The Sherrods.

by George Barr McCutcheon.

CHAPTER I.

THE SOFT SUMMER NIGHT.

Through the soft summer night came the sounds of the silence that is heard only when nature sleeps, imperceptible except as one feels it behind the breath he draws or perhaps realizes it in the touch of an unexpected branch or flower. The stillness of a silence that is not silent; a stillness so dead that the croaking of frogs, the chirping of crickets, the barking of dogs, the hooting of owls, the rustling of leaves are not heard, although the air is heavy with those voices of the night--the stillness of a night in the country. All human activity apparently at an end, all sign of life lost in somber shadows. The ceaseless croaking, the chirping, the hooting, the rustling themselves make up this unspeakable silence--this sweet, unconscious solitude.

A country lane, dark and gloomy, awaited the moon from the clouded east. Lighted only here and there by the twinkling windows in roadside homes, it lay asleep in its bed of dust. Far off it straggled into a village, but out there in the country it was lost to the world with the setting of the sun.

The faint glow from the window of a cottage poured its feeble but willing self into the night as if seeking to dispel the gloom, dimly conscious that its efforts were unappreciated and undesired. Down at the rickety front gate, cloaked in blackness, stood two persons.

Darkness could not hide the world from them, for the whole world dwelt within the confines of a love-lit garden gate. For them there was no sound of life except their tender voices, no evidence that a world existed beyond the posts between which they stood, his arm about her, her head upon his breast. They spoke softly in the silence about them.

"And to-morrow night at this time you will be mine--all mine," he murmured. She looked again into his face, indistinct in the night.

"To-morrow night! Oh, Jud, it does not seem possible. We are both so young and so--so--"

"So foolish!" he smiled.

"So poor," she finished plaintively.

"But, Justine, you don't feel afraid to marry me because I am poor, do you?" he asked.

"Do you think I have been poor only to be afraid of it? We love each other, dear, and we are rich. To-morrow night I shall be the richest girl in the world," she sighed tremulously.

"To-morrow night," he whispered. His arm tightened about her, his head dropped until his lips met hers and clung to them until the world was forgotten.

Far away in the night sounded the steady beat of a galloping horse's hoofs. Louder and nearer grew the pounding on the dry roadway until at last the rollicking whistle of the rider could be heard. Standing in the gateway, the silent lovers, their happy young hearts beating as one, listened dreamily to the approach.

"He has been in the village," said she, at length breaking the silence that had followed their pa.s.sionate kiss. Her slender body trembled slightly in his arms.

"And he is going home drunk, as usual," added the youth sententiously.

"Has he annoyed you lately?"

"We must pay no attention to what he says or does," she answered evasively.

"Then he has said or done something?"

"He came to the schoolhouse yesterday morning, dear--just for a moment--and he was not so very rude," she pleaded hurriedly.

"What did he say to you; what did he want?" persisted her lover.

"Oh, nothing--nothing, Jud. Just the same old thing. He wanted me to give you up and--and--" She hesitated.

"And wait for him, eh? If he bothers you again I'll kill him. You're mine, and he knows it, and he's got to let you alone."

"But it will all be over to-morrow night, dear. I'll be yours, and he'll have to give up. He's crazy now, and you must not mind what he does. When I'm your wife he'll quit--maybe he'll go away. I've told him I don't love him. Don't you see, Jud, he has hope now, because I am not married. Just as soon as the wedding's over he'll see that it's no use and--and he'll let us alone."

"The drunken hound! The idea of him daring to love you! Justine, I could kill him!"

The horseman swept past the gate, a swift black shadow amid the thunder of hoof-beats, and the lovers drew closer together. Just as he roared past them his whistling ceased and a strong, bold voice shouted:

"h.e.l.lo, Justine!" He was saluting, in drunken gallantry, the girl whom he believed to be asleep beneath a counterpane near some black window in the little house. The horse shied, his whip swished through the air and cut across the animal's flank; the ugly snort of the beast mingled with oaths from the rider.

The girl shuddered and placed her hands over her ears; her companion set his teeth and muttered:

"The dog! I wish that horse would throw him and break his neck! He's not fit to live. Justine, if there is a man who will go to h.e.l.l when he dies, that man is 'Gene Crawley. And he wants you--the hound! The sweetest, gentlest, purest girl in the world! He wants you!"

They forgot the rider, and the clatter of the horse's hoofs died away in the night. The lovers turned slowly toward the house. At the door he stooped and kissed her.

"The last night we are to part like this," he whispered.

She laid both hands upon his face.

"Let us pray to-night, dear, that we may be always as happy as we now are," she said softly.

She opened the door, and the two stood for a moment in the fair light from the cottage lamp. From above him on the door-sill, she laid her fingers in his curly brown hair, and said, half timidly, half joyfully:

"The last night we shall say good-bye like this."

Then she kissed him suddenly and was gone, blushing and trembling. He looked at the closed door for an instant, and then dropped to his knees and kissed the step on which she had stood.

