193

BROKEN CHORDS.

AFTER the episode of the ruined venison, Callista tried sulking—refusing to speak. But she found in Lance a power of silence that so far overmatched her own as to leave her daunted. He returned now from his long expeditions, to hang up his wild meat in the grove, and thereafter to sit bright-eyed and silent across the hearth from her, whistling, under his breath, or strumming lightly on his banjo.

Callista was a concrete, objective individual, yet she grew to recognize the resources of one who had for his familiars dreams that he could bid to stand at his knee and beguile his leisure or his loneliness. But dreams, so treated, have a trick of strengthening themselves against times of depression, changing their nature, and wringing with cruel fingers the heart which entertains them; so that those who feed the imagination must be willing to endure the strength of its chastisements.

Yet if Lance Cleaverage suffered, he kept always a brave front, and took his suffering away from under the eye of his young wife. To do him justice, he had little understanding of his own offences. An ardent huntsman, he had by choice lived hard much 194 of his life, sleeping in the open in all weathers, eating what came to hand. Callista's needs he was unfitted to gauge, and she maintained a haughty silence concerning them. Since she would not inquire, he told her nothing of having been offered money to play at dances, but began to be sometimes from home at nights, taking his banjo, leaving her alone.

An equable tempered, practical woman might have trained him readily to the duties of masculine provider in the primitive household. But beautiful, spoiled Callista, burning with wrongs which she was too proud and too angry to voice, eaten with jealousy of those thoughts which comforted him when she refused to speak, always in terror that people would find out how at hap-hazard they lived, how poor and ill-provided they were, and laugh at her choice—Callista had her own ideas of discipline. If Lance went away and left no firewood cut, she considered it proper to retort by getting no supper and letting him come into a house stone cold. This was a serious matter where a chunk of fire may be sent from neighbor to neighbor to take the place of matches.

In this sort the winter wore away. In April there came one of the spring storms that southern mountaineers call "blackberry winter." All the little growing things were checked or killed. A fine, cold rain beat throughout the day around the eaves of the 195 cabin. The wind laid wet, sobbing lips to chink and cranny, and cried to her that she was alone—alone—alone; she, Callista, was neglected, deserted, shunned! For Lance had a day's work at re-lining fireplaces at Squire Ashe's place. Busy with the truck-patch he had at this late day set about, and which he must both clear and fence, he had somewhat overlooked the wood-pile; and before noon the fuel was exhausted. Instead of gathering chips and trash, or raiding the dry spaces under the great pines for cones and crackling twigs,—as any one of her hardy mountain sisters would have done, and then greeted her man at night with a laugh, and a hot supper—Callista let the fire go out, and sat brooding. Without fire she could cook herself no dinner, and she ate a bit of cold corn-pone, fancying Lance at somebody's table—he never told her now where he was going, nor for how long—eating the warm, appetizing food that would be provided.

As evening drew on the rain slacked, and a cloud drove down on the mountain-top, forcing an icy, penetrating chill through the very substance of the walls, sending Callista to bed to get warm. She wrapped herself in quilts and shivered. It was dark when she heard Lance come stumbling in, cross the room, and, without a word, search on the fire-board for matches.

"There ain't any," she told him, not moving to get up. "It 196 wouldn't do you any good if there was—there's no wood."

He did not answer, but, feeling his way, passed on into the little lean-to kitchen, and Callista harkened eagerly, believing that sight of the bowl of meal and the pan of uncooked turnips on the table by the window would bring home to her husband the enormity of her wrongs and his offences. Leaning forward she could discern a vaguely illuminated silhouette of him against this window. He appeared to be eating. She guessed that he had peeled a turnip and was making a lunch of that.

"Would you rather have your victuals raw?" she demanded finally, desperate at his silence. "I reckon I'd better learn your ruthers in the matter."

