Stubble Part 10

She found that much maligned and misunderstood woman cheerily rocking her leisure away at the front door of her home. The air was warm and Zenie had, contrary to the tenets of her race's religion, thrown open all the front of her house, windows and all. The neck of her waist, which was a very old white one of Mary Louise's, was likewise frankly open, and as there was considerable difference in the respective sizes, Zenie seemed on the point of bursting from its doubtful whiteness into all her full-blown coffee-coloured creamness. She hastily pinned up the bosom of it a little as Mary Louise turned in at her gate.

"How do, Mis' Ma'y Louise," she beamed, rising to her feet and holding her offspring clutched at a precarious angle to her shoulder. She stood with one hand resting on the doorpost and in her eyes expectancy. "Won' you-all come in?"

"Just for a minute," said Mary Louise, refusing the proffered chair and giving the room a hasty, critical look. Even in that critical look she could find naught to criticize. The cabin was a small three-room affair, set back from the street, between two vacant old storehouses.

Zeke had whitewashed it without and calcimined it within, and with the free air that circulated the place this treatment was enough to make the front rooms pa.s.sable. Over the iron mantel hung Zeke's "Knights of Macabre" sword in its scabbard. Mary Louise looked for the white-plumed hat but it had evidently been put away. On the left wall, in a brilliant gilt frame, hung a coloured portrait of Admiral Dewey.

The artist had in some way inspired a look of malign cunning on the face by shifting the position of the left eye a hair's breadth below normal, but the mouth and smile were benign. On a table to the right reposed a gla.s.s case with a base of felt and a rounded top--the mausoleum for an ancient bird creature that looked like a prairie chicken, very droopy and, in spite of its interment, quite dingy with dust. It was vaguely familiar to her somehow.

Zenie was watching the inspection with an eager, expectant look. When Mary Louise had apparently finished and turned to her again, she smiled.

"You ain' eveh see ouh house befo', is you?"

Mary Louise admitted she never had. And then to disarm any suspicion that she might have come for social reasons only, she attacked the matter in hand with characteristic vigour:

"Zeke's not home much, is he?"

"Right smaht he ain', no'm." Zenie's face was all expectant smiles.

Not a shadow seemed to linger near it.

Mary Louise allowed her gaze to travel about the room. In the entire atmosphere of the place was no besmirching suggestion of toil. She returned again to Zenie. The latter was like some tropical flower in full bloom. She began, selecting carefully her ground: "You haven't any place to put your baby, no one to watch him while you work, have you?" This was spoken with all the force of conviction.

Zenie's face wreathed itself in another smile. "I ain' do no mo'

wuk--not ontil Zeke he come home."

Mary Louise paused and drew breath. She began again: "If there was somewhere you could put him, someone who could look out for him, or if it was so that you could keep an eye on him yourself--why, you could go to work again, like you used to."

The brightness of Zenie's smile began to fade. "Yas'm. Yas'm, reckon I could." She turned her attention to the child in her arms and her voice, as she continued, was liquid soft. "Zeke's doin' so good--I ain' aim to wuk out no mo'. Jes' keep house heah fo' him."

Then Mary Louise, sensing defeat, struck; struck unerringly for her objective which she judged to be the vulnerable spot; struck with characteristic vigour and direct: "I'll give you six dollars a week if you'll come and do the cooking for Miss Susie, for this summer." She paused and observed the effect.

Zenie had suddenly acquired all the coy graces of a maid receiving a long-expected proposal. She cast her eyes discreetly down, toyed at the rocker edge with her shoe, and smiled.

"You won't have to clean up the house. Landy does that. You won't have to do a single thing but cook." The speech ended with a rising inflection. Mary Louise's eloquent picture inspired even herself with hope.

"Mis' Burrus done offa me seven."

There was a momentary silence, during which time Mary Louise marshalled her routed forces. Directly she gallantly renewed the attack: "I'll give you seven then. And you can have all the time off you want, whenever you get through with the dishes." She had come, in a way, prepared for shocks, but the whirlwind manner of her recklessness was leaving her a bit breathless.

Zenie's face at once a.s.sumed a look of concern and lifting her head she pondered far-off possibilities. "Zeke, he home so little," she began, and her voice had an ineffable sadness, "I likes to be home when he come."

"But you _can_ be at home when he comes," Mary Louise explained with a patience which she far from felt. "You can get off directly dishes are done--seven o'clock every evening, I'm sure."

"I know," responded Zenie, still doubting. "But Zeke, he gone at night. Mos' eve' night. He home in de day, mos' de day."

It ended by Mary Louise's offering and Zenie's accepting ten dollars a week, and with a promise of starting in on the following Monday. Mary Louise descended the cabin steps with the hollow pomp of one who has bought his victory too dearly. Zenie, from the steps, called cheerily: "Mis' Ma'y Louise. You bring me some goods fuh a dress? Sometime when you come up ag'in?"

Mary Louise paused at the gate and speculated on the humble creature on whom she had wreaked her will. "I guess I might, Zenie. What kind do you want?"

Zenie beamed. "Oh, mos' any kin'. Whateveh you think is pritty. I pay you fo' it."

Mary Louise promised and departed. She walked home very thoughtfully.

Ten dollars a week! Ten dollars just to get the cooking done! She had had her eyes fixed very clearly indeed on the coveted goal to brush aside such an expensive obstacle.

