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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10621 ***
+
+[Illustration: "Yes, Cissie, I understand now"]
+
+
+
+
+                               BIRTHRIGHT
+
+                                A NOVEL
+
+                           BY T.S. STRIBLING
+
+
+                             Illustrated by
+                              F. Luis Mora
+
+
+                                  1922
+
+
+
+
+                              TO MY MOTHER
+
+                         AMELIA WAITS STRIBLING
+
+
+
+
+                         LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+"Yes, Cissie, I understand now"
+
+Peter recognized the white aprons and the swords and spears of the
+Knights and Ladies of Tabor
+
+Up and down its street flows the slow negro life of the village
+
+In the Siner cabin old Caroline Siner berated her boy
+
+The old gentleman turned around at last
+
+"You-you mean you want m-me--to go with you, Cissie?" he stammered
+
+"Naw yuh don't," he warned sharply. "You turn roun' an' march on to
+Niggertown"
+
+The bridal couple embarked for Cairo
+
+
+
+
+
+                               BIRTHRIGHT
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER I
+
+
+At Cairo, Illinois, the Pullman-car conductor asked Peter Siner to take
+his suitcase and traveling-bag and pass forward into the Jim Crow car.
+The request came as a sort of surprise to the negro. During Peter
+Siner's four years in Harvard the segregation of black folk on Southern
+railroads had become blurred and reminiscent in his mind; now it was
+fetched back into the sharp distinction of the present instant. With a
+certain sense of strangeness, Siner picked up his bags, and saw his own
+form, in the car mirrors, walking down the length of the sleeper. He
+moved on through the dining-car, where a few hours before he had had
+dinner and talked with two white men, one an Oregon apple-grower, the
+other a Wisconsin paper-manufacturer. The Wisconsin man had furnished
+cigars, and the three had sat and smoked in the drawing-room, indeed,
+had discussed this very point; and now it was upon him.
+
+At the door of the dining-car stood the porter of his Pullman, a negro
+like himself, and Peter mechanically gave him fifty cents. The porter
+accepted it silently, without offering the amenities of his whisk-broom
+and shoe-brush, and Peter passed on forward.
+
+Beyond the dining-car and Pullmans stretched twelve day-coaches filled
+with less-opulent white travelers in all degrees of sleepiness and
+dishabille from having sat up all night. The thirteenth coach was the
+Jim Crow car. Framed in a conspicuous place beside the entrance of the
+car was a copy of the Kentucky state ordinance setting this coach apart
+from the remainder of the train for the purposes therein provided.
+
+The Jim Crow car was not exactly shabby, but it was unkept. It was half
+filled with travelers of Peter's own color, and these passengers were
+rather more noisy than those in the white coaches. Conversation was not
+restrained to the undertones one heard in the other day-coaches or the
+Pullmans. Near the entrance of the car two negroes in soldiers' uniforms
+had turned a seat over to face the door, and now they sat talking loudly
+and laughing the loose laugh of the half intoxicated as they watched the
+inflow of negro passengers coming out of the white cars.
+
+The windows of the Jim Crow car were shut, and already it had become
+noisome. The close air was faintly barbed with the peculiar, penetrating
+odor of dark, sweating skins. For four years Peter Siner had not known
+that odor. Now it came to him not so much offensively as with a queer
+quality of intimacy and reminiscence. The tall, carefully tailored negro
+spread his wide nostrils, vacillating whether to sniff it out with
+disfavor or to admit it for the sudden mental associations it evoked.
+
+It was a faint, pungent smell that played in the back of his nose and
+somehow reminded him of his mother, Caroline Siner, a thick-bodied black
+woman whom he remembered as always bending over a wash-tub. This was
+only one unit of a complex. The odor was also connected with negro
+protracted meetings in Hooker's Bend, and the Harvard man remembered a
+lanky black preacher waving long arms and wailing of hell-fire, to the
+chanted groans of his dark congregation; and he, Peter Siner, had
+groaned with the others. Peter had known this odor in the press-room of
+Tennessee cotton-gins, over a river packet's boilers, where he and other
+roustabouts were bedded, in bunk-houses in the woods. It also recalled a
+certain octoroon girl named Ida May, and an intimacy with her which it
+still moved and saddened Peter to think of. Indeed, it resurrected
+innumerable vignettes of his life in the negro village in Hooker's Bend;
+it was linked with innumerable emotions, this pungent, unforgetable odor
+that filled the Jim Crow car.
+
+Somehow the odor had a queer effect of appearing to push his
+conversation with the two white Northern men in the drawing-room back to
+a distance, an indefinable distance of both space and time.
+
+The negro put his suitcase under the seat, hung his overcoat on the
+hook, and placed his hand-bag in the rack overhead; then with some
+difficulty he opened a window and sat down by it.
+
+A stir of travelers in the Cairo station drifted into the car. Against a
+broad murmur of hurrying feet, moving trucks, and talking there stood
+out the thin, flat voice of a Southern white girl calling good-by to
+some one on the train. Peter could see her waving a bright parasol and
+tiptoeing. A sandwich boy hurried past, shrilling his wares. Siner
+leaned out, with fifteen cents, and signaled to him. The urchin
+hesitated, and was about to reach up one of his wrapped parcels, when a
+peremptory voice shouted at him from a lower car. With a sort of start
+the lad deserted Siner and went trotting down to his white customer. A
+moment later the train bell began ringing, and the Dixie Flier puffed
+deliberately out of the Cairo station and moved across the Ohio bridge
+into the South.
+
+Half an hour later the blue-grass fields of Kentucky were spinning
+outside of the window in a vast green whirlpool. The distant trees and
+houses moved forward with the train, while the foreground, with its
+telegraph poles, its culverts, section-houses, and shrubbery, rushed
+backward in a blur. Now and then into the Jim Crow window whipped a
+blast of coal smoke and hot cinders, for the engine was only two cars
+ahead.
+
+Peter Siner looked out at the interminable spin of the landscape with a
+certain wistfulness. He was coming back into the South, into his own
+country. Here for generations his forebears had toiled endlessly and
+fruitlessly, yet the fat green fields hurtling past him told with what
+skill and patience their black hands had labored.
+
+The negro shrugged away such thoughts, and with a certain effort
+replaced them with the constructive idea that was bringing him South
+once more. It was a very simple idea. Siner was returning to his native
+village in Tennessee to teach school. He planned to begin his work with
+the ordinary public school at Hooker's Bend, but, in the back of his
+head, he hoped eventually to develop an institution after the plan of
+Tuskeegee or the Hampton Institute in Virginia.
+
+To do what he had in mind, he must obtain aid from white sources, and
+now, as he traveled southward, he began conning in his mind the white
+men and white women he knew in Hooker's Bend. He wanted first of all to
+secure possession of a small tract of land which he knew adjoined the
+negro school-house over on the east side of the village.
+
+Before the negro's mind the different villagers passed in review with
+that peculiar intimacy of vision that servants always have of their
+masters. Indeed, no white Southerner knows his own village so minutely
+as does any member of its colored population. The colored villagers see
+the whites off their guard and just as they are, and that is an attitude
+in which no one looks his best. The negroes might be called the black
+recording angels of the South. If what they know should be shouted aloud
+in any Southern town, its social life would disintegrate. Yet it is a
+strange fact that gossip seldom penetrates from the one race to the
+other.
+
+So Peter Siner sat in the Jim Crow car musing over half a dozen
+villagers in Hooker's Bend. He thought of them in a curious way.
+Although he was now a B.A. of Harvard University, and although he knew
+that not a soul in the little river village, unless it was old Captain
+Renfrew, could construe a line of Greek and that scarcely two had ever
+traveled farther north than Cincinnati, still, as Peter recalled their
+names and foibles, he involuntarily felt that he was telling over a roll
+of the mighty. The white villagers came marching through his mind as
+beings austere, and the very cranks and quirks of their characters
+somehow held that austerity. There were the Brownell sisters, two old
+maids, Molly and Patti, who lived in a big brick house on the hill.
+Peter remembered that Miss Molly Brownell always doled out to his
+mother, at Monday's washday dinner, exactly one biscuit less than the
+old negress wanted to eat, and she always paid her in old clothes. Peter
+remembered, a dozen times in his life, his mother coming home and
+wondering in an impersonal way how it was that Miss Molly Brownell could
+skimp every meal she ate at the big house by exactly one biscuit. It was
+Miss Brownell's thin-lipped boast that she understood negroes. She had
+told Peter so several times when, as a lad, he went up to the big house
+on errands. Peter Siner considered this remembrance without the faintest
+feeling of humor, and mentally removed Miss Molly Brownell from his list
+of possible subscribers. Yet, he recalled, the whole Brownell estate had
+been reared on negro labor.
+
+Then there was Henry Hooker, cashier of the village bank. Peter knew
+that the banker subscribed liberally to foreign missions; indeed, at the
+cashier's behest, the white church of Hooker's Bend kept a paid
+missionary on the upper Congo. But the banker had sold some village lots
+to the negroes, and in two instances, where a streak of commercial
+phosphate had been discovered on the properties, the lots had reverted
+to the Hooker estate. There had been in the deed something concerning a
+mineral reservation that the negro purchasers knew nothing about until
+the phosphate was discovered. The whole matter had been perfectly legal.
+
+A hand shook Siner's shoulder and interrupted his review. Peter turned,
+and caught an alcoholic breath over his shoulder, and the blurred voice
+of a Southern negro called out above the rumble of the car and the roar
+of the engine:
+
+"'Fo' Gawd, ef dis ain't Peter Siner I's been lookin' at de las' twenty
+miles, an' not knowin' him wid sich skeniptious clo'es on! Wha you fum,
+nigger?"
+
+Siner took the enthusiastic hand offered him and studied the heavily
+set, powerful man bending over the seat. He was in a soldier's uniform,
+and his broad nutmeg-colored face and hot black eyes brought Peter a
+vague sense of familiarity; but he never would have identified his
+impression had he not observed on the breast of the soldier's uniform
+the Congressional military medal for bravery on the field of battle. Its
+glint furnished Peter the necessary clew. He remembered his mother's
+writing him something about Tump Pack going to France and getting
+"crowned" before the army. He had puzzled a long time over what she
+meant by "crowned" before he guessed her meaning. Now the medal aided
+Peter in reconstructing out of this big umber-colored giant the rather
+spindling Tump Pack he had known in Hooker's Bend.
+
+Siner was greatly surprised, and his heart warmed at the sight of his
+old playmate.
+
+"What have you been doing to yourself, Tump?" he cried, laughing, and
+shaking the big hand in sudden warmth. "You used to be the size of a
+dime in a jewelry store."
+
+"Been in 'e army, nigger, wha I's been fed," said the grinning brown
+man, delightedly. "I sho is picked up, ain't I?"
+
+"And what are you doing here in Cairo?"
+
+"Tryin' to bridle a lil white mule." Mr. Pack winked a whisky-brightened
+eye jovially and touched his coat to indicate that some of the "white
+mule" was in his pocket and had not been drunk.
+
+"How'd you get here?"
+
+"Wucked my way down on de St. Louis packet an' got paid off at Padjo
+[Paducah, Kentucky]; 'n 'en I thought I'd come on down heah an' roll
+some bones. Been hittin' 'em two days now, an' I sho come putty nigh
+bein' cleaned; but I put up lil Joe heah, an' won 'em all back, 'n 'en
+some." He touched the medal on his coat, winked again, slapped Siner on
+the leg, and burst into loud laughter.
+
+Peter was momentarily shocked. He made a place on the seat for his
+friend to sit. "You don't mean you put up your medal on a crap game,
+Tump?"
+
+"Sho do, black man." Pack became soberer. "Dat's one o' de great
+benefits o' bein' dec'rated. Dey ain't a son uv a gun on de river whut
+kin win lil Joe; dey all tried it."
+
+A moment's reflection told Peter how simple and natural it was for Pack
+to prize his military medal as a good-luck piece to be used as a last
+resort in crap games. He watched Tump stroke the face of his medal with
+his fingers.
+
+"My mother wrote me; about your getting it, Tump. I was glad to hear
+it."
+
+The brown man nodded, and stared down at the bit of gold on his barrel-
+like chest.
+
+"Yas-suh, dat 'uz guv to me fuh bravery. You know whut a skeery lil
+nigger I wuz roun' Hooker's Ben'; well, de sahgeant tuk me an' he drill
+ever' bit o' dat right out 'n me. He gimme a baynit an' learned me to
+stob dummies wid it over at Camp Oglethorpe, ontil he felt lak I had de
+heart to stob anything; 'n' 'en he sont me acrost. I had to git a new
+pair breeches ever' three weeks, I growed so fas'." Here he broke out
+into his big loose laugh again, and renewed the alcoholic scent around
+Peter.
+
+"And you made good?"
+
+"Sho did, black man, an', 'fo' Gawd, I 'serve a medal ef any man ever
+did. Dey gimme dish-heah fuh stobbin fo' white men wid a baynit. 'Fo'
+Gawd, nigger, I never felt so quare in all my born days as when I wuz a-
+jobbin' de livers o' dem white men lak de sahgeant tol' me to." Tump
+shook his head, bewildered, and after a moment added, "Yas-suh, I never
+wuz mo' surprised in all my life dan when I got dis medal fuh stobbin'
+fo' white men."
+
+Peter Siner looked through the Jim Crow window at the vast rotation of
+the Kentucky landscape on which his forebears had toiled; presently he
+added soberly:
+
+"You were fighting for your country, Tump. It was war then; you were
+fighting for your country."
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+At Jackson, Tennessee, the two negroes were forced to spend the night
+between trains. Tump Pack piloted Peter Siner to a negro cafe where they
+could eat, and later they searched out a negro lodging-house on Gate
+Street where they could sleep. It was a grimy, smelly place, with its
+own odor spiked by a phosphate-reducing plant two blocks distant. The
+paper on the wall of the room Peter slept in looked scrofulous. There
+was no window, and Peter's four-years régime of open windows and fresh-
+air sleep was broken. He arranged his clothing for the night so it would
+come in contact with nothing in the room but a chair back. He felt dull
+next morning, and could not bring himself either to shave or bathe in
+the place, but got out and hunted up a negro barber-shop furnished with
+one greasy red-plush barber-chair.
+
+A few hours later the two negroes journeyed on down to Perryville,
+Tennessee, a village on the Tennessee River where they took a gasolene
+launch up to Hooker's Bend. The launch was about fifty feet long and had
+two cabins, a colored cabin in front of, and a white cabin behind, the
+engine-room.
+
+This unremitting insistence on his color, this continual shunting him
+into obscure and filthy ways, gradually gave Peter a loathly sensation.
+It increased the unwashed feeling that followed his lack of a morning
+bath. The impression grew upon him that he was being handled with tongs,
+along back-alley routes; that he and his race were something to be kept
+out of sight as much as possible, as careful housekeepers manoeuver
+their slops.
+
+At Perryville a number of passengers boarded the up-river boat; two or
+three drummers; a yellowed old hill woman returning to her Wayne County
+home; a red-headed peanut-buyer; a well-groomed white girl in a tailor
+suit; a youngish man barely on the right side of middle age who seemed
+to be attending her; and some negro girls with lunches. The passengers
+trailed from the railroad station down the river bank through a slush of
+mud, for the river had just fallen and had left a layer of liquid mud to
+a height of about twenty feet all along the littoral. The passengers
+picked their way down carefully, stepping into one another's tracks in
+the effort not to ruin their shoes. The drummers grumbled. The youngish
+man piloted the girl down, holding her hand, although both could have
+managed better by themselves.
+
+Following the passengers came the trunks and grips on a truck. A negro
+deck-hand, the truck-driver, and the white master of the launch shoved
+aboard the big sample trunks of the drummers with grunts, profanity, and
+much stamping of mud. Presently, without the formality of bell or
+whistle, the launch clacked away from the landing and stood up the wide,
+muddy river.
+
+The river itself was monotonous and depressing. It was perhaps half a
+mile wide, with flat, willowed mud banks on one side and low shelves of
+stratified limestone on the other.
+
+Trading-points lay at ten- or fifteen-mile intervals along the great
+waterway. The typical landing was a dilapidated shed of a store half
+covered with tin tobacco signs and ancient circus posters. Usually, only
+one man met the launch at each landing, the merchant, a democrat in his
+shirt-sleeves and without a tie. His voice was always a flat, weary
+drawl, but his eyes, wrinkled against the sun, usually held the
+shrewdness of those who make their living out of two-penny trades.
+
+At each place the red-headed peanut-buyer slogged up the muddy bank and
+bargained for the merchant's peanuts, to be shipped on the down-river
+trip of the first St. Louis packet. The loneliness of the scene embraced
+the trading-points, the river, and the little gasolene launch struggling
+against the muddy current. It permeated the passengers, and was a
+finishing touch to Peter Siner's melancholy.
+
+The launch clacked on and on interminably. Sometimes it seemed to make
+no headway at all against the heavy, silty current. Tump Pack, the white
+captain, and the negro engineer began a game of craps in the negro
+cabin. Presently, two of the white drummers came in from the white cabin
+and began betting on the throws. The game was listless. The master of
+the launch pointed out places along the shores where wildcat stills were
+located. The crap-shooters, negro and white, squatted in a circle on the
+cabin floor, snapping their fingers and calling their points
+monotonously. One of the negro girls in the negro cabin took an apple
+out of her lunch sack and began eating it, holding it in her palm after
+the fashion of negroes rather than in her fingers, as is the custom of
+white women.
+
+Both doors of the engine-room were open, and Peter Siner could see
+through into the white cabin. The old hill woman was dozing in her
+chair, her bonnet bobbing to each stroke of the engines. The youngish
+man and the girl were engaged in some sort of intimate lovers' dispute.
+When the engines stopped at one of the landings, Peter discovered she
+was trying to pay him what he had spent on getting her baggage trucked
+down at Perryville. The girl kept pressing a bill into the man's hand,
+and he avoided receiving the money. They kept up the play for sake of
+occasional contacts.
+
+When the launch came in sight of Hooker's Bend toward the middle of the
+afternoon, Peter Siner experienced one of the profoundest surprises of
+his life. Somehow, all through his college days he had remembered
+Hooker's Bend as a proud town with important stores and unapproachable
+white residences. Now he saw a skum of negro cabins, high piles of
+lumber, a sawmill, and an ice-factory. Behind that, on a little rise,
+stood the old Brownell manor, maintaining a certain shabby dignity in a
+grove of oaks. Behind and westward from the negro shacks and lumber-
+piles ranged the village stores, their roofs just visible over the top
+of the bank. Moored to the shore, lay the wharf-boat in weathered greens
+and yellows. As a background for the whole scene rose the dark-green
+height of what was called the "Big Hill," an eminence that separated the
+negro village on the east from the white village on the west. The hill
+itself held no houses, but appeared a solid green-black with cedars.
+
+The ensemble was merely another lonely spot on the south bank of the
+great somnolent river. It looked dead, deserted, a typical river town,
+unprodded even by the hoot of a jerk-water railroad.
+
+As the launch chortled toward the wharf, Peter Siner stood trying to
+orient himself to this unexpected and amazing minifying of Hooker's
+Bend. He had left a metropolis; he was coming back to a tumble-down
+village. Yet nothing was changed. Even the two scraggly locust-trees
+that clung perilously to the brink of the river bank still held their
+toe-hold among the strata of limestone.
+
+The negro deck-hand came out and pumped the hand-power whistle in three
+long discordant blasts. Then a queer thing happened. The whistle was
+answered by a faint strain of music. A little later the passengers saw a
+line of negroes come marching down the river bank to the wharf-boat.
+They marched in military order, and from afar Peter recognized the white
+aprons and the swords and spears of the Knights and Ladies of Tabor, a
+colored burial association.
+
+Siner wondered what had brought out the Knights and Ladies of Tabor. The
+singing and the drumming gradually grew upon the air. The passengers in
+the white cabin, came out on the guards at this unexpected fanfare. As
+soon as the white travelers saw the marching negroes, they began joking
+about what caused the demonstration. The captain of the launch thought
+he knew, and began an oath, but stopped it out of deference to the girl
+in the tailor suit. He said it was a dead nigger the society was going
+to ship up to Savannah.
+
+The girl in the tailor suit was much amused. She said the darkies looked
+like a string of caricatures marching down the river bank. Peter noticed
+her Northern accent, and fancied she was coming to Hooker's Bend to
+teach school.
+
+One of the drummers turned to another.
+
+"Did you ever hear Bob Taylor's yarn about Uncle 'Rastus's funeral?
+Funniest thing Bob ever got off." He proceeded to tell it.
+
+Every one on the launch was laughing except the captain, who was
+swearing quietly; but the line of negroes marched on down to the wharf-
+boat with the unshakable dignity of black folk in an important position.
+They came singing an old negro spiritual. The women's sopranos thrilled
+up in high, weird phrasing against an organ-like background of male
+voices.
+
+But the black men carried no coffin, and suddenly it occurred to Peter
+Siner that perhaps this celebration was given in honor of his own home-
+coming. The mulatto's heart beat a trifle faster as he began planning a
+suitable response to this ovation.
+
+Sure enough, the singing ranks disappeared behind the wharf-boat, and a
+minute later came marching around the stern and lined up on the outer
+guard of the vessel. The skinny, grizzly-headed negro commander held up
+his sword, and the Knights and Ladies of Tabor fell silent.
+
+The master of the launch tossed his head-line to the wharf-boat, and
+yelled for one of the negroes to make it fast. One did. Then the
+commandant with the sword began his address, but it was not directed to
+Peter. He said:
+
+[Illustration: Peter recognized the white aprons and the swords and
+spears of the Knights and Ladies of Tabor]
+
+"Brudder Tump Pack, we, de Hooker's Ben' lodge uv de Knights an' Ladies
+uv Tabor, welcome you back to yo' native town. We is proud uv you, a
+colored man, who brings back de highes' crown uv bravery dis Newnighted
+States has in its power to bestow.
+
+"Two yeahs ago, Brudder Tump, we seen you marchin' away fum Hooker's
+Ben' wid thirteen udder boys, white an' colored, all marchin' away
+togedder. Fo' uv them boys is already back home; three, we heah, is on
+de way back, but six uv yo' brave comrades, Brudder Pack, is sleepin'
+now in France, an' ain't never goin' to come home no mo'. When we honors
+you, we honors them all, de libin' an' de daid, de white an' de black,
+who fought togedder fuh one country, fuh one flag."
+
+Gasps, sobs from the line of black folk, interrupted the speaker. Just
+then a shriveled old negress gave a scream, and came running and half
+stumbling out of the line, holding out her arms to the barrel-chested
+soldier on the gang-plank. She seized him and began shrieking:
+
+"Bless Gawd! my son's done come home! Praise de Lawd! Bless His holy
+name!" Here her laudation broke into sobbing and choking and laughing,
+and she squeezed herself to her son.
+
+Tump patted her bony black form.
+
+"I's heah, Mammy," he stammered uncertainly. "I's come back, Mammy."
+
+Half a dozen other negroes caught the joyful hysteria. They began a
+religious shouting, clapping their hands, flinging up their arms,
+shrieking.
+
+One of the drummers grunted:
+
+"Good God! all this over a nigger getting back!"
+
+At the extreme end of the dark line a tall cream-colored girl wept
+silently. As Peter Siner stood blinking his eyes, he saw the octoroon's
+shoulders and breasts shake from the sobs, which her white blood
+repressed to silence.
+
+A certain sympathy for her grief and its suppression kept Peter's eyes
+on the young woman, and then, with the queer effect of one picture
+melting into another, the strange girl's face assumed familiar curves
+and softnesses, and he was looking at Ida May.
+
+A quiver traveled deliberately over Peter from his crisp black hair to
+the soles of his feet. He started toward her impulsively.
+
+At that moment one of the drummers picked up his grip, and started down
+the gang-plank, and with its leathern bulk pressed Tump Pack and his
+mother out of his path. He moved on to the shore through the negroes,
+who divided at his approach. The captain of the launch saw that other of
+his white passengers were becoming impatient, and he shouted for the
+darkies to move aside and not to block the gangway. The youngish man
+drew the girl in the tailor suit close to him and started through with
+her. Peter heard him say, "They won't hurt you, Miss Negley." And Miss
+Negley, in the brisk nasal intonation of a Northern woman, replied: "Oh,
+I'm not afraid. We waste a lot of sympathy on them back home, but when
+you see them--"
+
+At that moment Peter heard a cry in his ears and felt arms thrown about
+his neck. He looked down and saw his mother, Caroline Siner, looking up
+into his face and weeping with the general emotion of the negroes and
+this joy of her own. Caroline had changed since Peter last saw her. Her
+eyes were a little more wrinkled, her kinky hair was thinner and very
+gray.
+
+Something warm and melting moved in Peter Siner's breast. He caressed
+his mother and murmured incoherently, as had Tump Pack. Presently the
+master of the launch came by, and touched the old negress, not ungently,
+with the end of a spike-pole.
+
+"You'll have to move, Aunt Ca'line," he said. "We're goin' to get the
+freight off now."
+
+The black woman paused in her weeping. "Yes, Mass' Bob," she said, and
+she and Peter moved off of the launch onto the wharf-boat.
+
+The Knights and Ladies of Tabor were already up the river bank with
+their hero. Peter and his mother were left alone. Now they walked around
+the guards of the wharf-boat to the bank, holding each other's arms
+closely. As they went, Peter kept looking down at his old black mother,
+with a growing tenderness. She was so worn and heavy! He recognized the
+very dress she wore, an old black silk which she had "washed out" for
+Miss Patti Brownell when he was a boy. It had been then, it was now, her
+best dress. During the years the old negress had registered her
+increasing bulk by letting out seams and putting in panels. Some of the
+panels did not agree with the original fabric either in color or in
+texture and now the seams were stretching again and threatening a rip.
+Peter's own immaculate clothes reproached him, and he wondered for the
+hundredth, or for the thousandth time how his mother had obtained
+certain remittances which she had forwarded him during his college
+years.
+
+As Peter and his mother crept up the bank of the river, stopping
+occasionally to let the old negress rest, his impression of the meanness
+and shabbiness of the whole village grew. From the top of the bank the
+single business street ran straight back from the river. It was stony in
+places, muddy in places, strewn with goods-boxes, broken planking,
+excelsior, and straw that had been used for packing. Charred rubbish-
+piles lay in front of every store, which the clerks had swept out and
+attempted to burn. Hogs roamed the thoroughfare, picking up decaying
+fruit and parings, and nosing tin cans that had been thrown out by the
+merchants. The stores that Peter had once looked upon as show-places
+were poor two-story brick or frame buildings, defiled by time and wear
+and weather. The white merchants were coatless, listless men who sat in
+chairs on the brick pavements before their stores and who moved slowly
+when a customer entered their doors.
+
+And, strange to say, it was this fall of his white townsmen that moved
+Peter Siner with a sense of the greatest loss. It seemed fantastic to
+him, this sudden land-slide of the mighty.
+
+As Peter and his mother came over the brow of the river bank, they saw a
+crowd collecting at the other end of the street. The main street of
+Hooker's Bend is only a block long, and the two negroes could easily
+hear the loud laughter of men hurrying to the focus of interest and the
+blurry expostulations of negro voices. The laughter spread like a
+contagion. Merchants as far up as the river corner became infected, and
+moved toward the crowd, looking back over their shoulders at every tenth
+or twelfth step to see that no one entered their doors.
+
+Presently, a little short man, fairly yipping with laughter, stumbled
+back up the street to his store with tears of mirth in his eyes. A
+belated merchant stopped him by clapping both hands on his shoulders and
+shaking some composure into him.
+
+"What is it? What's so funny? Damn it! I miss ever'thing!"
+
+"I-i-it's that f-fool Tum-Tump Pack. Bobbs's arrested him!"
+
+The inquirer was astounded.
+
+"How the hell can he arrest him when he hit town this minute?"
+
+"Wh-why, Bobbs had an old warrant for crap-shoot--three years old--
+before the war. Just as Tump was a-coming down the street at the head of
+the coons, out steps Bobbs--" Here the little man was overcome.
+
+The merchant from the corner opened his eyes.
+
+"Arrested him on an old crap charge?"
+
+The little man nodded. They gazed at each other. Then they exploded
+simultaneously.
+
+Peter left his obese mother and hurried to the corner, Dawson Bobbs, the
+constable, had handcuffs on Tump's wrists, and stood with his prisoner
+amid a crowd of arguing negroes.
+
+Bobbs was a big, fleshy, red-faced man, with chilly blue eyes and a
+little straight slit of a mouth in his wide face. He was laughing and
+chewing a sliver of toothpick.
+
+"O Tump Pack," he called loudly, "you kain't git away from me! If you
+roll bones in Hooker's Bend, you'll have to divide your winnings with
+the county." Dawson winked a chill eye at the crowd in general.
+
+"But hit's out o' date, Mr. Bobbs," the old gray-headed minister, Parson
+Ranson, was pleading.
+
+"May be that, Parson, but hit's easier to come up before the J.P. and
+pay off than to fight it through the circuit court."
+
+Siner pushed his way through the crowd. "How much do you want, Mr.
+Bobbs?" he asked briefly.
+
+The constable looked with reminiscent eyes at the tall, well-tailored
+negro. He was plainly going through some mental card-index, hunting for
+the name of Peter Siner on some long-forgotten warrant. Apparently, he
+discovered nothing, for he said shortly:
+
+"How do I know before he's tried? Come on, Tump!"
+
+The procession moved in a long noisy line up Pillow Street, the white
+residential street lying to the west. It stopped before a large shaded
+lawn, where a number of white men and women were playing a game with
+cards. The cards used by the lawn party were not ordinary playing-cards,
+but had figures on them instead of spots, and were called "rook" cards.
+The party of white ladies and gentlemen were playing "rook." On a table
+in the middle of the lawn glittered some pieces of silver plate which
+formed the first, second, and third prizes for the three leading scores.
+
+The constable halted his black company before the lawn, where they stood
+in the sunshine patiently waiting for the justice of the peace to finish
+his game and hear the case of the State of Tennessee, plaintiff, versus
+Tump Pack, defendant.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER II
+
+
+On the eastern edge of Hooker's Bend, drawn in a rough semicircle around
+the Big Hill, lies Niggertown. In all the half-moon there are perhaps
+not two upright buildings. The grimy cabins lean at crazy angles, some
+propped with poles, while others hold out against gravitation at a
+hazard.
+
+Up and down its street flows the slow negro life of the village. Here
+children of all colors from black to cream fight and play; deep-chested
+negresses loiter to and fro, some on errands to the white section of the
+village on the other side of the hill, where they go to scrub or cook or
+wash or iron. Others go down to the public well with a bucket in each
+hand and one balanced on the head.
+
+The public well itself lies at the southern end of this miserable
+street, just at a point where the drainage of the Big Hill collects. The
+rainfall runs down through Niggertown, under its sties, stables, and
+outdoor toilets, and the well supplies the negroes with water for
+cooking, washing, and drinking. Or, rather, what was once a well
+supplies this water, for it is a well no longer. Its top and curbing
+caved in long ago, and now there is simply a big hole in the soft,
+water-soaked clay, about fifteen feet wide, with water standing at the
+bottom.
+
+Here come the unhurried colored women, who throw in their buckets, and
+with a dexterity that comes of long practice draw them out full of
+water. Black mothers shout at their children not to fall into this pit,
+and now and then, when a pig fails to come up for its evening slops, a
+black boy will go to the public well to see if perchance his porker has
+met misfortune there.
+
+The inhabitants of Niggertown suffer from divers diseases; they develop
+strange ailments that no amount of physicking will overcome; young wives
+grow sickly from no apparent cause. Although only three or four hundred
+persons live in Niggertown, two or three negroes are always slowly dying
+of tuberculosis; winter brings pneumonia; summer, malaria. About once a
+year the state health officer visits Hooker's Bend and forces the white
+soda-water dispensers on the other side of the hill to sterilize their
+glasses in the name of the sovereign State of Tennessee.
+
+The Siner home was a three-room shanty about midway in the semicircle.
+Peter Siner stood in the sunlight just outside the entrance, watching
+his old mother clean the bugs out of a tainted ham that she had bought
+for a pittance from some white housekeeper in the village. It had been
+too high for white people to eat. Old Caroline patiently tapped the
+honeycombed meat to scare out the last of the little green householders,
+and then she washed it in a solution of soda to freshen it up.
+
+The sight of his bulky old mother working at the spoiled ham and of the
+negro women in the street moving to and from the infected well filled
+Peter Siner with its terrible pathos. Although he had seen these
+surroundings all of his life, he had a queer impression that he was
+looking upon them for the first time. During his boyhood he had accepted
+all this without question as the way the world was made. During his
+college days a criticism had arisen in his mind, but it came slowly, and
+was tempered by that tenderness every one feels for the spot called
+home. Now, as he stood looking at it, he wondered how human beings lived
+there at all. He wondered if Ida May used water from the Niggertown
+well.
+
+He turned to ask old Caroline, but checked himself with a man's
+instinctive avoidance of mentioning his intimacies to his mother. At
+that moment, oddly enough, the old negress brought up the topic herself.
+
+"Ida May wuz 'quirin' 'bout you las' night, Peter."
+
+A faint tingle filtered through Peter's throat and chest, but he asked
+casually enough what she had said.
+
+"Didn' say; she wrote."
+
+Peter looked around, frankly astonished.
+
+"Wrote?"
+
+"Yeah; co'se she wrote."
+
+"What made her write?" a fantasy of Ida May dumb flickered before the
+mulatto.
+
+[Illustration: Up and down its street flows the slow negro life of the
+village]
+
+"Why, Ida May's in Nashville." Caroline looked at Peter. "She wrote to
+Cissie, astin' 'bout you. She ast is you as bright in yo' books as you
+is in yo' color." The old negress gave a pleased abdominal chuckle as
+she admired her broad-shouldered brown son.
+
+"But I saw Ida May standing on the wharf-boat the day I came home,"
+protested Peter, still bewildered.
+
+"No you ain't. I reckon you seen Cissie. Dey looks kind o' like when you
+is fur off."
+
+"Cissie?" repeated Peter. Then he remembered a smaller sister of Ida
+May's, a little, squalling, yellow, wet-nosed nuisance that had annoyed
+his adolescence. So that little spoil-sport had grown up into the girl
+he had mistaken for Ida May. This fact increased his sense of
+strangeness--that sense of great change that had fallen on the village
+in his absence which formed the groundwork of all his renewed
+associations.
+
+Peter's prolonged silence aroused certain suspicions in the old negress.
+She glanced at her son out of the tail of her eyes.
+
+"Cissie Dildine is Tump Pack's gal," she stated defensively, with the
+jealousy all mothers feel toward all sons.
+
+A diversion in the shouts of the children up the mean street and a
+sudden furious barking of dogs drew Peter from the discussion. He looked
+up, and saw a negro girl of about fourteen coming down the curved
+street, with long, quick steps and an occasional glance over her
+shoulder.
+
+From across the thoroughfare a small chocolate-colored woman, with her
+wool done in outstanding spikes, thrust her head out at the door and
+called:
+
+"Whut's de matter, Ofeely?"
+
+The girl lifted a high voice:
+
+"Oh, Miss Nan, it's that constable goin' th'ugh the houses!" The girl
+veered across the street to the safety of the open door and one of her
+own sex.
+
+"Good Lawd!" cried the spiked one in disgust, "ever', time a white
+pusson gits somp'n misplaced--" She moved to one side to allow the girl
+to enter, and continued staring up the street, with the whites of her
+eyes accented against her dark face, after the way of angry negroes.
+
+Around the crescent the dogs were furious. They were Niggertown dogs,
+and the sight of a white man always drove them to a frenzy. Presently in
+the hullabaloo, Peter heard Dawson Bobbs's voice shouting:
+
+"Aunt Mahaly, if you kain't call off this dawg, I'm shore goin' to kill
+him."
+
+Then an old woman's scolding broke in and complicated the mĂªlĂ©e.
+Presently Peter saw the bulky form of Dawson Bobbs come around the
+curve, moving methodically from cabin to cabin. He held some legal-
+looking papers in his hands, and Peter knew what the constable was
+doing. He was serving a blanket search-warrant on the whole black
+population of Hooker's Bend. At almost every cabin a dog ran out to
+blaspheme at the intruder, but a wave of the man's pistol sent them
+yelping under the floors again.
+
+When the constable entered a house, Peter could hear him bumping and
+rattling among the furnishings, while the black householders stood
+outside the door and watched him disturb their housekeeping
+arrangements.
+
+Presently Bobbs came angling across the street toward the Siner cabin.
+As he entered the rickety gate, old Caroline called out:
+
+"Whut is you after, anyway, white man?"
+
+Bobbs turned cold, truculent eyes on the old negress. "A turkey
+roaster," he snapped. "Some o' you niggers stole Miss Lou Arkwright's
+turkey roaster."
+
+"Tukky roaster!" cried the old black woman, in great disgust. "Whut you
+s'pose us niggers is got to roast in a tukky roaster?"
+
+The constable answered shortly that his business was to find the
+roaster, not what the negroes meant to put in it.
+
+"I decla'," satirized old Caroline, savagely, "dish-heah Niggertown is a
+white man's pocket. Ever' time he misplace somp'n, he feel in his pocket
+to see ef it ain't thaiuh. Don'-chu turn over dat sody-water, white man!
+You know dey ain't no tukky roaster under dat sody-water. I 'cla' 'fo'
+Gawd, ef a white man wuz to eat a flapjack, an' it did n' give him de
+belly-ache, I 'cla' 'fo' Gawd he'd git out a search-wa'nt to see ef some
+nigger had n' stole dat flapjack goin' down his th'oat."
+
+"Mr. Bobbs has to do his work, Mother," put in Peter. "I don't suppose
+he enjoys it any more than we do."
+
+"Den let 'im git out'n dis business an' git in anudder," scolded the old
+woman. "Dis sho is a mighty po' business."
+
+The ponderous Mr. Bobbs finished with a practised thoroughness his
+inspection of the cabin, and then the inquisition proceeded down the
+street, around the crescent, and so out of sight and eventually out of
+hearing.
+
+Old Caroline snapped her chair back beside her greasy table and sat down
+abruptly to her spoiled ham again.
+
+"Dat make me mad," she grumbled. "Ever' time a white pusson fail to lay
+dey han' on somp'n, dey comes an' turns over ever'thing in my house."
+She paused a moment, closed her eyes in thought, and then mused aloud:
+"I wonder who is got Miss Arkwright's roaster."
+
+The commotion of the constable's passing died in his wake, and
+Niggertown resumed its careless existence. Dogs reappeared from under
+the cabins and stretched in the sunshine; black children came out of
+hiding and picked up their play; the frightened Ophelia came out of
+Nan's cabin across the street and went her way; a lanky negro youth in
+blue coat and pin-striped trousers appeared, coming down the squalid
+thoroughfare whistling the "Memphis Blues" with bird-like virtuosity.
+The lightness with which Niggertown accepted the moral side glance of a
+blanket search-warrant depressed Siner.
+
+Caroline called her son to dinner, as the twelve-o'clock meal is called
+in Hooker's Bend, and so ended his meditation. The Harvard man went back
+into the kitchen and sat down at a rickety table covered with a red-
+checked oil-cloth. On it were spread the spoiled ham, a dish of poke
+salad, a corn pone, and a pot of weak coffee. A quaint old bowl held
+some brown sugar. The fat old negress made a slight, habitual settling
+movement in her chair that marked the end of her cooking and the
+beginning of her meal. Then she bent her grizzled, woolly head and
+mumbled off one of those queer old-fashioned graces which consist of a
+swift string of syllables without pauses between either words or
+sentences.
+
+Peter sat watching his mother with a musing gaze. The kitchen was
+illuminated by a single small square window set high up from the floor.
+Now the disposition of its single ray of light over the dishes and the
+bowed head of the massive negress gave Peter one of those sharp, tender
+apprehensions of formal harmony that lie back of the genre in art. It
+stirred his emotion in an odd fashion. When old Caroline raised her
+head, she found her son staring with impersonal eyes not at herself, but
+at the whole room, including her. The old woman was perplexed and a
+little apprehensive.
+
+"Why, son!" she ejaculated, "didn' you bow yo' haid while yo' mammy ast
+de grace?"
+
+Peter was a little confused at his remissness. Then he leaned a little
+forward to explain the sudden glamour which for a moment had
+transfigured the interior of their kitchen. But even as he started to
+speak, he realized that what he meant to say would only confuse his
+mother; therefore he cast about mentally for some other explanation of
+his behavior, but found nothing at hand.
+
+"I hope you ain't forgot yo' 'ligion up at de 'versity, son."
+
+"Oh, no, no, indeed, Mother, but just at that moment, just as you bowed
+your head, you know, it struck me that--that there is something noble in
+our race." That was the best he could put it to her.
+
+"Noble--"
+
+"Yes. You know," he went on a little quickly, "sometimes I--I've thought
+my father must have been a noble man."
+
+The old negress became very still. She was not looking quite at her son,
+or yet precisely away from him.
+
+"Uh--uh noble nigger,"--she gave her abdominal chuckle. "Why--yeah, I
+reckon yo' father wuz putty noble as--as niggers go." She sat looking at
+her son, oddly, with a faint amusement in her gross black face, when a
+careful voice, a very careful voice, sounded in the outer room, gliding
+up politely on the syllables:
+
+"Ahnt Carolin'! oh, Ahnt Carolin', may I enter?"
+
+The old woman stirred.
+
+"Da''s Cissie, Peter. Go ast her in to de fambly-room."
+
+When Siner opened the door, the vague resemblance of the slender, creamy
+girl on the threshold to Ida May again struck him; but Cissie Dildine
+was younger, and her polished black hair lay straight on her pretty
+head, and was done in big, shining puffs over her ears in a way that Ida
+May's unruly curls would never have permitted. Her eyes were the most
+limpid brown Peter had ever seen, but her oval face was faintly
+unnatural from the use of negro face powder, which colored women insist
+on, and which gives their yellows and browns a barely perceptible
+greenish hue. Cissie wore a fluffy yellow dress some three shades deeper
+than the throat and the glimpse of bosom revealed at the neck.
+
+The girl carried a big package in her arms, and now she manipulated this
+to put out a slender hand to Peter.
+
+"This is Cissie Dildine, Mister Siner." She smiled up at him. "I just
+came over to put my name down on your list. There was such a mob at the
+Benevolence Hall last night I couldn't get to you."
+
+The girl had a certain finical precision to her English that told Peter
+she had been away to some school, and had been taught to guard her
+grammar very carefully as she talked.
+
+Peter helped her inside amid the handshake and said he would go fetch
+the list. As he turned, Cissie offered her bundle. "Here is something I
+thought might be a little treat for you and Ahnt Carolin'." She paused,
+and then explained remotely, "Sometimes it is hard to get good things at
+the village market."
+
+Peter took the package, vaguely amused at Cissie's patronage of the
+Hooker's Bend market. It was an attitude instinctively assumed by every
+girl, white or black, who leaves the village and returns. The bundle was
+rather large and wrapped in newspapers. He carried it into the kitchen
+to his mother, and then returned with the list.
+
+The sheet was greasy from the handling of black fingers. The girl spread
+it on the little center-table with a certain daintiness, seated herself,
+and held out her hand for Peter's pencil. She made rather a graceful
+study in cream and yellow as she leaned over the table and signed her
+name in a handwriting as perfect and as devoid of character as a copy-
+book. She began discussing the speech Peter had made at the Benevolence
+Hall.
+
+"I don't know whether I am in favor of your project or not, Mr. Siner,"
+she said as she rose from the table.
+
+"No?" Peter was surprised and amused at her attitude and at her precise
+voice.
+
+"No, I'm rather inclined toward Mr. DuBois's theory of a literary
+culture than toward Mr. Washington's for a purely industrial training."
+
+Peter broke out laughing.
+
+"For the love of Mike, Cissie, you talk like the instructor in Sociology
+B! And haven't we met before somewhere? This 'Mister Siner' stuff--"
+
+The girl's face warmed under its faint, greenish powder.
+
+"If I aren't careful with my language, Peter," she said simply, "I'll be
+talking just as badly as I did before I went to the seminary. You know I
+never hear a proper sentence in Hooker's Bend except my own."
+
+A certain resignation in the girl's soft voice brought Peter a qualm for
+laughing at her. He laid an impulsive hand on her young shoulder.
+
+"Well, that's true, certainly, but it won't always be like that, Cissie.
+More of us go off to school every year. I do hope my school here in
+Hooker's Bend will be of some real value. If I could just show our
+people how badly we fare here, how ill housed, and unsanitary--"
+
+The girl pressed Peter's fingers with a woman's optimism for a man.
+
+"You'll succeed, Peter, I know you will. Some day the name Siner will
+mean the same thing to coloured people as Tanner and Dunbar and
+Braithwaite do. Anyway, I've put my name down for ten dollars to help
+out." She returned the pencil. "I'll have Tump Pack come around and pay
+you my subscription, Peter."
+
+"I'll watch out for Tump," promised Peter in a lightening mood, "--and
+make him pay."
+
+"He'll do it."
+
+"I don't doubt it. You ought to have him under perfect control. I meant
+to tell you what a pretty frock you have on."
+
+The girl dimpled, and dropped him a little curtsy, half ironical and
+wholly graceful.
+
+Peter was charmed.
+
+"Now keep that way, Cissie, smiling and human, not so grammatical. I
+wish I had a brooch."
+
+"A brooch?"
+
+"I'd give it to you. Your dress needs a brooch, an old gold brooch at
+the bosom, just a glint there to balance your eyes."
+
+Cissie flushed happily, and made the feminine movement of concealing the
+V-shaped opening at her throat.
+
+"It's a pleasure to doll up for a man like you, Peter. You see a girl's
+good points--if she has any," she tacked on demurely.
+
+"Oh, just any man--"
+
+"Don't think it! Don't think it!" waved down Cissie, humorously.
+
+"But, Cissie, how is it possible--"
+
+"Just blind." Cissie rippled into a boarding-school laugh. "I could wear
+the whole rue del Opera here in Niggertown, and nobody would ever see it
+but you."
+
+Cissie was moving toward the door. Peter tried to detain her. He enjoyed
+the implication of Tump Pack's stupidity, in their badinage, but she
+would not stay. He was finally reduced to thanking her for her present,
+then stood guard as she tripped out into the grimy street. In the
+sunshine her glossy black hair and canary dress looked as trim and
+brilliant as the plumage of a chaffinch.
+
+Peter Siner walked back into the kitchen with the fixed smile of a man
+who is thinking of a pretty girl. The black dowager in the kitchen
+received him in silence, with her thick lips pouted. When Peter observed
+it, he felt slightly amused at his mother's resentment.
+
+"Well, you sho had a lot o' chatter over signin' a lil ole paper."
+
+"She signed for ten dollars," said Peter, smiling.
+
+"Huh! she'll never pay it."
+
+"Said Tump Pack would pay it."
+
+"Huh!" The old negress dropped the subject, and nodded at a huge double
+pan on the table. "Dat's whut she brung you." She grunted
+disapprovingly.
+
+"And it's for you, too, Mother."
+
+"Ya-as, I 'magine she brung somp'n fuh me."
+
+Peter walked across to the double pans, and saw they held a complete
+dinner--chicken, hot biscuits, cake, pickle, even ice-cream.
+
+The sight of the food brought Peter a realization that he was keenly
+hungry. As a matter of fact, he had not eaten a palatable meal since he
+had been evicted from the white dining-car at Cairo, Illinois. Siner
+served his own and his mother's plate.
+
+The old woman sniffed again.
+
+"Seems to me lak you is mighty onobsarvin' fuh a nigger whut's been off
+to college."
+
+"Anything else?" Peter looked into the pans again.
+
+"Ain't you see whut it's all in?"
+
+"What it's in?"
+
+"Yeah; whut it's in. You heared whut I said."
+
+"What is it in?"
+
+"Why, it's in Miss Arkwright's tukky roaster, dat's whut it's in." The
+old negress drove her point home with an acid accent.
+
+Peter Siner was too loyal to his new friendship with Cissie Dildine to
+allow his mother's jealous suspicions to affect him; nevertheless the
+old woman's observations about the turkey roaster did prevent a complete
+and care-free enjoyment of the meal. Certainly there were other turkey
+roasters in Hooker's Bend than Mrs. Arkwright's. Cissie might very well
+own a roaster. It was absurd to think that Cissie, in the midst of her
+almost pathetic struggle to break away from the uncouthness of
+Niggertown, would stoop to--Even in his thoughts Peter avoided
+nominating the charge.
+
+And then, somehow, his memory fished up the fact that years ago Ida May,
+according to village rumor, was "light-fingered." At that time in
+Peter's life "light-fingeredness" carried with it no opprobrium
+whatever. It was simply a fact about Ida May, as were her sloe eyes and
+curling black hair. His reflections renewed his perpetual sense of
+queerness and strangeness that hall-marked every phase of Niggertown
+life since his return from the North.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+Cissie Dildine's contribution tailed out the one hundred dollars that
+Peter needed, and after he had finished his meal, the mulatto set out
+across the Big Hill for the white section of the village, to complete
+his trade.
+
+It was Peter's program to go to the Planter's Bank, pay down his
+hundred, and receive a deed from one Elias Tomwit, which the bank held
+in escrow. Two or three days before Peter had tried to borrow the
+initial hundred from the bank, but the cashier, Henry Hooker, after
+going into the transaction, had declined the loan, and therefore Siner
+had been forced to await a meeting of the Sons and Daughters of
+Benevolence. At this meeting the subscription had gone through promptly.
+The land the negroes purposed to purchase for an industrial school was a
+timbered tract tying southeast of Hooker's Bend on the head-waters of
+Ross Creek. A purchase price of eight hundred dollars had been agreed
+upon. The timber on the tract, sold on the stump, would bring almost
+that amount. It was Siner's plan to commandeer free labor in Niggertown,
+work off the timber, and have enough money to build the first unit of
+his school. A number of negro men already had subscribed a certain
+number of days' work in the timber. It was a modest and entirely
+practical program, and Peter felt set up over it.
+
+The brown man turned briskly out into the hot afternoon sunshine, down
+the mean semicircular street, where piccaninnies were kicking up clouds
+of dust. He hurried through the dusty area, and presently turned off a
+by-path that led over the hill, through a glade of cedars, to the white
+village.
+
+The glade was gloomy, but warm, for the shade of cedars somehow seems to
+hold heat. A carpet of needles hushed Siner's footfalls and spread a
+Sabbatical silence through the grove. The upward path was not smooth,
+but was broken with outcrops of the same reddish limestone that marks
+the whole stretch of the Tennessee River. Here and there in the grove
+were circles eight or ten feet in diameter, brushed perfectly clean of
+all needles and pebbles and twigs. These places were crap-shooters'
+circles, where black and white men squatted to shoot dice.
+
+Under the big stones on the hillside, Peter knew, was cached illicit
+whisky, and at night the boot-leggers carried on a brisk trade among the
+gamblers. More than that, the glade on the Big Hill was used for still
+more demoralizing ends. It became a squalid grove of Ashtoreth; but now,
+in the autumn evening, all the petty obscenities of white and black
+sloughed away amid the religious implications of the dark-green aisles.
+
+The sight of a white boy sitting on an outcrop of limestone with a strap
+of school-books dropped at his feet rather surprised Peter. The negro
+looked at the hobbledehoy for several seconds before he recognized in
+the lanky youth a little Arkwright boy whom he had known and played with
+in his pre-college days. Now there was such an exaggerated wistfulness
+in young Arkwright's attitude that Peter was amused.
+
+"Hello, Sam," he called. "What you doing out here?"
+
+The Arkwright boy turned with a start.
+
+"Aw, is that you, Siner?" Before the negro could reply, he added: "Was
+you on the Harvard football team, Siner? Guess the white fellers have a
+pretty gay time in Harvard, don't they, Siner? Geemenettie! but I git
+tired o' this dern town! D' reckon I could make the football team? Looks
+like I could if a nigger like you could, Siner."
+
+None of this juvenile outbreak of questions required answers. Peter
+stood looking at the hobbledehoy without smiling.
+
+"Aren't you going to school?" he asked.
+
+Arkwright shrugged.
+
+"Aw, hell!" he said self-consciously. "We got marched down to the
+protracted meetin' while ago--whole school did. My seat happened to be
+close to a window. When they all stood up to sing, I crawled out and
+skipped. Don't mention that, Siner."
+
+"I won't."
+
+"When a fellow goes to college he don't git marched to preachin', does
+he, Siner?"
+
+"I never did."
+
+"We-e-ll," mused young Sam, doubtfully, "you're a nigger."
+
+"I never saw any white men marched in, either."
+
+"Oh, hell! I wish I was in college."
+
+"What are you sitting out here thinking about?" inquired Peter of the
+ingenuous youngster.
+
+"Oh--football and--women and God and--how to stack cards. You think
+about ever'thing, in the woods. Damn it! I got to git out o' this little
+jay town. D' reckon I could git in the navy, Siner?"
+
+"Don't see why you couldn't, Sam. Have you seen Tump Pack anywhere?"
+
+"Yeah; on Hobbett's corner. Say, is Cissie Dildine at home?"
+
+"I believe she is."
+
+"She cooks for us," explained young Arkwright, "and Mammy wants her to
+come and git supper, too."
+
+The phrase "get supper, too," referred to the custom in the white homes
+of Hooker's Bend of having only two meals cooked a day, breakfast and
+the twelve-o'clock dinner, with a hot supper optional with the mistress.
+
+Peter nodded, and passed on up the path, leaving young Arkwright seated
+on the ledge of rock, a prey to all the boiling, erratic impulses of
+adolescence. The negro sensed some of the innumerable difficulties of
+this white boy's life, and once, as he walked on over the silent
+needles, he felt an impulse to turn back and talk to young Sam
+Arkwright, to sit down and try to explain to the youth what he could of
+this hazardous adventure called Life. But then, he reflected, very
+likely the boy would be offended at a serious talk from a negro. Also,
+he thought that young Arkwright, being white, was really not within the
+sphere of his ministry. He, Peter Siner, was a worker in the black world
+of the South. He was part of the black world which the white South was
+so meticulous to hide away, to keep out of sight and out of thought.
+
+A certain vague sense of triumph trickled through some obscure corner of
+Peter's mind. It was so subtle that Peter himself would have been the
+first, in all good faith, to deny it and to affirm that all his motives
+were altruistic. Once he looked back through the cedars. He could still
+see the boy hunched over, chin in fist, staring at the mat of needles.
+
+As Peter turned the brow of the Big Hill, he saw at its eastern foot the
+village church, a plain brick building with a decaying spire. Its side
+was perforated by four tall arched windows. Each was a memorial window
+of stained glass, which gave the building a black look from the outside.
+As Peter walked down the hill toward the church he heard the and
+somewhat nasal singing of uncultivated voices mingled with the snoring
+of a reed organ.
+
+When he reached Main Street, Peter found the whole business portion
+virtually deserted. All the stores were closed, and in every show-window
+stood a printed notice that no business would be transacted between the
+hours of two and three o'clock in the afternoon during the two weeks of
+revival then in progress. Beside this notice stood another card, giving
+the minister's text for the current day. On this particular day it read:
+
+
+                        GO YE INTO ALL THE WORLD
+
+                 Come hear Rev. E.B. Blackwater's great
+                         Missionary Address on
+
+                         CHRISTIANIZING AFRICA
+
+                  ELOQUENT, PROFOUND, HEART-SEARCHING.
+                        ILLUSTRATED WITH SLIDES.
+
+
+Half a dozen negroes lounged in the sunshine on Hobbett's corner as
+Peter came up. They were amusing themselves after the fashion of blacks,
+with mock fights, feints, sudden wrestlings. They would seize one
+another by the head and grind their knuckles into one another's wool.
+Occasionally, one would leap up and fall into one of those grotesque
+shuffles called "breakdowns." It all held a certain rawness, an
+irrepressible juvenility.
+
+As Peter came up, Tump Pack detached himself from the group and gave a
+pantomime of thrusting. He was clearly reproducing the action which had
+won for him his military medal. Then suddenly he fell down in the dust
+and writhed. He was mimicking with a ghastly realism the death-throes of
+his four victims. His audience howled with mirth at this dumb show of
+the bayonet-fight and of killing four men. Tump himself got up out of
+the dust with tears of laughter in his eyes. Peter caught the end of his
+sentence, "Sho put it to 'em, black boy. Fo' white men--"
+
+His audience roared again, swayed around, and pounded one another in an
+excess of mirth.
+
+Siner shouted from across the street two or three times before he caught
+Tump's attention. The ex-soldier looked around, sobered abruptly.
+
+"Whut-chu want, nigger?" His inquiry was not over-cordial.
+
+Peter nodded him across the street.
+
+The heavily built black in khaki hesitated a moment, then started across
+the street with the dragging feet of a reluctant negro. Peter looked at
+him as he came up.
+
+"What's the matter, Tump?" he asked playfully.
+
+"Ain't nothin' matter wid me, nigger." Peter made a guess at Tump's
+surliness.
+
+"Look here, are you puffed up because Cissie Dildine struck you for a
+ten?"
+
+Tump's expression changed.
+
+"Is she struck me fuh a ten?"
+
+"Yes; on that school subscription."
+
+"Is dat whut you two niggers wuz a-talkin' 'bout over thaiuh in yo'
+house?"
+
+"Exactly." Peter showed the list, with Cissie's name on it. "She told me
+to collect from you."
+
+Tump brightened up.
+
+"So dat wuz whut you two niggers wuz a-talkin' 'bout over at yo' house."
+He ran a fist down into his khaki, and drew out three or four one-dollar
+bills and about a pint of small change. It was the usual crap-shooter's
+offering. The two negroes sat down on the ramshackle porch of an old
+jeweler's shop, and Tump began a complicated tally of ten dollars.
+
+By the time he had his dimes, quarters, and nickels in separate stacks,
+services in the village church were finished, and the congregation came
+filing up the street. First came the school-children, running and
+chattering and swinging their books by the straps; then the business men
+of the hamlet, rather uncomfortable in coats and collars, hurrying back
+to their stores; finally came the women, surrounding the preacher.
+
+Tump and Peter walked on up to the entrance of the Planter's Bank and
+there awaited Mr. Henry Hooker, the cashier. Presently a skinny man
+detached himself from the church crowd and came angling across the dirty
+street toward the bank. Mr. Hooker wore somewhat shabby clothes for a
+banker; in fact, he never could recover from certain personal habits
+formed during a penurious boyhood. He had a thin hatchet face which just
+at this moment was shining though from some inward glow. Although he was
+an unhandsome little man, his expression was that of one at peace with
+man and God and was pleasant to see. He had been so excited by the
+minister that he was constrained to say something even to two negroes.
+So as he unlocked the little one-story bank, he told Tump and Peter that
+he had been listening to a man who was truly a man of God. He said
+Blackwater could touch the hardest heart, and, sure enough, Mr. Hooker's
+rather popped and narrow-set eyes looked as though he had been crying.
+
+All this encomium was given in a high, cracked voice as the cashier
+opened the door and turned the negroes into the bank. Tump, who stood
+with his hat off, listening to all the cashier had to say, said he
+thought so, too.
+
+The shabby interior of the little bank, the shabby little banker,
+renewed that sense of disillusion that pervaded Peter's home-coming. In
+Boston the mulatto had done his slight banking business in a white
+marble structure with tellers of machine-like briskness and neatness.
+
+Mr. Hooker strolled around into his grill-cage; when he was thoroughly
+ensconced he began business in his high voice:
+
+"You came to see me about that land, Peter?"
+
+Yes, sir."
+
+"Sorry to tell you, Peter, you are not back in time to get the Tomwit
+place."
+
+Peter came out of his musing over the Boston banks with a sense of
+bewilderment.
+
+"How's that? why, I bought that land--"
+
+"But you paid nothing for your option, Siner."
+
+"I had a clear-cut understanding with Mr. Tomwit--"
+
+Mr. Hooker smiled a smile that brought out sharp wrinkles around the
+thin nose on his thin face.
+
+"You should have paid him an earnest, Siner, if you wanted to bind your
+trade. You colored folks are always stumbling over the law."
+
+Peter stared through the grating, not knowing what to do.
+
+"I'll go see Mr. Tomwit," he said, and started uncertainly for the door.
+
+The cashier's falsetto stopped him:
+
+"No use, Peter. Mr. Tomwit surprised me, too, but no use talking about
+it. I didn't like to see such an important thing as the education of our
+colored people held up, myself. I've been thinking about it."
+
+"Especially when I had made a fair square trade," put in Peter, warmly.
+
+"Exactly," squeaked the cashier. "And rather than let your project be
+delayed, I'm going to offer you the old Dillihay place at exactly the
+same price, Peter--eight hundred."
+
+"The Dillihay place?"
+
+"Yes; that's west of town; it's bigger by twenty acres than old man
+Tomwit's place."
+
+Peter considered the proposition.
+
+"I'll have to carry this before the Sons and Daughters of Benevolence,
+Mr. Hooker."
+
+The cashier repeated the smile that bracketed his thin nose in wrinkles.
+
+"That's with you, but you know what you say goes with the niggers here
+in town, and, besides, I won't promise how long I'll hold the Dillihay
+place. Real estate is brisk around here now. I didn't want to delay a
+good work on account of not having a location." Mr. Hooker turned away
+to a big ledger on a breast-high desk, and apparently was about to
+settle himself to the endless routine of bank work.
+
+Peter knew the Dillihay place well. It lacked the timber of the other
+tract; still, it was fairly desirable. He hesitated before the tarnished
+grill.
+
+"What do you think about it, Tump?"
+
+"You won't make a mistake in buying," answered the high voice of Mr.
+Hooker at his ledger.
+
+"I don' think you'll make no mistake in buyin', Peter," repeated Tump's
+bass.
+
+Peter turned back a little uncertainly, and asked how long it would take
+to fix the new deed. He had a notion of making a flying canvass of the
+officers of the Sons and Daughters in the interim. He was surprised to
+find that Mr. Hooker already had the deed and the notes ready to sign,
+in anticipation of Peter's desires. Here the banker brought out the set
+of papers.
+
+"I'll take it," decided Peter; "and if the lodge doesn't want it, I'll
+keep the place myself."
+
+"I like to deal with a man of decision," piped the cashier, a wrinkled
+smile on his sharp face.
+
+Peter pushed in his bag of collections, then Mr. Hooker signed the deed,
+and Peter signed the land notes. They exchanged the instruments. Peter
+received the crisp deed, bound in blue manuscript cover. It rattled
+unctuously. To Peter it was his first step toward a second Tuskegee.
+
+The two negroes walked out of the Planter's Bank filled with a sense of
+well-doing. Tump Pack was openly proud of having been connected, even in
+a casual way, with the purchase. As he walked down the steps, he turned
+to Peter.
+
+"Don' reckon nobody could git a deed off on you wid stoppers in it, does
+you?"
+
+"We don't know any such word as 'stop,' Tump," declared Peter, gaily.
+
+For Peter was gay. The whole incident at the bank was beginning to
+please him. The meeting of a sudden difficulty, his quick decision--it
+held the quality of leadership. Napoleon had it.
+
+The two colored men stepped briskly through the afternoon sunshine along
+the mean village street. Here and there in front of their doorways sat
+the merchants yawning and talking, or watching pigs root in the piles of
+waste.
+
+In Peter's heart came a wonderful thought. He would make his industrial
+institution such a model of neatness that the whole village of Hooker's
+Bend would catch the spirit. The white people should see that something
+clean and uplifting could come out of Niggertown. The two races ought to
+live for a mutual benefit. It was a fine, generous thought. For some
+reason, just then, there flickered through Peter's mind a picture of the
+Arkwright boy sitting hunched over in the cedar glade, staring at the
+needles.
+
+All this musing was brushed away by the sight of old Mr. Tomwit crossing
+the street from the east side to the livery-stable on the west. That
+human desire of wanting the person who has wronged you to know that you
+know your injury moved Peter to hurry his steps and to speak to the old
+gentleman.
+
+Mr. Tomwit had been a Confederate cavalryman in the Civil War, and there
+was still a faint breeze and horsiness about him. He was a hammered-down
+old gentleman, with hair thin but still jet-black, a seamed, sunburned
+face, and a flattened nose. His voice was always a friendly roar. Now,
+when he saw Peter turning across the street to meet him, he halted and
+called out at once:
+
+"Now Peter, I know what's the matter with you. I didn't do you right."
+
+Peter went closer, not caring to take the whole village into his
+confidence.
+
+"How came you to turn down my proposition, Mr. Tomwit," he asked, "after
+we had agreed and drawn up the papers?"
+
+"We-e-ell, I had to do it, Peter," explained the old man, loudly.
+
+"Why, Mr. Tomwit?"
+
+"A white neighbor wanted me to, Peter," boomed the cavalryman.
+
+"Who, Mr. Tomwit?"
+
+"Henry Hooker talked me into it, Peter. It was a mean trick, Peter. I
+done you wrong." He stood nodding his head and rubbing his flattened
+nose in an impersonal manner. "Yes, I done you wrong, Peter," he
+acknowledged loudly, and looked frankly into Peter's eyes.
+
+The negro was immensely surprised that Henry Hooker had done such a
+thing. A thought came that perhaps some other Henry Hooker had moved
+into town in his absence.
+
+"You don't mean the cashier of the bank?"
+
+Old Mr. Tomwit drew out a plug of Black Mule tobacco, set some gapped,
+discolored teeth into corner, nodded at Peter silently, at the same time
+utilizing the nod to tear off a large quid. He rolled tin about with his
+tongue and after a few moments adjusted it so that he could speak.
+
+"Yeah," he proceeded in a muffled tone, "they ain't but one Henry
+Hooker; he is the one and only Henry. He said if I sold you my land,
+you'd put up a nigger school and bring in so many blackbirds you'd run
+me clean off my farm. He said it'd ruin the whole town, a nigger school
+would."
+
+Peter was astonished.
+
+"Why, he didn't talk that way to me!"
+
+"Natchelly, natchelly," agreed the old cavalryman, dryly.--"Henry has a
+different way to talk to ever' man, Peter."
+
+"In fact," proceeded Peter, "Mr. Hooker sold me the old Dillihay place
+in lieu of the deal I missed with you."
+
+Old Mr. Tomwit moved his quid in surprise.
+
+"The hell he did!"
+
+"That at least shows he doesn't think a negro school would ruin the
+value of his land. He owns farms all around the Dillihay place."
+
+Old Mr. Tomwit turned his quid over twice and spat thoughtfully.
+
+"That your deed in your pocket?" With the air of a man certain of being
+obeyed he held out his hand for the blue manuscript cover protruding
+from the mulatto's pocket. Peter handed it over. The old gentleman
+unfolded the deed, then moved it carefully to and from his eyes until
+the typewriting was adjusted to his focus. He read it slowly, with a
+movement of his lips and a drooling of tobacco-juice. Finally he
+finished, remarked, "I be damned!" in a deliberate voice, returned the
+deed, and proceeded across the street to the livery-stable, which was
+fronted by an old mulberry-tree, with several chairs under it. In one of
+these chairs he would sit for the remainder of the day, making an
+occasional loud remark about the weather or the crops, and watching the
+horses pass in and out of the stable.
+
+Siner had vaguely enjoyed old Mr. Tomwit's discomfiture over the deed,
+if it was discomfiture that had moved the old gentleman to his
+sententious profanity. But the negro did not understand Henry Hooker's
+action at all. The banker had abused his position of trust as holder of
+a deed in escrow snapping up the sale himself; then he had sold Peter
+the Dillihay place. It was a queer shift.
+
+Tump Pack caught his principal's mood with that chameleon-like mental
+quality all negroes possess.
+
+"Dat Henry Hooker," criticized Tump, "allus was a lil ole dried-up snake
+in de grass."
+
+"He abused his position of trust," said Peter, gloomily; "I must say,
+his motives seem very obscure to me."
+
+"Dat sho am a fine way to put hit," said Tump, admiringly.
+
+"Why do you suppose he bought in the Tomwit tract and sold me the
+Dillihay place?"
+
+Asked for an opinion, Tump began twiddling military medal and corrugated
+the skin on his inch-high brow.
+
+"Now you puts it to me lak dat, Peter," he answered with importance, "I
+wonders ef dat gimlet-haided white man ain't put some stoppers in dat
+deed he guv you. He mout of."
+
+Such remarks as that from Tump always annoyed Peter. Tump's intellectual
+method was to talk sense just long enough to gain his companion's ear,
+and then produce something absurd and quash the tentative interest.
+
+Siner turned away from him and said, "Piffle."
+
+Tump was defensive at once.
+
+"'T ain't piffle, either! I's talkin' sense, nigger."
+
+Peter shrugged, and walked a little way in silence, but the soldier's
+nonsense stuck in his brain and worried him. Finally he turned, rather
+irritably.
+
+"Stoppers--what do you mean by stoppers?"
+
+Tump opened his jet eyes and their yellowish whites. "I means nigger-
+stoppers," he reiterated, amazed in his turn.
+
+"Negro-stoppers--" Peter began to laugh sardonically, and abruptly quit
+the conversation.
+
+Such rank superiority irritated the soldier to the nth power.
+
+"Look heah, black man, I knows I _is_ right. Heah, lonme look at
+dat-aiuh, deed. Maybe I can find 'em. I knows I suttinly is right."
+
+Peter walked on, paying no attention to the request Until Tump caught
+his arm and drew him up short.
+
+"Look heah, nigger," said Tump, in a different tone, "I faded dad deed
+fuh ten iron men, an' I reckon I got a once-over comin' fuh my money."
+
+The soldier was plainly mobilized and ready to attack. To fight Tump, to
+fight any negro at all, would be Peter's undoing; it would forfeit the
+moral leadership he hoped to gain. Moreover, he had no valid grounds for
+a disagreement with Tump. He passed over the deed, and the two negroes
+moved on their way to Niggertown.
+
+Tump trudged forward with eyes glued to paper, his face puckered in the
+unaccustomed labor of reading.
+
+His thick lips moved at the individual letters, and constructed them
+bunglingly into syllables and words. He was trying to uncover the verbal
+camouflage by which the astute white brushed away all rights of all
+black men whatsoever.
+
+To Peter there grew up something sadly comical in Tump's efforts. The
+big negro might well typify all the colored folk of the South,
+struggling in a web of law and custom they did not understand,
+misplacing their suspicions, befogged and fearful. A certain penitence
+for having been irritated at Tump softened Peter.
+
+"That's all right, Tump; there's nothing to find."
+
+At that moment the soldier began to bob his head.
+
+"Eh! eh! eh! W-wait a minute!" he stammered. "Whut dis? B'lieve I done
+foun' it! I sho is! Heah she am! Heah's dis nigger-stopper, jes lak I
+tol' you!" Tump marked a sentence in the guaranty of the deed with a
+rusty forefinger and looked up at Peter in mixed triumph and accusation.
+
+Peter leaned over the deed, amused.
+
+"Let's see your mare's nest."
+
+"Well, she 'fo' God is thaiuh, an' you sho let loose a hundud dollars uv
+our 'ciety's money, an' got nothin' fuh hit but a piece o' paper wid a
+nigger-stopper on hit!"
+
+Tump's voice was so charged with contempt that Peter looked with a
+certain uneasiness at his find. He read this sentence switched into the
+guaranty of the indenture:
+
+
+"Be it further understood and agreed that no negro, black man, Afro-
+American, mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, or any person whatsoever of
+colored blood or lineage, shall enter upon, seize, hold, occupy, reside
+upon, till, cultivate, own or possess any part or parcel of said
+property, or garner, cut, or harvest therefrom, any of the usufruct,
+timber, or emblements thereof, but shall by these presents be estopped
+from so doing forever."
+
+
+Tump Pack drew a shaken, unhappy breath.
+
+"Now, I reckon you see whut a nigger-stopper is."
+
+Peter stood in the sunshine, looking at the estoppel clause, his lips
+agape. Twice he read it over. It held something of the quality of those
+comprehensive curses that occur in the Old Testament. He moistened his
+lips and looked at Tump.
+
+"Why that can't be legal." His voice sounded empty and shallow.
+
+"Legal! 'Fo' Gawd, nigger, whauh you been to school all dese yeahs,
+never to heah uv a nigger-stopper befo'!"
+
+"But--but how can a stroke of the pen, a mere gesture, estop a whole
+class of American citizens forever?" cried Peter, with a rising voice.
+"Turn it around. Suppose they had put in a line that no white man should
+own that land. It--it's empty! I tell you, it's mere words!"
+
+Tump cut into his diatribe: "No use talkin' lak dat. Our 'ciety thought
+you wuz a aidjucated nigger. We didn't think no white man could put
+nothin' over on you."
+
+"Education!" snapped Siner. "Education isn't supposed to keep you away
+from shysters!"
+
+"Keep you away fum 'em!" cried Tump, in a scandalized voice. "'Fo' Gawd,
+nigger, you don' know nothin'! O' co'se a aidjucation ain't to keep you
+away fum shysters; hit's to mek you one 'uv 'em!"
+
+Peter stood breathing irregularly, looking at his deed. A determination
+not to be cheated grew up and hardened in his nerves. With unsteady
+hands he refolded his deed and put it into his pocket, then he turned
+about and started back up the village street toward the bank.
+
+Tump stared after him a moment and presently called out:
+
+"Heah, nigger, whut you gwine do?" A moment later he repeated to his
+friend's back: "Look heah, nigger, I 'vise you ag'inst anything you's
+gwine do, less'n you's ready to pass in you' checks!" As Peter strode on
+he lifted his voice still higher: "Peter! Hey, Peter, I sho' 'vise you
+'g'inst anything you's 'gwine do!"
+
+A pulse throbbed in Siner's temples. The wrath of the cozened heated his
+body. His clothes felt hot. As he strode up the trash-piled street, the
+white merchants lolling in their doors began smiling. Presently a laugh
+broke out at one end of the street and was caught up here and there. It
+was the undying minstrel jest, the comedy of a black face. Dawson Bobbs
+leaned against the wide brick entrance of the livery-stable, his red
+face balled into shining convexities by a quizzical smile.
+
+"Hey, Peter," he drawled, winking at old Mr. Tomwit, "been investin' in
+real estate?" and broke into Homeric laughter.
+
+As Peter passed on, the constable dropped casually in behind the brown
+man and followed him up to the bank.
+
+To Peter Siner the walk up to the bank was an emotional confusion. He
+has a dim consciousness that voices said things to him along the way and
+that there was laughter. All this was drowned by desperate thoughts and
+futile plans to regain his lost money, flashing through his head. The
+cashier would exchange the money for the deed; he would enter suit and
+carry it to the Supreme Court; he would show the money had not been his,
+he had had no right to buy; he would beg the cashier. His head seemed to
+spin around and around.
+
+He climbed the steps into the Planter's Bank and opened the screen-door.
+The cashier glanced up briefly, but continued busily at his ledger.
+
+Peter walked shakenly to the barred window in the grill.
+
+"Mr. Hooker."
+
+"Very busy now, Peter," came the high voice.
+
+"I want to know about this deed."
+
+The banker was nimbly setting down long rows of figures. "No time to
+explain deeds, Peter."
+
+"But--but there is a clause in this deed, Mr. Hooter, estopping colored
+persons from occupying the Dillihay place."
+
+"Precisely. What about it?" Mr. Hooker snapped out his inquiry and
+looked up suddenly, catching Peter full in the face with his narrow-set
+eyes. It was the equivalent of a blow.
+
+"According to this, I--I can't establish a school on it."
+
+"You cannot."
+
+"Then what can I do with it?" cried Peter.
+
+"Sell it. You have what lawyers call a cloud on the title. Sell it. I'll
+give you ten dollars for your right in it, just to clear up my title."
+
+A queer trembling seized Peter. The little banker turned to a fantastic
+caricature of a man. His hatchet face, close-set eyes, harsh, straight
+hair, and squeaky voice made him seem like some prickly, dried-up gnome
+a man sees in a fever.
+
+At that moment the little wicket-door of the window opened under the
+pressure of Peter's shoulder. Inside on the desk, lay neat piles of
+bills of all denominations, ready to be placed in the vault. In a
+nervous tremor Peter dropped in his blue-covered deed and picked up a
+hundred-dollar bill.
+
+"I--I won't trade," he jibbered. "It--it wasn't my money. Here's your
+deed!" Peter was moving away. He felt a terrific impulse to run, but he
+walked.
+
+The banker straightened abruptly. "Stop there, Peter!" he screeched.
+
+At that moment Dawson Bobbs lounged in at the door, with his perpetual
+grin balling up his broad red face. He had a toothpick, in his mouth.
+
+"'S matter?" he asked casually.
+
+"Peter there," said the banker, with a pale, sharp face, "doesn't want
+to stick to his trade. He is just walking off with one of my hundred-
+dollar bills."
+
+"Sick o' yo' deal, Peter?" inquired Bobbs, smiling and shifting the
+toothpick. He bit down on it. "Well, whut-chu want done, Henry?"
+
+"Oh," hesitated the cashier in a quandary, "nothing, I suppose. Siner
+was excited; you know how niggers are. We can't afford to send every
+nigger to the pen that breaks the law." He stood studying Peter out of
+his close-set eyes. "Here's your deed, Peter." He shoved it back under
+the grill. "And lemme give you a little friendly advice. I'd just run an
+ordinary nigger school if I was you. This higher education don't seem to
+make a nigger much smarter when he comes back than when he starts out."
+A faint smile bracketed the thin nose.
+
+Dawson Bobbs roared with sudden appreciation, took the bill from Peter's
+fingers, and pushed it back under the grill.
+
+The cashier picked up the money, casually. He considered a moment, then
+reached for a long envelop. As he did so, the incident with Peter
+evidently passed from his mind, for his hatchet face lighted up as with
+some inward illumination.
+
+"Bobbs," he said warmly, "that was a great sermon Brother Blackwater
+preached. It made me want to help according as the Lord has blessed me.
+Couldn't you spare five dollars, Bobbs, to go along with this?"
+
+The constable tried to laugh and wriggle away, but the cashier's gimlet
+eyes kept boring him, and eventually he fished out a five-dollar bill
+and handed it in. Mr. Hooker placed the two bills in the envelop, sealed
+it, and handed it to the constable.
+
+"Jest drop that in the post-office as you go down the street, Bobbs," he
+directed in his high voice. Peter caught a glimpse of the type-written
+address.
+
+It was
+
+  Rev. Lemuel Hardiman,
+    c/o United Missions,
+      Katuako Post,
+        Bahr el Ghazal,
+          Sudan,
+            East Africa.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER III
+
+
+The white population of Hooker's Bend was much amused and gratified at
+the outcome of the Hooker-Siner land deal. Every one agreed that the
+cashier's chicanery was a droll and highly original turn to give to a
+negro exclusion clause drawn into a deed. Then, too, it involved several
+legal points highly congenial to the Hooker's Bend intellect Could the
+Sons and Daughters of Benevolence recover their hundred dollars? Could
+Henry Hooker force them to pay the remaining seven hundred? Could not
+Siner establish his school on the Dillihay place regardless of the
+clause, since the cashier would be estopped from obtaining an injunction
+by his own instrument?
+
+As a matter of fact, the Sons and Daughters of Benevolence sent a
+committee to wait on Mr. Hooker to see what action he meant to take on
+the notes that paid for his spurious deed. This brought another harvest
+of rumors. Street gossip reported that Henry had compromised for this,
+that, and the other amount, that he would not compromise, that he had
+persuaded the fool niggers into signing still other instruments. Peter
+never knew the truth. He was not on the committee.
+
+But high above the legal phase of interest lay the warming fact that
+Peter Siner, a negro graduate of Harvard, on his first tilt in Hooker's
+Bend affairs had ridden to a fall. This pleased even the village women,
+whose minds could not follow the subtle trickeries of legal disputation.
+The whole affair simply proved what the white village had known all
+along: you can't educate a nigger. Hooker's Bend warmed with pleasure
+that half of its population was ineducable.
+
+White sentiment in Hooker's Bend reacted strongly on Niggertown. Peter
+Siner's prestige was no more. The cause of higher education for negroes
+took a mighty slump. Junius Gholston, a negro boy who had intended to go
+to Nashville to attend Fisk University, reconsidered the matter, packed
+away his good clothes, put on overalls, and shipped down the river as a
+roustabout instead.
+
+In the Siner cabin old Caroline Siner berated her boy for his stupidity
+in ever trading with that low-down, twisting snake in the grass, Henry
+Hooker. She alternated this with floods of tears. Caroline had no
+sympathy for her offspring. She said she had thrown away years of self-
+sacrifice, years of washing, a thousand little comforts her money would
+have bought, all for nothing, for less than nothing, to ship a fool
+nigger up North and to ship him back.
+
+Of all Niggertown, Caroline was the most unforgiving because Peter had
+wounded her in her pride. Every other negro in the village felt that
+genial satisfaction in a great man's downfall that is balm to small
+souls. But the old mother knew not this consolation. Peter was her
+proxy. It was she who had fallen.
+
+The only person in Niggertown who continued amiable to Peter Siner was
+Cissie Dildine. The octoroon, perhaps, had other criteria by which to
+judge a man than his success or mishaps dealing with a pettifogger.
+
+Two or three days after the catastrophe, Cissie made an excursion to the
+Siner cabin with a plate of cookies. Cissie was careful to place her
+visit on exactly a normal footing. She brought her little cakes in the
+role of one who saw no evil, spoke no evil, and heard no evil. But
+somehow Cissie's visit increased the old woman's wrath. She remained
+obstinately in the kitchen, and made remarks not only audible, but
+arresting, through the thin partition that separated it from the poor
+living-room.
+
+Cissie was hardly inside when a voice stated that it hated to see a gal
+running after a man, trying to bait him with a lot of fum-diddles.
+
+Cissie gave Peter a single wide-eyed glance, and then attempted to
+ignore the bodiless comment.
+
+"Here are some cookies, Mr. Siner," began the girl, rather nervously. "I
+thought you and Ahnt Carolin'--"
+
+"Yeah, I 'magine dey's fuh me!" jeered the spectral voice.
+
+"Might like them," concluded the girl, with a little gasp.
+
+"I suttinly don' want no light-fingered hussy ma'yin' my son," proceeded
+the voice, "an' de whole Dildine fambly 'll bear watchin'."
+
+[Illustration: In the Siner cabin old Caroline Siner berated her boy.]
+
+"Won't you have a seat?" asked Peter, exquisitely uncomfortable.
+
+Cissie handed him her plate in confusion.
+
+"Why, no, Mr. Siner," she hastened on, in her careful grammar, "I just--
+ran over to--"
+
+"To fling herse'f in a nigger's face 'cause he's been North and got
+made a fool uv," boomed the hidden censor.
+
+"I must go now," gasped Cissie.
+
+Peter made a harried gesture.
+
+"Wait--wait till I get my hat."
+
+He put the plate down with a swift glance around for his hat. He found
+it, and strode to the door, following the girl. The two hurried out into
+the street, followed by indistinct strictures from the kitchen. Cissie
+breathed fast, with open lips. They moved rapidly along the semicircular
+street almost with a sense of flight. The heat of the early autumn sun
+stung them through their clothes. For some distance they walked in a
+nervous silence, then Cissie said:
+
+"Your mother certainly hates me, Peter."
+
+"No," said Peter, trying to soften the situation; "it's me; she's
+terribly hurt about--" he nodded to-ward the white section--"that
+business."
+
+Cissie opened her clear brown eyes.
+
+"Your own mother turned against you!"
+
+"Oh, she has a right to be," began Peter, defensively. "I ought to have
+read that deed. It's amazing I didn't, but I--I really wasn't expecting
+a trick, Mr. Hooker seemed so--so sympathetic--" He came to a lame halt,
+staring at the dust through which they picked their way.
+
+"Of course you weren't expecting tricks!" cried Cissie, warmly. "The
+whole thing shows you're a gentleman used to dealing with gentlemen. But
+of course these Hooker's Bend negroes will never see that!"
+
+Peter, surprised and grateful, looked at Cissie. Her construction of the
+swindle was more flattering than any apology he had been able to frame
+for himself.
+
+"Still, Cissie, I ought to have used the greatest care--"
+
+"I'm not talking about what you 'ought,'" stated the octoroon, crisply;
+"I'm talking about what you are. When it comes to 'ought,' we colored
+people must get what we can, any way we can. We fight from the bottom."
+The speech held a viperish quality which for a moment caught the brown
+man's attention; then he said:
+
+"One thing is sure, I've lost my prestige, whatever it was worth."
+
+The girl nodded slowly.
+
+"With the others you have, I suppose."
+
+Peter glanced at Cissie. The temptation was strong to give the
+conversation a personal turn, but he continued on the general topic:
+
+"Well, perhaps it's just as well. My prestige was a bit too flamboyant,
+Cissie. All I had to do was to mention a plan. The Sons and Daughters
+didn't even discuss it. They put it right through. That wasn't healthy.
+Our whole system of society, all democracies are based on discussion.
+Our old Witenagemot--"
+
+"But it wasn't _our_ old Witenagemot," said the girl.
+
+"Well--no," admitted the mulatto, "that's true."
+
+They moved along for some distance in silence, when the girl asked:
+
+"What are you going to do now, Peter?"
+
+"Teach, and keep working for that training-school," stated Peter, almost
+belligerently. "You didn't expect a little thing like a hundred dollars
+to stop me, did you?"
+
+"No-o-o," conceded Cissie, with some reserve of judgment in her tone.
+Presently she added, "You could do a lot better up North, Peter."
+
+"For whom?"
+
+"Why, yourself," said the girl, a little surprised.
+
+Siner nodded.
+
+"I thought all that out before I came back here, Cissie. A friend of
+mine named Farquhar offered me a place with him up in Chicago,--a string
+of garages. You'd like Farquhar, Cissie. He's a materialist with an
+absolutely inexorable brain. He mechanizes the universe. I told him I
+couldn't take his offer. 'It's like this,' I argued: 'if every negro
+with a little ability leaves the South, our people down there will never
+progress.' It's really that way, Cissie, it takes a certain mental
+atmosphere to develop a people as a whole. A few individuals here and
+there may have the strength to spring up by themselves, but the run of
+the people--no. I believe one of the greatest curses of the colored race
+in the South is the continual draining of its best individuals North.
+Farquhar argued--" just then Peter saw that Cissie was not attending his
+discourse. She was walking at his side in a respectful silence. He
+stopped talking, and presently she smiled and said:
+
+"You haven't noticed my new brooch, Peter." She lifted her hand to her
+bosom, and twisted the face of the trinket toward him. "You oughtn't to
+have made me show it to you after you recommended it yourself." She made
+a little _moue_ of disappointment.
+
+It was a pretty bit of old gold that complimented the creamy skin. Peter
+began admiring it at once, and, negro fashion, rather overstepped the
+limits white beaux set to their praise, as he leaned close to her.
+
+At the moment the two were passing one of the oddest houses in
+Niggertown. It was a two-story cabin built in the shape of a steamboat.
+A little cupola represented a pilot-house, and two iron chimneys served
+for smoke-stacks.
+
+This queer building had been built by a negro stevedore because of a
+deep admiration for the steamboats on which he had made his living.
+Instead of steps at the front door, this boat-like house had a stage-
+plank. As Peter strolled down the street with Cissie, admiring her
+brooch, and suffused with a sense of her nearness, he happened to glance
+up, and saw Tump Pack walk down the stage-plank, come out, and wait for
+them at the gate.
+
+There was something grim in the ex-soldier's face and in the set of his
+gross lips as the two came up, but the aura of the girl prevented Peter
+from paying much attention to it. As the two reached Tump, Peter had
+just lifted his hand to his hat when Tump made a quick step out at the
+gate, in front of them, and swung a furious blow at Peter's head.
+
+Cissie screamed. Siner staggered back with flames dancing before his
+eyes. The soldier lunged after his toppling man with gorilla-like blows.
+Hot pains shot through Peter's body. His head roared like a gong. The
+sunlight danced about him in flashes. The air was full of black fists
+smashing him, and not five feet away, the bullet head of Tump Pack
+bobbed this way and that in the rapid shifts of his attack. A stab of
+pain cut off Peter's breath. He stood with his diaphragm muscles tense
+and paralyzed, making convulsive efforts to breathe. At that moment he
+glimpsed the convexity of Tump's stomach. He drop-kicked at it with
+foot-ball desperation. Came a loud explosive groan. Tump seemed to rise
+a foot or two in air, turned over, and thudded down on his shoulders in
+the dust. The soldier made no attempt to rise, but curled up, twisting
+in agony.
+
+Peter stood in the dust-cloud, wabbly, with roaring head. His open mouth
+was full of dust. Then he became aware that negroes were running in from
+every direction, shouting. Their voices whooped out what had happened,
+who it was, who had licked. Tump Pack's agonized spasms brought howls of
+mirth from the black fellows. Negro women were in the crowd, grinning, a
+little frightened, but curious. Some were in Mother-Hubbards; one had
+her hair half combed, one side in a kinky mattress, the other lying flat
+and greased down to her scalp.
+
+When Peter gradually became able to breathe and could think at all,
+there was something terrible to him in Tump's silent attack and in this
+extravagant black mirth over mere suffering. Cissie was gone,--had fled,
+no doubt, at the beginning of the fight.
+
+The prostrate man's tortured abdomen finally allowed him to twist around
+toward Peter. His eyes were popped, and seemed all yellows and streaked
+with swollen veins.
+
+"I'll git you fuh dis," he wheezed, spitting dust "You did n' fight
+fair, you--"
+
+The black chorus rolled their heads and pounded one another in a gale of
+merriment.
+
+Peter Siner turned away toward his home filled with sick thought. He had
+never realized so clearly the open sore of Niggertown life and its great
+need of healing, yet this very episode would further bar him, Peter,
+from any constructive work. He foresaw, too plainly, how the white town
+and Niggertown would react to this fight. There would be no
+discrimination in the scandal. He, Peter Siner, would be grouped with
+the boot-leggers and crap-shooters and women-chasers who filled
+Niggertown with their brawls. As a matter of simple fact, he had been
+fighting with another negro over a woman. That he was subjected to an
+attack without warning or cause would never become a factor in the
+analysis. He knew that very well.
+
+Two of Peter's teeth were loose; his left jaw was swelling; his head
+throbbed. With that queer perversity of human nerves, he kept biting his
+sore teeth together as he walked along.
+
+When he reached home, his mother met him at the door. Thanks to the
+swiftness with which gossip spreads among black folk, she had already
+heard of the fight, and incidentally had formed her judgment of the
+matter. Now she looked in exasperation at her son's swelling face.
+
+"I 'cla' 'fo' Gawd!--ain't been home a week befo' he's fightin' over a
+nigger wench lak a roustabout!"
+
+Peter's head throbbed so he could hardly make out the details of
+Caroline's face.
+
+"But, Mother--" he began defensively, "I--"
+
+"Me sweatin' over de wash-pot," the negress went on, "so's you could go
+up North an' learn a lil sense; heah you comes back chasin' a dutty
+slut!"
+
+"But, Mother," he begged thickly, "I was simply walking home with Miss
+Dildine."
+
+"Miss Dildine! Miss Dildine!" exploded the ponderous woman, with an
+erasing gesture. "Ef you means dat stuck-up fly-by-night Cissie Dildine,
+say so, and don' stan' thaiuh mouthin', 'Miss Dildine, Miss Dildine'!"
+
+"Mother," asked Peter, thickly, through his swelling mouth, "do you want
+to know what did happen?"
+
+"I knows. I tol' you to keep away fum dat hussy. She's a fool 'bout her
+bright color an' straight hair. Needn't be givin' herse'f no airs!"
+
+Peter stood in the doorway, steadying himself by the jamb. The world
+still swayed from the blows he had received on the head.
+
+"What girl would you be willing for me to go with?" he asked in faint
+satire.
+
+"Heah in Niggertown?"
+
+Peter nodded. The movement increased his headache.
+
+"None a-tall. No Niggertown wench a-tall. When you mus' ma'y, I's
+'speckin' you to go off summuhs an' pick yo' gal, lak you went off to
+pick yo' aidjucation." She swung out a thick arm, and looked at Peter
+out of the corner of her eyes, her head tilted to one side, as negresses
+do when they become dramatically serious.
+
+Peter left his mother to her stare and went to his own room. This
+constant implication among Niggertown inhabitants that Niggertown and
+all it held was worthless, mean, unhuman depressed Peter. The mulatto
+knew the real trouble with Niggertown was it had adopted the white
+village's estimate of it. The sentiment of the white village was
+overpowering among the imitative negroes. The black folk looked into the
+eyes of the whites and saw themselves reflected as chaff and skum and
+slime, and no human being ever suggested that they were aught else.
+
+Peter's room was a rough shed papered with old newspapers. All sorts of
+yellow scare-heads streaked his walls. Hanging up was a crayon
+enlargement of his mother, her broad face as unwrinkled as an egg and
+drawn almost white, for the picture agents have discovered the only way
+to please their black patrons is to make their enlargements as nearly
+white as possible.
+
+In one corner, on a home-made book-rack, stood Peter's library,--a Greek
+book or two, an old calculus, a sociology, a psychology, a philosophy,
+and a score of other volumes he had accumulated in his four college
+years. As Peter, his head aching, looked at these, he realized how
+immeasurably removed he was from the cool abstraction of the study.
+
+The brown man sat down in an ancient rocking-chair by the window, leaned
+back, and closed his eyes. His blood still whispered in his ears from
+his fight. Notwithstanding his justification, he gradually became filled
+with self-loathing. To fight--to hammer and kick in Niggertown's dust--
+over a girl! It was an indignity.
+
+
+Peter shifted his position in his chair, and his thoughts took another
+trail. Tump's attack had been sudden and silent, much like a bulldog's.
+The possibility of a simple friendship between a woman and a man never
+entered Tump's head; it never entered any Niggertown head. Here all
+attraction was reduced to the simplest terms of sex. Niggertown held no
+delicate intimacies or reserves. Two youths could not go with the same
+girl. Black women had no very great powers of choice over their suitors.
+The strength of a man's arm isolated his sweetheart. That did not seem
+right, resting the power of successful mating entirely upon brawn.
+
+As Peter sat thinking it over, it came to him that the progress of any
+race depended, finally, upon the woman having complete power of choosing
+her mate. It is woman alone who consistently places the love accent upon
+other matters than mere flesh and muscle. Only woman has much sex
+selectiveness, or is inclined to select individuals with qualities of
+mind and spirit.
+
+For millions of years these instinctive spiritualizers of human breeding
+stock have been hampered in their choice of mates by the unrestrained
+right of the fighting male. Indeed, the great constructive work of
+chivalry in the middle ages was to lay, unconsciously, the corner-stone
+of modern civilization by resigning to the woman the power of choosing
+from a group of males.
+
+Siner stirred in his chair, surprised at whither his reverie had lead
+him. He wondered how he had stumbled upon these thoughts. Had he read
+them in a book? In point of fact, a beating administered by Tump Pack
+had brought the brown man the first original idea he had entertained in
+his life.
+
+By this time, Peter's jaw had reached its maximum swelling and was eased
+somewhat. He looked out of his little window, wondering whether Cissie
+Dildine would choose him--or Tump Pack.
+
+Peter was surprised to find blue dusk peering through his panes. All the
+scare-heads on his walls had lapsed into a common obscurity. As he rose
+slowly, so as not to start his head hurting again, he heard three rapid
+pistol shots in the cedar glade between Niggertown and the white
+village. He knew this to be the time-honored signal of boot-leggers
+announcing that illicit whisky was for sale in the blackness of the
+glade.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Next day the Siner-Pack fight was the focus of news interest in Hooker's
+Bend. White mistresses extracted the story from their black maids, and
+were amused by it or deprecated Cissie Dildine's morals as the mood
+moved them.
+
+Along Main Street in front of the village stores, the merchants and
+hangers-on discussed the affair. It was diverting that a graduate of
+Harvard should come back to Hooker's Bend and immediately drop into such
+a fracas. Old Captain Renfrew, one-time attorney at law and
+representative of his county in the state legislature, sat under the
+mulberry in front of the livery-stable and plunged into a long
+monologue, with old Mr. Tomwit as listener, on the uneducability of the
+black race.
+
+"Take a horse, sir," expounded the captain; "a horse can be trained to
+add and put its name together out of an alphabet, but no horse could
+ever write a promissory note and figure the interest on it, sir. Take a
+dog. I've known dogs, sir, that could bring your mail from the post-
+office, but I never saw a dog stop on the way home, sir, to read a post-
+card."
+
+Here the old ex-attorney spat and renewed the tobacco in a black brier,
+then proceeded to draw the parrallel between dogs and horses and Peter
+Siner newly returned from Harvard.
+
+"God'lmighty has set his limit on dogs, horses, and niggers, Mr. Tomwit.
+Thus far and no farther. Take a nigger baby at birth; a nigger baby has
+no fontanelles. It has no window toward heaven. Its skull is sealed up
+in darkness. The nigger brain can never expand and absorb the universe,
+sir. It can never rise on the wings of genius and weigh the stars, nor
+compute the swing of the Pleiades. Thus far and no farther! It's
+congenital.
+
+"Now, take this Peter Siner and his disgraceful fight over a nigger
+wench. Would you expect an educated stud horse to pay no attention to a
+mare, sir? You can educate a stud till--"
+
+"But hold on!" interrupted the old cavalryman. "I've known as
+gentlemanly stallions as--as anybody!"
+
+The old attorney cleared his throat, momentarily taken aback at this
+failure of his metaphor. However he rallied with legal suppleness:
+
+"You are talking about thoroughbreds, sir."
+
+"I am, sir."
+
+"Good God, Tomwit! you don't imagine I'm comparing a nigger to a
+thoroughbred, sir!"
+
+On the street corners, or piled around on cotton-bales down on the wharf,
+the negro men of the village discussed the fight. It was for the most
+part a purely technical discussion of blows and counters and kicks, and
+of the strange fact that a college education failed to enable Siner
+utterly to annihilate his adversary. Jim Pink Staggs, a dapper gentleman
+of ebony blackness, of pin-stripe flannels and blue serge coat--
+altogether a gentleman of many parts--sat on one of the bales and
+indolently watched an old black crone fishing from a ledge of rocks just
+a little way below the wharf-boat. Around Jim Pink lounged and sprawled
+black men and youths, stretching on the cotton-bales like cats in the
+sunshine.
+
+Jim Pink was discussing Peter's education.
+
+"I 'fo' Gawd kain't see no use goin' off lak dat an' den comin' back an'
+lettin' a white man cheat you out'n yo' hide an' taller, an' lettin' a
+black man beat you up tull you has to 'kick him in the spivit. Ef a
+aidjucation does you any good a-tall, you'd be boun' to beat de white man
+at one en' uv de line, or de black man at de udder. Ef Peter ain't to be
+foun' at eider en', wha is he?"
+
+"Um-m-m!" "Eh-h-h!" "You sho spoke a moufful, Jim Pink!" came an
+assenting chorus from the bales.
+
+Eventually such gossip died away and took another flurry when a report
+went abroad that Tump Pack was carrying a pistol and meant to shoot
+Peter on sight. Then this in turn ceased to be news and of human
+interest. It clung to Peter's mind longer than to any other person's in
+Hooker's Bend, and it presented to the brown man a certain problem in
+casuistry.
+
+Should he accede to Tump Pack's possession of Cissie Dildine and give up
+seeing the girl? Such a course cut across all his fine-spun theory about
+women having free choice of their mates. However, the Harvard man could
+not advocate a socialization of courtship when he himself would be the
+first beneficiary. The prophet whose finger points selfward is damned.
+Furthermore, all Niggertown would side with Tump Pack in such a
+controversy. It was no uncommon thing for the very negro women to fight
+over their beaux and husbands. As for any social theory changing this
+régime, in the first place the negroes couldn't understand the theory;
+in the second, it would have no effect if they could. Actions never grow
+out of theories; theories grow out of actions. A theory is a looking-
+glass that reflects the past and makes it look like the future, but the
+glass really hides the future, and when humanity comes to a turn in its
+course, there is always a smash-up, and a blind groping for the lost
+path.
+
+Now, in regard to Cissie Dildine, Peter was not precisely afraid of Tump
+Pack, but he could not clear his mind of the fact that Tump had been
+presented with a medal by the Congress of the United States for killing
+four men. Good sense and a care for his reputation and his skin told
+Peter to abandon his theory of free courtship for the time being. This
+meant a renunciation of Cissie Dildine; but he told himself he renounced
+very little. He had no reason to think that Cissie cared a picayune
+about him.
+
+Peter's work kept him indoors for a number of days following the
+encounter. He was reviewing some primary school work in order to pass a
+teacher's examination that would be held in Jonesboro, the county seat,
+in about three weeks.
+
+To the uninitiated it may seem strange to behold a Harvard graduate
+stuck down day after day poring over a pile of dog-eared school-books--
+third arithmetics, primary grammars, beginners' histories of Tennessee,
+of the United States, of England; physiology, hygiene. It may seem
+queer. But when it comes to standing a Wayne County teacher's
+examination, the specific answers to the specific questions on a dozen
+old examination slips are worth all the degrees Harvard ever did confer.
+
+So, in his newspapered study, Peter Siner looked up long lists of
+questions, and attempted to memorize the answers. But the series of
+missteps he had made since returning to Hooker's Bend besieged his brain
+and drew his thoughts from his catechism. It seemed strange that in so
+short a time he should have wandered so far from the course he had set
+for himself. His career in Niggertown formed a record of slight
+mistakes, but they were not to be undone, and their combined force had
+swung him a long way from the course he had plotted for himself. There
+was no way to explain. Hooker's Bend would judge him by the sheer
+surface of his works. What he had meant to do, his dreams and altruisms,
+they would never surmise. That was the irony of the thing.
+
+Then he thought of Cissie Dildine who did understand him. This thought
+might have been Cissie's cue to enter the stage of Peter's mind. Her
+oval, creamy face floated between Peter's eyes and the dog-eared primer.
+He thought of Cissie wistfully, and of her lonely fight for good
+English, good manners, and good taste. There was a pathos about Cissie.
+
+Peter got up from his chair and looked out at his high window into the
+early afternoon. He had been poring over primers for three days,
+stuffing the most heterogeneous facts. His head felt thick and slightly
+feverish. Through his window he saw the side of another negro cabin, but
+by looking at an angle eastward he could see a field yellow with corn, a
+valley, and, beyond, a hill wooded and glowing with the pageantry of
+autumn. He thought of Cissie Dildine again, of walking with her among
+the burning maples and the golden elms. He thought of the restfulness
+such a walk with Cissie would bring.
+
+As he mused, Peter's soul made one of those sharp liberating movements
+that occasionally visit a human being. The danger of Tump Pack's
+jealousy, the loss of his prestige, the necessity of learning the
+specific answers to the examination questions, all dropped away from him
+as trivial and inconsequent. He turned from the window, put away his
+books and question-slips, picked up his hat, and moved out briskly
+through his mother's room toward the door.
+
+The old woman in the kitchen must have heard him, for she called to him
+through the partition, and a moment later her bulky form filled the
+kitchen entrance. She wiped her hands on her apron and looked at him
+accusingly.
+
+"Wha you gwine, son?"
+
+"For a walk."
+
+The old negress tilted her head aslant and looked fixedly at him.
+
+"You's gwine to dat Cissie Dildine's, Peter."
+
+Peter looked at his mother, surprised and rather disconcerted that she
+had guessed his intentions from his mere footsteps. The young man
+changed his plans for his walk, and began a diplomatic denial:
+
+"No, I'm going to walk by myself. I'm tired; I'm played out."
+
+"Tired?" repeated his mother, doubtfully. "You ain't done nothin' but
+set an' turn th'ugh books an' write on a lil piece o' paper."
+
+Peter was vaguely amused in his weariness, but thought that he concealed
+his mirth from his mother.
+
+"That gets tiresome after a while."
+
+She grunted her skepticism. As Peter moved for the door she warned him:
+
+"Peter, you knows ef Tump Pack sees you, he's gwine to shoot you sho!"
+
+"Oh, no he won't; that's Tump's talk."
+
+"Talk! talk! Whut's matter wid you, Peter? Dat nigger done git crowned
+fuh killin' fo' men!" She stood staring at him with white eyes. Then she
+urged, "Now, look heah, Peter, come along an' eat yo' supper."
+
+"No, I really need a walk. I won't walk through Niggertown. I'll walk
+out in the woods."
+
+"I jes made some salmon coquettes fuh you whut'll spile ef you don' eat
+'em now."
+
+"I didn't know you were making croquettes," said Peter, with polite
+interest.
+
+"Well, I is. I gotta can o' salmon fum Miss Mollie Brownell she'd opened
+an' couldn't quite use. I doctered 'em up wid a lil vinegar an' sody,
+an' dey is 'bout as pink as dey ever wuz."
+
+A certain uneasiness and annoyance came over Peter at this persistent
+use of unwholesome foods.
+
+"Look here, Mother, you're not using old canned goods that have been
+left over?"
+
+The old negress stood looking at him in silence, but lost her coaxing
+expression.
+
+"I've told and told you about using any tainted or impure foods that the
+white people can't eat."
+
+"Well, whut ef you is?"
+
+"If it's too bad for them, it's too bad for you!"
+
+Caroline made a careless gesture.
+
+"Good Lawd, boy! I don' 'speck to eat whut's good fuh me! All I says is,
+'Grub, keep me alive. Ef you do dat, you done a good day's wuck.'"
+
+Peter was disgusted and shocked at his mother's flippancy. Modern
+colleges are atheistic, but they do exalt three gods,--food,
+cleanliness, and exercise. Now here was Peter's mother blaspheming one
+of his trinity.
+
+"I wish you 'd let me know when you want anything Mother. I'll get it
+fresh for you." His words were filial enough, but his tone carried his
+irritation.
+
+The old negress turned back to the kitchen.
+
+"Huh, boy! you been fotch up on lef'-overs," she said, and disappeared
+through the door.
+
+Peter walked to the gate, let himself out, and started off on his
+constitutional. His tiff with his mother renewed all his nervousness and
+sense of failure. His litany of mistakes renewed their dolor in his
+mind.
+
+An autumn wind was blowing, and long plumes of dust whisked up out of
+the curving street and swept over the ill-kept yards, past the cabins,
+and toward the sere fields and chromatic woods. The wind beat at the
+brown man; the dust whispered against his clothes, made him squint his
+eyes to a crack and tickled his nostrils at each breath.
+
+When Peter had gone two or three hundred yards, he became aware that
+somebody was walking immediately behind him. Tump Pack popped into his
+mind. He looked over his shoulder and then turned. Through the veils of
+flying dust he made out some one, and a moment later identified not Tump
+Pack, but the gangling form of Jim Pink Staggs, clad in a dark-blue
+sack-coat and white flannel trousers with pin stripes. It was the sort
+of costume affected by interlocutors of minstrel shows; it had a
+minstrel trigness about it.
+
+As a matter of fact, Jim Pink was a sort of semi-professional minstrel.
+Ordinarily, he ran a pressing-shop in the Niggertown crescent, but
+occasionally he impressed all the dramatic talent of Niggertown and
+really did take the road with a minstrel company. These barn-storming
+expeditions reached down into Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas.
+Sometimes they proved a great success, and the darkies rode back several
+hundred dollars ahead. Sometimes they tramped back.
+
+Jim Pink hailed Peter with a wave of his hand and a grotesque
+displacement of his mouth to one side of his face, which he had found
+effective in his minstrel buffoonery.
+
+"Whut you raisin' so much dus' about?" he called out of the corner of
+his mouth, while looking at Peter out of one half-closed eye.
+
+Peter shook his head and smiled.
+
+"Thought it mout be Mister Hooker deliverin' dat lan' you bought." Jim
+Pink flung his long, flexible face into an imitation of convulsed
+laughter, then next moment dropped it into an intense gravity and
+declared, "'Dus' thou art, to dus' returnest.'" The quotation seemed
+fruitless and silly enough, but Jim Pink tucked his head to one side as
+if listening intently to himself, then repeated sepulchrally, "'Dus'
+thou art, to dus' returnest.' By the way, Peter," he broke off cheerily,
+"you ain't happen to see Tump Pack, is you?"
+
+"No," said Peter, unamused.
+
+"Is he borrowed a gun fum you?" inquired the minstrel, solemnly.
+
+"No-o." Peter looked questioningly at the clown through half-closed
+eyes.
+
+"Huh, now dat's funny." Jim Pink frowned, and pulled down his loose
+mouth and seemed to study. He drew out a pearl-handled knife, closed his
+hand over it, blew on his fist, then opened the other hand, and
+exhibited the knife lying in its palm, with the blade open. He seemed
+surprised at the change and began cleaning his finger-nails. Jim Pink
+was the magician at his shows.
+
+Peter waited patiently for Jim Pink to impart his information, "Well,
+what's the idea?" he asked at last.
+
+"Don' know. 'Pears lak dat knife won't stay in any one han'." He looked
+at it, curiously.
+
+"I mean about Tump," said Peter, impatiently.
+
+"O-o-oh, yeah; you mean 'bout Tump. Well, I thought Tump mus' uv
+borrowed a gun fum you. He lef' Hobbett's corner wid a great big forty-
+fo', inquirin' wha you is." Just then he glanced up, looked
+penetratingly through the dust-cloud, and added, "Why, I b'lieve da' 's
+Tump now."
+
+With a certain tightening of the nerves, Peter followed his glance, but
+made out nothing through the fogging dust. When he looked around at Jim
+Pink again, the buffoon's face was a caricature of immense mirth. He
+shook it sober, abruptly, minstrel fashion.
+
+"Maybe I's mistooken," he said solemnly. "Tump did start over heah wid a
+gun, but Mister Dawson Bobbs done tuk him up fuh ca'yin' concealed
+squidjulums; so Tump's done los' dat freedom uv motion in de pu'suit uv
+happiness gua'anteed us niggers an' white folks by the Constitution uv
+de Newnighted States uv America." Here Jim Pink broke into genuine
+laughter, which was quite a different thing from his stage grimaces.
+Peter stared at the fool astonished.
+
+"Has he gone to jail?"
+
+"Not prezactly."
+
+"Well--confound it!--exactly what did happen, Jim Pink?"
+
+"He gone to Mr. Cicero Throgmartins'."
+
+"What did he go there for?"
+
+"Couldn't he'p hisse'f."
+
+"Look here, you tell me what's happened."
+
+"Mr. Bobbs ca'ied Tump thaiuh. Y' see, Mr. Throgmartin tried to hire
+Tump to pick cotton. Tump didn't haf to, because he'd jes shot fo'
+natchels in a crap game. So to-day, when Tump starts over heah wid his
+gun, Mr. Bobbs 'resses Tump. Mr. Throgmartin bails him out, so now
+Tump's gone to pick cotton fuh Mr. Throgmartin to pay off'n his fine."
+Here Jim Pink yelped into honest laughter at Tump's undoing so that dust
+got into his nose and mouth and set him sneezing and coughing.
+
+"How long's he up for?" asked Peter, astonished and immensely relieved
+at this outcome of Tump's expedition against himself.
+
+Jim Pink controlled his coughing long enough to gasp:
+
+"Th-thutty days, ef he don' run off," and fell to laughing again.
+
+Peter Siner, long before, had adopted the literate man's notion of what
+is humorous, and Tump's mishap was slap-stick to him. Nevertheless, he
+did smile. The incident filled him with extraordinary relief and
+buoyancy. At the next corner he made some excuse to Jim Pink, and turned
+off up an alley.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+Peter walked along with his shoulders squared and the dust peppering his
+back. Not till Tump was lifted from his mind did he realize what an
+incubus the soldier had been. Peter had been forced into a position
+where, if he had killed Tump, he would have been ruined; if he had not,
+he would probably have murdered. Now he was free--for thirty days.
+
+He swung along briskly in the warm sunshine toward the multicolored
+forest. The day had suddenly become glorious. Presently he found himself
+in the back alleys near Cissie's house. He was passing chicken-houses
+and stables. Hogs in open pens grunted expectantly at his footsteps.
+
+Peter had not meant to go to Cissie's at all, but now, when he saw he
+was right behind her dwelling, she seemed radiantly accessible to him.
+Still, it struck him that it would not be precisely the thing to call on
+Cissie immediately after Tump's arrest. It might look as if--Then the
+thought came that, as a neighbor, he should stop and tell Cissie of
+Tump's misfortune. He really ought to offer his services to Cissie, if
+he could do anything. At Cissie's request he might even aid Tump Pack
+himself. Peter got himself into a generous glow as he charged up a side
+alley, around to a rickety front gate. Let Niggertown criticize as it
+would, he was braced by a high altruism.
+
+Peter did not shout from the gate, as is the fashion of the crescent,
+but walked up a little graveled path lined with dusty box-shrubs and
+tapped at the unpainted door.
+
+Doors in Niggertown never open straight away to visitors. A covert
+inspection first takes place from the edges of the window-blinds.
+
+Peter stood in the whipping dust, and the caution of the inmates spurred
+his impatience to see Cissie. At last the door opened, and Cissie
+herself was in the entrance. She stood quite still a moment, looking at
+Peter with eyes that appeared frightened.
+
+"I--I wasn't expecting to see you," she stammered.
+
+"No? I came by with news, Cissie."
+
+"News?" She seemed more frightened than ever. "Peter, you--you haven't--
+" She paused, regarding him with big eyes.
+
+"Tump Pack's been arrested," explained Peter, quickly, sensing the
+tragedy in her thoughts. "I came by to tell you. If there's anything I
+can do for you--or him, I'll do it."
+
+His altruistic offer sounded rather foolish in the actual saying.
+
+He could not tell from her face whether she was glad or sorry.
+
+"What did they arrest him for?"
+
+"Carrying a pistol."
+
+She paused a moment.
+
+"Will he--get out soon?"
+
+"He's sentenced for thirty days."
+
+Cissie dropped her hands with a hopeless gesture.
+
+"Oh, isn't this all sickening!--sickening!" she exclaimed. She looked
+tired. Ghosts of sleepless nights circled her eyes. Suddenly she said,
+"Come in. Oh, do come in, Peter." She reached out and almost pulled him
+in. She was so urgent that Peter might have fancied Tump Pack at the
+gate with his automatic. He did glance around, but saw nobody passing
+except the Arkwright boy. The hobbledehoy walked down the other side of
+the street, hands thrust in pockets, with the usual discontented
+expression on his face.
+
+Cissie slammed the door shut, and the two stood rather at a loss in the
+sudden gloom of the hall. Cissie broke into a brief, mirthless laugh.
+
+"Peter, it's hard to be nice in Niggertown. I--I just happened to think
+how folks would gossip--you coming here as soon as Tump was arrested."
+
+"Perhaps I'd better go," suggested Peter, uncomfortably.
+
+Cissie reached up and caught his lapel.
+
+"Oh, no, don't feel that way! I'm glad you came, really. Here, let's go
+through this way to the arbor. It isn't a bad place to sit."
+
+She led the way silently through two dark rooms. Before she opened the
+back door, Peter could hear Cissie's mother and a younger sister moving
+around the outside of the house to give up the arbor to Cissie and her
+company.
+
+The arbor proved a trellis of honeysuckle over the back door, with a
+bench under it. A film of dust lay over the dense foliage, and a few
+withered blooms pricked its grayish green. The earthen floor of the
+arbor was beaten hard and bare by the naked feet of children.
+
+Cissie sat down on the bench and indicated a place beside her.
+
+"I've been so uneasy about you! I've been wondering what on earth you
+could do about it."
+
+"It's a snarl, all right," he said, and almost immediately began
+discussing the peculiar _impasse_ in which his difficulty with Tump
+had landed him. Cissie sat listening with a serious, almost tragic face,
+giving a little nod now and then. Once she remarked in her precise way:
+
+"The trouble with a gentleman fighting a rowdy, the gentleman has all to
+lose and nothing to gain. If you don't live among your own class, Peter,
+your life will simmer down to an endless diplomacy."
+
+"You mean deceit, I suppose."
+
+"No, I mean diplomacy. But that isn't a very healthy frame of mind,--
+always to be suppressing and guarding yourself."
+
+Peter didn't know about that. He was inclined to argue the matter, but
+Cissie wouldn't argue. She seemed to assume that all of her statements
+were axioms, truths reduced to the simplest possible mental terms, and
+that proof was unnecessary, if not impossible. So the topic went into
+the discard.
+
+"Been baking my brains over a lot of silly little exam questions,"
+complained Peter. "Can you trace the circulation of the blood? I think
+it leaves the grand central station through the right aorta, and then,
+after a schedule run of nine minutes, you can hear it coming up the
+track through the left ventricle, with all the passengers eager to get
+off and take some refreshment at the lungs. I have the general idea, but
+the exact routing gets me."
+
+Cissie laughed accommodatingly.
+
+"I wonder why it's necessary for everybody to know that once. I did. I
+could follow the circulation the right way or backward."
+
+"Must have been harder backward, going against the current."
+
+Cissie laughed again. A girl's part in a witty conversation might seem
+easy at first sight. She has only to laugh at the proper intervals.
+However, these intervals are not always distinctly marked. Some girls
+take no chances and laugh all the time.
+
+Cissie's appreciation was the sedative Peter needed. The relief of her
+laughter and her presence ran along his nerves and unkinked them, like a
+draft of Kentucky Special after a debauch. The curves of her cheek, the
+tilt of her head, and the lift of her dull-blue blouse at the bosom wove
+a great restfulness about Peter. The brooch of old gold glinted at her
+throat. The heavy screen of the arbor gave them a sweet sense of
+privacy. The conversation meandered this way and that, and became quite
+secondary to the feeling of the girl's nearness and sympathy. Their talk
+drifted back to Peter's mission here in Hooker's Bend, and Cissie was
+saying:
+
+"The trouble is, Peter, we are out of our _milieu_." Some portion
+of Peter's brain that was not basking in the warmth and invitation of
+the girl answered quite logically:
+
+"Yes, but if I could help these people, Cissie, reconstruct our life
+here culturally--"
+
+Cissie shook her head. "Not culturally."
+
+This opposition shunted more of Peter's thought to the topic in hand. He
+paused interrogatively.
+
+"Racially," said Cissie.
+
+"Racially?" repeated the man, quite lost.
+
+Cissie nodded, looking straight into his eyes. "You know very well,
+Peter, that you and I are not--are not anything near full bloods. You
+know that racially we don't belong in--Niggertown."
+
+Peter never knew exactly how this extraordinary sentence had come about,
+but in a kind of breath he realized that he and this almost white girl
+were not of Niggertown. No doubt she had been arguing that he, Peter,
+who was one sort of man, was trying to lead quite another sort of men
+moved by different racial impulses, and such leading could only come to
+confusion. He saw the implications at once.
+
+It was an extraordinary idea, an explosive idea, such as Cissie seemed
+to have the faculty of touching off. He sat staring at her.
+
+It was the white blood in his own veins that had sent him struggling up
+North, that had brought him back with this flame in his heart for his
+own people. It was the white blood in Cissie that kept her struggling to
+stand up, to speak an unbroken tongue, to gather around her the delicate
+atmosphere and charm of a gentlewoman. It was the Caucasian in them
+buried here in Niggertown. It was their part of the tragedy of millions
+of mixed blood in the South. Their common problem, a feeling of their
+joint isolation, brought Peter to a sense of keen and tingling nearness
+to the girl.
+
+She was talking again, very earnestly, almost tremulously:
+
+"Why don't you go North, Peter? I think and think about you staying
+here. You simply can't grow up and develop here. And now, especially,
+when everybody doubts you. If you'd go North--"
+
+"What about you, Cissie? You say we're together--"
+
+"Oh, I'm a woman. We haven't the chance to do as we will."
+
+A kind of titillation went over Peter's scalp and body.
+
+"Then you are going to stay here and marry--Tump?" He uttered the name
+in a queer voice.
+
+Tears started in Cissie's eyes; her bosom lifted to her quick breathing.
+
+
+"I--I don't know what I'm going to do," she stammered miserably.
+
+Peter leaned over her with a drumming heart; he heard her catch her
+breath.
+
+"You don't care for Tump?" he asked with a dry mouth.
+
+She gasped out something, and the next moment Peter felt her body sink
+limply in his groping arms. They clung together closely, quiveringly.
+Three nights of vigil, each thinking miserably and wistfully of the
+other, had worn the nerves of both man and girl until they were ready to
+melt together at a touch. Her soft body clinging to his own, the little
+nervous pressures of her arms, her eased breathing at his neck, wiped
+away Siner's long sense of strain. Strength and peace seemed to pour
+from her being into his by a sort of spiritual osmosis. She resigned her
+head to his palm in order that he might lift her lips to his when he
+pleased. After all, there is no way for a man to rest without a woman.
+All he can do is to stop work.
+
+For a long time they sat transported amid the dusty honeysuckles and
+withered blooms, but after a while they began talking a little at a time
+of the future, their future. They felt so indissolubly joined that they
+could not imagine the future finding them apart. There was no need for
+any more trouble with Tump Pack. They would marry quietly, and go away
+North to live. Peter thought of his friend Farquhar. He wondered if
+Farquhar's attitude would be just the same toward Cissie as it was
+toward him.
+
+"North," was the burden of the octoroon's dreams. They would go North to
+Chicago. There were two hundred and fifty thousand negroes in Chicago, a
+city within itself three times the size of Nashville. Up North she and
+Peter could go to theaters, art galleries, could enter any church, could
+ride in street-cars, railroad-trains, could sleep and eat at any hotel,
+live authentic lives.
+
+It was Cissie planning her emancipation, planning to escape her lifelong
+disabilities.
+
+"Oh, I'll be so glad! so glad! so glad!" she sobbed, and drew Peter's
+head passionately down to her deep bosom.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER V
+
+
+Peter Siner walked home from the Dildine cabin that night rather
+dreading to meet his mother, for it was late. Cissie had served
+sandwiches and coffee on a little table in the arbor, and then had kept
+Peter hours afterward. Around him still hung the glamour of Cissie's
+little supper. He could still see her rounded elbows that bent softly
+backward when she extended an arm, and the glimpses of her bosom when
+she leaned to hand him cream or sugar. She had accomplished the whole
+supper in the white manner, with all poise and daintiness. In fact, no
+one is more exquisitely polite than an octoroon woman when she desires
+to be polite, when she elevates the subserviency of her race into
+graciousness.
+
+However, the pleasure and charm of Cissie were fading under the
+approaching abuse that Caroline was sure to pour upon the girl. Peter
+dreaded it. He walked slowly down the dark semicircle, planning how he
+could best break to his mother the news of his engagement. Peter knew
+she would begin a long bill of complaints,--how badly she was treated,
+how she had sacrificed herself, her comfort, how she had washed and
+scrubbed. She would surely charge Cissie with being a thief and a drab,
+and all the announcements of engagements that Peter could make would
+never induce the old woman to soften her abuse. Indeed, they would make
+her worse.
+
+So Peter walked on slowly, smelling the haze of dust that hung in the
+blackness. Out on the Big Hill, in the glade, Peter caught an occasional
+glimmer of light where crap-shooters and boot-leggers were beginning
+their nightly carousal.
+
+These evidences of illicit trades brought Peter a thrill of disgust. In
+a sort of clear moment he saw that he could not keep Cissie in such a
+sty as this. He could not rear in such a place as this any children that
+might come to him and Cissie. His thoughts drifted back to his mother,
+and his dread of her tongue.
+
+The Siner cabin was dark and tightly shut when Peter let himself in at
+the gate and walked to the door. He stood a moment listening, and then
+gently pressed open the shutter. A faint light burned on the inside, a
+night-lamp with an old-fashioned brass bowl. It sat on the floor, turned
+low, at the foot of his mother's bed. The mean room was mainly in
+shadow. The old-style four-poster in which Caroline slept was an
+indistinct mound. The air was close and foul with the bad ventilation of
+all negro sleeping-rooms. The brass lamp, turned low, added smoke and
+gas to the tight quarters.
+
+The odor caught Peter in the nose and throat, and once more stirred up
+his impatience with his mother's disregard of hygiene. He tiptoed into
+the room and decided to remove the lamp and open the high, small window
+to admit a little air. He moved noiselessly and had stooped for the lamp
+when there came a creaking and a heavy sigh from the bed, and the old
+negress asked:
+
+"Is dat you, son?"
+
+Peter was tempted to stand perfectly still and wait till his mother
+dozed again, thus putting off her inevitable tirade against Cissie; but
+he answered in a low tone that it was he.
+
+"Whut you gwine do wid dat lamp, son?"
+
+"Go to bed by it, Mother."
+
+"Well, bring hit back." She breathed heavily, and moved restlessly in
+the old four-poster. As Peter stood up he saw that the patched quilts
+were all askew over her shapeless bulk. Evidently, she had not been
+resting well.
+
+Peter's conscience smote him again for worrying his mother with his
+courtship of Cissie, yet what could he do? If he had wooed any other
+girl in the world, she would have been equally jealous and grieved. It
+was inevitable that she should be disappointed and bitter; it was bound
+up in the very part and parcel of her sacrifice. A great sadness came
+over Peter. He almost wished his mother would berate him, but she
+continued to lie there, breathing heavily under her disarranged covers.
+As Peter passed into his room, the old negress called after him to
+remind him to bring the light back when he was through with it.
+
+This time something in her tone alarmed Peter.  He paused in the
+doorway.
+
+"Are you sick, Mother?" he asked.
+
+The old woman gave a yawn that changed to a groan.
+
+"I--I ain't feelin' so good."
+
+"What's the matter, Mother?"
+
+"My stomach, my--" But at that moment her sentence changed to an
+inarticulate sound, and she doubled up in bed as if caught in a spasm of
+acute agony.
+
+Peter hurried to her, thoroughly frightened, and saw sweat streaming
+down her face. He stared down at her.
+
+"Mother, you are sick! What can I do?" he cried, with a man's
+helplessness.
+
+She opened her eyes with an effort, panting now as the edge of the agony
+passed. There was a movement under the quilts, and she thrust out a
+rubber hot-water bottle.
+
+"Fill it--fum de kittle," she wheezed out, then relaxed into groans, and
+wiped clumsily at the sweat on her shining black face.
+
+Peter seized the bottle and ran into the kitchen. There he found a brisk
+fire popping in the stove and a kettle of water boiling. It showed him,
+to his further alarm, that his mother had been trying to minister to
+herself until forced to bed.
+
+The man scalded a finger and thumb pouring water into the flared mouth,
+but after a moment twisted on the top and hurried into the sick-room.
+
+He reached the old negress just as another knife of pain set her
+writhing and sweating. She seized the hot-water bottle, pushed it under
+the quilts, and pressed it to her stomach, then lay with eyes and teeth
+clenched tight, and her thick lips curled in a grin of agony.
+
+Peter set the lamp on the table, said he was going for the doctor, and
+started.
+
+The old woman hunched up in bed. With the penuriousness of her station
+and sacrifices, she begged Peter not to go; then groaned out, "Go tell
+Mars' Renfrew," but the next moment did not want Peter to leave her.
+
+Peter said he would get Nan Berry to stay while he was gone. The Berry
+cabin lay diagonally across the street. Peter ran over, thumped on the
+door, and shouted his mother's needs. As soon as he received an answer,
+he started on over the Big Hill toward the white town.
+
+Peter was seriously frightened. His run to Dr. Jallup's, across the Big
+Hill, was a series of renewed strivings for speed. Every segment of his
+journey seemed to seize him and pin him down in the midst of the night
+like a bug caught in a black jelly. He seemed to progress not at all.
+
+Now he was in the cedar glade. His muffled flight drove in the sentries
+of the crap-shooters, and gamesters blinked out their lights and
+listened to his feet stumbling on through the darkness.
+
+After an endless run in the glade, Peter found himself on top of the
+hill, amid boulders and outcrops limestone and cedar-shrubs. His flash-
+light picked out these objects, limned them sharply against the
+blackness, then dropped them into obscurity again.
+
+He tried to run faster. His impatience subdivided the distance into
+yards and feet. Now he was approaching that boulder, now he was passing
+it; now he was ten feet beyond, twenty, thirty. Perhaps his mother was
+dying, alone save for stupid Nan Berry.
+
+Now he was going down the hill past the white church. All that was
+visible was its black spire set against a web of stars. He was making no
+speed at all. He panted on. His heart hammered. His legs drummed with
+Lilliputian paces. Now he was among the village stores, all utterly
+black. At one point the echo of his feet chattered back at him, as if
+some other futile runner strained amid vast spaces of blackness.
+
+After a long time he found himself running up a residential street, and
+presently, far ahead, he saw the glow of Dr. Jallup's porch light. Its
+beam had the appearance of coming from a vast distance. When he reached
+the place, he flung his breast against the top panel of the doctor's
+fence and held on, exhausted. He drew in his breath, and began shouting,
+"Hello, Doctor!"
+
+Peter called persistently, and as he commanded more breath, he called
+louder and louder, "Hello, Doctor! Hello, Doctor! Hello, Doctor!" in
+tones edging on panic.
+
+The doctor's house might have been dead. Somewhere a dog began barking.
+High in the Southern sky a star looked down remotely on Peter's frantic
+haste. The black man stood in the black night with cries: "Hello,
+Doctor! Hello, Doctor! Hello, Doctor!"
+
+At last, in despair, he tried to think of other doctors. He thought of
+telephoning to Jonesboro. Just as he decided he must turn away there
+came a stirring in the dead house, a flicker of light appeared on the
+inside now here, now there; it steadied into a tiny beam and approached
+the door. The door opened, and Dr. Jallup's head and breast appeared,
+illuminated against the black interior.
+
+"My mother's sick, Doctor," began Peter, in immense relief.
+
+"Who is it?" inquired the half-clad man, impassively.
+
+"Caroline Siner; she's been taken with a--"
+
+The physician lifted his light a trifle in an effort to see Peter.
+
+"Lemme see: she's that fat nigger woman that lives in a three-roomed
+house--"
+
+"I'll show you the way," said Peter. "She's very ill."
+
+The half-dressed man shook his head.
+
+"No, Ca'line Siner owes me a five-dollar doctor's bill already. Our
+county medical association made a rule that no niggers should--"
+
+With a drying mouth, Peter Siner stared at the man of medicine.
+
+"But, my God, Doctor," gasped the son, "I'll pay you--"
+
+"Have you got the money there in your pocket?" asked Jallup,
+impassively.
+
+A sort of chill traveled deliberately over Peter's body and shook his
+voice.
+
+"N-no, but I can get it--"
+
+"Yes, you can all get it," stated the physician in dull irritation. "I'm
+tired of you niggers running up doctors' bills nobody can collect. You
+never have more than the law allows; your wages never get big enough to
+garnishee." His voice grew querulous as he related his wrongs. "No, I'm
+not going to see Ca'line Siner. If she wants me to visit her, let her
+send ten dollars to cover that and back debts, and I'll--" The end of
+his sentence was lost in the closing of his door. The light he carried
+declined from a beam to a twinkling here and there, and then vanished in
+blackness. Dr. Jallup's house became dead again. The little porch light
+in its glass box might have been a candle burning before a tomb.
+
+Peter Siner stood at the fence, licking his dry lips, with nerves
+vibrating like a struck bell. He pushed himself slowly away from the top
+plank and found his legs so weak that he could hardly walk. He moved
+slowly, back down the unseen street. The dog he had disturbed gave a few
+last growls and settled into silence.
+
+Peter moved along, wetting his dry lips, and stirring feebly among his
+dazed thoughts, hunting some other plan of action. There was a tiny
+burning spot on the left side of his occiput. It felt like a heated
+cambric needle which had been slipped into his scalp. Then he realized
+that he must go home, get ten dollars, and bring them back to Dr.
+Jallup. He started to run, but almost toppled over on his leaden legs.
+
+He plodded through the darkness, retracing the endless trail to
+Niggertown. As he passed a dark mass of shrubbery and trees, he recalled
+his mother's advice to ask aid of Captain Renfrew. It was the old
+Renfrew place that Peter was passing.
+
+The negro hesitated, then turned in at the gate in the bare hope of
+obtaining the ten dollars at once. Inside the gate Peter's feet
+encountered the scattered bricks of an old walk. The negro stood and
+called Captain Renfrew's name in a guarded voice. He was not at all sure
+of his action.
+
+Peter had called twice and was just about to go when a lamp appeared
+around the side of the house on a long portico that extended clear
+around the building. Bathed in the light of the lamp which he held over
+his head, there appeared an old man wearing a worn dressing gown.
+
+"Who is it?" he asked in a wavery voice.
+
+Peter told his name and mission.
+
+The old Captain continued holding up his light.
+
+"Oh, Peter Siner; Caroline Siner's sick? All right I'll have Jallup run
+over; I'll phone him."
+
+Peter was beginning his thanks preparatory to going, when the old man
+interrupted.
+
+"No, just stay here until Jallup comes by in his or He'll pick us both
+up. It'll save time. Come on inside. What's the matter with old
+Caroline?"
+
+The old dressing-gown led the way around the continuous piazza, to a
+room that stood open and brightly lighted on the north face of the old
+house.
+
+A great relief came to Peter at this unexpected succor. He followed
+around the piazza, trying to describe Caroline's symptoms. The room
+Peter entered was a library, a rather stately old room, lined with books
+all around the walls to about as high as a man could reach. Spaces for
+doors and windows were let in among the book-cases. The volumes
+themselves seemed composed mainly of histories and old-fashioned
+scientific books, if Peter could judge from a certain severity of their
+bindings. On a big library table burned a gasolene-lamp, which threw a
+brilliant whiteness all over the room. The table was piled with books
+and periodicals. Books and papers were heaped on every chair in the
+study except a deep Morris chair in which the old Captain had been
+sitting. A big meridional globe, about two and a half feet in diameter,
+gleamed through a film of dust in the embrasure of a window. The whole
+room had the womanless look of a bachelor's quarters, and was flavored
+with tobacco and just a hint of whisky.
+
+Old Captain Renfrew evidently had been reading when Peter called from
+the gate. Now the old man went to a telephone and rang long and briskly
+to awaken the boy who slept in the central office. Peter fidgeted as the
+old Captain stood with receiver to ear.
+
+"Hard to wake." The old gentleman spoke into the transmitter, but was
+talking to Peter. "Don't be so uneasy, Peter. Human beings are harder to
+kill than you think."
+
+There was a kindliness, even a fellowship, in Captain Renfrew's tones
+that spread like oil over Peter's raw nerves. It occurred to the negro
+that this was the first time he had been addressed as an authentic human
+being since his conversation with the two Northern men on the Pullman,
+up in Illinois. It surprised him. It was sufficient to take his mind
+momentarily from his mother. He looked a little closely at the old man
+at the telephone. The Captain wore few indices of kindness. Lines of
+settled sarcasm netted his eyes and drooped away from his old mouth. The
+very swell of his full temples and their crinkly veins marked a sardonic
+old man.
+
+At last he roused central over the wire, and impressed upon him the
+necessity of creating a stridor in Dr. Jallup's dead house, and a moment
+later a continued buzzing in the receiver betokened the operator's
+efforts to do so.
+
+The old gentleman turned around at last, holding the receiver a little
+distance from his ear.
+
+"I understand you went to Harvard, Peter."
+
+"Yes, sir." Peter took his eyes momentarily from the telephone. The old
+Southerner in the dressing-gown scrutinized the brown man. He cleared
+his throat.
+
+"You know, Peter, it gives me a--a certain satisfaction to see a Harvard
+man in Hooker's Bend. I'm a Harvard man myself."
+
+Peter stood in the brilliant light, astonished, not at Captain Renfrew's
+being a Harvard man,--he had known that,--but that this old gentleman
+was telling the fact to him, Peter Siner, a negro graduate of Harvard.
+
+It was extraordinary; it was tantamount to an offer of friendship, not
+patronage. Such an offer in the South disturbed Peter's poise; it
+touched him queerly. And it seemed to explain why Captain Renfrew had
+received Peter so graciously and was now arranging for Dr. Jallup to
+visit Caroline.
+
+Peter was moved to the conventional query, asking in what class the
+Captain had been graduated. But while his very voice was asking it,
+Peter thought what a strange thing it was that he, Peter Siner, a negro,
+and this lonely old gentleman, his benefactor, were spiritual brothers,
+both sprung from the loins of Harvard, that ancient mother of souls.
+
+[Illustration: The old gentleman turned around at last]
+
+From the darkness outside, Dr. Jallup's horn summmoned the two men.
+Captain Renfrew got out of his gown and into his coat and turned off his
+gasolene light. They walked around the piazza to the front of the house.
+In the street the head-lights of the roadster shot divergent rays
+through the darkness. They went out. The old Captain took a seat in the
+car beside the physician, while Peter stood on the running-board. A
+moment later, the clutch snarled, and the machine puttered down the
+street. Peter clung to the standards of the auto top, peering ahead.
+
+The men remained almost silent. Once Dr. Jallup, watching the dust that
+lay modeled in sharp lights and shadows under the head-lights, mentioned
+lack of rain. Their route did not lead over the Big Hill. They turned
+north at Hobbett's corner, drove around by River Street, and presently
+entered the northern end of the semicircle.
+
+The speed of the car was reduced to a crawl in the bottomless dust of
+the crescent. The head-lights swept slowly around the cabins on the
+concave side of the street, bringing them one by one into stark
+brilliance and dropping them into obscurity. The smell of refuse, of
+uncleaned stables and sties and outhouses hung in the darkness. Peter
+bent down under the top of the motor and pointed out his place. A minute
+later the machine came to a noisy halt and was choked into silence. At
+that moment, in the sweep of the head-light, Peter saw Viny Berry, one
+of Nan's younger sisters, coming up from Niggertown's public well,
+carrying two buckets of water.
+
+Viny was hurrying, plashing the water over the sides of her buckets. The
+importance of her mission was written in her black face.
+
+"She's awful thirsty," she called to Peter in guarded tones. "Nan called
+me to fetch some fraish water fum de well."
+
+Peter took the water that had been brought from the semi-cesspool at the
+end of the street. Viny hurried across the street to home and to bed.
+With the habitual twinge of his sanitary conscience, Peter considered
+the water in the buckets.
+
+"We'll have to boil this," he said to the doctor.
+
+"Boil it?" repeated Jallup, blankly. Then, he added: "Oh, yes--boil.
+Certainly."
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+A repellent odor of burned paper, breathed air, and smoky lights filled
+the close room. Nan had lighted another lamp and now the place was
+discernible in a dull yellow glow. In the corner lay a half-burned wisp
+of paper. Nan herself stood by the mound on the bed, putting straight
+the quilts that her patient had twisted awry.
+
+"She sho am bad, Doctor," said the colored woman, with big eyes.
+
+Seen in the light, Dr. Jallup was a little sandy-bearded man with a
+round, simple face, oddly overlaid with that inscrutability carefully
+cultivated by country doctors. With professional cheeriness, he
+approached the mound of bedclothes.
+
+"A little under the weather, Aunt Ca'line?" He slipped his fingers
+alongside her throat to test her temperature, at the same time drawing a
+thermometer from his waistcoat pocket.
+
+The old negress stirred, and looked up out of sick eyes.
+
+"Doctor," she gasped, "I sho got a misery heah." She indicated her
+stomach.
+
+"How do you feel?" he asked hopefully.
+
+The woman panted, then whispered:
+
+"Lak a knife was a-cuttin' an' a-tearin' out my innards." She rested,
+then added, "Not so bad now; feels mo' lak somp'n's tearin' in de nex'
+room."
+
+"Like something tearing in the next room?" repeated Jallup, emptily.
+
+"Yes, suh," she whispered. "I jes can feel hit--away off, lak."
+
+The doctor attempted to take her temperature, but the thermometer in her
+mouth immediately nauseated her, so he slipped the instrument under her
+arm.
+
+Old Caroline groaned at the slightest exertion, then, as she tossed her
+black head, she caught a glimpse of old Captain Renfrew.
+
+She halted abruptly in her restlessness, stared at the old gentleman,
+wet her dry lips with a queer brown-furred tongue.
+
+"Is dat you, Mars' Milt?" she gasped in feeble astonishment. A moment
+later she guessed the truth. "I s'pose you had to bring de doctor. 'Fo'
+Gawd, Mars' Milt--" She lay staring, with the covers rising and falling
+as she gasped for breath. Her feverish eyes shifted back and forth
+between the grim old gentleman and the tall, broad-shouldered brown man
+at the foot of her bed. She drew a baggy black arm from under the cover.
+
+"Da' 's Peter, Mars' Milt," she pointed. "Da' 's Peter, my son. He--he
+use' to be my son 'fo' he went off to school; but sence he come home, he
+been a-laughin' at me." Tears came to her eyes; she panted for a moment,
+then added: "Yeah, he done marked his mammy down fuh a nigger, Mars'
+Milt. Whut I thought wuz gwine be sweet lays bitter in my mouf." She
+worked her thick lips as if the rank taste of her sickness were the very
+flavor of her son's ingratitude.
+
+A sudden gasp and twist of her body told Nan that the old woman was
+again seized with a spasm. The neighbor woman took swift control, and
+waved out Peter and old Mr. Renfrew, while she and the doctor aided the
+huge negress.
+
+The two evicted men went into Peter's room and shut the door. Peter,
+unnerved, groped, and presently found and lighted a lamp. He put it down
+on his little table among his primary papers and examination papers. He
+indicated to Captain Renfrew the single chair in the room.
+
+But the old gentleman stood motionless in the mean room, with its head-
+line streaked walls. Sounds of the heavy lifting of Peter's mother came
+through the thin door and partition with painful clearness. Peter opened
+his own small window, for the air in his room was foul.
+
+Captain Renfrew stood in silence, with a remote sarcasm in his wrinkled
+eyes. What was in his heart, why he had subjected himself to the
+noisomeness of failing flesh, Peter had not the faintest idea. Once, out
+of studently habit, he glanced at Peter's philosophic books, but
+apparently he read the titles without really observing them. Once he
+looked at Peter.
+
+"Peter," he said colorlessly, "I hope you'll be careful of Caroline's
+feelings if she ever gets up again. She has been very faithful to you,
+Peter."
+
+Peter's eyes dampened. A great desire mounted in him to explain himself
+to this strange old gentleman, to show him how inevitable had been the
+breach. For some reason a veritable passion to reveal his heart to this
+his sole benefactor surged through the youth.
+
+"Mr. Renfrew," he stammered, "Mr. Renfrew--I--I--" His throat abruptly
+ached and choked. He felt his face distort in a spasm of uncontrollable
+grief. He turned quickly from this strange old man with a remote sarcasm
+in his eyes and a remote affection in his tones. Peter clenched his
+jaws, his nostrils spread in his effort stoically to bottle up his grief
+and remorse, like a white man; in an effort to keep from howling his
+agony aloud, like a negro. He stood with aching throat and blurred eyes,
+trembling, swallowing, and silent.
+
+Presently Nan Berry opened the door. She held a half-burned paper in her
+hand; Dr. Jallup stood near the bed, portioning out some calomel and
+quinine. The prevalent disease in Hooker's Bend is malaria; Dr. Jallup
+always physicked for malaria. On this occasion he diagnosed it must be a
+very severe attack of malaria indeed, so he measured out enormous doses.
+
+He took a glass of the water that Viny had brought, held up old
+Caroline's head, and washed down two big capsules into the already
+poisoned stomach of the old negress. His simple face was quite
+inscrutable as he did this. He left other capsules for Nan to administer
+at regular intervals. Then he and Captain Renfrew motored out of
+Niggertown, out of its dust and filth and stench.
+
+At four o'clock in the morning Caroline Siner died.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER VI
+
+
+When Nan Berry saw that Caroline was dead, the black woman dropped a
+glass of water and a capsule of calomel and stared. A queer terror
+seized her. She began such a wailing that it aroused others in
+Niggertown. At the sound they got out of their beds and came to the
+Siner cabin, their eyes big with mystery and fear. At the sight of old
+Caroline's motionless body they lifted their voices through the night.
+
+The lamentation carried far beyond the confines of Niggertown. The last
+gamblers in the cedar glade heard it, and it broke up their gaming and
+drinking. White persons living near the black crescent were waked out of
+their sleep and listened to the eerie sound. It rose and fell in the
+darkness like a melancholy organ chord. The wailing of the women
+quivered against the heavy grief of the men. The half-asleep listeners
+were moved by its weirdness to vague and sinister fancies. The dolor
+veered away from what the Anglo-Saxon knows as grief and was shot
+through with the uncanny and the terrible. White children crawled out of
+their small beds and groped their way to their parents. The women
+shivered and asked of the darkness, "_What_ makes the negroes howl
+so?"
+
+Nobody knew,--least of all, the negroes. Nobody suspected that the
+bedlam harked back to the jungle, to black folk in African kraals
+beating tom-toms and howling, not in grief, but in an ecstasy of terror
+lest the souls of their dead might come back in the form of tigers or
+pythons or devils and work woe to the tribe. Through the night the
+negroes wailed on, performing through custom an ancient rite of which
+they knew nothing. They supposed themselves heartbroken over the death
+of Caroline Siner.
+
+Amid this din Peter Siner sat in his room, stunned by the sudden taking
+off of his mother. The reproaches that she had expressed to old Captain
+Renfrew clung in Peter's brain. The brown man had never before realized
+the faint amusement and condescension that had flavored all his
+relations with his mother since his return home. But he knew now that
+she had felt his disapproval of her lifelong habits; that she saw he
+never explained or attempted to explain his thoughts to her, assuming
+her to be too ignorant; as she put it, "a fool."
+
+The pathos of his mother's last days, what she had expected, what she
+had received, came to Peter with the bitterness of what is finished and
+irrevocable. She had been dead only a few minutes, yet she could never
+know his grief and remorse; she could never forgive him. She was utterly
+removed in a few minutes, in a moment in the failing of a breath. The
+finality of death overpowered him.
+
+Into his room, through the thin wall, came the catch of numberless sobs,
+the long-drawn open wails, and the spasms of sobbing. Blurred voices
+called, "O Gawd! Gawd hab mercy! Hab mercy!" Now words were lost in the
+midst of confusion. The clamor boomed through the thin partition as if
+it would shake down his newspapered walls. With wet cheeks and an aching
+throat, Peter sat by his table, staring at his book-case in silence,
+like a white man.
+
+The dim light of his lamp fell over his psychologies and philosophies.
+These were the books that had given him precedence over the old
+washwoman who kept him in college. It was reading these books that had
+made him so wise that the old negress could not even follow his
+thoughts. Now in the hour of his mother's death the backs of his
+metaphysics blinked at him emptily. What signified their endless pages
+about dualism and monism, about phenomenon and noumenon? His mother was
+dead. And she had died embittered against him because he had read and
+had been bewildered by these empty, wordy volumes.
+
+A sense of profound defeat, of being ultimately fooled and cozened by
+the subtleties of white men, filled Peter Siner. He had eaten at their
+table, but their meat was not his meat. The uproar continued. Standing
+out of the din arose the burden of negro voices "Hab mercy! Gawd hab
+mercy!"
+
+In the morning the Ladies of Tabor came and washed and dressed Caroline
+Siner's body and made it ready for burial. For twenty years the old
+negress had paid ten cents a month to her society to insure her burial,
+and now the lodge made ready to fulfil its pledge. After many comings
+and goings, the black women called Peter to see their work, as if for
+his approval.
+
+The huge dead woman lay on the four-poster with a sheet spread over the
+lower part of her body. The ministrants had clothed it in the old black-
+silk dress, with its spreading seams and panels of different materials.
+It reminded Peter of the new dress he had meant to get his mother, and
+of the modish suit which at that moment molded his own shoulders and
+waist. The pitifulness of her sacrifices trembled in Peter's throat. He
+pressed his lips together, and nodded silently to the black Ladies of
+Tabor.
+
+Presently the white undertaker, a silent little man with a brisk yet
+sympathetic air, came and made some measurements. He talked to Peter in
+undertones about the finishing of the casket, how much the Knights of
+Tabor would pay, what Peter wanted. Then he spoke of the hour of burial,
+and mentioned a somewhat early hour because some of the negroes wanted
+to ship as roustabouts on the up-river packet, which was due at any
+moment.
+
+These decisions, asked of Peter, kept pricking him and breaking through
+the stupefaction of this sudden tragedy. He kept nodding a mechanical
+agreement until the undertaker had arranged all the details. Then the
+little man moved softly out of the cabin and went stepping away through
+the dust of Niggertown with professional briskness. A little later two
+black grave-diggers set out with picks and shovels for the negro
+graveyard.
+
+Numberless preparations for the funeral were going on all over
+Niggertown. The Knights of Tabor were putting on their regalia. Negro
+women were sending out hurry notices to white mistresses that they would
+be unable to cook the noonday meal. Dozens of negro girls flocked to the
+hair-dressing establishment of Miss Mallylou Speers. All were bent on
+having their wool straightened for the obsequies, and as only a few of
+them could be accommodated, the little room was packed. A smell of
+burning hair pervaded it. The girls sat around waiting their turn. Most
+of them already had their hair down,--or, rather loose, for it stood out
+in thick mats. The hair-dresser had a small oil stove on which lay
+heating half a dozen iron combs. With a hot comb she teased each strand
+of wool into perfect straightness and then plastered it down with a
+greasy pomade. The result was a stiff effect, something like the hair of
+the Japanese. It required about three hours to straighten the hair of
+one negress. The price was a dollar and a half.
+
+By half-past nine o'clock a crowd of negro men, in lodge aprons and with
+spears, and negro women, with sashes of ribbon over their shoulders and
+across the breasts, assembled about the Siner cabin. In the dusty
+curving street were ranged half a dozen battered vehicles,--a hearse, a
+delivery wagon, some rickety buggies, and a hack. Presently the
+undertaker arrived with a dilapidated black hearse which he used
+especially for negroes. He jumped down, got out his straps and coffin
+stands, directed some negro men to bring in the coffin, then hurried
+into the cabin with his air of brisk precision.
+
+He placed the coffin on the stands near the bed; then a number of men
+slipped the huge black body into it. The undertaker settled old
+Caroline's head against the cotton pillows, running his hand down beside
+her cheek and tipping her face just so. Then he put on the cover, which
+left a little oval opening just above her dead face. The sight of old
+Caroline's face seen through the little oval pane moved some of the
+women to renewed sobs. Eight black men took up the coffin and carried it
+out with the slow, wide-legged steps of roustabouts. Parson Ranson, in a
+rusty Prince Albert coat, took Peter's arm and led him to the first
+vehicle after the hearse. It was a delivery wagon, but it was the best
+vehicle in the procession.
+
+As Peter followed the coffin out, he saw the Knights and Ladies of Tabor
+lined up in marching order behind the van. The men held their spears and
+swords at attention; the women carried flowers. Behind the marchers came
+other old vehicles, a sorry procession.
+
+At fifteen minutes to ten the bell in the steeple of the colored church
+tolled a single stroke. The sound quivered through the sunshine over
+Niggertown. At its signal the poor procession moved away through the
+dust. At intervals the bell tolled after the vanishing train.
+
+As the negroes passed through the white town the merchants, lolling in
+their doors, asked passers-by what negro had died. The idlers under the
+mulberry in front of the livery-stable nodded at the old negro preacher
+in his long greenish-black coat, and Dawson Bobbs remarked:
+
+"Well, old Parson Ranson's going to tell 'em about it to-day," and he
+shifted his toothpick with a certain effect of humor.
+
+Old Mr. Tomwit asked if his companions had ever heard how Newt Bodler, a
+wit famous in Wayne County, once broke up a negro funeral with a
+hornets' nest. The idlers nodded a smiling affirmative as they watched
+the cortège go past. They had all heard it. But Mr. Tomwit would not be
+denied. He sallied forth into humorous reminiscence. Another loafer
+contributed an anecdote of how he had tied ropes to a dead negro so as
+to make the corpse sit up in bed and frighten the mourners.
+
+All their tales were of the vintage of the years immediately succeeding
+the Civil War,--pioneer humor, such as convulsed the readers of Peck's
+Bad Boy, Mr. Bowser, Sut Lovingood. The favorite dramatic properties of
+such writers were the hornets' nest, the falling ladder, the banana
+peel. They cultivated the humor of contusions, the wit of impact. This
+style still holds the stage of Hooker's Bend.
+
+In telling these tales the white villagers meant no special disrespect
+to the negro funeral. It simply reminded them of humorous things; so
+they told their jokes, like the naĂ¯ve children of the soil that they
+were.
+
+At last the poor procession passed beyond the white church, around a
+bend in the road, and so vanished. Presently the bell in Niggertown
+ceased tolling.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+Peter always remembered his mother's funeral in fragments of intolerable
+pathos,--the lifting of old Parson Ranson's hands toward heaven, the
+songs of the black folk, the murmur of the first shovelful of dirt as it
+was lowered to the coffin, and the final raw mound of earth littered
+with a few dying flowers. With that his mother--who had been so near to,
+and so disappointed in, her son--was blotted from his life. The other
+events of the funeral flowed by in a sort of dream: he moved about; the
+negroes were speaking to him in the queer overtones one uses to the
+bereaved; he was being driven back to Niggertown; he reentered the Siner
+cabin. One or two of his friends stayed in the room with him for a while
+and said vague things, but there was nothing to say.
+
+Later in the afternoon Cissie Dildine and her mother brought his dinner
+to him. Vannie Dildine, a thin yellow woman, uttered a few disjointed
+words about Sister Ca'line being a good woman, and stopped amid
+sentence. There was nothing to say. Death had cut a wound across Peter
+Siner's life. Not for days, nor weeks, nor months, would his existence
+knit solidly back together. The poison of his ingratitude to his
+faithful old black mother would for a long, long day prevent the
+healing.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VII
+
+
+During a period following his mother's death Peter Siner's life drifted
+emptily and without purpose. He had the feeling of one convalescing in a
+hospital. His days passed unconnected by any thread of purpose; they
+were like cards scattered on a table, meaning nothing.
+
+At times he struggled against his lethargy. When he awoke in the morning
+and found the sun shining on his dusty primers and examination papers,
+he would think that he ought to go back to his old task; but he never
+did. In his heart grew a conviction that he would never teach school at
+Hooker's Bend.
+
+He would rise and dress slowly in the still cabin, thinking he must soon
+make new plans and take up some work. He never decided precisely what
+work; his thoughts trailed on in vague, idle designs.
+
+In fact, during Peter's reaction to his shock there began to assert
+itself in him that capacity for profound indolence inherent in his negro
+blood. To a white man time is a cumulative excitant. Continuous and
+absolute idleness is impossible; he must work, hunt, fish, play, gamble,
+or dissipate,--do something to burn up the accumulating sugar in his
+muscles. But to a negro idleness is an increasing balm; it is a
+stretching of his legs in the sunshine, a cat-like purring of his
+nerves; while his thoughts spread here and there in inconsequences, like
+water without a channel, making little humorous eddies, winding this way
+and that into oddities and fantasies without ever feeling that
+constraint of sequence which continually operates in a white brain. And
+it is this quality that makes negroes the entertainers of children
+_par excellence_.
+
+Peter Siner's mental slackening made him understandable, and gave him a
+certain popularity in Nigger-town. Black men fell into the habit of
+dropping in at the Siner cabin, where they would sit outdoors, with
+chairs propped against the wall, and philosophize on the desultory life
+of the crescent. Sometimes they would relate their adventures on the
+river packets and around the docks at Paducah, Cairo, St. Joe, and St.
+Louis; usually a recountal of drunkenness, gaming, fighting, venery,
+arrests, jail sentences, petty peculations, and escapes. Through these
+Iliads of vagabondage ran an irresponsible gaiety, a non-morality, and a
+kind of unbrave zest for adventure. They told of their defeats and
+flights with as much relish and humor as of their charges and victories.
+And while the spirit was thoroughly pagan, these accounts were full of
+the clichés of religion. A roustabout whom every one called the
+Persimmon confided to Peter that he meant to cut loose some logs in a
+raft up the river, float them down a little way, tie them up again, and
+claim the prize-money for salvaging them, God willing.
+
+The Persimmon was so called from a scar on his long slanting head. A
+steamboat mate had once found him asleep in the passageway of a lumber
+pile which the boat was lading, and he waked the negro by hitting him in
+the head with a persimmon bolt. In this there was nothing unusual or
+worthy of a nickname. The point was, the mate had been mistaken: the
+Persimmon was not working on his boat at all. In time this became one of
+the stock anecdotes which pilots and captains told to passengers
+traveling up and down the river.
+
+The Persimmon was a queer-looking negro; his head was a long diagonal
+from its peak down to his pendent lower lip, for he had no chin. The
+salient points on this black slope were the Persimmon's sad, protruding
+yellow eyeballs, over which the lids always drooped about half closed.
+An habitual tipping of this melancholy head to one side gave the
+Persimmon the look of one pondering and deploring the amount of sin
+there was in the world. This saintly impression the Persimmon's conduct
+and language never bore out.
+
+At the time of the Persimmon's remarks about the raft two of Peter's
+callers, Jim Pink Staggs and Parson Ranson, took the roustabout to task.
+Jim Pink based his objection on the grounds of glutting the labor
+market.
+
+"Ef us niggers keeps turnin' too many raf's loose fuh de prize-money,"
+he warned, "somebody's goin' to git 'spicious, an' you'll ruin a good
+thing."
+
+The Persimmon absorbed this with a far-away look in his half-closed
+eyes.
+
+"It's a ticklish job," argued Parson Ranson, "an' I wouldn't want to
+wuck at de debbil's task aroun' de ribber, ca'se you mout fall in,
+Persimmon, an' git drownded."
+
+"I wouldn't do sich a thing a-tall," admitted the Persimmon, "but I jes'
+natchelly got to git ten dollars to he'p pay on my divo'ce."
+
+"I kain't see whut you want wid a divo'ce," said Jim Pink, yawning,
+"when you been ma'ied three times widout any."
+
+"It's fuh a Christmas present," explained the Persimmon, carelessly,
+"fuh th' woman I'm libin' wid now. Mahaly's a great woman fuh style. I'm
+goin' to divo'ce my other wives, one at a time lak my lawyer say."
+
+"On what grounds?" asked Peter, curiously.
+
+"Desuhtion."
+
+"Desertion?"
+
+"Uh huh; I desuhted 'em."
+
+Jim Pink shook his head, picked up a pebble, and began idly juggling it,
+making it appear double, single, treble, then single again.
+
+"Too many divo'ces in dis country now, Persimmon," he moralized.
+
+"Well, whut's de cause uv 'em?" asked the Persimmon, suddenly bringing
+his protruding yellow eyes around on the sleight-of-hand performer.
+
+Jim Pink was slightly taken aback; then he said:
+
+"'Spicion; nothin' but 'spicion."
+
+"Yeah, 'spicion," growled the Persimmon; "'spicion an' de husban'
+leadin' a irreg'lar life."
+
+Jim Pink looked at his companion, curiously.
+
+"The husban'--leadin' a irreg'lar life?"
+
+"Yeah,"--the Persimmon nodded grimly,--"the husban' comin' home at
+onexpected hours. You know whut I means, Jim Pink."
+
+Jim Pink let his pebble fall and lowered the fore legs of his chair
+softly to the ground.
+
+"Now, look heah, Persimmon, you don' want to be draggin' no foreign
+disco'se into yo' talk heah befo' Mr. Siner an' Parson Ranson."
+
+The Persimmon rose deliberately.
+
+"All I want to say is, I drapped off'n de matrimonial tree three times
+a'ready, Jim Pink, an' I think I feels somebody shakin' de limb ag'in."
+
+The old negro preacher rose, too, a little behind Jim Pink.
+
+"Now, boys! boys!" he placated. "You jes think dat, Persimmon."
+
+"Yeah," admitted Persimmon, "I jes think it; but ef I b'lieve ever'thing
+is so whut I think is so, I'd part Jim Pink's wool wid a brickbat."
+
+Parson Ranson tried to make peace, but the Persimmon spread his hands in
+a gesture that included the three men. "Now, I ain't sayin' nothin'," he
+stated solemnly, "an' I ain't makin' no threats; but ef anything
+happens, you-all kain't say that nobody didn' tell nobody about
+nothin'."
+
+With this the Persimmon walked to the gate, let himself out, still
+looking back at Jim Pink, and then started down the dusty street.
+
+Mr. Staggs seemed uncomfortable under the Persimmon's protruding yellow
+stare, but finally, when the roustabout was gone, he shrugged, regained
+his aplomb, and remarked that some niggers spent their time in studyin'
+'bout things they hadn't no info'mation on whatever. Then he strolled
+off up the crescent in the other direction.
+
+All this would have made fair minstrel patter if Peter Siner had shared
+the white conviction that every emotion expressed in a negro's patois is
+humorous. Unfortunately, Peter was too close to the negroes to hold such
+a tenet. He knew this quarrel was none the less rancorous for having
+been couched in the queer circumlocution of black folk. And behind it
+all shone the background of racial promiscuity out of which it sprang.
+It was like looking at an open sore that touched all of Niggertown, men
+and boys, young girls and women. It caused tragedies, murders, fights,
+and desertions in the black village as regularly as the rotation of the
+calendar; yet there was no public sentiment against it. Peter wondered
+how this attitude of his whole people could possibly be.
+
+With the query the memory of Ida May came back to him, with its sense of
+dim pathos. It seemed to Peter now as if their young and uninstructed
+hands had destroyed a safety-vault to filch a penny.
+
+The reflex of a thought of Ida May always brought Peter to Cissie; it
+always stirred up in him a desire to make this young girl's path gentle
+and smooth. There was a fineness, a delicacy about Cissie, that, it
+seemed to Peter, Ida May had never possessed. Then, too, Cissie was
+moved by a passion for self-betterment. She deserved a cleaner field
+than the Niggertown of Hooker's Bend.
+
+Peter took Parson Ranson's arm, and the two moved to the gate by common
+consent. It was no longer pleasant to sit here. The quarrel they had
+heard somehow had flavored their surroundings.
+
+Peter turned his steps mechanically northward up the crescent toward the
+Dildine cabin. Nothing now restrained him from calling on Cissie; he
+would keep no dinner waiting; he would not be warned and berated on his
+return home. The nagging, jealous love of his mother had ended.
+
+As the two men walked along, it was borne in upon Peter that his
+mother's death definitely ended one period of his life. There was no
+reason why he should continue his present unsettled existence. It seemed
+best to marry Cissie at once and go North. Further time in this place
+would not be good for the girl. Even if he could not lift all
+Niggertown, he could at least help Cissie. He had had no idea, when he
+first planned his work, what a tremendous task he was essaying. The
+white village had looked upon the negroes so long as non-moral and non-
+human that the negroes, with the flexibility of their race, had
+assimilated that point of view. The whites tried to regulate the negroes
+by endless laws. The negroes had come to accept this, and it seemed that
+they verily believed that anything not discovered by the constable was
+permissible. Mr. Dawson Bobbs was Niggertown's conscience. It was best
+for Peter to take from this atmosphere what was dearest to him, and go
+at once.
+
+The brown man's thoughts came trailing back to the old negro parson
+hobbling at his side. He looked at the old man, hesitated a moment, then
+told him what was in his mind.
+
+Parson Ranson's face wrinkled into a grin.
+
+"You's gwine to git ma'ied?"
+
+"And I thought I'd have you perform the ceremony."
+
+This suggestion threw the old negro into excitement.
+
+"Me, Mr. Peter?"
+
+"Yes. Why not?"
+
+"Why, Mr. Peter, I kain't jine you an' Miss Cissie Dildine."
+
+Peter looked at him, astonished.
+
+"Why can't you?"
+
+"Whyn't you git a white preacher?"
+
+"Well," deliberated Peter, gravely, "it's a matter of principle with me,
+Parson Ranson. I think we colored people ought to be more self-reliant,
+more self-serving. We ought to lead our own lives instead of being mere
+echoes of white thought." He made a swift gesture, moved by this passion
+of his life. "I don't mean racial equality. To my mind racial equality
+is an empty term. One might as well ask whether pink and violet are
+equal. But what I do insist on is autonomous development."
+
+The old preacher nodded, staring into the dust. "Sho! 'tonomous
+'velopment."
+
+Peter saw that his language, if not his thought, was far beyond his old
+companion's grasp, and he lacked the patience to simplify himself.
+
+"Why don't you want to marry us, Parson?"
+
+Parson Ranson lifted his brows and filled his forehead with wrinkles.
+
+"Well, I dunno. You an' Miss Cissie acts too much lak white folks fuh a
+nigger lak me to jine you, Mr. Peter."
+
+Peter made a sincere effort to be irritated, but he was not.
+
+"That's no way to feel. It's exactly what I was talking about,--racial
+self-reliance. You've married hundreds of colored couples."
+
+"Ya-as, suh,"--the old fellow scratched his black jaw.--"I kin yoke up a
+pair uv ordina'y niggers all right. Sometimes dey sticks, sometimes dey
+don't." The old man shook his white, kinky head. "I'll bust in an' try
+to hitch up you-all. I--I dunno whedder de cer'mony will hol' away up
+North or not."
+
+"It'll be all right anywhere, Parson," said Peter, seriously. "Your name
+on the marriage-certificate will--can you write?"
+
+"N-no, suh."
+
+After a brief hesitation Peter repeated determinedly:
+
+"It'll be all right. And, by the way, of course, this will be a very
+quiet wedding."
+
+"Yas-suh." The old man bobbed importantly.
+
+"I wouldn't mention it to any one."
+
+"No, suh; no, suh. I don' blame you a-tall, Mr. Peter, wid dat Tump Pack
+gallivantin' roun' wid a forty-fo'. Hit would keep 'mos' anybody's
+weddin' ve'y quiet onless he wuz lookin' fuh a short cut to heab'n."
+
+As the two negroes passed the Berry cabin, Nan Berry thrust out her
+spiked head and called to Peter Captain Renfrew wanted to see him.
+
+Peter paused, with quickened interest in this strange old man who had
+come to his mother's death-bed with a doctor. Peter asked Nan what the
+Captain wanted.
+
+Nan did not know. Wince Washington had told Nan that the Captain wanted
+to see Peter. Bluegum Frakes had told Wince; Jerry Dillihay had told
+Bluegum; but any further meanderings of the message, when it started, or
+what its details might be, Nan could not state.
+
+It was a typical message from a resident of the white town to a denizen
+of Niggertown. Such messages are delivered to any black man for any
+other black man, not only in the village, but anywhere in the outlying
+country. It may be passed on by a dozen or a score of mouths before it
+reaches its objective. It may be a day or a week in transit, but
+eventually it will be delivered verbatim. This queer system of
+communication is a relic of slavery, when the master would send out word
+for some special negro out of two or three hundred slaves to report at
+the big house.
+
+However, as Peter approached the Dildine cabin, thoughts of his
+approaching marriage drove from his mind even old Captain Renfrew's
+message. His heart beat fast from having made his first formal step
+toward wedlock. The thought of having Cissie all to himself, swept his
+nerves in a gust.
+
+He opened the gate, and ran up between the dusty lines of dwarf box,
+eager to tell her what he had done. He thumped on the cracked, unpainted
+door, and impatiently waited the skirmish of observation along the edge
+of the window-blinds. This was unduly drawn out. Presently he heard
+women's voices whispering to each other inside. They seemed urgent,
+almost angry voices. Now and then he caught a sentence:
+
+"What difference will it make?" "I couldn't." "Why couldn't you?"
+"Because--" "That's because you've been to Nashville." "Oh, well--" A
+chair was moved over a bare floor. A little later footsteps came to the
+entrance, the door opened, and Cissie's withered yellow mother stood
+before him.
+
+Vannie offered her hand and inquired after Peter's health with a stopped
+voice that instantly recalled his mother's death. After the necessary
+moment of talk, the mulatto inquired for Cissie.
+
+The yellow woman seemed slightly ill at ease.
+
+"Cissie ain't so well, Peter."
+
+"She's not ill?"
+
+"N-no; but the excitement an' ever'thing--" answered Vannie, vaguely.
+
+In the flush of his plans, Peter was keenly disappointed.
+
+"It's very important, Mrs. Dildine."
+
+Vannie's dried yellow face framed the ghost of a smile.
+
+"Ever'thing a young man's got to say to a gal is ve'y important, Peter."
+
+It seemed to Peter a poor time for a jest; his face warmed faintly.
+
+"It--it's about some of the details of our--our wedding."
+
+"If you'll excuse her to-day, Peter, an' come after supper--"
+
+Peter hesitated, and was about to go away when Cissie's voice came from
+an inner room, telling her mother to admit him.
+
+The yellow woman glanced at the door on the left side of the hall,
+crossed over and opened it, stood to one side while Peter entered, and
+closed it after him, leaving the two alone.
+
+The room into which Peter stepped was dark, after the fashion of negro
+houses. Only after a moment's survey did he see Cissie sitting near a
+big fireplace made of rough stone. The girl started to rise as Peter
+advanced toward her, but he solicitously forbade it and hurried over to
+her. When he leaned over her and put his arms about her, his ardor was
+slightly dampened when she gave him her cheek instead of her lips to
+kiss.
+
+"Surely, you're not too ill to be kissed?" he rallied faintly.
+
+"You kissed me. I thought we had agreed, Peter, you were not to come in
+the daytime any more."
+
+"Oh, is that it?" Peter patted her shoulder, cheerfully. "Don't worry; I
+have just removed any reason why I shouldn't come any time I want to."
+
+Cissie looked at him, her dark eyes large in the gloom.
+
+"What have you done?"
+
+"Got a preacher to marry us; on my way now for a license. Dropped in to
+ask if you 'll be ready by tomorrow or next day."
+
+The girl gasped.
+
+"But, Peter--"
+
+Peter drew a chair beside her in a serious argumentative mood.
+
+"Yes I think we ought to get married at once. No reason why we shouldn't
+get it over with--Why, what's the matter?"
+
+"So soon after your mother's death, Peter?"
+
+"It's to get away from Hooker's Bend, Cissie--to get you away. I don't
+like for you to stay here. It's all so--" he broke off, not caring to
+open the disagreeable subject.
+
+The girl sat staring down at some fagots smoldering on the hearth. At
+that moment they broke into flame and illuminated her sad face.
+
+"You'll go, won't you?" asked Peter at last, with a faint uncertainty.
+
+The girl looked up.
+
+"Oh--I--I'd be glad to, Peter,"--she gave a little shiver. "Ugh! this
+Niggertown is a--a terrible place!"
+
+Peter leaned over, took one of her hands, and patted it.
+
+"Then we'll go," he said soothingly. "It's decided--tomorrow. And we'll
+have a perfectly lovely wedding trip," he planned cheerfully, to draw
+her mind from her mood. "On the car going North I'll get a whole
+drawing-room. I've always wanted a drawing-room, and you'll be my
+excuse. We'll sit and watch the fields and woods and cities slip past
+us, and know, when we get off, we can walk on the streets as freely as
+anybody. We'll be a genuine man and wife."
+
+His recital somehow stirred him. He took her in his arms, pressed her
+cheek to his, and after a moment kissed her lips with the trembling
+ardor of a bridegroom.
+
+Cissie remained passive a moment, then put up he hands, turned his face
+away, and slowly released herself.
+
+Peter was taken aback.
+
+"What _is_ the matter, Cissie?"
+
+"I can't go, Peter."
+
+Peter looked at her with a feeling of strangeness.
+
+"Can't go?"
+
+The girl shook her head.
+
+"You mean--you want us to live here?"
+
+Cissie sat exceedingly still and barely shook her head.
+
+The mulatto had a sensation as if the portals which disclosed a new and
+delicious life were slowly closing against him. He stared into her oval
+face.
+
+"You don't mean, Cissie--you don't mean you don't want to marry me?"
+
+The fagots on the hearth burned now with a cheerful flame. Cissie stared
+at it, breathing rapidly from the top of her lungs. She seemed about to
+faint. As Peter watched her the jealousy of the male crept over him.
+
+"Look here, Cissie," he said in a queer voice, "you--you don't mean,
+after all, that Tump Pack is--"
+
+"Oh no! No!" Her face showed her repulsion. Then she drew a long breath
+and apparently made up her mind to some sort of ordeal.
+
+"Peter," she asked in a low tone, "did you ever think what we colored
+people are trying to reach?" She stared into his uncomprehending eyes.
+"I mean what is our aim, our goal, whom are we trying to be like?"
+
+"We aren't trying to be like any one." Peter was entirely at a loss.
+
+"Oh, yes, we are," Cissie hurried on. "Why do colored girls straighten
+their hair, bleach their skins, pinch their feet? Aren't they trying to
+look like white girls?"
+
+Peter agreed, wondering at her excitement.
+
+"And you went North to college, Peter, so you could think and act like a
+white man--"
+
+Peter resisted this at once; he was copying nobody. The whole object of
+college was to develop one's personality, to bring out--
+
+The girl stopped his objections almost piteously.
+
+"Oh, don't argue! You know arguing throws me off. I--now I've forgotten
+how I meant to say it!" Tears of frustration welled up in her eyes.
+
+Her mood was alarming, almost hysterical. Peter began comforting her.
+
+"There, there, dear, dear Cissie, what is the matter? Don't say it at
+all." Then, inconsistently, he added: "You said I copied white men.
+Well, what of it?"
+
+Cissie breathed her relief at having been given the thread of her
+discourse. She sat silent for a moment with the air of one screwing up
+her courage.
+
+"It's this," she said in an uncertain voice: "sometimes we--we--girls--
+here in Niggertown copy the wrong thing first."
+
+Peter looked blankly at her.
+
+"The wrong thing first, Cissie?"
+
+"Oh, yes; we--we begin on clothes and--and hair and--and that isn't the
+real matter."
+
+"Why, no-o-o, that isn't the real matter," said Peter puzzled.
+
+Cissie looked at his face and became hopeless.
+
+"Oh, _don't_ you understand! Lots of us--lots of us make that
+mistake! I--I did; so--so, Peter, I can't go with you!" She flung out
+the last phrase, and suddenly collapsed on the arm of her chair,
+sobbing.
+
+Peter was amazed. He got up, sat on the arm of his own chair next to
+hers and put his arms about her, bending over her, mothering her. Her
+distress was so great that he said as earnestly as his ignorance
+permitted:
+
+"Yes, Cissie, I understand now." But his tone belied his words, and the
+girl shook her head. "Yes, I do, Cissie," he repeated emptily. But she
+only shook her head as she leaned over him, and her tears slowly formed
+and trickled down on his hand. Then all at once old Caroline's
+accusation against Cissie flashed on Peter's mind. She had stolen that
+dinner in the turkey roaster, after all. It so startled him that he sat
+up straight. Cissie also sat up. She stopped crying, and sat looking
+into the fire.
+
+"You mean--morals?" said Peter in a low tone.
+
+Cissie barely nodded, her wet eyes fixed on the fire.
+
+"I see. I was stupid."
+
+The girl sat a moment, drawing deep breaths. At last she rose slowly.
+
+"Well--I'm glad it's over. I'm glad you know." She stood looking at him
+almost composedly except for her breathing and her tear-stained face.
+"You see, Peter, if you had been like Tump Pack or Wince or any of the
+boys around here, it--it wouldn't have made much difference; but--but
+you went off and--and learned to think and feel like a white man. You--
+you changed your code, Peter." She gave a little shaken sound, something
+between a sob and a laugh. "I--I don't think th-that's very fair, Peter,
+to--to go away an'--an' change an' come back an' judge us with yo' n-new
+code." Cissie's precise English broke down.
+
+Just then Peter's logic caught at a point.
+
+"If you didn't know anything about my code, how do you know what I feel
+now?" he asked.
+
+She looked at him with a queer expression.
+
+"I found out when you kissed me under the arbor. It was too late then."
+
+She stood erect, with dismissal very clearly written in her attitude.
+Peter walked out of the room.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+With a certain feeling of clumsiness Peter groped in the dark hall for
+his hat, then, as quietly as he could, let himself out at the door.
+Outside he was surprised to find that daylight still lingered in the
+sky. He thought night had fallen. The sun lay behind the Big Hill, but
+its red rays pouring down through the boles of the cedars tinted long
+delicate avenues in the dusty atmosphere above his head. A sharp chill
+in the air presaged frost for the night. Somewhere in the crescent a boy
+yodeled for his dog at about half-minute intervals, with the persistence
+of children.
+
+Peter walked a little distance, but finally came to a stand in the dust,
+looking at the negro cabins, not knowing where to go or what to do.
+Cissie's confession had destroyed all his plans. It had left him as
+adynamic as had his mother's death. It seemed to Peter that there was a
+certain similarity between the two events; both were sudden and
+desolating. And just as his mother had vanished utterly from his reach,
+so now it seemed Cissie was no more. Cissie the clear-eyed, Cissie the
+ambitious, Cissie the refined, had vanished away, and in her place stood
+a thief.
+
+The thing was grotesque. Peter began a sudden shuddering in the cold.
+Then he began moving toward the empty cabin where he slept and kept his
+things. He moved along, talking to himself in the dusty emptiness of the
+crescent. He decided that he would go home, pack his clothes, and
+vanish. A St. Louis boat would be down that night, and he would just
+have time to pack his clothes and catch it. He would not take his books,
+his philosophies. He would let them remain, in the newspapered room,
+until all crumbled into uniform philosophic dust, and the teachings of
+Aristotle blew about Niggertown.
+
+Then, as he thought of traveling North, the vision of the honeymoon he
+had just planned revived his numb brain into a dismal aching. He looked
+back through the dusk at the Dildine roof. It stood black against an
+opalescent sky. Out of the foreground, bending over it, arose a clump of
+tall sunflowers, in whose silhouette hung a suggestion of yellow and
+green. The whole scene quivered slightly at every throb of his heart. He
+thought what a fool he was to allow a picaresque past to keep him away
+from such a woman, how easy it would be to go back to the soft luxury of
+Cissie, to tell her it made no difference; and somehow, just at that
+moment it seemed not to.
+
+Then the point of view which Peter had been four years acquiring swept
+away the impulse, and it left him moving toward his cabin again, empty,
+cold, and planless.
+
+He was drawn out of his reverie by the soft voice of a little negro boy
+asking him apprehensively whom he was talking to.
+
+Peter stopped, drew forth a handkerchief and dabbed the moisture from
+his cold face in the meticulous fashion of college men.
+
+With the boy came a dog which was cautiously smelling Peter's shoes and
+trousers. Both boy and dog were investigating the phenomenon of Peter.
+Peter, in turn, looked down at them with a feeling that they had
+materialized out of nothing.
+
+"What did you say?" he asked vaguely.
+
+The boy was suddenly overcome with the excessive shyness of negro
+children, and barely managed to whisper:
+
+"I--I ast wh-who you wuz a-talkin' to."
+
+"Was I talking?"
+
+The little negro nodded, undecided whether to stand his ground or flee.
+Peter touched the child's crisp hair.
+
+"I was talking to myself," he said, and moved forward again.
+
+The child instantly gained confidence at the slight caress, took a fold
+of Peter's trousers in his hand for friendliness, and the two trudged on
+together.
+
+"Wh-whut you talkin' to yo' se'f for?"
+
+Peter glanced down at the little black head that promised to think up a
+thousand questions.
+
+"I was wondering where to go."
+
+"Lawsy! is you los' yo' way?"
+
+He stroked the little head with a rush of self-pity.
+
+"Yes, I have, son; I've completely lost my way."
+
+The child twisted his head around and peered up alongside Peter's arm.
+Presently he asked:
+
+"Ain't you Mr. Peter Siner?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Ain't you de man whut's gwine to ma'y Miss Cissie Dildine?"
+
+Peter looked down at his small companion with a certain concern that his
+marriage was already gossip known to babes.
+
+"I'm Peter Siner," he repeated.
+
+"Den I knows which way you wants to go," piped the youngster in sudden
+helpfulness. "You wants to go over to Cap'n Renfrew's place acrost de
+Big Hill. He done sont fuh you. Mr. Wince Washington tol' me, ef I seed
+you, to tell you dat Cap'n Renfrew wants to see you. I dunno whut hit's
+about. I ast Wince, an' he didn' know."
+
+Peter recalled the message Nan Berry had given him some hours before.
+Now the same summons had seeped around to him from another direction.
+
+"I--I'll show you de way to Cap'n Renfrew's ef--ef you'll come back wid
+me th'ugh de cedar glade," proposed the child. "I--I ain't skeered in de
+cedar glade, b-b-but hit's so dark I kain't see my way back home.
+I--I--"
+
+Peter thanked him and declined his services. After all, he might as well
+go to see Captain Renfrew. He owed the old gentleman some thanks--and
+ten dollars.
+
+The only thing of which Peter Siner was aware during his walk over the
+Big Hill and through the village was his last scene with Cissie. He went
+over it again and again, repeating their conversation, inventing new
+replies, framing new action, questioning more fully into the octoroon's
+vague confession and his benumbed acceptance of it. The moment his mind
+completed the little drama it started again from the very beginning.
+
+At Captain Renfrew's gate this mental mummery paused long enough for him
+to vacillate between walking in or going around and shouting from the
+back gate. It is a point of etiquette in Hooker's Bend that negroes
+shall enter a white house from the back stoop. Peter had no desire to
+transgress this custom. On the other hand, if Captain Renfrew was
+receiving him as a fellow of Harvard, the back door, in its way, would
+prove equally embarrassing.
+
+After a certain indecision he compromised by entering the front gate and
+calling the Captain's name from among the scattered bricks of the old
+walk.
+
+The house lay silent, half smothered in a dark tangle of shrubbery.
+Peter called twice before he heard the shuffle of house slippers, and
+then saw the Captain's dressing-gown at the piazza steps.
+
+"Is that you, Peter?" came a querulous voice.
+
+"Yes, Captain. I was told you wanted to see me."
+
+"You've been deliberate in coming," criticized the old gentleman,
+testily. "I sent you word by some black rascal three days ago."
+
+"I just received the message to-day." Peter remained discreetly at the
+gate.
+
+"Yes; well, come in, come in. See if you can do anything with this
+damnable lamp."
+
+The old man turned with a dignified drawing-together of his dressing-
+gown and moved back. Apparently, the renovation of a cranky lamp was the
+whole content of the Captain's summons to Peter.
+
+There was something so characteristic in this incident that Peter was
+moved to a vague sense of mirth. It was just like the old régime to call
+in a negro, a special negro, from ten miles away to move a jar of ferns
+across the lawn or trim a box hedge or fix a lamp.
+
+Peter followed the old gentleman around to the back piazza facing his
+study. There, laid out on the floor, were all the parts of a gasolene
+lamp, together with a pipe-wrench, a hammer, a little old-fashioned
+vise, a bar of iron, and an envelop containing the mantels and the more
+delicate parts of the lamp.
+
+"It's extraordinary to me," criticized the Captain, "why they can't make
+a gasolene lamp that will go, and remain in a going condition."
+
+"Has it been out of fix for three days?" asked Peter, sorry that the old
+gentleman should have lacked a light for so long.
+
+"No," growled the Captain; "it started gasping at four o'clock last
+night; so I put it out and went to bed. I've been working at it this
+evening. There's a little hole in the tip,--if I could see it,--a hair-
+sized hole, painfully small. Why any man wants to make gasolene lamps
+with microscopic holes that ordinary intelligence must inform him will
+become clogged I cannot conceive."
+
+Peter ventured no opinion on this trait of lampmakers, but said that if
+the Captain knew where he could get an oil hand-lamp for a little more
+light, he thought he could unstop the hole.
+
+The Captain looked at his helper and shook his head.
+
+"I am surprised at you, Peter. When I was your age, I could see an
+aperture like that hole under the last quarter of the moon. In this
+strong light I could have--er--lunged the cleaner through it, sir. You
+must have strained your eyes in college." He paused, then added: "You'll
+find hand-lamps in any of the rooms fronting this porch. I don't know
+whether they have oil in them or not--the shiftless niggers that come
+around to take care of this building--no dependence to be put in them.
+When I try it myself, I do even worse."
+
+The old gentleman's tone showed that he was thawing out of his irritable
+mood, and Peter sensed that he meant to be amusing in an austere,
+unsmiling fashion. The Captain rubbed his delicate wrinkled hands
+together in a pleased fashion and sat down in a big porch chair to await
+Peter's assembling of the lamp. The brown man started down the long
+piazza, in search of a hand-light.
+
+He found a lamp in the first room he entered, returned to the piazza,
+sat down on the edge of it, and began his tinkering. The old Captain
+apparently watched him with profound satisfaction. Presently, after the
+fashion of the senile, he began endless and minute instructions as to
+how the lamp should be cleaned.
+
+"Take the wire in your left hand, Peter,--that's right,--now hold the
+tip a little closer to the light--no, place the mantels on the right
+side--that's the way I do it. System...." the old man's monologue ran on
+and on, and became a murmur in Peter's ears. It was rather soothing than
+otherwise. Now and then it held tremulous vibrations that might have
+been from age or that might have been from some deep satisfaction
+mounting even to joy. But to Peter that seemed hardly probable. No doubt
+it was senility. The Captain was a tottery old man, past the age for any
+fundamental joy.
+
+Night had fallen now, and a darkness, musky with autumn weeds, hemmed in
+the sphere of yellow light on the old piazza. A black-and-white cat
+materialized out of the gloom, purring, and arching against a pillar.
+The whole place was filled with a sense of endless leisure. The old man,
+the cat, the perfume of the weeds, soothed in Peter even the rawness of
+his hurt at Cissie.
+
+Indeed, in a way, the old manor became a sort of apology for the
+octoroon girl. The height and the reach of the piazza, exaggerated by
+the darkness, suggested a time when retinues of negroes passed through
+its dignified colonnades. Those black folk were a part of the place.
+They came and went, picked up and used what they could, and that was all
+life held for them. They were without wage, without rights, even to the
+possession of their own bodies; so by necessity they took what they
+could. That was only fifty-odd years ago. Thus, in a way, Peter's
+surroundings began a subtle explanation of and apology for Cissie, the
+whole racial training of black folk in petty thievery. And that this
+should have touched Cissie--the meanness, the pathos of her fate moved
+Peter.
+
+The negro was aroused from his reverie by the old Captain's getting out
+of his chair and saying, "Very good," and then Peter saw that he had
+finished the lamp. The two men rose and carried it into the study, where
+Peter pumped and lighted it; a bit later its brilliant white light
+flooded the room.
+
+"Quite good." The old Captain stood rubbing his hands with his odd air
+of continued delight. "How do you like this place, anyway, Peter?" He
+wrapped his gown around him, sat down in the old Morris chair beside the
+book-piled table, and indicated another seat for Peter.
+
+The mulatto took it, aware of a certain flexing of Hooker's Bend custom,
+where negroes, unless old or infirm, are not supposed to sit in the
+presence of whites.
+
+"Do you mean the study, Captain?"
+
+"Yes, the study, the whole place."
+
+"It's very pleasant," replied Peter; "it has the atmosphere of age."
+
+Captain Renfrew nodded.
+
+"These old places," pursued Peter, "always give me an impression of
+statesmanship, somehow. I always think of grave old gentlemen busy with
+the cares of public policy."
+
+The old man seemed gratified.
