Foreword . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . vii
I A STRANGER FROM SOUTH
CAROLINA . 1
II AN EVENING VISIT. .
. . . . . .14
III THE OLD JUDGE. . .
. . . . . .32
IV DOWN THE RIVER. . .
. . . . . .36
V THE TOURNAMENT . . .
. . . . . .45
VI THE QUEEN OF LOVE
AND BEAUTY. .59
VII 'MID NEW
SURROUNDINGS. . . . .63
VIII THE COURTSHIP . .
. . . . . .67
IX DOUBTS AND FEARS. .
. . . . . .77
X THE DREAM. . . . . .
. . . . . .88
XI A LETTER AND A
JOURNEY. . . . .96
XII TRYON GOES TO
PATESVILLE . . 104
XIII AN INJUDICIOUS PAYMENT.
. . 116
XIV A LOYAL FRIEND . .
. . . . . 124
XV MINE OWN PEOPLE . .
. . . . . 132
XVI THE BOTTOM FALLS
OUT . . . . 142
XVII TWO LETTERS . . .
. . . . . 149
XVIII UNDER THE OLD
REGIME . . . 155
XIX GOD MADE US ALL. .
. . . . . 178
XX DIGGING UP ROOTS. .
. . . . . 189
XXI A GILDED
OPPORTUNITY . . . . 193
XXII IMPERATIVE
BUSINESS . . . . 203
XXIII THE GUEST OF
HONOR . . . . 209
XXIV SWING YOUR
PARTNERS . . . . 220
XXV BALANCE ALL. . . .
. . . . . 228
XXVI THE SCHOOLHOUSE IN
THE WOODS233
XXVII AN INTERESTING
ACQUAINTANCE239
XXVIII THE LOST KNIFE.
. . . . . 244
XXIX PLATO EARNS HALF A
DOLLAR . 251
XXX AN UNUSUAL HONOR .
. . . . . 260
XXXI IN DEEP WATERS. .
. . . . . 268
XXXII THE POWER OF
LOVE. . . . . 277
XXXIII A MULE AND A
CART . . . . 282
TIME touches all things
with destroying hand; and if he seem now and then to bestow the bloom of youth,
the sap of spring, it is but a brief mockery, to be surely and swiftly followed
by the wrinkles of old age, the dry leaves and bare branches of winter. And yet
there are places where Time seems to linger lovingly long after youth has
departed, and to which he seems loath to bring the evil day. Who has not known
some even-tempered old man or woman who seemed to have drunk of the fountain of
youth? Who has not seen somewhere an old town that, having long since ceased to
grow, yet held its own without perceptible decline?
Some such trite
reflection--as apposite to the subject as most random reflections are--passed
through the mind of a young man who came out of the front door of the
Patesville Hotel about nine o'clock one fine morning in spring, a few years
after the Civil War, and started down Front Street toward the market-house.
Arriving at the town late the previous evening, he had been driven up from the
steamboat in a carriage, from which he had been able to distinguish only the
shadowy outlines of the houses along the street; so that this morning walk was
his first opportunity to see the town by daylight. He was dressed in a suit of
linen duck--the day was warm--a panama straw hat, and patent leather shoes. In
appearance he was tall, dark, with straight, black, lustrous hair, and very
clean-cut, high-bred features. When he paused by the clerk's desk on his way
out, to light his cigar, the day clerk, who had just come on duty, glanced at
the register and read the last entry:-- “ `JOHN WARWICK, CLARENCE, SOUTH
CAROLINA.'
“One of the South
Ca'lina bigbugs, I reckon --probably in cotton, or turpentine.” The gentleman
from South Carolina, walking down the street, glanced about him with an eager
look, in which curiosity and affection were mingled with a touch of bitterness.
He saw little that was not familiar, or that he had not seen in his dreams a
hundred times during the past ten years. There had been some changes, it is
true, some melancholy changes, but scarcely anything by way of addition or
improvement to counterbalance them. Here and there blackened and dismantled
walls marked the place where handsome buildings once had stood, for Sherman's
march to the sea had left its mark upon the town. The stores were mostly of
brick, two stories high, joining one another after the manner of cities. Some
of the names on the signs were familiar; others, including a number of Jewish
names, were quite unknown to him.
A two minutes' walk
brought Warwick--the name he had registered under, and as we shall call him--to
the market-house, the central feature of Patesville, from both the commercial
and the picturesque points of view. Standing foursquare in the heart of the
town, at the intersection of the two main streets, a “jog” at each street
corner left around the market-house a little public square, which at this hour
was well occupied by carts and wagons from the country and empty drays awaiting
hire. Warwick was unable to perceive much change in the market-house. Perhaps
the surface of the red brick, long unpainted, had scaled off a little more here
and there. There might have been a slight accretion of the moss and lichen on
the shingled roof. But the tall tower, with its four- faced clock, rose as
majestically and uncompromisingly as though the land had never been subjugated.
Was it so irreconcilable, Warwick wondered, as still to peal out the curfew bell,
which at nine o'clock at night had clamorously warned all negroes, slave or
free, that it was unlawful for them to be abroad after that hour, under penalty
of imprisonment or whipping? Was the old constable, whose chief business it had
been to ring the bell, still alive and exercising the functions of his office,
and had age lessened or increased the number of times that obliging citizens
performed this duty for him during his temporary absences in the company of
convivial spirits? A few moments later, Warwick saw a colored policeman in the
old constable's place--a stronger reminder than even the burned buildings that
war had left its mark upon the old town, with which Time had dealt so tenderly.
The lower story of the
market-house was open on all four of its sides to the public square. Warwick
passed through one of the wide brick arches and traversed the building with a
leisurely step. He looked in vain into the stalls for the butcher who had sold
fresh meat twice a week, on market days, and he felt a genuine thrill of
pleasure when he recognized the red bandana turban of old Aunt Lyddy, the
ancient negro woman who had sold him gingerbread and fried fish, and told him
weird tales of witchcraft and conjuration, in the old days when, as an idle
boy, he had loafed about the market-house. He did not speak to her, however, or
give her any sign of recognition. He threw a glance toward a certain corner
where steps led to the town hall above. On this stairway he had once seen a
manacled free negro shot while being taken upstairs for examination under a
criminal charge. Warwick recalled vividly how the shot had rung out. He could
see again the livid look of terror on the victim's face, the gathering crowd,
the resulting confusion. The murderer, he recalled, had been tried and
sentenced to imprisonment for life, but was pardoned by a merciful governor
after serving a year of his sentence. As Warwick was neither a prophet nor the
son of a prophet, he could not foresee that, thirty years later, even this
would seem an excessive punishment for so slight a misdemeanor.
Leaving the
market-house, Warwick turned to the left, and kept on his course until he
reached the next corner. After another turn to the right, a dozen paces brought
him in front of a small weather-beaten frame building, from which projected a
wooden sign-board bearing the inscription:-- ARCHIBALD STRAIGHT, LAWYER. He
turned the knob, but the door was locked. Retracing his steps past a vacant
lot, the young man entered a shop where a colored man was employed in
varnishing a coffin, which stood on two trestles in the middle of the floor.
Not at all impressed by the melancholy suggestiveness of his task, he was
whistling a lively air with great gusto. Upon Warwick's entrance this effusion
came to a sudden end, and the coffin-maker assumed an air of professional
gravity.
“Good-mawnin', suh,” he
said, lifting his cap politely.
“Good-morning,”
answered Warwick. “Can you tell me anything about Judge Straight's office
hours?”
“De ole jedge has be'n
a little onreg'lar sence de wah, suh; but he gin'ally gits roun' 'bout ten
o'clock er so. He+'s be'n kin' er feeble fer de las' few yeahs. An' I reckon,”
continued the undertaker solemnly, his glance unconsciously seeking a row of
fine caskets standing against the wall,--“I reckon he'll soon be goin' de way
er all de earth. `Man dat is bawn er 'oman hath but a sho't time ter lib, an'
is full er mis'ry. He cometh up an' is cut down lack as a flower.' `De days er
his life is three-sco' an' ten'--an' de ole jedge is libbed mo' d'n dat, suh,
by five yeahs, ter say de leas'.”
“ `Death,' ” quoted
Warwick, with whose mood the undertaker's remarks were in tune, “ `is the
penalty that all must pay for the crime of living.' "
“Dat 's a fac', suh,
dat 's a fac'; so dey mus'-- so dey mus'. An' den all de dead has ter be
buried. An' we does ou' sheer of it, suh, we does ou' sheer. We conduc's de
obs'quies er all de bes' w'ite folks er de town, suh.”
Warwick left the
undertaker's shop and retraced his steps until he had passed the lawyer's
office, toward which he threw an affectionate glance. A few rods farther led
him past the old black Presbyterian church, with its square tower, embowered in
a stately grove; past the Catholic church, with its many crosses, and a painted
wooden figure of St. James in a recess beneath the gable; and past the old
Jefferson House, once the leading hotel of the town, in front of which
political meetings had been held, and political speeches made, and political
hard cider drunk, in the days of “Tippecanoe and Tyler too.”
The street down which
Warwick had come intersected Front Street at a sharp angle in front of the old
hotel, forming a sort of flatiron block at the junction, known as Liberty
Point,--perhaps because slave auctions were sometimes held there in the good old
days. Just before Warwick reached Liberty Point, a young woman came down Front
Street from the direction of the market-house. When their paths converged,
Warwick kept on down Front Street behind her, it having been already his
intention to walk in this direction.
Warwick's first glance
had revealed the fact that the young woman was strikingly handsome, with a
stately beauty seldom encountered. As he walked along behind her at a measured
distance, he could not help noting the details that made up this pleasing
impression, for his mind was singularly alive to beauty, in whatever
embodiment. The girl's figure, he perceived, was admirably proportioned; she
was evidently at the period when the angles of childhood were rounding into the
promising curves of adolescence. Her abundant hair, of a dark and glossy brown,
was neatly plaited and coiled above an ivory column that rose straight from a
pair of gently sloping shoulders, clearly outlined beneath the light muslin
frock that covered them. He could see that she was tastefully, though not
richly, dressed, and that she walked with an elastic step that revealed a light
heart and the vigor of perfect health. Her face, of course, he could not
analyze, since he had caught only the one brief but convincing glimpse of it.
The young woman kept on
down Front Street, Warwick maintaining his distance a few rods behind her. They
passed a factory, a warehouse or two, and then, leaving the brick pavement,
walked along on mother earth, under a leafy arcade of spreading oaks and elms.
Their way led now through a residential portion of the town, which, as they
advanced, gradually declined from staid respectability to poverty, open and
unabashed. Warwick observed, as they passed through the respectable quarter,
that few people who met the girl greeted her, and that some others whom she
passed at gates or doorways gave her no sign of recognition; from which he
inferred that she was possibly a visitor in the town and not well acquainted.
Their walk had
continued not more than ten minutes when they crossed a creek by a wooden
bridge and came to a row of mean houses standing flush with the street. At the
door of one, an old black woman had stooped to lift a large basket, piled high
with laundered clothes. The girl, as she passed, seized one end of the basket
and helped the old woman to raise it to her head, where it rested solidly on
the cushion of her head-kerchief. During this interlude, Warwick, though he had
slackened his pace measurably, had so nearly closed the gap between himself and
them as to hear the old woman say, with the dulcet negro intonation:--
“T'anky', honey; de
Lawd gwine bless you sho'. You wuz alluz a good gal, and de Lawd love eve'ybody
w'at he'p de po' ole nigger. You gwine ter hab good luck all yo' bawn days.”
“I hope you+'re a true
prophet, Aunt Zilphy,” laughed the girl in response.
The sound of her voice
gave Warwick a thrill. It was soft and sweet and clear--quite in harmony with
her appearance. That it had a faint suggestiveness of the old woman's accent he
hardly noticed, for the current Southern speech, including his own, was rarely
without a touch of it. The corruption of the white people's speech was one
element--only one--of the negrro's unconscious revenge for his own debasement.
The houses they passed
now grew scattering, and the quarter of the town more neglected. Warwick felt
himself wondering where the girl might be going in a neighborhood so
uninviting. When she stopped to pull a half-naked negro child out of a mudhole
and set him upon his feet, he thought she might be some young lady from the
upper part of the town, bound on some errand of mercy, or going, perhaps, to
visit an old servant or look for a new one. Once she threw a backward glance at
Warwick, thus enabling him to catch a second glimpse of a singularly pretty
face. Perhaps the young woman found his presence in the neighborhood as
unaccountable as he had deemed hers; for, finding his glance fixed upon her,
she quickened her pace with an air of startled timidity.
“A woman with such a
figure,” thought Warwick, “ought to be able to face the world with the
confidence of Phryne confronting her judges.”
By this time Warwick
was conscious that something more than mere grace or beauty had attracted him
with increasing force toward this young woman. A suggestion, at first faint and
elusive, of something familiar, had grown stronger when he heard her voice, and
became more and more pronounced with each rod of their advance; and when she
stopped finally before a gate, and, opening it, went into a yard shut off from
the street by a row of dwarf cedars, Warwick had already discounted in some
measure the surprise he would have felt at seeing her enter there had he not
walked down Front Street behind her. There was still sufficient unexpectedness about
the act, however, to give him a decided thrill of pleasure.
“It must be Rena,” he
murmured. “Who could have dreamed that she would blossom out like that? It must
surely be Rena!”
He walked slowly past
the gate and peered through a narrow gap in the cedar hedge. The girl was
moving along a sanded walk, toward a gray, unpainted house, with a steep roof,
broken by dormer windows. The trace of timidity he had observed in her had
given place to the more assured bearing of one who is upon his own ground. The
garden walks were bordered by long rows of jonquils, pinks, and carnations,
inclosing clumps of fragrant shrubs, lilies, and roses already in bloom. Toward
the middle of the garden stood two fine magnolia-trees, with heavy, dark green,
glistening leaves, while nearer the house two mighty elms shaded a wide piazza,
at one end of which a honeysuckle vine, and at the other a Virginia creeper,
running over a wooden lattice, furnished additional shade and seclusion. On
dark or wintry days, the aspect of this garden must have been extremely sombre
and depressing, and it might well have seemed a fit place to hide some guilty
or disgraceful secret. But on the bright morning when Warwick stood looking
through the cedars, it seemed, with its green frame and canopy and its bright
carpet of flowers, an ideal retreat from the fierce sunshine and the sultry
heat of the approaching summer.
The girl stooped to
pluck a rose, and as she bent over it, her profile was clearly outlined. She
held the flower to her face with a long-drawn inhalation, then went up the
steps, crossed the piazza, opened the door without knocking, and entered the
house with the air of one thoroughly at home.
“Yes,” said the young
man to himself, “it's Rena, sure enough.”
The house stood on a corner,
around which the cedar hedge turned, continuing along the side of the garden
until it reached the line of the front of the house. The piazza to a rear wing,
at right angles to the front of the house, was open to inspection from the side
street, which, to judge from its deserted look, seemed to be but little used.
Turning into this street and walking leisurely past the back yard, which was
only slightly screened from the street by a china-tree, Warwick perceived the
young woman standing on the piazza, facing an elderly woman, who sat in a large
rocking-chair, plying a pair of knitting-needles on a half-finished stocking.
Warwick's walk led him within three feet of the side gate, which he felt an
almost irresistible impulse to enter. Every detail of the house and garden was
familiar; a thousand cords of memory and affection drew him thither; but a
stronger counter-motive prevailed. With a great effort he restrained himself,
and after a momentary pause, walked slowly on past the house, with a backward glance,
which he turned away when he saw that it was observed.
Warwick's attention had
been so fully absorbed by the house behind the cedars and the women there, that
he had scarcely noticed, on the other side of the neglected by-street, two men
working by a large open window, in a low, rude building with a clapboarded
roof, directly opposite the back piazza occupied by the two women. Both the men
were busily engaged in shaping barrel-staves, each wielding a sharp-edged
drawing-knife on a piece of seasoned oak clasped tightly in a wooden vise.
“I jes' wonder who dat
man is, an' w'at he 's doin' on dis street,” observed the younger of the two,
with a suspicious air. He had noticed the gentleman's involuntary pause and his
interest in the opposite house, and had stopped work for a moment to watch the
stranger as he went on down the street.
“Nev' min' 'bout dat
man,” said the elder one. “You 'ten' ter yo' wuk an' finish dat bairl-stave.
You spen's enti'ely too much er yo' time stretchin' yo' neck atter other
people. An' you need n' 'sturb yo'se'f 'bout dem folks 'cross de street, fer
dey ain't yo' kin', an' you+'re wastin' yo' time both'in' yo' min' wid 'em, er
wid folks w'at comes on de street on account of 'em. Look sha'p now, boy, er
you+'ll git dat stave trim' too much.”
The younger man resumed
his work, but still found time to throw a slanting glance out of the window.
The gentleman, he perceived, stood for a moment on the rotting bridge across
the old canal, and then walked slowly ahead until he turned to the right into
Back Street, a few rods farther on.
TOWARD evening of the
same day, Warwick took his way down Front Street in the gathering dusk. By the
time night had spread its mantle over the earth, he had reached the gate by which
he had seen the girl of his morning walk enter the cedar- bordered garden. He
stopped at the gate and glanced toward the house, which seemed dark and silent
and deserted.
“It+'s more than
likely,” he thought, “that they are in the kitchen. I reckon I+'d better try
the back door.”
But as he drew
cautiously near the corner, he saw a man's figure outlined in the yellow light
streaming from the open door of a small house between Front Street and the
cooper shop. Wishing, for reasons of his own, to avoid observation, Warwick did
not turn the corner, but walked on down Front Street until he reached a point
from which he could see, at a long angle, a ray of light proceeding from the
kitchen window of the house behind the cedars.
“They are there,” he
muttered with a sigh of relief, for he had feared they might be away. “I
suspect I+'ll have to go to the front door, after all. No one can see me
through the trees.”
He retraced his steps
to the front gate, which he essayed to open. There was apparently some defect
in the latch, for it refused to work. Warwick remembered the trick, and with a
slight sense of amusement, pushed his foot under the gate and gave it a hitch
to the left, after which it opened readily enough. He walked softly up the
sanded path, tiptoed up the steps and across the piazza, and rapped at the
front door, not too loudly, lest this too might attract the attention of the
man across the street. There was no response to his rap. He put his ear to the
door and heard voices within, and the muffled sound of footsteps. After a
moment he rapped again, a little louder than before.
There was an instant
cessation of the sounds within. He rapped a third time, to satisfy any
lingering doubt in the minds of those who he felt sure were listening in some
trepidation. A moment later a ray of light streamed through the keyhole.
“Who+'s there?” a
woman's voice inquired somewhat sharply.
“A gentleman,” answered
Warwick, not holding it yet time to reveal himself. “Does Mis' Molly Walden
live here?”
“Yes,” was the guarded
answer. “I+'m Mis' Walden. What+'s yo'r business?”
“I have a message to
you from your son John.”
A key clicked in the
lock. The door opened, and the elder of the two women Warwick had seen upon the
piazza stood in the doorway, peering curiously and with signs of great
excitement into the face of the stranger.
“You 've got a message
from my son, you say?” she asked with tremulous agitation. “Is he sick, or in
trouble?”
“No. He+'s well and
doing well, and sends his love to you, and hopes you+'ve not forgotten him.”
“Fergot him? No, God
knows I ain't fergot him! But come in, sir, an' tell me somethin' mo' about
him.”
Warwick went in, and as
the woman closed the door after him, he threw a glance round the room. On the
wall, over the mantelpiece, hung a steel engraving of General Jackson at the
battle of New Orleans, and, on the opposite wall, a framed fashion-plate from “Godey's
Lady's Book.” In the middle of the room an octagonal centre-table with a single
leg, terminating in three sprawling feet, held a collection of curiously shaped
sea-shells. There was a great haircloth sofa, somewhat the worse for wear, and
a well-filled bookcase. The screen standing before the fireplace was covered
with Confederate bank-notes of various denominations and designs, in which the
heads of Jefferson Davis and other Confederate leaders were conspicuous. “Imperious
Cæsar, dead, and turned to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away,”
murmured the young man, as his eye fell upon this specimen of decorative art.
The woman showed her
visitor to a seat. She then sat down facing him and looked at him closely. “When
did you last see my son?” she asked.
“I+'ve never met your
son,” he replied.
Her face fell. “Then
the message comes through you from somebody else?”
“No, directly from your
son.”
She scanned his face
with a puzzled look. This bearded young gentleman, who spoke so politely and
was dressed so well, surely--no, it could not be! and yet--
Warwick was smiling at
her through a mist of tears. An electric spark of sympathy flashed between
them. They rose as if moved by one impulse, and were clasped in each other's
arms.
“John, my John! It *is
John!”
“Mother--my dear old
mother!”
“I did+n't think,” she
sobbed, “that I+'d ever see you again.”
He smoothed her hair
and kissed her. “And are you glad to see me, mother?”
“Am I glad to see you?
It+'s like the dead comin' to life. I thought I+'d lost you forever, John, my
son, my darlin' boy!” she answered, hugging him strenuously.
“I couldn't live
without seeing you, mother,” he said. He meant it, too, or thought he did,
although he had not seen her for ten years.
“You+'ve grown so tall,
John, and are such a fine gentleman! And you *are a gentleman now, John, ain't
you--sure enough? Nobody knows the old story?”
“Well, mother, I+'ve
taken a man's chance in life, and have tried to make the most of it; and I
have+n't felt under any obligation to spoil it by raking up old stories that
are best forgotten. There are the dear old books: have they been read since I
went away?”
“No, honey, there+'s
be'n nobody to read 'em, excep' Rena, an' she don't take to books quite like
you did. But I+'ve kep' 'em dusted clean, an' kep' the moths an' the bugs out;
for I hoped you+'d come back some day, an' knowed you+'d like to find 'em all
in their places, jus' like you left 'em.”
“That+'s mighty nice of
you, mother. You could have done no more if you had loved them for themselves.
But where is Rena? I saw her on the street to-day, but she did+n't know me from
Adam; nor did I guess it was she until she opened the gate and came into the
yard.”
“I+'ve be'n so glad to
see you that I+'d fergot about her,” answered the mother. “Rena, oh, Rena!”
The girl was not far
away; she had been standing in the next room, listening intently to every word
of the conversation, and only kept from coming in by a certain constraint that
made a brother whom she had not met for so many years seem almost as much a
stranger as if he had not been connected with her by any tie.
“Yes, mamma,” she
answered, coming forward.
“Rena, child, here+'s
yo'r brother John, who+'s come back to see us. Tell 'im howdy.”
As she came forward,
Warwick rose, put his arm around her waist, drew her toward him, and kissed her
affectionately, to her evident embarrassment. She was a tall girl, but he
towered above her in quite a protecting fashion; and she thought with a thrill
how fine it would be to have such a brother as this in the town all the time.
How proud she would be, if she could but walk up the street with such a brother
by her side! She could then hold up her head before all the world, oblivious to
the glance of pity or contempt. She felt a very pronounced respect for this
tall gentleman who held her blushing face between his hands and looked steadily
into her eyes.
“You+'re the little
sister I used to read stories to, and whom I promised to come and see some day.
Do you remember how you cried when I went away?”
“It seems but
yesterday,” she answered. “I+'ve still got the dime you gave me.”
He kissed her again,
and then drew her down beside him on the sofa, where he sat enthroned between
the two loving and excited women. No king could have received more sincere or
delighted homage. He was a man, come into a household of women,--a man of whom
they were proud, and to whom they looked up with fond reverence. For he was not
only a son,--a brother--but he represented to them the world from which
circumstances had shut them out, and to which distance lent even more than its
usual enchantment; and they felt nearer to this far-off world because of the
glory which Warwick reflected from it.
“You're a very pretty
girl,” said Warwick, regarding his sister thoughtfully. “I followed you down
Front Street this morning, and scarcely took my eyes off you all the way; and
yet I did+n't know you, and scarcely saw your face. You improve on
acquaintance; to-night, I find you handsomer still.”
“Now, John,” said his
mother, expostulating mildly, “you+'ll spile her, if you don't min'.”
The girl was beaming
with gratified vanity. What woman would not find such praise sweet from almost
any source, and how much more so from this great man, who, from his exalted
station in the world, must surely know the things whereof he spoke! She
believed every word of it; she knew it very well indeed, but wished to hear it
repeated and itemized and emphasized.
“No, he won't, mamma,”
she asserted, “for he+'s flattering me. He talks as if I was some rich young
lady, who lives on the Hill,”--the Hill was the aristocratic portion of the
town,-- “instead of a poor”
“Instead of a poor
young girl, who has the hill to climb,” replied her brother, smoothing her hair
with his hand. Her hair was long and smooth and glossy, with a wave like the
ripple of a summer breeze upon the surface of still water. It was the girl's
great pride, and had been sedulously cared for. “What lovely hair! It has just
the wave that yours lacks, mother.”
“Yes,” was the
regretful reply, “I+'ve never be'n able to git that wave out. But her hair's
be'n took good care of, an' there ain't nary gal in town that+'s got any finer.”
“Don't worry about the
wave, mother. It+'s just the fashionable ripple, and becomes her immensely. I
think my little Albert favors his Aunt Rena somewhat.”
“Your little Albert!”
they cried. “You+'ve got a child?”
“Oh, yes,” he replied
calmly, “a very fine baby boy.”
They began to purr in
proud contentment at this information, and made minute inquiries about the age
and weight and eyes and nose and other important details of this precious
infant. They inquired more coldly about the child's mother, of whom they spoke
with greater warmth when they learned that she was dead. They hung breathless
on Warwick's words as he related briefly the story of his life since he had
left, years before, the house behind the cedars--how with a stout heart and an
abounding hope he had gone out into a seemingly hostile world, and made fortune
stand and deliver. His story had for the women the charm of an escape from captivity,
with all the thrill of a pirate's tale. With the whole world before him, he had
remained in the South, the land of his fathers, where, he conceived, he had an
inalienable birthright. By some good chance he had escaped military service in
the Confederate army, and, in default of older and more experienced men, had
undertaken, during the rebellion, the management of a large estate, which had
been left in the hands of women and slaves. He had filled the place so
acceptably, and employed his leisure to such advantage, that at the close of
the war he found himself--he was modest enough to think, too, in default of a
better man--the husband of the orphan daughter of the gentleman who had owned
the plantation, and who had lost his life upon the battlefield. Warwick's wife
was of good family, and in a more settled condition of society it would not
have been easy for a young man of no visible antecedents to win her hand. A
year or two later, he had taken the oath of allegiance, and had been admitted
to the South Carolina bar. Rich in his wife's right, he had been able to
practice his profession upon a high plane, without the worry of sordid cares,
and with marked success for one of his age.
“I suppose,” he
concluded, “that I have got along at the bar, as elsewhere, owing to the lack
of better men. Many of the good lawyers were killed in the war, and most of the
remainder were disqualified; while I had the advantage of being alive, and of
never having been in arms against the government. People had to have lawyers,
and they gave me their business in preference to the carpet- baggers. Fortune,
you know, favors the available man.”
His mother drank in
with parted lips and glistening eyes the story of his adventures and the record
of his successes. As Rena listened, the narrow walls that hemmed her in seemed
to draw closer and closer, as though they must crush her. Her brother watched
her keenly. He had been talking not only to inform the women, but with a deeper
purpose, conceived since his morning walk, and deepened as he had followed,
during his narrative, the changing expression of Rena's face and noted her
intense interest in his story, her pride in his successes, and the occasional
wistful look that indexed her self-pity so completely.
“An' I s'pose you+'re
happy, John?” asked his mother.
“Well, mother,
happiness is a relative term, and depends, I imagine, upon how nearly we think
we get what we think we want. I have had my chance and have+n't thrown it away,
and I suppose I ought to be happy. But then, I have lost my wife, whom I loved
very dearly, and who loved me just as much, and I+'m troubled about my child.”
“Why?” they demanded. “Is
there anything the matter with him?”
“No, not exactly. He+'s
well enough, as babies go, and has a good enough nurse, as nurses go. But the
nurse is ignorant, and not always careful. A child needs some woman of its own
blood to love it and look after it intelligently.”
Mis' Molly's eyes were
filled with tearful yearning. She would have given all the world to warm her
son's child upon her bosom; but she knew this could not be.
“Did your wife leave
any kin?” she asked with an effort.
“No near kin; she was
an only child.”
“You+'ll be gettin'
married again,” suggested his mother.
“No,” he replied; “I
think not.”
Warwick was still
reading his sister's face, and saw the spark of hope that gleamed in her
expressive eye.
“If I had some relation
of my own that I could take into the house with me,” he said reflectively, “the
child might be healthier and happier, and I should be much more at ease about
him.”
The mother looked from
son to daughter with a dawning apprehension and a sudden pallor. When she saw
the yearning in Rena's eyes, she threw herself at her son's feet.
“Oh, John,” she cried
despairingly, “don't take her away from me! Don't take her, John, darlin', for
it+'d break my heart to lose her!”
Rena's arms were round
her mother's neck, and Rena's voice was sounding in her ears. “There, there,
mamma! Never mind! I won't leave you, mamma--dear old mamma! Your Rena+'ll stay
with you always, and never, never leave you.”
John smoothed his
mother's hair with a comforting touch, patted her withered cheek soothingly,
lifted her tenderly to her place by his side, and put his arm about her.
“You love your
children, mother?”
“They+'re all I+'ve
got,” she sobbed, “an' they cos' me all I had. When the las' one+'s gone, I+'ll
want to go too, for I+'ll be all alone in the world. Don't take Rena, John; for
if you do, I+'ll never see her again, an' I can't bear to think of it. How
would you like to lose yo'r one child?”
“Well, well, mother,
we+'ll say no more about it. And now tell me all about yourself, and about the
neighbors, and how you got through the war, and who+'s dead and who+'s
married--and everything.”
The change of subject
restored in some degree Mis' Molly's equanimity, and with returning calmness
came a sense of other responsibilities.
“Good gracious, Rena!”
she exclaimed. “John 's be'n in the house an hour, and ain't had nothin' to eat
yet! Go in the kitchen an' spread a clean tablecloth, an' git out that 'tater
pone, an' a pitcher o' that las' kag o' persimmon beer, an' let John take a
bite an' a sip.”
Warwick smiled at the
mention of these homely dainties. “I thought of your sweet-potato pone at the
hotel to-day, when I was at dinner, and wondered if you+'d have some in the
house. There was never any like yours; and I+'ve forgotten the taste of
persimmon beer entirely.”
Rena left the room to
carry out her hospitable commission. Warwick, taking advantage of her absence,
returned after a while to the former subject.
“Of course, mother,” he
said calmly, “I would+n't think of taking Rena away against your wishes. A
mother's claim upon her child is a high and holy one. Of course she will have
no chance here, where our story is known. The war has wrought great changes,
has put the bottom rail on top, and all that--but it has+n't wiped *that out.
Nothing bat death can remove that stain, if it does not follow us even beyond
the grave. Here she must forever be--nobody! With me she might have got out
into the world; with her beauty she might have made a good marriage; and, if I
mistake not, she has sense as well as beauty.”
“Yes,” sighed the
mother, “she+'s got good sense. She ain't as quick as you was, an' don't read
as many books, but she+'s keerful an' painstakin', an' always tries to do
what+'s right. She+'s be'n thinkin' about goin' away somewhere an' tryin' to
git a school to teach, er somethin', sence the Yankees have started 'em
everywhere for po' white folks an' niggers too. But I don't like fer her to go
too fur.”
“With such beauty and
brains,” continued Warwick, “she could leave this town and make a place for
herself. The place is already made. She has only to step into my carriage--after
perhaps a little preparation--and ride up the hill which I have had to climb so
painfully. It would be a great pleasure to me to see her at the top. But of
course it is impossible-a mere idle dream. *Your claim comes first; her duty
chains her here.”
“It would be so lonely
without her,” murmured the mother weakly, “an' I love her so--my las' one!”
“No doubt--no doubt,”
returned Warwick, with a sympathetic sigh; “of course you love her. It+'s not
to be thought of for a moment. It+'s a pity that she could+n't have a chance
here--but how could she! I had thought she might marry a gentleman, but I dare
say she'll do as well as the rest of her friends--as well as Mary B., for
instance, who married--Homer Pettifoot, did you say? Or maybe Billy Oxendine
might do for her. As long as she has never known any better, she+'ll probably
be as well satisfied as though she married a rich man, and lived in a fine
house, and kept a carriage and servants, and moved with the best in the land.”
The tortured mother
could endure no more. The one thing she desired above all others was her
daughter's happiness. Her own life had not been governed by the highest
standards, but about her love for her beautiful daughter there was no taint of
selfishness. The life her son had described had been to her always the ideal
but unattainable life. Circumstances, some beyond her control, and others for
which she was herself in a measure responsible, had put it forever and
inconceivably beyond her reach. It had been conquered by her son. It beckoned
to her daughter. The comparison of this free and noble life with the sordid
existence of those around her broke down the last barrier of opposition.
“O Lord!” she moaned, “what
shall I do with out her? It+'ll be lonely, John--so lonely!”
“You+'ll have your
home, mother,” said Warwick tenderly, accepting the implied surrender. “You+'ll
have your friends and relatives, and the knowledge that your children are
happy. I+'ll let you hear from us often, and no doubt you can see Rena now and
then. But you must let her go, mother,--it would be a sin against her to
refuse.”
“She may go,” replied
the mother brokenly. “I+'ll not stand in her way--I+'ve got sins enough to
answer for already.”
Warwick watched her
pityingly. He had stirred her feelings to unwonted depths, and his sympathy
went out to her. If she had sinned, she had been more sinned against than
sinning, and it was not his part to judge her. He had yielded to a sentimental
weakness in deciding upon this trip to Patesville. A matter of business had
brought him within a day's journey of the town, and an over- mastering impulse
had compelled him to seek the mother who had given him birth and the old town
where he had spent the earlier years of his life. No one would have acknowledged
sooner than he the folly of this visit. Men who have elected to govern their
lives by principles of abstract right and reason, which happen, perhaps, to be
at variance with what society considers equally right and reasonable, should,
for fear of complications, be careful about descending from the lofty heights
of logic to the common level of impulse and affection. Many years before,
Warwick, when a lad of eighteen, had shaken the dust of the town from his feet,
and with it, he fondly thought, the blight of his inheritance, and had achieved
elsewhere a worthy career. But during all these years of absence he had
cherished a tender feeling for his mother, and now again found himself in her
house, amid the familiar surroundings of his childhood. His visit had brought
joy to his mother's heart, and was now to bring its shrouded companion, sorrow.
His mother had lived her life, for good or ill. A wider door was open to his
sister--her mother must not bar the entrance.
“She may go,” the
mother repeated sadly, drying her tears. “I+'ll give her up for her good.”
“The table 's ready,
mamma,” said Rena, coming to the door.
The lunch was spread in
the kitchen, a large unplastered room at the rear, with a wide fireplace at one
end. Only yesterday, it seemed to Warwick, he had sprawled upon the hearth,
turning sweet potatoes before the fire, or roasting groundpeas in the ashes;
or, more often, reading, by the light of a blazing pine-knot or lump of resin,
some volume from the bookcase in the hall. From Bulwer's novel, he had read the
story of Warwick the Kingmaker, and upon leaving home had chosen it for his
own. He was a new man, but he had the blood of an old race, and he would select
for his own one of its worthy names. Overhead loomed the same smoky beams, decorated
with what might have been, from all appearances, the same bunches of dried
herbs, the same strings of onions and red peppers. Over in the same corner
stood the same spinning-wheel, and through the open door of an adjoining room
he saw the old loom, where in childhood he had more than once thrown the
shuttle. The kitchen was different from the stately dining-room of the old
colonial mansion where he now lived; but it was homelike, and it was familiar.
The sight of it moved his heart, and he felt for the moment a sort of a blind
anger against the fate which made it necessary that he should visit the home of
his childhood, if at all, like a thief in the night. But he realized, after a
moment, that the thought was pure sentiment, and that one who had gained so
much ought not to complain if he must give up a little. He who would climb the
heights of life must leave even the pleasantest valleys behind.
“Rena,” asked her
mother, “how+'d you like to go an' pay yo'r brother John a visit? I guess I
might spare you for a little while.”
The girl's eyes lighted
up. She would not have gone if her mother had wished her to stay, but she would
always have regarded this as the lost opportunity of her life.
“Are you sure you don't
care, mamma?” she asked, hoping and yet doubting.
“Oh, I+'ll manage to
git along somehow or other. You can go an' stay till you git homesick, an' then
John+'ll let you come back home.”
But Mis' Molly believed
that she would never come back, except, like her brother, under cover of the
night. She must lose her daughter as well as her son, and this should be the
penance for her sin. That her children must expiate as well the sins of their
fathers, who had sinned so lightly, after the manner of men, neither she nor
they could foresee, since they could not read the future.
The next boat by which
Warwick could take his sister away left early in the morning of the next day
but one. He went back to his hotel with the understanding that the morrow
should be devoted to getting Rena ready for her departure, and that Warwick
would visit the household again the following evening; for, as has been
intimated, there were several reasons why there should be no open relations
between the fine gentleman at the hotel and the women in the house behind the cedars,
who, while superior in blood and breeding to the people of the neighborhood in
which they lived, were yet under the shadow of some cloud which clearly shut
them out from the better society of the town. Almost any resident could have
given one or more of these reasons, of which any one would have been sufficient
to most of them; and to some of them Warwick's mere presence in the town would
have seemed a bold and daring thing.
ON the morning
following the visit to his mother, Warwick visited the old judge's office. The
judge was not in, but the door stood open, and Warwick entered to await his
return. There had been fewer changes in the office, where he had spent many,
many hours, than in the town itself. The dust was a little thicker, the papers
in the pigeon-holes of the walnut desk were a little yellower, the cobwebs in
the corners a little more aggressive. The flies droned as drowsily and the
murmur of the brook below was just as audible. Warwick stood at the rear window
and looked out over a familiar view. Directly across the creek, on the low
ground beyond, might be seen the dilapidated stone foundation of the house
where once had lived Flora Macdonald, the Jacobite refugee, the most romantic
character of North Carolina history. Old Judge Straight had had a tree cut away
from the creek-side opposite his window, so that this historic ruin might be
visible from his office; for the judge could trace the ties of blood that connected
him collaterally with this famous personage. His pamphlet on Flora Macdonald,
printed for private circulation, was highly prized by those of his friends who
were fortunate enough to obtain a copy. To the left of the window a placid
mill-pond spread its wide expanse, and to the right the creek disappeared under
a canopy of overhanging trees.
A footstep sounded in
the doorway, and Warwick, turning, faced the old judge. Time had left greater
marks upon the lawyer than upon his office. His hair was whiter, his stoop more
pronounced; when he spoke to Warwick, his voice had some of the shrillness of
old age; and in his hand, upon which the veins stood out prominently, a decided
tremor was perceptible.
“Good-morning, Judge
Straight,” said the young man, removing his hat with the graceful Southern
deference of the young for the old.
“Good-morning, sir,”
replied the judge with equal courtesy.
“You don't remember me,
I imagine,” suggested Warwick.
“Your face seems
familiar,” returned the judge cautiously, “but I cannot for the moment recall
your name. I shall be glad to have you refresh my memory.”
“I was John Walden,
sir, when you knew me.”
The judge's face still
gave no answering light of recognition.
“Your old office-boy,”
continued the younger man.
“Ah, indeed, so you
were!” rejoined the judge warmly, extending his hand with great cordiality, and
inspecting Warwick more closely through his spectacles. “Let me see--you went
away a few years before the war, was+n't it?”
“Yes, sir, to South
Carolina.”
“Yes, yes, I remember
now! I had been thinking it was to the North. So many things have happened
since then, that it taxes an old man's memory to keep track of them all. Well,
well! and how have you been getting along?”
Warwick told his story
in outline, much as he had given it to his mother and sister, and the judge
seemed very much interested.
“And you married into a
good family?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“And have children?”
“One.”
“And you are visiting
your mother?”
“Not exactly. I have
seen her, but I am stopping at a hotel.”
“H'm! Are you staying
long?”
“I leave to-morrow.”
“It+'s well enough. I
would+n't stay too long. The people of a small town are inquisitive about
strangers, and some of them have long memories. I remember we went over the
law, which was in your favor; but custom is stronger than law--in these matters
custom *is law. It was a great pity that your father did not make a will. Well,
my boy, I wish you continued good luck; I imagined you would make your way.”
