Chapter II

One summer--it was a war summer--I thought by personal effort and example to swell the national harvest. I had suggested, advised, and implored. Now I would dig and plant and water, hoping that a beneficent contagion would transform my land from a wasteful reproach to a prolific blessing. My ambitious programme was interrupted midway by a distant call that could not be denied, and I had been a forgetful time away, when I realized, with aching insurrection, that Autumn must be in the Unakas. In my weariness I thought of her as a giant matron, seated amid her peaks, with hair flowing like rivers of copper, and arms stretched out with a vast tenderness to take even me to her bosom. And I fled toward her, my heart and mind exchanging jumbled murmurs of extenuation. Did not the country need all its farmers?

Coretta and her dancing youngsters did not meet me as usual under the white oak half-way up the mountain. I asked Serena, who joined me there, concerning the omission, and from her discreet evasion I surmised that a disclosure awaited me in Coretta’s trepidant breast. It was several days in fledging. I ignored the mystery, and plunged into the ardors of conservation. It became quickly evident that my example was not to be the little candle that far rebukes a wasteful world. Coretta did not come near me; and one morning, when I saw Serena approaching, her radiance visible a hundred yards away, I knew that only one thing could give such a tinge of glory to her countenance. She was coming to announce one of her sudden journeys. Yes, Len had agreed for her to visit a sister who lived sixty miles distant.

“With everything to do?” I cried.

“I can work harder after I come back. A ja’nt always helps me.”

That was true. She would look younger, by ten years, on her return.

“Can Len afford it now, Serena?”

“I told him I’d git the money from you, an’ work it out when I got back. I can put in several days ’fore fodder-pullin’. I reckon you’ll be wantin’ some help by that time,” she added, with a glance at the beans and tomatoes in piles on the kitchen porch. By that time, indeed!

Her radiance began to fade. Was it possible I could hesitate?

“I told Len you’d never refused me _yit_.”

With the money happily clutched, she turned a shining back upon me.

I started meekly to Coretta’s. But so many evidences of neglect seen on the way brought me to her in remonstrative mood.

She was very busy sewing. The children were to have new dresses. And in harvest-time!

“I thought I should find you canning, Coretta.”

“I ain’t got no heart this year,” she said.

I tried to recall some of the mottoes of the period. Every mouthful we save, and so forth. “And your brother is over there, you know.”

She dropped her head.

“I see your beans are not picked yet.”

“I jest ain’t got no heart.”

“Is that why you didn’t keep the weeds out of my garden?”

“Yes, Mis’ Dolly.”

“But I sent you the hat.”

Her head went lower. I had, while away, spent half of a much-needed day in search of a hat that would withstand mountain wear and weather, yet be pretty enough for Coretta’s taste.

“And you let the pigs get to my potato-patch.”

She turned to the machine. Well, it was my machine. I looked at the gay pieces of gingham scattered about and resolved to be drastic.

“I’m going to have the machine brought home, Coretta. You won’t have any time for sewing until you get your fruit and vegetables put up.”

She was dismayed. “Oh, I’ll never git ready!”

“Ready for what?”

“To go to the mills.”

“The mills!”

“We’re all goin’ to Georgia. Sam can git three dollars a day there. Katy can keep house an’ tend to the young-uns, an’ I’m goin’ to work, too. We can make ’tween five and six dollars a day. An’ I’ve got to have the machine. How’ll I ever git their clo’es made?”

She ran on, but I shrank aside, looking about me and counting the curly heads. Our supreme judiciary had that year annulled the law of the people for the rescue of the child in the mills.

“Coretta, you can’t take these babies----”

“Oh, I knowed you’d talk that way, but please don’t, for we’ve got to go. The tickets have come, an’ we have to use ’em inside o’ two weeks. I’m jest worn out workin’ on the farm like a man, an’ in the house, too. We’ll never git a start here.”

I had no argument against the truth. Once I had thought of making Sam the legal owner of that part of the farm he was supposed to till, and had consulted the village wise man about it.

“Let me see,” he said: “Sam gets the full product of his labor now, don’t he?”

“Oh, you read the book?”

“Sure, I did! And you keep the place up? Pay for fencin’, and the like?”

I admitted it.

“And the taxes?”

“Of course.”

“And he can’t make ends meet?”

“No.”

“Well, if I was Sam, I’d injunct aginst any change that ’ud saddle me with taxes and improvements.”

So I had made no change. And I had no answer for Coretta. She was still talking.

“They’ll give us a good house at the mill, an’ furnish it too.”

“If you pay three times over in instalments.”

“When I git enough for my house, I mean to move back.”

“You’ll never get it paid for, and if you leave they’ll sell it to somebody else. They count on getting pay from three families for every set of furniture they put out,” I exaggerated stoutly.

“You needn’t talk like that, Mis’ Dolly,” she said, with her face all protest. “I’ve got to go.”

“Very well.” I rose, and started out. Spying the hat that had cost me so much thought, I said: “You didn’t like the hat?”

Her face became an eager pink with satisfaction.

“Shore I liked it! Everybody says it jest suits me. I want everything _like that hat_!”

So my success had defeated me. She had been seduced by perfection. And I reflected, as I walked home, that even if one ended in a morass, it was something to follow the twinkling of a very little star. I had seen in Coretta the flutter of a potentiality that would one day redeem life from squalor and give the planet an unquenchable glow.

The first shock over, I could not stifle the thought that the loss of Sam would be an excellent thing for me. I could replace him with a man whose ideas of farming were not inherited from his great-grandfather: some one who would not make me poorer every year, and keep my wits exercised on the problem of his family’s support. And then, like the breaking of a soft light, the thought stole upon me that I need never again be roused from morning sleep to supply Coretta’s breakfast omissions. Let her go her way. I would not expostulate; I would not persuade; I would not even be sad. My pillow should be mine henceforth.

But I took care to avoid the children. This seemed necessary to the anticipated enjoyment of that pillow. I kept away from Coretta’s cabin, and when I saw bobbing curls nearing mine through the bushes, I had sudden errands elsewhere.