_ When Christopher left Blake Hall, he swung vigorously in the
twilight across the newly ploughed fields, until, at the end of a
few minutes' walk, he reached the sunken road that branched off
by the abandoned ice-pond. Here the bullfrogs were still croaking
hoarsely, and far away over the gray-green rushes a dim moon was
mounting the steep slope of bluish sky.
The air was fresh with the scent of the upturned earth, and the
closing day refined into a tranquil beauty; but the young man, as
he passed briskly, did not so much as draw a lengthened breath,
and when presently the cry of a whip-poor-will floated from the
old rail fence, he fell into a whistling mockery of the plaintive
notes. The dogs at his heels started a rabbit once from the close
cover of the underbrush, and he called them to order in a sharp,
peremptory tone. Not until he reached the long, whitewashed gate
opening before the frame house of the former overseers did he
break the easy swing of his accustomed stride.
The house, a common country dwelling of the sort used by the
poorer class of farmers, lost something of its angularity beneath
the moonlight, and even the half-dried garments, spread after the
day's washing on the bent old rose-bushes, shone in soft white
patches amid the grass, which looked thick and fine under the
heavy dew. In one corner of the yard there was a spreading
peach-tree, on which the shriveled little peaches ripened out of
season, and against the narrow porch sprawled a gray and crippled
aspen, where a flock of turkeys had settled to roost along its
twisted boughs.
In one of the lower rooms a lamp was burning, and as Christopher
crunched heavily along the pebbled path, a woman with a piece of
sewing in her hand came into the hall and spoke his name.
"Christopher, you are late."
Her voice was deep and musical, with a richness of volume which
raised deluding hopes of an impassioned beauty in the
speaker--who, as she crossed the illumined square of the
window-frame, showed as a tall, thin woman of forty years, with
squinting eyes, and a face whose misshapen features stood out
like the hasty drawing for a grotesque. When she reached him
Christopher turned from the porch, and they walked together
slowly out into the moonlight, passing under the aspen where the
turkeys stirred and fluttered in their sleep.
"Has her cat come home, Cynthia?" were the young man's first
anxious words.
"About sunset. Uncle Boaz found her over at Aunt Daphne's,
hunting mice under the joists. Mother had fretted terribly over
the loss."
"Is she easier now?"
"Much more so, but she still asks for the port. We pretend that
Uncle Boaz has mislaid the key of the wine-cellar. She upbraided
him, and he bore it so patiently, poor old soul!"
Christopher quickly reached into the deep pocket of his overalls
and drew out the scanty wages of his last three days' labour.
"Send this by somebody down to Tompkins," he said, "and get the
wine he ordered. He refuses to sell on credit any longer, so I
had to find the money."
She looked up, startled.
"Oh, Christopher, you have worked for Fletcher?"
Tears shone in her eyes and her mouth quivered. "Oh,
Christopher!" she repeated, and the emotional quality in her
voice rang strong and true. He fell back, angered, while the hand
she had stretched out dropped limply to her side.
"For God's sake, don't snivel," he retorted harshly. "Send the
money and give her the wine, but dole it out like a miser, for
where the next will come from is more than I can tell."
"The pay for my sewing is due in three days," said Cynthia,
raising her roughened hand on which the needle-scars showed even
in the moonlight. "Mother has worried so to-day that I couldn't
work except at odd moments, but I can easily manage to sit up
to-night and get it done. She thinks I'm embroidering an ottoman,
you see, and this evening she asked to feel the silks."
He uttered a savage exclamation.
"Oh, I gave her some ravellings from an old tidy," she hastened
to assure him. "She played with them awhile and knew no better,
as I told her the colours one by one. Afterward she planned all
kinds of samplers and fire-screens that I might work. Her own
knitting has wearied her of late, so we haven't been obliged to
buy the yarn."
"She doesn't suspect, you think?"