Warwick went away, and
the old judge sat for a moment absorbed in reflection. “Right and wrong,” he
mused, “must be eternal verities, but our standards for measuring them vary
with our latitude and our epoch. We make our customs lightly; once made, like
our sins, they grip us in bands of steel; we become the creatures of our
creations. By one standard my old office-boy should never have been born. Yet
he is a son of Adam, and came into existence in the way ordained by God from
the beginning of the world. In equity he would seem to be entitled to his
chance in life; it might have been wiser, though, for him to seek it farther
afield than South Carolina. It was too near home, even though the laws were
with him.”
NEITHER mother nor
daughter slept a great deal during the night of Warwick's first visit. Mis'
Molly anointed her sacrifice with tears and cried herself to sleep. Rena's
emotions were more conflicting; she was sorry to leave her mother, but glad to
go with her brother. The mere journey she was about to make was a great event
for the two women to contemplate, to say nothing of the golden vision that lay
beyond, for neither of them had ever been out of the town or its vicinity.
The next day was
devoted to preparations for the journey. Rena's slender wardrobe was made ready
and packed in a large valise. Towards sunset, Mis' Molly took off her apron,
put on her slat-bonnet,--she was ever the pink of neatness, --picked her way
across the street, which was muddy from a rain during the day, traversed the
foot-bridge that spanned the ditch in front of the cooper shop, and spoke first
to the elder of the two men working there.
“Good-evenin', Peter.”
“Good-evenin', ma'm,”
responded the man briefly, and not relaxing at all the energy with which he was
trimming a barrel-stave.
Mis' Molly then
accosted the younger workman, a dark-brown young man, small in stature, but
with a well-shaped head, an expressive forehead, and features indicative of
kindness, intelligence, humor, and imagination. “Frank,” she asked, “can I git
you to do somethin' fer me soon in the mo'nin'?”
“Yas 'm, I reckon so,”
replied the young man, resting his hatchet on the chopping-block. “W'at is it,
Mis' Molly?”
“My daughter 's goin'
away on the boat, an' I 'lowed you would n' min' totin' her kyarpet-bag down to
the w'arf, onless you+'d ruther haul it down on yo'r kyart. It ain't very
heavy. Of co'se I+'ll pay you fer yo'r trouble.”
“Thank y', ma'm,” he
replied. He knew that she would not pay him, for the simple reason that he
would not accept pay for such a service. “Is she gwine fur?” he asked, with a
sorrowful look, which he could not entirely disguise.
“As fur as Wilmin'ton
an' beyon'. She+'ll be visitin' her brother John, who lives in--another State,
an' wants her to come an' see him.”
“Yas 'm, I+'ll come. I
won' need de kyart-- I+'ll tote de bag. 'Bout w'at time shill I come over?”
“Well, 'long 'bout
seven o'clock or half pas'. She+'s goin' on the Old North State, an' it leaves
at eight.”
Frank stood looking
after Mis' Molly as she picked her way across the street, until he was recalled
to his duty by a sharp word from his father.
“ 'Ten' ter yo' wuk,
boy, 'ten' ter yo' wuk. You 're wastin' yo' time--wastin' yo' time!”
Yes, he was wasting his
time. The beautiful young girl across the street could never be anything to
him. But he had saved her life once, and had dreamed that he might render her
again some signal service that might win her friendship, and convince her of
his humble devotion. For Frank was not proud. A smile, which Peter would have
regarded as condescending to a free man, who, since the war, was as good as
anybody else; a kind word, which Peter would have considered offensively
patronizing; a piece of Mis' Molly's famous potato pone from Rena's hands, --a
bone to a dog, Peter called it once;--were ample rewards for the thousand and
one small services Frank had rendered the two women who lived in the house
behind the cedars.
Frank went over in the
morning a little ahead of the appointed time, and waited on the back piazza
until his services were required.
“You ain't gwine ter be
gone long, is you, Miss Rena?” he inquired, when Rena came out dressed for the
journey in her best frock, with broad white collar and cuffs.
Rena did not know. She
had been asking herself the same question. All sorts of vague dreams had
floated through her mind during the last few hours, as to what the future might
bring forth. But she detected the anxious note in Frank's voice, and had no
wish to give this faithful friend of the family unnecessary pain.
“Oh, no, Frank, I
reckon not. I+'m supposed to be just going on a short visit. My brother has
lost his wife, and wishes me to come and stay with him awhile, and look after
his little boy.”
“I+'m feared you+'ll
lack it better dere, Miss Rena,” replied Frank sorrowfully, dropping his mask
of unconcern, “an' den you won't come back, an' none er yo' frien's won't never
see you no mo'.”
“You don't think,
Frank,” asked Rena severely, “that I would leave my mother and my home and all
my friends, and *never come back again?”
“Why, no 'ndeed,”
interposed Mis' Molly wistfully, as she hovered around her daughter, giving her
hair or her gown a touch here and there; “she+'ll be so homesick in a month
that she+'ll be willin' to walk home.”
“You would n' never
hafter do dat, Miss Rena,” returned Frank, with a disconsolate smile. “Ef you
ever wanter come home, an' can't git back no other way, jes' let *me know, an'
I+'ll take my mule an' my kyart an' fetch you back, ef it+'s from de een' er de
worl'.”
“Thank you, Frank, I
believe you would,” said the girl kindly. “You+'re a true friend, Frank, and
I+'ll not forget you while I+'m gone.”
The idea of her beautiful
daughter riding home from the end of the world with Frank, in a cart, behind a
one-eyed mule, struck Mis' Molly as the height of the ridiculous--she was in a
state of excitement where tears or laughter would have come with equal
ease--and she turned away to hide her merriment. Her daughter was going to live
in a fine house, and marry a rich man, and ride in her carriage. Of course a
negro would drive the carriage, but that was different from riding with one in
a cart.
When it was time to go,
Mis' Molly and Rena set out on foot for the river, which was only a short
distance away. Frank followed with the valise. There was no gathering of
friends to see Rena off, as might have been the case under different
circumstances. Her departure had some of the characteristics of a secret
flight; it was as important that her destination should not be known, as it had
been that her brother should conceal his presence in the town.
Mis' Molly and Rena
remained on the bank until the steamer announced, with a raucous whistle, its
readiness to depart. Warwick was seen for a moment on the upper deck, from
which he greeted them with a smile and a slight nod. He had bidden his mother
an affectionate farewell the evening before. Rena gave her hand to Frank.
“Good-by, Frank,” she
said, with a kind smile; “I hope you and mamma will be good friends while I+'m
gone.”
The whistle blew a
second warning blast, and the deck hands prepared to draw in the gang- plank.
Rena flew into her mother's arms, and then, breaking away, hurried on board and
retired to her state-room, from which she did not emerge during the journey.
The window-blinds were closed, darkening the room, and the stewardess who came
to ask if she should bring her some dinner could not see her face distinctly,
but perceived enough to make her surmise that the young lady had been weeping.
“Po' chile,” murmured
the sympathetic colored woman, “I reckon some er her folks is dead, er her
sweetheart 's gone back on her, er e'se she+'s had some kin' er bad luck er
'nuther. W'ite folks has deir troubles jes' ez well ez black folks, an'
sometimes feels 'em mo', 'cause dey ain't ez use' ter 'em.”
Mis' Molly went back in
sadness to the lonely house behind the cedars, henceforth to be peopled for her
with only the memory of those she had loved. She had paid with her heart's
blood another installment on the Shylock's bond exacted by society for her own
happiness of the past and her children's prospects for the future.
The journey down the
sluggish river to the seaboard in the flat-bottomed, stern-wheel steamer lasted
all day and most of the night. During the first half-day, the boat grounded now
and then upon a sand-bank, and the half-naked negro deck- hands toiled with
ropes and poles to release it. Several times before Rena fell asleep that
night, the steamer would tie up at a landing, and by the light of huge pine
torches she watched the boat hands send the yellow turpentine barrels down the
steep bank in a long string, or pass cord-wood on board from hand to hand. The
excited negroes, their white teeth and eyeballs glistening in the surrounding
darkness to which their faces formed no relief; the white officers in brown
linen, shouting, swearing, and gesticulating; the yellow, flickering torchlight
over all,--made up a scene of which the weird interest would have appealed to a
more blasé traveler than this girl upon her first journey.
During the day, Warwick
had taken his meals in the dining-room, with the captain and the other cabin
passengers. It was learned that he was a South Carolina lawyer, and not a
carpet-bagger. Such credentials were unimpeachable, and the passengers found him
a very agreeable traveling companion. Apparently sound on the subject of
negroes, Yankees, and the righteousness of the lost cause, he yet discussed
these themes in a lofty and impersonal manner that gave his words greater
weight than if he had seemed warped by a personal grievance. His attitude, in
fact, piqued the curiosity of one or two of the passengers.
“Did your people lose
any niggers?” asked one of them.
“My father owned a
hundred,” he replied grandly.
Their respect for his
views was doubled. It is easy to moralize about the misfortunes of others, and
to find good in the evil that they suffer;-- only a true philosopher could
speak thus lightly of his own losses.
When the steamer tied
up at the wharf at Wilmington, in the early morning, the young lawyer and a
veiled lady passenger drove in the same carriage to a hotel. After they had
breakfasted in a private room, Warwick explained to his sister the plan he had
formed for her future. Henceforth she must be known as Miss Warwick, dropping
the old name with the old life. He would place her for a year in a
boarding-school at Charleston, after which she would take her place as the
mistress of his house. Having imparted this information, he took his sister for
a drive through the town. There for the first time Rena saw great ships, which,
her brother told her, sailed across the mighty ocean to distant lands, whose
flags he pointed out drooping lazily at the mast- heads. The business portion
of the town had “an ancient and fishlike smell,” and most of the trade seemed
to be in cotton and naval stores and products of the sea. The wharves were
piled high with cotton bales, and there were acres of barrels of resin and
pitch and tar and spirits of turpentine. The market, a long, low, wooden
structure, in the middle of the principal street, was filled with a mass of
people of all shades, from blue- black to Saxon blonde, gabbling and
gesticulating over piles of oysters and clams and freshly caught fish of varied
hue. By ten o'clock the sun was beating down so fiercely that the glitter of
the white, sandy streets dazzled and pained the eyes unaccustomed to it, and
Rena was glad to be driven back to the hotel. The travelers left together on an
early afternoon train.
Thus for the time being
was severed the last tie that bound Rena to her narrow past, and for some time
to come the places and the people who had known her once were to know her no
more.
Some few weeks later,
Mis' Molly called upon old Judge Straight with reference to the taxes on her
property.
“Your son came in to
see me the other day,” he remarked. “He seems to have got along.”
“Oh, yes, judge, he+'s
done fine, John has; an' he+'s took his sister away with him.”
“Ah!” exclaimed the
judge. Then after a pause he added, “I hope she may do as well.”
“Thank you, sir,” she
said, with a curtsy, as she rose to go. “We+'ve always knowed that you were our
friend and wished us well.”
The judge looked after
her as she walked away. Her bearing had a touch of timidity, a shade of
affectation, and yet a certain pathetic dignity.
“It is a pity,” he
murmured, with a sigh, “that men cannot select their mothers. My young friend
John has builded, whether wisely or not, very well; but he has come back into
the old life and carried away a part of it, and I fear that this addition will
weaken the structure.”
THE annual tournament
of the Clarence Social Club was about to begin. The county fairground, where
all was in readiness, sparkled with the youth and beauty of the town, standing
here and there under the trees in animated groups, or moving toward the seats
from which the pageant might be witnessed. A quarter of a mile of the race
track, to right and left of the judges' stand, had been laid off for the lists.
Opposite the grand stand, which occupied a considerable part of this distance,
a dozen uprights had been erected at measured intervals. Projecting several
feet over the track from each of these uprights was an iron crossbar, from
which an iron hook depended. Between the uprights stout posts were planted, of
such a height that their tops could be easily reached by a swinging sword-cut
from a mounted rider passing upon the track. The influence of Walter Scott was
strong upon the old South. The South before the war was essentially feudal, and
Scott's novels of chivalry appealed forcefully to the feudal heart. During the
month preceding the Clarence tournament, the local bookseller had closed out
his entire stock of “Ivanhoe,” consisting of five copies, and had taken orders
for seven copies more. The tournament scene in this popular novel furnished the
model after which these bloodless imitations of the ancient passages-at- arms
were conducted, with such variations as were required to adapt them to a
different age and civilization.
The best people
gradually filled the grand stand, while the poorer white and colored folks
found seats outside, upon what would now be known as the “bleachers,” or stood
alongside the lists. The knights, masquerading in fanciful costumes, in which
bright-colored garments, gilt paper, and cardboard took the place of knightly
harness, were mounted on spirited horses. Most of them were gathered at one end
of the lists, while others practiced their steeds upon the unoccupied portion
of the race track.
The judges entered the
grand stand, and one of them, after looking at his watch, gave a signal.
Immediately a herald, wearing a bright yellow sash, blew a loud blast upon a
bugle, and, big with the importance of his office, galloped wildly down the
lists. An attendant on horseback busied himself hanging upon each of the
pendent hooks an iron ring, of some two inches in diameter, while another, on
foot, placed on top of each of the shorter posts a wooden ball some four inches
through.
“It+'s my first
tournament,” observed a lady near the front of the grand stand, leaning over
and addressing John Warwick, who was seated in the second row, in company with
a very handsome girl. “It is somewhat different from Ashby-de- la-Zouch.”
“It is the renaissance
of chivalry, Mrs. Newberry,” replied the young lawyer, “and, like any other
renaissance, it must adapt itself to new times and circumstances. For instance,
when we build a Greek portico, having no Pentelic marble near at hand, we use a
pine-tree, one of nature's columns, which Grecian art at its best could only
copy and idealize. Our knights are not weighted down with heavy armor, but much
more appropriately attired, for a day like this, in costumes that recall the
picturesqueness, without the discomfort, of the old knightly harness. For an
iron- headed lance we use a wooden substitute, with which we transfix rings
instead of hearts; while our trusty blades hew their way through wooden blocks
instead of through flesh and blood. It is a South Carolina renaissance which
has points of advantage over the tournaments of the olden time.”
“I+'m afraid, Mr.
Warwick,” said the lady, “that you+'re the least bit heretical about our
chivalry--or else you+'re a little too deep for me.”
“The last would be
impossible, Mrs. Newberry; and I+'m sure our chivalry has proved its valor on
many a hard-fought field. The spirit of a thing, after all, is what counts; and
what is lacking here? We have the lists, the knights, the prancing steeds, the
trial of strength and skill. If our knights do not run the physical risks of
Ashby- de-la-Zouch, they have all the mental stimulus. Wounded vanity will take
the place of wounded limbs, and there will be broken hopes in lieu of broken
heads. How many hearts in yonder group of gallant horsemen beat high with hope!
How many possible Queens of Love and Beauty are in this group of fair faces
that surround us!”
The lady was about to
reply, when the bugle sounded again, and the herald dashed swiftly back upon
his prancing steed to the waiting group of riders. The horsemen formed three
abreast, and rode down the lists in orderly array. As they passed the grand
stand, each was conscious of the battery of bright eyes turned upon him, and
each gave by his bearing some idea of his ability to stand fire from such weapons.
One horse pranced proudly, another caracoled with grace. One rider fidgeted
nervously, another trembled and looked the other way. Each horseman carried in
his hand a long wooden lance and wore at his side a cavalry sabre, of which
there were plenty to be had since the war, at small expense. Several left the
ranks and drew up momentarily beside the grand stand, where they took from fair
hands a glove or a flower, which was pinned upon the rider's breast or fastened
upon his hat--a ribbon or a veil, which was tied about the lance like a pennon,
but far enough from the point not to interfere with the usefulness of the
weapon.
As the troop passed the
lower end of the grand stand, a horse, excited by the crowd, became somewhat
unmanageable, and in the effort to curb him, the rider dropped his lance. The
prancing animal reared, brought one of his hoofs down upon the fallen lance
with considerable force, and sent a broken piece of it flying over the railing
opposite the grand stand, into the middle of a group of spectators standing
there. The flying fragment was dodged by those who saw it coming, but brought
up with a resounding thwack against the head of a colored man in the second
row, who stood watching the grand stand with an eager and curious gaze. He rubbed
his head ruefully, and made a good-natured response to the chaffing of his
neighbors, who, seeing no great harm done, made witty and original remarks
about the advantage of being black upon occasions where one's skull was exposed
to danger. Finding that the blow had drawn blood, the young man took out a red
bandana handkerchief and tied it around his head, meantime letting his eye roam
over the faces in the grand stand, as though in search of some one that he
expected or hoped to find there.
The knights, having
reached the end of the lists, now turned and rode back in open order, with such
skillful horsemanship as to evoke a storm of applause from the spectators. The
ladies in the grand stand waved their handkerchiefs vigorously, and the men
clapped their hands. The beautiful girl seated by Warwick's side accidentally
let a little square of white lace-trimmed linen slip from her hand. It
fluttered lightly over the railing, and, buoyed up by the air, settled slowly
toward the lists. A young rider in the approaching rear rank saw the
handkerchief fall, and darting swiftly forward, caught it on the point of his
lance ere it touched the ground. He drew up his horse and made a movement as
though to extend the handkerchief toward the lady, who was blushing profusely
at the attention she had attracted by her carelessness. The rider hesitated a
moment, glanced interrogatively at Warwick, and receiving a smile in return,
tied the handkerchief around the middle of his lance and quickly rejoined his
comrades at the head of the lists.
The young man with the
bandage round his head, on the benches across the lists, had forced his way to
the front row and was leaning against the railing. His restless eye was
attracted by the falling handkerchief, and his face, hitherto anxious, suddenly
lit up with animation.
“Yas, suh, yas, suh,
it's her!” he muttered softly. “It+'s Miss Rena, sho+'s you bawn. She looked
lack a' angel befo', but now, up dere 'mongs' all dem rich, fine folks, she
looks lack a whole flock er angels. Dey ain' one er dem ladies w'at could hol'
a candle ter her. I wonder w'at dat man+'s gwine ter do wid her handkercher? I
s'pose he+'s her gent'eman now. I wonder ef she+'d know me er speak ter me ef
she seed me? I reckon she would, spite er her gittin' up so in de worl'; fer
she wuz alluz good ter ev'ybody, an' dat let even *me in,” he concluded with a
sigh.
“Who is the lady,
Tryon?” asked one of the young men, addressing the knight who had taken the
handkerchief.
“A Miss Warwick,”
replied the knight pleasantly, “Miss Rowena Warwick, the lawyer's sister.”
“I did+n't know he had
a sister,” rejoined the first speaker. “I envy you your lady. There are six
Rebeccas and eight Rowenas of my own acquaintance in the grand stand, but she throws
them all into the shade. She has+n't been here long, surely; I have+n't seen
her before.”
“She has been away at
school; she came only last night,” returned the knight of the crimson sash,
briefly. He was already beginning to feel a proprietary interest in the lady
whose token he wore, and did not care to discuss her with a casual
acquaintance.
The herald sounded the
charge. A rider darted out from the group and galloped over the course. As he
passed under each ring, he tried to catch it on the point of his lance,--a feat
which made the management of the horse with the left hand necessary, and
required a true eye and a steady arm. The rider captured three of the twelve
rings, knocked three others off the hooks, and left six undisturbed. Turning at
the end of the lists, he took the lance with the reins in the left hand and
drew his sword with the right. He then rode back over the course, cutting at
the wooden balls upon the posts. Of these he clove one in twain, to use the
parlance of chivalry, and knocked two others off their supports. His
performance was greeted with a liberal measure of applause, for which he bowed
in smiling acknowledgment as he took his place among the riders.
Again the herald's call
sounded, and the tourney went forward. Rider after rider, with varying skill,
essayed his fortune with lance and sword. Some took a liberal proportion of the
rings; others merely knocked them over the boundaries, where they were
collected by agile little negro boys and handed back to the attendants. A
balking horse caused the spectators much amusement and his rider no little
chagrin.
The lady who had
dropped the handkerchief kept her eye upon the knight who had bound it round
his lance. “Who is he, John?” she asked the gentleman beside her.
“That, my dear Rowena,
is my good friend and client, George Tryon, of North Carolina. If he had been a
stranger, I should have said that he took a liberty; but as things stand, we
ought to regard it as a compliment. The incident is quite in accord with the
customs of chivalry. If George were but masked and you were veiled, we should
have a romantic situation,--you the mysterious damsel in distress, he the
unknown champion. The parallel, my dear, might not be so hard to draw, even as
things are. But look, it is his turn now; I+'ll wager that he makes a good run.”
“I+'ll take you up on
that, Mr. Warwick,” said Mrs. Newberry from behind, who seemed to have a very
keen ear for whatever Warwick said.
Rena's eyes were
fastened on her knight, so that she might lose no single one of his movements.
As he rode down the lists, more than one woman found him pleasant to look upon.
He was a tall, fair young man, with gray eyes, and a frank, open face. He wore
a slight mustache, and when he smiled, showed a set of white and even teeth. He
was mounted on a very handsome and spirited bay mare, was clad in a picturesque
costume, of which velvet knee-breeches and a crimson scarf were the most
conspicuous features, and displayed a marked skill in horsemanship. At the
blast of the bugle his horse started forward, and, after the first few rods,
settled into an even gallop. Tryon's lance, held truly and at the right angle,
captured the first ring, then the second and third. His coolness and steadiness
seemed not at all disturbed by the applause which followed, and one by one the
remaining rings slipped over the point of his lance, until at the end he had
taken every one of the twelve. Holding the lance with its booty of captured
rings in his left hand, together with the bridle rein, he drew his sabre with
the right and rode back over the course. His horse moved like clockwork, his
eye was true and his hand steady. Three of the wooden balls fell from the
posts, split fairly in the middle, while from the fourth he sliced off a goodly
piece and left the remainder standing in its place.
This performance, by
far the best up to this point, and barely escaping perfection, elicited a storm
of applause. The rider was not so well known to the townspeople as some of the
other participants, and his name passed from mouth to mouth in answer to
numerous inquiries. The girl whose token he had worn also became an object of
renewed interest, because of the result to her in case the knight should prove
victor in the contest, of which there could now scarcely be a doubt; for but
three riders remained, and it was very improbable that any one of them would
excel the last. Wagers for the remainder of the tourney stood anywhere from
five, and even from ten to one, in favor of the knight of the crimson sash, and
when the last course had been run, his backers were jubilant. No one of those
following him had displayed anything like equal skill.
The herald now blew his
bugle and declared the tournament closed. The judges put their heads together
for a moment. The bugle sounded again, and the herald announced in a loud voice
that Sir George Tryon, having taken the greatest number of rings and split the
largest number of balls, was proclaimed victor in the tournament and entitled
to the flowery chaplet of victory.
Tryon, having bowed
repeatedly in response to the liberal applause, advanced to the judges' stand
and received the trophy from the hands of the chief judge, who exhorted him to
wear the garland worthily, and to yield it only to a better man.
“It will be your
privilege, Sir George,” announced the judge, “as the chief reward of your
valor, to select from the assembled beauty of Clarence the lady whom you wish
to honor, to whom we will all do homage as the Queen of Love and Beauty.”
Tryon took the wreath and
bowed his thanks. Then placing the trophy on the point of his lance, he spoke
earnestly for a moment to the herald, and rode past the grand stand, from which
there was another outburst of applause. Returning upon his tracks, the knight
of the crimson sash paused before the group where Warwick and his sister sat,
and lowered the wreath thrice before the lady whose token he had won.
“Oyez! Oyez!” cried the
herald; “Sir George Tryon, the victor in the tournament, has chosen Miss Rowena
Warwick as the Queen of Love and Beauty, and she will be crowned at the feast
to-night and receive the devoirs of all true knights.”
The fair-ground was
soon covered with scattered groups of the spectators of the tournament. In one
group a vanquished knight explained in elaborate detail why it was that he had
failed to win the wreath. More than one young woman wondered why some one of
the home young men could not have taken the honors, or, if the stranger must
win them, why he could not have selected some belle of the town as Queen of
Love and Beauty instead of this upstart girl who had blown into the town over
night, as one might say.
Warwick and his sister,
standing under a spreading elm, held a little court of their own. A dozen
gentlemen and several ladies had sought an introduction before Tryon came up.
“I suppose John would
have a right to call me out, Miss Warwick,” said Tryon, when he had been
formally introduced and had shaken hands with Warwick's sister, “for taking
liberties with the property and name of a lady to whom I had not had an
introduction; but I know John so well that you seemed like an old acquaintance;
and when I saw you, and recalled your name, which your brother had mentioned
more than once, I felt instinctively that you ought to be the queen. I entered
my name only yesterday, merely to swell the number and make the occasion more
interesting. These fellows have been practicing for a month, and I had no hope
of winning. I should have been satisfied, indeed, if I had+n't made myself
ridiculous; but when you dropped your handkerchief, I felt a sudden
inspiration; and as soon as I had tied it upon my lance, victory perched upon
my saddle-bow, guided my lance and sword, and rings and balls went down before
me like chaff before the wind. Oh, it was a great inspiration, Miss Warwick!”
Rena, for it was our
Patesville acquaintance fresh from boarding-school, colored deeply at this
frank and fervid flattery, and could only murmur an inarticulate reply. Her
year of instruction, while distinctly improving her mind and manners, had
scarcely prepared her for so sudden an elevation into a grade of society to
which she had hitherto been a stranger. She was not without a certain courage,
however, and her brother, who remained at her side, helped her over the most difficult
situations.
“We+'ll forgive you,
George,” replied Warwick, “if you+'ll come home to luncheon with us.”
“I+'m mighty
sorry--awfully sorry,” returned Tryon, with evident regret, “but I have another
engagement, which I can scarcely break, even by the command of royalty. At what
time shall I call for Miss Warwick this evening? I believe that privilege is
mine, along with the other honors and rewards of victory,--unless she is bound
to some one else.”
“She is entirely free,”
replied Warwick. “Come as early as you like, and I+'ll talk to you until she+'s
ready.”
Tryon bowed himself
away, and after a number of gentlemen and a few ladies had paid their respects
to the Queen of Love and Beauty, and received an introduction to her, Warwick
signaled to the servant who had his carriage in charge, and was soon driving
homeward with his sister. No one of the party noticed a young negro, with a
handkerchief bound around his head, who followed them until the carriage turned
into the gate and swept up the wide drive that led to Warwick's doorstep.
“Well, Rena,” said
Warwick, when they found themselves alone, “you have arrived. Your début into
society is a little more spectacular than I should have wished, but we must
rise to the occasion and make the most of it. You are winning the first fruits
of your opportunity. You are the most envied woman in Clarence at this
particular moment, and, unless I am mistaken, will be the most admired at the
ball to-night.”
SHORTLY after luncheon,
Rena had a visitor in the person of Mrs. Newberry, a vivacious young widow of
the town, who proffered her services to instruct Rena in the etiquette of the
annual ball.
“Now, my dear,” said
Mrs. Newberry, “the first thing to do is to get your coronation robe ready. It
simply means a gown with a long train. You have a lovely white waist. Get right
into my buggy, and we+'ll go down town to get the cloth, take it over to Mrs.
Marshall's, and have her run you up a skirt this afternoon.”
Rena placed herself
unreservedly in the hands of Mrs. Newberry, who introduced her to the best
dressmaker of the town, a woman of much experience in such affairs, who
improvised during the afternoon a gown suited to the occasion. Mrs. Marshall
had made more than a dozen ball dresses during the preceding month; being a
wise woman and understanding her business thoroughly, she had made each one of
them so that with a few additional touches it might serve for the Queen of Love
and Beauty. This was her first direct order for the specific garment.
Tryon escorted Rena to
the ball, which was held in the principal public hall of the town, and attended
by all the best people. The champion still wore the costume of the morning, in
place of evening dress, save that long stockings and dancing-pumps had taken
the place of riding-boots. Rena went through the ordeal very creditably. Her
shyness was palpable, but it was saved from awkwardness by her native grace and
good sense. She made up in modesty what she lacked in aplomb. Her months in
school had not eradicated a certain self-consciousness born of her secret. The
brain-cells never lose the impressions of youth, and Rena's Patesville life was
not far enough removed to have lost its distinctness of outline. Of the two, the
present was more of a dream, the past was the more vivid reality. At school she
had learned something from books and not a little from observation. She had
been able to compare herself with other girls, and to see wherein she excelled
or fell short of them. With a sincere desire for improvement, and a wish to
please her brother and do him credit, she had sought to make the most of her
opportunities. Building upon a foundation of innate taste and intelligence, she
had acquired much of the self-possession which comes from a knowledge of
correct standards of deportment. She had moreover learned without difficulty,
for it suited her disposition, to keep silence when she could not speak to
advantage. A certain necessary reticence about the past added strength to a
natural reserve. Thus equipped, she held her own very well in the somewhat
trying ordeal of the ball, at which the fiction of queenship and the attendant
ceremonies, which were pretty and graceful, made her the most conspicuous
figure. Few of those who watched her move with easy grace through the measures
of the dance could have guessed how nearly her heart was in her mouth during
much of the time.
“You+'re doing
splendidly, my dear,” said Mrs. Newberry, who had constituted herself Rena's
chaperone.
“I trust your Gracious
Majesty is pleased with the homage of your devoted subjects,” said Tryon, who
spent much of his time by her side and kept up the character of knight in his
speech and manner.
“Very much,” replied
the Queen of Love and Beauty, with a somewhat tired smile. It was pleasant, but
she would be glad, she thought, when it was all over.
“Keep up your courage,”
whispered her brother. “You are not only queen, but the belle of the ball. I am
proud of you. A dozen women here would give a year off the latter end of life
to be in your shoes to-night.”
Rena felt immensely
relieved when the hour arrived at which she could take her departure, which was
to be the signal for the breaking-up of the ball. She was driven home in
Tryon's carriage, her brother accompanying them. The night was warm, and the
drive homeward under the starlight, in the open carriage, had a soothing effect
upon Rena's excited nerves. The calm restfulness of the night, the cool blue
depths of the unclouded sky, the solemn croaking of the frogs in a distant
swamp, were much more in harmony with her nature than the crowded brilliancy of
the ball-room. She closed her eyes, and, leaning back in the carriage, thought
of her mother, who she wished might have seen her daughter this night. A
momentary pang of homesickness pierced her tender heart, and she furtively
wiped away the tears that came into her eyes.
“Good-night, fair
Queen!” exclaimed Tryon, breaking into her reverie as the carriage rolled up to
the doorstep, “and let your loyal subject kiss your hand in token of his
fealty. May your Majesty never abdicate her throne, and may she ever count me
her humble servant and devoted knight.”
“And now, sister,” said
Warwick, when Tryon had been driven away, “now that the masquerade is over, let
us to sleep, and to-morrow take up the serious business of life. Your day has
been a glorious success!”
He put his arm around
her and gave her a kiss and a brotherly hug.
“It is a dream,” she
murmured sleepily, “only a dream. I am Cinderella before the clock has struck.
Good-night, dear John.”
“Good-night, Rowena.”
WARWICK'S residence was
situated in the outskirts of the town. It was a fine old plantation house,
built in colonial times, with a stately colonnade, wide verandas, and long
windows with Venetian blinds. It was painted white, and stood back several rods
from the street, in a charming setting of palmettoes, magnolias, and flowering
shrubs. Rena had always thought her mother's house large, but now it seemed
cramped and narrow, in comparison with this roomy mansion. The furniture was
old-fashioned and massive. The great brass andirons on the wide hearth stood
like sentinels proclaiming and guarding the dignity of the family. The
spreading antlers on the wall testified to a mighty hunter in some past
generation. The portraits of Warwick's wife's ancestors-- high featured, proud
men and women, dressed in the fashions of a bygone age--looked down from
tarnished gilt frames. It was all very novel to her, and very impressive. When
she ate off china, with silver knives and forks that had come down as
heirlooms, escaping somehow the ravages and exigencies of the war
time,--Warwick told her afterwards how he had buried them out of reach of
friend or foe,--she thought that her brother must be wealthy, and she felt very
proud of him and of her opportunity. The servants, of whom there were several
in the house, treated her with a deference to which her eight months in school
had only partly accustomed her. At school she had been one of many to be
served, and had herself been held to obedience. Here, for the first time in her
life, she was mistress, and tasted the sweets of power.
The household consisted
of her brother and herself, a cook, a coachman, a nurse, and her brother's
little son Albert. The child, with a fine instinct, had put out his puny arms
to Rena at first sight, and she had clasped the little man to her bosom with a
motherly caress. She had always loved weak creatures. Kittens and puppies had
ever found a welcome and a meal at Rena's hands, only to be chased away by Mis'
Molly, who had had a wider experience. No shiftless poor white, no half-witted
or hungry negro, had ever gone unfed from Mis' Molly's kitchen door if Rena
were there to hear his plaint. Little Albert was pale and sickly when she came,
but soon bloomed again in the sunshine of her care, and was happy only in her
presence. Warwick found pleasure in their growing love for each other, and was
glad to perceive that the child formed a living link to connect her with his
home.
“Dat chile sutt'nly do
lub Miss Rena, an' dat+'s a fac', sho 's you bawn,” remarked 'Lissa the cook to
Mimy the nurse one day. “You+'ll get yo' nose put out er j'int, ef you don't
min'.”
“I ain't frettin',
honey,” laughed the nurse good-naturedly. She was not at all jealous. She had
the same wages as before, and her labors were materially lightened by the
aunt's attention to the child. This gave Mimy much more time to flirt with Tom
the coachman.
It was a source of much
gratification to Warwick that his sister seemed to adapt herself so easily to
the new conditions. Her graceful movements, the quiet elegance with which she
wore even the simplest gown, the easy authoritativeness with which she directed
the servants, were to him proofs of superior quality, and he felt
correspondingly proud of her. His feeling for her was something more than
brotherly love,--he was quite conscious that there were degrees in brotherly
love, and that if she had been homely or stupid, he would never have disturbed
her in the stagnant life of the house behind the cedars. There had come to him
from some source, down the stream of time, a rill of the Greek sense of
proportion, of fitness, of beauty, which is indeed but proportion embodied, the
perfect adaptation of means to ends. He had perceived, more clearly than she
could have appreciated it at that time, the undeveloped elements of discord
between Rena and her former life. He had imagined her lending grace and charm
to his own household. Still another motive, a purely psychological one, had
more or less consciously influenced him. He had no fear that the family secret
would ever be discovered,-- he had taken his precautions too thoroughly, he
thought, for that; and yet he could not but feel, at times, that if
peradventure--it was a conceivable hypothesis--it should become known, his fine
social position would collapse like a house of cards. Because of this
knowledge, which the world around him did not possess, he had felt now and then
a certain sense of loneliness; and there was a measure of relief in having
about him one who knew his past, and yet whose knowledge, because of their
common interest, would not interfere with his present or jeopardize his future.
For he had always been, in a figurative sense, a naturalized foreigner in the
world of wide opportunity, and Rena was one of his old compatriots, whom he was
glad to welcome into the populous loneliness of his adopted country.
IN a few weeks the
echoes of the tournament died away, and Rena's life settled down into a
pleasant routine, which she found much more comfortable than her recent
spectacular prominence. Her queenship, while not entirely forgiven by the
ladies of the town, had gained for her a temporary social prominence. Among her
own sex, Mrs. Newberry proved a warm and enthusiastic friend. Rumor whispered
that the lively young widow would not be unwilling to console Warwick in the
loneliness of the old colonial mansion, to which his sister was a most excellent
medium of approach. Whether this was true or not it is unnecessary to inquire,
for it is no part of this story, except as perhaps indicating why Mrs. Newberry
played the part of the female friend, without whom no woman is ever launched
successfully in a small and conservative society. Her brother's standing gave
her the right of social entry; the tournament opened wide the door, and Mrs.
Newberry performed the ceremony of introduction. Rena had many visitors during
the month following the tournament, and might have made her choice from among a
dozen suitors; but among them all, her knight of the handkerchief found most
favor.
George Tryon had come
to Clarence a few months before upon business connected with the settlement of
his grandfather's estate. A rather complicated litigation had grown up around
the affair, various phases of which had kept Tryon almost constantly in the
town. He had placed matters in Warwick's hands, and had formed a decided
friendship for his attorney, for whom he felt a frank admiration. Tryon was
only twenty-three, and his friend's additional five years, supplemented by a
certain professional gravity, commanded a great deal of respect from the
younger man. When Tryon had known Warwick for a week, he had been ready to
swear by him. Indeed, Warwick was a man for whom most people formed a liking at
first sight. To this power of attraction he owed most of his success--first
with Judge Straight, of Patesville, then with the lawyer whose office he had
entered at Clarence, with the woman who became his wife, and with the clients
for whom he transacted business. Tryon would have maintained against all comers
that Warwick was the finest fellow in the world. When he met Warwick's sister,
the foundation for admiration had already been laid. If Rena had proved to be a
maiden lady of uncertain age and doubtful personal attractiveness, Tryon would
probably have found in her a most excellent lady, worthy of all respect and
esteem, and would have treated her with profound deference and sedulous courtesy.
When she proved to be a young and handsome woman, of the type that he admired
most, he was capable of any degree of infatuation. His mother had for a long
time wanted him to marry the orphan daughter of an old friend, a vivacious
blonde, who worshiped him. He had felt friendly towards her, but had shrunk
from matrimony. He did not want her badly enough to give up his freedom. The
war had interfered with his education, and though fairly well instructed, he
had never attended college. In his own opinion, he ought to see something of
the world, and have his youthful fling. Later on, when he got ready to settle
down, if Blanche were still in the humor, they might marry, and sink to the
humdrum level of other old married people. The fact that Blanche Leary was
visiting his mother during his unexpectedly long absence had not operated at
all to hasten his return to North Carolina. He had been having a very good time
at Clarence, and, at the distance of several hundred miles, was safe for the
time being from any immediate danger of marriage.
With Rena's advent,
however, he had seen life through different glasses. His heart had thrilled at
first sight of this tall girl, with the ivory complexion, the rippling brown
hair, and the inscrutable eyes. When he became better acquainted with her, he
liked to think that her thoughts centred mainly in himself; and in this he was
not far wrong. He discovered that she had a short upper lip, and what seemed to
him an eminently kissable mouth. After he had dined twice at Warwick's,
subsequently to the tournament,--his lucky choice of Rena had put him at once
upon a household footing with the family,--his views of marriage changed
entirely. It now seemed to him the duty, as well as the high and holy privilege
of a young man, to marry and manfully to pay his debt to society. When in
Rena's presence, he could not imagine how he had ever contemplated the
possibility of marriage with Blanche Leary,--she was utterly, entirely, and
hopelessly unsuited to him. For a fair man of vivacious temperament, this
stately dark girl was the ideal mate. Even his mother would admit this, if she
could only see Rena. To win this beautiful girl for his wife would be a worthy
task. He had crowned her Queen of Love and Beauty; since then she had ascended the
throne of his heart. He would make her queen of his home and mistress of his
life.
To Rena this brief
month's courtship came as a new education. Not only had this fair young man
crowned her queen, and honored her above all the ladies in town; but since then
he had waited assiduously upon her, had spoken softly to her, had looked at her
with shining eyes, and had sought to be alone with her. The time soon came when
to touch his hand in greeting sent a thrill through her frame,--a time when she
listened for his footstep and was happy in his presence. He had been bold
enough at the tournament; he had since become somewhat bashful and constrained.
He must be in love, she thought, and wondered how soon he would speak. If it
were so sweet to walk with him in the garden, or along the shaded streets, to
sit with him, to feel the touch of his hand, what happiness would it not be to
hear him say that he loved her--to bear his name, to live with him always. To
be thus loved and honored by this handsome young man, --she could hardly
believe it possible. He would never speak--he would discover her secret and
withdraw. She turned pale at the thought,--ah, God! something would happen,--it
was too good to be true. The Prince would never try on the glass slipper.
Tryon first told his
love for Rena one summer evening on their way home from church. They were
walking in the moonlight along the quiet street, which, but for their presence,
seemed quite deserted.
“Miss Warwick--Rowena,”
he said, clasping with his right hand the hand that rested on his left arm, “I
love you! Do you--love me?”
To Rena this simple
avowal came with much greater force than a more formal declaration could have
had. It appealed to her own simple nature. Indeed, few women at such a moment
criticise the form in which the most fateful words of life--but one--are
spoken. Words, while pleasant, are really superfluous. Her whispered “Yes”
spoke volumes.
