The Earth Trembled Part 6

Again the guest was bubbling over with good-natured merriment. "We ain't got to de las' crus' yit, an' I couldn't make my dinneh on a crus' nohow.

Dar's one ting I'se jes' got to 'sist on in de pahnas.h.i.+p. I don't keer notin' 'bout 'count books and sich, but ef we'se gwine to make a fort'n you got to hab a heap o' po'er in you'se arms. You got to hab a strong back and feel peart all ober. Dis de ony ting I 'sist on. Now how you gwine to be plump and strong?"

"Oh, I'm pretty strong, and I'll get stronger now that I have hope, and see my way a little."

"Hope am bery good fer 'sert, honey, but we want somep'n solider to start in on. You jes' set de table in de oder room, an' I'll be de brack raben dat'll pervide. Now you must min' kase I'se doing 'cording to Scripter, an' we neber hab no luck 'tall if we go agin Scripter."

"Very well," said Mara, laughing, "you shall have your own way. I see through all your talk, but I know you'll feel bad if you can't carry out your purpose. You'll have a better dinner, too."

"Yeh, yeh, she knows a heap moah'n me," thought Aun' Sheba when alone, "but I know some tings too, bress her heart. I kin see dat her cheeks am pale and thin an' dat her eyes am gettin' so big and brack dat her purty face am like a little house wid big winders. She got quality blood in her vein, shuah, but habn't got neah 'nuff. Heah's de 'terial wat gibs hope sometimes better'n preachin," and she whipped out the steak and prepared it for the broiler. Then she clapped some potatoes into the oven, threw together the const.i.tuents of light biscuit, and put the coffee over the fire. A natural born cook, she was deft and quick, and had a substantial repast ready in an amazingly short time. Soon it was smoking on the table, and then she said with a significant little nod at Mara, "Now I'se gwine to wait on Missus like ole times."

Mara understood her and did not protest, for she felt the necessity of humoring her aunt, who quite thawed out at the semblance of her former state. While the poor lady enlarged on the thought that such should be the normal condition of affairs, and would be if the world were not wholly out of joint, she nevertheless dined so heartily as to prove that she could still enjoy the good things of life if they were provided without personal compromise on her part. Mara made a silent note of this, and felt more strongly than ever that her aunt's needs and not her words must control her actions. After dinner she said, "Come, aunty, you have had much to try your nerves of late, and there must be much more not in harmony with your feelings. It can't be helped, but I absolve you of all responsibility, and I know very well if you had what was once your own, I would not have to raise my hand. You see I am not seeking relief in the way that is so utterly distasteful to you, and, when you come to think this plan all over, you will admit that it is the one that would attract the least attention, and involve the least change. Now lie down and take a good rest this afternoon."

"Well," said Mrs. Hunter, with the air of one yielding a great deal, "I will submit, even though I can not approve, on the one condition that you have nothing more to say to Mr. Clancy."

A painful flush overspread Mara's features, and she replied in a constrained voice, "You will have no occasion to worry about Mr. Clancy.

After--" then remembering that Aunt Sheba was within ear-shot, she concluded, "Mr. Clancy will have nothing to say to me when he knows what is taking place. When you have thought it over you will see that my plan makes me independent of every one."

"That is, if you succeed," remarked Mrs. Hunter, "and it will be about the only thing to be said in its favor."

