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No more than a dozen footfalls, and from the darkness Boaz's voice rolled forth, fraternal, stentorian, "Good night, Antone!" "Good night to you, Caleb Snow!" To Boaz Negro it was still broad day. Now, because of this, he was what might be called a substantial man. He owned his place, his shop, opening on the sidewalk, and behind it the dwelling-house with trellised galleries upstairs and down.
The body lay on the floor at Boaz's feet, where it had tumbled down slowly after a moment from the spasmodic embrace of his arms; those ivory-coloured arms which had beaten so long upon the bare iron surface of a last. Blows continuous and powerful. It seemed incredible. They were so weak now. They could not have lifted the hammer now. But that beard!
And Boaz answered her: "It hath been showed me all that thou hast done to thy mother." So, all day, Ruth gleaned in Boaz's fields. At noon she ate bread and parched corn with the others. Boaz commanded his reapers to let fall large handfuls of grain, as they worked, for Ruth to gather, and at night she took it all home to Naomi.
He heard them coming around the corner of the shop from the house, footfalls half swallowed by the wind, passing discreetly, without haste, retreating, merging step by step with the huge, incessant background of the wind. Boaz's muscles tightened all over him. He had the impulse to start up, to fling open the door, shout into the night, "What are you doing? Stop there! Say!
"Haven't you ever thought of having Manuel learn the trade?" A suspicion, a kind of premonition, lighted the fires of defence. "Shoemaking," said Boaz, "is good enough for a blind man." "Oh, I don't know. At least it's better than doing nothing at all." Boaz's hammer was still. He sat silent, monumental. Outwardly. For once his unfailing response had failed him, "Manuel ain't too stout, you know."
With these words she put up her mouth and gave me so tender and passionate a kiss that I went away feeling certain of my bliss being crowned on my return. That evening, at supper-time, I reached Boaz's house. My Fortune in Holland My Return to Paris with Young Pompeati
Yet perhaps it would have been harder after all. For his earnings were less and less. In that town a cobbler who sits in an empty shop is apt to want for trade. Folk take their boots to mend where they take their bodies to rest and their minds to be edified. No longer did the walls of Boaz's shop resound to the boastful recollections of young men. Boaz had changed.
Ain't that so, old gal?" he inquired of the spotted hound on a bed of husks at his side. "It wan't no longer than last week that she kept that little nigger of Uncle Boaz's up a persimmon tree for mo'n an hour." "Thar's some niggers that look so much like possums when they git up in persimmon branches that it takes a sharp eye to tell the difference," observed Tim Mallory.
Perhaps it had become suddenly inadequate. He hated Wood; he despised Wood; more than ever before, a hundredfold more, quite abruptly, he distrusted Wood. How could a man say such things as Wood had said? And where Manuel himself might hear! Where Manuel had heard! Boaz's other emotions hatred and contempt and distrust were overshadowed.
Sitting as impassive and monumental as ever, his strong, bleached hands at rest on his work, round drops of sweat came out on Boaz's forehead. He scarcely took the sense of what Wood was saying. Only fragments. "Government money, understand for the breakwater workings huge too many people know here, everywhere don't trust the safe tin safe 'Noah's Ark' give you my word Heavens, no!"
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