Perhaps the loneliest spot in all the pine woods was the big Collister farm. Its buildings were not huddled in the centre of it, where they could keep one another in countenance, but each stood by itself, facing the desolate stretches of grey sand and pine stumps in its own way. Near each a few uncut pine trees kept guard, presumably for shade, but really sending their straggling shadows far beyond the mark. Many a Northern heart had ached from watching them, they were so tall and isolate; for, having been forest-bred, they had a sad and detached expression when they stood alone or in groups, just like the Northern faces when they met the still distances of the South.
In Collister’s day he and the man who worked for him were the only strangers who had need to wathc the pines. A land-improvement company had opened up the farm, but after sinking all its money in the insatiable depths of sandy soil, where the Lord, who knew best, had planted pine trees, the great bustling company made an assignment of its stumpy fields, and somewhat later the farm passed into the hands of Collister. Who Collister was, and where he came from, were variously related far and wide through the piney woods; for he was one of those people whose lives are an odd blending of reclusion and notoriety. He kept up the little store on the farm: and, though it was usually his man who came up from the fields when any one stood at the closed store and shouted, its trade was largely augmented by the hope of seeing Collister.
The sunken money of the land company must have enriched the soil, for the farm prospered as well as the store, yielding unprecedentedly in such patches as the two men chose to cultivate. In mid-summer the schooner-captains, in their loose red shirts, came panting up two sunburned miles from the bayou to chaffer with Collister or his man over the price of water-melons; and when their schooners were loaded, the land breeze which carried the cool green freight through bayou and bay out to the long reaches of the sound, where the sea wind took the burden on, sent abroad not only schooner and cargo and men, but countless strange reports of the ways and doings of Collister. At least one of these bulletins never changed. Year after year, when fall came, and he had added the season’s proceeds to his accumulating wealth—when even the peanuts had been dug, and the scent of their roasting spread through the piney woods on the fresh air of the winter evenings, making an appetising advertisement for the store—it was whispered through the country, and far out on the gulf, that Collister said he would marry any girl who could make good bread—light bread. That settled at least one question: Coillster came from the North. The man who worked for him was thought to have come from the same place; but though he did the cooking, his skill must have left something to be desired, and after current gossip had risked all its surmises on the likelihood of Collister’s finding a wife under the condition imposed, it usually added that if Collister married, the man who worked for him would take it as a slight, and leave.
An old country road led through the big farm, and along it the country people passed in surprising numbers and frequency for so sparsely settled a region. They took their way leisurely; and if they could not afford a five-cent purchase at the store gave plenty of time to staring right and left behind the stumps, in a cheerful determination to see something worth remembrance. One day, when the store chanced to be standing open, one of these passers walked up to the threshold and stood for a while looking in. The room was small and dingy, lighted only by the opening of the door, and crammed with boxes, leaky barrels, farm produce, and side-meat. One corner had been arranged with calicoes and ribbons and threads; but though the inspector was a young and pretty girl in the most dingy of cotton gowns, she had scarcely a thought for that corner; she was staring at a man who was so hard at work rearranging the boxes and barrels that he did not notice her shadow at his elbow. Finally he glanced up of his own accord.
“Hello!” he said, coming forward; “do you want to buy something? Why didn’t you sing out?”
For a little while longer the girl stared at him steadily as if he had not moved. Most of the people who live in the pine woods come to have a ragged look, but he was the raggedest person she had ever seen. He was as ragged as a bunch of pine needles; yet he had the same clean and wholesome look, and his face was pleasant.
“Are you the man that works for Collister?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said.
The girl looked him up and down again with innocent curiosity. “How much does he give you?” she asked.
“Nothing but my board and clothes,” the man answered, and smiled. He did not seem to find it hard work to stand still and watch her while her black eyes swiftly catalogued each rag. When they reached his bare brown feet she laughed.
“Then I think he had ought to dress you better, an’ give you some shoes,” she said.
“He does—winters,” the man answered calmly.
She gave an impatient shake of her sun-bonnet. “That isn’t the thing—just to keep you all warm,” she exclaimed. “A man like Mr. Collister had ought to keep you looking ’ristocratic.”
The man who worked for Collister grinned. “Not very much in Collister’s line,” he said. “We might get mixed up if I was too dressy.” He pulled a cracker-box forward, and dusted it. “If you ain’t in a hurry, you’d better come inside and take a seat,” he added.
The girl sank to the doorstep instead, taking off her bonnet. Its slats folded together as she dropped it into her lap, and she gave a sigh of relief, loosening some crushed tresses of hair from her forehead. She seemed to be settling down for a comfortable inquisition.
“What kind of clothes does Mr. Collister wear?” she began.
The man drew the cracker-box up near the doorway, and sat down. “Dressy,” he said, “’bout like mine.”
The girl gave him a look which dared to say, “I don’t believe it.”