+
+"You are sensitive to atmosphere. If I may say it, every Southron of the
+old régime was a statesman by nature and training. The complete care of
+two or three hundred negroes, a regard for their bodily, moral, and
+spiritual welfare, inevitably led the master into the impersonal
+attitude of statecraft. It was a training, sir, in leadership, in social
+thinking, in, if you please, altruism." The old gentleman thumped the
+arm of his chair with a translucent palm. "Yes, sir, negro slavery was
+God's great lesson to the South in altruism and loving-kindness, sir! My
+boy, I do believe with all my heart that the institution of slavery was
+placed here in God's country to rear up giants of political leadership,
+that our nation might weather the revolutions of the world. Oh, the
+Yankees are necessary! I know that!" The old Captain held up a palm at
+Peter as if repressing an imminent retort. "I know the Yankees are the
+Marthas of the nation. They furnish food and fuel to the ship of state,
+but, my boy, the reservoir of our country's spiritual and mental
+strength, the Mary of our nation, must always be the South. Virginia is
+the mother of Presidents!"
+
+The Captain's oration left him rather breathless. He paused a moment,
+then asked:
+
+"Peter, have you ever thought that we men of the leisure class owe a
+debt to the world?"
+
+Peter smiled.
+
+"I know the theory of the leisure class, but I've had very little
+practical experience with leisure."
+
+"Well, that's a subject close to my heart. As a scholar and a thinker, I
+feel that I should give the fruits of my leisure to the world. Er--in
+fact, Peter, that is why I sent for you to come and see me."
+
+"Why you sent for me?" Peter was surprised at this turn.
+
+"Precisely. You."
+
+Here the old gentleman got himself out of his chair, walked across to
+one of a series of drawers in his bookcases, opened it, and took out a
+sheaf of papers and a quart bottle. He brought the papers and the bottle
+back to the table, made room for them, put the papers in a neat pile,
+and set the bottle at a certain distance from the heap.
+
+"Now, Peter, please hand me one of those wineglasses in the religious
+section of my library--I always keep two or three glasses among my
+religious works, in memory of the fact that our Lord and Master wrought
+a miracle at the feast of Cana, especially to bless the cup. Indeed,
+Peter, thinking of that miracle at the wedding-feast, I wonder, sir, how
+the prohibitionists can defend their conduct even to their own
+consciences, because logically, sir, logically, the miracle of our
+gracious Lord completely cuts away the ground from beneath their feet!
+
+"No wonder, when the Mikado sent a Japanese envoy to America to make a
+tentative examination of Christianity as a proper creed for the state
+religion of Japan--no wonder, with this miracle flouted by the
+prohibitionists, the embassy carried back the report that Americans
+really have no faith in the religion they profess. Shameful! Shameful!
+Place the glass there on the left of the bottle. A little farther away
+from the bottle, please, just a trifle more. Thank you."
+
+The Captain poured himself a tiny glassful, and its bouquet immediately
+filled the room. There was no guessing how old that whisky was.
+
+"I will not break the laws of my country, Peter, no matter how godless
+and sacrilegious those laws may be; therefore I cannot offer you a
+drink, but you will observe a second glass among the religious works,
+and the bottle sits in plain view on the table--er--em." He watched
+Peter avail himself of his opportunity, and then added, "Now, you may
+just drink to me, standing, as you are, like that."
+
+They drank, Peter standing, the old gentleman seated.
+
+"It is just as necessary," pursued the old connoisseur, when Peter was
+reseated, "it is just as necessary for a gentleman to have a delicate
+palate for the tints of the vine as it is for him to have a delicate eye
+for the tints of the palette. Nature bestowed a taste both in art and
+wine on man, which he should strive to improve at every opportunity. It
+is a gift from God. Perhaps you would like another glass. No? Then
+accommodate me."
+
+He drained this one, with Peter standing, worked his withered lips back
+and forth to experience its full taste, then swallowed, and smacked.
+
+"Now, Peter," he said, "the reason I asked you to come to see me is that
+I need a man about this house. That will be one phase of your work. The
+more important part is that you shall serve as a sort of secretary. I
+have here a manuscript." He patted the pile of papers. "My handwriting
+is rather difficult. I want you to copy this matter out and get it ready
+for the printer."
+
+Peter became more and more astonished.
+
+"Are you offering me a permanent place, Captain Renfrew?" he asked.
+
+The old man nodded.
+
+"I need a man with a certain liberality of culture. I will no doubt have
+you run through books and periodicals and make note of any points
+germane to my thesis."
+
+Peter looked at the pile of script on the table.
+
+"That is very flattering, Captain; but the fact is, I came by your place
+at this hour because I am just in the act of leaving here on the
+steamboat to-night."
+
+The Captain looked at Peter with concern on his face. "Leaving Hooker's
+Bend?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Why?"
+
+Peter hesitated.
+
+"Well, my mother is dead--"
+
+"Yes, but your--your--your work is still here, Peter." The Captain fell
+into a certain confusion. "A man's work, Peter; a man's work."
+
+"Do you mean my school-teaching?"
+
+Then came a pause. The conversation somehow had managed to leave them
+both somewhat at sea. The Captain began again, in a different tone:
+
+"Peter, I wish you to remain here with me for another reason. I am an
+old man, Peter. Anything could happen to me here in this big house, and
+nobody would know it. I don't like to think of it." The old man's tone
+quite painted his fears. "I am not afraid of death, Peter. I have walked
+before God all my life save in one or two points, which, I believe, in
+His mercy, He has forgiven me; but I cannot endure the idea of being
+found here some day in some unconsidered posture, fallen out of a chair,
+or a-sprawl on the floor. I wish to die with dignity, Peter, as I have
+lived."
+
+"Then you mean that you want me to stay here with you until--until the
+end, Captain?"
+
+The old man nodded.
+
+"That is my desire, Peter, for an honorarium which you yourself shall
+designate. At my death, you will receive some proper portion of my
+estate; in fact, the bulk of my estate, because I leave no other heirs.
+I am the last Renfrew of my race, Peter."
+
+Peter grew more and more amazed as the old gentleman unfolded this
+strange proposal. What queerer, pleasanter berth could he find than that
+offered him here in the quietude of the old manor, among books, tending
+the feeble flame of this old aristocrat's life? An air of scholasticism
+hung about the library. In some corner of this dark oaken library his
+philosophies would rest comfortably.
+
+Then it occurred to Peter that he would have to continue his sleeping
+and eating in Niggertown, and since his mother had died and his rupture
+with Cissie, the squalor and smells of the crescent had become
+impossible. He told the old Captain his objections as diplomatically as
+possible. The old man made short work of them. He wanted Peter to sleep
+in the manor within calling distance, and he might begin this very night
+and stay on for a week or so as a sort of test whether he liked the
+position or not. The Captain waited with some concern until Peter agreed
+to a trial.
+
+After that the old gentleman talked on interminably of the South, of the
+suffrage movement, the destructive influence it would have on the home,
+the Irish question, the Indian question, whether the mound-builders did
+not spring from the two lost tribes of Israel--an endless outpouring of
+curious facts, quaint reasoning, and extraordinary conclusions, all
+delivered with the great dignity and in the flowing periods of an
+orator.
+
+It was fully two o'clock in the morning when it occurred to the Captain
+that his new secretary might like to go to bed. The old man took the
+hand-lamp which was still burning and led the way out to the back piazza
+past a number of doors to a corner bedroom. He shuffled along in his
+carpet slippers, followed by the black-and-white cat, which ran along,
+making futile efforts to rub itself against his lean shanks. Peter
+followed in a sort of stupor from the flood of words, ideas, and strange
+fancies that had been poured into his ears.
+
+The Captain turned off the piazza into one of those old-fashioned
+Southern rooms with full-length windows, which were really glazed doors,
+a ceiling so high that Peter could make out only vague concentric rings
+of stucco-work among the shadows overhead, and a floor space of ball-
+room proportions. In one corner was a huge canopy bed, across from it a
+clothes-press of dark wood, and in another corner a large screen hiding
+the bathing arrangements.
+
+Peter's bedroom was a sleeping apartment, in the old sense of the word
+before the term "apartment" had lost its dignity.
+
+The Captain placed the lamp on the great table and indicated Peter's
+possession with a wave of the hand.
+
+"If you stay here, Peter, I will put in a call-bell, so I can awaken you
+if I need you during the night. Now I wish you healthful slumbers and
+pleasant dreams." With that the old gentleman withdrew ceremoniously.
+
+When the Captain was gone, the mulatto remained standing in the vast
+expanse, marveling over this queer turn of fortune. Why Captain Renfrew
+had selected him as a secretary and companion Peter could not fancy.
+
+The magnificence of his surroundings revived his late dream of a
+honeymoon with Cissie. Certainly, in his fancy, he had visioned a
+honeymoon in Pullman parlor cars and suburban bungalows. He had been
+mistaken. This great chamber rose about him like a corrected proof of
+his desire.
+
+Into just such a room he would like to lead Cissie; into this great room
+that breathed pride and dignity. What a glowing heart the girl would
+have made for its somber magnificence!
+
+He walked over to the full-length windows and opened them; then he
+unbolted the jalousies outside and swung them back. The musk of autumn
+weeds breathed in out of the darkness. Peter drew a long breath, with a
+sort of wistful melting in his chest.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER IX
+
+
+A turmoil aroused Peter Siner the next morning, and when he discovered
+where he was, in the big canopy bed in the great room, he listened
+curiously and heard a continuous chattering and quarreling. After a
+minute or two he recognized the voice of old Rose Hobbett. Rose was
+cooking the Captain's breakfast, and she performed this function in a
+kind of solitary rage. She banged the vessels, slammed the stove-eyes on
+and off, flung the stove-wood about, and kept up a snarling
+animadversion upon every topic that drifted through her kinky head. She
+called the kitchen a rat-hole, stated the Captain must be as mean as the
+devil to live as long as he did, complained that no one ever paid any
+attention to her, that she might as well be a stray cat, and so on.
+
+As Peter grew wider awake, the monotony of the old negress's rancor
+faded into an unobserved noise. He sat up on the edge of his bed between
+the parted curtains and divined there was a bath behind the screen in
+the corner of his room. Sure enough, he found two frayed but clean
+towels, a pan, a pitcher, and a small tub all made of tin. Peter
+assembled his find and began splashing his heavily molded chest with a
+feeling of well-being. As he splashed on the water, he amused himself by
+listening again to old Rose. She was now complaining that some white
+young'uns had called her "raving Rose." She hoped "God'lmighty would
+send down two she bears and eat 'em up." Peter was amazed by the old
+crone's ability to maintain an unending flow of concentrated and aimless
+virulence.
+
+The kitchen of the Renfrew manor was a separate building, and presently
+Peter saw old Rose carrying great platters across the weed-grown
+compound into the dining-room. She bore plate after plate piled high
+with cookery,--enough for a company of men. A little later came a
+clangor on a rusty triangle, as if she were summoning a house party. Old
+Rose did things in a wholesale spirit.
+
+Peter started for his door, but when he had opened the shutter, he stood
+hesitating. Breakfast introduced another delicate problem. He decided
+not to go to the dining-room at once, but to wait and allow Captain
+Renfrew to indicate whether he, Peter, should break his fast with the
+master in the dining-room or with old Rose in the kitchen.
+
+A moment later he saw the Captain coming down the long back piazza.
+Peter almost addressed his host, but the old Southerner proceeded into
+the dining-room apparently without seeing Peter at all.
+
+The guest was gathering his breath to call good morning, but took the
+cue with a negro's sensitiveness, and let his eyes run along the weeds
+in the compound. The drying stalks were woven with endless spider-webs,
+all white with frost. Peter stood regarding their delicate geometries a
+moment longer and then reentered his room, not knowing precisely what to
+do. He could hear Rose walking across the piazza to and from the dining-
+room, and the clink of tableware. A few minutes later a knock came at
+his door, and the old woman entered with a huge salver covered with
+steaming dishes.
+
+The negress came into the room scowling, and seemed doubtful for a
+moment just how to shut the door and still hold the tray with both
+hands. She solved the problem by backing against the door tremendously.
+Then she saw Peter. She straightened and stared at him with outraged
+dignity.
+
+"Well, 'fo' Gawd! Is I bringin' dish-here breakfus' to a nigger?"
+
+"I suppose it's mine," agreed Peter, amused.
+
+"But whuffo, whuffo, nigger, is it dat you ain't come to de kitchen an'
+eat off'n de shelf? Is you sick?"
+
+Peter admitted fair bodily vigor.
+
+"Den whut de debbil is I got into!" cried Rose, angrily. "I ain't gwine
+wuck at no sich place, ca'yin' breakfus' to a big beef uv a nigger,
+stout as a mule. Say, nigger, wha-chu doin' in heah, anyway? Hoccum
+dis?"
+
+Peter tried to explain that he was there to do a little writing for the
+Captain.
+
+"Well, 'fo' Gawd, when niggers gits to writin' fuh white folks, ants'll
+be jumpin' fuh bullfrogs--an havin' other niggers bring dey breakfusses.
+You jes as much a nigger as I is, Peter Siner, de brightes' day you ever
+seen!"
+
+Peter began a conciliatory phrase.
+
+Old Rose banged the platter on the table and then threatened:
+
+"Dis is de las' time I fetches a moufful to you, Peter Siner, or any
+other nigger. You ain't no black Jesus, even ef you is a woods calf."
+
+Peter paused in drawing a chair to the table.
+
+"What did you say, Rose?" he asked sharply.
+
+"You heared whut I say."
+
+A wave of anger went over Peter.
+
+"Yes, I did. You ought to be ashamed to speak ill of the dead."
+
+The crone tossed her malicious head, a little abashed, perhaps, yet very
+glad she had succeeded in hurting Peter. She turned and went out the
+door, mumbling something which might have been apology or renewed
+invectives.
+
+Peter watched the old virago close the door and then sat down to his
+breakfast. His anger presently died away, and he sat wondering what
+could have happened to Rose Hobbett that had corroded her whole
+existence. Did she enjoy her vituperation, her continual malice? He
+tried to imagine how she felt.
+
+The breakfast Rose had brought him was delicious: hot biscuits of
+feathery lightness, three wide slices of ham, a bowl of scrambled eggs,
+a pot of coffee, some preserved raspberries, and a tiny glass of whisky.
+
+The plate which Captain Renfrew had set before his guest was a delicate
+dawn pink ringed with a wreath of holly. It was old Worcester porcelain
+of about the decade of 1760. The coffee-pot was really an old Whieldon
+teapot in broad cauliflower design. Age and careless heating had given
+the surface a fine reticulation. His cup and saucer, on the contrary,
+were thick pieces of ware such as the cabin-boys toss about on
+steamboats. The whole ceramic mélange told of the fortuities of English
+colonial and early American life, of the migration of families westward.
+No doubt, once upon a time, that dawn-pink Worcester had married into a
+Whieldon cauliflower family. A queer sort of genealogy might be traced
+among Southern families through their mixtures of tableware.
+
+As Peter mused over these implications of long ancestral lines, it
+reminded him that he had none. Over his own past, over the lineage of
+nearly every negro in the South, hung a curtain. Even the names of the
+colored folk meant nothing, and gave no hint of their kin and clan. At
+the end of the war between the States, Peter's people had selected names
+for themselves, casually, as children pick up a pretty stone. They meant
+nothing. It occurred to Peter for the first time, as he sat looking at
+the chinaware, that he knew nothing about himself; whether his kinsmen
+were valiant or recreant he did not know. Even his own father he knew
+little about except that his mother had said his name was Peter, like
+his own, and that he had gone down the river on a tie boat and was
+drowned.
+
+A faint sound attracted Peter's attention. He looked out at his open
+window and saw old Rose making off the back way with something concealed
+under her petticoat. Peter knew it was the unused ham and biscuits that
+she had cooked. For once the old negress hurried along without railing
+at the world. She moved with a silent, but, in a way, self-respecting,
+flight. Peter could see by the tilt of her head and the set of her
+shoulders that not only did her spoil gratify her enmity to mankind in
+general and the Captain in particular, but she was well within her
+rights in her acquisition. She disappeared around a syringa bush, and
+was heard no more until she reappeared to cook the noon meal, as
+vitriolic as ever.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Peter entered the library, old Captain Renfrew greeted him with
+morning wishes, thus sustaining the fiction that they had not seen each
+other before, that morning.
+
+The old gentleman seemed pleased but somewhat excited over his new
+secretary. He moved some of his books aimlessly from one table to
+another, placed them in exact piles as if he were just about to plunge
+into heroic labor, and could not give time to such details once he had
+begun.
+
+As he arranged his books just so, he cleared his throat.
+
+"Now, Peter, we want to get down to this," he announced dynamically; "do
+this thing, shove this work out!" He started with tottery briskness
+around to his manuscript drawer, but veered off to the left to aline
+some magazines. "System, Peter, system. Without system one may well be
+hopeless of performing any great literary labor; but with system, the
+constant piling up of brick on brick, stone on stone--it's the way Rome
+was built, my boy."
+
+Peter made a murmur supposed to acknowledge the correctness of this
+view.
+
+Eventually the old Captain drew out his drawer of manuscript, stood
+fumbling with it uncertainly. Now and then he glanced at Peter, a
+genuine secretary who stood ready to help him in his undertaking. The
+old gentleman picked up some sheets of his manuscript, seemed about to
+read them aloud, but after a moment shook his head, and said, "No, we'll
+do that to-night," and restored them to their places. Finally he turned
+to his helper.
+
+"Now, Peter," he explained, "in doing this work, I always write at
+night. It's quieter then,--less distraction. My mornings I spend
+downtown in conversation with my friends. If you should need me, Peter,
+you can walk down and find me in front of the livery-stable. I sit there
+for a while each morning."
+
+The gravity with which he gave this schedule of his personal habits
+amused Peter, who bowed with a serious, "Very well, Captain."
+
+"And in the meantime," pursued the old man, looking vaguely about the
+room, "you will do well to familiarize yourself with my library in order
+that you may be properly qualified for your secretarial labors."
+
+Peter agreed again.
+
+"And now if you will get my hat and coat, I will be off and let you go
+to work," concluded the Captain, with an air of continued urgency.
+
+Peter became thoroughly amused at such an outcome of the old gentleman's
+headlong attack on his work,--a stroll down to the village to hold
+conversation with friends. The mulatto walked unsmilingly to a little
+closet where the Captain hung his things. He took down the old
+gentleman's tall hat, a gray greatcoat worn shiny about the shoulders
+and tail, and a finely carved walnut cane. Some reminiscence of the
+manners of butlers which Peter had seen in theaters caused him to swing
+the overcoat across his left arm and polish the thin nap of the old hat
+with his right sleeve. He presented it to his employer with a certain
+duplication of a butler's obsequiousness. He offered the overcoat to the
+old gentleman's arms with the same air. Then he held up the collar of
+the greatcoat with one hand and with the other reached under its skirts,
+and drew down the Captain's long day coat with little jerks, as if he
+were going through a ritual.
+
+Peter grew more and more hilarious over his barber's manners. It was his
+contribution to the old gentleman's literary labors, and he was doing it
+beautifully, so he thought. He was just making some minute adjustments
+of the collar when, to his amazement, Captain Renfrew turned on him.
+
+"Damn it, sir!" he flared out. "What do you think you are? I didn't
+engage you for a kowtowing valet in waiting, sir! I asked you, sir, to
+come under my roof as an intellectual co-worker, as one gentleman asks
+another, and here you are making these niggery motions! They are
+disgusting! They are defiling! They are beneath the dignity of one
+gentleman to another, sir! What makes it more degrading, I perceive by
+your mannerism that you assume a specious servility, sir, as if you
+would flatter me by it!"
+
+The old lawyer's face was white. His angry old eyes jerked Peter out of
+his slight mummery. The negro felt oddly like a grammar-school boy
+caught making faces behind his master's back. It shocked him into
+sincerer manners.
+
+"Captain," he said with a certain stiffness, "I apologize for my
+mistake; but may I ask how you desire me to act?"
+
+"Simply, naturally, sir," thundered the Captain, "as one alumnus of
+Harvard to another! It is quite proper for a young man, sir, to assist
+an old gentleman with his hat and coat, but without fripperies and
+genuflections and absurdities!"
+
+The old man's hauteur touched some spring of resentment in Peter. He
+shook his head.
+
+"No, Captain; our lack of sympathy goes deeper than manners. My position
+here is anomalous. For instance, I can talk to you sitting, I can drink
+with you standing, but I can't breakfast with you at all. I do that
+_in camera_, like a disgraceful divorce proceeding. It's precisely
+as I was treated coming down here South again; it's as I've been treated
+ever since I've been back; it's--" He paused abruptly and swallowed down
+the rancor that filled him. "No," he repeated in a different tone,
+"there is no earthly excuse for me to remain here, Captain, or to let
+you go on measuring out your indulgences to me. There is no way for us
+to get together or to work together--not this far South. Let me thank
+you for a night's entertainment and go."
+
+Peter turned about, meaning to make an end of this queer adventure.
+
+The old Captain watched him, and his pallor increased. He lifted an
+unsteady hand.
+
+"No, no, Peter," he objected, "not so soon. This has been no trial, no
+fair trial. The little--little--er--details of our domestic life here,
+they will--er--arrange themselves, Peter. Gossip--talk, you know, we
+must avoid that." The old lawyer stood staring with strange eyes at his
+protégé. "I--I'm interested in you, Peter. My actions may seem--odd,
+but--er--a negro boy going off and doing what you have done--
+extraordinary. I--I have spoken to your mother, Caroline, about you
+often. In fact, Peter, I--I made some little advances in order that you
+might complete your studies. Now, now, don't thank me! It was purely
+impersonal. You seemed bright. I have often thought we gentle people of
+the South ought to do more to encourage our black folk--not--not as
+social equals--" Here the old gentleman made a wry mouth as if he had
+tasted salt.
+
+"Stay here and look over the library," he broke off abruptly. "We can
+arrange some ground of--of common action, some--"
+
+He settled the lapels of his great-coat with precision, addressed his
+palm to the knob of his stick, and marched stiffly out of the library,
+around the piazza, and along the dismantled walk to the front gate.
+
+Peter stood utterly astonished at this strange information. Suddenly he
+ran after the old lawyer, and rounded the turn of the piazza in time to
+see him walk stiffly down the shaded street with tremulous dignity. The
+old gentleman was much the same as usual, a little shakier, perhaps, his
+tall hat a little more polished, his shiny gray overcoat set a little
+more snugly at the collar.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER X
+
+
+The village of Hooker's Bend amuses itself mainly with questionable
+jests that range all the way from the slightly brackish to the
+hopelessly obscene. Now, in using this type of anecdote, the Hooker's-
+Benders must not be thought to design an attack upon the decencies of
+life; on the contrary, they are relying on the fact that their hearers
+have, in the depths of their beings, a profound reverence for the object
+of their sallies. And so, by taking advantage of the moral shock they
+produce and linking it to the idea of an absurdity, they convert the
+whole psychical reaction into an explosion of humor. Thus the ring of
+raconteurs telling blackguardly stories around the stoves in Hooker's
+Bend stores, are, in reality, exercising one another in the more
+delicate sentiments of life, and may very well be classed as a round
+table of Sir Galahads, _sans peur et sans reproche_.
+
+However, the best men weary in well doing, and for the last few days
+Hooker's Bend had switched from its intellectual staple of conversation
+to consider the comedy of Tump Pack's undoing. The incident held
+undeniably comic elements. For Tump to start out carrying a forty-four,
+meaning to blow a rival out of his path, and to wind up hard at work,
+picking cotton at nothing a day for a man whose offer of three dollars a
+day he had just refused, certainly held the makings of a farce.
+
+On the heels of this came the news that Peter Siner meant to take
+advantage of Tump's arrest and marry Cissie Dildine. Old Parson Ranson
+was responsible for the spread of this last rumor. He had fumbled badly
+in his effort to hold Peter's secret. Not once, but many times, always
+guarded by a pledge of secrecy, had he revealed the approaching wedding.
+When pressed for a date, the old negro said he was "not at lib'ty to
+tell."
+
+Up to this point white criticism viewed the stage-setting of the black
+comedy with the impersonal interest of a box party. Some of the round
+table said they believed there would be a dead coon or so before the
+scrape was over.
+
+Dawson Bobbs, the ponderous constable, went to the trouble to telephone
+Mr. Cicero Throgmartin, for whom Tump was working, cautioning
+Throgmartin to make sure that Tump Pack was in the sleeping-shack every
+night, as he might get wind of the wedding and take a notion to bolt and
+stop it. "You know, you can't tell what a fool nigger'll do," finished
+Bobbs.
+
+Throgmartin was mildly amused, promised the necessary precautions, and
+said:
+
+"It looks like Peter has put one over on Tump, and maybe a college
+education does help a nigger some, after all."
+
+The constable thought it was just luck.
+
+"Well, I dunno," said Throgmartin, who was a philosopher, and inclined
+to view every matter from various angles. "Peter may of worked this out
+somehow."
+
+"Have you heard what Henry Hooker done to Siner in the land deal?"
+
+Throgmartin said he had.
+
+"No, I don't mean _that_. I mean Henry's last wrinkle in
+garnisheeing old Ca'line's estate in his bank for the rest of the
+purchase money on the Dilihay place."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"You don't mean it!"
+
+"Damn 'f I don't."
+
+The constable's sentence shook with suppressed mirth, and the next
+moment roars of laughter came over the telephone wire.
+
+"Say, ain't he the bird!"
+
+"He's the original early bird. I'd like to get a snap-shot of the worm
+that gets away from him."
+
+Both men laughed heartily again.
+
+"But, say," objected Throgmartin, who was something of a lawyer
+himself,--as, indeed, all Southern men are,--"I thought the Sons and
+Daughters of Benevolence owed Hooker, not Peter Siner, nor Ca'line's
+estate."
+
+"Well, it _is_ the Sons and Daughters, but Ca'line was one of 'em,
+and they ain't no limited li'bility 'sociation. Henry can jump on
+anything any of 'em's got. Henry got the Persimmon to bring him a copy
+of their by-laws."
+
+"Well, I swear! Say, if Henry wasn't kind of held back by his religion,
+he'd use a gun, wouldn't he?"
+
+"I dunno. I can say this for Henry's religion: 'It's jest like Henry's
+wife,--it's the dearest thing to his heart; he'd give his life for it,
+but it don't do nobody a damn bit of good except jest Henry.'"
+
+The constable's little eyes twinkled as he heard Throgmartin roaring
+with laughter and sputtering appreciative oaths.
+
+At that moment a ringing of the bell jarred the ears of both
+telephonists. A voice asked for Dr. Jallup. It was an ill time to
+interrupt two gentlemen. The flair of a jest is lost in a pause. The
+officer stated sharply that he was the constable of Wayne County and was
+talking business about the county's prisoners. His tone was so charged
+with consequence that the voice that wanted a doctor apologized hastily
+and ceased.
+
+Came a pause in which neither man found anything to say. Laughter is
+like that,--a gay bubble that a touch will destroy. Presently Bobbs
+continued, gravely enough:
+
+"Talking about Siner, he's stayin' up at old man Renfrew's now."
+
+"'At so?"
+
+"Old Rose Hobbett swears he's doin' some sort of writin' up there and
+livin' in one of the old man's best rooms."
+
+"Hell he is!"
+
+"Yeah?" the constable's voice questioned Throgmartin's opinion about
+such heresy and expressed his own.
+
+"D' recken it's so? Old Rose is such a thief and a liar."
+
+"Nope," declared the constable, "the old nigger never would of made up a
+lie like that,--never would of thought of it. Old Cap'n Renfrew's
+gettin' childish; this nigger's takin' advantage of it. Down at the
+liver'-stable the boys were talkin' about Siner goin' to git married,
+an' dern if old man Renfrew didn't git cut up about it!"
+
+"Well," opined Throgmartin, charitably, "the old man livin' there all by
+himself--I reckon even a nigger is some comp'ny. They're funny damn
+things, niggers is; never know a care nor trouble. Lord! I wish I was as
+care-free as they are!"
+
+"Don't you, though!" agreed the constable, with the weight of the white
+man's burden on his shoulders. For this is a part of the Southern
+credo,--that all negroes are gay, care-free, and happy, and that if one
+could only be like the negroes, gay, care-free, and happy--Ah, if one
+could only be like the negroes!
+
+None of this gossip reached Peter directly, but a sort of back-wash did
+catch him keenly through young Sam Arkwright and serve as a conundrum
+for several days.
+
+One morning Peter was bringing an armful of groceries up the street to
+the old manor, and he met the boy coming in the opposite direction. The
+negro's mind was centered on a peculiar problem he had found in the
+Renfrew library, so, according to a habit he had acquired in Boston, he
+took the right-hand side of the pavement, which chanced to be the inner
+side. This violated a Hooker's-Bend convention, which decrees that when
+a white and a black meet on the sidewalk, the black man invariably shall
+take the outer side.
+
+For this _faux pas_ the gangling youth stopped Peter, fell to
+abusing and cursing him for his impudence, his egotism, his attempt at
+social equality,--all of which charges, no doubt, were echoes from the
+round table. Such wrath over such an offense was unusual. Ordinarily, a
+white villager would have thought several uncomplimentary things about
+Peter, but would have said nothing.
+
+Peter stopped with a shock of surprise, then listened to the whole
+diatribe with a rising sense of irritation and irony. Finally, without a
+word, he corrected his mistake by retracing his steps and passing Sam
+again, this time on the outside.
+
+Peter walked on up the street, outwardly calm, but his ears burned, and
+the queer indignity stuck in his mind. As he went along he invented all
+sorts of ironical remarks he might have made to Arkwright, which would
+have been unwise; then he thought of sober reasoning he could have used,
+which would perhaps have been just as ill-advised. Still later he
+wondered why Arkwright had fallen into such a rage over such a trifle.
+Peter felt sure there was some contributing rancor in the youth's mind.
+Perhaps he had received a scolding at home or a whipping at school, or
+perhaps he was in the midst of one of those queer attacks of megalomania
+from which adolescents are chronic sufferers. Peter fancied this and
+that, but he never came within hail of the actual reason.
+
+When the brown man reached the old manor, the quietude of the library,
+with its blackened mahogany table, its faded green Axminster, the
+meridional globe with its dusty twinkle, banished the incident from his
+mind. He returned to his work of card-indexing the Captain's books. He
+took half a dozen at a time from the shelves, dusted them on the piazza,
+then carried them to the embrasure of the window, which offered a
+pleasant light for reading and for writing the cards.
+
+He went through volume after volume,--speeches by Clay, Calhoun, Yancy,
+Prentiss, Breckenridge; an old life of General Taylor, Foxe's "Book of
+Martyrs"; a collection of the old middle-English dramatists, such as
+Lillo, Garrick, Arthur Murphy, Charles Macklin, George Colman, Charles
+Coffey, men whose plays have long since declined from the boards and
+disappeared from the reading-table.
+
+The Captain's collection of books was strongly colored by a religious
+cast,--John Wesley's sermons, Charles Wesley's hymns; a treatise
+presenting a biblical proof that negroes have no souls; a little book
+called "Flowers Gathered," which purported to be a compilation of the
+sayings of ultra-pious children, all of whom died young; an old book
+called "Elements of Criticism," by Henry Home of Kames; another tome
+entitled "Studies of Nature," by St. Pierre. This last was a long
+argument for the miraculous creation of the world as set forth in
+Genesis. The proof offered was a résumé of the vegetable, animal, and
+mineral kingdoms, showing their perfect fitness for man's use, and the
+immediate induction was that they were designed for man's use. Still
+another work calculated the exact age of the earth by the naĂ¯ve method
+of counting the generations from Adam to Christ, to the total adding
+eighteen hundred and eighty-five years (for the book was written in
+1885), and the original six days it required the Lord to build the
+earth. By referring to Genesis and finding out precisely what the
+Creator did on the morning of the first day, the writer contrived to
+bring his calculation of the age of the earth and everything in the
+world to a precision of six hours, give or take,--a somewhat closer
+schedule than that made by the Tennessee river boats coming up from St.
+Louis.
+
+These and similar volumes formed the scientific section of Captain
+Renfrew's library, and it was this paucity of the natural sciences that
+formed the problem which Peter tried to solve. All scientific additions
+came to an abrupt stop about the decade of 1880-90. That was the date
+when Charles Darwin's great fructifying theory, enunciated in 1859,
+began to seep into the South.
+
+In the Captain's library the only notice of evolution was a book called
+"Darwinism Dethroned." As for the elaborations of the Darwinian
+hypothesis by Spencer, Fiske, DeVries, Weismann, Haeckel, Kidd, Bergson,
+and every subsequent philosophic or biologic writer, all these men might
+never have written a line so far as Captain Renfrew's library was
+informed.
+
+Now, why such extraordinary occlusions? Why should Captain Renfrew deny
+himself the very commonplaces of thought, theories familiarly held by
+the rest of America, and, indeed, by all the rest of the civilized
+world?
+
+Musing by the window, Peter succeeded in stating his problem more
+broadly: Why was Captain Renfrew an intellectual reactionist? The old
+gentleman was the reverse of stupid. Why should he confine his selection
+of books to a few old oddities that had lost their battle against a
+theory which had captured the intellectual world fifty years before?
+
+Nor was it Captain Renfrew alone. Now and then Peter saw editorials
+appearing in leading Southern journals, seriously attacking the
+evolutionary hypothesis. Ministers in respectable churches still
+fulminated against it. Peter knew that the whole South still clings, in
+a way, to the miraculous and special creation of the earth as described
+in Genesis. It clings with an intransigentism and bitterness far
+exceeding other part of America. Why? To Peter the problem appeared
+insoluble.
+
+He sat by the window lost in his reverie. Just outside the ledge half a
+dozen English sparrows abused one another with chirps that came faintly
+through the small diamond panes. Their quick movements held Peter's
+eyes, and their endless quarreling presently recalled his episode with
+young Arkwright. It occurred to him, casually, that when Arkwright grew
+up he would subscribe to every reactionary doctrine set forth in the
+library Peter was indexing.
+
+With that thought came a sort of mental flare, as if he were about to
+find the answer to the whole question through the concrete attack made
+on him by Sam.
+
+It is an extraordinary feeling,--the sudden, joyful dawn of a new idea.
+Peter sat up sharply and leaned forward with a sense of being right on
+the fringe of a new and a great perception. Young Arkwright, the old
+Captain, the whole South, were unfolding themselves in a vast answer,
+when a movement outside the window caught the negro's introspective
+eyes.
+
+A girl was passing; a girl in a yellow dress was passing the Renfrew
+gate. Even then Peter would not have wavered in his synthesis had not
+the girl paused slightly and given a swift side glance at the old manor.
+Then the man in the window recognized Cissie Dildine.
+
+A slight shock traveled through Siner's body at the sight of Cissie's
+colorless face and darkened eyes. He stood up abruptly, with a feeling
+that he had some urgent thing to say to the young woman. His sharp
+movement toppled over the big globe.
+
+The crash caused the girl to stop and look. For a moment they stood
+thus, the girl in the chill street, the man in the pleasant window,
+looking at each other. Next moment Cissie hurried on up the village
+street toward the Arkwright house. No doubt she was on her way to cook
+the noon meal.
+
+Peter remained standing at the window, with a heavily beating heart. He
+watched her until she vanished behind a wing of the shrubbery in the
+Renfrew yard.
+
+When she had gone, he looked at his books and cards, sat down, and tried
+to resume his indexing. But his mind played away from it like a restive
+horse. It had been two weeks since he last saw Cissie. Two weeks.... His
+nerves vibrated like the strings of a pianoforte. He had scarcely
+thought of her during the fortnight; but now, having seen her, he found
+himself powerless to go on with his work. He pottered a while longer
+among the books and cards, but they were meaningless. They appeared an
+utter futility. Why index a lot of nonsense? Somehow this recalled his
+flare, his adumbration of some great idea connected with young Arkwright
+and the old Captain, and the South.
+
+He put his trembling nerves to work, trying to recapture his line of
+thought. He sat for ten minutes, following this mental train, then that,
+losing one, groping for another. His thoughts were jumpy. They played
+about Arkwright, the Captain, Cissie, his mother's death, Tump Pack in
+prison, the quarrel between the Persimmon and Jim Pink Staggs. The whole
+of Niggertown came rushing down upon him, seizing him in its passion and
+dustiness and greasiness, putting to flight all his cultivated white-man
+ideas.
+
+After half an hour's searching he gave it up. Before he left the room he
+stooped, and tried to set up again the globe that the passing of the
+girl had caused him to throw down; but its pivot was out of plumb, and
+he had to lean it against the window-seat.
+
+The sight of Captain Renfrew coming in at the gate sent Peter to his
+room. The hour was near twelve, and it had become a little point of
+household etiquette for the mulatto and the white man not to be together
+when old Rose jangled the triangle. By this means they forestalled the
+mute discourtesy of the old Captain's walking away from his secretary to
+eat. The subject of their separate meals had never been mentioned since
+their first acrimonious morning. The matter had dropped into the
+abeyance of custom, just as the old gentleman had predicted.
+
+Peter had left open his jalousies, but his windows were closed, and now
+as he entered he found his apartment flooded with sunshine and filled
+with that equable warmth that comes of straining sunbeams through glass.
+
+
+He prepared for dinner with his mind still hovering about Cissie. He
+removed a book and a lamp from the lion-footed table, and drew up an old
+chair with which the Captain had furnished his room. It was a delicate
+old Heppelwhite of rosewood. It had lost a finial from one of its back
+standards, and a round was gone from the left side. Peter never moved
+the chair that vague plans sometime to repair it did not occur to him.
+
+When he had cleared his table and placed his chair beside it, he
+wandered over to his tall west window and stood looking up the street
+through the brilliant sunshine, toward the Arkwright home. No one was in
+sight. In Hooker's Bend every one dines precisely at twelve, and at that
+hour the streets are empty. It would be some time before Cissie came
+back down the street on her way to Niggertown. She first would have to
+wash and put away the Arkwright dishes. It would be somewhere about one
+o'clock. Nevertheless, he kept staring out through the radiance of the
+autumn sunlight with an irrational feeling that she might appear at any
+moment. He was afraid she would slip past and he not see her at all. The
+thought disturbed him somewhat. It kept him sufficiently on the alert to
+stand tapping the balls of his fingers against the glass and looking
+steadily toward the Arkwright house.
+
+Presently the watcher perceived that a myriad spider-webs filled the
+sunshine with a delicate dancing glister. It was the month of voyaging
+spiders. Invisible to Peter, the tiny spinners climbed to the tip-most
+twigs of the dead weeds, listed their abdomens, and lassoed the wind
+with gossamer lariats; then they let go and sailed away to a hazard of
+new fortunes. The air was full of the tiny adventurers. As he stared up
+the street, Peter caught the glint of these invisible airships whisking
+away to whatever chance might hold for them. There was something epic in
+it. It recalled to the mulatto's mind some of Fabre's lovely
+descriptions. It reminded him of two or three books on entomology which
+he had left in his mother's cabin. He felt he ought to go after them
+while the spiders were migrating. He suddenly made up his mind he would
+go at once, as soon as he had had dinner; somewhere about one o'clock.
+
+He looked again at the Arkwright house. The thought of walking down the
+street with Cissie, to get his books, quickened his heart.
+
+He was still at the window when his door opened and old Rose entered
+with his dinner. She growled under her breath all the way from the door
+to the table on which she placed the tray. Only a single phrase detached
+itself and stood out clearly amid her mutterings, "Hope it chokes you."
+
+Peter arranged his chair and table with reference to the window, so he
+could look up the street while he was eating his dinner.
+
+The ill-wishing Rose had again furnished a gourmet's meal, but Peter's
+preoccupation prevented its careful and appreciative gustation. An
+irrational feeling of the octoroon's imminence spurred him to fast
+eating. He had hardly begun his soup before he found himself drinking
+swiftly, looking up the street over his spoon, as if he meant to rush
+out and swing aboard a passing train.
+
+Siner checked his precipitation, annoyed at himself. He began again,
+deliberately, with an attempt to keep his mind on the savor of his food.
+He even thought of abandoning his little design of going for the books;
+or he would go at a different hour, or to-morrow, or not at all. He told
+himself he would far better allow Cissie Dildine to pass and repass
+unspoken to, instead of trying to arrange an accidental meeting. But the
+brown man's nerves wouldn't hear to it. That automatic portion of his
+brain and spinal column which, physiologists assert, performs three
+fourths of a man's actions and conditions nine tenths of his volitions--
+that part of Peter wouldn't consider it. It began to get jumpy and
+scatter havoc in Peter's thoughts at the mere suggestion of not seeing
+Cissie. Imperceptibly this radical left wing of his emotions speeded up
+his meal, again. He caught himself, stopped his knife and fork in the
+act of rending apart a broiled chicken.
+
+"Confound it! I'll start when she comes in sight, no matter whether I've
+finished this meal or not," he promised himself.
+
+And suddenly he felt unhurried, in the midst of a large leisure, with a
+savory broiled chicken dinner before him,--not exactly before him,
+either; most of it had been stuffed away. Only the fag-end remained on
+his plate. A perfectly good meal had been ruined by an ill-timed
+resistance to temptation.
+
+The glint of a yellow dress far up the street had just prompted him to
+swift action when the door opened and old Rose put her head in to say
+that Captain Renfrew wanted to see Peter in the library.
+
+The brown man came to a shocked standstill.
+
+"What! Right now?" he asked.
+
+"Yeah, right now," carped Rose. "Ever'thing he wants, he wants right
+now. He's been res'less as a cat in a bulldog's den ever sence he come
+home fuh dinner. Dunno whut's come into he ole bones, runnin' th'ugh his
+dinner lak a razo'-back." She withdrew in a continued mumble of censure.
+
+Peter cast a glance up the street, timed Cissie's arrival at the front
+gate, picked up his hat, and walked briskly to the library in the hope
+of finishing any business the Captain might have, in time to encounter
+the octoroon. He even began making some little conversational plans with
+which he could meet Cissie in a simple, unstudied manner. He recalled
+with a certain satisfaction that he had not said a word of condemnation
+the night of Cissie's confession. He would make a point of that, and was
+prepared to argue that, since he had said nothing, he meant nothing. In
+fact he was prepared to throw away the truth completely and enter the
+conversation as an out-and-out opportunist, alleging whatever appeared
+to fit the occasion, as all men talk to all women.
+
+The old Captain was just getting into his chair as Peter entered. He
+paused in the midst of lowering himself by the chair-arms and got erect
+again. He began speaking a little uncertainly:
+
+"Ah--by the way, Peter--I sent for you--"
+
+"Yes, sir." Peter looked out at the window.
+
+The old gentleman scrutinized Peter a moment; then his faded eyes
+wandered about the library.
+
+"Still working at the books, cross-indexing them--"
+
+"Yes, sir." Peter could divine by the crinkle of his nerves the very
+loci of the girl as she passed down the thoroughfare.
+
+"Very good," said the old lawyer, absently. He was obviously preoccupied
+with some other topic. "Very good," he repeated with racking
+deliberation; "quite good. How did that globe get bent?"
+
+Peter, looking at it, did not remember either knocking it over or
+setting it up.
+
+"I don't know," he said rapidly. "I hadn't noticed it."
+
+"Old Rose did it," meditated the Captain aloud, "but it's no use to
+accuse her of it; she'd deny it. And yet, on the other hand, Peter,
+she'll be nervous until I do accuse her of it. She'll be dropping
+things, breaking up my china. I dare say I'd best accuse her at once,
+storm at her some to quiet her nerves, and get it over."
+
+This monologue spurred Peter's impatience into an agony.
+
+"I believe you were wanting me, Captain?" he suggested, with a certain
+urge for action.
+
+The Captain's little pleasantry faded. He looked at Peter and became
+uncomfortable again.
+
+"Well, yes, Peter. Downtown I heard--well, a rumor connected with you--"
+
+Such an extraordinary turn caught the attention of even the fidgety
+Peter. He looked at his employer and wondered blankly what he had heard.
+
+"I don't want to intrude on your private affairs, Peter, not at all--
+not--not in the least--"
+
+"No-o-o," agreed Peter, completely at a loss.
+
+The old gentleman rubbed his thin hands together, lifted his eyebrows up
+and down nervously. "Are--are you about to--to leave me, Peter?"
+
+Peter was greatly surprised at the slightness and simplicity of this
+question and at the evidence of emotion it carried.
+
+"Why, no," he cried; "not at all! Who told you I was? It is a deep
+gratification to me--"
+
+"To be exact," proceeded the old man, with a vague fear still in his
+eyes, "I heard you were going to marry."
+
+"Marry!" This flaw took Peter's sails even more unexpectedly than the
+other. "Captain, who in the world--who could have told--"
+
+"Are you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You aren't?"
+
+"Indeed, no!"
+
+"I heard you were going to marry a negress here in town called Cissie
+Dildine." A question was audible in the silence that followed this
+statement. The obscure emotion that charged all the old man's queries
+affected Peter.
+
+"I am not, Captain," he declared earnestly; "that's settled."
+
+"Oh--you say it's settled," picked up the old lawyer, delicately.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then you had thought of it?" Immediately, however, he corrected this
+breach of courtesy into which his old legal habit of cross-questioning
+had led him. "Well, at any rate," he said in quite another voice, "that
+eases my mind, Peter. It eases my mind. It was not only, Peter, the
+thought of losing you, but this girl you were thinking of marrying--let
+me warn you, Peter--she's a negress."
+
+The mulatto stared at the strange objection.
+
+"A negress!"
+
+The old man paused and made that queer movement with his wrinkled lips
+as if he tasted some salty flavor.
+
+"I--I don't mean exactly a--a negress," stammered the old gentleman; "I
+mean she's not a--a good girl, Peter; she's a--a thief, in fact--she's a
+thief--a thief, Peter. I couldn't endure for you to marry a thief,
+Peter."
+
+It seemed to Peter Siner that some horrible compulsion kept the old
+Captain repeating over and over the fact that Cissie Dildine was a
+thief, a thief, a thief. The word cut the very viscera in the brown man.
+At last, when it seemed the old gentleman would never cease, Peter
+lifted a hand.
+
+"Yes, yes," he gasped, with a sickly face, "I--I've heard that before."
+
+He drew a shaken breath and moistened his lips. The two stood looking at
+each other, each profoundly at a loss as to what the other meant. Old
+Captain Renfrew collected himself first.
+
+"That is all, Peter." He tried to lighten his tones. "I think I'll get
+to work. Let me see, where do I keep my manuscript?"
+
+Peter pointed mechanically at a drawer as he walked out at the library
+door. Once outside, he ran to the front piazza, then to the front gate,
+and with a racing heart stood looking up and down the sleepy
+thoroughfare. The street was quite empty.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Old Captain Renfrew was a trustful, credulous soul, as, indeed, most
+gentleman who lead a bachelor's life are. Such men lack that moral
+hardening and whetting which is obtained only amid the vicissitudes of a
+home; they are not actively and continuously engaged in the employment
+and detection of chicane; want of intimate association with a woman and
+some children begets in them a soft and simple way of believing what is
+said to them. And their faith, easily raised, is just as easily
+shattered. Their judgment lacks training.
+
+Peter Siner's simple assertion to the old Captain that he was not going
+to marry Cissie Dildine completely allayed the old gentleman's
+uneasiness. Even the further information that Peter had had such a
+marriage under advisement, but had rejected it, did not put him on his
+guard.
+
+From long non-intimacy with any human creature, the old legislator had
+forgotten that human life is one long succession of doing the things one
+is not going to do; he had forgotten, if he ever knew, that the human
+brain is primarily not a master, but a servant; its function is not to
+direct, but to devise schemes and apologies to gratify impulses. It is
+the ways and means committee to the great legislature of the body.
+
+For several days after his fear that Peter Siner would marry Cissie
+Dildine old Captain Renfrew was as felicitous as a lover newly
+reconciled to his mistress. He ambled between the manor and the livery-
+stable with an abiding sense of well-being. When he approached his home
+in the radiance of high noon and saw the roof of the old mansion lying a
+bluish gray in the shadows of the trees, it filled his heart with joy to
+feel that it was not an old and empty house that awaited his coming, but
+that in it worked a busy youth who would be glad to see him enter the
+gate.
+
+The fear of some unattended and undignified death which had beset the
+old gentleman during the last eight or ten years of his life vanished
+under Peter's presence. When he thought of it at all now, he always
+previsioned himself being lifted in Peter's athletic arms and laid
+properly on his big four-poster.
+
+At times, when Peter sat working over the books in the library, the
+Captain felt a prodigious urge to lay a hand on the young man's broad
+and capable shoulder. But he never did. Again, the old lawyer would sit
+for minutes at a time watching his secretary's regular features as the
+brown man pursued his work with a trained intentness. The old gentleman
+derived a deep pleasure from such long scrutinies. It pleased him to
+imagine that, when he was young, he had possessed the same vigor, the
+same masculinity, the same capacity for persistent labor. Indeed, all
+old gentlemen are prone to choose the most personable and virile young
+man they can find for themselves to have been like.
+
+The two men had little to say to each other. Their thoughts beat to such
+different tempos that any attempt at continued speech discovered unequal
+measures. As a matter of fact, in all comfortable human conversation,
+words are used as mere buoys dropped here and there to mark well-known
+channels of thought and feeling. Similarity of mental topography is
+necessary to mutual understanding. Between any two generations the
+landscape is so changed as to be unrecognizable. Our fathers are
+monarchists; our sons, bolsheviki.
+
+Old Rose Hobbett was more of an age with the Captain, and these two
+talked very comfortably as the old virago came and went with food at
+meal-time. For instance, the Captain always asked his servant if she had
+fed his cat, and old Rose invariably would sulk and poke out her lips
+and put off answering to the last possible moment of insolence, then
+would grumble out that she was jes 'bout to feed the varmint, an' 't wuz
+funny nobody couldn't give a hard-wuckin' colored woman breathin'-space
+to turn roun' in.
+
+This reply was satisfactory to the Captain, because he knew what it
+meant,--that Rose had half forgotten the cat, and had meant wholly to
+forget it, but since she had been snapped up, so to speak, in the very
+act of forgetting, she would dole it out a piece or two of the meat that
+she had meant to abscond with as soon as the dishes were done.
+
+While Rose was fulminating, the old gentleman recalled his bent globe
+and decided the moment had come for a lecture on that point. It always
+vaguely embarrassed the Captain to correct Rose, and this increased his
+dignity. Now he cleared his throat in a certain way that brought the old
+negress to attention, so well they knew each other.
+
+"By the way, Rose, in the future I must request you to use extraordinary
+precautions in cleansing and dusting articles of my household furniture,
+or, in case of damage, I shall be forced to withhold an indemnification
+out of your pay."
+
+Eight or ten years ago, when the Captain first repeated this formula to
+his servant, the roll and swing of his rhetoric, and the last word,
+"pay," had built up lively hopes in Rose that the old gentleman was
+announcing an increase in her regular wage of a dollar a week.
+Experience, however, had long since corrected this faulty
+interpretation.
+
+She came to a stand in the doorway, with her kinky gray head swung
+around, half puzzled, wholly rebellious.
+
+"Whut is I bruk now?"
+
+"My globe."
+
+The old woman turned about with more than usual innocence.
+
+"Why, I ain't tech yo' globe!"
+
+"I foresaw that," agreed the Captain, with patient irony, "but in the
+future don't touch it more carefully. You bent its pivot the last time
+you refrained from handling it."
+
+"But I tell you I ain't tech yo' globe!" cried the negress, with the
+anger of an illiterate person who feels, but cannot understand, the
+satire leveled at her.
+
+"I agree with you," said the Captain, glad the affair was over.
+
+This verbal ducking into the cellar out of the path of her storm stirred
+up a tempest.
+
+"But I tell you I ain't bruk it!"
+
+"That's what I said."
+
+"Yeah, yeah, yeah," she flared; "you says I ain't, but when you says I
+ain't, you means I is, an' when you says I is, you means I ain't. Dat's
+de sort o' flapjack I's wuckin' fur!"
+
+The woman flirted out of the dining-room, and the old gentleman drew
+another long breath, glad it was over. He really had little reason to
+quarrel about the globe, bent or unbent; he never used it. It sat in his
+study year in and year out, its dusty twinkle brightened at long
+intervals by old Rose's spiteful rag.
+
+The Captain ate on placidly. There had been a time when he was dubious
+about such scenes with Rose. Once he felt it beneath his dignity as a
+Southern gentleman to allow any negro to speak to him disrespectfully.
+He used to feel that he should discharge her instantly and during the
+first years of their entente had done so a number of times. But he could
+get no one else who suited him so well; her biscuits, her corn-light-
+bread, her lye-hominy, which only the old darkies know how to make. And,
+to tell the truth, he missed the old creature herself, her understanding
+of him and his ideas, her contemporaneity; and no one else would work
+for a dollar a week.
+
+Presently in the course of his eating the old gentleman required another
+biscuit, and he wanted a hot one. Three mildly heated disks lay on a
+plate before him, but they had been out of the oven for five minutes and
+had been reduced to an unappetizing tepidity.
+
+A little hand-bell sat beside the Captain's plate whose special use was
+to summon hot biscuits. Now, the old lawyer looked at its worn handle
+speculatively. He was not at all sure Rose would answer the bell. She
+would say she hadn't heard it. He felt faintly disgruntled at not
+foreseeing this exigency and buttering two biscuits while they were hot,
+or even three.
+
+He considered momentarily a project of going after a hot biscuit for
+himself, but eventually put it by. South of the Mason-Dixon Line, self-
+help is half-scandal. At last, quite dubiously, he did pick up the bell
+and gave it a gentle ring, so if old Rose chose not to hear it, she
+probably wouldn't: thus he could believe her and not lose his temper and
+so widen an already uncomfortable breach.
+
+To the Captain's surprise, the old creature not only brought the
+biscuits, but she did it promptly. No sooner had she served them,
+however, than the Captain saw she really had returned with a new line of
+defense.
+
+She mumbled it out as usual, so that her employer was forced to guess at
+a number of words: "Dat nigger, Peter, mus' 'a' busted yo' gl--"
+
+"No, he didn't."
+
+"Mus' uv."
+
+"No, he didn't. I asked him, and he said he didn't."
+
+The old harridan stared, and her speech suddenly became clear-cut:
+
+"Well, 'fo' Gawd, I says I didn't, too!"
+
+At this point the Captain made an unintelligible sound and spread the
+butter on his hot biscuit.
+
+"He's jes a nigger, lak I is," stated the cook, warmly.
+
+The Captain buttered a second hot biscuit.
+
+"We's jes two niggers."
+
+The Captain hoped she would presently sputter herself out.
+
+"Now look heah," cried the crone, growing angrier and angrier as the
+reaches of the insult spread itself before her, "is you gwine to put one
+o' us niggers befo' de udder? Ca'se ef you is, I mus' say, it's Kady-
+lock-a-do' wid me."
+
+The Captain looked up satirically.
+
+"What do you mean by Katie-lock-the-door with you?" he asked, though he
+had an uneasy feeling that he knew.
+
+"You know whut I means. I means I 's gwine to leab dis place."
+
+"Now look here, Rose," protested the lawyer, with dignity, "Peter Siner
+occupies almost a fiduciary relation to me."
+
+The old negress stared with a slack jaw. "A relation o' yo's!"
+
+The lawyer hesitated some seconds, looking at the hag. His high-bred old
+face was quite inscrutable, but presently he said in a serious voice:
+
+"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'
+niggers 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
+passes 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-nigger an' a she-nigger 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-nigger" and "she-nigger" 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 passings 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 passed 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 passed back toward Niggertown, 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 passed she kept Peter watching the clock at
+nervous intervals, wondering if, after all, she had gone by unobserved.
+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
+entity, 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 passing 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 pass 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 reëstablish 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 passionate 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 passed 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 niggerish taste, and
+his dislike for the girl edged his stricture; then, on second thought,
+the oddness of sumac for a nosegay caught his attention. Nobody used
+sumac for a buttonhole. 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.
+
+All his life, Captain Renfrew's brain had been deliberate. He moved
+mentally, as he did physically, with dignity. To tell the truth, the
+Captain's thoughts had a way of absolutely stopping now and then, and
+for a space he would view the world as a simple collection of colored
+surfaces without depth or meaning. During these intervals, by a sort of
+irony of the gods the old gentleman's face wore a look of philosophic
+concentration, so that his mental hiatuses had given him a reputation
+for profundity, which was county wide. It had been this, years before,
+that had carried him by a powerful majority into the Tennessee
+legislature. The voters agreed, almost to a man, that they preferred
+depth to a shallow facility. The rival candidate had been shallow and
+facile. The polls returned the Captain, and the young gentleman--for the
+Captain was a young gentleman in those days--was launched on a typical
+politician's career. But some Republican member from east Tennessee had
+impugned the rising statesman's honor with some sort of improper
+liaison. In those days there seemed to be proper and improper liaisons.
+There had been a duel on the banks of the Cumberland River in which the
+Captain succeeded in wounding his traducer in the arm, and was thus
+vindicated by the gods. But the incident ended a career that might very
+well have wound up in the governor's chair, or even in the United States
+Senate, considering how very deliberate the Captain was mentally.
+
+To-day, as the Captain walked up the street following Cissie Dildine,
+one of these vacant moods fell upon him and it was not until they had
+reached his own gate that it suddenly occurred to the old gentleman just
+what Cissie's sumac did mean. It was a signal to Peter. The simplicity
+of the solution stirred the old man. Its meaning was equally easy to
+fathom. When a woman signals any man it conveys consent. Denials receive
+no signals; they are inferred. In this particular case Captain Renfrew
+found every reason to believe that this flaring bit of sumac was the
+prelude to an elopement.
+
+In the window of his library the Captain saw his secretary staring at
+his cards and books with an intentness plainly assumed. Peter's fixed
+stare had none of those small movements of the head that mark genuine
+intellectual labor. So Peter was posing, pretending he did not see the
+girl, to disarm his employer's suspicions,--pretending not to see a
+girl rigged out like that!
+
+Such duplicity sent a queer spasm of anguish through the old lawyer.
+Peter's action held half a dozen barbs for the Captain. A fellow-alumnus
+of Harvard staying in his house merely for his wage and keep! Peter bore
+not the slightest affection for him; the mulatto lacked even the
+chivalry to notify the Captain of his intentions, because he knew the
+Captain objected. And yet all these self-centered objections were
+nothing to what old Captain Renfrew felt for Peter's own sake. For Peter
+to marry a nigger and a strumpet, for him to elope with a wanton and a
+thief! For such an upstanding lad, the very picture of his own virility
+and mental alertness when he was of that age, for such a boy to fling
+himself away, to drop out of existence--oh, it was loathly!
+
+The old man entered the library feeling sick. It was empty. Peter had
+gone to his room, according to his custom. But in this particular
+instance it seemed to Captain Renfrew his withdrawal was flavored with a
+tang of guilt. If he were innocent, why should not such a big, strong
+youth have stayed and helped an old gentleman off with his overcoat?
+
+The old Captain blew out a windy breath as he helped himself out of his
+coat in the empty library. The bent globe still leaned against the
+window-seat. The room had never looked so somber or so lonely.
+
+At dinner the old man ate so little that Rose Hobbett ceased her
+monotonous grumbling to ask if he felt well. He said he had had a hard
+day, a difficult day. He felt so weak and thin that he foretold the gray
+days when he could no longer creep to the village and sit with his
+cronies at the livery-stable, when he would be house-fast, through
+endless days, creeping from room to room like a weak old rat in a huge
+empty house, finally to die in some disgusting fashion. And Now Peter
+was going to leave him, was going to throw himself away on a lascivious
+wench. A faint moisture dampened the old man's withered eyes. He drank
+an extra thimbleful of whisky to try to hearten himself. Its bouquet
+filled the time-worn stateliness of the dining-room.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+During the weeks of Peter's stay at the manor it had grown to be the
+Captain's habit really to write for two or three hours in the afternoon,
+and his pile of manuscript had thickened under his application.
+
+The old man was writing a book called "Reminiscences of Peace and War."
+His book would form another unit of that extraordinary crop of personal
+reminiscences of the old South which flooded the presses of America
+during the decade of 1908-18. During just that decade it seemed as if the
+aged men and women of the South suddenly realized that the generation who
+had lived through the picturesqueness and stateliness of the old slave
+régime was almost gone, and over their hearts swept a common impulse to
+commemorate, in the sunset of their own lives, its fading splendor and
+its vanished deeds.
+
+On this particular afternoon the Captain settled himself to work, but
+his reminiscences did not get on. He pinched a bit of floss from the nib
+of his pen and tried to swing into the period of which he was writing.
+He read over a few pages of his copy as mental priming, but his thoughts
+remained flat and dull. Indeed, his whole life, as he reviewed it in the
+waning afternoon, appeared empty and futile. It seemed hardly worth
+while to go on.
+
+The Captain had come to that point in his memoirs where the Republican
+representative from Knox County had set going the petard which had
+wrecked his political career.
+
+From the very beginnings of his labors the old lawyer had looked forward
+to writing just this period of his life. He meant to clear up his name
+once for all. He meant to use invective, argument, testimony and a
+powerful emotional appeal, such as a country lawyer invariably attempts
+with a jury.
+
+But now that he had arrived at the actual composition of his defense, he
+sat biting his penholder, with all the arguments he meant to advance
+slipped from his mind. He could not recall the points of the proof. He
+could not recall them with Peter Siner moving restlessly about the room,
+glancing through the window, unsettled, nervous, on the verge of eloping
+with a negress.
+
+His secretary's tragedy smote the old man. The necessity of doing
+something for Peter put his thoughts to rout. A wild idea occurred to
+the Captain that if he should write the exact truth, perhaps his memoirs
+might serve Peter as a signal against a futile, empty journey.
+
+But the thought no sooner appeared than it was rejected. In the Anglo-
+Saxon, especially the Anglo-Saxon of the Southern United States, abides
+no such Gallic frankness as moved a Jean-Jacques. Southern memoirs
+always sound like the conversation between two maiden ladies,--nothing
+intimate, simply a few general remarks designed to show from what nice
+families they came.
+
+So the Captain wrote nothing. During all the afternoon he sat at his
+desk with a leaden heart, watching Peter move about the room. The old
+man maintained more or less the posture of writing, but his thoughts
+were occupied in pitying himself and pitying Peter. Half a dozen times
+he looked up, on the verge of making some plea, some remonstrance,
+against the madness of this brown man. But the sight of Peter sitting in
+the window-seat staring out into the street silenced him. He was a weak
+old man, and Peter's nerves were strung with the desire of youth.
+
+At last the two men heard old Rose clashing in the kitchen. A few
+minutes later the secretary excused himself from the library, to go to
+his own room. As Peter was about to pass through the door, the Captain
+was suddenly galvanized into action by the thought that this perhaps was
+the last time he would ever see him. He got up from his chair and called
+shakenly to Peter. The negro paused. The Captain moistened his lips and
+controlled his voice.
+
+"I want to have a word with you, Peter, about a--a little matter. I--
+I've mentioned it before."
+
+"Yes, sir." The negro's tone and attitude reminded the Captain that the
+supper gong would soon sound and they would best separate at once.
+
+"It--it's about Cissie Dildine," the old lawyer hurried on.
+
+Peter nodded slightly.
+
+"Yes, you mentioned that before."
+
+The old man lifted a thin hand as if to touch Peter's arm, but he did
+not. A sort of desperation seized him.
+
+"But listen, Peter, you don't want to do--what's in your mind!"
+
+"What is in my mind, Captain?"
+
+"I mean marry a negress. You don't want to marry a negress!"
+
+The brown man stared, utterly blank.
+
+"Not marry a negress!"
+
+"No, Peter; no," quavered the old man. "For yourself it may make no
+difference, but your children--think of your children, your son growing
+up under a brown veil! You can't tear it off. God himself can't tear it
+off! You can never reach him through it. Your children, your children's
+children, a terrible procession that stretches out and out, marching
+under a black shroud, unknowing, unknown! All you can see are their sad
+forms beneath the shroud, marching away--marching away. God knows where!
+And yet it's your own flesh and blood!"
+
+Suddenly the old lawyer's face broke into the hard, tearless contortions
+of the aged. His terrible emotion communicated itself to the sensitive
+brown man.
+
+"But, Captain, I myself am a negro. Whom should I marry?"
+
+"No one; no one! Let your seed wither in your loins! It's better to do
+that; it's better--" At that moment the clashing of the supper gong fell
+on the old man's naked nerves. He straightened up by some reflex
+mechanism, turned away from what he thought was his last interview with
+his secretary, and proceeded down the piazza into the great empty
+dining-room.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+With overwrought nerves Peter Siner entered his room. At five o'clock
+that afternoon he had seen Cissie Dildine go up the street to the
+Arkwright home to cook one of those occasional suppers. He had been
+watching for her return, and in the midst of it the Captain's
+extraordinary outburst had stirred him up.
+
+Once in his room, the negro placed the broken Hepplewhite in such a
+position that he could rake the street with a glance. Then he tried to
+compose himself and await the coming of his supper and the passage of
+Cissie. There was something almost pathetic in Peter's endless watching,
+all for a mere glimpse or two of the girl in yellow. He himself had no
+idea how his nerves and thoughts had woven themselves around the young
+woman. He had no idea what a passion this continual doling out of
+glimpses had begotten. He did not dream how much he was, as folk naĂ¯vely
+put it, in love with her.
+
+His love was strong enough to make him forget for a while the old
+lawyer's outbreak. However, as the dusk thickened in the shrubbery and
+under the trees, certain of the old gentleman's phrases revisited the
+mulatto's mind: "A terrible procession ... marching under a black
+shroud.... Your children, your children's children, a terrible
+procession,... marching away, God knows where.... And yet--it's your own
+flesh and blood!" They were terrific sentences, as if the old man had
+been trying to tear from his vision some sport of nature, some
+deformity. As the implications spread before Peter, he became more and
+more astonished at its content. Even to Captain Renfrew black men were
+dehumanized,--shrouded, untouchable creatures.
+
+It delivered to Peter a slow but a profound shock. He glanced about at
+the faded magnificence of the room with a queer feeling that he had been
+introduced into it under a sort of misrepresentation. He had taken up
+his abode with the Captain, at least on the basis of belonging to the
+human family, but this passionate outbreak, this puzzling explosion, cut
+that ground from under his feet.
+
+The more Peter thought about it, the stranger grew his sensation. Not
+even to be classed as a human being by this old gentleman who in a weak,
+helpless fashion had crept somewhat into Peter's affections,--not to be
+considered a man! The mulatto drew a long, troubled breath, and by the
+mere mechanics of his desire kept staring through the gloom for Cissie.
+
+Peter Siner had known all along that the unread whites of Hooker's Bend
+--and that included nearly every white person in the village--considered
+black men as simple animals; but he had supposed that the more thoughtful
+men, of whom Captain Renfrew was a type, at least admitted the Afro-
+American to the common brotherhood of humanity. But they did not.
+
+As Peter sat staring into the darkness the whole effect of the
+dehumanizing of the black folk of the South began to unfold itself
+before his imagination. It explained to him the tragedies of his race,
+their sufferings at the hand of mob violence; the casualness, even the
+levity with which black men were murdered: the chronic dishonesty with
+which negroes were treated: the constant enactment of adverse
+legislation against them; the cynical use of negro women. They were all
+vermin, animals; they were one with the sheep and the swine; a little
+nearer the human in form, perhaps, and, oddly enough, one that could be
+bred to a human being, as testified a multitude of brown and yellow and
+cream-colored folk, but all marching away, as the Captain had so
+passionately said, marching away, their forms hidden from human
+intercourse under a shroud of black, an endless procession marching
+away, God knew whither! And yet they were the South's own flesh and
+blood.
+
+The horror of such a complex swelled in Peter's mind to monstrous
+proportions. As night thickened at his window, the negro sat dazed and
+wondering at the mightiness of his vision. His thoughts went groping,
+trying to solve some obscure problem it posed. He thought of the
+Arkwright boy; he thought of the white men smiling as his mother's
+funeral went past the livery-stable; he thought of Captain Renfrew's
+manuscript that he was transcribing. Through all the old man's memoirs
+ran a certain lack of sincerity. Peter always felt amid his labors that
+the old Captain was making an attorney's plea rather than a candid
+exposition. At this point in his thoughts there gradually limned itself
+in the brown man's mind the answer to that enigma which he almost had
+unraveled on the day he first saw Cissie Dildine pass his window. With
+it came the answer to the puzzle contained in the old Captain's library.
+The library was not an ordinary compilation of the world's thought; it,
+too, was an attorney's special pleading against the equality of man. Any
+book or theory that upheld the equality of man was carefully excluded
+from the shelves. Darwin's great hypothesis, and every development
+springing from it, had been banned, because the moment that a theory was
+propounded of the great biologic relationship of all flesh, from worms
+to vertebrates, there instantly followed a corollary of the brotherhood
+of man.
+
+What Christ did for theology, Darwin did for biology,--he democratized
+it. The One descended to man's brotherhood from the Trinity; the other
+climbed up to it from the worms.
+
+The old Captain's library lacked sincerity. Southern orthodoxy, which
+persists in pouring its religious thought into the outworn molds of
+special creation, lacks sincerity. Scarcely a department of Southern
+life escapes this fundamental attitude of special pleader and
+disingenuousness. It explains the Southern fondness for legal
+subtleties. All attempts at Southern poetry, belles-lettres, painting,
+novels, bear the stamp of the special plea, of authors whose exposition
+is careful.
+
+Peter perceived what every one must perceive, that when letters turn
+into a sort of glorified prospectus of a country, all value as
+literature ceases. The very breath of art and interpretation is an eager
+and sincere searching of the heart. This sincerity the South lacks. Her
+single talent will always be forensic, because she is a lawyer with a
+cause to defend. And such is the curse that arises from lynchings and
+venery and extortions and dehumanizings,--sterility; a dumbness of soul.
+
+Peter Siner's thoughts lifted him with the tremendous buoyancy of
+inspiration. He swung out of his chair and began tramping his dark room.
+The skin of his scalp tickled as if a ghost had risen before him. The
+nerves in his thighs and back vibrated. He felt light, and tingled with
+energy.
+
+Unaware of what he was doing, he set about lighting the gasolene-lamp.
+He worked with nervous quickness, as if he were in a great hurry.
+Presently a brilliant light flooded the room. It turned the gray
+illumination of the windows to blackness.
+
+Joy enveloped Peter. His own future developed under his eyes with the
+same swift clairvoyance that marked his vision of the ills of his
+country. He saw himself remedying those ills. He would go about showing
+white men and black men the simple truth, the spiritual necessity for
+justice and fairness. It was not a question of social equality; it was a
+question of clearing a road for the development of Southern life. He
+would show white men that to weaken, to debase, to dehumanize the negro,
+inflicted a more terrible wound on the South than would any strength the
+black man might develop. He would show black men that to hate the
+whites, constantly to suspect, constantly to pilfer from them, only
+riveted heavier shackles on their limbs.
+
+It was all so clear and so simple! The white South must humanize the
+black not for the sake of the negro, but for the sake of itself. No one
+could resist logic so fundamental.
+
+Peter's heart sang with the solemn joy of a man who had found his work.
+All through his youth he had felt blind yearnings and gropings for he
+knew not what. It had driven him with endless travail out of Niggertown,
+through school and college, and back to Niggertown,--this untiring Hound
+of Heaven. But at last he had reached his work. He, Peter Siner, a
+mulatto, with the blood of both white and black in his veins, would come
+as an evangel of liberty to both white and black. The brown man's eyes
+grew moist from Joy. His body seemed possessed of tremendous energy.
+
+As he paced his room there came into the glory of Peter's thoughts the
+memory of the Arkwright boy as he sat in the cedar glade brooding on the
+fallen needles Peter recalled the hobbledehoy's disjointed words as he
+wrestled with the moral and physical problems of adolescence. Peter
+recalled his impulse to sit down by young Sam Arkwright, and, as best he
+might, give him some clue to the critical and feverish period through
+which he was passing.
+
+He had not done so, but Peter remembered the instance down to the very
+desperation in the face of the brooding youngster. And it seemed to
+Peter that this rejected impulse had been a sign that he was destined to
+be an evangel to the whites as well as to the blacks.
+
+The joy of Peter's mission bore him aloft on vast wings. His room seemed
+to fall away from him, and he was moving about his country, releasing
+the two races from their bonds of suspicion and cruelty.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+Slowly the old manor formed about Peter again, and he perceived that a
+tapping on the door had summoned him back. He walked to the door with
+his heart full of kindness for old Rose. She was bringing him his
+supper. He felt as if he could take the old woman in his arms, and out
+of the mere hugeness of his love sweeten her bitter life. The mulatto
+opened the door as eagerly as if he were admitting some long-desired
+friend; but when the shutter swung back, the old crone and her salver
+were not there. All he could discern in the darkness were the white
+pillars marking the night into panels. There was no light in the outer
+kitchen. The whole manor was silent.
+
+As he stood listening, the knocking was repeated, this time more
+faintly. He fixed the sound at the window. He closed the door, walked
+across the brilliant room, and opened the shutters.
+
+For several moments he saw nothing more than the tall quadrangle of
+blackness which the window framed; then a star or two pierced it; then
+something moved. He saw a woman's figure standing close to the casement,
+and out of the darkness Cissie Dildine's voice asked in its careful
+English:
+
+"Peter, may I come in?"
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+For a full thirty seconds Peter Siner stared at the girl at the window
+before, even with her prompting, he thought of the amenity of asking her
+to come inside. As a further delayed courtesy, he drew the Heppelwhite
+chair toward her.
+
+Cissie's face looked bloodless in the blanched light of the gasolene-
+lamp. She forced a faint, doubtful smile.
+
+"You don't seem very glad to see me, Peter."
+
+"I am," he assured her, mechanically, but he really felt nothing but
+astonishment and dismay. They filled his voice. He was afraid some one
+would see Cissie in his room. His thoughts went flitting about the
+premises, calculating the positions of the various trees and shrubs in
+relation to the windows, trying to determine whether, and just where, in
+his brilliantly lighted chamber the girl could be seen from the street.
+
+The octoroon made no further comment on his confusion. Her eyes wandered
+from him over the stately furniture and up to the stuccoed ceiling.
+
+"They told me you lived in a wonderful room," she remarked absently.
+
+"Yes, it's very nice," agreed Peter in the same tone, wondering what
+might be the object of her hazardous visit. A flicker of suspicion
+suggested that she was trying to compromise him out of revenge for his
+renouncement of her, but the next instant he rejected this.
+
+The girl accepted the chair Peter offered and continued to look about.
+
+"I hope you don't mind my staring, Peter," she said.
+
+"I stared when I first came here to stay," assisted Peter, who was
+getting a little more like himself, even if a little uneasier at the
+consequences of this visit.
+
+"Is that a highboy?" She nodded nervously at the piece of furniture.
+"I've seen pictures of them."
+
+"Uh huh. Revolutionary, I believe. The night wind is a little raw." He
+moved across the room and closed the jalousies, and thus cut off the
+night wind and also the west view from the street. He glanced at the
+heavy curtains parted over his front windows, with a keen desire to
+swing them together. Some fragment of his mind continued the surface
+conversation with Cissie.
+
+"Is it post-Revolutionary or pre-Revolutionary?" she asked with a
+preoccupied air.
+
+"Post, I believe. No, pre. I always meant to examine closely."
+
+"To have such things would almost teach one history," Cissie said.
+
+"Yeah; very nice." Peter had decided that the girl was in direct line
+with the left front window and an opening between the trees to the
+street.
+
+The girl's eyes followed his.
+
+"Are those curtains velour, Peter?"
+
+"I--I believe so," agreed the man, unhappily.
+
+"I--I wonder how they look spread."
+
+Peter seized on this flimsy excuse with a wave of relief and
+thankfulness to Cissie. He had to restrain himself as he strode across
+the room and swung together the two halves of the somber curtains in
+order to preserve an appearance of an exhibit. His fingers were so
+nervous that he bungled a moment at the heavy cords, but finally the two
+draperies swung together, loosing a little cloud of dust. He drew
+together a small aperture where the hangings stood apart, and then
+turned away in sincere relief.
+
+Cissie's own interest in historic furniture and textiles came to an
+abrupt conclusion. She gave a deep sigh and settled back into her chair.
+She sat looking at Peter seriously, almost distressfully, as he came
+toward her.
+
+With the closing of the curtains and the establishment of a real privacy
+Peter became aware once again of the sweetness and charm Cissie always
+held for him. He still wondered what had brought her, but he was no
+longer uneasy.
+
+"Perhaps I'd better build a fire," he suggested, quite willing now to
+make her visit seem not unusual.
+
+"Oh, no,"--she spoke with polite haste,--"I'm just going to stay a
+minute. I don't know what you'll think of me." She looked intently at
+him.
+
+"I think it lovely of you to come." He was disgusted with the triteness
+of this remark, but he could think of nothing else.
+
+"I don't know," demurred the octoroon, with her faint doubtful smile.
+"Persons don't welcome beggars very cordially."
+
+"If all beggars were so charming--" Apparently he couldn't escape
+banalities.
+
+But Cissie interrupted whatever speech he meant to make, with a return
+of her almost painful seriousness.
+
+"I really came to ask you to help me, Peter."
+
+"Then your need has brought me a pleasure, at least." Some impulse kept
+the secretary making those foolish complimentary speeches which keep a
+conversation empty and insincere.
+
+"Oh, Peter, I didn't come here for you to talk like that! Will you do
+what I want?"
+
+"What do you want, Cissie?" he asked, sobered by her voice and manner.
+
+"I want you to help me, Peter."
+
+"All right, I will." He spaced his words with his speculations about the
+nature of her request. "What do you want me to do?"
+
+"I want you to help me go away."
+
+Peter looked at her in surprise. He hardly knew what he had been
+expecting, but it was not this.
+
+Some repressed emotion crept into the girl's voice.
+
+"Peter, I--I can't stay here in Hooker's Bend any longer. I want to go
+away. I--I've got to go away."
+
+Peter stood regarding her curiously and at the same time
+sympathetically.
+
+"Where do you want to go, Cissie?"
+
+The girl drew a long breath; her bosom lifted and dropped abruptly.
+
+"I don't know; that was one of the things I wanted to ask you about."
+
+"You don't know where you want to go?" He smiled faintly. "How do you
+know you want to go at all?"
+
+"Oh, Peter, all I know is I must leave Hooker's Bend!" She gave a little
+shiver. "I'm tired of it, sick of it--sick." She exhaled a breath, as if
+she were indeed physically ill. Her face suggested it; her eyes were
+shadowed. "Some Northern city, I suppose," she added.
+
+"And you want me to help you?" inquired Peter, puzzled.
+
+She nodded silently, with a woman's instinct to make a man guess the
+favor she is seeking.
+
+Then it occurred to Peter just what sort of assistance the girl did
+want. It gave him a faint shock that a girl could come to a man to beg
+or to borrow money. It was a white man's shock, a notion he had picked
+up in Boston, because it happens frequently among village negroes, and
+among them it holds as little significance as children begging one
+another for bites of apples.
+
+Peter thought over his bank balance, then started toward a chest of
+drawers where he kept his checkbook.
+
+"Cissie, if I can he of any service to you in a substantial way, I'll be
+more than glad to--"
+
+She put out a hand and stopped him; then talked on in justification of
+her determination to go away.
+
+"I just can't endure it any longer, Peter." She shuddered again. "I
+can't stand Niggertown, or this side of town--any of it. They--they have
+no _feeling_ for a colored girl, Peter, not--not a speck!" She rave
+a gasp, and after a moment plunged on into her wrongs: "When--when one
+of us even walks past on the street, they--they whistle and say a-all
+kinds of things out loud, j-just as if w-we weren't there at all. Th-
+they don't c-care; we're just n-nigger w-women." Cissie suddenly began
+sobbing with a faint catching noise, her full bosom shaken by the
+spasms; her tears slowly welling over. She drew out a handkerchief with
+a part of its lace edge gone, and wiped her eyes and cheeks, holding the
+bit of cambric in a ball in her palm, like a negress, instead of in her
+fingers, like a white woman, as she had been taught. Then she drew a
+deep breath, swallowed, and became more composed.
+
+Peter stood looking in helpless anger at this representative of all
+women of his race.
+
+"Cissie, that's street-corner scum--the dirty sewage--"
+
+"They make you feel naked," went on Cissie in the monotone that succeeds
+a fit of weeping, "and ashamed--and afraid." She blinked her eyes to
+press out the undue moisture, and looked at Peter as if asking what else
+she could do about it than to go away from the village.
+
+"Will it be any better away from here?" suggested Peter, doubtfully.
+
+Cissie shook her head.
+
+"I--I suppose not, if--if I go alone."
+
+"I shouldn't think so," agreed Peter, somberly. He started to hearten
+her by saying white women also underwent such trials, if that would be a
+consolation; but he knew very well that a white woman's hardships were
+as nothing compared to those of a colored woman who was endowed with any
+grace whatever.
+
+"And besides, Cissie," went on Peter, who somehow found himself arguing
+against the notion of her going, "I hardly see how a decent colored
+woman gets around at all. Colored boarding-houses are wretched places. I
+ate and slept in one or two, coming home. Rotten." The possibility of
+Cissie finding herself in such a place moved Peter.
+
+The girl nodded submissively to his judgment, and said in a queer voice:
+"That's why I--I didn't want to travel alone, Peter."
+
+"No, it's a bad idea--" and then Peter perceived that a queer quality
+was creeping into the tĂªte-Ă -tĂªte.
+
+She returned his look unsteadily, but with a curious persistence.
+
+[Illustration: "You-you mean you want m-me--to go with you, Cissie?" he
+stammered]
+
+"I--I d-don't want to travel a-alone, Peter," she gasped.
+
+Her look, her voice suddenly brought home to the an the amazing
+connotation of her words. He stared at her, felt his face grow warm with
+a sharp, peculiar embarrassment. He hardly knew what to say or do before
+her intent and piteous eyes.
+
+"You--you mean you want m-me--to go with you, Cissie?" he stammered.
+
+The girl suddenly began trembling, now that her last reserve of
+indirection had been torn away.
+
+"Listen, Peter," she began breathlessly. "I'm not the sort of woman you
+think. If I hadn't accused myself, we'd be married now. I--I wanted you
+more than anything in the world, Peter, but I did tell you. Surely,
+surely, Peter, that shows I am a good woman--th-the real I. Dear, dear
+Peter, there is a difference between a woman and her acts. Peter, you're
+the first man in all my life, in a-all my life who ever came to me k-
+kindly and gently; so I had to l-love you and t-tell you, Peter."
+
+The girl's wavering voice broke down completely; her face twisted with
+grief. She groped for her chair, sat down, buried her face in her arms
+on the table, and broke into a chattering outbreak of sobs that sounded
+like some sort of laughter.
+
+Her shoulders shook; the light gleamed on her soft, black Caucasian
+hair. There was a little rent in one of the seams in her cheap jacket,
+at one of the curves where her side molded into her shoulder. The
+customer made garment had found Cissie's body of richer mold than it had
+been designed to shield. And yet in Peter's distress and tenderness and
+embarrassment, this little rent held his attention and somehow misprized
+the wearer.
+
+It seemed symbolic in the searching white light. He could see the very
+break in the thread and the widened stitches at the ends of the rip. Her
+coat had given way because she was modeled more nearly like the Venus de
+Milo than the run of womankind. He felt the little irony of the thing,
+and yet was quite unable to resist the comparison.
+
+And then, too, she had referred again to her sin of peculation. A woman
+enjoys confessions from a man. A man's sins are mostly vague, indefinite
+things to a woman, a shadowy background which brings out the man in a
+beautiful attitude of repentance; but when a woman confesses, the man
+sees all her past as a close-up with full lighting. He has an intimate
+acquaintance with just what she's talking about, and the woman herself
+grows shadowy and unreal. Men have too many blots not to demand
+whiteness in women. By striking some such average, nature keeps the race
+a going moral concern.
+
+So Peter, as he stood looking down on the woman who was asking him to
+marry her, was filled with as unhappy and as impersonal a tenderness as
+a born brother. He recalled the thoughts which had come to him when he
+saw Cissie passing his window. She was not the sort of woman he wanted
+to marry; she was not his ideal. He cast about in his head for some
+gentle way of putting her off, so that he would not hurt her any
+further, if such an easement were possible.
+
+As he stood thinking, he found not a pretext, but a reality. He stooped
+over, and put a hand lightly on each of her arms.
+
+"Cissie," he said in a serious, even voice, "if I should ever marry any
+one, it would be you."
+
+The girl paused in her sobbing at his even, passionless voice.
+
+"Then you--you won't?" she whispered in her arms.
+
+"I can't, Cissie." Now that he was saying it, he uttered the words very
+evenly and smoothly. "I can't, dear Cissie, because a great work has
+just come into my life." He paused, expecting her to ask some question,
+but she lay silent, with her face in her arms, evidently listening.
+
+"Cissie, I think, in fact I know, I can demonstrate to all the South,
+both white and black, the need of a better and more sincere
+understanding between our two races."
+
+Peter did not feel the absurdity of such a speech in such a place. He
+patted her arm, but there was something in the warmth of her flesh that
+disturbed his austerity and caused him to lift his hand to the more
+impersonal axis of her shoulder. He proceeded to develop his idea.
+
+"Cissie, just a moment ago you were complaining of the insults you meet
+everywhere. I believe if I can spread my ideas, Cissie, that even a
+pretty colored girl like you may walk the streets without being
+subjected to obscenity on every corner." His tone unconsciously
+patronized Cissie's prettiness with the patronage of the male for the
+less significant thing, as though her ripeness for love and passion and
+children were, after all, not comparable with what he, a male, could do
+in the way of significantly molding life.
+
+Cissie lifted her head and dried her eyes.
+
+"So you aren't going to marry me, Peter?" Woman-like, now that she was
+well into the subject, she was far less embarrassed than Peter. She had
+had her cry.
+
+"Why--er--considering this work, Cissie--"
+
+"Aren't you going to marry anybody, Peter?"
+
+The artist in Peter, the thing the girl loved in him, caught again that
+Messianic vision of himself.
+
+"Why, no, Cissie," he said, with a return of his inspiration of an hour
+ago; "I'll be going here and there all over the South preaching this
+gospel of kindliness and tolerance, of forgiveness of the faults of
+others." Cissie looked at him with a queer expression. "I'll show the
+white people that they should treat the negro with consideration not for
+the sake of the negro, but for the sake of themselves. It's so simple,
+Cissie, it's so logical and clear--"
+
+The girl shook her head sadly.
+
+"And you don't want me to go with you, Peter?"
+
+"Why, n-no, Cissie; a girl like you couldn't go. Perhaps I'll be
+misunderstood in places, perhaps I may have to leave a town hurriedly,
+or be swung over the walls, like Paul, in a basket." He attempted to
+treat it lightly.
+
+But the girl looked at him with a horror dawning in her melancholy face.
+
+"Peter, do you really mean that?" she whispered.
+
+"Why, truly. You don't imagine--"
+
+The octoroon opened her dark eyes until she might have been some weird.
+
+"Oh, Peter, please, please put such a mad idea away from you! Peter,
+you've been living here alone in this old house until you don't see
+things clearly. Dear Peter, don't you _know?_ You can't go out and
+talk like that to white folks and--and not have some terrible thing
+happen to you! Oh, Peter, if you would only marry me, it would cure you
+of such wildness!" Involuntarily she got up, holding out her arms to
+him, offering herself to his needs, with her frightened eyes fixed on
+his.
+
+It made him exquisitely uncomfortable again. He made a little sound
+designed to comfort and reassure her. He would do very well. He was
+something of a diplomat in his way. He had got along with the boys in
+Harvard very well indeed. In fact, he was rather a man of the world. No
+need to worry about him, though it was awfully sweet of her.
+
+Cissie picked up her handkerchief with its torn edge, which she had laid
+on the table. Evidently she was about to go.
+
+"I surely don't know what will become of me," she said, looking at it.
+
+In a reversal of feeling Peter did not want her to go away quite then.
+He cast about for some excuse to detain her a moment longer.
+
+"Now, Cissie," he began, "if you are really going to leave Hooker's
+Bend--"
+
+"I'm not going," she said, with a long exhalation. "I--" she swallowed--
+"I just thought that up to--ask you to--to--You see," she explained, a
+little breathless, "I thought you still loved me and had forgiven me by
+the way you watched for me every day at the window."
+
+This speech touched Peter more keenly than any of the little drama the
+girl had invented. It hit him so shrewdly he could think of nothing more
+to say.
+
+Cissie moved toward the window and undid the latch.
+
+"Good night, Peter." She paused a moment, with her hand on the catch.
+"Peter," she said, "I'd almost rather see you marry some other girl than
+try so terrible a thing."
+
+The big, full-blooded athlete smiled faintly.
+
+"You seem perfectly sure marriage would cure me of my mission."
+
+Cissie's face reddened faintly.
+
+"I think so," she said briefly. "Good night," and she disappeared in the
+dark space she had opened, and closed the jalousies softly after her.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER XV
+
+
+Cissie Dildine's conviction that marriage would cure Peter of his
+mission persisted in the mulatto's mind long after the glamour of the
+girl had faded and his room had regained the bleak emptiness of a
+bachelor's bedchamber.
+
+Cissie had been so brief and positive in her statement that Peter, who
+had not thought on the point at all, grew more than half convinced she
+was right.
+
+Now that he pondered over it, it seemed there was a difference between
+the outlook of a bachelor and that of a married man. The former
+considered humanity as a balloonist surveys a throng,--immediately and
+without perspective,--but the latter always sees mankind through the
+frame of his family. A single man tends naturally to philosophy and
+reform; a married man to administration and statesmanship. There have
+been no great unmarried statesmen; there have been no great married
+philosophers or reformers.
+
+Now that Cissie had pointed out this universal rule, Peter saw it very
+clearly. And Peter suspected that beneath this rough classification, and
+conditioning it, lay a plexus of obscure mental and physical reactions
+set up by the relations between husband and wife. It might very well be
+there was a difference between the actual cerebral and nervous structure
+of a married man and that of a single man.
+
+At any rate, after these reflections, Peter now felt sure that marriage
+would cure him of his mission; but how had Cissie known it? How had she
+struck out so involved a theory, one might say, in the toss of a head?
+The more Peter thought it over the more extraordinary it became. It was
+another one of those explosive ideas which Cissie, apparently, had the
+faculty of creating out of a pure mental vacuum.
+
+All this philosophy aside, Cissie's appearance just in the nick of his
+inspiration, her surprising proposal of marriage, and his refusal, had
+accomplished one thing: it had committed Peter to the program he had
+outlined to the girl.
+
+Indeed, there seemed something fatalistic in such a concatenation of
+events. Siner wondered whether or not he would have obeyed his vision
+without this added impulse from Cissie. He did not know; but now, since
+it had all come about just as it had, he suspected he would have been
+neglectful. He felt as if a dangerous but splendid channel had been
+opened before his eyes, and almost at the same instant a hand had
+reached down and directed his life into it. This fancy moved the
+mulatto. As he got himself ready for bed, he kept thinking:
+
+"Well, my life is settled at last. There is nothing else for me to do.
+Even if this should end terribly for me, as Cissie imagines, my life
+won't be wasted."
+
+Next morning Peter Siner was awakened by old Rose Hobbett thrusting her
+head in at his door, staring around, and finally, seeing Peter in bed,
+grumbling:
+
+"Why is you still heah, black man?"
+
+The secretary opened his eyes in astonishment.
+
+"Why shouldn't I be here?"
+
+"Nobody wuz 'speckin' you to be heah." The crone withdrew her head and
+vanished.
+
+Peter wondered at this unaccustomed interest of Rose, then hurried out
+of bed, supposing himself late for breakfast.
+
+A dense fog had come up from the river, and the moisture floating into
+his open windows had dampened his whole room. Peter stepped briskly to
+the screen and began splashing himself. It was only in the midst of his
+ablutions that he remembered his inspiration and resolve of the previous
+evening. As he squeezed the water over his powerfully molded body, he
+recalled it almost impersonally. It might have happened to some third
+person. He did not even recall distinctly the threads of the logic which
+had lifted him to such a Pisgah, and showed him the whole South as a new
+and promised land. However, he knew that he could start his train of
+thought again, and again ascend the mountain.
+
+Floating through the fog into his open window came the noises of the
+village as it set about living another day, precisely as it had lived
+innumerable days in the past. The blast of the six-o'clock whistle from
+the planing-mill made the loose sashes of his windows rattle. Came a
+lowing of cows and a clucking of hens, a woman's calling. The voices of
+men in conversation came so distinctly through the pall that it seemed a
+number of persons must be moving about their morning work, talking and
+shouting, right in the Renfrew yard.
+
+But the thing that impressed Peter most was the solidity and stability
+of this Southern village that he could hear moving around him, and its
+certainty to go on in the future precisely as it had gone on in the
+past. It was a tremendous force. The very old manor about him seemed
+huge and intrenched in long traditions, while he, Peter Siner, was just
+a brown man, naked behind a screen and rather cold from the fog and damp
+of the morning.
+
+He listened to old Rose clashing the kitchen utensils. As he drew on his
+damp underwear, he wondered what he could say to old Rose that would
+persuade her into a little kindliness and tolerance for the white
+people. As he listened he felt hopeless; he could never explain to the
+old creature that her own happiness depended upon the charity she
+extended to others. She could never understand it. She would live and
+die precisely the same bitter old beldam that she was, and nothing could
+ever assuage her.
+
+While Peter was thinking of the old creature, she came shuffling along
+the back piazza with his breakfast. She let herself in by lifting one
+knee to a horizontal, balancing the tray on it, then opening the door
+with her freed hand.
+
+When the shutter swung open, it displayed the crone standing on one
+foot, wearing a man's grimy sock, which had fallen down over a broken,
+run-down shoe.
+
+In Peter's mood the thought of this wretched old woman putting on such
+garments morning after morning was unspeakably pathetic. He thought of
+his own mother, who had lived and died only a shade or two removed from
+the old crone's condition.
+
+Rose put down her foot, and entered the room with her lips poked out,
+ready to make instant attack if Peter mentioned his lack of supper the
+night before.
+
+"Aunt Rose," asked the secretary, with his friendly intent in his tones,
+"how came you to look in this morning and say you didn't expect to find
+me in my room?"
+
+She gave an unintelligible grunt, pushed the lamp to one side, and eased
+her tray to the table.
+
+Peter finished touching his tie before one of those old-fashioned
+mirrors, not of cut-glass, yet perfectly true. He came from the mirror
+and moved his chair, out of force of habit, so he could look up the
+street toward the Arkwrights'.
+
+"Aunt Rose," said the young man, wistfully, "why are you always angry?"
+
+She bridled at this extraordinary inquiry.
+
+"Me?"
+
+"Yes, you."
+
+She hesitated a moment, thinking how she could make her reply a personal
+assault on Peter.
+
+"'Cause you come heah, 'sputin' my rights, da' 's' why."
+
+"No," demurred Peter, "you were quarreling in the kitchen the first
+morning I came here, and you didn't know I was on the place."
+
+"Well--I got my tribulations," she snapped, staring suspiciously at
+these unusual questions.
+
+There was a pause; then Peter said placatingly:
+
+"I was just thinking, Aunt Rose, you might forget your tribulations if
+you didn't ride them all the time."
+
+"Hoccum! What you mean, ridin' my tribulations?"
+
+"Thinking about them. The old Captain, for instance; you are no happier
+always abusing the old Captain."
+
+The old virago gave a sniff, tossed her head, but kept her eyes rolled
+suspiciously on Peter.
+
+"Very often the way we think and act makes us happy or unhappy,"
+moralized Peter, broadly.
+
+"Look heah, nigger, you ain't no preacher sont out by de Lawd to me!"
+
+"Anyway, I am sure you would feel more friendly toward the Captain if
+you acted openly with him; for instance, if you didn't take off all his
+cold victuals, and handkerchiefs and socks, soap, kitchenware--"
+
+The cook snorted.
+
+"I'd feel dat much mo' nekked an' hongry, dat's how I'd feel."
+
+"Perhaps, if you'd start over, he might give you a better wage."
+
+"Huh!" she snorted in an access of irony. "I see dat skinflint gib'n' me
+a better wage. Puuh!" The suddenly she realized where the conversation
+had wandered, and stared at the secretary with widening eyes "Good Lawd!
+Did dat fool Cap'n set up a nigger in dis bedroom winder jes to ketch
+ole Rose packin' off a few ole lef'-overs?" Peter began a hurried
+denial, but she rushed on: "'Fo' Gawd, I hopes his viddles chokes him! I
+hope his ole smoke-house falls down on his ole haid. I hope to Jesus--"
+
+Peter pleaded with her not to think the Captain was behind his
+observations, but the hag rushed out of the bedroom, swinging her head
+from side to side, uttering the most terrible maledictions. She would
+show him! She wouldn't put another foot in his old kitchen. Wild horses
+couldn't drag her into his smoke-house again.
+
+Peter ran to the door and called after her down the piazza, trying to
+exonerate the Captain: but she either did not or would not hear, and
+vanished into the kitchen, still furious.
+
+Old Rose made Peter so uneasy that he deserted his breakfast midway and
+hurried to the library. In the solemn old room he found the Captain
+alone and in rather a pleased mood. The old gentleman stood patting and
+alining a pile of manuscript. As the mulatto entered he exclaimed:
+
+"Well, here's Peter again!" as if his secretary had been off on a long
+journey. Immediately afterward he added, "Peter, guess what I did last
+night." His voice was full of triumph.
+
+Peter was thinking about Aunt Rose, and stood looking at the Captain
+without the slightest idea.
+
+"I wrote all of this,"--he indicated his manuscript,--"over a hundred
+pages."
+
+Peter considered the work without much enthusiasm.
+
+"You must have worked all night."
+
+The old attorney rubbed his hands.
+
+"I think I may claim a touch of inspiration last night, Peter.
+Reminiscences rippled from under my pen, propitious words, prosperous
+sentences. Er--the fact is, Peter, you will see, when you begin copying,
+I had come to a matter--a--a matter of some moment in my life. Every
+life contains such moments, Peter. I had meant to write something in the
+nature of a defen--an explanation, Peter. But after you left the library
+last night it suddenly occurred to me just to give each fact as it took
+place, quite frankly. So I did that--not--not what I meant to write, at
+all--ah. As you copy it, you may find it not entirely without some
+interest to yourself, Peter."
+
+"To me?" repeated Peter, after the fashion of the unattentative.
+
+"Yes, to yourself." The Captain was oddly moved. He took his hands off
+the script, walked a little away from the table, came back to it. "It--
+ah--may explain a good many things that--er--may have puzzled you." He
+cleared his throat and shifted his subject briskly. "We ought to be
+thinking about a publisher. What publisher shall we have publish these
+reminiscences? Make some stir in Tennessee's political circles,
+Peter; tremendous sales; clear up questions everybody is interested in.
+H-m--well, I'll walk down town and you"--he motioned to the script--
+"begin copying--"
+
+"By the way, Captain," said Peter as the old gentleman turned for the
+door, "has Rose said anything to you yet?"
+
+The old man detached his mind from his script with an obvious effort.
+
+"What about?"
+
+"About leaving your service."
+
+"No-o, not especially; she's always leaving my service."
+
+"But in this case it was my fault; at least I brought it about. I
+remonstrated with her about taking your left-over victuals and socks and
+handkerchiefs and things. She was quite offended."
+
+"Yes, it always offends her," agreed the old man, impatiently. "I never
+mention it myself unless I catch her red-handed; then I storm a little
+to keep her in bounds."
+
+Naturally, Peter knew of this extraordinary system of service in the
+South; nevertheless he was shocked at its implications.
+
+"Captain," suggested Peter, "wouldn't you find it to your own interest
+to give old Rose a full cash payment for her services and allow her to
+buy her own things?"
+
+The Captain dismissed the subject with a wave of his hand. "She's a
+nigger, Peter; you can't hire a nigger not to steal. Born in 'em. Then
+I'm not sure but what it would be compounding a felony, hiring a person
+not to steal; might be so construed. Well, now, there's the script. Read
+it carefully, my boy, and remember that in order to gain a certain
+_status quo_ certain antecedents are--are absolutely necessary,
+Peter. Without them my--my life would have been quite empty, Peter.
+It's--it's very strange--amazing. You will understand as you read. I'll
+be back to dinner, so good-by." In the strangest agitation the old
+Captain walked out of the library. The last glimpse Peter had of him was
+his meager old figure silhouetted against the cold gray fog that filled
+the compound.
+
+Neither the Captain's agitation nor his obvious desire that Peter should
+at once read the new manuscript really got past the threshold of the
+mulatto's consciousness. Peter's thoughts still hovered about old Rose,
+and from that point spread to the whole system of colored service in the
+South. For Rose's case was typical. The wage of cooks in small Southern
+villages is a pittance--and what they can steal. The tragedy of the
+mothers of a whole race working for their board and thievings came over
+Peter with a rising grimness. And there was no public sentiment against
+such practice. It was accepted everywhere as natural and inevitable. The
+negresses were never prosecuted; no effort was made to regain the stolen
+goods. The employers realized that what they paid would not keep soul
+and body together; that it was steal or perish.
+
+It was a fantastic truth that for any colored girl to hire into domestic
+service in Hooker's Bend was more or less entering an apprenticeship in
+peculation. What she could steal was the major portion of her wage, if
+two such anomalous terms may be used in conjunction.
+
+Yet, strange to say, the negro women of the village were quite honest in
+other matters. They paid their small debts. They took their mistresses'
+pocket-books to market and brought back the correct change. And if a
+mistress grew too indignant about something they had stolen, they would
+bring it back and say: "Here is a new one. I'd rather buy you a new one
+than have you think I would take anything."
+
+The whole system was the lees of slavery, and was surely the most
+demoralizing, the most grotesque method of hiring service in the whole
+civilized world. It was so absurd that its mere relation lapses into
+humor, that bane of black folk.
+
+Such painful thoughts filled the gloomy library and harassed Peter in
+his copying. He took his work to the window and tried to concentrate
+upon it, but his mind kept playing away.
+
+Indeed, it seemed to Peter that to sit in this old room and rewrite the
+wordy meanderings of the old gentleman's book was the very height of
+emptiness. How utterly futile, when all around him, on every hand, girls
+like Cissie Dildine were being indentured to corruption! And, as far as
+Peter knew, he was the only person in the South who saw it or felt it or
+cared anything at all about it.
+
+When Cissie Dildine came to the surface of Peter's mind she remained
+there, whirling around and around in his chaotic thoughts. He began
+talking to her image, after a certain dramatic trick of his mind, and
+she began offering her environment as an excuse for what had come
+between them and estranged them. She stole, but she had been trained to
+steal. She was a thief, the victim of an immense immorality. The charm
+of Cissie, her queer, swift-working intuition, the candor of her
+confession, her voluptuousness--all came rushing down on Peter,
+harassing him with anger and love and desire. To copy any more script
+became impossible. He lost his place; he hardly knew what he was
+writing.
+
+He flung aside the whole work, got to his feet with the imperative need
+of an athlete for the open. He started out of the room, but as an
+afterthought scribbled a nervous line, telling the Captain he might not
+be back for dinner. Then he found his hat and coat and walked briskly
+around the piazza to the front gate.
+
+The trees and shrubs were dripping, but the fog had almost cleared away,
+leaving only a haze in the air. A pale, level line of it cut across the
+scarp of the Big Hill. The sun shone with a peculiar soft light through
+the vapors.
+
+As Peter passed out at the gate, the fancy came to him that he might
+very well be starting on his mission. It came with a sort of surprise.
+He wondered how other men had set about reforms. With unpremeditation?
+He wondered to whom Jesus of Nazareth preached his first sermon. The
+thought of that young Galilean, sensitive, compassionate, inexperienced,
+speaking to his first hearer, filled Peter with a strange trembling
+tenderness. He looked about the familiar street of Hooker's Bend, the
+old trees over the pavement, the shabby village houses, and it all held
+a strangeness when thus juxtaposed to the thought of Nazareth nineteen
+hundred years before.
+
+The mulatto started down the street with his footsteps quickened by a
+sense of spiritual adventure.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+On the corner, against the blank south wall of Hobbett's store, Peter
+Siner saw the usual crowd of negroes warming themselves in the soft
+sunshine. They were slapping one another, scuffling, making feints with
+knives or stones, all to an accompaniment of bragging, profanity, and
+loud laughter. Their behavior was precisely that of adolescent white
+boys of fifteen or sixteen years of age.
+
+Jim Pink Staggs was furnishing much amusement with an impromptu sleight-
+of-hand exhibition. The black audience clustered around Jim Pink in his
+pinstripe trousers and blue-serge coat. They exhibited not the least
+curiosity as to the mechanics of the tricks, but asked for more and
+still more, with the naĂ¯ve delight of children in the mysterious.
+
+Peter Siner walked down the street with his Messianic impulse strong
+upon him. He was in that stage of feeling toward his people where a
+man's emotions take the color of religion. Now, as he approached the
+crowd of negroes, he wondered what he could say, how he could transfer
+to them the ideas and the emotion that lifted up his own heart.
+
+As he drew nearer, his concern mounted to anxiety. Indeed, what could he
+say? How could he present so grave a message? He was right among them
+now. One of the negroes jostled him by striking around his body at
+another negro. Peter stopped. His heart beat, and he had a queer
+sensation of being operated by some power outside himself. Next moment
+he heard himself saying in fairly normal tones:
+
+"Fellows, do you think we ought to be idling on the street corners like
+this? We ought to be at work, don't you think?"
+
+The horse-play stopped at this amazing sentiment.
+
+"Whuffo, Peter?" asked a voice.
+
+"Because the whole object of our race nowadays is to gain the respect of
+other races, and more particularly our own self-respect. We haven't it
+now. The only way to get it is to work, work, work."
+
+"Ef you feel lak you'd ought to go to wuck," suggested one astonished
+hearer, "you done got my p'mission, black boy, to hit yo' natchel gait
+to de fust job in sight."
+
+Peter was hardly less surprised than his hearers at what he was saying.
+He paid no attention to the interruption.
+
+"Fellows, it's the only way our colored people can get on and make the
+most out of life. Persistent labor is the very breath of the soul, men;
+it--it is." Here Peter caught an intimation of the whole flow of energy
+through the universe, focusing in man and being transformed into mental
+and moral values. And it suddenly occurred to him that the real worth of
+any people was their efficiency in giving this flow of force moral and
+spiritual forms. That is the end of man; that is what is prefigured when
+a baby's hand reaches for the sun. But Peter considered his audience,
+and his thought stammered on his tongue. The Persimmon, with his
+protruding, half-asleep eyes, was saying:
+
+"I don' know, Peter, as I 's so partic'lar 'bout makin' de mos' out'n
+dis worl'. You know de Bible say--hit say,"--here the Persimmon's voice
+dropped a tone lower, in unconscious imitation of negro preachers,--"la-
+ay not up yo' treasure on uth, wha moss do corrup', an' thieves break
+th'ugh _an'_ steal."
+
+Came a general nodding and agreement of soft, blurry voices.
+
+"'At sho whut it say, black man!"
+
+"Sho do!"
+
+"Lawd God loves a nigger on a street corner same as He do a millionaire
+in a six-cylinder, Peter."
+
+"Sho do, black man; but He's jes about de onlies' thing on uth 'at do."
+
+"Well, I don' know," came a troubled rejoinder. "Thaiuh 's de debbil,
+ketchin' mo' niggers nowadays dan he do white men, I 'fo' Gawd
+b'liebes."
+
+"Well, dat's because dey _is_ so many mo' niggers dan dey is white
+folks," put in a philosopher.
+
+"Whut you say 'bout dat, Brudder Peter?" inquired the Persimmon,
+seriously. None of this discussion was either derision or burlesque.
+None of the crowd had the slightest feeling that these questions were
+not just as practical and important as the suggestion that they all go
+to work.
+
+When Peter realized how their ignorant and undisciplined thoughts flowed
+off into absurdities, and that they were entirely unaware of it, it
+brought a great depression to his heart. He held up a hand with an
+earnestness that caught their vagrant attention.
+
+"Listen!" he pleaded. "Can't you see how much there is for us black
+folks to do, and what little we have done?"
+
+"Sho is a lot to do; we admits dat," said Bluegum Frakes. "But whut's de
+use doin' hit ef we kin manage to shy roun' some o' dat wuck an' keep on
+libin' anyhow, specially wid wages so high?"
+
+The question stopped Peter. Neither his own thoughts, nor any book that
+he had ever read nor any lecture that he had heard ever attempted to
+explain the enormous creative urge which is felt by every noble mind,
+and which, indeed, is shared to some extent by every human creature. Put
+to it like that, Siner concocted a sort of allegory, telling of a negro
+who was shiftless in the summer and suffered want in the winter, and
+applied it to the present high wage and to the low wage that was coming;
+but in his heart Peter knew such utilitarianism was not the true reason
+at all. Men do not weave tapestries to warm themselves, or build temples
+to keep the rain away.
+
+The brown man passed on around the corner, out of the faint warmth of
+the sunshine and away from the empty and endless arguments which his
+coming had provoked among the negroes.
+
+The futile ending of his first adventure surprised Peter. He walked
+uncertainly up the business street of the village, hardly knowing where
+to turn next.
+
+Cold weather had driven the merchants indoors, and the thoroughfare was
+quite deserted except for a few hogs rooting among the refuse heaps
+piled in front of the stores. It was not a pleasant sight, and it
+repelled Peter all the more because he was accustomed to the antiseptic
+look of a Northern city. He walked up to the third door from the corner,
+when a buzz of voices brought him to a standstill and finally persuaded
+him inside.
+
+At the back end of a badly lighted store a circle of white men and boys
+had formed around an old-fashioned, egg-shaped stove. Near by, on some
+meal-bags, sat two negroes, one of whom wore a broad grin, the other, a
+funny, sheepish look.
+
+The white men were teasing the latter negro about having gone to jail
+for selling a mortgaged cow. The men went about their fun-making
+leisurely, knowing quite well the negro could not get angry or make any
+retort or leave the store, all of these methods of self-defense being
+ruled out by custom.
+
+"You must have forgot your cow was mortgaged, Bob."
+
+"No-o-o, suh; I--I--I didn't fuhgit," drawling his vowels to a
+prodigious length.
+
+"Didn't you know you'd get into trouble?"
+
+"No-o-o, suh."
+
+"Know it now, don't you?"
+
+"Ya-a-s, suh."
+
+"Have a good time in jail, Bob?"
+
+"Ya-a-s, suh. Shot cra-a-aps nearly all de time tull de jailer broke hit
+up."
+
+"Wouldn't he let you shoot any more?"
+
+"No-o-o, suh; not after he won all our money." Here Bob flung up his
+head, poked out his lips like a bugle, and broke into a grotesque, "Hoo!
+hoo! hoo!" It was such an absurd laugh, and Bob's tale had come to such
+an absurd denouement, that the white men roared, and shuffled their feet
+on the flared base of the stove. Some spat in or near a box filled with
+sawdust, and betrayed other nervous signs of satisfaction. When a man so
+spat, he stopped laughing abruptly, straightened his face, and stared
+emptily at the rusty stove until further inquisition developed some
+other preposterous escapade in Bob's jail career.
+
+The merchant, looking up at one of these intermissions, saw Peter
+standing at his counter. He came out of the circle and asked Peter what
+he wanted. The mulatto bought a package of soda and went out.
+
+The chill north wind smelled clean after the odors of the store. Peter
+stood with his package of soda, breathing deeply, looking up and down
+the street, wondering what to do next. Without much precision of
+purpose, he walked diagonally across the street, northward toward a
+large faded sign that read, "Killibrew's Grocery." A little later Peter
+entered a big, rather clean store which smelled of spices, coffee, and a
+faint dash of decayed potatoes. Mr. Killibrew himself, a big, rotund
+man, with a round head of prematurely white hair, was visible in a
+little glass office at the end of his store. Even through the glazed
+partition Peter could see Mr. Killibrew smiling as he sat comfortably at
+his desk. Indeed, the grocer's chief assets were a really expansive
+friendliness and a pleasant, easily provoked laughter.
+
+He was fifty-two years old, and had been in the grocery business since
+he was fifteen. He had never been to school at all, but had learned
+bookkeeping, business mathematics, salesmanship, and the wisdom of the
+market-place from his store, from other merchants, and from the drummers
+who came every week with their samples and their worldly wisdom. These
+drummers were, almost to a man, very sincere friends of Mr. Killibrew,
+and not infrequently they would write the grocer from the city, or send
+him telegrams, advising him to buy this or to unload that, according to
+the exigencies of the market. As a result of this was very well off
+indeed, and all because he was a friendly, agreeable sort of man.
+
+The grocer heard Peter enter and started to come out of his office, when
+Peter stopped him and asked if he might speak with him alone.
+
+The white-haired man with the pink, good-natured face stood looking at
+Peter with rather a questioning but pleasant expression.
+
+"Why, certainly, certainly." He turned back to the swivel-chair at his
+desk, seated himself, and twisted about on Peter as he entered. Mr.
+Killibrew did not offer Peter a seat,--that would have been an
+infraction of Hooker's Bend custom,--but he sat leaning back, evidently
+making up his mind to refuse Peter credit, which he fancied the mulatto
+would ask for and yet do it pleasantly.
+
+"I was wondering, Mr. Killibrew," began Peter feeling his way along, "I
+was wondering if you would mind talking over a little matter with me.
+It's considered a delicate subject, I believe, but I thought a frank
+talk would help."
+
+During the natural pauses of Peter's explanation Mr. Killibrew kept up a
+genial series of nods and ejaculations.
+
+"Certainly, Peter. I don't see why, Peter. I'm sure it will help,
+Peter."
+
+"I'd like to talk frankly about the relations of our two races in the
+South, in Hooker's Bend."
+
+The grocer stopped his running accompaniment of affirmations and looked
+steadfastly at Peter. Presently he seemed to solve some question and
+broke into a pleasant laugh.
+
+"Now, Peter, if this is some political shenanigan, I must tell you I'm a
+Democrat. Besides that, I don't care a straw about politics. I vote, and
+that's all."
+
+Peter put down the suspicion that he was on a political errand.
+
+"Not that at all, Mr. Killibrew. It's a question of the white race and
+the black race. The particular feature I am working on is the wages paid
+to cooks."
+
+"I didn't know you were a cook," interjected the grocer in surprise.
+
+"I am not."
+
+Mr. Killibrew looked at Peter, thought intensely for a few moments, and
+came to an unescapable conclusion.
+
+"You don't mean you've formed a cook's union here in Hooker's Bend,
+Peter!" he cried, immensely amazed.
+
+"Not at all. It's this," clarified Peter. "It may seem trivial, but it
+illustrates the principle I'm trying to get at. Doesn't your cook carry
+away cold food?"
+
+It required perhaps four seconds for the merchant to stop his
+speculations on what Peter had come for and adjust his mind to the
+question.
+
+"Why, yes, I suppose so," he agreed, very much at sea. "I--I never
+caught up with her." He laughed a pleasant, puzzled laugh. "Of course
+she doesn't come around and show me what she's making off with. Why?"
+
+"Well, it's this. Wouldn't you prefer to give your cook a certain cash
+payment instead of having her taking uncertain amounts of your
+foodstuffs and wearing apparel?"
+
+The merchant leaned forward in his chair.
+
+"Did old Becky Davis send you to me with any such proposition as that,
+Peter?"
+
+"No, not at all. But, Mr. Killibrew, wouldn't you like better and more
+trustworthy servants as cooks, as farm-hands, chauffeurs, stable-boys?
+You see, you and your children and your children's children are going to
+have to depend on negro labor, as far as we can see, to the end of
+time."
+
+"We-e-ell, yes," admitted Mr. Killibrew, who was not accustomed to
+considering the end of time.
+
+"Wouldn't it be better to have honest, self-respecting help than
+dishonest help?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Then let's think about cooks. How can one hope to rear an honest, self-
+respecting citizenry as long as the mothers of the race are compelled to
+resort to thievery to patch out an insufficient wage?"
+
+"Why, I don't suppose niggers ever will be honest," admitted the grocer,
+very frankly. "You naturally don't trust a nigger. If you credit one for
+a dime, the next time he has any money he'll go trade somewhere else."
+The grocer broke into his contagious laugh. "Do you know how I've built
+up my business here, Peter? By never trusting a nigger." Mr. Killibrew
+continued his pleased chuckle. "Yes, I get the whole cash trade of the
+niggers in Hooker's Bend by never cheating one and never trusting one."
+
+The grocer leaned back in his squeaking chair and looked out through the
+glass partition, over the brightly colored packages that lined his
+shelves from floor to ceiling. All that prosperity had come about
+through a policy of honesty and distrust. It was something to be proud
+of.
+
+"Now, let me see," he proceeded, recurring pleasantly to what he
+recalled of Peter's original proposition: "Aunt Becky sent you here to
+tell me if I'd raise her pay, she'd stop stealin' and--and raise some
+honest children." Mr. Killibrew threw back his head broke into loud,
+jelly-like laughter. "Why, don't you know, Peter, she's an old liar. If
+I gave her a hundred a week, she'd steal. And children! Why, the old
+humbug! She's too old; she's had her crop. And, besides all that, I
+don't mind what the old woman takes. It isn't much. She's a good old
+darky, faithful as a dog." He arose from his swivel-chair briskly and
+floated Peter out before him. "Tell her, if she wants a raise," he
+concluded heartily, "and can't pinch enough out of my kitchen and the
+two dollars I pay her--tell her to come to me, straight out, and I'll
+give her more, and she can pinch more."
+
+Mr. Killibrew moved down the aisle of his store between fragrant barrels
+and boxes, laughing mellowly at old Aunt Becky's ruse, as he saw it. As
+he turned Peter out, he invited him to come again when he needed
+anything in the grocery line.
+
+And he was so pleasant, hearty, and sincere in his friendliness toward
+both Peter and old Aunt Becky that Peter, even amid the complete side-
+tracking and derailing of his mission, decided that it ever he did have
+occasion to purchase any groceries, he would do his trading at this
+market ruled by an absolute honesty with, and a complete distrust in,
+his race.
+
+At the conclusion of the Killibrew interview Peter instinctively felt
+that he had just about touched the norm of Hooker's Bend. The village
+might contain men who would dive a little deeper into the race question
+with Peter; assuredly, there would be hundreds who would not dive so
+deep. Mr. Killibrew's attitude on the race question turned on how to
+hold the negro patronage of the village to his grocery. It was not an
+abstract question at all, but a concrete fact, which he had worked out
+to his own satisfaction. With Mr. Killibrew, with all Hooker's Bend,
+there was no negro question.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+When Peter Siner started on his indefinite errand among the village
+stores he believed it would require much tact and diplomacy to discuss
+the race question without offense. To his surprise, no precaution was
+necessary. Everybody agreed at once that the South would be benefited by
+a more trustworthy labor, that if the negroes were trustworthy they
+could be paid more; but nobody agreed that if negroes were paid more
+they would become more trustworthy. The prevailing dictum was, A
+nigger's a nigger.
+
+As Peter came out into the shabby little street of Hooker's Bend
+discouragement settled upon him. He felt as if he had come squarely
+against some blank stone wall that no amount of talking could budge. The
+black man would have to change his psychology or remain where he was, a
+creature of poverty, hovels, and dirt; but amid such surroundings he
+could not change his psychology.
+
+The point of these unhappy conclusions somehow turned against Cissie
+Dildine. The mulatto became aware that his whole crusade had been
+undertaken in behalf of the octoroon. Everything the merchants said
+against negroes became accusations against Cissie in a sharp personal
+way. "A nigger is a nigger"; "A thief is a thief"; "She wouldn't quit
+stealing if I paid her a hundred a week." Every stroke had fallen
+squarely on Cissie's shoulders. A nigger, a thief; and she would never
+be otherwise.
+
+It was all so hopeless, so unchangeable, that Peter walked down the
+bleak street unutterably depressed There was nothing he could do. The
+situation was static. It seemed best that he should go away North and
+save his own skin. It was impossible to take Cissie with him. Perhaps in
+time he would come to forget her, and in so doing he would forget the
+pauperism and pettinesses of all the black folk of the South. Because
+through Cissie Peter saw the whole negro race. She was flexuous and
+passionate, kindly and loving, childish and naĂ¯vely wise; on occasion
+she could falsify and steal, and in the depth of her Peter sensed a
+profound capacity for fury and violence. For all her precise English,
+she was untamed, perhaps untamable.
+
+Cissie was a far cry from the sort of woman Peter imagined he wanted for
+a mate; yet he knew that if he stayed on in Hooker's Bend, seeing her,
+desiring her, with her luxury mocking the loneliness of the old Renfrew
+manor, presently he would marry her. Already he had had his little
+irrational moments when it seemed to him that Cissie herself was quite
+fine and worthy and that her speculations were something foreign and did
+not pertain to her at all.
+
+He would better go North. It would be safer up there. No doubt he could
+find another colored girl in the North. The thought of fondling any
+other woman filled Peter with a sudden, sharp repulsion. However, Peter
+was wise. He knew he would get over that in time.
+
+With this plan in mind, Peter set out down the street, intending to
+cross the Big Hill at the church, walk over to his mother's shack, and
+pack his few belongings preparatory to going away.
+
+It was not a heroic retreat. The conversation which he had had with his
+college friend Farquhar recurred to Peter. Farquhar had tried to
+persuade Peter to remain North and take a position in a system of
+garages out of Chicago.
+
+"You can do nothing in the South, Siner," assured Farquhar; "your
+countrymen must stand on their own feet, just as you are doing."
+
+Peter had argued the vast majority of the negroes had no chance, but
+Farquhar pressed the point that Peter himself disproved his own
+statement. At the time Peter felt there was an clench in the
+Illinoisan's logic, but he was not skilful enough to analyze it. Now the
+mulatto began to see that Farquhar was right. The negro question was a
+matter of individual initiative. Critics forgot that a race was composed
+of individual men.
+
+Peter had an uneasy sense that this was exceedingly thin logic, a mere
+smoke screen behind which he meant to retreat back up North. He walked
+on down the poor village street, turning it over and over in his mind,
+affirming it positively to himself, after the manner of uneasy
+consciences.
+
+An unusual stir among the negroes on Hobbett's corner caught Peter's
+attention and broke into his chain of thought. Half a dozen negroes
+stood on the corner, staring down toward the white church. A black boy
+suddenly started running across the street, and disappeared among the
+stores on the other side. Peter caught glimpses of him among the
+wretched alleyways and vacant lots that lie east of Main Street. The boy
+was still running toward Niggertown.
+
+By this time Peter was just opposite the watchers on the corner. He
+lifted his voice and asked them the matter, but at the moment they began
+an excited talking, and no one heard him.
+
+Jim Pink Staggs jerked off his fur cap, made a gesture, contorted his
+long, black face into a caricature of fright, and came loping across the
+street, looking back over his shoulder, mimicking a run for life His
+mummery set his audience howling.
+
+The buffoon would have collided with Peter, but the mulatto caught Jim
+Pink by the arm and shoulder, brought him to a halt, and at the same
+time helped him keep his feet.
+
+To Peter's inquiry what was the matter, the black fellow whirled and
+blared out loudly, for the sake of his audience:
+
+"'Fo' Gawd, nigger, I sho thought Mr. Bobbs had me!" and he writhed his
+face into an idiotic grimace.
+
+The audience reeled about in their mirth. Because with negroes, as with
+white persons, two thirds of humor is in the reputation, and Jim Pink
+was of prodigious repute.
+
+Peter walked along with him patiently, because he knew that until they
+were out of ear-shot of the crowd there was no way of getting a sensible
+answer out of Jim Pink.
+
+"Where are you going?" he asked presently.
+
+"Thought I'd step over to Niggertown." Jim Pink's humorous air was still
+upon him.
+
+"What's doing over there? What were the boys raising such a hullabaloo
+about?"
+
+"Such me."
+
+"Why did that boy go running across like that?"
+
+Jim Pink rolled his eyes on Peter with a peculiar look.
+
+"Reckon he mus' 'a' wanted to git on t'other side o' town."
+
+Peter flattered the Punchinello by smiling a little.
+
+"Come, Jim Pink, what do you know?" he asked. The magician poked out his
+huge lips.
+
+"Mr. Bobbs turn acrost by de church, over de Big Hill. Da' 's always a
+ba-ad sign."
+
+Peter's brief interest in the matter flickered out. Another arrest for
+some niggerish peccadillo. The history of Niggertown was one long series
+of petty offenses, petty raids, and petty punishments. Peter would be
+glad to get well away from such a place.
+
+"Think I'll go North, Jim Pink," remarked Peter, chiefly to keep up a
+friendly conversation with his companion.
+
+"Whut-chu goin' to do up thaiuh?"
+
+"Take a position in a system of garages."
+
+"A position is a job wid a white color on it," defined the minstrel.
+"Whut you goin' to do wid Cissie?"
+
+Peter looked around at the foolish face.
+
+"With Cissie?--Cissie Dildine?"
+
+"Uh huh."
+
+"Why, what makes you think I'm going to do anything with Cissie?"
+
+"M-m, visitin' roun'." The fool flung his face into a grimace, and
+dropped it as one might shake out a sack.
+
+Peter watched the contortion uneasily.
+
+"What do you mean--visiting around?"
+
+
+   "Diff'nt folks go visitin' roun';
+    Some goes up an' some goes down."
+
+
+Apparently Jim Pink had merely quoted a few words from a poem he knew.
+He stared at the green-black depth of the glade, which set in about
+half-way up the hill they were climbing.
+
+"Ef this weather don' ever break," he observed sagely, "we sho am in fuh
+a dry spell."
+
+Peter did not pursue the topic of the weather. He climbed the hill in
+silence, wondering just what the buffoon meant. He suspected he was
+hinting at Cissie's visit to his room. However, he did not dare ask any
+questions or press the point in any manner, lest he commit himself.
+
+The minstrel had succeeded in making Peter's walk very uncomfortable, as
+somehow he always did. Peter went on thinking about the matter. If Jim
+Pink knew of Cissie's visit, all Niggertown knew it. No woman's
+reputation, nobody's shame or misery or even life, would stand between
+Jim Pink and what he considered a joke. The buffoon was the crudest
+thing in this world--a man who thought himself a wit.
+
+Peter could imagine all the endless tweaks to Cissie's pride Niggertown
+would give the octoroon. She had asked Peter to marry her and had been
+refused. She had humbled herself for naught. That was the very tar of
+shame. Peter knew that in the moral categories of Niggertown Cissie
+would suffer more from such a rebuff than if she had lied or committed
+theft and adultery every day in the calendar. She had been refused
+marriage. All the folk-ways of Niggertown were utterly topsyturvy. It
+was a crazy-house filled with the most grotesque moral measures.
+
+It seemed to Peter as he entered the cedar-glade that he had lost all
+sympathy with this people from which he had sprung. He looked upon them
+as strange, incomprehensible beings, just as a man will forget his own
+childhood and look upon children as strange, incomprehensible little
+creatures. In the midst of his thoughts he heard himself saying to Jim
+Pink:
+
+"I suppose it is as dusty as ever."
+
+"Dustier 'an ever," assured Jim Pink.
+
+Apparently their conversation had recurred to the weather, after all.
+
+A chill silence encompassed the glade. The path the negroes followed
+wound this way and that among reddish boulders, between screens of
+intergrown cedars, and over a bronze mat of needles. Their steps were
+noiseless. The odor of the cedars and the temple-like stillness brought
+to Peter's mind the night of his mother's death. It seemed to him a long
+time since he had come running through the glade after a doctor, and
+yet, by a queer distortion of his sense of time, his mother's death and
+burial bulked in his past as if it had occurred yesterday.
+
+There was no sound in the glade to disturb Peter's thoughts except a
+murmur of human voices from some of the innumerable privacies of the
+place, and the occasional chirp of a waxwing busy over clusters of
+cedar-balls.
+
+It had been five weeks and a day since Caroline died. Five weeks and a
+day; his mother's death drifting away into the mystery and oblivion of
+the past. Likewise, twenty-five years of his own life completed and
+gone.
+
+A procession of sad, wistful thoughts trailed through Peter's brain: his
+mother, and Ida May, and now Cissie. It seemed to Peter that all any
+woman had ever brought him was wistfulness and sadness. His mother had
+been jealous, and instead of the great happiness he had expected, his
+home life with her had turned out a series of small perplexities and
+pains. Before that was Ida May, and now here was her younger sister.
+Peter wondered if any man ever reached the peace and happiness
+foreshadowed in his dream of a woman.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+A voice calling his name checked Peter's stride mechanically, and caused
+him to look about with the slight bewilderment of a man aroused from a
+reverie.
+
+At the first sound, however, Jim Pink became suddenly alert. He took
+three strides ahead of Peter, and as he went he whispered over his
+shoulder:
+
+"Beat it, nigger! beat it!"
+
+The mulatto recognized one of Jim Pink's endless stupid attempts at
+comedy. It would be precisely Jim Pink's idea of a jest to give Peter a
+little start. As the mulatto stood looking about among the cedars for
+the person who had called his name, it amazed him that Jim Pink could be
+so utterly insane; that he performed some buffoonery instantly, by
+reflex action as it were, upon the slightest provocation. It was almost
+a mania with Jim Pink; it verged on the pathological.
+
+The clown, however, was pressing his joke. He was pretending great fear,
+and was shouting out in his loose minstrel voice:
+
+"Hey, don' shoot down dis way, black man, tull I makes my exit!" And a
+voice, rich with contempt, called back:
+
+"You needn't be skeered, you fool rabbit of a nigger!"
+
+Peter turned with a qualm. Quite close to him, and in another direction
+from which he had been looking, stood Tump Pack. The ex-soldier looked
+the worse for wear after his jail sentence. His uniform was frayed, and
+over his face lay a grayish cast that marks negroes in bad condition. At
+his side, attached by a belt and an elaborate shoulder holster, hung a
+big army revolver, while on the greasy lapel of his coat was pinned his
+military medal for exceptional bravery on the field of battle.
+
+"Been lookin' fuh you fuh some time, Peter," he stated grimly.
+
+Peter considered the formidable figure with a queer sensation. He tried
+to take Tump's appearance casually; he tried to maintain an air of
+ordinariness.
+
+"Didn't know you were back."
+
+"Yeah, I's back."
+
+"Have you--been looking for me?"
+
+"Yeah."
+
+"Didn't you know where I was staying?"
+
+"Co'se I did; up 'mong de white folks. You know dey don' 'low no
+shootin' an' killin' 'mong de white folks." He drew his pistol from the
+holster with the address of an expert marksman.
+
+[Illustration: "Naw yuh don't," he warned sharply. "You turn roun' an'
+march on to niggertown"]
+
+Peter stood, with a quickening pulse, studying his assailant. The glade,
+the air, the sunshine, seemed suddenly drawn to a tension, likely to,
+break into violent commotion. His abrupt danger brought Peter to a
+feeling of lightness and power. A quiver went along his spine. His
+nostrils widened unconsciously as he calculated a leap and a blow at
+Tump's gun.
+
+The soldier took a step backward, at the same time bringing the barrel
+to a ready.
+
+"Naw you don't," he warned sharply. "You turn roun' an' march on to
+Niggertown."
+
+"What for?" Peter still tried to be casual, but his voice held new
+overtones.
+
+"Because, nigger, I means to drap you right on de Main Street o'
+Niggertown, 'fo' all dem niggers whut's been a-raggin' me 'bout you an'
+Cissie. I's gwine show dem fool niggers I don' take no fumi-diddles
+off'n nobody."
+
+"Tump," gasped Jim Pink, in a husky voice, "you oughtn't shoot Peter; he
+mammy jes daid."
+
+"'En she won' worry none. Turn roun', Peter, an' when I says, 'March,'
+you march." He leveled his pistol. "'Tention! Rat about face! March!"
+
+Peter turned and moved off down the noiseless path, walking with the
+stiff gait of a man who expects a terrific blow from behind at any
+instant.
+
+The mulatto walked twenty or more paces amid a confusion of self-
+protective impulses. He thought of whirling on Tump even at this late
+date. He thought of darting behind a cedar, but he knew the man behind
+him was an expert shot, and something fundamental in the brown man
+forbade his getting himself killed while running away. It was too
+undignified a death.
+
+Presently he surprised himself by calling over his shoulder, as a sort
+of complaint:
+
+"How came you with the pistol, Tump? Thought it was against the law to
+carry one."
+
+"You kin ca'y 'em ef you don' keep 'em hid," explained the ex-soldier in
+a wooden voice. "Mr. Bobbs tol' me dat when he guv my gun back."
+
+The irony of the thing caught Peter, for the authorities to arrest Tump
+not because he was trying to kill Peter, but because he went about his
+first attempt in an illegal manner. For the first time in his life the
+mulatto felt that contempt for a white man's technicalities that flavors
+every negro's thoughts. Here for thirty days his life had been saved by
+a technical law of the white man; at the end of the thirty days, by
+another technical law, Tump was set at liberty and allowed to carry a
+weapon, in a certain way, to murder him. It was grotesque; it was
+absurd. It filled Peter with a sudden violent questioning of the whole
+white régime. His thoughts danced along in peculiar excitement.
+
+At the turn of the hill the trio came in sight of the squalid semicircle
+of Niggertown. Here and there from a tumbledown chimney a feather of
+pale wood smoke lifted into the chill sunshine. The sight of the houses
+brought Peter a sharp realization that his life would end in the curving
+street beneath him. A shock at the incomprehensible brevity of his life
+rushed over him. Just to that street, just as far as the curve, and his
+legs were swinging along, carrying him forward at an even gait.
+
+All at once he began talking, arguing. He tried to speak at an ordinary
+tempo, but his words kept edging on faster and faster:
+
+"Tump, I'm not going to marry Cissie Dildine."
+
+"I knows you ain't, Peter."
+
+"I mean, if you let me alone, I didn't mean to."
+
+"I ain't goin' to let you alone."
+
+"Tump, we had already decided not to marry."
+
+After a short pause Tump said in a slightly different tone:
+
+"'Pears lak you don' haf to ma'y her--comin' to yo' room."
+
+A queer sinking came over the mulatto. "Listen, Tump, I--we--in my room
+--we simply talked, that's all. She came to tell me she was goin away.
+I--I didn't harm her, Tump." Peter swallowed. He despaired of being
+believed.
+
+But his defense only infuriated the soldier. He suddenly broke into
+violent profanity.
+
+"Hot damn you! shut yo black mouf! Whut I keer whut-chu done! You weaned
+her away fum me. She won't speak to me! She won't look at me!" A sudden
+insanity of rage seized Tump. He poured on his victim every oath and
+obscenity he had raked out of the whole army.
+
+Strangely enough, the gunman's outbreak brought a kind of relief to
+Peter Siner. It exonerated him. He was not suspected of wronging Cissie;
+or, rather, whether he had or had not wronged her made no difference to
+Tump. Peter's crime consisted in mere being, in existing where Cissie
+could see him and desire him rather than Tump. Why it calmed Peter to
+know that Tump held no dishonorable charge against him the mulatto
+himself could not have told. Tump's violence showed Peter the certainty
+of his own death, and somehow it washed away the hope and the thought of
+escape.
+
+Half-way down the hill they entered the edge of Niggertown. The smell of
+sties and stables came to them. Peter's thoughts moved here and there,
+like the eyes of a little child glancing about as it is forced to leave
+a pleasure-ground.
+
+Peter knew that Jim Pink, who now made a sorry figure in their rear,
+would one day give a buffoon's mimicry of this his walk to death. He
+thought of Tump, who would have to serve a year or two in the Nashville
+Penitentiary, for the murder of negroes is seldom severely punished. He
+thought of Cissie. He was being murdered because Cissie desired him.
+
+And then Peter remembered the single bit of wisdom that his whole life
+had taught him. It was this: no people can become civilized until the
+woman has the power of choice among the males that sue for her hand. The
+history of the white race shows the gradual increase of the woman's
+power of choice. Among the yellow races, where this power is curtailed,
+civilization is curtailed. It was this principle that exalted chivalry.
+Upon it the white man has reared all his social fabric.
+
+So deeply ingrained is it that almost every novel written by white men
+revolves about some woman's choice of her mate being thwarted by power
+or pride or wealth, but in every instance the rightness of the woman's
+choice is finally justified. The burden of every song is love, true
+love, enduring love, a woman's true and enduring love.
+
+And in his moment of clairvoyance Peter saw that these songs and stories
+were profoundly true. Against a woman's selectiveness no other social
+force may count.
+
+That was why his own race was weak and hopeless and helpless. The males
+of his people were devoid of any such sentiment or self-repression. They
+were men of the jungle, creatures of tusk and claw and loin. This very
+act of violence against his person condemned his whole race.
+
+These thoughts brought the mulatto an unspeakable sadness, not only for
+his own particular death, but that this idea, this great redeeming
+truth, which burned so brightly in his brain, would in another moment
+flicker out, unrevealed, and be no more.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+The coughing and rattling of an old motor-car as it rounded the
+Niggertown curve delayed Tump Pack's act of violence. Instinctively, the
+three men waited for the machine to pass before Peter walked out into
+the road. Next moment it appeared around the turn, moving slowly through
+the dust and spreading a veritable fog behind it.
+
+All three negroes recognized the first glimpse of the hood and top, for
+there are only three or four cars in Hooker's Bend, and these are as
+well known as the faces of their owners. This particular motor belonged
+to Constable Bobbs, and the next moment the trio saw the ponderous body
+of the officer at the wheel, and by his side a woman. As the machine
+clacked toward them Peter felt a certain surprise to see that it was
+Cissie Dildine.
+
+The constable in the car scrutinized the black men, by the roadside in a
+very peculiar way. As he came near, he leaned across Cissie and almost
+eclipsed the girl. He eyed the trio with his perpetual menace of a grin
+on his broad red face. His right hand, lying across Cissie's lap, held a
+revolver. When closest he shouted above the clangor of his engine:
+
+"Now, none o' that, boys! None o' that! You'll prob'ly hit the gal if
+you shoot, an' I'll pick you off lak three black skunks."
+
+He brandished his revolver at them, but the gesture was barely seen, and
+instantly concealed by the cloud; of dust following the motor. Next
+moment it enveloped the negroes and hid them even from one another.
+
+It was only after Peter was lost in the dust-cloud that the mulatto
+really divined what was meant by Cissie's strange appearance with the
+constable, her chalky face, her frightened brown eyes. The significance
+of the scene grew in his mind. He stood with eyes screwed to slits
+staring into the apricot-colored dust in the direction of the vanishing
+noise.
+
+Presently Tump Pack's form outlined itself in the yellow obscurity,
+groping toward Peter. He still held his pistol, but it swung at his
+side. He called Peter's name in the strained voice of a man struggling
+not to cough:
+
+"Peter--is Mr. Bobbs done--'rested Cissie?"
+
+Peter could hardly talk himself.
+
+"Don't know. Looks like it."
+
+The two negroes stared at each other through the dust.
+
+"Fuh Gawd's sake! Cissie 'rested!" Tump began to cough. Then he wheezed:
+
+"Mine an' yo' little deal's off, Peter. You gotta he'p git her out."
+Here he fell into a violent fit of coughing, and started groping his way
+to the edge of the dust-cloud.
+
+In the rush of the moment the swift change in Peter's situation appeared
+only natural. He followed Tump, so distressed by the dust and disturbed
+over Cissie that he hardly thought of his peculiar position. The dust
+pinched the upper part of his throat, stung his nose. Tears trickled
+from his eyes, and he pressed his finger against his upper lip, trying
+not to sneeze. He was still struggling against the sneeze when Tump
+recovered his speech.
+
+"Wh-whut you reckon she done, Peter? She don' shoot craps, nor boot-
+laig, nor--" He fell to coughing.
+
+Peter got out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes.
+
+"Let's go--to the Dildine house," he said.
+
+The two moved hurriedly through the thinning cloud, and presently came
+to breathable air, where they could see the houses around them.
+
+"I know she done somp'n; I know she done somp'n," chanted Tump, with the
+melancholy cadence of his race. He shook his dusty head. "You ain't
+never been in jail, is you, black man?"
+
+Peter said he had not.
+
+"Lawd! it ain't no place fuh a woman," declared Tump. "You dunno nothin'
+'bout it, black man. It sho ain't no place fuh a woman."
+
+A notion of an iron cage floated before Peter's mind. The two negroes
+trudged on through the crescent side by side, their steps raising a
+little trail of dust in the air behind them. Their faces and clothes
+were of a uniform dust color. Streaks of mud marked the runnels of their
+tears down their cheeks.
+
+The shrubbery and weeds that grew alongside the negro thoroughfare were
+quite dead. Even the little avenue of dwarf box was withered that led
+from the gate to the door of the Dildine home. The two colored men
+walked up the little path to the door, knocked, and waited on the steps
+for the little skirmish of observation from behind the blinds. None
+came. The worst had befallen the house; there was nothing to guard. The
+door opened as soon as an inmate could reach it, and Vannie Dildine
+stood before them.
+
+The quadroon's eyes were red, and her face had the moist, slightly
+swollen appearance that comes of protracted weeping. She looked so frail
+and miserable that Peter instinctively stepped inside and took her arm
+to assist her in the mere physical effort of standing.
+
+"What is the matter, Mrs. Dildine?" he asked in a shocked tone. "What's
+happened to Cissie?"
+
+Vannie began weeping again with a faint gasping and a racking of her
+flat chest.
+
+"It's--it's--O-o-oh, Peter!" She put an arm about him and began weeping
+against him. He soothed her, patted her shoulder, at the same time
+staring at the side of her head, wondering what could have dealt her
+this blow.
+
+Presently she steadied herself and began explaining in feeble little
+phrases, sandwiched between sobs and gasps:
+
+"She--tuk a brooch--Kep'--kep' layin' it roun' in--h-her way, th-that
+young Sam Arkwright did,--a-an' finally she--she tuk hit. N-nen, when he
+seen he h-had her, he said sh-sh-she 'd haf to d-do wh-whut he said, or
+he'd sen' her to-to ja-a-il!" Vannie sobbed drearily for a few moments
+on Peter's breast. "Sh-she did fuh a while: 'n 'en sh-she broke off wid
+h-him, anyhow, an'--an' he swo' out a wa'nt an sont her to jail!" The
+mother sobbed without comfort, and finally added: "Sh-she in a delicate
+fix now, an' 'at jail goin' to be a gloomy place fuh Cissie."
+
+The three negroes stood motionless in the dusty hallway, motionless save
+for the racking of Vannie's sobs.
+
+Tump Pack stirred himself.
+
+"Well, we gotta git her out." His words trailed off. He stood wrinkling
+his half-inch of brow. "I wonder would dey exchange pris'ners; wonder ef
+I could go up an' serve out Cissie's term."
+
+"Oh, Tump!" gasped the woman, "ef you only could!"
+
+"I'll step an' see, Miss Vannie. 'At sho ain't no place fuh a nice gal
+lak Cissie." Tump turned on his mission, evidently intending to walk to
+Jonesboro and offer himself in the place of the prisoner.
+
+Peter supported Vannie back into the poor living-room, and placed her in
+the old rocking-chair before the empty hearth. There was where he had
+sat the evening Cissie made her painful confession to him. Only now did
+he realize the whole of what Cissie was trying to confess.
+
+Peter Siner overtook Tump Pack a little way down the crescent, opposite
+the Berry cabin. The thoroughfare was deserted, because the weather was
+cold and the scantily clad children were indoors. However, from every
+cabin came sound of laughing and romping, and now and then a youngster
+darted through the cold from one hut to another.
+
+It seemed to Peter Siner only a little while since he and Ida May were
+skittering through wintry weather from one fire to another, with Cissie,
+a wailing, wet-nosed little spoil-sport, trailing after them. And then,
+with a wheeling of the years, they were scattered everywhere.
+
+As the negroes passed the Berry cabin, Nan Berry came out with an old
+shawl around her bristling spikes. She stopped the two men and drew them
+to her gate with a gesture.
+
+"Wha you gwine?"
+
+"Jonesbuh."
+
+"Whut you goin' do 'bout po-o-o' Cissie?"
+
+"Goin' to see ef the sheriff won' take me 'stid o' Cissie."
+
+"Tha's right," said Nan, nodding solemnly. "I hopes he will. You is mo'
+used to it, Tump."
+
+"Yeah, an' 'at jail sho ain't no place fuh a nice gal lak Cissie."
+
+"Sho ain't," agreed Nan.
+
+Peter interrupted to say he was sure the sheriff would not exchange.
+
+The hopes of his listeners fell.
+
+"Weh-ul," dragged out Nan, with a long face, "of co'se now it's lak dis:
+ef Cissie goin' to stay in dat ja-ul, she's goin' to need some mo'
+clo'es 'cep'n whut she's got on,--specially lak she is."
+
+Tump stared down the swing of the crescent.
+
+"'Fo' Gawd, dis sho don' seem lak hit's right to me," he said.
+
+Nan let herself out at the rickety gate. "You niggers wait heah tull I
+runs up to Miss Vannie's an' git some o' Cissie's clo'es fuh you to tote
+her."
+
+Tump objected.
+
+"Jail ain't no place fuh clean clo'es. She jes better serve out her term
+lak she is, an' wash up when she gits th'ugh."
+
+"You fool nigger!" snapped Nan. "She kain't serve out her term lak she
+is!"
+
+"Da' 's so," said Tump.
+
+The three stood silent, Nan and Tump lost in blankness, trying to think
+of something to do for Cissie. Finally Nan said:
+
+"I heah she done commit gran' larceny, an' they goin' sen' her to de
+pen."
+
+"Whut is gran' larceny?" asked Tump.
+
+"It's takin' mo' at one time an' de white folks 'speck you to take,"
+defined the woman. "Well, I'll go git her clo'es." She hurried off up
+the crescent.
+
+Peter and Tump waited in the Berry cabin for Nan's return. Outside, the
+Berry cabin was the usual clapboard-roofed, weather-stained structure;
+inside, it was dark, windowless, and strong with the odor of black folk.
+Some children were playing around the hearth, roasting chestnuts. Their
+elders sat in a circle of decrepit chairs. It was so dark that when
+Peter first entered he could not make out the little group, but he soon
+recognized their voices: Parson Ranson, Wince Washington, Jerry
+Dillihay, and all of the Berry family.
+
+They were talking of Cissie, of course. They hoped Cissie wouldn't
+really be sent to the penitentiary, that the white folks would let her
+out in time for her to have her child at home. Parson Ranson thought it
+would be bad luck for a child to be born in jail.
+
+Wince Washington, who had been in jail a number of times, suggested that
+they bail Cissie out by signing their names to a paper. He had been set
+free by this means once or twice.
+
+Sally, Nan's little sister, observed tartly that if Cissie hadn't acted
+so, she wouldn't have been in jail.
+
+"Don' speak lak dat uv dem as is in trouble, Sally," reproved old Parson
+Ranson, solemnly; "anybody can say 'Ef.'"
+
+"Sho am de troof," agreed Jerry Dillihay.
+
+"Sho am, black man." The conversation drifted into the endless
+moralizing of their race, but it held no criticism or condemnation of
+Cissie. From the tone of the negroes one would have thought some
+impersonal disaster had overtaken her. Every one was planning how to
+help Cissie, how to make her present state more endurable. They were the
+black folk, the unfortunate of the earth, and the pride of righteousness
+is only to the well placed and the untempted.
+
+Presently Nan came back with a bundle of Cissie's clothes. Tump took the
+bundle of dainty lingerie, the intimate garments of the woman he loved,
+and set forth on his quixotic errand. He tied it to his shoulder-holster
+and set out. Peter went a little of the way with him. It was almost dusk
+when they started. The chill of approaching night stung the men's faces.
+As they walked past the footpath that led over the Big Hill, three
+pistol-shots from the glade announced that the boot-leggers had opened
+business for the night.
+
+Tump paused and shivered. He said it was a cold night. He thought he
+would like to get a kick of "white mule" to put a little heart in him.
+It was a long walk to Jonesboro. He hesitated a moment, then turned off
+the road around the crescent for the path through the glade.
+
+A thought to dissuade Tump from drinking the fiery "singlings" of the
+moonshiners crossed Peters mind, but he put it aside. Tump was a habitué
+of the glade. All the physiological arguments upon which Peter could
+base an argument were far beyond the ex-soldier's comprehension. So Tump
+turned off through the dark trees. Peter watched him until all he could
+see was the white blur of Cissie's underwear swinging against his
+holster.
+
+After Tump's disappearance, Peter stood for several minutes thinking.
+His brief crusade into Niggertown had ended in a situation far outside
+of his volition. That morning he had started out with some vague idea of
+taking Niggertown in his hands and molding it in accordance with his
+white ideas; but Niggertown had taken Peter into its hands, had
+threatened his life, had administered to him profound mental and moral
+shocks, and now had dropped him, like some bit of waste, with his face
+set over the Big Hill for white town.
+
+As Peter stood there it seemed to him there was something symbolic in
+his attitude. He was no longer of the black world; he was of the white.
+He did not understand his people; they eluded him.
+
+He belonged to the white world; not to the village across the hill, but
+to the North. Nothing now prevented him from going North and taking the
+position with Farquhar. Cissie Dildine was impossible for him now.
+Niggertown was immovable, at least for him. He was no Washington to lead
+his people to a loftier plane. In fact, Peter began to suspect that he
+was no leader at all. He saw now that his initial success with the Sons
+and Daughters of Benevolence had been effected merely by the aura of his
+college training. After his first misstep he had never rehabilitated
+himself. He perhaps had a dash of the artistic in him, and the power to
+mold ideas often confuses itself subjectively with the power to mold
+human beings. In reality he did not even understand the people he
+assumed to mold. A suspicion came to him that under the given conditions
+their ways were more rational than his own.
+
+As for Cissie Dildine, his duty by the girl, his queer protective
+passion for her--all that was surely past now. After her lapse from all
+decency there was no reason why he should spend another thought on her.
+He would go North to Chicago.
+
+The last of the twilight was fading in swift, visible gradations of
+light. The cedars, the cabins, and the hill faded in pulse-beats of
+darkness. Above the Big Hill the last ember of day smoldered against a
+green-blue infinity. Here and there a star pricked the dome with a
+wintry brilliance.
+
+Then, somehow, the thought of Cissie looking out on that chilly sky
+through iron bars tightened Peter's throat. He caught himself up sharply
+for his emotion. He began a vague defense of the white man's laws on
+grounds as cold and impersonal as the winter evening. Laws, customs, and
+conventions were for the strengthening of men, to seed the select, to
+winnow the weak. It was white logic, applied firmly, as by a white man.
+But somehow the stars multiplied and kept Cissie's image before Peter--a
+cold, frightened girl, harassed with coming motherhood, peering at those
+chill, distant lights out of the blackness of a jail.
+
+The mulatto decided to spend the night in his mother's cabin. He would
+do his packing, and be ready for the down-river boat in the morning. He
+found his way to his own gate in the darkness. He lifted it around,
+entered, and walked to his door. When he tried to open it, he found some
+one had bored holes through the shutter and the jamb and had wired it
+shut.
+
+Peter struck a match to see just what had been done. The flame displayed
+a small sheet tacked on the door. He spent two matches investigating it.
+It was a notice of levy, posted by the constable in an action of debt
+brought against the estate of Caroline Siner by Henry Hooker. The owner
+of the estate and the public in general were warned against removing
+anything whatsoever from the premises under penalty exacted by the law
+governing such offenses. Then Peter untwisted the wire and entered.
+
+Peter searched about and found the tiny brass night-lamp which his
+mother always had used. The larger glass-bowled lamp was gone. The
+interior of the cabin was clammy from cold and foul from long lack of
+airing. In the corner his mother's old four-poster loomed in the
+shadows, but he could see some of its covers had been taken. He passed
+into the kitchen with a notion of building a fire and eating a bite, but
+everything edible had been abstracted. Even one of the lids of the old
+step-stove was gone. Most of the pans and kettles had disappeared, but
+the pretty old Dutch sugar-bowl remained on a bare paper-covered shelf.
+Negro-like, whatever person or persons who had ransacked Peter's home
+considered the sugar-bowl too fine to take. Or they may have thought
+that Peter would want this bowl for a keepsake, and with that queer
+compassion that permeates a negro's worst moments they allowed it to
+remain. And Peter knew if he raised an outcry about his losses, much of
+the property would be surreptitiously restored, or perhaps his neighbors
+would bring back his things and say they had found them. They would help
+him as best they could, just as they of the crescent would help Cissie
+as best they could, and would receive her back as one of them when she
+and her baby were finally released from jail.
+
+They were a queer people. They were a people who would never get on well
+and do well. They lacked the steel-like edge that the white man
+achieves. By virtue of his hardness, a white man makes his very laws and
+virtues instruments to crush and mulct his fellow-man; but negroes are
+so softened by untoward streaks of sympathy that they lose the very uses
+of their crimes.
+
+The depression of the whole day settled upon Peter with the deepening
+night. He held his poor light above his head and picked his way to his
+own room. After the magnificence of the Renfrew manor, it had contracted
+to a grimy little box lined with yellowed papers. His books were still
+intact, but Henry Hooker would get them as part payment on the Dillihay
+place, which Henry owned. On his little table still lay the pile of old
+examination papers, lists of incoherent questions which somebody
+somewhere imagined formed a test of human ability to meet and answer the
+mysterious searchings of life.
+
+Peter was familiar with the books; many of the questions he had learned
+by rote, but the night and the crescent, and the thought of a pregnant
+girl caged in the blackness of a jail filled his soul with a great
+melancholy query to which he could find no answer.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+Two voices talking, interrupting each other with ejaculations, after the
+fashion of negroes under excitement, aroused Peter Siner from his sleep.
+He caught the words: "He did! Tump did! The jailer did! 'Fo' God! black
+man, whut's Cissie doin'?"
+
+Overtones of shock, even of horror, in the two voices brought Peter wide
+awake the moment he opened his eyes. He sat up suddenly in his bed,
+remained perfectly still, listening with his mouth open. The voices,
+however, were passing. The words became indistinct, then relapsed into
+that bubbling monotone of human voices at a distance, and presently
+ceased.
+
+These fragmentary phrases, however, feathered with consternation, filled
+Peter with vague premonitions. He whirled his legs out of bed and began
+drawing on his clothes. When he was up and into the crescent, however,
+nobody was in sight. He stood breathing the chill, damp air, blinking
+his eyes. Lack of his cold bath made him feel chilly and lethargic. He
+wriggled his shoulders and considered going back, after all, and having
+his splash. Just then he saw the Persimmon coming around the crescent.
+Peter called to the roustabout and asked about Tump Pack.
+
+The Persimmon looked at Peter with his half-asleep, protruding eyeballs.
+
+"Don' you know 'bout Tump Pack already, Mister Siner?"
+
+"No." Peter was astonished at the formality of the "Mr. Siner."
+
+"Then is you 'spectin' somp'n 'bout him?"
+
+"Why, no, but I was asleep in there a moment ago, and somebody came
+along talking about Tump and Cissie. They--they aren't married, are
+they?"
+
+"Oh, no-o, no-o-o, no-o-o-o-o." The Persimmon waggled his bullet head
+slowly from side to side. "I heared Tump got into a lil trouble wid de
+jailer las' night."
+
+"Serious?"
+
+"I dunno." The Persimmon closed one of his protruding yellow eyes.
+"Owin' to whut you call se'ius; maybe whut I call se'ius wouldn't be
+se'ius to you at all; 'n 'en maybe whut you call se'ius would be ve'y
+insince'ius to Tump." The roustabout's philosophy, which consisted in a
+monotonous recasting of a given proposition, trickled on and on in the
+cold wind. After a while it fizzled out to nothing at all, and the
+Persimmon asked in a queer manner: "Did you give Tump some women's
+clo'es, Peter?"
+
+It was such an odd question that at first Peter was at loss; then he
+recalled Nan Berry's despatching Cissie some underwear. He explained
+this to the Persimmon, and tacked on a curious, "Why?"
+
+"Oh, nothin'; nothin' 'tall. Ever'body say you a mighty long-haided
+nigger. Jim Pink he tell us 'bout Tump Pack marchin' you 'roun' wid a
+gun. I sho don' want you ever git mad at me, Mister Siner. Man wid a gun
+an' you turn yo' long haid on him an' blow him away wid a wad o' women's
+clo'es. I sho don' want you ever cross yo' fingers at me, Mister Siner."
+
+Peter stared at the grotesque, bullet-headed roustabout. "Persimmon," he
+said uneasily, "what in the world are you talking about?"
+
+The Persimmon smiled a sickly, white-toothed smile. "Jim Pink say yo'
+aidjucation is a flivver. I say, 'Jim Pink, no nigger don' go off an'
+study fo' yeahs in college whut 'n he comes back an' kin throw some kin'
+uv a hoodoo over us fool niggers whut ain't got no brains. Now, Tump wid
+a gun, an' you wid jes ordina'y women's clo'es! 'Fo' Gawd, aidjucation
+is a great thing; sho is a great thing." The Persimmon gave Peter an
+apprehensive wink and moved on.
+
+There was no use trying to extract information from the Persimmon unless
+he was minded to give it. His talk would merely become vaguer and
+vaguer. Peter watched him go, then turned and attempted to throw the
+whole matter off his mind by assuming a certain brisk Northern mood. He
+must pack, get ready for the down-river gasolene launch. The doings of
+Tump Pack and Cissie Dildine were, after all, nothing to him.
+
+He started inside, when the levy notice on the door again met his eyes.
+He paused, read it over once more, and decided that he must go over the
+hill to the Planter's Bank and get Henry Hooker's permission to remove
+certain small personal belongings that he wanted to take with him.
+
+The mere clear-cut decision to go invigorated Peter.
+
+Some of the energy that always filled him during his college days in
+Boston seemed to come to him now from the mere thought of the North.
+Soon he would be in the midst of it, moving briskly, talking to wide-
+awake men to whom a slightly unusual English word would not form a
+stumbling-block to conversation. He set out down the crescent and across
+the Big Hill at a swinging stride. He was glad to get away.
+
+Beyond the white church on the other side of the hill he heard a motor
+coming in on the Jonesboro road. Presently he saw a battered car moving
+around the long swing of the pike, spewing a trail of dust down the
+wind. Its clacking became prodigious.
+
+The mulatto was just entering that indefinite stretch of thoroughfare
+where a country road becomes a village street when there came a wail of
+brakes behind him and he looked around.
+
+It was Dawson Bobbs's car. The fat man now slowed up not far from the
+mulatto and called to him.
+
+"Yes, sir," said Peter.
+
+Dawson bobbed his fat head backward and upward in a signal for Peter to
+approach. It held the casualness of one certain to be obeyed.
+
+Although Peter had done no crime, nor had even harbored a criminal
+intention, a trickle of apprehension went through him at Bobbs's nod. He
+recalled Jim Pink's saying that it was bad luck to see the constable. He
+walked up to the shuddering motor and stood about three feet from the
+running-board.
+
+The officer bit on a sliver of toothpick that he held in his thin lips.
+
+"Accident up Jonesboro las' night, Peter."
+
+"What was it, Mr. Bobbs?"
+
+"Tump Pack got killed."
+
+Peter continued looking fixedly at Mr. Bobbs's broad red face. The dusty
+road beneath him seemed to give a little dip. He repeated the
+information emptily, trying to orient himself to this sudden change in
+his whole mental horizon.
+
+The officer was looking at Peter fixedly with his chill slits of eyes.
+
+"Yeah; trying to make a jail delivery."
+
+The two men continued looking at each other, one from the road, the
+other from the motor. The flow of Peter's thoughts seemed to divide. The
+greater part was occupied with Tump Pack. Peter could vision the
+formidable ex-soldier lying dead in Jonesboro jail, with his little
+congressional medal on his breast. Some lighter portion of his mind
+nickered about here and there on trivial things. He observed a little
+hole rusted in the running-board of the motor. He noticed that the
+officer's eyes were just the same chill, washed blue as the winter sky
+above his head. He remembered a tale that, before electrocution became a
+law in Tennessee the county sheriff's nerve had failed him at a hanging,
+and the constable Dawson Bobbs had sprung the drop. There was something
+terrible about the fat man. He would do anything, absolutely anything,
+that came to his hands in the way of legal sewage.
+
+In the midst of these thoughts Peter heard himself saying.
+
+"He--was trying to get Cissie out?"
+
+"Yep."
+
+"He--must have been drunk."
+
+"Oh, yeah."
+
+Mr. Bobbs sat studying the mulatto. As he studied him he said slowly:
+
+"Some of 'em say he was disguised as a woman. Others say he had some
+women's clothes along, ready to put on. Now, me and the sheriff knowed
+Tump Pack purty well, Peter, and we knowed that nigger never in the
+worl' would 'a' thought up sich a plan by hisself."
+
+He sat looking at Peter so interrogatively that the mulatto began, in a
+strained, earnest voice, telling the constable precisely what had
+happened in regard to the clothes.
+
+Mr. Bobbs sat listening impassively, moving his toothpick up and down
+from one side to the other of his small, thin-lipped mouth. At last he
+nodded.
+
+"Well, I guess that's about the way of it. I didn't exactly understand
+the women's clothes business,--damn' fool disguise,--but we figgered it
+might pop into the head of a' edjucated nigger." He sucked his teeth,
+reflectively. "Peter," he said at last, "seems to me, if I was you, I'd
+drift on away from this town. The niggers around here ain't strong for
+you now; some say you're a hoodoo; some say this an' some that. The
+white folks don't exactly like you trying to get up a cook's union. It's
+your right to do that if you want to, of course, but this is a mighty
+small city to have unions and things. The fact is, it ain't a big enough
+place for a nigger of yore ability, Peter. I b'lieve, if I was you, I'd
+jes drift on some'eres else."
+
+The officer tipped up his toothpick so that it lifted his upper lip in a
+little v-shaped opening and exposed a strong, yellowish tooth. At the
+moment his machine started slowly forward. It gave him the appearance of
+accidentally rolling off while immersed in deep thought.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+The death of Tump Pack moved Peter with a sense of strange pathos. He
+always remembered Tump tramping away through the night to carry Cissie
+some underclothes and, if possible, to take her place in jail. At the
+foundation of Tump's being lay a faithfulness and devotion to Cissie
+that reached the heights of a dog's. And yet, he might have deserted
+her, he would probably have beaten her, and he most certainly would have
+betrayed her many, many times. It was inexplicable.
+
+
+Now that Tump was dead, the mantle of his fidelity somehow seemed to
+fall on Peter. For some reason Peter felt that he should assume Tump's
+place as Cissie Dildine's husband and protector. Had Tump lived, Peter
+might have gone North in peace, if not in happiness. Now such a journey,
+without Cissie, had become impossible. He had a feeling that it would
+not be right.
+
+As for the disgrace of marrying such a woman as Cissie Dildine, Peter
+slowly gave that idea up. The "worthinesses" and "disgraces" implicit in
+Harvard atmosphere, which Peter had spent four years of his life
+imbibing, slowly melted away in the air of Niggertown. What was
+honorable there, what was disgraceful there, somehow changed its color
+here.
+
+By virtue of this change Peter felt intuitively that Cissie Dildine was
+neither disgraced by her arrest nor soiled by her physical condition.
+Somehow she seemed just as "nice" a girl, just as "good" a girl, as ever
+she was before. Moreover, every other darky in Niggertown held these
+same instinctive beliefs. Had it not been for that, Peter would have
+thought it was his passion pleading for the girl, justifying itself by a
+grotesque morality, as passions often do. But this was not the correct
+solution. The sentiment was enigmatic. Peter puzzled over it time and
+time again as he waited in Hooker's Bend for the outcome of Cissie's
+trial.
+
+The octoroon's imprisonment came to an end on the third day after Tump's
+death. Sam Arkwright's parents had not known of their son's legal
+proceedings, and Mr. Arkwright immediately quashed the warrant, and
+hushed up the unfortunate matter as best he could. Young Sam was
+suddenly sent away from home to college, as the best step in the
+circumstances. And so the wishes of the adolescent in the cedar-glade
+came queerly to pass, even if Peter did withhold any grave, mature
+advice on the subject which he may have possessed.
+
+Naturally, there was much mirth among the men of Hooker's Bend and much
+virulence among the women over the peculiar conditions under which young
+Sam made his pilgrimage in pursuit of wisdom and morals and the right
+conduct of life. And life being problematic and uncertain as it is, and
+prone to wind about in the strangest way, no one may say with certitude
+that young Sam did not make a promising start.
+
+Certainly, over the affair the Knights of the Round Table launched many
+a quip and jest, but that simply proved the fineness of their sentiments
+toward a certain delicate human relation which forms mankind's single
+awful approach to the creative and the holy.
+
+Tump Pack became almost a mythical figure in Niggertown. Jim Pink Staggs
+composed a saga relating the soldier's exploits in France, his assault
+on the jail to liberate Cissie, and his death.
+
+In his songs--and Jim Pink had composed a good many--the minstrel
+instinctively avoided humor. He always improvised them to the sobbing of
+a guitar, and they were as invariably sad as the poetry of adolescents.
+It was called "Tump Pack's Lament." The negroes of Hooker's Bend learned
+it from Jim Pink, and with them it drifted up and down the three great
+American rivers, and now it is sung by the roustabouts, stevedores, and
+underlings of our strange black American world.
+
+This song commemorating Tump Pack's bravery and faithfulness to his love
+may very well take the place of the Congressional medal which,
+unfortunately, was lost on the night the soldier was killed. Between the
+two, there is little doubt that the accolade of fame bestowed in the
+buffoon's simple melody is more vital and enduring than that accorded by
+special act of the Congress of the United States of America.
+
+When Cissie Dildine returned from jail, she and her mother arranged the
+Dildine-Siner wedding as nearly according to white standards in similar
+circumstances as they could conceive. They agreed that it should be a
+simple, quiet home wedding. However, as every soul in Niggertown, a
+number of colored friends in Jonesboro, and a contingent from up-river
+villages meant to attend, it became necessary to hold the service in the
+church.
+
+The officiating minister was not Parson Ranson after all, but a Reverend
+Cleotus Haidus, the presiding elder of that circuit of the Afro-American
+Methodist Church, whose duties happened to call him to Hooker's Bend
+that day. So, notwithstanding Cissie's efforts at simplicity, the
+wedding, after all, was resolved into an affair.
+
+Once, in one of her moments of clairvoyance, Cissie said to Peter:
+
+"Our trouble is, Peter, we are trying to mix what I have learned in
+Nashville and what you have learned in Boston with what we both feel in
+Hooker's Bend. I--I'm almost ashamed to say it, but I don't really feel
+sad and plaintive at all, Peter. I feel glad, gloriously glad. Oh, my
+dear, dear Peter!" and she flung her arms around Peter's neck and held
+him with all her might against her ripening bosom.
+
+To Cissie her theft, her jail sentence, her pregnancy, were nothing more
+than if she had taken a sip of water. However, with the imitativeness of
+her race and the histrionic ability of her sex, she appeared pensive and
+subdued during the elaborate double-ring ceremony performed by the
+Reverend Cleotus Haidus. Nobody in the packed church knew how
+tremendously Cissie's heart was beating except Peter, who held her hand.
+
+The ethical engine that Peter had patiently builded in Harvard almost
+ceased to function in this weird morality of Niggertown. Whether he were
+doing right or doing wrong, Peter could not determine. He lost all his
+moorings. At times he felt himself walking according to the ethnological
+law, which is the Harvard way of saying walking according to the will of
+God; but at other times he felt party to some unpardonable obscenity. So
+deeply was he disturbed that out of the dregs of his mind floated up old
+bits of the Scriptures that he was unaware of possessing: "There is a
+way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of
+death." And Peter wondered if he were not in that way.
+
+[Illustration: The bridal couple embarked for Cairo]
+
+The bridal couple embarked for Cairo on the _Red Cloud_, a packet
+in the Dubuque, Ohio, and Tennessee River trade. Peter and Cissie were
+not allowed to walk up the main stairway into the passengers' cabin, but
+were required to pick their way along the boiler-deck, through the
+stench of freight, lumber, live stock and sleeping roustabouts. Then
+they went through the heat and steam of the engine-room up a small
+companionway that led through the toilet, on to the rear guard of the
+main deck, and thence back to a little cuddy behind the main saloon
+called the chambermaid's cabin.
+
+The chambermaid's cabin was filled with the perpetual odor of hot soap-
+suds, soiled laundry, and the broader smell of steam and the boat's
+machinery. The little place trembled night and day, for the steamer's
+engines were just beneath them, and immediately behind them thundered
+the great stern-wheel of the packet. A single square window in the end
+of the chambermaid's cabin looked out on the wheel, but at all times,
+except when the wind was blowing from just the right quarter, this
+window was deluged with a veritable Niagara of water. The continual
+shake of the cabin, the creak of the rudder-beam working to and fro, the
+watery thunder of the wheel, and the solemn rumble of the engines made
+conversation impossible until the travelers grew accustomed to the
+noises. Still, Cissie found it pleasant. She liked to sit and look out
+into the main saloon, with its interminable gilded scrolls extending
+away up the long cabin, a suave perspective. She liked to watch the
+white passengers dine--the white napery, the bouquets, the endless
+tables all filled with diners; some swathed in napkins from chin to
+waistband, others less completely protected. It gave Cissie a certain
+tang of triumph to smile at the swathed ones and to think that she knew
+better than that.
+
+At night a negro string-band played for the white excursionists to
+dance, and Cissie would sit, with glowing eyes, clenching Peter's hand,
+every fiber of her asway to the music, and it seemed as if her heart
+would go mad. All these inhibitions, all this spreading before her of
+forbidden joys, did not daunt her delight. She reveled in them by
+propinquity.
+
+The chambermaid was a Mrs. Antolia Higgman, a strong, full-bodied
+_café-au-lait_ negress. She was a very sensible woman, and during
+her work on the boat she had picked up a Northern accent and a number of
+little mannerisms from the Chicago and St. Louis excursionists, who made
+ten-day round trips from Dubuque to Florence, Alabama, and return. When
+Mrs. Higgman was not running errands for the women passengers, she was
+working at her perpetual laundering.
+
+At first Peter was a little uneasy as to how Mrs. Higgman would treat
+Cissie, but she turned out a good-hearted woman, and did everything she
+could to make the young wife comfortable. It soon became clear that Mrs.
+Higgman knew the whole situation, for one day she said to Cissie in her
+odd dialect, burred with Yankeeish "r's" and "ing's."
+
+"These river-r towns, Mrs. Siner-r, are jest like one big village, with
+the river-r for its Main Street. I know ever-r'thang that goes on,
+through the cabin-boys an' cooks, an'--an'--you cerrtainly ar-re a dear-
+r, Mrs. Siner-r," and thereupon, quite unexpectedly, she kissed Cissie.
+
+So on about the second day down the river Cissie dropped her saddened
+manner and became frankly, freely, and riotously happy. After the
+fashion of village negresses, she insisted on helping Mrs. Higgman with
+her work, and, incidentally, she cultivated Mrs. Higgman's Northern
+accent. When the chambermaid was out on her errands and Cissie found a
+moment alone with Peter, she would tweak his ear or pull his cheek and
+provoke him to kiss her. Indeed, it was all the hot, shuddering little
+laundry-room could do to contain the gay and bubbling Cissie.
+
+Peter thought and thought, resignedly now, but persistently, how this
+strange happiness that belonged to them both could be. He was content,
+yet he felt he ought not to be content. He thought there must be
+something base in himself, yet he felt that there was not. He drank the
+wine of his honeymoon marveling.
+
+On the morning before the _Red Cloud_ entered the port of Cairo
+Mrs. Higgman was out of the cabin, and Peter stood at the little square
+window, with his arm about Cissie's waist, looking out to the rear of
+the steamer. A strong east wind blew the spray away from the glass, and
+Peter could see the huge wheel covered with a waterfall thundering
+beneath him. Back of the wheel stretched a long row of even waves and
+troughs. Every seventh or eighth wave tumbled over on itself in a swash
+of foam. These flashing stern waves strung far up the river. On each
+side of the great waterway stretched the flat shores of Kentucky and
+Ohio. Here and there over the broad clay-colored water moved other
+boats--tow-boats, a string of government auto-barges, a snag-boat,
+another packet.
+
+Peter gave up his question. The curves of Cissie's form in his arm held
+a sweetness and a restfulness that her maidenhood had never promised. He
+felt so deeply sure of his happiness that it seemed strange to him that
+he could not aline his emotions and his mind.
+
+As Peter stood staring up the Ohio River, it occurred to him that
+perhaps, in some queer way, the morals of black folk were not the morals
+of white folk; perhaps the laws that bound one race were not the laws
+that bound the other. It might be that white anathemas were black
+blessings. Peter thought along this line peacefully for several minutes.
+
+And finally he concluded that, after all, morals and conventions, right
+and wrong, are merely those precepts that a race have practised and
+found good in its evolution. Morals are the training rules that keep a
+people fit. It might very well be that one moral régime is applicable to
+one race, and quite another to another.
+
+The single object of all morals is racial welfare, the racial integrity,
+the breeding of strong children to perpetuate the species. If the black
+race possess a more exuberant vitality than some other race, then the
+black would not be forced to practise so severe a vital economy as some
+less virile folk. Racial morals are simply a question of having and
+spending within safety limits.
+
+Peter knew that for years white men had held a prejudice against
+marrying widows. This is utterly without grounds except for one reason:
+the first born of a woman is the lustiest. Among the still weaker Aryans
+of India the widows burn themselves. Among certain South Sea Islanders
+only the first-born may live and mate; all other children are slain.
+Among nearly every white race marriage lines are strictly drawn, and the
+tendency is to have few children to a family, to conserve the precious
+vital impulse. So strong is this feeling of birth control that to-day
+nearly all American white women are ashamed of large families. This
+shame is the beginning of a convention; the convention may harden into a
+cult, a law, or a religion.
+
+And here is the amazing part of morals. Morals are always directed
+toward one particular race, but the individual members of that race
+always feel that their brand of morals does and should apply to all the
+peoples of the earth; so one has the spectacle of nations sending out
+missionaries and battle-ships to teach and enforce their particular
+folk-ways. Another queer thing is that whereas the end of morals is
+designed solely for the betterment of the race, and is entirely
+regardless of the person, to the conscience of the person morals are
+always translated as something that binds him personally, that will
+shame him or honor him personally not only for the brief span of this
+worldly life, but through an eternity to come. To him, his particular
+code, surrounded by all the sanctions of custom, law, and religion,
+appears earth-embracing, hell-deep, and heaven-piercing, and any human
+creature who follows any other code appears fatally wicked, utterly
+shameless, and ineluctably lost.
+
+And yet there is no such thing as absolute morals. Morals are as
+transitory as the sheen on a blackbird's wing; they change perpetually
+with the necessities of the race. Any people with an abounding vitality
+will naturally practise customs which a less vital people must shun.
+
+Morals are nothing more than the engines controlling the stream of
+energy that propel a race on its course. All engines are not alike, nor
+are all races bound for the same port.
+
+Here Peter Siner made the amazing discovery that although he had spent
+four years in Harvard, he had come out, just as he went in, a negro.
+
+A great joy came over him. He took Cissie whole-heartedly in his arms
+and kissed again and again the deep crimson of her lips. His brain and
+his heart were together at last. As he stood looking out at the window,
+pressing Cissie to him, he wondered, when he reached Chicago, if he
+could ever make Farquhar understand.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Birthright, by T.S. Stribling
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10621 ***
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Birthright, by T.S. Stribling
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Birthright
+       A Novel
+
+Author: T.S. Stribling
+
+Release Date: January 7, 2004 [EBook #10621]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BIRTHRIGHT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Robert Shimmin and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "Yes, Cissie, I understand now"]
+
+
+
+
+                               BIRTHRIGHT
+
+                                A NOVEL
+
+                           BY T.S. STRIBLING
+
+
+                             Illustrated by
+                              F. Luis Mora
+
+
+                                  1922
+
+
+
+
+                              TO MY MOTHER
+
+                         AMELIA WAITS STRIBLING
+
+
+
+
+                         LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+"Yes, Cissie, I understand now"
+
+Peter recognized the white aprons and the swords and spears of the
+Knights and Ladies of Tabor
+
+Up and down its street flows the slow negro life of the village
+
+In the Siner cabin old Caroline Siner berated her boy
+
+The old gentleman turned around at last
+
+"You-you mean you want m-me--to go with you, Cissie?" he stammered
+
+"Naw yuh don't," he warned sharply. "You turn roun' an' march on to
+Niggertown"
+
+The bridal couple embarked for Cairo
+
+
+
+
+
+                               BIRTHRIGHT
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER I
+
+
+At Cairo, Illinois, the Pullman-car conductor asked Peter Siner to take
+his suitcase and traveling-bag and pass forward into the Jim Crow car.
+The request came as a sort of surprise to the negro. During Peter
+Siner's four years in Harvard the segregation of black folk on Southern
+railroads had become blurred and reminiscent in his mind; now it was
+fetched back into the sharp distinction of the present instant. With a
+certain sense of strangeness, Siner picked up his bags, and saw his own
+form, in the car mirrors, walking down the length of the sleeper. He
+moved on through the dining-car, where a few hours before he had had
+dinner and talked with two white men, one an Oregon apple-grower, the
+other a Wisconsin paper-manufacturer. The Wisconsin man had furnished
+cigars, and the three had sat and smoked in the drawing-room, indeed,
+had discussed this very point; and now it was upon him.
+
+At the door of the dining-car stood the porter of his Pullman, a negro
+like himself, and Peter mechanically gave him fifty cents. The porter
+accepted it silently, without offering the amenities of his whisk-broom
+and shoe-brush, and Peter passed on forward.
+
+Beyond the dining-car and Pullmans stretched twelve day-coaches filled
+with less-opulent white travelers in all degrees of sleepiness and
+dishabille from having sat up all night. The thirteenth coach was the
+Jim Crow car. Framed in a conspicuous place beside the entrance of the
+car was a copy of the Kentucky state ordinance setting this coach apart
+from the remainder of the train for the purposes therein provided.
+
+The Jim Crow car was not exactly shabby, but it was unkept. It was half
+filled with travelers of Peter's own color, and these passengers were
+rather more noisy than those in the white coaches. Conversation was not
+restrained to the undertones one heard in the other day-coaches or the
+Pullmans. Near the entrance of the car two negroes in soldiers' uniforms
+had turned a seat over to face the door, and now they sat talking loudly
+and laughing the loose laugh of the half intoxicated as they watched the
+inflow of negro passengers coming out of the white cars.
+
+The windows of the Jim Crow car were shut, and already it had become
+noisome. The close air was faintly barbed with the peculiar, penetrating
+odor of dark, sweating skins. For four years Peter Siner had not known
+that odor. Now it came to him not so much offensively as with a queer
+quality of intimacy and reminiscence. The tall, carefully tailored negro
+spread his wide nostrils, vacillating whether to sniff it out with
+disfavor or to admit it for the sudden mental associations it evoked.
+
+It was a faint, pungent smell that played in the back of his nose and
+somehow reminded him of his mother, Caroline Siner, a thick-bodied black
+woman whom he remembered as always bending over a wash-tub. This was
+only one unit of a complex. The odor was also connected with negro
+protracted meetings in Hooker's Bend, and the Harvard man remembered a
+lanky black preacher waving long arms and wailing of hell-fire, to the
+chanted groans of his dark congregation; and he, Peter Siner, had
+groaned with the others. Peter had known this odor in the press-room of
+Tennessee cotton-gins, over a river packet's boilers, where he and other
+roustabouts were bedded, in bunk-houses in the woods. It also recalled a
+certain octoroon girl named Ida May, and an intimacy with her which it
+still moved and saddened Peter to think of. Indeed, it resurrected
+innumerable vignettes of his life in the negro village in Hooker's Bend;
+it was linked with innumerable emotions, this pungent, unforgetable odor
+that filled the Jim Crow car.
+
+Somehow the odor had a queer effect of appearing to push his
+conversation with the two white Northern men in the drawing-room back to
+a distance, an indefinable distance of both space and time.
+
+The negro put his suitcase under the seat, hung his overcoat on the
+hook, and placed his hand-bag in the rack overhead; then with some
+difficulty he opened a window and sat down by it.
+
+A stir of travelers in the Cairo station drifted into the car. Against a
+broad murmur of hurrying feet, moving trucks, and talking there stood
+out the thin, flat voice of a Southern white girl calling good-by to
+some one on the train. Peter could see her waving a bright parasol and
+tiptoeing. A sandwich boy hurried past, shrilling his wares. Siner
+leaned out, with fifteen cents, and signaled to him. The urchin
+hesitated, and was about to reach up one of his wrapped parcels, when a
+peremptory voice shouted at him from a lower car. With a sort of start
+the lad deserted Siner and went trotting down to his white customer. A
+moment later the train bell began ringing, and the Dixie Flier puffed
+deliberately out of the Cairo station and moved across the Ohio bridge
+into the South.
+
+Half an hour later the blue-grass fields of Kentucky were spinning
+outside of the window in a vast green whirlpool. The distant trees and
+houses moved forward with the train, while the foreground, with its
+telegraph poles, its culverts, section-houses, and shrubbery, rushed
+backward in a blur. Now and then into the Jim Crow window whipped a
+blast of coal smoke and hot cinders, for the engine was only two cars
+ahead.
+
+Peter Siner looked out at the interminable spin of the landscape with a
+certain wistfulness. He was coming back into the South, into his own
+country. Here for generations his forebears had toiled endlessly and
+fruitlessly, yet the fat green fields hurtling past him told with what
+skill and patience their black hands had labored.
+
+The negro shrugged away such thoughts, and with a certain effort
+replaced them with the constructive idea that was bringing him South
+once more. It was a very simple idea. Siner was returning to his native
+village in Tennessee to teach school. He planned to begin his work with
+the ordinary public school at Hooker's Bend, but, in the back of his
+head, he hoped eventually to develop an institution after the plan of
+Tuskeegee or the Hampton Institute in Virginia.
+
+To do what he had in mind, he must obtain aid from white sources, and
+now, as he traveled southward, he began conning in his mind the white
+men and white women he knew in Hooker's Bend. He wanted first of all to
+secure possession of a small tract of land which he knew adjoined the
+negro school-house over on the east side of the village.
+
+Before the negro's mind the different villagers passed in review with
+that peculiar intimacy of vision that servants always have of their
+masters. Indeed, no white Southerner knows his own village so minutely
+as does any member of its colored population. The colored villagers see
+the whites off their guard and just as they are, and that is an attitude
+in which no one looks his best. The negroes might be called the black
+recording angels of the South. If what they know should be shouted aloud
+in any Southern town, its social life would disintegrate. Yet it is a
+strange fact that gossip seldom penetrates from the one race to the
+other.
+
+So Peter Siner sat in the Jim Crow car musing over half a dozen
+villagers in Hooker's Bend. He thought of them in a curious way.
+Although he was now a B.A. of Harvard University, and although he knew
+that not a soul in the little river village, unless it was old Captain
+Renfrew, could construe a line of Greek and that scarcely two had ever
+traveled farther north than Cincinnati, still, as Peter recalled their
+names and foibles, he involuntarily felt that he was telling over a roll
+of the mighty. The white villagers came marching through his mind as
+beings austere, and the very cranks and quirks of their characters
+somehow held that austerity. There were the Brownell sisters, two old
+maids, Molly and Patti, who lived in a big brick house on the hill.
+Peter remembered that Miss Molly Brownell always doled out to his
+mother, at Monday's washday dinner, exactly one biscuit less than the
+old negress wanted to eat, and she always paid her in old clothes. Peter
+remembered, a dozen times in his life, his mother coming home and
+wondering in an impersonal way how it was that Miss Molly Brownell could
+skimp every meal she ate at the big house by exactly one biscuit. It was
+Miss Brownell's thin-lipped boast that she understood negroes. She had
+told Peter so several times when, as a lad, he went up to the big house
+on errands. Peter Siner considered this remembrance without the faintest
+feeling of humor, and mentally removed Miss Molly Brownell from his list
+of possible subscribers. Yet, he recalled, the whole Brownell estate had
+been reared on negro labor.
+
+Then there was Henry Hooker, cashier of the village bank. Peter knew
+that the banker subscribed liberally to foreign missions; indeed, at the
+cashier's behest, the white church of Hooker's Bend kept a paid
+missionary on the upper Congo. But the banker had sold some village lots
+to the negroes, and in two instances, where a streak of commercial
+phosphate had been discovered on the properties, the lots had reverted
+to the Hooker estate. There had been in the deed something concerning a
+mineral reservation that the negro purchasers knew nothing about until
+the phosphate was discovered. The whole matter had been perfectly legal.
+
+A hand shook Siner's shoulder and interrupted his review. Peter turned,
+and caught an alcoholic breath over his shoulder, and the blurred voice
+of a Southern negro called out above the rumble of the car and the roar
+of the engine:
+
+"'Fo' Gawd, ef dis ain't Peter Siner I's been lookin' at de las' twenty
+miles, an' not knowin' him wid sich skeniptious clo'es on! Wha you fum,
+nigger?"
+
+Siner took the enthusiastic hand offered him and studied the heavily
+set, powerful man bending over the seat. He was in a soldier's uniform,
+and his broad nutmeg-colored face and hot black eyes brought Peter a
+vague sense of familiarity; but he never would have identified his
+impression had he not observed on the breast of the soldier's uniform
+the Congressional military medal for bravery on the field of battle. Its
+glint furnished Peter the necessary clew. He remembered his mother's
+writing him something about Tump Pack going to France and getting
+"crowned" before the army. He had puzzled a long time over what she
+meant by "crowned" before he guessed her meaning. Now the medal aided
+Peter in reconstructing out of this big umber-colored giant the rather
+spindling Tump Pack he had known in Hooker's Bend.
+
+Siner was greatly surprised, and his heart warmed at the sight of his
+old playmate.
+
+"What have you been doing to yourself, Tump?" he cried, laughing, and
+shaking the big hand in sudden warmth. "You used to be the size of a
+dime in a jewelry store."
+
+"Been in 'e army, nigger, wha I's been fed," said the grinning brown
+man, delightedly. "I sho is picked up, ain't I?"
+
+"And what are you doing here in Cairo?"
+
+"Tryin' to bridle a lil white mule." Mr. Pack winked a whisky-brightened
+eye jovially and touched his coat to indicate that some of the "white
+mule" was in his pocket and had not been drunk.
+
+"How'd you get here?"
+
+"Wucked my way down on de St. Louis packet an' got paid off at Padjo
+[Paducah, Kentucky]; 'n 'en I thought I'd come on down heah an' roll
+some bones. Been hittin' 'em two days now, an' I sho come putty nigh
+bein' cleaned; but I put up lil Joe heah, an' won 'em all back, 'n 'en
+some." He touched the medal on his coat, winked again, slapped Siner on
+the leg, and burst into loud laughter.
+
+Peter was momentarily shocked. He made a place on the seat for his
+friend to sit. "You don't mean you put up your medal on a crap game,
+Tump?"
+
+"Sho do, black man." Pack became soberer. "Dat's one o' de great
+benefits o' bein' dec'rated. Dey ain't a son uv a gun on de river whut
+kin win lil Joe; dey all tried it."
+
+A moment's reflection told Peter how simple and natural it was for Pack
+to prize his military medal as a good-luck piece to be used as a last
+resort in crap games. He watched Tump stroke the face of his medal with
+his fingers.
+
+"My mother wrote me; about your getting it, Tump. I was glad to hear
+it."
+
+The brown man nodded, and stared down at the bit of gold on his barrel-
+like chest.
+
+"Yas-suh, dat 'uz guv to me fuh bravery. You know whut a skeery lil
+nigger I wuz roun' Hooker's Ben'; well, de sahgeant tuk me an' he drill
+ever' bit o' dat right out 'n me. He gimme a baynit an' learned me to
+stob dummies wid it over at Camp Oglethorpe, ontil he felt lak I had de
+heart to stob anything; 'n' 'en he sont me acrost. I had to git a new
+pair breeches ever' three weeks, I growed so fas'." Here he broke out
+into his big loose laugh again, and renewed the alcoholic scent around
+Peter.
+
+"And you made good?"
+
+"Sho did, black man, an', 'fo' Gawd, I 'serve a medal ef any man ever
+did. Dey gimme dish-heah fuh stobbin fo' white men wid a baynit. 'Fo'
+Gawd, nigger, I never felt so quare in all my born days as when I wuz a-
+jobbin' de livers o' dem white men lak de sahgeant tol' me to." Tump
+shook his head, bewildered, and after a moment added, "Yas-suh, I never
+wuz mo' surprised in all my life dan when I got dis medal fuh stobbin'
+fo' white men."
+
+Peter Siner looked through the Jim Crow window at the vast rotation of
+the Kentucky landscape on which his forebears had toiled; presently he
+added soberly:
+
+"You were fighting for your country, Tump. It was war then; you were
+fighting for your country."
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+At Jackson, Tennessee, the two negroes were forced to spend the night
+between trains. Tump Pack piloted Peter Siner to a negro cafe where they
+could eat, and later they searched out a negro lodging-house on Gate
+Street where they could sleep. It was a grimy, smelly place, with its
+own odor spiked by a phosphate-reducing plant two blocks distant. The
+paper on the wall of the room Peter slept in looked scrofulous. There
+was no window, and Peter's four-years régime of open windows and fresh-
+air sleep was broken. He arranged his clothing for the night so it would
+come in contact with nothing in the room but a chair back. He felt dull
+next morning, and could not bring himself either to shave or bathe in
+the place, but got out and hunted up a negro barber-shop furnished with
+one greasy red-plush barber-chair.
+
+A few hours later the two negroes journeyed on down to Perryville,
+Tennessee, a village on the Tennessee River where they took a gasolene
+launch up to Hooker's Bend. The launch was about fifty feet long and had
+two cabins, a colored cabin in front of, and a white cabin behind, the
+engine-room.
+
+This unremitting insistence on his color, this continual shunting him
+into obscure and filthy ways, gradually gave Peter a loathly sensation.
+It increased the unwashed feeling that followed his lack of a morning
+bath. The impression grew upon him that he was being handled with tongs,
+along back-alley routes; that he and his race were something to be kept
+out of sight as much as possible, as careful housekeepers manoeuver
+their slops.
+
+At Perryville a number of passengers boarded the up-river boat; two or
+three drummers; a yellowed old hill woman returning to her Wayne County
+home; a red-headed peanut-buyer; a well-groomed white girl in a tailor
+suit; a youngish man barely on the right side of middle age who seemed
+to be attending her; and some negro girls with lunches. The passengers
+trailed from the railroad station down the river bank through a slush of
+mud, for the river had just fallen and had left a layer of liquid mud to
+a height of about twenty feet all along the littoral. The passengers
+picked their way down carefully, stepping into one another's tracks in
+the effort not to ruin their shoes. The drummers grumbled. The youngish
+man piloted the girl down, holding her hand, although both could have
+managed better by themselves.
+
+Following the passengers came the trunks and grips on a truck. A negro
+deck-hand, the truck-driver, and the white master of the launch shoved
+aboard the big sample trunks of the drummers with grunts, profanity, and
+much stamping of mud. Presently, without the formality of bell or
+whistle, the launch clacked away from the landing and stood up the wide,
+muddy river.
+
+The river itself was monotonous and depressing. It was perhaps half a
+mile wide, with flat, willowed mud banks on one side and low shelves of
+stratified limestone on the other.
+
+Trading-points lay at ten- or fifteen-mile intervals along the great
+waterway. The typical landing was a dilapidated shed of a store half
+covered with tin tobacco signs and ancient circus posters. Usually, only
+one man met the launch at each landing, the merchant, a democrat in his
+shirt-sleeves and without a tie. His voice was always a flat, weary
+drawl, but his eyes, wrinkled against the sun, usually held the
+shrewdness of those who make their living out of two-penny trades.
+
+At each place the red-headed peanut-buyer slogged up the muddy bank and
+bargained for the merchant's peanuts, to be shipped on the down-river
+trip of the first St. Louis packet. The loneliness of the scene embraced
+the trading-points, the river, and the little gasolene launch struggling
+against the muddy current. It permeated the passengers, and was a
+finishing touch to Peter Siner's melancholy.
+
+The launch clacked on and on interminably. Sometimes it seemed to make
+no headway at all against the heavy, silty current. Tump Pack, the white
+captain, and the negro engineer began a game of craps in the negro
+cabin. Presently, two of the white drummers came in from the white cabin
+and began betting on the throws. The game was listless. The master of
+the launch pointed out places along the shores where wildcat stills were
+located. The crap-shooters, negro and white, squatted in a circle on the
+cabin floor, snapping their fingers and calling their points
+monotonously. One of the negro girls in the negro cabin took an apple
+out of her lunch sack and began eating it, holding it in her palm after
+the fashion of negroes rather than in her fingers, as is the custom of
+white women.
+
+Both doors of the engine-room were open, and Peter Siner could see
+through into the white cabin. The old hill woman was dozing in her
+chair, her bonnet bobbing to each stroke of the engines. The youngish
+man and the girl were engaged in some sort of intimate lovers' dispute.
+When the engines stopped at one of the landings, Peter discovered she
+was trying to pay him what he had spent on getting her baggage trucked
+down at Perryville. The girl kept pressing a bill into the man's hand,
+and he avoided receiving the money. They kept up the play for sake of
+occasional contacts.
+
+When the launch came in sight of Hooker's Bend toward the middle of the
+afternoon, Peter Siner experienced one of the profoundest surprises of
+his life. Somehow, all through his college days he had remembered
+Hooker's Bend as a proud town with important stores and unapproachable
+white residences. Now he saw a skum of negro cabins, high piles of
+lumber, a sawmill, and an ice-factory. Behind that, on a little rise,
+stood the old Brownell manor, maintaining a certain shabby dignity in a
+grove of oaks. Behind and westward from the negro shacks and lumber-
+piles ranged the village stores, their roofs just visible over the top
+of the bank. Moored to the shore, lay the wharf-boat in weathered greens
+and yellows. As a background for the whole scene rose the dark-green
+height of what was called the "Big Hill," an eminence that separated the
+negro village on the east from the white village on the west. The hill
+itself held no houses, but appeared a solid green-black with cedars.
+
+The ensemble was merely another lonely spot on the south bank of the
+great somnolent river. It looked dead, deserted, a typical river town,
+unprodded even by the hoot of a jerk-water railroad.
+
+As the launch chortled toward the wharf, Peter Siner stood trying to
+orient himself to this unexpected and amazing minifying of Hooker's
+Bend. He had left a metropolis; he was coming back to a tumble-down
+village. Yet nothing was changed. Even the two scraggly locust-trees
+that clung perilously to the brink of the river bank still held their
+toe-hold among the strata of limestone.
+
+The negro deck-hand came out and pumped the hand-power whistle in three
+long discordant blasts. Then a queer thing happened. The whistle was
+answered by a faint strain of music. A little later the passengers saw a
+line of negroes come marching down the river bank to the wharf-boat.
+They marched in military order, and from afar Peter recognized the white
+aprons and the swords and spears of the Knights and Ladies of Tabor, a
+colored burial association.
+
+Siner wondered what had brought out the Knights and Ladies of Tabor. The
+singing and the drumming gradually grew upon the air. The passengers in
+the white cabin, came out on the guards at this unexpected fanfare. As
+soon as the white travelers saw the marching negroes, they began joking
+about what caused the demonstration. The captain of the launch thought
+he knew, and began an oath, but stopped it out of deference to the girl
+in the tailor suit. He said it was a dead nigger the society was going
+to ship up to Savannah.
+
+The girl in the tailor suit was much amused. She said the darkies looked
+like a string of caricatures marching down the river bank. Peter noticed
+her Northern accent, and fancied she was coming to Hooker's Bend to
+teach school.
+
+One of the drummers turned to another.
+
+"Did you ever hear Bob Taylor's yarn about Uncle 'Rastus's funeral?
+Funniest thing Bob ever got off." He proceeded to tell it.
+
+Every one on the launch was laughing except the captain, who was
+swearing quietly; but the line of negroes marched on down to the wharf-
+boat with the unshakable dignity of black folk in an important position.
+They came singing an old negro spiritual. The women's sopranos thrilled
+up in high, weird phrasing against an organ-like background of male
+voices.
+
+But the black men carried no coffin, and suddenly it occurred to Peter
+Siner that perhaps this celebration was given in honor of his own home-
+coming. The mulatto's heart beat a trifle faster as he began planning a
+suitable response to this ovation.
+
+Sure enough, the singing ranks disappeared behind the wharf-boat, and a
+minute later came marching around the stern and lined up on the outer
+guard of the vessel. The skinny, grizzly-headed negro commander held up
+his sword, and the Knights and Ladies of Tabor fell silent.
+
+The master of the launch tossed his head-line to the wharf-boat, and
+yelled for one of the negroes to make it fast. One did. Then the
+commandant with the sword began his address, but it was not directed to
+Peter. He said:
+
+[Illustration: Peter recognized the white aprons and the swords and
+spears of the Knights and Ladies of Tabor]
+
+"Brudder Tump Pack, we, de Hooker's Ben' lodge uv de Knights an' Ladies
+uv Tabor, welcome you back to yo' native town. We is proud uv you, a
+colored man, who brings back de highes' crown uv bravery dis Newnighted
+States has in its power to bestow.
+
+"Two yeahs ago, Brudder Tump, we seen you marchin' away fum Hooker's
+Ben' wid thirteen udder boys, white an' colored, all marchin' away
+togedder. Fo' uv them boys is already back home; three, we heah, is on
+de way back, but six uv yo' brave comrades, Brudder Pack, is sleepin'
+now in France, an' ain't never goin' to come home no mo'. When we honors
+you, we honors them all, de libin' an' de daid, de white an' de black,
+who fought togedder fuh one country, fuh one flag."
+
+Gasps, sobs from the line of black folk, interrupted the speaker. Just
+then a shriveled old negress gave a scream, and came running and half
+stumbling out of the line, holding out her arms to the barrel-chested
+soldier on the gang-plank. She seized him and began shrieking:
+
+"Bless Gawd! my son's done come home! Praise de Lawd! Bless His holy
+name!" Here her laudation broke into sobbing and choking and laughing,
+and she squeezed herself to her son.
+
+Tump patted her bony black form.
+
+"I's heah, Mammy," he stammered uncertainly. "I's come back, Mammy."
+
+Half a dozen other negroes caught the joyful hysteria. They began a
+religious shouting, clapping their hands, flinging up their arms,
+shrieking.
+
+One of the drummers grunted:
+
+"Good God! all this over a nigger getting back!"
+
+At the extreme end of the dark line a tall cream-colored girl wept
+silently. As Peter Siner stood blinking his eyes, he saw the octoroon's
+shoulders and breasts shake from the sobs, which her white blood
+repressed to silence.
+
+A certain sympathy for her grief and its suppression kept Peter's eyes
+on the young woman, and then, with the queer effect of one picture
+melting into another, the strange girl's face assumed familiar curves
+and softnesses, and he was looking at Ida May.
+
+A quiver traveled deliberately over Peter from his crisp black hair to
+the soles of his feet. He started toward her impulsively.
+
+At that moment one of the drummers picked up his grip, and started down
+the gang-plank, and with its leathern bulk pressed Tump Pack and his
+mother out of his path. He moved on to the shore through the negroes,
+who divided at his approach. The captain of the launch saw that other of
+his white passengers were becoming impatient, and he shouted for the
+darkies to move aside and not to block the gangway. The youngish man
+drew the girl in the tailor suit close to him and started through with
+her. Peter heard him say, "They won't hurt you, Miss Negley." And Miss
+Negley, in the brisk nasal intonation of a Northern woman, replied: "Oh,
+I'm not afraid. We waste a lot of sympathy on them back home, but when
+you see them--"
+
+At that moment Peter heard a cry in his ears and felt arms thrown about
+his neck. He looked down and saw his mother, Caroline Siner, looking up
+into his face and weeping with the general emotion of the negroes and
+this joy of her own. Caroline had changed since Peter last saw her. Her
+eyes were a little more wrinkled, her kinky hair was thinner and very
+gray.
+
+Something warm and melting moved in Peter Siner's breast. He caressed
+his mother and murmured incoherently, as had Tump Pack. Presently the
+master of the launch came by, and touched the old negress, not ungently,
+with the end of a spike-pole.
+
+"You'll have to move, Aunt Ca'line," he said. "We're goin' to get the
+freight off now."
+
+The black woman paused in her weeping. "Yes, Mass' Bob," she said, and
+she and Peter moved off of the launch onto the wharf-boat.
+
+The Knights and Ladies of Tabor were already up the river bank with
+their hero. Peter and his mother were left alone. Now they walked around
+the guards of the wharf-boat to the bank, holding each other's arms
+closely. As they went, Peter kept looking down at his old black mother,
+with a growing tenderness. She was so worn and heavy! He recognized the
+very dress she wore, an old black silk which she had "washed out" for
+Miss Patti Brownell when he was a boy. It had been then, it was now, her
+best dress. During the years the old negress had registered her
+increasing bulk by letting out seams and putting in panels. Some of the
+panels did not agree with the original fabric either in color or in
+texture and now the seams were stretching again and threatening a rip.
+Peter's own immaculate clothes reproached him, and he wondered for the
+hundredth, or for the thousandth time how his mother had obtained
+certain remittances which she had forwarded him during his college
+years.
+
+As Peter and his mother crept up the bank of the river, stopping
+occasionally to let the old negress rest, his impression of the meanness
+and shabbiness of the whole village grew. From the top of the bank the
+single business street ran straight back from the river. It was stony in
+places, muddy in places, strewn with goods-boxes, broken planking,
+excelsior, and straw that had been used for packing. Charred rubbish-
+piles lay in front of every store, which the clerks had swept out and
+attempted to burn. Hogs roamed the thoroughfare, picking up decaying
+fruit and parings, and nosing tin cans that had been thrown out by the
+merchants. The stores that Peter had once looked upon as show-places
+were poor two-story brick or frame buildings, defiled by time and wear
+and weather. The white merchants were coatless, listless men who sat in
+chairs on the brick pavements before their stores and who moved slowly
+when a customer entered their doors.
+
+And, strange to say, it was this fall of his white townsmen that moved
+Peter Siner with a sense of the greatest loss. It seemed fantastic to
+him, this sudden land-slide of the mighty.
+
+As Peter and his mother came over the brow of the river bank, they saw a
+crowd collecting at the other end of the street. The main street of
+Hooker's Bend is only a block long, and the two negroes could easily
+hear the loud laughter of men hurrying to the focus of interest and the
+blurry expostulations of negro voices. The laughter spread like a
+contagion. Merchants as far up as the river corner became infected, and
+moved toward the crowd, looking back over their shoulders at every tenth
+or twelfth step to see that no one entered their doors.
+
+Presently, a little short man, fairly yipping with laughter, stumbled
+back up the street to his store with tears of mirth in his eyes. A
+belated merchant stopped him by clapping both hands on his shoulders and
+shaking some composure into him.
+
+"What is it? What's so funny? Damn it! I miss ever'thing!"
+
+"I-i-it's that f-fool Tum-Tump Pack. Bobbs's arrested him!"
+
+The inquirer was astounded.
+
+"How the hell can he arrest him when he hit town this minute?"
+
+"Wh-why, Bobbs had an old warrant for crap-shoot--three years old--
+before the war. Just as Tump was a-coming down the street at the head of
+the coons, out steps Bobbs--" Here the little man was overcome.
+
+The merchant from the corner opened his eyes.
+
+"Arrested him on an old crap charge?"
+
+The little man nodded. They gazed at each other. Then they exploded
+simultaneously.
+
+Peter left his obese mother and hurried to the corner, Dawson Bobbs, the
+constable, had handcuffs on Tump's wrists, and stood with his prisoner
+amid a crowd of arguing negroes.
+
+Bobbs was a big, fleshy, red-faced man, with chilly blue eyes and a
+little straight slit of a mouth in his wide face. He was laughing and
+chewing a sliver of toothpick.
+
+"O Tump Pack," he called loudly, "you kain't git away from me! If you
+roll bones in Hooker's Bend, you'll have to divide your winnings with
+the county." Dawson winked a chill eye at the crowd in general.
+
+"But hit's out o' date, Mr. Bobbs," the old gray-headed minister, Parson
+Ranson, was pleading.
+
+"May be that, Parson, but hit's easier to come up before the J.P. and
+pay off than to fight it through the circuit court."
+
+Siner pushed his way through the crowd. "How much do you want, Mr.
+Bobbs?" he asked briefly.
+
+The constable looked with reminiscent eyes at the tall, well-tailored
+negro. He was plainly going through some mental card-index, hunting for
+the name of Peter Siner on some long-forgotten warrant. Apparently, he
+discovered nothing, for he said shortly:
+
+"How do I know before he's tried? Come on, Tump!"
+
+The procession moved in a long noisy line up Pillow Street, the white
+residential street lying to the west. It stopped before a large shaded
+lawn, where a number of white men and women were playing a game with
+cards. The cards used by the lawn party were not ordinary playing-cards,
+but had figures on them instead of spots, and were called "rook" cards.
+The party of white ladies and gentlemen were playing "rook." On a table
+in the middle of the lawn glittered some pieces of silver plate which
+formed the first, second, and third prizes for the three leading scores.
+
+The constable halted his black company before the lawn, where they stood
+in the sunshine patiently waiting for the justice of the peace to finish
+his game and hear the case of the State of Tennessee, plaintiff, versus
+Tump Pack, defendant.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER II
+
+
+On the eastern edge of Hooker's Bend, drawn in a rough semicircle around
+the Big Hill, lies Niggertown. In all the half-moon there are perhaps
+not two upright buildings. The grimy cabins lean at crazy angles, some
+propped with poles, while others hold out against gravitation at a
+hazard.
+
+Up and down its street flows the slow negro life of the village. Here
+children of all colors from black to cream fight and play; deep-chested
+negresses loiter to and fro, some on errands to the white section of the
+village on the other side of the hill, where they go to scrub or cook or
+wash or iron. Others go down to the public well with a bucket in each
+hand and one balanced on the head.
+
+The public well itself lies at the southern end of this miserable
+street, just at a point where the drainage of the Big Hill collects. The
+rainfall runs down through Niggertown, under its sties, stables, and
+outdoor toilets, and the well supplies the negroes with water for
+cooking, washing, and drinking. Or, rather, what was once a well
+supplies this water, for it is a well no longer. Its top and curbing
+caved in long ago, and now there is simply a big hole in the soft,
+water-soaked clay, about fifteen feet wide, with water standing at the
+bottom.
+
+Here come the unhurried colored women, who throw in their buckets, and
+with a dexterity that comes of long practice draw them out full of
+water. Black mothers shout at their children not to fall into this pit,
+and now and then, when a pig fails to come up for its evening slops, a
+black boy will go to the public well to see if perchance his porker has
+met misfortune there.
+
+The inhabitants of Niggertown suffer from divers diseases; they develop
+strange ailments that no amount of physicking will overcome; young wives
+grow sickly from no apparent cause. Although only three or four hundred
+persons live in Niggertown, two or three negroes are always slowly dying
+of tuberculosis; winter brings pneumonia; summer, malaria. About once a
+year the state health officer visits Hooker's Bend and forces the white
+soda-water dispensers on the other side of the hill to sterilize their
+glasses in the name of the sovereign State of Tennessee.
+
+The Siner home was a three-room shanty about midway in the semicircle.
+Peter Siner stood in the sunlight just outside the entrance, watching
+his old mother clean the bugs out of a tainted ham that she had bought
+for a pittance from some white housekeeper in the village. It had been
+too high for white people to eat. Old Caroline patiently tapped the
+honeycombed meat to scare out the last of the little green householders,
+and then she washed it in a solution of soda to freshen it up.
+
+The sight of his bulky old mother working at the spoiled ham and of the
+negro women in the street moving to and from the infected well filled
+Peter Siner with its terrible pathos. Although he had seen these
+surroundings all of his life, he had a queer impression that he was
+looking upon them for the first time. During his boyhood he had accepted
+all this without question as the way the world was made. During his
+college days a criticism had arisen in his mind, but it came slowly, and
+was tempered by that tenderness every one feels for the spot called
+home. Now, as he stood looking at it, he wondered how human beings lived
+there at all. He wondered if Ida May used water from the Niggertown
+well.
+
+He turned to ask old Caroline, but checked himself with a man's
+instinctive avoidance of mentioning his intimacies to his mother. At
+that moment, oddly enough, the old negress brought up the topic herself.
+
+"Ida May wuz 'quirin' 'bout you las' night, Peter."
+
+A faint tingle filtered through Peter's throat and chest, but he asked
+casually enough what she had said.
+
+"Didn' say; she wrote."
+
+Peter looked around, frankly astonished.
+
+"Wrote?"
+
+"Yeah; co'se she wrote."
+
+"What made her write?" a fantasy of Ida May dumb flickered before the
+mulatto.
+
+[Illustration: Up and down its street flows the slow negro life of the
+village]
+
+"Why, Ida May's in Nashville." Caroline looked at Peter. "She wrote to
+Cissie, astin' 'bout you. She ast is you as bright in yo' books as you
+is in yo' color." The old negress gave a pleased abdominal chuckle as
+she admired her broad-shouldered brown son.
+
+"But I saw Ida May standing on the wharf-boat the day I came home,"
+protested Peter, still bewildered.
+
+"No you ain't. I reckon you seen Cissie. Dey looks kind o' like when you
+is fur off."
+
+"Cissie?" repeated Peter. Then he remembered a smaller sister of Ida
+May's, a little, squalling, yellow, wet-nosed nuisance that had annoyed
+his adolescence. So that little spoil-sport had grown up into the girl
+he had mistaken for Ida May. This fact increased his sense of
+strangeness--that sense of great change that had fallen on the village
+in his absence which formed the groundwork of all his renewed
+associations.
+
+Peter's prolonged silence aroused certain suspicions in the old negress.
+She glanced at her son out of the tail of her eyes.
+
+"Cissie Dildine is Tump Pack's gal," she stated defensively, with the
+jealousy all mothers feel toward all sons.
+
+A diversion in the shouts of the children up the mean street and a
+sudden furious barking of dogs drew Peter from the discussion. He looked
+up, and saw a negro girl of about fourteen coming down the curved
+street, with long, quick steps and an occasional glance over her
+shoulder.
+
+From across the thoroughfare a small chocolate-colored woman, with her
+wool done in outstanding spikes, thrust her head out at the door and
+called:
+
+"Whut's de matter, Ofeely?"
+
+The girl lifted a high voice:
+
+"Oh, Miss Nan, it's that constable goin' th'ugh the houses!" The girl
+veered across the street to the safety of the open door and one of her
+own sex.
+
+"Good Lawd!" cried the spiked one in disgust, "ever', time a white
+pusson gits somp'n misplaced--" She moved to one side to allow the girl
+to enter, and continued staring up the street, with the whites of her
+eyes accented against her dark face, after the way of angry negroes.
+
+Around the crescent the dogs were furious. They were Niggertown dogs,
+and the sight of a white man always drove them to a frenzy. Presently in
+the hullabaloo, Peter heard Dawson Bobbs's voice shouting:
+
+"Aunt Mahaly, if you kain't call off this dawg, I'm shore goin' to kill
+him."
+
+Then an old woman's scolding broke in and complicated the mêlée.
+Presently Peter saw the bulky form of Dawson Bobbs come around the
+curve, moving methodically from cabin to cabin. He held some legal-
+looking papers in his hands, and Peter knew what the constable was
+doing. He was serving a blanket search-warrant on the whole black
+population of Hooker's Bend. At almost every cabin a dog ran out to
+blaspheme at the intruder, but a wave of the man's pistol sent them
+yelping under the floors again.
+
+When the constable entered a house, Peter could hear him bumping and
+rattling among the furnishings, while the black householders stood
+outside the door and watched him disturb their housekeeping
+arrangements.
+
+Presently Bobbs came angling across the street toward the Siner cabin.
+As he entered the rickety gate, old Caroline called out:
+
+"Whut is you after, anyway, white man?"
+
+Bobbs turned cold, truculent eyes on the old negress. "A turkey
+roaster," he snapped. "Some o' you niggers stole Miss Lou Arkwright's
+turkey roaster."
+
+"Tukky roaster!" cried the old black woman, in great disgust. "Whut you
+s'pose us niggers is got to roast in a tukky roaster?"
+
+The constable answered shortly that his business was to find the
+roaster, not what the negroes meant to put in it.
+
+"I decla'," satirized old Caroline, savagely, "dish-heah Niggertown is a
+white man's pocket. Ever' time he misplace somp'n, he feel in his pocket
+to see ef it ain't thaiuh. Don'-chu turn over dat sody-water, white man!
+You know dey ain't no tukky roaster under dat sody-water. I 'cla' 'fo'
+Gawd, ef a white man wuz to eat a flapjack, an' it did n' give him de
+belly-ache, I 'cla' 'fo' Gawd he'd git out a search-wa'nt to see ef some
+nigger had n' stole dat flapjack goin' down his th'oat."
+
+"Mr. Bobbs has to do his work, Mother," put in Peter. "I don't suppose
+he enjoys it any more than we do."
+
+"Den let 'im git out'n dis business an' git in anudder," scolded the old
+woman. "Dis sho is a mighty po' business."
+
+The ponderous Mr. Bobbs finished with a practised thoroughness his
+inspection of the cabin, and then the inquisition proceeded down the
+street, around the crescent, and so out of sight and eventually out of
+hearing.
+
+Old Caroline snapped her chair back beside her greasy table and sat down
+abruptly to her spoiled ham again.
+
+"Dat make me mad," she grumbled. "Ever' time a white pusson fail to lay
+dey han' on somp'n, dey comes an' turns over ever'thing in my house."
+She paused a moment, closed her eyes in thought, and then mused aloud:
+"I wonder who is got Miss Arkwright's roaster."
+
+The commotion of the constable's passing died in his wake, and
+Niggertown resumed its careless existence. Dogs reappeared from under
+the cabins and stretched in the sunshine; black children came out of
+hiding and picked up their play; the frightened Ophelia came out of
+Nan's cabin across the street and went her way; a lanky negro youth in
+blue coat and pin-striped trousers appeared, coming down the squalid
+thoroughfare whistling the "Memphis Blues" with bird-like virtuosity.
+The lightness with which Niggertown accepted the moral side glance of a
+blanket search-warrant depressed Siner.
+
+Caroline called her son to dinner, as the twelve-o'clock meal is called
+in Hooker's Bend, and so ended his meditation. The Harvard man went back
+into the kitchen and sat down at a rickety table covered with a red-
+checked oil-cloth. On it were spread the spoiled ham, a dish of poke
+salad, a corn pone, and a pot of weak coffee. A quaint old bowl held
+some brown sugar. The fat old negress made a slight, habitual settling
+movement in her chair that marked the end of her cooking and the
+beginning of her meal. Then she bent her grizzled, woolly head and
+mumbled off one of those queer old-fashioned graces which consist of a
+swift string of syllables without pauses between either words or
+sentences.
+
+Peter sat watching his mother with a musing gaze. The kitchen was
+illuminated by a single small square window set high up from the floor.
+Now the disposition of its single ray of light over the dishes and the
+bowed head of the massive negress gave Peter one of those sharp, tender
+apprehensions of formal harmony that lie back of the genre in art. It
+stirred his emotion in an odd fashion. When old Caroline raised her
+head, she found her son staring with impersonal eyes not at herself, but
+at the whole room, including her. The old woman was perplexed and a
+little apprehensive.
+
+"Why, son!" she ejaculated, "didn' you bow yo' haid while yo' mammy ast
+de grace?"
+
+Peter was a little confused at his remissness. Then he leaned a little
+forward to explain the sudden glamour which for a moment had
+transfigured the interior of their kitchen. But even as he started to
+speak, he realized that what he meant to say would only confuse his
+mother; therefore he cast about mentally for some other explanation of
+his behavior, but found nothing at hand.
+
+"I hope you ain't forgot yo' 'ligion up at de 'versity, son."
+
+"Oh, no, no, indeed, Mother, but just at that moment, just as you bowed
+your head, you know, it struck me that--that there is something noble in
+our race." That was the best he could put it to her.
+
+"Noble--"
+
+"Yes. You know," he went on a little quickly, "sometimes I--I've thought
+my father must have been a noble man."
+
+The old negress became very still. She was not looking quite at her son,
+or yet precisely away from him.
+
+"Uh--uh noble nigger,"--she gave her abdominal chuckle. "Why--yeah, I
+reckon yo' father wuz putty noble as--as niggers go." She sat looking at
+her son, oddly, with a faint amusement in her gross black face, when a
+careful voice, a very careful voice, sounded in the outer room, gliding
+up politely on the syllables:
+
+"Ahnt Carolin'! oh, Ahnt Carolin', may I enter?"
+
+The old woman stirred.
+
+"Da''s Cissie, Peter. Go ast her in to de fambly-room."
+
+When Siner opened the door, the vague resemblance of the slender, creamy
+girl on the threshold to Ida May again struck him; but Cissie Dildine
+was younger, and her polished black hair lay straight on her pretty
+head, and was done in big, shining puffs over her ears in a way that Ida
+May's unruly curls would never have permitted. Her eyes were the most
+limpid brown Peter had ever seen, but her oval face was faintly
+unnatural from the use of negro face powder, which colored women insist
+on, and which gives their yellows and browns a barely perceptible
+greenish hue. Cissie wore a fluffy yellow dress some three shades deeper
+than the throat and the glimpse of bosom revealed at the neck.
+
+The girl carried a big package in her arms, and now she manipulated this
+to put out a slender hand to Peter.
+
+"This is Cissie Dildine, Mister Siner." She smiled up at him. "I just
+came over to put my name down on your list. There was such a mob at the
+Benevolence Hall last night I couldn't get to you."
+
+The girl had a certain finical precision to her English that told Peter
+she had been away to some school, and had been taught to guard her
+grammar very carefully as she talked.
+
+Peter helped her inside amid the handshake and said he would go fetch
+the list. As he turned, Cissie offered her bundle. "Here is something I
+thought might be a little treat for you and Ahnt Carolin'." She paused,
+and then explained remotely, "Sometimes it is hard to get good things at
+the village market."
+
+Peter took the package, vaguely amused at Cissie's patronage of the
+Hooker's Bend market. It was an attitude instinctively assumed by every
+girl, white or black, who leaves the village and returns. The bundle was
+rather large and wrapped in newspapers. He carried it into the kitchen
+to his mother, and then returned with the list.
+
+The sheet was greasy from the handling of black fingers. The girl spread
+it on the little center-table with a certain daintiness, seated herself,
+and held out her hand for Peter's pencil. She made rather a graceful
+study in cream and yellow as she leaned over the table and signed her
+name in a handwriting as perfect and as devoid of character as a copy-
+book. She began discussing the speech Peter had made at the Benevolence
+Hall.
+
+"I don't know whether I am in favor of your project or not, Mr. Siner,"
+she said as she rose from the table.
+
+"No?" Peter was surprised and amused at her attitude and at her precise
+voice.
+
+"No, I'm rather inclined toward Mr. DuBois's theory of a literary
+culture than toward Mr. Washington's for a purely industrial training."
+
+Peter broke out laughing.
+
+"For the love of Mike, Cissie, you talk like the instructor in Sociology
+B! And haven't we met before somewhere? This 'Mister Siner' stuff--"
+
+The girl's face warmed under its faint, greenish powder.
+
+"If I aren't careful with my language, Peter," she said simply, "I'll be
+talking just as badly as I did before I went to the seminary. You know I
+never hear a proper sentence in Hooker's Bend except my own."
+
+A certain resignation in the girl's soft voice brought Peter a qualm for
+laughing at her. He laid an impulsive hand on her young shoulder.
+
+"Well, that's true, certainly, but it won't always be like that, Cissie.
+More of us go off to school every year. I do hope my school here in
+Hooker's Bend will be of some real value. If I could just show our
+people how badly we fare here, how ill housed, and unsanitary--"
+
+The girl pressed Peter's fingers with a woman's optimism for a man.
+
+"You'll succeed, Peter, I know you will. Some day the name Siner will
+mean the same thing to coloured people as Tanner and Dunbar and
+Braithwaite do. Anyway, I've put my name down for ten dollars to help
+out." She returned the pencil. "I'll have Tump Pack come around and pay
+you my subscription, Peter."
+
+"I'll watch out for Tump," promised Peter in a lightening mood, "--and
+make him pay."
+
+"He'll do it."
+
+"I don't doubt it. You ought to have him under perfect control. I meant
+to tell you what a pretty frock you have on."
+
+The girl dimpled, and dropped him a little curtsy, half ironical and
+wholly graceful.
+
+Peter was charmed.
+
+"Now keep that way, Cissie, smiling and human, not so grammatical. I
+wish I had a brooch."
+
+"A brooch?"
+
+"I'd give it to you. Your dress needs a brooch, an old gold brooch at
+the bosom, just a glint there to balance your eyes."
+
+Cissie flushed happily, and made the feminine movement of concealing the
+V-shaped opening at her throat.
+
+"It's a pleasure to doll up for a man like you, Peter. You see a girl's
+good points--if she has any," she tacked on demurely.
+
+"Oh, just any man--"
+
+"Don't think it! Don't think it!" waved down Cissie, humorously.
+
+"But, Cissie, how is it possible--"
+
+"Just blind." Cissie rippled into a boarding-school laugh. "I could wear
+the whole rue del Opera here in Niggertown, and nobody would ever see it
+but you."
+
+Cissie was moving toward the door. Peter tried to detain her. He enjoyed
+the implication of Tump Pack's stupidity, in their badinage, but she
+would not stay. He was finally reduced to thanking her for her present,
+then stood guard as she tripped out into the grimy street. In the
+sunshine her glossy black hair and canary dress looked as trim and
+brilliant as the plumage of a chaffinch.
+
+Peter Siner walked back into the kitchen with the fixed smile of a man
+who is thinking of a pretty girl. The black dowager in the kitchen
+received him in silence, with her thick lips pouted. When Peter observed
+it, he felt slightly amused at his mother's resentment.
+
+"Well, you sho had a lot o' chatter over signin' a lil ole paper."
+
+"She signed for ten dollars," said Peter, smiling.
+
+"Huh! she'll never pay it."
+
+"Said Tump Pack would pay it."
+
+"Huh!" The old negress dropped the subject, and nodded at a huge double
+pan on the table. "Dat's whut she brung you." She grunted
+disapprovingly.
+
+"And it's for you, too, Mother."
+
+"Ya-as, I 'magine she brung somp'n fuh me."
+
+Peter walked across to the double pans, and saw they held a complete
+dinner--chicken, hot biscuits, cake, pickle, even ice-cream.
+
+The sight of the food brought Peter a realization that he was keenly
+hungry. As a matter of fact, he had not eaten a palatable meal since he
+had been evicted from the white dining-car at Cairo, Illinois. Siner
+served his own and his mother's plate.
+
+The old woman sniffed again.
+
+"Seems to me lak you is mighty onobsarvin' fuh a nigger whut's been off
+to college."
+
+"Anything else?" Peter looked into the pans again.
+
+"Ain't you see whut it's all in?"
+
+"What it's in?"
+
+"Yeah; whut it's in. You heared whut I said."
+
+"What is it in?"
+
+"Why, it's in Miss Arkwright's tukky roaster, dat's whut it's in." The
+old negress drove her point home with an acid accent.
+
+Peter Siner was too loyal to his new friendship with Cissie Dildine to
+allow his mother's jealous suspicions to affect him; nevertheless the
+old woman's observations about the turkey roaster did prevent a complete
+and care-free enjoyment of the meal. Certainly there were other turkey
+roasters in Hooker's Bend than Mrs. Arkwright's. Cissie might very well
+own a roaster. It was absurd to think that Cissie, in the midst of her
+almost pathetic struggle to break away from the uncouthness of
+Niggertown, would stoop to--Even in his thoughts Peter avoided
+nominating the charge.
+
+And then, somehow, his memory fished up the fact that years ago Ida May,
+according to village rumor, was "light-fingered." At that time in
+Peter's life "light-fingeredness" carried with it no opprobrium
+whatever. It was simply a fact about Ida May, as were her sloe eyes and
+curling black hair. His reflections renewed his perpetual sense of
+queerness and strangeness that hall-marked every phase of Niggertown
+life since his return from the North.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+Cissie Dildine's contribution tailed out the one hundred dollars that
+Peter needed, and after he had finished his meal, the mulatto set out
+across the Big Hill for the white section of the village, to complete
+his trade.
+
+It was Peter's program to go to the Planter's Bank, pay down his
+hundred, and receive a deed from one Elias Tomwit, which the bank held
+in escrow. Two or three days before Peter had tried to borrow the
+initial hundred from the bank, but the cashier, Henry Hooker, after
+going into the transaction, had declined the loan, and therefore Siner
+had been forced to await a meeting of the Sons and Daughters of
+Benevolence. At this meeting the subscription had gone through promptly.
+The land the negroes purposed to purchase for an industrial school was a
+timbered tract tying southeast of Hooker's Bend on the head-waters of
+Ross Creek. A purchase price of eight hundred dollars had been agreed
+upon. The timber on the tract, sold on the stump, would bring almost
+that amount. It was Siner's plan to commandeer free labor in Niggertown,
+work off the timber, and have enough money to build the first unit of
+his school. A number of negro men already had subscribed a certain
+number of days' work in the timber. It was a modest and entirely
+practical program, and Peter felt set up over it.
+
+The brown man turned briskly out into the hot afternoon sunshine, down
+the mean semicircular street, where piccaninnies were kicking up clouds
+of dust. He hurried through the dusty area, and presently turned off a
+by-path that led over the hill, through a glade of cedars, to the white
+village.
+
+The glade was gloomy, but warm, for the shade of cedars somehow seems to
+hold heat. A carpet of needles hushed Siner's footfalls and spread a
+Sabbatical silence through the grove. The upward path was not smooth,
+but was broken with outcrops of the same reddish limestone that marks
+the whole stretch of the Tennessee River. Here and there in the grove
+were circles eight or ten feet in diameter, brushed perfectly clean of
+all needles and pebbles and twigs. These places were crap-shooters'
+circles, where black and white men squatted to shoot dice.
+
+Under the big stones on the hillside, Peter knew, was cached illicit
+whisky, and at night the boot-leggers carried on a brisk trade among the
+gamblers. More than that, the glade on the Big Hill was used for still
+more demoralizing ends. It became a squalid grove of Ashtoreth; but now,
+in the autumn evening, all the petty obscenities of white and black
+sloughed away amid the religious implications of the dark-green aisles.
+
+The sight of a white boy sitting on an outcrop of limestone with a strap
+of school-books dropped at his feet rather surprised Peter. The negro
+looked at the hobbledehoy for several seconds before he recognized in
+the lanky youth a little Arkwright boy whom he had known and played with
+in his pre-college days. Now there was such an exaggerated wistfulness
+in young Arkwright's attitude that Peter was amused.
+
+"Hello, Sam," he called. "What you doing out here?"
+
+The Arkwright boy turned with a start.
+
+"Aw, is that you, Siner?" Before the negro could reply, he added: "Was
+you on the Harvard football team, Siner? Guess the white fellers have a
+pretty gay time in Harvard, don't they, Siner? Geemenettie! but I git
+tired o' this dern town! D' reckon I could make the football team? Looks
+like I could if a nigger like you could, Siner."
+
+None of this juvenile outbreak of questions required answers. Peter
+stood looking at the hobbledehoy without smiling.
+
+"Aren't you going to school?" he asked.
+
+Arkwright shrugged.
+
+"Aw, hell!" he said self-consciously. "We got marched down to the
+protracted meetin' while ago--whole school did. My seat happened to be
+close to a window. When they all stood up to sing, I crawled out and
+skipped. Don't mention that, Siner."
+
+"I won't."
+
+"When a fellow goes to college he don't git marched to preachin', does
+he, Siner?"
+
+"I never did."
+
+"We-e-ll," mused young Sam, doubtfully, "you're a nigger."
+
+"I never saw any white men marched in, either."
+
+"Oh, hell! I wish I was in college."
+
+"What are you sitting out here thinking about?" inquired Peter of the
+ingenuous youngster.
+
+"Oh--football and--women and God and--how to stack cards. You think
+about ever'thing, in the woods. Damn it! I got to git out o' this little
+jay town. D' reckon I could git in the navy, Siner?"
+
+"Don't see why you couldn't, Sam. Have you seen Tump Pack anywhere?"
+
+"Yeah; on Hobbett's corner. Say, is Cissie Dildine at home?"
+
+"I believe she is."
+
+"She cooks for us," explained young Arkwright, "and Mammy wants her to
+come and git supper, too."
+
+The phrase "get supper, too," referred to the custom in the white homes
+of Hooker's Bend of having only two meals cooked a day, breakfast and
+the twelve-o'clock dinner, with a hot supper optional with the mistress.
+
+Peter nodded, and passed on up the path, leaving young Arkwright seated
+on the ledge of rock, a prey to all the boiling, erratic impulses of
+adolescence. The negro sensed some of the innumerable difficulties of
+this white boy's life, and once, as he walked on over the silent
+needles, he felt an impulse to turn back and talk to young Sam
+Arkwright, to sit down and try to explain to the youth what he could of
+this hazardous adventure called Life. But then, he reflected, very
+likely the boy would be offended at a serious talk from a negro. Also,
+he thought that young Arkwright, being white, was really not within the
+sphere of his ministry. He, Peter Siner, was a worker in the black world
+of the South. He was part of the black world which the white South was
+so meticulous to hide away, to keep out of sight and out of thought.
+
+A certain vague sense of triumph trickled through some obscure corner of
+Peter's mind. It was so subtle that Peter himself would have been the
+first, in all good faith, to deny it and to affirm that all his motives
+were altruistic. Once he looked back through the cedars. He could still
+see the boy hunched over, chin in fist, staring at the mat of needles.
+
+As Peter turned the brow of the Big Hill, he saw at its eastern foot the
+village church, a plain brick building with a decaying spire. Its side
+was perforated by four tall arched windows. Each was a memorial window
+of stained glass, which gave the building a black look from the outside.
+As Peter walked down the hill toward the church he heard the and
+somewhat nasal singing of uncultivated voices mingled with the snoring
+of a reed organ.
+
+When he reached Main Street, Peter found the whole business portion
+virtually deserted. All the stores were closed, and in every show-window
+stood a printed notice that no business would be transacted between the
+hours of two and three o'clock in the afternoon during the two weeks of
+revival then in progress. Beside this notice stood another card, giving
+the minister's text for the current day. On this particular day it read:
+
+
+                        GO YE INTO ALL THE WORLD
+
+                 Come hear Rev. E.B. Blackwater's great
+                         Missionary Address on
+
+                         CHRISTIANIZING AFRICA
+
+                  ELOQUENT, PROFOUND, HEART-SEARCHING.
+                        ILLUSTRATED WITH SLIDES.
+
+
+Half a dozen negroes lounged in the sunshine on Hobbett's corner as
+Peter came up. They were amusing themselves after the fashion of blacks,
+with mock fights, feints, sudden wrestlings. They would seize one
+another by the head and grind their knuckles into one another's wool.
+Occasionally, one would leap up and fall into one of those grotesque
+shuffles called "breakdowns." It all held a certain rawness, an
+irrepressible juvenility.
+
+As Peter came up, Tump Pack detached himself from the group and gave a
+pantomime of thrusting. He was clearly reproducing the action which had
+won for him his military medal. Then suddenly he fell down in the dust
+and writhed. He was mimicking with a ghastly realism the death-throes of
+his four victims. His audience howled with mirth at this dumb show of
+the bayonet-fight and of killing four men. Tump himself got up out of
+the dust with tears of laughter in his eyes. Peter caught the end of his
+sentence, "Sho put it to 'em, black boy. Fo' white men--"
+
+His audience roared again, swayed around, and pounded one another in an
+excess of mirth.
+
+Siner shouted from across the street two or three times before he caught
+Tump's attention. The ex-soldier looked around, sobered abruptly.
+
+"Whut-chu want, nigger?" His inquiry was not over-cordial.
+
+Peter nodded him across the street.
+
+The heavily built black in khaki hesitated a moment, then started across
+the street with the dragging feet of a reluctant negro. Peter looked at
+him as he came up.
+
+"What's the matter, Tump?" he asked playfully.
+
+"Ain't nothin' matter wid me, nigger." Peter made a guess at Tump's
+surliness.
+
+"Look here, are you puffed up because Cissie Dildine struck you for a
+ten?"
+
+Tump's expression changed.
+
+"Is she struck me fuh a ten?"
+
+"Yes; on that school subscription."
+
+"Is dat whut you two niggers wuz a-talkin' 'bout over thaiuh in yo'
+house?"
+
+"Exactly." Peter showed the list, with Cissie's name on it. "She told me
+to collect from you."
+
+Tump brightened up.
+
+"So dat wuz whut you two niggers wuz a-talkin' 'bout over at yo' house."
+He ran a fist down into his khaki, and drew out three or four one-dollar
+bills and about a pint of small change. It was the usual crap-shooter's
+offering. The two negroes sat down on the ramshackle porch of an old
+jeweler's shop, and Tump began a complicated tally of ten dollars.
+
+By the time he had his dimes, quarters, and nickels in separate stacks,
+services in the village church were finished, and the congregation came
+filing up the street. First came the school-children, running and
+chattering and swinging their books by the straps; then the business men
+of the hamlet, rather uncomfortable in coats and collars, hurrying back
+to their stores; finally came the women, surrounding the preacher.
+
+Tump and Peter walked on up to the entrance of the Planter's Bank and
+there awaited Mr. Henry Hooker, the cashier. Presently a skinny man
+detached himself from the church crowd and came angling across the dirty
+street toward the bank. Mr. Hooker wore somewhat shabby clothes for a
+banker; in fact, he never could recover from certain personal habits
+formed during a penurious boyhood. He had a thin hatchet face which just
+at this moment was shining though from some inward glow. Although he was
+an unhandsome little man, his expression was that of one at peace with
+man and God and was pleasant to see. He had been so excited by the
+minister that he was constrained to say something even to two negroes.
+So as he unlocked the little one-story bank, he told Tump and Peter that
+he had been listening to a man who was truly a man of God. He said
+Blackwater could touch the hardest heart, and, sure enough, Mr. Hooker's
+rather popped and narrow-set eyes looked as though he had been crying.
+
+All this encomium was given in a high, cracked voice as the cashier
+opened the door and turned the negroes into the bank. Tump, who stood
+with his hat off, listening to all the cashier had to say, said he
+thought so, too.
+
+The shabby interior of the little bank, the shabby little banker,
+renewed that sense of disillusion that pervaded Peter's home-coming. In
+Boston the mulatto had done his slight banking business in a white
+marble structure with tellers of machine-like briskness and neatness.
+
+Mr. Hooker strolled around into his grill-cage; when he was thoroughly
+ensconced he began business in his high voice:
+
+"You came to see me about that land, Peter?"
+
+Yes, sir."
+
+"Sorry to tell you, Peter, you are not back in time to get the Tomwit
+place."
+
+Peter came out of his musing over the Boston banks with a sense of
+bewilderment.
+
+"How's that? why, I bought that land--"
+
+"But you paid nothing for your option, Siner."
+
+"I had a clear-cut understanding with Mr. Tomwit--"
+
+Mr. Hooker smiled a smile that brought out sharp wrinkles around the
+thin nose on his thin face.
+
+"You should have paid him an earnest, Siner, if you wanted to bind your
+trade. You colored folks are always stumbling over the law."
+
+Peter stared through the grating, not knowing what to do.
+
+"I'll go see Mr. Tomwit," he said, and started uncertainly for the door.
+
+The cashier's falsetto stopped him:
+
+"No use, Peter. Mr. Tomwit surprised me, too, but no use talking about
+it. I didn't like to see such an important thing as the education of our
+colored people held up, myself. I've been thinking about it."
+
+"Especially when I had made a fair square trade," put in Peter, warmly.
+
+"Exactly," squeaked the cashier. "And rather than let your project be
+delayed, I'm going to offer you the old Dillihay place at exactly the
+same price, Peter--eight hundred."
+
+"The Dillihay place?"
+
+"Yes; that's west of town; it's bigger by twenty acres than old man
+Tomwit's place."
+
+Peter considered the proposition.
+
+"I'll have to carry this before the Sons and Daughters of Benevolence,
+Mr. Hooker."
+
+The cashier repeated the smile that bracketed his thin nose in wrinkles.
+
+"That's with you, but you know what you say goes with the niggers here
+in town, and, besides, I won't promise how long I'll hold the Dillihay
+place. Real estate is brisk around here now. I didn't want to delay a
+good work on account of not having a location." Mr. Hooker turned away
+to a big ledger on a breast-high desk, and apparently was about to
+settle himself to the endless routine of bank work.
+
+Peter knew the Dillihay place well. It lacked the timber of the other
+tract; still, it was fairly desirable. He hesitated before the tarnished
+grill.
+
+"What do you think about it, Tump?"
+
+"You won't make a mistake in buying," answered the high voice of Mr.
+Hooker at his ledger.
+
+"I don' think you'll make no mistake in buyin', Peter," repeated Tump's
+bass.
+
+Peter turned back a little uncertainly, and asked how long it would take
+to fix the new deed. He had a notion of making a flying canvass of the
+officers of the Sons and Daughters in the interim. He was surprised to
+find that Mr. Hooker already had the deed and the notes ready to sign,
+in anticipation of Peter's desires. Here the banker brought out the set
+of papers.
+
+"I'll take it," decided Peter; "and if the lodge doesn't want it, I'll
+keep the place myself."
+
+"I like to deal with a man of decision," piped the cashier, a wrinkled
+smile on his sharp face.
+
+Peter pushed in his bag of collections, then Mr. Hooker signed the deed,
+and Peter signed the land notes. They exchanged the instruments. Peter
+received the crisp deed, bound in blue manuscript cover. It rattled
+unctuously. To Peter it was his first step toward a second Tuskegee.
+
+The two negroes walked out of the Planter's Bank filled with a sense of
+well-doing. Tump Pack was openly proud of having been connected, even in
+a casual way, with the purchase. As he walked down the steps, he turned
+to Peter.
+
+"Don' reckon nobody could git a deed off on you wid stoppers in it, does
+you?"
+
+"We don't know any such word as 'stop,' Tump," declared Peter, gaily.
+
+For Peter was gay. The whole incident at the bank was beginning to
+please him. The meeting of a sudden difficulty, his quick decision--it
+held the quality of leadership. Napoleon had it.
+
+The two colored men stepped briskly through the afternoon sunshine along
+the mean village street. Here and there in front of their doorways sat
+the merchants yawning and talking, or watching pigs root in the piles of
+waste.
+
+In Peter's heart came a wonderful thought. He would make his industrial
+institution such a model of neatness that the whole village of Hooker's
+Bend would catch the spirit. The white people should see that something
+clean and uplifting could come out of Niggertown. The two races ought to
+live for a mutual benefit. It was a fine, generous thought. For some
+reason, just then, there flickered through Peter's mind a picture of the
+Arkwright boy sitting hunched over in the cedar glade, staring at the
+needles.
+
+All this musing was brushed away by the sight of old Mr. Tomwit crossing
+the street from the east side to the livery-stable on the west. That
+human desire of wanting the person who has wronged you to know that you
+know your injury moved Peter to hurry his steps and to speak to the old
+gentleman.
+
+Mr. Tomwit had been a Confederate cavalryman in the Civil War, and there
+was still a faint breeze and horsiness about him. He was a hammered-down
+old gentleman, with hair thin but still jet-black, a seamed, sunburned
+face, and a flattened nose. His voice was always a friendly roar. Now,
+when he saw Peter turning across the street to meet him, he halted and
+called out at once:
+
+"Now Peter, I know what's the matter with you. I didn't do you right."
+
+Peter went closer, not caring to take the whole village into his
+confidence.
+
+"How came you to turn down my proposition, Mr. Tomwit," he asked, "after
+we had agreed and drawn up the papers?"
+
+"We-e-ell, I had to do it, Peter," explained the old man, loudly.
+
+"Why, Mr. Tomwit?"
+
+"A white neighbor wanted me to, Peter," boomed the cavalryman.
+
+"Who, Mr. Tomwit?"
+
+"Henry Hooker talked me into it, Peter. It was a mean trick, Peter. I
+done you wrong." He stood nodding his head and rubbing his flattened
+nose in an impersonal manner. "Yes, I done you wrong, Peter," he
+acknowledged loudly, and looked frankly into Peter's eyes.
+
+The negro was immensely surprised that Henry Hooker had done such a
+thing. A thought came that perhaps some other Henry Hooker had moved
+into town in his absence.
+
+"You don't mean the cashier of the bank?"
+
+Old Mr. Tomwit drew out a plug of Black Mule tobacco, set some gapped,
+discolored teeth into corner, nodded at Peter silently, at the same time
+utilizing the nod to tear off a large quid. He rolled tin about with his
+tongue and after a few moments adjusted it so that he could speak.
+
+"Yeah," he proceeded in a muffled tone, "they ain't but one Henry
+Hooker; he is the one and only Henry. He said if I sold you my land,
+you'd put up a nigger school and bring in so many blackbirds you'd run
+me clean off my farm. He said it'd ruin the whole town, a nigger school
+would."
+
+Peter was astonished.
+
+"Why, he didn't talk that way to me!"
+
+"Natchelly, natchelly," agreed the old cavalryman, dryly.--"Henry has a
+different way to talk to ever' man, Peter."
+
+"In fact," proceeded Peter, "Mr. Hooker sold me the old Dillihay place
+in lieu of the deal I missed with you."
+
+Old Mr. Tomwit moved his quid in surprise.
+
+"The hell he did!"
+
+"That at least shows he doesn't think a negro school would ruin the
+value of his land. He owns farms all around the Dillihay place."
+
+Old Mr. Tomwit turned his quid over twice and spat thoughtfully.
+
+"That your deed in your pocket?" With the air of a man certain of being
+obeyed he held out his hand for the blue manuscript cover protruding
+from the mulatto's pocket. Peter handed it over. The old gentleman
+unfolded the deed, then moved it carefully to and from his eyes until
+the typewriting was adjusted to his focus. He read it slowly, with a
+movement of his lips and a drooling of tobacco-juice. Finally he
+finished, remarked, "I be damned!" in a deliberate voice, returned the
+deed, and proceeded across the street to the livery-stable, which was
+fronted by an old mulberry-tree, with several chairs under it. In one of
+these chairs he would sit for the remainder of the day, making an
+occasional loud remark about the weather or the crops, and watching the
+horses pass in and out of the stable.
+
+Siner had vaguely enjoyed old Mr. Tomwit's discomfiture over the deed,
+if it was discomfiture that had moved the old gentleman to his
+sententious profanity. But the negro did not understand Henry Hooker's
+action at all. The banker had abused his position of trust as holder of
+a deed in escrow snapping up the sale himself; then he had sold Peter
+the Dillihay place. It was a queer shift.
+
+Tump Pack caught his principal's mood with that chameleon-like mental
+quality all negroes possess.
+
+"Dat Henry Hooker," criticized Tump, "allus was a lil ole dried-up snake
+in de grass."
+
+"He abused his position of trust," said Peter, gloomily; "I must say,
+his motives seem very obscure to me."
+
+"Dat sho am a fine way to put hit," said Tump, admiringly.
+
+"Why do you suppose he bought in the Tomwit tract and sold me the
+Dillihay place?"
+
+Asked for an opinion, Tump began twiddling military medal and corrugated
+the skin on his inch-high brow.
+
+"Now you puts it to me lak dat, Peter," he answered with importance, "I
+wonders ef dat gimlet-haided white man ain't put some stoppers in dat
+deed he guv you. He mout of."
+
+Such remarks as that from Tump always annoyed Peter. Tump's intellectual
+method was to talk sense just long enough to gain his companion's ear,
+and then produce something absurd and quash the tentative interest.
+
+Siner turned away from him and said, "Piffle."
+
+Tump was defensive at once.
+
+"'T ain't piffle, either! I's talkin' sense, nigger."
+
+Peter shrugged, and walked a little way in silence, but the soldier's
+nonsense stuck in his brain and worried him. Finally he turned, rather
+irritably.
+
+"Stoppers--what do you mean by stoppers?"
+
+Tump opened his jet eyes and their yellowish whites. "I means nigger-
+stoppers," he reiterated, amazed in his turn.
+
+"Negro-stoppers--" Peter began to laugh sardonically, and abruptly quit
+the conversation.
+
+Such rank superiority irritated the soldier to the nth power.
+
+"Look heah, black man, I knows I _is_ right. Heah, lonme look at
+dat-aiuh, deed. Maybe I can find 'em. I knows I suttinly is right."
+
+Peter walked on, paying no attention to the request Until Tump caught
+his arm and drew him up short.
+
+"Look heah, nigger," said Tump, in a different tone, "I faded dad deed
+fuh ten iron men, an' I reckon I got a once-over comin' fuh my money."
+
+The soldier was plainly mobilized and ready to attack. To fight Tump, to
+fight any negro at all, would be Peter's undoing; it would forfeit the
+moral leadership he hoped to gain. Moreover, he had no valid grounds for
+a disagreement with Tump. He passed over the deed, and the two negroes
+moved on their way to Niggertown.
+
+Tump trudged forward with eyes glued to paper, his face puckered in the
+unaccustomed labor of reading.
+
+His thick lips moved at the individual letters, and constructed them
+bunglingly into syllables and words. He was trying to uncover the verbal
+camouflage by which the astute white brushed away all rights of all
+black men whatsoever.
+
+To Peter there grew up something sadly comical in Tump's efforts. The
+big negro might well typify all the colored folk of the South,
+struggling in a web of law and custom they did not understand,
+misplacing their suspicions, befogged and fearful. A certain penitence
+for having been irritated at Tump softened Peter.
+
+"That's all right, Tump; there's nothing to find."
+
+At that moment the soldier began to bob his head.
+
+"Eh! eh! eh! W-wait a minute!" he stammered. "Whut dis? B'lieve I done
+foun' it! I sho is! Heah she am! Heah's dis nigger-stopper, jes lak I
+tol' you!" Tump marked a sentence in the guaranty of the deed with a
+rusty forefinger and looked up at Peter in mixed triumph and accusation.
+
+Peter leaned over the deed, amused.
+
+"Let's see your mare's nest."
+
+"Well, she 'fo' God is thaiuh, an' you sho let loose a hundud dollars uv
+our 'ciety's money, an' got nothin' fuh hit but a piece o' paper wid a
+nigger-stopper on hit!"
+
+Tump's voice was so charged with contempt that Peter looked with a
+certain uneasiness at his find. He read this sentence switched into the
+guaranty of the indenture:
+
+
+"Be it further understood and agreed that no negro, black man, Afro-
+American, mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, or any person whatsoever of
+colored blood or lineage, shall enter upon, seize, hold, occupy, reside
+upon, till, cultivate, own or possess any part or parcel of said
+property, or garner, cut, or harvest therefrom, any of the usufruct,
+timber, or emblements thereof, but shall by these presents be estopped
+from so doing forever."
+
+
+Tump Pack drew a shaken, unhappy breath.
+
+"Now, I reckon you see whut a nigger-stopper is."
+
+Peter stood in the sunshine, looking at the estoppel clause, his lips
+agape. Twice he read it over. It held something of the quality of those
+comprehensive curses that occur in the Old Testament. He moistened his
+lips and looked at Tump.
+
+"Why that can't be legal." His voice sounded empty and shallow.
+
+"Legal! 'Fo' Gawd, nigger, whauh you been to school all dese yeahs,
+never to heah uv a nigger-stopper befo'!"
+
+"But--but how can a stroke of the pen, a mere gesture, estop a whole
+class of American citizens forever?" cried Peter, with a rising voice.
+"Turn it around. Suppose they had put in a line that no white man should
+own that land. It--it's empty! I tell you, it's mere words!"
+
+Tump cut into his diatribe: "No use talkin' lak dat. Our 'ciety thought
+you wuz a aidjucated nigger. We didn't think no white man could put
+nothin' over on you."
+
+"Education!" snapped Siner. "Education isn't supposed to keep you away
+from shysters!"
+
+"Keep you away fum 'em!" cried Tump, in a scandalized voice. "'Fo' Gawd,
+nigger, you don' know nothin'! O' co'se a aidjucation ain't to keep you
+away fum shysters; hit's to mek you one 'uv 'em!"
+
+Peter stood breathing irregularly, looking at his deed. A determination
+not to be cheated grew up and hardened in his nerves. With unsteady
+hands he refolded his deed and put it into his pocket, then he turned
+about and started back up the village street toward the bank.
+
+Tump stared after him a moment and presently called out:
+
+"Heah, nigger, whut you gwine do?" A moment later he repeated to his
+friend's back: "Look heah, nigger, I 'vise you ag'inst anything you's
+gwine do, less'n you's ready to pass in you' checks!" As Peter strode on
+he lifted his voice still higher: "Peter! Hey, Peter, I sho' 'vise you
+'g'inst anything you's 'gwine do!"
+
+A pulse throbbed in Siner's temples. The wrath of the cozened heated his
+body. His clothes felt hot. As he strode up the trash-piled street, the
+white merchants lolling in their doors began smiling. Presently a laugh
+broke out at one end of the street and was caught up here and there. It
+was the undying minstrel jest, the comedy of a black face. Dawson Bobbs
+leaned against the wide brick entrance of the livery-stable, his red
+face balled into shining convexities by a quizzical smile.
+
+"Hey, Peter," he drawled, winking at old Mr. Tomwit, "been investin' in
+real estate?" and broke into Homeric laughter.
+
+As Peter passed on, the constable dropped casually in behind the brown
+man and followed him up to the bank.
+
+To Peter Siner the walk up to the bank was an emotional confusion. He
+has a dim consciousness that voices said things to him along the way and
+that there was laughter. All this was drowned by desperate thoughts and
+futile plans to regain his lost money, flashing through his head. The
+cashier would exchange the money for the deed; he would enter suit and
+carry it to the Supreme Court; he would show the money had not been his,
+he had had no right to buy; he would beg the cashier. His head seemed to
+spin around and around.
+
+He climbed the steps into the Planter's Bank and opened the screen-door.
+The cashier glanced up briefly, but continued busily at his ledger.
+
+Peter walked shakenly to the barred window in the grill.
+
+"Mr. Hooker."
+
+"Very busy now, Peter," came the high voice.
+
+"I want to know about this deed."
+
+The banker was nimbly setting down long rows of figures. "No time to
+explain deeds, Peter."
+
+"But--but there is a clause in this deed, Mr. Hooter, estopping colored
+persons from occupying the Dillihay place."
+
+"Precisely. What about it?" Mr. Hooker snapped out his inquiry and
+looked up suddenly, catching Peter full in the face with his narrow-set
+eyes. It was the equivalent of a blow.
+
+"According to this, I--I can't establish a school on it."
+
+"You cannot."
+
+"Then what can I do with it?" cried Peter.
+
+"Sell it. You have what lawyers call a cloud on the title. Sell it. I'll
+give you ten dollars for your right in it, just to clear up my title."
+
+A queer trembling seized Peter. The little banker turned to a fantastic
+caricature of a man. His hatchet face, close-set eyes, harsh, straight
+hair, and squeaky voice made him seem like some prickly, dried-up gnome
+a man sees in a fever.
+
+At that moment the little wicket-door of the window opened under the
+pressure of Peter's shoulder. Inside on the desk, lay neat piles of
+bills of all denominations, ready to be placed in the vault. In a
+nervous tremor Peter dropped in his blue-covered deed and picked up a
+hundred-dollar bill.
+
+"I--I won't trade," he jibbered. "It--it wasn't my money. Here's your
+deed!" Peter was moving away. He felt a terrific impulse to run, but he
+walked.
+
+The banker straightened abruptly. "Stop there, Peter!" he screeched.
+
+At that moment Dawson Bobbs lounged in at the door, with his perpetual
+grin balling up his broad red face. He had a toothpick, in his mouth.
+
+"'S matter?" he asked casually.
+
+"Peter there," said the banker, with a pale, sharp face, "doesn't want
+to stick to his trade. He is just walking off with one of my hundred-
+dollar bills."
+
+"Sick o' yo' deal, Peter?" inquired Bobbs, smiling and shifting the
+toothpick. He bit down on it. "Well, whut-chu want done, Henry?"
+
+"Oh," hesitated the cashier in a quandary, "nothing, I suppose. Siner
+was excited; you know how niggers are. We can't afford to send every
+nigger to the pen that breaks the law." He stood studying Peter out of
+his close-set eyes. "Here's your deed, Peter." He shoved it back under
+the grill. "And lemme give you a little friendly advice. I'd just run an
+ordinary nigger school if I was you. This higher education don't seem to
+make a nigger much smarter when he comes back than when he starts out."
+A faint smile bracketed the thin nose.
+
+Dawson Bobbs roared with sudden appreciation, took the bill from Peter's
+fingers, and pushed it back under the grill.
+
+The cashier picked up the money, casually. He considered a moment, then
+reached for a long envelop. As he did so, the incident with Peter
+evidently passed from his mind, for his hatchet face lighted up as with
+some inward illumination.
+
+"Bobbs," he said warmly, "that was a great sermon Brother Blackwater
+preached. It made me want to help according as the Lord has blessed me.
+Couldn't you spare five dollars, Bobbs, to go along with this?"
+
+The constable tried to laugh and wriggle away, but the cashier's gimlet
+eyes kept boring him, and eventually he fished out a five-dollar bill
+and handed it in. Mr. Hooker placed the two bills in the envelop, sealed
+it, and handed it to the constable.
+
+"Jest drop that in the post-office as you go down the street, Bobbs," he
+directed in his high voice. Peter caught a glimpse of the type-written
+address.
+
+It was
+
+  Rev. Lemuel Hardiman,
+    c/o United Missions,
+      Katuako Post,
+        Bahr el Ghazal,
+          Sudan,
+            East Africa.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER III
+
+
+The white population of Hooker's Bend was much amused and gratified at
+the outcome of the Hooker-Siner land deal. Every one agreed that the
+cashier's chicanery was a droll and highly original turn to give to a
+negro exclusion clause drawn into a deed. Then, too, it involved several
+legal points highly congenial to the Hooker's Bend intellect Could the
+Sons and Daughters of Benevolence recover their hundred dollars? Could
+Henry Hooker force them to pay the remaining seven hundred? Could not
+Siner establish his school on the Dillihay place regardless of the
+clause, since the cashier would be estopped from obtaining an injunction
+by his own instrument?
+
+As a matter of fact, the Sons and Daughters of Benevolence sent a
+committee to wait on Mr. Hooker to see what action he meant to take on
+the notes that paid for his spurious deed. This brought another harvest
+of rumors. Street gossip reported that Henry had compromised for this,
+that, and the other amount, that he would not compromise, that he had
+persuaded the fool niggers into signing still other instruments. Peter
+never knew the truth. He was not on the committee.
+
+But high above the legal phase of interest lay the warming fact that
+Peter Siner, a negro graduate of Harvard, on his first tilt in Hooker's
+Bend affairs had ridden to a fall. This pleased even the village women,
+whose minds could not follow the subtle trickeries of legal disputation.
+The whole affair simply proved what the white village had known all
+along: you can't educate a nigger. Hooker's Bend warmed with pleasure
+that half of its population was ineducable.
+
+White sentiment in Hooker's Bend reacted strongly on Niggertown. Peter
+Siner's prestige was no more. The cause of higher education for negroes
+took a mighty slump. Junius Gholston, a negro boy who had intended to go
+to Nashville to attend Fisk University, reconsidered the matter, packed
+away his good clothes, put on overalls, and shipped down the river as a
+roustabout instead.
+
+In the Siner cabin old Caroline Siner berated her boy for his stupidity
+in ever trading with that low-down, twisting snake in the grass, Henry
+Hooker. She alternated this with floods of tears. Caroline had no
+sympathy for her offspring. She said she had thrown away years of self-
+sacrifice, years of washing, a thousand little comforts her money would
+have bought, all for nothing, for less than nothing, to ship a fool
+nigger up North and to ship him back.
+
+Of all Niggertown, Caroline was the most unforgiving because Peter had
+wounded her in her pride. Every other negro in the village felt that
+genial satisfaction in a great man's downfall that is balm to small
+souls. But the old mother knew not this consolation. Peter was her
+proxy. It was she who had fallen.
+
+The only person in Niggertown who continued amiable to Peter Siner was
+Cissie Dildine. The octoroon, perhaps, had other criteria by which to
+judge a man than his success or mishaps dealing with a pettifogger.
+
+Two or three days after the catastrophe, Cissie made an excursion to the
+Siner cabin with a plate of cookies. Cissie was careful to place her
+visit on exactly a normal footing. She brought her little cakes in the
+role of one who saw no evil, spoke no evil, and heard no evil. But
+somehow Cissie's visit increased the old woman's wrath. She remained
+obstinately in the kitchen, and made remarks not only audible, but
+arresting, through the thin partition that separated it from the poor
+living-room.
+
+Cissie was hardly inside when a voice stated that it hated to see a gal
+running after a man, trying to bait him with a lot of fum-diddles.
+
+Cissie gave Peter a single wide-eyed glance, and then attempted to
+ignore the bodiless comment.
+
+"Here are some cookies, Mr. Siner," began the girl, rather nervously. "I
+thought you and Ahnt Carolin'--"
+
+"Yeah, I 'magine dey's fuh me!" jeered the spectral voice.
+
+"Might like them," concluded the girl, with a little gasp.
+
+"I suttinly don' want no light-fingered hussy ma'yin' my son," proceeded
+the voice, "an' de whole Dildine fambly 'll bear watchin'."
+
+[Illustration: In the Siner cabin old Caroline Siner berated her boy.]
+
+"Won't you have a seat?" asked Peter, exquisitely uncomfortable.
+
+Cissie handed him her plate in confusion.
+
+"Why, no, Mr. Siner," she hastened on, in her careful grammar, "I just--
+ran over to--"
+
+"To fling herse'f in a nigger's face 'cause he's been North and got
+made a fool uv," boomed the hidden censor.
+
+"I must go now," gasped Cissie.
+
+Peter made a harried gesture.
+
+"Wait--wait till I get my hat."
+
+He put the plate down with a swift glance around for his hat. He found
+it, and strode to the door, following the girl. The two hurried out into
+the street, followed by indistinct strictures from the kitchen. Cissie
+breathed fast, with open lips. They moved rapidly along the semicircular
+street almost with a sense of flight. The heat of the early autumn sun
+stung them through their clothes. For some distance they walked in a
+nervous silence, then Cissie said:
+
+"Your mother certainly hates me, Peter."
+
+"No," said Peter, trying to soften the situation; "it's me; she's
+terribly hurt about--" he nodded to-ward the white section--"that
+business."
+
+Cissie opened her clear brown eyes.
+
+"Your own mother turned against you!"
+
+"Oh, she has a right to be," began Peter, defensively. "I ought to have
+read that deed. It's amazing I didn't, but I--I really wasn't expecting
+a trick, Mr. Hooker seemed so--so sympathetic--" He came to a lame halt,
+staring at the dust through which they picked their way.
+
+"Of course you weren't expecting tricks!" cried Cissie, warmly. "The
+whole thing shows you're a gentleman used to dealing with gentlemen. But
+of course these Hooker's Bend negroes will never see that!"
+
+Peter, surprised and grateful, looked at Cissie. Her construction of the
+swindle was more flattering than any apology he had been able to frame
+for himself.
+
+"Still, Cissie, I ought to have used the greatest care--"
+
+"I'm not talking about what you 'ought,'" stated the octoroon, crisply;
+"I'm talking about what you are. When it comes to 'ought,' we colored
+people must get what we can, any way we can. We fight from the bottom."
+The speech held a viperish quality which for a moment caught the brown
+man's attention; then he said:
+
+"One thing is sure, I've lost my prestige, whatever it was worth."
+
+The girl nodded slowly.
+
+"With the others you have, I suppose."
+
+Peter glanced at Cissie. The temptation was strong to give the
+conversation a personal turn, but he continued on the general topic:
+
+"Well, perhaps it's just as well. My prestige was a bit too flamboyant,
+Cissie. All I had to do was to mention a plan. The Sons and Daughters
+didn't even discuss it. They put it right through. That wasn't healthy.
+Our whole system of society, all democracies are based on discussion.
+Our old Witenagemot--"
+
+"But it wasn't _our_ old Witenagemot," said the girl.
+
+"Well--no," admitted the mulatto, "that's true."
+
+They moved along for some distance in silence, when the girl asked:
+
+"What are you going to do now, Peter?"
+
+"Teach, and keep working for that training-school," stated Peter, almost
+belligerently. "You didn't expect a little thing like a hundred dollars
+to stop me, did you?"
+
+"No-o-o," conceded Cissie, with some reserve of judgment in her tone.
+Presently she added, "You could do a lot better up North, Peter."
+
+"For whom?"
+
+"Why, yourself," said the girl, a little surprised.
+
+Siner nodded.
+
+"I thought all that out before I came back here, Cissie. A friend of
+mine named Farquhar offered me a place with him up in Chicago,--a string
+of garages. You'd like Farquhar, Cissie. He's a materialist with an
+absolutely inexorable brain. He mechanizes the universe. I told him I
+couldn't take his offer. 'It's like this,' I argued: 'if every negro
+with a little ability leaves the South, our people down there will never
+progress.' It's really that way, Cissie, it takes a certain mental
+atmosphere to develop a people as a whole. A few individuals here and
+there may have the strength to spring up by themselves, but the run of
+the people--no. I believe one of the greatest curses of the colored race
+in the South is the continual draining of its best individuals North.
+Farquhar argued--" just then Peter saw that Cissie was not attending his
+discourse. She was walking at his side in a respectful silence. He
+stopped talking, and presently she smiled and said:
+
+"You haven't noticed my new brooch, Peter." She lifted her hand to her
+bosom, and twisted the face of the trinket toward him. "You oughtn't to
+have made me show it to you after you recommended it yourself." She made
+a little _moue_ of disappointment.
+
+It was a pretty bit of old gold that complimented the creamy skin. Peter
+began admiring it at once, and, negro fashion, rather overstepped the
+limits white beaux set to their praise, as he leaned close to her.
+
+At the moment the two were passing one of the oddest houses in
+Niggertown. It was a two-story cabin built in the shape of a steamboat.
+A little cupola represented a pilot-house, and two iron chimneys served
+for smoke-stacks.
+
+This queer building had been built by a negro stevedore because of a
+deep admiration for the steamboats on which he had made his living.
+Instead of steps at the front door, this boat-like house had a stage-
+plank. As Peter strolled down the street with Cissie, admiring her
+brooch, and suffused with a sense of her nearness, he happened to glance
+up, and saw Tump Pack walk down the stage-plank, come out, and wait for
+them at the gate.
+
+There was something grim in the ex-soldier's face and in the set of his
+gross lips as the two came up, but the aura of the girl prevented Peter
+from paying much attention to it. As the two reached Tump, Peter had
+just lifted his hand to his hat when Tump made a quick step out at the
+gate, in front of them, and swung a furious blow at Peter's head.
+
+Cissie screamed. Siner staggered back with flames dancing before his
+eyes. The soldier lunged after his toppling man with gorilla-like blows.
+Hot pains shot through Peter's body. His head roared like a gong. The
+sunlight danced about him in flashes. The air was full of black fists
+smashing him, and not five feet away, the bullet head of Tump Pack
+bobbed this way and that in the rapid shifts of his attack. A stab of
+pain cut off Peter's breath. He stood with his diaphragm muscles tense
+and paralyzed, making convulsive efforts to breathe. At that moment he
+glimpsed the convexity of Tump's stomach. He drop-kicked at it with
+foot-ball desperation. Came a loud explosive groan. Tump seemed to rise
+a foot or two in air, turned over, and thudded down on his shoulders in
+the dust. The soldier made no attempt to rise, but curled up, twisting
+in agony.
+
+Peter stood in the dust-cloud, wabbly, with roaring head. His open mouth
+was full of dust. Then he became aware that negroes were running in from
+every direction, shouting. Their voices whooped out what had happened,
+who it was, who had licked. Tump Pack's agonized spasms brought howls of
+mirth from the black fellows. Negro women were in the crowd, grinning, a
+little frightened, but curious. Some were in Mother-Hubbards; one had
+her hair half combed, one side in a kinky mattress, the other lying flat
+and greased down to her scalp.
+
+When Peter gradually became able to breathe and could think at all,
+there was something terrible to him in Tump's silent attack and in this
+extravagant black mirth over mere suffering. Cissie was gone,--had fled,
+no doubt, at the beginning of the fight.
+
+The prostrate man's tortured abdomen finally allowed him to twist around
+toward Peter. His eyes were popped, and seemed all yellows and streaked
+with swollen veins.
+
+"I'll git you fuh dis," he wheezed, spitting dust "You did n' fight
+fair, you--"
+
+The black chorus rolled their heads and pounded one another in a gale of
+merriment.
+
+Peter Siner turned away toward his home filled with sick thought. He had
+never realized so clearly the open sore of Niggertown life and its great
+need of healing, yet this very episode would further bar him, Peter,
+from any constructive work. He foresaw, too plainly, how the white town
+and Niggertown would react to this fight. There would be no
+discrimination in the scandal. He, Peter Siner, would be grouped with
+the boot-leggers and crap-shooters and women-chasers who filled
+Niggertown with their brawls. As a matter of simple fact, he had been
+fighting with another negro over a woman. That he was subjected to an
+attack without warning or cause would never become a factor in the
+analysis. He knew that very well.
+
+Two of Peter's teeth were loose; his left jaw was swelling; his head
+throbbed. With that queer perversity of human nerves, he kept biting his
+sore teeth together as he walked along.
+
+When he reached home, his mother met him at the door. Thanks to the
+swiftness with which gossip spreads among black folk, she had already
+heard of the fight, and incidentally had formed her judgment of the
+matter. Now she looked in exasperation at her son's swelling face.
+
+"I 'cla' 'fo' Gawd!--ain't been home a week befo' he's fightin' over a
+nigger wench lak a roustabout!"
+
+Peter's head throbbed so he could hardly make out the details of
+Caroline's face.
+
+"But, Mother--" he began defensively, "I--"
+
+"Me sweatin' over de wash-pot," the negress went on, "so's you could go
+up North an' learn a lil sense; heah you comes back chasin' a dutty
+slut!"
+
+"But, Mother," he begged thickly, "I was simply walking home with Miss
+Dildine."
+
+"Miss Dildine! Miss Dildine!" exploded the ponderous woman, with an
+erasing gesture. "Ef you means dat stuck-up fly-by-night Cissie Dildine,
+say so, and don' stan' thaiuh mouthin', 'Miss Dildine, Miss Dildine'!"
+
+"Mother," asked Peter, thickly, through his swelling mouth, "do you want
+to know what did happen?"
+
+"I knows. I tol' you to keep away fum dat hussy. She's a fool 'bout her
+bright color an' straight hair. Needn't be givin' herse'f no airs!"
+
+Peter stood in the doorway, steadying himself by the jamb. The world
+still swayed from the blows he had received on the head.
+
+"What girl would you be willing for me to go with?" he asked in faint
+satire.
+
+"Heah in Niggertown?"
+
+Peter nodded. The movement increased his headache.
+
+"None a-tall. No Niggertown wench a-tall. When you mus' ma'y, I's
+'speckin' you to go off summuhs an' pick yo' gal, lak you went off to
+pick yo' aidjucation." She swung out a thick arm, and looked at Peter
+out of the corner of her eyes, her head tilted to one side, as negresses
+do when they become dramatically serious.
+
+Peter left his mother to her stare and went to his own room. This
+constant implication among Niggertown inhabitants that Niggertown and
+all it held was worthless, mean, unhuman depressed Peter. The mulatto
+knew the real trouble with Niggertown was it had adopted the white
+village's estimate of it. The sentiment of the white village was
+overpowering among the imitative negroes. The black folk looked into the
+eyes of the whites and saw themselves reflected as chaff and skum and
+slime, and no human being ever suggested that they were aught else.
+
+Peter's room was a rough shed papered with old newspapers. All sorts of
+yellow scare-heads streaked his walls. Hanging up was a crayon
+enlargement of his mother, her broad face as unwrinkled as an egg and
+drawn almost white, for the picture agents have discovered the only way
+to please their black patrons is to make their enlargements as nearly
+white as possible.
+
+In one corner, on a home-made book-rack, stood Peter's library,--a Greek
+book or two, an old calculus, a sociology, a psychology, a philosophy,
+and a score of other volumes he had accumulated in his four college
+years. As Peter, his head aching, looked at these, he realized how
+immeasurably removed he was from the cool abstraction of the study.
+
+The brown man sat down in an ancient rocking-chair by the window, leaned
+back, and closed his eyes. His blood still whispered in his ears from
+his fight. Notwithstanding his justification, he gradually became filled
+with self-loathing. To fight--to hammer and kick in Niggertown's dust--
+over a girl! It was an indignity.
+
+
+Peter shifted his position in his chair, and his thoughts took another
+trail. Tump's attack had been sudden and silent, much like a bulldog's.
+The possibility of a simple friendship between a woman and a man never
+entered Tump's head; it never entered any Niggertown head. Here all
+attraction was reduced to the simplest terms of sex. Niggertown held no
+delicate intimacies or reserves. Two youths could not go with the same
+girl. Black women had no very great powers of choice over their suitors.
+The strength of a man's arm isolated his sweetheart. That did not seem
+right, resting the power of successful mating entirely upon brawn.
+
+As Peter sat thinking it over, it came to him that the progress of any
+race depended, finally, upon the woman having complete power of choosing
+her mate. It is woman alone who consistently places the love accent upon
+other matters than mere flesh and muscle. Only woman has much sex
+selectiveness, or is inclined to select individuals with qualities of
+mind and spirit.
+
+For millions of years these instinctive spiritualizers of human breeding
+stock have been hampered in their choice of mates by the unrestrained
+right of the fighting male. Indeed, the great constructive work of
+chivalry in the middle ages was to lay, unconsciously, the corner-stone
+of modern civilization by resigning to the woman the power of choosing
+from a group of males.
+
+Siner stirred in his chair, surprised at whither his reverie had lead
+him. He wondered how he had stumbled upon these thoughts. Had he read
+them in a book? In point of fact, a beating administered by Tump Pack
+had brought the brown man the first original idea he had entertained in
+his life.
+
+By this time, Peter's jaw had reached its maximum swelling and was eased
+somewhat. He looked out of his little window, wondering whether Cissie
+Dildine would choose him--or Tump Pack.
+
+Peter was surprised to find blue dusk peering through his panes. All the
+scare-heads on his walls had lapsed into a common obscurity. As he rose
+slowly, so as not to start his head hurting again, he heard three rapid
+pistol shots in the cedar glade between Niggertown and the white
+village. He knew this to be the time-honored signal of boot-leggers
+announcing that illicit whisky was for sale in the blackness of the
+glade.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Next day the Siner-Pack fight was the focus of news interest in Hooker's
+Bend. White mistresses extracted the story from their black maids, and
+were amused by it or deprecated Cissie Dildine's morals as the mood
+moved them.
+
+Along Main Street in front of the village stores, the merchants and
+hangers-on discussed the affair. It was diverting that a graduate of
+Harvard should come back to Hooker's Bend and immediately drop into such
+a fracas. Old Captain Renfrew, one-time attorney at law and
+representative of his county in the state legislature, sat under the
+mulberry in front of the livery-stable and plunged into a long
+monologue, with old Mr. Tomwit as listener, on the uneducability of the
+black race.
+
+"Take a horse, sir," expounded the captain; "a horse can be trained to
+add and put its name together out of an alphabet, but no horse could
+ever write a promissory note and figure the interest on it, sir. Take a
+dog. I've known dogs, sir, that could bring your mail from the post-
+office, but I never saw a dog stop on the way home, sir, to read a post-
+card."
+
+Here the old ex-attorney spat and renewed the tobacco in a black brier,
+then proceeded to draw the parrallel between dogs and horses and Peter
+Siner newly returned from Harvard.
+
+"God'lmighty has set his limit on dogs, horses, and niggers, Mr. Tomwit.
+Thus far and no farther. Take a nigger baby at birth; a nigger baby has
+no fontanelles. It has no window toward heaven. Its skull is sealed up
+in darkness. The nigger brain can never expand and absorb the universe,
+sir. It can never rise on the wings of genius and weigh the stars, nor
+compute the swing of the Pleiades. Thus far and no farther! It's
+congenital.
+
+"Now, take this Peter Siner and his disgraceful fight over a nigger
+wench. Would you expect an educated stud horse to pay no attention to a
+mare, sir? You can educate a stud till--"
+
+"But hold on!" interrupted the old cavalryman. "I've known as
+gentlemanly stallions as--as anybody!"
+
+The old attorney cleared his throat, momentarily taken aback at this
+failure of his metaphor. However he rallied with legal suppleness:
+
+"You are talking about thoroughbreds, sir."
+
+"I am, sir."
+
+"Good God, Tomwit! you don't imagine I'm comparing a nigger to a
+thoroughbred, sir!"
+
+On the street corners, or piled around on cotton-bales down on the wharf,
+the negro men of the village discussed the fight. It was for the most
+part a purely technical discussion of blows and counters and kicks, and
+of the strange fact that a college education failed to enable Siner
+utterly to annihilate his adversary. Jim Pink Staggs, a dapper gentleman
+of ebony blackness, of pin-stripe flannels and blue serge coat--
+altogether a gentleman of many parts--sat on one of the bales and
+indolently watched an old black crone fishing from a ledge of rocks just
+a little way below the wharf-boat. Around Jim Pink lounged and sprawled
+black men and youths, stretching on the cotton-bales like cats in the
+sunshine.
+
+Jim Pink was discussing Peter's education.
+
+"I 'fo' Gawd kain't see no use goin' off lak dat an' den comin' back an'
+lettin' a white man cheat you out'n yo' hide an' taller, an' lettin' a
+black man beat you up tull you has to 'kick him in the spivit. Ef a
+aidjucation does you any good a-tall, you'd be boun' to beat de white man
+at one en' uv de line, or de black man at de udder. Ef Peter ain't to be
+foun' at eider en', wha is he?"
+
+"Um-m-m!" "Eh-h-h!" "You sho spoke a moufful, Jim Pink!" came an
+assenting chorus from the bales.
+
+Eventually such gossip died away and took another flurry when a report
+went abroad that Tump Pack was carrying a pistol and meant to shoot
+Peter on sight. Then this in turn ceased to be news and of human
+interest. It clung to Peter's mind longer than to any other person's in
+Hooker's Bend, and it presented to the brown man a certain problem in
+casuistry.
+
+Should he accede to Tump Pack's possession of Cissie Dildine and give up
+seeing the girl? Such a course cut across all his fine-spun theory about
+women having free choice of their mates. However, the Harvard man could
+not advocate a socialization of courtship when he himself would be the
+first beneficiary. The prophet whose finger points selfward is damned.
+Furthermore, all Niggertown would side with Tump Pack in such a
+controversy. It was no uncommon thing for the very negro women to fight
+over their beaux and husbands. As for any social theory changing this
+régime, in the first place the negroes couldn't understand the theory;
+in the second, it would have no effect if they could. Actions never grow
+out of theories; theories grow out of actions. A theory is a looking-
+glass that reflects the past and makes it look like the future, but the
+glass really hides the future, and when humanity comes to a turn in its
+course, there is always a smash-up, and a blind groping for the lost
+path.
+
+Now, in regard to Cissie Dildine, Peter was not precisely afraid of Tump
+Pack, but he could not clear his mind of the fact that Tump had been
+presented with a medal by the Congress of the United States for killing
+four men. Good sense and a care for his reputation and his skin told
+Peter to abandon his theory of free courtship for the time being. This
+meant a renunciation of Cissie Dildine; but he told himself he renounced
+very little. He had no reason to think that Cissie cared a picayune
+about him.
+
+Peter's work kept him indoors for a number of days following the
+encounter. He was reviewing some primary school work in order to pass a
+teacher's examination that would be held in Jonesboro, the county seat,
+in about three weeks.
+
+To the uninitiated it may seem strange to behold a Harvard graduate
+stuck down day after day poring over a pile of dog-eared school-books--
+third arithmetics, primary grammars, beginners' histories of Tennessee,
+of the United States, of England; physiology, hygiene. It may seem
+queer. But when it comes to standing a Wayne County teacher's
+examination, the specific answers to the specific questions on a dozen
+old examination slips are worth all the degrees Harvard ever did confer.
+
+So, in his newspapered study, Peter Siner looked up long lists of
+questions, and attempted to memorize the answers. But the series of
+missteps he had made since returning to Hooker's Bend besieged his brain
+and drew his thoughts from his catechism. It seemed strange that in so
+short a time he should have wandered so far from the course he had set
+for himself. His career in Niggertown formed a record of slight
+mistakes, but they were not to be undone, and their combined force had
+swung him a long way from the course he had plotted for himself. There
+was no way to explain. Hooker's Bend would judge him by the sheer
+surface of his works. What he had meant to do, his dreams and altruisms,
+they would never surmise. That was the irony of the thing.
+
+Then he thought of Cissie Dildine who did understand him. This thought
+might have been Cissie's cue to enter the stage of Peter's mind. Her
+oval, creamy face floated between Peter's eyes and the dog-eared primer.
+He thought of Cissie wistfully, and of her lonely fight for good
+English, good manners, and good taste. There was a pathos about Cissie.
+
+Peter got up from his chair and looked out at his high window into the
+early afternoon. He had been poring over primers for three days,
+stuffing the most heterogeneous facts. His head felt thick and slightly
+feverish. Through his window he saw the side of another negro cabin, but
+by looking at an angle eastward he could see a field yellow with corn, a
+valley, and, beyond, a hill wooded and glowing with the pageantry of
+autumn. He thought of Cissie Dildine again, of walking with her among
+the burning maples and the golden elms. He thought of the restfulness
+such a walk with Cissie would bring.
+
+As he mused, Peter's soul made one of those sharp liberating movements
+that occasionally visit a human being. The danger of Tump Pack's
+jealousy, the loss of his prestige, the necessity of learning the
+specific answers to the examination questions, all dropped away from him
+as trivial and inconsequent. He turned from the window, put away his
+books and question-slips, picked up his hat, and moved out briskly
+through his mother's room toward the door.
+
+The old woman in the kitchen must have heard him, for she called to him
+through the partition, and a moment later her bulky form filled the
+kitchen entrance. She wiped her hands on her apron and looked at him
+accusingly.
+
+"Wha you gwine, son?"
+
+"For a walk."
+
+The old negress tilted her head aslant and looked fixedly at him.
+
+"You's gwine to dat Cissie Dildine's, Peter."
+
+Peter looked at his mother, surprised and rather disconcerted that she
+had guessed his intentions from his mere footsteps. The young man
+changed his plans for his walk, and began a diplomatic denial:
+
+"No, I'm going to walk by myself. I'm tired; I'm played out."
+
+"Tired?" repeated his mother, doubtfully. "You ain't done nothin' but
+set an' turn th'ugh books an' write on a lil piece o' paper."
+
+Peter was vaguely amused in his weariness, but thought that he concealed
+his mirth from his mother.
+
+"That gets tiresome after a while."
+
+She grunted her skepticism. As Peter moved for the door she warned him:
+
+"Peter, you knows ef Tump Pack sees you, he's gwine to shoot you sho!"
+
+"Oh, no he won't; that's Tump's talk."
+
+"Talk! talk! Whut's matter wid you, Peter? Dat nigger done git crowned
+fuh killin' fo' men!" She stood staring at him with white eyes. Then she
+urged, "Now, look heah, Peter, come along an' eat yo' supper."
+
+"No, I really need a walk. I won't walk through Niggertown. I'll walk
+out in the woods."
+
+"I jes made some salmon coquettes fuh you whut'll spile ef you don' eat
+'em now."
+
+"I didn't know you were making croquettes," said Peter, with polite
+interest.
+
+"Well, I is. I gotta can o' salmon fum Miss Mollie Brownell she'd opened
+an' couldn't quite use. I doctered 'em up wid a lil vinegar an' sody,
+an' dey is 'bout as pink as dey ever wuz."
+
+A certain uneasiness and annoyance came over Peter at this persistent
+use of unwholesome foods.
+
+"Look here, Mother, you're not using old canned goods that have been
+left over?"
+
+The old negress stood looking at him in silence, but lost her coaxing
+expression.
+
+"I've told and told you about using any tainted or impure foods that the
+white people can't eat."
+
+"Well, whut ef you is?"
+
+"If it's too bad for them, it's too bad for you!"
+
+Caroline made a careless gesture.
+
+"Good Lawd, boy! I don' 'speck to eat whut's good fuh me! All I says is,
+'Grub, keep me alive. Ef you do dat, you done a good day's wuck.'"
+
+Peter was disgusted and shocked at his mother's flippancy. Modern
+colleges are atheistic, but they do exalt three gods,--food,
+cleanliness, and exercise. Now here was Peter's mother blaspheming one
+of his trinity.
+
+"I wish you 'd let me know when you want anything Mother. I'll get it
+fresh for you." His words were filial enough, but his tone carried his
+irritation.
+
+The old negress turned back to the kitchen.
+
+"Huh, boy! you been fotch up on lef'-overs," she said, and disappeared
+through the door.
+
+Peter walked to the gate, let himself out, and started off on his
+constitutional. His tiff with his mother renewed all his nervousness and
+sense of failure. His litany of mistakes renewed their dolor in his
+mind.
+
+An autumn wind was blowing, and long plumes of dust whisked up out of
+the curving street and swept over the ill-kept yards, past the cabins,
+and toward the sere fields and chromatic woods. The wind beat at the
+brown man; the dust whispered against his clothes, made him squint his
+eyes to a crack and tickled his nostrils at each breath.
+
+When Peter had gone two or three hundred yards, he became aware that
+somebody was walking immediately behind him. Tump Pack popped into his
+mind. He looked over his shoulder and then turned. Through the veils of
+flying dust he made out some one, and a moment later identified not Tump
+Pack, but the gangling form of Jim Pink Staggs, clad in a dark-blue
+sack-coat and white flannel trousers with pin stripes. It was the sort
+of costume affected by interlocutors of minstrel shows; it had a
+minstrel trigness about it.
+
+As a matter of fact, Jim Pink was a sort of semi-professional minstrel.
+Ordinarily, he ran a pressing-shop in the Niggertown crescent, but
+occasionally he impressed all the dramatic talent of Niggertown and
+really did take the road with a minstrel company. These barn-storming
+expeditions reached down into Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas.
+Sometimes they proved a great success, and the darkies rode back several
+hundred dollars ahead. Sometimes they tramped back.
+
+Jim Pink hailed Peter with a wave of his hand and a grotesque
+displacement of his mouth to one side of his face, which he had found
+effective in his minstrel buffoonery.
+
+"Whut you raisin' so much dus' about?" he called out of the corner of
+his mouth, while looking at Peter out of one half-closed eye.
+
+Peter shook his head and smiled.
+
+"Thought it mout be Mister Hooker deliverin' dat lan' you bought." Jim
+Pink flung his long, flexible face into an imitation of convulsed
+laughter, then next moment dropped it into an intense gravity and
+declared, "'Dus' thou art, to dus' returnest.'" The quotation seemed
+fruitless and silly enough, but Jim Pink tucked his head to one side as
+if listening intently to himself, then repeated sepulchrally, "'Dus'
+thou art, to dus' returnest.' By the way, Peter," he broke off cheerily,
+"you ain't happen to see Tump Pack, is you?"
+
+"No," said Peter, unamused.
+
+"Is he borrowed a gun fum you?" inquired the minstrel, solemnly.
+
+"No-o." Peter looked questioningly at the clown through half-closed
+eyes.
+
+"Huh, now dat's funny." Jim Pink frowned, and pulled down his loose
+mouth and seemed to study. He drew out a pearl-handled knife, closed his
+hand over it, blew on his fist, then opened the other hand, and
+exhibited the knife lying in its palm, with the blade open. He seemed
+surprised at the change and began cleaning his finger-nails. Jim Pink
+was the magician at his shows.
+
+Peter waited patiently for Jim Pink to impart his information, "Well,
+what's the idea?" he asked at last.
+
+"Don' know. 'Pears lak dat knife won't stay in any one han'." He looked
+at it, curiously.
+
+"I mean about Tump," said Peter, impatiently.
+
+"O-o-oh, yeah; you mean 'bout Tump. Well, I thought Tump mus' uv
+borrowed a gun fum you. He lef' Hobbett's corner wid a great big forty-
+fo', inquirin' wha you is." Just then he glanced up, looked
+penetratingly through the dust-cloud, and added, "Why, I b'lieve da' 's
+Tump now."
+
+With a certain tightening of the nerves, Peter followed his glance, but
+made out nothing through the fogging dust. When he looked around at Jim
+Pink again, the buffoon's face was a caricature of immense mirth. He
+shook it sober, abruptly, minstrel fashion.
+
+"Maybe I's mistooken," he said solemnly. "Tump did start over heah wid a
+gun, but Mister Dawson Bobbs done tuk him up fuh ca'yin' concealed
+squidjulums; so Tump's done los' dat freedom uv motion in de pu'suit uv
+happiness gua'anteed us niggers an' white folks by the Constitution uv
+de Newnighted States uv America." Here Jim Pink broke into genuine
+laughter, which was quite a different thing from his stage grimaces.
+Peter stared at the fool astonished.
+
+"Has he gone to jail?"
+
+"Not prezactly."
+
+"Well--confound it!--exactly what did happen, Jim Pink?"
+
+"He gone to Mr. Cicero Throgmartins'."
+
+"What did he go there for?"
+
+"Couldn't he'p hisse'f."
+
+"Look here, you tell me what's happened."
+
+"Mr. Bobbs ca'ied Tump thaiuh. Y' see, Mr. Throgmartin tried to hire
+Tump to pick cotton. Tump didn't haf to, because he'd jes shot fo'
+natchels in a crap game. So to-day, when Tump starts over heah wid his
+gun, Mr. Bobbs 'resses Tump. Mr. Throgmartin bails him out, so now
+Tump's gone to pick cotton fuh Mr. Throgmartin to pay off'n his fine."
+Here Jim Pink yelped into honest laughter at Tump's undoing so that dust
+got into his nose and mouth and set him sneezing and coughing.
+
+"How long's he up for?" asked Peter, astonished and immensely relieved
+at this outcome of Tump's expedition against himself.
+
+Jim Pink controlled his coughing long enough to gasp:
+
+"Th-thutty days, ef he don' run off," and fell to laughing again.
+
+Peter Siner, long before, had adopted the literate man's notion of what
+is humorous, and Tump's mishap was slap-stick to him. Nevertheless, he
+did smile. The incident filled him with extraordinary relief and
+buoyancy. At the next corner he made some excuse to Jim Pink, and turned
+off up an alley.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+Peter walked along with his shoulders squared and the dust peppering his
+back. Not till Tump was lifted from his mind did he realize what an
+incubus the soldier had been. Peter had been forced into a position
+where, if he had killed Tump, he would have been ruined; if he had not,
+he would probably have murdered. Now he was free--for thirty days.
+
+He swung along briskly in the warm sunshine toward the multicolored
+forest. The day had suddenly become glorious. Presently he found himself
+in the back alleys near Cissie's house. He was passing chicken-houses
+and stables. Hogs in open pens grunted expectantly at his footsteps.
+
+Peter had not meant to go to Cissie's at all, but now, when he saw he
+was right behind her dwelling, she seemed radiantly accessible to him.
+Still, it struck him that it would not be precisely the thing to call on
+Cissie immediately after Tump's arrest. It might look as if--Then the
+thought came that, as a neighbor, he should stop and tell Cissie of
+Tump's misfortune. He really ought to offer his services to Cissie, if
+he could do anything. At Cissie's request he might even aid Tump Pack
+himself. Peter got himself into a generous glow as he charged up a side
+alley, around to a rickety front gate. Let Niggertown criticize as it
+would, he was braced by a high altruism.
+
+Peter did not shout from the gate, as is the fashion of the crescent,
+but walked up a little graveled path lined with dusty box-shrubs and
+tapped at the unpainted door.
+
+Doors in Niggertown never open straight away to visitors. A covert
+inspection first takes place from the edges of the window-blinds.
+
+Peter stood in the whipping dust, and the caution of the inmates spurred
+his impatience to see Cissie. At last the door opened, and Cissie
+herself was in the entrance. She stood quite still a moment, looking at
+Peter with eyes that appeared frightened.
+
+"I--I wasn't expecting to see you," she stammered.
+
+"No? I came by with news, Cissie."
+
+"News?" She seemed more frightened than ever. "Peter, you--you haven't--
+" She paused, regarding him with big eyes.
+
+"Tump Pack's been arrested," explained Peter, quickly, sensing the
+tragedy in her thoughts. "I came by to tell you. If there's anything I
+can do for you--or him, I'll do it."
+
+His altruistic offer sounded rather foolish in the actual saying.
+
+He could not tell from her face whether she was glad or sorry.
+
+"What did they arrest him for?"
+
+"Carrying a pistol."
+
+She paused a moment.
+
+"Will he--get out soon?"
+
+"He's sentenced for thirty days."
+
+Cissie dropped her hands with a hopeless gesture.
+
+"Oh, isn't this all sickening!--sickening!" she exclaimed. She looked
+tired. Ghosts of sleepless nights circled her eyes. Suddenly she said,
+"Come in. Oh, do come in, Peter." She reached out and almost pulled him
+in. She was so urgent that Peter might have fancied Tump Pack at the
+gate with his automatic. He did glance around, but saw nobody passing
+except the Arkwright boy. The hobbledehoy walked down the other side of
+the street, hands thrust in pockets, with the usual discontented
+expression on his face.
+
+Cissie slammed the door shut, and the two stood rather at a loss in the
+sudden gloom of the hall. Cissie broke into a brief, mirthless laugh.
+
+"Peter, it's hard to be nice in Niggertown. I--I just happened to think
+how folks would gossip--you coming here as soon as Tump was arrested."
+
+"Perhaps I'd better go," suggested Peter, uncomfortably.
+
+Cissie reached up and caught his lapel.
+
+"Oh, no, don't feel that way! I'm glad you came, really. Here, let's go
+through this way to the arbor. It isn't a bad place to sit."
+
+She led the way silently through two dark rooms. Before she opened the
+back door, Peter could hear Cissie's mother and a younger sister moving
+around the outside of the house to give up the arbor to Cissie and her
+company.
+
+The arbor proved a trellis of honeysuckle over the back door, with a
+bench under it. A film of dust lay over the dense foliage, and a few
+withered blooms pricked its grayish green. The earthen floor of the
+arbor was beaten hard and bare by the naked feet of children.
+
+Cissie sat down on the bench and indicated a place beside her.
+
+"I've been so uneasy about you! I've been wondering what on earth you
+could do about it."
+
+"It's a snarl, all right," he said, and almost immediately began
+discussing the peculiar _impasse_ in which his difficulty with Tump
+had landed him. Cissie sat listening with a serious, almost tragic face,
+giving a little nod now and then. Once she remarked in her precise way:
+
+"The trouble with a gentleman fighting a rowdy, the gentleman has all to
+lose and nothing to gain. If you don't live among your own class, Peter,
+your life will simmer down to an endless diplomacy."
+
+"You mean deceit, I suppose."
+
+"No, I mean diplomacy. But that isn't a very healthy frame of mind,--
+always to be suppressing and guarding yourself."
+
+Peter didn't know about that. He was inclined to argue the matter, but
+Cissie wouldn't argue. She seemed to assume that all of her statements
+were axioms, truths reduced to the simplest possible mental terms, and
+that proof was unnecessary, if not impossible. So the topic went into
+the discard.
+
+"Been baking my brains over a lot of silly little exam questions,"
+complained Peter. "Can you trace the circulation of the blood? I think
+it leaves the grand central station through the right aorta, and then,
+after a schedule run of nine minutes, you can hear it coming up the
+track through the left ventricle, with all the passengers eager to get
+off and take some refreshment at the lungs. I have the general idea, but
+the exact routing gets me."
+
+Cissie laughed accommodatingly.
+
+"I wonder why it's necessary for everybody to know that once. I did. I
+could follow the circulation the right way or backward."
+
+"Must have been harder backward, going against the current."
+
+Cissie laughed again. A girl's part in a witty conversation might seem
+easy at first sight. She has only to laugh at the proper intervals.
+However, these intervals are not always distinctly marked. Some girls
+take no chances and laugh all the time.
+
+Cissie's appreciation was the sedative Peter needed. The relief of her
+laughter and her presence ran along his nerves and unkinked them, like a
+draft of Kentucky Special after a debauch. The curves of her cheek, the
+tilt of her head, and the lift of her dull-blue blouse at the bosom wove
+a great restfulness about Peter. The brooch of old gold glinted at her
+throat. The heavy screen of the arbor gave them a sweet sense of
+privacy. The conversation meandered this way and that, and became quite
+secondary to the feeling of the girl's nearness and sympathy. Their talk
+drifted back to Peter's mission here in Hooker's Bend, and Cissie was
+saying:
+
+"The trouble is, Peter, we are out of our _milieu_." Some portion
+of Peter's brain that was not basking in the warmth and invitation of
+the girl answered quite logically:
+
+"Yes, but if I could help these people, Cissie, reconstruct our life
+here culturally--"
+
+Cissie shook her head. "Not culturally."
+
+This opposition shunted more of Peter's thought to the topic in hand. He
+paused interrogatively.
+
+"Racially," said Cissie.
+
+"Racially?" repeated the man, quite lost.
+
+Cissie nodded, looking straight into his eyes. "You know very well,
+Peter, that you and I are not--are not anything near full bloods. You
+know that racially we don't belong in--Niggertown."
+
+Peter never knew exactly how this extraordinary sentence had come about,
+but in a kind of breath he realized that he and this almost white girl
+were not of Niggertown. No doubt she had been arguing that he, Peter,
+who was one sort of man, was trying to lead quite another sort of men
+moved by different racial impulses, and such leading could only come to
+confusion. He saw the implications at once.
+
+It was an extraordinary idea, an explosive idea, such as Cissie seemed
+to have the faculty of touching off. He sat staring at her.
+
+It was the white blood in his own veins that had sent him struggling up
+North, that had brought him back with this flame in his heart for his
+own people. It was the white blood in Cissie that kept her struggling to
+stand up, to speak an unbroken tongue, to gather around her the delicate
+atmosphere and charm of a gentlewoman. It was the Caucasian in them
+buried here in Niggertown. It was their part of the tragedy of millions
+of mixed blood in the South. Their common problem, a feeling of their
+joint isolation, brought Peter to a sense of keen and tingling nearness
+to the girl.
+
+She was talking again, very earnestly, almost tremulously:
+
+"Why don't you go North, Peter? I think and think about you staying
+here. You simply can't grow up and develop here. And now, especially,
+when everybody doubts you. If you'd go North--"
+
+"What about you, Cissie? You say we're together--"
+
+"Oh, I'm a woman. We haven't the chance to do as we will."
+
+A kind of titillation went over Peter's scalp and body.
+
+"Then you are going to stay here and marry--Tump?" He uttered the name
+in a queer voice.
+
+Tears started in Cissie's eyes; her bosom lifted to her quick breathing.
+
+
+"I--I don't know what I'm going to do," she stammered miserably.
+
+Peter leaned over her with a drumming heart; he heard her catch her
+breath.
+
+"You don't care for Tump?" he asked with a dry mouth.
+
+She gasped out something, and the next moment Peter felt her body sink
+limply in his groping arms. They clung together closely, quiveringly.
+Three nights of vigil, each thinking miserably and wistfully of the
+other, had worn the nerves of both man and girl until they were ready to
+melt together at a touch. Her soft body clinging to his own, the little
+nervous pressures of her arms, her eased breathing at his neck, wiped
+away Siner's long sense of strain. Strength and peace seemed to pour
+from her being into his by a sort of spiritual osmosis. She resigned her
+head to his palm in order that he might lift her lips to his when he
+pleased. After all, there is no way for a man to rest without a woman.
+All he can do is to stop work.
+
+For a long time they sat transported amid the dusty honeysuckles and
+withered blooms, but after a while they began talking a little at a time
+of the future, their future. They felt so indissolubly joined that they
+could not imagine the future finding them apart. There was no need for
+any more trouble with Tump Pack. They would marry quietly, and go away
+North to live. Peter thought of his friend Farquhar. He wondered if
+Farquhar's attitude would be just the same toward Cissie as it was
+toward him.
+
+"North," was the burden of the octoroon's dreams. They would go North to
+Chicago. There were two hundred and fifty thousand negroes in Chicago, a
+city within itself three times the size of Nashville. Up North she and
+Peter could go to theaters, art galleries, could enter any church, could
+ride in street-cars, railroad-trains, could sleep and eat at any hotel,
+live authentic lives.
+
+It was Cissie planning her emancipation, planning to escape her lifelong
+disabilities.
+
+"Oh, I'll be so glad! so glad! so glad!" she sobbed, and drew Peter's
+head passionately down to her deep bosom.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER V
+
+
+Peter Siner walked home from the Dildine cabin that night rather
+dreading to meet his mother, for it was late. Cissie had served
+sandwiches and coffee on a little table in the arbor, and then had kept
+Peter hours afterward. Around him still hung the glamour of Cissie's
+little supper. He could still see her rounded elbows that bent softly
+backward when she extended an arm, and the glimpses of her bosom when
+she leaned to hand him cream or sugar. She had accomplished the whole
+supper in the white manner, with all poise and daintiness. In fact, no
+one is more exquisitely polite than an octoroon woman when she desires
+to be polite, when she elevates the subserviency of her race into
+graciousness.
+
+However, the pleasure and charm of Cissie were fading under the
+approaching abuse that Caroline was sure to pour upon the girl. Peter
+dreaded it. He walked slowly down the dark semicircle, planning how he
+could best break to his mother the news of his engagement. Peter knew
+she would begin a long bill of complaints,--how badly she was treated,
+how she had sacrificed herself, her comfort, how she had washed and
+scrubbed. She would surely charge Cissie with being a thief and a drab,
+and all the announcements of engagements that Peter could make would
+never induce the old woman to soften her abuse. Indeed, they would make
+her worse.
+
+So Peter walked on slowly, smelling the haze of dust that hung in the
+blackness. Out on the Big Hill, in the glade, Peter caught an occasional
+glimmer of light where crap-shooters and boot-leggers were beginning
+their nightly carousal.
+
+These evidences of illicit trades brought Peter a thrill of disgust. In
+a sort of clear moment he saw that he could not keep Cissie in such a
+sty as this. He could not rear in such a place as this any children that
+might come to him and Cissie. His thoughts drifted back to his mother,
+and his dread of her tongue.
+
+The Siner cabin was dark and tightly shut when Peter let himself in at
+the gate and walked to the door. He stood a moment listening, and then
+gently pressed open the shutter. A faint light burned on the inside, a
+night-lamp with an old-fashioned brass bowl. It sat on the floor, turned
+low, at the foot of his mother's bed. The mean room was mainly in
+shadow. The old-style four-poster in which Caroline slept was an
+indistinct mound. The air was close and foul with the bad ventilation of
+all negro sleeping-rooms. The brass lamp, turned low, added smoke and
+gas to the tight quarters.
+
+The odor caught Peter in the nose and throat, and once more stirred up
+his impatience with his mother's disregard of hygiene. He tiptoed into
+the room and decided to remove the lamp and open the high, small window
+to admit a little air. He moved noiselessly and had stooped for the lamp
+when there came a creaking and a heavy sigh from the bed, and the old
+negress asked:
+
+"Is dat you, son?"
+
+Peter was tempted to stand perfectly still and wait till his mother
+dozed again, thus putting off her inevitable tirade against Cissie; but
+he answered in a low tone that it was he.
+
+"Whut you gwine do wid dat lamp, son?"
+
+"Go to bed by it, Mother."
+
+"Well, bring hit back." She breathed heavily, and moved restlessly in
+the old four-poster. As Peter stood up he saw that the patched quilts
+were all askew over her shapeless bulk. Evidently, she had not been
+resting well.
+
+Peter's conscience smote him again for worrying his mother with his
+courtship of Cissie, yet what could he do? If he had wooed any other
+girl in the world, she would have been equally jealous and grieved. It
+was inevitable that she should be disappointed and bitter; it was bound
+up in the very part and parcel of her sacrifice. A great sadness came
+over Peter. He almost wished his mother would berate him, but she
+continued to lie there, breathing heavily under her disarranged covers.
+As Peter passed into his room, the old negress called after him to
+remind him to bring the light back when he was through with it.
+
+This time something in her tone alarmed Peter.  He paused in the
+doorway.
+
+"Are you sick, Mother?" he asked.
+
+The old woman gave a yawn that changed to a groan.
+
+"I--I ain't feelin' so good."
+
+"What's the matter, Mother?"
+
+"My stomach, my--" But at that moment her sentence changed to an
+inarticulate sound, and she doubled up in bed as if caught in a spasm of
+acute agony.
+
+Peter hurried to her, thoroughly frightened, and saw sweat streaming
+down her face. He stared down at her.
+
+"Mother, you are sick! What can I do?" he cried, with a man's
+helplessness.
+
+She opened her eyes with an effort, panting now as the edge of the agony
+passed. There was a movement under the quilts, and she thrust out a
+rubber hot-water bottle.
+
+"Fill it--fum de kittle," she wheezed out, then relaxed into groans, and
+wiped clumsily at the sweat on her shining black face.
+
+Peter seized the bottle and ran into the kitchen. There he found a brisk
+fire popping in the stove and a kettle of water boiling. It showed him,
+to his further alarm, that his mother had been trying to minister to
+herself until forced to bed.
+
+The man scalded a finger and thumb pouring water into the flared mouth,
+but after a moment twisted on the top and hurried into the sick-room.
+
+He reached the old negress just as another knife of pain set her
+writhing and sweating. She seized the hot-water bottle, pushed it under
+the quilts, and pressed it to her stomach, then lay with eyes and teeth
+clenched tight, and her thick lips curled in a grin of agony.
+
+Peter set the lamp on the table, said he was going for the doctor, and
+started.
+
+The old woman hunched up in bed. With the penuriousness of her station
+and sacrifices, she begged Peter not to go; then groaned out, "Go tell
+Mars' Renfrew," but the next moment did not want Peter to leave her.
+
+Peter said he would get Nan Berry to stay while he was gone. The Berry
+cabin lay diagonally across the street. Peter ran over, thumped on the
+door, and shouted his mother's needs. As soon as he received an answer,
+he started on over the Big Hill toward the white town.
+
+Peter was seriously frightened. His run to Dr. Jallup's, across the Big
+Hill, was a series of renewed strivings for speed. Every segment of his
+journey seemed to seize him and pin him down in the midst of the night
+like a bug caught in a black jelly. He seemed to progress not at all.
+
+Now he was in the cedar glade. His muffled flight drove in the sentries
+of the crap-shooters, and gamesters blinked out their lights and
+listened to his feet stumbling on through the darkness.
+
+After an endless run in the glade, Peter found himself on top of the
+hill, amid boulders and outcrops limestone and cedar-shrubs. His flash-
+light picked out these objects, limned them sharply against the
+blackness, then dropped them into obscurity again.
+
+He tried to run faster. His impatience subdivided the distance into
+yards and feet. Now he was approaching that boulder, now he was passing
+it; now he was ten feet beyond, twenty, thirty. Perhaps his mother was
+dying, alone save for stupid Nan Berry.
+
+Now he was going down the hill past the white church. All that was
+visible was its black spire set against a web of stars. He was making no
+speed at all. He panted on. His heart hammered. His legs drummed with
+Lilliputian paces. Now he was among the village stores, all utterly
+black. At one point the echo of his feet chattered back at him, as if
+some other futile runner strained amid vast spaces of blackness.
+
+After a long time he found himself running up a residential street, and
+presently, far ahead, he saw the glow of Dr. Jallup's porch light. Its
+beam had the appearance of coming from a vast distance. When he reached
+the place, he flung his breast against the top panel of the doctor's
+fence and held on, exhausted. He drew in his breath, and began shouting,
+"Hello, Doctor!"
+
+Peter called persistently, and as he commanded more breath, he called
+louder and louder, "Hello, Doctor! Hello, Doctor! Hello, Doctor!" in
+tones edging on panic.
+
+The doctor's house might have been dead. Somewhere a dog began barking.
+High in the Southern sky a star looked down remotely on Peter's frantic
+haste. The black man stood in the black night with cries: "Hello,
+Doctor! Hello, Doctor! Hello, Doctor!"
+
+At last, in despair, he tried to think of other doctors. He thought of
+telephoning to Jonesboro. Just as he decided he must turn away there
+came a stirring in the dead house, a flicker of light appeared on the
+inside now here, now there; it steadied into a tiny beam and approached
+the door. The door opened, and Dr. Jallup's head and breast appeared,
+illuminated against the black interior.
+
+"My mother's sick, Doctor," began Peter, in immense relief.
+
+"Who is it?" inquired the half-clad man, impassively.
+
+"Caroline Siner; she's been taken with a--"
+
+The physician lifted his light a trifle in an effort to see Peter.
+
+"Lemme see: she's that fat nigger woman that lives in a three-roomed
+house--"
+
+"I'll show you the way," said Peter. "She's very ill."
+
+The half-dressed man shook his head.
+
+"No, Ca'line Siner owes me a five-dollar doctor's bill already. Our
+county medical association made a rule that no niggers should--"
+
+With a drying mouth, Peter Siner stared at the man of medicine.
+
+"But, my God, Doctor," gasped the son, "I'll pay you--"
+
+"Have you got the money there in your pocket?" asked Jallup,
+impassively.
+
+A sort of chill traveled deliberately over Peter's body and shook his
+voice.
+
+"N-no, but I can get it--"
+
+"Yes, you can all get it," stated the physician in dull irritation. "I'm
+tired of you niggers running up doctors' bills nobody can collect. You
+never have more than the law allows; your wages never get big enough to
+garnishee." His voice grew querulous as he related his wrongs. "No, I'm
+not going to see Ca'line Siner. If she wants me to visit her, let her
+send ten dollars to cover that and back debts, and I'll--" The end of
+his sentence was lost in the closing of his door. The light he carried
+declined from a beam to a twinkling here and there, and then vanished in
+blackness. Dr. Jallup's house became dead again. The little porch light
+in its glass box might have been a candle burning before a tomb.
+
+Peter Siner stood at the fence, licking his dry lips, with nerves
+vibrating like a struck bell. He pushed himself slowly away from the top
+plank and found his legs so weak that he could hardly walk. He moved
+slowly, back down the unseen street. The dog he had disturbed gave a few
+last growls and settled into silence.
+
+Peter moved along, wetting his dry lips, and stirring feebly among his
+dazed thoughts, hunting some other plan of action. There was a tiny
+burning spot on the left side of his occiput. It felt like a heated
+cambric needle which had been slipped into his scalp. Then he realized
+that he must go home, get ten dollars, and bring them back to Dr.
+Jallup. He started to run, but almost toppled over on his leaden legs.
+
+He plodded through the darkness, retracing the endless trail to
+Niggertown. As he passed a dark mass of shrubbery and trees, he recalled
+his mother's advice to ask aid of Captain Renfrew. It was the old
+Renfrew place that Peter was passing.
+
+The negro hesitated, then turned in at the gate in the bare hope of
+obtaining the ten dollars at once. Inside the gate Peter's feet
+encountered the scattered bricks of an old walk. The negro stood and
+called Captain Renfrew's name in a guarded voice. He was not at all sure
+of his action.
+
+Peter had called twice and was just about to go when a lamp appeared
+around the side of the house on a long portico that extended clear
+around the building. Bathed in the light of the lamp which he held over
+his head, there appeared an old man wearing a worn dressing gown.
+
+"Who is it?" he asked in a wavery voice.
+
+Peter told his name and mission.
+
+The old Captain continued holding up his light.
+
+"Oh, Peter Siner; Caroline Siner's sick? All right I'll have Jallup run
+over; I'll phone him."
+
+Peter was beginning his thanks preparatory to going, when the old man
+interrupted.
+
+"No, just stay here until Jallup comes by in his or He'll pick us both
+up. It'll save time. Come on inside. What's the matter with old
+Caroline?"
+
+The old dressing-gown led the way around the continuous piazza, to a
+room that stood open and brightly lighted on the north face of the old
+house.
+
+A great relief came to Peter at this unexpected succor. He followed
+around the piazza, trying to describe Caroline's symptoms. The room
+Peter entered was a library, a rather stately old room, lined with books
+all around the walls to about as high as a man could reach. Spaces for
+doors and windows were let in among the book-cases. The volumes
+themselves seemed composed mainly of histories and old-fashioned
+scientific books, if Peter could judge from a certain severity of their
+bindings. On a big library table burned a gasolene-lamp, which threw a
+brilliant whiteness all over the room. The table was piled with books
+and periodicals. Books and papers were heaped on every chair in the
+study except a deep Morris chair in which the old Captain had been
+sitting. A big meridional globe, about two and a half feet in diameter,
+gleamed through a film of dust in the embrasure of a window. The whole
+room had the womanless look of a bachelor's quarters, and was flavored
+with tobacco and just a hint of whisky.
+
+Old Captain Renfrew evidently had been reading when Peter called from
+the gate. Now the old man went to a telephone and rang long and briskly
+to awaken the boy who slept in the central office. Peter fidgeted as the
+old Captain stood with receiver to ear.
+
+"Hard to wake." The old gentleman spoke into the transmitter, but was
+talking to Peter. "Don't be so uneasy, Peter. Human beings are harder to
+kill than you think."
+
+There was a kindliness, even a fellowship, in Captain Renfrew's tones
+that spread like oil over Peter's raw nerves. It occurred to the negro
+that this was the first time he had been addressed as an authentic human
+being since his conversation with the two Northern men on the Pullman,
+up in Illinois. It surprised him. It was sufficient to take his mind
+momentarily from his mother. He looked a little closely at the old man
+at the telephone. The Captain wore few indices of kindness. Lines of
+settled sarcasm netted his eyes and drooped away from his old mouth. The
+very swell of his full temples and their crinkly veins marked a sardonic
+old man.
+
+At last he roused central over the wire, and impressed upon him the
+necessity of creating a stridor in Dr. Jallup's dead house, and a moment
+later a continued buzzing in the receiver betokened the operator's
+efforts to do so.
+
+The old gentleman turned around at last, holding the receiver a little
+distance from his ear.
+
+"I understand you went to Harvard, Peter."
+
+"Yes, sir." Peter took his eyes momentarily from the telephone. The old
+Southerner in the dressing-gown scrutinized the brown man. He cleared
+his throat.
+
+"You know, Peter, it gives me a--a certain satisfaction to see a Harvard
+man in Hooker's Bend. I'm a Harvard man myself."
+
+Peter stood in the brilliant light, astonished, not at Captain Renfrew's
+being a Harvard man,--he had known that,--but that this old gentleman
+was telling the fact to him, Peter Siner, a negro graduate of Harvard.
+
+It was extraordinary; it was tantamount to an offer of friendship, not
+patronage. Such an offer in the South disturbed Peter's poise; it
+touched him queerly. And it seemed to explain why Captain Renfrew had
+received Peter so graciously and was now arranging for Dr. Jallup to
+visit Caroline.
+
+Peter was moved to the conventional query, asking in what class the
+Captain had been graduated. But while his very voice was asking it,
+Peter thought what a strange thing it was that he, Peter Siner, a negro,
+and this lonely old gentleman, his benefactor, were spiritual brothers,
+both sprung from the loins of Harvard, that ancient mother of souls.
+
+[Illustration: The old gentleman turned around at last]
+
+From the darkness outside, Dr. Jallup's horn summmoned the two men.
+Captain Renfrew got out of his gown and into his coat and turned off his
+gasolene light. They walked around the piazza to the front of the house.
+In the street the head-lights of the roadster shot divergent rays
+through the darkness. They went out. The old Captain took a seat in the
+car beside the physician, while Peter stood on the running-board. A
+moment later, the clutch snarled, and the machine puttered down the
+street. Peter clung to the standards of the auto top, peering ahead.
+
+The men remained almost silent. Once Dr. Jallup, watching the dust that
+lay modeled in sharp lights and shadows under the head-lights, mentioned
+lack of rain. Their route did not lead over the Big Hill. They turned
+north at Hobbett's corner, drove around by River Street, and presently
+entered the northern end of the semicircle.
+
+The speed of the car was reduced to a crawl in the bottomless dust of
+the crescent. The head-lights swept slowly around the cabins on the
+concave side of the street, bringing them one by one into stark
+brilliance and dropping them into obscurity. The smell of refuse, of
+uncleaned stables and sties and outhouses hung in the darkness. Peter
+bent down under the top of the motor and pointed out his place. A minute
+later the machine came to a noisy halt and was choked into silence. At
+that moment, in the sweep of the head-light, Peter saw Viny Berry, one
+of Nan's younger sisters, coming up from Niggertown's public well,
+carrying two buckets of water.
+
+Viny was hurrying, plashing the water over the sides of her buckets. The
+importance of her mission was written in her black face.
+
+"She's awful thirsty," she called to Peter in guarded tones. "Nan called
+me to fetch some fraish water fum de well."
+
+Peter took the water that had been brought from the semi-cesspool at the
+end of the street. Viny hurried across the street to home and to bed.
+With the habitual twinge of his sanitary conscience, Peter considered
+the water in the buckets.
+
+"We'll have to boil this," he said to the doctor.
+
+"Boil it?" repeated Jallup, blankly. Then, he added: "Oh, yes--boil.
+Certainly."
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+A repellent odor of burned paper, breathed air, and smoky lights filled
+the close room. Nan had lighted another lamp and now the place was
+discernible in a dull yellow glow. In the corner lay a half-burned wisp
+of paper. Nan herself stood by the mound on the bed, putting straight
+the quilts that her patient had twisted awry.
+
+"She sho am bad, Doctor," said the colored woman, with big eyes.
+
+Seen in the light, Dr. Jallup was a little sandy-bearded man with a
+round, simple face, oddly overlaid with that inscrutability carefully
+cultivated by country doctors. With professional cheeriness, he
+approached the mound of bedclothes.
+
+"A little under the weather, Aunt Ca'line?" He slipped his fingers
+alongside her throat to test her temperature, at the same time drawing a
+thermometer from his waistcoat pocket.
+
+The old negress stirred, and looked up out of sick eyes.
+
+"Doctor," she gasped, "I sho got a misery heah." She indicated her
+stomach.
+
+"How do you feel?" he asked hopefully.
+
+The woman panted, then whispered:
+
+"Lak a knife was a-cuttin' an' a-tearin' out my innards." She rested,
+then added, "Not so bad now; feels mo' lak somp'n's tearin' in de nex'
+room."
+
+"Like something tearing in the next room?" repeated Jallup, emptily.
+
+"Yes, suh," she whispered. "I jes can feel hit--away off, lak."
+
+The doctor attempted to take her temperature, but the thermometer in her
+mouth immediately nauseated her, so he slipped the instrument under her
+arm.
+
+Old Caroline groaned at the slightest exertion, then, as she tossed her
+black head, she caught a glimpse of old Captain Renfrew.
+
+She halted abruptly in her restlessness, stared at the old gentleman,
+wet her dry lips with a queer brown-furred tongue.
+
+"Is dat you, Mars' Milt?" she gasped in feeble astonishment. A moment
+later she guessed the truth. "I s'pose you had to bring de doctor. 'Fo'
+Gawd, Mars' Milt--" She lay staring, with the covers rising and falling
+as she gasped for breath. Her feverish eyes shifted back and forth
+between the grim old gentleman and the tall, broad-shouldered brown man
+at the foot of her bed. She drew a baggy black arm from under the cover.
+
+"Da' 's Peter, Mars' Milt," she pointed. "Da' 's Peter, my son. He--he
+use' to be my son 'fo' he went off to school; but sence he come home, he
+been a-laughin' at me." Tears came to her eyes; she panted for a moment,
+then added: "Yeah, he done marked his mammy down fuh a nigger, Mars'
+Milt. Whut I thought wuz gwine be sweet lays bitter in my mouf." She
+worked her thick lips as if the rank taste of her sickness were the very
+flavor of her son's ingratitude.
+
+A sudden gasp and twist of her body told Nan that the old woman was
+again seized with a spasm. The neighbor woman took swift control, and
+waved out Peter and old Mr. Renfrew, while she and the doctor aided the
+huge negress.
+
+The two evicted men went into Peter's room and shut the door. Peter,
+unnerved, groped, and presently found and lighted a lamp. He put it down
+on his little table among his primary papers and examination papers. He
+indicated to Captain Renfrew the single chair in the room.
+
+But the old gentleman stood motionless in the mean room, with its head-
+line streaked walls. Sounds of the heavy lifting of Peter's mother came
+through the thin door and partition with painful clearness. Peter opened
+his own small window, for the air in his room was foul.
+
+Captain Renfrew stood in silence, with a remote sarcasm in his wrinkled
+eyes. What was in his heart, why he had subjected himself to the
+noisomeness of failing flesh, Peter had not the faintest idea. Once, out
+of studently habit, he glanced at Peter's philosophic books, but
+apparently he read the titles without really observing them. Once he
+looked at Peter.
+
+"Peter," he said colorlessly, "I hope you'll be careful of Caroline's
+feelings if she ever gets up again. She has been very faithful to you,
+Peter."
+
+Peter's eyes dampened. A great desire mounted in him to explain himself
+to this strange old gentleman, to show him how inevitable had been the
+breach. For some reason a veritable passion to reveal his heart to this
+his sole benefactor surged through the youth.
+
+"Mr. Renfrew," he stammered, "Mr. Renfrew--I--I--" His throat abruptly
+ached and choked. He felt his face distort in a spasm of uncontrollable
+grief. He turned quickly from this strange old man with a remote sarcasm
+in his eyes and a remote affection in his tones. Peter clenched his
+jaws, his nostrils spread in his effort stoically to bottle up his grief
+and remorse, like a white man; in an effort to keep from howling his
+agony aloud, like a negro. He stood with aching throat and blurred eyes,
+trembling, swallowing, and silent.
+
+Presently Nan Berry opened the door. She held a half-burned paper in her
+hand; Dr. Jallup stood near the bed, portioning out some calomel and
+quinine. The prevalent disease in Hooker's Bend is malaria; Dr. Jallup
+always physicked for malaria. On this occasion he diagnosed it must be a
+very severe attack of malaria indeed, so he measured out enormous doses.
+
+He took a glass of the water that Viny had brought, held up old
+Caroline's head, and washed down two big capsules into the already
+poisoned stomach of the old negress. His simple face was quite
+inscrutable as he did this. He left other capsules for Nan to administer
+at regular intervals. Then he and Captain Renfrew motored out of
+Niggertown, out of its dust and filth and stench.
+
+At four o'clock in the morning Caroline Siner died.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER VI
+
+
+When Nan Berry saw that Caroline was dead, the black woman dropped a
+glass of water and a capsule of calomel and stared. A queer terror
+seized her. She began such a wailing that it aroused others in
+Niggertown. At the sound they got out of their beds and came to the
+Siner cabin, their eyes big with mystery and fear. At the sight of old
+Caroline's motionless body they lifted their voices through the night.
+
+The lamentation carried far beyond the confines of Niggertown. The last
+gamblers in the cedar glade heard it, and it broke up their gaming and
+drinking. White persons living near the black crescent were waked out of
+their sleep and listened to the eerie sound. It rose and fell in the
+darkness like a melancholy organ chord. The wailing of the women
+quivered against the heavy grief of the men. The half-asleep listeners
+were moved by its weirdness to vague and sinister fancies. The dolor
+veered away from what the Anglo-Saxon knows as grief and was shot
+through with the uncanny and the terrible. White children crawled out of
+their small beds and groped their way to their parents. The women
+shivered and asked of the darkness, "_What_ makes the negroes howl
+so?"
+
+Nobody knew,--least of all, the negroes. Nobody suspected that the
+bedlam harked back to the jungle, to black folk in African kraals
+beating tom-toms and howling, not in grief, but in an ecstasy of terror
+lest the souls of their dead might come back in the form of tigers or
+pythons or devils and work woe to the tribe. Through the night the
+negroes wailed on, performing through custom an ancient rite of which
+they knew nothing. They supposed themselves heartbroken over the death
+of Caroline Siner.
+
+Amid this din Peter Siner sat in his room, stunned by the sudden taking
+off of his mother. The reproaches that she had expressed to old Captain
+Renfrew clung in Peter's brain. The brown man had never before realized
+the faint amusement and condescension that had flavored all his
+relations with his mother since his return home. But he knew now that
+she had felt his disapproval of her lifelong habits; that she saw he
+never explained or attempted to explain his thoughts to her, assuming
+her to be too ignorant; as she put it, "a fool."
+
+The pathos of his mother's last days, what she had expected, what she
+had received, came to Peter with the bitterness of what is finished and
+irrevocable. She had been dead only a few minutes, yet she could never
+know his grief and remorse; she could never forgive him. She was utterly
+removed in a few minutes, in a moment in the failing of a breath. The
+finality of death overpowered him.
+
+Into his room, through the thin wall, came the catch of numberless sobs,
+the long-drawn open wails, and the spasms of sobbing. Blurred voices
+called, "O Gawd! Gawd hab mercy! Hab mercy!" Now words were lost in the
+midst of confusion. The clamor boomed through the thin partition as if
+it would shake down his newspapered walls. With wet cheeks and an aching
+throat, Peter sat by his table, staring at his book-case in silence,
+like a white man.
+
+The dim light of his lamp fell over his psychologies and philosophies.
+These were the books that had given him precedence over the old
+washwoman who kept him in college. It was reading these books that had
+made him so wise that the old negress could not even follow his
+thoughts. Now in the hour of his mother's death the backs of his
+metaphysics blinked at him emptily. What signified their endless pages
+about dualism and monism, about phenomenon and noumenon? His mother was
+dead. And she had died embittered against him because he had read and
+had been bewildered by these empty, wordy volumes.
+
+A sense of profound defeat, of being ultimately fooled and cozened by
+the subtleties of white men, filled Peter Siner. He had eaten at their
+table, but their meat was not his meat. The uproar continued. Standing
+out of the din arose the burden of negro voices "Hab mercy! Gawd hab
+mercy!"
+
+In the morning the Ladies of Tabor came and washed and dressed Caroline
+Siner's body and made it ready for burial. For twenty years the old
+negress had paid ten cents a month to her society to insure her burial,
+and now the lodge made ready to fulfil its pledge. After many comings
+and goings, the black women called Peter to see their work, as if for
+his approval.
+
+The huge dead woman lay on the four-poster with a sheet spread over the
+lower part of her body. The ministrants had clothed it in the old black-
+silk dress, with its spreading seams and panels of different materials.
+It reminded Peter of the new dress he had meant to get his mother, and
+of the modish suit which at that moment molded his own shoulders and
+waist. The pitifulness of her sacrifices trembled in Peter's throat. He
+pressed his lips together, and nodded silently to the black Ladies of
+Tabor.
+
+Presently the white undertaker, a silent little man with a brisk yet
+sympathetic air, came and made some measurements. He talked to Peter in
+undertones about the finishing of the casket, how much the Knights of
+Tabor would pay, what Peter wanted. Then he spoke of the hour of burial,
+and mentioned a somewhat early hour because some of the negroes wanted
+to ship as roustabouts on the up-river packet, which was due at any
+moment.
+
+These decisions, asked of Peter, kept pricking him and breaking through
+the stupefaction of this sudden tragedy. He kept nodding a mechanical
+agreement until the undertaker had arranged all the details. Then the
+little man moved softly out of the cabin and went stepping away through
+the dust of Niggertown with professional briskness. A little later two
+black grave-diggers set out with picks and shovels for the negro
+graveyard.
+
+Numberless preparations for the funeral were going on all over
+Niggertown. The Knights of Tabor were putting on their regalia. Negro
+women were sending out hurry notices to white mistresses that they would
+be unable to cook the noonday meal. Dozens of negro girls flocked to the
+hair-dressing establishment of Miss Mallylou Speers. All were bent on
+having their wool straightened for the obsequies, and as only a few of
+them could be accommodated, the little room was packed. A smell of
+burning hair pervaded it. The girls sat around waiting their turn. Most
+of them already had their hair down,--or, rather loose, for it stood out
+in thick mats. The hair-dresser had a small oil stove on which lay
+heating half a dozen iron combs. With a hot comb she teased each strand
+of wool into perfect straightness and then plastered it down with a
+greasy pomade. The result was a stiff effect, something like the hair of
+the Japanese. It required about three hours to straighten the hair of
+one negress. The price was a dollar and a half.
+
+By half-past nine o'clock a crowd of negro men, in lodge aprons and with
+spears, and negro women, with sashes of ribbon over their shoulders and
+across the breasts, assembled about the Siner cabin. In the dusty
+curving street were ranged half a dozen battered vehicles,--a hearse, a
+delivery wagon, some rickety buggies, and a hack. Presently the
+undertaker arrived with a dilapidated black hearse which he used
+especially for negroes. He jumped down, got out his straps and coffin
+stands, directed some negro men to bring in the coffin, then hurried
+into the cabin with his air of brisk precision.
+
+He placed the coffin on the stands near the bed; then a number of men
+slipped the huge black body into it. The undertaker settled old
+Caroline's head against the cotton pillows, running his hand down beside
+her cheek and tipping her face just so. Then he put on the cover, which
+left a little oval opening just above her dead face. The sight of old
+Caroline's face seen through the little oval pane moved some of the
+women to renewed sobs. Eight black men took up the coffin and carried it
+out with the slow, wide-legged steps of roustabouts. Parson Ranson, in a
+rusty Prince Albert coat, took Peter's arm and led him to the first
+vehicle after the hearse. It was a delivery wagon, but it was the best
+vehicle in the procession.
+
+As Peter followed the coffin out, he saw the Knights and Ladies of Tabor
+lined up in marching order behind the van. The men held their spears and
+swords at attention; the women carried flowers. Behind the marchers came
+other old vehicles, a sorry procession.
+
+At fifteen minutes to ten the bell in the steeple of the colored church
+tolled a single stroke. The sound quivered through the sunshine over
+Niggertown. At its signal the poor procession moved away through the
+dust. At intervals the bell tolled after the vanishing train.
+
+As the negroes passed through the white town the merchants, lolling in
+their doors, asked passers-by what negro had died. The idlers under the
+mulberry in front of the livery-stable nodded at the old negro preacher
+in his long greenish-black coat, and Dawson Bobbs remarked:
+
+"Well, old Parson Ranson's going to tell 'em about it to-day," and he
+shifted his toothpick with a certain effect of humor.
+
+Old Mr. Tomwit asked if his companions had ever heard how Newt Bodler, a
+wit famous in Wayne County, once broke up a negro funeral with a
+hornets' nest. The idlers nodded a smiling affirmative as they watched
+the cortège go past. They had all heard it. But Mr. Tomwit would not be
+denied. He sallied forth into humorous reminiscence. Another loafer
+contributed an anecdote of how he had tied ropes to a dead negro so as
+to make the corpse sit up in bed and frighten the mourners.
+
+All their tales were of the vintage of the years immediately succeeding
+the Civil War,--pioneer humor, such as convulsed the readers of Peck's
+Bad Boy, Mr. Bowser, Sut Lovingood. The favorite dramatic properties of
+such writers were the hornets' nest, the falling ladder, the banana
+peel. They cultivated the humor of contusions, the wit of impact. This
+style still holds the stage of Hooker's Bend.
+
+In telling these tales the white villagers meant no special disrespect
+to the negro funeral. It simply reminded them of humorous things; so
+they told their jokes, like the naïve children of the soil that they
+were.
+
+At last the poor procession passed beyond the white church, around a
+bend in the road, and so vanished. Presently the bell in Niggertown
+ceased tolling.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+Peter always remembered his mother's funeral in fragments of intolerable
+pathos,--the lifting of old Parson Ranson's hands toward heaven, the
+songs of the black folk, the murmur of the first shovelful of dirt as it
+was lowered to the coffin, and the final raw mound of earth littered
+with a few dying flowers. With that his mother--who had been so near to,
+and so disappointed in, her son--was blotted from his life. The other
+events of the funeral flowed by in a sort of dream: he moved about; the
+negroes were speaking to him in the queer overtones one uses to the
+bereaved; he was being driven back to Niggertown; he reentered the Siner
+cabin. One or two of his friends stayed in the room with him for a while
+and said vague things, but there was nothing to say.
+
+Later in the afternoon Cissie Dildine and her mother brought his dinner
+to him. Vannie Dildine, a thin yellow woman, uttered a few disjointed
+words about Sister Ca'line being a good woman, and stopped amid
+sentence. There was nothing to say. Death had cut a wound across Peter
+Siner's life. Not for days, nor weeks, nor months, would his existence
+knit solidly back together. The poison of his ingratitude to his
+faithful old black mother would for a long, long day prevent the
+healing.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VII
+
+
+During a period following his mother's death Peter Siner's life drifted
+emptily and without purpose. He had the feeling of one convalescing in a
+hospital. His days passed unconnected by any thread of purpose; they
+were like cards scattered on a table, meaning nothing.
+
+At times he struggled against his lethargy. When he awoke in the morning
+and found the sun shining on his dusty primers and examination papers,
+he would think that he ought to go back to his old task; but he never
+did. In his heart grew a conviction that he would never teach school at
+Hooker's Bend.
+
+He would rise and dress slowly in the still cabin, thinking he must soon
+make new plans and take up some work. He never decided precisely what
+work; his thoughts trailed on in vague, idle designs.
+
+In fact, during Peter's reaction to his shock there began to assert
+itself in him that capacity for profound indolence inherent in his negro
+blood. To a white man time is a cumulative excitant. Continuous and
+absolute idleness is impossible; he must work, hunt, fish, play, gamble,
+or dissipate,--do something to burn up the accumulating sugar in his
+muscles. But to a negro idleness is an increasing balm; it is a
+stretching of his legs in the sunshine, a cat-like purring of his
+nerves; while his thoughts spread here and there in inconsequences, like
+water without a channel, making little humorous eddies, winding this way
+and that into oddities and fantasies without ever feeling that
+constraint of sequence which continually operates in a white brain. And
+it is this quality that makes negroes the entertainers of children
+_par excellence_.
+
+Peter Siner's mental slackening made him understandable, and gave him a
+certain popularity in Nigger-town. Black men fell into the habit of
+dropping in at the Siner cabin, where they would sit outdoors, with
+chairs propped against the wall, and philosophize on the desultory life
+of the crescent. Sometimes they would relate their adventures on the
+river packets and around the docks at Paducah, Cairo, St. Joe, and St.
+Louis; usually a recountal of drunkenness, gaming, fighting, venery,
+arrests, jail sentences, petty peculations, and escapes. Through these
+Iliads of vagabondage ran an irresponsible gaiety, a non-morality, and a
+kind of unbrave zest for adventure. They told of their defeats and
+flights with as much relish and humor as of their charges and victories.
+And while the spirit was thoroughly pagan, these accounts were full of
+the clichés of religion. A roustabout whom every one called the
+Persimmon confided to Peter that he meant to cut loose some logs in a
+raft up the river, float them down a little way, tie them up again, and
+claim the prize-money for salvaging them, God willing.
+
+The Persimmon was so called from a scar on his long slanting head. A
+steamboat mate had once found him asleep in the passageway of a lumber
+pile which the boat was lading, and he waked the negro by hitting him in
+the head with a persimmon bolt. In this there was nothing unusual or
+worthy of a nickname. The point was, the mate had been mistaken: the
+Persimmon was not working on his boat at all. In time this became one of
+the stock anecdotes which pilots and captains told to passengers
+traveling up and down the river.
+
+The Persimmon was a queer-looking negro; his head was a long diagonal
+from its peak down to his pendent lower lip, for he had no chin. The
+salient points on this black slope were the Persimmon's sad, protruding
+yellow eyeballs, over which the lids always drooped about half closed.
+An habitual tipping of this melancholy head to one side gave the
+Persimmon the look of one pondering and deploring the amount of sin
+there was in the world. This saintly impression the Persimmon's conduct
+and language never bore out.
+
+At the time of the Persimmon's remarks about the raft two of Peter's
+callers, Jim Pink Staggs and Parson Ranson, took the roustabout to task.
+Jim Pink based his objection on the grounds of glutting the labor
+market.
+
+"Ef us niggers keeps turnin' too many raf's loose fuh de prize-money,"
+he warned, "somebody's goin' to git 'spicious, an' you'll ruin a good
+thing."
+
+The Persimmon absorbed this with a far-away look in his half-closed
+eyes.
+
+"It's a ticklish job," argued Parson Ranson, "an' I wouldn't want to
+wuck at de debbil's task aroun' de ribber, ca'se you mout fall in,
+Persimmon, an' git drownded."
+
+"I wouldn't do sich a thing a-tall," admitted the Persimmon, "but I jes'
+natchelly got to git ten dollars to he'p pay on my divo'ce."
+
+"I kain't see whut you want wid a divo'ce," said Jim Pink, yawning,
+"when you been ma'ied three times widout any."
+
+"It's fuh a Christmas present," explained the Persimmon, carelessly,
+"fuh th' woman I'm libin' wid now. Mahaly's a great woman fuh style. I'm
+goin' to divo'ce my other wives, one at a time lak my lawyer say."
+
+"On what grounds?" asked Peter, curiously.
+
+"Desuhtion."
+
+"Desertion?"
+
+"Uh huh; I desuhted 'em."
+
+Jim Pink shook his head, picked up a pebble, and began idly juggling it,
+making it appear double, single, treble, then single again.
+
+"Too many divo'ces in dis country now, Persimmon," he moralized.
+
+"Well, whut's de cause uv 'em?" asked the Persimmon, suddenly bringing
+his protruding yellow eyes around on the sleight-of-hand performer.
+
+Jim Pink was slightly taken aback; then he said:
+
+"'Spicion; nothin' but 'spicion."
+
+"Yeah, 'spicion," growled the Persimmon; "'spicion an' de husban'
+leadin' a irreg'lar life."
+
+Jim Pink looked at his companion, curiously.
+
+"The husban'--leadin' a irreg'lar life?"
+
+"Yeah,"--the Persimmon nodded grimly,--"the husban' comin' home at
+onexpected hours. You know whut I means, Jim Pink."
+
+Jim Pink let his pebble fall and lowered the fore legs of his chair
+softly to the ground.
+
+"Now, look heah, Persimmon, you don' want to be draggin' no foreign
+disco'se into yo' talk heah befo' Mr. Siner an' Parson Ranson."
+
+The Persimmon rose deliberately.
+
+"All I want to say is, I drapped off'n de matrimonial tree three times
+a'ready, Jim Pink, an' I think I feels somebody shakin' de limb ag'in."
+
+The old negro preacher rose, too, a little behind Jim Pink.
+
+"Now, boys! boys!" he placated. "You jes think dat, Persimmon."
+
+"Yeah," admitted Persimmon, "I jes think it; but ef I b'lieve ever'thing
+is so whut I think is so, I'd part Jim Pink's wool wid a brickbat."
+
+Parson Ranson tried to make peace, but the Persimmon spread his hands in
+a gesture that included the three men. "Now, I ain't sayin' nothin'," he
+stated solemnly, "an' I ain't makin' no threats; but ef anything
+happens, you-all kain't say that nobody didn' tell nobody about
+nothin'."
+
+With this the Persimmon walked to the gate, let himself out, still
+looking back at Jim Pink, and then started down the dusty street.
+
+Mr. Staggs seemed uncomfortable under the Persimmon's protruding yellow
+stare, but finally, when the roustabout was gone, he shrugged, regained
+his aplomb, and remarked that some niggers spent their time in studyin'
+'bout things they hadn't no info'mation on whatever. Then he strolled
+off up the crescent in the other direction.
+
+All this would have made fair minstrel patter if Peter Siner had shared
+the white conviction that every emotion expressed in a negro's patois is
+humorous. Unfortunately, Peter was too close to the negroes to hold such
+a tenet. He knew this quarrel was none the less rancorous for having
+been couched in the queer circumlocution of black folk. And behind it
+all shone the background of racial promiscuity out of which it sprang.
+It was like looking at an open sore that touched all of Niggertown, men
+and boys, young girls and women. It caused tragedies, murders, fights,
+and desertions in the black village as regularly as the rotation of the
+calendar; yet there was no public sentiment against it. Peter wondered
+how this attitude of his whole people could possibly be.
+
+With the query the memory of Ida May came back to him, with its sense of
+dim pathos. It seemed to Peter now as if their young and uninstructed
+hands had destroyed a safety-vault to filch a penny.
+
+The reflex of a thought of Ida May always brought Peter to Cissie; it
+always stirred up in him a desire to make this young girl's path gentle
+and smooth. There was a fineness, a delicacy about Cissie, that, it
+seemed to Peter, Ida May had never possessed. Then, too, Cissie was
+moved by a passion for self-betterment. She deserved a cleaner field
+than the Niggertown of Hooker's Bend.
+
+Peter took Parson Ranson's arm, and the two moved to the gate by common
+consent. It was no longer pleasant to sit here. The quarrel they had
+heard somehow had flavored their surroundings.
+
+Peter turned his steps mechanically northward up the crescent toward the
+Dildine cabin. Nothing now restrained him from calling on Cissie; he
+would keep no dinner waiting; he would not be warned and berated on his
+return home. The nagging, jealous love of his mother had ended.
+
+As the two men walked along, it was borne in upon Peter that his
+mother's death definitely ended one period of his life. There was no
+reason why he should continue his present unsettled existence. It seemed
+best to marry Cissie at once and go North. Further time in this place
+would not be good for the girl. Even if he could not lift all
+Niggertown, he could at least help Cissie. He had had no idea, when he
+first planned his work, what a tremendous task he was essaying. The
+white village had looked upon the negroes so long as non-moral and non-
+human that the negroes, with the flexibility of their race, had
+assimilated that point of view. The whites tried to regulate the negroes
+by endless laws. The negroes had come to accept this, and it seemed that
+they verily believed that anything not discovered by the constable was
+permissible. Mr. Dawson Bobbs was Niggertown's conscience. It was best
+for Peter to take from this atmosphere what was dearest to him, and go
+at once.
+
+The brown man's thoughts came trailing back to the old negro parson
+hobbling at his side. He looked at the old man, hesitated a moment, then
+told him what was in his mind.
+
+Parson Ranson's face wrinkled into a grin.
+
+"You's gwine to git ma'ied?"
+
+"And I thought I'd have you perform the ceremony."
+
+This suggestion threw the old negro into excitement.
+
+"Me, Mr. Peter?"
+
+"Yes. Why not?"
+
+"Why, Mr. Peter, I kain't jine you an' Miss Cissie Dildine."
+
+Peter looked at him, astonished.
+
+"Why can't you?"
+
+"Whyn't you git a white preacher?"
+
+"Well," deliberated Peter, gravely, "it's a matter of principle with me,
+Parson Ranson. I think we colored people ought to be more self-reliant,
+more self-serving. We ought to lead our own lives instead of being mere
+echoes of white thought." He made a swift gesture, moved by this passion
+of his life. "I don't mean racial equality. To my mind racial equality
+is an empty term. One might as well ask whether pink and violet are
+equal. But what I do insist on is autonomous development."
+
+The old preacher nodded, staring into the dust. "Sho! 'tonomous
+'velopment."
+
+Peter saw that his language, if not his thought, was far beyond his old
+companion's grasp, and he lacked the patience to simplify himself.
+
+"Why don't you want to marry us, Parson?"
+
+Parson Ranson lifted his brows and filled his forehead with wrinkles.
+
+"Well, I dunno. You an' Miss Cissie acts too much lak white folks fuh a
+nigger lak me to jine you, Mr. Peter."
+
+Peter made a sincere effort to be irritated, but he was not.
+
+"That's no way to feel. It's exactly what I was talking about,--racial
+self-reliance. You've married hundreds of colored couples."
+
+"Ya-as, suh,"--the old fellow scratched his black jaw.--"I kin yoke up a
+pair uv ordina'y niggers all right. Sometimes dey sticks, sometimes dey
+don't." The old man shook his white, kinky head. "I'll bust in an' try
+to hitch up you-all. I--I dunno whedder de cer'mony will hol' away up
+North or not."
+
+"It'll be all right anywhere, Parson," said Peter, seriously. "Your name
+on the marriage-certificate will--can you write?"
+
+"N-no, suh."
+
+After a brief hesitation Peter repeated determinedly:
+
+"It'll be all right. And, by the way, of course, this will be a very
+quiet wedding."
+
+"Yas-suh." The old man bobbed importantly.
+
+"I wouldn't mention it to any one."
+
+"No, suh; no, suh. I don' blame you a-tall, Mr. Peter, wid dat Tump Pack
+gallivantin' roun' wid a forty-fo'. Hit would keep 'mos' anybody's
+weddin' ve'y quiet onless he wuz lookin' fuh a short cut to heab'n."
+
+As the two negroes passed the Berry cabin, Nan Berry thrust out her
+spiked head and called to Peter Captain Renfrew wanted to see him.
+
+Peter paused, with quickened interest in this strange old man who had
+come to his mother's death-bed with a doctor. Peter asked Nan what the
+Captain wanted.
+
+Nan did not know. Wince Washington had told Nan that the Captain wanted
+to see Peter. Bluegum Frakes had told Wince; Jerry Dillihay had told
+Bluegum; but any further meanderings of the message, when it started, or
+what its details might be, Nan could not state.
+
+It was a typical message from a resident of the white town to a denizen
+of Niggertown. Such messages are delivered to any black man for any
+other black man, not only in the village, but anywhere in the outlying
+country. It may be passed on by a dozen or a score of mouths before it
+reaches its objective. It may be a day or a week in transit, but
+eventually it will be delivered verbatim. This queer system of
+communication is a relic of slavery, when the master would send out word
+for some special negro out of two or three hundred slaves to report at
+the big house.
+
+However, as Peter approached the Dildine cabin, thoughts of his
+approaching marriage drove from his mind even old Captain Renfrew's
+message. His heart beat fast from having made his first formal step
+toward wedlock. The thought of having Cissie all to himself, swept his
+nerves in a gust.
+
+He opened the gate, and ran up between the dusty lines of dwarf box,
+eager to tell her what he had done. He thumped on the cracked, unpainted
+door, and impatiently waited the skirmish of observation along the edge
+of the window-blinds. This was unduly drawn out. Presently he heard
+women's voices whispering to each other inside. They seemed urgent,
+almost angry voices. Now and then he caught a sentence:
+
+"What difference will it make?" "I couldn't." "Why couldn't you?"
+"Because--" "That's because you've been to Nashville." "Oh, well--" A
+chair was moved over a bare floor. A little later footsteps came to the
+entrance, the door opened, and Cissie's withered yellow mother stood
+before him.
+
+Vannie offered her hand and inquired after Peter's health with a stopped
+voice that instantly recalled his mother's death. After the necessary
+moment of talk, the mulatto inquired for Cissie.
+
+The yellow woman seemed slightly ill at ease.
+
+"Cissie ain't so well, Peter."
+
+"She's not ill?"
+
+"N-no; but the excitement an' ever'thing--" answered Vannie, vaguely.
+
+In the flush of his plans, Peter was keenly disappointed.
+
+"It's very important, Mrs. Dildine."
+
+Vannie's dried yellow face framed the ghost of a smile.
+
+"Ever'thing a young man's got to say to a gal is ve'y important, Peter."
+
+It seemed to Peter a poor time for a jest; his face warmed faintly.
+
+"It--it's about some of the details of our--our wedding."
+
+"If you'll excuse her to-day, Peter, an' come after supper--"
+
+Peter hesitated, and was about to go away when Cissie's voice came from
+an inner room, telling her mother to admit him.
+
+The yellow woman glanced at the door on the left side of the hall,
+crossed over and opened it, stood to one side while Peter entered, and
+closed it after him, leaving the two alone.
+
+The room into which Peter stepped was dark, after the fashion of negro
+houses. Only after a moment's survey did he see Cissie sitting near a
+big fireplace made of rough stone. The girl started to rise as Peter
+advanced toward her, but he solicitously forbade it and hurried over to
+her. When he leaned over her and put his arms about her, his ardor was
+slightly dampened when she gave him her cheek instead of her lips to
+kiss.
+
+"Surely, you're not too ill to be kissed?" he rallied faintly.
+
+"You kissed me. I thought we had agreed, Peter, you were not to come in
+the daytime any more."
+
+"Oh, is that it?" Peter patted her shoulder, cheerfully. "Don't worry; I
+have just removed any reason why I shouldn't come any time I want to."
+
+Cissie looked at him, her dark eyes large in the gloom.
+
+"What have you done?"
+
+"Got a preacher to marry us; on my way now for a license. Dropped in to
+ask if you 'll be ready by tomorrow or next day."
+
+The girl gasped.
+
+"But, Peter--"
+
+Peter drew a chair beside her in a serious argumentative mood.
+
+"Yes I think we ought to get married at once. No reason why we shouldn't
+get it over with--Why, what's the matter?"
+
+"So soon after your mother's death, Peter?"
+
+"It's to get away from Hooker's Bend, Cissie--to get you away. I don't
+like for you to stay here. It's all so--" he broke off, not caring to
+open the disagreeable subject.
+
+The girl sat staring down at some fagots smoldering on the hearth. At
+that moment they broke into flame and illuminated her sad face.
+
+"You'll go, won't you?" asked Peter at last, with a faint uncertainty.
+
+The girl looked up.
+
+"Oh--I--I'd be glad to, Peter,"--she gave a little shiver. "Ugh! this
+Niggertown is a--a terrible place!"
+
+Peter leaned over, took one of her hands, and patted it.
+
+"Then we'll go," he said soothingly. "It's decided--tomorrow. And we'll
+have a perfectly lovely wedding trip," he planned cheerfully, to draw
+her mind from her mood. "On the car going North I'll get a whole
+drawing-room. I've always wanted a drawing-room, and you'll be my
+excuse. We'll sit and watch the fields and woods and cities slip past
+us, and know, when we get off, we can walk on the streets as freely as
+anybody. We'll be a genuine man and wife."
+
+His recital somehow stirred him. He took her in his arms, pressed her
+cheek to his, and after a moment kissed her lips with the trembling
+ardor of a bridegroom.
+
+Cissie remained passive a moment, then put up he hands, turned his face
+away, and slowly released herself.
+
+Peter was taken aback.
+
+"What _is_ the matter, Cissie?"
+
+"I can't go, Peter."
+
+Peter looked at her with a feeling of strangeness.
+
+"Can't go?"
+
+The girl shook her head.
+
+"You mean--you want us to live here?"
+
+Cissie sat exceedingly still and barely shook her head.
+
+The mulatto had a sensation as if the portals which disclosed a new and
+delicious life were slowly closing against him. He stared into her oval
+face.
+
+"You don't mean, Cissie--you don't mean you don't want to marry me?"
+
+The fagots on the hearth burned now with a cheerful flame. Cissie stared
+at it, breathing rapidly from the top of her lungs. She seemed about to
+faint. As Peter watched her the jealousy of the male crept over him.
+
+"Look here, Cissie," he said in a queer voice, "you--you don't mean,
+after all, that Tump Pack is--"
+
+"Oh no! No!" Her face showed her repulsion. Then she drew a long breath
+and apparently made up her mind to some sort of ordeal.
+
+"Peter," she asked in a low tone, "did you ever think what we colored
+people are trying to reach?" She stared into his uncomprehending eyes.
+"I mean what is our aim, our goal, whom are we trying to be like?"
+
+"We aren't trying to be like any one." Peter was entirely at a loss.
+
+"Oh, yes, we are," Cissie hurried on. "Why do colored girls straighten
+their hair, bleach their skins, pinch their feet? Aren't they trying to
+look like white girls?"
+
+Peter agreed, wondering at her excitement.
+
+"And you went North to college, Peter, so you could think and act like a
+white man--"
+
+Peter resisted this at once; he was copying nobody. The whole object of
+college was to develop one's personality, to bring out--
+
+The girl stopped his objections almost piteously.
+
+"Oh, don't argue! You know arguing throws me off. I--now I've forgotten
+how I meant to say it!" Tears of frustration welled up in her eyes.
+
+Her mood was alarming, almost hysterical. Peter began comforting her.
+
+"There, there, dear, dear Cissie, what is the matter? Don't say it at
+all." Then, inconsistently, he added: "You said I copied white men.
+Well, what of it?"
+
+Cissie breathed her relief at having been given the thread of her
+discourse. She sat silent for a moment with the air of one screwing up
+her courage.
+
+"It's this," she said in an uncertain voice: "sometimes we--we--girls--
+here in Niggertown copy the wrong thing first."
+
+Peter looked blankly at her.
+
+"The wrong thing first, Cissie?"
+
+"Oh, yes; we--we begin on clothes and--and hair and--and that isn't the
+real matter."
+
+"Why, no-o-o, that isn't the real matter," said Peter puzzled.
+
+Cissie looked at his face and became hopeless.
+
+"Oh, _don't_ you understand! Lots of us--lots of us make that
+mistake! I--I did; so--so, Peter, I can't go with you!" She flung out
+the last phrase, and suddenly collapsed on the arm of her chair,
+sobbing.
+
+Peter was amazed. He got up, sat on the arm of his own chair next to
+hers and put his arms about her, bending over her, mothering her. Her
+distress was so great that he said as earnestly as his ignorance
+permitted:
+
+"Yes, Cissie, I understand now." But his tone belied his words, and the
+girl shook her head. "Yes, I do, Cissie," he repeated emptily. But she
+only shook her head as she leaned over him, and her tears slowly formed
+and trickled down on his hand. Then all at once old Caroline's
+accusation against Cissie flashed on Peter's mind. She had stolen that
+dinner in the turkey roaster, after all. It so startled him that he sat
+up straight. Cissie also sat up. She stopped crying, and sat looking
+into the fire.
+
+"You mean--morals?" said Peter in a low tone.
+
+Cissie barely nodded, her wet eyes fixed on the fire.
+
+"I see. I was stupid."
+
+The girl sat a moment, drawing deep breaths. At last she rose slowly.
+
+"Well--I'm glad it's over. I'm glad you know." She stood looking at him
+almost composedly except for her breathing and her tear-stained face.
+"You see, Peter, if you had been like Tump Pack or Wince or any of the
+boys around here, it--it wouldn't have made much difference; but--but
+you went off and--and learned to think and feel like a white man. You--
+you changed your code, Peter." She gave a little shaken sound, something
+between a sob and a laugh. "I--I don't think th-that's very fair, Peter,
+to--to go away an'--an' change an' come back an' judge us with yo' n-new
+code." Cissie's precise English broke down.
+
+Just then Peter's logic caught at a point.
+
+"If you didn't know anything about my code, how do you know what I feel
+now?" he asked.
+
+She looked at him with a queer expression.
+
+"I found out when you kissed me under the arbor. It was too late then."
+
+She stood erect, with dismissal very clearly written in her attitude.
+Peter walked out of the room.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+With a certain feeling of clumsiness Peter groped in the dark hall for
+his hat, then, as quietly as he could, let himself out at the door.
+Outside he was surprised to find that daylight still lingered in the
+sky. He thought night had fallen. The sun lay behind the Big Hill, but
+its red rays pouring down through the boles of the cedars tinted long
+delicate avenues in the dusty atmosphere above his head. A sharp chill
+in the air presaged frost for the night. Somewhere in the crescent a boy
+yodeled for his dog at about half-minute intervals, with the persistence
+of children.
+
+Peter walked a little distance, but finally came to a stand in the dust,
+looking at the negro cabins, not knowing where to go or what to do.
+Cissie's confession had destroyed all his plans. It had left him as
+adynamic as had his mother's death. It seemed to Peter that there was a
+certain similarity between the two events; both were sudden and
+desolating. And just as his mother had vanished utterly from his reach,
+so now it seemed Cissie was no more. Cissie the clear-eyed, Cissie the
+ambitious, Cissie the refined, had vanished away, and in her place stood
+a thief.
+
+The thing was grotesque. Peter began a sudden shuddering in the cold.
+Then he began moving toward the empty cabin where he slept and kept his
+things. He moved along, talking to himself in the dusty emptiness of the
+crescent. He decided that he would go home, pack his clothes, and
+vanish. A St. Louis boat would be down that night, and he would just
+have time to pack his clothes and catch it. He would not take his books,
+his philosophies. He would let them remain, in the newspapered room,
+until all crumbled into uniform philosophic dust, and the teachings of
+Aristotle blew about Niggertown.
+
+Then, as he thought of traveling North, the vision of the honeymoon he
+had just planned revived his numb brain into a dismal aching. He looked
+back through the dusk at the Dildine roof. It stood black against an
+opalescent sky. Out of the foreground, bending over it, arose a clump of
+tall sunflowers, in whose silhouette hung a suggestion of yellow and
+green. The whole scene quivered slightly at every throb of his heart. He
+thought what a fool he was to allow a picaresque past to keep him away
+from such a woman, how easy it would be to go back to the soft luxury of
+Cissie, to tell her it made no difference; and somehow, just at that
+moment it seemed not to.
+
+Then the point of view which Peter had been four years acquiring swept
+away the impulse, and it left him moving toward his cabin again, empty,
+cold, and planless.
+
+He was drawn out of his reverie by the soft voice of a little negro boy
+asking him apprehensively whom he was talking to.
+
+Peter stopped, drew forth a handkerchief and dabbed the moisture from
+his cold face in the meticulous fashion of college men.
+
+With the boy came a dog which was cautiously smelling Peter's shoes and
+trousers. Both boy and dog were investigating the phenomenon of Peter.
+Peter, in turn, looked down at them with a feeling that they had
+materialized out of nothing.
+
+"What did you say?" he asked vaguely.
+
+The boy was suddenly overcome with the excessive shyness of negro
+children, and barely managed to whisper:
+
+"I--I ast wh-who you wuz a-talkin' to."
+
+"Was I talking?"
+
+The little negro nodded, undecided whether to stand his ground or flee.
+Peter touched the child's crisp hair.
+
+"I was talking to myself," he said, and moved forward again.
+
+The child instantly gained confidence at the slight caress, took a fold
+of Peter's trousers in his hand for friendliness, and the two trudged on
+together.
+
+"Wh-whut you talkin' to yo' se'f for?"
+
+Peter glanced down at the little black head that promised to think up a
+thousand questions.
+
+"I was wondering where to go."
+
+"Lawsy! is you los' yo' way?"
+
+He stroked the little head with a rush of self-pity.
+
+"Yes, I have, son; I've completely lost my way."
+
+The child twisted his head around and peered up alongside Peter's arm.
+Presently he asked:
+
+"Ain't you Mr. Peter Siner?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Ain't you de man whut's gwine to ma'y Miss Cissie Dildine?"
+
+Peter looked down at his small companion with a certain concern that his
+marriage was already gossip known to babes.
+
+"I'm Peter Siner," he repeated.
+
+"Den I knows which way you wants to go," piped the youngster in sudden
+helpfulness. "You wants to go over to Cap'n Renfrew's place acrost de
+Big Hill. He done sont fuh you. Mr. Wince Washington tol' me, ef I seed
+you, to tell you dat Cap'n Renfrew wants to see you. I dunno whut hit's
+about. I ast Wince, an' he didn' know."
+
+Peter recalled the message Nan Berry had given him some hours before.
+Now the same summons had seeped around to him from another direction.
+
+"I--I'll show you de way to Cap'n Renfrew's ef--ef you'll come back wid
+me th'ugh de cedar glade," proposed the child. "I--I ain't skeered in de
+cedar glade, b-b-but hit's so dark I kain't see my way back home.
+I--I--"
+
+Peter thanked him and declined his services. After all, he might as well
+go to see Captain Renfrew. He owed the old gentleman some thanks--and
+ten dollars.
+
+The only thing of which Peter Siner was aware during his walk over the
+Big Hill and through the village was his last scene with Cissie. He went
+over it again and again, repeating their conversation, inventing new
+replies, framing new action, questioning more fully into the octoroon's
+vague confession and his benumbed acceptance of it. The moment his mind
+completed the little drama it started again from the very beginning.
+
+At Captain Renfrew's gate this mental mummery paused long enough for him
+to vacillate between walking in or going around and shouting from the
+back gate. It is a point of etiquette in Hooker's Bend that negroes
+shall enter a white house from the back stoop. Peter had no desire to
+transgress this custom. On the other hand, if Captain Renfrew was
+receiving him as a fellow of Harvard, the back door, in its way, would
+prove equally embarrassing.
+
+After a certain indecision he compromised by entering the front gate and
+calling the Captain's name from among the scattered bricks of the old
+walk.
+
+The house lay silent, half smothered in a dark tangle of shrubbery.
+Peter called twice before he heard the shuffle of house slippers, and
+then saw the Captain's dressing-gown at the piazza steps.
+
+"Is that you, Peter?" came a querulous voice.
+
+"Yes, Captain. I was told you wanted to see me."
+
+"You've been deliberate in coming," criticized the old gentleman,
+testily. "I sent you word by some black rascal three days ago."
+
+"I just received the message to-day." Peter remained discreetly at the
+gate.
+
+"Yes; well, come in, come in. See if you can do anything with this
+damnable lamp."
+
+The old man turned with a dignified drawing-together of his dressing-
+gown and moved back. Apparently, the renovation of a cranky lamp was the
+whole content of the Captain's summons to Peter.
+
+There was something so characteristic in this incident that Peter was
+moved to a vague sense of mirth. It was just like the old régime to call
+in a negro, a special negro, from ten miles away to move a jar of ferns
+across the lawn or trim a box hedge or fix a lamp.
+
+Peter followed the old gentleman around to the back piazza facing his
+study. There, laid out on the floor, were all the parts of a gasolene
+lamp, together with a pipe-wrench, a hammer, a little old-fashioned
+vise, a bar of iron, and an envelop containing the mantels and the more
+delicate parts of the lamp.
+
+"It's extraordinary to me," criticized the Captain, "why they can't make
+a gasolene lamp that will go, and remain in a going condition."
+
+"Has it been out of fix for three days?" asked Peter, sorry that the old
+gentleman should have lacked a light for so long.
+
+"No," growled the Captain; "it started gasping at four o'clock last
+night; so I put it out and went to bed. I've been working at it this
+evening. There's a little hole in the tip,--if I could see it,--a hair-
+sized hole, painfully small. Why any man wants to make gasolene lamps
+with microscopic holes that ordinary intelligence must inform him will
+become clogged I cannot conceive."
+
+Peter ventured no opinion on this trait of lampmakers, but said that if
+the Captain knew where he could get an oil hand-lamp for a little more
+light, he thought he could unstop the hole.
+
+The Captain looked at his helper and shook his head.
+
+"I am surprised at you, Peter. When I was your age, I could see an
+aperture like that hole under the last quarter of the moon. In this
+strong light I could have--er--lunged the cleaner through it, sir. You
+must have strained your eyes in college." He paused, then added: "You'll
+find hand-lamps in any of the rooms fronting this porch. I don't know
+whether they have oil in them or not--the shiftless niggers that come
+around to take care of this building--no dependence to be put in them.
+When I try it myself, I do even worse."
+
+The old gentleman's tone showed that he was thawing out of his irritable
+mood, and Peter sensed that he meant to be amusing in an austere,
+unsmiling fashion. The Captain rubbed his delicate wrinkled hands
+together in a pleased fashion and sat down in a big porch chair to await
+Peter's assembling of the lamp. The brown man started down the long
+piazza, in search of a hand-light.
+
+He found a lamp in the first room he entered, returned to the piazza,
+sat down on the edge of it, and began his tinkering. The old Captain
+apparently watched him with profound satisfaction. Presently, after the
+fashion of the senile, he began endless and minute instructions as to
+how the lamp should be cleaned.
+
+"Take the wire in your left hand, Peter,--that's right,--now hold the
+tip a little closer to the light--no, place the mantels on the right
+side--that's the way I do it. System...." the old man's monologue ran on
+and on, and became a murmur in Peter's ears. It was rather soothing than
+otherwise. Now and then it held tremulous vibrations that might have
+been from age or that might have been from some deep satisfaction
+mounting even to joy. But to Peter that seemed hardly probable. No doubt
+it was senility. The Captain was a tottery old man, past the age for any
+fundamental joy.
+
+Night had fallen now, and a darkness, musky with autumn weeds, hemmed in
+the sphere of yellow light on the old piazza. A black-and-white cat
+materialized out of the gloom, purring, and arching against a pillar.
+The whole place was filled with a sense of endless leisure. The old man,
+the cat, the perfume of the weeds, soothed in Peter even the rawness of
+his hurt at Cissie.
+
+Indeed, in a way, the old manor became a sort of apology for the
+octoroon girl. The height and the reach of the piazza, exaggerated by
+the darkness, suggested a time when retinues of negroes passed through
+its dignified colonnades. Those black folk were a part of the place.
+They came and went, picked up and used what they could, and that was all
+life held for them. They were without wage, without rights, even to the
+possession of their own bodies; so by necessity they took what they
+could. That was only fifty-odd years ago. Thus, in a way, Peter's
+surroundings began a subtle explanation of and apology for Cissie, the
+whole racial training of black folk in petty thievery. And that this
+should have touched Cissie--the meanness, the pathos of her fate moved
+Peter.
+
+The negro was aroused from his reverie by the old Captain's getting out
+of his chair and saying, "Very good," and then Peter saw that he had
+finished the lamp. The two men rose and carried it into the study, where
+Peter pumped and lighted it; a bit later its brilliant white light
+flooded the room.
+
+"Quite good." The old Captain stood rubbing his hands with his odd air
+of continued delight. "How do you like this place, anyway, Peter?" He
+wrapped his gown around him, sat down in the old Morris chair beside the
+book-piled table, and indicated another seat for Peter.
+
+The mulatto took it, aware of a certain flexing of Hooker's Bend custom,
+where negroes, unless old or infirm, are not supposed to sit in the
+presence of whites.
+
+"Do you mean the study, Captain?"
+
+"Yes, the study, the whole place."
+
+"It's very pleasant," replied Peter; "it has the atmosphere of age."
+
+Captain Renfrew nodded.
+
+"These old places," pursued Peter, "always give me an impression of
+statesmanship, somehow. I always think of grave old gentlemen busy with
+the cares of public policy."
+
+The old man seemed gratified.
+
+"You are sensitive to atmosphere. If I may say it, every Southron of the
+old régime was a statesman by nature and training. The complete care of
+two or three hundred negroes, a regard for their bodily, moral, and
+spiritual welfare, inevitably led the master into the impersonal
+attitude of statecraft. It was a training, sir, in leadership, in social
+thinking, in, if you please, altruism." The old gentleman thumped the
+arm of his chair with a translucent palm. "Yes, sir, negro slavery was
+God's great lesson to the South in altruism and loving-kindness, sir! My
+boy, I do believe with all my heart that the institution of slavery was
+placed here in God's country to rear up giants of political leadership,
+that our nation might weather the revolutions of the world. Oh, the
+Yankees are necessary! I know that!" The old Captain held up a palm at
+Peter as if repressing an imminent retort. "I know the Yankees are the
+Marthas of the nation. They furnish food and fuel to the ship of state,
+but, my boy, the reservoir of our country's spiritual and mental
+strength, the Mary of our nation, must always be the South. Virginia is
+the mother of Presidents!"
+
+The Captain's oration left him rather breathless. He paused a moment,
+then asked:
+
+"Peter, have you ever thought that we men of the leisure class owe a
+debt to the world?"
+
+Peter smiled.
+
+"I know the theory of the leisure class, but I've had very little
+practical experience with leisure."
+
+"Well, that's a subject close to my heart. As a scholar and a thinker, I
+feel that I should give the fruits of my leisure to the world. Er--in
+fact, Peter, that is why I sent for you to come and see me."
+
+"Why you sent for me?" Peter was surprised at this turn.
+
+"Precisely. You."
+
+Here the old gentleman got himself out of his chair, walked across to
+one of a series of drawers in his bookcases, opened it, and took out a
+sheaf of papers and a quart bottle. He brought the papers and the bottle
+back to the table, made room for them, put the papers in a neat pile,
+and set the bottle at a certain distance from the heap.
+
+"Now, Peter, please hand me one of those wineglasses in the religious
+section of my library--I always keep two or three glasses among my
+religious works, in memory of the fact that our Lord and Master wrought
+a miracle at the feast of Cana, especially to bless the cup. Indeed,
+Peter, thinking of that miracle at the wedding-feast, I wonder, sir, how
+the prohibitionists can defend their conduct even to their own
+consciences, because logically, sir, logically, the miracle of our
+gracious Lord completely cuts away the ground from beneath their feet!
+
+"No wonder, when the Mikado sent a Japanese envoy to America to make a
+tentative examination of Christianity as a proper creed for the state
+religion of Japan--no wonder, with this miracle flouted by the
+prohibitionists, the embassy carried back the report that Americans
+really have no faith in the religion they profess. Shameful! Shameful!
+Place the glass there on the left of the bottle. A little farther away
+from the bottle, please, just a trifle more. Thank you."
+
+The Captain poured himself a tiny glassful, and its bouquet immediately
+filled the room. There was no guessing how old that whisky was.
+
+"I will not break the laws of my country, Peter, no matter how godless
+and sacrilegious those laws may be; therefore I cannot offer you a
+drink, but you will observe a second glass among the religious works,
+and the bottle sits in plain view on the table--er--em." He watched
+Peter avail himself of his opportunity, and then added, "Now, you may
+just drink to me, standing, as you are, like that."
+
+They drank, Peter standing, the old gentleman seated.
+
+"It is just as necessary," pursued the old connoisseur, when Peter was
+reseated, "it is just as necessary for a gentleman to have a delicate
+palate for the tints of the vine as it is for him to have a delicate eye
+for the tints of the palette. Nature bestowed a taste both in art and
+wine on man, which he should strive to improve at every opportunity. It
+is a gift from God. Perhaps you would like another glass. No? Then
+accommodate me."
+
+He drained this one, with Peter standing, worked his withered lips back
+and forth to experience its full taste, then swallowed, and smacked.
+
+"Now, Peter," he said, "the reason I asked you to come to see me is that
+I need a man about this house. That will be one phase of your work. The
+more important part is that you shall serve as a sort of secretary. I
+have here a manuscript." He patted the pile of papers. "My handwriting
+is rather difficult. I want you to copy this matter out and get it ready
+for the printer."
+
+Peter became more and more astonished.
+
+"Are you offering me a permanent place, Captain Renfrew?" he asked.
+
+The old man nodded.
+
+"I need a man with a certain liberality of culture. I will no doubt have
+you run through books and periodicals and make note of any points
+germane to my thesis."
+
+Peter looked at the pile of script on the table.
+
+"That is very flattering, Captain; but the fact is, I came by your place
+at this hour because I am just in the act of leaving here on the
+steamboat to-night."
+
+The Captain looked at Peter with concern on his face. "Leaving Hooker's
+Bend?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Why?"
+
+Peter hesitated.
+
+"Well, my mother is dead--"
+
+"Yes, but your--your--your work is still here, Peter." The Captain fell
+into a certain confusion. "A man's work, Peter; a man's work."
+
+"Do you mean my school-teaching?"
+
+Then came a pause. The conversation somehow had managed to leave them
+both somewhat at sea. The Captain began again, in a different tone:
+
+"Peter, I wish you to remain here with me for another reason. I am an
+old man, Peter. Anything could happen to me here in this big house, and
+nobody would know it. I don't like to think of it." The old man's tone
+quite painted his fears. "I am not afraid of death, Peter. I have walked
+before God all my life save in one or two points, which, I believe, in
+His mercy, He has forgiven me; but I cannot endure the idea of being
+found here some day in some unconsidered posture, fallen out of a chair,
+or a-sprawl on the floor. I wish to die with dignity, Peter, as I have
+lived."
+
+"Then you mean that you want me to stay here with you until--until the
+end, Captain?"
+
+The old man nodded.
+
+"That is my desire, Peter, for an honorarium which you yourself shall
+designate. At my death, you will receive some proper portion of my
+estate; in fact, the bulk of my estate, because I leave no other heirs.
+I am the last Renfrew of my race, Peter."
+
+Peter grew more and more amazed as the old gentleman unfolded this
+strange proposal. What queerer, pleasanter berth could he find than that
+offered him here in the quietude of the old manor, among books, tending
+the feeble flame of this old aristocrat's life? An air of scholasticism
+hung about the library. In some corner of this dark oaken library his
+philosophies would rest comfortably.
+
+Then it occurred to Peter that he would have to continue his sleeping
+and eating in Niggertown, and since his mother had died and his rupture
+with Cissie, the squalor and smells of the crescent had become
+impossible. He told the old Captain his objections as diplomatically as
+possible. The old man made short work of them. He wanted Peter to sleep
+in the manor within calling distance, and he might begin this very night
+and stay on for a week or so as a sort of test whether he liked the
+position or not. The Captain waited with some concern until Peter agreed
+to a trial.
+
+After that the old gentleman talked on interminably of the South, of the
+suffrage movement, the destructive influence it would have on the home,
+the Irish question, the Indian question, whether the mound-builders did
+not spring from the two lost tribes of Israel--an endless outpouring of
+curious facts, quaint reasoning, and extraordinary conclusions, all
+delivered with the great dignity and in the flowing periods of an
+orator.
+
+It was fully two o'clock in the morning when it occurred to the Captain
+that his new secretary might like to go to bed. The old man took the
+hand-lamp which was still burning and led the way out to the back piazza
+past a number of doors to a corner bedroom. He shuffled along in his
+carpet slippers, followed by the black-and-white cat, which ran along,
+making futile efforts to rub itself against his lean shanks. Peter
+followed in a sort of stupor from the flood of words, ideas, and strange
+fancies that had been poured into his ears.
+
+The Captain turned off the piazza into one of those old-fashioned
+Southern rooms with full-length windows, which were really glazed doors,
+a ceiling so high that Peter could make out only vague concentric rings
+of stucco-work among the shadows overhead, and a floor space of ball-
+room proportions. In one corner was a huge canopy bed, across from it a
+clothes-press of dark wood, and in another corner a large screen hiding
+the bathing arrangements.
+
+Peter's bedroom was a sleeping apartment, in the old sense of the word
+before the term "apartment" had lost its dignity.
+
+The Captain placed the lamp on the great table and indicated Peter's
+possession with a wave of the hand.
+
+"If you stay here, Peter, I will put in a call-bell, so I can awaken you
+if I need you during the night. Now I wish you healthful slumbers and
+pleasant dreams." With that the old gentleman withdrew ceremoniously.
+
+When the Captain was gone, the mulatto remained standing in the vast
+expanse, marveling over this queer turn of fortune. Why Captain Renfrew
+had selected him as a secretary and companion Peter could not fancy.
+
+The magnificence of his surroundings revived his late dream of a
+honeymoon with Cissie. Certainly, in his fancy, he had visioned a
+honeymoon in Pullman parlor cars and suburban bungalows. He had been
+mistaken. This great chamber rose about him like a corrected proof of
+his desire.
+
+Into just such a room he would like to lead Cissie; into this great room
+that breathed pride and dignity. What a glowing heart the girl would
+have made for its somber magnificence!
+
+He walked over to the full-length windows and opened them; then he
+unbolted the jalousies outside and swung them back. The musk of autumn
+weeds breathed in out of the darkness. Peter drew a long breath, with a
+sort of wistful melting in his chest.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER IX
+
+
+A turmoil aroused Peter Siner the next morning, and when he discovered
+where he was, in the big canopy bed in the great room, he listened
+curiously and heard a continuous chattering and quarreling. After a
+minute or two he recognized the voice of old Rose Hobbett. Rose was
+cooking the Captain's breakfast, and she performed this function in a
+kind of solitary rage. She banged the vessels, slammed the stove-eyes on
+and off, flung the stove-wood about, and kept up a snarling
+animadversion upon every topic that drifted through her kinky head. She
+called the kitchen a rat-hole, stated the Captain must be as mean as the
+devil to live as long as he did, complained that no one ever paid any
+attention to her, that she might as well be a stray cat, and so on.
+
+As Peter grew wider awake, the monotony of the old negress's rancor
+faded into an unobserved noise. He sat up on the edge of his bed between
+the parted curtains and divined there was a bath behind the screen in
+the corner of his room. Sure enough, he found two frayed but clean
+towels, a pan, a pitcher, and a small tub all made of tin. Peter
+assembled his find and began splashing his heavily molded chest with a
+feeling of well-being. As he splashed on the water, he amused himself by
+listening again to old Rose. She was now complaining that some white
+young'uns had called her "raving Rose." She hoped "God'lmighty would
+send down two she bears and eat 'em up." Peter was amazed by the old
+crone's ability to maintain an unending flow of concentrated and aimless
+virulence.
+
+The kitchen of the Renfrew manor was a separate building, and presently
+Peter saw old Rose carrying great platters across the weed-grown
+compound into the dining-room. She bore plate after plate piled high
+with cookery,--enough for a company of men. A little later came a
+clangor on a rusty triangle, as if she were summoning a house party. Old
+Rose did things in a wholesale spirit.
+
+Peter started for his door, but when he had opened the shutter, he stood
+hesitating. Breakfast introduced another delicate problem. He decided
+not to go to the dining-room at once, but to wait and allow Captain
+Renfrew to indicate whether he, Peter, should break his fast with the
+master in the dining-room or with old Rose in the kitchen.
+
+A moment later he saw the Captain coming down the long back piazza.
+Peter almost addressed his host, but the old Southerner proceeded into
+the dining-room apparently without seeing Peter at all.
+
+The guest was gathering his breath to call good morning, but took the
+cue with a negro's sensitiveness, and let his eyes run along the weeds
+in the compound. The drying stalks were woven with endless spider-webs,
+all white with frost. Peter stood regarding their delicate geometries a
+moment longer and then reentered his room, not knowing precisely what to
+do. He could hear Rose walking across the piazza to and from the dining-
+room, and the clink of tableware. A few minutes later a knock came at
+his door, and the old woman entered with a huge salver covered with
+steaming dishes.
