The Battle Ground - Ellen Glasgow
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As he stood there the silence of the old house knocked upon his heart like
sound--and quick fears sprang up within him of a sudden death, or of Betty
weeping for him somewhere alone in the stillness. The long roof under the
waving elm boughs lost, for a heartbeat, the likeness of his home, and
became, as the clouds thickened in the sky, but a great mound of earth over
which the wind blew and the dead leaves fell.
But at last when he turned away and followed the branch road, his racial
temperament had triumphed over the forebodings of the moment; and with the
flicker of a smile upon his lips, he started briskly toward the turnpike.
As the mind in the first ecstasy of a high passion is purified from the
stain of mere emotion, so the Major, and the Major's anger, were forgotten,
and his own bitter resentment swept as suddenly from his thoughts. He was
overpowered and uplifted by the one supreme feeling from which he still
trembled. All else seemed childish and of small significance beside the
memory of Betty's lips upon his own. What room had he for anger when he was
filled to overflowing with the presence of love?
The branch road ran out abruptly into the turnpike, and once off the
familiar way by his grandfather's stone wall, he felt the blackness of the
night close round him like a vault. Without a lantern there was small hope
of striking the tavern or the tavern road till morning. To go on meant a
night upon the roadside or in the fields.
As he stretched out his arm, groping in the blackness, he struck suddenly
upon the body of the blasted tree, and coming round it, his eyes caught the
red light of free Levi's fire, and he heard the sound of a hammer falling
upon heated iron. The little path was somewhere in the darkness, and as he
vainly sought for it, he stumbled over a row of stripped and headless
cornstalks which ran up to the cabin door. Once upon the smooth stone
before the threshold, he gave a boyish whistle and lifted his hand to
knock. "It is I, Uncle Levi--there are no 'hants' about," he cried.
The hammer was thrown aside, and fell upon the stones, and a moment
afterward, the door flew back quickly, showing the blanched face of free
Levi and the bright glow of the hearth. "Dis yer ain' no time fur pranks,"
said the old man, angrily. "Ain't yer ever gwine ter grow up, yit?" and he
added, slowly, "Praise de Lawd hit's you instid er de devil."
"Oh, it's I, sure enough," returned Dan, lightly, as he came into the
cabin. "I'm on my way to Merry Oaks Tavern, Uncle Levi,--it's ten miles
off, you know, and this blessed night is no better than an ink-pot. I'd
positively be ashamed to send such a night down on a respectable planet.
It's that old lantern of yours I want, by the way, and in case it doesn't
turn up again, take this to buy a new one. No, I can't rest to-night. This
is my working time, and I must be up and doing." He reached for the rusty
old lantern behind the door, and lighted it, laughing as he did so. His
face was pale, and there was a nervous tremor in his hands, but his voice
had lost none of its old heartiness. "Ah, that's it, old man," he said,
when the light was ready. "We'll shake hands in case it's a long parting.
This is a jolly world. Uncle Levi,--good-by, and God bless you," and,
leaving the old man speechless on the hearth, he closed the door and went
out into the night.
On the turnpike again, with the lantern swinging in his hand, he walked
rapidly in the direction of the tavern road, throwing quick flashes of
light before his footsteps. Behind him he heard the falling of free Levi's
hammer, and knew that the old negro was toiling at his rude forge for the
bread which he would to-morrow eat in freedom.
With the word he tossed back his hair and quickened his steps, as if he
were leaving servitude behind him in the house at Chericoke; and, as the
anger blazed up within his heart he found pleasure in the knowledge that at
last he was starting out to level his own road. Under the clouds on the
long turnpike it all seemed so easy--as easy as the falling of free Levi's
hammer, which had faded in the distance.
What was it, after all? A year or two of struggle and of attainment, and he
would come back flushed with success, to clasp Betty in his arms. In a
dozen different ways he pictured to himself the possible manner of that
home-coming, obliterating the year or two that lay between. He saw himself
a great lawyer from a little reading and a single speech, or a judge upon
his bench, famed for his classic learning and his grave decisions. He had
only to choose, he felt, and he might be anything--had they not told him so
at college? did not even his grandfather admit it? He had only to
choose--and, oh, he would choose well--he would choose to be a man, and to
come riding back with his honours thick upon him.
Looking ahead, he saw himself a few years hence, as he rode leisurely
homeward up the turnpike, while the stray countrymen he met took off their
harvest hats, and stared wonderingly long after he was gone. He saw the
Governor hastening to the road to shake his hand, he saw his grandfather
bowed with the sense of his injustice, tremulous with the flutter of his
pride; and, best of all, he saw Betty--Betty, with the rays of light
beneath her lashes, coming straight across the drive into his arms.
And then all else faded slowly from him to give place to Betty, and he saw
her growing, changing, brightening, as he had seen her from her childhood
up. The small white figure in the moonlight, the merry little playmate,
hanging on his footsteps, eager to run his errands, the slender girl, with
the red braids and the proud shy eyes, and the woman who knelt upon the
hearth in Aunt Ailsey's cabin, smiling up at him as she dried her
hair--all gathered round him now illuminated against the darkness of the
night. Betty, Betty,--he whispered her name softly beneath his breath, he
spoke it aloud in the silence of the turnpike, he even cried it out against
the mountains, and waited for the echo--Betty, Betty. There was not only
sweetness in the thought of her, there was strength also. The hand that had
held him back when he would have gone out blindly in his passion was the
hand of a woman, not of a girl--of a woman who could face life smiling
because she felt deep in herself the power to conquer it. Two days ago she
had been but the girl he loved, to-night, with her kisses on his lips, she
had become for him at once a shield and a religion. He looked outward and
saw her influence a light upon his pathway; he turned his gaze within and
found her a part of the sacred forces of his life--of his wistful
childhood, his boyish purity, and the memory of his mother.
He had passed Uplands, and now, as he followed the tavern way, he held the
flash of his lantern near the ground, and went slowly by the crumbling
hollows in the strip of "corduroy" road. There was a thick carpet of moist
leaves underfoot, and above the wind played lightly among the overhanging
branches. His lantern made a shining circle in the midst of a surrounding
blackness, and where the light fell the scattered autumn leaves sent out
gold and scarlet flashes that came and went as quickly as a flame. Once an
owl flew across his path, and startled by the lantern, blindly fluttered
off again. Somewhere in the distance he heard the short bark of a fox; then
it died away, and there was no sound except the ceaseless rustle of the
trees.
By the time he came out of the wood upon the open road, his high spirits
had gone suddenly down, and the visions of an hour ago showed stale and
lifeless to his clouded eyes. After a day's ride and a poor dinner, the
ten-mile walk had left him with aching limbs, and a growing conviction that
despite his former aspirations, he was fast going to the devil along the
tavern road. When at last he swung open the whitewashed gate before the
inn, and threw the light of his lantern on the great oaks in the yard, the
relief he felt was hardly brighter than despair, and it made very little
difference, he grimly told himself, whether he put up for the night or kept
the road forever. With a clatter he went into the little wooden porch and
knocked upon the door.
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."