It was such an enthusiastic train that Joe could not long escape the contagion of its enthusiasm. Ten miles out they came into a stretch of rolling meadow where the shadows of trees were like purple splotches upon the shimmering mist of the grass. A high wind had arisen that set the countless blades vibrating so that each bit of sun-swept meadow was naught but a silverish blurr, with the tree tops above it tossing wildly about. A little girl, holding open a gate for an old man in a buggy behind a placid old white horse, was all fluttering ribbon ends, and as they passed, her sunbonnet was torn from her grasp and flung over the fence, far afield. Joe could see her running after it as they rounded a curve out of sight.

At twelve thirty-five they reached Guests where Joe alighted. He was the only passenger of like mind, and aside from the station master who made a hurried exchange of sundry small express packages and mail there was no one at the station but a fat little old man in a brown derby and a red sweater, and with a very dirty face. This latter gentleman accosted Joe with a warning gesture, lifting his arm and pointing to the sky, and at the same time giving him a significant look, and then scuttling over to a disreputable motor car that stood beside the station platform. Arriving there he twisted his fat neck half around to see if his prey was following him, and being thus assured, clambered in. The car was very aged and trembling from some violent internal disorder, while the top was bellying off sidewise with a great flapping of loose straps and curtain ends till it seemed doubtful if the whole thing might hold together for another minute.

"High wind," suggested the Jehu, in a fat wheezy voice as Joe crawled into the seat beside him. Joe agreed without qualification. The old man paused a minute, gave him a sober, reflective look of far-away intensity, and then suddenly turned and spat precariously into the wind.

"Bloomfield?" he suggested with increased lightness of manner.

"Bloomfield," Joe agreed again. It was a pleasant bit of procedure, invested with the dignity of a formula, for there was no other town within a radius of many miles and no other road over which such traffic was possible. Still it had to be gone through with.

They started with a rush, being ably seconded by a more severe gust of wind than usual, and for eight miles it was a stalemate between the wind and the motor as to which could make the most noise. But in spite of it all Joe was enjoying it. There was a freedom in the uproar, in the wildly tossing tree tops, in the white clouds that went scudding high overhead. He had an insane desire to fling his hat high up in the air, as they rolled along, and see how far the wind would carry it.

At length they arrived. Out of courtesy, perhaps, the wind abated; perhaps it was because nothing boisterous would be tolerated along those silent old streets. But as they passed the tavern, one green shutter could be seen hanging by one hinge, moving softly to and fro, and against the iron stair railing of the meeting house an old, yellowing newspaper clung for a moment and then dropped to the pavement. A very old man in a linen suit, followed by an old hound, was going through the door as they passed, and he pivoted on his stick and watched them. Here was the very essence of stability.

Reaching the central square, the driver swung his car in a majestic arc around the traffic post in the centre of the street and drew up at the curb in front of the post-office. There was a liberal sprinkling of small motors of the same general classification as the one in which they were arriving, parked with their noses headed toward the curb, at an angle. Uncle Buzz's figure suddenly appeared, hurrying from behind one of these, his face set in an earnest frown. He had evidently seen them from the "Golden Rule," diagonally opposite, and had come the most direct route, through the traffic.

"Well, Joseph, this is a surprise."

This, thought Joe, might mean anything. Either his Aunt Loraine had not been apprised of his expected arrival, or perhaps the old man had already extricated himself from his trouble.

"Any bags?"

"No. No bags." Joe was still holding the out-stretched hand of welcome.

Uncle Buzz turned to the driver and dropped a coin in that worthy gentleman's greasy palm as it lay inertly on the seat, beside him. "That will be all," he said with great dignity.

The driver gave him a long look, heavy lidded—a critical look, a deeply thoughtful look—sniffed, and then turned to Joe, "Goin' back?" he asked shortly, as though there were nothing more now for any one to stay for.

"No," said Joe. "Not to-day."

The driver pondered this in his heart for a moment, came to a sudden decision, sniffed again, and turned his back on them both and proceeded to stretch himself out as far as the narrow confines of the seat would permit. Business was apparently over for the day.

Uncle Buzz led Joe across the street to the busy side. The contrast of their figures was striking, for Joe was over a head taller, and loose where Uncle Buzz was stiff.

Mr. Mosby turned at the curbing and with a confidential air: "We'll just get a bite to eat in here," indicating a tiny little lunch room crammed in between two ramshackle old frame buildings. "Your Aunt Loraine was a bit indisposed this morning."

This established one conclusion. He was at least not expected at home. More than that, he could not decide without further premises.

They occupied stools at a high counter covered with oilcloth. Uncle Buzz ordered rolls and coffee. Joe took rolls and coffee. There was a period of silence as they waited.

Directly Mr. Mosby began talking in a low tone: "It's a rather fortunate thing you came up this week-end, Joseph. I was rather afraid you mightn't." He paused and Joe, while he felt reasonably sure of just what would come next, listened with polite interest.

"I've been troubled with frightful headaches this past week," he continued, "so severe that I could scarcely see the open page before me."

Joe murmured his regret over the cup's brim.

The old man paused and seemed to consider. Then hesitantly continuing: "If you could spare an hour or two this afternoon——?"

"Surely I can, Uncle Buzz. Easiest thing you know."

The old man breathed deep and long and set down his coffee cup. "It is a trifling matter of some forty-six dollars. Would you like to go out to Montgomery's this afternoon? He has a couple of two-year-olds that he will be shipping down for the Derby now pretty soon."

"I'd be very pleased to, Uncle Buzz."

And thus was the matter broached, and the matter accepted, without any bald reference to necessity, without the slightest violation to the tenets of hospitality. No reference was made to a previous understanding. Joe's visit was established on a purely social basis, and as such it would be presented to Mrs. Mosby, whose penchant for alarm might thus escape stimulus.

They finished their lunch hurriedly and made their way across to the "Golden Rule," where Uncle Buzz led his charge with swift, silent steps back to the little private office in the rear of the store. Once inside, the door was closed and the books quickly opened upon the table. "They are always a bit impatient for the balance this time of the year," Mr. Mosby offered in explanation.

An hour's work sufficed to find the trouble. It was in the carrying forward of a single account. Once found, the rest was very simple, and at three o'clock Uncle Buzz slammed the ledger shut with an air of complete satisfaction, walked confidently through the door into the adjoining office with his little sheaf of papers, and returning reached for his hat. "Burrus is out," he said crisply. "We won't wait."

Joe likewise reached for his hat.

At the door the old man turned, and with a reminiscent smile and in a confidential tone, "There is a lot of personal jealousy in this firm."

Joe expressed no surprise.

"He's just been elected deacon in the church." His old eyes began to twinkle. "Great changes can take place in a man's habits once you hitch him up with apron strings. His wife has never thought so much of Loraine. And now he doesn't think so much of me." He chuckled. "We were raised together, and I have a good memory." He opened the door and walked slowly toward the front of the store. It was empty of customers. A clerk stood leaning idly across a glass counter of notions looking into the street. Uncle Buzz proceeded calmly on, giving the clerk a pleasant nod. "She came from a farm back in the county. They say she had never seen a railroad until she was twenty-one years old."

The clerk inspected Joe thoroughly and critically and made no sign of having heard anything. And still Joe felt a bit dubious; indiscretion is like other normal weapons: it kills when one doesn't know it is loaded.

But Mr. Mosby was in rising spirits. They emerged to the street and turned the corner into the less populous thoroughfare, known commonly throughout Bloomfield as Pearl Street, and there they came upon Uncle Buzz's horse and buggy, standing as if carved from one and the same block of immutable immobility. Even the flies found little of excitement in lighting about the front section of the combination, and only one or two were buzzing about in the general neighbourhood in a dispirited manner.

The horse opened his eyes and lifted one ear as Uncle Buzz climbed in the buggy and took up the lines. But being complacent and particularly indisposed to anything as much like effort as resistance, the starting was quite without ceremony.

Eventually, and not too much so, they left the city streets, and soon were jogging down a winding little lane of the softest, yellowest earth imaginable. On either side, between the edge of the roadside and the snake rail fence, was a little bank all a-tangle with blackberry bushes, and here and there, with its roots protruding out into space, a gaunt and bare thorn tree or an occasional walnut thrusting its branches over the road. Beyond, the fields lay in cool, serrated rows, deep brown and freshly fragrant. The woodland which hung about in the background beyond the fields would occasionally sweep down and cross the road, and then would come a stretch of checkered shade on the yellow earth, and the lifting, expectant sound of high wind in top branches. And sometimes, in the heart of such an arm of woodland, the old horse's hoofs would echo hollow on the warped and mellowing boards of a tiny bridge, and there would be a momentary slip and gurgle of water underneath, on down through the ferns. Joe felt steeped in calm.

Mr. Montgomery was not at home. Nor were the horses. They found they were a week late. An old Negro whom they encountered just within the paddock gate so informed them: "Yessuh. They done took 'em down t' Louisville, las' Monday."