+
+The negress came into the room scowling, and seemed doubtful for a
+moment just how to shut the door and still hold the tray with both
+hands. She solved the problem by backing against the door tremendously.
+Then she saw Peter. She straightened and stared at him with outraged
+dignity.
+
+"Well, 'fo' Gawd! Is I bringin' dish-here breakfus' to a nigger?"
+
+"I suppose it's mine," agreed Peter, amused.
+
+"But whuffo, whuffo, nigger, is it dat you ain't come to de kitchen an'
+eat off'n de shelf? Is you sick?"
+
+Peter admitted fair bodily vigor.
+
+"Den whut de debbil is I got into!" cried Rose, angrily. "I ain't gwine
+wuck at no sich place, ca'yin' breakfus' to a big beef uv a nigger,
+stout as a mule. Say, nigger, wha-chu doin' in heah, anyway? Hoccum
+dis?"
+
+Peter tried to explain that he was there to do a little writing for the
+Captain.
+
+"Well, 'fo' Gawd, when niggers gits to writin' fuh white folks, ants'll
+be jumpin' fuh bullfrogs--an havin' other niggers bring dey breakfusses.
+You jes as much a nigger as I is, Peter Siner, de brightes' day you ever
+seen!"
+
+Peter began a conciliatory phrase.
+
+Old Rose banged the platter on the table and then threatened:
+
+"Dis is de las' time I fetches a moufful to you, Peter Siner, or any
+other nigger. You ain't no black Jesus, even ef you is a woods calf."
+
+Peter paused in drawing a chair to the table.
+
+"What did you say, Rose?" he asked sharply.
+
+"You heared whut I say."
+
+A wave of anger went over Peter.
+
+"Yes, I did. You ought to be ashamed to speak ill of the dead."
+
+The crone tossed her malicious head, a little abashed, perhaps, yet very
+glad she had succeeded in hurting Peter. She turned and went out the
+door, mumbling something which might have been apology or renewed
+invectives.
+
+Peter watched the old virago close the door and then sat down to his
+breakfast. His anger presently died away, and he sat wondering what
+could have happened to Rose Hobbett that had corroded her whole
+existence. Did she enjoy her vituperation, her continual malice? He
+tried to imagine how she felt.
+
+The breakfast Rose had brought him was delicious: hot biscuits of
+feathery lightness, three wide slices of ham, a bowl of scrambled eggs,
+a pot of coffee, some preserved raspberries, and a tiny glass of whisky.
+
+The plate which Captain Renfrew had set before his guest was a delicate
+dawn pink ringed with a wreath of holly. It was old Worcester porcelain
+of about the decade of 1760. The coffee-pot was really an old Whieldon
+teapot in broad cauliflower design. Age and careless heating had given
+the surface a fine reticulation. His cup and saucer, on the contrary,
+were thick pieces of ware such as the cabin-boys toss about on
+steamboats. The whole ceramic mélange told of the fortuities of English
+colonial and early American life, of the migration of families westward.
+No doubt, once upon a time, that dawn-pink Worcester had married into a
+Whieldon cauliflower family. A queer sort of genealogy might be traced
+among Southern families through their mixtures of tableware.
+
+As Peter mused over these implications of long ancestral lines, it
+reminded him that he had none. Over his own past, over the lineage of
+nearly every negro in the South, hung a curtain. Even the names of the
+colored folk meant nothing, and gave no hint of their kin and clan. At
+the end of the war between the States, Peter's people had selected names
+for themselves, casually, as children pick up a pretty stone. They meant
+nothing. It occurred to Peter for the first time, as he sat looking at
+the chinaware, that he knew nothing about himself; whether his kinsmen
+were valiant or recreant he did not know. Even his own father he knew
+little about except that his mother had said his name was Peter, like
+his own, and that he had gone down the river on a tie boat and was
+drowned.
+
+A faint sound attracted Peter's attention. He looked out at his open
+window and saw old Rose making off the back way with something concealed
+under her petticoat. Peter knew it was the unused ham and biscuits that
+she had cooked. For once the old negress hurried along without railing
+at the world. She moved with a silent, but, in a way, self-respecting,
+flight. Peter could see by the tilt of her head and the set of her
+shoulders that not only did her spoil gratify her enmity to mankind in
+general and the Captain in particular, but she was well within her
+rights in her acquisition. She disappeared around a syringa bush, and
+was heard no more until she reappeared to cook the noon meal, as
+vitriolic as ever.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Peter entered the library, old Captain Renfrew greeted him with
+morning wishes, thus sustaining the fiction that they had not seen each
+other before, that morning.
+
+The old gentleman seemed pleased but somewhat excited over his new
+secretary. He moved some of his books aimlessly from one table to
+another, placed them in exact piles as if he were just about to plunge
+into heroic labor, and could not give time to such details once he had
+begun.
+
+As he arranged his books just so, he cleared his throat.
+
+"Now, Peter, we want to get down to this," he announced dynamically; "do
+this thing, shove this work out!" He started with tottery briskness
+around to his manuscript drawer, but veered off to the left to aline
+some magazines. "System, Peter, system. Without system one may well be
+hopeless of performing any great literary labor; but with system, the
+constant piling up of brick on brick, stone on stone--it's the way Rome
+was built, my boy."
+
+Peter made a murmur supposed to acknowledge the correctness of this
+view.
+
+Eventually the old Captain drew out his drawer of manuscript, stood
+fumbling with it uncertainly. Now and then he glanced at Peter, a
+genuine secretary who stood ready to help him in his undertaking. The
+old gentleman picked up some sheets of his manuscript, seemed about to
+read them aloud, but after a moment shook his head, and said, "No, we'll
+do that to-night," and restored them to their places. Finally he turned
+to his helper.
+
+"Now, Peter," he explained, "in doing this work, I always write at
+night. It's quieter then,--less distraction. My mornings I spend
+downtown in conversation with my friends. If you should need me, Peter,
+you can walk down and find me in front of the livery-stable. I sit there
+for a while each morning."
+
+The gravity with which he gave this schedule of his personal habits
+amused Peter, who bowed with a serious, "Very well, Captain."
+
+"And in the meantime," pursued the old man, looking vaguely about the
+room, "you will do well to familiarize yourself with my library in order
+that you may be properly qualified for your secretarial labors."
+
+Peter agreed again.
+
+"And now if you will get my hat and coat, I will be off and let you go
+to work," concluded the Captain, with an air of continued urgency.
+
+Peter became thoroughly amused at such an outcome of the old gentleman's
+headlong attack on his work,--a stroll down to the village to hold
+conversation with friends. The mulatto walked unsmilingly to a little
+closet where the Captain hung his things. He took down the old
+gentleman's tall hat, a gray greatcoat worn shiny about the shoulders
+and tail, and a finely carved walnut cane. Some reminiscence of the
+manners of butlers which Peter had seen in theaters caused him to swing
+the overcoat across his left arm and polish the thin nap of the old hat
+with his right sleeve. He presented it to his employer with a certain
+duplication of a butler's obsequiousness. He offered the overcoat to the
+old gentleman's arms with the same air. Then he held up the collar of
+the greatcoat with one hand and with the other reached under its skirts,
+and drew down the Captain's long day coat with little jerks, as if he
+were going through a ritual.
+
+Peter grew more and more hilarious over his barber's manners. It was his
+contribution to the old gentleman's literary labors, and he was doing it
+beautifully, so he thought. He was just making some minute adjustments
+of the collar when, to his amazement, Captain Renfrew turned on him.
+
+"Damn it, sir!" he flared out. "What do you think you are? I didn't
+engage you for a kowtowing valet in waiting, sir! I asked you, sir, to
+come under my roof as an intellectual co-worker, as one gentleman asks
+another, and here you are making these niggery motions! They are
+disgusting! They are defiling! They are beneath the dignity of one
+gentleman to another, sir! What makes it more degrading, I perceive by
+your mannerism that you assume a specious servility, sir, as if you
+would flatter me by it!"
+
+The old lawyer's face was white. His angry old eyes jerked Peter out of
+his slight mummery. The negro felt oddly like a grammar-school boy
+caught making faces behind his master's back. It shocked him into
+sincerer manners.
+
+"Captain," he said with a certain stiffness, "I apologize for my
+mistake; but may I ask how you desire me to act?"
+
+"Simply, naturally, sir," thundered the Captain, "as one alumnus of
+Harvard to another! It is quite proper for a young man, sir, to assist
+an old gentleman with his hat and coat, but without fripperies and
+genuflections and absurdities!"
+
+The old man's hauteur touched some spring of resentment in Peter. He
+shook his head.
+
+"No, Captain; our lack of sympathy goes deeper than manners. My position
+here is anomalous. For instance, I can talk to you sitting, I can drink
+with you standing, but I can't breakfast with you at all. I do that
+_in camera_, like a disgraceful divorce proceeding. It's precisely
+as I was treated coming down here South again; it's as I've been treated
+ever since I've been back; it's--" He paused abruptly and swallowed down
+the rancor that filled him. "No," he repeated in a different tone,
+"there is no earthly excuse for me to remain here, Captain, or to let
+you go on measuring out your indulgences to me. There is no way for us
+to get together or to work together--not this far South. Let me thank
+you for a night's entertainment and go."
+
+Peter turned about, meaning to make an end of this queer adventure.
+
+The old Captain watched him, and his pallor increased. He lifted an
+unsteady hand.
+
+"No, no, Peter," he objected, "not so soon. This has been no trial, no
+fair trial. The little--little--er--details of our domestic life here,
+they will--er--arrange themselves, Peter. Gossip--talk, you know, we
+must avoid that." The old lawyer stood staring with strange eyes at his
+protégé. "I--I'm interested in you, Peter. My actions may seem--odd,
+but--er--a negro boy going off and doing what you have done--
+extraordinary. I--I have spoken to your mother, Caroline, about you
+often. In fact, Peter, I--I made some little advances in order that you
+might complete your studies. Now, now, don't thank me! It was purely
+impersonal. You seemed bright. I have often thought we gentle people of
+the South ought to do more to encourage our black folk--not--not as
+social equals--" Here the old gentleman made a wry mouth as if he had
+tasted salt.
+
+"Stay here and look over the library," he broke off abruptly. "We can
+arrange some ground of--of common action, some--"
+
+He settled the lapels of his great-coat with precision, addressed his
+palm to the knob of his stick, and marched stiffly out of the library,
+around the piazza, and along the dismantled walk to the front gate.
+
+Peter stood utterly astonished at this strange information. Suddenly he
+ran after the old lawyer, and rounded the turn of the piazza in time to
+see him walk stiffly down the shaded street with tremulous dignity. The
+old gentleman was much the same as usual, a little shakier, perhaps, his
+tall hat a little more polished, his shiny gray overcoat set a little
+more snugly at the collar.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER X
+
+
+The village of Hooker's Bend amuses itself mainly with questionable
+jests that range all the way from the slightly brackish to the
+hopelessly obscene. Now, in using this type of anecdote, the Hooker's-
+Benders must not be thought to design an attack upon the decencies of
+life; on the contrary, they are relying on the fact that their hearers
+have, in the depths of their beings, a profound reverence for the object
+of their sallies. And so, by taking advantage of the moral shock they
+produce and linking it to the idea of an absurdity, they convert the
+whole psychical reaction into an explosion of humor. Thus the ring of
+raconteurs telling blackguardly stories around the stoves in Hooker's
+Bend stores, are, in reality, exercising one another in the more
+delicate sentiments of life, and may very well be classed as a round
+table of Sir Galahads, _sans peur et sans reproche_.
+
+However, the best men weary in well doing, and for the last few days
+Hooker's Bend had switched from its intellectual staple of conversation
+to consider the comedy of Tump Pack's undoing. The incident held
+undeniably comic elements. For Tump to start out carrying a forty-four,
+meaning to blow a rival out of his path, and to wind up hard at work,
+picking cotton at nothing a day for a man whose offer of three dollars a
+day he had just refused, certainly held the makings of a farce.
+
+On the heels of this came the news that Peter Siner meant to take
+advantage of Tump's arrest and marry Cissie Dildine. Old Parson Ranson
+was responsible for the spread of this last rumor. He had fumbled badly
+in his effort to hold Peter's secret. Not once, but many times, always
+guarded by a pledge of secrecy, had he revealed the approaching wedding.
+When pressed for a date, the old negro said he was "not at lib'ty to
+tell."
+
+Up to this point white criticism viewed the stage-setting of the black
+comedy with the impersonal interest of a box party. Some of the round
+table said they believed there would be a dead coon or so before the
+scrape was over.
+
+Dawson Bobbs, the ponderous constable, went to the trouble to telephone
+Mr. Cicero Throgmartin, for whom Tump was working, cautioning
+Throgmartin to make sure that Tump Pack was in the sleeping-shack every
+night, as he might get wind of the wedding and take a notion to bolt and
+stop it. "You know, you can't tell what a fool nigger'll do," finished
+Bobbs.
+
+Throgmartin was mildly amused, promised the necessary precautions, and
+said:
+
+"It looks like Peter has put one over on Tump, and maybe a college
+education does help a nigger some, after all."
+
+The constable thought it was just luck.
+
+"Well, I dunno," said Throgmartin, who was a philosopher, and inclined
+to view every matter from various angles. "Peter may of worked this out
+somehow."
+
+"Have you heard what Henry Hooker done to Siner in the land deal?"
+
+Throgmartin said he had.
+
+"No, I don't mean _that_. I mean Henry's last wrinkle in
+garnisheeing old Ca'line's estate in his bank for the rest of the
+purchase money on the Dilihay place."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"You don't mean it!"
+
+"Damn 'f I don't."
+
+The constable's sentence shook with suppressed mirth, and the next
+moment roars of laughter came over the telephone wire.
+
+"Say, ain't he the bird!"
+
+"He's the original early bird. I'd like to get a snap-shot of the worm
+that gets away from him."
+
+Both men laughed heartily again.
+
+"But, say," objected Throgmartin, who was something of a lawyer
+himself,--as, indeed, all Southern men are,--"I thought the Sons and
+Daughters of Benevolence owed Hooker, not Peter Siner, nor Ca'line's
+estate."
+
+"Well, it _is_ the Sons and Daughters, but Ca'line was one of 'em,
+and they ain't no limited li'bility 'sociation. Henry can jump on
+anything any of 'em's got. Henry got the Persimmon to bring him a copy
+of their by-laws."
+
+"Well, I swear! Say, if Henry wasn't kind of held back by his religion,
+he'd use a gun, wouldn't he?"
+
+"I dunno. I can say this for Henry's religion: 'It's jest like Henry's
+wife,--it's the dearest thing to his heart; he'd give his life for it,
+but it don't do nobody a damn bit of good except jest Henry.'"
+
+The constable's little eyes twinkled as he heard Throgmartin roaring
+with laughter and sputtering appreciative oaths.
+
+At that moment a ringing of the bell jarred the ears of both
+telephonists. A voice asked for Dr. Jallup. It was an ill time to
+interrupt two gentlemen. The flair of a jest is lost in a pause. The
+officer stated sharply that he was the constable of Wayne County and was
+talking business about the county's prisoners. His tone was so charged
+with consequence that the voice that wanted a doctor apologized hastily
+and ceased.
+
+Came a pause in which neither man found anything to say. Laughter is
+like that,--a gay bubble that a touch will destroy. Presently Bobbs
+continued, gravely enough:
+
+"Talking about Siner, he's stayin' up at old man Renfrew's now."
+
+"'At so?"
+
+"Old Rose Hobbett swears he's doin' some sort of writin' up there and
+livin' in one of the old man's best rooms."
+
+"Hell he is!"
+
+"Yeah?" the constable's voice questioned Throgmartin's opinion about
+such heresy and expressed his own.
+
+"D' recken it's so? Old Rose is such a thief and a liar."
+
+"Nope," declared the constable, "the old nigger never would of made up a
+lie like that,--never would of thought of it. Old Cap'n Renfrew's
+gettin' childish; this nigger's takin' advantage of it. Down at the
+liver'-stable the boys were talkin' about Siner goin' to git married,
+an' dern if old man Renfrew didn't git cut up about it!"
+
+"Well," opined Throgmartin, charitably, "the old man livin' there all by
+himself--I reckon even a nigger is some comp'ny. They're funny damn
+things, niggers is; never know a care nor trouble. Lord! I wish I was as
+care-free as they are!"
+
+"Don't you, though!" agreed the constable, with the weight of the white
+man's burden on his shoulders. For this is a part of the Southern
+credo,--that all negroes are gay, care-free, and happy, and that if one
+could only be like the negroes, gay, care-free, and happy--Ah, if one
+could only be like the negroes!
+
+None of this gossip reached Peter directly, but a sort of back-wash did
+catch him keenly through young Sam Arkwright and serve as a conundrum
+for several days.
+
+One morning Peter was bringing an armful of groceries up the street to
+the old manor, and he met the boy coming in the opposite direction. The
+negro's mind was centered on a peculiar problem he had found in the
+Renfrew library, so, according to a habit he had acquired in Boston, he
+took the right-hand side of the pavement, which chanced to be the inner
+side. This violated a Hooker's-Bend convention, which decrees that when
+a white and a black meet on the sidewalk, the black man invariably shall
+take the outer side.
+
+For this _faux pas_ the gangling youth stopped Peter, fell to
+abusing and cursing him for his impudence, his egotism, his attempt at
+social equality,--all of which charges, no doubt, were echoes from the
+round table. Such wrath over such an offense was unusual. Ordinarily, a
+white villager would have thought several uncomplimentary things about
+Peter, but would have said nothing.
+
+Peter stopped with a shock of surprise, then listened to the whole
+diatribe with a rising sense of irritation and irony. Finally, without a
+word, he corrected his mistake by retracing his steps and passing Sam
+again, this time on the outside.
+
+Peter walked on up the street, outwardly calm, but his ears burned, and
+the queer indignity stuck in his mind. As he went along he invented all
+sorts of ironical remarks he might have made to Arkwright, which would
+have been unwise; then he thought of sober reasoning he could have used,
+which would perhaps have been just as ill-advised. Still later he
+wondered why Arkwright had fallen into such a rage over such a trifle.
+Peter felt sure there was some contributing rancor in the youth's mind.
+Perhaps he had received a scolding at home or a whipping at school, or
+perhaps he was in the midst of one of those queer attacks of megalomania
+from which adolescents are chronic sufferers. Peter fancied this and
+that, but he never came within hail of the actual reason.
+
+When the brown man reached the old manor, the quietude of the library,
+with its blackened mahogany table, its faded green Axminster, the
+meridional globe with its dusty twinkle, banished the incident from his
+mind. He returned to his work of card-indexing the Captain's books. He
+took half a dozen at a time from the shelves, dusted them on the piazza,
+then carried them to the embrasure of the window, which offered a
+pleasant light for reading and for writing the cards.
+
+He went through volume after volume,--speeches by Clay, Calhoun, Yancy,
+Prentiss, Breckenridge; an old life of General Taylor, Foxe's "Book of
+Martyrs"; a collection of the old middle-English dramatists, such as
+Lillo, Garrick, Arthur Murphy, Charles Macklin, George Colman, Charles
+Coffey, men whose plays have long since declined from the boards and
+disappeared from the reading-table.
+
+The Captain's collection of books was strongly colored by a religious
+cast,--John Wesley's sermons, Charles Wesley's hymns; a treatise
+presenting a biblical proof that negroes have no souls; a little book
+called "Flowers Gathered," which purported to be a compilation of the
+sayings of ultra-pious children, all of whom died young; an old book
+called "Elements of Criticism," by Henry Home of Kames; another tome
+entitled "Studies of Nature," by St. Pierre. This last was a long
+argument for the miraculous creation of the world as set forth in
+Genesis. The proof offered was a résumé of the vegetable, animal, and
+mineral kingdoms, showing their perfect fitness for man's use, and the
+immediate induction was that they were designed for man's use. Still
+another work calculated the exact age of the earth by the naïve method
+of counting the generations from Adam to Christ, to the total adding
+eighteen hundred and eighty-five years (for the book was written in
+1885), and the original six days it required the Lord to build the
+earth. By referring to Genesis and finding out precisely what the
+Creator did on the morning of the first day, the writer contrived to
+bring his calculation of the age of the earth and everything in the
+world to a precision of six hours, give or take,--a somewhat closer
+schedule than that made by the Tennessee river boats coming up from St.
+Louis.
+
+These and similar volumes formed the scientific section of Captain
+Renfrew's library, and it was this paucity of the natural sciences that
+formed the problem which Peter tried to solve. All scientific additions
+came to an abrupt stop about the decade of 1880-90. That was the date
+when Charles Darwin's great fructifying theory, enunciated in 1859,
+began to seep into the South.
+
+In the Captain's library the only notice of evolution was a book called
+"Darwinism Dethroned." As for the elaborations of the Darwinian
+hypothesis by Spencer, Fiske, DeVries, Weismann, Haeckel, Kidd, Bergson,
+and every subsequent philosophic or biologic writer, all these men might
+never have written a line so far as Captain Renfrew's library was
+informed.
+
+Now, why such extraordinary occlusions? Why should Captain Renfrew deny
+himself the very commonplaces of thought, theories familiarly held by
+the rest of America, and, indeed, by all the rest of the civilized
+world?
+
+Musing by the window, Peter succeeded in stating his problem more
+broadly: Why was Captain Renfrew an intellectual reactionist? The old
+gentleman was the reverse of stupid. Why should he confine his selection
+of books to a few old oddities that had lost their battle against a
+theory which had captured the intellectual world fifty years before?
+
+Nor was it Captain Renfrew alone. Now and then Peter saw editorials
+appearing in leading Southern journals, seriously attacking the
+evolutionary hypothesis. Ministers in respectable churches still
+fulminated against it. Peter knew that the whole South still clings, in
+a way, to the miraculous and special creation of the earth as described
+in Genesis. It clings with an intransigentism and bitterness far
+exceeding other part of America. Why? To Peter the problem appeared
+insoluble.
+
+He sat by the window lost in his reverie. Just outside the ledge half a
+dozen English sparrows abused one another with chirps that came faintly
+through the small diamond panes. Their quick movements held Peter's
+eyes, and their endless quarreling presently recalled his episode with
+young Arkwright. It occurred to him, casually, that when Arkwright grew
+up he would subscribe to every reactionary doctrine set forth in the
+library Peter was indexing.
+
+With that thought came a sort of mental flare, as if he were about to
+find the answer to the whole question through the concrete attack made
+on him by Sam.
+
+It is an extraordinary feeling,--the sudden, joyful dawn of a new idea.
+Peter sat up sharply and leaned forward with a sense of being right on
+the fringe of a new and a great perception. Young Arkwright, the old
+Captain, the whole South, were unfolding themselves in a vast answer,
+when a movement outside the window caught the negro's introspective
+eyes.
+
+A girl was passing; a girl in a yellow dress was passing the Renfrew
+gate. Even then Peter would not have wavered in his synthesis had not
+the girl paused slightly and given a swift side glance at the old manor.
+Then the man in the window recognized Cissie Dildine.
+
+A slight shock traveled through Siner's body at the sight of Cissie's
+colorless face and darkened eyes. He stood up abruptly, with a feeling
+that he had some urgent thing to say to the young woman. His sharp
+movement toppled over the big globe.
+
+The crash caused the girl to stop and look. For a moment they stood
+thus, the girl in the chill street, the man in the pleasant window,
+looking at each other. Next moment Cissie hurried on up the village
+street toward the Arkwright house. No doubt she was on her way to cook
+the noon meal.
+
+Peter remained standing at the window, with a heavily beating heart. He
+watched her until she vanished behind a wing of the shrubbery in the
+Renfrew yard.
+
+When she had gone, he looked at his books and cards, sat down, and tried
+to resume his indexing. But his mind played away from it like a restive
+horse. It had been two weeks since he last saw Cissie. Two weeks.... His
+nerves vibrated like the strings of a pianoforte. He had scarcely
+thought of her during the fortnight; but now, having seen her, he found
+himself powerless to go on with his work. He pottered a while longer
+among the books and cards, but they were meaningless. They appeared an
+utter futility. Why index a lot of nonsense? Somehow this recalled his
+flare, his adumbration of some great idea connected with young Arkwright
+and the old Captain, and the South.
+
+He put his trembling nerves to work, trying to recapture his line of
+thought. He sat for ten minutes, following this mental train, then that,
+losing one, groping for another. His thoughts were jumpy. They played
+about Arkwright, the Captain, Cissie, his mother's death, Tump Pack in
+prison, the quarrel between the Persimmon and Jim Pink Staggs. The whole
+of Niggertown came rushing down upon him, seizing him in its passion and
+dustiness and greasiness, putting to flight all his cultivated white-man
+ideas.
+
+After half an hour's searching he gave it up. Before he left the room he
+stooped, and tried to set up again the globe that the passing of the
+girl had caused him to throw down; but its pivot was out of plumb, and
+he had to lean it against the window-seat.
+
+The sight of Captain Renfrew coming in at the gate sent Peter to his
+room. The hour was near twelve, and it had become a little point of
+household etiquette for the mulatto and the white man not to be together
+when old Rose jangled the triangle. By this means they forestalled the
+mute discourtesy of the old Captain's walking away from his secretary to
+eat. The subject of their separate meals had never been mentioned since
+their first acrimonious morning. The matter had dropped into the
+abeyance of custom, just as the old gentleman had predicted.
+
+Peter had left open his jalousies, but his windows were closed, and now
+as he entered he found his apartment flooded with sunshine and filled
+with that equable warmth that comes of straining sunbeams through glass.
+
+
+He prepared for dinner with his mind still hovering about Cissie. He
+removed a book and a lamp from the lion-footed table, and drew up an old
+chair with which the Captain had furnished his room. It was a delicate
+old Heppelwhite of rosewood. It had lost a finial from one of its back
+standards, and a round was gone from the left side. Peter never moved
+the chair that vague plans sometime to repair it did not occur to him.
+
+When he had cleared his table and placed his chair beside it, he
+wandered over to his tall west window and stood looking up the street
+through the brilliant sunshine, toward the Arkwright home. No one was in
+sight. In Hooker's Bend every one dines precisely at twelve, and at that
+hour the streets are empty. It would be some time before Cissie came
+back down the street on her way to Niggertown. She first would have to
+wash and put away the Arkwright dishes. It would be somewhere about one
+o'clock. Nevertheless, he kept staring out through the radiance of the
+autumn sunlight with an irrational feeling that she might appear at any
+moment. He was afraid she would slip past and he not see her at all. The
+thought disturbed him somewhat. It kept him sufficiently on the alert to
+stand tapping the balls of his fingers against the glass and looking
+steadily toward the Arkwright house.
+
+Presently the watcher perceived that a myriad spider-webs filled the
+sunshine with a delicate dancing glister. It was the month of voyaging
+spiders. Invisible to Peter, the tiny spinners climbed to the tip-most
+twigs of the dead weeds, listed their abdomens, and lassoed the wind
+with gossamer lariats; then they let go and sailed away to a hazard of
+new fortunes. The air was full of the tiny adventurers. As he stared up
+the street, Peter caught the glint of these invisible airships whisking
+away to whatever chance might hold for them. There was something epic in
+it. It recalled to the mulatto's mind some of Fabre's lovely
+descriptions. It reminded him of two or three books on entomology which
+he had left in his mother's cabin. He felt he ought to go after them
+while the spiders were migrating. He suddenly made up his mind he would
+go at once, as soon as he had had dinner; somewhere about one o'clock.
+
+He looked again at the Arkwright house. The thought of walking down the
+street with Cissie, to get his books, quickened his heart.
+
+He was still at the window when his door opened and old Rose entered
+with his dinner. She growled under her breath all the way from the door
+to the table on which she placed the tray. Only a single phrase detached
+itself and stood out clearly amid her mutterings, "Hope it chokes you."
+
+Peter arranged his chair and table with reference to the window, so he
+could look up the street while he was eating his dinner.
+
+The ill-wishing Rose had again furnished a gourmet's meal, but Peter's
+preoccupation prevented its careful and appreciative gustation. An
+irrational feeling of the octoroon's imminence spurred him to fast
+eating. He had hardly begun his soup before he found himself drinking
+swiftly, looking up the street over his spoon, as if he meant to rush
+out and swing aboard a passing train.
+
+Siner checked his precipitation, annoyed at himself. He began again,
+deliberately, with an attempt to keep his mind on the savor of his food.
+He even thought of abandoning his little design of going for the books;
+or he would go at a different hour, or to-morrow, or not at all. He told
+himself he would far better allow Cissie Dildine to pass and repass
+unspoken to, instead of trying to arrange an accidental meeting. But the
+brown man's nerves wouldn't hear to it. That automatic portion of his
+brain and spinal column which, physiologists assert, performs three
+fourths of a man's actions and conditions nine tenths of his volitions--
+that part of Peter wouldn't consider it. It began to get jumpy and
+scatter havoc in Peter's thoughts at the mere suggestion of not seeing
+Cissie. Imperceptibly this radical left wing of his emotions speeded up
+his meal, again. He caught himself, stopped his knife and fork in the
+act of rending apart a broiled chicken.
+
+"Confound it! I'll start when she comes in sight, no matter whether I've
+finished this meal or not," he promised himself.
+
+And suddenly he felt unhurried, in the midst of a large leisure, with a
+savory broiled chicken dinner before him,--not exactly before him,
+either; most of it had been stuffed away. Only the fag-end remained on
+his plate. A perfectly good meal had been ruined by an ill-timed
+resistance to temptation.
+
+The glint of a yellow dress far up the street had just prompted him to
+swift action when the door opened and old Rose put her head in to say
+that Captain Renfrew wanted to see Peter in the library.
+
+The brown man came to a shocked standstill.
+
+"What! Right now?" he asked.
+
+"Yeah, right now," carped Rose. "Ever'thing he wants, he wants right
+now. He's been res'less as a cat in a bulldog's den ever sence he come
+home fuh dinner. Dunno whut's come into he ole bones, runnin' th'ugh his
+dinner lak a razo'-back." She withdrew in a continued mumble of censure.
+
+Peter cast a glance up the street, timed Cissie's arrival at the front
+gate, picked up his hat, and walked briskly to the library in the hope
+of finishing any business the Captain might have, in time to encounter
+the octoroon. He even began making some little conversational plans with
+which he could meet Cissie in a simple, unstudied manner. He recalled
+with a certain satisfaction that he had not said a word of condemnation
+the night of Cissie's confession. He would make a point of that, and was
+prepared to argue that, since he had said nothing, he meant nothing. In
+fact he was prepared to throw away the truth completely and enter the
+conversation as an out-and-out opportunist, alleging whatever appeared
+to fit the occasion, as all men talk to all women.
+
+The old Captain was just getting into his chair as Peter entered. He
+paused in the midst of lowering himself by the chair-arms and got erect
+again. He began speaking a little uncertainly:
+
+"Ah--by the way, Peter--I sent for you--"
+
+"Yes, sir." Peter looked out at the window.
+
+The old gentleman scrutinized Peter a moment; then his faded eyes
+wandered about the library.
+
+"Still working at the books, cross-indexing them--"
+
+"Yes, sir." Peter could divine by the crinkle of his nerves the very
+loci of the girl as she passed down the thoroughfare.
+
+"Very good," said the old lawyer, absently. He was obviously preoccupied
+with some other topic. "Very good," he repeated with racking
+deliberation; "quite good. How did that globe get bent?"
+
+Peter, looking at it, did not remember either knocking it over or
+setting it up.
+
+"I don't know," he said rapidly. "I hadn't noticed it."
+
+"Old Rose did it," meditated the Captain aloud, "but it's no use to
+accuse her of it; she'd deny it. And yet, on the other hand, Peter,
+she'll be nervous until I do accuse her of it. She'll be dropping
+things, breaking up my china. I dare say I'd best accuse her at once,
+storm at her some to quiet her nerves, and get it over."
+
+This monologue spurred Peter's impatience into an agony.
+
+"I believe you were wanting me, Captain?" he suggested, with a certain
+urge for action.
+
+The Captain's little pleasantry faded. He looked at Peter and became
+uncomfortable again.
+
+"Well, yes, Peter. Downtown I heard--well, a rumor connected with you--"
+
+Such an extraordinary turn caught the attention of even the fidgety
+Peter. He looked at his employer and wondered blankly what he had heard.
+
+"I don't want to intrude on your private affairs, Peter, not at all--
+not--not in the least--"
+
+"No-o-o," agreed Peter, completely at a loss.
+
+The old gentleman rubbed his thin hands together, lifted his eyebrows up
+and down nervously. "Are--are you about to--to leave me, Peter?"
+
+Peter was greatly surprised at the slightness and simplicity of this
+question and at the evidence of emotion it carried.
+
+"Why, no," he cried; "not at all! Who told you I was? It is a deep
+gratification to me--"
+
+"To be exact," proceeded the old man, with a vague fear still in his
+eyes, "I heard you were going to marry."
+
+"Marry!" This flaw took Peter's sails even more unexpectedly than the
+other. "Captain, who in the world--who could have told--"
+
+"Are you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You aren't?"
+
+"Indeed, no!"
+
+"I heard you were going to marry a negress here in town called Cissie
+Dildine." A question was audible in the silence that followed this
+statement. The obscure emotion that charged all the old man's queries
+affected Peter.
+
+"I am not, Captain," he declared earnestly; "that's settled."
+
+"Oh--you say it's settled," picked up the old lawyer, delicately.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then you had thought of it?" Immediately, however, he corrected this
+breach of courtesy into which his old legal habit of cross-questioning
+had led him. "Well, at any rate," he said in quite another voice, "that
+eases my mind, Peter. It eases my mind. It was not only, Peter, the
+thought of losing you, but this girl you were thinking of marrying--let
+me warn you, Peter--she's a negress."
+
+The mulatto stared at the strange objection.
+
+"A negress!"
+
+The old man paused and made that queer movement with his wrinkled lips
+as if he tasted some salty flavor.
+
+"I--I don't mean exactly a--a negress," stammered the old gentleman; "I
+mean she's not a--a good girl, Peter; she's a--a thief, in fact--she's a
+thief--a thief, Peter. I couldn't endure for you to marry a thief,
+Peter."
+
+It seemed to Peter Siner that some horrible compulsion kept the old
+Captain repeating over and over the fact that Cissie Dildine was a
+thief, a thief, a thief. The word cut the very viscera in the brown man.
+At last, when it seemed the old gentleman would never cease, Peter
+lifted a hand.
+
+"Yes, yes," he gasped, with a sickly face, "I--I've heard that before."
+
+He drew a shaken breath and moistened his lips. The two stood looking at
+each other, each profoundly at a loss as to what the other meant. Old
+Captain Renfrew collected himself first.
+
+"That is all, Peter." He tried to lighten his tones. "I think I'll get
+to work. Let me see, where do I keep my manuscript?"
+
+Peter pointed mechanically at a drawer as he walked out at the library
+door. Once outside, he ran to the front piazza, then to the front gate,
+and with a racing heart stood looking up and down the sleepy
+thoroughfare. The street was quite empty.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Old Captain Renfrew was a trustful, credulous soul, as, indeed, most
+gentleman who lead a bachelor's life are. Such men lack that moral
+hardening and whetting which is obtained only amid the vicissitudes of a
+home; they are not actively and continuously engaged in the employment
+and detection of chicane; want of intimate association with a woman and
+some children begets in them a soft and simple way of believing what is
+said to them. And their faith, easily raised, is just as easily
+shattered. Their judgment lacks training.
+
+Peter Siner's simple assertion to the old Captain that he was not going
+to marry Cissie Dildine completely allayed the old gentleman's
+uneasiness. Even the further information that Peter had had such a
+marriage under advisement, but had rejected it, did not put him on his
+guard.
+
+From long non-intimacy with any human creature, the old legislator had
+forgotten that human life is one long succession of doing the things one
+is not going to do; he had forgotten, if he ever knew, that the human
+brain is primarily not a master, but a servant; its function is not to
+direct, but to devise schemes and apologies to gratify impulses. It is
+the ways and means committee to the great legislature of the body.
+
+For several days after his fear that Peter Siner would marry Cissie
+Dildine old Captain Renfrew was as felicitous as a lover newly
+reconciled to his mistress. He ambled between the manor and the livery-
+stable with an abiding sense of well-being. When he approached his home
+in the radiance of high noon and saw the roof of the old mansion lying a
+bluish gray in the shadows of the trees, it filled his heart with joy to
+feel that it was not an old and empty house that awaited his coming, but
+that in it worked a busy youth who would be glad to see him enter the
+gate.
+
+The fear of some unattended and undignified death which had beset the
+old gentleman during the last eight or ten years of his life vanished
+under Peter's presence. When he thought of it at all now, he always
+previsioned himself being lifted in Peter's athletic arms and laid
+properly on his big four-poster.
+
+At times, when Peter sat working over the books in the library, the
+Captain felt a prodigious urge to lay a hand on the young man's broad
+and capable shoulder. But he never did. Again, the old lawyer would sit
+for minutes at a time watching his secretary's regular features as the
+brown man pursued his work with a trained intentness. The old gentleman
+derived a deep pleasure from such long scrutinies. It pleased him to
+imagine that, when he was young, he had possessed the same vigor, the
+same masculinity, the same capacity for persistent labor. Indeed, all
+old gentlemen are prone to choose the most personable and virile young
+man they can find for themselves to have been like.
+
+The two men had little to say to each other. Their thoughts beat to such
+different tempos that any attempt at continued speech discovered unequal
+measures. As a matter of fact, in all comfortable human conversation,
+words are used as mere buoys dropped here and there to mark well-known
+channels of thought and feeling. Similarity of mental topography is
+necessary to mutual understanding. Between any two generations the
+landscape is so changed as to be unrecognizable. Our fathers are
+monarchists; our sons, bolsheviki.
+
+Old Rose Hobbett was more of an age with the Captain, and these two
+talked very comfortably as the old virago came and went with food at
+meal-time. For instance, the Captain always asked his servant if she had
+fed his cat, and old Rose invariably would sulk and poke out her lips
+and put off answering to the last possible moment of insolence, then
+would grumble out that she was jes 'bout to feed the varmint, an' 't wuz
+funny nobody couldn't give a hard-wuckin' colored woman breathin'-space
+to turn roun' in.
+
+This reply was satisfactory to the Captain, because he knew what it
+meant,--that Rose had half forgotten the cat, and had meant wholly to
+forget it, but since she had been snapped up, so to speak, in the very
+act of forgetting, she would dole it out a piece or two of the meat that
+she had meant to abscond with as soon as the dishes were done.
+
+While Rose was fulminating, the old gentleman recalled his bent globe
+and decided the moment had come for a lecture on that point. It always
+vaguely embarrassed the Captain to correct Rose, and this increased his
+dignity. Now he cleared his throat in a certain way that brought the old
+negress to attention, so well they knew each other.
+
+"By the way, Rose, in the future I must request you to use extraordinary
+precautions in cleansing and dusting articles of my household furniture,
+or, in case of damage, I shall be forced to withhold an indemnification
+out of your pay."
+
+Eight or ten years ago, when the Captain first repeated this formula to
+his servant, the roll and swing of his rhetoric, and the last word,
+"pay," had built up lively hopes in Rose that the old gentleman was
+announcing an increase in her regular wage of a dollar a week.
+Experience, however, had long since corrected this faulty
+interpretation.
+
+She came to a stand in the doorway, with her kinky gray head swung
+around, half puzzled, wholly rebellious.
+
+"Whut is I bruk now?"
+
+"My globe."
+
+The old woman turned about with more than usual innocence.
+
+"Why, I ain't tech yo' globe!"
+
+"I foresaw that," agreed the Captain, with patient irony, "but in the
+future don't touch it more carefully. You bent its pivot the last time
+you refrained from handling it."
+
+"But I tell you I ain't tech yo' globe!" cried the negress, with the
+anger of an illiterate person who feels, but cannot understand, the
+satire leveled at her.
+
+"I agree with you," said the Captain, glad the affair was over.
+
+This verbal ducking into the cellar out of the path of her storm stirred
+up a tempest.
+
+"But I tell you I ain't bruk it!"
+
+"That's what I said."
+
+"Yeah, yeah, yeah," she flared; "you says I ain't, but when you says I
+ain't, you means I is, an' when you says I is, you means I ain't. Dat's
+de sort o' flapjack I's wuckin' fur!"
+
+The woman flirted out of the dining-room, and the old gentleman drew
+another long breath, glad it was over. He really had little reason to
+quarrel about the globe, bent or unbent; he never used it. It sat in his
+study year in and year out, its dusty twinkle brightened at long
+intervals by old Rose's spiteful rag.
+
+The Captain ate on placidly. There had been a time when he was dubious
+about such scenes with Rose. Once he felt it beneath his dignity as a
+Southern gentleman to allow any negro to speak to him disrespectfully.
+He used to feel that he should discharge her instantly and during the
+first years of their entente had done so a number of times. But he could
+get no one else who suited him so well; her biscuits, her corn-light-
+bread, her lye-hominy, which only the old darkies know how to make. And,
+to tell the truth, he missed the old creature herself, her understanding
+of him and his ideas, her contemporaneity; and no one else would work
+for a dollar a week.
+
+Presently in the course of his eating the old gentleman required another
+biscuit, and he wanted a hot one. Three mildly heated disks lay on a
+plate before him, but they had been out of the oven for five minutes and
+had been reduced to an unappetizing tepidity.
+
+A little hand-bell sat beside the Captain's plate whose special use was
+to summon hot biscuits. Now, the old lawyer looked at its worn handle
+speculatively. He was not at all sure Rose would answer the bell. She
+would say she hadn't heard it. He felt faintly disgruntled at not
+foreseeing this exigency and buttering two biscuits while they were hot,
+or even three.
+
+He considered momentarily a project of going after a hot biscuit for
+himself, but eventually put it by. South of the Mason-Dixon Line, self-
+help is half-scandal. At last, quite dubiously, he did pick up the bell
+and gave it a gentle ring, so if old Rose chose not to hear it, she
+probably wouldn't: thus he could believe her and not lose his temper and
+so widen an already uncomfortable breach.
+
+To the Captain's surprise, the old creature not only brought the
+biscuits, but she did it promptly. No sooner had she served them,
+however, than the Captain saw she really had returned with a new line of
+defense.
+
+She mumbled it out as usual, so that her employer was forced to guess at
+a number of words: "Dat nigger, Peter, mus' 'a' busted yo' gl--"
+
+"No, he didn't."
+
+"Mus' uv."
+
+"No, he didn't. I asked him, and he said he didn't."
+
+The old harridan stared, and her speech suddenly became clear-cut:
+
+"Well, 'fo' Gawd, I says I didn't, too!"
+
+At this point the Captain made an unintelligible sound and spread the
+butter on his hot biscuit.
+
+"He's jes a nigger, lak I is," stated the cook, warmly.
+
+The Captain buttered a second hot biscuit.
+
+"We's jes two niggers."
+
+The Captain hoped she would presently sputter herself out.
+
+"Now look heah," cried the crone, growing angrier and angrier as the
+reaches of the insult spread itself before her, "is you gwine to put one
+o' us niggers befo' de udder? Ca'se ef you is, I mus' say, it's Kady-
+lock-a-do' wid me."
+
+The Captain looked up satirically.
+
+"What do you mean by Katie-lock-the-door with you?" he asked, though he
+had an uneasy feeling that he knew.
+
+"You know whut I means. I means I 's gwine to leab dis place."
+
+"Now look here, Rose," protested the lawyer, with dignity, "Peter Siner
+occupies almost a fiduciary relation to me."
+
+The old negress stared with a slack jaw. "A relation o' yo's!"
+
+The lawyer hesitated some seconds, looking at the hag. His high-bred old
+face was quite inscrutable, but presently he said in a serious voice:
+
+"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'
+niggers 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
+passes 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-nigger an' a she-nigger 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-nigger" and "she-nigger" 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 passings 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 passed 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 passed back toward Niggertown, 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 passed she kept Peter watching the clock at
+nervous intervals, wondering if, after all, she had gone by unobserved.
+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
+entity, 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 passing 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 pass 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 reëstablish 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 passionate 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 passed 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 niggerish taste, and
+his dislike for the girl edged his stricture; then, on second thought,
+the oddness of sumac for a nosegay caught his attention. Nobody used
+sumac for a buttonhole. 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.
+
+All his life, Captain Renfrew's brain had been deliberate. He moved
+mentally, as he did physically, with dignity. To tell the truth, the
+Captain's thoughts had a way of absolutely stopping now and then, and
+for a space he would view the world as a simple collection of colored
+surfaces without depth or meaning. During these intervals, by a sort of
+irony of the gods the old gentleman's face wore a look of philosophic
+concentration, so that his mental hiatuses had given him a reputation
+for profundity, which was county wide. It had been this, years before,
+that had carried him by a powerful majority into the Tennessee
+legislature. The voters agreed, almost to a man, that they preferred
+depth to a shallow facility. The rival candidate had been shallow and
+facile. The polls returned the Captain, and the young gentleman--for the
+Captain was a young gentleman in those days--was launched on a typical
+politician's career. But some Republican member from east Tennessee had
+impugned the rising statesman's honor with some sort of improper
+liaison. In those days there seemed to be proper and improper liaisons.
+There had been a duel on the banks of the Cumberland River in which the
+Captain succeeded in wounding his traducer in the arm, and was thus
+vindicated by the gods. But the incident ended a career that might very
+well have wound up in the governor's chair, or even in the United States
+Senate, considering how very deliberate the Captain was mentally.
+
+To-day, as the Captain walked up the street following Cissie Dildine,
+one of these vacant moods fell upon him and it was not until they had
+reached his own gate that it suddenly occurred to the old gentleman just
+what Cissie's sumac did mean. It was a signal to Peter. The simplicity
+of the solution stirred the old man. Its meaning was equally easy to
+fathom. When a woman signals any man it conveys consent. Denials receive
+no signals; they are inferred. In this particular case Captain Renfrew
+found every reason to believe that this flaring bit of sumac was the
+prelude to an elopement.
+
+In the window of his library the Captain saw his secretary staring at
+his cards and books with an intentness plainly assumed. Peter's fixed
+stare had none of those small movements of the head that mark genuine
+intellectual labor. So Peter was posing, pretending he did not see the
+girl, to disarm his employer's suspicions,--pretending not to see a
+girl rigged out like that!
+
+Such duplicity sent a queer spasm of anguish through the old lawyer.
+Peter's action held half a dozen barbs for the Captain. A fellow-alumnus
+of Harvard staying in his house merely for his wage and keep! Peter bore
+not the slightest affection for him; the mulatto lacked even the
+chivalry to notify the Captain of his intentions, because he knew the
+Captain objected. And yet all these self-centered objections were
+nothing to what old Captain Renfrew felt for Peter's own sake. For Peter
+to marry a nigger and a strumpet, for him to elope with a wanton and a
+thief! For such an upstanding lad, the very picture of his own virility
+and mental alertness when he was of that age, for such a boy to fling
+himself away, to drop out of existence--oh, it was loathly!
+
+The old man entered the library feeling sick. It was empty. Peter had
+gone to his room, according to his custom. But in this particular
+instance it seemed to Captain Renfrew his withdrawal was flavored with a
+tang of guilt. If he were innocent, why should not such a big, strong
+youth have stayed and helped an old gentleman off with his overcoat?
+
+The old Captain blew out a windy breath as he helped himself out of his
+coat in the empty library. The bent globe still leaned against the
+window-seat. The room had never looked so somber or so lonely.
+
+At dinner the old man ate so little that Rose Hobbett ceased her
+monotonous grumbling to ask if he felt well. He said he had had a hard
+day, a difficult day. He felt so weak and thin that he foretold the gray
+days when he could no longer creep to the village and sit with his
+cronies at the livery-stable, when he would be house-fast, through
+endless days, creeping from room to room like a weak old rat in a huge
+empty house, finally to die in some disgusting fashion. And Now Peter
+was going to leave him, was going to throw himself away on a lascivious
+wench. A faint moisture dampened the old man's withered eyes. He drank
+an extra thimbleful of whisky to try to hearten himself. Its bouquet
+filled the time-worn stateliness of the dining-room.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+During the weeks of Peter's stay at the manor it had grown to be the
+Captain's habit really to write for two or three hours in the afternoon,
+and his pile of manuscript had thickened under his application.
+
+The old man was writing a book called "Reminiscences of Peace and War."
+His book would form another unit of that extraordinary crop of personal
+reminiscences of the old South which flooded the presses of America
+during the decade of 1908-18. During just that decade it seemed as if the
+aged men and women of the South suddenly realized that the generation who
+had lived through the picturesqueness and stateliness of the old slave
+régime was almost gone, and over their hearts swept a common impulse to
+commemorate, in the sunset of their own lives, its fading splendor and
+its vanished deeds.
+
+On this particular afternoon the Captain settled himself to work, but
+his reminiscences did not get on. He pinched a bit of floss from the nib
+of his pen and tried to swing into the period of which he was writing.
+He read over a few pages of his copy as mental priming, but his thoughts
+remained flat and dull. Indeed, his whole life, as he reviewed it in the
+waning afternoon, appeared empty and futile. It seemed hardly worth
+while to go on.
+
+The Captain had come to that point in his memoirs where the Republican
+representative from Knox County had set going the petard which had
+wrecked his political career.
+
+From the very beginnings of his labors the old lawyer had looked forward
+to writing just this period of his life. He meant to clear up his name
+once for all. He meant to use invective, argument, testimony and a
+powerful emotional appeal, such as a country lawyer invariably attempts
+with a jury.
+
+But now that he had arrived at the actual composition of his defense, he
+sat biting his penholder, with all the arguments he meant to advance
+slipped from his mind. He could not recall the points of the proof. He
+could not recall them with Peter Siner moving restlessly about the room,
+glancing through the window, unsettled, nervous, on the verge of eloping
+with a negress.
+
+His secretary's tragedy smote the old man. The necessity of doing
+something for Peter put his thoughts to rout. A wild idea occurred to
+the Captain that if he should write the exact truth, perhaps his memoirs
+might serve Peter as a signal against a futile, empty journey.
+
+But the thought no sooner appeared than it was rejected. In the Anglo-
+Saxon, especially the Anglo-Saxon of the Southern United States, abides
+no such Gallic frankness as moved a Jean-Jacques. Southern memoirs
+always sound like the conversation between two maiden ladies,--nothing
+intimate, simply a few general remarks designed to show from what nice
+families they came.
+
+So the Captain wrote nothing. During all the afternoon he sat at his
+desk with a leaden heart, watching Peter move about the room. The old
+man maintained more or less the posture of writing, but his thoughts
+were occupied in pitying himself and pitying Peter. Half a dozen times
+he looked up, on the verge of making some plea, some remonstrance,
+against the madness of this brown man. But the sight of Peter sitting in
+the window-seat staring out into the street silenced him. He was a weak
+old man, and Peter's nerves were strung with the desire of youth.
+
+At last the two men heard old Rose clashing in the kitchen. A few
+minutes later the secretary excused himself from the library, to go to
+his own room. As Peter was about to pass through the door, the Captain
+was suddenly galvanized into action by the thought that this perhaps was
+the last time he would ever see him. He got up from his chair and called
+shakenly to Peter. The negro paused. The Captain moistened his lips and
+controlled his voice.
+
+"I want to have a word with you, Peter, about a--a little matter. I--
+I've mentioned it before."
+
+"Yes, sir." The negro's tone and attitude reminded the Captain that the
+supper gong would soon sound and they would best separate at once.
+
+"It--it's about Cissie Dildine," the old lawyer hurried on.
+
+Peter nodded slightly.
+
+"Yes, you mentioned that before."
+
+The old man lifted a thin hand as if to touch Peter's arm, but he did
+not. A sort of desperation seized him.
+
+"But listen, Peter, you don't want to do--what's in your mind!"
+
+"What is in my mind, Captain?"
+
+"I mean marry a negress. You don't want to marry a negress!"
+
+The brown man stared, utterly blank.
+
+"Not marry a negress!"
+
+"No, Peter; no," quavered the old man. "For yourself it may make no
+difference, but your children--think of your children, your son growing
+up under a brown veil! You can't tear it off. God himself can't tear it
+off! You can never reach him through it. Your children, your children's
+children, a terrible procession that stretches out and out, marching
+under a black shroud, unknowing, unknown! All you can see are their sad
+forms beneath the shroud, marching away--marching away. God knows where!
+And yet it's your own flesh and blood!"
+
+Suddenly the old lawyer's face broke into the hard, tearless contortions
+of the aged. His terrible emotion communicated itself to the sensitive
+brown man.
+
+"But, Captain, I myself am a negro. Whom should I marry?"
+
+"No one; no one! Let your seed wither in your loins! It's better to do
+that; it's better--" At that moment the clashing of the supper gong fell
+on the old man's naked nerves. He straightened up by some reflex
+mechanism, turned away from what he thought was his last interview with
+his secretary, and proceeded down the piazza into the great empty
+dining-room.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+With overwrought nerves Peter Siner entered his room. At five o'clock
+that afternoon he had seen Cissie Dildine go up the street to the
+Arkwright home to cook one of those occasional suppers. He had been
+watching for her return, and in the midst of it the Captain's
+extraordinary outburst had stirred him up.
+
+Once in his room, the negro placed the broken Hepplewhite in such a
+position that he could rake the street with a glance. Then he tried to
+compose himself and await the coming of his supper and the passage of
+Cissie. There was something almost pathetic in Peter's endless watching,
+all for a mere glimpse or two of the girl in yellow. He himself had no
+idea how his nerves and thoughts had woven themselves around the young
+woman. He had no idea what a passion this continual doling out of
+glimpses had begotten. He did not dream how much he was, as folk naïvely
+put it, in love with her.
+
+His love was strong enough to make him forget for a while the old
+lawyer's outbreak. However, as the dusk thickened in the shrubbery and
+under the trees, certain of the old gentleman's phrases revisited the
+mulatto's mind: "A terrible procession ... marching under a black
+shroud.... Your children, your children's children, a terrible
+procession,... marching away, God knows where.... And yet--it's your own
+flesh and blood!" They were terrific sentences, as if the old man had
+been trying to tear from his vision some sport of nature, some
+deformity. As the implications spread before Peter, he became more and
+more astonished at its content. Even to Captain Renfrew black men were
+dehumanized,--shrouded, untouchable creatures.
+
+It delivered to Peter a slow but a profound shock. He glanced about at
+the faded magnificence of the room with a queer feeling that he had been
+introduced into it under a sort of misrepresentation. He had taken up
+his abode with the Captain, at least on the basis of belonging to the
+human family, but this passionate outbreak, this puzzling explosion, cut
+that ground from under his feet.
+
+The more Peter thought about it, the stranger grew his sensation. Not
+even to be classed as a human being by this old gentleman who in a weak,
+helpless fashion had crept somewhat into Peter's affections,--not to be
+considered a man! The mulatto drew a long, troubled breath, and by the
+mere mechanics of his desire kept staring through the gloom for Cissie.
+
+Peter Siner had known all along that the unread whites of Hooker's Bend
+--and that included nearly every white person in the village--considered
+black men as simple animals; but he had supposed that the more thoughtful
+men, of whom Captain Renfrew was a type, at least admitted the Afro-
+American to the common brotherhood of humanity. But they did not.
+
+As Peter sat staring into the darkness the whole effect of the
+dehumanizing of the black folk of the South began to unfold itself
+before his imagination. It explained to him the tragedies of his race,
+their sufferings at the hand of mob violence; the casualness, even the
+levity with which black men were murdered: the chronic dishonesty with
+which negroes were treated: the constant enactment of adverse
+legislation against them; the cynical use of negro women. They were all
+vermin, animals; they were one with the sheep and the swine; a little
+nearer the human in form, perhaps, and, oddly enough, one that could be
+bred to a human being, as testified a multitude of brown and yellow and
+cream-colored folk, but all marching away, as the Captain had so
+passionately said, marching away, their forms hidden from human
+intercourse under a shroud of black, an endless procession marching
+away, God knew whither! And yet they were the South's own flesh and
+blood.
+
+The horror of such a complex swelled in Peter's mind to monstrous
+proportions. As night thickened at his window, the negro sat dazed and
+wondering at the mightiness of his vision. His thoughts went groping,
+trying to solve some obscure problem it posed. He thought of the
+Arkwright boy; he thought of the white men smiling as his mother's
+funeral went past the livery-stable; he thought of Captain Renfrew's
+manuscript that he was transcribing. Through all the old man's memoirs
+ran a certain lack of sincerity. Peter always felt amid his labors that
+the old Captain was making an attorney's plea rather than a candid
+exposition. At this point in his thoughts there gradually limned itself
+in the brown man's mind the answer to that enigma which he almost had
+unraveled on the day he first saw Cissie Dildine pass his window. With
+it came the answer to the puzzle contained in the old Captain's library.
+The library was not an ordinary compilation of the world's thought; it,
+too, was an attorney's special pleading against the equality of man. Any
+book or theory that upheld the equality of man was carefully excluded
+from the shelves. Darwin's great hypothesis, and every development
+springing from it, had been banned, because the moment that a theory was
+propounded of the great biologic relationship of all flesh, from worms
+to vertebrates, there instantly followed a corollary of the brotherhood
+of man.
+
+What Christ did for theology, Darwin did for biology,--he democratized
+it. The One descended to man's brotherhood from the Trinity; the other
+climbed up to it from the worms.
+
+The old Captain's library lacked sincerity. Southern orthodoxy, which
+persists in pouring its religious thought into the outworn molds of
+special creation, lacks sincerity. Scarcely a department of Southern
+life escapes this fundamental attitude of special pleader and
+disingenuousness. It explains the Southern fondness for legal
+subtleties. All attempts at Southern poetry, belles-lettres, painting,
+novels, bear the stamp of the special plea, of authors whose exposition
+is careful.
+
+Peter perceived what every one must perceive, that when letters turn
+into a sort of glorified prospectus of a country, all value as
+literature ceases. The very breath of art and interpretation is an eager
+and sincere searching of the heart. This sincerity the South lacks. Her
+single talent will always be forensic, because she is a lawyer with a
+cause to defend. And such is the curse that arises from lynchings and
+venery and extortions and dehumanizings,--sterility; a dumbness of soul.
+
+Peter Siner's thoughts lifted him with the tremendous buoyancy of
+inspiration. He swung out of his chair and began tramping his dark room.
+The skin of his scalp tickled as if a ghost had risen before him. The
+nerves in his thighs and back vibrated. He felt light, and tingled with
+energy.
+
+Unaware of what he was doing, he set about lighting the gasolene-lamp.
+He worked with nervous quickness, as if he were in a great hurry.
+Presently a brilliant light flooded the room. It turned the gray
+illumination of the windows to blackness.
+
+Joy enveloped Peter. His own future developed under his eyes with the
+same swift clairvoyance that marked his vision of the ills of his
+country. He saw himself remedying those ills. He would go about showing
+white men and black men the simple truth, the spiritual necessity for
+justice and fairness. It was not a question of social equality; it was a
+question of clearing a road for the development of Southern life. He
+would show white men that to weaken, to debase, to dehumanize the negro,
+inflicted a more terrible wound on the South than would any strength the
+black man might develop. He would show black men that to hate the
+whites, constantly to suspect, constantly to pilfer from them, only
+riveted heavier shackles on their limbs.
+
+It was all so clear and so simple! The white South must humanize the
+black not for the sake of the negro, but for the sake of itself. No one
+could resist logic so fundamental.
+
+Peter's heart sang with the solemn joy of a man who had found his work.
+All through his youth he had felt blind yearnings and gropings for he
+knew not what. It had driven him with endless travail out of Niggertown,
+through school and college, and back to Niggertown,--this untiring Hound
+of Heaven. But at last he had reached his work. He, Peter Siner, a
+mulatto, with the blood of both white and black in his veins, would come
+as an evangel of liberty to both white and black. The brown man's eyes
+grew moist from Joy. His body seemed possessed of tremendous energy.
+
+As he paced his room there came into the glory of Peter's thoughts the
+memory of the Arkwright boy as he sat in the cedar glade brooding on the
+fallen needles Peter recalled the hobbledehoy's disjointed words as he
+wrestled with the moral and physical problems of adolescence. Peter
+recalled his impulse to sit down by young Sam Arkwright, and, as best he
+might, give him some clue to the critical and feverish period through
+which he was passing.
+
+He had not done so, but Peter remembered the instance down to the very
+desperation in the face of the brooding youngster. And it seemed to
+Peter that this rejected impulse had been a sign that he was destined to
+be an evangel to the whites as well as to the blacks.
+
+The joy of Peter's mission bore him aloft on vast wings. His room seemed
+to fall away from him, and he was moving about his country, releasing
+the two races from their bonds of suspicion and cruelty.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+Slowly the old manor formed about Peter again, and he perceived that a
+tapping on the door had summoned him back. He walked to the door with
+his heart full of kindness for old Rose. She was bringing him his
+supper. He felt as if he could take the old woman in his arms, and out
+of the mere hugeness of his love sweeten her bitter life. The mulatto
+opened the door as eagerly as if he were admitting some long-desired
+friend; but when the shutter swung back, the old crone and her salver
+were not there. All he could discern in the darkness were the white
+pillars marking the night into panels. There was no light in the outer
+kitchen. The whole manor was silent.
+
+As he stood listening, the knocking was repeated, this time more
+faintly. He fixed the sound at the window. He closed the door, walked
+across the brilliant room, and opened the shutters.
+
+For several moments he saw nothing more than the tall quadrangle of
+blackness which the window framed; then a star or two pierced it; then
+something moved. He saw a woman's figure standing close to the casement,
+and out of the darkness Cissie Dildine's voice asked in its careful
+English:
+
+"Peter, may I come in?"
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+For a full thirty seconds Peter Siner stared at the girl at the window
+before, even with her prompting, he thought of the amenity of asking her
+to come inside. As a further delayed courtesy, he drew the Heppelwhite
+chair toward her.
+
+Cissie's face looked bloodless in the blanched light of the gasolene-
+lamp. She forced a faint, doubtful smile.
+
+"You don't seem very glad to see me, Peter."
+
+"I am," he assured her, mechanically, but he really felt nothing but
+astonishment and dismay. They filled his voice. He was afraid some one
+would see Cissie in his room. His thoughts went flitting about the
+premises, calculating the positions of the various trees and shrubs in
+relation to the windows, trying to determine whether, and just where, in
+his brilliantly lighted chamber the girl could be seen from the street.
+
+The octoroon made no further comment on his confusion. Her eyes wandered
+from him over the stately furniture and up to the stuccoed ceiling.
+
+"They told me you lived in a wonderful room," she remarked absently.
+
+"Yes, it's very nice," agreed Peter in the same tone, wondering what
+might be the object of her hazardous visit. A flicker of suspicion
+suggested that she was trying to compromise him out of revenge for his
+renouncement of her, but the next instant he rejected this.
+
+The girl accepted the chair Peter offered and continued to look about.
+
+"I hope you don't mind my staring, Peter," she said.
+
+"I stared when I first came here to stay," assisted Peter, who was
+getting a little more like himself, even if a little uneasier at the
+consequences of this visit.
+
+"Is that a highboy?" She nodded nervously at the piece of furniture.
+"I've seen pictures of them."
+
+"Uh huh. Revolutionary, I believe. The night wind is a little raw." He
+moved across the room and closed the jalousies, and thus cut off the
+night wind and also the west view from the street. He glanced at the
+heavy curtains parted over his front windows, with a keen desire to
+swing them together. Some fragment of his mind continued the surface
+conversation with Cissie.
+
+"Is it post-Revolutionary or pre-Revolutionary?" she asked with a
+preoccupied air.
+
+"Post, I believe. No, pre. I always meant to examine closely."
+
+"To have such things would almost teach one history," Cissie said.
+
+"Yeah; very nice." Peter had decided that the girl was in direct line
+with the left front window and an opening between the trees to the
+street.
+
+The girl's eyes followed his.
+
+"Are those curtains velour, Peter?"
+
+"I--I believe so," agreed the man, unhappily.
+
+"I--I wonder how they look spread."
+
+Peter seized on this flimsy excuse with a wave of relief and
+thankfulness to Cissie. He had to restrain himself as he strode across
+the room and swung together the two halves of the somber curtains in
+order to preserve an appearance of an exhibit. His fingers were so
+nervous that he bungled a moment at the heavy cords, but finally the two
+draperies swung together, loosing a little cloud of dust. He drew
+together a small aperture where the hangings stood apart, and then
+turned away in sincere relief.
+
+Cissie's own interest in historic furniture and textiles came to an
+abrupt conclusion. She gave a deep sigh and settled back into her chair.
+She sat looking at Peter seriously, almost distressfully, as he came
+toward her.
+
+With the closing of the curtains and the establishment of a real privacy
+Peter became aware once again of the sweetness and charm Cissie always
+held for him. He still wondered what had brought her, but he was no
+longer uneasy.
+
+"Perhaps I'd better build a fire," he suggested, quite willing now to
+make her visit seem not unusual.
+
+"Oh, no,"--she spoke with polite haste,--"I'm just going to stay a
+minute. I don't know what you'll think of me." She looked intently at
+him.
+
+"I think it lovely of you to come." He was disgusted with the triteness
+of this remark, but he could think of nothing else.
+
+"I don't know," demurred the octoroon, with her faint doubtful smile.
+"Persons don't welcome beggars very cordially."
+
+"If all beggars were so charming--" Apparently he couldn't escape
+banalities.
+
+But Cissie interrupted whatever speech he meant to make, with a return
+of her almost painful seriousness.
+
+"I really came to ask you to help me, Peter."
+
+"Then your need has brought me a pleasure, at least." Some impulse kept
+the secretary making those foolish complimentary speeches which keep a
+conversation empty and insincere.
+
+"Oh, Peter, I didn't come here for you to talk like that! Will you do
+what I want?"
+
+"What do you want, Cissie?" he asked, sobered by her voice and manner.
+
+"I want you to help me, Peter."
+
+"All right, I will." He spaced his words with his speculations about the
+nature of her request. "What do you want me to do?"
+
+"I want you to help me go away."
+
+Peter looked at her in surprise. He hardly knew what he had been
+expecting, but it was not this.
+
+Some repressed emotion crept into the girl's voice.
+
+"Peter, I--I can't stay here in Hooker's Bend any longer. I want to go
+away. I--I've got to go away."
+
+Peter stood regarding her curiously and at the same time
+sympathetically.
+
+"Where do you want to go, Cissie?"
+
+The girl drew a long breath; her bosom lifted and dropped abruptly.
+
+"I don't know; that was one of the things I wanted to ask you about."
+
+"You don't know where you want to go?" He smiled faintly. "How do you
+know you want to go at all?"
+
+"Oh, Peter, all I know is I must leave Hooker's Bend!" She gave a little
+shiver. "I'm tired of it, sick of it--sick." She exhaled a breath, as if
+she were indeed physically ill. Her face suggested it; her eyes were
+shadowed. "Some Northern city, I suppose," she added.
+
+"And you want me to help you?" inquired Peter, puzzled.
+
+She nodded silently, with a woman's instinct to make a man guess the
+favor she is seeking.
+
+Then it occurred to Peter just what sort of assistance the girl did
+want. It gave him a faint shock that a girl could come to a man to beg
+or to borrow money. It was a white man's shock, a notion he had picked
+up in Boston, because it happens frequently among village negroes, and
+among them it holds as little significance as children begging one
+another for bites of apples.
+
+Peter thought over his bank balance, then started toward a chest of
+drawers where he kept his checkbook.
+
+"Cissie, if I can he of any service to you in a substantial way, I'll be
+more than glad to--"
+
+She put out a hand and stopped him; then talked on in justification of
+her determination to go away.
+
+"I just can't endure it any longer, Peter." She shuddered again. "I
+can't stand Niggertown, or this side of town--any of it. They--they have
+no _feeling_ for a colored girl, Peter, not--not a speck!" She rave
+a gasp, and after a moment plunged on into her wrongs: "When--when one
+of us even walks past on the street, they--they whistle and say a-all
+kinds of things out loud, j-just as if w-we weren't there at all. Th-
+they don't c-care; we're just n-nigger w-women." Cissie suddenly began
+sobbing with a faint catching noise, her full bosom shaken by the
+spasms; her tears slowly welling over. She drew out a handkerchief with
+a part of its lace edge gone, and wiped her eyes and cheeks, holding the
+bit of cambric in a ball in her palm, like a negress, instead of in her
+fingers, like a white woman, as she had been taught. Then she drew a
+deep breath, swallowed, and became more composed.
+
+Peter stood looking in helpless anger at this representative of all
+women of his race.
+
+"Cissie, that's street-corner scum--the dirty sewage--"
+
+"They make you feel naked," went on Cissie in the monotone that succeeds
+a fit of weeping, "and ashamed--and afraid." She blinked her eyes to
+press out the undue moisture, and looked at Peter as if asking what else
+she could do about it than to go away from the village.
+
+"Will it be any better away from here?" suggested Peter, doubtfully.
+
+Cissie shook her head.
+
+"I--I suppose not, if--if I go alone."
+
+"I shouldn't think so," agreed Peter, somberly. He started to hearten
+her by saying white women also underwent such trials, if that would be a
+consolation; but he knew very well that a white woman's hardships were
+as nothing compared to those of a colored woman who was endowed with any
+grace whatever.
+
+"And besides, Cissie," went on Peter, who somehow found himself arguing
+against the notion of her going, "I hardly see how a decent colored
+woman gets around at all. Colored boarding-houses are wretched places. I
+ate and slept in one or two, coming home. Rotten." The possibility of
+Cissie finding herself in such a place moved Peter.
+
+The girl nodded submissively to his judgment, and said in a queer voice:
+"That's why I--I didn't want to travel alone, Peter."
+
+"No, it's a bad idea--" and then Peter perceived that a queer quality
+was creeping into the tête-à-tête.
+
+She returned his look unsteadily, but with a curious persistence.
+
+[Illustration: "You-you mean you want m-me--to go with you, Cissie?" he
+stammered]
+
+"I--I d-don't want to travel a-alone, Peter," she gasped.
+
+Her look, her voice suddenly brought home to the an the amazing
+connotation of her words. He stared at her, felt his face grow warm with
+a sharp, peculiar embarrassment. He hardly knew what to say or do before
+her intent and piteous eyes.
+
+"You--you mean you want m-me--to go with you, Cissie?" he stammered.
+
+The girl suddenly began trembling, now that her last reserve of
+indirection had been torn away.
+
+"Listen, Peter," she began breathlessly. "I'm not the sort of woman you
+think. If I hadn't accused myself, we'd be married now. I--I wanted you
+more than anything in the world, Peter, but I did tell you. Surely,
+surely, Peter, that shows I am a good woman--th-the real I. Dear, dear
+Peter, there is a difference between a woman and her acts. Peter, you're
+the first man in all my life, in a-all my life who ever came to me k-
+kindly and gently; so I had to l-love you and t-tell you, Peter."
+
+The girl's wavering voice broke down completely; her face twisted with
+grief. She groped for her chair, sat down, buried her face in her arms
+on the table, and broke into a chattering outbreak of sobs that sounded
+like some sort of laughter.
+
+Her shoulders shook; the light gleamed on her soft, black Caucasian
+hair. There was a little rent in one of the seams in her cheap jacket,
+at one of the curves where her side molded into her shoulder. The
+customer made garment had found Cissie's body of richer mold than it had
+been designed to shield. And yet in Peter's distress and tenderness and
+embarrassment, this little rent held his attention and somehow misprized
+the wearer.
+
+It seemed symbolic in the searching white light. He could see the very
+break in the thread and the widened stitches at the ends of the rip. Her
+coat had given way because she was modeled more nearly like the Venus de
+Milo than the run of womankind. He felt the little irony of the thing,
+and yet was quite unable to resist the comparison.
+
+And then, too, she had referred again to her sin of peculation. A woman
+enjoys confessions from a man. A man's sins are mostly vague, indefinite
+things to a woman, a shadowy background which brings out the man in a
+beautiful attitude of repentance; but when a woman confesses, the man
+sees all her past as a close-up with full lighting. He has an intimate
+acquaintance with just what she's talking about, and the woman herself
+grows shadowy and unreal. Men have too many blots not to demand
+whiteness in women. By striking some such average, nature keeps the race
+a going moral concern.
+
+So Peter, as he stood looking down on the woman who was asking him to
+marry her, was filled with as unhappy and as impersonal a tenderness as
+a born brother. He recalled the thoughts which had come to him when he
+saw Cissie passing his window. She was not the sort of woman he wanted
+to marry; she was not his ideal. He cast about in his head for some
+gentle way of putting her off, so that he would not hurt her any
+further, if such an easement were possible.
+
+As he stood thinking, he found not a pretext, but a reality. He stooped
+over, and put a hand lightly on each of her arms.
+
+"Cissie," he said in a serious, even voice, "if I should ever marry any
+one, it would be you."
+
+The girl paused in her sobbing at his even, passionless voice.
+
+"Then you--you won't?" she whispered in her arms.
+
+"I can't, Cissie." Now that he was saying it, he uttered the words very
+evenly and smoothly. "I can't, dear Cissie, because a great work has
+just come into my life." He paused, expecting her to ask some question,
+but she lay silent, with her face in her arms, evidently listening.
+
+"Cissie, I think, in fact I know, I can demonstrate to all the South,
+both white and black, the need of a better and more sincere
+understanding between our two races."
+
+Peter did not feel the absurdity of such a speech in such a place. He
+patted her arm, but there was something in the warmth of her flesh that
+disturbed his austerity and caused him to lift his hand to the more
+impersonal axis of her shoulder. He proceeded to develop his idea.
+
+"Cissie, just a moment ago you were complaining of the insults you meet
+everywhere. I believe if I can spread my ideas, Cissie, that even a
+pretty colored girl like you may walk the streets without being
+subjected to obscenity on every corner." His tone unconsciously
+patronized Cissie's prettiness with the patronage of the male for the
+less significant thing, as though her ripeness for love and passion and
+children were, after all, not comparable with what he, a male, could do
+in the way of significantly molding life.
+
+Cissie lifted her head and dried her eyes.
+
+"So you aren't going to marry me, Peter?" Woman-like, now that she was
+well into the subject, she was far less embarrassed than Peter. She had
+had her cry.
+
+"Why--er--considering this work, Cissie--"
+
+"Aren't you going to marry anybody, Peter?"
+
+The artist in Peter, the thing the girl loved in him, caught again that
+Messianic vision of himself.
+
+"Why, no, Cissie," he said, with a return of his inspiration of an hour
+ago; "I'll be going here and there all over the South preaching this
+gospel of kindliness and tolerance, of forgiveness of the faults of
+others." Cissie looked at him with a queer expression. "I'll show the
+white people that they should treat the negro with consideration not for
+the sake of the negro, but for the sake of themselves. It's so simple,
+Cissie, it's so logical and clear--"
+
+The girl shook her head sadly.
+
+"And you don't want me to go with you, Peter?"
+
+"Why, n-no, Cissie; a girl like you couldn't go. Perhaps I'll be
+misunderstood in places, perhaps I may have to leave a town hurriedly,
+or be swung over the walls, like Paul, in a basket." He attempted to
+treat it lightly.
+
+But the girl looked at him with a horror dawning in her melancholy face.
+
+"Peter, do you really mean that?" she whispered.
+
+"Why, truly. You don't imagine--"
+
+The octoroon opened her dark eyes until she might have been some weird.
+
+"Oh, Peter, please, please put such a mad idea away from you! Peter,
+you've been living here alone in this old house until you don't see
+things clearly. Dear Peter, don't you _know?_ You can't go out and
+talk like that to white folks and--and not have some terrible thing
+happen to you! Oh, Peter, if you would only marry me, it would cure you
+of such wildness!" Involuntarily she got up, holding out her arms to
+him, offering herself to his needs, with her frightened eyes fixed on
+his.
+
+It made him exquisitely uncomfortable again. He made a little sound
+designed to comfort and reassure her. He would do very well. He was
+something of a diplomat in his way. He had got along with the boys in
+Harvard very well indeed. In fact, he was rather a man of the world. No
+need to worry about him, though it was awfully sweet of her.
+
+Cissie picked up her handkerchief with its torn edge, which she had laid
+on the table. Evidently she was about to go.
+
+"I surely don't know what will become of me," she said, looking at it.
+
+In a reversal of feeling Peter did not want her to go away quite then.
+He cast about for some excuse to detain her a moment longer.
+
+"Now, Cissie," he began, "if you are really going to leave Hooker's
+Bend--"
+
+"I'm not going," she said, with a long exhalation. "I--" she swallowed--
+"I just thought that up to--ask you to--to--You see," she explained, a
+little breathless, "I thought you still loved me and had forgiven me by
+the way you watched for me every day at the window."
+
+This speech touched Peter more keenly than any of the little drama the
+girl had invented. It hit him so shrewdly he could think of nothing more
+to say.
+
+Cissie moved toward the window and undid the latch.
+
+"Good night, Peter." She paused a moment, with her hand on the catch.
+"Peter," she said, "I'd almost rather see you marry some other girl than
+try so terrible a thing."
+
+The big, full-blooded athlete smiled faintly.
+
+"You seem perfectly sure marriage would cure me of my mission."
+
+Cissie's face reddened faintly.
+
+"I think so," she said briefly. "Good night," and she disappeared in the
+dark space she had opened, and closed the jalousies softly after her.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER XV
+
+
+Cissie Dildine's conviction that marriage would cure Peter of his
+mission persisted in the mulatto's mind long after the glamour of the
+girl had faded and his room had regained the bleak emptiness of a
+bachelor's bedchamber.
+
+Cissie had been so brief and positive in her statement that Peter, who
+had not thought on the point at all, grew more than half convinced she
+was right.
+
+Now that he pondered over it, it seemed there was a difference between
+the outlook of a bachelor and that of a married man. The former
+considered humanity as a balloonist surveys a throng,--immediately and
+without perspective,--but the latter always sees mankind through the
+frame of his family. A single man tends naturally to philosophy and
+reform; a married man to administration and statesmanship. There have
+been no great unmarried statesmen; there have been no great married
+philosophers or reformers.
+
+Now that Cissie had pointed out this universal rule, Peter saw it very
+clearly. And Peter suspected that beneath this rough classification, and
+conditioning it, lay a plexus of obscure mental and physical reactions
+set up by the relations between husband and wife. It might very well be
+there was a difference between the actual cerebral and nervous structure
+of a married man and that of a single man.
+
+At any rate, after these reflections, Peter now felt sure that marriage
+would cure him of his mission; but how had Cissie known it? How had she
+struck out so involved a theory, one might say, in the toss of a head?
+The more Peter thought it over the more extraordinary it became. It was
+another one of those explosive ideas which Cissie, apparently, had the
+faculty of creating out of a pure mental vacuum.
+
+All this philosophy aside, Cissie's appearance just in the nick of his
+inspiration, her surprising proposal of marriage, and his refusal, had
+accomplished one thing: it had committed Peter to the program he had
+outlined to the girl.
+
+Indeed, there seemed something fatalistic in such a concatenation of
+events. Siner wondered whether or not he would have obeyed his vision
+without this added impulse from Cissie. He did not know; but now, since
+it had all come about just as it had, he suspected he would have been
+neglectful. He felt as if a dangerous but splendid channel had been
+opened before his eyes, and almost at the same instant a hand had
+reached down and directed his life into it. This fancy moved the
+mulatto. As he got himself ready for bed, he kept thinking:
+
+"Well, my life is settled at last. There is nothing else for me to do.
+Even if this should end terribly for me, as Cissie imagines, my life
+won't be wasted."
+
+Next morning Peter Siner was awakened by old Rose Hobbett thrusting her
+head in at his door, staring around, and finally, seeing Peter in bed,
+grumbling:
+
+"Why is you still heah, black man?"
+
+The secretary opened his eyes in astonishment.
+
+"Why shouldn't I be here?"
+
+"Nobody wuz 'speckin' you to be heah." The crone withdrew her head and
+vanished.
+
+Peter wondered at this unaccustomed interest of Rose, then hurried out
+of bed, supposing himself late for breakfast.
+
+A dense fog had come up from the river, and the moisture floating into
+his open windows had dampened his whole room. Peter stepped briskly to
+the screen and began splashing himself. It was only in the midst of his
+ablutions that he remembered his inspiration and resolve of the previous
+evening. As he squeezed the water over his powerfully molded body, he
+recalled it almost impersonally. It might have happened to some third
+person. He did not even recall distinctly the threads of the logic which
+had lifted him to such a Pisgah, and showed him the whole South as a new
+and promised land. However, he knew that he could start his train of
+thought again, and again ascend the mountain.
+
+Floating through the fog into his open window came the noises of the
+village as it set about living another day, precisely as it had lived
+innumerable days in the past. The blast of the six-o'clock whistle from
+the planing-mill made the loose sashes of his windows rattle. Came a
+lowing of cows and a clucking of hens, a woman's calling. The voices of
+men in conversation came so distinctly through the pall that it seemed a
+number of persons must be moving about their morning work, talking and
+shouting, right in the Renfrew yard.
+
+But the thing that impressed Peter most was the solidity and stability
+of this Southern village that he could hear moving around him, and its
+certainty to go on in the future precisely as it had gone on in the
+past. It was a tremendous force. The very old manor about him seemed
+huge and intrenched in long traditions, while he, Peter Siner, was just
+a brown man, naked behind a screen and rather cold from the fog and damp
+of the morning.
+
+He listened to old Rose clashing the kitchen utensils. As he drew on his
+damp underwear, he wondered what he could say to old Rose that would
+persuade her into a little kindliness and tolerance for the white
+people. As he listened he felt hopeless; he could never explain to the
+old creature that her own happiness depended upon the charity she
+extended to others. She could never understand it. She would live and
+die precisely the same bitter old beldam that she was, and nothing could
+ever assuage her.
+
+While Peter was thinking of the old creature, she came shuffling along
+the back piazza with his breakfast. She let herself in by lifting one
+knee to a horizontal, balancing the tray on it, then opening the door
+with her freed hand.
+
+When the shutter swung open, it displayed the crone standing on one
+foot, wearing a man's grimy sock, which had fallen down over a broken,
+run-down shoe.
+
+In Peter's mood the thought of this wretched old woman putting on such
+garments morning after morning was unspeakably pathetic. He thought of
+his own mother, who had lived and died only a shade or two removed from
+the old crone's condition.
+
+Rose put down her foot, and entered the room with her lips poked out,
+ready to make instant attack if Peter mentioned his lack of supper the
+night before.
+
+"Aunt Rose," asked the secretary, with his friendly intent in his tones,
+"how came you to look in this morning and say you didn't expect to find
+me in my room?"
+
+She gave an unintelligible grunt, pushed the lamp to one side, and eased
+her tray to the table.
+
+Peter finished touching his tie before one of those old-fashioned
+mirrors, not of cut-glass, yet perfectly true. He came from the mirror
+and moved his chair, out of force of habit, so he could look up the
+street toward the Arkwrights'.
+
+"Aunt Rose," said the young man, wistfully, "why are you always angry?"
+
+She bridled at this extraordinary inquiry.
+
+"Me?"
+
+"Yes, you."
+
+She hesitated a moment, thinking how she could make her reply a personal
+assault on Peter.
+
+"'Cause you come heah, 'sputin' my rights, da' 's' why."
+
+"No," demurred Peter, "you were quarreling in the kitchen the first
+morning I came here, and you didn't know I was on the place."
+
+"Well--I got my tribulations," she snapped, staring suspiciously at
+these unusual questions.
+
+There was a pause; then Peter said placatingly:
+
+"I was just thinking, Aunt Rose, you might forget your tribulations if
+you didn't ride them all the time."
+
+"Hoccum! What you mean, ridin' my tribulations?"
+
+"Thinking about them. The old Captain, for instance; you are no happier
+always abusing the old Captain."
+
+The old virago gave a sniff, tossed her head, but kept her eyes rolled
+suspiciously on Peter.
+
+"Very often the way we think and act makes us happy or unhappy,"
+moralized Peter, broadly.
+
+"Look heah, nigger, you ain't no preacher sont out by de Lawd to me!"
+
+"Anyway, I am sure you would feel more friendly toward the Captain if
+you acted openly with him; for instance, if you didn't take off all his
+cold victuals, and handkerchiefs and socks, soap, kitchenware--"
+
+The cook snorted.
+
+"I'd feel dat much mo' nekked an' hongry, dat's how I'd feel."
+
+"Perhaps, if you'd start over, he might give you a better wage."
+
+"Huh!" she snorted in an access of irony. "I see dat skinflint gib'n' me
+a better wage. Puuh!" The suddenly she realized where the conversation
+had wandered, and stared at the secretary with widening eyes "Good Lawd!
+Did dat fool Cap'n set up a nigger in dis bedroom winder jes to ketch
+ole Rose packin' off a few ole lef'-overs?" Peter began a hurried
+denial, but she rushed on: "'Fo' Gawd, I hopes his viddles chokes him! I
+hope his ole smoke-house falls down on his ole haid. I hope to Jesus--"
+
+Peter pleaded with her not to think the Captain was behind his
+observations, but the hag rushed out of the bedroom, swinging her head
+from side to side, uttering the most terrible maledictions. She would
+show him! She wouldn't put another foot in his old kitchen. Wild horses
+couldn't drag her into his smoke-house again.
+
+Peter ran to the door and called after her down the piazza, trying to
+exonerate the Captain: but she either did not or would not hear, and
+vanished into the kitchen, still furious.
+
+Old Rose made Peter so uneasy that he deserted his breakfast midway and
+hurried to the library. In the solemn old room he found the Captain
+alone and in rather a pleased mood. The old gentleman stood patting and
+alining a pile of manuscript. As the mulatto entered he exclaimed:
+
+"Well, here's Peter again!" as if his secretary had been off on a long
+journey. Immediately afterward he added, "Peter, guess what I did last
+night." His voice was full of triumph.
+
+Peter was thinking about Aunt Rose, and stood looking at the Captain
+without the slightest idea.
+
+"I wrote all of this,"--he indicated his manuscript,--"over a hundred
+pages."
+
+Peter considered the work without much enthusiasm.
+
+"You must have worked all night."
+
+The old attorney rubbed his hands.
+
+"I think I may claim a touch of inspiration last night, Peter.
+Reminiscences rippled from under my pen, propitious words, prosperous
+sentences. Er--the fact is, Peter, you will see, when you begin copying,
+I had come to a matter--a--a matter of some moment in my life. Every
+life contains such moments, Peter. I had meant to write something in the
+nature of a defen--an explanation, Peter. But after you left the library
+last night it suddenly occurred to me just to give each fact as it took
+place, quite frankly. So I did that--not--not what I meant to write, at
+all--ah. As you copy it, you may find it not entirely without some
+interest to yourself, Peter."
+
+"To me?" repeated Peter, after the fashion of the unattentative.
+
+"Yes, to yourself." The Captain was oddly moved. He took his hands off
+the script, walked a little away from the table, came back to it. "It--
+ah--may explain a good many things that--er--may have puzzled you." He
+cleared his throat and shifted his subject briskly. "We ought to be
+thinking about a publisher. What publisher shall we have publish these
+reminiscences? Make some stir in Tennessee's political circles,
+Peter; tremendous sales; clear up questions everybody is interested in.
+H-m--well, I'll walk down town and you"--he motioned to the script--
+"begin copying--"
+
+"By the way, Captain," said Peter as the old gentleman turned for the
+door, "has Rose said anything to you yet?"
+
+The old man detached his mind from his script with an obvious effort.
+
+"What about?"
+
+"About leaving your service."
+
+"No-o, not especially; she's always leaving my service."
+
+"But in this case it was my fault; at least I brought it about. I
+remonstrated with her about taking your left-over victuals and socks and
+handkerchiefs and things. She was quite offended."
+
+"Yes, it always offends her," agreed the old man, impatiently. "I never
+mention it myself unless I catch her red-handed; then I storm a little
+to keep her in bounds."
+
+Naturally, Peter knew of this extraordinary system of service in the
+South; nevertheless he was shocked at its implications.
+
+"Captain," suggested Peter, "wouldn't you find it to your own interest
+to give old Rose a full cash payment for her services and allow her to
+buy her own things?"
+
+The Captain dismissed the subject with a wave of his hand. "She's a
+nigger, Peter; you can't hire a nigger not to steal. Born in 'em. Then
+I'm not sure but what it would be compounding a felony, hiring a person
+not to steal; might be so construed. Well, now, there's the script. Read
+it carefully, my boy, and remember that in order to gain a certain
+_status quo_ certain antecedents are--are absolutely necessary,
+Peter. Without them my--my life would have been quite empty, Peter.
+It's--it's very strange--amazing. You will understand as you read. I'll
+be back to dinner, so good-by." In the strangest agitation the old
+Captain walked out of the library. The last glimpse Peter had of him was
+his meager old figure silhouetted against the cold gray fog that filled
+the compound.
+
+Neither the Captain's agitation nor his obvious desire that Peter should
+at once read the new manuscript really got past the threshold of the
+mulatto's consciousness. Peter's thoughts still hovered about old Rose,
+and from that point spread to the whole system of colored service in the
+South. For Rose's case was typical. The wage of cooks in small Southern
+villages is a pittance--and what they can steal. The tragedy of the
+mothers of a whole race working for their board and thievings came over
+Peter with a rising grimness. And there was no public sentiment against
+such practice. It was accepted everywhere as natural and inevitable. The
+negresses were never prosecuted; no effort was made to regain the stolen
+goods. The employers realized that what they paid would not keep soul
+and body together; that it was steal or perish.
+
+It was a fantastic truth that for any colored girl to hire into domestic
+service in Hooker's Bend was more or less entering an apprenticeship in
+peculation. What she could steal was the major portion of her wage, if
+two such anomalous terms may be used in conjunction.
+
+Yet, strange to say, the negro women of the village were quite honest in
+other matters. They paid their small debts. They took their mistresses'
+pocket-books to market and brought back the correct change. And if a
+mistress grew too indignant about something they had stolen, they would
+bring it back and say: "Here is a new one. I'd rather buy you a new one
+than have you think I would take anything."
+
+The whole system was the lees of slavery, and was surely the most
+demoralizing, the most grotesque method of hiring service in the whole
+civilized world. It was so absurd that its mere relation lapses into
+humor, that bane of black folk.
+
+Such painful thoughts filled the gloomy library and harassed Peter in
+his copying. He took his work to the window and tried to concentrate
+upon it, but his mind kept playing away.
+
+Indeed, it seemed to Peter that to sit in this old room and rewrite the
+wordy meanderings of the old gentleman's book was the very height of
+emptiness. How utterly futile, when all around him, on every hand, girls
+like Cissie Dildine were being indentured to corruption! And, as far as
+Peter knew, he was the only person in the South who saw it or felt it or
+cared anything at all about it.
+
+When Cissie Dildine came to the surface of Peter's mind she remained
+there, whirling around and around in his chaotic thoughts. He began
+talking to her image, after a certain dramatic trick of his mind, and
+she began offering her environment as an excuse for what had come
+between them and estranged them. She stole, but she had been trained to
+steal. She was a thief, the victim of an immense immorality. The charm
+of Cissie, her queer, swift-working intuition, the candor of her
+confession, her voluptuousness--all came rushing down on Peter,
+harassing him with anger and love and desire. To copy any more script
+became impossible. He lost his place; he hardly knew what he was
+writing.
+
+He flung aside the whole work, got to his feet with the imperative need
+of an athlete for the open. He started out of the room, but as an
+afterthought scribbled a nervous line, telling the Captain he might not
+be back for dinner. Then he found his hat and coat and walked briskly
+around the piazza to the front gate.
+
+The trees and shrubs were dripping, but the fog had almost cleared away,
+leaving only a haze in the air. A pale, level line of it cut across the
+scarp of the Big Hill. The sun shone with a peculiar soft light through
+the vapors.
+
+As Peter passed out at the gate, the fancy came to him that he might
+very well be starting on his mission. It came with a sort of surprise.
+He wondered how other men had set about reforms. With unpremeditation?
+He wondered to whom Jesus of Nazareth preached his first sermon. The
+thought of that young Galilean, sensitive, compassionate, inexperienced,
+speaking to his first hearer, filled Peter with a strange trembling
+tenderness. He looked about the familiar street of Hooker's Bend, the
+old trees over the pavement, the shabby village houses, and it all held
+a strangeness when thus juxtaposed to the thought of Nazareth nineteen
+hundred years before.
+
+The mulatto started down the street with his footsteps quickened by a
+sense of spiritual adventure.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+On the corner, against the blank south wall of Hobbett's store, Peter
+Siner saw the usual crowd of negroes warming themselves in the soft
+sunshine. They were slapping one another, scuffling, making feints with
+knives or stones, all to an accompaniment of bragging, profanity, and
+loud laughter. Their behavior was precisely that of adolescent white
+boys of fifteen or sixteen years of age.
+
+Jim Pink Staggs was furnishing much amusement with an impromptu sleight-
+of-hand exhibition. The black audience clustered around Jim Pink in his
+pinstripe trousers and blue-serge coat. They exhibited not the least
+curiosity as to the mechanics of the tricks, but asked for more and
+still more, with the naïve delight of children in the mysterious.
+
+Peter Siner walked down the street with his Messianic impulse strong
+upon him. He was in that stage of feeling toward his people where a
+man's emotions take the color of religion. Now, as he approached the
+crowd of negroes, he wondered what he could say, how he could transfer
+to them the ideas and the emotion that lifted up his own heart.
+
+As he drew nearer, his concern mounted to anxiety. Indeed, what could he
+say? How could he present so grave a message? He was right among them
+now. One of the negroes jostled him by striking around his body at
+another negro. Peter stopped. His heart beat, and he had a queer
+sensation of being operated by some power outside himself. Next moment
+he heard himself saying in fairly normal tones:
+
+"Fellows, do you think we ought to be idling on the street corners like
+this? We ought to be at work, don't you think?"
+
+The horse-play stopped at this amazing sentiment.
+
+"Whuffo, Peter?" asked a voice.
+
+"Because the whole object of our race nowadays is to gain the respect of
+other races, and more particularly our own self-respect. We haven't it
+now. The only way to get it is to work, work, work."
+
+"Ef you feel lak you'd ought to go to wuck," suggested one astonished
+hearer, "you done got my p'mission, black boy, to hit yo' natchel gait
+to de fust job in sight."
+
+Peter was hardly less surprised than his hearers at what he was saying.
+He paid no attention to the interruption.
+
+"Fellows, it's the only way our colored people can get on and make the
+most out of life. Persistent labor is the very breath of the soul, men;
+it--it is." Here Peter caught an intimation of the whole flow of energy
+through the universe, focusing in man and being transformed into mental
+and moral values. And it suddenly occurred to him that the real worth of
+any people was their efficiency in giving this flow of force moral and
+spiritual forms. That is the end of man; that is what is prefigured when
+a baby's hand reaches for the sun. But Peter considered his audience,
+and his thought stammered on his tongue. The Persimmon, with his
+protruding, half-asleep eyes, was saying:
+
+"I don' know, Peter, as I 's so partic'lar 'bout makin' de mos' out'n
+dis worl'. You know de Bible say--hit say,"--here the Persimmon's voice
+dropped a tone lower, in unconscious imitation of negro preachers,--"la-
+ay not up yo' treasure on uth, wha moss do corrup', an' thieves break
+th'ugh _an'_ steal."
+
+Came a general nodding and agreement of soft, blurry voices.
+
+"'At sho whut it say, black man!"
+
+"Sho do!"
+
+"Lawd God loves a nigger on a street corner same as He do a millionaire
+in a six-cylinder, Peter."
+
+"Sho do, black man; but He's jes about de onlies' thing on uth 'at do."
+
+"Well, I don' know," came a troubled rejoinder. "Thaiuh 's de debbil,
+ketchin' mo' niggers nowadays dan he do white men, I 'fo' Gawd
+b'liebes."
+
+"Well, dat's because dey _is_ so many mo' niggers dan dey is white
+folks," put in a philosopher.
+
+"Whut you say 'bout dat, Brudder Peter?" inquired the Persimmon,
+seriously. None of this discussion was either derision or burlesque.
+None of the crowd had the slightest feeling that these questions were
+not just as practical and important as the suggestion that they all go
+to work.
+
+When Peter realized how their ignorant and undisciplined thoughts flowed
+off into absurdities, and that they were entirely unaware of it, it
+brought a great depression to his heart. He held up a hand with an
+earnestness that caught their vagrant attention.
+
+"Listen!" he pleaded. "Can't you see how much there is for us black
+folks to do, and what little we have done?"
+
+"Sho is a lot to do; we admits dat," said Bluegum Frakes. "But whut's de
+use doin' hit ef we kin manage to shy roun' some o' dat wuck an' keep on
+libin' anyhow, specially wid wages so high?"
+
+The question stopped Peter. Neither his own thoughts, nor any book that
+he had ever read nor any lecture that he had heard ever attempted to
+explain the enormous creative urge which is felt by every noble mind,
+and which, indeed, is shared to some extent by every human creature. Put
+to it like that, Siner concocted a sort of allegory, telling of a negro
+who was shiftless in the summer and suffered want in the winter, and
+applied it to the present high wage and to the low wage that was coming;
+but in his heart Peter knew such utilitarianism was not the true reason
+at all. Men do not weave tapestries to warm themselves, or build temples
+to keep the rain away.
+
+The brown man passed on around the corner, out of the faint warmth of
+the sunshine and away from the empty and endless arguments which his
+coming had provoked among the negroes.
+
+The futile ending of his first adventure surprised Peter. He walked
+uncertainly up the business street of the village, hardly knowing where
+to turn next.
+
+Cold weather had driven the merchants indoors, and the thoroughfare was
+quite deserted except for a few hogs rooting among the refuse heaps
+piled in front of the stores. It was not a pleasant sight, and it
+repelled Peter all the more because he was accustomed to the antiseptic
+look of a Northern city. He walked up to the third door from the corner,
+when a buzz of voices brought him to a standstill and finally persuaded
+him inside.
+
+At the back end of a badly lighted store a circle of white men and boys
+had formed around an old-fashioned, egg-shaped stove. Near by, on some
+meal-bags, sat two negroes, one of whom wore a broad grin, the other, a
+funny, sheepish look.
+
+The white men were teasing the latter negro about having gone to jail
+for selling a mortgaged cow. The men went about their fun-making
+leisurely, knowing quite well the negro could not get angry or make any
+retort or leave the store, all of these methods of self-defense being
+ruled out by custom.
+
+"You must have forgot your cow was mortgaged, Bob."
+
+"No-o-o, suh; I--I--I didn't fuhgit," drawling his vowels to a
+prodigious length.
+
+"Didn't you know you'd get into trouble?"
+
+"No-o-o, suh."
+
+"Know it now, don't you?"
+
+"Ya-a-s, suh."
+
+"Have a good time in jail, Bob?"
+
+"Ya-a-s, suh. Shot cra-a-aps nearly all de time tull de jailer broke hit
+up."
+
+"Wouldn't he let you shoot any more?"
+
+"No-o-o, suh; not after he won all our money." Here Bob flung up his
+head, poked out his lips like a bugle, and broke into a grotesque, "Hoo!
+hoo! hoo!" It was such an absurd laugh, and Bob's tale had come to such
+an absurd denouement, that the white men roared, and shuffled their feet
+on the flared base of the stove. Some spat in or near a box filled with
+sawdust, and betrayed other nervous signs of satisfaction. When a man so
+spat, he stopped laughing abruptly, straightened his face, and stared
+emptily at the rusty stove until further inquisition developed some
+other preposterous escapade in Bob's jail career.
+
+The merchant, looking up at one of these intermissions, saw Peter
+standing at his counter. He came out of the circle and asked Peter what
+he wanted. The mulatto bought a package of soda and went out.
+
+The chill north wind smelled clean after the odors of the store. Peter
+stood with his package of soda, breathing deeply, looking up and down
+the street, wondering what to do next. Without much precision of
+purpose, he walked diagonally across the street, northward toward a
+large faded sign that read, "Killibrew's Grocery." A little later Peter
+entered a big, rather clean store which smelled of spices, coffee, and a
+faint dash of decayed potatoes. Mr. Killibrew himself, a big, rotund
+man, with a round head of prematurely white hair, was visible in a
+little glass office at the end of his store. Even through the glazed
+partition Peter could see Mr. Killibrew smiling as he sat comfortably at
+his desk. Indeed, the grocer's chief assets were a really expansive
+friendliness and a pleasant, easily provoked laughter.
+
+He was fifty-two years old, and had been in the grocery business since
+he was fifteen. He had never been to school at all, but had learned
+bookkeeping, business mathematics, salesmanship, and the wisdom of the
+market-place from his store, from other merchants, and from the drummers
+who came every week with their samples and their worldly wisdom. These
+drummers were, almost to a man, very sincere friends of Mr. Killibrew,
+and not infrequently they would write the grocer from the city, or send
+him telegrams, advising him to buy this or to unload that, according to
+the exigencies of the market. As a result of this was very well off
+indeed, and all because he was a friendly, agreeable sort of man.
+
+The grocer heard Peter enter and started to come out of his office, when
+Peter stopped him and asked if he might speak with him alone.
+
+The white-haired man with the pink, good-natured face stood looking at
+Peter with rather a questioning but pleasant expression.
+
+"Why, certainly, certainly." He turned back to the swivel-chair at his
+desk, seated himself, and twisted about on Peter as he entered. Mr.
+Killibrew did not offer Peter a seat,--that would have been an
+infraction of Hooker's Bend custom,--but he sat leaning back, evidently
+making up his mind to refuse Peter credit, which he fancied the mulatto
+would ask for and yet do it pleasantly.
+
+"I was wondering, Mr. Killibrew," began Peter feeling his way along, "I
+was wondering if you would mind talking over a little matter with me.
+It's considered a delicate subject, I believe, but I thought a frank
+talk would help."
+
+During the natural pauses of Peter's explanation Mr. Killibrew kept up a
+genial series of nods and ejaculations.
+
+"Certainly, Peter. I don't see why, Peter. I'm sure it will help,
+Peter."
+
+"I'd like to talk frankly about the relations of our two races in the
+South, in Hooker's Bend."
+
+The grocer stopped his running accompaniment of affirmations and looked
+steadfastly at Peter. Presently he seemed to solve some question and
+broke into a pleasant laugh.
+
+"Now, Peter, if this is some political shenanigan, I must tell you I'm a
+Democrat. Besides that, I don't care a straw about politics. I vote, and
+that's all."
+
+Peter put down the suspicion that he was on a political errand.
+
+"Not that at all, Mr. Killibrew. It's a question of the white race and
+the black race. The particular feature I am working on is the wages paid
+to cooks."
+
+"I didn't know you were a cook," interjected the grocer in surprise.
+
+"I am not."
+
+Mr. Killibrew looked at Peter, thought intensely for a few moments, and
+came to an unescapable conclusion.
+
+"You don't mean you've formed a cook's union here in Hooker's Bend,
+Peter!" he cried, immensely amazed.
+
+"Not at all. It's this," clarified Peter. "It may seem trivial, but it
+illustrates the principle I'm trying to get at. Doesn't your cook carry
+away cold food?"
+
+It required perhaps four seconds for the merchant to stop his
+speculations on what Peter had come for and adjust his mind to the
+question.
+
+"Why, yes, I suppose so," he agreed, very much at sea. "I--I never
+caught up with her." He laughed a pleasant, puzzled laugh. "Of course
+she doesn't come around and show me what she's making off with. Why?"
+
+"Well, it's this. Wouldn't you prefer to give your cook a certain cash
+payment instead of having her taking uncertain amounts of your
+foodstuffs and wearing apparel?"
+
+The merchant leaned forward in his chair.
+
+"Did old Becky Davis send you to me with any such proposition as that,
+Peter?"
+
+"No, not at all. But, Mr. Killibrew, wouldn't you like better and more
+trustworthy servants as cooks, as farm-hands, chauffeurs, stable-boys?
+You see, you and your children and your children's children are going to
+have to depend on negro labor, as far as we can see, to the end of
+time."
+
+"We-e-ell, yes," admitted Mr. Killibrew, who was not accustomed to
+considering the end of time.
+
+"Wouldn't it be better to have honest, self-respecting help than
+dishonest help?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Then let's think about cooks. How can one hope to rear an honest, self-
+respecting citizenry as long as the mothers of the race are compelled to
+resort to thievery to patch out an insufficient wage?"
+
+"Why, I don't suppose niggers ever will be honest," admitted the grocer,
+very frankly. "You naturally don't trust a nigger. If you credit one for
+a dime, the next time he has any money he'll go trade somewhere else."
+The grocer broke into his contagious laugh. "Do you know how I've built
+up my business here, Peter? By never trusting a nigger." Mr. Killibrew
+continued his pleased chuckle. "Yes, I get the whole cash trade of the
+niggers in Hooker's Bend by never cheating one and never trusting one."
+
+The grocer leaned back in his squeaking chair and looked out through the
+glass partition, over the brightly colored packages that lined his
+shelves from floor to ceiling. All that prosperity had come about
+through a policy of honesty and distrust. It was something to be proud
+of.
+
+"Now, let me see," he proceeded, recurring pleasantly to what he
+recalled of Peter's original proposition: "Aunt Becky sent you here to
+tell me if I'd raise her pay, she'd stop stealin' and--and raise some
+honest children." Mr. Killibrew threw back his head broke into loud,
+jelly-like laughter. "Why, don't you know, Peter, she's an old liar. If
+I gave her a hundred a week, she'd steal. And children! Why, the old
+humbug! She's too old; she's had her crop. And, besides all that, I
+don't mind what the old woman takes. It isn't much. She's a good old
+darky, faithful as a dog." He arose from his swivel-chair briskly and
+floated Peter out before him. "Tell her, if she wants a raise," he
+concluded heartily, "and can't pinch enough out of my kitchen and the
+two dollars I pay her--tell her to come to me, straight out, and I'll
+give her more, and she can pinch more."
+
+Mr. Killibrew moved down the aisle of his store between fragrant barrels
+and boxes, laughing mellowly at old Aunt Becky's ruse, as he saw it. As
+he turned Peter out, he invited him to come again when he needed
+anything in the grocery line.
+
+And he was so pleasant, hearty, and sincere in his friendliness toward
+both Peter and old Aunt Becky that Peter, even amid the complete side-
+tracking and derailing of his mission, decided that it ever he did have
+occasion to purchase any groceries, he would do his trading at this
+market ruled by an absolute honesty with, and a complete distrust in,
+his race.
+
+At the conclusion of the Killibrew interview Peter instinctively felt
+that he had just about touched the norm of Hooker's Bend. The village
+might contain men who would dive a little deeper into the race question
+with Peter; assuredly, there would be hundreds who would not dive so
+deep. Mr. Killibrew's attitude on the race question turned on how to
+hold the negro patronage of the village to his grocery. It was not an
+abstract question at all, but a concrete fact, which he had worked out
+to his own satisfaction. With Mr. Killibrew, with all Hooker's Bend,
+there was no negro question.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+When Peter Siner started on his indefinite errand among the village
+stores he believed it would require much tact and diplomacy to discuss
+the race question without offense. To his surprise, no precaution was
+necessary. Everybody agreed at once that the South would be benefited by
+a more trustworthy labor, that if the negroes were trustworthy they
+could be paid more; but nobody agreed that if negroes were paid more
+they would become more trustworthy. The prevailing dictum was, A
+nigger's a nigger.
+
+As Peter came out into the shabby little street of Hooker's Bend
+discouragement settled upon him. He felt as if he had come squarely
+against some blank stone wall that no amount of talking could budge. The
+black man would have to change his psychology or remain where he was, a
+creature of poverty, hovels, and dirt; but amid such surroundings he
+could not change his psychology.
+
+The point of these unhappy conclusions somehow turned against Cissie
+Dildine. The mulatto became aware that his whole crusade had been
+undertaken in behalf of the octoroon. Everything the merchants said
+against negroes became accusations against Cissie in a sharp personal
+way. "A nigger is a nigger"; "A thief is a thief"; "She wouldn't quit
+stealing if I paid her a hundred a week." Every stroke had fallen
+squarely on Cissie's shoulders. A nigger, a thief; and she would never
+be otherwise.
+
+It was all so hopeless, so unchangeable, that Peter walked down the
+bleak street unutterably depressed There was nothing he could do. The
+situation was static. It seemed best that he should go away North and
+save his own skin. It was impossible to take Cissie with him. Perhaps in
+time he would come to forget her, and in so doing he would forget the
+pauperism and pettinesses of all the black folk of the South. Because
+through Cissie Peter saw the whole negro race. She was flexuous and
+passionate, kindly and loving, childish and naïvely wise; on occasion
+she could falsify and steal, and in the depth of her Peter sensed a
+profound capacity for fury and violence. For all her precise English,
+she was untamed, perhaps untamable.
+
+Cissie was a far cry from the sort of woman Peter imagined he wanted for
+a mate; yet he knew that if he stayed on in Hooker's Bend, seeing her,
+desiring her, with her luxury mocking the loneliness of the old Renfrew
+manor, presently he would marry her. Already he had had his little
+irrational moments when it seemed to him that Cissie herself was quite
+fine and worthy and that her speculations were something foreign and did
+not pertain to her at all.
+
+He would better go North. It would be safer up there. No doubt he could
+find another colored girl in the North. The thought of fondling any
+other woman filled Peter with a sudden, sharp repulsion. However, Peter
+was wise. He knew he would get over that in time.
+
+With this plan in mind, Peter set out down the street, intending to
+cross the Big Hill at the church, walk over to his mother's shack, and
+pack his few belongings preparatory to going away.
+
+It was not a heroic retreat. The conversation which he had had with his
+college friend Farquhar recurred to Peter. Farquhar had tried to
+persuade Peter to remain North and take a position in a system of
+garages out of Chicago.
+
+"You can do nothing in the South, Siner," assured Farquhar; "your
+countrymen must stand on their own feet, just as you are doing."
+
+Peter had argued the vast majority of the negroes had no chance, but
+Farquhar pressed the point that Peter himself disproved his own
+statement. At the time Peter felt there was an clench in the
+Illinoisan's logic, but he was not skilful enough to analyze it. Now the
+mulatto began to see that Farquhar was right. The negro question was a
+matter of individual initiative. Critics forgot that a race was composed
+of individual men.
+
+Peter had an uneasy sense that this was exceedingly thin logic, a mere
+smoke screen behind which he meant to retreat back up North. He walked
+on down the poor village street, turning it over and over in his mind,
+affirming it positively to himself, after the manner of uneasy
+consciences.
+
+An unusual stir among the negroes on Hobbett's corner caught Peter's
+attention and broke into his chain of thought. Half a dozen negroes
+stood on the corner, staring down toward the white church. A black boy
+suddenly started running across the street, and disappeared among the
+stores on the other side. Peter caught glimpses of him among the
+wretched alleyways and vacant lots that lie east of Main Street. The boy
+was still running toward Niggertown.
+
+By this time Peter was just opposite the watchers on the corner. He
+lifted his voice and asked them the matter, but at the moment they began
+an excited talking, and no one heard him.
+
+Jim Pink Staggs jerked off his fur cap, made a gesture, contorted his
+long, black face into a caricature of fright, and came loping across the
+street, looking back over his shoulder, mimicking a run for life His
+mummery set his audience howling.
+
+The buffoon would have collided with Peter, but the mulatto caught Jim
+Pink by the arm and shoulder, brought him to a halt, and at the same
+time helped him keep his feet.
+
+To Peter's inquiry what was the matter, the black fellow whirled and
+blared out loudly, for the sake of his audience:
+
+"'Fo' Gawd, nigger, I sho thought Mr. Bobbs had me!" and he writhed his
+face into an idiotic grimace.
+
+The audience reeled about in their mirth. Because with negroes, as with
+white persons, two thirds of humor is in the reputation, and Jim Pink
+was of prodigious repute.
+
+Peter walked along with him patiently, because he knew that until they
+were out of ear-shot of the crowd there was no way of getting a sensible
+answer out of Jim Pink.
+
+"Where are you going?" he asked presently.
+
+"Thought I'd step over to Niggertown." Jim Pink's humorous air was still
+upon him.
+
+"What's doing over there? What were the boys raising such a hullabaloo
+about?"
+
+"Such me."
+
+"Why did that boy go running across like that?"
+
+Jim Pink rolled his eyes on Peter with a peculiar look.
+
+"Reckon he mus' 'a' wanted to git on t'other side o' town."
+
+Peter flattered the Punchinello by smiling a little.
+
+"Come, Jim Pink, what do you know?" he asked. The magician poked out his
+huge lips.
+
+"Mr. Bobbs turn acrost by de church, over de Big Hill. Da' 's always a
+ba-ad sign."
+
+Peter's brief interest in the matter flickered out. Another arrest for
+some niggerish peccadillo. The history of Niggertown was one long series
+of petty offenses, petty raids, and petty punishments. Peter would be
+glad to get well away from such a place.
+
+"Think I'll go North, Jim Pink," remarked Peter, chiefly to keep up a
+friendly conversation with his companion.
+
+"Whut-chu goin' to do up thaiuh?"
+
+"Take a position in a system of garages."
+
+"A position is a job wid a white color on it," defined the minstrel.
+"Whut you goin' to do wid Cissie?"
+
+Peter looked around at the foolish face.
+
+"With Cissie?--Cissie Dildine?"
+
+"Uh huh."
+
+"Why, what makes you think I'm going to do anything with Cissie?"
+
+"M-m, visitin' roun'." The fool flung his face into a grimace, and
+dropped it as one might shake out a sack.
+
+Peter watched the contortion uneasily.
+
+"What do you mean--visiting around?"
+
+
+   "Diff'nt folks go visitin' roun';
+    Some goes up an' some goes down."
+
+
+Apparently Jim Pink had merely quoted a few words from a poem he knew.
+He stared at the green-black depth of the glade, which set in about
+half-way up the hill they were climbing.
+
+"Ef this weather don' ever break," he observed sagely, "we sho am in fuh
+a dry spell."
+
+Peter did not pursue the topic of the weather. He climbed the hill in
+silence, wondering just what the buffoon meant. He suspected he was
+hinting at Cissie's visit to his room. However, he did not dare ask any
+questions or press the point in any manner, lest he commit himself.
+
+The minstrel had succeeded in making Peter's walk very uncomfortable, as
+somehow he always did. Peter went on thinking about the matter. If Jim
+Pink knew of Cissie's visit, all Niggertown knew it. No woman's
+reputation, nobody's shame or misery or even life, would stand between
+Jim Pink and what he considered a joke. The buffoon was the crudest
+thing in this world--a man who thought himself a wit.
+
+Peter could imagine all the endless tweaks to Cissie's pride Niggertown
+would give the octoroon. She had asked Peter to marry her and had been
+refused. She had humbled herself for naught. That was the very tar of
+shame. Peter knew that in the moral categories of Niggertown Cissie
+would suffer more from such a rebuff than if she had lied or committed
+theft and adultery every day in the calendar. She had been refused
+marriage. All the folk-ways of Niggertown were utterly topsyturvy. It
+was a crazy-house filled with the most grotesque moral measures.
+
+It seemed to Peter as he entered the cedar-glade that he had lost all
+sympathy with this people from which he had sprung. He looked upon them
+as strange, incomprehensible beings, just as a man will forget his own
+childhood and look upon children as strange, incomprehensible little
+creatures. In the midst of his thoughts he heard himself saying to Jim
+Pink:
+
+"I suppose it is as dusty as ever."
+
+"Dustier 'an ever," assured Jim Pink.
+
+Apparently their conversation had recurred to the weather, after all.
+
+A chill silence encompassed the glade. The path the negroes followed
+wound this way and that among reddish boulders, between screens of
+intergrown cedars, and over a bronze mat of needles. Their steps were
+noiseless. The odor of the cedars and the temple-like stillness brought
+to Peter's mind the night of his mother's death. It seemed to him a long
+time since he had come running through the glade after a doctor, and
+yet, by a queer distortion of his sense of time, his mother's death and
+burial bulked in his past as if it had occurred yesterday.
+
+There was no sound in the glade to disturb Peter's thoughts except a
+murmur of human voices from some of the innumerable privacies of the
+place, and the occasional chirp of a waxwing busy over clusters of
+cedar-balls.
+
+It had been five weeks and a day since Caroline died. Five weeks and a
+day; his mother's death drifting away into the mystery and oblivion of
+the past. Likewise, twenty-five years of his own life completed and
+gone.
+
+A procession of sad, wistful thoughts trailed through Peter's brain: his
+mother, and Ida May, and now Cissie. It seemed to Peter that all any
+woman had ever brought him was wistfulness and sadness. His mother had
+been jealous, and instead of the great happiness he had expected, his
+home life with her had turned out a series of small perplexities and
+pains. Before that was Ida May, and now here was her younger sister.
+Peter wondered if any man ever reached the peace and happiness
+foreshadowed in his dream of a woman.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+A voice calling his name checked Peter's stride mechanically, and caused
+him to look about with the slight bewilderment of a man aroused from a
+reverie.
+
+At the first sound, however, Jim Pink became suddenly alert. He took
+three strides ahead of Peter, and as he went he whispered over his
+shoulder:
+
+"Beat it, nigger! beat it!"
+
+The mulatto recognized one of Jim Pink's endless stupid attempts at
+comedy. It would be precisely Jim Pink's idea of a jest to give Peter a
+little start. As the mulatto stood looking about among the cedars for
+the person who had called his name, it amazed him that Jim Pink could be
+so utterly insane; that he performed some buffoonery instantly, by
+reflex action as it were, upon the slightest provocation. It was almost
+a mania with Jim Pink; it verged on the pathological.
+
+The clown, however, was pressing his joke. He was pretending great fear,
+and was shouting out in his loose minstrel voice:
+
+"Hey, don' shoot down dis way, black man, tull I makes my exit!" And a
+voice, rich with contempt, called back:
+
+"You needn't be skeered, you fool rabbit of a nigger!"
+
+Peter turned with a qualm. Quite close to him, and in another direction
+from which he had been looking, stood Tump Pack. The ex-soldier looked
+the worse for wear after his jail sentence. His uniform was frayed, and
+over his face lay a grayish cast that marks negroes in bad condition. At
+his side, attached by a belt and an elaborate shoulder holster, hung a
+big army revolver, while on the greasy lapel of his coat was pinned his
+military medal for exceptional bravery on the field of battle.
+
+"Been lookin' fuh you fuh some time, Peter," he stated grimly.
+
+Peter considered the formidable figure with a queer sensation. He tried
+to take Tump's appearance casually; he tried to maintain an air of
+ordinariness.
+
+"Didn't know you were back."
+
+"Yeah, I's back."
+
+"Have you--been looking for me?"
+
+"Yeah."
+
+"Didn't you know where I was staying?"
+
+"Co'se I did; up 'mong de white folks. You know dey don' 'low no
+shootin' an' killin' 'mong de white folks." He drew his pistol from the
+holster with the address of an expert marksman.
+
+[Illustration: "Naw yuh don't," he warned sharply. "You turn roun' an'
+march on to niggertown"]
+
+Peter stood, with a quickening pulse, studying his assailant. The glade,
+the air, the sunshine, seemed suddenly drawn to a tension, likely to,
+break into violent commotion. His abrupt danger brought Peter to a
+feeling of lightness and power. A quiver went along his spine. His
+nostrils widened unconsciously as he calculated a leap and a blow at
+Tump's gun.
+
+The soldier took a step backward, at the same time bringing the barrel
+to a ready.
+
+"Naw you don't," he warned sharply. "You turn roun' an' march on to
+Niggertown."
+
+"What for?" Peter still tried to be casual, but his voice held new
+overtones.
+
+"Because, nigger, I means to drap you right on de Main Street o'
+Niggertown, 'fo' all dem niggers whut's been a-raggin' me 'bout you an'
+Cissie. I's gwine show dem fool niggers I don' take no fumi-diddles
+off'n nobody."
+
+"Tump," gasped Jim Pink, in a husky voice, "you oughtn't shoot Peter; he
+mammy jes daid."
+
+"'En she won' worry none. Turn roun', Peter, an' when I says, 'March,'
+you march." He leveled his pistol. "'Tention! Rat about face! March!"
+
+Peter turned and moved off down the noiseless path, walking with the
+stiff gait of a man who expects a terrific blow from behind at any
+instant.
+
+The mulatto walked twenty or more paces amid a confusion of self-
+protective impulses. He thought of whirling on Tump even at this late
+date. He thought of darting behind a cedar, but he knew the man behind
+him was an expert shot, and something fundamental in the brown man
+forbade his getting himself killed while running away. It was too
+undignified a death.
+
+Presently he surprised himself by calling over his shoulder, as a sort
+of complaint:
+
+"How came you with the pistol, Tump? Thought it was against the law to
+carry one."
+
+"You kin ca'y 'em ef you don' keep 'em hid," explained the ex-soldier in
+a wooden voice. "Mr. Bobbs tol' me dat when he guv my gun back."
+
+The irony of the thing caught Peter, for the authorities to arrest Tump
+not because he was trying to kill Peter, but because he went about his
+first attempt in an illegal manner. For the first time in his life the
+mulatto felt that contempt for a white man's technicalities that flavors
+every negro's thoughts. Here for thirty days his life had been saved by
+a technical law of the white man; at the end of the thirty days, by
+another technical law, Tump was set at liberty and allowed to carry a
+weapon, in a certain way, to murder him. It was grotesque; it was
+absurd. It filled Peter with a sudden violent questioning of the whole
+white régime. His thoughts danced along in peculiar excitement.
+
+At the turn of the hill the trio came in sight of the squalid semicircle
+of Niggertown. Here and there from a tumbledown chimney a feather of
+pale wood smoke lifted into the chill sunshine. The sight of the houses
+brought Peter a sharp realization that his life would end in the curving
+street beneath him. A shock at the incomprehensible brevity of his life
+rushed over him. Just to that street, just as far as the curve, and his
+legs were swinging along, carrying him forward at an even gait.
+
+All at once he began talking, arguing. He tried to speak at an ordinary
+tempo, but his words kept edging on faster and faster:
+
+"Tump, I'm not going to marry Cissie Dildine."
+
+"I knows you ain't, Peter."
+
+"I mean, if you let me alone, I didn't mean to."
+
+"I ain't goin' to let you alone."
+
+"Tump, we had already decided not to marry."
+
+After a short pause Tump said in a slightly different tone:
+
+"'Pears lak you don' haf to ma'y her--comin' to yo' room."
+
+A queer sinking came over the mulatto. "Listen, Tump, I--we--in my room
+--we simply talked, that's all. She came to tell me she was goin away.
+I--I didn't harm her, Tump." Peter swallowed. He despaired of being
+believed.
+
+But his defense only infuriated the soldier. He suddenly broke into
+violent profanity.
+
+"Hot damn you! shut yo black mouf! Whut I keer whut-chu done! You weaned
+her away fum me. She won't speak to me! She won't look at me!" A sudden
+insanity of rage seized Tump. He poured on his victim every oath and
+obscenity he had raked out of the whole army.
+
+Strangely enough, the gunman's outbreak brought a kind of relief to
+Peter Siner. It exonerated him. He was not suspected of wronging Cissie;
+or, rather, whether he had or had not wronged her made no difference to
+Tump. Peter's crime consisted in mere being, in existing where Cissie
+could see him and desire him rather than Tump. Why it calmed Peter to
+know that Tump held no dishonorable charge against him the mulatto
+himself could not have told. Tump's violence showed Peter the certainty
+of his own death, and somehow it washed away the hope and the thought of
+escape.
+
+Half-way down the hill they entered the edge of Niggertown. The smell of
+sties and stables came to them. Peter's thoughts moved here and there,
+like the eyes of a little child glancing about as it is forced to leave
+a pleasure-ground.
+
+Peter knew that Jim Pink, who now made a sorry figure in their rear,
+would one day give a buffoon's mimicry of this his walk to death. He
+thought of Tump, who would have to serve a year or two in the Nashville
+Penitentiary, for the murder of negroes is seldom severely punished. He
+thought of Cissie. He was being murdered because Cissie desired him.
+
+And then Peter remembered the single bit of wisdom that his whole life
+had taught him. It was this: no people can become civilized until the
+woman has the power of choice among the males that sue for her hand. The
+history of the white race shows the gradual increase of the woman's
+power of choice. Among the yellow races, where this power is curtailed,
+civilization is curtailed. It was this principle that exalted chivalry.
+Upon it the white man has reared all his social fabric.
+
+So deeply ingrained is it that almost every novel written by white men
+revolves about some woman's choice of her mate being thwarted by power
+or pride or wealth, but in every instance the rightness of the woman's
+choice is finally justified. The burden of every song is love, true
+love, enduring love, a woman's true and enduring love.
+
+And in his moment of clairvoyance Peter saw that these songs and stories
+were profoundly true. Against a woman's selectiveness no other social
+force may count.
+
+That was why his own race was weak and hopeless and helpless. The males
+of his people were devoid of any such sentiment or self-repression. They
+were men of the jungle, creatures of tusk and claw and loin. This very
+act of violence against his person condemned his whole race.
+
+These thoughts brought the mulatto an unspeakable sadness, not only for
+his own particular death, but that this idea, this great redeeming
+truth, which burned so brightly in his brain, would in another moment
+flicker out, unrevealed, and be no more.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+The coughing and rattling of an old motor-car as it rounded the
+Niggertown curve delayed Tump Pack's act of violence. Instinctively, the
+three men waited for the machine to pass before Peter walked out into
+the road. Next moment it appeared around the turn, moving slowly through
+the dust and spreading a veritable fog behind it.
+
+All three negroes recognized the first glimpse of the hood and top, for
+there are only three or four cars in Hooker's Bend, and these are as
+well known as the faces of their owners. This particular motor belonged
+to Constable Bobbs, and the next moment the trio saw the ponderous body
+of the officer at the wheel, and by his side a woman. As the machine
+clacked toward them Peter felt a certain surprise to see that it was
+Cissie Dildine.
+
+The constable in the car scrutinized the black men, by the roadside in a
+very peculiar way. As he came near, he leaned across Cissie and almost
+eclipsed the girl. He eyed the trio with his perpetual menace of a grin
+on his broad red face. His right hand, lying across Cissie's lap, held a
+revolver. When closest he shouted above the clangor of his engine:
+
+"Now, none o' that, boys! None o' that! You'll prob'ly hit the gal if
+you shoot, an' I'll pick you off lak three black skunks."
+
+He brandished his revolver at them, but the gesture was barely seen, and
+instantly concealed by the cloud; of dust following the motor. Next
+moment it enveloped the negroes and hid them even from one another.
+
+It was only after Peter was lost in the dust-cloud that the mulatto
+really divined what was meant by Cissie's strange appearance with the
+constable, her chalky face, her frightened brown eyes. The significance
+of the scene grew in his mind. He stood with eyes screwed to slits
+staring into the apricot-colored dust in the direction of the vanishing
+noise.
+
+Presently Tump Pack's form outlined itself in the yellow obscurity,
+groping toward Peter. He still held his pistol, but it swung at his
+side. He called Peter's name in the strained voice of a man struggling
+not to cough:
+
+"Peter--is Mr. Bobbs done--'rested Cissie?"
+
+Peter could hardly talk himself.
+
+"Don't know. Looks like it."
+
+The two negroes stared at each other through the dust.
+
+"Fuh Gawd's sake! Cissie 'rested!" Tump began to cough. Then he wheezed:
+
+"Mine an' yo' little deal's off, Peter. You gotta he'p git her out."
+Here he fell into a violent fit of coughing, and started groping his way
+to the edge of the dust-cloud.
+
+In the rush of the moment the swift change in Peter's situation appeared
+only natural. He followed Tump, so distressed by the dust and disturbed
+over Cissie that he hardly thought of his peculiar position. The dust
+pinched the upper part of his throat, stung his nose. Tears trickled
+from his eyes, and he pressed his finger against his upper lip, trying
+not to sneeze. He was still struggling against the sneeze when Tump
+recovered his speech.
+
+"Wh-whut you reckon she done, Peter? She don' shoot craps, nor boot-
+laig, nor--" He fell to coughing.
+
+Peter got out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes.
+
+"Let's go--to the Dildine house," he said.
+
+The two moved hurriedly through the thinning cloud, and presently came
+to breathable air, where they could see the houses around them.
+
+"I know she done somp'n; I know she done somp'n," chanted Tump, with the
+melancholy cadence of his race. He shook his dusty head. "You ain't
+never been in jail, is you, black man?"
+
+Peter said he had not.
+
+"Lawd! it ain't no place fuh a woman," declared Tump. "You dunno nothin'
+'bout it, black man. It sho ain't no place fuh a woman."
+
+A notion of an iron cage floated before Peter's mind. The two negroes
+trudged on through the crescent side by side, their steps raising a
+little trail of dust in the air behind them. Their faces and clothes
+were of a uniform dust color. Streaks of mud marked the runnels of their
+tears down their cheeks.
+
+The shrubbery and weeds that grew alongside the negro thoroughfare were
+quite dead. Even the little avenue of dwarf box was withered that led
+from the gate to the door of the Dildine home. The two colored men
+walked up the little path to the door, knocked, and waited on the steps
+for the little skirmish of observation from behind the blinds. None
+came. The worst had befallen the house; there was nothing to guard. The
+door opened as soon as an inmate could reach it, and Vannie Dildine
+stood before them.
+
+The quadroon's eyes were red, and her face had the moist, slightly
+swollen appearance that comes of protracted weeping. She looked so frail
+and miserable that Peter instinctively stepped inside and took her arm
+to assist her in the mere physical effort of standing.
+
+"What is the matter, Mrs. Dildine?" he asked in a shocked tone. "What's
+happened to Cissie?"
+
+Vannie began weeping again with a faint gasping and a racking of her
+flat chest.
+
+"It's--it's--O-o-oh, Peter!" She put an arm about him and began weeping
+against him. He soothed her, patted her shoulder, at the same time
+staring at the side of her head, wondering what could have dealt her
+this blow.
+
+Presently she steadied herself and began explaining in feeble little
+phrases, sandwiched between sobs and gasps:
+
+"She--tuk a brooch--Kep'--kep' layin' it roun' in--h-her way, th-that
+young Sam Arkwright did,--a-an' finally she--she tuk hit. N-nen, when he
+seen he h-had her, he said sh-sh-she 'd haf to d-do wh-whut he said, or
+he'd sen' her to-to ja-a-il!" Vannie sobbed drearily for a few moments
+on Peter's breast. "Sh-she did fuh a while: 'n 'en sh-she broke off wid
+h-him, anyhow, an'--an' he swo' out a wa'nt an sont her to jail!" The
+mother sobbed without comfort, and finally added: "Sh-she in a delicate
+fix now, an' 'at jail goin' to be a gloomy place fuh Cissie."
+
+The three negroes stood motionless in the dusty hallway, motionless save
+for the racking of Vannie's sobs.
+
+Tump Pack stirred himself.
+
+"Well, we gotta git her out." His words trailed off. He stood wrinkling
+his half-inch of brow. "I wonder would dey exchange pris'ners; wonder ef
+I could go up an' serve out Cissie's term."
+
+"Oh, Tump!" gasped the woman, "ef you only could!"
+
+"I'll step an' see, Miss Vannie. 'At sho ain't no place fuh a nice gal
+lak Cissie." Tump turned on his mission, evidently intending to walk to
+Jonesboro and offer himself in the place of the prisoner.
+
+Peter supported Vannie back into the poor living-room, and placed her in
+the old rocking-chair before the empty hearth. There was where he had
+sat the evening Cissie made her painful confession to him. Only now did
+he realize the whole of what Cissie was trying to confess.
+
+Peter Siner overtook Tump Pack a little way down the crescent, opposite
+the Berry cabin. The thoroughfare was deserted, because the weather was
+cold and the scantily clad children were indoors. However, from every
+cabin came sound of laughing and romping, and now and then a youngster
+darted through the cold from one hut to another.
+
+It seemed to Peter Siner only a little while since he and Ida May were
+skittering through wintry weather from one fire to another, with Cissie,
+a wailing, wet-nosed little spoil-sport, trailing after them. And then,
+with a wheeling of the years, they were scattered everywhere.
+
+As the negroes passed the Berry cabin, Nan Berry came out with an old
+shawl around her bristling spikes. She stopped the two men and drew them
+to her gate with a gesture.
+
+"Wha you gwine?"
+
+"Jonesbuh."
+
+"Whut you goin' do 'bout po-o-o' Cissie?"
+
+"Goin' to see ef the sheriff won' take me 'stid o' Cissie."
+
+"Tha's right," said Nan, nodding solemnly. "I hopes he will. You is mo'
+used to it, Tump."
+
+"Yeah, an' 'at jail sho ain't no place fuh a nice gal lak Cissie."
+
+"Sho ain't," agreed Nan.
+
+Peter interrupted to say he was sure the sheriff would not exchange.
+
+The hopes of his listeners fell.
+
+"Weh-ul," dragged out Nan, with a long face, "of co'se now it's lak dis:
+ef Cissie goin' to stay in dat ja-ul, she's goin' to need some mo'
+clo'es 'cep'n whut she's got on,--specially lak she is."
+
+Tump stared down the swing of the crescent.
+
+"'Fo' Gawd, dis sho don' seem lak hit's right to me," he said.
+
+Nan let herself out at the rickety gate. "You niggers wait heah tull I
+runs up to Miss Vannie's an' git some o' Cissie's clo'es fuh you to tote
+her."
+
+Tump objected.
+
+"Jail ain't no place fuh clean clo'es. She jes better serve out her term
+lak she is, an' wash up when she gits th'ugh."
+
+"You fool nigger!" snapped Nan. "She kain't serve out her term lak she
+is!"
+
+"Da' 's so," said Tump.
+
+The three stood silent, Nan and Tump lost in blankness, trying to think
+of something to do for Cissie. Finally Nan said:
+
+"I heah she done commit gran' larceny, an' they goin' sen' her to de
+pen."
+
+"Whut is gran' larceny?" asked Tump.
+
+"It's takin' mo' at one time an' de white folks 'speck you to take,"
+defined the woman. "Well, I'll go git her clo'es." She hurried off up
+the crescent.
+
+Peter and Tump waited in the Berry cabin for Nan's return. Outside, the
+Berry cabin was the usual clapboard-roofed, weather-stained structure;
+inside, it was dark, windowless, and strong with the odor of black folk.
+Some children were playing around the hearth, roasting chestnuts. Their
+elders sat in a circle of decrepit chairs. It was so dark that when
+Peter first entered he could not make out the little group, but he soon
+recognized their voices: Parson Ranson, Wince Washington, Jerry
+Dillihay, and all of the Berry family.
+
+They were talking of Cissie, of course. They hoped Cissie wouldn't
+really be sent to the penitentiary, that the white folks would let her
+out in time for her to have her child at home. Parson Ranson thought it
+would be bad luck for a child to be born in jail.
+
+Wince Washington, who had been in jail a number of times, suggested that
+they bail Cissie out by signing their names to a paper. He had been set
+free by this means once or twice.
+
+Sally, Nan's little sister, observed tartly that if Cissie hadn't acted
+so, she wouldn't have been in jail.
+
+"Don' speak lak dat uv dem as is in trouble, Sally," reproved old Parson
+Ranson, solemnly; "anybody can say 'Ef.'"
+
+"Sho am de troof," agreed Jerry Dillihay.
+
+"Sho am, black man." The conversation drifted into the endless
+moralizing of their race, but it held no criticism or condemnation of
+Cissie. From the tone of the negroes one would have thought some
+impersonal disaster had overtaken her. Every one was planning how to
+help Cissie, how to make her present state more endurable. They were the
+black folk, the unfortunate of the earth, and the pride of righteousness
+is only to the well placed and the untempted.
+
+Presently Nan came back with a bundle of Cissie's clothes. Tump took the
+bundle of dainty lingerie, the intimate garments of the woman he loved,
+and set forth on his quixotic errand. He tied it to his shoulder-holster
+and set out. Peter went a little of the way with him. It was almost dusk
+when they started. The chill of approaching night stung the men's faces.
+As they walked past the footpath that led over the Big Hill, three
+pistol-shots from the glade announced that the boot-leggers had opened
+business for the night.
+
+Tump paused and shivered. He said it was a cold night. He thought he
+would like to get a kick of "white mule" to put a little heart in him.
+It was a long walk to Jonesboro. He hesitated a moment, then turned off
+the road around the crescent for the path through the glade.
+
+A thought to dissuade Tump from drinking the fiery "singlings" of the
+moonshiners crossed Peters mind, but he put it aside. Tump was a habitué
+of the glade. All the physiological arguments upon which Peter could
+base an argument were far beyond the ex-soldier's comprehension. So Tump
+turned off through the dark trees. Peter watched him until all he could
+see was the white blur of Cissie's underwear swinging against his
+holster.
+
+After Tump's disappearance, Peter stood for several minutes thinking.
+His brief crusade into Niggertown had ended in a situation far outside
+of his volition. That morning he had started out with some vague idea of
+taking Niggertown in his hands and molding it in accordance with his
+white ideas; but Niggertown had taken Peter into its hands, had
+threatened his life, had administered to him profound mental and moral
+shocks, and now had dropped him, like some bit of waste, with his face
+set over the Big Hill for white town.
+
+As Peter stood there it seemed to him there was something symbolic in
+his attitude. He was no longer of the black world; he was of the white.
+He did not understand his people; they eluded him.
+
+He belonged to the white world; not to the village across the hill, but
+to the North. Nothing now prevented him from going North and taking the
+position with Farquhar. Cissie Dildine was impossible for him now.
+Niggertown was immovable, at least for him. He was no Washington to lead
+his people to a loftier plane. In fact, Peter began to suspect that he
+was no leader at all. He saw now that his initial success with the Sons
+and Daughters of Benevolence had been effected merely by the aura of his
+college training. After his first misstep he had never rehabilitated
+himself. He perhaps had a dash of the artistic in him, and the power to
+mold ideas often confuses itself subjectively with the power to mold
+human beings. In reality he did not even understand the people he
+assumed to mold. A suspicion came to him that under the given conditions
+their ways were more rational than his own.
+
+As for Cissie Dildine, his duty by the girl, his queer protective
+passion for her--all that was surely past now. After her lapse from all
+decency there was no reason why he should spend another thought on her.
+He would go North to Chicago.
+
+The last of the twilight was fading in swift, visible gradations of
+light. The cedars, the cabins, and the hill faded in pulse-beats of
+darkness. Above the Big Hill the last ember of day smoldered against a
+green-blue infinity. Here and there a star pricked the dome with a
+wintry brilliance.
+
+Then, somehow, the thought of Cissie looking out on that chilly sky
+through iron bars tightened Peter's throat. He caught himself up sharply
+for his emotion. He began a vague defense of the white man's laws on
+grounds as cold and impersonal as the winter evening. Laws, customs, and
+conventions were for the strengthening of men, to seed the select, to
+winnow the weak. It was white logic, applied firmly, as by a white man.
+But somehow the stars multiplied and kept Cissie's image before Peter--a
+cold, frightened girl, harassed with coming motherhood, peering at those
+chill, distant lights out of the blackness of a jail.
+
+The mulatto decided to spend the night in his mother's cabin. He would
+do his packing, and be ready for the down-river boat in the morning. He
+found his way to his own gate in the darkness. He lifted it around,
+entered, and walked to his door. When he tried to open it, he found some
+one had bored holes through the shutter and the jamb and had wired it
+shut.
+
+Peter struck a match to see just what had been done. The flame displayed
+a small sheet tacked on the door. He spent two matches investigating it.
+It was a notice of levy, posted by the constable in an action of debt
+brought against the estate of Caroline Siner by Henry Hooker. The owner
+of the estate and the public in general were warned against removing
+anything whatsoever from the premises under penalty exacted by the law
+governing such offenses. Then Peter untwisted the wire and entered.
+
+Peter searched about and found the tiny brass night-lamp which his
+mother always had used. The larger glass-bowled lamp was gone. The
+interior of the cabin was clammy from cold and foul from long lack of
+airing. In the corner his mother's old four-poster loomed in the
+shadows, but he could see some of its covers had been taken. He passed
+into the kitchen with a notion of building a fire and eating a bite, but
+everything edible had been abstracted. Even one of the lids of the old
+step-stove was gone. Most of the pans and kettles had disappeared, but
+the pretty old Dutch sugar-bowl remained on a bare paper-covered shelf.
+Negro-like, whatever person or persons who had ransacked Peter's home
+considered the sugar-bowl too fine to take. Or they may have thought
+that Peter would want this bowl for a keepsake, and with that queer
+compassion that permeates a negro's worst moments they allowed it to
+remain. And Peter knew if he raised an outcry about his losses, much of
+the property would be surreptitiously restored, or perhaps his neighbors
+would bring back his things and say they had found them. They would help
+him as best they could, just as they of the crescent would help Cissie
+as best they could, and would receive her back as one of them when she
+and her baby were finally released from jail.
+
+They were a queer people. They were a people who would never get on well
+and do well. They lacked the steel-like edge that the white man
+achieves. By virtue of his hardness, a white man makes his very laws and
+virtues instruments to crush and mulct his fellow-man; but negroes are
+so softened by untoward streaks of sympathy that they lose the very uses
+of their crimes.
+
+The depression of the whole day settled upon Peter with the deepening
+night. He held his poor light above his head and picked his way to his
+own room. After the magnificence of the Renfrew manor, it had contracted
+to a grimy little box lined with yellowed papers. His books were still
+intact, but Henry Hooker would get them as part payment on the Dillihay
+place, which Henry owned. On his little table still lay the pile of old
+examination papers, lists of incoherent questions which somebody
+somewhere imagined formed a test of human ability to meet and answer the
+mysterious searchings of life.
+
+Peter was familiar with the books; many of the questions he had learned
+by rote, but the night and the crescent, and the thought of a pregnant
+girl caged in the blackness of a jail filled his soul with a great
+melancholy query to which he could find no answer.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+Two voices talking, interrupting each other with ejaculations, after the
+fashion of negroes under excitement, aroused Peter Siner from his sleep.
+He caught the words: "He did! Tump did! The jailer did! 'Fo' God! black
+man, whut's Cissie doin'?"
+
+Overtones of shock, even of horror, in the two voices brought Peter wide
+awake the moment he opened his eyes. He sat up suddenly in his bed,
+remained perfectly still, listening with his mouth open. The voices,
+however, were passing. The words became indistinct, then relapsed into
+that bubbling monotone of human voices at a distance, and presently
+ceased.
+
+These fragmentary phrases, however, feathered with consternation, filled
+Peter with vague premonitions. He whirled his legs out of bed and began
+drawing on his clothes. When he was up and into the crescent, however,
+nobody was in sight. He stood breathing the chill, damp air, blinking
+his eyes. Lack of his cold bath made him feel chilly and lethargic. He
+wriggled his shoulders and considered going back, after all, and having
+his splash. Just then he saw the Persimmon coming around the crescent.
+Peter called to the roustabout and asked about Tump Pack.
+
+The Persimmon looked at Peter with his half-asleep, protruding eyeballs.
+
+"Don' you know 'bout Tump Pack already, Mister Siner?"
+
+"No." Peter was astonished at the formality of the "Mr. Siner."
+
+"Then is you 'spectin' somp'n 'bout him?"
+
+"Why, no, but I was asleep in there a moment ago, and somebody came
+along talking about Tump and Cissie. They--they aren't married, are
+they?"
+
+"Oh, no-o, no-o-o, no-o-o-o-o." The Persimmon waggled his bullet head
+slowly from side to side. "I heared Tump got into a lil trouble wid de
+jailer las' night."
+
+"Serious?"
+
+"I dunno." The Persimmon closed one of his protruding yellow eyes.
+"Owin' to whut you call se'ius; maybe whut I call se'ius wouldn't be
+se'ius to you at all; 'n 'en maybe whut you call se'ius would be ve'y
+insince'ius to Tump." The roustabout's philosophy, which consisted in a
+monotonous recasting of a given proposition, trickled on and on in the
+cold wind. After a while it fizzled out to nothing at all, and the
+Persimmon asked in a queer manner: "Did you give Tump some women's
+clo'es, Peter?"
+
+It was such an odd question that at first Peter was at loss; then he
+recalled Nan Berry's despatching Cissie some underwear. He explained
+this to the Persimmon, and tacked on a curious, "Why?"
+
+"Oh, nothin'; nothin' 'tall. Ever'body say you a mighty long-haided
+nigger. Jim Pink he tell us 'bout Tump Pack marchin' you 'roun' wid a
+gun. I sho don' want you ever git mad at me, Mister Siner. Man wid a gun
+an' you turn yo' long haid on him an' blow him away wid a wad o' women's
+clo'es. I sho don' want you ever cross yo' fingers at me, Mister Siner."
+
+Peter stared at the grotesque, bullet-headed roustabout. "Persimmon," he
+said uneasily, "what in the world are you talking about?"
+
+The Persimmon smiled a sickly, white-toothed smile. "Jim Pink say yo'
+aidjucation is a flivver. I say, 'Jim Pink, no nigger don' go off an'
+study fo' yeahs in college whut 'n he comes back an' kin throw some kin'
+uv a hoodoo over us fool niggers whut ain't got no brains. Now, Tump wid
+a gun, an' you wid jes ordina'y women's clo'es! 'Fo' Gawd, aidjucation
+is a great thing; sho is a great thing." The Persimmon gave Peter an
+apprehensive wink and moved on.
+
+There was no use trying to extract information from the Persimmon unless
+he was minded to give it. His talk would merely become vaguer and
+vaguer. Peter watched him go, then turned and attempted to throw the
+whole matter off his mind by assuming a certain brisk Northern mood. He
+must pack, get ready for the down-river gasolene launch. The doings of
+Tump Pack and Cissie Dildine were, after all, nothing to him.
+
+He started inside, when the levy notice on the door again met his eyes.
+He paused, read it over once more, and decided that he must go over the
+hill to the Planter's Bank and get Henry Hooker's permission to remove
+certain small personal belongings that he wanted to take with him.
+
+The mere clear-cut decision to go invigorated Peter.
+
+Some of the energy that always filled him during his college days in
+Boston seemed to come to him now from the mere thought of the North.
+Soon he would be in the midst of it, moving briskly, talking to wide-
+awake men to whom a slightly unusual English word would not form a
+stumbling-block to conversation. He set out down the crescent and across
+the Big Hill at a swinging stride. He was glad to get away.
+
+Beyond the white church on the other side of the hill he heard a motor
+coming in on the Jonesboro road. Presently he saw a battered car moving
+around the long swing of the pike, spewing a trail of dust down the
+wind. Its clacking became prodigious.
+
+The mulatto was just entering that indefinite stretch of thoroughfare
+where a country road becomes a village street when there came a wail of
+brakes behind him and he looked around.
+
+It was Dawson Bobbs's car. The fat man now slowed up not far from the
+mulatto and called to him.
+
+"Yes, sir," said Peter.
+
+Dawson bobbed his fat head backward and upward in a signal for Peter to
+approach. It held the casualness of one certain to be obeyed.
+
+Although Peter had done no crime, nor had even harbored a criminal
+intention, a trickle of apprehension went through him at Bobbs's nod. He
+recalled Jim Pink's saying that it was bad luck to see the constable. He
+walked up to the shuddering motor and stood about three feet from the
+running-board.
+
+The officer bit on a sliver of toothpick that he held in his thin lips.
+
+"Accident up Jonesboro las' night, Peter."
+
+"What was it, Mr. Bobbs?"
+
+"Tump Pack got killed."
+
+Peter continued looking fixedly at Mr. Bobbs's broad red face. The dusty
+road beneath him seemed to give a little dip. He repeated the
+information emptily, trying to orient himself to this sudden change in
+his whole mental horizon.
+
+The officer was looking at Peter fixedly with his chill slits of eyes.
+
+"Yeah; trying to make a jail delivery."
+
+The two men continued looking at each other, one from the road, the
+other from the motor. The flow of Peter's thoughts seemed to divide. The
+greater part was occupied with Tump Pack. Peter could vision the
+formidable ex-soldier lying dead in Jonesboro jail, with his little
+congressional medal on his breast. Some lighter portion of his mind
+nickered about here and there on trivial things. He observed a little
+hole rusted in the running-board of the motor. He noticed that the
+officer's eyes were just the same chill, washed blue as the winter sky
+above his head. He remembered a tale that, before electrocution became a
+law in Tennessee the county sheriff's nerve had failed him at a hanging,
+and the constable Dawson Bobbs had sprung the drop. There was something
+terrible about the fat man. He would do anything, absolutely anything,
+that came to his hands in the way of legal sewage.
+
+In the midst of these thoughts Peter heard himself saying.
+
+"He--was trying to get Cissie out?"
+
+"Yep."
+
+"He--must have been drunk."
+
+"Oh, yeah."
+
+Mr. Bobbs sat studying the mulatto. As he studied him he said slowly:
+
+"Some of 'em say he was disguised as a woman. Others say he had some
+women's clothes along, ready to put on. Now, me and the sheriff knowed
+Tump Pack purty well, Peter, and we knowed that nigger never in the
+worl' would 'a' thought up sich a plan by hisself."
+
+He sat looking at Peter so interrogatively that the mulatto began, in a
+strained, earnest voice, telling the constable precisely what had
+happened in regard to the clothes.
+
+Mr. Bobbs sat listening impassively, moving his toothpick up and down
+from one side to the other of his small, thin-lipped mouth. At last he
+nodded.
+
+"Well, I guess that's about the way of it. I didn't exactly understand
+the women's clothes business,--damn' fool disguise,--but we figgered it
+might pop into the head of a' edjucated nigger." He sucked his teeth,
+reflectively. "Peter," he said at last, "seems to me, if I was you, I'd
+drift on away from this town. The niggers around here ain't strong for
+you now; some say you're a hoodoo; some say this an' some that. The
+white folks don't exactly like you trying to get up a cook's union. It's
+your right to do that if you want to, of course, but this is a mighty
+small city to have unions and things. The fact is, it ain't a big enough
+place for a nigger of yore ability, Peter. I b'lieve, if I was you, I'd
+jes drift on some'eres else."
+
+The officer tipped up his toothpick so that it lifted his upper lip in a
+little v-shaped opening and exposed a strong, yellowish tooth. At the
+moment his machine started slowly forward. It gave him the appearance of
+accidentally rolling off while immersed in deep thought.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+The death of Tump Pack moved Peter with a sense of strange pathos. He
+always remembered Tump tramping away through the night to carry Cissie
+some underclothes and, if possible, to take her place in jail. At the
+foundation of Tump's being lay a faithfulness and devotion to Cissie
+that reached the heights of a dog's. And yet, he might have deserted
+her, he would probably have beaten her, and he most certainly would have
+betrayed her many, many times. It was inexplicable.
+
+
+Now that Tump was dead, the mantle of his fidelity somehow seemed to
+fall on Peter. For some reason Peter felt that he should assume Tump's
+place as Cissie Dildine's husband and protector. Had Tump lived, Peter
+might have gone North in peace, if not in happiness. Now such a journey,
+without Cissie, had become impossible. He had a feeling that it would
+not be right.
+
+As for the disgrace of marrying such a woman as Cissie Dildine, Peter
+slowly gave that idea up. The "worthinesses" and "disgraces" implicit in
+Harvard atmosphere, which Peter had spent four years of his life
+imbibing, slowly melted away in the air of Niggertown. What was
+honorable there, what was disgraceful there, somehow changed its color
+here.
+
+By virtue of this change Peter felt intuitively that Cissie Dildine was
+neither disgraced by her arrest nor soiled by her physical condition.
+Somehow she seemed just as "nice" a girl, just as "good" a girl, as ever
+she was before. Moreover, every other darky in Niggertown held these
+same instinctive beliefs. Had it not been for that, Peter would have
+thought it was his passion pleading for the girl, justifying itself by a
+grotesque morality, as passions often do. But this was not the correct
+solution. The sentiment was enigmatic. Peter puzzled over it time and
+time again as he waited in Hooker's Bend for the outcome of Cissie's
+trial.
+
+The octoroon's imprisonment came to an end on the third day after Tump's
+death. Sam Arkwright's parents had not known of their son's legal
+proceedings, and Mr. Arkwright immediately quashed the warrant, and
+hushed up the unfortunate matter as best he could. Young Sam was
+suddenly sent away from home to college, as the best step in the
+circumstances. And so the wishes of the adolescent in the cedar-glade
+came queerly to pass, even if Peter did withhold any grave, mature
+advice on the subject which he may have possessed.
+
+Naturally, there was much mirth among the men of Hooker's Bend and much
+virulence among the women over the peculiar conditions under which young
+Sam made his pilgrimage in pursuit of wisdom and morals and the right
+conduct of life. And life being problematic and uncertain as it is, and
+prone to wind about in the strangest way, no one may say with certitude
+that young Sam did not make a promising start.
+
+Certainly, over the affair the Knights of the Round Table launched many
+a quip and jest, but that simply proved the fineness of their sentiments
+toward a certain delicate human relation which forms mankind's single
+awful approach to the creative and the holy.
+
+Tump Pack became almost a mythical figure in Niggertown. Jim Pink Staggs
+composed a saga relating the soldier's exploits in France, his assault
+on the jail to liberate Cissie, and his death.
+
+In his songs--and Jim Pink had composed a good many--the minstrel
+instinctively avoided humor. He always improvised them to the sobbing of
+a guitar, and they were as invariably sad as the poetry of adolescents.
+It was called "Tump Pack's Lament." The negroes of Hooker's Bend learned
+it from Jim Pink, and with them it drifted up and down the three great
+American rivers, and now it is sung by the roustabouts, stevedores, and
+underlings of our strange black American world.
+
+This song commemorating Tump Pack's bravery and faithfulness to his love
+may very well take the place of the Congressional medal which,
+unfortunately, was lost on the night the soldier was killed. Between the
+two, there is little doubt that the accolade of fame bestowed in the
+buffoon's simple melody is more vital and enduring than that accorded by
+special act of the Congress of the United States of America.
+
+When Cissie Dildine returned from jail, she and her mother arranged the
+Dildine-Siner wedding as nearly according to white standards in similar
+circumstances as they could conceive. They agreed that it should be a
+simple, quiet home wedding. However, as every soul in Niggertown, a
+number of colored friends in Jonesboro, and a contingent from up-river
+villages meant to attend, it became necessary to hold the service in the
+church.
+
+The officiating minister was not Parson Ranson after all, but a Reverend
+Cleotus Haidus, the presiding elder of that circuit of the Afro-American
+Methodist Church, whose duties happened to call him to Hooker's Bend
+that day. So, notwithstanding Cissie's efforts at simplicity, the
+wedding, after all, was resolved into an affair.
+
+Once, in one of her moments of clairvoyance, Cissie said to Peter:
+
+"Our trouble is, Peter, we are trying to mix what I have learned in
+Nashville and what you have learned in Boston with what we both feel in
+Hooker's Bend. I--I'm almost ashamed to say it, but I don't really feel
+sad and plaintive at all, Peter. I feel glad, gloriously glad. Oh, my
+dear, dear Peter!" and she flung her arms around Peter's neck and held
+him with all her might against her ripening bosom.
+
+To Cissie her theft, her jail sentence, her pregnancy, were nothing more
+than if she had taken a sip of water. However, with the imitativeness of
+her race and the histrionic ability of her sex, she appeared pensive and
+subdued during the elaborate double-ring ceremony performed by the
+Reverend Cleotus Haidus. Nobody in the packed church knew how
+tremendously Cissie's heart was beating except Peter, who held her hand.
+
+The ethical engine that Peter had patiently builded in Harvard almost
+ceased to function in this weird morality of Niggertown. Whether he were
+doing right or doing wrong, Peter could not determine. He lost all his
+moorings. At times he felt himself walking according to the ethnological
+law, which is the Harvard way of saying walking according to the will of
+God; but at other times he felt party to some unpardonable obscenity. So
+deeply was he disturbed that out of the dregs of his mind floated up old
+bits of the Scriptures that he was unaware of possessing: "There is a
+way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of
+death." And Peter wondered if he were not in that way.
+
+[Illustration: The bridal couple embarked for Cairo]
+
+The bridal couple embarked for Cairo on the _Red Cloud_, a packet
+in the Dubuque, Ohio, and Tennessee River trade. Peter and Cissie were
+not allowed to walk up the main stairway into the passengers' cabin, but
+were required to pick their way along the boiler-deck, through the
+stench of freight, lumber, live stock and sleeping roustabouts. Then
+they went through the heat and steam of the engine-room up a small
+companionway that led through the toilet, on to the rear guard of the
+main deck, and thence back to a little cuddy behind the main saloon
+called the chambermaid's cabin.
+
+The chambermaid's cabin was filled with the perpetual odor of hot soap-
+suds, soiled laundry, and the broader smell of steam and the boat's
+machinery. The little place trembled night and day, for the steamer's
+engines were just beneath them, and immediately behind them thundered
+the great stern-wheel of the packet. A single square window in the end
+of the chambermaid's cabin looked out on the wheel, but at all times,
+except when the wind was blowing from just the right quarter, this
+window was deluged with a veritable Niagara of water. The continual
+shake of the cabin, the creak of the rudder-beam working to and fro, the
+watery thunder of the wheel, and the solemn rumble of the engines made
+conversation impossible until the travelers grew accustomed to the
+noises. Still, Cissie found it pleasant. She liked to sit and look out
+into the main saloon, with its interminable gilded scrolls extending
+away up the long cabin, a suave perspective. She liked to watch the
+white passengers dine--the white napery, the bouquets, the endless
+tables all filled with diners; some swathed in napkins from chin to
+waistband, others less completely protected. It gave Cissie a certain
+tang of triumph to smile at the swathed ones and to think that she knew
+better than that.
+
+At night a negro string-band played for the white excursionists to
+dance, and Cissie would sit, with glowing eyes, clenching Peter's hand,
+every fiber of her asway to the music, and it seemed as if her heart
+would go mad. All these inhibitions, all this spreading before her of
+forbidden joys, did not daunt her delight. She reveled in them by
+propinquity.
+
+The chambermaid was a Mrs. Antolia Higgman, a strong, full-bodied
+_café-au-lait_ negress. She was a very sensible woman, and during
+her work on the boat she had picked up a Northern accent and a number of
+little mannerisms from the Chicago and St. Louis excursionists, who made
+ten-day round trips from Dubuque to Florence, Alabama, and return. When
+Mrs. Higgman was not running errands for the women passengers, she was
+working at her perpetual laundering.
+
+At first Peter was a little uneasy as to how Mrs. Higgman would treat
+Cissie, but she turned out a good-hearted woman, and did everything she
+could to make the young wife comfortable. It soon became clear that Mrs.
+Higgman knew the whole situation, for one day she said to Cissie in her
+odd dialect, burred with Yankeeish "r's" and "ing's."
+
+"These river-r towns, Mrs. Siner-r, are jest like one big village, with
+the river-r for its Main Street. I know ever-r'thang that goes on,
+through the cabin-boys an' cooks, an'--an'--you cerrtainly ar-re a dear-
+r, Mrs. Siner-r," and thereupon, quite unexpectedly, she kissed Cissie.
+
+So on about the second day down the river Cissie dropped her saddened
+manner and became frankly, freely, and riotously happy. After the
+fashion of village negresses, she insisted on helping Mrs. Higgman with
+her work, and, incidentally, she cultivated Mrs. Higgman's Northern
+accent. When the chambermaid was out on her errands and Cissie found a
+moment alone with Peter, she would tweak his ear or pull his cheek and
+provoke him to kiss her. Indeed, it was all the hot, shuddering little
+laundry-room could do to contain the gay and bubbling Cissie.
+
+Peter thought and thought, resignedly now, but persistently, how this
+strange happiness that belonged to them both could be. He was content,
+yet he felt he ought not to be content. He thought there must be
+something base in himself, yet he felt that there was not. He drank the
+wine of his honeymoon marveling.
+
+On the morning before the _Red Cloud_ entered the port of Cairo
+Mrs. Higgman was out of the cabin, and Peter stood at the little square
+window, with his arm about Cissie's waist, looking out to the rear of
+the steamer. A strong east wind blew the spray away from the glass, and
+Peter could see the huge wheel covered with a waterfall thundering
+beneath him. Back of the wheel stretched a long row of even waves and
+troughs. Every seventh or eighth wave tumbled over on itself in a swash
+of foam. These flashing stern waves strung far up the river. On each
+side of the great waterway stretched the flat shores of Kentucky and
+Ohio. Here and there over the broad clay-colored water moved other
+boats--tow-boats, a string of government auto-barges, a snag-boat,
+another packet.
+
+Peter gave up his question. The curves of Cissie's form in his arm held
+a sweetness and a restfulness that her maidenhood had never promised. He
+felt so deeply sure of his happiness that it seemed strange to him that
+he could not aline his emotions and his mind.
+
+As Peter stood staring up the Ohio River, it occurred to him that
+perhaps, in some queer way, the morals of black folk were not the morals
+of white folk; perhaps the laws that bound one race were not the laws
+that bound the other. It might be that white anathemas were black
+blessings. Peter thought along this line peacefully for several minutes.
+
+And finally he concluded that, after all, morals and conventions, right
+and wrong, are merely those precepts that a race have practised and
+found good in its evolution. Morals are the training rules that keep a
+people fit. It might very well be that one moral régime is applicable to
+one race, and quite another to another.
+
+The single object of all morals is racial welfare, the racial integrity,
+the breeding of strong children to perpetuate the species. If the black
+race possess a more exuberant vitality than some other race, then the
+black would not be forced to practise so severe a vital economy as some
+less virile folk. Racial morals are simply a question of having and
+spending within safety limits.
+
+Peter knew that for years white men had held a prejudice against
+marrying widows. This is utterly without grounds except for one reason:
+the first born of a woman is the lustiest. Among the still weaker Aryans
+of India the widows burn themselves. Among certain South Sea Islanders
+only the first-born may live and mate; all other children are slain.
+Among nearly every white race marriage lines are strictly drawn, and the
+tendency is to have few children to a family, to conserve the precious
+vital impulse. So strong is this feeling of birth control that to-day
+nearly all American white women are ashamed of large families. This
+shame is the beginning of a convention; the convention may harden into a
+cult, a law, or a religion.
+
+And here is the amazing part of morals. Morals are always directed
+toward one particular race, but the individual members of that race
+always feel that their brand of morals does and should apply to all the
+peoples of the earth; so one has the spectacle of nations sending out
+missionaries and battle-ships to teach and enforce their particular
+folk-ways. Another queer thing is that whereas the end of morals is
+designed solely for the betterment of the race, and is entirely
+regardless of the person, to the conscience of the person morals are
+always translated as something that binds him personally, that will
+shame him or honor him personally not only for the brief span of this
+worldly life, but through an eternity to come. To him, his particular
+code, surrounded by all the sanctions of custom, law, and religion,
+appears earth-embracing, hell-deep, and heaven-piercing, and any human
+creature who follows any other code appears fatally wicked, utterly
+shameless, and ineluctably lost.
+
+And yet there is no such thing as absolute morals. Morals are as
+transitory as the sheen on a blackbird's wing; they change perpetually
+with the necessities of the race. Any people with an abounding vitality
+will naturally practise customs which a less vital people must shun.
+
+Morals are nothing more than the engines controlling the stream of
+energy that propel a race on its course. All engines are not alike, nor
+are all races bound for the same port.
+
+Here Peter Siner made the amazing discovery that although he had spent
+four years in Harvard, he had come out, just as he went in, a negro.
+
+A great joy came over him. He took Cissie whole-heartedly in his arms
+and kissed again and again the deep crimson of her lips. His brain and
+his heart were together at last. As he stood looking out at the window,
+pressing Cissie to him, he wondered, when he reached Chicago, if he
+could ever make Farquhar understand.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Birthright, by T.S. Stribling
+
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+<meta content="pg2html (binary version 0.12a)"
+    name="generator">
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of
+    Birthright,
+    by T.S. Stribling.
+</title>
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+    <!--
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+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Birthright, by T.S. Stribling
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Birthright
+       A Novel
+
+Author: T.S. Stribling
+
+Release Date: January 7, 2004 [EBook #10621]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BIRTHRIGHT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Robert Shimmin and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="image-1"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="birth01.png"
+alt="'Yes, Cissie, I Understand Now'
+">
+<br>'Yes, Cissie, I Understand Now'
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h1>
+    BIRTHRIGHT
+</h1>
+<center>
+    A NOVEL
+</center>
+<center><b>
+    BY T.S. STRIBLING
+</b></center>
+<hr>
+<center>
+    <b>Illustrated by F. Luis Mora</b>
+</center>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<center>
+    1922
+</center>
+<a name="2H_4_1"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<center>
+    TO MY MOTHER
+</center>
+<center>
+    AMELIA WAITS STRIBLING
+</center>
+<a name="2HLIS2"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+</h2>
+<p>
+    <a href="#image-1">"Yes, Cissie, I understand now"</a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    <a href="#image-2">Peter recognized the white aprons and the swords and spears of the
+    Knights and Ladies of Tabor</a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    <a href="#image-3">Up and down its street flows the slow negro life of the village</a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    <a href="#image-4">In the Siner cabin old Caroline Siner berated her boy</a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    <a href="#image-5">The old gentleman turned around at last</a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    <a href="#image-6">"You-you mean you want m-me&mdash;to go with you, Cissie?" he stammered</a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    <a href="#image-7">"Naw yuh don't," he warned sharply. "You turn roun' an' march on to
+    Niggertown"</a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    <a href="#image-8">The bridal couple embarked for Cairo</a>
+</p>
+<a name="2H_4_3"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    BIRTHRIGHT
+</h2>
+<a name="2HCH4"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER I
+</h2>
+<p>
+    At Cairo, Illinois, the Pullman-car conductor asked Peter Siner to take
+    his suitcase and traveling-bag and pass forward into the Jim Crow car.
+    The request came as a sort of surprise to the negro. During Peter
+    Siner's four years in Harvard the segregation of black folk on Southern
+    railroads had become blurred and reminiscent in his mind; now it was
+    fetched back into the sharp distinction of the present instant. With a
+    certain sense of strangeness, Siner picked up his bags, and saw his own
+    form, in the car mirrors, walking down the length of the sleeper. He
+    moved on through the dining-car, where a few hours before he had had
+    dinner and talked with two white men, one an Oregon apple-grower, the
+    other a Wisconsin paper-manufacturer. The Wisconsin man had furnished
+    cigars, and the three had sat and smoked in the drawing-room, indeed,
+    had discussed this very point; and now it was upon him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At the door of the dining-car stood the porter of his Pullman, a negro
+    like himself, and Peter mechanically gave him fifty cents. The porter
+    accepted it silently, without offering the amenities of his whisk-broom
+    and shoe-brush, and Peter passed on forward.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Beyond the dining-car and Pullmans stretched twelve day-coaches filled
+    with less-opulent white travelers in all degrees of sleepiness and
+    dishabille from having sat up all night. The thirteenth coach was the
+    Jim Crow car. Framed in a conspicuous place beside the entrance of the
+    car was a copy of the Kentucky state ordinance setting this coach apart
+    from the remainder of the train for the purposes therein provided.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Jim Crow car was not exactly shabby, but it was unkept. It was half
+    filled with travelers of Peter's own color, and these passengers were
+    rather more noisy than those in the white coaches. Conversation was not
+    restrained to the undertones one heard in the other day-coaches or the
+    Pullmans. Near the entrance of the car two negroes in soldiers' uniforms
+    had turned a seat over to face the door, and now they sat talking loudly
+    and laughing the loose laugh of the half intoxicated as they watched the
+    inflow of negro passengers coming out of the white cars.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The windows of the Jim Crow car were shut, and already it had become
+    noisome. The close air was faintly barbed with the peculiar, penetrating
+    odor of dark, sweating skins. For four years Peter Siner had not known
+    that odor. Now it came to him not so much offensively as with a queer
+    quality of intimacy and reminiscence. The tall, carefully tailored negro
+    spread his wide nostrils, vacillating whether to sniff it out with
+    disfavor or to admit it for the sudden mental associations it evoked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was a faint, pungent smell that played in the back of his nose and
+    somehow reminded him of his mother, Caroline Siner, a thick-bodied black
+    woman whom he remembered as always bending over a wash-tub. This was
+    only one unit of a complex. The odor was also connected with negro
+    protracted meetings in Hooker's Bend, and the Harvard man remembered a
+    lanky black preacher waving long arms and wailing of hell-fire, to the
+    chanted groans of his dark congregation; and he, Peter Siner, had
+    groaned with the others. Peter had known this odor in the press-room of
+    Tennessee cotton-gins, over a river packet's boilers, where he and other
+    roustabouts were bedded, in bunk-houses in the woods. It also recalled a
+    certain octoroon girl named Ida May, and an intimacy with her which it
+    still moved and saddened Peter to think of. Indeed, it resurrected
+    innumerable vignettes of his life in the negro village in Hooker's Bend;
+    it was linked with innumerable emotions, this pungent, unforgetable odor
+    that filled the Jim Crow car.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Somehow the odor had a queer effect of appearing to push his
+    conversation with the two white Northern men in the drawing-room back to
+    a distance, an indefinable distance of both space and time.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The negro put his suitcase under the seat, hung his overcoat on the
+    hook, and placed his hand-bag in the rack overhead; then with some
+    difficulty he opened a window and sat down by it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A stir of travelers in the Cairo station drifted into the car. Against a
+    broad murmur of hurrying feet, moving trucks, and talking there stood
+    out the thin, flat voice of a Southern white girl calling good-by to
+    some one on the train. Peter could see her waving a bright parasol and
+    tiptoeing. A sandwich boy hurried past, shrilling his wares. Siner
+    leaned out, with fifteen cents, and signaled to him. The urchin
+    hesitated, and was about to reach up one of his wrapped parcels, when a
+    peremptory voice shouted at him from a lower car. With a sort of start
+    the lad deserted Siner and went trotting down to his white customer. A
+    moment later the train bell began ringing, and the Dixie Flier puffed
+    deliberately out of the Cairo station and moved across the Ohio bridge
+    into the South.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Half an hour later the blue-grass fields of Kentucky were spinning
+    outside of the window in a vast green whirlpool. The distant trees and
+    houses moved forward with the train, while the foreground, with its
+    telegraph poles, its culverts, section-houses, and shrubbery, rushed
+    backward in a blur. Now and then into the Jim Crow window whipped a
+    blast of coal smoke and hot cinders, for the engine was only two cars
+    ahead.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter Siner looked out at the interminable spin of the landscape with a
+    certain wistfulness. He was coming back into the South, into his own
+    country. Here for generations his forebears had toiled endlessly and
+    fruitlessly, yet the fat green fields hurtling past him told with what
+    skill and patience their black hands had labored.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The negro shrugged away such thoughts, and with a certain effort
+    replaced them with the constructive idea that was bringing him South
+    once more. It was a very simple idea. Siner was returning to his native
+    village in Tennessee to teach school. He planned to begin his work with
+    the ordinary public school at Hooker's Bend, but, in the back of his
+    head, he hoped eventually to develop an institution after the plan of
+    Tuskeegee or the Hampton Institute in Virginia.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To do what he had in mind, he must obtain aid from white sources, and
+    now, as he traveled southward, he began conning in his mind the white
+    men and white women he knew in Hooker's Bend. He wanted first of all to
+    secure possession of a small tract of land which he knew adjoined the
+    negro school-house over on the east side of the village.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Before the negro's mind the different villagers passed in review with
+    that peculiar intimacy of vision that servants always have of their
+    masters. Indeed, no white Southerner knows his own village so minutely
+    as does any member of its colored population. The colored villagers see
+    the whites off their guard and just as they are, and that is an attitude
+    in which no one looks his best. The negroes might be called the black
+    recording angels of the South. If what they know should be shouted aloud
+    in any Southern town, its social life would disintegrate. Yet it is a
+    strange fact that gossip seldom penetrates from the one race to the
+    other.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So Peter Siner sat in the Jim Crow car musing over half a dozen
+    villagers in Hooker's Bend. He thought of them in a curious way.
+    Although he was now a B.A. of Harvard University, and although he knew
+    that not a soul in the little river village, unless it was old Captain
+    Renfrew, could construe a line of Greek and that scarcely two had ever
+    traveled farther north than Cincinnati, still, as Peter recalled their
+    names and foibles, he involuntarily felt that he was telling over a roll
+    of the mighty. The white villagers came marching through his mind as
+    beings austere, and the very cranks and quirks of their characters
+    somehow held that austerity. There were the Brownell sisters, two old
+    maids, Molly and Patti, who lived in a big brick house on the hill.
+    Peter remembered that Miss Molly Brownell always doled out to his
+    mother, at Monday's washday dinner, exactly one biscuit less than the
+    old negress wanted to eat, and she always paid her in old clothes. Peter
+    remembered, a dozen times in his life, his mother coming home and
+    wondering in an impersonal way how it was that Miss Molly Brownell could
+    skimp every meal she ate at the big house by exactly one biscuit. It was
+    Miss Brownell's thin-lipped boast that she understood negroes. She had
+    told Peter so several times when, as a lad, he went up to the big house
+    on errands. Peter Siner considered this remembrance without the faintest
+    feeling of humor, and mentally removed Miss Molly Brownell from his list
+    of possible subscribers. Yet, he recalled, the whole Brownell estate had
+    been reared on negro labor.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then there was Henry Hooker, cashier of the village bank. Peter knew
+    that the banker subscribed liberally to foreign missions; indeed, at the
+    cashier's behest, the white church of Hooker's Bend kept a paid
+    missionary on the upper Congo. But the banker had sold some village lots
+    to the negroes, and in two instances, where a streak of commercial
+    phosphate had been discovered on the properties, the lots had reverted
+    to the Hooker estate. There had been in the deed something concerning a
+    mineral reservation that the negro purchasers knew nothing about until
+    the phosphate was discovered. The whole matter had been perfectly legal.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A hand shook Siner's shoulder and interrupted his review. Peter turned,
+    and caught an alcoholic breath over his shoulder, and the blurred voice
+    of a Southern negro called out above the rumble of the car and the roar
+    of the engine:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'Fo' Gawd, ef dis ain't Peter Siner I's been lookin' at de las' twenty
+    miles, an' not knowin' him wid sich skeniptious clo'es on! Wha you fum,
+    nigger?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Siner took the enthusiastic hand offered him and studied the heavily
+    set, powerful man bending over the seat. He was in a soldier's uniform,
+    and his broad nutmeg-colored face and hot black eyes brought Peter a
+    vague sense of familiarity; but he never would have identified his
+    impression had he not observed on the breast of the soldier's uniform
+    the Congressional military medal for bravery on the field of battle. Its
+    glint furnished Peter the necessary clew. He remembered his mother's
+    writing him something about Tump Pack going to France and getting
+    "crowned" before the army. He had puzzled a long time over what she
+    meant by "crowned" before he guessed her meaning. Now the medal aided
+    Peter in reconstructing out of this big umber-colored giant the rather
+    spindling Tump Pack he had known in Hooker's Bend.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Siner was greatly surprised, and his heart warmed at the sight of his
+    old playmate.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What have you been doing to yourself, Tump?" he cried, laughing, and
+    shaking the big hand in sudden warmth. "You used to be the size of a
+    dime in a jewelry store."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Been in 'e army, nigger, wha I's been fed," said the grinning brown
+    man, delightedly. "I sho is picked up, ain't I?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And what are you doing here in Cairo?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Tryin' to bridle a lil white mule." Mr. Pack winked a whisky-brightened
+    eye jovially and touched his coat to indicate that some of the "white
+    mule" was in his pocket and had not been drunk.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "How'd you get here?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Wucked my way down on de St. Louis packet an' got paid off at Padjo
+    [Paducah, Kentucky]; 'n 'en I thought I'd come on down heah an' roll
+    some bones. Been hittin' 'em two days now, an' I sho come putty nigh
+    bein' cleaned; but I put up lil Joe heah, an' won 'em all back, 'n 'en
+    some." He touched the medal on his coat, winked again, slapped Siner on
+    the leg, and burst into loud laughter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter was momentarily shocked. He made a place on the seat for his
+    friend to sit. "You don't mean you put up your medal on a crap game,
+    Tump?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Sho do, black man." Pack became soberer. "Dat's one o' de great
+    benefits o' bein' dec'rated. Dey ain't a son uv a gun on de river whut
+    kin win lil Joe; dey all tried it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    A moment's reflection told Peter how simple and natural it was for Pack
+    to prize his military medal as a good-luck piece to be used as a last
+    resort in crap games. He watched Tump stroke the face of his medal with
+    his fingers.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "My mother wrote me; about your getting it, Tump. I was glad to hear
+    it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The brown man nodded, and stared down at the bit of gold on his barrel-
+    like chest.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yas-suh, dat 'uz guv to me fuh bravery. You know whut a skeery lil
+    nigger I wuz roun' Hooker's Ben'; well, de sahgeant tuk me an' he drill
+    ever' bit o' dat right out 'n me. He gimme a baynit an' learned me to
+    stob dummies wid it over at Camp Oglethorpe, ontil he felt lak I had de
+    heart to stob anything; 'n' 'en he sont me acrost. I had to git a new
+    pair breeches ever' three weeks, I growed so fas'." Here he broke out
+    into his big loose laugh again, and renewed the alcoholic scent around
+    Peter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And you made good?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Sho did, black man, an', 'fo' Gawd, I 'serve a medal ef any man ever
+    did. Dey gimme dish-heah fuh stobbin fo' white men wid a baynit. 'Fo'
+    Gawd, nigger, I never felt so quare in all my born days as when I wuz a-
+    jobbin' de livers o' dem white men lak de sahgeant tol' me to." Tump
+    shook his head, bewildered, and after a moment added, "Yas-suh, I never
+    wuz mo' surprised in all my life dan when I got dis medal fuh stobbin'
+    fo' white men."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter Siner looked through the Jim Crow window at the vast rotation of
+    the Kentucky landscape on which his forebears had toiled; presently he
+    added soberly:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You were fighting for your country, Tump. It was war then; you were
+    fighting for your country."
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    At Jackson, Tennessee, the two negroes were forced to spend the night
+    between trains. Tump Pack piloted Peter Siner to a negro cafe where they
+    could eat, and later they searched out a negro lodging-house on Gate
+    Street where they could sleep. It was a grimy, smelly place, with its
+    own odor spiked by a phosphate-reducing plant two blocks distant. The
+    paper on the wall of the room Peter slept in looked scrofulous. There
+    was no window, and Peter's four-years r&eacute;gime of open windows and fresh-
+    air sleep was broken. He arranged his clothing for the night so it would
+    come in contact with nothing in the room but a chair back. He felt dull
+    next morning, and could not bring himself either to shave or bathe in
+    the place, but got out and hunted up a negro barber-shop furnished with
+    one greasy red-plush barber-chair.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A few hours later the two negroes journeyed on down to Perryville,
+    Tennessee, a village on the Tennessee River where they took a gasolene
+    launch up to Hooker's Bend. The launch was about fifty feet long and had
+    two cabins, a colored cabin in front of, and a white cabin behind, the
+    engine-room.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This unremitting insistence on his color, this continual shunting him
+    into obscure and filthy ways, gradually gave Peter a loathly sensation.
+    It increased the unwashed feeling that followed his lack of a morning
+    bath. The impression grew upon him that he was being handled with tongs,
+    along back-alley routes; that he and his race were something to be kept
+    out of sight as much as possible, as careful housekeepers manoeuver
+    their slops.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At Perryville a number of passengers boarded the up-river boat; two or
+    three drummers; a yellowed old hill woman returning to her Wayne County
+    home; a red-headed peanut-buyer; a well-groomed white girl in a tailor
+    suit; a youngish man barely on the right side of middle age who seemed
+    to be attending her; and some negro girls with lunches. The passengers
+    trailed from the railroad station down the river bank through a slush of
+    mud, for the river had just fallen and had left a layer of liquid mud to
+    a height of about twenty feet all along the littoral. The passengers
+    picked their way down carefully, stepping into one another's tracks in
+    the effort not to ruin their shoes. The drummers grumbled. The youngish
+    man piloted the girl down, holding her hand, although both could have
+    managed better by themselves.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Following the passengers came the trunks and grips on a truck. A negro
+    deck-hand, the truck-driver, and the white master of the launch shoved
+    aboard the big sample trunks of the drummers with grunts, profanity, and
+    much stamping of mud. Presently, without the formality of bell or
+    whistle, the launch clacked away from the landing and stood up the wide,
+    muddy river.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The river itself was monotonous and depressing. It was perhaps half a
+    mile wide, with flat, willowed mud banks on one side and low shelves of
+    stratified limestone on the other.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Trading-points lay at ten- or fifteen-mile intervals along the great
+    waterway. The typical landing was a dilapidated shed of a store half
+    covered with tin tobacco signs and ancient circus posters. Usually, only
+    one man met the launch at each landing, the merchant, a democrat in his
+    shirt-sleeves and without a tie. His voice was always a flat, weary
+    drawl, but his eyes, wrinkled against the sun, usually held the
+    shrewdness of those who make their living out of two-penny trades.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At each place the red-headed peanut-buyer slogged up the muddy bank and
+    bargained for the merchant's peanuts, to be shipped on the down-river
+    trip of the first St. Louis packet. The loneliness of the scene embraced
+    the trading-points, the river, and the little gasolene launch struggling
+    against the muddy current. It permeated the passengers, and was a
+    finishing touch to Peter Siner's melancholy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The launch clacked on and on interminably. Sometimes it seemed to make
+    no headway at all against the heavy, silty current. Tump Pack, the white
+    captain, and the negro engineer began a game of craps in the negro
+    cabin. Presently, two of the white drummers came in from the white cabin
+    and began betting on the throws. The game was listless. The master of
+    the launch pointed out places along the shores where wildcat stills were
+    located. The crap-shooters, negro and white, squatted in a circle on the
+    cabin floor, snapping their fingers and calling their points
+    monotonously. One of the negro girls in the negro cabin took an apple
+    out of her lunch sack and began eating it, holding it in her palm after
+    the fashion of negroes rather than in her fingers, as is the custom of
+    white women.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Both doors of the engine-room were open, and Peter Siner could see
+    through into the white cabin. The old hill woman was dozing in her
+    chair, her bonnet bobbing to each stroke of the engines. The youngish
+    man and the girl were engaged in some sort of intimate lovers' dispute.
+    When the engines stopped at one of the landings, Peter discovered she
+    was trying to pay him what he had spent on getting her baggage trucked
+    down at Perryville. The girl kept pressing a bill into the man's hand,
+    and he avoided receiving the money. They kept up the play for sake of
+    occasional contacts.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When the launch came in sight of Hooker's Bend toward the middle of the
+    afternoon, Peter Siner experienced one of the profoundest surprises of
+    his life. Somehow, all through his college days he had remembered
+    Hooker's Bend as a proud town with important stores and unapproachable
+    white residences. Now he saw a skum of negro cabins, high piles of
+    lumber, a sawmill, and an ice-factory. Behind that, on a little rise,
+    stood the old Brownell manor, maintaining a certain shabby dignity in a
+    grove of oaks. Behind and westward from the negro shacks and lumber-
+    piles ranged the village stores, their roofs just visible over the top
+    of the bank. Moored to the shore, lay the wharf-boat in weathered greens
+    and yellows. As a background for the whole scene rose the dark-green
+    height of what was called the "Big Hill," an eminence that separated the
+    negro village on the east from the white village on the west. The hill
+    itself held no houses, but appeared a solid green-black with cedars.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The ensemble was merely another lonely spot on the south bank of the
+    great somnolent river. It looked dead, deserted, a typical river town,
+    unprodded even by the hoot of a jerk-water railroad.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As the launch chortled toward the wharf, Peter Siner stood trying to
+    orient himself to this unexpected and amazing minifying of Hooker's
+    Bend. He had left a metropolis; he was coming back to a tumble-down
+    village. Yet nothing was changed. Even the two scraggly locust-trees
+    that clung perilously to the brink of the river bank still held their
+    toe-hold among the strata of limestone.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The negro deck-hand came out and pumped the hand-power whistle in three
+    long discordant blasts. Then a queer thing happened. The whistle was
+    answered by a faint strain of music. A little later the passengers saw a
+    line of negroes come marching down the river bank to the wharf-boat.
+    They marched in military order, and from afar Peter recognized the white
+    aprons and the swords and spears of the Knights and Ladies of Tabor, a
+    colored burial association.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Siner wondered what had brought out the Knights and Ladies of Tabor. The
+    singing and the drumming gradually grew upon the air. The passengers in
+    the white cabin, came out on the guards at this unexpected fanfare. As
+    soon as the white travelers saw the marching negroes, they began joking
+    about what caused the demonstration. The captain of the launch thought
+    he knew, and began an oath, but stopped it out of deference to the girl
+    in the tailor suit. He said it was a dead nigger the society was going
+    to ship up to Savannah.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl in the tailor suit was much amused. She said the darkies looked
+    like a string of caricatures marching down the river bank. Peter noticed
+    her Northern accent, and fancied she was coming to Hooker's Bend to
+    teach school.
+</p>
+<p>
+    One of the drummers turned to another.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Did you ever hear Bob Taylor's yarn about Uncle 'Rastus's funeral?
+    Funniest thing Bob ever got off." He proceeded to tell it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Every one on the launch was laughing except the captain, who was
+    swearing quietly; but the line of negroes marched on down to the wharf-
+    boat with the unshakable dignity of black folk in an important position.
+    They came singing an old negro spiritual. The women's sopranos thrilled
+    up in high, weird phrasing against an organ-like background of male
+    voices.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But the black men carried no coffin, and suddenly it occurred to Peter
+    Siner that perhaps this celebration was given in honor of his own home-
+    coming. The mulatto's heart beat a trifle faster as he began planning a
+    suitable response to this ovation.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Sure enough, the singing ranks disappeared behind the wharf-boat, and a
+    minute later came marching around the stern and lined up on the outer
+    guard of the vessel. The skinny, grizzly-headed negro commander held up
+    his sword, and the Knights and Ladies of Tabor fell silent.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The master of the launch tossed his head-line to the wharf-boat, and
+    yelled for one of the negroes to make it fast. One did. Then the
+    commandant with the sword began his address, but it was not directed to
+    Peter. He said:
+</p>
+<a name="image-2"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="birth02.png"
+alt="Peter Recognized the White Aprons and The Swords And
+Spears of the Knights and Ladies Of Tabor
+">
+<br>Peter Recognized the White Aprons and The Swords And
+Spears of the Knights and Ladies Of Tabor
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    "Brudder Tump Pack, we, de Hooker's Ben' lodge uv de Knights an' Ladies
+    uv Tabor, welcome you back to yo' native town. We is proud uv you, a
+    colored man, who brings back de highes' crown uv bravery dis Newnighted
+    States has in its power to bestow.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Two yeahs ago, Brudder Tump, we seen you marchin' away fum Hooker's
+    Ben' wid thirteen udder boys, white an' colored, all marchin' away
+    togedder. Fo' uv them boys is already back home; three, we heah, is on
+    de way back, but six uv yo' brave comrades, Brudder Pack, is sleepin'
+    now in France, an' ain't never goin' to come home no mo'. When we honors
+    you, we honors them all, de libin' an' de daid, de white an' de black,
+    who fought togedder fuh one country, fuh one flag."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Gasps, sobs from the line of black folk, interrupted the speaker. Just
+    then a shriveled old negress gave a scream, and came running and half
+    stumbling out of the line, holding out her arms to the barrel-chested
+    soldier on the gang-plank. She seized him and began shrieking:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Bless Gawd! my son's done come home! Praise de Lawd! Bless His holy
+    name!" Here her laudation broke into sobbing and choking and laughing,
+    and she squeezed herself to her son.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tump patted her bony black form.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I's heah, Mammy," he stammered uncertainly. "I's come back, Mammy."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Half a dozen other negroes caught the joyful hysteria. They began a
+    religious shouting, clapping their hands, flinging up their arms,
+    shrieking.
