the undaunted eyes of Miss Chris, she melted into propitiation.
"Des' let dat ar chicken alont, Miss Chris," she said, skilfully
reducing the charge to a single offence. "Des' let dat ar chicken alont.
'Tain' no use yo' rilin' yo'se'f 'bout dat. Hit's done en it's been
done. Hit don't becomst de quality ter fluster demse'ves over de gwines
on uv er low-lifeted fowl. You des' bresh yo'se'f down an steddy like
hit ain' been fool you ef you knowed yo'se'f. You des' let dat ar
chicken be er little act uv erdultery betweenst you en me. Ef'n it's
gone, hit'll stay gone!"
Whereupon Miss Chris retreated, leaving her opponent in possession of
the kitchen floor.
But from this day forth the hen-house was locked at night and unlocked
in the morning by the hand of Miss Chris, and Aunt Verbeny's overweening
ill-temper diminished with her authority.
Miss Chris had been a beauty in her day, but as she passed middle age
the family failing seized upon her, and she grew huge and unwieldy, the
disproportion of her enormous figure to her small feet giving her an
awkward, waddling walk.
She had a profusion of silvery-white hair, worn in fluffy curls about
her large pink face, soft brown eyes, and a full double chin that fell
over a round cameo brooch bearing the head of Minerva set in a plain
gold band. In winter she wore gowns of black Henrietta cloth, made with
plain bodices and full plaited skirts; in summer she wore the same
skirts with loosely fitting white linen sacques, trimmed in delicate
embroideries, with muslin ruffles falling over her plump hands. When she
came to the Hall she brought with her innumerable reminiscences of her
childhood, which she told in a musical voice with girlish laughter.
After his sister's arrival the general discontinued his fitful
overseering. He rose early and spent his long days sitting upon the
front porch, smoking an old briar pipe and reading the Richmond papers.
Occasionally he would ride at a jogging pace round the fields, giving
casual directions to the workers, but as his weight increased he found
it difficult to mount into the saddle, and, at last, desisted from the
attempt. He preferred to sit in peace in his cane rocking chair, looking
down the box walk into the twilight of the cedar avenue, or gazing
placidly beyond the aspens and the well-house to the streaked ribbons of
the ripening corn. It was said that he had never been the same man since
the death of his wife. Certainly he laughed as heartily and his jovial
face had taken a ruddier tint, but there was a superficiality in his
exuberant cheerfulness which told that it was not well rooted below the
surface. His jokes were as ready as ever, but he had fallen into an
absent-minded habit of repetition, and sometimes repeated the same
stories at breakfast and supper. He talked freely of his dead wife, he
even made ill-placed jests about his widowerhood, and he never failed to
kiss a pair of red lips when the chance offered; but, for all that, his
gaze often wandered past the huge sycamore to the family graveyard,
where rank periwinkle grew and mocking-birds nested. Through the long
summer not a Sunday passed that he did not take fresh flowers to one of
the neatly trimmed mounds where the marble headpiece read:
"AMELIA TUCKER,
BELOVED WIFE OF
THOMAS BATTLE,
DIED APRIL 3RD., 18--.
'_I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith
the Lord._'"
Sometimes the children were with him, but usually he went alone, and
once or twice he returned with red eyelids and asked for a julep.
There was little to fill his life now, and he divided it between Bernard
and Eugenia, whom he adored, and the negroes, whom he reviled for
diversion and spoiled to make amends.
"They will break me!" he would declare a dozen times a day. "They will
turn me out of house and home. Here's old Sambo's Claudius come back and
moved into the quarters. He hasn't a cent to his name, and he's the most
no 'count scamp on earth. It's worse than before the war--upon my soul
it is! Then they lived on me and I got an odd piece of work out of
them. Now they live on me and don't do a damned lick!"
"My dear Tom!" Miss Chris cheerfully remonstrated. She had long been
reconciled to her brother's swearing propensities, which she regarded as
an amiable eccentricity to be overlooked by a special indulgence
accorded the male sex, but she never knew just how to meet him in a
discussion of the servants.
"What is to be done about it?" she inquired gravely. "Claudius left here
at the beginning of the war, Aunt Griselda says, and he has never been
back until now. It seems he has brought his family. He has
lung-trouble."
"Done about it!" repeated the general heatedly. "What's to be done about
it? Why, the rascal can't starve. I've just told Sampson to wheel him
down a barrel of meal. Oh, they'll break me! I shan't have a morsel
left!"
The next time it was an opposite grievance.
"What do you reckon's happened now?" he asked, marching into the brick
storeroom, where his sister was slicing ripe, red tomatoes into a blue
china bowl. "What do you think that fool Ish has done?"
Miss Chris looked up attentively, her large, fresh-coloured face
expressing mild apprehension. She had rolled back her linen sleeves, and
the juice of the tomatoes stained her full, dimpled wrists.
"He hasn't killed himself?" she inquired anxiously.
"Killed himself?" roared the general. "He'll live forever. I don't
believe he'd die if he were strung up with a halter round his neck.
He's moved off."
"Moved off!" echoed Miss Chris faintly. "Why, I believe Uncle Ish was
living in that cabin on Hickory Hill before I was born. I remember going
up there to help him gather hickory nuts when I wasn't six years old. I
couldn't have been six because mammy Betsey was with me, and she died
before I was seven. I declare there were always more nuts on those trees
than any I ever saw--"
But the general broke in upon her reminiscences, and she took up a fresh
tomato and peeled it carefully with a sharp-edged knife.
"Some idiots got after him," said the general, "and told him if he went
on living on my land he'd go back to slavery, and, bless your life, he
has gone--gone to that little one-room shanty where his daughter used to
live, between my place and Burr's--as if I'd have him," he concluded
wrathfully. "I wouldn't own that fool again if he dropped into my lap
straight from heaven!"
Miss Chris laughed merrily.
"It is the last place he would be likely to drop from," she returned;
"but I'll call him up and talk with him. It is a pity for him to be
moving off at his age."
So Uncle Ishmael was summoned up to the porch, and Miss Chris explained
the error of his ways, but to no purpose.
"I ain' got no fault ter fine," he repeated over and over again,
scratching his grizzled head. "I ain' got no fault ter fine wid you.
You've been used me moughty well, en I'se pow'ful 'bleeged ter you--en
Marse Tom, he's a gent'mun ef ever I seed one. I ain' go no fault ter
fine."
The general lost his temper and started up.
"Then what do you mean by turning fool at your age?" he demanded
angrily. "Haven't I given you a roof over your head all these years?"
"Dat's so, suh."
"And food to eat?"
"Dat's so."
"And never asked you to do a lick of work since you got the rheumatism?"
"Dat's es true es de Gospel."
"Then what do you mean by going off like mad to that little, broken-down
shanty with half the roof gone?"
Uncle Ishmael shuffled his heavy feet and scratched his head again.
"Hit's de trufe, Marse Tom," he said at last. "Hit's de Gospel trufe. I
ain' had so much ter eat sence I'se gone off, en I ain' had much uv er
roof ter kiver me, en I ain' had nuttin' ter w'ar ter speak on--but, fo'
de Lawd, Marse Tom, freedom it are er moughty good thing."
Then the general flew into the house in a rage and Uncle Ishmael left,
followed by two small negroes, bearing on their heads the donations made
by Miss Chris to his welfare.
On the day that Eugenia encountered Nicholas at school the general was
sitting, as usual, in his rocking chair upon the front porch, when he
saw the flutter of a blue skirt, and Eugenia emerged from the avenue and
came up the walk between the stiff rows of box. It was two o'clock, and
the general was peacefully awaiting the sound of the dinner bell, but
at the sight of Eugenia his peacefulness departed, and he called
angrily:
"Eugie, where's Bernard?"
"Comin'."
"Coming!" returned the general indignantly. "Haven't I told you a dozen
times not to walk along that road by yourself? Why didn't you wait for
the carriage? Are you never going to mind what I say to you?"
Eugenia came up the steps and threw her books on one of the long green
benches. Then she seated herself in a rocking chair and untied her
sunbonnet.
"I wa'n't by myself," she said. "A boy was with me."
"A boy? Where is he?"
"He ran away."
The general's great head went back, and he shook with laughter. "Bless
my soul! What did he mean by that? What boy was it, daughter?"
Eugenia sat upright in the high rocker, fanning her heated face with her
sunbonnet.
"The Burr boy," she answered.
The general gasped for breath, and turned towards the hall.
