The Hills of Refuge Part 15

"But I do like it very, very much," Charles heard himself stammering. "I am only afraid that I shall not be able to give thorough satisfaction with my work."

"Oh, that will be all right!" Mary smiled a stiff smile again, while a far-away look lay in her eyes.

"What is the matter, daughter?" Rowland asked, suddenly. "Have Lester & Hooker been bothering you about that account again?"

"No, father, I met Mr. Hooker, but he did not say anything about it. You know he agreed to give us another month."

"Then something else has happened," Rowland persisted, still staring inquiringly.

"No, nothing, father, nothing. I'm a little tired, that's all. Come, Mr.

Brown, I know father has not shown you your room yet."

They left the old gentleman on the veranda, eagerly scanning a page of his ma.n.u.script, and Mary led Charles up the old-fashioned stairs with its walnut bal.u.s.trade and battered steps. She smiled as she explained that the "Yankee soldiers" had occupied the house during the war, and that no repairs had been made since. There were six bedrooms on the floor they were now on, and the one at the end over the kitchen was to be Charles's. She led him into it. It was very attractive. An old-fashioned mahogany wardrobe stood against the wall near the single window, which was draped with cheap cotton-lace curtains. There was a walnut wash-stand with a white marble top holding a white bowl and pitcher, and a plain mahogany bureau. There was an open fireplace which was filled with boughs of cedar. Its hearth had just been whitewashed.

There was a table of old oak in the center of the room, holding some books and an old-fashioned bra.s.s candlestick. On the white walls in various sorts of frames hung some of the brilliant print pictures which were popular in the South just after the war. In a corner stood a tall-posted bed, which, with its snowy pillows and white counterpane, had a most cool and inviting look.

"Do you really intend this for me?" Charles asked. "But you mustn't put me here, you know. You have no idea the sort of bed I've been sleeping in. If you have never seen a bunk in a circus freight-car--"

"All the more reason you should be comfortable here with us," Mary interrupted. "As it is, I'm afraid you will want to quit us. It is awfully, awfully dull and lonely out here--no amus.e.m.e.nts of any sort.

Your life must have been a very eventful and exciting one, and this, by contrast, may be anything but pleasant."

"It is just what I want," he fairly pleaded now, as their probing eyes met like those of two earnest children. "I am sick of the life I was leading, while this--this somehow seems like--" He found himself unable to formulate what he was trying to say, and she laughed merrily.

"I hope it is not due to your fibbing that you are all tangled up," she said. "Well, let's go down-stairs. I've got to help Zilla get dinner ready, and then I'll show you our corn and cotton. You won't want to begin work till to-morrow morning, of course."

"But why?" he blandly inquired, as they were going down the stairs.

"Well," she returned, "people usually begin in the morning when they hire out, and it will take you one afternoon at least to get the lay of the land and see what is to be done."

"I feel that I ought to be at something right away," he said. "Besides, you remember that you told me your crops were suffering for lack of attention."

She laughed again. "I wonder if I have run across a real masculine curiosity," she said. She paused on the step and faced him, and he had again that magnetic sensation of nearness to her which he had experienced at the store the day before. "You see," she continued, "out here we have to drive men to work, negroes and whites, and you speak of it as if it were a game to be played. I wonder if you really know what you are about to tackle. The sun is hot enough some days to bake a potato, and there is no sort of shade in our fields."

"I don't think I shall mind the sun a bit," he said. "It is much cooler here than down in Florida where we were showing, and even there I enjoyed the days we had to work in the open more than those spent on the cars."

"Oh, well, we shall see," she said, smiling again. They were at the veranda now, and she added: "Wait here and I'll see Aunt Zilla, and then we'll walk down to the cotton-field that is suffering the most and I'll give you a lesson in hoeing and weed-pulling. Then if you really are daft about working, you may start after dinner."

CHAPTER V

Charles sat down on the veranda and Mary turned away. Rowland was bent over his writing and did not look up, so deeply was he absorbed in what he was recording. He had a small bottle of ink on the floor at his side, into which he dipped an old pen which was so sharp at the point that it kept sticking into the cheap paper he was using. Mary reappeared very soon, now wearing her becoming hat and a great pair of cotton gloves.

"Father," she said, teasingly, as she stood beside him, a hand on his threadbare coat at the shoulder, "I saw a list of men in the paper the other day that were being sent to the chain-gang for all sorts of crimes. There was a Jasper Rowland in the lot, and his son Thomas. Had you not better write to them? Perhaps they may furnish an important link in our history."

Rowland looked up and smiled indulgently at her and then at Charles.

"She is always poking fun at me like that," he said. "Of course there are off-shoots from the main tree like those she mentions, but I a.s.sure you, sir, that they are rare. Besides, such cases often come from families who have once been high up in the world. I am afraid that the idleness and affluence of the old slave period have left their stamp on many of our best families. I know that my own boys--"

"Stop, father!" and Mary actually put her gloved hand over the old man's lips. "You must not bring Kenneth and Martin into such a cla.s.sification.

I know what you started to say, and you shall not to Mr. Brown. My brothers are idle, fun-loving, and wild, but they are not dishonorable."

"Oh, well, have it your way," Rowland gave in. "I think they are all right in many ways, but they are worrying the life out of you by the way they are carrying on. It seems to me that if they had a high sense of honor, they--"

"Now, Mr. Brown," Mary said, quickly, "I won't listen to what he is saying. You'll get the idea presently that my poor brothers are worse than thieves."

"Oh no," Charles tried to say, lightly, as they went down the steps and turned toward the side of the house. "I'm sure I understand about your brothers."