They walked on past the
house, along the country road into which the street soon merged. When they
returned, an hour later, they found Warwick seated on the piazza, in a
rocking-chair, smoking a fragrant cigar.
“Well, children,” he
observed with mock severity, “you are late in getting home from church. The
sermon must have been extremely long.”
“We have been attending
an after-meeting,” replied Tryon joyfully, “and have been discussing an old
text, `Little children, love one another,' and its corollary, `It is not good
for man to live alone.' John, I am the happiest man alive. Your sister has
promised to marry me. I should like to shake my brother's hand.”
Never does one feel so
strongly the universal brotherhood of man as when one loves some other fellow's
sister. Warwick sprang from his chair and clasped Tryon's extended hand with
real emotion. He knew of no man whom he would have preferred to Tryon as a
husband for his sister.
“My dear George--my
dear sister,” he exclaimed, “I am very, very glad. I wish you every happiness.
My sister is the most fortunate of women.”
“And I am the luckiest
of men,” cried Tryon.
“I wish you every
happiness,” repeated Warwick; adding, with a touch of solemnity, as a certain
thought, never far distant, occurred to him, “I hope that neither of you may
ever regret your choice.”
Thus placed upon the
footing of an accepted lover, Tryon's visits to the house became more frequent.
He wished to fix a time for the marriage, but at this point Rena developed a
strange reluctance.
“Can we not love each
other for a while?” she asked. “To be engaged is a pleasure that comes but
once; it would be a pity to cut it too short.”
“It is a pleasure that
I would cheerfully dispense with,” he replied, “for the certainty of possession.
I want you all to myself, and all the time. Things might happen. If I should
die, for instance, before I married you”--
“Oh, don't suppose such
awful things,” she cried, putting her hand over his mouth.
He held it there and
kissed it until she pulled it away.
“I should consider,” he
resumed, completing the sentence, “that my life had been a failure.”
“If I should die,” she
murmured, “I should die happy in the knowledge that you had loved me.”
“In three weeks,” he
went on, “I shall have finished my business in Clarence, and there will be but
one thing to keep me here. When shall it be? I must take you home with me.”
“I will let you know,”
she replied, with a troubled sigh, “in a week from to-day.”
“I+'ll call your
attention to the subject every day in the mean time,” he asserted. “I
should+n't like you to forget it.”
Rena's shrinking from
the irrevocable step of marriage was due to a simple and yet complex cause.
Stated baldly, it was the consciousness of her secret; the complexity arose out
of the various ways in which it seemed to bear upon her future. Our lives are
so bound up with those of our fellow men that the slightest departure from the
beaten path involves a multiplicity of small adjustments. It had not been
difficult for Rena to conform her speech, her manners, and in a measure her
modes of thought, to those of the people around her; but when this readjustment
went beyond mere externals and concerned the vital issues of life, the secret
that oppressed her took on a more serious aspect, with tragic possibilities. A
discursive imagination was not one of her characteristics, or the danger of a
marriage of which perfect frankness was not a condition might well have
presented itself before her heart had become involved. Under the influence of
doubt and fear acting upon love, the invisible bar to happiness glowed with a
lambent flame that threatened dire disaster.
“Would he have loved me
at all,” she asked herself, “if he had known the story of my past? Or, having
loved me, could he blame me now for what I cannot help?”
There were two shoals
in the channel of her life, upon either of which her happiness might go to
shipwreck. Since leaving the house behind the cedars, where she had been
brought into the world without her own knowledge or consent, and had first
drawn the breath of life by the involuntary contraction of certain muscles,
Rena had learned, in a short time, many things; but she was yet to learn that
the innocent suffer with the guilty, and feel the punishment the more keenly because
unmerited. She had yet to learn that the old Mosaic formula, “The sins of the
fathers shall be visited upon the children,” was graven more indelibly upon the
heart of the race than upon the tables of Sinai.
But would her lover
still love her, if he knew all? She had read some of the novels in the bookcase
in her mother's hall, and others at boarding- school. She had read that love
was a conqueror, that neither life nor death, nor creed nor caste, could stay
his triumphant course. Her secret was no legal bar to their union. If Rena
could forget the secret, and Tryon should never know it, it would be no
obstacle to their happiness. But Rena felt, with a sinking of the heart, that
happiness was not a matter of law or of fact, but lay entirely within the
domain of sentiment. We are happy when we think ourselves happy, and with a
strange perversity we often differ from others with regard to what should
constitute our happiness. Rena's secret was the worm in the bud, the skeleton
in the closet.
“He says that he loves
me. He *does love me. Would he love me, if he knew?” She stood before an oval
mirror brought from France by one of Warwick's wife's ancestors, and regarded
her image with a coldly critical eye. She was as little vain as any of her sex
who are endowed with beauty. She tried to place herself, in thus passing upon
her own claims to consideration, in the hostile attitude of society toward her
hidden disability. There was no mark upon her brow to brand her as less pure,
less innocent, less desirable, less worthy to be loved, than these proud women
of the past who had admired themselves in this old mirror.
“I think a man might
love me for myself,” she murmured pathetically, “and if he loved me truly, that
he would marry me. If he would not marry me, then it would be because he
did+n't love me. I+'ll tell George my secret. If he leaves me, then he does not
love me.”
But this resolution
vanished into thin air before it was fully formulated. The secret was not hers
alone; it involved her brother's position, to whom she owed everything, and in
less degree the future of her little nephew, whom she had learned to love so
well. She had the choice of but two courses of action, to marry Tryon or to
dismiss him. The thought that she might lose him made him seem only more dear;
to think that he might leave her made her sick at heart. In one week she was
bound to give him an answer; he was more likely to ask for it at their next
meeting.
RENA'S heart was too
heavy with these misgivings for her to keep them to herself. On the morning
after the conversation with Tryon in which she had promised him an answer
within a week, she went into her brother's study, where he usually spent an
hour after breakfast before going to his office. He looked up amiably from the
book before him and read trouble in her face.
“Well, Rena, dear,” he
asked with a smile, “what+'s the matter? Is there anything you want--money, or
what? I should like to have Aladdin's lamp--though I+'d hardly need it-- that
you might have no wish unsatisfied.”
He had found her very
backward in asking for things that she needed. Generous with his means, he
thought nothing too good for her. Her success had gratified his pride, and
justified his course in taking her under his protection.
“Thank you, John. You
give me already more than I need. It is something else, John. George wants me
to say when I will marry him. I am afraid to marry him, without telling him. If
he should find out afterwards, he might cast me off, or cease to love me. If he
did not know it, I should be forever thinking of what he would do if he *should
find it out; or, if I should die without his having learned it, I should not
rest easy in my grave for thinking of what he would have done if he *had found
it out.”
Warwick's smile gave
place to a grave expression at this somewhat comprehensive statement. He rose
and closed the door carefully, lest some one of the servants might overhear the
conversation. More liberally endowed than Rena with imagination, and not
without a vein of sentiment, he had nevertheless a practical side that
outweighed them both. With him, the problem that oppressed his sister had been
in the main a matter of argument, of self-conviction. Once persuaded that he
had certain rights, or ought to have them, by virtue of the laws of nature, in
defiance of the customs of mankind, he had promptly sought to enjoy them. This
he had been able to do by simply concealing his antecedents and making the most
of his opportunities, with no troublesome qualms of conscience whatever. But he
had already perceived, in their brief intercourse, that Rena's emotions, while
less easily stirred, touched a deeper note than his, and dwelt upon it with
greater intensity than if they had been spread over the larger field to which a
more ready sympathy would have supplied so many points of access;--hers was a
deep and silent current flowing between the narrow walls of a self- contained
life, his the spreading river that ran through a pleasant landscape. Warwick's
imagination, however, enabled him to put himself in touch with her mood and
recognize its bearings upon her conduct. He would have preferred her taking the
practical point of view, to bring her round to which he perceived would be a
matter of diplomacy.
“How long have these
weighty thoughts been troubling your small head?” he asked with assumed
lightness.
“Since he asked me last
night to name our wedding day.”
“My dear child,”
continued Warwick, “you take too tragic a view of life. Marriage is a
reciprocal arrangement, by which the contracting parties give love for love,
care for keeping, faith for faith. It is a matter of the future, not of the
past. What a poor soul it is that has not some secret chamber, sacred to
itself; where one can file away the things others have no right to know, as well
as things that one himself would fain forget! We are under no moral obligation
to inflict upon others the history of our past mistakes, our wayward thoughts,
our secret sins, our desperate hopes, or our heartbreaking disappointments.
Still less are we bound to bring out from this secret chamber the dusty record
of our ancestry.
`Let the dead past bury
its dead.' George Tryon loves you for yourself alone; it is not your ancestors
that he seeks to marry.”
“But would he marry me
if he knew?” she persisted.
Warwick paused for
reflection. He would have preferred to argue the question in a general way, but
felt the necessity of satisfying her scruples, as far as might be. He had liked
Tryon from the very beginning of their acquaintance. In all their intercourse,
which had been very close for several months, he had been impressed by the
young man's sunny temper, his straightforwardness, his intellectual honesty.
Tryon's deference to Warwick as the elder man had very naturally proved an
attraction. Whether this friendship would have stood the test of utter
frankness about his own past was a merely academic speculation with which
Warwick did not trouble himself. With his sister the question had evidently
become a matter of conscience, --a difficult subject with which to deal in a
person of Rena's temperament.
“My dear sister,” he
replied, “why should he know? We have+n't asked him for his pedigree; we don't
care to know it. If he cares for ours, he should ask for it, and it would then
be time enough to raise the question. You love him, I imagine, and wish to make
him happy?”
It is the highest wish
of the woman who loves. The enamored man seeks his own happiness; the loving
woman finds no sacrifice too great for the loved one. The fiction of chivalry
made man serve woman; the fact of human nature makes woman happiest when
serving where she loves.
“Yes, oh, yes,” Rena
exclaimed with fervor, clasping her hands unconsciously. “I+'m afraid he+'d be
unhappy if he knew, and it would make me miserable to think him unhappy.”
“Well, then,” said
Warwick, “suppose we should tell him our secret and put ourselves in his power,
and that he should then conclude that he could+n't marry you? Do you imagine he
would be any happier than he is now, or than if he should never know?”
Ah, no! she could not
think so. One could not tear love out of one+'s heart without pain and
suffering.
There was a knock at
the door. Warwick opened it to the nurse, who stood with little Albert in her
arms.
“Please, suh,” said the
girl, with a curtsy, “de baby 's be'n oryin' an' frettin' fer Miss Rena, an' I
'lowed she mought want me ter fetch 'im, ef it would+n't+'sturb her.”
“Give me the darling,”
exclaimed Rena, coming forward and taking the child from the nurse. “It wants
its auntie. Come to its auntie, bless its little heart!”
Little Albert crowed
with pleasure and put up his pretty mouth for a kiss. Warwick found the sight a
pleasant one. If he could but quiet his sister's troublesome scruples, he might
erelong see her fondling beautiful children of her own. Even if Rena were
willing to risk her happiness, and he to endanger his position, by a quixotic
frankness, the future of his child must not be compromised.
“You would+n't want to
make George unhappy,” Warwick resumed when the nurse retired. “Very well; would
you not be willing, for his sake, to keep a secret--your secret and mine, and
that of the innocent child in your arms? Would you involve all of us in
difficulties merely to secure your own peace of mind? Does+n't such a course
seem just the least bit selfish? Think the matter over from that point of view,
and we+'ll speak of it later in the day. I shall be with George all the
morning, and I may be able, by a little management, to find out his views on
the subject of birth and family, and all that. Some men are very liberal, and
love is a great leveler. I+'ll sound him, at any rate.”
He kissed the baby and
left Rena to her own reflections, to which his presentation of the case had
given a new turn. It had never before occurred to her to regard silence in the
light of self-sacrifice. It had seemed a sort of sin; her brother's argument
made of it a virtue. It was not the first time, nor the last, that right and
wrong had been a matter of view-point.
Tryon himself furnished
the opening for Warwick's proposed examination. The younger man could not long
remain silent upon the subject uppermost in his mind. “I am anxious, John,” he
said, “to have Rowena name the happiest day of my life--our wedding day. When
the trial in Edgecombe County is finished, I shall have no further business
here, and shall be ready to leave for home. I should like to take my bride with
me, and surprise my mother.”
Mothers, thought
Warwick, are likely to prove inquisitive about their sons' wives, especially when
taken unawares in matters of such importance. This seemed a good time to test
the liberality of Tryon's views, and to put forward a shield for his sister's
protection.
“Are you sure, George,
that your mother will find the surprise agreeable when you bring home a bride
of whom you know so little and your mother nothing at all?”
Tryon had felt that it
would be best to surprise his mother. She would need only to see Rena to
approve of her, but she was so far prejudiced in favor of Blanche Leary that it
would be wisest to present the argument after having announced the irrevocable
conclusion. Rena herself would be a complete justification for the accomplished
deed.
“I think you ought to
know, George,” continued Warwick, without waiting for a reply to his question, “that
my sister and I are not of an old family, or a rich family, or a distinguished
family; that she can bring you nothing but herself; that we have no connections
of which you could boast, and no relatives to whom we should be glad to introduce
you. You must take us for ourselves alone--we are new people.”
“My dear John,” replied
the young man warmly, “there is a great deal of nonsense about families. If a
man is noble and brave and strong, if a woman is beautiful and good and true,
what matters it about his or her ancestry? If an old family can give them these
things, then it is valuable; if they possess them without it, then of what use
is it, except as a source of empty pride, which they would be better without?
If all new families were like yours, there would be no advantage in belonging
to an old one. All I care to know of Rowena's family is that she is your
sister; and you+'ll pardon me, old fellow, if I add that she hardly needs even
you,--she carries the stamp of her descent upon her face and in her heart.”
“It makes me glad to
hear you speak in that way,” returned Warwick, delighted by the young man's
breadth and earnestness.
“Oh, I mean every word
of it,” replied Tryon. “Ancestors, indeed, for Rowena! I will tell you a family
secret, John, to prove how little I care for ancestors. My maternal
great-great-grandfather, a hundred and fifty years ago, was hanged, drawn, and
quartered for stealing cattle across the Scottish border. How is that for a
pedigree? Behold in me the lineal descendant of a felon!”
Warwick felt much
relieved at this avowal. His own statement had not touched the vital point
involved; it had been at the best but a half-truth; but Tryon's magnanimity
would doubtless protect Rena from any close inquiry concerning her past. It
even occurred to Warwick for a moment that he might safely disclose the secret
to Tryon; but an appreciation of certain facts of history and certain traits of
human nature constrained him to put the momentary thought aside. It was a great
relief, however, to imagine that Tryon might think lightly of this thing that
he need never know.
“Well, Rena,” he said
to his sister when he went home at noon: “I+'ve sounded George.”
“What did he say?” she
asked eagerly.
“I told him we were
people of no family, and that we had no relatives that we were proud of. He
said he loved you for yourself, and would never ask you about your ancestry.”
“Oh, I am so glad!”
exclaimed Rena joyfully. This report left her very happy for about three hours,
or until she began to analyze carefully her brother's account of what had been
said. Warwick's statement had not been specific,--he had not told Tryon *the
thing. George's reply, in turn, had been a mere generality. The concrete fact that
oppressed her remained unrevealed, and her doubt was still unsatisfied.
Rena was occupied with
this thought when her lover next came to see her. Tryon came up the sanded walk
from the gate and spoke pleasantly to the nurse, a good-looking yellow girl who
was seated on the front steps, playing with little Albert. He took the boy from
her arms, and she went to call Miss Warwick.
Rena came out, followed
by the nurse, who offered to take the child.
“Never mind, Mimy,
leave him with me,” said Tryon.
The nurse walked
discreetly over into the garden, remaining within call, but beyond the hearing
of conversation in an ordinary tone.
“Rena, darling,” said
her lover, “when shall it be? Surely you won't ask me to wait a week. Why,
that+'s a lifetime!”
Rena was struck by a
brilliant idea. She would test her lover. Love was a very powerful force; she
had found it the greatest, grandest, sweetest thing in the world. Tryon had
said that he loved her; he had said scarcely anything else for several weeks,
surely nothing else worth remembering. She would test his love by a
hypothetical question.
“You say you love me,”
she said, glancing at him with a sad thoughtfulness in her large dark eyes. “How
much do you love me?”
“I love you all one can
love. True love has no degrees; it is all or nothing!”
“Would you love me,”
she asked, with an air of coquetry that masked her concern, pointing toward the
girl in the shrubbery, “if I were Albert's nurse yonder?”
“If you were Albert's
nurse,” he replied, with a joyous laugh, “he would have to find another within
a week, for within a week we should be married.”
The answer seemed to
fit the question, but in fact, Tryon's mind and Rena's did not meet. That two
intelligent persons should each attach a different meaning to so simple a form
of words as Rena's question was the best ground for her misgiving with regard
to the marriage. But love blinded her. She was anxious to be convinced. She
interpreted the meaning of his speech by her own thought and by the ardor of
his glance, and was satisfied with the answer.
“And now, darling,”
pleaded Tryon, “will you not fix the day that shall make me happy? I shall be
ready to go away in three weeks. Will you go with me?”
“Yes,” she answered, in
a tumult of joy. She would never need to tell him her secret now. It would make
no difference with him, so far as she was concerned; and she had no right to
reveal her brother's secret. She was willing to bury the past in forgetfulness,
now that she knew it would have no interest for her lover.
THE marriage was fixed
for the thirtieth of the month, immediately after which Tryon and his bride
were to set out for North Carolina. Warwick would have liked it much if Tryon
had lived in South Carolina; but the location of his North Carolina home was at
some distance from Patesville, with which it had no connection by steam or
rail, and indeed lay altogether out of the line of travel to Patesville. Rena
had no acquaintance with people of social standing in North Carolina; and with
the added maturity and charm due to her improved opportunities, it was unlikely
that any former resident of Patesville who might casually meet her would see in
the elegant young matron from South Carolina more than a passing resemblance to
a poor girl who had once lived in an obscure part of the old town. It would of
course be necessary for Rena to keep away from Patesville; save for her
mother's sake, she would hardly be tempted to go back.
On the twentieth of the
month, Warwick set out with Tryon for the county seat of the adjoining county,
to try one of the lawsuits which had required Tryon's presence in South
Carolina for so long a time. Their destination was a day's drive from Clarence,
behind a good horse, and the trial was expected to last a week.
“This week will seem
like a year,” said Tryon ruefully, the evening before their departure, “but
I+'ll write every day, and shall expect a letter as often.”
“The mail goes only
twice a week, George,” replied Rena.
“Then I shall have
three letters in each mail.”
Warwick and Tryon were
to set out in the cool of the morning, after an early breakfast. Rena was up at
daybreak that she might preside at the breakfast-table and bid the travelers
good-by.
“John,” said Rena to
her brother in the morning, “I dreamed last night that mother was ill.”
“Dreams, you know,
Rena,” answered Warwick lightly, “go by contraries. Yours undoubtedly signifies
that our mother, God bless her simple soul! is at the present moment enjoying
her usual perfect health. She was never sick in her life.”
For a few months after
leaving Patesville with her brother, Rena had suffered tortures of
homesickness; those who have felt it know the pang. The severance of old ties
had been abrupt and complete. At the school where her brother had taken her,
there had been nothing to relieve the strangeness of her surroundings--no
schoolmate from her own town, no relative or friend of the family near by. Even
the compensation of human sympathy was in a measure denied her, for Rena was
too fresh from her prison-house to doubt that sympathy would fail before the
revelation of the secret the consciousness of which oppressed her at that time
like a nightmare. It was not strange that Rena, thus isolated, should have been
prostrated by homesickness for several weeks after leaving Patesville. When the
paroxysm had passed, there followed a dull pain, which gradually subsided into
a resignation as profound, in its way, as had been her longing for home. She
loved, she suffered, with a quiet intensity of which her outward demeanor gave
no adequate expression. From some ancestral source she had derived a strain of
the passive fatalism by which alone one can submit uncomplainingly to the
inevitable. By the same token, when once a thing had been decided, it became
with her a finality, which only some extraordinary stress of emotion could
disturb. She had acquiesced in her brother's plan; for her there was no
withdrawing; her homesickness was an incidental thing which must be endured, as
patiently as might be, until time should have brought a measure of relief.
Warwick had made
provision for an occasional letter from Patesville, by leaving with his mother
a number of envelopes directed to his address. She could have her letters
written, inclose them in these envelopes, and deposit them in the post- office
with her own hand. Thus the place of Warwick's residence would remain within
her own knowledge, and his secret would not be placed at the mercy of any
wandering Patesvillian who might perchance go to that part of South Carolina.
By this simple means Rena had kept as closely in touch with her mother as
Warwick had considered prudent; any closer intercourse was not consistent with
their present station in life.
The night after Warwick
and Tryon had ridden away, Rena dreamed again that her mother was ill. Better
taught people than she, in regions more enlightened than the South Carolina of
that epoch, are disturbed at times by dreams. Mis' Molly had a profound faith
in them. If God, in ancient times, had spoken to men in visions of the night,
what easier way could there be for Him to convey his meaning to people of all
ages? Science, which has shattered many an idol and destroyed many a delusion,
has made but slight inroads upon the shadowy realm of dreams. For Mis' Molly,
to whom science would have meant nothing and psychology would have been a
meaningless term, the land of dreams was carefully mapped and bounded. Each
dream had some special significance, or was at least susceptible of
classification under some significant head. Dreams, as a general rule, went by
contraries; but a dream three times repeated was a certain portent of the thing
defined. Rena's few years of schooling at Patesville and her months at
Charleston had scarcely disturbed these hoary superstitions which lurk in the
dim corners of the brain. No lady in Clarence, perhaps, would have remained
undisturbed by a vivid dream, three times repeated, of some event bearing
materially upon her own life.
The first repetition of
a dream was decisive of nothing, for two dreams meant no more than one. The
power of the second lay in the suspense, the uncertainty, to which it gave
rise. Two doubled the chance of a third. The day following this second dream
was an anxious one for Rena. She could not for an instant dismiss her mother
from her thoughts, which were filled too with a certain self-reproach. She had
left her mother alone; if her mother were really ill, there was no one at home
to tend her with loving care. This feeling grew in force, until by nightfall
Rena had become very unhappy, and went to bed with the most dismal forebodings.
In this state of mind, it is not surprising that she now dreamed that her
mother was lying at the point of death, and that she cried out with
heart-rending pathos:--
“Rena, my darlin', why
did you forsake yo'r pore old mother? Come back to me, honey; I+'ll die ef I
don't see you soon.”
The stress of
subconscious emotion engendered by the dream was powerful enough to wake Rena,
and her mother's utterance seemed to come to her with the force of a fateful
warning and a great reproach. Her mother was sick and needed her, and would die
if she did not come. She felt that she must see her mother,--it would be almost
like murder to remain away from her under such circumstances.
After breakfast she
went into the business part of the town and inquired at what time a train would
leave that would take her toward Patesville. Since she had come away from the
town, a railroad had been opened by which the long river voyage might be
avoided, and, making allowance for slow trains and irregular connections, the
town of Patesville could be reached by an all-rail route in about twelve hours.
Calling at the post-office for the family mail, she found there a letter from
her mother, which she tore open in great excitement. It was written in an unpracticed
hand and badly spelled, and was in effect as follows:--
MY DEAR DAUGHTER,--I
take my pen in hand to let you know that I am not very well. I have had a kind
of misery in my side for two weeks, with palpitations of the heart, and I have
been in bed for three days. I+'m feeling mighty poorly, but Dr. Green says that
I+'ll get over it in a few days. Old Aunt Zilphy is staying with me, and
looking after things tolerably well. I hope this will find you and John
enjoying good health. Give my love to John, and I hope the Lord will bless him
and you too. Cousin Billy Oxendine has had a rising on his neck, and has had to
have it lanced. Mary B. has another young one, a boy this time. Old man Tom
Johnson was killed last week while trying to whip black Jim Brown, who lived
down on the Wilmington Road. Jim has run away. There has been a big freshet in
the river, and it looked at one time as if the new bridge would be washed away.
Frank comes over every
day or two and asks about you. He says to tell you that he don't believe you
are coming back any more, but you are to remember him, and that foolishness he
said about bringing you back from the end of the world with his mule and cart.
He+'s very good to me, and brings over shavings and kindling-wood, and made me a
new well-bucket for nothing. It+'s a comfort to talk to him about you, though I
have+n't told him where you are living.
I hope this will find
you and John both well, and doing well. I should like to see you, but if it+'s
the Lord's will that I should+n't, I shall be thankful anyway that you have
done what was the best for yourselves and your children, and that I have given
you up for your own good. Your affectionate mother, MARY WALDEN.
Rena shed tears over
this simple letter, which, to her excited imagination, merely confirmed the
warning of her dream. At the date of its writing her mother had been sick in
bed, with the symptoms of a serious illness. She had no nurse but a purblind
old woman. Three days of progressive illness had evidently been quite sufficient
to reduce her parent to the condition indicated by the third dream. The thought
that her mother might die without the presence of any one who loved her pierced
Rena's heart like a knife and lent wings to her feet. She wished for the
enchanted horse of which her brother had read to her so many years before on
the front piazza of the house behind the cedars, that she might fly through the
air to her dying mother's side. She determined to go at once to Patesville.
Returning home, she
wrote a letter to Warwick inclosing their mother's letter, and stating that she
had dreamed an alarming dream for three nights in succession; that she had left
the house in charge of the servants and gone to Patesville; and that she would
return as soon as her mother was out of danger.
To her lover she wrote
that she had been called away to visit a sick-bed, and would return very soon,
perhaps by the time he got back to Clarence. These letters Rena posted on her
way to the train, which she took at five o'clock in the afternoon. This would
bring her to Patesville early in the morning of the following day.
WAR has been called the
court of last resort. A lawsuit may with equal aptness be compared to a
battle--the parallel might be drawn very closely all along the line. First we
have the casus belli, the cause of action; then the various protocols and
proclamations and general orders, by way of pleas, demurrers, and motions; then
the preliminary skirmishes at the trial table; and then the final struggle, in
which might is quite as likely to prevail as right, victory most often resting
with the strongest battalions, and truth and justice not seldom overborne by
the weight of odds upon the other side.
The lawsuit which
Warwick and Tryon had gone to try did not, however, reach this ultimate stage,
but, after a three days' engagement, resulted in a treaty of peace. The case
was compromised and settled, and Tryon and Warwick set out on their homeward
drive. They stopped at a farm- house at noon, and while at table saw the stage-
coach from the town they had just left, bound for their own destination. In the
mail-bag under the driver's seat were Rena's two letters; they had been
delivered at the town in the morning, and immediately remailed to Clarence, in
accordance with orders left at the post-office the evening before. Tryon and
Warwick drove leisurely homeward through the pines, all unconscious of the
fateful squares of white paper moving along the road a few miles before them,
which a mother's yearning and a daughter's love had thrown, like the apple of
discord, into the narrow circle of their happiness.
They reached Clarence
at four o'clock. Warwick got down from the buggy at his office. Tryon drove on
to his hotel, to make a hasty toilet before visiting his sweetheart.
Warwick glanced at his
mail, tore open the envelope addressed in his sister's handwriting, and read
the contents with something like dismay. She had gone away on the eve of her
wedding, her lover knew not where, to be gone no one knew how long, on a
mission which could not be frankly disclosed. A dim foreboding of disaster
flashed across his mind. He thrust the letter into his pocket, with others yet
unopened, and started toward his home. Reaching the gate, he paused a moment
and then walked on past the house. Tryon would probably be there in a few
minutes, and he did not care to meet him without first having had the
opportunity for some moments of reflection. He must fix upon some line of
action in this emergency.
Meanwhile Tryon had
reached his hotel and opened his mail. The letter from Rena was read first,
with profound disappointment. He had really made concessions in the settlement
of that lawsuit--had yielded several hundred dollars of his just dues, in order
that he might get back to Rena three days earlier. Now he must cool his heels
in idleness for at least three days before she would return. It was annoying,
to say the least. He wished to know where she had gone, that he might follow
her and stay near her until she should be ready to come back. He might ask
Warwick-- no, she might have had some good reason for not having mentioned her
destination. She had probably gone to visit some of the poor relations of whom
her brother had spoken so frankly, and she would doubtless prefer that he
should not see her amid any surroundings but the best. Indeed, he did not know
that he would himself care to endanger, by suggestive comparisons, the fine
aureole of superiority that surrounded her. She represented in her adorable
person and her pure heart the finest flower of the finest race that God had
ever made--the supreme effort of creative power, than which there could be no
finer. The flower would soon be his; why should he care to dig up the soil in
which it grew?
Tryon went on opening
his letters. There were several bills and circulars, and then a letter from his
mother, of which he broke the seal:--
MY DEAREST GEORGE,
-- This leaves us well.
Blanche is still with me, and we are impatiently awaiting your return. In your
absence she seems almost like a daughter to me. She joins me in the hope that
your lawsuits are progressing favorably, and that you will be with us soon. . .
.
On your way home, if it
does not keep you away from us too long, would it not be well for you to come
by way of Patesville, and find out whether there is any prospect of our being
able to collect our claim against old Mr. Duncan McSwayne's estate? You must
have taken the papers with you, along with the rest, for I do not find them
here. Things ought to be settled enough now for people to realize on some of
their securities. Your grandfather always believed the note was good, and meant
to try to collect it, but the war interfered. He said to me, before he died,
that if the note was ever collected, he would use the money to buy a wedding
present for your wife. Poor father! he is dead and gone to heaven; but I am
sure that even there he would be happier if he knew the note was paid and the
money used as he intended.
If you go to
Patesville, call on my cousin, Dr. Ed. Green, and tell him who you are. Give
him my love. I have+n't seen him for twenty years. He used to be very fond of
the ladies, a very gallant man. He can direct you to a good lawyer, no doubt.
Hoping to see you soon,
Your loving mother,
ELIZABETH TRYON.
P. S. Blanche joins me in love to you.
This affectionate and
motherly letter did not give Tryon unalloyed satisfaction. He was glad to hear
that his mother was well, but he had hoped that Blanche Leary might have
finished her visit by this time. The reasonable inference from the letter was
that Blanche meant to await his return. Her presence would spoil the fine
romantic flavor of the surprise he had planned for his mother; it would never
do to expose his bride to an unannounced meeting with the woman whom he had
tacitly rejected. There would be one advantage in such a meeting: the
comparison of the two women would be so much in Rena's favor that his mother
could not hesitate for a moment between them. The situation, however, would
have elements of constraint, and he did not care to expose either Rena or
Blanche to any disagreeable contingency. It would be better to take his wife on
a wedding trip, and notify his mother, before he returned home, of his
marriage. In the extremely improbable case that she should disapprove his
choice after having seen his wife, the ice would at least have been broken
before his arrival at home.
“By Jove!” he exclaimed
suddenly, striking his knee with his hand, “why should+n't I run up to
Patesville while Rena+'s gone? I can leave here at five o'clock, and get there
some time to-morrow morning. I can transact my business during the day, and get
back the day after to-morrow; for Rena might return ahead of time, just as we
did, and I shall want to be here when she comes; I+'d rather wait a year for a
legal opinion on a doubtful old note than to lose one day with my love. The
train goes in twenty minutes. My bag is already packed. I+'ll just drop a line
to George and tell him where I+'ve gone.”
He put Rena's letter
into his breast pocket, and turning to his trunk, took from it a handful of
papers relating to the claim in reference to which he was going to Patesville.
These he thrust into the same pocket with Rena's letter; he wished to read both
letter and papers while on the train. It would be a pleasure merely to hold the
letter before his eyes and look at the lines traced by her hand. The papers he
wished to study, for the more practical purpose of examining into the merits of
his claim against the estate of Duncan McSwayne.
When Warwick reached
home, he inquired if Mr. Tryon had called.
“No, suh,” answered the
nurse, to whom he had put the question; “ he ain't be'n here yet, suh.”
Warwick was surprised
and much disturbed.
“De baby 's be'n cryin'
for Miss Rena,” suggested the nurse, “an' I s'pec' he+'d like to see you, suh.
Shall I fetch ' im?”
“Yes, bring him to me.”
He took the child in
his arms and went out upon the piazza. Several porch pillows lay invitingly
near. He pushed them toward the steps with his foot, sat down upon one, and
placed little Albert upon another. He was scarcely seated when a messenger from
the hotel came up the walk from the gate and handed him a note. At the same
moment he heard the long shriek of the afternoon train leaving the station on
the opposite side of the town.
He tore the envelope
open anxiously, read the note, smiled a sickly smile, and clenched the paper in
his hand unconsciously. There was nothing he could do. The train had gone;
there was no telegraph to Patesville, and no letter could leave Clarence for
twenty-four hours. The best laid schemes go wrong at times--the stanchest ships
are sometimes wrecked, or skirt the breakers perilously. Life is a sea, full of
strange currents and uncharted reefs--whoever leaves the traveled path must run
the danger of destruction. Warwick was a lawyer, however, and accustomed to
balance probabilities.
“He may easily be in
Patesville a day or two without meeting her. She will spend most of her time at
mother's bedside, and he will be occupied with his own affairs.”
If Tryon should meet
her--well, he was very much in love, and he had spoken very nobly of birth and
blood. Warwick would have preferred, nevertheless, that Tryon+'s theories
should not be put to this particular test. Rena's scruples had so far been
successfully combated; the question would be opened again, and the situation
unnecessarily complicated, if Tryon should meet Rena in Patesville.
“Will he or will he
not?” he asked himself. He took a coin from his pocket and spun it upon the
floor. “Heads, he sees her; tails, he does not.”
The coin spun swiftly
and steadily, leaving upon the eye the impression of a revolving sphere. Little
Albert, left for a moment to his own devices, had crept behind his father and
was watching the whirling disk with great pleasure. He felt that he would like
to possess this interesting object. The coin began to move more slowly, and was
wabbling to its fall, when the child stretched forth his chubby fist and caught
it ere it touched the floor.
TRYON arrived in the
early morning and put up at the Patesville Hotel, a very comfortable inn. After
a bath, breakfast, and a visit to the barbershop, he inquired of the hotel
clerk the way to the office of Dr. Green, his mother+'s cousin.
“On the corner, sir,”
answered the clerk, “by the market-house, just over the drugstore. The doctor
drove past here only half an hour ago. You+'ll probably catch him in his
office.”
Tryon found the office
without difficulty. He climbed the stair, but found no one in except a young
colored man seated in the outer office, who rose promptly as Tryon entered.
“No, suh,” replied the
man to Tryon's question, “he ain't hyuh now. He+'s gone out to see a patient,
suh, but he+'ll be back soon. Won't you set down in de private office an' wait
fer 'im, suh?”
Tryon had not slept
well during his journey, and felt somewhat fatigued. Through the open door of
the next room he saw an inviting armchair, with a window at one side, and upon
the other a table strewn with papers and magazines.
“Yes,” he answered, “I+'ll
wait.”
He entered the private
office, sank into the armchair, and looked out of the window upon the square
below. The view was mildly interesting. The old brick market-house with the tower
was quite picturesque. On a wagon-scale at one end the public weighmaster was
weighing a load of hay. In the booths under the wide arches several old negro
women were frying fish on little charcoal stoves-- the odor would have been
appetizing to one who had not breakfasted. On the shady side stood half a dozen
two-wheeled carts, loaded with lightwood and drawn by diminutive steers, or
superannuated army mules branded on the flank with the cabalistic letters “C.
S. A.,” which represented a vanished dream, or “U. S. A.,” which, as any negro
about the market-house would have borne witness, signified a very concrete
fact. Now and then a lady or gentleman passed with leisurely step--no one ever
hurried in Patesville--or some poor white sandhiller slouched listlessly along
toward store or bar-room.
Tryon mechanically
counted the slabs of gingerbread on the nearest market-stall, and calculated
the cubical contents of several of the meagre loads of wood. Having exhausted
the view, he turned to the table at his elbow and picked up a medical journal,
in which he read first an account of a marvelous surgical operation. Turning
the leaves idly, he came upon an article by a Southern writer, upon the
perennial race problem that has vexed the country for a century. The writer
maintained that owing to a special tendency of the negro blood, however
diluted, to revert to the African type, any future amalgamation of the white
and black races, which foolish and wicked Northern negrophiles predicted as the
ultimate result of the new conditions confronting the South, would therefore be
an ethnological impossibility; for the smallest trace of negro blood would
inevitably drag down the superior race to the level of the inferior, and reduce
the fair Southland, already devastated by the hand of the invader, to the
frightful level of Hayti, the awful example of negro incapacity. To forefend
their beloved land, now doubly sanctified by the blood of her devoted sons who
had fallen in the struggle to maintain her liberties and preserve her property,
it behooved every true Southron{sic} to stand firm against the abhorrent tide
of radicalism, to maintain the supremacy and purity of his all- pervading,
all-conquering race, and to resist by every available means the threatened
domination of an inferior and degraded people, who were set to rule hereditary
freemen ere they had themselves scarce ceased to be slaves.
When Tryon had finished
the article, which seemed to him a well-considered argument, albeit a trifle
bombastic, he threw the book upon the table. Finding the armchair wonderfully
comfortable, and feeling the fatigue of his journey, he yielded to a drowsy
impulse, leaned his head on the cushioned back of the chair, and fell asleep.
According to the habit of youth, he dreamed, and pursuant to his own individual
habit, he dreamed of Rena. They were walking in the moonlight, along the quiet
road in front of her brother's house. The air was redolent with the perfume of
flowers. His arm was around her waist. He had asked her if she loved him, and
was awaiting her answer in tremulous but confident expectation. She opened her
lips to speak. The sound that came from them seemed to be:--
“Is Dr. Green in? No?
Ask him, when he comes back, please, to call at our house as soon as he can.”
Tryon was in that state
of somnolence in which one may dream and yet be aware that one is
dreaming,--the state where one, during a dream, dreams that one pinches one's
self to be sure that one is not dreaming. He was therefore aware of a ringing
quality about the words he had just heard that did not comport with the shadowy
converse of a dream--an incongruity in the remark, too, which marred the
harmony of the vision. The shock was sufficient to disturb Tryon's slumber, and
he struggled slowly back to consciousness. When fully awake, he thought he
heard a light footfall descending the stairs.
“Was there some one
here?” he inquired of the attendant in the outer office, who was visible
through the open door.
“Yas, suh,” replied the
boy, “a young cullud 'oman wuz in jes' now, axin' fer de doctuh.”
Tryon felt a momentary
touch of annoyance that a negro woman should have intruded herself into his
dream at its most interesting point. Nevertheless, the voice had been so real,
his imagination had reproduced with such exactness the dulcet tones so dear to
him, that he turned his head involuntarily and looked out of the window. He
could just see the flutter of a woman's skirt disappearing around the corner.
A moment later the
doctor came bustling in,-- a plump, rosy man of fifty or more, with a frank,
open countenance and an air of genial good nature. Such a doctor, Tryon
fancied, ought to enjoy a wide popularity. His mere presence would suggest life
and hope and healthfulness.
“My dear boy,”
exclaimed the doctor cordially, after Tryon had introduced himself, “I+'m
delighted to meet you--or any one of the old blood. Your mother and I were
sweethearts, long ago, when we both wore pinafores, and went to see our
grandfather at Christmas; and I met her more than once, and paid her more than
one compliment, after she had grown to be a fine young woman. You+'re like her!
too, but not quite so handsome-- you+'ve more of what I suppose to be the Tryon
favor, though I never met your father. So one of old Duncan McSwayne's notes
went so far as that? Well, well, I don't know where you won't find them. One of
them turned up here the other day from New York.
“The man you want to
see,” he added later in the conversation, “is old Judge Straight. He's getting
somewhat stiff in the joints, but he knows more law, and more about the
McSwayne estate, than any other two lawyers in town. If anybody can collect
your claim, Judge Straight can. I+'ll send my boy Dave over to his office.
Dave,” he called to his attendant, “run over to Judge Straight's office and see
if he+'s there.
“There was a freshet
here a few weeks ago,” he want on, when the colored man had departed, “and they
had to open the flood-gates and let the water out of the mill pond, for if the
dam had broken, as it did twenty years ago, it would have washed the pillars
from under the judge's office and let it down in the creek, and”--
“Jedge Straight ain't
in de office jes' now, suh,” reported the doctor's man Dave, from the head of
the stairs.
“Did you ask when he+'d
be back?”
“No, suh, you did+n't
tell me ter, suh.”
