BY WILL N. HARBEN
Author of “Abner Daniel,” “The Substitute,”
“The Georgians,” etc.

OLD Jim Ewebanks sat down on the wash-bench in front of the widow Thompson’s cabin and watched the old woman as she stood in the doorway, pouring water into her earthen churn to “make the butter come.” He had walked over from his cabin across the hollow to bring her a piece of news; but the subject was a delicate one, and he hardly knew how to broach it.

If he had been a lighter man, he would have led her further in her cheerful comments on the crops, the price of cotton and the health of their neighbors; but deception of no sort was in Ewebanks’s line, and moreover, the sun was going down. He could see the blue smoke curling from the mud-and-log chimney on the dark, mist-draped mountainside across the marshes and writing a welcome message on the sky. He had a mental glimpse of his wife as she bent over a big fireplace and put steaming food on the supper-table. He was reminded that he had not fed his cattle; and still he could not bring himself to the task before him.

Mrs. Thompson’s son, Joe, came up the narrow road from the field, leading his bay mare. The young man turned the animal into a little stableyard. With the clanking harness massed on his brawny shoulder he passed by, nodding to the visitor, and hung his burden on a peg in the lean-to shed at the end of the cabin.

Then he went into the entry between the two rooms of the house, and, rolling up his shirt sleeves, bathed his face and hands in a tin basin.

Ewebanks determined to come to his point before Joe finished washing. Indeed, a sudden question from the widow made it somewhat easier for him.

“What’s fetched you ’long here this time o’ day, Jim?” she asked, as she tilted her churn toward the light reflected from the sky and raised the dasher cautiously to inspect the yellow lumps of butter clinging to its dripping surface.

Ewebanks felt his throat tighten. It was hard for him to bring up a subject to the mild-faced, reticent woman, which, while it had been common talk in the neighborhood for the past twenty-five years, had scarcely been mentioned in her presence. He bent down irresolutely and began to pick the cockle-burrs from the frayed legs of his trousers.

Joe Thompson saved him from an immediate reply by throwing the contents of his basin at a lot of chickens in the yard and coming toward him, drying his face and hands on his red cotton handkerchief.

“You are off’n yore reg’lar stompin’-ground, hain’t you?” he said cordially.

Jim Ewebanks made a failure of a smile as his eyes fell on Mrs. Thompson. She had stopped churning, and, leaning on her wooden dasher, was studying his face.

“What fetched you, shore ’nough?” she asked abruptly.

Ewebanks knew that her suspicions were roused. He sat erect and clasped his coarse hands between his knees.

“My cousin Sally Wynn’s been over in the valley today,” he gulped. “It’s reported thar that yore sister, Mrs. Hansard, is purty low. We-uns talked it over—me’n my wife did—an’ Sally, an’ ’lowed you ort to know. They axed me to come tell you, but as I told them, I hain’t no hand to—it looks like they could ’a’ picked somebody——”

He broke off. There was little change in the grim, lined face under the gray hair, and the red-checked breakfast shawl which the woman wore like a hood. She turned the churn again to the light and peered down into the white depths.

Someone had once said in the hearing of Ewebanks that nothing could induce Martha Thompson to utter a word about her sister, and he wondered how she would treat the present disclosure. She let the churn resume its upright position and put the lid back into place; then she glanced at him.

“She—hain’t bad off, I reckon,” she said tensely.

“Purty low,” he replied, his eyes on the ground. “The fact is, Mrs. Thompson, ef you want to see ’er alive you’d better go over thar tomorrow at the furdest.”

Ewebanks knew he had gone a little too far in his last words, when Joe broke in fiercely:

“She won’t go a step! She sha’n’t set foot inside that cussed house. They’ve done ’thout us so fur, an’ they kin longer—dead, dyin’ or buried!”

“Hush, Joe!” Mrs. Thompson had left her churn, and with her hands wrapped in her apron was leaning against the door-jamb.

Joe didn’t heed her.

“They’ve always helt the’r heads above us becase we’re poor an’ they’re rich,” he ran on. “You sha’n’t go a step, mother!”