They left him scratching his kinky gray pate in meditation.

Uncle Buzz was disappointed. The little excursion was thus deprived of its sparkle. There was a something about going out to see racehorses——Well, at any rate, Uncle Buzz was disappointed. He showed it on the way home. Perhaps the fading sunlight, the lengthening shadows, had something to do with it. And the wind, too, that had come with the morning and kept up its bluster all day, had died to a whisper, so that a cluster of last year's corn-stalks standing in a fence corner were merely indifferently waggling. It may have been just a reflection of mood, but as they were rounding the brow of the hill above Bloomfield and could see the dip of the meadows to the creek and the white fences and outbuildings of the Fair Grounds away off to the right, the old horse stopped and gently switched his tail. And Uncle Buzz let him stop.

"Do you know," he said, and his voice was reminiscent and uncertain, "I've been thinking lately we ought to sell the place and move to town."

Joe looked up at him curiously. "Why do you think that, Uncle Buzz?"

Mr. Mosby pondered, as the horse, feeling perhaps the slight pricks of conscience, resumed his way at an imperceptible walk. "Well," he said, "this country is not what it used to be. All the other towns, Guests, Fillmore—all the rest of them—are on the railroad or interurban. They have the advantage of us."

Joe was watching him unperceived. The old man's face had lost its aggressive jauntiness. There was an odd pucker about the brows. His mouth, above the well-trimmed goatee, seemed small and indecisive. Joe could see the clear blue veins on the back of the hand as it listlessly held the lines.

"Business has been a bit slack this past year. Seems like it never got over the war. And prices are high, too. Can't get a nigger to do a day's work for you for less than three dollars now," he added fiercely. And then lapsing into his former vein again, "I wonder——"

Joe waited. "Wonder what, Uncle Buzz?"

The sun made one of its perceptible drops, just as though its setting was a matter of notches. A little cool breeze came up to meet them from the creek bottom as they moved slowly downward.

"Why couldn't you get me something to do in Louisville? How about the Plow Company? They must employ a great many men." He laughed a bit shrilly. "I've always thought I would like to live in Louisville."

Joe was aghast. He felt as if it might be some old lady demanding of him pink tights and a place in the front row of the ballet. However, he checked the exclamation that rose to his lips. But for a moment he did not know what to say. Uncle Buzz—wanting to go to work at Bromley's!—An ancient and decrepit Whittington!

"But you've been here so long, Uncle Buzz!" he managed at length.

"So I have. All the more reason. I'm getting in a rut. Besides, I'm getting tired of Burrus. Narrow-minded scoundrel! He throws out hints about Zeke bringing me my whiskey over from Fillmore. As if it were any of his business!" He subsided and silently contemplated the depths of Burrus' degradation.

Joe laughed softly and at the same time felt the sharp little warning edge of an intuition. Uncle Buzz was slipping, and he knew it.

"I wouldn't be in a hurry," he suggested at length, "Bromley's is full up. All those men coming back from the army, you know—I'll keep an eye open for you if you want me." It was most incongruous, the patronizing air that had crept into his voice, the tone that invariably greets the unemployed, wherever or whoever he be.

Uncle Buzz brightened. "Do," he said.

They drove through the gate and up to the house. Aunt Loraine profusely reproached her husband for not advising her of Joseph's arrival. "It's a shame. Here at the last minute. You might have at least sent me word, Bushrod."

"We had to go out in the country," Uncle Buzz replied with decision.

And so they supped meagrely on fried chicken and rice and gravy and hot biscuits and coffee. And afterward they sat in the high-ceilinged back parlour, in candlelight, and watched the glow die from the western sky. And Aunt Loraine asked him about the "season" in Louisville, and once she asked him about Mary Louise. And bye-and-bye Uncle Buzz began to nod just like a sleepy little boy, and with the prospect of a long, well-filled to-morrow, Joe suggested that they go to bed. And then there was a moment's pausing upon the threshold of a yawning black door beyond which things smelled mustily sweet, with dusty shadows that crept across the matting from a shielded lamp; and later a most delicious yielding of one's self to the cool envelope of soft white sheets, and a moment's wide-eyed staring at the ceiling; and then forgetfulness.

Sometime later—it seemed hours—Joe was awakened by the clatter of an automobile somewhere beneath his window. For a moment he lay still and wondered and then, the bustle continuing, only in a much subdued and muffled manner, he got up and in his bare feet walked over to the window across the matting and looked out. He saw an oil lantern sitting on the edge of the side steps, and he saw the open screen door. And then from a black shadow a short distance away, behind the old lilac bush he remembered so well, he saw a figure emerge, carrying a glass jug. The figure was Zeke's, stooped over and shuffling, in the same old peaked cap he had always worn. And in the jug was the apotheosis of Mr. Mosby's contempt for Mr. Burrus, and as it passed the light it gleamed and sparkled with a deep golden malevolence. And hearing steps on the porch, and voices, and fearing lest he might be seen spying at the window, Joe crept back to bed. And directly he heard the familiar roaring clatter of a car starting up somewhere down below there in the darkness, and after a while—silence. He fell into a deep and satisfying sleep.



CHAPTER VI

Mary Louise had the power of concentration over her determinations as well as over her desires. Once having decided on a course she could keep herself driving at it without ceasing. If she made a digression, it was with eyes set on the goal, and for the reason that to so digress was to find a more facile path and save time in the end. Her past attainments had been gained apparently without effort, for in the little world she had known at Bloomfield all had been hers to do with as she desired. And then had come the eighteen months in Louisville, with its awakenings, its gradual undermining of her old standards and conceptions, and its whetting of the keen edge of her desire.

She had been made to see her facts in another light. Those things that had been wont to be considered as axioms and irrefutable postulates in her daily acceptance were suddenly seen as the most ephemeral hypotheses. The desirability of Bloomfield and the lustre about the name "McCallum"—two rocks upon which she had builded the edifice of her confidence—were found of a sudden to be but shifting sands, hard-packed enough on the surface, but subjected to the most insidious and devastating undertow. Many a weaker spirit would have thrown up his arms and dived with desperation overboard in search of solid footing. But not so Mary Louise. She had a momentary whirl at negation and then a firm and ever-increasing determination to build her own footing. If Bloomfield and the McCallum family were not all they should be, she would make them so, to her own satisfaction at least. Money was the one thing needed, she soon found or thought she found, and money was the thing she was determined to get, enough of it to accomplish her purpose. When she had started the tea room she had not had the slightest idea that she could possibly fail to do just exactly what she wanted.

As she read the note that Joe had left for her, the news of Miss Susie's illness caused her temporary distress. But her mind did not dwell for long on the distressing part of it, but got busy with the problem in hand, went into conference with itself over it, analyzed and dissected it to its complete satisfaction, and then put out the resulting dicta on the bulletin board of her consciousness. The particular "Thou must" was in this case "Go to Bloomfield." And inasmuch as Mary Louise never under any circumstances thought of disregarding these highly accurate mental dicta, go to Bloomfield she did. She went the following morning, which was Friday. And it must be said that in spite of the attention which was focused on the immediate difficulty before her, which was, "What to do with Miss Susie," her mind kept straining at this barrier for continued and reassuring glimpses of the ultimate goal ahead. Still, she loved her aunt, and the realization of her suffering was to her genuine pain.

As she entered the sitting-room door, she found the little old lady propped in a rocking chair just inside the doorway with a patchwork quilt across her lap, tucking her in. There was no appreciable change. She was as yellow, as parchment like as ever. Her eyes perhaps were brighter; indeed they seemed almost to have a heat of their own as Mary Louise stooped to kiss the cheek held up to her.

"Why didn't you let me know sooner?" she chided.

"There was no reason for you to come at all," Miss Susie responded briskly. "Some people haven't enough questions to decide for themselves. Have to go about hunting for other people's problems."

"But you weren't going to sit up here and not let me know anything about it?" Mary Louise took off her hat and came over to the rocking chair, toward which she dragged another, and seated herself. She reached out and took one of the little blue-veined hands and stroked it gently. "You weren't going to sit up here and let me know nothing about it? That's not what you promised."

Miss Susie's fixed, inexorable expression did not change. But she was pleased—was feeling softer. Unconsciously she liked Mary Louise to assume that patronizing, superior air toward her. She said nothing and began to rock softly to and fro, staring through the doorway.

Mary Louise continued the gentle stroking. Bye-and-bye she ventured softly, "You're right sure you're feeling all right now? What did the doctor say?"

Miss Susie turned on her, mouth snapping shut. "Doctor! Who said I had to have a doctor?" The look in her eyes, as she turned them full upon the girl, was one in which defiance mingled with alarm and struggled for mastery. For Miss Susie had waged a long and losing warfare with disease and she quailed before the emblems of surrender if not from the enemy itself.

Mary Louise for the moment let it go at that. After the air had appreciably cooled she ventured again: "I don't suppose Mrs. Mosby knew how to reach me?" Miss Susie looked puzzled and she continued in explanation, "I had a note from Joe Hooper saying you had had a little spell—I suppose Mrs. Mosby 'phoned him."