+</p>
+<p>
+    One of the drummers grunted:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Good God! all this over a nigger getting back!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    At the extreme end of the dark line a tall cream-colored girl wept
+    silently. As Peter Siner stood blinking his eyes, he saw the octoroon's
+    shoulders and breasts shake from the sobs, which her white blood
+    repressed to silence.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A certain sympathy for her grief and its suppression kept Peter's eyes
+    on the young woman, and then, with the queer effect of one picture
+    melting into another, the strange girl's face assumed familiar curves
+    and softnesses, and he was looking at Ida May.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A quiver traveled deliberately over Peter from his crisp black hair to
+    the soles of his feet. He started toward her impulsively.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At that moment one of the drummers picked up his grip, and started down
+    the gang-plank, and with its leathern bulk pressed Tump Pack and his
+    mother out of his path. He moved on to the shore through the negroes,
+    who divided at his approach. The captain of the launch saw that other of
+    his white passengers were becoming impatient, and he shouted for the
+    darkies to move aside and not to block the gangway. The youngish man
+    drew the girl in the tailor suit close to him and started through with
+    her. Peter heard him say, "They won't hurt you, Miss Negley." And Miss
+    Negley, in the brisk nasal intonation of a Northern woman, replied: "Oh,
+    I'm not afraid. We waste a lot of sympathy on them back home, but when
+    you see them&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    At that moment Peter heard a cry in his ears and felt arms thrown about
+    his neck. He looked down and saw his mother, Caroline Siner, looking up
+    into his face and weeping with the general emotion of the negroes and
+    this joy of her own. Caroline had changed since Peter last saw her. Her
+    eyes were a little more wrinkled, her kinky hair was thinner and very
+    gray.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Something warm and melting moved in Peter Siner's breast. He caressed
+    his mother and murmured incoherently, as had Tump Pack. Presently the
+    master of the launch came by, and touched the old negress, not ungently,
+    with the end of a spike-pole.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You'll have to move, Aunt Ca'line," he said. "We're goin' to get the
+    freight off now."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The black woman paused in her weeping. "Yes, Mass' Bob," she said, and
+    she and Peter moved off of the launch onto the wharf-boat.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Knights and Ladies of Tabor were already up the river bank with
+    their hero. Peter and his mother were left alone. Now they walked around
+    the guards of the wharf-boat to the bank, holding each other's arms
+    closely. As they went, Peter kept looking down at his old black mother,
+    with a growing tenderness. She was so worn and heavy! He recognized the
+    very dress she wore, an old black silk which she had "washed out" for
+    Miss Patti Brownell when he was a boy. It had been then, it was now, her
+    best dress. During the years the old negress had registered her
+    increasing bulk by letting out seams and putting in panels. Some of the
+    panels did not agree with the original fabric either in color or in
+    texture and now the seams were stretching again and threatening a rip.
+    Peter's own immaculate clothes reproached him, and he wondered for the
+    hundredth, or for the thousandth time how his mother had obtained
+    certain remittances which she had forwarded him during his college
+    years.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As Peter and his mother crept up the bank of the river, stopping
+    occasionally to let the old negress rest, his impression of the meanness
+    and shabbiness of the whole village grew. From the top of the bank the
+    single business street ran straight back from the river. It was stony in
+    places, muddy in places, strewn with goods-boxes, broken planking,
+    excelsior, and straw that had been used for packing. Charred rubbish-
+    piles lay in front of every store, which the clerks had swept out and
+    attempted to burn. Hogs roamed the thoroughfare, picking up decaying
+    fruit and parings, and nosing tin cans that had been thrown out by the
+    merchants. The stores that Peter had once looked upon as show-places
+    were poor two-story brick or frame buildings, defiled by time and wear
+    and weather. The white merchants were coatless, listless men who sat in
+    chairs on the brick pavements before their stores and who moved slowly
+    when a customer entered their doors.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And, strange to say, it was this fall of his white townsmen that moved
+    Peter Siner with a sense of the greatest loss. It seemed fantastic to
+    him, this sudden land-slide of the mighty.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As Peter and his mother came over the brow of the river bank, they saw a
+    crowd collecting at the other end of the street. The main street of
+    Hooker's Bend is only a block long, and the two negroes could easily
+    hear the loud laughter of men hurrying to the focus of interest and the
+    blurry expostulations of negro voices. The laughter spread like a
+    contagion. Merchants as far up as the river corner became infected, and
+    moved toward the crowd, looking back over their shoulders at every tenth
+    or twelfth step to see that no one entered their doors.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Presently, a little short man, fairly yipping with laughter, stumbled
+    back up the street to his store with tears of mirth in his eyes. A
+    belated merchant stopped him by clapping both hands on his shoulders and
+    shaking some composure into him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What is it? What's so funny? Damn it! I miss ever'thing!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I-i-it's that f-fool Tum-Tump Pack. Bobbs's arrested him!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The inquirer was astounded.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "How the hell can he arrest him when he hit town this minute?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Wh-why, Bobbs had an old warrant for crap-shoot&mdash;three years old&mdash;
+    before the war. Just as Tump was a-coming down the street at the head of
+    the coons, out steps Bobbs&mdash;" Here the little man was overcome.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The merchant from the corner opened his eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Arrested him on an old crap charge?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The little man nodded. They gazed at each other. Then they exploded
+    simultaneously.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter left his obese mother and hurried to the corner, Dawson Bobbs, the
+    constable, had handcuffs on Tump's wrists, and stood with his prisoner
+    amid a crowd of arguing negroes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Bobbs was a big, fleshy, red-faced man, with chilly blue eyes and a
+    little straight slit of a mouth in his wide face. He was laughing and
+    chewing a sliver of toothpick.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "O Tump Pack," he called loudly, "you kain't git away from me! If you
+    roll bones in Hooker's Bend, you'll have to divide your winnings with
+    the county." Dawson winked a chill eye at the crowd in general.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But hit's out o' date, Mr. Bobbs," the old gray-headed minister, Parson
+    Ranson, was pleading.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "May be that, Parson, but hit's easier to come up before the J.P. and
+    pay off than to fight it through the circuit court."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Siner pushed his way through the crowd. "How much do you want, Mr.
+    Bobbs?" he asked briefly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The constable looked with reminiscent eyes at the tall, well-tailored
+    negro. He was plainly going through some mental card-index, hunting for
+    the name of Peter Siner on some long-forgotten warrant. Apparently, he
+    discovered nothing, for he said shortly:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "How do I know before he's tried? Come on, Tump!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The procession moved in a long noisy line up Pillow Street, the white
+    residential street lying to the west. It stopped before a large shaded
+    lawn, where a number of white men and women were playing a game with
+    cards. The cards used by the lawn party were not ordinary playing-cards,
+    but had figures on them instead of spots, and were called "rook" cards.
+    The party of white ladies and gentlemen were playing "rook." On a table
+    in the middle of the lawn glittered some pieces of silver plate which
+    formed the first, second, and third prizes for the three leading scores.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The constable halted his black company before the lawn, where they stood
+    in the sunshine patiently waiting for the justice of the peace to finish
+    his game and hear the case of the State of Tennessee, plaintiff, versus
+    Tump Pack, defendant.
+</p>
+<a name="2HCH5"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER II
+</h2>
+<p>
+    On the eastern edge of Hooker's Bend, drawn in a rough semicircle around
+    the Big Hill, lies Niggertown. In all the half-moon there are perhaps
+    not two upright buildings. The grimy cabins lean at crazy angles, some
+    propped with poles, while others hold out against gravitation at a
+    hazard.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Up and down its street flows the slow negro life of the village. Here
+    children of all colors from black to cream fight and play; deep-chested
+    negresses loiter to and fro, some on errands to the white section of the
+    village on the other side of the hill, where they go to scrub or cook or
+    wash or iron. Others go down to the public well with a bucket in each
+    hand and one balanced on the head.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The public well itself lies at the southern end of this miserable
+    street, just at a point where the drainage of the Big Hill collects. The
+    rainfall runs down through Niggertown, under its sties, stables, and
+    outdoor toilets, and the well supplies the negroes with water for
+    cooking, washing, and drinking. Or, rather, what was once a well
+    supplies this water, for it is a well no longer. Its top and curbing
+    caved in long ago, and now there is simply a big hole in the soft,
+    water-soaked clay, about fifteen feet wide, with water standing at the
+    bottom.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here come the unhurried colored women, who throw in their buckets, and
+    with a dexterity that comes of long practice draw them out full of
+    water. Black mothers shout at their children not to fall into this pit,
+    and now and then, when a pig fails to come up for its evening slops, a
+    black boy will go to the public well to see if perchance his porker has
+    met misfortune there.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The inhabitants of Niggertown suffer from divers diseases; they develop
+    strange ailments that no amount of physicking will overcome; young wives
+    grow sickly from no apparent cause. Although only three or four hundred
+    persons live in Niggertown, two or three negroes are always slowly dying
+    of tuberculosis; winter brings pneumonia; summer, malaria. About once a
+    year the state health officer visits Hooker's Bend and forces the white
+    soda-water dispensers on the other side of the hill to sterilize their
+    glasses in the name of the sovereign State of Tennessee.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Siner home was a three-room shanty about midway in the semicircle.
+    Peter Siner stood in the sunlight just outside the entrance, watching
+    his old mother clean the bugs out of a tainted ham that she had bought
+    for a pittance from some white housekeeper in the village. It had been
+    too high for white people to eat. Old Caroline patiently tapped the
+    honeycombed meat to scare out the last of the little green householders,
+    and then she washed it in a solution of soda to freshen it up.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The sight of his bulky old mother working at the spoiled ham and of the
+    negro women in the street moving to and from the infected well filled
+    Peter Siner with its terrible pathos. Although he had seen these
+    surroundings all of his life, he had a queer impression that he was
+    looking upon them for the first time. During his boyhood he had accepted
+    all this without question as the way the world was made. During his
+    college days a criticism had arisen in his mind, but it came slowly, and
+    was tempered by that tenderness every one feels for the spot called
+    home. Now, as he stood looking at it, he wondered how human beings lived
+    there at all. He wondered if Ida May used water from the Niggertown
+    well.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He turned to ask old Caroline, but checked himself with a man's
+    instinctive avoidance of mentioning his intimacies to his mother. At
+    that moment, oddly enough, the old negress brought up the topic herself.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ida May wuz 'quirin' 'bout you las' night, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    A faint tingle filtered through Peter's throat and chest, but he asked
+    casually enough what she had said.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Didn' say; she wrote."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter looked around, frankly astonished.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Wrote?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yeah; co'se she wrote."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What made her write?" a fantasy of Ida May dumb flickered before the
+    mulatto.
+</p>
+<a name="image-3"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="birth03.png"
+alt="Up and Down Its Street Flows the Slow Negro Life of The
+Village
+">
+<br>Up and Down Its Street Flows the Slow Negro Life of The Village
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    "Why, Ida May's in Nashville." Caroline looked at Peter. "She wrote to
+    Cissie, astin' 'bout you. She ast is you as bright in yo' books as you
+    is in yo' color." The old negress gave a pleased abdominal chuckle as
+    she admired her broad-shouldered brown son.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But I saw Ida May standing on the wharf-boat the day I came home,"
+    protested Peter, still bewildered.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No you ain't. I reckon you seen Cissie. Dey looks kind o' like when you
+    is fur off."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Cissie?" repeated Peter. Then he remembered a smaller sister of Ida
+    May's, a little, squalling, yellow, wet-nosed nuisance that had annoyed
+    his adolescence. So that little spoil-sport had grown up into the girl
+    he had mistaken for Ida May. This fact increased his sense of
+    strangeness&mdash;that sense of great change that had fallen on the village
+    in his absence which formed the groundwork of all his renewed
+    associations.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter's prolonged silence aroused certain suspicions in the old negress.
+    She glanced at her son out of the tail of her eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Cissie Dildine is Tump Pack's gal," she stated defensively, with the
+    jealousy all mothers feel toward all sons.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A diversion in the shouts of the children up the mean street and a
+    sudden furious barking of dogs drew Peter from the discussion. He looked
+    up, and saw a negro girl of about fourteen coming down the curved
+    street, with long, quick steps and an occasional glance over her
+    shoulder.
+</p>
+<p>
+    From across the thoroughfare a small chocolate-colored woman, with her
+    wool done in outstanding spikes, thrust her head out at the door and
+    called:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Whut's de matter, Ofeely?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl lifted a high voice:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, Miss Nan, it's that constable goin' th'ugh the houses!" The girl
+    veered across the street to the safety of the open door and one of her
+    own sex.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Good Lawd!" cried the spiked one in disgust, "ever', time a white
+    pusson gits somp'n misplaced&mdash;" She moved to one side to allow the girl
+    to enter, and continued staring up the street, with the whites of her
+    eyes accented against her dark face, after the way of angry negroes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Around the crescent the dogs were furious. They were Niggertown dogs,
+    and the sight of a white man always drove them to a frenzy. Presently in
+    the hullabaloo, Peter heard Dawson Bobbs's voice shouting:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Aunt Mahaly, if you kain't call off this dawg, I'm shore goin' to kill
+    him."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then an old woman's scolding broke in and complicated the m&ecirc;l&eacute;e.
+    Presently Peter saw the bulky form of Dawson Bobbs come around the
+    curve, moving methodically from cabin to cabin. He held some legal-
+    looking papers in his hands, and Peter knew what the constable was
+    doing. He was serving a blanket search-warrant on the whole black
+    population of Hooker's Bend. At almost every cabin a dog ran out to
+    blaspheme at the intruder, but a wave of the man's pistol sent them
+    yelping under the floors again.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When the constable entered a house, Peter could hear him bumping and
+    rattling among the furnishings, while the black householders stood
+    outside the door and watched him disturb their housekeeping
+    arrangements.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Presently Bobbs came angling across the street toward the Siner cabin.
+    As he entered the rickety gate, old Caroline called out:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Whut is you after, anyway, white man?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Bobbs turned cold, truculent eyes on the old negress. "A turkey
+    roaster," he snapped. "Some o' you niggers stole Miss Lou Arkwright's
+    turkey roaster."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Tukky roaster!" cried the old black woman, in great disgust. "Whut you
+    s'pose us niggers is got to roast in a tukky roaster?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The constable answered shortly that his business was to find the
+    roaster, not what the negroes meant to put in it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I decla'," satirized old Caroline, savagely, "dish-heah Niggertown is a
+    white man's pocket. Ever' time he misplace somp'n, he feel in his pocket
+    to see ef it ain't thaiuh. Don'-chu turn over dat sody-water, white man!
+    You know dey ain't no tukky roaster under dat sody-water. I 'cla' 'fo'
+    Gawd, ef a white man wuz to eat a flapjack, an' it did n' give him de
+    belly-ache, I 'cla' 'fo' Gawd he'd git out a search-wa'nt to see ef some
+    nigger had n' stole dat flapjack goin' down his th'oat."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Mr. Bobbs has to do his work, Mother," put in Peter. "I don't suppose
+    he enjoys it any more than we do."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Den let 'im git out'n dis business an' git in anudder," scolded the old
+    woman. "Dis sho is a mighty po' business."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The ponderous Mr. Bobbs finished with a practised thoroughness his
+    inspection of the cabin, and then the inquisition proceeded down the
+    street, around the crescent, and so out of sight and eventually out of
+    hearing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Old Caroline snapped her chair back beside her greasy table and sat down
+    abruptly to her spoiled ham again.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Dat make me mad," she grumbled. "Ever' time a white pusson fail to lay
+    dey han' on somp'n, dey comes an' turns over ever'thing in my house."
+    She paused a moment, closed her eyes in thought, and then mused aloud:
+    "I wonder who is got Miss Arkwright's roaster."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The commotion of the constable's passing died in his wake, and
+    Niggertown resumed its careless existence. Dogs reappeared from under
+    the cabins and stretched in the sunshine; black children came out of
+    hiding and picked up their play; the frightened Ophelia came out of
+    Nan's cabin across the street and went her way; a lanky negro youth in
+    blue coat and pin-striped trousers appeared, coming down the squalid
+    thoroughfare whistling the "Memphis Blues" with bird-like virtuosity.
+    The lightness with which Niggertown accepted the moral side glance of a
+    blanket search-warrant depressed Siner.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Caroline called her son to dinner, as the twelve-o'clock meal is called
+    in Hooker's Bend, and so ended his meditation. The Harvard man went back
+    into the kitchen and sat down at a rickety table covered with a red-
+    checked oil-cloth. On it were spread the spoiled ham, a dish of poke
+    salad, a corn pone, and a pot of weak coffee. A quaint old bowl held
+    some brown sugar. The fat old negress made a slight, habitual settling
+    movement in her chair that marked the end of her cooking and the
+    beginning of her meal. Then she bent her grizzled, woolly head and
+    mumbled off one of those queer old-fashioned graces which consist of a
+    swift string of syllables without pauses between either words or
+    sentences.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter sat watching his mother with a musing gaze. The kitchen was
+    illuminated by a single small square window set high up from the floor.
+    Now the disposition of its single ray of light over the dishes and the
+    bowed head of the massive negress gave Peter one of those sharp, tender
+    apprehensions of formal harmony that lie back of the genre in art. It
+    stirred his emotion in an odd fashion. When old Caroline raised her
+    head, she found her son staring with impersonal eyes not at herself, but
+    at the whole room, including her. The old woman was perplexed and a
+    little apprehensive.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, son!" she ejaculated, "didn' you bow yo' haid while yo' mammy ast
+    de grace?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter was a little confused at his remissness. Then he leaned a little
+    forward to explain the sudden glamour which for a moment had
+    transfigured the interior of their kitchen. But even as he started to
+    speak, he realized that what he meant to say would only confuse his
+    mother; therefore he cast about mentally for some other explanation of
+    his behavior, but found nothing at hand.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I hope you ain't forgot yo' 'ligion up at de 'versity, son."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, no, no, indeed, Mother, but just at that moment, just as you bowed
+    your head, you know, it struck me that&mdash;that there is something noble in
+    our race." That was the best he could put it to her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Noble&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes. You know," he went on a little quickly, "sometimes I&mdash;I've thought
+    my father must have been a noble man."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old negress became very still. She was not looking quite at her son,
+    or yet precisely away from him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Uh&mdash;uh noble nigger,"&mdash;she gave her abdominal chuckle. "Why&mdash;yeah, I
+    reckon yo' father wuz putty noble as&mdash;as niggers go." She sat looking at
+    her son, oddly, with a faint amusement in her gross black face, when a
+    careful voice, a very careful voice, sounded in the outer room, gliding
+    up politely on the syllables:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ahnt Carolin'! oh, Ahnt Carolin', may I enter?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old woman stirred.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Da''s Cissie, Peter. Go ast her in to de fambly-room."
+</p>
+<p>
+    When Siner opened the door, the vague resemblance of the slender, creamy
+    girl on the threshold to Ida May again struck him; but Cissie Dildine
+    was younger, and her polished black hair lay straight on her pretty
+    head, and was done in big, shining puffs over her ears in a way that Ida
+    May's unruly curls would never have permitted. Her eyes were the most
+    limpid brown Peter had ever seen, but her oval face was faintly
+    unnatural from the use of negro face powder, which colored women insist
+    on, and which gives their yellows and browns a barely perceptible
+    greenish hue. Cissie wore a fluffy yellow dress some three shades deeper
+    than the throat and the glimpse of bosom revealed at the neck.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl carried a big package in her arms, and now she manipulated this
+    to put out a slender hand to Peter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This is Cissie Dildine, Mister Siner." She smiled up at him. "I just
+    came over to put my name down on your list. There was such a mob at the
+    Benevolence Hall last night I couldn't get to you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl had a certain finical precision to her English that told Peter
+    she had been away to some school, and had been taught to guard her
+    grammar very carefully as she talked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter helped her inside amid the handshake and said he would go fetch
+    the list. As he turned, Cissie offered her bundle. "Here is something I
+    thought might be a little treat for you and Ahnt Carolin'." She paused,
+    and then explained remotely, "Sometimes it is hard to get good things at
+    the village market."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter took the package, vaguely amused at Cissie's patronage of the
+    Hooker's Bend market. It was an attitude instinctively assumed by every
+    girl, white or black, who leaves the village and returns. The bundle was
+    rather large and wrapped in newspapers. He carried it into the kitchen
+    to his mother, and then returned with the list.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The sheet was greasy from the handling of black fingers. The girl spread
+    it on the little center-table with a certain daintiness, seated herself,
+    and held out her hand for Peter's pencil. She made rather a graceful
+    study in cream and yellow as she leaned over the table and signed her
+    name in a handwriting as perfect and as devoid of character as a copy-
+    book. She began discussing the speech Peter had made at the Benevolence
+    Hall.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I don't know whether I am in favor of your project or not, Mr. Siner,"
+    she said as she rose from the table.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No?" Peter was surprised and amused at her attitude and at her precise
+    voice.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, I'm rather inclined toward Mr. DuBois's theory of a literary
+    culture than toward Mr. Washington's for a purely industrial training."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter broke out laughing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "For the love of Mike, Cissie, you talk like the instructor in Sociology
+    B! And haven't we met before somewhere? This 'Mister Siner' stuff&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl's face warmed under its faint, greenish powder.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If I aren't careful with my language, Peter," she said simply, "I'll be
+    talking just as badly as I did before I went to the seminary. You know I
+    never hear a proper sentence in Hooker's Bend except my own."
+</p>
+<p>
+    A certain resignation in the girl's soft voice brought Peter a qualm for
+    laughing at her. He laid an impulsive hand on her young shoulder.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, that's true, certainly, but it won't always be like that, Cissie.
+    More of us go off to school every year. I do hope my school here in
+    Hooker's Bend will be of some real value. If I could just show our
+    people how badly we fare here, how ill housed, and unsanitary&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl pressed Peter's fingers with a woman's optimism for a man.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You'll succeed, Peter, I know you will. Some day the name Siner will
+    mean the same thing to coloured people as Tanner and Dunbar and
+    Braithwaite do. Anyway, I've put my name down for ten dollars to help
+    out." She returned the pencil. "I'll have Tump Pack come around and pay
+    you my subscription, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'll watch out for Tump," promised Peter in a lightening mood, "&mdash;and
+    make him pay."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He'll do it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I don't doubt it. You ought to have him under perfect control. I meant
+    to tell you what a pretty frock you have on."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl dimpled, and dropped him a little curtsy, half ironical and
+    wholly graceful.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter was charmed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now keep that way, Cissie, smiling and human, not so grammatical. I
+    wish I had a brooch."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "A brooch?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'd give it to you. Your dress needs a brooch, an old gold brooch at
+    the bosom, just a glint there to balance your eyes."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie flushed happily, and made the feminine movement of concealing the
+    V-shaped opening at her throat.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It's a pleasure to doll up for a man like you, Peter. You see a girl's
+    good points&mdash;if she has any," she tacked on demurely.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, just any man&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Don't think it! Don't think it!" waved down Cissie, humorously.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But, Cissie, how is it possible&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Just blind." Cissie rippled into a boarding-school laugh. "I could wear
+    the whole rue del Opera here in Niggertown, and nobody would ever see it
+    but you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie was moving toward the door. Peter tried to detain her. He enjoyed
+    the implication of Tump Pack's stupidity, in their badinage, but she
+    would not stay. He was finally reduced to thanking her for her present,
+    then stood guard as she tripped out into the grimy street. In the
+    sunshine her glossy black hair and canary dress looked as trim and
+    brilliant as the plumage of a chaffinch.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter Siner walked back into the kitchen with the fixed smile of a man
+    who is thinking of a pretty girl. The black dowager in the kitchen
+    received him in silence, with her thick lips pouted. When Peter observed
+    it, he felt slightly amused at his mother's resentment.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, you sho had a lot o' chatter over signin' a lil ole paper."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "She signed for ten dollars," said Peter, smiling.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Huh! she'll never pay it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Said Tump Pack would pay it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Huh!" The old negress dropped the subject, and nodded at a huge double
+    pan on the table. "Dat's whut she brung you." She grunted
+    disapprovingly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And it's for you, too, Mother."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ya-as, I 'magine she brung somp'n fuh me."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter walked across to the double pans, and saw they held a complete
+    dinner&mdash;chicken, hot biscuits, cake, pickle, even ice-cream.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The sight of the food brought Peter a realization that he was keenly
+    hungry. As a matter of fact, he had not eaten a palatable meal since he
+    had been evicted from the white dining-car at Cairo, Illinois. Siner
+    served his own and his mother's plate.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old woman sniffed again.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Seems to me lak you is mighty onobsarvin' fuh a nigger whut's been off
+    to college."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Anything else?" Peter looked into the pans again.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ain't you see whut it's all in?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What it's in?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yeah; whut it's in. You heared whut I said."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What is it in?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, it's in Miss Arkwright's tukky roaster, dat's whut it's in." The
+    old negress drove her point home with an acid accent.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter Siner was too loyal to his new friendship with Cissie Dildine to
+    allow his mother's jealous suspicions to affect him; nevertheless the
+    old woman's observations about the turkey roaster did prevent a complete
+    and care-free enjoyment of the meal. Certainly there were other turkey
+    roasters in Hooker's Bend than Mrs. Arkwright's. Cissie might very well
+    own a roaster. It was absurd to think that Cissie, in the midst of her
+    almost pathetic struggle to break away from the uncouthness of
+    Niggertown, would stoop to&mdash;Even in his thoughts Peter avoided
+    nominating the charge.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And then, somehow, his memory fished up the fact that years ago Ida May,
+    according to village rumor, was "light-fingered." At that time in
+    Peter's life "light-fingeredness" carried with it no opprobrium
+    whatever. It was simply a fact about Ida May, as were her sloe eyes and
+    curling black hair. His reflections renewed his perpetual sense of
+    queerness and strangeness that hall-marked every phase of Niggertown
+    life since his return from the North.
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    Cissie Dildine's contribution tailed out the one hundred dollars that
+    Peter needed, and after he had finished his meal, the mulatto set out
+    across the Big Hill for the white section of the village, to complete
+    his trade.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was Peter's program to go to the Planter's Bank, pay down his
+    hundred, and receive a deed from one Elias Tomwit, which the bank held
+    in escrow. Two or three days before Peter had tried to borrow the
+    initial hundred from the bank, but the cashier, Henry Hooker, after
+    going into the transaction, had declined the loan, and therefore Siner
+    had been forced to await a meeting of the Sons and Daughters of
+    Benevolence. At this meeting the subscription had gone through promptly.
+    The land the negroes purposed to purchase for an industrial school was a
+    timbered tract tying southeast of Hooker's Bend on the head-waters of
+    Ross Creek. A purchase price of eight hundred dollars had been agreed
+    upon. The timber on the tract, sold on the stump, would bring almost
+    that amount. It was Siner's plan to commandeer free labor in Niggertown,
+    work off the timber, and have enough money to build the first unit of
+    his school. A number of negro men already had subscribed a certain
+    number of days' work in the timber. It was a modest and entirely
+    practical program, and Peter felt set up over it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The brown man turned briskly out into the hot afternoon sunshine, down
+    the mean semicircular street, where piccaninnies were kicking up clouds
+    of dust. He hurried through the dusty area, and presently turned off a
+    by-path that led over the hill, through a glade of cedars, to the white
+    village.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The glade was gloomy, but warm, for the shade of cedars somehow seems to
+    hold heat. A carpet of needles hushed Siner's footfalls and spread a
+    Sabbatical silence through the grove. The upward path was not smooth,
+    but was broken with outcrops of the same reddish limestone that marks
+    the whole stretch of the Tennessee River. Here and there in the grove
+    were circles eight or ten feet in diameter, brushed perfectly clean of
+    all needles and pebbles and twigs. These places were crap-shooters'
+    circles, where black and white men squatted to shoot dice.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Under the big stones on the hillside, Peter knew, was cached illicit
+    whisky, and at night the boot-leggers carried on a brisk trade among the
+    gamblers. More than that, the glade on the Big Hill was used for still
+    more demoralizing ends. It became a squalid grove of Ashtoreth; but now,
+    in the autumn evening, all the petty obscenities of white and black
+    sloughed away amid the religious implications of the dark-green aisles.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The sight of a white boy sitting on an outcrop of limestone with a strap
+    of school-books dropped at his feet rather surprised Peter. The negro
+    looked at the hobbledehoy for several seconds before he recognized in
+    the lanky youth a little Arkwright boy whom he had known and played with
+    in his pre-college days. Now there was such an exaggerated wistfulness
+    in young Arkwright's attitude that Peter was amused.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Hello, Sam," he called. "What you doing out here?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Arkwright boy turned with a start.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Aw, is that you, Siner?" Before the negro could reply, he added: "Was
+    you on the Harvard football team, Siner? Guess the white fellers have a
+    pretty gay time in Harvard, don't they, Siner? Geemenettie! but I git
+    tired o' this dern town! D' reckon I could make the football team? Looks
+    like I could if a nigger like you could, Siner."
+</p>
+<p>
+    None of this juvenile outbreak of questions required answers. Peter
+    stood looking at the hobbledehoy without smiling.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Aren't you going to school?" he asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Arkwright shrugged.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Aw, hell!" he said self-consciously. "We got marched down to the
+    protracted meetin' while ago&mdash;whole school did. My seat happened to be
+    close to a window. When they all stood up to sing, I crawled out and
+    skipped. Don't mention that, Siner."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I won't."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "When a fellow goes to college he don't git marched to preachin', does
+    he, Siner?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I never did."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We-e-ll," mused young Sam, doubtfully, "you're a nigger."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I never saw any white men marched in, either."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, hell! I wish I was in college."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What are you sitting out here thinking about?" inquired Peter of the
+    ingenuous youngster.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh&mdash;football and&mdash;women and God and&mdash;how to stack cards. You think
+    about ever'thing, in the woods. Damn it! I got to git out o' this little
+    jay town. D' reckon I could git in the navy, Siner?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Don't see why you couldn't, Sam. Have you seen Tump Pack anywhere?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yeah; on Hobbett's corner. Say, is Cissie Dildine at home?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I believe she is."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "She cooks for us," explained young Arkwright, "and Mammy wants her to
+    come and git supper, too."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The phrase "get supper, too," referred to the custom in the white homes
+    of Hooker's Bend of having only two meals cooked a day, breakfast and
+    the twelve-o'clock dinner, with a hot supper optional with the mistress.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter nodded, and passed on up the path, leaving young Arkwright seated
+    on the ledge of rock, a prey to all the boiling, erratic impulses of
+    adolescence. The negro sensed some of the innumerable difficulties of
+    this white boy's life, and once, as he walked on over the silent
+    needles, he felt an impulse to turn back and talk to young Sam
+    Arkwright, to sit down and try to explain to the youth what he could of
+    this hazardous adventure called Life. But then, he reflected, very
+    likely the boy would be offended at a serious talk from a negro. Also,
+    he thought that young Arkwright, being white, was really not within the
+    sphere of his ministry. He, Peter Siner, was a worker in the black world
+    of the South. He was part of the black world which the white South was
+    so meticulous to hide away, to keep out of sight and out of thought.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A certain vague sense of triumph trickled through some obscure corner of
+    Peter's mind. It was so subtle that Peter himself would have been the
+    first, in all good faith, to deny it and to affirm that all his motives
+    were altruistic. Once he looked back through the cedars. He could still
+    see the boy hunched over, chin in fist, staring at the mat of needles.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As Peter turned the brow of the Big Hill, he saw at its eastern foot the
+    village church, a plain brick building with a decaying spire. Its side
+    was perforated by four tall arched windows. Each was a memorial window
+    of stained glass, which gave the building a black look from the outside.
+    As Peter walked down the hill toward the church he heard the and
+    somewhat nasal singing of uncultivated voices mingled with the snoring
+    of a reed organ.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When he reached Main Street, Peter found the whole business portion
+    virtually deserted. All the stores were closed, and in every show-window
+    stood a printed notice that no business would be transacted between the
+    hours of two and three o'clock in the afternoon during the two weeks of
+    revival then in progress. Beside this notice stood another card, giving
+    the minister's text for the current day. On this particular day it read:
+</p>
+<center>
+                        GO YE INTO ALL THE WORLD
+</center>
+<center>
+                 Come hear Rev. E.B. Blackwater's great<br>
+                         Missionary Address on
+</center>
+<center>
+                         CHRISTIANIZING AFRICA
+</center>
+<center>
+                  ELOQUENT, PROFOUND, HEART-SEARCHING.<br>
+                        ILLUSTRATED WITH SLIDES.
+</center>
+<p>
+    Half a dozen negroes lounged in the sunshine on Hobbett's corner as
+    Peter came up. They were amusing themselves after the fashion of blacks,
+    with mock fights, feints, sudden wrestlings. They would seize one
+    another by the head and grind their knuckles into one another's wool.
+    Occasionally, one would leap up and fall into one of those grotesque
+    shuffles called "breakdowns." It all held a certain rawness, an
+    irrepressible juvenility.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As Peter came up, Tump Pack detached himself from the group and gave a
+    pantomime of thrusting. He was clearly reproducing the action which had
+    won for him his military medal. Then suddenly he fell down in the dust
+    and writhed. He was mimicking with a ghastly realism the death-throes of
+    his four victims. His audience howled with mirth at this dumb show of
+    the bayonet-fight and of killing four men. Tump himself got up out of
+    the dust with tears of laughter in his eyes. Peter caught the end of his
+    sentence, "Sho put it to 'em, black boy. Fo' white men&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    His audience roared again, swayed around, and pounded one another in an
+    excess of mirth.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Siner shouted from across the street two or three times before he caught
+    Tump's attention. The ex-soldier looked around, sobered abruptly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Whut-chu want, nigger?" His inquiry was not over-cordial.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter nodded him across the street.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The heavily built black in khaki hesitated a moment, then started across
+    the street with the dragging feet of a reluctant negro. Peter looked at
+    him as he came up.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What's the matter, Tump?" he asked playfully.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ain't nothin' matter wid me, nigger." Peter made a guess at Tump's
+    surliness.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Look here, are you puffed up because Cissie Dildine struck you for a
+    ten?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tump's expression changed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Is she struck me fuh a ten?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes; on that school subscription."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Is dat whut you two niggers wuz a-talkin' 'bout over thaiuh in yo'
+    house?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Exactly." Peter showed the list, with Cissie's name on it. "She told me
+    to collect from you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tump brightened up.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "So dat wuz whut you two niggers wuz a-talkin' 'bout over at yo' house."
+    He ran a fist down into his khaki, and drew out three or four one-dollar
+    bills and about a pint of small change. It was the usual crap-shooter's
+    offering. The two negroes sat down on the ramshackle porch of an old
+    jeweler's shop, and Tump began a complicated tally of ten dollars.
+</p>
+<p>
+    By the time he had his dimes, quarters, and nickels in separate stacks,
+    services in the village church were finished, and the congregation came
+    filing up the street. First came the school-children, running and
+    chattering and swinging their books by the straps; then the business men
+    of the hamlet, rather uncomfortable in coats and collars, hurrying back
+    to their stores; finally came the women, surrounding the preacher.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tump and Peter walked on up to the entrance of the Planter's Bank and
+    there awaited Mr. Henry Hooker, the cashier. Presently a skinny man
+    detached himself from the church crowd and came angling across the dirty
+    street toward the bank. Mr. Hooker wore somewhat shabby clothes for a
+    banker; in fact, he never could recover from certain personal habits
+    formed during a penurious boyhood. He had a thin hatchet face which just
+    at this moment was shining though from some inward glow. Although he was
+    an unhandsome little man, his expression was that of one at peace with
+    man and God and was pleasant to see. He had been so excited by the
+    minister that he was constrained to say something even to two negroes.
+    So as he unlocked the little one-story bank, he told Tump and Peter that
+    he had been listening to a man who was truly a man of God. He said
+    Blackwater could touch the hardest heart, and, sure enough, Mr. Hooker's
+    rather popped and narrow-set eyes looked as though he had been crying.
+</p>
+<p>
+    All this encomium was given in a high, cracked voice as the cashier
+    opened the door and turned the negroes into the bank. Tump, who stood
+    with his hat off, listening to all the cashier had to say, said he
+    thought so, too.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The shabby interior of the little bank, the shabby little banker,
+    renewed that sense of disillusion that pervaded Peter's home-coming. In
+    Boston the mulatto had done his slight banking business in a white
+    marble structure with tellers of machine-like briskness and neatness.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Hooker strolled around into his grill-cage; when he was thoroughly
+    ensconced he began business in his high voice:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You came to see me about that land, Peter?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Yes, sir."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Sorry to tell you, Peter, you are not back in time to get the Tomwit
+    place."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter came out of his musing over the Boston banks with a sense of
+    bewilderment.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "How's that? why, I bought that land&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But you paid nothing for your option, Siner."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I had a clear-cut understanding with Mr. Tomwit&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Hooker smiled a smile that brought out sharp wrinkles around the
+    thin nose on his thin face.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You should have paid him an earnest, Siner, if you wanted to bind your
+    trade. You colored folks are always stumbling over the law."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter stared through the grating, not knowing what to do.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'll go see Mr. Tomwit," he said, and started uncertainly for the door.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The cashier's falsetto stopped him:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No use, Peter. Mr. Tomwit surprised me, too, but no use talking about
+    it. I didn't like to see such an important thing as the education of our
+    colored people held up, myself. I've been thinking about it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Especially when I had made a fair square trade," put in Peter, warmly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Exactly," squeaked the cashier. "And rather than let your project be
+    delayed, I'm going to offer you the old Dillihay place at exactly the
+    same price, Peter&mdash;eight hundred."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The Dillihay place?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes; that's west of town; it's bigger by twenty acres than old man
+    Tomwit's place."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter considered the proposition.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'll have to carry this before the Sons and Daughters of Benevolence,
+    Mr. Hooker."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The cashier repeated the smile that bracketed his thin nose in wrinkles.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That's with you, but you know what you say goes with the niggers here
+    in town, and, besides, I won't promise how long I'll hold the Dillihay
+    place. Real estate is brisk around here now. I didn't want to delay a
+    good work on account of not having a location." Mr. Hooker turned away
+    to a big ledger on a breast-high desk, and apparently was about to
+    settle himself to the endless routine of bank work.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter knew the Dillihay place well. It lacked the timber of the other
+    tract; still, it was fairly desirable. He hesitated before the tarnished
+    grill.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What do you think about it, Tump?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You won't make a mistake in buying," answered the high voice of Mr.
+    Hooker at his ledger.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I don' think you'll make no mistake in buyin', Peter," repeated Tump's
+    bass.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter turned back a little uncertainly, and asked how long it would take
+    to fix the new deed. He had a notion of making a flying canvass of the
+    officers of the Sons and Daughters in the interim. He was surprised to
+    find that Mr. Hooker already had the deed and the notes ready to sign,
+    in anticipation of Peter's desires. Here the banker brought out the set
+    of papers.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'll take it," decided Peter; "and if the lodge doesn't want it, I'll
+    keep the place myself."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I like to deal with a man of decision," piped the cashier, a wrinkled
+    smile on his sharp face.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter pushed in his bag of collections, then Mr. Hooker signed the deed,
+    and Peter signed the land notes. They exchanged the instruments. Peter
+    received the crisp deed, bound in blue manuscript cover. It rattled
+    unctuously. To Peter it was his first step toward a second Tuskegee.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The two negroes walked out of the Planter's Bank filled with a sense of
+    well-doing. Tump Pack was openly proud of having been connected, even in
+    a casual way, with the purchase. As he walked down the steps, he turned
+    to Peter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Don' reckon nobody could git a deed off on you wid stoppers in it, does
+    you?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We don't know any such word as 'stop,' Tump," declared Peter, gaily.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For Peter was gay. The whole incident at the bank was beginning to
+    please him. The meeting of a sudden difficulty, his quick decision&mdash;it
+    held the quality of leadership. Napoleon had it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The two colored men stepped briskly through the afternoon sunshine along
+    the mean village street. Here and there in front of their doorways sat
+    the merchants yawning and talking, or watching pigs root in the piles of
+    waste.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In Peter's heart came a wonderful thought. He would make his industrial
+    institution such a model of neatness that the whole village of Hooker's
+    Bend would catch the spirit. The white people should see that something
+    clean and uplifting could come out of Niggertown. The two races ought to
+    live for a mutual benefit. It was a fine, generous thought. For some
+    reason, just then, there flickered through Peter's mind a picture of the
+    Arkwright boy sitting hunched over in the cedar glade, staring at the
+    needles.
+</p>
+<p>
+    All this musing was brushed away by the sight of old Mr. Tomwit crossing
+    the street from the east side to the livery-stable on the west. That
+    human desire of wanting the person who has wronged you to know that you
+    know your injury moved Peter to hurry his steps and to speak to the old
+    gentleman.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Tomwit had been a Confederate cavalryman in the Civil War, and there
+    was still a faint breeze and horsiness about him. He was a hammered-down
+    old gentleman, with hair thin but still jet-black, a seamed, sunburned
+    face, and a flattened nose. His voice was always a friendly roar. Now,
+    when he saw Peter turning across the street to meet him, he halted and
+    called out at once:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now Peter, I know what's the matter with you. I didn't do you right."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter went closer, not caring to take the whole village into his
+    confidence.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "How came you to turn down my proposition, Mr. Tomwit," he asked, "after
+    we had agreed and drawn up the papers?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We-e-ell, I had to do it, Peter," explained the old man, loudly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, Mr. Tomwit?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "A white neighbor wanted me to, Peter," boomed the cavalryman.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Who, Mr. Tomwit?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Henry Hooker talked me into it, Peter. It was a mean trick, Peter. I
+    done you wrong." He stood nodding his head and rubbing his flattened
+    nose in an impersonal manner. "Yes, I done you wrong, Peter," he
+    acknowledged loudly, and looked frankly into Peter's eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The negro was immensely surprised that Henry Hooker had done such a
+    thing. A thought came that perhaps some other Henry Hooker had moved
+    into town in his absence.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You don't mean the cashier of the bank?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Old Mr. Tomwit drew out a plug of Black Mule tobacco, set some gapped,
+    discolored teeth into corner, nodded at Peter silently, at the same time
+    utilizing the nod to tear off a large quid. He rolled tin about with his
+    tongue and after a few moments adjusted it so that he could speak.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yeah," he proceeded in a muffled tone, "they ain't but one Henry
+    Hooker; he is the one and only Henry. He said if I sold you my land,
+    you'd put up a nigger school and bring in so many blackbirds you'd run
+    me clean off my farm. He said it'd ruin the whole town, a nigger school
+    would."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter was astonished.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, he didn't talk that way to me!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Natchelly, natchelly," agreed the old cavalryman, dryly.&mdash;"Henry has a
+    different way to talk to ever' man, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "In fact," proceeded Peter, "Mr. Hooker sold me the old Dillihay place
+    in lieu of the deal I missed with you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Old Mr. Tomwit moved his quid in surprise.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The hell he did!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That at least shows he doesn't think a negro school would ruin the
+    value of his land. He owns farms all around the Dillihay place."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Old Mr. Tomwit turned his quid over twice and spat thoughtfully.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That your deed in your pocket?" With the air of a man certain of being
+    obeyed he held out his hand for the blue manuscript cover protruding
+    from the mulatto's pocket. Peter handed it over. The old gentleman
+    unfolded the deed, then moved it carefully to and from his eyes until
+    the typewriting was adjusted to his focus. He read it slowly, with a
+    movement of his lips and a drooling of tobacco-juice. Finally he
+    finished, remarked, "I be damned!" in a deliberate voice, returned the
+    deed, and proceeded across the street to the livery-stable, which was
+    fronted by an old mulberry-tree, with several chairs under it. In one of
+    these chairs he would sit for the remainder of the day, making an
+    occasional loud remark about the weather or the crops, and watching the
+    horses pass in and out of the stable.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Siner had vaguely enjoyed old Mr. Tomwit's discomfiture over the deed,
+    if it was discomfiture that had moved the old gentleman to his
+    sententious profanity. But the negro did not understand Henry Hooker's
+    action at all. The banker had abused his position of trust as holder of
+    a deed in escrow snapping up the sale himself; then he had sold Peter
+    the Dillihay place. It was a queer shift.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tump Pack caught his principal's mood with that chameleon-like mental
+    quality all negroes possess.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Dat Henry Hooker," criticized Tump, "allus was a lil ole dried-up snake
+    in de grass."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He abused his position of trust," said Peter, gloomily; "I must say,
+    his motives seem very obscure to me."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Dat sho am a fine way to put hit," said Tump, admiringly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why do you suppose he bought in the Tomwit tract and sold me the
+    Dillihay place?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Asked for an opinion, Tump began twiddling military medal and corrugated
+    the skin on his inch-high brow.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now you puts it to me lak dat, Peter," he answered with importance, "I
+    wonders ef dat gimlet-haided white man ain't put some stoppers in dat
+    deed he guv you. He mout of."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Such remarks as that from Tump always annoyed Peter. Tump's intellectual
+    method was to talk sense just long enough to gain his companion's ear,
+    and then produce something absurd and quash the tentative interest.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Siner turned away from him and said, "Piffle."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tump was defensive at once.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'T ain't piffle, either! I's talkin' sense, nigger."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter shrugged, and walked a little way in silence, but the soldier's
+    nonsense stuck in his brain and worried him. Finally he turned, rather
+    irritably.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Stoppers&mdash;what do you mean by stoppers?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tump opened his jet eyes and their yellowish whites. "I means nigger-
+    stoppers," he reiterated, amazed in his turn.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Negro-stoppers&mdash;" Peter began to laugh sardonically, and abruptly quit
+    the conversation.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Such rank superiority irritated the soldier to the nth power.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Look heah, black man, I knows I <i>is</i> right. Heah, lonme look at
+    dat-aiuh, deed. Maybe I can find 'em. I knows I suttinly is right."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter walked on, paying no attention to the request Until Tump caught
+    his arm and drew him up short.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Look heah, nigger," said Tump, in a different tone, "I faded dad deed
+    fuh ten iron men, an' I reckon I got a once-over comin' fuh my money."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The soldier was plainly mobilized and ready to attack. To fight Tump, to
+    fight any negro at all, would be Peter's undoing; it would forfeit the
+    moral leadership he hoped to gain. Moreover, he had no valid grounds for
+    a disagreement with Tump. He passed over the deed, and the two negroes
+    moved on their way to Niggertown.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tump trudged forward with eyes glued to paper, his face puckered in the
+    unaccustomed labor of reading.
+</p>
+<p>
+    His thick lips moved at the individual letters, and constructed them
+    bunglingly into syllables and words. He was trying to uncover the verbal
+    camouflage by which the astute white brushed away all rights of all
+    black men whatsoever.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To Peter there grew up something sadly comical in Tump's efforts. The
+    big negro might well typify all the colored folk of the South,
+    struggling in a web of law and custom they did not understand,
+    misplacing their suspicions, befogged and fearful. A certain penitence
+    for having been irritated at Tump softened Peter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That's all right, Tump; there's nothing to find."
+</p>
+<p>
+    At that moment the soldier began to bob his head.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Eh! eh! eh! W-wait a minute!" he stammered. "Whut dis? B'lieve I done
+    foun' it! I sho is! Heah she am! Heah's dis nigger-stopper, jes lak I
+    tol' you!" Tump marked a sentence in the guaranty of the deed with a
+    rusty forefinger and looked up at Peter in mixed triumph and accusation.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter leaned over the deed, amused.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Let's see your mare's nest."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, she 'fo' God is thaiuh, an' you sho let loose a hundud dollars uv
+    our 'ciety's money, an' got nothin' fuh hit but a piece o' paper wid a
+    nigger-stopper on hit!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tump's voice was so charged with contempt that Peter looked with a
+    certain uneasiness at his find. He read this sentence switched into the
+    guaranty of the indenture:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Be it further understood and agreed that no negro, black man, Afro-
+    American, mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, or any person whatsoever of
+    colored blood or lineage, shall enter upon, seize, hold, occupy, reside
+    upon, till, cultivate, own or possess any part or parcel of said
+    property, or garner, cut, or harvest therefrom, any of the usufruct,
+    timber, or emblements thereof, but shall by these presents be estopped
+    from so doing forever."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tump Pack drew a shaken, unhappy breath.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now, I reckon you see whut a nigger-stopper is."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter stood in the sunshine, looking at the estoppel clause, his lips
+    agape. Twice he read it over. It held something of the quality of those
+    comprehensive curses that occur in the Old Testament. He moistened his
+    lips and looked at Tump.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why that can't be legal." His voice sounded empty and shallow.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Legal! 'Fo' Gawd, nigger, whauh you been to school all dese yeahs,
+    never to heah uv a nigger-stopper befo'!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But&mdash;but how can a stroke of the pen, a mere gesture, estop a whole
+    class of American citizens forever?" cried Peter, with a rising voice.
+    "Turn it around. Suppose they had put in a line that no white man should
+    own that land. It&mdash;it's empty! I tell you, it's mere words!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tump cut into his diatribe: "No use talkin' lak dat. Our 'ciety thought
+    you wuz a aidjucated nigger. We didn't think no white man could put
+    nothin' over on you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Education!" snapped Siner. "Education isn't supposed to keep you away
+    from shysters!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Keep you away fum 'em!" cried Tump, in a scandalized voice. "'Fo' Gawd,
+    nigger, you don' know nothin'! O' co'se a aidjucation ain't to keep you
+    away fum shysters; hit's to mek you one 'uv 'em!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter stood breathing irregularly, looking at his deed. A determination
+    not to be cheated grew up and hardened in his nerves. With unsteady
+    hands he refolded his deed and put it into his pocket, then he turned
+    about and started back up the village street toward the bank.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tump stared after him a moment and presently called out:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Heah, nigger, whut you gwine do?" A moment later he repeated to his
+    friend's back: "Look heah, nigger, I 'vise you ag'inst anything you's
+    gwine do, less'n you's ready to pass in you' checks!" As Peter strode on
+    he lifted his voice still higher: "Peter! Hey, Peter, I sho' 'vise you
+    'g'inst anything you's 'gwine do!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    A pulse throbbed in Siner's temples. The wrath of the cozened heated his
+    body. His clothes felt hot. As he strode up the trash-piled street, the
+    white merchants lolling in their doors began smiling. Presently a laugh
+    broke out at one end of the street and was caught up here and there. It
+    was the undying minstrel jest, the comedy of a black face. Dawson Bobbs
+    leaned against the wide brick entrance of the livery-stable, his red
+    face balled into shining convexities by a quizzical smile.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Hey, Peter," he drawled, winking at old Mr. Tomwit, "been investin' in
+    real estate?" and broke into Homeric laughter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As Peter passed on, the constable dropped casually in behind the brown
+    man and followed him up to the bank.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To Peter Siner the walk up to the bank was an emotional confusion. He
+    has a dim consciousness that voices said things to him along the way and
+    that there was laughter. All this was drowned by desperate thoughts and
+    futile plans to regain his lost money, flashing through his head. The
+    cashier would exchange the money for the deed; he would enter suit and
+    carry it to the Supreme Court; he would show the money had not been his,
+    he had had no right to buy; he would beg the cashier. His head seemed to
+    spin around and around.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He climbed the steps into the Planter's Bank and opened the screen-door.
+    The cashier glanced up briefly, but continued busily at his ledger.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter walked shakenly to the barred window in the grill.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Mr. Hooker."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Very busy now, Peter," came the high voice.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I want to know about this deed."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The banker was nimbly setting down long rows of figures. "No time to
+    explain deeds, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But&mdash;but there is a clause in this deed, Mr. Hooter, estopping colored
+    persons from occupying the Dillihay place."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Precisely. What about it?" Mr. Hooker snapped out his inquiry and
+    looked up suddenly, catching Peter full in the face with his narrow-set
+    eyes. It was the equivalent of a blow.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "According to this, I&mdash;I can't establish a school on it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You cannot."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then what can I do with it?" cried Peter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Sell it. You have what lawyers call a cloud on the title. Sell it. I'll
+    give you ten dollars for your right in it, just to clear up my title."
+</p>
+<p>
+    A queer trembling seized Peter. The little banker turned to a fantastic
+    caricature of a man. His hatchet face, close-set eyes, harsh, straight
+    hair, and squeaky voice made him seem like some prickly, dried-up gnome
+    a man sees in a fever.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At that moment the little wicket-door of the window opened under the
+    pressure of Peter's shoulder. Inside on the desk, lay neat piles of
+    bills of all denominations, ready to be placed in the vault. In a
+    nervous tremor Peter dropped in his blue-covered deed and picked up a
+    hundred-dollar bill.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I&mdash;I won't trade," he jibbered. "It&mdash;it wasn't my money. Here's your
+    deed!" Peter was moving away. He felt a terrific impulse to run, but he
+    walked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The banker straightened abruptly. "Stop there, Peter!" he screeched.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At that moment Dawson Bobbs lounged in at the door, with his perpetual
+    grin balling up his broad red face. He had a toothpick, in his mouth.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'S matter?" he asked casually.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Peter there," said the banker, with a pale, sharp face, "doesn't want
+    to stick to his trade. He is just walking off with one of my hundred-
+    dollar bills."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Sick o' yo' deal, Peter?" inquired Bobbs, smiling and shifting the
+    toothpick. He bit down on it. "Well, whut-chu want done, Henry?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh," hesitated the cashier in a quandary, "nothing, I suppose. Siner
+    was excited; you know how niggers are. We can't afford to send every
+    nigger to the pen that breaks the law." He stood studying Peter out of
+    his close-set eyes. "Here's your deed, Peter." He shoved it back under
+    the grill. "And lemme give you a little friendly advice. I'd just run an
+    ordinary nigger school if I was you. This higher education don't seem to
+    make a nigger much smarter when he comes back than when he starts out."
+    A faint smile bracketed the thin nose.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dawson Bobbs roared with sudden appreciation, took the bill from Peter's
+    fingers, and pushed it back under the grill.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The cashier picked up the money, casually. He considered a moment, then
+    reached for a long envelop. As he did so, the incident with Peter
+    evidently passed from his mind, for his hatchet face lighted up as with
+    some inward illumination.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Bobbs," he said warmly, "that was a great sermon Brother Blackwater
+    preached. It made me want to help according as the Lord has blessed me.
+    Couldn't you spare five dollars, Bobbs, to go along with this?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The constable tried to laugh and wriggle away, but the cashier's gimlet
+    eyes kept boring him, and eventually he fished out a five-dollar bill
+    and handed it in. Mr. Hooker placed the two bills in the envelop, sealed
+    it, and handed it to the constable.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Jest drop that in the post-office as you go down the street, Bobbs," he
+    directed in his high voice. Peter caught a glimpse of the type-written
+    address.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was
+</p>
+<pre>
+  Rev. Lemuel Hardiman,
+    c/o United Missions,
+      Katuako Post,
+        Bahr el Ghazal,
+          Sudan,
+            East Africa.
+</pre>
+<a name="2HCH6"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER III
+</h2>
+<p>
+    The white population of Hooker's Bend was much amused and gratified at
+    the outcome of the Hooker-Siner land deal. Every one agreed that the
+    cashier's chicanery was a droll and highly original turn to give to a
+    negro exclusion clause drawn into a deed. Then, too, it involved several
+    legal points highly congenial to the Hooker's Bend intellect Could the
+    Sons and Daughters of Benevolence recover their hundred dollars? Could
+    Henry Hooker force them to pay the remaining seven hundred? Could not
+    Siner establish his school on the Dillihay place regardless of the
+    clause, since the cashier would be estopped from obtaining an injunction
+    by his own instrument?
+</p>
+<p>
+    As a matter of fact, the Sons and Daughters of Benevolence sent a
+    committee to wait on Mr. Hooker to see what action he meant to take on
+    the notes that paid for his spurious deed. This brought another harvest
+    of rumors. Street gossip reported that Henry had compromised for this,
+    that, and the other amount, that he would not compromise, that he had
+    persuaded the fool niggers into signing still other instruments. Peter
+    never knew the truth. He was not on the committee.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But high above the legal phase of interest lay the warming fact that
+    Peter Siner, a negro graduate of Harvard, on his first tilt in Hooker's
+    Bend affairs had ridden to a fall. This pleased even the village women,
+    whose minds could not follow the subtle trickeries of legal disputation.
+    The whole affair simply proved what the white village had known all
+    along: you can't educate a nigger. Hooker's Bend warmed with pleasure
+    that half of its population was ineducable.
+</p>
+<p>
+    White sentiment in Hooker's Bend reacted strongly on Niggertown. Peter
+    Siner's prestige was no more. The cause of higher education for negroes
+    took a mighty slump. Junius Gholston, a negro boy who had intended to go
+    to Nashville to attend Fisk University, reconsidered the matter, packed
+    away his good clothes, put on overalls, and shipped down the river as a
+    roustabout instead.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the Siner cabin old Caroline Siner berated her boy for his stupidity
+    in ever trading with that low-down, twisting snake in the grass, Henry
+    Hooker. She alternated this with floods of tears. Caroline had no
+    sympathy for her offspring. She said she had thrown away years of self-
+    sacrifice, years of washing, a thousand little comforts her money would
+    have bought, all for nothing, for less than nothing, to ship a fool
+    nigger up North and to ship him back.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Of all Niggertown, Caroline was the most unforgiving because Peter had
+    wounded her in her pride. Every other negro in the village felt that
+    genial satisfaction in a great man's downfall that is balm to small
+    souls. But the old mother knew not this consolation. Peter was her
+    proxy. It was she who had fallen.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The only person in Niggertown who continued amiable to Peter Siner was
+    Cissie Dildine. The octoroon, perhaps, had other criteria by which to
+    judge a man than his success or mishaps dealing with a pettifogger.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Two or three days after the catastrophe, Cissie made an excursion to the
+    Siner cabin with a plate of cookies. Cissie was careful to place her
+    visit on exactly a normal footing. She brought her little cakes in the
+    role of one who saw no evil, spoke no evil, and heard no evil. But
+    somehow Cissie's visit increased the old woman's wrath. She remained
+    obstinately in the kitchen, and made remarks not only audible, but
+    arresting, through the thin partition that separated it from the poor
+    living-room.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie was hardly inside when a voice stated that it hated to see a gal
+    running after a man, trying to bait him with a lot of fum-diddles.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie gave Peter a single wide-eyed glance, and then attempted to
+    ignore the bodiless comment.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Here are some cookies, Mr. Siner," began the girl, rather nervously. "I
+    thought you and Ahnt Carolin'&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yeah, I 'magine dey's fuh me!" jeered the spectral voice.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Might like them," concluded the girl, with a little gasp.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I suttinly don' want no light-fingered hussy ma'yin' my son," proceeded
+    the voice, "an' de whole Dildine fambly 'll bear watchin'."
+</p>
+<a name="image-4"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="birth04.png"
+alt="In the Siner Cabin Old Caroline Siner Berated Her Boy.
+">
+<br>In the Siner Cabin Old Caroline Siner Berated Her Boy.
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    "Won't you have a seat?" asked Peter, exquisitely uncomfortable.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie handed him her plate in confusion.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, no, Mr. Siner," she hastened on, in her careful grammar, "I just&mdash;
+    ran over to&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "To fling herse'f in a nigger's face 'cause he's been North and got
+    made a fool uv," boomed the hidden censor.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I must go now," gasped Cissie.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter made a harried gesture.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Wait&mdash;wait till I get my hat."
+</p>
+<p>
+    He put the plate down with a swift glance around for his hat. He found
+    it, and strode to the door, following the girl. The two hurried out into
+    the street, followed by indistinct strictures from the kitchen. Cissie
+    breathed fast, with open lips. They moved rapidly along the semicircular
+    street almost with a sense of flight. The heat of the early autumn sun
+    stung them through their clothes. For some distance they walked in a
+    nervous silence, then Cissie said:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Your mother certainly hates me, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No," said Peter, trying to soften the situation; "it's me; she's
+    terribly hurt about&mdash;" he nodded to-ward the white section&mdash;"that
+    business."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie opened her clear brown eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Your own mother turned against you!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, she has a right to be," began Peter, defensively. "I ought to have
+    read that deed. It's amazing I didn't, but I&mdash;I really wasn't expecting
+    a trick, Mr. Hooker seemed so&mdash;so sympathetic&mdash;" He came to a lame halt,
+    staring at the dust through which they picked their way.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of course you weren't expecting tricks!" cried Cissie, warmly. "The
+    whole thing shows you're a gentleman used to dealing with gentlemen. But
+    of course these Hooker's Bend negroes will never see that!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter, surprised and grateful, looked at Cissie. Her construction of the
+    swindle was more flattering than any apology he had been able to frame
+    for himself.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Still, Cissie, I ought to have used the greatest care&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'm not talking about what you 'ought,'" stated the octoroon, crisply;
+    "I'm talking about what you are. When it comes to 'ought,' we colored
+    people must get what we can, any way we can. We fight from the bottom."
+    The speech held a viperish quality which for a moment caught the brown
+    man's attention; then he said:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "One thing is sure, I've lost my prestige, whatever it was worth."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl nodded slowly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "With the others you have, I suppose."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter glanced at Cissie. The temptation was strong to give the
+    conversation a personal turn, but he continued on the general topic:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, perhaps it's just as well. My prestige was a bit too flamboyant,
+    Cissie. All I had to do was to mention a plan. The Sons and Daughters
+    didn't even discuss it. They put it right through. That wasn't healthy.
+    Our whole system of society, all democracies are based on discussion.
+    Our old Witenagemot&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But it wasn't <i>our</i> old Witenagemot," said the girl.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well&mdash;no," admitted the mulatto, "that's true."
+</p>
+<p>
+    They moved along for some distance in silence, when the girl asked:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What are you going to do now, Peter?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Teach, and keep working for that training-school," stated Peter, almost
+    belligerently. "You didn't expect a little thing like a hundred dollars
+    to stop me, did you?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No-o-o," conceded Cissie, with some reserve of judgment in her tone.
+    Presently she added, "You could do a lot better up North, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "For whom?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, yourself," said the girl, a little surprised.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Siner nodded.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I thought all that out before I came back here, Cissie. A friend of
+    mine named Farquhar offered me a place with him up in Chicago,&mdash;a string
+    of garages. You'd like Farquhar, Cissie. He's a materialist with an
+    absolutely inexorable brain. He mechanizes the universe. I told him I
+    couldn't take his offer. 'It's like this,' I argued: 'if every negro
+    with a little ability leaves the South, our people down there will never
+    progress.' It's really that way, Cissie, it takes a certain mental
+    atmosphere to develop a people as a whole. A few individuals here and
+    there may have the strength to spring up by themselves, but the run of
+    the people&mdash;no. I believe one of the greatest curses of the colored race
+    in the South is the continual draining of its best individuals North.
+    Farquhar argued&mdash;" just then Peter saw that Cissie was not attending his
+    discourse. She was walking at his side in a respectful silence. He
+    stopped talking, and presently she smiled and said:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You haven't noticed my new brooch, Peter." She lifted her hand to her
+    bosom, and twisted the face of the trinket toward him. "You oughtn't to
+    have made me show it to you after you recommended it yourself." She made
+    a little <i>moue</i> of disappointment.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was a pretty bit of old gold that complimented the creamy skin. Peter
+    began admiring it at once, and, negro fashion, rather overstepped the
+    limits white beaux set to their praise, as he leaned close to her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At the moment the two were passing one of the oddest houses in
+    Niggertown. It was a two-story cabin built in the shape of a steamboat.
+    A little cupola represented a pilot-house, and two iron chimneys served
+    for smoke-stacks.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This queer building had been built by a negro stevedore because of a
+    deep admiration for the steamboats on which he had made his living.
+    Instead of steps at the front door, this boat-like house had a stage-
+    plank. As Peter strolled down the street with Cissie, admiring her
+    brooch, and suffused with a sense of her nearness, he happened to glance
+    up, and saw Tump Pack walk down the stage-plank, come out, and wait for
+    them at the gate.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There was something grim in the ex-soldier's face and in the set of his
+    gross lips as the two came up, but the aura of the girl prevented Peter
+    from paying much attention to it. As the two reached Tump, Peter had
+    just lifted his hand to his hat when Tump made a quick step out at the
+    gate, in front of them, and swung a furious blow at Peter's head.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie screamed. Siner staggered back with flames dancing before his
+    eyes. The soldier lunged after his toppling man with gorilla-like blows.
+    Hot pains shot through Peter's body. His head roared like a gong. The
+    sunlight danced about him in flashes. The air was full of black fists
+    smashing him, and not five feet away, the bullet head of Tump Pack
+    bobbed this way and that in the rapid shifts of his attack. A stab of
+    pain cut off Peter's breath. He stood with his diaphragm muscles tense
+    and paralyzed, making convulsive efforts to breathe. At that moment he
+    glimpsed the convexity of Tump's stomach. He drop-kicked at it with
+    foot-ball desperation. Came a loud explosive groan. Tump seemed to rise
+    a foot or two in air, turned over, and thudded down on his shoulders in
+    the dust. The soldier made no attempt to rise, but curled up, twisting
+    in agony.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter stood in the dust-cloud, wabbly, with roaring head. His open mouth
+    was full of dust. Then he became aware that negroes were running in from
+    every direction, shouting. Their voices whooped out what had happened,
+    who it was, who had licked. Tump Pack's agonized spasms brought howls of
+    mirth from the black fellows. Negro women were in the crowd, grinning, a
+    little frightened, but curious. Some were in Mother-Hubbards; one had
+    her hair half combed, one side in a kinky mattress, the other lying flat
+    and greased down to her scalp.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When Peter gradually became able to breathe and could think at all,
+    there was something terrible to him in Tump's silent attack and in this
+    extravagant black mirth over mere suffering. Cissie was gone,&mdash;had fled,
+    no doubt, at the beginning of the fight.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The prostrate man's tortured abdomen finally allowed him to twist around
+    toward Peter. His eyes were popped, and seemed all yellows and streaked
+    with swollen veins.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'll git you fuh dis," he wheezed, spitting dust "You did n' fight
+    fair, you&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The black chorus rolled their heads and pounded one another in a gale of
+    merriment.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter Siner turned away toward his home filled with sick thought. He had
+    never realized so clearly the open sore of Niggertown life and its great
+    need of healing, yet this very episode would further bar him, Peter,
+    from any constructive work. He foresaw, too plainly, how the white town
+    and Niggertown would react to this fight. There would be no
+    discrimination in the scandal. He, Peter Siner, would be grouped with
+    the boot-leggers and crap-shooters and women-chasers who filled
+    Niggertown with their brawls. As a matter of simple fact, he had been
+    fighting with another negro over a woman. That he was subjected to an
+    attack without warning or cause would never become a factor in the
+    analysis. He knew that very well.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Two of Peter's teeth were loose; his left jaw was swelling; his head
+    throbbed. With that queer perversity of human nerves, he kept biting his
+    sore teeth together as he walked along.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When he reached home, his mother met him at the door. Thanks to the
+    swiftness with which gossip spreads among black folk, she had already
+    heard of the fight, and incidentally had formed her judgment of the
+    matter. Now she looked in exasperation at her son's swelling face.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I 'cla' 'fo' Gawd!&mdash;ain't been home a week befo' he's fightin' over a
+    nigger wench lak a roustabout!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter's head throbbed so he could hardly make out the details of
+    Caroline's face.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But, Mother&mdash;" he began defensively, "I&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Me sweatin' over de wash-pot," the negress went on, "so's you could go
+    up North an' learn a lil sense; heah you comes back chasin' a dutty
+    slut!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But, Mother," he begged thickly, "I was simply walking home with Miss
+    Dildine."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Miss Dildine! Miss Dildine!" exploded the ponderous woman, with an
+    erasing gesture. "Ef you means dat stuck-up fly-by-night Cissie Dildine,
+    say so, and don' stan' thaiuh mouthin', 'Miss Dildine, Miss Dildine'!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Mother," asked Peter, thickly, through his swelling mouth, "do you want
+    to know what did happen?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I knows. I tol' you to keep away fum dat hussy. She's a fool 'bout her
+    bright color an' straight hair. Needn't be givin' herse'f no airs!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter stood in the doorway, steadying himself by the jamb. The world
+    still swayed from the blows he had received on the head.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What girl would you be willing for me to go with?" he asked in faint
+    satire.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Heah in Niggertown?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter nodded. The movement increased his headache.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "None a-tall. No Niggertown wench a-tall. When you mus' ma'y, I's
+    'speckin' you to go off summuhs an' pick yo' gal, lak you went off to
+    pick yo' aidjucation." She swung out a thick arm, and looked at Peter
+    out of the corner of her eyes, her head tilted to one side, as negresses
+    do when they become dramatically serious.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter left his mother to her stare and went to his own room. This
+    constant implication among Niggertown inhabitants that Niggertown and
+    all it held was worthless, mean, unhuman depressed Peter. The mulatto
+    knew the real trouble with Niggertown was it had adopted the white
+    village's estimate of it. The sentiment of the white village was
+    overpowering among the imitative negroes. The black folk looked into the
+    eyes of the whites and saw themselves reflected as chaff and skum and
+    slime, and no human being ever suggested that they were aught else.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter's room was a rough shed papered with old newspapers. All sorts of
+    yellow scare-heads streaked his walls. Hanging up was a crayon
+    enlargement of his mother, her broad face as unwrinkled as an egg and
+    drawn almost white, for the picture agents have discovered the only way
+    to please their black patrons is to make their enlargements as nearly
+    white as possible.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In one corner, on a home-made book-rack, stood Peter's library,&mdash;a Greek
+    book or two, an old calculus, a sociology, a psychology, a philosophy,
+    and a score of other volumes he had accumulated in his four college
+    years. As Peter, his head aching, looked at these, he realized how
+    immeasurably removed he was from the cool abstraction of the study.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The brown man sat down in an ancient rocking-chair by the window, leaned
+    back, and closed his eyes. His blood still whispered in his ears from
+    his fight. Notwithstanding his justification, he gradually became filled
+    with self-loathing. To fight&mdash;to hammer and kick in Niggertown's dust&mdash;
+    over a girl! It was an indignity.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter shifted his position in his chair, and his thoughts took another
+    trail. Tump's attack had been sudden and silent, much like a bulldog's.
+    The possibility of a simple friendship between a woman and a man never
+    entered Tump's head; it never entered any Niggertown head. Here all
+    attraction was reduced to the simplest terms of sex. Niggertown held no
+    delicate intimacies or reserves. Two youths could not go with the same
+    girl. Black women had no very great powers of choice over their suitors.
+    The strength of a man's arm isolated his sweetheart. That did not seem
+    right, resting the power of successful mating entirely upon brawn.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As Peter sat thinking it over, it came to him that the progress of any
+    race depended, finally, upon the woman having complete power of choosing
+    her mate. It is woman alone who consistently places the love accent upon
+    other matters than mere flesh and muscle. Only woman has much sex
+    selectiveness, or is inclined to select individuals with qualities of
+    mind and spirit.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For millions of years these instinctive spiritualizers of human breeding
+    stock have been hampered in their choice of mates by the unrestrained
+    right of the fighting male. Indeed, the great constructive work of
+    chivalry in the middle ages was to lay, unconsciously, the corner-stone
+    of modern civilization by resigning to the woman the power of choosing
+    from a group of males.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Siner stirred in his chair, surprised at whither his reverie had lead
+    him. He wondered how he had stumbled upon these thoughts. Had he read
+    them in a book? In point of fact, a beating administered by Tump Pack
+    had brought the brown man the first original idea he had entertained in
+    his life.
+</p>
+<p>
+    By this time, Peter's jaw had reached its maximum swelling and was eased
+    somewhat. He looked out of his little window, wondering whether Cissie
+    Dildine would choose him&mdash;or Tump Pack.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter was surprised to find blue dusk peering through his panes. All the
+    scare-heads on his walls had lapsed into a common obscurity. As he rose
+    slowly, so as not to start his head hurting again, he heard three rapid
+    pistol shots in the cedar glade between Niggertown and the white
+    village. He knew this to be the time-honored signal of boot-leggers
+    announcing that illicit whisky was for sale in the blackness of the
+    glade.
+</p>
+<a name="2HCH7"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER IV
+</h2>
+<p>
+    Next day the Siner-Pack fight was the focus of news interest in Hooker's
+    Bend. White mistresses extracted the story from their black maids, and
+    were amused by it or deprecated Cissie Dildine's morals as the mood
+    moved them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Along Main Street in front of the village stores, the merchants and
+    hangers-on discussed the affair. It was diverting that a graduate of
+    Harvard should come back to Hooker's Bend and immediately drop into such
+    a fracas. Old Captain Renfrew, one-time attorney at law and
+    representative of his county in the state legislature, sat under the
+    mulberry in front of the livery-stable and plunged into a long
+    monologue, with old Mr. Tomwit as listener, on the uneducability of the
+    black race.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Take a horse, sir," expounded the captain; "a horse can be trained to
+    add and put its name together out of an alphabet, but no horse could
+    ever write a promissory note and figure the interest on it, sir. Take a
+    dog. I've known dogs, sir, that could bring your mail from the post-
+    office, but I never saw a dog stop on the way home, sir, to read a post-
+    card."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here the old ex-attorney spat and renewed the tobacco in a black brier,
+    then proceeded to draw the parrallel between dogs and horses and Peter
+    Siner newly returned from Harvard.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "God'lmighty has set his limit on dogs, horses, and niggers, Mr. Tomwit.
+    Thus far and no farther. Take a nigger baby at birth; a nigger baby has
+    no fontanelles. It has no window toward heaven. Its skull is sealed up
+    in darkness. The nigger brain can never expand and absorb the universe,
+    sir. It can never rise on the wings of genius and weigh the stars, nor
+    compute the swing of the Pleiades. Thus far and no farther! It's
+    congenital.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now, take this Peter Siner and his disgraceful fight over a nigger
+    wench. Would you expect an educated stud horse to pay no attention to a
+    mare, sir? You can educate a stud till&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But hold on!" interrupted the old cavalryman. "I've known as
+    gentlemanly stallions as&mdash;as anybody!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old attorney cleared his throat, momentarily taken aback at this
+    failure of his metaphor. However he rallied with legal suppleness:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You are talking about thoroughbreds, sir."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I am, sir."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Good God, Tomwit! you don't imagine I'm comparing a nigger to a
+    thoroughbred, sir!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the street corners, or piled around on cotton-bales down on the wharf,
+    the negro men of the village discussed the fight. It was for the most
+    part a purely technical discussion of blows and counters and kicks, and
+    of the strange fact that a college education failed to enable Siner
+    utterly to annihilate his adversary. Jim Pink Staggs, a dapper gentleman
+    of ebony blackness, of pin-stripe flannels and blue serge coat&mdash;
+    altogether a gentleman of many parts&mdash;sat on one of the bales and
+    indolently watched an old black crone fishing from a ledge of rocks just
+    a little way below the wharf-boat. Around Jim Pink lounged and sprawled
+    black men and youths, stretching on the cotton-bales like cats in the
+    sunshine.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jim Pink was discussing Peter's education.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I 'fo' Gawd kain't see no use goin' off lak dat an' den comin' back an'
+    lettin' a white man cheat you out'n yo' hide an' taller, an' lettin' a
+    black man beat you up tull you has to 'kick him in the spivit. Ef a
+    aidjucation does you any good a-tall, you'd be boun' to beat de white man
+    at one en' uv de line, or de black man at de udder. Ef Peter ain't to be
+    foun' at eider en', wha is he?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Um-m-m!" "Eh-h-h!" "You sho spoke a moufful, Jim Pink!" came an
+    assenting chorus from the bales.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Eventually such gossip died away and took another flurry when a report
+    went abroad that Tump Pack was carrying a pistol and meant to shoot
+    Peter on sight. Then this in turn ceased to be news and of human
+    interest. It clung to Peter's mind longer than to any other person's in
+    Hooker's Bend, and it presented to the brown man a certain problem in
+    casuistry.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Should he accede to Tump Pack's possession of Cissie Dildine and give up
+    seeing the girl? Such a course cut across all his fine-spun theory about
+    women having free choice of their mates. However, the Harvard man could
+    not advocate a socialization of courtship when he himself would be the
+    first beneficiary. The prophet whose finger points selfward is damned.
+    Furthermore, all Niggertown would side with Tump Pack in such a
+    controversy. It was no uncommon thing for the very negro women to fight
+    over their beaux and husbands. As for any social theory changing this
+    r&eacute;gime, in the first place the negroes couldn't understand the theory;
+    in the second, it would have no effect if they could. Actions never grow
+    out of theories; theories grow out of actions. A theory is a looking-
+    glass that reflects the past and makes it look like the future, but the
+    glass really hides the future, and when humanity comes to a turn in its
+    course, there is always a smash-up, and a blind groping for the lost
+    path.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now, in regard to Cissie Dildine, Peter was not precisely afraid of Tump
+    Pack, but he could not clear his mind of the fact that Tump had been
+    presented with a medal by the Congress of the United States for killing
+    four men. Good sense and a care for his reputation and his skin told
+    Peter to abandon his theory of free courtship for the time being. This
+    meant a renunciation of Cissie Dildine; but he told himself he renounced
+    very little. He had no reason to think that Cissie cared a picayune
+    about him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter's work kept him indoors for a number of days following the
+    encounter. He was reviewing some primary school work in order to pass a
+    teacher's examination that would be held in Jonesboro, the county seat,
+    in about three weeks.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To the uninitiated it may seem strange to behold a Harvard graduate
+    stuck down day after day poring over a pile of dog-eared school-books&mdash;
+    third arithmetics, primary grammars, beginners' histories of Tennessee,
+    of the United States, of England; physiology, hygiene. It may seem
+    queer. But when it comes to standing a Wayne County teacher's
+    examination, the specific answers to the specific questions on a dozen
+    old examination slips are worth all the degrees Harvard ever did confer.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So, in his newspapered study, Peter Siner looked up long lists of
+    questions, and attempted to memorize the answers. But the series of
+    missteps he had made since returning to Hooker's Bend besieged his brain
+    and drew his thoughts from his catechism. It seemed strange that in so
+    short a time he should have wandered so far from the course he had set
+    for himself. His career in Niggertown formed a record of slight
+    mistakes, but they were not to be undone, and their combined force had
+    swung him a long way from the course he had plotted for himself. There
+    was no way to explain. Hooker's Bend would judge him by the sheer
+    surface of his works. What he had meant to do, his dreams and altruisms,
+    they would never surmise. That was the irony of the thing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then he thought of Cissie Dildine who did understand him. This thought
+    might have been Cissie's cue to enter the stage of Peter's mind. Her
+    oval, creamy face floated between Peter's eyes and the dog-eared primer.
+    He thought of Cissie wistfully, and of her lonely fight for good
+    English, good manners, and good taste. There was a pathos about Cissie.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter got up from his chair and looked out at his high window into the
+    early afternoon. He had been poring over primers for three days,
+    stuffing the most heterogeneous facts. His head felt thick and slightly
+    feverish. Through his window he saw the side of another negro cabin, but
+    by looking at an angle eastward he could see a field yellow with corn, a
+    valley, and, beyond, a hill wooded and glowing with the pageantry of
+    autumn. He thought of Cissie Dildine again, of walking with her among
+    the burning maples and the golden elms. He thought of the restfulness
+    such a walk with Cissie would bring.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As he mused, Peter's soul made one of those sharp liberating movements
+    that occasionally visit a human being. The danger of Tump Pack's
+    jealousy, the loss of his prestige, the necessity of learning the
+    specific answers to the examination questions, all dropped away from him
+    as trivial and inconsequent. He turned from the window, put away his
+    books and question-slips, picked up his hat, and moved out briskly
+    through his mother's room toward the door.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old woman in the kitchen must have heard him, for she called to him
+    through the partition, and a moment later her bulky form filled the
+    kitchen entrance. She wiped her hands on her apron and looked at him
+    accusingly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Wha you gwine, son?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "For a walk."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old negress tilted her head aslant and looked fixedly at him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You's gwine to dat Cissie Dildine's, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter looked at his mother, surprised and rather disconcerted that she
+    had guessed his intentions from his mere footsteps. The young man
+    changed his plans for his walk, and began a diplomatic denial:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, I'm going to walk by myself. I'm tired; I'm played out."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Tired?" repeated his mother, doubtfully. "You ain't done nothin' but
+    set an' turn th'ugh books an' write on a lil piece o' paper."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter was vaguely amused in his weariness, but thought that he concealed
+    his mirth from his mother.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That gets tiresome after a while."
+</p>
+<p>
+    She grunted her skepticism. As Peter moved for the door she warned him:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Peter, you knows ef Tump Pack sees you, he's gwine to shoot you sho!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, no he won't; that's Tump's talk."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Talk! talk! Whut's matter wid you, Peter? Dat nigger done git crowned
+    fuh killin' fo' men!" She stood staring at him with white eyes. Then she
+    urged, "Now, look heah, Peter, come along an' eat yo' supper."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, I really need a walk. I won't walk through Niggertown. I'll walk
+    out in the woods."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I jes made some salmon coquettes fuh you whut'll spile ef you don' eat
+    'em now."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I didn't know you were making croquettes," said Peter, with polite
+    interest.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, I is. I gotta can o' salmon fum Miss Mollie Brownell she'd opened
+    an' couldn't quite use. I doctered 'em up wid a lil vinegar an' sody,
+    an' dey is 'bout as pink as dey ever wuz."
+</p>
+<p>
+    A certain uneasiness and annoyance came over Peter at this persistent
+    use of unwholesome foods.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Look here, Mother, you're not using old canned goods that have been
+    left over?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old negress stood looking at him in silence, but lost her coaxing
+    expression.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I've told and told you about using any tainted or impure foods that the
+    white people can't eat."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, whut ef you is?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If it's too bad for them, it's too bad for you!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Caroline made a careless gesture.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Good Lawd, boy! I don' 'speck to eat whut's good fuh me! All I says is,
+    'Grub, keep me alive. Ef you do dat, you done a good day's wuck.'"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter was disgusted and shocked at his mother's flippancy. Modern
+    colleges are atheistic, but they do exalt three gods,&mdash;food,
+    cleanliness, and exercise. Now here was Peter's mother blaspheming one
+    of his trinity.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I wish you 'd let me know when you want anything Mother. I'll get it
+    fresh for you." His words were filial enough, but his tone carried his
+    irritation.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old negress turned back to the kitchen.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Huh, boy! you been fotch up on lef'-overs," she said, and disappeared
+    through the door.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter walked to the gate, let himself out, and started off on his
+    constitutional. His tiff with his mother renewed all his nervousness and
+    sense of failure. His litany of mistakes renewed their dolor in his
+    mind.
+</p>
+<p>
+    An autumn wind was blowing, and long plumes of dust whisked up out of
+    the curving street and swept over the ill-kept yards, past the cabins,
+    and toward the sere fields and chromatic woods. The wind beat at the
+    brown man; the dust whispered against his clothes, made him squint his
+    eyes to a crack and tickled his nostrils at each breath.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When Peter had gone two or three hundred yards, he became aware that
+    somebody was walking immediately behind him. Tump Pack popped into his
+    mind. He looked over his shoulder and then turned. Through the veils of
+    flying dust he made out some one, and a moment later identified not Tump
+    Pack, but the gangling form of Jim Pink Staggs, clad in a dark-blue
+    sack-coat and white flannel trousers with pin stripes. It was the sort
+    of costume affected by interlocutors of minstrel shows; it had a
+    minstrel trigness about it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As a matter of fact, Jim Pink was a sort of semi-professional minstrel.
+    Ordinarily, he ran a pressing-shop in the Niggertown crescent, but
+    occasionally he impressed all the dramatic talent of Niggertown and
+    really did take the road with a minstrel company. These barn-storming
+    expeditions reached down into Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas.
+    Sometimes they proved a great success, and the darkies rode back several
+    hundred dollars ahead. Sometimes they tramped back.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jim Pink hailed Peter with a wave of his hand and a grotesque
+    displacement of his mouth to one side of his face, which he had found
+    effective in his minstrel buffoonery.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Whut you raisin' so much dus' about?" he called out of the corner of
+    his mouth, while looking at Peter out of one half-closed eye.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter shook his head and smiled.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Thought it mout be Mister Hooker deliverin' dat lan' you bought." Jim
+    Pink flung his long, flexible face into an imitation of convulsed
+    laughter, then next moment dropped it into an intense gravity and
+    declared, "'Dus' thou art, to dus' returnest.'" The quotation seemed
+    fruitless and silly enough, but Jim Pink tucked his head to one side as
+    if listening intently to himself, then repeated sepulchrally, "'Dus'
+    thou art, to dus' returnest.' By the way, Peter," he broke off cheerily,
+    "you ain't happen to see Tump Pack, is you?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No," said Peter, unamused.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Is he borrowed a gun fum you?" inquired the minstrel, solemnly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No-o." Peter looked questioningly at the clown through half-closed
+    eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Huh, now dat's funny." Jim Pink frowned, and pulled down his loose
+    mouth and seemed to study. He drew out a pearl-handled knife, closed his
+    hand over it, blew on his fist, then opened the other hand, and
+    exhibited the knife lying in its palm, with the blade open. He seemed
+    surprised at the change and began cleaning his finger-nails. Jim Pink
+    was the magician at his shows.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter waited patiently for Jim Pink to impart his information, "Well,
+    what's the idea?" he asked at last.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Don' know. 'Pears lak dat knife won't stay in any one han'." He looked
+    at it, curiously.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I mean about Tump," said Peter, impatiently.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "O-o-oh, yeah; you mean 'bout Tump. Well, I thought Tump mus' uv
+    borrowed a gun fum you. He lef' Hobbett's corner wid a great big forty-
+    fo', inquirin' wha you is." Just then he glanced up, looked
+    penetratingly through the dust-cloud, and added, "Why, I b'lieve da' 's
+    Tump now."
+</p>
+<p>
+    With a certain tightening of the nerves, Peter followed his glance, but
+    made out nothing through the fogging dust. When he looked around at Jim
+    Pink again, the buffoon's face was a caricature of immense mirth. He
+    shook it sober, abruptly, minstrel fashion.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Maybe I's mistooken," he said solemnly. "Tump did start over heah wid a
+    gun, but Mister Dawson Bobbs done tuk him up fuh ca'yin' concealed
+    squidjulums; so Tump's done los' dat freedom uv motion in de pu'suit uv
+    happiness gua'anteed us niggers an' white folks by the Constitution uv
+    de Newnighted States uv America." Here Jim Pink broke into genuine
+    laughter, which was quite a different thing from his stage grimaces.
+    Peter stared at the fool astonished.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Has he gone to jail?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Not prezactly."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well&mdash;confound it!&mdash;exactly what did happen, Jim Pink?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He gone to Mr. Cicero Throgmartins'."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What did he go there for?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Couldn't he'p hisse'f."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Look here, you tell me what's happened."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Mr. Bobbs ca'ied Tump thaiuh. Y' see, Mr. Throgmartin tried to hire
+    Tump to pick cotton. Tump didn't haf to, because he'd jes shot fo'
+    natchels in a crap game. So to-day, when Tump starts over heah wid his
+    gun, Mr. Bobbs 'resses Tump. Mr. Throgmartin bails him out, so now
+    Tump's gone to pick cotton fuh Mr. Throgmartin to pay off'n his fine."
+    Here Jim Pink yelped into honest laughter at Tump's undoing so that dust
+    got into his nose and mouth and set him sneezing and coughing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "How long's he up for?" asked Peter, astonished and immensely relieved
+    at this outcome of Tump's expedition against himself.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jim Pink controlled his coughing long enough to gasp:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Th-thutty days, ef he don' run off," and fell to laughing again.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter Siner, long before, had adopted the literate man's notion of what
+    is humorous, and Tump's mishap was slap-stick to him. Nevertheless, he
+    did smile. The incident filled him with extraordinary relief and
+    buoyancy. At the next corner he made some excuse to Jim Pink, and turned
+    off up an alley.
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    Peter walked along with his shoulders squared and the dust peppering his
+    back. Not till Tump was lifted from his mind did he realize what an
+    incubus the soldier had been. Peter had been forced into a position
+    where, if he had killed Tump, he would have been ruined; if he had not,
+    he would probably have murdered. Now he was free&mdash;for thirty days.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He swung along briskly in the warm sunshine toward the multicolored
+    forest. The day had suddenly become glorious. Presently he found himself
+    in the back alleys near Cissie's house. He was passing chicken-houses
+    and stables. Hogs in open pens grunted expectantly at his footsteps.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter had not meant to go to Cissie's at all, but now, when he saw he
+    was right behind her dwelling, she seemed radiantly accessible to him.
+    Still, it struck him that it would not be precisely the thing to call on
+    Cissie immediately after Tump's arrest. It might look as if&mdash;Then the
+    thought came that, as a neighbor, he should stop and tell Cissie of
+    Tump's misfortune. He really ought to offer his services to Cissie, if
+    he could do anything. At Cissie's request he might even aid Tump Pack
+    himself. Peter got himself into a generous glow as he charged up a side
+    alley, around to a rickety front gate. Let Niggertown criticize as it
+    would, he was braced by a high altruism.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter did not shout from the gate, as is the fashion of the crescent,
+    but walked up a little graveled path lined with dusty box-shrubs and
+    tapped at the unpainted door.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Doors in Niggertown never open straight away to visitors. A covert
+    inspection first takes place from the edges of the window-blinds.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter stood in the whipping dust, and the caution of the inmates spurred
+    his impatience to see Cissie. At last the door opened, and Cissie
+    herself was in the entrance. She stood quite still a moment, looking at
+    Peter with eyes that appeared frightened.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I&mdash;I wasn't expecting to see you," she stammered.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No? I came by with news, Cissie."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "News?" She seemed more frightened than ever. "Peter, you&mdash;you haven't&mdash;
+    " She paused, regarding him with big eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Tump Pack's been arrested," explained Peter, quickly, sensing the
+    tragedy in her thoughts. "I came by to tell you. If there's anything I
+    can do for you&mdash;or him, I'll do it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    His altruistic offer sounded rather foolish in the actual saying.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He could not tell from her face whether she was glad or sorry.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What did they arrest him for?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Carrying a pistol."
+</p>
+<p>
+    She paused a moment.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Will he&mdash;get out soon?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He's sentenced for thirty days."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie dropped her hands with a hopeless gesture.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, isn't this all sickening!&mdash;sickening!" she exclaimed. She looked
+    tired. Ghosts of sleepless nights circled her eyes. Suddenly she said,
+    "Come in. Oh, do come in, Peter." She reached out and almost pulled him
+    in. She was so urgent that Peter might have fancied Tump Pack at the
+    gate with his automatic. He did glance around, but saw nobody passing
+    except the Arkwright boy. The hobbledehoy walked down the other side of
+    the street, hands thrust in pockets, with the usual discontented
+    expression on his face.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie slammed the door shut, and the two stood rather at a loss in the
+    sudden gloom of the hall. Cissie broke into a brief, mirthless laugh.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Peter, it's hard to be nice in Niggertown. I&mdash;I just happened to think
+    how folks would gossip&mdash;you coming here as soon as Tump was arrested."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Perhaps I'd better go," suggested Peter, uncomfortably.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie reached up and caught his lapel.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, no, don't feel that way! I'm glad you came, really. Here, let's go
+    through this way to the arbor. It isn't a bad place to sit."
+</p>
+<p>
+    She led the way silently through two dark rooms. Before she opened the
+    back door, Peter could hear Cissie's mother and a younger sister moving
+    around the outside of the house to give up the arbor to Cissie and her
+    company.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The arbor proved a trellis of honeysuckle over the back door, with a
+    bench under it. A film of dust lay over the dense foliage, and a few
+    withered blooms pricked its grayish green. The earthen floor of the
+    arbor was beaten hard and bare by the naked feet of children.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie sat down on the bench and indicated a place beside her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I've been so uneasy about you! I've been wondering what on earth you
+    could do about it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It's a snarl, all right," he said, and almost immediately began
+    discussing the peculiar <i>impasse</i> in which his difficulty with Tump
+    had landed him. Cissie sat listening with a serious, almost tragic face,
+    giving a little nod now and then. Once she remarked in her precise way:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The trouble with a gentleman fighting a rowdy, the gentleman has all to
+    lose and nothing to gain. If you don't live among your own class, Peter,
+    your life will simmer down to an endless diplomacy."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You mean deceit, I suppose."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, I mean diplomacy. But that isn't a very healthy frame of mind,&mdash;
+    always to be suppressing and guarding yourself."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter didn't know about that. He was inclined to argue the matter, but
+    Cissie wouldn't argue. She seemed to assume that all of her statements
+    were axioms, truths reduced to the simplest possible mental terms, and
+    that proof was unnecessary, if not impossible. So the topic went into
+    the discard.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Been baking my brains over a lot of silly little exam questions,"
+    complained Peter. "Can you trace the circulation of the blood? I think
+    it leaves the grand central station through the right aorta, and then,
+    after a schedule run of nine minutes, you can hear it coming up the
+    track through the left ventricle, with all the passengers eager to get
+    off and take some refreshment at the lungs. I have the general idea, but
+    the exact routing gets me."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie laughed accommodatingly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I wonder why it's necessary for everybody to know that once. I did. I
+    could follow the circulation the right way or backward."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Must have been harder backward, going against the current."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie laughed again. A girl's part in a witty conversation might seem
+    easy at first sight. She has only to laugh at the proper intervals.
+    However, these intervals are not always distinctly marked. Some girls
+    take no chances and laugh all the time.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie's appreciation was the sedative Peter needed. The relief of her
+    laughter and her presence ran along his nerves and unkinked them, like a
+    draft of Kentucky Special after a debauch. The curves of her cheek, the
+    tilt of her head, and the lift of her dull-blue blouse at the bosom wove
+    a great restfulness about Peter. The brooch of old gold glinted at her
+    throat. The heavy screen of the arbor gave them a sweet sense of
+    privacy. The conversation meandered this way and that, and became quite
+    secondary to the feeling of the girl's nearness and sympathy. Their talk
+    drifted back to Peter's mission here in Hooker's Bend, and Cissie was
+    saying:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The trouble is, Peter, we are out of our <i>milieu</i>." Some portion
+    of Peter's brain that was not basking in the warmth and invitation of
+    the girl answered quite logically:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, but if I could help these people, Cissie, reconstruct our life
+    here culturally&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie shook her head. "Not culturally."
+</p>
+<p>
+    This opposition shunted more of Peter's thought to the topic in hand. He
+    paused interrogatively.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Racially," said Cissie.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Racially?" repeated the man, quite lost.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie nodded, looking straight into his eyes. "You know very well,
+    Peter, that you and I are not&mdash;are not anything near full bloods. You
+    know that racially we don't belong in&mdash;Niggertown."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter never knew exactly how this extraordinary sentence had come about,
+    but in a kind of breath he realized that he and this almost white girl
+    were not of Niggertown. No doubt she had been arguing that he, Peter,
+    who was one sort of man, was trying to lead quite another sort of men
+    moved by different racial impulses, and such leading could only come to
+    confusion. He saw the implications at once.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was an extraordinary idea, an explosive idea, such as Cissie seemed
+    to have the faculty of touching off. He sat staring at her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was the white blood in his own veins that had sent him struggling up
+    North, that had brought him back with this flame in his heart for his
+    own people. It was the white blood in Cissie that kept her struggling to
+    stand up, to speak an unbroken tongue, to gather around her the delicate
+    atmosphere and charm of a gentlewoman. It was the Caucasian in them
+    buried here in Niggertown. It was their part of the tragedy of millions
+    of mixed blood in the South. Their common problem, a feeling of their
+    joint isolation, brought Peter to a sense of keen and tingling nearness
+    to the girl.
+</p>
+<p>
+    She was talking again, very earnestly, almost tremulously:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why don't you go North, Peter? I think and think about you staying
+    here. You simply can't grow up and develop here. And now, especially,
+    when everybody doubts you. If you'd go North&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What about you, Cissie? You say we're together&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, I'm a woman. We haven't the chance to do as we will."
+</p>
+<p>
+    A kind of titillation went over Peter's scalp and body.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then you are going to stay here and marry&mdash;Tump?" He uttered the name
+    in a queer voice.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tears started in Cissie's eyes; her bosom lifted to her quick breathing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I&mdash;I don't know what I'm going to do," she stammered miserably.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter leaned over her with a drumming heart; he heard her catch her
+    breath.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You don't care for Tump?" he asked with a dry mouth.
+</p>
+<p>
+    She gasped out something, and the next moment Peter felt her body sink
+    limply in his groping arms. They clung together closely, quiveringly.
+    Three nights of vigil, each thinking miserably and wistfully of the
+    other, had worn the nerves of both man and girl until they were ready to
+    melt together at a touch. Her soft body clinging to his own, the little
+    nervous pressures of her arms, her eased breathing at his neck, wiped
+    away Siner's long sense of strain. Strength and peace seemed to pour
+    from her being into his by a sort of spiritual osmosis. She resigned her
+    head to his palm in order that he might lift her lips to his when he
+    pleased. After all, there is no way for a man to rest without a woman.
+    All he can do is to stop work.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For a long time they sat transported amid the dusty honeysuckles and
+    withered blooms, but after a while they began talking a little at a time
+    of the future, their future. They felt so indissolubly joined that they
+    could not imagine the future finding them apart. There was no need for
+    any more trouble with Tump Pack. They would marry quietly, and go away
+    North to live. Peter thought of his friend Farquhar. He wondered if
+    Farquhar's attitude would be just the same toward Cissie as it was
+    toward him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "North," was the burden of the octoroon's dreams. They would go North to
+    Chicago. There were two hundred and fifty thousand negroes in Chicago, a
+    city within itself three times the size of Nashville. Up North she and
+    Peter could go to theaters, art galleries, could enter any church, could
+    ride in street-cars, railroad-trains, could sleep and eat at any hotel,
+    live authentic lives.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was Cissie planning her emancipation, planning to escape her lifelong
+    disabilities.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, I'll be so glad! so glad! so glad!" she sobbed, and drew Peter's
+    head passionately down to her deep bosom.
+</p>
+<a name="2HCH8"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER V
+</h2>
+<p>
+    Peter Siner walked home from the Dildine cabin that night rather
+    dreading to meet his mother, for it was late. Cissie had served
+    sandwiches and coffee on a little table in the arbor, and then had kept
+    Peter hours afterward. Around him still hung the glamour of Cissie's
+    little supper. He could still see her rounded elbows that bent softly
+    backward when she extended an arm, and the glimpses of her bosom when
+    she leaned to hand him cream or sugar. She had accomplished the whole
+    supper in the white manner, with all poise and daintiness. In fact, no
+    one is more exquisitely polite than an octoroon woman when she desires
+    to be polite, when she elevates the subserviency of her race into
+    graciousness.
+</p>
+<p>
+    However, the pleasure and charm of Cissie were fading under the
+    approaching abuse that Caroline was sure to pour upon the girl. Peter
+    dreaded it. He walked slowly down the dark semicircle, planning how he
+    could best break to his mother the news of his engagement. Peter knew
+    she would begin a long bill of complaints,&mdash;how badly she was treated,
+    how she had sacrificed herself, her comfort, how she had washed and
+    scrubbed. She would surely charge Cissie with being a thief and a drab,
+    and all the announcements of engagements that Peter could make would
+    never induce the old woman to soften her abuse. Indeed, they would make
+    her worse.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So Peter walked on slowly, smelling the haze of dust that hung in the
+    blackness. Out on the Big Hill, in the glade, Peter caught an occasional
+    glimmer of light where crap-shooters and boot-leggers were beginning
+    their nightly carousal.
+</p>
+<p>
+    These evidences of illicit trades brought Peter a thrill of disgust. In
+    a sort of clear moment he saw that he could not keep Cissie in such a
+    sty as this. He could not rear in such a place as this any children that
+    might come to him and Cissie. His thoughts drifted back to his mother,
+    and his dread of her tongue.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Siner cabin was dark and tightly shut when Peter let himself in at
+    the gate and walked to the door. He stood a moment listening, and then
+    gently pressed open the shutter. A faint light burned on the inside, a
+    night-lamp with an old-fashioned brass bowl. It sat on the floor, turned
+    low, at the foot of his mother's bed. The mean room was mainly in
+    shadow. The old-style four-poster in which Caroline slept was an
+    indistinct mound. The air was close and foul with the bad ventilation of
+    all negro sleeping-rooms. The brass lamp, turned low, added smoke and
+    gas to the tight quarters.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The odor caught Peter in the nose and throat, and once more stirred up
+    his impatience with his mother's disregard of hygiene. He tiptoed into
+    the room and decided to remove the lamp and open the high, small window
+    to admit a little air. He moved noiselessly and had stooped for the lamp
+    when there came a creaking and a heavy sigh from the bed, and the old
+    negress asked:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Is dat you, son?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter was tempted to stand perfectly still and wait till his mother
+    dozed again, thus putting off her inevitable tirade against Cissie; but
+    he answered in a low tone that it was he.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Whut you gwine do wid dat lamp, son?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Go to bed by it, Mother."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, bring hit back." She breathed heavily, and moved restlessly in
+    the old four-poster. As Peter stood up he saw that the patched quilts
+    were all askew over her shapeless bulk. Evidently, she had not been
+    resting well.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter's conscience smote him again for worrying his mother with his
+    courtship of Cissie, yet what could he do? If he had wooed any other
+    girl in the world, she would have been equally jealous and grieved. It
+    was inevitable that she should be disappointed and bitter; it was bound
+    up in the very part and parcel of her sacrifice. A great sadness came
+    over Peter. He almost wished his mother would berate him, but she
+    continued to lie there, breathing heavily under her disarranged covers.
+    As Peter passed into his room, the old negress called after him to
+    remind him to bring the light back when he was through with it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This time something in her tone alarmed Peter.  He paused in the
+    doorway.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Are you sick, Mother?" he asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old woman gave a yawn that changed to a groan.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I&mdash;I ain't feelin' so good."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What's the matter, Mother?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "My stomach, my&mdash;" But at that moment her sentence changed to an
+    inarticulate sound, and she doubled up in bed as if caught in a spasm of
+    acute agony.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter hurried to her, thoroughly frightened, and saw sweat streaming
+    down her face. He stared down at her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Mother, you are sick! What can I do?" he cried, with a man's
+    helplessness.
+</p>
+<p>
+    She opened her eyes with an effort, panting now as the edge of the agony
+    passed. There was a movement under the quilts, and she thrust out a
+    rubber hot-water bottle.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Fill it&mdash;fum de kittle," she wheezed out, then relaxed into groans, and
+    wiped clumsily at the sweat on her shining black face.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter seized the bottle and ran into the kitchen. There he found a brisk
+    fire popping in the stove and a kettle of water boiling. It showed him,
+    to his further alarm, that his mother had been trying to minister to
+    herself until forced to bed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The man scalded a finger and thumb pouring water into the flared mouth,
+    but after a moment twisted on the top and hurried into the sick-room.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He reached the old negress just as another knife of pain set her
+    writhing and sweating. She seized the hot-water bottle, pushed it under
+    the quilts, and pressed it to her stomach, then lay with eyes and teeth
+    clenched tight, and her thick lips curled in a grin of agony.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter set the lamp on the table, said he was going for the doctor, and
+    started.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old woman hunched up in bed. With the penuriousness of her station
+    and sacrifices, she begged Peter not to go; then groaned out, "Go tell
+    Mars' Renfrew," but the next moment did not want Peter to leave her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter said he would get Nan Berry to stay while he was gone. The Berry
+    cabin lay diagonally across the street. Peter ran over, thumped on the
+    door, and shouted his mother's needs. As soon as he received an answer,
+    he started on over the Big Hill toward the white town.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter was seriously frightened. His run to Dr. Jallup's, across the Big
+    Hill, was a series of renewed strivings for speed. Every segment of his
+    journey seemed to seize him and pin him down in the midst of the night
+    like a bug caught in a black jelly. He seemed to progress not at all.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now he was in the cedar glade. His muffled flight drove in the sentries
+    of the crap-shooters, and gamesters blinked out their lights and
+    listened to his feet stumbling on through the darkness.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After an endless run in the glade, Peter found himself on top of the
+    hill, amid boulders and outcrops limestone and cedar-shrubs. His flash-
+    light picked out these objects, limned them sharply against the
+    blackness, then dropped them into obscurity again.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He tried to run faster. His impatience subdivided the distance into
+    yards and feet. Now he was approaching that boulder, now he was passing
+    it; now he was ten feet beyond, twenty, thirty. Perhaps his mother was
+    dying, alone save for stupid Nan Berry.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now he was going down the hill past the white church. All that was
+    visible was its black spire set against a web of stars. He was making no
+    speed at all. He panted on. His heart hammered. His legs drummed with
+    Lilliputian paces. Now he was among the village stores, all utterly
+    black. At one point the echo of his feet chattered back at him, as if
+    some other futile runner strained amid vast spaces of blackness.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After a long time he found himself running up a residential street, and
+    presently, far ahead, he saw the glow of Dr. Jallup's porch light. Its
+    beam had the appearance of coming from a vast distance. When he reached
+    the place, he flung his breast against the top panel of the doctor's
+    fence and held on, exhausted. He drew in his breath, and began shouting,
+    "Hello, Doctor!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter called persistently, and as he commanded more breath, he called
+    louder and louder, "Hello, Doctor! Hello, Doctor! Hello, Doctor!" in
+    tones edging on panic.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The doctor's house might have been dead. Somewhere a dog began barking.
+    High in the Southern sky a star looked down remotely on Peter's frantic
+    haste. The black man stood in the black night with cries: "Hello,
+    Doctor! Hello, Doctor! Hello, Doctor!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    At last, in despair, he tried to think of other doctors. He thought of
+    telephoning to Jonesboro. Just as he decided he must turn away there
+    came a stirring in the dead house, a flicker of light appeared on the
+    inside now here, now there; it steadied into a tiny beam and approached
+    the door. The door opened, and Dr. Jallup's head and breast appeared,
+    illuminated against the black interior.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "My mother's sick, Doctor," began Peter, in immense relief.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Who is it?" inquired the half-clad man, impassively.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Caroline Siner; she's been taken with a&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The physician lifted his light a trifle in an effort to see Peter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Lemme see: she's that fat nigger woman that lives in a three-roomed
+    house&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'll show you the way," said Peter. "She's very ill."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The half-dressed man shook his head.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, Ca'line Siner owes me a five-dollar doctor's bill already. Our
+    county medical association made a rule that no niggers should&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    With a drying mouth, Peter Siner stared at the man of medicine.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But, my God, Doctor," gasped the son, "I'll pay you&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Have you got the money there in your pocket?" asked Jallup,
+    impassively.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A sort of chill traveled deliberately over Peter's body and shook his
+    voice.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "N-no, but I can get it&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, you can all get it," stated the physician in dull irritation. "I'm
+    tired of you niggers running up doctors' bills nobody can collect. You
+    never have more than the law allows; your wages never get big enough to
+    garnishee." His voice grew querulous as he related his wrongs. "No, I'm
+    not going to see Ca'line Siner. If she wants me to visit her, let her
+    send ten dollars to cover that and back debts, and I'll&mdash;" The end of
+    his sentence was lost in the closing of his door. The light he carried
+    declined from a beam to a twinkling here and there, and then vanished in
+    blackness. Dr. Jallup's house became dead again. The little porch light
+    in its glass box might have been a candle burning before a tomb.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter Siner stood at the fence, licking his dry lips, with nerves
+    vibrating like a struck bell. He pushed himself slowly away from the top
+    plank and found his legs so weak that he could hardly walk. He moved
+    slowly, back down the unseen street. The dog he had disturbed gave a few
+    last growls and settled into silence.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter moved along, wetting his dry lips, and stirring feebly among his
+    dazed thoughts, hunting some other plan of action. There was a tiny
+    burning spot on the left side of his occiput. It felt like a heated
+    cambric needle which had been slipped into his scalp. Then he realized
+    that he must go home, get ten dollars, and bring them back to Dr.
+    Jallup. He started to run, but almost toppled over on his leaden legs.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He plodded through the darkness, retracing the endless trail to
+    Niggertown. As he passed a dark mass of shrubbery and trees, he recalled
+    his mother's advice to ask aid of Captain Renfrew. It was the old
+    Renfrew place that Peter was passing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The negro hesitated, then turned in at the gate in the bare hope of
+    obtaining the ten dollars at once. Inside the gate Peter's feet
+    encountered the scattered bricks of an old walk. The negro stood and
+    called Captain Renfrew's name in a guarded voice. He was not at all sure
+    of his action.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter had called twice and was just about to go when a lamp appeared
+    around the side of the house on a long portico that extended clear
+    around the building. Bathed in the light of the lamp which he held over
+    his head, there appeared an old man wearing a worn dressing gown.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Who is it?" he asked in a wavery voice.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter told his name and mission.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old Captain continued holding up his light.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, Peter Siner; Caroline Siner's sick? All right I'll have Jallup run
+    over; I'll phone him."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter was beginning his thanks preparatory to going, when the old man
+    interrupted.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, just stay here until Jallup comes by in his or He'll pick us both
+    up. It'll save time. Come on inside. What's the matter with old
+    Caroline?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old dressing-gown led the way around the continuous piazza, to a
+    room that stood open and brightly lighted on the north face of the old
+    house.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A great relief came to Peter at this unexpected succor. He followed
+    around the piazza, trying to describe Caroline's symptoms. The room
+    Peter entered was a library, a rather stately old room, lined with books
+    all around the walls to about as high as a man could reach. Spaces for
+    doors and windows were let in among the book-cases. The volumes
+    themselves seemed composed mainly of histories and old-fashioned
+    scientific books, if Peter could judge from a certain severity of their
+    bindings. On a big library table burned a gasolene-lamp, which threw a
+    brilliant whiteness all over the room. The table was piled with books
+    and periodicals. Books and papers were heaped on every chair in the
+    study except a deep Morris chair in which the old Captain had been
+    sitting. A big meridional globe, about two and a half feet in diameter,
+    gleamed through a film of dust in the embrasure of a window. The whole
+    room had the womanless look of a bachelor's quarters, and was flavored
+    with tobacco and just a hint of whisky.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Old Captain Renfrew evidently had been reading when Peter called from
+    the gate. Now the old man went to a telephone and rang long and briskly
+    to awaken the boy who slept in the central office. Peter fidgeted as the
+    old Captain stood with receiver to ear.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Hard to wake." The old gentleman spoke into the transmitter, but was
+    talking to Peter. "Don't be so uneasy, Peter. Human beings are harder to
+    kill than you think."
+</p>
+<p>
+    There was a kindliness, even a fellowship, in Captain Renfrew's tones
+    that spread like oil over Peter's raw nerves. It occurred to the negro
+    that this was the first time he had been addressed as an authentic human
+    being since his conversation with the two Northern men on the Pullman,
+    up in Illinois. It surprised him. It was sufficient to take his mind
+    momentarily from his mother. He looked a little closely at the old man
+    at the telephone. The Captain wore few indices of kindness. Lines of
+    settled sarcasm netted his eyes and drooped away from his old mouth. The
+    very swell of his full temples and their crinkly veins marked a sardonic
+    old man.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At last he roused central over the wire, and impressed upon him the
+    necessity of creating a stridor in Dr. Jallup's dead house, and a moment
+    later a continued buzzing in the receiver betokened the operator's
+    efforts to do so.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old gentleman turned around at last, holding the receiver a little
+    distance from his ear.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I understand you went to Harvard, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, sir." Peter took his eyes momentarily from the telephone. The old
+    Southerner in the dressing-gown scrutinized the brown man. He cleared
+    his throat.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You know, Peter, it gives me a&mdash;a certain satisfaction to see a Harvard
+    man in Hooker's Bend. I'm a Harvard man myself."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter stood in the brilliant light, astonished, not at Captain Renfrew's
+    being a Harvard man,&mdash;he had known that,&mdash;but that this old gentleman
+    was telling the fact to him, Peter Siner, a negro graduate of Harvard.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was extraordinary; it was tantamount to an offer of friendship, not
+    patronage. Such an offer in the South disturbed Peter's poise; it
+    touched him queerly. And it seemed to explain why Captain Renfrew had
+    received Peter so graciously and was now arranging for Dr. Jallup to
+    visit Caroline.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter was moved to the conventional query, asking in what class the
+    Captain had been graduated. But while his very voice was asking it,
+    Peter thought what a strange thing it was that he, Peter Siner, a negro,
+    and this lonely old gentleman, his benefactor, were spiritual brothers,
+    both sprung from the loins of Harvard, that ancient mother of souls.
+</p>
+<a name="image-5"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="birth05.png"
+alt="The Old Gentleman Turned Around at Last
+">
+<br>The Old Gentleman Turned Around at Last
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    From the darkness outside, Dr. Jallup's horn summmoned the two men.
+    Captain Renfrew got out of his gown and into his coat and turned off his
+    gasolene light. They walked around the piazza to the front of the house.
+    In the street the head-lights of the roadster shot divergent rays
+    through the darkness. They went out. The old Captain took a seat in the
+    car beside the physician, while Peter stood on the running-board. A
+    moment later, the clutch snarled, and the machine puttered down the
+    street. Peter clung to the standards of the auto top, peering ahead.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The men remained almost silent. Once Dr. Jallup, watching the dust that
+    lay modeled in sharp lights and shadows under the head-lights, mentioned
+    lack of rain. Their route did not lead over the Big Hill. They turned
+    north at Hobbett's corner, drove around by River Street, and presently
+    entered the northern end of the semicircle.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The speed of the car was reduced to a crawl in the bottomless dust of
+    the crescent. The head-lights swept slowly around the cabins on the
+    concave side of the street, bringing them one by one into stark
+    brilliance and dropping them into obscurity. The smell of refuse, of
+    uncleaned stables and sties and outhouses hung in the darkness. Peter
+    bent down under the top of the motor and pointed out his place. A minute
+    later the machine came to a noisy halt and was choked into silence. At
+    that moment, in the sweep of the head-light, Peter saw Viny Berry, one
+    of Nan's younger sisters, coming up from Niggertown's public well,
+    carrying two buckets of water.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Viny was hurrying, plashing the water over the sides of her buckets. The
+    importance of her mission was written in her black face.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "She's awful thirsty," she called to Peter in guarded tones. "Nan called
+    me to fetch some fraish water fum de well."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter took the water that had been brought from the semi-cesspool at the
+    end of the street. Viny hurried across the street to home and to bed.
+    With the habitual twinge of his sanitary conscience, Peter considered
+    the water in the buckets.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We'll have to boil this," he said to the doctor.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Boil it?" repeated Jallup, blankly. Then, he added: "Oh, yes&mdash;boil.
+    Certainly."
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    A repellent odor of burned paper, breathed air, and smoky lights filled
+    the close room. Nan had lighted another lamp and now the place was
+    discernible in a dull yellow glow. In the corner lay a half-burned wisp
+    of paper. Nan herself stood by the mound on the bed, putting straight
+    the quilts that her patient had twisted awry.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "She sho am bad, Doctor," said the colored woman, with big eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Seen in the light, Dr. Jallup was a little sandy-bearded man with a
+    round, simple face, oddly overlaid with that inscrutability carefully
+    cultivated by country doctors. With professional cheeriness, he
+    approached the mound of bedclothes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "A little under the weather, Aunt Ca'line?" He slipped his fingers
+    alongside her throat to test her temperature, at the same time drawing a
+    thermometer from his waistcoat pocket.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old negress stirred, and looked up out of sick eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Doctor," she gasped, "I sho got a misery heah." She indicated her
+    stomach.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "How do you feel?" he asked hopefully.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The woman panted, then whispered:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Lak a knife was a-cuttin' an' a-tearin' out my innards." She rested,
+    then added, "Not so bad now; feels mo' lak somp'n's tearin' in de nex'
+    room."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Like something tearing in the next room?" repeated Jallup, emptily.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, suh," she whispered. "I jes can feel hit&mdash;away off, lak."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The doctor attempted to take her temperature, but the thermometer in her
+    mouth immediately nauseated her, so he slipped the instrument under her
+    arm.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Old Caroline groaned at the slightest exertion, then, as she tossed her
+    black head, she caught a glimpse of old Captain Renfrew.
+</p>
+<p>
+    She halted abruptly in her restlessness, stared at the old gentleman,
+    wet her dry lips with a queer brown-furred tongue.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Is dat you, Mars' Milt?" she gasped in feeble astonishment. A moment
+    later she guessed the truth. "I s'pose you had to bring de doctor. 'Fo'
+    Gawd, Mars' Milt&mdash;" She lay staring, with the covers rising and falling
+    as she gasped for breath. Her feverish eyes shifted back and forth
+    between the grim old gentleman and the tall, broad-shouldered brown man
+    at the foot of her bed. She drew a baggy black arm from under the cover.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Da' 's Peter, Mars' Milt," she pointed. "Da' 's Peter, my son. He&mdash;he
+    use' to be my son 'fo' he went off to school; but sence he come home, he
+    been a-laughin' at me." Tears came to her eyes; she panted for a moment,
+    then added: "Yeah, he done marked his mammy down fuh a nigger, Mars'
+    Milt. Whut I thought wuz gwine be sweet lays bitter in my mouf." She
+    worked her thick lips as if the rank taste of her sickness were the very
+    flavor of her son's ingratitude.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A sudden gasp and twist of her body told Nan that the old woman was
+    again seized with a spasm. The neighbor woman took swift control, and
+    waved out Peter and old Mr. Renfrew, while she and the doctor aided the
+    huge negress.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The two evicted men went into Peter's room and shut the door. Peter,
+    unnerved, groped, and presently found and lighted a lamp. He put it down
+    on his little table among his primary papers and examination papers. He
+    indicated to Captain Renfrew the single chair in the room.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But the old gentleman stood motionless in the mean room, with its head-
+    line streaked walls. Sounds of the heavy lifting of Peter's mother came
+    through the thin door and partition with painful clearness. Peter opened
+    his own small window, for the air in his room was foul.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Captain Renfrew stood in silence, with a remote sarcasm in his wrinkled
+    eyes. What was in his heart, why he had subjected himself to the
+    noisomeness of failing flesh, Peter had not the faintest idea. Once, out
+    of studently habit, he glanced at Peter's philosophic books, but
+    apparently he read the titles without really observing them. Once he
+    looked at Peter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Peter," he said colorlessly, "I hope you'll be careful of Caroline's
+    feelings if she ever gets up again. She has been very faithful to you,
+    Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter's eyes dampened. A great desire mounted in him to explain himself
+    to this strange old gentleman, to show him how inevitable had been the
+    breach. For some reason a veritable passion to reveal his heart to this
+    his sole benefactor surged through the youth.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Mr. Renfrew," he stammered, "Mr. Renfrew&mdash;I&mdash;I&mdash;" His throat abruptly
+    ached and choked. He felt his face distort in a spasm of uncontrollable
+    grief. He turned quickly from this strange old man with a remote sarcasm
+    in his eyes and a remote affection in his tones. Peter clenched his
+    jaws, his nostrils spread in his effort stoically to bottle up his grief
+    and remorse, like a white man; in an effort to keep from howling his
+    agony aloud, like a negro. He stood with aching throat and blurred eyes,
+    trembling, swallowing, and silent.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Presently Nan Berry opened the door. She held a half-burned paper in her
+    hand; Dr. Jallup stood near the bed, portioning out some calomel and
+    quinine. The prevalent disease in Hooker's Bend is malaria; Dr. Jallup
+    always physicked for malaria. On this occasion he diagnosed it must be a
+    very severe attack of malaria indeed, so he measured out enormous doses.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He took a glass of the water that Viny had brought, held up old
+    Caroline's head, and washed down two big capsules into the already
+    poisoned stomach of the old negress. His simple face was quite
+    inscrutable as he did this. He left other capsules for Nan to administer
+    at regular intervals. Then he and Captain Renfrew motored out of
+    Niggertown, out of its dust and filth and stench.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At four o'clock in the morning Caroline Siner died.
+</p>
+<a name="2HCH9"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER VI
+</h2>
+<p>
+    When Nan Berry saw that Caroline was dead, the black woman dropped a
+    glass of water and a capsule of calomel and stared. A queer terror
+    seized her. She began such a wailing that it aroused others in
+    Niggertown. At the sound they got out of their beds and came to the
+    Siner cabin, their eyes big with mystery and fear. At the sight of old
+    Caroline's motionless body they lifted their voices through the night.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The lamentation carried far beyond the confines of Niggertown. The last
+    gamblers in the cedar glade heard it, and it broke up their gaming and
+    drinking. White persons living near the black crescent were waked out of
+    their sleep and listened to the eerie sound. It rose and fell in the
+    darkness like a melancholy organ chord. The wailing of the women
+    quivered against the heavy grief of the men. The half-asleep listeners
+    were moved by its weirdness to vague and sinister fancies. The dolor
+    veered away from what the Anglo-Saxon knows as grief and was shot
+    through with the uncanny and the terrible. White children crawled out of
+    their small beds and groped their way to their parents. The women
+    shivered and asked of the darkness, "<i>What</i> makes the negroes howl
+    so?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nobody knew,&mdash;least of all, the negroes. Nobody suspected that the
+    bedlam harked back to the jungle, to black folk in African kraals
+    beating tom-toms and howling, not in grief, but in an ecstasy of terror
+    lest the souls of their dead might come back in the form of tigers or
+    pythons or devils and work woe to the tribe. Through the night the
+    negroes wailed on, performing through custom an ancient rite of which
+    they knew nothing. They supposed themselves heartbroken over the death
+    of Caroline Siner.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Amid this din Peter Siner sat in his room, stunned by the sudden taking
+    off of his mother. The reproaches that she had expressed to old Captain
+    Renfrew clung in Peter's brain. The brown man had never before realized
+    the faint amusement and condescension that had flavored all his
+    relations with his mother since his return home. But he knew now that
+    she had felt his disapproval of her lifelong habits; that she saw he
+    never explained or attempted to explain his thoughts to her, assuming
+    her to be too ignorant; as she put it, "a fool."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The pathos of his mother's last days, what she had expected, what she
+    had received, came to Peter with the bitterness of what is finished and
+    irrevocable. She had been dead only a few minutes, yet she could never
+    know his grief and remorse; she could never forgive him. She was utterly
+    removed in a few minutes, in a moment in the failing of a breath. The
+    finality of death overpowered him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Into his room, through the thin wall, came the catch of numberless sobs,
+    the long-drawn open wails, and the spasms of sobbing. Blurred voices
+    called, "O Gawd! Gawd hab mercy! Hab mercy!" Now words were lost in the
+    midst of confusion. The clamor boomed through the thin partition as if
+    it would shake down his newspapered walls. With wet cheeks and an aching
+    throat, Peter sat by his table, staring at his book-case in silence,
+    like a white man.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The dim light of his lamp fell over his psychologies and philosophies.
+    These were the books that had given him precedence over the old
+    washwoman who kept him in college. It was reading these books that had
+    made him so wise that the old negress could not even follow his
+    thoughts. Now in the hour of his mother's death the backs of his
+    metaphysics blinked at him emptily. What signified their endless pages
+    about dualism and monism, about phenomenon and noumenon? His mother was
+    dead. And she had died embittered against him because he had read and
+    had been bewildered by these empty, wordy volumes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A sense of profound defeat, of being ultimately fooled and cozened by
+    the subtleties of white men, filled Peter Siner. He had eaten at their
+    table, but their meat was not his meat. The uproar continued. Standing
+    out of the din arose the burden of negro voices "Hab mercy! Gawd hab
+    mercy!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the morning the Ladies of Tabor came and washed and dressed Caroline
+    Siner's body and made it ready for burial. For twenty years the old
+    negress had paid ten cents a month to her society to insure her burial,
+    and now the lodge made ready to fulfil its pledge. After many comings
+    and goings, the black women called Peter to see their work, as if for
+    his approval.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The huge dead woman lay on the four-poster with a sheet spread over the
+    lower part of her body. The ministrants had clothed it in the old black-
+    silk dress, with its spreading seams and panels of different materials.
+    It reminded Peter of the new dress he had meant to get his mother, and
+    of the modish suit which at that moment molded his own shoulders and
+    waist. The pitifulness of her sacrifices trembled in Peter's throat. He
+    pressed his lips together, and nodded silently to the black Ladies of
+    Tabor.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Presently the white undertaker, a silent little man with a brisk yet
+    sympathetic air, came and made some measurements. He talked to Peter in
+    undertones about the finishing of the casket, how much the Knights of
+    Tabor would pay, what Peter wanted. Then he spoke of the hour of burial,
+    and mentioned a somewhat early hour because some of the negroes wanted
+    to ship as roustabouts on the up-river packet, which was due at any
+    moment.
+</p>
+<p>
+    These decisions, asked of Peter, kept pricking him and breaking through
+    the stupefaction of this sudden tragedy. He kept nodding a mechanical
+    agreement until the undertaker had arranged all the details. Then the
+    little man moved softly out of the cabin and went stepping away through
+    the dust of Niggertown with professional briskness. A little later two
+    black grave-diggers set out with picks and shovels for the negro
+    graveyard.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Numberless preparations for the funeral were going on all over
+    Niggertown. The Knights of Tabor were putting on their regalia. Negro
+    women were sending out hurry notices to white mistresses that they would
+    be unable to cook the noonday meal. Dozens of negro girls flocked to the
+    hair-dressing establishment of Miss Mallylou Speers. All were bent on
+    having their wool straightened for the obsequies, and as only a few of
+    them could be accommodated, the little room was packed. A smell of
+    burning hair pervaded it. The girls sat around waiting their turn. Most
+    of them already had their hair down,&mdash;or, rather loose, for it stood out
+    in thick mats. The hair-dresser had a small oil stove on which lay
+    heating half a dozen iron combs. With a hot comb she teased each strand
+    of wool into perfect straightness and then plastered it down with a
+    greasy pomade. The result was a stiff effect, something like the hair of
+    the Japanese. It required about three hours to straighten the hair of
+    one negress. The price was a dollar and a half.
+</p>
+<p>
+    By half-past nine o'clock a crowd of negro men, in lodge aprons and with
+    spears, and negro women, with sashes of ribbon over their shoulders and
+    across the breasts, assembled about the Siner cabin. In the dusty
+    curving street were ranged half a dozen battered vehicles,&mdash;a hearse, a
+    delivery wagon, some rickety buggies, and a hack. Presently the
+    undertaker arrived with a dilapidated black hearse which he used
+    especially for negroes. He jumped down, got out his straps and coffin
+    stands, directed some negro men to bring in the coffin, then hurried
+    into the cabin with his air of brisk precision.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He placed the coffin on the stands near the bed; then a number of men
+    slipped the huge black body into it. The undertaker settled old
+    Caroline's head against the cotton pillows, running his hand down beside
+    her cheek and tipping her face just so. Then he put on the cover, which
+    left a little oval opening just above her dead face. The sight of old
+    Caroline's face seen through the little oval pane moved some of the
+    women to renewed sobs. Eight black men took up the coffin and carried it
+    out with the slow, wide-legged steps of roustabouts. Parson Ranson, in a
+    rusty Prince Albert coat, took Peter's arm and led him to the first
+    vehicle after the hearse. It was a delivery wagon, but it was the best
+    vehicle in the procession.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As Peter followed the coffin out, he saw the Knights and Ladies of Tabor
+    lined up in marching order behind the van. The men held their spears and
+    swords at attention; the women carried flowers. Behind the marchers came
+    other old vehicles, a sorry procession.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At fifteen minutes to ten the bell in the steeple of the colored church
+    tolled a single stroke. The sound quivered through the sunshine over
+    Niggertown. At its signal the poor procession moved away through the
+    dust. At intervals the bell tolled after the vanishing train.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As the negroes passed through the white town the merchants, lolling in
+    their doors, asked passers-by what negro had died. The idlers under the
+    mulberry in front of the livery-stable nodded at the old negro preacher
+    in his long greenish-black coat, and Dawson Bobbs remarked:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, old Parson Ranson's going to tell 'em about it to-day," and he
+    shifted his toothpick with a certain effect of humor.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Old Mr. Tomwit asked if his companions had ever heard how Newt Bodler, a
+    wit famous in Wayne County, once broke up a negro funeral with a
+    hornets' nest. The idlers nodded a smiling affirmative as they watched
+    the cort&egrave;ge go past. They had all heard it. But Mr. Tomwit would not be
+    denied. He sallied forth into humorous reminiscence. Another loafer
+    contributed an anecdote of how he had tied ropes to a dead negro so as
+    to make the corpse sit up in bed and frighten the mourners.
+</p>
+<p>
+    All their tales were of the vintage of the years immediately succeeding
+    the Civil War,&mdash;pioneer humor, such as convulsed the readers of Peck's
+    Bad Boy, Mr. Bowser, Sut Lovingood. The favorite dramatic properties of
+    such writers were the hornets' nest, the falling ladder, the banana
+    peel. They cultivated the humor of contusions, the wit of impact. This
+    style still holds the stage of Hooker's Bend.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In telling these tales the white villagers meant no special disrespect
+    to the negro funeral. It simply reminded them of humorous things; so
+    they told their jokes, like the na&iuml;ve children of the soil that they
+    were.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At last the poor procession passed beyond the white church, around a
+    bend in the road, and so vanished. Presently the bell in Niggertown
+    ceased tolling.
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    Peter always remembered his mother's funeral in fragments of intolerable
+    pathos,&mdash;the lifting of old Parson Ranson's hands toward heaven, the
+    songs of the black folk, the murmur of the first shovelful of dirt as it
+    was lowered to the coffin, and the final raw mound of earth littered
+    with a few dying flowers. With that his mother&mdash;who had been so near to,
+    and so disappointed in, her son&mdash;was blotted from his life. The other
+    events of the funeral flowed by in a sort of dream: he moved about; the
+    negroes were speaking to him in the queer overtones one uses to the
+    bereaved; he was being driven back to Niggertown; he reentered the Siner
+    cabin. One or two of his friends stayed in the room with him for a while
+    and said vague things, but there was nothing to say.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Later in the afternoon Cissie Dildine and her mother brought his dinner
+    to him. Vannie Dildine, a thin yellow woman, uttered a few disjointed
+    words about Sister Ca'line being a good woman, and stopped amid
+    sentence. There was nothing to say. Death had cut a wound across Peter
+    Siner's life. Not for days, nor weeks, nor months, would his existence
+    knit solidly back together. The poison of his ingratitude to his
+    faithful old black mother would for a long, long day prevent the
+    healing.
+</p>
+<a name="2HCH10"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER VII
+</h2>
+<p>
+    During a period following his mother's death Peter Siner's life drifted
+    emptily and without purpose. He had the feeling of one convalescing in a
+    hospital. His days passed unconnected by any thread of purpose; they
+    were like cards scattered on a table, meaning nothing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At times he struggled against his lethargy. When he awoke in the morning
+    and found the sun shining on his dusty primers and examination papers,
+    he would think that he ought to go back to his old task; but he never
+    did. In his heart grew a conviction that he would never teach school at
+    Hooker's Bend.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He would rise and dress slowly in the still cabin, thinking he must soon
+    make new plans and take up some work. He never decided precisely what
+    work; his thoughts trailed on in vague, idle designs.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In fact, during Peter's reaction to his shock there began to assert
+    itself in him that capacity for profound indolence inherent in his negro
+    blood. To a white man time is a cumulative excitant. Continuous and
+    absolute idleness is impossible; he must work, hunt, fish, play, gamble,
+    or dissipate,&mdash;do something to burn up the accumulating sugar in his
+    muscles. But to a negro idleness is an increasing balm; it is a
+    stretching of his legs in the sunshine, a cat-like purring of his
+    nerves; while his thoughts spread here and there in inconsequences, like
+    water without a channel, making little humorous eddies, winding this way
+    and that into oddities and fantasies without ever feeling that
+    constraint of sequence which continually operates in a white brain. And
+    it is this quality that makes negroes the entertainers of children
+    <i>par excellence</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter Siner's mental slackening made him understandable, and gave him a
+    certain popularity in Nigger-town. Black men fell into the habit of
+    dropping in at the Siner cabin, where they would sit outdoors, with
+    chairs propped against the wall, and philosophize on the desultory life
+    of the crescent. Sometimes they would relate their adventures on the
+    river packets and around the docks at Paducah, Cairo, St. Joe, and St.
+    Louis; usually a recountal of drunkenness, gaming, fighting, venery,
+    arrests, jail sentences, petty peculations, and escapes. Through these
+    Iliads of vagabondage ran an irresponsible gaiety, a non-morality, and a
+    kind of unbrave zest for adventure. They told of their defeats and
+    flights with as much relish and humor as of their charges and victories.
+    And while the spirit was thoroughly pagan, these accounts were full of
+    the clich&eacute;s of religion. A roustabout whom every one called the
+    Persimmon confided to Peter that he meant to cut loose some logs in a
+    raft up the river, float them down a little way, tie them up again, and
+    claim the prize-money for salvaging them, God willing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Persimmon was so called from a scar on his long slanting head. A
+    steamboat mate had once found him asleep in the passageway of a lumber
+    pile which the boat was lading, and he waked the negro by hitting him in
+    the head with a persimmon bolt. In this there was nothing unusual or
+    worthy of a nickname. The point was, the mate had been mistaken: the
+    Persimmon was not working on his boat at all. In time this became one of
+    the stock anecdotes which pilots and captains told to passengers
+    traveling up and down the river.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Persimmon was a queer-looking negro; his head was a long diagonal
+    from its peak down to his pendent lower lip, for he had no chin. The
+    salient points on this black slope were the Persimmon's sad, protruding
+    yellow eyeballs, over which the lids always drooped about half closed.
+    An habitual tipping of this melancholy head to one side gave the
+    Persimmon the look of one pondering and deploring the amount of sin
+    there was in the world. This saintly impression the Persimmon's conduct
+    and language never bore out.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At the time of the Persimmon's remarks about the raft two of Peter's
+    callers, Jim Pink Staggs and Parson Ranson, took the roustabout to task.
+    Jim Pink based his objection on the grounds of glutting the labor
+    market.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ef us niggers keeps turnin' too many raf's loose fuh de prize-money,"
+    he warned, "somebody's goin' to git 'spicious, an' you'll ruin a good
+    thing."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Persimmon absorbed this with a far-away look in his half-closed
+    eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It's a ticklish job," argued Parson Ranson, "an' I wouldn't want to
+    wuck at de debbil's task aroun' de ribber, ca'se you mout fall in,
+    Persimmon, an' git drownded."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I wouldn't do sich a thing a-tall," admitted the Persimmon, "but I jes'
+    natchelly got to git ten dollars to he'p pay on my divo'ce."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I kain't see whut you want wid a divo'ce," said Jim Pink, yawning,
+    "when you been ma'ied three times widout any."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It's fuh a Christmas present," explained the Persimmon, carelessly,
+    "fuh th' woman I'm libin' wid now. Mahaly's a great woman fuh style. I'm
+    goin' to divo'ce my other wives, one at a time lak my lawyer say."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "On what grounds?" asked Peter, curiously.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Desuhtion."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Desertion?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Uh huh; I desuhted 'em."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jim Pink shook his head, picked up a pebble, and began idly juggling it,
+    making it appear double, single, treble, then single again.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Too many divo'ces in dis country now, Persimmon," he moralized.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, whut's de cause uv 'em?" asked the Persimmon, suddenly bringing
+    his protruding yellow eyes around on the sleight-of-hand performer.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jim Pink was slightly taken aback; then he said:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'Spicion; nothin' but 'spicion."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yeah, 'spicion," growled the Persimmon; "'spicion an' de husban'
+    leadin' a irreg'lar life."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jim Pink looked at his companion, curiously.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The husban'&mdash;leadin' a irreg'lar life?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yeah,"&mdash;the Persimmon nodded grimly,&mdash;"the husban' comin' home at
+    onexpected hours. You know whut I means, Jim Pink."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jim Pink let his pebble fall and lowered the fore legs of his chair
+    softly to the ground.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now, look heah, Persimmon, you don' want to be draggin' no foreign
+    disco'se into yo' talk heah befo' Mr. Siner an' Parson Ranson."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Persimmon rose deliberately.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "All I want to say is, I drapped off'n de matrimonial tree three times
+    a'ready, Jim Pink, an' I think I feels somebody shakin' de limb ag'in."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old negro preacher rose, too, a little behind Jim Pink.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now, boys! boys!" he placated. "You jes think dat, Persimmon."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yeah," admitted Persimmon, "I jes think it; but ef I b'lieve ever'thing
+    is so whut I think is so, I'd part Jim Pink's wool wid a brickbat."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Parson Ranson tried to make peace, but the Persimmon spread his hands in
+    a gesture that included the three men. "Now, I ain't sayin' nothin'," he
+    stated solemnly, "an' I ain't makin' no threats; but ef anything
+    happens, you-all kain't say that nobody didn' tell nobody about
+    nothin'."
+</p>
+<p>
+    With this the Persimmon walked to the gate, let himself out, still
+    looking back at Jim Pink, and then started down the dusty street.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Staggs seemed uncomfortable under the Persimmon's protruding yellow
+    stare, but finally, when the roustabout was gone, he shrugged, regained
+    his aplomb, and remarked that some niggers spent their time in studyin'
+    'bout things they hadn't no info'mation on whatever. Then he strolled
+    off up the crescent in the other direction.
+</p>
+<p>
+    All this would have made fair minstrel patter if Peter Siner had shared
+    the white conviction that every emotion expressed in a negro's patois is
+    humorous. Unfortunately, Peter was too close to the negroes to hold such
+    a tenet. He knew this quarrel was none the less rancorous for having
+    been couched in the queer circumlocution of black folk. And behind it
+    all shone the background of racial promiscuity out of which it sprang.
+    It was like looking at an open sore that touched all of Niggertown, men
+    and boys, young girls and women. It caused tragedies, murders, fights,
+    and desertions in the black village as regularly as the rotation of the
+    calendar; yet there was no public sentiment against it. Peter wondered
+    how this attitude of his whole people could possibly be.
+</p>
+<p>
+    With the query the memory of Ida May came back to him, with its sense of
+    dim pathos. It seemed to Peter now as if their young and uninstructed
+    hands had destroyed a safety-vault to filch a penny.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The reflex of a thought of Ida May always brought Peter to Cissie; it
+    always stirred up in him a desire to make this young girl's path gentle
+    and smooth. There was a fineness, a delicacy about Cissie, that, it
+    seemed to Peter, Ida May had never possessed. Then, too, Cissie was
+    moved by a passion for self-betterment. She deserved a cleaner field
+    than the Niggertown of Hooker's Bend.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter took Parson Ranson's arm, and the two moved to the gate by common
+    consent. It was no longer pleasant to sit here. The quarrel they had
+    heard somehow had flavored their surroundings.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter turned his steps mechanically northward up the crescent toward the
+    Dildine cabin. Nothing now restrained him from calling on Cissie; he
+    would keep no dinner waiting; he would not be warned and berated on his
+    return home. The nagging, jealous love of his mother had ended.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As the two men walked along, it was borne in upon Peter that his
+    mother's death definitely ended one period of his life. There was no
+    reason why he should continue his present unsettled existence. It seemed
+    best to marry Cissie at once and go North. Further time in this place
+    would not be good for the girl. Even if he could not lift all
+    Niggertown, he could at least help Cissie. He had had no idea, when he
+    first planned his work, what a tremendous task he was essaying. The
+    white village had looked upon the negroes so long as non-moral and non-
+    human that the negroes, with the flexibility of their race, had
+    assimilated that point of view. The whites tried to regulate the negroes
+    by endless laws. The negroes had come to accept this, and it seemed that
+    they verily believed that anything not discovered by the constable was
+    permissible. Mr. Dawson Bobbs was Niggertown's conscience. It was best
+    for Peter to take from this atmosphere what was dearest to him, and go
+    at once.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The brown man's thoughts came trailing back to the old negro parson
+    hobbling at his side. He looked at the old man, hesitated a moment, then
+    told him what was in his mind.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Parson Ranson's face wrinkled into a grin.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You's gwine to git ma'ied?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And I thought I'd have you perform the ceremony."
+</p>
+<p>
+    This suggestion threw the old negro into excitement.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Me, Mr. Peter?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes. Why not?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, Mr. Peter, I kain't jine you an' Miss Cissie Dildine."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter looked at him, astonished.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why can't you?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Whyn't you git a white preacher?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well," deliberated Peter, gravely, "it's a matter of principle with me,
+    Parson Ranson. I think we colored people ought to be more self-reliant,
+    more self-serving. We ought to lead our own lives instead of being mere
+    echoes of white thought." He made a swift gesture, moved by this passion
+    of his life. "I don't mean racial equality. To my mind racial equality
+    is an empty term. One might as well ask whether pink and violet are
+    equal. But what I do insist on is autonomous development."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old preacher nodded, staring into the dust. "Sho! 'tonomous
+    'velopment."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter saw that his language, if not his thought, was far beyond his old
+    companion's grasp, and he lacked the patience to simplify himself.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why don't you want to marry us, Parson?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Parson Ranson lifted his brows and filled his forehead with wrinkles.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, I dunno. You an' Miss Cissie acts too much lak white folks fuh a
+    nigger lak me to jine you, Mr. Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter made a sincere effort to be irritated, but he was not.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That's no way to feel. It's exactly what I was talking about,&mdash;racial
+    self-reliance. You've married hundreds of colored couples."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ya-as, suh,"&mdash;the old fellow scratched his black jaw.&mdash;"I kin yoke up a
+    pair uv ordina'y niggers all right. Sometimes dey sticks, sometimes dey
+    don't." The old man shook his white, kinky head. "I'll bust in an' try
+    to hitch up you-all. I&mdash;I dunno whedder de cer'mony will hol' away up
+    North or not."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It'll be all right anywhere, Parson," said Peter, seriously. "Your name
+    on the marriage-certificate will&mdash;can you write?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "N-no, suh."
+</p>
+<p>
+    After a brief hesitation Peter repeated determinedly:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It'll be all right. And, by the way, of course, this will be a very
+    quiet wedding."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yas-suh." The old man bobbed importantly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I wouldn't mention it to any one."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, suh; no, suh. I don' blame you a-tall, Mr. Peter, wid dat Tump Pack
+    gallivantin' roun' wid a forty-fo'. Hit would keep 'mos' anybody's
+    weddin' ve'y quiet onless he wuz lookin' fuh a short cut to heab'n."
+</p>
+<p>
+    As the two negroes passed the Berry cabin, Nan Berry thrust out her
+    spiked head and called to Peter Captain Renfrew wanted to see him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter paused, with quickened interest in this strange old man who had
+    come to his mother's death-bed with a doctor. Peter asked Nan what the
+    Captain wanted.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nan did not know. Wince Washington had told Nan that the Captain wanted
+    to see Peter. Bluegum Frakes had told Wince; Jerry Dillihay had told
+    Bluegum; but any further meanderings of the message, when it started, or
+    what its details might be, Nan could not state.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was a typical message from a resident of the white town to a denizen
+    of Niggertown. Such messages are delivered to any black man for any
+    other black man, not only in the village, but anywhere in the outlying
+    country. It may be passed on by a dozen or a score of mouths before it
+    reaches its objective. It may be a day or a week in transit, but
+    eventually it will be delivered verbatim. This queer system of
+    communication is a relic of slavery, when the master would send out word
+    for some special negro out of two or three hundred slaves to report at
+    the big house.
+</p>
+<p>
+    However, as Peter approached the Dildine cabin, thoughts of his
+    approaching marriage drove from his mind even old Captain Renfrew's
+    message. His heart beat fast from having made his first formal step
+    toward wedlock. The thought of having Cissie all to himself, swept his
+    nerves in a gust.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He opened the gate, and ran up between the dusty lines of dwarf box,
+    eager to tell her what he had done. He thumped on the cracked, unpainted
+    door, and impatiently waited the skirmish of observation along the edge
+    of the window-blinds. This was unduly drawn out. Presently he heard
+    women's voices whispering to each other inside. They seemed urgent,
+    almost angry voices. Now and then he caught a sentence:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What difference will it make?" "I couldn't." "Why couldn't you?"
+    "Because&mdash;" "That's because you've been to Nashville." "Oh, well&mdash;" A
+    chair was moved over a bare floor. A little later footsteps came to the
+    entrance, the door opened, and Cissie's withered yellow mother stood
+    before him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Vannie offered her hand and inquired after Peter's health with a stopped
+    voice that instantly recalled his mother's death. After the necessary
+    moment of talk, the mulatto inquired for Cissie.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The yellow woman seemed slightly ill at ease.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Cissie ain't so well, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "She's not ill?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "N-no; but the excitement an' ever'thing&mdash;" answered Vannie, vaguely.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the flush of his plans, Peter was keenly disappointed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It's very important, Mrs. Dildine."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Vannie's dried yellow face framed the ghost of a smile.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ever'thing a young man's got to say to a gal is ve'y important, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    It seemed to Peter a poor time for a jest; his face warmed faintly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It&mdash;it's about some of the details of our&mdash;our wedding."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If you'll excuse her to-day, Peter, an' come after supper&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter hesitated, and was about to go away when Cissie's voice came from
+    an inner room, telling her mother to admit him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The yellow woman glanced at the door on the left side of the hall,
+    crossed over and opened it, stood to one side while Peter entered, and
+    closed it after him, leaving the two alone.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The room into which Peter stepped was dark, after the fashion of negro
+    houses. Only after a moment's survey did he see Cissie sitting near a
+    big fireplace made of rough stone. The girl started to rise as Peter
+    advanced toward her, but he solicitously forbade it and hurried over to
+    her. When he leaned over her and put his arms about her, his ardor was
+    slightly dampened when she gave him her cheek instead of her lips to
+    kiss.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Surely, you're not too ill to be kissed?" he rallied faintly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You kissed me. I thought we had agreed, Peter, you were not to come in
+    the daytime any more."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, is that it?" Peter patted her shoulder, cheerfully. "Don't worry; I
+    have just removed any reason why I shouldn't come any time I want to."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie looked at him, her dark eyes large in the gloom.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What have you done?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Got a preacher to marry us; on my way now for a license. Dropped in to
+    ask if you 'll be ready by tomorrow or next day."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl gasped.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But, Peter&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter drew a chair beside her in a serious argumentative mood.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes I think we ought to get married at once. No reason why we shouldn't
+    get it over with&mdash;Why, what's the matter?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "So soon after your mother's death, Peter?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It's to get away from Hooker's Bend, Cissie&mdash;to get you away. I don't
+    like for you to stay here. It's all so&mdash;" he broke off, not caring to
+    open the disagreeable subject.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl sat staring down at some fagots smoldering on the hearth. At
+    that moment they broke into flame and illuminated her sad face.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You'll go, won't you?" asked Peter at last, with a faint uncertainty.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl looked up.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh&mdash;I&mdash;I'd be glad to, Peter,"&mdash;she gave a little shiver. "Ugh! this
+    Niggertown is a&mdash;a terrible place!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter leaned over, took one of her hands, and patted it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then we'll go," he said soothingly. "It's decided&mdash;tomorrow. And we'll
+    have a perfectly lovely wedding trip," he planned cheerfully, to draw
+    her mind from her mood. "On the car going North I'll get a whole
+    drawing-room. I've always wanted a drawing-room, and you'll be my
+    excuse. We'll sit and watch the fields and woods and cities slip past
+    us, and know, when we get off, we can walk on the streets as freely as
+    anybody. We'll be a genuine man and wife."
+</p>
+<p>
+    His recital somehow stirred him. He took her in his arms, pressed her
+    cheek to his, and after a moment kissed her lips with the trembling
+    ardor of a bridegroom.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie remained passive a moment, then put up he hands, turned his face
+    away, and slowly released herself.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter was taken aback.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What <i>is</i> the matter, Cissie?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I can't go, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter looked at her with a feeling of strangeness.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Can't go?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl shook her head.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You mean&mdash;you want us to live here?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie sat exceedingly still and barely shook her head.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The mulatto had a sensation as if the portals which disclosed a new and
+    delicious life were slowly closing against him. He stared into her oval
+    face.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You don't mean, Cissie&mdash;you don't mean you don't want to marry me?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The fagots on the hearth burned now with a cheerful flame. Cissie stared
+    at it, breathing rapidly from the top of her lungs. She seemed about to
+    faint. As Peter watched her the jealousy of the male crept over him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Look here, Cissie," he said in a queer voice, "you&mdash;you don't mean,
+    after all, that Tump Pack is&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh no! No!" Her face showed her repulsion. Then she drew a long breath
+    and apparently made up her mind to some sort of ordeal.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Peter," she asked in a low tone, "did you ever think what we colored
+    people are trying to reach?" She stared into his uncomprehending eyes.
+    "I mean what is our aim, our goal, whom are we trying to be like?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We aren't trying to be like any one." Peter was entirely at a loss.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, yes, we are," Cissie hurried on. "Why do colored girls straighten
+    their hair, bleach their skins, pinch their feet? Aren't they trying to
+    look like white girls?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter agreed, wondering at her excitement.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And you went North to college, Peter, so you could think and act like a
+    white man&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter resisted this at once; he was copying nobody. The whole object of
+    college was to develop one's personality, to bring out&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl stopped his objections almost piteously.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, don't argue! You know arguing throws me off. I&mdash;now I've forgotten
+    how I meant to say it!" Tears of frustration welled up in her eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Her mood was alarming, almost hysterical. Peter began comforting her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "There, there, dear, dear Cissie, what is the matter? Don't say it at
+    all." Then, inconsistently, he added: "You said I copied white men.
+    Well, what of it?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie breathed her relief at having been given the thread of her
+    discourse. She sat silent for a moment with the air of one screwing up
+    her courage.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It's this," she said in an uncertain voice: "sometimes we&mdash;we&mdash;girls&mdash;
+    here in Niggertown copy the wrong thing first."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter looked blankly at her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The wrong thing first, Cissie?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, yes; we&mdash;we begin on clothes and&mdash;and hair and&mdash;and that isn't the
+    real matter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, no-o-o, that isn't the real matter," said Peter puzzled.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie looked at his face and became hopeless.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, <i>don't</i> you understand! Lots of us&mdash;lots of us make that
+    mistake! I&mdash;I did; so&mdash;so, Peter, I can't go with you!" She flung out
+    the last phrase, and suddenly collapsed on the arm of her chair,
+    sobbing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter was amazed. He got up, sat on the arm of his own chair next to
+    hers and put his arms about her, bending over her, mothering her. Her
+    distress was so great that he said as earnestly as his ignorance
+    permitted:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, Cissie, I understand now." But his tone belied his words, and the
+    girl shook her head. "Yes, I do, Cissie," he repeated emptily. But she
+    only shook her head as she leaned over him, and her tears slowly formed
+    and trickled down on his hand. Then all at once old Caroline's
+    accusation against Cissie flashed on Peter's mind. She had stolen that
+    dinner in the turkey roaster, after all. It so startled him that he sat
+    up straight. Cissie also sat up. She stopped crying, and sat looking
+    into the fire.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You mean&mdash;morals?" said Peter in a low tone.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie barely nodded, her wet eyes fixed on the fire.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I see. I was stupid."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl sat a moment, drawing deep breaths. At last she rose slowly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well&mdash;I'm glad it's over. I'm glad you know." She stood looking at him
+    almost composedly except for her breathing and her tear-stained face.
+    "You see, Peter, if you had been like Tump Pack or Wince or any of the
+    boys around here, it&mdash;it wouldn't have made much difference; but&mdash;but
+    you went off and&mdash;and learned to think and feel like a white man. You&mdash;
+    you changed your code, Peter." She gave a little shaken sound, something
+    between a sob and a laugh. "I&mdash;I don't think th-that's very fair, Peter,
+    to&mdash;to go away an'&mdash;an' change an' come back an' judge us with yo' n-new
+    code." Cissie's precise English broke down.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Just then Peter's logic caught at a point.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If you didn't know anything about my code, how do you know what I feel
+    now?" he asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    She looked at him with a queer expression.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I found out when you kissed me under the arbor. It was too late then."
+</p>
+<p>
+    She stood erect, with dismissal very clearly written in her attitude.
+    Peter walked out of the room.
+</p>
+<a name="2HCH11"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER VIII
+</h2>
+<p>
+    With a certain feeling of clumsiness Peter groped in the dark hall for
+    his hat, then, as quietly as he could, let himself out at the door.
+    Outside he was surprised to find that daylight still lingered in the
+    sky. He thought night had fallen. The sun lay behind the Big Hill, but
+    its red rays pouring down through the boles of the cedars tinted long
+    delicate avenues in the dusty atmosphere above his head. A sharp chill
+    in the air presaged frost for the night. Somewhere in the crescent a boy
+    yodeled for his dog at about half-minute intervals, with the persistence
+    of children.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter walked a little distance, but finally came to a stand in the dust,
+    looking at the negro cabins, not knowing where to go or what to do.
+    Cissie's confession had destroyed all his plans. It had left him as
+    adynamic as had his mother's death. It seemed to Peter that there was a
+    certain similarity between the two events; both were sudden and
+    desolating. And just as his mother had vanished utterly from his reach,
+    so now it seemed Cissie was no more. Cissie the clear-eyed, Cissie the
+    ambitious, Cissie the refined, had vanished away, and in her place stood
+    a thief.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The thing was grotesque. Peter began a sudden shuddering in the cold.
+    Then he began moving toward the empty cabin where he slept and kept his
+    things. He moved along, talking to himself in the dusty emptiness of the
+    crescent. He decided that he would go home, pack his clothes, and
+    vanish. A St. Louis boat would be down that night, and he would just
+    have time to pack his clothes and catch it. He would not take his books,
+    his philosophies. He would let them remain, in the newspapered room,
+    until all crumbled into uniform philosophic dust, and the teachings of
+    Aristotle blew about Niggertown.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then, as he thought of traveling North, the vision of the honeymoon he
+    had just planned revived his numb brain into a dismal aching. He looked
+    back through the dusk at the Dildine roof. It stood black against an
+    opalescent sky. Out of the foreground, bending over it, arose a clump of
+    tall sunflowers, in whose silhouette hung a suggestion of yellow and
+    green. The whole scene quivered slightly at every throb of his heart. He
+    thought what a fool he was to allow a picaresque past to keep him away
+    from such a woman, how easy it would be to go back to the soft luxury of
+    Cissie, to tell her it made no difference; and somehow, just at that
+    moment it seemed not to.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then the point of view which Peter had been four years acquiring swept
+    away the impulse, and it left him moving toward his cabin again, empty,
+    cold, and planless.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He was drawn out of his reverie by the soft voice of a little negro boy
+    asking him apprehensively whom he was talking to.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter stopped, drew forth a handkerchief and dabbed the moisture from
+    his cold face in the meticulous fashion of college men.
+</p>
+<p>
+    With the boy came a dog which was cautiously smelling Peter's shoes and
+    trousers. Both boy and dog were investigating the phenomenon of Peter.
+    Peter, in turn, looked down at them with a feeling that they had
+    materialized out of nothing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What did you say?" he asked vaguely.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The boy was suddenly overcome with the excessive shyness of negro
+    children, and barely managed to whisper:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I&mdash;I ast wh-who you wuz a-talkin' to."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Was I talking?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The little negro nodded, undecided whether to stand his ground or flee.
+    Peter touched the child's crisp hair.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I was talking to myself," he said, and moved forward again.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The child instantly gained confidence at the slight caress, took a fold
+    of Peter's trousers in his hand for friendliness, and the two trudged on
+    together.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Wh-whut you talkin' to yo' se'f for?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter glanced down at the little black head that promised to think up a
+    thousand questions.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I was wondering where to go."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Lawsy! is you los' yo' way?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    He stroked the little head with a rush of self-pity.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, I have, son; I've completely lost my way."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The child twisted his head around and peered up alongside Peter's arm.
+    Presently he asked:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ain't you Mr. Peter Siner?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ain't you de man whut's gwine to ma'y Miss Cissie Dildine?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter looked down at his small companion with a certain concern that his
+    marriage was already gossip known to babes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'm Peter Siner," he repeated.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Den I knows which way you wants to go," piped the youngster in sudden
+    helpfulness. "You wants to go over to Cap'n Renfrew's place acrost de
+    Big Hill. He done sont fuh you. Mr. Wince Washington tol' me, ef I seed
+    you, to tell you dat Cap'n Renfrew wants to see you. I dunno whut hit's
+    about. I ast Wince, an' he didn' know."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter recalled the message Nan Berry had given him some hours before.
+    Now the same summons had seeped around to him from another direction.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I&mdash;I'll show you de way to Cap'n Renfrew's ef&mdash;ef you'll come back wid
+    me th'ugh de cedar glade," proposed the child. "I&mdash;I ain't skeered in de
+    cedar glade, b-b-but hit's so dark I kain't see my way back home.
+</p>
+<center>
+    I&mdash;I&mdash;"
+</center>
+<p>
+    Peter thanked him and declined his services. After all, he might as well
+    go to see Captain Renfrew. He owed the old gentleman some thanks&mdash;and
+    ten dollars.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The only thing of which Peter Siner was aware during his walk over the
+    Big Hill and through the village was his last scene with Cissie. He went
+    over it again and again, repeating their conversation, inventing new
+    replies, framing new action, questioning more fully into the octoroon's
+    vague confession and his benumbed acceptance of it. The moment his mind
+    completed the little drama it started again from the very beginning.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At Captain Renfrew's gate this mental mummery paused long enough for him
+    to vacillate between walking in or going around and shouting from the
+    back gate. It is a point of etiquette in Hooker's Bend that negroes
+    shall enter a white house from the back stoop. Peter had no desire to
+    transgress this custom. On the other hand, if Captain Renfrew was
+    receiving him as a fellow of Harvard, the back door, in its way, would
+    prove equally embarrassing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After a certain indecision he compromised by entering the front gate and
+    calling the Captain's name from among the scattered bricks of the old
+    walk.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The house lay silent, half smothered in a dark tangle of shrubbery.
+    Peter called twice before he heard the shuffle of house slippers, and
+    then saw the Captain's dressing-gown at the piazza steps.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Is that you, Peter?" came a querulous voice.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, Captain. I was told you wanted to see me."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You've been deliberate in coming," criticized the old gentleman,
+    testily. "I sent you word by some black rascal three days ago."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I just received the message to-day." Peter remained discreetly at the
+    gate.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes; well, come in, come in. See if you can do anything with this
+    damnable lamp."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old man turned with a dignified drawing-together of his dressing-
+    gown and moved back. Apparently, the renovation of a cranky lamp was the
+    whole content of the Captain's summons to Peter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There was something so characteristic in this incident that Peter was
+    moved to a vague sense of mirth. It was just like the old r&eacute;gime to call
+    in a negro, a special negro, from ten miles away to move a jar of ferns
+    across the lawn or trim a box hedge or fix a lamp.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter followed the old gentleman around to the back piazza facing his
+    study. There, laid out on the floor, were all the parts of a gasolene
+    lamp, together with a pipe-wrench, a hammer, a little old-fashioned
+    vise, a bar of iron, and an envelop containing the mantels and the more
+    delicate parts of the lamp.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It's extraordinary to me," criticized the Captain, "why they can't make
+    a gasolene lamp that will go, and remain in a going condition."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Has it been out of fix for three days?" asked Peter, sorry that the old
+    gentleman should have lacked a light for so long.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No," growled the Captain; "it started gasping at four o'clock last
+    night; so I put it out and went to bed. I've been working at it this
+    evening. There's a little hole in the tip,&mdash;if I could see it,&mdash;a hair-
+    sized hole, painfully small. Why any man wants to make gasolene lamps
+    with microscopic holes that ordinary intelligence must inform him will
+    become clogged I cannot conceive."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter ventured no opinion on this trait of lampmakers, but said that if
+    the Captain knew where he could get an oil hand-lamp for a little more
+    light, he thought he could unstop the hole.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Captain looked at his helper and shook his head.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I am surprised at you, Peter. When I was your age, I could see an
+    aperture like that hole under the last quarter of the moon. In this
+    strong light I could have&mdash;er&mdash;lunged the cleaner through it, sir. You
+    must have strained your eyes in college." He paused, then added: "You'll
+    find hand-lamps in any of the rooms fronting this porch. I don't know
+    whether they have oil in them or not&mdash;the shiftless niggers that come
+    around to take care of this building&mdash;no dependence to be put in them.
+    When I try it myself, I do even worse."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old gentleman's tone showed that he was thawing out of his irritable
+    mood, and Peter sensed that he meant to be amusing in an austere,
+    unsmiling fashion. The Captain rubbed his delicate wrinkled hands
+    together in a pleased fashion and sat down in a big porch chair to await
+    Peter's assembling of the lamp. The brown man started down the long
+    piazza, in search of a hand-light.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He found a lamp in the first room he entered, returned to the piazza,
+    sat down on the edge of it, and began his tinkering. The old Captain
+    apparently watched him with profound satisfaction. Presently, after the
+    fashion of the senile, he began endless and minute instructions as to
+    how the lamp should be cleaned.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Take the wire in your left hand, Peter,&mdash;that's right,&mdash;now hold the
+    tip a little closer to the light&mdash;no, place the mantels on the right
+    side&mdash;that's the way I do it. System...." the old man's monologue ran on
+    and on, and became a murmur in Peter's ears. It was rather soothing than
+    otherwise. Now and then it held tremulous vibrations that might have
+    been from age or that might have been from some deep satisfaction
+    mounting even to joy. But to Peter that seemed hardly probable. No doubt
+    it was senility. The Captain was a tottery old man, past the age for any
+    fundamental joy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Night had fallen now, and a darkness, musky with autumn weeds, hemmed in
+    the sphere of yellow light on the old piazza. A black-and-white cat
+    materialized out of the gloom, purring, and arching against a pillar.
+    The whole place was filled with a sense of endless leisure. The old man,
+    the cat, the perfume of the weeds, soothed in Peter even the rawness of
+    his hurt at Cissie.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Indeed, in a way, the old manor became a sort of apology for the
+    octoroon girl. The height and the reach of the piazza, exaggerated by
+    the darkness, suggested a time when retinues of negroes passed through
+    its dignified colonnades. Those black folk were a part of the place.
+    They came and went, picked up and used what they could, and that was all
+    life held for them. They were without wage, without rights, even to the
+    possession of their own bodies; so by necessity they took what they
+    could. That was only fifty-odd years ago. Thus, in a way, Peter's
+    surroundings began a subtle explanation of and apology for Cissie, the
+    whole racial training of black folk in petty thievery. And that this
+    should have touched Cissie&mdash;the meanness, the pathos of her fate moved
+    Peter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The negro was aroused from his reverie by the old Captain's getting out
+    of his chair and saying, "Very good," and then Peter saw that he had
+    finished the lamp. The two men rose and carried it into the study, where
+    Peter pumped and lighted it; a bit later its brilliant white light
+    flooded the room.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Quite good." The old Captain stood rubbing his hands with his odd air
+    of continued delight. "How do you like this place, anyway, Peter?" He
+    wrapped his gown around him, sat down in the old Morris chair beside the
+    book-piled table, and indicated another seat for Peter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The mulatto took it, aware of a certain flexing of Hooker's Bend custom,
+    where negroes, unless old or infirm, are not supposed to sit in the
+    presence of whites.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Do you mean the study, Captain?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, the study, the whole place."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It's very pleasant," replied Peter; "it has the atmosphere of age."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Captain Renfrew nodded.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "These old places," pursued Peter, "always give me an impression of
+    statesmanship, somehow. I always think of grave old gentlemen busy with
+    the cares of public policy."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old man seemed gratified.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You are sensitive to atmosphere. If I may say it, every Southron of the
+    old r&eacute;gime was a statesman by nature and training. The complete care of
+    two or three hundred negroes, a regard for their bodily, moral, and
+    spiritual welfare, inevitably led the master into the impersonal
+    attitude of statecraft. It was a training, sir, in leadership, in social
+    thinking, in, if you please, altruism." The old gentleman thumped the
+    arm of his chair with a translucent palm. "Yes, sir, negro slavery was
+    God's great lesson to the South in altruism and loving-kindness, sir! My
+    boy, I do believe with all my heart that the institution of slavery was
+    placed here in God's country to rear up giants of political leadership,
+    that our nation might weather the revolutions of the world. Oh, the
+    Yankees are necessary! I know that!" The old Captain held up a palm at
+    Peter as if repressing an imminent retort. "I know the Yankees are the
+    Marthas of the nation. They furnish food and fuel to the ship of state,
+    but, my boy, the reservoir of our country's spiritual and mental
+    strength, the Mary of our nation, must always be the South. Virginia is
+    the mother of Presidents!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Captain's oration left him rather breathless. He paused a moment,
+    then asked:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Peter, have you ever thought that we men of the leisure class owe a
+    debt to the world?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter smiled.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I know the theory of the leisure class, but I've had very little
+    practical experience with leisure."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, that's a subject close to my heart. As a scholar and a thinker, I
+    feel that I should give the fruits of my leisure to the world. Er&mdash;in
+    fact, Peter, that is why I sent for you to come and see me."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why you sent for me?" Peter was surprised at this turn.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Precisely. You."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here the old gentleman got himself out of his chair, walked across to
+    one of a series of drawers in his bookcases, opened it, and took out a
+    sheaf of papers and a quart bottle. He brought the papers and the bottle
+    back to the table, made room for them, put the papers in a neat pile,
+    and set the bottle at a certain distance from the heap.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now, Peter, please hand me one of those wineglasses in the religious
+    section of my library&mdash;I always keep two or three glasses among my
+    religious works, in memory of the fact that our Lord and Master wrought
+    a miracle at the feast of Cana, especially to bless the cup. Indeed,
+    Peter, thinking of that miracle at the wedding-feast, I wonder, sir, how
+    the prohibitionists can defend their conduct even to their own
+    consciences, because logically, sir, logically, the miracle of our
+    gracious Lord completely cuts away the ground from beneath their feet!
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No wonder, when the Mikado sent a Japanese envoy to America to make a
+    tentative examination of Christianity as a proper creed for the state
+    religion of Japan&mdash;no wonder, with this miracle flouted by the
+    prohibitionists, the embassy carried back the report that Americans
+    really have no faith in the religion they profess. Shameful! Shameful!
+    Place the glass there on the left of the bottle. A little farther away
+    from the bottle, please, just a trifle more. Thank you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Captain poured himself a tiny glassful, and its bouquet immediately
+    filled the room. There was no guessing how old that whisky was.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I will not break the laws of my country, Peter, no matter how godless
+    and sacrilegious those laws may be; therefore I cannot offer you a
+    drink, but you will observe a second glass among the religious works,
+    and the bottle sits in plain view on the table&mdash;er&mdash;em." He watched
+    Peter avail himself of his opportunity, and then added, "Now, you may
+    just drink to me, standing, as you are, like that."
+</p>
+<p>
+    They drank, Peter standing, the old gentleman seated.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It is just as necessary," pursued the old connoisseur, when Peter was
+    reseated, "it is just as necessary for a gentleman to have a delicate
+    palate for the tints of the vine as it is for him to have a delicate eye
+    for the tints of the palette. Nature bestowed a taste both in art and
+    wine on man, which he should strive to improve at every opportunity. It
+    is a gift from God. Perhaps you would like another glass. No? Then
+    accommodate me."
+</p>
+<p>
+    He drained this one, with Peter standing, worked his withered lips back
+    and forth to experience its full taste, then swallowed, and smacked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now, Peter," he said, "the reason I asked you to come to see me is that
+    I need a man about this house. That will be one phase of your work. The
+    more important part is that you shall serve as a sort of secretary. I
+    have here a manuscript." He patted the pile of papers. "My handwriting
+    is rather difficult. I want you to copy this matter out and get it ready
+    for the printer."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter became more and more astonished.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Are you offering me a permanent place, Captain Renfrew?" he asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old man nodded.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I need a man with a certain liberality of culture. I will no doubt have
+    you run through books and periodicals and make note of any points
+    germane to my thesis."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter looked at the pile of script on the table.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That is very flattering, Captain; but the fact is, I came by your place
+    at this hour because I am just in the act of leaving here on the
+    steamboat to-night."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Captain looked at Peter with concern on his face. "Leaving Hooker's
+    Bend?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, sir."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter hesitated.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, my mother is dead&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, but your&mdash;your&mdash;your work is still here, Peter." The Captain fell
+    into a certain confusion. "A man's work, Peter; a man's work."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Do you mean my school-teaching?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then came a pause. The conversation somehow had managed to leave them
+    both somewhat at sea. The Captain began again, in a different tone:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Peter, I wish you to remain here with me for another reason. I am an
+    old man, Peter. Anything could happen to me here in this big house, and
+    nobody would know it. I don't like to think of it." The old man's tone
+    quite painted his fears. "I am not afraid of death, Peter. I have walked
+    before God all my life save in one or two points, which, I believe, in
+    His mercy, He has forgiven me; but I cannot endure the idea of being
+    found here some day in some unconsidered posture, fallen out of a chair,
+    or a-sprawl on the floor. I wish to die with dignity, Peter, as I have
+    lived."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then you mean that you want me to stay here with you until&mdash;until the
+    end, Captain?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old man nodded.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That is my desire, Peter, for an honorarium which you yourself shall
+    designate. At my death, you will receive some proper portion of my
+    estate; in fact, the bulk of my estate, because I leave no other heirs.
+    I am the last Renfrew of my race, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter grew more and more amazed as the old gentleman unfolded this
+    strange proposal. What queerer, pleasanter berth could he find than that
+    offered him here in the quietude of the old manor, among books, tending
+    the feeble flame of this old aristocrat's life? An air of scholasticism
+    hung about the library. In some corner of this dark oaken library his
+    philosophies would rest comfortably.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then it occurred to Peter that he would have to continue his sleeping
+    and eating in Niggertown, and since his mother had died and his rupture
+    with Cissie, the squalor and smells of the crescent had become
+    impossible. He told the old Captain his objections as diplomatically as
+    possible. The old man made short work of them. He wanted Peter to sleep
+    in the manor within calling distance, and he might begin this very night
+    and stay on for a week or so as a sort of test whether he liked the
+    position or not. The Captain waited with some concern until Peter agreed
+    to a trial.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After that the old gentleman talked on interminably of the South, of the
+    suffrage movement, the destructive influence it would have on the home,
+    the Irish question, the Indian question, whether the mound-builders did
+    not spring from the two lost tribes of Israel&mdash;an endless outpouring of
+    curious facts, quaint reasoning, and extraordinary conclusions, all
+    delivered with the great dignity and in the flowing periods of an
+    orator.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was fully two o'clock in the morning when it occurred to the Captain
+    that his new secretary might like to go to bed. The old man took the
+    hand-lamp which was still burning and led the way out to the back piazza
+    past a number of doors to a corner bedroom. He shuffled along in his
+    carpet slippers, followed by the black-and-white cat, which ran along,
+    making futile efforts to rub itself against his lean shanks. Peter
+    followed in a sort of stupor from the flood of words, ideas, and strange
+    fancies that had been poured into his ears.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Captain turned off the piazza into one of those old-fashioned
+    Southern rooms with full-length windows, which were really glazed doors,
+    a ceiling so high that Peter could make out only vague concentric rings
+    of stucco-work among the shadows overhead, and a floor space of ball-
+    room proportions. In one corner was a huge canopy bed, across from it a
+    clothes-press of dark wood, and in another corner a large screen hiding
+    the bathing arrangements.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter's bedroom was a sleeping apartment, in the old sense of the word
+    before the term "apartment" had lost its dignity.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Captain placed the lamp on the great table and indicated Peter's
+    possession with a wave of the hand.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If you stay here, Peter, I will put in a call-bell, so I can awaken you
+    if I need you during the night. Now I wish you healthful slumbers and
+    pleasant dreams." With that the old gentleman withdrew ceremoniously.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When the Captain was gone, the mulatto remained standing in the vast
+    expanse, marveling over this queer turn of fortune. Why Captain Renfrew
+    had selected him as a secretary and companion Peter could not fancy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The magnificence of his surroundings revived his late dream of a
+    honeymoon with Cissie. Certainly, in his fancy, he had visioned a
+    honeymoon in Pullman parlor cars and suburban bungalows. He had been
+    mistaken. This great chamber rose about him like a corrected proof of
+    his desire.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Into just such a room he would like to lead Cissie; into this great room
+    that breathed pride and dignity. What a glowing heart the girl would
+    have made for its somber magnificence!
+</p>
+<p>
+    He walked over to the full-length windows and opened them; then he
+    unbolted the jalousies outside and swung them back. The musk of autumn
+    weeds breathed in out of the darkness. Peter drew a long breath, with a
+    sort of wistful melting in his chest.
+</p>
+<a name="2HCH12"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER IX
+</h2>
+<p>
+    A turmoil aroused Peter Siner the next morning, and when he discovered
+    where he was, in the big canopy bed in the great room, he listened
+    curiously and heard a continuous chattering and quarreling. After a
+    minute or two he recognized the voice of old Rose Hobbett. Rose was
+    cooking the Captain's breakfast, and she performed this function in a
+    kind of solitary rage. She banged the vessels, slammed the stove-eyes on
+    and off, flung the stove-wood about, and kept up a snarling
+    animadversion upon every topic that drifted through her kinky head. She
+    called the kitchen a rat-hole, stated the Captain must be as mean as the
+    devil to live as long as he did, complained that no one ever paid any
+    attention to her, that she might as well be a stray cat, and so on.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As Peter grew wider awake, the monotony of the old negress's rancor
+    faded into an unobserved noise. He sat up on the edge of his bed between
+    the parted curtains and divined there was a bath behind the screen in
+    the corner of his room. Sure enough, he found two frayed but clean
+    towels, a pan, a pitcher, and a small tub all made of tin. Peter
+    assembled his find and began splashing his heavily molded chest with a
+    feeling of well-being. As he splashed on the water, he amused himself by
+    listening again to old Rose. She was now complaining that some white
+    young'uns had called her "raving Rose." She hoped "God'lmighty would
+    send down two she bears and eat 'em up." Peter was amazed by the old
+    crone's ability to maintain an unending flow of concentrated and aimless
+    virulence.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The kitchen of the Renfrew manor was a separate building, and presently
+    Peter saw old Rose carrying great platters across the weed-grown
+    compound into the dining-room. She bore plate after plate piled high
+    with cookery,&mdash;enough for a company of men. A little later came a
+    clangor on a rusty triangle, as if she were summoning a house party. Old
+    Rose did things in a wholesale spirit.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter started for his door, but when he had opened the shutter, he stood
+    hesitating. Breakfast introduced another delicate problem. He decided
+    not to go to the dining-room at once, but to wait and allow Captain
+    Renfrew to indicate whether he, Peter, should break his fast with the
+    master in the dining-room or with old Rose in the kitchen.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A moment later he saw the Captain coming down the long back piazza.
+    Peter almost addressed his host, but the old Southerner proceeded into
+    the dining-room apparently without seeing Peter at all.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The guest was gathering his breath to call good morning, but took the
+    cue with a negro's sensitiveness, and let his eyes run along the weeds
+    in the compound. The drying stalks were woven with endless spider-webs,
+    all white with frost. Peter stood regarding their delicate geometries a
+    moment longer and then reentered his room, not knowing precisely what to
+    do. He could hear Rose walking across the piazza to and from the dining-
+    room, and the clink of tableware. A few minutes later a knock came at
+    his door, and the old woman entered with a huge salver covered with
+    steaming dishes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The negress came into the room scowling, and seemed doubtful for a
+    moment just how to shut the door and still hold the tray with both
+    hands. She solved the problem by backing against the door tremendously.
+    Then she saw Peter. She straightened and stared at him with outraged
+    dignity.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, 'fo' Gawd! Is I bringin' dish-here breakfus' to a nigger?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I suppose it's mine," agreed Peter, amused.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But whuffo, whuffo, nigger, is it dat you ain't come to de kitchen an'
+    eat off'n de shelf? Is you sick?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter admitted fair bodily vigor.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Den whut de debbil is I got into!" cried Rose, angrily. "I ain't gwine
+    wuck at no sich place, ca'yin' breakfus' to a big beef uv a nigger,
+    stout as a mule. Say, nigger, wha-chu doin' in heah, anyway? Hoccum
+    dis?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter tried to explain that he was there to do a little writing for the
+    Captain.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, 'fo' Gawd, when niggers gits to writin' fuh white folks, ants'll
+    be jumpin' fuh bullfrogs&mdash;an havin' other niggers bring dey breakfusses.
+    You jes as much a nigger as I is, Peter Siner, de brightes' day you ever
+    seen!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter began a conciliatory phrase.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Old Rose banged the platter on the table and then threatened:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Dis is de las' time I fetches a moufful to you, Peter Siner, or any
+    other nigger. You ain't no black Jesus, even ef you is a woods calf."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter paused in drawing a chair to the table.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What did you say, Rose?" he asked sharply.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You heared whut I say."
+</p>
+<p>
+    A wave of anger went over Peter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, I did. You ought to be ashamed to speak ill of the dead."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The crone tossed her malicious head, a little abashed, perhaps, yet very
+    glad she had succeeded in hurting Peter. She turned and went out the
+    door, mumbling something which might have been apology or renewed
+    invectives.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter watched the old virago close the door and then sat down to his
+    breakfast. His anger presently died away, and he sat wondering what
+    could have happened to Rose Hobbett that had corroded her whole
+    existence. Did she enjoy her vituperation, her continual malice? He
+    tried to imagine how she felt.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The breakfast Rose had brought him was delicious: hot biscuits of
+    feathery lightness, three wide slices of ham, a bowl of scrambled eggs,
+    a pot of coffee, some preserved raspberries, and a tiny glass of whisky.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The plate which Captain Renfrew had set before his guest was a delicate
+    dawn pink ringed with a wreath of holly. It was old Worcester porcelain
+    of about the decade of 1760. The coffee-pot was really an old Whieldon
+    teapot in broad cauliflower design. Age and careless heating had given
+    the surface a fine reticulation. His cup and saucer, on the contrary,
+    were thick pieces of ware such as the cabin-boys toss about on
+    steamboats. The whole ceramic m&eacute;lange told of the fortuities of English
+    colonial and early American life, of the migration of families westward.
+    No doubt, once upon a time, that dawn-pink Worcester had married into a
+    Whieldon cauliflower family. A queer sort of genealogy might be traced
+    among Southern families through their mixtures of tableware.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As Peter mused over these implications of long ancestral lines, it
+    reminded him that he had none. Over his own past, over the lineage of
+    nearly every negro in the South, hung a curtain. Even the names of the
+    colored folk meant nothing, and gave no hint of their kin and clan. At
+    the end of the war between the States, Peter's people had selected names
+    for themselves, casually, as children pick up a pretty stone. They meant
+    nothing. It occurred to Peter for the first time, as he sat looking at
+    the chinaware, that he knew nothing about himself; whether his kinsmen
+    were valiant or recreant he did not know. Even his own father he knew
+    little about except that his mother had said his name was Peter, like
+    his own, and that he had gone down the river on a tie boat and was
+    drowned.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A faint sound attracted Peter's attention. He looked out at his open
+    window and saw old Rose making off the back way with something concealed
+    under her petticoat. Peter knew it was the unused ham and biscuits that
+    she had cooked. For once the old negress hurried along without railing
+    at the world. She moved with a silent, but, in a way, self-respecting,
+    flight. Peter could see by the tilt of her head and the set of her
+    shoulders that not only did her spoil gratify her enmity to mankind in
+    general and the Captain in particular, but she was well within her
+    rights in her acquisition. She disappeared around a syringa bush, and
+    was heard no more until she reappeared to cook the noon meal, as
+    vitriolic as ever.
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    When Peter entered the library, old Captain Renfrew greeted him with
+    morning wishes, thus sustaining the fiction that they had not seen each
+    other before, that morning.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old gentleman seemed pleased but somewhat excited over his new
+    secretary. He moved some of his books aimlessly from one table to
+    another, placed them in exact piles as if he were just about to plunge
+    into heroic labor, and could not give time to such details once he had
+    begun.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As he arranged his books just so, he cleared his throat.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now, Peter, we want to get down to this," he announced dynamically; "do
+    this thing, shove this work out!" He started with tottery briskness
+    around to his manuscript drawer, but veered off to the left to aline
+    some magazines. "System, Peter, system. Without system one may well be
+    hopeless of performing any great literary labor; but with system, the
+    constant piling up of brick on brick, stone on stone&mdash;it's the way Rome
+    was built, my boy."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter made a murmur supposed to acknowledge the correctness of this
+    view.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Eventually the old Captain drew out his drawer of manuscript, stood
+    fumbling with it uncertainly. Now and then he glanced at Peter, a
+    genuine secretary who stood ready to help him in his undertaking. The
+    old gentleman picked up some sheets of his manuscript, seemed about to
+    read them aloud, but after a moment shook his head, and said, "No, we'll
+    do that to-night," and restored them to their places. Finally he turned
+    to his helper.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now, Peter," he explained, "in doing this work, I always write at
+    night. It's quieter then,&mdash;less distraction. My mornings I spend
+    downtown in conversation with my friends. If you should need me, Peter,
+    you can walk down and find me in front of the livery-stable. I sit there
+    for a while each morning."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The gravity with which he gave this schedule of his personal habits
+    amused Peter, who bowed with a serious, "Very well, Captain."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And in the meantime," pursued the old man, looking vaguely about the
+    room, "you will do well to familiarize yourself with my library in order
+    that you may be properly qualified for your secretarial labors."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter agreed again.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And now if you will get my hat and coat, I will be off and let you go
+    to work," concluded the Captain, with an air of continued urgency.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter became thoroughly amused at such an outcome of the old gentleman's
+    headlong attack on his work,&mdash;a stroll down to the village to hold
+    conversation with friends. The mulatto walked unsmilingly to a little
+    closet where the Captain hung his things. He took down the old
+    gentleman's tall hat, a gray greatcoat worn shiny about the shoulders
+    and tail, and a finely carved walnut cane. Some reminiscence of the
+    manners of butlers which Peter had seen in theaters caused him to swing
+    the overcoat across his left arm and polish the thin nap of the old hat
+    with his right sleeve. He presented it to his employer with a certain
+    duplication of a butler's obsequiousness. He offered the overcoat to the
+    old gentleman's arms with the same air. Then he held up the collar of
+    the greatcoat with one hand and with the other reached under its skirts,
+    and drew down the Captain's long day coat with little jerks, as if he
+    were going through a ritual.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter grew more and more hilarious over his barber's manners. It was his
+    contribution to the old gentleman's literary labors, and he was doing it
+    beautifully, so he thought. He was just making some minute adjustments
+    of the collar when, to his amazement, Captain Renfrew turned on him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Damn it, sir!" he flared out. "What do you think you are? I didn't
+    engage you for a kowtowing valet in waiting, sir! I asked you, sir, to
+    come under my roof as an intellectual co-worker, as one gentleman asks
+    another, and here you are making these niggery motions! They are
+    disgusting! They are defiling! They are beneath the dignity of one
+    gentleman to another, sir! What makes it more degrading, I perceive by
+    your mannerism that you assume a specious servility, sir, as if you
+    would flatter me by it!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old lawyer's face was white. His angry old eyes jerked Peter out of
+    his slight mummery. The negro felt oddly like a grammar-school boy
+    caught making faces behind his master's back. It shocked him into
+    sincerer manners.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Captain," he said with a certain stiffness, "I apologize for my
+    mistake; but may I ask how you desire me to act?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Simply, naturally, sir," thundered the Captain, "as one alumnus of
+    Harvard to another! It is quite proper for a young man, sir, to assist
+    an old gentleman with his hat and coat, but without fripperies and
+    genuflections and absurdities!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old man's hauteur touched some spring of resentment in Peter. He
+    shook his head.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, Captain; our lack of sympathy goes deeper than manners. My position
+    here is anomalous. For instance, I can talk to you sitting, I can drink
+    with you standing, but I can't breakfast with you at all. I do that
+    <i>in camera</i>, like a disgraceful divorce proceeding. It's precisely
+    as I was treated coming down here South again; it's as I've been treated
+    ever since I've been back; it's&mdash;" He paused abruptly and swallowed down
+    the rancor that filled him. "No," he repeated in a different tone,
+    "there is no earthly excuse for me to remain here, Captain, or to let
+    you go on measuring out your indulgences to me. There is no way for us
+    to get together or to work together&mdash;not this far South. Let me thank
+    you for a night's entertainment and go."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter turned about, meaning to make an end of this queer adventure.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old Captain watched him, and his pallor increased. He lifted an
+    unsteady hand.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, no, Peter," he objected, "not so soon. This has been no trial, no
+    fair trial. The little&mdash;little&mdash;er&mdash;details of our domestic life here,
+    they will&mdash;er&mdash;arrange themselves, Peter. Gossip&mdash;talk, you know, we
+    must avoid that." The old lawyer stood staring with strange eyes at his
+    prot&eacute;g&eacute;. "I&mdash;I'm interested in you, Peter. My actions may seem&mdash;odd,
+    but&mdash;er&mdash;a negro boy going off and doing what you have done&mdash;
+    extraordinary. I&mdash;I have spoken to your mother, Caroline, about you
+    often. In fact, Peter, I&mdash;I made some little advances in order that you
+    might complete your studies. Now, now, don't thank me! It was purely
+    impersonal. You seemed bright. I have often thought we gentle people of
+    the South ought to do more to encourage our black folk&mdash;not&mdash;not as
+    social equals&mdash;" Here the old gentleman made a wry mouth as if he had
+    tasted salt.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Stay here and look over the library," he broke off abruptly. "We can
+    arrange some ground of&mdash;of common action, some&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    He settled the lapels of his great-coat with precision, addressed his
+    palm to the knob of his stick, and marched stiffly out of the library,
+    around the piazza, and along the dismantled walk to the front gate.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter stood utterly astonished at this strange information. Suddenly he
+    ran after the old lawyer, and rounded the turn of the piazza in time to
+    see him walk stiffly down the shaded street with tremulous dignity. The
+    old gentleman was much the same as usual, a little shakier, perhaps, his
+    tall hat a little more polished, his shiny gray overcoat set a little
+    more snugly at the collar.
