"Ah, well, every one to his taste, my child; and I have heard that she wore a larger shoe. However, this is foolish chatter, and a waste of time. Go and carry Dinah the medicine, and let me see Christopher as soon as he comes in. By the way, Cynthia, have you noticed whether he seeks the society of ladies? Do you think it likely that his affections are engaged?"
"No, no, not at all. He doesn't care for girls; I'm sure of it."
"That seems very strange. Why, at his age, his father had been the object of a dozen love affairs, and been jilted twice, report went, though I had my suspicion from the first that it was the other way. Certainly Miss Peggie Stuart (and he had once been engaged to her) went into a decline immediately after our marriage—but in affairs of the heart, as I have mentioned often before, the only reliable witnesses are those who never tell what they know. Now, as for Christopher, are you quite sure he is as handsome as you say?" "Quite, quite, he's splendid—like the picture of the young David in the Bible." "Then there's something wrong. Does he cough?" "His health seems perfect." "Which proves conclusively that he cherishes a secret feeling. For a man to go twenty-six years without falling in love means that he's either a saint or an imbecile, my dear; and for my part, I declare I don't know which character sits worse upon a gentleman. Can it be one of the Morrisons, do you think? The youngest girl used to be considered something of a beauty by the family; though she was always too namby-pamby for my taste."
"She's fifty by now, if she's a day, mother, and the only thing I ever saw Christopher do for her was to drive a strange bull out of her road." "Well, that sounds romantic; but I fear, as you say, she's really too old for him. How time does fly." Cynthia stooped and carefully arranged the old lady's feet upon the ottoman. "There, now—I'll carry the medicine to Aunt Dinah," she said, "and be back in plenty of time to dress for supper." She found the quinine in an old medicine chest in the adjoining room, and went with it to one of the crumbling cabins which had formed part of the "quarters" in the prosperous days of slavery. Aunt Dinah insisted upon detaining her for a chat, and it was half an hour afterward that she came out again and walked slowly back along the little falling path. The mild June breeze freshened her hot cheeks, and as she passed thoughtfully between the coarse sprays of yarrow blooming along the ragged edges of the fields she felt her spirit freed from the day's burden of unrest. What she wanted just then was to lie for an hour close upon the ground, to renew the vital forces within her by contact with the invigorating earth—to feel Nature at friendly touch with her lips and hands. She would have liked to run like a wild thing through the golden sunshine lying upon the yarrow, following the shy cries of the partridges that scattered at her approach—but there was work for her inside the house, so she went back patiently to take it up. As she entered the little yard, she saw Tucker basking in the sunshine on an old bench beside one of the damask rose-bushes, and she crossed over and stood for a moment in the tall grass before him. "You look so happy, Uncle Tucker. How do you manage it?" "By keeping so, I reckon, my dear. I tell you, this sun feels precious good on the back." She dropped limply on the bench beside him. "Yes, it is pleasant, but I hadn't thought of it." " Well, you'd think of it often enough if you were in my place," pursued Tucker, always garrulous, and grateful for a listener. "I didn't notice things much myself when I was young. The only sights that seemed to count, somehow, were those I saw inside my head, and if you'll believe me, I used to be moody and out of sorts half the time, just like Christopher. Times have changed now, you'll say, and it's true. Why, I've got nothing to do these days but to take a look at things, and I tell you I see a lot now where all was a blank before. You just glance over that old field and tell me what you find," Cynthia followed the sweep of his left arm. "There's first the road, and then a piece of fallow land that ought to be ploughed," she said. "Bless my soul, is that all you see? Why, there is every shade of green on earth in that old field, and almost every one of blue, except azure, which you'll find up in the sky. That little bit of white cloud, no bigger than my hand, is shaped exactly like an eagle's wing. I've watched it for an hour, and I never saw one like it. As for that old pine on top the little knoll, if you look at it long enough you'll see that it's a great big green cross raised against the sky." "So it is, " said Cynthia, in surprise; "so it is."
"Then to come nearer, look at that spray of turtlehead growing by that gray stone—the shadow it throws is as fine as thread lace, and it waves in the breeze just like the flower."
" Oh, it is beautiful, and I never should have seen it."