Cynthia shook her head. "After fifteen years of deception there's
no danger of my telling the truth to-day. I only wish I could,"
she added, with that patient dignity which is the outward
expression of complete renouncement. When she lifted her tragic
face the tears on her cheeks softened the painful hollows, as the
moonbeams, playing over her gown of patched and faded silk,
revived for a moment the freshness of its discoloured flowers.
"The truth would be the death of her," said the young man, in a
bitter passion of anxiety. "Tell her that Fletcher owns the Hall,
and that for fifteen years she has lived, blind and paralysed, in
the overseer's house! Why, I'd rather stick a knife into her
heart myself!"
"Her terrible pride would kill her--yes, you're right. We'll keep
it up to the end at any cost."
He turned to her with a sudden terror in his face. "She isn't
worse, is she?"
"Worse? Oh, no; I only meant the cost to us, the cost of never
speaking the truth within the house."
"Well, I'm not afraid of lying, God knows," he answered, in the
tone of one from whom a burden has been removed. "I'm only
wondering how much longer I'll be able to afford the luxury."
"But we're no worse off than usual, that's one comfort. Mother is
quite happy now since Beulah has been found, and the only added
worry is that Aunt Dinah is laid up in her cabin and we've had to
send her soup. Uncle Isam has come to see you, by the way. I
believe he wants you to give him some advice about his little hut
up in the woods, and to look up his birth in the servants'
age-book, too. He lives five miles away, you know, and works
across the river at Farrar's Mills."
"Uncle Isam!" exclaimed Christopher, wonderingly; "why, what do I
know about the man? I haven't laid eyes on him for the last ten
years."
"But he wants help now, so of course he's come to you, and as
he's walked all the distance--equally of course--he'll stay to
supper. Mother has her young chicken, and there's bacon and
cornbread for the rest of us, so I hope the poor man won't go
back hungry. Ever since Aunt Polly's chimney blew down she has
had to fry the middling in the kitchen, and mother complains so
of the smell. She can't understand why we have it three times a
day, and when I told her that Uncle Tucker acquired the habit in
the army, she remarked that it was very inconsiderate of him to
insist upon gratifying so extraordinary a taste."
Christopher laughed shortly.
"Well, it's a muck of a world," he declared cheerfully, taking
off his coarse harvest hat and running his hand through his
clustering fair hair. In the mellow light the almost brutal
strength of his jaw was softened, and his sunburned face paled to
the beauty of some ancient ivory carving. Cynthia, gazing up at
him, caught her breath with a sob.
"How big you are, and strong! How fit for any life in the world
but this!"
"Don't whimper," he responded roughly, adding, after a moment,
"Precious fit for anything but the stable or the tobacco field!
Why, I couldn't so much as write a decently spelled letter to
save my soul. A darky asked me yesterday to read a postbill for
him down at the store, and I had to skip a big word in the first
line."
He made his confession defiantly, with a certain boorish pride in
his ignorance and his degradation.
"My dear, my dear, I wanted to teach you--I will teach you now.
We will read together."
"And let mother and Uncle Tucker plough the field, and plant the
crop, and cut the wood. No, it won't answer; your learning would
do me no good, and I don't want it--I told you that when you
first took me from my study and put me to do all the chores upon
the place."
"I take you! Oh, Christopher, what could we do? Uncle Tucker was
a hopeless cripple, there wasn't a servant strong enough to spade
the garden, and there were only Lila and you and I."
"And I was ten. Well, I'm not blaming you, and I've done what I
was forced to--but keep your confounded books out of my sight,
that's all I ask. Is that mother calling?"
Cynthia bent her ear. "I thought Lila was with her, but I'll go
at once. Be sure to change your clothes, dear, before she touches
you."
"Hadn't I better chop a little kindling-wood before supper?"
"No--no, not to-night. Go and dress, while I send Uncle Boaz for
the wine."
