The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories Part 16

"An' then, 'Dosia," said Justus softly, "when the 'lection is over, it's time fur ye an' me ter git married."

She roused herself with an obvious effort, and looked uncomprehendingly at him for a moment, as if she hardly heard.

"The las' one o' Fambly will be off my han's then. Fambly will hev been pervided fur--every one, Wat an' all. I hev done my bes' fur Fambly, an' I dunno but I hev earned the right ter think some fur myse'f now."

He would not perhaps have arrogated so much, except to the woman by whom he believed himself beloved. She said nothing, and he went on slowly, lingering upon the words as if he loved the prospect they conjured up.

"We-uns will hev the gyardin an' orchard, an' pastur' an' woods-lot an' fields, ter tend ter, an' the cows an' bees, an' the mare an'

filly, an' peegs an' poultry, ter look arter. An' the house air all tight, the roof an' all in good repair, an' we-uns will have it all ter ourselves."

She turned upon him with sudden interest.

"What will kem o' Wat?"

"Oh, he mus' live in town whilst sher'ff, bein' off'cer o' the court an' official keeper o' jail, though he kin app'int a jailer."

"Live in Colbury!" she exclaimed in wonderment.

Justus laughed in triumph. "Oh, I tell ye, Wat's 'way up in the pictur's! He'll be a reg'lar town man 'fore long, I reckon, dandified an' sniptious ez the nex' one, marryin' one o' them finified town gals ez wear straw hats stiddier sunbonnets,--though they _do_ look ter be about ez flimsy an' no-'count cattle ez any I ever see," the sterling rural standpoint modifying his relish of Walter's frivolous worldly opportunities.

She tossed her head in defiance of some sudden unspoken thought. As she lifted her eyes, fired by pride, she saw the comet all a-glitter in the darkening sky.

She hardly knew that he had seized her hand; but his importunity must be answered.

"D'rec'ly after the 'lection--'lection day, 'Dosia?" he urged.

"Ain't ye got no jedgmint," she temporized, laughing unmirthfully, "axin' sech a question ez that under that onlucky comet!"

"I hev been waitin' so long, 'Dosia!"

It was the first suggestion of complaint she had ever heard from him.

"Then ye air used ter waitin', an' 't won't kill ye ter wait a leetle longer. I'll let ye know 'lection day."

II.

It was a hot day in the little valley town, the first Thursday in August, the climax of a drought, with the sun blazing down from dawn to dusk, and not a cloud, not a vagrant mist, not even the stir of the impalpable ether, to interpose. The mountains that rimmed the horizon all around Colbury s.h.i.+mmered azure, through the heated air. No wind came down those darker indentations that marked ravines. A dazzling, stifling stillness reigned; yet now and again an eddying cloud of dust would spring up along the streets, and go whirling up-hill and down, pausing suddenly, and settling upon the overgrown shrubbery in the pretty village yards, or on white curtains hanging motionless at the windows of large, old-fas.h.i.+oned frame houses. Even the shade was hot with a sort of closeness unknown in the open air, yet as it dwindled to noontide proportions some alleviation seemed withdrawn; and though the mercury marked no change, all the senses welcomed the post-meridian lengthening of the images of bough and bole beneath the trees, and the fantastic architecture of the shadows of chimney and gable and dormer-window, elongated out of drawing, stretching across the gra.s.sy streets and ample gardens. There among the grape trellises, and raspberry bushes, and peach and cherry trees, the locusts chirred and chirred a tireless, vibrating panegyric on hot weather. The birds were hushed; sometimes under a clump of matted leaves one of the feathered gentry might be seen with wings well held out from his panting sides. The beautiful green beetle, here called the "June-bug,"

hovered about the beds of thyme, its jeweled, enameled green body and its silver gauze wings flas.h.i.+ng in the sun, although June was far down the revolving year. Blue and lilac lizards basked in the garden walks, which were cracked by the heat. Little stir was in the streets; the languid business of a small town was transacted if absolute need required, and postponed if a morrow would admit of contemplation. The voters slowly repaired to the polls with a sense of martyrdom in the cause of party, and the election was pa.s.sing off in a most orderly fas.h.i.+on, there being no residuum of energy in the baking town to render it disorderly or unseemly. Often not a human being was to be seen, coming or going.