+</p>
+<a name="2HCH13"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER X
+</h2>
+<p>
+    The village of Hooker's Bend amuses itself mainly with questionable
+    jests that range all the way from the slightly brackish to the
+    hopelessly obscene. Now, in using this type of anecdote, the Hooker's-
+    Benders must not be thought to design an attack upon the decencies of
+    life; on the contrary, they are relying on the fact that their hearers
+    have, in the depths of their beings, a profound reverence for the object
+    of their sallies. And so, by taking advantage of the moral shock they
+    produce and linking it to the idea of an absurdity, they convert the
+    whole psychical reaction into an explosion of humor. Thus the ring of
+    raconteurs telling blackguardly stories around the stoves in Hooker's
+    Bend stores, are, in reality, exercising one another in the more
+    delicate sentiments of life, and may very well be classed as a round
+    table of Sir Galahads, <i>sans peur et sans reproche</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    However, the best men weary in well doing, and for the last few days
+    Hooker's Bend had switched from its intellectual staple of conversation
+    to consider the comedy of Tump Pack's undoing. The incident held
+    undeniably comic elements. For Tump to start out carrying a forty-four,
+    meaning to blow a rival out of his path, and to wind up hard at work,
+    picking cotton at nothing a day for a man whose offer of three dollars a
+    day he had just refused, certainly held the makings of a farce.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the heels of this came the news that Peter Siner meant to take
+    advantage of Tump's arrest and marry Cissie Dildine. Old Parson Ranson
+    was responsible for the spread of this last rumor. He had fumbled badly
+    in his effort to hold Peter's secret. Not once, but many times, always
+    guarded by a pledge of secrecy, had he revealed the approaching wedding.
+    When pressed for a date, the old negro said he was "not at lib'ty to
+    tell."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Up to this point white criticism viewed the stage-setting of the black
+    comedy with the impersonal interest of a box party. Some of the round
+    table said they believed there would be a dead coon or so before the
+    scrape was over.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dawson Bobbs, the ponderous constable, went to the trouble to telephone
+    Mr. Cicero Throgmartin, for whom Tump was working, cautioning
+    Throgmartin to make sure that Tump Pack was in the sleeping-shack every
+    night, as he might get wind of the wedding and take a notion to bolt and
+    stop it. "You know, you can't tell what a fool nigger'll do," finished
+    Bobbs.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Throgmartin was mildly amused, promised the necessary precautions, and
+    said:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It looks like Peter has put one over on Tump, and maybe a college
+    education does help a nigger some, after all."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The constable thought it was just luck.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, I dunno," said Throgmartin, who was a philosopher, and inclined
+    to view every matter from various angles. "Peter may of worked this out
+    somehow."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Have you heard what Henry Hooker done to Siner in the land deal?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Throgmartin said he had.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, I don't mean <i>that</i>. I mean Henry's last wrinkle in
+    garnisheeing old Ca'line's estate in his bank for the rest of the
+    purchase money on the Dilihay place."
+</p>
+<p>
+    There was a pause.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You don't mean it!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Damn 'f I don't."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The constable's sentence shook with suppressed mirth, and the next
+    moment roars of laughter came over the telephone wire.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Say, ain't he the bird!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He's the original early bird. I'd like to get a snap-shot of the worm
+    that gets away from him."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Both men laughed heartily again.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But, say," objected Throgmartin, who was something of a lawyer
+    himself,&mdash;as, indeed, all Southern men are,&mdash;"I thought the Sons and
+    Daughters of Benevolence owed Hooker, not Peter Siner, nor Ca'line's
+    estate."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, it <i>is</i> the Sons and Daughters, but Ca'line was one of 'em,
+    and they ain't no limited li'bility 'sociation. Henry can jump on
+    anything any of 'em's got. Henry got the Persimmon to bring him a copy
+    of their by-laws."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, I swear! Say, if Henry wasn't kind of held back by his religion,
+    he'd use a gun, wouldn't he?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I dunno. I can say this for Henry's religion: 'It's jest like Henry's
+    wife,&mdash;it's the dearest thing to his heart; he'd give his life for it,
+    but it don't do nobody a damn bit of good except jest Henry.'"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The constable's little eyes twinkled as he heard Throgmartin roaring
+    with laughter and sputtering appreciative oaths.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At that moment a ringing of the bell jarred the ears of both
+    telephonists. A voice asked for Dr. Jallup. It was an ill time to
+    interrupt two gentlemen. The flair of a jest is lost in a pause. The
+    officer stated sharply that he was the constable of Wayne County and was
+    talking business about the county's prisoners. His tone was so charged
+    with consequence that the voice that wanted a doctor apologized hastily
+    and ceased.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Came a pause in which neither man found anything to say. Laughter is
+    like that,&mdash;a gay bubble that a touch will destroy. Presently Bobbs
+    continued, gravely enough:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Talking about Siner, he's stayin' up at old man Renfrew's now."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'At so?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Old Rose Hobbett swears he's doin' some sort of writin' up there and
+    livin' in one of the old man's best rooms."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Hell he is!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yeah?" the constable's voice questioned Throgmartin's opinion about
+    such heresy and expressed his own.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "D' recken it's so? Old Rose is such a thief and a liar."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Nope," declared the constable, "the old nigger never would of made up a
+    lie like that,&mdash;never would of thought of it. Old Cap'n Renfrew's
+    gettin' childish; this nigger's takin' advantage of it. Down at the
+    liver'-stable the boys were talkin' about Siner goin' to git married,
+    an' dern if old man Renfrew didn't git cut up about it!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well," opined Throgmartin, charitably, "the old man livin' there all by
+    himself&mdash;I reckon even a nigger is some comp'ny. They're funny damn
+    things, niggers is; never know a care nor trouble. Lord! I wish I was as
+    care-free as they are!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Don't you, though!" agreed the constable, with the weight of the white
+    man's burden on his shoulders. For this is a part of the Southern
+    credo,&mdash;that all negroes are gay, care-free, and happy, and that if one
+    could only be like the negroes, gay, care-free, and happy&mdash;Ah, if one
+    could only be like the negroes!
+</p>
+<p>
+    None of this gossip reached Peter directly, but a sort of back-wash did
+    catch him keenly through young Sam Arkwright and serve as a conundrum
+    for several days.
+</p>
+<p>
+    One morning Peter was bringing an armful of groceries up the street to
+    the old manor, and he met the boy coming in the opposite direction. The
+    negro's mind was centered on a peculiar problem he had found in the
+    Renfrew library, so, according to a habit he had acquired in Boston, he
+    took the right-hand side of the pavement, which chanced to be the inner
+    side. This violated a Hooker's-Bend convention, which decrees that when
+    a white and a black meet on the sidewalk, the black man invariably shall
+    take the outer side.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For this <i>faux pas</i> the gangling youth stopped Peter, fell to
+    abusing and cursing him for his impudence, his egotism, his attempt at
+    social equality,&mdash;all of which charges, no doubt, were echoes from the
+    round table. Such wrath over such an offense was unusual. Ordinarily, a
+    white villager would have thought several uncomplimentary things about
+    Peter, but would have said nothing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter stopped with a shock of surprise, then listened to the whole
+    diatribe with a rising sense of irritation and irony. Finally, without a
+    word, he corrected his mistake by retracing his steps and passing Sam
+    again, this time on the outside.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter walked on up the street, outwardly calm, but his ears burned, and
+    the queer indignity stuck in his mind. As he went along he invented all
+    sorts of ironical remarks he might have made to Arkwright, which would
+    have been unwise; then he thought of sober reasoning he could have used,
+    which would perhaps have been just as ill-advised. Still later he
+    wondered why Arkwright had fallen into such a rage over such a trifle.
+    Peter felt sure there was some contributing rancor in the youth's mind.
+    Perhaps he had received a scolding at home or a whipping at school, or
+    perhaps he was in the midst of one of those queer attacks of megalomania
+    from which adolescents are chronic sufferers. Peter fancied this and
+    that, but he never came within hail of the actual reason.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When the brown man reached the old manor, the quietude of the library,
+    with its blackened mahogany table, its faded green Axminster, the
+    meridional globe with its dusty twinkle, banished the incident from his
+    mind. He returned to his work of card-indexing the Captain's books. He
+    took half a dozen at a time from the shelves, dusted them on the piazza,
+    then carried them to the embrasure of the window, which offered a
+    pleasant light for reading and for writing the cards.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He went through volume after volume,&mdash;speeches by Clay, Calhoun, Yancy,
+    Prentiss, Breckenridge; an old life of General Taylor, Foxe's "Book of
+    Martyrs"; a collection of the old middle-English dramatists, such as
+    Lillo, Garrick, Arthur Murphy, Charles Macklin, George Colman, Charles
+    Coffey, men whose plays have long since declined from the boards and
+    disappeared from the reading-table.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Captain's collection of books was strongly colored by a religious
+    cast,&mdash;John Wesley's sermons, Charles Wesley's hymns; a treatise
+    presenting a biblical proof that negroes have no souls; a little book
+    called "Flowers Gathered," which purported to be a compilation of the
+    sayings of ultra-pious children, all of whom died young; an old book
+    called "Elements of Criticism," by Henry Home of Kames; another tome
+    entitled "Studies of Nature," by St. Pierre. This last was a long
+    argument for the miraculous creation of the world as set forth in
+    Genesis. The proof offered was a r&eacute;sum&eacute; of the vegetable, animal, and
+    mineral kingdoms, showing their perfect fitness for man's use, and the
+    immediate induction was that they were designed for man's use. Still
+    another work calculated the exact age of the earth by the na&iuml;ve method
+    of counting the generations from Adam to Christ, to the total adding
+    eighteen hundred and eighty-five years (for the book was written in
+    1885), and the original six days it required the Lord to build the
+    earth. By referring to Genesis and finding out precisely what the
+    Creator did on the morning of the first day, the writer contrived to
+    bring his calculation of the age of the earth and everything in the
+    world to a precision of six hours, give or take,&mdash;a somewhat closer
+    schedule than that made by the Tennessee river boats coming up from St.
+    Louis.
+</p>
+<p>
+    These and similar volumes formed the scientific section of Captain
+    Renfrew's library, and it was this paucity of the natural sciences that
+    formed the problem which Peter tried to solve. All scientific additions
+    came to an abrupt stop about the decade of 1880-90. That was the date
+    when Charles Darwin's great fructifying theory, enunciated in 1859,
+    began to seep into the South.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the Captain's library the only notice of evolution was a book called
+    "Darwinism Dethroned." As for the elaborations of the Darwinian
+    hypothesis by Spencer, Fiske, DeVries, Weismann, Haeckel, Kidd, Bergson,
+    and every subsequent philosophic or biologic writer, all these men might
+    never have written a line so far as Captain Renfrew's library was
+    informed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now, why such extraordinary occlusions? Why should Captain Renfrew deny
+    himself the very commonplaces of thought, theories familiarly held by
+    the rest of America, and, indeed, by all the rest of the civilized
+    world?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Musing by the window, Peter succeeded in stating his problem more
+    broadly: Why was Captain Renfrew an intellectual reactionist? The old
+    gentleman was the reverse of stupid. Why should he confine his selection
+    of books to a few old oddities that had lost their battle against a
+    theory which had captured the intellectual world fifty years before?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nor was it Captain Renfrew alone. Now and then Peter saw editorials
+    appearing in leading Southern journals, seriously attacking the
+    evolutionary hypothesis. Ministers in respectable churches still
+    fulminated against it. Peter knew that the whole South still clings, in
+    a way, to the miraculous and special creation of the earth as described
+    in Genesis. It clings with an intransigentism and bitterness far
+    exceeding other part of America. Why? To Peter the problem appeared
+    insoluble.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He sat by the window lost in his reverie. Just outside the ledge half a
+    dozen English sparrows abused one another with chirps that came faintly
+    through the small diamond panes. Their quick movements held Peter's
+    eyes, and their endless quarreling presently recalled his episode with
+    young Arkwright. It occurred to him, casually, that when Arkwright grew
+    up he would subscribe to every reactionary doctrine set forth in the
+    library Peter was indexing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    With that thought came a sort of mental flare, as if he were about to
+    find the answer to the whole question through the concrete attack made
+    on him by Sam.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is an extraordinary feeling,&mdash;the sudden, joyful dawn of a new idea.
+    Peter sat up sharply and leaned forward with a sense of being right on
+    the fringe of a new and a great perception. Young Arkwright, the old
+    Captain, the whole South, were unfolding themselves in a vast answer,
+    when a movement outside the window caught the negro's introspective
+    eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A girl was passing; a girl in a yellow dress was passing the Renfrew
+    gate. Even then Peter would not have wavered in his synthesis had not
+    the girl paused slightly and given a swift side glance at the old manor.
+    Then the man in the window recognized Cissie Dildine.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A slight shock traveled through Siner's body at the sight of Cissie's
+    colorless face and darkened eyes. He stood up abruptly, with a feeling
+    that he had some urgent thing to say to the young woman. His sharp
+    movement toppled over the big globe.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The crash caused the girl to stop and look. For a moment they stood
+    thus, the girl in the chill street, the man in the pleasant window,
+    looking at each other. Next moment Cissie hurried on up the village
+    street toward the Arkwright house. No doubt she was on her way to cook
+    the noon meal.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter remained standing at the window, with a heavily beating heart. He
+    watched her until she vanished behind a wing of the shrubbery in the
+    Renfrew yard.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When she had gone, he looked at his books and cards, sat down, and tried
+    to resume his indexing. But his mind played away from it like a restive
+    horse. It had been two weeks since he last saw Cissie. Two weeks.... His
+    nerves vibrated like the strings of a pianoforte. He had scarcely
+    thought of her during the fortnight; but now, having seen her, he found
+    himself powerless to go on with his work. He pottered a while longer
+    among the books and cards, but they were meaningless. They appeared an
+    utter futility. Why index a lot of nonsense? Somehow this recalled his
+    flare, his adumbration of some great idea connected with young Arkwright
+    and the old Captain, and the South.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He put his trembling nerves to work, trying to recapture his line of
+    thought. He sat for ten minutes, following this mental train, then that,
+    losing one, groping for another. His thoughts were jumpy. They played
+    about Arkwright, the Captain, Cissie, his mother's death, Tump Pack in
+    prison, the quarrel between the Persimmon and Jim Pink Staggs. The whole
+    of Niggertown came rushing down upon him, seizing him in its passion and
+    dustiness and greasiness, putting to flight all his cultivated white-man
+    ideas.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After half an hour's searching he gave it up. Before he left the room he
+    stooped, and tried to set up again the globe that the passing of the
+    girl had caused him to throw down; but its pivot was out of plumb, and
+    he had to lean it against the window-seat.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The sight of Captain Renfrew coming in at the gate sent Peter to his
+    room. The hour was near twelve, and it had become a little point of
+    household etiquette for the mulatto and the white man not to be together
+    when old Rose jangled the triangle. By this means they forestalled the
+    mute discourtesy of the old Captain's walking away from his secretary to
+    eat. The subject of their separate meals had never been mentioned since
+    their first acrimonious morning. The matter had dropped into the
+    abeyance of custom, just as the old gentleman had predicted.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter had left open his jalousies, but his windows were closed, and now
+    as he entered he found his apartment flooded with sunshine and filled
+    with that equable warmth that comes of straining sunbeams through glass.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He prepared for dinner with his mind still hovering about Cissie. He
+    removed a book and a lamp from the lion-footed table, and drew up an old
+    chair with which the Captain had furnished his room. It was a delicate
+    old Heppelwhite of rosewood. It had lost a finial from one of its back
+    standards, and a round was gone from the left side. Peter never moved
+    the chair that vague plans sometime to repair it did not occur to him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When he had cleared his table and placed his chair beside it, he
+    wandered over to his tall west window and stood looking up the street
+    through the brilliant sunshine, toward the Arkwright home. No one was in
+    sight. In Hooker's Bend every one dines precisely at twelve, and at that
+    hour the streets are empty. It would be some time before Cissie came
+    back down the street on her way to Niggertown. She first would have to
+    wash and put away the Arkwright dishes. It would be somewhere about one
+    o'clock. Nevertheless, he kept staring out through the radiance of the
+    autumn sunlight with an irrational feeling that she might appear at any
+    moment. He was afraid she would slip past and he not see her at all. The
+    thought disturbed him somewhat. It kept him sufficiently on the alert to
+    stand tapping the balls of his fingers against the glass and looking
+    steadily toward the Arkwright house.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Presently the watcher perceived that a myriad spider-webs filled the
+    sunshine with a delicate dancing glister. It was the month of voyaging
+    spiders. Invisible to Peter, the tiny spinners climbed to the tip-most
+    twigs of the dead weeds, listed their abdomens, and lassoed the wind
+    with gossamer lariats; then they let go and sailed away to a hazard of
+    new fortunes. The air was full of the tiny adventurers. As he stared up
+    the street, Peter caught the glint of these invisible airships whisking
+    away to whatever chance might hold for them. There was something epic in
+    it. It recalled to the mulatto's mind some of Fabre's lovely
+    descriptions. It reminded him of two or three books on entomology which
+    he had left in his mother's cabin. He felt he ought to go after them
+    while the spiders were migrating. He suddenly made up his mind he would
+    go at once, as soon as he had had dinner; somewhere about one o'clock.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He looked again at the Arkwright house. The thought of walking down the
+    street with Cissie, to get his books, quickened his heart.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He was still at the window when his door opened and old Rose entered
+    with his dinner. She growled under her breath all the way from the door
+    to the table on which she placed the tray. Only a single phrase detached
+    itself and stood out clearly amid her mutterings, "Hope it chokes you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter arranged his chair and table with reference to the window, so he
+    could look up the street while he was eating his dinner.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The ill-wishing Rose had again furnished a gourmet's meal, but Peter's
+    preoccupation prevented its careful and appreciative gustation. An
+    irrational feeling of the octoroon's imminence spurred him to fast
+    eating. He had hardly begun his soup before he found himself drinking
+    swiftly, looking up the street over his spoon, as if he meant to rush
+    out and swing aboard a passing train.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Siner checked his precipitation, annoyed at himself. He began again,
+    deliberately, with an attempt to keep his mind on the savor of his food.
+    He even thought of abandoning his little design of going for the books;
+    or he would go at a different hour, or to-morrow, or not at all. He told
+    himself he would far better allow Cissie Dildine to pass and repass
+    unspoken to, instead of trying to arrange an accidental meeting. But the
+    brown man's nerves wouldn't hear to it. That automatic portion of his
+    brain and spinal column which, physiologists assert, performs three
+    fourths of a man's actions and conditions nine tenths of his volitions&mdash;
+    that part of Peter wouldn't consider it. It began to get jumpy and
+    scatter havoc in Peter's thoughts at the mere suggestion of not seeing
+    Cissie. Imperceptibly this radical left wing of his emotions speeded up
+    his meal, again. He caught himself, stopped his knife and fork in the
+    act of rending apart a broiled chicken.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Confound it! I'll start when she comes in sight, no matter whether I've
+    finished this meal or not," he promised himself.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And suddenly he felt unhurried, in the midst of a large leisure, with a
+    savory broiled chicken dinner before him,&mdash;not exactly before him,
+    either; most of it had been stuffed away. Only the fag-end remained on
+    his plate. A perfectly good meal had been ruined by an ill-timed
+    resistance to temptation.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The glint of a yellow dress far up the street had just prompted him to
+    swift action when the door opened and old Rose put her head in to say
+    that Captain Renfrew wanted to see Peter in the library.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The brown man came to a shocked standstill.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What! Right now?" he asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yeah, right now," carped Rose. "Ever'thing he wants, he wants right
+    now. He's been res'less as a cat in a bulldog's den ever sence he come
+    home fuh dinner. Dunno whut's come into he ole bones, runnin' th'ugh his
+    dinner lak a razo'-back." She withdrew in a continued mumble of censure.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter cast a glance up the street, timed Cissie's arrival at the front
+    gate, picked up his hat, and walked briskly to the library in the hope
+    of finishing any business the Captain might have, in time to encounter
+    the octoroon. He even began making some little conversational plans with
+    which he could meet Cissie in a simple, unstudied manner. He recalled
+    with a certain satisfaction that he had not said a word of condemnation
+    the night of Cissie's confession. He would make a point of that, and was
+    prepared to argue that, since he had said nothing, he meant nothing. In
+    fact he was prepared to throw away the truth completely and enter the
+    conversation as an out-and-out opportunist, alleging whatever appeared
+    to fit the occasion, as all men talk to all women.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old Captain was just getting into his chair as Peter entered. He
+    paused in the midst of lowering himself by the chair-arms and got erect
+    again. He began speaking a little uncertainly:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ah&mdash;by the way, Peter&mdash;I sent for you&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, sir." Peter looked out at the window.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old gentleman scrutinized Peter a moment; then his faded eyes
+    wandered about the library.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Still working at the books, cross-indexing them&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, sir." Peter could divine by the crinkle of his nerves the very
+    loci of the girl as she passed down the thoroughfare.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Very good," said the old lawyer, absently. He was obviously preoccupied
+    with some other topic. "Very good," he repeated with racking
+    deliberation; "quite good. How did that globe get bent?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter, looking at it, did not remember either knocking it over or
+    setting it up.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I don't know," he said rapidly. "I hadn't noticed it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Old Rose did it," meditated the Captain aloud, "but it's no use to
+    accuse her of it; she'd deny it. And yet, on the other hand, Peter,
+    she'll be nervous until I do accuse her of it. She'll be dropping
+    things, breaking up my china. I dare say I'd best accuse her at once,
+    storm at her some to quiet her nerves, and get it over."
+</p>
+<p>
+    This monologue spurred Peter's impatience into an agony.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I believe you were wanting me, Captain?" he suggested, with a certain
+    urge for action.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Captain's little pleasantry faded. He looked at Peter and became
+    uncomfortable again.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, yes, Peter. Downtown I heard&mdash;well, a rumor connected with you&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Such an extraordinary turn caught the attention of even the fidgety
+    Peter. He looked at his employer and wondered blankly what he had heard.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I don't want to intrude on your private affairs, Peter, not at all&mdash;
+    not&mdash;not in the least&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No-o-o," agreed Peter, completely at a loss.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old gentleman rubbed his thin hands together, lifted his eyebrows up
+    and down nervously. "Are&mdash;are you about to&mdash;to leave me, Peter?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter was greatly surprised at the slightness and simplicity of this
+    question and at the evidence of emotion it carried.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, no," he cried; "not at all! Who told you I was? It is a deep
+    gratification to me&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "To be exact," proceeded the old man, with a vague fear still in his
+    eyes, "I heard you were going to marry."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Marry!" This flaw took Peter's sails even more unexpectedly than the
+    other. "Captain, who in the world&mdash;who could have told&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Are you?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You aren't?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Indeed, no!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I heard you were going to marry a negress here in town called Cissie
+    Dildine." A question was audible in the silence that followed this
+    statement. The obscure emotion that charged all the old man's queries
+    affected Peter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I am not, Captain," he declared earnestly; "that's settled."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh&mdash;you say it's settled," picked up the old lawyer, delicately.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then you had thought of it?" Immediately, however, he corrected this
+    breach of courtesy into which his old legal habit of cross-questioning
+    had led him. "Well, at any rate," he said in quite another voice, "that
+    eases my mind, Peter. It eases my mind. It was not only, Peter, the
+    thought of losing you, but this girl you were thinking of marrying&mdash;let
+    me warn you, Peter&mdash;she's a negress."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The mulatto stared at the strange objection.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "A negress!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old man paused and made that queer movement with his wrinkled lips
+    as if he tasted some salty flavor.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I&mdash;I don't mean exactly a&mdash;a negress," stammered the old gentleman; "I
+    mean she's not a&mdash;a good girl, Peter; she's a&mdash;a thief, in fact&mdash;she's a
+    thief&mdash;a thief, Peter. I couldn't endure for you to marry a thief,
+    Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    It seemed to Peter Siner that some horrible compulsion kept the old
+    Captain repeating over and over the fact that Cissie Dildine was a
+    thief, a thief, a thief. The word cut the very viscera in the brown man.
+    At last, when it seemed the old gentleman would never cease, Peter
+    lifted a hand.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, yes," he gasped, with a sickly face, "I&mdash;I've heard that before."
+</p>
+<p>
+    He drew a shaken breath and moistened his lips. The two stood looking at
+    each other, each profoundly at a loss as to what the other meant. Old
+    Captain Renfrew collected himself first.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That is all, Peter." He tried to lighten his tones. "I think I'll get
+    to work. Let me see, where do I keep my manuscript?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter pointed mechanically at a drawer as he walked out at the library
+    door. Once outside, he ran to the front piazza, then to the front gate,
+    and with a racing heart stood looking up and down the sleepy
+    thoroughfare. The street was quite empty.
+</p>
+<a name="2HCH14"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XI
+</h2>
+<p>
+    Old Captain Renfrew was a trustful, credulous soul, as, indeed, most
+    gentleman who lead a bachelor's life are. Such men lack that moral
+    hardening and whetting which is obtained only amid the vicissitudes of a
+    home; they are not actively and continuously engaged in the employment
+    and detection of chicane; want of intimate association with a woman and
+    some children begets in them a soft and simple way of believing what is
+    said to them. And their faith, easily raised, is just as easily
+    shattered. Their judgment lacks training.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter Siner's simple assertion to the old Captain that he was not going
+    to marry Cissie Dildine completely allayed the old gentleman's
+    uneasiness. Even the further information that Peter had had such a
+    marriage under advisement, but had rejected it, did not put him on his
+    guard.
+</p>
+<p>
+    From long non-intimacy with any human creature, the old legislator had
+    forgotten that human life is one long succession of doing the things one
+    is not going to do; he had forgotten, if he ever knew, that the human
+    brain is primarily not a master, but a servant; its function is not to
+    direct, but to devise schemes and apologies to gratify impulses. It is
+    the ways and means committee to the great legislature of the body.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For several days after his fear that Peter Siner would marry Cissie
+    Dildine old Captain Renfrew was as felicitous as a lover newly
+    reconciled to his mistress. He ambled between the manor and the livery-
+    stable with an abiding sense of well-being. When he approached his home
+    in the radiance of high noon and saw the roof of the old mansion lying a
+    bluish gray in the shadows of the trees, it filled his heart with joy to
+    feel that it was not an old and empty house that awaited his coming, but
+    that in it worked a busy youth who would be glad to see him enter the
+    gate.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The fear of some unattended and undignified death which had beset the
+    old gentleman during the last eight or ten years of his life vanished
+    under Peter's presence. When he thought of it at all now, he always
+    previsioned himself being lifted in Peter's athletic arms and laid
+    properly on his big four-poster.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At times, when Peter sat working over the books in the library, the
+    Captain felt a prodigious urge to lay a hand on the young man's broad
+    and capable shoulder. But he never did. Again, the old lawyer would sit
+    for minutes at a time watching his secretary's regular features as the
+    brown man pursued his work with a trained intentness. The old gentleman
+    derived a deep pleasure from such long scrutinies. It pleased him to
+    imagine that, when he was young, he had possessed the same vigor, the
+    same masculinity, the same capacity for persistent labor. Indeed, all
+    old gentlemen are prone to choose the most personable and virile young
+    man they can find for themselves to have been like.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The two men had little to say to each other. Their thoughts beat to such
+    different tempos that any attempt at continued speech discovered unequal
+    measures. As a matter of fact, in all comfortable human conversation,
+    words are used as mere buoys dropped here and there to mark well-known
+    channels of thought and feeling. Similarity of mental topography is
+    necessary to mutual understanding. Between any two generations the
+    landscape is so changed as to be unrecognizable. Our fathers are
+    monarchists; our sons, bolsheviki.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Old Rose Hobbett was more of an age with the Captain, and these two
+    talked very comfortably as the old virago came and went with food at
+    meal-time. For instance, the Captain always asked his servant if she had
+    fed his cat, and old Rose invariably would sulk and poke out her lips
+    and put off answering to the last possible moment of insolence, then
+    would grumble out that she was jes 'bout to feed the varmint, an' 't wuz
+    funny nobody couldn't give a hard-wuckin' colored woman breathin'-space
+    to turn roun' in.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This reply was satisfactory to the Captain, because he knew what it
+    meant,&mdash;that Rose had half forgotten the cat, and had meant wholly to
+    forget it, but since she had been snapped up, so to speak, in the very
+    act of forgetting, she would dole it out a piece or two of the meat that
+    she had meant to abscond with as soon as the dishes were done.
+</p>
+<p>
+    While Rose was fulminating, the old gentleman recalled his bent globe
+    and decided the moment had come for a lecture on that point. It always
+    vaguely embarrassed the Captain to correct Rose, and this increased his
+    dignity. Now he cleared his throat in a certain way that brought the old
+    negress to attention, so well they knew each other.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "By the way, Rose, in the future I must request you to use extraordinary
+    precautions in cleansing and dusting articles of my household furniture,
+    or, in case of damage, I shall be forced to withhold an indemnification
+    out of your pay."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Eight or ten years ago, when the Captain first repeated this formula to
+    his servant, the roll and swing of his rhetoric, and the last word,
+    "pay," had built up lively hopes in Rose that the old gentleman was
+    announcing an increase in her regular wage of a dollar a week.
+    Experience, however, had long since corrected this faulty
+    interpretation.
+</p>
+<p>
+    She came to a stand in the doorway, with her kinky gray head swung
+    around, half puzzled, wholly rebellious.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Whut is I bruk now?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "My globe."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old woman turned about with more than usual innocence.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, I ain't tech yo' globe!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I foresaw that," agreed the Captain, with patient irony, "but in the
+    future don't touch it more carefully. You bent its pivot the last time
+    you refrained from handling it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But I tell you I ain't tech yo' globe!" cried the negress, with the
+    anger of an illiterate person who feels, but cannot understand, the
+    satire leveled at her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I agree with you," said the Captain, glad the affair was over.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This verbal ducking into the cellar out of the path of her storm stirred
+    up a tempest.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But I tell you I ain't bruk it!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That's what I said."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yeah, yeah, yeah," she flared; "you says I ain't, but when you says I
+    ain't, you means I is, an' when you says I is, you means I ain't. Dat's
+    de sort o' flapjack I's wuckin' fur!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The woman flirted out of the dining-room, and the old gentleman drew
+    another long breath, glad it was over. He really had little reason to
+    quarrel about the globe, bent or unbent; he never used it. It sat in his
+    study year in and year out, its dusty twinkle brightened at long
+    intervals by old Rose's spiteful rag.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Captain ate on placidly. There had been a time when he was dubious
+    about such scenes with Rose. Once he felt it beneath his dignity as a
+    Southern gentleman to allow any negro to speak to him disrespectfully.
+    He used to feel that he should discharge her instantly and during the
+    first years of their entente had done so a number of times. But he could
+    get no one else who suited him so well; her biscuits, her corn-light-
+    bread, her lye-hominy, which only the old darkies know how to make. And,
+    to tell the truth, he missed the old creature herself, her understanding
+    of him and his ideas, her contemporaneity; and no one else would work
+    for a dollar a week.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Presently in the course of his eating the old gentleman required another
+    biscuit, and he wanted a hot one. Three mildly heated disks lay on a
+    plate before him, but they had been out of the oven for five minutes and
+    had been reduced to an unappetizing tepidity.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A little hand-bell sat beside the Captain's plate whose special use was
+    to summon hot biscuits. Now, the old lawyer looked at its worn handle
+    speculatively. He was not at all sure Rose would answer the bell. She
+    would say she hadn't heard it. He felt faintly disgruntled at not
+    foreseeing this exigency and buttering two biscuits while they were hot,
+    or even three.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He considered momentarily a project of going after a hot biscuit for
+    himself, but eventually put it by. South of the Mason-Dixon Line, self-
+    help is half-scandal. At last, quite dubiously, he did pick up the bell
+    and gave it a gentle ring, so if old Rose chose not to hear it, she
+    probably wouldn't: thus he could believe her and not lose his temper and
+    so widen an already uncomfortable breach.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To the Captain's surprise, the old creature not only brought the
+    biscuits, but she did it promptly. No sooner had she served them,
+    however, than the Captain saw she really had returned with a new line of
+    defense.
+</p>
+<p>
+    She mumbled it out as usual, so that her employer was forced to guess at
+    a number of words: "Dat nigger, Peter, mus' 'a' busted yo' gl&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, he didn't."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Mus' uv."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, he didn't. I asked him, and he said he didn't."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old harridan stared, and her speech suddenly became clear-cut:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, 'fo' Gawd, I says I didn't, too!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    At this point the Captain made an unintelligible sound and spread the
+    butter on his hot biscuit.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He's jes a nigger, lak I is," stated the cook, warmly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Captain buttered a second hot biscuit.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We's jes two niggers."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Captain hoped she would presently sputter herself out.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now look heah," cried the crone, growing angrier and angrier as the
+    reaches of the insult spread itself before her, "is you gwine to put one
+    o' us niggers befo' de udder? Ca'se ef you is, I mus' say, it's Kady-
+    lock-a-do' wid me."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Captain looked up satirically.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What do you mean by Katie-lock-the-door with you?" he asked, though he
+    had an uneasy feeling that he knew.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You know whut I means. I means I 's gwine to leab dis place."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now look here, Rose," protested the lawyer, with dignity, "Peter Siner
+    occupies almost a fiduciary relation to me."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old negress stared with a slack jaw. "A relation o' yo's!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The lawyer hesitated some seconds, looking at the hag. His high-bred old
+    face was quite inscrutable, but presently he said in a serious voice:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Peter occupies a position of trust with me, Rose."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yeah," mumbled Rose; "I see you trus' him."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "One day he is going to do me a service, a very great service, Rose."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The hag continued looking at him with a stubborn expression.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You know better than any one else, Rose, my dread of some&mdash;some
+    unmannerly death&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old woman made a sound that might have meant anything.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And Peter has promised to stay with me until&mdash;until the end."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old negress considered this solemn speech, and then grunted out:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Which en'?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Which end?" The Captain was irritated.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yeah; yo' en' or Peter's en'?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "By every law of probability, Peter will outlive me."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yeah, but Peter 'll come to a en' wid you when he ma'ies dat stuck-up
+    yellow fly-by-night, Cissie Dildine."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He's not going to marry her," said the Captain, comfortably.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Huh!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Peter told me he didn't intend to marry Cissie Dildine."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Shu! Then whut fur dey go roun' peepin' at each other lak a couple o'
+    niggers roun' a haystack?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old lawyer was annoyed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Peeping where?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, right in front o' dis house, dat's wha; ever' day when dat hussy
+    passes up to de Arkwrights', wha she wucks. She pokes along an' walls
+    her eyes roun' at dis house lak a calf wid de splivins."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That going on now?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ever' day."
+</p>
+<p>
+    A deep uneasiness went through the old man. He moistened his lips.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But Peter said&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Good Gawd! Mars' Renfrew, whut diff'ence do it make whut Peter say?
+    Ain't you foun' out yit when a he-nigger an' a she-nigger gits to
+    peepin' at each udder, whut dey says don't lib in de same neighbo'hood
+    wid whut dey does?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    This was delivered with such energy that it completely undermined the
+    Captain's faith in Peter, and the fact angered the old gentleman.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That'll do, Rose; that'll do. That's all I need of you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    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.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The verjuice which old Rose had sprinkled over Peter and Cissie by
+    calling them "he-nigger" and "she-nigger" 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.
+</p>
+<p>
+    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.
+</p>
+<a name="2HCH15"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XII
+</h2>
+<p>
+    The semi-daily passings 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.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After watching for two or three days, Peter worked out a sort of time-
+    table for Cissie. She passed 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 passed back toward Niggertown, 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.
+</p>
+<p>
+    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 passed she kept Peter watching the clock at
+    nervous intervals, wondering if, after all, she had gone by unobserved.
+    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
+    entity, self-sufficient, individual, bearing no relation to any other
+    words except that of mere proximity,&mdash;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.
+</p>
+<p>
+    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&mdash;" 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 passing 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,&mdash;while his heart hammered, and the
+    lines of print under his eyes blurred into gray streaks across the page.
+</p>
+<p>
+    One afternoon Peter saw Cissie pass 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.
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    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.
+</p>
+<p>
+    By a little observation he identified Cissie Dildine and what he saw did
+    not re&euml;stablish 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 passionate 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.
+</p>
+<p>
+    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.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Just before Cissie passed 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.
+</p>
+<p>
+    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.
+</p>
+<p>
+    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.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But old Captain Renfrew was far from appreciating any such bravura in
+    scarlet and gold. At first he put it down to mere niggerish taste, and
+    his dislike for the girl edged his stricture; then, on second thought,
+    the oddness of sumac for a nosegay caught his attention. Nobody used
+    sumac for a buttonhole. 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?
+</p>
+<p>
+    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.
+</p>
+<p>
+    All his life, Captain Renfrew's brain had been deliberate. He moved
+    mentally, as he did physically, with dignity. To tell the truth, the
+    Captain's thoughts had a way of absolutely stopping now and then, and
+    for a space he would view the world as a simple collection of colored
+    surfaces without depth or meaning. During these intervals, by a sort of
+    irony of the gods the old gentleman's face wore a look of philosophic
+    concentration, so that his mental hiatuses had given him a reputation
+    for profundity, which was county wide. It had been this, years before,
+    that had carried him by a powerful majority into the Tennessee
+    legislature. The voters agreed, almost to a man, that they preferred
+    depth to a shallow facility. The rival candidate had been shallow and
+    facile. The polls returned the Captain, and the young gentleman&mdash;for the
+    Captain was a young gentleman in those days&mdash;was launched on a typical
+    politician's career. But some Republican member from east Tennessee had
+    impugned the rising statesman's honor with some sort of improper
+    liaison. In those days there seemed to be proper and improper liaisons.
+    There had been a duel on the banks of the Cumberland River in which the
+    Captain succeeded in wounding his traducer in the arm, and was thus
+    vindicated by the gods. But the incident ended a career that might very
+    well have wound up in the governor's chair, or even in the United States
+    Senate, considering how very deliberate the Captain was mentally.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To-day, as the Captain walked up the street following Cissie Dildine,
+    one of these vacant moods fell upon him and it was not until they had
+    reached his own gate that it suddenly occurred to the old gentleman just
+    what Cissie's sumac did mean. It was a signal to Peter. The simplicity
+    of the solution stirred the old man. Its meaning was equally easy to
+    fathom. When a woman signals any man it conveys consent. Denials receive
+    no signals; they are inferred. In this particular case Captain Renfrew
+    found every reason to believe that this flaring bit of sumac was the
+    prelude to an elopement.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the window of his library the Captain saw his secretary staring at
+    his cards and books with an intentness plainly assumed. Peter's fixed
+    stare had none of those small movements of the head that mark genuine
+    intellectual labor. So Peter was posing, pretending he did not see the
+    girl, to disarm his employer's suspicions,&mdash;pretending not to see a
+    girl rigged out like that!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Such duplicity sent a queer spasm of anguish through the old lawyer.
+    Peter's action held half a dozen barbs for the Captain. A fellow-alumnus
+    of Harvard staying in his house merely for his wage and keep! Peter bore
+    not the slightest affection for him; the mulatto lacked even the
+    chivalry to notify the Captain of his intentions, because he knew the
+    Captain objected. And yet all these self-centered objections were
+    nothing to what old Captain Renfrew felt for Peter's own sake. For Peter
+    to marry a nigger and a strumpet, for him to elope with a wanton and a
+    thief! For such an upstanding lad, the very picture of his own virility
+    and mental alertness when he was of that age, for such a boy to fling
+    himself away, to drop out of existence&mdash;oh, it was loathly!
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old man entered the library feeling sick. It was empty. Peter had
+    gone to his room, according to his custom. But in this particular
+    instance it seemed to Captain Renfrew his withdrawal was flavored with a
+    tang of guilt. If he were innocent, why should not such a big, strong
+    youth have stayed and helped an old gentleman off with his overcoat?
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old Captain blew out a windy breath as he helped himself out of his
+    coat in the empty library. The bent globe still leaned against the
+    window-seat. The room had never looked so somber or so lonely.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At dinner the old man ate so little that Rose Hobbett ceased her
+    monotonous grumbling to ask if he felt well. He said he had had a hard
+    day, a difficult day. He felt so weak and thin that he foretold the gray
+    days when he could no longer creep to the village and sit with his
+    cronies at the livery-stable, when he would be house-fast, through
+    endless days, creeping from room to room like a weak old rat in a huge
+    empty house, finally to die in some disgusting fashion. And Now Peter
+    was going to leave him, was going to throw himself away on a lascivious
+    wench. A faint moisture dampened the old man's withered eyes. He drank
+    an extra thimbleful of whisky to try to hearten himself. Its bouquet
+    filled the time-worn stateliness of the dining-room.
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    During the weeks of Peter's stay at the manor it had grown to be the
+    Captain's habit really to write for two or three hours in the afternoon,
+    and his pile of manuscript had thickened under his application.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old man was writing a book called "Reminiscences of Peace and War."
+    His book would form another unit of that extraordinary crop of personal
+    reminiscences of the old South which flooded the presses of America
+    during the decade of 1908-18. During just that decade it seemed as if the
+    aged men and women of the South suddenly realized that the generation who
+    had lived through the picturesqueness and stateliness of the old slave
+    r&eacute;gime was almost gone, and over their hearts swept a common impulse to
+    commemorate, in the sunset of their own lives, its fading splendor and
+    its vanished deeds.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On this particular afternoon the Captain settled himself to work, but
+    his reminiscences did not get on. He pinched a bit of floss from the nib
+    of his pen and tried to swing into the period of which he was writing.
+    He read over a few pages of his copy as mental priming, but his thoughts
+    remained flat and dull. Indeed, his whole life, as he reviewed it in the
+    waning afternoon, appeared empty and futile. It seemed hardly worth
+    while to go on.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Captain had come to that point in his memoirs where the Republican
+    representative from Knox County had set going the petard which had
+    wrecked his political career.
+</p>
+<p>
+    From the very beginnings of his labors the old lawyer had looked forward
+    to writing just this period of his life. He meant to clear up his name
+    once for all. He meant to use invective, argument, testimony and a
+    powerful emotional appeal, such as a country lawyer invariably attempts
+    with a jury.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But now that he had arrived at the actual composition of his defense, he
+    sat biting his penholder, with all the arguments he meant to advance
+    slipped from his mind. He could not recall the points of the proof. He
+    could not recall them with Peter Siner moving restlessly about the room,
+    glancing through the window, unsettled, nervous, on the verge of eloping
+    with a negress.
+</p>
+<p>
+    His secretary's tragedy smote the old man. The necessity of doing
+    something for Peter put his thoughts to rout. A wild idea occurred to
+    the Captain that if he should write the exact truth, perhaps his memoirs
+    might serve Peter as a signal against a futile, empty journey.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But the thought no sooner appeared than it was rejected. In the Anglo-
+    Saxon, especially the Anglo-Saxon of the Southern United States, abides
+    no such Gallic frankness as moved a Jean-Jacques. Southern memoirs
+    always sound like the conversation between two maiden ladies,&mdash;nothing
+    intimate, simply a few general remarks designed to show from what nice
+    families they came.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So the Captain wrote nothing. During all the afternoon he sat at his
+    desk with a leaden heart, watching Peter move about the room. The old
+    man maintained more or less the posture of writing, but his thoughts
+    were occupied in pitying himself and pitying Peter. Half a dozen times
+    he looked up, on the verge of making some plea, some remonstrance,
+    against the madness of this brown man. But the sight of Peter sitting in
+    the window-seat staring out into the street silenced him. He was a weak
+    old man, and Peter's nerves were strung with the desire of youth.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At last the two men heard old Rose clashing in the kitchen. A few
+    minutes later the secretary excused himself from the library, to go to
+    his own room. As Peter was about to pass through the door, the Captain
+    was suddenly galvanized into action by the thought that this perhaps was
+    the last time he would ever see him. He got up from his chair and called
+    shakenly to Peter. The negro paused. The Captain moistened his lips and
+    controlled his voice.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I want to have a word with you, Peter, about a&mdash;a little matter. I&mdash;
+    I've mentioned it before."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, sir." The negro's tone and attitude reminded the Captain that the
+    supper gong would soon sound and they would best separate at once.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It&mdash;it's about Cissie Dildine," the old lawyer hurried on.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter nodded slightly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, you mentioned that before."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old man lifted a thin hand as if to touch Peter's arm, but he did
+    not. A sort of desperation seized him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But listen, Peter, you don't want to do&mdash;what's in your mind!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What is in my mind, Captain?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I mean marry a negress. You don't want to marry a negress!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The brown man stared, utterly blank.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Not marry a negress!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, Peter; no," quavered the old man. "For yourself it may make no
+    difference, but your children&mdash;think of your children, your son growing
+    up under a brown veil! You can't tear it off. God himself can't tear it
+    off! You can never reach him through it. Your children, your children's
+    children, a terrible procession that stretches out and out, marching
+    under a black shroud, unknowing, unknown! All you can see are their sad
+    forms beneath the shroud, marching away&mdash;marching away. God knows where!
+    And yet it's your own flesh and blood!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Suddenly the old lawyer's face broke into the hard, tearless contortions
+    of the aged. His terrible emotion communicated itself to the sensitive
+    brown man.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But, Captain, I myself am a negro. Whom should I marry?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No one; no one! Let your seed wither in your loins! It's better to do
+    that; it's better&mdash;" At that moment the clashing of the supper gong fell
+    on the old man's naked nerves. He straightened up by some reflex
+    mechanism, turned away from what he thought was his last interview with
+    his secretary, and proceeded down the piazza into the great empty
+    dining-room.
+</p>
+<a name="2HCH16"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XIII
+</h2>
+<p>
+    With overwrought nerves Peter Siner entered his room. At five o'clock
+    that afternoon he had seen Cissie Dildine go up the street to the
+    Arkwright home to cook one of those occasional suppers. He had been
+    watching for her return, and in the midst of it the Captain's
+    extraordinary outburst had stirred him up.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Once in his room, the negro placed the broken Hepplewhite in such a
+    position that he could rake the street with a glance. Then he tried to
+    compose himself and await the coming of his supper and the passage of
+    Cissie. There was something almost pathetic in Peter's endless watching,
+    all for a mere glimpse or two of the girl in yellow. He himself had no
+    idea how his nerves and thoughts had woven themselves around the young
+    woman. He had no idea what a passion this continual doling out of
+    glimpses had begotten. He did not dream how much he was, as folk na&iuml;vely
+    put it, in love with her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    His love was strong enough to make him forget for a while the old
+    lawyer's outbreak. However, as the dusk thickened in the shrubbery and
+    under the trees, certain of the old gentleman's phrases revisited the
+    mulatto's mind: "A terrible procession ... marching under a black
+    shroud.... Your children, your children's children, a terrible
+    procession,... marching away, God knows where.... And yet&mdash;it's your own
+    flesh and blood!" They were terrific sentences, as if the old man had
+    been trying to tear from his vision some sport of nature, some
+    deformity. As the implications spread before Peter, he became more and
+    more astonished at its content. Even to Captain Renfrew black men were
+    dehumanized,&mdash;shrouded, untouchable creatures.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It delivered to Peter a slow but a profound shock. He glanced about at
+    the faded magnificence of the room with a queer feeling that he had been
+    introduced into it under a sort of misrepresentation. He had taken up
+    his abode with the Captain, at least on the basis of belonging to the
+    human family, but this passionate outbreak, this puzzling explosion, cut
+    that ground from under his feet.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The more Peter thought about it, the stranger grew his sensation. Not
+    even to be classed as a human being by this old gentleman who in a weak,
+    helpless fashion had crept somewhat into Peter's affections,&mdash;not to be
+    considered a man! The mulatto drew a long, troubled breath, and by the
+    mere mechanics of his desire kept staring through the gloom for Cissie.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter Siner had known all along that the unread whites of Hooker's Bend
+    &mdash;and that included nearly every white person in the village&mdash;considered
+    black men as simple animals; but he had supposed that the more thoughtful
+    men, of whom Captain Renfrew was a type, at least admitted the Afro-
+    American to the common brotherhood of humanity. But they did not.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As Peter sat staring into the darkness the whole effect of the
+    dehumanizing of the black folk of the South began to unfold itself
+    before his imagination. It explained to him the tragedies of his race,
+    their sufferings at the hand of mob violence; the casualness, even the
+    levity with which black men were murdered: the chronic dishonesty with
+    which negroes were treated: the constant enactment of adverse
+    legislation against them; the cynical use of negro women. They were all
+    vermin, animals; they were one with the sheep and the swine; a little
+    nearer the human in form, perhaps, and, oddly enough, one that could be
+    bred to a human being, as testified a multitude of brown and yellow and
+    cream-colored folk, but all marching away, as the Captain had so
+    passionately said, marching away, their forms hidden from human
+    intercourse under a shroud of black, an endless procession marching
+    away, God knew whither! And yet they were the South's own flesh and
+    blood.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The horror of such a complex swelled in Peter's mind to monstrous
+    proportions. As night thickened at his window, the negro sat dazed and
+    wondering at the mightiness of his vision. His thoughts went groping,
+    trying to solve some obscure problem it posed. He thought of the
+    Arkwright boy; he thought of the white men smiling as his mother's
+    funeral went past the livery-stable; he thought of Captain Renfrew's
+    manuscript that he was transcribing. Through all the old man's memoirs
+    ran a certain lack of sincerity. Peter always felt amid his labors that
+    the old Captain was making an attorney's plea rather than a candid
+    exposition. At this point in his thoughts there gradually limned itself
+    in the brown man's mind the answer to that enigma which he almost had
+    unraveled on the day he first saw Cissie Dildine pass his window. With
+    it came the answer to the puzzle contained in the old Captain's library.
+    The library was not an ordinary compilation of the world's thought; it,
+    too, was an attorney's special pleading against the equality of man. Any
+    book or theory that upheld the equality of man was carefully excluded
+    from the shelves. Darwin's great hypothesis, and every development
+    springing from it, had been banned, because the moment that a theory was
+    propounded of the great biologic relationship of all flesh, from worms
+    to vertebrates, there instantly followed a corollary of the brotherhood
+    of man.
+</p>
+<p>
+    What Christ did for theology, Darwin did for biology,&mdash;he democratized
+    it. The One descended to man's brotherhood from the Trinity; the other
+    climbed up to it from the worms.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old Captain's library lacked sincerity. Southern orthodoxy, which
+    persists in pouring its religious thought into the outworn molds of
+    special creation, lacks sincerity. Scarcely a department of Southern
+    life escapes this fundamental attitude of special pleader and
+    disingenuousness. It explains the Southern fondness for legal
+    subtleties. All attempts at Southern poetry, belles-lettres, painting,
+    novels, bear the stamp of the special plea, of authors whose exposition
+    is careful.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter perceived what every one must perceive, that when letters turn
+    into a sort of glorified prospectus of a country, all value as
+    literature ceases. The very breath of art and interpretation is an eager
+    and sincere searching of the heart. This sincerity the South lacks. Her
+    single talent will always be forensic, because she is a lawyer with a
+    cause to defend. And such is the curse that arises from lynchings and
+    venery and extortions and dehumanizings,&mdash;sterility; a dumbness of soul.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter Siner's thoughts lifted him with the tremendous buoyancy of
+    inspiration. He swung out of his chair and began tramping his dark room.
+    The skin of his scalp tickled as if a ghost had risen before him. The
+    nerves in his thighs and back vibrated. He felt light, and tingled with
+    energy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Unaware of what he was doing, he set about lighting the gasolene-lamp.
+    He worked with nervous quickness, as if he were in a great hurry.
+    Presently a brilliant light flooded the room. It turned the gray
+    illumination of the windows to blackness.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Joy enveloped Peter. His own future developed under his eyes with the
+    same swift clairvoyance that marked his vision of the ills of his
+    country. He saw himself remedying those ills. He would go about showing
+    white men and black men the simple truth, the spiritual necessity for
+    justice and fairness. It was not a question of social equality; it was a
+    question of clearing a road for the development of Southern life. He
+    would show white men that to weaken, to debase, to dehumanize the negro,
+    inflicted a more terrible wound on the South than would any strength the
+    black man might develop. He would show black men that to hate the
+    whites, constantly to suspect, constantly to pilfer from them, only
+    riveted heavier shackles on their limbs.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was all so clear and so simple! The white South must humanize the
+    black not for the sake of the negro, but for the sake of itself. No one
+    could resist logic so fundamental.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter's heart sang with the solemn joy of a man who had found his work.
+    All through his youth he had felt blind yearnings and gropings for he
+    knew not what. It had driven him with endless travail out of Niggertown,
+    through school and college, and back to Niggertown,&mdash;this untiring Hound
+    of Heaven. But at last he had reached his work. He, Peter Siner, a
+    mulatto, with the blood of both white and black in his veins, would come
+    as an evangel of liberty to both white and black. The brown man's eyes
+    grew moist from Joy. His body seemed possessed of tremendous energy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As he paced his room there came into the glory of Peter's thoughts the
+    memory of the Arkwright boy as he sat in the cedar glade brooding on the
+    fallen needles Peter recalled the hobbledehoy's disjointed words as he
+    wrestled with the moral and physical problems of adolescence. Peter
+    recalled his impulse to sit down by young Sam Arkwright, and, as best he
+    might, give him some clue to the critical and feverish period through
+    which he was passing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He had not done so, but Peter remembered the instance down to the very
+    desperation in the face of the brooding youngster. And it seemed to
+    Peter that this rejected impulse had been a sign that he was destined to
+    be an evangel to the whites as well as to the blacks.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The joy of Peter's mission bore him aloft on vast wings. His room seemed
+    to fall away from him, and he was moving about his country, releasing
+    the two races from their bonds of suspicion and cruelty.
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    Slowly the old manor formed about Peter again, and he perceived that a
+    tapping on the door had summoned him back. He walked to the door with
+    his heart full of kindness for old Rose. She was bringing him his
+    supper. He felt as if he could take the old woman in his arms, and out
+    of the mere hugeness of his love sweeten her bitter life. The mulatto
+    opened the door as eagerly as if he were admitting some long-desired
+    friend; but when the shutter swung back, the old crone and her salver
+    were not there. All he could discern in the darkness were the white
+    pillars marking the night into panels. There was no light in the outer
+    kitchen. The whole manor was silent.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As he stood listening, the knocking was repeated, this time more
+    faintly. He fixed the sound at the window. He closed the door, walked
+    across the brilliant room, and opened the shutters.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For several moments he saw nothing more than the tall quadrangle of
+    blackness which the window framed; then a star or two pierced it; then
+    something moved. He saw a woman's figure standing close to the casement,
+    and out of the darkness Cissie Dildine's voice asked in its careful
+    English:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Peter, may I come in?"
+</p>
+<a name="2HCH17"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XIV
+</h2>
+<p>
+    For a full thirty seconds Peter Siner stared at the girl at the window
+    before, even with her prompting, he thought of the amenity of asking her
+    to come inside. As a further delayed courtesy, he drew the Heppelwhite
+    chair toward her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie's face looked bloodless in the blanched light of the gasolene-
+    lamp. She forced a faint, doubtful smile.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You don't seem very glad to see me, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I am," he assured her, mechanically, but he really felt nothing but
+    astonishment and dismay. They filled his voice. He was afraid some one
+    would see Cissie in his room. His thoughts went flitting about the
+    premises, calculating the positions of the various trees and shrubs in
+    relation to the windows, trying to determine whether, and just where, in
+    his brilliantly lighted chamber the girl could be seen from the street.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The octoroon made no further comment on his confusion. Her eyes wandered
+    from him over the stately furniture and up to the stuccoed ceiling.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "They told me you lived in a wonderful room," she remarked absently.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, it's very nice," agreed Peter in the same tone, wondering what
+    might be the object of her hazardous visit. A flicker of suspicion
+    suggested that she was trying to compromise him out of revenge for his
+    renouncement of her, but the next instant he rejected this.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl accepted the chair Peter offered and continued to look about.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I hope you don't mind my staring, Peter," she said.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I stared when I first came here to stay," assisted Peter, who was
+    getting a little more like himself, even if a little uneasier at the
+    consequences of this visit.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Is that a highboy?" She nodded nervously at the piece of furniture.
+    "I've seen pictures of them."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Uh huh. Revolutionary, I believe. The night wind is a little raw." He
+    moved across the room and closed the jalousies, and thus cut off the
+    night wind and also the west view from the street. He glanced at the
+    heavy curtains parted over his front windows, with a keen desire to
+    swing them together. Some fragment of his mind continued the surface
+    conversation with Cissie.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Is it post-Revolutionary or pre-Revolutionary?" she asked with a
+    preoccupied air.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Post, I believe. No, pre. I always meant to examine closely."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "To have such things would almost teach one history," Cissie said.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yeah; very nice." Peter had decided that the girl was in direct line
+    with the left front window and an opening between the trees to the
+    street.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl's eyes followed his.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Are those curtains velour, Peter?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I&mdash;I believe so," agreed the man, unhappily.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I&mdash;I wonder how they look spread."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter seized on this flimsy excuse with a wave of relief and
+    thankfulness to Cissie. He had to restrain himself as he strode across
+    the room and swung together the two halves of the somber curtains in
+    order to preserve an appearance of an exhibit. His fingers were so
+    nervous that he bungled a moment at the heavy cords, but finally the two
+    draperies swung together, loosing a little cloud of dust. He drew
+    together a small aperture where the hangings stood apart, and then
+    turned away in sincere relief.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie's own interest in historic furniture and textiles came to an
+    abrupt conclusion. She gave a deep sigh and settled back into her chair.
+    She sat looking at Peter seriously, almost distressfully, as he came
+    toward her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    With the closing of the curtains and the establishment of a real privacy
+    Peter became aware once again of the sweetness and charm Cissie always
+    held for him. He still wondered what had brought her, but he was no
+    longer uneasy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Perhaps I'd better build a fire," he suggested, quite willing now to
+    make her visit seem not unusual.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, no,"&mdash;she spoke with polite haste,&mdash;"I'm just going to stay a
+    minute. I don't know what you'll think of me." She looked intently at
+    him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I think it lovely of you to come." He was disgusted with the triteness
+    of this remark, but he could think of nothing else.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I don't know," demurred the octoroon, with her faint doubtful smile.
+    "Persons don't welcome beggars very cordially."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If all beggars were so charming&mdash;" Apparently he couldn't escape
+    banalities.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But Cissie interrupted whatever speech he meant to make, with a return
+    of her almost painful seriousness.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I really came to ask you to help me, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then your need has brought me a pleasure, at least." Some impulse kept
+    the secretary making those foolish complimentary speeches which keep a
+    conversation empty and insincere.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, Peter, I didn't come here for you to talk like that! Will you do
+    what I want?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What do you want, Cissie?" he asked, sobered by her voice and manner.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I want you to help me, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "All right, I will." He spaced his words with his speculations about the
+    nature of her request. "What do you want me to do?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I want you to help me go away."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter looked at her in surprise. He hardly knew what he had been
+    expecting, but it was not this.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Some repressed emotion crept into the girl's voice.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Peter, I&mdash;I can't stay here in Hooker's Bend any longer. I want to go
+    away. I&mdash;I've got to go away."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter stood regarding her curiously and at the same time
+    sympathetically.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Where do you want to go, Cissie?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl drew a long breath; her bosom lifted and dropped abruptly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I don't know; that was one of the things I wanted to ask you about."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You don't know where you want to go?" He smiled faintly. "How do you
+    know you want to go at all?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, Peter, all I know is I must leave Hooker's Bend!" She gave a little
+    shiver. "I'm tired of it, sick of it&mdash;sick." She exhaled a breath, as if
+    she were indeed physically ill. Her face suggested it; her eyes were
+    shadowed. "Some Northern city, I suppose," she added.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And you want me to help you?" inquired Peter, puzzled.
+</p>
+<p>
+    She nodded silently, with a woman's instinct to make a man guess the
+    favor she is seeking.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then it occurred to Peter just what sort of assistance the girl did
+    want. It gave him a faint shock that a girl could come to a man to beg
+    or to borrow money. It was a white man's shock, a notion he had picked
+    up in Boston, because it happens frequently among village negroes, and
+    among them it holds as little significance as children begging one
+    another for bites of apples.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter thought over his bank balance, then started toward a chest of
+    drawers where he kept his checkbook.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Cissie, if I can he of any service to you in a substantial way, I'll be
+    more than glad to&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    She put out a hand and stopped him; then talked on in justification of
+    her determination to go away.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I just can't endure it any longer, Peter." She shuddered again. "I
+    can't stand Niggertown, or this side of town&mdash;any of it. They&mdash;they have
+    no <i>feeling</i> for a colored girl, Peter, not&mdash;not a speck!" She rave
+    a gasp, and after a moment plunged on into her wrongs: "When&mdash;when one
+    of us even walks past on the street, they&mdash;they whistle and say a-all
+    kinds of things out loud, j-just as if w-we weren't there at all. Th-
+    they don't c-care; we're just n-nigger w-women." Cissie suddenly began
+    sobbing with a faint catching noise, her full bosom shaken by the
+    spasms; her tears slowly welling over. She drew out a handkerchief with
+    a part of its lace edge gone, and wiped her eyes and cheeks, holding the
+    bit of cambric in a ball in her palm, like a negress, instead of in her
+    fingers, like a white woman, as she had been taught. Then she drew a
+    deep breath, swallowed, and became more composed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter stood looking in helpless anger at this representative of all
+    women of his race.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Cissie, that's street-corner scum&mdash;the dirty sewage&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "They make you feel naked," went on Cissie in the monotone that succeeds
+    a fit of weeping, "and ashamed&mdash;and afraid." She blinked her eyes to
+    press out the undue moisture, and looked at Peter as if asking what else
+    she could do about it than to go away from the village.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Will it be any better away from here?" suggested Peter, doubtfully.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie shook her head.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I&mdash;I suppose not, if&mdash;if I go alone."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I shouldn't think so," agreed Peter, somberly. He started to hearten
+    her by saying white women also underwent such trials, if that would be a
+    consolation; but he knew very well that a white woman's hardships were
+    as nothing compared to those of a colored woman who was endowed with any
+    grace whatever.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And besides, Cissie," went on Peter, who somehow found himself arguing
+    against the notion of her going, "I hardly see how a decent colored
+    woman gets around at all. Colored boarding-houses are wretched places. I
+    ate and slept in one or two, coming home. Rotten." The possibility of
+    Cissie finding herself in such a place moved Peter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl nodded submissively to his judgment, and said in a queer voice:
+    "That's why I&mdash;I didn't want to travel alone, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, it's a bad idea&mdash;" and then Peter perceived that a queer quality
+    was creeping into the t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te.
+</p>
+<p>
+    She returned his look unsteadily, but with a curious persistence.
+</p>
+<a name="image-6"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="birth06.png"
+alt="'You-you Mean You Want M-me&mdash;to Go With You, Cissie?' He
+Stammered
+">
+<br>'You-you Mean You Want M-me&mdash;to Go With You, Cissie?' He
+Stammered
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    "I&mdash;I d-don't want to travel a-alone, Peter," she gasped.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Her look, her voice suddenly brought home to the an the amazing
+    connotation of her words. He stared at her, felt his face grow warm with
+    a sharp, peculiar embarrassment. He hardly knew what to say or do before
+    her intent and piteous eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You&mdash;you mean you want m-me&mdash;to go with you, Cissie?" he stammered.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl suddenly began trembling, now that her last reserve of
+    indirection had been torn away.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Listen, Peter," she began breathlessly. "I'm not the sort of woman you
+    think. If I hadn't accused myself, we'd be married now. I&mdash;I wanted you
+    more than anything in the world, Peter, but I did tell you. Surely,
+    surely, Peter, that shows I am a good woman&mdash;th-the real I. Dear, dear
+    Peter, there is a difference between a woman and her acts. Peter, you're
+    the first man in all my life, in a-all my life who ever came to me k-
+    kindly and gently; so I had to l-love you and t-tell you, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl's wavering voice broke down completely; her face twisted with
+    grief. She groped for her chair, sat down, buried her face in her arms
+    on the table, and broke into a chattering outbreak of sobs that sounded
+    like some sort of laughter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Her shoulders shook; the light gleamed on her soft, black Caucasian
+    hair. There was a little rent in one of the seams in her cheap jacket,
+    at one of the curves where her side molded into her shoulder. The
+    customer made garment had found Cissie's body of richer mold than it had
+    been designed to shield. And yet in Peter's distress and tenderness and
+    embarrassment, this little rent held his attention and somehow misprized
+    the wearer.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It seemed symbolic in the searching white light. He could see the very
+    break in the thread and the widened stitches at the ends of the rip. Her
+    coat had given way because she was modeled more nearly like the Venus de
+    Milo than the run of womankind. He felt the little irony of the thing,
+    and yet was quite unable to resist the comparison.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And then, too, she had referred again to her sin of peculation. A woman
+    enjoys confessions from a man. A man's sins are mostly vague, indefinite
+    things to a woman, a shadowy background which brings out the man in a
+    beautiful attitude of repentance; but when a woman confesses, the man
+    sees all her past as a close-up with full lighting. He has an intimate
+    acquaintance with just what she's talking about, and the woman herself
+    grows shadowy and unreal. Men have too many blots not to demand
+    whiteness in women. By striking some such average, nature keeps the race
+    a going moral concern.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So Peter, as he stood looking down on the woman who was asking him to
+    marry her, was filled with as unhappy and as impersonal a tenderness as
+    a born brother. He recalled the thoughts which had come to him when he
+    saw Cissie passing his window. She was not the sort of woman he wanted
+    to marry; she was not his ideal. He cast about in his head for some
+    gentle way of putting her off, so that he would not hurt her any
+    further, if such an easement were possible.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As he stood thinking, he found not a pretext, but a reality. He stooped
+    over, and put a hand lightly on each of her arms.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Cissie," he said in a serious, even voice, "if I should ever marry any
+    one, it would be you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl paused in her sobbing at his even, passionless voice.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then you&mdash;you won't?" she whispered in her arms.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I can't, Cissie." Now that he was saying it, he uttered the words very
+    evenly and smoothly. "I can't, dear Cissie, because a great work has
+    just come into my life." He paused, expecting her to ask some question,
+    but she lay silent, with her face in her arms, evidently listening.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Cissie, I think, in fact I know, I can demonstrate to all the South,
+    both white and black, the need of a better and more sincere
+    understanding between our two races."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter did not feel the absurdity of such a speech in such a place. He
+    patted her arm, but there was something in the warmth of her flesh that
+    disturbed his austerity and caused him to lift his hand to the more
+    impersonal axis of her shoulder. He proceeded to develop his idea.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Cissie, just a moment ago you were complaining of the insults you meet
+    everywhere. I believe if I can spread my ideas, Cissie, that even a
+    pretty colored girl like you may walk the streets without being
+    subjected to obscenity on every corner." His tone unconsciously
+    patronized Cissie's prettiness with the patronage of the male for the
+    less significant thing, as though her ripeness for love and passion and
+    children were, after all, not comparable with what he, a male, could do
+    in the way of significantly molding life.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie lifted her head and dried her eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "So you aren't going to marry me, Peter?" Woman-like, now that she was
+    well into the subject, she was far less embarrassed than Peter. She had
+    had her cry.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why&mdash;er&mdash;considering this work, Cissie&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Aren't you going to marry anybody, Peter?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The artist in Peter, the thing the girl loved in him, caught again that
+    Messianic vision of himself.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, no, Cissie," he said, with a return of his inspiration of an hour
+    ago; "I'll be going here and there all over the South preaching this
+    gospel of kindliness and tolerance, of forgiveness of the faults of
+    others." Cissie looked at him with a queer expression. "I'll show the
+    white people that they should treat the negro with consideration not for
+    the sake of the negro, but for the sake of themselves. It's so simple,
+    Cissie, it's so logical and clear&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl shook her head sadly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And you don't want me to go with you, Peter?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, n-no, Cissie; a girl like you couldn't go. Perhaps I'll be
+    misunderstood in places, perhaps I may have to leave a town hurriedly,
+    or be swung over the walls, like Paul, in a basket." He attempted to
+    treat it lightly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But the girl looked at him with a horror dawning in her melancholy face.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Peter, do you really mean that?" she whispered.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, truly. You don't imagine&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The octoroon opened her dark eyes until she might have been some weird.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, Peter, please, please put such a mad idea away from you! Peter,
+    you've been living here alone in this old house until you don't see
+    things clearly. Dear Peter, don't you <i>know?</i> You can't go out and
+    talk like that to white folks and&mdash;and not have some terrible thing
+    happen to you! Oh, Peter, if you would only marry me, it would cure you
+    of such wildness!" Involuntarily she got up, holding out her arms to
+    him, offering herself to his needs, with her frightened eyes fixed on
+    his.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It made him exquisitely uncomfortable again. He made a little sound
+    designed to comfort and reassure her. He would do very well. He was
+    something of a diplomat in his way. He had got along with the boys in
+    Harvard very well indeed. In fact, he was rather a man of the world. No
+    need to worry about him, though it was awfully sweet of her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie picked up her handkerchief with its torn edge, which she had laid
+    on the table. Evidently she was about to go.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I surely don't know what will become of me," she said, looking at it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In a reversal of feeling Peter did not want her to go away quite then.
+    He cast about for some excuse to detain her a moment longer.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now, Cissie," he began, "if you are really going to leave Hooker's
+    Bend&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'm not going," she said, with a long exhalation. "I&mdash;" she swallowed&mdash;
+    "I just thought that up to&mdash;ask you to&mdash;to&mdash;You see," she explained, a
+    little breathless, "I thought you still loved me and had forgiven me by
+    the way you watched for me every day at the window."
+</p>
+<p>
+    This speech touched Peter more keenly than any of the little drama the
+    girl had invented. It hit him so shrewdly he could think of nothing more
+    to say.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie moved toward the window and undid the latch.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Good night, Peter." She paused a moment, with her hand on the catch.
+    "Peter," she said, "I'd almost rather see you marry some other girl than
+    try so terrible a thing."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The big, full-blooded athlete smiled faintly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You seem perfectly sure marriage would cure me of my mission."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie's face reddened faintly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I think so," she said briefly. "Good night," and she disappeared in the
+    dark space she had opened, and closed the jalousies softly after her.
+</p>
+<a name="2HCH18"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XV
+</h2>
+<p>
+    Cissie Dildine's conviction that marriage would cure Peter of his
+    mission persisted in the mulatto's mind long after the glamour of the
+    girl had faded and his room had regained the bleak emptiness of a
+    bachelor's bedchamber.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie had been so brief and positive in her statement that Peter, who
+    had not thought on the point at all, grew more than half convinced she
+    was right.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now that he pondered over it, it seemed there was a difference between
+    the outlook of a bachelor and that of a married man. The former
+    considered humanity as a balloonist surveys a throng,&mdash;immediately and
+    without perspective,&mdash;but the latter always sees mankind through the
+    frame of his family. A single man tends naturally to philosophy and
+    reform; a married man to administration and statesmanship. There have
+    been no great unmarried statesmen; there have been no great married
+    philosophers or reformers.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now that Cissie had pointed out this universal rule, Peter saw it very
+    clearly. And Peter suspected that beneath this rough classification, and
+    conditioning it, lay a plexus of obscure mental and physical reactions
+    set up by the relations between husband and wife. It might very well be
+    there was a difference between the actual cerebral and nervous structure
+    of a married man and that of a single man.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At any rate, after these reflections, Peter now felt sure that marriage
+    would cure him of his mission; but how had Cissie known it? How had she
+    struck out so involved a theory, one might say, in the toss of a head?
+    The more Peter thought it over the more extraordinary it became. It was
+    another one of those explosive ideas which Cissie, apparently, had the
+    faculty of creating out of a pure mental vacuum.
+</p>
+<p>
+    All this philosophy aside, Cissie's appearance just in the nick of his
+    inspiration, her surprising proposal of marriage, and his refusal, had
+    accomplished one thing: it had committed Peter to the program he had
+    outlined to the girl.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Indeed, there seemed something fatalistic in such a concatenation of
+    events. Siner wondered whether or not he would have obeyed his vision
+    without this added impulse from Cissie. He did not know; but now, since
+    it had all come about just as it had, he suspected he would have been
+    neglectful. He felt as if a dangerous but splendid channel had been
+    opened before his eyes, and almost at the same instant a hand had
+    reached down and directed his life into it. This fancy moved the
+    mulatto. As he got himself ready for bed, he kept thinking:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, my life is settled at last. There is nothing else for me to do.
+    Even if this should end terribly for me, as Cissie imagines, my life
+    won't be wasted."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Next morning Peter Siner was awakened by old Rose Hobbett thrusting her
+    head in at his door, staring around, and finally, seeing Peter in bed,
+    grumbling:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why is you still heah, black man?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The secretary opened his eyes in astonishment.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why shouldn't I be here?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Nobody wuz 'speckin' you to be heah." The crone withdrew her head and
+    vanished.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter wondered at this unaccustomed interest of Rose, then hurried out
+    of bed, supposing himself late for breakfast.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A dense fog had come up from the river, and the moisture floating into
+    his open windows had dampened his whole room. Peter stepped briskly to
+    the screen and began splashing himself. It was only in the midst of his
+    ablutions that he remembered his inspiration and resolve of the previous
+    evening. As he squeezed the water over his powerfully molded body, he
+    recalled it almost impersonally. It might have happened to some third
+    person. He did not even recall distinctly the threads of the logic which
+    had lifted him to such a Pisgah, and showed him the whole South as a new
+    and promised land. However, he knew that he could start his train of
+    thought again, and again ascend the mountain.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Floating through the fog into his open window came the noises of the
+    village as it set about living another day, precisely as it had lived
+    innumerable days in the past. The blast of the six-o'clock whistle from
+    the planing-mill made the loose sashes of his windows rattle. Came a
+    lowing of cows and a clucking of hens, a woman's calling. The voices of
+    men in conversation came so distinctly through the pall that it seemed a
+    number of persons must be moving about their morning work, talking and
+    shouting, right in the Renfrew yard.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But the thing that impressed Peter most was the solidity and stability
+    of this Southern village that he could hear moving around him, and its
+    certainty to go on in the future precisely as it had gone on in the
+    past. It was a tremendous force. The very old manor about him seemed
+    huge and intrenched in long traditions, while he, Peter Siner, was just
+    a brown man, naked behind a screen and rather cold from the fog and damp
+    of the morning.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He listened to old Rose clashing the kitchen utensils. As he drew on his
+    damp underwear, he wondered what he could say to old Rose that would
+    persuade her into a little kindliness and tolerance for the white
+    people. As he listened he felt hopeless; he could never explain to the
+    old creature that her own happiness depended upon the charity she
+    extended to others. She could never understand it. She would live and
+    die precisely the same bitter old beldam that she was, and nothing could
+    ever assuage her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    While Peter was thinking of the old creature, she came shuffling along
+    the back piazza with his breakfast. She let herself in by lifting one
+    knee to a horizontal, balancing the tray on it, then opening the door
+    with her freed hand.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When the shutter swung open, it displayed the crone standing on one
+    foot, wearing a man's grimy sock, which had fallen down over a broken,
+    run-down shoe.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In Peter's mood the thought of this wretched old woman putting on such
+    garments morning after morning was unspeakably pathetic. He thought of
+    his own mother, who had lived and died only a shade or two removed from
+    the old crone's condition.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Rose put down her foot, and entered the room with her lips poked out,
+    ready to make instant attack if Peter mentioned his lack of supper the
+    night before.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Aunt Rose," asked the secretary, with his friendly intent in his tones,
+    "how came you to look in this morning and say you didn't expect to find
+    me in my room?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    She gave an unintelligible grunt, pushed the lamp to one side, and eased
+    her tray to the table.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter finished touching his tie before one of those old-fashioned
+    mirrors, not of cut-glass, yet perfectly true. He came from the mirror
+    and moved his chair, out of force of habit, so he could look up the
+    street toward the Arkwrights'.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Aunt Rose," said the young man, wistfully, "why are you always angry?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    She bridled at this extraordinary inquiry.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Me?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    She hesitated a moment, thinking how she could make her reply a personal
+    assault on Peter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'Cause you come heah, 'sputin' my rights, da' 's' why."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No," demurred Peter, "you were quarreling in the kitchen the first
+    morning I came here, and you didn't know I was on the place."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well&mdash;I got my tribulations," she snapped, staring suspiciously at
+    these unusual questions.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There was a pause; then Peter said placatingly:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I was just thinking, Aunt Rose, you might forget your tribulations if
+    you didn't ride them all the time."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Hoccum! What you mean, ridin' my tribulations?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Thinking about them. The old Captain, for instance; you are no happier
+    always abusing the old Captain."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old virago gave a sniff, tossed her head, but kept her eyes rolled
+    suspiciously on Peter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Very often the way we think and act makes us happy or unhappy,"
+    moralized Peter, broadly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Look heah, nigger, you ain't no preacher sont out by de Lawd to me!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Anyway, I am sure you would feel more friendly toward the Captain if
+    you acted openly with him; for instance, if you didn't take off all his
+    cold victuals, and handkerchiefs and socks, soap, kitchenware&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The cook snorted.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'd feel dat much mo' nekked an' hongry, dat's how I'd feel."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Perhaps, if you'd start over, he might give you a better wage."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Huh!" she snorted in an access of irony. "I see dat skinflint gib'n' me
+    a better wage. Puuh!" The suddenly she realized where the conversation
+    had wandered, and stared at the secretary with widening eyes "Good Lawd!
+    Did dat fool Cap'n set up a nigger in dis bedroom winder jes to ketch
+    ole Rose packin' off a few ole lef'-overs?" Peter began a hurried
+    denial, but she rushed on: "'Fo' Gawd, I hopes his viddles chokes him! I
+    hope his ole smoke-house falls down on his ole haid. I hope to Jesus&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter pleaded with her not to think the Captain was behind his
+    observations, but the hag rushed out of the bedroom, swinging her head
+    from side to side, uttering the most terrible maledictions. She would
+    show him! She wouldn't put another foot in his old kitchen. Wild horses
+    couldn't drag her into his smoke-house again.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter ran to the door and called after her down the piazza, trying to
+    exonerate the Captain: but she either did not or would not hear, and
+    vanished into the kitchen, still furious.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Old Rose made Peter so uneasy that he deserted his breakfast midway and
+    hurried to the library. In the solemn old room he found the Captain
+    alone and in rather a pleased mood. The old gentleman stood patting and
+    alining a pile of manuscript. As the mulatto entered he exclaimed:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, here's Peter again!" as if his secretary had been off on a long
+    journey. Immediately afterward he added, "Peter, guess what I did last
+    night." His voice was full of triumph.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter was thinking about Aunt Rose, and stood looking at the Captain
+    without the slightest idea.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I wrote all of this,"&mdash;he indicated his manuscript,&mdash;"over a hundred
+    pages."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter considered the work without much enthusiasm.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You must have worked all night."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old attorney rubbed his hands.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I think I may claim a touch of inspiration last night, Peter.
+    Reminiscences rippled from under my pen, propitious words, prosperous
+    sentences. Er&mdash;the fact is, Peter, you will see, when you begin copying,
+    I had come to a matter&mdash;a&mdash;a matter of some moment in my life. Every
+    life contains such moments, Peter. I had meant to write something in the
+    nature of a defen&mdash;an explanation, Peter. But after you left the library
+    last night it suddenly occurred to me just to give each fact as it took
+    place, quite frankly. So I did that&mdash;not&mdash;not what I meant to write, at
+    all&mdash;ah. As you copy it, you may find it not entirely without some
+    interest to yourself, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "To me?" repeated Peter, after the fashion of the unattentative.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, to yourself." The Captain was oddly moved. He took his hands off
+    the script, walked a little away from the table, came back to it. "It&mdash;
+    ah&mdash;may explain a good many things that&mdash;er&mdash;may have puzzled you." He
+    cleared his throat and shifted his subject briskly. "We ought to be
+    thinking about a publisher. What publisher shall we have publish these
+    reminiscences? Make some stir in Tennessee's political circles,
+    Peter; tremendous sales; clear up questions everybody is interested in.
+    H-m&mdash;well, I'll walk down town and you"&mdash;he motioned to the script&mdash;
+    "begin copying&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "By the way, Captain," said Peter as the old gentleman turned for the
+    door, "has Rose said anything to you yet?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old man detached his mind from his script with an obvious effort.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What about?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "About leaving your service."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No-o, not especially; she's always leaving my service."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But in this case it was my fault; at least I brought it about. I
+    remonstrated with her about taking your left-over victuals and socks and
+    handkerchiefs and things. She was quite offended."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, it always offends her," agreed the old man, impatiently. "I never
+    mention it myself unless I catch her red-handed; then I storm a little
+    to keep her in bounds."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Naturally, Peter knew of this extraordinary system of service in the
+    South; nevertheless he was shocked at its implications.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Captain," suggested Peter, "wouldn't you find it to your own interest
+    to give old Rose a full cash payment for her services and allow her to
+    buy her own things?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Captain dismissed the subject with a wave of his hand. "She's a
+    nigger, Peter; you can't hire a nigger not to steal. Born in 'em. Then
+    I'm not sure but what it would be compounding a felony, hiring a person
+    not to steal; might be so construed. Well, now, there's the script. Read
+    it carefully, my boy, and remember that in order to gain a certain
+    <i>status quo</i> certain antecedents are&mdash;are absolutely necessary,
+    Peter. Without them my&mdash;my life would have been quite empty, Peter.
+    It's&mdash;it's very strange&mdash;amazing. You will understand as you read. I'll
+    be back to dinner, so good-by." In the strangest agitation the old
+    Captain walked out of the library. The last glimpse Peter had of him was
+    his meager old figure silhouetted against the cold gray fog that filled
+    the compound.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Neither the Captain's agitation nor his obvious desire that Peter should
+    at once read the new manuscript really got past the threshold of the
+    mulatto's consciousness. Peter's thoughts still hovered about old Rose,
+    and from that point spread to the whole system of colored service in the
+    South. For Rose's case was typical. The wage of cooks in small Southern
+    villages is a pittance&mdash;and what they can steal. The tragedy of the
+    mothers of a whole race working for their board and thievings came over
+    Peter with a rising grimness. And there was no public sentiment against
+    such practice. It was accepted everywhere as natural and inevitable. The
+    negresses were never prosecuted; no effort was made to regain the stolen
+    goods. The employers realized that what they paid would not keep soul
+    and body together; that it was steal or perish.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was a fantastic truth that for any colored girl to hire into domestic
+    service in Hooker's Bend was more or less entering an apprenticeship in
+    peculation. What she could steal was the major portion of her wage, if
+    two such anomalous terms may be used in conjunction.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Yet, strange to say, the negro women of the village were quite honest in
+    other matters. They paid their small debts. They took their mistresses'
+    pocket-books to market and brought back the correct change. And if a
+    mistress grew too indignant about something they had stolen, they would
+    bring it back and say: "Here is a new one. I'd rather buy you a new one
+    than have you think I would take anything."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The whole system was the lees of slavery, and was surely the most
+    demoralizing, the most grotesque method of hiring service in the whole
+    civilized world. It was so absurd that its mere relation lapses into
+    humor, that bane of black folk.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Such painful thoughts filled the gloomy library and harassed Peter in
+    his copying. He took his work to the window and tried to concentrate
+    upon it, but his mind kept playing away.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Indeed, it seemed to Peter that to sit in this old room and rewrite the
+    wordy meanderings of the old gentleman's book was the very height of
+    emptiness. How utterly futile, when all around him, on every hand, girls
+    like Cissie Dildine were being indentured to corruption! And, as far as
+    Peter knew, he was the only person in the South who saw it or felt it or
+    cared anything at all about it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When Cissie Dildine came to the surface of Peter's mind she remained
+    there, whirling around and around in his chaotic thoughts. He began
+    talking to her image, after a certain dramatic trick of his mind, and
+    she began offering her environment as an excuse for what had come
+    between them and estranged them. She stole, but she had been trained to
+    steal. She was a thief, the victim of an immense immorality. The charm
+    of Cissie, her queer, swift-working intuition, the candor of her
+    confession, her voluptuousness&mdash;all came rushing down on Peter,
+    harassing him with anger and love and desire. To copy any more script
+    became impossible. He lost his place; he hardly knew what he was
+    writing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He flung aside the whole work, got to his feet with the imperative need
+    of an athlete for the open. He started out of the room, but as an
+    afterthought scribbled a nervous line, telling the Captain he might not
+    be back for dinner. Then he found his hat and coat and walked briskly
+    around the piazza to the front gate.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The trees and shrubs were dripping, but the fog had almost cleared away,
+    leaving only a haze in the air. A pale, level line of it cut across the
+    scarp of the Big Hill. The sun shone with a peculiar soft light through
+    the vapors.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As Peter passed out at the gate, the fancy came to him that he might
+    very well be starting on his mission. It came with a sort of surprise.
+    He wondered how other men had set about reforms. With unpremeditation?
+    He wondered to whom Jesus of Nazareth preached his first sermon. The
+    thought of that young Galilean, sensitive, compassionate, inexperienced,
+    speaking to his first hearer, filled Peter with a strange trembling
+    tenderness. He looked about the familiar street of Hooker's Bend, the
+    old trees over the pavement, the shabby village houses, and it all held
+    a strangeness when thus juxtaposed to the thought of Nazareth nineteen
+    hundred years before.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The mulatto started down the street with his footsteps quickened by a
+    sense of spiritual adventure.
+</p>
+<a name="2HCH19"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XVI
+</h2>
+<p>
+    On the corner, against the blank south wall of Hobbett's store, Peter
+    Siner saw the usual crowd of negroes warming themselves in the soft
+    sunshine. They were slapping one another, scuffling, making feints with
+    knives or stones, all to an accompaniment of bragging, profanity, and
+    loud laughter. Their behavior was precisely that of adolescent white
+    boys of fifteen or sixteen years of age.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jim Pink Staggs was furnishing much amusement with an impromptu sleight-
+    of-hand exhibition. The black audience clustered around Jim Pink in his
+    pinstripe trousers and blue-serge coat. They exhibited not the least
+    curiosity as to the mechanics of the tricks, but asked for more and
+    still more, with the na&iuml;ve delight of children in the mysterious.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter Siner walked down the street with his Messianic impulse strong
+    upon him. He was in that stage of feeling toward his people where a
+    man's emotions take the color of religion. Now, as he approached the
+    crowd of negroes, he wondered what he could say, how he could transfer
+    to them the ideas and the emotion that lifted up his own heart.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As he drew nearer, his concern mounted to anxiety. Indeed, what could he
+    say? How could he present so grave a message? He was right among them
+    now. One of the negroes jostled him by striking around his body at
+    another negro. Peter stopped. His heart beat, and he had a queer
+    sensation of being operated by some power outside himself. Next moment
+    he heard himself saying in fairly normal tones:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Fellows, do you think we ought to be idling on the street corners like
+    this? We ought to be at work, don't you think?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The horse-play stopped at this amazing sentiment.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Whuffo, Peter?" asked a voice.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Because the whole object of our race nowadays is to gain the respect of
+    other races, and more particularly our own self-respect. We haven't it
+    now. The only way to get it is to work, work, work."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ef you feel lak you'd ought to go to wuck," suggested one astonished
+    hearer, "you done got my p'mission, black boy, to hit yo' natchel gait
+    to de fust job in sight."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter was hardly less surprised than his hearers at what he was saying.
+    He paid no attention to the interruption.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Fellows, it's the only way our colored people can get on and make the
+    most out of life. Persistent labor is the very breath of the soul, men;
+    it&mdash;it is." Here Peter caught an intimation of the whole flow of energy
+    through the universe, focusing in man and being transformed into mental
+    and moral values. And it suddenly occurred to him that the real worth of
+    any people was their efficiency in giving this flow of force moral and
+    spiritual forms. That is the end of man; that is what is prefigured when
+    a baby's hand reaches for the sun. But Peter considered his audience,
+    and his thought stammered on his tongue. The Persimmon, with his
+    protruding, half-asleep eyes, was saying:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I don' know, Peter, as I 's so partic'lar 'bout makin' de mos' out'n
+    dis worl'. You know de Bible say&mdash;hit say,"&mdash;here the Persimmon's voice
+    dropped a tone lower, in unconscious imitation of negro preachers,&mdash;"la-
+    ay not up yo' treasure on uth, wha moss do corrup', an' thieves break
+    th'ugh <i>an'</i> steal."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Came a general nodding and agreement of soft, blurry voices.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'At sho whut it say, black man!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Sho do!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Lawd God loves a nigger on a street corner same as He do a millionaire
+    in a six-cylinder, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Sho do, black man; but He's jes about de onlies' thing on uth 'at do."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, I don' know," came a troubled rejoinder. "Thaiuh 's de debbil,
+    ketchin' mo' niggers nowadays dan he do white men, I 'fo' Gawd
+    b'liebes."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, dat's because dey <i>is</i> so many mo' niggers dan dey is white
+    folks," put in a philosopher.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Whut you say 'bout dat, Brudder Peter?" inquired the Persimmon,
+    seriously. None of this discussion was either derision or burlesque.
+    None of the crowd had the slightest feeling that these questions were
+    not just as practical and important as the suggestion that they all go
+    to work.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When Peter realized how their ignorant and undisciplined thoughts flowed
+    off into absurdities, and that they were entirely unaware of it, it
+    brought a great depression to his heart. He held up a hand with an
+    earnestness that caught their vagrant attention.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Listen!" he pleaded. "Can't you see how much there is for us black
+    folks to do, and what little we have done?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Sho is a lot to do; we admits dat," said Bluegum Frakes. "But whut's de
+    use doin' hit ef we kin manage to shy roun' some o' dat wuck an' keep on
+    libin' anyhow, specially wid wages so high?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The question stopped Peter. Neither his own thoughts, nor any book that
+    he had ever read nor any lecture that he had heard ever attempted to
+    explain the enormous creative urge which is felt by every noble mind,
+    and which, indeed, is shared to some extent by every human creature. Put
+    to it like that, Siner concocted a sort of allegory, telling of a negro
+    who was shiftless in the summer and suffered want in the winter, and
+    applied it to the present high wage and to the low wage that was coming;
+    but in his heart Peter knew such utilitarianism was not the true reason
+    at all. Men do not weave tapestries to warm themselves, or build temples
+    to keep the rain away.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The brown man passed on around the corner, out of the faint warmth of
+    the sunshine and away from the empty and endless arguments which his
+    coming had provoked among the negroes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The futile ending of his first adventure surprised Peter. He walked
+    uncertainly up the business street of the village, hardly knowing where
+    to turn next.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cold weather had driven the merchants indoors, and the thoroughfare was
+    quite deserted except for a few hogs rooting among the refuse heaps
+    piled in front of the stores. It was not a pleasant sight, and it
+    repelled Peter all the more because he was accustomed to the antiseptic
+    look of a Northern city. He walked up to the third door from the corner,
+    when a buzz of voices brought him to a standstill and finally persuaded
+    him inside.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At the back end of a badly lighted store a circle of white men and boys
+    had formed around an old-fashioned, egg-shaped stove. Near by, on some
+    meal-bags, sat two negroes, one of whom wore a broad grin, the other, a
+    funny, sheepish look.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The white men were teasing the latter negro about having gone to jail
+    for selling a mortgaged cow. The men went about their fun-making
+    leisurely, knowing quite well the negro could not get angry or make any
+    retort or leave the store, all of these methods of self-defense being
+    ruled out by custom.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You must have forgot your cow was mortgaged, Bob."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No-o-o, suh; I&mdash;I&mdash;I didn't fuhgit," drawling his vowels to a
+    prodigious length.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Didn't you know you'd get into trouble?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No-o-o, suh."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Know it now, don't you?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ya-a-s, suh."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Have a good time in jail, Bob?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ya-a-s, suh. Shot cra-a-aps nearly all de time tull de jailer broke hit
+    up."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Wouldn't he let you shoot any more?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No-o-o, suh; not after he won all our money." Here Bob flung up his
+    head, poked out his lips like a bugle, and broke into a grotesque, "Hoo!
+    hoo! hoo!" It was such an absurd laugh, and Bob's tale had come to such
+    an absurd denouement, that the white men roared, and shuffled their feet
+    on the flared base of the stove. Some spat in or near a box filled with
+    sawdust, and betrayed other nervous signs of satisfaction. When a man so
+    spat, he stopped laughing abruptly, straightened his face, and stared
+    emptily at the rusty stove until further inquisition developed some
+    other preposterous escapade in Bob's jail career.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The merchant, looking up at one of these intermissions, saw Peter
+    standing at his counter. He came out of the circle and asked Peter what
+    he wanted. The mulatto bought a package of soda and went out.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The chill north wind smelled clean after the odors of the store. Peter
+    stood with his package of soda, breathing deeply, looking up and down
+    the street, wondering what to do next. Without much precision of
+    purpose, he walked diagonally across the street, northward toward a
+    large faded sign that read, "Killibrew's Grocery." A little later Peter
+    entered a big, rather clean store which smelled of spices, coffee, and a
+    faint dash of decayed potatoes. Mr. Killibrew himself, a big, rotund
+    man, with a round head of prematurely white hair, was visible in a
+    little glass office at the end of his store. Even through the glazed
+    partition Peter could see Mr. Killibrew smiling as he sat comfortably at
+    his desk. Indeed, the grocer's chief assets were a really expansive
+    friendliness and a pleasant, easily provoked laughter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He was fifty-two years old, and had been in the grocery business since
+    he was fifteen. He had never been to school at all, but had learned
+    bookkeeping, business mathematics, salesmanship, and the wisdom of the
+    market-place from his store, from other merchants, and from the drummers
+    who came every week with their samples and their worldly wisdom. These
+    drummers were, almost to a man, very sincere friends of Mr. Killibrew,
+    and not infrequently they would write the grocer from the city, or send
+    him telegrams, advising him to buy this or to unload that, according to
+    the exigencies of the market. As a result of this was very well off
+    indeed, and all because he was a friendly, agreeable sort of man.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The grocer heard Peter enter and started to come out of his office, when
+    Peter stopped him and asked if he might speak with him alone.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The white-haired man with the pink, good-natured face stood looking at
+    Peter with rather a questioning but pleasant expression.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, certainly, certainly." He turned back to the swivel-chair at his
+    desk, seated himself, and twisted about on Peter as he entered. Mr.
+    Killibrew did not offer Peter a seat,&mdash;that would have been an
+    infraction of Hooker's Bend custom,&mdash;but he sat leaning back, evidently
+    making up his mind to refuse Peter credit, which he fancied the mulatto
+    would ask for and yet do it pleasantly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I was wondering, Mr. Killibrew," began Peter feeling his way along, "I
+    was wondering if you would mind talking over a little matter with me.
+    It's considered a delicate subject, I believe, but I thought a frank
+    talk would help."
+</p>
+<p>
+    During the natural pauses of Peter's explanation Mr. Killibrew kept up a
+    genial series of nods and ejaculations.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Certainly, Peter. I don't see why, Peter. I'm sure it will help,
+    Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'd like to talk frankly about the relations of our two races in the
+    South, in Hooker's Bend."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The grocer stopped his running accompaniment of affirmations and looked
+    steadfastly at Peter. Presently he seemed to solve some question and
+    broke into a pleasant laugh.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now, Peter, if this is some political shenanigan, I must tell you I'm a
+    Democrat. Besides that, I don't care a straw about politics. I vote, and
+    that's all."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter put down the suspicion that he was on a political errand.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Not that at all, Mr. Killibrew. It's a question of the white race and
+    the black race. The particular feature I am working on is the wages paid
+    to cooks."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I didn't know you were a cook," interjected the grocer in surprise.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I am not."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Killibrew looked at Peter, thought intensely for a few moments, and
+    came to an unescapable conclusion.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You don't mean you've formed a cook's union here in Hooker's Bend,
+    Peter!" he cried, immensely amazed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Not at all. It's this," clarified Peter. "It may seem trivial, but it
+    illustrates the principle I'm trying to get at. Doesn't your cook carry
+    away cold food?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    It required perhaps four seconds for the merchant to stop his
+    speculations on what Peter had come for and adjust his mind to the
+    question.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, yes, I suppose so," he agreed, very much at sea. "I&mdash;I never
+    caught up with her." He laughed a pleasant, puzzled laugh. "Of course
+    she doesn't come around and show me what she's making off with. Why?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, it's this. Wouldn't you prefer to give your cook a certain cash
+    payment instead of having her taking uncertain amounts of your
+    foodstuffs and wearing apparel?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The merchant leaned forward in his chair.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Did old Becky Davis send you to me with any such proposition as that,
+    Peter?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, not at all. But, Mr. Killibrew, wouldn't you like better and more
+    trustworthy servants as cooks, as farm-hands, chauffeurs, stable-boys?
+    You see, you and your children and your children's children are going to
+    have to depend on negro labor, as far as we can see, to the end of
+    time."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We-e-ell, yes," admitted Mr. Killibrew, who was not accustomed to
+    considering the end of time.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Wouldn't it be better to have honest, self-respecting help than
+    dishonest help?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Certainly."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then let's think about cooks. How can one hope to rear an honest, self-
+    respecting citizenry as long as the mothers of the race are compelled to
+    resort to thievery to patch out an insufficient wage?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, I don't suppose niggers ever will be honest," admitted the grocer,
+    very frankly. "You naturally don't trust a nigger. If you credit one for
+    a dime, the next time he has any money he'll go trade somewhere else."
+    The grocer broke into his contagious laugh. "Do you know how I've built
+    up my business here, Peter? By never trusting a nigger." Mr. Killibrew
+    continued his pleased chuckle. "Yes, I get the whole cash trade of the
+    niggers in Hooker's Bend by never cheating one and never trusting one."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The grocer leaned back in his squeaking chair and looked out through the
+    glass partition, over the brightly colored packages that lined his
+    shelves from floor to ceiling. All that prosperity had come about
+    through a policy of honesty and distrust. It was something to be proud
+    of.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now, let me see," he proceeded, recurring pleasantly to what he
+    recalled of Peter's original proposition: "Aunt Becky sent you here to
+    tell me if I'd raise her pay, she'd stop stealin' and&mdash;and raise some
+    honest children." Mr. Killibrew threw back his head broke into loud,
+    jelly-like laughter. "Why, don't you know, Peter, she's an old liar. If
+    I gave her a hundred a week, she'd steal. And children! Why, the old
+    humbug! She's too old; she's had her crop. And, besides all that, I
+    don't mind what the old woman takes. It isn't much. She's a good old
+    darky, faithful as a dog." He arose from his swivel-chair briskly and
+    floated Peter out before him. "Tell her, if she wants a raise," he
+    concluded heartily, "and can't pinch enough out of my kitchen and the
+    two dollars I pay her&mdash;tell her to come to me, straight out, and I'll
+    give her more, and she can pinch more."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Killibrew moved down the aisle of his store between fragrant barrels
+    and boxes, laughing mellowly at old Aunt Becky's ruse, as he saw it. As
+    he turned Peter out, he invited him to come again when he needed
+    anything in the grocery line.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And he was so pleasant, hearty, and sincere in his friendliness toward
+    both Peter and old Aunt Becky that Peter, even amid the complete side-
+    tracking and derailing of his mission, decided that it ever he did have
+    occasion to purchase any groceries, he would do his trading at this
+    market ruled by an absolute honesty with, and a complete distrust in,
+    his race.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At the conclusion of the Killibrew interview Peter instinctively felt
+    that he had just about touched the norm of Hooker's Bend. The village
+    might contain men who would dive a little deeper into the race question
+    with Peter; assuredly, there would be hundreds who would not dive so
+    deep. Mr. Killibrew's attitude on the race question turned on how to
+    hold the negro patronage of the village to his grocery. It was not an
+    abstract question at all, but a concrete fact, which he had worked out
+    to his own satisfaction. With Mr. Killibrew, with all Hooker's Bend,
+    there was no negro question.
+</p>
+<a name="2HCH20"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XVII
+</h2>
+<p>
+    When Peter Siner started on his indefinite errand among the village
+    stores he believed it would require much tact and diplomacy to discuss
+    the race question without offense. To his surprise, no precaution was
+    necessary. Everybody agreed at once that the South would be benefited by
+    a more trustworthy labor, that if the negroes were trustworthy they
+    could be paid more; but nobody agreed that if negroes were paid more
+    they would become more trustworthy. The prevailing dictum was, A
+    nigger's a nigger.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As Peter came out into the shabby little street of Hooker's Bend
+    discouragement settled upon him. He felt as if he had come squarely
+    against some blank stone wall that no amount of talking could budge. The
+    black man would have to change his psychology or remain where he was, a
+    creature of poverty, hovels, and dirt; but amid such surroundings he
+    could not change his psychology.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The point of these unhappy conclusions somehow turned against Cissie
+    Dildine. The mulatto became aware that his whole crusade had been
+    undertaken in behalf of the octoroon. Everything the merchants said
+    against negroes became accusations against Cissie in a sharp personal
+    way. "A nigger is a nigger"; "A thief is a thief"; "She wouldn't quit
+    stealing if I paid her a hundred a week." Every stroke had fallen
+    squarely on Cissie's shoulders. A nigger, a thief; and she would never
+    be otherwise.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was all so hopeless, so unchangeable, that Peter walked down the
+    bleak street unutterably depressed There was nothing he could do. The
+    situation was static. It seemed best that he should go away North and
+    save his own skin. It was impossible to take Cissie with him. Perhaps in
+    time he would come to forget her, and in so doing he would forget the
+    pauperism and pettinesses of all the black folk of the South. Because
+    through Cissie Peter saw the whole negro race. She was flexuous and
+    passionate, kindly and loving, childish and na&iuml;vely wise; on occasion
+    she could falsify and steal, and in the depth of her Peter sensed a
+    profound capacity for fury and violence. For all her precise English,
+    she was untamed, perhaps untamable.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie was a far cry from the sort of woman Peter imagined he wanted for
+    a mate; yet he knew that if he stayed on in Hooker's Bend, seeing her,
+    desiring her, with her luxury mocking the loneliness of the old Renfrew
+    manor, presently he would marry her. Already he had had his little
+    irrational moments when it seemed to him that Cissie herself was quite
+    fine and worthy and that her speculations were something foreign and did
+    not pertain to her at all.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He would better go North. It would be safer up there. No doubt he could
+    find another colored girl in the North. The thought of fondling any
+    other woman filled Peter with a sudden, sharp repulsion. However, Peter
+    was wise. He knew he would get over that in time.
+</p>
+<p>
+    With this plan in mind, Peter set out down the street, intending to
+    cross the Big Hill at the church, walk over to his mother's shack, and
+    pack his few belongings preparatory to going away.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was not a heroic retreat. The conversation which he had had with his
+    college friend Farquhar recurred to Peter. Farquhar had tried to
+    persuade Peter to remain North and take a position in a system of
+    garages out of Chicago.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You can do nothing in the South, Siner," assured Farquhar; "your
+    countrymen must stand on their own feet, just as you are doing."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter had argued the vast majority of the negroes had no chance, but
+    Farquhar pressed the point that Peter himself disproved his own
+    statement. At the time Peter felt there was an clench in the
+    Illinoisan's logic, but he was not skilful enough to analyze it. Now the
+    mulatto began to see that Farquhar was right. The negro question was a
+    matter of individual initiative. Critics forgot that a race was composed
+    of individual men.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter had an uneasy sense that this was exceedingly thin logic, a mere
+    smoke screen behind which he meant to retreat back up North. He walked
+    on down the poor village street, turning it over and over in his mind,
+    affirming it positively to himself, after the manner of uneasy
+    consciences.
+</p>
+<p>
+    An unusual stir among the negroes on Hobbett's corner caught Peter's
+    attention and broke into his chain of thought. Half a dozen negroes
+    stood on the corner, staring down toward the white church. A black boy
+    suddenly started running across the street, and disappeared among the
+    stores on the other side. Peter caught glimpses of him among the
+    wretched alleyways and vacant lots that lie east of Main Street. The boy
+    was still running toward Niggertown.
+</p>
+<p>
+    By this time Peter was just opposite the watchers on the corner. He
+    lifted his voice and asked them the matter, but at the moment they began
+    an excited talking, and no one heard him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jim Pink Staggs jerked off his fur cap, made a gesture, contorted his
+    long, black face into a caricature of fright, and came loping across the
+    street, looking back over his shoulder, mimicking a run for life His
+    mummery set his audience howling.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The buffoon would have collided with Peter, but the mulatto caught Jim
+    Pink by the arm and shoulder, brought him to a halt, and at the same
+    time helped him keep his feet.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To Peter's inquiry what was the matter, the black fellow whirled and
+    blared out loudly, for the sake of his audience:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'Fo' Gawd, nigger, I sho thought Mr. Bobbs had me!" and he writhed his
+    face into an idiotic grimace.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The audience reeled about in their mirth. Because with negroes, as with
+    white persons, two thirds of humor is in the reputation, and Jim Pink
+    was of prodigious repute.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter walked along with him patiently, because he knew that until they
+    were out of ear-shot of the crowd there was no way of getting a sensible
+    answer out of Jim Pink.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Where are you going?" he asked presently.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Thought I'd step over to Niggertown." Jim Pink's humorous air was still
+    upon him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What's doing over there? What were the boys raising such a hullabaloo
+    about?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Such me."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why did that boy go running across like that?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jim Pink rolled his eyes on Peter with a peculiar look.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Reckon he mus' 'a' wanted to git on t'other side o' town."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter flattered the Punchinello by smiling a little.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Come, Jim Pink, what do you know?" he asked. The magician poked out his
+    huge lips.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Mr. Bobbs turn acrost by de church, over de Big Hill. Da' 's always a
+    ba-ad sign."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter's brief interest in the matter flickered out. Another arrest for
+    some niggerish peccadillo. The history of Niggertown was one long series
+    of petty offenses, petty raids, and petty punishments. Peter would be
+    glad to get well away from such a place.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Think I'll go North, Jim Pink," remarked Peter, chiefly to keep up a
+    friendly conversation with his companion.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Whut-chu goin' to do up thaiuh?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Take a position in a system of garages."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "A position is a job wid a white color on it," defined the minstrel.
+    "Whut you goin' to do wid Cissie?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter looked around at the foolish face.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "With Cissie?&mdash;Cissie Dildine?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Uh huh."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, what makes you think I'm going to do anything with Cissie?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "M-m, visitin' roun'." The fool flung his face into a grimace, and
+    dropped it as one might shake out a sack.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter watched the contortion uneasily.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What do you mean&mdash;visiting around?"
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+   "Diff'nt folks go visitin' roun';<br>
+    Some goes up an' some goes down."
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    Apparently Jim Pink had merely quoted a few words from a poem he knew.
+    He stared at the green-black depth of the glade, which set in about
+    half-way up the hill they were climbing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ef this weather don' ever break," he observed sagely, "we sho am in fuh
+    a dry spell."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter did not pursue the topic of the weather. He climbed the hill in
+    silence, wondering just what the buffoon meant. He suspected he was
+    hinting at Cissie's visit to his room. However, he did not dare ask any
+    questions or press the point in any manner, lest he commit himself.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The minstrel had succeeded in making Peter's walk very uncomfortable, as
+    somehow he always did. Peter went on thinking about the matter. If Jim
+    Pink knew of Cissie's visit, all Niggertown knew it. No woman's
+    reputation, nobody's shame or misery or even life, would stand between
+    Jim Pink and what he considered a joke. The buffoon was the crudest
+    thing in this world&mdash;a man who thought himself a wit.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter could imagine all the endless tweaks to Cissie's pride Niggertown
+    would give the octoroon. She had asked Peter to marry her and had been
+    refused. She had humbled herself for naught. That was the very tar of
+    shame. Peter knew that in the moral categories of Niggertown Cissie
+    would suffer more from such a rebuff than if she had lied or committed
+    theft and adultery every day in the calendar. She had been refused
+    marriage. All the folk-ways of Niggertown were utterly topsyturvy. It
+    was a crazy-house filled with the most grotesque moral measures.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It seemed to Peter as he entered the cedar-glade that he had lost all
+    sympathy with this people from which he had sprung. He looked upon them
+    as strange, incomprehensible beings, just as a man will forget his own
+    childhood and look upon children as strange, incomprehensible little
+    creatures. In the midst of his thoughts he heard himself saying to Jim
+    Pink:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I suppose it is as dusty as ever."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Dustier 'an ever," assured Jim Pink.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Apparently their conversation had recurred to the weather, after all.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A chill silence encompassed the glade. The path the negroes followed
+    wound this way and that among reddish boulders, between screens of
+    intergrown cedars, and over a bronze mat of needles. Their steps were
+    noiseless. The odor of the cedars and the temple-like stillness brought
+    to Peter's mind the night of his mother's death. It seemed to him a long
+    time since he had come running through the glade after a doctor, and
+    yet, by a queer distortion of his sense of time, his mother's death and
+    burial bulked in his past as if it had occurred yesterday.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There was no sound in the glade to disturb Peter's thoughts except a
+    murmur of human voices from some of the innumerable privacies of the
+    place, and the occasional chirp of a waxwing busy over clusters of
+    cedar-balls.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It had been five weeks and a day since Caroline died. Five weeks and a
+    day; his mother's death drifting away into the mystery and oblivion of
+    the past. Likewise, twenty-five years of his own life completed and
+    gone.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A procession of sad, wistful thoughts trailed through Peter's brain: his
+    mother, and Ida May, and now Cissie. It seemed to Peter that all any
+    woman had ever brought him was wistfulness and sadness. His mother had
+    been jealous, and instead of the great happiness he had expected, his
+    home life with her had turned out a series of small perplexities and
+    pains. Before that was Ida May, and now here was her younger sister.
+    Peter wondered if any man ever reached the peace and happiness
+    foreshadowed in his dream of a woman.
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    A voice calling his name checked Peter's stride mechanically, and caused
+    him to look about with the slight bewilderment of a man aroused from a
+    reverie.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At the first sound, however, Jim Pink became suddenly alert. He took
+    three strides ahead of Peter, and as he went he whispered over his
+    shoulder:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Beat it, nigger! beat it!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The mulatto recognized one of Jim Pink's endless stupid attempts at
+    comedy. It would be precisely Jim Pink's idea of a jest to give Peter a
+    little start. As the mulatto stood looking about among the cedars for
+    the person who had called his name, it amazed him that Jim Pink could be
+    so utterly insane; that he performed some buffoonery instantly, by
+    reflex action as it were, upon the slightest provocation. It was almost
+    a mania with Jim Pink; it verged on the pathological.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The clown, however, was pressing his joke. He was pretending great fear,
+    and was shouting out in his loose minstrel voice:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Hey, don' shoot down dis way, black man, tull I makes my exit!" And a
+    voice, rich with contempt, called back:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You needn't be skeered, you fool rabbit of a nigger!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter turned with a qualm. Quite close to him, and in another direction
+    from which he had been looking, stood Tump Pack. The ex-soldier looked
+    the worse for wear after his jail sentence. His uniform was frayed, and
+    over his face lay a grayish cast that marks negroes in bad condition. At
+    his side, attached by a belt and an elaborate shoulder holster, hung a
+    big army revolver, while on the greasy lapel of his coat was pinned his
+    military medal for exceptional bravery on the field of battle.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Been lookin' fuh you fuh some time, Peter," he stated grimly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter considered the formidable figure with a queer sensation. He tried
+    to take Tump's appearance casually; he tried to maintain an air of
+    ordinariness.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Didn't know you were back."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yeah, I's back."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Have you&mdash;been looking for me?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yeah."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Didn't you know where I was staying?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Co'se I did; up 'mong de white folks. You know dey don' 'low no
+    shootin' an' killin' 'mong de white folks." He drew his pistol from the
+    holster with the address of an expert marksman.
+</p>
+<a name="image-7"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="birth07.png"
+alt="'naw Yuh Don't,' he Warned Sharply. 'you Turn Roun' An'
+March on to Niggertown'
+">
+<br>'Naw Yuh Don't,' He Warned Sharply. 'You Turn Roun' An'
+March on to Niggertown'</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    Peter stood, with a quickening pulse, studying his assailant. The glade,
+    the air, the sunshine, seemed suddenly drawn to a tension, likely to,
+    break into violent commotion. His abrupt danger brought Peter to a
+    feeling of lightness and power. A quiver went along his spine. His
+    nostrils widened unconsciously as he calculated a leap and a blow at
+    Tump's gun.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The soldier took a step backward, at the same time bringing the barrel
+    to a ready.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Naw you don't," he warned sharply. "You turn roun' an' march on to
+    Niggertown."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What for?" Peter still tried to be casual, but his voice held new
+    overtones.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Because, nigger, I means to drap you right on de Main Street o'
+    Niggertown, 'fo' all dem niggers whut's been a-raggin' me 'bout you an'
+    Cissie. I's gwine show dem fool niggers I don' take no fumi-diddles
+    off'n nobody."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Tump," gasped Jim Pink, in a husky voice, "you oughtn't shoot Peter; he
+    mammy jes daid."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'En she won' worry none. Turn roun', Peter, an' when I says, 'March,'
+    you march." He leveled his pistol. "'Tention! Rat about face! March!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter turned and moved off down the noiseless path, walking with the
+    stiff gait of a man who expects a terrific blow from behind at any
+    instant.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The mulatto walked twenty or more paces amid a confusion of self-
+    protective impulses. He thought of whirling on Tump even at this late
+    date. He thought of darting behind a cedar, but he knew the man behind
+    him was an expert shot, and something fundamental in the brown man
+    forbade his getting himself killed while running away. It was too
+    undignified a death.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Presently he surprised himself by calling over his shoulder, as a sort
+    of complaint:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "How came you with the pistol, Tump? Thought it was against the law to
+    carry one."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You kin ca'y 'em ef you don' keep 'em hid," explained the ex-soldier in
+    a wooden voice. "Mr. Bobbs tol' me dat when he guv my gun back."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The irony of the thing caught Peter, for the authorities to arrest Tump
+    not because he was trying to kill Peter, but because he went about his
+    first attempt in an illegal manner. For the first time in his life the
+    mulatto felt that contempt for a white man's technicalities that flavors
+    every negro's thoughts. Here for thirty days his life had been saved by
+    a technical law of the white man; at the end of the thirty days, by
+    another technical law, Tump was set at liberty and allowed to carry a
+    weapon, in a certain way, to murder him. It was grotesque; it was
+    absurd. It filled Peter with a sudden violent questioning of the whole
+    white r&eacute;gime. His thoughts danced along in peculiar excitement.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At the turn of the hill the trio came in sight of the squalid semicircle
+    of Niggertown. Here and there from a tumbledown chimney a feather of
+    pale wood smoke lifted into the chill sunshine. The sight of the houses
+    brought Peter a sharp realization that his life would end in the curving
+    street beneath him. A shock at the incomprehensible brevity of his life
+    rushed over him. Just to that street, just as far as the curve, and his
+    legs were swinging along, carrying him forward at an even gait.
+</p>
+<p>
+    All at once he began talking, arguing. He tried to speak at an ordinary
+    tempo, but his words kept edging on faster and faster:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Tump, I'm not going to marry Cissie Dildine."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I knows you ain't, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I mean, if you let me alone, I didn't mean to."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I ain't goin' to let you alone."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Tump, we had already decided not to marry."
+</p>
+<p>
+    After a short pause Tump said in a slightly different tone:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'Pears lak you don' haf to ma'y her&mdash;comin' to yo' room."
+</p>
+<p>
+    A queer sinking came over the mulatto. "Listen, Tump, I&mdash;we&mdash;in my room
+    &mdash;we simply talked, that's all. She came to tell me she was goin away.
+    I&mdash;I didn't harm her, Tump." Peter swallowed. He despaired of being
+    believed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But his defense only infuriated the soldier. He suddenly broke into
+    violent profanity.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Hot damn you! shut yo black mouf! Whut I keer whut-chu done! You weaned
+    her away fum me. She won't speak to me! She won't look at me!" A sudden
+    insanity of rage seized Tump. He poured on his victim every oath and
+    obscenity he had raked out of the whole army.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Strangely enough, the gunman's outbreak brought a kind of relief to
+    Peter Siner. It exonerated him. He was not suspected of wronging Cissie;
+    or, rather, whether he had or had not wronged her made no difference to
+    Tump. Peter's crime consisted in mere being, in existing where Cissie
+    could see him and desire him rather than Tump. Why it calmed Peter to
+    know that Tump held no dishonorable charge against him the mulatto
+    himself could not have told. Tump's violence showed Peter the certainty
+    of his own death, and somehow it washed away the hope and the thought of
+    escape.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Half-way down the hill they entered the edge of Niggertown. The smell of
+    sties and stables came to them. Peter's thoughts moved here and there,
+    like the eyes of a little child glancing about as it is forced to leave
+    a pleasure-ground.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter knew that Jim Pink, who now made a sorry figure in their rear,
+    would one day give a buffoon's mimicry of this his walk to death. He
+    thought of Tump, who would have to serve a year or two in the Nashville
+    Penitentiary, for the murder of negroes is seldom severely punished. He
+    thought of Cissie. He was being murdered because Cissie desired him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And then Peter remembered the single bit of wisdom that his whole life
+    had taught him. It was this: no people can become civilized until the
+    woman has the power of choice among the males that sue for her hand. The
+    history of the white race shows the gradual increase of the woman's
+    power of choice. Among the yellow races, where this power is curtailed,
+    civilization is curtailed. It was this principle that exalted chivalry.
+    Upon it the white man has reared all his social fabric.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So deeply ingrained is it that almost every novel written by white men
+    revolves about some woman's choice of her mate being thwarted by power
+    or pride or wealth, but in every instance the rightness of the woman's
+    choice is finally justified. The burden of every song is love, true
+    love, enduring love, a woman's true and enduring love.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And in his moment of clairvoyance Peter saw that these songs and stories
+    were profoundly true. Against a woman's selectiveness no other social
+    force may count.
+</p>
+<p>
+    That was why his own race was weak and hopeless and helpless. The males
+    of his people were devoid of any such sentiment or self-repression. They
+    were men of the jungle, creatures of tusk and claw and loin. This very
+    act of violence against his person condemned his whole race.
+</p>
+<p>
+    These thoughts brought the mulatto an unspeakable sadness, not only for
+    his own particular death, but that this idea, this great redeeming
+    truth, which burned so brightly in his brain, would in another moment
+    flicker out, unrevealed, and be no more.
+</p>
+<a name="2HCH21"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XVIII
+</h2>
+<p>
+    The coughing and rattling of an old motor-car as it rounded the
+    Niggertown curve delayed Tump Pack's act of violence. Instinctively, the
+    three men waited for the machine to pass before Peter walked out into
+    the road. Next moment it appeared around the turn, moving slowly through
+    the dust and spreading a veritable fog behind it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    All three negroes recognized the first glimpse of the hood and top, for
+    there are only three or four cars in Hooker's Bend, and these are as
+    well known as the faces of their owners. This particular motor belonged
+    to Constable Bobbs, and the next moment the trio saw the ponderous body
+    of the officer at the wheel, and by his side a woman. As the machine
+    clacked toward them Peter felt a certain surprise to see that it was
+    Cissie Dildine.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The constable in the car scrutinized the black men, by the roadside in a
+    very peculiar way. As he came near, he leaned across Cissie and almost
+    eclipsed the girl. He eyed the trio with his perpetual menace of a grin
+    on his broad red face. His right hand, lying across Cissie's lap, held a
+    revolver. When closest he shouted above the clangor of his engine:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now, none o' that, boys! None o' that! You'll prob'ly hit the gal if
+    you shoot, an' I'll pick you off lak three black skunks."
+</p>
+<p>
+    He brandished his revolver at them, but the gesture was barely seen, and
+    instantly concealed by the cloud; of dust following the motor. Next
+    moment it enveloped the negroes and hid them even from one another.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was only after Peter was lost in the dust-cloud that the mulatto
+    really divined what was meant by Cissie's strange appearance with the
+    constable, her chalky face, her frightened brown eyes. The significance
+    of the scene grew in his mind. He stood with eyes screwed to slits
+    staring into the apricot-colored dust in the direction of the vanishing
+    noise.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Presently Tump Pack's form outlined itself in the yellow obscurity,
+    groping toward Peter. He still held his pistol, but it swung at his
+    side. He called Peter's name in the strained voice of a man struggling
+    not to cough:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Peter&mdash;is Mr. Bobbs done&mdash;'rested Cissie?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter could hardly talk himself.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Don't know. Looks like it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The two negroes stared at each other through the dust.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Fuh Gawd's sake! Cissie 'rested!" Tump began to cough. Then he wheezed:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Mine an' yo' little deal's off, Peter. You gotta he'p git her out."
+    Here he fell into a violent fit of coughing, and started groping his way
+    to the edge of the dust-cloud.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the rush of the moment the swift change in Peter's situation appeared
+    only natural. He followed Tump, so distressed by the dust and disturbed
+    over Cissie that he hardly thought of his peculiar position. The dust
+    pinched the upper part of his throat, stung his nose. Tears trickled
+    from his eyes, and he pressed his finger against his upper lip, trying
+    not to sneeze. He was still struggling against the sneeze when Tump
+    recovered his speech.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Wh-whut you reckon she done, Peter? She don' shoot craps, nor boot-
+    laig, nor&mdash;" He fell to coughing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter got out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Let's go&mdash;to the Dildine house," he said.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The two moved hurriedly through the thinning cloud, and presently came
+    to breathable air, where they could see the houses around them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I know she done somp'n; I know she done somp'n," chanted Tump, with the
+    melancholy cadence of his race. He shook his dusty head. "You ain't
+    never been in jail, is you, black man?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter said he had not.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Lawd! it ain't no place fuh a woman," declared Tump. "You dunno nothin'
+    'bout it, black man. It sho ain't no place fuh a woman."
+</p>
+<p>
+    A notion of an iron cage floated before Peter's mind. The two negroes
+    trudged on through the crescent side by side, their steps raising a
+    little trail of dust in the air behind them. Their faces and clothes
+    were of a uniform dust color. Streaks of mud marked the runnels of their
+    tears down their cheeks.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The shrubbery and weeds that grew alongside the negro thoroughfare were
+    quite dead. Even the little avenue of dwarf box was withered that led
+    from the gate to the door of the Dildine home. The two colored men
+    walked up the little path to the door, knocked, and waited on the steps
+    for the little skirmish of observation from behind the blinds. None
+    came. The worst had befallen the house; there was nothing to guard. The
+    door opened as soon as an inmate could reach it, and Vannie Dildine
+    stood before them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The quadroon's eyes were red, and her face had the moist, slightly
+    swollen appearance that comes of protracted weeping. She looked so frail
+    and miserable that Peter instinctively stepped inside and took her arm
+    to assist her in the mere physical effort of standing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What is the matter, Mrs. Dildine?" he asked in a shocked tone. "What's
+    happened to Cissie?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Vannie began weeping again with a faint gasping and a racking of her
+    flat chest.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It's&mdash;it's&mdash;O-o-oh, Peter!" She put an arm about him and began weeping
+    against him. He soothed her, patted her shoulder, at the same time
+    staring at the side of her head, wondering what could have dealt her
+    this blow.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Presently she steadied herself and began explaining in feeble little
+    phrases, sandwiched between sobs and gasps:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "She&mdash;tuk a brooch&mdash;Kep'&mdash;kep' layin' it roun' in&mdash;h-her way, th-that
+    young Sam Arkwright did,&mdash;a-an' finally she&mdash;she tuk hit. N-nen, when he
+    seen he h-had her, he said sh-sh-she 'd haf to d-do wh-whut he said, or
+    he'd sen' her to-to ja-a-il!" Vannie sobbed drearily for a few moments
+    on Peter's breast. "Sh-she did fuh a while: 'n 'en sh-she broke off wid
+    h-him, anyhow, an'&mdash;an' he swo' out a wa'nt an sont her to jail!" The
+    mother sobbed without comfort, and finally added: "Sh-she in a delicate
+    fix now, an' 'at jail goin' to be a gloomy place fuh Cissie."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The three negroes stood motionless in the dusty hallway, motionless save
+    for the racking of Vannie's sobs.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tump Pack stirred himself.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, we gotta git her out." His words trailed off. He stood wrinkling
+    his half-inch of brow. "I wonder would dey exchange pris'ners; wonder ef
+    I could go up an' serve out Cissie's term."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, Tump!" gasped the woman, "ef you only could!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'll step an' see, Miss Vannie. 'At sho ain't no place fuh a nice gal
+    lak Cissie." Tump turned on his mission, evidently intending to walk to
+    Jonesboro and offer himself in the place of the prisoner.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter supported Vannie back into the poor living-room, and placed her in
+    the old rocking-chair before the empty hearth. There was where he had
+    sat the evening Cissie made her painful confession to him. Only now did
+    he realize the whole of what Cissie was trying to confess.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter Siner overtook Tump Pack a little way down the crescent, opposite
+    the Berry cabin. The thoroughfare was deserted, because the weather was
+    cold and the scantily clad children were indoors. However, from every
+    cabin came sound of laughing and romping, and now and then a youngster
+    darted through the cold from one hut to another.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It seemed to Peter Siner only a little while since he and Ida May were
+    skittering through wintry weather from one fire to another, with Cissie,
+    a wailing, wet-nosed little spoil-sport, trailing after them. And then,
+    with a wheeling of the years, they were scattered everywhere.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As the negroes passed the Berry cabin, Nan Berry came out with an old
+    shawl around her bristling spikes. She stopped the two men and drew them
+    to her gate with a gesture.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Wha you gwine?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Jonesbuh."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Whut you goin' do 'bout po-o-o' Cissie?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Goin' to see ef the sheriff won' take me 'stid o' Cissie."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Tha's right," said Nan, nodding solemnly. "I hopes he will. You is mo'
+    used to it, Tump."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yeah, an' 'at jail sho ain't no place fuh a nice gal lak Cissie."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Sho ain't," agreed Nan.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter interrupted to say he was sure the sheriff would not exchange.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The hopes of his listeners fell.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Weh-ul," dragged out Nan, with a long face, "of co'se now it's lak dis:
+    ef Cissie goin' to stay in dat ja-ul, she's goin' to need some mo'
+    clo'es 'cep'n whut she's got on,&mdash;specially lak she is."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tump stared down the swing of the crescent.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'Fo' Gawd, dis sho don' seem lak hit's right to me," he said.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nan let herself out at the rickety gate. "You niggers wait heah tull I
+    runs up to Miss Vannie's an' git some o' Cissie's clo'es fuh you to tote
+    her."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tump objected.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Jail ain't no place fuh clean clo'es. She jes better serve out her term
+    lak she is, an' wash up when she gits th'ugh."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You fool nigger!" snapped Nan. "She kain't serve out her term lak she
+    is!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Da' 's so," said Tump.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The three stood silent, Nan and Tump lost in blankness, trying to think
+    of something to do for Cissie. Finally Nan said:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I heah she done commit gran' larceny, an' they goin' sen' her to de
+    pen."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Whut is gran' larceny?" asked Tump.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It's takin' mo' at one time an' de white folks 'speck you to take,"
+    defined the woman. "Well, I'll go git her clo'es." She hurried off up
+    the crescent.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter and Tump waited in the Berry cabin for Nan's return. Outside, the
+    Berry cabin was the usual clapboard-roofed, weather-stained structure;
+    inside, it was dark, windowless, and strong with the odor of black folk.
+    Some children were playing around the hearth, roasting chestnuts. Their
+    elders sat in a circle of decrepit chairs. It was so dark that when
+    Peter first entered he could not make out the little group, but he soon
+    recognized their voices: Parson Ranson, Wince Washington, Jerry
+    Dillihay, and all of the Berry family.
+</p>
+<p>
+    They were talking of Cissie, of course. They hoped Cissie wouldn't
+    really be sent to the penitentiary, that the white folks would let her
+    out in time for her to have her child at home. Parson Ranson thought it
+    would be bad luck for a child to be born in jail.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Wince Washington, who had been in jail a number of times, suggested that
+    they bail Cissie out by signing their names to a paper. He had been set
+    free by this means once or twice.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Sally, Nan's little sister, observed tartly that if Cissie hadn't acted
+    so, she wouldn't have been in jail.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Don' speak lak dat uv dem as is in trouble, Sally," reproved old Parson
+    Ranson, solemnly; "anybody can say 'Ef.'"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Sho am de troof," agreed Jerry Dillihay.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Sho am, black man." The conversation drifted into the endless
+    moralizing of their race, but it held no criticism or condemnation of
+    Cissie. From the tone of the negroes one would have thought some
+    impersonal disaster had overtaken her. Every one was planning how to
+    help Cissie, how to make her present state more endurable. They were the
+    black folk, the unfortunate of the earth, and the pride of righteousness
+    is only to the well placed and the untempted.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Presently Nan came back with a bundle of Cissie's clothes. Tump took the
+    bundle of dainty lingerie, the intimate garments of the woman he loved,
+    and set forth on his quixotic errand. He tied it to his shoulder-holster
+    and set out. Peter went a little of the way with him. It was almost dusk
+    when they started. The chill of approaching night stung the men's faces.
+    As they walked past the footpath that led over the Big Hill, three
+    pistol-shots from the glade announced that the boot-leggers had opened
+    business for the night.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tump paused and shivered. He said it was a cold night. He thought he
+    would like to get a kick of "white mule" to put a little heart in him.
+    It was a long walk to Jonesboro. He hesitated a moment, then turned off
+    the road around the crescent for the path through the glade.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A thought to dissuade Tump from drinking the fiery "singlings" of the
+    moonshiners crossed Peters mind, but he put it aside. Tump was a habitu&eacute;
+    of the glade. All the physiological arguments upon which Peter could
+    base an argument were far beyond the ex-soldier's comprehension. So Tump
+    turned off through the dark trees. Peter watched him until all he could
+    see was the white blur of Cissie's underwear swinging against his
+    holster.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After Tump's disappearance, Peter stood for several minutes thinking.
+    His brief crusade into Niggertown had ended in a situation far outside
+    of his volition. That morning he had started out with some vague idea of
+    taking Niggertown in his hands and molding it in accordance with his
+    white ideas; but Niggertown had taken Peter into its hands, had
+    threatened his life, had administered to him profound mental and moral
+    shocks, and now had dropped him, like some bit of waste, with his face
+    set over the Big Hill for white town.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As Peter stood there it seemed to him there was something symbolic in
+    his attitude. He was no longer of the black world; he was of the white.
+    He did not understand his people; they eluded him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He belonged to the white world; not to the village across the hill, but
+    to the North. Nothing now prevented him from going North and taking the
+    position with Farquhar. Cissie Dildine was impossible for him now.
+    Niggertown was immovable, at least for him. He was no Washington to lead
+    his people to a loftier plane. In fact, Peter began to suspect that he
+    was no leader at all. He saw now that his initial success with the Sons
+    and Daughters of Benevolence had been effected merely by the aura of his
+    college training. After his first misstep he had never rehabilitated
+    himself. He perhaps had a dash of the artistic in him, and the power to
+    mold ideas often confuses itself subjectively with the power to mold
+    human beings. In reality he did not even understand the people he
+    assumed to mold. A suspicion came to him that under the given conditions
+    their ways were more rational than his own.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As for Cissie Dildine, his duty by the girl, his queer protective
+    passion for her&mdash;all that was surely past now. After her lapse from all
+    decency there was no reason why he should spend another thought on her.
+    He would go North to Chicago.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The last of the twilight was fading in swift, visible gradations of
+    light. The cedars, the cabins, and the hill faded in pulse-beats of
+    darkness. Above the Big Hill the last ember of day smoldered against a
+    green-blue infinity. Here and there a star pricked the dome with a
+    wintry brilliance.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then, somehow, the thought of Cissie looking out on that chilly sky
+    through iron bars tightened Peter's throat. He caught himself up sharply
+    for his emotion. He began a vague defense of the white man's laws on
+    grounds as cold and impersonal as the winter evening. Laws, customs, and
+    conventions were for the strengthening of men, to seed the select, to
+    winnow the weak. It was white logic, applied firmly, as by a white man.
+    But somehow the stars multiplied and kept Cissie's image before Peter&mdash;a
+    cold, frightened girl, harassed with coming motherhood, peering at those
+    chill, distant lights out of the blackness of a jail.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The mulatto decided to spend the night in his mother's cabin. He would
+    do his packing, and be ready for the down-river boat in the morning. He
+    found his way to his own gate in the darkness. He lifted it around,
+    entered, and walked to his door. When he tried to open it, he found some
+    one had bored holes through the shutter and the jamb and had wired it
+    shut.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter struck a match to see just what had been done. The flame displayed
+    a small sheet tacked on the door. He spent two matches investigating it.
+    It was a notice of levy, posted by the constable in an action of debt
+    brought against the estate of Caroline Siner by Henry Hooker. The owner
+    of the estate and the public in general were warned against removing
+    anything whatsoever from the premises under penalty exacted by the law
+    governing such offenses. Then Peter untwisted the wire and entered.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter searched about and found the tiny brass night-lamp which his
+    mother always had used. The larger glass-bowled lamp was gone. The
+    interior of the cabin was clammy from cold and foul from long lack of
+    airing. In the corner his mother's old four-poster loomed in the
+    shadows, but he could see some of its covers had been taken. He passed
+    into the kitchen with a notion of building a fire and eating a bite, but
+    everything edible had been abstracted. Even one of the lids of the old
+    step-stove was gone. Most of the pans and kettles had disappeared, but
+    the pretty old Dutch sugar-bowl remained on a bare paper-covered shelf.
+    Negro-like, whatever person or persons who had ransacked Peter's home
+    considered the sugar-bowl too fine to take. Or they may have thought
+    that Peter would want this bowl for a keepsake, and with that queer
+    compassion that permeates a negro's worst moments they allowed it to
+    remain. And Peter knew if he raised an outcry about his losses, much of
+    the property would be surreptitiously restored, or perhaps his neighbors
+    would bring back his things and say they had found them. They would help
+    him as best they could, just as they of the crescent would help Cissie
+    as best they could, and would receive her back as one of them when she
+    and her baby were finally released from jail.
+</p>
+<p>
+    They were a queer people. They were a people who would never get on well
+    and do well. They lacked the steel-like edge that the white man
+    achieves. By virtue of his hardness, a white man makes his very laws and
+    virtues instruments to crush and mulct his fellow-man; but negroes are
+    so softened by untoward streaks of sympathy that they lose the very uses
+    of their crimes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The depression of the whole day settled upon Peter with the deepening
+    night. He held his poor light above his head and picked his way to his
+    own room. After the magnificence of the Renfrew manor, it had contracted
+    to a grimy little box lined with yellowed papers. His books were still
+    intact, but Henry Hooker would get them as part payment on the Dillihay
+    place, which Henry owned. On his little table still lay the pile of old
+    examination papers, lists of incoherent questions which somebody
+    somewhere imagined formed a test of human ability to meet and answer the
+    mysterious searchings of life.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter was familiar with the books; many of the questions he had learned
+    by rote, but the night and the crescent, and the thought of a pregnant
+    girl caged in the blackness of a jail filled his soul with a great
+    melancholy query to which he could find no answer.
+</p>
+<a name="2HCH22"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XIX
+</h2>
+<p>
+    Two voices talking, interrupting each other with ejaculations, after the
+    fashion of negroes under excitement, aroused Peter Siner from his sleep.
+    He caught the words: "He did! Tump did! The jailer did! 'Fo' God! black
+    man, whut's Cissie doin'?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Overtones of shock, even of horror, in the two voices brought Peter wide
+    awake the moment he opened his eyes. He sat up suddenly in his bed,
+    remained perfectly still, listening with his mouth open. The voices,
+    however, were passing. The words became indistinct, then relapsed into
+    that bubbling monotone of human voices at a distance, and presently
+    ceased.
+</p>
+<p>
+    These fragmentary phrases, however, feathered with consternation, filled
+    Peter with vague premonitions. He whirled his legs out of bed and began
+    drawing on his clothes. When he was up and into the crescent, however,
+    nobody was in sight. He stood breathing the chill, damp air, blinking
+    his eyes. Lack of his cold bath made him feel chilly and lethargic. He
+    wriggled his shoulders and considered going back, after all, and having
+    his splash. Just then he saw the Persimmon coming around the crescent.
+    Peter called to the roustabout and asked about Tump Pack.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Persimmon looked at Peter with his half-asleep, protruding eyeballs.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Don' you know 'bout Tump Pack already, Mister Siner?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No." Peter was astonished at the formality of the "Mr. Siner."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then is you 'spectin' somp'n 'bout him?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, no, but I was asleep in there a moment ago, and somebody came
+    along talking about Tump and Cissie. They&mdash;they aren't married, are
+    they?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, no-o, no-o-o, no-o-o-o-o." The Persimmon waggled his bullet head
+    slowly from side to side. "I heared Tump got into a lil trouble wid de
+    jailer las' night."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Serious?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I dunno." The Persimmon closed one of his protruding yellow eyes.
+    "Owin' to whut you call se'ius; maybe whut I call se'ius wouldn't be
+    se'ius to you at all; 'n 'en maybe whut you call se'ius would be ve'y
+    insince'ius to Tump." The roustabout's philosophy, which consisted in a
+    monotonous recasting of a given proposition, trickled on and on in the
+    cold wind. After a while it fizzled out to nothing at all, and the
+    Persimmon asked in a queer manner: "Did you give Tump some women's
+    clo'es, Peter?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was such an odd question that at first Peter was at loss; then he
+    recalled Nan Berry's despatching Cissie some underwear. He explained
+    this to the Persimmon, and tacked on a curious, "Why?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, nothin'; nothin' 'tall. Ever'body say you a mighty long-haided
+    nigger. Jim Pink he tell us 'bout Tump Pack marchin' you 'roun' wid a
+    gun. I sho don' want you ever git mad at me, Mister Siner. Man wid a gun
+    an' you turn yo' long haid on him an' blow him away wid a wad o' women's
+    clo'es. I sho don' want you ever cross yo' fingers at me, Mister Siner."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter stared at the grotesque, bullet-headed roustabout. "Persimmon," he
+    said uneasily, "what in the world are you talking about?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Persimmon smiled a sickly, white-toothed smile. "Jim Pink say yo'
+    aidjucation is a flivver. I say, 'Jim Pink, no nigger don' go off an'
+    study fo' yeahs in college whut 'n he comes back an' kin throw some kin'
+    uv a hoodoo over us fool niggers whut ain't got no brains. Now, Tump wid
+    a gun, an' you wid jes ordina'y women's clo'es! 'Fo' Gawd, aidjucation
+    is a great thing; sho is a great thing." The Persimmon gave Peter an
+    apprehensive wink and moved on.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There was no use trying to extract information from the Persimmon unless
+    he was minded to give it. His talk would merely become vaguer and
+    vaguer. Peter watched him go, then turned and attempted to throw the
+    whole matter off his mind by assuming a certain brisk Northern mood. He
+    must pack, get ready for the down-river gasolene launch. The doings of
+    Tump Pack and Cissie Dildine were, after all, nothing to him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He started inside, when the levy notice on the door again met his eyes.
+    He paused, read it over once more, and decided that he must go over the
+    hill to the Planter's Bank and get Henry Hooker's permission to remove
+    certain small personal belongings that he wanted to take with him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The mere clear-cut decision to go invigorated Peter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Some of the energy that always filled him during his college days in
+    Boston seemed to come to him now from the mere thought of the North.
+    Soon he would be in the midst of it, moving briskly, talking to wide-
+    awake men to whom a slightly unusual English word would not form a
+    stumbling-block to conversation. He set out down the crescent and across
+    the Big Hill at a swinging stride. He was glad to get away.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Beyond the white church on the other side of the hill he heard a motor
+    coming in on the Jonesboro road. Presently he saw a battered car moving
+    around the long swing of the pike, spewing a trail of dust down the
+    wind. Its clacking became prodigious.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The mulatto was just entering that indefinite stretch of thoroughfare
+    where a country road becomes a village street when there came a wail of
+    brakes behind him and he looked around.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was Dawson Bobbs's car. The fat man now slowed up not far from the
+    mulatto and called to him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, sir," said Peter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dawson bobbed his fat head backward and upward in a signal for Peter to
+    approach. It held the casualness of one certain to be obeyed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Although Peter had done no crime, nor had even harbored a criminal
+    intention, a trickle of apprehension went through him at Bobbs's nod. He
+    recalled Jim Pink's saying that it was bad luck to see the constable. He
+    walked up to the shuddering motor and stood about three feet from the
+    running-board.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The officer bit on a sliver of toothpick that he held in his thin lips.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Accident up Jonesboro las' night, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What was it, Mr. Bobbs?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Tump Pack got killed."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter continued looking fixedly at Mr. Bobbs's broad red face. The dusty
+    road beneath him seemed to give a little dip. He repeated the
+    information emptily, trying to orient himself to this sudden change in
+    his whole mental horizon.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The officer was looking at Peter fixedly with his chill slits of eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yeah; trying to make a jail delivery."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The two men continued looking at each other, one from the road, the
+    other from the motor. The flow of Peter's thoughts seemed to divide. The
+    greater part was occupied with Tump Pack. Peter could vision the
+    formidable ex-soldier lying dead in Jonesboro jail, with his little
+    congressional medal on his breast. Some lighter portion of his mind
+    nickered about here and there on trivial things. He observed a little
+    hole rusted in the running-board of the motor. He noticed that the
+    officer's eyes were just the same chill, washed blue as the winter sky
+    above his head. He remembered a tale that, before electrocution became a
+    law in Tennessee the county sheriff's nerve had failed him at a hanging,
+    and the constable Dawson Bobbs had sprung the drop. There was something
+    terrible about the fat man. He would do anything, absolutely anything,
+    that came to his hands in the way of legal sewage.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the midst of these thoughts Peter heard himself saying.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He&mdash;was trying to get Cissie out?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yep."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He&mdash;must have been drunk."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, yeah."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Bobbs sat studying the mulatto. As he studied him he said slowly:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Some of 'em say he was disguised as a woman. Others say he had some
+    women's clothes along, ready to put on. Now, me and the sheriff knowed
+    Tump Pack purty well, Peter, and we knowed that nigger never in the
+    worl' would 'a' thought up sich a plan by hisself."
+</p>
+<p>
+    He sat looking at Peter so interrogatively that the mulatto began, in a
+    strained, earnest voice, telling the constable precisely what had
+    happened in regard to the clothes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Bobbs sat listening impassively, moving his toothpick up and down
+    from one side to the other of his small, thin-lipped mouth. At last he
+    nodded.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, I guess that's about the way of it. I didn't exactly understand
+    the women's clothes business,&mdash;damn' fool disguise,&mdash;but we figgered it
+    might pop into the head of a' edjucated nigger." He sucked his teeth,
+    reflectively. "Peter," he said at last, "seems to me, if I was you, I'd
+    drift on away from this town. The niggers around here ain't strong for
+    you now; some say you're a hoodoo; some say this an' some that. The
+    white folks don't exactly like you trying to get up a cook's union. It's
+    your right to do that if you want to, of course, but this is a mighty
+    small city to have unions and things. The fact is, it ain't a big enough
+    place for a nigger of yore ability, Peter. I b'lieve, if I was you, I'd
+    jes drift on some'eres else."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The officer tipped up his toothpick so that it lifted his upper lip in a
+    little v-shaped opening and exposed a strong, yellowish tooth. At the
+    moment his machine started slowly forward. It gave him the appearance of
+    accidentally rolling off while immersed in deep thought.
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    The death of Tump Pack moved Peter with a sense of strange pathos. He
+    always remembered Tump tramping away through the night to carry Cissie
+    some underclothes and, if possible, to take her place in jail. At the
+    foundation of Tump's being lay a faithfulness and devotion to Cissie
+    that reached the heights of a dog's. And yet, he might have deserted
+    her, he would probably have beaten her, and he most certainly would have
+    betrayed her many, many times. It was inexplicable.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now that Tump was dead, the mantle of his fidelity somehow seemed to
+    fall on Peter. For some reason Peter felt that he should assume Tump's
+    place as Cissie Dildine's husband and protector. Had Tump lived, Peter
+    might have gone North in peace, if not in happiness. Now such a journey,
+    without Cissie, had become impossible. He had a feeling that it would
+    not be right.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As for the disgrace of marrying such a woman as Cissie Dildine, Peter
+    slowly gave that idea up. The "worthinesses" and "disgraces" implicit in
+    Harvard atmosphere, which Peter had spent four years of his life
+    imbibing, slowly melted away in the air of Niggertown. What was
+    honorable there, what was disgraceful there, somehow changed its color
+    here.
+</p>
+<p>
+    By virtue of this change Peter felt intuitively that Cissie Dildine was
+    neither disgraced by her arrest nor soiled by her physical condition.
+    Somehow she seemed just as "nice" a girl, just as "good" a girl, as ever
+    she was before. Moreover, every other darky in Niggertown held these
+    same instinctive beliefs. Had it not been for that, Peter would have
+    thought it was his passion pleading for the girl, justifying itself by a
+    grotesque morality, as passions often do. But this was not the correct
+    solution. The sentiment was enigmatic. Peter puzzled over it time and
+    time again as he waited in Hooker's Bend for the outcome of Cissie's
+    trial.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The octoroon's imprisonment came to an end on the third day after Tump's
+    death. Sam Arkwright's parents had not known of their son's legal
+    proceedings, and Mr. Arkwright immediately quashed the warrant, and
+    hushed up the unfortunate matter as best he could. Young Sam was
+    suddenly sent away from home to college, as the best step in the
+    circumstances. And so the wishes of the adolescent in the cedar-glade
+    came queerly to pass, even if Peter did withhold any grave, mature
+    advice on the subject which he may have possessed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Naturally, there was much mirth among the men of Hooker's Bend and much
+    virulence among the women over the peculiar conditions under which young
+    Sam made his pilgrimage in pursuit of wisdom and morals and the right
+    conduct of life. And life being problematic and uncertain as it is, and
+    prone to wind about in the strangest way, no one may say with certitude
+    that young Sam did not make a promising start.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Certainly, over the affair the Knights of the Round Table launched many
+    a quip and jest, but that simply proved the fineness of their sentiments
+    toward a certain delicate human relation which forms mankind's single
+    awful approach to the creative and the holy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tump Pack became almost a mythical figure in Niggertown. Jim Pink Staggs
+    composed a saga relating the soldier's exploits in France, his assault
+    on the jail to liberate Cissie, and his death.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In his songs&mdash;and Jim Pink had composed a good many&mdash;the minstrel
+    instinctively avoided humor. He always improvised them to the sobbing of
+    a guitar, and they were as invariably sad as the poetry of adolescents.
+    It was called "Tump Pack's Lament." The negroes of Hooker's Bend learned
+    it from Jim Pink, and with them it drifted up and down the three great
+    American rivers, and now it is sung by the roustabouts, stevedores, and
+    underlings of our strange black American world.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This song commemorating Tump Pack's bravery and faithfulness to his love
+    may very well take the place of the Congressional medal which,
+    unfortunately, was lost on the night the soldier was killed. Between the
+    two, there is little doubt that the accolade of fame bestowed in the
+    buffoon's simple melody is more vital and enduring than that accorded by
+    special act of the Congress of the United States of America.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When Cissie Dildine returned from jail, she and her mother arranged the
+    Dildine-Siner wedding as nearly according to white standards in similar
+    circumstances as they could conceive. They agreed that it should be a
+    simple, quiet home wedding. However, as every soul in Niggertown, a
+    number of colored friends in Jonesboro, and a contingent from up-river
+    villages meant to attend, it became necessary to hold the service in the
+    church.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The officiating minister was not Parson Ranson after all, but a Reverend
+    Cleotus Haidus, the presiding elder of that circuit of the Afro-American
+    Methodist Church, whose duties happened to call him to Hooker's Bend
+    that day. So, notwithstanding Cissie's efforts at simplicity, the
+    wedding, after all, was resolved into an affair.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Once, in one of her moments of clairvoyance, Cissie said to Peter:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Our trouble is, Peter, we are trying to mix what I have learned in
+    Nashville and what you have learned in Boston with what we both feel in
+    Hooker's Bend. I&mdash;I'm almost ashamed to say it, but I don't really feel
+    sad and plaintive at all, Peter. I feel glad, gloriously glad. Oh, my
+    dear, dear Peter!" and she flung her arms around Peter's neck and held
+    him with all her might against her ripening bosom.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To Cissie her theft, her jail sentence, her pregnancy, were nothing more
+    than if she had taken a sip of water. However, with the imitativeness of
+    her race and the histrionic ability of her sex, she appeared pensive and
+    subdued during the elaborate double-ring ceremony performed by the
+    Reverend Cleotus Haidus. Nobody in the packed church knew how
+    tremendously Cissie's heart was beating except Peter, who held her hand.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The ethical engine that Peter had patiently builded in Harvard almost
+    ceased to function in this weird morality of Niggertown. Whether he were
+    doing right or doing wrong, Peter could not determine. He lost all his
+    moorings. At times he felt himself walking according to the ethnological
+    law, which is the Harvard way of saying walking according to the will of
+    God; but at other times he felt party to some unpardonable obscenity. So
+    deeply was he disturbed that out of the dregs of his mind floated up old
+    bits of the Scriptures that he was unaware of possessing: "There is a
+    way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of
+    death." And Peter wondered if he were not in that way.
+</p>
+<a name="image-8"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="birth08.png"
+alt="The Bridal Couple Embarked for Cairo
+">
+<br>The Bridal Couple Embarked for Cairo
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    The bridal couple embarked for Cairo on the <i>Red Cloud</i>, a packet
+    in the Dubuque, Ohio, and Tennessee River trade. Peter and Cissie were
+    not allowed to walk up the main stairway into the passengers' cabin, but
+    were required to pick their way along the boiler-deck, through the
+    stench of freight, lumber, live stock and sleeping roustabouts. Then
+    they went through the heat and steam of the engine-room up a small
+    companionway that led through the toilet, on to the rear guard of the
+    main deck, and thence back to a little cuddy behind the main saloon
+    called the chambermaid's cabin.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The chambermaid's cabin was filled with the perpetual odor of hot soap-
+    suds, soiled laundry, and the broader smell of steam and the boat's
+    machinery. The little place trembled night and day, for the steamer's
+    engines were just beneath them, and immediately behind them thundered
+    the great stern-wheel of the packet. A single square window in the end
+    of the chambermaid's cabin looked out on the wheel, but at all times,
+    except when the wind was blowing from just the right quarter, this
+    window was deluged with a veritable Niagara of water. The continual
+    shake of the cabin, the creak of the rudder-beam working to and fro, the
+    watery thunder of the wheel, and the solemn rumble of the engines made
+    conversation impossible until the travelers grew accustomed to the
+    noises. Still, Cissie found it pleasant. She liked to sit and look out
+    into the main saloon, with its interminable gilded scrolls extending
+    away up the long cabin, a suave perspective. She liked to watch the
+    white passengers dine&mdash;the white napery, the bouquets, the endless
+    tables all filled with diners; some swathed in napkins from chin to
+    waistband, others less completely protected. It gave Cissie a certain
+    tang of triumph to smile at the swathed ones and to think that she knew
+    better than that.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At night a negro string-band played for the white excursionists to
+    dance, and Cissie would sit, with glowing eyes, clenching Peter's hand,
+    every fiber of her asway to the music, and it seemed as if her heart
+    would go mad. All these inhibitions, all this spreading before her of
+    forbidden joys, did not daunt her delight. She reveled in them by
+    propinquity.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The chambermaid was a Mrs. Antolia Higgman, a strong, full-bodied
+    <i>caf&eacute;-au-lait</i> negress. She was a very sensible woman, and during
+    her work on the boat she had picked up a Northern accent and a number of
+    little mannerisms from the Chicago and St. Louis excursionists, who made
+    ten-day round trips from Dubuque to Florence, Alabama, and return. When
+    Mrs. Higgman was not running errands for the women passengers, she was
+    working at her perpetual laundering.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At first Peter was a little uneasy as to how Mrs. Higgman would treat
+    Cissie, but she turned out a good-hearted woman, and did everything she
+    could to make the young wife comfortable. It soon became clear that Mrs.
+    Higgman knew the whole situation, for one day she said to Cissie in her
+    odd dialect, burred with Yankeeish "r's" and "ing's."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "These river-r towns, Mrs. Siner-r, are jest like one big village, with
+    the river-r for its Main Street. I know ever-r'thang that goes on,
+    through the cabin-boys an' cooks, an'&mdash;an'&mdash;you cerrtainly ar-re a dear-
+    r, Mrs. Siner-r," and thereupon, quite unexpectedly, she kissed Cissie.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So on about the second day down the river Cissie dropped her saddened
+    manner and became frankly, freely, and riotously happy. After the
+    fashion of village negresses, she insisted on helping Mrs. Higgman with
+    her work, and, incidentally, she cultivated Mrs. Higgman's Northern
+    accent. When the chambermaid was out on her errands and Cissie found a
+    moment alone with Peter, she would tweak his ear or pull his cheek and
+    provoke him to kiss her. Indeed, it was all the hot, shuddering little
+    laundry-room could do to contain the gay and bubbling Cissie.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter thought and thought, resignedly now, but persistently, how this
+    strange happiness that belonged to them both could be. He was content,
+    yet he felt he ought not to be content. He thought there must be
+    something base in himself, yet he felt that there was not. He drank the
+    wine of his honeymoon marveling.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the morning before the <i>Red Cloud</i> entered the port of Cairo
+    Mrs. Higgman was out of the cabin, and Peter stood at the little square
+    window, with his arm about Cissie's waist, looking out to the rear of
+    the steamer. A strong east wind blew the spray away from the glass, and
+    Peter could see the huge wheel covered with a waterfall thundering
+    beneath him. Back of the wheel stretched a long row of even waves and
+    troughs. Every seventh or eighth wave tumbled over on itself in a swash
+    of foam. These flashing stern waves strung far up the river. On each
+    side of the great waterway stretched the flat shores of Kentucky and
+    Ohio. Here and there over the broad clay-colored water moved other
+    boats&mdash;tow-boats, a string of government auto-barges, a snag-boat,
+    another packet.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter gave up his question. The curves of Cissie's form in his arm held
+    a sweetness and a restfulness that her maidenhood had never promised. He
+    felt so deeply sure of his happiness that it seemed strange to him that
+    he could not aline his emotions and his mind.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As Peter stood staring up the Ohio River, it occurred to him that
+    perhaps, in some queer way, the morals of black folk were not the morals
+    of white folk; perhaps the laws that bound one race were not the laws
+    that bound the other. It might be that white anathemas were black
+    blessings. Peter thought along this line peacefully for several minutes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And finally he concluded that, after all, morals and conventions, right
+    and wrong, are merely those precepts that a race have practised and
+    found good in its evolution. Morals are the training rules that keep a
+    people fit. It might very well be that one moral r&eacute;gime is applicable to
+    one race, and quite another to another.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The single object of all morals is racial welfare, the racial integrity,
+    the breeding of strong children to perpetuate the species. If the black
+    race possess a more exuberant vitality than some other race, then the
+    black would not be forced to practise so severe a vital economy as some
+    less virile folk. Racial morals are simply a question of having and
+    spending within safety limits.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter knew that for years white men had held a prejudice against
+    marrying widows. This is utterly without grounds except for one reason:
+    the first born of a woman is the lustiest. Among the still weaker Aryans
+    of India the widows burn themselves. Among certain South Sea Islanders
+    only the first-born may live and mate; all other children are slain.
+    Among nearly every white race marriage lines are strictly drawn, and the
+    tendency is to have few children to a family, to conserve the precious
+    vital impulse. So strong is this feeling of birth control that to-day
+    nearly all American white women are ashamed of large families. This
+    shame is the beginning of a convention; the convention may harden into a
+    cult, a law, or a religion.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And here is the amazing part of morals. Morals are always directed
+    toward one particular race, but the individual members of that race
+    always feel that their brand of morals does and should apply to all the
+    peoples of the earth; so one has the spectacle of nations sending out
+    missionaries and battle-ships to teach and enforce their particular
+    folk-ways. Another queer thing is that whereas the end of morals is
+    designed solely for the betterment of the race, and is entirely
+    regardless of the person, to the conscience of the person morals are
+    always translated as something that binds him personally, that will
+    shame him or honor him personally not only for the brief span of this
+    worldly life, but through an eternity to come. To him, his particular
+    code, surrounded by all the sanctions of custom, law, and religion,
+    appears earth-embracing, hell-deep, and heaven-piercing, and any human
+    creature who follows any other code appears fatally wicked, utterly
+    shameless, and ineluctably lost.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And yet there is no such thing as absolute morals. Morals are as
+    transitory as the sheen on a blackbird's wing; they change perpetually
+    with the necessities of the race. Any people with an abounding vitality
+    will naturally practise customs which a less vital people must shun.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Morals are nothing more than the engines controlling the stream of
+    energy that propel a race on its course. All engines are not alike, nor
+    are all races bound for the same port.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here Peter Siner made the amazing discovery that although he had spent
+    four years in Harvard, he had come out, just as he went in, a negro.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A great joy came over him. He took Cissie whole-heartedly in his arms
+    and kissed again and again the deep crimson of her lips. His brain and
+    his heart were together at last. As he stood looking out at the window,
+    pressing Cissie to him, he wondered, when he reached Chicago, if he
+    could ever make Farquhar understand.<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Birthright, by T.S. Stribling
+
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+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,9065 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Birthright, by T.S. Stribling
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Birthright
+       A Novel
+
+Author: T.S. Stribling
+
+Release Date: January 7, 2004 [EBook #10621]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BIRTHRIGHT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Robert Shimmin and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "Yes, Cissie, I understand now"]
+
+
+
+
+                               BIRTHRIGHT
+
+                                A NOVEL
+
+                           BY T.S. STRIBLING
+
+
+                             Illustrated by
+                              F. Luis Mora
+
+
+                                  1922
+
+
+
+
+                              TO MY MOTHER
+
+                         AMELIA WAITS STRIBLING
+
+
+
+
+                         LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+"Yes, Cissie, I understand now"
+
+Peter recognized the white aprons and the swords and spears of the
+Knights and Ladies of Tabor
+
+Up and down its street flows the slow negro life of the village
+
+In the Siner cabin old Caroline Siner berated her boy
+
+The old gentleman turned around at last
+
+"You-you mean you want m-me--to go with you, Cissie?" he stammered
+
+"Naw yuh don't," he warned sharply. "You turn roun' an' march on to
+Niggertown"
+
+The bridal couple embarked for Cairo
+
+
+
+
+
+                               BIRTHRIGHT
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER I
+
+
+At Cairo, Illinois, the Pullman-car conductor asked Peter Siner to take
+his suitcase and traveling-bag and pass forward into the Jim Crow car.
+The request came as a sort of surprise to the negro. During Peter
+Siner's four years in Harvard the segregation of black folk on Southern
+railroads had become blurred and reminiscent in his mind; now it was
+fetched back into the sharp distinction of the present instant. With a
+certain sense of strangeness, Siner picked up his bags, and saw his own
+form, in the car mirrors, walking down the length of the sleeper. He
+moved on through the dining-car, where a few hours before he had had
+dinner and talked with two white men, one an Oregon apple-grower, the
+other a Wisconsin paper-manufacturer. The Wisconsin man had furnished
+cigars, and the three had sat and smoked in the drawing-room, indeed,
+had discussed this very point; and now it was upon him.
+
+At the door of the dining-car stood the porter of his Pullman, a negro
+like himself, and Peter mechanically gave him fifty cents. The porter
+accepted it silently, without offering the amenities of his whisk-broom
+and shoe-brush, and Peter passed on forward.
+
+Beyond the dining-car and Pullmans stretched twelve day-coaches filled
+with less-opulent white travelers in all degrees of sleepiness and
+dishabille from having sat up all night. The thirteenth coach was the
+Jim Crow car. Framed in a conspicuous place beside the entrance of the
+car was a copy of the Kentucky state ordinance setting this coach apart
+from the remainder of the train for the purposes therein provided.
+
+The Jim Crow car was not exactly shabby, but it was unkept. It was half
+filled with travelers of Peter's own color, and these passengers were
+rather more noisy than those in the white coaches. Conversation was not
+restrained to the undertones one heard in the other day-coaches or the
+Pullmans. Near the entrance of the car two negroes in soldiers' uniforms
+had turned a seat over to face the door, and now they sat talking loudly
+and laughing the loose laugh of the half intoxicated as they watched the
+inflow of negro passengers coming out of the white cars.
+
+The windows of the Jim Crow car were shut, and already it had become
+noisome. The close air was faintly barbed with the peculiar, penetrating
+odor of dark, sweating skins. For four years Peter Siner had not known
+that odor. Now it came to him not so much offensively as with a queer
+quality of intimacy and reminiscence. The tall, carefully tailored negro
+spread his wide nostrils, vacillating whether to sniff it out with
+disfavor or to admit it for the sudden mental associations it evoked.
+
+It was a faint, pungent smell that played in the back of his nose and
+somehow reminded him of his mother, Caroline Siner, a thick-bodied black
+woman whom he remembered as always bending over a wash-tub. This was
+only one unit of a complex. The odor was also connected with negro
+protracted meetings in Hooker's Bend, and the Harvard man remembered a
+lanky black preacher waving long arms and wailing of hell-fire, to the
+chanted groans of his dark congregation; and he, Peter Siner, had
+groaned with the others. Peter had known this odor in the press-room of
+Tennessee cotton-gins, over a river packet's boilers, where he and other
+roustabouts were bedded, in bunk-houses in the woods. It also recalled a
+certain octoroon girl named Ida May, and an intimacy with her which it
+still moved and saddened Peter to think of. Indeed, it resurrected
+innumerable vignettes of his life in the negro village in Hooker's Bend;
+it was linked with innumerable emotions, this pungent, unforgetable odor
+that filled the Jim Crow car.
+
+Somehow the odor had a queer effect of appearing to push his
+conversation with the two white Northern men in the drawing-room back to
+a distance, an indefinable distance of both space and time.
+
+The negro put his suitcase under the seat, hung his overcoat on the
+hook, and placed his hand-bag in the rack overhead; then with some
+difficulty he opened a window and sat down by it.
+
+A stir of travelers in the Cairo station drifted into the car. Against a
+broad murmur of hurrying feet, moving trucks, and talking there stood
+out the thin, flat voice of a Southern white girl calling good-by to
+some one on the train. Peter could see her waving a bright parasol and
+tiptoeing. A sandwich boy hurried past, shrilling his wares. Siner
+leaned out, with fifteen cents, and signaled to him. The urchin
+hesitated, and was about to reach up one of his wrapped parcels, when a
+peremptory voice shouted at him from a lower car. With a sort of start
+the lad deserted Siner and went trotting down to his white customer. A
+moment later the train bell began ringing, and the Dixie Flier puffed
+deliberately out of the Cairo station and moved across the Ohio bridge
+into the South.
+
+Half an hour later the blue-grass fields of Kentucky were spinning
+outside of the window in a vast green whirlpool. The distant trees and
+houses moved forward with the train, while the foreground, with its
+telegraph poles, its culverts, section-houses, and shrubbery, rushed
+backward in a blur. Now and then into the Jim Crow window whipped a
+blast of coal smoke and hot cinders, for the engine was only two cars
+ahead.
+
+Peter Siner looked out at the interminable spin of the landscape with a
+certain wistfulness. He was coming back into the South, into his own
+country. Here for generations his forebears had toiled endlessly and
+fruitlessly, yet the fat green fields hurtling past him told with what
+skill and patience their black hands had labored.
+
+The negro shrugged away such thoughts, and with a certain effort
+replaced them with the constructive idea that was bringing him South
+once more. It was a very simple idea. Siner was returning to his native
+village in Tennessee to teach school. He planned to begin his work with
+the ordinary public school at Hooker's Bend, but, in the back of his
+head, he hoped eventually to develop an institution after the plan of
+Tuskeegee or the Hampton Institute in Virginia.
+
+To do what he had in mind, he must obtain aid from white sources, and
+now, as he traveled southward, he began conning in his mind the white
+men and white women he knew in Hooker's Bend. He wanted first of all to
+secure possession of a small tract of land which he knew adjoined the
+negro school-house over on the east side of the village.
+
+Before the negro's mind the different villagers passed in review with
+that peculiar intimacy of vision that servants always have of their
+masters. Indeed, no white Southerner knows his own village so minutely
+as does any member of its colored population. The colored villagers see
+the whites off their guard and just as they are, and that is an attitude
+in which no one looks his best. The negroes might be called the black
+recording angels of the South. If what they know should be shouted aloud
+in any Southern town, its social life would disintegrate. Yet it is a
+strange fact that gossip seldom penetrates from the one race to the
+other.
+
+So Peter Siner sat in the Jim Crow car musing over half a dozen
+villagers in Hooker's Bend. He thought of them in a curious way.
+Although he was now a B.A. of Harvard University, and although he knew
+that not a soul in the little river village, unless it was old Captain
+Renfrew, could construe a line of Greek and that scarcely two had ever
+traveled farther north than Cincinnati, still, as Peter recalled their
+names and foibles, he involuntarily felt that he was telling over a roll
+of the mighty. The white villagers came marching through his mind as
+beings austere, and the very cranks and quirks of their characters
+somehow held that austerity. There were the Brownell sisters, two old
+maids, Molly and Patti, who lived in a big brick house on the hill.
+Peter remembered that Miss Molly Brownell always doled out to his
+mother, at Monday's washday dinner, exactly one biscuit less than the
+old negress wanted to eat, and she always paid her in old clothes. Peter
+remembered, a dozen times in his life, his mother coming home and
+wondering in an impersonal way how it was that Miss Molly Brownell could
+skimp every meal she ate at the big house by exactly one biscuit. It was
+Miss Brownell's thin-lipped boast that she understood negroes. She had
+told Peter so several times when, as a lad, he went up to the big house
+on errands. Peter Siner considered this remembrance without the faintest
+feeling of humor, and mentally removed Miss Molly Brownell from his list
+of possible subscribers. Yet, he recalled, the whole Brownell estate had
+been reared on negro labor.
+
+Then there was Henry Hooker, cashier of the village bank. Peter knew
+that the banker subscribed liberally to foreign missions; indeed, at the
+cashier's behest, the white church of Hooker's Bend kept a paid
+missionary on the upper Congo. But the banker had sold some village lots
+to the negroes, and in two instances, where a streak of commercial
+phosphate had been discovered on the properties, the lots had reverted
+to the Hooker estate. There had been in the deed something concerning a
+mineral reservation that the negro purchasers knew nothing about until
+the phosphate was discovered. The whole matter had been perfectly legal.
+
+A hand shook Siner's shoulder and interrupted his review. Peter turned,
+and caught an alcoholic breath over his shoulder, and the blurred voice
+of a Southern negro called out above the rumble of the car and the roar
+of the engine:
+
+"'Fo' Gawd, ef dis ain't Peter Siner I's been lookin' at de las' twenty
+miles, an' not knowin' him wid sich skeniptious clo'es on! Wha you fum,
+nigger?"
+
+Siner took the enthusiastic hand offered him and studied the heavily
+set, powerful man bending over the seat. He was in a soldier's uniform,
+and his broad nutmeg-colored face and hot black eyes brought Peter a
+vague sense of familiarity; but he never would have identified his
+impression had he not observed on the breast of the soldier's uniform
+the Congressional military medal for bravery on the field of battle. Its
+glint furnished Peter the necessary clew. He remembered his mother's
+writing him something about Tump Pack going to France and getting
+"crowned" before the army. He had puzzled a long time over what she
+meant by "crowned" before he guessed her meaning. Now the medal aided
+Peter in reconstructing out of this big umber-colored giant the rather
+spindling Tump Pack he had known in Hooker's Bend.
+
+Siner was greatly surprised, and his heart warmed at the sight of his
+old playmate.
+
+"What have you been doing to yourself, Tump?" he cried, laughing, and
+shaking the big hand in sudden warmth. "You used to be the size of a
+dime in a jewelry store."
+
+"Been in 'e army, nigger, wha I's been fed," said the grinning brown
+man, delightedly. "I sho is picked up, ain't I?"
+
+"And what are you doing here in Cairo?"
+
+"Tryin' to bridle a lil white mule." Mr. Pack winked a whisky-brightened
+eye jovially and touched his coat to indicate that some of the "white
+mule" was in his pocket and had not been drunk.
+
+"How'd you get here?"
+
+"Wucked my way down on de St. Louis packet an' got paid off at Padjo
+[Paducah, Kentucky]; 'n 'en I thought I'd come on down heah an' roll
+some bones. Been hittin' 'em two days now, an' I sho come putty nigh
+bein' cleaned; but I put up lil Joe heah, an' won 'em all back, 'n 'en
+some." He touched the medal on his coat, winked again, slapped Siner on
+the leg, and burst into loud laughter.
+
+Peter was momentarily shocked. He made a place on the seat for his
+friend to sit. "You don't mean you put up your medal on a crap game,
+Tump?"
+
+"Sho do, black man." Pack became soberer. "Dat's one o' de great
+benefits o' bein' dec'rated. Dey ain't a son uv a gun on de river whut
+kin win lil Joe; dey all tried it."
+
+A moment's reflection told Peter how simple and natural it was for Pack
+to prize his military medal as a good-luck piece to be used as a last
+resort in crap games. He watched Tump stroke the face of his medal with
+his fingers.
+
+"My mother wrote me; about your getting it, Tump. I was glad to hear
+it."
+
+The brown man nodded, and stared down at the bit of gold on his barrel-
+like chest.
+
+"Yas-suh, dat 'uz guv to me fuh bravery. You know whut a skeery lil
+nigger I wuz roun' Hooker's Ben'; well, de sahgeant tuk me an' he drill
+ever' bit o' dat right out 'n me. He gimme a baynit an' learned me to
+stob dummies wid it over at Camp Oglethorpe, ontil he felt lak I had de
+heart to stob anything; 'n' 'en he sont me acrost. I had to git a new
+pair breeches ever' three weeks, I growed so fas'." Here he broke out
+into his big loose laugh again, and renewed the alcoholic scent around
+Peter.
+
+"And you made good?"
+
+"Sho did, black man, an', 'fo' Gawd, I 'serve a medal ef any man ever
+did. Dey gimme dish-heah fuh stobbin fo' white men wid a baynit. 'Fo'
+Gawd, nigger, I never felt so quare in all my born days as when I wuz a-
+jobbin' de livers o' dem white men lak de sahgeant tol' me to." Tump
+shook his head, bewildered, and after a moment added, "Yas-suh, I never
+wuz mo' surprised in all my life dan when I got dis medal fuh stobbin'
+fo' white men."
+
+Peter Siner looked through the Jim Crow window at the vast rotation of
+the Kentucky landscape on which his forebears had toiled; presently he
+added soberly:
+
+"You were fighting for your country, Tump. It was war then; you were
+fighting for your country."
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+At Jackson, Tennessee, the two negroes were forced to spend the night
+between trains. Tump Pack piloted Peter Siner to a negro cafe where they
+could eat, and later they searched out a negro lodging-house on Gate
+Street where they could sleep. It was a grimy, smelly place, with its
+own odor spiked by a phosphate-reducing plant two blocks distant. The
+paper on the wall of the room Peter slept in looked scrofulous. There
+was no window, and Peter's four-years regime of open windows and fresh-
+air sleep was broken. He arranged his clothing for the night so it would
+come in contact with nothing in the room but a chair back. He felt dull
+next morning, and could not bring himself either to shave or bathe in
+the place, but got out and hunted up a negro barber-shop furnished with
+one greasy red-plush barber-chair.
+
+A few hours later the two negroes journeyed on down to Perryville,
+Tennessee, a village on the Tennessee River where they took a gasolene
+launch up to Hooker's Bend. The launch was about fifty feet long and had
+two cabins, a colored cabin in front of, and a white cabin behind, the
+engine-room.
+
+This unremitting insistence on his color, this continual shunting him
+into obscure and filthy ways, gradually gave Peter a loathly sensation.
+It increased the unwashed feeling that followed his lack of a morning
+bath. The impression grew upon him that he was being handled with tongs,
+along back-alley routes; that he and his race were something to be kept
+out of sight as much as possible, as careful housekeepers manoeuver
+their slops.
+
+At Perryville a number of passengers boarded the up-river boat; two or
+three drummers; a yellowed old hill woman returning to her Wayne County
+home; a red-headed peanut-buyer; a well-groomed white girl in a tailor
+suit; a youngish man barely on the right side of middle age who seemed
+to be attending her; and some negro girls with lunches. The passengers
+trailed from the railroad station down the river bank through a slush of
+mud, for the river had just fallen and had left a layer of liquid mud to
+a height of about twenty feet all along the littoral. The passengers
+picked their way down carefully, stepping into one another's tracks in
+the effort not to ruin their shoes. The drummers grumbled. The youngish
+man piloted the girl down, holding her hand, although both could have
+managed better by themselves.
+
+Following the passengers came the trunks and grips on a truck. A negro
+deck-hand, the truck-driver, and the white master of the launch shoved
+aboard the big sample trunks of the drummers with grunts, profanity, and
+much stamping of mud. Presently, without the formality of bell or
+whistle, the launch clacked away from the landing and stood up the wide,
+muddy river.
+
+The river itself was monotonous and depressing. It was perhaps half a
+mile wide, with flat, willowed mud banks on one side and low shelves of
+stratified limestone on the other.
+
+Trading-points lay at ten- or fifteen-mile intervals along the great
+waterway. The typical landing was a dilapidated shed of a store half
+covered with tin tobacco signs and ancient circus posters. Usually, only
+one man met the launch at each landing, the merchant, a democrat in his
+shirt-sleeves and without a tie. His voice was always a flat, weary
+drawl, but his eyes, wrinkled against the sun, usually held the
+shrewdness of those who make their living out of two-penny trades.
+
+At each place the red-headed peanut-buyer slogged up the muddy bank and
+bargained for the merchant's peanuts, to be shipped on the down-river
+trip of the first St. Louis packet. The loneliness of the scene embraced
+the trading-points, the river, and the little gasolene launch struggling
+against the muddy current. It permeated the passengers, and was a
+finishing touch to Peter Siner's melancholy.
+
+The launch clacked on and on interminably. Sometimes it seemed to make
+no headway at all against the heavy, silty current. Tump Pack, the white
+captain, and the negro engineer began a game of craps in the negro
+cabin. Presently, two of the white drummers came in from the white cabin
+and began betting on the throws. The game was listless. The master of
+the launch pointed out places along the shores where wildcat stills were
+located. The crap-shooters, negro and white, squatted in a circle on the
+cabin floor, snapping their fingers and calling their points
+monotonously. One of the negro girls in the negro cabin took an apple
+out of her lunch sack and began eating it, holding it in her palm after
+the fashion of negroes rather than in her fingers, as is the custom of
+white women.
+
+Both doors of the engine-room were open, and Peter Siner could see
+through into the white cabin. The old hill woman was dozing in her
+chair, her bonnet bobbing to each stroke of the engines. The youngish
+man and the girl were engaged in some sort of intimate lovers' dispute.
+When the engines stopped at one of the landings, Peter discovered she
+was trying to pay him what he had spent on getting her baggage trucked
+down at Perryville. The girl kept pressing a bill into the man's hand,
+and he avoided receiving the money. They kept up the play for sake of
+occasional contacts.
+
+When the launch came in sight of Hooker's Bend toward the middle of the
+afternoon, Peter Siner experienced one of the profoundest surprises of
+his life. Somehow, all through his college days he had remembered
+Hooker's Bend as a proud town with important stores and unapproachable
+white residences. Now he saw a skum of negro cabins, high piles of
+lumber, a sawmill, and an ice-factory. Behind that, on a little rise,
+stood the old Brownell manor, maintaining a certain shabby dignity in a
+grove of oaks. Behind and westward from the negro shacks and lumber-
+piles ranged the village stores, their roofs just visible over the top
+of the bank. Moored to the shore, lay the wharf-boat in weathered greens
+and yellows. As a background for the whole scene rose the dark-green
+height of what was called the "Big Hill," an eminence that separated the
+negro village on the east from the white village on the west. The hill
+itself held no houses, but appeared a solid green-black with cedars.
+
+The ensemble was merely another lonely spot on the south bank of the
+great somnolent river. It looked dead, deserted, a typical river town,
+unprodded even by the hoot of a jerk-water railroad.
+
+As the launch chortled toward the wharf, Peter Siner stood trying to
+orient himself to this unexpected and amazing minifying of Hooker's
+Bend. He had left a metropolis; he was coming back to a tumble-down
+village. Yet nothing was changed. Even the two scraggly locust-trees
+that clung perilously to the brink of the river bank still held their
+toe-hold among the strata of limestone.
+
+The negro deck-hand came out and pumped the hand-power whistle in three
+long discordant blasts. Then a queer thing happened. The whistle was
+answered by a faint strain of music. A little later the passengers saw a
+line of negroes come marching down the river bank to the wharf-boat.
+They marched in military order, and from afar Peter recognized the white
+aprons and the swords and spears of the Knights and Ladies of Tabor, a
+colored burial association.
+
+Siner wondered what had brought out the Knights and Ladies of Tabor. The
+singing and the drumming gradually grew upon the air. The passengers in
+the white cabin, came out on the guards at this unexpected fanfare. As
+soon as the white travelers saw the marching negroes, they began joking
+about what caused the demonstration. The captain of the launch thought
+he knew, and began an oath, but stopped it out of deference to the girl
+in the tailor suit. He said it was a dead nigger the society was going
+to ship up to Savannah.
+
+The girl in the tailor suit was much amused. She said the darkies looked
+like a string of caricatures marching down the river bank. Peter noticed
+her Northern accent, and fancied she was coming to Hooker's Bend to
+teach school.
+
+One of the drummers turned to another.
+
+"Did you ever hear Bob Taylor's yarn about Uncle 'Rastus's funeral?
+Funniest thing Bob ever got off." He proceeded to tell it.
+
+Every one on the launch was laughing except the captain, who was
+swearing quietly; but the line of negroes marched on down to the wharf-
+boat with the unshakable dignity of black folk in an important position.
+They came singing an old negro spiritual. The women's sopranos thrilled
+up in high, weird phrasing against an organ-like background of male
+voices.
+
+But the black men carried no coffin, and suddenly it occurred to Peter
+Siner that perhaps this celebration was given in honor of his own home-
+coming. The mulatto's heart beat a trifle faster as he began planning a
+suitable response to this ovation.
+
+Sure enough, the singing ranks disappeared behind the wharf-boat, and a
+minute later came marching around the stern and lined up on the outer
+guard of the vessel. The skinny, grizzly-headed negro commander held up
+his sword, and the Knights and Ladies of Tabor fell silent.
+
+The master of the launch tossed his head-line to the wharf-boat, and
+yelled for one of the negroes to make it fast. One did. Then the
+commandant with the sword began his address, but it was not directed to
+Peter. He said:
+
+[Illustration: Peter recognized the white aprons and the swords and
+spears of the Knights and Ladies of Tabor]
+
+"Brudder Tump Pack, we, de Hooker's Ben' lodge uv de Knights an' Ladies
+uv Tabor, welcome you back to yo' native town. We is proud uv you, a
+colored man, who brings back de highes' crown uv bravery dis Newnighted
+States has in its power to bestow.
+
+"Two yeahs ago, Brudder Tump, we seen you marchin' away fum Hooker's
+Ben' wid thirteen udder boys, white an' colored, all marchin' away
+togedder. Fo' uv them boys is already back home; three, we heah, is on
+de way back, but six uv yo' brave comrades, Brudder Pack, is sleepin'
+now in France, an' ain't never goin' to come home no mo'. When we honors
+you, we honors them all, de libin' an' de daid, de white an' de black,
+who fought togedder fuh one country, fuh one flag."
+
+Gasps, sobs from the line of black folk, interrupted the speaker. Just
+then a shriveled old negress gave a scream, and came running and half
+stumbling out of the line, holding out her arms to the barrel-chested
+soldier on the gang-plank. She seized him and began shrieking:
+
+"Bless Gawd! my son's done come home! Praise de Lawd! Bless His holy
+name!" Here her laudation broke into sobbing and choking and laughing,
+and she squeezed herself to her son.
+
+Tump patted her bony black form.
+
+"I's heah, Mammy," he stammered uncertainly. "I's come back, Mammy."
+
+Half a dozen other negroes caught the joyful hysteria. They began a
+religious shouting, clapping their hands, flinging up their arms,
+shrieking.
+
+One of the drummers grunted:
+
+"Good God! all this over a nigger getting back!"
+
+At the extreme end of the dark line a tall cream-colored girl wept
+silently. As Peter Siner stood blinking his eyes, he saw the octoroon's
+shoulders and breasts shake from the sobs, which her white blood
+repressed to silence.
+
+A certain sympathy for her grief and its suppression kept Peter's eyes
+on the young woman, and then, with the queer effect of one picture
+melting into another, the strange girl's face assumed familiar curves
+and softnesses, and he was looking at Ida May.
+
+A quiver traveled deliberately over Peter from his crisp black hair to
+the soles of his feet. He started toward her impulsively.
+
+At that moment one of the drummers picked up his grip, and started down
+the gang-plank, and with its leathern bulk pressed Tump Pack and his
+mother out of his path. He moved on to the shore through the negroes,
+who divided at his approach. The captain of the launch saw that other of
+his white passengers were becoming impatient, and he shouted for the
+darkies to move aside and not to block the gangway. The youngish man
+drew the girl in the tailor suit close to him and started through with
+her. Peter heard him say, "They won't hurt you, Miss Negley." And Miss
+Negley, in the brisk nasal intonation of a Northern woman, replied: "Oh,
+I'm not afraid. We waste a lot of sympathy on them back home, but when
+you see them--"
+
+At that moment Peter heard a cry in his ears and felt arms thrown about
+his neck. He looked down and saw his mother, Caroline Siner, looking up
+into his face and weeping with the general emotion of the negroes and
+this joy of her own. Caroline had changed since Peter last saw her. Her
+eyes were a little more wrinkled, her kinky hair was thinner and very
+gray.
+
+Something warm and melting moved in Peter Siner's breast. He caressed
+his mother and murmured incoherently, as had Tump Pack. Presently the
+master of the launch came by, and touched the old negress, not ungently,
+with the end of a spike-pole.
+
+"You'll have to move, Aunt Ca'line," he said. "We're goin' to get the
+freight off now."
+
+The black woman paused in her weeping. "Yes, Mass' Bob," she said, and
+she and Peter moved off of the launch onto the wharf-boat.
+
+The Knights and Ladies of Tabor were already up the river bank with
+their hero. Peter and his mother were left alone. Now they walked around
+the guards of the wharf-boat to the bank, holding each other's arms
+closely. As they went, Peter kept looking down at his old black mother,
+with a growing tenderness. She was so worn and heavy! He recognized the
+very dress she wore, an old black silk which she had "washed out" for
+Miss Patti Brownell when he was a boy. It had been then, it was now, her
+best dress. During the years the old negress had registered her
+increasing bulk by letting out seams and putting in panels. Some of the
+panels did not agree with the original fabric either in color or in
+texture and now the seams were stretching again and threatening a rip.
+Peter's own immaculate clothes reproached him, and he wondered for the
+hundredth, or for the thousandth time how his mother had obtained
+certain remittances which she had forwarded him during his college
+years.
+
+As Peter and his mother crept up the bank of the river, stopping
+occasionally to let the old negress rest, his impression of the meanness
+and shabbiness of the whole village grew. From the top of the bank the
+single business street ran straight back from the river. It was stony in
+places, muddy in places, strewn with goods-boxes, broken planking,
+excelsior, and straw that had been used for packing. Charred rubbish-
+piles lay in front of every store, which the clerks had swept out and
+attempted to burn. Hogs roamed the thoroughfare, picking up decaying
+fruit and parings, and nosing tin cans that had been thrown out by the
+merchants. The stores that Peter had once looked upon as show-places
+were poor two-story brick or frame buildings, defiled by time and wear
+and weather. The white merchants were coatless, listless men who sat in
+chairs on the brick pavements before their stores and who moved slowly
+when a customer entered their doors.
+
+And, strange to say, it was this fall of his white townsmen that moved
+Peter Siner with a sense of the greatest loss. It seemed fantastic to
+him, this sudden land-slide of the mighty.
+
+As Peter and his mother came over the brow of the river bank, they saw a
+crowd collecting at the other end of the street. The main street of
+Hooker's Bend is only a block long, and the two negroes could easily
+hear the loud laughter of men hurrying to the focus of interest and the
+blurry expostulations of negro voices. The laughter spread like a
+contagion. Merchants as far up as the river corner became infected, and
+moved toward the crowd, looking back over their shoulders at every tenth
+or twelfth step to see that no one entered their doors.
+
+Presently, a little short man, fairly yipping with laughter, stumbled
+back up the street to his store with tears of mirth in his eyes. A
+belated merchant stopped him by clapping both hands on his shoulders and
+shaking some composure into him.
+
+"What is it? What's so funny? Damn it! I miss ever'thing!"
+
+"I-i-it's that f-fool Tum-Tump Pack. Bobbs's arrested him!"
+
+The inquirer was astounded.
+
+"How the hell can he arrest him when he hit town this minute?"
+
+"Wh-why, Bobbs had an old warrant for crap-shoot--three years old--
+before the war. Just as Tump was a-coming down the street at the head of
+the coons, out steps Bobbs--" Here the little man was overcome.
+
+The merchant from the corner opened his eyes.
+
+"Arrested him on an old crap charge?"
+
+The little man nodded. They gazed at each other. Then they exploded
+simultaneously.
+
+Peter left his obese mother and hurried to the corner, Dawson Bobbs, the
+constable, had handcuffs on Tump's wrists, and stood with his prisoner
+amid a crowd of arguing negroes.
+
+Bobbs was a big, fleshy, red-faced man, with chilly blue eyes and a
+little straight slit of a mouth in his wide face. He was laughing and
+chewing a sliver of toothpick.
+
+"O Tump Pack," he called loudly, "you kain't git away from me! If you
+roll bones in Hooker's Bend, you'll have to divide your winnings with
+the county." Dawson winked a chill eye at the crowd in general.
+
+"But hit's out o' date, Mr. Bobbs," the old gray-headed minister, Parson
+Ranson, was pleading.
+
+"May be that, Parson, but hit's easier to come up before the J.P. and
+pay off than to fight it through the circuit court."
+
+Siner pushed his way through the crowd. "How much do you want, Mr.
+Bobbs?" he asked briefly.
+
+The constable looked with reminiscent eyes at the tall, well-tailored
+negro. He was plainly going through some mental card-index, hunting for
+the name of Peter Siner on some long-forgotten warrant. Apparently, he
+discovered nothing, for he said shortly:
+
+"How do I know before he's tried? Come on, Tump!"
+
+The procession moved in a long noisy line up Pillow Street, the white
+residential street lying to the west. It stopped before a large shaded
+lawn, where a number of white men and women were playing a game with
+cards. The cards used by the lawn party were not ordinary playing-cards,
+but had figures on them instead of spots, and were called "rook" cards.
+The party of white ladies and gentlemen were playing "rook." On a table
+in the middle of the lawn glittered some pieces of silver plate which
+formed the first, second, and third prizes for the three leading scores.