She entered the house with a hurried step, and Christopher, after
an instant's hesitation, passed to the back, and, taking off his
clumsy boots, crept softly up the creaking staircase to his
little garret room in the loft.
Ten minutes later he came down again, wearing a decent suit of
country-made clothes, with the dust washed from his face, and his
hair smoothly brushed across his forehead. In the front hall he
took a white rosebud from a little vase of Bohemian glass and
pinned it carefully in the lapel of his coat. Then, before
entering, he stood for a moment silent upon the threshold of the
lamplighted room.
In a massive Elizabethan chair of blackened oak a stately old
lady was sitting straight and stiff, with her useless legs
stretched out upon an elaborately embroidered ottoman. She wore a
dress of rich black brocade, made very full in the skirt, and
sleeves after an earlier fashion, and her beautiful snow-white
hair was piled over a high cushion and ornamented by a cap of
fine thread lace. In her face, which she turned at the first
footstep with a pitiable, blind look, there were the faint traces
of a proud, though almost extinguished, beauty--traces which were
visible in the impetuous flash of her sightless eyes, in the
noble arch of her brows, and in the transparent quality of her
now yellowed skin, which still kept the look of rare porcelain
held against the sunlight. On a dainty, rose-decked tray beside
her chair there were the half of a broiled chicken, a thin glass
of port, and a plate of buttered waffles; and near her high
footstool a big yellow cat was busily lapping a saucer of new
milk.
As Christopher went up to her, she stretched out her hand and
touched his face with her sensitive fingers. "Oh, if I could only
see you," she said, a little peevishly. "It is twenty years since
I looked at you, and now you are taller than your father was, you
say. I can feel that your hair is light, like his and like
Lila's, too, since you are twins."
A pretty, fragile woman, who was wrapping a shawl about the old
lady's feet, rose to her full height and passed behind the
Elizabethan chair." Just a shade lighter than mine, mother," she
responded; "the sun makes a difference, you know; he is in the
sun so much without a hat." As she stood with her delicate hands
clasped above the fancifully carved grotesques upon the
chair-back, her beauty shone like a lamp against the
smoke-stained walls.
"Ah, if you could but have seen his father when he was young,
Lila," sighed her mother, falling into one of the easy reveries
of old age. "I met him at a fancy ball, you know, where he went
as Achilles in full Grecian dress. Oh! the sight he was, my dear,
one of the few fair men among us, and taller even than old
Colonel Fitzhugh, who was considered one of the finest figures of
his time. That was a wild night for me, Christopher, as I've told
you often before--it was love at first sight on both sides, and
so marked were your father's attentions that they were the talk
of the ball. Edward Morris--the greatest wit of his day, you
know--remarked at supper that the weak point of Achilles was
proved at last to be not his heel, but his heart."
She laughed with pleasure at the memory, and returned in a
half-hearted fashion to her plate of buttered waffles. "Have you
been riding again, Christopher?" she asked after a moment, as if
remembering a grievance. "I haven't had so much as a word from
you to-day, but when one is chained to a chair like this it is
useless to ask even to be thought of amid your pleasures."
"I always think of you, mother."
"Well, I'm glad to hear it, my dear, though I'm sure I should
never imagine that you do. Have you heard, by the way, that Boaz
lost the key of the winecellar, and that I had to go two whole
days without my port? I declare, he is getting so careless that
I'm afraid we'll have to put another butler over him."
"Lawd, ole miss, you ain' gwine do dat, is you?" anxiously
questioned Uncle Boaz as he filled her glass.
She lifted the wine to her lips, her stern face softening. Like
many a high-spirited woman doomed to perpetual inaction, her
dominion over her servants had grown to represent the larger
share of life.
"Then be more careful in future, Boaz," she cautioned. "Tell me,
Lila, what has become of Nathan, the son of Phyllis? He used to
be a very bright little darkey twenty years ago, and I always
intended putting him in the dining-room, but things escape me so.
