A DRY-SALT MAN
Joe was afoot early. His mother came to the place in the fence where the
gate once stood to give him a last word of comfort, and to bewail again
her selfishness in sending him away to serve as bondboy under the hard
hand of Isom Chase. Joe cheered her with hopeful pictures of the future,
when the old home should be redeemed and the long-dwelling shadow of
their debt to Isom cleared away and paid. From the rise in the road
which gave him the last sight of the house Joe looked back and saw her
with her head bowed to the topmost rail of the fence, a figure of
dejection and woe in the security which she had purchased for herself at
such a heavy price.
Although Joe moved briskly along his way, his feet as light as if they
carried him to some destination of certain felicity, there was a cloud
upon his heart. This arrangement which his mother had made in an hour of
panic had disordered his plans and troubled the bright waters of his
dreams. Plans and dreams were all his riches. They were the sole
patrimony of value handed down from Peter Newbolt, the Kentucky
gentleman, who had married below his state and carried his young
mountain wife away to the Missouri woods to escape the censure of family
and criticism of friends.
That was the only legacy, indeed, that Joe was conscious of, but
everybody else was aware that old Peter had left him something even more
dangerous than dreams. That was nothing less than a bridling,
high-minded, hot-blooded pride--a thing laughable, the neighbors said,
in one so bitterly and hopelessly poor.
"The pore folks," the neighbors called the Newbolts in speaking of them
one to another, for in that community of fairly prosperous people there
was none so poor as they. The neighbors had magnified their misfortune
into a reproach, and the "pore folks" was a term in which they found
much to compensate their small souls for the slights which old Peter, in
his conscious superiority, unwittingly put upon them.
To the end of his days Peter never had been wise enough to forget that
nature had endowed him, in many ways, above the level of the world to
which Fate had chained his feet, and his neighbors never had been kind
enough to forget that he was poor.
Even after Peter was dead Joe suffered for the family pride. He was
still spoken of, far and near in that community, as the "pore folks's
boy." Those who could not rise to his lofty level despised him because
he respected the gerund, and also said _were_ where they said _was_, and
_there are_, where usage made it _they is_. It was old Peter's
big-headedness and pride, they said. What business had the pore folks's
boy with the speech of a school-teacher or minister in his mouth? His
"coming" and his "going," indeed! Huh, it made 'em sick.
Joe had lived a lonely, isolated life on account of the family poverty
and pride. He was as sensitive as a poet to the boorish brutality, and
his poor, unlettered, garrulous mother made it worse for him by her
boasting of his parts. She never failed to let it be known that he had
read the Bible through, "from back to back," and the _Cottage
Encyclopedia_, and the _Imitation of Christ_, the three books in the
Newbolt library.
People had stood by and watched Peter Newbolt at his schemes and dreams
for many a year, and all the time they had seen him growing poorer and
poorer, and marveled that he never appeared to realize it himself. Just
as a great many men spend their lives following the delusion that they
can paint or write, and waste their energies and resources on that false
and destructive idea, Peter had held the dream that he was singled out
to revolutionize industry by his inventions.
He had invented a self-winding clock which, outside his own shop and in
the hands of another, would not wind; a self-binding reaper that, in his
neighbor's field, would not perform its part; and a lamp that was
designed to manufacture the gas that it burned from the water in its
bowl, but which dismally and ignobly failed. He had contrived and
patented a machine for milking cows, which might have done all that was
claimed for it if anybody--cows included--could have been induced to
give it a trial, and he had fiddled around with perpetual motion until
the place was a litter of broken springs and rusty wheels.
Nothing had come of all this pother but rustic entertainment, although
he demonstrated the truth of his calculations by geometry, and applied
Greek names to the things which he had done and hoped to do. All this
had eaten up his energies, and his fields had gone but half tilled.
Perhaps back of all Peter's futile strivings there had lain the germ of
some useful thing which, if properly directed, might have grown into the
fortune of his dreams. But he had plodded in small ways, and had died at
last, in debt and hopeless, leaving nothing but a name of reproach which
lived after him, and even hung upon his son that cool April morning as
he went forward to assume the penance that his mother's act had set for
him to bear.
And the future was clouded to Joe Newbolt now, like a window-pane with
frost upon it, where all had been so clear in his calculations but a day
before. In his heart he feared the ordeal for Isom Chase was a man of
evil repute.
Long ago Chase's first wife had died, without issue, cursed to her grave
because she had borne him no sons to labor in his fields. Lately he had
married another, a woman of twenty, although he was well along the road
to sixty-five himself. His second wife was a stranger in that community,
the daughter of a farmer named Harrison, who dwelt beyond the
county-seat.