"I'd rather have 'em raw as to have 'em cooked the way you mostly get 'em," came the swift reply in a perfectly colorless tone. "I ain't particularly petted on having my victuals burnt on one side and raw on the other, and I'd rather do my own seasoning—some folks salt things till the devil himself couldn't eat 'em, or leave the salt out, and then wonder that there's complaints."

Her day of brooding had come to a crisis of choking rage. Callista sat up on the edge of the bed and put her thick hair back from her face.

"I cook what I'm provided," she said in a cold, even voice. 197 "That is, I cook it when I'm supplied with wood. And I fix your meals the best I know how; but it would take one of the sort you named just then to cook without fire."

She had expected that he would go out in the dark and cut firewood for her. As for the matches, starting a flame without them was an easy trick for a hunter like Lance. She remembered with a sudden strange pang his once showing her how he could prepare his pile of shredded tinder, fire a blank charge into it, and have a blaze promptly. She heard him fumbling for something on the wall—his gun, of course. But the next instant there came the whine of the banjo; it hummed softly as it struck against the lintel. That was what he was getting—not the gun to light a fire—he was leaving her alone in the cabin! She guessed that he was going over to Derf's to play for a dance; and for a strenuous moment she was near to springing after him and begging him to stay with her.

But habit prevailed. She huddled, shivering, under her covers and went back to the sullen canker of her own wrongs. She might have had the pick of the countryside, and she had taken up with Lance Cleaverage. She had married him when and how he said—that was where she made her mistake. She should have told him then—she should have—but, in the midst of all this rush of 198 accusation, she knew well that she took Lance when and how she could get him, and at this moment her heart was clamoring to know where he was and what doing.

So she lay shivering, cold to the knees, her hands like ice, her teeth locked in a rigor that was as much spiritual as physical, till she could bear it no longer. Then she got hesitatingly up from the bed and stood long in the middle of the darkened room, turning her head about as though she could see. She knew where each article of furniture stood. It was her room, her home, hers and Lance's. Lance had built it; she had somehow failed pitiably, utterly, to make it hers; and she was well aware that she had failed to make it home for him—yet it was all either of them had. Back over her mind came memory of their wedding morning, when, his arm about her waist, her head half the time on his shoulder, they had visited every nook of the place and discussed between tender words and kisses all its scant furnishings. Then suddenly, without having come to any decision whatever, she found herself out in the cold rain, running through the woods toward the big road and the Derf place.

Down the long slope from the Gap she fled, then past the old quarry, past Spellman's clearing, and around the Spring hollow. She had never set foot on Derf land before. Through the fine rain Callista—spent, gasping, wet and disheveled—at last saw 199 the windows, a luminous haze; caught the sound of stamping, thudding feet, and heard the twang of Lance's banjo. She had approached through the grove, and stood at the side fence. The place was so public that its dogs paid little attention to comers and goers. When Callista came to herself fully, she realized that it was the bars of the milking place she leaned upon. Slowly she withdrew the upper one from its socket, stepped over, then turned and replaced it. With ever-increasing hesitation she faltered toward the house, avoiding the front and approaching the light at the side, where she hoped to be unobserved.

Shivering, shrinking, her loosened wet hair dragging in against her neck, she stared through the window into the lighted room. They were dancing in there. The sounds she had heard were from Lance's banjo indeed, but held in other hands, while Lance himself sat at a little table near the hearth, a steaming supper before him, Ola Derf waiting on him hand and foot, stooping to the coals for fresh supplies of good hot coffee, or smoking, crisp pones.

"Now you just hush!" she shrilled in response to somebody's importunities, as Callista hung listening. "Lance cain't play for no dancin' till he gits through his supper. And he's a-goin' to have time to eat, too. You Jim, put that banjo down—you cain't play hit. Pat for 'em if they're in such a hurry to dance."

The Aleshine girls from Big Buck Gap, a young widow who lived 200 half way down the Side, two cousins of the Derf's themselves—these were the women in the room. Callista was desperately afraid lest one of the loud-talking, half-intoxicated men in there should come out and discover her; yet she could not drag herself away from sight of Lance sitting housed, warm, comforted and fed—a home made for him. Something knocked at the door of her heart with a message that this scene carried; but fiercely she barred that door, and set herself to defend her own position.

