The Phantoms of the Foot-Bridge and Other Stories Part 8

"Naw; him, _him_--_Kittredge_," said Tim, jerking his big thumb in the direction of the small boy.

"Law-dy Gawd A'mighty! _naw! naw!_" The grandfather indignantly repudiated the imputation of the infirmity. One would have imagined that he would deem it meet that a Kittredge should be pigeon-toed. "It's jes the way _all_ babies hev got a-walkin'; he ain't right handy yit with his feet--jes a-beginnin' ter walk, an' sech. Peegeon-toed! I say it, ye fool!" He cast a glance of contempt on his eldest-born, and arrogantly puffed his pipe.

Again Joe Boyd came, and yet again. He brought messages contrite and promissory from Absalom; he brought commands stern and insistent. He came into the house at last, and sat and talked at the fireside in the presence of the men of the family, who bore themselves in a manner calculated to impress the Kittredge emissary with their triumph and contempt for his mission, although they studiously kept silence, leaving it to Evelina to answer.

At last the old man, leaning forward, tapped Joe on the knee. "See hyar, Joe. Ye hev always been a good frien' o' mine. This hyar man he stole my darter from me, an' whenst she wanted ter be frien's, an' not let her old dad die unforgivin', he wouldn't let her send the word ter me. An'

then he sot himself ter spite an' hector me, an' fairly run me out'n the town, an' harried me out'n my office, an' when she f'und out--she wouldn't take my word fur it--the deceivin' natur' o' the Kittredge tribe, she hed hed enough o' 'em. I hev let ye argufy 'bout'n it; ye hev hed yer fill of words. An' now I be tired out. Ye ain't 'lowin' she'll ever go back ter her husband, air ye?"

Joe dolorously shook his head.

"Waal, ef ever ye kem hyar talkin' 'bout'n it agin, I'll be 'bleeged ter take down my rifle ter ye."

Joe gazed, unmoved, into the fire.

"An' that would be mighty hard on me, Joe, 'kase ye be so pop'lar 'mongst all, I dunno _what_ the kentry-side would do ter me ef I war ter put a bullet inter ye. Ye air a young man, Joe. Ye oughter spare a old man sech a danger ez that."

And so it happened that Joe Boyd's offices as mediator ceased.

A week went by in silence and without result. Evelina's tears seemed to keep count of the minutes. The brothers indignantly noted it, and even the old man was roused from the placid securities of his theories concerning lachrymose womankind, and remonstrated sometimes, and sometimes grew angry and exhorted her to go back. What did it matter to her how her father was treated? He was a c.u.mberer of the ground, and many people besides her husband had thought he had no right to sit in a justice's chair. And then she would burst into tears once more, and declare again that she would never go back.

The only thoroughly cheerful soul about the place was the intruding Kittredge. He sat continuously--for the weather was fine--on the lowest log of the wood-pile, and swung his bare pink feet among the chips and bark, and seemed to have given up all ambition to walk. Occasionally red and yellow leaves whisked past his astonished eyes, although these were few now, for November was on the wane. He babbled to the chickens, who pecked about him with as much indifference as if he were made of wood.

His two teeth came glittering out whenever the rooster crowed, and his gleeful laugh--he rejoiced so in this handsomely endowed bird--could be heard to the barn. The dogs seemed never to have known that he was a Kittredge, and wagged their tails at the very sound of his voice, and seized surrept.i.tious opportunities to lick his face. Of all his underfoot world only the gobbler awed him into gravity and silence; he would gaze in dismay as the marauding fowl irresolutely approached from around the wood-pile, with long neck out-stretched and undulating gait, applying first one eye and then the other to the pink hands, for the gobbler seemed to consider them a perpetual repository of corn-dodgers, which indeed they were. Then the head and the wabbling red wattles would dart forth with a sudden peck, and the shriek that ensued proved that nothing could be much amiss with the Kittredge lungs.

