Part 16

“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.”

He crossed to the mirror and carefully brushed a stray lock of hair into place; then he took up his hat and gloves and turned toward the door. “I think it is waiting for me now,” he added lightly; “a pleasant evening to you.”

But she stood straight before him and as he met her eyes his affected jauntiness dropped from him. With a boyish awkwardness he took her hand and held it for an instant as he looked at her. “My dear madam, you are a good woman,” he said, and went whistling down to take the stage.

Upon the porch he found Jack Hicks seated between a stout gentleman and a thin lady, who were to be the passengers to Hopeville; and as Dan appeared the innkeeper started to his feet and swung open the door of the coach for the thin lady to pass inside. “You'll find it a pleasant ride, mum,” he heartily assured her. “I've often taken it myself an', rain or shine, thar's not a prettier road in all Virginny,” then he moved humbly back as Dan, carelessly drawing on his gloves, came down the steps. “I hope we haven't hurried you, suh,” he stammered.

“Not a bit--not a bit,” returned Dan, affably, slipping on his overcoat, which Big Abel had run up to hold for him.

“You gwine git right soakin' wet, Marse Dan,” said Big Abel, anxiously.

“Oh, I'll not melt,” responded Dan, and bowing to the thin lady he stepped upon the wheel and mounted lightly to the box.

“There's no end to this eternal drizzle,” he called down, as he tucked the waterproof robe about him and took up the reins.

Then, with a merry crack of the whip, the stage rolled through the gate and on its way.

As it turned into the road, a man on horseback came galloping from the direction of the town, and when he neared the tavern he stood up in his stirrups and shouted his piece of news.

“Thar was a raid on Harper's Ferry in the night,” he yelled hoarsely. “The arsenal has fallen, an' they're armin' the damned niggers.”

XII

THE NIGHT OF FEAR

Late in the afternoon, as the Governor neared the tavern, he was met by a messenger with the news; and at once turning his horse's head, he started back to Uplands. A dim fear, which had been with him since boyhood, seemed to take shape and meaning with the words; and in a lightning flash of understanding he knew that he had lived before through the horror of this moment. If his fathers had sinned, surely the shadow of their wrong had passed them by to fall the heavier upon their sons; for even as his blood rang in his ears, he saw a savage justice in the thing he feared--a recompense to natural laws in which the innocent should weigh as naught against the guilty.

A fine rain was falling; and as he went on, the end of a drizzling afternoon dwindled rapidly into night. Across the meadows he saw the lamps in scattered cottages twinkle brightly through the dusk which rolled like fog down from the mountains. The road he followed sagged between two gray hills into a narrow valley, and regaining its balance upon the farther side, stretched over a cattle pasture into the thick cover of the woods.

As he reached the summit of the first hill, he saw the Major's coach creeping slowly up the incline, and heard the old gentleman scolding through the window at Congo on the box.

“My dear Major, home's the place for you,” he said as he drew rein. “Is it possible that the news hasn't reached you yet?”

Remembering Congo, he spoke cautiously, but the Major, in his anger, tossed discretion to the winds.

“Reached me?--bless my soul!--do you take me for a ground hog?” he cried, thrusting his red face through the window. “I met Tom Bickels four miles back, and the horses haven't drawn breath since. But it's what I expected all along--I was just telling Congo so--it all comes from the mistaken tolerance of black Republicans. Let me open my doors to them to-day, and they'll be tempting Congo to murder me in my bed to-morrow.”

“Go 'way f'om yer, Ole Marster,” protested Congo from the box, flicking at the harness with his long whip.

The Governor looked a little anxiously at the negro, and then shook his head impatiently. Though a less exacting master than the Major, he had not the same childlike trust in the slaves he owned.

“Shall you not turn back?” he asked, surprised.

“Champe's there,” responded the Major, “so I came on for the particulars. A night in town isn't to my liking, but I can't sleep a wink until I hear a thing or two. You're going out, eh?”

“I'm riding home,” said the Governor, “it makes me uneasy to be away from Uplands.” He paused, hesitated an instant, and then broke out suddenly. “Good God, Major, what does it mean?”

