The Voice of the People. Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

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СКАЧАТЬ tyranny had extended over thirty years, was assisted from her pedestal, and the hen-house keys were removed from the nail of the kitchen wall.

      "This will never do, Verbeny," said Miss Chris a month after her arrival. "We could not possibly have eaten three dozen chickens within the last week. I am afraid you take them home without asking me."

      Aunt Verbeny, a fat old woman with a shining black skin, smoothed her checked apron with offended dignity.

      "Hi! Miss Chris, ain't I de cook?" she exclaimed.

      But Miss Chris preserved her ground.

      "That is no excuse for you taking what doesn't belong to you," she replied severely. "If this keeps up I shall be obliged to let Delphy do the cooking. There won't be a chicken in the hen-house by the end of the month."

      Aunt Verbeny still smoothed her apron, but her authority was shaken, and she felt it. She gave a slow grunt of dissatisfaction.

      "Dese ain't de doin's I'se used ter," she protested, and then, beneath the undaunted eyes of Miss Chris, she melted into propitiation.

      "Des' let dat ar chicken alont, Miss Chris," she said, skilfully reducing the charge to a single offence. "Des' let dat ar chicken alont. 'Tain' no use yo' rilin' yo'se'f 'bout dat. Hit's done en it's been done. Hit don't becomst de quality ter fluster demse'ves over de gwines on uv er low-lifeted fowl. You des' bresh yo'se'f down an steddy like hit ain' been fool you ef you knowed yo'se'f. You des' let dat ar chicken be er little act uv erdultery betweenst you en me. Ef'n it's gone, hit'll stay gone!"

      Whereupon Miss Chris retreated, leaving her opponent in possession of the kitchen floor.

      But from this day forth the hen-house was locked at night and unlocked in the morning by the hand of Miss Chris, and Aunt Verbeny's overweening ill-temper diminished with her authority.

      Miss Chris had been a beauty in her day, but as she passed middle age the family failing seized upon her, and she grew huge and unwieldy, the disproportion of her enormous figure to her small feet giving her an awkward, waddling walk.

      She had a profusion of silvery-white hair, worn in fluffy curls about her large pink face, soft brown eyes, and a full double chin that fell over a round cameo brooch bearing the head of Minerva set in a plain gold band. In winter she wore gowns of black Henrietta cloth, made with plain bodices and full plaited skirts; in summer she wore the same skirts with loosely fitting white linen sacques, trimmed in delicate embroideries, with muslin ruffles falling over her plump hands. When she came to the Hall she brought with her innumerable reminiscences of her childhood, which she told in a musical voice with girlish laughter.

      After his sister's arrival the general discontinued his fitful overseering. He rose early and spent his long days sitting upon the front porch, smoking an old briar pipe and reading the Richmond papers. Occasionally he would ride at a jogging pace round the fields, giving casual directions to the workers, but as his weight increased he found it difficult to mount into the saddle, and, at last, desisted from the attempt. He preferred to sit in peace in his cane rocking chair, looking down the box walk into the twilight of the cedar avenue, or gazing placidly beyond the aspens and the well-house to the streaked ribbons of the ripening corn. It was said that he had never been the same man since the death of his wife. Certainly he laughed as heartily and his jovial face had taken a ruddier tint, but there was a superficiality in his exuberant cheerfulness which told that it was not well rooted below the surface. His jokes were as ready as ever, but he had fallen into an absent-minded habit of repetition, and sometimes repeated the same stories at breakfast and supper. He talked freely of his dead wife, he even made ill-placed jests about his widowerhood, and he never failed to kiss a pair of red lips when the chance offered; but, for all that, his gaze often wandered past the huge sycamore to the family graveyard, where rank periwinkle grew and mocking-birds nested. Through the long summer not a Sunday passed that he did not take fresh flowers to one of the neatly trimmed mounds where the marble headpiece read:

      "AMELIA TUCKER,

       BELOVED WIFE OF

       THOMAS BATTLE,

       DIED APRIL 3RD., 18—.

       'I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord.'"

      Sometimes the children were with him, but usually he went alone, and once or twice he returned with red eyelids and asked for a julep.

      There was little to fill his life now, and he divided it between Bernard and Eugenia, whom he adored, and the negroes, whom he reviled for diversion and spoiled to make amends.

      "They will break me!" he would declare a dozen times a day. "They will turn me out of house and home. Here's old Sambo's Claudius come back and moved into the quarters. He hasn't a cent to his name, and he's the most no 'count scamp on earth. It's worse than before the war—upon my soul it is! Then they lived on me and I got an odd piece of work out of them. Now they live on me and don't do a damned lick!"

      "My dear Tom!" Miss Chris cheerfully remonstrated. She had long been reconciled to her brother's swearing propensities, which she regarded as an amiable eccentricity to be overlooked by a special indulgence accorded the male sex, but she never knew just how to meet him in a discussion of the servants.

      "What is to be done about it?" she inquired gravely. "Claudius left here at the beginning of the war, Aunt Griselda says, and he has never been back until now. It seems he has brought his family. He has lung-trouble."

      "Done about it!" repeated the general heatedly. "What's to be done about it? Why, the rascal can't starve. I've just told Sampson to wheel him down a barrel of meal. Oh, they'll break me! I shan't have a morsel left!"

      The next time it was an opposite grievance.

      "What do you reckon's happened now?" he asked, marching into the brick storeroom, where his sister was slicing ripe, red tomatoes into a blue china bowl. "What do you think that fool Ish has done?"

      Miss Chris looked up attentively, her large, fresh-coloured face expressing mild apprehension. She had rolled back her linen sleeves, and the juice of the tomatoes stained her full, dimpled wrists.

      "He hasn't killed himself?" she inquired anxiously.

      "Killed himself?" roared the general. "He'll live forever. I don't believe he'd die if he were strung up with a halter round his neck. He's moved off."

      "Moved off!" echoed Miss Chris faintly. "Why, I believe Uncle Ish was living in that cabin on Hickory Hill before I was born. I remember going up there to help him gather hickory nuts when I wasn't six years old. I couldn't have been six because mammy Betsey was with me, and she died before I was seven. I declare there were always more nuts on those trees than any I ever saw—"

      But the general broke in upon her reminiscences, and she took up a fresh tomato and peeled it carefully with a sharp-edged knife.

      "Some idiots got after him," said the general, "and told him if he went on living on my land he'd go back to slavery, and, bless your life, he has gone—gone to that little one-room shanty where his daughter used to live, between my place and Burr's—as if I'd have him," he concluded wrathfully. "I wouldn't own that fool again if he dropped into my lap straight from heaven!"

      Miss Chris laughed merrily.

      "It is the last place he would be likely to drop from," she returned; "but I'll call him up and talk with him. СКАЧАТЬ