_ CHAPTER V
One clear, warm morning a week later Henley stood in the little porch in front of his store and glanced up the street which gave into the road that led on to his farm. In the store Cahews was nailing the top slats on a coop of scrambling, squawking chickens, and with a pot of lampblack and brush was marking it for shipment to Atlanta. In a cloud of dust in the rear, Pomp, the negro porter and all-round servant on Henley's farm, was turning the handle of a clattering machine for the separation of chaff from grain. And while his eyes were resting on the road the storekeeper saw a horse and wagon come around a bend and slowly advance toward him. The horse was a poor beast of great age, and the wagon was none the better for wear. It had lost all its original paint, the woodwork was cracked by the weather and the sun. Its four wheels ran unevenly; some of the spokes were missing, and its bolts and rods of iron rattled in holes worn too large.
"By Gum, it's Dixie Hart, and she's fetching in a load of produce," Henley muttered; then he called out to Cahews: "Say, Jim, get through there and stop that nigger's clatter. We are going to have a visitor. The fairest of the fair will be here in a minute."
Henley stepped down to the edge of the sidewalk and bowed and smiled to her as she drew rein. In her new straw hat and clean, well-ironed gingham she looked decidedly well. She was radiantly bright, and smiled merrily as she extended her hand and shook his over the rickety fore-wheel as she leaned forward from the dilapidated, sagging seat, the springs of which rested on the sides of the wagon-bed.
"I told you I'd be in," she laughed, "and, if the market is off to-day, back I go to my shanty. Nothing but the best prices catch me."
"About as favorable now as any time," he said. "What does your load consist of?" he ran on, jovially, as he glanced behind her at the bags, boxes, coops, pails, and jars.
"Odds and ends," she laughed. "I've got to make a payment to old Welborne on my debt. You and Jim had better give me tiptop bids all through or I'll peddle the truck from door to door and steal your trade right from under your noses."
Henley smiled good-humoredly as he walked round the wagon opening boxes and bags and making notes with a pencil on a scrap of paper. Then he told her what he would pay for each item.
"Is that as good as you can do?" It was a question she always asked, and she did so now more from habit than for any intention of disagreeing with him.
"That's the top-notch, Dixie," he said. "We couldn't do that, but we've got customers that simply won't eat butter and eggs that don't have your brand on 'em."
"I believe you," she said, laconically. "I've met 'em myself. They pass by the house from Carlton sometimes in their fine rigs and ask me why I don't start a milk-and-butter farm. I may do it if I ever get out of debt. I've got sense enough to know it would pay, and pay big, considering that there ain't no such business established. Well, Alfred, I'll take your offer. I don't like to dicker with first one store and then another, and I know you've been straight with me in all my dealings. I'll trade out part of the amount. I've got a few tricks to buy in your line."
"Well, alight and come in and set down," he said. "Jim and Pomp will unload and weigh and measure. I'll make Pomp mind your hoss."
"Oh, old Bob will stand all right!" she laughed, as she put her gloved hand on Henley's shoulder and sprang lightly to the ground. "He's moved all he wants to to-day. It would take a switch-engine to budge him an inch. See 'im nod? He knows what we are talking about."
Henley led her through the long room to his desk in the rear, and gave her a seat near the open door as the clerk and the porter went out to the wagon. She took off her hat and pushed back her luxuriant hair with her fingers.
"You go on with your work," she said; "don't mind me."
He applied himself to some writing he had to do till Cahews came with a slip of paper on which he had noted the weights, quantities, and values of the things she had brought, and with a polite bow he handed it to her.
"Look it over, Dixie," Henley jested. "Old man Hardcastle's daughter has rubbed a rabbit-foot on Jim so that he can hardly add two and two. Besides, he is always rattled when he's waiting on a pretty girl."
"Well, he won't rattle any more than a green gourd round me, if that's the case," Dixie said, as she began to run over the figures, her lips moving as she counted on her fingers. "I know in reason it's correct," she said, extending the slip to Cahews. "No, wait a minute," drawing it back and looking at it again. "If I'm not powerfully mistaken, Jim, you are swindling yourself out of twenty cents on the string-beans. There was one peck instead of two."
