Part 9

The keeper followed me out again, and talked a while on the steps, "I got Blant started on a few vittles to-day, after nine days of starving," he said. "The way I done it was to make out I thought he was trying to cheat the gallows. Then he called for meat and bread. 'Pears like the gallows is the onliest prospect he is able to take any comfort in, and I hold it before him constant, to sort of keep his sperrits up. Though God knows I'm a-acting the black hypocrite when I do it, when there haint the least grain of a show for him to get a death sentence. There's a strong prejudyce again' hanging in this country,--not a jury ever set in this court-house that pronounced a death sentence,--Blant would a-knowed it if he had stopped to think. But even if the prejudyce didn't exist, why Blant haint done nothing to earn the gallows,--you might say he haint done anything for the law to take hold of. Of course everybody knows his shooting of Rich was the worst kind of accident; and as for the Cheevers he has killed and maimed, why, that war is really a family affair, which the law haint got no business to meddle with. Public sentiment is again' the law mixing up in affairs like that, and that's the reason why no great effort haint been made to arrest Blant before now. Folks has knowed he meant well, and was hard placed, and let it go at that. Now he's throwed hisself into the very jaws of the law, however, it may feel compelled to do something; but of course it won't be nothing like no death sentence. But I haven't got the heart to tell him so,--no, I really have not,--I believe he would dash his brains out again' the wall if I did."

Nucky was more insistent this afternoon when I read to him (he is sitting up now and begins to look like himself). "I know pine-blank something is wrong on Trigger, or Blant would have been here," he said, anxiously.

"Nothing is wrong there, except that the babe is ailing," I said, "the mail-carrier told me yesterday she was far from well."

_First Sunday, February._

I should be quite weighed down by the Marrs troubles if it were not for the cheerful society of the boys, whose lively and funny doings afford some escape from tragic and depressing thoughts. This morning before church, when I was making the usual round of the ears with soap and wash-rag, to my utter amazement I found Philip's clean, inside and out, behind and before. At first stricken dumb by the discovery--for I long since abandoned the hope of reforming him in the matters of chivalry and cleanliness--I finally inquired what was the matter.

"Nothing, I just kep' a-digging," was his careless reply.

To-night, however, when everybody was undressing, Hen slid noiselessly into my room, mysteriously shutting the door behind him. Half clothed, I dived into my closet, soon emerging in my wrapper. Hen himself was in trousers and undershirt, with dangling gallusses. Planting himself on the hearth, back to the fire, he held up first one bare foot, then the other, to the blaze, and at last spoke in a confidential tone:

"Philip lied to you this morning when he said there wa'n't nothing the matter with him. He knows what made him wash his years, and _I_ know."

"What was it?" I inquired, drawing up the rocker.

"He's a-courting, that's what's the matter."

"Courting!" I exclaimed, incredulously.

"Yes, courting, by grab! You mind Dilsey Warrick, that 'ere little tow-head come in atter Christmas, from over on Wace?"

Yes, I remembered Dilsey,--a demure dove of a child, in blue home-spun dress and red yarn stockings, with long, fair hair hanging in two plaits, and the face of an austere little saint. She is at least three years older and a head taller than Hen, but it pleases him to speak of the sex in diminutives.

"You know I pack water to the big house of a morning before breakfast," he continued; "well, Dilsey she sweeps off the front porch over yander then, and Philip _he_ goes round and mends the fence where the hogs breaks in of a night."

I groaned an assent,--the neighborhood hogs are badly on the rampage, after our mustard-and turnip-greens, which show temptingly when the snow melts; and the fence is so frail it gives way constantly to their assaults.

"Well," proceeded Hen, "that's as good a chanct as he wants, when thaint nobody much around but me. But I keep my eye on him,--I tip round the corner of the house right easy, and come up on 'em unexpected."

"You are certainly mistaken about Philip," I said decidedly, "why, he despises girls, has no earthly use for them, in fact."

