211

ROXY GRIEVER'S GUEST.

IT was a strange day whose gray dawn brought Callista to her father-in-law's door. Where she had wandered, questioning, debating, agonizing, since she dismissed Flenton Hands at the corner of old Kimbro's lean home pasture, only Callista knew. The Judas tree down by the spring branch might have told a tale of clutching fingers that reached up to its low boughs, while somebody stood shaking and listening to the sound of the creek that came down the gorge past that home Callista was leaving. The mosses between there and the big road could have whispered of swift-passing feet that went restlessly as though driven to and fro over their sodden carpet for hours. The bluff where a trail precariously rounds old Flat Top kept its secret of a crouching figure that looked out over the Gulf, black in the now moonless night, of a sobbing voice that prayed, and accused and questioned incoherently.

The household at Kimbro Cleaverage's rose by candle-light. Sylvane, strolling out to the water bucket, barely well awake, caught sight of his sister-in-law at the gate, gave one swift glance at her face as it showed gray through the dim light, 212 wheeled silently and hurried ahead of her into the kitchen to warn his sister not to betray surprise. So she was received with that marvelous, fine courtesy of the mountaineer, which proffers only an unquestioning welcome, demanding no explanations of the strangest coming or of the most unexpected comer. She answered their greeting in a curious, lifeless tone, said only that she was tired, not sick at all, and would like to lie down; and when Roxy hastened with her to the bed in the far room and saw her safely bestowed there, the girl sank into almost instant slumber so soon as she had stretched herself out.

"She's went to sleep already," whispered Roxy to Sylvane, stepping back into the kitchen, and, while she quietly carried forward the breakfast preparations, the boy crept up to the loft where Mary Ann Martha and Polly slept and whence the little one's boisterous tones began to be heard. Later he came down with the two, holding the five-year-old by the hand, imposing quiet upon them both by look and word; maintaining it by constant watchfulness.

They ate their breakfast, speaking in subdued voices, mostly of indifferent matters. Roxy, who, woman fashion, would have made some comment, inquiry or suggestion, was checked whenever she looked at the faces of her men folk. The meal over, Sylvane and her father went out to the day's work. Roxy cleared away the 213 dishes and set the house in order, returning every little while to hover doubtfully above that slim form lying so silent and motionless in the bed. She was frightened at the way the girl slept, unaware that Callista had not closed her eyes the night before, and that she was worn out, mind and body, with weeks of fretting emotions.

The morning came on still, warm and cloudy. There was silence in the forest, the softened loam making no sound under any foot, last year's old leaves too damp to rustle on the oak boughs. It was a day so soundless, stirless, colorless, as to seem unreal, with a haunting sadness in the air like an undefined memory of past existences, a drowsiness of forgotten lands. Even the hearth fire faded faint in that toneless day, which had neither sun nor moon nor wind, neither heat nor cold indoors or out. Again and again, as the hours wore on, the Widow Griever stole in and looked upon her sleeping guest with a sort of terror. She sent Polly away with Mary Ann Martha to look for posies in the far woods that the house might be quiet. Quiet—it was as if the vast emptiness which surrounds the universe had penetrated into the heart of that day, making all objects transparent, weightless, meaningless, without power of motion. She would stand beside the bed, noting the even breathing of the sleeper, then go softly to the door and look out. The trees rose into the 214 stillness and emptiness and spread their branches there, themselves thin shadows of a one-time growth and life. The water of the pond below lay wan and glassy, unstirred by any ripple. The very rocks on its edges appeared devoid of substance. From ten o'clock on seemed one standstill afternoon, lacking sign of life or the passage of time, until the imperceptible approach of dusk and the slow deepening of a night which might to all appearances be the shadow of eternal sleep.

Kimbro and his son had taken their bit of dinner with them to their work of clearing and brush-burning in a distant field. At dusk they came quietly in to find the supper ready, Polly still herding Mary Ann Martha to keep her quiet, Roxy Griever putting the meal on the table, worried, but saying nothing. On their part, they asked no questions, but each stole an anxious glance at the shut door behind which was the spare bed. As they sat down to eat, Roxy said to her father:

"I don't hardly know, Poppy—She's a-sleepin' yit—been a-sleepin' like that ever sence she laid down thar. Do you reckon I ort—"

"I'd jest let her sleep, daughter," put in the old man gently. "I reckon hit's the best medicine she can get. The pore child must be sort of wore out."

After supper, while Roxy, with Polly's help, was washing the dishes, Kimbro and his younger son held a brief consultation out 215 by the gate, following which the boy moved swiftly off, going up Lance's Laurel.

