The Girl at the Halfway House, Emerson Hough [best summer books .TXT] 📗

market, the hotel accommodations were more pretentious than comfortable, and many a cowman who had sat at the board of the Halfway House going up the trail, would mount his horse and ride back daily twenty-five miles for dinner. Such are the attractions of corn bread and chicken when prepared by the hands of a real genius gone astray on this much-miscooked world.

Many other guests were among those "locators," who came out to Ellisville and drove to the south in search of "claims." These usually travelled over the route of Sam, the stage-driver, who carried the mail to Plum Centre during its life, and who never failed to sound the praises of the Halfway House. Thus the little Southern family quickly found itself possessed of a definite, profitable, and growing business. Buford was soon able to employ aid in making his improvements. He constructed a large dugout, after the fashion of the dwelling most common in the country at that time, This manner of dwelling, practically a roofed-over cellar, its side-walls showing but a few feet above the level of the earth, had been discovered to be a very practical and comfortable form of living place by those settlers who found a region practically barren of timber, and as yet unsupplied with brick or boards. In addition to the main dugout there was a rude barn built of sods, and towering high above the squat buildings rose the frame of the first windmill on the cattle trail, a landmark for many miles. Seeing these things growing up about him, at the suggestion and partly through the aid of his widely scattered but kind-hearted neighbours, Major Buford began to take on heart of grace. He foresaw for his people an independence, rude and far below their former plane of life, it was true, yet infinitely better than a proud despair.

It was perhaps the women who suffered most in the transition from older lands to this new, wild region. The barren and monotonous prospect, the high-keyed air and the perpetual winds, thinned and wore out the fragile form of Mrs. Buford. This impetuous, nerve-wearing air was much different from the soft, warm winds of the flower-laden South. At night as she lay down to sleep she did not hear the tinkle of music nor the voice of night-singing birds, which in the scenes of her girlhood had been familiar sounds. The moan of the wind in the short, hard grass was different from its whisper in the peach trees, and the shrilling of the coyotes made but rude substitute for the trill of the love-bursting mocking bird that sang its myriad song far back in old Virginia.

Aunt Lucy's soliloquizing songs, when she ceased the hymns of her fervid Methodism, turned always to that far-off, gentle land where life had been so free from anxiety or care. Of Dixie, of the Potomac, of old Kentucky, of the "Mississip'," of the land of Tennessee—a score of songs of exile would flow unconscious from her lips, until at last, bethinking to herself, she would fall to weeping, covering her face with her apron and refusing to be comforted by any hand but that of Mary Ellen, the "young Miss Beecham," whose fortunes she had followed to the end of the world.

Sometimes at night Mrs. Buford and her niece sang together the songs of the old South, Mary Ellen furnishing accompaniment with her guitar. They sang together, here beneath the surface of this sweeping sea of land, out over which the red eye of their home looked wonderingly. And sometimes Mary Ellen sang to her guitar alone, too often songs which carried her back to a morbid, mental state, from which not even the high voice of this glad, new land could challenge her. Very far away to her seemed even the graves of Louisburg. Father, mother, brothers, lover, every kin of earth nearest to her, had not death claimed them all? What was there left, what was there to be hoped here, cast away on this sea of land, this country that could never be a land of homes? Sad doctrine, this, for a young woman in her early twenties, five feet five, with the peach on her cheek in spite of the burning wind, and hands that reached out for every little ailing chicken, for every kitten, or puppy that wanted comforting.

But when the morning came and the sun rose, and the blue sky smiled, and all the earth seemed to be vibrant with some high-keyed summoning note—how difficult then it was to be sad! How far away indeed seemed the once-familiar scenes! How hard it was not to hope, here in this land of self-reliance and belief! It was the horror of Mary Ellen's soul that when this sun shone she could not be sad. This land, this crude, forbidding, fascinating land—what was there about it that swept her along against her will?

CHAPTER XXI THE ADVICE OF AUNT LUCY

One day Aunt Lucy, missing Quarterly Meeting, and eke bethinking herself of some of those aches and pains of body and forebodings of mind with which the negro is never unprovided, became mournful in her melody, and went to bed sighing and disconsolate. Mary Ellen heard her voice uplifted long and urgently, and suspecting the cause, at length went to her door.

"What is it, Aunt Lucy?" she asked kindly.

"Nothin', mam; I jess rasslin' wit ther throne o' Grace er l'il bit. I don't wan' to 'sturb you-all."

"We don't want to disturb you, either, Aunt Lucy," said Mary Ellen gently.

"Thass hit, Miss Ma'y Ellen, thass hit! It ain't fitten fer a ole nigger 'ooman to be prayin' erroun' whah white folks is. You kain't seem to let out good an' free; 'n ef I kain't let out good an' free, 'pears like I don't git no hol' on salvation. We all po' weak sinners, Miss Ma'y Ellen."

"Yes, I know, Lucy."

"An' does you know, Miss Ma'y Ellen, I sorter gits skeered sometimes, out yer, fer fear mer supplercashuns ain't goin' take holt o' heaven jess right. White folks has one way er prayin', but er nigger kain't pray erlone—no, mam, jess kain't pray erlone."

"I thought you were doing pretty well, Lucy."

"Yass'm, pretty well, but not nothin' like hit useter be back in ole
Vehginny, when 'bout er hunderd niggers git to prayin' all to onct.
Thass whut goin' to fotch the powah on er suffrin' human soul—yes, ma'm!"