"Come out here, Chris!" he called. "Here's Eugie been walking home with
the Burr boy!"
In a moment Miss Chris's large figure appeared in the doorway, and she
handed a brimming mint julep to the general.
"I don't know what Eugie can be made of," she remarked. "Amos Burr was
overseer for the Carringtons before he got that place of his own, and I
remember just as well as if it were yesterday old Mr. Phil Carrington
telling me once, when I was on a visit there, that the more his man Burr
worked the less he accomplished. But, as for Eugenia, that isn't the
worst about her. Just the other morning, when I was looking out of the
storeroom window, I saw her with her arm round the neck of Aunt
Verbeny's little Suke. I declare I was so upset I let the quart pot fall
into the potato bin!"
"But there isn't anybody else, Aunt Chris," protested Eugenia, looking
up from her father's julep, which she was tasting. "And I'm 'bliged to
have a bosom friend."
The general shook until his face was purple and the ice jingled in the
glass.
"Bosom friend, you puss!" he roared. "Why can't you choose a bosom
friend of your own colour? What do you want with a bosom friend as black
as the ace of spades?"
"O papa, she ain't black; she's jes' yellow-brown."
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Eugie," said Miss Chris severely.
"Now go upstairs and wash your face and hands before dinner. It is
almost ready. I wonder where Bernard is!"
"Can't I wait twell the bell rings?" Eugenia asked; but Miss Chris shook
her head decisively.
"Eugenia, will you never stop talking like a darkey?" she demanded. "How
often must I tell you that there's no such word as 'twell'? Now, go
right straight upstairs."
Eugenia rose obediently and went into the hall. She had learned from her
father and the servants not to dispute the authority of Miss Chris,
though she yielded to it with a mild surprise at her own docility.
"She don't really manage me," she had once confided to Delphy, the
washerwoman, "but I jes' plays that she does."
VI
When Eugenia came downstairs she found the family seated at dinner, Miss
Chris and her father beaming upon each other across a dish of fried
chicken and a home-cured ham. Bernard was on Miss Chris's right hand,
and on the other side of the table Eugenia's seat separated the general
from Aunt Griselda, who sat severely buttering her toast before a brown
earthenware teapot ornamented by a raised design of Rebecca at the well.
Aunt Griselda was a lean, dried-up old lady, with a sharp, curved nose
like the beak of a bird, and smoothly parted hair brushed low over her
ears and held in place by a tortoise-shell comb. There were deep
channels about her eyes, worn by the constant falling of acrid tears,
and her cheeks were wrinkled and yellowed like old parchment.
Twenty years ago, when the general had first brought home his young
wife, before her buoyancy had faltered, and before the five little
head-boards to the five stillborn children had been set up amid the
periwinkle in the family graveyard, Aunt Griselda had written from the
home of her sister to say that she would stop over at Battle Hall on her
way to Richmond.
The general had received the news joyfully, and the best chamber had
been made ready by the hospitable hands of his young wife. Delicate,
lavender-scented linen had been put on the old tester-bed and curtains
of flowered chintz tied back from the window seats. Amelia Battle had
placed a bowl of tea-roses upon the dressing table and gone graciously
down to the avenue to welcome her guest. From the family carriage Aunt
Griselda had emerged soured and eccentric. She had gone up to the best
chamber, unpacked her trunks, hung up her bombazine skirts in the
closet, ordered green tea and toast, and settled herself for the
remainder of her days. That was twenty years ago, and she still slept in
the best chamber, and still ordered tea and toast at the table. She had
grown sourer with years and more eccentric with authority, but the
general never failed to treat her crotchets with courtesy or to open the
door for her when she came and went. To the mild complaints of Miss
Chris and the protestations of Eugenia he returned the invariable
warning: "She is our guest--remember what is due to a guest, my dears."
And when Miss Chris placidly suggested that the privileges of guestship
wore threadbare when they were stretched over twenty years, and Eugenia
fervently hoped that there were no visitors in heaven, the general
responded to each in turn:
"It is the right of a guest to determine the length of his stay, and, as
a Virginian, my house is open as long as it has a roof over it."
So Aunt Griselda drank her green tea in acrid silence, turning at
intervals to reprove Bernard for taking too large mouthfuls or to
request Eugenia to remove her elbows from the table.
To-day, when Eugenia descended, she was gazing stonily into Miss
Chris's genial face, and listening constrainedly to a story at which the
general was laughing heartily.
"Yes, I never look at these forks of the bead pattern that I don't see
Aunt Callowell," Miss Chris was concluding. "She never used any other
pattern, and I remember when Cousin Bob Baker once sent her a set of
teaspoons with a different border, she returned them to Richmond to be
exchanged. Do you remember the time she came to mother's when we were
children, Tom? Eugie, will you have breast or leg?"
"I don't think I could have been at home," said the general, his face
growing animated, as it always did, in a discussion of old times; "but I
do remember once, when I was at Uncle Robert's, they sent me eighteen
miles on horseback for the doctor, because Aunt Callowell had such a
queer feeling in her side when she started to walk. I can see her now
holding her side and saying: 'I can't possibly take a step! Robert, I
can't take a step!' And when I brought the doctor eighteen miles from
home, on his old gray mare, he found that she'd put a shoe on one foot
and a slipper on the other."
The general threw back his head and laughed until the table groaned,
while Miss Chris's double chin shook softly over her cameo brooch.
Aunt Griselda wiped her eyes on the border of her handkerchief.
"Aunt Cornelia Callowell was a righteous woman," she murmured. "I never
thought that I should hear her ridiculed in the house of her
great-nephew. She scalloped me a flannel petticoat with her own hands.
Eugenia, in my day little girls didn't reach for the butter. They waited
until it was handed to them."
Congo, the butler, rushed to Eugenia's assistance, and the general shook
his finger at her and formed the word "guest" with his mouth. Miss Chris
changed the subject by begging Aunt Griselda to have a wing of chicken.
"I don't believe in so much dieting," she said cheerfully. "I think your
nerves would be better if you ate more. Just try a brown wing."
"I know my nerves are bad," Aunt Griselda rejoined, still wiping her
eyes, "though it is hard to be accused of a temper before my own nephew.
But I know I am a burden, and I have overstayed my welcome. Let me go."
"Why, Aunt Griselda?" remonstrated Miss Chris in hurt tones. "You know I
didn't accuse you of anything. I only meant that you would feel better
if you didn't drink so much tea and ate more meat--"
"I am not too old to take a hint," replied Aunt Griselda. "I haven't
reached my dotage yet, and I can see when I am a burden. Here, Congo,
you may put my teapot away."
"O Lord!" gasped the general tragically; and rising to the occasion, he
said hurriedly: "By the way, Chris, they told me at the post-office
to-day that old Dr. Smith was dead. It was only last week that I met him
on his way to town with his niece's daughter, and he told me that he had
never been in better health in his life."
"Dear me!" exclaimed Miss Chris, holding a large spoonful of
raspberries poised above the dish to which she was helping. "Why, old
Dr. Smith attended me forty years ago when I had measles. I remember he
made me lie in bed with blankets over me, though it was August, and he
wouldn't let me drink anything except hot flax-seed tea. They say all
that has been changed in this generation--"
"Leave me plenty of room for cream, Aunt Chris," broke in Bernard, with
an anxious eye on Miss Chris's absent-minded manipulations. She reached
for the round, old silver pitcher, and poured the yellow cream on the
sugared berries without pausing in her soft, monotonous flow of words.
"But even in those days Dr. Smith was behind the times, and he has been
so ever since. He used to say that chloroform was invented by infidels,
and he would not let them give it to his son, Lawrence, when he broke
his leg on the threshing machine. It was a mania with him, for, when I
was nursing in the hospitals during the war, he told me with his own
lips that he believed the Lord was on our side because we didn't have
chloroform."
"He had a good many odd ideas," said the general, "but he is dead now,
poor man."
"He raised up my dear father when he was struck down with paralysis,"
murmured Aunt Griselda.
When dinner was over the general returned to the front porch, and
Eugenia and the puppy went with Bernard to the orchard to look for green
apples.
They started out in single file; Bernard, a bright-faced, snub-nosed boy
with a girlish mouth, a little in advance, Eugenia following, and the
puppy at her heels. On the way across the meadow, where myriads of
grasshoppers darted with a whirring noise beneath the leaves of coarse
mullein plants or the slender, unopened pods of milkweed, the puppy made
sudden desperate skirmishes into the tangled pathside, pointing
ineffectually at the heavy-legged insects, his red tongue lolling and
his short tail wagging. Up the steep ascent of the orchard a rocky trail
ran, bordered by a rail fence. From the point of the hill one could see
the adjoining country unrolled like a map, olive heights melting into
emerald valleys, bare clearings into luxuriant crops, running a
chromatic scale from the dry old battlefields surrounding Kingsborough
to the arable "bottoms" beside the enrichening river.
