Ann Boyd Part 12

There was a low whimper in her voice, and the lines about her mouth had tightened. King's breast heaved, and he suddenly put out his hand and began to stroke her thin, gray hair. A strange, restful feeling stole over him. The spell was on her, too; she closed her eyes and a satisfied smile lighted her wan face. Then her lips began to quiver, and she quickly turned her face from him.

"I'm a simpleton," she sobbed, "but I can't help it. n.o.body hain't petted me nor tuck on over me a bit since your pa died. I never treated you right, neither, Luke. I ort never to 'a' let Mark run over you like he did."

"Never mind that," King said. "He and I have already made friends; but you must not lie in this dingy hole; you need medicine, and good, warm food."

"Oh, I'm goin' to git up," she answered, lightly. "I'm not sick, Luke. I jest laid down awhile to rest. I have to do this nearly every evening. I must git the house straight. Mary an' Jane hain't no hands at house-work 'thout I stand right over 'em, an' Jake an' his pa is continually a-fussing. I feel stronger already. If you'll go in t'other room I'll rise. They'll never fix you nothin' to eat nor nowhar to sleep. I reckon you'll have to lie with Jake like you used to, till I can fix better.

Things has been in an awful mess since I got so porely."

He went into the front room. The old man had brought his hand-bag in. He had placed it in a chair and opened it and was coolly inspecting the contents in the firelight. Jake and the two girls stood looking on. King stared at the old man, but the latter did not seem at all abashed.

"Huh," he said, "you seem to be about as well stocked with little tricks as a notion peddler-five or six pair o' striped socks and no end o'

collars; them things folded under the s.h.i.+rts looks like another suit o'

clothes. I reckon you have had a good job if you carry two outfits around. Though I _have_ heard of printin'-men that went off owin'

accounts here an' yan."

"I paid what I owed before I left," King said, with an effort at lightness as he closed the valise and put it into a corner.

In a few minutes his mother came in. She blew out the candle, and as she crossed to the mantel-piece she carefully extinguished the smoking wick with her fingers. The change in her was more noticeable to her son than it had been when she was reclining. She looked very frail in her faded black cotton gown. Somehow, bent as she was, she seemed shorter than of old, more cowed and hopeless. Her shoes were worn through, and her bare feet showed through the holes.

"Mary," she asked, "have you put on the supper?"

"Yes'm, but it hain't tuck up yet." The girl went into the next room, which was used at once for cooking and dining, and her mother followed her. In a few minutes the old woman came to the door.

"Walk out, all of you," she said, wearily. "Luke, it seems funny to make company of you, but somehow I can't treat you like the rest. You'll have to make out with what is set before you, though hog-meat is mighty scarce this year. Just at fattenin'-time our pigs took the cholera an'

six laid down in the swamp in one day and died. Pork is fetchin' fifteen cents a pound in town, and mighty few will sell on a credit."

XV

After supper King left his mother and step-sisters removing the dishes from the table and went out. He was sickened to the depths of his sensitive soul by the sordid meal he had just seen the family partake of with evident relish, as if it were of unusual occurrence. And he was angry with himself, too, for feeling so, when such a life had been their lot so long.

He crossed the little brook that ran on a bed of brown stone behind the cabin, and leaned against the rail-fence which surrounded the pine-pole corn-crib. He could easily leave them in their squalor and ignorance and return to the great, intellectual world-the world which read his editorials and followed his precepts, the key-note of which had always been the love of man for man as the greatest force in the universe-but, after all, would that not stamp him with the brand he most despised-hypocrisy? A pretty preacher, he, of such fine-spun theories, while his own mother and her step-children were burrowing in the soil like eyeless animals, and he living on the fat of the land along with the wealth and power of the country!

The cabin door shone out, a square of red light against the blackness of the hill and the silent, serried pines beyond. He heard Jake whistling a tune he had whistled long ago, when they had worked Mark Bruce's crop side by side, and the spasmodic creaking of the puncheons as the family moved about within.

A figure appeared in the doorway. It was his mother, and she was coming to search for him.

"Here I am, mother!" he cried out, gently, as she advanced through the darkness; "look out and don't get your feet wet."

She chuckled childishly as she stepped across the brook on the largest stones. When she reached him she put her hand on his arm and laughed: "La me, boy, a little wet won't hurt me-I'm used to a good soakin'

mighty nigh every drenchin' rain. I slept with a stream of it tricklin'

through the roof on my back one night, an' I've milched the cows in that thar lot when the mire was shoe-mouth deep in January. I 'lowed I'd find you out here. You used to be a mighty hand to sneak off to yoreself to study, and you are still that away. But you are different in some things, too. You don't talk our way exactly, an' I reckon that's what aggravates Mark. He was goin' on jest now about yore stuck-up way o'

eatin with yore pocket-handkerchief spread out in yore lap."

King looked past her at the full moon rising above the trees on the mountain-top.

"Mother," said he, abruptly, and he put his arm impulsively around her neck, and his eyes filled-"mother, I can't stay here but a few days. I have work to do in Atlanta. Your health is bad, and you are not comfortable; the others are strong and can stand it, but you can't. Come down there with me for a while, anyway. I'll put you under a doctor and bring back your health."

She looked up into his eyes steadily for a moment, then she slapped him playfully on the breast and drew away from him. "How foolish you talk fer a grown-up man!" she laughed; "why, you know I can't leave Mark and the children. He'd go stark crazy 'thout me around to grumble at, an'

then the rest ud be without my advice an' counsel. La me, what makes you think I ain't comfortable? This cabin is a sight better 'n the last one we had, an' drier an' a heap warmer inside when fire-wood kin be got.