To Theodosia it was all vastly different from the picture she had projected of Colbury with an election in progress. In interest, movement, populousness, it did not compare with a county-court day, which her imagination had multiplied when she estimated the relative importance of the events. She had made no allowance for the absence of the country people, specially wont to visit the town when the quarterly court was in session, but now all dutifully in place voting in their own remote districts. The dust, the suffocating heat, the stale, vapid air, the indescribable sense of a lower level--all these affected her like a veritable burden, accustomed as she was to the light and rare mountain breeze, to the tempered sun, the mist, and the cloud. The new and untried conditions of town life trammeled and constrained her. She had a certain pride, and she feared she continually offended against the canons of metropolitan taste. In every pa.s.sing face she saw surprise, and she fancied contempt. In every casual laugh she heard ridicule. Her brain was a turmoil of conflicting anxieties, hopes, resolutions, and in addition these external demands upon her attention served to intensify her absorbing emotions and to irritate her nerves rather than to divert or soothe them. She had escaped from the relative at whose house she was making a visit, craftily timed to include election day, on the plea that she wished to see something of the town. "Ye don't live up on the mounting, Cousin Anice, 'mongst the deer, an' b'ar, an' fox, like me,"

she had said jestingly, "or ye'd want ter view all the town ye kin."

And once outside the shabby little palings, she returned no more for hours.

Along the scorching streets she wandered, debating within herself anxious questions which, she felt, affected all her future, and unfitting herself still further to reach that just and wise conclusion she desired to compa.s.s. She could not altogether abstract her mind, despite the interests which she had at stake. She noticed that her unaccustomed feet stumbled over the flag-stones of the pavement--"Fit fur nothin' but followin' the plough!" she muttered in irritation. She hesitated at the door of a store, then sidled sheepishly in, tearing her dress on a nail in a barrel set well in the corner and out of the way.

But while looking over the pile of goods which she had neither the wish nor the money to purchase, she could have sunk with shame with the sudden thought that perhaps it was not the vogue in Colbury to keep a clerk actively afoot to while away the idle time of a desperately idle woman. She could not at once decide how she might best extricate herself, and for considerable time the empty show of an impending purchase went on.

"I'll--I'll kem an' see 'bout'n it ter-morrer," she faltered at last.

"Much obleeged."

"No trouble to show goods," said the martyr of the counter, politely.

In truth he had in the course of his career shown them as futilely to women who were much older and far, far uglier, and contemplating purchase as remotely.

She went out scarlet, slow, tremulous, and walking close into the wall like an apprehensive cat, looking now and again over her shoulder. She wondered if he laughed when he was alone.

Her shadow was long now as it preceded her down the street, lank, awkward, clumsy. She took note of the late hour which it intimated, and followed the extravagant, lurching caricature of herself to her cousin's house, a little unpainted, humble building set far back in the yard, against the good time coming when a more ornate structure should be prefixed. The good time seemed still a long way off. Her cousin's ironing-board was on the porch, and presently a lean, elderly, active woman whisked out, her flat-iron in her hand.

"Cousin Anice," called Theodosia from the gate, "how's the 'lection turned out?"

Cousin Anice paused to put her finger in her mouth; thus moistened, she touched it to the flat-iron, which hissed smartly, and which she applied then to the ap.r.o.n on the board.

"Laws-a-ma.s.sy! chile, the polls is jes' closed, an' all the country deestric's ter be hearn from. We won't know till ter-morrer--till late ter-night, nohow."

Theodosia leaned against the gate. How could she wait! How could she endure the suspense! She thought of Justus, and of her promise to fix the date of the wedding on election day, but only as an additional factor of trouble in her own anxiety and indecision.