After an unsuccessful search for cherries Bernard climbed a tree where
summer apples hung green, and tossed the fruit to Eugenia, who held up
her blue skirt beneath the overhanging boughs. The puppy, having dodged
in astonishment a stray apple, went off after the silvery track of a
snail.
"That's enough," called Bernard presently, and he descended and filled
his pockets from Eugenia's lap. "They set my teeth on edge, anyway. Got
any salt?"
Eugenia drew a small folded envelope from her pocket. Then she threw
away her apple and pointed to the little brook at the foot of the hill.
"There's that red-winged blackbird in the bulrushes again. I believe
it's got a nest."
And they started in a run down the hillside, the puppy waddling behind
with shrill, impertinent barks.
At the bottom of the hill they lost the blackbird and found Nicholas
Burr, who was lying face downwards upon the earth, a fishing line at his
side.
"He's crying," said Eugenia in a high whisper.
Nicholas rolled over, saw them, and got up, wiping his eyes on the
sleeve of his shirt.
"There warn't nobody lookin'," he said defiantly.
"You're too big to cry," observed Bernard dispassionately, munching a
green apple he had taken from his pocket. "You're as big as I am, and I
haven't cried since I was six years old. Eugie cries."
"I don't!" protested Eugenia vehemently. "I reckon you'd cry too if they
made you sit in the house the whole afternoon and hem cup-towels."
"I'm a boy, Miss Spitfire. Boys don't sew. I saw Nick Burr milking,
though, one day. What made you milk, Nick?"
"Ma did."
"I'd like to see anybody make me milk. You're jes' the same as a girl."
"I ain't!"
"You are!"
"I ain't!"
"'Spose you fight it out," suggested Eugenia, with an eye for sport,
settling herself upon the ground with Jim in her lap.
Nicholas picked up his fishing line and wound it slowly round the cork.
"There's a powerful lot of minnows in this creek," he remarked amicably.
"When you lean over that log you can catch 'em in your hat."
"Let's do it," said Eugenia, starting up, and they went out upon the
slippery log between the reedy banks. Over the smooth, pebbly bed of
the stream flashed the shining bodies of hundreds of minnows, passing
back and forth with brisk wriggles of their fine, steel-coloured tails.
On the Battle side of the bank a huge, blue-winged dragonfly buzzed
above the flaunting red and yellow faces of three tiger-lilies.
Jim sat on the brookside and watched the minnows, having ventured midway
upon the log, to retreat at the sight of his own reflection in the
water.
"He's a coward," said Bernard teasingly, alluding to the recreant Jim.
"I wouldn't have a dog that was a coward."
"He ain't a coward," returned Eugenia passionately. "He jes' don't like
looking at his own face, that's all. Here, Nick, hand me your hat."
Nick obediently gave her his hat, and Eugenia leaned over the stream,
her bare arms and vivid face mirrored against the silvery minnows, when
a shrill call came from the house.
"Nick! Who-a Ni-ck!"
"That's Sairy Jane," said Nicholas, reaching for his hat. "Ma wants me."
"Who is Sairy Jane?"
"Sister."
Eugenia handed him his dripping hat, and stood shaking her fingers free
from the sparkling drops.
"Will you come and fish with me to-morrow?" she asked.
"If I ain't got to work in the field--"
"Don't work."
"Can't help it."
The call was repeated, and Nicholas sped over the mossy log and across
the ploughed field, while Bernard and Eugenia toiled up the hillside.
As they passed the Sweet Gum Spring they saw Delphy, the washerwoman,
standing in her doorway, quarrelling with her son-in-law, Moses, who was
hoeing a small garden patch in the rear of an adjoining cabin. Delphy
was a large mulatto woman, with a broad, flat bosom and enormous hands
that looked as if they had been parboiled into a livid blue tint.
"'Tain' no use fer to hoe groun' dat ain' got no richness," she was
saying, shaking her huge head until the dipper hanging on the lintel of
the door rattled, "en'tain' no use preachin' ter a nigger dat ain' got
no gumption. Es de tree fall, so hit' gwine ter lay, en es a fool's done
been born, so he gwine ter die. 'Tain' no use a-tryin' fer to do over a
job dat de Lawd done slighted. You may ding about hit en you may dung
about hit, but ef'n it won't, hit won't."
Moses, a meek-looking negro with an honest face, hoed silently, making
no response to his mother-in-law's vituperations, which grew voluble
before his non-resistance.
"Dar ain' no use er my frettin' en perfumin' over dat ar nigger," she
concluded, as if addressing a third person. "He wuz born a syndicate en
he'll die er syndicate. De Debbil, he ain' gwine tu'n 'm en de Lawd he
can't. De preachin' it runs off 'im same es water off er duck's back.
I'se done talked ter him day in en day out twell dar ain' no breff lef
fer me ter blow wid, an' he ain' changed a hyar f'om what de Lawd made
'im. Seems like he ain' got de sperit uv--"
"Why, Delphy!" exclaimed Bernard, interrupting the flow of speech.
"What's the matter with Moses?"
Delphy snorted contemptuously and took breath for procedure, when the
sharp cry of a baby came from Moses' cabin, and Eugenia broke in
excitedly:
"Why, there's a baby in there, Delphy! Whose baby is that?"
"Git er long wid you, chile," said Delphy. "You knows er plum sight mo'
now'n you ought ter." Then she added with a snort: "Hit's es black es er
crow's foot."
"Is it Betsey's baby?"
"I reckon'tis. Moses he says ez what'tis, but he's de mos' outlandish
nigger on dis yer place. Dar ain' no relyin' on him, noways."
"When did it come, Delphy? Who brought it? I saw Dr. Debs yesterday, an'
his saddle-bag bulged mightily."
"De Lawd didn't brung hit," returned Delphy emphatically. "De Lawd
wouldn't er teched hit wid er ten-foot pole. Dis yer Moses, he ain' wuth
de salt dat's put in his bread. He's de wuss er de hull lot--"
"Why doesn't Betsey get rid of him?" asked Bernard, eyeing the shrinking
Moses with disfavour. "I heard Aunt Chris say that Mrs. Willie Wilson in
Richmond got a divorce from her husband for good and all--"
"Lawdy, chile! Huccome you think I'se gwine ter pay fer a dervoge fer
sech er low-lifeted creetur ez dat? He ain' wuth no dervogin', he ain'.
When it come ter dervogin', I'll dervoge 'im wid my fis' en foot--"
Here the baby cried again, and the irate Delphy disappeared into Moses'
cabin, while the meek-looking son-in-law hoed the garden patch and
muttered beneath his breath.
The children passed the spring, crossed the meadow, and followed the
grapevine trellis to the back steps, when Eugenia rushed through the
wide hall with an impetuous flutter of short skirts.
"Papa!" she cried, bursting upon the general as he sat smoking upon the
front porch. "What do you think has happened? There's a new baby came to
Moses' cabin, an' Delphy says it's as black as--"
"Well, I am blessed!" groaned the general, knocking the ashes from his
pipe. "Another mouth to feed. Eugie, they'll ruin me yet."
"I reckon they will," returned Eugenia hopelessly. She seated herself
upon the topmost step and made a place for Jim beside her.
The general was silent for some time, smoking thoughtfully and staring
past the aspens and the well-house to the waving cornfield. When he
spoke it was with embarrassed hesitation.
"I say, daughter."
Eugenia looked up eagerly.
"Didn't that spotted cow of Moses' die last week?"
"That it did," replied Eugenia emphatically. "It got loose in your
clover, pasture and ate itself too full. Moses says it bu'st."
"Pish!" exclaimed the general angrily. "My clover! I tell you, they
won't leave me a roof over my head. They'll eat me into the poorhouse.
But I'll turn them off. I'll send them packing, bag and baggage. My
clover!"
"Moses ain't got much of a garden patch," said Eugenia. "It looks mighty
poor. The potato-bugs ate all his potatoes."
The general was silent again.
"I say, daughter," he began at last, blowing a heavy cloud of smoke upon
the air, "the next time you go by Sweet Gum Spring you had just as well
tell Moses that I can let him have a side of bacon if he wants it. The
rascal can't starve. But they won't leave me a mouthful--not one. And
Eugie--"
"Yes, sir."