This degree of toleration obtained, Mara prepared to join Aunt Sheba in the kitchen, with the purpose of giving her whole thought and energy to the securing of an independence, now coveted more than ever. In spite of the influences and misapprehensions of her life which had tended to separate her from Clancy, when she fully learned that he was affiliating with those who dwelt as aliens in her thoughts, she had been overborne by his words and the promptings of her own heart. She was glad, indeed, that she had not revealed what she now regarded as her weakness, feeling that it would have complicated matters most seriously. While she had been compelled to see the folly of seclusion and inaction, the natural result of a morbid pride which blinds as well as paralyzes, she was by no means ready to accept his views or go to his lengths. She would have shared poverty with him gladly if he would continue to be "a true Southerner," in other words, one who submitted in cold and unrelenting protest to the new order of things. In accepting this new order, and in availing himself of it to advance his fortunes and those of his State as he also claimed, he alienated her in spite of all his arguments, and his avowed love. She felt that he should take the ground with her that they had suffered too deeply, and had been wronged too greatly, to ignore the past. They were a conquered people, but so were the Poles and Alsatians. Were those subject races ready to take the hands that had struck them and still held them in thraldom? Their indignant enmity was patriotism, not hate. Now that the habitual thoughts of her life had been given time to resume their control, she felt all the more bitterly what seemed a hopeless separation. The North had not only robbed her of kindred and property, but was now taking her lover. She knew she loved him, yet not for the sake of her love would she be false to her deep-rooted feelings and convictions. If he had seen how nearly she yielded to _him_, not to his views, the previous evening, it would have been doubly hard to show him in the end that she could never share in his life, unless he adopted her att.i.tude of pa.s.sive submission to what could not be helped.

Others might do as they pleased, but their dignity and personal memories required this position, and, as she had said to him, she could take no other course without hypocrisy, revolting alike to her feelings and sense of honor. His strong words, however, combining with the circ.u.mstances of her lot, had broken the spell of her aunt's influence, and had planted in her mind the thought that any useless suffering on her part was not loyalty to the memory of her father and mother. Her new impulse was to make the most and best of her life as far as she could conscientiously: and the hope would a.s.sert itself that if she were firm he would eventually be won over to her position. "If he loves as I do," she thought, "he will be. He, no doubt, is sincere, but he has been beguiled into seeing things in the light of his immediate interests. Love to me, if it is genuine, and loyalty to the cause for which his father gave his life, should lead him to the dignified submission of the conquered and away from all a.s.sociation with the conquerors that can be avoided. I'll prove to him," was her mental conclusion, accompanied with a flash of her dark eyes, "that a girl ignorant of the world and its ways, and with the help only of a former slave, can earn her bread, and thus show him how needless are his Northern allies."

Thoughts like these had been swiftly coursing through her mind while dining, and therefore, when she joined Aun' Sheba in the kitchen, she was ready to employ every faculty, sharpened to the utmost, in the tasks before her.

In that humble arena, and by the prosaic method contemplated, she would a.s.sert her unsubdued spirit, and maintain a consistency which should not be marred, even at the bidding of love, by an insincere acceptance of his views and a.s.sociations.

CHAPTER VIII

NEVER FORGET; NEVER FORGIVE

While Ann' Sheba finished her dinner Mara began to open and put in their places the slender materials which she had purchased as her first step toward self-support. The generous meal, and especially the coffee combining with the strong incentive of her purpose, gave elasticity to her step and flushed her face slightly with color. The old aunty watched her curiously and sympathetically as she thought, "Bress her heart how purty she am, bendin' heah an' dar like a willow an' lookin' de lady ebery inch while she doin' kitchen work! Quar pahner fer sech an ole woman as me ter hab, but I dun declar dat her han's, ef dey am little, seem po'ful smart.

Dey takes hole on tings jes' as if dey'd coax 'em right along whar she wants dem!" Then she broke out, "Wot a fool dat Owen Clancy am!"

Mara started and was suddenly busy in a distant part of the room. "I reckon you are the only one that thinks so, Aun' Sheba," she remarked quietly.

"Ef he could see you now he'd tink so hisself."

"Very likely," and there was a little bitterness in Mara's accent.

"De mo' fool he be den," said Aun' Sheba with an indignant toss of her head. "Whar ud his eyes be ef he could see you and not go down on his marrow-bones, I'd like to know? Habn't I seen all de quality ob dis town?

and dat fer de new quality," with a snap of her fingers, "an you take de s.h.i.+ne off'n dem all eben in de kitchen. Law sakes, what kin' ob blood dat man Clancy hab to lebe you kase you po'? Pears ter me de ole cun'l, his fader, ud be orful figety in his coffin."

