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The Miller Of Old Church, a novel by Ellen Glasgow |
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Book 1 - Chapter 8. Shows Two Sides Of A Quarrel |
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_ BOOK I CHAPTER VIII. SHOWS TWO SIDES OF A QUARREL At dusk that evening the miller, who had spent the day in Applegate, stopped at Bottom's Ordinary on his way home, and received a garbled account of the quarrel from the farmers gathered about the hospitable hearth in the public room. The genius of personality had enabled Betsey Bottom to hold open doors to the traveller long after the wayside tavern in Virginia had passed from the road and the one certain fact relating to the chance comer was that he never came. By combining a store with a public house, she managed still to defy the progress of time as well as the absence of guests. "Thank the Lord, I've never been one to give in to changes!" it was her habit to exclaim. The room was full of tobacco smoke when Abel entered, and as he paused, in order to distinguish the row of silhouettes nodding against the ruddy square of the fireplace, Adam Doolittle's quavering voice floated to him from a seat in the warmest corner. The old man was now turning ninety, and he had had, on the whole, a fortunate life, though he would have indignantly repudiated the idea. He was a fair type of the rustic of the past generation--slow of movement, keen of wit, racy of speech. "What's this here tale about Mr. Jonathan knockin' Archie down an' settin' on him, Abel?" he inquired. "Ain't you got yo' hand in yet, seein' as you've been spilin' for a fight for the last fortnight?" "I hadn't heard of it," replied Abel, his face flushing. "What in hell did he knock Archie down for?" "Jest for shooting' a few birds that might as well have been flying about on yo' land as on his, if thar minds had been set over toward you." "Do you mean Mr. Jonathan got into a quarrel with him for hunting on his land? Why, we shot over those fields for a hundred years before the first damned Gay ever came here." "So we have--so we have, but it seems we ain't a-goin' to do so any longer if Mr. Jonathan can find a way to prevent it. Archie was down here jest a minute or two arter you went by this mornin', an' he was swearin' like thunder, with a busted lip an' a black eye." A smarting sensation passed over Abel, as though the change to the warm room after the cold outside were stinging his flesh. "Well, I wish I had been there," he retorted, "somebody else would have been knocked down and sat on if that had happened." "Ah, so I said--so I said," chuckled old Adam. "Thar ain't many men with sech a hearty stomach for trouble, I was jest sayin' to Solomon." Bending over the fire, he lifted a live ember between two small sticks, and placing it in the callous palm of his hand, blew softly on it an instant before he lighted his pipe. "What goes against my way of thinkin'," remarked Betsey Bottom, wiping a glass of cider on her checked apron before she handed it to Abel, "is that so peaceable lookin' a gentleman as Mr. Jonathan should begin to start a fuss jest as soon as he lands in the midst of us. Them plump, soft-eyed males is generally inclined to mildness whether they be men or cattle." "'Taint nothin' on earth but those foreign whims he's brought back an' is tryin' to set workin' down here," said Solomon Hatch. "If we don't get our backs up agin 'em in time, we'll find presently we don't even dare to walk straight along the turnpike when we see him a comin'. A few birds, indeed!--did anybody ever hear tell of sech doin's? 'Warn't them birds in the air?' I ax, 'an' don't the air belong to Archie the same as to him?'" "It's because he's rich an' we're po', that he's got a right to lay claim to it," muttered William Ming, a weakly obstinate person, to whose character a glass of cider contributed the only strength. "You'd better hold yo' tongue, suh," retorted his wife, "it ain't yo' air anyway, is it?" "I reckon it's as much mine as it's Mr. Jonathan's," rejoined William, who, having taken a double portion, had waxed argumentative. "An' what I reason is that birds as is in the air ain't anybody's except the man's that can bring 'em down with a gun." "That's mo' than you could do," replied his wife, "an' be that whether or no, it's time you were thinkin' about beddin' the grey mule, an' she ain't in the air, anyhow. If I was you, Abel," she continued in a softer tone, "I wouldn't let 'em make me so riled about Mr. Jonathan till I'd looked deep in the matter. It may be that he ain't acquainted with the custom of the neighbourhood, an' was actin' arter some foolish foreign laws he was used to." "I'll give him warning all the same," said Abel savagely, "that if I ever catch him on my land I'll serve him in the fashion that he served Archie." "You don't lose nothin' by goin' slow," returned Solomon. "Old Adam there is a born fire eater, too, but he knows how to set back when thar's trouble brewin'." "I ain't never set back mo' than was respectable in a man of ninety," croaked old Adam indignantly, while he prodded the ashes in his corncob pipe with his stubby