Miss Susie gave a little snort. "And what would Loraine Mosby be doing meddling in my affairs? She hasn't called on me for years. Like as not it was that fool Lavinia Burrus. You would think she owned and was running the town. The salvation of Bloomfield weighs mighty heavy on her shoulders these days—with her 'Dear Miss McCallum,' and her 'Poor dear Mrs. Hamilton!' I've a mind to tell her that charity, even of thought, begins at home—where it's needed."

Mary Louise felt a sudden sort of displeasure. She had adopted the devious method of getting at the true state of affairs, for that was the only way any one could get anything out of Miss Susie. And now she found herself getting interested on her own account. She had once supposed that it had been through Mrs. Mosby's agency that she had been apprised. It now appeared that someone else—an outsider and a parvenu at that—had linked her name with that of Joe Hooper's to send her word through him. It gave her rank displeasure. To be officially tagged as "Such and such" by a "one-horse" little town. Yes it was a "one-horse" little town. Her assurance slipped from her and in confusion she sought to investigate no further.

"Where's Mattie? You ought to have something about your shoulders." She rose to her feet and began poking about on the wardrobe shelf.

"Mattie's not here," said Miss Susie.

Mary Louise turned around. "Mattie's not here?—And what's the reason she's not here?"

Miss Susie's voice was acquiring calm. "She decided that this wasn't good enough place for her. She couldn't bear to think of all the money servants were getting down in Louisville—so she left."

Mary Louise came back and stood before her chair. She looked at her aunt intently. "You mean to say she left you?"

"She did."

It was too much for Mary Louise's comprehension and she contemplated the fact bleakly. "Why, her people have been here on the place for four generations!"

Miss Susie's face was grim. "Ten dollars a week was too much for her."

Slowly the conviction was taking root. "And she has really left?"

Miss Susie nodded.

"And taken Omar with her?"

Miss Susie nodded again.

"And Landy?"

There was a moment's silence. Miss Susie, it seemed, would for the dramatic effect have preferred that the defection had been universal. "No," she said half regretfully, "Landy's stayed with me."

"And done the cooking, I suppose?"

"He did—after Wednesday."

"And Wednesday? You tried it until then, I suppose?" Mary Louise's tone was all reproach.

Miss Susie did not deny it.

They sat for a moment in dismal accord. Mary Louise had a sudden feeling as though the family were breaking up. All during the war the little corps of servants had remained intact. She had felt that, the war over, the danger point had been passed. Also the reason for Miss Susie's little spell was now apparent.

Directly she asked more briskly, "D' you try to get any one else?—Zibbie Tuttle?"

"Zibbie's gone to town, too."

Another moment's depressed silence.

"And how about Zenie? She used to cook."

Miss Susie sighed. "Zenie's got her head all full of fool notions. She thinks she has to stay home and look after that worthless Zeke."

"And she won't come? You've tried her?"

Miss Susie shook her head grimly.

Mary Louise suddenly laughed. It was a dry, mirthless sort of laugh. "Looks like the Negroes are getting all the latest notions of progress, too. I must have put the idea into their heads."

"All except Zenie," amended Miss Susie. "She's old-fashioned."

"Perhaps I'd better be coming back." She stood by the door, musing.

Miss Susie reached over for her spectacles. There was an almost imperceptible flash in her eyes. "And be like Zenie?"

The shot missed. Mary Louise was turning over many things in her mind. Her little plans were being threatened and by circumstances which she had previously scorned to notice. Irritation and a restless desire to be up and at her obstacles were prevailing over all other feelings. For several moments she pondered, gazing through the glass half of the sitting-room door, and then with a hurried, "I'll be back," she bolted from the room, out toward the kitchen.

When she returned some fifteen minutes later there was a look of settled calm on her face, and she busied herself making Miss Susie comfortable; for she had reached a decision and could think about other things. And the things that old Landy had told her had sobered her while they strengthened that decision.

That night she lay on a restless pillow. The sudden change from the rattle and bang of the city where all the little noises were swallowed up in a general roar was hard on her ravelled nerves. She missed the noise. She found herself painfully acute to all the little tickings and crackings and buzzings that an open country window brings to one's ears. There was an unpleasant smell of damp matting there in the dark room. And the wind, as it came soughing down from the hill behind, caught a loose end of the roof somewhere over her head and made as though to roll it back. But it never did. Her bed was lumpy. It had never seemed so before. And there was not enough ventilation in the room. The two windows, placed side by side in the eaves, allowed no circulation. People in the country did not know how to live. Now she would knock that partition away. There was no use having a hall at the head of the stairs, a hall that led nowhere except into one room. She would knock that partition away and make a single big room of the whole attic. And then the window in the hall would serve for additional light and air for the one room. Or would it be better to cut another window and run the partition lengthwise, thus making two rooms of it? That might be better. Two rooms were better than one great big barn of a room. Later on, perhaps, she would have it done. She fell asleep over the complexity of the problem.

The next morning she set out with dispatch to carry out her plan. She went to see Zenie Thompson.

She found that much maligned and misunderstood woman cheerily rocking her leisure away at the front door of her home. The air was warm and Zenie had, contrary to the tenets of her race's religion, thrown open all the front of her house, windows and all. The neck of her waist, which was a very old white one of Mary Louise's, was likewise frankly open, and as there was considerable difference in the respective sizes, Zenie seemed on the point of bursting from its doubtful whiteness into all her full-blown coffee-coloured creamness. She hastily pinned up the bosom of it a little as Mary Louise turned in at her gate.

"How do, Mis' Ma'y Louise," she beamed, rising to her feet and holding her offspring clutched at a precarious angle to her shoulder. She stood with one hand resting on the doorpost and in her eyes expectancy. "Won' you-all come in?"

"Just for a minute," said Mary Louise, refusing the proffered chair and giving the room a hasty, critical look. Even in that critical look she could find naught to criticize. The cabin was a small three-room affair, set back from the street, between two vacant old storehouses. Zeke had whitewashed it without and calcimined it within, and with the free air that circulated the place this treatment was enough to make the front rooms passable. Over the iron mantel hung Zeke's "Knights of Macabre" sword in its scabbard. Mary Louise looked for the white-plumed hat but it had evidently been put away. On the left wall, in a brilliant gilt frame, hung a coloured portrait of Admiral Dewey. The artist had in some way inspired a look of malign cunning on the face by shifting the position of the left eye a hair's breadth below normal, but the mouth and smile were benign. On a table to the right reposed a glass case with a base of felt and a rounded top—the mausoleum for an ancient bird creature that looked like a prairie chicken, very droopy and, in spite of its interment, quite dingy with dust. It was vaguely familiar to her somehow.

Zenie was watching the inspection with an eager, expectant look. When Mary Louise had apparently finished and turned to her again, she smiled.

"You ain' eveh see ouh house befo', is you?"

Mary Louise admitted she never had. And then to disarm any suspicion that she might have come for social reasons only, she attacked the matter in hand with characteristic vigour:

"Zeke's not home much, is he?"

"Right smaht he ain', no'm." Zenie's face was all expectant smiles. Not a shadow seemed to linger near it.

Mary Louise allowed her gaze to travel about the room. In the entire atmosphere of the place was no besmirching suggestion of toil. She returned again to Zenie. The latter was like some tropical flower in full bloom. She began, selecting carefully her ground: "You haven't any place to put your baby, no one to watch him while you work, have you?" This was spoken with all the force of conviction.

Zenie's face wreathed itself in another smile. "I ain' do no mo' wuk—not ontil Zeke he come home."

Mary Louise paused and drew breath. She began again: "If there was somewhere you could put him, someone who could look out for him, or if it was so that you could keep an eye on him yourself—why, you could go to work again, like you used to."

The brightness of Zenie's smile began to fade. "Yas'm. Yas'm, reckon I could." She turned her attention to the child in her arms and her voice, as she continued, was liquid soft. "Zeke's doin' so good—I ain' aim to wuk out no mo'. Jes' keep house heah fo' him."

Then Mary Louise, sensing defeat, struck; struck unerringly for her objective which she judged to be the vulnerable spot; struck with characteristic vigour and direct: "I'll give you six dollars a week if you'll come and do the cooking for Miss Susie, for this summer." She paused and observed the effect.

Zenie had suddenly acquired all the coy graces of a maid receiving a long-expected proposal. She cast her eyes discreetly down, toyed at the rocker edge with her shoe, and smiled.

"You won't have to clean up the house. Landy does that. You won't have to do a single thing but cook." The speech ended with a rising inflection. Mary Louise's eloquent picture inspired even herself with hope.

"Mis' Burrus done offa me seven."

There was a momentary silence, during which time Mary Louise marshalled her routed forces. Directly she gallantly renewed the attack: "I'll give you seven then. And you can have all the time off you want, whenever you get through with the dishes." She had come, in a way, prepared for shocks, but the whirlwind manner of her recklessness was leaving her a bit breathless.