"Now, Aunt Lucy," said Mary Ellen sagely, "there isn't anything wrong with your soul at all. You're as good an old thing as ever breathed, I'm sure of that, and the Lord will reward you if he ever does any one, white or black."

"Does you think that, honey?"

"Indeed I do."

"Well, sometimes I thinks the Lord ain' goin' to fergive me fer all ther devilment I done when I was l'il. You know, Miss Ma'y Ellen, hit take a life er prayer to wipe out ouah transgresshuns. Now, how kin I pray, not to say pray, out yer, in this yer lan'? They ain't a chu'ch in a hunderd mile o' yer, so fer's I kin tell, an' they shoh'ly ain't no chu'ch fer cullud folks. Law me, Miss Ma'y Ellen, they ain't ary nother nigger out yer nowheres, an' you don' know how lonesome I does git! Seems to me like, ef I c'd jess know er sengle nigger, so'st we c'd meet onct in er while, an' so'st we c'd jess kneel down togetheh an' pray comfer'ble like, same's ef 'twus back in ole Vehginny—why, Miss Ma'y Ellen, I'd be the happiest ole 'ooman ever you did see. Mighty bad sort o' feelin', when a pusson ain't right shore 'bout they soul. An' when I has to pray erlone, I kain't never be right shore!"

Mary Ellen rose and went to her room, returning with her guitar. She seated herself upon the side of the bed near Aunt Lucy—an act which would have been impossible of belief back in old Virginia—and touched a few low chords. "Listen, Aunt Lucy," she said; "I will play and you may sing. That will make you feel better, I think."

It was only from a perfect understanding of the negro character that this proposal could come, and only a perfect dignity could carry it out with grace; yet there, beneath the floor of the wide prairie sea, these strange exercises were carried on, the low throbbing of the strings according with the quavering minors of the old-time hymns, until Aunt Lucy wiped her eyes and smiled.

"Thank yer. Miss Ma'y' Ellen," she said; "thank yer a thousand times. You shoh'ly does know how toe comfort folks mighty well, even a pore ole nigger. Law bless yer, honey, whut c'd I do without yer, me out yer all erlone? Seems like the Lord done gone 'way fur off, 'n I kain't fotch him noways; but when white folks like Miss Ma'y Ellen Beecham come set down right side o' me an' sing wif me, den I know ther Lord, he standin' by listenin'. Yas'm, he shoh'ly goin' to incline his eah!"

Women are women. There is no synonym. Women, white and white, black and black, or, if need be, white and black, have sympathies and understandings and revealings which they never carry to the opposite sex. It is likely that no man ever explored the last intricacy of that sweet and wondrous maze, a woman's heart; yet the woman who marries, and who has with her a husband, sets herself for the time outside the circle of all other husbandless women who may be about her. Thus it was that—without any loss of self-respect upon the one side, or any forgetfulness upon the other of that immovable line between black and white which had been part of the immemorial creed of both—Mary Ellen and Aunt Lucy, being companionless, sometimes drifted together in the way of things.

On the morning following Aunt Lucy's devotional exercises that good soul seemed to be altogether happy and contented, and without any doubts as to her future welfare. She busied herself with the preparation of the food for the chickens, meantime half unconsciously humming a song in reminiscent minor. "Custard pie—custard pie," she sang, softly, yet unctuously, as she stirred and mingled the materials before her; "custard pie—custard pie. Hope ter eat hit twell I die—twell I die."

Mary Ellen was out in the open air, bonnetless and all a-blow. It was a glorious, sunny day, the air charged with some essence of vital stimulus. Tall and shapely, radiant, not yet twenty-three years of age, and mistress of earth's best blessing, perfect health—how could Mary Ellen be sad? All the earth and sky, and the little twittering ground birds, and the bustling fowls, forbade it. The very stir of life was everywhere. She walked, but trod as steps the wild deer, lightly, with confidence, high-headed.

"Chick-chick-chick-chickee!" called Mary Ellen, bending over the fence of the chicken yard, and noting with pleasure the hurrying, clacking throng of fowls that answered and swarmed about her. "Chick, chick, chick!"

"I'll be thah t'reckly wif ther feed, Miss Ma'y Ellen," called out Aunt Lucy from the kitchen. And presently she emerged and joined her mistress at the corral.

"Aunt Lucy," said Mary Ellen, "do you suppose we could ever raise a garden?"

"Whut's dat, chile—raise er gyarden? Kain't raise no gyarden out yer, noways."

"I was just thinking may be we could have a garden, just a little one, next year."

"Hit don' never rain ernuf, chile, in this yer country."

"I know, but couldn't we use the water from the well? The windmill is always pumping it up, and it only runs to waste. I was thinking, if we had a few peas, or beans, or things like that, you know—"

"Uh-huh!"

"And do you suppose a rose bush would grow—a real rose bush, over by the side of the house?"

"Law, no, chile, whut you talkin' 'bout? Nothin' hain't goin' to grow yer, 'less'n hit's a little broom cohn, er some o' that alfalafew, er that soht er things. Few beans might, ef we wortered 'em. My lan!" with a sudden interest, as she grasped the thought, "whut could I git fer right fraish beans, real string beans, I does wondeh! Sakes, ef I c'd hev string beans an' apple pies, I shoh'ly c'd make er foh'tune, right quick. Why,