It was a warm night in May. The bright moonlight shone in through the
chinks of the little cabin, and streamed across Ivy's face, where she
lay asleep on Mammy's big feather bed. Bud was gently snoring in his
corner of the trundle-bed below, but John Jay kicked restlessly beside
him. He could not sleep with the moonlight in his eyes and the frogs
croaking so mournfully in the pond back of the house. To begin with, it
was too early to go to bed, and in the second place he wasn't a bit
sleepy.
Mammy sat on a bench just outside of the door, with her elbows on her
knees. She was crooning a dismal song softly to herself,--something
about
"Mary and Martha in deep distress,
A-grievin' ovah brer Laz'rus' death."
It gave him such a creepy sort of feeling that he stuck his fingers in
his ears to shut out the sound. Thus barricaded, he did not hear slow
footsteps shuffling up the path; but presently the powerful fumes of a
rank pipe told of an approaching visitor. He took his fingers from his
ears and sat up.
Uncle Billy and Aunt Susan had come over to gossip a while. Mammy groped
her way into the house to drag out the wooden rocker for her
sister-in-law, while Uncle Billy tilted himself back against the cabin
in a straight splint-bottomed chair. The usual opening remarks about the
state of the family health, the weather, and the crops were of very
little interest to John Jay; indeed he nearly fell asleep while Aunt
Susan was giving a detailed account of the way she cured the misery in
her side. However, as soon as they began to discuss neighborhood
happenings, he was all attention.
The more interested he grew, it seemed to him, the lower they pitched
their voices. Creeping carefully across the floor, he curled up on his
pillow just inside the doorway, where the shadows fell heaviest, and
where he could enjoy every word of the conversation, without straining
his ears to listen.
"Gawge Chadwick came home yestiddy," announced Uncle Billy.
"Sho now!" exclaimed Mammy. "Not lame Jintsey's boy! You don't mean it!"
"That's the ve'y one," persisted Uncle Billy. "Gawge Washington
Chadwick. He's a ministah of the gospel now, home from college with a
Rev'und befo' his name, an' a long-tailed black coat on. He doesn't look
much like the little pickaninny that b'long to Mars' Nat back in wah
times."
"And Jintsey's dead, poah thing!" exclaimed Aunt Susan. "What a day it
would have been for her, if she could have lived to see her boy in the
pulpit!"
Conversation never kept on a straight road when these three were
together. It was continually turning back by countless by-paths to the
old slavery days. The rule of their master, Nat Chadwick, had been an
easy one. There had always been plenty in the smoke-house and
contentment in the quarters. These simple old souls, while rejoicing in
their freedom, often looked tenderly back to the flesh-pots of their
early Egypt.
John Jay had heard these reminiscences dozens of times. He knew just
what was coming next, when Uncle Billy began telling about the day that
young Mars' Nat was christened. Mis' Alice gave a silver cup to
Jintsey's baby, George Washington, because he was born on the same day
as his little Mars' Nat. John Jay knew the whole family history. He was
very proud of these people of gentle birth and breeding, whom Sheba
spoke of as "ou' family." One by one they had been carried to the little
Episcopal churchyard on the hill, until only one remained. The great
estate had passed into the hands of strangers. Only to Billy and Susan
and Sheba, faithful even unto death, was it still surrounded by the halo
of its old-time grandeur.
Naturally, young Nat Chadwick, the last of the line, had fallen heir to
all the love and respect with which they cherished any who bore the
family name. To other people he was a luckless sort of fellow, who had
sown his wild oats early, and met disappointment at every turn. It was
passed about, too, that there was a romance in his life which had
changed and embittered it. Certain it is, he suddenly seemed to lose all
ambition and energy. Instead of making the brilliant lawyer his friends
expected, he had come down at last to be the keeper of the toll-gate on
a country turnpike.
Lying on his pillow in the dense shadow, John Jay looked out into the
white moonlight, and listened to the old story told all over again. But
this time there was added the history of Jintsey's boy, who seemed to
have been born with the ambition hot in his heart to win an education.
He had done it. There was a quiver of pride in Uncle Billy's voice as he
told how the boy had outstripped his young master in the long race; but
there was a loyal and tender undercurrent of excuse for the unfortunate
heir running through all his talk.
It had taken twenty years of struggle and work for the little black boy
to realize his hopes. He had grown to be a grave man of thirty-three
before it was accomplished. Now he had come home from a Northern college
with his diploma and his degree.
"He have fought a good fight," said Uncle Billy in conclusion, finishing
as usual with a scriptural quotation. "He have fought a good fight, and
he have finished his co'se, but"--here his voice sank almost to a
whisper--"he have come home to die."
