70

THE ASKING.

ON the comb of a tall ridge back of the Cleaverage place, Ola Derf caught up with Lance at last.

"I got to set down awhile till I can ketch my breath," the girl said jerkily. "I reckon I run half a mile hollerin' yo' name every step. Lance Cleaverage—and you never turned yo' head. I believe in my soul you heared me the first time I called."

Cleaverage did not take the trouble to affirm or deny. He flung himself back on the fern and pine needles with his hat over his face, and remarking, "Wake me up when you get your breath," affected to go to sleep. Ola Derf was as comfortable a companion as a dog, in that you could talk to her or let her alone, as the humor ran.

A cicada's whir overhead swelled to a pulsating screech and died away. The woods here opened into calm and lofty spaces which at a little distance began to be dimmed as with vaporized sapphire—the blue that melted the hills into the sky. His eyes were caught by an indigo-bird in the branches—a drop of color 71 apparently precipitated by this marvel of azure held in solution by the summer air.

It was the morning after Lance had sung to Callista under her window, and his mind was yet swimming in dreams of her. He was roused from these by Ola's voice.

"Lance," she began and broke off. "Oh, Lance, I want to talk to you about—about—" Again her voice lapsed. She could see nothing of his face. His chest rose and fell rhythmically. "Lance—air you asleep?"

"Huh-uh. But if you keep on talkin' right good maybe I'll get to sleep."

She paid no attention to the snub, but addressed herself once more to what seemed a difficult bit of conversational tactics.

"Lance," came the plaint for the third time, "I wanted to name Callista Gentry to you. I—I—that thar gal don't care the rappin' o' her finger about you, nor any man."

Cleaverage, with the memory of last night warm at his heart, smiled under his hat brim and made no answer, save a little derisive sound which might have meant denial, indifference, or mere good-humored contempt of Ola herself.

"Oh, yes, I know," Ola nodded to her own thought, "they's a heap of 'em lets on not to like the boys; but with Callista Gentry hit goes to the bone. She don't care for nary soul in this round world but her own pretty self. She 'minds me of a snake—a white 72 snake, if ever there was such a thing. You look at her. You ain't never seen her change color, whatever came or went."

The picture evoked of Callista's flushed, tender face lying upon his breast made the pulses of the man on the warm pine needles leap.

"Well," he prompted finally, "what's the trouble? Are you a true friend, that doesn't want me to get snake bit?"

Ola laughed out a short laugh.

"No," she said, drearily, "I'm just a fool that's got yo' good at heart, and don't like to see you get a wife that cares nothin' for you. Thar—I've said my say. Thar's no love in her, and thar's no heart in her. But if a pretty face and high and mighty ways is what takes you, of course you can follow yo' ruthers."

"Uh-huh," agreed Lance, pushing his hat back and sitting up. He cast a laughing, sidelong glance in her direction. "Ola," he said softly, "I'm a goin' to let you into a secret. The gals has pestered me all my life long with too much lovin', and my great reason for bein' willin' to have Callista Gentry is that she seems like you say, sorter offish."

To his intense surprise (he had been wont to jest much more hardily with her than this), Ola's face flushed suddenly a dark, burning red. She jumped to her feet like a boy.

"All right," she said in a throaty tone, her countenance turned 73 away from him. "If that's so, I'm sorry I spoke. Tell Miz. Cleaverage all about it—and all about me and the other gals that run after you so turrible. I don't care."

But half way down the ridge her swift, angry, steps began to lag, and a little further on Lance overtook her.

"They's a-goin' to be a dance at our house a-Wednesday," she said in a penitent voice. "You're a-comin', ain't you, Lance?"

"Nope," returned the invited guest briefly.

He volunteered no excuse or explanation; and so, when the parting of their ways was reached, she demanded with imploring eyes on his face,

"Ye ain't mad with me, air ye. Lance? Why won't you come to my party?"

"Got somethin' else to do," Cleaverage returned nonchalantly. "Callista and me is goin' to be married a-Wednesday night."

Ola fell back a step, and clutched the sunbonnet which she carried rolled in her hands.

"You're a—w'y, Lance—you're jest a foolin'," she faltered.