"You needn't mention it to your Aunt Chris--"
At that instant a little barefooted negro came running across the lawn
from the spring-house, a large tin pail in his hand.
"Here, boy!" called the general. "Where're you off to? What have you got
in that pail?"
"It's Jake," said Eugenia in a whisper, while Jim barked frantically
from the shelter of her arms. "He's Delphy's Jake."
The small negro stood grinning in the walk, his white eyeballs circling
in their sockets. "Hit's Miss Chris, suh," he said at last.
"Miss Chris, you rascal!" shouted the general. "Do you expect me to
believe you've got Miss Chris in that pail? Open it, sir; open it!"
Jake showed a shining row of ivory teeth and stood shaking the pail from
side to side.
"Miss Chris, she gun hit ter me, suh," he explained. "Hit's Miss Chris
herse'f dat's done sont me ter tote dish yer buttermilk ter Unk Mose."
"Bless my soul!" cried the general wrathfully. "Get away with you! The
whole place is bent on ruining me. I'll be in the poorhouse before the
week's up." And he strode indoors in a rage.
VII
Twice a year, on fine days in spring and fall, Aunt Griselda's bombazine
dresses were taken from the whitewashed closet and hung out to air upon
the clothesline at the back of the house, while pungent odours of tar
and camphor were exhaled from the full black folds. On these days Aunt
Griselda would remain in her room, sorting faded relics which she took
from a cedar chest and spread beside her on the floor. The door was kept
locked at such times, but once Eugenia, who had gone with Congo to carry
Aunt Griselda her toast and tea, had caught a glimpse of a yellowed
swiss muslin frock and the leather case of a daguerreotype containing
the picture of a round-eyed girl with rosy cheeks. Aunt Griselda had
hidden them hastily away at the child's entrance--hidden them with that
nervous, awkward haste which dreads a dawning jest of itself; but
Eugenia had seen that her old eyes were red and her voice more rasping
than usual.
Sixty years ago Aunt Griselda had had her romance, and she still kept
her love-letters tied up with discoloured ribbons and laid away in the
cedar chest. It was but the skeleton of a love story--the adolescent
ardours of a high-spirited country girl and the high-spirited son of a
neighbouring farmer. When the quarrel came the letters were overlooked
when the ring went back. Griselda Grigsby had tossed them carelessly
into the cedar chest and gone out to forget them. Her heart had not
been deeply touched and it soon mended. No other lovers came, and she
lived her quiet life in her father's house, gathering garden flowers for
the great, blue bowls in the parlour, teaching the catechism to small
black slaves, and making stiff, old-fashioned samplers in crewels. The
high-spirited lover had loved elsewhere and died of a fever, and, beyond
a passing regret, she thought little of him. There were nearer
interests, and she was still the petted daughter of her father's
house--the eldest and the best beloved. Then the crash came. The old
people passed away, the house changed hands, Aunt Griselda was stranded
upon the high tide of hospitality--and crewel work went out of fashion.
In her sister's home she became a constant guest--one to be offered the
favoured share and to be treated with tender, increasing tolerance--not
to be loved. Since the death of her parents none had loved her, though
many had borne gently with her spoiled fancies. But her coming in had
brought no light, and her going out had left nothing dark. She was old
and ill-tempered and bitter of speech, and, though all doors opened
hospitably at her approach, all closed quickly when she was gone. Her
spoiled youth had left her sensitive to trivial stings, unforgivable to
fancied wrongs. In a childish oversight she detected hidden malice and
implacable hate in a thoughtless jest. Her bitterness and her years
waxed greater together, and she lost alike her youth and her
self-control. When she had yearned for passionate affection she had
found kindly tolerance, and the longings of her hidden nature, which
none knew, were expressed in rasping words and acrid tears. Once, some
years after Bernard's birth, she had called him into her room as she sat
among her relics, and had shown him the daguerreotype.
"It's pitty lady," the child had lisped, and she had caught him suddenly
to her lean old breast, but he had broken into peevish cries and
struggled free, tearing with his foot the ruffle of the swiss muslin
gown.
"Oo ain't pitty lady," he had said, and Aunt Griselda had risen and
pushed him into the hall with sharp, scolding words, and had sat down to
darn the muslin ruffle with delicate, old-fashioned stitches.
It was only when all living love had failed her that she returned to the
dead. She had gathered the letters of nearly sixty years ago from the
bottom of the cedar chest, reading them through her spectacles with
bleared, watery eyes. Those subtle sentimentalities which linger like
aromas in a heart too aged for passion were liberated by the bundle of
yellow scrawls written by hands that were dust. As she sat in her stiff
bombazine skirts beside the opened chest, peering with worry-ravaged
face at the old letters, she forgot that she was no longer one with the
girl in the muslin frock, and that the inciter of this exuberant emotion
was as dead as the emotion itself.
When the dresses were brought up to her she would put them on again and
go down to flinch before kindly eyes and to make embittered speeches in
her high, shrill voice. Outwardly she grew more soured and more
eccentric. On mild summer evenings she would come down stairs with her
head wrapped in a pink knitted "nubia," and stroll back and forth along
the gravelled walk, her gaunt figure passing into the dusk of the cedar
avenue and emerging like the erratic shadow of one of the sombre trees.
Sometimes Eugenia joined her, but Bernard, her favourite, held shyly
aloof. In her exercise she seldom spoke, and her words were peevish
ones, but there was grim pathos in her carriage as she moved slowly back
and forth between the straight rows of box.
After supper the family assembled on the porch and talked in a desultory
way until ten o'clock, when the lights were put out and the house
retired to rest. Eugenia slept in a great, four-post bedstead with Aunt
Chris, and the bed was so large and soft and billowy that she seemed to
lose herself suddenly at night in its lavender-scented midst, and to be
as suddenly discovered in the morning by Rindy, the house-girl, when she
came with her huge pails of warm water.
Those fresh summer dawns of Eugenia's childhood became among her dearest
memories in after years. There were hours when, awaking, wide-eyed,
before the house was astir, she would rise on her elbow and look out
across the dripping lawn, where each dewdrop was charged with opalescent
tints, to the western horizon, where the day broke in a cloud of gold.
The song of a mocking-bird in the poplars of the little graveyard came
to her with unsuspected melody--a melody drawn from the freshness, the
loneliness, the half-awakened calls from hidden nests and the lyric
ecstasy of dawn.
Then, with the rising of the sun, Aunt Chris would turn upon her pillow
and open her soft, brown eyes.
"It is not good for little folks to be awake so early," she would say,
and there would rush upon the child a sense of warmth and tenderness and
comfort, and she would nestle closer to her sweet, white pillow. With
the beginning of day began also the demands upon the time of Miss Chris.
First the new overseer, knocking at her door, would call through the
crack that a cow had calved, or that one of the sheep was too ill to go
to pasture. Then Rindy, entering with her pails, would shake a
pessimistic head.
"Lawd, Miss Chris, one er dem ole coons done eat up er hull pa'cel er
yo' chickens." And Miss Chris, at once the prop and the mainstay of the
Battle fortunes, would rise with anxious exclamations and put on her
full black skirt and linen sacque.
When breakfast was over Miss Chris went into the storeroom each morning
and came out with a basin of corn-meal dough, followed by Sampson
bearing an axe and Aunt Verbeny jingling the hen-house keys. The slow
procession then filed out to the space before the hen-house, the door of
which was flung back, while Aunt Verbeny clucked at a little distance.
Miss Chris scattered her dough upon the ground and, while her
unsuspecting beneficiaries made their morning meal, she pointed out to
Sampson, the executioner, the members of the feathered community
destined to be sacrificed to the carnivorous habits of their fellow
mortals.
"Feel that one with the black spots, Sampson," she said with the
indifference of an abstract deity. "Is it fat? And the domineca pullet,
and the two roosters we bought from Delphy."
And when Sampson had seized upon the victims of the fiat she turned to
inspect the bunches of fowls offered by neighbouring breeders.
To-day it was Nicholas Burr who stood patiently in the background, three
drooping chickens in each hand, their legs tied together with strips of
a purple calico which Marthy was making into a dress for Sairy Jane.
Seeing that Miss Chris had delivered her judgments, he came forward and
proffered his captives with an abashed demeanour.
"How much are they worth?" asked Miss Chris in her cheerful tones, while
Aunt Verbeny gave a suspicious poke beneath one of the flapping wings,
followed by a grunt of disparagement.
