remarked sternly.
While he drew breath Dan stared at him with the blankness of surprise.
“Where did you come from, Big Abel?” he questioned at last, speaking in a
whisper.
Big Abel was busily untying the sheet he had brought, and spreading out the
contents upon the bed, and he did not pause as he sullenly answered:--
“Ole Marster's.”
“Who sent you?”
Big Abel snorted. “Who gwine sen' me?” he demanded in his turn.
“Well, I declare,” said Dan, and after a moment, “how did you get away,
man?”
“Lawd, Lawd,” returned Big Abel, “I wa'n' bo'n yestiddy nur de day befo'.
Terreckly I seed you a-cuttin' up de drive, I knowed dar wuz mo' den wuz in
de tail er de eye, en w'en you des lit right out agin en bang de do' behint
you fitten ter bus' hit, den I begin ter steddy 'bout de close in de big
wa'drobe. I got out one er ole Miss's sheets w'en she wa'n' lookin, en I
tie up all de summer close de bes' I kin--caze dat ar do' bang hit ain'
soun' like you gwine be back fo' de summer right plum hyer. I'se done heah
a do' bang befo' now, en dars mo' in it den des de shettin' ter stay shet.”
“So you ran away?” said Dan, with a long whistle.
“Ain't you done run away?”
“I--oh, I was turned out,” answered the young man, with his eyes on the
negro. “But--bless my soul, Big Abel, why did you do it?”
Big Abel muttered something beneath his breath, and went on laying out the
things.
“How you gwine git dese yer close ef I ain' tote 'em 'long de road?” he
asked presently. “How you gwine git dis yer close bresh ef I ain' brung hit
ter you? Whar de close you got? Whar de close bresh?”
“You're a fool, Big Abel,” retorted Dan. “Go back where you belong and
don't hang about me any more. I'm a beggar, I tell you, and I'm likely to
be a beggar at the judgment day.”
“Whar de close bresh?” repeated Big Abel, scornfully.
“What would Saphiry say, I'd like to know?” went on Dan. “It isn't fair to
Saphiry to run off this way.”
“Don' you bodder 'bout Saphiry,” responded Big Abel. “I'se done loss my
tase fur Saphiry, young Marster.”
“I tell you you're a fool,” snapped out Dan, sharply.
“De Lawd he knows,” piously rejoined Big Abel, and he added: “Dar ain' no
use a-rumpasin' case hyer I is en hyer I'se gwine ter stay. Whar you run,
dar I'se gwine ter run right atter, so 'tain' no use a-rumpasin'. Hit's a
pity dese yer ain' nuttin' but summer close.”
Dan looked at him a moment in silence, then he put out his hand and slapped
him upon the shoulder.
“You're a fool--God bless you,” he said.
“Go 'way f'om yer, young Marster,” responded the negro, in a high
good-humour. “Dar's a speck er dut right on yo' shut.”
“Then give me another,” cried Dan, gayly, and threw off his coat.
When he went down stairs, carefully brushed, a half-hour afterward, the
world had grown suddenly to wear a more cheerful aspect. He greeted Mrs.
Hicks with his careless good-humour, and spoke pleasantly to the dirty
white-haired children that streamed through the dining room.
“Yes, I'll take my breakfast now, if you please,” he said as he sat down at
one end of the long, oilcloth-covered table. Mrs. Hicks brought him his
coffee and cakes, and then stood, with her hands upon a chair back, and
watched him with a frank delight in his well-dressed comely figure.
“You do favour the Major, Mr. Dan,” she suddenly remarked.
He started impatiently. “Oh, the Lightfoots are all alike, you know,” he
responded. “We are fond of saying that a strain of Lightfoot blood is good
for two centuries of intermixing.” Then, as he looked up at her faded
wrapper and twisted curl papers, he flinched and turned away as if her
ugliness afflicted his eyes. “Do not let me keep you,” he added hastily.
But the woman stooped to shake a child that was tugging at her dress, and
talked on in her drawling voice, while a greedy interest gave life to her
worn and sallow face. “How long do you think of stayin'?” she asked
curiously, “and do you often take a notion to walk so fur in the dead of
night? Why, I declar, when I looked out an' saw you I couldn't believe my
eyes. That's not Mr. Dan, I said, you won't catch Mr. Dan out in the pitch
darkness with a lantern and ten miles from home.”
“I really do not want to keep you,” he broke in shortly, all the
good-humour gone from his voice.