forefinger. "'Tis my j'ints, not my sperits that have grown feeble." "Oh, we all know that your were a gay dog an' a warnin' to the righteous when you were young," rejoined Solomon, in an apologetic manner, "an' it must be a deal of satisfaction to be able to look back on a sinful past when you've grown old and repented. I've been a pious, God-fearing soul from my birth, as you all know, friends, but sad to relate, I ain't found the solid comfort in a life of virtue that I'd hoped for, an' that's the truth." "The trouble with it, Solomon," replied old Adam, pushing a log back on the andirons with his rough, thick soled boot to which shreds of manure were clinging, "the trouble with it is that good or bad porridge, it all leaves the same taste in the mouth arter you've once swallowed it. I've had my pleasant trespasses in the past, but when I look backward on 'em now, to save my life, I can't remember anything about 'em but some small painful mishap that al'ays went along with 'em an' sp'iled the pleasure. Thar was the evening I dressed up in my best clothes an' ran off to Applegate to take a yellow haired circus lady, in pink skirts, out to supper. It ought to have been a fine, glorious bit of wickedness to remember, but the truth was that I'd put on a new pair of boots, an' one of 'em pinched so in the toes that I couldn't think of another thing the whole blessed evening. 'Tis al'ays that way in my experience of life--when you glance back or glance befo' 'tis pleasant enough to the eye, but at the moment while you're linin' it thar's al'ays the damn shoe that pinches." "Ah, you're right, you're right, Mr. Doolittle," remarked William Ming, who had lingered in the doorway to follow the conversation. "It's life, that's what it is," commented Solomon, heaving a sigh that burst a button hole in his blue shirt. "An' what's mo' than life, it's marriage. When I see the way some men wear themselves out with wantin' little specks of women, I say to myself over an' over agin, 'Ah, if they only knew that thar ain't nothin' in it except the wantin'.'" "Not another thing--not another blessed mite of a thing," agreed William, who had imbibed secretly again behind the back of his wife. "I've know a man to throw himself into the river from sheer love befo' marriage," said Solomon, "an' two weeks arter the woman had taken him, to fall out with her because she'd put too much shortenin' in his pie-crust." "It's all love befo' marriage an' all shortenin' arterwards," observed Betsey Bottom, with scorn. "I've al'ays noticed in this world that the less men folks have to say for themselves the better case they make of it. When they've spent all thar time sence Adam tryin' to throw dust in the eyes of women, it would be better manners if they'd stop twittin' 'em because they'd succeeded." "True, true, you never spoke a truer word, ma'am, in my acquaintance with you," responded Solomon, with what hasty gallantry he could summon. "I was thinkin' them very things to myself when you mentioned 'em. Not that anybody could throw dust in yo' eyes, even if he tried to." "Well, it would take mo'n a man to do that, I reckon," she replied, amiably enough, "I saw through 'em early, an' when you've once seen through 'em it's surprisin' how soon the foolishness of men begins to look like any other foolishness on earth." She was listened to with respectful and flattering attention by her guests, who leaned forward with pipes in hand and vacant, admiring eyes on her still comely features. It was a matter of gossip that she had refused half the county, and that her reason for marrying William had been that he wasn't "set," and would be easy to manage. The event had proved the prophecy, and to all appearance it was a perfectly successful mating. Abel was the first to move under her gaze, and rising from his chair by the fire, he took up his hat, and made his way slowly through the group, which parted grudgingly, and closed quickly together. "Take a night to sleep on yo' temper Abel," called Solomon after him, "and git a good breakfast inside of you befo' you start out to do anything rash. Well, I must be gittin' along, folks, sad as it seems to me. It's strange to think, now ain't it--that when Nannie was married to Tom Middlesex an' livin' six miles over yonder at Piping Tree, I couldn't have got over that road too fast on my way to her." "You'd still feel like that, friend, if she were still married to Tom Middlesex," quavered old Adam. "'Tis the woman we oughtn't to think on that draws us with a hair." "Now that's a case in p'int," replied Solomon, nodding after the vanishing figure of Abel. "All his wits are in his eyes, as you can tell jest to look at him--an' for sech a little hop-o'-my-thumb female that don't reach nigh up to his shoulder." "I can't see any particular good looks in the gal, myself," remarked Mrs. Bottom, "but then, when it's b'iled down to the p'int, it ain't her, but his own wishes he's chasin'." "Did you mark the way she veered from him to Mr. Jonathan the other day?" inquired William Ming, "she's the sort that would flirt with a scarecrow if thar warn't anything else goin'." "The truth is that her eyes are bigger than her