Chapter I. In Which Tobacco Is Hero

On an October afternoon some four years later, at the season of the year when the whole county was fragrant with the curing tobacco, Christopher Blake passed along the stretch of old road which divided his farm from the Weatherbys’, and, without entering the porch, called for Jim from the little walk before the flat whitewashed steps. In response to his voice, Mrs. Weatherby, a large, motherly looking woman, appeared upon the threshold, and after chatting a moment, directed him to the log tobacco barn, where the recently cut crop was "drying out."

"Jim and Jacob are both over thar," she said; " an’ a few others, for the matter of that, who have been helpin’ us press new cider an’ drinkin’ the old. I’m sure I don’t see why they want to lounge out thar in all that smoke, but thar’s no accountin’ for the taste of a man that ever I heard tell of an’ I reckon they kin fancy pretty easy that they are settin’ plum in the bowl of a pipe. It beats me, though, that it do. Why, one mouthful of it is enough to start me coughin’ for a week, an’ those men thar jest swallow it down for pure pleasure." Clean, kindly, hospitable, she wandered garrulously on, remembering at intervals to press the young man to "come inside an’ try the cakes an’ cider."

"No, I’ll look them up out there," said Christopher, resisting the invitation to enter. "I want to get a pair of horseshoes from Jim; the gray mare cast hers yesterday, and Dick Boxley is laid up with a sprained arm. Oh, no, thanks; I must be going back." With a friendly nod he turned from the steps and went rapidly along the path which led to the distant barn.

As Mrs. Weatherby had said, the place was like the bowl of a pipe, and it was a moment before Christopher discovered the little group gathered about the doorway, where a shutter hung loosely on wooden hinges.

The ancient custom of curing tobacco with open fires, which had persisted in Virginia since the days of the early settlers, was still commonly in use; and it is possible that had one of Christopher’s colonial ancestors appeared at the moment in Jacob Weatherby’s log barn it would have been difficult to convince him that between his death and his resurrection there was a lapse of more than two hundred years. He would have found the same square, pen-like structure, built of straight logs carefully notched at the corners; the same tier-poles rising at intervals of three feet to the roof; the same hewn plates to support the rafters; the same "daubing" of the chinks with red clay; and the same crude door cut in the south wall. From the roof the tobacco hung in a fantastic decoration, shading from dull green to deep bronze, and appearing, when viewed from the ground below, to resemble a numberless array of small furled flags. On the hard earth floor there were three parallel rows of "unseasoned" logs which burned slowly day and night, filling the barn with gray smoke and the pungent odour of the curing tobacco.

"It takes a heap of lookin’ arter, an’ no mistake," old Jacob was remarking, as he surveyed the fine crop with the bland and easy gaze of ownership. "Why, in a little while them top leaves thar will be like tinder, an’ the first floatin’ spark will set it all afire. That’s the way Sol Peterkin lost half a crop last year, an’ it’s the way Dick Moss lost his whole one the year before." At Christopher’s entrance he paused and turned his pleasant, ruddy face from the fresh logs which he had been watching. "So you want to have a look at my tobaccy, too?" he added, with the healthful zest of a child. "Well, it’s worth seein’, if I do say so; thar hasn’t been sech leaves raised in this county within the memory of man."

"That’s so," said Christopher, with an appreciative glance. "I’m looking for Jim, but he’s keeping up the fires, isn’t he?" Then he turned quickly, for Tom Spade, who with young Matthew Field had been critically weighing the promise of Jacob’s crop, broke out suddenly into a boisterous laugh.

"Why, I declar’, Mr. Christopher, if you ain’t lost yo’ shadow!" he exclaimed.

Christopher regarded him blankly for a moment, and then joined lightly in the general mirth. "Oh, you mean Will Fletcher," he returned. "There was a pretty girl in the road as we came up, and I couldn’t get him a step beyond her. Heaven knows what’s become of him by now!"