Zenie's face at once assumed a look of concern and lifting her head she pondered far-off possibilities. "Zeke, he home so little," she began, and her voice had an ineffable sadness, "I likes to be home when he come."

"But you can be at home when he comes," Mary Louise explained with a patience which she far from felt. "You can get off directly dishes are done—seven o'clock every evening, I'm sure."

"I know," responded Zenie, still doubting. "But Zeke, he gone at night. Mos' eve' night. He home in de day, mos' de day."

It ended by Mary Louise's offering and Zenie's accepting ten dollars a week, and with a promise of starting in on the following Monday. Mary Louise descended the cabin steps with the hollow pomp of one who has bought his victory too dearly. Zenie, from the steps, called cheerily: "Mis' Ma'y Louise. You bring me some goods fuh a dress? Sometime when you come up ag'in?"

Mary Louise paused at the gate and speculated on the humble creature on whom she had wreaked her will. "I guess I might, Zenie. What kind do you want?"

Zenie beamed. "Oh, mos' any kin'. Whateveh you think is pritty. I pay you fo' it."

Mary Louise promised and departed. She walked home very thoughtfully. Ten dollars a week! Ten dollars just to get the cooking done! She had had her eyes fixed very clearly indeed on the coveted goal to brush aside such an expensive obstacle.

That afternoon, as she busied herself with little chores about the house—she was sweeping the side porch at the time—she chanced to look up and saw Joe Hooper driving by in a low-swung phaeton behind a sleepy old horse. Beside him sat Mr. Mosby, very prim and very erect, and Joe's arm lay along the back of the seat behind him. The street was rather shady and it was quite a distance from where she was to where he was passing. But somehow it seemed to her that there was a singularly cheerful, quite happy expression on his face as he lolled back against the cushion. And he did not look in as he passed.



CHAPTER VII

Two weeks passed. Joe felt himself gradually slipping into an abyss of resignation. Nearer and nearer came June. Less and less he seemed to care. He took interest in nothing. He ate and slept and plodded. He ate and slept and plodded as though all that life consisted of was eating and sleeping and plodding. Most of us have seen in some quiet fence corner, just behind the barn, under some old tree with gnarled trunk and droopy branches, an old gray horse, with eyes closed, muzzle resting on the top rail, one hind leg slightly bent and propped by the tip of a cracked and drying hoof. Most of us have seen such a horse, seemingly on the gradual slip into oblivion, whose very tail-switching was so rhythmic and regular as to fit in, in absolute harmony, with the swelling waves of sleep and measured breathing and all that sort of thing. And that very horse might well be on the brink of a day's exhausting labour. And furthermore he might well know it. Certainly his experience might tell him—easily enough. Yet he stands there switching in a sort of self-imposed numbness. It is probably nature's way of anaesthetizing him from the pain of unlimited drabness. It is the only way a sensitive nature can face such a prospect without going mad. Such was Joe.

He had slumped. He no longer cared. He no longer cared if skies were blue and if breezes were lazy and outdoors was calling. He no longer cared when the quitting whistle blew. He no longer cared that June was only two weeks off. He would not even have cared if June had been the end of it all. He had settled into his stupor.

And then one morning at about eleven o'clock he was summoned to the telephone by the switchboard operator. It was a drowsy morning, full of dronings and rustlings, and he was very heavy lidded as he stepped into the booth reserved for such calls. He had been expecting a message from Indianapolis about some shipment that had gone astray and for which he was putting in a claim. He sank heavily down upon the hard, polished little stool. The air was stuffy and foul about him.

"This Mr. Hooper?" he heard a voice say.

He said it was.

"Well, this is——" He had not the slightest idea what the name was. But it made not the slightest difference. It might have been the president or it might have been the shipping clerk. All that mattered was that it was a tiresome sack of castings giving him some extra trouble. And so he stretched a little and yawned a little and replied: "Yes. All right."

And then the voice went on a little hurriedly—too hurriedly for him to catch it all. And instead of "sack of castings," the voice kept on crazily alluding to "your uncle" and "all night"—and phrases that were jumbled as in a dream. He came to himself suddenly with a start and then the connection was broken off and there was nothing but a confused buzzing and rattling. He straightened up on the stool, waited a minute, and then jiggled the receiver. He felt very queer. He felt to blame for his stupidness. He felt someway as though he had been caught up with. And he could not understand.

Directly the exchange called his name and he responded quite sharply and briskly. Then her "Just a minute," and he was feeling suddenly taut and tense. And then the voice was switched on again.

Like a dream it came. He could barely make out the syllables. The voice was broken—seemed very far-away—very weak. It was telling him that his uncle—his uncle, Mr. Mosby—"Brrr! Brrr!"—and had not been seen since. There was a moment's pause.

And then—would he come?

Another pause and he had vague notions that that was all. And yet he had not heard. Yes, he would come.

There was a click and then silence, and there he was, sitting just as though he had dreamed it all. Then a voice called, "Did you get them?" And he mechanically put up the receiver without a word. Something had happened—just what, he could only guess—make out piecemeal. There was trouble—he could feel that. Uncle Buzz had somehow stepped beyond the pale. He had heard the words "all night" and "no trace of him." This was no ordinary trouble. This was not a matter of trial balance.

He opened the door and stepped out into the office. It was a changed place. Over there was his long flat-topped desk with the opened ledger upon it. A sheet of paper had blown to the floor and was sliding over toward him, its edges curling lazily. These seemed live, vibrant features. One of the clerks across the way had thought of something humorous and was leaning forward to tell his vis-a-vis. It had been so vital that he had laid his pen down to tell it. He was talking with half-shut lips, with eyes that shifted back and forth alert for a glance of disfavour. His rusty black derby sat on the back of his head: his white pique tie had slipped away from a bright brass collar button....

Through the open door he could see Mr. Boner hunched up over his desk and as he watched, that gentleman suddenly plunged his head in a ducking motion toward the cuspidor on the floor and just as quickly bent down again over the desk. Like fire-flashes of consciousness all these things were. These were things going on outside of him. There was a world moving on outside of him, a world that took little count of the creatures in its path. All this—all this about him—was like a bit of stale, flat, slightly greenish backwater—the big wheels churning away just beyond and paying it no attention, letting it grow staler and staler. Some day there would come a change—as though the miller had opened up another sluice—and a few vigorous splashings and all would be changed even here. He viewed it speculatively, as one outside it all. He suddenly felt that for him it was all over. And he went into Mr. Boner's office.

Mr. Boner looked up sidewise.

"I've had a 'phone call from home."

Mr. Boner's eyes rolled slightly, showing the whites.

"There's some trouble there. I'll have to go."

A moment's pause. Mr. Boner cleared his throat. "All right," he said. And then he bent back over his work.

He went and got his hat. With his hand on the swinging door he paused and looked back. Not a head was raised. In the air there hovered a droning, a rustling. It was like a vast, drowsy, slothful thing, ignorant, dull, hateful. He pulled open the door. And then he left it.

Three hours later he was standing in the "Golden Rule" at Bloomfield. Before him was a glass counter wherein were displayed knives and cleavers and scissors and other cutlery. Above the counter, peering at him rather anxiously over steel-rimmed spectacles, were the head and shoulders of Mr. Burrus. Burrus! It had come to him on the train. That was the name he had not caught. Burrus! Who else?

"And you say that the last time you saw him was when he got into his buggy and drove away—last night? What makes you think he's gone away?"

Mr. Burrus had been thoughtfully eyeing his stock of knives through the case and as Joe finished he cast a quick, sidewise glance up at him. Joe caught the flicker of it through the spectacles. "Well," he began, and hesitated a little, "it's what I woulda done—under the circumstances." Mr. Burrus' manner, usually so brisk and business-like, seemed suddenly to have changed. He scratched his head with a long and bony finger and looked up again at Joe. What he saw seemed not to reassure him, for Joe had all of a sudden grown beyond Bloomfield's conception of him. He towered above the cutlery case—seemed to fill out his clothes. There was a set look about his mouth and a steadiness about his eyes. Mr. Burrus paused again.

"Circumstances?" said Joe. "Under what circumstances?"

Mr. Burrus gazed off into the clear blue of the sky patch outlined by his front door. "Well," he began cautiously, "I weren't callatin' to say anything about this to anybody, but—I had to let Bushrod go." The little weazened body with its scrawny neck rising out of the gaping rubber collar, the shiny bald head with its fringe of graying hair about the edge, the white shirt sleeves with the frayed cuffs and the skinny brown hands—a most incongruous disguise for Nemesis to take in passing a pronunciamento.

"Why?" Joe repeated after him softly. "Wasn't he doing his work?"

Another flash-like glance up through the steel-rimmed spectacles. Mr. Burrus appeared to be weighing his words. "No," he considered, "it weren't that." He drummed with his fingers on the glass counter. "He was drunk," he snapped out, and stared sternly off into space. And then as if he felt it becoming of him, he frowned and his adam's-apple moved up and down with quick, spasmodic jerks. But he would not look at Joe.