Chase's homestead was a place pleasant enough for the abode of
happiness, in spite of its grim history and sordid reputation. The mark
of thrift was about it, orchards bloomed upon its fair slopes, its
hedges graced the highways like cool, green walls, not a leaf in excess
upon them, not a protruding bramble. How Isom Chase got all the work
done was a matter of unceasing wonder, for nothing tumbled to ruin
there, nothing went to waste. The secret of it was, perhaps, that when
Chase _did_ hire a man he got three times as much work out of him as a
laborer ordinarily performed.
There were stories abroad that Chase was as hard and cruel to his young
wife as he had been to his old, but there was no better warrant for them
than his general reputation. It was the custom in those days for a woman
to suffer greater indignities and cruelties than now without public
complaint. There never had been a separation of man and wife in that
community, there never had been a suit for divorce. Doubtless there were
as many unhappy women to the square mile there as in other places, but
custom ruled that they must conceal their sorrows in their breasts.
To all of these things concerning Isom Chase, Joe Newbolt was no
stranger. He knew, very well indeed, the life that lay ahead of him as
the bondboy of that old man as he went forward along the dew-moist road
that morning.
Early as it was, Isom Chase had been out of bed two hours or more when
Joe arrived. The scents of frying food came out of the kitchen, and Isom
himself was making a splash in a basin of water--one thing that he could
afford to be liberal with three times a day--on the porch near the open
door.
Joe had walked three miles, the consuming fires of his growing body were
demanding food. The odors of breakfast struck him with keen relish as he
waited at the steps of the porch, unseen by Isom Chase, who had lifted
his face from the basin with much snorting, and was now drying it on a
coarse brown towel.
"Oh, you're here," said he, seeing Joe as he turned to hang up the
towel. "Well, come on in and eat your breakfast. We ought to 'a' been in
the field nearly an hour ago."
Hungry as he was, Joe did not advance to accept the invitation, which
was not warmed by hospitality, indeed, but sounded rather like a
command. He stood where he had stopped, and pushed his flap-brimmed hat
back from his forehead, in nervous movement of decision. Chase turned,
half-way to the door, looking back at his bound boy with impatience.
"No need for you to be bashful. This is home for a good while to come,"
said he.
"I'm not so very bashful," Joe disclaimed, placing the little roll which
contained his one extra shirt on the wash-bench near the door, taking
off his hat, then, and standing serious and solemn before his new
master.
"Well, I don't want to stand here waitin' on you and dribble away the
day, for I've got work to do!" said Isom sourly.
"Yes, sir," said Joe, yielding the point respectfully, but standing his
ground; "but before I go across your doorstep, and sit at your table and
break bread with you, I want you to understand my position in this
matter."
"It's all settled between your mother and me," said Chase impatiently,
drawing down his bayoneted eyebrows in a frown, "there's no understanding
to come to between me and you--you've got nothing to say in the
transaction. You're bound out to me for two years and three months at ten
dollars a month and all found, and that settles it."
"No, it don't settle it," said Joe with rising heat; "it only begins it.
Before I put a bite in my mouth in this house, or set my hand to any
work on this place, I'm going to lay down the law to you, Mr. Chase, and
you're going to listen to it, too!"
"Now, Joe, you've got too much sense to try to stir up a row and rouse
hard feelin's between us at the start," said Isom, coming forward with
his soft-soap of flattery and crafty conciliation.
"If I hadn't 'a' known that you was the smartest boy of your age
anywhere around here, do you suppose I'd have taken you in this way?"
"You scared mother into it; you didn't give me a chance to say anything,
and you took an underhanded hold," charged Joe, his voice trembling with
scarce-controlled anger. "It wasn't right, Isom, it wasn't fair. You
know I could hire out any day for more than ten dollars a month, and you
know I'd never let mother go on the county as long as I was able to lift
a hand."
"Winter and summer through, Joe--you must consider that," argued Isom,
giving his head a twist which was meant to be illustrative of deep
wisdom.
"You knew she was afraid of being thrown on the county," said Joe, "you
sneaked in when I wasn't around and scared her up so she'd do most
anything."
"Well, you don't need to talk so loud," cautioned Isom, turning an
uneasy, cross look toward the door, from which the sound of a light step
fled.
"I'll talk loud enough for you to hear me, and understand what I mean,"
said Joe. "I could run off and leave you, Isom, if I wanted to, but
that's not my way. Mother made the bargain, I intend to live up to it,
and let her have what little benefit there is to be got out of it. But I
want you to know what I think of you at the start, and the way I feel
about it. I'm here to work for mother, and keep that old roof over her
head that's dearer to her than life, but I'm not your slave nor your
servant in any sense of the word."
"It's all the same to me," said Isom, dropping his sham front of
placation, lifting his finger to accent his words, "but you'll work,
understand that--you'll _work_!"
"Mother told me," said Joe not in the least disturbed by this glimpse of
Isom in his true guise, "that you had that notion in your mind, Isom.
She said you told her you could thrash me if you wanted to do it, but I
want to tell you----"
"It's the law," cut in Isom. "I can do it if I see fit."