“Thar ain't nothin' to do right now,” she answered with a searching look
into his face. “I was jest waitin' to bring you some mo' cakes.” She went
out and came in presently with a fresh plateful. “I remember jest as well
the first time you ever took breakfast here,” she said. “You wa'n't more'n
twelve, I don't reckon, an' the Major brought you by in the coach, with Big
Abel driving. The Major didn't like the molasses we gave him, and he pushed
the pitcher away and said it wasn't fit for pigs; and then you looked about
real peart and spoke up, 'It's good molasses, grandpa, I like it.' Sakes
alive, it seems jest like yestiddy. I don't reckon the Major is comin' by
to-day, is he?”
He pushed his plate away and rose hurriedly, then, without replying, he
brushed past her, and went out upon the porch.
There he found Jack Hicks, and forced himself squarely into a discussion of
his altered fortunes. “I may as well tell you, Jack,” he said, with a touch
of arrogance, “that I'm turned out upon the world, at last, and I've got to
make a living. I've left Chericoke for good, and as I've got to stay here
until I find a place to go, there's no use making a secret of it.”
The pipe dropped from Jack's mouth, and he stared back in astonishment.
“Bless my soul and body!” he exclaimed. “Is the old gentleman crazy or is
you?”
“You forget yourself,” sharply retorted Dan.
“Well, well,” pursued Jack, good-naturedly, as he knocked the ashes from
his pipe and slowly refilled it. “If you hadn't have told me, I wouldn't
have believed you--well, well.” He put his pipe into his mouth and hung on
it for a moment; then he took it out and spoke thoughtfully. “I reckon I've
known you from a child, haven't I, Mr. Dan?” he asked.
“That's so, Jack,” responded the young man, “and if you can recommend me, I
want you to help me to a job for a week or two--then I'm off to town.”
“I've known you from a child year in an' year out,” went on Jack, blandly
disregarding the interruption. “From the time you was sech a
pleasant-spoken little boy that it did me good to bow to you when you rode
by with the Major. 'Thar's not another like him in the country,' I said to
Bill Bates, an' he said to me, 'Thar's not a man between here an'
Leicesterburg as ain't ready to say the same.' Then time went on an' you
got bigger, an' the year came when the crops failed an' Sairy got sick, an'
I took a mortgage on this here house--an' what should happen but that you
stepped right up an' paid it out of yo' own pocket. And you kept it from
the Major. Lord, Lord, to think the Major never knew which way the money
went.”
“We won't speak of that,” said Dan, throwing back his head. The thought
that the innkeeper might be going to offer him the money stung him into
anger.
But Jack knew his man, and he would as soon have thought of throwing a
handful of dust into his face. “Jest as you like, suh, jest as you like,”
he returned easily, and went on smoking.
Dan sat down in a chair upon the porch, and taking out his knife began idly
whittling at the end of a stick. A small boy, in blue jean breeches,
watched him eagerly from the steps, and he spoke to him pleasantly while he
cut into the wood.
“Did you ever see a horse's head on a cane, sonny?”
The child sucked his dirty thumb and edged nearer.
“Naw, suh, but I've seen a dawg's,” he answered, drawing out his thumb like
a stopper and sticking it in again.
“Well, you watch this and you'll see a horse's. There, now don't take your
eyes away.”
He whittled silently for a time, then as he looked up his glance fell on
the stagecoach in the yard, and he turned from it to Jack Hicks.
“There's one thing on earth I know about, Jack,” he said, “and that's a
horse.”
“Not a better jedge in the county, suh,” was Jack's response.
As Dan whittled a flush rose to his face. “Does Tom Hyden still drive the
Hopeville stage?” he asked.
“Well, you see it's this way,” answered Jack, weighing his words. “Tom he's
a first-rate hand at horses, but he drinks like a fish, and last week he
married a wife who owns a house an' farm up the road. So long as he had to
earn his own livin' he kept sober long enough to run the stage, but since
he's gone and married, he says thar's no call fur him to keep a level
head--so he don't keep it. Yes, that's about how 'tis, suh.”
Dan finished the stick and handed it to the child. “I tell you what, Jack,”
he said suddenly, “I want Tom Hyden's place, and I'm going to drive that
stage over to Hopeville this afternoon. Phil Banks runs it, doesn't
he?--well, I know him.” He rose and stood humorously looking out upon the
coach. “There's no time like the present,” he added, “so I begin work
to-day.”
Jack Hicks silently stared up at him for a moment; then he coughed and
exclaimed hoarsely:--
“The jedgment ain't fur off,” but Dan laughed the prophecy aside and went
upstairs to write to Betty.
