Chapter III: Book I: Fair Weather at Kingsborough (3)

"Why doesn't Betsey get rid of him?" asked Bernard, eyeing the shrinking Moses with disfavour. "I heard Aunt Chris say that Mrs. Willie Wilson in Richmond got a divorce from her husband for good and all--"

"Lawdy, chile! Huccome you think I'se gwine ter pay fer a dervoge fer sech er low-lifeted creetur ez dat? He ain' wuth no dervogin', he ain'. When it come ter dervogin', I'll dervoge 'im wid my fis' en foot--"

Here the baby cried again, and the irate Delphy disappeared into Moses' cabin, while the meek-looking son-in-law hoed the garden patch and muttered beneath his breath.

The children passed the spring, crossed the meadow, and followed the grapevine trellis to the back steps, when Eugenia rushed through the wide hall with an impetuous flutter of short skirts.

"Papa!" she cried, bursting upon the general as he sat smoking upon the front porch. "What do you think has happened? There's a new baby came to Moses' cabin, an' Delphy says it's as black as--"

"Well, I am blessed!" groaned the general, knocking the ashes from his pipe. "Another mouth to feed. Eugie, they'll ruin me yet."

"I reckon they will," returned Eugenia hopelessly. She seated herself upon the topmost step and made a place for Jim beside her.

The general was silent for some time, smoking thoughtfully and staring past the aspens and the well-house to the waving cornfield. When he spoke it was with embarrassed hesitation.

"I say, daughter."

Eugenia looked up eagerly.

"Didn't that spotted cow of Moses' die last week?"

"That it did," replied Eugenia emphatically. "It got loose in your clover, pasture and ate itself too full. Moses says it bu'st."

"Pish!" exclaimed the general angrily. "My clover! I tell you, they won't leave me a roof over my head. They'll eat me into the poorhouse. But I'll turn them off. I'll send them packing, bag and baggage. My clover!"

"Moses ain't got much of a garden patch," said Eugenia. "It looks mighty poor. The potato-bugs ate all his potatoes."

The general was silent again.

"I say, daughter," he began at last, blowing a heavy cloud of smoke upon the air, "the next time you go by Sweet Gum Spring you had just as well tell Moses that I can let him have a side of bacon if he wants it. The rascal can't starve. But they won't leave me a mouthful--not one. And Eugie--"

"Yes, sir."

"You needn't mention it to your Aunt Chris--"

At that instant a little barefooted negro came running across the lawn from the spring-house, a large tin pail in his hand.

"Here, boy!" called the general. "Where're you off to? What have you got in that pail?"

"It's Jake," said Eugenia in a whisper, while Jim barked frantically from the shelter of her arms. "He's Delphy's Jake."

The small negro stood grinning in the walk, his white eyeballs circling in their sockets. "Hit's Miss Chris, suh," he said at last.

"Miss Chris, you rascal!" shouted the general. "Do you expect me to believe you've got Miss Chris in that pail? Open it, sir; open it!"

Jake showed a shining row of ivory teeth and stood shaking the pail from side to side.

"Miss Chris, she gun hit ter me, suh," he explained. "Hit's Miss Chris herse'f dat's done sont me ter tote dish yer buttermilk ter Unk Mose."

"Bless my soul!" cried the general wrathfully. "Get away with you! The whole place is bent on ruining me. I'll be in the poorhouse before the week's up." And he strode indoors in a rage.

VII

Twice a year, on fine days in spring and fall, Aunt Griselda's bombazine dresses were taken from the whitewashed closet and hung out to air upon the clothesline at the back of the house, while pungent odours of tar and camphor were exhaled from the full black folds. On these days Aunt Griselda would remain in her room, sorting faded relics which she took from a cedar chest and spread beside her on the floor. The door was kept locked at such times, but once Eugenia, who had gone with Congo to carry Aunt Griselda her toast and tea, had caught a glimpse of a yellowed swiss muslin frock and the leather case of a daguerreotype containing the picture of a round-eyed girl with rosy cheeks. Aunt Griselda had hidden them hastily away at the child's entrance--hidden them with that nervous, awkward haste which dreads a dawning jest of itself; but Eugenia had seen that her old eyes were red and her voice more rasping than usual.

Sixty years ago Aunt Griselda had had her romance, and she still kept her love-letters tied up with discoloured ribbons and laid away in the cedar chest. It was but the skeleton of a love story--the adolescent ardours of a high-spirited country girl and the high-spirited son of a neighbouring farmer. When the quarrel came the letters were overlooked when the ring went back. Griselda Grigsby had tossed them carelessly into the cedar chest and gone out to forget them. Her heart had not been deeply touched and it soon mended. No other lovers came, and she lived her quiet life in her father's house, gathering garden flowers for the great, blue bowls in the parlour, teaching the catechism to small black slaves, and making stiff, old-fashioned samplers in crewels. The high-spirited lover had loved elsewhere and died of a fever, and, beyond a passing regret, she thought little of him. There were nearer interests, and she was still the petted daughter of her father's house--the eldest and the best beloved. Then the crash came. The old people passed away, the house changed hands, Aunt Griselda was stranded upon the high tide of hospitality--and crewel work went out of fashion.