His mother, Phyllis, I remember, got some ridiculous idea about
freedom in her head, and ran away with the Yankee soldiers before
we whipped them."
Lila's face flushed, for since the war Nathan had grown into one
of the most respectable of freedmen, but Uncle Boaz, with a glib
tongue, started valiantly to her support.
"Go 'way, ole miss; dat ar Natan is de mos' ornery un er de hull
bunch," he declared. "Wen he comes inter my dinin'-'oom, out I'se
gwine, an' days sho."
The old lady passed a hand slowly across her brow. "I can't
remember--I can't remember," she murmured; "but I dare say you're
right, Boaz--and that reminds me that this bottle of port is not
so good as the last. Have you tried it, Christopher?"
"Not yet, mother. Where did you find it, Uncle Boaz?"
"Hit's des de same, suh," protested Uncle Boaz. "Dey wuz bofe un
um layin' right side by side, des like dey 'uz bo'n blood kin, en
I done dus' de cobwebs off'n um wid de same duster, dat I is."
"Well, well, that will do. Now go in to supper, children, and
send Docia to take my tray. Dear me, I do wish that Tucker could
be persuaded to give up that vulgar bacon. I'm not so
unreasonable, I hope, as to expect a man to make any sacrifices
in this world--that's the woman's part, and I've tried to take my
share of it--but to conceive of a passion for a thing like
bacon--I declare is quite beyond me."
"Come, now, Lucy, don't begin to meddle with my whims," protested
the cheerful tones of Tucker, as he entered on his crutches, one
of which was strapped to the stump of his right arm. "Allow me my
dissipations, my dear, and I'll not interfere with yours."
"Dissipations!" promptly took up the old lady, from the hearth.
"Why, if it were such a gentlemanly thing as a dissipation,
Tucker, I shouldn't say a word--not a single word. A taste for
wine is entirely proper, I'm sure, and even a little intoxication
is permissible on occasions--such as christenings, weddings, and
Christmas Eve gatherings. Your father used to say, Christopher,
that the proof of a gentleman was in the way he held his wine.
But to fall a deliberate victim to so low-born a vice as a love
of bacon is something that no member of our family has ever done
before."
"That's true, Lucy," pleasantly assented Tucker; "but then, you
see, no member of our family had ever fought three years for his
State--to say nothing of losing a leg and an arm in her service."
His fine face was ploughed with the marks of suffering, but the
heartiness had not left his voice, and his smile still shone
bright and strong. From a proud position as the straightest shot
and the gayest liver of his day, he had been reduced at a single
blow to the couch of a hopeless cripple. Poverty had come a
little later, but the second shock had only served to steady his
nerves from the vibration of the first, and the courage which had
drooped within him for a time was revived in the form of a rare
and gentle humour. Nothing was so terrible but Tucker could get a
laugh out of it, people said--not knowing that since he had
learned to smile at his own ghastly failure it was an easy matter
to turn the jest on universal joy or woe.
The old lady's humour melted at his words, and she hastened to
offer proof of her contrition. "You're perfectly right, brother,"
she said; "and I know I'm an ungrateful creature, so you needn't
take the trouble to tell me. As long as you do me the honour to
live beneath my roof, you shall eat the whole hog or none to your
heart's content."
Then, as Docia, a large black woman, with brass hoops in her
ears, appeared to bear away the supper tray, Mrs. Blake folded
her hands and settled herself for a nap upon her cushions, while
the yellow cat purred blissfully on her knees.
Beyond the adjoining bedroom, through which Christopher passed, a
rude plank platform led to a long, unceiled room which served as
kitchen and dining-room in one. Here a cheerful blaze made merry
about an ancient crane, on which a coffeeboiler swung slowly back
and forth with a bubbling noise. In the red firelight a plain
pine table was spread with a scant supper of cornbread and bacon
and a cracked Wedgewood pitcher filled with buttermilk. There was
no silver; the china consisted of some odd, broken pieces of old
willow-ware; and beyond a bunch of damask roses stuck in a quaint
glass vase, there was no visible attempt to lighten the effect of
extreme poverty. An aged Negress, in a dress of linsey-woolsey
which resembled a patchwork quilt, was pouring hot, thin coffee
into a row of cups with chipped or missing saucers.
