The Battle Ground Part 31

"Yes, I'll take my breakfast now, if you please," he said as he sat down at one end of the long, oilcloth-covered table. Mrs. Hicks brought him his coffee and cakes, and then stood, with her hands upon a chair back, and watched him with a frank delight in his well-dressed comely figure.

"You do favour the Major, Mr. Dan," she suddenly remarked.

He started impatiently. "Oh, the Lightfoots are all alike, you know," he responded. "We are fond of saying that a strain of Lightfoot blood is good for two centuries of intermixing." Then, as he looked up at her faded wrapper and twisted curl papers, he flinched and turned away as if her ugliness afflicted his eyes. "Do not let me keep you," he added hastily.

But the woman stooped to shake a child that was tugging at her dress, and talked on in her drawling voice, while a greedy interest gave life to her worn and sallow face. "How long do you think of stayin'?" she asked curiously, "and do you often take a notion to walk so fur in the dead of night? Why, I declar, when I looked out an' saw you I couldn't believe my eyes. That's not Mr. Dan, I said, you won't catch Mr. Dan out in the pitch darkness with a lantern and ten miles from home."

"I really do not want to keep you," he broke in shortly, all the good-humour gone from his voice.

"Thar ain't nothin' to do right now," she answered with a searching look into his face. "I was jest waitin' to bring you some mo' cakes." She went out and came in presently with a fresh plateful. "I remember jest as well the first time you ever took breakfast here," she said. "You wa'n't more'n twelve, I don't reckon, an' the Major brought you by in the coach, with Big Abel driving. The Major didn't like the mola.s.ses we gave him, and he pushed the pitcher away and said it wasn't fit for pigs; and then you looked about real peart and spoke up, 'It's good mola.s.ses, grandpa, I like it.' Sakes alive, it seems jest like yestiddy. I don't reckon the Major is comin' by to-day, is he?"

He pushed his plate away and rose hurriedly, then, without replying, he brushed past her, and went out upon the porch.

There he found Jack Hicks, and forced himself squarely into a discussion of his altered fortunes. "I may as well tell you, Jack," he said, with a touch of arrogance, "that I'm turned out upon the world, at last, and I've got to make a living. I've left Cheric.o.ke for good, and as I've got to stay here until I find a place to go, there's no use making a secret of it."

The pipe dropped from Jack's mouth, and he stared back in astonishment.

"Bless my soul and body!" he exclaimed. "Is the old gentleman crazy or is you?"

"You forget yourself," sharply retorted Dan.

"Well, well," pursued Jack, good-naturedly, as he knocked the ashes from his pipe and slowly refilled it. "If you hadn't have told me, I wouldn't have believed you--well, well." He put his pipe into his mouth and hung on it for a moment; then he took it out and spoke thoughtfully. "I reckon I've known you from a child, haven't I, Mr. Dan?" he asked.

"That's so, Jack," responded the young man, "and if you can recommend me, I want you to help me to a job for a week or two--then I'm off to town."

"I've known you from a child year in an' year out," went on Jack, blandly disregarding the interruption. "From the time you was sech a pleasant-spoken little boy that it did me good to bow to you when you rode by with the Major. 'Thar's not another like him in the country,' I said to Bill Bates, an' he said to me, 'Thar's not a man between here an'

Leicesterburg as ain't ready to say the same.' Then time went on an' you got bigger, an' the year came when the crops failed an' Sairy got sick, an'

I took a mortgage on this here house--an' what should happen but that you stepped right up an' paid it out of yo' own pocket. And you kept it from the Major. Lord, Lord, to think the Major never knew which way the money went."

"We won't speak of that," said Dan, throwing back his head. The thought that the innkeeper might be going to offer him the money stung him into anger.

But Jack knew his man, and he would as soon have thought of throwing a handful of dust into his face. "Jest as you like, suh, jest as you like,"

he returned easily, and went on smoking.

Dan sat down in a chair upon the porch, and taking out his knife began idly whittling at the end of a stick. A small boy, in blue jean breeches, watched him eagerly from the steps, and he spoke to him pleasantly while he cut into the wood.

"Did you ever see a horse's head on a cane, sonny?"

The child sucked his dirty thumb and edged nearer.

"Naw, suh, but I've seen a dawg's," he answered, drawing out his thumb like a stopper and sticking it in again.

"Well, you watch this and you'll see a horse's. There, now don't take your eyes away."

He whittled silently for a time, then as he looked up his glance fell on the stagecoach in the yard, and he turned from it to Jack Hicks.

"There's one thing on earth I know about, Jack," he said, "and that's a horse."

"Not a better jedge in the county, suh," was Jack's response.