"Well, don't ever try it," said Joe, drawing a long breath. "That was
the main thing I wanted to say to you, Isom--don't ever try that!"
"I never intended to take a swingle-tree to you, Joe," said Isom,
forcing his dry face into a grin. "I don't see that there ever need be
any big differences between me and you. You do what's right by me and
I'll do the same by you."
Isom spoke with lowered voice, a turning of the eyes toward the kitchen
door, as if troubled lest this defiance of his authority might have been
heard within, and the seeds of insubordination sown in another
bond-slave's breast.
"I'll carry out mother's agreement with you to the best of my ability,"
said Joe, moving forward as if ready now to begin.
"Then come on in and eat your breakfast," said Isom.
Isom led the way into the smoky kitchen, inwardly more gratified than
displeased over this display of spirit. According to the agreement
between them, he had taken under bond-service the Widow Newbolt's "minor
male child," but it looked to him as if some mistake had been made in
the delivery.
"He's a man!" exulted Isom in his heart, pleased beyond measure that he
had bargained better than he had known.
Joe put his lean brown hand into the bosom of his shirt and brought out
a queer, fat little book, leather-bound and worn of the corners. This he
placed on top of his bundle, then followed Chase into the kitchen where
the table was spread for breakfast.
Mrs. Chase was busy straining milk. She did not turn her head, nor give
the slightest indication of friendliness or interest in Joe as he took
the place pointed out by Chase. Chase said no word of introduction. He
turned his plate over with a businesslike flip, took up the platter
which contained two fried eggs and a few pieces of bacon, scraped off
his portion, and handed the rest to Joe.
In addition to the one egg each, and the fragments of bacon, there were
sodden biscuits and a broken-nosed pitcher holding molasses. A cup of
roiled coffee stood ready poured beside each plate, and that was the
breakfast upon which Joe cast his curious eyes. It seemed absurdly
inadequate to the needs of two strong men, accustomed as Joe was to four
eggs at a meal, with the stays of life which went with them in
proportion.
Mrs. Chase did not sit at the table with them, nor replenish the empty
platter, although Joe looked expectantly and hungrily for her to do so.
She was carrying pans of milk into the cellar, and did not turn her head
once in their direction during the meal.
Joe rose from the table hungry, and in that uneasy state of body began
his first day's labor on Isom Chase's farm. He hoped that dinner might
repair the shortcomings of breakfast, and went to the table eagerly when
that hour came.
For dinner there was hog-jowl and beans, bitter with salt, yellow with
salt, but apparently greatly to the liking of Isom, whose natural food
seemed to be the very essence of salt.
"Help yourself, eat plenty," he invited Joe.
Jowls and beans were cheap; he could afford to be liberal with that
meal. Generosity in regard to that five-year-old jowl cost him scarcely
a pang.
"Thank you," said Joe politely. "I'm doing very well."
A place was laid for Mrs. Chase, as at breakfast, but she did not join
them at the table. She was scalding milk crocks and pans, her face was
red from the steam. As she bent over the sink the uprising vapor moved
her hair upon her temples like a wind.
"Ain't you goin' to eat your dinner, Ollie?" inquired Isom with
considerable lightness, perhaps inspired by the hope that she was not.
"I don't feel hungry right now," she answered, bending over her steaming
pan of crocks.
Isom did not press her on the matter. He filled up his plate again with
beans and jowl, whacking the grinning jawbone with his knife to free the
clinging shreds of meat.
Accustomed as he had been all his life to salt fare, that meal was
beyond anything in that particular of seasoning that Joe ever had
tasted. The fiery demand of his stomach for liquid dilution of his
saline repast made an early drain on his coffee; when he had swallowed
the last bean that he was able to force down, his cup was empty. He cast
his eyes about inquiringly for more.
"We only drink one cup of coffee at a meal here," explained Isom, a
rebuke in his words for the extravagance of those whose loose habits
carried them beyond that abstemious limit.
"All right; I guess I can make out on that," said Joe.
There was a pitcher of water at his hand, upon which he drew heavily,
with the entire good-will and approbation of Isom. Then he took his hat
from the floor at his feet and went out, leaving Isom hammering again at
the jowl, this time with the handle of his fork, in the hope of
dislodging a bit of gristle which clung to one end.
Joe's hope leaped ahead to supper, unjustified as the flight was by the
day's developments. Human creatures could not subsist longer than a meal
or two on such fare as that, he argued; there must be a change very
soon, of course.
It was a heavy afternoon for Joe. He was weary from the absolute lack of
nourishment when the last of the chores was done long after dusk, and
Isom announced that they would go to the house for supper.
The supper began with soup, made from the left-over beans and the
hog's jaw of dinner. There it swam, that fleshless, long-toothed,
salt-reddened bone, the most hateful piece of animal anatomy that Joe
ever fixed his hungry eyes upon. And supper ended as it began; with
soup. There was nothing else behind it, save some hard bread to soak in
it, and its only savor was salt.