In her sister's home she became a constant guest--one to be offered the favoured share and to be treated with tender, increasing tolerance--not to be loved. Since the death of her parents none had loved her, though many had borne gently with her spoiled fancies. But her coming in had brought no light, and her going out had left nothing dark. She was old and ill-tempered and bitter of speech, and, though all doors opened hospitably at her approach, all closed quickly when she was gone. Her spoiled youth had left her sensitive to trivial stings, unforgivable to fancied wrongs. In a childish oversight she detected hidden malice and implacable hate in a thoughtless jest. Her bitterness and her years waxed greater together, and she lost alike her youth and her self-control. When she had yearned for passionate affection she had found kindly tolerance, and the longings of her hidden nature, which none knew, were expressed in rasping words and acrid tears. Once, some years after Bernard's birth, she had called him into her room as she sat among her relics, and had shown him the daguerreotype.

"It's pitty lady," the child had lisped, and she had caught him suddenly to her lean old breast, but he had broken into peevish cries and struggled free, tearing with his foot the ruffle of the swiss muslin gown.

"Oo ain't pitty lady," he had said, and Aunt Griselda had risen and pushed him into the hall with sharp, scolding words, and had sat down to darn the muslin ruffle with delicate, old-fashioned stitches.

It was only when all living love had failed her that she returned to the dead. She had gathered the letters of nearly sixty years ago from the bottom of the cedar chest, reading them through her spectacles with bleared, watery eyes. Those subtle sentimentalities which linger like aromas in a heart too aged for passion were liberated by the bundle of yellow scrawls written by hands that were dust. As she sat in her stiff bombazine skirts beside the opened chest, peering with worry-ravaged face at the old letters, she forgot that she was no longer one with the girl in the muslin frock, and that the inciter of this exuberant emotion was as dead as the emotion itself.

When the dresses were brought up to her she would put them on again and go down to flinch before kindly eyes and to make embittered speeches in her high, shrill voice. Outwardly she grew more soured and more eccentric. On mild summer evenings she would come down stairs with her head wrapped in a pink knitted "nubia," and stroll back and forth along the gravelled walk, her gaunt figure passing into the dusk of the cedar avenue and emerging like the erratic shadow of one of the sombre trees.

Sometimes Eugenia joined her, but Bernard, her favourite, held shyly aloof. In her exercise she seldom spoke, and her words were peevish ones, but there was grim pathos in her carriage as she moved slowly back and forth between the straight rows of box.

After supper the family assembled on the porch and talked in a desultory way until ten o'clock, when the lights were put out and the house retired to rest. Eugenia slept in a great, four-post bedstead with Aunt Chris, and the bed was so large and soft and billowy that she seemed to lose herself suddenly at night in its lavender-scented midst, and to be as suddenly discovered in the morning by Rindy, the house-girl, when she came with her huge pails of warm water.

Those fresh summer dawns of Eugenia's childhood became among her dearest memories in after years. There were hours when, awaking, wide-eyed, before the house was astir, she would rise on her elbow and look out across the dripping lawn, where each dewdrop was charged with opalescent tints, to the western horizon, where the day broke in a cloud of gold. The song of a mocking-bird in the poplars of the little graveyard came to her with unsuspected melody--a melody drawn from the freshness, the loneliness, the half-awakened calls from hidden nests and the lyric ecstasy of dawn.

Then, with the rising of the sun, Aunt Chris would turn upon her pillow and open her soft, brown eyes.

"It is not good for little folks to be awake so early," she would say, and there would rush upon the child a sense of warmth and tenderness and comfort, and she would nestle closer to her sweet, white pillow. With the beginning of day began also the demands upon the time of Miss Chris. First the new overseer, knocking at her door, would call through the crack that a cow had calved, or that one of the sheep was too ill to go to pasture. Then Rindy, entering with her pails, would shake a pessimistic head.

"Lawd, Miss Chris, one er dem ole coons done eat up er hull pa'cel er yo' chickens." And Miss Chris, at once the prop and the mainstay of the Battle fortunes, would rise with anxious exclamations and put on her full black skirt and linen sacque.

When breakfast was over Miss Chris went into the storeroom each morning and came out with a basin of corn-meal dough, followed by Sampson bearing an axe and Aunt Verbeny jingling the hen-house keys. The slow procession then filed out to the space before the hen-house, the door of which was flung back, while Aunt Verbeny clucked at a little distance. Miss Chris scattered her dough upon the ground and, while her unsuspecting beneficiaries made their morning meal, she pointed out to Sampson, the executioner, the members of the feathered community destined to be sacrificed to the carnivorous habits of their fellow mortals.

"Feel that one with the black spots, Sampson," she said with the indifference of an abstract deity. "Is it fat? And the domineca pullet, and the two roosters we bought from Delphy."

And when Sampson had seized upon the victims of the fiat she turned to inspect the bunches of fowls offered by neighbouring breeders.

To-day it was Nicholas Burr who stood patiently in the background, three drooping chickens in each hand, their legs tied together with strips of a purple calico which Marthy was making into a dress for Sairy Jane.

Seeing that Miss Chris had delivered her judgments, he came forward and proffered his captives with an abashed demeanour.

"How much are they worth?" asked Miss Chris in her cheerful tones, while Aunt Verbeny gave a suspicious poke beneath one of the flapping wings, followed by a grunt of disparagement.

Nicholas stammered confusedly:

"Ma says the biggest ought to bring a quarter," he returned, blushing as Aunt Verbeny grunted again, "and the four smallest can go for twenty cents."

But when the bargain was concluded he lingered and added shamefacedly: "Won't you please let that red-and-black rooster live as long as you can? I raised it."

"Why, bless my heart!" exclaimed Miss Chris, "I believe the child is fond of the chicken."