Mrs. Thompson said nothing. She rolled her churn aside and went into the cabin. Ewebanks saw her bending over the pots and kettles in the red light from the live coals. He saw her rise to arrange the table, and knew she was going to ask him to supper. He got up to go, said good day to Joe, who had lapsed into sullen silence, and descended the rocky path toward his cabin.

It was growing dusk; a deepening haze, half of smoke, half of mist, hung over the wooded hill on the right of the road, and on the left a newly cleared field was dotted with the smoldering fires of brush-heaps.

At the foot of the hill he glanced back and saw Mrs. Thompson in the path signaling to him. He paused in the corner of a rail fence half overgrown with briars and waited for her. She was panting with exertion when she reached him.

“I didn’t care to talk up thar ’fore Joe,” she began. “He’s so bitter agin Melissa an’ ’er folks; but I want to know more. What seems to be ailin’ ’er, Jim?”

“A general break-down, I reckon,” was the answer. “She’s been gradually on the fail fer some time. I reckon yore duty-bound to see ’er, Mrs. Thompson. I’d not pay any attention to Joe nur nobody else. Maybe thar’s been some pride on yore side, too.”

“I don’t know,” she said doubtfully, and then she was silent. She broke a piece of worm-eaten bark from a pine rail on the fence and crumbled it in her hand.

“I’ve been wantin’ to tell you some’n fer a long time,” Ewebanks put in cautiously, “but it wasn’t no business o’ mine, an’ I hate meddlin’. I hain’t no talebearer, but this hain’t that, I reckon.”

“I hauled some wood fer ’er one day last spring when me’n my team was detained at court over thar. She come out in the yard in front o’ her fine house whar I was unloadin’. She looked mighty thin an’ peaked an’ lonesome. I had no idea she knowed me from a side o’ sole leather, grand woman that she is, but she axed me ef I wasn’t from out this way. I told ’er I was, an’ then she reached over the wagon-wheel an’ shuck hands powerful friendly like, an’ axed particular about you an’ Joe, an’ how you was a-makin’ of it. I told ’er you was up an’ about, but, like the rest of us, as pore as Job’s turkey. She said she’d been a-layin’ off to go to see you, but, somehow, hadn’t been able to git round to it. She said she’d been porely fer over a year.”

“She wasn’t porely two year back when I was on my back with typhoid,” said Mrs. Thompson bitterly. “The report went out that I’d never git up agin, but she never come a-nigh me, nur sent no word.”

“Maybe she never heard of it,” said Ewebanks. “They had a lot to do over thar about that time in one way and another. One o’ the gals was marryin’ of a banker, an’ t’other the Governor’s son, an’ yore brother-in-law, up to his death, was in politics, an’ they was constant a-givin’ parties an’ a-havin’ big company an’ the like. We-uns that don’t carry on at sech a rate ortn’t to be judges. I’m of the opinion that you ort to go, Mrs. Thompson. Ef she dies you’ll always wish you’d laid aside the grudge.”

The old woman glanced up at her cabin and awkwardly wiped her mouth with her bare hand.

“It seems sech a short time sence me’n her was childern together,” she mused. “We was on the same level then, an’ I never loved anybody more’n I did her. She was the purtiest gal in the neighborhood, an’ as sharp as a briar. Squire Farnhill tuck a likin’ to ’er, an’, as he had no childern o’ his own, he offered to adopt ’er an’ give ’er a home an’ education. She was a great stay-at-home an’ we had to actually beg ’er to go. We knowed it was best, fer pa was weighted down with debt an’ was a big drinker. She was soon weaned from us an’ ’fore she was seventeen Colonel Frank Hansard married ’er an’ tuck ’er over to his big plantation in Fannin’. We had our matters to look after, an’ they had the’rn. It begun that way, an’ it’s kept up.”

“I don’t know how true it is,” ventured Ewebanks, “but I have heard that her husband was a proud, stuck-up, ambitious man, an’ that he wished to cut off communication betwixt you two; but he’s dead an’ out o’ the way now.”

