"The truth would be the death of her," said the young man, in a bitter passion of anxiety."Tell her that Fletcher owns the Hall, and that for fifteen years she has lived, blind and paralysed, in the overseer's house! Why, I'd rather stick a knife into her heart myself!""Her terrible pride would kill her--yes, you're right.We'll keep it up to the end at any cost."He turned to her with a sudden terror in his face."She isn't worse, is she?""Worse? Oh, no; I only meant the cost to us, the cost of never speaking the truth within the house.""Well, I'm not afraid of lying, God knows," he answered, in the tone of one from whom a burden has been removed."I'm only wondering how much longer I'll be able to afford the luxury.""But we're no worse off than usual, that's one comfort.Mother is quite happy now since Beulah has been found, and the only added worry is that Aunt Dinah is laid up in her cabin and we've had to send her soup.Uncle Isam has come to see you, by the way.Ibelieve he wants you to give him some advice about his little hut up in the woods, and to look up his birth in the servants'
age-book, too.He lives five miles away, you know, and works across the river at Farrar's Mills.""Uncle Isam!" exclaimed Christopher, wonderingly; "why, what do Iknow about the man? I haven't laid eyes on him for the last ten years.""But he wants help now, so of course he's come to you, and as he's walked all the distance--equally of course--he'll stay to supper.Mother has her young chicken, and there's bacon and cornbread for the rest of us, so I hope the poor man won't go back hungry.Ever since Aunt Polly's chimney blew down she has had to fry the middling in the kitchen, and mother complains so of the smell.She can't understand why we have it three times a day, and when I told her that Uncle Tucker acquired the habit in the army, she remarked that it was very inconsiderate of him to insist upon gratifying so extraordinary a taste."Christopher laughed shortly.
"Well, it's a muck of a world," he declared cheerfully, taking off his coarse harvest hat and running his hand through his clustering fair hair.In the mellow light the almost brutal strength of his jaw was softened, and his sunburned face paled to the beauty of some ancient ivory carving.Cynthia, gazing up at him, caught her breath with a sob.
"How big you are, and strong! How fit for any life in the world but this!""Don't whimper," he responded roughly, adding, after a moment, "Precious fit for anything but the stable or the tobacco field!
Why, I couldn't so much as write a decently spelled letter to save my soul.A darky asked me yesterday to read a postbill for him down at the store, and I had to skip a big word in the first line."He made his confession defiantly, with a certain boorish pride in his ignorance and his degradation.
"My dear, my dear, I wanted to teach you--I will teach you now.
We will read together."
"And let mother and Uncle Tucker plough the field, and plant the crop, and cut the wood.No, it won't answer; your learning would do me no good, and I don't want it--I told you that when you first took me from my study and put me to do all the chores upon the place.""I take you! Oh, Christopher, what could we do? Uncle Tucker was a hopeless cripple, there wasn't a servant strong enough to spade the garden, and there were only Lila and you and I.""And I was ten.Well, I'm not blaming you, and I've done what Iwas forced to--but keep your confounded books out of my sight, that's all I ask.Is that mother calling?"Cynthia bent her ear."I thought Lila was with her, but I'll go at once.Be sure to change your clothes, dear, before she touches you.""Hadn't I better chop a little kindling-wood before supper?""No--no, not to-night.Go and dress, while I send Uncle Boaz for the wine."She entered the house with a hurried step, and Christopher, after an instant's hesitation, passed to the back, and, taking off his clumsy boots, crept softly up the creaking staircase to his little garret room in the loft.
Ten minutes later he came down again, wearing a decent suit of country-made clothes, with the dust washed from his face, and his hair smoothly brushed across his forehead.In the front hall he took a white rosebud from a little vase of Bohemian glass and pinned it carefully in the lapel of his coat.Then, before entering, he stood for a moment silent upon the threshold of the lamplighted room.
In a massive Elizabethan chair of blackened oak a stately old lady was sitting straight and stiff, with her useless legs stretched out upon an elaborately embroidered ottoman.She wore a dress of rich black brocade, made very full in the skirt, and sleeves after an earlier fashion, and her beautiful snow-white hair was piled over a high cushion and ornamented by a cap of fine thread lace.In her face, which she turned at the first footstep with a pitiable, blind look, there were the faint traces of a proud, though almost extinguished, beauty--traces which were visible in the impetuous flash of her sightless eyes, in the noble arch of her brows, and in the transparent quality of her now yellowed skin, which still kept the look of rare porcelain held against the sunlight.On a dainty, rose-decked tray beside her chair there were the half of a broiled chicken, a thin glass of port, and a plate of buttered waffles; and near her high footstool a big yellow cat was busily lapping a saucer of new milk.
