Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories Part 7

That afternoon he left the hospital, and several hours later was seen walking up Monument Street with his arm full of bundles.

"I believe he's been buying clothes to take Sally home in!" said one of the nurses, who was watching him from an upper window. "He asked me this morning if I knew a place where he could buy women's togs."

"It's a shame he won't let the girl stay," said Miss Fletcher. "I have been talking to the superintendent, and she is quite willing to let her do light work around the hospital and pick up what training she can. I should be glad enough to look after her, and there's a good night school two blocks over."

"Why don't you talk to the old man?" urged the nurse. "You are the only one who has ever been able to do anything with him. Perhaps you could make him see what an injustice he is doing the girl."

"I believe I'll try," said Miss Fletcher.

The next morning, when she came on duty, she found Sally's bed the repository of a strange a.s.sortment of wearing apparel. A calico dress of p.r.o.nounced hue, a large lace jabot, and a small pair of yellow kid gloves were spread out for inspection.

"I knowed they wuz too leetle," Pop was saying, as he carefully smoothed the kid fingers, "but I 'lowed you could kerry 'em in yer hand."

There was an unusual eagerness in his hard face, an evident desire to make up to Sally in one way for what he was depriving her of in another.

He was more talkative than at any time since coming to the hospital, and he dilated with satisfaction on the joys that awaited their home-coming.

"May I have a little talk with you before you go?" asked Miss Fletcher.

He flashed on her a quick look of suspicion, but her calm, impa.s.sive face told him nothing. She was a pretty woman, and Pop had evidently recognized the fact from the start.

"Wal, I'll come now," he said, rising reluctantly; "but, Sal, you git yer clothes on an' be ready to start time I git back. I ain't anxious to stay round these here diggin's no longer'n need be. Besides, that thar railroad car mought take a earlier start. You be ready ag'in I git back."

For an hour and a quarter Miss Fletcher was shut up in the linen closet with the old man. What arguments and persuasions she brought to bear are not known. Occasionally his voice could be heard in loud and angry dissent, but when at last they emerged he looked like some old king of the jungle that has been captured and tamed. His shoulders drooped, his one arm hung limply by his side, and his usually restless eyes were bent upon the floor.

Without a word he strode back to the room where Sally in her misfit clothes was waiting for him.

"Come along o' me, Sal," he commanded sternly as he picked up his carpet sack. "Leave your things whar they be."

Silently they pa.s.sed out of the ward, down the stairway, through the long vaultlike corridor to the superintendent's room. Once there he flung back his rusty coat and ripped the last bill but one from its hiding place.

"That thar is fer my gal," he said defiantly to the superintendent.

"She'll git one the fust day of every month. Give her the larnin' she's so h.e.l.l-bent on, stuff her plumb full on it. An' ef you let ennything happen to her"--his brows lowered threateningly--"I'll come back an'

blow yer whole blame' horspittle into eternity!"

"Pop!" Sally pleaded, "Pop!"

But his emotions were at high tide and he did not heed her. Pushing her roughly aside, he strode back to the entrance hall, and was about to pick up his carpet sack when his gaze was suddenly arrested by the great marble figure that bends its thorn-crowned head in pity over the unhappy and the pain-racked mortals that pa.s.s beneath its outstretched hands.

"You ain't goin' to leave me like this, Pop?" begged Sally. "Ef you take it so hard, I'll go back, an' I'll go willin'. Jus' say the word, Pop, an' I'll go!"

The old mountaineer's one hand closed on the girl's bony arm in a tight clasp, his shoulders heaved, and his ma.s.sive features worked, but his gaze never left the calm, pitying face of the Saviour overhead. He had followed his child without a tremor into the Valley of the Shadow of Death, but at the entrance of this new life, where he must let her go alone, his courage failed and his spirit faltered. His dominant will, hitherto the only law he knew, was in mortal combat with a new and unknown force that for the first time had entered his life.

For several minutes he stood thus, his conflicting pa.s.sions swaying him, as opposing gales shake a giant forest tree. Then he resolutely loosened his grip on the girl's arm and taking up his burden, without a word or a backward glance, set his face toward the hills, leaving an awkward, wistful girl watching him with her tears only half obscuring the vision that was already dawning for her.

HOODOOED

Gordon Lee Surrender Jones lay upon what he confidently claimed to be his death-bed. Now and again he glanced furtively at the cabin door and listened. Being a.s.sured that n.o.body was coming, he cautiously extricated a large black foot from the bedclothes, and, holding it near the candle, laboriously tied a red string about one of his toes. He was a powerful negro, with a close-cropped bullet-head, a ma.s.sive bulldog jaw, and a pair of incongruously gentle and credulous eyes.