"Dag gone _me_, he's got use enough for little Dilsey, by Ned! Gee, I never see the beat! He sot in a-courting her the day he got out from eech, and haint stopped to ketch his breath sence. Dad swinge my hide if that 'ere boy haint been nailing planks on that front fence with lee-tle-bitty fourpenny nails, so's the hogs'll root 'em off sure every night, and he'll git to work there and talk to Dilsey of a morning! I been keeping my eye peeled for him ever sence I seed him give her a' apple one day at recess,--I knowed then something had happened to him!"

I sat speechless.

"But what made him wash his years," continued Hen, with lowered voice and another glance at the door; "one morning whilst Dilsey was a-sweeping, here come Philip along, a-swinging his hammer and nail-box. He put his hand in his pocket and pult out a candy cane I had seed him a-eating on the night before,--one of these-here they fotch on at the store for Christmas--and poked it at Dilsey. 'Have some,' he says, 'eat it all, if you want.' Dilsey she put out her hand for it, and then she tuck a hard look at it, and then at Philip, and says she's obleeged, but she don't believe she wants any. Philip he shoved it ag'in' her face. 'Don't be afeared,' he says, 'I'd ruther you'd have it as anybody'. Little Dilse she said no thanks, she wouldn't choose any (dag gone if she haint the ladyest girl ever I heared talk!); and Philip axed her what's the reason. But she just kep' a-sweeping, and wouldn't open her mouth. Then Philip he grabbed her by the shoulder, and says, by Heck, she's _got_ to tell. And Dilse she shuck him off proud-like, and says, 'Well, if you _bound_ to hear it, I don't crave to eat atter no boy that don't never wash his years!' Then Philip he was b'iling (dad burn if I'd take any such talk from any woman!), and he says, 'I bet they clean as yourn!'; and Dilsey she frowned and spoke up solemn, 'I'd have you know, Mister Philip Floyd, _my_ years gits washed every day I live!', and made for the door. And Philip he seed me behind the post and give me as much candy cane as I could bite off not to tell nobody what she said to him. And for two days he sulled, and never come anigh her mornings, and mended the back fence. Then when his bath night come, he turnt in and pintly scrubbed the hide off his years, in and out, and went back to mending the front fence next morning; and him and Dilse made up; and he allus gives her new sticks of candy now; and don't you never let on I told you, less'n you want to see me kilt!"

XXIV

THE BABE

_Monday._

On my way to the hospital this morning, I stopped at the weaving-house to see more of the little girl who can work such wonders with Philip. After careful scrutiny of, and conversation with the pretty, dignified child at the loom, I understood something of her power. She has the look of the ideal woman, suggesting many beautiful and elusive things, and judging from her perfect manners, might have been reared in marble halls instead of in a two-room log house on the head of Wace. She has distinctly the look of race,--and her name, how it carries one back through centuries of English history! If the magnificent earl, "proud setter-up and plucker-down of kings" were himself her ancestor, he could feel nothing but pride in this fair little shoot of his noble tree.

Before I went into the jail to see Blant after dinner, the keeper told me of a touching and remarkable thing. Old Mrs. Tarrant, Rich's mother, rode over yesterday to tell Blant that, although he had darkened the light of the sun-ball for her, she freely forgave him, and hoped he would forgive himself,--that she knew this would be Rich's message to him if he could speak. Her words should have comforted him some; and when I went in, it seemed to me that his face, though infinitely sad, was more at peace.

_Tuesday._

The nurse told me this morning that Nucky would be permitted to leave the hospital and return to the cottage to-night; and I realized that the time had come when I could no longer keep from him the sad occurrences on Trigger. So after dinner, taking his hands in mine, I told him the dreadful tale. He heard it with a white face, expressing neither joy over Todd's death, nor sorrow over Rich's (these Marrses seem to have abnormal powers of emotional repression), and only said, "I'll go right down to Blant."

"Yes, do," I said, "the sight of you may be just what he needs."

On his return to the cottage after supper, "Trojan" was loudly and joyfully welcomed by the other boys; but grief and anxiety were plainly written on his face, he had little to say, and seemed much older.