Eugenia, who was hovering by, burst into tears and declared that the rooster should not die.

"Twenty cents is s-o ch-ea-p for a li-fe," she sobbed. "It shan't be killed, Aunt Chris. It shall go in my hen-h-ou-se." And she rushed off to get her little tin bank from the top bureau drawer.

When the arrangements were concluded Nicholas started empty-handed down the box walk, the money jingling in his pocket. At the end of the long avenue of cedars there was a wide, unploughed common which extended for a quarter of a mile along the roadside. In spring and summer the ground was white with daisies and in the autumn it donned gorgeous vestments of golden-rod and sumach. In the centre of the waste, standing alike grim and majestic at all seasons, there was the charred skeleton of a gigantic tree, which had been stripped naked by a bolt of lightning long years ago. At its foot a prickly clump of briars surrounded the blackened trunk in a decoration of green or red, and from this futile screen the spectral limbs rose boldly and were silhouetted against the far-off horizon like the masts of a wrecked and deserted ship. A rail fence, where a trumpet-vine hung heavily, divided the field from the road, and several straggling sheep that had strayed from the distant flock stood looking shyly over the massive crimson clusters.

When Nicholas came out from the funereal dusk of the cedars the field was almost blinding in the morning glare, the yellow-centred daisies rolling in the breeze like white-capped billows on a sunlit sea. From the avenue to his father's land the road was unbroken by a single shadow--only to the right, amid the young corn, there was a solitary persimmon tree, and on the left the gigantic wreck stranded amid the tossing daisies.

The sun was hot, and dust rose like smoke from the white streak of the road, which blazed beneath a cloudless sky.

The boy was tired and thirsty, and as he tramped along the perspiration rose to his forehead and dropped, upon his shoulder. With a sigh of satisfaction he came upon the little cottage of his father and saw his stepmother taking the clothes in from the bushes where they had been spread to dry. It was Saturday, and ironing day, and he hoped for a chance at his lessons before night came, when he was so tired that the facts would not stick in his brain. He thought that it must be very easy to study in the mornings when you were fresh and eager and before that leaden weight centred behind your eyeballs.

When Marthy Burr saw him she called irritably:

"I say, Nick, did they take the chickens?"

Nicholas nodded, and, crossing the weeds in the garden, gave her the money from his pocket.

"They didn't say nothing 'bout wantin' more, I 'spose? Did you tell 'em I was fattenin' them four pairs of ducks?"

Nicholas shook his head. No, he hadn't told them.

"Well, your pa wants you down in the peanut field. You'd better get a drink of water first. You look powerful red."

An hour later, when work was over, he carried his book to the orchard and flung himself down beneath the trees. The judge had given him a biography of Jefferson, and he had learned his hero's life with lips and heart. The day that it was finished he put the volume under his arm and went to the rector's house.

"I want to join the church," he said bluntly.

The rector, a kindly, middle-aged man, with a love for children, turned to him in half-puzzled, half-sympathetic inquiry.

"You are young, my child," he replied, "to be so zealous a Christian."

"'Tain't that, sir," said the boy slowly. "I don't set much store by that. But I've got to go to heaven--because I can't see Thomas Jefferson no other way."

The rector did not smile. He was wiser than his generation, for he left the great man's own religion to himself and God. He said merely:

"When you are older we shall see, my boy--we shall see."

Nicholas left with a chill of disappointment, but as he passed along the street his name was called by Juliet Burwell, and she fluttered across to him in all her mystifying flounces and her gracious smile.

"I was at the rector's," she said, "and he told me that you wanted to be confirmed--and I want you to come into my Sunday-school class."

Nicholas met the kind eyes and blushed purple. Her beauty took away his breath and made his pulses leap. The slow, musical drawl of her speech soothed him like the running of clear water. He felt the image of Thomas Jefferson totter upon its pedestal, but it was steadied with a tremendous lurch. Jefferson was a man, after all, and this was only a woman.

"Will you come?" asked the soft voice, and he stammered an amazed and awkward assent.

VIII

On the Saturday after the day upon which Nicholas had pledged himself to attend Sunday-school Juliet Burwell asked him to come into Kingsborough and talk over the lesson for the following morning. At five o'clock in the afternoon he dressed himself with trembling hands and a perturbed heart; and for the first time in his life turned to look at his reflection in the small, cracked mirror hanging above the washstand in his stepmother's room.

As a finishing touch Marthy Burr tied a flaming plaid cravat beneath his collar.

"You ain't much on looks," she remarked as she drew back to survey him, "but you've got as peart a face as I ever seed. I reckon you'll be plenty handsome for a man. I was al'ays kind of set against one of these pink an' white men, somehow. They're pretty enough to look at when you're feelin' first-rate, but when you git the neuralgy they sort of turns yo' stomach. I've a taste for sober colours in men and caliky."

"I think he looks beautiful," said Sairy Jane, her eyes on the cravat, and Nicholas felt a sudden glow of gratitude, and silently resolved to save up until he had enough money to buy her a hair ribbon.

"I ain't sayin' he don't," returned Marthy Burr with a severe glance in the direction of her eldest daughter, who was minding Jubal in the kitchen doorway. "Thar's red heads an' red heads, an' his ain't no redder than the reddest. But he came honestly by it, which is more than some folks can say as is got yellow. His father had it befo' him, an' thar's one good thing about it, you've got to be born with it or you ain't goin' to come by it no other way. I never seed a dyer that could set hair that thar colour 'cep'n the Lord Himself--an' I ain't one to deny that the Lord has got good taste in His own line."

