Birthright Part 27

"Peter occupies a position of trust with me, Rose."

"Yeah," mumbled Rose; "I see you trus' him."

"One day he is going to do me a service, a very great service, Rose."

The hag continued looking at him with a stubborn expression.

"You know better than any one else, Rose, my dread of some--some unmannerly death--"

The old woman made a sound that might have meant anything.

"And Peter has promised to stay with me until--until the end."

The old negress considered this solemn speech, and then grunted out:

"Which en'?"

"Which end?" The Captain was irritated.

"Yeah; yo' en' or Peter's en'?"

"By every law of probability, Peter will outlive me."

"Yeah, but Peter 'll come to a en' wid you when he ma'ies dat stuck-up yellow fly-by-night, Cissie Dildine."

"He's not going to marry her," said the Captain, comfortably.

"Huh!"

"Peter told me he didn't intend to marry Cissie Dildine."

"Shu! Then whut fur dey go roun' peepin' at each other lak a couple o'

n.i.g.g.e.rs roun' a haystack?"

The old lawyer was annoyed.

"Peeping where?"

"Why, right in front o' dis house, dat's wha; ever' day when dat hussy pa.s.ses up to de Arkwrights', wha she wucks. She pokes along an' walls her eyes roun' at dis house lak a calf wid de splivins."

"That going on now?"

"Ever' day."

A deep uneasiness went through the old man. He moistened his lips.

"But Peter said--"

"Good Gawd! Mars' Renfrew, whut diff'ence do it make whut Peter say?

Ain't you foun' out yit when a he-n.i.g.g.e.r an' a she-n.i.g.g.e.r gits to peepin' at each udder, whut dey says don't lib in de same neighbo'hood wid whut dey does?"

This was delivered with such energy that it completely undermined the Captain's faith in Peter, and the fact angered the old gentleman.

"That'll do, Rose; that'll do. That's all I need of you."

The old crone puffed up again at this unexpected flare, and went out of the room, plopping her feet on floor and mumbling. Among these ungracious sounds the Captain caught, "Blin' ole fool!" But there was no need becoming offended and demanding what she meant. Her explanation would have been vague and unsatisfactory.

The verjuice which old Rose had sprinkled over Peter and Cissie by calling them "he-n.i.g.g.e.r" and "she-n.i.g.g.e.r" somehow minimized them, animalized them in the old lawyer's imagination. Rose's speech was charged with such contempt for her own color that it placed the mulatto and the octoroon down with apes and rabbits.

The lawyer fought against his feeling, for the sake of his secretary, who had come to occupy so wide a sector of his comfort and affection.

Yet the old virago evidently spoke from a broad background of experience. She was at least half convincing. While the Captain repelled her charge against his quiet, hard-working brown helper, he admitted it against Cissie Dildine, whom he did not know. She was an animal, a female centaur, a wanton and a strumpet, as all negresses are wantons and strumpets. All white men in the South firmly believe that. They believe it with a peculiar detestation; and since they used these persons very profitably for a hundred and fifty years as breeding animals, one might say they believe it a trifle ungratefully.

CHAPTER XII

The semi-daily pa.s.sings of Cissie Dildine before the old Renfrew manor on her way to and from the Arkwright home upset Peter Siner's working schedule to an extraordinary degree.

After watching for two or three days, Peter worked out a sort of time- table for Cissie. She pa.s.sed up early in the morning, at about five forty-five. He could barely see her then, and somehow she looked very pathetic hurrying along in the cold, dim light of dawn. After she had cooked the Arkwright breakfast, swept the Arkwright floors, dusted the Arkwright furniture, she pa.s.sed back toward n.i.g.g.e.rtown, somewhere near nine. About eleven o'clock she went up to cook dinner, and returned at one or two in the afternoon. Occasionally, she made a third trip to get supper.

This was as exactly as Peter could predict the arrivals and departures of Cissie, and the schedule involved a large margin of uncertainty. For half an hour before Cissie pa.s.sed she kept Peter watching the clock at nervous intervals, wondering if, after all, she had gone by un.o.bserved.