To his surprise, Mary's face had clouded over. It seemed as if she were about to shed tears, for her wondrous eyes were misty. He heard her sigh, and she was silent for several minutes as they went down the path toward the cotton-field. Presently she looked straight into his face.

She tried to smile, and then gave up the attempt with a little shake of her head.

"I really am in great, great trouble over my brothers," she faltered. "I didn't want to tell my father, for it will do no good and it seems to me that he is already losing his natural love for them; but this morning I heard from Mrs. Dodd that they were over at Carlin last night, cutting up frightfully--drinking, gambling, and what not. Oh, I don't know how I can bear much more of it. Do you know, Mr. Brown, that since my mother's death these boys, although they are older than I am, have seemed almost like sons of mine? I worry, worry, worry. I lie awake night after night when they are away like this, and even when they are here I watch their every look and tone to see if--if they are about to break out again.

I'll have gray hairs--I know I shall--and that very soon."

A keen pang of remorse pa.s.sed through the listening wanderer. He was recalling certain incidents in his own life, the anxiety and tears of his own mother just prior to her death. For a moment he was almost oblivious of the sweet face into which he was blankly staring. But his expression must have been sympathetic, for Mary suddenly remarked:

"I don't know why I am talking so freely with you about them, Mr. Brown.

I really never mention my brothers to my best friends--their faults, I mean--but here I am telling you the worst about them. You seem wonderfully gentle and sympathetic and--and--" She choked up, wiped her fluttering lips with her gloved hand and dropped her eyes.

"I want to aid you," he said, deeply moved, "and I will do everything in my power. Look at me, Miss Rowland. I don't want to pa.s.s for better than I am. I want to start right with you. The habits your brothers have were once my own. I owe my wandering life to them. For a year I have been free from the old habits. I hope I shall remain so. I sometimes feel that I shall never, never fall back. I feel so now more strongly than I ever did, because your trouble shows me so plainly how terribly wrong I was."

"Oh, it doesn't make any difference what you once were," Mary said, earnestly. "It is what you are now that counts. I understand you better than I did at first. I see why you are living as you are, away from kindred and friends, and I am glad you told me. It is a great thing to trample an old weakness underfoot and rise up on it. Oh, do you know, what you say makes me hope that my brothers, too, may change! Oh, they must, they must! They cannot go on as they are."

Nothing more was said till they reached the cotton-field, which was a level fertile tract of land containing about ten acres. Beyond it lay another tract about the same size, which was planted in corn, while another smaller field adjoining was given over to wheat. Under a tree at the side of the path lay some hoes, and Mary took one and gave him another.

"See, this is all you have to do," she began, lightly, going to the first cotton-plant in the nearest row and cutting the weeds about it with the hoe. "You can 'kill two birds with one stone'--loosen up the earth's surface and destroy the weeds at the same time. I'm sure you don't have to be shown which is the cotton."

"Oh no! I see that plainly," and with the other hoe Charles set in on the next row, and side by side they worked forward.

"Splendid! splendid!" Mary cried, pausing and smiling at him from her sweet, flushed face. "Surely you have used a hoe before this."

"Only once, in a little garden at a summer resort," he said. "Then it was cabbages and beans."

"But you really are beating me!" she cried, "and it is better done. See!

I've left some and you haven't. Your row is as clean as a barn floor before a dance, and your stroke is deep and firm."

They worked to the ends of the two rows and were about to start back when an iron bell on a post at the kitchen door rang. They saw Zilla with her hand on its rope, staring at them fixedly.

"That is for us," Mary explained. "Dinner is ready, and Aunt Zilla has a fit when anybody's late. We all try to obey that bell. It was put there long before the war. It was used--you see it is a large one--to call up the slaves. My grandfather had a regular code of signals which he used to communicate with his overseer. In that day there were negro uprisings, slave runaways to be stopped, and all sorts of outlandish things that are now out of date. Girls like me, for instance, never worked in the field those days, but it is better this way. I know I am stronger and more healthy than my mother was, and if I had less to worry about I think I should be happier, for my mother was not a happy woman.

I am afraid that she and my father were not as well mated as they ought to have been. I think the match was made by the parents on both sides, a sort of marriage of convenience to tie some property together."

When they were nearing the kitchen door Charles was suddenly embarra.s.sed by the thought that he might be expected to dine with the family; he felt that he was unfit to sit at table with them in his uncouth clothing. Mary seemed to read his thoughts, for she said:

"Don't change your clothes. We have no ceremony here in the working period. We have no time for style. Run up to your room and get the dust off your face and hands, and come right down. Don't make Zilla mad, for all you do."

Coming down, presently, Charles felt a little easier, for Mary was already at the table in the same dress she had worn in the field. She was drinking milk and eating hot biscuits and fried spring chicken.

"You see I didn't wait for you," she laughed, "and you must not wait for any one in the future, either. When the bell rings sit down and eat. It is the only way. Father is not coming, you see. He has struck another Rowland, a loyalist in the Revolution. Do you know, father went all the way to Charleston, South Carolina, last summer, to consult an old will.

He spent money we needed to pay farm-hands with, but he had a glorious time. He was entertained in an old historic mansion which had belonged to some of the Rowlands, and brought home photographs of it, and of old tombstones and maps of the first settlers. Oh, he'll bore the life out of you if you let him! He has never been sat down on but once. Old Judge Warner, who went through the war with father, was with us overnight not long ago, and after supper father got out his charts, books, coats of arms and began. The judge listened for a while, then suddenly said: