Adam’s straw hat moved back and forth with dramatic deliberation before he resumed. “In the twenty-odd years I knowed him, I sca’sely ever heard the Colonel condemn a man—not to say, wholesome condemn him as no good. But the last thing he ever said to me about Oswald Paley—and the Colonel was then lookin’ the end square in the face—was the deepest damnation I ever heard him make of any man.” Adam halted his fan abruptly. “Miz Hightower, that’s enough for me!”
Mrs. Hightower nodded. “Yes I know. Oswald Paley is a treacherous man.”
Adam resumed. “And Miz Hightower, hit ain’t my part to condemn no white man that ain’t done nothin’ to me and I don’t believe I ever have befo’. But I’m gointer say about this particular man that all I’ve seen of ‘im supports the Colonel’s words.”
“Yes, a treacherous man,” she repeated, her face still questioning.
The hat, held between his hands, Adam rested on his chest decisively. “We may not know whether the Colonel sent a mineral plat to a Macon blueprint man or not, but we do know that any contention, that Paley makes ‘bout it, is to our harm on the Hightower place!”
Mrs. Hightower shrugged and nodded. As she stared on at Adam, the gaze from her long, serious, gray-blue eyes going through him and growing abstracted, a frightened look came on her face. “Yes,” she said finally, “yes. If we only knew what he was up to!” She walked thoughtfully over to the basket of crab-apples, saying, “Well, thank your mother and the children for picking them!” She took a few in her hand and abruptly dropped them, as she remembered what she had intended to do about them, exclaiming, “And—oh, here! Let me give you this!” She hurried through the back hall into her bedroom and returned after a moment with silver in her hand. “Give this to your mother for her church circle” she said, counting out eighty cents into his hand. “And tell her I do appreciate the crab apples!” She turned away toward the hall door again, adding disconnectedly, “I wish I could impress Mr. Littleton with what we know about Oswald Paley!”
Adam raised his voice. “Miz Hightower!”
She turned back in surprise. “Yes, Adam?”
He smiled apologetically. “As you sort-a e-expose, there’s a lot-a crooks and turns to this here Land Deal. And it looks like I’m gointer have to ask you to pass some word out among the folks in it, for me, if you don’t mind, please ‘um!”
Mrs. Hightower came back to the head of the steps and looked down at him with sharp attention.
Adam stood before her in upright ease of posture, at that incalculable but exact distance away from the steps that gave his uplifted face command, rather than appeal, but a command unasserted and potential and covered with a distant twinkle in his eyes and a slightly ironic compression about his mouth—an action that was automatic and an appearance that was unconscious with him. “Sort-a pass the word ‘round that you’re ‘bout to get the county surveyor to run out the line between the low and upper swamp lots, please M’am!”
Mrs. Hightower’s eyes widened in surprise. She said frowning, “But, Adam, we don’t want to do that! We can’t afford it!”
Adam’s smile grew more pronounced. “I-I didn’t say, Do hit. J-just pass out the word that you aim to.”
The tightened lines at the corners of Mrs. Hightower’s eyes and mouth began to relax, as she stood speculatively eyeing Adam’s countenance. She shrugged. “Do, Adam! What’s this all about?”
He lowered his eyes, as if the lids were curtains and lifted them again as he began to speak steadily, without stammering. “Yestidy afternoon I ran across a feller on a Hundred-and-forty-two, close to Slappy’s bottom line, a-cuttin’ your ash timber. He hadn’t even got the first tree down when I flushed ‘im. He ‘uz a colored man and I reckon you don’t know ‘im. I had my suspicion from the outset as to how come ‘im there.” As his smile threatened to broaden, Adam glanced away swiftly to restore his gravity. “This colored feller—though I bin knowin’ him a long time—waun’t a bit quick to git on confidential terms with me. Which made hit pretty sure he already knowed he didn’t have no business there. Howsomever, I persuaded him to go with me to talk hit over with Mr. Slappy.”
