第39章 Little Darby(5)

As the young fellow stood in the door looking out with the evening light upon him, his tall, straight figure filled it as if it had been a frame.

He stood perfectly motionless for some minutes, gazing across the gum thickets before him.

The sun had set only about a half-hour and the light was still lingering on the under edges of the clouds in the west and made a sort of glow in the little yard before him, as it did in front of the cabin on the other hill.His eye first swept the well-known horizon, taking in the thickets below him and the heavy pines on either side where it was already dusk, and then rested on the little cabin opposite.

Whether he saw it or not, one could hardly have told, for his face wore a reminiscent look.Figures moved backward and forward over there, came out and went in, without his look changing.

Even Vashti, faintly distinguishable in her gay dress, came out and passed down the hill alone, without his expression changing.

It was, perhaps, fifteen minutes later that he seemed to awake, and after a look over his shoulder stepped from the door into the yard.

His mother was cooking, and he strolled down the path across the little clearing and entered the pines.Insensibly his pace quickened --he strode along the dusky path with as firm a step as if it were broad daylight.A quarter of a mile below the path crossed the little stream and joined the path from Cove Mills's place, which he used to take when he went to school.He crossed at the old log and turned down the path through the little clearing there.The next moment he stood face to face with Vashti Mills.Whether he was surprised or not no one could have told, for he said not a word, and his face was in the shadow, though Vashti's was toward the clearing and the light from the sky was on it.

Her hat was in her hand.He stood still, but did not stand aside to let her pass, until she made an imperious little gesture and stepped as if she would have passed around him.Then he stood aside.

But she did not appear in a hurry to avail herself of the freedom offered, she simply looked at him.He took off his cap sheepishly enough, and said, "Good-evenin'.""Good-evenin'," she said, and then, as the pause became embarrassing, she said, "Hear you're agoin' away to-morrer?""Yes -- to-morrer mornin'."

"When you're acomin' back?" she asked, after a pause in which she had been twisting the pink string of her hat.

"Don't know -- may be never." Had he been looking at her he might have seen the change which his words brought to her face; she lifted her eyes to his face for the first time since the half defiant glance she had given him when they met, and they had a strange light in them, but at the moment he was looking at a bow on her dress which had been pulled loose.

He put out his hand and touched it and said:

"You're a-losin' yer bow," and as she found a pin and fastened it again, he added, "An' I don' know as anybody keers."An overpowering impulse changed her and forced her to say:

"I don't know as anybody does either; I know as I don't."The look on his face smote her, and the spark died out of her eyes as he said, slowly: "No, I knowed you didn'! I don't know as anybody does, exceptin' my old woman.Maybe she will a little.I jist wanted to tell you that I wouldn't a' fit them boys if they hadn't a' pushed me so hard, and I wan't afeared to fight your old man, I jist wouldn't -- that's all."What answer she might have made to this was prevented by him;for he suddenly held out his hand with something in it, saying, "Here."She instinctively reached out to take whatever it was, and he placed in her hand a book which she recognized as the little Testament which she had won as a prize at school and had given him when they went to school together.It was the only book she had ever possessed as her very own.

"I brought this thinking as how maybe you might 'a'-wanted --me to keep it," he was going to say; but he checked himself and said:

"might 'a'-wanted it back."

Before she could recover from the surprise of finding the book in her hand her own, he was gone.The words only came to her clearly as his retreating footsteps grew fainter and his tall figure faded in the darkening light.She made a hasty step or two after him, then checked herself and listened intently to see if he were not returning, and then, as only the katydids answered, threw herself flat on the ground and grovelled in the darkness.

There were few houses in the district or in the county where lights did not burn all that night.The gleam of the fire in Mrs.Stanley's little house could be seen all night from the door of the Mills cabin, as the candle by which Mrs.Mills complained while she and Vashti sewed, could be faintly seen from Little Darby's house.The two Mills boys slept stretched out on the one bed in the little centre-room.

While the women sewed and talked fitfully by the single tallow candle, and old Cove dozed in a chair with his long legs stretched out toward the fire and the two shining barrels of his sons' muskets resting against his knees, where they had slipped from his hands when he had finished rubbing them.

The younger woman did most of the sewing.Her fingers were suppler than her mother's, and she scarcely spoke except to answer the latter's querulous questions.Presently a rooster crowed somewhere in the distance, and almost immediately another crowed in answer closer at hand.

"Thar's the second rooster-crow, it's gittin' erlong toward the mornin',"said the elder woman.

The young girl made no answer, but a moment later rose and, laying aside the thing she was sewing, walked to the low door and stepped out into the night.When she returned and picked up her sewing again, her mother said:

"I de-clar, Vashti, you drinks mo' water than anybody I ever see."To which she made no answer.

"Air they a-stirrin' over at Mis's Stanley's?" asked the mother.