“Good-bye, Marse Whit’,” he said, simply.
The Colonel took a firmer grasp of the black hand.
“No ill-will, Joe?” he questioned, anxiously.
“No, suh, Marse Whit’, I hain’t got no hard feelin’s ’gin you.”
“Well, then good-bye, Joe. If I ever get my head above water, I ’ll keep my promise about you and Liza. She looked on you as her favorite, but don’t raise your hopes too high. I’m an old man now, and it may be uphill work down there.”
The negro lowered his head and the overseer drove on. As the wagon rumbled down the rocky slope a wisp of blue smoke from the Colonel’s cigar followed it like a banner unfurled to the breeze. For several minutes after the wagon had disappeared Big Joe stood where he had alighted, his eyes upon the ground.
“What’s the matter?” asked Gill, stepping down to him.
“Nothin’, Marse—” Big Joe seemed to bite into the word as it rose to his tongue, then he shrugged his shoulders contemptuously and looked down again.
The Gills exchanged ominous glaces, and there was a pause.
“Have you had anything to eat this morning?” Gill bethought himself to ask.
The black man shook his head.
“I ain’t teched a bite sence dey sol’ me; dey offered it to me, but I didn’t want it.”
Once more the glances of the husband and wife traveled slowly back and forth, centering finally on the face of the negro.
“I reckon it’s ‘cause yore sick at heart,” observed Gill, at first sympathetically, and then with growing firmness as he continued. “I know how you feel; most o’ yore sort has a way o’ thinkin’ yorese’ves a sight better ’n pore white folks, an’ right now the truth is you can’t bear the idee o’ belongin’ to me ’n my wife. Now, me ’n you an’ her ought to come to some sort of agreement that we kin all live under. You won’t find nuther one of us the overbearin’ sort. We was forced to take you to secure ourse’ves agin the loss of our little all, an’ we want to do what’s fair in every respect. I’m told you are a fust-rate shoemaker. Now, ef you want to, you kin set up a shop in yore room thar, an’ have the last cent you kin make. You ’ll git plenty o’ work, too, fer this neighborhood is badly in need of a shoemaker. Now, my wife will fry you some fresh eggs an’ bacon an’ make you a good cup o’ coffee.”
But all that Peter Gill had managed to say with satisfaction to himself seemed to have gone into one of the negro’s ears and to have met with not the slightest obstruction on its way out at the other. To the hospitable invitation which closed Peter’s speech, the negro simply said:
“I don’t feel like eatin’ a bite.”
“Oh, you don’t,” said Gill, at the end of his resources; “maybe you’d feel different about it ef you was to smell the bacon a-fryin’.”
“I don’t wan’t to eat,” reiterated the slave. “Well, you needn’t unless you want to,” went on Gill, still pacifically. “That thar room on the right is fer you; jest go in it whenever you feel like it an’ try to make yorese’f at home; you won’t find us hard to git along with.”
The Gills left their human property seated on a big rock in front of the cabin and withdrew to the rear. There they sat till near noon. Now and then Gill would peer around the corner to satisfy himself that his slave was still seated on the rock. Gill chewed nearly a week’s allowance of tobacco that morning; it seemed to have a sedative effect on his nerves. Finally, Ann Duncan loomed up in the distance and strode toward the cabin. She wore a gown of less brilliant tints than the one she had worn the day before. It had the dun color of clay washed into rather than out of its texture, and it hung from her narrow hips as if it were damp.
“Well, he did come,” she remarked, introductively.
Mrs. Gill nodded. “Yes; the Colonel fetched ’im over this mornin’.”
“So I heerd, an’ I jest ‘lowed I’d step over an’ see how you made out.” Mrs. Duncan’s rippling laugh recalled the whole of her allusions of the day previous. “Thar’s more talk goin’ round than you could shake a stick at, an’ considerable spite an’ envy. Some ‘lows that the havin’ o’ this slave is agoin’ to make you stuck up, an’ that you ’ll move yore membership to Big Bethel meetin’-house; but law me! I can see that you are bothered. How did he take to his room?”
“He ain’t so much as looked in yit,” replied Mrs. Gill, with a frown.
Thereupon Ann Duncan ventured up into the passage and peered cautiously round the corner at Big Joe.
“He’sa-wipin’ of his eyes,” she announced, as she came back. “It looks like he’s a-cryin’ about some ‘n’.”
At this juncture, a motley cluster of men, women, and children, led by Andrew Duncan, came out of the woods which fringed the red, freshly plowed field below, and began to steer itself, like a school of fish, toward the cabin. About fifty yards away they halted, as animals do when they scent danger. Heads up and open-mouthed, they stood gazing, first at the Gills, and then at their slave. Peter Gill grew angry. He stood up and strode as far in their direction as the ash-hopper under the apple-tree, and raised both his hands, as if he were frightening away a flock of crows.
“Be off, the last one of you!” he shouted; “and don’t you dare show yorese’ves round heer unless you’ve got business. This ain’t no side-show—I want you to understand that!”
They might have defied their old neighbor Gill, but the owner of a slave so big and well dressed as the human monument on the rock was too important a personage to displease with impunity; so, followed by the apologetic Mrs. Duncan, who blamed herself for having set a bad example to her curious neighbors, they slowly dispersed.
At noon Mrs. Gill went into the cabin and began to prepare dinner. She came back to her husband in a moment, and in a low voice, and one that held much significance, she said:
“I need some firewood.” As she spoke she allowed her glance to rest on Big Joe. Gill looked at the sullen negro for half a minute, and then he shrugged his shoulders as if indecision were a burden to be shaken off, and mumbling something inaudible he went out to the woodpile and brought in an armful of fuel.
“A pore beginning,” his wife said, as he put it down on the hearth.
“I know it,” retorted Gill, angrily. “You needn’t begin that sort o’ talk, fer I won’t stand it. I’m a-doin’ all I can.” And Gill went back to his chair.
The good housewife fried some slices of dark red ham. She boiled a pot of sweet potatoes, peeled off their jackets, and made a pulp of them in a pan; into the mass she stirred sweet milk, butter, eggs, sugar, and grated nutmeg. Then she rolled out a sheet of dough and cut out some open-top pies.
“I never knowed a nigger that could keep his teeth out of ’em,” she chuckled.
Half an hour later she called out to Gill to come in. He paused in the doorway, staring in astonishment.
“Well, I never!” he ejaculated.
She had laid the best white cloth, got out her new knives and forks with the bone handles, and some dishes that were never used except on rare occasions. She had placed Gill’s plate at the head of the table, hers at the foot, and was wiping a third—the company plate with the blue decorations.
“Whar’s he goin’ to set an’ eat?” she asked.
“Blast me ef I know any more ’n a rat,” Gill told her, with alarmed frankness. “I hain’t thought about it a bit, but it never will do fer ’im to set down with me an’ you. Folks might see it, an’