قراءة كتاب His "Day In Court" 1895
تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"
with a sterling, narrow-minded wife and an ascetic sense of religion. "Thar Satan waits, an' he gits nimbler every time ye shake yer foot. The fiddler gin out the figger ter change partners, an' this hyar gal war dancin' opposite Abs'lom, ez hed never looked nigh her till that day. The gal didn't know what ter do; she jes' stood still; but Abs'lom he jes' danced up ter her ez keerless an' gay ez he always war, jes' like she war ennybody else, an' when he held out his han' she gin him hern, all a-trembly, an' lookin' up at him, plumb skeered ter death, her eyes all wide an' sorter wishful, like some wild thing trapped in the woods. An' then the durned fiddler, moved by the devil, I'll be be bound, plumb furgot ter change 'em back. So they danced haf'n the day tergether. An' arter that they war forever a-stealin' off an' accidentally meetin' at the spring, an' whenst he war a-huntin' or she drivin' up the cow, an' a-courtin' ginerally, till they war promised ter marry."
"'Twarn't the bran dance; 'twar suthin' ez fleet-in' an' ez useless," said his mother, standing in the door and gazing at the unconscious girl, who was leaning upon the hoe, half in the shadow of the blooming laurel that crowded about the enclosure and bent over the rail fence, and half in the burnished sunshine; "she's plumb beautiful—thar's the snare ez tangled Abs'lom's steps. I never 'lowed ter see the day ez could show enny comfort fur his dad bein' dead, but we hev been spared some o' the tallest cavortin' that ever war seen sence the Big Smoky war built. Sometimes it plumb skeers me ter think ez we-uns hev got a Quimbey abidin' up hyar along o' we-uns in his house an' a-callin' o' herse'f Kittredge. I looks ter see him a-stalkin' roun' hyar some night, too outdone an' aggervated ter rest in his grave."
But the nights continued spectreless and peaceful on the Great Smoky, and the same serene stars shone above the mountain as over the Cove. Evelina could watch here, as often before, the rising moon ascending through a rugged gap in the range, suffusing the dusky purple slopes and the black crags on either hand with a pensive glamour, and revealing the river below by the amber reflection its light evoked. She often sat on the step of the porch, her elbow on her knees, her chin in her hand, following with her shining eyes the pearly white mists loitering among the ranges. Hear! a dog barks in the Cove, a cock crows, a horn is wound, far, far away; it echoes faintly. And once more only the sounds of the night—that vague stir in the windless woods, as if the forest breathes, the far-away tinkle of water hidden in the darkness—and the moon is among the summits.
The men remained within, for Absalom avoided the chill night air, and crouched over the smouldering fire. Peter's wife sedulously held aloof from the ostracized Quimbey woman. But her mother-in-law had fallen into the habit of sitting upon the porch these moonlit nights. The sparse, newly-leafed hop and gourd vines clambering to its roof were all delicately imaged on the floor, and the old woman's clumsy figure, her grotesque sun-bonnet, her awkward arm-chair, were faithfully reproduced in her shadow on the log wall of the cabin—even to the up-curling smoke from her pipe. Once she suddenly took the stem from her mouth. "Eveliny," she said, "'pears like ter me ye talk mighty little. Thar ain't no use in gittin' tongue-tied up hyar on the mounting."
Evelina started and raised her eyes, dilated with a stare of amazement at this unexpected overture.
"I ain't keerin'," said the old woman, recklessly, to herself, although consciously recreant to the traditions of the family, and sacrificing with a pang her distorted sense of loyalty and duty to her kindlier impulse. "I warn't born a Kittredge nohow."
"Yes, 'm," said Evelina, meekly; "but I don't feel much like talkin' noways; I never talked much, bein' nobody but men-folks ter our house. I'd ruther hear ye talk 'n talk myself."
"Listen at ye now! The headin' young folks o' this kentry 'll never rest till they make thar elders shoulder all the burdens. An' what air ye wantin' a pore ole 'oman like me ter talk about?"
Evelina hesitated a moment, then looked up, with a face radiant in the moonbeams. "Tell all 'bout Abs'lom—afore I ever seen him."
His mother laughed. "Ye air a powerful fool, Eveliny."
The girl laughed a little, too. "I dunno ez I want ter be no wiser," she said.
But one was his wife, and the other was his mother, and as they talked of him daily and long, the bond between them was complete.
"I hev got 'em both plumb fooled," the handsome Absalom boasted at the settlement, when the gossips wondered once more, as they had often done, that there should be such unity of interest between old Joel Quimbey's daughter and old Josiah Kittredge's widow. As time went on many rumors of great peace on the mountain-side came to the father's ears, and he grew more testy daily as he grew visibly older. These rumors multiplied with the discovery that they were as wormwood and gall to him. Not that he wished his daughter to be unhappy, but the joy which was his grief and humiliation was needlessly flaunted into his face; the idlers about the county town had invariably a new budget of details, being supplied, somewhat maliciously, it must be confessed, by the Kittredges themselves. The ceremony of planting one foot on the neck of the vanquished was in their minds one of the essential concomitants of victory. The bold Absalom, not thoroughly known to either of the women who adored him, was ingenious in expedients, and had applied the knowledge gleaned from his wife's reminiscences of her home, her father, and her brothers to more accurately aim his darts. Sometimes old Quimbey would fairly flee the town, and betake himself in a towering rage to his deserted hearth, to brood futilely over the ashes, and devise impotent schemes of vengeance.
He often wondered afterward in dreary retrospection how he had survived that first troublous year after his daughter's elopement, when he was so lonely, so heavy-hearted at home, so harried and angered abroad. His comforts, it is true, were amply insured: a widowed sister had come to preside over his household—a deaf old woman, who had much to be thankful for in her infirmity, for Joel Quimbey in his youth, before he acquired religion, had been known as a singularly profane man—"a mos' survigrus cusser"—and something of his old proficiency had returned to him. Perhaps public sympathy for his troubles strengthened his hold upon the regard of the community. For it was in the second year of Evelina's marriage, in the splendid midsummer, when all the gifts of nature climax to a gorgeous perfection, and candidates become incumbents, that he unexpectedly attained the great ambition of his life. He was said to have made the race for justice of the peace from sheer force of habit, but by some unexplained freak of popularity the oft-defeated candidate was successful by a large majority at the August election.
"Laws-a-massy, boys," he said, tremulously, to his triumphant sons, when the result was announced, the excited flush on his thin old face suffusing his hollow veinous temples, and rising into his fine white hair, "how glad Eveliny would hev been ef—ef—" He was about to say if she had lived, for he often spoke of her as if she were dead. He turned suddenly back, and began to eagerly absorb the details of the race, as if he had often before been elected, with calm superiority canvassing the relative strength, or rather the relative weakness, of the defeated aspirants.
He could scarcely have measured the joy which the news gave to Evelina. She was eminently susceptible of the elation of pride, the fervid glow of success; but her tender heart melted in sympathetic divination of all that this was to him who had sought it so long, and so unabashed by defeat. She pined to see his triumph in his eyes, to hear it in his voice. She wondered—nay, she knew that he longed to tell it to her. As the year rolled