"And best of all," resumed Tucker, as if avoiding an interruption, "is that I've watched a nestful of young wrens take flight from under the eaves. There's not a play of Shakespeare's greater than that, I tell you." "And it makes you happy—just this?" asked Cynthia wistfully, as the pathos of his maimed figure drove to her heart. "Well, I reckon happiness is not so much in what comes as in the way you take it," he returned, smiling. "There was a time, you must remember, when I was the straightest shot of my day, and something of a lady-killer as well, if I do say it who shouldn't. I've done my part in a war and I'm not ashamed of it. I've taken the enemy's cannon under a fire hot enough to roast an ox, and I've sent more men to eternity than I like to think of; but I tell you honestly there's no battle-field under heaven worth an hour of this old bench. If I had my choice to-day, I'd rather see the flitting of those wrens than kill the biggest Yankee that ever lived. The time was when I didn't think so, but I know now that there's as much life out there in that old field as in the tightest-packed city street I ever saw—purer life, praise God, and sweeter to the taste. Why, look at this poplar leaf that blew across the road; I've studied the pattern of it for half an hour, and I've found out that such a wonder is worth going ten miles to see." "Oh, I can't understand you," sighed Cynthia hopelessly. "I wish I could, but I can't—I was born different—so different." "Bless your heart, honey, I was born different myself, and if I'd kept my leg and my arm I dare say I'd be strutting round on one and shaking the other in the face of God Almighty just as I used to do. A two-legged man is so busy getting about the world that he never has time to sit down and take a look around him. I tell you I see more in one hour as I am now than I saw in all the rest of my life when I was sound and whole. Why, I could sit here all day long and stare up at that blue sky, and then go to bed feeling that my twelve hours were full and brimming over. If I'd never seen anything in my life but that sky above the old pine, I should say at the end 'Thank God for that one good look.'" "I can't understand—I can't understand," repeated Cynthia, in a broken voice, though her face shed a clear, white beam. "I only know that we are all in awful straights, and that to-morrow is the day when I must get up at five o'clock and travel all the way to town to get my sewing." He laid his large pink hand on hers, "Why not let Lila go for you?" "What! to wait like a servant for the bundle and walk the streets all day—I'd go twenty times first!" "My dear, you needn't envy me," he responded, patting her knotted hand. "I took less courage with me when I stormed my heights."
CHAPTER X. Sentimental and Otherwise
In the gray dawn Cynthia came softly downstairs and, passing her mother's door on tiptoe, went out into the kitchen to begin preparations for her early breakfast. She wore a severe black alpaca dress, made from a cast-off one of her mother's, and below her white linen collar she had pinned a cameo brooch bearing the head of Minerva, which had once belonged to Aunt Susannah. On the bed upstairs she had left her shawl and bonnet and a pair of carefully mended black silk mitts, for her monthly visits to the little country town were endured with something of the frozen dignity which supported Marie Antoinette in the tumbrel. It was a case where family pride was found more potent than Christian resignation. When she opened the kitchen door, with her arms full of resinous pine from the pile beside the steps, she found that Tucker had risen before her and was fumbling awkwardly in the safe with his single hand. "Why, Uncle Tucker!" she exclaimed in surprise, "what on earth has happened?" Turning his cheerful face upon her, he motioned to a little wooden tobacco box on the bare table. "A nest full of swallows tumbled down my chimney log in the night," he explained, "and they cried so loud I couldn't sleep, so I thought I might as well get up and dig 'em a worm or two. Do you happen to know where a bit of wool is?" Cynthia threw her bundle of kindling-wood on the hearth and stood regarding him with apathetic eyes. "You'd much better wring their necks," she responded indifferently; "but there's a basketful of wool Aunt Polly has just carded in the closet. How in the world did you manage to dress yourself?" "Oh, it's wonderful what one hand can do when it's put to it. Would you mind fastening my collar, by the way, and any buttons that you happen to see loose?" She glanced over him critically, pulling his clothes in place and adjusting a button here and there. "I do hate to see you in this old jean suit," she said; "you used to look so nice in your other clothes." With a laugh he settled his empty sleeve. "Oh, they're good for warm weather," he responded; "and they wash easily, which is something. Think, too, what a waste it would be to dress half a man in a whole suit of broadcloth." "Oh, don't, don't," she protested, on the point of tears, but he smiled and patted her bowed shoulder. "I got over that long ago, honey," he said gently. "I kicked powerful hard with my one foot at first, but the dust I raised wasn't a speck in the face of God Almighty. There, there, we'll have a fine sunrise, and I'm going out to watch it from my old bench—unless you'll find something for a single hand to do." She shook her head, smiling with misty eyes.
"You'll have breakfast with me, I suppose," she said. "I got up early because I couldn't sleep, but it's not yet four o'clock." For an instant he looked at her gravely. "Worrying about the day?" "A little." "If I could only manage to hobble along with you." "Oh, but you couldn't, dear—and the worst of it is having to wait so long in town for the afternoon stage. I get my sewing, and then I eat my lunch on the old church steps, and then there are four mortal hours when I walk about aimlessly in the sun." "And you wouldn't go to see anybody?" "With my bundle of work, and in this alpaca? Not for worlds!" He sighed, not reproachfully, but with the sympathy which projects itself into states of feeling other than its own. "Well, I wish all the same you'd let Lila go in with you. I think you make a mistake about her, Cynthia; she wouldn't feel the strain of it half so much as you do."