The Deliverance Part 6

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 pa.s.sed 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 fas.h.i.+on to her plate of b.u.t.tered 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 gla.s.s.

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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sion 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 a.s.sented 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 bra.s.s hoops in her ears, appeared to bear away the supper tray, Mrs. Blake folded her hands and settled herself for a nap upon her cus.h.i.+ons, while the yellow cat purred blissfully on her knees.

Beyond the adjoining bedroom, through which Christopher pa.s.sed, 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 b.u.t.termilk. 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 gla.s.s 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 coa.r.s.e 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 s.e.x, 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 Ma.r.s.e Noah," she remarked with scorn.

"Howdy, Ma.r.s.e Christopher? Howdy, Ma.r.s.e 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, Ma.r.s.e 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 sa.s.sy 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 fas.h.i.+ons, 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 peac.o.c.ks. '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 n.i.g.g.e.r '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."