AFTER his journey the day before and so late going to bed, Duncan might have slept longer; but he was awakened next morning by voices outside his door. He heard Middleton’s little pipe begging in a low tone that they should go in and wake him up and then Mary Hartwell whispering something.
“But, Hartie, why can’t Valette come in?” the little voice whispered.
“Because she’s a young lady and’s got on a wrapper and Brother’s a young man and she has her hair slicked back.”
“Sh! You’ll wake Brother!” Valette’s voice in a whisper.
“Lette, the clock’s struck,” said Middleton.
“That’s all right, the clock hasn’t walked all the way from Virginia.”
“But——”
More whispering followed and Duncan heard the sound of tiptoeing away. He sprang out of bed, threw the clothes on that his mother had had put there for him, and went downstairs by the small door to the dining-room and so out to the stable lot. He shook hands with the three or four plantation negroes who had gathered there waiting to see him, ordered the roan saddled, and delighted them by walking away as if it were the same as any morning and he had not been gone at all.
And if they knew what was good for them, Duncan called back from the gate, they’d have all that jimson weed out of the fence corners before they saw him again. “Yas, sir, yas, sir,” the negroes said, scurrying into the stable shed for their hoes as if they had never noticed the weeds before.
“And pick up those barrel staves.”
“Yas, sir, boss.”
Under the oaks at the gate to the quarters, Duncan caught sight of his Uncle Henry plaiting a cracker to a wagon whip. At first the old man looked as if he would pretend not to see anybody, then he suddenly shambled forward, dragging the whip by the cracker behind him as he came.
“I heard you’d come,” he said, not offering to shake hands with Duncan, but crossing his arms and still dragging the butt end of the whip on the ground. “Well, I can show you something, you’d like a salvo to welcome your return.”
He pushed the gate open with his knee and led Duncan down the road through the quarters, walking ahead, his arms still crossed, and his long hair blowing about his neck. But nobody came out to greet Duncan; all but three or four of the cabins stood empty, the doors ajar and rubbish on the steps. In the cotton field that began here on the other side of the road Duncan saw only the last year’s stalks, brown and ragged. Finally at the two end cabins women were on the little porches and children about. In the last yard, an old man was making a brushwood fire under a pot for soap. Duncan went up to him and asked how he was and if there was enough to eat in the cabin, and if Enoch, his son, took care of him. Enoch was a good son, the old man said, but this morning he had gone off early to look for a shoat that was loose over there somewhere in the piney woods.
“Old Enoch had a good coon dog, name was Music,” said Henry Tate, “but he got him killed, Enoch says. Music kept wallowing in front of the door, measuring for somebody’s grave; ain’t that it, Uncle Pindar?”
The old man said nothing, and Duncan saw his uncle glance at him out of his sly eyes and then away.
“And what are you doing these days, Uncle?” Duncan said.
“I been dreamin’ o’ hellfire. I see my ole ’oman ’ere, and dat coon dog Music come in and her singing to de Lord, say git out o’ here, you flop-yeared houn’, Glory Hallelujah, I’ll take a stick an’ knock you down, Glory Hallelujah.” He began to chuckle. “So ’twas. And I ain’ mistook, dey was white folks dere, an’ settin’ down in chairs restin’, an’ each one wid ’e darkey holdin’ him in front to keep off de fire.”
“And bully for who?” said Henry Tate, leering into the childish old eyes now almost slits.
“Bully for Lincoln! Bully for Jesus! One freed de body, one freed de soul. Can y’all gimme two bits, Marse?”
Duncan, wondering where he would get it, promised to bring the money next time. “Enoch’s wife cooks for you, don’t she, Uncle?” he asked.
“Naw, sir, Little Marse. I tell you how ’tis, Mr. Duncan. Her’s gone cook for some white trash. And he’s a beatin’ her, and she been had a baby.”
“Is she there now?”
“Naw, sir, she gone. One mornin’ she wrapped de baby in a blanket and th’owed him behint de fire and come out and shut de doh. Wash Jackson was de one smelled de smell. I don’ know whah she gone.”
“You don’t know?”
“Naw, sir, I don’ know. She come by here, say she gwi’ travel.”
“Where to?”
“I don’ know.”
Henry Tate had already turned on his heel and was halfway to the gate.
