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The House Behind the Cedars

by Charles W. Chesnutt · English · Gutenberg #472 · 408,629 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The House Behind the Cedars

Author: Charles W. Chesnutt


        
Release date: March 1, 1996 [eBook #472]
                Most recently updated: January 1, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/472

Credits: Produced by Charles Keller.  HTML version by Al Haines.


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HOUSE BEHIND THE CEDARS ***




Produced by Charles Keller.  HTML version by Al Haines.








THE HOUSE BEHIND THE CEDARS


BY

CHARLES W. CHESNUTT



CONTENTS

      I  A STRANGER FROM SOUTH CAROLINA
     II  AN EVENING VISIT
    III  THE OLD JUDGE
     IV  DOWN THE RIVER
      V  THE TOURNAMENT
     VI  THE QUEEN OF LOVE AND BEAUTY
    VII  'MID NEW SURROUNDINGS
   VIII  THE COURTSHIP
     IX  DOUBTS AND FEARS
      X  THE DREAM
     XI  A LETTER AND A JOURNEY
    XII  TRYON GOES TO PATESVILLE
   XIII  AN INJUDICIOUS PAYMENT
    XIV  A LOYAL FRIEND
     XV  MINE OWN PEOPLE
    XVI  THE BOTTOM FALLS OUT
   XVII  TWO LETTERS
  XVIII  UNDER THE OLD REGIME
    XIX  GOD MADE US ALL
     XX  DIGGING UP ROOTS
    XXI  A GILDED OPPORTUNITY
   XXII  IMPERATIVE BUSINESS
  XXIII  THE GUEST OF HONOR
   XXIV  SWING YOUR PARTNERS
    XXV  BALANCE ALL
   XXVI  THE SCHOOLHOUSE IN THE WOODS
  XXVII  AN INTERESTING ACQUAINTANCE
 XXVIII  THE LOST KNIFE
   XXIX  PLATO EARNS HALF A DOLLAR
    XXX  AN UNUSUAL HONOR
   XXXI  IN DEEP WATERS
  XXXII  THE POWER OF LOVE
 XXXIII  A MULE AND A CART





THE HOUSE BEHIND THE CEDARS



I

A STRANGER FROM SOUTH CAROLINA

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 negro'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.



II

AN EVENING VISIT

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 Caesar, 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 didn'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 haven'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 didn'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 didn'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 haven'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 wouldn'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 hasn't wiped THAT out. Nothing but 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 couldn'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.



III

THE OLD JUDGE

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,
wasn'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 wouldn'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."



IV

DOWN THE RIVER

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 blase
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."



V

THE TOURNAMENT

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 didn'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 hasn't been here long, surely; I haven'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 hadn'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 debut 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."



VI

THE QUEEN OF LOVE AND BEAUTY

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."



VII

'MID NEW SURROUNDINGS

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.



VIII

THE COURTSHIP

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 shouldn'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 didn'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.



IX

DOUBTS AND FEARS

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 haven'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
couldn'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 wouldn'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 wouldn'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?  Doesn'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.



X

THE DREAM

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 haven'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 shouldn'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.



XI

A LETTER AND A JOURNEY

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 haven'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
shouldn'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.



XII

TRYON GOES TO PATESVILLE

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 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 didn't tell me ter, suh."

"Well, now, go back and inquire.

"The niggers," he explained to Tryon, "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
haven'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 didn'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."



XIII

AN INJUDICIOUS PAYMENT

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 regime.  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 hadn't."



XIV

A LOYAL FRIEND

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 hadn'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."



XV

MINE OWN PEOPLE

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 isn'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 wouldn'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 didn'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.  Hurry 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.



XVI

THE BOTTOM FALLS OUT

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.



XVII

TWO LETTERS

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 didn'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 didn'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 couldn'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 do

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