“Well, now, go back and
inquire.
“The niggers,” he
explained to Tryon,+'s are getting mighty trifling since they+'ve been freed.
Before the war, that boy would have been around there and back before you could
say Jack Robinson; now, the lazy rascal takes his time just like a white man.”
Dave returned more
promptly than from his first trip. “Jedge Straight+'s dere now, suh,” he said. “He+'s
done come in.”
“I+'ll take you right
around and introduce you,” said the doctor, running on pleasantly, like a
babbling brook. “I don't know whether the judge ever met your mother or not,
but he knows a gentleman when he sees one, and will be glad to meet you and
look after your affair. See to the patients, Dave, and say I+'ll be back
shortly, and don't forget any messages left for me. Look sharp, now! You know
your failing!”
They found Judge
Straight in his office. He was seated by the rear window, and had fallen into a
gentle doze--the air of Patesville was conducive to slumber. A visitor from
some bustling city might have rubbed his eyes, on any but a market-day, and
imagined the whole town asleep --that the people were somnambulists and did not
know it. The judge, an old hand, roused himself so skillfully, at the sound of
approaching footsteps, that his visitors could not guess but that he had been
wide awake. He shook hands with the doctor, and acknowledged the introduction
to Tryon with a rare old-fashioned courtesy, which the young man thought a very
charming survival of the manners of a past and happier age.
“No,” replied the
judge, in answer to a question by Dr. Green, “I never met his mother; I was a
generation ahead of her. I was at school with her father, however, fifty years
ago--fifty years ago! No doubt that seems to you a long time, young gentleman?”
“It is a long time,
sir,” replied Tryon. “I must live more than twice as long as I have in order to
cover it.”
“A long time, and a
troubled time,” sighed the judge. “I could wish that I might see this unhappy
land at peace with itself before I die. Things are in a sad tangle; I can't see
the way out. But the worst enemy has been slain, in spite of us. We are well
rid of slavery.”
“But the negro we still
have with us,” remarked the doctor, “for here comes my man Dave. What is it,
Dave?” he asked sharply, as the negro stuck his head in at the door.
“Doctuh Green,” he
said, “I fuhgot ter tell you, suh, dat dat young 'oman wuz at de office agin
jes' befo' you come in, an' said fer you to go right down an' see her mammy ez
soon ez you could.”
“Ah, yes, and you+'ve
just remembered it! I+'m afraid you're entirely too forgetful for a doctor's
office. You forgot about old Mrs. Latimer, the other day, and when I got there
she had almost choked to death. Now get back to the office, and remember, the
next time you forget anything, I+'ll hire another boy; remember that! That
boy's head,” he remarked to his companions, after Dave had gone, “reminds me of
nothing so much as a dried gourd, with a handful of cowpeas rattling around it,
in lieu of gray matter. An old woman out in Redbank got a fishbone in her
throat, the other day, and nearly choked to death before I got there. A white
woman, sir, came very near losing her life because of a lazy, trifling negro!”
“I should think you
would discharge him, sir,” suggested Tryon.
“What would be the use?”
rejoined the doctor. “All negroes are alike, except that now and then there+'s
a pretty woman along the border-line. Take this patient of mine, for
instance,--I+'ll call on her after dinner, her case is not serious,--thirty
years ago she would have made any man turn his head to look at her. You know
who I mean, don't you, judge?”
“Yes. I think so,” said
the judge promptly “I+'ve transacted a little business for her now and then.”
“I don't know whether
you+'ve seen the daughter or not--I+'m sure you have+n't for the past year or
so, for she+'s been away. But she's in town now, and, by Jove, the girl is
really beautiful. And I+'m a judge of beauty. Do you remember my wife thirty
years ago, judge?”
“She was a very
handsome woman, Ed,” replied the other judicially. “If I had been twenty years
younger, I should have cut you out.”
“You mean you would
have tried. But as I was saying, this girl is a beauty; I reckon we might guess
where she got some of it, eh, Judge? Human nature is human nature, but it+'s a
d--d shame that a man should beget a child like that and leave it to live the
life open for a negro. If she had been born white, the young fellows would be
tumbling over one another to get her. Her mother would have to look after her
pretty closely as things are, if she stayed here; but she disappeared
mysteriously a year or two ago, and has been at the North, I+'m told, passing
for white. She+'ll probably marry a Yankee; he won't know any better, and it
will serve him right--she+'s only too white for them. She has a very striking
figure, something on the Greek order, stately and slow-moving. She has the
manners of a lady, too --a beautiful woman, if she is a nigger!”
“I quite agree with
you, Ed,” remarked the judge dryly, “that the mother had better look closely
after the daughter.”
“Ah, no, judge,”
replied the other, with a flattered smile, “my admiration for beauty is purely
abstract. Twenty-five years ago, when I was younger”--
“When you were young,”
corrected the judge.
“When you and I were
younger,” continued the doctor ingeniously,--“twenty-five years ago, I could
not have answered for myself. But I would advise the girl to stay at the North,
if she can. She+'s certainly out of place around here.”
Tryon found the subject
a little tiresome, and the doctor's enthusiasm not at all contagious. He could
not possibly have been interested in a colored girl, under any circumstances,
and he was engaged to be married to the most beautiful white woman on earth. To
mention a negro woman in the same room where he was thinking of Rena seemed
little short of profanation. His friend the doctor was a jovial fellow, but it
was surely doubtful taste to refer to his wife in such a conversation. He was
very glad when the doctor dropped the subject and permitted him to go more into
detail about the matter which formed his business in Patesville. He took out of
his pocket the papers concerning the McSwayne claim and laid them on the
judge's desk.
“You+'ll find
everything there, sir,--the note, the contract, and some correspondence that
will give you the hang of the thing. Will you be able to look over them to-day?
I should like,” he added a little nervously, “to go back to-morrow.”
“What!” exclaimed Dr.
Green vivaciously, “insult our town by staying only one day? It won't be long
enough to get acquainted with our young ladies. Patesville girls are famous for
their beauty. But perhaps there+'s a loadstone in South Carolina to draw you
back? Ah, you change color! To my mind there's nothing finer than the ingenuous
blush of youth. But we+'ll spare you if you+'ll answer one question--is it
serious?”
“I+'m to be married in
two weeks, sir,” answered Tryon. The statement sounded very pleasant, in spite
of the slight embarrassment caused by the inquiry.
“Good boy!” rejoined
the doctor, taking his arm familiarly--they were both standing now. “You ought
to have married a Patesville girl, but you people down towards the eastern
counties seldom come this way, and we are evidently too late to catch you.”
“I+'ll look your papers
over this morning,” said the judge, “and when I come from dinner will stop at
the court house and examine the records and see whether there+'s anything we
can get hold of. If you+'ll drop in around three or four o'clock, I may be able
to give you an opinion.”
“Now, George,”
exclaimed the doctor, “we+'ll go back to the office for a spell, and then I+'ll
take you home with me to luncheon.”
Tryon hesitated.
“Oh, you must come!
Mrs. Green would never forgive me if I did+n't bring you. Strangers are rare
birds in our society, and when they come we make them welcome. Our enemies may
overturn our institutions, and try to put the bottom rail on top, but they
cannot destroy our Southern hospitality. There are so many carpet-baggers and
other social vermin creeping into the South, with the Yankees trying to force
the niggers on us, that it+'s a genuine pleasure to get acquainted with another
real Southern gentleman, whom one can invite into one's house without fear of
contamination, and before whom one can express his feelings freely and be sure
of perfect sympathy.”
WHEN Judge Straight's
visitors had departed, he took up the papers which had been laid loosely on the
table as they were taken out of Tryon's breast- pocket, and commenced their
perusal. There was a note for five hundred dollars, many years overdue, but not
yet outlawed by lapse of time; a contract covering the transaction out of which
the note had grown; and several letters and copies of letters modifying the
terms of the contract. The judge had glanced over most of the papers, and was
getting well into the merits of the case, when he unfolded a letter which read
as follows:-- MY DEAREST GEORGE,-- I am going away for about a week, to visit
the bedside of an old friend, who is very ill, and may not live. Do not be
alarmed about me, for I shall very likely be back by the time you are. Yours
lovingly, ROWENA WARWICK.
The judge was unable to
connect this letter with the transaction which formed the subject of his
examination. Age had dimmed his perceptions somewhat, and it was not until he
had finished the letter, and read it over again, and noted the signature at the
bottom a second time, that he perceived that the writing was in a woman's hand,
that the ink was comparatively fresh, and that the letter was dated only a
couple of days before. While he still held the sheet in his hand, it dawned
upon him slowly that he held also one of the links in a chain of possible
tragedy which he himself, he became uncomfortably aware, had had a hand in
forging.
“It is the Walden
woman's daughter, as sure as fate! Her name is Rena. Her brother goes by the
name of Warwick. She has come to visit her sick mother. My young client,
Green's relation, is her lover--is engaged to marry her--is in town, and is
likely to meet her!”
The judge was so
absorbed in the situation thus suggested that he laid the papers down and
pondered for a moment the curious problem involved. He was quite aware that two
races had not dwelt together, side by side, for nearly three hundred years,
without mingling their blood in greater or less degree; he was old enough, and
had seen curious things enough, to know that in this mingling the current had
not always flowed in one direction. Certain old decisions with which he was
familiar; old scandals that had crept along obscure channels; old facts that
had come to the knowledge of an old practitioner, who held in the hollow of his
hand the honor of more than one family, made him know that there was dark blood
among the white people--not a great deal, and that very much diluted, and, so
long as it was sedulously concealed or vigorously denied, or lost in the mists
of tradition, or ascribed to a foreign or an aboriginal strain, having no
perceptible effect upon the racial type.
Such people were, for
the most part, merely on the ragged edge of the white world, seldom rising
above the level of overseers, or slave-catchers, or sheriff's officers, who
could usually be relied upon to resent the drop of black blood that tainted
them, and with the zeal of the proselyte to visit their hatred of it upon the
unfortunate blacks that fell into their hands. One curse of negro slavery was,
and one part of its baleful heritage is, that it poisoned the fountains of
human sympathy. Under a system where men might sell their own children without
social reprobation or loss of prestige, it was not surprising that some of them
should hate their distant cousins. There were not in Patesville half a dozen
persons capable of thinking Judge Straight's thoughts upon the question before
him, and perhaps not another who would have adopted the course he now pursued
toward this anomalous family in the house behind the cedars.
“Well, here we are
again, as the clown in the circus remarks,” murmured the judge. “Ten years ago,
in a moment of sentimental weakness and of quixotic loyalty to the memory of an
old friend,-- who, by the way, had not cared enough for his own children to
take them away from the South, as he might have done, or to provide for them
handsomely, as he perhaps meant to do,--I violated the traditions of my class
and stepped from the beaten path to help the misbegotten son of my old friend
out of the slough of despond, in which he had learned, in some strange way,
that he was floundering. Ten years later, the ghost of my good deed returns to
haunt me, and makes me doubt whether I have wrought more evil than good. I
wonder,” he mused, “if he will find her out?”
The judge was a man of
imagination; he had read many books and had personally outlived some
prejudices. He let his mind run on the various phases of the situation.
“If he found her out,
would he by any possibility marry her?”
“It is not likely,” he
answered himself. “If he made the discovery here, the facts would probably leak
out in the town. It is something that a man might do in secret, but only a hero
or a fool would do openly.”
The judge sighed as he
contemplated another possibility. He had lived for seventy years under the old
régime. The young man was a gentleman --so had been the girl's father.
Conditions were changed, but human nature was the same. Would the young man's
love turn to disgust and repulsion, or would it merely sink from the level of
worship to that of desire? Would the girl, denied marriage, accept anything
less? Her mother had,--but conditions were changed. Yes, conditions were
changed, so far as the girl was concerned; there was a possible future for her
under the new order of things; but white people had not changed their opinion
of the negroes, except for the worse. The general belief was that they were
just as inferior as before, and had, moreover, been spoiled by a disgusting
assumption of equality, driven into their thick skulls by Yankee malignity bent
upon humiliating a proud though vanquished foe.
If the judge had had
sons and daughters of his own, he might not have done what he now proceeded to
do. But the old man's attitude toward society was chiefly that of an observer,
and the narrow stream of sentiment left in his heart chose to flow toward the
weaker party in this unequal conflict, --a young woman fighting for love and
opportunity against the ranked forces of society, against immemorial tradition,
against pride of family and of race.
“It may be the unwisest
thing I ever did,” he said to himself, turning to his desk and taking up a
quill pen, “and may result in more harm than good; but I was always from
childhood in sympathy with the under dog. There is certainly as much reason in
my helping the girl as the boy, for being a woman, she is less able to help
herself.”
He dipped his pen into
the ink and wrote the following lines:--
MADAM,--If you value
your daughter's happiness, keep her at home for the next day or two.
This note he dried by
sprinkling it with sand from a box near at hand, signed with his own name, and,
with a fine courtesy, addressed to “Mrs. Molly Walden.” Having first carefully
sealed it in an envelope, he stepped to the open door, and spied, playing
marbles on the street near by, a group of negro boys, one of whom the judge
called by name.
“Here, Billy,” he said,
handing the boy the note, “take this to Mis' Molly Walden. Do you know where
she lives--down on Front Street, in the house behind the cedars?”
“Yas, suh, I knows de
place.”
“Make haste, now. When
you come back and tell me what she says, I+'ll give you ten cents. On second
thoughts, I shall be gone to lunch, so here's your money,” he added, handing
the lad the bit of soiled paper by which the United States government
acknowledged its indebtedness to the bearer in the sum of ten cents.
Just here, however, the
judge made his mistake. Very few mortals can spare the spring of hope, the
motive force of expectation. The boy kept the note in his hand, winked at his
companions, who had gathered as near as their awe of the judge would permit,
and started down the street. As soon as the judge had disappeared, Billy
beckoned to his friends, who speedily overtook him. When the party turned the
corner of Front Street and were safely out of sight of Judge Straight's office,
the capitalist entered the grocery store and invested his unearned increment in
gingerbread. When the ensuing saturnalia was over, Billy finished the game of
marbles which the judge had interrupted, and then set Out to execute his
commission. He had nearly reached his objective point when he met upon the
street a young white lady, whom he did not know, and for whom, the path being
narrow at that point, he stepped out into the gutter. He reached the house
behind the cedars, went round to the back door, and handed the envelope to Mis'
Molly, who was seated on the rear piazza, propped up by pillows in a
comfortable rocking-chair.
“Laws-a-massy!” she
exclaimed weakly, “what is it?”
“It+'s a lettuh, ma'm,”
answered the boy, whose expanding nostrils had caught a pleasant odor from the
kitchen, and who was therefore in no hurry to go away.
“Who+'s it fur?” she
asked.
“It+'s fuh you, ma'm,”
replied the lad.
“An' who+'s it from?”
she inquired, turning the envelope over and over, and examining it with the
impotent curiosity of one who cannot read.
“F'm ole Jedge
Straight, ma'm. He tole me ter fetch it ter you. Is you got a roasted 'tater
you could gimme, ma'm?”
“Shorely, chile. I+'ll
have Aunt Zilphy fetch you a piece of 'tater pone, if you+'ll hol' on a minute.”
She called to Aunt
Zilphy, who soon came hobbling out of the kitchen with a large square of the
delicacy,--a flat cake made of mashed sweet potatoes, mixed with beaten eggs,
sweetened and flavored to suit the taste, and baked in a Dutch oven upon the
open hearth.
The boy took the
gratuity, thanked her, and turned to go. Mis' Molly was still scanning the
superscription of the letter. “I wonder,” she murmured, “what old Judge
Straight can be writin' to me about. Oh, boy!”
“Yas 'm,” answered the
messenger, looking back.
“Can you read writin'?”
“No 'm.”
“All right. Never mind.”
She laid the letter
carefully on the chimney- piece of the kitchen. “I reckon it+'s somethin' mo'
'bout the taxes,” she thought, “or maybe somebody wants to buy one er my lots.
Rena+'ll be back terreckly, an' she kin read it an' find out. I+'m glad my
child'en have be'n to school. They never could have got where they are now if
they had+n't.”
MENTION has been made
of certain addressed envelopes which John Warwick, on the occasion of his visit
to Patesville, had left with his illiterate mother, by the use of which she
might communicate with her children from time to time. On one occasion, Mis'
Molly, having had a letter written, took one of these envelopes from the chest
where she kept her most valued possessions, and was about to inclose the letter
when some one knocked at the back door. She laid the envelope and letter on a
table in her bedroom, and went to answer the knock. The wind, blowing across
the room through the open windows, picked up the envelope and bore it into the
street. Mis' Molly, on her return, missed it, looked for it, and being unable
to find it, took another envelope. An hour or two later another gust of wind
lifted the bit of paper from the ground and carried it into the open door of
the cooper shop. Frank picked it up, and observing that it was clean and
unused, read the superscription. In his conversations with Mis' Molly, which
were often about Rena,--the subject uppermost in both their minds,--he had
noted the mystery maintained by Mis' Molly about her daughter's whereabouts,
and had often wondered where she might be. Frank was an intelligent fellow, and
could put this and that together. The envelope was addressed to a place in
South Carolina. He was aware, from some casual remark of Mis' Molly's, that Rena
had gone to live in South Carolina. Her son's name was John-- that he had
changed his last name was more than likely. Frank was not long in reaching the
conclusion that Rena was to be found near the town named on the envelope, which
he carefully preserved for future reference.
For a whole year Frank
had yearned for a smile or a kind word from the only woman in the world. Peter,
his father, had rallied him somewhat upon his moodiness after Rena's departure.
“Now 's de time, boy,
fer you ter be lookin' roun' fer some nice gal er yo' own color, w'at+'ll
'preciate you, an' won't be 'shamed er you. You+'re wastin' time, boy, wastin'
time, shootin' at a mark outer yo' range.”
But Frank said nothing
in reply, and afterwards the old man, who was not without discernment,
respected his son's mood and was silent in turn; while Frank fed his memory
with his imagination, and by their joint aid kept hope alive.
Later an opportunity to
see her presented itself. Business in the cooper shop was dull. A barrel
factory had been opened in the town, and had well-nigh paralyzed the cooper's
trade. The best mechanic could hardly compete with a machine. One man could now
easily do the work of Peter's shop. An agent appeared in town seeking laborers
for one of the railroads which the newly organized carpet-bag governments were
promoting. Upon inquiry Frank learned that their destination was near the town
of Clarence, South Carolina. He promptly engaged himself for the service, and
was soon at work in the neighborhood of Warwick's home. There he was employed
steadily until a certain holiday, upon which a grand tournament was advertised
to take place in a neighboring town. Work was suspended, and foremen and
laborers attended the festivities.
Frank had surmised that
Rena would be present on such an occasion. He had more than guessed, too, that
she must be looked for among the white people rather than among the black.
Hence the interest with which he had scanned the grand stand. The result has
already been recounted. He had recognized her sweet face; he had seen her
enthroned among the proudest and best. He had witnessed and gloried in her
triumph. He had seen her cheek flushed with pleasure, her eyes lit up with
smiles. He had followed her carriage, had made the acquaintance of Mimy the
nurse, and had learned all about the family. When finally he left the
neighborhood to return to Patesville, he had learned of Tryon's attentions, and
had heard the servants' gossip with reference to the marriage, of which they
knew the details long before the principals had approached the main fact. Frank
went away without having received one smile or heard one word from Rena; but he
had seen her: she was happy; he was content in the knowledge of her happiness.
She was doubtless secure in the belief that her secret was unknown. Why should
he, by revealing his presence, sow the seeds of doubt or distrust in the garden
of her happiness? He sacrificed the deepest longing of a faithful heart, and
went back to the cooper shop lest perchance she might accidentally come upon
him some day and suffer the shock which he had sedulously spared her.
“I would n' want ter
skeer her,” he mused, “er make her feel bad, an' dat's w'at I+'d mos' lackly do
ef she seed me. She+'ll be better off wid me out'n de road. She+'ll marry dat
rich w'ite gent'eman,-- he won't never know de diffe'nce,--an' be a w'ite lady,
ez she would 'a' be'n, ef some ole witch had n' changed her in her cradle. But
maybe some time she+'ll 'member de little nigger w'at use' ter nuss her w'en
she woz a chile, an' fished her out'n de ole canal, an' would 'a' died fer her
ef it would 'a' done any good.”
Very generously too,
and with a fine delicacy, he said nothing to Mis' Molly of his having seen her
daughter, lest she might be disquieted by the knowledge that he shared the
family secret,--no great mystery now, this pitiful secret, but more far-
reaching in its consequences than any blood-curdling crime. The taint of black
blood was the unpardonable sin, from the unmerited penalty of which there was no
escape except by concealment. If there be a dainty reader of this tale who
scorns a lie, and who writes the story of his life upon his sleeve for all the
world to read, let him uncurl his scornful lip and come down from the pedestal
of superior morality, to which assured position and wide opportunity have
lifted him, and put himself in the place of Rena and her brother, upon whom God
had lavished his best gifts, and from whom society would have withheld all that
made these gifts valuable. To undertake what they tried to do required great
courage. Had they possessed the sneaking, cringing, treacherous character
traditionally ascribed to people of mixed blood--the character which the
blessed institutions of a free slave-holding republic had been well adapted to
foster among them; had they been selfish enough to sacrifice to their ambition
the mother who gave them birth, society would have been placated or humbugged,
and the voyage of their life might have been one of unbroken smoothness.
When Rena came back
unexpectedly at the behest of her dream, Frank heard again the music of her
voice, felt the joy of her presence and the benison of her smile. There was,
however, a subtle difference in her bearing. Her words were not less kind, but
they seemed to come from a remoter source. She was kind, as the sun is warm or
the rain refreshing; she was especially kind to Frank, because he had been good
to her mother. If Frank felt the difference in her attitude, he ascribed it to
the fact that she had been white, and had taken on something of the white
attitude toward the negro; and Frank, with an equal unconsciousness, clothed
her with the attributes of the superior race. Only her drop of black blood, he
conceived, gave him the right to feel toward her as he would never have felt
without it; and if Rena guessed her faithful devotee's secret, the same reason
saved his worship from presumption. A smile and a kind word were little enough
to pay for a life's devotion.
On the third day of
Rena's presence in Patesville, Frank was driving up Front Street in the early
afternoon, when he nearly fell off his cart in astonishment as he saw seated in
Dr. Green's buggy, which was standing in front of the Patesville Hotel, the
young gentleman who had won the prize at the tournament, and who, as he had
learned, was to marry Rena. Frank was quite certain that she did not know of
Tryon's presence in the town. Frank had been over to Mis' Molly's in the
morning, and had offered his services to the sick woman, who had rapidly become
convalescent upon her daughter's return. Mis' Molly had spoken of some camphor
that she needed. Frank had volunteered to get it. Rena had thanked him, and had
spoken of going to the drugstore during the afternoon. It was her intention to
leave Patesville on the following day.
“Ef dat man sees her in
dis town,” said Frank to himself, “dere+'ll be trouble. She don't know *he+'s
here, an' I+'ll bet he don't know *she's here.”
Then Frank was assailed
by a very strong temptation. If, as he surmised, the joint presence of the two
lovers in Patesville was a mere coincidence, a meeting between them would
probably result in the discovery of Rena's secret.
“If she+'s found out,”
argued the tempter, “she+'ll come back to her mother, and you can see her every
day.”
But Frank's love was
not of the selfish kind. He put temptation aside, and applied the whip to the
back of his mule with a vigor that astonished the animal and moved him to
unwonted activity. In an unusually short space of time he drew up before Mis'
Molly's back gate, sprang from the cart, and ran up to Mis' Molly on the porch.
“Is Miss Rena here?” he
demanded breathlessly.
“No, Frank; she went up
town 'bout an hour ago to see the doctor an' git me some camphor gum.”
Frank uttered a groan,
rushed from the house, sprang into the cart, and goaded the terrified mule into
a gallop that carried him back to the market house in half the time it had
taken him to reach Mis' Molly's.
“I wonder what in the
worl 's the matter with Frank,” mused Mis' Molly, in vague alarm. “Ef he
had+n't be'n in such a hurry, I+'d 'a' axed him to read Judge Straight's
letter. But Rena+'ll be home soon.”
When Frank reached the
doctor's office, he saw Tryon seated in the doctor's buggy, which was standing
by the window of the drugstore. Frank ran upstairs and asked the doctor's man
if Miss Walden had been there.
“Yas,” replied Dave, “she
wuz here a little w'ile ago, an' said she wuz gwine downstairs ter de drugsto'.
I would n' be s'prise' ef you+'d fin' her dere now.”
THE drive by which Dr.
Green took Tryon to his own house led up Front Street about a mile, to the most
aristocratic portion of the town, situated on the hill known as Haymount, or,
more briefly, “The Hill.” The Hill had lost some of its former glory, however,
for the blight of a four years' war was everywhere. After reaching the top of
this wooded eminence, the road skirted for some little distance the brow of the
hill. Below them lay the picturesque old town, a mass of vivid green, dotted here
and there with gray roofs that rose above the tree-tops. Two long ribbons of
streets stretched away from the Hill to the faint red line that marked the high
bluff beyond the river at the farther side of the town. The market-house tower
and the slender spires of half a dozen churches were sharply outlined against
the green background. The face of the clock was visible, but the hours could
have been read only by eyes of phenomenal sharpness. Around them stretched
ruined walls, dismantled towers, and crumbling earthworks--footprints of the
god of war, one of whose temples had crowned this height. For many years before
the rebellion a Federal arsenal had been located at Patesville. Seized by the
state troops upon the secession of North Carolina, it had been held by the
Confederates until the approach of Sherman's victorious army, whereupon it was
evacuated and partially destroyed. The work of destruction begun by the
retreating garrison was completed by the conquerors, and now only ruined walls
and broken cannon remained of what had once been the chief ornament and pride
of Patesville.
The front of Dr.
Green's spacious brick house, which occupied an ideally picturesque site, was
overgrown by a network of clinging vines, contrasting most agreeably with the
mellow red background. A low brick wall, also overrun with creepers, separated
the premises from the street and shut in a well-kept flower garden, in which
Tryon, who knew something of plants, noticed many rare and beautiful specimens.
Mrs. Green greeted Tryon
cordially. He did not have the doctor's memory with which to fill out the
lady's cheeks or restore the lustre of her hair or the sparkle of her eyes, and
thereby justify her husband's claim to be a judge of beauty; but her
kind-hearted hospitality was obvious, and might have made even a plain woman
seem handsome. She and her two fair daughters, to whom Tryon was duly
presented, looked with much favor upon their handsome young kinsman; for among
the people of Patesville, perhaps by virtue of the prevalence of Scottish
blood, the ties of blood were cherished as things of value, and never forgotten
except in case of the unworthy--an exception, by the way, which one need hardly
go so far to seek.
The Patesville people
were not exceptional in the weaknesses and meannesses which are common to all
mankind, but for some of the finer social qualities they were conspicuously
above the average. Kindness, hospitality, loyalty, a chivalrous deference to
women,--all these things might be found in large measure by those who saw
Patesville with the eyes of its best citizens, and accepted their standards of
politics, religion, manners, and morals.
The doctor, after the
introductions, excused himself for a moment. Mrs. Green soon left Tryon with
the young ladies and went to look after luncheon. Her first errand, however,
was to find the doctor.
“Is he well off, Ed?”
she asked her husband.
“Lots of land, and
plenty of money, if he is ever able to collect it. He has inherited two
estates.”
“He+'s a good-looking
fellow,” she mused. “Is he married?”
“There you go again,”
replied her husband, shaking his forefinger at her in mock reproach. “To a
woman with marriageable daughters all roads lead to matrimony, the centre of a
woman's universe. All men must be sized up by their matrimonial availability.
No, he is+n't married.”
“That's nice,” she
rejoined reflectively. “I think we ought to ask him to stay with us while he is
in town, don't you?”
“He+'s not married,”
rejoined the doctor slyly, “but the next best thing--he+'s engaged.”
“Come to think of it,”
said the lady, “I+'m afraid we would+n't have the room to spare, and the girls
would hardly have time to entertain him. But we+'ll have him up several times.
I like his looks. I wish you had sent me word he was coming; I+'d have had a
better luncheon.”
“Make him a salad,”
rejoined the doctor, “and get out a bottle of the best claret. Thank God, the
Yankees did+n't get into my wine cellar! The young man must be treated with
genuine Southern hospitality,--even if he were a Mormon and married ten times
over.”
“Indeed, he would not,
Ed,--the idea! I+'m ashamed of you. Harry back to the parlor and talk to him.
The girls may want to primp a little before luncheon; we don't have a young man
every day.”
“Beauty unadorned,” replied
the doctor, “is adorned the most. My profession qualifies me to speak upon the
subject. They are the two handsomest young women in Patesville, and the
daughters of the most beautiful”--
“Don't you dare to say
the word,” interrupted Mrs. Green, with placid good nature. “I shall never grow
old while I am living with a big boy like you. But I must go and make the
salad.”
At dinner the
conversation ran on the family connections and their varying fortunes in the
late war. Some had died upon the battlefield, and slept in unknown graves; some
had been financially ruined by their faith in the “lost cause,” having invested
their all in the securities of the Confederate Government. Few had anything
left but land, and land without slaves to work it was a drug in the market.
“I was offered a
thousand acres, the other day, at twenty-five cents an acre,” remarked the
doctor. “The owner is so land-poor that he can't pay the taxes. They have taken
our negroes and our liberties. It may be better for our grandchildren that the
negroes are free, but it's confoundedly hard on us to take them without paying
for them. They may exalt our slaves over us temporarily, but they have not
broken our spirit, and cannot take away our superiority of blood and breeding.
In time we shall regain control. The negro is an inferior creature; God has
marked him with the badge of servitude, and has adjusted his intellect to a
servile condition. We will not long submit to his domination. I give you a
toast, sir: The Anglo-Saxon race: may it remain forever, as now, the head and
front of creation, never yielding its rights, and ready always to die, if need
be, in defense of its liberties!”
“With all my heart,
sir,” replied Tryon, who felt in this company a thrill of that pleasure which
accompanies conscious superiority,--“with all my heart, sir, if the ladies will
permit me.”
“We will join you,”
they replied. The toast was drunk with great enthusiasm.
“And now, my dear
George,” exclaimed the doctor, “to change one good subject for another, tell us
who is the favored lady?”
“A Miss Rowena Warwick,
sir,” replied Tryon, vividly conscious of four pairs of eyes fixed upon him,
but, apart from the momentary embarrassment, welcoming the subject as the one
he would most like to speak upon.
“A good, strong old
English name,” observed the doctor.
“The heroine of
`Ivanhoe'!” exclaimed Miss Harriet.
“Warwick the Kingmaker!”
said Miss Mary. “Is she tall and fair, and dignified and stately?”
“She is tall, dark
rather than fair, and full of tender grace and sweet humility.”
“She should have been
named Rebecca instead of Rowena,” rejoined Miss Mary, who was well up in her
Scott.
“ Tell us something
about her people,” asked Mrs. Green,--to which inquiry the young ladies looked
assent.
In this meeting of the
elect of his own class and kin Warwick felt a certain strong illumination upon
the value of birth and blood. Finding Rena among people of the best social
standing, the subsequent intimation that she was a girl of no family had seemed
a small matter to one so much in love. Nevertheless, in his present company he
felt a decided satisfaction in being able to present for his future wife a
clean bill of social health.
“Her brother is the
most prominent lawyer of Clarence. They live in a fine old family mansion, and
are among the best people of the town.”
“Quite right, my boy,”
assented the doctor. “None but the best are good enough for the best. You must
bring her to Patesville some day. But bless my life!” he exclaimed, looking at
his watch, “I must be going. Will you stay with the ladies awhile, or go back
down town with me?”
“I think I had better
go with you, sir. I shall have to see Judge Straight.”
“Very well. But you
must come back to supper, and we+'ll have a few friends in to meet you. You
must see some of the best people.”
The doctor's buggy was
waiting at the gate. As they were passing the hotel on their drive down town,
the clerk came out to the curbstone and called to the doctor.
“There+'s a man here,
doctor, who+'s been taken suddenly ill. Can you come in a minute?”
“I suppose I+'ll have
to. Will you wait for me here, George, or will you drive down to the office? I
can walk the rest of the way.”
“I think I+'ll wait
here, doctor,” answered Tryon. “I+'ll step up to my room a moment. I+'ll be
back by the time you+'re ready.”
It was while they were
standing before the hotel, before alighting from the buggy, that Frank Fowler,
passing on his cart, saw Tryon and set out as fast as he could to warn Mis'
Molly and her daughter of his presence in the town.
Tryon went up to his
room, returned after a while, and resumed his seat in the buggy, where he
waited fifteen minutes longer before the doctor was ready. When they drew up in
front of the office, the doctor's man Dave was standing in the doorway, looking
up the street with an anxious expression, as though struggling hard to keep
something upon his mind.
“Anything wanted, Dave?”
asked the doctor.
“Dat young 'oman+'s
be'n heah ag'in, suh, an' wants ter see you bad. She+'s in de drugstore dere
now, suh. Bless Gawd!” he added to himself fervently, “I 'membered dat. Dis yer
recommemb'ance er mine is gwine ter git me inter trouble ef I don' look out,
an' dat+'s a fac', sho'.”
The doctor sprang from
the buggy with an agility remarkable in a man of sixty. “Just keep your seat,
George,” he said to Tryon, “until I have spoken to the young woman, and then
we+'ll go across to Straight's. Or, if you+'ll drive along a little farther,
you can see the girl through the window. She+'s worth the trouble, if you like
a pretty face.”
Tryon liked one pretty
face; moreover, tinted beauty had never appealed to him. More to show a proper
regard for what interested the doctor than from any curiosity of his own, he
drove forward a few feet, until the side of the buggy was opposite the
drugstore window, and then looked in.
Between the colored
glass bottles in the window he could see a young woman, a tall and slender
girl, like a lily on its stem. She stood talking with the doctor, who held his
hat in his hand with as much deference as though she were the proudest dame in
town. Her face was partly turned away from the window, but as Tryon's eye fell
upon her, he gave a great start. Surely, no two women could be so much alike.
The height, the graceful droop of the shoulders, the swan-like poise of the
head, the well- turned little ear,--surely, no two women could have them all
identical! But, pshaw! the notion was absurd, it was merely the reflex
influence of his morning's dream.
She moved slightly; it
was Rena's movement. Surely he knew the gown, and the style of hair- dressing!
She rested her hand lightly on the back of a chair. The ring that glittered on
her finger could be none other than his own.
The doctor bowed. The
girl nodded in response, and, turning, left the store. Tryon leaned forward
from the buggy-seat and kept his eye fixed on the figure that moved across the
floor of the drugstore. As she came out, she turned her face casually toward
the buggy, and there could no longer be any doubt as to her identity.
When Rena's eyes fell
upon the young man in the buggy, she saw a face as pale as death, with starting
eyes, in which love, which once had reigned there, had now given place to
astonishment and horror. She stood a moment as if turned to stone. One
appealing glance she gave,--a look that might have softened adamant. When she
saw that it brought no answering sign of love or sorrow or regret, the color
faded from her cheek, the light from her eye, and she fell fainting to the
ground.
THE first effect of
Tryon's discovery was, figuratively speaking, to knock the bottom out of things
for him. It was much as if a boat on which he had been floating smoothly down
the stream of pleasure had sunk suddenly and left him struggling in deep waters.
The full realization of the truth, which followed speedily, had for the moment
reversed his mental attitude toward her, and love and yearning had given place
to anger and disgust. His agitation could hardly have escaped notice had not
the doctor's attention, and that of the crowd that quickly gathered, been
absorbed by the young woman who had fallen. During the time occupied in
carrying her into the drugstore, restoring her to consciousness, and sending
her home in a carriage, Tryon had time to recover in some degree his
self-possession. When Rena had been taken home, he slipped away for a long
walk, after which he called at Judge Straight's office and received the judge's
report upon the matter presented. Judge Straight had found the claim, in his
opinion, a good one; he had discovered property from which, in case the claim
were allowed, the amount might be realized. The judge, who had already been
informed of the incident at the drugstore, observed Tryon's preoccupation and
guessed shrewdly at its cause, but gave no sign. Tryon left the matter of the
note unreservedly in the lawyer's hands, with instructions to communicate to
him any further developments.
Returning to the
doctor's office, Tryon listened to that genial gentleman's comments on the
accident, his own concern in which he, by a great effort, was able to conceal.
The doctor insisted upon his returning to the Hill for supper. Tryon pleaded
illness. The doctor was solicitous, felt his pulse, examined his tongue,
pronounced him feverish, and prescribed a sedative. Tryon sought refuge in his
room at the hotel, from which he did not emerge again until morning.
His emotions were
varied and stormy. At first he could see nothing but the fraud of which he had
been made the victim. A negro girl had been foisted upon him for a white woman,
and he had almost committed the unpardonable sin against his race of marrying
her. Such a step, he felt, would have been criminal at any time; it would have
been the most odious treachery at this epoch, when his people had been
subjugated and humiliated by the Northern invaders, who had preached negro
equality and abolished the wholesome laws decreeing the separation of the
races. But no Southerner who loved his poor, downtrodden country, or his race,
the proud Anglo-Saxon race which traced the clear stream of its blood to the
cavaliers of England, could tolerate the idea that even in distant generations
that unsullied current could be polluted by the blood of slaves. The very
thought was an insult to the white people of the South. For Tryon's liberality,
of which he had spoken so nobly and so sincerely, had been confined
unconsciously, and as a matter of course, within the boundaries of his own
race. The Southern mind, in discussing abstract questions relative to humanity,
makes always, consciously or unconsciously, the mental reservation that the
conclusions reached do not apply to the negro, unless they can be made to
harmonize with the customs of the country.
But reasoning thus was
not without effect upon a mind by nature reasonable above the average. Tryon's
race impulse and social prejudice had carried him too far, and the swing of the
mental pendulum brought his thoughts rapidly back in the opposite direction.
Tossing uneasily on the bed, where he had thrown himself down without
undressing, the air of the room oppressed him, and he threw open the window.
The cool night air calmed his throbbing pulses. The moonlight, streaming
through the window, flooded the room with a soft light, in which he seemed to
see Rena standing before him, as she had appeared that afternoon, gazing at him
with eyes that implored charity and forgiveness. He burst into tears,-- bitter
tears, that strained his heartstrings. He was only a youth. She was his first
love, and he had lost her forever. She was worse than dead to him; for if he
had seen her lying in her shroud before him, he could at least have cherished
her memory; now, even this consolation was denied him.
The town clock--which
so long as it was wound up regularly recked nothing of love or hate, joy or
sorrow--solemnly tolled out the hour of midnight and sounded the knell of his
lost love. Lost she was, as though she had never been, as she had indeed had no
right to be. He resolutely determined to banish her image from his mind. See her
again he could not; it would be painful to them both; it could be productive of
no good to either. He had felt the power and charm of love, and no ordinary
shook could have loosened its hold; but this catastrophe, which had so rudely
swept away the groundwork of his passion, had stirred into new life all the
slumbering pride of race and ancestry which characterized his caste. How much
of this sensitive superiority was essential and how much accidental; how much
of it was due to the ever-suggested comparison with a servile race; how much of
it was ignorance and self-conceit; to what extent the boasted purity of his
race would have been contaminated by the fair woman whose image filled his
memory,--of these things he never thought. He was not influenced by sordid
considerations; he would have denied that his course was controlled by any
narrow prudence. If Rena had been white, pure white (for in his creed there was
no compromise), he would have braved any danger for her sake. Had she been
merely of illegitimate birth, he would have overlooked the bar sinister. Had
her people been simply poor and of low estate, he would have brushed aside mere
worldly considerations, and would have bravely sacrificed convention for love;
for his liberality was not a mere form of words. But the one objection which he
could not overlook was, unhappily, the one that applied to the only woman who
had as yet moved his heart. He tried to be angry with her, but after the first
hour he found it impossible. He was a man of too much imagination not to be
able to put himself, in some measure at least, in her place,--to perceive that
for her the step which had placed her in Tryon's world was the working out of
nature's great law of self- preservation, for which he could not blame her. But
for the sheerest accident,--no, rather, but for a providential
interference,--he would have married her, and might have gone to the grave
unconscious that she was other than she seemed.