That afternoon, as she busied herself with little ch.o.r.es about the house--she was sweeping the side porch at the time--she chanced to look up and saw Joe Hooper driving by in a low-swung phaeton behind a sleepy old horse. Beside him sat Mr. Mosby, very prim and very erect, and Joe's arm lay along the back of the seat behind him. The street was rather shady and it was quite a distance from where she was to where he was pa.s.sing. But somehow it seemed to her that there was a singularly cheerful, quite happy expression on his face as he lolled back against the cushion. And he did not look in as he pa.s.sed.

CHAPTER VII

Two weeks pa.s.sed. Joe felt himself gradually slipping into an abyss of resignation. Nearer and nearer came June. Less and less he seemed to care. He took interest in nothing. He ate and slept and plodded. He ate and slept and plodded as though all that life consisted of was eating and sleeping and plodding. Most of us have seen in some quiet fence corner, just behind the barn, under some old tree with gnarled trunk and droopy branches, an old gray horse, with eyes closed, muzzle resting on the top rail, one hind leg slightly bent and propped by the tip of a cracked and drying hoof. Most of us have seen such a horse, seemingly on the gradual slip into oblivion, whose very tail-switching was so rhythmic and regular as to fit in, in absolute harmony, with the swelling waves of sleep and measured breathing and all that sort of thing. And that very horse might well be on the brink of a day's exhausting labour. And furthermore he might well know it. Certainly his experience might tell him--easily enough. Yet he stands there switching in a sort of self-imposed numbness. It is probably nature's way of anaesthetizing him from the pain of unlimited drabness. It is the only way a sensitive nature can face such a prospect without going mad. Such was Joe.

He had slumped. He no longer cared. He no longer cared if skies were blue and if breezes were lazy and outdoors was calling. He no longer cared when the quitting whistle blew. He no longer cared that June was only two weeks off. He would not even have cared if June had been the end of it all. He had settled into his stupor.

And then one morning at about eleven o'clock he was summoned to the telephone by the switchboard operator. It was a drowsy morning, full of dronings and rustlings, and he was very heavy lidded as he stepped into the booth reserved for such calls. He had been expecting a message from Indianapolis about some shipment that had gone astray and for which he was putting in a claim. He sank heavily down upon the hard, polished little stool. The air was stuffy and foul about him.

"This Mr. Hooper?" he heard a voice say.

He said it was.

"Well, this is----" He had not the slightest idea what the name was.

But it made not the slightest difference. It might have been the president or it might have been the shipping clerk. All that mattered was that it was a tiresome sack of castings giving him some extra trouble. And so he stretched a little and yawned a little and replied: "Yes. All right."

And then the voice went on a little hurriedly--too hurriedly for him to catch it all. And instead of "sack of castings," the voice kept on crazily alluding to "your uncle" and "all night"--and phrases that were jumbled as in a dream. He came to himself suddenly with a start and then the connection was broken off and there was nothing but a confused buzzing and rattling. He straightened up on the stool, waited a minute, and then jiggled the receiver. He felt very queer. He felt to blame for his stupidness. He felt someway as though he had been caught up with. And he could not understand.

Directly the exchange called his name and he responded quite sharply and briskly. Then her "Just a minute," and he was feeling suddenly taut and tense. And then the voice was switched on again.

Like a dream it came. He could barely make out the syllables. The voice was broken--seemed very far-away--very weak. It was telling him that his uncle--his uncle, Mr. Mosby--"Brrr! Brrr!"--and had not been seen since. There was a moment's pause.

And then--would he come?

Another pause and he had vague notions that that was all. And yet he had not heard. Yes, he would come.

There was a click and then silence, and there he was, sitting just as though he had dreamed it all. Then a voice called, "Did you get them?" And he mechanically put up the receiver without a word.

Something had happened--just what, he could only guess--make out piecemeal. There was trouble--he could feel that. Uncle Buzz had somehow stepped beyond the pale. He had heard the words "all night"

and "no trace of him." This was no ordinary trouble. This was not a matter of trial balance.

He opened the door and stepped out into the office. It was a changed place. Over there was his long flat-topped desk with the opened ledger upon it. A sheet of paper had blown to the floor and was sliding over toward him, its edges curling lazily. These seemed live, vibrant features. One of the clerks across the way had thought of something humorous and was leaning forward to tell his vis-a-vis. It had been so vital that he had laid his pen down to tell it. He was talking with half-shut lips, with eyes that shifted back and forth alert for a glance of disfavour. His rusty black derby sat on the back of his head: his white pique tie had slipped away from a bright bra.s.s collar b.u.t.ton....

Through the open door he could see Mr. b.o.n.e.r hunched up over his desk and as he watched, that gentleman suddenly plunged his head in a ducking motion toward the cuspidor on the floor and just as quickly bent down again over the desk. Like fire-flashes of consciousness all these things were. These were things going on outside of him. There was a world moving on outside of him, a world that took little count of the creatures in its path. All this--all this about him--was like a bit of stale, flat, slightly greenish backwater--the big wheels churning away just beyond and paying it no attention, letting it grow staler and staler. Some day there would come a change--as though the miller had opened up another sluice--and a few vigorous splashings and all would be changed even here. He viewed it speculatively, as one outside it all. He suddenly felt that for him it was all over. And he went into Mr. b.o.n.e.r's office.

Mr. b.o.n.e.r looked up sidewise.

"I've had a 'phone call from home."

Mr. b.o.n.e.r's eyes rolled slightly, showing the whites.

"There's some trouble there. I'll have to go."