"And hers shall be the breathing balm, And hers the silence, and the calm Of mute, insensate things."
CHAPTER II
In a week Tom was going away to school. It should not come as a surprise, Ellen repeatedly told him, for she had from time to time apprised him of the approaching fulfilment of her plans; but Tom had rested, like Hertha, in the present moment, believing, too, that Ellen"s plans might go astray. This, however, was little likely to take place, for in his older sister he dealt with a general, intelligent, resourceful, and with a contempt for the enemy, poverty. Her efforts had at length secured a scholarship, and four years of savings were to be expended for traveling and necessary clothes. The rest depended upon Tom who would be equipped to go out and do his share in gaining an education.
"Surely," Ellen said at the supper-table when the announcement of the final arrangements was made, "you know I"m right, Tom, and that a colored boy needs an education more than a white boy."
Aunt Maggie wiped her eyes. "We sure need Tom," she said.
The older sister looked around the table, at Hertha"s sad face, at Tom"s sullen one, at her mother"s tears, and for a moment felt the severity of the coming catastrophe; but for a moment only. Emotion soon gave place to reasoned thought.
"Tom has a right to an education," she said solemnly. "If he doesn"t learn a trade at school he never will learn one, and we shouldn"t keep him here no matter how much we shall need him and miss him."
Aunt Maggie rose. "You don" know what it means," she said, "to part a mudder f"om her only son." Her rich voice sounded with a certain finality as though, while appreciating Ellen"s power, she wished her to understand her responsibility. "You"s taken a deal upon you"self." And she left her children and went into her room.
Tom and Hertha slipped out of doors. In time of trouble they always got away from the house, and now in silence they made their way to the river.
It was a hot night in late September with a wind blowing from the east.
In the summer, unless held home by some imperative need, all the people of the plantation, black and white, came in the evening to the wharf to taste the fresh breeze. But the wharf was long and seclusion possible, so the two slipped to their favorite place at the far end, and leaning against a post dangled their feet over the water.
"If it would do any good," Tom said morosely, "I"d run away."
Hertha laughed.
"Ellen thinks she can boss the whole of us," he went on, "but the time am coming when she can"t boss me."
""Is," Tom."
"Yes, ma"am."
Tom"s speech was a queer mixture of good English acquired from his sisters, who had been drilled by northern teachers, and colloquial speech picked up from his surroundings.
"It does seem too bad," Hertha declared, "to leave just now when Mr.
Merryvale has come back and you can have work with some pay."
"I ain"t going for more"n a year," Tom declared.
"You"ll be grown up by that time."
"I"m as tall as you now."
Hertha looked across the water into the deep, velvet sky, and thought of the long days in which she would have to go about her work without her baby. Tom was seven years younger than she and since his birth had been her special charge. Hundreds of times she had washed his face and his soft little brown hands to which the grubby earth was as dear as to the roots of a flower. She it was who had always shielded him from severity, finding many and ingenious excuses for him. He had grown up a quiet, serious boy of a meditative cast, and sometimes came out with unusual, even startling remarks. Tom"s "thinking" was one of the jokes of the family. Hertha found it hard to imagine life without him.
"Do you remember," she said after they had sat silent for a time; "once I struck you?"
"Naw!"
"Of course you don"t remember, you weren"t more than three. We were out visiting at Aunt Mary"s and I had dressed you for the afternoon. We were on the steps. I had some sewing and you slipped away and went off berrying. Oh, but weren"t you a sight when you came back!"
Tom grunted.
"You came right up to me and leaned against my knee, not a bit afraid. I scolded and you looked up and smiled. You were very little then, seems to me you weren"t more than a baby."
"Yes?"
"I slapped you on your cheek!"
"Whew! I don"t believe it would have killed a mosquito."
"You were so grieved! You looked at me as though I had bruised your heart. Your mouth trembled and you hid your face in my lap and cried."
"And then you took me in your lap and petted me and told me about the three little pigs and washed me and got me into another dress without Mammy"s knowing!"
"You can"t remember, Tom!"
"Yes, I can."
"I don"t believe you were as old as three."
"Well," meditatively, "if I don"t remember that time I remembers heaps of others like it. You never went back on me."
"Probably Ellen is right," Hertha remarked later, "she usually is, though I don"t think it was worth while my spending that last year in school, I was so homesick."
"You can never tell about an education," Tom said, wise in another"s case.
Behind them came the sound of conversation, broken occasionally by a boisterous laugh. Some one was thrumming on a banjo and now and then singing a few lines from a popular song.
"What do you reckon it"ll be like at school?" Tom asked.
"Oh, doing things. First one thing and then another until you"re so tired at night you fall at once to sleep and wake up and start to do more things."
"That ain"t much different from home."
Hertha did not answer. She never disputed but she thought Tom would find a difference.
They looked out into the starlight. "I was thinking," the boy said, "you"re like that star up there." He pointed to a planet, bright in the heavens. "That"s like you, beautiful and alone."
"Well!" She gave his arm a little squeeze. "But I"m not alone and neither is the star. See the little stars about."
"They don"t count."
They sat for two hours looking into the starlight, talking a little and dreaming a good deal more until, growing sleepy, they rose and went home.
"What do you two find to say to one another?" Ellen asked, not unkindly, as she met them on their return. But part of their pleasure in one another"s company was that they did not need to talk.