“Yes, but sometimes childern take after the’r fathers,” said the widow, “an’, right or wrong, it’s natural fer a mother to sympathize with her offspring. I’m sorter afeard the family wouldn’t want me even at ’er deathbed. Now, ef they had jest ’a’ sent me word that she was low, or——”

“I’d be fer doin’ my duty accordin’ to my own lights,” declared Ewebanks, when he saw she was going no further. “I don’t know as I’d be bothered about what them gals, or the’r husbands, thought at sech a serious time.”

She nodded as if she agreed with him, and turned to go. “Joe’s waitin’ fer his supper,” she said. “I’ll study about it, Jim. I couldn’t go till tomorrow, anyway. But, Jim Ewebanks—” she hesitated for a moment, and then she looked at him squarely—“Jim, I want to tell you that I think you are a powerful good man. Yo’re a Christian o’ the right sort, an’ I’m glad you are my neighbor.”

II

That night Mrs. Thompson had a visit from Mrs. Ewebanks, accompanied by her daughter Mary Ann, a fair slip of a creature of twelve years. Mary Ann was always her mother’s companion on her social rounds in the neighborhood. She was a very timid child and was never known to open her mouth on any of these visits. They took the chairs offered them before the fire. It was at once evident from Mrs. Ewebanks’s manner that she had come to advise her neighbor, and she showed by her disregard for oral approaches that she was going to reach her point by a short cut.

“Jim told me he’d been over,” she began, with a sneer, as she seated herself squarely in her chair and brushed a brindled cat from under her blue homespun skirt. “Scat! I don’t want yore flees! An’ he told me, after I’d pumped ’im about dry, what he was fool enough to advise you. Men hain’t a bit o’ gumption. What’s he want to tell you all that foolishness fer? I hain’t never had a bit o’ use fer them high-falutin’ Hansards. Why, they hain’t had respect enough fer yore feelin’s to even let you know yore sister was at death’s door. Sally Wynn jest drapped onto it by accident.”

Mrs. Thompson was standing in the chimney-corner, her hand on the little mantelpiece, but she sat down.

“I reckon a body ort not to have ill-will at sech a time,” she faltered. “Ef Melissa’s a-dyin’ I reckon it ’ud be nothin’ more’n human fer me to want to be thar. She mought be sorry you see, in ’er last hour, an’ wish she’d sent fer me. I’d hate to think that, after she was laid away fer good an’ all.”

“Pshaw!” Mrs. Ewebanks drew her damp, steaming shoes back from the fire. She had something else to say.

“I never told you, Martha Thompson, but I give it to that woman straight from the shoulder not long back. I was visitin’ my brother over thar. Mrs. Hansard used to drive out fer fresh air when the weather was good, an’ she stopped at the spring on brother’s place one day while I was thar gittin’ me a drink—no, I remember now, I was pickin’ a place to set a bucket o’ fresh butter to harden it up fer camp-meetin’. She didn’t take no more notice o’ me’n ef I’d been some cornfield nigger, but you bet I started the conversation. I up an’ axed ’er ef she wasn’t a Hansard an’ when she ’lowed she was, I told ’er I thought so from her favor to ’er sister over here. She got as red as a pickled beet, an’ stammered an’ looked ashamed, then she sot into axin’ how you was a-comin’ on, an’ the like.”

“That was a good deal fer Melissa to do,” observed the widow. “Thar was a time that she never mentioned my name. She’s awful proud.”

“Oh, I’ll be bound you’ll make excuses fer ’er,” snapped Mrs. Ewebanks. “When folks liter’ly knock the breath out’n you, you jump up an’ rub the hurt place an’ ax the’r pardon. As fer me, I give that woman a setback that I’ll bet she didn’t git over in a long time. I told ’er as I looked straight in ’er eyes, that ef she wanted to know how ’er own sister was makin’ of it, she’d better have ’er nigger drive ’er over to the log shack Martha Thompson lives in, an’ pay a call.”

“Oh, you said that!”

“Yes, an’ she jest set on the carriage-seat an’ squirmed like an eel an’ looked downcast an’ said nothin’.”

“That must ’a’ been at the beginnin’ o’ ’er sickness,” said Mrs. Thompson thoughtfully. She had missed the point of her visitor’s story and kept her eyes on her son, who sat in the chimney-corner, his feet on a pile of logs and kindling pine.

