The Battle Ground Part 30

The woman beamed upon him, as women always did, and while she led the way into the little dining room, and set out the cold meat and bread upon the oil-cloth covering of the table, she asked him eager questions about the Major and Mrs. Lightfoot, which he aroused himself to parry with a tired laugh. She was tall and thin, with a wrinkled brown face, and a row of curl papers about her forehead. Her faded calico wrapper hung loosely over her nightgown, and he saw her bare feet through the cracks in her worn-out leather slippers.

"The poor young gentleman is all but dead," she said at last. "You give him his supper, Jack, and I'll go right up to fix his room. To think of his walkin' ten miles in the pitch blackness--the poor young gentleman."

She went out, her run down slippers flapping on the stair, and Dan, as he ate his ham and bread, listened impatiently to the drawling voice of Jack Hicks, who discussed the condition of the country while he drew apple cider from a keg into a white china pitcher. As he talked, his fat face shone with a drowsy good-humour, and his puffed lids winked sleepily over his expressionless blue eyes. He moved heavily as if his limbs were forever coming in the way of his intentions.

"Yes, suh, I never was one of them folks as ain't satisfied unless they're always a-fussin'," he remarked, as he placed the pitcher upon the table.

"Thar's a sight of them kind in these here parts, but I ain't one of 'em.

Lord, Lord, I tell 'em, befo' you git ready to jump out of the fryin' pan, you'd better make mighty sure you ain't fixin' to land yo'self in the fire.

That's what I always had agin these here abolitionists as used to come pokin' round here--they ain't never learned to set down an' cross thar hands, an' leave the Lord to mind his own business. Bless my soul, I reckon they'd have wanted to have a hand in that little fuss of Lucifer's if they'd been alive--that's what I tell 'em, suh. An' now thar's all this talk about the freein' of the n.i.g.g.e.rs--free? What are they goin' to do with 'em after they're done set 'em free? Ain't they the sons of Ham? I ask 'em; an' warn't they made to be servants of servants like the Bible says? It's a bold man that goes plum agin the Bible, and flies smack into the face of G.o.d Almighty--it's a bold man, an' he ain't me, suh. What I say is, if the Lord can stand it, I reckon the rest of the country--"

He paused to draw breath, and Dan laid down his knife and fork and pushed back his chair. "Before you begin again, Jack," he said coolly, "will you spare enough wind to carry me upstairs?"

"That's what I tell 'em," pursued Jack amiably, as he lighted a candle and led the way into the hall. "They used to come down here every once in a while an' try to draw me out; and one of 'em 'most got a coat of tar an'

feathers for meddlin' with my man Lacy; but if the Lord--here we are, here we are."

He stopped upon the landing and opened the door of a long room, in which Mrs. Hicks was putting the last touches to the bed. She stopped as Dan came in, and by the pale flicker of a tallow candle stood looking at him from the threshold. "If you'll jest knock on the floor when you wake up, I'll know when to send yo' hot water," she said, "and if thar's anything else you want, you can jest knock agin."

With a smile he thanked her and promised to remember; and then as she went out into the hall, he bolted the door, and threw himself into a chair beside the window. Sleep had quite deserted him, and the dawn was on the mountains when at last he lay down and closed his eyes.

XI

AT MERRY OAKS TAVERN

Upon awaking his first thought was that he had got "into a deucedly uncomfortable fix," and when he stretched out his hand from the bedside the need of fresh clothes appeared less easy to be borne than the more abstract wreck of his career. For the first time he clearly grasped some outline of his future--a future in which a change of linen would become a luxury; and it was with smarting eyes and a nervous tightening of the throat that he glanced about the long room, with its whitewashed walls, and told himself that he had come early to the end of his ambition. In the ill-regulated tenor of his thoughts but a hair's breadth divided a.s.surance from despair.

Last night the vaguest hope had seemed to be a certainty; to-day his fat acres and the st.u.r.dy slaves upon them had vanished like a dream, and the building of his fortunes had become suddenly a very different matter from the rearing of airy castles along the road.

As he lay there, with his strong white hands folded upon the quilt, his eyes went beyond the little lattice at the window, and rested upon the dark gray chain of mountains over which the white clouds sailed like birds.

Somewhere nearer those mountains he knew that Cheric.o.ke was standing under the clouded sky, with the half-bared elms knocking night and day upon the windows. He could see the open doors, through which the wind blew steadily, and the crooked stair down which his mother had come in her careless girlhood.

It seemed to him, lying there, that in this one hour he had drawn closer into sympathy with his mother, and when he looked up from his pillow, he half expected to see her merry eyes bending over him, and to feel her thin and trembling hand upon his brow. His old wors.h.i.+p of her awoke to life, and he suffered over again the moment in his childhood when he had called her and she had not answered, and they had pushed him from the room and told him she was dead. He remembered the clear white of her face, with the violet shadows in the hollows; and he remembered the baby lying as if asleep upon her bosom. For a moment he felt that he had never grown older since that day--that he was still a child grieving for her loss--while all the time she was not dead, but stood beside him and smiled down upon his pillow. Poor mother, with the merry eyes and the bitter mouth.

Then as he looked the face grew younger, though the smile did not change, and he saw that it was Betty, after all--Betty with the tenderness in her eyes and the motherly yearning in her outstretched arms. The two women he loved were forever blended in his thoughts, and he dimly realized that whatever the future made of him, he should be moulded less by events than by the hands of these two women. Events might subdue, but love alone could create the spirit that gave him life.

There was a tap at his door, and when he arose and opened it, Mrs. Hicks handed in a pitcher of hot water and inquired "if he had recollected to knock upon the floor?"

He set the water upon the table, and after he had dressed brushed hopelessly, with a trembling hand, at the dust upon his clothes. Then he went to the window and stood gloomily looking down among the great oak trees to the strip of yard where a pig was rooting in the acorns.

A small porch ran across the entrance to the inn, and Jack Hicks was already seated on it, with a pipe in his mouth, and his feet upon the railing. His drowsy gaze was turned upon the woodpile hard by, where an old negro slave was chopping aimlessly into a new pine log, and a black urchin gathering chips into a big split basket. At a little distance the Hopeville stage was drawn out under the trees, the empty shafts lying upon the ground, and on the box a red and black rooster stood crowing. Overhead there was a dull gray sky, and the scene, in all its ugliness, showed stripped of the redeeming grace of lights and shadows.

Jack Hicks, smoking on his porch, presented a picture of bodily comfort and philosophic ease of mind. He was owner of some rich acres, and his possessions, it was said, might have been readily doubled had he chosen to barter for them the peace of perfect inactivity. To do him justice the idea had never occurred to him in the light of a temptation, and when a neighbour had once remarked in his hearing that he "reckoned Jack would rather lose a dollar than walk a mile to fetch it," he had answered blandly, and without embarra.s.sment, that "a mile was a goodish stretch on a sandy road." So he sat and dozed beneath his st.u.r.dy oaks, while his wife went ragged at the heels and his swarm of tow-headed children rolled contentedly with the pigs among the acorns.

Dan was still looking moodily down into the yard, when he heard a gentle pressure upon the handle of his door, and as he turned, it opened quickly and Big Abel, bearing a large white bundle upon his shoulders, staggered into the room.

"Ef'n you'd des let me knowed hit, I could er brung a bigger load," he 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--G.o.d 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.