The clock struck the
hour of two. With a shiver he closed the window, undressed by the moonlight,
drew down the shade, and went to bed. He fell into an unquiet slumber, and
dreamed again of Rena. He must learn to control his waking thoughts; his dreams
could not be curbed. In that realm Rena's image was for many a day to remain
supreme. He dreamed of her sweet smile, her soft touch, her gentle voice. In
all her fair young beauty she stood before him, and then by some hellish magic
she was slowly transformed into a hideous black hag. With agonized eyes he
watched her beautiful tresses become mere wisps of coarse wool, wrapped round
with dingy cotton strings; he saw her clear eyes grow bloodshot, her ivory
teeth turn to unwholesome fangs. With a shudder he awoke, to find the cold gray
dawn of a rainy day stealing through the window.
He rose, dressed
himself, went down to breakfast, then entered the writing-room and penned a
letter which, after reading it over, he tore into small pieces and threw into
the waste basket. A second shared the same fate. Giving up the task, he left
the hotel and walked down to Dr. Green's office.
“Is the doctor in?” he
asked of the colored attendant.
“No, suh,” replied the
man; “he+'s gone ter see de young cullud gal w'at fainted w'en de doctah was
wid you yistiddy.”
Tryon sat down at the
doctor's desk and hastily scrawled a note, stating that business compelled his
immediate departure. He thanked the doctor for courtesies extended, and left
his regards for the ladies. Returning. to the hotel, he paid his bill and took
a hack for the wharf, from which a boat was due to leave at nine o'clock.
As the hack drove down
Front Street, Tryon noted idly the houses that lined the street. When he
reached the sordid district in the lower part of the town, there was nothing to
attract his attention until the carriage came abreast of a row of cedar-trees,
beyond which could be seen the upper part of a large house with dormer windows.
Before the gate stood a horse and buggy, which Tryon thought he recognized as
Dr. Green's. He leaned forward and addressed the driver.
“Can you tell me who
lives there?” Tryon asked, pointing to the house.
“A callud 'oman, suh,”
the man replied, touching his hat. “Mis' Molly Walden an' her daughter Rena.”
The vivid impression he
received of this house, and the spectre that rose before him of a pale,
broken-hearted girl within its gray walls, weeping for a lost lover and a
vanished dream of happiness, did not argue well for Tryon's future peace of
mind. Rena's image was not to be easily expelled from his heart; for the laws of
nature are higher and more potent than merely human institutions, and upon
anything like a fair field are likely to win in the long ran.
WARWICK awaited events
with some calmness and some philosophy,--he could hardly have had the one
without the other; and it required much philosophy to make him wait a week in
patience for information upon a subject in which he was so vitally interested.
The delay pointed to disaster. Bad news being expected, delay at least put off
the evil day. At the end of the week he received two letters,--one addressed in
his own hand writing and postmarked Patesville, N. C.; the other in the
handwriting of George Tryon. He opened the Patesville letter, which ran as
follows:--
MY DEAR SON,
-- Frank is writing this
letter for me. I am not well, but, thank the Lord, I am better than I was.
Rena has had a heap of
trouble on account of me and my sickness. If I could of dreamt that I was going
to do so much harm, I would of died and gone to meet my God without writing one
word to spoil my girl's chances in life; but I did+n't know what was going to
happen, and I hope the Lord will forgive me.
Frank knows all about
it, and so I am having him write this letter for me, as Rena is not well enough
yet. Frank has been very good to me and to Rena. He was down to your place and
saw Rena there, and never said a word about it to nobody, not even to me,
because he did+n't want to do Rena no harm. Frank is the best friend I have got
in town, because he does so much for me and don't want nothing in return. (He
tells me not to put this in about him, but I want you to know it.)
And now about Rena. She
come to see me, and I got better right away, for it was longing for her as much
as anything else that made me sick, and I was mighty mizzable. When she had
been here three days and was going back next day, she went up town to see the
doctor for me, and while she was up there she fainted and fell down in the
street, and Dr. Green sent her home in his buggy and come down to see her. He
could+n't tell what was the matter with her, but she has been sick ever since
and out of her head some of the time, and keeps on calling on somebody by the
name of George, which was the young white man she told me she was going to
marry. It seems he was in town the day Rena was took sick, for Frank saw him up
street and run all the way down here to tell me, so that she could keep out of
his way, while she was still up town waiting for the doctor and getting me some
camphor gum for my camphor bottle. Old Judge Straight must have knowed
something about it, for he sent me a note to keep Rena in the house, but the
little boy he sent it by did+n't bring it till Rena was already gone up town,
and, as I could+n't read, of course I did+n't know what it said. Dr. Green
heard Rena running on while she was out of her head, and I reckon he must have
suspicioned something, for he looked kind of queer and went away without saying
nothing. Frank says she met this man on the street, and when he found out she
was+n't white, he said or done something that broke her heart and she fainted
and fell down.
I am writing you this
letter because I know you will be worrying about Rena not coming back. If it
was+n't for Frank, I hardly know how I could write to you. Frank is not going
to say nothing about Rena's passing for white and meeting this man, and neither
am I; and I don't suppose Judge Straight will say nothing, because he is our
good friend; and Dr. Green won't say nothing about it, because Frank says Dr.
Green's cook Nancy says this young man named George stopped with him and was
some cousin or relation to the family, and they would+n't want people to know
that any of their kin was thinking about marrying a colored girl, and the white
folks have all been mad since J. B. Thompson married his black housekeeper when
she got religion and would+n't live with him no more.
All the rest of the
connection are well. I have just been in to see how Rena is. She is feeling
some better, I think, and says give you her love and she will write you a
letter in a few days, as soon as she is well enough. She bust out crying while
she was talking, but I reckon that is better than being out of her head. I hope
this may find you well, and that this man of Rena's won't say nor do nothing
down there to hurt you. He has not wrote to Rena nor sent her no word. I reckon
he is very mad.
Your affectionate
mother,
MARY WALDEN.
This letter, while
confirming Warwick's fears, relieved his suspense. He at least knew the worst,
unless there should be something still more disturbing in Tryon's letter, which
he now proceeded to open, and which ran as follows:--
JOHN WARWICK, ESQ.
Dear Sir,
-- When I inform you,
as you are doubtless informed ere the receipt of this, that I saw your sister
in Patesville last week and learned the nature of those antecedents of yours
and hers at which you hinted so obscurely in a recent conversation, you will not
be surprised to learn that I take this opportunity of renouncing any
pretensions to Miss Warwick's hand, and request you to convey this message to
her, since it was through you that I formed her acquaintance. I think perhaps
that few white men would deem it necessary to make an explanation under the
circumstances, and I do not know that I need say more than that no one,
considering where and how I met your sister, would have dreamed of even the
possibility of what I have learned. I might with justice reproach you for
trifling with the most sacred feelings of a man's heart; but I realize the
hardship of your position and hers, and can make allowances. I would never have
sought to know this thing; I would doubtless have been happier had I gone
through life without finding it out; but having the knowledge, I cannot ignore
it, as you must understand perfectly well. I regret that she should be
distressed or disappointed, -- she has not suffered alone.
I need scarcely assure
you that I shall say nothing about this affair, and that I shall keep your
secret as though it were my own. Personally, I shall never be able to think of
you as other than a white man, as you may gather from the tone of this letter;
and while I cannot marry your sister, I wish her every happiness, and remain,
Yours very truly,
GEORGE TRYON.
Warwick could not know
that this formal epistle was the last of a dozen that Tryon had written and
destroyed during the week since the meeting in Patesville,--hot, blistering
letters, cold, cutting letters, scornful, crushing letters. Though none of them
was sent, except this last, they had furnished a safety-valve for his emotions,
and had left him in a state of mind that permitted him to write the foregoing.
And now, while Rena is
recovering from her illness, and Tryon from his love, and while Fate is
shuffling the cards for another deal, a few words may be said about the past
life of the people who lived in the rear of the flower garden, in the quaint
old house beyond the cedars, and how their lives were mingled with those of the
men and women around them and others that were gone. For connected with our
kind we must be; if not by our virtues, then by our vices,--if not by our
services, at least by our needs.
FOR many years before
the civil war there had lived, in the old house behind the cedars, a free
colored woman who went by the name of Molly Walden--her rightful name, for her
parents were free-born and legally married. She was a tall woman, straight as
an arrow. Her complexion in youth was of an old ivory tint, which at the period
of this story, time had darkened measurably. Her black eyes, now faded, had
once sparkled with the fire of youth. High cheek-bones, straight black hair,
and a certain dignified reposefulness of manner pointed to an aboriginal
descent. Tradition gave her to the negro race. Doubtless she had a strain of
each, with white blood very visibly predominating over both. In Louisiana or
the West Indies she would have been called a quadroon, or more loosely, a
creole; in North Carolina, where fine distinctions were not the rule in matters
of color, she was sufficiently differentiated when described as a bright
mulatto.
Molly's free birth
carried with it certain advantages, even in the South before the war. Though
degraded from its high estate, and shorn of its choicest attributes, the word “freedom”
had nevertheless a cheerful sound, and described a condition that left even to
colored people who could claim it some liberty of movement and some control of
their own persons. They were not citizens, yet they were not slaves. No negro,
save in books, ever refused freedom; many of them ran frightful risks to
achieve it. Molly's parents were of the class, more numerous in North Carolina
than elsewhere, known as “old issue free negroes,” which took its rise in the
misty colonial period, when race lines were not so closely drawn, and the
population of North Carolina comprised many Indians, runaway negroes, and
indentured white servants from the seaboard plantations, who mingled their
blood with great freedom and small formality. Free colored people in North
Carolina exercised the right of suffrage as late as 1835, and some of them, in
spite of galling restrictions, attained to a considerable degree of prosperity,
and dreamed of a still brighter future, when the growing tyranny of the slave
power crushed their hopes and crowded the free people back upon the black mass
just beneath them. Mis' Molly's father had been at one time a man of some
means. In an evil hour, with an overweening confidence in his fellow men, he
indorsed a note for a white man who, in a moment of financial hardship, clapped
his colored neighbor on the back and called him brother. Not poverty, but
wealth, is the most potent leveler. In due time the indorser was called upon to
meet the maturing obligation. This was the beginning of a series of financial
difficulties which speedily involved him in ruin. He died prematurely, a
disappointed and disheartened man, leaving his family in dire poverty.
His widow and surviving
children lived on for a little while at the house he had owned, just outside of
the town, on one of the main traveled roads. By the wayside, near the house,
there was a famous deep well. The slim, barefoot girl, with sparkling eyes and
voluminous hair, who played about the yard and sometimes handed water in a
gourd to travelers, did not long escape critical observation. A gentleman drove
by one day, stopped at the well, smiled upon the girl, and said kind words. He
came again, more than once, and soon, while scarcely more than a child in
years, Molly was living in her own house, hers by deed of gift, for her
protector was rich and liberal. Her mother nevermore knew want. Her poor
relations could always find a meal in Molly's kitchen. She did not flaunt her
prosperity in the world's face; she hid it discreetly behind the cedar screen.
Those who wished could know of it, for there were few secrets in Patesville;
those who chose could as easily ignore it. There were few to trouble themselves
about the secluded life of an obscure woman of a class which had no recognized
place in the social economy. She worshiped the ground upon which her lord
walked, was humbly grateful for his protection, and quite as faithful as the
forbidden marriage vow could possibly have made her. She led her life in
material peace and comfort, and with a certain amount of dignity. Of her false
relation to society she was not without some vague conception; but the moral
point involved was so confused with other questions growing out --of slavery
and caste as to cause her, as a rule, but little uneasiness; and only now and
then, in the moments of deeper feeling that come sometimes to all who live and
love, did there break through the mists of ignorance and prejudice surrounding
her a flash of light by which she saw, so far as she was capable of seeing, her
true position, which in the clear light of truth no special pleading could
entirely justify. For she was free, she had not the slave's excuse. With every
inducement to do evil and few incentives to do well, and hence entitled to
charitable judgment, she yet had freedom of choice, and therefore could not
wholly escape blame. Let it be said, in further extenuation, that no other
woman lived in neglect or sorrow because of her. She robbed no one else. For
what life gave her she returned an equivalent; and what she did not pay, her
children settled to the last farthing.
Several years before
the war, when Mis' Molly's daughter Rena was a few years old, death had
suddenly removed the source of their prosperity.
The household was not
left entirely destitute. Mis' Molly owned her home, and had a store of gold
pieces in the chest beneath her bed. A small piece of real estate stood in the
name of each of the children, the income from which contributed to their
maintenance. Larger expectations were dependent upon the discovery of a
promised will, which never came to light. Mis' Molly wore black for several
years after this bereavement, until the teacher and the preacher, following close
upon the heels of military occupation, suggested to the colored people new
standards of life and character, in the light of which Mis' Molly laid her
mourning sadly and shamefacedly aside. She had eaten of the fruit of the Tree
of Knowledge. After the war she formed the habit of church-going, and might
have been seen now and then, with her daughter, in a retired corner of the
gallery of the white Episcopal church. Upon the ground floor was a certain pew
which could be seen from her seat, where once had sat a gentleman whose
pleasures had not interfered with the practice of his religion. She might have
had a better seat in a church where a Northern missionary would have preached a
sermon better suited to her comprehension and her moral needs, but she preferred
the other. She was not white, alas! she was shut out from this seeming
paradise; but she liked to see the distant glow of the celestial city, and to
recall the days when she had basked in its radiance. She did not sympathize
greatly with the new era opened up for the emancipated slaves; she had no ideal
love of liberty; she was no broader and no more altruistic than the white
people around her, to whom she had always looked up; and she sighed for the old
days, because to her they had been the good days. Now, not only was her king
dead, but the shield of his memory protected her no longer.
Molly had lost one
child, and his grave was visible from the kitchen window, under a small clump
of cedars in the rear of the two-acre lot. For even in the towns many a
household had its private cemetery in those old days when the living were close
to the dead, and ghosts were not the mere chimeras of a sick imagination, but
real though unsubstantial entities, of which it was almost disgraceful not to
have seen one or two. Had not the Witch of Endor called up the shade of Samuel
the prophet? Had not the spirit of Mis' Molly's dead son appeared to her, as
well as the ghostly presence of another she had loved?
In 1855, Mis' Molly's
remaining son had grown into a tall, slender lad of fifteen, with his father's
patrician features and his mother's Indian hair, and no external sign to mark
him off from the white boys on the street. He soon came to know, however, that
there was a difference. He was informed one day that he was black. He denied
the proposition and thrashed the child who made it. The scene was repeated the
next day, with a variation,--he was himself thrashed by a larger boy. When he
had been beaten five or six times, he ceased to argue the point, though to himself
he never admitted the charge. His playmates might call him black; the mirror
proved that God, the Father of all, had made him white; and God, he had been
taught, made no mistakes,--having made him white, He must have meant him to be
white.
In the “hall” or parlor
of his mother's house stood a quaintly carved black walnut bookcase, containing
a small but remarkable collection of books, which had at one time been used, in
his hours of retreat and relaxation from business and politics, by the
distinguished gentleman who did not give his name to Mis' Molly's children,--to
whom it would have been a valuable heritage, could they have had the right to
bear it. Among the books were a volume of Fielding's complete works, in fine
print, set in double columns; a set of Bulwer's novels; a collection of
everything that Walter Scott--the literary idol of the South--had ever written;
Beaumont and Fletcher's plays, cheek by jowl with the history of the virtuous
Clarissa Harlowe; the Spectator and Tristram Shandy, Robinson Crusoe and the
Arabian Nights. On these secluded shelves Roderick Random, Don Quixote, and Gil
Blas for a long time ceased their wanderings, the Pilgrim's Progress was
suspended, Milton's mighty harmonies were dumb, and Shakespeare reigned over a
silent kingdom. An illustrated Bible, with a wonderful Apocrypha, was flanked
on one side by Volney's Ruins of Empire and on the other by Paine's Age of
Reason, for the collector of the books had been a man of catholic taste as well
as of inquiring mind, and no one who could have criticised his reading ever
penetrated behind the cedar hedge. A history of the French Revolution consorted
amiably with a homespun chronicle of North Carolina, rich in biographical
notices of distinguished citizens and inscriptions from their tombstones, upon
reading which one might well wonder why North Carolina had not long ago
eclipsed the rest of the world in wealth, wisdom, glory, and renown. On almost
every page of this monumental work could be found the most ardent panegyrics of
liberty, side by side with the slavery statistics of the State,--an incongruity
of which the learned author was deliciously unconscious.
When John Walden was
yet a small boy, he had learned all that could be taught by the faded mulatto
teacher in the long, shiny black frock coat, whom local public opinion
permitted to teach a handful of free colored children for a pittance barely
enough to keep soul and body together. When the boy had learned to read, he
discovered the library, which for several years had been without a reader, and
found in it the portal of a new world, peopled with strange and marvelous
beings. Lying prone upon the floor of the shaded front piazza, behind the
fragrant garden, he followed the fortunes of Tom Jones and Sophia; he wept over
the fate of Eugene Aram; he penetrated with Richard the Lion-heart into
Saladin's tent, with Gil Blas into the robbers' cave; he flew through the air
on the magic carpet or the enchanted horse, or tied with Sindbad to the roc's
leg. Sometimes he read or repeated the simpler stories to his little sister,
sitting wide-eyed by his side. When he had read all the books,--indeed, long
before he had read them all,--he too had tasted of the fruit of the Tree of
Knowledge: contentment took its flight, and happiness lay far beyond the sphere
where he was born. The blood of his white fathers, the heirs of the ages, cried
out for its own, and after the manner of that blood set about getting the
object of its desire.
Near the corner of
Mackenzie Street, just one block north of the Patesville market-house, there
had stood for many years before the war, on the verge of the steep bank of
Beaver Creek, a small frame office building, the front of which was level with
the street, while the rear rested on long brick pillars founded on the solid
rock at the edge of the brawling stream below. Here, for nearly half a century,
Archibald Straight had transacted legal business for the best people of
Northumberland County. Full many a lawsuit had he won, lost, or settled; many a
spendthrift had he saved from ruin, and not a few families from disgrace.
Several times honored by election to the bench, he had so dispensed justice
tempered with mercy as to win the hearts of all good citizens, and especially
those of the poor, the oppressed, and the socially disinherited. The rights of
the humblest negro, few as they might be, were as sacred to him as those of the
proudest aristocrat, and he had sentenced a man to be hanged for the murder of
his own slave. An old-fashioned man, tall and spare of figure and bowed
somewhat with age, he was always correctly clad in a long frock coat of
broadcloth, with a high collar and a black stock. Courtly in address to his
social equals (superiors he had none), he was kind and considerate to those
beneath him. He owned a few domestic servants, no one of whom had ever felt the
weight of his hand, and for whose ultimate freedom he had provided in his will.
In the long-drawn-out slavery agitation he had taken a keen interest, rather as
observer than as participant. As the heat of controversy increased, his lack of
zeal for the peculiar institution led to his defeat for the bench by a more
active partisan. His was too just a mind not to perceive the arguments on both
sides; but, on the whole, he had stood by the ancient landmarks, content to let
events drift to a conclusion he did not expect to see; the institutions of his
fathers would probably last his lifetime.
One day Judge Straight
was sitting in his office reading a recently published pamphlet,-- presenting
an elaborate pro-slavery argument, based upon the hopeless intellectual
inferiority of the negro, and the physical and moral degeneration of mulattoes,
who combined the worst qualities of their two ancestral races,--when a
barefooted boy walked into the office, straw hat in hand, came boldly up to the
desk at which the old judge was sitting, and said as the judge looked up
through his gold-rimmed glasses,--
“Sir, I want to be a
lawyer!”
“God bless me!”
exclaimed the judge. “It is a singular desire, from a singular source, and
expressed in a singular way. Who the devil are you, sir, that wish so strange a
thing as to become a lawyer--everybody's servant?”
“And everybody's
master, sir,” replied the lad stoutly.
“That is a matter of
opinion, and open to argument,” rejoined the judge, amused and secretly
flattered by this tribute to his profession, “though there may be a grain of
truth in what you say. But what is your name, Mr. Would-be-lawyer?”
“John Walden, sir,”
answered the lad.
“John Walden?--Walden?”
mused the judge.
“What Walden can that
be? Do you belong in town?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Humph! I can't imagine
who you are. It+'s plain that you are a lad of good blood, and yet I don't know
whose son you can be. What is your father's name?”
The lad hesitated, and
flushed crimson.
The old gentleman noted
his hesitation. “It is a wise son,” he thought, “that knows his own father. He
is a bright lad, and will have this question put to him more than once. I+'ll
see how he will answer it.”
The boy maintained an
awkward silence, while the old judge eyed him keenly.
“My father+'s dead,” he
said at length, in a low voice. “I+'m Mis' Molly Walden's son.” He had
expected, of course, to tell who he was, if asked, but had not foreseen just
the form of the inquiry; and while he had thought more of his race than of his
illegitimate birth, he realized at this moment as never before that this
question too would be always with him. As put now by Judge Straight, it made
him wince. He had not read his father's books for nothing.
“God bless my soul!”
exclaimed the judge in genuine surprise at this answer; “and you want to be a
lawyer!” The situation was so much worse than he had suspected that even an old
practitioner, case-hardened by years of life at the trial table and on the
bench, was startled for a moment into a comical sort of consternation, so
apparent that a lad less stout-hearted would have weakened and fled at the
sight of it.
“Yes, sir. Why not?”
responded the boy, trembling a little at the knees, but stoutly holding his
ground.
“He wants to be a
lawyer, and he asks me why not!” muttered the judge, speaking apparently to
himself. He rose from his chair, walked across the room, and threw open a
window. The cool morning air brought with it the babbling of the stream below
and the murmur of the mill near by. He glanced across the creek to the ruined
foundation of an old house on the low ground beyond the creek. Turning from the
window, he looked back at the boy, who had remained standing between him and
the door. At that moment another lad came along the street and stopped opposite
the open doorway. The presence of the two boys in connection with the book he
had been reading suggested a comparison. The judge knew the lad outside as the
son of a leading merchant of the town. The merchant and his wife were both of
old families which had lived in the community for several generations, and
whose blood was presumably of the purest strain; yet the boy was sallow, with
amorphous features, thin shanks, and stooping shoulders. The youth standing in
the judge's office, on the contrary, was straight, shapely, and well-grown. His
eye was clear, and he kept it fixed on the old gentleman with a look in which
there was nothing of cringing. He was no darker than many a white boy bronzed
by the Southern sun; his hair and eyes were black, and his features of the
high-bred, clean-cut order that marks the patrician type the world over. What
struck the judge most forcibly, however, was the lad's resemblance to an old friend
and companion and client. He recalled a certain conversation with this old
friend, who had said to him one day:
“Archie, I+'m coming in
to have you draw my will. There are some children for whom I would like to make
ample provision. I can't give them anything else, but money will make them free
of the world.”
The judge's friend had
died suddenly before carrying out this good intention. The judge had taken
occasion to suggest the existence of these children, and their father's
intentions concerning them, to the distant relatives who had inherited his
friend's large estate. They had chosen to take offense at the suggestion. One
had thought it in shocking bad taste; another considered any mention of such a
subject an insult to his cousin's memory. A third had said, with flashing eyes,
that the woman and her children had already robbed the estate of enough; that
it was a pity the little niggers were not slaves--that they would have added
measurably to the value of the property. Judge Straight's manner indicated some
disapproval of their attitude, and the settlement of the estate was placed in
other hands than his. Now, this son, with his father's face and his father's
voice, stood before his father's friend, demanding entrance to the golden gate
of opportunity, which society barred to all who bore the blood of the despised
race.
As he kept on looking
at the boy, who began at length to grow somewhat embarrassed under this keen
scrutiny, the judge's mind reverted to certain laws and judicial decisions that
he had looked up once or twice in his lifetime. Even the law, the instrument by
which tyranny riveted the chains upon its victims, had revolted now and then
against the senseless and unnatural prejudice by which a race ascribing its
superiority to right of blood permitted a mere suspicion of servile blood to
outweigh a vast preponderance of its own.
“Why, indeed, should he
not be a lawyer, or anything else that a man might be, if it be in him?” asked
the judge, speaking rather to himself than to the boy. “Sit down,” he ordered,
pointing to a chair on the other side of the room. That he should ask a colored
lad to be seated in his presence was of itself enough to stamp the judge as
eccentric. “You want to be a lawyer,” he went on, adjusting his spectacles. “You
are aware, of course, that you are a negro?”
“I am white,” replied
the lad, turning back his sleeve and holding out his arm, “and I am free, as
all my people were before me.”
The old lawyer shook
his head, and fixed his eyes upon the lad with a slightly quizzical smile. “You
are black.” he said, “and you are not free. You cannot travel without your
papers; you cannot secure accommodations at an inn; you could not vote, if you
were of age; you cannot be out after nine o'clock without a permit. If a white
man struck you, you could not return the blow, and you could not testify
against him in a court of justice. You are black, my lad, and you are not free.
Did you ever hear of the Dred Scott decision, delivered by the great, wise, and
learned Judge Taney?”
“No, sir,” answered the
boy.
“It is too long to
read,” rejoined the judge, taking up the pamphlet he had laid down upon the
lad's entrance, “but it says in substance, as quoted by this author, that
negroes are beings `of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate
with the white race, either in social or political relations; in fact, so
inferior that they have no rights which the white man is bound to respect, and
that the negro may justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.'
That is the law of this nation, and that is the reason why you cannot be a
lawyer.”
“It may all be true,”
replied the boy, “but it don't apply to me. It says `the negro.' A negro is
black; I am white, and not black.”
“Black as ink, my lad,”
returned the lawyer, shaking his head. “ `One touch of nature makes the whole
world kin,' says the poet. Somewhere, sometime, you had a black ancestor. One
drop of black blood makes the whole man black.”
“Why should+n't it be
the other way, if the white blood is so much superior?” inquired the lad.
“Because it is more
convenient as it is--and more profitable.”
“It is not right,”
maintained the lad.
“God bless me!”
exclaimed the old gentleman, “he is invading the field of ethics! He will be
questioning the righteousness of slavery next! I+'m afraid you would+n't make a
good lawyer, in any event. Lawyers go by the laws--they abide by the
accomplished fact; to them, whatever is, is right. The laws do not permit men
of color to practice law, and public sentiment would not allow one of them to
study it.”
“I had thought,” said
the lad, “that I might pass for white. There are white people darker than I am.”
“Ah, well, that is
another matter; but”--
The judge stopped for a
moment, struck by the absurdity of his arguing such a question with a mulatto
boy. He really must be falling into premature dotage. The proper thing would be
to rebuke the lad for his presumption and advise him to learn to take care of
horses, or make boots, or lay bricks. But again he saw his old friend in the
lad's face, and again he looked in vain for any sign of negro blood. The least
earmark would have turned the scale, but he could not find it.
“That is another
matter,” he repeated. “Here you have started as black, and must remain so. But
if you wish to move away, and sink your past into oblivion, the case might be
different. Let us see what the law is; you might not need it if you went far
enough, but it is well enough to be within it--liberty is sweeter when founded
securely on the law.”
He took down a volume
bound in legal calf and glanced through it. “The color line is drawn in North
Carolina at four generations removed from the negro; there have been judicial
decisions to that effect. I imagine that would cover your case. But let us see
what South Carolina may say about it,” he continued, taking another book. “I
think the law is even more liberal there. Ah, this is the place:--
“ `The term mulatto,' ”
he read, “ `is not invariably applicable to every admixture of African blood
with the European, nor is one having all the features of a white to be ranked
with the degraded class designated by the laws of this State as persons of
color, because of some remote taint of the negro race. Juries would probably be
justified in holding a person to be white in whom the admixture of African
blood did not exceed one eighth. And even where color or feature are doubtful,
it is a question for the jury to decide by reputation, by reception into
society, and by their exercise of the privileges of the white man, as well as
by admixture of blood.' ”
“Then I need not be
black?” the boy cried, with sparkling eyes.
“No,” replied the
lawyer, “you need not be black, away from Patesville. You have the somewhat
unusual privilege, it seems, of choosing between two races, and if you are a
lad of spirit, as I think you are, it will not take you long to make your
choice. As you have all the features of a white man, you would, at least in
South Carolina, have simply to assume the place and exercise the privileges of
a white man. You might, of course, do the same thing anywhere, as long as no
one knew your origin. But the matter has been adjudicated there in several
cases, and on the whole I think South Carolina is the place for you. They+'re
more liberal there, perhaps because they have many more blacks than whites, and
would like to lessen the disproportion.”
“From this time on,”
said the boy, “I am white.”
“Softly, softly, my
Caucasian fellow citizen,” returned the judge, chuckling with quiet amusement. “You
are white in the abstract, before the law. You may cherish the fact in secret,
but I would not advise you to proclaim it openly just yet. You must wait until
you go away--to South Carolina.”
“And can I learn to be
a lawyer, sir?” asked the lad.
“It seems to me that
you ought to be reasonably content for one day with what you have learned
already. You cannot be a lawyer until you are white, in position as well as in
theory, nor until you are twenty-one years old. I need an office boy. If you
are willing to come into my office, sweep it, keep my books dusted, and stay
here when I am out, I do not care. To the rest of the town you will be my
servant, and still a negro. If you choose to read my books when no one is about
and be white in your own private opinion, I have no objection. When you have
made up your mind to go away, perhaps what you have read may help you. But mum
's the word! If I hear a whisper of this from any other source, out you go,
neck and crop! I am willing to help you make a man of yourself, but it can only
be done under the rose.”
For two years John
Walden openly swept the office and surreptitiously read the law books of old
Judge Straight. When he was eighteen, he asked his mother for a sum of money,
kissed her good- by, and went out into the world. When his sister, then a
pretty child of seven, cried because her big brother was going away, he took
her up in his arms, gave her a silver dime with a hole in it for a keepsake,
hugged her close, and kissed her.
“Nev' min', sis,” he
said soothingly. “Be a good little gal, an' some o' these days I+'ll come back
to see you and bring you somethin' fine.”
In after years, when
Mis' Molly was asked what had become of her son, she would reply with sad
complacency,--
“He+'s gone over on the
other side.”
As we have seen, he
came back ten years later.
Many years before, when
Mis' Molly, then a very young woman, had taken up her residence in the house
behind the cedars, the gentleman heretofore referred to had built a cabin on
the opposite corner, in which he had installed a trusted slave by the name of
Peter Fowler and his wife Nancy. Peter was a good mechanic, and hired his time
from his master with the provision that Peter and his wife should do certain
work for Mis' Molly and serve as a sort of protection for her. In course of
time Peter, who was industrious and thrifty, saved enough money to purchase his
freedom and that of his wife and their one child, and to buy the little house
across the street, with the cooper shop behind it. After they had acquired
their freedom, Peter and Nancy did no work for Mis' Molly save as they were
paid for it, and as a rule preferred not to work at all for the woman who had
been practically their mistress; it made them seem less free. Nevertheless, the
two households had remained upon good terms, even after the death of the man
whose will had brought them together, and who had remained Peter's patron after
he had ceased to be his master. There was no intimate association between the
two families. Mis' Molly felt herself infinitely superior to Peter and his
wife,--scarcely less superior than her poor white neighbors felt themselves to
Mis' Molly. Mis' Molly always meant to be kind, and treated Peter and Nancy
with a certain good-natured condescension. They resented this, never openly or
offensively, but always in a subconscious sort of way, even when they did not
speak of it among themselves--much as they had resented her mistress-ship in
the old days. For after all, they argued, in spite of her airs and graces, her
white face and her fine clothes, was she not a negro, even as themselves? and
since the slaves had been freed, was not one negro as good as another?
Peter's son Frank had
grown up with little Rena. He was several years older than she, and when Rena
was a small child Mis' Molly had often confided her to his care, and he had
watched over her and kept her from harm. When Frank became old enough to go to
work in the cooper shop, Rena, then six or seven, had often gone across to play
among the clean white shavings. Once Frank, while learning the trade, had let
slip a sharp steel tool, which flying toward Rena had grazed her arm and sent
the red blood coursing along the white flesh and soaking the muslin sleeve. He
had rolled up the sleeve and stanched the blood and dried her tears. For a long
time thereafter her mother kept her away from the shop and was very cold to
Frank. One day the little girl wandered down to the bank of the old canal. It
had been raining for several days, and the water was quite deep in the channel.
The child slipped and fell into the stream. From the open window of the cooper
shop Frank heard a scream. He ran down to the canal and pulled her out, and
carried her all wet and dripping to the house. From that time he had been
restored to favor. He had watched the girl grow up to womanhood in the years
following the war, and had been sorry when she became too old to play about the
shop.
He never spoke to her
of love,--indeed, he never thought of his passion in such a light. There would
have been no legal barrier to their union; there would have been no frightful
menace to white supremacy in the marriage of the negro and the octoroon: the
drop of dark blood bridged the chasm. But Frank knew that she did not love him,
and had not hoped that she might. His was one of those rare souls that can give
with small hope of return. When he had made the scar upon her arm, by the same
token she had branded him her slave forever; when he had saved her from a
watery grave, he had given his life to her. There are depths of fidelity and
devotion in the negro heart that have never been fathomed or fully appreciated.
Now and then in the kindlier phases of slavery these qualities were brightly
conspicuous, and in them, if wisely appealed to, lies the strongest hope of
amity between the two races whose destiny seems bound up together in the
Western world. Even a dumb brute can be won by kindness. Surely it were worth
while to try some other weapon than scorn and contumely and hard words upon
people of our common race,-- the human race, which is bigger and broader than
Celt or Saxon, barbarian or Greek, Jew or Gentile, black or white; for we are
all children of a common Father, forget it as we may, and each one of us is in
some measure his brother's keeper.
RENA was convalescent
from a two-weeks' illness when her brother came to see her. He arrived at
Patesville by an early morning train before the town was awake, and walked
unnoticed from the station to his mother's house. His meeting with his sister
was not without emotion: he embraced her tenderly, and Rena became for a few
minutes a very Niobe of grief.
“Oh, it was cruel,
cruel!” she sobbed. “I shall never get over it.”
“I know it, my dear,”
replied Warwick soothingly,--“I know it, and I+'m to blame for it. If I had
never taken you away from here, you would have escaped this painful experience.
But do not despair; all is not lost. Tryon will not marry you, as I hoped he
might, while I feared the contrary; but he is a gentleman, and will be silent.
Come back and try again.”
“No, John. I could+n't
go through it a second time. I managed very well before, when I thought our
secret was unknown; but now I could never be sure. It would be borne on every
wind, for aught I knew, and every rustling leaf might whisper it. The law, you
said, made us white; but not the law, nor even love, can conquer prejudice. *He
spoke of my beauty, my grace, my sweetness! I looked into his eyes and believed
him. And yet he left me without a word! What would I do in Clarence now? I came
away engaged to be married, with even the day set; I should go back forsaken
and discredited; even the servants would pity me.”
“Little Albert is
pining for you,” suggested Warwick. “We could make some explanation that would
spare your feelings.”
“ Ah, do not tempt me,
John! I love the child, and am grieved to leave him. I+'m grateful, too, John,
for what you have done for me. I am not sorry that I tried it. It opened my
eyes, and I would rather die of knowledge than live in ignorance. But I could
not go through it again, John; I am not strong enough. I could do you no good;
I have made you trouble enough already. Get a mother for Albert--Mrs. Newberry
would marry you, secret and all, and would be good to the child. Forget me,
John, and take care of yourself. Your friend has found you out through me--he
may have told a dozen people. You think he will be silent;--I thought he loved
me, and he left me without a word, and with a look that told me how he hated and
despised me. I would not have believed it--even of a white man.”
“You do him an
injustice,” said her brother, producing Tryon's letter. “He did not get off
unscathed. He sent you a message.”
She turned her face
away, but listened while he read the letter. “He did not love me,” she cried
angrily, when he had finished, “or he would not have cast me off--he would not
have looked at me so. The law would have let him marry me. I seemed as white as
he did. He might have gone anywhere with me, and no one would have stared at us
curiously; no one need have known. The world is wide--there must be some place
where a man could live happily with the woman he loved.”
“Yes, Rena, there is;
and the world is wide enough for you to get along without Tryon.”
“For a day or two,” she
went on, “I hoped he might come back. But his expression in that awful moment
grew upon me, haunted me day and night, until I shuddered at the thought that I
might ever see him again. He looked at me as though I were not even a human
being. I do not love him any longer, John; I would not marry him if I were
white, or he were as I am. He did not love me--or he would have acted
differently. He might have loved me and have left me--he could not have loved
me and have looked at me so!”
She was weeping
hysterically. There was little he could say to comfort her. Presently she dried
her tears. Warwick was reluctant to leave her in Patesville. Her childish
happiness had been that of ignorance; she could never be happy there again. She
had flowered in the sunlight; she must not pine away in the shade.
“If you won't come back
with me, Rena, I+'ll send you to some school at the North, where you can
acquire a liberal education, and prepare yourself for some career of
usefulness. You may marry a better man than even Tryon.”
“No,” she replied
firmly, “I shall never marry any man, and I+'ll not leave mother again. God is
against it; I+'ll stay with my own people.”
“God has nothing to do
with it,” retorted Warwick. “God is too often a convenient stalking- horse for
human selfishness. If there is anything to be done, so unjust, so despicable,
so wicked that human reason revolts at it, there is always some smug hypocrite
to exclaim, `It is the will of God.' ”
“God made us all,”
continued Rena dreamily, “and for some good purpose, though we may not always
see it. He made some people white, and strong, and masterful, and--heartless.
He made others black and homely, and poor and weak”--
“And a lot of others
`poor white' and shiftless,” smiled Warwick.
“He made us, too,”
continued Rena, intent upon her own thought, “and He must have had a reason for
it. Perhaps He meant us to bring the others together in his own good time. A
man may make a new place for himself--a woman is born and bound to hers. God
must have meant me to stay here, or He would not have sent me back. I shall
accept things as they are. Why should I seek the society of people whose
friendship--and love-- one little word can turn to scorn? I was right, John; I
ought to have told him. Suppose he had married me and then had found it out?”
To Rena's argument of
divine foreordination Warwick attached no weight whatever. He had seen God's
heel planted for four long years upon the land which had nourished slavery. Had
God ordained the crime that the punishment might follow? It would have been
easier for Omnipotence to prevent the crime. The experience of his sister had
stirred up a certain bitterness against white people--a feeling which he had
put aside years ago, with his dark blood, but which sprang anew into life when
the fact of his own origin was brought home to him so forcibly through his
sister's misfortune. His sworn friend and promised brother-in- law had thrown
him over promptly, upon the discovery of the hidden drop of dark blood. How
many others of his friends would do the same, if they but knew of it? He had
begun to feel a little of the spiritual estrangement from his associates that
he had noticed in Rena during her life at Clarence. The fact that several
persons knew his secret had spoiled the fine flavor of perfect security
hitherto marking his position. George Tryon was a man of honor among white men,
and had deigned to extend the protection of his honor to Warwick as a man,
though no longer as a friend; to Rena as a woman, but not as a wife. Tryon,
however, was only human, and who could tell when their paths in life might
cross again, or what future temptation Tryon might feel to use a damaging
secret to their disadvantage? Warwick had cherished certain ambitions, but
these he must now put behind him. In the obscurity of private life, his past
would be of little moment; in the glare of a political career, one's
antecedents are public property, and too great a reserve in regard to one's
past is regarded as a confession of something discreditable. Frank, too, knew
the secret --a good, faithful fellow, even where there was no obligation of
fidelity; he ought to do something for Frank to show their appreciation of his
conduct. But what assurance was there that Frank would always be discreet about
the affairs of others? Judge Straight knew the whole story, and old men are
sometimes garrulous. Dr. Green suspected the secret; he had a wife and
daughters. If old Judge Straight could have known Warwick's thoughts, he would
have realized the fulfillment of his prophecy. Warwick, who had builded so well
for himself, had weakened the structure of his own life by trying to share his
good fortune with his sister.
“ Listen, Rena,” he
said, with a sudden impulse, “we+'ll go to the North or West--I+'ll go with
you--far away from the South and the Southern people, and start life over
again. It will be easier for you, it will not be hard for me--I am young, and
have means. There are no strong ties to bind me to the South. I would have a
larger outlook elsewhere.”
“And what about our
mother?” asked Rena.
It would be necessary
to leave her behind, they both perceived clearly enough, unless they were
prepared to surrender the advantage of their whiteness and drop back to the
lower rank. The mother bore the mark of the Ethiopian--not pronouncedly, but
distinctly; neither would Mis' Molly, in all probability, care to leave home
and friends and the graves of her loved ones. She had no mental resources to
supply the place of these; she was, moreover, too old to be transplanted; she
would not fit into Warwick's scheme for a new life.
