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 assure 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 classification. 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 passed 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 pass 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 embarrassed 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:

"'Say, Andy, I'm going to be frank with you. I never have been interested in my own ancestry. Wouldn't it seem odd to you if I was interested in yours?'"

Charles laughed heartily, for the girl had managed to put him quite at his ease. Besides, he was ravenously hungry and Zilla had brought a big platter of fried chicken and a plate heaping with hot biscuits and put them before him. A pot of coffee stood near him, from which he was expected to help himself. A door of the room was open, showing a flower-garden full of blooming rose-bushes. The midday sun beat down on it. Bees were hovering over the flowers. In some apple-trees close to the door birds were flitting about and chirping. A rooster was crowing lustily at the barn; the cawing of a crow came across the fields. To the wanderer all nature seemed to be swelling, bursting with joy. As he looked into the face of the girl across the table something seemed to tell him that a veritable new life had begun for him, and that she, in some way, was responsible for it. He was full of gratitude to her.

Dinner over, they rose from the table together. "What are you going to do now?" she questioned. "I must tell you that we always take at least an hour for dinner, and on very hot days we don't work till later in the afternoon."

"It is too much fun to stay away from it," he laughed. "It is like playing a new game."

She went with him to the door; she stepped down into the yard. "I must show you a few other things," she said. "That is the blacksmith's shop adjoining the smoke-house. The shop used to be a means of making money. We owned an old slave who was considered the best blacksmith in the county. He used to shoe horses and mend carriages and wagons, but now the shop is seldom used except for the sharpening of tools. Then we hire a blacksmith to come out from Carlin. But he gets three dollars a day, and so we only have him about twice a year."

They were at the old shop now, and Mary drew the great sliding-door open. To her surprise, Charles stepped in, examined the big bellows, forge, and anvil with the air of one who knew what he was about.

"Everything is here," he said, "and in good order."

"What do you know about a shop?" Mary asked, with a smile.

"More than I do about farming," he answered. "The show I was with carried its own shop, and now and then I used to work in it as an assistant. If you will let me, the first rainy day that comes I'll sharpen all the tools."

"Oh, can you—will you?" she cried. "That would be splendid. But if it gets out the neighbors will bore you to death with requests for this or that. You couldn't shoe a horse, could you?"

"Oh yes. That is simple enough," he replied, indifferently. "The big draft-horses we used had to be double shod, and I learned how to do it."

At the door of the shop they parted. Charles went back to the cotton-field and resumed his work there. All the afternoon he toiled. Digging the mellow soil and cutting down the succulent weeds and crab-grass was a fascinating pastime rather than a disagreeable task. The sun sank behind the hills. The dusk fell over the land. Presently he looked up and saw Mary at the end of the row which he was finishing.

"This won't do," she chided him. "In a little while it will be too dark. Didn't you hear the bell?"

He had not, and he stared at her, abashed.

"Well, come on," she said, sweetly. "Aunt Zilla is not angry. It is such an odd thing to see a man willing to work that she was laughing over it. I think she likes you already, and it is queer, for she does not take to strangers readily. She is a close observer and she says that you have a sad, lonely look about the eyes. I didn't agree with her, for you seem very cheerful to me. You are not—not homesick, or—or anything of that sort, are you, Mr. Brown?"

"I think not at all," he answered. "How could I be homesick, for I have no home?"

"Then Aunt Zilla may be right," Mary observed, quietly. "You may be sad because you have no home; perhaps that is what she reads in your face. Now that I come to think of it, you do seem to look lonely and isolated. Somehow I can't imagine your being contented here with us. You are so different, somehow, from our young men. I don't know in what way, particularly, but you are different, and so I am actually afraid that you will decide to—to go somewhere else. If you do, Mr. Brown, don't let anything I have said about—about needing your help stop you."

They were on the path approaching the house; he paused suddenly, and they faced each other. "I wish I could remove those ideas from your mind for good and all, Miss Rowland," he said, almost huskily, in his earnestness. "It is the second time you have mentioned the subject and I want you to understand the truth. My life for the last year has been one of restless torment. I gave up traveling with the circus to settle down on a farm. Something told me I would like it, but nothing told me that I would find work with such kind persons as you and your father. The truth is, I am so contented here that I am afraid"—he was laughing now—"that I shall wake up and find myself in that rumbling freight-train again, with canvas to unload, ropes to stretch, and stakes to drive."

