277

CALLISTA CLEAVERAGE GOES HOME.

CALLISTA reached her grandfather's gate when the old man was just finishing that last pipe he loved to smoke in his big hickory arm chair on the porch before he lay down for his night's rest. In the soft, summer night, beginning to be thick with stars, he was aware that whoever the newcomer was, it was someone well known to the dogs, for the chorus of greetings was distinctly friendly. Yet his keen old hunter's ears noticed the surprised yap of a younger hound born since Callista left the farm; and when his granddaughter emerged into the light of the doorway, he was scarcely surprised.

"Good evenin', Gran'pappy. Where's Mother?" Callista greeted him.

Before Ajax could answer her, his daughter-in-law came hurrying out crying,

"Lord love yo' soul, honey! Did you git home at last to see yo' mammy that's—"

Callista silenced her with a raised hand.

"W'y, Callisty honey," ejaculated Mrs. Gentry, examining her anxiously, "is anything the matter with Lance?"

A slight contraction passed across the visitor's face, as they 278 watched it, but she answered coldly, evenly,

"I reckon there's nothing more the matter of Lance Cleaverage than there always has been. I've come home."

Dead silence followed this statement. Then old Ajax knocked the ashes out of his pipe and slowly put it in his pocket.

"Uh-huh," he agreed, "you've come home—and I always knowed you would."

Octavia turned on him crying in a voice more tremulous with tears than anger,

"Now, Pap Gentry—"

But Callista interposed, with the faintest flicker of her old fire,

"Let him have his say. I told you-all once, standin' right here on this porch, that I'd never come home to this house with empty hands—that I'd bring something. Well, I have. I've brought this child."

Octavia was striving to take the baby from his mother's arms, to draw Callista into the house. At this she began to cry,

"Make her hush, Pap Gentry," she pleaded. "Don't set there and let my gal talk that-a-way!"

But old Ajax, remembering the turbulent days of his youth, knowing from his own wild heart in those long past days the anger that burned in Callista, and must have way, wisely offered 279 no interference.

"I've come home to stay," Callista pursued bitterly, "and I've brought my boy. But ye needn't be afraid of seein' us come. Sence I lived here I've learned how to work. I can earn my way, and his, too."

"Callista," sobbed the mother, clinging to her daughter, still seeking to draw her forward, "you're welcome here; and, if anything, the boy is welcomer. We ain't got nobody but you. Pappy, make her welcome; tell her that we're proud to have her as long as she's willin' to stay, and—and—" she hesitated desperately—"we'd be proud to have Lance, too."

She instantly saw her mistake. Callista drew herself sharply from her mother's detaining arms and sat down on the porch edge, hushing the child whom their talk had disturbed. Presently she said—and her voice sounded low, and cold, and clear,

"I have quit Lance Cleaverage. You needn't name his being anywhere that I'm at."

Gentry snorted, and heaved himself up in his chair as though to go into the house.

"I consider that I had good cause to quit him," Callista went on; "but I'm not a-goin' to—"

"I don't want to know yo' reasons!" broke in old Ajax fiercely. "I say, reason! Reason and you ort not to be named in the same day. Yo' mammy spiled you rotten—I told her so, a-many's the time—and now them that wishes you well has to look on and see 280 you hit out and smash things."

The deep, rumbling old voice sank and quavered toward the end.

"I wasn't going to give you any reasons," returned Callista contemptuously. "Them that I've got are betwixt me and Lance—and there they'll always be. I would rather live at home; but I can earn my keep and the chap's anywhere. Shall I go—or stay?"

The old man put down a shaking hand and laid it on her shoulder—a tremendous demonstration for Ajax Gentry.

"You'll stay, gal," he said in a broken tone. "You'll stay, and welcome. But I want you to know right here and now that I think Lance Cleaverage is a mighty fine man. You' my gran'child—my onliest one—I set some considerable store by ye myse'f. But there's nothing you've said or done that gives me cause to change my mind about Lance."

Callista rose, still hushing her boy in her arms.

"If I'm to live with you-all," she said in a tone of authority which had never been hers in the days of her petted, spoiled girlhood, "I may as well speak out plain and say that I never want to hear the name of Cleaverage if I can help it. If you don't agree to that—without any why or wherefore—I'd rather not stay."

"Oh, honey—oh, honey!" protested Octavia tearfully. "Gran'pappy 281 and me will do just whatever you say. Fetch the baby in the house. God love his little soul, hit's the first time he's ever been inside of these doors—and to think he should come this-a-way!"

