"Why?"
"I can"t tell you. He made me; he made all the people there."
Her father was standing between her and the door. He stood aside. "Go to bed now. But be quiet. Your Aunt Nancy is there."
"Aunt Nancy?"
"Laban came, but he went back to the Cross Roads, and she"s over for the night with the baby."
"The baby? Oh, I"ll be careful!" A joy came into her voice, and the strain left it in something like a laugh.
Early in the morning she crept down the ladder from the loft; her father had looped his cot up against the cabin wall and gone out. Nancy was sitting up in the bed she had made for herself on the floor, coiling a rope of her black hair into a knot at her neck. The baby lay cooing and kicking in her lap. The morning air came in fresh and sweet at the open door.
"Oh, Aunt Nancy, may I take her?"
"Yes; I"ll get the breakfast. Your father"ll be hungry; he"s been up a good while, I reckon."
"I"ll make the fire first, and then I"ll take the baby."
The girl uncovered the embers on the hearth and blew them into life; then she ran out into the cornfield, and gathered her ap.r.o.n full of the milky ears, and grated them for the cakes which her aunt molded to fry for breakfast. She took the baby and washed its hands and face, talking and laughing with it.
"You talk to it a sight more than you do to anybody else, Jane," the mother said. "Don"t put anything but its little shimmy on; it"s goin" to be another hot day."
"I believe," the girl said, "I"ll get some water in the tub, and wash her all over. There"ll be time enough."
"It"d be a good thing, I reckon. But you mustn"t forget your milkin". I dunno what _our_ cow"d do this morning if it wasn"t for Joey. But he"ll milk her, him and Benny Hingston, between them, somehow. Benny stayed with him last night."
"I did forget the milking," the girl said, putting the baby"s little chemise on. "But I"ll do it now. Sissy will have to wait till after breakfast for her washing." She got the tin bucket from where it blazed a-tilt in the sun beside the back door of the cabin, and took her deep bonnet from its peg. She did not ask why the boys slept alone in the cabin, but her aunt felt that she must explain.
"Laban"s got work for the whole fall at the Cross Roads. He went straight back last night. I come here." She had got through without telling the lie which she feared she must. "I"m goin" home after breakfast."
Jane asked nothing further, but called from the open door, "Sukey, Sukey!
Suk, Suk, Suk!" A plaintive lowing responded; then the snapping sound of a cow"s eager hoofs; the hoa.r.s.e drumming of the milk in the bucket followed, subduing itself to the soft final murmur of the strippings in the foam.
Jane carried the milk to the spring house before she reappeared in the cabin with a cup of it for the baby.
"It"s so good for her to have it warm from the cow," she said, as she tilted the tin for the last drop on the little one"s lips. "I wish you"d leave her here with me, Aunt Nancy."
"It"s about time she was weaned," the mother said. "I reckon you better call your father now. He must be ready for his breakfast, bendin" over that tobacco ever since sun-up."
Jane took down the tin dinner horn from its peg, and went to the back door with it, and blew a long, loud blast, crumbling away in broken sounds.
The baby was beating the air with its hands up and down, and gurgling its delight in the noise when she came back. "Oh, honey, honey, honey!" she cooed, catching it up and hugging it to her.
The mother looked at them over her shoulder as she put the cakes of grated corn in the skillet, and set it among the coals on the hearth.
"It"s a pity you ha"n"t got one of your own."
"I don"t want one of my own," the girl said.
"I thought, a spell back,"--the woman took up the subject again after a decent interval--"that you and Hughey Blake was goin" to make a match."
The girl said nothing, and her aunt pursued, "Was he there, last night?"
"I didn"t notice."
"Many folks?" her aunt asked with whatever change or fulfilment of a first intent.
From kneeling over to play with the baby the girl sank back on her heels with her hands fallen before her.
"I don"t know."
"What did he preach?"
"The Word of G.o.d; G.o.d"s own words. All Scripture; but it was like as if it was the first time you ever heard it."
The girl was looking at the woman, but seemed rapt from the sight of her in a vision of the night before.
"I reckon Satan could make it sound that way," Nancy said, but her niece seemed not to hear her. Nancy stood staring at her, with words bitter beyond saying in her heart; words that rose in her throat and choked her.
When she spoke she only said, "Get up, Jane; your father"ll be here in a minute."
"I"m not going to eat anything. I"m going into the woods." She staggered to her feet, and dashed from the door. The child looked after her with outstretched arms and whimpered pitifully, but she did not mind its call.
"Where"s Jane?" her father said, coming in at the back door.
"Gone into the woods," she said.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Nancy stood staring at her, with words beyond saying in her heart--words that rose in her throat and choked her]
"To pray, I reckon."
He sat down at the table-leaf lifted from the wall, and his sister served him his breakfast. He ate greedily, but his hand trembled so in lifting his cup that the coffee spilled from it.
When he had ended and sat leaning back from the board, she asked him: "What are you going to do?"
The old man cleared his throat. "Nothing, yet. Let the Lord work His will."
"And let Joseph Dylks work _his_ will, too! I"ll have something to say about that."
"Be careful, woman. Be careful."
"Oh, I"ll be careful. He has as much to lose as I have."
"No, not half so much."
VIII
Where Matthew Braile sat smoking most of the hot forenoon away on the porch of his cabin, there came to him rumor of the swift spread of the superst.i.tion running from mind to mind in the neighborhood, and catching like fire in dry gra.s.s. The rumor came in different voices, some piously meant to shake him with fear in the scorner"s seat which he held so stubbornly; some in their doubt seeking the help of his powerful unfaith; but he required their news from them all with the same mocking. They were not of the Scribes and Pharisees, the pillars of the Temple, the wise and rich and proud who had been the first to follow Dylks, but the poorer and lowlier sort who wavered before the example of their betters, and were willing to submit it to the searching of the old Sadducee"s scrutiny.