The Major shook his head until his long white hair fell across his eyes.

“Mean, sir?” he thundered in a rage. “It means, I reckon, that those damned friends of yours have a mind to murder you. It means that after all your speech-making and your brotherly love, they're putting pitchforks into the hands of savages and loosening them upon you. Oh, you needn't mind Congo, Governor. Congo's heart's as white as mine.”

“Dat's so, Ole Marster,” put in Congo, approvingly.

The Governor was trembling as he leaned down from his saddle.

“We know nothing as yet, sir,” he began, “there must be some--”

“Oh, go on, go on,” cried the Major, striking the carriage window. “Keep up your speech-making and your handshaking until your wife gets murdered in her bed--but, by God, sir, if Virginia doesn't secede after this, I'll secede without her!”

The coach moved on and the Governor, touching his horse with the whip, rode rapidly down the hill.

As he descended into the valley, a thick mist rolled over him and the road lost itself in the blur of the surrounding fields. Without slackening his pace, he lighted the lantern at his saddle-bow and turned up the collar of his coat about his ears. The fine rain was soaking through his clothes, but in the tension of his nerves he was oblivious of the weather. The sun might have risen overhead and he would not have known it.

With the coming down of the darkness a slow fear crept, like a physical chill, from head to foot. A visible danger he felt that he might meet face to face and conquer; but how could he stand against an enemy that crept upon him unawares?--against the large uncertainty, the utter ignorance of the depth or meaning of the outbreak, the knowledge of a hidden evil which might be even now brooding at his fireside?

A thousand hideous possibilities came toward him from out the stretch of the wood. The light of a distant window, seen through the thinned edge of the forest; the rustle of a small animal in the underbrush; the drop of a walnut on the wet leaves in the road; the very odours which rose from the moist earth and dripped from the leafless branches--all sent him faster on his way, with a sound within his ears that was like the drumming of his heart.

To quiet his nerves, he sought to bring before him a picture of the house at Uplands, of the calm white pillars and the lamplight shining from the door; but even as he looked the vision of a slave-war rushed between, and the old buried horrors of the Southampton uprising sprang suddenly to life and thronged about the image of his home. Yesterday those tales had been for him as colourless as history, as dry as dates; to-night, with this new fear at his heart, the past became as vivid as the present, and it seemed to him that beyond each lantern flash he saw a murdered woman, or an infant with its brains dashed out at its mother's breast. This was what he feared, for this was what the message meant to him: “The slaves are armed and rising.”

And yet with it all, he felt that there was some wild justice in the thing he dreaded, in the revolt of an enslaved and ignorant people, in the pitiable and ineffectual struggle for a freedom which would mean, in the beginning, but the power to go forth and kill. It was the recognition of this deeper pathos that made him hesitate to reproach even while his thoughts dwelt on the evils--that would, if the need came, send him fearless and gentle to the fight. For what he saw was that behind the new wrongs were the old ones, and that the sinners of to-day were, perhaps, the sinned against of yesterday.

When at last he came out into the turnpike, he had not the courage to look among the trees for the lights of Uplands; and for a while he rode with his eyes following the lantern flash as it ran onward over the wet ground. The small yellow circle held his gaze, and as if fascinated he watched it moving along the road, now shining on the silver grains in a ring of sand, now glancing back from the standing water in a wheelrut, and now illuminating a mossy stone or a weed upon the roadside. It was the one bright thing in a universe of blackness, until, as he came suddenly upon an elevation, the trees parted and he saw the windows of his home glowing upon the night. As he looked a great peace fell over him, and he rode on, thanking God.

When he turned into the drive, his past anxiety appeared to him to be ridiculous, and as he glanced from the clear lights in the great house to the chain of lesser ones that stretched along the quarters, he laughed aloud in the first exhilaration of his relief. This at least was safe, God keep the others.

At his first call as he alighted before the portico, Hosea came running for his horse, and when he entered the house, the cheerful face of Uncle Shadrach looked out from the dining room.