Grasping a trunk of muscadine vine, which, when she shivered, shook down icy drops upon her, Callista rested long, regarding the scene before her. What should she do? To return to her home and leave her husband there seemed a physical impossibility. To go in and play the high-and-mighty, as she had been wont to do in her free girlhood, to glance over her shoulder with dropped eyelids and inform Lance Cleaverage that she cared not at all what he did or where he went—this were mere farce; her time for that sort of mumming was past.

Lance had finished his supper now, and turned from the board. It seemed to Callista that he looked well pleased with himself, satisfied, even gay. The sight set her teeth rattling in fresh shivers. Still he did not play for the dancers, who continued to make what headway they might to the time of Jim's patting.

Callista saw Ola bring the banjo and lay it in Lance's lap. Then 201 the little brown girl seated herself close beside him. He bent and placed the instrument properly in Ola's grasp, disposing the short, stubbed fingers on the strings. In the positive throe of jealousy that this sight brought, Callista must needs, for her own self-respect, recall that Lance had offered more than once to teach her to play, and that she had refused—and pretty shortly, too—to learn, or to touch the banjo, which she had come to hate with an unreasoning hatred. Now the dancers grew tired of Jim and his patting, and the call was for music.

"See here, Lance Cleaverage," said Buck Fuson, "we-all throwed in to get you to play; but we ain't a-goin' to pay the money and have you fool away yo' time with Ola."

This was the first that Callista knew of Lance earning money by his banjo-playing.

"All right," said Cleaverage laconically, not looking up from his instructions. "I've had me a good supper, and I've got a warm place to stay, and that's all I want. Go on and dance."

He addressed himself singly to Ola and her chords, moving her fingers patiently, taking the banjo himself to show her just how the thing was done. She was a dull pupil, but a humbly grateful one; and after a while it seemed to Callista that she could no longer bear the sight. She was debating starkly between the desperate course of returning home alone and the yet more 202 desperate enterprise of going in, when a deeper shadow crossed the darkness behind her, and she turned with a smothered scream to find Iley Derf's Indian husband moving impassively through the glow from the window and making his way to the back door.

At the sight she wheeled and fled across the yard toward the front gate and the road. She gained that doubtful refuge just as a man on a horse came splattering up out of the muddy little hollow below the Derf place. With another cry she flung about and ran from him, stepped on a round stone, and fell.

For a moment she crouched, shivering, wet, bruised, trying to get to her feet, the breath sobbing through her parted lips; then somebody set a not-too-gentle grasp on her shoulder, and she looked up to divine in the dimness Flenton Hands's face above her. There was sufficient light from the noisy cabin behind to allow him to recognize her.

"Lord God—Callista!" he whispered, lifting her to her feet and supporting her with an arm under hers. "What in the world—"

"I—I—something scared me," she faltered. "It was that old Indian that Iley Derf married. He came right a-past where I was and, and—he scared me."

"Whar was you at?" inquired Hands blankly.

"In there," returned Callista, pointing toward the Derf yard, 203 beginning to cry like a child. "I was looking through the window at them dance, and—and that old Indian scared me."

Twang—twang—twang, across the gusty blackness of the night came the jeer of Lance's banjo. There was no whisper now of "How many miles—how many years?" but the sharp staccato of "Cripple Creek," punctuated by the thudding of dancers' feet as they pounded out the time. Callista felt her face grow hot in the darkness. She knew that Flenton was listening, and that he must guess why she should hang outside the window looking in.

"Come on," said Hands suddenly, almost roughly. "This ain't no fit place for you,—a woman like you,—my God! Callista, I'll put you on my horse and take you home."

There was a new note in his voice, a new authority in his movements, as he lifted her to the saddle and, plodding beside her in the dark, wet road, made no further offer of question or conversation.

