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Updated: June 10, 2025
He had to bear with him but for a few moments, however. They met a crowd of workmen at the corner, one of whom, an old man freshly washed, with honest eyes looking out of horn spectacles, waited for them by a fire-plug. It was Polston, the coal-digger, an acquaintance, a far-off kinsman of Holmes, in fact. "Curious person making signs to you, yonder," said Cox; "hand, I presume."
Being proud of her slave, she let the hand flutter down now somehow with some flowers it held until it touched his hard fingers, her cheek flushing into rose. The nerveless, spongy hand, what a death-grip it had on his life! He did not look back once at the motionless, dusty figure on the road. What was that Polston had said about starving to death for a kind word?
Old Yare pointed it out to Mrs. Polston one day. "My girl's far off frum us," he said, sobbing in the kitchen, "my girl's far off now." It was the last night of the year that she died. She was so much better that they all were quite cheerful. Kitts went away as it grew dark, and she bade him wrap up his throat with such a motherly dogmatism that they all laughed at her; she, too, with the rest.
"My father was outside," said Holmes, some old bitterness rising up in his tone, his gray eye lighting with some unrevenged wrong. Polston did not speak for a moment. "Dunnot bear malice agin her. They're dead, now. It wasn't left fur her to judge him out yonder. Yoh've yer father's Stephen, 'times. Hungry, pitiful, like women's. His got desper't' 't th' last. Drunk hard, died of 't, yoh know.
Lois used to tell him, while she feebly tried to set his room in order, of all her plans, of how Sam Polston was to be married on New-Year's, but most of all of the Christmas coming out at the old schoolmaster's: how the old house had been scrubbed from top to bottom, was fairly glowing with shining paint and hot fires, how Margaret and her mother worked, in terror lest the old man should find out how poor and bare it was, how he and Joel had some secret enterprise on foot at the far end of the plantation out in the swamp, and were gone nearly all day.
She liked better to hear him than any of the others, even than Margret, whose voice was so low and tender: something in the man's half-savage nature was akin to the child's. As the day drew near when she was to go, every pleasant trifle seemed to gather a deeper, solemn meaning. Jenny Balls came in one night, and old Mrs. Polston.
The old stoker had just finished slaking the out-fires, and was putting some blue plates on the table, gravely straightening them. He had grown old, as Polston said, Holmes saw, stooped much, with a low, hacking cough; his coarse clothes were curiously clean: that was to please Lois, of course.
Well, ther' 's a day of makin' things clear, comin'." They had reached the corner now, and Polston turned down the lane. "Yoh 'll think o' Yare's case?" he said. "Yes. But how can I help it," Holmes said, lightly, "if I am like my mother, here?" putting his hand to his mouth. "God help us, how can yoh?
"It's the turn o' the night," said Mrs. Polston, solemnly; "lift her head; the Old Year's 'goin' out." Margret lifted her head, and held it on her breast. She could hear cries and sobs; the faces, white now, and wet, pressed nearer, yet fading slowly: it was the Old Year going out, the worn-out year of her life.
There was old Polston and his son Sam coming home from the coal-pits, as black as ink, with their little tin lanterns on their caps. After a while Sam would come out in his suit of Kentucky jean, his face shining with the soap, and go sheepishly down to Jenny Ball's, and the old man would bring his pipe and chair out on the pavement, and his wife would sit on the steps.
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