Part 3

When she was gone, I reflectively picked a letter from my batch of half-read mail. It began: “Your last filled me with a veritable nostalgia for your mountain. The odor of ripened grains and fruits and new-cut wood overcomes me whenever I think of it. I see great white clouds rearing their domes against a deep, blue sky; and at my feet gentians star my way to you.”

I dropped the letter. Where was Autumn? How had I lost her? Like a spear-thrust the question kept recurring until the next day, when Aunt Janey Stiles came.

IV

Aunt Janey lived over the mountain on Juniper Creek, three miles west of me, and carried all her supplies on her shoulder from the village two miles to the east. On her way out she would take eggs, butter, chickens, beans--anything exchangeable at the village store--and on her way in would carry flour, coffee, sugar, salt, soda, and lard. She had done this for forty years, and looked wiry and tenacious enough to do it for forty more. She sometimes paused for half a day, and once spent the night with me; but, unlike the neighborly highlanders, would never turn a hand to help me. She watched me work as she might have attended a play, and this did not make for the smoothness of my operations; but I was always glad to see Aunt Janey. Her attainments did not include a knowledge of the alphabet, but her mind sometimes revealed a glitter that made me think her brown, withered body held an old-world spirit--Greek, perhaps--a Periclesian favorite.

“I wasn’t meanin’ to stop,” she said, as her sack slid from her shoulders; “but seein’ the big kittle smokin’ in the yard, I ’lowed you’s makin’ apple butter, an’ I like to watch it poppin’. Don’t you quit stirrin’. I’ll fetch me a cheer from the kitchen. The sun’s as soft as an old blanket to-day.”

She returned with the chair, and continued: “You’ve got to watch apple butter closer’n a creepin’ baby if anybody’s goin’ to _eat_ it.”

Did she know that I had burned up one kettleful? Though I had tried to remove all trace of it, there might be a treacherous odor in the air.

“That’s so, Aunt Janey,” I said; “but I’m going to take time to empty this anyway.” And I took up a tub of apple-parings. I could utilize those parings in three ways, and for that triple reason I wished them to disappear quickly.

“They’re tellin’ all around that you’re powerful agin wastin’ stuff,” said Aunt Janey when I had returned, in a tone so intentionally colorless that I became suspicious and defensive.

“I am. And I could have carried those parings to Sam’s hogs; but Sam would be lazier to-morrow than he is to-day. And I could have made vinegar out of them; but I’d have had to take Len from the field to bring back the barrel that Serena borrowed last year. And I could make jelly. But with all those fine jelly apples lying around in bushels on the ground, why should I save parings?”

“You forgot beer,” said Aunt Janey.

“Beer?” I faltered.

I had elderberry wine, and blackberry cordial, and peaches brandied in brown sugar as dietetic allurements, but had made no provision for beer.

“Best beer you ever drunk by a hickory fire in the dead o’ Jinniwary. Stir, gal, stir!”

I stirred. “But I don’t drink beer,” said I brightening, “and nobody ought to now.”

“You don’t eat pickle either--tomato-pickle, cabbage-pickle, beet-pickle, pickylilly, onion-pickle, pickle everything. An’ you _kain’t_ eat much p’sarves, but I noticed you had ’most all sorts when I looked over your stock.”

“But the plain fruits and vegetables--everybody likes _them_.”

“You’re a leetle short on some of ’em, ain’t you? Had a nice lot o’ beans to spile on you, didn’t you?”

I had buried the contents of twelve large jars in the garden after dark, hoping that my influence as a conserver would not be diminished. How did she know? I looked up from my stirring and met a glance of Aspasian dubiety. She didn’t know. She had been guessing. But my start had betrayed me. As soon as I was caught, she became sincerely consoling.

“Tut, gal, beans are always hard for a beginner. It was that run you took off at night, I reckon. I knowed when I passed you’d be in the night with it; an’ I knowed they’d spile, you was so flustered. It takes a ca’m sperret to put up beans to stay. Leather breeches is safer.”

She took up her sack.

“There’s a powerful lot o’ wild grapes this year.”