"Wat's been hyar ez cross ez two sticks," said Mrs. Elmer. She paused to hold up the ap.r.o.n, exquisitely white, and sheer, and stiff, and to gaze with critical professional eyes upon it; she was what is known as a "beautiful washer and ironer," although otherwise not comely. "Wat's beat plumb out o' sight, ef the truth war knowed, I reckon. He 'lows he's powerful 'feared. Ef't war Justus, now, _he'd_ hev been 'lected sure. Justus is a mighty s'perior man; pity he never hed no eddication. He could hev done anything--sharp ez a brier. Yes; Wat's beat, I reckon."

In the instant Theodosia's heart sank. But she turned from the palings, and sauntered resolutely on. It well behooved her to take counsel with herself. "I mought hev made a turr'ble, turr'ble mistake," she muttered. She was sensible of a sharp pang pervading her consciousness. Nevertheless, judgment clamored for recognition.

"Everybody gins Justus a good name, better'n Wat," she argued. "An' ef Wat _ain't_ 'lected"--

She walked down the street with a freer step, her head lifted, her self-respect more secure. With the possible collapse of her prospect of living in Colbury, and her ambition to adjust herself to the exigent demands of its more ornate civilization, her natural untrained grace was returning to her. She felt that she was certainly stylish enough for the hills, where she was likely to live all her days, and with this realization she quite unconsciously seemed easy enough, unconstrained enough, graceful enough, to pa.s.s muster in a wider sphere. Her heart was beating placidly now with the casting away of this new expectation that had made all its pulses tense. The still air was cooler, or at least darker. A roseate suffusion was in the sky, although a star twinkled there. More people were in the streets; doors and windows were open, and faces appeared now and again among the vines and curtains. As she hesitated on the street corner, two young girls in white dresses and with fair hair pa.s.sed her. She watched them with darkening brow as they drew hastily together, and suddenly she overheard the half-smothered exclamation which had a dozen times to-day barely escaped her ears.

"What a pretty, pretty girl! Oh, my! how pretty, how pretty!"

Theodosia stood like one bewitched; a light like the illumination of jewels was in her sapphire eyes; the color surged to her cheek; she lifted up her head on its round, white throat; her lips curved. "Oh, poor fool!" she thought in pity for herself, for this was what the Colbury people had been saying all day in their swift, recurrent glances, their half-masked asides, their furtive turning to look after her. And she--to have given herself a day of such keen misery unconscious of their covert encomiums!

"I live up thar in the wilderness till I jes' don't sense nothin',"

she said.

All the wilting prospects of life were refreshed as a flower in the perfumed dew-fall. She felt competent, able to cope with them all; her restored self-confidence pervaded her whole ent.i.ty, spiritual and material. She walked back with an elastic step, a breezy, debonair manner, and she met Justus Hoxon at the gate of her cousin's yard with a jaunty a.s.surance, and with all the charm of her rich beauty in the ascendant.

He would fain have detained her in the twilight. "What's that ye promised to tell me 'lection day?"

"I 'lowed the day Wat war 'lected," she temporized, laying her hand on the gate, which his stronger hand kept still closed.

"Waal, this is the day Wat is 'lected."

She drew back. Even in the dim light he could see her blue eyes widening with inquiry as she looked at him.

"I 'lowed the returns warn't all in," she said doubtfully.

"They ain't, but enough hev kem in sence the polls closed ter gin him a thumpin' majority. He's safe." The tense ring of triumph was in his voice.

The scene was swimming before her; she was dazed by the sudden alternations of hope and despair, of decision and counter-decision, by the seeming instability of all this. Once more she thought, in a tremble, and with a difference, of the mistake she might have made.

She held to the gate to keep her feet, no longer to open it.

"What did ye promise ter tell me 'lection day?" he demanded once more, clasping her hand as it lay on the palings.