Isom seemed to be satisfied with, even cheered by, his liquid
refreshment. His wife came to her place at the table when they were
almost through, and sat stirring a bowl of the mixture of bread and thin
soup, her eyes set in abstracted stare in the middle of the table, far
beyond the work of her hands. She did not speak to Joe; he did not
undertake any friendly approaches.
Joe never had seen Mrs. Chase before that day, neighbors though they had
been for months. She appeared unusually handsome to Joe, with her fair
skin, and hair colored like ripe oats straw. She wore a plait of it as
big as his wrist coiled and wound around her head.
For a little while after finishing his unsatisfying meal, Joe sat
watching her small hand turning the spoon in her soup. He noted the
thinness of her young cheeks, in which there was no marvel, seeing the
fare upon which she was forced to live. She seemed to be unconscious of
him and Isom. She did not raise her eyes.
Joe got up in a little while and left them, going to the porch to look
for his bundle and his book. They were gone. He came back, standing
hesitatingly in the door.
"They're in your room upstairs," said Mrs. Chase without turning her
head to look at him, still leaning forward over her bowl.
"I'll show you where it is," Isom offered.
He led the way up the stairs which opened from the kitchen, carrying a
small lamp in his hand.
Joe's room was over the kitchen. It was bleak and bare, its black
rafters hung with spiderwebs, plastered with the nests of wasps. A
dormer window jutted toward the east like a hollow eye, designed, no
doubt, and built by Isom Chase himself, to catch the first gleam of
morning and throw it in the eyes of the sleeping hired-hand, whose bed
stood under it.
Isom came down directly, took his lantern, and went to the barn to look
after a new-born calf. Where there was profit, such as he counted it, in
gentleness, Isom Chase could be as tender as a mother. Kind words and
caresses, according to his experience, did not result in any more work
out of a wife so he spared them the young woman at the table, as he had
denied them the old one in her grave.
As Isom hurried out into the soft night, with a word about the calf,
Ollie made a bitter comparison between her lot and that of the animals
in the barn. Less than six months before that gloomy night she had come
to that house a bride, won by the prospect of ease and independence
which Chase had held out to her in the brief season of his adroit
courtship. The meanest men sometimes turn out to be the nimblest
cock-pheasants during that interesting period, and, like those vain
birds of the jungles, they strut and dance and cut dazzling capers
before the eyes of the ladies when they want to strike up a matrimonial
bargain.
Isom Chase had done that. He had been a surprising lover for a dry man
of his years, spurring around many a younger man in the contest for
Ollie's hand. Together with parental encouragement and her own vain
dreams, she had not found it hard to say the word that made her his
wife. But the gay feathers had fallen from him very shortly after their
wedding day, revealing the worm which they had hidden; the bright colors
of his courtship parade had faded like the fustian decorations of a
carnival in the rain.
Isom was a man of bone and dry skin, whose greed and penury had starved
his own soul. He had brought her there and put burdens upon her, with
the assurance that it would be only for a little while, until somebody
could be hired to take the work off her hands. Then he had advanced the
plea of hard times, when the first excuse had worn out; now he had
dropped all pretenses. She was serving, as he had married her to serve,
as he had brought her there in unrecompensed bondage to serve, and hope
was gone from her horizon, and her tears were undried upon her cheeks.
Isom had profited by a good day's work from Joe, and he had not been
obliged to drive him to obtain it. So he was in great spirits when he
came back from the barn, where he had found the calf coming on sturdily
and with great promise. He put out the lantern and turned the lamp down
a shade seeing that it was consuming a twentieth more oil than necessary
to light Ollie about her work. Then he sat down beside the table,
stretching his long legs with a sigh.
Ollie was washing the few dishes which had served for supper, moving
between table and sink with quick competence, making a neat figure in
the somber room. It was a time when a natural man would have filled his
pipe and brought out the weekly paper, or sat and gossiped a comfortable
hour with his wife. But Isom never had cheered his atrophied nerves with
a whiff of tobacco, and as for the county paper, or any paper whatever
except mortgages and deeds, Isom held all of them to be frauds and
extravagances which a man was better off without.
"Well, what do you think of the new hand?" asked Isom, following her
with his eyes.
"I didn't pay any particular notice to him," said she, her back toward
him as she stood scraping a pan at the sink.
"Did you hear what he said to me this morning when he was standin' there
by the steps?"
"No, I didn't hear," listlessly, indifferently.
"H'm--I thought you was listening."
"I just looked out to see who it was."
"No difference if you did hear, Ollie," he allowed generously--for Isom.
"A man's wife ought to share his business secrets, according to my way
of lookin' at it; she's got a right to know what's going on. Well, I
tell you that chap talked up to me like a man!"
Isom smacked his lips over the recollection. The promise of it was sweet
to his taste.
Ollie's heart stirred a little. She wondered if someone had entered that
house at last who would be able to set at defiance its stern decrees.
