The Voice of the People Part 25

"There they are!" she cried excitedly, and before the carriage stopped she was up the narrow walk and in the general's arms.

"Well, daughter! daughter!" said the general. His eyes were watery, and when Eugenia fell upon Miss Chris, he blew his nose loudly with a nervous wave of his silk handkerchief.

"I was obliged to come," explained Eugenia. "When I got your letter saying I might, I was so happy."

"Tom!" murmured Miss Chris reproachfully, but her eyes were s.h.i.+ning and she laid an affectionate hand on her brother's arm.

The general blushed like a boy.

"I told her if she'd fully made up her mind to come, I'd--I'd let her,"

he stammered shamefacedly.

"Oh, I was coming anyway!" announced Eugenia cheerfully as she was clasped upon the bosom of Aunt Verbeny.

"Ain't you des' yo' ma all over?" cried Aunt Verbeny enthusiastically.

"Is you ever see anybody so w'ite en' so' black in de same breff 'cep'n Miss Meeley? Can't I see her now same ez 'twuz yestiddy, stannin' right dar in dis yer hall en' sayin', 'You b'longs ter me, Verbeny, en' I'se gwine ter take cyar you de bes' I kin.'"

Aunt Verbeny fixed her eyes upon the general and he quailed.

"Don't I take care of you, Aunt Verbeny?" he asked appealingly; but Eugenia, having greeted the remaining servants, drew him with her into the dining-room. When he sat down at last to the heavily laden table, he seemed to have grown twenty years younger. As Eugenia hung over him with domineering devotion, the irritable expression faded from his face and he grew almost jovial. When she weakened his coffee, he protested delightedly, and when she refused to allow him his nightly dole of preserved quinces, he stormed with rapture. "She wants to starve me, the tyrant," he declared. "She'll take the very bread from my mouth next."

Then his enthusiasm overcame him.

"That's the finest girl in the world, Chris! G.o.d bless her, her heart's as warm as her eyes. Why, she'd d.a.m.n herself to do a kindness."

Miss Chris appeared to remonstrate.

"I am surprised, Tom," she said disapprovingly, though why she was surprised or what she was surprised at the general never knew.

When Eugenia went upstairs that night, she blew out her candle and undressed by the full light of the moon as it shone through the giant sycamore. Outside, the lawn lay like a sheet unrolled, rent by sharp black shadows. All the dear, familiar objects were draped by the darkness as by a curtain; the body of the sycamore a.s.sumed a spectral pallor, and the small rockery near by was as mysterious as a tomb. From the dusk beneath the window the fragrance of the mimosa tree floated into the room.

Eugenia, in her long, white nightgown, fell upon her bed and slept.

The next day she went the rounds of the farm. "I'm coming back to take you for exercise," she remarked to the general as she stood before him in her sunbonnet.

The general, who was placidly smoking, groaned in protest.

"Then you'll kill me, Eugie," he urged. "Exercise doesn't suit me. I'm too heavy."

"You'll get lighter," returned Eugenia rea.s.suringly. "You don't move about half enough, but I'll make you."

The general groaned again, and Miss Chris, pink and fresh in her linen sacque, came out upon the porch.

"Bless the child!" she exclaimed. "Where on earth did she lay hands on that bonnet? Don't stay out too long in the sun, Eugie, or you'll burn black."

The general caught at the straw.

"I wish you'd tell her she ought to sit in the house, Chris. She wants to drag me--me out in that heat." But Eugenia drew the sunbonnet over her dark head and disappeared across the lawn.

Having inspected the farmyard and the stables, she crossed the ragged field to the negro cabins, where she was received with hilarity.

"Ain't I al'ays tell you she uz de fines' lady in delan'?" demanded Delphy of the retreating Moses. "Ain't I al'ays tell you dar wa'n't her match in dese yer parts or outer dem? I ax you, ain't I?"

"Dat's so," admitted Moses meekly.

"Where's Betsey?" inquired Eugenia, twirling her sunbonnet. "Aunt Verbeny told me the baby died. I am so sorry."

"De Lawd He give, en' de Lawd He teck," returned Delphy piously, "en' He done been moughty open-handed dis long time. He done give er plum sight mo'n He done teck, en' it ain' no use'n sayin' He ain'."

"So the others are well?" ventured Eugenia, and as a bow-legged crawler emerged from beneath the doorstep she added: "Is that the youngest?"

Delphy snorted.

"Dat ar brat, Miss Euginney? He ain' Betsey's, nohow. He's Rindy's Lije, en' he's de mos' out'n out pesterer sence Mose wuz born."

"Rindy!" exclaimed Eugenia in surprise, lightly touching the small black body with her foot. "Why, I didn't know Rindy was married. She's working at the house now."

Delphy seized the child and held him at arm's length while she applied a sounding box. "Go 'way f'om yer, honey," she said. "Rindy ain' mah'ed.

He's des' an accident. Shet yo' mouth, you imp er darkness, fo' I shet hit fur you."

"Don't hurt him, Delphy," pleaded the girl. "Rindy ought to be ashamed of herself, but it isn't his fault. I'm going to send him some clothes.

He looks fat enough, anyhow."

"He's fitten ter bus'," retorted Delphy sternly.

"He don't do nuttin' fur his livin' but eat all day, en' den when night come he don't do nuttin' but holler kaze de time ter leave off eatin'

done come. He ain' no mo' use'n a weazel."

Eugenia promised to befriend the baby, and left with Delphy's pessimism ringing in her ears. "He ain' wuth yo' shoestring, he ain'," called the woman after her.

The girl was as popular among the negroes as she had been as a small tomboy in pinafores. Her impulsive generosity and, above all, her cordial kindness, had not abated with years. She was as ready to serve as be served, her heart was as open as her hand; and the shrewd, childish race received her as a benignant providence. Her sweetness of disposition became a proverb. "As suns.h.i.+ny ez Miss Euginny," said Aunt Verbeny of a clear day--and the general raised her wages.

During the early summer Bernard came home on a vacation. For several years he had held a position in a bank in Lynchburg, and his visits to Kingsborough took place at uncertain intervals. He was a slight, insignificant young fellow, with complacent eyes and a beautiful, girlish mouth. His temper was quicker than Eugenia's, and he was in continual friction with the general, who had grown absent-minded and irritable. He not only forgot his own opinions as soon as he expressed them, but, what is still more annoying, he was apt to offer them as some one's else in the course of a few hours.

"That young Burr's a scamp," he remarked one morning at breakfast, "a regular scamp. Here he's setting up as a lawyer under George Ba.s.sett's eye, when I happen to know that Jerry Pollard wouldn't have him in his store if you paid him."

"My dear Tom," breathed the placid voice of Miss Chris, "I'm quite sure you're mistaken. Why, Judge Ba.s.sett--"

"Mistaken!" persisted the general angrily. "Am I the man to make a statement without authority? I tell you he's a scamp, ma'am--a regular scamp! If you please to doubt my word--"

"That's rather rough on a chap, isn't it?" put in Bernard indifferently.

"He isn't a gentleman, but I shouldn't call him a scamp."

"Why should you call him anything, sir?" demanded the general. "It's no business of yours, is it? If I choose to call him a--"

"Now, father," said Eugenia, and at her decisive tones the general broke off and turned upon her round, inquiring eyes. "Now, father, you don't mean one word that you're saying, and you know it." And she proceeded to b.u.t.ter his cakes.