A moment's silence descended on the shop and the odours of the place, as though set free by that silence, came drifting to Joe's nostrils as he stood there waiting—waiting for the story. There was a blending of the smells of coal oil and fresh cloth on bolts and the indefinable metallic smell of tinware, and behind it all an overtone of odour, as it were, of sweet growing things—hay and grain—and the fields—Someone dropped a pan in the rear of the shop and Mr. Burrus looked around fiercely. When he again faced Joe, the harassed look was gone.

Joe had been gradually making up his mind. "You'd seen him drunk before?—That wasn't the first time?"

Mr. Burrus looked up. "Well!" he began tartly. "So much the worse, isn't it?"

"No," said Joe, "it's not. If you'd fired him the first time there'd have been some reason for it. It was because he wasn't the kind of man you wanted in your office, wasn't it?"

"That was it, exactly," agreed Mr. Burrus.

"It was because he didn't see things as he should, didn't do things as he should—in a general way—that he wasn't fit for the job, Mr. Burrus?" Joe went on.

"Exactly."

"And if he had—had been of a piece with yourself—so that you could have jiggled him around in your fingers like a hunk of putty, it would have been all right. It was not his drinking—it was his drinking in spite of your wanting him not to—that got him in bad, wasn't it, Mr. Burrus?"

Mr. Burrus fidgeted and then turned sharply on Joe. "This ain't no third degree."

"And you think he's gone away?" Joe continued as though not hearing him.

"Of course he's gone away. What else was there for him to do?"

There was no obvious alternative.

Joe took his leave and went to see Mrs. Mosby. As he stood waiting in the cool, high-ceilinged hall, he was struck by the quiet of the place. It had an air of waiting. What for? There was a high walnut hat-rack with a mirror and a marble slab with a card tray on it, and two high-backed chairs, likewise black walnut and elaborately carved and atrocious, and in the dim recesses of the stair a horsehair sofa, all just as they had been for years. They were mute but they seemed expectant. What could they be waiting for? They were on the outside edge of things—where life was passing. What could be in store for them? And yet, as he stood in the hall, with the sound of his breathing so fine, so distinct in his ears, they seemed to be part of another presence waiting there with him, a mute presence as to sound, but in some way eloquent voiced, clamorous to be heard.

A faint rustling came to his ears and then steps, and looking up, he saw his aunt Loraine coming down the stairs. Her bangles and her trinkets gave out hushed little clickings and he could hear her breathing as she came across the carpet to meet him.

"Joseph," she said, and he could see beneath her shell that she was agitated. "Joseph! What do you suppose can have happened?" Her toilette, like an ancient ritual observed in every sacred detail, included her manner and deportment. The voice, the inflection, the bearing—all went with the ruching and the bangles. Joe had once wondered if she put them all in the same box when she went to bed.

"I don't know, Aunt Lorry, I'm sure." Catching a haggard look about her eyes he added more gently: "But I wouldn't be too worried. He's probably gone to Louisville."

She shook her head, and in spite of herself her voice broke a little. "He's never done that without telling me."

Joe stood for a moment in thought. "There was no business that would take him anywhere—business about the farm?"

"No," she said. "Won't you come in and sit down in the parlour? I was so upset——"

He looked at her kindly. It was perhaps the first time in his experience he had ever done so. Somehow the shell did not seem so to cover her. She was such a tight little body, a close-bound fagot of reserves and inhibitions. She had never exuded the slightest humanity. And now the shell was cracking and little glints were showing through. "No, Aunt Lorry," he said. "Not now. There's nothing to be gained by talking—unless you have any ideas as to where—where he might have gone."

Her eyes looked haggard but they remained stoically dry. She shook her head.

He turned to go and took a few steps toward the door. And she came and laid her hand on his arm. It was as light and feathery as a dead leaf, but he could feel the warmth through his sleeve.

"Don't," she said, "don't let anything get out if—if there's anything should be kept quiet." She looked him earnestly in the eyes. "I'll depend on you?"

He promised and ran lightly down the front steps. Behind him the front door closed, ponderous and grave. And as he passed around the curve of the driveway to the gate he looked back and the shadows of the old house were stretching out toward him on the grass.

He had had a sudden idea. There in the front hall it had occurred to him that there was one person at least who might know something. He had recalled that last night spent in the upstairs ell bedroom, the voices, the clatter of a car. Zeke was probably closer to his uncle Buzz than any other living soul. And just as suddenly he had decided that it would be time wasted to talk with his aunt Loraine—time that could be well spent elsewhere. And so his departure had been precipitate. And now as he hurried along the plank walk, beneath the arching branches, with the world so fresh and green and hopeful about him, he felt how incongruous everything was. Over beyond the hedge the blackbirds were hopping about on the grass looking for worms, giving occasional satisfied clucks. Across an intersecting road, on up ahead, an old buggy passed, drawn by a jogging horse with hanging head. Like the Mosby turnout—very. And that very morning he had been at his desk, drugged, overwhelmed with the hopelessness of monotony.

He passed on to the other side of town, keeping to the back streets, for he did not wish to meet any one or talk to any one. It was nearing six o'clock as he approached the gate of Zeke Thompson's cabin, and there was that golden glow in the sky which so often follows a spell of dampness. It had rained the night before—the road looked dark and cool—and about the western sky the clouds were hovering as if undecided. But the sunlight streamed bravely through and all was fresh and clean and cool.

The front door was open and as Joe passed through the gate he saw no one. Softly he climbed the steps and passed over the threshold. The room was empty, but an apron thrown carelessly over the back of a rocking chair gave evidence of its having been vacated not long since. The door to the next room was standing ajar.

Joe stood and pondered. Just what should he ask Zeke? Should he tell him what had happened? Zeke might probably have heard, if the news was about. Standing there, waiting, there came to his ears a peculiar sound, faint, high-pitched, and monotonous. He listened. Someone was singing in the next room in a voice not much louder than a whisper. Curious, he walked softly over to the door and peered through.

There in a tiny rocking chair sat a little figure rocking to and fro. Its back was half turned toward him, but he could see a kinky head which was bent over something held in its arms, which it was most evidently lulling to sleep. The room was darkening, with only a single patch of orange-coloured sunlight upon the bare floor. Back and forth went the little body. He could see the bare feet with the stubby toes, escaping as by miracle the ever-threatening rocker. There was a small square of blue-calico-covered back, two little pigtails of hair tightly tied with scraps of baby-blue ribbon, and—the voice. It was as fine and high as wind blowing across a hair and with a curious, lifting minor note. He listened.

First there would be a gentle hushing and then the refrain—the melody was unappreciable and elusive, though constant:—

"Grasshopper set on sweet tater vine, On sweet tater vine, On sweet tater vine. Big turkey gobbler come up behime And nip him off that sweet tater vine."

With the word "nip" would come a crescendo, swelling to a sharp little monosyllabic quaver, and then the whole thing would die away most mournfully.

Twice he heard it sung through to the faint accompaniment of the tiny screaking rocker. It was a very solemn abjuration against the promiscuous sitting about of casual creatures. And oddly enough it seemed to him in a way that something was speaking through that feeble, quavering voice to him; that this was of the same parcel with what had happened, was happening. He felt singularly tense—had not the slightest desire to laugh. And as he watched, the orange patch on the floor began to fade, until the room was bathed in shadow. And the song came suddenly to an end and he heard a gentle little "Hush," and then a sigh, and then silence. Slowly he backed away on tiptoe from the door.

He had barely gained the security of the front room—somehow he felt it as security—when he heard the gate screak and, turning suddenly, saw a man dart like a shadow around the side of the house. For a moment he stood in indecision; then he walked softly to the open front door and stood waiting on the threshold. It would be easier to explain his presence there. The sky had grown darker; curling billows of cloud rolling in from the south had chased away the orange glow and their under surface was lit by a pale-green luminance as they came. Shifting wisps of vapour slid twisting and writhing on up ahead, like outriders on reconnaissance. It was singularly still.

Joe stood and waited. Directly he heard a sound, and then steps echoed on the walk around the side of the cabin, and then a man came hurrying around the corner, took one step up on the cabin stair, and then fell back with a low cry: "Fo' de Lawd."

It was Zeke. The smoothness of his skin turned an ashen colour and the whites of his eyes were rolling. He pushed back away from the doorway and stared at Joe. Gradually the terror began to fade out of his face and it was superseded by a sickly grin. Joe was watching him closely.

"You plum skeered me to deff," he finally managed to say, his breath coming fast and thick. "Thought you wuz a ghos'." The grin was very weak and it quickly subsided.

Zeke was a gaunt "darky" of that peculiar transparent blackness that looks as though it is put on only one layer deep, and yet is black, not brown. He was thin and shambling, with high and prominent cheekbones and eyes that showed a lot of white at all times. Across one cheek was a long, purplish scar reaching up to the corner of one eye. It gave him a look of cunning from that quarter. But on the whole he was an ineffectual, shiftless looking Negro, with hands that were always dangling and feet that always dragged.