Lance shook his head lightly, without a word.

"But—why, I was over at Gentry's this morning," she exclaimed finally. "Nobody thar said anything about it." She still watched his face incredulously. "They shorely would have said somethin', if Callista had named the day."

"She never named it," said Lance easily. "I named it myself, 74 back there on the ridge whilst you was catchin' your breath—or wastin' it. We had allowed that a week from yesterday would do us, but it sort of come over me that Wednesday was the right time, and I'm goin' along by there right now to settle it all. Reckon if you folks are givin' a dance you won't heed a invite? Good-bye," and he turned away on his own trail.

Swift, unsmiling, preoccupied as a wild thing on its foreordained errand—the hart to the spring, the homing bird—Cleaverage made his way to the Gentry place. Callista felt him coming before he turned into the big road; she saw him while yet the leafage of the door maples would have confused any view less keen. She longed to flee. Then in a blissful tremor she could do nothing but remain. Octavia Gentry, carrying hanks of carpet chain to the dye-pot in the yard, caught sight of him and called out a greeting.

"Is Mr. Gentry about the place?" Lance asked her, as he lingered a moment with Callista's eyes on him from the doorway.

"Yes, Pappy's makin' ready to go down to the Settlement, and he ain't been to the field to-day. He's in the house somewhar's. Did you want to see him special, Lance?"

Cleaverage made no direct reply; and the widow added,

"Thar he is, right now," as Ajax Gentry stepped out into the 75 open passage with a bit of harness in his hand which he was mending. A certain gravity fell on her manner as the two walked toward the house. It went through her mind that Cleaverage had never formally asked for Callista, and that now he was about to do so. She lifted her head proudly and glanced round at him. Lance Cleaverage was not only the best match in the whole Turkey Track region, but he had been the least oncoming of all "Sis's love-yers." You never could be sure whether Lance wanted the girl or was merely amusing himself; and Octavia had always been strongly set upon the match. When they came to the porch edge, Lance seated himself upon it and looked past the old man to where Callista's flower face was dimly discernible in the entry beyond.

"Good morning," he said impersonally. "I'm glad to find you at home, Mr. Gentry. I stopped a-past to name it to you-all that Callista and me has made up our minds to be wed a-Wednesday evening."

There was a soft exclamation from within; but mother and grandfather remained dumb with astonishment. Cleaverage glanced round at them with a slight impatience in his hazel eyes that held always the fiery, tawny glint in their depths. He detested having people receive his announcements as though they were astonishing—that is, unless it was his humor to astonish.

"Well," Grandfather Gentry began after a time, "ain't this 76 ruther sudden?"

"Marryin' has to be done all of a sudden," Lance remarked without rancor. "I never yet have heard of gettin' married gradual."

"Why, Lance, honey," said the widow in a coaxing tone, "you ain't rightly ready for a wife, air ye? Ef you two young folks had named this to me—well, six months ago—I'd 'a' had Callista's settin' out in good order. Looks like Pappy 's right, and it is sorter suddent."

"What do you say, Callista?" inquired the postulant bridegroom without looking up.

In the soft dusk of the interior the girl's face was crimson. Here came the time when she could no longer pretend to be urged into the marriage by her mother, her grandfather, the course of events; but must say "yes" or "no" openly of her own motion. Last night's startling accost yet shook her young heart; the glamour of that hour came back upon her senses.

"I say whatever you say, Lance," she uttered, scarcely above a whisper.

Ajax Gentry laughed out.

"Well—I reckon that settles it," he said, jingling his harness and turning to leave.

"No—it don't settle nothin'," broke in Octavia anxiously. "Lance ain't got any land cleared to speak of over on his place, and he ain't put in any crop; how air the both of 'em to live? 77 They'll just about have obliged to stay here with us. You can find work for Lance on the farm, cain't ye, Pappy?"

Old Ajax measured his prospective grand-son-in-law with a steady eye, and assured himself that there was not room on the farm nor in the house for two masters. He read mastery in every line of face and figure. Lance got to his feet so suddenly that he might have been said to leap up.

"I've built me a good cabin, and it's all ready. Callista and me are goin' into no house but our own," he said brusquely. "Ain't that so, Callista?"