One fine day he sat thus in the red November sunset. The sky, seen through the interlacing black boughs above his head, was all amber and crimson, save for a wide s.p.a.ce of pure and pallid green, against which the purplish-garnet wintry mountains darkly gloomed. Beyond the rail fence the avenues of the bare woods were carpeted with the sere yellowish leaves that gave back the sunlight with a responsive illuminating effect, and thus the sylvan vistas glowed. The long slanting beams elongated his squatty little shadow till it was hardly a caricature. He heard the cow lowing as she came to be milked, fording the river where the clouds were so splendidly reflected. The chickens were going to roost. The odor of the wood, the newly-hewn chips, imparted a fresh and fragrant aroma to the air. He had found among them a sweet-gum ball and a pine cone, and was applying them to the invariable test of taste. Suddenly he dropped them with a nervous start, his lips trembled, his lower jaw fell, he was aware of a stealthy approach. Something was creeping behind the wood-pile. He hardly had time to bethink himself of his enemy the gobbler when he was clutched under the arm, swung through the air with a swiftness that caused the scream to evaporate in his throat, and the next moment he looked quakingly up into his father's face with unrecognizing eyes; for he had forgotten Absalom in these few weeks. He squirmed and wriggled as he was held on the pommel of the saddle, winking and catching his breath and spluttering, as preliminary proceedings to an outcry. There was a sudden sound of heavily shod feet running across the puncheon floor within, a wild, incoherent exclamation smote the air, an interval of significant silence ensued.

"Get up!" cried Absalom, not waiting for Tim's rifle, but spurring the young horse, and putting him at the fence. The animal rose with the elasticity and lightness of an uprearing ocean wave. The baby once more twisted his soft neck, and looked anxiously into the rider's face. This was not the gobbler. The gobbler did not ride horseback. Then the affinity of the male infant for the n.o.ble equine animal suddenly overbore all else. In elation he smote with his soft pink hand the glossy arched neck before him. "Dul-lup!" he arrogantly echoed Absalom's words. And thus father and son at a single bound disappeared into woods, and so out of sight.

The savage Tim was leaning upon his rifle in the doorway, his eyes dilated, his breath short, his whole frame trembling with excitement, as the other men, alarmed by Evelina's screams, rushed down from the barn.

"What ails ye, Tim? Why'n't ye fire?" demanded his father.

Tim turned an agitated, baffled look upon him. "I--I mought hev hit the baby," he faltered.

"Hain't ye got no aim, ye durned sinner?" asked Stephen, furiously.

"Bullet mought hev gone through him and struck inter the baby,"

expostulated Tim.

"An' then agin it moughtn't!" cried Stephen. "Lawd, ef _I_ hed hed the chance!"

"Ye wouldn't hev done no differ," declared Tim.

"Hyar!" Steve caught his brother's gun and presented it to Tim's lips.

"Suck the bar'l. It's 'bout all ye air good fur."

The horses had been turned out. By the time they were caught and saddled pursuit was evidently hopeless. The men strode in one by one, das.h.i.+ng the saddles and bridles on the floor, and finding in angry expletives a vent for their grief. And indeed it might have seemed that the Quimbeys must have long sought a choice Kittredge infant for adoption, so far did their bewailings discount Rachel's mourning.

"Don't cry, Eveliny," they said, ever and anon. "We-uns'll git him back fur ye."

But she had not shed a tear. She sat speechless, motionless, as if turned to stone.

"Laws-a-ma.s.sy, child, ef ye would jes hev b'lieved _me_ 'bout'n them Kittredges--Abs'lom in partic'lar--ye'd be happy an' free now," said the old man, his imagination somewhat extending his experience, for he had had no knowledge of his son-in-law until their relations.h.i.+p began.

The evening wore drearily on. Now and then the men roused themselves, and with lowering faces discussed the opportunities of reprisal, and the best means of rescuing the child. And whether they schemed to burn the Kittredge cabin, or to arm themselves, burst in upon their enemies, shooting and killing all who resisted, Evelina said nothing, but stared into the fire with unnaturally dilated eyes, her white lined face all drawn and somehow unrecognizable.

"Never mind," her father said at intervals, taking her cold hand, "we-uns 'll git him back, Eveliny. The Lord hed a mother wunst, an' I'll be bound He keeps a special pity for a woman an' her child."

"Oh, great gos.h.!.+ who'd hev dreamt we'd hev missed him so!" cried Tim, s.h.i.+fting his position, and slipping his left arm over the back of his chair. "Jes ter think o' the leetle size o' him, an' the great big gap he hev lef' roun' this hyar ha'th-stone!"

"An' yit he jes sot underfoot, 'mongst the cat an' the dogs, jes ez humble!" said Stephen.

"I'd git him back even ef he warn't no kin ter me, Eveliny," declared Tim, and he spoke advisedly, remembering that the youth was a Kittredge.