Nicholas stammered confusedly:
"Ma says the biggest ought to bring a quarter," he returned, blushing as
Aunt Verbeny grunted again, "and the four smallest can go for twenty
cents."
But when the bargain was concluded he lingered and added shamefacedly:
"Won't you please let that red-and-black rooster live as long as you
can? I raised it."
"Why, bless my heart!" exclaimed Miss Chris, "I believe the child is
fond of the chicken."
Eugenia, who was hovering by, burst into tears and declared that the
rooster should not die.
"Twenty cents is s-o ch-ea-p for a li-fe," she sobbed. "It shan't be
killed, Aunt Chris. It shall go in my hen-h-ou-se." And she rushed off
to get her little tin bank from the top bureau drawer.
When the arrangements were concluded Nicholas started empty-handed down
the box walk, the money jingling in his pocket. At the end of the long
avenue of cedars there was a wide, unploughed common which extended for
a quarter of a mile along the roadside. In spring and summer the ground
was white with daisies and in the autumn it donned gorgeous vestments of
golden-rod and sumach. In the centre of the waste, standing alike grim
and majestic at all seasons, there was the charred skeleton of a
gigantic tree, which had been stripped naked by a bolt of lightning long
years ago. At its foot a prickly clump of briars surrounded the
blackened trunk in a decoration of green or red, and from this futile
screen the spectral limbs rose boldly and were silhouetted against the
far-off horizon like the masts of a wrecked and deserted ship. A rail
fence, where a trumpet-vine hung heavily, divided the field from the
road, and several straggling sheep that had strayed from the distant
flock stood looking shyly over the massive crimson clusters.
When Nicholas came out from the funereal dusk of the cedars the field
was almost blinding in the morning glare, the yellow-centred daisies
rolling in the breeze like white-capped billows on a sunlit sea. From
the avenue to his father's land the road was unbroken by a single
shadow--only to the right, amid the young corn, there was a solitary
persimmon tree, and on the left the gigantic wreck stranded amid the
tossing daisies.
The sun was hot, and dust rose like smoke from the white streak of the
road, which blazed beneath a cloudless sky.
The boy was tired and thirsty, and as he tramped along the perspiration
rose to his forehead and dropped, upon his shoulder. With a sigh of
satisfaction he came upon the little cottage of his father and saw his
stepmother taking the clothes in from the bushes where they had been
spread to dry. It was Saturday, and ironing day, and he hoped for a
chance at his lessons before night came, when he was so tired that the
facts would not stick in his brain. He thought that it must be very easy
to study in the mornings when you were fresh and eager and before that
leaden weight centred behind your eyeballs.
When Marthy Burr saw him she called irritably:
"I say, Nick, did they take the chickens?"
Nicholas nodded, and, crossing the weeds in the garden, gave her the
money from his pocket.
"They didn't say nothing 'bout wantin' more, I 'spose? Did you tell 'em
I was fattenin' them four pairs of ducks?"
Nicholas shook his head. No, he hadn't told them.
"Well, your pa wants you down in the peanut field. You'd better get a
drink of water first. You look powerful red."
An hour later, when work was over, he carried his book to the orchard
and flung himself down beneath the trees. The judge had given him a
biography of Jefferson, and he had learned his hero's life with lips and
heart. The day that it was finished he put the volume under his arm and
went to the rector's house.
"I want to join the church," he said bluntly.
The rector, a kindly, middle-aged man, with a love for children, turned
to him in half-puzzled, half-sympathetic inquiry.
"You are young, my child," he replied, "to be so zealous a Christian."
"'Tain't that, sir," said the boy slowly. "I don't set much store by
that. But I've got to go to heaven--because I can't see Thomas Jefferson
no other way."
The rector did not smile. He was wiser than his generation, for he left
the great man's own religion to himself and God. He said merely:
"When you are older we shall see, my boy--we shall see."
Nicholas left with a chill of disappointment, but as he passed along the
street his name was called by Juliet Burwell, and she fluttered across
to him in all her mystifying flounces and her gracious smile.
"I was at the rector's," she said, "and he told me that you wanted to be
confirmed--and I want you to come into my Sunday-school class."
Nicholas met the kind eyes and blushed purple. Her beauty took away his
breath and made his pulses leap. The slow, musical drawl of her speech
soothed him like the running of clear water. He felt the image of Thomas
Jefferson totter upon its pedestal, but it was steadied with a
tremendous lurch. Jefferson was a man, after all, and this was only a
woman.
"Will you come?" asked the soft voice, and he stammered an amazed and
awkward assent.
VIII
On the Saturday after the day upon which Nicholas had pledged himself to
attend Sunday-school Juliet Burwell asked him to come into Kingsborough
and talk over the lesson for the following morning. At five o'clock in
the afternoon he dressed himself with trembling hands and a perturbed
heart; and for the first time in his life turned to look at his
reflection in the small, cracked mirror hanging above the washstand in
his stepmother's room.
As a finishing touch Marthy Burr tied a flaming plaid cravat beneath his
collar.
"You ain't much on looks," she remarked as she drew back to survey him,
"but you've got as peart a face as I ever seed. I reckon you'll be
plenty handsome for a man. I was al'ays kind of set against one of these
pink an' white men, somehow. They're pretty enough to look at when
you're feelin' first-rate, but when you git the neuralgy they sort of
turns yo' stomach. I've a taste for sober colours in men and caliky."
"I think he looks beautiful," said Sairy Jane, her eyes on the cravat,
and Nicholas felt a sudden glow of gratitude, and silently resolved to
save up until he had enough money to buy her a hair ribbon.
"I ain't sayin' he don't," returned Marthy Burr with a severe glance in
the direction of her eldest daughter, who was minding Jubal in the
kitchen doorway. "Thar's red heads an' red heads, an' his ain't no
redder than the reddest. But he came honestly by it, which is more than
some folks can say as is got yellow. His father had it befo' him, an'
thar's one good thing about it, you've got to be born with it or you
ain't goin' to come by it no other way. I never seed a dyer that could
set hair that thar colour 'cep'n the Lord Himself--an' I ain't one to
deny that the Lord has got good taste in His own line."
Then, as Nicholas took up his hat, she added: "If they ask after me,
Nick, be sure an' say I'm jes' po'ly."
Nicholas nodded and went out, followed to the road by Sairy Jane and
Jubal, while his stepmother called after him to walk in the grass and
try to keep his feet clean.
When he reached Kingsborough and crossed the green to the Burwell's
house, which was in the lane called "Back Street," he fell to a creeping
pace, held back by the fluttering of his pulses. Not until he saw Juliet
standing at the little whitewashed gate did he brace himself to the full
courage of approaching. When he spoke her name she opened the gate and
gave him her hand, while all sense of diffidence fell from him.
"I've been looking at you for a long ways," he said boldly, "an' you
were just like one of them tall lilies bordering the walk."
She blushed, turning her clear eyes upon him, and he felt a great desire
to kiss the folds of her skirt or the rose above her left temple. He had
never seen any one so good or so kind or so beautiful, and he vowed
passionately in his rustic little heart that he would always love her
best--best of all--that he would fight for her if he might, or work for
her if she needed it. There was none like her--not his stepmother--not
Sairy Jane--not even Eugenia. She was different--something of finer
clay, made to be waited upon and worshipped like the picture of the
goddess standing on the moon that he had seen in the judge's study.
Juliet smiled upon his ardour, and, leading him to a bench beneath a
flowering myrtle, made him sit down beside her, while she spoke pious
things about Adam and the catechism and the salvation of the world--to
all of which he listened with wide-opened eyes and a fluttering heart.
He wondered why no one had ever before told him such beautiful things
about God and the manifold importance of keeping a clean heart and
loving your neighbour as yourself. It seemed to him that he had been
living in sin for the twelve years of his life and he feared that he
should find it impossible to purge his mind of evil passions and to love
the coloured boy Boss who had stolen his best fishing line. He asked
Juliet if she thought he would be able to withstand the assaults of
Satan as the minister told him to do; but she laughed and said that
there was no Satan who went about like a roaring lion--only cruelty and
anger and ill-will, and that he must be kind to his brothers and
sisters, and to animals, and not rob birds' nests, which was very wrong.
