The Brimming Cup Part 29

Mr. Welles patted Paul's shoulder, and said, "There, there," till Paul's teeth stopped chattering and he began to be a little ashamed of showing how it had startled him. He was also a little put out that Mr. Welles had remained so unmoved. "You don't know how dangerous a big tree _is_, when it falls!" he said, accusingly, to defend himself. "If you'd lived here more, and heard some of the stories ... ! Nate Hewitt had his back broken with a tree falling on him. But he was cutting that one down, and it fell too soon. n.o.body had touched this one! And there isn't any wind.

What _made_ it fall? Most every winter, some man in the lumber camp on the mountain gets killed or smashed up, and lots of horses too."

He felt much better now, and he did want to find out whatever had made that tree fall. He sat up, and looked back at it, just a mess of broken branches and upset leaves, where a minute before there had been a tall living tree! "I'm going over to see what made it fall," he said.

He splashed across the pool and poked around with a stick in the hole in the ground, and almost right away he saw what the reason was. He ran back to tell Mr. Welles. "I see now. The brook had kept sidling over that way, and washed the earth from under the rocks. It just didn't have enough ground left to hold on to."

He felt all right now he knew some simple reason for what had looked so crazy. He looked up confidently at the old man, and was struck into awed silence by the expression of Mr. Welles' face.

"Paul," said Mr. Welles, and his voice wasn't steady, "I guess what I ought to try to be is one more drop of water in the brook."

Paul stared hard. He did not understand this either, but he understood the expression in that tired, old face. Mr. Welles went on, "That wrong feeling about colored people, not wanting them to be respected as much as any American, is ... that's a tree that's got to come down. I'm too old to take an axe to it. And, anyhow, if you cut that sort of thing down with an axe, the roots generally live and start all over again. If we can just wash the ground out from under it, with enough people thinking differently, maybe it'll fall, roots and all, of its own weight. If I go and live there and just am one more person who respects them when they deserve it, it'll help _that_ much, maybe, don't you think?"

Paul had understood more what Mr. Welles' face and voice said to him than the words. He kept on looking into the old man's eyes. Something deep inside Paul said "yes" to what Mr. Welles' eyes were asking him.

"How about it, Paul?" asked the old man.

The child gave a start, climbed up beside him, and took hold of his hand. "How about it? How about it?" asked Mr. Welles in a very low tone.

The little boy nodded. "Maybe," he said briefly. His lips shook.

Presently he sniffed and drew his sleeve across his nose. He held the old hand tightly.

"Oh dear!" he said again, in a small, miserable voice.

The old man made no answer.

The two sat motionless, leaning against each other. A ray of sun found the newly opened spot in the roof of the woods, and it seemed to Paul it pointed a long steady finger down on the fallen beech.

At first Paul's throat ached, and his eyes smarted. He felt heavy and sore, as though he hadn't eaten the right thing for lunch.

But by and by this went away. A quiet came all over him, so that he was better than happy. He laid his head against Mr. Welles' shoulder and looked up into the worn, pale old face, which was now also very quiet and still as though he too were better than happy.

He held Paul close to him.

Paul had a great many mixed-up thoughts. But there was one that was clear. He said to himself solemnly, "I guess I know who I want to be like when I grow up."

By and by, he stirred and said, "Well, I guess I better start to pack up. Don't you bother. I'll pack the things away. Mother showed me how to clean the frying-pan with sand and moss."

CHAPTER XIV

BESIDE THE ONION-BED

July 10.

Marise pulled nervously and rapidly at the weeds among the onions, and wiped away with her sleeve the drops that ran down her hot, red face.

She was not rebellious at the dusty, tiresome task, nor aware of the merciless heat of the early-summer sun. She was not indeed thinking at all of what she was doing, except that the physical effort of stooping and reaching and pulling was a relief to her, made slightly less oppressive the thunder-heavy moral atmosphere she breathed. She was trying to think, but the different impressions came rushing into her mind with such vehement haste that they dashed against each other brutally, to her entire confusion.

