Chapter 14

He was still knocking when a window was raised suddenly above him, and a man's voice called out, “if he wanted a place for night-hawks to go on to hell.” Then, being evidently a garrulous body, the speaker leaned comfortably upon the sill, and sent down a string of remarks, which Dan promptly shortened with an oath.

“Hold your tongue, Jack Hicks,” he cried, angrily, “and come down and open this door before I break it in. I've walked ten miles to-night and I can't stand here till morning. How long has it been since you had a guest?”

“There was six of 'em changin' stages this mornin',” drawled Jack, in reply, still hanging from the sill. “I gave 'em a dinner of fried chicken and battercakes, and two of 'em being Yankees hadn't never tasted it befo'--and a month ago one dropped in to spend the night--”

He broke off hastily, for his wife had joined him at the window, and as Dan looked up with the flash of the lantern in his face, she gave a cry and called his name.

“Put on your clothes and go down, you fool,” she said, “it's Mr. Dan--don't you see it's Mr. Dan, and he's as white as yo' nightshirt. Go down, I tell you,--go down and let him in.” There was a skurrying in the room and on the staircase, and a moment later the door was flung open and a lamp flashed in the darkness.

“Walk in, suh, walk right in,” said Jack Hicks, hospitably, “day or night you're welcome--as welcome as the Major himself.” He drew back and stood with the lamplight full upon him--a loose, ill-proportioned figure, with a flabby face and pale blue eyes set under swollen lids.

“I want something to eat, Jack,” returned Dan, as he entered and put down his lantern, “and a place to sleep--in fact I want anything you have to offer.”

Then, as Mrs. Hicks appeared upon the stair, he greeted her, despite his weariness, with something of his old jesting manner. “I am begging a supper,” he remarked affably, as he shook her hand, “and I may as well confess, by the way, that I am positively starving.”

The woman beamed upon him, as women always did, and while she led the way into the little dining room, and set out the cold meat and bread upon the oil-cloth covering of the table, she asked him eager questions about the Major and Mrs. Lightfoot, which he aroused himself to parry with a tired laugh. She was tall and thin, with a wrinkled brown face, and a row of curl papers about her forehead. Her faded calico wrapper hung loosely over her nightgown, and he saw her bare feet through the cracks in her worn-out leather slippers.

“The poor young gentleman is all but dead,” she said at last. “You give him his supper, Jack, and I'll go right up to fix his room. To think of his walkin' ten miles in the pitch blackness--the poor young gentleman.”

She went out, her run down slippers flapping on the stair, and Dan, as he ate his ham and bread, listened impatiently to the drawling voice of Jack Hicks, who discussed the condition of the country while he drew apple cider from a keg into a white china pitcher. As he talked, his fat face shone with a drowsy good-humour, and his puffed lids winked sleepily over his expressionless blue eyes. He moved heavily as if his limbs were forever coming in the way of his intentions.

“Yes, suh, I never was one of them folks as ain't satisfied unless they're always a-fussin',” he remarked, as he placed the pitcher upon the table. “Thar's a sight of them kind in these here parts, but I ain't one of 'em. Lord, Lord, I tell 'em, befo' you git ready to jump out of the fryin' pan, you'd better make mighty sure you ain't fixin' to land yo'self in the fire. That's what I always had agin these here abolitionists as used to come pokin' round here--they ain't never learned to set down an' cross thar hands, an' leave the Lord to mind his own business. Bless my soul, I reckon they'd have wanted to have a hand in that little fuss of Lucifer's if they'd been alive--that's what I tell 'em, suh. An' now thar's all this talk about the freein' of the niggers--free? What are they goin' to do with 'em after they're done set 'em free? Ain't they the sons of Ham? I ask 'em; an' warn't they made to be servants of servants like the Bible says? It's a bold man that goes plum agin the Bible, and flies smack into the face of God Almighty--it's a bold man, an' he ain't me, suh. What I say is, if the Lord can stand it, I reckon the rest of the country--”

He paused to draw breath, and Dan laid down his knife and fork and pushed back his chair. “Before you begin again, Jack,” he said coolly, “will you spare enough wind to carry me upstairs?”

“That's what I tell 'em,” pursued Jack amiably, as he lighted a candle and led the way into the hall. “They used to come down here every once in a while an' try to draw me out; and one of 'em 'most got a coat of tar an' feathers for meddlin' with my man Lacy; but if the Lord--here we are, here we are.”

