The Voice of the People Part 3

"I'm learnin' by heart, sir--and--and, if you don't mind, sir, what does j-u-r-i-s-p-r-u-d-e-n-c-e mean?"

The judge started, returning the boy's eager gaze with one of kindly perplexity.

"Bless my soul!" he said again. "You aren't trying to understand that, are you?"

The boy grew scarlet and his lips trembled. "No, sir," he answered. "I'm jest learnin' it now. I'll know what it means when I'm bigger--"

"And you expect to remember it?" asked the judge.

"I don't never forget," said the boy.

"Bless my soul!" exclaimed the judge for the third time.

For a moment he stood looking silently down upon the marble slab with its defaced lettering. Of the wordy epitaph which had once redounded to the honour of the bones beneath there remained only the words "who departed," but he read these with a long abstracted gaze.

"Let me see," he said at last, speaking with his accustomed dignity.

"Did you ever go to school, Nicholas?"

"Yes, sir."

"When?"

"I went 'most three winters, sir, but I had to leave off on o'count o'

pa's not havin' any hand 'cep'n me."

The judge smiled.

"Ah, well," he returned. "We'll see if you can't begin again. My boy has a tutor, you know, and his playmates come to study with him. He's about your age, and it will give you a start. Come in to-morrow at nine, and we'll talk it over. No, don't get up. I am going."

And he pa.s.sed out of the churchyard, closing the heavy gate with a metallic clang. Nicholas lay on the marble slab, but the book slipped from his hands, and he gazed straight before him at the oriel window, where the ivy was tremulous with the shining bodies and clamorous voices of nesting sparrows. They darted swiftly from gable to gable, filling the air with shrill sounds of discord, and endowing with animation the inanimate pile, wrapping the dead bricks in a living shroud.

On the other side swept the long, colourless gra.s.ses, rippling in faint waves like a still lake that reflects the sunshine and swaying lightly beneath myriads of gauzy-winged bees that flashed with a droning noise from blade to blade, to find rest in the yellow hearts of the damask roses. Across the white vaults and the low-lying marble slabs innumerable shadows chased, and from above the gnarled old locust trees swept a fringe of vivid green, the slender blossoms hanging in ta.s.sels from the branches' ends, and filling the air with a soft and ceaseless rain of fragrant petals. Pale as the ghosts of dead leaves, they fell always, fluttering night and day from the twisted boughs, settling in creamy flakes upon the bending gra.s.ses, and outlining in delicate tracery the epitaphs upon the discoloured marbles.

Nicholas lay with wide-open eyes, looking up at the oriel window where the sparrows twittered. On a near vault a catbird poised for an instant, surveying him with bright, distrustful eyes. Then, with an impetuous flutter of slate-gray wings, it fled to the poisonous oak on the far brick wall. A red-and-white cow, pa.s.sing along the lane outside, stopped before the closed gate, and stood philosophically chewing the cud as she looked within through impeding bars. From the judge's garden came the faint sound of a negro voice as the old gardener weeded the vegetables.

Nicholas rolled over again and faced the outstretched wings of the noseless angel on the nearest tombstone. The loss of the nose had distorted the marble smile into a grimace, which gave a leer to the remaining features. As the boy looked at it he laughed suddenly, and his voice startled him amid the droning of bees. Then he sat up and glanced at his brier-scratched feet stretched upon the slab, and laughed again for the sheer joy of discord.

III

Nicholas followed the main street to its sudden end at King's College, and turned into one of the diverging ways which skirted the whitewashed plank fence of the college grounds, and led to what was known in the neighbourhood as the Old Stage Road. Pa.s.sing a straggling group of negro cabins, it stretched, naked, bleached, and barren, for a good half-mile, dividing with its sandy length the low-lying fields, which were sown on the one side in a spa.r.s.e crop of grain and on the other in the rich leaves and round pink heads of ripening clover. At the end of the half-mile the road ascended a slight elevation, and the character of the soil changed abruptly into clay of vivid red, which, extending a dozen yards up the rain-washed hillside, appeared, in a general view of the landscape, like the scarlet tongue protruding from the silvery body of a serpent.

Far ahead to the right of the highway and beyond the thinly sown wheat a stretch of pine woodland was darkly limned against the western horizon, standing a gloomy advance guard of the shadows of the night. At its foot the newer green of the late spring foliage took a frivolous aspect, presenting the effect of deep-tinted foam breaking against the impenetrable ma.s.s of darkness.

The boy trudged resolutely along the sandy road, reaching at intervals to grasp handfuls of sa.s.safras leaves from the bushes beside the way.

From the ditch on the left a brown toad hopped slowly into the dust of the road. On the worm-eaten rails of the fence, on the other side, a gray lizard glided swiftly like a stealthy shadow of the leaves of the poisonous oak.

Nicholas picked up a stone from the roadside and aimed it at the slimy little body, but his throw erred, and the missile fell harmlessly into the wheat field beyond, startling a blackbird with scarlet marks, which soared suddenly above the bearded grain and vanished, with a tremulous cry and a flame of outstretched wings, into the distant wood.