Then, as Nicholas took up his hat, she added: "If they ask after me, Nick, be sure an' say I'm jes' po'ly."

Nicholas nodded and went out, followed to the road by Sairy Jane and Jubal, while his stepmother called after him to walk in the grass and try to keep his feet clean.

When he reached Kingsborough and crossed the green to the Burwell's house, which was in the lane called "Back Street," he fell to a creeping pace, held back by the fluttering of his pulses. Not until he saw Juliet standing at the little whitewashed gate did he brace himself to the full courage of approaching. When he spoke her name she opened the gate and gave him her hand, while all sense of diffidence fell from him.

"I've been looking at you for a long ways," he said boldly, "an' you were just like one of them tall lilies bordering the walk."

She blushed, turning her clear eyes upon him, and he felt a great desire to kiss the folds of her skirt or the rose above her left temple. He had never seen any one so good or so kind or so beautiful, and he vowed passionately in his rustic little heart that he would always love her best--best of all--that he would fight for her if he might, or work for her if she needed it. There was none like her--not his stepmother--not Sairy Jane--not even Eugenia. She was different--something of finer clay, made to be waited upon and worshipped like the picture of the goddess standing on the moon that he had seen in the judge's study.

Juliet smiled upon his ardour, and, leading him to a bench beneath a flowering myrtle, made him sit down beside her, while she spoke pious things about Adam and the catechism and the salvation of the world--to all of which he listened with wide-opened eyes and a fluttering heart. He wondered why no one had ever before told him such beautiful things about God and the manifold importance of keeping a clean heart and loving your neighbour as yourself. It seemed to him that he had been living in sin for the twelve years of his life and he feared that he should find it impossible to purge his mind of evil passions and to love the coloured boy Boss who had stolen his best fishing line. He asked Juliet if she thought he would be able to withstand the assaults of Satan as the minister told him to do; but she laughed and said that there was no Satan who went about like a roaring lion--only cruelty and anger and ill-will, and that he must be kind to his brothers and sisters, and to animals, and not rob birds' nests, which was very wrong. Then she added as an afterthought, with a saintly look in her eyes, that he must love God. He promised that he should try to do so, though he wished in his heart that she had told him to love herself instead. As he sat in the soft light, watching her beautiful face rising against a background of lilies, his young brain thrilled with the joy of life. It was such a glorious thing to live in a great, kind world, with a big, beneficent God above the blue, and to love all mankind--not harbouring an angry thought or an ill feeling! He looked into the kind eyes beside him and felt that he should like to be a saint or a minister--not a lawyer, which might be wicked after all. Then he remembered the waxen-faced, choleric clergyman of the church his stepmother attended, but he put the memory away. No, he would not be like that; he would not preach fire and brimstone from a white-pine pulpit. He would be large and just and merciful like God; and Juliet Burwell would come to hear him preach, looking up at him with her blue, blue glance. In the meantime he would not rob that marsh hen's nest which he had found. He would never steal another egg. He wished that he didn't have that drawerful at home. He would give them to Sairy Jane if she wanted them--all except the snake's egg, which he might keep, because serpents were an accursed race. Yes, Sairy Jane might have them all, and he wouldn't pull her hair again when he caught her looking at them on the sly.

Presently Juliet called Sally and took him into the quaint old dining-room and gave him cakes and jam on a table that shone like glass. There he saw Mr. Burwell--a pink-cheeked, little gentleman who wore an expansive air of innocence and a white piqué waistcoat--and Mrs. Burwell, a pretty, gray-haired woman, who ruled her husband with the velvet-pawed despotism which was the heritage of the women of her race and day. She had never bought a bonnet without openly consulting his judgment; he had never taken a step in life without unconsciously following hers.

"Really, my dear Sally," he had said when he heard of Nicholas's reception by his daughter, "Juliet must a--a--be taught to recognise the existence of class. Really, I cannot have her bringing all these people into my house. You must put a stop to it at once, my dear."

Mrs. Burwell had smiled placidly as she patted her gray fringe.

"Of course you know best, Mr. Burwell," she had replied with that touching humility which forbade her to address her husband by his Christian name. "Of course you know best about such matters, and I'll tell Juliet what you say. Poor child, she has such confidence in your judgment that she will believe whatever you say to be right; but she does love so to feel that she is exerting a good influence over the boys, and, perhaps, helping them to work out their future salvation. She thinks, too, that it is so well for them to have a chance of talking to you. I heard her tell Dudley Webb that he must take you for an example--"

"Ah!--ahem!" said Mr. Burwell, who worshipped the ground his daughter trod upon. "I suppose it would be a pity to interfere with her, eh, my dear?"

"Well, I can't help wishing myself, Mr. Burwell, that she would select children of her own class in life, but, as you say, she has taken a fancy to that Burr boy, and he seems to be a decent, respectful kind of child. Of course I know it is your soft heart that makes you look at it in this way--but I love you all the better for it. I remember the day you proposed to me for the sixth time, I had just seen you bandage up the head of a little darkey that had cut himself--and I accepted you on the spot."

"Yes, yes, my love," Mr. Burwell had responded, kissing his wife as they left the room. "I am convinced that I am right, and I am glad that you agree with me. We won't speak of it to Juliet."

In the hall below they met Nicholas Burr, and greeted him with hospitable kindness.