When she tried to think out an answer to this perfectly preposterous idea of old Mr. Welles, why should a thousand other horrifying ideas which she had been keeping at bay pour in through the door, once opened to probing thought? What possible connection could there be between such a fantastic crazy notion as his, and those other heaving, looming possibilities which rolled themselves higher and murkier the longer she refused to look at them? She s.n.a.t.c.hed at the weeds, twitching them up, flinging them down, reaching, straining, the sun molten on her back, the sweat stinging on her face. It was a silly impression of course, but it seemed to her that if she hurried fast enough with the weeds, those thoughts and doubts could not catch up with her.

She had put them off, and put them off while Neale was away, because they scared her, and she didn't want to look at them without Neale. But he had been back for weeks now and still she put them off. All those tarnishing sayings, those careless, casual negations of what she had taken for axioms; that challenge to her whole life dropped from time to time as though it were an accepted commonplace with all intelligent beings... .

Was her love for the children only an inverted form of sensual egotism, an enervating slavery for them, really only a s.n.a.t.c.hed-up subst.i.tute for the personal life which was ebbing away from her? Was her att.i.tude towards her beloved music a lazy, self-indulgent one, to keep it to herself and the valley here? Was that growing indifference of hers to dress and trips to the city, and seeing Eugenia's smart crowd there, a sign of mental dry-rot? Was it a betrayal of what was alive in her own personality to go on adapting herself to the inevitable changes in her relations with Neale, compromising, rather than ..."

"Aren't you awfully hot to go on doing that?" asked Neale, coming up behind her, from the road. She was startled because she had not heard him approach on the soft, cultivated ground of the garden. And as she turned her wet, crimson face up to his, he was startled himself. "Why, what's the matter, dear?" he asked anxiously.

She sank back to a sitting position, drawing a long breath, mopping her forehead with her sleeve, as unconscious of her looks before Neale as though she had still been alone. She motioned him down beside her. "Oh, Neale, I'm so glad! How'd you happen to be so early? Maybe if we stay right out here, where the children won't know where we are, we can have a few minutes quite to ourselves. Toucle is going to get tea tonight.

Neale, sit down a minute. I want to tell you something. I'm awfully upset. I went over to help Mr. Welles transplant his Brussels sprouts, and we got to talking. Neale, what do you suppose has been in his mind all this time we've been thinking him so happy and contented here?"

"Doesn't he like Crittenden's? Find it dull?"

"No, no, not that, a bit. He _loves_ it. It's heart-breaking to see how much he loves it!" She stopped, her voice shaking a little, and waited till she could get it under control. Her husband took her stained, dusty hand in his. She gave his fingers a little pressure, absently, not noting what she did, and seeing the corner of his handkerchief showing in the pocket of his shirt, she pulled it out with a nervous jerk, and wiped her face all over with it.

He waited in silence.

"Listen, Neale, I know it will sound perfectly crazy to you, at first.

But you might as well believe it, for he is serious. It seems he's been getting lots more letters from that niece or cousin of his, down in Georgia. She tells him about things, how the Negroes are treated, all the Jim Crow business carried into every single detail of every single minute of every single day. It seems they're not badly treated as long as they'll stay day-laborers or servants, but ... oh well, there's no need to go on with telling you ... _you_ know. We all know well enough what the American att.i.tude is. Only I didn't think it could be so bad, or so everlastingly kept up every minute, as this cousin tells him. I suppose she ought to know. She's lived there for forty years. She keeps citing instances she's seen." Marise broke out with a fierce, blaming sharpness, "I don't see what _business_ she had, writing him that way. I think it was beastly of her. Why couldn't she let him alone!"

She felt her husband waiting patiently for her to quiet down and go on more coherently, and knew that his patience came from a long acquaintance with her mental habits, a certainty that her outbursts of feeling generally did quiet down if one waited: and across her genuine absorption in the story she was telling there flitted, bat-like, a distaste far being known so well as all that! There was something indiscreet and belittling in it, she thought, with an inward fastidious recoil. But this had gone, entirely, in a moment, and she was rushing on, "And, Neale, what _do_ you think? She has worked on him, and he has worked on himself till he's got himself in a morbid state. He thinks perhaps he ought to leave Ashley that he loves so much and go down to live where this horrid cousin lives... ."