“Is there?” I said, so dispiritedly that she put down her sack.

“Biggest and juiciest I ever seen. A body ought to put up a lot o’ grapes. They’re so tonicky. An’ they make the nicest jelly there is for the sick. Tarty like. Apple jelly’s too tame for a stomach ’at’s off a bit. Not speakin’ agin yourn, seein’ you got such a power of it. An’ namin’ the sick, ain’t you never thought o’ puttin’ up mullin? There’s enough for Europe an’ Ameriky too in your new ground, an’ it’ll shore cure that winter cough people has--cure it right now. If you don’t mean to break off at all, if you ain’t goin’ to stop _anywheres_, if I’s you I’d fix up some good yarb medicines. You can send _them_ to the soldiers. There’s shumake for a swelled throat, an’ boneset for the ager, an’ pokeweed for rheumatiz, an’ spignet for consumption, an’ a lot more I’ll show you if you go home with me some time. Things to he’p folks, ’stead of a lot of stuff to chuck up the stomach an’ make ’em sicker. S’pose you go home with me right now.”

“With so much to do?” I said. “Oh, I couldn’t!”

“There’ll always be something to do, gal. If we lived till we finished up, the world ud be full of Methuselys, an’ no room for the young folks. Nobody finishes. They got to _break off_.”

She shouldered her sack and started, pausing a rod away for one more barb.

“You goin’ to gether yer sunflower-seed? I’ve hearn they eat ’em in Rooshia.”

Aunt Janey was right: I had the uncomfortable habit of hanging on for a finish that the gods would never uncover. And what could I do about it? There was one answer--Serena. She could break off without a qualm. She could sing the doxology while doing it, and give the Amen a sprightly reverberation.

Without daring to pause, I started off, stepping as briskly as Aunt Janey, but in the opposite direction. I would get Serena to come and clear away every sign of conservation, and I would walk on the mountains while she was doing it. If only I might find her in the disengaged period she would be sure to observe between fodder-pulling and sorghum-making!

As I neared Len’s cabin the odor of boiling syrup told me I was too late. I arrived and looked drearily on the scene. A shouting boy was busily driving the oxen that turned the cane-mill, which was spouting with juice. More juice foamed in the boiler on the furnace. Len, his seven children, three neighbors, and their children, were officiating in various or the same parts. Serena was skimming the boiling syrup. All the country round acknowledged her as the queen of “lassy-makers.” She turned a heated face to me just long enough to say with the most cheerful of smiles: “They don’t give me time to make my beds.”

I was turning away, when Len stopped me.

“We’ve taken off one biler, an’ I put a few ’lasses for you in that jug. Reenie, git the jug!”

“I don’t want them,” I said, near to tears, and trapped in the vernacular.

Len was puzzled.

“But you’re welcome to the ’lasses. I’ll bring ’em up to you.”

“Not a spoonful, thank you, Len,” I called, already vanishing and hastening my steps unconsciously until I found myself running--running up-hill. I did not turn on the trail toward home, but went out to Three Pine Point, where one could see the river miles away, smooth, effortless, winding to some hidden land, safe and far from the malefic spirit of industry. I dropped to the brown pine-needles. Quickly the woods set their magical currents flowing, and that sensation as of smiling veins crept over me.

Then I saw Nellie Ludd, or part of her. One could get only partial glimpses of Nellie in the woods--an upreaching arm, a strip of skirt, the sheen of her head. No, she was not golden-haired, or green-kirtled, and she did not lead the fancy back to Tempe and the vales of Arcady. Her dress was dingy brown in hue, and of cloth woven on her mother’s loom, but fashioned by herself as fittingly to her grace as fur to the marten or feathers to the swallow. Her eyes, if ever you met them, you would find to be honey-brown, like the first falling leaves. Her hair was the color of darkly shining smoke, and seemingly as loath to stay put. And the world she led the fancy to was a world which none of us have seen, but to which all secretly intend to go; a world whose picture every man holds in his heart, but will not look at in the light lest his neighbor come upon him suddenly. For, though we may have learned to love our neighbor as ourself, we have not yet learned to trust him.