"So this is your new scholar, eh, Juliet? You must do justice to your teacher, my boy."

Juliet laughed and went out into the yard to meet several young men who were coming up the walk, and Nicholas noticed with a jealous pang that she sat with them beneath the myrtle and talked in the same soft voice with the same radiant smile. She was not speaking of heaven now. She was laughing merrily at pointless jokes and promising to embroider a handkerchief for one and to make a box of caramels for another.

He knew that they all loved her, and it gave him a miserable feeling. He felt that they were unworthy of her--that they would not worship her always and become ministers for her sake, as he was going to do. He even wondered if it wouldn't be better, after all, to become a prize fighter and to knock them all out in the first round when he got a chance.

In a moment Juliet called him to her side and laid her hand upon his arm. "He has promised not to rob birds' nests and to love me always," she said.

But the young men only laughed.

"Ask something harder," retorted one. "Any of us will do that. Ask him to stand on his head or to tie himself into a bow knot for your sake."

Nicholas reddened angrily, but Juliet told the jester to try such experiments himself--that she did not want a contortionist about. Then she bent over the boy as he said good-bye, and he went down the walk between the lilies and out into the lane.

He recrossed the green slowly, turning into the main street at the court-house steps. As he passed the church, a little further on, the iron gate opened and the rector came out, jingling the heavy keys in his hand as he talked amicably to a tourist who followed upon his heels.

"Yes, my good sir," he was saying in his high-pitched, emphatic utterance, "this dear old churchyard is never mowed except by living lawn-mowers. I assure you that I have seen thirty heads of cattle upon the vaults--positively, thirty heads, sir!"

But the boy's thoughts were far from the church and its rector, and the words sifted rapidly through his brain. He touched his hat at the tourist's greeting and smiled into the clergyman's face, but his actions were automatic. He would have nodded to the horse in the street or have smiled at the sun.

As he passed the small shops fronting on the narrow sidewalk and followed the whitewashed fence of the college grounds until it ended at the Old Stage Road, he was conscious of the keen, pulsating harmony of life. It was good to be alive--to feel the warm sunshine overhead and the warm dust below. He was glad that he had been born, though the idea had never formulated itself until now. He would be very good all his life and never do a wicked thing. It was so easy to be good if you only wanted to. Yes, he would study hard and become learned in the law, like those old prophets with whom God spoke as man with man. Then, when he had grown better and wiser than any one on earth, his tongue would become loosened, and he would go forth to preach the Gospel, and Juliet would listen to him for his wisdom's sake. Oh, if she would only love him best--best of all!

This evening the road through the wood did not frighten him, though the sun was down. He thought neither of the ghosts that Uncle Dan'l had seen, nor of the bug-a-boos that had chased Viney's husband home. He was too old for these things now. He had grown taller and stronger in a day. When he reached the pasture gate opposite the house he opened it and went in to look for the sheep.

The west was fast losing colour, like a bright-hued fabric that has been drenched in water, and a thick, blue mist, shot with fireflies, shrouded the wide common. A fresh, sharp odour rose from the dew-steeped earth, giving place, as he gained upon the flock, to the smell of moist wool. As he brushed the heavy, purple tubes of Jamestown weeds long-legged insects flew out and struck against his arm before they fell in a drunken stupor to the grass below.

The boy made his way cautiously, his figure becoming blurred as the mist wrapped him like a blanket. The darkness was gathering rapidly. From the far-off horizon clouds of lavender were melting, and the pines had gone gray.

Presently a white patch glimmered in the midst of the pasture, and he began to call softly:

"Coo-sheep! Coo-sheep!"

A tremulous bleat answered, but as he neared the flock it scattered swiftly, the errant leaders darting shyly behind the looming outlines of sassafras bushes. Again he called, and again the plaintive cry responded, growing fainter as several fleeter ewes sped past him to the beech trees beside the little stream.

The space before the boy was suddenly spangled with fireflies, and the mist grew denser.

He broke off a branch of sassafras and started at a brisk run, rounding by some dozen yards the startled ewes. The scattered white blotches closed together as he ran towards them, and fled, bleating, to the flock where it clustered at the pasture gate.

In a moment he had driven them across the road and behind the bars of the cow-pen.

When he entered the house a little later he found that the family had had supper, a single plate remaining for himself. His stepmother, looking jaded and nervous, was putting salted herring to soak in an earthenware bowl, while she scolded Sairy Jane, who was patching Jubal's apron.

"It's goin' on ten years sence I've stopped to draw breath," said Marthy Burr, "an' I'm clean wore out. 'Tain't no better than a dog's life, nohow--a woman an' a dog air about the only creeturs as would put up with it, an' they're the biggest pair of fools the Lord ever made. Here I've been standin' at the tub from sunrise to sunset, with my jaw a'most splittin' from my face, an' thar's yo' pa a-settin' at his pipe as unconsarned as if I wa'nt his lawful wife--the more's the pity! It's the lawful wives as have the work to do, an' the lawfuller the wives the lawfuller the work. If this here government ain't got nothin' better to do than to drive poor women till they drop I reckon we'd as well stop payin' taxes to keep it goin'."

Nicholas wiped his heated brow on his shirt-sleeve and hung his hat on the back of a bottomless chair. Jubal, who was rolling on the floor, gave a gurgle and made a grab at it, to be soundly boxed by his mother as she reseated him at Sairy Jane's feet. His gurgle wavered dolorously and rose into a howl.

"Have you been to supper, ma?" asked Nicholas cheerfully.