Hard times like these now is likely to come at any time an' anywhar. It strikes rich an' pore alike. Thar's d.i.c.kerson offerin' that fine old farm, with all the improvements, fer a mere song to raise money to go into business whar he kin hope to pay out o' debt. They say now that the place-lock, stock, and barrel-kin be had fer ten thousand. Why, when you was a boy he would have refused twenty. Now, ef we-all had it instead o'

him, Mark an' Jake could make it pay like rips, fer they are hard workers."

"You think they could, mother?" His heart bounded suddenly, and he stood staring thoughtfully into her eyes.

"Pay?-of course they could. Fellers that could keep a roof over a family's head on what they've had to back 'em could get rich on a place like that. But, la me, what's the use o' pore folks thinkin' about the property o' the rich an' lucky? It's like dreamin' you are a queen at night an' wakin' up in hunger an' rags."

"I remember the farm and the old house very well," King remarked, reflectively, the queer light still in his earnest eyes.

"The _old_ one! Huh, d.i.c.kerson got on a splurge the year you left, an'

built a grand new one with some money from his wife's estate. He turned the old one into a big barn an' stable an' gin. You must see the new house 'fore you go away, Luke. It's jest splendid, with green blinds to the winders, a fancy spring-house with a tin rooster on top that p'ints the way the wind blows, and on high stilts like thar's a big tank and a windmill to keep the house supplied with water. I hain't never been in it, but they say they've got wash-tubs long enough to lie down in handy to every sleepin'-room, and no end of fancy contraptions."

"We'd better go in, mother," he said, abruptly. "You'll catch your death of cold out here in the dew."

She laughed as they walked back to the cabin, side by side. A thick smoke and its unpleasant odor met them at the door.

"It's Mark burnin' rags inside to oust the mosquitoes so he kin sleep,"

she explained. "They are wuss this year than I ever seed 'em. Seems like the general starvation has tackled them, too, fer they look like they will eat a body up whether or no. Jake an' the gals grease their faces with lamp-oil when they have any, but I jest kiver up my head with a rag an' never know they are about. I reckon we'd better go to bed. Jake has fixed him a pallet on the fodder in the loft, so you kin lie by yoreself. He's been jowerin' at his pa ever since supper about treatin'

you so bad. I thought once they'd come to blows."

The next morning, after breakfast, Jake threw a bag of sh.e.l.led corn on the back of his mare, and, mounting upon it as if it were a saddle, he started off down the valley to the mill, and his father shouldered an axe and went up on the hill to cut wood.

"Whar you going?" Mrs. Bruce asked, as she followed Luke to the door.

His eyes fell to the ground. "I thought," he answered, "that I'd walk over to the d.i.c.kerson farm and take a look at the improvements. I used to hunt over that land."

"Well, whatever you do, be sure you get back to dinner," she said. "Me an' Jane took a torch last night after you went to bed an' blinded a hen on the roost and pulled her down; I'm goin' to make you an' old-time chicken-pie like you used to love on Christmas."

Half a mile up the road, which ran along the side of the hill from which the slow, reverberating clap, clap of Mark Bruce's axe came on the still air, King came into view of the rich, level lands of the d.i.c.kerson plantation. He stood in the shade of a tall poplar and looked thoughtfully at the lush green meadows, the well-tilled fields of corn, cotton, and sorghum, and the large, two-storied house, with its dormer-windows, tall, fluted columns, and broad verandas-at the well-arranged out-houses, barns, and stables, and the white-gravelled drives and walks from the house to the main road. Then he turned and looked back at the cabin-the home of his nearest kin.

The house was hardly discernible in the gray morning mist that lingered over the little vale in which it stood. He saw Jake, far away, riding along, in and out, among the sa.s.safras and sumach bushes that bordered a worn-out wheat-field, his long legs dangling at the sides of the mare.

There was a bent, blurred figure at the wood-pile in the yard; it was his mother or one of the girls.

"Poor souls!" he exclaimed; "they have been in a dreary tread-mill all their lives, and have never known the joy of one gratified ambition. If only I could conquer my own selfish desires, I could lay before them that which they never dreamed of possessing-a glorious taste of genuine happiness. It would take my last dollar of ready money, but I'd still have my interest in the new paper and this brain and will of mine. Aunt Ann would never see it my way, and she might throw me over for doing it, but why shouldn't I? Why shouldn't I do it when my very soul cries out for it? Why have I been preaching this thing all this time and making converts right and left if I am to draw back the first time a real opportunity confronts me? It may be to test my mettle. Yes, that's what it is. I've got to do one or the other-keep the money-or give it to them."

XVI

King turned towards the d.i.c.kerson place and walked on, a great weight of indecision on him. He had always held up Ann Boyd as his highest human example. She would laugh the idea to scorn-the idea of putting old Mark Bruce and his "lay-out" into such a home and circ.u.mstances; and yet, estimable as she was in many things, still she was not a free woman. She showed that by her slavery to the deepest hatred that ever burned in a human breast. No, it was plain to the young philosopher that in some things, at least, she was no guide for him. Rather might it not eventually result in the hate-hardened woman's learning brighter walks of life from him, young as he was? And yet, he told himself, the money was his, not theirs, and few really succeeded in life who gave away their substance.

The road led him past Jane Hemingway's cottage, and at the fence, in the barn-yard, he saw Virginia. He saw her, bareheaded, with her wonderful hair and exquisite profile and curve of neck, shoulder, and breast, before she was aware of his approach, and the view brought him to a stand behind some bushes which quite hid him from her view.