"Ain' seen you fo' a long time, Mist' Joe."

"No. I've been away—down in the city." He paused a moment, considering the best way to begin. "Where were you and Mr. Bushrod last night?" he ventured on a bold stroke.

Zeke's eyes opened wide. "Why, we wusn' no place, Mist' Joe, Mist' Bushrod, he—I was to bring him—he and I wuz to have a little bisnis ovah to de house, but I couldn' come." His face clouded and took on an anxious look. "Dey ain' no trubbel, is dey, Mist' Joe?"

Joe made no reply and Zeke watched his thoughtful, serious face with growing anxiety. Here was one more avenue of possible solution blocked. Since yesterday afternoon no one had apparently seen him—Uncle Buzz. It was as though the world had swallowed him up. He would have to seek elsewhere. He was on the point of dismissing the matter, of going elsewhere, when a thought suddenly came to him.

"You and he were to have some business last night?" he said, looking at Zeke intently.

Zeke grinned a sheepish grin. "Yessuh, we wuz—we had a little bisnis."

"But you didn't meet him? Sure you didn't meet him?"

"Sho I neveh. I ain' able to git de—I was detain'." Zeke had learned from experience and considerable instinct to hedge his utterances about with much generality. It was a good principle. It meant less to retract.

Joe thought another moment. "Take me," he said suddenly, "to the place where you get the business." There he might find a connecting link in his chain, he felt growingly certain.

"Oveh to Mist' Bushrod's?" The inflection was perfectly naive.

"No. Of course not—out where you get it. Over to Fillmore or wherever it is."

"Now, Mist' Joe," very reproachfully and with a quick, nervous flashing of the eyes.

Joe frowned. "You needn't put on anything with me, Zeke. I'm not going to give you away. Let's go get your car." He stretched out his arm as though to sweep Zeke into doing his bidding and started for the door.

"But I ain' eveh had no bisnis to Fillmo'," Zeke began in a last effort to stem the tide. "They ain' no bisnis theh."

"That's more like it. That may be the truth," said Joe pressing him on. And Zeke reluctantly passed out and descended the steps.

As Joe turned to close the front door behind him he caught a look back in the room. Framed in the doorway stood a very small pickaninny, barely reaching to the knob. She was barefoot, in a blue calico dress, with her hair done in two kinky braids that stood out in front like diminutive horns. In her arms she held tightly clutched an old corn shock wrapped in a red rag. One hand grasped the doorpost. And she was watching him wide eyed and very gravely.

"That's good advice you gave me," Joe said to her, as he closed the door.

They made their way around a corner to a ramshackle shed, Joe urging on the reluctant Zeke by the menace of an encroaching shoulder. Zeke paused at the entrance. He groped in his pocket and directly pulled forth a key on a very dirty, greasy string. Fumblingly he inserted it in the lock. Then he paused again and lifting his eyes, thoughtfully inspected the sky.

"Look powahful lak rain," he reflected dubiously.

"Get the car out," said the inexorable Joe. "We can put the top up."

Zeke opened the door and went in. For several minutes there was the metallic slip and catch of the crank and Zeke's laboured breathing. Then there issued forth a reverberating roar as of a monster released in travail, and then slowly there emerged, back end first, a perfect scarecrow of an automobile, mud stained and rust streaked, with an arrangement on the back like a discarded chicken crate, with fenders that were battered and twisted as though torn by some elemental tempest, and with a sagging and flopping top over the front seat that looked as though at any moment it might collapse from sheer decrepitude. Slowly the thing backed out of the shed, in a curve to the road, with much groaning and roaring, and then came to a stop. The whites of two eyes peered out of the shadow of the enveloping bonnet as Joe approached.

He took one more look at the sky before he climbed in. The racing forerunners of storm had in some inexplicable manner vanished and there remained a lowering canopy of gray and black with here and there a patch of grayish green. Over in the west was a thin line of greening yellow, and the shadows were darkening over the back lanes through the trees.

"Let's go," said Joe, climbing in.

With much panting and sputtering and popping the car started slowly forward and they were off. Neither spoke. They came to an intersecting street and Zeke slowed down the car.

"Which way, Mist' Joe?" he asked.

Joe was suddenly irritated. "To Fillmore. You know where I mean. Wherever you've been going for the stuff."

Zeke made a sudden turn to the left, narrowly escaping the projecting roots of a tree. Joe clung to the top brace for support. Down a darkening street they rolled, with the trees arching, sombre overhead, and on either side, back in the shadows, the darker shapes of houses with here and there the passing glow of a lighted lamp. Night descended upon them as they left the town and a few splashes of rain appeared on the dirty glass of the wind-shield. Joe settled stoically down to wait. There was so much time to be passed until he could be of further use and until then there was no need of making any effort. The thought of the morning came back to him. It did not seem possible that the same day was passing. Singularly, the idea of Bromley's was the thing that obsessed him rather than the business in hand. It was as though he had been released on furlough. "Grind, grind, grind," said the car. "You will be back at it all to-morrow. This is not real. This is a dream you're having." He shook himself. He was getting sleepy, felt utterly fagged.

And then Mary Louise flashed across his mind. "Come on," she seemed to say. "You're slipping. You're getting behind. They're all getting ahead of you. You're not keeping up. Let's get in a little more—little more—little more." He lurched against the top brace, blinked, and straightened up. Beside him was the shadow bent a little over the wheel. He could see the outline of the peak of the old golf cap and the dim tracing of Zeke's face, about it a faint gleam, and then the flash of an eye. He pondered. Here was Zeke doing his work—playing his part in the scheme of things. He was not bothered by any notions of obligation. He was not concerned with working out his destiny. He played his cards as he got them. "Sometime they roll seven—and sometime they roll two," he remembered the words of a philosopher of the rolling rubes a year ago—or was it a lifetime? Bromley's! The Golden Rule! Mary Louise! All alike. "Shape yourself to this pattern. Fill this niche. You've got to," said one. "Be like me. Do as I do. Or get out," said another. "It costs so much to live this way. And you have to. Or it's not worth living," said the third. How about his way of looking at it?

He turned suddenly to the inscrutable face beside him.

"You don't let anybody cramp your style, do you, Zeke?" he said.

Zeke started. The sudden voice for a moment terrified him. "Nossuh, I doesn'," he stammered, anxious to agree.

Joe's voice was kindly encouraging. "Well, don't you let them, ever."

"Nossuh, I won'." And singularly he spoke the truth.

They came to a stretch of sand and the car slowed down appreciably. In addition there was a grade. And then came a flash of lightning over in the west, straight ahead of them, and another, fan-shaped, like the slow opening of a hand. In the momentary glare they saw the outlines of a hill up before them, with the road clipping it in two. A telephone pole on the crest stretched out spectral arms and leaned away. And then darkness again.

Joe decided he had better tell Zeke the object of their mission. It really didn't matter much, but then he wanted to talk.

"Do you reckon Mr. Bushrod's in Fillmore, Zeke?" he began, trying to make it as conversational as possible.

"I dunno. Mist' Joe. He might could." This offered no encouragement.

"He's been gone—ever since last night. Reckon he is in Fillmore?" He caught the gleam of two eyes as Zeke partly turned to look at him.

"I dunno, Mist' Joe. Wheh you reckon he gone?" As yet the import had failed to reach him.

For a short while they rolled along in silence, silence save for the rattling labour of the car. The grade was growing steeper. On both sides of the road the woods were encroaching and the only light was the feeble one cast by the single uncertain lamp of the car. It barely seemed to puncture the black.

"Mist' Bushrod ain' been home?" came Zeke's voice. The idea was beginning to have effect.

"Not since yesterday morning."

For another interval, silence, and then: "Whuh Mist' Bushrod gone? Reckon he gone to Louisville?" Perhaps the faint stirrings of a cell of conscience. Who can say?

"Don't know, Zeke. Perhaps."

As though satisfied by this mutual exchange of confidence, Zeke lapsed again into silence, and for a time nothing was heard save the voice of the car and occasional sighing bursts of wind high up in the tree-tops. Then there came a black line of shadow stretching across their way, on up ahead, and above it a yellowish, greenish streak of light where the clouds were breaking. Faint wisps of vapour went curling slowly across the streak and there was a patch of blue, very deep, and the momentary gleam of a star, and then they plunged into the shadow.

The air grew cooler, almost cold. The woods had swept down upon the road and engulfed it. Even the noise of the motor seemed quieter, and above it could be heard whisperings and occasional crackings. Something started up from a thicket by the side of the road and they could hear it scurrying through the underbrush. Zeke moved up the throttle and they began to move faster. And on either side of them came down the darkness, sweeping past them, pressing close, and before them wavered the faltering light, and the cool damp air came fingering and touched their faces.

Zeke stopped the car. The rushing darkness stopped. The breeze was still.

"Heah's de place," he said, and his voice was lower; Joe could barely hear him.

"I thought it was Fillmore. This isn't Fillmore."