+
+The constable halted his black company before the lawn, where they stood
+in the sunshine patiently waiting for the justice of the peace to finish
+his game and hear the case of the State of Tennessee, plaintiff, versus
+Tump Pack, defendant.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER II
+
+
+On the eastern edge of Hooker's Bend, drawn in a rough semicircle around
+the Big Hill, lies Niggertown. In all the half-moon there are perhaps
+not two upright buildings. The grimy cabins lean at crazy angles, some
+propped with poles, while others hold out against gravitation at a
+hazard.
+
+Up and down its street flows the slow negro life of the village. Here
+children of all colors from black to cream fight and play; deep-chested
+negresses loiter to and fro, some on errands to the white section of the
+village on the other side of the hill, where they go to scrub or cook or
+wash or iron. Others go down to the public well with a bucket in each
+hand and one balanced on the head.
+
+The public well itself lies at the southern end of this miserable
+street, just at a point where the drainage of the Big Hill collects. The
+rainfall runs down through Niggertown, under its sties, stables, and
+outdoor toilets, and the well supplies the negroes with water for
+cooking, washing, and drinking. Or, rather, what was once a well
+supplies this water, for it is a well no longer. Its top and curbing
+caved in long ago, and now there is simply a big hole in the soft,
+water-soaked clay, about fifteen feet wide, with water standing at the
+bottom.
+
+Here come the unhurried colored women, who throw in their buckets, and
+with a dexterity that comes of long practice draw them out full of
+water. Black mothers shout at their children not to fall into this pit,
+and now and then, when a pig fails to come up for its evening slops, a
+black boy will go to the public well to see if perchance his porker has
+met misfortune there.
+
+The inhabitants of Niggertown suffer from divers diseases; they develop
+strange ailments that no amount of physicking will overcome; young wives
+grow sickly from no apparent cause. Although only three or four hundred
+persons live in Niggertown, two or three negroes are always slowly dying
+of tuberculosis; winter brings pneumonia; summer, malaria. About once a
+year the state health officer visits Hooker's Bend and forces the white
+soda-water dispensers on the other side of the hill to sterilize their
+glasses in the name of the sovereign State of Tennessee.
+
+The Siner home was a three-room shanty about midway in the semicircle.
+Peter Siner stood in the sunlight just outside the entrance, watching
+his old mother clean the bugs out of a tainted ham that she had bought
+for a pittance from some white housekeeper in the village. It had been
+too high for white people to eat. Old Caroline patiently tapped the
+honeycombed meat to scare out the last of the little green householders,
+and then she washed it in a solution of soda to freshen it up.
+
+The sight of his bulky old mother working at the spoiled ham and of the
+negro women in the street moving to and from the infected well filled
+Peter Siner with its terrible pathos. Although he had seen these
+surroundings all of his life, he had a queer impression that he was
+looking upon them for the first time. During his boyhood he had accepted
+all this without question as the way the world was made. During his
+college days a criticism had arisen in his mind, but it came slowly, and
+was tempered by that tenderness every one feels for the spot called
+home. Now, as he stood looking at it, he wondered how human beings lived
+there at all. He wondered if Ida May used water from the Niggertown
+well.
+
+He turned to ask old Caroline, but checked himself with a man's
+instinctive avoidance of mentioning his intimacies to his mother. At
+that moment, oddly enough, the old negress brought up the topic herself.
+
+"Ida May wuz 'quirin' 'bout you las' night, Peter."
+
+A faint tingle filtered through Peter's throat and chest, but he asked
+casually enough what she had said.
+
+"Didn' say; she wrote."
+
+Peter looked around, frankly astonished.
+
+"Wrote?"
+
+"Yeah; co'se she wrote."
+
+"What made her write?" a fantasy of Ida May dumb flickered before the
+mulatto.
+
+[Illustration: Up and down its street flows the slow negro life of the
+village]
+
+"Why, Ida May's in Nashville." Caroline looked at Peter. "She wrote to
+Cissie, astin' 'bout you. She ast is you as bright in yo' books as you
+is in yo' color." The old negress gave a pleased abdominal chuckle as
+she admired her broad-shouldered brown son.
+
+"But I saw Ida May standing on the wharf-boat the day I came home,"
+protested Peter, still bewildered.
+
+"No you ain't. I reckon you seen Cissie. Dey looks kind o' like when you
+is fur off."
+
+"Cissie?" repeated Peter. Then he remembered a smaller sister of Ida
+May's, a little, squalling, yellow, wet-nosed nuisance that had annoyed
+his adolescence. So that little spoil-sport had grown up into the girl
+he had mistaken for Ida May. This fact increased his sense of
+strangeness--that sense of great change that had fallen on the village
+in his absence which formed the groundwork of all his renewed
+associations.
+
+Peter's prolonged silence aroused certain suspicions in the old negress.
+She glanced at her son out of the tail of her eyes.
+
+"Cissie Dildine is Tump Pack's gal," she stated defensively, with the
+jealousy all mothers feel toward all sons.
+
+A diversion in the shouts of the children up the mean street and a
+sudden furious barking of dogs drew Peter from the discussion. He looked
+up, and saw a negro girl of about fourteen coming down the curved
+street, with long, quick steps and an occasional glance over her
+shoulder.
+
+From across the thoroughfare a small chocolate-colored woman, with her
+wool done in outstanding spikes, thrust her head out at the door and
+called:
+
+"Whut's de matter, Ofeely?"
+
+The girl lifted a high voice:
+
+"Oh, Miss Nan, it's that constable goin' th'ugh the houses!" The girl
+veered across the street to the safety of the open door and one of her
+own sex.
+
+"Good Lawd!" cried the spiked one in disgust, "ever', time a white
+pusson gits somp'n misplaced--" She moved to one side to allow the girl
+to enter, and continued staring up the street, with the whites of her
+eyes accented against her dark face, after the way of angry negroes.
+
+Around the crescent the dogs were furious. They were Niggertown dogs,
+and the sight of a white man always drove them to a frenzy. Presently in
+the hullabaloo, Peter heard Dawson Bobbs's voice shouting:
+
+"Aunt Mahaly, if you kain't call off this dawg, I'm shore goin' to kill
+him."
+
+Then an old woman's scolding broke in and complicated the melee.
+Presently Peter saw the bulky form of Dawson Bobbs come around the
+curve, moving methodically from cabin to cabin. He held some legal-
+looking papers in his hands, and Peter knew what the constable was
+doing. He was serving a blanket search-warrant on the whole black
+population of Hooker's Bend. At almost every cabin a dog ran out to
+blaspheme at the intruder, but a wave of the man's pistol sent them
+yelping under the floors again.
+
+When the constable entered a house, Peter could hear him bumping and
+rattling among the furnishings, while the black householders stood
+outside the door and watched him disturb their housekeeping
+arrangements.
+
+Presently Bobbs came angling across the street toward the Siner cabin.
+As he entered the rickety gate, old Caroline called out:
+
+"Whut is you after, anyway, white man?"
+
+Bobbs turned cold, truculent eyes on the old negress. "A turkey
+roaster," he snapped. "Some o' you niggers stole Miss Lou Arkwright's
+turkey roaster."
+
+"Tukky roaster!" cried the old black woman, in great disgust. "Whut you
+s'pose us niggers is got to roast in a tukky roaster?"
+
+The constable answered shortly that his business was to find the
+roaster, not what the negroes meant to put in it.
+
+"I decla'," satirized old Caroline, savagely, "dish-heah Niggertown is a
+white man's pocket. Ever' time he misplace somp'n, he feel in his pocket
+to see ef it ain't thaiuh. Don'-chu turn over dat sody-water, white man!
+You know dey ain't no tukky roaster under dat sody-water. I 'cla' 'fo'
+Gawd, ef a white man wuz to eat a flapjack, an' it did n' give him de
+belly-ache, I 'cla' 'fo' Gawd he'd git out a search-wa'nt to see ef some
+nigger had n' stole dat flapjack goin' down his th'oat."
+
+"Mr. Bobbs has to do his work, Mother," put in Peter. "I don't suppose
+he enjoys it any more than we do."
+
+"Den let 'im git out'n dis business an' git in anudder," scolded the old
+woman. "Dis sho is a mighty po' business."
+
+The ponderous Mr. Bobbs finished with a practised thoroughness his
+inspection of the cabin, and then the inquisition proceeded down the
+street, around the crescent, and so out of sight and eventually out of
+hearing.
+
+Old Caroline snapped her chair back beside her greasy table and sat down
+abruptly to her spoiled ham again.
+
+"Dat make me mad," she grumbled. "Ever' time a white pusson fail to lay
+dey han' on somp'n, dey comes an' turns over ever'thing in my house."
+She paused a moment, closed her eyes in thought, and then mused aloud:
+"I wonder who is got Miss Arkwright's roaster."
+
+The commotion of the constable's passing died in his wake, and
+Niggertown resumed its careless existence. Dogs reappeared from under
+the cabins and stretched in the sunshine; black children came out of
+hiding and picked up their play; the frightened Ophelia came out of
+Nan's cabin across the street and went her way; a lanky negro youth in
+blue coat and pin-striped trousers appeared, coming down the squalid
+thoroughfare whistling the "Memphis Blues" with bird-like virtuosity.
+The lightness with which Niggertown accepted the moral side glance of a
+blanket search-warrant depressed Siner.
+
+Caroline called her son to dinner, as the twelve-o'clock meal is called
+in Hooker's Bend, and so ended his meditation. The Harvard man went back
+into the kitchen and sat down at a rickety table covered with a red-
+checked oil-cloth. On it were spread the spoiled ham, a dish of poke
+salad, a corn pone, and a pot of weak coffee. A quaint old bowl held
+some brown sugar. The fat old negress made a slight, habitual settling
+movement in her chair that marked the end of her cooking and the
+beginning of her meal. Then she bent her grizzled, woolly head and
+mumbled off one of those queer old-fashioned graces which consist of a
+swift string of syllables without pauses between either words or
+sentences.
+
+Peter sat watching his mother with a musing gaze. The kitchen was
+illuminated by a single small square window set high up from the floor.
+Now the disposition of its single ray of light over the dishes and the
+bowed head of the massive negress gave Peter one of those sharp, tender
+apprehensions of formal harmony that lie back of the genre in art. It
+stirred his emotion in an odd fashion. When old Caroline raised her
+head, she found her son staring with impersonal eyes not at herself, but
+at the whole room, including her. The old woman was perplexed and a
+little apprehensive.
+
+"Why, son!" she ejaculated, "didn' you bow yo' haid while yo' mammy ast
+de grace?"
+
+Peter was a little confused at his remissness. Then he leaned a little
+forward to explain the sudden glamour which for a moment had
+transfigured the interior of their kitchen. But even as he started to
+speak, he realized that what he meant to say would only confuse his
+mother; therefore he cast about mentally for some other explanation of
+his behavior, but found nothing at hand.
+
+"I hope you ain't forgot yo' 'ligion up at de 'versity, son."
+
+"Oh, no, no, indeed, Mother, but just at that moment, just as you bowed
+your head, you know, it struck me that--that there is something noble in
+our race." That was the best he could put it to her.
+
+"Noble--"
+
+"Yes. You know," he went on a little quickly, "sometimes I--I've thought
+my father must have been a noble man."
+
+The old negress became very still. She was not looking quite at her son,
+or yet precisely away from him.
+
+"Uh--uh noble nigger,"--she gave her abdominal chuckle. "Why--yeah, I
+reckon yo' father wuz putty noble as--as niggers go." She sat looking at
+her son, oddly, with a faint amusement in her gross black face, when a
+careful voice, a very careful voice, sounded in the outer room, gliding
+up politely on the syllables:
+
+"Ahnt Carolin'! oh, Ahnt Carolin', may I enter?"
+
+The old woman stirred.
+
+"Da''s Cissie, Peter. Go ast her in to de fambly-room."
+
+When Siner opened the door, the vague resemblance of the slender, creamy
+girl on the threshold to Ida May again struck him; but Cissie Dildine
+was younger, and her polished black hair lay straight on her pretty
+head, and was done in big, shining puffs over her ears in a way that Ida
+May's unruly curls would never have permitted. Her eyes were the most
+limpid brown Peter had ever seen, but her oval face was faintly
+unnatural from the use of negro face powder, which colored women insist
+on, and which gives their yellows and browns a barely perceptible
+greenish hue. Cissie wore a fluffy yellow dress some three shades deeper
+than the throat and the glimpse of bosom revealed at the neck.
+
+The girl carried a big package in her arms, and now she manipulated this
+to put out a slender hand to Peter.
+
+"This is Cissie Dildine, Mister Siner." She smiled up at him. "I just
+came over to put my name down on your list. There was such a mob at the
+Benevolence Hall last night I couldn't get to you."
+
+The girl had a certain finical precision to her English that told Peter
+she had been away to some school, and had been taught to guard her
+grammar very carefully as she talked.
+
+Peter helped her inside amid the handshake and said he would go fetch
+the list. As he turned, Cissie offered her bundle. "Here is something I
+thought might be a little treat for you and Ahnt Carolin'." She paused,
+and then explained remotely, "Sometimes it is hard to get good things at
+the village market."
+
+Peter took the package, vaguely amused at Cissie's patronage of the
+Hooker's Bend market. It was an attitude instinctively assumed by every
+girl, white or black, who leaves the village and returns. The bundle was
+rather large and wrapped in newspapers. He carried it into the kitchen
+to his mother, and then returned with the list.
+
+The sheet was greasy from the handling of black fingers. The girl spread
+it on the little center-table with a certain daintiness, seated herself,
+and held out her hand for Peter's pencil. She made rather a graceful
+study in cream and yellow as she leaned over the table and signed her
+name in a handwriting as perfect and as devoid of character as a copy-
+book. She began discussing the speech Peter had made at the Benevolence
+Hall.
+
+"I don't know whether I am in favor of your project or not, Mr. Siner,"
+she said as she rose from the table.
+
+"No?" Peter was surprised and amused at her attitude and at her precise
+voice.
+
+"No, I'm rather inclined toward Mr. DuBois's theory of a literary
+culture than toward Mr. Washington's for a purely industrial training."
+
+Peter broke out laughing.
+
+"For the love of Mike, Cissie, you talk like the instructor in Sociology
+B! And haven't we met before somewhere? This 'Mister Siner' stuff--"
+
+The girl's face warmed under its faint, greenish powder.
+
+"If I aren't careful with my language, Peter," she said simply, "I'll be
+talking just as badly as I did before I went to the seminary. You know I
+never hear a proper sentence in Hooker's Bend except my own."
+
+A certain resignation in the girl's soft voice brought Peter a qualm for
+laughing at her. He laid an impulsive hand on her young shoulder.
+
+"Well, that's true, certainly, but it won't always be like that, Cissie.
+More of us go off to school every year. I do hope my school here in
+Hooker's Bend will be of some real value. If I could just show our
+people how badly we fare here, how ill housed, and unsanitary--"
+
+The girl pressed Peter's fingers with a woman's optimism for a man.
+
+"You'll succeed, Peter, I know you will. Some day the name Siner will
+mean the same thing to coloured people as Tanner and Dunbar and
+Braithwaite do. Anyway, I've put my name down for ten dollars to help
+out." She returned the pencil. "I'll have Tump Pack come around and pay
+you my subscription, Peter."
+
+"I'll watch out for Tump," promised Peter in a lightening mood, "--and
+make him pay."
+
+"He'll do it."
+
+"I don't doubt it. You ought to have him under perfect control. I meant
+to tell you what a pretty frock you have on."
+
+The girl dimpled, and dropped him a little curtsy, half ironical and
+wholly graceful.
+
+Peter was charmed.
+
+"Now keep that way, Cissie, smiling and human, not so grammatical. I
+wish I had a brooch."
+
+"A brooch?"
+
+"I'd give it to you. Your dress needs a brooch, an old gold brooch at
+the bosom, just a glint there to balance your eyes."
+
+Cissie flushed happily, and made the feminine movement of concealing the
+V-shaped opening at her throat.
+
+"It's a pleasure to doll up for a man like you, Peter. You see a girl's
+good points--if she has any," she tacked on demurely.
+
+"Oh, just any man--"
+
+"Don't think it! Don't think it!" waved down Cissie, humorously.
+
+"But, Cissie, how is it possible--"
+
+"Just blind." Cissie rippled into a boarding-school laugh. "I could wear
+the whole rue del Opera here in Niggertown, and nobody would ever see it
+but you."
+
+Cissie was moving toward the door. Peter tried to detain her. He enjoyed
+the implication of Tump Pack's stupidity, in their badinage, but she
+would not stay. He was finally reduced to thanking her for her present,
+then stood guard as she tripped out into the grimy street. In the
+sunshine her glossy black hair and canary dress looked as trim and
+brilliant as the plumage of a chaffinch.
+
+Peter Siner walked back into the kitchen with the fixed smile of a man
+who is thinking of a pretty girl. The black dowager in the kitchen
+received him in silence, with her thick lips pouted. When Peter observed
+it, he felt slightly amused at his mother's resentment.
+
+"Well, you sho had a lot o' chatter over signin' a lil ole paper."
+
+"She signed for ten dollars," said Peter, smiling.
+
+"Huh! she'll never pay it."
+
+"Said Tump Pack would pay it."
+
+"Huh!" The old negress dropped the subject, and nodded at a huge double
+pan on the table. "Dat's whut she brung you." She grunted
+disapprovingly.
+
+"And it's for you, too, Mother."
+
+"Ya-as, I 'magine she brung somp'n fuh me."
+
+Peter walked across to the double pans, and saw they held a complete
+dinner--chicken, hot biscuits, cake, pickle, even ice-cream.
+
+The sight of the food brought Peter a realization that he was keenly
+hungry. As a matter of fact, he had not eaten a palatable meal since he
+had been evicted from the white dining-car at Cairo, Illinois. Siner
+served his own and his mother's plate.
+
+The old woman sniffed again.
+
+"Seems to me lak you is mighty onobsarvin' fuh a nigger whut's been off
+to college."
+
+"Anything else?" Peter looked into the pans again.
+
+"Ain't you see whut it's all in?"
+
+"What it's in?"
+
+"Yeah; whut it's in. You heared whut I said."
+
+"What is it in?"
+
+"Why, it's in Miss Arkwright's tukky roaster, dat's whut it's in." The
+old negress drove her point home with an acid accent.
+
+Peter Siner was too loyal to his new friendship with Cissie Dildine to
+allow his mother's jealous suspicions to affect him; nevertheless the
+old woman's observations about the turkey roaster did prevent a complete
+and care-free enjoyment of the meal. Certainly there were other turkey
+roasters in Hooker's Bend than Mrs. Arkwright's. Cissie might very well
+own a roaster. It was absurd to think that Cissie, in the midst of her
+almost pathetic struggle to break away from the uncouthness of
+Niggertown, would stoop to--Even in his thoughts Peter avoided
+nominating the charge.
+
+And then, somehow, his memory fished up the fact that years ago Ida May,
+according to village rumor, was "light-fingered." At that time in
+Peter's life "light-fingeredness" carried with it no opprobrium
+whatever. It was simply a fact about Ida May, as were her sloe eyes and
+curling black hair. His reflections renewed his perpetual sense of
+queerness and strangeness that hall-marked every phase of Niggertown
+life since his return from the North.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+Cissie Dildine's contribution tailed out the one hundred dollars that
+Peter needed, and after he had finished his meal, the mulatto set out
+across the Big Hill for the white section of the village, to complete
+his trade.
+
+It was Peter's program to go to the Planter's Bank, pay down his
+hundred, and receive a deed from one Elias Tomwit, which the bank held
+in escrow. Two or three days before Peter had tried to borrow the
+initial hundred from the bank, but the cashier, Henry Hooker, after
+going into the transaction, had declined the loan, and therefore Siner
+had been forced to await a meeting of the Sons and Daughters of
+Benevolence. At this meeting the subscription had gone through promptly.
+The land the negroes purposed to purchase for an industrial school was a
+timbered tract tying southeast of Hooker's Bend on the head-waters of
+Ross Creek. A purchase price of eight hundred dollars had been agreed
+upon. The timber on the tract, sold on the stump, would bring almost
+that amount. It was Siner's plan to commandeer free labor in Niggertown,
+work off the timber, and have enough money to build the first unit of
+his school. A number of negro men already had subscribed a certain
+number of days' work in the timber. It was a modest and entirely
+practical program, and Peter felt set up over it.
+
+The brown man turned briskly out into the hot afternoon sunshine, down
+the mean semicircular street, where piccaninnies were kicking up clouds
+of dust. He hurried through the dusty area, and presently turned off a
+by-path that led over the hill, through a glade of cedars, to the white
+village.
+
+The glade was gloomy, but warm, for the shade of cedars somehow seems to
+hold heat. A carpet of needles hushed Siner's footfalls and spread a
+Sabbatical silence through the grove. The upward path was not smooth,
+but was broken with outcrops of the same reddish limestone that marks
+the whole stretch of the Tennessee River. Here and there in the grove
+were circles eight or ten feet in diameter, brushed perfectly clean of
+all needles and pebbles and twigs. These places were crap-shooters'
+circles, where black and white men squatted to shoot dice.
+
+Under the big stones on the hillside, Peter knew, was cached illicit
+whisky, and at night the boot-leggers carried on a brisk trade among the
+gamblers. More than that, the glade on the Big Hill was used for still
+more demoralizing ends. It became a squalid grove of Ashtoreth; but now,
+in the autumn evening, all the petty obscenities of white and black
+sloughed away amid the religious implications of the dark-green aisles.
+
+The sight of a white boy sitting on an outcrop of limestone with a strap
+of school-books dropped at his feet rather surprised Peter. The negro
+looked at the hobbledehoy for several seconds before he recognized in
+the lanky youth a little Arkwright boy whom he had known and played with
+in his pre-college days. Now there was such an exaggerated wistfulness
+in young Arkwright's attitude that Peter was amused.
+
+"Hello, Sam," he called. "What you doing out here?"
+
+The Arkwright boy turned with a start.
+
+"Aw, is that you, Siner?" Before the negro could reply, he added: "Was
+you on the Harvard football team, Siner? Guess the white fellers have a
+pretty gay time in Harvard, don't they, Siner? Geemenettie! but I git
+tired o' this dern town! D' reckon I could make the football team? Looks
+like I could if a nigger like you could, Siner."
+
+None of this juvenile outbreak of questions required answers. Peter
+stood looking at the hobbledehoy without smiling.
+
+"Aren't you going to school?" he asked.
+
+Arkwright shrugged.
+
+"Aw, hell!" he said self-consciously. "We got marched down to the
+protracted meetin' while ago--whole school did. My seat happened to be
+close to a window. When they all stood up to sing, I crawled out and
+skipped. Don't mention that, Siner."
+
+"I won't."
+
+"When a fellow goes to college he don't git marched to preachin', does
+he, Siner?"
+
+"I never did."
+
+"We-e-ll," mused young Sam, doubtfully, "you're a nigger."
+
+"I never saw any white men marched in, either."
+
+"Oh, hell! I wish I was in college."
+
+"What are you sitting out here thinking about?" inquired Peter of the
+ingenuous youngster.
+
+"Oh--football and--women and God and--how to stack cards. You think
+about ever'thing, in the woods. Damn it! I got to git out o' this little
+jay town. D' reckon I could git in the navy, Siner?"
+
+"Don't see why you couldn't, Sam. Have you seen Tump Pack anywhere?"
+
+"Yeah; on Hobbett's corner. Say, is Cissie Dildine at home?"
+
+"I believe she is."
+
+"She cooks for us," explained young Arkwright, "and Mammy wants her to
+come and git supper, too."
+
+The phrase "get supper, too," referred to the custom in the white homes
+of Hooker's Bend of having only two meals cooked a day, breakfast and
+the twelve-o'clock dinner, with a hot supper optional with the mistress.
+
+Peter nodded, and passed on up the path, leaving young Arkwright seated
+on the ledge of rock, a prey to all the boiling, erratic impulses of
+adolescence. The negro sensed some of the innumerable difficulties of
+this white boy's life, and once, as he walked on over the silent
+needles, he felt an impulse to turn back and talk to young Sam
+Arkwright, to sit down and try to explain to the youth what he could of
+this hazardous adventure called Life. But then, he reflected, very
+likely the boy would be offended at a serious talk from a negro. Also,
+he thought that young Arkwright, being white, was really not within the
+sphere of his ministry. He, Peter Siner, was a worker in the black world
+of the South. He was part of the black world which the white South was
+so meticulous to hide away, to keep out of sight and out of thought.
+
+A certain vague sense of triumph trickled through some obscure corner of
+Peter's mind. It was so subtle that Peter himself would have been the
+first, in all good faith, to deny it and to affirm that all his motives
+were altruistic. Once he looked back through the cedars. He could still
+see the boy hunched over, chin in fist, staring at the mat of needles.
+
+As Peter turned the brow of the Big Hill, he saw at its eastern foot the
+village church, a plain brick building with a decaying spire. Its side
+was perforated by four tall arched windows. Each was a memorial window
+of stained glass, which gave the building a black look from the outside.
+As Peter walked down the hill toward the church he heard the and
+somewhat nasal singing of uncultivated voices mingled with the snoring
+of a reed organ.
+
+When he reached Main Street, Peter found the whole business portion
+virtually deserted. All the stores were closed, and in every show-window
+stood a printed notice that no business would be transacted between the
+hours of two and three o'clock in the afternoon during the two weeks of
+revival then in progress. Beside this notice stood another card, giving
+the minister's text for the current day. On this particular day it read:
+
+
+                        GO YE INTO ALL THE WORLD
+
+                 Come hear Rev. E.B. Blackwater's great
+                         Missionary Address on
+
+                         CHRISTIANIZING AFRICA
+
+                  ELOQUENT, PROFOUND, HEART-SEARCHING.
+                        ILLUSTRATED WITH SLIDES.
+
+
+Half a dozen negroes lounged in the sunshine on Hobbett's corner as
+Peter came up. They were amusing themselves after the fashion of blacks,
+with mock fights, feints, sudden wrestlings. They would seize one
+another by the head and grind their knuckles into one another's wool.
+Occasionally, one would leap up and fall into one of those grotesque
+shuffles called "breakdowns." It all held a certain rawness, an
+irrepressible juvenility.
+
+As Peter came up, Tump Pack detached himself from the group and gave a
+pantomime of thrusting. He was clearly reproducing the action which had
+won for him his military medal. Then suddenly he fell down in the dust
+and writhed. He was mimicking with a ghastly realism the death-throes of
+his four victims. His audience howled with mirth at this dumb show of
+the bayonet-fight and of killing four men. Tump himself got up out of
+the dust with tears of laughter in his eyes. Peter caught the end of his
+sentence, "Sho put it to 'em, black boy. Fo' white men--"
+
+His audience roared again, swayed around, and pounded one another in an
+excess of mirth.
+
+Siner shouted from across the street two or three times before he caught
+Tump's attention. The ex-soldier looked around, sobered abruptly.
+
+"Whut-chu want, nigger?" His inquiry was not over-cordial.
+
+Peter nodded him across the street.
+
+The heavily built black in khaki hesitated a moment, then started across
+the street with the dragging feet of a reluctant negro. Peter looked at
+him as he came up.
+
+"What's the matter, Tump?" he asked playfully.
+
+"Ain't nothin' matter wid me, nigger." Peter made a guess at Tump's
+surliness.
+
+"Look here, are you puffed up because Cissie Dildine struck you for a
+ten?"
+
+Tump's expression changed.
+
+"Is she struck me fuh a ten?"
+
+"Yes; on that school subscription."
+
+"Is dat whut you two niggers wuz a-talkin' 'bout over thaiuh in yo'
+house?"
+
+"Exactly." Peter showed the list, with Cissie's name on it. "She told me
+to collect from you."
+
+Tump brightened up.
+
+"So dat wuz whut you two niggers wuz a-talkin' 'bout over at yo' house."
+He ran a fist down into his khaki, and drew out three or four one-dollar
+bills and about a pint of small change. It was the usual crap-shooter's
+offering. The two negroes sat down on the ramshackle porch of an old
+jeweler's shop, and Tump began a complicated tally of ten dollars.
+
+By the time he had his dimes, quarters, and nickels in separate stacks,
+services in the village church were finished, and the congregation came
+filing up the street. First came the school-children, running and
+chattering and swinging their books by the straps; then the business men
+of the hamlet, rather uncomfortable in coats and collars, hurrying back
+to their stores; finally came the women, surrounding the preacher.
+
+Tump and Peter walked on up to the entrance of the Planter's Bank and
+there awaited Mr. Henry Hooker, the cashier. Presently a skinny man
+detached himself from the church crowd and came angling across the dirty
+street toward the bank. Mr. Hooker wore somewhat shabby clothes for a
+banker; in fact, he never could recover from certain personal habits
+formed during a penurious boyhood. He had a thin hatchet face which just
+at this moment was shining though from some inward glow. Although he was
+an unhandsome little man, his expression was that of one at peace with
+man and God and was pleasant to see. He had been so excited by the
+minister that he was constrained to say something even to two negroes.
+So as he unlocked the little one-story bank, he told Tump and Peter that
+he had been listening to a man who was truly a man of God. He said
+Blackwater could touch the hardest heart, and, sure enough, Mr. Hooker's
+rather popped and narrow-set eyes looked as though he had been crying.
+
+All this encomium was given in a high, cracked voice as the cashier
+opened the door and turned the negroes into the bank. Tump, who stood
+with his hat off, listening to all the cashier had to say, said he
+thought so, too.
+
+The shabby interior of the little bank, the shabby little banker,
+renewed that sense of disillusion that pervaded Peter's home-coming. In
+Boston the mulatto had done his slight banking business in a white
+marble structure with tellers of machine-like briskness and neatness.
+
+Mr. Hooker strolled around into his grill-cage; when he was thoroughly
+ensconced he began business in his high voice:
+
+"You came to see me about that land, Peter?"
+
+Yes, sir."
+
+"Sorry to tell you, Peter, you are not back in time to get the Tomwit
+place."
+
+Peter came out of his musing over the Boston banks with a sense of
+bewilderment.
+
+"How's that? why, I bought that land--"
+
+"But you paid nothing for your option, Siner."
+
+"I had a clear-cut understanding with Mr. Tomwit--"
+
+Mr. Hooker smiled a smile that brought out sharp wrinkles around the
+thin nose on his thin face.
+
+"You should have paid him an earnest, Siner, if you wanted to bind your
+trade. You colored folks are always stumbling over the law."
+
+Peter stared through the grating, not knowing what to do.
+
+"I'll go see Mr. Tomwit," he said, and started uncertainly for the door.
+
+The cashier's falsetto stopped him:
+
+"No use, Peter. Mr. Tomwit surprised me, too, but no use talking about
+it. I didn't like to see such an important thing as the education of our
+colored people held up, myself. I've been thinking about it."
+
+"Especially when I had made a fair square trade," put in Peter, warmly.
+
+"Exactly," squeaked the cashier. "And rather than let your project be
+delayed, I'm going to offer you the old Dillihay place at exactly the
+same price, Peter--eight hundred."
+
+"The Dillihay place?"
+
+"Yes; that's west of town; it's bigger by twenty acres than old man
+Tomwit's place."
+
+Peter considered the proposition.
+
+"I'll have to carry this before the Sons and Daughters of Benevolence,
+Mr. Hooker."
+
+The cashier repeated the smile that bracketed his thin nose in wrinkles.
+
+"That's with you, but you know what you say goes with the niggers here
+in town, and, besides, I won't promise how long I'll hold the Dillihay
+place. Real estate is brisk around here now. I didn't want to delay a
+good work on account of not having a location." Mr. Hooker turned away
+to a big ledger on a breast-high desk, and apparently was about to
+settle himself to the endless routine of bank work.
+
+Peter knew the Dillihay place well. It lacked the timber of the other
+tract; still, it was fairly desirable. He hesitated before the tarnished
+grill.
+
+"What do you think about it, Tump?"
+
+"You won't make a mistake in buying," answered the high voice of Mr.
+Hooker at his ledger.
+
+"I don' think you'll make no mistake in buyin', Peter," repeated Tump's
+bass.
+
+Peter turned back a little uncertainly, and asked how long it would take
+to fix the new deed. He had a notion of making a flying canvass of the
+officers of the Sons and Daughters in the interim. He was surprised to
+find that Mr. Hooker already had the deed and the notes ready to sign,
+in anticipation of Peter's desires. Here the banker brought out the set
+of papers.
+
+"I'll take it," decided Peter; "and if the lodge doesn't want it, I'll
+keep the place myself."
+
+"I like to deal with a man of decision," piped the cashier, a wrinkled
+smile on his sharp face.
+
+Peter pushed in his bag of collections, then Mr. Hooker signed the deed,
+and Peter signed the land notes. They exchanged the instruments. Peter
+received the crisp deed, bound in blue manuscript cover. It rattled
+unctuously. To Peter it was his first step toward a second Tuskegee.
+
+The two negroes walked out of the Planter's Bank filled with a sense of
+well-doing. Tump Pack was openly proud of having been connected, even in
+a casual way, with the purchase. As he walked down the steps, he turned
+to Peter.
+
+"Don' reckon nobody could git a deed off on you wid stoppers in it, does
+you?"
+
+"We don't know any such word as 'stop,' Tump," declared Peter, gaily.
+
+For Peter was gay. The whole incident at the bank was beginning to
+please him. The meeting of a sudden difficulty, his quick decision--it
+held the quality of leadership. Napoleon had it.
+
+The two colored men stepped briskly through the afternoon sunshine along
+the mean village street. Here and there in front of their doorways sat
+the merchants yawning and talking, or watching pigs root in the piles of
+waste.
+
+In Peter's heart came a wonderful thought. He would make his industrial
+institution such a model of neatness that the whole village of Hooker's
+Bend would catch the spirit. The white people should see that something
+clean and uplifting could come out of Niggertown. The two races ought to
+live for a mutual benefit. It was a fine, generous thought. For some
+reason, just then, there flickered through Peter's mind a picture of the
+Arkwright boy sitting hunched over in the cedar glade, staring at the
+needles.
+
+All this musing was brushed away by the sight of old Mr. Tomwit crossing
+the street from the east side to the livery-stable on the west. That
+human desire of wanting the person who has wronged you to know that you
+know your injury moved Peter to hurry his steps and to speak to the old
+gentleman.
+
+Mr. Tomwit had been a Confederate cavalryman in the Civil War, and there
+was still a faint breeze and horsiness about him. He was a hammered-down
+old gentleman, with hair thin but still jet-black, a seamed, sunburned
+face, and a flattened nose. His voice was always a friendly roar. Now,
+when he saw Peter turning across the street to meet him, he halted and
+called out at once:
+
+"Now Peter, I know what's the matter with you. I didn't do you right."
+
+Peter went closer, not caring to take the whole village into his
+confidence.
+
+"How came you to turn down my proposition, Mr. Tomwit," he asked, "after
+we had agreed and drawn up the papers?"
+
+"We-e-ell, I had to do it, Peter," explained the old man, loudly.
+
+"Why, Mr. Tomwit?"
+
+"A white neighbor wanted me to, Peter," boomed the cavalryman.
+
+"Who, Mr. Tomwit?"
+
+"Henry Hooker talked me into it, Peter. It was a mean trick, Peter. I
+done you wrong." He stood nodding his head and rubbing his flattened
+nose in an impersonal manner. "Yes, I done you wrong, Peter," he
+acknowledged loudly, and looked frankly into Peter's eyes.
+
+The negro was immensely surprised that Henry Hooker had done such a
+thing. A thought came that perhaps some other Henry Hooker had moved
+into town in his absence.
+
+"You don't mean the cashier of the bank?"
+
+Old Mr. Tomwit drew out a plug of Black Mule tobacco, set some gapped,
+discolored teeth into corner, nodded at Peter silently, at the same time
+utilizing the nod to tear off a large quid. He rolled tin about with his
+tongue and after a few moments adjusted it so that he could speak.
+
+"Yeah," he proceeded in a muffled tone, "they ain't but one Henry
+Hooker; he is the one and only Henry. He said if I sold you my land,
+you'd put up a nigger school and bring in so many blackbirds you'd run
+me clean off my farm. He said it'd ruin the whole town, a nigger school
+would."
+
+Peter was astonished.
+
+"Why, he didn't talk that way to me!"
+
+"Natchelly, natchelly," agreed the old cavalryman, dryly.--"Henry has a
+different way to talk to ever' man, Peter."
+
+"In fact," proceeded Peter, "Mr. Hooker sold me the old Dillihay place
+in lieu of the deal I missed with you."
+
+Old Mr. Tomwit moved his quid in surprise.
+
+"The hell he did!"
+
+"That at least shows he doesn't think a negro school would ruin the
+value of his land. He owns farms all around the Dillihay place."
+
+Old Mr. Tomwit turned his quid over twice and spat thoughtfully.
+
+"That your deed in your pocket?" With the air of a man certain of being
+obeyed he held out his hand for the blue manuscript cover protruding
+from the mulatto's pocket. Peter handed it over. The old gentleman
+unfolded the deed, then moved it carefully to and from his eyes until
+the typewriting was adjusted to his focus. He read it slowly, with a
+movement of his lips and a drooling of tobacco-juice. Finally he
+finished, remarked, "I be damned!" in a deliberate voice, returned the
+deed, and proceeded across the street to the livery-stable, which was
+fronted by an old mulberry-tree, with several chairs under it. In one of
+these chairs he would sit for the remainder of the day, making an
+occasional loud remark about the weather or the crops, and watching the
+horses pass in and out of the stable.
+
+Siner had vaguely enjoyed old Mr. Tomwit's discomfiture over the deed,
+if it was discomfiture that had moved the old gentleman to his
+sententious profanity. But the negro did not understand Henry Hooker's
+action at all. The banker had abused his position of trust as holder of
+a deed in escrow snapping up the sale himself; then he had sold Peter
+the Dillihay place. It was a queer shift.
+
+Tump Pack caught his principal's mood with that chameleon-like mental
+quality all negroes possess.
+
+"Dat Henry Hooker," criticized Tump, "allus was a lil ole dried-up snake
+in de grass."
+
+"He abused his position of trust," said Peter, gloomily; "I must say,
+his motives seem very obscure to me."
+
+"Dat sho am a fine way to put hit," said Tump, admiringly.
+
+"Why do you suppose he bought in the Tomwit tract and sold me the
+Dillihay place?"
+
+Asked for an opinion, Tump began twiddling military medal and corrugated
+the skin on his inch-high brow.
+
+"Now you puts it to me lak dat, Peter," he answered with importance, "I
+wonders ef dat gimlet-haided white man ain't put some stoppers in dat
+deed he guv you. He mout of."
+
+Such remarks as that from Tump always annoyed Peter. Tump's intellectual
+method was to talk sense just long enough to gain his companion's ear,
+and then produce something absurd and quash the tentative interest.
+
+Siner turned away from him and said, "Piffle."
+
+Tump was defensive at once.
+
+"'T ain't piffle, either! I's talkin' sense, nigger."
+
+Peter shrugged, and walked a little way in silence, but the soldier's
+nonsense stuck in his brain and worried him. Finally he turned, rather
+irritably.
+
+"Stoppers--what do you mean by stoppers?"
+
+Tump opened his jet eyes and their yellowish whites. "I means nigger-
+stoppers," he reiterated, amazed in his turn.
+
+"Negro-stoppers--" Peter began to laugh sardonically, and abruptly quit
+the conversation.
+
+Such rank superiority irritated the soldier to the nth power.
+
+"Look heah, black man, I knows I _is_ right. Heah, lonme look at
+dat-aiuh, deed. Maybe I can find 'em. I knows I suttinly is right."
+
+Peter walked on, paying no attention to the request Until Tump caught
+his arm and drew him up short.
+
+"Look heah, nigger," said Tump, in a different tone, "I faded dad deed
+fuh ten iron men, an' I reckon I got a once-over comin' fuh my money."
+
+The soldier was plainly mobilized and ready to attack. To fight Tump, to
+fight any negro at all, would be Peter's undoing; it would forfeit the
+moral leadership he hoped to gain. Moreover, he had no valid grounds for
+a disagreement with Tump. He passed over the deed, and the two negroes
+moved on their way to Niggertown.
+
+Tump trudged forward with eyes glued to paper, his face puckered in the
+unaccustomed labor of reading.
+
+His thick lips moved at the individual letters, and constructed them
+bunglingly into syllables and words. He was trying to uncover the verbal
+camouflage by which the astute white brushed away all rights of all
+black men whatsoever.
+
+To Peter there grew up something sadly comical in Tump's efforts. The
+big negro might well typify all the colored folk of the South,
+struggling in a web of law and custom they did not understand,
+misplacing their suspicions, befogged and fearful. A certain penitence
+for having been irritated at Tump softened Peter.
+
+"That's all right, Tump; there's nothing to find."
+
+At that moment the soldier began to bob his head.
+
+"Eh! eh! eh! W-wait a minute!" he stammered. "Whut dis? B'lieve I done
+foun' it! I sho is! Heah she am! Heah's dis nigger-stopper, jes lak I
+tol' you!" Tump marked a sentence in the guaranty of the deed with a
+rusty forefinger and looked up at Peter in mixed triumph and accusation.
+
+Peter leaned over the deed, amused.
+
+"Let's see your mare's nest."
+
+"Well, she 'fo' God is thaiuh, an' you sho let loose a hundud dollars uv
+our 'ciety's money, an' got nothin' fuh hit but a piece o' paper wid a
+nigger-stopper on hit!"
+
+Tump's voice was so charged with contempt that Peter looked with a
+certain uneasiness at his find. He read this sentence switched into the
+guaranty of the indenture:
+
+
+"Be it further understood and agreed that no negro, black man, Afro-
+American, mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, or any person whatsoever of
+colored blood or lineage, shall enter upon, seize, hold, occupy, reside
+upon, till, cultivate, own or possess any part or parcel of said
+property, or garner, cut, or harvest therefrom, any of the usufruct,
+timber, or emblements thereof, but shall by these presents be estopped
+from so doing forever."
+
+
+Tump Pack drew a shaken, unhappy breath.
+
+"Now, I reckon you see whut a nigger-stopper is."
+
+Peter stood in the sunshine, looking at the estoppel clause, his lips
+agape. Twice he read it over. It held something of the quality of those
+comprehensive curses that occur in the Old Testament. He moistened his
+lips and looked at Tump.
+
+"Why that can't be legal." His voice sounded empty and shallow.
+
+"Legal! 'Fo' Gawd, nigger, whauh you been to school all dese yeahs,
+never to heah uv a nigger-stopper befo'!"
+
+"But--but how can a stroke of the pen, a mere gesture, estop a whole
+class of American citizens forever?" cried Peter, with a rising voice.
+"Turn it around. Suppose they had put in a line that no white man should
+own that land. It--it's empty! I tell you, it's mere words!"
+
+Tump cut into his diatribe: "No use talkin' lak dat. Our 'ciety thought
+you wuz a aidjucated nigger. We didn't think no white man could put
+nothin' over on you."
+
+"Education!" snapped Siner. "Education isn't supposed to keep you away
+from shysters!"
+
+"Keep you away fum 'em!" cried Tump, in a scandalized voice. "'Fo' Gawd,
+nigger, you don' know nothin'! O' co'se a aidjucation ain't to keep you
+away fum shysters; hit's to mek you one 'uv 'em!"
+
+Peter stood breathing irregularly, looking at his deed. A determination
+not to be cheated grew up and hardened in his nerves. With unsteady
+hands he refolded his deed and put it into his pocket, then he turned
+about and started back up the village street toward the bank.
+
+Tump stared after him a moment and presently called out:
+
+"Heah, nigger, whut you gwine do?" A moment later he repeated to his
+friend's back: "Look heah, nigger, I 'vise you ag'inst anything you's
+gwine do, less'n you's ready to pass in you' checks!" As Peter strode on
+he lifted his voice still higher: "Peter! Hey, Peter, I sho' 'vise you
+'g'inst anything you's 'gwine do!"
+
+A pulse throbbed in Siner's temples. The wrath of the cozened heated his
+body. His clothes felt hot. As he strode up the trash-piled street, the
+white merchants lolling in their doors began smiling. Presently a laugh
+broke out at one end of the street and was caught up here and there. It
+was the undying minstrel jest, the comedy of a black face. Dawson Bobbs
+leaned against the wide brick entrance of the livery-stable, his red
+face balled into shining convexities by a quizzical smile.
+
+"Hey, Peter," he drawled, winking at old Mr. Tomwit, "been investin' in
+real estate?" and broke into Homeric laughter.
+
+As Peter passed on, the constable dropped casually in behind the brown
+man and followed him up to the bank.
+
+To Peter Siner the walk up to the bank was an emotional confusion. He
+has a dim consciousness that voices said things to him along the way and
+that there was laughter. All this was drowned by desperate thoughts and
+futile plans to regain his lost money, flashing through his head. The
+cashier would exchange the money for the deed; he would enter suit and
+carry it to the Supreme Court; he would show the money had not been his,
+he had had no right to buy; he would beg the cashier. His head seemed to
+spin around and around.
+
+He climbed the steps into the Planter's Bank and opened the screen-door.
+The cashier glanced up briefly, but continued busily at his ledger.
+
+Peter walked shakenly to the barred window in the grill.
+
+"Mr. Hooker."
+
+"Very busy now, Peter," came the high voice.
+
+"I want to know about this deed."
+
+The banker was nimbly setting down long rows of figures. "No time to
+explain deeds, Peter."
+
+"But--but there is a clause in this deed, Mr. Hooter, estopping colored
+persons from occupying the Dillihay place."
+
+"Precisely. What about it?" Mr. Hooker snapped out his inquiry and
+looked up suddenly, catching Peter full in the face with his narrow-set
+eyes. It was the equivalent of a blow.
+
+"According to this, I--I can't establish a school on it."
+
+"You cannot."
+
+"Then what can I do with it?" cried Peter.
+
+"Sell it. You have what lawyers call a cloud on the title. Sell it. I'll
+give you ten dollars for your right in it, just to clear up my title."
+
+A queer trembling seized Peter. The little banker turned to a fantastic
+caricature of a man. His hatchet face, close-set eyes, harsh, straight
+hair, and squeaky voice made him seem like some prickly, dried-up gnome
+a man sees in a fever.
+
+At that moment the little wicket-door of the window opened under the
+pressure of Peter's shoulder. Inside on the desk, lay neat piles of
+bills of all denominations, ready to be placed in the vault. In a
+nervous tremor Peter dropped in his blue-covered deed and picked up a
+hundred-dollar bill.
+
+"I--I won't trade," he jibbered. "It--it wasn't my money. Here's your
+deed!" Peter was moving away. He felt a terrific impulse to run, but he
+walked.
+
+The banker straightened abruptly. "Stop there, Peter!" he screeched.
+
+At that moment Dawson Bobbs lounged in at the door, with his perpetual
+grin balling up his broad red face. He had a toothpick, in his mouth.
+
+"'S matter?" he asked casually.
+
+"Peter there," said the banker, with a pale, sharp face, "doesn't want
+to stick to his trade. He is just walking off with one of my hundred-
+dollar bills."
+
+"Sick o' yo' deal, Peter?" inquired Bobbs, smiling and shifting the
+toothpick. He bit down on it. "Well, whut-chu want done, Henry?"
+
+"Oh," hesitated the cashier in a quandary, "nothing, I suppose. Siner
+was excited; you know how niggers are. We can't afford to send every
+nigger to the pen that breaks the law." He stood studying Peter out of
+his close-set eyes. "Here's your deed, Peter." He shoved it back under
+the grill. "And lemme give you a little friendly advice. I'd just run an
+ordinary nigger school if I was you. This higher education don't seem to
+make a nigger much smarter when he comes back than when he starts out."
+A faint smile bracketed the thin nose.
+
+Dawson Bobbs roared with sudden appreciation, took the bill from Peter's
+fingers, and pushed it back under the grill.
+
+The cashier picked up the money, casually. He considered a moment, then
+reached for a long envelop. As he did so, the incident with Peter
+evidently passed from his mind, for his hatchet face lighted up as with
+some inward illumination.
+
+"Bobbs," he said warmly, "that was a great sermon Brother Blackwater
+preached. It made me want to help according as the Lord has blessed me.
+Couldn't you spare five dollars, Bobbs, to go along with this?"
+
+The constable tried to laugh and wriggle away, but the cashier's gimlet
+eyes kept boring him, and eventually he fished out a five-dollar bill
+and handed it in. Mr. Hooker placed the two bills in the envelop, sealed
+it, and handed it to the constable.
+
+"Jest drop that in the post-office as you go down the street, Bobbs," he
+directed in his high voice. Peter caught a glimpse of the type-written
+address.
+
+It was
+
+  Rev. Lemuel Hardiman,
+    c/o United Missions,
+      Katuako Post,
+        Bahr el Ghazal,
+          Sudan,
+            East Africa.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER III
+
+
+The white population of Hooker's Bend was much amused and gratified at
+the outcome of the Hooker-Siner land deal. Every one agreed that the
+cashier's chicanery was a droll and highly original turn to give to a
+negro exclusion clause drawn into a deed. Then, too, it involved several
+legal points highly congenial to the Hooker's Bend intellect Could the
+Sons and Daughters of Benevolence recover their hundred dollars? Could
+Henry Hooker force them to pay the remaining seven hundred? Could not
+Siner establish his school on the Dillihay place regardless of the
+clause, since the cashier would be estopped from obtaining an injunction
+by his own instrument?
+
+As a matter of fact, the Sons and Daughters of Benevolence sent a
+committee to wait on Mr. Hooker to see what action he meant to take on
+the notes that paid for his spurious deed. This brought another harvest
+of rumors. Street gossip reported that Henry had compromised for this,
+that, and the other amount, that he would not compromise, that he had
+persuaded the fool niggers into signing still other instruments. Peter
+never knew the truth. He was not on the committee.
+
+But high above the legal phase of interest lay the warming fact that
+Peter Siner, a negro graduate of Harvard, on his first tilt in Hooker's
+Bend affairs had ridden to a fall. This pleased even the village women,
+whose minds could not follow the subtle trickeries of legal disputation.
+The whole affair simply proved what the white village had known all
+along: you can't educate a nigger. Hooker's Bend warmed with pleasure
+that half of its population was ineducable.
+
+White sentiment in Hooker's Bend reacted strongly on Niggertown. Peter
+Siner's prestige was no more. The cause of higher education for negroes
+took a mighty slump. Junius Gholston, a negro boy who had intended to go
+to Nashville to attend Fisk University, reconsidered the matter, packed
+away his good clothes, put on overalls, and shipped down the river as a
+roustabout instead.
+
+In the Siner cabin old Caroline Siner berated her boy for his stupidity
+in ever trading with that low-down, twisting snake in the grass, Henry
+Hooker. She alternated this with floods of tears. Caroline had no
+sympathy for her offspring. She said she had thrown away years of self-
+sacrifice, years of washing, a thousand little comforts her money would
+have bought, all for nothing, for less than nothing, to ship a fool
+nigger up North and to ship him back.
+
+Of all Niggertown, Caroline was the most unforgiving because Peter had
+wounded her in her pride. Every other negro in the village felt that
+genial satisfaction in a great man's downfall that is balm to small
+souls. But the old mother knew not this consolation. Peter was her
+proxy. It was she who had fallen.
+
+The only person in Niggertown who continued amiable to Peter Siner was
+Cissie Dildine. The octoroon, perhaps, had other criteria by which to
+judge a man than his success or mishaps dealing with a pettifogger.
+
+Two or three days after the catastrophe, Cissie made an excursion to the
+Siner cabin with a plate of cookies. Cissie was careful to place her
+visit on exactly a normal footing. She brought her little cakes in the
+role of one who saw no evil, spoke no evil, and heard no evil. But
+somehow Cissie's visit increased the old woman's wrath. She remained
+obstinately in the kitchen, and made remarks not only audible, but
+arresting, through the thin partition that separated it from the poor
+living-room.
+
+Cissie was hardly inside when a voice stated that it hated to see a gal
+running after a man, trying to bait him with a lot of fum-diddles.
+
+Cissie gave Peter a single wide-eyed glance, and then attempted to
+ignore the bodiless comment.
+
+"Here are some cookies, Mr. Siner," began the girl, rather nervously. "I
+thought you and Ahnt Carolin'--"
+
+"Yeah, I 'magine dey's fuh me!" jeered the spectral voice.
+
+"Might like them," concluded the girl, with a little gasp.
+
+"I suttinly don' want no light-fingered hussy ma'yin' my son," proceeded
+the voice, "an' de whole Dildine fambly 'll bear watchin'."
+
+[Illustration: In the Siner cabin old Caroline Siner berated her boy.]
+
+"Won't you have a seat?" asked Peter, exquisitely uncomfortable.
+
+Cissie handed him her plate in confusion.
+
+"Why, no, Mr. Siner," she hastened on, in her careful grammar, "I just--
+ran over to--"
+
+"To fling herse'f in a nigger's face 'cause he's been North and got
+made a fool uv," boomed the hidden censor.
+
+"I must go now," gasped Cissie.
+
+Peter made a harried gesture.
+
+"Wait--wait till I get my hat."
+
+He put the plate down with a swift glance around for his hat. He found
+it, and strode to the door, following the girl. The two hurried out into
+the street, followed by indistinct strictures from the kitchen. Cissie
+breathed fast, with open lips. They moved rapidly along the semicircular
+street almost with a sense of flight. The heat of the early autumn sun
+stung them through their clothes. For some distance they walked in a
+nervous silence, then Cissie said:
+
+"Your mother certainly hates me, Peter."
+
+"No," said Peter, trying to soften the situation; "it's me; she's
+terribly hurt about--" he nodded to-ward the white section--"that
+business."
+
+Cissie opened her clear brown eyes.
+
+"Your own mother turned against you!"
+
+"Oh, she has a right to be," began Peter, defensively. "I ought to have
+read that deed. It's amazing I didn't, but I--I really wasn't expecting
+a trick, Mr. Hooker seemed so--so sympathetic--" He came to a lame halt,
+staring at the dust through which they picked their way.
+
+"Of course you weren't expecting tricks!" cried Cissie, warmly. "The
+whole thing shows you're a gentleman used to dealing with gentlemen. But
+of course these Hooker's Bend negroes will never see that!"
+
+Peter, surprised and grateful, looked at Cissie. Her construction of the
+swindle was more flattering than any apology he had been able to frame
+for himself.
+
+"Still, Cissie, I ought to have used the greatest care--"
+
+"I'm not talking about what you 'ought,'" stated the octoroon, crisply;
+"I'm talking about what you are. When it comes to 'ought,' we colored
+people must get what we can, any way we can. We fight from the bottom."
+The speech held a viperish quality which for a moment caught the brown
+man's attention; then he said:
+
+"One thing is sure, I've lost my prestige, whatever it was worth."
+
+The girl nodded slowly.
+
+"With the others you have, I suppose."
+
+Peter glanced at Cissie. The temptation was strong to give the
+conversation a personal turn, but he continued on the general topic:
+
+"Well, perhaps it's just as well. My prestige was a bit too flamboyant,
+Cissie. All I had to do was to mention a plan. The Sons and Daughters
+didn't even discuss it. They put it right through. That wasn't healthy.
+Our whole system of society, all democracies are based on discussion.
+Our old Witenagemot--"
+
+"But it wasn't _our_ old Witenagemot," said the girl.
+
+"Well--no," admitted the mulatto, "that's true."
+
+They moved along for some distance in silence, when the girl asked:
+
+"What are you going to do now, Peter?"
+
+"Teach, and keep working for that training-school," stated Peter, almost
+belligerently. "You didn't expect a little thing like a hundred dollars
+to stop me, did you?"
+
+"No-o-o," conceded Cissie, with some reserve of judgment in her tone.
+Presently she added, "You could do a lot better up North, Peter."
+
+"For whom?"
+
+"Why, yourself," said the girl, a little surprised.
+
+Siner nodded.
+
+"I thought all that out before I came back here, Cissie. A friend of
+mine named Farquhar offered me a place with him up in Chicago,--a string
+of garages. You'd like Farquhar, Cissie. He's a materialist with an
+absolutely inexorable brain. He mechanizes the universe. I told him I
+couldn't take his offer. 'It's like this,' I argued: 'if every negro
+with a little ability leaves the South, our people down there will never
+progress.' It's really that way, Cissie, it takes a certain mental
+atmosphere to develop a people as a whole. A few individuals here and
+there may have the strength to spring up by themselves, but the run of
+the people--no. I believe one of the greatest curses of the colored race
+in the South is the continual draining of its best individuals North.
+Farquhar argued--" just then Peter saw that Cissie was not attending his
+discourse. She was walking at his side in a respectful silence. He
+stopped talking, and presently she smiled and said:
+
+"You haven't noticed my new brooch, Peter." She lifted her hand to her
+bosom, and twisted the face of the trinket toward him. "You oughtn't to
+have made me show it to you after you recommended it yourself." She made
+a little _moue_ of disappointment.
+
+It was a pretty bit of old gold that complimented the creamy skin. Peter
+began admiring it at once, and, negro fashion, rather overstepped the
+limits white beaux set to their praise, as he leaned close to her.
+
+At the moment the two were passing one of the oddest houses in
+Niggertown. It was a two-story cabin built in the shape of a steamboat.
+A little cupola represented a pilot-house, and two iron chimneys served
+for smoke-stacks.
+
+This queer building had been built by a negro stevedore because of a
+deep admiration for the steamboats on which he had made his living.
+Instead of steps at the front door, this boat-like house had a stage-
+plank. As Peter strolled down the street with Cissie, admiring her
+brooch, and suffused with a sense of her nearness, he happened to glance
+up, and saw Tump Pack walk down the stage-plank, come out, and wait for
+them at the gate.
+
+There was something grim in the ex-soldier's face and in the set of his
+gross lips as the two came up, but the aura of the girl prevented Peter
+from paying much attention to it. As the two reached Tump, Peter had
+just lifted his hand to his hat when Tump made a quick step out at the
+gate, in front of them, and swung a furious blow at Peter's head.
+
+Cissie screamed. Siner staggered back with flames dancing before his
+eyes. The soldier lunged after his toppling man with gorilla-like blows.
+Hot pains shot through Peter's body. His head roared like a gong. The
+sunlight danced about him in flashes. The air was full of black fists
+smashing him, and not five feet away, the bullet head of Tump Pack
+bobbed this way and that in the rapid shifts of his attack. A stab of
+pain cut off Peter's breath. He stood with his diaphragm muscles tense
+and paralyzed, making convulsive efforts to breathe. At that moment he
+glimpsed the convexity of Tump's stomach. He drop-kicked at it with
+foot-ball desperation. Came a loud explosive groan. Tump seemed to rise
+a foot or two in air, turned over, and thudded down on his shoulders in
+the dust. The soldier made no attempt to rise, but curled up, twisting
+in agony.
+
+Peter stood in the dust-cloud, wabbly, with roaring head. His open mouth
+was full of dust. Then he became aware that negroes were running in from
+every direction, shouting. Their voices whooped out what had happened,
+who it was, who had licked. Tump Pack's agonized spasms brought howls of
+mirth from the black fellows. Negro women were in the crowd, grinning, a
+little frightened, but curious. Some were in Mother-Hubbards; one had
+her hair half combed, one side in a kinky mattress, the other lying flat
+and greased down to her scalp.
+
+When Peter gradually became able to breathe and could think at all,
+there was something terrible to him in Tump's silent attack and in this
+extravagant black mirth over mere suffering. Cissie was gone,--had fled,
+no doubt, at the beginning of the fight.
+
+The prostrate man's tortured abdomen finally allowed him to twist around
+toward Peter. His eyes were popped, and seemed all yellows and streaked
+with swollen veins.
+
+"I'll git you fuh dis," he wheezed, spitting dust "You did n' fight
+fair, you--"
+
+The black chorus rolled their heads and pounded one another in a gale of
+merriment.
+
+Peter Siner turned away toward his home filled with sick thought. He had
+never realized so clearly the open sore of Niggertown life and its great
+need of healing, yet this very episode would further bar him, Peter,
+from any constructive work. He foresaw, too plainly, how the white town
+and Niggertown would react to this fight. There would be no
+discrimination in the scandal. He, Peter Siner, would be grouped with
+the boot-leggers and crap-shooters and women-chasers who filled
+Niggertown with their brawls. As a matter of simple fact, he had been
+fighting with another negro over a woman. That he was subjected to an
+attack without warning or cause would never become a factor in the
+analysis. He knew that very well.
+
+Two of Peter's teeth were loose; his left jaw was swelling; his head
+throbbed. With that queer perversity of human nerves, he kept biting his
+sore teeth together as he walked along.
+
+When he reached home, his mother met him at the door. Thanks to the
+swiftness with which gossip spreads among black folk, she had already
+heard of the fight, and incidentally had formed her judgment of the
+matter. Now she looked in exasperation at her son's swelling face.
+
+"I 'cla' 'fo' Gawd!--ain't been home a week befo' he's fightin' over a
+nigger wench lak a roustabout!"
+
+Peter's head throbbed so he could hardly make out the details of
+Caroline's face.
+
+"But, Mother--" he began defensively, "I--"
+
+"Me sweatin' over de wash-pot," the negress went on, "so's you could go
+up North an' learn a lil sense; heah you comes back chasin' a dutty
+slut!"
+
+"But, Mother," he begged thickly, "I was simply walking home with Miss
+Dildine."
+
+"Miss Dildine! Miss Dildine!" exploded the ponderous woman, with an
+erasing gesture. "Ef you means dat stuck-up fly-by-night Cissie Dildine,
+say so, and don' stan' thaiuh mouthin', 'Miss Dildine, Miss Dildine'!"
+
+"Mother," asked Peter, thickly, through his swelling mouth, "do you want
+to know what did happen?"
+
+"I knows. I tol' you to keep away fum dat hussy. She's a fool 'bout her
+bright color an' straight hair. Needn't be givin' herse'f no airs!"
+
+Peter stood in the doorway, steadying himself by the jamb. The world
+still swayed from the blows he had received on the head.
+
+"What girl would you be willing for me to go with?" he asked in faint
+satire.
+
+"Heah in Niggertown?"
+
+Peter nodded. The movement increased his headache.
+
+"None a-tall. No Niggertown wench a-tall. When you mus' ma'y, I's
+'speckin' you to go off summuhs an' pick yo' gal, lak you went off to
+pick yo' aidjucation." She swung out a thick arm, and looked at Peter
+out of the corner of her eyes, her head tilted to one side, as negresses
+do when they become dramatically serious.
+
+Peter left his mother to her stare and went to his own room. This
+constant implication among Niggertown inhabitants that Niggertown and
+all it held was worthless, mean, unhuman depressed Peter. The mulatto
+knew the real trouble with Niggertown was it had adopted the white
+village's estimate of it. The sentiment of the white village was
+overpowering among the imitative negroes. The black folk looked into the
+eyes of the whites and saw themselves reflected as chaff and skum and
+slime, and no human being ever suggested that they were aught else.
+
+Peter's room was a rough shed papered with old newspapers. All sorts of
+yellow scare-heads streaked his walls. Hanging up was a crayon
+enlargement of his mother, her broad face as unwrinkled as an egg and
+drawn almost white, for the picture agents have discovered the only way
+to please their black patrons is to make their enlargements as nearly
+white as possible.
+
+In one corner, on a home-made book-rack, stood Peter's library,--a Greek
+book or two, an old calculus, a sociology, a psychology, a philosophy,
+and a score of other volumes he had accumulated in his four college
+years. As Peter, his head aching, looked at these, he realized how
+immeasurably removed he was from the cool abstraction of the study.
+
+The brown man sat down in an ancient rocking-chair by the window, leaned
+back, and closed his eyes. His blood still whispered in his ears from
+his fight. Notwithstanding his justification, he gradually became filled
+with self-loathing. To fight--to hammer and kick in Niggertown's dust--
+over a girl! It was an indignity.
+
+
+Peter shifted his position in his chair, and his thoughts took another
+trail. Tump's attack had been sudden and silent, much like a bulldog's.
+The possibility of a simple friendship between a woman and a man never
+entered Tump's head; it never entered any Niggertown head. Here all
+attraction was reduced to the simplest terms of sex. Niggertown held no
+delicate intimacies or reserves. Two youths could not go with the same
+girl. Black women had no very great powers of choice over their suitors.
+The strength of a man's arm isolated his sweetheart. That did not seem
+right, resting the power of successful mating entirely upon brawn.
+
+As Peter sat thinking it over, it came to him that the progress of any
+race depended, finally, upon the woman having complete power of choosing
+her mate. It is woman alone who consistently places the love accent upon
+other matters than mere flesh and muscle. Only woman has much sex
+selectiveness, or is inclined to select individuals with qualities of
+mind and spirit.
+
+For millions of years these instinctive spiritualizers of human breeding
+stock have been hampered in their choice of mates by the unrestrained
+right of the fighting male. Indeed, the great constructive work of
+chivalry in the middle ages was to lay, unconsciously, the corner-stone
+of modern civilization by resigning to the woman the power of choosing
+from a group of males.
+
+Siner stirred in his chair, surprised at whither his reverie had lead
+him. He wondered how he had stumbled upon these thoughts. Had he read
+them in a book? In point of fact, a beating administered by Tump Pack
+had brought the brown man the first original idea he had entertained in
+his life.
+
+By this time, Peter's jaw had reached its maximum swelling and was eased
+somewhat. He looked out of his little window, wondering whether Cissie
+Dildine would choose him--or Tump Pack.
+
+Peter was surprised to find blue dusk peering through his panes. All the
+scare-heads on his walls had lapsed into a common obscurity. As he rose
+slowly, so as not to start his head hurting again, he heard three rapid
+pistol shots in the cedar glade between Niggertown and the white
+village. He knew this to be the time-honored signal of boot-leggers
+announcing that illicit whisky was for sale in the blackness of the
+glade.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Next day the Siner-Pack fight was the focus of news interest in Hooker's
+Bend. White mistresses extracted the story from their black maids, and
+were amused by it or deprecated Cissie Dildine's morals as the mood
+moved them.
+
+Along Main Street in front of the village stores, the merchants and
+hangers-on discussed the affair. It was diverting that a graduate of
+Harvard should come back to Hooker's Bend and immediately drop into such
+a fracas. Old Captain Renfrew, one-time attorney at law and
+representative of his county in the state legislature, sat under the
+mulberry in front of the livery-stable and plunged into a long
+monologue, with old Mr. Tomwit as listener, on the uneducability of the
+black race.
+
+"Take a horse, sir," expounded the captain; "a horse can be trained to
+add and put its name together out of an alphabet, but no horse could
+ever write a promissory note and figure the interest on it, sir. Take a
+dog. I've known dogs, sir, that could bring your mail from the post-
+office, but I never saw a dog stop on the way home, sir, to read a post-
+card."
+
+Here the old ex-attorney spat and renewed the tobacco in a black brier,
+then proceeded to draw the parrallel between dogs and horses and Peter
+Siner newly returned from Harvard.
+
+"God'lmighty has set his limit on dogs, horses, and niggers, Mr. Tomwit.
+Thus far and no farther. Take a nigger baby at birth; a nigger baby has
+no fontanelles. It has no window toward heaven. Its skull is sealed up
+in darkness. The nigger brain can never expand and absorb the universe,
+sir. It can never rise on the wings of genius and weigh the stars, nor
+compute the swing of the Pleiades. Thus far and no farther! It's
+congenital.
+
+"Now, take this Peter Siner and his disgraceful fight over a nigger
+wench. Would you expect an educated stud horse to pay no attention to a
+mare, sir? You can educate a stud till--"
+
+"But hold on!" interrupted the old cavalryman. "I've known as
+gentlemanly stallions as--as anybody!"
+
+The old attorney cleared his throat, momentarily taken aback at this
+failure of his metaphor. However he rallied with legal suppleness:
+
+"You are talking about thoroughbreds, sir."
+
+"I am, sir."
+
+"Good God, Tomwit! you don't imagine I'm comparing a nigger to a
+thoroughbred, sir!"
+
+On the street corners, or piled around on cotton-bales down on the wharf,
+the negro men of the village discussed the fight. It was for the most
+part a purely technical discussion of blows and counters and kicks, and
+of the strange fact that a college education failed to enable Siner
+utterly to annihilate his adversary. Jim Pink Staggs, a dapper gentleman
+of ebony blackness, of pin-stripe flannels and blue serge coat--
+altogether a gentleman of many parts--sat on one of the bales and
+indolently watched an old black crone fishing from a ledge of rocks just
+a little way below the wharf-boat. Around Jim Pink lounged and sprawled
+black men and youths, stretching on the cotton-bales like cats in the
+sunshine.
+
+Jim Pink was discussing Peter's education.
+
+"I 'fo' Gawd kain't see no use goin' off lak dat an' den comin' back an'
+lettin' a white man cheat you out'n yo' hide an' taller, an' lettin' a
+black man beat you up tull you has to 'kick him in the spivit. Ef a
+aidjucation does you any good a-tall, you'd be boun' to beat de white man
+at one en' uv de line, or de black man at de udder. Ef Peter ain't to be
+foun' at eider en', wha is he?"
+
+"Um-m-m!" "Eh-h-h!" "You sho spoke a moufful, Jim Pink!" came an
+assenting chorus from the bales.
+
+Eventually such gossip died away and took another flurry when a report
+went abroad that Tump Pack was carrying a pistol and meant to shoot
+Peter on sight. Then this in turn ceased to be news and of human
+interest. It clung to Peter's mind longer than to any other person's in
+Hooker's Bend, and it presented to the brown man a certain problem in
+casuistry.
+
+Should he accede to Tump Pack's possession of Cissie Dildine and give up
+seeing the girl? Such a course cut across all his fine-spun theory about
+women having free choice of their mates. However, the Harvard man could
+not advocate a socialization of courtship when he himself would be the
+first beneficiary. The prophet whose finger points selfward is damned.
+Furthermore, all Niggertown would side with Tump Pack in such a
+controversy. It was no uncommon thing for the very negro women to fight
+over their beaux and husbands. As for any social theory changing this
+regime, in the first place the negroes couldn't understand the theory;
+in the second, it would have no effect if they could. Actions never grow
+out of theories; theories grow out of actions. A theory is a looking-
+glass that reflects the past and makes it look like the future, but the
+glass really hides the future, and when humanity comes to a turn in its
+course, there is always a smash-up, and a blind groping for the lost
+path.
+
+Now, in regard to Cissie Dildine, Peter was not precisely afraid of Tump
+Pack, but he could not clear his mind of the fact that Tump had been
+presented with a medal by the Congress of the United States for killing
+four men. Good sense and a care for his reputation and his skin told
+Peter to abandon his theory of free courtship for the time being. This
+meant a renunciation of Cissie Dildine; but he told himself he renounced
+very little. He had no reason to think that Cissie cared a picayune
+about him.
+
+Peter's work kept him indoors for a number of days following the
+encounter. He was reviewing some primary school work in order to pass a
+teacher's examination that would be held in Jonesboro, the county seat,
+in about three weeks.
+
+To the uninitiated it may seem strange to behold a Harvard graduate
+stuck down day after day poring over a pile of dog-eared school-books--
+third arithmetics, primary grammars, beginners' histories of Tennessee,
+of the United States, of England; physiology, hygiene. It may seem
+queer. But when it comes to standing a Wayne County teacher's
+examination, the specific answers to the specific questions on a dozen
+old examination slips are worth all the degrees Harvard ever did confer.
+
+So, in his newspapered study, Peter Siner looked up long lists of
+questions, and attempted to memorize the answers. But the series of
+missteps he had made since returning to Hooker's Bend besieged his brain
+and drew his thoughts from his catechism. It seemed strange that in so
+short a time he should have wandered so far from the course he had set
+for himself. His career in Niggertown formed a record of slight
+mistakes, but they were not to be undone, and their combined force had
+swung him a long way from the course he had plotted for himself. There
+was no way to explain. Hooker's Bend would judge him by the sheer
+surface of his works. What he had meant to do, his dreams and altruisms,
+they would never surmise. That was the irony of the thing.
+
+Then he thought of Cissie Dildine who did understand him. This thought
+might have been Cissie's cue to enter the stage of Peter's mind. Her
+oval, creamy face floated between Peter's eyes and the dog-eared primer.
+He thought of Cissie wistfully, and of her lonely fight for good
+English, good manners, and good taste. There was a pathos about Cissie.
+
+Peter got up from his chair and looked out at his high window into the
+early afternoon. He had been poring over primers for three days,
+stuffing the most heterogeneous facts. His head felt thick and slightly
+feverish. Through his window he saw the side of another negro cabin, but
+by looking at an angle eastward he could see a field yellow with corn, a
+valley, and, beyond, a hill wooded and glowing with the pageantry of
+autumn. He thought of Cissie Dildine again, of walking with her among
+the burning maples and the golden elms. He thought of the restfulness
+such a walk with Cissie would bring.
+
+As he mused, Peter's soul made one of those sharp liberating movements
+that occasionally visit a human being. The danger of Tump Pack's
+jealousy, the loss of his prestige, the necessity of learning the
+specific answers to the examination questions, all dropped away from him
+as trivial and inconsequent. He turned from the window, put away his
+books and question-slips, picked up his hat, and moved out briskly
+through his mother's room toward the door.
+
+The old woman in the kitchen must have heard him, for she called to him
+through the partition, and a moment later her bulky form filled the
+kitchen entrance. She wiped her hands on her apron and looked at him
+accusingly.
+
+"Wha you gwine, son?"
+
+"For a walk."
+
+The old negress tilted her head aslant and looked fixedly at him.
+
+"You's gwine to dat Cissie Dildine's, Peter."
+
+Peter looked at his mother, surprised and rather disconcerted that she
+had guessed his intentions from his mere footsteps. The young man
+changed his plans for his walk, and began a diplomatic denial:
+
+"No, I'm going to walk by myself. I'm tired; I'm played out."
+
+"Tired?" repeated his mother, doubtfully. "You ain't done nothin' but
+set an' turn th'ugh books an' write on a lil piece o' paper."
+
+Peter was vaguely amused in his weariness, but thought that he concealed
+his mirth from his mother.
+
+"That gets tiresome after a while."
+
+She grunted her skepticism. As Peter moved for the door she warned him:
+
+"Peter, you knows ef Tump Pack sees you, he's gwine to shoot you sho!"
+
+"Oh, no he won't; that's Tump's talk."
+
+"Talk! talk! Whut's matter wid you, Peter? Dat nigger done git crowned
+fuh killin' fo' men!" She stood staring at him with white eyes. Then she
+urged, "Now, look heah, Peter, come along an' eat yo' supper."
+
+"No, I really need a walk. I won't walk through Niggertown. I'll walk
+out in the woods."
+
+"I jes made some salmon coquettes fuh you whut'll spile ef you don' eat
+'em now."
+
+"I didn't know you were making croquettes," said Peter, with polite
+interest.
+
+"Well, I is. I gotta can o' salmon fum Miss Mollie Brownell she'd opened
+an' couldn't quite use. I doctered 'em up wid a lil vinegar an' sody,
+an' dey is 'bout as pink as dey ever wuz."
+
+A certain uneasiness and annoyance came over Peter at this persistent
+use of unwholesome foods.
+
+"Look here, Mother, you're not using old canned goods that have been
+left over?"
+
+The old negress stood looking at him in silence, but lost her coaxing
+expression.
+
+"I've told and told you about using any tainted or impure foods that the
+white people can't eat."
+
+"Well, whut ef you is?"
+
+"If it's too bad for them, it's too bad for you!"
+
+Caroline made a careless gesture.
+
+"Good Lawd, boy! I don' 'speck to eat whut's good fuh me! All I says is,
+'Grub, keep me alive. Ef you do dat, you done a good day's wuck.'"
+
+Peter was disgusted and shocked at his mother's flippancy. Modern
+colleges are atheistic, but they do exalt three gods,--food,
+cleanliness, and exercise. Now here was Peter's mother blaspheming one
+of his trinity.
+
+"I wish you 'd let me know when you want anything Mother. I'll get it
+fresh for you." His words were filial enough, but his tone carried his
+irritation.
+
+The old negress turned back to the kitchen.
+
+"Huh, boy! you been fotch up on lef'-overs," she said, and disappeared
+through the door.
+
+Peter walked to the gate, let himself out, and started off on his
+constitutional. His tiff with his mother renewed all his nervousness and
+sense of failure. His litany of mistakes renewed their dolor in his
+mind.
+
+An autumn wind was blowing, and long plumes of dust whisked up out of
+the curving street and swept over the ill-kept yards, past the cabins,
+and toward the sere fields and chromatic woods. The wind beat at the
+brown man; the dust whispered against his clothes, made him squint his
+eyes to a crack and tickled his nostrils at each breath.
+
+When Peter had gone two or three hundred yards, he became aware that
+somebody was walking immediately behind him. Tump Pack popped into his
+mind. He looked over his shoulder and then turned. Through the veils of
+flying dust he made out some one, and a moment later identified not Tump
+Pack, but the gangling form of Jim Pink Staggs, clad in a dark-blue
+sack-coat and white flannel trousers with pin stripes. It was the sort
+of costume affected by interlocutors of minstrel shows; it had a
+minstrel trigness about it.
+
+As a matter of fact, Jim Pink was a sort of semi-professional minstrel.
+Ordinarily, he ran a pressing-shop in the Niggertown crescent, but
+occasionally he impressed all the dramatic talent of Niggertown and
+really did take the road with a minstrel company. These barn-storming
+expeditions reached down into Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas.
+Sometimes they proved a great success, and the darkies rode back several
+hundred dollars ahead. Sometimes they tramped back.
+
+Jim Pink hailed Peter with a wave of his hand and a grotesque
+displacement of his mouth to one side of his face, which he had found
+effective in his minstrel buffoonery.
+
+"Whut you raisin' so much dus' about?" he called out of the corner of
+his mouth, while looking at Peter out of one half-closed eye.
+
+Peter shook his head and smiled.
+
+"Thought it mout be Mister Hooker deliverin' dat lan' you bought." Jim
+Pink flung his long, flexible face into an imitation of convulsed
+laughter, then next moment dropped it into an intense gravity and
+declared, "'Dus' thou art, to dus' returnest.'" The quotation seemed
+fruitless and silly enough, but Jim Pink tucked his head to one side as
+if listening intently to himself, then repeated sepulchrally, "'Dus'
+thou art, to dus' returnest.' By the way, Peter," he broke off cheerily,
+"you ain't happen to see Tump Pack, is you?"
+
+"No," said Peter, unamused.
+
+"Is he borrowed a gun fum you?" inquired the minstrel, solemnly.
+
+"No-o." Peter looked questioningly at the clown through half-closed
+eyes.
+
+"Huh, now dat's funny." Jim Pink frowned, and pulled down his loose
+mouth and seemed to study. He drew out a pearl-handled knife, closed his
+hand over it, blew on his fist, then opened the other hand, and
+exhibited the knife lying in its palm, with the blade open. He seemed
+surprised at the change and began cleaning his finger-nails. Jim Pink
+was the magician at his shows.
+
+Peter waited patiently for Jim Pink to impart his information, "Well,
+what's the idea?" he asked at last.
+
+"Don' know. 'Pears lak dat knife won't stay in any one han'." He looked
+at it, curiously.
+
+"I mean about Tump," said Peter, impatiently.
+
+"O-o-oh, yeah; you mean 'bout Tump. Well, I thought Tump mus' uv
+borrowed a gun fum you. He lef' Hobbett's corner wid a great big forty-
+fo', inquirin' wha you is." Just then he glanced up, looked
+penetratingly through the dust-cloud, and added, "Why, I b'lieve da' 's
+Tump now."
+
+With a certain tightening of the nerves, Peter followed his glance, but
+made out nothing through the fogging dust. When he looked around at Jim
+Pink again, the buffoon's face was a caricature of immense mirth. He
+shook it sober, abruptly, minstrel fashion.
+
+"Maybe I's mistooken," he said solemnly. "Tump did start over heah wid a
+gun, but Mister Dawson Bobbs done tuk him up fuh ca'yin' concealed
+squidjulums; so Tump's done los' dat freedom uv motion in de pu'suit uv
+happiness gua'anteed us niggers an' white folks by the Constitution uv
+de Newnighted States uv America." Here Jim Pink broke into genuine
+laughter, which was quite a different thing from his stage grimaces.
+Peter stared at the fool astonished.
+
+"Has he gone to jail?"
+
+"Not prezactly."
+
+"Well--confound it!--exactly what did happen, Jim Pink?"
+
+"He gone to Mr. Cicero Throgmartins'."
+
+"What did he go there for?"
+
+"Couldn't he'p hisse'f."
+
+"Look here, you tell me what's happened."
+
+"Mr. Bobbs ca'ied Tump thaiuh. Y' see, Mr. Throgmartin tried to hire
+Tump to pick cotton. Tump didn't haf to, because he'd jes shot fo'
+natchels in a crap game. So to-day, when Tump starts over heah wid his
+gun, Mr. Bobbs 'resses Tump. Mr. Throgmartin bails him out, so now
+Tump's gone to pick cotton fuh Mr. Throgmartin to pay off'n his fine."
+Here Jim Pink yelped into honest laughter at Tump's undoing so that dust
+got into his nose and mouth and set him sneezing and coughing.
+
+"How long's he up for?" asked Peter, astonished and immensely relieved
+at this outcome of Tump's expedition against himself.
+
+Jim Pink controlled his coughing long enough to gasp:
+
+"Th-thutty days, ef he don' run off," and fell to laughing again.
+
+Peter Siner, long before, had adopted the literate man's notion of what
+is humorous, and Tump's mishap was slap-stick to him. Nevertheless, he
+did smile. The incident filled him with extraordinary relief and
+buoyancy. At the next corner he made some excuse to Jim Pink, and turned
+off up an alley.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+Peter walked along with his shoulders squared and the dust peppering his
+back. Not till Tump was lifted from his mind did he realize what an
+incubus the soldier had been. Peter had been forced into a position
+where, if he had killed Tump, he would have been ruined; if he had not,
+he would probably have murdered. Now he was free--for thirty days.
+
+He swung along briskly in the warm sunshine toward the multicolored
+forest. The day had suddenly become glorious. Presently he found himself
+in the back alleys near Cissie's house. He was passing chicken-houses
+and stables. Hogs in open pens grunted expectantly at his footsteps.
+
+Peter had not meant to go to Cissie's at all, but now, when he saw he
+was right behind her dwelling, she seemed radiantly accessible to him.
+Still, it struck him that it would not be precisely the thing to call on
+Cissie immediately after Tump's arrest. It might look as if--Then the
+thought came that, as a neighbor, he should stop and tell Cissie of
+Tump's misfortune. He really ought to offer his services to Cissie, if
+he could do anything. At Cissie's request he might even aid Tump Pack
+himself. Peter got himself into a generous glow as he charged up a side
+alley, around to a rickety front gate. Let Niggertown criticize as it
+would, he was braced by a high altruism.
+
+Peter did not shout from the gate, as is the fashion of the crescent,
+but walked up a little graveled path lined with dusty box-shrubs and
+tapped at the unpainted door.
+
+Doors in Niggertown never open straight away to visitors. A covert
+inspection first takes place from the edges of the window-blinds.
+
+Peter stood in the whipping dust, and the caution of the inmates spurred
+his impatience to see Cissie. At last the door opened, and Cissie
+herself was in the entrance. She stood quite still a moment, looking at
+Peter with eyes that appeared frightened.
+
+"I--I wasn't expecting to see you," she stammered.
+
+"No? I came by with news, Cissie."
+
+"News?" She seemed more frightened than ever. "Peter, you--you haven't--
+" She paused, regarding him with big eyes.
+
+"Tump Pack's been arrested," explained Peter, quickly, sensing the
+tragedy in her thoughts. "I came by to tell you. If there's anything I
+can do for you--or him, I'll do it."
+
+His altruistic offer sounded rather foolish in the actual saying.
+
+He could not tell from her face whether she was glad or sorry.
+
+"What did they arrest him for?"
+
+"Carrying a pistol."
+
+She paused a moment.
+
+"Will he--get out soon?"
+
+"He's sentenced for thirty days."
+
+Cissie dropped her hands with a hopeless gesture.
+
+"Oh, isn't this all sickening!--sickening!" she exclaimed. She looked
+tired. Ghosts of sleepless nights circled her eyes. Suddenly she said,
+"Come in. Oh, do come in, Peter." She reached out and almost pulled him
+in. She was so urgent that Peter might have fancied Tump Pack at the
+gate with his automatic. He did glance around, but saw nobody passing
+except the Arkwright boy. The hobbledehoy walked down the other side of
+the street, hands thrust in pockets, with the usual discontented
+expression on his face.
+
+Cissie slammed the door shut, and the two stood rather at a loss in the
+sudden gloom of the hall. Cissie broke into a brief, mirthless laugh.
+
+"Peter, it's hard to be nice in Niggertown. I--I just happened to think
+how folks would gossip--you coming here as soon as Tump was arrested."
+
+"Perhaps I'd better go," suggested Peter, uncomfortably.
+
+Cissie reached up and caught his lapel.
+
+"Oh, no, don't feel that way! I'm glad you came, really. Here, let's go
+through this way to the arbor. It isn't a bad place to sit."
+
+She led the way silently through two dark rooms. Before she opened the
+back door, Peter could hear Cissie's mother and a younger sister moving
+around the outside of the house to give up the arbor to Cissie and her
+company.
+
+The arbor proved a trellis of honeysuckle over the back door, with a
+bench under it. A film of dust lay over the dense foliage, and a few
+withered blooms pricked its grayish green. The earthen floor of the
+arbor was beaten hard and bare by the naked feet of children.
+
+Cissie sat down on the bench and indicated a place beside her.
+
+"I've been so uneasy about you! I've been wondering what on earth you
+could do about it."
+
+"It's a snarl, all right," he said, and almost immediately began
+discussing the peculiar _impasse_ in which his difficulty with Tump
+had landed him. Cissie sat listening with a serious, almost tragic face,
+giving a little nod now and then. Once she remarked in her precise way:
+
+"The trouble with a gentleman fighting a rowdy, the gentleman has all to
+lose and nothing to gain. If you don't live among your own class, Peter,
+your life will simmer down to an endless diplomacy."
+
+"You mean deceit, I suppose."
+
+"No, I mean diplomacy. But that isn't a very healthy frame of mind,--
+always to be suppressing and guarding yourself."
+
+Peter didn't know about that. He was inclined to argue the matter, but
+Cissie wouldn't argue. She seemed to assume that all of her statements
+were axioms, truths reduced to the simplest possible mental terms, and
+that proof was unnecessary, if not impossible. So the topic went into
+the discard.
+
+"Been baking my brains over a lot of silly little exam questions,"
+complained Peter. "Can you trace the circulation of the blood? I think
+it leaves the grand central station through the right aorta, and then,
+after a schedule run of nine minutes, you can hear it coming up the
+track through the left ventricle, with all the passengers eager to get
+off and take some refreshment at the lungs. I have the general idea, but
+the exact routing gets me."
+
+Cissie laughed accommodatingly.
+
+"I wonder why it's necessary for everybody to know that once. I did. I
+could follow the circulation the right way or backward."
+
+"Must have been harder backward, going against the current."
+
+Cissie laughed again. A girl's part in a witty conversation might seem
+easy at first sight. She has only to laugh at the proper intervals.
+However, these intervals are not always distinctly marked. Some girls
+take no chances and laugh all the time.
+
+Cissie's appreciation was the sedative Peter needed. The relief of her
+laughter and her presence ran along his nerves and unkinked them, like a
+draft of Kentucky Special after a debauch. The curves of her cheek, the
+tilt of her head, and the lift of her dull-blue blouse at the bosom wove
+a great restfulness about Peter. The brooch of old gold glinted at her
+throat. The heavy screen of the arbor gave them a sweet sense of
+privacy. The conversation meandered this way and that, and became quite
+secondary to the feeling of the girl's nearness and sympathy. Their talk
+drifted back to Peter's mission here in Hooker's Bend, and Cissie was
+saying:
+
+"The trouble is, Peter, we are out of our _milieu_." Some portion
+of Peter's brain that was not basking in the warmth and invitation of
+the girl answered quite logically:
+
+"Yes, but if I could help these people, Cissie, reconstruct our life
+here culturally--"
+
+Cissie shook her head. "Not culturally."
+
+This opposition shunted more of Peter's thought to the topic in hand. He
+paused interrogatively.
+
+"Racially," said Cissie.
+
+"Racially?" repeated the man, quite lost.
+
+Cissie nodded, looking straight into his eyes. "You know very well,
+Peter, that you and I are not--are not anything near full bloods. You
+know that racially we don't belong in--Niggertown."
+
+Peter never knew exactly how this extraordinary sentence had come about,
+but in a kind of breath he realized that he and this almost white girl
+were not of Niggertown. No doubt she had been arguing that he, Peter,
+who was one sort of man, was trying to lead quite another sort of men
+moved by different racial impulses, and such leading could only come to
+confusion. He saw the implications at once.
+
+It was an extraordinary idea, an explosive idea, such as Cissie seemed
+to have the faculty of touching off. He sat staring at her.
+
+It was the white blood in his own veins that had sent him struggling up
+North, that had brought him back with this flame in his heart for his
+own people. It was the white blood in Cissie that kept her struggling to
+stand up, to speak an unbroken tongue, to gather around her the delicate
+atmosphere and charm of a gentlewoman. It was the Caucasian in them
+buried here in Niggertown. It was their part of the tragedy of millions
+of mixed blood in the South. Their common problem, a feeling of their
+joint isolation, brought Peter to a sense of keen and tingling nearness
+to the girl.
+
+She was talking again, very earnestly, almost tremulously:
+
+"Why don't you go North, Peter? I think and think about you staying
+here. You simply can't grow up and develop here. And now, especially,
+when everybody doubts you. If you'd go North--"
+
+"What about you, Cissie? You say we're together--"
+
+"Oh, I'm a woman. We haven't the chance to do as we will."
+
+A kind of titillation went over Peter's scalp and body.
+
+"Then you are going to stay here and marry--Tump?" He uttered the name
+in a queer voice.
+
+Tears started in Cissie's eyes; her bosom lifted to her quick breathing.
+
+
+"I--I don't know what I'm going to do," she stammered miserably.
+
+Peter leaned over her with a drumming heart; he heard her catch her
+breath.
+
+"You don't care for Tump?" he asked with a dry mouth.
+
+She gasped out something, and the next moment Peter felt her body sink
+limply in his groping arms. They clung together closely, quiveringly.
+Three nights of vigil, each thinking miserably and wistfully of the
+other, had worn the nerves of both man and girl until they were ready to
+melt together at a touch. Her soft body clinging to his own, the little
+nervous pressures of her arms, her eased breathing at his neck, wiped
+away Siner's long sense of strain. Strength and peace seemed to pour
+from her being into his by a sort of spiritual osmosis. She resigned her
+head to his palm in order that he might lift her lips to his when he
+pleased. After all, there is no way for a man to rest without a woman.
+All he can do is to stop work.
+
+For a long time they sat transported amid the dusty honeysuckles and
+withered blooms, but after a while they began talking a little at a time
+of the future, their future. They felt so indissolubly joined that they
+could not imagine the future finding them apart. There was no need for
+any more trouble with Tump Pack. They would marry quietly, and go away
+North to live. Peter thought of his friend Farquhar. He wondered if
+Farquhar's attitude would be just the same toward Cissie as it was
+toward him.
+
+"North," was the burden of the octoroon's dreams. They would go North to
+Chicago. There were two hundred and fifty thousand negroes in Chicago, a
+city within itself three times the size of Nashville. Up North she and
+Peter could go to theaters, art galleries, could enter any church, could
+ride in street-cars, railroad-trains, could sleep and eat at any hotel,
+live authentic lives.
+
+It was Cissie planning her emancipation, planning to escape her lifelong
+disabilities.
+
+"Oh, I'll be so glad! so glad! so glad!" she sobbed, and drew Peter's
+head passionately down to her deep bosom.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER V
+
+
+Peter Siner walked home from the Dildine cabin that night rather
+dreading to meet his mother, for it was late. Cissie had served
+sandwiches and coffee on a little table in the arbor, and then had kept
+Peter hours afterward. Around him still hung the glamour of Cissie's
+little supper. He could still see her rounded elbows that bent softly
+backward when she extended an arm, and the glimpses of her bosom when
+she leaned to hand him cream or sugar. She had accomplished the whole
+supper in the white manner, with all poise and daintiness. In fact, no
+one is more exquisitely polite than an octoroon woman when she desires
+to be polite, when she elevates the subserviency of her race into
+graciousness.
+
+However, the pleasure and charm of Cissie were fading under the
+approaching abuse that Caroline was sure to pour upon the girl. Peter
+dreaded it. He walked slowly down the dark semicircle, planning how he
+could best break to his mother the news of his engagement. Peter knew
+she would begin a long bill of complaints,--how badly she was treated,
+how she had sacrificed herself, her comfort, how she had washed and
+scrubbed. She would surely charge Cissie with being a thief and a drab,
+and all the announcements of engagements that Peter could make would
+never induce the old woman to soften her abuse. Indeed, they would make
+her worse.
+
+So Peter walked on slowly, smelling the haze of dust that hung in the
+blackness. Out on the Big Hill, in the glade, Peter caught an occasional
+glimmer of light where crap-shooters and boot-leggers were beginning
+their nightly carousal.
+
+These evidences of illicit trades brought Peter a thrill of disgust. In
+a sort of clear moment he saw that he could not keep Cissie in such a
+sty as this. He could not rear in such a place as this any children that
+might come to him and Cissie. His thoughts drifted back to his mother,
+and his dread of her tongue.
+
+The Siner cabin was dark and tightly shut when Peter let himself in at
+the gate and walked to the door. He stood a moment listening, and then
+gently pressed open the shutter. A faint light burned on the inside, a
+night-lamp with an old-fashioned brass bowl. It sat on the floor, turned
+low, at the foot of his mother's bed. The mean room was mainly in
+shadow. The old-style four-poster in which Caroline slept was an
+indistinct mound. The air was close and foul with the bad ventilation of
+all negro sleeping-rooms. The brass lamp, turned low, added smoke and
+gas to the tight quarters.
+
+The odor caught Peter in the nose and throat, and once more stirred up
+his impatience with his mother's disregard of hygiene. He tiptoed into
+the room and decided to remove the lamp and open the high, small window
+to admit a little air. He moved noiselessly and had stooped for the lamp
+when there came a creaking and a heavy sigh from the bed, and the old
+negress asked:
+
+"Is dat you, son?"
+
+Peter was tempted to stand perfectly still and wait till his mother
+dozed again, thus putting off her inevitable tirade against Cissie; but
+he answered in a low tone that it was he.
+
+"Whut you gwine do wid dat lamp, son?"
+
+"Go to bed by it, Mother."
+
+"Well, bring hit back." She breathed heavily, and moved restlessly in
+the old four-poster. As Peter stood up he saw that the patched quilts
+were all askew over her shapeless bulk. Evidently, she had not been
+resting well.
+
+Peter's conscience smote him again for worrying his mother with his
+courtship of Cissie, yet what could he do? If he had wooed any other
+girl in the world, she would have been equally jealous and grieved. It
+was inevitable that she should be disappointed and bitter; it was bound
+up in the very part and parcel of her sacrifice. A great sadness came
+over Peter. He almost wished his mother would berate him, but she
+continued to lie there, breathing heavily under her disarranged covers.
+As Peter passed into his room, the old negress called after him to
+remind him to bring the light back when he was through with it.
+
+This time something in her tone alarmed Peter.  He paused in the
+doorway.
+
+"Are you sick, Mother?" he asked.
+
+The old woman gave a yawn that changed to a groan.
+
+"I--I ain't feelin' so good."
+
+"What's the matter, Mother?"
+
+"My stomach, my--" But at that moment her sentence changed to an
+inarticulate sound, and she doubled up in bed as if caught in a spasm of
+acute agony.
+
+Peter hurried to her, thoroughly frightened, and saw sweat streaming
+down her face. He stared down at her.
+
+"Mother, you are sick! What can I do?" he cried, with a man's
+helplessness.
+
+She opened her eyes with an effort, panting now as the edge of the agony
+passed. There was a movement under the quilts, and she thrust out a
+rubber hot-water bottle.
+
+"Fill it--fum de kittle," she wheezed out, then relaxed into groans, and
+wiped clumsily at the sweat on her shining black face.
+
+Peter seized the bottle and ran into the kitchen. There he found a brisk
+fire popping in the stove and a kettle of water boiling. It showed him,
+to his further alarm, that his mother had been trying to minister to
+herself until forced to bed.
+
+The man scalded a finger and thumb pouring water into the flared mouth,
+but after a moment twisted on the top and hurried into the sick-room.
+
+He reached the old negress just as another knife of pain set her
+writhing and sweating. She seized the hot-water bottle, pushed it under
+the quilts, and pressed it to her stomach, then lay with eyes and teeth
+clenched tight, and her thick lips curled in a grin of agony.
+
+Peter set the lamp on the table, said he was going for the doctor, and
+started.
+
+The old woman hunched up in bed. With the penuriousness of her station
+and sacrifices, she begged Peter not to go; then groaned out, "Go tell
+Mars' Renfrew," but the next moment did not want Peter to leave her.
+
+Peter said he would get Nan Berry to stay while he was gone. The Berry
+cabin lay diagonally across the street. Peter ran over, thumped on the
+door, and shouted his mother's needs. As soon as he received an answer,
+he started on over the Big Hill toward the white town.
+
+Peter was seriously frightened. His run to Dr. Jallup's, across the Big
+Hill, was a series of renewed strivings for speed. Every segment of his
+journey seemed to seize him and pin him down in the midst of the night
+like a bug caught in a black jelly. He seemed to progress not at all.
+
+Now he was in the cedar glade. His muffled flight drove in the sentries
+of the crap-shooters, and gamesters blinked out their lights and
+listened to his feet stumbling on through the darkness.
+
+After an endless run in the glade, Peter found himself on top of the
+hill, amid boulders and outcrops limestone and cedar-shrubs. His flash-
+light picked out these objects, limned them sharply against the
+blackness, then dropped them into obscurity again.
+
+He tried to run faster. His impatience subdivided the distance into
+yards and feet. Now he was approaching that boulder, now he was passing
+it; now he was ten feet beyond, twenty, thirty. Perhaps his mother was
+dying, alone save for stupid Nan Berry.
+
+Now he was going down the hill past the white church. All that was
+visible was its black spire set against a web of stars. He was making no
+speed at all. He panted on. His heart hammered. His legs drummed with
+Lilliputian paces. Now he was among the village stores, all utterly
+black. At one point the echo of his feet chattered back at him, as if
+some other futile runner strained amid vast spaces of blackness.
+
+After a long time he found himself running up a residential street, and
+presently, far ahead, he saw the glow of Dr. Jallup's porch light. Its
+beam had the appearance of coming from a vast distance. When he reached
+the place, he flung his breast against the top panel of the doctor's
+fence and held on, exhausted. He drew in his breath, and began shouting,
+"Hello, Doctor!"
+
+Peter called persistently, and as he commanded more breath, he called
+louder and louder, "Hello, Doctor! Hello, Doctor! Hello, Doctor!" in
+tones edging on panic.
+
+The doctor's house might have been dead. Somewhere a dog began barking.
+High in the Southern sky a star looked down remotely on Peter's frantic
+haste. The black man stood in the black night with cries: "Hello,
+Doctor! Hello, Doctor! Hello, Doctor!"
+
+At last, in despair, he tried to think of other doctors. He thought of
+telephoning to Jonesboro. Just as he decided he must turn away there
+came a stirring in the dead house, a flicker of light appeared on the
+inside now here, now there; it steadied into a tiny beam and approached
+the door. The door opened, and Dr. Jallup's head and breast appeared,
+illuminated against the black interior.
+
+"My mother's sick, Doctor," began Peter, in immense relief.
+
+"Who is it?" inquired the half-clad man, impassively.
+
+"Caroline Siner; she's been taken with a--"
+
+The physician lifted his light a trifle in an effort to see Peter.
+
+"Lemme see: she's that fat nigger woman that lives in a three-roomed
+house--"
+
+"I'll show you the way," said Peter. "She's very ill."
+
+The half-dressed man shook his head.
+
+"No, Ca'line Siner owes me a five-dollar doctor's bill already. Our
+county medical association made a rule that no niggers should--"
+
+With a drying mouth, Peter Siner stared at the man of medicine.
+
+"But, my God, Doctor," gasped the son, "I'll pay you--"
+
+"Have you got the money there in your pocket?" asked Jallup,
+impassively.
+
+A sort of chill traveled deliberately over Peter's body and shook his
+voice.
+
+"N-no, but I can get it--"
+
+"Yes, you can all get it," stated the physician in dull irritation. "I'm
+tired of you niggers running up doctors' bills nobody can collect. You
+never have more than the law allows; your wages never get big enough to
+garnishee." His voice grew querulous as he related his wrongs. "No, I'm
+not going to see Ca'line Siner. If she wants me to visit her, let her
+send ten dollars to cover that and back debts, and I'll--" The end of
+his sentence was lost in the closing of his door. The light he carried
+declined from a beam to a twinkling here and there, and then vanished in
+blackness. Dr. Jallup's house became dead again. The little porch light
+in its glass box might have been a candle burning before a tomb.
+
+Peter Siner stood at the fence, licking his dry lips, with nerves
+vibrating like a struck bell. He pushed himself slowly away from the top
+plank and found his legs so weak that he could hardly walk. He moved
+slowly, back down the unseen street. The dog he had disturbed gave a few
+last growls and settled into silence.
+
+Peter moved along, wetting his dry lips, and stirring feebly among his
+dazed thoughts, hunting some other plan of action. There was a tiny
+burning spot on the left side of his occiput. It felt like a heated
+cambric needle which had been slipped into his scalp. Then he realized
+that he must go home, get ten dollars, and bring them back to Dr.
+Jallup. He started to run, but almost toppled over on his leaden legs.
+
+He plodded through the darkness, retracing the endless trail to
+Niggertown. As he passed a dark mass of shrubbery and trees, he recalled
+his mother's advice to ask aid of Captain Renfrew. It was the old
+Renfrew place that Peter was passing.
+
+The negro hesitated, then turned in at the gate in the bare hope of
+obtaining the ten dollars at once. Inside the gate Peter's feet
+encountered the scattered bricks of an old walk. The negro stood and
+called Captain Renfrew's name in a guarded voice. He was not at all sure
+of his action.
+
+Peter had called twice and was just about to go when a lamp appeared
+around the side of the house on a long portico that extended clear
+around the building. Bathed in the light of the lamp which he held over
+his head, there appeared an old man wearing a worn dressing gown.
+
+"Who is it?" he asked in a wavery voice.
+
+Peter told his name and mission.
+
+The old Captain continued holding up his light.
+
+"Oh, Peter Siner; Caroline Siner's sick? All right I'll have Jallup run
+over; I'll phone him."
+
+Peter was beginning his thanks preparatory to going, when the old man
+interrupted.
+
+"No, just stay here until Jallup comes by in his or He'll pick us both
+up. It'll save time. Come on inside. What's the matter with old
+Caroline?"
+
+The old dressing-gown led the way around the continuous piazza, to a
+room that stood open and brightly lighted on the north face of the old
+house.
+
+A great relief came to Peter at this unexpected succor. He followed
+around the piazza, trying to describe Caroline's symptoms. The room
+Peter entered was a library, a rather stately old room, lined with books
+all around the walls to about as high as a man could reach. Spaces for
+doors and windows were let in among the book-cases. The volumes
+themselves seemed composed mainly of histories and old-fashioned
+scientific books, if Peter could judge from a certain severity of their
+bindings. On a big library table burned a gasolene-lamp, which threw a
+brilliant whiteness all over the room. The table was piled with books
+and periodicals. Books and papers were heaped on every chair in the
+study except a deep Morris chair in which the old Captain had been
+sitting. A big meridional globe, about two and a half feet in diameter,
+gleamed through a film of dust in the embrasure of a window. The whole
+room had the womanless look of a bachelor's quarters, and was flavored
+with tobacco and just a hint of whisky.
+
+Old Captain Renfrew evidently had been reading when Peter called from
+the gate. Now the old man went to a telephone and rang long and briskly
+to awaken the boy who slept in the central office. Peter fidgeted as the
+old Captain stood with receiver to ear.
+
+"Hard to wake." The old gentleman spoke into the transmitter, but was
+talking to Peter. "Don't be so uneasy, Peter. Human beings are harder to
+kill than you think."
+
+There was a kindliness, even a fellowship, in Captain Renfrew's tones
+that spread like oil over Peter's raw nerves. It occurred to the negro
+that this was the first time he had been addressed as an authentic human
+being since his conversation with the two Northern men on the Pullman,
+up in Illinois. It surprised him. It was sufficient to take his mind
+momentarily from his mother. He looked a little closely at the old man
+at the telephone. The Captain wore few indices of kindness. Lines of
+settled sarcasm netted his eyes and drooped away from his old mouth. The
+very swell of his full temples and their crinkly veins marked a sardonic
+old man.
+
+At last he roused central over the wire, and impressed upon him the
+necessity of creating a stridor in Dr. Jallup's dead house, and a moment
+later a continued buzzing in the receiver betokened the operator's
+efforts to do so.
+
+The old gentleman turned around at last, holding the receiver a little
+distance from his ear.
+
+"I understand you went to Harvard, Peter."
+
+"Yes, sir." Peter took his eyes momentarily from the telephone. The old
+Southerner in the dressing-gown scrutinized the brown man. He cleared
+his throat.
+
+"You know, Peter, it gives me a--a certain satisfaction to see a Harvard
+man in Hooker's Bend. I'm a Harvard man myself."
+
+Peter stood in the brilliant light, astonished, not at Captain Renfrew's
+being a Harvard man,--he had known that,--but that this old gentleman
+was telling the fact to him, Peter Siner, a negro graduate of Harvard.
+
+It was extraordinary; it was tantamount to an offer of friendship, not
+patronage. Such an offer in the South disturbed Peter's poise; it
+touched him queerly. And it seemed to explain why Captain Renfrew had
+received Peter so graciously and was now arranging for Dr. Jallup to
+visit Caroline.
+
+Peter was moved to the conventional query, asking in what class the
+Captain had been graduated. But while his very voice was asking it,
+Peter thought what a strange thing it was that he, Peter Siner, a negro,
+and this lonely old gentleman, his benefactor, were spiritual brothers,
+both sprung from the loins of Harvard, that ancient mother of souls.
+
+[Illustration: The old gentleman turned around at last]
+
+From the darkness outside, Dr. Jallup's horn summmoned the two men.
+Captain Renfrew got out of his gown and into his coat and turned off his
+gasolene light. They walked around the piazza to the front of the house.
+In the street the head-lights of the roadster shot divergent rays
+through the darkness. They went out. The old Captain took a seat in the
+car beside the physician, while Peter stood on the running-board. A
+moment later, the clutch snarled, and the machine puttered down the
+street. Peter clung to the standards of the auto top, peering ahead.
+
+The men remained almost silent. Once Dr. Jallup, watching the dust that
+lay modeled in sharp lights and shadows under the head-lights, mentioned
+lack of rain. Their route did not lead over the Big Hill. They turned
+north at Hobbett's corner, drove around by River Street, and presently
+entered the northern end of the semicircle.
+
+The speed of the car was reduced to a crawl in the bottomless dust of
+the crescent. The head-lights swept slowly around the cabins on the
+concave side of the street, bringing them one by one into stark
+brilliance and dropping them into obscurity. The smell of refuse, of
+uncleaned stables and sties and outhouses hung in the darkness. Peter
+bent down under the top of the motor and pointed out his place. A minute
+later the machine came to a noisy halt and was choked into silence. At
+that moment, in the sweep of the head-light, Peter saw Viny Berry, one
+of Nan's younger sisters, coming up from Niggertown's public well,
+carrying two buckets of water.
+
+Viny was hurrying, plashing the water over the sides of her buckets. The
+importance of her mission was written in her black face.
+
+"She's awful thirsty," she called to Peter in guarded tones. "Nan called
+me to fetch some fraish water fum de well."
+
+Peter took the water that had been brought from the semi-cesspool at the
+end of the street. Viny hurried across the street to home and to bed.
+With the habitual twinge of his sanitary conscience, Peter considered
+the water in the buckets.
+
+"We'll have to boil this," he said to the doctor.
+
+"Boil it?" repeated Jallup, blankly. Then, he added: "Oh, yes--boil.
+Certainly."
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+A repellent odor of burned paper, breathed air, and smoky lights filled
+the close room. Nan had lighted another lamp and now the place was
+discernible in a dull yellow glow. In the corner lay a half-burned wisp
+of paper. Nan herself stood by the mound on the bed, putting straight
+the quilts that her patient had twisted awry.
+
+"She sho am bad, Doctor," said the colored woman, with big eyes.
+
+Seen in the light, Dr. Jallup was a little sandy-bearded man with a
+round, simple face, oddly overlaid with that inscrutability carefully
+cultivated by country doctors. With professional cheeriness, he
+approached the mound of bedclothes.
+
+"A little under the weather, Aunt Ca'line?" He slipped his fingers
+alongside her throat to test her temperature, at the same time drawing a
+thermometer from his waistcoat pocket.
+
+The old negress stirred, and looked up out of sick eyes.
+
+"Doctor," she gasped, "I sho got a misery heah." She indicated her
+stomach.
+
+"How do you feel?" he asked hopefully.
+
+The woman panted, then whispered:
+
+"Lak a knife was a-cuttin' an' a-tearin' out my innards." She rested,
+then added, "Not so bad now; feels mo' lak somp'n's tearin' in de nex'
+room."
+
+"Like something tearing in the next room?" repeated Jallup, emptily.
+
+"Yes, suh," she whispered. "I jes can feel hit--away off, lak."
+
+The doctor attempted to take her temperature, but the thermometer in her
+mouth immediately nauseated her, so he slipped the instrument under her
+arm.
+
+Old Caroline groaned at the slightest exertion, then, as she tossed her
+black head, she caught a glimpse of old Captain Renfrew.
+
+She halted abruptly in her restlessness, stared at the old gentleman,
+wet her dry lips with a queer brown-furred tongue.
+
+"Is dat you, Mars' Milt?" she gasped in feeble astonishment. A moment
+later she guessed the truth. "I s'pose you had to bring de doctor. 'Fo'
+Gawd, Mars' Milt--" She lay staring, with the covers rising and falling
+as she gasped for breath. Her feverish eyes shifted back and forth
+between the grim old gentleman and the tall, broad-shouldered brown man
+at the foot of her bed. She drew a baggy black arm from under the cover.
+
+"Da' 's Peter, Mars' Milt," she pointed. "Da' 's Peter, my son. He--he
+use' to be my son 'fo' he went off to school; but sence he come home, he
+been a-laughin' at me." Tears came to her eyes; she panted for a moment,
+then added: "Yeah, he done marked his mammy down fuh a nigger, Mars'
+Milt. Whut I thought wuz gwine be sweet lays bitter in my mouf." She
+worked her thick lips as if the rank taste of her sickness were the very
+flavor of her son's ingratitude.
+
+A sudden gasp and twist of her body told Nan that the old woman was
+again seized with a spasm. The neighbor woman took swift control, and
+waved out Peter and old Mr. Renfrew, while she and the doctor aided the
+huge negress.
+
+The two evicted men went into Peter's room and shut the door. Peter,
+unnerved, groped, and presently found and lighted a lamp. He put it down
+on his little table among his primary papers and examination papers. He
+indicated to Captain Renfrew the single chair in the room.
+
+But the old gentleman stood motionless in the mean room, with its head-
+line streaked walls. Sounds of the heavy lifting of Peter's mother came
+through the thin door and partition with painful clearness. Peter opened
+his own small window, for the air in his room was foul.
+
+Captain Renfrew stood in silence, with a remote sarcasm in his wrinkled
+eyes. What was in his heart, why he had subjected himself to the
+noisomeness of failing flesh, Peter had not the faintest idea. Once, out
+of studently habit, he glanced at Peter's philosophic books, but
+apparently he read the titles without really observing them. Once he
+looked at Peter.
+
+"Peter," he said colorlessly, "I hope you'll be careful of Caroline's
+feelings if she ever gets up again. She has been very faithful to you,
+Peter."
+
+Peter's eyes dampened. A great desire mounted in him to explain himself
+to this strange old gentleman, to show him how inevitable had been the
+breach. For some reason a veritable passion to reveal his heart to this
+his sole benefactor surged through the youth.
+
+"Mr. Renfrew," he stammered, "Mr. Renfrew--I--I--" His throat abruptly
+ached and choked. He felt his face distort in a spasm of uncontrollable
+grief. He turned quickly from this strange old man with a remote sarcasm
+in his eyes and a remote affection in his tones. Peter clenched his
+jaws, his nostrils spread in his effort stoically to bottle up his grief
+and remorse, like a white man; in an effort to keep from howling his
+agony aloud, like a negro. He stood with aching throat and blurred eyes,
+trembling, swallowing, and silent.
+
+Presently Nan Berry opened the door. She held a half-burned paper in her
+hand; Dr. Jallup stood near the bed, portioning out some calomel and
+quinine. The prevalent disease in Hooker's Bend is malaria; Dr. Jallup
+always physicked for malaria. On this occasion he diagnosed it must be a
+very severe attack of malaria indeed, so he measured out enormous doses.
+
+He took a glass of the water that Viny had brought, held up old
+Caroline's head, and washed down two big capsules into the already
+poisoned stomach of the old negress. His simple face was quite
+inscrutable as he did this. He left other capsules for Nan to administer
+at regular intervals. Then he and Captain Renfrew motored out of
+Niggertown, out of its dust and filth and stench.
+
+At four o'clock in the morning Caroline Siner died.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER VI
+
+
+When Nan Berry saw that Caroline was dead, the black woman dropped a
+glass of water and a capsule of calomel and stared. A queer terror
+seized her. She began such a wailing that it aroused others in
+Niggertown. At the sound they got out of their beds and came to the
+Siner cabin, their eyes big with mystery and fear. At the sight of old
+Caroline's motionless body they lifted their voices through the night.
+
+The lamentation carried far beyond the confines of Niggertown. The last
+gamblers in the cedar glade heard it, and it broke up their gaming and
+drinking. White persons living near the black crescent were waked out of
+their sleep and listened to the eerie sound. It rose and fell in the
+darkness like a melancholy organ chord. The wailing of the women
+quivered against the heavy grief of the men. The half-asleep listeners
+were moved by its weirdness to vague and sinister fancies. The dolor
+veered away from what the Anglo-Saxon knows as grief and was shot
+through with the uncanny and the terrible. White children crawled out of
+their small beds and groped their way to their parents. The women
+shivered and asked of the darkness, "_What_ makes the negroes howl
+so?"
+
+Nobody knew,--least of all, the negroes. Nobody suspected that the
+bedlam harked back to the jungle, to black folk in African kraals
+beating tom-toms and howling, not in grief, but in an ecstasy of terror
+lest the souls of their dead might come back in the form of tigers or
+pythons or devils and work woe to the tribe. Through the night the
+negroes wailed on, performing through custom an ancient rite of which
+they knew nothing. They supposed themselves heartbroken over the death
+of Caroline Siner.
+
+Amid this din Peter Siner sat in his room, stunned by the sudden taking
+off of his mother. The reproaches that she had expressed to old Captain
+Renfrew clung in Peter's brain. The brown man had never before realized
+the faint amusement and condescension that had flavored all his
+relations with his mother since his return home. But he knew now that
+she had felt his disapproval of her lifelong habits; that she saw he
+never explained or attempted to explain his thoughts to her, assuming
+her to be too ignorant; as she put it, "a fool."
+
+The pathos of his mother's last days, what she had expected, what she
+had received, came to Peter with the bitterness of what is finished and
+irrevocable. She had been dead only a few minutes, yet she could never
+know his grief and remorse; she could never forgive him. She was utterly
+removed in a few minutes, in a moment in the failing of a breath. The
+finality of death overpowered him.
+
+Into his room, through the thin wall, came the catch of numberless sobs,
+the long-drawn open wails, and the spasms of sobbing. Blurred voices
+called, "O Gawd! Gawd hab mercy! Hab mercy!" Now words were lost in the
+midst of confusion. The clamor boomed through the thin partition as if
+it would shake down his newspapered walls. With wet cheeks and an aching
+throat, Peter sat by his table, staring at his book-case in silence,
+like a white man.
+
+The dim light of his lamp fell over his psychologies and philosophies.
+These were the books that had given him precedence over the old
+washwoman who kept him in college. It was reading these books that had
+made him so wise that the old negress could not even follow his
+thoughts. Now in the hour of his mother's death the backs of his
+metaphysics blinked at him emptily. What signified their endless pages
+about dualism and monism, about phenomenon and noumenon? His mother was
+dead. And she had died embittered against him because he had read and
+had been bewildered by these empty, wordy volumes.
+
+A sense of profound defeat, of being ultimately fooled and cozened by
+the subtleties of white men, filled Peter Siner. He had eaten at their
+table, but their meat was not his meat. The uproar continued. Standing
+out of the din arose the burden of negro voices "Hab mercy! Gawd hab
+mercy!"
+
+In the morning the Ladies of Tabor came and washed and dressed Caroline
+Siner's body and made it ready for burial. For twenty years the old
+negress had paid ten cents a month to her society to insure her burial,
+and now the lodge made ready to fulfil its pledge. After many comings
+and goings, the black women called Peter to see their work, as if for
+his approval.
+
+The huge dead woman lay on the four-poster with a sheet spread over the
+lower part of her body. The ministrants had clothed it in the old black-
+silk dress, with its spreading seams and panels of different materials.
+It reminded Peter of the new dress he had meant to get his mother, and
+of the modish suit which at that moment molded his own shoulders and
+waist. The pitifulness of her sacrifices trembled in Peter's throat. He
+pressed his lips together, and nodded silently to the black Ladies of
+Tabor.
+
+Presently the white undertaker, a silent little man with a brisk yet
+sympathetic air, came and made some measurements. He talked to Peter in
+undertones about the finishing of the casket, how much the Knights of
+Tabor would pay, what Peter wanted. Then he spoke of the hour of burial,
+and mentioned a somewhat early hour because some of the negroes wanted
+to ship as roustabouts on the up-river packet, which was due at any
+moment.
+
+These decisions, asked of Peter, kept pricking him and breaking through
+the stupefaction of this sudden tragedy. He kept nodding a mechanical
+agreement until the undertaker had arranged all the details. Then the
+little man moved softly out of the cabin and went stepping away through
+the dust of Niggertown with professional briskness. A little later two
+black grave-diggers set out with picks and shovels for the negro
+graveyard.
+
+Numberless preparations for the funeral were going on all over
+Niggertown. The Knights of Tabor were putting on their regalia. Negro
+women were sending out hurry notices to white mistresses that they would
+be unable to cook the noonday meal. Dozens of negro girls flocked to the
+hair-dressing establishment of Miss Mallylou Speers. All were bent on
+having their wool straightened for the obsequies, and as only a few of
+them could be accommodated, the little room was packed. A smell of
+burning hair pervaded it. The girls sat around waiting their turn. Most
+of them already had their hair down,--or, rather loose, for it stood out
+in thick mats. The hair-dresser had a small oil stove on which lay
+heating half a dozen iron combs. With a hot comb she teased each strand
+of wool into perfect straightness and then plastered it down with a
+greasy pomade. The result was a stiff effect, something like the hair of
+the Japanese. It required about three hours to straighten the hair of
+one negress. The price was a dollar and a half.
+
+By half-past nine o'clock a crowd of negro men, in lodge aprons and with
+spears, and negro women, with sashes of ribbon over their shoulders and
+across the breasts, assembled about the Siner cabin. In the dusty
+curving street were ranged half a dozen battered vehicles,--a hearse, a
+delivery wagon, some rickety buggies, and a hack. Presently the
+undertaker arrived with a dilapidated black hearse which he used
+especially for negroes. He jumped down, got out his straps and coffin
+stands, directed some negro men to bring in the coffin, then hurried
+into the cabin with his air of brisk precision.
+
+He placed the coffin on the stands near the bed; then a number of men
+slipped the huge black body into it. The undertaker settled old
+Caroline's head against the cotton pillows, running his hand down beside
+her cheek and tipping her face just so. Then he put on the cover, which
+left a little oval opening just above her dead face. The sight of old
+Caroline's face seen through the little oval pane moved some of the
+women to renewed sobs. Eight black men took up the coffin and carried it
+out with the slow, wide-legged steps of roustabouts. Parson Ranson, in a
+rusty Prince Albert coat, took Peter's arm and led him to the first
+vehicle after the hearse. It was a delivery wagon, but it was the best
+vehicle in the procession.
+
+As Peter followed the coffin out, he saw the Knights and Ladies of Tabor
+lined up in marching order behind the van. The men held their spears and
+swords at attention; the women carried flowers. Behind the marchers came
+other old vehicles, a sorry procession.
+
+At fifteen minutes to ten the bell in the steeple of the colored church
+tolled a single stroke. The sound quivered through the sunshine over
+Niggertown. At its signal the poor procession moved away through the
+dust. At intervals the bell tolled after the vanishing train.
+
+As the negroes passed through the white town the merchants, lolling in
+their doors, asked passers-by what negro had died. The idlers under the
+mulberry in front of the livery-stable nodded at the old negro preacher
+in his long greenish-black coat, and Dawson Bobbs remarked:
+
+"Well, old Parson Ranson's going to tell 'em about it to-day," and he
+shifted his toothpick with a certain effect of humor.
+
+Old Mr. Tomwit asked if his companions had ever heard how Newt Bodler, a
+wit famous in Wayne County, once broke up a negro funeral with a
+hornets' nest. The idlers nodded a smiling affirmative as they watched
+the cortege go past. They had all heard it. But Mr. Tomwit would not be
+denied. He sallied forth into humorous reminiscence. Another loafer
+contributed an anecdote of how he had tied ropes to a dead negro so as
+to make the corpse sit up in bed and frighten the mourners.
+
+All their tales were of the vintage of the years immediately succeeding
+the Civil War,--pioneer humor, such as convulsed the readers of Peck's
+Bad Boy, Mr. Bowser, Sut Lovingood. The favorite dramatic properties of
+such writers were the hornets' nest, the falling ladder, the banana
+peel. They cultivated the humor of contusions, the wit of impact. This
+style still holds the stage of Hooker's Bend.
+
+In telling these tales the white villagers meant no special disrespect
+to the negro funeral. It simply reminded them of humorous things; so
+they told their jokes, like the naive children of the soil that they
+were.
+
+At last the poor procession passed beyond the white church, around a
+bend in the road, and so vanished. Presently the bell in Niggertown
+ceased tolling.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+Peter always remembered his mother's funeral in fragments of intolerable
+pathos,--the lifting of old Parson Ranson's hands toward heaven, the
+songs of the black folk, the murmur of the first shovelful of dirt as it
+was lowered to the coffin, and the final raw mound of earth littered
+with a few dying flowers. With that his mother--who had been so near to,
+and so disappointed in, her son--was blotted from his life. The other
+events of the funeral flowed by in a sort of dream: he moved about; the
+negroes were speaking to him in the queer overtones one uses to the
+bereaved; he was being driven back to Niggertown; he reentered the Siner
+cabin. One or two of his friends stayed in the room with him for a while
+and said vague things, but there was nothing to say.
+
+Later in the afternoon Cissie Dildine and her mother brought his dinner
+to him. Vannie Dildine, a thin yellow woman, uttered a few disjointed
+words about Sister Ca'line being a good woman, and stopped amid
+sentence. There was nothing to say. Death had cut a wound across Peter
+Siner's life. Not for days, nor weeks, nor months, would his existence
+knit solidly back together. The poison of his ingratitude to his
+faithful old black mother would for a long, long day prevent the
+healing.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VII
+
+
+During a period following his mother's death Peter Siner's life drifted
+emptily and without purpose. He had the feeling of one convalescing in a
+hospital. His days passed unconnected by any thread of purpose; they
+were like cards scattered on a table, meaning nothing.
+
+At times he struggled against his lethargy. When he awoke in the morning
+and found the sun shining on his dusty primers and examination papers,
+he would think that he ought to go back to his old task; but he never
+did. In his heart grew a conviction that he would never teach school at
+Hooker's Bend.
+
+He would rise and dress slowly in the still cabin, thinking he must soon
+make new plans and take up some work. He never decided precisely what
+work; his thoughts trailed on in vague, idle designs.
+
+In fact, during Peter's reaction to his shock there began to assert
+itself in him that capacity for profound indolence inherent in his negro
+blood. To a white man time is a cumulative excitant. Continuous and
+absolute idleness is impossible; he must work, hunt, fish, play, gamble,
+or dissipate,--do something to burn up the accumulating sugar in his
+muscles. But to a negro idleness is an increasing balm; it is a
+stretching of his legs in the sunshine, a cat-like purring of his
+nerves; while his thoughts spread here and there in inconsequences, like
+water without a channel, making little humorous eddies, winding this way
+and that into oddities and fantasies without ever feeling that
+constraint of sequence which continually operates in a white brain. And
+it is this quality that makes negroes the entertainers of children
+_par excellence_.
+
+Peter Siner's mental slackening made him understandable, and gave him a
+certain popularity in Nigger-town. Black men fell into the habit of
+dropping in at the Siner cabin, where they would sit outdoors, with
+chairs propped against the wall, and philosophize on the desultory life
+of the crescent. Sometimes they would relate their adventures on the
+river packets and around the docks at Paducah, Cairo, St. Joe, and St.
+Louis; usually a recountal of drunkenness, gaming, fighting, venery,
+arrests, jail sentences, petty peculations, and escapes. Through these
+Iliads of vagabondage ran an irresponsible gaiety, a non-morality, and a
+kind of unbrave zest for adventure. They told of their defeats and
+flights with as much relish and humor as of their charges and victories.
+And while the spirit was thoroughly pagan, these accounts were full of
+the cliches of religion. A roustabout whom every one called the
+Persimmon confided to Peter that he meant to cut loose some logs in a
+raft up the river, float them down a little way, tie them up again, and
+claim the prize-money for salvaging them, God willing.
+
+The Persimmon was so called from a scar on his long slanting head. A
+steamboat mate had once found him asleep in the passageway of a lumber
+pile which the boat was lading, and he waked the negro by hitting him in
+the head with a persimmon bolt. In this there was nothing unusual or
+worthy of a nickname. The point was, the mate had been mistaken: the
+Persimmon was not working on his boat at all. In time this became one of
+the stock anecdotes which pilots and captains told to passengers
+traveling up and down the river.
+
+The Persimmon was a queer-looking negro; his head was a long diagonal
+from its peak down to his pendent lower lip, for he had no chin. The
+salient points on this black slope were the Persimmon's sad, protruding
+yellow eyeballs, over which the lids always drooped about half closed.
+An habitual tipping of this melancholy head to one side gave the
+Persimmon the look of one pondering and deploring the amount of sin
+there was in the world. This saintly impression the Persimmon's conduct
+and language never bore out.
+
+At the time of the Persimmon's remarks about the raft two of Peter's
+callers, Jim Pink Staggs and Parson Ranson, took the roustabout to task.
+Jim Pink based his objection on the grounds of glutting the labor
+market.
+
+"Ef us niggers keeps turnin' too many raf's loose fuh de prize-money,"
+he warned, "somebody's goin' to git 'spicious, an' you'll ruin a good
+thing."
+
+The Persimmon absorbed this with a far-away look in his half-closed
+eyes.
+
+"It's a ticklish job," argued Parson Ranson, "an' I wouldn't want to
+wuck at de debbil's task aroun' de ribber, ca'se you mout fall in,
+Persimmon, an' git drownded."
+
+"I wouldn't do sich a thing a-tall," admitted the Persimmon, "but I jes'
+natchelly got to git ten dollars to he'p pay on my divo'ce."
+
+"I kain't see whut you want wid a divo'ce," said Jim Pink, yawning,
+"when you been ma'ied three times widout any."
+
+"It's fuh a Christmas present," explained the Persimmon, carelessly,
+"fuh th' woman I'm libin' wid now. Mahaly's a great woman fuh style. I'm
+goin' to divo'ce my other wives, one at a time lak my lawyer say."
+
+"On what grounds?" asked Peter, curiously.
+
+"Desuhtion."
+
+"Desertion?"
+
+"Uh huh; I desuhted 'em."
+
+Jim Pink shook his head, picked up a pebble, and began idly juggling it,
+making it appear double, single, treble, then single again.
+
+"Too many divo'ces in dis country now, Persimmon," he moralized.
+
+"Well, whut's de cause uv 'em?" asked the Persimmon, suddenly bringing
+his protruding yellow eyes around on the sleight-of-hand performer.
+
+Jim Pink was slightly taken aback; then he said:
+
+"'Spicion; nothin' but 'spicion."
+
+"Yeah, 'spicion," growled the Persimmon; "'spicion an' de husban'
+leadin' a irreg'lar life."
+
+Jim Pink looked at his companion, curiously.
+
+"The husban'--leadin' a irreg'lar life?"
+
+"Yeah,"--the Persimmon nodded grimly,--"the husban' comin' home at
+onexpected hours. You know whut I means, Jim Pink."
+
+Jim Pink let his pebble fall and lowered the fore legs of his chair
+softly to the ground.
+
+"Now, look heah, Persimmon, you don' want to be draggin' no foreign
+disco'se into yo' talk heah befo' Mr. Siner an' Parson Ranson."
+
+The Persimmon rose deliberately.
+
+"All I want to say is, I drapped off'n de matrimonial tree three times
+a'ready, Jim Pink, an' I think I feels somebody shakin' de limb ag'in."
+
+The old negro preacher rose, too, a little behind Jim Pink.
+
+"Now, boys! boys!" he placated. "You jes think dat, Persimmon."
+
+"Yeah," admitted Persimmon, "I jes think it; but ef I b'lieve ever'thing
+is so whut I think is so, I'd part Jim Pink's wool wid a brickbat."
+
+Parson Ranson tried to make peace, but the Persimmon spread his hands in
+a gesture that included the three men. "Now, I ain't sayin' nothin'," he
+stated solemnly, "an' I ain't makin' no threats; but ef anything
+happens, you-all kain't say that nobody didn' tell nobody about
+nothin'."
+
+With this the Persimmon walked to the gate, let himself out, still
+looking back at Jim Pink, and then started down the dusty street.
+
+Mr. Staggs seemed uncomfortable under the Persimmon's protruding yellow
+stare, but finally, when the roustabout was gone, he shrugged, regained
+his aplomb, and remarked that some niggers spent their time in studyin'
+'bout things they hadn't no info'mation on whatever. Then he strolled
+off up the crescent in the other direction.
+
+All this would have made fair minstrel patter if Peter Siner had shared
+the white conviction that every emotion expressed in a negro's patois is
+humorous. Unfortunately, Peter was too close to the negroes to hold such
+a tenet. He knew this quarrel was none the less rancorous for having
+been couched in the queer circumlocution of black folk. And behind it
+all shone the background of racial promiscuity out of which it sprang.
+It was like looking at an open sore that touched all of Niggertown, men
+and boys, young girls and women. It caused tragedies, murders, fights,
+and desertions in the black village as regularly as the rotation of the
+calendar; yet there was no public sentiment against it. Peter wondered
+how this attitude of his whole people could possibly be.
+
+With the query the memory of Ida May came back to him, with its sense of
+dim pathos. It seemed to Peter now as if their young and uninstructed
+hands had destroyed a safety-vault to filch a penny.
+
+The reflex of a thought of Ida May always brought Peter to Cissie; it
+always stirred up in him a desire to make this young girl's path gentle
+and smooth. There was a fineness, a delicacy about Cissie, that, it
+seemed to Peter, Ida May had never possessed. Then, too, Cissie was
+moved by a passion for self-betterment. She deserved a cleaner field
+than the Niggertown of Hooker's Bend.
+
+Peter took Parson Ranson's arm, and the two moved to the gate by common
+consent. It was no longer pleasant to sit here. The quarrel they had
+heard somehow had flavored their surroundings.
+
+Peter turned his steps mechanically northward up the crescent toward the
+Dildine cabin. Nothing now restrained him from calling on Cissie; he
+would keep no dinner waiting; he would not be warned and berated on his
+return home. The nagging, jealous love of his mother had ended.
+
+As the two men walked along, it was borne in upon Peter that his
+mother's death definitely ended one period of his life. There was no
+reason why he should continue his present unsettled existence. It seemed
+best to marry Cissie at once and go North. Further time in this place
+would not be good for the girl. Even if he could not lift all
+Niggertown, he could at least help Cissie. He had had no idea, when he
+first planned his work, what a tremendous task he was essaying. The
+white village had looked upon the negroes so long as non-moral and non-
+human that the negroes, with the flexibility of their race, had
+assimilated that point of view. The whites tried to regulate the negroes
+by endless laws. The negroes had come to accept this, and it seemed that
+they verily believed that anything not discovered by the constable was
+permissible. Mr. Dawson Bobbs was Niggertown's conscience. It was best
+for Peter to take from this atmosphere what was dearest to him, and go
+at once.
+
+The brown man's thoughts came trailing back to the old negro parson
+hobbling at his side. He looked at the old man, hesitated a moment, then
+told him what was in his mind.
+
+Parson Ranson's face wrinkled into a grin.
+
+"You's gwine to git ma'ied?"
+
+"And I thought I'd have you perform the ceremony."
+
+This suggestion threw the old negro into excitement.
+
+"Me, Mr. Peter?"
+
+"Yes. Why not?"
+
+"Why, Mr. Peter, I kain't jine you an' Miss Cissie Dildine."
+
+Peter looked at him, astonished.
+
+"Why can't you?"
+
+"Whyn't you git a white preacher?"
+
+"Well," deliberated Peter, gravely, "it's a matter of principle with me,
+Parson Ranson. I think we colored people ought to be more self-reliant,
+more self-serving. We ought to lead our own lives instead of being mere
+echoes of white thought." He made a swift gesture, moved by this passion
+of his life. "I don't mean racial equality. To my mind racial equality
+is an empty term. One might as well ask whether pink and violet are
+equal. But what I do insist on is autonomous development."
+
+The old preacher nodded, staring into the dust. "Sho! 'tonomous
+'velopment."
+
+Peter saw that his language, if not his thought, was far beyond his old
+companion's grasp, and he lacked the patience to simplify himself.
+
+"Why don't you want to marry us, Parson?"
+
+Parson Ranson lifted his brows and filled his forehead with wrinkles.
+
+"Well, I dunno. You an' Miss Cissie acts too much lak white folks fuh a
+nigger lak me to jine you, Mr. Peter."
+
+Peter made a sincere effort to be irritated, but he was not.
+
+"That's no way to feel. It's exactly what I was talking about,--racial
+self-reliance. You've married hundreds of colored couples."
+
+"Ya-as, suh,"--the old fellow scratched his black jaw.--"I kin yoke up a
+pair uv ordina'y niggers all right. Sometimes dey sticks, sometimes dey
+don't." The old man shook his white, kinky head. "I'll bust in an' try
+to hitch up you-all. I--I dunno whedder de cer'mony will hol' away up
+North or not."
+
+"It'll be all right anywhere, Parson," said Peter, seriously. "Your name
+on the marriage-certificate will--can you write?"
+
+"N-no, suh."
+
+After a brief hesitation Peter repeated determinedly:
+
+"It'll be all right. And, by the way, of course, this will be a very
+quiet wedding."
+
+"Yas-suh." The old man bobbed importantly.
+
+"I wouldn't mention it to any one."
+
+"No, suh; no, suh. I don' blame you a-tall, Mr. Peter, wid dat Tump Pack
+gallivantin' roun' wid a forty-fo'. Hit would keep 'mos' anybody's
+weddin' ve'y quiet onless he wuz lookin' fuh a short cut to heab'n."
+
+As the two negroes passed the Berry cabin, Nan Berry thrust out her
+spiked head and called to Peter Captain Renfrew wanted to see him.
+
+Peter paused, with quickened interest in this strange old man who had
+come to his mother's death-bed with a doctor. Peter asked Nan what the
+Captain wanted.
+
+Nan did not know. Wince Washington had told Nan that the Captain wanted
+to see Peter. Bluegum Frakes had told Wince; Jerry Dillihay had told
+Bluegum; but any further meanderings of the message, when it started, or
+what its details might be, Nan could not state.
+
+It was a typical message from a resident of the white town to a denizen
+of Niggertown. Such messages are delivered to any black man for any
+other black man, not only in the village, but anywhere in the outlying
+country. It may be passed on by a dozen or a score of mouths before it
+reaches its objective. It may be a day or a week in transit, but
+eventually it will be delivered verbatim. This queer system of
+communication is a relic of slavery, when the master would send out word
+for some special negro out of two or three hundred slaves to report at
+the big house.
+
+However, as Peter approached the Dildine cabin, thoughts of his
+approaching marriage drove from his mind even old Captain Renfrew's
+message. His heart beat fast from having made his first formal step
+toward wedlock. The thought of having Cissie all to himself, swept his
+nerves in a gust.
+
+He opened the gate, and ran up between the dusty lines of dwarf box,
+eager to tell her what he had done. He thumped on the cracked, unpainted
+door, and impatiently waited the skirmish of observation along the edge
+of the window-blinds. This was unduly drawn out. Presently he heard
+women's voices whispering to each other inside. They seemed urgent,
+almost angry voices. Now and then he caught a sentence:
+
+"What difference will it make?" "I couldn't." "Why couldn't you?"
+"Because--" "That's because you've been to Nashville." "Oh, well--" A
+chair was moved over a bare floor. A little later footsteps came to the
+entrance, the door opened, and Cissie's withered yellow mother stood
+before him.
+
+Vannie offered her hand and inquired after Peter's health with a stopped
+voice that instantly recalled his mother's death. After the necessary
+moment of talk, the mulatto inquired for Cissie.
+
+The yellow woman seemed slightly ill at ease.
+
+"Cissie ain't so well, Peter."
+
+"She's not ill?"
+
+"N-no; but the excitement an' ever'thing--" answered Vannie, vaguely.
+
+In the flush of his plans, Peter was keenly disappointed.
+
+"It's very important, Mrs. Dildine."
+
+Vannie's dried yellow face framed the ghost of a smile.
+
+"Ever'thing a young man's got to say to a gal is ve'y important, Peter."
+
+It seemed to Peter a poor time for a jest; his face warmed faintly.
+
+"It--it's about some of the details of our--our wedding."
+
+"If you'll excuse her to-day, Peter, an' come after supper--"
+
+Peter hesitated, and was about to go away when Cissie's voice came from
+an inner room, telling her mother to admit him.
+
+The yellow woman glanced at the door on the left side of the hall,
+crossed over and opened it, stood to one side while Peter entered, and
+closed it after him, leaving the two alone.
+
+The room into which Peter stepped was dark, after the fashion of negro
+houses. Only after a moment's survey did he see Cissie sitting near a
+big fireplace made of rough stone. The girl started to rise as Peter
+advanced toward her, but he solicitously forbade it and hurried over to
+her. When he leaned over her and put his arms about her, his ardor was
+slightly dampened when she gave him her cheek instead of her lips to
+kiss.
+
+"Surely, you're not too ill to be kissed?" he rallied faintly.
+
+"You kissed me. I thought we had agreed, Peter, you were not to come in
+the daytime any more."
+
+"Oh, is that it?" Peter patted her shoulder, cheerfully. "Don't worry; I
+have just removed any reason why I shouldn't come any time I want to."
+
+Cissie looked at him, her dark eyes large in the gloom.
+
+"What have you done?"
+
+"Got a preacher to marry us; on my way now for a license. Dropped in to
+ask if you 'll be ready by tomorrow or next day."
+
+The girl gasped.
+
+"But, Peter--"
+
+Peter drew a chair beside her in a serious argumentative mood.
+
+"Yes I think we ought to get married at once. No reason why we shouldn't
+get it over with--Why, what's the matter?"
+
+"So soon after your mother's death, Peter?"
+
+"It's to get away from Hooker's Bend, Cissie--to get you away. I don't
+like for you to stay here. It's all so--" he broke off, not caring to
+open the disagreeable subject.
+
+The girl sat staring down at some fagots smoldering on the hearth. At
+that moment they broke into flame and illuminated her sad face.
+
+"You'll go, won't you?" asked Peter at last, with a faint uncertainty.
+
+The girl looked up.
+
+"Oh--I--I'd be glad to, Peter,"--she gave a little shiver. "Ugh! this
+Niggertown is a--a terrible place!"
+
+Peter leaned over, took one of her hands, and patted it.
+
+"Then we'll go," he said soothingly. "It's decided--tomorrow. And we'll
+have a perfectly lovely wedding trip," he planned cheerfully, to draw
+her mind from her mood. "On the car going North I'll get a whole
+drawing-room. I've always wanted a drawing-room, and you'll be my
+excuse. We'll sit and watch the fields and woods and cities slip past
+us, and know, when we get off, we can walk on the streets as freely as
+anybody. We'll be a genuine man and wife."
+
+His recital somehow stirred him. He took her in his arms, pressed her
+cheek to his, and after a moment kissed her lips with the trembling
+ardor of a bridegroom.
+
+Cissie remained passive a moment, then put up he hands, turned his face
+away, and slowly released herself.
+
+Peter was taken aback.
+
+"What _is_ the matter, Cissie?"
+
+"I can't go, Peter."
+
+Peter looked at her with a feeling of strangeness.
+
+"Can't go?"
+
+The girl shook her head.
+
+"You mean--you want us to live here?"
+
+Cissie sat exceedingly still and barely shook her head.
+
+The mulatto had a sensation as if the portals which disclosed a new and
+delicious life were slowly closing against him. He stared into her oval
+face.
+
+"You don't mean, Cissie--you don't mean you don't want to marry me?"
+
+The fagots on the hearth burned now with a cheerful flame. Cissie stared
+at it, breathing rapidly from the top of her lungs. She seemed about to
+faint. As Peter watched her the jealousy of the male crept over him.
+
+"Look here, Cissie," he said in a queer voice, "you--you don't mean,
+after all, that Tump Pack is--"
+
+"Oh no! No!" Her face showed her repulsion. Then she drew a long breath
+and apparently made up her mind to some sort of ordeal.
+
+"Peter," she asked in a low tone, "did you ever think what we colored
+people are trying to reach?" She stared into his uncomprehending eyes.
+"I mean what is our aim, our goal, whom are we trying to be like?"
+
+"We aren't trying to be like any one." Peter was entirely at a loss.
+
+"Oh, yes, we are," Cissie hurried on. "Why do colored girls straighten
+their hair, bleach their skins, pinch their feet? Aren't they trying to
+look like white girls?"
+
+Peter agreed, wondering at her excitement.
+
+"And you went North to college, Peter, so you could think and act like a
+white man--"
+
+Peter resisted this at once; he was copying nobody. The whole object of
+college was to develop one's personality, to bring out--
+
+The girl stopped his objections almost piteously.
+
+"Oh, don't argue! You know arguing throws me off. I--now I've forgotten
+how I meant to say it!" Tears of frustration welled up in her eyes.
+
+Her mood was alarming, almost hysterical. Peter began comforting her.
+
+"There, there, dear, dear Cissie, what is the matter? Don't say it at
+all." Then, inconsistently, he added: "You said I copied white men.
+Well, what of it?"
+
+Cissie breathed her relief at having been given the thread of her
+discourse. She sat silent for a moment with the air of one screwing up
+her courage.
+
+"It's this," she said in an uncertain voice: "sometimes we--we--girls--
+here in Niggertown copy the wrong thing first."
+
+Peter looked blankly at her.
+
+"The wrong thing first, Cissie?"
+
+"Oh, yes; we--we begin on clothes and--and hair and--and that isn't the
+real matter."
+
+"Why, no-o-o, that isn't the real matter," said Peter puzzled.
+
+Cissie looked at his face and became hopeless.
+
+"Oh, _don't_ you understand! Lots of us--lots of us make that
+mistake! I--I did; so--so, Peter, I can't go with you!" She flung out
+the last phrase, and suddenly collapsed on the arm of her chair,
+sobbing.
+
+Peter was amazed. He got up, sat on the arm of his own chair next to
+hers and put his arms about her, bending over her, mothering her. Her
+distress was so great that he said as earnestly as his ignorance
+permitted:
+
+"Yes, Cissie, I understand now." But his tone belied his words, and the
+girl shook her head. "Yes, I do, Cissie," he repeated emptily. But she
+only shook her head as she leaned over him, and her tears slowly formed
+and trickled down on his hand. Then all at once old Caroline's
+accusation against Cissie flashed on Peter's mind. She had stolen that
+dinner in the turkey roaster, after all. It so startled him that he sat
+up straight. Cissie also sat up. She stopped crying, and sat looking
+into the fire.
+
+"You mean--morals?" said Peter in a low tone.
+
+Cissie barely nodded, her wet eyes fixed on the fire.
+
+"I see. I was stupid."
+
+The girl sat a moment, drawing deep breaths. At last she rose slowly.
+
+"Well--I'm glad it's over. I'm glad you know." She stood looking at him
+almost composedly except for her breathing and her tear-stained face.
+"You see, Peter, if you had been like Tump Pack or Wince or any of the
+boys around here, it--it wouldn't have made much difference; but--but
+you went off and--and learned to think and feel like a white man. You--
+you changed your code, Peter." She gave a little shaken sound, something
+between a sob and a laugh. "I--I don't think th-that's very fair, Peter,
+to--to go away an'--an' change an' come back an' judge us with yo' n-new
+code." Cissie's precise English broke down.
+
+Just then Peter's logic caught at a point.
+
+"If you didn't know anything about my code, how do you know what I feel
+now?" he asked.
+
+She looked at him with a queer expression.
+
+"I found out when you kissed me under the arbor. It was too late then."
+
+She stood erect, with dismissal very clearly written in her attitude.
+Peter walked out of the room.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+With a certain feeling of clumsiness Peter groped in the dark hall for
+his hat, then, as quietly as he could, let himself out at the door.
+Outside he was surprised to find that daylight still lingered in the
+sky. He thought night had fallen. The sun lay behind the Big Hill, but
+its red rays pouring down through the boles of the cedars tinted long
+delicate avenues in the dusty atmosphere above his head. A sharp chill
+in the air presaged frost for the night. Somewhere in the crescent a boy
+yodeled for his dog at about half-minute intervals, with the persistence
+of children.
+
+Peter walked a little distance, but finally came to a stand in the dust,
+looking at the negro cabins, not knowing where to go or what to do.
+Cissie's confession had destroyed all his plans. It had left him as
+adynamic as had his mother's death. It seemed to Peter that there was a
+certain similarity between the two events; both were sudden and
+desolating. And just as his mother had vanished utterly from his reach,
+so now it seemed Cissie was no more. Cissie the clear-eyed, Cissie the
+ambitious, Cissie the refined, had vanished away, and in her place stood
+a thief.
+
+The thing was grotesque. Peter began a sudden shuddering in the cold.
+Then he began moving toward the empty cabin where he slept and kept his
+things. He moved along, talking to himself in the dusty emptiness of the
+crescent. He decided that he would go home, pack his clothes, and
+vanish. A St. Louis boat would be down that night, and he would just
+have time to pack his clothes and catch it. He would not take his books,
+his philosophies. He would let them remain, in the newspapered room,
+until all crumbled into uniform philosophic dust, and the teachings of
+Aristotle blew about Niggertown.
+
+Then, as he thought of traveling North, the vision of the honeymoon he
+had just planned revived his numb brain into a dismal aching. He looked
+back through the dusk at the Dildine roof. It stood black against an
+opalescent sky. Out of the foreground, bending over it, arose a clump of
+tall sunflowers, in whose silhouette hung a suggestion of yellow and
+green. The whole scene quivered slightly at every throb of his heart. He
+thought what a fool he was to allow a picaresque past to keep him away
+from such a woman, how easy it would be to go back to the soft luxury of
+Cissie, to tell her it made no difference; and somehow, just at that
+moment it seemed not to.
+
+Then the point of view which Peter had been four years acquiring swept
+away the impulse, and it left him moving toward his cabin again, empty,
+cold, and planless.
+
+He was drawn out of his reverie by the soft voice of a little negro boy
+asking him apprehensively whom he was talking to.
+
+Peter stopped, drew forth a handkerchief and dabbed the moisture from
+his cold face in the meticulous fashion of college men.
+
+With the boy came a dog which was cautiously smelling Peter's shoes and
+trousers. Both boy and dog were investigating the phenomenon of Peter.
+Peter, in turn, looked down at them with a feeling that they had
+materialized out of nothing.
+
+"What did you say?" he asked vaguely.
+
+The boy was suddenly overcome with the excessive shyness of negro
+children, and barely managed to whisper:
+
+"I--I ast wh-who you wuz a-talkin' to."
+
+"Was I talking?"
+
+The little negro nodded, undecided whether to stand his ground or flee.
+Peter touched the child's crisp hair.
+
+"I was talking to myself," he said, and moved forward again.
+
+The child instantly gained confidence at the slight caress, took a fold
+of Peter's trousers in his hand for friendliness, and the two trudged on
+together.
+
+"Wh-whut you talkin' to yo' se'f for?"
+
+Peter glanced down at the little black head that promised to think up a
+thousand questions.
+
+"I was wondering where to go."
+
+"Lawsy! is you los' yo' way?"
+
+He stroked the little head with a rush of self-pity.
+
+"Yes, I have, son; I've completely lost my way."
+
+The child twisted his head around and peered up alongside Peter's arm.
+Presently he asked:
+
+"Ain't you Mr. Peter Siner?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Ain't you de man whut's gwine to ma'y Miss Cissie Dildine?"
+
+Peter looked down at his small companion with a certain concern that his
+marriage was already gossip known to babes.
+
+"I'm Peter Siner," he repeated.
+
+"Den I knows which way you wants to go," piped the youngster in sudden
+helpfulness. "You wants to go over to Cap'n Renfrew's place acrost de
+Big Hill. He done sont fuh you. Mr. Wince Washington tol' me, ef I seed
+you, to tell you dat Cap'n Renfrew wants to see you. I dunno whut hit's
+about. I ast Wince, an' he didn' know."
+
+Peter recalled the message Nan Berry had given him some hours before.
+Now the same summons had seeped around to him from another direction.
+
+"I--I'll show you de way to Cap'n Renfrew's ef--ef you'll come back wid
+me th'ugh de cedar glade," proposed the child. "I--I ain't skeered in de
+cedar glade, b-b-but hit's so dark I kain't see my way back home.
+I--I--"
+
+Peter thanked him and declined his services. After all, he might as well
+go to see Captain Renfrew. He owed the old gentleman some thanks--and
+ten dollars.
+
+The only thing of which Peter Siner was aware during his walk over the
+Big Hill and through the village was his last scene with Cissie. He went
+over it again and again, repeating their conversation, inventing new
+replies, framing new action, questioning more fully into the octoroon's
+vague confession and his benumbed acceptance of it. The moment his mind
+completed the little drama it started again from the very beginning.
+
+At Captain Renfrew's gate this mental mummery paused long enough for him
+to vacillate between walking in or going around and shouting from the
+back gate. It is a point of etiquette in Hooker's Bend that negroes
+shall enter a white house from the back stoop. Peter had no desire to
+transgress this custom. On the other hand, if Captain Renfrew was
+receiving him as a fellow of Harvard, the back door, in its way, would
+prove equally embarrassing.
+
+After a certain indecision he compromised by entering the front gate and
+calling the Captain's name from among the scattered bricks of the old
+walk.
+
+The house lay silent, half smothered in a dark tangle of shrubbery.
+Peter called twice before he heard the shuffle of house slippers, and
+then saw the Captain's dressing-gown at the piazza steps.
+
+"Is that you, Peter?" came a querulous voice.
+
+"Yes, Captain. I was told you wanted to see me."
+
+"You've been deliberate in coming," criticized the old gentleman,
+testily. "I sent you word by some black rascal three days ago."
+
+"I just received the message to-day." Peter remained discreetly at the
+gate.
+
+"Yes; well, come in, come in. See if you can do anything with this
+damnable lamp."
+
+The old man turned with a dignified drawing-together of his dressing-
+gown and moved back. Apparently, the renovation of a cranky lamp was the
+whole content of the Captain's summons to Peter.
+
+There was something so characteristic in this incident that Peter was
+moved to a vague sense of mirth. It was just like the old regime to call
+in a negro, a special negro, from ten miles away to move a jar of ferns
+across the lawn or trim a box hedge or fix a lamp.
+
+Peter followed the old gentleman around to the back piazza facing his
+study. There, laid out on the floor, were all the parts of a gasolene
+lamp, together with a pipe-wrench, a hammer, a little old-fashioned
+vise, a bar of iron, and an envelop containing the mantels and the more
+delicate parts of the lamp.
+
+"It's extraordinary to me," criticized the Captain, "why they can't make
+a gasolene lamp that will go, and remain in a going condition."
+
+"Has it been out of fix for three days?" asked Peter, sorry that the old
+gentleman should have lacked a light for so long.
+
+"No," growled the Captain; "it started gasping at four o'clock last
+night; so I put it out and went to bed. I've been working at it this
+evening. There's a little hole in the tip,--if I could see it,--a hair-
+sized hole, painfully small. Why any man wants to make gasolene lamps
+with microscopic holes that ordinary intelligence must inform him will
+become clogged I cannot conceive."
+
+Peter ventured no opinion on this trait of lampmakers, but said that if
+the Captain knew where he could get an oil hand-lamp for a little more
+light, he thought he could unstop the hole.
+
+The Captain looked at his helper and shook his head.
+
+"I am surprised at you, Peter. When I was your age, I could see an
+aperture like that hole under the last quarter of the moon. In this
+strong light I could have--er--lunged the cleaner through it, sir. You
+must have strained your eyes in college." He paused, then added: "You'll
+find hand-lamps in any of the rooms fronting this porch. I don't know
+whether they have oil in them or not--the shiftless niggers that come
+around to take care of this building--no dependence to be put in them.
+When I try it myself, I do even worse."
+
+The old gentleman's tone showed that he was thawing out of his irritable
+mood, and Peter sensed that he meant to be amusing in an austere,
+unsmiling fashion. The Captain rubbed his delicate wrinkled hands
+together in a pleased fashion and sat down in a big porch chair to await
+Peter's assembling of the lamp. The brown man started down the long
+piazza, in search of a hand-light.
+
+He found a lamp in the first room he entered, returned to the piazza,
+sat down on the edge of it, and began his tinkering. The old Captain
+apparently watched him with profound satisfaction. Presently, after the
+fashion of the senile, he began endless and minute instructions as to
+how the lamp should be cleaned.
+
+"Take the wire in your left hand, Peter,--that's right,--now hold the
+tip a little closer to the light--no, place the mantels on the right
+side--that's the way I do it. System...." the old man's monologue ran on
+and on, and became a murmur in Peter's ears. It was rather soothing than
+otherwise. Now and then it held tremulous vibrations that might have
+been from age or that might have been from some deep satisfaction
+mounting even to joy. But to Peter that seemed hardly probable. No doubt
+it was senility. The Captain was a tottery old man, past the age for any
+fundamental joy.
+
+Night had fallen now, and a darkness, musky with autumn weeds, hemmed in
+the sphere of yellow light on the old piazza. A black-and-white cat
+materialized out of the gloom, purring, and arching against a pillar.
+The whole place was filled with a sense of endless leisure. The old man,
+the cat, the perfume of the weeds, soothed in Peter even the rawness of
+his hurt at Cissie.
+
+Indeed, in a way, the old manor became a sort of apology for the
+octoroon girl. The height and the reach of the piazza, exaggerated by
+the darkness, suggested a time when retinues of negroes passed through
+its dignified colonnades. Those black folk were a part of the place.
+They came and went, picked up and used what they could, and that was all
+life held for them. They were without wage, without rights, even to the
+possession of their own bodies; so by necessity they took what they
+could. That was only fifty-odd years ago. Thus, in a way, Peter's
+surroundings began a subtle explanation of and apology for Cissie, the
+whole racial training of black folk in petty thievery. And that this
+should have touched Cissie--the meanness, the pathos of her fate moved
+Peter.
+
+The negro was aroused from his reverie by the old Captain's getting out
+of his chair and saying, "Very good," and then Peter saw that he had
+finished the lamp. The two men rose and carried it into the study, where
+Peter pumped and lighted it; a bit later its brilliant white light
+flooded the room.
+
+"Quite good." The old Captain stood rubbing his hands with his odd air
+of continued delight. "How do you like this place, anyway, Peter?" He
+wrapped his gown around him, sat down in the old Morris chair beside the
+book-piled table, and indicated another seat for Peter.
+
+The mulatto took it, aware of a certain flexing of Hooker's Bend custom,
+where negroes, unless old or infirm, are not supposed to sit in the
+presence of whites.
+
+"Do you mean the study, Captain?"
+
+"Yes, the study, the whole place."
+
+"It's very pleasant," replied Peter; "it has the atmosphere of age."
+
+Captain Renfrew nodded.
+
+"These old places," pursued Peter, "always give me an impression of
+statesmanship, somehow. I always think of grave old gentlemen busy with
+the cares of public policy."
+
+The old man seemed gratified.
+
+"You are sensitive to atmosphere. If I may say it, every Southron of the
+old regime was a statesman by nature and training. The complete care of
+two or three hundred negroes, a regard for their bodily, moral, and
+spiritual welfare, inevitably led the master into the impersonal
+attitude of statecraft. It was a training, sir, in leadership, in social
+thinking, in, if you please, altruism." The old gentleman thumped the
+arm of his chair with a translucent palm. "Yes, sir, negro slavery was
+God's great lesson to the South in altruism and loving-kindness, sir! My
+boy, I do believe with all my heart that the institution of slavery was
+placed here in God's country to rear up giants of political leadership,
+that our nation might weather the revolutions of the world. Oh, the
+Yankees are necessary! I know that!" The old Captain held up a palm at
+Peter as if repressing an imminent retort. "I know the Yankees are the
+Marthas of the nation. They furnish food and fuel to the ship of state,
+but, my boy, the reservoir of our country's spiritual and mental
+strength, the Mary of our nation, must always be the South. Virginia is
+the mother of Presidents!"
+
+The Captain's oration left him rather breathless. He paused a moment,
+then asked:
+
+"Peter, have you ever thought that we men of the leisure class owe a
+debt to the world?"
+
+Peter smiled.
+
+"I know the theory of the leisure class, but I've had very little
+practical experience with leisure."
+
+"Well, that's a subject close to my heart. As a scholar and a thinker, I
+feel that I should give the fruits of my leisure to the world. Er--in
+fact, Peter, that is why I sent for you to come and see me."
+
+"Why you sent for me?" Peter was surprised at this turn.
+
+"Precisely. You."
+
+Here the old gentleman got himself out of his chair, walked across to
+one of a series of drawers in his bookcases, opened it, and took out a
+sheaf of papers and a quart bottle. He brought the papers and the bottle
+back to the table, made room for them, put the papers in a neat pile,
+and set the bottle at a certain distance from the heap.
+
+"Now, Peter, please hand me one of those wineglasses in the religious
+section of my library--I always keep two or three glasses among my
+religious works, in memory of the fact that our Lord and Master wrought
+a miracle at the feast of Cana, especially to bless the cup. Indeed,
+Peter, thinking of that miracle at the wedding-feast, I wonder, sir, how
+the prohibitionists can defend their conduct even to their own
+consciences, because logically, sir, logically, the miracle of our
+gracious Lord completely cuts away the ground from beneath their feet!
+
+"No wonder, when the Mikado sent a Japanese envoy to America to make a
+tentative examination of Christianity as a proper creed for the state
+religion of Japan--no wonder, with this miracle flouted by the
+prohibitionists, the embassy carried back the report that Americans
+really have no faith in the religion they profess. Shameful! Shameful!
+Place the glass there on the left of the bottle. A little farther away
+from the bottle, please, just a trifle more. Thank you."
+
+The Captain poured himself a tiny glassful, and its bouquet immediately
+filled the room. There was no guessing how old that whisky was.
+
+"I will not break the laws of my country, Peter, no matter how godless
+and sacrilegious those laws may be; therefore I cannot offer you a
+drink, but you will observe a second glass among the religious works,
+and the bottle sits in plain view on the table--er--em." He watched
+Peter avail himself of his opportunity, and then added, "Now, you may
+just drink to me, standing, as you are, like that."
+
+They drank, Peter standing, the old gentleman seated.
+
+"It is just as necessary," pursued the old connoisseur, when Peter was
+reseated, "it is just as necessary for a gentleman to have a delicate
+palate for the tints of the vine as it is for him to have a delicate eye
+for the tints of the palette. Nature bestowed a taste both in art and
+wine on man, which he should strive to improve at every opportunity. It
+is a gift from God. Perhaps you would like another glass. No? Then
+accommodate me."
+
+He drained this one, with Peter standing, worked his withered lips back
+and forth to experience its full taste, then swallowed, and smacked.
+
+"Now, Peter," he said, "the reason I asked you to come to see me is that
+I need a man about this house. That will be one phase of your work. The
+more important part is that you shall serve as a sort of secretary. I
+have here a manuscript." He patted the pile of papers. "My handwriting
+is rather difficult. I want you to copy this matter out and get it ready
+for the printer."
+
+Peter became more and more astonished.
+
+"Are you offering me a permanent place, Captain Renfrew?" he asked.
+
+The old man nodded.
+
+"I need a man with a certain liberality of culture. I will no doubt have
+you run through books and periodicals and make note of any points
+germane to my thesis."
+
+Peter looked at the pile of script on the table.
+
+"That is very flattering, Captain; but the fact is, I came by your place
+at this hour because I am just in the act of leaving here on the
+steamboat to-night."
+
+The Captain looked at Peter with concern on his face. "Leaving Hooker's
+Bend?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Why?"
+
+Peter hesitated.
+
+"Well, my mother is dead--"
+
+"Yes, but your--your--your work is still here, Peter." The Captain fell
+into a certain confusion. "A man's work, Peter; a man's work."
+
+"Do you mean my school-teaching?"
+
+Then came a pause. The conversation somehow had managed to leave them
+both somewhat at sea. The Captain began again, in a different tone:
+
+"Peter, I wish you to remain here with me for another reason. I am an
+old man, Peter. Anything could happen to me here in this big house, and
+nobody would know it. I don't like to think of it." The old man's tone
+quite painted his fears. "I am not afraid of death, Peter. I have walked
+before God all my life save in one or two points, which, I believe, in
+His mercy, He has forgiven me; but I cannot endure the idea of being
+found here some day in some unconsidered posture, fallen out of a chair,
+or a-sprawl on the floor. I wish to die with dignity, Peter, as I have
+lived."
+
+"Then you mean that you want me to stay here with you until--until the
+end, Captain?"
+
+The old man nodded.
+
+"That is my desire, Peter, for an honorarium which you yourself shall
+designate. At my death, you will receive some proper portion of my
+estate; in fact, the bulk of my estate, because I leave no other heirs.
+I am the last Renfrew of my race, Peter."
+
+Peter grew more and more amazed as the old gentleman unfolded this
+strange proposal. What queerer, pleasanter berth could he find than that
+offered him here in the quietude of the old manor, among books, tending
+the feeble flame of this old aristocrat's life? An air of scholasticism
+hung about the library. In some corner of this dark oaken library his
+philosophies would rest comfortably.
+
+Then it occurred to Peter that he would have to continue his sleeping
+and eating in Niggertown, and since his mother had died and his rupture
+with Cissie, the squalor and smells of the crescent had become
+impossible. He told the old Captain his objections as diplomatically as
+possible. The old man made short work of them. He wanted Peter to sleep
+in the manor within calling distance, and he might begin this very night
+and stay on for a week or so as a sort of test whether he liked the
+position or not. The Captain waited with some concern until Peter agreed
+to a trial.
+
+After that the old gentleman talked on interminably of the South, of the
+suffrage movement, the destructive influence it would have on the home,
+the Irish question, the Indian question, whether the mound-builders did
+not spring from the two lost tribes of Israel--an endless outpouring of
+curious facts, quaint reasoning, and extraordinary conclusions, all
+delivered with the great dignity and in the flowing periods of an
+orator.
+
+It was fully two o'clock in the morning when it occurred to the Captain
+that his new secretary might like to go to bed. The old man took the
+hand-lamp which was still burning and led the way out to the back piazza
+past a number of doors to a corner bedroom. He shuffled along in his
+carpet slippers, followed by the black-and-white cat, which ran along,
+making futile efforts to rub itself against his lean shanks. Peter
+followed in a sort of stupor from the flood of words, ideas, and strange
+fancies that had been poured into his ears.
+
+The Captain turned off the piazza into one of those old-fashioned
+Southern rooms with full-length windows, which were really glazed doors,
+a ceiling so high that Peter could make out only vague concentric rings
+of stucco-work among the shadows overhead, and a floor space of ball-
+room proportions. In one corner was a huge canopy bed, across from it a
+clothes-press of dark wood, and in another corner a large screen hiding
+the bathing arrangements.
+
+Peter's bedroom was a sleeping apartment, in the old sense of the word
+before the term "apartment" had lost its dignity.
+
+The Captain placed the lamp on the great table and indicated Peter's
+possession with a wave of the hand.
+
+"If you stay here, Peter, I will put in a call-bell, so I can awaken you
+if I need you during the night. Now I wish you healthful slumbers and
+pleasant dreams." With that the old gentleman withdrew ceremoniously.
+
+When the Captain was gone, the mulatto remained standing in the vast
+expanse, marveling over this queer turn of fortune. Why Captain Renfrew
+had selected him as a secretary and companion Peter could not fancy.
+
+The magnificence of his surroundings revived his late dream of a
+honeymoon with Cissie. Certainly, in his fancy, he had visioned a
+honeymoon in Pullman parlor cars and suburban bungalows. He had been
+mistaken. This great chamber rose about him like a corrected proof of
+his desire.
+
+Into just such a room he would like to lead Cissie; into this great room
+that breathed pride and dignity. What a glowing heart the girl would
+have made for its somber magnificence!
+
+He walked over to the full-length windows and opened them; then he
+unbolted the jalousies outside and swung them back. The musk of autumn
+weeds breathed in out of the darkness. Peter drew a long breath, with a
+sort of wistful melting in his chest.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER IX
+
+
+A turmoil aroused Peter Siner the next morning, and when he discovered
+where he was, in the big canopy bed in the great room, he listened
+curiously and heard a continuous chattering and quarreling. After a
+minute or two he recognized the voice of old Rose Hobbett. Rose was
+cooking the Captain's breakfast, and she performed this function in a
+kind of solitary rage. She banged the vessels, slammed the stove-eyes on
+and off, flung the stove-wood about, and kept up a snarling
+animadversion upon every topic that drifted through her kinky head. She
+called the kitchen a rat-hole, stated the Captain must be as mean as the
+devil to live as long as he did, complained that no one ever paid any
+attention to her, that she might as well be a stray cat, and so on.
+
+As Peter grew wider awake, the monotony of the old negress's rancor
+faded into an unobserved noise. He sat up on the edge of his bed between
+the parted curtains and divined there was a bath behind the screen in
+the corner of his room. Sure enough, he found two frayed but clean
+towels, a pan, a pitcher, and a small tub all made of tin. Peter
+assembled his find and began splashing his heavily molded chest with a
+feeling of well-being. As he splashed on the water, he amused himself by
+listening again to old Rose. She was now complaining that some white
+young'uns had called her "raving Rose." She hoped "God'lmighty would
+send down two she bears and eat 'em up." Peter was amazed by the old
+crone's ability to maintain an unending flow of concentrated and aimless
+virulence.
+
+The kitchen of the Renfrew manor was a separate building, and presently
+Peter saw old Rose carrying great platters across the weed-grown
+compound into the dining-room. She bore plate after plate piled high
+with cookery,--enough for a company of men. A little later came a
+clangor on a rusty triangle, as if she were summoning a house party. Old
+Rose did things in a wholesale spirit.
+
+Peter started for his door, but when he had opened the shutter, he stood
+hesitating. Breakfast introduced another delicate problem. He decided
+not to go to the dining-room at once, but to wait and allow Captain
+Renfrew to indicate whether he, Peter, should break his fast with the
+master in the dining-room or with old Rose in the kitchen.
+
+A moment later he saw the Captain coming down the long back piazza.
+Peter almost addressed his host, but the old Southerner proceeded into
+the dining-room apparently without seeing Peter at all.
+
+The guest was gathering his breath to call good morning, but took the
+cue with a negro's sensitiveness, and let his eyes run along the weeds
+in the compound. The drying stalks were woven with endless spider-webs,
+all white with frost. Peter stood regarding their delicate geometries a
+moment longer and then reentered his room, not knowing precisely what to
+do. He could hear Rose walking across the piazza to and from the dining-
+room, and the clink of tableware. A few minutes later a knock came at
+his door, and the old woman entered with a huge salver covered with
+steaming dishes.
+
+The negress came into the room scowling, and seemed doubtful for a
+moment just how to shut the door and still hold the tray with both
+hands. She solved the problem by backing against the door tremendously.
+Then she saw Peter. She straightened and stared at him with outraged
+dignity.
+
+"Well, 'fo' Gawd! Is I bringin' dish-here breakfus' to a nigger?"
+
+"I suppose it's mine," agreed Peter, amused.
+
+"But whuffo, whuffo, nigger, is it dat you ain't come to de kitchen an'
+eat off'n de shelf? Is you sick?"
+
+Peter admitted fair bodily vigor.
+
+"Den whut de debbil is I got into!" cried Rose, angrily. "I ain't gwine
+wuck at no sich place, ca'yin' breakfus' to a big beef uv a nigger,
+stout as a mule. Say, nigger, wha-chu doin' in heah, anyway? Hoccum
+dis?"
+
+Peter tried to explain that he was there to do a little writing for the
+Captain.
+
+"Well, 'fo' Gawd, when niggers gits to writin' fuh white folks, ants'll
+be jumpin' fuh bullfrogs--an havin' other niggers bring dey breakfusses.
+You jes as much a nigger as I is, Peter Siner, de brightes' day you ever
+seen!"
+
+Peter began a conciliatory phrase.
+
+Old Rose banged the platter on the table and then threatened:
+
+"Dis is de las' time I fetches a moufful to you, Peter Siner, or any
+other nigger. You ain't no black Jesus, even ef you is a woods calf."
+
+Peter paused in drawing a chair to the table.
+
+"What did you say, Rose?" he asked sharply.
+
+"You heared whut I say."
+
+A wave of anger went over Peter.
+
+"Yes, I did. You ought to be ashamed to speak ill of the dead."
+
+The crone tossed her malicious head, a little abashed, perhaps, yet very
+glad she had succeeded in hurting Peter. She turned and went out the
+door, mumbling something which might have been apology or renewed
+invectives.
+
+Peter watched the old virago close the door and then sat down to his
+breakfast. His anger presently died away, and he sat wondering what
+could have happened to Rose Hobbett that had corroded her whole
+existence. Did she enjoy her vituperation, her continual malice? He
+tried to imagine how she felt.
+
+The breakfast Rose had brought him was delicious: hot biscuits of
+feathery lightness, three wide slices of ham, a bowl of scrambled eggs,
+a pot of coffee, some preserved raspberries, and a tiny glass of whisky.
+
+The plate which Captain Renfrew had set before his guest was a delicate
+dawn pink ringed with a wreath of holly. It was old Worcester porcelain
+of about the decade of 1760. The coffee-pot was really an old Whieldon
+teapot in broad cauliflower design. Age and careless heating had given
+the surface a fine reticulation. His cup and saucer, on the contrary,
+were thick pieces of ware such as the cabin-boys toss about on
+steamboats. The whole ceramic melange told of the fortuities of English
+colonial and early American life, of the migration of families westward.
+No doubt, once upon a time, that dawn-pink Worcester had married into a
+Whieldon cauliflower family. A queer sort of genealogy might be traced
+among Southern families through their mixtures of tableware.
+
+As Peter mused over these implications of long ancestral lines, it
+reminded him that he had none. Over his own past, over the lineage of
+nearly every negro in the South, hung a curtain. Even the names of the
+colored folk meant nothing, and gave no hint of their kin and clan. At
+the end of the war between the States, Peter's people had selected names
+for themselves, casually, as children pick up a pretty stone. They meant
+nothing. It occurred to Peter for the first time, as he sat looking at
+the chinaware, that he knew nothing about himself; whether his kinsmen
+were valiant or recreant he did not know. Even his own father he knew
+little about except that his mother had said his name was Peter, like
+his own, and that he had gone down the river on a tie boat and was
+drowned.
+
+A faint sound attracted Peter's attention. He looked out at his open
+window and saw old Rose making off the back way with something concealed
+under her petticoat. Peter knew it was the unused ham and biscuits that
+she had cooked. For once the old negress hurried along without railing
+at the world. She moved with a silent, but, in a way, self-respecting,
+flight. Peter could see by the tilt of her head and the set of her
+shoulders that not only did her spoil gratify her enmity to mankind in
+general and the Captain in particular, but she was well within her
+rights in her acquisition. She disappeared around a syringa bush, and
+was heard no more until she reappeared to cook the noon meal, as
+vitriolic as ever.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Peter entered the library, old Captain Renfrew greeted him with
+morning wishes, thus sustaining the fiction that they had not seen each
+other before, that morning.
+
+The old gentleman seemed pleased but somewhat excited over his new
+secretary. He moved some of his books aimlessly from one table to
+another, placed them in exact piles as if he were just about to plunge
+into heroic labor, and could not give time to such details once he had
+begun.
+
+As he arranged his books just so, he cleared his throat.
+
+"Now, Peter, we want to get down to this," he announced dynamically; "do
+this thing, shove this work out!" He started with tottery briskness
+around to his manuscript drawer, but veered off to the left to aline
+some magazines. "System, Peter, system. Without system one may well be
+hopeless of performing any great literary labor; but with system, the
+constant piling up of brick on brick, stone on stone--it's the way Rome
+was built, my boy."
+
+Peter made a murmur supposed to acknowledge the correctness of this
+view.
+
+Eventually the old Captain drew out his drawer of manuscript, stood
+fumbling with it uncertainly. Now and then he glanced at Peter, a
+genuine secretary who stood ready to help him in his undertaking. The
+old gentleman picked up some sheets of his manuscript, seemed about to
+read them aloud, but after a moment shook his head, and said, "No, we'll
+do that to-night," and restored them to their places. Finally he turned
+to his helper.
+
+"Now, Peter," he explained, "in doing this work, I always write at
+night. It's quieter then,--less distraction. My mornings I spend
+downtown in conversation with my friends. If you should need me, Peter,
+you can walk down and find me in front of the livery-stable. I sit there
+for a while each morning."
+
+The gravity with which he gave this schedule of his personal habits
+amused Peter, who bowed with a serious, "Very well, Captain."
+
+"And in the meantime," pursued the old man, looking vaguely about the
+room, "you will do well to familiarize yourself with my library in order
+that you may be properly qualified for your secretarial labors."
+
+Peter agreed again.
+
+"And now if you will get my hat and coat, I will be off and let you go
+to work," concluded the Captain, with an air of continued urgency.
+
+Peter became thoroughly amused at such an outcome of the old gentleman's
+headlong attack on his work,--a stroll down to the village to hold
+conversation with friends. The mulatto walked unsmilingly to a little
+closet where the Captain hung his things. He took down the old
+gentleman's tall hat, a gray greatcoat worn shiny about the shoulders
+and tail, and a finely carved walnut cane. Some reminiscence of the
+manners of butlers which Peter had seen in theaters caused him to swing
+the overcoat across his left arm and polish the thin nap of the old hat
+with his right sleeve. He presented it to his employer with a certain
+duplication of a butler's obsequiousness. He offered the overcoat to the
+old gentleman's arms with the same air. Then he held up the collar of
+the greatcoat with one hand and with the other reached under its skirts,
+and drew down the Captain's long day coat with little jerks, as if he
+were going through a ritual.
+
+Peter grew more and more hilarious over his barber's manners. It was his
+contribution to the old gentleman's literary labors, and he was doing it
+beautifully, so he thought. He was just making some minute adjustments
+of the collar when, to his amazement, Captain Renfrew turned on him.
+
+"Damn it, sir!" he flared out. "What do you think you are? I didn't
+engage you for a kowtowing valet in waiting, sir! I asked you, sir, to
+come under my roof as an intellectual co-worker, as one gentleman asks
+another, and here you are making these niggery motions! They are
+disgusting! They are defiling! They are beneath the dignity of one
+gentleman to another, sir! What makes it more degrading, I perceive by
+your mannerism that you assume a specious servility, sir, as if you
+would flatter me by it!"
+
+The old lawyer's face was white. His angry old eyes jerked Peter out of
+his slight mummery. The negro felt oddly like a grammar-school boy
+caught making faces behind his master's back. It shocked him into
+sincerer manners.
+
+"Captain," he said with a certain stiffness, "I apologize for my
+mistake; but may I ask how you desire me to act?"
+
+"Simply, naturally, sir," thundered the Captain, "as one alumnus of
+Harvard to another! It is quite proper for a young man, sir, to assist
+an old gentleman with his hat and coat, but without fripperies and
+genuflections and absurdities!"
+
+The old man's hauteur touched some spring of resentment in Peter. He
+shook his head.
+
+"No, Captain; our lack of sympathy goes deeper than manners. My position
+here is anomalous. For instance, I can talk to you sitting, I can drink
+with you standing, but I can't breakfast with you at all. I do that
+_in camera_, like a disgraceful divorce proceeding. It's precisely
+as I was treated coming down here South again; it's as I've been treated
+ever since I've been back; it's--" He paused abruptly and swallowed down
+the rancor that filled him. "No," he repeated in a different tone,
+"there is no earthly excuse for me to remain here, Captain, or to let
+you go on measuring out your indulgences to me. There is no way for us
+to get together or to work together--not this far South. Let me thank
+you for a night's entertainment and go."
+
+Peter turned about, meaning to make an end of this queer adventure.
+
+The old Captain watched him, and his pallor increased. He lifted an
+unsteady hand.
+
+"No, no, Peter," he objected, "not so soon. This has been no trial, no
+fair trial. The little--little--er--details of our domestic life here,
+they will--er--arrange themselves, Peter. Gossip--talk, you know, we
+must avoid that." The old lawyer stood staring with strange eyes at his
+protege. "I--I'm interested in you, Peter. My actions may seem--odd,
+but--er--a negro boy going off and doing what you have done--
+extraordinary. I--I have spoken to your mother, Caroline, about you
+often. In fact, Peter, I--I made some little advances in order that you
+might complete your studies. Now, now, don't thank me! It was purely
+impersonal. You seemed bright. I have often thought we gentle people of
+the South ought to do more to encourage our black folk--not--not as
+social equals--" Here the old gentleman made a wry mouth as if he had
+tasted salt.
+
+"Stay here and look over the library," he broke off abruptly. "We can
+arrange some ground of--of common action, some--"
+
+He settled the lapels of his great-coat with precision, addressed his
+palm to the knob of his stick, and marched stiffly out of the library,
+around the piazza, and along the dismantled walk to the front gate.
+
+Peter stood utterly astonished at this strange information. Suddenly he
+ran after the old lawyer, and rounded the turn of the piazza in time to
+see him walk stiffly down the shaded street with tremulous dignity. The
+old gentleman was much the same as usual, a little shakier, perhaps, his
+tall hat a little more polished, his shiny gray overcoat set a little
+more snugly at the collar.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER X
+
+
+The village of Hooker's Bend amuses itself mainly with questionable
+jests that range all the way from the slightly brackish to the
+hopelessly obscene. Now, in using this type of anecdote, the Hooker's-
+Benders must not be thought to design an attack upon the decencies of
+life; on the contrary, they are relying on the fact that their hearers
+have, in the depths of their beings, a profound reverence for the object
+of their sallies. And so, by taking advantage of the moral shock they
+produce and linking it to the idea of an absurdity, they convert the
+whole psychical reaction into an explosion of humor. Thus the ring of
+raconteurs telling blackguardly stories around the stoves in Hooker's
+Bend stores, are, in reality, exercising one another in the more
+delicate sentiments of life, and may very well be classed as a round
+table of Sir Galahads, _sans peur et sans reproche_.
+
+However, the best men weary in well doing, and for the last few days
+Hooker's Bend had switched from its intellectual staple of conversation
+to consider the comedy of Tump Pack's undoing. The incident held
+undeniably comic elements. For Tump to start out carrying a forty-four,
+meaning to blow a rival out of his path, and to wind up hard at work,
+picking cotton at nothing a day for a man whose offer of three dollars a
+day he had just refused, certainly held the makings of a farce.
+
+On the heels of this came the news that Peter Siner meant to take
+advantage of Tump's arrest and marry Cissie Dildine. Old Parson Ranson
+was responsible for the spread of this last rumor. He had fumbled badly
+in his effort to hold Peter's secret. Not once, but many times, always
+guarded by a pledge of secrecy, had he revealed the approaching wedding.
+When pressed for a date, the old negro said he was "not at lib'ty to
+tell."
+
+Up to this point white criticism viewed the stage-setting of the black
+comedy with the impersonal interest of a box party. Some of the round
+table said they believed there would be a dead coon or so before the
+scrape was over.
+
+Dawson Bobbs, the ponderous constable, went to the trouble to telephone
+Mr. Cicero Throgmartin, for whom Tump was working, cautioning
+Throgmartin to make sure that Tump Pack was in the sleeping-shack every
+night, as he might get wind of the wedding and take a notion to bolt and
+stop it. "You know, you can't tell what a fool nigger'll do," finished
+Bobbs.
+
+Throgmartin was mildly amused, promised the necessary precautions, and
+said:
+
+"It looks like Peter has put one over on Tump, and maybe a college
+education does help a nigger some, after all."
+
+The constable thought it was just luck.
+
+"Well, I dunno," said Throgmartin, who was a philosopher, and inclined
+to view every matter from various angles. "Peter may of worked this out
+somehow."
+
+"Have you heard what Henry Hooker done to Siner in the land deal?"
+
+Throgmartin said he had.
+
+"No, I don't mean _that_. I mean Henry's last wrinkle in
+garnisheeing old Ca'line's estate in his bank for the rest of the
+purchase money on the Dilihay place."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"You don't mean it!"
+
+"Damn 'f I don't."
+
+The constable's sentence shook with suppressed mirth, and the next
+moment roars of laughter came over the telephone wire.
+
+"Say, ain't he the bird!"
+
+"He's the original early bird. I'd like to get a snap-shot of the worm
+that gets away from him."
+
+Both men laughed heartily again.
+
+"But, say," objected Throgmartin, who was something of a lawyer
+himself,--as, indeed, all Southern men are,--"I thought the Sons and
+Daughters of Benevolence owed Hooker, not Peter Siner, nor Ca'line's
+estate."
+
+"Well, it _is_ the Sons and Daughters, but Ca'line was one of 'em,
+and they ain't no limited li'bility 'sociation. Henry can jump on
+anything any of 'em's got. Henry got the Persimmon to bring him a copy
+of their by-laws."
+
+"Well, I swear! Say, if Henry wasn't kind of held back by his religion,
+he'd use a gun, wouldn't he?"
+
+"I dunno. I can say this for Henry's religion: 'It's jest like Henry's
+wife,--it's the dearest thing to his heart; he'd give his life for it,
+but it don't do nobody a damn bit of good except jest Henry.'"
+
+The constable's little eyes twinkled as he heard Throgmartin roaring
+with laughter and sputtering appreciative oaths.
+
+At that moment a ringing of the bell jarred the ears of both
+telephonists. A voice asked for Dr. Jallup. It was an ill time to
+interrupt two gentlemen. The flair of a jest is lost in a pause. The
+officer stated sharply that he was the constable of Wayne County and was
+talking business about the county's prisoners. His tone was so charged
+with consequence that the voice that wanted a doctor apologized hastily
+and ceased.
+
+Came a pause in which neither man found anything to say. Laughter is
+like that,--a gay bubble that a touch will destroy. Presently Bobbs
+continued, gravely enough:
+
+"Talking about Siner, he's stayin' up at old man Renfrew's now."
+
+"'At so?"
+
+"Old Rose Hobbett swears he's doin' some sort of writin' up there and
+livin' in one of the old man's best rooms."
+
+"Hell he is!"
+
+"Yeah?" the constable's voice questioned Throgmartin's opinion about
+such heresy and expressed his own.
+
+"D' recken it's so? Old Rose is such a thief and a liar."
+
+"Nope," declared the constable, "the old nigger never would of made up a
+lie like that,--never would of thought of it. Old Cap'n Renfrew's
+gettin' childish; this nigger's takin' advantage of it. Down at the
+liver'-stable the boys were talkin' about Siner goin' to git married,
+an' dern if old man Renfrew didn't git cut up about it!"
+
+"Well," opined Throgmartin, charitably, "the old man livin' there all by
+himself--I reckon even a nigger is some comp'ny. They're funny damn
+things, niggers is; never know a care nor trouble. Lord! I wish I was as
+care-free as they are!"
+
+"Don't you, though!" agreed the constable, with the weight of the white
+man's burden on his shoulders. For this is a part of the Southern
+credo,--that all negroes are gay, care-free, and happy, and that if one
+could only be like the negroes, gay, care-free, and happy--Ah, if one
+could only be like the negroes!
+
+None of this gossip reached Peter directly, but a sort of back-wash did
+catch him keenly through young Sam Arkwright and serve as a conundrum
+for several days.
+
+One morning Peter was bringing an armful of groceries up the street to
+the old manor, and he met the boy coming in the opposite direction. The
+negro's mind was centered on a peculiar problem he had found in the
+Renfrew library, so, according to a habit he had acquired in Boston, he
+took the right-hand side of the pavement, which chanced to be the inner
+side. This violated a Hooker's-Bend convention, which decrees that when
+a white and a black meet on the sidewalk, the black man invariably shall
+take the outer side.
+
+For this _faux pas_ the gangling youth stopped Peter, fell to
+abusing and cursing him for his impudence, his egotism, his attempt at
+social equality,--all of which charges, no doubt, were echoes from the
+round table. Such wrath over such an offense was unusual. Ordinarily, a
+white villager would have thought several uncomplimentary things about
+Peter, but would have said nothing.
+
+Peter stopped with a shock of surprise, then listened to the whole
+diatribe with a rising sense of irritation and irony. Finally, without a
+word, he corrected his mistake by retracing his steps and passing Sam
+again, this time on the outside.
+
+Peter walked on up the street, outwardly calm, but his ears burned, and
+the queer indignity stuck in his mind. As he went along he invented all
+sorts of ironical remarks he might have made to Arkwright, which would
+have been unwise; then he thought of sober reasoning he could have used,
+which would perhaps have been just as ill-advised. Still later he
+wondered why Arkwright had fallen into such a rage over such a trifle.
+Peter felt sure there was some contributing rancor in the youth's mind.
+Perhaps he had received a scolding at home or a whipping at school, or
+perhaps he was in the midst of one of those queer attacks of megalomania
+from which adolescents are chronic sufferers. Peter fancied this and
+that, but he never came within hail of the actual reason.