“The Lord wouldn’t give blessed health to a pusson with her mean sperit,” resumed the visitor warmly. “I jest set thar an’ wondered how any mortal woman in a Christian land could calmly ax a stranger about ’er own sister livin’ twenty miles off an’ not go to see ’er. She tried to talk about some’n else but she’d no sooner git started than I’d deliberately switch ’er back to you an’ yore plight an’ I kept that a-goin’ till she riz an’ driv off.”

“I have heard,” said the widow, her glance going cautiously back to her son, who had bent down to add another piece of pine to the fire, “I have heard that Colonel Hansard was always in debt from his extravagance, an’ that his family lived past the’r means. Brother Thomas went to see Melissa once, an’ he said he believed she was a misjudged woman. He ’lowed she was willin’ enough to do right, but that her husband always made ’er feel dependent on him becase his money had lifted ’er up. Brother Thomas said the gals had growed up like the’r daddy, an’ that between ’em all, Melissa never’d had any will o’ her own. I reckon I railly ort to go see ’er.”

“Ef you do they’ll slam the door in yore face,” said Mrs. Ewebanks in the angry determination to stir the widow’s pride.

“I don’t think it’s a matter fer you to decide on, Mrs. Ewebanks.” The widow leaned back out of the fire-light, and sat coldly erect. “I believe in doin’ unto others as I’d have them do unto me, an’ ef I was in Melissa’s fix I’d want to see my only livin’ sister. Facin’ the end folks sometimes change powerful. Circumstances made ’er what she is; ef she hadn’t been tuck by a rich man, she’d ’a’ been like common folks. She used to love me when she was little, an’ I jest don’t want ’em to lay ’er body away without seein’ ’er once more. I—I used to—I reckon I still love ’er some.”

Mrs. Thompson’s voice had sunk almost to a whisper. Mrs. Ewebanks moved uneasily; a sneer had risen on her red face, but it died away. Joe Thompson had suddenly turned upon her from the semi-darkness of his corner. There was no mistaking the ferocious glare of his eyes.

“It—it hain’t none o’ my business,” she stammered; “I—I jest——”

Joe leaned forward; his round freckled face under the shock of tawny hair, through which he had been running his fingers, was in the light.

“Now yo’re a-shoutin’!” he said, with a harsh laugh; “it hain’t none o’ yore business, but you stalked all the way over here tonight to attend to it.”

“Hush, Joe, be ashamed o’ yorese’f!” said his mother; “you’ve clean forgot how to behave ’fore company.”

“’Fore company hell!” Joe rose quickly and stumbled over a fire-log which rolled down under his feet. There was a hint of tears in his eyes and he shook his head like an angry dog as he went to the door and stood with his back to the visitors in sullen silence.

For a moment there was silence. Mrs. Ewebanks knew she had blundered hopelessly. Mary Ann, who never said anything, and who seldom moved when anyone was looking at her, now turned appealingly to her mother, and, unfolding her gingham sunbonnet, she bent down and swung it like a switchman’s flag between her knees. Mrs. Ewebanks paid no heed to it. She dreaded her husband’s finding out what had passed, especially as he had intrusted her with a message to Mrs. Thompson quite out of key with her argument.

“Jim told me to tell you he’d drive you over in his wagon in the mornin’ ef you are bent on makin’ the trip,” she said almost apologetically.

Joe Thompson whirled round fiercely. His back was against the door, and in his checked shirt and rolled-up sleeves he looked like a pugilist ready for fight.

“We don’t need any help from you-uns,” he snorted. “I’m goin’ to take mother.”

Mrs. Ewebanks now felt sure that her husband would blame her for the rejection of his invitation. In her vexation she slapped Mary Ann’s red hand loose from its urgent clutch on her skirt and turned to Joe.

“I’m afeard I’ve been meddlin’ with what don’t concern me,” she began, but the young man interrupted her.

“It’s our bed-time,” he said fiercely. “The Lord knows mother’s had enough o’ yore clatter fur one dose.”

“Joe!” exclaimed Mrs. Thompson sternly, “I ’lowed you had more manners.”

