Gill’s glance was sweeping the table and its tempting dishes with an indescribable air of disapproval.
“You are a-fixin’up powerful,” was his slow comment; “a body would think, to look at all this, that it was the fourth Sunday an’ you was expectin’ the preacher. You’d better begin right; we cayn’t keep this up an’ make a crop.”
Her eyes flashed angrily.
“You had no business to bring Big Joe heer, then,” she fumed. “You know well enough he’s used to fine doin’s, an’ I’m not a-goin’ to have ’im make light of us, ef we are pore. I was jest a-thinkin’; the Whitneys always tied napkins ’round the’r necks to ketch the gravy they drap, an’ Big Joe’s bound to notice that we ain’t used to sech.”
It was finally agreed that for that day at least the slave was to have his dinner served to him where he sat; so Mrs. Gill arranged it temptingly on a piece of plank, over which a piece of cloth had been spread, and took it out to him. She found him almost asleep, but he opened his eyes as she drew near.
Drowsily he surveyed the contents of the cups and dishes, his eyes kindling at the sight of the two whole custards. But his pride—it was evidently that—enabled him to manifest a sneer of irreconcilability.
“I ain’t a-goin’ t’eat a bite,” was the way he put it, stubbornly.
For a moment Mrs. Gill was nonplussed; but she believed in getting at the core of things.
“Are you a-complainin’?” she questioned.
The big negro’s sneer grew more pronounced, but that was all the answer he gave.
“Don’t you think you could stomach a bit o’ this heer custard pie?”
Big Joe’s eyes gleamed against his will, but he shook his head.
“I tol’ um all ef dey sol’ me to you, I wouldn’t eat a bite. I’m gwine ter starve ter death.”
“Oh, that’s yore intention!” Mrs. Gill caught her breath. A sort of superstitious terror seized upon her as she slowly hitched back to the cabin.
“He won’t tech a bite,” she informed Gill’s expectant visage; “an’ what’s a sight more, he says he’s vowed he won’t eat our victuals, an’ that he’s laid out to starve. Peter Gill, I’m afeerd this has been sent on us!”
“Sent on us!” echoed Gill, who also had his quota of superstition.
“Yes, it’s a visitation of the Almighty fer our hoardin’ up that money when so many of our neighbors is in need. I wish now we never had seed it. Ef Big Joe dies on our hands, I ’ll always feel like we have committed the unpardonable sin. We’ve talked ag’in’ slave-holdin’ all our lives tell we had the bag to hold, an’ now we’ve set up reg’lar in the business.”
Gill ate his dinner on the new cloth in morose silence. A heavy air of general discontent had settled on him.
“Well,” he commented, as he went to the water-shelf in the passage to take his afterdinner drink from the old cedar pail, “ef he refused ‘tater custards like them thar he certainly is in a bad plight. If he persists, I ’ll have to send fer a doctor.”
The afternoon passed slowly. The later conduct of the slave was uneventful, beyond the fact that he rose to his full height once, stretched and yawned, without looking toward the cabin, and then reclined at full length on the grass. Another batch of curious neighbors came as near the cabin as the spring. Those who had been ordered away in the forenoon had set afloat a report that Gill had said that, now he was a slave-holder, he would not submit to familiar visits from the poor white trash of the community. And Sid Ruford, the ringleader of the group at the spring, had the boldness to shout out some hints about the one-nigger, log-cabin aristocracy which drove the hot blood to Gill’s tanned face. He sprang up and took down his long-barreled “squirrel gun” from its hooks on the wall.
“I ’ll jest step down thar,” he said, “an’ see ef that gab is meant fer me.”
“I wouldn’t pay no ‘tention to him,” replied Mrs. Gill, who was held back from the brink of an explosion only by the sight of the weapon and a knowledge of Gill’s marksmanship. However, Gill had scarcely taken half a dozen steps down the path when he wheeled and came back laughing.
“They run like a passle o’ skeerd sheep,” he chuckled, as he restored his gun to its place.
This incident seemed to break the barrier of reserve between him and his human property, for he stood over the prostrate form of the negro and eyed him with a dissatisfied look.
“See heer,” he began, sullenly, “enough of a thing is a plenty. I’m gettin’ sick an’ tired o’ this, an’ I ’ll be dadblasted ef I’m a-goin’ to let a black, poutin’ scamp make me lose my nat’ral sleep an’ peace o’ mind. Now, you git right up off ’n that damp ground an’ go in yore room an’ lie down, if you feel that-a-way. Folks is a-passin’ along an’ lookin’ at you like you was a stuffed monkey.”
It may have been the sight of the gun, or it may have been a masterful quality in the Anglo-Saxon voice, that inspired the negro with a respect he had not hitherto entertained for his new owner, for he rose at once and went into his room.
At dusk Mrs. Gill waddled to the closed door of his apartment and rapped respectfully. She heard the bed creaking as if Big Joe were rising, and then he cautiously opened the door and with downcast eyes waited for her to make her wishes known.
“Supper is ready,” she announced, in a voice which, despite her strength of character, quivered a little, “an’ before settin’ down to it, I thought thar would be no harm in askin’ if thar’s anything that would strike yore fancy. When it gits a little darker I could blind a chicken on the roost an’ fry it, or I could make you some thick flour soup with sliced dumplin’s.”
She saw him wince as he tore himself from the temptation she had laid before him, but he spoke quite firmly.
“I ain’t a-goin’ t’eat any more in this worl’,” he said.
“Well, I reckon you won’t gorge yorese’f in the next,” said Mrs. Gill, “but I want to say that what you are contemplatin’ is a sin.” She turned back into the cabin and sat at the table and poured her husband’s coffee in disturbed silence.
“I believe on my soul he’s goin’ to make a die of it,” she said, after a while, as she sat munching a piece of dry bread, having no appetite at all. And Gill, deeply troubled, could make no reply.
It was their habit to go to bed as soon as supper was over, so when they rose from the table Mrs. Gill turned down the covers of the high-posted bed and beat the pillows. Before barring the cabin door, she scrutinized the closed shutter directly opposite, but all was still as death in the room of the slave.
For the first night in many years the old pair found they could not sleep, their brains being still active with the first great problem of their lives. The little clock struck ten. The silence of the night was disturbed by the shrilling of tree-frogs and the occasional cry of the whip-poor-will.
Suddenly Gill sprang up with a little grunt of alarm. “What’s that?” he asked.
“It sounded powerful like somebody a-groanin’,” whispered Mrs. Gill. “Oh, Lordy, Peter, I have a awful feelin’!”
“I ’ll git up an’ see what’s ailin’ ’im,” said Gill, a little more calmly. “Mebby the idiot has done without food till he’s took cramps.”
Dressing himself hastily, he went outside. A pencil of yellow light was streaming through a crack beneath Big Joe’s door. Gill had not put on his shoes, and his feet fell softly on the grass. Putting his ear to the door of the negro’s room, he overheard low groans and words