A chill seemed to creep all over John Jay's warm little body. He raised
his head from the pillow to listen still more carefully.
"Yes, they say he got the gallopin' consumption while he was up Nawth,
shovellin' snow an' such work, an' studyin' nights in a room 'thout no
fiah. He took ole Mars's name an' he have brought honah upon it, but
what good is it goin' to do him? Tell me that. For when the leaves go in
the autumn time, then Jintsey's boy must go too."
"Where's he stayin' at now?" demanded Mammy sharply, although she drew
the corner of her apron across her eyes.
"He's down to Mars' Nat's at the toll-gate cottage. 'Peahs like it's the
natch'el place for him to be. Neithah of 'em's got anybody else, and
it's kind a like old times when they was chillun, play in' round the big
house togethah. I stopped in to see him yestiddy. The cup Mis' Alice
gave him was a-settin' on the mantel, an' Mars' Nat was stewin' up some
sawt of cough tonic for him. The white folks up Nawth must a thought a
heap of him. He'd just got a lettah from one of the college professahs
'quirin' bout his health. Mars' Nat read out what was on the back of it:
'Rev'und Gawge W. Chadwick, an' some lettahs on the end that I kain't
remembah. An' he said, laughin'-like, sezee, 'well, Uncle Billy, you'd
nevah take that as meanin' Jintsey's boy, would you now? It's a mighty
fine soundin' title,' sezee. Gawge gave a little moanful sawt of smile,
same as to say, well, aftah all, it wasn't wuth what it cost him. An' it
wasn't! No, it wasn't," repeated Uncle Billy, solemnly shaking the ashes
from his pipe. "What's the good of a head full of book learnin' with a
poah puny body that kaint tote it around?"
Somehow, Uncle Billy's solemn declaration, "he have fought a good
fight," associated this colored preacher, in John Jay's simple little
mind, with soldiers and fierce battles and a great victory. He lay back
on his pillow, wishing they would go on talking about this man who had
suddenly become such a hero in his boyish eyes. But their talk gradually
drifted to the details of Mrs. Watson's last illness. He had heard them
so many times that he soon felt his eyelids slowly closing. Then he
dozed for a few minutes, awakening with a start. They had gotten as far
as the funeral now, and were discussing the sermon. They would soon be
commenting on the way that each member of the family "took her death."
That was so much more interesting, he thought he would just close his
eyes again for a moment, until they came to that.
Their voices murmured on in a pleasing flow; his head sunk lower on the
pillow, and his breathing was a little louder. Then his hand dropped
down at his side. He was sound asleep just when Aunt Susan was about to
begin one of her most thrilling ghost stories.
In the midst of an account of "a ha'nt that walked the graveyard every
thirteenth Friday in the year," John Jay turned over in his sleep with a
little snort. Aunt Susan nearly jumped out of her chair, and Uncle Billy
dropped his pipe. There was a moment of frightened silence till Mammy
said, "It must have been Bud, I reckon. John Jay is allus a-knockin' him
in his sleep an' makin' him holler out. Go on, sis' Susan."
The moon had travelled well across the sky when Mammy's guests said good
night. She lingered outside after they had gone, to look far down the
road, where a single point of light, shining through the trees, marked
the toll-gate. It would not be so lonely for Mars' Nat, now that George
had come home. She recalled the laughing face of the little black boy as
she had known it long ago, and tried to call up in her imagination a
picture of the man that Uncle Billy had described. Visions of the old
days rose before her. As she stood there with her hands wrapped in her
apron, it was not the moon-flooded night she looked into, but the warm,
living daylight of a golden past.
At last, with a sigh, she turned to take the chairs into the house.
Lifting the big rocker high in front of her, she stepped over the
threshold and started to shuffle her way along to the candle shelf. The
chair came down in the middle of the floor with a sudden bang, as she
caught her foot in John Jay's pillow and sprawled across him.
The boy's first waking thought was that there had been an earthquake and
that the cabin had caved in. He never could rightly remember the order
of events that followed, but he had a confused memory of a shriek, a
scratching of matches, and the glimmer of a candle that made him sit up
and blink his eyes. Then something struck him, first on one ear, then
the other, cuffing him soundly. He was too dazed to know why. Some blind
instinct helped him to find the bed and burrow down under the clothes,
where he lay trying to think what possible fault of his could have
raised such a cyclone about his ears. He was too deep under the
bedclothes to hear Mammy's grumbling remarks about his "tawmentin' ways"
as she rubbed her skinned elbow with tallow from the candle.