It was a gracious chance that brought me to the Point just as Nellie was leaving it. “Breaking off” was no longer difficult. That sputtering kettle--how remote and absurd it seemed!

Descending late in the afternoon, my hills seemed to shine upon me, reflecting happy restoration. I passed by the pasture ridge where the silence was tapped by the falling chestnuts, and felt no impulse to defeat the squirrels and gophers of their prize. A bellwood crowned with purple bushels of grapes stirred no acquisitive instinct. I went calmly through the orchard, picking my way over the fallen fruit that no hand would rescue from decay; looked unwistfully at the pumpkins, cushaws, and “candy-roasters” that would feed nothing but the frost; and from my cabin step smiled at the flaming wing of a young maple that was like a vivid aspiration airily detaching itself from the clutch of utility and the lures of bounty.

When I went in, Serena herself could not have cast a more contented eye about my kitchen, turbulent with unfinished tasks. The autumnal spirit had effectually bathed my lacerations. The box on which conveniently rested my little typewriter was invitingly near. I sank, a willing non-resistant, into a chair, and my hands mechanically sought the keys of the machine. For a few minutes I seemed to be having a pleasant time, with consciousness unaroused to the issue. Then I took out the sheet and read:

“Goodly Autumn comes again; Fills my cupboard, fills my bin; Piles the leaves beneath my shed For my pony’s winter bed.

Goodly Autumn comes again; Mellows apples, mellows sin; Drops the bars in every place; All the world is out to gaze.

Goodly Autumn with her bread! Surely now the poor are fed; And in peace I may sit down To my fill of white or brown.

Autumn is so good to me; I will walk abroad and see If the earth and if the sun Sup as well as I have done.”

“This is how they feel,” thought I, as I drowned in placidity without a bubble struggling overhead. “This is why protracted meetings are held in autumn. Ah, I will call my poem ‘The Season of Piety.’”

I began to feel like the good wife of a deacon. Nay, I was the deacon himself, and blushed in his elderly trousers.

With her usual ghostly suddenness, Katy appeared.

“Mommy’s got the milkweed in her breast agin, an’ the baby’s all broke out; she’s afraid it’s the measles an’ we’ll all take ’em.”

I rose. Certainly they would all take them. The season of piety was ended.

Both cases were happily light, and when Coretta looked up from her pillow and said, “We ain’t goin’ away. I’ve been thinkin’ what it ud be like to git sick away from home an’ everybody,” I did not feel that a slight reproof would be cruel.

“Stay? With nothing laid in for the winter?”

“But you’ve put up such a lot.”

My heart, which had softened at sight of her young cheek tracked red with the whimsical fever, felt a stony relapse.

“You know, Coretta, I have had to consider other plans.”

She was terrified, but unbelieving. The heavens could not really fall.

“_You wouldn’t let us stay?_”

“On one condition, perhaps.”

Her face shone with relief. She had met conditions before, and melted through them.

“What’s that, Mis’ Dolly?”

“You’ll never wake me up again to borrow something for breakfast?”

“No, I shore won’t.”

“Cross your heart?”

“Cross my heart.”

“Swear to God?”

“Swear to God.”

I looked down at the lovely face, contented with the thought of being sick and _at home_, and my smile undid me.

“Swear to God,” she repeated feebly, “unless, o’ course, we’re jest smack out o’ stuff.”

III

SERENA AND WILD STRAWBERRIES

I

She was not an unalloyed joy that first year of our friendship. Her imperturbability did not always seem as a restful evergreen wall, in whose shadow I could sit until perplexities lost their heat. At times it was a “no thoroughfare” with the meadows of desire gleaming beyond.

I called one day and found her churning by the spring, a pleasing picture, too, under the trees. Her rounded, youngish figure gave no hint of her seven-fold maternity, and however ragged the rest of her family might be, she always magically managed to be neat. She was singing leisurely and churning in rhythm--a most undomestic performance; but my eye was not Mrs. Poyser’s, and if it had been, it could not have embarrassed Serena.

