Viola Gwyn Part 7

"Wait till you see me in my black dress and bonnet,--and mittens,"

she challenged.

He bowed gallantly. "Only the addition of the veil,--it would have to be a very thick one,--I am sure,--could make me doubt my own eyes. They are witnesses whose testimony it will be very hard to shake."

Her manner underwent another transformation, as swift as it was unexpected. A troubled, hara.s.sed expression came into her eyes, driving out the sparkle that had filled them during that all too brief exchange. The smile died on her lips, which remained drawn and slightly parted as if frozen; she seemed for the moment to have stopped breathing. He was acutely alive to the old searching, penetrating look,--only now there was an added note of uneasiness.

In another moment all this had vanished, and she was smiling again,--not warmly, frankly as before, but with a strange wistfulness that left him more deeply perplexed than ever.

"I wonder,--" she began, and then shook her head without completing the sentence. After a moment she went on: "Phineas is a long time.

I hope all is well."

They heard the kitchen door open and close and Striker's voice loudly proclaiming the staunchness of his outbuildings, a speech cut short by Eliza's exasperation.

"How many times do I have to tell you, Phin Striker, not to come in this here kitchen without wipin' your feet? Might as well be the barn, fer as you're concerned. Go out an' sc.r.a.pe that mud offen your boots."

Deep mumbling and then the opening and shutting of the door again.

"Sometimes, I fear, poor Phineas finds matrimony very trying," said the girl, her eyes twinkling.

Eliza appeared in the doorway. She was rolling down her sleeves.

"How are you two gettin' along?" she inquired, looking from one to the other keenly. "I thought Phin was in here amusin' you the whole time with lies about him an' Dan'l Boone. He used to hunt with old Dan'l when he was a boy, an' if ever'thing happened to them two fellers that he sez happened, why, Phin'd have to be nearly two hundred years old by now an' there wouldn't be a live animal or Indian between here an' the Gulf of Mexico." She seemed a little uneasy. "I hope you two made out all right."

The girl spoke quickly, before her companion could reply. "We have had a most agreeable chat, Eliza. Are you through in the kitchen?

If you are, would you mind coming into the bedroom with me? I want you to see the other dress on me, and besides I have a good many things I wish to talk over with you. Good night," she said to Gwynne. "No doubt we shall meet again."

He was dumbfounded. "Am I not to see you in the new dress?" he cried, visibly disappointed. "Surely you are not going to deny me the joy of beholding you in--"

She interrupted him almost cavalierly. "Pray save up some of your compliments against the day when you behold me in my sombre black, for I shall need them then. Again, good night."

"Good night," he returned, bowing stiffly and in high dudgeon.

Eliza, in hurrying past, had s.n.a.t.c.hed one of the candlesticks from the mantel, and now stood holding the bedroom door open for the queenly young personage. A moment later the door closed behind them.

Gwynne was still scowling at the inoffensive door when Striker came bl.u.s.tering into the room.

"Where are the women?" he demanded, stopping short.

A jerk of the thumb was his answer.

"Gone to bed?" with something like an accusing gleam in his eye as his gaze returned to the young man.

"I believe so," replied Gwynne carelessly, as he sat down in the despised rocker and stretched his long legs out to the fire. "I fancy we are safe to smoke now, Striker. We have the parlor all to ourselves. The ladies have deserted us."

Striker took the tobacco pouch from the peg on the mantel and handed it to his guest.

"Fill up," he said shortly, and then walked over to the bedroom door. He rapped timorously on one of the thick boards. "Want me fer anything?" he inquired softly, as his wife opened the door an inch or two.

"No. Go to bed when you're ready an' don't ferget to smother that fire."

"Good night, Phineas," called out another voice merrily.

"Good night," responded Striker, with a dubious shake of his head.

He returned to the fireplace.

"Women are funny things," said he, dragging up another chair.

"'Specially about boots. I go out 'long about sun-up an' work like a dog all day, an' then when I come in to supper what happens? First thing my wife does is to look at my boots. Then she tells me to go out an' sc.r.a.pe the mud off'm 'em. Then she looks up at my face to see if it's me. Sometimes I get so doggoned mad I wish it wasn't me, so's I could turn out to be the preacher er somebody like that an' learn her to be keerful who she's talkin' to. Supposin' I do track a little mud into her kitchen? It's OUR mud, ain't it? 'Tain't as if it was somebody else's land I'm bringin' into her kitchen.

Between us we own every danged bit of land from here to the Middleton dirt-road an' it ain't my fault if it happens to be mud once in awhile. You'd think, the way she acts, I'd been out stealin' somebody else's mud just for the sake of bringin' it into her kitchen.

"An' what makes me madder'n anything else is the way she scolds them pore dogs when they come in with a little mud. As if a dog understood he had to sc.r.a.pe his feet off an' wash his paws an'

everything 'fore he c'n step inside his master's cabin. Now you take cats, they're as smart as all get out. They're jist like women.

Allus thinkin' about their pussonal appearance. Ever notice a cat walk across a muddy strip o' ground? Why, you'd think they was walkin' on a red hot stove, the way they step. I've seen a cat go fifty rods out of her way to get around a mud-puddle. I recollect seein' ole Maje,--he's our princ.i.p.al tom-cat,--seein' him creepin'

along a rail fence nearly half a mile from the house so's he wouldn't have to cross a stretch o' wet ground jist outside the kitchen door. Now, a dog would have splashed right through it an'

took the consequences. But ole Maje--NO, SIR! He goes miles out'n his way an' then when he gits home he sets down on the doorstep an' licks his feet fer half an hour er so before he begins to meow so's Eliza'll open the door an' let him in.