A little later Callista waked briefly. She sat listlessly upon the side of the bed, declining Roxy's eager proffer of good warm supper at the table, and took—almost perforce—from the elder woman's hand the cup of coffee and bit of food which Roxy brought her.

"No, no, nothing more, thank you, Sister Roxy!" she said hastily, almost recoiling. "That's a-plenty. I ain't hungry—just sort o' tired." And she turned round, stretched herself on the bed once more, and sank back into sleep.

The next morning, when the breakfast was ready, although Roxy had listened in vain for sounds from the small far room, Callista came unexpectedly out, fully dressed. She sat with them at the table, pale, downcast, staring at her plate and crumbling a bit of corn pone, unable to do more than drink a few swallows of coffee. She did not note that Sylvane was missing. Later the boy came back from Lance's Laurel, to tell his father and sister that he had spent the night with his brother, that the cabin in the Gap was now closed and empty, and Lance gone to work at Thatcher Daggett's sawmill, some twelve miles through the woods, out on North Caney Creek, where several men of the neighborhood were employed.

"That's the reason Callista come over here," old Kimbro said 216 mildly. "She and Lance have had a difference of opinion, hit's likely, about whether or no he should go there. Well, I'm sure glad to have her with us. She'd 'a' been right lonesome all to herself."

"Would you name it to her?" asked the widow anxiously.

Kimbro shook his head. "Don't you name nothin' to the girl, except that she's welcome in this house as long as she cares to stay—and don't say too much about that—she knows it."

"Lance has fixed it up with old man Daggett so that Callista can get what she wants from the store—Derf's place," put in Sylvane.

An expression of relief dawned upon Roxy's thin, anxious face. The Kimbro Cleaverages were very poor. Truly, Callista, the admired, was welcome, yet the seams of their narrow resources would fairly gape with the strain to cover the entertainment of such a guest. If she could get what she wanted from Derf's, it would simplify matters greatly.

"Well, you'll tell her that, won't ye, Buddy?" his sister prompted Sylvane.

He nodded.

"I've got some other things to tell her from Lance," he said, boyishly secretive. "I'm goin' over to see him at the mill come, Sunday, and she can send word by me. I'll be passin' back and forth all the time whilst he's workin' there."

But when this easy method of communication was brought to the 217 notice of Callista, she made no offer toward using it.

It was mid-afternoon of the day following her arrival. The rain was intermitted, not definitely ceased; there would be more of it; but just now the air was warm and the sun brilliant. Mountain fashion, the door of the cabin stood wide. Mary Ann Martha had a corn pone, and she took occasional bites from it as she circled the visitor, staring at her with avid, hazel eyes, that troubled Callista's calm whenever she caught the fire of them, so like Lance's. Marauding chickens came across the door-stone and ventured far on the child's trail of crumbs; the light cackle of their whispered duckings, the scratch of their claws on the puncheons, alone broke the stillness. Callista sat by the doorway, a dead weight at her heart. The pallor, the weariness of it, were plain in her face.

"Good land, Polly—cain't you take this chap over yon in the woods and lose her?" demanded the widow in final exasperation, as Mary Ann Martha turned suddenly on the chicken that was stalking her, and shooed it, squalling, from the door. "I want to get out my quilt and work on it."

All unconscious that these things were done on her behalf, Callista saw the unwilling Mary Ann Martha marched away. She beheld the gospel quilt brought out and spread on the widow's 218 knees quite as some chatelaine of old might have produced her tapestry for the diversion of the guest. Over the gulf of pain and regret and apprehension—this well of struggling, seething emotion—lightly rippled the surface sounds of life, material talk, bits of gossip, that Callista roused herself to harken to and answer.

Roxy spoke in a solemn, muffled tone, something the voice she would have used if her father or Sylvane were dead in the house. She would have been more than human, and less than woman, had she not to some degree relished the situation. She remembered with deep satisfaction that, though she was his own sister, she had always reprehended Lance publicly and privately, holding him unfit to mate with this paragon. Callista had the sensation of being at her own funeral. She drooped, colorless and inert, in her chair, and stared past everything the room contained, out through the open door and across the far blue rim of hills.

"I believe in my soul these here needles Sylvane got me is too fine for my cotton," Roxy murmured, by way of attracting attention. "I wonder could you thread one for me, Callisty? Your eyes is younger than mine."

Callista took the needle and threaded it, handing it back with a sigh. As she did so, her glance encountered Roxy's solicitous gaze, then fell to the quilt.

"You—you've done a sight of work on that, haven't you, Sis' Roxy?" she asked gently.

The widow nodded. "An' there's a sight more to do," she added. 219

"This is a pretty figure," Callista said, pointing at random, but producing a kindly show of interest.

Roxy brightened.

"Can you make out what it's meant for?" she inquired eagerly. Then, for fear Callista should attempt and fail, "I aimed it for a Tree of Life, with a angel sorter peerched on it, an' one standin' un'neath. But," deprecatingly, "hit looks mo' like a jimpson weed to me. An' pears like I 'don't never have no luck with angels."

Callista's absent gaze rested upon the unsatisfactory sprigged calico and striped seersucker version of members of the heavenly host.

"Them Jacob's-ladder angels—you hain't never seen them, Callisty, sence I sorter tinkered they' wings. Look! 'Pears to me like it's he'ped 'em powerful. But these—I vow, I don't know what is the matter of 'em, without it's the goods. That thar stuff, is 'most too coarse for angels, I reckon. Or it might be the color. 'Warshed whiter'n snow—without spot or, stain—' that's what the Good Book says, whilst all these is spotted and figured. But ye see white on white wouldn't never show. I might 'a' used blue-and-white stripe. And then again, the sayin' is, 'Chastised with many stripes'—that'd never be angels, no how."

Once more Callista made an effort to bring her mind to the 220 problem in hand.

"The sky is blue," Roxy adduced somewhat lamely. "Do you reckon blue angels would be more better?"

"Maybe purple," hesitated the visitor. "The Bible names purple a heap in regards to Heaven—purple and gold. I've got a piece of purple calico at—at home." Her voice trailed and faltered huskily over the words. Then she set her lips hard, crested her head in the old fashion, and went on evenly. "I've got a piece of mighty pretty purple, and one as near gold as ever goods was, that you're welcome to, Sis' Roxy, if—if you or Polly would go over and get 'em."

Again thought of where those treasured rolls of calico were to be found lowered the clear, calm, defiant voice. Roxy noted it; but the magnum opus, brought out to cheer and divert Callista, had laid its unfailing spell upon the widow; the lust for quilt pieces, rampant in all mountain women, wakened in her, aggravated in her case by the peculiar needs, the more exacting demands of her own superior artistry.

"Yes—shore, honey; I'll be glad to go any time," she said, "ef you'll jest tell me where to look."

So life went on at the Kimbro Cleaverage place, a curious interlude, and still no word was said to Callista of the 221 strangeness of her advent, and no explanation vouchsafed, till on the evening of the third day the girl herself sought her father-in-law and opened the matter haltingly, timidly. They were out at the chip-pile where Kimbro was cutting the next day's wood for Roxy's use. He dropped his axe to the chopping log and stood leaning on it, peering at her with mild, faded, near-sighted eyes.

"Well now, Callisty," he began gently, "I'm glad you named this to me, becaze I've got a message for you from Lance, and I didn't want to speak of it for fear it would seem like hurrying you away, or criticising any of your actions. I want you to know, daughter, that I don't do that. Lance is a wild boy, and he's got wild ways. But he has a true heart, honey, and one of these days you'll find it. Now, I reckon, you might be having some trouble with him."

"A message," repeated Callista in a low tone. "Is he gone away?"

"Well, he's out on North Caney," old Kimbro told her, "a-workin' at Thatch Daggett's sawmill. Lance can make good money whenever he'll work at his own trade, and I doubt not he'll do right well at this sawmill business, too. He hain't got the land cleared over where you-all was livin' that he ought to have, an' I think it's better for you to stay on with us a while—we're sure proud to have you."

Callista's eyes filled with a sudden rush of tears. Kimbro did 222 not explain to her that Sylvane had gone to see his brother. He fumbled in his pocket and brought out a little roll of money.

"Lance sent you this," he said. "He never had time to write any letter. My son Lance is a mighty poor correspondent at the best; but he sent you this, and he bade Sylvane to tell you that you was to buy what you needed at Derf's store, an' that he'd hope to send you money from time to time as you should have use for it."

Callista looked on the ground and said nothing. And so it was settled. The comfortable, new, well-fitted home at the head of Lance's Laurel was closed, and Callista lived in the shabby, ruinous dwelling of her father-in-law. The help that she could offer in the way of provisions was welcome. To Roxy Griever, she had always been an ideal, a pattern of perfection, and now they made a sort of queen of her. The widow begrudged her nothing and waited on her hand and foot. Polly followed her around and served her eagerly, admiringly; but most astonishing of all, Mary Ann Martha would be good for her, and was ready to do anything to attract her notice. Sometimes Callista seemed to want the child with her; and sometimes when the little girl looked at her with Lance's eyes, and spoke out suddenly in his defiant fashion, Callista would wince as though she had been struck at, and send Mary Ann Martha away almost harshly.