Mrs. Hightower began shaking her head and smiling. “Enough said,” she broke in. “What did that pious-faced snake in the grass, Hinshaw Slappy, say?” she asked, in tart amusement.
“He didn’t say much,” Adam said and added laconically, after a pause, “and then he took that back. What he said mostly was that he waun’t goin’ to admit to nothin’!”
Mrs. Hightower sniffed and began to pat her foot in annoyance. “That sounds like him, all right!”
Adam now spoke blandly, as if what he was prescribing were a specific with which both were familiar. “I told ‘im we might have to git the county surveyor to run out that bottom line twixt you and him!”
She began to frown. “What is this about the county surveyor? And who was the colored man cutting the timber, anyhow?”
Adam looked down at the steps carefully and gravely. Then he looked up again with the same care and gravity, a dim apologetic smile in his eyes. “Miz Hightower, I don’t think you knows that colored feller,” he said, his voice raised in disparagement of her interest, “and if you’ll just trust me and put out that word, like I axe you to, I’d be much obliged.”
Her slim face cleared and she smiled reluctantly, with appreciation for his reservations. “All right, Adam—all right, if you say so. . . .” She nodded, placing a steadying hand on the post near the water spigot. She started to move away from the steps, and turned back. “But whom am I to put out this word to—which one?”
Adam lifted a stiff face and his mouth worked convulsively before he could get out the words. “I don’t think hit matter too much, Miz Hightower, which one. You’ll be seein’ the banker Littleton, likely. You kin just leave it with him. The next time you see ‘im.”
Lucy Hightower’s eyes widened. Then she laughed out loud.
When she had recovered from her amusement, she looked down to see that Adam had left and was already half way across the yard. She started to call him back, then she halted, resting her hand again on the post, and stood watching him as he moved through the gate. She smiled reflectively, repeating to herself, “I sca’sely ever heard the Colonel condemn a man.” She nodded her head. Yes, Marcellus didn’t have to. Yes. And neither did Adam! Suddenly she felt defended against all of the deceit and trickery and connivance of the twenty-odd weak, avaricious, fearful men who appeared to have joined together against her, merely because she had property and was a woman too inexperienced to protect it. She watched Adam mount the hub of a wheel and get into the seat of his wagon and give his guttural command to his mules, “Git in there, Gray! Don’t let Red tote all the load!” Yes, thank God, there was one man in the lot!
9.
ON MONDAY AFTERNOON, on her return from McDowell’s general store, where she had gone to settle with Halley McGrew for the damage to his automobile, Lucy Hightower approached her yard by the side entrance the better to survey the activity of her children. On the way home she had come to a high decision, but recognized that she must for the time lower the focus of her thoughts to her daily duty. From the sidewalk she could see the game of scrub going on a hundred yards away in the dead-end street that made a neighborhood commons between her place and the one next door. She paused long enough to pick out the stubby figure of her son, knickerbockers hanging down his bare legs, catching the ball behind the batter, and to detect the sound of her younger daughter’s high-pitched voice among the fielders at the far end of the playground. She had been made aware of her eldest child’s dutifulness already by the sounds from the piano in the parlor. Elinor was practicing her piece for the commencement recital. Reassured, Mrs. Hightower passed through the gate quickly, crossed the narrow side lawn, climbed the steps beside the trumpet vine and entered her bedroom by the window-door at the end of the porch.
In the back hall she intercepted Elinor. “You sounded pretty good from the street,” s
he said, adding routinely, “Did you practice a full hour?”
Framed in the portieres that marked off the rear from the front hall, Elinor paused, raising the leather music roll she held in her hand in a vaguely defensive gesture. “As a matter of fact I went five minutes over time, Mamma,” she said, a little self-righteously, a glint in her gray-green eyes, “I was so absorbed!”