"I know," said Zeke. "I doesn' go to Fillmo'. Dis is de place whuh I gets it. Up de paff a piece."

Joe was on the point of telling him to go on—on to Fillmore, where proper inquiry might be made, when a sense of curiosity prompted him to stop. He would see where the illegal traffic was being carried on. Zeke was trustingly letting him in on his business and he might not understand. After all, it was getting down in a way to the heart of the business—in a way getting closer to Uncle Buzz. He had never bothered much before. He climbed out of the car and Zeke shut off the motor.

The silence, as he followed Zeke down the narrow path, was oppressive. There would come a vast sighing like a wave of sound, and a settling, a few crackings far off, and then silence. The ground was soft with a matting of fallen leaves, damp and mouldy, and once as Zeke turned his pocket flashlight from the path there came a gleam of water. Briars flicked his face and scratched his hands, and once a low-hanging branch struck him across the eyes and he stumbled from the path and stepped into slime. He kept close behind his guide, for the darkness was intense and the path was tortuous. Directly Zeke stopped. The pocket light made a small circle on the ground.

"Heah 'tis," Zeke whispered, and pointed with the light.

A thicket of blackberry bushes crowded into a corner of an old snake-rail fence and two old boards were all that was visible in the narrow compass of the light—that, and a pool of dark water over to one side. Up above, there was a break in the trees and a suggestion, beyond, of open fields. He stood for a minute. Nothing else was visible, nothing from the hand of man, as Zeke moved the light back and forth in slow-sweeping arcs. It had been a waste of time; there was nothing to see, nothing but the crude assignation place of a troop of spectral whiskey jugs, and the seat of a profitable industry. He turned to go, his mind shifting to other things. He heard Zeke fumbling in the bushes, saw the light switch into the fence corner, then across the pool; and then he heard a cry, a low cry of terror, and caught a glimpse of something white—on the ground, near a big tree. And then Zeke's voice, "Fo' Gawd!" and the light switched off and someone came hurrying toward him in the darkness.

"Come on, Mist' Joe. Le's git away fum heah!"

Zeke brushed past him in an agony of haste. He heard his footsteps on the leaf carpet, saw the crazy flickerings of the light through the trees, and had a sudden intense desire to follow. But he paused, curious, mastering his fear. And then the outline of the clearing came slowly to his eyes, and looking up he saw that the clouds were breaking and that the tip of the moon was showing through. Slowly the place was bathed in a silvery flood. Back slipped the shadows. Shapes that had been pressing, close at hand, receded and took the form of trees, of bushes, lurking there on the edge of the darkness. He saw the fence corner. He saw the two boards propped up against it, forming a cache. He saw the pool, a tiny little woodland pool. And then he caught again that glimmer of white by the foot of a huge beech tree. Slowly he made his way toward it with beating heart. Slowly it took shape, a huddled shadow, right on the edge of the light. He touched it with his foot, careful lest he step beyond. He stooped. He touched it with his hand. He turned it over. And the moonlight, slipping through the trees as though to help him, sent a feeble, flickering shaft down—upon the upturned face of Uncle Buzz. For a moment it rested there, as if to reassure him, bringing out in misty detail all that was necessary. The thing was hideously befouled, besmirched, lying there in that black swamp water, mute, helpless, utterly broken. But it was unmistakeable. He stretched out his arms and dragged it from the water, and the clouds, closing in again, obscured the moon, leaving all in darkness.



CHAPTER VIII

Two days later they buried Mr. Mosby.

Joe had kept his promise. At least he had kept it as well as it was possible to keep it. It was decided that Mr. Mosby had met his death by drowning. That is what "One Half of Rome" believed. The "Other Half of Rome" perhaps had various ideas. It could not be surmised from the set conventional expressions on the faces of those gathered together in the back parlour that hot Saturday afternoon just what the consensus was. There had been at first a surreptitious buzz of conversation and then deep silence as the Episcopal priest in his long white vestments came slowly in. Joe felt peculiarly outside of it all. He was in a sense neither spectator nor mourner. For Mrs. Mosby depended on the palsied arm of her brother for support. And then there were a few old ladies, friends of Mrs. Mosby's, and himself bringing up the rear—merely appended to the family, the last survivor of the discredited branch. He was conscious of a heavy scent of flowers banked about the close, dark room, a scent in which the cloying sweetness of jasmine prevailed. For a moment there was not a sound, and then the minister lifted his head and began the burial service. He, too, was feeling the heavy hand of time, and his voice, so long charged with the burden of emotion, emotion that had had to be summoned on short notice, seemed on the point of breaking. He was old and broken himself, wearied with futility, with his head raised, half-closed eyes lifted ceiling-ward, his fluttering draperies now billowy, now closely enwrapping his gaunt frame in the little breeze that came in from the hall. There was not much of comfort to be gained, not much of hope. Looking out of the corner of his eyes, Joe could get a glimpse of a wall of white, blank, expressionless faces and the silent waving of countless palm-leaf fans. Directly in front of him was the long, narrow back of Mr. Fawcette, and beside the latter, Aunt Loraine, sitting very straight and very stiff, her new black veil opaquely shielding from curious eyes the delicacy of her grief. The ruching was there, but the bangles had been laid aside. On went that quavering, faltering voice:

"All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds."

Of just what kind had been Uncle Buzz, he found himself wondering. A weaker kind, or at least, a kind ill suited to the world it had been thrown in.

"Now I say, brethren," the voice went on, "that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption."

What, thought Joe, were the chances of all those white, fleshy faces staring there, immovable? The crowd in the back parlour—a single, silent, pasty-faced, fan-waving convention, over which the fat, pasty white hand of death was significantly hovering, and about which the odour of jasmine was pressing. He felt suddenly stifled, suffocated. He wanted to get up and run away, out of doors, anywhere. The only thing that seemed to escape the stifling was his Uncle Buzz, lying there quietly, in acceptance. And then he knew that another link had been broken, a link that held him to the past. There was a little less friendliness, a little less cheer, a little less understandableness—he was conscious of it—a little less need of him.

The service came to an end and a small fraction of the assembly filed out to the family burying ground on the hill behind the house. Here came a repetition of what had been enacted in the back parlour, only there was the distraction of the wind which would be playful and of a robin, perched on a near-by fence post, who would not be depressed but sang away its liquid, throaty warble as though the whole ceremony had been arranged for its own entertainment. It came quickly to an end. Mr. Mosby was sent on his way with all due convention and dispatch with a little of sentimentality thrown in for good measure. A few moments of grace after the last clods of earth were tossed on and patted down, and then everyone was hurrying away, back to his respective niche, cloaking haste with a thin layer of dignity. Mr. Burrus openly ran after a departing "Ford." It was Mr. Martin's, and the handy reserve carry-all of the "Golden Rule," and Mr. Burrus preferred a moment's haste to a long, hot walk at greater leisure. Joe remembered his face, there in the third row at the end, in the back parlour. Inscrutable it had seemed—a weazened, yellowing blank mask, slowly souring in the heat. What had he been thinking on? On the waste of some lost accounts, perhaps—or even on the amount of credit he might allow the widow. It might be that he contemplated the remote results of his own handiwork lying there in the black cloth-covered box. But if this latter, his face showed no sign. And "Neither Half of Rome," though it point an accusing finger, would pause for a moment as it passed him by.

Joe did not go back to the house with the rest of the family. Instead, he struck out across the fields away from them. He climbed the back boundary fence and was soon walking up to his knees in grass and weeds. The air was hot and sticky and heavily charged with a shimmering white water vapour. There were a few sluggish clouds with sombre centres hanging about the valley to the southwest, and there was a drone and zip of flying creatures in swarms above the drying weeds and stubble. Coming to a large oak tree standing solitary in that wasting field, he threw himself face downward on the ground in its shadow, careless that the grass was scant, and that his bed was scratchy. For a moment he lay in utter relaxation, caring for and observing nothing. And then, the sharp edge of his fatigue being broken, he slowly turned on his side and leaned his head on his palm, his elbow resting on the ground. It was a barren prospect that stretched out before him: lazy, shiftless land clear over the brow of the hill that sloped away to the house. The Fawcette place had not been worked to capacity for years, and there it lay, the waste of Mr. Mosby's opportunity. Tiny creatures swarmed in the grass. Joe could see them scurrying up and down the withered and drying stalks. A little crowd of gnats was hovering about his head and occasionally one would light upon his face and stick there dejectedly. Above the grass, against the blue of the sky beyond, he could see the shimmering waves hang tremulous like the air above a hot wood-stove in winter, and there came to his ears the sudden whirring zip of a grasshopper in mid-flight. Directly there came another, and another, till the air seemed full of them. Summer had come. And about him lay the field in listless idleness.

