After supper King left his mother and step-sisters removing the dishes
from the table and went out. He was sickened to the depths of his
sensitive soul by the sordid meal he had just seen the family partake of
with evident relish, as if it were of unusual occurrence. And he was
angry with himself, too, for feeling so, when such a life had been their
lot so long.
He crossed the little brook that ran on a bed of brown stone behind the
cabin, and leaned against the rail-fence which surrounded the pine-pole
corn-crib. He could easily leave them in their squalor and ignorance and
return to the great, intellectual world--the world which read his
editorials and followed his precepts, the key-note of which had always
been the love of man for man as the greatest force in the universe--but,
after all, would that not stamp him with the brand he most
despised--hypocrisy? A pretty preacher, he, of such fine-spun theories,
while his own mother and her step-children were burrowing in the soil
like eyeless animals, and he living on the fat of the land along with
the wealth and power of the country!
The cabin door shone out, a square of red light against the blackness of
the hill and the silent, serried pines beyond. He heard Jake whistling a
tune he had whistled long ago, when they had worked Mark Bruce's crop
side by side, and the spasmodic creaking of the puncheons as the family
moved about within.
A figure appeared in the doorway. It was his mother, and she was coming
to search for him.
"Here I am, mother!" he cried out, gently, as she advanced through the
darkness; "look out and don't get your feet wet."
She chuckled childishly as she stepped across the brook on the largest
stones. When she reached him she put her hand on his arm and laughed:
"La me, boy, a little wet won't hurt me--I'm used to a good soakin'
mighty nigh every drenchin' rain. I slept with a stream of it tricklin'
through the roof on my back one night, an' I've milched the cows in that
thar lot when the mire was shoe-mouth deep in January. I 'lowed I'd find
you out here. You used to be a mighty hand to sneak off to yoreself to
study, and you are still that away. But you are different in some
things, too. You don't talk our way exactly, an' I reckon that's what
aggravates Mark. He was goin' on jest now about yore stuck-up way o'
eatin with yore pocket-handkerchief spread out in yore lap."
King looked past her at the full moon rising above the trees on the
mountain-top.
"Mother," said he, abruptly, and he put his arm impulsively around her
neck, and his eyes filled--"mother, I can't stay here but a few days. I
have work to do in Atlanta. Your health is bad, and you are not
comfortable; the others are strong and can stand it, but you can't. Come
down there with me for a while, anyway. I'll put you under a doctor and
bring back your health."
She looked up into his eyes steadily for a moment, then she slapped him
playfully on the breast and drew away from him. "How foolish you talk
fer a grown-up man!" she laughed; "why, you know I can't leave Mark and
the children. He'd go stark crazy 'thout me around to grumble at, an'
then the rest ud be without my advice an' counsel. La me, what makes you
think I ain't comfortable? This cabin is a sight better 'n the last one
we had, an' drier an' a heap warmer inside when fire-wood kin be got.
Hard times like these now is likely to come at any time an' anywhar. It
strikes rich an' pore alike. Thar's Dickerson offerin' that fine old
farm, with all the improvements, fer a mere song to raise money to go
into business whar he kin hope to pay out o' debt. They say now that the
place--lock, stock, and barrel--kin be had fer ten thousand. Why, when
you was a boy he would have refused twenty. Now, ef we-all had it
instead o' him, Mark an' Jake could make it pay like rips, fer they are
hard workers."
"You think they could, mother?" His heart bounded suddenly, and he stood
staring thoughtfully into her eyes.
"Pay?--of course they could. Fellers that could keep a roof over a
family's head on what they've had to back 'em could get rich on a place
like that. But, la me, what's the use o' pore folks thinkin' about the
property o' the rich an' lucky? It's like dreamin' you are a queen at
night an' wakin' up in hunger an' rags."
"I remember the farm and the old house very well," King remarked,
reflectively, the queer light still in his earnest eyes.
"The _old_ one! Huh, Dickerson got on a splurge the year you left, an'
built a grand new one with some money from his wife's estate. He turned
the old one into a big barn an' stable an' gin. You must see the new
house 'fore you go away, Luke. It's jest splendid, with green blinds to
the winders, a fancy spring-house with a tin rooster on top that p'ints
the way the wind blows, and on high stilts like thar's a big tank and a
windmill to keep the house supplied with water. I hain't never been in
it, but they say they've got wash-tubs long enough to lie down in handy
to every sleepin'-room, and no end of fancy contraptions."
"We'd better go in, mother," he said, abruptly. "You'll catch your death
of cold out here in the dew."
She laughed as they walked back to the cabin, side by side. A thick
smoke and its unpleasant odor met them at the door.
"It's Mark burnin' rags inside to oust the mosquitoes so he kin sleep,"
she explained. "They are wuss this year than I ever seed 'em. Seems like
the general starvation has tackled them, too, fer they look like they
will eat a body up whether or no. Jake an' the gals grease their faces
with lamp-oil when they have any, but I jest kiver up my head with a rag
an' never know they are about. I reckon we'd better go to bed. Jake has
fixed him a pallet on the fodder in the loft, so you kin lie by
yoreself. He's been jowerin' at his pa ever since supper about treatin'
you so bad. I thought once they'd come to blows."
The next morning, after breakfast, Jake threw a bag of shelled corn on
the back of his mare, and, mounting upon it as if it were a saddle, he
started off down the valley to the mill, and his father shouldered an
axe and went up on the hill to cut wood.
"Whar you going?" Mrs. Bruce asked, as she followed Luke to the door.
His eyes fell to the ground. "I thought," he answered, "that I'd walk
over to the Dickerson farm and take a look at the improvements. I used
to hunt over that land."
"Well, whatever you do, be sure you get back to dinner," she said. "Me
an' Jane took a torch last night after you went to bed an' blinded a hen
on the roost and pulled her down; I'm goin' to make you an' old-time
chicken-pie like you used to love on Christmas."
Half a mile up the road, which ran along the side of the hill from which
the slow, reverberating clap, clap of Mark Bruce's axe came on the still
air, King came into view of the rich, level lands of the Dickerson
plantation. He stood in the shade of a tall poplar and looked
thoughtfully at the lush green meadows, the well-tilled fields of corn,
cotton, and sorghum, and the large, two-storied house, with its
dormer-windows, tall, fluted columns, and broad verandas--at the
well-arranged out-houses, barns, and stables, and the white-gravelled
drives and walks from the house to the main road. Then he turned and
looked back at the cabin--the home of his nearest kin.
The house was hardly discernible in the gray morning mist that lingered
over the little vale in which it stood. He saw Jake, far away, riding
along, in and out, among the sassafras and sumach bushes that bordered a
worn-out wheat-field, his long legs dangling at the sides of the mare.
There was a bent, blurred figure at the wood-pile in the yard; it was
his mother or one of the girls.
"Poor souls!" he exclaimed; "they have been in a dreary tread-mill all
their lives, and have never known the joy of one gratified ambition. If
only I could conquer my own selfish desires, I could lay before them
that which they never dreamed of possessing--a glorious taste of genuine
happiness. It would take my last dollar of ready money, but I'd still
have my interest in the new paper and this brain and will of mine. Aunt
Ann would never see it my way, and she might throw me over for doing it,
but why shouldn't I? Why shouldn't I do it when my very soul cries out
for it? Why have I been preaching this thing all this time and making
converts right and left if I am to draw back the first time a real
opportunity confronts me? It may be to test my mettle. Yes, that's what
it is. I've got to do one or the other--keep the money--or give it to
them."