"I bet my right hand that was Molly Peterkin," said Tom. "If anybody in these parts begins to talk about ’a pretty gal,’ you may be sartain he’s meanin’ that yaller-headed limb of Satan. Why, I stopped my Jinnie goin’ with her a year ago. Sech women, I said to her, are fit for nobody but men to keep company with."

"That’s so; that’s so," agreed old Jacob, in a charitable tone; "seein’ as men have most likely made ’em what they are, an’ oughtn’t to be ashamed of thar own handiwork."

"Now, when it comes to yaller hair an’ blue eyes," put in Matthew Field, "she kin hold her own agin any wedded wife that ever made a man regret the day of his birth. Many’s the time of late I’ve gone a good half-mile to git out of that gal’s way, jest as I used to cut round old Fletcher’s pasture when I was a boy to keep from passin’ by his redheart cherry-tree that overhung the road. Well, well, they do say that her young man, Fred Turner, went back on her, an’ threw her on her father’s hands two days befo’ the weddin’."

"It was hard on Sol, now you come to think of it," said Tom. "He told me himself that he tried to git the three who ought to marry her to draw straws for the one who was to be the happy man, but they all backed out an’ left her high an’ dry an’ as pretty as a peach. Fred Turner would have taken his chance, he said, like an honest man, an’ he was terrible down in the mouth when I saw him, for he was near daft over the gal."

"Well, he was right," admitted Matthew, after reflection. "Why, the gal sins so free an’ easy you might almost fancy her a man."

He drew back, coughing, for Jim came in with a long green log and laid it on the smouldering fire, which glowed crimson under the heavy smoke.

"Here’s Sol," said the young man, settling the log with his foot. "I told him you were on your way to the house, pa, but he said he had only a minute, so he came out here."

"Oh, I’ve jest been to borrow some Jamaica ginger from Mrs. Weatherby," explained Sol Peterkin, carefully closing the shutter after his entrance.

"My wife’s took so bad that I’m beginnin’ to fear she’ll turn out as po’ a bargain as the last. It’s my luck—I always knew I was ill-fated—but, Lord a-mercy, how’s a man goin’ to tell the state of a woman’s innards from the way she looks on top? All the huggin’ in the world won’t make her wink an eyelash, an’ then there’ll crop out heart disease or dropsy befo’ the year is up. When I think of the trouble I had pickin’ that thar woman it makes me downright sick. It ain’t much matter about the colour or the shape, I said—a freckled face an’ a scrawny waist I kin stand—only let it be the quality that wears. If you believe it, suh, I chose the very ugliest I could find, thinkin’ that the Lord might be mo’ willin’ to overlook her—an’ now this is what’s come of it. She’s my fourth, too, an’ I’ll begin to be a joke when I go out lookin’ for a fifth. Naw, suh; if Mary dies, pure shame will keep me a widower to my death."

"Thar ain’t but one thing sartain about marriage, in my mind," commented Matthew Field, "an’ that is that it gits most of its colour from the distance that comes between. The more your mouth waters for a woman, the likelier ’tis that ’tain’t the woman for you—that’s my way of thinkin’. The woman a man don’t git somehow is always the woman he ought to have had. It’s a curious, mixed-up business, however you look at it."

"That’s so," said Tom Spade; "I always noticed it. The woman who is your wife may be a bouncin’ beauty, an’ the woman who ain’t may be as ugly as sin, but you’d go twice as far to kiss her all the same. Thar is always a sight more spice about the woman who ain’t."

"Jest look at Eliza, now," pursued Matthew, wrapped in the thought of his own domestic infelicities. "What I could never understand about Eliza was that John Sales went clean to the dogs because he couldn’t git her. To think of sech a thing happenin’, jest as if I was to blame, when if I’d only known it I could hev turned about an’ taken her sister Lizzie. Thar were five of ’em in all, an’ I settled on Eliza, as it was, with my eyes blindfold. Poor John—poor John! It was sech a terrible waste of wantin’."