In the dimness of the hallway, Mrs. Hightower gave her daughter a sharpened second glance. A strong gaze, a prominent nose and slight sallowness, coupled with an ingenuity for mischief only in recent years brought to taw, of which Mrs. Hightower was conscious, gave Elinor, for her, an aura of mystery. “So absorbed?” she repeated ambiguously.
Elinor relaxed her stance and, turning back to the table just behind her, laid the music roll on it. She grinned. “That, and I got mixed up on the clock, too!”
Mrs. Hightower tossed her head, eyeing her daughter’s mouth still widened by her smiling, “Well, get Marse and Lucinda into the house and start supper. Lucinda will help you. Tell Marse to get to work on his arithmetic—in his room; I’m going to be in mine.” She smiled, turning away. “And push in your teeth!” (This was a reference to Elinor’s eye teeth that had denticles behind them and had to be constantly “pushed in” against their spoiling her mouth.) “Aw, Mamma!” Mrs. Hightower heard, in protest, as she swept on toward her bedroom-sittingroom and her exciting purpose.
Seeing a disordered pile of school books on the reading table in her room, she scooped them up in her arms and took them out into the back hall where she unloaded them on the linen press. “Tell Marse his books are on the big chest!” she called out to Elinor, now on the back porch in the act of summoning her younger brother and sister. “And I mustn’t be disturbed,” she added, as she reentered her room. She thumbbolted the door behind her.
Edward, she told herself without any conscious relevance, had to have a great deal of experience with boys to have been principal of the High School as long as he had. Though, of course, he was not really old! She took off her hat swiftly and put it on a shelf in the closet, moving on to the secretary in the bay window. When she saw him at her mother’s funeral in Charleston three years ago he didn’t look very much changed—a little thinner and there were lines in his face that made his nose more prominent and there was a thin spot on the crown of his head. But he was still handsome. And he was attentive still and had about him his appealing air of innocence.
She began a search of the stuffed pigeonholes in the desk for a letter Edward had written her after her mother’s death. She wanted to see what it was exactly that he had said about her appearance. Even mourning had not spoiled the quality of her complexion? Doubtless he had not actually referred to her complexion, but somehow he got over that impression. Of course, Mr. Hightower had been with her in Charleston and there wasn’t much occasion for Edward to show her attention during that three-day visit. But he had nevertheless, been able to give her the feeling—now that she thought about it—that he still bore her a deep consideration. And that had not been so long ago! She did exist in the flesh for him! A little color had come into Lucy’s face, now drawn about the eyes and mouth in an anxiety of eagerness as she picked among the confusion of papers.
After all, she had been responsible for Edward’s not marrying her!
“I’m not going to take it!” he said then. “This has gone on too long already.” His voice was raised in protest, but he spoke soberly. “I can get an instructor’s job at the Citadel and we’ll get married!”
They were sitting on the old green plush Sheraton sofa in the Morrow parlor on Wentworth street.
She had said, “Don’t be absurd! Only six such fellowhips are given out by Johns Hopkins, Peter Miller tells me. Why it’s like being picked to be bishop!”
Shaking his head, he frowned, staring at the brass shield that covered the fireplace. “No,” he said, “I’m not going to!”
She had taken hold of his hand then to cry, “Look at me, Edward!” His dark liquid eyes were widened in pain, and she, with as much of the oracular as she could give to her voice, went on, “You’ll be a doctor of philosophy some day. I know it!”
A frightened look came over his face, and she had thought then that it was merely the challenge of his future at Johns Hopkins that affected him.
Lifting a rusty hardback ledger out of her way, Lucy paused in her search for Edward’s old letter to consider.
She had been unfair to him!
But then, she was also unfair to herself. And she had kissed him on that occasion, too. A kiss of betrayal, it turned out to be! She did not think of it so at the time, to be sure, but she had known that, within reason, she was not going to get to wait three more years to marry Edward! Her father was then already planning to retire and move to an up-country farm. That had been an evening in May. Within a month she had met Marcellus Hightower!