_Friday._

At noon yesterday Philip came in clamoring for a patch for his elbow,--formerly he would have died rather than sew on a patch. I was not surprised to hear from Hen later that he "had heared Dilsey tell Philip at recess she couldn't abide raggeddy boys". And this morning when Philip burst into my room with the demand, "Gimme a latch-pin", and after some pondering I handed him out a safety-pin, with which he proceeded to join together his sundered gallusses and trousers, Hen, who was making my bed, contributed, "She tolt him before breakfast she never had no respects for folks that went about with their clothes a-drapping off 'em!"

Oh that all my twelve would fall in love!

_Monday._

This morning, after a brief reign, bows and spikes went out, and "stilks" came in. Geordie, who now has the stable-job, had a number of superior dogwood limbs laid away under the gear-room, ready to be sold. Looking back, I realize that, with the exception of the old stand-by, shinny, not a single game has come in during the term without his connivance. Indeed, the born trader's ability in supplying a demand is exceeded only by his genius in creating it.

Every day Nucky goes down to see Blant, always returning sad, thoughtful and troubled. "'Pears like he haint able to take no more interest in nothing, now Rich is gone," he said to me last night; "when he talks he don't say nothing but 'I have killed the friend of my bosom,--my heart is broke,--I can't stand to live no longer.'"

_Wednesday._

I stopped the mail-boy again to-day, for news of the Marrs family. "Things is going mighty bad," he said. "The babe is pindling scandlous, and its paw is wore to a frazzle tending it of nights, and cooking, and troubling in his mind. Minervy Saxby allows if Blant don't git back to that 'ere babe, it'll purely pine to death."

Nucky came out as we talked, and heard the boy's account. He said to me immediately, "I want to go home Friday."

"You are not strong enough for the walk," I said.

"I've got to go," he declared.

_Saturday Night._

Nucky went home yesterday; and shortly after noon to-day I was surprised to see him ride down the road in front of the cottage, with a small bundle held on one arm. I called to him in surprise, and he halted. "It's the babe,--I brung it to see Blant," he said.

He unwrapped the blanket from the baby's head, and the poor little creature looked down at me with such big, sad eyes out of a tiny white face, that my heart was wrung within me.

I went on down to the jail with them. The keeper ushered us into the large room where Blant sat with the other prisoners (most of them nice boys, in only for moonshining, or for celebrating Christmas too enthusiastically); but he sat in a corner alone, while they played cards around a table.

Nucky went toward Blant with his bundle. "'Pears like the babe will pine to death for you, Blant," he said, "so I brung her over." He opened the blanket, and with one ecstatic cry out of utmost depths of suffering, the little creature sprang forward, and buried her head in Blant's bosom.

Blant held her close, laid his head upon hers, and burst into a terrible storm of weeping, a storm that swept everything, and all of us, before it. Nucky and I wept together, the keeper stood with tears streaming down his cheeks, the card-playing boys, noisy and careless a moment before, to a man laid their heads on the table and wept. I am sure that before that tempest of emotion was over, it must have washed from Blant's heart some of its awful burden.

I slipped out and ran to the hospital for a nursing bottle and some milk, that Blant might feed the poor little starving babe. Oh how bright, how joyous, how pitiable, was the smile upon her tiny, pinched face as she laid aside her bottle repeatedly to assure herself by touch and sight that Blant still held her.

Late in the afternoon, when I begged to keep the babe during the night, Blant shook his head, and clasped her more strongly to his heart.

_Sunday Night._

When Nucky and I stopped at the jail after church to-day, the keeper told us Blant had sat up all night with the babe in his arms. "'Peared like he couldn't part with her a' instant," he said; "I allow if anything can splice him on to life again, it will be her."

This raised my hopes. I saw now that Nucky had brought her for a double reason.

"May she stay here with him a while?" I asked.

"Certainly," he said; "of course it's again' the rules; but what's rules when a pore little innocent babe is pining to death?"

But when we spoke to Blant, our hopes were dashed to the ground. He said sternly, "No, it can't be,--Nucky never ought to have brung her,--she must be took back immediate. In a little while more she'd have forgot me,--little young things like that can't have no very long recollections. Now, God help her, she'll have to start all over again. But it has to be,--it would be pure cruelty to keep her here and get her all wropped up in me again, only to face a' eternal parting."