Cynthia was already at the table, and when Christopher came in
she served him with an anxious haste like that of a stricken
mother. To Tucker and herself the coarse fare was unbearable even
after the custom of fifteen years, and time had not lessened the
surprise with which they watched the young man's healthful
enjoyment of his food. Even Lila, whose glowing face in its
nimbus of curls lent an almost festive air to her end of the
white pine board, ate with a heartiness which Cynthia, with her
outgrown standard for her sex, could not but find a trifle
vulgar. The elder sister had been born to a different heritage
--to one of restricted views and mincing manners for a
woman--and, despite herself, she could but drift aimlessly on the
widening current of the times.
"Christopher, will you have some coffee--it is stronger now?" she
asked presently, reaching for his emptied cup.
"Dis yer stuff ain' no cawfy," grumbled Aunt Pony, taking the
boiler from the crane; "hit ain' nuttin' but dishwater, I don'
cyar who done made hit." Then, as the door opened to admit Uncle
Isam with a bucket from the spring, she divided her scorn equally
between him and the coffee-pot.
"You needn't be a-castin' er you nets into dese yer pains," she
observed cynically.
Uncle Isam, a dried old Negro of seventy years, shambled in
patiently and placed the bucket carefully upon the stones, to be
shrilly scolded by Aunt Polly for spilling a few drops on the
floor. "I reckon you is steddyin' ter outdo Marse Noah," she
remarked with scorn.
"Howdy, Marse Christopher? Howdy, Marse Tuck?" Uncle Isam
inquired politely, as he seated himself in a low chair on the
hearth and dropped his clasped hands between his open knees.
Christopher nodded carelessly. "Glad to see you, Isam," Tucker
cordially responded. "Times have changed since you used to live
over here."
"Days so, suh, dot's so. Times dey's done change, but I
ain't--I'se des de same. Dat's de tribble wid dis yer worl'; w'en
hit change yo' fortune hit don' look ter changin' yo' skin es
well."
"That's true; but you're doing all right, I hope?"
"I dunno, Marse Tuck," replied Uncle Isam, coughing as a sudden
spurt of smoke issued from the old stone chimney. "I dunno 'bout
dat. Times dey's right peart, but I ain't. De vittles dey's ready
ter do dar tu'n, but de belly, hit ain't."
"What--are you sick?" asked Cynthia, with interest, rising from
the table.
Uncle Isam sighed. "I'se got a tur'able peskey feelin', Miss
Cynthy, days de gospel trufe," he returned. "I dunno whur hit's
de lungs er de liver, but one un um done got moughty sassy ter de
yuther 'en he done flung de reins right loose. Hit looks pow'ful
like dey wuz gwine ter run twel dey bofe drap down daid, so I
done come all dis way atter a dose er dem bitters ole miss use
ter gin us befo' de wah."
"Well, I never!" said Cynthia, laughing. "I believe he means the
brown bitters mother used to make for chills and fever. I'm very
sorry, Uncle Isam, but we haven't any. We don't keep it any
longer."
Leaning over his gnarled palms, the old man shook his head in
sober reverie.
"Dar ain' nuttin' like dem bitters in dese yer days," he
reflected sadly, "'caze de smell er dem use ter mos' knock you
flat 'fo' you done taste 'em, en all de way ter de belly dey use
ter keep a-wukin' fur dey livin'. Lawd! Lawd! I'se done bought de
biggest bottle er sto' stuff in de sto', en hit slid right spang
down 'fo' I got a grip er de taste er hit."
"I'll tell you how to mix it, " said Cynthia sympathetically.