He stopped upon the landing and opened the door of a long room, in which Mrs. Hicks was putting the last touches to the bed. She stopped as Dan came in, and by the pale flicker of a tallow candle stood looking at him from the threshold. “If you'll jest knock on the floor when you wake up, I'll know when to send yo' hot water,” she said, “and if thar's anything else you want, you can jest knock agin.”

With a smile he thanked her and promised to remember; and then as she went out into the hall, he bolted the door, and threw himself into a chair beside the window. Sleep had quite deserted him, and the dawn was on the mountains when at last he lay down and closed his eyes.

XI

AT MERRY OAKS TAVERN

Upon awaking his first thought was that he had got “into a deucedly uncomfortable fix,” and when he stretched out his hand from the bedside the need of fresh clothes appeared less easy to be borne than the more abstract wreck of his career. For the first time he clearly grasped some outline of his future--a future in which a change of linen would become a luxury; and it was with smarting eyes and a nervous tightening of the throat that he glanced about the long room, with its whitewashed walls, and told himself that he had come early to the end of his ambition. In the ill-regulated tenor of his thoughts but a hair's breadth divided assurance from despair. Last night the vaguest hope had seemed to be a certainty; to-day his fat acres and the sturdy slaves upon them had vanished like a dream, and the building of his fortunes had become suddenly a very different matter from the rearing of airy castles along the road.

As he lay there, with his strong white hands folded upon the quilt, his eyes went beyond the little lattice at the window, and rested upon the dark gray chain of mountains over which the white clouds sailed like birds. Somewhere nearer those mountains he knew that Chericoke was standing under the clouded sky, with the half-bared elms knocking night and day upon the windows. He could see the open doors, through which the wind blew steadily, and the crooked stair down which his mother had come in her careless girlhood.

It seemed to him, lying there, that in this one hour he had drawn closer into sympathy with his mother, and when he looked up from his pillow, he half expected to see her merry eyes bending over him, and to feel her thin and trembling hand upon his brow. His old worship of her awoke to life, and he suffered over again the moment in his childhood when he had called her and she had not answered, and they had pushed him from the room and told him she was dead. He remembered the clear white of her face, with the violet shadows in the hollows; and he remembered the baby lying as if asleep upon her bosom. For a moment he felt that he had never grown older since that day--that he was still a child grieving for her loss--while all the time she was not dead, but stood beside him and smiled down upon his pillow. Poor mother, with the merry eyes and the bitter mouth.

Then as he looked the face grew younger, though the smile did not change, and he saw that it was Betty, after all--Betty with the tenderness in her eyes and the motherly yearning in her outstretched arms. The two women he loved were forever blended in his thoughts, and he dimly realized that whatever the future made of him, he should be moulded less by events than by the hands of these two women. Events might subdue, but love alone could create the spirit that gave him life.

There was a tap at his door, and when he arose and opened it, Mrs. Hicks handed in a pitcher of hot water and inquired “if he had recollected to knock upon the floor?”

He set the water upon the table, and after he had dressed brushed hopelessly, with a trembling hand, at the dust upon his clothes. Then he went to the window and stood gloomily looking down among the great oak trees to the strip of yard where a pig was rooting in the acorns.

A small porch ran across the entrance to the inn, and Jack Hicks was already seated on it, with a pipe in his mouth, and his feet upon the railing. His drowsy gaze was turned upon the woodpile hard by, where an old negro slave was chopping aimlessly into a new pine log, and a black urchin gathering chips into a big split basket. At a little distance the Hopeville stage was drawn out under the trees, the empty shafts lying upon the ground, and on the box a red and black rooster stood crowing. Overhead there was a dull gray sky, and the scene, in all its ugliness, showed stripped of the redeeming grace of lights and shadows.

Jack Hicks, smoking on his porch, presented a picture of bodily comfort and philosophic ease of mind. He was owner of some rich acres, and his possessions, it was said, might have been readily doubled had he chosen to barter for them the peace of perfect inactivity. To do him justice the idea had never occurred to him in the light of a temptation, and when a neighbour had once remarked in his hearing that he “reckoned Jack would rather lose a dollar than walk a mile to fetch it,” he had answered blandly, and without embarrassment, that “a mile was a goodish stretch on a sandy road.” So he sat and dozed beneath his sturdy oaks, while his wife went ragged at the heels and his swarm of tow-headed children rolled contentedly with the pigs among the acorns.

