"Dar's a wallopin' ahaid er you, sho's you bo'n," he muttered, as he limped on toward a small log hut from which floated an inviting fragrance of bacon frying in fat."I reckon you lay dat you kin cut yo' mulatter capers wid me all you please, but you'd better look out sharp 'fo' you begin foolin' 'long er Marse Christopher.Dar you go agin, now.Ain' dat des like you? Wat you wanter go sickin' atter dat ole hyar fer, anyhow?""So that is one of young Blake's hangers-on?" observed Carraway, with a slight inflection of inquiry.
"Uncle Boaz, you mean? Oh, he was the old gentleman's body-servant befo' the war.He used to wear his marster's cast-off ruffles an' high hat.A mighty likely nigger he was, too, till he got all bent up with the rheumatics."The lawyer had lifted his walking-stick and was pointing straight ahead to a group of old brick chimneys huddled in the sunset above a grove of giant oaks.
"That must be Blake Hall over there," he said; "there's not another house like it in the three counties.""We'll be at the big gate in a minute, suh," Peterkin returned.
"This is the first view of the Hall you git, an' they say the old gentleman used to raise his hat whenever he passed by it." Then as they swung open the great iron gate, with its new coat of red, he touched Carraway's sleeve and spoke in a hoarse whisper.
"Thar's Mr.Christopher himself over yonder," he said, "an' Lord bless my soul, if he ain't settin' out old Fletcher's plants.
Thar! he's standin' up now--the big young fellow with the basket.
The old gentleman was the biggest man twixt here an'
Fredericksburg, but I d'clar Mr.Christopher is a good half-head taller!"At his words Carraway stopped short in the road, raising his useless glasses upon his brow.The sun had just gone down in a blaze of light, and the great bare field was slowly darkening against the west.
Nearer at hand there were the long road, already in twilight, the rail fence wrapped in creepers, and a solitary chestnut tree in full bloom.Farther away swept the freshly ploughed ground over which passed the moving figures of the labourers transplanting the young crop.Of them all, Carraway saw but a single worker--in reality, only one among the daily toilers in the field, moulded physically perhaps in a finer shape than they, and limned in the lawyer's mental vision against a century of the brilliant if tragic history of his race.As he moved slowly along between the even rows, dropping from time to time a plant into one of the small holes dug before him, and pausing with the basket on his arm to settle the earth carefully with his foot, he seemed, indeed, as much the product of the soil upon which he stood as did the great white chestnut growing beside the road.In his pose, in his walk, in the careless carriage of his head, there was something of the large freedom of the elements.
"A dangerous young giant," observed the lawyer slowly, letting his glasses fall before his eyes."A monumental Blake, as it were.Well, as I have remarked before upon occasions, blood will tell, even at the dregs.""He's the very spit of his pa, that's so," replied Peterkin, "an'
though it's no business of mine, I'm afeared he's got the old gentleman's dry throat along with it.Lord! Lord! I've always stood it out that it's better to water yo' mouth with tobaccy than to burn it up with sperits." He checked himself and fell back hastily, for young Blake, after a single glance at the west, had tossed his basket carelessly aside, and was striding vigorously across the field.
"Not another plant will I set out, and that's an end of it!" he was saying angrily."I agreed to do a day's work and I've been at it steadily since sunrise.Is it any concern of mine, I'd like to know, if he can't put in his crop to-night? Do you think I care whether his tobacco rots in the ground or out of it?"As he came on, Carraway measured him coolly, with an appreciation tempered by his native sense of humour.He perceived at once a certain coarseness of finish which, despite the deep-rooted veneration for an idle ancestry, is found most often in the descendants of a long line of generous livers.A moment later he weighed the keen gray flash of the eyes beneath the thick fair hair, the coating of dust and sweat over the high-bred curve from brow to nose, and the fullness of the jaw which bore with a suggestion of sheer brutality upon the general impression of a fine racial type.Taken from the mouth up, the face might have passed as a pure, fleshly copy of the antique idea; seen downward, it became almost repelling in its massive power.
Stooping beside the fence for a common harvest hat, the young man placed it on his head, and gave a careless nod to Peterkin.He had thrown one leg over the rails, and was about to swing himself into the road, when Sol spoke a little timidly.
"I hear yo' ma's done lost her yaller cat, Mr.Christopher."For an instant Christopher hung midway of the fence.
"Isn't the beast back yet?" he asked irritably, scraping the mud from his boot upon the rail."I've had Uncle Boaz scouring the county half the day."A pack of hounds that had been sleeping under the sassafras bushes across the road came fawning to his feet, and he pushed them impatiently aside.
"I was thinkin'," began Peterkin, with an uncertain cough, "that I might manage to send over my big white Tom, an', bein' blind, maybe she wouldn't know the difference."Christopher shook his head.
"Oh, it's no use," he replied, speaking with an air of superiority."She could pick out that cat among a million, Ibelieve, with a single touch.Well, there's no help for it.Down, Spot--down, I say, Sir!"With a leisurely movement he swung himself from the fence, stopping to wipe his brow with his blue cotton sleeve.Then he went whistling defiantly down the way to the Hall, turning at last into a sunken road that trailed by an abandoned ice-pond where bullfrogs were croaking hoarsely in the rushes.