The keeper pondered silently for quite a while; then he spoke up, firmly. "Blant," he said, "I got a confession to make to you, and pardon to ax of you, for what I have done. In the pity and tenderness of my heart, I have lied to you, and led you on to hope for a death sentence, when God knows there haint the ghost of a show you'll git one. In the first place, if you'll ricollect, there's a powerful prejudyce again' hanging in this country; in the next, I am sorry to tell you you haint done nothing to really earn the gallows. Everybody knows how it was betwixt you and Rich; and as for Todd and Elhannon and Ben and Jeems that you kilt, and t'other Cheevers you wounded, why, that war is a family affair, in which the law haint got no particular call, or no great desire, to meddle, and wouldn't if you hadn't a-throwed yourself spang in its arms thisaway. As it is, you have put it in a mighty embarrassing position, and, as you might say, forced it to set up and take notice, and probably some kind of action,--it may be a couple of year' sentence to Frankfort, or some such, but certainly there haint a-going to be no hanging business. I hate to disapp'int your hopes of dying,--I know you don't take no easement or comfort in nothing else. But truth is truth. Now my advice to you is, be sensible, brace up, take some comfort, keep the babe here with you and git yourself sort of tied on to life again."

Blant's answer was angry and indignant. "May the earth open and swallow me before I take cheer or comfort in this world from which I have sent the friend of my bosom, my more than brother! Till I have to, I haint going to give up the hope of laying down my life for his. If you lied to me once, you may be lying to me again. Take her, Nucky!"

He attempted to hand over the babe to Nucky; but it was not so easily accomplished. The process of separating her from him was such a painful one that he himself was almost unmanned, and again there was not a dry eye in the jail.

XXV

CHANGE AND GROWTH

_Monday Night. Mid-February._

It is six weeks since the roads became impassable for wagons, and already we begin to feel some of the effects of the isolation. Flour, sugar and coffee have to be very sparingly used. Of course there is plenty of corn-meal, beans, middling and sorghum, so there is no danger of starvation.

When Nucky returned this evening from taking the babe home, he came into my room, and threw himself on the floor. Presently I saw that his body was shaken with silent sobs. To my entreaties he at last replied,

"Things is terrible there at home,--paw is all wore-out with the trouble, and all Blant's jobs he has to tend to, like cooking and minding the babe of nights, and he couldn't get along at all if Uncle Billy's boys didn't come down and chop wood, and feed the animals, and such. I ought to be home now tending to things for him; and I'll have to give up learning and go when crap-time comes. Blant never ought to have give hisself up,--he ought to have thought about his family, and not lost his head that way. They'll sure send him to Frankfort on his trial,--I heared some talk about it last week."

Indeed, it is a pitiable situation, and will be far more so if Blant is sent to the penitentiary. The thought hangs a new weight of dread upon me,--of course then Nucky will have to leave school and go home and take up Blant's burdens. My own selfish grief in the thought of losing Nucky ought not to protrude itself in the face of greater troubles,--but I have already lost so much,--must everything I set my affection upon be taken?

_Saturday._

Yesterday Philip astonished me by asking for the wash-job. If there is anything on the place he has often expressed contempt for, it is the duties of the unfortunate wash-boy, who must rise before day on Saturdays to build fires and fill kettles, and then for nine long hours toil wearily, chopping wood, carrying water, and otherwise "slaving" for the wash-girls, until, when playtime comes, he is generally too tired to play; not to mention that every day in the week he must tend the ironing-stove, and, deepest indignity of all, take a hand at the ironing. No job is so consistently avoided by every boy on the place; while the carpenter- and shop-work, which Philip does exclusively, is considered the most aristocratic and desirable of all. I gladly transferred him, however; and this morning the explanation appeared, when Dilsey Warrick tripped over with the other nine wash-girls, having been shifted from the weaving to the washing department.