Mary Ann had drawn her mother’s skirt sharply to one side and grasped her arm tenaciously. Mrs. Ewebanks allowed herself thus to be unseated, and she rose meekly enough. There was nothing in her manner resembling a threat that she would never be ordered out of that house again, and in this Mary Ann witnessed her mother’s first swerving from habit.

There was a look on the widow’s face which showed that she was almost sorry for her visitor’s chagrin.

“Don’t hurry,” she said in a pained and yet gentle tone.

“Oh, no, don’t hurry!” Joe repeated, with a sneer; “stay to breakfast; I’ll throw some more wood on the fire an’ let’s set down an’ talk.”

The defeat of Mrs. Ewebanks was more than complete. Between her hostess and the son she stood wavering. This provoked an actual vocal sound from Mary Ann. At any other time the Thompsons would have marveled over it. She grunted in impatience and then said audibly:

“Come on, ma, let’s go home.” And in this it was as if the child had at once extended a verbal hand of sympathy to the Thompsons and given her mother a back-handed slap.

There was nothing for Mrs. Ewebanks to do but obey, for Mary Ann had stalked heavily from the cabin and just outside the door stood beckoning to her. Joe had gone to the fireplace and was digging a grave in the hot ashes for the fire-coated back-log.

Mrs. Thompson shambled to the door and looked after her departing guests. She could see their dresses in the light of the thinly veiled moon as they slowly descended the narrow path. When the noise Joe was making with the shovel and tongs had ceased she heard someone speaking in a raised voice. For several minutes it continued, rising and falling with the breeze, an uninterrupted monologue, growing fainter and fainter as the visitors receded.

It was the voice of Mary Ann.

III

The Hansards lived in an old-fashioned, two-storied, white frame building. It had dormer windows in the gray shingled roof and a long veranda with massive fluted columns. Back of the house rose a rocky hill covered with pines, and in front lay a wide, rolling lawn, through which, for a quarter of a mile, stretched a white-graveled drive, shaded by fine old water oaks from the house to the main traveled road.

Along this drive the next morning Joe Thompson drove his mother in a rickety buggy. On the left near the house was a row of cabins where the negro servants lived, and standing somewhat to itself was the white cottage of the overseer of the plantation. The doors of all the cabins were closed, and no one was in sight.

“I’m afeared she’s wuss, an’ they’ve all gone to the big house,” sighed Mrs. Thompson. “Maybe we won’t git thar in time.”

Joe made no response, but he whipped his mare into a quicker pace. When they reached the veranda and alighted no one came to meet them. A negro woman hastened across the hall, but she did not look toward Mrs. Thompson, who stood on the steps waiting for Joe to hitch his mare to a post nearby.

“Ain’t you goin’ to come in?” she asked, when he came toward her.

“No, I’ll wait out here,” he answered, and he sat down on the steps.

She hesitated for an instant, then she turned resolutely into the great carpeted hall, and through a door on the right she entered a large parlor. No one was there. The carpet was rich in color and texture, the furniture massive and fine. Over the mantel was a large oil portrait of Colonel Hansard, and on the opposite wall one of his wife painted just after her marriage. Set into the wall and hung about with lace drapery was a mirror that reached from the floor to the ceiling. From this room, through an open door on her left, Mrs. Thompson went into another. It was the library. No one was there. On all sides of the room were glass-doored cases of richly bound books. Here and there on tables and stands stood time-yellowed marble busts and pots of plants. In a corner of the room was a revolving bookcase, and in the centre a long writing-table covered with green cloth.

The old woman looked about her perplexed. Everything was so still that she could hear the scratching of a honeysuckle vine against the window under the touch of the breeze. She wondered if her sister had died, and if everybody had gone to the funeral.

She was on the point of returning to Joe, when she was startled by a low moan in an adjoining room. The sound came through a door on her right, which was slightly ajar. She cautiously pushed it open. The room contained an awed and silent group. The crisis had come. Mrs. Hansard was dying. She lay on a high-canopied bed in a corner, hidden from Mrs. Thompson’s view by the family and servants gathered at the bed. Seeing a vacant chair in a row of women against a wall, the visitor went in and sat down. Her black cotton sunbonnet hid her face, and, as there were others present as humbly clad as she, she attracted little notice.

