The Hills of Refuge Part 16

"'Say, Andy, I'm going to be frank with you. I never have been interested in my _own_ ancestry. Wouldn't it seem odd to you if I was interested in _yours_?'"

Charles laughed heartily, for the girl had managed to put him quite at his ease. Besides, he was ravenously hungry and Zilla had brought a big platter of fried chicken and a plate heaping with hot biscuits and put them before him. A pot of coffee stood near him, from which he was expected to help himself. A door of the room was open, showing a flower-garden full of blooming rose-bushes. The midday sun beat down on it. Bees were hovering over the flowers. In some apple-trees close to the door birds were flitting about and chirping. A rooster was crowing l.u.s.tily at the barn; the cawing of a crow came across the fields. To the wanderer all nature seemed to be swelling, bursting with joy. As he looked into the face of the girl across the table something seemed to tell him that a veritable new life had begun for him, and that she, in some way, was responsible for it. He was full of grat.i.tude to her.

Dinner over, they rose from the table together. "What are you going to do now?" she questioned. "I must tell you that we always take at least an hour for dinner, and on very hot days we don't work till later in the afternoon."

"It is too much fun to stay away from it," he laughed. "It is like playing a new game."

She went with him to the door; she stepped down into the yard. "I must show you a few other things," she said. "That is the blacksmith's shop adjoining the smoke-house. The shop used to be a means of making money.

We owned an old slave who was considered the best blacksmith in the county. He used to shoe horses and mend carriages and wagons, but now the shop is seldom used except for the sharpening of tools. Then we hire a blacksmith to come out from Carlin. But he gets three dollars a day, and so we only have him about twice a year."

They were at the old shop now, and Mary drew the great sliding-door open. To her surprise, Charles stepped in, examined the big bellows, forge, and anvil with the air of one who knew what he was about.

"Everything is here," he said, "and in good order."

"What do you know about a shop?" Mary asked, with a smile.

"More than I do about farming," he answered. "The show I was with carried its own shop, and now and then I used to work in it as an a.s.sistant. If you will let me, the first rainy day that comes I'll sharpen all the tools."

"Oh, can you--will you?" she cried. "That would be splendid. But if it gets out the neighbors will bore you to death with requests for this or that. You couldn't shoe a horse, could you?"

"Oh yes. That is simple enough," he replied, indifferently. "The big draft-horses we used had to be double shod, and I learned how to do it."

At the door of the shop they parted. Charles went back to the cotton-field and resumed his work there. All the afternoon he toiled.

Digging the mellow soil and cutting down the succulent weeds and crab-gra.s.s was a fascinating pastime rather than a disagreeable task.

The sun sank behind the hills. The dusk fell over the land. Presently he looked up and saw Mary at the end of the row which he was finis.h.i.+ng.

"This won't do," she chided him. "In a little while it will be too dark.

Didn't you hear the bell?"

He had not, and he stared at her, abashed.

"Well, come on," she said, sweetly. "Aunt Zilla is not angry. It is such an odd thing to see a man willing to work that she was laughing over it.

I think she likes you already, and it is queer, for she does not take to strangers readily. She is a close observer and she says that you have a sad, lonely look about the eyes. I didn't agree with her, for you seem very cheerful to me. You are not--not homesick, or--or anything of that sort, are you, Mr. Brown?"

"I think not at all," he answered. "How could I be homesick, for I have no home?"

"Then Aunt Zilla may be right," Mary observed, quietly. "You may be sad because you have no home; perhaps that is what she reads in your face.

Now that I come to think of it, you do seem to look lonely and isolated.

Somehow I can't imagine your being contented here with us. You are so different, somehow, from our young men. I don't know in what way, particularly, but you are different, and so I am actually afraid that you will decide to--to go somewhere else. If you do, Mr. Brown, don't let anything I have said about--about needing your help stop you."

They were on the path approaching the house; he paused suddenly, and they faced each other. "I wish I could remove those ideas from your mind for good and all, Miss Rowland," he said, almost huskily, in his earnestness. "It is the second time you have mentioned the subject and I want you to understand the truth. My life for the last year has been one of restless torment. I gave up traveling with the circus to settle down on a farm. Something told me I would like it, but nothing told me that I would find work with such kind persons as you and your father. The truth is, I am so contented here that I am afraid"--he was laughing now--"that I shall wake up and find myself in that rumbling freight-train again, with canvas to unload, ropes to stretch, and stakes to drive."

"Well, I'll not bring it up again," she promised, with a sigh of relief.

"I wouldn't have done it, but Zilla set me thinking on that line. I do want you to feel at home here, and it is not all selfishness, either.

I've had trouble--I'm having plenty of it now--and somehow I feel that you have had more than your share somehow, somewhere."

The words were half tentative; she eyed him expectantly, but he made no response. They were at the veranda now, and he turned into the hall and went up to his room. He found that his bag had come, and, quickly putting on the suit of clothes it contained, he hurried down. The suit was a good, well-fitting one, bought with his old taste for such things, and in the lamplight he presented quite a changed appearance. He remarked the all but surprised look in Mary's face when he met her in the dining-room, but she made no comment. She had not changed her dress, and was waiting for him in her place at the head of the table.

"Father has eaten and gone back to his books," she said. "He takes very little nourishment. That is one good thing in ancestry wors.h.i.+p, it saves food in his case. He can live on a biscuit and a gla.s.s of milk a day if he is on the track of a fresh twig for our tree."