CHAPTER II.

"LET NOT MAN PUT ASUNDER."

The next night they were married. In the little cottage there were lights and the revelry known only in country nuptials. The doors and windows were open, and scores of young people in their best clothes flitted in and out, their merry voices ringing with excitement, their faces glowing with pleasure, their eyes sparkling with the mischief peculiar to occasions of the kind. There were the congratulations and the teasings; the timid jests and the coa.r.s.e ones; the cynical bits of advice from lofty experts; the blushes of prospective brides; the red-faced denials of guilty beaux; the smiles, the winks, and the songs; the feasting and the farewells.

"That boy," Jud Sherrod, and "Cap" Van's daughter, Justine, were to be married. The community would have liked to be glad. Everybody had "allowed" they would be married some day. Now that the day had come, amid the rejoicing there were doubts, such as this:

"They's a mighty nice-appearin' couple, but dinged 'f I see how they're goin' to git along. Jud ain't got no more bizness workin' on a farm than a hog hez in a telegraft office. Course, his pap was a farmer, but Jud's been off to seminary. He don't give a dodgast fer the farm, nohow, an' I perdict that she'll haf to keep on teachin' school fer a livin'. Course, that little land o' hern might keep 'em goin', but I bet a barrel o' cider 'at Jud won't be wuth a bushel o' corn-husks at runnin' it. He's a dern nice boy, though, an' I'd hate like Sam Patch to see a morgidge put on the place. What she'd orter done wuz to married some big cuss like Link Overshine er Luther Hitchc.o.c.k. They'd 'a' made somethin' out'n that little eighty up yander, an' she'd never need to worry. Dinged if she ain't put' nigh the purtiest girl I ever see. Looks jest like her ma. 'Member her? Don't see what she ever could see in Jud Sherrod. He cain't do a dasted thing but draw picters. His pap had orter walloped him good an' made him chop wood er somethin', 'stead o' lettin' him go on the way he did. They do say he kin sketch things powerful fine. He tuck off a picter uv Sim Brookses'

sucklin' calves that was a daisy, I've hearn. But that ain't farmin'

by a dern sight."

Even Jud and Justine had looked forward to the great day with anxious minds. Both realized the importance of the step they were to take, for they were possessed of a judgment and a keenness uncommon in young and ardent lovers. Justine, little more than a girl in years, knew that Jud was not and never could be a farmer; it was not in him. He knew it as well as she, though he was not indolent; he was far from that. He was ambitious and he was an indefatigable toiler--in art, not of the soil. He was a born artist. By force of circ.u.mstances he was a farmer. The tan on his hands and face, the hardness in his palms had not been acquired unwillingly, for he was not a sluggard, nor a grumbler. He plowed, though his thoughts were not of the plowing; he reaped, though his thoughts were not of the harvest.

They had been sweethearts from childhood. They had played together, read together, studied together, and suffered together. It seemed to them that they just grew up to their wedding day, a perfectly natural growth. Had this marriage come five years earlier everything would have been different. Instead of the little cottage, clean, cozy, and poor, there would have been the big white house on the hill, surrounded by maples and oaks; instead of the simple gown of white lawn there would have been a magnificent silk or satin; instead of the sympathy and the somber head-shakings of wedding guests there would have been rejoicing; and approval.

To-night, as the little clock on Justine's bureau struck eight, she left her room and met Jud in the narrow hall upstairs. Downstairs could be heard the m.u.f.fled voices of an expectant crowd, an occasional giggle breaking through the buzz. He kissed her and both were silent, thinking of other homes. One remembered the big white house on the hill, the other the old yellow farmhouse, large and rambling, "over on the pike." To-night they faced the minister in the parlor of one of the lowliest dwellings in the neighborhood. The boy had not an acre of all his father's lands; the girl was poor, at the gates of the famous Van homestead. They were married not in his house, but in hers. The cottage stood in the corner of a thirty-acre farm that had come to her through her grandmother. This was all except memories that the child had to connect her present life with the comfortable days of the past.

Old Mrs. Crane, who lived with Justine in the little cot, met them at the foot of the creaking stairway and threw open the door to the parlor. Before the boy and girl gleamed the faces of a score or more of eager, excited friends. There was hardly a girl in the crowd who was not dressed more expensively than the bride. Justine was proudly aware of the critical, simpering gaze that swept over her simple gown; she could almost read the exultant thoughts of her guests, as they compared her plain lawn to the ridiculous finery that hid their sunburnt necks, scrawny arms, and perspiring bodies.

Her face was fresh and flushed with happiness, pride--perhaps disdain; their faces had, at least, been washed and lavishly powdered. Most of them wore absurd white gloves over their red arms. Yet they were the elite of the county. There were red dresses, blue dresses, yellow dresses, and there were other dresses in which the colors of the rainbow shone, all made to fit women other than those who wore them.