“I've got a job, Big Abel,” he began, going into his room, where the negro
was pressing a pair of trousers with a flatiron, “and what's more it will
keep me till I get another.”
Big Abel gloomily shook his head. “We all 'ud des better go 'long home ter
Ole Miss,” he returned, for he was in no mood for compromises. “Caze I ain'
use ter de po' w'ite trash en dey ain' use ter me.”
“Go if you want to,” retorted Dan, sternly, “but you go alone,” and the
negro, protesting under his breath, laid the clothes away and went down to
his breakfast.
Dan sat down by the window and wrote a letter to Betty which he never sent.
When he thought of her now it was as if half the world instead of ten miles
lay between them; and quickly as he would have resented the hint of it from
Jack Hicks, to himself he admitted that he was fast sinking where Betty
could not follow him. What would the end be? he asked, and disheartened by
the question, tore the paper into bits and walked moodily up and down the
room. He had lived so blithely until to-day! His lines had fallen so
smoothly in the pleasant places! Not without a grim humour he remembered
now that last year his grievance had been that his tailor failed to fit
him. Last year he had walked the floor in a rage because of a wrinkled
coat, and to-day--His road had gone rough so suddenly that he stumbled like
a blind man when he tried to go over it in his old buoyant manner.
An hour later he was still pacing restlessly to and fro, when the door
softly opened and Mrs. Hicks looked in upon him with a deprecating smile.
As she lingered on the threshold, he stopped in the middle of the room and
threw her a sharp glance over his shoulder.
“Is there anything you wish?” he questioned irritably.
Shaking her head, she came slowly toward him and stood in her soiled
wrapper and curl papers, where the gray light from the latticed window fell
full upon her.
“It ain't nothin',” she answered hurriedly. “Nothin' except Jack's been
tellin' me you're in trouble, Mr. Dan.”
“Then he has been telling you something that concerns nobody but myself,”
he replied coolly, and continued his walking.
There was a nervous flutter of her wrapper, and she passed her knotted hand
over her face.
“You are like yo' mother, Mr. Dan,” she said with an unexpectedness that
brought him to a halt. “An' I was the last one to see her the night she
went away. She came in here, po' thing, all shiverin' with the cold, an'
she wouldn't set down but kep' walkin' up an' down, up an' down, jest like
you've been doin' fur this last hour. Po' thing! Po' thing! I tried to make
her take a sip of brandy, but she laughed an' said she was quite warm, with
her teeth chatterin' fit to break--”
“You are very good, Mrs. Hicks,” interrupted Dan, in an affected drawl
which steadied his voice, “but do you know, I'd really rather that you
wouldn't.”
Her sallow face twitched and she looked wistfully up at him.
“It isn't that, Mr. Dan,” she went on slowly, “but I've had trouble myself,
God knows, and when I think of that po' proud young lady, an' the way she
went, I can't help sayin' what I feel--it won't stay back. So if you'll
jest keep on here, an' give up the stage drivin' an' wait twil the old
gentleman comes round--Jack an' I'll do our best fur you--we'll do our
best, even if it ain't much.”
Her lips quivered, and as he watched her it seemed to him that a new
meaning passed into her face--something that made her look like Betty and
his mother--that made all good women who had loved him look alike. For the
moment he forgot her ugliness, and with the beginning of that keener
insight into life which would come to him as he touched with humanity, he
saw only the dignity with which suffering had endowed this plain and simple
woman. The furrows upon her cheeks were no longer mere disfigurements; they
raised her from the ordinary level of the ignorant and the ugly into some
bond of sympathy with his dead mother.
“My dear Mrs. Hicks,” he stammered, abashed and reddening. “Why, I shall
take a positive pleasure in driving the stage, I assure you.”
He crossed to the mirror and carefully brushed a stray lock of hair into
place; then he took up his hat and gloves and turned toward the door. “I
think it is waiting for me now,” he added lightly; “a pleasant evening to
you.”
But she stood straight before him and as he met her eyes his affected
jauntiness dropped from him. With a boyish awkwardness he took her hand and
held it for an instant as he looked at her. “My dear madam, you are a good
woman,” he said, and went whistling down to take the stage.
Upon the porch he found Jack Hicks seated between a stout gentleman and a
thin lady, who were to be the passengers to Hopeville; and as Dan appeared
the innkeeper started to his feet and swung open the door of the coach for
the thin lady to pass inside. “You'll find it a pleasant ride, mum,” he
heartily assured her. “I've often taken it myself an', rain or shine,
thar's not a prettier road in all Virginny,” then he moved humbly back as
Dan, carelessly drawing on his gloves, came down the steps. “I hope we
haven't hurried you, suh,” he stammered.