She hoped that, if so, this breach in the grim wall might let some
sunlight in time into her own bleak heart. But she said nothing to Isom,
and he talked on.
"I made a good pick when I lit on that boy," said he, with that old wise
twist of the head; "the best pick in this county, by a long shot. I
choose a man like I pick a horse, for the blood he shows. A blooded
horse will endure where a plug will fall down, and it's the same way
with a man. Ollie, don't you know that boy's got as good a strain in him
as you'll find in this part of the country?"
"I never saw him before today, I don't know his folks," said she,
apparently little interested in her husband's find.
Isom sat silent for a while, looking at the worn floor.
"Well, he's bound out to me for two years and more," said he, the
comfort of it in his hard, plain face. "I'll have a steady hand that I
can depend on now. That's a boy that'll do his duty; no doubt in my mind
about that. It may go against the grain once in a while, Ollie, like our
duty does for all of us sometimes; but, no matter how it tastes to him,
that boy Joe, he'll face it.
"He's not one of the kind that'll shirk on me when my back's turned, or
steal from me if he gets a chance, or betray any trust I put in him.
He's as poor as blue-John and as proud as Lucifer, but he's as straight
as the barrel of that old gun. He's got Kentucky blood in him, and the
best of it, too."
"He brought a funny little Bible with him," said Ollie in low voice, as
if communing with herself.
"Funny?" said Isom. "Is that so?"
"So little and fat," she explained. "I never saw one like it before. It
was there on the bench this morning with his bundle. I put it up by his
bed."
"Hum-m," said Isom reflectively, as if considering it deeply. Then:
"Well, I guess it's all right."
Isom sat a good while, fingering his stiff beard. He gave no surface
indication of the thoughts which were working within him, for he was
unlike those sentimental, plump, thin-skinned people who cannot conceal
their emotions from the world. Isom might have been dreaming of gain, or
he might have been contemplating the day of loss and panic, for all that
his face revealed. Sun and shadow alike passed over it, as rain and
blast and summer sun pass over and beat upon a stone, leaving no mark
behind save in that slow and painful wear which one must live a century
to note. He looked up at his wife at length, his hand still in his
beard, and studied her silently.
"I'm not a hard man, Ollie, like some people give me the name of being,"
he complained, with more gentleness in his voice than she had heard
since he was courting her. He still studied her, as if he expected her
to uphold common report and protest that he was hard and cruel-driving
in his way. She said nothing; Isom proceeded to give himself the good
rating which the world denied.
"I'm not half as mean as some envious people would make out, if they
could find anybody to take stock in what they say. If I'm not as
honey-mouthed as some, that's because I've got more sense than to
diddle-daddle my time away in words when there's so much to do. I'll
show you that I'm as kind at heart, Ollie, as any man in this county, if
you'll stand by me and do your part of what's to be done without black
looks and grumbles and growls.
"I'm a good many years older than you, and maybe I'm not as light-footed
and light-headed as you'd like a husband to be, but I've got weight to
me where it counts. I could buy out two-thirds of the young fellers in
this county, Ollie, all in a bunch."
"Yes, Isom, I guess you could," she allowed, a weary drag in her voice.
"I'll put a woman in to do the work here in the fall, when I make a turn
of my crops and money comes a little freer than it does right now," he
promised. "Interest on my loans is behind in a good many cases, and
there's no use crowdin' 'em to pay till they sell their wheat and hogs.
If I had the ready money in hand to pay wages, Ollie, I'd put a nigger
woman in here tomorrow and leave you nothing to do but oversee. You'll
have a fine easy time of it this fall, Ollie, when I turn my crops."
Ollie drained the dishpan and wrung out the cloths. These she hung on a
line to dry. Isom watched her with approval, pleased to see her so
housewifely and neat.
"Ollie, you've come on wonderful since I married you," said he. "When
you come here--do you recollect?--you couldn't hardly make a mess of
biscuits that was fit to eat, and you knew next to nothing about milk
and butter for all that you was brought up on a farm."
"Well, I've learned my lesson," said she, with a bitterness which passed
over Isom's head.
Her back was turned to him, she was reaching to hang a utensil on the
wall, so high above her head that she stood on tiptoe. Isom was not
insensible to the pretty lines of her back, the curve of her plump hips,
the whiteness of her naked arms. He smiled.
"Well, it's worth money to you to know all these things," said he, "and
I don't know but it's just as well for you to go on and do the work this
summer for the benefit of what's to be got out of it; you'll be all the
better able to oversee a nigger woman when I put one in, and all the
better qualified to take things into your own hands when I'm done and in
the grave. For I'll have to go, in fifteen or twenty years more," he
sighed.
Ollie made no reply. She was standing with her back still turned toward
him, stripping down her sleeves. But the sigh which she gave breath to
sounded loud in Isom's ears.
Perhaps he thought she was contemplating with concern the day when he
must give over his strivings and hoardings, and leave her widowed and
alone. That may have moved him to his next excess of generosity.
