"Yes, Lord, she wuz dead en buried," repeated Uncle Ish slowly. "En dar ain" none like her lef" roun" yer now. Dis yer little Euginny is des"
de spit er her ma, en it "ud mek Ole Miss tu"n in her grave ter hear tell "bout her gwines on. De quality en de po" folks is all de same ter her. She ain" no mo" un inspecter er pussons den de Lord is--ef Ole Miss wuz "live, I reckon she"d lam "er twel she wuz black en blue--"
"Is she so very bad?" asked Nicholas in an awed voice.
Uncle Ish turned upon him reprovingly.
"Bad!" he repeated. "Who gwine call Ole Miss" gran"chile bad? I don"t reckon it"s dese yer new come folks es hev des" sprouted outer de dut es is gwine ter--"
At this instant the sound of a vehicle reached them, gaining upon them from the direction of Kingsborough, and they fell to one side of the road, leaving room for the horses to pa.s.s. It was the Battle carriage, rolling heavily on its aged wheels and creaking beneath the general"s weight.
"Howdy, Ma.r.s.e Tom!" called Uncle Ishmael. The general responded good-naturedly, and the carriage pa.s.sed on, but, before turning into the branch road a few yards ahead, it came to a standstill, and the bright, decisive voice of the little girl floated back.
"Uncle Ish--I say, Uncle Ish, don"t you want to ride?"
"Dar, now!" cried Uncle Ishmael exultantly. "Ain"t I tell you she wuz plum crazy? What she doin" a-peckin" up en ole n.i.g.g.e.r like I is?"
He hastened his steps and scrambled into the seat beside the driver, settling his bag between his knees; and, with a flick of the peeled hickory whip, the carriage rolled into the branch road and disappeared, scattering a whirl of mud drops as it splashed through the shallow puddles which lingered in the dryest season beneath the heavy shade of the wood.
Nicholas turned into the branch road also, for the poor lands of his father adjoined the slightly richer ones of the Battles. He felt tired and a little lonely, and he wished suddenly that a friendly cart would come along in which he might ride the remainder of the way. Between the densely wooded thicket on either side, the road looked dark and solemn.
It was spread with a rotting carpet of last year"s leaves, soft and damp under foot, and polished into shining tracks in the ruts left by pa.s.sing wheels. Through the dusk the ghostly bodies of beech trees stood out distinctly from the surrounding wood, as if marked by a silver light falling from the topmost branches. The hoa.r.s.e, grating notes of jar-flies intensified the stillness.
Nicholas went on steadily, spurred by superst.i.tious terror of the silence. He remembered that Uncle Ish had said there were no "ha"nts"
along this road, but the a.s.surance was barren of comfort. Old Uncle Dan"l Mule had certainly seen a figure in a white sheet rise up out of that decayed oak stump in the hollow, for he had sworn to it in the boy"s presence in Aunt Rhody Sand"s cabin the night of her daughter Viny"s wedding. As for Viny"s husband Saul, he had declared that one night after ten o"clock, when he was coming through this wood, the "booger-boos" had got after him and chased him home.
At the end of the wood the road came out upon the open again, and in the distance Nicholas could see, like burnished squares, the windows of his father"s house. Between the thicket and the house there was a long stretch of clearing, which had been once planted in corn, and now supported a headless army of dry stubble, amid a dull-brown waste of broomsedge. The last pale vestige of the afterglow, visible across the level country, swept the arid field and softened the harsh outlines of the landscape. It was barren soil, whose strength had been exhausted long since by years of production without returns, tilled by hands that had forced without fertilising. There was now grim pathos in its absolute sterility, telling as it did of long-gone yields of grain and historic harvests.
Nicholas skirted the waste, and was turning into the pasture gate on the opposite side of the road, when he heard the shrill sound of a voice from the direction of the house.
"Nick!--who--a Nick!"
On one of the cedar posts of the fence of the cow-pen he discerned the small figure and green cotton frock of his half-sister, Sarah Jane, who was shouting through her hollowed palms to increase the volume of sound.
"I say, Nick! The she-ep hev" been driv-en u-p! Come to sup-per!"
She vanished from the post and Nicholas ran up the remainder of the road and swung himself over the little gate which led into the small square yard immediately surrounding the house. At the pump near the back door his father, who had just come from work, was washing his hands before going into supper, and near a row of pointed chicken coops the three younger children were "shooing" up the tiny yellow broods. The yard was unkempt and ugly, run wild in straggling ailanthus shoots and littered with chips from the wood-pile.
As he entered the house he saw his stepmother placing a dish of fried bacon upon the table, which was covered with a "watered" oilcloth of a bright walnut tint. At her back stood Sarah Jane with a plate of corn bread in one hand and a gla.s.s pitcher containing b.u.t.termilk in the other. She was a slight, flaxen-haired child, with wizened features and sore, red eyelids.