"Well, it’s a thing to stiddy about," said old Jacob, with a sigh. "They tell me now that that po’ young gal of Bill Fletcher’s has found it a thorny bed, to be sho’. Her letters are all bright an’ pleasant enough, they say, filled with fine clothes an’ the names of strange places, but a gentleman who met her somewhar over thar wrote Fletcher that her husband used her like a dumb brute."

Christopher started and looked up inquiringly.

"Have you heard anything about that, Jim?" he asked in a queer voice.

"Nothin’ more. Fletcher told me he had written to her to come home, but she answered that she would stick to Wyndham for better or for worse. It’s a great pity—the marriage promised so well, too."

"Oh, the gal’s got a big heart; I could tell it from her eyes," said old Jacob. "When you see those dark, solemn eyes, lookin’ out of a pale, peaked face, it means thar’s a heart behind ’em, an’ a heart that bodes trouble some day, whether it be in man or woman."

Christopher passed his hand across his brow and stood staring vacantly at the smouldering logs. He could not tell whether the news saddened or rejoiced him, but, at least, it brought Maria’s image vividly before his eyes. The spell of her presence was over him again, and he felt, as he had felt on that last evening, the mysterious attraction of her womanhood. So intense was the visionary appeal that it had for the moment almost the effect of hallucination; it was as if she still entreated him across all the distance. The brooding habit of his mind had undoubtedly done much to conserve his emotion, as had the rural isolation in which he lived. In a city life the four years would probably have blotted out her memory; but where comparison was impossible, and lighter distractions almost unheard of, what chance was there for him to forget the single passionate experience he had known? Among his primitive neighbours Maria had flitted for a time like a bewildering vision; then the great distant world had caught her up into its brightness, and the desolate waste country was become the guardian of the impression she had left.

"If thar’s a man who has had bad luck with his children, it’s Bill Fletcher," old Jacob was saying thoughtfully. "He’s been a hard man an’ a mean one, too, an’ when he couldn’t beg or borrow it’s my opinion that he never hesitated to put forth his hand an’ steal. Thar’s a powerful lot of judgment in dumb happenin’s, an’ when you see a family waste out an’ run to seed like that it usually means that the good Lord is havin’ His way about matters. It takes a mighty sharp eye to tell the difference between judgment an’ misfortune, an’ I’ve seen enough in this world to know that, no matter how skilfully you twist up good an’ evil, God Almighty may be a long time in the unravelling, but He’ll straighten ’em out at last. Now as to Bill Fletcher, his sins got in the bone an’ they’re workin’ out in the blood. Look at his son Bill—didn’t he come out of the army to drink himself to death? Then his granddaughter Maria has gone an’ mismarried a somebody, an’ this boy that he’d set his heart on is goin’ to the devil so precious fast that he ain’t got time to look behind him."

"Oh, he’s young yet," suggested Tom Spade, solemnly wagging his head, "an’ Fletcher says, you know, that he’s all right so long as he keeps clear of Mr. Christopher. It’s Mr. Christopher, he swears, that’s been the ruin of him."

Christopher met this with a sneer. "Why does he let him dog my footsteps, then?" he inquired with a laugh. "I never go to the Hall, and yet he’s always after me."

"Bless you, suh, it ain’t any question of lettin’ an’ thar never has been sence the boy first put on breeches. Why, when I refused to sell him whisky at my sto’, what did he do but begin smugglin’ it out from town! Fletcher found it out an’ blew him sky-high, but in less than a month it was all goin’ on agin."

"An’ the funny part is," said Jim Weatherby, "that you can’t dislike Will Fletcher, however much you try. He’s a kindhearted, jolly fellow, in spite of the devil."

"Or in spite of Mr. Christopher," added Tom, with a guffaw.

Frowning heavily, Christopher turned toward the door.

"Oh, you ask Will Fletcher who is his best friend," he said, "and let me hear his answer."