It was common talk that it should be worked, that it was a shame not to work it. But there had not been money enough. Money was needed for everything, everything that man wanted to do, money and something else. About him buzzed the gnats; all around him poured the sunshine; and in his ears was the drone of countless insects. This was Saturday. Another full day and would come Monday. Monday! He had not thought of it until now. He suddenly felt the uselessness of his bonds. And yet he could feel the stretching of his tether. Was everybody fastened to a tether? Was there no such thing as freedom? Singularly enough, this field in all its idleness, with all its heat, with its droning and buzzing, suggested freedom. In fact, the feel of the entire country, this country that he had known, about which his memories clustered thick, suggested freedom. And yet it was not above reproach. People spoke of it condescendingly. "Poor land—unproducing—a century behind the times." What was it? The land? The people? The times? There was Uncle Buzz, with his foothold on two hundred acres, and they had buried him in his one good suit. Buried beneath the force of circumstances, he had never once lifted his head—had died with it in a shallow pool of water. And he was no better. He could feel the shackles close about him, binding him hand and foot. What was one to do? His head dropped down upon the crook of his arm and he fell asleep.

An hour later he awoke. He felt hot and uncomfortable. He stretched himself and rolled over on his back. He gazed upward through the tangle of branches and tried to relax again. But the heat had become unbearable. He struggled to his feet and brushed the litter from his clothes. Away in each direction stretched the field. It was dry and dusty and covered with a short, cutting stubble beneath the upper surface of waving grass and weeds. It no longer held any allurement for him and yet he did not want to go back to the house. He looked at his watch. It was five o'clock. Some of the old ladies would still be there. They would be sitting about on the horsehair chairs making lugubrious conversation. Back toward the left stretched the pike, white and dusty enough. But there were trees along the edge of it, and he remembered the grass in the fence corners to be long and fresh and succulent as a rule, even in midsummer. Slowly he started in that direction. When he reached the boundary fence he was dripping with perspiration and his shoes and trouser hems were covered with the yellow dust. He climbed the fence, and as he stepped out into the road he saw an automobile approaching in the distance, dipping down a hill to the creek that broke the stretch toward Guests. It was not often that motors of any distinction saw fit to travel into Bloomfield; the pike was not good enough. But this approaching car seemed to be one of some distinction—was long and rather rakish, had a deep sound to the exhaust as it started up the hill toward him. Idly he watched it. There were two passengers, a man and a woman, slouched well down in the seats. What could they be doing in the heat of the afternoon with the top down and in all that blazing sunlight? He stepped over to the side of the road and dragged his feet, first one and then the other, in the grass to wipe off some of the dust. He knew that he was hot and dirty and dishevelled, but he did not care much. On came the car. As it came nearer it lost its interest to him and he sat down in the grass and plucked a blade to chew, paying it no further attention. Suddenly, to his surprise, he realized it was stopping and then the woman called to him.

At first he did not recognize her. Her face was quite red from the sun and she had on a fetching little close-fitting motor-bonnet with fluttering lavender strings. A long lemon-coloured duster enveloped the rest of her. She was quite pretty, with the contrast of colour, with her hair all snugly tucked away. It did not look like Mary Louise, but it was. He felt very conscious of his dusty old suit and his wilting collar and his flushed and perspiring face, as he came and stood by the car.

"This is Mr. Claybrook, Joe," she said, looking at him gravely.

He remembered then the big, confident man that had joined them that unhappy night.

"I just heard, Joe. It was terrible. I was awfully distressed."

He looked into her eyes—she spoke so earnestly—and wondered if she were feeling all she might feel. Uncle Buzz had not received very charitable treatment at her hands. The picture of it all came before his mind and he said nothing.

"When is—when is the funeral?"

"It's all over," he replied shortly. "This afternoon."

"Oh."

She turned and had a word with her companion. And then he leaned over, partly across her, smiling quietly.

"We're going right back in an hour or so. Be glad to have you go with us. There's plenty of room." His voice was big and rather pleasant and he had an air of careless assumption that everything would be all right.

"Yes, do, Joe," Mary Louise put in. "I had John drive me up this afternoon. I wanted to get here in time for——Aunt Susie wanted some things."

It was quite natural the way she said, "I had John——"

"It will be better than going back on that morning train—to-morrow? And I suppose you'll have to be back at the office Monday?" He had never known her voice to be so solicitously sweet.

"No," he said, and he surprised himself, "I'm not going back." He had come to no such decision. But the idea was suddenly so utterly distasteful that it seemed impossible. And she having him, Claybrook, take him, Joe, back to work. The smart of it was intolerable. "No," he repeated firmly, "I'm not going back." And then he gazed off across the hood of the motor into the vacant field beyond.

"I see," she replied, rather softly, and he could feel that she was watching him and that Claybrook was, in a way, standing by in a condescending attitude, ready to do her bidding.

He was anxious to be off, anxious to be alone. "Thank you very much, however," he said, and bowed to Claybrook. He avoided Mary Louise's eyes. He backed away from the car and lifted his hat. "Good-bye."

Turning away, he set off down the road, away from Bloomfield, and shortly he heard the motor start and the grind of wheels. He looked back. He saw her lean over as though to speak to Claybrook. And then he saw Claybrook turn his face toward hers. They were probably talking about him.

He trudged on down the road, although he had no idea of where he was going. There was a soreness deep down in his heart and it hurt all the more because he realized that he had been unreasonable. And he had said he was not going back. He caught his breath slightly at the thought. Well, he wouldn't go back. There was no reason why he should—absolutely no reason. With that he turned about and walked briskly back up the hill toward home.

As he entered the front hall he could hear a low hum of conversation on the other side of the parlour doors. They were partly open, and he hurried past lest someone call for him to come in. He went upstairs, into the ell bedroom, and took off his coat. He looked at himself in the glass of the bureau. His face was red and streaked with perspiration and dust. And they had looked quite fresh—"smart" was the word. He proceeded to clean himself up and he spent quite a long time in the process.

When he came downstairs again it was growing dark. He no longer heard the voices in the parlour. When he reached the foot, he paused for a moment in uncertainty. The walnut chairs were there, quite placid and content with themselves, and the hat-rack, and the old horsehair sofa. His aunt Loraine came out of another door, back in the passage. She had, of course, laid aside her veil and her face had been freshly powdered; she looked quite the same. There was a certain prim set to her mouth, and her eyes, as she looked at him, were calculatingly cool. She did not touch him but stood with her arms hanging rather stiffly by her sides.

"Joseph," she said, "we want you to stay, if you will—as long as you feel you can."

The tiny spark that he had felt died away. "We," she had said. He wondered who the "we" might be. Mr. Fawcette, perhaps; perhaps one of the old ladies. Aunt Lorry had evidently been looking ahead. There was no need for him here.

"No," he said rather quietly. "Thank you very much, Aunt Lorry. I must be getting back—first train to-morrow, I expect."

She lifted her eyebrows ever so slightly. "Very well. Make yourself at home while you stay." And she glided off with her queer, noiseless step, back into the shadow of the hall.

He walked to the front door and out on to the wide verandah. He looked down the winding driveway to the gate, all mellowing in the dying sunlight. There was not a breath of air, not a sound. The gate was standing partly open; the last departing guest had neglected to shut it. On the driveway lay something white, somebody's handkerchief. It lay without moving, inert. There was nothing to pick it up, not even the slightest breeze. He gazed across the open country that dipped away to the west to the ridge of hills that was crowned with orange and purple mists, with the white road climbing to its crest. And as he watched, he could see a small blob of white dust moving, leaving a feathery tail behind it. And he turned quickly and went into the house.



PART II

MYRTLE



CHAPTER IX

The sunlight was dazzling white. High winds during the night had chased all clouds to remote quarters and had with the morning suddenly gone, leaving the city to the entire mercy of the sun. It was August and very dry and in the corners of buildings huddled little heaps of dust and elusive trash, withered and powdery. On the pavements and walls the sunlight lay like white-hot gold and the shadows cast by the awnings of Bessire's department store were sharply chiselled as by a stencil. Mary Louise paused for a moment in their shelter and drew breath.

Sometimes work is a fattener. It is when, by virtue of its absorption, certain phases of the body are allowed to function naturally. It is true in the case of meddling minds, also in more or less conscientious natures. Mary Louise's nerves had temporarily ceased to feed upon her. She was getting plump. The lace frill at the bottom of her elbow sleeve lay flat against a curve that was full and round. In fact, one was conscious of a general well-roundedness about her. And her face, which was flushed, was likewise serene.

The tea room had been making money. With the arrival of the intense heat had come generous patronage, especially for the noon meal. And the petty vexations had effaced themselves. For the past few weeks an atmosphere of expectancy had seemed to hover, such as is felt on trains arriving after a long journey, or in the completion of a work. It was the sense of accomplishment. Mary Louise felt her problem undergoing solution, and nothing else mattered. She now laughed at the dismay she had felt at paying ten dollars for a cook in Bloomfield. There was no price to be set on her freedom. And the careless streak in Maida was something to be accepted with good nature and not to be allowed to irritate. Maida was at least on the job, eternally on the job. Not much of a companion truly, nor for that matter a really good business partner. But she irradiated good nature and that was something.