morals, an' I said it the first time I ever seed her," rejoined old Adam. "My taste, even when I was young, never ran to women that was mo' eyes than figger." Still discoursing, they stumbled out into the dusk, through which Abel's large figure loomed ahead of them. "A man that's born to trouble, an' that of the fightin' kind--as the sparks fly upward," added the elder. As the miller drove out of the wood, the rustle of the leaves under his wheels changed from the soft murmurs in the moist hollows to the crisp crackle in the open places. In the west Venus hung silver white over the new moon, and below the star and the crescent a single pine tree stood as clearly defined as if it were pasted on a grey background of sky. Half a mile farther on, where his road narrowed abruptly, a voice hallooed to him as he approached, and driving nearer he discerned dimly a man's figure standing beside a horse that had gone lame. "Halloo, there? Have you a light? My horse has got a stone or cast a shoe, I can't make out which it is." Reaching for the lantern under his seat, Abel alighted and after calling "Whoa!" to his mare, walked a few steps forward to the stationary horse and rider in the dusk ahead. As the light shone on the man and he recognized Jonathan Gay, he hesitated an instant, as though uncertain whether to advance or retreat. "If I'd known 'twas you," he observed gruffly, "I shouldn't have been so quick about getting down out of my gig." "Thank you, all the same," replied Gay in his pleasant voice. "It doesn't seem to be a stone, after all," he added. "I'm rather afraid he got a sprain when he stumbled into a hole a yard or two back." Kneeling in the road, Abel lifted the horse's foot, and felt for the injury with a practised hand. "Needs a bandage," he said at last curtly. "I happen to have a bottle of liniment in the gig." The light glided like a winged insect over the strip of corduroy road, and a minute later the pungent odour of the liniment floated to Gay's nostrils. "Give me anything you have for a compress," remarked the miller, dropping again on his knees. "Pick a few of those Jimson weeds by the fence and lend me your handkerchief--or a couple of them would be still better. There, now, that's the best I can do," he added after a moment. "Lead him slowly and be sure to look where you're going." "I will, thank you--but can you find your way without the lantern?" "Hannah can travel the road in the dark and so can I for that matter. You needn't thank me, by the way. I wouldn't have troubled about you, but I've a liking for horses." "A jolly good thing it was for me that you came up at the instant. I say, Revercomb, I'm sorry it was your brother I got into a row with this morning." "Oh, that's another score. We haven't settled it yet," retorted the Miller, as he stepped into his gig. "You've warned us off your land, so I'll trouble you to keep to the turnpike and avoid the bridle path that passes my pasture." Before Gay could reply, the other had whistled to his mare and was spinning over the flat road into the star-spangled distance. When the miller reached home and entered the kitchen, his mother's first words related to the plight of Archie, who sat sullenly nursing his bruised mouth in one corner. "If you've got any of the Hawtrey blood in yo' veins you'll take sides with the po' boy," she said. "Thar's Abner settin' over thar so everlastin' mealy mouthed that he won't say nothin' mo' to the p'int than that he knew all the time it would happen." "Well, that's enough, ain't it?" growled Abner; "I did know it would happen sure enough from the outset." "Thar ain't any rousin' him," observed Sarah, with scorn. "I declar, I believe pa over thar has got mo' sperit in him even if he does live mostly on cornmeal mush." "Plenty of sperit in me--plenty of sperit," chirped grandfather, alert as an aged sparrow that still contrives to hop stiffly in the sunshine. "Oh, yes, he's sperit left in him, though he's three years older than I am," remarked grandmother, with bitterness. "_He_ ain't wo' out with work and with child bearin' befo' he was ninety. _He_ ain't bald, _he_ ain't toothless," she concluded passionately, as if each of grandfather's blessings were an additional insult to her. "He can still eat hard food when he wants it." "For pity's sake, be quiet, ma," commanded Sarah sternly, at which the old woman broke into sobs. "Yes, I must be quiet, but _he_ can still talk," she moaned. "Tell me about it, Archie," said Abel, drawing off his overcoat and sitting down to his supper. "I passed Jonathan Gay in the road and he asked me to bind up his horse's sprain." "He'd be damned befo' I'd bind up a sprain for him!" burst out Archie, with violence. "Met me with a string of partridges this morning and jumped on me, blast him, as if he'd caught me in the act of stealing. I'd like to know if we hadn't hunted on that land before he or his rotten old uncle were ever thought of?" "Ah, those were merry days, those were!" piped grandfather. "Used to go huntin' myself when I was young, with Mr. Jordan, an' brought home any day as many fine birds as I could carry. Trained his dogs for him, too." "Thar was al'ays time for him