"Lord, Nick, it's a long ways past supper-time," answered Sairy Jane, relieved by the interruption. "The things air all washed up, ain't they, pa?"

Amos Burr scowled heavily upon the boy's head, his phlegmatic nature goaded into resentment by his wife's ill-temper and the lamentations of Jubal.

"I don't reckon you expect supper to keep waitin' till breakfast," he said. "You've given your ma trouble enough 'thout makin' her do an extra washin' up on your o'count. You've gone clean crazy sence you've been loafin' round with them Battles. I don't see as you air much o'count, nohow."

Nicholas raised his eyes to his father's face and looked at him fixedly. For a moment he did not speak, and then he said slowly:

"I'm as good as a hand to you."

He was thinking doggedly that he had never hated any one so much as he hated his own father, and that he liked the sensation. He wished he could do him some real harm--hit him hard enough to hurt or make the peanuts rot in the ground. He should like also to choke Jubal, who never left off yelling.

Amos Burr spat a mouthful of tobacco juice through the open window, flinching before the boy's steady glance. He was a mild-natured man at best, whose chief sin was his softness. It would not have entered his slow-witted head to protest against the accusations of his wife. When they stung him into revolt he revolted in the opposite direction.

But his failures were faults in his son's eyes. To the desperate determination of the boy, weakness became as contemptible as crime. What was a man worth who worked from morning until night and yet achieved nothing? Of what account was the farmer whom the crows outwitted and the weather made a mockery? Did not the very crops cry out as they rotted that his father was a fool, and the unploughed land proclaim him a coward? Had he ever dared a venture in his life or risked a season? And yet what had ever returned at his bidding or brought forth at his planting?

"You've been mighty little use of late," repeated Amos Burr stubbornly when his wife placed the earthenware bowl on the shelf and came to the table--her arm outstretched.

"Now, you jes' take yourself right off, Amos Burr," she said. "If you can't behave decently to my dead sister's child you shan't hang round them as was her own flesh and blood kin. Sairy Jane, you bring that plate of hot corn pones from the stove. Here, Nick, set right down an' eat your supper! There's some canned cherries if you want 'em."

Nicholas sat down, but the cornbread stuck in his throat and the coffee was without aroma. He looked at the figured oilcloth on the table and thought of the shining glass and silver at Juliet Burwell's. The flavour of the cake she had given him seemed to intensify his distaste for the food before him. He felt that he cared for nobody--that he wanted nothing. He looked at his stepmother and thought that she was dried and brown like a hickory nut; he looked at Sairy Jane and wondered why she didn't have any eyelashes, and he looked at Jubal and saw that he was all gums.

When he went up to his little attic room after supper he sat on his shucks pallet in the darkness and thought of all the evil that he should like to do. He should like to pull Sairy Jane's plait and to slap Jubal. He should even like to tell Juliet Burwell that he didn't want to keep a clean heart, and to call God names. No, he would not become a minister and preach the Gospel. He would be a thief instead and break into hen-houses and steal chickens. If his father planted watermelons he would steal them from the vines as soon as they were ripe. Perhaps Eugenia would help him. At any rate he would go halves with her if she would be his partner in wickedness. He had just as soon go to hell, after all--if it were not for Thomas Jefferson.

He leaned his head on his hands and looked through the narrow window to where the peanut fields lay in blackness. From the stable came the faint neigh of the old mare, and he remembered suddenly that he had forgotten to put straw in her stall and to loosen her halter that she might lie down. He rose and stole softly downstairs and out of the house.

IX

One evening in late autumn Nicholas went into Delphy's cabin after supper and found Eugenia seated upon the hearth, facing Uncle Ish and Aunt Verbeny. Between them Delphy's son-in-law, Moses, was helping Bernard mend a broken hare trap, while Delphy, herself, was crooning a lullaby to one of her grandchildren as she carded the wool which she had taken from a quilt of faded patchwork. On the stones of the great fireplace the red flames from lightwood splits leaped over a smouldering hickory log, filling the cabin with the penetrating odour of burning, resinous pine. From the wall above the hearth a dozen roasting apples were suspended by hemp strings, and as the heat penetrated the russet coats the apples circled against the yawning chimney like small globes revolving about a sun.

Eugenia was sitting silently in a low, split-bottomed chair, her hands folded in her lap and her animated eyes on the dark faces across from her, over whose wrinkled surfaces the dancing firelight chased in ruddy lights and shadows.

Uncle Ish had stretched his feet out upon the stones, and the mud adhering to his rough, homemade boots was fast drying before the blaze and settling in coarse gray dust upon the hearth. His gnarled old palms lay upward on his knees, and his grizzled head was bowed upon his chest. At intervals he muttered softly to himself, but his words were inaudible--suggested by some far-off and disconnected vision. Aunt Verbeny was nodding in her chair, arousing herself from time to time to give a sharp glance into the face of Uncle Ish.

"Huccome dey let you out ter-night, honey?" asked Delphy suddenly, turning her eyes upon Eugenia as she drew a fresh handful of wool from between the covers of the quilt.

"I ran away," replied the child gravely. "I saw Bernard with his hare trap, and Bernard shan't do nothin' that I can't do."

"Yes, I shall," rejoined Bernard without looking up from his trap. "You can't wear breeches."

"I like to know why I can't," demanded Eugenia. "I put on a pair of your old ones and they fit me just as well as they do you--only Aunt Chris made me get out of them."