When supper was over they went out to the front veranda. Leaving Charles seated on the end of it, Mary went into the big parlor behind him. He saw the light flash up as she struck a match and applied it to a lamp. A moment later he heard her playing the old piano. Its tone was sweet and her touch good. She was playing old plantation melodies, some of which he had heard before, and a wonderful sense of peace and restfulness crept over him. Presently, as if drawn by the music, Rowland rose from a rustic seat under an oak on the lawn and came to him.

"She learned that from her mother," the old man whispered. "My wife was graduated at a Virginia college for young ladies, and in her day was considered a fine performer. Mary sings, too, but--There, she is beginning now."

He checked himself, for his daughter was singing an old hymn, and Charles thought her voice was wonderfully sweet and sympathetic. But it suddenly quivered, a lump seemed to rise into her throat, and she stopped. There was stillness for a moment, then Charles heard Zilla's voice.

"Don't give way lak dat, missie!" she said. "Raise yo' pretty haid up.

Dem boys is gwine ter come thoo dis spree same as de rest of 'um. Don't give up, chile. Ol' Zilla gwine ter go 'stracted if you do. You is too young en' sweet en' lightsome ter give down lak dat."

"It is those boys," Rowland muttered. "She's like her mother was, full of worry when they start to cut up. As for me, you see, I know that wild oats must be sown. I certainly ought to know, for I cut a wide swath in my young day. It must run in our blood. There was a young Sir George Rowland among the first settlers in South Carolina, and, judging from his will, of which I have a copy, he was as dissolute and extravagant as a royal prince. Yes, yes, blood will tell, and history is only repeating itself in my boys."

He turned into the parlor. Charles heard his voice gently admonis.h.i.+ng his daughter, joined to that of Aunt Zilla, and presently Mary was heard ascending the stairs to her room. She had a lighted candle in her hand, and Charles caught a glimpse of her when she was half-way up the flight.

She looked to him like an old picture of Colonial days; the light elongated her figure and gave to her trim gown the effect of an elaborate train. He was sure that the impression he had of her at that instant would never leave him.

Saying good night to Rowland, Charles went up to his room and undressed.

A few minutes before he had been conscious of a sense of infinite peace and content, but already the feeling was gone. In its place was a growing desire to lift the sinister shadow that hung over the young girl. He could hear her soft step in her room across the hall. He had put out his light and now saw from his window that old Rowland was still strolling about the lawn. Presently all was still in Mary's room. He was very tired, but his brain was too active for sleep. The long straight rows of cotton-plants haunted his mind. In thought he was cutting out the weeds with Mary at his side. He heard again her sweet, merry comments and wise suggestions; he saw the wondrous lights and shadows in her beauteous face and the moving grace of her form. He was her servant; she belonged to the social cla.s.s which he had renounced forever. Owing to the blight upon his name and character, he could never aspire to be more than a laborer on her father's farm, but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered but her happiness, and he told himself that she should have happiness if he died to give it to her.

CHAPTER VI

He waked before the sun was quite up the next morning. The pale light reflected from the eastern sky was creeping in at the windows when he opened his eyes. His mind was not clear, and at first he thought he was in his room at his old home. In a half-dreaming state he fancied Michael was at the door, telling him it was time to rise and catch a train. Next he thought he heard Ruth's voice calling to him, as she was wont to do at times before she was out of bed. Then the vague outlines of the old furniture took clearer shape and he sat up. In a flash his new life had reopened before him. He dressed hurriedly and went down-stairs. The front door was open, and the dewy lawn lay in the yellowing light. The peak of the nearest mountain pierced the fleecy clouds. He was turning around the house to go to the cotton-field when the blind of Mary's room was thrown open and she looked down and smiled.

"Good morning!" she cried. "I wonder if you are headed for that cotton-patch?"

He answered that he was, and she laughed.

"Not before you have your breakfast," she commanded. "That is against the rules. It will be ready soon. Wait for me. I'm coming right down."

He went to the veranda and saw her descending. When she came out into the full light from the shadowy house he remarked the lines of care in her face, and they threw a damper on his spirits.

"How did you rest?" she asked.

"Very well," he returned, "but I am afraid that you did not."

She was silent, her head downcast, and he wondered over the impulse that had emboldened him to make such a personal comment. He was about to beg her pardon, when she raised her face and looked at him confidingly.

"Oh, I know I show it, Mr. Brown," she exclaimed, "but I can't help it.

I've been half crazy all night long. I slept only a few minutes at a time, and even in my sleep my fears clung to me. It is my brothers. I have worried over them before, but never like this. From what I heard yesterday the spree they are on is the worst they ever had. They were with their vilest a.s.sociates, moons.h.i.+ners and gamblers, over at Carlin, drinking harder than ever before."

Here Zilla came to the front door. Catching her mistress's eye, she cried out, excitedly: "Young miss, I see er hoss en' buggy 'way down de road. It got two mens in it. Looks ter me like de boys. Dey is whippin'

de hoss powerful en' ercomin' fast."

Ascending the veranda steps, Mary looked down the main road toward Carlin. "Yes, it is my brothers," she said, frowning. "Why they are hurrying so I can't make out. The horse looks as if it is about to drop."

She said no more, but hastened to the front gate, where she stood, her tense hands on the latch, waiting for the vehicle to arrive. In a moment a panting, foaming bay horse was reined in at the gate and the two young men sprang down from a ramshackle buggy.