Dan was still looking moodily down into the yard, when he heard a gentle pressure upon the handle of his door, and as he turned, it opened quickly and Big Abel, bearing a large white bundle upon his shoulders, staggered into the room.

“Ef'n you'd des let me knowed hit, I could er brung a bigger load,” he remarked sternly.

While he drew breath Dan stared at him with the blankness of surprise. “Where did you come from, Big Abel?” he questioned at last, speaking in a whisper.

Big Abel was busily untying the sheet he had brought, and spreading out the contents upon the bed, and he did not pause as he sullenly answered:--

“Ole Marster's.”

“Who sent you?”

Big Abel snorted. “Who gwine sen' me?” he demanded in his turn.

“Well, I declare,” said Dan, and after a moment, “how did you get away, man?”

“Lawd, Lawd,” returned Big Abel, “I wa'n' bo'n yestiddy nur de day befo'. Terreckly I seed you a-cuttin' up de drive, I knowed dar wuz mo' den wuz in de tail er de eye, en w'en you des lit right out agin en bang de do' behint you fitten ter bus' hit, den I begin ter steddy 'bout de close in de big wa'drobe. I got out one er ole Miss's sheets w'en she wa'n' lookin, en I tie up all de summer close de bes' I kin--caze dat ar do' bang hit ain' soun' like you gwine be back fo' de summer right plum hyer. I'se done heah a do' bang befo' now, en dars mo' in it den des de shettin' ter stay shet.”

“So you ran away?” said Dan, with a long whistle.

“Ain't you done run away?”

“I--oh, I was turned out,” answered the young man, with his eyes on the negro. “But--bless my soul, Big Abel, why did you do it?”

Big Abel muttered something beneath his breath, and went on laying out the things.

“How you gwine git dese yer close ef I ain' tote 'em 'long de road?” he asked presently. “How you gwine git dis yer close bresh ef I ain' brung hit ter you? Whar de close you got? Whar de close bresh?”

“You're a fool, Big Abel,” retorted Dan. “Go back where you belong and don't hang about me any more. I'm a beggar, I tell you, and I'm likely to be a beggar at the judgment day.”

“Whar de close bresh?” repeated Big Abel, scornfully.

“What would Saphiry say, I'd like to know?” went on Dan. “It isn't fair to Saphiry to run off this way.”

“Don' you bodder 'bout Saphiry,” responded Big Abel. “I'se done loss my tase fur Saphiry, young Marster.”

“I tell you you're a fool,” snapped out Dan, sharply.

“De Lawd he knows,” piously rejoined Big Abel, and he added: “Dar ain' no use a-rumpasin' case hyer I is en hyer I'se gwine ter stay. Whar you run, dar I'se gwine ter run right atter, so 'tain' no use a-rumpasin'. Hit's a pity dese yer ain' nuttin' but summer close.”

Dan looked at him a moment in silence, then he put out his hand and slapped him upon the shoulder.

“You're a fool--God bless you,” he said.

“Go 'way f'om yer, young Marster,” responded the negro, in a high good-humour. “Dar's a speck er dut right on yo' shut.”

“Then give me another,” cried Dan, gayly, and threw off his coat.

When he went down stairs, carefully brushed, a half-hour afterward, the world had grown suddenly to wear a more cheerful aspect. He greeted Mrs. Hicks with his careless good-humour, and spoke pleasantly to the dirty white-haired children that streamed through the dining room.

“Yes, I'll take my breakfast now, if you please,” he said as he sat down at one end of the long, oilcloth-covered table. Mrs. Hicks brought him his coffee and cakes, and then stood, with her hands upon a chair back, and watched him with a frank delight in his well-dressed comely figure.

“You do favour the Major, Mr. Dan,” she suddenly remarked.

He started impatiently. “Oh, the Lightfoots are all alike, you know,” he responded. “We are fond of saying that a strain of Lightfoot blood is good for two centuries of intermixing.” Then, as he looked up at her faded wrapper and twisted curl papers, he flinched and turned away as if her ugliness afflicted his eyes. “Do not let me keep you,” he added hastily.

