"Haven't I?"
"Won't little mother be surprised and glad?"
"Let's fool her," the Boy cried. "Let me go up by myself and she won't know me!"
"All right—we'll try."
The brother stopped at the village and the young stranger walked alone to his father's house. How beautiful it all seemed—the big log house with the cabins clustering around it! A horse neighed at the barn and a colt answered from the field.
He walked boldly up to the porch and just inside the door sat his lovely mother. She had been one of the most beautiful girls in all South Carolina in her day, his father had often said. She was beautiful still. She had known what happiness was. She was the mother of ten strong children—five boys and five girls—and her heart was young with their joys and hopes. A smile was playing about her fine mouth. She was dreaming perhaps of his coming.
The Boy cleared his throat with a deep manly note and spoke in studied careless tones:
"Seen any stray horses around here, ma'am?"
The mother's eyes flashed as she sprang through the doorway and snatched him to her heart with a cry of joy:
"No—but I see a stray Boy! Oh, my darling, my baby, my heart!"
And then words failed. She loosed her hold and held him at arm's length, tried to say something, but only clasped him again and cried for joy.
"Please, Ma, let me have him!" Polly pleaded.
And then he clasped his sister in a long, voiceless hug—loosed her and caught her again:
"I missed you, Polly, dear!" he sighed.
When all the others had been greeted, he turned to his mother:
"Where's Pa?"
"Down in the field with the colts."
"I'll go find him!"
With a bound he was off. He wondered what his silent, undemonstrative father would do. He had always felt that he was a man of deep emotion for all his self-control.
He saw him in the field, walked along the edge of the woods, and suddenly came before him without warning. The father's lips trembled. He stooped without a word, clasped the Boy in his arms and kissed him again and again.
The youngster couldn't help wondering why a strong man should kiss so big a boy. The mother—yes—but his father, a man—no.
It was sweet, this home-coming to those who loved deepest. Somehow the monastery, its bells, its organ, its jeweled windows, and its kindly black-robed priests seemed far away and unreal now—only a dream that had passed.
VI
REBELLION
The mother's breakdown was not allowed to stop the Boy's education. Both father and older brother were determined on this. They would use the schools at home now.
He was sent to the County Academy in the fall. The Boy didn't like it. After the easy life with the kindly old monks at St. Thomas, this academy was not only cheap and coarse and uninteresting, but the teacher had no sense. He gave lessons so long and hard it was impossible to memorize them.
The Boy complained to the teacher. A lesson of the same length was promptly given again. The rebel showed the teacher he was wrong by failing to know it.
"I'll thrash you, sir!" was the stern answer.
The Boy would not take that from such a fool. He rose in his wrath, went home and poured out the indignant story of his wrongs.
The father was a man of few words, but the long silence which followed gave a feeling of vague uneasiness. He was never dictatorial to his children, but meant what he said. His voice was quiet and persuasive when he finally spoke.
"Of course, my son, you will have to choose for yourself whether you will work with your hands only, or with your head and hands. You can't be an idler, I need more cotton pickers. You don't like school, try the cotton, I'll give you work."
The Boy flushed and looked at his father keenly. It was no joke. He meant exactly what he had said, and a boy with any sand in his gizzard couldn't back down.
"All right, sir," was the firm answer. "I'll begin in the morning."
He went forth to his task with grim determination. The sun of early September had just risen and it was already hot as he bent to work. Cotton picking looked easy from a distance. When you got at it, things somehow were different. A task of everlasting monotony, this bending from boll to boll along the endless rows! He never realized before how long the cotton rows were. There was a little stop at the end before turning and selecting the next, but these rows seemed to stretch away into eternity.
Three hours at it, and he was mortally tired. His back ached in a dull hopeless pain. He lifted his head and gazed longingly toward the school he had scorned.
"What a fool!" he sighed. "But I'll stick to it. I can do what any nigger can."
He looked curiously at the slaves who worked without apparent effort. Not one of them seemed the least bit tired. He could get used to it, too. After all, this breath of the open world was better than being cooped up in a stuffy old schoolhouse with a fool to set impossible tasks.
"Pooh! I'll show my father!" he exclaimed.
The negroes broke into a plantation song. Jim Pemberton, the leader, sang each stanza in a clear fine tenor that rang over the field and echoed through the deep woods. The others joined in the chorus and after the last verse repeated in low sweet notes that died away so softly it was impossible to tell the moment the song had ceased.
The music was beautiful, but it was impossible for him to join in their singing. He couldn't lower himself to an equality with black slaves. This cotton picking seemed part of their scheme of life. Their strong black bodies swayed in a sort of rhythmic movement even when they were not singing. Somehow his body didn't fit into the scheme. His back ached and ached. No matter. He had chosen, and he would show them he had a man's spirit inside a boy's breast.
At noon the ache had worn away and he felt a sense of joy in conquering the pain.
He ate his dinner in silence and wondered what Polly was thinking about at school. Girl-like, she had cried and begged him to go back.
With a cheerful wave of his hand to his mother, he returned to the field before the negroes, strapped the bag on his shoulder and bent again to his task. The afternoon was long. It seemed at three o'clock there could be no end to it and still those long, long rows of white fleece stretched on and on into eternity—all alike in dull, tiresome monotony.
He whistled to keep up his courage.
The negroes whispered to one another and smiled as they looked his way. He paid no attention.
By four o'clock, the weariness had become a habit and at sundown he felt stronger than at dawn. He swung the bag over his back and started to the weighing place.
"Pooh—it's easy!" he said with scorn.
The negroes crowded around his pile of cotton.
"Dat Boy is sho one cotton-picker!" cried Jim Pemberton, regarding him with grinning admiration.
"Of course, I can pick cotton if I want to—"
"But ye raly don't wanter?" Jim grinned.
"Sure I do. I'm sick of school."