"Well, I'll not bring it up again," she promised, with a sigh of relief. "I wouldn't have done it, but Zilla set me thinking on that line. I do want you to feel at home here, and it is not all selfishness, either. I've had trouble—I'm having plenty of it now—and somehow I feel that you have had more than your share somehow, somewhere."

The words were half tentative; she eyed him expectantly, but he made no response. They were at the veranda now, and he turned into the hall and went up to his room. He found that his bag had come, and, quickly putting on the suit of clothes it contained, he hurried down. The suit was a good, well-fitting one, bought with his old taste for such things, and in the lamplight he presented quite a changed appearance. He remarked the all but surprised look in Mary's face when he met her in the dining-room, but she made no comment. She had not changed her dress, and was waiting for him in her place at the head of the table.

"Father has eaten and gone back to his books," she said. "He takes very little nourishment. That is one good thing in ancestry worship, it saves food in his case. He can live on a biscuit and a glass of milk a day if he is on the track of a fresh twig for our tree."

When supper was over they went out to the front veranda. Leaving Charles seated on the end of it, Mary went into the big parlor behind him. He saw the light flash up as she struck a match and applied it to a lamp. A moment later he heard her playing the old piano. Its tone was sweet and her touch good. She was playing old plantation melodies, some of which he had heard before, and a wonderful sense of peace and restfulness crept over him. Presently, as if drawn by the music, Rowland rose from a rustic seat under an oak on the lawn and came to him.

"She learned that from her mother," the old man whispered. "My wife was graduated at a Virginia college for young ladies, and in her day was considered a fine performer. Mary sings, too, but—There, she is beginning now."

He checked himself, for his daughter was singing an old hymn, and Charles thought her voice was wonderfully sweet and sympathetic. But it suddenly quivered, a lump seemed to rise into her throat, and she stopped. There was stillness for a moment, then Charles heard Zilla's voice.

"Don't give way lak dat, missie!" she said. "Raise yo' pretty haid up. Dem boys is gwine ter come thoo dis spree same as de rest of 'um. Don't give up, chile. Ol' Zilla gwine ter go 'stracted if you do. You is too young en' sweet en' lightsome ter give down lak dat."

"It is those boys," Rowland muttered. "She's like her mother was, full of worry when they start to cut up. As for me, you see, I know that wild oats must be sown. I certainly ought to know, for I cut a wide swath in my young day. It must run in our blood. There was a young Sir George Rowland among the first settlers in South Carolina, and, judging from his will, of which I have a copy, he was as dissolute and extravagant as a royal prince. Yes, yes, blood will tell, and history is only repeating itself in my boys."

He turned into the parlor. Charles heard his voice gently admonishing his daughter, joined to that of Aunt Zilla, and presently Mary was heard ascending the stairs to her room. She had a lighted candle in her hand, and Charles caught a glimpse of her when she was half-way up the flight. She looked to him like an old picture of Colonial days; the light elongated her figure and gave to her trim gown the effect of an elaborate train. He was sure that the impression he had of her at that instant would never leave him.

Saying good night to Rowland, Charles went up to his room and undressed. A few minutes before he had been conscious of a sense of infinite peace and content, but already the feeling was gone. In its place was a growing desire to lift the sinister shadow that hung over the young girl. He could hear her soft step in her room across the hall. He had put out his light and now saw from his window that old Rowland was still strolling about the lawn. Presently all was still in Mary's room. He was very tired, but his brain was too active for sleep. The long straight rows of cotton-plants haunted his mind. In thought he was cutting out the weeds with Mary at his side. He heard again her sweet, merry comments and wise suggestions; he saw the wondrous lights and shadows in her beauteous face and the moving grace of her form. He was her servant; she belonged to the social class which he had renounced forever. Owing to the blight upon his name and character, he could never aspire to be more than a laborer on her father's farm, but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered but her happiness, and he told himself that she should have happiness if he died to give it to her.