Part 6 (1/2)

For days Sammy had been in a very ill-promising mood; but he brightened as the foster-parents drove away in the bleak, gray, hostile forenoon, Huldy helping Aunt Cornelia to dress and make ready, tucking her lovingly into the wagon and beneath the thick old quilt.

The elder woman yearned over the girl with a mother's compa.s.sionate tenderness. Both Aunt Cornelia and Pap John looked with a pa.s.sionate, delighted antic.i.p.ation to when they would have their own child's baby upon their hearth. It was the more notable marks of this tenderness, of this joyous antic.i.p.ation, which Sammy had begun to resent--the gifts and the labors showered upon the young wife in relation to her coming importance, which he had barely come short of refusing and repelling. ”Whose wife is she, I'd like to know? Looks like I cain't do nothin' for my own woman--a-givin' an' a-givin' to Huldy, like she was some po' white trash, some beggar!” But he had only ”sulled,” as his mother called it, never quite able to reach the point he desired of actually flinging the care, the gifts, and the loving labors back in the foster-parents' faces.

Pappy Blackshears pa.s.sed away quietly in the evening; and when he had been made ready for his grave by Cornelia's hands, her anxiety for the little daughter at home would not let her remain longer.

”I'm jest 'bleeged to go to Huldy,” she explained to the relatives and neighbors gathered at the old Blackshears place. ”I p'intedly da.s.sent to leave her over one night--and not a soul with her but Sammy, and he nothin'

but a chile--and not a neighbor within a mild of our place--and sech a night! Pap and me we'll hitch up an' mak' 'as'e back to Huldy. We'll be here to the funeral a Sunday--but I da.s.sent to stay away from Huldy nair another hour now.” And so, at ten o'clock that bitter night, Pap and Aunt Cornelia came hurrying home.

As the wagon drove up the mountain trail to the house, the hounds came belling joyously to meet them; but no light gleamed cheerfully from the windows; no door was flung gayly open; no little Huldy cried out her glad greeting. Filled with formless apprehensions, Pap climbed over the wheel, lifted Cornelia down, and dreading they knew not what, the two went,--holding by each other's hand,--opened the door, and entered, shrinking and reluctant. They blew the smouldering coals to a little flame, piled on light-wood till the broad blaze rolled up the chimney, then looked about. No living soul was in any room. Finally Cornelia caught sight of a bit of paper stuck upon the high mantel. She tore it down, and the two read slowly and laboriously together the few lines written in Sammy's hand:

”I ain't going to allow my wife to live off any man's charity. I ain't going to be made to look like nothing in the eyes of people any longer.

I've taken my wife to my own place, where I can support her myself. I had to borrow your ox-cart and steers to move with, and Huldy made me bring some things she said mother had give her, but I'll pay all this back, and more, for I intend to be independent and not live on any man's bounty.

”Respectfully, your son,

”SAMUEL”

The two old faces, pallid and grief-struck, confronted each other in the shaken radiance of the pine fire.

”Oh, my po' chile, my po' little Huldy! Whar? His own place! My law!--whar?

Whar has he drug that little soul?”

An intuition flashed into Pap Overholt's mind. He grasped his wife's arm.

”W'y, Cornely,” he cried, ”hit's that cabin on The Bench! Don't ye know, honey? I give him that land when he was sixteen year old,--time he brung the prize home from the school down in the settlemint.”

”The Bench! Oh, Lord--The Bench! W'y, hit 'll be the death of her. John, we cain't git to her too quick.” And she ran from cupboard to press, from press to chest, from chest to bureau drawer, piling into John's arms the flask of brandy, the homely medicines, the warm garments, such bits of food as she could catch up that were palatable and portable. Pap, with more vulnerable emotions and less resolute nature, was incapable of speech; he could only suffer dumbly.

Arrived at the abandoned cabin on The Bench, the picture that greeted them crushed Pap's soft heart to powder, but roused in Aunt Cornelia a rage that would have resulted in a sharp settlement with Sammy, had it not been that, now as always, to reach the offender a blow must go through that same pitiful heart of John's. The young people had not long been at the cabin when the parents arrived. The little Huldy, moaning piteously, with a stricken, terrified look in her big, childish eyes, was crouched upon the floor beside a rickety chair. Sammy, sullen and defiant, was at the desolate hearth, fumbling with unskilled hands at the sodden chunks of wood he had there gathered.

