Читать книгу Paul Rundel - Will N. Harben - Страница 12

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THAT evening, after Hoag had put his sister and niece into his phaeton, and told Cato, the negro driver, to take them to Grayson, he went back to the veranda where his wife and her mother, Mrs. Sarah Tilton, stood waving their handkerchiefs at the departing guests. Mrs. Hoag was a thin, wanfaced woman of questionable age and health. In honor of the visitors she wore her best black-silk gown, and its stiff, rigid folds and white-lace collar gave her a prim and annual-excursion look. There was a tired expression in her gray eyes, a nervous twitching of her needle-pricked fingers. Her mother was of a lustier type, having a goodly allotment of flesh, plenty of blood and activity of limb and brain, and a tongue which occupied itself on every possible occasion with equal loquacity in small or large affairs.

“I couldn't help from thinkin' what an awful time we'd have had,” she was saying to her daughter, “if they had stayed here this summer instead of at the hotel. I can stand it for a day or two, but three months on a stretch would lay me stark and stiff in my grave. Did you ever in all yore bom days see such finicky ways? They nibbled at the lettuce like tame rabbits eatin' cabbage-leaves, and wiped their lips or fingers every minute, whether they got grease on 'em or not, and then their prissy talk! I presume, if Harriet said presee-um once she did fully a dozen times, an' I didn't know any more what it meant than if she'd been talkin' Choctaw.”

“They are simply not used to our country ways,” Mrs. Hoag sighed. “I don't feel like they are, to say, stuck up. I think they was just tryin' to be easy an' natural-like.”

“Maybe she'd find it easier to go back to the way she used to live before her pa sent 'er off to that fine boardin'-school in Macon,” Mrs. Tilton retorted, with a smile that froze into a sort of grimace of satisfaction. “She used to go barefooted here in the mountains; she was a regular tomboy that wanted to climb every tree in sight, slide down every bank, and wade in every mud-puddle and branch anywheres about. She was eternally stuffin' her stomach with green apples, raw turnips, an' sweet potatoes, an' smearin' her face with 'lasses or preserves. She laid herself up for a week once for eatin' a lot o' pure licorice an' cinnamon-bark that she found in the drug-store her uncle used to keep at the cross-roads.”

Hoag sat down in a chair, tilted it back against the wall, and cast a summarizing glance toward his com, wheat, and cotton fields beyond the brown roofs of the long sheds and warehouses of the tannery at the foot of the hill. He seldom gave the slightest heed to the current observations of his wife or her mother. If they had not found much to say about the visitors, it would have indicated that they were unwell and needed a doctor, and of course that would have meant money out of his pocket, which was a matter of more moment than the most pernicious gossip. Hoag's younger son, Jack, a golden-haired child three years of age, toddled round the house and putting his chubby hands on the lowest of the veranda steps, glanced up at his father, and smiled and cooed. Hoag leaned forward, crude tenderness in his look and movement.

“That's right!” he cried, gently, and he held his hands out encouragingly. “Crawl up to daddy, Jack. I was lookin' for you, little boy. I was wonderin' where you was at. Got scared o' the fine town folks, an' hid out, didn't you?”

Slowly, retarded as Jack was by his short skirt, he mounted step after step, constantly applauded by his father, till, red in the face and panting, he reached the top and was eagerly received into the extended arms.

“Bully boy!” Hoag cried. “I knew you'd stick to it and never say die. You are as full o' pluck as an egg is of meat.” And the planter pressed the bonny head against his breast and stroked the soft, curling hair with his big, red hand.

Few of Hoag's friends knew of his almost motherly tenderness and fondness for his child. In returning home at night, even if it was very late, he never would go to bed without looking into his wife's room to see if Jack was all right. And every morning, before rising, he would call the child to him, and the two would wake The rest of the family With their romping and laughter. Sometimes Hoag would dress the boy, experiencing a delight in the clumsy action which he could not have analyzed. His devotion to Jack seemed all the more remarkable for his indifferent manner toward his older son, Henry, a lad of fifteen, who had a mischievous disposition which made him rather unpopular in the neighborhood. Many persons thought Henry was like his father in appearance, though quite the reverse in the habit of thrift or business foresight. Mrs. Tilton, the grandmother, declared that the boy was being driven to the dogs as rapidly as could be possible, for he had never known the meaning of paternal sympathy or advice, and never been made to do any sort of work. Be that as it might, Henry was duly sworn at or punished by Hoag at least once a week.