Then she added as an afterthought, with a saintly look in her eyes, that
he must love God. He promised that he should try to do so, though he
wished in his heart that she had told him to love herself instead. As
he sat in the soft light, watching her beautiful face rising against a
background of lilies, his young brain thrilled with the joy of life. It
was such a glorious thing to live in a great, kind world, with a big,
beneficent God above the blue, and to love all mankind--not harbouring
an angry thought or an ill feeling! He looked into the kind eyes beside
him and felt that he should like to be a saint or a minister--not a
lawyer, which might be wicked after all. Then he remembered the
waxen-faced, choleric clergyman of the church his stepmother attended,
but he put the memory away. No, he would not be like that; he would not
preach fire and brimstone from a white-pine pulpit. He would be large
and just and merciful like God; and Juliet Burwell would come to hear
him preach, looking up at him with her blue, blue glance. In the
meantime he would not rob that marsh hen's nest which he had found. He
would never steal another egg. He wished that he didn't have that
drawerful at home. He would give them to Sairy Jane if she wanted
them--all except the snake's egg, which he might keep, because serpents
were an accursed race. Yes, Sairy Jane might have them all, and he
wouldn't pull her hair again when he caught her looking at them on the
sly.
Presently Juliet called Sally and took him into the quaint old
dining-room and gave him cakes and jam on a table that shone like glass.
There he saw Mr. Burwell--a pink-cheeked, little gentleman who wore an
expansive air of innocence and a white piqué waistcoat--and Mrs.
Burwell, a pretty, gray-haired woman, who ruled her husband with the
velvet-pawed despotism which was the heritage of the women of her race
and day. She had never bought a bonnet without openly consulting his
judgment; he had never taken a step in life without unconsciously
following hers.
"Really, my dear Sally," he had said when he heard of Nicholas's
reception by his daughter, "Juliet must a--a--be taught to recognise the
existence of class. Really, I cannot have her bringing all these people
into my house. You must put a stop to it at once, my dear."
Mrs. Burwell had smiled placidly as she patted her gray fringe.
"Of course you know best, Mr. Burwell," she had replied with that
touching humility which forbade her to address her husband by his
Christian name. "Of course you know best about such matters, and I'll
tell Juliet what you say. Poor child, she has such confidence in your
judgment that she will believe whatever you say to be right; but she
does love so to feel that she is exerting a good influence over the
boys, and, perhaps, helping them to work out their future salvation. She
thinks, too, that it is so well for them to have a chance of talking to
you. I heard her tell Dudley Webb that he must take you for an
example--"
"Ah!--ahem!" said Mr. Burwell, who worshipped the ground his daughter
trod upon. "I suppose it would be a pity to interfere with her, eh, my
dear?"
"Well, I can't help wishing myself, Mr. Burwell, that she would select
children of her own class in life, but, as you say, she has taken a
fancy to that Burr boy, and he seems to be a decent, respectful kind of
child. Of course I know it is your soft heart that makes you look at it
in this way--but I love you all the better for it. I remember the day
you proposed to me for the sixth time, I had just seen you bandage up
the head of a little darkey that had cut himself--and I accepted you on
the spot."
"Yes, yes, my love," Mr. Burwell had responded, kissing his wife as they
left the room. "I am convinced that I am right, and I am glad that you
agree with me. We won't speak of it to Juliet."
In the hall below they met Nicholas Burr, and greeted him with
hospitable kindness.
"So this is your new scholar, eh, Juliet? You must do justice to your
teacher, my boy."
Juliet laughed and went out into the yard to meet several young men who
were coming up the walk, and Nicholas noticed with a jealous pang that
she sat with them beneath the myrtle and talked in the same soft voice
with the same radiant smile. She was not speaking of heaven now. She was
laughing merrily at pointless jokes and promising to embroider a
handkerchief for one and to make a box of caramels for another.
He knew that they all loved her, and it gave him a miserable feeling. He
felt that they were unworthy of her--that they would not worship her
always and become ministers for her sake, as he was going to do. He even
wondered if it wouldn't be better, after all, to become a prize fighter
and to knock them all out in the first round when he got a chance.
In a moment Juliet called him to her side and laid her hand upon his
arm. "He has promised not to rob birds' nests and to love me always,"
she said.
But the young men only laughed.
"Ask something harder," retorted one. "Any of us will do that. Ask him
to stand on his head or to tie himself into a bow knot for your sake."
Nicholas reddened angrily, but Juliet told the jester to try such
experiments himself--that she did not want a contortionist about. Then
she bent over the boy as he said good-bye, and he went down the walk
between the lilies and out into the lane.
He recrossed the green slowly, turning into the main street at the
court-house steps. As he passed the church, a little further on, the
iron gate opened and the rector came out, jingling the heavy keys in his
hand as he talked amicably to a tourist who followed upon his heels.
"Yes, my good sir," he was saying in his high-pitched, emphatic
utterance, "this dear old churchyard is never mowed except by living
lawn-mowers. I assure you that I have seen thirty heads of cattle upon
the vaults--positively, thirty heads, sir!"
But the boy's thoughts were far from the church and its rector, and the
words sifted rapidly through his brain. He touched his hat at the
tourist's greeting and smiled into the clergyman's face, but his actions
were automatic. He would have nodded to the horse in the street or have
smiled at the sun.
As he passed the small shops fronting on the narrow sidewalk and
followed the whitewashed fence of the college grounds until it ended at
the Old Stage Road, he was conscious of the keen, pulsating harmony of
life. It was good to be alive--to feel the warm sunshine overhead and
the warm dust below. He was glad that he had been born, though the idea
had never formulated itself until now. He would be very good all his
life and never do a wicked thing. It was so easy to be good if you only
wanted to. Yes, he would study hard and become learned in the law, like
those old prophets with whom God spoke as man with man. Then, when he
had grown better and wiser than any one on earth, his tongue would
become loosened, and he would go forth to preach the Gospel, and Juliet
would listen to him for his wisdom's sake. Oh, if she would only love
him best--best of all!
This evening the road through the wood did not frighten him, though the
sun was down. He thought neither of the ghosts that Uncle Dan'l had
seen, nor of the bug-a-boos that had chased Viney's husband home. He was
too old for these things now. He had grown taller and stronger in a day.
When he reached the pasture gate opposite the house he opened it and
went in to look for the sheep.
The west was fast losing colour, like a bright-hued fabric that has been
drenched in water, and a thick, blue mist, shot with fireflies, shrouded
the wide common. A fresh, sharp odour rose from the dew-steeped earth,
giving place, as he gained upon the flock, to the smell of moist wool.
As he brushed the heavy, purple tubes of Jamestown weeds long-legged
insects flew out and struck against his arm before they fell in a
drunken stupor to the grass below.
The boy made his way cautiously, his figure becoming blurred as the
mist wrapped him like a blanket. The darkness was gathering rapidly.
From the far-off horizon clouds of lavender were melting, and the pines
had gone gray.
Presently a white patch glimmered in the midst of the pasture, and he
began to call softly:
"Coo-sheep! Coo-sheep!"
A tremulous bleat answered, but as he neared the flock it scattered
swiftly, the errant leaders darting shyly behind the looming outlines of
sassafras bushes. Again he called, and again the plaintive cry
responded, growing fainter as several fleeter ewes sped past him to the
beech trees beside the little stream.
The space before the boy was suddenly spangled with fireflies, and the
mist grew denser.
He broke off a branch of sassafras and started at a brisk run, rounding
by some dozen yards the startled ewes. The scattered white blotches
closed together as he ran towards them, and fled, bleating, to the flock
where it clustered at the pasture gate.
In a moment he had driven them across the road and behind the bars of
the cow-pen.
When he entered the house a little later he found that the family had
had supper, a single plate remaining for himself. His stepmother,
looking jaded and nervous, was putting salted herring to soak in an
earthenware bowl, while she scolded Sairy Jane, who was patching Jubal's
apron.
"It's goin' on ten years sence I've stopped to draw breath," said Marthy
Burr, "an' I'm clean wore out. 'Tain't no better than a dog's life,
nohow--a woman an' a dog air about the only creeturs as would put up
with it, an' they're the biggest pair of fools the Lord ever made. Here
I've been standin' at the tub from sunrise to sunset, with my jaw a'most
splittin' from my face, an' thar's yo' pa a-settin' at his pipe as
unconsarned as if I wa'nt his lawful wife--the more's the pity! It's the
lawful wives as have the work to do, an' the lawfuller the wives the
lawfuller the work. If this here government ain't got nothin' better to
do than to drive poor women till they drop I reckon we'd as well stop
payin' taxes to keep it goin'."