"Sakes er live!" exclaimed Aunt Verbeny, awaking from her doze.

Uncle Ish stared dreamily into the flames. "Ole Miss wuz in her grave, she wuz," he muttered, while Delphy looked at him and shook her head mysteriously.

Then, as Nicholas entered, they made a place for him upon the hearthstones, treating him with the forbearing tolerance with which the well-born negro regards the low-born white man.

"Pa wants you all to help him in peanut-picking to-morrow," said Nicholas, addressing the group indiscriminately. "He's late at it this year, but he's been laid up with rheumatism."

"Dar ain' nuttin' ez goes on two foot er fo' ez won' len' er han' at a pickin'," remarked Uncle Ish as the boy sat down. "Dar ain' nuttin' in de shape, er man er crow ez won't he'p demse'ves w'en dey's lyin' roun' loose, nuther."

"Dar's gwine ter be er killin' fros' fo' mawnin'," said Moses, his teeth chattering from the draught let in by the opening door. "Hit kilt all Miss Chris' hop vines las' year, en it'll kill all ez ain't under kiver ter-night. Hit seems ter sort er lay holt er yo' chist en clean grip hit."

"You ain' never had no chist, nohow," remarked Delphy disdainfully. "Hit don't take mo'n er spit er fros' ter freeze thoo you. You de coldest innered somebody I ever lay eyes on. Dar mought ez well be er fence rail er roun' on er winter night fer all de wa'mth ez is in yo' bones."

"Dat's so," admitted Moses shamefacedly. "Dat's so. Dese yer nights, when de fire is all gone, is moughty near ter freezin' me out er house en home. I ain' never seed ne'r quilt ez wuz made fur er hull fambly yit. Wid me ter pull en Betsey ter pull en de chillun ter pull, whar de quilt?"

"Dar ain' no blankets dese days," said Uncle Ish sadly. "Dey ain' got mo'n er seasonin' er wool in dese yer sto' stuff. Dey wa'nt dat ar way in ole times, sis Verbeny. Bless yo' soul, sis Verbeny, dey wan't dat ar way."

"Ole Miss she use ter have eve'y stitch er her wool carded fo' her own eyes," said Aunt Verbeny. "What wa'nt good enough fer her wuz good enough fer de res', en we got hit. Ef'n de briars wouldn't come out'n it soon ez she laid her han' on 'em, Ole Miss she turnt up her nose en thowed de wool on ter de niggers' pile. Hit had ter be pisonous white en sof fo' hit 'ud tech Ole Missusses skin. Noner yo' nappy stuff done come near her."

Uncle Ish chuckled and hung his head on his breast.

"Doze wuz times!" he cried, "doze wuz times, en dese ain't times!"

Then he looked at Nicholas, who was watching the apples spinning in the heat.

"De po' white trash ain' set foot inside my do'," he added, "en de leetle gals ain' flirt roun' twell dar wa'nt no qualifyin' der legs f'om der arms."

"I don't care!" said Eugenia, looking defiantly at Uncle Ish.

"Lor', chile, don't teck on dat way," remonstrated Aunt Verbeny. "You ain't had no raisin' noways, en dar ain' been nobody ter brung you up 'cep'n yo' pa. Hit's de foolishness uv Miss Chris ez has overturnt de hull place."

"She's a-settin' moughty prim now," continued Uncle Ish, his eyes on the little girl. "She des' es prim es ef she wuz chiny en glass, but I'se had my eye on 'er afo' dis. I'se done tote 'er in dese arms when she wa'nt knee high ter Marse Tom's ole mule Jenny, en she ain't cut nairy er caper dat I ain't 'sperienced hit."

"I don't care," retorted Eugenia.

"Ain't I done see her plump right out whar sis Delphy wuz a-wallopin' her Jeetle nigger Jake, en holler out dat Jake ain' done lay ban's on her pa's watermillion--'case she done steal 'em herse'f?"

"I don't care!" repeated Eugenia with tearful defiance.

"An' she ain' no mo' steal dat ar watermillion den I is," finished Uncle Ish triumphantly.

"It was just a lie," said Bernard. "Eugie, you know where liars go."

"Des' ez straight ter de bad place ez dey kin walk," added Aunt Verbeny severely. "Des' ez straight ez de Lord kin sen' 'em dar."

"It was a good lie," declared Nicholas, in manful defence of the weak. "I don't believe she's goin' to be damned for a good lie and a little one, too."

"Well, dar's lies en dar's lies," put in Delphy consolingly, "an' I 'low dat dar's mo' in de manner uv lyin' den in de lie. Some lies is er long ways sweeter ter de tas' den Gospel trufe. Abraham, he lied, en it ain't discountenance him wid de Lord. Marse Tom, he lied when he wuz young, en it spar'd 'im er whoppin'. Hit's er plum fool ez won't spar' dere own hinder parts on er 'count uv er few words."

"George Washington didn't," said Bernard.

"I wish he had," added Eugenia. "Aunt Chris made me read about him and his old cherry tree when I told her the red rooster was setting, because I didn't want her to kill him."

"Ma asked me once if I had been fishin' when she told me to clean out the spring," said Nicholas thoughtfully, "an' I said yes."

"What did she say?" asked Bernard.

"Nothin'. She whacked me on the head."

Just then Betsey came in with her baby in her arms, and Moses shuffled aside to give place to her, cowed by an admonishing glance from his mother-in-law.