Callista drew back and eyed her mother.

"If you're going to go on like that," she said, "I reckon it would be just as well for me to live somewheres else. You won't see me shed a tear. I don't know what there is to cry for. Gran'pappy is an old man—he ought to have some peace about him. I won't come in unless you hush."

And having laid her will upon them both, Callista Cleaverage re-entered the dwelling of her girlhood and disposed her sleeping boy on the bed in the fore room.

To the mind of man, which looks always to find noise and displacement commensurate with size, there is something appalling about the way in which the great events of life slip smoothly into position, fitting themselves between our days with such nicety as to seem always to have been there. Little calamities jar and fret and refuse to be adjusted, but matters of life and death and eternity flow as smoothly as water.

Callista might have dropped easily into her old place in the home, but the woman who had returned to the Gentry roof could never have contented herself in that narrow sphere. Strong, efficient, driven to tireless activity by memories which one 282 might guess stung and hurt the mind at leisure, she cleared out the long unused weaving room and set the loom to work.

"Aunt Faithful Bushares learned me to weave whilst I was stayin' at Miz. Griever's, after the baby was born," she told her mother. "I'll finish this rag carpet you've got in the loom, and then I'll be able to earn some ready money. I can weave mighty pretty carpet, and a body can get a plenty of it to do from down in the Settlement. They's things I need from the store now and agin, and this boy's got to have something laid by for him, to take care of him as he grows."

Thus boldly, at the outset—though without mentioning the forbidden name—she made it known to them that she would accept nothing from her husband. Octavia Gentry was always on the edge of tears when she talked to Callista about her plans; at other times, the daughter's presence in the house was cheerful and sustaining. If Callista brooded on the shipwreck of her affairs, she asked no sympathy from anyone. Indeed, so far from seeking it, she resented bitterly any suggestion of the sort.

Lance's own family blamed him more than did Callista's people. Roxy Griever, of course, was loud in her denunciations.

"Hit's jest the trick a body might expect from one of tham men," she commented. "He never was fitten for Callisty; and when a 283 feller plumb outmarries hisself, looks like hit makes a fool of him, and he cain't noways behave."

Old Kimbro gazed upon the floor.

"I reckon it's my fault, Roxana," he said gently. "Lance has a strong nature, and he needed better discipline than what I was able to give him. I had my hopes that he'd get it in his marriage, for daughter Callista is sure a fine woman; but—well, maybe time'll mend it. I don't give up all hope yet."

"Miz. Gentry sent word that she wanted me to help them through fodder-pullin'," Sylvane announced. "If I do, I'm a-goin' to watch my chance to talk to Sis' Callie. She's always the sweetest thing to me. I'll bet I can get in a good word for Buddy."

But it was Roxy Griever who saw Callista before Sylvane did. Octavia, desperately anxious and perturbed, sent word to the widow to drop in as though by accident and spend the day. Callista came into the room without knowing who was present. The two women were fluttering about over her baby, exclaiming and admiring. The young mother greeted the visitor with an ordinary manner, which yet was a trifle cold.

"The boy's mighty peart," the Widow Griever said eagerly. "But," examining Callista with a somewhat timid eye, "you' lookin' a 284 little puny yo'self. Sis' Callie."

"Oh, I'm perfectly well," returned Callista sharply.

There fell a silence, upon which Roxy's voice broke, husky and uncertain.

"Well, I hope you won't harbor no hard feelin's toward any of Lance's kin-folks, for we don't none of us uphold him."

At the name a quiver went through Callista's frame, the blue eyes fixed on Roxy's face flickered a bit in their steady, almost fierce regard. Then she bent and picked up her child.

"I reckon Mother hasn't said anything to you," she explained evenly; "but I have asked each and every in this house not to say—You spoke a name that I won't hear from anybody if I can help it. If you and me are to sit down at the same table, you'll have to promise not to mention that—that person again."

Then she walked out, leaving the two older women staring at each other, aghast, both of them with tears in their eyes.

"But I cain't blame her," Roxana hastened to declare. "I know in my soul that everything that's chanced is Lance's fault. He always was the meanest little boy, and the worst big boy, and the sinfulest young man, that ever a God-fearin' father had! He never was half way fitten for Callista—and I always said so."

"Oh, Miz. Griever—hush!" protested Octavia. "She'll hear you—285 Sis' ain't but gone in the next room."