Nicholas wiped his heated brow on his shirt-sleeve and hung his hat on
the back of a bottomless chair. Jubal, who was rolling on the floor,
gave a gurgle and made a grab at it, to be soundly boxed by his mother
as she reseated him at Sairy Jane's feet. His gurgle wavered dolorously
and rose into a howl.
"Have you been to supper, ma?" asked Nicholas cheerfully.
"Lord, Nick, it's a long ways past supper-time," answered Sairy Jane,
relieved by the interruption. "The things air all washed up, ain't they,
pa?"
Amos Burr scowled heavily upon the boy's head, his phlegmatic nature
goaded into resentment by his wife's ill-temper and the lamentations of
Jubal.
"I don't reckon you expect supper to keep waitin' till breakfast," he
said. "You've given your ma trouble enough 'thout makin' her do an extra
washin' up on your o'count. You've gone clean crazy sence you've been
loafin' round with them Battles. I don't see as you air much o'count,
nohow."
Nicholas raised his eyes to his father's face and looked at him
fixedly. For a moment he did not speak, and then he said slowly:
"I'm as good as a hand to you."
He was thinking doggedly that he had never hated any one so much as he
hated his own father, and that he liked the sensation. He wished he
could do him some real harm--hit him hard enough to hurt or make the
peanuts rot in the ground. He should like also to choke Jubal, who never
left off yelling.
Amos Burr spat a mouthful of tobacco juice through the open window,
flinching before the boy's steady glance. He was a mild-natured man at
best, whose chief sin was his softness. It would not have entered his
slow-witted head to protest against the accusations of his wife. When
they stung him into revolt he revolted in the opposite direction.
But his failures were faults in his son's eyes. To the desperate
determination of the boy, weakness became as contemptible as crime. What
was a man worth who worked from morning until night and yet achieved
nothing? Of what account was the farmer whom the crows outwitted and the
weather made a mockery? Did not the very crops cry out as they rotted
that his father was a fool, and the unploughed land proclaim him a
coward? Had he ever dared a venture in his life or risked a season? And
yet what had ever returned at his bidding or brought forth at his
planting?
"You've been mighty little use of late," repeated Amos Burr stubbornly
when his wife placed the earthenware bowl on the shelf and came to the
table--her arm outstretched.
"Now, you jes' take yourself right off, Amos Burr," she said. "If you
can't behave decently to my dead sister's child you shan't hang round
them as was her own flesh and blood kin. Sairy Jane, you bring that
plate of hot corn pones from the stove. Here, Nick, set right down an'
eat your supper! There's some canned cherries if you want 'em."
Nicholas sat down, but the cornbread stuck in his throat and the coffee
was without aroma. He looked at the figured oilcloth on the table and
thought of the shining glass and silver at Juliet Burwell's. The flavour
of the cake she had given him seemed to intensify his distaste for the
food before him. He felt that he cared for nobody--that he wanted
nothing. He looked at his stepmother and thought that she was dried and
brown like a hickory nut; he looked at Sairy Jane and wondered why she
didn't have any eyelashes, and he looked at Jubal and saw that he was
all gums.
When he went up to his little attic room after supper he sat on his
shucks pallet in the darkness and thought of all the evil that he should
like to do. He should like to pull Sairy Jane's plait and to slap Jubal.
He should even like to tell Juliet Burwell that he didn't want to keep a
clean heart, and to call God names. No, he would not become a minister
and preach the Gospel. He would be a thief instead and break into
hen-houses and steal chickens. If his father planted watermelons he
would steal them from the vines as soon as they were ripe. Perhaps
Eugenia would help him. At any rate he would go halves with her if she
would be his partner in wickedness. He had just as soon go to hell,
after all--if it were not for Thomas Jefferson.
He leaned his head on his hands and looked through the narrow window to
where the peanut fields lay in blackness. From the stable came the faint
neigh of the old mare, and he remembered suddenly that he had forgotten
to put straw in her stall and to loosen her halter that she might lie
down. He rose and stole softly downstairs and out of the house.
IX
One evening in late autumn Nicholas went into Delphy's cabin after
supper and found Eugenia seated upon the hearth, facing Uncle Ish and
Aunt Verbeny. Between them Delphy's son-in-law, Moses, was helping
Bernard mend a broken hare trap, while Delphy, herself, was crooning a
lullaby to one of her grandchildren as she carded the wool which she had
taken from a quilt of faded patchwork. On the stones of the great
fireplace the red flames from lightwood splits leaped over a smouldering
hickory log, filling the cabin with the penetrating odour of burning,
resinous pine. From the wall above the hearth a dozen roasting apples
were suspended by hemp strings, and as the heat penetrated the russet
coats the apples circled against the yawning chimney like small globes
revolving about a sun.
Eugenia was sitting silently in a low, split-bottomed chair, her hands
folded in her lap and her animated eyes on the dark faces across from
her, over whose wrinkled surfaces the dancing firelight chased in ruddy
lights and shadows.
Uncle Ish had stretched his feet out upon the stones, and the mud
adhering to his rough, homemade boots was fast drying before the blaze
and settling in coarse gray dust upon the hearth. His gnarled old palms
lay upward on his knees, and his grizzled head was bowed upon his chest.
At intervals he muttered softly to himself, but his words were
inaudible--suggested by some far-off and disconnected vision. Aunt
Verbeny was nodding in her chair, arousing herself from time to time to
give a sharp glance into the face of Uncle Ish.
"Huccome dey let you out ter-night, honey?" asked Delphy suddenly,
turning her eyes upon Eugenia as she drew a fresh handful of wool from
between the covers of the quilt.
"I ran away," replied the child gravely. "I saw Bernard with his hare
trap, and Bernard shan't do nothin' that I can't do."
"Yes, I shall," rejoined Bernard without looking up from his trap. "You
can't wear breeches."
"I like to know why I can't," demanded Eugenia. "I put on a pair of your
old ones and they fit me just as well as they do you--only Aunt Chris
made me get out of them."
"Sakes er live!" exclaimed Aunt Verbeny, awaking from her doze.
Uncle Ish stared dreamily into the flames. "Ole Miss wuz in her grave,
she wuz," he muttered, while Delphy looked at him and shook her head
mysteriously.
Then, as Nicholas entered, they made a place for him upon the
hearthstones, treating him with the forbearing tolerance with which the
well-born negro regards the low-born white man.
"Pa wants you all to help him in peanut-picking to-morrow," said
Nicholas, addressing the group indiscriminately. "He's late at it this
year, but he's been laid up with rheumatism."
"Dar ain' nuttin' ez goes on two foot er fo' ez won' len' er han' at a
pickin'," remarked Uncle Ish as the boy sat down. "Dar ain' nuttin' in
de shape, er man er crow ez won't he'p demse'ves w'en dey's lyin' roun'
loose, nuther."
"Dar's gwine ter be er killin' fros' fo' mawnin'," said Moses, his teeth
chattering from the draught let in by the opening door. "Hit kilt all
Miss Chris' hop vines las' year, en it'll kill all ez ain't under kiver
ter-night. Hit seems ter sort er lay holt er yo' chist en clean grip
hit."
"You ain' never had no chist, nohow," remarked Delphy disdainfully. "Hit
don't take mo'n er spit er fros' ter freeze thoo you. You de coldest
innered somebody I ever lay eyes on. Dar mought ez well be er fence rail
er roun' on er winter night fer all de wa'mth ez is in yo' bones."
"Dat's so," admitted Moses shamefacedly. "Dat's so. Dese yer nights,
when de fire is all gone, is moughty near ter freezin' me out er house
en home. I ain' never seed ne'r quilt ez wuz made fur er hull fambly
yit. Wid me ter pull en Betsey ter pull en de chillun ter pull, whar de
quilt?"
"Dar ain' no blankets dese days," said Uncle Ish sadly. "Dey ain' got
mo'n er seasonin' er wool in dese yer sto' stuff. Dey wa'nt dat ar way
in ole times, sis Verbeny. Bless yo' soul, sis Verbeny, dey wan't dat ar
way."
"Ole Miss she use ter have eve'y stitch er her wool carded fo' her own
eyes," said Aunt Verbeny. "What wa'nt good enough fer her wuz good
enough fer de res', en we got hit. Ef'n de briars wouldn't come out'n it
soon ez she laid her han' on 'em, Ole Miss she turnt up her nose en
thowed de wool on ter de niggers' pile. Hit had ter be pisonous white
en sof fo' hit 'ud tech Ole Missusses skin. Noner yo' nappy stuff done
come near her."
Uncle Ish chuckled and hung his head on his breast.