Again the girl within the doorway answered in that hushed, almost reluctant voice,

"Just as you say. Lance."

And though grandfather laughed, and Mother Gentry objected and even scolded, that ended the argument.

"I'll stop a-past and leave the word at Hands's," Lance told them as he turned to go. "Is there anyone else you'd wish me to bid, mother?"

That "mother," uttered in Lance's golden tones, went right to the widow's sentimental heart. She would have acceded to anything he had proposed in such a way. Old Ajax smiled, realizing that Lance meant to triumph once for all over Flenton Hands.

As Cleaverage walked away, the mother prompted, almost indignantly.

"Why didn't ye go down to the draw-bars with him, Callista? I 78 don't think that's no way to say farewell to a young man when you've just been promised."

Gentry looked at his daughter-in-law through narrowed eyes, then at Callista; his glance followed Lance Cleaverage's light-footed departure a moment, and then he delivered himself.

"I ain't got nothing agin your marryin' Lance Cleaverage Wednesday evening," he said concisely to Callista. "I ain't been axed; but ef I had been, my say would still be the same. All I've got to tell you is that thar was never yet a house built of logs or boards or stones that was big enough to hold two families."

"Why, Pap Gentry!" exclaimed Octavia in a scandalized tone. "This house is certainly Callista's home, and I'm sure I love Lance as well as I ever could a own son. If they thought well to live here along of us this winter, I know you wouldn't hold to that talk."

"I reckon you don't know me so well as ye 'lowed ye did," observed Gentry; "for I would—and do. Lance Cleaverage has took up with the crazy notion of marryin' all in haste. He ain't got no provision for livin' on that place of his. Well, I tell you right now, he cain't come and live in my house. No, nor you cain't pack victuals over to 'em to keep 'em up."

A coquette according to mountain ideals, carrying her head high 79 with the boys, famous for her bickerings with Lance, Callista Gentry had always been a model at home, quiet, tractable, obedient. But the face she now turned upon her grandfather was that of a young fury. All her cold pride was up in arms. That secret, still spirit of hers, haughty, unbent, unbroken, reared itself to give the old man to understand that she wanted nothing of him from this on. She—Lance's wife—the idea of her begging food from Grandfather Gentry!

"If you two'll hush and let me speak," she said in an even tone, "I reckon I'll be able to set grandpappy's mind at rest. You can give me the wedding—I reckon you want to do so much as that for your own good name. But bite or sup I'll never take afterwards in this house. No, I won't. So far from carryin' victuals out of it, you'll see when I come in I'll have somethin' in my hand, grandpap. I invite you and mother right now to take yo' Sunday dinners with me when you want to ride as far as the Blue Spring church. But,"—she went back to it bitterly—"bite or sup in this house neither me nor Lance will ever take." Then, her eyes bright, her usually pale cheeks flaming, she turned and ran up the steep little stairs to her own room. Octavia looked reproach at her father-in-law; but Ajax Gentry spat scornfully toward the vacant fireplace, and demanded,

"Now she's a pretty somebody for a man to wed and carry to his 80 home, ain't she? I say, Sunday dinners with her! Can she mix a decent pone o' corn bread, and bake it without burnin' half her fingers off? She cain't. Can she cut out a hickory shirt and make it? She cain't. Could she kill a chicken and pick and clean it and cook it—could she do it ef she was a starvin'? She could not. She cain't so much as bile water without burnin' it. She don't know nothin'—nothin' but the road. She's shore a fine bargain for a man to git. To have a passel o' fool boys follerin' after her and co'tin' her, that's all Callisty's ever studied about, or all you ever studied about for her."

"Well, pappy," Octavia bridled, considerably stung, "I don't think you' got much room to talk. In yo' young days, from all I ever heared—either from you or from others—you was about as flighty with the gals, and had about as many of 'em follerin' after you, as Sis is with the boys."

She looked up at her father-in-law where he lounged against the fire-board. Grandly tall was old Ajax Gentry, carrying his seventy years and his crown of silver like an added grace. His blue eye had the cold fire of Callista's, and his lean sinewy body, like hers, showed the long, flowing curves of running water.