The situation was past words. Pap, after one look at Huldy, went about the fire-building, the slow tears rolling down his cheeks. While Aunt Cornelia brought the bedding, the warm blankets and wrappings, and made the little suffering creature a comfortable couch, Pap wrought at the forlorn, gaping fireplace like a suffering giant. When the leaping flames danced and shouted up the chimney till the whole cabin was filled with the physical joy of their light and warmth, when steaming coffee and the hastily fetched food had been served to the others, and the little wife lay quietly for the moment, the two elders talked together outside where a corner of the cabin cut off the driving sleet. Then Sammy was included, and another council was held, this time of three.

No. He would not budge. That was _his_ wife. A fellow that was man enough to have a wife ought to be man enough to take keer of her. He wasn't going to have his child born in the house of charity. There was no thoroughfare.

Sammy was allowed to withdraw, and the council of two was resumed. As a result of its deliberations, Pap John drove away through the darkness and the sleet. By midnight two trips had been made between the big double log house at the Overholt place and the wretched cabin on The Bench, and all that Sammy would suffer to be brought to them or done for them had been brought and done. The cabin was, in a very humble way, inhabitable. There was food and a small provision for the immediate present. And here, upon that wild March night of screaming wind and sleet, and with only Aunt Cornelia as doctor and nurse, Huldy's child was born.

And now a new order of things began.

Sammy's energies appeared to be devoted to the thwarting of Pap Overholt's care and benefits. There should be no cow brought to the cabin; and so Pap John, who was getting on in years now, and had long since given up hard, active work, hastened from his bed at four o'clock in the morning, milked a cow, and carried the pail of fresh milk to Huldy and the baby, furtively, apologetically. The food, the raiment, everything had to be smuggled into the house little by little, explained, apologized for. The land on The Bench was rich alluvial soil. Sammy, in his first burst of independence, ploughed it (borrowing mule and plough from a neighbor--the one neighbor ever known to be on ill terms with Pap Overholt), and planted it to corn.

He put in a little garden, too; while Pap had achieved the establishment of a small colony of hens (every one of whom, it appeared, laid two or three eggs each day--at least that was the way the count came out).

The baby thrived, unconscious of all the grief, the perverse cruelty, the baffled, defeated tenderness about her, and was the light of Pap Overholt's doting eyes, the delight of Aunt Cornelia's heart. When she was eighteen months old, and could toddle about and run to meet them, and chattered that wonderful language which these two hearts of love had all their lives yearned to hear--the dialect of babyhood,--the twin boys came to the cabin on The Bench. And Pap Overholt's lines were harder than ever. Cornelia had sterner stuff in her. She would have called a halt.

”Oh, John!” she expostulated finally, when she saw her husband come home crestfallen one day, with a ham which Sammy had detected him smuggling into the cabin and ordered back,--”John honey, ef you was to stop toting things to the cabin and let it all alone--not pester with it another--”

”Cornely, Cornely!” cried Pap John, ”you know Sammy cain't no mo' keep a wife and chillen than a p.e.c.k.e.rwood kin. W'y, they'd starve! Huldy and the chaps would jest p'intedly starve.”

”No, they won't, John. Ef you could master yo' own soft heart--ef you could stay away (like he's tole ye a minny a time to do, knowin' 'at you was safe not to mind him)--Sammy would stop this here foolishness. He'd come to his senses and be thankful for what the Lord sent, like other people. W'y, John--”

”Cornely honey--don't. Don't ye say another word. I tell ye, this last year there's a feelin' in my throat and in my breast--hyer,”--he laid his hand pathetically over his heart,--”a cur'us, gone, flutterin' feelin'. And when Sammy r'ars up and threatens he'll take Huldy and the chaps--you know,”--he finished with a gesture of the hand and a glance of unspeakable pain,--”when he does that 'ar way, or something comes at me sudden like that--that we may lose 'em, hit seems like--right hyer,”--and his hand went again to his heart,--”that I can't bear it--that hit 'll take my life.”