“I left her once,” said
Rena, “and it brought pain and sorrow to all three of us. She is not strong,
and I will not leave her here to die alone. This shall be my home while she
lives, and if I leave it again, it shall be for only a short time, to go where
I can write to her freely, and hear from her often. Don't worry about me,
John,--I shall do very well.”
Warwick sighed. He was
sincerely sorry to leave his sister, and yet he saw that for the time being her
resolution was not to be shaken. He must bide his time. Perhaps, in a few
months, she would tire of the old life. His door would be always open to her,
and he would charge himself with her future.
“Well, then,” he said,
concluding the argument, “we+'ll say no more about it for the present. I+'ll
write to you later. I was afraid that you might not care to go back just now,
and so I brought your trunk along with me.”
He gave his mother the
baggage-check. She took it across to Frank, who, during the day, brought the
trunk from the depot. Mis' Molly offered to pay him for the service, but he
would accept nothing.
“Lawd, no, Mis' Molly;
I did n' hafter go out'n my way ter git dat trunk. I had a load er sperrit-
bairls ter haul ter de still, an' de depot wuz right on my way back. It+'d be
robbin' you ter take pay fer a little thing lack dat.”
“My son John+'s here,”
said Mis' Molly “an' he wants to see you. Come into the settin'-room. We don't
want folks to know he+'s in town; but you know all our secrets, an' we can
trust you like one er the family.”
“I+'m glad to see you
again, Frank,” said Warwick, extending his hand and clasping Frank's warmly. “You+'ve
grown up since I saw you last, but it seems you are still our good friend.”
“Our very good friend,”
interjected Rena.
Frank threw her a
grateful glance. “Yas, suh,” he said, looking Warwick over with a friendly eye,
“an' you is growed some, too. I seed you, you know, down dere where you live;
but I did n' let on, fer you an' Mis' Rena wuz w'ite as anybody; an' eve'ybody
said you wuz good ter cullud folks, an' he'ped 'em in deir lawsuits an' one way
er 'nuther, an' I wuz jes' plum' glad ter see you gettin' 'long so fine, dat I
wuz, certain sho', an' no mistake about it.”
“Thank you, Frank, and
I want you to understand how much I appreciate”--
“How much we all
appreciate,” corrected Rena.
“Yes, how much we all
appreciate, and how grateful we all are for your kindness to mother for so many
years. I know from her and from my sister how good you+'ve been to them.”
“Lawd, suh!” returned
Frank deprecatingly, “you+'re makin' a mountain out'n a molehill. I ain't done
nuthin' ter speak of--not half ez much ez I would 'a' done. I wuz glad ter do
w'at little I could, fer frien'ship's sake.”
“We value your
friendship, Frank, and we+'ll not forget it.”
“No, Frank,” added
Rena, “we will never forget it, and you shall always be our good friend.”
Frank left the room and
crossed the street with swelling heart. He would have given his life for Rena.
A kind word was doubly sweet from her lips; no service would be too great to
pay for her friendship.
When Frank went out to
the stable next morning to feed his mule, his eyes opened wide with astonishment.
In place of the decrepit, one-eyed army mule he had put up the night before, a
fat, sleek specimen of vigorous mulehood greeted his arrival with the sonorous
hehaw of lusty youth. Hanging on a peg near by was a set of fine new harness,
and standing under the adjoining shed, as he perceived, a handsome new cart.
“Well, well!” exclaimed
Frank; “ef I did n' mos' know whar dis mule, an' dis kyart, an' dis harness
come from, I+'d 'low dere 'd be'n witcheraf' er cunjin' wukkin' here. But, oh
my, dat is a fine mule!--I mos' wush I could keep 'im.”
He crossed the road to
the house behind the cedars, and found Mis' Molly in the kitchen. “Mis' Molly,”
he protested, “I ain't done nuthin' ter deserve dat mule. W'at little I done
fer you wa'n't done fer pay. I+'d ruther not keep dem things.”
“Fer goodness' sake,
Frank!” exclaimed his neighbor, with a well-simulated air of mystification, “what
are you talkin' about?”
“You knows w'at I+'m
talkin' about, Mis' Molly; you knows well ernuff I+'m talkin' about dat fine
mule an' kyart an' harness over dere in my stable.”
“How should I know
anything about 'em?" she asked.
“Now, Mis' Molly! You
folks is jes' tryin' ter fool me, an' make me take somethin' fer nuthin'. I
lef' my ole mule an' kyart an' harness in de stable las' night, an' dis mawnin'
dey 're gone, an' new ones in deir place. Co'se you knows whar dey come from!”
“Well, now, Frank,
sence you mention it, I did see a witch flyin' roun' here las' night on a
broom- stick, an' it 'peared ter me she lit on yo'r barn, an' I s'pose she
turned yo'r old things into new ones. I would+n't bother my mind about it if I
was you, for she may turn 'em back any night, you know; an' you might as well
have the use of 'em in the mean while.”
“Dat+'s all
foolishness, Mis' Molly, an' I+'m gwine ter fetch dat mule right over here an'
tell yo' son ter gimme my ole one back.”
“My son+'s gone,” she
replied, “an' I don't know nothin' about yo'r old mule. And what would I do
with a mule, anyhow? I ain't got no barn to put him in.”
“I suspect you don't
care much for us after all, Frank,” said Rena reproachfully--she had come in
while they were talking. “You meet with a piece of good luck, and you+'re
afraid of it, lest it might have come from us.”
“Now, Miss Rena, you
ought+n't ter say dat,” expostulated Frank, his reluctance yielding
immediately. “I+'ll keep de mule an' de kyart an' de harness--fac', I+'ll have
ter keep 'em, 'cause I ain't got no others. But dey 're gwine ter be yo'n ez
much ez mine. W'enever you wants anything hauled, er wants yo' lot ploughed, er
anything-- dat+'s yo' mule, an' I+'m yo' man an' yo' mammy's.”
So Frank went back to
the stable, where he feasted his eyes on his new possessions, fed and watered
the mule, and curried and brushed his coat until it shone like a looking-glass.
“Now dat,” remarked
Peter, at the breakfast- table, when informed of the transaction, “is somethin'
lack rale w'ite folks.”
No real white person
had ever given Peter a mule or a cart. He had rendered one of them unpaid
service for half a lifetime, and had paid for the other half; and some of them
owed him substantial sums for work performed. But “to him that hath shall be
given”--Warwick paid for the mule, and the real white folks got most of the
credit.
WHEN the first great
shock of his discovery wore off, the fact of Rena's origin lost to Tryon some
of its initial repugnance--indeed, the repugnance was not to the woman at all,
as their past relations were evidence, but merely to the thought of her as a
wife. It could hardly have failed to occur to so reasonable a man as Tryon that
Rena's case could scarcely be unique. Surely in the past centuries of free
manners and easy morals that had prevailed in remote parts of the South, there
must have been many white persons whose origin would not have borne too
microscopic an investigation. Family trees not seldom have a crooked branch;
or, to use a more apposite figure, many a flock has its black sheep. Being a
man of lively imagination, Tryon soon found himself putting all sorts of
hypothetical questions about a matter which he had already definitely
determined. If he had married Rena in ignorance of her secret, and had learned
it afterwards, would he have put her aside? If, knowing her history, he had
nevertheless married her, and she had subsequently displayed some trait of
character that would suggest the negro, could he have forgotten or forgiven the
taint? Could he still have held her in love and honor? If not, could he have
given her the outward seeming of affection, or could he have been more than
coldly tolerant? He was glad that he had been spared this ordeal. With an
effort he put the whole matter definitely and conclusively aside, as he had
done a hundred times already.
Returning to his home,
after an absence of several months in South Carolina, it was quite apparent to
his mother's watchful eye that he was in serious trouble. He was absent-minded,
monosyllabic, sighed deeply and often, and could not always conceal the traces
of secret tears. For Tryon was young, and possessed of a sensitive soul--a
source of happiness or misery, as the Fates decree. To those thus dowered, the
heights of rapture are accessible, the abysses of despair yawn threateningly;
only the dull monotony of contentment is denied.
Mrs. Tryon vainly
sought by every gentle art a woman knows to win her son's confidence. “What is
the matter, George, dear?” she would ask, stroking his hot brow with her small,
cool hand as he sat moodily nursing his grief. “Tell your mother, George. Who
else could comfort you so well as she?”
“Oh, it+'s nothing,
mother,--nothing at all,” he would reply, with a forced attempt at lightness. “It's
only your fond imagination, you best of mothers.”
It was Mrs. Tryon's
turn to sigh and shed a clandestine tear. Until her son had gone away on this
trip to South Carolina, he had kept no secrets from her: his heart had been an
open book, of which she knew every page; now, some painful story was inscribed
therein which he meant she should not read. If she could have abdicated her
empire to Blanche Leary or have shared it with her, she would have yielded
gracefully; but very palpably some other influence than Blanche's had driven
joy from her son's countenance and lightness from his heart.
Miss Blanche Leary,
whom Tryon found in the house upon his return, was a demure, pretty little
blonde, with an amiable disposition, a talent for society, and a pronounced
fondness for George Tryon. A poor girl, of an excellent family impoverished by
the war, she was distantly related to Mrs. Tryon, had for a long time enjoyed
that lady's favor, and was her choice for George's wife when he should be old
enough to marry. A woman less interested than Miss Leary would have perceived
that there was something wrong with Tryon. Miss Leary had no doubt that there
was a woman at the bottom of it,--for about what else should youth worry but
love? or if one's love affairs run smoothly, why should one worry about
anything at all? Miss Leary, in the nineteen years of her mundane existence,
had not been without mild experiences of the heart, and had hovered for some
time on the verge of disappointment with respect to Tryon himself. A sensitive
pride would have driven more than one woman away at the sight of the man of her
preference sighing like a furnace for some absent fair one. But Mrs. Tryon was
so cordial, and insisted so strenuously upon her remaining, that Blanche's
love, which was strong, conquered her pride, which was no more than a
reasonable young woman ought to have who sets success above mere sentiment. She
remained in the house and bided her opportunity. If George practically ignored
her for a time, she did not throw herself at all in his way. She went on a
visit to some girls in the neighborhood and remained away a week, hoping that
she might be missed. Tryon expressed no regret at her departure and no
particular satisfaction upon her return. If the house was duller in her
absence, he was but dimly conscious of the difference. He was still fighting a
battle in which a susceptible heart and a reasonable mind had locked horns in a
well-nigh hopeless conflict. Reason, common-sense, the instinctive ready-made
judgments of his training and environment,-- the deep-seated prejudices of race
and caste,--commanded him to dismiss Rena from his thoughts. His stubborn heart
simply would not let go.
ALTHOUGH the whole
fabric of Rena's new life toppled and fell with her lover's defection, her
sympathies, broadened by culture and still more by her recent emotional
experience, did not shrink, as would have been the case with a more selfish
soul, to the mere limits of her personal sorrow, great as this seemed at the
moment. She had learned to love, and when the love of one man failed her, she
turned to humanity, as a stream obstructed in its course overflows the adjacent
country. Her early training had not directed her thoughts to the darker people
with whose fate her own was bound up so closely, but rather away from them. She
had been taught to despise them because they were not so white as she was, and
had been slaves while she was free. Her life in her brother's home, by removing
her from immediate contact with them, had given her a different point of
view,--one which emphasized their shortcomings, and thereby made vastly clearer
to her the gulf that separated them from the new world in which she lived; so
that when misfortune threw her back upon them, the reaction brought her nearer
than before. Where once she had seemed able to escape from them, they were now,
it appeared, her inalienable race. Thus doubly equipped, she was able to view
them at once with the mental eye of an outsider and the sympathy of a sister:
she could see their faults, and judge them charitably; she knew and appreciated
their good qualities. With her quickened intelligence she could perceive how
great was their need and how small their opportunity; and with this
illumination came the desire to contribute to their help. She had not the
breadth or culture to see in all its ramifications the great problem which
still puzzles statesmen and philosophers; but she was conscious of the wish,
and of the power, in a small way, to do something for the advancement of those
who had just set their feet upon the ladder of progress.
This new-born desire to
be of service to her rediscovered people was not long without an opportunity
for expression. Yet the Fates willed that her future should be but another link
in a connected chain: she was to be as powerless to put aside her recent past
as she had been to escape from the influence of her earlier life. There are
sordid souls that eat and drink and breed and die, and imagine they have lived.
But Rena's life since her great awakening had been that of the emotions, and
her temperament made of it a continuous life. Her successive states of
consciousness were not detachable, but united to form a single if not an
entirely harmonious whole. To her sensitive spirit to-day was born of
yesterday, to-morrow would be but the offspring of to day.
One day, along toward
noon, her mother received a visit from Mary B. Pettifoot, a second cousin, who
lived on Back Street, only a short distance from the house behind the cedars.
Rena had gone out, so that the visitor found Mis' Molly alone.
“I heared you say,
Cousin Molly,” said Mary B. (no one ever knew what the B. in Mary's name stood
for,--it was a mere ornamental flourish), “that Rena was talkin' 'bout teachin'
school. I+'ve got a good chance fer her, ef she keers ter take it. My cousin
Jeff Wain 'rived in town this mo'nin', f'm 'way down in Sampson County, ter git
a teacher fer the nigger school in his deestric'. I s'pose he mought 'a' got one
f'm 'roun' Newbern, er Goldsboro, er some er them places eas', but he 'lowed
he+'d like to visit some er his kin an' ole frien's, an' so kill two birds with
one stone.”
“I seed a strange
mulatter man, with a bay hoss an' a new buggy, drivin' by here this mo'nin'
early, from down to'ds the river,” rejoined Mis' Molly. “I wonder if that wuz
him?”
“Did he have on a linen
duster?” asked Mary B.
“Yas, an' 'peared to be
a very well sot up man,” replied Mis' Molly, “ 'bout thirty-five years old, I
should reckon.”
“That wuz him,”
assented Mary B. “He+'s got a fine hoss an' buggy, an' a gol' watch an' chain,
an' a big plantation, an' lots er hosses an' mules an' cows an' hawgs. He
raise' fifty bales er cotton las' year, an' he+'s be'n ter the legislatur'.”
“ My gracious!”
exclaimed Mis' Molly, struck with awe at this catalogue of the stranger's
possessions-- he was evidently worth more than a great many “rich” white
people,--all white people in North Carolina in those days were either “rich” or
“poor,” the distinction being one of caste rather than of wealth. “Is he
married?” she inquired with interest?
“No,--single. You
mought 'low it was quare that he should n' be married at his age; but he was
crossed in love oncet,”--Mary B. heaved a self-conscious sigh,--“an' has stayed
single ever sence. That wuz ten years ago, but as some husban's is long-lived,
an' there ain' no mo' chance fer 'im now than there wuz then, I reckon some
nice gal mought stan' a good show er ketchin' 'im, ef she+'d play her kyards
right.”
To Mis' Molly this was
news of considerable importance. She had not thought a great deal of Rena's
plan to teach; she considered it lowering for Rena, after having been white, to
go among the negroes any more than was unavoidable. This opportunity, however,
meant more than mere employment for her daughter. She had felt Rena's
disappointment keenly, from the practical point of view, and, blaming herself
for it, held herself all the more bound to retrieve the misfortune in any
possible way. If she had not been sick, Rena would not have dreamed the fateful
dream that had brought her to Patesville; for the connection between the vision
and the reality was even closer in Mis' Molly's eyes than in Rena's. If the
mother had not sent the letter announcing her illness and confirming the dream,
Rena would not have ruined her promising future by coming to Patesville. But
the harm had been done, and she was responsible, ignorantly of course, but none
the less truly, and it only remained for her to make amends, as far as
possible. Her highest ambition, since Rena had grown up, had been to see her
married and comfortably settled in life. She had no hope that Tryon would come
back. Rena had declared that she would make no further effort to get away from
her people; and, furthermore, that she would never marry. To this latter
statement Mis' Molly secretly attached but little importance. That a woman
should go single from the cradle to the grave did not accord with her
experience in life of the customs of North Carolina. She respected a grief she
could not entirely fathom, yet did not for a moment believe that Rena would
remain unmarried.
“You+'d better fetch
him roun' to see me, Ma'y B.,” she said, “an' let+'s see what he looks like.
I+'m pertic'lar 'bout my gal. She says she ain't goin' to marry nobody; but of
co'se we know that+'s all foolishness.”
“I+'ll fetch him roun'
this evenin' 'bout three o'clock,” said the visitor, rising. “I mus' hurry back
now an' keep him comp'ny. Tell Rena ter put on her bes' bib an' tucker; for Mr.
Wain is pertic'lar too, an' I+'ve already be'n braggin' 'bout her looks.”
When Mary B., at the
appointed hour, knocked at Mis' Molly's front door,--the visit being one of
ceremony, she had taken her cousin round to the Front Street entrance and
through the flower garden,--Mis' Molly was prepared to receive them. After a
decent interval, long enough to suggest that she had not been watching their
approach and was not over-eager about the visit, she answered the knock and
admitted them into the parlor. Mr. Wain was formally introduced, and seated
himself on the ancient haircloth sofa, under the framed fashion-plate, while
Mary B. sat by the open door and fanned herself with a palm-leaf fan.
Mis' Molly's impression
of Wain was favorable. His complexion was of a light brown--not quite so fair
as Mis' Molly would have preferred; but any deficiency in this regard, or in
the matter of the stranger's features, which, while not unpleasing, leaned
toward the broad mulatto type, was more than compensated in her eyes by very
straight black hair, and, as soon appeared, a great facility of complimentary
speech. On his introduction Mr. Wain bowed low, assumed an air of great
admiration, and expressed his extreme delight in making the acquaintance of so
distinguished-looking a lady.
“You+'re flatt'rin' me,
Mr. Wain,” returned Mis' Molly, with a gratified smile. “But you want to meet
my daughter befo' you commence th'owin' bokays. Excuse my leavin' you--I+'ll go
an' fetch her.”
She returned in a
moment, followed by Rena. “Mr. Wain, 'low me to int'oduce you to my daughter
Rena. Rena, this is Ma'y B.'s cousin on her pappy's side, who+'s come up from
Sampson to git a school-teacher.”
Rena bowed gracefully.
Wain stared a moment in genuine astonishment, and then bent himself nearly
double, keeping his eyes fixed meanwhile upon Rena's face. He had expected to
see a pretty yellow girl, but had been prepared for no such radiant vision of
beauty as this which now confronted him.
“Does--does you mean
ter say, Mis' Walden, dat--dat dis young lady is yo' own daughter?” he
stammered, rallying his forces for action.
“Why not, Mr. Wain?”
asked Mis' Molly, bridling with mock resentment. “Do you mean ter 'low that she
wuz changed in her cradle, er is she too good-lookin' to be my daughter?”
“My deah Mis' Walden!
it 'ud be wastin' wo'ds fer me ter say dat dey ain' no young lady too good-
lookin' ter be yo' daughter; but you+'re lookin' so young yo'sef dat I+'d
ruther take her fer yo' sister.”
“Yas,” rejoined Mis'
Molly, with animation, “they ain't many years between us. I wuz ruther young
myself when she wuz bo'n.”
“An', mo'over,” Wain
went on, “it takes me a minute er so ter git my min' use' ter thinkin' er Mis'
Rena as a cullud young lady. I mought 'a' seed her a hund'ed times, an' I+'d
'a' never dreamt but w'at she wuz a w'ite young lady, f'm one er de bes'
families.”
“Yas, Mr. Wain,”
replied Mis' Molly complacently, “all three er my child'en wuz white, an' one
of 'em has be'n on the other side fer many long years. Rena has be'n to school,
an' has traveled, an' has had chances--better chances than anybody roun' here
knows.”
“She+'s jes' de lady
I+'m lookin' fer, ter teach ou' school,” rejoined Wain, with emphasis. “Wid her
schoolin' an' my riccommen', she kin git a fus'- class ce'tifikit an' draw
fo'ty dollars a month; an' a lady er her color kin keep a lot er little niggers
straighter 'n a darker lady could. We jus' got ter have her ter teach ou'
school--ef we kin git her.”
Rena's interest in the
prospect of employment at her chosen work was so great that she paid little
attention to Wain's compliments. Mis' Molly led Mary B. away to the kitchen on
some pretext, and left Rena to entertain the gentleman. She questioned him
eagerly about the school, and he gave the most glowing accounts of the elegant
school- house, the bright pupils, and the congenial society of the
neighborhood. He spoke almost entirely in superlatives, and, after making due
allowance for what Rena perceived to be a temperamental tendency to exaggeration,
she concluded that she would find in the school a worthy field of usefulness,
and in this polite and good-natured though somewhat wordy man a coadjutor upon
whom she could rely in her first efforts; for she was not over-confident of her
powers, which seemed to grow less as the way opened for their exercise.
“Do you think I+'m
competent to teach the school?” she asked of the visitor, after stating some of
her qualifications.
“Oh, dere 's no doubt
about it, Miss Rena,” replied Wain, who had listened with an air of great
wisdom, though secretly aware that he was too ignorant of letters to form a
judgment; “you kin teach de school all right, an' could ef you did+n't know
half ez much. You won't have no trouble managin' de child'en, nuther. Ef any of
'em gits onruly, jes' call on me fer he'p, an' I+'ll make 'em walk Spanish.
I+'m chuhman er de school committee, an' I+'ll lam de hide off'n any scholar
dat don' behave. You kin trus' me fer dat, sho' ez I+'m a-settin' here.”
“Then,” said Rena, “I+'ll
undertake it, and do my best. I+'m sure you+'ll not be too exacting.”
“Yo' bes', Miss
Rena,+'ll be de bes' dey is. Don' you worry ner fret. Dem niggers won't have no
other teacher after dey+'ve once laid eyes on you: I+'ll guarantee dat. Dere
won't be no trouble, not a bit.”
“Well, Cousin Molly,”
said Mary B. to Mis' Molly in the kitchen, “how does the plan strike you?”
“Ef Rena+'s satisfied,
I am,” replied Mis' Molly. “But you+'d better say nothin' about ketchin' a
beau, or any such foolishness, er else she+'d be just as likely not to go nigh
Sampson County.”
“Befo' Cousin Jeff goes
back,” confided Mary B., “I+'d like ter give 'im a party, but my house is too
small. I wuz wonderin',” she added tentatively, “ef I could n' borry yo' house.”
“Shorely, Ma'y B. I+'m
int'rested in Mr. Wain on Rena's account, an' it+'s as little as I kin do to
let you use my house an' help you git things ready.”
The date of the party
was set for Thursday night, as Wain was to leave Patesville on Friday morning,
taking with him the new teacher. The party would serve the double purpose of a
compliment to the guest and a farewell to Rena, and it might prove the
precursor, the mother secretly hoped, of other festivities to follow at some
later date.
ONE Wednesday morning,
about six weeks after his return home, Tryon received a letter from Judge
Straight with reference to the note left with him at Patesville for collection.
This communication properly required an answer, which might have been made in
writing within the compass of ten lines. No sooner, however, had Tryon read the
letter than he began to perceive reasons why it should be answered in person.
He had left Patesville under extremely painful circumstances, vowing that he
would never return; and yet now the barest pretext, by which no one could have
been deceived except willingly, was sufficient to turn his footsteps thither
again. He explained to his mother--with a vagueness which she found somewhat
puzzling, but ascribed to her own feminine obtuseness in matters of business--the
reasons that imperatively demanded his presence in Patesville. With an early
start he could drive there in one day,--he had an excellent roadster, a light
buggy, and a recent rain had left the road in good condition,--a day would
suffice for the transaction of his business, and the third day would bring him
home again. He set out on his journey on Thursday morning, with this programme
very clearly outlined.
Tryon would not at
first have admitted even to himself that Rena's presence in Patesville had any
bearing whatever upon his projected visit. The matter about which Judge
Straight had written might, it was clear, be viewed in several aspects. The
judge had written him concerning the one of immediate importance. It would be
much easier to discuss the subject in all its bearings, and clean up the whole
matter, in one comprehensive personal interview.
The importance of this
business, then, seemed very urgent for the first few hours of Tryon's journey.
Ordinarily a careful driver and merciful to his beast, his eagerness to reach
Patesville increased gradually until it became necessary to exercise some
self-restraint in order not to urge his faithful mare beyond her powers; and
soon he could no longer pretend obliviousness of the fact that some attraction
stronger than the whole amount of Duncan McSwayne's note was urging him
irresistibly toward his destination. The old town beyond the distant river, his
heart told him clamorously, held the object in all the world to him most dear.
Memory brought up in vivid detail every moment of his brief and joyous
courtship, each tender word, each enchanting smile, every fond caress. He lived
his past happiness over again down to the moment of that fatal discovery. What
horrible fate was it that had involved him--nay, that had caught this sweet
delicate girl in such a blind alley? A wild hope flashed across his mind:
perhaps the ghastly story might not be true; perhaps, after all, the girl was
no more a negro than she seemed. He had heard sad stories of white children,
born out of wedlock, abandoned by sinful parents to the care or adoption of
colored women, who had reared them as their own, the children's future basely
sacrificed to hide the parents' shame. He would confront this reputed mother of
his darling and wring the truth from her. He was in a state of mind where any
sort of a fairy tale would have seemed reasonable. He would almost have bribed
some one to tell him that the woman he had loved, the woman he still loved (he
felt a thrill of lawless pleasure in the confession), was not the descendant of
slaves,-- that he might marry her, and not have before his eyes the gruesome
fear that some one of their children might show even the faintest mark of the
despised race.
At noon he halted at a
convenient hamlet, fed and watered his mare, and resumed his journey after an
hour's rest. By this time he had well- nigh forgotten about the legal business
that formed the ostensible occasion for his journey, and was conscious only of
a wild desire to see the woman whose image was beckoning him on to Patesville
as fast as his horse could take him.
At sundown he stopped
again, about ten miles from the town, and cared for his now tired beast. He
knew her capacity, however, and calculated that she could stand the additional
ten miles without injury. The mare set out with reluctance, but soon settled
resignedly down into a steady jog.
Memory had hitherto
assailed Tryon with the vision of past joys. As he neared the town, imagination
attacked him with still more moving images. He had left her, this sweet flower
of womankind--white or not, God had never made a fairer!--he had seen her fall
to the hard pavement, with he knew not what resulting injury. He had left her
tender frame--the touch of her finger-tips had made him thrill with happiness--
to be lifted by strange hands, while he with heartless pride had driven
deliberately away, without a word of sorrow or regret. He had ignored her as
completely as though she had never existed. That he had been deceived was true.
But had he not aided in his own deception? Had not Warwick told him distinctly
that they were of no family, and was it not his own fault that he had not
followed up the clue thus given him? Had not Rena compared herself to the
child's nurse, and had he not assured her that if she were the nurse, he would
marry her next day? The deception had been due more to his own blindness than
to any lack of honesty on the part of Rena and her brother. In the light of his
present feelings they seemed to have been absurdly outspoken. He was glad that
he had kept his discovery to himself. He had considered himself very
magnanimous not to have exposed the fraud that was being perpetrated upon
society: it was with a very comfortable feeling that he now realized that the
matter was as profound a secret as before.
“She ought to have been
born white,” he muttered, adding weakly, “I would to God that I had never found
her out!”
Drawing near the bridge
that crossed the river to the town, he pictured to himself a pale girl, with
sorrowful, tear-stained eyes, pining away in the old gray house behind the
cedars for love of him, dying, perhaps, of a broken heart. He would hasten to
her; he would dry her tears with kisses; he would express sorrow for his
cruelty.
The tired mare had
crossed the bridge and was slowly toiling up Front Street; she was near the
limit of her endurance, and Tryon did not urge her.
They might talk the
matter over, and if they must part, part at least they would in peace and
friendship. If he could not marry her, he would never marry any one else; it
would be cruel for him to seek happiness while she was denied it, for, having
once given her heart to him, she could never, he was sure,--so instinctively
fine was her nature,--she could never love any one less worthy than himself,
and would therefore probably never marry. He knew from a Clarence acquaintance,
who had written him a letter, that Rena had not reappeared in that town.
If he should
discover--the chance was one in a thousand--that she was white; or if he should
find it too hard to leave her--ah, well! he was a white man, one of a race born
to command. He would make her white; no one beyond the old town would ever know
the difference. If, perchance, their secret should be disclosed, the world was
wide; a man of courage and ambition, inspired by love, might make a career
anywhere. Circumstances made weak men; strong men mould circumstances to do
their bidding. He would not let his darling die of grief, whatever the price
must be paid for her salvation. She was only a few rods away from him now. In a
moment he would see her; he would take her tenderly in his arms, and heart to
heart they would mutually forgive and forget, and, strengthened by their love,
would face the future boldly and bid the world do its worst.
THE evening of the
party arrived. The house had been thoroughly cleaned in preparation for the
event, and decorated with the choicest treasures of the garden. By eight
o'clock the guests had gathered. They were all mulattoes,--all people of mixed
blood were called “mulattoes” in North Carolina. There were dark mulattoes and
bright mulattoes. Mis' Molly's guests were mostly of the bright class, most of
them more than half white, and few of them less. In Mis' Molly's small circle,
straight hair was the only palliative of a dark complexion. Many of the guests
would not have been casually distinguishable from white people of the poorer
class. Others bore unmistakable traces of Indian ancestry,--for Cherokee and
Tuscarora blood was quite widely diffused among the free negroes of North
Carolina, though well-nigh lost sight of by the curious custom of the white
people to ignore anything but the negro blood in those who were touched by its
potent current. Very few of those present had been slaves. The free colored
people of Patesville were numerous enough before the war to have their own “society,”
and human enough to despise those who did not possess advantages equal to their
own; and at this time they still looked down upon those who had once been held
in bondage. The only black man present occupied a chair which stood on a broad
chest in one corner, and extracted melody from a fiddle to which a whole
generation of the best people of Patesville had danced and made merry. Uncle
Needham seldom played for colored gatherings, but made an exception in Mis'
Molly's case; she was not white, but he knew her past; if she was not the rose,
she had at least been near the rose. When the company had gathered, Mary B., as
mistress of ceremonies, whispered to Uncle Needham, who tapped his violin
sharply with the bow.
“Ladies an' gent'emens,
take yo' pa'dners fer a Fuhginny reel!”
Mr. Wain, as the guest
of honor, opened the ball with his hostess. He wore a broadcloth coat and
trousers, a heavy glittering chain across the spacious front of his white
waistcoat, and a large red rose in his buttonhole. If his boots were slightly
run down at the heel, so trivial a detail passed unnoticed in the general
splendor of his attire. Upon a close or hostile inspection there would have
been some features of his ostensibly good-natured face--the shifty eye, the
full and slightly drooping lower lip--which might have given a student of
physiognomy food for reflection. But whatever the latent defects of Wain's
character, he proved himself this evening a model of geniality, presuming not
at all upon his reputed wealth, but winning golden opinions from those who came
to criticise, of whom, of course, there were a few, the company being composed
of human beings.
When the dance began,
Wain extended his large, soft hand to Mary B., yellow, buxom, thirty, with
white and even teeth glistening behind her full red lips. A younger sister of
Mary B.'s was paired with Billy Oxendine, a funny little tailor, a great
gossip, and therefore a favorite among the women. Mis' Molly graciously
consented, after many protestations of lack of skill and want of practice, to
stand up opposite Homer Pettifoot, Mary B.'s husband, a tall man, with a slight
stoop, a bald crown, and full, dreamy eyes,--a man of much imagination and a
large fund of anecdote. Two other couples completed the set; others were
restrained by bashfulness or religious scruples, which did not yield until
later in the evening.
The perfumed air from
the garden without and the cut roses within mingled incongruously with the
alien odors of musk and hair oil, of which several young barbers in the company
were especially redolent. There was a play of sparkling eyes and glancing feet.
Mary B. danced with the languorous grace of an Eastern odalisque, Mis' Molly
with the mincing, hesitating step of one long out of practice. Wain performed
saltatory prodigies. This was a golden opportunity for the display in which his
soul found delight. He introduced variations hitherto unknown to the dance. His
skill and suppleness brought a glow of admiration into the eyes of the women,
and spread a cloud of jealousy over the faces of several of the younger men,
who saw themselves eclipsed.
Rena had announced in
advance her intention to take no active part in the festivities. “I don't feel
like dancing, mamma--I shall never dance again.”
“Well, now, Rena,”
answered her mother, “of co'se you+'re too dignified, sence you+'ve be'n
'sociatin' with white folks, to be hoppin' roun' an' kickin' up like Ma'y B.
an' these other yaller gals; but of co'se, too, you can't slight the comp'ny
entirely, even ef it ain't jest exac'ly our party,-- you+'ll have to pay 'em
some little attention, 'specially Mr. Wain, sence you+'re goin' down yonder
with 'im.”
Rena conscientiously
did what she thought politeness required. She went the round of the guests in
the early part of the evening and exchanged greetings with them. To several
requests for dances she replied that she was not dancing. She did not hold
herself aloof because of pride; any instinctive shrinking she might have felt
by reason of her recent association with persons of greater refinement was
offset by her still more newly awakened zeal for humanity; they were her
people, she must not despise them. But the occasion suggested painful memories
of other and different scenes in which she had lately participated. Once or
twice these memories were so vivid as almost to overpower her. She slipped away
from the company, and kept in the background as much as possible without
seeming to slight any one.
The guests as well were
dimly conscious of a slight barrier between Mis' Molly's daughter and
themselves. The time she had spent apart from these friends of her youth had
rendered it impossible for her ever to meet them again upon the plane of common
interests and common thoughts. It was much as though one, having acquired the
vernacular of his native country, had lived in a foreign land long enough to
lose the language of his childhood without acquiring fully that of his adopted
country. Miss Rowena Warwick could never again become quite the Rena Walden who
had left the house behind the cedars no more than a year and a half before.
Upon this very difference were based her noble aspirations for usefulness,--one
must stoop in order that one may lift others. Any other young woman present
would have been importuned beyond her powers of resistance. Rena's reserve was
respected.
When supper was
announced, somewhat early in the evening, the dancers found seats in the hall
or on the front piazza. Aunt Zilphy, assisted by Mis' Molly and Mary B., passed
around the refreshments, which consisted of fried chicken, buttered biscuits,
pound-cake, and eggnog. When the first edge of appetite was taken off, the
conversation waxed animated. Homer Pettifoot related, with minute detail, an
old, threadbare hunting lie, dating, in slightly differing forms, from the age
of Nimrod, about finding twenty-five partridges sitting in a row on a rail, and
killing them all with a single buckshot, which passed through twenty-four and
lodged in the body of the twenty-fifth, from which it was extracted and
returned to the shot pouch for future service.
This story was followed
by a murmur of incredulity--of course, the thing was possible, but Homer's
faculty for exaggeration was so well known that any statement of his was viewed
with suspicion. Homer seemed hurt at this lack of faith, and was disposed to
argue the point, but the sonorous voice of Mr. Wain on the other side of the
room cut short his protestations, in much the same way that the rising sun
extinguishes the light of lesser luminaries.
“I wuz a member er de
fus' legislatur' after de wah,” Wain was saying. “When I went up f'm Sampson in
de fall, I had to pass th'ough Smithfiel', I got in town in de afternoon, an'
put up at de bes' hotel. De lan'lo'd did n' have no s'picion but what I wuz a
white man, an' he gimme a room, an' I had supper an' breakfas', an' went on ter
Rolly nex' mornin'. W'en de session wuz over, I come along back, an' w'en I got
ter Smithfiel', I driv' up ter de same hotel. I noticed, as soon as I got dere,
dat de place had run down consid'able-- dere wuz weeds growin' in de yard, de
winders wuz dirty, an' ev'ything roun' dere looked kinder lonesome an'
shif'less. De lan'lo'd met me at de do'; he looked mighty down in de mouth, an'
sezee:--
“ `Look a-here, w'at
made you come an' stop at my place widout tellin' me you wuz a black man? Befo'
you come th'ough dis town I had a fus'-class business. But w'en folks found out
dat a nigger had put up here, business drapped right off, an' I+'ve had ter
shet up my hotel. You oughter be+'shamed er yo'se'f fer ruinin' a po' man w'at
had n' never done no harm ter you. You+'ve done a mean, low-lived thing, an' a
jes' God+'ll punish you fer it.'
“De po' man acshully
bust inter tears,” continued Mr. Wain magnanimously, “an' I felt so sorry fer
'im--he wuz a po' white man tryin' ter git up in de worl'--dat I hauled out my
purse an' gin 'im ten dollars, an' he 'peared monst'ous glad ter git it.”
“ How good-hearted! How
kin'!” murmured the ladies. “It done credit to yo' feelin's.”
“ Don't b'lieve a word
er dem lies,” muttered one young man to another sarcastically. “He could n'
pass fer white, 'less'n it wuz a mighty dark night.”
Upon this glorious
evening of his life, Mr. Jefferson Wain had one distinctly hostile critic, of
whose presence he was blissfully unconscious. Frank Fowler had not been invited
to the party,-- his family did not go with Mary B.'s set. Rena had suggested to
her mother that he be invited, but Mis' Molly had demurred on the ground that
it was not her party, and that she had no right to issue invitations. It is
quite likely that she would have sought an invitation for Frank from Mary B.;
but Frank was black, and would not harmonize with the rest of the company, who
would not have Mis' Molly's reasons for treating him well. She had compromised
the matter by stepping across the way in the afternoon and suggesting that
Frank might come over and sit on the back porch and look at the dancing and
share in the supper.
Frank was not without a
certain honest pride. He was sensitive enough, too, not to care to go where he
was not wanted. He would have curtly refused any such maimed invitation to any
other place. But would he not see Rena in her best attire, and might she not
perhaps, in passing, speak a word to him?
“Thank y', Mis' Molly,”
he replied, “I+'ll prob'ly come over.”
“You+'re a big fool,
boy,” observed his father after Mis' Molly had gone back across the street, “ter
be stickin' roun' dem yaller niggers 'cross de street, an' slobb'rin' an'
slav'rin' over 'em, an' hangin' roun' deir back do' wuss 'n ef dey wuz w'ite
folks. I+'d see 'em dead fus'!”
Frank himself resisted
the temptation for half an hour after the music began, but at length he made
his way across the street and stationed himself at the window opening upon the
back piazza. When Rena was in the room, he had eyes for her only, but when she
was absent, he fixed his attention mainly upon Wain. With jealous clairvoyance
he observed that Wain's eyes followed Rena when she left the room, and lit up
when she returned. Frank had heard that Rena was going away with this man, and
he watched Wain closely, liking him less the longer he looked at him. To his
fancy, Wain's style and skill were affectation, his good-nature mere hypocrisy,
and his glance at Rena the eye of the hawk upon his quarry. He had heard that
Wain was unmarried, and he could not see how, this being so, he could help
wishing Rena for a wife. Frank would have been content to see her marry a white
man, who would have raised her to a plane worthy of her merits. In this man's
shifty eye he read the liar--his wealth and standing were probably as false as
his seeming good-humor.
“Is that you, Frank?”
said a soft voice near at hand.
He looked up with a
joyful thrill. Rena was peering intently at him, as if trying to distinguish
his features in the darkness. It was a bright moonlight night, but Frank stood
in the shadow of the piazza.
“Yas 'm, it's me, Miss
Rena. Yo' mammy said I could come over an' see you-all dance. You ain' be'n out
on de flo' at all, ter-night.”
“ No, Frank, I don't
care for dancing. I shall not dance to-night.”
This answer was
pleasing to Frank. If he could not hope to dance with her, at least the men
inside --at least this snake in the grass from down the country--should not
have that privilege.
“But you must have some
supper, Frank,” said Rena. “I+'ll bring it myself.”
“No, Miss Rena, I don'
keer fer nothin'--I did n' come over ter eat--r'al'y I did+n't.”
“Nonsense, Frank,
there+'s plenty of it. I have no appetite, and you shall have my portion.”
She brought him a slice
of cake and a glass of eggnog. When Mis' Molly, a minute later, came out upon
the piazza, Frank left the yard and walked down the street toward the old
canal. Rena had spoken softly to him; she had fed him with her own dainty
hands. He might never hope that she would see in him anything but a friend; but
he loved her, and he would watch over her and protect her, wherever she might
be. He did not believe that she would ever marry the grinning hypocrite
masquerading back there in Mis' Molly's parlor; but the man would bear
watching.