"O-o-o-oh!" he rejoined, with an indescribable lengthened circumflex 81 on the vowel that lent it a world of meaning. "O-o-o-oh! . . . a man! Well—that's mighty different. If a feller's got the looks—and the ways—he can fly 'round amongst the gals for a spell whilst he's young and gaily, and it don't do him no harm. There's some that the women still foller after, even when he's wedded and settled down" (Ajax smiled reminiscently). "But when a man marries a gal, he wants a womern—a womern that'll keep his house, and cook his meals, and raise his chillen right. The kind o' tricks Callisty's always pinned her faith to ain't worth shucks in wedded life. Ef I was a young feller to-morrow, I wouldn't give a chaw o' tobaccer for a whole church-house full o' gals like Callisty, an' I've told you so a-many's the time. Yo' Maw Gentry wasn't none o' that sort—yo' mighty right she wasn't! She could cook and weave and tend a truck patch and raise chickens to beat any womern in the Turkey Tracks, Big and Little. I say, Sunday dinner with Callisty!" he repeated. "Them that goes to her for a dinner had better pack their victuals with 'em."

Octavia gathered up her hanks of carpet-warp and started for the door.

"All right, Pappy," she said angrily. "All right. I raised the gal best I knowed how. I reckon you think the fault—sence you see so much fault in her—comes from my raisin'; but I know mighty well an' good that the only trouble I ever had with Sis, was 'count o' her Gentry blood. How you can expect the 82 cookin' o' corn pones and makin' o' hickory shirts from a gal that's always got every man in reach plumb distracted over her, is more'n I can see." Octavia went out hastily before her father-in-law could make the ironic reply which she knew to expect; and after a moment or two, Ajax himself moved away toward the log stable to begin his harnessing.

Callista had hurried to her bedroom, slammed the door, and was alone with her own heart. As for Lance, walking beneath the chestnuts, he had no wish to have her beside him under the old man's humorous, semi-sarcastic gaze and his prospective mother-in-law's sentimental, examining eye. He wanted her to himself. He thought with a mighty surge of rapture of the approaching time when they could shut out all the world and find once more that island of delight where they should dwell the only created beings. He, to share his honeymoon with the Gentry family! He laughed shortly at the thought.

It was Little Liza that opened the Hands door to him, and her light eyes softened unwillingly as they beheld his alert figure on the step. Little Liza was tormented with an incongruously soft heart, painfully accessible to the demands of beauty and charm.

"Howdy," she said. She had not seen Lance Cleaverage since the day of the funeral; but she had heard from her brother and her 83 sisters that his behavior on that occasion was unseemly, if not positively disrespectful.

Lance barely returned her greeting, then he broached his errand.

"Jane! Ellen! Oh, Flent!" she called distressfully, when she had his news, "Come on out. Lance Cleaverage is here, waitin' to invite you to his weddin'."

The two sisters came out on the porch, but Flenton did not make his appearance.

"Howdy, Lance. Who is it?" inquired Ellen Hands. "Callista Gentry hasn't took you, has she?"

"Well," drawled Lance, lifting a laughing eye to the line of big, gray-faced women on the rude, puncheon-floored gallery, "you can make it out best way you find. The weddin' is to be held at the Gentry place. If it ain't Callista, it's somebody mighty like her."

Little Liza's lip trembled.

"You Lance Cleaverage," she said huskily, "you're a-gettin' the sweetest prettiest thing that ever walked this earth. I do know that there ain't the man livin' that's fit for Callisty. I hope to the Lord you'll be good to her."

Again Lance regarded the doleful visages before him and laughed.

"You-all look like I'd bid you to a funeral rather than to a weddin'," he said, lingering a bit to see if Flenton would show himself.

Hands was just inside the window. He knew well what had been 84 said. Nothing could have been less to his taste than the going out to receive such an invitation.

"Thar—you see now, Flent," said Little Liza tragically, as she encountered her brother when they turned from watching Lance away. "You've lost her. Oh, law! I always thought if I could call Callisty Gentry sister, it would make me the happiest critter in the world."