“I’m takin’ my time,” she said, “fer this is my last churnin’ fer a good spell, I reckon.”

“Your last? Why, is the cow sick?--dead? And you have just bought her?” I asked, my concern sharpened perhaps by the thought of a very inconvenient loan that had gone abysmally into her purchase.

“She got so many sweet apples last night she’s foundered herself--clear light ruined, granpap says.”

“Surely you didn’t turn her into the orchard?”

“Why, a few apples wouldn’t hurt her. But there was a whole passel on the ground that I couldn’t see fer the weeds an’ briers. An’ she got ’em.”

“But I lent Ben my scythe to cut those briers.”

“His poppie needed him in the field, an’ he couldn’t git the time right off. When he did, we couldn’t find that scythe nowheres. I hate it about the cow,” she assured me cheerfully; “but it had to happen, I reckon.”

I looked about me. At that moment I could see nothing artistic in Ned’s half of a shirt looped about one shoulder; there was only pathos in little Lissie’s naked, buttonless back; and I could not placidly think of Len, as I had passed him a few moments before, showing ankles as sockless as ever was Simpson. But perhaps it was the thought of that loan, with its indefinite time extension, that made me wish to set a shade of anxiety on Serena’s unclouded brow. At any rate, I began to sermonize on the merits of discontent and the virtue of ambition.

Her face brimmed with astonishment that finally broke into speech: “But I’ve four beds, and bread on my table! What more do I want?”

What more could I say? So man, in some grateful season, may look up to the seated gods: “I’ve four religions and a bumper crop; what more do I want?” And what can the seated gods do but smile patiently?

I retreated, seeking my usual solace after all defeats--the unreproachful woods. Near a small clearing, in the quiet shield of some bushes, I overheard the latter end of an argument. One voice was Len’s, the other a neighbor’s.

“A tater’s a tater, anyhow,” the neighbor was affirming.

“You might as well say a woman’s a woman,” came the retort from Len.

“Well, ain’t she?” said the neighbor.

“Lord, no!” said Len, with contempt freely flowing.

“Oh, course there ain’t nobody like Reenie. Pity the Lord didn’t think o’ makin’ her fer Adam. We’d all be in Eden yit, loaferin’ by the river of life, ’stead o’ diggin’ taters out o’ rocks.”

“When you’re spilin’ to talk about a woman, Dan Goforth, you needn’t travel furder’n your own doorstep,” answered Len, his voice, like drawling fire, creeping on without pause. “Reenie mayn’t be stout enough to wear out a hoe-handle, but she’s never jowerin’ when I come in, ’n’ there’s always a clean place in the house big enough fer me to set my cheer down in, I ain’t layin’ up much more’n debts, but they’s easy carried when nobody’s naggin’ yer strenth out, a woman’s smile ain’t no oak-tree in harvest-time, but it’s jest as good to set by, my coat’s raggeder’n yourn, but I’d ruther Reenie ’ud lose her needle onct on a while than her temper all the time, neighbors can go by my house day or night an’ never hear no fire aspittin’, which kain’t be said o’ yourn, an’ you scootle from here, Dan Goforth; don’t you tech nary nuther tater in this patch!”

The neighbor scootled, backward it seemed, to the road. I took the trouble myself to go down to a trail and come up casually from another direction, in full view of Len. He was working mightily, digging up a hill with two strokes of his hoe.

“Dan gone?” I asked indifferently.

“Ay, he lit out. Old Nance wanted him, I reckon. He dassen’t stay a minute after she fixes the clock fer him.”

“That’s a kind of trouble you and Reenie don’t have.”

