_Monday Night.
Mid-February._
It is six weeks since the roads became impassable for wagons, and
already we begin to feel some of the effects of the isolation. Flour,
sugar and coffee have to be very sparingly used. Of course there is
plenty of corn-meal, beans, middling and sorghum, so there is no danger
of starvation.
When Nucky returned this evening from taking the babe home, he came into
my room, and threw himself on the floor. Presently I saw that his body
was shaken with silent sobs. To my entreaties he at last replied,
"Things is terrible there at home,--paw is all wore-out with the
trouble, and all Blant's jobs he has to tend to, like cooking and
minding the babe of nights, and he couldn't get along at all if Uncle
Billy's boys didn't come down and chop wood, and feed the animals, and
such. I ought to be home now tending to things for him; and I'll have to
give up learning and go when crap-time comes. Blant never ought to have
give hisself up,--he ought to have thought about his family, and not
lost his head that way. They'll sure send him to Frankfort on his
trial,--I heared some talk about it last week."
Indeed, it is a pitiable situation, and will be far more so if Blant is
sent to the penitentiary. The thought hangs a new weight of dread upon
me,--of course then Nucky will have to leave school and go home and take
up Blant's burdens. My own selfish grief in the thought of losing Nucky
ought not to protrude itself in the face of greater troubles,--but I
have already lost so much,--must everything I set my affection upon be
taken?
_Saturday._
Yesterday Philip astonished me by asking for the wash-job. If there is
anything on the place he has often expressed contempt for, it is the
duties of the unfortunate wash-boy, who must rise before day on
Saturdays to build fires and fill kettles, and then for nine long hours
toil wearily, chopping wood, carrying water, and otherwise "slaving" for
the wash-girls, until, when playtime comes, he is generally too tired to
play; not to mention that every day in the week he must tend the
ironing-stove, and, deepest indignity of all, take a hand at the
ironing. No job is so consistently avoided by every boy on the place;
while the carpenter- and shop-work, which Philip does exclusively, is
considered the most aristocratic and desirable of all. I gladly
transferred him, however; and this morning the explanation appeared,
when Dilsey Warrick tripped over with the other nine wash-girls, having
been shifted from the weaving to the washing department.
_Sunday Night._
After church to-day, I myself heard some of the solid men of the
community talking about Blant's case; and their words confirmed Nucky's
statement of last week. I gather that public sentiment is pretty well
crystallized into the feeling that a couple of years in Frankfort is
about the least the reluctant law can do when forced to extremities.
Sympathy for Blant is strong; but the determination is equally strong
that his many lawless acts cannot be longer overlooked, and that the
majesty of the law must be vindicated. Nucky, pale of face, hurried to
the jail after hearing the talk, and Taulbee said to me as we came home,
"It looks now like Blant is bound for Frankfort; but I'll lay my hat he
don't never get there,--not if Trojan can help it."
"He'll have to go if he is sent," I replied; "now he has put himself in
the hands of the law, he must take his medicine, whatever it is."
"Who,--Blant? Him swallow anything he don't want to? I reckon not.
There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip."
_Wednesday, first week in March._
More distressing news from Trigger, when the mail-boy stopped to report
to-day. "Same old story all over ag'in," he says, "the babe crying and
puning constant, and plumb off its feed, and favoring a little picked
bird. Minervy Saxby doubts it's a-holding out till the trial." I heard
later he had taken the news on to Blant, through the bars of the jail
window.
_Saturday Evening._
Philip is in a seventh heaven. Every day in the week now he basks in
Dilsey's presence two or three hours, cheerfully doing the menial tasks
of keeping up fires and ironing; and on Saturdays he spends almost the
entire day in her society, hanging out clothes, turning wringers, doing
tremendous deeds on the wood-pile with his ax, running nimbly down and
up the rocky sides of the well when the chain breaks and the bucket
falls in, as it is fond of doing, and, between labors, giving hazardous
performances on the limb of a peach-tree. The teasings of the boys and
girls seem powerless to dampen his ardor,--indeed, I suspect that their
"Howdy, Mr. Warrick," "Good evening, Mrs. Floyd," fall as music on his
ears.
_Sunday Night._
When I went with Nucky to the jail this afternoon, I found that the
rumors abroad for two weeks had reached it, indeed, they were being
freely discussed by the prisoners, the keeper and Blant himself,--I was
thankful to see that he was able to put his mind on the subject.
"Yes," he said sadly, "it looks like I'll have to give up the hope I
have cherished, and try to get my consent to face life again; which God
knows I couldn't if it wasn't brung home to me that I got a family
depending on me, and a pore little infant looking to me for life
itself. Nothing else could ever give me courage to breast the waves of
sorrow that swallows me up. But I reckon, after all, I have got a higher
call to live than to die; and that, when they acquit me on my trial,
constant hard labor for my family will in time take off some of the edge
of my sorrow."
"But the probabilities is they _won't_ acquit you, Blant," said the
keeper impatiently; "I been trying to ding that into your head nigh a
week. I told you plain what the talk was about sending you to Frankfort
a couple of year'".
"I can't believe anything so unreasonable," replied Blant. "Now, a life
for a life is just plain sense and common justice,--if they was to kill
me for the lives I have took, especially Rich's, I would perfectly agree
they was doing right. But what good or justice it would do anybody to
shut me up in Frankfort when I'm so bad needed at home, I fail to see.
Here I am, with a crippled paw, a living to make for a large family,
and the babe maw left in my hands to tend and raise,--you might say with
my hands running over full,--now is there any sense in cooping me up
where I can't do none of it? I allow not--it's plumb ridiculous,--no
jury would be guilty of it; and if they was to, I haint willing to take
it."
"I allow you'll have to, if it comes," said the keeper, sternly. "You'd
ought to have thought of that sooner, and looked before you leaped. You
certainly done the nearsightedest job ever I heared of when you give
yourself up to the sheriff,--honest, I wouldn't have believed it of you,
Blant,--but of course your mind was clean unhinged by misery, and you
wa'n't accountable. And I'm sorry for you if you get sent up. But now
you've throwed yourself in the arms of the law, you got to lay there.
Whatever you do, take warning, and don't try no escapin' tricks here on
me, like you done on the sheriff last spring. Because, whatever
happens, and however good I like you--which I do, the best in the
world--I want you to ricollect that law is law, and I'm its sworn
gyuardeen, and obligated by my oath, and aiming to do my _whole duty_.
And also, that I haint no poor shakes at gun-practice myself, though I
may not be as sure a shot as you."
At the words, "as sure a shot as you," a spasm of anguish passed over
Blant's face. "I wish to God I never had been no kind of a shot at all
before I took the life of him I loved!" he exclaimed, wildly. "Don't
never tell me of it, or call it to my recollection that I had the surest
aim of any man in five counties; for the days of my gun-pride are over;
I have shot my last shoot!"
Cries of amazement and incredulity rose on all sides. "You're crazy,
Blant,--wouldn't you defend your life?" "Wouldn't you shoot for your
freedom?" "Wouldn't you fight for your land if the Cheevers tuck it
again?" To all of which he returned the solemn answer, "No,--none of
them things would now tempt me! The bullet that pierced my friend's
heart was my last! Not for life, not for freedom, not for old ancestral
land, will I shed another drap of human blood!"
Nucky heard these words of Blant's as if stunned and smitten, and walked
home beside me in a daze.