"You may have a chance so to call her yet," said Hands, who showed any emotion the announcement may have roused in him only by an added tightening of lip and eye. "Wednesday ain't come yet—and hit ain't gone."

"Well, hit'll come and hit'll go," said Ellen heavily. "Lance Cleaverage gits what he starts after, and that's the fact."

"Yes," agreed Little Liza, "he shore does. I don't reckon I could have said no to him myself."

"Lance Cleaverage!" echoed her brother. "Well, he's born—but he ain't buried. I never did yet give up a thing that I'd set my mind on. I ain't said I've given up Callista Gentry."

The three looked at him rather wildly. Talk of this sort is unknown among the mountain people. Yet they could but feel the woman's admiration for his masculine high-handedness of speech.

At the Cleaverage place they were making ready for the noonday meal when Lance brought his news home. The table, with its 85 cloth of six flour-sacks sewed end to end, was set in the cool entry. The Dutch oven, half buried in ashes, was full of buttermilk-dodgers, keeping hot. At the other side of the broad hearthstone, Roxy Griever bent above a dinner-pot dishing up white beans and dumplings. Beside her Mary Ann Martha held a small yellow bowl and made futile dabs with a spoon she had herself whittled from a bit of shingle, trying to get beans into it. Her mother's reproofs dropped upon her tousled and incorrigible head with the regularity of clockwork.

"You, Mary Ann Marthy, I do know in my soul you' the worst child the Lord ever made: Where do you expect to go to when you die? Look at that thar good victuals all splattered out in the ashes. That's yo' doin'. You' jest adzackly like yo' uncle Lance."

Then Sylvane, who was shaping an axe-helve in the doorway, looked up and said, "Here comes Lance himself." And Kimbro Cleaverage pushed another chair towards the table.

"Well," said the bridegroom expectant, looking about on the shadowed interior of the cabin, dim to his eyes after the glare outside, "I've got a invite for you-all to a weddin'."

"Not you and Callista?" exclaimed Sylvane, his boyish face glowing. "Oh, Lance—she ain't said yes, has she?"

"No, Buddy," Lance flung over his shoulder, and you saw by his 86 smile the strong affection there was between them, "she ain't said yes—but I have. I've set the time for Wednesday, and the Gentry place is all uptore right now getting ready for it. I reckon"—his eye gleamed with the mischievous afterthought—"I reckon they'll clear the big barn for dancing."

As though the word had been a catch released in her mechanism, Roxy Griever straightened up, spoon in hand, with a snort.

"You Lance Cleaverage—you sinful soul!" she began, pointing her bean spoon at him and thus shedding delightful dribblings of the stew which Mary Ann Martha instantly scraped up, "you air a-gettin' the best girl in the two Turkey Tracks—and here you take the name of dancin' on yo' sinful lips at the same time!"

"I reckon you'll not come if there's goin' to be dancin'," remarked Lance, hanging up his hat and seating himself at the table. "I hadn't thought of that. Well—we'll have to get along without you."

Roxy snorted inarticulate reprobation. Suddenly she demanded.

"Sylvane, whar's that branch of leaves I sent you after?"

With the words, Mary Ann Martha, unnoticed by her mother, abruptly dropped her shingle spoon, scrambled across Sylvane's 87 long legs, and galloped wildly out into the bit of orchard beside the house, her mass of almost white curling hair flying comically about her bobbing head, a picture of energetic terror. Her young uncle looked after her, smiling tolerantly, and said nothing.

"The flies'll git more of this dinner than we'uns, if we don't have something. Why'n't you git me that branch o' leaves, Sylvane?" persisted his sister.

"Well, Sis' Roxy, I wanted to finish my axe-helve, so I sub-contracted that order o' yourn," answered Sylvane, deprecatingly. "Sent Ma'-An'-Marth' out to git a small limb."

"For the land's sake! An' her not taller than—" began Roxy querulously. But her father put in, with pacific intention,

"Here's the chap now with her peach-tree branch. Come on, Pretty; let Gran'pappy put it up 'side o' him at the table. Now sons, now daughter, air ye ready? This is a bountiful meal; and Roxy's cooked it fine as the best; we're mightily favored. We'll ax God's blessing on the food."