"I told you Jim was rattled," Henley continued to jest. "But I won't discharge 'im. I'd pardon him if he was to set the store afire, under the circumstances. I've seen him wash his hands in the kerosene tank and wipe 'em on his clothes just after Julia Hardcastle driv' by in a hug-me-tight buggy with a drummer."
"Well, I wouldn't blame him much," Dixie smiled in her sympathy for the embarrassed clerk. "She is nice and pretty, and one town-girl that isn't stuck up. I like her. She wants to have a good time; she likes attention and good clothes, and I'm sure I'd be just like her if I had half the chance. She called to see me the other day, and Ma and Aunt Mandy fell in love with her. They think she has lots of common-sense, and they know. I had another call. Carrie Wade waited till she saw me go to the field to work, then she come over and asked if I was at the house. Ma told her where I was, and she come over the clods grumbling like a spoilt baby about getting dust on her shoes. What do you reckon she wanted?"
"I can't imagine," Henley answered, as Cahews, flushing with delight over the compliment to the maid of his choice, moved away.
"She come to cut at me," Dixie said, as she took the pile of silver into her hand which Henley was extending. "As she stood there between the corn-rows holding up her skirt she said she was going over to the lumber-camp again with Martha Sims to another big all-day blow-out. She said she was to start early and had so much fixing to do that she wondered if I'd spare the time to wash and iron a muslin dress for her. She said she'd pay well for it, because my things always looked so nice."
"Impudent thing!" Henley said; "she ought to have, knowed better than that."
"She
did know better, and that's exactly why she said it. She intended to let me know where she was going, thinking it would break my heart. She admits she is bent on getting married, and says she knows I'll live and die an old maid. She hates me, Alfred; with all her soul she hates me. She will never rest satisfied till she sees me plumb down and out. It all started through no fault of mine, too. You remember that young preacher, Mr. Wrenn, that boarded about in the families three years ago. Well, she made a dead set at him. She literally tagged after him everywhere he went till folks here in Chester was laughing about it and calling her his little dog Fido. They say he got so he'd run and hide every time she'd turn a corner. Well, he stayed at our house two weeks, and, of course, we all tried to make him as comfortable as we could. I give you my word that I never was alone with the fellow more than five minutes in all the time he was there, but I'll admit he hung around considerable--that is, with us all."
"I remember the fellow," Henley said, deeply interested. "I had a talk with your Pa about him not a month before he died. Your Pa said he couldn't see why you was so offish. The fellow made no beans about how he felt, and when the report went out that you had turned him down folks wondered powerful, for all the girls was setting their caps for him."
"I was too young to have good sense, I reckon," the girl said, shrugging her shoulders. "Pa was alive, and we did not want for anything. I never dreamt I'd have such a load on me as I've got now. Then I had a foolish notion about love, anyway. I'd been reading novels, and got an idea in my silly head that when a girl met the right person she went through some sort of dazzling regeneration; and as I didn't feel anyways peculiar when Mr. Wrenn was about I thought I ought to wait, and I told him so. I'll never forget that young man's face. I've thought of it thousands of times, and been sorry."
"And Carrie Wade found out about it?" Henley was leading her along gently and sympathetically.
"Why, he told her himself--told her to her face in a crowd of young folks at Sunday-school the next day, and the worst part of it was somebody in the bunch that didn't like Carrie joked her about it. The whole thing has gone out o' folks' minds by this time, I reckon; but Carrie never laid it aside. It rankled and still rankles. She gloats over my hardships and makes a point of flaunting her good luck in my face, and is eternally telling me of her chances to get married. She's half crazy on the subject, and thinks every one else is like her. I know one thing, Alfred Henley, when I do slip off the coil of single blessedness she'll be madder than a wet hen without shelter on a cold December day. And she won't have long to wait neither--there! I've gone and let the cat out of the bag, but I don't care. I'd trust a friend like you with my life. You talk pretty free to me, and I can to you."
"You don't--you can't mean to--to say that you have got some 'n of the sort in view, Dixie?"
"Well, you just lie low and watch," she laughed, significantly. "I let one chance pass me, and I don't intend to be such a fool again. I can use a stout, willing, and able-bodied man in my line of business. I've got two old women to support and a big debt to pay, and I'm about to the limit of my endurance. I might have put it off, but I'm itching to see my prime enemy's face when I march him out to meeting. It's all on the quiet, and is going to be a big surprise. I never let my folks on to it till just the other day. That reminds me. I want one of your blank envelopes. I've written to him, and I'm clean out of envelopes and want to mail the letter before I go home."