A small heavy envelope fell like a plummet out of the ledger that she had taken up and lay before her on the green baize. She stared at it in mystification. The superscription spoke to her from the vigorous forward-slanting though fading script:
“Miss Lucy Morrow
Aiken Co. Aiken, South Carolina.”
The words carried a command.
She knew the letter, though she had not seen it in many years. He had written her only five times after she removed her family to Aiken, after they were engaged. They were his only love letters; she had kept them all. But this one alone had come through the years. She took the sheets out of the container and spread them out before her. It did not occur to Lucy that she could refuse to read his letter.
He had written her on his professional stationery. A box in the left-hand corner announced: “Special attention given to selling, buying, paying taxes, leasing and perfecting TITLES TO WILD LAND.” On the right, in print: “M.B. Hightower Attorney at Law,” then in his hand: “Adair, Ga., Dec. 3d, 1886.”
Her eyes took in the familiar script as if it were a returning presence.
“My dear Lucy,”
“Your bright messenger of the 24th ult., was read on my return from Clarksville, the county seat of Clark County where we hold our Superior courts.
“I have about decided not to try to visit you this week, as I have to be in Coffee County next week and I could not more than reach you and return by that time. I will have more time after then and I will not have to hurry back so quick.
“You will not feel more disappointed than I do but I believe you feel too much interest in my affairs to have me neglect a matter of so much importance to me (or us). Nor does this make you a secondary consideration either, as you are sometimes half persuaded to believe.”
There was Marcellus Hightower! Every word and syllable of it was him. Lucy shook her head. Looking over the unselfconscious script again, she became aware for the first time (though she could not say how many times she had read it) that there were no paragraph indentions, no punctuation in it. She had always supplied them unconsciously herself, so conscious was she of the rhythm and sound of that voice that had seemed sometimes to come to her through her chest rather than her ears. So conscious, of its commitment!
“Now, if your cheeks are rosy when I go to see you, you will pardon me if I insist on what you so often refused me? It was perhaps impudent to make such a request, but you know, my dear, how much I love you! It is you alone, Sweetheart, who can make me happy and I am lonely without you, forgetting all the rest.”
Well the test of it was not in the words!
“It is hard to foretell the future and we cannot tell how much sorrow may come or how soon, but if tonight I knew we would be congenial and happy, it is all of life I would wish. And I tremble when I think that either one of us should spend the rest of our lives unhappy?”
Lucy lifted smarting eyes and looked away, her breathing grown labored. Our lives! The voice was coming to her through the chest now. . .
“Of course my humble prayer is that you will not be disappointed. We cannot escap
e the stern realities of life and you have seen enough of the country perhaps to guess whether or not you could afford to spend all the rest of your life on the banks of ‘My own Oconee.’ It is doubtful whether or not I could make a living for you in the city, is why I hint what might be your fate if you continue to trust me.”
Oh yes, she was confident that she had seen enough of the rest of the country to know, the first time she read this letter! Then, she had known! Lucy pulled the handkerchief from the band of her apron and wiped her eyes. She sat up in her chair and took the last lines in a clump.
“When you write Miss Julia again tell her I appreciate the compliment and hope the Earthquake may never visit her home any more and ‘May her joys be as deep as the ocean, and her sorrows as light as its foam.’
“I shall be happy to hear from you soon, dear,
Yours as ever,
M.B. Hightower”
Lucy got up abruptly, still dabbing with the crumpled linen cloth. It was now almost dark and she strode to the reading table and lighted a lamp. But, why, why, why? Shrugging she moved to the window-door to the side porch and drew in the blinds. Edward’s voice echoed in her head: “But they are dead; those two are dead!
“Their spirits are in heaven!”
And isn’t that the unalterable, the controlling fact of the whole situation, Lucy? She asked herself, still in Edward’s tones. She strode to the table again and, picking up the lighted lamp, she bore it over to the secretary. The Earthquake! How odd! The Earthquake and Edward!
This is Adam (Lightwood History Collection Book 4) Page 11