But the woman stooped to shake a child that was tugging at her dress, and talked on in her drawling voice, while a greedy interest gave life to her worn and sallow face. “How long do you think of stayin'?” she asked curiously, “and do you often take a notion to walk so fur in the dead of night? Why, I declar, when I looked out an' saw you I couldn't believe my eyes. That's not Mr. Dan, I said, you won't catch Mr. Dan out in the pitch darkness with a lantern and ten miles from home.”

“I really do not want to keep you,” he broke in shortly, all the good-humour gone from his voice.

“Thar ain't nothin' to do right now,” she answered with a searching look into his face. “I was jest waitin' to bring you some mo' cakes.” She went out and came in presently with a fresh plateful. “I remember jest as well the first time you ever took breakfast here,” she said. “You wa'n't more'n twelve, I don't reckon, an' the Major brought you by in the coach, with Big Abel driving. The Major didn't like the molasses we gave him, and he pushed the pitcher away and said it wasn't fit for pigs; and then you looked about real peart and spoke up, 'It's good molasses, grandpa, I like it.' Sakes alive, it seems jest like yestiddy. I don't reckon the Major is comin' by to-day, is he?”

He pushed his plate away and rose hurriedly, then, without replying, he brushed past her, and went out upon the porch.

There he found Jack Hicks, and forced himself squarely into a discussion of his altered fortunes. “I may as well tell you, Jack,” he said, with a touch of arrogance, “that I'm turned out upon the world, at last, and I've got to make a living. I've left Chericoke for good, and as I've got to stay here until I find a place to go, there's no use making a secret of it.”

The pipe dropped from Jack's mouth, and he stared back in astonishment.

“Bless my soul and body!” he exclaimed. “Is the old gentleman crazy or is you?”

“You forget yourself,” sharply retorted Dan.

“Well, well,” pursued Jack, good-naturedly, as he knocked the ashes from his pipe and slowly refilled it. “If you hadn't have told me, I wouldn't have believed you--well, well.” He put his pipe into his mouth and hung on it for a moment; then he took it out and spoke thoughtfully. “I reckon I've known you from a child, haven't I, Mr. Dan?” he asked.

“That's so, Jack,” responded the young man, “and if you can recommend me, I want you to help me to a job for a week or two--then I'm off to town.”

“I've known you from a child year in an' year out,” went on Jack, blandly disregarding the interruption. “From the time you was sech a pleasant-spoken little boy that it did me good to bow to you when you rode by with the Major. 'Thar's not another like him in the country,' I said to Bill Bates, an' he said to me, 'Thar's not a man between here an' Leicesterburg as ain't ready to say the same.' Then time went on an' you got bigger, an' the year came when the crops failed an' Sairy got sick, an' I took a mortgage on this here house--an' what should happen but that you stepped right up an' paid it out of yo' own pocket. And you kept it from the Major. Lord, Lord, to think the Major never knew which way the money went.”

“We won't speak of that,” said Dan, throwing back his head. The thought that the innkeeper might be going to offer him the money stung him into anger.

But Jack knew his man, and he would as soon have thought of throwing a handful of dust into his face. “Jest as you like, suh, jest as you like,” he returned easily, and went on smoking.

Dan sat down in a chair upon the porch, and taking out his knife began idly whittling at the end of a stick. A small boy, in blue jean breeches, watched him eagerly from the steps, and he spoke to him pleasantly while he cut into the wood.

“Did you ever see a horse's head on a cane, sonny?”

The child sucked his dirty thumb and edged nearer.

“Naw, suh, but I've seen a dawg's,” he answered, drawing out his thumb like a stopper and sticking it in again.

“Well, you watch this and you'll see a horse's. There, now don't take your eyes away.”

He whittled silently for a time, then as he looked up his glance fell on the stagecoach in the yard, and he turned from it to Jack Hicks.

“There's one thing on earth I know about, Jack,” he said, “and that's a horse.”

“Not a better jedge in the county, suh,” was Jack's response.

As Dan whittled a flush rose to his face. “Does Tom Hyden still drive the Hopeville stage?” he asked.

“Well, you see it's this way,” answered Jack, weighing his words. “Tom he's a first-rate hand at horses, but he drinks like a fish, and last week he married a wife who owns a house an' farm up the road. So long as he had to earn his own livin' he kept sober long enough to run the stage, but since he's gone and married, he says thar's no call fur him to keep a level head--so he don't keep it. Yes, that's about how 'tis, suh.”

