She turned slowly to him, an expression of mingled amazement and fear on her face.
“You mean that you want me to bind Joe out to you till he’s his own man?” said she.
“Well, some call it by that name,” nodded Chase, “but it’s nothing more than any apprenticeship to any trade, except–oh, well, there ain’t no difference, except that there’s few trades that equal the one the boy’ll learn under me, ma’am.”
“You’re askin’ me to bind my little son–my only child left to me of all that I bore–you want me to bind him out to you like a nigger slave!”
Her voice fell away to a whisper, unable to bear the horror that grew into her words.
“Better boys than him have been bound out in this neighborhood!” said Chase sharply. “If you don’t want to do it, don’t do it. That’s all I’ve got to say. If you’d rather go to the poorhouse than see your son in steady and honorable employment, in a good home, and learning a business under a man that’s made some success of it, that’s your lookout, not mine. But that’s where you’ll land the minute you set your foot out in that road. Then the county court’ll take your boy and bind him out to somebody, and you’ll have no 9 word to say in the matter, at all. But you can suit yourself.”
“It–kind of–shook me,” she muttered, the mother-love, the honor and justice in her quailing heart shrinking back before the threat of that terrible disgrace–the poorhouse.
The shadow of the poorhouse had stood in her way for years. It had been the fear of Peter when he was there, and his last word was one of thankfulness to the Almighty that he had been permitted to die in a freeman’s bed, under his own humble roof. That consolation was to be denied her; the shadow of the poorhouse had advanced until it stood now at her door. One step and it would envelop her; the taint of its blight would wither her heart.
Sarah Newbolt had inherited that dread of publicly confessed poverty and dependence. It had come down to her through a long line of pioneer forebears who feared neither hardship, strife nor death, so that it might come to them without a master and under the free sky. Only the disgraced, the disowned, the failures, and the broken-minded made an end in the poorhouse in those vigorous days. It was a disgrace from which a family never could hope to rise again. There, on the old farm with Peter she had been poor, as poor as the poorest, but they had been free to come and go.
“I know I’ve got the name of being a hard man and a money-grabber and a driver,” said Chase with crabbed bitterness, “but who is it that gives that reputation to me? People that can’t beat me and take advantage of me and work money out of me by their rascally schemes! I’m not a hard man by nature–my actions with you prove that, don’t they?”
“You’ve been as kind as a body could expect,” she answered. “It’s only right that you should have your money back, and it ain’t been your fault that we couldn’t raise it. But we’ve done the best we could.” 10
“And that best only led you up to the poorhouse door,” said he. “I’m offering you a way to escape it, and spend the rest of your days in the place you’re attached to, but I don’t seem to get any thanks for it.”
“I am thankful to you for your offer–from the bottom of my heart I’m thankful, Mr. Chase,” she hastened to declare.
“Well, neither of us knows how Joe’s going to turn out,” said he. “Under my training he might develop into a good, sober farmer, one that knows his business and can make it pay. If he does, I promise you I’ll give him a chance on this place to redeem it. I’ll put him on it to farm on shares when he fills out his time under me, my share of the crops to apply to the debt. Would that be fair?”
“Nobody in this world couldn’t say it wasn’t generous and fair of you, and noble and kind, Mr. Chase,” she declared, her face showing a little color, the courage coming back into her eyes.
“Then you’d better take up my offer without any more foolishness,” he advised.
“I’ll have to talk it over with Joe,” said she.
“He’s got nothing to do with it, I tell you,” protested Chase, brushing that phase of it aside with a sweep of his hairy hand. “You, and you alone, are responsible for him till he’s twenty-one, and it’s your duty to keep him off the county and away from the disgrace of pauperism, and yourself as well.”
“I ought to see Joe about it first, Mr. Chase, I ought to talk it over with him. Let me think a minute.”
She settled down to her pensive attitude, elbows on knees, chin in hands, and looked over the homely scene of riotous shrubbery, racked buildings, leaning well-curb, rotting fences. In one swift, painful moment she pictured what that spot would be after Isom Chase had taken possession. 11
He would uproot the lilacs; he would level the house and the chimney, stone by stone; he would fill up the well and pull down the old barn that Peter built, and drive his plow over the hearthstone where she had suckled her babies in the years of her youth and hope. He would obliterate the landmarks of her bridal days, and sow his grain in the spot where Peter, fresh in the strong heat of youth, had anchored their ambitions.
It was not so much for what it had been that her heart was tender to it, for the years had been heavy there and toilsome, disappointing and full of pain; not so much for what it had been, indeed, as what she and young Peter, with the thick black hair upon his brow, had planned to make it. It was for the romance unlived, the hope unrealized, that it was dear. And then again it was poor and pitiful, wind-shaken and old, but it was home. The thought of the desolation that waited it in the dread future struck her breast like the pangs of bereavement. Tears coursed down her face; sobs rose in her aching throat.
Joe, she thought, would do that much for her and the old home place; it would be but a little more than two years of sacrifice for him, at the most, with the bright hope of independence and redemption at the end. Being bound out would not be so disgraceful as going to the poorhouse. Joe would do it for her, she was sure of that. But it would be better to wait until evening and ask him.
“Joe, he’ll be along home from his work about dusk,” said she, “and we could let you know tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” said Isom Chase, rising stiffly, “I’ll have to send the sheriff here with the papers. Tomorrow, ma’am, will be too late.”
That dreadful picture swept across her inner vision once more–the chimney down, the house gone. She saw corn growing over the spot where she sat that moment; she remembered 12 that Isom Chase had plowed up a burying-ground once and seeded it to timothy.
“What will I have to do to bind Joe over to you?” she asked, facing him in sudden resolution.
“We’ll git in the buggy,” said he, with new friendliness, seeing that he had won, “and drive over to Judge Little’s. He can make out the papers in a few minutes, and I’ll pay you a month’s wages in advance. That will fix you up for groceries and garden seeds and everything, and you’ll be as snug and happy as any woman in the county.”
In less than two hours the transaction was completed, and Sarah Newbolt was back again in the home upon which she had secured her slipping tenure at the sacrifice of her son’s liberty. As she began “stirring the pots for supper,” as she called it, she also had time to stir the deep waters of reflection.
She had secured herself from the threat of the county farm, and Joe had been the price; Joe, her last-born, the sole remaining one of the six who had come to her and gone on again into the mists.
She began to fear in her heart when she stood off and viewed the result of her