The Hills of Refuge Part 30

Mary was at the door now; he followed and stood bowing her out, while she thanked him for his helpful advice.

She was crossing the street when Albert Frazier, seated in a buggy, with his brother, drove by. She thought he might get out and speak to her, but he simply tipped his hat and transferred his gaze to the back of the trotting bay horse. She noted that the sheriff, whom she had never met, had not noticed her nor his brother's salutation.

She went into the post-office to get some stamps, and when she came out Albert Frazier was waiting for her on the sidewalk.

"I would have got out when I pa.s.sed you just now," he said, beaming on her admiringly, "but I was with John, you see; and--well, to be plain, he doesn't know about me and you, and right now especially I don't want him to get on to it."

"I understand," she said, coldly, looking away from him. "Aren't you afraid he will see us now?"

"No. He has gone on home. His wife isn't well. Say, little girl, you are not mad, are you?"

"Oh no," she answered, forcing a smile.

"Well," he bridled, "it is for your own good and the boys'. I'm having a tough job keeping John from suspecting the truth. If I hadn't got up that bogus letter from Texas he might have had his men searching the mountains, or watching you and that hobo circus man take food out to them in their cave. I'm doing all I can for you and I think you ought not to get on your high horse as you do sometimes."

"Forgive me," she said, tremulously, the muscles of her lips twitching.

"I know what you are doing, and I appreciate it from the bottom of my heart."

Her grateful words put him in a better mood. They were about to cross the street again; a wagon loaded with cotton-bales was pa.s.sing. He was hardly justified in doing so, for she needed no a.s.sistance, but he took hold of her arm, and she felt his throbbing fingers pressing it. She drew away from him. "Don't!" she said, impulsively.

"There you go again," he cried, but not angrily, for her natural restraint had been one of her chief attractions. Other girls had given in more easily and had been forgotten by him, but Mary was different.

There was, moreover, always that consciousness on his part of her social superiority. He wanted her for a wife, and, situated as she now was, he had never felt so sure of her.

"When are you going to let me give you that money?" it now occurred to him to ask. "Tobe must be removed, you know."

A look of deep pain struggled in the features she was trying to keep pa.s.sive. "I haven't quite given up the hope of getting it elsewhere,"

she finally said. "If I quite fail, I'll come to you. I've said so, and I'll keep my word."

At this moment a farmer came up to Frazier and said that he wanted to speak to him a moment. Excusing himself and bowing, Frazier left her.

CHAPTER XVIII

As she walked on Mary was glad that Frazier had been called away before he had asked her whither she was going, for she did not want him to know that she had decided to call at Tobe Keith's home and inquire personally about his condition. It struck her as being incongruous that she was already keeping things from the man she might eventually marry. And at this moment various thoughts of Charles fairly besieged her brain.

Somehow she could not imagine herself keeping any vital thing from him.

How strange, and he such a new friend! She found herself blus.h.i.+ng, she knew not why. What was it about the man that appealed to her so strongly? Was it the mystery that constantly enveloped him, and out of which had come such a stream of generous acts, or was it the constant heart-hungry and lonely look of the man who certainly was out of his natural sphere as a common laborer?

Her way took her through the poorest section of the little town. Small houses, some having only two and three rooms each, bordered the rugged, unpaved little streets. Part of the section was known as the "Negro Settlement," and there stood a little steepled church, with green blinds, the walls of which, in default of paint, had received frequent coatings of whitewash at the hands of the swarthy devotees. She had no trouble in finding her way, for she already had a general idea of where the mother of the wounded man lived, and only had to ask as to the particular house.

"Can you tell me where Mr. Keith lives?" she inquired of a little negro boy amusing himself in a swing.

"You mean the man that was kilt?" the child asked, blandly, as he halted himself by thrusting his bare feet down on the ground.

"The man that was--hurt," Mary corrected, shuddering over the way the boy had put his reply.

"De las' house at the end er de street, on dis yer side. You cayn't miss it. Miz' Keith got grape-vines in 'er front yard, en' er goat en'

chickens en' ducks."

She found it without trouble. The house had four small rooms and a crude lean-to shed which served as a kitchen. A slender, thin woman of the lowest cla.s.s of whites, about fifty years of age, scantily attired in a plain print skirt and a waist of white cotton material, her iron-gray hair plastered down on the sides of her face from a straight part in the middle of her head and drawn to a small doughnut-shaped knot behind, sat in the doorway smoking a clay pipe with a reed stem. As Mary arrived at the little gate, which was kept closed by a rope fastened to a stake and from which hung a brick for a weight, she looked up, drew her coa.r.s.ely shod feet under her, and took the pipe from her mouth. She must have recognized the visitor, for she contracted her thin brows and allowed a sullen, resentful expression to spread over her wrinkled face and tighten the muscles of her lips.

"May I come in, Mrs. Keith?" Mary asked, holding the gate partly open and dubiously waiting for a response.

The pipe was clutched more firmly and the woman stared straight at her.

"You may come in if you want to," was the caustic answer. "We don't keep no bitin' dog. I didn't 'low the likes of you would want to come, after what's happened, but if you do I can't hinder you an' Tobe hain't able to prevent it, nuther."

