And Sammy found Matthew an invaluable lieutenant.
“By gum, Sara, we have turned a trick. To tell the truth, for a long time I distrusted that bird, even after his great speech. I was afraid he’d be a highbrow and start out reforming. Damned if he ain’t the best worker I ever had.”
“Yes he’ll do for the legislature,” said Sara. Sammy scowled. That was like Sara. Whenever he yielded an inch, off she skipped with an ell.
“Slow, slow,” he said frowning; “we can’t push a new man and a jailbird too fast.”
“Sammy, you’re still a fool. Don’t you see that this is the only man we can push, because he’s tied to us body and soul?”
“I ain’t so sure—”
“Sh!”
Matthew came in. He greeted them diffidently, almost shyly. He always felt naked before these two.
They talked over routine matters, and then without preliminaries Matthew said abruptly, “I’d like to take a short vacation. I ought to see my old mother in Virginia.”
“Sure,” said Sammy cheerfully, and drew out a roll of bills. Matthew hesitated, counted out a few bills, and handed the rest back.
“Thanks!” he said, and with no further word turned and went out.
Sammy’s jaw dropped. He stared at the bills in his hand and at the door. “I don’t like that handing dough back,” he said. “It ain’t natural.”
“He may be honest,” said Sara.
“And in politics? Humph! Wonder just what his game is? I wish he’d grin a little more and do the glad hand act!”
“Do you want the earth?” asked Sara.
It was Christmas time, 1924, when Matthew came back to Virginia after five years of absence. Winter had hardly begun, and the soft glow of Autumn still lingered on the fields. He stopped at the county seat three miles from home and went to the recorder’s office. It was as he had thought; his mother’s little farm of twenty acres was mortgaged, and only by the good-natured indulgence of the mortgagee was she living there and paying neither interest nor rent.
“Don’t want to disturb Sally, you know. She’s our folks. Used to belong to my grandfather. So you’re her boy, hey? Heard you was dead—then heard you was in jail. Well, well; and what’s your business—er—and what’s your name? Matthew Towns? Sure, sure, the old family name. Well, Matthew, it’ll take near on a thousand dollars to clear that place.”
Matthew paid five hundred cash and arranged to pay the rest and to buy the other twenty acres next year—the twenty acres of tangled forest, hill, and brook that he always had wanted as a boy; but his father strove for the twenty smoother acres—strove and failed.
Then slowly Matthew walked out into the country and into the night. He slept in an empty hut beside the road and listened to creeping things. He heard the wind, the hooting of the owls, and saw the sun rise, pale gold and crimson, over the eastern trees. He washed his face by the roadside and then sat waiting—waiting for the world.
He sat there in the dim, sweet morning and swung his long limbs. He was a boy again, with the world before him. Beyond the forest, it lay magnificent—wonderful—beautiful—beautiful as one unforgettable face. He leaped to the ground and clenched his hand. A wave of red shame smothered his heart. He had not known such a rush of feeling for a year. He thought he had forgotten how to feel. He knew now why he had come here. It was not simply to see that poor old mother. It was to walk in her footsteps, to know if she had carried his last message.
A bowed old black man crept down the road.
“Good morning, sir.”
“Good mo’nin’—good mo’nin’. Fine mo’nin’, And who might you be, sah? Pears like I know you.”
“I am Matthew Towns.”
The old man slowly came nearer. He stretched out his hand and touched Matthew. And then he said:
“She said you wuzn’t dead. She said God couldn’t let you die till she put her old hands on your head. And she sits waitin’ for you always, waitin’ in the cabin do’.”
Matthew turned and went down to the brook and crossed it and walked up through the black wood and came to the fence. She was sitting in the door, straight, tall, big and brown. She was singing something low and strong. And her eyes were scanning the highway. Matthew leaped the fence and walked slowly toward her down the lane.
VII
Sara Andrews sat in Matthew’s flat in the spring of 1925 and looked around with a calculating glance. It was in her eyes a silly room; a man’s room, of course. It was terribly dirty and yet with odd bits—a beautiful but uneven parquet floor, quite new; a glorious and costly rug that had never been swept; old books and pamphlets lay piled about, and in the center was a big dilapidated armchair, sadly needing new upholstery. The room was proof that Matthew needed a home. She would invite him to hers. It might lead to something, and Sara looked him over carefully as he bent over the report which she had brought. Outside his haunted eyes and a certain perpetual lack of enthusiasm, he was very good to look at.
