Judith of the Cumberlands. MacGowan Alice

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СКАЧАТЬ in an appearance at Nancy Card’s, there was preaching at Brush Arbor, but Judith, nourishing what secret hopes may be conjectured, refused to make any preparation for attending service.

      “An’ ye think ye won’t go to meeting this fine sunshiny Sabbath mornin’, Sister Barrier?” Elder Drane put the query, standing anxious and carefully attired in his best before Judith on the doorstep of her home.

      She shook her dark head, and looked past the Elder toward the distant ranges.

      “I jest p’intedly cain’t git away this morning,” she said carelessly.

      The Elder combed his sandy whiskers with a thoughtful forefinger. Not thus had Judith been wont to reply to him. Always before, if there had been denial, there were too, reasons adduced, shy looks from the corners of those dark eyes and tender inquiries as to the health of his children.

      “Is they—is they some particular reason that you cain’t go this morning?” the widower inquired cautiously.

      There was, and that particular reason lay as far afield as the Edge and Nancy Card’s place, but Judith Barrier did not see fit to name it to this one of her suitors, who had brought her perhaps more glory than any other. She was impatient to be rid of him. Like her mother Earth, having occupied her time for lo! these several years in the building of an ideal from such unpromising materials as were then at hand, she was ready to sweep those tentative makings—confessed failures now that she found the type she really wanted—swiftly, ruthlessly to the limbo of oblivion.

      Elihu Drane stood high among his neighbours; he was a man of some education as well as comfortable means. His attention had been worth retaining once; now she smiled at him with a vague, impersonal sweetness, and repeated her statement that she couldn’t go to church.

      “I’ve got too much to do,” she qualified finally. “Looks like the work in this house never is finished. And there’s chicken and dumplin’s to cook for dinner.”

      The Elder’s pale blue eyes brightened. “Walk down to the gate with me, won’t you?” he said hopefully, “I’ve got somethin’ to talk to you about.”

      When they were out of earshot of the house, he began eagerly, “Sister Barrier you’re workin’ yourse’f to death here, in the sweet days of your youth. I did promise the last time that I never would beg you again to wed me, but looks like I can’t stand by and hold my peace. If you was to trust yourse’f to me things would be different. I never did hold with a woman killin’ herse’f with hard work. My first and second had everything that they could wish for, and I was good and ready to do more any time they named what it was. I’ve got a crank churn. None of these old back-breaking, up-and-down dashers for me. I hired a woman whenever my wife said the word. I don’t think either of mine ever killed a chicken or cut a stick of firewood from the time they walked in the front door as a bride till they was carried out of it in their coffins.”

      He stared eagerly into the downcast face beside him, but somewhere Judith found strength to resist even these dazzling propositions.

      “I ain’t studyin’ about gittin’ wedded,” she told him most untruthfully. “Looks like I’m a mighty cold-hearted somebody, Elder Drane. I jest can’t fix it no way but to live here with my Uncle Jep and take care of him in his old days. Oh, would you wait a minute?” as they reached the horse-block and the Elder began to untie his mount with a discouraged countenance. “Jest let me run back to the house—I won’t keep you a second. I got some little sugar cookies for Mart and Lucy.”

      Mart and Lucy were the Elder’s children. He stood looking after her as she ran lithely up the path, and wondered why she could love them so much and him so little. She came back laughing and a bit out of breath.

      “I expect we’ll have company to-day,” she told him comfortably. “We always do when there’s preaching at the church, and I ’low I’d better stay home and see to the dinner.”

      The Elder had scarcely made his chastened adieux when the Lusk girls came through the grove walking on either side of a young man.

      The Lusk girls were Judith’s nearest neighbours—if you excepted Huldah Spiller at Jim Cal’s cabin, and at the present Judith certainly was in the mind to make an exception of her. The sisters were seldom seen apart; narrow shouldered, short waisted, thin limbed young creatures, they were even at seventeen bowing to a deprecating stoop. Their little faces were alike, short-chinned with pink mouths inclined to be tremulous, the eyes big, blue, and half-frightened in expression, and the drab hair drawn away from the small foreheads so tightly that it looked almost grey. They inevitably reminded one of a pair of blue and white night-moths, scarcely fitted for a daylight world, and continually afraid of it.

      “Cousin Lacey’s over from the Far Cove,” called Pendrilla before they reached Judith. “Ain’t it fine? Ef we-all can git up a play-party he says he’ll shore come ef we let him know in time.”

      The young fellow with them, their cousin Lacey Rountree, showed sufficient resemblance to mark the family type, but his light eyes were lit with reckless fires, and his short chin was carried with a defiant tilt.

      “What you foolin’ along o’ that old feller for, Judith?” he asked jerking an irreverent thumb after the departing Elder.

      “I wasn’t fooling with him,” returned Judith, her red lips demure, her brown eyes laughing above them through their thick fringe of lashes. “Elder Drane was consulting me about church matters—sech as children like you have no call to meddle with.”

      Young Rountree smiled, “I’ll bet he was!” picking up a stone and firing it far into the blue in sheer exuberance of youthful joy. “Did he name anything about a weddin’ in church?”

      “Elder Drane is a mighty fine man,” asserted Judith, suddenly sober. “Any gal might be glad to git him. But its my belief and opinion that his heart is buried with his first—or his second,” and she laughed out suddenly at the unintentional humorous conclusion she had made.

      “See here, Jude,” the boy put it boldly as the four young people strolled toward the house, “you’re too pretty and sweet to be anybody’s thirdly. Next time old man Drane comes pesterin’ round you, you tell him that you’re promised to me—hear?”

      Again Judith laughed. It is impossible to talk seriously to a boy with whom one has played hat-ball and prisoner’s base, whose hair one has pulled, and who has, in retort courteous, rolled one in the dust.

      “I’m in earnest if I ever was in my life,” asserted Lacey, taking it quite as a matter of course that Cliantha and Pendrilla should be made party to his courting.

      And the two little old maids of seventeen looked with wondering admiration at Judith’s management of all this masculine attention—her careless, discounting smile for their swaggering young cousin, her calm acceptance of imposing Elder Drane’s humble and persistent wooing.

Chapter IV

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Building

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      Judith awakened that morning with СКАЧАТЬ