With an abrupt nod to Jacob, he went out of the tobacco barn and along the little path to the road. He had barely reached the gate, however, when Jim Weatherby ran after him with the horseshoes, and offered eagerly to come over in the morning and see that the gray mare was properly shod.

"I’m handy at that kind of thing, you know," he explained, with a blush.

"Well, if you don’t mind, I wish you would come," Christopher replied, "but to save my life I can’t see why you are so ready with other people’s jobs."

Then, taking the horseshoes, he opened the gate and started rapidly toward home. His mind was still absorbed by old Jacob’s news, and upon reaching the house he was about to pass up to his room, when Cynthia called him from the little platform beyond the back door, and going out, he found her standing pale and tearful on the kitchen threshold. Looking beyond her, he saw that Lila and Tucker were in the room, and from the intense and resolute expression in the younger sister’s face he judged that she was the central figure in what appeared to be a disturbing scene.

"Christopher, you can’t imagine what has happened," Cynthia began in her beautiful, tragic voice. "Lila went to church yesterday— with whom, do you suppose?"

Christopher thought for a moment.

"Not with Bill Fletcher?" he gave out at last.

"Come, come, now, it’s a long ways better than that, you’ll admit, Cynthia," broke in Tucker, with a peaceful intention. "I can’t help reminding you, my dear, to be thankful that it wasn’t so unlikely a person as Bill Fletcher."

With a decisive gesture such as he had never believed her capable of, Lila came up to Christopher and stood facing him with beaming eyes. He had never before seen her so lovely, and he realised at the instant that it was this she had always needed to complete her beauty. From something merely white and warm and delicate she had become suddenly as radiant as a flame.

"I went with Jim Weatherby, Christopher," she said slowly, "and I’m not ashamed of it."

The admission wrung a short groan from Cynthia, who stood twisting her gingham apron tightly about her fingers.

"Oh, Lila, who was his grandfather?" she cried. "Well, there’s this thing certain, she doesn’t want to marry his grandfather," put in Tucker, undaunted by the failure of his former attempts at peace-making. "Not that I have anything against the old chap, for that matter; he was an honest, well-behaved old body, and used to mend my boots for me up to the day of his death. Jim gets his handy ways from him, I reckon."

Cynthia turned upon him angrily.

"Uncle Tucker, you will drive me mad," she exclaimed, the tears starting to her lashes. "It does seem to me that you, at least, might show some consideration for the family name. It’s all we’ve left."

"And it’s a good enough relic in its way," returned Tucker amicably, "though if you are going to make a business of sacrificing yourself, for heaven’s sake let it be for something bigger than a relic. A live neighbour is a much better thing to make sacrifices for than a dead grandfather."

"I don’t care one bit what his grandfather was or whether he ever had any or not!" cried Lila, in an outburst of indignation; "and more than that, I don’t care what mine was, either. I am going to marry him—I am—I am! Don’t look at me like that, Cynthia. Do you want to spoil my whole life?"

Cynthia threw out her hands with a despairing grasp of the air, as if she were reaching for the broken remnants of the family pride. "To marry a Weatherby!" she gasped. "Oh, mother! mother! Lila, is it possible that you can be so selfish?" But Lila had won her freedom too dearly to surrender it to an appeal.

"I want to be selfish," she said stubbornly. "I have never been selfish in my life, and I want to see what it feels like. Oh, you are cruel, all of you, and you will break my heart."

Christopher’s face paled and grew stern.

"We must all think of mother’s wishes, Lila," he said gravely.

For the first time the girl lost her high fortitude, and a babyish quiver shook her lips. Her glance wavered and fell, and with a pathetic gesture she turned from Christopher to Cynthia and from Cynthia to Tucker.

"Oh, you can’t understand, Christopher!" she cried; "you have never been in love, nor has Cynthia. None of you can understand but Uncle Tucker!"

She ran to him sobbing, and he, steadying himself on a single crutch, folded his arm about her.

"I understand, child, thank God," he said softly.