“Not a bit--not a bit,” returned Dan, affably, slipping on his overcoat,
which Big Abel had run up to hold for him.
“You gwine git right soakin' wet, Marse Dan,” said Big Abel, anxiously.
“Oh, I'll not melt,” responded Dan, and bowing to the thin lady he stepped
upon the wheel and mounted lightly to the box.
“There's no end to this eternal drizzle,” he called down, as he tucked the
waterproof robe about him and took up the reins.
Then, with a merry crack of the whip, the stage rolled through the gate and
on its way.
As it turned into the road, a man on horseback came galloping from the
direction of the town, and when he neared the tavern he stood up in his
stirrups and shouted his piece of news.
“Thar was a raid on Harper's Ferry in the night,” he yelled hoarsely. “The
arsenal has fallen, an' they're armin' the damned niggers.”
XII
THE NIGHT OF FEAR
Late in the afternoon, as the Governor neared the tavern, he was met by a
messenger with the news; and at once turning his horse's head, he started
back to Uplands. A dim fear, which had been with him since boyhood, seemed
to take shape and meaning with the words; and in a lightning flash of
understanding he knew that he had lived before through the horror of this
moment. If his fathers had sinned, surely the shadow of their wrong had
passed them by to fall the heavier upon their sons; for even as his blood
rang in his ears, he saw a savage justice in the thing he feared--a
recompense to natural laws in which the innocent should weigh as naught
against the guilty.
A fine rain was falling; and as he went on, the end of a drizzling
afternoon dwindled rapidly into night. Across the meadows he saw the lamps
in scattered cottages twinkle brightly through the dusk which rolled like
fog down from the mountains. The road he followed sagged between two gray
hills into a narrow valley, and regaining its balance upon the farther
side, stretched over a cattle pasture into the thick cover of the woods.
As he reached the summit of the first hill, he saw the Major's coach
creeping slowly up the incline, and heard the old gentleman scolding
through the window at Congo on the box.
“My dear Major, home's the place for you,” he said as he drew rein. “Is it
possible that the news hasn't reached you yet?”
Remembering Congo, he spoke cautiously, but the Major, in his anger, tossed
discretion to the winds.
“Reached me?--bless my soul!--do you take me for a ground hog?” he cried,
thrusting his red face through the window. “I met Tom Bickels four miles
back, and the horses haven't drawn breath since. But it's what I expected
all along--I was just telling Congo so--it all comes from the mistaken
tolerance of black Republicans. Let me open my doors to them to-day, and
they'll be tempting Congo to murder me in my bed to-morrow.”
“Go 'way f'om yer, Ole Marster,” protested Congo from the box, flicking at
the harness with his long whip.
The Governor looked a little anxiously at the negro, and then shook his
head impatiently. Though a less exacting master than the Major, he had not
the same childlike trust in the slaves he owned.
“Shall you not turn back?” he asked, surprised.
“Champe's there,” responded the Major, “so I came on for the particulars. A
night in town isn't to my liking, but I can't sleep a wink until I hear a
thing or two. You're going out, eh?”
“I'm riding home,” said the Governor, “it makes me uneasy to be away from
Uplands.” He paused, hesitated an instant, and then broke out suddenly.
“Good God, Major, what does it mean?”
The Major shook his head until his long white hair fell across his eyes.
“Mean, sir?” he thundered in a rage. “It means, I reckon, that those damned
friends of yours have a mind to murder you. It means that after all your
speech-making and your brotherly love, they're putting pitchforks into the
hands of savages and loosening them upon you. Oh, you needn't mind Congo,
Governor. Congo's heart's as white as mine.”
“Dat's so, Ole Marster,” put in Congo, approvingly.
The Governor was trembling as he leaned down from his saddle.
“We know nothing as yet, sir,” he began, “there must be some--”
“Oh, go on, go on,” cried the Major, striking the carriage window. “Keep up
your speech-making and your handshaking until your wife gets murdered in
her bed--but, by God, sir, if Virginia doesn't secede after this, I'll
secede without her!”
The coach moved on and the Governor, touching his horse with the whip, rode
rapidly down the hill.
As he descended into the valley, a thick mist rolled over him and the road
lost itself in the blur of the surrounding fields. Without slackening his
pace, he lighted the lantern at his saddle-bow and turned up the collar of
his coat about his ears. The fine rain was soaking through his clothes, but
in the tension of his nerves he was oblivious of the weather. The sun might
have risen overhead and he would not have known it.
