Of the other members of the two households there were, at the great house, Miss Patty, as every one called her, John Merryvale's sister who came to him after his wife's death; and at the cabin in the pines, Tom, the son of the household, a serious, reliable boy, deliberate to slowness.
And lastly, there was Hertha. Ellen had insisted when they moved to Merryvale that Hertha remain a second year at her college, and the girl stayed away for that time; but the next season, the year Lee Merryvale went North, she made her entrance, a girl of nineteen, into Merryvale life. It was a modest entrance and she played her part shyly in the background. Hertha bore no resemblance to her sister and brother. Among the cabins in the pines you noticed her tightly curling hair and deep brown eyes, but as she moved about the great house you saw her graceful figure, her slender feet and hands, her small head on its long neck, her delicate nose and mouth, her white skin. She was a good needlewoman, and Miss Patty quickly seized upon her as her maid, and, for a pittance, Hertha worked for her by day, while at night and on Sundays she joined mother and brother and sister in the cabin. "You's a contented chile," her mother used to say, "an' 'member, dat's a gift." She had not been so contented in the city where she spent her childhood, but this new world by the river touched her spirit. She loved the quiet days, sewing and waiting on Miss Patty whose indolence and advancing years made her increasingly dependent. She loved on Sundays to take walks with Tom through the woods to where the creek set in, black, mysterious, a long line of cypresses guarding the stream. She was contented with her home, and her mind sometimes wandered when Ellen talked in the evening of plans for the future. Ellen was full of plans, she lived not for to-day but for to-morrow, but Hertha lived in to-day. Life was not always pleasant, the autumn tempests that lashed the great oaks and uprooted the pines were terrifying, but there were more days of sunshine than of storm. Lee Merryvale might sweat over his orange grove and swear at his workers, Ellen might lead out the whole settlement in a mad orgy of whitewashing, but no one expected anything disturbing from Hertha. Tom, once, painstakingly reading through a collection of poems acquired by Ellen in her school days as a prize, found the lines that suited the lady of his home; for, to Tom, Hertha was not only sister but queen.
"And hers shall be the breathing balm,
And hers the silence, and the calm
Of mute, insensate things."
CHAPTER II
In a week Tom was going away to school. It should not come as a surprise, Ellen repeatedly told him, for she had from time to time apprised him of the approaching fulfilment of her plans; but Tom had rested, like Hertha, in the present moment, believing, too, that Ellen's plans might go astray. This, however, was little likely to take place, for in his older sister he dealt with a general, intelligent, resourceful, and with a contempt for the enemy, poverty. Her efforts had at length secured a scholarship, and four years of savings were to be expended for traveling and necessary clothes. The rest depended upon Tom who would be equipped to go out and do his share in gaining an education.
"Surely," Ellen said at the supper-table when the announcement of the final arrangements was made, "you know I'm right, Tom, and that a colored boy needs an education more than a white boy."
Aunt Maggie wiped her eyes. "We sure need Tom," she said.
The older sister looked around the table, at Hertha's sad face, at Tom's sullen one, at her mother's tears, and for a moment felt the severity of the coming catastrophe; but for a moment only. Emotion soon gave place to reasoned thought.
"Tom has a right to an education," she said solemnly. "If he doesn't learn a trade at school he never will learn one, and we shouldn't keep him here no matter how much we shall need him and miss him."
Aunt Maggie rose. "You don' know what it means," she said, "to part a mudder f'om her only son." Her rich voice sounded with a certain finality as though, while appreciating Ellen's power, she wished her to understand her responsibility. "You's taken a deal upon you'self." And she left her children and went into her room.
Tom and Hertha slipped out of doors. In time of trouble they always got away from the house, and now in silence they made their way to the river.
It was a hot night in late September with a wind blowing from the east. In the summer, unless held home by some imperative need, all the people of the plantation, black and white, came in the evening to the wharf to taste the fresh breeze. But the wharf was long and seclusion possible, so the two slipped to their favorite place at the far end, and leaning against a post dangled their feet over the water.
"If it would do any good," Tom said morosely, "I'd run away."
Hertha laughed.
"Ellen thinks she can boss the whole of us," he went on, "but the time am coming when she can't boss me."
"'Is,' Tom."
"Yes, ma'am."
Tom's speech was a queer mixture of good English acquired from his sisters, who had been drilled by northern teachers, and colloquial speech picked up from his surroundings.
"It does seem too bad," Hertha declared, "to leave just now when Mr. Merryvale has come back and you can have work with some pay."
"I ain't going for more'n a year," Tom declared.
"You'll be grown up by that time."
"I'm as tall as you now."
Hertha looked across the water into the deep, velvet sky, and thought of the long days in which she would have to go about her work without her baby. Tom was seven years younger than she and since his birth had been her special charge. Hundreds of times she had washed his face and his soft little brown hands to which the grubby earth was as dear as to the roots of a flower. She it was who had always shielded him from severity, finding many and ingenious excuses for him. He had grown up a quiet, serious boy of a meditative cast, and sometimes came out with unusual, even startling remarks. Tom's "thinking" was one of the jokes of the family. Hertha found it hard to imagine life without him.
"Do you remember," she said after they had sat silent for a time; "once I struck you?"
"Naw!"
"Of course you don't remember, you weren't more than three. We were out visiting at Aunt Mary's and I had dressed you for the afternoon. We were on the steps. I had some sewing and you slipped away and went off berrying. Oh, but weren't you a sight when you came back!"
Tom grunted.
"You came right up to me and leaned against my knee, not a bit afraid. I scolded and you looked up and smiled. You were very little then, seems to me you weren't more than a baby."
"Yes?"
"I slapped you on your cheek!"
"Whew! I don't believe it would have killed a mosquito."
"You were so grieved! You looked at me as though I had bruised your heart. Your mouth trembled and you hid your face in my lap and cried."
"And then you took me in your lap and petted me and told me about the three little pigs and washed me and got me into another dress without Mammy's knowing!"
"You can't remember, Tom!"