Mis' Molly had come to
call her daughter into the house. “Rena,” she said, “Mr. Wain wants ter know if
you won't dance just one dance with him.”
“Yas, Rena,” pleaded
Mary B., who followed Miss Molly out to the piazza, “jes' one dance. I don't
think you+'re treatin' my comp'ny jes' right, Cousin Rena.”
“You+'re goin' down
there with 'im,” added her mother, “an' it 'd be just as well to be on friendly
terms with 'im.”
Wain himself had
followed the women. “Sho'ly, Miss Rena, you+'re gwine ter honah me wid one
dance? I+'d go 'way f'm dis pa'ty sad at hea't ef I had n' stood up oncet wid
de young lady er de house.”
As Rena, weakly
persuaded, placed her hand on Wain's arm and entered the house, a buggy, coming
up Front Street, paused a moment at the corner, and then turning slowly, drove
quietly up the nameless by-street, concealed by the intervening cedars, until
it reached a point from which the occupant could view, through the open front
window, the interior of the parlor.
MOVED by tenderness and
thoughts of self-sacrifice, which had occupied his mind to the momentary
exclusion of all else, Tryon had scarcely noticed, as be approached the house
behind the cedars, a strain of lively music, to which was added, as he drew
still nearer, the accompaniment of other festive sounds. He suddenly awoke,
however, to the fact that these signs of merriment came from the house at which
he had intended to stop;-- he had not meant that Rena should pass another
sleepless night of sorrow, or that he should himself endure another needless
hour of suspense.
He drew rein at the
corner. Shocked surprise, a nascent anger, a vague alarm, an insistent
curiosity, urged him nearer. Turning the mare into the side street and keeping
close to the fence, he drove ahead in the shadow of the cedars until he reached
a gap through which he could see into the open door and windows of the brightly
lighted hall.
There was evidently a
ball in progress. The fiddle was squeaking merrily so a tune that he remembered
well,--it was associated with one of the most delightful evenings of his life,
that of the tournament ball. A mellow negro voice was calling with a rhyming
accompaniment the figures of a quadrille. Tryon, with parted lips and slowly
hardening heart, leaned forward from the buggy- seat, gripping the rein so
tightly that his nails cut into the opposing palm. Above the clatter of noisy
conversation rose the fiddler's voice:-- “Swing yo' pa'dners; doan be shy, Look
yo' lady in de eye! Th'ow yo' ahm aroun' huh wais'; Take yo' time--dey ain' no
has'e!” To the middle of the floor, in full view through an open window,
advanced the woman who all day long had been the burden of his thoughts--not
pale with grief and hollow-eyed with weeping, but flushed with pleasure, around
her waist the arm of a burly, grinning mulatto, whose face was offensively familiar
to Tryon.
With a muttered curse
of concentrated bitterness, Tryon struck the mare a sharp blow with the whip.
The sensitive creature, spirited even in her great weariness, resented the lash
and started off with the bit in her teeth. Perceiving that it would be
difficult to turn in the narrow roadway without running into the ditch at the
left, Tryon gave the mare rein and dashed down the street, scarcely missing, as
the buggy crossed the bridge, a man standing abstractedly by the old canal, who
sprang aside barely in time to avoid being run over.
Meantime Rena was
passing through a trying ordeal. After the first few bars, the fiddler plunged
into a well-known air, in which Rena, keenly susceptible to musical
impressions, recognized the tune to which, as Queen of Love and Beauty, she had
opened the dance at her entrance into the world of life and love, for it was
there she had met George Tryon. The combination of music and movement brought
up the scene with great distinctness. Tryon, peering angrily through the
cedars, had not been more conscious than she of the external contrast between
her partners on this and the former occasion. She perceived, too, as Tryon from
the outside had not, the difference between Wain's wordy flattery (only saved
by his cousin's warning from pointed and fulsome adulation), and the tenderly
graceful compliment, couched in the romantic terms of chivalry, with which the
knight of the handkerchief had charmed her ear. It was only by an immense
effort that she was able to keep her emotions under control until the end of
the dance, when she fled to her chamber and burst into tears. It was not the
cruel Tryon who had blasted her love with his deadly look that she mourned, but
the gallant young knight who had worn her favor on his lance and crowned her
Queen of Love and Beauty.
Tryon's stay in
Patesville was very brief. He drove to the hotel and put up for the night.
During many sleepless hours his mind was in a turmoil with a very different set
of thoughts from those which had occupied it on the way to town. Not the least
of them was a profound self-contempt for his own lack of discernment. How had
he been so blind as not to have read long ago the character of this wretched
girl who had bewitched him? To-night his eyes had been opened--he had seen her
with the mask thrown off, a true daughter of a race in which the sensuous
enjoyment of the moment took precedence of taste or sentiment or any of the
higher emotions. Her few months of boarding- school, her brief association with
white people, had evidently been a mere veneer over the underlying negro, and
their effects had slipped away as soon as the intercourse had ceased. With the
monkey-like imitativeness of the negro she had copied the manners of white
people while she lived among them, and had dropped them with equal facility when
they ceased to serve a purpose. Who but a negro could have recovered so soon
from what had seemed a terrible bereavement?--she herself must have felt it at
the time, for otherwise she would not have swooned. A woman of sensibility, as
this one had seemed to be, should naturally feel more keenly, and for a longer
time than a man, an injury to the affections; but he, a son of the ruling race,
had been miserable for six weeks about a girl who had so far forgotten him as
already to plunge headlong into the childish amusements of her own ignorant and
degraded people. What more, indeed, he asked himself savagely,--what more could
be expected of the base-born child of the plaything of a gentleman's idle hour,
who to this ignoble origin added the blood of a servile race? And he, George
Tryon, had honored her with his love; he had very nearly linked his fate and
joined his blood to hers by the solemn sanctions of church and state. Tryon was
not a devout man, but he thanked God with religious fervor that he had been
saved a second time from a mistake which would have wrecked his whole future.
If he had yielded to the momentary weakness of the past night,--the outcome of
a sickly sentimentality to which he recognized now, in the light of reflection,
that he was entirely too prone,--he would have regretted it soon enough. The
black streak would have been sure to come out in some form, sooner or later, if
not in the wife, then in her children. He saw clearly enough, in this hour of
revulsion, that with his temperament and training such a union could never have
been happy. If all the world had been ignorant of the dark secret, it would
always have been in his own thoughts, or at least never far away. Each fault of
hers that the close daily association of husband and wife might reveal,--the
most flawless of sweethearts do not pass scathless through the long test of
matrimony,--every wayward impulse of his children, every defect of mind,
morals, temper, or health, would have been ascribed to the dark ancestral
strain. Happiness under such conditions would have been impossible.
When Tryon lay awake in
the early morning, after a few brief hours of sleep, the business which had
brought him to Patesville seemed, in the cold light of reason, so ridiculously
inadequate that he felt almost ashamed to have set up such a pretext for his
journey. The prospect, too, of meeting Dr. Green and his family, of having to
explain his former sudden departure, and of running a gauntlet of inquiry
concerning his marriage to the aristocratic Miss Warwick of South Carolina; the
fear that some one at Patesville might have suspected a connection between
Rena's swoon and his own flight,--these considerations so moved this
impressionable and impulsive young man that he called a bell-boy, demanded an early
breakfast, ordered his horse, paid his reckoning, and started upon his homeward
journey forthwith. A certain distrust of his own sensibility, which he felt to
be curiously inconsistent with his most positive convictions, led him to seek
the river bridge by a roundabout route which did not take him past the house
where, a few hours before, he had seen the last fragment of his idol shattered
beyond the hope of repair.
The party broke up at
an early hour, since most of the guests were working-people, and the travelers
were to make an early start next day. About nine in the morning, Wain drove
round to Mis' Molly's. Rena's trunk was strapped behind the buggy, and she set
out, in the company of Wain, for her new field of labor. The school term was
only two months in length, and she did not expect to return until its
expiration. Just before taking her seat in the buggy, Rena felt a sudden
sinking of the heart.
“Oh, mother,” she
whispered, as they stood wrapped in a close embrace, “I+'m afraid to leave you.
I left you once, and it turned out so miserably.”
“It+'ll turn out better
this time, honey,” replied her mother soothingly. “Good-by, child. Take care of
yo'self an' yo'r money, and write to yo'r mammy.”
One kiss all round, and
Rena was lifted into the buggy. Wain seized the reins, and under his skillful
touch the pretty mare began to prance and curvet with restrained impatience.
Wain could not resist the opportunity to show off before the party, which
included Mary B.'s entire family and several other neighbors, who had gathered
to see the travelers off.
“Good-by ter
Patesville! Good-by, folkses all!” he cried, with a wave of his disengaged
hand.
“Good-by, mother!
Good-by, all!” cried Rena, as with tears in her heart and a brave smile on her
face she left her home behind her for the second time.
When they had crossed
the river bridge, the travelers came to a long stretch of rising ground, from
the summit of which they could look back over the white sandy road for nearly a
mile. Neither Rena nor her companion saw Frank Fowler behind the chinquapin
bush at the foot of the hill, nor the gaze of mute love and longing with which
he watched the buggy mount the long incline. He had not been able to trust
himself to bid her farewell. He had seen her go away once before with every
prospect of happiness, and come back, a dove with a wounded wing, to the old
nest behind the cedars. She was going away again, with a man whom he disliked
and distrusted. If she had met misfortune before, what were her prospects for happiness
now?
The buggy paused at the
top of the hill, and Frank, shading his eyes with his hand, thought he could
see her turn and look behind. Look back, dear child, towards your home and
those who love you! For who knows more than this faithful worshiper what
threads of the past Fate is weaving into your future, or whether happiness or
misery lies before you?
THE road to Sampson
County lay for the most over the pine-clad sandhills,--an alternation of gentle
rises and gradual descents, with now and then a swamp of greater or less
extent. Long stretches of the highway led through the virgin forest, for miles
unbroken by a clearing or sign of human habitation.
They traveled slowly,
with frequent pauses in shady places, for the weather was hot. The journey,
made leisurely, required more than a day, and might with slight effort be
prolonged into two. They stopped for the night at a small village, where Wain
found lodging for Rena with an acquaintance of his, and for himself with another,
while a third took charge of the horse, the accommodation for travelers being
limited. Rena's appearance and manners were the subject of much comment. It was
necessary to explain to several curious white people that Rena was a woman of
color. A white woman might have driven with Wain without attracting
remark,--most white ladies had negro coachmen. That a woman of Rena's
complexion should eat at a negro's table, or sleep beneath a negro's roof, was
a seeming breach of caste which only black blood could excuse. The explanation
was never questioned. No white person of sound mind would ever claim to be a
negro.
They resumed their
journey somewhat late in the morning. Rena would willingly have hastened, for
she was anxious to plunge into her new work; but Wain seemed disposed to
prolong the pleasant drive, and beguiled the way for a time with stories of
wonderful things he had done and strange experiences of a somewhat checkered
career. He was shrewd enough to avoid any subject which would offend a modest young
woman, but too obtuse to perceive that much of what he said would not commend
him to a person of refinement. He made little reference to his possessions,
concerning which so much had been said at Patesville; and this reticence was a
point in his favor. If he had not been so much upon his guard and Rena so much
absorbed by thoughts of her future work, such a drive would have furnished a
person of her discernment a very fair measure of the man's character. To these
distractions must be added the entire absence of any idea that Wain might have
amorous designs upon her; and any shortcomings of manners or speech were
excused by the broad mantle of charity which Rena in her new-found zeal for the
welfare of her people was willing to throw over all their faults. They were the
victims of oppression; they were not responsible for its results.
Toward the end of the
second day, while nearing their destination, the travelers passed a large white
house standing back from the road at the foot of a lane. Around it grew
widespreading trees and well-kept shrubbery. The fences were in good repair.
Behind the house and across the road stretched extensive fields of cotton and
waving corn. They had passed no other place that showed such signs of thrift
and prosperity.
“Oh, what a lovely
place!” exclaimed Rena. “That is yours, is+n't it?”
“No; we ain't got to my
house yet,” he answered. “Dat house b'longs ter de riches' people roun' here.
Dat house is over in de nex' county. We+'re right close to de line now.”
Shortly afterwards they
turned off from the main highway they had been pursuing, and struck into a
narrower road to the left.
“De main road,”
explained Wain, “goes on to Clinton, 'bout five miles er mo' away. Dis one
we+'re turnin' inter now will take us to my place, which is 'bout three miles
fu'ther on. We+'ll git dere now in an hour er so.”
Wain lived in an old
plantation house, somewhat dilapidated, and surrounded by an air of neglect and
shiftlessness, but still preserving a remnant of dignity in its outlines and
comfort in its interior arrangements. Rena was assigned a large room on the
second floor. She was somewhat surprised at the make-up of the household.
Wain's mother-- an old woman, much darker than her son--kept house for him. A
sister with two children lived in the house. The element of surprise lay in the
presence of two small children left by Wain's wife, of whom Rena now heard for
the first time. He had lost his wife, he informed Rena sadly, a couple of years
before.
“Yas, Miss Rena,” she
sighed, “de Lawd give her, an' de Lawd tuck her away. Blessed be de name er de
Lawd.” He accompanied this sententious quotation with a wicked look from under
his half-closed eyelids that Rena did not see.
The following morning
Wain drove her in his buggy over to the county town, where she took the
teacher's examination. She was given a seat in a room with a number of other
candidates for certificates, but the fact leaking out from some remark of
Wain's that she was a colored girl, objection was quietly made by several of
the would-be teachers to her presence in the room, and she was requested to
retire until the white teachers should have been examined. An hour or two later
she was given a separate examination, which she passed without difficulty. The
examiner, a gentleman of local standing, was dimly conscious that she might not
have found her exclusion pleasant, and was especially polite. It would have
been strange, indeed, if he had not been impressed by her sweet face and air of
modest dignity, which were all the more striking because of her social
disability. He fell into conversation with her, became interested in her hopes
and aims, and very cordially offered to be of service, if at any time he might,
in connection with her school.
“You have the
satisfaction,” he said, “of receiving the only first-grade certificate issued
to-day. You might teach a higher grade of pupils than you will find at Sandy
Run, but let us hope that you may in time raise them to your own level.”
“Which I doubt very
much,” he muttered to himself, as she went away with Wain. “What a pity that
such a woman should be a nigger! If she were anything to me, though, I should
hate to trust her anywhere near that saddle-colored scoundrel. He's a
thoroughly bad lot, and will bear watching.”
Rena, however, was
serenely ignorant of any danger from the accommodating Wain. Absorbed in her
own thoughts and plans, she had not sought to look beneath the surface of his
somewhat overdone politeness. In a few days she began her work as teacher, and
sought to forget in the service of others the dull sorrow that still gnawed at
her heart.
BLANCHE LEARY, closely
observant of Tryon's moods, marked a decided change in his manner after his return
from his trip to Patesville. His former moroseness had given way to a certain
defiant lightness, broken now and then by an involuntary sigh, but maintained
so well, on the whole, that his mother detected no lapses whatever. The change
was characterized by another feature agreeable to both the women: Tryon showed
decidedly more interest than ever before in Miss Leary's society. Within a week
he asked her several times to play a selection on the piano, displaying, as she
noticed, a decided preference for gay and cheerful music, and several times
suggesting a change when she chose pieces of a sentimental cast. More than
once, during the second week after his return, he went out riding with her; she
was a graceful horsewoman, perfectly at home in the saddle, and appearing to
advantage in a riding- habit. She was aware that Tryon watched her now and
then, with an eye rather critical than indulgent.
“He is comparing me
with some other girl,” she surmised. “I seem to stand the test very well. I
wonder who the other is, and what was the trouble?”
Miss Leary exerted all
her powers to interest and amuse the man she had set out to win, and who seemed
nearer than ever before. Tryon, to his pleased surprise, discovered in her mind
depths that he had never suspected. She displayed a singular affinity for the
tastes that were his--he could not, of course, know how carefully she had
studied them. The old wound, recently reopened, seemed to be healing rapidly,
under conditions more conducive than before to perfect recovery. No longer,
indeed, was he pursued by the picture of Rena discovered and unmasked--this he
had definitely banished from the realm of sentiment to that of reason. The
haunting image of Rena loving and beloved, amid the harmonious surroundings of
her brother's home, was not so readily displaced. Nevertheless, he reached in
several weeks a point from which he could consider her as one thinks of a dear
one removed by the hand of death, or smitten by some incurable ailment of mind
or body. Erelong, he fondly believed, the recovery would be so far complete
that he could consign to the tomb of pleasant memories even the most thrilling
episodes of his ill-starred courtship.
“George,” said Mrs.
Tryon one morning while her son was in this cheerful mood, “I+'m sending
Blanche over to Major McLeod's to do an errand for me. Would you mind driving
her over? The road may be rough after the storm last night, and Blanche has an
idea that no one drives so well as you.”
“Why, yes, mother,
I+'ll be glad to drive Blanche over. I want to see the major myself.”
They were soon bowling
along between the pines, behind the handsome mare that had carried Tryon so
well at the Clarence tournament. Presently he drew up sharply.
“A tree has fallen
squarely across the road,” he exclaimed. “We shall have to turn back a little
way and go around.”
They drove back a
quarter of a mile and turned into a by-road leading to the right through the
woods. The solemn silence of the pine forest is soothing or oppressive,
according to one's mood. Beneath the cool arcade of the tall, overarching trees
a deep peace stole over Tryon's heart. He had put aside indefinitely and
forever an unhappy and impossible love. The pretty and affectionate girl beside
him would make an ideal wife. Of her family and blood he was sure. She was his
mother's choice, and his mother had set her heart upon their marriage. Why not
speak to her now, and thus give himself the best possible protection against
stray flames of love?
“Blanche,” he said,
looking at her kindly
“Yes, George?” Her
voice was very gentle, and slightly tremulous. Could she have divined his
thought? Love is a great clairvoyant.
“Blanche, dear, I”--
A clatter of voices
broke upon the stillness of the forest and interrupted Tryon's speech. A sudden
turn to the left brought the buggy to a little clearing, in the midst of which
stood a small log schoolhouse. Out of the schoolhouse a swarm of colored
children were emerging, the suppressed energy of the school hour finding vent
in vocal exercise of various sorts. A group had already formed a ring, and were
singing with great volume and vigor:--
“Miss Jane, she loves sugar an' tea, Miss Jane, she loves candy. Miss
Jane, she can whirl all around An' kiss her love quite handy. “De oak grows
tall, De pine grows slim, So rise you up, my true love, An' let me come in.” “What a funny little darkey!”
exclaimed Miss Leary, pointing to a diminutive lad who was walking on his
hands, with his feet balanced in the air. At sight of the buggy and its
occupants this sable acrobat, still retaining his inverted position, moved
toward the newcomers, and, reversing himself with a sudden spring, brought up
standing beside the buggy.
“Hoddy, Mars Geo'ge!”
he exclaimed, bobbing his head and kicking his heel out behind in approved
plantation style.
“Hello, Plato,” replied
the young man, “what are you doing here?”
“Gwine ter school, Mars
Geo'ge,” replied the lad; “larnin' ter read an' write, suh, lack de w'ite
folks.”
“Wat you callin' dat
w'ite man marster fur?” whispered a tall yellow boy to the acrobat addressed as
Plato. “You don' b'long ter him no mo'; you+'re free, an' ain' got sense ernuff
ter know it.”
Tryon threw a small
coin to Plato, and holding another in his hand suggestively, smiled toward the
tall yellow boy, who looked regretfully at the coin, but stood his ground; he
would call no man master, not even for a piece of money.
During this little
colloquy, Miss Leary had kept her face turned toward the schoolhouse.
“What a pretty girl!”
she exclaimed. “There,” she added, as Tryon turned his head toward her, “you
are too late. She has retired into her castle. Oh, Plato!”
“Yas, missis,” replied
Plato, who was prancing round the buggy in great glee, on the strength of his
acquaintance with the white folks.
“Is your teacher white?”
“No, ma'm, she ain't
w'ite; she's black. She looks lack she+'s w'ite, but she+'s black.”
Tryon had not seen the
teacher's face, but the incident had jarred the old wound; Miss Leary's
description of the teacher, together with Plato's characterization, had stirred
lightly sleeping memories. He was more or less abstracted during the remainder
of the drive, and did not recur to the conversation that had been interrupted
by coming upon the schoolhouse.
The teacher, glancing
for a moment through the open door of the schoolhouse, had seen a handsome
young lady staring at her,--Miss Leary had a curiously intent look when she was
interested in anything, with no intention whatever to be rude,-- and beyond the
lady the back and shoulder of a man, whose face was turned the other way. There
was a vague suggestion of something familiar about the equipage, but Rena
shrank from this close scrutiny and withdrew out of sight before she had had an
opportunity to identify the vague resemblance to something she had known.
Miss Leary had missed
by a hair's-breadth the psychological moment, and felt some resentment toward
the little negroes who had interrupted her lover's train of thought. Negroes
have caused a great deal of trouble among white people. How deeply the shadow
of the Ethiopian had fallen upon her own happiness, Miss Leary of course could
not guess.
A FEW days later, Rena
looked out of the window near her desk and saw a low basket phaeton, drawn by a
sorrel pony, driven sharply into the clearing and drawn up beside an oak
sapling. The occupant of the phaeton, a tall, handsome, well-preserved lady in
middle life, with slightly gray hair, alighted briskly from the phaeton, tied
the pony to the sapling with a hitching-strap, and advanced to the schoolhouse
door.
Rena wondered who the
lady might be. She had a benevolent aspect, however, and came forward to the
desk with a smile, not at all embarrassed by the wide-eyed inspection of the
entire school.
“How do you do?” she
said, extending her hand to the teacher. “I live in the neighborhood and am
interested in the colored people--a good many of them once belonged to me. I
heard something of your school, and thought I should like to make your
acquaintance.”
“It is very kind of
you, indeed,” murmured Rena respectfully.
“Yes,” continued the
lady, “I am not one of those who sit back and blame their former slaves because
they were freed. They are free now,--it is all decided and settled,--and they
ought to be taught enough to enable them to make good use of their freedom. But
really, my dear,--you must+n't feel offended if I make a mistake,--I am going
to ask you something very personal.” She looked suggestively at the gaping
pupils.
“The school may take
the morning recess now,” announced the teacher. The pupils filed out in an
orderly manner, most of them stationing themselves about the grounds in such places
as would keep the teacher and the white lady in view. Very few white persons
approved of the colored schools; no other white person had ever visited this
one.
“Are you really
colored?” asked the lady, when the children had withdrawn.
A year and a half
earlier, Rena would have met the question by some display of
self-consciousness. Now, she replied simply and directly.
“Yes, ma'am, I am
colored.”
The lady, who had been
studying her as closely as good manners would permit, sighed regretfully.
“Well, it+'s a shame.
No one would ever think it. If you chose to conceal it, no one would ever be
the wiser. What is your name, child, and where were you brought up? You must
have a romantic history.”
Rena gave her name and
a few facts in regard to her past. The lady was so much interested, and put so
many and such searching questions, that Rena really found it more difficult to
suppress the fact that she had been white, than she had formerly had in hiding
her African origin. There was about the girl an air of real refinement that
pleased the lady,--the refinement not merely of a fine nature, but of contact
with cultured people; a certain reserve of speech and manner quite inconsistent
with Mrs. Tryon's experience of colored women. The lady was interested and
slightly mystified. A generous, impulsive spirit,--her son's own mother,--she
made minute inquiries about the school and the pupils, several of whom she knew
by name. Rena stated that the two months' term was nearing its end, and that
she was training the children in various declamations and dialogues for the
exhibition at the close.
“I shall attend it,”
declared the lady positively. “I+'m sure you are doing a good work, and it+'s
very noble of you to undertake it when you might have a very different future.
If I can serve you at any time, don't hesitate to call upon me. I live in the
big white house just before you turn out of the Clinton road to come this way.
I+'m only a widow, but my son George lives with me and has some influence in
the neighborhood. He drove by here yesterday with the lady he is going to
marry. It was she who told me about you.”
Was it the name, or
some subtle resemblance in speech or feature, that recalled Tryon's image to
Rena's mind? It was not so far away--the image of the loving Tryon--that any
powerful witchcraft was required to call it up. His mother was a widow; Rena
had thought, in happier days, that she might be such a kind lady as this. But
the cruel Tryon who had left her--his mother would be some hard, cold, proud woman,
who would regard a negro as but little better than a dog, and who would not
soil her lips by addressing a colored person upon any other terms than as a
servant. She knew, too, that Tryon did not live in Sampson County, though the
exact location of his home was not clear to her.
“And where are you
staying, my dear?” asked the good lady.
“I+'m boarding at Mrs.
Wain's,” answered Rena.
“Mrs. Wain's?”
“Yes, they live in the
old Campbell place.”
“Oh, yes--Aunt Nancy.
She+'s a good enough woman, but we don't think much of her son Jeff. He married
my Amanda after the war--she used to belong to me, and ought to have known
better. He abused her most shamefully, and had to be threatened with the law.
She left him a year or so ago and went away; I have+n't seen her lately. Well,
good-by, child; I+'m coming to your exhibition. If you ever pass my house, come
in and see me.”
The good lady had
talked for half an hour, and had brought a ray of sunshine into the teacher's
monotonous life, heretofore lighted only by the uncertain lamp of high resolve.
She had satisfied a pardonable curiosity, and had gone away without mentioning
her name.
Rena saw Plato untying
the pony as the lady climbed into the phaeton.
“Who was the lady,
Plato?” asked the teacher when the visitor had driven away.
“Dat 'uz my ole
mist'iss, ma'm,” returned Plato proudly,--s; ole Mis' 'Liza.”
“Mis' 'Liza who?” asked
Rena.
“Mis' 'Liza Tryon. I
use' ter b'long ter her. Dat 'uz her son, my young Mars Geo'ge, w'at driv pas'
hyuh yistiddy wid 'is sweetheart.”
RENA had found her task
not a difficult one so far as discipline was concerned. Her pupils were of a
docile race, and school to them had all the charm of novelty. The teacher
commanded some awe because she was a stranger, and some, perhaps, because she
was white; for the theory of blackness as propounded by Plato could not quite
counter- balance in the young African mind the evidence of their own senses.
She combined gentleness with firmness; and if these had not been sufficient,
she had reserves of character which would have given her the mastery over much
less plastic material than these ignorant but eager young people. The work of
instruction was simple enough, for most of the pupils began with the alphabet,
which they acquired from Webster's blue-backed spelling- book, the palladium of
Southern education at that epoch. The much abused carpet-baggers had put the
spelling-book within reach of every child of school age in North Carolina,--a
fact which is often overlooked when the carpet-baggers are held up to public
odium. Even the devil should have his due, and is not so black as he is
painted.
At the time when she
learned that Tryon lived in the neighborhood, Rena had already been subjected
for several weeks to a trying ordeal. Wain had begun to persecute her with
marked attentions. She had at first gone to board at his house,--or, by
courtesy, with his mother. For a week or two she had considered his attentions
in no other light than those of a member of the school committee sharing her
own zeal and interested in seeing the school successfully carried on. In this
character Wain had driven her to the town for her examination; he had busied
himself about putting the schoolhouse in order, and in various matters
affecting the conduct of the school. He had jocularly offered to come and whip
the children for her, and had found it convenient to drop in occasionally,
ostensibly to see what progress the work was making.
“Dese child'en,” he
would observe sonorously, in the presence of the school, “oughter be monst'ous
glad ter have de chance er settin' under yo' instruction, Miss Rena. I+'m sho'
eve'body in dis neighbo'hood 'preciates de priv'lege er havin' you in ou'
mids'.”
Though slightly
embarrassing to the teacher, these public demonstrations were endurable so long
as they could be regarded as mere official appreciation of her work. Sincerely
in earnest about her undertaking, she had plunged into it with all the
intensity of a serious nature which love had stirred to activity. A pessimist
might have sighed sadly or smiled cynically at the notion that a poor, weak
girl, with a dangerous beauty and a sensitive soul, and troubles enough of her
own, should hope to accomplish anything appreciable toward lifting the black
mass still floundering in the mud where slavery had left it, and where
emancipation had found it,--the mud in which, for aught that could be seen to
the contrary, her little feet, too, were hopelessly entangled. It might have
seemed like expecting a man to lift himself by his boot-straps.
But Rena was no
philosopher, either sad or cheerful. She could not even have replied to this
argument, that races must lift themselves, and the most that can be done by
others is to give them opportunity and fair play. Hers was a simpler
reasoning,--the logic by which the world is kept going onward and upward when
philosophers are at odds and reformers are not forthcoming. She knew that for
every child she taught to read and write she opened, if ever so little, the
door of opportunity, and she was happy in the consciousness of performing a
duty which seemed all the more imperative because newly discovered. Her zeal,
indeed, for the time being was like that of an early Christian, who was more
willing than not to die for his faith. Rena had fully and firmly made up her
mind to sacrifice her life upon this altar. Her absorption in the work had not
been without its reward, for thereby she had been able to keep at a distance
the spectre of her lost love. Her dreams she could not control, but she
banished Tryon as far as possible from her waking thoughts.
When Wain's attentions
became obviously personal, Rena's new vestal instinct took alarm, and she began
to apprehend his character more clearly. She had long ago learned that his
pretensions to wealth were a sham. He was nominal owner of a large plantation,
it is true; but the land was worn out, and mortgaged to the limit of its
security value. His reputed droves of cattle and hogs had dwindled to a mere
handful of lean and listless brutes.
Her clear eye, when
once set to take Wain's measure, soon fathomed his shallow, selfish soul, and
detected, or at least divined, behind his mask of good-nature a lurking
brutality which filled her with vague distrust, needing only occasion to
develop it into active apprehension,--occasion which was not long wanting. She
avoided being alone with him at home by keeping carefully with the women of the
house. If she were left alone,--and they soon showed a tendency to leave her on
any pretext whenever Wain came near,--she would seek her own room and lock the
door. She preferred not to offend Wain; she was far away from home and in a
measure in his power, but she dreaded his compliments and sickened at his
smile. She was also compelled to hear his relations sing his praises.
“My son Jeff,” old Mrs.
Wain would say, “is de bes' man you ever seed. His fus' wife had de easies'
time an' de happies' time er ary woman in dis settlement. He+'s grieve' fer her
a long time, but I reckon he+'s gittin' over it, an' de nex' 'oman w'at marries
him+'ll git a box er pyo' gol', ef I does say it as is his own mammy.”
Rena had thought Wain
rather harsh with his household, except in her immediate presence. His mother
and sister seemed more or less afraid of him, and the children often anxious to
avoid him.
One day, he timed his
visit to the schoolhouse so as to walk home with Rena through the woods. When
she became aware of his purpose, she called to one of the children who was
loitering behind the others, “Wait a minute, Jenny. I+'m going your way, and
you can walk along with me.”
Wain with difficulty
hid a scowl behind a smiling front. When they had gone a little distance along
the road through the woods, he clapped his hand upon his pocket.
“I declare ter
goodness,” he exclaimed, “ef I ain't dropped my pocket-knife! I thought I felt
somethin' slip th'ough dat hole in my pocket jes' by the big pine stump in the
schoolhouse ya'd. Jinny, chile, run back an' hunt fer my knife, an' I+'ll give
yer five cents ef yer find it. Me an' Miss Rena+'ll walk on slow 'tel you
ketches us.”
Rena did not dare to
object, though she was afraid to be alone with this man. If she could have had
a moment to think, she would have volunteered to go back with Jenny and look
for the knife, which, although a palpable subterfuge on her part, would have
been one to which Wain could not object; but the child, dazzled by the prospect
of reward, had darted back so quickly that this way of escape was cut off. She
was evidently in for a declaration of love, which she had taken infinite pains
to avoid. Just the form it would assume, she could not foresee. She was not
long left in suspense. No sooner was the child well oat of sight than Wain
threw his arms suddenly about her waist and smilingly attempted to kiss her.
Speechless with fear
and indignation, she tore herself from his grasp with totally unexpected force,
and fled incontinently along the forest path. Wain--who, to do him justice, had
merely meant to declare his passion in what he had hoped might prove a not
unacceptable fashion--followed in some alarm, expostulating and apologizing as
he went. But he was heavy and Rena was light, and fear lent wings to her feet.
He followed her until he saw her enter the house of Elder Johnson, the father
of several of her pupils, after which he sneaked uneasily homeward, somewhat
apprehensive of the consequences of his abrupt wooing, which was evidently open
to an unfavorable construction. When, an hour later, Rena sent one of the
Johnson children for some of her things, with a message explaining that the
teacher had been invited to spend a few days at Elder Johnson's, Wain felt a
pronounced measure of relief. For an hour he had even thought it might be
better to relinquish his pursuit. With a fatuousness born of vanity, however,
no sooner had she sent her excuse than he began to look upon her visit to
Johnson's as a mere exhibition of coyness, which, together with her conduct in
the woods, was merely intended to lure him on.
Right upon the heels of
the perturbation caused by Wain's conduct, Rena discovered that Tryon lived in
the neighborhood; that not only might she meet him any day upon the highway,
but that he had actually driven by the schoolhouse. That he knew or would know
of her proximity there could be no possible doubt, since she had freely told
his mother her name and her home. A hot wave of shame swept over her at the
thought that George Tryon might imagine she were following him, throwing
herself in his way, and at the thought of the construction which he might place
upon her actions. Caught thus between two emotional fires, at the very time
when her school duties, owing to the approaching exhibition, demanded all her
energies, Rena was subjected to a physical and mental strain that only youth
and health could have resisted, and then only for a short time.
TRYON'S first feeling,
when his mother at the dinner-table gave an account of her visit to the
schoolhouse in the woods, was one of extreme annoyance. Why, of all created
beings, should this particular woman be chosen to teach the colored school at
Sandy Run? Had she learned that he lived in the neighborhood, and had she
sought the place hoping that he might consent to renew, on different terms,
relations which could never be resumed upon their former footing? Six weeks
before, he would not have believed her capable of following him; but his last
visit to Patesville had revealed her character in such a light that it was
difficult to predict what she might do. It was, however, no affair of his. He
was done with her; he had dismissed her from his own life, where she had never
properly belonged, and he had filled her place, or would soon fill it, with
another and worthier woman. Even his mother, a woman of keen discernment and
delicate intuitions, had been deceived by this girl's specious exterior. She
had brought away from her interview of the morning the impression that Rena was
a fine, pure spirit, born out of place, through some freak of Fate, devoting
herself with heroic self-sacrifice to a noble cause. Well, he had imagined her
just as pure and fine, and she had deliberately, with a negro's low cunning,
deceived him into believing that she was a white girl. The pretended confession
of the brother, in which he had spoken of the humble origin of the family, had
been, consciously or unconsciously, the most disingenuous feature of the whole
miserable performance. They had tried by a show of frankness to satisfy their
own consciences,--they doubtless had enough of white blood to give them a
rudimentary trace of such a moral organ,--and by the same act to disarm him
against future recriminations, in the event of possible discovery. How was he
to imagine that persons of their appearance and pretensions were tainted with
negro blood? The more he dwelt upon the subject, the more angry he became with
those who had surprised his virgin heart and deflowered it by such low
trickery. The man who brought the first negro into the British colonies had
committed a crime against humanity and a worse crime against his own race. The
father of this girl had been guilty of a sin against society for which
others--for which he, George Tryon-- must pay the penalty. As slaves, negroes
were tolerable. As freemen, they were an excrescence, an alien element
incapable of absorption into the body politic of white men. He would like to
send them all back to the Africa from which their forefathers had
come,--unwillingly enough, he would admit, --and he would like especially to
banish this girl from his own neighborhood; not indeed that her presence would
make any difference to him, except as a humiliating reminder of his own folly
and weakness with which he could very well dispense.
Of this state of mind
Tryon gave no visible manifestation beyond a certain taciturnity, so much at
variance with his recent liveliness that the ladies could not fail to notice
it. No effort upon the part of either was able to affect his mood, and they
both resigned themselves to await his lordship's pleasure to be companionable.
For a day or two, Tryon
sedulously kept away from the neighborhood of the schoolhouse at Sandy Rim. He
really had business which would have taken him in that direction, but made a
detour of five miles rather than go near his abandoned and discredited
sweetheart.
But George Tryon was
wisely distrustful of his own impulses. Driving one day along the road to
Clinton, he overhauled a diminutive black figure trudging along the road,
occasionally turning a handspring by way of diversion.
“Hello, Plato,” called
Tryon, “do you want a lift?”
“Hoddy, Mars Geo'ge.
Kin I ride wid you?”
“Jump up.”
Plato mounted into the
buggy with the agility to be expected from a lad of his acrobatic
accomplishments. The two almost immediately fell into conversation upon perhaps
the only subject of common interest between them. Before the town was reached,
Tryon knew, so far as Plato could make it plain, the estimation in which the
teacher was held by pupils and parents. He had learned the hours of opening and
dismissal of the school, where the teacher lived, her habits of coming to and
going from the schoolhouse, and the road she always followed.
“Does she go to church
or anywhere else with Jeff Wain, Plato?” asked Tryon.
“No, suh, she don' go
nowhar wid nobody excep'n' ole Elder Johnson er Mis' Johnson, an' de child'en.
She use' ter stop at Mis' Wain's, but she+'s stayin' wid Elder Johnson now. She
alluz makes some er de child'en go home wid er f'm school,” said Plato, proud
to find in Mars Geo'ge an appreciative listener,--“sometimes one an' sometimes
anudder. I+'s be'n home wid 'er twice, ann it+'ll be my tu'n ag'in befo' long.”
“Plato,” remarked Tryon
impressively, as they drove into the town, “do you think you could keep a
secret?”
“Yas, Mars Geo'ge, ef
you says I shill.”
“Do you see this
fifty-cent piece?” Tryon displayed a small piece of paper money, crisp and
green in its newness.
“Yas, Mars Geo'ge,”
replied Plato, fixing his eyes respectfully on the government's promise to pay.
Fifty cents was a large sum of money. His acquaintance with Mars Geo'ge gave
him the privilege of looking at money. When he grew up, he would be able, in
good times, to earn fifty cents a day.
“I am going to give
this to you, Plato.”
Plato's eyes opened
wide as saucers. “Me, Mars Geo'ge?” he asked in amazement.
“Yes, Plato. I+'m going
to write a letter while I+'m in town, and want you to take it. Meet me here in
half an hour, and I+'ll give you the letter. Meantime, keep your mouth shut.”
“Yas, Mars Geo'ge,”
replied Plato with a grin that distended that organ unduly. That he did not
keep it shut may be inferred from the fact that within the next half hour he
had eaten and drunk fifty cents' worth of candy, ginger-pop, and other
available delicacies that appealed to the youthful palate. Having nothing more
to spend, and the high prices prevailing for some time after the war having
left him capable of locomotion, Plato was promptly on hand at the appointed
time and place.
Tryon placed a letter
in Plato's hand, still sticky with molasses candy,--he had inclosed it in a
second cover by way of protection. “Give that letter,” he said, “to your
teacher; don't say a word about it to a living soul; bring me an answer, and
give it into my own hand, and you shall have another half dollar.”
Tryon was quite aware
that by a surreptitious correspondence he ran some risk of compromising Rena.
But he had felt, as soon as he had indulged his first opportunity to talk of
her, an irresistible impulse to see her and speak to her again. He could
scarcely call at her boarding-place,-- what possible proper excuse could a
young white man have for visiting a colored woman? At the schoolhouse she would
be surrounded by her pupils, and a private interview would be as difficult,
with more eyes to remark and more tongues to comment upon it. He might address
her by mail, but did not know how often she sent to the nearest post-office. A
letter mailed in the town must pass through the hands of a postmaster
notoriously inquisitive and evil-minded, who was familiar with Tryon's
handwriting and had ample time to attend to other people's business. To meet
the teacher alone on the road seemed scarcely feasible, according to Plato's
statement. A messenger, then, was not only the least of several evils, but
really the only practicable way to communicate with Rena. He thought he could
trust Plato, though miserably aware that he could not trust himself where this
girl was concerned.