There was a breathless silence for a moment. Those at the bed seemed to be leaning forward in great agitation. Suddenly one of the daughters of the dying woman cried out: “Oh, doctor! Come quick!” and a physician who stood near advanced and bent over his patient.

After a moment he silently withdrew to the fireplace, where he simply stood looking at the fire in the grate. Edith, the eldest child, followed and asked him a question. He gravely nodded, and with her handkerchief to her eyes she burst into tears. Her husband, the Governor’s son, a handsome, manly fellow, came to her and, putting his arm around her, drew her back to the bed.

“She’s trying to speak,” he whispered, and for the next moment the dying woman’s labored breathing was the only sound in the room.

“Father! Mother!” Mrs. Thompson was hearing her sister’s voice for the first time in twenty-five years. “Brother Thomas! Uncle Frank! Where are you?”

“She is thinking of her childhood,” said Edith in a whisper. She bent over her mother and in a calm, steady voice said:

“We are all here, mother dear—Susie and Annie and Jasper and I.”

There was silence for a moment; then the voice of the dying woman rose in keen appeal.

“Martha! Oh, I want Martha—I want Martha!”

The two sisters exchanged anxious glances.

“She means Aunt Martha Thompson,” whispered Susie; “we have not sent for her. What shall we do?”

Edith bent over the pillow.

“Mother dear——”

“I want Martha, my sister Martha!” Mrs. Hansard said impatiently, and she beat the white coverlet with her thin hand. “Martha, sister Martha, where are you?”

“Here I am, Melissa.” The gaunt figure rose suddenly, to the surprise of all, and moved toward the bed. They made room for her. There was no time for formal explanations or greetings. “I’m here, Melissa; I heard you was sick, an’ ’lowed I’d better drap in.”

“Thank God!” cried Mrs. Hansard, as she took the hardened hand in her frail fingers and tried to press it. “I’ve been prayin’ God to let me see you once more. I want you to forgive me, Martha. I’m dying. I’ve done you a great wrong. Forgive me, forgive me!”

“La, me, Melissa, I hain’t a thing to forgive!” was the calm, insistent reply; “not a blessed thing! It was all as much my doin’ as yore’n. We was both jest natural—that’s all—jest natural, like the Lord made us—me in my way, and you in yore’n.”

Edith kissed her aunt’s wrinkled cheek gratefully, and, with her cheek on the old woman’s shoulder, she wept silently.

“I thank God; I feel easier now,” said Mrs. Hansard. “You’ve made me happier, Martha. I can die easier now. God is good.”

Someone gave Mrs. Thompson a chair, and she sat down and held her sister’s hand till it was all over. Then the Governor’s son took the old woman’s arm and led her into the sitting-room, and there the three motherless girls joined her.

“You are much like her,” sobbed Susie, the youngest; “you have her eyes and mouth.”

“Yes, folks used to say we favored,” said Mrs. Thompson simply.

“You must not leave us, Aunt Martha,” said Edith. “We must keep you with us. She would like to have it so.”

“Yes, do, do, Aunt Martha,” chimed in Susie and Annie.

The old woman had folded her bonnet in her lap and was holding her rough hands out to the fire. She smiled as if vaguely pleased, and yet she shook her head.

“No, don’t ax me that, girls,” she said. “I’ve got ways an’ habits that ain’t one bit like yore’n. I’d feel out o’ place anywhar except in my cabin. I couldn’t change at my time o’ life. Joe’s workin’ fer me, an’ he’ll never marry. He hates the sight of a woman. He says they meddle. He’s waitin’ fer me now outside, an’ I reckon I ort to be a-goin’.”

“But not till after—after the funeral,” said Susie.

“Yes, honey. I don’t think I ort to wait. I’ve got lots to do at home. My cows are to feed an’ milk, an’ it’s a long drive. It’ll be in the night when we git home. Remember, me an’ yore mother hain’t been intimate sence we was childern. I’m her sister by blood, but not by raisin’, an’ I hain’t the same sort o’ mourner as you-uns, an’ don’t think I ort to pass as one in public. I wouldn’t feel exactly natural, that’s all.”

The Governor’s son nodded his head as if he agreed with her, and the girls silently gave her her wish.