"You"re late for supper," she said idly as he entered. "Sairy Jane"s gone to bed with a headache and ma"s in a temper. I"ll get you something as soon as I"ve done this seam."
"I"ve had supper," he answered shortly, adding from force of habit, "where"s ma?"
Nannie motioned towards the kitchen and drew a little nearer the lamp, while Nicholas left the room in search of his stepmother.
Marthy Burr, a pile of newly dug potatoes on the floor beside her, was carefully sorting them before storing them for winter use. The sound ones she laid in a basket at her right hand, those that were of imperfect growth or showed signs of decay she threw into a hamper that was kept in the kitchen closet.
"You ought to make Jubal do this," said Nicholas as he entered.
"I wouldn"t trust the thickest skinned potato in the field in his hands," returned Marthy sharply. "He an" yo" pa made out to store "em last year, an" when I went to look in the first barrel, the last one of "em had rotted."
"Let them rot," said Nicholas harshly. "I be d.a.m.ned if I"d care. You don"t eat them, anyway."
"I reckon if I was a man I might consarn myself "bout the things that tickle my own palate--an" "taters ain"t one of "em," was his stepmother"s retort. "But, being a woman, it seems I"ve got to spend my life slavin" for other folks" stomachs. But you"re yo" Uncle Nick Sales all over again; "Don"t you get up befo" day to set that dough, Marthy,"
he"d say, but when the bread came on flat as a pancake, he"d look sourer than all the rest."
"What was my Uncle Nick Sales like?" asked Nicholas indifferently. He knew the name, but he had never heard the man"s story.
"All book larnin" an" mighty little sense--just like you," replied his stepmother with repressed pride in her voice. "Could read the Bible in an outlandish tongue an" was too big a fool to come in out of the rain.
He used to sit up all night at his books--an" fall asleep the next day at the plough. He was the wisest fool I ever see."
"Poor fool!" said Nicholas softly. It was the epitaph over the unmarked grave of that other member of his race who had blazed the th.o.r.n.y path before him. A strange, pathetic figure rose suddenly in his vision--a man with a great brow and a twisted back, with brawny, knotted hands--an unlearned student driving the plough, an ignorant philosopher dragging the mire.
"Poor fool!" he said again. "What did his learning do for him?"
"It killed him," returned his stepmother shortly.
She stood before him wiping her gnarled hands on her soiled ap.r.o.n. His gaze fell upon her, and he wondered angrily whence sprung her indomitable energy--the energy that could expend itself upon potatoes.
Her face was sharpened until it seemed to become all feature--there were hollows in the narrow temples, and where the pale, thin hair was drawn tightly over the head he could trace the prominent bones of the skull.
As he looked at her his own petty suffering was overshadowed by the visible tragedy of her life--the sordid tragedy where unconsciousness was pathos. He reached out quickly and took a corner of her ap.r.o.n in his hand. It was the strongest demonstration of affection he had ever made to her.
"I"ll sort them, ma," he said lightly. "There"s not a speck in the lot of them too fine for my eyes." And he knelt down beside the earthy heap.
But when he went up to his room an hour later and lighted his kerosene lamp, it was not of his stepmother that he was thinking--nor was it of Eugenia. His stiffened muscles contracted in physical pain, and his brain was deadened by the sense of unutterable defeat. The delirium of his anger had pa.s.sed away; the fever of his skin had chilled beneath the cold sweat that broke over him--in the reaction from the madness that had gripped him he was conscious of a sanity almost sublime. The habitual balance of his nature had swung back into place.
He got out his books and arranged them as usual beside the lamp. Then he took up the volume he had been reading and held it unopened in his hands. He stared straight before him at the whitewashed wall of the little room, at the rough pine bedstead, at the crude washstand, at the coloured calendar above.
On the unearthly whiteness of the wall he beheld the pictured vision of that other student of his race--the kinsman who had lived toiling and had died learning. He came to him a tragic figure in mire-clotted garments--a youth with aspiring eyes and muck-stained feet. He wondered what had been his history--that unknown labourer who had sought knowledge--that philosopher of the plough who had died in ignorance.