“Honest truth,” the man nodded. “Would you like to have me call him up from the field, and show him to you?”
Not to assent would have seemed as if she were daunted, and yet the girl had many more questions to ask about Collister. “Pretty soon,” she said. “I suppose if you don’t call him, he’ll be coming for you. They say he works you mighty hard.”
It is never pleasant to be spoken of as something entirely subject to another person’s will. A slow flush spread over the man’s face, but he answered loyally, “Collister may be mean to some folks, but he’s always been mighty good to me.” He smiled as he looked off from stump to stump across the clearing to the far rim of the forest. The stumps seemed to be running after one another, and gathering in groups to whisper secrets. “You’ve got to remember that this is a God-forsaken hole for anybody to be stuck in,” he said; “’tain’t in humanity for him to keep his soul as white as natural, more’n his skin; but there’s this to be said for Collister: he’s always good to me.”
“I’m right glad of that,” the girl said. She too was looking out at the loneliness, and a little of it was reflected on her face. “You-all must think a heap of him,” she added wistfully.
“You can just bet on that,” he declared. “I’ve done him a heap of mean turns, too; but they was always done ’cause I didn’t know any better, so he don’t hold me any grudge.”
“Wouldn’t he mind if he knew you were a-losing time by sitting here talking to me?” she asked.
The man shook his head. “No,” he answered cheerfully, “he wouldn’t care—not for me. There isn’t anybody else he would favour like that, but he makes it a point to accommodate me.”
The girl gave her head a little turn. “Do you think he would accommodate me?” she asked.
He looked her over critically as she had first looked at him. “It’s a dangerous business answering for Collister,” he ventured; “but maybe if I asked him he would.”
“Well, you are bigoty,” she asserted. “I can’t noways see what there is betwixt you. Why, they say that whilst you’re working he comes out in the field, an’ bosses you under a umbrelly; an”’—a laugh carried her words along like leaves on dancing water—“an’ that he keeps a stool stropped to his back, ready to set down on whenever he pleases. Is it true—‘hones’ truth’?”
A great mirth shook Collister’s man from head to foot. “Such a figure—such a figure as the old boy cuts!” he gasped. “Sometimes I ask him if he’ll keep his stool strapped on when he goes a-courting; and he says maybe so—it’ll be so handy to hitch along closer to the young lady.” Without thinking, he illustrated with the cracker-box as he spoke. “And as for the umbrella, I certainly ain’t the one to object to that; for, you see, when the sun’s right hot he holds it over me.”
He leaned half forward as he spoke, smiling at her. It is hard to tell exactly when a new acquaintance ceases to be a stranger; but as the girl on the doorstep smiled in answer she was unexpectedly aware that the shrewd, kindly, furrowed face of this young man who worked for Collister was something which she had known for a long, long time. It seemed as familiar as the scent of pine needles and myrtle or as the shafts of blue, smoke-stained sunlight between the brown trunks of the pine trees in the fall, or as the feathery outline of green pine-tops against the dreamy intensity of a Southern sky; and when all this has been said of a girl who lives in the “pineys” there is no necessity for saying more. She gave a little nervous laugh.
The man began talking again. “It ain’t such foolery as you would think, his wearing the stool and carrying the umbrella,” he said. “This is the way he reasons it out, he says. In the first place there’s the sun; that’s a pretty good reason. But what started it was a blazing day up North, when he was hustling four deals at once; a man would need a head the size of a barrel to keep that sort of thing going for long, and Collister has just an ordinary head no bigger than mine. Well, the upshot of it was that he had a sunstroke, and was laid up a month; and then he reckoned up the day’s business, and what he’d gained on one deal he’d lost on another, so that he came out even to a cent—queer, wasn’t it?—with just the experience of a sunstroke to add to his stock-in-trade. Then he bought himself an umbrella and a stool, and began to take life fair and easy. Easy going is my way too; that’s why we get along together.”
There was a jar of candy on a shelf behind him and above his head, and turning, he reached up a long arm and took it down. It was translucent stick candy with red stripes round it—just such candy as every fortunate child knew twenty years ago, and some know still. In the piney woods it has not been superseded as a standard of delight, and the children expect to receive it gratuitously after any extensive purchase. Near the coast, where Creole words have spread, it is asked for by a queer sweet name—lagnappe (something thrown in for good measure). The man who worked for Collister handed the jar across to the girl, making her free of it with a gesture.
“Do you reckon Mr. Collister would want me to take some?” she asked, poising her slender brown hand on the edge of the jar. “You know, they say that when he first come hyar, an’ the children asked him for lagnappe, he pretended not to onderstan’ ’em, and said he was sorry, but he hadn’t got it yet in stock. Is that true?”
“Yes,” the man answered; “that’s true.”
“Well, did he onderstan’?” she asked.
