And as I had promised we performed upon that stubborn turtle. With a
convulsion, as the ammonia fumes entered his nostrils, if he had such
things, he let go of the toe, shuddered and withdrew into his shell, to
die, I supposed, though I afterwards learned that he crawled off in the
night, much to the kiddie's grief.
"That's a bad smell, poor old turkle," was all the thanks I got as the
sufferer climbed down from the bed and proceeded to seize his late enemy
in intrepid and sympathetic hands. His mother rescued both him and the
turtle by placing the latter in a bucket on a table at the window and
giving the rescued another bucket to get me a drink of water from the
well in the yard.
"Northeast, bottom corner," he promised me with hospitality shining from
his entire face as he experimentally hopped out into the yard, then
forgot me and the water entirely in making the acquaintance of a very
dirty little dog that was barking at him through the fence.
"Oh, he's lovely, Martha," I said, speaking from pure impulse in a way
that could not fail to carry conviction and melt the heart of any woman
who possessed a treasure like that.
"I know he is, Miss Charlotte," Martha answered with gentle bitterness,
"and that makes it all the worse for him."
"It doesn't; it can't be worse for anybody to be born as beautiful and
strong as that boy is," I answered her and felt somehow I had fallen
head foremost into my mission. "I came down here to see you, Martha, and
now that I have seen him--I--it's--it's a shame, all of it," I ended by
faltering with a total lack of the eloquence that I felt.
"Yes, it's just that--a shame," Martha admitted to me with a great
hopelessness in her black eyes. "And nothing can make it better."
"Something can be done!" I answered hotly. "You are young, Martha, and
he's a baby. You can get out of it all and you can get him out and begin
all over. I--I'll help you." And as I spoke I took her hand in mine.
Mine was brown and hard from tennis and Martha's from toil, but they met
and clung.
"I--I tried that, Miss Charlotte. I had to come back," answered Martha,
and a bitter passion suddenly lit her pale face. "I'm too young to be
let go--yet."
"What do you mean, Martha?" I asked, and suddenly I felt that some kind
of chasm had yawned at my feet that I had never suspected to exist
before.
"Don't ask me, Miss Charlotte," Martha answered as the passion died out
of her face and voice and the sorrow fell over her like a shadow.
"Do you remember that afternoon at Mother Spurlock's when we were ten,
and you climbed the tree and got the apples, while I picked them up for
her to make apple turn-overs for us?" I asked her suddenly as I held on
to her hand when she tried to draw it from me. "I cried for a week to
go and see you, Martha, and it was all wrong that I wasn't allowed. My
mother would have let me come if she had been alive, but Mammy was an
ignorant negro and didn't understand."