Invariably, he would move his work to a window where he had the whole street under his observation. Then he would proceed with his indexing with more and more difficulty. At first the paragraphs would lose connection, and he would be forced to reread them. Then the sentences would drop apart. Immediately before the girl arrived, the words themselves grew anarchic. They stared him in the eye, each a complete ent.i.ty, self-sufficient, individual, bearing no relation to any other words except that of mere proximity,--like a spelling lesson. Only by an effort could Peter enforce a temporary cohesion among them, and they dropped apart at the first slackening of the strain.

Strange to say, when the octoroon actually was walking past, Peter did not look at her steadily. On the contrary, he would think to himself: "How little I care for such a woman! My ideal is thus and so--" He would look at her until she glanced across the yard and saw him sitting in the window; then immediately he bent over his books, as if his stray glance had lighted on her purely by chance, as if she were nothing more to him than a pa.s.sing dray or a fluttering leaf. Indeed, he told himself during these crises that he had no earthly interest in the girl, that she was not the sort of woman he desired,--while his heart hammered, and the lines of print under his eyes blurred into gray streaks across the page.

One afternoon Peter saw Cissie pa.s.s his gate, hurrying, almost running, apparently in flight from something. It sent a queer shock through him.

He stared after her, then up and down the street. He wondered why she ran. Even when he went to bed that night the strangeness of Cissie's flight kept him awake inventing explanations.

None of Peter's preoccupations was lost upon Captain Renfrew. None is so suspicious as a credulous man aroused. After Rose had struck her blow at the secretary, the old gentleman noted all of Peter's permutations and misconstrued a dozen quite innocent actions on Peter's part into signs of bad faith.

By a little observation he identified Cissie Dildine and what he saw did not reestablish his peace of mind. On the contrary, it became more than probable that the cream-colored negress would lure Peter away. This possibility aroused in the old lawyer a grim, voiceless rancor against Cissie. In his thoughts he linked the girl with every manner of evil design against Peter. She was an adventuress, a Cyprian, a seductress attempting to snare Peter in the brazen web of her comeliness. For to the old gentleman's eyes there was an abiding impudicity about Cissie's very charms. The pa.s.sionate repose of her face was immodest; the possession of a torso such as a sculptor might have carved was brazen.

The girl was shamefully well appointed.

One morning as Captain Renfrew came home from town, he chanced to walk just behind the octoroon, and quite unconsciously the girl delivered an added fillip to the old gentleman's uneasiness.

Just before Cissie pa.s.sed in front of the Renfrew manor, womanlike, she paused to make some slight improvements in her appearance before walking under the eyes of her lover. She adjusted some strands of hair which had blown loose in the autumn wind, looked at herself in a purse mirror, retouched her nose with her greenish powder; then she picked a little sprig of sumac leaves that burned in the corner of a lawn and pinned its flame on the unashamed loveliness of her bosom.

This negro instinct for brilliant color is the theme of many jests in the South, but it is entirely justified esthetically, although the constant sarcasm of the whites has checked its satisfaction, if it has not corrupted the taste.

The bit of sumac out of which the octoroon had improvised a nosegay lighted up her skin and eyes, and created an ensemble as closely resembling a Henri painting as anything the streets of Hooker's Bend were destined to see.

But old Captain Renfrew was far from appreciating any such bravura in scarlet and gold. At first he put it down to mere n.i.g.g.e.rish taste, and his dislike for the girl edged his stricture; then, on second thought, the oddness of sumac for a nosegay caught his attention. n.o.body used sumac for a b.u.t.tonhole. He had never heard of any woman, white or black, using sumac for a bouquet. Why should this Cissie Dildine trig herself out in sumac?

The Captain's suspicions came to a point like a setter. He began sniffing about for Cissie's motives in choosing so queer an ornament. He wondered if it had anything to do with Peter Siner.