He lifted his shoulders in a way he had learned in the South. “To be sure,” he said. “I told him at the time that it was a mean thing to do, but he said he simply couldn’t help himself; young ones kept running here from miles around to get five cent’s worth of baking-sody and ask for a stick of candy. But take some; he won’t mind, for he’s always good to me.
She drew back her hand. “No,” she said, pouting; “I’m going to come in sometime when he’s hyar, an’ see if he’ll give some lagnappe to me.”
“I’ll tell him to,” the man said.
“Well, you are bigoty!” the girl repeated.
“If I was to tell him to,” the man persisted, “who should I say would ask for it?”
She looked at him defiantly. “I’ll do the telling,” she said; “but while we’re talking about names, what’s your’s?”
“Well,” he answered, “if you’re not naming any names, I don’t believe I am. You know considerably more about me already than I do about you.”
“Oh, just as you please,” she said. To be brought blankly against the fact that neither knew the other’s name caused a sense of constraint between them. She picked up her bonnet and put it on as if she might be about to go; and though she did not rise, she turned her face out-of-doors so that the bonnet hid it from him—and it was such a pretty face!
“Say, now,” he began, after one of those pauses in which lives sometimes sway restlessly to and fro in the balances of fate, “I didn’t mean to make you mad. I’ll tell my name if you want to know.”
“I’m not so anxious,” she said. One of her brown hands went up officiously and pulled the bonnet still farther forward. “Is it true,” she asked, “that Mr. Collister says he will marry any girl that can make good light bread?”
The man formed his lips as if to whistle, and then stopped.
“Yes,” he said, eyeing the sun-bonnet, “it’s true.”
She turned round and surprised him. “I can make good light bread,” she announced.
“You!” he said.
“Yes,” she answered sharply; “why not? It ain’t so great a trick.”
“But”—he paused, meeting the challenge of her face uneasily—“but did you come here to say that?”
“You’ve heard me say it,” she retorted.
He rose and stood beside her, looking neither at her, nor at the fields, nor at the encircling forest, but far over and beyond them all, at the first touches of rose-colour on the soft clouds in the west. He seemed very tall as she looked up at him, and his face was very grave. She had forgotten long ago to notice his bare feet and tattered clothing. “So that means,” he said slowly, “that you came here to offer to marry a man that you never saw.”
She did not answer for a moment, and when she did her voice was stubborn. “No,” she said; “I came hyar to say that I know how to make light bread. You needn’t be faultin’ me for his saying that he would marry any girl that could.”
“But you would marry him?”
“I allow if he was to ask me I would.”
The man looked down squarely to meet her eyes, but he found only the sun-bonnet. “What would you do it for,” he asked; “a lark?”
“A lark?” she echoed; “oh, yes, a lark!”
He stooped toward her and put his hand on her shoulder. “Look up here,” he said; “I want to see if it’s a lark or not.”
“I jus’ said it was,” she answered, so low that he had to bend a little closer to be certain that he heard.
“That won’t do,” he said firmly; “you must look up into my face.”
“I—won’t!” she declared.
He stood gazing at her downcast head. There was something that shone in his eyes, and his tongue was ready to say, “You must.” He closed his lips and straightened himself again. The girl sat perfectly still, except that once in a while there was a catch in her breath. He kept looking off into the empty, sighing reaches of pine country, which could make people do strange things. “We haven’t known each other very long,” he said at last; “but a few minutes ago I thought we knew each other pretty well, and perhaps you don’t have any better friend than I am in this desolate hole. Won’t you tell me why it is you want to marry Collister?”
“For his money!” the girl answered shortly.
His face darkened as if he were cursing Collister’s money under his breath; but she did not look up, and he said nothing until he could speak quietly. “Is that quite fair to Collister?” he asked.
“He did talk about marrying any girl that could make good light bread; but I don’t suppose he wanted to do it unless she liked him a little, too.”
“I—allowed—maybe I’d like him a little,” the girl explained; “an’ I was right sure that he’d like me.”
“That’s the mischief of it,” the man muttered; “I’ll warrant he’ll like you!”
After hiding her face so long the girl looked up, and was surprised to see him so troubled. “You’ve been right good to me,” she said gently, “an’ I reckon I don’t mind—perhaps I had ought to tell you jus’ why I come. I—I don’t think it’s fair; I won’t tell him I can make good bread; only”—she met his eyes appealingly—“if I don’t, I don’t see what I’m going to do.”
“What’s the matter?” he asked. “Don’t you have any home?”
She smiled bravely, so that it was sorrowful to see her face. “Not any more,” she said. “I’ve always had a right good home, but my paw died—only las’ week. You an’ Mr. Collister used to know him, an’ he has spoken of you—both of you. He was Noel Seymour from up at Castauplay.”