The sun had gone down behind the pines and a warm mist steamed up from the cooling earth, condensing into heavy dew on the dusty leaves of the plants in the ditch. Above the lowering pines the horizon burned to a deep scarlet, like an inverted brazier at red heat, and one gigantic tree, rising beyond the jagged line of the forest, was silhouetted sharply against the enkindled clouds. Suddenly, from the shadows of the long road, a voice rose plaintively. It was rich and deep and colourific, and it seemed to hover close to the warmth of the earth, weighed down by its animal melody. It had mingled so subtly with the stillness that it was as much a part of nature as the cry of a whip-poor-will beyond the thicket or the sunset in the pine-guarded west. At first it came faintly, and the words were lost, but as Nicholas gained upon the singer he caught more clearly the air and the song.

"_Oh, de Ark hit came ter res'

On-de-hill, Oh, de Ark hit came ter res'

On-de-hill, En' dar ole Noah stood, En' spread his han's abroad, Er sacri-fice ter-Gawd On-de-hill._"

Nicholas quickened his pace into a run and, in a moment, saw the stooping figure of an old negro toiling up the red clay hillside, a staff in his hand and a bag of meal on his shoulder. In the vivid light of the sunset his stature was exaggerated in size, giving him an appearance at once picturesque and pathetic--softening his rugged outline and magnifying the distortion of age.

As he ascended the gradual incline he planted his staff firmly in the soil, shifting his bag from side to side and uttering inaudible grunts in the pauses of his song.

"_En' dar, mid flame en smoke, De great Jehovah s-poke.

En' awful thunder b-roke, On-de-hill._"

"Uncle Ish!" called the boy sharply. The old man lowered the bag from his shoulder and turned slowly round.

"Who dat?" he demanded severely. "Ain't I done tell you dar ain' no ha'nts 'long dis yer road?"

"It's me, Uncle Ish," said the boy. "It's Nick Burr. I heard you singing a long ways off."

"Den what you want ter go a-hollerin' en a-stealin' up on er ole n.i.g.g.e.r fer des' 'bout sundown?"

"But, Uncle Ish, I didn't mean to scare you. I jest heard--"

"Skeer! Who dat you been skeerin'? Ain't I done tole you dar ain' no ha'nts round dese parts? What I gwine ter be skeered fer uv er little no 'count white trash dat ain' never own er n.i.g.g.e.r in dere life? Who you done skeer dis time?"

He picked up his bag, slung it over his shoulder and went on his way, the boy trotting beside him. For a time the old man muttered angrily beneath his breath, and then, becoming mollified by the boy's silence, he looked kindly down on the small red head at his elbow.

"You ain't said howdy, honey," he remarked in a fault-finding tone. "Dar ain' no manners dese days, nohow. Dey ain' no manners en dey ain' no nuttin'. De n.i.g.g.e.rs, dey is gwine plum outer dey heads, en de po' white trash dey's gwine plum outer dey places."

He looked at Nicholas, who flinched and hung his head.

"Dar ain' n.o.body lef to keep 'em ter dey places, no mo'. In Ole Miss'

time der wa'nt no traipsin' roun' er n.i.g.g.e.rs en intermixin' up er de quality en de trash. Ole Miss, she des' pint out der place en dey stay dar. She ain' never stomach noner der high-ferlutin' doin's roun' her.

She know whar she b'long en she know whar dey b'long. Bless yo' life, Ole Miss wuz dat perticklar she wouldn't drink arter Ole Marster, hisself, 'thout renchin' out de gow'd twel t'wuz mos' bruck off de handle."

He sighed and shifted his bag.

"Ef Ole Miss 'ud been yer thoo' dis las' war, dar wouldn't er been no slue-footed Yankees a-foolin' roun' her parlour. She'd uv up en show'd 'em de do'--"

"Are all Yankees slue-footed, Uncle Ish?"

"All dose I seed, honey--des' es slue-footed. En dar wuz Miss Chris' en ole Miss Grissel a-makin' up ter 'em, en a-layin' out er demselves fer 'em en a-spreadin' uv de table, des' de same es ef dey went straight on dey toes. Dar wan't much sense in dat ar war, nohow, an' I ain' never knowed yit what 'twuz dey fit about. Hit wuz des' a-hidin' en a-teckin'

ter de bushes, en a-hidin' agin, en den a-feastin', en a-curtsin' ter de Yankees. Dar wan't no sense in it, no ways. .h.i.ts put, but Ise heered Ma.r.s.e Tom 'low hit wuz a civil war, en dat's what it wuz. When de Yankees come a-ridin' up en a-reinin' in dere hosses befo' de front po'ch, en Miss Chris come out a-smilin' en a-axin' howdy, en den dey stan' dar a-bowin' en a-sc.r.a.pin', hit wuz des' es civil es ef dey'd come a-co'tin'. But Ole Miss wuz dead en buried, she wuz."

Nicholas shook his head without speaking. There was a shade of consolation in the thought that the awful "Ole Miss" was below the earth and beyond the possibility of pointing out his place.

The brazier in the west snapped asunder suddenly, and a single forked flame shot above the jagged pines and went out in the dove-coloured clouds. In a huge oak beyond the rail fence there was a harsh rustling of wings where a flock of buzzards settled to roost.