"Well, I hope she may," the widow pursued piously, in a slightly raised tone. "I'd hate mightily to have my sweet Sis' Callie think that I held with any sech; or that I didn't know what her troubles had been, or didn't feel that she was plumb jestified and adzactly right in all points and in all ways whatever."

"M—maybe she is," sniffed soft-hearted Octavia; "but I love Lance mighty well. Right now I could jest break down and bawl when I think o' him there in the cabin all alone by himself, and—"

The closing words were lost in the apron she raised to her eyes. If Callista heard the controversy, it had an odd effect; for she treated the Widow Griever with considerable resentment, and, laying a gentle hand on her mother's shoulder, said to her apart:

"I don't want to be a torment to you, Mammy; but I believe when any of those folks are about I'd better just take the baby and stay in my own house."

"But, honey," her mother remonstrated, "Pappy Gentry's aimin' to have Sylvanus here all through fodder-pullin' time. Is that a-goin' to trouble you? Do you just despise all them that's kin to—would you ruther we didn't have the boy?"

Callista shook her head.

"It ain't for me to say," she repeated stubbornly Then, with a 286 sudden rush of tears in her hard eyes, "I do love Sylvane. I always did. I couldn't have an own brother I'd think more of. But—well, let him come over here if you want him. I can keep out of his way."

The "house" to which Callista proposed to retire was the outside cabin, where the loom stood. This she had fitted up for the use of herself and child, as well as a weaving room, saying that the noise might disturb Gran'pappy if the baby were in the house all the time. And it was at the threshold of that outside cabin that, only a few days later, Sylvane caught his sister-in-law and detained her, the baby on her arm. Little Ajax reared himself in his mother's hold and plunged at his youthful uncle, so that she had no choice but to turn and speak.

"How you come on, Sis' Callie?" Sylvane inquired, after he had tossed the heavy boy up a time or two and finally set him on his shoulder.

"Tol'able," Callista returned briefly. "I've got a lot of weavin' to do and it keeps me in the house pretty steady."

"I—was you leavin' in thar becaze I come?" inquired Sylvane with a boy's directness.

Callista shook her head.

"Didn't I tell you I was mighty busy?" she asked evasively. "You an' me always have been good friends, Sylvane, and I aim that we 287 always shall be, if it lies in my power."

The young fellow looked up at her where she stood above him in the doorway.

"You ain't never a-goin' to fuss with me," he told her bluntly. "Besides, me and this chap is so petted on each other that you couldn't keep us apart," and he turned to root a laughing face into the baby's side, greatly to that serious-minded young man's enjoyment.

Callista smiled down at both of them, and Sylvane found something wintry and desolate in the smile.

"Weavin' is mighty hard work," he broke out impatiently. "Even Sis' Roxy says that, and the Lord knows she's ready to kill herself and everybody else around her with workin'. What makes you do so much of it, Sis' Callie?"

Callista looked past the two and answered:

"Sylvane, a woman with a child to support has to work hard here in the Turkey Tracks. If it wasn't for Mommie and Gran'pappy I'd go down in the Settlement, where I could earn more and earn it easier."

"Callista—honey," Sylvane bent forward and caught her arm. "You ain't got no call to talk that-a-way. Lance shore has a right to support his own son—even if you won't take nothin' from him for yo'self."

Callista removed her gaze from the far sky line and brought it 288 down to her young brother-in-law. Now indeed her smile was wintry, even bitter.

"The man you named, Sylvane," she said explicitly, "has no notion of carin' what becomes of this child. Now that you've brought this up, I'll say to you what I haven't said to any other: it was this that caused me to quit Lance. You' right, I did leave the house in there for fear you should speak to me—and speak of him. If I could be sure that I'd never hear his name again, I'd be better suited. I reckon you'll have to promise not to bring this up again, or they'll sure get to be hard feelings between you and me."

Sylvane dropped back with a face of consternation, his hand fell away from her arm. He reached up and drew the boy down, so that the small, fair face was against his breast.

"Sis' Callie," he began incredulously, "I cain't believe it. Buddy's got quare ways, but them that loves him can understand. His own son—! Why, ef the chap was mine—" He broke off, and stood a moment in silence. "The meanest man there is, looks like to me, ort to be glad to do for his own child."

The words were not so strange on the lips of the tall seventeen-year-old boy with the child's eyes, since in mountain communities youths little older are often husbands and fathers.