"Mr. Clancy has not left me because I am poor, Aun' Sheba," said Mara gravely. "You do him great injustice. We are not so good friends as we were simply because we cannot agree on certain subjects. But I would rather you would not talk about him to me or to any one else. Come now, you must give me some lessons in your mystery of making cakes that melt in one's mouth. Otherwise people will say you are growing old and losing your high art."

"Dey better not tell me no sech lies. Law, Missy, you is gwine ter beat me all holler wen onst you gits de hang ob de work. You little white han's gib fancy teches dat ain't in my big black han'. Arter all, tain't de han's; it's de min'. Dere's my darter Mis Watson. Neber could larn her much mo'n plain cookin'. Dere's a knack at dese tings dat's bawn in one.

It's wot you granpa used ter call genus, an' you allus hab it, eben when you was a chile an' want ter muss in de kitchen."

Thus full of reminiscence and philosophy eminently satisfactory to her own mind, Aun' Sheba taught her apt and eager pupil the secrets of her craft.

Mara was up with the dawn on the following day, and achieved fair success.

Other lessons followed, and it was not very long before the girl pa.s.sed beyond the imitative stage and began to reason upon the principles involved in her work and then to experiment.

One day an old customer said to Aun' Sheba: "There's a new hand at the bellows."

"Dunno not'n 'bout bellus. Ain't de cakes right?"

"Well, then, you've got some new receipts."

"Like a'nuff I hab," said the vender warily. "De pint am, howsumeber, isn't de cakes good?"

"Yes, they seem better every day, but they are not the same every day. I reckon some one's coaching you."

"Law sakes, Ma.s.sa, wo't you mean by coachin' me?"

"Do you make the cakes?" was asked pointblank.

"Now, Ma.s.sa, you's gittin' too cur'us. Wot de Scripter say? Ask no questions fer conscience' sake."

"Come, come, Aun' Sheba; if you begin to wrest Scripture, I'll take pains to find you out."

She shuffled away in some trepidation and shook her head over the problem of keeping her relations with Mara secret. "Missy puttin' her min' in de cakes an' I didn't hab much min' to put in an' folks know de dif'ence,"

she soliloquized. Later on she was down among the cotton warehouses, and finding herself weary and warm, stopped to rest in the shade of a building. Suddenly Owen Clancy turned the corner. His brow was contracted as if in deep and not agreeable thought.

Aun' Sheba's lowered at him, for he seemed about to pa.s.s her without noticing her. The moment he became aware of her presence, however, he stopped and fixed upon her his penetrating gray eyes. His gaze was so persistent and stern that she was disconcerted, but she spoke with her accustomed a.s.surance: "You ain't gwine ter call de perlice, is you, Mars'

Clancy?" and she placed her arms akimbo on her hips.

This reference was shrewd, for it reminded him that his grievance was purely personal and one that he could not resent in her case, yet his heart was so sore with the suspicion that Mara was looking to this negress for help instead of to himself, that for the time being he detested the woman. Love is not a judicial quality, and rarely has patience with those who interfere with its success. He had hoped that eventually the pressure of poverty would turn Mara's thoughts to him, especially as he had revealed so emphatically his wish to help her disinterestedly as a friend even; but if his present fears were well grounded, he would have to admit that her heart had grown utterly cold toward him.

"Why should you think of the police, Aun' Sheba, unless you have something on your mind?" he asked, coolly removing the cover of the basket and helping himself. "You didn't make these cakes. Did you steal them?"

"Ma.r.s.e Clancy, what you take me fer?"

"That depends on how honest your answers are."'

"I ain't 'bliged ter answer 'tall."

"Oh, you're afraid then."

"No, I ain't afeerd. Ef dey is stolen, you'se a 'ceivin ob stolen goods, fum de way dem cakes dis'pearin'."

"You're pert, Aun'Sheba."

"Oh co'se I'se peart. Hab to be spry to arn a libin' in dese yer times, but I can do it fum dem dat's fren'ly and not fum dem dat glower at me."