Still Evelina said not a word. All that night she silently walked the puncheon floor, while the rest of the household slept. The dogs, in vague disturbance, because of the unprecedented vigil and stir in the midnight, wheezed uneasily from time to time, and crept restlessly about under the cabin, now and again thumping their backs or heads against the floor; but at last they betook themselves to slumber. The hickory logs broke in twain as they burned, and fell on either side, and presently there was only the dull red glow of the embers on her pale face, and the room was full of brown shadows, motionless, now that the flames flared no more. Once when the red glow, growing ever dimmer, seemed almost submerged beneath the gray ashes, she paused and stirred the coals. The renewed glimmer showed a fixed expression in her eyes, becoming momently more resolute. At intervals she knelt at the window and placed her hands about her face to shut out the light from the hearth, and looked out upon the night. How the chill stars loitered! How the dawn delayed! The great mountain gloomed darkling above the Cove. The waning moon, all melancholy and mystic, swung in the purple sky. The bare, stark boughs of the trees gave out here and there a glimmer of h.o.a.r-frost. There was no wind; when she heard the dry leaves whisk she caught a sudden glimpse of a fox that, with his crafty shadow pursuing him, leaped upon the wood-pile, nimbly ran along its length, and so, noiselessly, away--while the dogs snored beneath the house. A c.o.c.k crew from the chicken-roost; the mountain echoed the resonant strain. She saw a mist come stealing softly along a precipitous gorge; the gauzy web hung s.h.i.+mmering in the moon; presently the trees were invisible; anon they showed rigid among the soft enmeshment of the vapor, and again were lost to view.

She rose; there was a new energy in her step; she walked quickly across the floor and unbarred the door.

The little cabin on the mountain was lost among the clouds. It was not yet day, but the old woman, with that proclivity to early rising characteristic of advancing years, was already astir. It was in the princ.i.p.al room of the cabin that she slept, and it contained another bed, in which, placed crosswise, were five billet-shaped objects under the quilts, which when awake identified themselves as Peter Kittredge's children. She had dressed and uncovered the embers, and put on a few of the chips which had been spread out on the hearth to dry, and had sat down in the chimney corner. A timid blaze began to steal up, and again was quenched, and only the smoke ascended in its form; then the light flickered out once more, casting a gigantic shadow of her sun-bonnet--for she had donned it thus early--half upon the brown and yellow daubed wall, and half upon the dark ceiling, making a specious stir amidst the peltry and strings of pop-corn hanging motionless thence.

She sighed heavily once or twice, and with an aged manner, and leaned her elbows on her knees and gazed contemplatively at the fire. All at once the ashes were whisked about the hearth as in a sudden draught, and then were still. In momentary surprise she pushed her chair back, hesitated, then replaced it, and calmly settled again her elbows on her knees. Suddenly once more a whisking of the ashes; a cold s.h.i.+ver ran through her, and she turned to see a hand fumbling at the batten shutter close by. She stared for a moment as if paralyzed; her spectacles fell to the floor from her nerveless hand, shattering the lenses on the hearth. She rose trembling to her feet, and her lips parted as if to cry out. They emitted no sound, and she turned with a terrified fascination and looked back. The shutter had opened, there was no gla.s.s, the small square of the window showed the nebulous gray mist without, and defined upon it was Evelina's head, her dark hair streaming over the red shawl held about it, her fair oval face pallid and pensive, and with a great wistfulness upon it; her l.u.s.trous dark eyes glittered.

"Mother," her red lips quivered out.

The old crone recognized no treachery in her heart. She laid a warning finger upon her lips. All the men were asleep.

Evelina stretched out her yearning arms. "Gin him ter me!"

"Naw, naw, Eveliny," huskily whispered Absalom's mother. "Ye oughter kem hyar an' 'bide with yer husband--ye know ye ought."

Evelina still held out her insistent arms. "Gin him ter me!" she pleaded.

The old woman shook her head sternly. "Ye kem in, an' 'bide whar ye b'long."

Evelina took a step nearer the window. She laid her hand on the sill.

"Spos'n 'twar Abs'lom whenst he war a baby," she said, her eyes softly brightening, "an' another woman hed him an' kep' him, 'kase ye an' his dad fell out--would ye hev 'lowed she war right ter treat ye like ye treat me--whenst Abs'lom war a baby?"

Once more she held out her arms.

There was a step in the inner shed-room; then silence.

"Ye hain't got no excuse," the soft voice urged; "ye know jes how I feel, how ye'd hev felt, whenst Abs'lom war a baby."

The shawl had fallen back from her tender face; her eyes glowed, her cheek was softly flushed. A sudden terror thrilled through her as she again heard the heavy step approaching in the shed-room. "Whenst Abs'lom war a baby," she reiterated, her whole pleading heart in the tones.

A sudden radiance seemed to illumine the sad, dun-colored folds of the encompa.s.sing cloud; her face shone with a transfiguring happiness, for the hustling old crone had handed out to her a warm, somnolent bundle, and the shutter closed upon the mists with a bang.