With the coming down of the darkness a slow fear crept, like a physical
chill, from head to foot. A visible danger he felt that he might meet face
to face and conquer; but how could he stand against an enemy that crept
upon him unawares?--against the large uncertainty, the utter ignorance of
the depth or meaning of the outbreak, the knowledge of a hidden evil which
might be even now brooding at his fireside?
A thousand hideous possibilities came toward him from out the stretch of
the wood. The light of a distant window, seen through the thinned edge of
the forest; the rustle of a small animal in the underbrush; the drop of a
walnut on the wet leaves in the road; the very odours which rose from the
moist earth and dripped from the leafless branches--all sent him faster on
his way, with a sound within his ears that was like the drumming of his
heart.
To quiet his nerves, he sought to bring before him a picture of the house
at Uplands, of the calm white pillars and the lamplight shining from the
door; but even as he looked the vision of a slave-war rushed between, and
the old buried horrors of the Southampton uprising sprang suddenly to life
and thronged about the image of his home. Yesterday those tales had been
for him as colourless as history, as dry as dates; to-night, with this new
fear at his heart, the past became as vivid as the present, and it seemed
to him that beyond each lantern flash he saw a murdered woman, or an infant
with its brains dashed out at its mother's breast. This was what he feared,
for this was what the message meant to him: “The slaves are armed and
rising.”
And yet with it all, he felt that there was some wild justice in the thing
he dreaded, in the revolt of an enslaved and ignorant people, in the
pitiable and ineffectual struggle for a freedom which would mean, in the
beginning, but the power to go forth and kill. It was the recognition of
this deeper pathos that made him hesitate to reproach even while his
thoughts dwelt on the evils--that would, if the need came, send him
fearless and gentle to the fight. For what he saw was that behind the new
wrongs were the old ones, and that the sinners of to-day were, perhaps, the
sinned against of yesterday.
When at last he came out into the turnpike, he had not the courage to look
among the trees for the lights of Uplands; and for a while he rode with his
eyes following the lantern flash as it ran onward over the wet ground. The
small yellow circle held his gaze, and as if fascinated he watched it
moving along the road, now shining on the silver grains in a ring of sand,
now glancing back from the standing water in a wheelrut, and now
illuminating a mossy stone or a weed upon the roadside. It was the one
bright thing in a universe of blackness, until, as he came suddenly upon an
elevation, the trees parted and he saw the windows of his home glowing upon
the night. As he looked a great peace fell over him, and he rode on,
thanking God.
When he turned into the drive, his past anxiety appeared to him to be
ridiculous, and as he glanced from the clear lights in the great house to
the chain of lesser ones that stretched along the quarters, he laughed
aloud in the first exhilaration of his relief. This at least was safe, God
keep the others.
At his first call as he alighted before the portico, Hosea came running for
his horse, and when he entered the house, the cheerful face of Uncle
Shadrach looked out from the dining room.
“Hi! Marse Peyton, I 'lowed you wuz gwine ter spen' de night.”
“Oh, I had to get back, Shadrach,” replied the Governor. “No, I won't take
any supper--you needn't bring it--but give me a glass of Burgundy, and then
go to bed. Where is your mistress, by the way? Has she gone to her room?”
Uncle Shadrach brought the bottle of Burgundy from the cellaret and placed
it upon the table.
“Naw, suh, Miss July she set out ter de quarters ter see atter Mahaley,” he
returned. “Mahaley she's moughty bad off, but 'tain' no night fur Miss
July--dat's w'at I tell 'er--one er dese yer spittin' nights ain' no night
ter be out in.”
“You're right, Shadrach, you're right,” responded the Governor; and rising
he drank the wine standing. “It isn't a fit night for her to be out, and
I'll go after her at once.”
He took up his lantern, and as the old negro opened the doors before him,
went out upon the back porch and down the steps.
From the steps a narrow path ran by the kitchen, and skirting the
garden-wall, straggled through the orchard and past the house of the
overseer to the big barn and the cabins in the quarters. There was a light
from the barn door, and as he passed he heard the sound of fiddles and the
shuffling steps of the field hands in a noisy “game.” The words they sang
floated out into the night, and with the squeaking of the fiddles followed
him along his path.
When he reached the quarters, he went from door to door, asking for his
wife. “Is this Mahaley's cabin?” he anxiously inquired, “and has your
mistress gone by?”
In the first room an old negro woman sat on the hearth wrapping the hair of
her grandchild, and she rose with a courtesy and a smile of welcome. At the
question her face fell and she shook her head.