"Well, air you going to promise me never to name it again?" demanded Callista, an almost querulous edge to her voice. 289 Sylvane's resemblance to his brother, some gnawing knowledge of injustice toward the absent Lance, wrought upon her mood intolerably.

"No, I'll never name Buddy to you again," said Sylvane soberly. "If you and me ever talks of him, you'll have to mention it first. But if there is anything I can do for you, Sis' Callie, you know you have but to ask."

"I know that, Sylvane," Callista assured him, with a certain eagerness in her tone. "And they is something—something that I reckon nobody could do as well as you could. I need—I just have obliged to get my things from—from up yon in the Gap. Would you go fetch 'em for me, Brother?"

Sylvane, after all, was kin to Lance. He could not keep down a little thrill of pride, that his brother had thus far forced Callista's hand. But he answered gravely—almost sadly,

"I'll go this day, if you say so."

Securing permission from Ajax to absent himself, the boy hitched his old mule to the buckboard and hurried off to the home at the head of Lance's Laurel. Whether or not he found all of Callista's belongings packed and ready, what was said between the two men, no one knew. He returned near nightfall with Callista's trunk and one or two sizable bundles, while Spotty meekly led roped to the rear axle of the buckboard. Callista 290 helped him into her cabin with the bundles; but when he would have untied Spotty she remonstrated.

"I surely thought you were fixing to take the cow over to yo' house," she said shortly. "It doesn't belong here."

"It was said to be yours," Sylvane told her, true to his promise not to mention his brother's name, even inferentially. "I 'lowed that the baby and—and all—would need the milk. Reckon you best leave her stay."

"No," said Callista positively. "The cow's nothing I have any concerns with. Maybe Sis' Roxy could make use of the milk. Take her along home, Sylvane, or drive her back where she came from—or turn her loose, for all of me."

And then Sylvane knew whether his brother had failed in care for the child.

When Callista came in from disposing of this question of the cow, she found her mother standing, inclined, as usual, to be tearful, over the boxes and bundles. Coming on one of these latter with a peculiar knot which Lance always used, and which he had once taught her the secret of, Callista experienced a sick revulsion of feeling.

"I wish you'd undo 'em and put 'em away for me. Mammy," she said with unusual gentleness. "I think I hear the baby."

"All right, honey, go 'long and 'tend to him. I'll see to these," agreed Octavia patiently.

Callista hurried over to the big house where young Ajax lay 291 asleep, and, as chance would have it, found indeed that he had wakened. She was hushing him on her knee a few minutes later, when her mother appeared in the doorway, a little money held in her trembling hands, and her eyes now openly overflowing.

"That pore boy!" Octavia burst out. "Look what he sent you. Sis! Now, he hain't sold anything of his crop—not yet. The good Lord only knows whar he come by this; but what he could get his hands on, he's sent you."

Callista leaped to her feet and ran to the door, pushing her mother aside none too gently, offending Ajax greatly by her rough handling of him.

"Sylvane!" she cried in the direction of the horse lot where Sylvane had gone to exchange the harness for a saddle on the mule. "Whoo-ee—Sylvane!"

"I'm a-comin'," Sylvane's voice answered, and she turned swiftly to the bed and laid the baby down.

"Give me that money!" she demanded.

"What for?" asked Octavia with unexpected spirit, tucking the bills in against her arm and refusing them.

"I want to send it back by Sylvane."

"You ain't a-goin' to do any such thing," Octavia declared. "The good Lord! To think that I ever raised such a gal as you air!"

"Give it to me!" Callista laid hands upon her mother's arm, 292 wrenching at it. "Here's Sylvane. Give it to me now!"

The thud of the mule's hoofs approaching the door came clearly to both of them. Callista could even distinguish the little cow's light feet following.

The two wrestled and swayed a moment, Callista pushing a strong, capable hand into the elbow where the bills and the few coins were held.

"Take it, then. Oh, my Lord!" moaned Octavia. "I think you're the hard-heartedest somebody I ever knew of. Pore Lance—pore Lance!"

Sylvane, riding to the door with the rejected cow, received with something of Lance's stoic grace the despised money. A thankfulness that his "Buddy" was rehabilitated in his eyes made him say, as he stuffed the small wad down in his pocket:

"An' I don't take back my word. Sis' Callie. You wouldn't have these; but whatever I can do is ready and waitin', you know that."

And somehow, in the hour of her victory, Callista tasted defeat.