"I'm going to let Joe help you around the house a good deal, Ollie,"
said he. "He'll make it a lot easier for you this summer. He'll carry
the swill down to the hogs, and water 'em, and take care of the calves.
That'll save you a good many steps in the course of the day."
Ollie maintained her ungrateful silence. She had heard promises before,
and she had come to that point of hopelessness where she no longer
seemed to care. Isom was accustomed to her silences, also; it appeared
to make little difference to him whether she spoke or held her peace.
He sat there reflectively a little while; then got up, stretching his
arms, yawning with a noise like a dog.
"Guess I'll go to bed," said he.
He looked for a splinter on a stick of stove-wood, which he lit at the
stove and carried to his lamp. At the door he paused, turned, and looked
at Ollie, his hand, hovering like a grub curved beside the chimney,
shading the light from his eyes.
"So he brought a Bible, did he?"
"Yes."
"Well, he's welcome to it," said Isom. "I don't care what anybody that
works for me reads--just so long as he _works_!"
Isom's jubilation over his bondboy set his young wife's curiosity
astir. She had not noted any romantic or noble parts about the youth in
the casual, uninterested view which she had given him that day. To her
then he had appeared only a sprangling, long-bodied, long-legged,
bony-shouldered, unformed lad whose hollow frame indicated a great
capacity for food. Her only thought in connection with him had been
that it meant another mouth to dole Isom's slender allowance out to,
more scheming on her part to make the rations go round. It meant
another one to wash for, another bed to make.
She had thought of those things wearily that morning when she heard the
new voice at the kitchen door, and she had gone there for a moment to
look him over; for strange faces, even those of loutish farm-hands, were
refreshing in her isolated life. She had not heard what the lad was
saying to Isom, for the kitchen was large and the stove far away from
the door, but she had the passing thought that there was a good deal of
earnestness or passion in the harangue for a farm-hand to be laying on
his early morning talk.
When she found the Bible lying there on top of Joe's hickory shirt, she
had concluded that he had been talking religion. She hoped that he would
not preach at his meals. The only religion that Ollie knew anything of,
and not much of that, was a glum and melancholy kind, with frenzied
shoutings of the preacher in it, and portentous shaking of the beard in
the shudderful pictures of the anguish of unrepentant death. So she
hoped that he would not preach at his meals, for the house was sad
enough, and terrible and gloomily hopeless enough, without the kind of
religion that made the night deeper and the day longer in its dread.
Now Isom's talk about the lad's blood, and his expression of high
confidence in his fealty, gave her a pleasant topic of speculation. Did
good blood make men different from those who came of mongrel strain, in
other points than that of endurance alone? Did it give men nobility and
sympathy and loftiness, or was it something prized by those who hired
them, as Isom seemed to value it in Joe, because it lent strength to the
arms?
Ollie sat on the kitchen steps and turned all this over in her thoughts
after Isom had gone to bed.
Perhaps in the new bondboy, who had come there to serve with her, she
would find one with whom she might talk and sometimes ease her heart.
She hoped that it might be so, for she needed chatter and laughter and
the common sympathies of youth, as a caged bird requires the seed of its
wild life. There was hope in the new farm-hand which swept into her
heart like a refreshing breeze. She would look him over and sound him
when he worked, choring between kitchen and barn.
Ollie had been a poor man's child. Isom had chosen her as he would have
selected a breeding-cow, because nature, in addition to giving her a
form of singular grace and beauty, had combined therein the utilitarian
indications of ability to plentifully reproduce her kind. Isom wanted
her because she was alert and quick of foot, and strong to bear the
burdens of motherhood; for even in the shadow of his decline he still
held to the hope of his youth--that he might leave a son behind him to
guard his acres and bring down his name.
Ollie was no deeper than her opportunities of life had made her. She had
no qualities of self-development, and while she had graduated from a
high school and still had the ornate diploma among her simple treasures,
learning had passed through her pretty ears like water through a funnel.
It had swirled and choked there a little while, just long enough for her
to make her "points" required for passing, then it had sped on and left
her unencumbered and free.
Her mother had always held Ollie's beauty a greater asset than mental
graces, and this early appraisement of it at its trading value had made
Ollie a bit vain and ambitious to mate above her family. Isom Chase had
held out to her all the allurements of which she had dreamed, and she
had married him for his money. She had as well taken a stone to her soft
bosom in the hope of warming it into yielding a flower.
Isom was up at four o'clock next morning. A few minutes after him Ollie
stumbled down the stairs, heavy with the pain of broken sleep. Joe was
snoring above-stairs; the sound penetrated to the kitchen down the
doorless casement.
"Listen to that feller sawin' gourds!" said Isom crabbedly.
The gloom of night was still in the kitchen; in the corner where the
stove stood it was so dark that Ollie had to grope her way, yawning
heavily, feeling that she would willingly trade the last year of her
life for one more hour of sleep that moist spring morning.
