Mothering on Perilous Part 19

Every day Nucky goes down to see Blant, always returning sad, thoughtful and troubled. "'Pears like he haint able to take no more interest in nothing, now Rich is gone," he said to me last night; "when he talks he don't say nothing but 'I have killed the friend of my bosom,--my heart is broke,--I can't stand to live no longer.'"

_Wednesday._

I stopped the mail-boy again to-day, for news of the Marrs family.

"Things is going mighty bad," he said. "The babe is pindling scandlous, and its paw is wore to a frazzle tending it of nights, and cooking, and troubling in his mind. Minervy Saxby allows if Blant don't git back to that 'ere babe, it'll purely pine to death."

Nucky came out as we talked, and heard the boy's account. He said to me immediately, "I want to go home Friday."

"You are not strong enough for the walk," I said.

"I've got to go," he declared.

_Sat.u.r.day Night._

Nucky went home yesterday; and shortly after noon to-day I was surprised to see him ride down the road in front of the cottage, with a small bundle held on one arm. I called to him in surprise, and he halted.

"It's the babe,--I brung it to see Blant," he said.

He unwrapped the blanket from the baby's head, and the poor little creature looked down at me with such big, sad eyes out of a tiny white face, that my heart was wrung within me.

I went on down to the jail with them. The keeper ushered us into the large room where Blant sat with the other prisoners (most of them nice boys, in only for moonshining, or for celebrating Christmas too enthusiastically); but he sat in a corner alone, while they played cards around a table.

Nucky went toward Blant with his bundle. "'Pears like the babe will pine to death for you, Blant," he said, "so I brung her over." He opened the blanket, and with one ecstatic cry out of utmost depths of suffering, the little creature sprang forward, and buried her head in Blant's bosom.

Blant held her close, laid his head upon hers, and burst into a terrible storm of weeping, a storm that swept everything, and all of us, before it. Nucky and I wept together, the keeper stood with tears streaming down his cheeks, the card-playing boys, noisy and careless a moment before, to a man laid their heads on the table and wept. I am sure that before that tempest of emotion was over, it must have washed from Blant's heart some of its awful burden.

I slipped out and ran to the hospital for a nursing bottle and some milk, that Blant might feed the poor little starving babe. Oh how bright, how joyous, how pitiable, was the smile upon her tiny, pinched face as she laid aside her bottle repeatedly to a.s.sure herself by touch and sight that Blant still held her.

Late in the afternoon, when I begged to keep the babe during the night, Blant shook his head, and clasped her more strongly to his heart.

_Sunday Night._

When Nucky and I stopped at the jail after church to-day, the keeper told us Blant had sat up all night with the babe in his arms. "'Peared like he couldn't part with her a' instant," he said; "I allow if anything can splice him on to life again, it will be her."

This raised my hopes. I saw now that Nucky had brought her for a double reason.

"May she stay here with him a while?" I asked.

"Certainly," he said; "of course it's again' the rules; but what's rules when a pore little innocent babe is pining to death?"

But when we spoke to Blant, our hopes were dashed to the ground. He said sternly, "No, it can't be,--Nucky never ought to have brung her,--she must be took back immediate. In a little while more she'd have forgot me,--little young things like that can't have no very long recollections. Now, G.o.d help her, she'll have to start all over again.

But it has to be,--it would be pure cruelty to keep her here and get her all wropped up in me again, only to face a' eternal parting."

The keeper pondered silently for quite a while; then he spoke up, firmly. "Blant," he said, "I got a confession to make to you, and pardon to ax of you, for what I have done. In the pity and tenderness of my heart, I have lied to you, and led you on to hope for a death sentence, when G.o.d knows there haint the ghost of a show you'll git one. In the first place, if you'll ricollect, there's a powerful prejudyce again'

hanging in this country; in the next, I am sorry to tell you you haint done nothing to really earn the gallows. Everybody knows how it was betwixt you and Rich; and as for Todd and Elhannon and Ben and Jeems that you kilt, and t'other Cheevers you wounded, why, that war is a family affair, in which the law haint got no particular call, or no great desire, to meddle, and wouldn't if you hadn't a-throwed yourself spang in its arms thisaway. As it is, you have put it in a mighty embarra.s.sing position, and, as you might say, forced it to set up and take notice, and probably some kind of action,--it may be a couple of year' sentence to Frankfort, or some such, but certainly there haint a-going to be no hanging business. I hate to disapp'int your hopes of dying,--I know you don't take no eas.e.m.e.nt or comfort in nothing else.