The phaeton returned from the village. Cato drove the horses into the stable-yard and put them into their stalls, whistling as he fed them and rubbed them down. The twilight was thickening over the fields and meadows. The dew was falling. The nearest hills were no longer observable. Jack, still in his father's arms on the veranda, was asleep; the touch of the child's breath on the man's cheek was a subtle, fragrant thing that conveyed vague delight to his consciousness. Henry rode up to the stable, turned his horse over to Cato, and came toward the house. He was, indeed, like his father in shape, build, and movement. He paused at the foot of the steps, glanced indifferently at Hoag and said:

“I passed Sid Trawley back on the mountain-road. He said, tell you he wanted to see you to-night without fail; he said, tell you not to leave till he got here.”

“Oh, all right,” Hoag said, with a steady, interested stare at his son, who now stood beside him. “I'll be here.”

His voice waked the sleeping child. Jack sat up, rubbed his eyes, and then put a little hand on his father's face. “Dack hungry; Dack want his supper,” he lisped.

Hoag-swung him gently to and fro like a woman rocking an infant to sleep. “Hold on!” He was speaking to Henry, and his tone was harsh and abrupt. “Did you water that horse?”

Henry leaned in the doorway, idly lashing his legs with his riding-whip. “No; the branch was a quarter of a mile out of the way. Cato will lead him to the well.”

“You know better than that,” Hoag growled. “You didn't even tell Cato the horse hadn't been watered. He would let him stay in the lot all night without a drop, hot as he is. Go water 'im now. Go, I tell you! You are getting so triflin' you ain't fit to live.”

Henry stared, and his stare kindled into a resentful glare. His whip hung steadily by his side. It was as if he were about to retort, but kept silence.

“Go 'tend to that horse,” Hoag repeated, “an' don't you ever do a thing like that again. You are none too good to do work o' that sort; I did plenty of it at your age. I had to work like a nigger an' I'm none the worse for it.”

Henry stood still. He had his father's temper, and it was being roughly handled. Jack, now thoroughly awake, put both his hands on his father's face and stroked his cheeks soothingly, as if conscious of the storm that was about to break. Then, slowly and with inarticulate mutterings, Henry turned and retraced his steps down the path to the stable. Hoag leaned over till Jack had to clutch the lapels of his coat to keep from falling.

“An' don't you raise a row with that nigger, neither,” Hoag called out. “I won't have it. You are not boss about this place.”

Henry paused in the path, turned a defiant face toward his father, and stood still for several seconds, then slowly went on to the stable.

“Dack want his supper, daddy,” Jack murmured.

“All right, baby,” Hoag said, in a tone of blended anger and gentleness, and with the child in his arms he went through the dark hall into the diningroom adjoining the kitchen in the rear of the house. Here, at the table next to his own place, he put Jack into the child's high-chair, and sat down beside him, his massive arm and hand still encircling the tiny shoulders.

“Now, make Dilly bring Jack's mush an' milk!” Hoag said, with a laugh. “Call 'er—call 'er loud!”

“Dilly!” Jack obeyed. “Oh, Dilly!”

“Louder; she didn't hear you.” Hoag shook with laughter, and patted the child on the head encouragingly.

“Dilly! Oh, Dilly!” Jack cried.

“Oh, I hear you, young marster,” the portly negress laughed, as she shuffled into the room. “I was gittin' yo' mush en milk, honey. I 'clar', 'fo' de Lawd you make me jump out'n my skin, I was so scared.”

“Where's the rest o' the folks?” Hoag inquired, with an impatient glance toward the door.

“Bofe of 'em say dey don't want er bite after eatin' all dat watermelon dis evenin',” the cook answered. “Miz Hoag say she gwine ter lie down right off, kase she got off dat hot dress en feel weak after so much doin's terday. She ain't er well 'oman, Marse Hoag—she ain't, suh. I know, kase I seed er lots of um in my day en time. She hain't got no spirit, suh; en when 'omen git dat way it's er bad sign o' what may come.”

Hoag showed no interest in the comment. He reached for the big platter of cold string-beans and boiled pork, and helped himself abundantly. He poured out his own coffee, and drank it hot from the saucer without sugar or cream. He used both hands in breaking the big, oval-shaped pone of corn-bread. He enjoyed his food as a hungry beast might, and yet he paused every now and then to feed the child with a spoon or to wipe the mush from the little chin. It was Jack's drooping head and blinking eyes that caused Hoag to hasten through the meal. He took the child to the little bed in its mother's room and put it down gently.

“Go to sleep,” he said. “Now go to sleep.”