In the parlor by the light-wood fire built especially for her against the autumn coolness, Mary Cherry stood enjoying the comfort of it. Her head was turned to one side, but the good eye was gazing at the floor. You might have wondered what she felt; she was always expressing her likes and what she despised or had her opinion of, but, perhaps, you knew even less than with most people of what went on in the soul dwelling within the harsh old body like a battered eagle perched on a crag.
“Well, so you’re up,” she said, glancing toward him with a frown quickly and dropping her skirt, which she had hoisted in the back to warm herself, as Duncan appeared in the door.
“Yes, m’am, and how are you this morning?”
“I reckon that clock woke you.” She jerked her thumb toward the mantelpiece. “I know everlasting well how my sleep is broken with it going off hour on hour. Your mother said it’s like chimes. All right, if it’s like chimes, says I, the next time I hear it in the middle of the night, I’ll join in with a hymn, and even that wouldn’t give any idea what it feels like to be rung up from your sleep. During the war a Yankee tried to steal that clock, you know; but the alabaster’s so heavy he soon got shed of it. A darkey found it in a ditch a mile from here and brought it in. But the angel off the top we never found. So Sister Bedford says, though I’d say ’twas an eagle.”
“No, an angel, Miss Mary, that’s right,” said Duncan, as he looked at the old veteran and smiled to think what his father wrote about her once. His father had quoted Napoleon’s remark about the Cossacks; Napoleon said the fear of the Cossacks kept dead battalions on their feet.
“All right, have it angel,” said Miss Mary, “and come warm your bones.”
“Miss Mary, it certainly is just what I wanted to find you here with us,” Duncan said, shaking the old solid hand, now all veins.
“Why, thank you, Duncan. Thank you kindly.” There was a rattle in her voice.
Then he heard the breakfast bell, and his mother’s voice in the dining-room, and upstairs the sound of the children pounding on his door and Valette’s laughter with theirs.
“Did you sleep well?” his mother asked him.
“In a bed like that!” Duncan said, going up to kiss her good morning.
“I hear young Mrs. Hugh McGehee up in Panola County,” said Mary Cherry, “the first thing she did when he got married after he got back from Birmingham, where he’d been directing our powder works, was to saw down all the tester beds, though I like a four-poster myself. She’s a pretty creature, face like a doll, reminds me of Valette. But she said she’s had enough of the old, she wants a change. Do you agree with that?” Miss Mary turned to Duncan.
“Yes, m’am,” Duncan said.
“And why?”
“No, m’am,” he heard Valette on the stair.
“Yes, m’am and no, m’am, eh?” Miss Mary said, glaring at Duncan.
“Let’s say the blessing, Miss Mary,” Mrs. Bedford said, as Valette and the children came in. “You know what ’tis. A two-year-old ham. One of those we hid in the chimney.”
“Aye,” Mary Cherry said, taking her seat, and bowing her head, as she listened threateningly for the others to get quiet. “The Lord make us thankful for what we are about to receive, and bless us and keep us for Jesus’ sake, Amen.” She raised her head. “Don’t give me any outside piece, Sister Sarah. Yes, not content with sawing the beds down, the young woman lets those orphan nieces of her husband’s take their mother’s things and play with them out in the yard, puttin’ sand in the silver teapot. I know there was a pair of butter knives with amethyst handles; they’re gone. Mark me, Duncan, you can ask God A’mighty Himself, what’ll happen in the South, first no butter knives, then it’ll be no butter, now watch.”
“Eat your hominy, Middleton,” said Mrs. Bedford, seeing him about to burst out laughing as his eyes followed Miss Mary’s knife and fork on the ham, and his ears took the God A’mighty for swearing.
Neither Duncan nor Valette heard any of it. He was so much in love that he sat there eating hungrily and with one accusing thought, which was that he had never had sense enough till that minute to see how much more wonderful and beautiful and open-hearted and good Valette was than any woman a man ever saw. As he thought this he scowled and his eyes shone like a child’s. And in his mind he was identifying her with his country, the morning that shone through the windows of the dining-room and with the resolution and spirit he felt in him for taking up this new life ahead in the South. Mrs. Bedford, seeing that Valette had forgotten to help herself to anything at all and only sat there sipping her coffee, buttered a biscuit while it was hot and slipped it on her plate.
“Yes, where those orphans’ teapot is by now the Lord knows,” Miss Mary said.
An hour after breakfast was over Duncan took the roan and set out to pay a call at Montrose.