Her husband's astonishment at this was as great as she could have desired. None of Neale's usual, unsurprised acceptance of everything that happened as being in the nature of things, which occasionally so rubbed her the wrong way, and seemed to her so wilfully phlegmatic. He was sincerely amazed and astounded; that was plain from his exclamation, his tone, his face. Of course he wasn't as outraged as she, but that wasn't to be expected, since he hadn't seen so much of that dear old life-worn man, nor grown so protectingly fond of him. She revelled in Neale's astonishment as bearing out her own feeling. "Isn't it crazy, Neale! Don't you think it crazy! Is there the slightest justification for it? You feel, just as I do, don't you, that it's a perfectly unbalanced, fanatical, _fool_ish thing to think of doing, his going down into that hopeless mess?"

But her husband had had a moment's time, while she exclaimed, to get back to his usual unhurried post in life. "It's certainly about as unexpected as anything I ever heard of," he admitted. "I should have to know a lot more about it, before I could be sure what to think."

An old impatience, at an old variance between their ways of thought, came out with an edge in Marise's tone as she said hotly, "Oh, _Neale_, don't take that line of yours! You know all there is to know, now! What else could you find out? You know how he's given all his life to looking out for his family, ending up with years of that bed-ridden old aunt the others wished on to him, just because he was too soft-hearted to get out from under. You know how anxious the Company was to do something to make up to him for all the years of service he gave them. And you know how happy he has been here, how he's loved it all, and fathered every root and seed in his garden, and how he and Paul have struck up such a sweet affection, and how he could be happier and happier." She struck her hands together. "Oh, Neale, I can't have him do such a foolish, useless thing, and spoil his life! It's not as if he'd be of any use down in Georgia. You know how the Southern white people detest Northerners coming down and interfering with the Negroes. Maybe they're wrong. But they're the people who live there. What could _he_ do against them? What under the sun could one tired-out old man accomplish in a situation that every American knows to be simply impossible?" She looked hard at her husband's thoughtful face and threw herself against him with a petulant gesture. "Now, Neale, don't go and justify him! Don't say you think he's right."

He put his arm about her shoulders, hot and wet under their gingham covering, and she leaned against him, the gesture as unconsidered and unconscious for the one as the other. "No, I'm not going to try to justify him. I suppose I think he's very foolish. But I must say it shows a pretty fine spirit. I take off my hat to his intention."

"Oh yes, his intention ..." conceded Marise. "He's an old saint, of course. Only he mustn't be allowed to ruin his life and break everybody's heart, even if he is a saint."

"That's the way saints usually run their business, isn't it?" asked Neale. "And I'd like to know how anybody's going to keep him from doing it, if he decides he ought to."

"Oh yes, we can," urged Marise, sitting up with energy. "We can, every one of us, throw ourselves against it, argue with him, tell him that it seems to us not only foolish, and exaggerated, and morbid, but conceited as if he thought what _he_ did would count so very much. We can make him feel that it would be sort of cheating the Company, after what they've done for him; we can just ma.s.s all our personalities against it, use moral suasion, get excited, work on his feelings ... she has done that, that cousin!"

"I wouldn't want to do that," said Neale quietly. "You can, if you think best."

She recognized a familiar emergence of granite in his voice and aspect and cried out on it pa.s.sionately, "Now, _Neale_!"

He knew perfectly well what this meant, without further words from her.

They looked at each other, an unspoken battle going on with extreme rapidity between them, over ground intimately familiar. In the middle of this, she broke violently into words, quite sure that he would know at which point she took it up. "You carry that idea to perfectly impossible lengths, Neale. Don't you ever admit that we ought to try to make other people act the way we think best, even when we _know_ we're right and they're wrong?"

"Yes," admitted her husband, "I should think we were bound to. If we ever _were_ sure we were right and they wrong."

She gave the impression of vibrating with impatience and cried out, "That's pettifogging. Of course there are times when we are sure.