"Poor fools!" he said bitterly, "poor fools!" for in his vision that other student walked not alone.
The next morning he went into Kingsborough at his usual hour, and, pa.s.sing his own small office, kept on to where Tom Ba.s.sett"s name was hung.
It was county court day, and the sheriff and the clerk of the court were sitting peaceably in armchairs on the little porch of the court-house.
As Nicholas pa.s.sed with a greeting, they turned from a languid discussion of the points of a brindle cow in the street to follow mentally his powerful figure.
"I reckon he"s got more muscle than any man in town," remarked the sheriff in a reflective drawl. "Unless Phil Bates, the butcher, could knock him out. Like to see "em at each other, wouldn"t you?" he added with a laugh.
The clerk carefully tilted his chair back against the wall and surveyed his outstretched feet. "Like to live to see him stumping this State for Congress," he replied. "There goes the brainiest man these parts have produced since before the war--the people want their own men, and it"s time they had "em."
Nicholas pa.s.sed on to Tom"s office, and, finding it empty, turned back to the judge"s house, where he found father and son breakfasting opposite each other at a table bright with silver and chrysanthemums.
They hospitably implored him to join them, but he shook his head, motioning away the plate which old Caesar would have laid before him.
"I wanted to ask Tom if he had heard this--this lie about me," he said quickly.
Tom looked up, flushing warmly.
"Why, who"s been such a blamed fool as to tell you?" he demanded.
"You have heard it?"
"It isn"t worth hearing. I called Jerry Pollard up at once, and he swore he was all wrong--the girl herself exonerates you. n.o.body believed it."
Nicholas crushed the brim of his hat in a sudden grip.
"Some believe it," he returned slowly. He sat down at the table, smiling gratefully at the judge"s protestations.
"They aren"t all like you, sir," he declared. "I wish they were. This world would be a little nearer heaven--a little less like h.e.l.l."
There was a trail of lingering bitterness in his voice, and in a moment he added quickly: "Do you know, I"d like to get away for a time. I"ve changed my mind about caring to live here. If they"d send me up to the legislature next year, I"d make a new beginning."
The judge shook his head.
"I doubt the wisdom of it, my boy," he said. But Tom caught at the suggestion.
"Send you," he repeated. "Of course; they"ll send you from here to Jericho, if you say so. Why, there"s no end to your popularity among men. Where the ladies are concerned, I modestly admit that I have the advantage of you; but they can"t vote, G.o.d bless them!"
"You"re welcome to all the good they may bring you, old boy," was Nicholas"s unchivalrous retort.
"Oh, you"re jealous, Nick!" twitted Tom gaily. "They don"t take kindly to your carrot locks. Now, I"ve inherited a way with them, eh, dad?"
The judge complacently b.u.t.tered his buckwheats. There was a twinkle in his eyes and a quiver at the corner of his cla.s.sic mouth.
"It was the only inheritance I wasn"t able to squander in my wild oats days," he returned. "May you cherish it, my boy, as carefully as your father has done. It would be a dull world without the women."
"And a peaceable one," added Nicholas viciously.
"We owe them much," said the judge, pouring maple syrup from the old silver jug. "If Helen of Troy set the world at war, she made men heroes."
"You can"t get the pater to acknowledge that the fair things are ever wrong," put in Tom protestingly. "He would have proved Eve"s innocence to the Almighty. If a woman murdered ten men before his eyes he"d lay the charge on the devil and acquit her."
The judge shook his head with a laugh.
"I might merely argue that the queen can do no wrong," he suggested.
When Tom had finished his breakfast, Nicholas walked with him to his office, and, seeing Bessie Pollard, red-eyed and drooping in her father"s door, he lingered an instant and held out his hand. There was defiant sympathy in his act--disdain of the judgment of Kingsborough--and of General Battle, who was pa.s.sing--and pity for a bruised common thing that looked at him with beautiful, mindless eyes.