Dan finished the stick and handed it to the child. “I tell you what, Jack,” he said suddenly, “I want Tom Hyden's place, and I'm going to drive that stage over to Hopeville this afternoon. Phil Banks runs it, doesn't he?--well, I know him.” He rose and stood humorously looking out upon the coach. “There's no time like the present,” he added, “so I begin work to-day.”

Jack Hicks silently stared up at him for a moment; then he coughed and exclaimed hoarsely:--

“The jedgment ain't fur off,” but Dan laughed the prophecy aside and went upstairs to write to Betty.

“I've got a job, Big Abel,” he began, going into his room, where the negro was pressing a pair of trousers with a flatiron, “and what's more it will keep me till I get another.”

Big Abel gloomily shook his head. “We all 'ud des better go 'long home ter Ole Miss,” he returned, for he was in no mood for compromises. “Caze I ain' use ter de po' w'ite trash en dey ain' use ter me.”

“Go if you want to,” retorted Dan, sternly, “but you go alone,” and the negro, protesting under his breath, laid the clothes away and went down to his breakfast.

Dan sat down by the window and wrote a letter to Betty which he never sent. When he thought of her now it was as if half the world instead of ten miles lay between them; and quickly as he would have resented the hint of it from Jack Hicks, to himself he admitted that he was fast sinking where Betty could not follow him. What would the end be? he asked, and disheartened by the question, tore the paper into bits and walked moodily up and down the room. He had lived so blithely until to-day! His lines had fallen so smoothly in the pleasant places! Not without a grim humour he remembered now that last year his grievance had been that his tailor failed to fit him. Last year he had walked the floor in a rage because of a wrinkled coat, and to-day--His road had gone rough so suddenly that he stumbled like a blind man when he tried to go over it in his old buoyant manner.

An hour later he was still pacing restlessly to and fro, when the door softly opened and Mrs. Hicks looked in upon him with a deprecating smile. As she lingered on the threshold, he stopped in the middle of the room and threw her a sharp glance over his shoulder.

“Is there anything you wish?” he questioned irritably.

Shaking her head, she came slowly toward him and stood in her soiled wrapper and curl papers, where the gray light from the latticed window fell full upon her.

“It ain't nothin',” she answered hurriedly. “Nothin' except Jack's been tellin' me you're in trouble, Mr. Dan.”

“Then he has been telling you something that concerns nobody but myself,” he replied coolly, and continued his walking.

There was a nervous flutter of her wrapper, and she passed her knotted hand over her face.

“You are like yo' mother, Mr. Dan,” she said with an unexpectedness that brought him to a halt. “An' I was the last one to see her the night she went away. She came in here, po' thing, all shiverin' with the cold, an' she wouldn't set down but kep' walkin' up an' down, up an' down, jest like you've been doin' fur this last hour. Po' thing! Po' thing! I tried to make her take a sip of brandy, but she laughed an' said she was quite warm, with her teeth chatterin' fit to break--”

“You are very good, Mrs. Hicks,” interrupted Dan, in an affected drawl which steadied his voice, “but do you know, I'd really rather that you wouldn't.”

Her sallow face twitched and she looked wistfully up at him.

“It isn't that, Mr. Dan,” she went on slowly, “but I've had trouble myself, God knows, and when I think of that po' proud young lady, an' the way she went, I can't help sayin' what I feel--it won't stay back. So if you'll jest keep on here, an' give up the stage drivin' an' wait twil the old gentleman comes round--Jack an' I'll do our best fur you--we'll do our best, even if it ain't much.”

Her lips quivered, and as he watched her it seemed to him that a new meaning passed into her face--something that made her look like Betty and his mother--that made all good women who had loved him look alike. For the moment he forgot her ugliness, and with the beginning of that keener insight into life which would come to him as he touched with humanity, he saw only the dignity with which suffering had endowed this plain and simple woman. The furrows upon her cheeks were no longer mere disfigurements; they raised her from the ordinary level of the ignorant and the ugly into some bond of sympathy with his dead mother.

“My dear Mrs. Hicks,” he stammered, abashed and reddening. “Why, I shall take a positive pleasure in driving the stage, I assure you.”