Isom mounted the kitchen stairs and roused Joe, lumbering down again
straightway and stringing the milk-pails on his arms without waiting to
see the result of his summons.
"Send him on down to the barn when he's ready," directed Isom, jangling
away in the pale light of early day.
Ollie fumbled around in her dark corner for kindling, and started a fire
in the kitchen stove with a great rattling of lids. Perhaps there was
more alarm than necessary in this primitive and homely task, sounded
with the friendly intention of carrying a warning to Joe, who was making
no move to obey his master's call.
Ollie went softly to the staircase and listened. Joe's snore was
rumbling again, as if he traveled a heavy road in the land of dreams.
She did not feel that she could go and shake him out of his sleep and
warn him of the penalty of such remission, but she called softly from
where she stood:
"Joe! You must get up, Joe!"
But her voice was not loud enough to wake a bird. Joe slept on, like a
heavy-headed boor, and she went back to the stove to put the kettle on
to boil. The issue of his recalcitration must be left between him and
Isom. If he had good blood in him, perhaps he would fight when Isom
lifted his hand and beat him out of his sleep, she reflected, hoping
simply that it would turn out that way.
Isom came back to the house in frothing wrath a quarter of an hour
later. There was no need to ask about Joe, for the bound boy's nostrils
sounded his own betrayal.
Isom did not look at Ollie as he took the steep stairs four treads at a
step. In a moment she heard the sleeper's bed squeaking in its rickety
old joints as her husband shook him and cut short his snore in the
middle of a long flourish.
"Turn out of here!" shouted Isom in his most terrible voice--which was
to Ollie's ears indeed a dreadful sound--"turn out and git into your
duds!"
Ollie heard the old bed give an extra loud groan, as if the sleeper had
drawn himself up in it with suddenness; following that came the quick
scuffling of bare feet on the floor.
"Don't you touch me! Don't you lay hands on me!" she heard the bound boy
warn, his voice still husky with sleep.
"I'll skin you alive!" threatened Isom. "You've come here to work, not
to trifle your days away sleepin'. A good dose of strap-oil's what you
need, and I'm the man to give it to you, too!"
Isom's foot was heavy on the floor over her head, moving about as if in
search of something to use in the flagellation. Ollie stood with hands
to her tumultuous bosom, pity welling in her heart for the lad who was
to feel the vigor of Isom's unsparing arm.
There was a lighter step upon the floor, moving across the room like a
sudden wind. The bound boy's voice sounded again, clear now and steady,
near the top of the stairs where Isom stood.
"Put that down! Put that down, I tell you!" he commanded. "I warned you
never to lift your hand against me. If you hit me with that I'll kill
you in your tracks!"
Ollie's heart leaped at the words; hot blood came into her face with a
surge. She clasped her hands to her breast in new fervor, and lifted her
face as one speeding a thankful prayer. She had heard Isom Chase
threatened and defied in his own house, and the knowledge that one lived
with the courage to do what she had longed to do, lifted her heart and
made it glad.
She heard Isom growl something in his throat, muffled and low, which she
could not separate into words.
"Well, then, I'll let it pass--this time," said Joe. "But don't you ever
do it any more. I'm a heavy sleeper sometimes, and this is an hour or
two earlier than I am used to getting up; but if you'll call me loud
enough, and talk like you were calling a man and not a dog, you'll have
no trouble with me. Now get out of here!"
Ollie could have shouted in the triumph of that moment. She shared the
bound boy's victory and exulted in his high independence. Isom had
swallowed it like a coward; now he was coming down the stairs, snarling
in his beard, but his knotted fist had not enforced discipline; his
coarse, distorted foot had not been lifted against his new slave. She
felt that the dawn was breaking over that house, that one had come into
it who would ease her of its terrors.
Joe came along after Isom in a little while, slipping his suspenders
over his lank shoulders as he went out of the kitchen door. He did not
turn to Ollie with the morning's greetings, but held his face from her
and hurried on, she thought, as if ashamed.
Ollie ran to the door on her nimble toes, the dawn of a smile on her
face, now rosy with its new light, and looked after him as he hurried
away in the brightening day. She stood with her hands clasped in
attitude of pleasure, again lifting her face as if to speed a prayer.
"Oh, thank God for a _man_!" said she.
Isom was in a crabbed way at breakfast, sulky and silent. But his evil
humor did not appear to weigh with any shadow of trouble on Joe, who ate
what was set before him like a hungry horse and looked around for more.
Ollie's interest in Joe was acutely sharpened by the incident of rising.
There must be something uncommon, indeed, in a lad of Joe's years, she
thought, to enable him to meet and pass off such a serious thing in that
untroubled way. As she served the table, there being griddle-cakes of
cornmeal that morning to flank the one egg and fragments of rusty bacon
each, she studied the boy's face carefully. She noted the high, clear
forehead, the large nose, the fineness of the heavy, black hair which
lay shaggy upon his temples. She studied the long hands, the grave line
of his mouth, and caught a quick glimpse now and then of his large,
serious gray eyes.