"Ever' so often I got to tie a litter of kittens up in a meal-bag an' take 'em over to the river an' drownd 'em, an' I want to tell you it's a pleasure to do it. You never in all your life heerd of anybody puttin' a litter of pups in a bag an' throwin' 'em in the river, did ye? No, sirree! Dogs is like men. They grow up to be useful citizens, mud er no mud. Why, if I had a dog what sat down on the doorstep an' licked his paws ever' time he got mud on 'em I'd take him out an' shoot him, 'cause I'd know he wasn't no kind of a dog at all. Now, Eliza's tryin' to make me act like a cat, an' me hatin' cats wuss'n pison. There's setch a thing as bein' too danged clean, don't you think so? Sort o' takes the self-respect away from a man. Makes you feel as if you'd ort to have petticoats on in place o' pants. How do you like that terbaccer?"

Throughout the foregoing dissertation, Gwynne had sat with his moody gaze fixed upon the flaring logs, which Striker had kicked into renewed life with the heel of one of his ponderous boots, disdaining the stout charred poker that leaned against the chimney wall. He was pulling dreamily at the corncob pipe; the fragrant blue smoke, drifting toward the open fireplace, was suddenly caught by the draft and drawn stringily into the hot cavern where it was lost in the hickory volume that swept up the chimney.

He had taken in but a portion of his host's remarks; his thoughts were not of dogs and cats but of the perplexing girl who eagerly gave him her confidence in one moment and shrank into the iciest reticence the next. Her unreserved revelations concerning her own father, uttered with all the frankness of an intimate, and the childish ingenuousness with which she accounted for her raiment, followed so closely, so abruptly by the most insolent display of bad manners he had ever known, gave him ample excuse for reflection, and if he failed to obtain the full benefit of Striker's discourse it was because he had no power to command his addled thoughts. As a matter of fact, he was debating within himself the advisability of asking his host a few direct and pointed questions. A fine regard for Striker's position deterred him,--and to this regard was added the conviction that his host would probably tell him to mind his own business and not go prying into the affairs of others. He came out of his reverie in good time to avoid injury to his host's feelings.

"It is admirable," he a.s.sured him promptly. "Do you cure it yourself or does it come up the river from Kentucky?"

"Comes from Kentucky. We don't have much luck tryin' to raise terbaccer in these parts."

Whereupon Mr. Striker went into a long and intelligent lecture upon the products of the soil in that section of Indiana; what to avoid and what to cultivate; how to buy and how to sell; the traders one could trust and those who could not be trusted out of sight; the short corn crop of the year before and the way he lost half a dozen as fine shoats as you'd see in a lifetime on account of wild hogs coming out of the woods and enticin' 'em off. He interrupted himself at one stage in order to get up and close the door to the kitchen. Zachariah was snoring l.u.s.tily.

"Whenever you feel like goin' to bed, jist say so," he said at last, as his guest drew his huge old silver watch from his pocket and glanced at it.

"I have been doing a little surmising, Mr. Striker," said the other.

"You have only this sitting-room and one bedroom. The ladies are occupying the latter. My servant has gone to bed in the kitchen.

I am wondering where you and I are to dispose ourselves."

"I could see you was doin' some figgerin', friend. Well, fer that matter, so was I. 'Tain't often she comes to spend the night here, an' when she does me an' Eliza give her our room an' bed an' we pull an extry straw tick out here in the room an' make the best of it.

Now, as I figger it out, Eliza is usin' that straw tick herself, 'cause she certainly wouldn't ever dream of gettin' into bed with--with--er--her. Not but what she's clean an' all that,--I mean Eliza,--but you see, she used to be a hired girl once upon a time, an'--an'--well, that sort of makes a--"

"My fellow-guest confided to me a little while ago that she too had been a hired girl, Mr. Striker, so I don't see--"

"Did she tell you that?" demanded Phineas sharply.

"She did," replied Gwynne, enjoying his host's consternation.

"Well, I'll be tee-totally danged," exploded the settler. He got up suddenly and turning his back to his guest, knocked the burnt tobacco from his pipe against the stone arch of the fireplace.

"I guess I better rake the ashes over these here coals," said he, "'cause if I don't an' the cabin took fire an' burnt us all alive Eliza'd never git done jawin' me about it." Presently he stood off and critically surveyed his work. "I guess that'll fix her so's she won't spit any sparks out here an' set fire to the carpet. As I was sayin', I reckon I'll have to make up a bed here in front of the fireplace fer myself, an' let you go up to the attic. We got a--"

"I was afraid of this, Mr. Striker. You are putting yourselves out terribly on my account. I can't allow it, sir. It is too much to ask--"

"Now, don't you worry about us. You ain't puttin' us out at all.

One night last winter,--the coldest night we had,--Eliza an' me slep' on the kitchen floor with nary a blanket er quilt, an' I had to git up every half hour to put wood on the fire so's we wouldn't freeze to death, all because Joe Wadley an' his wife an' her father an' mother an' his sister with her three children dropped in sort of unexpected on account of havin' their two wagons git stuck in a snow drift a mile er so from here. No, sirree, don't you worry.