In spite of herself, Callista felt comforted. She reached up and gathered her hair together, wringing the rain from it and redding it with the great shell comb which always held its abundant coils in place. She could not in reason tell Flenton to leave her—she needed him too much. When they turned in at the ill-kept lane which led to Lance's cabin. Lance's wife caught 204 her breath a little, but said nothing. Flenton lifted her gently down at her own door-stone, and, opening the door for her, followed her in and, with a match from his pocket, lit a candle. He looked at the cold ash-heap on the fireless hearth, whistled a bit, and went out. She heard him striking matches somewhere about the wood-pile, and directly after came the sound of an axe. It was not long before he returned, his arms piled high with such bits of dry wood as he could find, split to kindling size.

"It looks like it's a shame for me to have you waitin' on me this-a-way," Callista began half-heartedly. She had taken counsel with herself, during his absence, and resolved to make some effort to keep up appearances.

"Hit don't look like anything of the sort," protested Flenton Hands. "You needed me, and that's all I want to know."

He had laid his fire skilfully, and now the blaze began to roar up the big chimney.

"My feet ain't been warm this whole blessed day," Callista said, almost involuntarily, as she drew nearer the fascinating source of both warmth and light. "My, but that does feel good!"

"You pore child!" Flent muttered huskily, turning toward her from the hearth where he knelt. "You're e'en about perished."

He went out then, only to come hurriedly back, reporting,

"I cain't find any wood—whar does Lance keep it?" 205

Lance's wife hung her head, lips pressed tight together, striving for resolution to answer this with a smooth lie.

"He don't go off and leave you in this kind of weather without any wood?" inquired Hands hoarsely.

"Yes—he does," Callista choked. And, having opened the bottle a bit, out poured the hot wine of her wrath. All the things that she might have said to her mother had she been on good terms with that lady; the taunts that occurred to her in Lance's absence and which she failed to utter to him when he came; these rushed pell-mell into speech. She was white and shaking when she made an end.

"There," she said tragically, getting to her feet. "I reckon I had no business to name one word of this to you, Flenton; but I'm the most miserable creature that ever lived, I do think; and I ain't got a soul on this earth that cares whether or not about me. And—and—"

She broke off, locking her hands tightly and staring down at them.

Flenton had the sense and the self-control not to approach her, not to introduce too promptly the personal note.

"Callista," he began cautiously, assuming as nearly as possible the tone of an unbiased friend to both parties, "you ort to quit 206 Lance. He ain't doin' you right. There's more than you know of in this business; and whether you stay thar or not, you ort to quit him oncet and go home to yo' folks."

Callista made an inarticulate sound of denial.

"I never will—never in this world!" she burst out. "I might quit Lance, but home I'll never go."

Flenton's pale gray eyes lit up at the suggestion of her words, but she put aside the hand he stretched out toward her.

"I've been studying about it all day, and for a good many days before this one," she said with slow bitterness. "Lance Cleaverage gives me plenty of time to study. If I leave this house, I'm goin' straight to Father Cleaverage."

Hands looked disappointed, but he did not fail to press the minor advantage.

"If you want to go to-night, Callista," he suggested, "I'd be proud to carry you right along on my horse. Lance needs a lesson powerful bad. You go with me—"

"Hush," Callista warned him. "I thought I heard somebody coming. Thank you, Flent. You've been mighty good to me this night. I'll never forget you for it—but I reckon you better go now. When a woman's wedded, she has to be careful about the speech of people; and—I reckon you better go now, Flent."

The rain had ceased. A wan moon looked out in the western sky 207 and made the wet branches shine with a dim luster. Callista stood in the doorway against the broken leap and shine of the firelight. Hands went to his horse, and then turned back to look at her.

"And you won't go with me?" he repeated once more. "Callista, you'd be as safe with me as with your own brother. I've got that respect for you that it don't seem like you're the same as other women. I wish't you'd go, if for nothin' but to learn Lance a lesson."