The letter handed by
Tryon to Plato, and by the latter delivered with due secrecy and precaution,
ran as follows:--
DEAR MISS WARWICK,--You
may think it strange that I should address you after what has passed between
us; but learning from my mother of your presence in the neighborhood, I am
constrained to believe that you do not find my proximity embarrassing, and I
cannot resist the wish to meet you at least once more, and talk over the
circumstances of our former friendship. From a practical point of view this may
seem superfluous, as the matter has been definitely settled. I have no desire
to find fault with you; on the contrary, I wish to set myself right with regard
to my own actions, and to assure you of my good wishes. In other words, since
we must part, I would rather we parted friends than enemies. If nature and
society --or Fate, to put it another way--have decreed that we cannot live
together, it is nevertheless possible that we may carry into the future a pleasant
though somewhat sad memory of a past friendship. Will you not grant me one
interview? I appreciate the difficulty of arranging it; I have found it almost
as hard to communicate with you by letter. I will suit myself to your
convenience and meet you at any time and place you may designate. Please answer
by bearer, who I think is trustworthy, and believe me, whatever your answer may
be, Respectfully yours, G. T.
The next day but one
Tryon received through the mail the following reply to his letter:-- GEORGE
TRYON, ESQ.
Dear Sir,--I have
requested your messenger to say that I will answer your letter by mail, which I
shall now proceed to do. I assure you that I was entirely ignorant of your
residence in this neighborhood, or it would have been the last place on earth
in which I should have set foot.
As to our past
relations, they were ended by your own act. I frankly confess that I deceived
you; I have paid the penalty, and have no complaint to make. I appreciate the
delicacy which has made you respect my brother's secret, and thank you for it.
I remember the whole affair with shame and humiliation, and would willingly
forget it.
As to a future
interview, I do not see what good it would do either of us. You are white, and
you have given me to understand that I am black. I accept the classification,
however unfair, and the consequences, however unjust, one of which is that we
cannot meet in the same parlor, in the same church, at the same table, or
anywhere, in social intercourse; upon a steamboat we would not sit at the same
table; we could not walk together on the street, or meet publicly anywhere and
converse, without unkind remark. As a white man, this might not mean a great
deal to you; as a woman, shut out already by my color from much that is desirable,
my good name remains my most valuable possession. I beg of you to let me alone.
The best possible proof you can give me of your good wishes is to relinquish
any desire or attempt to see me. I shall have finished my work here in a few
days. I have other troubles, of which you know nothing, and any meeting with
you would only add to a burden which is already as much as I can bear. To speak
of parting is superfluous-- we have already parted. It were idle to dream of a
future friendship between people so widely different in station. Such a
friendship, if possible in itself, would never be tolerated by the lady whom
you are to marry, with whom you drove by my schoolhouse the other day. A
gentleman so loyal to his race and its traditions as you have shown yourself
could not be less faithful to the lady to whom he has lost his heart and his
memory in three short months.
No, Mr. Tryon, our
romance is ended, and better so. We could never have been happy. I have found a
work in which I may be of service to others who have fewer opportunities than
mine have been. Leave me in peace, I beseech you, and I shall soon pass out of
your neighborhood as I have passed out of your life, and hope to pass out of
your memory. Yours very truly, ROWENA WALDEN.
TO Rena's high-strung
and sensitive nature, already under very great tension from her past
experience, the ordeal of the next few days was a severe one. On the one hand,
Jeff Wain's infatuation had rapidly increased, in view of her speedy departure.
From Mrs. Tryon's remark about Wain's wife Amanda, and from things Rena had
since learned, she had every reason to believe that this wife was living, and
that Wain must be aware of the fact. In the light of this knowledge, Wain's
former conduct took on a blacker significance than, upon reflection, she had
charitably clothed it with after the first flush of indignation. That he had
not given up his design to make love to her was quite apparent, and, with
Amanda alive, his attentions, always offensive since she had gathered their
import, became in her eyes the expression of a villainous purpose, of which she
could not speak to others, and from which she felt safe only so long as she
took proper precautions against it. In a week her school would be over, and
then she would get Elder Johnson, or some one else than Wain, to take her back
to Patesville. True, she might abandon her school and go at once; but her work
would be incomplete, she would have violated her contract, she would lose her
salary for the month, explanations would be necessary, and would not be
forthcoming{,sic} She might feign sickness,--indeed, it would scarcely be
feigning, for she felt far from well; she had never, since her illness, quite
recovered her former vigor--but the inconvenience to others would be the same,
and her self-sacrifice would have had, at its very first trial, a lame and
impotent conclusion. She had as yet no fear of personal violence from Wain;
but, under the circumstances, his attentions were an insult. He was evidently
bent upon conquest, and vain enough to think he might achieve it by virtue of
his personal attractions. If he could have understood how she loathed the sight
of his narrow eyes, with their puffy lids, his thick, tobacco-stained lips, his
doubtful teeth, and his unwieldy person, Wain, a monument of conceit that he
was, might have shrunk, even in his own estimation, to something like his real
proportions. Rena believed that, to defend herself from persecution at his
hands, it was only necessary that she never let him find her alone. This,
however, required constant watchfulness. Relying upon his own powers, and upon
a woman's weakness and aversion to scandal, from which not even the purest may
always escape unscathed, and convinced by her former silence that he had
nothing serious to fear, Wain made it a point to be present at every public
place where she might be. He assumed, in conversation with her which she could
not avoid, and stated to others, that she had left his house because of a
previous promise to divide the time of her stay between Elder Johnson's house
and his own. He volunteered to teach a class in the Sunday-school which Rena
conducted at the colored Methodist church, and when she remained to service,
occupied a seat conspicuously near her own. In addition to these public
demonstrations, which it was impossible to escape, or, it seemed, with so
thick- skinned an individual as Wain, even to discourage, she was secretly and
uncomfortably conscious that she could scarcely stir abroad without the risk of
encountering one of two men, each of whom was on the lookout for an opportunity
to find her alone.
The knowledge of
Tryon's presence in the vicinity had been almost as much as Rena could bear. To
it must be added the consciousness that he, too, was pursuing her, to what end
she could not tell. After his letter to her brother, and the feeling therein
displayed, she found it necessary to crush once or twice a wild hope that, her
secret being still unknown save to a friendly few, he might return and claim
her. Now, such an outcome would be impossible. He had become engaged to another
woman,--this in itself would be enough to keep him from her, if it were not an
index of a vastly more serious barrier, a proof that he had never loved her. If
he had loved her truly, he would never have forgotten her in three short
months,--three long months they had heretofore seemed to her, for in them she
had lived a lifetime of experience. Another impassable barrier lay in the fact
that his mother had met her, and that she was known in the neighborhood. Thus
cut off from any hope that she might be anything to him, she had no wish to
meet her former lover; no possible good could come of such a meeting; and yet
her fluttering heart told her that if he should come, as his letter
foreshadowed that he might,--if he should come, the loving George of old, with
soft words and tender smiles and specious talk of friendship--ah! then, her
heart would break! She must not meet him--at any cost she must avoid him.
But this heaping up of
cares strained her endurance to the breaking-point. Toward the middle of the
last week, she knew that she had almost reached the limit, and was haunted by a
fear that she might break down before the week was over. Now her really fine
nature rose to the emergency, though she mustered her forces with a great
effort. If she could keep Wain at his distance and avoid Tryon for three days
longer, her school labors would be ended and she might retire in peace and
honor.
“Miss Rena,” said Plato
to her on Tuesday, “ain't it 'bout time I wuz gwine home wid you ag'in?"
“You may go with me
to-morrow, Plato,” answered the teacher.
After school Plato met
an anxious eyed young man in the woods a short distance from the schoolhouse.
“Well, Plato, what
news?”
“I+'s gwine ter see her
home ter-morrer, Mars Geo'ge.”
“To-morrow!” replied
Tryon; “how very fortunate! I wanted you to go to town to-morrow to take an
important message for me. I+'m sorry, Plato--you might have earned another
dollar.”
To lie is a disgraceful
thing, and yet there are times when, to a lover's mind, love dwarfs all
ordinary laws. Plato scratched his head disconsolately, but suddenly a bright
thought struck him.
“Can't I go ter town
fer you atter I+'ve seed her home, Mars Geo'ge?"
“N-o, I+'m afraid it
would be too late,” returned Tryon doubtfully.
“Den I+'ll haf ter ax
'er ter lemme go nex' day,” said Plato, with resignation. The honor might be
postponed or, if necessary, foregone; the opportunity to earn a dollar was the
chance of a lifetime and must not be allowed to slip.
“No, Plato,” rejoined
Tryon, shaking his head, “I should+n't want to deprive you of so great a
pleasure.” Tryon was entirely sincere in this characterization of Plato's
chance; he would have given many a dollar to be sure of Plato's place and
Plato's welcome. Rena's letter had re-inflamed his smouldering passion; only
opposition was needed to fan it to a white heat. Wherein lay the great
superiority of his position, if he was denied the right to speak to the one
person in the world whom he most cared to address? He felt some dim realization
of the tyranny of caste, when he found it not merely pressing upon an inferior
people who had no right to expect anything better, but barring his own way to
something that he desired. He meant her no harm--but he must see her. He could
never marry her now--but he must see her. He was conscious of a certain relief
at the thought that he had not asked Blanche Leary to be his wife. His hand was
unpledged. He could not marry the other girl, of course, but they must meet
again. The rest he would leave to Fate, which seemed reluctant to disentangle
threads which it had woven so closely.
“I think, Plato, that I
see an easier way out of the difficulty. Your teacher, I imagine, merely wants
some one to see her safely home. Don't you think, if you should go part of the
way, that I might take your place for the rest, while you did my errand?”
“Why, sho'ly, Mars
Geo'ge, you could take keer er her better 'n I could--better 'n anybody could
--co'se you could!”
Mars Geo'ge was white
and rich, and could do anything. Plato was proud of the fact that he had once
belonged to Mars Geo'ge. He could not conceive of any one so powerful as Mars
Geo'ge, unless it might be God, of whom Plato had heard more or less, and even
here the comparison might not be quite fair to Mars Geo'ge, for Mars Geo'ge was
the younger of the two. It would undoubtedly be a great honor for the teacher
to be escorted home by Mars Geo'ge. The teacher was a great woman, no doubt,
and looked white; but Mars Geo'ge was the real article. Mars Geo'ge had never
been known to go with a black woman before, and the teacher would doubtless
thank Plato for arranging that so great an honor should fall upon her. Mars
Ge'oge{sic} had given him fifty cents twice, and would now give him a dollar.
Noble Mars Geo'ge t Fortunate teacher! Happy Plato!
“Very well, Plato. I
think we can arrange it so that you can kill the two rabbits at one shot.
Suppose that we go over the road that she will take to go home.”
They soon arrived at
the schoolhouse. School had been out an hour, and the clearing was deserted.
Plato led the way by the road through the woods to a point where, amid somewhat
thick underbrush, another path intersected the road they were following.
“Now, Plato,” said
Tryon, pausing here, “this would be a good spot for you to leave the teacher
and for me to take your place. This path leads to the main road, and will take
you to town very quickly. I should+n't say anything to the teacher about it at
all; but when you and she get here, drop behind and run along this path until
you meet me,--I+'ll be waiting a few yards down the road,--and then run to town
as fast as your legs will carry you. As soon as you are gone, I+'ll come out
and tell the teacher that I+'ve sent you away on an errand, and will myself
take your place. You shall have a dollar, and I+'ll ask her to let you go home
with her the next day. But you mustn't say a word about it, Plato, or you won't
get the dollar, and I+'ll not ask the teacher to let you go home with her
again.”
“All right, Mars
Geo'ge, I ain't gwine ter say no mo' d'n ef de cat had my tongue.”
RENA was unusually
fatigued at the close of her ol on Wednesday afternoon. She had been troubled
all day with a headache, which, beginning with a dull pain, had gradually
increased in intensity until every nerve was throbbing like a trip- hammer. The
pupils seemed unusually stupid. A discouraging sense of the insignificance of
any part she could perform towards the education of three million people with a
school term of two months a year hung over her spirit like a pall. As the
object of Wain's attentions, she had begun to feel somewhat like a wild
creature who hears the pursuers on its track, and has the fear of capture added
to the fatigue of flight. But when this excitement had gone too far and had
neared the limit of exhaustion came Tryon's letter, with the resulting surprise
and consternation. Rena had keyed herself up to a heroic pitch to answer it;
but when the inevitable reaction came, she was overwhelmed with a sickening
sense of her own weakness. The things which in another sphere had constituted
her strength and shield were now her undoing, and exposed her to dangers from
which they lent her no protection. Not only was this her position in theory,
but the pursuers were already at her heels. As the day wore on, these dark
thoughts took on an added gloom, until, when the hour to dismiss school
arrived, she felt as though she had not a friend in the world. This feeling was
accentuated by a letter which she had that morning received from her mother, in
which Mis' Molly spoke very highly of Wain, and plainly expressed the hope that
her daughter might like him so well that she would prefer to remain in Sampson
County.
Plato, bright-eyed and
alert, was waiting in the school-yard until the teacher should be ready to
start. Having warned away several smaller children who had hung around after
school as though to share his prerogative of accompanying the teacher, Plato
had swung himself into the low branches of an oak at the edge of the clearing,
from which he was hanging by his legs, head downward. He dropped from this
reposeful attitude when the teacher appeared at the door, and took his place at
her side.
A premonition of
impending trouble caused the teacher to hesitate. She wished that she had kept
more of the pupils behind. Something whispered that danger lurked in the road
she customarily followed. Plato seemed insignificantly small and weak, and she
felt miserably unable to cope with any difficult or untoward situation.
“Plato,” she suggested,
“I think we+'ll go round the other way to-night, if you don't mind.”
Visions of Mars Geo'ge
disappointed, of a dollar unearned and unspent, flitted through the narrow
brain which some one, with the irony of ignorance or of knowledge, had mocked
with the name of a great philosopher. Plato was not an untruthful lad, but he
seldom had the opportunity to earn a dollar. His imagination, spurred on by the
instinct of self-interest, rose to the emergency.
“I+'s feared you mought
git snake-bit gwine roun' dat way, Miss Rena. My brer Jim kill't a
water-moccasin down dere yistiddy 'bout ten feet long.”
Rena had a horror of
snakes, with which the swamp by which the other road ran was infested. Snakes
were a vivid reality; her presentiment was probably a mere depression of
spirits due to her condition of nervous exhaustion. A cloud had come up and
threatened rain, and the wind was rising ominously. The old way was the
shorter; she wanted above all things to get to Elder Johnson's and go to bed.
Perhaps sleep would rest her tired brain--she could not imagine herself feeling
worse, unless she should break down altogether.
She plunged into the
path and hastened forward so as to reach home before the approaching storm. So
completely was she absorbed in her own thoughts that she scarcely noticed that
Plato himself seemed preoccupied. Instead of capering along like a playful
kitten or puppy, he walked by her side unusually silent. When they had gone a
short distance and were approaching a path which intersected their road at
something near a right angle, the teacher missed Plato. He had dropped behind a
moment before; now he had disappeared entirely. Her vague alarm of a few
moments before returned with redoubled force.
“Plato!” she called; “Plato!”
There was no response,
save the soughing of the wind through the swaying treetops. She stepped hastily
forward, wondering if this were some childish prank. If so, it was badly timed,
and she would let Plato feel the weight of her displeasure.
Her forward step had
brought her to the junction of the two paths, where she paused doubtfully. The
route she had been following was the most direct way home, but led for quite a
distance through the forest, which she did not care to traverse alone. The
intersecting path would soon take her to the main road, where she might find
shelter or company, or both. Glancing around again in search of her missing
escort, she became aware that a man was approaching her from each of the two
paths. In one she recognized the eager and excited face of George Tryon,
flushed with anticipation of their meeting, and yet grave with uncertainty of
his reception. Advancing confidently along the other path she saw the face of
Jeff Wain, drawn, as she imagined in her anguish, with evil passions which
would stop at nothing.
What should she do?
There was no sign of Plato--for aught she could see or hear of him, the earth
might have swallowed him up. Some deadly serpent might have stung him. Some
wandering rabbit might have tempted him aside. Another thought struck her.
Plato had been very quiet--there had been something on his conscience--perhaps
he had betrayed her! But to which of the two men, and to what end?
The problem was too
much for her overwrought brain. She turned and fled. A wiser instinct might
have led her forward. In the two conflicting dangers she might have found
safety. The road after all was a public way. Any number of persons might meet
there accidentally. But she saw only the darker side of the situation. To turn
to Tryon for protection before Wain had by some overt act manifested the evil
purpose which she as yet only suspected would be, she imagined, to acknowledge
a previous secret acquaintance with Tryon, thus placing her reputation at
Wain's mercy, and to charge herself with a burden of obligation toward a man
whom she wished to avoid and had refused to meet. If, on the other hand, she
should go forward to meet Wain, he would undoubtedly offer to accompany her
homeward. Tryon would inevitably observe the meeting, and suppose it
prearranged. Not for the world would she have him think so--why she should care
for his opinion, she did not stop to argue. She turned and fled, and to avoid
possible pursuit, struck into the underbrush at an angle which she calculated
would bring her in a few rods to another path which would lead quickly into the
main road. She had run only a few yards when she found herself in the midst of
a clump of prickly shrubs and briars. Meantime the storm had burst; the rain
fell in torrents. Extricating herself from the thorns, she pressed forward, but
instead of coming out upon the road, found herself penetrating deeper and
deeper into the forest.
The storm increased in
violence. The air grew darker and darker. It was near evening, the clouds were
dense, the thick woods increased the gloom. Suddenly a blinding flash of
lightning pierced the darkness, followed by a sharp clap of thunder. There was
a crash of falling timber. Terror-stricken, Rena flew forward through the
forest, the underbrush growing closer and closer as she advanced. Suddenly the
earth gave way beneath her feet and she sank into a concealed morass. By
clasping the trunk of a neighboring sapling she extricated herself with an
effort, and realized with a horrible certainty that she was lost in the swamp.
Turning, she tried to
retrace her steps. A flash of lightning penetrated the gloom around her, and
barring her path she saw a huge black snake,-- harmless enough, in fact, but to
her excited imagination frightful in appearance. With a wild shriek she turned
again, staggered forward a few yards, stumbled over a projecting root, and fell
heavily to the earth.
When Rena had
disappeared in the underbrush, Tryon and Wain had each instinctively set out in
pursuit of her, but owing to the gathering darkness, the noise of the storm,
and the thickness of the underbrush, they missed not only Rena but each other,
and neither was aware of the other's presence in the forest. Wain kept up the
chase until the rain drove him to shelter. Tryon, after a few minutes, realized
that she had fled to escape him, and that to pursue her would be to defeat
rather than promote his purpose. He desisted, therefore, and returning to the
main road, stationed himself at a point where he could watch Elder Johnson's
house, and having waited for a while without any signs of Rena, concluded that
she had taken refuge in some friendly cabin. Turning homeward disconsolately as
night came on, he intercepted Plato on his way back from town, and pledged him
to inviolable secrecy so effectually that Plato, when subsequently questioned,
merely answered that he had stopped a moment to gather some chinquapins, and
when he had looked around the teacher was gone.
Rena not appearing at
supper-time nor for an hour later, the elder, somewhat anxious, made inquiries
about the neighborhood, and finding his guest at no place where she might be
expected to stop, became somewhat alarmed. Wain's house was the last to which he
went. He had surmised that there was some mystery connected with her leaving
Wain's, but had never been given any definite information about the matter. In
response to his inquiries, Wain expressed surprise, but betrayed a certain
self-consciousness which did not escape the elder's eye. Returning home, he
organized a search party from his own family and several near neighbors, and
set out with dogs and torches to scour the woods for the missing teacher. A
couple of hours later, they found her lying unconscious in the edge of the
swamp, only a few rods from a well-defined path which would soon have led her
to the open highway. Strong arms lifted her gently and bore her home. Mrs.
Johnson undressed her and put her to bed, administering a homely remedy, of which
whiskey was the principal ingredient, to counteract the effects of the
exposure. There was a doctor within five miles, but no one thought of sending
for him, nor was it at all likely that it would have been possible to get him
for such a case at such an hour.
Rena's illness,
however, was more deeply seated than her friends could imagine. A tired body,
in sympathy with an overwrought brain, had left her peculiarly susceptible to
the nervous shock of her forest experience. The exposure for several hours in
her wet clothing to the damps and miasma of the swamp had brought on an attack
of brain fever. The next morning, she was delirious. One of the children took
word to the schoolhouse that the teacher was sick and there would be no school
that day. A number of curious and sympathetic people came in from time to time
and suggested various remedies, several of which old Mrs. Johnson, with
catholic impartiality, administered to the helpless teacher, who from delirium
gradually sunk into a heavy stupor scarcely distinguishable from sleep. It was
predicted that she would probably be well in the morning; if not, it would then
be time to consider seriously the question of sending for a doctor.
AFTER Tryon's failure
to obtain an interview with Rena through Plato's connivance, he decided upon a
different course of procedure. In a few days her school term would be finished.
He was not less desirous to see her, was indeed as much more eager as
opposition would be likely to make a very young man who was accustomed to
having his own way, and whose heart, as he had discovered, was more deeply and
permanently involved than he had imagined. His present plan was to wait until
the end of the school; then, when Rena went to Clinton on the Saturday or
Monday to draw her salary for the month, he would see her in the town, or, if
necessary, would follow her to Patesville. No power on earth should keep him
from her long, but he had no desire to interfere in any way with the duty which
she owed to others. When the school was over and her work completed, then he
would have his innings. Writing letters was too unsatisfactory a method of
communication--he must see her face to face.
The first of his three
days of waiting had passed, when, about ten o'clock on the morning of the
second day, which seemed very long in prospect, while driving along the road
toward Clinton, he met Plato, with a rabbit trap in his hand.
“Well, Plato,” he
asked, “why are you absent from the classic shades of the academy to-day?”
“Hoddy, Mars Geo'ge.
W'at wuz dat you say?”
“Why are you not at
school to-day?”
“Ain' got no teacher,
Mars Geo'ge. Teacher+'s gone!”
“Gone!” exclaimed
Tryon, with a sudden leap of the heart. “Gone where? What do you mean?”
“Teacher got los' in de
swamp, night befo' las', 'cause Plato wa'n't dere ter show her de way out'n de
woods. Elder Johnson foun' 'er wid dawgs and tawches, an' fotch her home an'
put her ter bed. No school yistiddy. She wuz out'n her haid las' night, an' dis
mawnin' she wuz gone.”
“Gone where?”
“Dey don' nobody know
whar, suh.”
Leaving Plato abruptly,
Tryon hastened down the road toward Elder Johnson's cabin. This was no time to
stand on punctilio. The girl had been lost in the woods in the storm, amid the
thunder and lightning and the pouring rain. She was sick with fright and
exposure, and he was the cause of it all. Bribery, corruption, and falsehood
had brought punishment in their train, and the innocent had suffered while the
guilty escaped. He must learn at once what had become of her. Reaching Elder
Johnson's house, he drew up by the front fence and gave the customary halloa,
which summoned a woman to the door.
“Good-morning,” he
said, nodding unconsciously, with the careless politeness of a gentleman to his
inferiors. “I+'m Mr. Tryon. I have come to inquire about the sick teacher.”
“Why, suh,” the woman
replied respectfully, “she got los' in de woods night befo' las', an' she wuz
out'n her min' most er de time yistiddy. Las' night she must 'a' got out er bed
an' run away w'en eve'ybody wuz soun' asleep, fer dis mawnin' she wuz gone, an'
none er us knows whar she is.”
“Has any search been
made for her?”
“Yas, suh, my husban'
an' de child'en has been huntin' roun' all de mawnin', an' he+'s gone ter borry
a hoss now ter go fu'ther. But Lawd knows dey ain' no tellin' whar she+'d go,
'less'n she got her min' back sence she lef'.”
Tryon's mare was in
good condition. He had money in his pocket and nothing to interfere with his
movements. He set out immediately on the road to Patesville, keeping a lookout
by the roadside, and stopping each person he met to inquire if a young woman,
apparently ill, had been seen traveling along the road on foot. No one had met
such a traveler. When he had gone two or three miles, he drove through a
shallow branch that crossed the road. The splashing of his horse's hoofs in the
water prevented him from hearing a low groan that came from the woods by the
roadside.
He drove on, making
inquiries at each farmhouse and of every person whom he encountered. Shortly
after crossing the branch, he met a young negro with a cartload of tubs and
buckets and piggins, and asked him if he had seen on the road a young white
woman with dark eyes and hair, apparently sick or demented. The young man
answered in the negative, and Tryon pushed forward anxiously.
At noon he stopped at a
farmhouse and swallowed a hasty meal. His inquiries here elicited no
information, and he was just leaving when a young man came in late to dinner
and stated, in response to the usual question, that he had met, some two hours
before, a young woman who answered Tryon's description, on the Lillington road,
which crossed the main road to Patesville a short distance beyond the
farmhouse. He had spoken to the woman. At first she had paid no heed to his
question. When addressed a second time, she had answered in a rambling and
disconnected way, which indicated to his mind that there was something wrong
with her.
Tryon thanked his
informant and hastened to the Lillington road. Stopping as before to inquire,
he followed the woman for several hours, each mile of the distance taking him
farther away from Patesville. From time to time he heard of the woman. Toward
nightfall he found her. She was white enough, with the sallowness of the sandhill
poor white. She was still young, perhaps, but poverty and a hard life made her
look older than she ought. She was not fair, and she was not Rena. When Tryon
came up to her, she was sitting on the doorsill of a miserable cabin, and held
in her hand a bottle, the contents of which had never paid any revenue tax. She
had walked twenty miles that day, and had beguiled the tedium of the journey by
occasional potations, which probably accounted for the incoherency of speech
which several of those who met her had observed. When Tryon drew near, she
tendered him the bottle with tipsy cordiality. He turned in disgust and
retraced his steps to the Patesville road, which he did not reach until
nightfall. As it was too dark to prosecute the search with any chance of
success, he secured lodging for the night, intending to resume his quest early
in the morning.
FRANK FOWLER'S heart
was filled with longing for a sight of Rena's face. When she had gone away
first, on the ill-fated trip to South Carolina, her absence had left an aching
void in his life; he had missed her cheerful smile, her pleasant words, her
graceful figure moving about across the narrow street. His work had grown
monotonous during her absence; the clatter of hammer and mallet, that had
seemed so merry when punctuated now and then by the strains of her voice,
became a mere humdrum rapping of wood upon wood and iron upon iron. He had
sought work in South Carolina with the hope that be might see her. He had
satisfied this hope, and had tried in vain to do her a service; but Fate had
been against her; her castle of cards had come tumbling down. He felt that her
sorrow had brought her nearer to him. The distance between them depended very
much upon their way of looking at things. He knew that her experience had
dragged her through the valley of humiliation. His unselfish devotion had
reacted to refine and elevate his own spirit. When he heard the suggestion,
after her second departure, that she might marry Wain, he could not but compare
himself with this new aspirant. He, Frank, was a man, an honest man--a better
man than the shifty scoundrel with whom she had ridden away. She was but a
woman, the best and sweetest and loveliest of all women, but yet a woman. After
a few short years of happiness or sorrow,-- little of joy, perhaps, and much of
sadness, which had begun already,--they would both be food for worms. White
people, with a deeper wisdom perhaps than they used in their own case, regarded
Rena and himself as very much alike. They were certainly both made by the same
God, in much the same physical and mental mould; they breathed the same air,
ate the same food, spoke the same speech, loved and hated, laughed and cried,
lived and would die, the same. If God had meant to rear any impassable barrier
between people of contrasting complexions, why did He not express the
prohibition as He had done between other orders of creation?
When Rena had departed
for Sampson County, Frank had reconciled himself to her absence by the hope of
her speedy return. He often stepped across the street to talk to Mis' Molly
about her. Several letters had passed between mother and daughter, and in
response to Frank's inquiries his neighbor uniformly stated that Rena was well
and doing well, and sent her love to all inquiring friends. But Frank observed
that Mis' Molly, when pressed as to the date of Rena's return, grew more and
more indefinite; and finally the mother, in a burst of confidential friendship,
told Frank of all her hopes with reference to the stranger from down the
country.
“Yas, Frank,” she
concluded, “it+'ll be her own fault ef she don't become a lady of proputty, fer
Mr. Wain is rich, an' owns a big plantation, an' hires a lot of hands, and is a
big man in the county. He+'s crazy to git her, an' it all lays in her own
han's.”
Frank did not find this
news reassuring. He believed that Wain was a liar and a scoundrel. He had
nothing more than his intuitions upon which to found this belief, but it was
none the less firm. If his estimate of the man's character were correct, then his
wealth might be a fiction, pure and simple. If so, the truth should be known to
Mis' Molly, so that instead of encouraging a marriage with Wain, she would see
him in his true light, and interpose to rescue her daughter from his
importunities. A day or two after this conversation, Frank met in the town a
negro from Sampson County, made his acquaintance, and inquired if he knew a man
by the name of Jeff Wain.
“Oh, Jeff Wain!”
returned the countryman slightingly; “yas, I knows 'im, an' don' know no good
of 'im. One er dese yer biggity, braggin' niggers--talks lack he own de whole
county, an' ain't wuth no mo' d'n I is--jes' a big bladder wid a handful er
shot rattlin' roun' in it. Had a wife, when I wuz dere, an' beat her an' 'bused
her so she had ter run away.”
This was alarming
information. Wain had passed in the town as a single man, and Frank had had no
hint that he had ever been married. There was something wrong somewhere. Frank
determined that he would find out the truth and, if possible, do something to
protect Rena against the obviously evil designs of the man who had taken her
away. The barrel factory had so affected the cooper's trade that Peter and
Frank had turned their attention more or less to the manufacture of small
woodenware for domestic use. Frank's mule was eating off its own head, as the
saying goes. It required but little effort to persuade Peter that his son might
take a load of buckets and tubs and piggins into the country and sell them or
trade them for country produce at a profit.
In a few days Frank had
his stock prepared, and set out on the road to Sampson County. He went about
thirty miles the first day, and camped by the roadside for the night, resuming
the journey at dawn. After driving for an hour through the tall pines that overhung
the road like the stately arch of a cathedral aisle, weaving a carpet for the
earth with their brown spines and cones, and soothing the ear with their
ceaseless murmur, Frank stopped to water his mule at a point where the white,
sandy road, widening as it went, sloped downward to a clear-running branch. On
the right a bay-tree bending over the stream mingled the heavy odor of its
flowers with the delicate perfume of a yellow jessamine vine that had overrun a
clump of saplings on the left. From a neigh boring tree a silver-throated
mocking-bird poured out a flood of riotous melody. A group of minnows; startled
by the splashing of the mule's feet, darted away into the shadow of the
thicket, their quick passage leaving the amber water filled with laughing
light.
The mule drank long and
lazily, while over Frank stole thoughts in harmony with the peaceful
scene,--thoughts of Rena, young and beautiful, her friendly smile, her pensive
dark eyes. He would soon see her now, and if she had any cause for fear or
unhappiness, he would place himself at her service--for a day, a week, a month,
a year, a lifetime, if need be.
His reverie was broken
by a slight noise from the thicket at his left. “I wonder who dat is?” he
muttered. “It soun's mighty quare, ter say de leas'.”
He listened intently
for a moment, but heard nothing further. “It must 'a' be'n a rabbit er
somethin' scamp'in' th'ough de woods. G'long dere, Cæsar!”
As the mule stepped
forward, the sound was repeated. This time it was distinctly audible, the long,
low moan of some one in sickness or distress.
“Dat ain't no rabbit,”
said Frank to himself. “Dere+'s somethin' wrong dere. Stan' here, Cæsar, till I
look inter dis matter.”
Pulling out from the
branch, Frank sprang from the saddle and pushed his way cautiously through the
outer edge of the thicket.
“Good Lawd!” he
exclaimed with a start, “it+'s a woman--a w'ite woman!”
The slender form of a
young woman lay stretched upon the ground in a small open space a few yards in
extent. Her face was turned away, and Frank could see at first only a tangled
mass of dark brown hair, matted with twigs and leaves and cockleburs, and
hanging in wild profusion around her neck.
Frank stood for a
moment irresolute, debating the serious question whether he should investigate
further with a view to rendering assistance, or whether he should put as great
a distance as possible between himself and this victim, as she might easily be,
of some violent crime, lest he should himself be suspected of it--a not unlikely
contingency, if he were found in the neighborhood and the woman should prove
unable to describe her assailant. While he hesitated, the figure moved
restlessly, and a voice murmured:--
“Mamma, oh, mamma!”
The voice thrilled
Frank like an electric shock. Trembling in every limb, he sprang forward toward
the prostrate figure. The woman turned her head, and he saw that it was Rena.
Her gown was torn and dusty, and fringed with burs and briars. When she had
wandered forth, half delirious, pursued by imaginary foes, she had not stopped
to put on her shoes, and her little feet were blistered and swollen and
bleeding. Frank knelt by her side and lifted her head on his arm. He put his
hand upon her brow; it was burning with fever.
“Miss Rena! Rena! don't
you know me?”
She turned her wild
eyes on him suddenly. “Yes, I know you, Jeff Wain. Go away from me! Go away!”
Her voice rose to a
scream; she struggled in his grasp and struck at him fiercely with her clenched
fists. Her sleeve fell back and disclosed the white scar made by his own hand
so many years before.
“You+'re a wicked man,”
she panted. “Don't touch me! I hate you and despise you!”
Frank could only
surmise how she had come here, in such a condition. When she spoke of Wain in
this manner, he drew his own conclusions. Some deadly villainy of Wain's had
brought her to this pass. Anger stirred his nature to the depths, and found
vent in curses on the author of Rena's misfortunes.
“Damn him!” he groaned.
“I+'ll have his heart's blood fer dis, ter de las' drop!”
Rena now laughed and
put up her arms appealingly. “George,” she cried, in melting tones, “dear
George, do you love me? How much do you love me? Ah, you don't love me!” she
moaned; “I+'m black; you don't love me; you despise me!”
Her voice died away
into a hopeless wail. Frank knelt by her side, his faithful heart breaking with
pity, great tears rolling untouched down his dusky cheeks.
“Oh, my honey, my
darlin',” he sobbed, “Frank loves you better 'n all de worl'.”
Meantime the sun shone
on as brightly as before, the mocking-bird sang yet more joyously. A gentle
breeze sprang up and wafted the odor of bay and jessamine past them on its
wings. The grand triumphal sweep of nature's onward march recked nothing of
life's little tragedies.
When the first burst of
his grief was over, Frank brought water from the branch, bathed Rena's face and
hands and feet, and forced a few drops between her reluctant lips. He then
pitched the cartload of tubs, buckets, and piggins out into the road, and gathering
dried leaves and pine- straw, spread them in the bottom of the cart. He
stooped, lifted her frail form in his arms, and laid it on the leafy bed.
Cutting a couple of hickory withes, he arched them over the cart, and gathering
an armful of jessamine quickly wove it into an awning to protect her from the
sun. She was quieter now, and seemed to fall asleep.
“Go ter sleep, honey,”
he murmured caressingly, “go ter sleep, an' Frank+'ll take you home ter yo'
mammy!”
Toward noon he was met
by a young white man, who peered inquisitively into the canopied cart.
“Hello!” exclaimed the
stranger, “who+'ve you got there?”
“A sick woman, suh.”
“Why, she+'s white, as
I+'m a sinner!” he cried, after a closer inspection. “Look a-here, nigger, what
are you doin' with this white woman?”
“She+'s not w'ite,
boss,--she+'s a bright mulatter.”
“Yas, mighty bright,”
continued the stranger suspiciously. “Where are you goin' with her?”
“I+'m takin' her ter
Patesville, ter her mammy.”
The stranger passed on.
Toward evening Frank heard hounds baying in the distance. A fox, weary with
running, brush drooping, crossed the road ahead of the cart. Presently, the
hounds straggled across the road, followed by two or three hunters on horseback,
who stopped at sight of the strangely canopied cart. They stared at the sick
girl and demanded who she was.
“I don't b'lieve she's
black at all,” declared one, after Frank's brief explanation. “This nigger has
a bad eye,--he's up ter some sort of devilment. What ails the girl?”
“ 'Pears ter be some
kind of a fever,” replied Frank; adding diplomatically, “I don't know whether
it's ketchin' er no--she's be'n out er her head most er de time.”
They drew off a little
at this. “I reckon it+'s all right,” said the chief spokesman. The hounds were
baying clamorously in the distance. The hunters followed the sound and
disappeared m the woods.
Frank drove all day and
all night, stopping only for brief periods of rest and refreshment. At dawn,
from the top of the long white hill, he sighted the river bridge below. At
sunrise he rapped at Mis' Molly's door.
Upon rising at dawn,
Tryon's first step, after a hasty breakfast, was to turn back toward Clinton.
He had wasted half a day in following the false scent on the Lillington road.
It seemed, after reflection, unlikely that a woman seriously ill should have
been able to walk any considerable distance before her strength gave out. In
her delirium, too, she might have wandered in a wrong direction, imagining any
road to lead to Patesville. It would be a good plan to drive back home,
continuing his inquiries meantime, and ascertain whether or not she had been
found by those who were seeking her, including many whom Tryon's inquiries had
placed upon the alert. If she should prove still missing, he would resume the
journey to Patesville and continue the search in that direction. She had
probably not wandered far from the highroad; even in delirium she would be
likely to avoid the deep woods, with which her illness was associated.
He had retraced more
than half the distance to Clinton when he overtook a covered wagon. The driver,
when questioned, said that he had met a young negro with a mule, and a cart in
which lay a young woman, white to all appearance, but claimed by the negro to
be a colored girl who had been taken sick on the road, and whom he was
conveying home to her mother at Patesville. From a further description of the
cart Tryon recognized it as the one he had met the day before. The woman could
be no other than Rena. He turned his mare and set out swiftly on the road to
Patesville.
If anything could have
taken more complete possession of George Tryon at twenty-three than love
successful and triumphant, it was love thwarted and denied. Never in the few
brief delirious weeks of his courtship had he felt so strongly drawn to the
beautiful sister of the popular lawyer, as he was now driven by an aching heart
toward the same woman stripped of every adventitions advantage and placed, by
custom, beyond the pale of marriage with men of his own race. Custom was
tyranny. Love was the only law. Would God have made hearts to so yearn for one
another if He had meant them to stay forever apart? If this girl should die, it
would be he who had killed her, by his cruelty, no less surely than if with his
own hand he had struck her down. He had been so dazzled by his own superiority,
so blinded by his own glory, that he had ruthlessly spurned and spoiled the
image of God in this fair creature, whom he might have had for his own
treasure,-- whom, please God, he would yet have, at any cost, to love and
cherish while they both should live. There were difficulties--they had seemed
insuperable, but love would surmount them. Sacrifices must be made, but if the
world without love would be nothing, then why not give up the world for love?
He would hasten to Patesville. He would find her; he would tell her that he
loved her, that she was all the world to him, that he had come to marry her,
and take her away where they might be happy together. He pictured to himself
the joy that would light up her face; he felt her soft arms around his neck,
her tremulous kisses upon his lips. If she were ill, his love would woo her
back to health,--if disappointment and sorrow had contributed to her illness,
joy and gladness should lead to her recovery.
He urged the mare
forward; if she would but keep up her present pace, he would reach Patesville
by nightfall.
Dr. Green had just gone
down the garden path to his buggy at the gate. Mis' Molly came out to the back
piazza, where Frank, weary and haggard, sat on the steps with Homer Pettifoot
and Billy Oxendine, who, hearing of Rena's return, had come around after their
day's work.
“Rena wants to see you,
Frank,” said Mis' Molly, with a sob.
He walked in softly,
reverently, and stood by her bedside. She turned her gentle eyes upon him and
put out her slender hand, which he took in his own broad palm.
“Frank,” she murmured, “my
good friend-- my best friend--you loved me best of them all.”
The tears rolled
untouched down his cheeks. “I+'d 'a' died, fer you, Miss Rena,” he said
brokenly.
Mary B. threw open a
window to make way for the passing spirit, and the red and golden glory of the
setting sun, triumphantly ending his daily course, flooded the narrow room with
light.
Between sunset and dark
a traveler, seated in a dusty buggy drawn by a tired horse, crossed the long
river bridge and drove up Front Street. Just as the buggy reached the gate in
front of the house behind the cedars, a woman was tying a piece of crape upon
the door-knob. Pale with apprehension, Tryon sat as if petrified, until a tall,
side-whiskered mulatto came down the garden walk to the front gate.
“Who+'s dead?” demanded
Tryon hoarsely, scarcely recognizing his own voice.
“A young cullud 'oman,
sah,” answered Homer Pettifoot, touching his hat, “Mis' Molly Walden's daughter
Rena.”