“Noel Seymour—dead?” said the man. All her light words pleaded with him for tenderness now that he knew she had said them with aching heart. “But Seymour was a Creole,” he added, “and you are not.”
“My own mother was an American,” the girl answered, “an’ I learned my talk from her before she died; an’ then my stepmother is American, too.” She stopped just long enough to try to smile again. “What do you think?” she asked. “My stepmother don’t like me. She isn’t going to let me stay at home any more. Could you be as mean as that?”
He put his hand on her shoulder. “You poor child!” he said; for gossip came sometimes in return for all that radiated from the farm, and he could recall a cruel story he once heard of Noel Seymour’s wife. It made him believe all and more than the girl had told him. “Poor child!” he said again; “you haven’t told me yet your first name.”
“Ginevra,” she answered. “My own mother liked it; my stepmother says it’s the name of a fool. She thinks she’s young an’ han’some; but I allow she’s sending me off because I’m a right smart, the best-favoured of the two. She wants to get married again, an’ thar ain’t but one bachelor up our way, so she’s skeered he’d take first pick of me.”
“My kingdom!” said the man who worked for Collister. “If there’s somebody up your way that you know, and that likes you, why didn’t you go and take your chances with him?”
A hot flush rushed over the girl’s face. “Does you-all think I’d be talkin’ like this to a man I knowed?” she demanded. She stared angrily until her lips began to quiver. “An’ besides, I hate him!” she cried. “He’s not a fittin’ man for such as me.”
“You poor child!” he said again.
She caught the compassion of his eyes. “What had any girl ought to do out hyar in the pineys if she was lef’ like me? I’ve hearn o’ places whar girls could find work, an’ my stepmother she allowed I could go to the oyster-factories in Potosi; but whar would I stay? An’ then I went to the factories once with my paw, an’ the air round ’em made me sick. You see, I was raised in the pineys, an’ they had a different smell.”
He shook his head, though kindly, at so slight a reason, and the sharp pain of his disapproval crossed her face. “Oh, you don’t know anything about it,” she cried desperately; “thar ain’t no man that can tell how it feels for a girl that’s had a father that’s made of her like mine did to be turned right out to face a whole townful that she never saw. Can’t you see how if you was skeered it would be a heap easier jus’ to face one man? An’ then I’d hearn no end about Mr. Collister, an’ some of it was funny, an’ thar wa’n’t none of it very bad; so I jus’ made up my mind to come round hyar an’ see for myse’f what like he was. You see,” she went on, with a lift of the head, “it was for the money, but it was for the honourableness, too; an’ I’d cross my heart an’ swear to you on the Bible that when I come hyar I hadn’t no thought that anybody could think it was onder-reachin’ Mr. Collister. I thought he’d be right proud, an’ before we got to talking I never sensed that it would be a hard thing to name to him; but now—” her voice trembled and broke. “Oh,” she cried, “I wished I’d never come!”
The man looked away from her. “Don’t wish it,” he said huskily. “Collister ought to be proud if he can have you for his wife; and he would give you a good home and everything your heart could ask for.”
Tears sprang from her eyes, and she dropped her head upon her knees to hide them. “Oh, I know, I know,” she sobbed; “but I’d rather marry you!”
“O-oh!” breathed the man who worked for Collister; “I’d so much rather that you did.” And with a laugh of pure delight he caught her up into his arms.
When they left the store a red blaze of sunset shone between the trunks of the pine trees. The man fastened the padlock behind them, and they started in a lover’s silence along the road. The big farm was as empty and as lifeless as ever, except for the lonesome neighing of a horse in the barnyard, and for a single straight blue thread of smoke which rose from one of the little houses. The girl pointed at it, and smiled.
“He’s having to get his own supper to-night,” she said, “but I’ll make it up to him; I’ll make his light bread jus’ the same.”
“Yes,” he said, “you’d better; for, whatever he’s been to other folks, he’s always been good to me; an’ please God, he’s going to be mighty good to you.”
A breath of land breeze had started in the pine woods, and was going out bearing a tribute of sweet odours to the sea. The disc of the sun sank below the black line etched against a crimson sky. Softly and faintly in the far distance some passing creole hailed another with a long sweet call. They reached the edge of the clearing, and went on through the deepening twilight of the pines. There were no words in all the world quite true enough to speak in that great murmurous stillness that was in the woods and in their hearts. At last they came to a path beyond which she would not let him go, thinking it better for this last time to go on alone.
“Good-night,” she said lingeringly; and he held her close and kissed her, whispering good-night, then stood and watched her slender, swaying figure as it grew indistinct between the trees; and just before it vanished he called out guardedly.
“Say,” he summoned, “come here!”
She went laughing back to him. “You-all are bigoty,” she said, “beginning to order me about!”
He took her hands, and held her from him so that he could see her face. “You mustn’t be mad at me,” he said; “but there’s something I forgot to tell you—I’m Collister.”