"It's very easy; I know Aunt Eve can brew it."
"Go 'way, Miss Cynthy; huccome you don' know better'n dat? Dar
ain' no Eve. She's done gone."
"Gone! Is she dead?"
"Naw'm, she aint daid dat I knows--she's des gone.
Hit all come along er dem highfalutin' notions days struttin'
roun' dese days 'bout prancin' up de chu'ch aisle en bein' mah'ed
by de preacher, stedder des totin' all yo' belongin's f'om one
cabin ter anurr, en roas'in' yo' ash-cake in de same pile er
ashes. You see, me en Eve we hed done 'sperunce mah'age gwine n
fifty years, but we ain' nuver 'sperunce de ceremony twel las'
watermillion time."
"Why, Uncle Isam, did she leave you because of that? Here, draw
up to the table and eat your supper, while I get down the
age-book and find your birth."
She reached for a dusty account book on one of the kitchen
shelves, and, bringing it to the table, began slowly turning the
yellowed leaves. For more than two hundred years the births of
all the Blake slaves had been entered in the big volume.
"You des wait, Miss Cynthy, you des wait twel I git dar,"
remonstrated Uncle Isam, as he stirred his coffee. "I ain' got no
use fur dese yer newfangle fashions, dot's wat I tell de chillun
w'en dey begin a-pesterin' me ter mah'y Eve--I ain' got no use
fur dem no way hit's put--I ain' got no use fur dis yer struttin'
up de aisle bus'ness, ner fur dis yer w'arin' er sto'-made shoes,
ner fur dis yer leavin' er de hyar unwropped, needer. Hit looks
pisonous tickly ter me, days wat I sez, but w'en dey keep up dey
naggin' day in en day out, en I carn' git shunt er um, I hop
right up en put on my Sunday bes' en go 'long wid 'em ter de
chu'ch--me en Eve bofe a-mincin' des like peacocks. 'You des pay
de preacher,' days wat I tell 'em, 'en I'se gwine do all de
mah'yin' days ter be done'; en w'en de preacher done got thoo wid
me en Eve, I stood right up in de chu'ch an axed ef dey wus any
udder nigger 'ooman es 'ud like ter do a little mah'yin'? 'Hit's
es easy ter mah'y a dozen es ter mah'y one,' I holler out."
"Oh, Uncle Isam! No wonder Aunt Eve was angry. Here we
are--'Isam, son of Docia, born August 12, 18--."
"Lawd, Miss Cynthy, 'twan' me dat mek Eve mad--twuz de preacher,
'caze atter we got back ter de cabin en eat de watermillion ter
de rin', she up en tied her bonnet on tight es a chestnut burr en
made right fur de do'. De preacher done tote 'er, she sez, dat
Eve 'uz in subjection ter her husban', en she'd let 'im see she
warn' gwine be subjected unner no man, she warn't. 'Fo' de Lawd,
Miss Cynthy, dat ar Eve sutney wuz a high-sperited 'ooman!"
"But, Uncle Isam, it was so silly. Why, she'd been married to you
already for a lifetime."
"Dat's so, Miss Cynthy, dat's so, 'caze 'twuz dem ar wuds dat
rile 'er mos'. She 'low she done been in subjection fur gwine on
fifty years widout knowin' hit."
He finished his coffee at a gulp and leaned back in his chair.
"En now des fem me hyear how ole I is," he wound up sorrowfully.
"The twelfth of August, 18-- (that's the date of your birth),
makes you--let me see--you'll be seventy years old next summer.
There, now, since you've found out what you wanted, you'd better
spend the night with Uncle Boaz."
"Thanky, ma'am, but I mus' be gwine back agin," responded Uncle
Isam, shuffling to his feet, "en ef you don' min', Marse
Christopher, I'd like a wud wid you outside de do'."
Laughing, Christopher rose from his chair and, with a patriarchal
dignity of manner, followed the old man into the moonlight. _