Here was an uncommon boy, with the man in him half showing; Isom was
right about that. Let it be blood or what it might, she liked him. Hope
of the cheer that he surely would bring into that dark house quickened
her cheek to a color which had grown strange to it in those heavy
months.
Joe's efforts in the field must have been highly satisfactory to Isom
that forenoon, for the master of the house came to the table at
dinner-time in quite a lively mood. The morning's unpleasantness seemed
to have been forgotten. Ollie noticed her husband more than once during
the meal measuring Joe's capabilities for future strength with
calculating, satisfied eyes. She sat at the table with them, taking
minute note of Joe at closer range, studying him curiously, awed a
little by the austerity of his young face, and the melancholy of his
eyes, in which there seemed to lie the concentrated sorrow of many
forebears who had suffered and died with burdens upon their hearts.
"Couldn't you manage to pick us a mess of dandelion for supper, Ollie?"
asked Isom. "I notice it's comin' up thick in the yard."
"I might, if I could find the time," said Ollie.
"Oh, I guess you'll have time enough," said Isom, severely.
Her face grew pale; she lowered her head as if to hide her fear from
Joe.
"Cook it with a jowl," ordered Isom; "they go fine together, and it's
good for the blood."
Joe was beginning to yearn forward to Sunday, when he could go home to
his mother for a satisfying meal, of which he was sharply feeling the
need. It was a mystery to him how Isom kept up on that fare, so scant
and unsatisfying, but he reasoned that it must be on account of there
being so little of him but gristle and bone.
Joe looked ahead now to the term of his bondage under Isom; the prospect
gave him an uneasy concern. He was afraid that the hard fare and harder
work would result in stunting his growth, like a young tree that has
come to a period of drought green and promising, and stands checked and
blighted, never again to regain the hardy qualities which it needs to
raise it up into the beauty of maturity.
The work gave him little concern; he knew that he could live and put on
strength through that if he had the proper food. So there would have to
be a change in the fare, concluded Joe, as he sat there while Isom
discussed the merits of dandelion and jowl. It would have to come very
early in his term of servitude, too. The law protected the bondman in
that, no matter how far it disregarded his rights and human necessities
in other ways. So thinking, he pushed away from the table and left the
room.
Isom drank a glass of water, smacked his dry lips over its excellencies,
the greatest of them in his mind being its cheapness, and followed it by
another.
"Thank the Lord for water, anyhow!" said he.
"Yes, there's plenty of that," said Ollie meaningly.
Isom was as thick-skinned as he was sapless. Believing that his
penurious code was just, and his frugality the first virtue of his life,
he was not ashamed of his table, and the outcast scraps upon it. But he
looked at his young wife with a sharp drawing down of his spiked brows
as he lingered there a moment, his cracked brown hands on the edge of
the table, which he had clutched as he pushed his chair back. He seemed
about to speak a rebuke for her extravagance of desire. The frown on his
face foreshadowed it, but presently it lifted, and he nodded shrewdly
after Joe.
"Give him a couple of eggs mornings after this," said he, "they've fell
off to next to nothing in price, anyhow. And eat one yourself once in a
while, Ollie. I ain't one of these men that believe a woman don't need
the same fare as a man, once on a while, anyhow."
His generous outburst did not appear to move his wife's gratitude. She
did not thank him by word or sign. Isom drank another glass of water,
rubbed his mustache and beard back from his lips in quick, grinding
twists of his doubled hand.
"The pie-plant's comin' out fast," said he, "and I suppose we might as
well eat it--nothing else but humans will eat it--for there's no sale
for it over in town. Seems like everybody's got a patch of it nowadays.
"Well, it's fillin', as the old woman said when she swallowed her
thimble, and that boy Joe he's going to be a drain on me to feed, I can
see that now. I'll have to fill him up on something or other, and I
guess pie-plant's about as good as anything. It's cheap."
"Yes, but it takes sugar," ventured Ollie, rolling some crumbs between
her fingers.
"You can use them molasses in the blue barrel," instructed Isom.
"It's about gone," said she.
"Well, put some water in the barrel and slosh it around--it'll come out
sweet enough for a mess or two."
Isom got up from the table as he gave these economic directions, and
stood a moment looking down at his wife.
"Don't you worry over feedin' that feller, Ollie," he advised. "I'll
manage that. I aim to keep him stout--I never saw a stouter feller for
his age than Joe--for I'm goin' to git a pile of work out of him the
next two years. I saw you lookin' him over this morning," said he,
approvingly, as he might have sanctioned her criticism of a new horse,
"and I could see you was lightin' on his points. Don't you think he's
all I said he was?"
"Yes," she answered, a look of abstraction in her eyes, her fingers busy
with the crumbs on the cloth, "all you said of him--_and more_!"