"Who is it, mother?" came a faint voice from within the house.

"Never mind, sonny, who it is," the old woman called back. "I'll tell you after awhile. Remember what the doctor said, that you must not get excited an' lift your fever."

There was silence in the room behind the grim sentinel at the door, and Mary lowered her voice almost to a whisper.

"Perhaps I'd better go away, Mrs. Keith," she faltered. "I thought I might see you alone. That's why I came. I don't want to disturb your son--I wouldn't, for all the world. Mrs. Keith, I am unhappy over this, too."

"Huh! I don't see nothin' fer _you_ to be upset over!" sneered the old woman. "Your brothers lit out fer new fields an' pastures with money to pay expenses with, like all highfalutin folks manage to git, while us pore scrub stock o' whites has to suffer, like Tobe is thar on his back, unable to move, an' with barely enough t' eat except what neighbors send in."

No seat was offered the visitor; the speaker grimly kept her chair, her stiff knees parted for the reception between them of her two gnarled rebellious hands and the clay pipe.

"I came to ask--I had to come," Mary faltered, her sweet face whitened by the rising terrors within her. "I came to see if any arrangements are being made to--to--I understand the doctors advise your son's removal to Atlanta, and--"

"They advise anything to shuffle the blame off their _own_ shoulders,"

blurted out the stubborn woman. "They see they ain't able to do nothing, an' they want my boy to die some'r's else, to save the county the expense of--of--" and she choked down a sob, a dry, alien thing in her scrawny neck. "I don't believe he'll ever be sent, so I don't. Sis Latimer, my cousin, a preacher's wife, has traipsed over two counties, tryin' to raise the four hundred dollars, and now says it can't be done.

That was the last straw to Tobe. He lay thar, after she left, an' I heard 'im cryin' under the sheet, to keep me from hearin' him. He says he hain't got nothin' ag'in' your two brothers now. He says they was all to blame, an' if they hadn't been drunk an' gamblin' it wouldn't 'a'

happened. Tobe's a odd boy--he forgives in a minute; but I hain't that way. I know how your brothers felt. They looked on my boy like dirt under their feet because you folks used to own n.i.g.g.e.rs and live so high in your fine house with underlings to run an' fetch for you at every call. Kenneth Rowland would have thought a second time before pullin'

down on a feller in his own set. Oh, I heard the filthy name he called Tobe, an' I didn't blame my boy for hittin' him, as they say he did, smack on the jaw. A blow with the bare hand, after a word like that is pa.s.sed, doesn't justify the use of a gun while another feller is pinnin'

a man's arms down at his side so he can't budge an inch. I'll tell you what you may not know, an' that is that if my boy does die them two whelps will be hunted down and strung up by the neck till they are dead, dead, dead! Thar never was a plainer case o' murder--cold-blooded murder. They say--folks say your brothers are livin' like lords in the West on money sent to 'em by rich kin to escape disgrace. The sheriff said so hisse'f, an' he ort to know. He's jest waitin' to see what comes o' Tobe. Your turn an' your stiff-backed, haughty old daddy's is comin', my fine young lady."

The faint voice was heard protesting from the interior of the house, and Mrs. Keith rose and stalked to the bed on which the wounded man lay. He said something in a low, guarded tone and Mary heard his mother answer:

"I wouldn't do that if I was you, honey. Let 'er go on. I can't stan'

the sight of 'er, after what has happened. She looks so uppity, in 'er fine clothes an' white skin not touched by the sun, while me an' you--"

The man's voice broke in, plaintively rumbling, as if from a great distance. He must have been insisting on some point to be gained, for he continued talking, now and then coughing and spitting audibly.

"Well, well," Mrs. Keith exclaimed, "I'll tell 'er. I think it is foolish, but I'll tell 'er. Do you want me to comb your head a little an' spruce you up some?"

He evidently did, for Mary was kept waiting ten minutes longer. Then the sullen virago appeared in the doorway. "Tobe wants you to come in and see 'im," she reluctantly announced.

Despite the feeling that she was unwelcomed by the woman, Mary saw no alternative but to go in. She regretted it the instant her eyes fell on the wasted form on the unkempt bed and beheld the eager orbs peering at her from deep, dark sockets beneath s.h.a.ggy brows. The room seemed to swing around her, the crude board floor to rise and fall like the waves of a rocking sea, the bed to float like a raft holding a starving derelict. Grasping the back of a chair for support, Mary leaned on it for a moment, and then, slightly recovering, she sat down, wondering if she could possibly bear the impending ordeal.

"I'm glad you thought enough o' me to come, Miss Mary," Tobe began, in the instinctive tone of respect that his cla.s.s had for hers, "an' I want to say something to you." He hesitated and lifted his eyes to his mother, who was standing at the foot of his bed. "Ma," he said, "will you please go out a little while--just a little while?"

"Me! Why, I'd like to know?" she fiercely demanded. "Surely you hain't got no secrets from me?"

"I hain't got no secrets, but I want to talk free an' easy like to Miss Mary, an' somehow when you stan' lookin' like that an' thinkin' what I know you are thinkin'--well, I just can't talk, that's all."