The girl in the doorway knew that there was no wood for any more fire than that which now blazed on the hearth behind her; she was aware that there was scarcely food in the house for three days' eating; yet she found courage to shake her head.

"Thank you kindly, Flent," she said with a note of finality in her tone. "I know you mean well, but I cain't go."

Then she closed the door as though to shut out the temptation, and, dressed as she was, lay down upon the bed and pulled the quilts over her.

She listened to the retreating hoofs of Flenton's horse, dreading always to hear Lance's voice hailing him, telling herself that his presence there at that hour alone with her was all Lance's fault, and she had no reason for the shame and fear which possessed her at thought of it. But the hoofs passed quite 208 away, and still Lance did not make his appearance. She could not sleep. She judged it was near midnight. Pictures of Lance teaching Ola Derf her chords on the banjo flickered before her eyes. Pictures of Lance dancing with Ola as he had at the infare followed. She had a kind of wonder at herself that she was not angrier, that she was only spent and numbed and cowed. Then all at once came a light step she knew well, the sudden little harmonious outcry of the banjo as Lance set it down to open the door, and Lance himself was in the room.

She thought she would have spoken to him. She did not know that the Indian had gone in and announced her presence outside the window at the Derfs. As she raised her head she got his haughty, lifted profile between herself and the light of the now dying fire. She knew that he was aware of her presence; but he looked neither to the right nor to the left; he made no comment on her fire, but strode swiftly through the room, across the open passage, and into the far room. She heard him moving about for a few moments, then everything was silent.

All that numbing inertia fell away from her. She sat up on the edge of the bed as she had once before that evening, and her eyes went from side to side of the room, picking out what she wanted to take with her. A few swift movements secured her shawl and sunbonnet. Without stealth, yet without noise, she opened 209 the door and stepped forth.

She stood in the open threshing-floor porch between the two rooms, a very gulf of shadow, into which watery moonlight struggled from the world outside. A long while she stood so, looking toward the far room, her hands clenched and pressed hard against her breast. Those hands were empty. She had shut the door of her girlhood home against herself unless she returned, a gift in them. No—she would not go back there.

All at once she became aware of a rhythmic sound, which made itself heard in the utter stillness of the forest night—Lance's deep breathing. He slept then; he could go to sleep like that, when she—. Callista faltered forward toward the front step; and as she did so, another sound overbore the slighter noise; it was the hoofs of an approaching horse.

She checked, turned, flung the sunbonnet from her and dropped the shawl upon it, then, with a quick, light step, crossed the porch and noiselessly pushed open the door of the room in which Lance lay. The little pale moon made faint radiance in the room, and by its light she saw her husband lying on that monster spare bed which is the pride of every country housewife. He had folded and put aside the ruffled covers of her contriving, and lay dressed as he was, with only his shoes removed. On tiptoe she 210 drew near and stood looking down at him. They said if you held a looking-glass over a sleeping person's face and asked him a question, he'd tell you the truth. What was it she wanted to know of Lance? Not whether he loved her or no, though she said to herself a dozen times a day that he cared nothing about her, and had never really cared.

The sleeper stirred and turned on his pillow, offering her a broader view of that strangely disconcerting countenance of slumber, as ambiguous well-nigh as the face of death itself.

She wheeled and fled noiselessly, as she had come in. The light, approaching horse's hoofs had ceased to sound some moments now. At the gate a mounted figure stood motionless within the shadow of the big pine. She ran down the path to find Flenton Hands.

"I—Callista," he faltered in a low voice, "don't be mad. I—looks like I couldn't leave you this-a-way. I was plumb to the corner of our big field, and—I come back."

He glanced with uncertainty and apprehension toward the house; then, as he noted her shawl and bonnet, got quickly from the saddle, saying hurriedly, eagerly,

"I 'lowed maybe you might change your mind—and I—I come back."

"Yes," said Callista, not looking at him. "I'm ready to go now, Flent."