She flushed slightly, and her long lashes rested on her pink cheeks as she drew a folded paper from her pocket and held it in her lap with the money he had given her.
"You don't mean it!" Henley cried in astonishment. "Why, you take my breath away; but, of course, I'm glad. I certainly can congratulate the lucky fellow."
"Ask 'im whether it would be in order before you do." She reached for his pen and dipped it, and began to address the envelope as it lay on her knee.
"And that letter is to him, you say?" Henley said, wonderingly.
"Well, it ain't to no
girl," Dixie smiled, with an arch, upward glance. "Stamps and paper cost too much such times as these to waste 'em on women."
"I'm curious to know what sort o' chap you've decided on," said Henley. "What does he look like?"
"He's a pig in a poke." She had finished writing and was drawing the gummed flap of the envelope across her smiling lips. "I never laid eyes on 'im in my life. What do you think of that? But that part must never get out. I want Carrie and all the rest to--to think, you see, that I got acquainted with him in--in the regular way. She never would get through talking if she knew the full truth, and that is nobody's business but his and mine. You may think I am a born fool, Alfred, but for the past six months I've been corresponding with a fellow in Florida. But he's all right. Don't you worry; he's
safe, and that is a lot to say in this day of trickery and strife. It all come about by accident. I've got a cousin--Tobe Chasteen--working down there in an orange-grove, and now and then he writes me a letter. Well, in one he wrote that a nice fellow down there wanted to write to some girl up in Georgia, and asked me if I'd answer. So, just for fun, and to kill time, I agreed, and so it started. He writes a good, flowing hand, and has plenty to say, and I got interested in the whole thing. He sent his picture, and wanted one of me. So I put on my best outfit and had a tintype struck off under that tent on the square and sent it to him. It was a frightful daub, I tell you; but he liked it, or said he did; he said it was fine, and if the goods come up to the sample that was all he could ask. I've got his in my pocket. I don't tote it about all the time, but it happened to be in the pocket of this dress. My two women want it to stay in the clock, so they can get it out and peep at it when I'm in the field. They are more crazy about him than I am. They sneak and read my letters, and ask ten thousand questions about him. There are some of his long epistles that I wouldn't show 'em for money--they are so silly. At first we just wrote about what was going on, but he kept edging closer and closer, and I never, in so many words, told him to let up. Once he drew a round ring in the middle of a blank page and asked under it if I couldn't guess what was in the middle of it. I looked close and could see a greasy splotch when it was held sidewise in the light. That kinder disgusted me, and I drew a ring in my answer, and told him there wasn't anything in mine, and never would be. He must have liked what I said, for he wrote back that it was cute, and that he'd bet I was one girl that never had been kissed. Well, he can think that, too, if he wants to. It won't do him any harm. I say all this was going on, but I never dreamt of closing the deal till I got in this present money-tight. You see, I wrote him about my financial trouble, and he said he had saved up some money and that he could wipe out all my obligations, and that me and him together would make a fine team on the farm. He wrote so kind, too, about Ma and Aunt Mandy, and said he'd always want 'em with us. You see, I felt grateful, and, considering everything, I think I acted wise--don't you?"
Henley half nodded, and tried to meet her frankness with a smile that was free from doubt. At this juncture Pomp came back with a telegram. It was an order from an Atlanta hotel for a quantity of eggs and butter. Henley read it and handed it back. "Tell Jim to quote the lowest cash prices," he said, absent-mindedly.
"But it's a order, suh," said the negro.
"Oh yes; I see it is. Well, ship it; it's all right."
"Would you like to see his picture?" Dixie asked. She had taken the crude tintype from her pocket and held it in her lap.
"Yes, I would," Henley replied, and he took the picture and looked at it. He didn't like it. A keen, quick reader of men's faces, he saw what had escaped her less experienced eye. There was something that bespoke prodigious vanity and lack of principle in the low brow, over which the coarse, black hair was plastered down so smoothly; in the heavy, carefully waxed, curled, and perhaps dyed mustache; in the small, conscious eyes, set close together; in the grossly sensuous mouth, from which a weak chin receded.