As his stepmother caught sight of him she stopped on her way to the stove and surveyed him with sharp but not unkindly eyes.
"You"ve been takin" your time "bout comin" home," she remarked, "an" I reckon you"re powerful hungry. You can sit down if you want to."
She was long and lean and withered, with a chronic facial neuralgia, which gave her an irritable expression and a querulous voice. For the past several years Nicholas had never seen her without a large cotton handkerchief bound tightly about her face. She had been the boy"s aunt before she married his father, and her affection for him was proved by her allowing no one to harry him except herself.
"How"s your face, ma?" asked Nicholas with the indifference of habit as he took his seat at the table, while Sarah Jane went to the door to call her father. When Burr came in the inquiry was repeated.
"Face any easier, Marthy?" It was a form that had been gone through with at every meal since the malady began, and Marthy Burr, while she deplored its insincerity, would have resented its omission.
"Don"t you all trouble "bout my neuralgy," she returned with resigned exasperation as she stood up to pour the coffee out of the large tin boiler. "It"s mine, an" I"ve borne worse things, I reckon, which ain"t sayin" that "tain"t near to takin" my head off."
Amos Burr drank his coffee without replying, the perspiration standing in drops on his large, freckled face and shining on his heavy eyebrows.
Presently he looked at Nicholas, who was eating abstractedly, his gaze on his plate.
"I got that thar piece of land broke to-day," he said, "an" I reckon you can take the one-horse harrow and go over it to-morrow. Them peanuts ought to hev" been in the ground two weeks ago--"
"They ain"t hulled yet," interrupted his wife. "Sairy Jane ain"t done more"n half of "em. She and Nick can do the balance after supper. Hurry up, Sairy Jane, and get through. Nannie, don"t you touch another slice of that middlin". You"ll be frettin" all night."
Nicholas looked up nervously. "I don"t want to harrow the land to-morrow, pa," he began; "the judge said I might come in to school--"
Amos Burr looked at him helplessly. "Wall, I never!" he exclaimed.
"Did you ever hear the likes?" said his wife.
"I can go, pa, can"t I?" asked Nicholas.
"He can go, pa, can"t he?" repeated Sarah Jane, looking up with her mouth wide open and full of corn bread.
Burr shook his head and looked at his wife.
"I don"t see as I can get any help," he said. "You"re as good as a hand, and I can"t spare you." Then he concluded with a touch of irritation, "I don"t see as you want any more schoolin". You can read and write now a heap better"n I can."
Nicholas choked over his bread and his lips trembled.
"I--I don"t want to be like you, pa!" he cried breathlessly, and the unshed tears stung his eyelids. "I want to be different!"
Burr looked up stolidly. "I don"t see as you want any more schoolin","
he repeated stubbornly, but his wife came sharply to the boy"s a.s.sistance.
"I wish you"d stop pesterin" the child, Amos," she said, inspired less by the softness of amiability than by the genius of opposition. "I don"t see how you can be everlastingly doin" it--my dead sister"s child, too."
Nicholas swallowed his tears with his coffee and turned to his father.
"I can get up "fore day and do a piece of the land, and I can help you "bout the sowin" when I get back in the evening. I"ll be back by twelve--"
"Oh, I reckon you can go if you"re so set on it," said Amos gruffly. He rose and left the room, stopping in the hall to get a bucket of b.u.t.termilk for the hogs. Nicholas went over to the window and joined Sarah Jane, who was sh.e.l.ling the peanuts, carefully separating the outer hulls from the inner pink skins, which were left intact for sowing.
Marthy Burr, who was clearing off the table, let fall a china dish and began scolding the younger children.
"I declare, if you don"t all but drive me daft!" she said, flinching from a twinge of neuralgia and raising her voice querulously. "Why can"t you take yourselves off and give me some rest? Nannie, you and Jake go out to the old oak and see if all the turkeys air up. Be sure and count "em--and take Jubal (the youngest) "long with you. If you see your pa tell him I say to look at the brindle cow. She acted mighty queer at milkin", and I reckon she"d better have a little bran mash--Sairy Jane,"
turning suddenly upon her eldest daughter, "if you eat another one of them peanuts I"ll box your jaws--"
Nicholas finished the peanuts and went upstairs to his little attic room. He was not sleepy, and, after throwing himself upon his corn-shuck mattress, he lay for a long time staring at the ceiling, thinking of the morrow and listening to the groans of his stepmother as she tossed with neuralgia.
IV
In the first glimmer of dawn Nicholas dressed himself and stole softly down from the attic, the frail stairway creaking beneath his tread. As he was unfastening the kitchen door, which led out upon a rough plank platform called the "back porch," Marthy Burr stuck her head in from the adjoining room where she slept, and called his name in a high-pitched, querulous voice.