The River's Children Part 4

"Dat 's so, Isrul, but yit'n still, you know de scripture say 'Hope referred meketh de heart sick.' You ricollec' dat, don't you?"

"Yas, but dat 's a side-track. Dat ain't got nothin' to do wid answer to prayer. Dat 's jes to give comfort to weary souls, when de waitin'-time is long; dat 's all. Dey may git sick at heart--jes' waitin'."

"You right, Isrul."

"Well, an' arter watchin' an' prayin', dey 's one mo' thing needful. An'

dat 's _faith_.

"Ef we _watches_ for Ma.r.s.e Harol' to come, an' _prays_ for 'im to come, an' don't _trus'_, you reckon Gord gwine to bother wid us?"

"I _tries_ to trus', Isrul, an' mos' days I does look for Ma.r.s.e Harol'.

Many 's de time I done taken Blossom by de hand an' walked along de levee an' looked down in de Ca'ollton gyarden while de ban' played, an'

jes fairly scroochinized my ol' eyes out, hopin' to reconnize 'im in de dance. I'm dat big a fool in faith--I sho' is. An' I tries de best I kin to keep my faith warm, so de good Lord 'll see it glowin' like a live coal in my heart an' he 'll 'member hisse'f about de chile an' sen' 'er daddy home, _sen' 'er daddy home_! My Gord, I say, SEN' 'ER DADDY HOME!

I tries continu'sly, Isrul."

"You must n't talk about tryin', Hannah. You mus' jes b'lieve it, same as a little chile--same like you see it; an' den you does see it. An'

when you git along so fur dat you _sees_ wid de neye o' faith, Gord 'll sho' mek yo' faith good. Ef faith kin h'ist a mountain an' shove it along, hit can fetch a man home whar he b'longs; an' hit 'll do it, too."

"Isrul!"

"What is it, Hannah?"

"Gord ain't nuver _promised_ to sen' Ma.r.s.e Harol' home, as I knows on."

"He's promised to answer de prayer o' faith, ain't He?"

"Yas, Isrul, dat 's so. Pray Him to strenken my faith, ol' man. You stays so much on de water wid de sky in yo' eyes, whilst I works 'mongst de woodpiles, so close to de yearth--seem like maybe you mought git nigher to Gord 'n what I'm enabled to do. Pickin' up chips, hit 's lowly work an' hit keeps yo' face down, an'--"

"Don't say dat, ol' 'oman! Use yo' fo'sight an' 'stid o' you seein'

_chips_ you'll see _kindlin'-wood_. Dat what dey _is_. Dey 'll lead yo'

heart upward dat-a-way. Heap o' folks don't see nothin' but money in de river--money an' mud; an' dey don't know it's a merror sometimes, full o' stars an' glory. I done read Gord's rainbow promises on de face o'

dat muddy river more 'n once-t, when I lifted out my swimp-nets on a still mornin' whilst de sun an' de mist consulted together to show a mericle to a ol' dim-eyed n.i.g.g.e.r."

"You sho' does help me when you 'splains it all out dat-a-way, Isrul.

Pray like a gordly man, ol' pardner, an' yo' ol' 'oman she gwine talk faith strong as she kin--widout turnin' hycoprite."

"Dat's right, honey--ol' 'oman--dat's right. _You_ pray an' _I'll_ pray--an' we'll _watch_ wid _faith_. An' ef Gord don't sen' Ma.r.s.e Harol', He'll git a message to us some way, so we'll be guided."

The sound of a horn from across the river put an end to the conversation. Some one was blowing for the ferryman.

"PITY you tied _Wood-duck_ up so soon to-night," said the old wife, following Israel with her eyes as she spoke, while he rose slowly and taking the oars down from the rafters started to the river.

In a moment the old man's answering horn sounded clear and loud in response, and the clank of the chain as it dropped in the bow of the skiff, followed by the rhythmic sound of the oar-locks, told his listening mate that the ferryman was on his way.

II

Besides plying the ferry-skiff at which Israel earned odd dimes--every day a few--he turned many an honest penny with his shrimp-nets.

The rafts of logs chained together at the landing were his, and const.i.tuted the initial station of a driftwood industry which was finally expressed in the long piles of wood which lay stacked in cord measures on either side of the cabin.

The low and prolonged talk of the old people to-night had been exceptional only in its intensity. The woman's reluctant almost despair of a forlorn hope was pathetic indeed. Still it was but momentary. They had gone over the same ground many times before, and fear and even foreboding had occasionally clouded their vision in reviewing the situation.

The woman's observation in regard to the child's growing tall was the first suggestion to Israel's mind of the urgency of immediate relief. In the stress of material provision, men may be forgiven if they sometimes overlook life's abstract values.