to go huntin'," whimpered grandmother. "What are you goin' to do about it, Abel?" asked Sarah, turning upon him with the smoking skillet in her hand. At the question Blossom Revercomb, who was seated at work under the lamp, raised her head and waited with an anxious, expectant look for the answer. She was embroidering a pair of velvet slippers for Mr. Mullen--a task begun with passion and now ending with weariness. While she listened for Abel's response, her long embroidery needle remained suspended over the toe of the slipper, where it gleamed in the lamp light. "I don't know," replied Abel, and Blossom drew a repressed sigh of relief; "I've just ordered him to keep clear of our land, if that's what you're hintin' at." "If you had the sperit of yo' grandpa you'd have knocked him down in the road," said Sarah angrily. "Yes, yes, I'd have knocked him down in the road," chimed in the old man, with the eagerness of a child. "You can't knock a man down when he asks to borrow your lantern," returned Abel, doggedly, on the defensive. "Oh, you can't, can't you?" jeered Sarah. "All you're good for, I reckon, is to shuck corn or peel potatoes!" For a minute Abel stared at her in silence. "I declare, mother, I don't believe you're any better than a heathen," he remarked sadly at last. "Well, I'm not the kind of Christian you are, anyway," retorted Sarah, "I'd like to know whar you'll find anything in Scripture about not knockin' a man down because he asks you for a lantern. I thought I knew my Bible--but I reckon you are better acquainted with it--you an' yo' Mr. Mullen." "Of course, you know your Bible. I wasn't meanin' that." "Then if readin' yo' Bible ain't bein' a Christian, I suppose it's havin' curly hair, an' gittin' up in the pulpit an' mincin'. Who are those slippers for, Keren-happuch?" "Mr. Mullen, grandma." "Well, if I was goin' to embroider slippers for a minister," taunted Sarah, "I'd take care to choose one that could repeat his Scripture when he was called on." "Ah, 'tis the age, not the man," lamented grandfather, "'tis an age of small larnin' an' weak-kneed an' mealy mouthed into the bargain. Why, they're actually afeared to handle hell-fire in the pulpit any longer, an' the texts they spout are that tame an' tasteless that 'tis like dosin' you with flaxseed tea when you're needin' tar-water. 'Twas different when I was young and in my vigour," he went on eagerly, undisturbed by the fact that nobody paid the slightest attention to what he was saying, "for sech was the power and logic of Parson Claymore's sermons that he could convict you of the unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost even when you hadn't committed it. A mo' blameless soul never lived than my father, yet I remember one Sunday when parson fixed his eye upon him an' rolled out his stirrin' text 'Thou art the man,' he was so taken by surprise an' suddenness that he just nodded back at the pulpit 'an answered, 'Yes, parson, I am, if you'll excuse me.'" "It's a pity ain't mo' like Parson Claymore now," remarked Sarah, who had stopped to listen to the concluding words of the anecdote. "Thar ain't vim enough in this generation of preachers to skeer a rabbit." Her profile, with its sparse wave of hair from the forehead, was repeated in grotesque exaggeration on the wall at her back. The iron will in her lent a certain metallic hardness to her features, and her shadow resembled in outline the head on some ancient coin that had lain buried for centuries. Intrenched behind an impregnable self-esteem, she had never conceded a point, never admitted a failure, never accepted a compromise. "It ain't no wonder that a new comer thinks he can knock you down an' set on you for shootin' a few birds," she added, after a moment. "He'll find out I ain't done with him yet," growled Archie, and rising from his seat, he took down his gun and began polishing the barrel with an old yarn stocking of Sarah's. The long needle missed the hole at which Blossom had pointed it, and she looked up with a sullen droop to her mouth. "I reckon Mr. Gay has just as good a right to his things as we have to ours," she said. "Right! Who wants his right?" flared Archie, turning upon her. "You'll say next, I reckon, that he had a right to split my upper lip open if he wanted to." "From the way grandma carries on anybody would think that was what _she_ wanted," persisted Blossom, adhering stubbornly to the point, "she sounds as if she were mad because people ain't everlastingly fighting." "You needn't think I don't see what you're aimin' at, Keren-happuch," rejoined Sarah, who used this name only in moments of anger, "you're tryin' to make me think a grown man can't do anything better than get up in the pulpit and mouth texts so soft that a babe couldn't cut its teeth on 'em. You've had notions in yo' head about Orlando Mullen ever since he came here, an' you ain't fooled me about 'em." "Thar, thar, don't you begin pesterin' Blossom," interposed Abner, aroused at last from his apathy. "Notions about Mr. Mullen!" repeated Blossom, and though there was a hot flush in her face, her tone was almost one of relief. _ |
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