“You’ve said it now. Reenie don’t keep no time on me. If I want to drap over the mountain to see if I can git old man Diller’s mule fer extry ploughin’, ’cause the crab-grass is elbowin’ along the ground ’most rootin’ up my corn, an’ tells Reenie I’ll be back by twelve, an’ I find the old man spilin’ a ox-yoke, an’ I shapes it up fer him an’ stays to dinner, an’ comes back by the meetin’-house where they’s puttin’ in the new windows an’ not gittin’ ’em plumb, an’ I stays till sundown settin’ ’em in so they won’t make everybody ’at passes think he’s gone cross-eyed, an’ I remembers we’ve got no coffee, so I slips round by the store an’ stays till dark talkin’ with Tim Frizbie about the best way to grow fat corn an’ lean cobs, ’cause I know you want me to git all the new idies I can, an’ when I strikes Granny Groom’s place she’s at the gate wantin’ me to talk to her Lizy’s girl who’s fixin’ to leave an’ strollop over the country, an’ I says to that girl when you’re at home you’re eatin’ welcome bread, and when you’re out in the world you don’t know what you’re eatin’, an’ a lot more that was aplenty, an’s I pass Mis’ Woodlow’s, who’s got a powerful bad risin’, I thinks I’ll stop an’ see if her jaw’s broke yit, an’ I finds ol’ Jim so out o’ heart about her, I stays to help him put over a couple o’ hours, an’ when I walks in home about midnight, Reenie she’s gone to bed sensible, an’ says there’s bread an’ beans in the cupboard. Now that’s what I call some comfort to a man, to know he can take what happens ’long the road, an’ know his wife ain’t frettin’ till her stomach’s gone an’ she’s as lean as a splinter like ol’ Nance Goforth.”

“You nearly got what you wanted when you married, didn’t you, Len?”

“Well, I reckon, but I didn’t know it from the start-off. Reenie was powerful to be agoin’, an’ I couldn’t git used to draggin’ off every Saturday night to stay till Monday mornin’. But I felt different about it after I’d nearly killed her an’ the baby.”

“Gracious, was it that bad?”

“I didn’t do it a-purpose. It was back in Madison, where I married Reenie, an’ jest two days ’fore Christmas. She’d put in to go to her pap’s, an’ I thought I’d git up a nice lot o’ wood, make me a big fire, an’ have my Christmas at home. I’d told her I thought she’d feel different about stayin’ in her own house after she’d got a little ’un in it, but she ’lowed her sight an’ hearin’ was as good as ’fore she had a baby, an’ she could enjoy usin’ ’em just the same. So I got out by good daylight an’ went up the hill above the house to cut a big, dead chestnut that I was tired o’ lookin’ at; then I means to slip over to By Kenny’s an’ git him an’ his wife to come over fer Christmas ’fore Reenie got away. There’d come a skift o’ snow a few days back, bare enough to make the ground gray, then a little warm rain, an’ on top o’ that a freeze that stung yer eyeballs, an’ you never saw anything as slick as that hill was ’fore the sun riz that mornin’. When my chestnut fell she crackled off every limb agin the hard ground clean as a sled-runner. Boys, if she didn’t shoot off, makin’ smoke out o’ that frost! I saw she was pinted fer our little shack an’ I tries to yell to Reenie to git out, but I never made more’n a peep like a chicken. When the log struck, it shaved by the corner o’ the house an’ took the chimbly. Boys, it made bug-bites o’ that chimbly! I knowed Reenie was settin’ by the fire with the baby, an’ I’d killed ’em both. I felt ’most froze to the ground, an’ I thought if Reenie was only livin’ I’d let her do her own ’druthers the rest of her days. An’ when I got down to the house an’ sees her an’ the baby not hurt, with the rocks all piled around ’em, I says to myself I ain’t ever goin’ back on what I promised her unbeknownst. An’ I ain’t.”

“What was she doing?”

“She was jest settin’ there.”

“What did she say?”

“She ’lowed we’d got to go to pap’s fer Christmas. An’ we did.”

II

I stood on the doorstep one morning, balancing destiny. Should I take the downward road to the post-office, and thereby connect with the distant maelstrom called progress, or should I choose the upward trail to the still crests of content?

Serena, happening designedly by, saved me the wrench of decision.

“If you want any strawberries this year,” she said, “you’d better go before the Mossy Creek folks have rumpaged over Old Cloud field. They slip up from the west side an’ don’t leave a berry for manners. I’m goin’ now. I always go once.”