Israel was so startled by this new thought that when he had rowed his boat out into the clearing which the broad river afforded, he involuntarily pressed the handles of his oars, lifting their blades from the water, while he turned his eyes in one direction and another and then upward. He had a hard problem to solve. Here was a great thinking s.p.a.ce, and yet, although he stopped for the length of several strokes, and the night was mild and still,--although every condition was favorable for clear thought,--his mind seemed lost in a sort of maze, and it was only when he discovered by a familiar landmark that he was drifting fast down-stream, only with this obtrusion of the actual, that he rallied quickly, and with a deft stroke or two recovered his course.

And as the oar-locks measured time again he chuckled:

"I got my lesson, yas, I got my lesson. _Work!_ Dat 's my po'tion. Quick as I gits biggoty and tries to read above my head, I goes de downward way."

He said it aloud, to himself, and the words gave him renewed energy, for, even as he spoke, the _Duck_, with oars for wings, plunged lightly forward over the water to a quickened measure.

The old wife, sitting alone, sleepless always when her man was making a night trip, was even before his summons to-night painfully awake. It was as if the outcry which had burst the door of patience had set her old mind free to wander. She seemed to have a broader vision, a new perspective upon a situation in which she was herself the chief conserving factor. While she kept the child within her door well in her subconscious care, and knew by her regular breathing that she slept: while she felt the near presence of the dog on guard at her skirts'

hem, her conscious thoughts were far away.

Quickly even as lightning darts, zigzagging a path of light from one remote point to another in its eccentric course--her dim eyes actually resting upon the night skies where the lightnings play--she traveled again in her musings the arbitrary paths of fate from one crisis to another in the eventful latter years of her life. Then she would seem to see clear s.p.a.ces, and again the bolts of misfortune which presaged the storm of sorrow out of which had come her present life.

First in the anxious retrospect there was the early break in the family when the boys began going away to college; then the sudden marriage of the youngest of the three; the declaration of war; the enlistment of the two elder students in the voluntary service which had transferred their names from the university roster to the list of martyrs.

Another dart as of lightning, and she saw this youngest come home with his fair New England bride, to depart with her and Israel for an island home beyond the canebrakes, and on the heel of this divided joy came his pa.s.sionate enlisting "to avenge the death of his brothers." And then--ah! and then--how fast the zigzags dart! Rapid changes everywhere traced in fire, and, as memory recalled them, throughout the whole was ever the rolling thunder of artillery, completing the figure.

The story is one of thousands, individualized, of course, each, by special incidents and personalities, but the same, every one, in its history of faithfulness of the slave people during the crucial period when the masters had gone to battle, leaving their wives and babies in the care of those whose single chance of freedom depended on the defeat of the absent.

Hannah and Israel had been loved and trusted servants in the family of old Colonel Le Duc. The woman had nursed all the babies in turn, Harold being the last, and hence her own particular "baby" for all time.

Brake Island, so called because of its situation in a dense cane-brake, which was at once a menace and a guard, was the most unpopular part of the colonel's large estate, albeit there was no land so rich as its fields, no wood better stocked with game than the narrow forest lying close along its northern limit, no streams more picturesque in their windings or better equipped for the angler's art than that of the Bayou d'Iris, whose purple banks declared the spring while the robins were calling, and before the young mocking-birds in the c.r.a.pe myrtles opened their great red mouths for the wriggling song-food of the bayou's brim.

All the Le Duc sons had loved to go to the island to shoot and to fish while they were lads, but upon attaining the social age they had grown to despise it for its loneliness. The brake which fringed its borders had long been a refuge for runaway negroes, who were often forced to poach upon its preserves for food, even to the extent of an occasional raid upon its smoke-houses and barns, so that women and children were wont to shudder at the very idea of living there. Still it had always been the declared "favorite spot on earth" to the colonel, who had often vowed that no son of his should own it and spurn it.

He lived like a lord himself, it is true, on a broader place of less beauty on the bank of the great river,--"keeping one foot in New Orleans and one on the plantation," as he expressed it,--and it is not surprising that his children had laughingly protested against being brought up on house-parties and the opera as preparation for a hermit's life, even in "Paradise."

All excepting Harold. While the brothers had protested against the island home, he had said little, but when he had brought his bride home, and realized the scant affection that stirred the hearts of his family at sight of her placid New England face, even while he himself suffered much, knowing that her brothers were enlisting in the opposing armies and that her family felt her marriage at this time to a slaveholder as a poignant sorrow--while the father seemed hesitating as to just what paternal provision he should make for his impulsive boy, the boy himself, in a sudden towering declaration of his manhood and of resentment and pride, turned upon him:

"Give us Brake Island and Mammy and Israel, and cut us loose! And I'll show my people a new variety of hermit life!"

The thing was quickly done. A deed of gift made on the spot conveyed this Eden of modern times, with its improvements, full working force and equipment, to Harold Guyoso Le Duc, who in accepting it a.s.sumed the one condition of making it his home.

III