But truth is truth. Now my advice to you is, be sensible, brace up, take some comfort, keep the babe here with you and git yourself sort of tied on to life again."

Blant's answer was angry and indignant. "May the earth open and swallow me before I take cheer or comfort in this world from which I have sent the friend of my bosom, my more than brother! Till I have to, I haint going to give up the hope of laying down my life for his. If you lied to me once, you may be lying to me again. Take her, Nucky!"

He attempted to hand over the babe to Nucky; but it was not so easily accomplished. The process of separating her from him was such a painful one that he himself was almost unmanned, and again there was not a dry eye in the jail.

XXV

CHANGE AND GROWTH

_Monday Night.

Mid-February._

It is six weeks since the roads became impa.s.sable for wagons, and already we begin to feel some of the effects of the isolation. Flour, sugar and coffee have to be very sparingly used. Of course there is plenty of corn-meal, beans, middling and sorghum, so there is no danger of starvation.

When Nucky returned this evening from taking the babe home, he came into my room, and threw himself on the floor. Presently I saw that his body was shaken with silent sobs. To my entreaties he at last replied,

"Things is terrible there at home,--paw is all wore-out with the trouble, and all Blant's jobs he has to tend to, like cooking and minding the babe of nights, and he couldn't get along at all if Uncle Billy's boys didn't come down and chop wood, and feed the animals, and such. I ought to be home now tending to things for him; and I'll have to give up learning and go when c.r.a.p-time comes. Blant never ought to have give hisself up,--he ought to have thought about his family, and not lost his head that way. They'll sure send him to Frankfort on his trial,--I heared some talk about it last week."

Indeed, it is a pitiable situation, and will be far more so if Blant is sent to the penitentiary. The thought hangs a new weight of dread upon me,--of course then Nucky will have to leave school and go home and take up Blant's burdens. My own selfish grief in the thought of losing Nucky ought not to protrude itself in the face of greater troubles,--but I have already lost so much,--must everything I set my affection upon be taken?

_Sat.u.r.day._

Yesterday Philip astonished me by asking for the wash-job. If there is anything on the place he has often expressed contempt for, it is the duties of the unfortunate wash-boy, who must rise before day on Sat.u.r.days to build fires and fill kettles, and then for nine long hours toil wearily, chopping wood, carrying water, and otherwise "slaving" for the wash-girls, until, when playtime comes, he is generally too tired to play; not to mention that every day in the week he must tend the ironing-stove, and, deepest indignity of all, take a hand at the ironing. No job is so consistently avoided by every boy on the place; while the carpenter- and shop-work, which Philip does exclusively, is considered the most aristocratic and desirable of all. I gladly transferred him, however; and this morning the explanation appeared, when Dilsey Warrick tripped over with the other nine wash-girls, having been shifted from the weaving to the washing department.

_Sunday Night._

After church to-day, I myself heard some of the solid men of the community talking about Blant's case; and their words confirmed Nucky's statement of last week. I gather that public sentiment is pretty well crystallized into the feeling that a couple of years in Frankfort is about the least the reluctant law can do when forced to extremities.

Sympathy for Blant is strong; but the determination is equally strong that his many lawless acts cannot be longer overlooked, and that the majesty of the law must be vindicated. Nucky, pale of face, hurried to the jail after hearing the talk, and Taulbee said to me as we came home,

"It looks now like Blant is bound for Frankfort; but I'll lay my hat he don't never get there,--not if Trojan can help it."

"He'll have to go if he is sent," I replied; "now he has put himself in the hands of the law, he must take his medicine, whatever it is."

"Who,--Blant? Him swallow anything he don't want to? I reckon not.

There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip."

_Wednesday, first week in March._

More distressing news from Trigger, when the mail-boy stopped to report to-day. "Same old story all over ag'in," he says, "the babe crying and puning constant, and plumb off its feed, and favoring a little picked bird. Minervy Saxby doubts it's a-holding out till the trial." I heard later he had taken the news on to Blant, through the bars of the jail window.

_Sat.u.r.day Evening._