_Sunday Night._

After church to-day, I myself heard some of the solid men of the community talking about Blant's case; and their words confirmed Nucky's statement of last week. I gather that public sentiment is pretty well crystallized into the feeling that a couple of years in Frankfort is about the least the reluctant law can do when forced to extremities. Sympathy for Blant is strong; but the determination is equally strong that his many lawless acts cannot be longer overlooked, and that the majesty of the law must be vindicated. Nucky, pale of face, hurried to the jail after hearing the talk, and Taulbee said to me as we came home,

"It looks now like Blant is bound for Frankfort; but I'll lay my hat he don't never get there,--not if Trojan can help it."

"He'll have to go if he is sent," I replied; "now he has put himself in the hands of the law, he must take his medicine, whatever it is."

"Who,--Blant? Him swallow anything he don't want to? I reckon not. There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip."

_Wednesday, first week in March._

More distressing news from Trigger, when the mail-boy stopped to report to-day. "Same old story all over ag'in," he says, "the babe crying and puning constant, and plumb off its feed, and favoring a little picked bird. Minervy Saxby doubts it's a-holding out till the trial." I heard later he had taken the news on to Blant, through the bars of the jail window.

_Saturday Evening._

Philip is in a seventh heaven. Every day in the week now he basks in Dilsey's presence two or three hours, cheerfully doing the menial tasks of keeping up fires and ironing; and on Saturdays he spends almost the entire day in her society, hanging out clothes, turning wringers, doing tremendous deeds on the wood-pile with his ax, running nimbly down and up the rocky sides of the well when the chain breaks and the bucket falls in, as it is fond of doing, and, between labors, giving hazardous performances on the limb of a peach-tree. The teasings of the boys and girls seem powerless to dampen his ardor,--indeed, I suspect that their "Howdy, Mr. Warrick," "Good evening, Mrs. Floyd," fall as music on his ears.

_Sunday Night._

When I went with Nucky to the jail this afternoon, I found that the rumors abroad for two weeks had reached it, indeed, they were being freely discussed by the prisoners, the keeper and Blant himself,--I was thankful to see that he was able to put his mind on the subject.

"Yes," he said sadly, "it looks like I'll have to give up the hope I have cherished, and try to get my consent to face life again; which God knows I couldn't if it wasn't brung home to me that I got a family depending on me, and a pore little infant looking to me for life itself. Nothing else could ever give me courage to breast the waves of sorrow that swallows me up. But I reckon, after all, I have got a higher call to live than to die; and that, when they acquit me on my trial, constant hard labor for my family will in time take off some of the edge of my sorrow."

"But the probabilities is they _won't_ acquit you, Blant," said the keeper impatiently; "I been trying to ding that into your head nigh a week. I told you plain what the talk was about sending you to Frankfort a couple of year'".

"I can't believe anything so unreasonable," replied Blant. "Now, a life for a life is just plain sense and common justice,--if they was to kill me for the lives I have took, especially Rich's, I would perfectly agree they was doing right. But what good or justice it would do anybody to shut me up in Frankfort when I'm so bad needed at home, I fail to see. Here I am, with a crippled paw, a living to make for a large family, and the babe maw left in my hands to tend and raise,--you might say with my hands running over full,--now is there any sense in cooping me up where I can't do none of it? I allow not--it's plumb ridiculous,--no jury would be guilty of it; and if they was to, I haint willing to take it."

"I allow you'll have to, if it comes," said the keeper, sternly. "You'd ought to have thought of that sooner, and looked before you leaped. You certainly done the nearsightedest job ever I heared of when you give yourself up to the sheriff,--honest, I wouldn't have believed it of you, Blant,--but of course your mind was clean unhinged by misery, and you wa'n't accountable. And I'm sorry for you if you get sent up. But now you've throwed yourself in the arms of the law, you got to lay there. Whatever you do, take warning, and don't try no escapin' tricks here on me, like you done on the sheriff last spring. Because, whatever happens, and however good I like you--which I do, the best in the world--I want you to ricollect that law is law, and I'm its sworn gyuardeen, and obligated by my oath, and aiming to do my _whole duty_. And also, that I haint no poor shakes at gun-practice myself, though I may not be as sure a shot as you."