"Bless de Lord!" exclaimed Uncle Ish, lifting his withered, old hands. "Ef dar ain' anur er Betsey's babies! How many is de, Mose?"

Moses scratched his head and shrank into the corner.

"I ain' done straighten 'em out yit, Unk Ish," he returned slowly. "'Pears like soon es I done add 'em all up anur done come, an' I has ter kac'late f'om de bottom agin. I ain' got no head fer figgers, nohow. Betsey, she lays dat dar's ten uv 'em, but ter save my soul I can't mek out mo'n eight."

"Dar's nearer er dozen," rejoined Betsey with offended pride, "dar's nearer er dozen 'cordin' ter de way I count."

"Dar now!" cried Aunt Verbeny. "I ain' never trus' no nigger's cac'lations yit, en I ain' gwine ter now. When I wants countin', I want white folks' countin'."

"Dey tell me," said Delphy, glancing sternly at the head on Betsey's knee, "dat de quality don' set demse'ves up on er pa'sel er chillun no mo'. De time done gone by. My Mahaly, she went up ter some outlandish place wid er wild Injun name, like Philadelphy, en she sez de smaller de fambly de mo' stuck up is de heads er it. She sez ef Ole Miss had gone up dar a-puttin' on airs 'case er her fifteen chillun, she wouldn't never have helt up 'er head no mo'. Mahaly, she ain' mah'ed no man, she ain't. She sez en ole maid in Philadelphy des' looks right spang over all de heads, she's so sot up."

"'Tain' so yer," said Aunt Verbeny feelingly. "'Tain' so yer. Hit seems like de 'oman nairy a man is laid claim ter ain' wuth claimin'. Ain' dat so, bro' Ish?"

But Uncle Ish only grunted in retort, his head nodding drowsily. The tremulous tracery the wood-fire cast upon his face gave it an expression of dumb intensity which adumbrated all the pathos and the patience of his race.

"Mahaly wuz er likely gal," went on Aunt Verbeny, "an' when she las' come home, she wuz a-warin' spike-heeled shoes en er veil uv skeeter nettin'. 'Tain' so long sence Rhody's Viney went to Philadelphy, too, but she ain' had no luck sence she wuz born er twin. Hit went clean agin 'er."

"Lord a-mercy, Aunt Verbeny, she ain't a-comin' back dis way?" asked Betsey, probing the apples with a small pine stick and giving the softest to Eugenia.

Aunt Verbeny shook her head.

"She ain' never had no luck on er 'count er bein' er twin," she said. "When she sot herse'f on a-gwine up ter de Yankees, Marse Tom, he tuck er goose quill en wrote out 'er principles [recommendations] des' es plain es writin' kin be writ--which ain't plain enough fer my eyes--en he gun' 'em ter Viney wid his own han's. Viney tuck 'n put 'em safe 'way down in de bottom uv 'er trunk en went 'long ter de Yankees. But she ain' been dar mo'n er week when one night she went a-traipsin' out on de street en lef er principles behint 'er, en, bless yo' life, oner dem ar Yankees breck right in en stole 'em smack 'way f'om 'er. Yo' trunk is a moughty risky place ter kyar yo' principles, but Viney, she wuz dat sot up."

A nod of assent passed round the group. The children ate their apples silently, and Moses got up to put fresh wood on the fire. As the green log fell among the smouldering chips vivid tongues of flame shot up the smoked old mortar of the chimney, and the remaining apples burst their brown peels and sent out little rivulets of juice. The crackling of the fresh bark made a cheerful accompaniment to the chirping of a cricket hidden somewhere in the hearthstones.

"Dar now, bro' Ish!" exclaimed Aunt Verbeny, watching Eugenia as she sat in the dull red glare. "Ef dat chile ain't de patt'en er young Miss Meeley, I'se clean cracked in my head, I is. I 'members Miss Meeley des' ez well ez 'twuz yestiddy de day Marse Tom brung her home en de niggers stood a-bowin' en axin' howdy at de gate. She wuz all black en white en cold lookin' twell she smiled, en den it wuz des' like er lightwood blaze in 'er eyes."

Uncle Ish nodded dreamily.

"I use ter ride erlong wid Marse Tom ter co'te 'er," he said, "en de gent'men wuz a-troopin' ter see her in vayous attitudes. Dey buzzed roun' 'er de same ez bees, but she ain' had no eyes fer none 'cep'n Marse Tom."

At that instant the door opened, and Rindy rushed in, breathlesly pursuing Eugenia.

"Miss Chris is pow'ful riled," she announced, "an' Marse Tom is a-stampin' roun' same ez er bull. I reckon you'se gwine ter ketch it when dey once gits dere han's on you." Then, as her eye fell on Nicholas, she assumed an indignant air. "Dis ain't de place fer po' folks," she added.

Eugenia rose and put a roasted apple in her pocket.

"I ain't goin' to catch anything that Bernard doesn't catch," she said. "When he goes I'm goin' too."

And she went out, followed by Rindy and the boys.

The first breath of the chill atmosphere brought a glow to Nicholas's cheek, and he started at a brisk run across the fields. He had gone but a few yards when he was checked by Eugenia's voice.

"Nick!" she called.

Her small, dark shadow was falling on the ground beside him, and by the light of the pale moon he could see the fog of her breath.

As he went towards her she held out her hand.

"Here's an apple I saved for you," she panted. "And--and I don't mind about your being poor white trash!"

He took the apple, but before the reply left his lips she had darted from him and was speeding homeward across the glimmering whiteness of the frost.