It was now almost too dark to distinguish objects; duskier and vaguer
became the flat world of marshes, set here and there with cypress and
bounded only by far horizons; and at last land and water disappeared
behind the gathered curtains of the night. There was no sound from the
waste except the wind among the withered reeds and the furrowing splash
of wheel and hoof over the submerged causeway.
The boy who was driving had scarcely spoken since he strapped Marche's
gun cases and valise to the rear of the rickety wagon at the railroad
station. Marche, too, remained silent, preoccupied with his own
reflections. Wrapped in his fur-lined coat, arms folded, he sat doubled
forward, feeling the Southern swamp-chill busy with his bones. Now and
then he was obliged to relight his pipe, but the cold bit at his
fingers, and he hurried to protect himself again with heavy gloves.
The small, rough hands of the boy who was driving were naked, and
finally Marche mentioned it, asking the child if he were not cold.
"No, sir," he said, with a colorless brevity that might have been
shyness or merely the dull indifference of the very poor, accustomed to
discomfort.
"Don't you feel cold at all?" persisted Marche kindly.
"No, sir."
"I suppose you are hardened to this sort of weather?"
"Yes, sir."
By the light of a flaming match, Marche glanced sideways at him as he
drew his pipe into a glow once more, and for an instant the boy's gray
eyes flickered toward his in the flaring light. Then darkness masked
them both again.
"Are you Mr. Herold's son?" inquired the young man.
"Yes, sir," almost sullenly.
"How old are you?"
"Eleven."
"You're a big boy, all right. I have never seen your father. He is at
the clubhouse, no doubt."
"Yes, sir," scarcely audible.
"And you and he live there all alone, I suppose?"
"Yes, sir." A moment later the boy added jerkily, "And my sister," as
though truth had given him a sudden nudge.
"Oh, you have a sister, too?"
"Yes, sir."
"That makes it very jolly for you, I fancy," said Marche pleasantly.
There was no reply to the indirect question.
His pipe had gone out again, and he knocked the ashes from it and
pocketed it. For a while they drove on in silence, then Marche peered
impatiently through the darkness, right and left, in an effort to see;
and gave it up.