"Doze wuz times!" he cried, "doze wuz times, en dese ain't times!"
Then he looked at Nicholas, who was watching the apples spinning in the
heat.
"De po' white trash ain' set foot inside my do'," he added, "en de
leetle gals ain' flirt roun' twell dar wa'nt no qualifyin' der legs f'om
der arms."
"I don't care!" said Eugenia, looking defiantly at Uncle Ish.
"Lor', chile, don't teck on dat way," remonstrated Aunt Verbeny. "You
ain't had no raisin' noways, en dar ain' been nobody ter brung you up
'cep'n yo' pa. Hit's de foolishness uv Miss Chris ez has overturnt de
hull place."
"She's a-settin' moughty prim now," continued Uncle Ish, his eyes on the
little girl. "She des' es prim es ef she wuz chiny en glass, but I'se
had my eye on 'er afo' dis. I'se done tote 'er in dese arms when she
wa'nt knee high ter Marse Tom's ole mule Jenny, en she ain't cut nairy
er caper dat I ain't 'sperienced hit."
"I don't care," retorted Eugenia.
"Ain't I done see her plump right out whar sis Delphy wuz a-wallopin'
her Jeetle nigger Jake, en holler out dat Jake ain' done lay ban's on
her pa's watermillion--'case she done steal 'em herse'f?"
"I don't care!" repeated Eugenia with tearful defiance.
"An' she ain' no mo' steal dat ar watermillion den I is," finished
Uncle Ish triumphantly.
"It was just a lie," said Bernard. "Eugie, you know where liars go."
"Des' ez straight ter de bad place ez dey kin walk," added Aunt Verbeny
severely. "Des' ez straight ez de Lord kin sen' 'em dar."
"It was a good lie," declared Nicholas, in manful defence of the weak.
"I don't believe she's goin' to be damned for a good lie and a little
one, too."
"Well, dar's lies en dar's lies," put in Delphy consolingly, "an' I 'low
dat dar's mo' in de manner uv lyin' den in de lie. Some lies is er long
ways sweeter ter de tas' den Gospel trufe. Abraham, he lied, en it ain't
discountenance him wid de Lord. Marse Tom, he lied when he wuz young, en
it spar'd 'im er whoppin'. Hit's er plum fool ez won't spar' dere own
hinder parts on er 'count uv er few words."
"George Washington didn't," said Bernard.
"I wish he had," added Eugenia. "Aunt Chris made me read about him and
his old cherry tree when I told her the red rooster was setting, because
I didn't want her to kill him."
"Ma asked me once if I had been fishin' when she told me to clean out
the spring," said Nicholas thoughtfully, "an' I said yes."
"What did she say?" asked Bernard.
"Nothin'. She whacked me on the head."
Just then Betsey came in with her baby in her arms, and Moses shuffled
aside to give place to her, cowed by an admonishing glance from his
mother-in-law.
"Bless de Lord!" exclaimed Uncle Ish, lifting his withered, old hands.
"Ef dar ain' anur er Betsey's babies! How many is de, Mose?"
Moses scratched his head and shrank into the corner.
"I ain' done straighten 'em out yit, Unk Ish," he returned slowly.
"'Pears like soon es I done add 'em all up anur done come, an' I has ter
kac'late f'om de bottom agin. I ain' got no head fer figgers, nohow.
Betsey, she lays dat dar's ten uv 'em, but ter save my soul I can't mek
out mo'n eight."
"Dar's nearer er dozen," rejoined Betsey with offended pride, "dar's
nearer er dozen 'cordin' ter de way I count."
"Dar now!" cried Aunt Verbeny. "I ain' never trus' no nigger's
cac'lations yit, en I ain' gwine ter now. When I wants countin', I want
white folks' countin'."
"Dey tell me," said Delphy, glancing sternly at the head on Betsey's
knee, "dat de quality don' set demse'ves up on er pa'sel er chillun no
mo'. De time done gone by. My Mahaly, she went up ter some outlandish
place wid er wild Injun name, like Philadelphy, en she sez de smaller de
fambly de mo' stuck up is de heads er it. She sez ef Ole Miss had gone
up dar a-puttin' on airs 'case er her fifteen chillun, she wouldn't
never have helt up 'er head no mo'. Mahaly, she ain' mah'ed no man, she
ain't. She sez en ole maid in Philadelphy des' looks right spang over
all de heads, she's so sot up."
"'Tain' so yer," said Aunt Verbeny feelingly. "'Tain' so yer. Hit seems
like de 'oman nairy a man is laid claim ter ain' wuth claimin'. Ain' dat
so, bro' Ish?"
But Uncle Ish only grunted in retort, his head nodding drowsily. The
tremulous tracery the wood-fire cast upon his face gave it an expression
of dumb intensity which adumbrated all the pathos and the patience of
his race.
"Mahaly wuz er likely gal," went on Aunt Verbeny, "an' when she las'
come home, she wuz a-warin' spike-heeled shoes en er veil uv skeeter
nettin'. 'Tain' so long sence Rhody's Viney went to Philadelphy, too,
but she ain' had no luck sence she wuz born er twin. Hit went clean agin
'er."
"Lord a-mercy, Aunt Verbeny, she ain't a-comin' back dis way?" asked
Betsey, probing the apples with a small pine stick and giving the
softest to Eugenia.
Aunt Verbeny shook her head.
"She ain' never had no luck on er 'count er bein' er twin," she said.
"When she sot herse'f on a-gwine up ter de Yankees, Marse Tom, he tuck
er goose quill en wrote out 'er principles [recommendations] des' es
plain es writin' kin be writ--which ain't plain enough fer my eyes--en
he gun' 'em ter Viney wid his own han's. Viney tuck 'n put 'em safe 'way
down in de bottom uv 'er trunk en went 'long ter de Yankees. But she
ain' been dar mo'n er week when one night she went a-traipsin' out on de
street en lef er principles behint 'er, en, bless yo' life, oner dem ar
Yankees breck right in en stole 'em smack 'way f'om 'er. Yo' trunk is a
moughty risky place ter kyar yo' principles, but Viney, she wuz dat sot
up."
A nod of assent passed round the group. The children ate their apples
silently, and Moses got up to put fresh wood on the fire. As the green
log fell among the smouldering chips vivid tongues of flame shot up the
smoked old mortar of the chimney, and the remaining apples burst their
brown peels and sent out little rivulets of juice. The crackling of the
fresh bark made a cheerful accompaniment to the chirping of a cricket
hidden somewhere in the hearthstones.
"Dar now, bro' Ish!" exclaimed Aunt Verbeny, watching Eugenia as she sat
in the dull red glare. "Ef dat chile ain't de patt'en er young Miss
Meeley, I'se clean cracked in my head, I is. I 'members Miss Meeley des'
ez well ez 'twuz yestiddy de day Marse Tom brung her home en de niggers
stood a-bowin' en axin' howdy at de gate. She wuz all black en white en
cold lookin' twell she smiled, en den it wuz des' like er lightwood
blaze in 'er eyes."
Uncle Ish nodded dreamily.
"I use ter ride erlong wid Marse Tom ter co'te 'er," he said, "en de
gent'men wuz a-troopin' ter see her in vayous attitudes. Dey buzzed
roun' 'er de same ez bees, but she ain' had no eyes fer none 'cep'n
Marse Tom."
At that instant the door opened, and Rindy rushed in, breathlesly
pursuing Eugenia.
"Miss Chris is pow'ful riled," she announced, "an' Marse Tom is
a-stampin' roun' same ez er bull. I reckon you'se gwine ter ketch it
when dey once gits dere han's on you." Then, as her eye fell on
Nicholas, she assumed an indignant air. "Dis ain't de place fer po'
folks," she added.
Eugenia rose and put a roasted apple in her pocket.
"I ain't goin' to catch anything that Bernard doesn't catch," she said.
"When he goes I'm goin' too."
And she went out, followed by Rindy and the boys.
The first breath of the chill atmosphere brought a glow to Nicholas's
cheek, and he started at a brisk run across the fields. He had gone but
a few yards when he was checked by Eugenia's voice.
"Nick!" she called.
Her small, dark shadow was falling on the ground beside him, and by the
light of the pale moon he could see the fog of her breath.
As he went towards her she held out her hand.
"Here's an apple I saved for you," she panted. "And--and I don't mind
about your being poor white trash!"
He took the apple, but before the reply left his lips she had darted
from him and was speeding homeward across the glimmering whiteness of
the frost.