According to his own diagnosis, he was suffering from "asmy, bronketers, pneumony, grip, diabeters, and old age." The last affliction was hardly possible, as Gordon Lee was probably born during the last days of the Civil War, though he might have been eighty, for all he knew to the contrary. In addition to his acknowledged ailments, there was one he cherished in secret. It was by far the most mysterious and deadly of the lot, a malady to be pondered on in the dark watches of the night, to be treated with weird rites and ceremonies, and to be cured only by some specialist versed in the deepest lore of witchcraft; for Gordon Lee knew beyond the faintest shadow of a doubt that a hoodoo had been laid upon him.

Of course, like most of his race, he had had experiences in this line before; but this was different. In fact, it was no less a calamity than a cricket in his leg. Just how the cricket got into his leg was a matter too deep for human speculation; but the fact that it was there, and that it hopped with ease from knee to ankle, and made excruciating excursions into his five toes, was as patent as the toes themselves.

What complicated the situation for Gordon Lee was that he could not discuss this painful topic with his wife. Amanda Jones had embarked on the higher education, and had long ago thrown overboard her old superst.i.tions. She was not only Queen Mother of the Sisters of the Order of the Star, and an officer in various church societies, but she was also a cook in the house of Mrs. James Bertram, President of the State Federation of Women's Clubs. The crumbs of wisdom that fell from the lips of the great Mrs. Bertram were carefully preserved by Amanda, and warmed over, with sundry garnishings of her own, for the various colored clubs to which she belonged.

Gordon Lee had succeeded in adorning only three toes when he heard a quick step on the gravel outside and, hastily getting his foot under cover, he settled back on the pillow, closed his eyes, and began laboriously inhaling with a wheeze and exhaling with a groan.

The candle sputtered as the door was flung open, and a small, energetic mulatto woman, twenty years Gordon Lee's junior, bustled into the room.

"Good lan'! but it's hot in heah!" she exclaimed, flinging up a window.

"I got a good mind to _nail_ this heah window down f'om the top."

"I done open' de door fer a spell dis mawnin'," said Gordon Lee, sullenly, pulling the bedclothes tighter about his neck. "Lettin' in all dis heah night air meks my eyes sore."

The bedclothes, having thus been drawn up from the bottom of the bed, left the patient's feet exposed, and Amanda immediately spied the string-encircled toes.

"Gordon Lee Surrender Jones," she exclaimed indignantly, "has that there meddlin' ol' Aunt Kizzy been here again?"

Gordon Lee's eyes blinked, and his thick, sullen under lip dropped half an inch lower.

"Ef you think," continued Amanda, furiously, "that I'm a-goin' to keep on a-workin' my fingers to the bone, lak I been doin' for the past year, a-payin' doctors' bills, an' buyin' medicines fer you, while you lay up in this here bed listenin' to the fool talk of a pa.s.sel of igneramuses, you's certainly mistaken. Hit's bad enough to have you steddyin' up new ailments ever' day, without folks a-puttin' 'em in yer head. Whut them strings tied on yer toes fer?"

Gordon Lee's wheezing had ceased under his severe mental strain, and now he lay blinking at the ceiling, utterly unable to give a satisfactory answer.

"Aunt Kizzy jes happen' 'long," he muttered presently. "Ain't no harm in a' ol' frien' pa.s.sin' de time ob day."

"Whut them _strings_ tied on yer toes fer?" repeated Amanda with fearful insistence.

Gordon Lee, pushed to the extreme, and knowing by experience that he was as powerless in the hands of his diminutive wife as an elephant in those of his keeper, weakly capitulated.

"Aunt Kizzy 'low'--I ain't sayin' she's right; I's jes tellin' you what she _'low'_--Aunt Kizzy 'low' dat, 'cordin' to de symtems, she say',--an' I ain't sayin' I b'lieve her,--but she say' hit looks to her lak I's sufferin' f'om a hoodoo."

"A hoodoo!" Amanda's scorn was unbounded. "Ef it don't beat my time how some of you n.i.g.g.e.rs hang on to them ol' notions. 'Tain't nothin' 't all but ignorant superst.i.tion. Ain't I tol' you that a hunderd times?"

"Yes, you done tol' me," said Gordon Lee, putting up a feeble defense.

"You all time quoilin' an' runnin' down conjurin' an' bad-luck signs an' all de _n.i.g.g.e.r_ superst.i.tions; but you's quick 'nough to tek up all dese heah _white_ superst.i.tions."

"How you mean?" demanded Amanda.

Gordon Lee, flattered at having any remark of his noticed, proceeded to elaborate.

"I mean all dis heah talk 'bout hits bein' bad luck to sleep wid de windows shet, an' bout flies carrying disease, an' 'bout worms gittin'

in de milk ef you leave it settin' roun' unkivered."

"Not worms," corrected Amanda; "_germs_. That ain't no superst.i.tion; that's a scientific fac'. They is so little you don't see 'em; but they's there all right. Mis' Bertram says they's ever'where--in the water, in the air, crawlin' up the very walls."