As Dan whittled a flush rose to his face. "Does Tom Hyden still drive the Hopeville stage?" he asked.

"Well, you see it's this way," answered Jack, weighing his words. "Tom he's a first-rate hand at horses, but he drinks like a fish, and last week he married a wife who owns a house an' farm up the road. So long as he had to earn his own livin' he kept sober long enough to run the stage, but since he's gone and married, he says thar's no call fur him to keep a level head--so he don't keep it. Yes, that's about how 'tis, suh."

Dan finished the stick and handed it to the child. "I tell you what, Jack,"

he said suddenly, "I want Tom Hyden's place, and I'm going to drive that stage over to Hopeville this afternoon. Phil Banks runs it, doesn't he?--well, I know him." He rose and stood humorously looking out upon the coach. "There's no time like the present," he added, "so I begin work to-day."

Jack Hicks silently stared up at him for a moment; then he coughed and exclaimed hoa.r.s.ely:--

"The jedgment ain't fur off," but Dan laughed the prophecy aside and went upstairs to write to Betty.

"I've got a job, Big Abel," he began, going into his room, where the negro was pressing a pair of trousers with a flatiron, "and what's more it will keep me till I get another."

Big Abel gloomily shook his head. "We all 'ud des better go 'long home ter Ole Miss," he returned, for he was in no mood for compromises. "Caze I ain'

use ter de po' w'ite trash en dey ain' use ter me."

"Go if you want to," retorted Dan, sternly, "but you go alone," and the negro, protesting under his breath, laid the clothes away and went down to his breakfast.

Dan sat down by the window and wrote a letter to Betty which he never sent.

When he thought of her now it was as if half the world instead of ten miles lay between them; and quickly as he would have resented the hint of it from Jack Hicks, to himself he admitted that he was fast sinking where Betty could not follow him. What would the end be? he asked, and disheartened by the question, tore the paper into bits and walked moodily up and down the room. He had lived so blithely until to-day! His lines had fallen so smoothly in the pleasant places! Not without a grim humour he remembered now that last year his grievance had been that his tailor failed to fit him. Last year he had walked the floor in a rage because of a wrinkled coat, and to-day--His road had gone rough so suddenly that he stumbled like a blind man when he tried to go over it in his old buoyant manner.

An hour later he was still pacing restlessly to and fro, when the door softly opened and Mrs. Hicks looked in upon him with a deprecating smile.

As she lingered on the threshold, he stopped in the middle of the room and threw her a sharp glance over his shoulder.

"Is there anything you wish?" he questioned irritably.

Shaking her head, she came slowly toward him and stood in her soiled wrapper and curl papers, where the gray light from the latticed window fell full upon her.

"It ain't nothin'," she answered hurriedly. "Nothin' except Jack's been tellin' me you're in trouble, Mr. Dan."

"Then he has been telling you something that concerns n.o.body but myself,"

he replied coolly, and continued his walking.

There was a nervous flutter of her wrapper, and she pa.s.sed her knotted hand over her face.

"You are like yo' mother, Mr. Dan," she said with an unexpectedness that brought him to a halt. "An' I was the last one to see her the night she went away. She came in here, po' thing, all s.h.i.+verin' with the cold, an'

she wouldn't set down but kep' walkin' up an' down, up an' down, jest like you've been doin' fur this last hour. Po' thing! Po' thing! I tried to make her take a sip of brandy, but she laughed an' said she was quite warm, with her teeth chatterin' fit to break--"

"You are very good, Mrs. Hicks," interrupted Dan, in an affected drawl which steadied his voice, "but do you know, I'd really rather that you wouldn't."

Her sallow face twitched and she looked wistfully up at him.

"It isn't that, Mr. Dan," she went on slowly, "but I've had trouble myself, G.o.d knows, and when I think of that po' proud young lady, an' the way she went, I can't help sayin' what I feel--it won't stay back. So if you'll jest keep on here, an' give up the stage drivin' an' wait twil the old gentleman comes round--Jack an' I'll do our best fur you--we'll do our best, even if it ain't much."

Her lips quivered, and as he watched her it seemed to him that a new meaning pa.s.sed into her face--something that made her look like Betty and his mother--that made all good women who had loved him look alike. For the moment he forgot her ugliness, and with the beginning of that keener insight into life which would come to him as he touched with humanity, he saw only the dignity with which suffering had endowed this plain and simple woman. The furrows upon her cheeks were no longer mere disfigurements; they raised her from the ordinary level of the ignorant and the ugly into some bond of sympathy with his dead mother.

"My dear Mrs. Hicks," he stammered, abashed and reddening. "Why, I shall take a positive pleasure in driving the stage, I a.s.sure you."