"He ain't as purty as he thinks he is by a long shot," Dixie remarked, rather lamely, for she was slightly chilled by Henley's failure to comment favorably on the picture, "but he has a good heart. He is a church member in fair standing, and has a Bible class of young ladies in Sunday-school, and was once proposed for superintendent, and lost out because he was unmarried and too young. Oh, I've thought it all over. I'm not jumping without looking for a spot to light on. I thought I could carry my load through, but I had to give in. I can't perform miracles, Alfred; I'm just clay, and the wrong gender of that. If I could keep temptation out of my way I might keep on, but I can't run against Carrie Wade's sneers. I'd rather strut by her house with a husband that was able to take me in out of the wet than anything else I know of, and I want to rest. I want to sleep one night without dreaming of old Welborne's flabby jaws, blinking eyes, and harsh voice snarling at me. Folks may say such an arrangement ain't customary--that it is out of the common--but it seems to me that everything about me is out of the common, anyway, and why shouldn't this fall in line? Customs are just what the most folks want to do. Custom don't look after the under dog in the pack. But when right is on a body's side there is no need to fear, and there won't be a shade of wrong in this if I have anything to do with it. I've made up my mind to do a wife's part in every sense of the word, and let it go at that--nothing risk, nothing have. I never used to think I'd ever marry a man I never saw--in fact, when I was young and silly I used to see myself strutting by whole regiments of fellers all making signs to me to come be his darling, but that was when my eyelids was glued down and before they was jerked open by trouble. Marrying with me in this case is an open-and-shut business proposition. I read somewhere that it is worked that way among high-up folks in France--though the dickering takes place between the parents of the contracting parties; and as I know a sight more about what to do than Ma, why, it was all right for me to take it in hand. Peter is an orphan, and I'm the head of a family, and so there was nobody else concerned. My two women are getting old and plumb helpless--more like children than grown-ups. They may live a long time. I certainly hope they will, for they are all I've got; but they are actually getting so that they don't want to budge out of the house, even as far as the fence. They are afraid a little sun will kill 'em dead. But, Alfred, I don't somehow like the way you look about it. You don't take it like I thought you would. I know in reason that you wish me well, and--"
"I don't know that I have a right to say a thing agin it," Henley broke into her now hesitating words. "But I must confess I'm sorter stunned, Dixie. I've always felt like a big brother to you, and pitied you a good deal, and now--well, you see, I reckon it is natural for me to be sorter afraid that you may be making a mistake in what you are doing. I feel like begging you not to do it, and then ag'in I don't, for I've always made up my mind that marrying was one thing no outsider could decide about. I have been dead agin marriages that afterwards turned out tiptop, and you know I didn't show such far-reaching wisdom in my own case as to set myself up as a judge."
"Well, you needn't have any fears on my account," Dixie smiled, assuringly. "I know what I am about, and I ain't the back-out kind. It's too late, anyway; the day has been set. For the last two weeks I've been giving every spare minute to the making of my outfit. It is a good one. I was determined to give Miss Wade a treat. I do things right, and I've spent some cash. My trousseau will attract attention, and I reckon Peter won't be ashamed. But it is to be kept quiet. Don't you say a word to a soul. A week from to-day I'll drive in and meet the up-train and haul my bridegroom home in my wagon. We'll eat dinner at our house and then drive over to Preacher Sanderson's and have him tie the knot. Now I'll go down in front and buy a few things and mail my letter and hurry home."
"Wait a minute, Dixie." She was moving away, and he stopped her, standing before her, a grave look in his eyes. "Surely it ain't as dead sure as that?"
"Yes, it is, Alfred; it's settled--plumb settled."
"But--but," he pursued, anxiously, "if you didn't like him when you see him, you wouldn't marry him?"
"Oh, that's a gray horse of another color," she smiled. "I think I'll like him; but if I didn't--well, if I didn't, I'd pay his way back to Florida, and beg off."
Henley made no further protest. He sat at his desk and bowed his head in troubled thought as she tripped lightly away.
"What a pity!" he mused. "She deserves the best in the land, and this fellow looks like a worthless scamp." _