Brown said nothing. There was nothing in his mind that quite fitted the occasion. "Mistah Breckenridge" ripped a few more dandelions off their stems and went on.
"W'y, when dat woman lef me—when mah Hannah went away—ah use tuh go aftah night to de place whah she lived, jes' to heah huh laff again. Ah'd stan' out in d' dahk, an' ah'd see huh shadow on de cu'tin, an' den ah'd heah huh laff an' laff lak she always done, an' den—ah'd come home! Ah done dat all dese yeahs sense mah Hannah lef me. Dinah's all right. Ah ain' complainin' none 'bout Dinah. Ah mah'd huh caze ah wuz lonesome, an' she suttinly bin a good wife to me. Ahm goin' to wuk foh huh tell ah git back all the money ah spent on Hannah. Hit wus Dinah's money, too. But"—he burst out again with a sudden long wail—"ah jes' doan see how ahm goin' tuh keep on livin in a worl' whah dey ain't no Hannah!"
His grief gathered force as he gave it rein. He hurled himself down on the ground again and tore at the grasses with his thin black hands. "Oh, ah want, ah want, ah want tuh heah mah Hannah laff again!" he cried, frenziedly.
A fish nibbled at the bait on Brown's hook, changed his mind, flirted his fins, and swam away—a proof of the proverb about second thoughts. A bird in the branches of the tree above the two men burst into ecstatic song. But neither heard him. "Mistah Breckenridge" had buried his black face in the cool grass, his hot tears falling fast upon it. Beside him young Brown, brought face to face with elemental conditions, sat silent and thought hard.
VIII
THE QUEST OF AUNT NANCY
It was in a stuffy compartment of a night train approaching Paris that Jessica and I were privileged to look upon Aunt Nancy for the first time. Her obvious age would soon have attracted our attention, no doubt, and certainly the gallantry with which she carried her eighty years could not long have escaped the observation of two such earnest students of humanity as we believed ourselves to be. But the characteristic in her which at once caught my eye was her expression—a look of such keen alertness, such intense vitality, that even in the mental stagnation that accompanies night travel I wondered what, in her surroundings, could explain it.
The dingy carriage in which we sat was vaguely illuminated by an oil lamp, the insufficient rays of which brought out effective high lights on the bald head of one audibly slumbering German on our side of the compartment, and on the heavy face of a stout Frenchwoman who sat opposite him, next to the old lady upon whom I was concentrating my attention. The latter, obviously an American, the two foreigners, and ourselves, were the sole occupants of the compartment; and certainly in the appearance of none of her four fellow-passengers was there justification of the wide-awake intentness of the kind old eyes that now beamed on us through heavy, steel-rimmed spectacles. Pensively, as befitted the weary wanderer, I marvelled. How could she look so alive, so wide awake, so energetic, at one o'clock in the morning?
The bald-headed man slept on. The stout woman removed a shell comb from her back hair and composed herself for deeper slumber. Jessica presented to my lambent gaze a visage which besought unspoken sympathy, and mutely breathed a protest against travel in general and this phase of it in particular. Jessica in the "still small hours" was never really gay. It was dimly comforting to one of my companionable nature to turn from her to the little old woman opposite me. In figure and dress she might have posed for one of Leech's drawings of ancient dames, so quaintly prim was she, so precise in their folds were her little black mantle and her simple black gown, so effective a frame to her wrinkled face was the wide black bonnet she wore. On her hands, demurely crossed in her lap, were black lace mitts. Moreover, she was enveloped, so to speak, in a dim aroma of peppermint, the source of which was even then slightly distending one faded cheek. Irrepressibly I smiled at her, and at once a long-drawn sigh of pleasure floated across to me. In spontaneous good-fellowship she leaned forward.
"It's a real comfortable journey, ain't it?" she whispered, so evidently torn between a passionate desire to talk and consideration for the sleepers that my heart went out to her.