+
+When the brown man reached the old manor, the quietude of the library,
+with its blackened mahogany table, its faded green Axminster, the
+meridional globe with its dusty twinkle, banished the incident from his
+mind. He returned to his work of card-indexing the Captain's books. He
+took half a dozen at a time from the shelves, dusted them on the piazza,
+then carried them to the embrasure of the window, which offered a
+pleasant light for reading and for writing the cards.
+
+He went through volume after volume,--speeches by Clay, Calhoun, Yancy,
+Prentiss, Breckenridge; an old life of General Taylor, Foxe's "Book of
+Martyrs"; a collection of the old middle-English dramatists, such as
+Lillo, Garrick, Arthur Murphy, Charles Macklin, George Colman, Charles
+Coffey, men whose plays have long since declined from the boards and
+disappeared from the reading-table.
+
+The Captain's collection of books was strongly colored by a religious
+cast,--John Wesley's sermons, Charles Wesley's hymns; a treatise
+presenting a biblical proof that negroes have no souls; a little book
+called "Flowers Gathered," which purported to be a compilation of the
+sayings of ultra-pious children, all of whom died young; an old book
+called "Elements of Criticism," by Henry Home of Kames; another tome
+entitled "Studies of Nature," by St. Pierre. This last was a long
+argument for the miraculous creation of the world as set forth in
+Genesis. The proof offered was a resume of the vegetable, animal, and
+mineral kingdoms, showing their perfect fitness for man's use, and the
+immediate induction was that they were designed for man's use. Still
+another work calculated the exact age of the earth by the naive method
+of counting the generations from Adam to Christ, to the total adding
+eighteen hundred and eighty-five years (for the book was written in
+1885), and the original six days it required the Lord to build the
+earth. By referring to Genesis and finding out precisely what the
+Creator did on the morning of the first day, the writer contrived to
+bring his calculation of the age of the earth and everything in the
+world to a precision of six hours, give or take,--a somewhat closer
+schedule than that made by the Tennessee river boats coming up from St.
+Louis.
+
+These and similar volumes formed the scientific section of Captain
+Renfrew's library, and it was this paucity of the natural sciences that
+formed the problem which Peter tried to solve. All scientific additions
+came to an abrupt stop about the decade of 1880-90. That was the date
+when Charles Darwin's great fructifying theory, enunciated in 1859,
+began to seep into the South.
+
+In the Captain's library the only notice of evolution was a book called
+"Darwinism Dethroned." As for the elaborations of the Darwinian
+hypothesis by Spencer, Fiske, DeVries, Weismann, Haeckel, Kidd, Bergson,
+and every subsequent philosophic or biologic writer, all these men might
+never have written a line so far as Captain Renfrew's library was
+informed.
+
+Now, why such extraordinary occlusions? Why should Captain Renfrew deny
+himself the very commonplaces of thought, theories familiarly held by
+the rest of America, and, indeed, by all the rest of the civilized
+world?
+
+Musing by the window, Peter succeeded in stating his problem more
+broadly: Why was Captain Renfrew an intellectual reactionist? The old
+gentleman was the reverse of stupid. Why should he confine his selection
+of books to a few old oddities that had lost their battle against a
+theory which had captured the intellectual world fifty years before?
+
+Nor was it Captain Renfrew alone. Now and then Peter saw editorials
+appearing in leading Southern journals, seriously attacking the
+evolutionary hypothesis. Ministers in respectable churches still
+fulminated against it. Peter knew that the whole South still clings, in
+a way, to the miraculous and special creation of the earth as described
+in Genesis. It clings with an intransigentism and bitterness far
+exceeding other part of America. Why? To Peter the problem appeared
+insoluble.
+
+He sat by the window lost in his reverie. Just outside the ledge half a
+dozen English sparrows abused one another with chirps that came faintly
+through the small diamond panes. Their quick movements held Peter's
+eyes, and their endless quarreling presently recalled his episode with
+young Arkwright. It occurred to him, casually, that when Arkwright grew
+up he would subscribe to every reactionary doctrine set forth in the
+library Peter was indexing.
+
+With that thought came a sort of mental flare, as if he were about to
+find the answer to the whole question through the concrete attack made
+on him by Sam.
+
+It is an extraordinary feeling,--the sudden, joyful dawn of a new idea.
+Peter sat up sharply and leaned forward with a sense of being right on
+the fringe of a new and a great perception. Young Arkwright, the old
+Captain, the whole South, were unfolding themselves in a vast answer,
+when a movement outside the window caught the negro's introspective
+eyes.
+
+A girl was passing; a girl in a yellow dress was passing the Renfrew
+gate. Even then Peter would not have wavered in his synthesis had not
+the girl paused slightly and given a swift side glance at the old manor.
+Then the man in the window recognized Cissie Dildine.
+
+A slight shock traveled through Siner's body at the sight of Cissie's
+colorless face and darkened eyes. He stood up abruptly, with a feeling
+that he had some urgent thing to say to the young woman. His sharp
+movement toppled over the big globe.
+
+The crash caused the girl to stop and look. For a moment they stood
+thus, the girl in the chill street, the man in the pleasant window,
+looking at each other. Next moment Cissie hurried on up the village
+street toward the Arkwright house. No doubt she was on her way to cook
+the noon meal.
+
+Peter remained standing at the window, with a heavily beating heart. He
+watched her until she vanished behind a wing of the shrubbery in the
+Renfrew yard.
+
+When she had gone, he looked at his books and cards, sat down, and tried
+to resume his indexing. But his mind played away from it like a restive
+horse. It had been two weeks since he last saw Cissie. Two weeks.... His
+nerves vibrated like the strings of a pianoforte. He had scarcely
+thought of her during the fortnight; but now, having seen her, he found
+himself powerless to go on with his work. He pottered a while longer
+among the books and cards, but they were meaningless. They appeared an
+utter futility. Why index a lot of nonsense? Somehow this recalled his
+flare, his adumbration of some great idea connected with young Arkwright
+and the old Captain, and the South.
+
+He put his trembling nerves to work, trying to recapture his line of
+thought. He sat for ten minutes, following this mental train, then that,
+losing one, groping for another. His thoughts were jumpy. They played
+about Arkwright, the Captain, Cissie, his mother's death, Tump Pack in
+prison, the quarrel between the Persimmon and Jim Pink Staggs. The whole
+of Niggertown came rushing down upon him, seizing him in its passion and
+dustiness and greasiness, putting to flight all his cultivated white-man
+ideas.
+
+After half an hour's searching he gave it up. Before he left the room he
+stooped, and tried to set up again the globe that the passing of the
+girl had caused him to throw down; but its pivot was out of plumb, and
+he had to lean it against the window-seat.
+
+The sight of Captain Renfrew coming in at the gate sent Peter to his
+room. The hour was near twelve, and it had become a little point of
+household etiquette for the mulatto and the white man not to be together
+when old Rose jangled the triangle. By this means they forestalled the
+mute discourtesy of the old Captain's walking away from his secretary to
+eat. The subject of their separate meals had never been mentioned since
+their first acrimonious morning. The matter had dropped into the
+abeyance of custom, just as the old gentleman had predicted.
+
+Peter had left open his jalousies, but his windows were closed, and now
+as he entered he found his apartment flooded with sunshine and filled
+with that equable warmth that comes of straining sunbeams through glass.
+
+
+He prepared for dinner with his mind still hovering about Cissie. He
+removed a book and a lamp from the lion-footed table, and drew up an old
+chair with which the Captain had furnished his room. It was a delicate
+old Heppelwhite of rosewood. It had lost a finial from one of its back
+standards, and a round was gone from the left side. Peter never moved
+the chair that vague plans sometime to repair it did not occur to him.
+
+When he had cleared his table and placed his chair beside it, he
+wandered over to his tall west window and stood looking up the street
+through the brilliant sunshine, toward the Arkwright home. No one was in
+sight. In Hooker's Bend every one dines precisely at twelve, and at that
+hour the streets are empty. It would be some time before Cissie came
+back down the street on her way to Niggertown. She first would have to
+wash and put away the Arkwright dishes. It would be somewhere about one
+o'clock. Nevertheless, he kept staring out through the radiance of the
+autumn sunlight with an irrational feeling that she might appear at any
+moment. He was afraid she would slip past and he not see her at all. The
+thought disturbed him somewhat. It kept him sufficiently on the alert to
+stand tapping the balls of his fingers against the glass and looking
+steadily toward the Arkwright house.
+
+Presently the watcher perceived that a myriad spider-webs filled the
+sunshine with a delicate dancing glister. It was the month of voyaging
+spiders. Invisible to Peter, the tiny spinners climbed to the tip-most
+twigs of the dead weeds, listed their abdomens, and lassoed the wind
+with gossamer lariats; then they let go and sailed away to a hazard of
+new fortunes. The air was full of the tiny adventurers. As he stared up
+the street, Peter caught the glint of these invisible airships whisking
+away to whatever chance might hold for them. There was something epic in
+it. It recalled to the mulatto's mind some of Fabre's lovely
+descriptions. It reminded him of two or three books on entomology which
+he had left in his mother's cabin. He felt he ought to go after them
+while the spiders were migrating. He suddenly made up his mind he would
+go at once, as soon as he had had dinner; somewhere about one o'clock.
+
+He looked again at the Arkwright house. The thought of walking down the
+street with Cissie, to get his books, quickened his heart.
+
+He was still at the window when his door opened and old Rose entered
+with his dinner. She growled under her breath all the way from the door
+to the table on which she placed the tray. Only a single phrase detached
+itself and stood out clearly amid her mutterings, "Hope it chokes you."
+
+Peter arranged his chair and table with reference to the window, so he
+could look up the street while he was eating his dinner.
+
+The ill-wishing Rose had again furnished a gourmet's meal, but Peter's
+preoccupation prevented its careful and appreciative gustation. An
+irrational feeling of the octoroon's imminence spurred him to fast
+eating. He had hardly begun his soup before he found himself drinking
+swiftly, looking up the street over his spoon, as if he meant to rush
+out and swing aboard a passing train.
+
+Siner checked his precipitation, annoyed at himself. He began again,
+deliberately, with an attempt to keep his mind on the savor of his food.
+He even thought of abandoning his little design of going for the books;
+or he would go at a different hour, or to-morrow, or not at all. He told
+himself he would far better allow Cissie Dildine to pass and repass
+unspoken to, instead of trying to arrange an accidental meeting. But the
+brown man's nerves wouldn't hear to it. That automatic portion of his
+brain and spinal column which, physiologists assert, performs three
+fourths of a man's actions and conditions nine tenths of his volitions--
+that part of Peter wouldn't consider it. It began to get jumpy and
+scatter havoc in Peter's thoughts at the mere suggestion of not seeing
+Cissie. Imperceptibly this radical left wing of his emotions speeded up
+his meal, again. He caught himself, stopped his knife and fork in the
+act of rending apart a broiled chicken.
+
+"Confound it! I'll start when she comes in sight, no matter whether I've
+finished this meal or not," he promised himself.
+
+And suddenly he felt unhurried, in the midst of a large leisure, with a
+savory broiled chicken dinner before him,--not exactly before him,
+either; most of it had been stuffed away. Only the fag-end remained on
+his plate. A perfectly good meal had been ruined by an ill-timed
+resistance to temptation.
+
+The glint of a yellow dress far up the street had just prompted him to
+swift action when the door opened and old Rose put her head in to say
+that Captain Renfrew wanted to see Peter in the library.
+
+The brown man came to a shocked standstill.
+
+"What! Right now?" he asked.
+
+"Yeah, right now," carped Rose. "Ever'thing he wants, he wants right
+now. He's been res'less as a cat in a bulldog's den ever sence he come
+home fuh dinner. Dunno whut's come into he ole bones, runnin' th'ugh his
+dinner lak a razo'-back." She withdrew in a continued mumble of censure.
+
+Peter cast a glance up the street, timed Cissie's arrival at the front
+gate, picked up his hat, and walked briskly to the library in the hope
+of finishing any business the Captain might have, in time to encounter
+the octoroon. He even began making some little conversational plans with
+which he could meet Cissie in a simple, unstudied manner. He recalled
+with a certain satisfaction that he had not said a word of condemnation
+the night of Cissie's confession. He would make a point of that, and was
+prepared to argue that, since he had said nothing, he meant nothing. In
+fact he was prepared to throw away the truth completely and enter the
+conversation as an out-and-out opportunist, alleging whatever appeared
+to fit the occasion, as all men talk to all women.
+
+The old Captain was just getting into his chair as Peter entered. He
+paused in the midst of lowering himself by the chair-arms and got erect
+again. He began speaking a little uncertainly:
+
+"Ah--by the way, Peter--I sent for you--"
+
+"Yes, sir." Peter looked out at the window.
+
+The old gentleman scrutinized Peter a moment; then his faded eyes
+wandered about the library.
+
+"Still working at the books, cross-indexing them--"
+
+"Yes, sir." Peter could divine by the crinkle of his nerves the very
+loci of the girl as she passed down the thoroughfare.
+
+"Very good," said the old lawyer, absently. He was obviously preoccupied
+with some other topic. "Very good," he repeated with racking
+deliberation; "quite good. How did that globe get bent?"
+
+Peter, looking at it, did not remember either knocking it over or
+setting it up.
+
+"I don't know," he said rapidly. "I hadn't noticed it."
+
+"Old Rose did it," meditated the Captain aloud, "but it's no use to
+accuse her of it; she'd deny it. And yet, on the other hand, Peter,
+she'll be nervous until I do accuse her of it. She'll be dropping
+things, breaking up my china. I dare say I'd best accuse her at once,
+storm at her some to quiet her nerves, and get it over."
+
+This monologue spurred Peter's impatience into an agony.
+
+"I believe you were wanting me, Captain?" he suggested, with a certain
+urge for action.
+
+The Captain's little pleasantry faded. He looked at Peter and became
+uncomfortable again.
+
+"Well, yes, Peter. Downtown I heard--well, a rumor connected with you--"
+
+Such an extraordinary turn caught the attention of even the fidgety
+Peter. He looked at his employer and wondered blankly what he had heard.
+
+"I don't want to intrude on your private affairs, Peter, not at all--
+not--not in the least--"
+
+"No-o-o," agreed Peter, completely at a loss.
+
+The old gentleman rubbed his thin hands together, lifted his eyebrows up
+and down nervously. "Are--are you about to--to leave me, Peter?"
+
+Peter was greatly surprised at the slightness and simplicity of this
+question and at the evidence of emotion it carried.
+
+"Why, no," he cried; "not at all! Who told you I was? It is a deep
+gratification to me--"
+
+"To be exact," proceeded the old man, with a vague fear still in his
+eyes, "I heard you were going to marry."
+
+"Marry!" This flaw took Peter's sails even more unexpectedly than the
+other. "Captain, who in the world--who could have told--"
+
+"Are you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You aren't?"
+
+"Indeed, no!"
+
+"I heard you were going to marry a negress here in town called Cissie
+Dildine." A question was audible in the silence that followed this
+statement. The obscure emotion that charged all the old man's queries
+affected Peter.
+
+"I am not, Captain," he declared earnestly; "that's settled."
+
+"Oh--you say it's settled," picked up the old lawyer, delicately.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then you had thought of it?" Immediately, however, he corrected this
+breach of courtesy into which his old legal habit of cross-questioning
+had led him. "Well, at any rate," he said in quite another voice, "that
+eases my mind, Peter. It eases my mind. It was not only, Peter, the
+thought of losing you, but this girl you were thinking of marrying--let
+me warn you, Peter--she's a negress."
+
+The mulatto stared at the strange objection.
+
+"A negress!"
+
+The old man paused and made that queer movement with his wrinkled lips
+as if he tasted some salty flavor.
+
+"I--I don't mean exactly a--a negress," stammered the old gentleman; "I
+mean she's not a--a good girl, Peter; she's a--a thief, in fact--she's a
+thief--a thief, Peter. I couldn't endure for you to marry a thief,
+Peter."
+
+It seemed to Peter Siner that some horrible compulsion kept the old
+Captain repeating over and over the fact that Cissie Dildine was a
+thief, a thief, a thief. The word cut the very viscera in the brown man.
+At last, when it seemed the old gentleman would never cease, Peter
+lifted a hand.
+
+"Yes, yes," he gasped, with a sickly face, "I--I've heard that before."
+
+He drew a shaken breath and moistened his lips. The two stood looking at
+each other, each profoundly at a loss as to what the other meant. Old
+Captain Renfrew collected himself first.
+
+"That is all, Peter." He tried to lighten his tones. "I think I'll get
+to work. Let me see, where do I keep my manuscript?"
+
+Peter pointed mechanically at a drawer as he walked out at the library
+door. Once outside, he ran to the front piazza, then to the front gate,
+and with a racing heart stood looking up and down the sleepy
+thoroughfare. The street was quite empty.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Old Captain Renfrew was a trustful, credulous soul, as, indeed, most
+gentleman who lead a bachelor's life are. Such men lack that moral
+hardening and whetting which is obtained only amid the vicissitudes of a
+home; they are not actively and continuously engaged in the employment
+and detection of chicane; want of intimate association with a woman and
+some children begets in them a soft and simple way of believing what is
+said to them. And their faith, easily raised, is just as easily
+shattered. Their judgment lacks training.
+
+Peter Siner's simple assertion to the old Captain that he was not going
+to marry Cissie Dildine completely allayed the old gentleman's
+uneasiness. Even the further information that Peter had had such a
+marriage under advisement, but had rejected it, did not put him on his
+guard.
+
+From long non-intimacy with any human creature, the old legislator had
+forgotten that human life is one long succession of doing the things one
+is not going to do; he had forgotten, if he ever knew, that the human
+brain is primarily not a master, but a servant; its function is not to
+direct, but to devise schemes and apologies to gratify impulses. It is
+the ways and means committee to the great legislature of the body.
+
+For several days after his fear that Peter Siner would marry Cissie
+Dildine old Captain Renfrew was as felicitous as a lover newly
+reconciled to his mistress. He ambled between the manor and the livery-
+stable with an abiding sense of well-being. When he approached his home
+in the radiance of high noon and saw the roof of the old mansion lying a
+bluish gray in the shadows of the trees, it filled his heart with joy to
+feel that it was not an old and empty house that awaited his coming, but
+that in it worked a busy youth who would be glad to see him enter the
+gate.
+
+The fear of some unattended and undignified death which had beset the
+old gentleman during the last eight or ten years of his life vanished
+under Peter's presence. When he thought of it at all now, he always
+previsioned himself being lifted in Peter's athletic arms and laid
+properly on his big four-poster.
+
+At times, when Peter sat working over the books in the library, the
+Captain felt a prodigious urge to lay a hand on the young man's broad
+and capable shoulder. But he never did. Again, the old lawyer would sit
+for minutes at a time watching his secretary's regular features as the
+brown man pursued his work with a trained intentness. The old gentleman
+derived a deep pleasure from such long scrutinies. It pleased him to
+imagine that, when he was young, he had possessed the same vigor, the
+same masculinity, the same capacity for persistent labor. Indeed, all
+old gentlemen are prone to choose the most personable and virile young
+man they can find for themselves to have been like.
+
+The two men had little to say to each other. Their thoughts beat to such
+different tempos that any attempt at continued speech discovered unequal
+measures. As a matter of fact, in all comfortable human conversation,
+words are used as mere buoys dropped here and there to mark well-known
+channels of thought and feeling. Similarity of mental topography is
+necessary to mutual understanding. Between any two generations the
+landscape is so changed as to be unrecognizable. Our fathers are
+monarchists; our sons, bolsheviki.
+
+Old Rose Hobbett was more of an age with the Captain, and these two
+talked very comfortably as the old virago came and went with food at
+meal-time. For instance, the Captain always asked his servant if she had
+fed his cat, and old Rose invariably would sulk and poke out her lips
+and put off answering to the last possible moment of insolence, then
+would grumble out that she was jes 'bout to feed the varmint, an' 't wuz
+funny nobody couldn't give a hard-wuckin' colored woman breathin'-space
+to turn roun' in.
+
+This reply was satisfactory to the Captain, because he knew what it
+meant,--that Rose had half forgotten the cat, and had meant wholly to
+forget it, but since she had been snapped up, so to speak, in the very
+act of forgetting, she would dole it out a piece or two of the meat that
+she had meant to abscond with as soon as the dishes were done.
+
+While Rose was fulminating, the old gentleman recalled his bent globe
+and decided the moment had come for a lecture on that point. It always
+vaguely embarrassed the Captain to correct Rose, and this increased his
+dignity. Now he cleared his throat in a certain way that brought the old
+negress to attention, so well they knew each other.
+
+"By the way, Rose, in the future I must request you to use extraordinary
+precautions in cleansing and dusting articles of my household furniture,
+or, in case of damage, I shall be forced to withhold an indemnification
+out of your pay."
+
+Eight or ten years ago, when the Captain first repeated this formula to
+his servant, the roll and swing of his rhetoric, and the last word,
+"pay," had built up lively hopes in Rose that the old gentleman was
+announcing an increase in her regular wage of a dollar a week.
+Experience, however, had long since corrected this faulty
+interpretation.
+
+She came to a stand in the doorway, with her kinky gray head swung
+around, half puzzled, wholly rebellious.
+
+"Whut is I bruk now?"
+
+"My globe."
+
+The old woman turned about with more than usual innocence.
+
+"Why, I ain't tech yo' globe!"
+
+"I foresaw that," agreed the Captain, with patient irony, "but in the
+future don't touch it more carefully. You bent its pivot the last time
+you refrained from handling it."
+
+"But I tell you I ain't tech yo' globe!" cried the negress, with the
+anger of an illiterate person who feels, but cannot understand, the
+satire leveled at her.
+
+"I agree with you," said the Captain, glad the affair was over.
+
+This verbal ducking into the cellar out of the path of her storm stirred
+up a tempest.
+
+"But I tell you I ain't bruk it!"
+
+"That's what I said."
+
+"Yeah, yeah, yeah," she flared; "you says I ain't, but when you says I
+ain't, you means I is, an' when you says I is, you means I ain't. Dat's
+de sort o' flapjack I's wuckin' fur!"
+
+The woman flirted out of the dining-room, and the old gentleman drew
+another long breath, glad it was over. He really had little reason to
+quarrel about the globe, bent or unbent; he never used it. It sat in his
+study year in and year out, its dusty twinkle brightened at long
+intervals by old Rose's spiteful rag.
+
+The Captain ate on placidly. There had been a time when he was dubious
+about such scenes with Rose. Once he felt it beneath his dignity as a
+Southern gentleman to allow any negro to speak to him disrespectfully.
+He used to feel that he should discharge her instantly and during the
+first years of their entente had done so a number of times. But he could
+get no one else who suited him so well; her biscuits, her corn-light-
+bread, her lye-hominy, which only the old darkies know how to make. And,
+to tell the truth, he missed the old creature herself, her understanding
+of him and his ideas, her contemporaneity; and no one else would work
+for a dollar a week.
+
+Presently in the course of his eating the old gentleman required another
+biscuit, and he wanted a hot one. Three mildly heated disks lay on a
+plate before him, but they had been out of the oven for five minutes and
+had been reduced to an unappetizing tepidity.
+
+A little hand-bell sat beside the Captain's plate whose special use was
+to summon hot biscuits. Now, the old lawyer looked at its worn handle
+speculatively. He was not at all sure Rose would answer the bell. She
+would say she hadn't heard it. He felt faintly disgruntled at not
+foreseeing this exigency and buttering two biscuits while they were hot,
+or even three.
+
+He considered momentarily a project of going after a hot biscuit for
+himself, but eventually put it by. South of the Mason-Dixon Line, self-
+help is half-scandal. At last, quite dubiously, he did pick up the bell
+and gave it a gentle ring, so if old Rose chose not to hear it, she
+probably wouldn't: thus he could believe her and not lose his temper and
+so widen an already uncomfortable breach.
+
+To the Captain's surprise, the old creature not only brought the
+biscuits, but she did it promptly. No sooner had she served them,
+however, than the Captain saw she really had returned with a new line of
+defense.
+
+She mumbled it out as usual, so that her employer was forced to guess at
+a number of words: "Dat nigger, Peter, mus' 'a' busted yo' gl--"
+
+"No, he didn't."
+
+"Mus' uv."
+
+"No, he didn't. I asked him, and he said he didn't."
+
+The old harridan stared, and her speech suddenly became clear-cut:
+
+"Well, 'fo' Gawd, I says I didn't, too!"
+
+At this point the Captain made an unintelligible sound and spread the
+butter on his hot biscuit.
+
+"He's jes a nigger, lak I is," stated the cook, warmly.
+
+The Captain buttered a second hot biscuit.
+
+"We's jes two niggers."
+
+The Captain hoped she would presently sputter herself out.
+
+"Now look heah," cried the crone, growing angrier and angrier as the
+reaches of the insult spread itself before her, "is you gwine to put one
+o' us niggers befo' de udder? Ca'se ef you is, I mus' say, it's Kady-
+lock-a-do' wid me."
+
+The Captain looked up satirically.
+
+"What do you mean by Katie-lock-the-door with you?" he asked, though he
+had an uneasy feeling that he knew.
+
+"You know whut I means. I means I 's gwine to leab dis place."
+
+"Now look here, Rose," protested the lawyer, with dignity, "Peter Siner
+occupies almost a fiduciary relation to me."
+
+The old negress stared with a slack jaw. "A relation o' yo's!"
+
+The lawyer hesitated some seconds, looking at the hag. His high-bred old
+face was quite inscrutable, but presently he said in a serious voice:
+
+"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'
+niggers 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
+passes 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-nigger an' a she-nigger 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-nigger" and "she-nigger" 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 passings 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 passed 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 passed back toward Niggertown, 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 passed she kept Peter watching the clock at
+nervous intervals, wondering if, after all, she had gone by unobserved.
+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
+entity, 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 passing 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 pass 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 passionate 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 passed 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 niggerish taste, and
+his dislike for the girl edged his stricture; then, on second thought,
+the oddness of sumac for a nosegay caught his attention. Nobody used
+sumac for a buttonhole. 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.
+
+All his life, Captain Renfrew's brain had been deliberate. He moved
+mentally, as he did physically, with dignity. To tell the truth, the
+Captain's thoughts had a way of absolutely stopping now and then, and
+for a space he would view the world as a simple collection of colored
+surfaces without depth or meaning. During these intervals, by a sort of
+irony of the gods the old gentleman's face wore a look of philosophic
+concentration, so that his mental hiatuses had given him a reputation
+for profundity, which was county wide. It had been this, years before,
+that had carried him by a powerful majority into the Tennessee
+legislature. The voters agreed, almost to a man, that they preferred
+depth to a shallow facility. The rival candidate had been shallow and
+facile. The polls returned the Captain, and the young gentleman--for the
+Captain was a young gentleman in those days--was launched on a typical
+politician's career. But some Republican member from east Tennessee had
+impugned the rising statesman's honor with some sort of improper
+liaison. In those days there seemed to be proper and improper liaisons.
+There had been a duel on the banks of the Cumberland River in which the
+Captain succeeded in wounding his traducer in the arm, and was thus
+vindicated by the gods. But the incident ended a career that might very
+well have wound up in the governor's chair, or even in the United States
+Senate, considering how very deliberate the Captain was mentally.
+
+To-day, as the Captain walked up the street following Cissie Dildine,
+one of these vacant moods fell upon him and it was not until they had
+reached his own gate that it suddenly occurred to the old gentleman just
+what Cissie's sumac did mean. It was a signal to Peter. The simplicity
+of the solution stirred the old man. Its meaning was equally easy to
+fathom. When a woman signals any man it conveys consent. Denials receive
+no signals; they are inferred. In this particular case Captain Renfrew
+found every reason to believe that this flaring bit of sumac was the
+prelude to an elopement.
+
+In the window of his library the Captain saw his secretary staring at
+his cards and books with an intentness plainly assumed. Peter's fixed
+stare had none of those small movements of the head that mark genuine
+intellectual labor. So Peter was posing, pretending he did not see the
+girl, to disarm his employer's suspicions,--pretending not to see a
+girl rigged out like that!
+
+Such duplicity sent a queer spasm of anguish through the old lawyer.
+Peter's action held half a dozen barbs for the Captain. A fellow-alumnus
+of Harvard staying in his house merely for his wage and keep! Peter bore
+not the slightest affection for him; the mulatto lacked even the
+chivalry to notify the Captain of his intentions, because he knew the
+Captain objected. And yet all these self-centered objections were
+nothing to what old Captain Renfrew felt for Peter's own sake. For Peter
+to marry a nigger and a strumpet, for him to elope with a wanton and a
+thief! For such an upstanding lad, the very picture of his own virility
+and mental alertness when he was of that age, for such a boy to fling
+himself away, to drop out of existence--oh, it was loathly!
+
+The old man entered the library feeling sick. It was empty. Peter had
+gone to his room, according to his custom. But in this particular
+instance it seemed to Captain Renfrew his withdrawal was flavored with a
+tang of guilt. If he were innocent, why should not such a big, strong
+youth have stayed and helped an old gentleman off with his overcoat?
+
+The old Captain blew out a windy breath as he helped himself out of his
+coat in the empty library. The bent globe still leaned against the
+window-seat. The room had never looked so somber or so lonely.
+
+At dinner the old man ate so little that Rose Hobbett ceased her
+monotonous grumbling to ask if he felt well. He said he had had a hard
+day, a difficult day. He felt so weak and thin that he foretold the gray
+days when he could no longer creep to the village and sit with his
+cronies at the livery-stable, when he would be house-fast, through
+endless days, creeping from room to room like a weak old rat in a huge
+empty house, finally to die in some disgusting fashion. And Now Peter
+was going to leave him, was going to throw himself away on a lascivious
+wench. A faint moisture dampened the old man's withered eyes. He drank
+an extra thimbleful of whisky to try to hearten himself. Its bouquet
+filled the time-worn stateliness of the dining-room.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+During the weeks of Peter's stay at the manor it had grown to be the
+Captain's habit really to write for two or three hours in the afternoon,
+and his pile of manuscript had thickened under his application.
+
+The old man was writing a book called "Reminiscences of Peace and War."
+His book would form another unit of that extraordinary crop of personal
+reminiscences of the old South which flooded the presses of America
+during the decade of 1908-18. During just that decade it seemed as if the
+aged men and women of the South suddenly realized that the generation who
+had lived through the picturesqueness and stateliness of the old slave
+regime was almost gone, and over their hearts swept a common impulse to
+commemorate, in the sunset of their own lives, its fading splendor and
+its vanished deeds.
+
+On this particular afternoon the Captain settled himself to work, but
+his reminiscences did not get on. He pinched a bit of floss from the nib
+of his pen and tried to swing into the period of which he was writing.
+He read over a few pages of his copy as mental priming, but his thoughts
+remained flat and dull. Indeed, his whole life, as he reviewed it in the
+waning afternoon, appeared empty and futile. It seemed hardly worth
+while to go on.
+
+The Captain had come to that point in his memoirs where the Republican
+representative from Knox County had set going the petard which had
+wrecked his political career.
+
+From the very beginnings of his labors the old lawyer had looked forward
+to writing just this period of his life. He meant to clear up his name
+once for all. He meant to use invective, argument, testimony and a
+powerful emotional appeal, such as a country lawyer invariably attempts
+with a jury.
+
+But now that he had arrived at the actual composition of his defense, he
+sat biting his penholder, with all the arguments he meant to advance
+slipped from his mind. He could not recall the points of the proof. He
+could not recall them with Peter Siner moving restlessly about the room,
+glancing through the window, unsettled, nervous, on the verge of eloping
+with a negress.
+
+His secretary's tragedy smote the old man. The necessity of doing
+something for Peter put his thoughts to rout. A wild idea occurred to
+the Captain that if he should write the exact truth, perhaps his memoirs
+might serve Peter as a signal against a futile, empty journey.
+
+But the thought no sooner appeared than it was rejected. In the Anglo-
+Saxon, especially the Anglo-Saxon of the Southern United States, abides
+no such Gallic frankness as moved a Jean-Jacques. Southern memoirs
+always sound like the conversation between two maiden ladies,--nothing
+intimate, simply a few general remarks designed to show from what nice
+families they came.
+
+So the Captain wrote nothing. During all the afternoon he sat at his
+desk with a leaden heart, watching Peter move about the room. The old
+man maintained more or less the posture of writing, but his thoughts
+were occupied in pitying himself and pitying Peter. Half a dozen times
+he looked up, on the verge of making some plea, some remonstrance,
+against the madness of this brown man. But the sight of Peter sitting in
+the window-seat staring out into the street silenced him. He was a weak
+old man, and Peter's nerves were strung with the desire of youth.
+
+At last the two men heard old Rose clashing in the kitchen. A few
+minutes later the secretary excused himself from the library, to go to
+his own room. As Peter was about to pass through the door, the Captain
+was suddenly galvanized into action by the thought that this perhaps was
+the last time he would ever see him. He got up from his chair and called
+shakenly to Peter. The negro paused. The Captain moistened his lips and
+controlled his voice.
+
+"I want to have a word with you, Peter, about a--a little matter. I--
+I've mentioned it before."
+
+"Yes, sir." The negro's tone and attitude reminded the Captain that the
+supper gong would soon sound and they would best separate at once.
+
+"It--it's about Cissie Dildine," the old lawyer hurried on.
+
+Peter nodded slightly.
+
+"Yes, you mentioned that before."
+
+The old man lifted a thin hand as if to touch Peter's arm, but he did
+not. A sort of desperation seized him.
+
+"But listen, Peter, you don't want to do--what's in your mind!"
+
+"What is in my mind, Captain?"
+
+"I mean marry a negress. You don't want to marry a negress!"
+
+The brown man stared, utterly blank.
+
+"Not marry a negress!"
+
+"No, Peter; no," quavered the old man. "For yourself it may make no
+difference, but your children--think of your children, your son growing
+up under a brown veil! You can't tear it off. God himself can't tear it
+off! You can never reach him through it. Your children, your children's
+children, a terrible procession that stretches out and out, marching
+under a black shroud, unknowing, unknown! All you can see are their sad
+forms beneath the shroud, marching away--marching away. God knows where!
+And yet it's your own flesh and blood!"
+
+Suddenly the old lawyer's face broke into the hard, tearless contortions
+of the aged. His terrible emotion communicated itself to the sensitive
+brown man.
+
+"But, Captain, I myself am a negro. Whom should I marry?"
+
+"No one; no one! Let your seed wither in your loins! It's better to do
+that; it's better--" At that moment the clashing of the supper gong fell
+on the old man's naked nerves. He straightened up by some reflex
+mechanism, turned away from what he thought was his last interview with
+his secretary, and proceeded down the piazza into the great empty
+dining-room.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+With overwrought nerves Peter Siner entered his room. At five o'clock
+that afternoon he had seen Cissie Dildine go up the street to the
+Arkwright home to cook one of those occasional suppers. He had been
+watching for her return, and in the midst of it the Captain's
+extraordinary outburst had stirred him up.
+
+Once in his room, the negro placed the broken Hepplewhite in such a
+position that he could rake the street with a glance. Then he tried to
+compose himself and await the coming of his supper and the passage of
+Cissie. There was something almost pathetic in Peter's endless watching,
+all for a mere glimpse or two of the girl in yellow. He himself had no
+idea how his nerves and thoughts had woven themselves around the young
+woman. He had no idea what a passion this continual doling out of
+glimpses had begotten. He did not dream how much he was, as folk naively
+put it, in love with her.
+
+His love was strong enough to make him forget for a while the old
+lawyer's outbreak. However, as the dusk thickened in the shrubbery and
+under the trees, certain of the old gentleman's phrases revisited the
+mulatto's mind: "A terrible procession ... marching under a black
+shroud.... Your children, your children's children, a terrible
+procession,... marching away, God knows where.... And yet--it's your own
+flesh and blood!" They were terrific sentences, as if the old man had
+been trying to tear from his vision some sport of nature, some
+deformity. As the implications spread before Peter, he became more and
+more astonished at its content. Even to Captain Renfrew black men were
+dehumanized,--shrouded, untouchable creatures.
+
+It delivered to Peter a slow but a profound shock. He glanced about at
+the faded magnificence of the room with a queer feeling that he had been
+introduced into it under a sort of misrepresentation. He had taken up
+his abode with the Captain, at least on the basis of belonging to the
+human family, but this passionate outbreak, this puzzling explosion, cut
+that ground from under his feet.
+
+The more Peter thought about it, the stranger grew his sensation. Not
+even to be classed as a human being by this old gentleman who in a weak,
+helpless fashion had crept somewhat into Peter's affections,--not to be
+considered a man! The mulatto drew a long, troubled breath, and by the
+mere mechanics of his desire kept staring through the gloom for Cissie.
+
+Peter Siner had known all along that the unread whites of Hooker's Bend
+--and that included nearly every white person in the village--considered
+black men as simple animals; but he had supposed that the more thoughtful
+men, of whom Captain Renfrew was a type, at least admitted the Afro-
+American to the common brotherhood of humanity. But they did not.
+
+As Peter sat staring into the darkness the whole effect of the
+dehumanizing of the black folk of the South began to unfold itself
+before his imagination. It explained to him the tragedies of his race,
+their sufferings at the hand of mob violence; the casualness, even the
+levity with which black men were murdered: the chronic dishonesty with
+which negroes were treated: the constant enactment of adverse
+legislation against them; the cynical use of negro women. They were all
+vermin, animals; they were one with the sheep and the swine; a little
+nearer the human in form, perhaps, and, oddly enough, one that could be
+bred to a human being, as testified a multitude of brown and yellow and
+cream-colored folk, but all marching away, as the Captain had so
+passionately said, marching away, their forms hidden from human
+intercourse under a shroud of black, an endless procession marching
+away, God knew whither! And yet they were the South's own flesh and
+blood.
+
+The horror of such a complex swelled in Peter's mind to monstrous
+proportions. As night thickened at his window, the negro sat dazed and
+wondering at the mightiness of his vision. His thoughts went groping,
+trying to solve some obscure problem it posed. He thought of the
+Arkwright boy; he thought of the white men smiling as his mother's
+funeral went past the livery-stable; he thought of Captain Renfrew's
+manuscript that he was transcribing. Through all the old man's memoirs
+ran a certain lack of sincerity. Peter always felt amid his labors that
+the old Captain was making an attorney's plea rather than a candid
+exposition. At this point in his thoughts there gradually limned itself
+in the brown man's mind the answer to that enigma which he almost had
+unraveled on the day he first saw Cissie Dildine pass his window. With
+it came the answer to the puzzle contained in the old Captain's library.
+The library was not an ordinary compilation of the world's thought; it,
+too, was an attorney's special pleading against the equality of man. Any
+book or theory that upheld the equality of man was carefully excluded
+from the shelves. Darwin's great hypothesis, and every development
+springing from it, had been banned, because the moment that a theory was
+propounded of the great biologic relationship of all flesh, from worms
+to vertebrates, there instantly followed a corollary of the brotherhood
+of man.
+
+What Christ did for theology, Darwin did for biology,--he democratized
+it. The One descended to man's brotherhood from the Trinity; the other
+climbed up to it from the worms.
+
+The old Captain's library lacked sincerity. Southern orthodoxy, which
+persists in pouring its religious thought into the outworn molds of
+special creation, lacks sincerity. Scarcely a department of Southern
+life escapes this fundamental attitude of special pleader and
+disingenuousness. It explains the Southern fondness for legal
+subtleties. All attempts at Southern poetry, belles-lettres, painting,
+novels, bear the stamp of the special plea, of authors whose exposition
+is careful.
+
+Peter perceived what every one must perceive, that when letters turn
+into a sort of glorified prospectus of a country, all value as
+literature ceases. The very breath of art and interpretation is an eager
+and sincere searching of the heart. This sincerity the South lacks. Her
+single talent will always be forensic, because she is a lawyer with a
+cause to defend. And such is the curse that arises from lynchings and
+venery and extortions and dehumanizings,--sterility; a dumbness of soul.
+
+Peter Siner's thoughts lifted him with the tremendous buoyancy of
+inspiration. He swung out of his chair and began tramping his dark room.
+The skin of his scalp tickled as if a ghost had risen before him. The
+nerves in his thighs and back vibrated. He felt light, and tingled with
+energy.
+
+Unaware of what he was doing, he set about lighting the gasolene-lamp.
+He worked with nervous quickness, as if he were in a great hurry.
+Presently a brilliant light flooded the room. It turned the gray
+illumination of the windows to blackness.
+
+Joy enveloped Peter. His own future developed under his eyes with the
+same swift clairvoyance that marked his vision of the ills of his
+country. He saw himself remedying those ills. He would go about showing
+white men and black men the simple truth, the spiritual necessity for
+justice and fairness. It was not a question of social equality; it was a
+question of clearing a road for the development of Southern life. He
+would show white men that to weaken, to debase, to dehumanize the negro,
+inflicted a more terrible wound on the South than would any strength the
+black man might develop. He would show black men that to hate the
+whites, constantly to suspect, constantly to pilfer from them, only
+riveted heavier shackles on their limbs.
+
+It was all so clear and so simple! The white South must humanize the
+black not for the sake of the negro, but for the sake of itself. No one
+could resist logic so fundamental.
+
+Peter's heart sang with the solemn joy of a man who had found his work.
+All through his youth he had felt blind yearnings and gropings for he
+knew not what. It had driven him with endless travail out of Niggertown,
+through school and college, and back to Niggertown,--this untiring Hound
+of Heaven. But at last he had reached his work. He, Peter Siner, a
+mulatto, with the blood of both white and black in his veins, would come
+as an evangel of liberty to both white and black. The brown man's eyes
+grew moist from Joy. His body seemed possessed of tremendous energy.
+
+As he paced his room there came into the glory of Peter's thoughts the
+memory of the Arkwright boy as he sat in the cedar glade brooding on the
+fallen needles Peter recalled the hobbledehoy's disjointed words as he
+wrestled with the moral and physical problems of adolescence. Peter
+recalled his impulse to sit down by young Sam Arkwright, and, as best he
+might, give him some clue to the critical and feverish period through
+which he was passing.
+
+He had not done so, but Peter remembered the instance down to the very
+desperation in the face of the brooding youngster. And it seemed to
+Peter that this rejected impulse had been a sign that he was destined to
+be an evangel to the whites as well as to the blacks.
+
+The joy of Peter's mission bore him aloft on vast wings. His room seemed
+to fall away from him, and he was moving about his country, releasing
+the two races from their bonds of suspicion and cruelty.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+Slowly the old manor formed about Peter again, and he perceived that a
+tapping on the door had summoned him back. He walked to the door with
+his heart full of kindness for old Rose. She was bringing him his
+supper. He felt as if he could take the old woman in his arms, and out
+of the mere hugeness of his love sweeten her bitter life. The mulatto
+opened the door as eagerly as if he were admitting some long-desired
+friend; but when the shutter swung back, the old crone and her salver
+were not there. All he could discern in the darkness were the white
+pillars marking the night into panels. There was no light in the outer
+kitchen. The whole manor was silent.
+
+As he stood listening, the knocking was repeated, this time more
+faintly. He fixed the sound at the window. He closed the door, walked
+across the brilliant room, and opened the shutters.
+
+For several moments he saw nothing more than the tall quadrangle of
+blackness which the window framed; then a star or two pierced it; then
+something moved. He saw a woman's figure standing close to the casement,
+and out of the darkness Cissie Dildine's voice asked in its careful
+English:
+
+"Peter, may I come in?"
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+For a full thirty seconds Peter Siner stared at the girl at the window
+before, even with her prompting, he thought of the amenity of asking her
+to come inside. As a further delayed courtesy, he drew the Heppelwhite
+chair toward her.
+
+Cissie's face looked bloodless in the blanched light of the gasolene-
+lamp. She forced a faint, doubtful smile.
+
+"You don't seem very glad to see me, Peter."
+
+"I am," he assured her, mechanically, but he really felt nothing but
+astonishment and dismay. They filled his voice. He was afraid some one
+would see Cissie in his room. His thoughts went flitting about the
+premises, calculating the positions of the various trees and shrubs in
+relation to the windows, trying to determine whether, and just where, in
+his brilliantly lighted chamber the girl could be seen from the street.
+
+The octoroon made no further comment on his confusion. Her eyes wandered
+from him over the stately furniture and up to the stuccoed ceiling.
+
+"They told me you lived in a wonderful room," she remarked absently.
+
+"Yes, it's very nice," agreed Peter in the same tone, wondering what
+might be the object of her hazardous visit. A flicker of suspicion
+suggested that she was trying to compromise him out of revenge for his
+renouncement of her, but the next instant he rejected this.
+
+The girl accepted the chair Peter offered and continued to look about.
+
+"I hope you don't mind my staring, Peter," she said.
+
+"I stared when I first came here to stay," assisted Peter, who was
+getting a little more like himself, even if a little uneasier at the
+consequences of this visit.
+
+"Is that a highboy?" She nodded nervously at the piece of furniture.
+"I've seen pictures of them."
+
+"Uh huh. Revolutionary, I believe. The night wind is a little raw." He
+moved across the room and closed the jalousies, and thus cut off the
+night wind and also the west view from the street. He glanced at the
+heavy curtains parted over his front windows, with a keen desire to
+swing them together. Some fragment of his mind continued the surface
+conversation with Cissie.
+
+"Is it post-Revolutionary or pre-Revolutionary?" she asked with a
+preoccupied air.
+
+"Post, I believe. No, pre. I always meant to examine closely."
+
+"To have such things would almost teach one history," Cissie said.
+
+"Yeah; very nice." Peter had decided that the girl was in direct line
+with the left front window and an opening between the trees to the
+street.
+
+The girl's eyes followed his.
+
+"Are those curtains velour, Peter?"
+
+"I--I believe so," agreed the man, unhappily.
+
+"I--I wonder how they look spread."
+
+Peter seized on this flimsy excuse with a wave of relief and
+thankfulness to Cissie. He had to restrain himself as he strode across
+the room and swung together the two halves of the somber curtains in
+order to preserve an appearance of an exhibit. His fingers were so
+nervous that he bungled a moment at the heavy cords, but finally the two
+draperies swung together, loosing a little cloud of dust. He drew
+together a small aperture where the hangings stood apart, and then
+turned away in sincere relief.
+
+Cissie's own interest in historic furniture and textiles came to an
+abrupt conclusion. She gave a deep sigh and settled back into her chair.
+She sat looking at Peter seriously, almost distressfully, as he came
+toward her.
+
+With the closing of the curtains and the establishment of a real privacy
+Peter became aware once again of the sweetness and charm Cissie always
+held for him. He still wondered what had brought her, but he was no
+longer uneasy.
+
+"Perhaps I'd better build a fire," he suggested, quite willing now to
+make her visit seem not unusual.
+
+"Oh, no,"--she spoke with polite haste,--"I'm just going to stay a
+minute. I don't know what you'll think of me." She looked intently at
+him.
+
+"I think it lovely of you to come." He was disgusted with the triteness
+of this remark, but he could think of nothing else.
+
+"I don't know," demurred the octoroon, with her faint doubtful smile.
+"Persons don't welcome beggars very cordially."
+
+"If all beggars were so charming--" Apparently he couldn't escape
+banalities.
+
+But Cissie interrupted whatever speech he meant to make, with a return
+of her almost painful seriousness.
+
+"I really came to ask you to help me, Peter."
+
+"Then your need has brought me a pleasure, at least." Some impulse kept
+the secretary making those foolish complimentary speeches which keep a
+conversation empty and insincere.
+
+"Oh, Peter, I didn't come here for you to talk like that! Will you do
+what I want?"
+
+"What do you want, Cissie?" he asked, sobered by her voice and manner.
+
+"I want you to help me, Peter."
+
+"All right, I will." He spaced his words with his speculations about the
+nature of her request. "What do you want me to do?"
+
+"I want you to help me go away."
+
+Peter looked at her in surprise. He hardly knew what he had been
+expecting, but it was not this.
+
+Some repressed emotion crept into the girl's voice.
+
+"Peter, I--I can't stay here in Hooker's Bend any longer. I want to go
+away. I--I've got to go away."
+
+Peter stood regarding her curiously and at the same time
+sympathetically.
+
+"Where do you want to go, Cissie?"
+
+The girl drew a long breath; her bosom lifted and dropped abruptly.
+
+"I don't know; that was one of the things I wanted to ask you about."
+
+"You don't know where you want to go?" He smiled faintly. "How do you
+know you want to go at all?"
+
+"Oh, Peter, all I know is I must leave Hooker's Bend!" She gave a little
+shiver. "I'm tired of it, sick of it--sick." She exhaled a breath, as if
+she were indeed physically ill. Her face suggested it; her eyes were
+shadowed. "Some Northern city, I suppose," she added.
+
+"And you want me to help you?" inquired Peter, puzzled.
+
+She nodded silently, with a woman's instinct to make a man guess the
+favor she is seeking.
+
+Then it occurred to Peter just what sort of assistance the girl did
+want. It gave him a faint shock that a girl could come to a man to beg
+or to borrow money. It was a white man's shock, a notion he had picked
+up in Boston, because it happens frequently among village negroes, and
+among them it holds as little significance as children begging one
+another for bites of apples.
+
+Peter thought over his bank balance, then started toward a chest of
+drawers where he kept his checkbook.
+
+"Cissie, if I can he of any service to you in a substantial way, I'll be
+more than glad to--"
+
+She put out a hand and stopped him; then talked on in justification of
+her determination to go away.
+
+"I just can't endure it any longer, Peter." She shuddered again. "I
+can't stand Niggertown, or this side of town--any of it. They--they have
+no _feeling_ for a colored girl, Peter, not--not a speck!" She rave
+a gasp, and after a moment plunged on into her wrongs: "When--when one
+of us even walks past on the street, they--they whistle and say a-all
+kinds of things out loud, j-just as if w-we weren't there at all. Th-
+they don't c-care; we're just n-nigger w-women." Cissie suddenly began
+sobbing with a faint catching noise, her full bosom shaken by the
+spasms; her tears slowly welling over. She drew out a handkerchief with
+a part of its lace edge gone, and wiped her eyes and cheeks, holding the
+bit of cambric in a ball in her palm, like a negress, instead of in her
+fingers, like a white woman, as she had been taught. Then she drew a
+deep breath, swallowed, and became more composed.
+
+Peter stood looking in helpless anger at this representative of all
+women of his race.
+
+"Cissie, that's street-corner scum--the dirty sewage--"
+
+"They make you feel naked," went on Cissie in the monotone that succeeds
+a fit of weeping, "and ashamed--and afraid." She blinked her eyes to
+press out the undue moisture, and looked at Peter as if asking what else
+she could do about it than to go away from the village.
+
+"Will it be any better away from here?" suggested Peter, doubtfully.
+
+Cissie shook her head.
+
+"I--I suppose not, if--if I go alone."
+
+"I shouldn't think so," agreed Peter, somberly. He started to hearten
+her by saying white women also underwent such trials, if that would be a
+consolation; but he knew very well that a white woman's hardships were
+as nothing compared to those of a colored woman who was endowed with any
+grace whatever.
+
+"And besides, Cissie," went on Peter, who somehow found himself arguing
+against the notion of her going, "I hardly see how a decent colored
+woman gets around at all. Colored boarding-houses are wretched places. I
+ate and slept in one or two, coming home. Rotten." The possibility of
+Cissie finding herself in such a place moved Peter.
+
+The girl nodded submissively to his judgment, and said in a queer voice:
+"That's why I--I didn't want to travel alone, Peter."
+
+"No, it's a bad idea--" and then Peter perceived that a queer quality
+was creeping into the tete-a-tete.
+
+She returned his look unsteadily, but with a curious persistence.
+
+[Illustration: "You-you mean you want m-me--to go with you, Cissie?" he
+stammered]
+
+"I--I d-don't want to travel a-alone, Peter," she gasped.
+
+Her look, her voice suddenly brought home to the an the amazing
+connotation of her words. He stared at her, felt his face grow warm with
+a sharp, peculiar embarrassment. He hardly knew what to say or do before
+her intent and piteous eyes.
+
+"You--you mean you want m-me--to go with you, Cissie?" he stammered.
+
+The girl suddenly began trembling, now that her last reserve of
+indirection had been torn away.
+
+"Listen, Peter," she began breathlessly. "I'm not the sort of woman you
+think. If I hadn't accused myself, we'd be married now. I--I wanted you
+more than anything in the world, Peter, but I did tell you. Surely,
+surely, Peter, that shows I am a good woman--th-the real I. Dear, dear
+Peter, there is a difference between a woman and her acts. Peter, you're
+the first man in all my life, in a-all my life who ever came to me k-
+kindly and gently; so I had to l-love you and t-tell you, Peter."
+
+The girl's wavering voice broke down completely; her face twisted with
+grief. She groped for her chair, sat down, buried her face in her arms
+on the table, and broke into a chattering outbreak of sobs that sounded
+like some sort of laughter.
+
+Her shoulders shook; the light gleamed on her soft, black Caucasian
+hair. There was a little rent in one of the seams in her cheap jacket,
+at one of the curves where her side molded into her shoulder. The
+customer made garment had found Cissie's body of richer mold than it had
+been designed to shield. And yet in Peter's distress and tenderness and
+embarrassment, this little rent held his attention and somehow misprized
+the wearer.
+
+It seemed symbolic in the searching white light. He could see the very
+break in the thread and the widened stitches at the ends of the rip. Her
+coat had given way because she was modeled more nearly like the Venus de
+Milo than the run of womankind. He felt the little irony of the thing,
+and yet was quite unable to resist the comparison.
+
+And then, too, she had referred again to her sin of peculation. A woman
+enjoys confessions from a man. A man's sins are mostly vague, indefinite
+things to a woman, a shadowy background which brings out the man in a
+beautiful attitude of repentance; but when a woman confesses, the man
+sees all her past as a close-up with full lighting. He has an intimate
+acquaintance with just what she's talking about, and the woman herself
+grows shadowy and unreal. Men have too many blots not to demand
+whiteness in women. By striking some such average, nature keeps the race
+a going moral concern.
+
+So Peter, as he stood looking down on the woman who was asking him to
+marry her, was filled with as unhappy and as impersonal a tenderness as
+a born brother. He recalled the thoughts which had come to him when he
+saw Cissie passing his window. She was not the sort of woman he wanted
+to marry; she was not his ideal. He cast about in his head for some
+gentle way of putting her off, so that he would not hurt her any
+further, if such an easement were possible.
+
+As he stood thinking, he found not a pretext, but a reality. He stooped
+over, and put a hand lightly on each of her arms.
+
+"Cissie," he said in a serious, even voice, "if I should ever marry any
+one, it would be you."
+
+The girl paused in her sobbing at his even, passionless voice.
+
+"Then you--you won't?" she whispered in her arms.
+
+"I can't, Cissie." Now that he was saying it, he uttered the words very
+evenly and smoothly. "I can't, dear Cissie, because a great work has
+just come into my life." He paused, expecting her to ask some question,
+but she lay silent, with her face in her arms, evidently listening.
+
+"Cissie, I think, in fact I know, I can demonstrate to all the South,
+both white and black, the need of a better and more sincere
+understanding between our two races."
+
+Peter did not feel the absurdity of such a speech in such a place. He
+patted her arm, but there was something in the warmth of her flesh that
+disturbed his austerity and caused him to lift his hand to the more
+impersonal axis of her shoulder. He proceeded to develop his idea.
+
+"Cissie, just a moment ago you were complaining of the insults you meet
+everywhere. I believe if I can spread my ideas, Cissie, that even a
+pretty colored girl like you may walk the streets without being
+subjected to obscenity on every corner." His tone unconsciously
+patronized Cissie's prettiness with the patronage of the male for the
+less significant thing, as though her ripeness for love and passion and
+children were, after all, not comparable with what he, a male, could do
+in the way of significantly molding life.
+
+Cissie lifted her head and dried her eyes.
+
+"So you aren't going to marry me, Peter?" Woman-like, now that she was
+well into the subject, she was far less embarrassed than Peter. She had
+had her cry.
+
+"Why--er--considering this work, Cissie--"
+
+"Aren't you going to marry anybody, Peter?"
+
+The artist in Peter, the thing the girl loved in him, caught again that
+Messianic vision of himself.
+
+"Why, no, Cissie," he said, with a return of his inspiration of an hour
+ago; "I'll be going here and there all over the South preaching this
+gospel of kindliness and tolerance, of forgiveness of the faults of
+others." Cissie looked at him with a queer expression. "I'll show the
+white people that they should treat the negro with consideration not for
+the sake of the negro, but for the sake of themselves. It's so simple,
+Cissie, it's so logical and clear--"
+
+The girl shook her head sadly.
+
+"And you don't want me to go with you, Peter?"
+
+"Why, n-no, Cissie; a girl like you couldn't go. Perhaps I'll be
+misunderstood in places, perhaps I may have to leave a town hurriedly,
+or be swung over the walls, like Paul, in a basket." He attempted to
+treat it lightly.
+
+But the girl looked at him with a horror dawning in her melancholy face.
+
+"Peter, do you really mean that?" she whispered.
+
+"Why, truly. You don't imagine--"
+
+The octoroon opened her dark eyes until she might have been some weird.
+
+"Oh, Peter, please, please put such a mad idea away from you! Peter,
+you've been living here alone in this old house until you don't see
+things clearly. Dear Peter, don't you _know?_ You can't go out and
+talk like that to white folks and--and not have some terrible thing
+happen to you! Oh, Peter, if you would only marry me, it would cure you
+of such wildness!" Involuntarily she got up, holding out her arms to
+him, offering herself to his needs, with her frightened eyes fixed on
+his.
+
+It made him exquisitely uncomfortable again. He made a little sound
+designed to comfort and reassure her. He would do very well. He was
+something of a diplomat in his way. He had got along with the boys in
+Harvard very well indeed. In fact, he was rather a man of the world. No
+need to worry about him, though it was awfully sweet of her.
+
+Cissie picked up her handkerchief with its torn edge, which she had laid
+on the table. Evidently she was about to go.
+
+"I surely don't know what will become of me," she said, looking at it.
+
+In a reversal of feeling Peter did not want her to go away quite then.
+He cast about for some excuse to detain her a moment longer.
+
+"Now, Cissie," he began, "if you are really going to leave Hooker's
+Bend--"
+
+"I'm not going," she said, with a long exhalation. "I--" she swallowed--
+"I just thought that up to--ask you to--to--You see," she explained, a
+little breathless, "I thought you still loved me and had forgiven me by
+the way you watched for me every day at the window."
+
+This speech touched Peter more keenly than any of the little drama the
+girl had invented. It hit him so shrewdly he could think of nothing more
+to say.
+
+Cissie moved toward the window and undid the latch.
+
+"Good night, Peter." She paused a moment, with her hand on the catch.
+"Peter," she said, "I'd almost rather see you marry some other girl than
+try so terrible a thing."
+
+The big, full-blooded athlete smiled faintly.
+
+"You seem perfectly sure marriage would cure me of my mission."
+
+Cissie's face reddened faintly.
+
+"I think so," she said briefly. "Good night," and she disappeared in the
+dark space she had opened, and closed the jalousies softly after her.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER XV
+
+
+Cissie Dildine's conviction that marriage would cure Peter of his
+mission persisted in the mulatto's mind long after the glamour of the
+girl had faded and his room had regained the bleak emptiness of a
+bachelor's bedchamber.
+
+Cissie had been so brief and positive in her statement that Peter, who
+had not thought on the point at all, grew more than half convinced she
+was right.
+
+Now that he pondered over it, it seemed there was a difference between
+the outlook of a bachelor and that of a married man. The former
+considered humanity as a balloonist surveys a throng,--immediately and
+without perspective,--but the latter always sees mankind through the
+frame of his family. A single man tends naturally to philosophy and
+reform; a married man to administration and statesmanship. There have
+been no great unmarried statesmen; there have been no great married
+philosophers or reformers.
+
+Now that Cissie had pointed out this universal rule, Peter saw it very
+clearly. And Peter suspected that beneath this rough classification, and
+conditioning it, lay a plexus of obscure mental and physical reactions
+set up by the relations between husband and wife. It might very well be
+there was a difference between the actual cerebral and nervous structure
+of a married man and that of a single man.
+
+At any rate, after these reflections, Peter now felt sure that marriage
+would cure him of his mission; but how had Cissie known it? How had she
+struck out so involved a theory, one might say, in the toss of a head?
+The more Peter thought it over the more extraordinary it became. It was
+another one of those explosive ideas which Cissie, apparently, had the
+faculty of creating out of a pure mental vacuum.
+
+All this philosophy aside, Cissie's appearance just in the nick of his
+inspiration, her surprising proposal of marriage, and his refusal, had
+accomplished one thing: it had committed Peter to the program he had
+outlined to the girl.
+
+Indeed, there seemed something fatalistic in such a concatenation of
+events. Siner wondered whether or not he would have obeyed his vision
+without this added impulse from Cissie. He did not know; but now, since
+it had all come about just as it had, he suspected he would have been
+neglectful. He felt as if a dangerous but splendid channel had been
+opened before his eyes, and almost at the same instant a hand had
+reached down and directed his life into it. This fancy moved the
+mulatto. As he got himself ready for bed, he kept thinking:
+
+"Well, my life is settled at last. There is nothing else for me to do.
+Even if this should end terribly for me, as Cissie imagines, my life
+won't be wasted."
+
+Next morning Peter Siner was awakened by old Rose Hobbett thrusting her
+head in at his door, staring around, and finally, seeing Peter in bed,
+grumbling:
+
+"Why is you still heah, black man?"
+
+The secretary opened his eyes in astonishment.
+
+"Why shouldn't I be here?"
+
+"Nobody wuz 'speckin' you to be heah." The crone withdrew her head and
+vanished.
+
+Peter wondered at this unaccustomed interest of Rose, then hurried out
+of bed, supposing himself late for breakfast.
+
+A dense fog had come up from the river, and the moisture floating into
+his open windows had dampened his whole room. Peter stepped briskly to
+the screen and began splashing himself. It was only in the midst of his
+ablutions that he remembered his inspiration and resolve of the previous
+evening. As he squeezed the water over his powerfully molded body, he
+recalled it almost impersonally. It might have happened to some third
+person. He did not even recall distinctly the threads of the logic which
+had lifted him to such a Pisgah, and showed him the whole South as a new
+and promised land. However, he knew that he could start his train of
+thought again, and again ascend the mountain.
+
+Floating through the fog into his open window came the noises of the
+village as it set about living another day, precisely as it had lived
+innumerable days in the past. The blast of the six-o'clock whistle from
+the planing-mill made the loose sashes of his windows rattle. Came a
+lowing of cows and a clucking of hens, a woman's calling. The voices of
+men in conversation came so distinctly through the pall that it seemed a
+number of persons must be moving about their morning work, talking and
+shouting, right in the Renfrew yard.
+
+But the thing that impressed Peter most was the solidity and stability
+of this Southern village that he could hear moving around him, and its
+certainty to go on in the future precisely as it had gone on in the
+past. It was a tremendous force. The very old manor about him seemed
+huge and intrenched in long traditions, while he, Peter Siner, was just
+a brown man, naked behind a screen and rather cold from the fog and damp
+of the morning.
+
+He listened to old Rose clashing the kitchen utensils. As he drew on his
+damp underwear, he wondered what he could say to old Rose that would
+persuade her into a little kindliness and tolerance for the white
+people. As he listened he felt hopeless; he could never explain to the
+old creature that her own happiness depended upon the charity she
+extended to others. She could never understand it. She would live and
+die precisely the same bitter old beldam that she was, and nothing could
+ever assuage her.
+
+While Peter was thinking of the old creature, she came shuffling along
+the back piazza with his breakfast. She let herself in by lifting one
+knee to a horizontal, balancing the tray on it, then opening the door
+with her freed hand.
+
+When the shutter swung open, it displayed the crone standing on one
+foot, wearing a man's grimy sock, which had fallen down over a broken,
+run-down shoe.
+
+In Peter's mood the thought of this wretched old woman putting on such
+garments morning after morning was unspeakably pathetic. He thought of
+his own mother, who had lived and died only a shade or two removed from
+the old crone's condition.
+
+Rose put down her foot, and entered the room with her lips poked out,
+ready to make instant attack if Peter mentioned his lack of supper the
+night before.
+
+"Aunt Rose," asked the secretary, with his friendly intent in his tones,
+"how came you to look in this morning and say you didn't expect to find
+me in my room?"
+
+She gave an unintelligible grunt, pushed the lamp to one side, and eased
+her tray to the table.
+
+Peter finished touching his tie before one of those old-fashioned
+mirrors, not of cut-glass, yet perfectly true. He came from the mirror
+and moved his chair, out of force of habit, so he could look up the
+street toward the Arkwrights'.
+
+"Aunt Rose," said the young man, wistfully, "why are you always angry?"
+
+She bridled at this extraordinary inquiry.
+
+"Me?"
+
+"Yes, you."
+
+She hesitated a moment, thinking how she could make her reply a personal
+assault on Peter.
+
+"'Cause you come heah, 'sputin' my rights, da' 's' why."
+
+"No," demurred Peter, "you were quarreling in the kitchen the first
+morning I came here, and you didn't know I was on the place."
+
+"Well--I got my tribulations," she snapped, staring suspiciously at
+these unusual questions.
+
+There was a pause; then Peter said placatingly:
+
+"I was just thinking, Aunt Rose, you might forget your tribulations if
+you didn't ride them all the time."
+
+"Hoccum! What you mean, ridin' my tribulations?"
+
+"Thinking about them. The old Captain, for instance; you are no happier
+always abusing the old Captain."
+
+The old virago gave a sniff, tossed her head, but kept her eyes rolled
+suspiciously on Peter.
+
+"Very often the way we think and act makes us happy or unhappy,"
+moralized Peter, broadly.
+
+"Look heah, nigger, you ain't no preacher sont out by de Lawd to me!"
+
+"Anyway, I am sure you would feel more friendly toward the Captain if
+you acted openly with him; for instance, if you didn't take off all his
+cold victuals, and handkerchiefs and socks, soap, kitchenware--"
+
+The cook snorted.
+
+"I'd feel dat much mo' nekked an' hongry, dat's how I'd feel."
+
+"Perhaps, if you'd start over, he might give you a better wage."
+
+"Huh!" she snorted in an access of irony. "I see dat skinflint gib'n' me
+a better wage. Puuh!" The suddenly she realized where the conversation
+had wandered, and stared at the secretary with widening eyes "Good Lawd!
+Did dat fool Cap'n set up a nigger in dis bedroom winder jes to ketch
+ole Rose packin' off a few ole lef'-overs?" Peter began a hurried
+denial, but she rushed on: "'Fo' Gawd, I hopes his viddles chokes him! I
+hope his ole smoke-house falls down on his ole haid. I hope to Jesus--"
+
+Peter pleaded with her not to think the Captain was behind his
+observations, but the hag rushed out of the bedroom, swinging her head
+from side to side, uttering the most terrible maledictions. She would
+show him! She wouldn't put another foot in his old kitchen. Wild horses
+couldn't drag her into his smoke-house again.
+
+Peter ran to the door and called after her down the piazza, trying to
+exonerate the Captain: but she either did not or would not hear, and
+vanished into the kitchen, still furious.
+
+Old Rose made Peter so uneasy that he deserted his breakfast midway and
+hurried to the library. In the solemn old room he found the Captain
+alone and in rather a pleased mood. The old gentleman stood patting and
+alining a pile of manuscript. As the mulatto entered he exclaimed:
+
+"Well, here's Peter again!" as if his secretary had been off on a long
+journey. Immediately afterward he added, "Peter, guess what I did last
+night." His voice was full of triumph.
+
+Peter was thinking about Aunt Rose, and stood looking at the Captain
+without the slightest idea.
+
+"I wrote all of this,"--he indicated his manuscript,--"over a hundred
+pages."
+
+Peter considered the work without much enthusiasm.
+
+"You must have worked all night."
+
+The old attorney rubbed his hands.
+
+"I think I may claim a touch of inspiration last night, Peter.
+Reminiscences rippled from under my pen, propitious words, prosperous
+sentences. Er--the fact is, Peter, you will see, when you begin copying,
+I had come to a matter--a--a matter of some moment in my life. Every
+life contains such moments, Peter. I had meant to write something in the
+nature of a defen--an explanation, Peter. But after you left the library
+last night it suddenly occurred to me just to give each fact as it took
+place, quite frankly. So I did that--not--not what I meant to write, at
+all--ah. As you copy it, you may find it not entirely without some
+interest to yourself, Peter."
+
+"To me?" repeated Peter, after the fashion of the unattentative.
+
+"Yes, to yourself." The Captain was oddly moved. He took his hands off
+the script, walked a little away from the table, came back to it. "It--
+ah--may explain a good many things that--er--may have puzzled you." He
+cleared his throat and shifted his subject briskly. "We ought to be
+thinking about a publisher. What publisher shall we have publish these
+reminiscences? Make some stir in Tennessee's political circles,
+Peter; tremendous sales; clear up questions everybody is interested in.
+H-m--well, I'll walk down town and you"--he motioned to the script--
+"begin copying--"
+
+"By the way, Captain," said Peter as the old gentleman turned for the
+door, "has Rose said anything to you yet?"
+
+The old man detached his mind from his script with an obvious effort.
+
+"What about?"
+
+"About leaving your service."
+
+"No-o, not especially; she's always leaving my service."
+
+"But in this case it was my fault; at least I brought it about. I
+remonstrated with her about taking your left-over victuals and socks and
+handkerchiefs and things. She was quite offended."
+
+"Yes, it always offends her," agreed the old man, impatiently. "I never
+mention it myself unless I catch her red-handed; then I storm a little
+to keep her in bounds."
+
+Naturally, Peter knew of this extraordinary system of service in the
+South; nevertheless he was shocked at its implications.
+
+"Captain," suggested Peter, "wouldn't you find it to your own interest
+to give old Rose a full cash payment for her services and allow her to
+buy her own things?"
+
+The Captain dismissed the subject with a wave of his hand. "She's a
+nigger, Peter; you can't hire a nigger not to steal. Born in 'em. Then
+I'm not sure but what it would be compounding a felony, hiring a person
+not to steal; might be so construed. Well, now, there's the script. Read
+it carefully, my boy, and remember that in order to gain a certain
+_status quo_ certain antecedents are--are absolutely necessary,
+Peter. Without them my--my life would have been quite empty, Peter.
+It's--it's very strange--amazing. You will understand as you read. I'll
+be back to dinner, so good-by." In the strangest agitation the old
+Captain walked out of the library. The last glimpse Peter had of him was
+his meager old figure silhouetted against the cold gray fog that filled
+the compound.
+
+Neither the Captain's agitation nor his obvious desire that Peter should
+at once read the new manuscript really got past the threshold of the
+mulatto's consciousness. Peter's thoughts still hovered about old Rose,
+and from that point spread to the whole system of colored service in the
+South. For Rose's case was typical. The wage of cooks in small Southern
+villages is a pittance--and what they can steal. The tragedy of the
+mothers of a whole race working for their board and thievings came over
+Peter with a rising grimness. And there was no public sentiment against
+such practice. It was accepted everywhere as natural and inevitable. The
+negresses were never prosecuted; no effort was made to regain the stolen
+goods. The employers realized that what they paid would not keep soul
+and body together; that it was steal or perish.
+
+It was a fantastic truth that for any colored girl to hire into domestic
+service in Hooker's Bend was more or less entering an apprenticeship in
+peculation. What she could steal was the major portion of her wage, if
+two such anomalous terms may be used in conjunction.
+
+Yet, strange to say, the negro women of the village were quite honest in
+other matters. They paid their small debts. They took their mistresses'
+pocket-books to market and brought back the correct change. And if a
+mistress grew too indignant about something they had stolen, they would
+bring it back and say: "Here is a new one. I'd rather buy you a new one
+than have you think I would take anything."
+
+The whole system was the lees of slavery, and was surely the most
+demoralizing, the most grotesque method of hiring service in the whole
+civilized world. It was so absurd that its mere relation lapses into
+humor, that bane of black folk.
+
+Such painful thoughts filled the gloomy library and harassed Peter in
+his copying. He took his work to the window and tried to concentrate
+upon it, but his mind kept playing away.
+
+Indeed, it seemed to Peter that to sit in this old room and rewrite the
+wordy meanderings of the old gentleman's book was the very height of
+emptiness. How utterly futile, when all around him, on every hand, girls
+like Cissie Dildine were being indentured to corruption! And, as far as
+Peter knew, he was the only person in the South who saw it or felt it or
+cared anything at all about it.
+
+When Cissie Dildine came to the surface of Peter's mind she remained
+there, whirling around and around in his chaotic thoughts. He began
+talking to her image, after a certain dramatic trick of his mind, and
+she began offering her environment as an excuse for what had come
+between them and estranged them. She stole, but she had been trained to
+steal. She was a thief, the victim of an immense immorality. The charm
+of Cissie, her queer, swift-working intuition, the candor of her
+confession, her voluptuousness--all came rushing down on Peter,
+harassing him with anger and love and desire. To copy any more script
+became impossible. He lost his place; he hardly knew what he was
+writing.
+
+He flung aside the whole work, got to his feet with the imperative need
+of an athlete for the open. He started out of the room, but as an
+afterthought scribbled a nervous line, telling the Captain he might not
+be back for dinner. Then he found his hat and coat and walked briskly
+around the piazza to the front gate.
+
+The trees and shrubs were dripping, but the fog had almost cleared away,
+leaving only a haze in the air. A pale, level line of it cut across the
+scarp of the Big Hill. The sun shone with a peculiar soft light through
+the vapors.
+
+As Peter passed out at the gate, the fancy came to him that he might
+very well be starting on his mission. It came with a sort of surprise.
+He wondered how other men had set about reforms. With unpremeditation?
+He wondered to whom Jesus of Nazareth preached his first sermon. The
+thought of that young Galilean, sensitive, compassionate, inexperienced,
+speaking to his first hearer, filled Peter with a strange trembling
+tenderness. He looked about the familiar street of Hooker's Bend, the
+old trees over the pavement, the shabby village houses, and it all held
+a strangeness when thus juxtaposed to the thought of Nazareth nineteen
+hundred years before.
+
+The mulatto started down the street with his footsteps quickened by a
+sense of spiritual adventure.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+On the corner, against the blank south wall of Hobbett's store, Peter
+Siner saw the usual crowd of negroes warming themselves in the soft
+sunshine. They were slapping one another, scuffling, making feints with
+knives or stones, all to an accompaniment of bragging, profanity, and
+loud laughter. Their behavior was precisely that of adolescent white
+boys of fifteen or sixteen years of age.
+
+Jim Pink Staggs was furnishing much amusement with an impromptu sleight-
+of-hand exhibition. The black audience clustered around Jim Pink in his
+pinstripe trousers and blue-serge coat. They exhibited not the least
+curiosity as to the mechanics of the tricks, but asked for more and
+still more, with the naive delight of children in the mysterious.
+
+Peter Siner walked down the street with his Messianic impulse strong
+upon him. He was in that stage of feeling toward his people where a
+man's emotions take the color of religion. Now, as he approached the
+crowd of negroes, he wondered what he could say, how he could transfer
+to them the ideas and the emotion that lifted up his own heart.
+
+As he drew nearer, his concern mounted to anxiety. Indeed, what could he
+say? How could he present so grave a message? He was right among them
+now. One of the negroes jostled him by striking around his body at
+another negro. Peter stopped. His heart beat, and he had a queer
+sensation of being operated by some power outside himself. Next moment
+he heard himself saying in fairly normal tones:
+
+"Fellows, do you think we ought to be idling on the street corners like
+this? We ought to be at work, don't you think?"
+
+The horse-play stopped at this amazing sentiment.
+
+"Whuffo, Peter?" asked a voice.
+
+"Because the whole object of our race nowadays is to gain the respect of
+other races, and more particularly our own self-respect. We haven't it
+now. The only way to get it is to work, work, work."
+
+"Ef you feel lak you'd ought to go to wuck," suggested one astonished
+hearer, "you done got my p'mission, black boy, to hit yo' natchel gait
+to de fust job in sight."
+
+Peter was hardly less surprised than his hearers at what he was saying.
+He paid no attention to the interruption.
+
+"Fellows, it's the only way our colored people can get on and make the
+most out of life. Persistent labor is the very breath of the soul, men;
+it--it is." Here Peter caught an intimation of the whole flow of energy
+through the universe, focusing in man and being transformed into mental
+and moral values. And it suddenly occurred to him that the real worth of
+any people was their efficiency in giving this flow of force moral and
+spiritual forms. That is the end of man; that is what is prefigured when
+a baby's hand reaches for the sun. But Peter considered his audience,
+and his thought stammered on his tongue. The Persimmon, with his
+protruding, half-asleep eyes, was saying:
+
+"I don' know, Peter, as I 's so partic'lar 'bout makin' de mos' out'n
+dis worl'. You know de Bible say--hit say,"--here the Persimmon's voice
+dropped a tone lower, in unconscious imitation of negro preachers,--"la-
+ay not up yo' treasure on uth, wha moss do corrup', an' thieves break
+th'ugh _an'_ steal."
+
+Came a general nodding and agreement of soft, blurry voices.
+
+"'At sho whut it say, black man!"
+
+"Sho do!"
+
+"Lawd God loves a nigger on a street corner same as He do a millionaire
+in a six-cylinder, Peter."
+
+"Sho do, black man; but He's jes about de onlies' thing on uth 'at do."
+
+"Well, I don' know," came a troubled rejoinder. "Thaiuh 's de debbil,
+ketchin' mo' niggers nowadays dan he do white men, I 'fo' Gawd
+b'liebes."
+
+"Well, dat's because dey _is_ so many mo' niggers dan dey is white
+folks," put in a philosopher.
+
+"Whut you say 'bout dat, Brudder Peter?" inquired the Persimmon,
+seriously. None of this discussion was either derision or burlesque.
+None of the crowd had the slightest feeling that these questions were
+not just as practical and important as the suggestion that they all go
+to work.
+
+When Peter realized how their ignorant and undisciplined thoughts flowed
+off into absurdities, and that they were entirely unaware of it, it
+brought a great depression to his heart. He held up a hand with an
+earnestness that caught their vagrant attention.
+
+"Listen!" he pleaded. "Can't you see how much there is for us black
+folks to do, and what little we have done?"
+
+"Sho is a lot to do; we admits dat," said Bluegum Frakes. "But whut's de
+use doin' hit ef we kin manage to shy roun' some o' dat wuck an' keep on
+libin' anyhow, specially wid wages so high?"
+
+The question stopped Peter. Neither his own thoughts, nor any book that
+he had ever read nor any lecture that he had heard ever attempted to
+explain the enormous creative urge which is felt by every noble mind,
+and which, indeed, is shared to some extent by every human creature. Put
+to it like that, Siner concocted a sort of allegory, telling of a negro
+who was shiftless in the summer and suffered want in the winter, and
+applied it to the present high wage and to the low wage that was coming;
+but in his heart Peter knew such utilitarianism was not the true reason
+at all. Men do not weave tapestries to warm themselves, or build temples
+to keep the rain away.
+
+The brown man passed on around the corner, out of the faint warmth of
+the sunshine and away from the empty and endless arguments which his
+coming had provoked among the negroes.
+
+The futile ending of his first adventure surprised Peter. He walked
+uncertainly up the business street of the village, hardly knowing where
+to turn next.
+
+Cold weather had driven the merchants indoors, and the thoroughfare was
+quite deserted except for a few hogs rooting among the refuse heaps
+piled in front of the stores. It was not a pleasant sight, and it
+repelled Peter all the more because he was accustomed to the antiseptic
+look of a Northern city. He walked up to the third door from the corner,
+when a buzz of voices brought him to a standstill and finally persuaded
+him inside.
+
+At the back end of a badly lighted store a circle of white men and boys
+had formed around an old-fashioned, egg-shaped stove. Near by, on some
+meal-bags, sat two negroes, one of whom wore a broad grin, the other, a
+funny, sheepish look.
+
+The white men were teasing the latter negro about having gone to jail
+for selling a mortgaged cow. The men went about their fun-making
+leisurely, knowing quite well the negro could not get angry or make any
+retort or leave the store, all of these methods of self-defense being
+ruled out by custom.
+
+"You must have forgot your cow was mortgaged, Bob."
+
+"No-o-o, suh; I--I--I didn't fuhgit," drawling his vowels to a
+prodigious length.
+
+"Didn't you know you'd get into trouble?"
+
+"No-o-o, suh."
+
+"Know it now, don't you?"
+
+"Ya-a-s, suh."
+
+"Have a good time in jail, Bob?"
+
+"Ya-a-s, suh. Shot cra-a-aps nearly all de time tull de jailer broke hit
+up."
+
+"Wouldn't he let you shoot any more?"
+
+"No-o-o, suh; not after he won all our money." Here Bob flung up his
+head, poked out his lips like a bugle, and broke into a grotesque, "Hoo!
+hoo! hoo!" It was such an absurd laugh, and Bob's tale had come to such
+an absurd denouement, that the white men roared, and shuffled their feet
+on the flared base of the stove. Some spat in or near a box filled with
+sawdust, and betrayed other nervous signs of satisfaction. When a man so
+spat, he stopped laughing abruptly, straightened his face, and stared
+emptily at the rusty stove until further inquisition developed some
+other preposterous escapade in Bob's jail career.
+
+The merchant, looking up at one of these intermissions, saw Peter
+standing at his counter. He came out of the circle and asked Peter what
+he wanted. The mulatto bought a package of soda and went out.
+
+The chill north wind smelled clean after the odors of the store. Peter
+stood with his package of soda, breathing deeply, looking up and down
+the street, wondering what to do next. Without much precision of
+purpose, he walked diagonally across the street, northward toward a
+large faded sign that read, "Killibrew's Grocery." A little later Peter
+entered a big, rather clean store which smelled of spices, coffee, and a
+faint dash of decayed potatoes. Mr. Killibrew himself, a big, rotund
+man, with a round head of prematurely white hair, was visible in a
+little glass office at the end of his store. Even through the glazed
+partition Peter could see Mr. Killibrew smiling as he sat comfortably at
+his desk. Indeed, the grocer's chief assets were a really expansive
+friendliness and a pleasant, easily provoked laughter.
+
+He was fifty-two years old, and had been in the grocery business since
+he was fifteen. He had never been to school at all, but had learned
+bookkeeping, business mathematics, salesmanship, and the wisdom of the
+market-place from his store, from other merchants, and from the drummers
+who came every week with their samples and their worldly wisdom. These
+drummers were, almost to a man, very sincere friends of Mr. Killibrew,
+and not infrequently they would write the grocer from the city, or send
+him telegrams, advising him to buy this or to unload that, according to
+the exigencies of the market. As a result of this was very well off
+indeed, and all because he was a friendly, agreeable sort of man.
+
+The grocer heard Peter enter and started to come out of his office, when
+Peter stopped him and asked if he might speak with him alone.
+
+The white-haired man with the pink, good-natured face stood looking at
+Peter with rather a questioning but pleasant expression.
+
+"Why, certainly, certainly." He turned back to the swivel-chair at his
+desk, seated himself, and twisted about on Peter as he entered. Mr.
+Killibrew did not offer Peter a seat,--that would have been an
+infraction of Hooker's Bend custom,--but he sat leaning back, evidently
+making up his mind to refuse Peter credit, which he fancied the mulatto
+would ask for and yet do it pleasantly.
+
+"I was wondering, Mr. Killibrew," began Peter feeling his way along, "I
+was wondering if you would mind talking over a little matter with me.
+It's considered a delicate subject, I believe, but I thought a frank
+talk would help."
+
+During the natural pauses of Peter's explanation Mr. Killibrew kept up a
+genial series of nods and ejaculations.
+
+"Certainly, Peter. I don't see why, Peter. I'm sure it will help,
+Peter."
+
+"I'd like to talk frankly about the relations of our two races in the
+South, in Hooker's Bend."
+
+The grocer stopped his running accompaniment of affirmations and looked
+steadfastly at Peter. Presently he seemed to solve some question and
+broke into a pleasant laugh.
+
+"Now, Peter, if this is some political shenanigan, I must tell you I'm a
+Democrat. Besides that, I don't care a straw about politics. I vote, and
+that's all."
+
+Peter put down the suspicion that he was on a political errand.
+
+"Not that at all, Mr. Killibrew. It's a question of the white race and
+the black race. The particular feature I am working on is the wages paid
+to cooks."
+
+"I didn't know you were a cook," interjected the grocer in surprise.
+
+"I am not."
+
+Mr. Killibrew looked at Peter, thought intensely for a few moments, and
+came to an unescapable conclusion.
+
+"You don't mean you've formed a cook's union here in Hooker's Bend,
+Peter!" he cried, immensely amazed.
+
+"Not at all. It's this," clarified Peter. "It may seem trivial, but it
+illustrates the principle I'm trying to get at. Doesn't your cook carry
+away cold food?"
+
+It required perhaps four seconds for the merchant to stop his
+speculations on what Peter had come for and adjust his mind to the
+question.
+
+"Why, yes, I suppose so," he agreed, very much at sea. "I--I never
+caught up with her." He laughed a pleasant, puzzled laugh. "Of course
+she doesn't come around and show me what she's making off with. Why?"
+
+"Well, it's this. Wouldn't you prefer to give your cook a certain cash
+payment instead of having her taking uncertain amounts of your
+foodstuffs and wearing apparel?"
+
+The merchant leaned forward in his chair.
+
+"Did old Becky Davis send you to me with any such proposition as that,
+Peter?"
+
+"No, not at all. But, Mr. Killibrew, wouldn't you like better and more
+trustworthy servants as cooks, as farm-hands, chauffeurs, stable-boys?
+You see, you and your children and your children's children are going to
+have to depend on negro labor, as far as we can see, to the end of
+time."
+
+"We-e-ell, yes," admitted Mr. Killibrew, who was not accustomed to
+considering the end of time.
+
+"Wouldn't it be better to have honest, self-respecting help than
+dishonest help?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Then let's think about cooks. How can one hope to rear an honest, self-
+respecting citizenry as long as the mothers of the race are compelled to
+resort to thievery to patch out an insufficient wage?"
+
+"Why, I don't suppose niggers ever will be honest," admitted the grocer,
+very frankly. "You naturally don't trust a nigger. If you credit one for
+a dime, the next time he has any money he'll go trade somewhere else."
+The grocer broke into his contagious laugh. "Do you know how I've built
+up my business here, Peter? By never trusting a nigger." Mr. Killibrew
+continued his pleased chuckle. "Yes, I get the whole cash trade of the
+niggers in Hooker's Bend by never cheating one and never trusting one."
+
+The grocer leaned back in his squeaking chair and looked out through the
+glass partition, over the brightly colored packages that lined his
+shelves from floor to ceiling. All that prosperity had come about
+through a policy of honesty and distrust. It was something to be proud
+of.
+
+"Now, let me see," he proceeded, recurring pleasantly to what he
+recalled of Peter's original proposition: "Aunt Becky sent you here to
+tell me if I'd raise her pay, she'd stop stealin' and--and raise some
+honest children." Mr. Killibrew threw back his head broke into loud,
+jelly-like laughter. "Why, don't you know, Peter, she's an old liar. If
+I gave her a hundred a week, she'd steal. And children! Why, the old
+humbug! She's too old; she's had her crop. And, besides all that, I
+don't mind what the old woman takes. It isn't much. She's a good old
+darky, faithful as a dog." He arose from his swivel-chair briskly and
+floated Peter out before him. "Tell her, if she wants a raise," he
+concluded heartily, "and can't pinch enough out of my kitchen and the
+two dollars I pay her--tell her to come to me, straight out, and I'll
+give her more, and she can pinch more."
+
+Mr. Killibrew moved down the aisle of his store between fragrant barrels
+and boxes, laughing mellowly at old Aunt Becky's ruse, as he saw it. As
+he turned Peter out, he invited him to come again when he needed
+anything in the grocery line.
+
+And he was so pleasant, hearty, and sincere in his friendliness toward
+both Peter and old Aunt Becky that Peter, even amid the complete side-
+tracking and derailing of his mission, decided that it ever he did have
+occasion to purchase any groceries, he would do his trading at this
+market ruled by an absolute honesty with, and a complete distrust in,
+his race.
+
+At the conclusion of the Killibrew interview Peter instinctively felt
+that he had just about touched the norm of Hooker's Bend. The village
+might contain men who would dive a little deeper into the race question
+with Peter; assuredly, there would be hundreds who would not dive so
+deep. Mr. Killibrew's attitude on the race question turned on how to
+hold the negro patronage of the village to his grocery. It was not an
+abstract question at all, but a concrete fact, which he had worked out
+to his own satisfaction. With Mr. Killibrew, with all Hooker's Bend,
+there was no negro question.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+When Peter Siner started on his indefinite errand among the village
+stores he believed it would require much tact and diplomacy to discuss
+the race question without offense. To his surprise, no precaution was
+necessary. Everybody agreed at once that the South would be benefited by
+a more trustworthy labor, that if the negroes were trustworthy they
+could be paid more; but nobody agreed that if negroes were paid more
+they would become more trustworthy. The prevailing dictum was, A
+nigger's a nigger.
+
+As Peter came out into the shabby little street of Hooker's Bend
+discouragement settled upon him. He felt as if he had come squarely
+against some blank stone wall that no amount of talking could budge. The
+black man would have to change his psychology or remain where he was, a
+creature of poverty, hovels, and dirt; but amid such surroundings he
+could not change his psychology.
+
+The point of these unhappy conclusions somehow turned against Cissie
+Dildine. The mulatto became aware that his whole crusade had been
+undertaken in behalf of the octoroon. Everything the merchants said
+against negroes became accusations against Cissie in a sharp personal
+way. "A nigger is a nigger"; "A thief is a thief"; "She wouldn't quit
+stealing if I paid her a hundred a week." Every stroke had fallen
+squarely on Cissie's shoulders. A nigger, a thief; and she would never
+be otherwise.
+
+It was all so hopeless, so unchangeable, that Peter walked down the
+bleak street unutterably depressed There was nothing he could do. The
+situation was static. It seemed best that he should go away North and
+save his own skin. It was impossible to take Cissie with him. Perhaps in
+time he would come to forget her, and in so doing he would forget the
+pauperism and pettinesses of all the black folk of the South. Because
+through Cissie Peter saw the whole negro race. She was flexuous and
+passionate, kindly and loving, childish and naively wise; on occasion
+she could falsify and steal, and in the depth of her Peter sensed a
+profound capacity for fury and violence. For all her precise English,
+she was untamed, perhaps untamable.
+
+Cissie was a far cry from the sort of woman Peter imagined he wanted for
+a mate; yet he knew that if he stayed on in Hooker's Bend, seeing her,
+desiring her, with her luxury mocking the loneliness of the old Renfrew
+manor, presently he would marry her. Already he had had his little
+irrational moments when it seemed to him that Cissie herself was quite
+fine and worthy and that her speculations were something foreign and did
+not pertain to her at all.
+
+He would better go North. It would be safer up there. No doubt he could
+find another colored girl in the North. The thought of fondling any
+other woman filled Peter with a sudden, sharp repulsion. However, Peter
+was wise. He knew he would get over that in time.
+
+With this plan in mind, Peter set out down the street, intending to
+cross the Big Hill at the church, walk over to his mother's shack, and
+pack his few belongings preparatory to going away.
+
+It was not a heroic retreat. The conversation which he had had with his
+college friend Farquhar recurred to Peter. Farquhar had tried to
+persuade Peter to remain North and take a position in a system of
+garages out of Chicago.
+
+"You can do nothing in the South, Siner," assured Farquhar; "your
+countrymen must stand on their own feet, just as you are doing."
+
+Peter had argued the vast majority of the negroes had no chance, but
+Farquhar pressed the point that Peter himself disproved his own
+statement. At the time Peter felt there was an clench in the
+Illinoisan's logic, but he was not skilful enough to analyze it. Now the
+mulatto began to see that Farquhar was right. The negro question was a
+matter of individual initiative. Critics forgot that a race was composed
+of individual men.
+
+Peter had an uneasy sense that this was exceedingly thin logic, a mere
+smoke screen behind which he meant to retreat back up North. He walked
+on down the poor village street, turning it over and over in his mind,
+affirming it positively to himself, after the manner of uneasy
+consciences.
+
+An unusual stir among the negroes on Hobbett's corner caught Peter's
+attention and broke into his chain of thought. Half a dozen negroes
+stood on the corner, staring down toward the white church. A black boy
+suddenly started running across the street, and disappeared among the
+stores on the other side. Peter caught glimpses of him among the
+wretched alleyways and vacant lots that lie east of Main Street. The boy
+was still running toward Niggertown.
+
+By this time Peter was just opposite the watchers on the corner. He
+lifted his voice and asked them the matter, but at the moment they began
+an excited talking, and no one heard him.
+
+Jim Pink Staggs jerked off his fur cap, made a gesture, contorted his
+long, black face into a caricature of fright, and came loping across the
+street, looking back over his shoulder, mimicking a run for life His
+mummery set his audience howling.
+
+The buffoon would have collided with Peter, but the mulatto caught Jim
+Pink by the arm and shoulder, brought him to a halt, and at the same
+time helped him keep his feet.
+
+To Peter's inquiry what was the matter, the black fellow whirled and
+blared out loudly, for the sake of his audience:
+
+"'Fo' Gawd, nigger, I sho thought Mr. Bobbs had me!" and he writhed his
+face into an idiotic grimace.
+
+The audience reeled about in their mirth. Because with negroes, as with
+white persons, two thirds of humor is in the reputation, and Jim Pink
+was of prodigious repute.
+
+Peter walked along with him patiently, because he knew that until they
+were out of ear-shot of the crowd there was no way of getting a sensible
+answer out of Jim Pink.
+
+"Where are you going?" he asked presently.
+
+"Thought I'd step over to Niggertown." Jim Pink's humorous air was still
+upon him.
+
+"What's doing over there? What were the boys raising such a hullabaloo
+about?"
+
+"Such me."
+
+"Why did that boy go running across like that?"
+
+Jim Pink rolled his eyes on Peter with a peculiar look.
+
+"Reckon he mus' 'a' wanted to git on t'other side o' town."
+
+Peter flattered the Punchinello by smiling a little.
+
+"Come, Jim Pink, what do you know?" he asked. The magician poked out his
+huge lips.
+
+"Mr. Bobbs turn acrost by de church, over de Big Hill. Da' 's always a
+ba-ad sign."
+
+Peter's brief interest in the matter flickered out. Another arrest for
+some niggerish peccadillo. The history of Niggertown was one long series
+of petty offenses, petty raids, and petty punishments. Peter would be
+glad to get well away from such a place.
+
+"Think I'll go North, Jim Pink," remarked Peter, chiefly to keep up a
+friendly conversation with his companion.
+
+"Whut-chu goin' to do up thaiuh?"
+
+"Take a position in a system of garages."
+
+"A position is a job wid a white color on it," defined the minstrel.
+"Whut you goin' to do wid Cissie?"
+
+Peter looked around at the foolish face.
+
+"With Cissie?--Cissie Dildine?"
+
+"Uh huh."
+
+"Why, what makes you think I'm going to do anything with Cissie?"
+
+"M-m, visitin' roun'." The fool flung his face into a grimace, and
+dropped it as one might shake out a sack.
+
+Peter watched the contortion uneasily.
+
+"What do you mean--visiting around?"
+
+
+   "Diff'nt folks go visitin' roun';
+    Some goes up an' some goes down."
+
+
+Apparently Jim Pink had merely quoted a few words from a poem he knew.
+He stared at the green-black depth of the glade, which set in about
+half-way up the hill they were climbing.
+
+"Ef this weather don' ever break," he observed sagely, "we sho am in fuh
+a dry spell."
+
+Peter did not pursue the topic of the weather. He climbed the hill in
+silence, wondering just what the buffoon meant. He suspected he was
+hinting at Cissie's visit to his room. However, he did not dare ask any
+questions or press the point in any manner, lest he commit himself.
+
+The minstrel had succeeded in making Peter's walk very uncomfortable, as
+somehow he always did. Peter went on thinking about the matter. If Jim
+Pink knew of Cissie's visit, all Niggertown knew it. No woman's
+reputation, nobody's shame or misery or even life, would stand between
+Jim Pink and what he considered a joke. The buffoon was the crudest
+thing in this world--a man who thought himself a wit.
+
+Peter could imagine all the endless tweaks to Cissie's pride Niggertown
+would give the octoroon. She had asked Peter to marry her and had been
+refused. She had humbled herself for naught. That was the very tar of
+shame. Peter knew that in the moral categories of Niggertown Cissie
+would suffer more from such a rebuff than if she had lied or committed
+theft and adultery every day in the calendar. She had been refused
+marriage. All the folk-ways of Niggertown were utterly topsyturvy. It
+was a crazy-house filled with the most grotesque moral measures.
+
+It seemed to Peter as he entered the cedar-glade that he had lost all
+sympathy with this people from which he had sprung. He looked upon them
+as strange, incomprehensible beings, just as a man will forget his own
+childhood and look upon children as strange, incomprehensible little
+creatures. In the midst of his thoughts he heard himself saying to Jim
+Pink:
+
+"I suppose it is as dusty as ever."
+
+"Dustier 'an ever," assured Jim Pink.
+
+Apparently their conversation had recurred to the weather, after all.
+
+A chill silence encompassed the glade. The path the negroes followed
+wound this way and that among reddish boulders, between screens of
+intergrown cedars, and over a bronze mat of needles. Their steps were
+noiseless. The odor of the cedars and the temple-like stillness brought
+to Peter's mind the night of his mother's death. It seemed to him a long
+time since he had come running through the glade after a doctor, and
+yet, by a queer distortion of his sense of time, his mother's death and
+burial bulked in his past as if it had occurred yesterday.
+
+There was no sound in the glade to disturb Peter's thoughts except a
+murmur of human voices from some of the innumerable privacies of the
+place, and the occasional chirp of a waxwing busy over clusters of
+cedar-balls.
+
+It had been five weeks and a day since Caroline died. Five weeks and a
+day; his mother's death drifting away into the mystery and oblivion of
+the past. Likewise, twenty-five years of his own life completed and
+gone.
+
+A procession of sad, wistful thoughts trailed through Peter's brain: his
+mother, and Ida May, and now Cissie. It seemed to Peter that all any
+woman had ever brought him was wistfulness and sadness. His mother had
+been jealous, and instead of the great happiness he had expected, his
+home life with her had turned out a series of small perplexities and
+pains. Before that was Ida May, and now here was her younger sister.
+Peter wondered if any man ever reached the peace and happiness
+foreshadowed in his dream of a woman.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+A voice calling his name checked Peter's stride mechanically, and caused
+him to look about with the slight bewilderment of a man aroused from a
+reverie.
+
+At the first sound, however, Jim Pink became suddenly alert. He took
+three strides ahead of Peter, and as he went he whispered over his
+shoulder:
+
+"Beat it, nigger! beat it!"
+
+The mulatto recognized one of Jim Pink's endless stupid attempts at
+comedy. It would be precisely Jim Pink's idea of a jest to give Peter a
+little start. As the mulatto stood looking about among the cedars for
+the person who had called his name, it amazed him that Jim Pink could be
+so utterly insane; that he performed some buffoonery instantly, by
+reflex action as it were, upon the slightest provocation. It was almost
+a mania with Jim Pink; it verged on the pathological.
+
+The clown, however, was pressing his joke. He was pretending great fear,
+and was shouting out in his loose minstrel voice:
+
+"Hey, don' shoot down dis way, black man, tull I makes my exit!" And a
+voice, rich with contempt, called back:
+
+"You needn't be skeered, you fool rabbit of a nigger!"
+
+Peter turned with a qualm. Quite close to him, and in another direction
+from which he had been looking, stood Tump Pack. The ex-soldier looked
+the worse for wear after his jail sentence. His uniform was frayed, and
+over his face lay a grayish cast that marks negroes in bad condition. At
+his side, attached by a belt and an elaborate shoulder holster, hung a
+big army revolver, while on the greasy lapel of his coat was pinned his
+military medal for exceptional bravery on the field of battle.
+
+"Been lookin' fuh you fuh some time, Peter," he stated grimly.
+
+Peter considered the formidable figure with a queer sensation. He tried
+to take Tump's appearance casually; he tried to maintain an air of
+ordinariness.
+
+"Didn't know you were back."
+
+"Yeah, I's back."
+
+"Have you--been looking for me?"
+
+"Yeah."
+
+"Didn't you know where I was staying?"
+
+"Co'se I did; up 'mong de white folks. You know dey don' 'low no
+shootin' an' killin' 'mong de white folks." He drew his pistol from the
+holster with the address of an expert marksman.
+
+[Illustration: "Naw yuh don't," he warned sharply. "You turn roun' an'
+march on to niggertown"]
+
+Peter stood, with a quickening pulse, studying his assailant. The glade,
+the air, the sunshine, seemed suddenly drawn to a tension, likely to,
+break into violent commotion. His abrupt danger brought Peter to a
+feeling of lightness and power. A quiver went along his spine. His
+nostrils widened unconsciously as he calculated a leap and a blow at
+Tump's gun.
+
+The soldier took a step backward, at the same time bringing the barrel
+to a ready.
+
+"Naw you don't," he warned sharply. "You turn roun' an' march on to
+Niggertown."
+
+"What for?" Peter still tried to be casual, but his voice held new
+overtones.
+
+"Because, nigger, I means to drap you right on de Main Street o'
+Niggertown, 'fo' all dem niggers whut's been a-raggin' me 'bout you an'
+Cissie. I's gwine show dem fool niggers I don' take no fumi-diddles
+off'n nobody."
+
+"Tump," gasped Jim Pink, in a husky voice, "you oughtn't shoot Peter; he
+mammy jes daid."
+
+"'En she won' worry none. Turn roun', Peter, an' when I says, 'March,'
+you march." He leveled his pistol. "'Tention! Rat about face! March!"
+
+Peter turned and moved off down the noiseless path, walking with the
+stiff gait of a man who expects a terrific blow from behind at any
+instant.
+
+The mulatto walked twenty or more paces amid a confusion of self-
+protective impulses. He thought of whirling on Tump even at this late
+date. He thought of darting behind a cedar, but he knew the man behind
+him was an expert shot, and something fundamental in the brown man
+forbade his getting himself killed while running away. It was too
+undignified a death.
+
+Presently he surprised himself by calling over his shoulder, as a sort
+of complaint:
+
+"How came you with the pistol, Tump? Thought it was against the law to
+carry one."
+
+"You kin ca'y 'em ef you don' keep 'em hid," explained the ex-soldier in
+a wooden voice. "Mr. Bobbs tol' me dat when he guv my gun back."
+
+The irony of the thing caught Peter, for the authorities to arrest Tump
+not because he was trying to kill Peter, but because he went about his
+first attempt in an illegal manner. For the first time in his life the
+mulatto felt that contempt for a white man's technicalities that flavors
+every negro's thoughts. Here for thirty days his life had been saved by
+a technical law of the white man; at the end of the thirty days, by
+another technical law, Tump was set at liberty and allowed to carry a
+weapon, in a certain way, to murder him. It was grotesque; it was
+absurd. It filled Peter with a sudden violent questioning of the whole
+white regime. His thoughts danced along in peculiar excitement.
+
+At the turn of the hill the trio came in sight of the squalid semicircle
+of Niggertown. Here and there from a tumbledown chimney a feather of
+pale wood smoke lifted into the chill sunshine. The sight of the houses
+brought Peter a sharp realization that his life would end in the curving
+street beneath him. A shock at the incomprehensible brevity of his life
+rushed over him. Just to that street, just as far as the curve, and his
+legs were swinging along, carrying him forward at an even gait.
+
+All at once he began talking, arguing. He tried to speak at an ordinary
+tempo, but his words kept edging on faster and faster:
+
+"Tump, I'm not going to marry Cissie Dildine."
+
+"I knows you ain't, Peter."
+
+"I mean, if you let me alone, I didn't mean to."
+
+"I ain't goin' to let you alone."
+
+"Tump, we had already decided not to marry."
+
+After a short pause Tump said in a slightly different tone:
+
+"'Pears lak you don' haf to ma'y her--comin' to yo' room."
+
+A queer sinking came over the mulatto. "Listen, Tump, I--we--in my room
+--we simply talked, that's all. She came to tell me she was goin away.
+I--I didn't harm her, Tump." Peter swallowed. He despaired of being
+believed.
+
+But his defense only infuriated the soldier. He suddenly broke into
+violent profanity.
+
+"Hot damn you! shut yo black mouf! Whut I keer whut-chu done! You weaned
+her away fum me. She won't speak to me! She won't look at me!" A sudden
+insanity of rage seized Tump. He poured on his victim every oath and
+obscenity he had raked out of the whole army.
+
+Strangely enough, the gunman's outbreak brought a kind of relief to
+Peter Siner. It exonerated him. He was not suspected of wronging Cissie;
+or, rather, whether he had or had not wronged her made no difference to
+Tump. Peter's crime consisted in mere being, in existing where Cissie
+could see him and desire him rather than Tump. Why it calmed Peter to
+know that Tump held no dishonorable charge against him the mulatto
+himself could not have told. Tump's violence showed Peter the certainty
+of his own death, and somehow it washed away the hope and the thought of
+escape.
+
+Half-way down the hill they entered the edge of Niggertown. The smell of
+sties and stables came to them. Peter's thoughts moved here and there,
+like the eyes of a little child glancing about as it is forced to leave
+a pleasure-ground.
+
+Peter knew that Jim Pink, who now made a sorry figure in their rear,
+would one day give a buffoon's mimicry of this his walk to death. He
+thought of Tump, who would have to serve a year or two in the Nashville
+Penitentiary, for the murder of negroes is seldom severely punished. He
+thought of Cissie. He was being murdered because Cissie desired him.
+
+And then Peter remembered the single bit of wisdom that his whole life
+had taught him. It was this: no people can become civilized until the
+woman has the power of choice among the males that sue for her hand. The
+history of the white race shows the gradual increase of the woman's
+power of choice. Among the yellow races, where this power is curtailed,
+civilization is curtailed. It was this principle that exalted chivalry.
+Upon it the white man has reared all his social fabric.
+
+So deeply ingrained is it that almost every novel written by white men
+revolves about some woman's choice of her mate being thwarted by power
+or pride or wealth, but in every instance the rightness of the woman's
+choice is finally justified. The burden of every song is love, true
+love, enduring love, a woman's true and enduring love.
+
+And in his moment of clairvoyance Peter saw that these songs and stories
+were profoundly true. Against a woman's selectiveness no other social
+force may count.
+
+That was why his own race was weak and hopeless and helpless. The males
+of his people were devoid of any such sentiment or self-repression. They
+were men of the jungle, creatures of tusk and claw and loin. This very
+act of violence against his person condemned his whole race.
+
+These thoughts brought the mulatto an unspeakable sadness, not only for
+his own particular death, but that this idea, this great redeeming
+truth, which burned so brightly in his brain, would in another moment
+flicker out, unrevealed, and be no more.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+The coughing and rattling of an old motor-car as it rounded the
+Niggertown curve delayed Tump Pack's act of violence. Instinctively, the
+three men waited for the machine to pass before Peter walked out into
+the road. Next moment it appeared around the turn, moving slowly through
+the dust and spreading a veritable fog behind it.
+
+All three negroes recognized the first glimpse of the hood and top, for
+there are only three or four cars in Hooker's Bend, and these are as
+well known as the faces of their owners. This particular motor belonged
+to Constable Bobbs, and the next moment the trio saw the ponderous body
+of the officer at the wheel, and by his side a woman. As the machine
+clacked toward them Peter felt a certain surprise to see that it was
+Cissie Dildine.
+
+The constable in the car scrutinized the black men, by the roadside in a
+very peculiar way. As he came near, he leaned across Cissie and almost
+eclipsed the girl. He eyed the trio with his perpetual menace of a grin
+on his broad red face. His right hand, lying across Cissie's lap, held a
+revolver. When closest he shouted above the clangor of his engine:
+
+"Now, none o' that, boys! None o' that! You'll prob'ly hit the gal if
+you shoot, an' I'll pick you off lak three black skunks."
+
+He brandished his revolver at them, but the gesture was barely seen, and
+instantly concealed by the cloud; of dust following the motor. Next
+moment it enveloped the negroes and hid them even from one another.
+
+It was only after Peter was lost in the dust-cloud that the mulatto
+really divined what was meant by Cissie's strange appearance with the
+constable, her chalky face, her frightened brown eyes. The significance
+of the scene grew in his mind. He stood with eyes screwed to slits
+staring into the apricot-colored dust in the direction of the vanishing
+noise.
+
+Presently Tump Pack's form outlined itself in the yellow obscurity,
+groping toward Peter. He still held his pistol, but it swung at his
+side. He called Peter's name in the strained voice of a man struggling
+not to cough:
+
+"Peter--is Mr. Bobbs done--'rested Cissie?"
+
+Peter could hardly talk himself.
+
+"Don't know. Looks like it."
+
+The two negroes stared at each other through the dust.
+
+"Fuh Gawd's sake! Cissie 'rested!" Tump began to cough. Then he wheezed:
+
+"Mine an' yo' little deal's off, Peter. You gotta he'p git her out."
+Here he fell into a violent fit of coughing, and started groping his way
+to the edge of the dust-cloud.
+
+In the rush of the moment the swift change in Peter's situation appeared
+only natural. He followed Tump, so distressed by the dust and disturbed
+over Cissie that he hardly thought of his peculiar position. The dust
+pinched the upper part of his throat, stung his nose. Tears trickled
+from his eyes, and he pressed his finger against his upper lip, trying
+not to sneeze. He was still struggling against the sneeze when Tump
+recovered his speech.
+
+"Wh-whut you reckon she done, Peter? She don' shoot craps, nor boot-
+laig, nor--" He fell to coughing.
+
+Peter got out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes.
+
+"Let's go--to the Dildine house," he said.
+
+The two moved hurriedly through the thinning cloud, and presently came
+to breathable air, where they could see the houses around them.
+
+"I know she done somp'n; I know she done somp'n," chanted Tump, with the
+melancholy cadence of his race. He shook his dusty head. "You ain't
+never been in jail, is you, black man?"
+
+Peter said he had not.
+
+"Lawd! it ain't no place fuh a woman," declared Tump. "You dunno nothin'
+'bout it, black man. It sho ain't no place fuh a woman."
+
+A notion of an iron cage floated before Peter's mind. The two negroes
+trudged on through the crescent side by side, their steps raising a
+little trail of dust in the air behind them. Their faces and clothes
+were of a uniform dust color. Streaks of mud marked the runnels of their
+tears down their cheeks.
+
+The shrubbery and weeds that grew alongside the negro thoroughfare were
+quite dead. Even the little avenue of dwarf box was withered that led
+from the gate to the door of the Dildine home. The two colored men
+walked up the little path to the door, knocked, and waited on the steps
+for the little skirmish of observation from behind the blinds. None
+came. The worst had befallen the house; there was nothing to guard. The
+door opened as soon as an inmate could reach it, and Vannie Dildine
+stood before them.
+
+The quadroon's eyes were red, and her face had the moist, slightly
+swollen appearance that comes of protracted weeping. She looked so frail
+and miserable that Peter instinctively stepped inside and took her arm
+to assist her in the mere physical effort of standing.
+
+"What is the matter, Mrs. Dildine?" he asked in a shocked tone. "What's
+happened to Cissie?"
+
+Vannie began weeping again with a faint gasping and a racking of her
+flat chest.
+
+"It's--it's--O-o-oh, Peter!" She put an arm about him and began weeping
+against him. He soothed her, patted her shoulder, at the same time
+staring at the side of her head, wondering what could have dealt her
+this blow.
+
+Presently she steadied herself and began explaining in feeble little
+phrases, sandwiched between sobs and gasps:
+
+"She--tuk a brooch--Kep'--kep' layin' it roun' in--h-her way, th-that
+young Sam Arkwright did,--a-an' finally she--she tuk hit. N-nen, when he
+seen he h-had her, he said sh-sh-she 'd haf to d-do wh-whut he said, or
+he'd sen' her to-to ja-a-il!" Vannie sobbed drearily for a few moments
+on Peter's breast. "Sh-she did fuh a while: 'n 'en sh-she broke off wid
+h-him, anyhow, an'--an' he swo' out a wa'nt an sont her to jail!" The
+mother sobbed without comfort, and finally added: "Sh-she in a delicate
+fix now, an' 'at jail goin' to be a gloomy place fuh Cissie."
+
+The three negroes stood motionless in the dusty hallway, motionless save
+for the racking of Vannie's sobs.
+
+Tump Pack stirred himself.
+
+"Well, we gotta git her out." His words trailed off. He stood wrinkling
+his half-inch of brow. "I wonder would dey exchange pris'ners; wonder ef
+I could go up an' serve out Cissie's term."
+
+"Oh, Tump!" gasped the woman, "ef you only could!"
+
+"I'll step an' see, Miss Vannie. 'At sho ain't no place fuh a nice gal
+lak Cissie." Tump turned on his mission, evidently intending to walk to
+Jonesboro and offer himself in the place of the prisoner.
+
+Peter supported Vannie back into the poor living-room, and placed her in
+the old rocking-chair before the empty hearth. There was where he had
+sat the evening Cissie made her painful confession to him. Only now did
+he realize the whole of what Cissie was trying to confess.
+
+Peter Siner overtook Tump Pack a little way down the crescent, opposite
+the Berry cabin. The thoroughfare was deserted, because the weather was
+cold and the scantily clad children were indoors. However, from every
+cabin came sound of laughing and romping, and now and then a youngster
+darted through the cold from one hut to another.
+
+It seemed to Peter Siner only a little while since he and Ida May were
+skittering through wintry weather from one fire to another, with Cissie,
+a wailing, wet-nosed little spoil-sport, trailing after them. And then,
+with a wheeling of the years, they were scattered everywhere.
+
+As the negroes passed the Berry cabin, Nan Berry came out with an old
+shawl around her bristling spikes. She stopped the two men and drew them
+to her gate with a gesture.
+
+"Wha you gwine?"
+
+"Jonesbuh."
+
+"Whut you goin' do 'bout po-o-o' Cissie?"
+
+"Goin' to see ef the sheriff won' take me 'stid o' Cissie."
+
+"Tha's right," said Nan, nodding solemnly. "I hopes he will. You is mo'
+used to it, Tump."
+
+"Yeah, an' 'at jail sho ain't no place fuh a nice gal lak Cissie."
+
+"Sho ain't," agreed Nan.
+
+Peter interrupted to say he was sure the sheriff would not exchange.
+
+The hopes of his listeners fell.
+
+"Weh-ul," dragged out Nan, with a long face, "of co'se now it's lak dis:
+ef Cissie goin' to stay in dat ja-ul, she's goin' to need some mo'
+clo'es 'cep'n whut she's got on,--specially lak she is."
+
+Tump stared down the swing of the crescent.
+
+"'Fo' Gawd, dis sho don' seem lak hit's right to me," he said.
+
+Nan let herself out at the rickety gate. "You niggers wait heah tull I
+runs up to Miss Vannie's an' git some o' Cissie's clo'es fuh you to tote
+her."
+
+Tump objected.
+
+"Jail ain't no place fuh clean clo'es. She jes better serve out her term
+lak she is, an' wash up when she gits th'ugh."
+
+"You fool nigger!" snapped Nan. "She kain't serve out her term lak she
+is!"
+
+"Da' 's so," said Tump.
+
+The three stood silent, Nan and Tump lost in blankness, trying to think
+of something to do for Cissie. Finally Nan said:
+
+"I heah she done commit gran' larceny, an' they goin' sen' her to de
+pen."
+
+"Whut is gran' larceny?" asked Tump.
+
+"It's takin' mo' at one time an' de white folks 'speck you to take,"
+defined the woman. "Well, I'll go git her clo'es." She hurried off up
+the crescent.
+
+Peter and Tump waited in the Berry cabin for Nan's return. Outside, the
+Berry cabin was the usual clapboard-roofed, weather-stained structure;
+inside, it was dark, windowless, and strong with the odor of black folk.
+Some children were playing around the hearth, roasting chestnuts. Their
+elders sat in a circle of decrepit chairs. It was so dark that when
+Peter first entered he could not make out the little group, but he soon
+recognized their voices: Parson Ranson, Wince Washington, Jerry
+Dillihay, and all of the Berry family.
+
+They were talking of Cissie, of course. They hoped Cissie wouldn't
+really be sent to the penitentiary, that the white folks would let her
+out in time for her to have her child at home. Parson Ranson thought it
+would be bad luck for a child to be born in jail.
+
+Wince Washington, who had been in jail a number of times, suggested that
+they bail Cissie out by signing their names to a paper. He had been set
+free by this means once or twice.
+
+Sally, Nan's little sister, observed tartly that if Cissie hadn't acted
+so, she wouldn't have been in jail.
+
+"Don' speak lak dat uv dem as is in trouble, Sally," reproved old Parson
+Ranson, solemnly; "anybody can say 'Ef.'"
+
+"Sho am de troof," agreed Jerry Dillihay.
+
+"Sho am, black man." The conversation drifted into the endless
+moralizing of their race, but it held no criticism or condemnation of
+Cissie. From the tone of the negroes one would have thought some
+impersonal disaster had overtaken her. Every one was planning how to
+help Cissie, how to make her present state more endurable. They were the
+black folk, the unfortunate of the earth, and the pride of righteousness
+is only to the well placed and the untempted.
+
+Presently Nan came back with a bundle of Cissie's clothes. Tump took the
+bundle of dainty lingerie, the intimate garments of the woman he loved,
+and set forth on his quixotic errand. He tied it to his shoulder-holster
+and set out. Peter went a little of the way with him. It was almost dusk
+when they started. The chill of approaching night stung the men's faces.
+As they walked past the footpath that led over the Big Hill, three
+pistol-shots from the glade announced that the boot-leggers had opened
+business for the night.
+
+Tump paused and shivered. He said it was a cold night. He thought he
+would like to get a kick of "white mule" to put a little heart in him.
+It was a long walk to Jonesboro. He hesitated a moment, then turned off
+the road around the crescent for the path through the glade.
+
+A thought to dissuade Tump from drinking the fiery "singlings" of the
+moonshiners crossed Peters mind, but he put it aside. Tump was a habitue
+of the glade. All the physiological arguments upon which Peter could
+base an argument were far beyond the ex-soldier's comprehension. So Tump
+turned off through the dark trees. Peter watched him until all he could
+see was the white blur of Cissie's underwear swinging against his
+holster.
+
+After Tump's disappearance, Peter stood for several minutes thinking.
+His brief crusade into Niggertown had ended in a situation far outside
+of his volition. That morning he had started out with some vague idea of
+taking Niggertown in his hands and molding it in accordance with his
+white ideas; but Niggertown had taken Peter into its hands, had
+threatened his life, had administered to him profound mental and moral
+shocks, and now had dropped him, like some bit of waste, with his face
+set over the Big Hill for white town.
+
+As Peter stood there it seemed to him there was something symbolic in
+his attitude. He was no longer of the black world; he was of the white.
+He did not understand his people; they eluded him.
+
+He belonged to the white world; not to the village across the hill, but
+to the North. Nothing now prevented him from going North and taking the
+position with Farquhar. Cissie Dildine was impossible for him now.
+Niggertown was immovable, at least for him. He was no Washington to lead
+his people to a loftier plane. In fact, Peter began to suspect that he
+was no leader at all. He saw now that his initial success with the Sons
+and Daughters of Benevolence had been effected merely by the aura of his
+college training. After his first misstep he had never rehabilitated
+himself. He perhaps had a dash of the artistic in him, and the power to
+mold ideas often confuses itself subjectively with the power to mold
+human beings. In reality he did not even understand the people he
+assumed to mold. A suspicion came to him that under the given conditions
+their ways were more rational than his own.
+
+As for Cissie Dildine, his duty by the girl, his queer protective
+passion for her--all that was surely past now. After her lapse from all
+decency there was no reason why he should spend another thought on her.
+He would go North to Chicago.
+
+The last of the twilight was fading in swift, visible gradations of
+light. The cedars, the cabins, and the hill faded in pulse-beats of
+darkness. Above the Big Hill the last ember of day smoldered against a
+green-blue infinity. Here and there a star pricked the dome with a
+wintry brilliance.
+
+Then, somehow, the thought of Cissie looking out on that chilly sky
+through iron bars tightened Peter's throat. He caught himself up sharply
+for his emotion. He began a vague defense of the white man's laws on
+grounds as cold and impersonal as the winter evening. Laws, customs, and
+conventions were for the strengthening of men, to seed the select, to
+winnow the weak. It was white logic, applied firmly, as by a white man.
+But somehow the stars multiplied and kept Cissie's image before Peter--a
+cold, frightened girl, harassed with coming motherhood, peering at those
+chill, distant lights out of the blackness of a jail.
+
+The mulatto decided to spend the night in his mother's cabin. He would
+do his packing, and be ready for the down-river boat in the morning. He
+found his way to his own gate in the darkness. He lifted it around,
+entered, and walked to his door. When he tried to open it, he found some
+one had bored holes through the shutter and the jamb and had wired it
+shut.
+
+Peter struck a match to see just what had been done. The flame displayed
+a small sheet tacked on the door. He spent two matches investigating it.
+It was a notice of levy, posted by the constable in an action of debt
+brought against the estate of Caroline Siner by Henry Hooker. The owner
+of the estate and the public in general were warned against removing
+anything whatsoever from the premises under penalty exacted by the law
+governing such offenses. Then Peter untwisted the wire and entered.
+
+Peter searched about and found the tiny brass night-lamp which his
+mother always had used. The larger glass-bowled lamp was gone. The
+interior of the cabin was clammy from cold and foul from long lack of
+airing. In the corner his mother's old four-poster loomed in the
+shadows, but he could see some of its covers had been taken. He passed
+into the kitchen with a notion of building a fire and eating a bite, but
+everything edible had been abstracted. Even one of the lids of the old
+step-stove was gone. Most of the pans and kettles had disappeared, but
+the pretty old Dutch sugar-bowl remained on a bare paper-covered shelf.
+Negro-like, whatever person or persons who had ransacked Peter's home
+considered the sugar-bowl too fine to take. Or they may have thought
+that Peter would want this bowl for a keepsake, and with that queer
+compassion that permeates a negro's worst moments they allowed it to
+remain. And Peter knew if he raised an outcry about his losses, much of
+the property would be surreptitiously restored, or perhaps his neighbors
+would bring back his things and say they had found them. They would help
+him as best they could, just as they of the crescent would help Cissie
+as best they could, and would receive her back as one of them when she
+and her baby were finally released from jail.
+
+They were a queer people. They were a people who would never get on well
+and do well. They lacked the steel-like edge that the white man
+achieves. By virtue of his hardness, a white man makes his very laws and
+virtues instruments to crush and mulct his fellow-man; but negroes are
+so softened by untoward streaks of sympathy that they lose the very uses
+of their crimes.
+
+The depression of the whole day settled upon Peter with the deepening
+night. He held his poor light above his head and picked his way to his
+own room. After the magnificence of the Renfrew manor, it had contracted
+to a grimy little box lined with yellowed papers. His books were still
+intact, but Henry Hooker would get them as part payment on the Dillihay
+place, which Henry owned. On his little table still lay the pile of old
+examination papers, lists of incoherent questions which somebody
+somewhere imagined formed a test of human ability to meet and answer the
+mysterious searchings of life.
+
+Peter was familiar with the books; many of the questions he had learned
+by rote, but the night and the crescent, and the thought of a pregnant
+girl caged in the blackness of a jail filled his soul with a great
+melancholy query to which he could find no answer.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+Two voices talking, interrupting each other with ejaculations, after the
+fashion of negroes under excitement, aroused Peter Siner from his sleep.
+He caught the words: "He did! Tump did! The jailer did! 'Fo' God! black
+man, whut's Cissie doin'?"
+
+Overtones of shock, even of horror, in the two voices brought Peter wide
+awake the moment he opened his eyes. He sat up suddenly in his bed,
+remained perfectly still, listening with his mouth open. The voices,
+however, were passing. The words became indistinct, then relapsed into
+that bubbling monotone of human voices at a distance, and presently
+ceased.
+
+These fragmentary phrases, however, feathered with consternation, filled
+Peter with vague premonitions. He whirled his legs out of bed and began
+drawing on his clothes. When he was up and into the crescent, however,
+nobody was in sight. He stood breathing the chill, damp air, blinking
+his eyes. Lack of his cold bath made him feel chilly and lethargic. He
+wriggled his shoulders and considered going back, after all, and having
+his splash. Just then he saw the Persimmon coming around the crescent.
+Peter called to the roustabout and asked about Tump Pack.
+
+The Persimmon looked at Peter with his half-asleep, protruding eyeballs.
+
+"Don' you know 'bout Tump Pack already, Mister Siner?"
+
+"No." Peter was astonished at the formality of the "Mr. Siner."
+
+"Then is you 'spectin' somp'n 'bout him?"
+
+"Why, no, but I was asleep in there a moment ago, and somebody came
+along talking about Tump and Cissie. They--they aren't married, are
+they?"
+
+"Oh, no-o, no-o-o, no-o-o-o-o." The Persimmon waggled his bullet head
+slowly from side to side. "I heared Tump got into a lil trouble wid de
+jailer las' night."
+
+"Serious?"
+
+"I dunno." The Persimmon closed one of his protruding yellow eyes.
+"Owin' to whut you call se'ius; maybe whut I call se'ius wouldn't be
+se'ius to you at all; 'n 'en maybe whut you call se'ius would be ve'y
+insince'ius to Tump." The roustabout's philosophy, which consisted in a
+monotonous recasting of a given proposition, trickled on and on in the
+cold wind. After a while it fizzled out to nothing at all, and the
+Persimmon asked in a queer manner: "Did you give Tump some women's
+clo'es, Peter?"
+
+It was such an odd question that at first Peter was at loss; then he
+recalled Nan Berry's despatching Cissie some underwear. He explained
+this to the Persimmon, and tacked on a curious, "Why?"
+
+"Oh, nothin'; nothin' 'tall. Ever'body say you a mighty long-haided
+nigger. Jim Pink he tell us 'bout Tump Pack marchin' you 'roun' wid a
+gun. I sho don' want you ever git mad at me, Mister Siner. Man wid a gun
+an' you turn yo' long haid on him an' blow him away wid a wad o' women's
+clo'es. I sho don' want you ever cross yo' fingers at me, Mister Siner."
+
+Peter stared at the grotesque, bullet-headed roustabout. "Persimmon," he
+said uneasily, "what in the world are you talking about?"
+
+The Persimmon smiled a sickly, white-toothed smile. "Jim Pink say yo'
+aidjucation is a flivver. I say, 'Jim Pink, no nigger don' go off an'
+study fo' yeahs in college whut 'n he comes back an' kin throw some kin'
+uv a hoodoo over us fool niggers whut ain't got no brains. Now, Tump wid
+a gun, an' you wid jes ordina'y women's clo'es! 'Fo' Gawd, aidjucation
+is a great thing; sho is a great thing." The Persimmon gave Peter an
+apprehensive wink and moved on.
+
+There was no use trying to extract information from the Persimmon unless
+he was minded to give it. His talk would merely become vaguer and
+vaguer. Peter watched him go, then turned and attempted to throw the
+whole matter off his mind by assuming a certain brisk Northern mood. He
+must pack, get ready for the down-river gasolene launch. The doings of
+Tump Pack and Cissie Dildine were, after all, nothing to him.
+
+He started inside, when the levy notice on the door again met his eyes.
+He paused, read it over once more, and decided that he must go over the
+hill to the Planter's Bank and get Henry Hooker's permission to remove
+certain small personal belongings that he wanted to take with him.
+
+The mere clear-cut decision to go invigorated Peter.
+
+Some of the energy that always filled him during his college days in
+Boston seemed to come to him now from the mere thought of the North.
+Soon he would be in the midst of it, moving briskly, talking to wide-
+awake men to whom a slightly unusual English word would not form a
+stumbling-block to conversation. He set out down the crescent and across
+the Big Hill at a swinging stride. He was glad to get away.
+
+Beyond the white church on the other side of the hill he heard a motor
+coming in on the Jonesboro road. Presently he saw a battered car moving
+around the long swing of the pike, spewing a trail of dust down the
+wind. Its clacking became prodigious.
+
+The mulatto was just entering that indefinite stretch of thoroughfare
+where a country road becomes a village street when there came a wail of
+brakes behind him and he looked around.
+
+It was Dawson Bobbs's car. The fat man now slowed up not far from the
+mulatto and called to him.
+
+"Yes, sir," said Peter.
+
+Dawson bobbed his fat head backward and upward in a signal for Peter to
+approach. It held the casualness of one certain to be obeyed.
+
+Although Peter had done no crime, nor had even harbored a criminal
+intention, a trickle of apprehension went through him at Bobbs's nod. He
+recalled Jim Pink's saying that it was bad luck to see the constable. He
+walked up to the shuddering motor and stood about three feet from the
+running-board.
+
+The officer bit on a sliver of toothpick that he held in his thin lips.
+
+"Accident up Jonesboro las' night, Peter."
+
+"What was it, Mr. Bobbs?"
+
+"Tump Pack got killed."
+
+Peter continued looking fixedly at Mr. Bobbs's broad red face. The dusty
+road beneath him seemed to give a little dip. He repeated the
+information emptily, trying to orient himself to this sudden change in
+his whole mental horizon.
+
+The officer was looking at Peter fixedly with his chill slits of eyes.
+
+"Yeah; trying to make a jail delivery."
+
+The two men continued looking at each other, one from the road, the
+other from the motor. The flow of Peter's thoughts seemed to divide. The
+greater part was occupied with Tump Pack. Peter could vision the
+formidable ex-soldier lying dead in Jonesboro jail, with his little
+congressional medal on his breast. Some lighter portion of his mind
+nickered about here and there on trivial things. He observed a little
+hole rusted in the running-board of the motor. He noticed that the
+officer's eyes were just the same chill, washed blue as the winter sky
+above his head. He remembered a tale that, before electrocution became a
+law in Tennessee the county sheriff's nerve had failed him at a hanging,
+and the constable Dawson Bobbs had sprung the drop. There was something
+terrible about the fat man. He would do anything, absolutely anything,
+that came to his hands in the way of legal sewage.
+
+In the midst of these thoughts Peter heard himself saying.
+
+"He--was trying to get Cissie out?"
+
+"Yep."
+
+"He--must have been drunk."
+
+"Oh, yeah."
+
+Mr. Bobbs sat studying the mulatto. As he studied him he said slowly:
+
+"Some of 'em say he was disguised as a woman. Others say he had some
+women's clothes along, ready to put on. Now, me and the sheriff knowed
+Tump Pack purty well, Peter, and we knowed that nigger never in the
+worl' would 'a' thought up sich a plan by hisself."
+
+He sat looking at Peter so interrogatively that the mulatto began, in a
+strained, earnest voice, telling the constable precisely what had
+happened in regard to the clothes.
+
+Mr. Bobbs sat listening impassively, moving his toothpick up and down
+from one side to the other of his small, thin-lipped mouth. At last he
+nodded.
+
+"Well, I guess that's about the way of it. I didn't exactly understand
+the women's clothes business,--damn' fool disguise,--but we figgered it
+might pop into the head of a' edjucated nigger." He sucked his teeth,
+reflectively. "Peter," he said at last, "seems to me, if I was you, I'd
+drift on away from this town. The niggers around here ain't strong for
+you now; some say you're a hoodoo; some say this an' some that. The
+white folks don't exactly like you trying to get up a cook's union. It's
+your right to do that if you want to, of course, but this is a mighty
+small city to have unions and things. The fact is, it ain't a big enough
+place for a nigger of yore ability, Peter. I b'lieve, if I was you, I'd
+jes drift on some'eres else."
+
+The officer tipped up his toothpick so that it lifted his upper lip in a
+little v-shaped opening and exposed a strong, yellowish tooth. At the
+moment his machine started slowly forward. It gave him the appearance of
+accidentally rolling off while immersed in deep thought.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+The death of Tump Pack moved Peter with a sense of strange pathos. He
+always remembered Tump tramping away through the night to carry Cissie
+some underclothes and, if possible, to take her place in jail. At the
+foundation of Tump's being lay a faithfulness and devotion to Cissie
+that reached the heights of a dog's. And yet, he might have deserted
+her, he would probably have beaten her, and he most certainly would have
+betrayed her many, many times. It was inexplicable.
+
+
+Now that Tump was dead, the mantle of his fidelity somehow seemed to
+fall on Peter. For some reason Peter felt that he should assume Tump's
+place as Cissie Dildine's husband and protector. Had Tump lived, Peter
+might have gone North in peace, if not in happiness. Now such a journey,
+without Cissie, had become impossible. He had a feeling that it would
+not be right.
+
+As for the disgrace of marrying such a woman as Cissie Dildine, Peter
+slowly gave that idea up. The "worthinesses" and "disgraces" implicit in
+Harvard atmosphere, which Peter had spent four years of his life
+imbibing, slowly melted away in the air of Niggertown. What was
+honorable there, what was disgraceful there, somehow changed its color
+here.
+
+By virtue of this change Peter felt intuitively that Cissie Dildine was
+neither disgraced by her arrest nor soiled by her physical condition.
+Somehow she seemed just as "nice" a girl, just as "good" a girl, as ever
+she was before. Moreover, every other darky in Niggertown held these
+same instinctive beliefs. Had it not been for that, Peter would have
+thought it was his passion pleading for the girl, justifying itself by a
+grotesque morality, as passions often do. But this was not the correct
+solution. The sentiment was enigmatic. Peter puzzled over it time and
+time again as he waited in Hooker's Bend for the outcome of Cissie's
+trial.
+
+The octoroon's imprisonment came to an end on the third day after Tump's
+death. Sam Arkwright's parents had not known of their son's legal
+proceedings, and Mr. Arkwright immediately quashed the warrant, and
+hushed up the unfortunate matter as best he could. Young Sam was
+suddenly sent away from home to college, as the best step in the
+circumstances. And so the wishes of the adolescent in the cedar-glade
+came queerly to pass, even if Peter did withhold any grave, mature
+advice on the subject which he may have possessed.
+
+Naturally, there was much mirth among the men of Hooker's Bend and much
+virulence among the women over the peculiar conditions under which young
+Sam made his pilgrimage in pursuit of wisdom and morals and the right
+conduct of life. And life being problematic and uncertain as it is, and
+prone to wind about in the strangest way, no one may say with certitude
+that young Sam did not make a promising start.
+
+Certainly, over the affair the Knights of the Round Table launched many
+a quip and jest, but that simply proved the fineness of their sentiments
+toward a certain delicate human relation which forms mankind's single
+awful approach to the creative and the holy.
+
+Tump Pack became almost a mythical figure in Niggertown. Jim Pink Staggs
+composed a saga relating the soldier's exploits in France, his assault
+on the jail to liberate Cissie, and his death.
+
+In his songs--and Jim Pink had composed a good many--the minstrel
+instinctively avoided humor. He always improvised them to the sobbing of
+a guitar, and they were as invariably sad as the poetry of adolescents.
+It was called "Tump Pack's Lament." The negroes of Hooker's Bend learned
+it from Jim Pink, and with them it drifted up and down the three great
+American rivers, and now it is sung by the roustabouts, stevedores, and
+underlings of our strange black American world.
+
+This song commemorating Tump Pack's bravery and faithfulness to his love
+may very well take the place of the Congressional medal which,
+unfortunately, was lost on the night the soldier was killed. Between the
+two, there is little doubt that the accolade of fame bestowed in the
+buffoon's simple melody is more vital and enduring than that accorded by
+special act of the Congress of the United States of America.
+
+When Cissie Dildine returned from jail, she and her mother arranged the
+Dildine-Siner wedding as nearly according to white standards in similar
+circumstances as they could conceive. They agreed that it should be a
+simple, quiet home wedding. However, as every soul in Niggertown, a
+number of colored friends in Jonesboro, and a contingent from up-river
+villages meant to attend, it became necessary to hold the service in the
+church.
+
+The officiating minister was not Parson Ranson after all, but a Reverend
+Cleotus Haidus, the presiding elder of that circuit of the Afro-American
+Methodist Church, whose duties happened to call him to Hooker's Bend
+that day. So, notwithstanding Cissie's efforts at simplicity, the
+wedding, after all, was resolved into an affair.
+
+Once, in one of her moments of clairvoyance, Cissie said to Peter:
+
+"Our trouble is, Peter, we are trying to mix what I have learned in
+Nashville and what you have learned in Boston with what we both feel in
+Hooker's Bend. I--I'm almost ashamed to say it, but I don't really feel
+sad and plaintive at all, Peter. I feel glad, gloriously glad. Oh, my
+dear, dear Peter!" and she flung her arms around Peter's neck and held
+him with all her might against her ripening bosom.
+
+To Cissie her theft, her jail sentence, her pregnancy, were nothing more
+than if she had taken a sip of water. However, with the imitativeness of
+her race and the histrionic ability of her sex, she appeared pensive and
+subdued during the elaborate double-ring ceremony performed by the
+Reverend Cleotus Haidus. Nobody in the packed church knew how
+tremendously Cissie's heart was beating except Peter, who held her hand.
+
+The ethical engine that Peter had patiently builded in Harvard almost
+ceased to function in this weird morality of Niggertown. Whether he were
+doing right or doing wrong, Peter could not determine. He lost all his
+moorings. At times he felt himself walking according to the ethnological
+law, which is the Harvard way of saying walking according to the will of
+God; but at other times he felt party to some unpardonable obscenity. So
+deeply was he disturbed that out of the dregs of his mind floated up old
+bits of the Scriptures that he was unaware of possessing: "There is a
+way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of
+death." And Peter wondered if he were not in that way.
+
+[Illustration: The bridal couple embarked for Cairo]
+
+The bridal couple embarked for Cairo on the _Red Cloud_, a packet
+in the Dubuque, Ohio, and Tennessee River trade. Peter and Cissie were
+not allowed to walk up the main stairway into the passengers' cabin, but
+were required to pick their way along the boiler-deck, through the
+stench of freight, lumber, live stock and sleeping roustabouts. Then
+they went through the heat and steam of the engine-room up a small
+companionway that led through the toilet, on to the rear guard of the
+main deck, and thence back to a little cuddy behind the main saloon
+called the chambermaid's cabin.
+
+The chambermaid's cabin was filled with the perpetual odor of hot soap-
+suds, soiled laundry, and the broader smell of steam and the boat's
+machinery. The little place trembled night and day, for the steamer's
+engines were just beneath them, and immediately behind them thundered
+the great stern-wheel of the packet. A single square window in the end
+of the chambermaid's cabin looked out on the wheel, but at all times,
+except when the wind was blowing from just the right quarter, this
+window was deluged with a veritable Niagara of water. The continual
+shake of the cabin, the creak of the rudder-beam working to and fro, the
+watery thunder of the wheel, and the solemn rumble of the engines made
+conversation impossible until the travelers grew accustomed to the
+noises. Still, Cissie found it pleasant. She liked to sit and look out
+into the main saloon, with its interminable gilded scrolls extending
+away up the long cabin, a suave perspective. She liked to watch the
+white passengers dine--the white napery, the bouquets, the endless
+tables all filled with diners; some swathed in napkins from chin to
+waistband, others less completely protected. It gave Cissie a certain
+tang of triumph to smile at the swathed ones and to think that she knew
+better than that.
+
+At night a negro string-band played for the white excursionists to
+dance, and Cissie would sit, with glowing eyes, clenching Peter's hand,
+every fiber of her asway to the music, and it seemed as if her heart
+would go mad. All these inhibitions, all this spreading before her of
+forbidden joys, did not daunt her delight. She reveled in them by
+propinquity.
+
+The chambermaid was a Mrs. Antolia Higgman, a strong, full-bodied
+_cafe-au-lait_ negress. She was a very sensible woman, and during
+her work on the boat she had picked up a Northern accent and a number of
+little mannerisms from the Chicago and St. Louis excursionists, who made
+ten-day round trips from Dubuque to Florence, Alabama, and return. When
+Mrs. Higgman was not running errands for the women passengers, she was
+working at her perpetual laundering.
+
+At first Peter was a little uneasy as to how Mrs. Higgman would treat
+Cissie, but she turned out a good-hearted woman, and did everything she
+could to make the young wife comfortable. It soon became clear that Mrs.
+Higgman knew the whole situation, for one day she said to Cissie in her
+odd dialect, burred with Yankeeish "r's" and "ing's."
+
+"These river-r towns, Mrs. Siner-r, are jest like one big village, with
+the river-r for its Main Street. I know ever-r'thang that goes on,
+through the cabin-boys an' cooks, an'--an'--you cerrtainly ar-re a dear-
+r, Mrs. Siner-r," and thereupon, quite unexpectedly, she kissed Cissie.
+
+So on about the second day down the river Cissie dropped her saddened
+manner and became frankly, freely, and riotously happy. After the
+fashion of village negresses, she insisted on helping Mrs. Higgman with
+her work, and, incidentally, she cultivated Mrs. Higgman's Northern
+accent. When the chambermaid was out on her errands and Cissie found a
+moment alone with Peter, she would tweak his ear or pull his cheek and
+provoke him to kiss her. Indeed, it was all the hot, shuddering little
+laundry-room could do to contain the gay and bubbling Cissie.
+
+Peter thought and thought, resignedly now, but persistently, how this
+strange happiness that belonged to them both could be. He was content,
+yet he felt he ought not to be content. He thought there must be
+something base in himself, yet he felt that there was not. He drank the
+wine of his honeymoon marveling.
+
+On the morning before the _Red Cloud_ entered the port of Cairo
+Mrs. Higgman was out of the cabin, and Peter stood at the little square
+window, with his arm about Cissie's waist, looking out to the rear of
+the steamer. A strong east wind blew the spray away from the glass, and
+Peter could see the huge wheel covered with a waterfall thundering
+beneath him. Back of the wheel stretched a long row of even waves and
+troughs. Every seventh or eighth wave tumbled over on itself in a swash
+of foam. These flashing stern waves strung far up the river. On each
+side of the great waterway stretched the flat shores of Kentucky and
+Ohio. Here and there over the broad clay-colored water moved other
+boats--tow-boats, a string of government auto-barges, a snag-boat,
+another packet.
+
+Peter gave up his question. The curves of Cissie's form in his arm held
+a sweetness and a restfulness that her maidenhood had never promised. He
+felt so deeply sure of his happiness that it seemed strange to him that
+he could not aline his emotions and his mind.
+
+As Peter stood staring up the Ohio River, it occurred to him that
+perhaps, in some queer way, the morals of black folk were not the morals
+of white folk; perhaps the laws that bound one race were not the laws
+that bound the other. It might be that white anathemas were black
+blessings. Peter thought along this line peacefully for several minutes.
+
+And finally he concluded that, after all, morals and conventions, right
+and wrong, are merely those precepts that a race have practised and
+found good in its evolution. Morals are the training rules that keep a
+people fit. It might very well be that one moral regime is applicable to
+one race, and quite another to another.
+
+The single object of all morals is racial welfare, the racial integrity,
+the breeding of strong children to perpetuate the species. If the black
+race possess a more exuberant vitality than some other race, then the
+black would not be forced to practise so severe a vital economy as some
+less virile folk. Racial morals are simply a question of having and
+spending within safety limits.
+
+Peter knew that for years white men had held a prejudice against
+marrying widows. This is utterly without grounds except for one reason:
+the first born of a woman is the lustiest. Among the still weaker Aryans
+of India the widows burn themselves. Among certain South Sea Islanders
+only the first-born may live and mate; all other children are slain.
+Among nearly every white race marriage lines are strictly drawn, and the
+tendency is to have few children to a family, to conserve the precious
+vital impulse. So strong is this feeling of birth control that to-day
+nearly all American white women are ashamed of large families. This
+shame is the beginning of a convention; the convention may harden into a
+cult, a law, or a religion.
+
+And here is the amazing part of morals. Morals are always directed
+toward one particular race, but the individual members of that race
+always feel that their brand of morals does and should apply to all the
+peoples of the earth; so one has the spectacle of nations sending out
+missionaries and battle-ships to teach and enforce their particular
+folk-ways. Another queer thing is that whereas the end of morals is
+designed solely for the betterment of the race, and is entirely
+regardless of the person, to the conscience of the person morals are
+always translated as something that binds him personally, that will
+shame him or honor him personally not only for the brief span of this
+worldly life, but through an eternity to come. To him, his particular
+code, surrounded by all the sanctions of custom, law, and religion,
+appears earth-embracing, hell-deep, and heaven-piercing, and any human
+creature who follows any other code appears fatally wicked, utterly
+shameless, and ineluctably lost.
+
+And yet there is no such thing as absolute morals. Morals are as
+transitory as the sheen on a blackbird's wing; they change perpetually
+with the necessities of the race. Any people with an abounding vitality
+will naturally practise customs which a less vital people must shun.
+
+Morals are nothing more than the engines controlling the stream of
+energy that propel a race on its course. All engines are not alike, nor
+are all races bound for the same port.
+
+Here Peter Siner made the amazing discovery that although he had spent
+four years in Harvard, he had come out, just as he went in, a negro.
+
+A great joy came over him. He took Cissie whole-heartedly in his arms
+and kissed again and again the deep crimson of her lips. His brain and
+his heart were together at last. As he stood looking out at the window,
+pressing Cissie to him, he wondered, when he reached Chicago, if he
+could ever make Farquhar understand.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Birthright, by T.S. Stribling
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diff --git a/10621.zip b/10621.zip
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #10621 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10621)
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Birthright, by T.S. Stribling
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Birthright
+       A Novel
+
+Author: T.S. Stribling
+
+Release Date: January 7, 2004 [EBook #10621]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BIRTHRIGHT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Robert Shimmin and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "Yes, Cissie, I understand now"]
+
+
+
+
+                               BIRTHRIGHT
+
+                                A NOVEL
+
+                           BY T.S. STRIBLING
+
+
+                             Illustrated by
+                              F. Luis Mora
+
+
+                                  1922
+
+
+
+
+                              TO MY MOTHER
+
+                         AMELIA WAITS STRIBLING
+
+
+
+
+                         LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+"Yes, Cissie, I understand now"
+
+Peter recognized the white aprons and the swords and spears of the
+Knights and Ladies of Tabor
+
+Up and down its street flows the slow negro life of the village
+
+In the Siner cabin old Caroline Siner berated her boy
+
+The old gentleman turned around at last
+
+"You-you mean you want m-me--to go with you, Cissie?" he stammered
+
+"Naw yuh don't," he warned sharply. "You turn roun' an' march on to
+Niggertown"
+
+The bridal couple embarked for Cairo
+
+
+
+
+
+                               BIRTHRIGHT
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER I
+
+
+At Cairo, Illinois, the Pullman-car conductor asked Peter Siner to take
+his suitcase and traveling-bag and pass forward into the Jim Crow car.
+The request came as a sort of surprise to the negro. During Peter
+Siner's four years in Harvard the segregation of black folk on Southern
+railroads had become blurred and reminiscent in his mind; now it was
+fetched back into the sharp distinction of the present instant. With a
+certain sense of strangeness, Siner picked up his bags, and saw his own
+form, in the car mirrors, walking down the length of the sleeper. He
+moved on through the dining-car, where a few hours before he had had
+dinner and talked with two white men, one an Oregon apple-grower, the
+other a Wisconsin paper-manufacturer. The Wisconsin man had furnished
+cigars, and the three had sat and smoked in the drawing-room, indeed,
+had discussed this very point; and now it was upon him.
+
+At the door of the dining-car stood the porter of his Pullman, a negro
+like himself, and Peter mechanically gave him fifty cents. The porter
+accepted it silently, without offering the amenities of his whisk-broom
+and shoe-brush, and Peter passed on forward.
+
+Beyond the dining-car and Pullmans stretched twelve day-coaches filled
+with less-opulent white travelers in all degrees of sleepiness and
+dishabille from having sat up all night. The thirteenth coach was the
+Jim Crow car. Framed in a conspicuous place beside the entrance of the
+car was a copy of the Kentucky state ordinance setting this coach apart
+from the remainder of the train for the purposes therein provided.
+
+The Jim Crow car was not exactly shabby, but it was unkept. It was half
+filled with travelers of Peter's own color, and these passengers were
+rather more noisy than those in the white coaches. Conversation was not
+restrained to the undertones one heard in the other day-coaches or the
+Pullmans. Near the entrance of the car two negroes in soldiers' uniforms
+had turned a seat over to face the door, and now they sat talking loudly
+and laughing the loose laugh of the half intoxicated as they watched the
+inflow of negro passengers coming out of the white cars.
+
+The windows of the Jim Crow car were shut, and already it had become
+noisome. The close air was faintly barbed with the peculiar, penetrating
+odor of dark, sweating skins. For four years Peter Siner had not known
+that odor. Now it came to him not so much offensively as with a queer
+quality of intimacy and reminiscence. The tall, carefully tailored negro
+spread his wide nostrils, vacillating whether to sniff it out with
+disfavor or to admit it for the sudden mental associations it evoked.
+
+It was a faint, pungent smell that played in the back of his nose and
+somehow reminded him of his mother, Caroline Siner, a thick-bodied black
+woman whom he remembered as always bending over a wash-tub. This was
+only one unit of a complex. The odor was also connected with negro
+protracted meetings in Hooker's Bend, and the Harvard man remembered a
+lanky black preacher waving long arms and wailing of hell-fire, to the
+chanted groans of his dark congregation; and he, Peter Siner, had
+groaned with the others. Peter had known this odor in the press-room of
+Tennessee cotton-gins, over a river packet's boilers, where he and other
+roustabouts were bedded, in bunk-houses in the woods. It also recalled a
+certain octoroon girl named Ida May, and an intimacy with her which it
+still moved and saddened Peter to think of. Indeed, it resurrected
+innumerable vignettes of his life in the negro village in Hooker's Bend;
+it was linked with innumerable emotions, this pungent, unforgetable odor
+that filled the Jim Crow car.
+
+Somehow the odor had a queer effect of appearing to push his
+conversation with the two white Northern men in the drawing-room back to
+a distance, an indefinable distance of both space and time.
+
+The negro put his suitcase under the seat, hung his overcoat on the
+hook, and placed his hand-bag in the rack overhead; then with some
+difficulty he opened a window and sat down by it.
+
+A stir of travelers in the Cairo station drifted into the car. Against a
+broad murmur of hurrying feet, moving trucks, and talking there stood
+out the thin, flat voice of a Southern white girl calling good-by to
+some one on the train. Peter could see her waving a bright parasol and
+tiptoeing. A sandwich boy hurried past, shrilling his wares. Siner
+leaned out, with fifteen cents, and signaled to him. The urchin
+hesitated, and was about to reach up one of his wrapped parcels, when a
+peremptory voice shouted at him from a lower car. With a sort of start
+the lad deserted Siner and went trotting down to his white customer. A
+moment later the train bell began ringing, and the Dixie Flier puffed
+deliberately out of the Cairo station and moved across the Ohio bridge
+into the South.
+
+Half an hour later the blue-grass fields of Kentucky were spinning
+outside of the window in a vast green whirlpool. The distant trees and
+houses moved forward with the train, while the foreground, with its
+telegraph poles, its culverts, section-houses, and shrubbery, rushed
+backward in a blur. Now and then into the Jim Crow window whipped a
+blast of coal smoke and hot cinders, for the engine was only two cars
+ahead.
+
+Peter Siner looked out at the interminable spin of the landscape with a
+certain wistfulness. He was coming back into the South, into his own
+country. Here for generations his forebears had toiled endlessly and
+fruitlessly, yet the fat green fields hurtling past him told with what
+skill and patience their black hands had labored.
+
+The negro shrugged away such thoughts, and with a certain effort
+replaced them with the constructive idea that was bringing him South
+once more. It was a very simple idea. Siner was returning to his native
+village in Tennessee to teach school. He planned to begin his work with
+the ordinary public school at Hooker's Bend, but, in the back of his
+head, he hoped eventually to develop an institution after the plan of
+Tuskeegee or the Hampton Institute in Virginia.
+
+To do what he had in mind, he must obtain aid from white sources, and
+now, as he traveled southward, he began conning in his mind the white
+men and white women he knew in Hooker's Bend. He wanted first of all to
+secure possession of a small tract of land which he knew adjoined the
+negro school-house over on the east side of the village.
+
+Before the negro's mind the different villagers passed in review with
+that peculiar intimacy of vision that servants always have of their
+masters. Indeed, no white Southerner knows his own village so minutely
+as does any member of its colored population. The colored villagers see
+the whites off their guard and just as they are, and that is an attitude
+in which no one looks his best. The negroes might be called the black
+recording angels of the South. If what they know should be shouted aloud
+in any Southern town, its social life would disintegrate. Yet it is a
+strange fact that gossip seldom penetrates from the one race to the
+other.
+
+So Peter Siner sat in the Jim Crow car musing over half a dozen
+villagers in Hooker's Bend. He thought of them in a curious way.
+Although he was now a B.A. of Harvard University, and although he knew
+that not a soul in the little river village, unless it was old Captain
+Renfrew, could construe a line of Greek and that scarcely two had ever
+traveled farther north than Cincinnati, still, as Peter recalled their
+names and foibles, he involuntarily felt that he was telling over a roll
+of the mighty. The white villagers came marching through his mind as
+beings austere, and the very cranks and quirks of their characters
+somehow held that austerity. There were the Brownell sisters, two old
+maids, Molly and Patti, who lived in a big brick house on the hill.
+Peter remembered that Miss Molly Brownell always doled out to his
+mother, at Monday's washday dinner, exactly one biscuit less than the
+old negress wanted to eat, and she always paid her in old clothes. Peter
+remembered, a dozen times in his life, his mother coming home and
+wondering in an impersonal way how it was that Miss Molly Brownell could
+skimp every meal she ate at the big house by exactly one biscuit. It was
+Miss Brownell's thin-lipped boast that she understood negroes. She had
+told Peter so several times when, as a lad, he went up to the big house
+on errands. Peter Siner considered this remembrance without the faintest
+feeling of humor, and mentally removed Miss Molly Brownell from his list
+of possible subscribers. Yet, he recalled, the whole Brownell estate had
+been reared on negro labor.
+
+Then there was Henry Hooker, cashier of the village bank. Peter knew
+that the banker subscribed liberally to foreign missions; indeed, at the
+cashier's behest, the white church of Hooker's Bend kept a paid
+missionary on the upper Congo. But the banker had sold some village lots
+to the negroes, and in two instances, where a streak of commercial
+phosphate had been discovered on the properties, the lots had reverted
+to the Hooker estate. There had been in the deed something concerning a
+mineral reservation that the negro purchasers knew nothing about until
+the phosphate was discovered. The whole matter had been perfectly legal.
+
+A hand shook Siner's shoulder and interrupted his review. Peter turned,
+and caught an alcoholic breath over his shoulder, and the blurred voice
+of a Southern negro called out above the rumble of the car and the roar
+of the engine:
+
+"'Fo' Gawd, ef dis ain't Peter Siner I's been lookin' at de las' twenty
+miles, an' not knowin' him wid sich skeniptious clo'es on! Wha you fum,
+nigger?"
+
+Siner took the enthusiastic hand offered him and studied the heavily
+set, powerful man bending over the seat. He was in a soldier's uniform,
+and his broad nutmeg-colored face and hot black eyes brought Peter a
+vague sense of familiarity; but he never would have identified his
+impression had he not observed on the breast of the soldier's uniform
+the Congressional military medal for bravery on the field of battle. Its
+glint furnished Peter the necessary clew. He remembered his mother's
+writing him something about Tump Pack going to France and getting
+"crowned" before the army. He had puzzled a long time over what she
+meant by "crowned" before he guessed her meaning. Now the medal aided
+Peter in reconstructing out of this big umber-colored giant the rather
+spindling Tump Pack he had known in Hooker's Bend.
+
+Siner was greatly surprised, and his heart warmed at the sight of his
+old playmate.
+
+"What have you been doing to yourself, Tump?" he cried, laughing, and
+shaking the big hand in sudden warmth. "You used to be the size of a
+dime in a jewelry store."
+
+"Been in 'e army, nigger, wha I's been fed," said the grinning brown
+man, delightedly. "I sho is picked up, ain't I?"
+
+"And what are you doing here in Cairo?"
+
+"Tryin' to bridle a lil white mule." Mr. Pack winked a whisky-brightened
+eye jovially and touched his coat to indicate that some of the "white
+mule" was in his pocket and had not been drunk.
+
+"How'd you get here?"
+
+"Wucked my way down on de St. Louis packet an' got paid off at Padjo
+[Paducah, Kentucky]; 'n 'en I thought I'd come on down heah an' roll
+some bones. Been hittin' 'em two days now, an' I sho come putty nigh
+bein' cleaned; but I put up lil Joe heah, an' won 'em all back, 'n 'en
+some." He touched the medal on his coat, winked again, slapped Siner on
+the leg, and burst into loud laughter.
+
+Peter was momentarily shocked. He made a place on the seat for his
+friend to sit. "You don't mean you put up your medal on a crap game,
+Tump?"
+
+"Sho do, black man." Pack became soberer. "Dat's one o' de great
+benefits o' bein' dec'rated. Dey ain't a son uv a gun on de river whut
+kin win lil Joe; dey all tried it."
+
+A moment's reflection told Peter how simple and natural it was for Pack
+to prize his military medal as a good-luck piece to be used as a last
+resort in crap games. He watched Tump stroke the face of his medal with
+his fingers.
+
+"My mother wrote me; about your getting it, Tump. I was glad to hear
+it."
+
+The brown man nodded, and stared down at the bit of gold on his barrel-
+like chest.
+
+"Yas-suh, dat 'uz guv to me fuh bravery. You know whut a skeery lil
+nigger I wuz roun' Hooker's Ben'; well, de sahgeant tuk me an' he drill
+ever' bit o' dat right out 'n me. He gimme a baynit an' learned me to
+stob dummies wid it over at Camp Oglethorpe, ontil he felt lak I had de
+heart to stob anything; 'n' 'en he sont me acrost. I had to git a new
+pair breeches ever' three weeks, I growed so fas'." Here he broke out
+into his big loose laugh again, and renewed the alcoholic scent around
+Peter.
+
+"And you made good?"
+
+"Sho did, black man, an', 'fo' Gawd, I 'serve a medal ef any man ever
+did. Dey gimme dish-heah fuh stobbin fo' white men wid a baynit. 'Fo'
+Gawd, nigger, I never felt so quare in all my born days as when I wuz a-
+jobbin' de livers o' dem white men lak de sahgeant tol' me to." Tump
+shook his head, bewildered, and after a moment added, "Yas-suh, I never
+wuz mo' surprised in all my life dan when I got dis medal fuh stobbin'
+fo' white men."
+
+Peter Siner looked through the Jim Crow window at the vast rotation of
+the Kentucky landscape on which his forebears had toiled; presently he
+added soberly:
+
+"You were fighting for your country, Tump. It was war then; you were
+fighting for your country."
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+At Jackson, Tennessee, the two negroes were forced to spend the night
+between trains. Tump Pack piloted Peter Siner to a negro cafe where they
+could eat, and later they searched out a negro lodging-house on Gate
+Street where they could sleep. It was a grimy, smelly place, with its
+own odor spiked by a phosphate-reducing plant two blocks distant. The
+paper on the wall of the room Peter slept in looked scrofulous. There
+was no window, and Peter's four-years régime of open windows and fresh-
+air sleep was broken. He arranged his clothing for the night so it would
+come in contact with nothing in the room but a chair back. He felt dull
+next morning, and could not bring himself either to shave or bathe in
+the place, but got out and hunted up a negro barber-shop furnished with
+one greasy red-plush barber-chair.
+
+A few hours later the two negroes journeyed on down to Perryville,
+Tennessee, a village on the Tennessee River where they took a gasolene
+launch up to Hooker's Bend. The launch was about fifty feet long and had
+two cabins, a colored cabin in front of, and a white cabin behind, the
+engine-room.
+
+This unremitting insistence on his color, this continual shunting him
+into obscure and filthy ways, gradually gave Peter a loathly sensation.
+It increased the unwashed feeling that followed his lack of a morning
+bath. The impression grew upon him that he was being handled with tongs,
+along back-alley routes; that he and his race were something to be kept
+out of sight as much as possible, as careful housekeepers manoeuver
+their slops.
+
+At Perryville a number of passengers boarded the up-river boat; two or
+three drummers; a yellowed old hill woman returning to her Wayne County
+home; a red-headed peanut-buyer; a well-groomed white girl in a tailor
+suit; a youngish man barely on the right side of middle age who seemed
+to be attending her; and some negro girls with lunches. The passengers
+trailed from the railroad station down the river bank through a slush of
+mud, for the river had just fallen and had left a layer of liquid mud to
+a height of about twenty feet all along the littoral. The passengers
+picked their way down carefully, stepping into one another's tracks in
+the effort not to ruin their shoes. The drummers grumbled. The youngish
+man piloted the girl down, holding her hand, although both could have
+managed better by themselves.
+
+Following the passengers came the trunks and grips on a truck. A negro
+deck-hand, the truck-driver, and the white master of the launch shoved
+aboard the big sample trunks of the drummers with grunts, profanity, and
+much stamping of mud. Presently, without the formality of bell or
+whistle, the launch clacked away from the landing and stood up the wide,
+muddy river.
+
+The river itself was monotonous and depressing. It was perhaps half a
+mile wide, with flat, willowed mud banks on one side and low shelves of
+stratified limestone on the other.
+
+Trading-points lay at ten- or fifteen-mile intervals along the great
+waterway. The typical landing was a dilapidated shed of a store half
+covered with tin tobacco signs and ancient circus posters. Usually, only
+one man met the launch at each landing, the merchant, a democrat in his
+shirt-sleeves and without a tie. His voice was always a flat, weary
+drawl, but his eyes, wrinkled against the sun, usually held the
+shrewdness of those who make their living out of two-penny trades.
+
+At each place the red-headed peanut-buyer slogged up the muddy bank and
+bargained for the merchant's peanuts, to be shipped on the down-river
+trip of the first St. Louis packet. The loneliness of the scene embraced
+the trading-points, the river, and the little gasolene launch struggling
+against the muddy current. It permeated the passengers, and was a
+finishing touch to Peter Siner's melancholy.
+
+The launch clacked on and on interminably. Sometimes it seemed to make
+no headway at all against the heavy, silty current. Tump Pack, the white
+captain, and the negro engineer began a game of craps in the negro
+cabin. Presently, two of the white drummers came in from the white cabin
+and began betting on the throws. The game was listless. The master of
+the launch pointed out places along the shores where wildcat stills were
+located. The crap-shooters, negro and white, squatted in a circle on the
+cabin floor, snapping their fingers and calling their points
+monotonously. One of the negro girls in the negro cabin took an apple
+out of her lunch sack and began eating it, holding it in her palm after
+the fashion of negroes rather than in her fingers, as is the custom of
+white women.
+
+Both doors of the engine-room were open, and Peter Siner could see
+through into the white cabin. The old hill woman was dozing in her
+chair, her bonnet bobbing to each stroke of the engines. The youngish
+man and the girl were engaged in some sort of intimate lovers' dispute.
+When the engines stopped at one of the landings, Peter discovered she
+was trying to pay him what he had spent on getting her baggage trucked
+down at Perryville. The girl kept pressing a bill into the man's hand,
+and he avoided receiving the money. They kept up the play for sake of
+occasional contacts.
+
+When the launch came in sight of Hooker's Bend toward the middle of the
+afternoon, Peter Siner experienced one of the profoundest surprises of
+his life. Somehow, all through his college days he had remembered
+Hooker's Bend as a proud town with important stores and unapproachable
+white residences. Now he saw a skum of negro cabins, high piles of
+lumber, a sawmill, and an ice-factory. Behind that, on a little rise,
+stood the old Brownell manor, maintaining a certain shabby dignity in a
+grove of oaks. Behind and westward from the negro shacks and lumber-
+piles ranged the village stores, their roofs just visible over the top
+of the bank. Moored to the shore, lay the wharf-boat in weathered greens
+and yellows. As a background for the whole scene rose the dark-green
+height of what was called the "Big Hill," an eminence that separated the
+negro village on the east from the white village on the west. The hill
+itself held no houses, but appeared a solid green-black with cedars.
+
+The ensemble was merely another lonely spot on the south bank of the
+great somnolent river. It looked dead, deserted, a typical river town,
+unprodded even by the hoot of a jerk-water railroad.
+
+As the launch chortled toward the wharf, Peter Siner stood trying to
+orient himself to this unexpected and amazing minifying of Hooker's
+Bend. He had left a metropolis; he was coming back to a tumble-down
+village. Yet nothing was changed. Even the two scraggly locust-trees
+that clung perilously to the brink of the river bank still held their
+toe-hold among the strata of limestone.
+
+The negro deck-hand came out and pumped the hand-power whistle in three
+long discordant blasts. Then a queer thing happened. The whistle was
+answered by a faint strain of music. A little later the passengers saw a
+line of negroes come marching down the river bank to the wharf-boat.
+They marched in military order, and from afar Peter recognized the white
+aprons and the swords and spears of the Knights and Ladies of Tabor, a
+colored burial association.
+
+Siner wondered what had brought out the Knights and Ladies of Tabor. The
+singing and the drumming gradually grew upon the air. The passengers in
+the white cabin, came out on the guards at this unexpected fanfare. As
+soon as the white travelers saw the marching negroes, they began joking
+about what caused the demonstration. The captain of the launch thought
+he knew, and began an oath, but stopped it out of deference to the girl
+in the tailor suit. He said it was a dead nigger the society was going
+to ship up to Savannah.
+
+The girl in the tailor suit was much amused. She said the darkies looked
+like a string of caricatures marching down the river bank. Peter noticed
+her Northern accent, and fancied she was coming to Hooker's Bend to
+teach school.
+
+One of the drummers turned to another.
+
+"Did you ever hear Bob Taylor's yarn about Uncle 'Rastus's funeral?
+Funniest thing Bob ever got off." He proceeded to tell it.
+
+Every one on the launch was laughing except the captain, who was
+swearing quietly; but the line of negroes marched on down to the wharf-
+boat with the unshakable dignity of black folk in an important position.
+They came singing an old negro spiritual. The women's sopranos thrilled
+up in high, weird phrasing against an organ-like background of male
+voices.
+
+But the black men carried no coffin, and suddenly it occurred to Peter
+Siner that perhaps this celebration was given in honor of his own home-
+coming. The mulatto's heart beat a trifle faster as he began planning a
+suitable response to this ovation.
+
+Sure enough, the singing ranks disappeared behind the wharf-boat, and a
+minute later came marching around the stern and lined up on the outer
+guard of the vessel. The skinny, grizzly-headed negro commander held up
+his sword, and the Knights and Ladies of Tabor fell silent.
+
+The master of the launch tossed his head-line to the wharf-boat, and
+yelled for one of the negroes to make it fast. One did. Then the
+commandant with the sword began his address, but it was not directed to
+Peter. He said:
+
+[Illustration: Peter recognized the white aprons and the swords and
+spears of the Knights and Ladies of Tabor]
+
+"Brudder Tump Pack, we, de Hooker's Ben' lodge uv de Knights an' Ladies
+uv Tabor, welcome you back to yo' native town. We is proud uv you, a
+colored man, who brings back de highes' crown uv bravery dis Newnighted
+States has in its power to bestow.
+
+"Two yeahs ago, Brudder Tump, we seen you marchin' away fum Hooker's
+Ben' wid thirteen udder boys, white an' colored, all marchin' away
+togedder. Fo' uv them boys is already back home; three, we heah, is on
+de way back, but six uv yo' brave comrades, Brudder Pack, is sleepin'
+now in France, an' ain't never goin' to come home no mo'. When we honors
+you, we honors them all, de libin' an' de daid, de white an' de black,
+who fought togedder fuh one country, fuh one flag."
+
+Gasps, sobs from the line of black folk, interrupted the speaker. Just
+then a shriveled old negress gave a scream, and came running and half
+stumbling out of the line, holding out her arms to the barrel-chested
+soldier on the gang-plank. She seized him and began shrieking:
+
+"Bless Gawd! my son's done come home! Praise de Lawd! Bless His holy
+name!" Here her laudation broke into sobbing and choking and laughing,
+and she squeezed herself to her son.
+
+Tump patted her bony black form.
+
+"I's heah, Mammy," he stammered uncertainly. "I's come back, Mammy."
+
+Half a dozen other negroes caught the joyful hysteria. They began a
+religious shouting, clapping their hands, flinging up their arms,
+shrieking.
+
+One of the drummers grunted:
+
+"Good God! all this over a nigger getting back!"
+
+At the extreme end of the dark line a tall cream-colored girl wept
+silently. As Peter Siner stood blinking his eyes, he saw the octoroon's
+shoulders and breasts shake from the sobs, which her white blood
+repressed to silence.
+
+A certain sympathy for her grief and its suppression kept Peter's eyes
+on the young woman, and then, with the queer effect of one picture
+melting into another, the strange girl's face assumed familiar curves
+and softnesses, and he was looking at Ida May.
+
+A quiver traveled deliberately over Peter from his crisp black hair to
+the soles of his feet. He started toward her impulsively.
+
+At that moment one of the drummers picked up his grip, and started down
+the gang-plank, and with its leathern bulk pressed Tump Pack and his
+mother out of his path. He moved on to the shore through the negroes,
+who divided at his approach. The captain of the launch saw that other of
+his white passengers were becoming impatient, and he shouted for the
+darkies to move aside and not to block the gangway. The youngish man
+drew the girl in the tailor suit close to him and started through with
+her. Peter heard him say, "They won't hurt you, Miss Negley." And Miss
+Negley, in the brisk nasal intonation of a Northern woman, replied: "Oh,
+I'm not afraid. We waste a lot of sympathy on them back home, but when
+you see them--"
+
+At that moment Peter heard a cry in his ears and felt arms thrown about
+his neck. He looked down and saw his mother, Caroline Siner, looking up
+into his face and weeping with the general emotion of the negroes and
+this joy of her own. Caroline had changed since Peter last saw her. Her
+eyes were a little more wrinkled, her kinky hair was thinner and very
+gray.
+
+Something warm and melting moved in Peter Siner's breast. He caressed
+his mother and murmured incoherently, as had Tump Pack. Presently the
+master of the launch came by, and touched the old negress, not ungently,
+with the end of a spike-pole.
+
+"You'll have to move, Aunt Ca'line," he said. "We're goin' to get the
+freight off now."
+
+The black woman paused in her weeping. "Yes, Mass' Bob," she said, and
+she and Peter moved off of the launch onto the wharf-boat.
+
+The Knights and Ladies of Tabor were already up the river bank with
+their hero. Peter and his mother were left alone. Now they walked around
+the guards of the wharf-boat to the bank, holding each other's arms
+closely. As they went, Peter kept looking down at his old black mother,
+with a growing tenderness. She was so worn and heavy! He recognized the
+very dress she wore, an old black silk which she had "washed out" for
+Miss Patti Brownell when he was a boy. It had been then, it was now, her
+best dress. During the years the old negress had registered her
+increasing bulk by letting out seams and putting in panels. Some of the
+panels did not agree with the original fabric either in color or in
+texture and now the seams were stretching again and threatening a rip.
+Peter's own immaculate clothes reproached him, and he wondered for the
+hundredth, or for the thousandth time how his mother had obtained
+certain remittances which she had forwarded him during his college
+years.
+
+As Peter and his mother crept up the bank of the river, stopping
+occasionally to let the old negress rest, his impression of the meanness
+and shabbiness of the whole village grew. From the top of the bank the
+single business street ran straight back from the river. It was stony in
+places, muddy in places, strewn with goods-boxes, broken planking,
+excelsior, and straw that had been used for packing. Charred rubbish-
+piles lay in front of every store, which the clerks had swept out and
+attempted to burn. Hogs roamed the thoroughfare, picking up decaying
+fruit and parings, and nosing tin cans that had been thrown out by the
+merchants. The stores that Peter had once looked upon as show-places
+were poor two-story brick or frame buildings, defiled by time and wear
+and weather. The white merchants were coatless, listless men who sat in
+chairs on the brick pavements before their stores and who moved slowly
+when a customer entered their doors.
+
+And, strange to say, it was this fall of his white townsmen that moved
+Peter Siner with a sense of the greatest loss. It seemed fantastic to
+him, this sudden land-slide of the mighty.
+
+As Peter and his mother came over the brow of the river bank, they saw a
+crowd collecting at the other end of the street. The main street of
+Hooker's Bend is only a block long, and the two negroes could easily
+hear the loud laughter of men hurrying to the focus of interest and the
+blurry expostulations of negro voices. The laughter spread like a
+contagion. Merchants as far up as the river corner became infected, and
+moved toward the crowd, looking back over their shoulders at every tenth
+or twelfth step to see that no one entered their doors.
+
+Presently, a little short man, fairly yipping with laughter, stumbled
+back up the street to his store with tears of mirth in his eyes. A
+belated merchant stopped him by clapping both hands on his shoulders and
+shaking some composure into him.
+
+"What is it? What's so funny? Damn it! I miss ever'thing!"
+
+"I-i-it's that f-fool Tum-Tump Pack. Bobbs's arrested him!"
+
+The inquirer was astounded.
+
+"How the hell can he arrest him when he hit town this minute?"
+
+"Wh-why, Bobbs had an old warrant for crap-shoot--three years old--
+before the war. Just as Tump was a-coming down the street at the head of
+the coons, out steps Bobbs--" Here the little man was overcome.
+
+The merchant from the corner opened his eyes.
+
+"Arrested him on an old crap charge?"
+
+The little man nodded. They gazed at each other. Then they exploded
+simultaneously.
+
+Peter left his obese mother and hurried to the corner, Dawson Bobbs, the
+constable, had handcuffs on Tump's wrists, and stood with his prisoner
+amid a crowd of arguing negroes.
+
+Bobbs was a big, fleshy, red-faced man, with chilly blue eyes and a
+little straight slit of a mouth in his wide face. He was laughing and
+chewing a sliver of toothpick.
+
+"O Tump Pack," he called loudly, "you kain't git away from me! If you
+roll bones in Hooker's Bend, you'll have to divide your winnings with
+the county." Dawson winked a chill eye at the crowd in general.
+
+"But hit's out o' date, Mr. Bobbs," the old gray-headed minister, Parson
+Ranson, was pleading.
+
+"May be that, Parson, but hit's easier to come up before the J.P. and
+pay off than to fight it through the circuit court."
+
+Siner pushed his way through the crowd. "How much do you want, Mr.
+Bobbs?" he asked briefly.
+
+The constable looked with reminiscent eyes at the tall, well-tailored
+negro. He was plainly going through some mental card-index, hunting for
+the name of Peter Siner on some long-forgotten warrant. Apparently, he
+discovered nothing, for he said shortly:
+
+"How do I know before he's tried? Come on, Tump!"
+
+The procession moved in a long noisy line up Pillow Street, the white
+residential street lying to the west. It stopped before a large shaded
+lawn, where a number of white men and women were playing a game with
+cards. The cards used by the lawn party were not ordinary playing-cards,
+but had figures on them instead of spots, and were called "rook" cards.
+The party of white ladies and gentlemen were playing "rook." On a table
+in the middle of the lawn glittered some pieces of silver plate which
+formed the first, second, and third prizes for the three leading scores.
+
+The constable halted his black company before the lawn, where they stood
+in the sunshine patiently waiting for the justice of the peace to finish
+his game and hear the case of the State of Tennessee, plaintiff, versus
+Tump Pack, defendant.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER II
+
+
+On the eastern edge of Hooker's Bend, drawn in a rough semicircle around
+the Big Hill, lies Niggertown. In all the half-moon there are perhaps
+not two upright buildings. The grimy cabins lean at crazy angles, some
+propped with poles, while others hold out against gravitation at a
+hazard.
+
+Up and down its street flows the slow negro life of the village. Here
+children of all colors from black to cream fight and play; deep-chested
+negresses loiter to and fro, some on errands to the white section of the
+village on the other side of the hill, where they go to scrub or cook or
+wash or iron. Others go down to the public well with a bucket in each
+hand and one balanced on the head.
+
+The public well itself lies at the southern end of this miserable
+street, just at a point where the drainage of the Big Hill collects. The
+rainfall runs down through Niggertown, under its sties, stables, and
+outdoor toilets, and the well supplies the negroes with water for
+cooking, washing, and drinking. Or, rather, what was once a well
+supplies this water, for it is a well no longer. Its top and curbing
+caved in long ago, and now there is simply a big hole in the soft,
+water-soaked clay, about fifteen feet wide, with water standing at the
+bottom.
+
+Here come the unhurried colored women, who throw in their buckets, and
+with a dexterity that comes of long practice draw them out full of
+water. Black mothers shout at their children not to fall into this pit,
+and now and then, when a pig fails to come up for its evening slops, a
+black boy will go to the public well to see if perchance his porker has
+met misfortune there.
+
+The inhabitants of Niggertown suffer from divers diseases; they develop
+strange ailments that no amount of physicking will overcome; young wives
+grow sickly from no apparent cause. Although only three or four hundred
+persons live in Niggertown, two or three negroes are always slowly dying
+of tuberculosis; winter brings pneumonia; summer, malaria. About once a
+year the state health officer visits Hooker's Bend and forces the white
+soda-water dispensers on the other side of the hill to sterilize their
+glasses in the name of the sovereign State of Tennessee.
+
+The Siner home was a three-room shanty about midway in the semicircle.
+Peter Siner stood in the sunlight just outside the entrance, watching
+his old mother clean the bugs out of a tainted ham that she had bought
+for a pittance from some white housekeeper in the village. It had been
+too high for white people to eat. Old Caroline patiently tapped the
+honeycombed meat to scare out the last of the little green householders,
+and then she washed it in a solution of soda to freshen it up.
+
+The sight of his bulky old mother working at the spoiled ham and of the
+negro women in the street moving to and from the infected well filled
+Peter Siner with its terrible pathos. Although he had seen these
+surroundings all of his life, he had a queer impression that he was
+looking upon them for the first time. During his boyhood he had accepted
+all this without question as the way the world was made. During his
+college days a criticism had arisen in his mind, but it came slowly, and
+was tempered by that tenderness every one feels for the spot called
+home. Now, as he stood looking at it, he wondered how human beings lived
+there at all. He wondered if Ida May used water from the Niggertown
+well.
+
+He turned to ask old Caroline, but checked himself with a man's
+instinctive avoidance of mentioning his intimacies to his mother. At
+that moment, oddly enough, the old negress brought up the topic herself.
+
+"Ida May wuz 'quirin' 'bout you las' night, Peter."
+
+A faint tingle filtered through Peter's throat and chest, but he asked
+casually enough what she had said.
+
+"Didn' say; she wrote."
+
+Peter looked around, frankly astonished.
+
+"Wrote?"
+
+"Yeah; co'se she wrote."
+
+"What made her write?" a fantasy of Ida May dumb flickered before the
+mulatto.
+
+[Illustration: Up and down its street flows the slow negro life of the
+village]
+
+"Why, Ida May's in Nashville." Caroline looked at Peter. "She wrote to
+Cissie, astin' 'bout you. She ast is you as bright in yo' books as you
+is in yo' color." The old negress gave a pleased abdominal chuckle as
+she admired her broad-shouldered brown son.
+
+"But I saw Ida May standing on the wharf-boat the day I came home,"
+protested Peter, still bewildered.
+
+"No you ain't. I reckon you seen Cissie. Dey looks kind o' like when you
+is fur off."
+
+"Cissie?" repeated Peter. Then he remembered a smaller sister of Ida
+May's, a little, squalling, yellow, wet-nosed nuisance that had annoyed
+his adolescence. So that little spoil-sport had grown up into the girl
+he had mistaken for Ida May. This fact increased his sense of
+strangeness--that sense of great change that had fallen on the village
+in his absence which formed the groundwork of all his renewed
+associations.
+
+Peter's prolonged silence aroused certain suspicions in the old negress.
+She glanced at her son out of the tail of her eyes.
+
+"Cissie Dildine is Tump Pack's gal," she stated defensively, with the
+jealousy all mothers feel toward all sons.
+
+A diversion in the shouts of the children up the mean street and a
+sudden furious barking of dogs drew Peter from the discussion. He looked
+up, and saw a negro girl of about fourteen coming down the curved
+street, with long, quick steps and an occasional glance over her
+shoulder.
+
+From across the thoroughfare a small chocolate-colored woman, with her
+wool done in outstanding spikes, thrust her head out at the door and
+called:
+
+"Whut's de matter, Ofeely?"
+
+The girl lifted a high voice:
+
+"Oh, Miss Nan, it's that constable goin' th'ugh the houses!" The girl
+veered across the street to the safety of the open door and one of her
+own sex.
+
+"Good Lawd!" cried the spiked one in disgust, "ever', time a white
+pusson gits somp'n misplaced--" She moved to one side to allow the girl
+to enter, and continued staring up the street, with the whites of her
+eyes accented against her dark face, after the way of angry negroes.
+
+Around the crescent the dogs were furious. They were Niggertown dogs,
+and the sight of a white man always drove them to a frenzy. Presently in
+the hullabaloo, Peter heard Dawson Bobbs's voice shouting:
+
+"Aunt Mahaly, if you kain't call off this dawg, I'm shore goin' to kill
+him."
+
+Then an old woman's scolding broke in and complicated the mêlée.
+Presently Peter saw the bulky form of Dawson Bobbs come around the
+curve, moving methodically from cabin to cabin. He held some legal-
+looking papers in his hands, and Peter knew what the constable was
+doing. He was serving a blanket search-warrant on the whole black
+population of Hooker's Bend. At almost every cabin a dog ran out to
+blaspheme at the intruder, but a wave of the man's pistol sent them
+yelping under the floors again.
+
+When the constable entered a house, Peter could hear him bumping and
+rattling among the furnishings, while the black householders stood
+outside the door and watched him disturb their housekeeping
+arrangements.
+
+Presently Bobbs came angling across the street toward the Siner cabin.
+As he entered the rickety gate, old Caroline called out:
+
+"Whut is you after, anyway, white man?"
+
+Bobbs turned cold, truculent eyes on the old negress. "A turkey
+roaster," he snapped. "Some o' you niggers stole Miss Lou Arkwright's
+turkey roaster."
+
+"Tukky roaster!" cried the old black woman, in great disgust. "Whut you
+s'pose us niggers is got to roast in a tukky roaster?"
+
+The constable answered shortly that his business was to find the
+roaster, not what the negroes meant to put in it.
+
+"I decla'," satirized old Caroline, savagely, "dish-heah Niggertown is a
+white man's pocket. Ever' time he misplace somp'n, he feel in his pocket
+to see ef it ain't thaiuh. Don'-chu turn over dat sody-water, white man!
+You know dey ain't no tukky roaster under dat sody-water. I 'cla' 'fo'
+Gawd, ef a white man wuz to eat a flapjack, an' it did n' give him de
+belly-ache, I 'cla' 'fo' Gawd he'd git out a search-wa'nt to see ef some
+nigger had n' stole dat flapjack goin' down his th'oat."
+
+"Mr. Bobbs has to do his work, Mother," put in Peter. "I don't suppose
+he enjoys it any more than we do."
+
+"Den let 'im git out'n dis business an' git in anudder," scolded the old
+woman. "Dis sho is a mighty po' business."
+
+The ponderous Mr. Bobbs finished with a practised thoroughness his
+inspection of the cabin, and then the inquisition proceeded down the
+street, around the crescent, and so out of sight and eventually out of
+hearing.
+
+Old Caroline snapped her chair back beside her greasy table and sat down
+abruptly to her spoiled ham again.
+
+"Dat make me mad," she grumbled. "Ever' time a white pusson fail to lay
+dey han' on somp'n, dey comes an' turns over ever'thing in my house."
+She paused a moment, closed her eyes in thought, and then mused aloud:
+"I wonder who is got Miss Arkwright's roaster."
+
+The commotion of the constable's passing died in his wake, and
+Niggertown resumed its careless existence. Dogs reappeared from under
+the cabins and stretched in the sunshine; black children came out of
+hiding and picked up their play; the frightened Ophelia came out of
+Nan's cabin across the street and went her way; a lanky negro youth in
+blue coat and pin-striped trousers appeared, coming down the squalid
+thoroughfare whistling the "Memphis Blues" with bird-like virtuosity.
+The lightness with which Niggertown accepted the moral side glance of a
+blanket search-warrant depressed Siner.
+
+Caroline called her son to dinner, as the twelve-o'clock meal is called
+in Hooker's Bend, and so ended his meditation. The Harvard man went back
+into the kitchen and sat down at a rickety table covered with a red-
+checked oil-cloth. On it were spread the spoiled ham, a dish of poke
+salad, a corn pone, and a pot of weak coffee. A quaint old bowl held
+some brown sugar. The fat old negress made a slight, habitual settling
+movement in her chair that marked the end of her cooking and the
+beginning of her meal. Then she bent her grizzled, woolly head and
+mumbled off one of those queer old-fashioned graces which consist of a
+swift string of syllables without pauses between either words or
+sentences.
+
+Peter sat watching his mother with a musing gaze. The kitchen was
+illuminated by a single small square window set high up from the floor.
+Now the disposition of its single ray of light over the dishes and the
+bowed head of the massive negress gave Peter one of those sharp, tender
+apprehensions of formal harmony that lie back of the genre in art. It
+stirred his emotion in an odd fashion. When old Caroline raised her
+head, she found her son staring with impersonal eyes not at herself, but
+at the whole room, including her. The old woman was perplexed and a
+little apprehensive.
+
+"Why, son!" she ejaculated, "didn' you bow yo' haid while yo' mammy ast
+de grace?"
+
+Peter was a little confused at his remissness. Then he leaned a little
+forward to explain the sudden glamour which for a moment had
+transfigured the interior of their kitchen. But even as he started to
+speak, he realized that what he meant to say would only confuse his
+mother; therefore he cast about mentally for some other explanation of
+his behavior, but found nothing at hand.
+
+"I hope you ain't forgot yo' 'ligion up at de 'versity, son."
+
+"Oh, no, no, indeed, Mother, but just at that moment, just as you bowed
+your head, you know, it struck me that--that there is something noble in
+our race." That was the best he could put it to her.
+
+"Noble--"
+
+"Yes. You know," he went on a little quickly, "sometimes I--I've thought
+my father must have been a noble man."
+
+The old negress became very still. She was not looking quite at her son,
+or yet precisely away from him.
+
+"Uh--uh noble nigger,"--she gave her abdominal chuckle. "Why--yeah, I
+reckon yo' father wuz putty noble as--as niggers go." She sat looking at
+her son, oddly, with a faint amusement in her gross black face, when a
+careful voice, a very careful voice, sounded in the outer room, gliding
+up politely on the syllables:
+
+"Ahnt Carolin'! oh, Ahnt Carolin', may I enter?"
+
+The old woman stirred.
+
+"Da''s Cissie, Peter. Go ast her in to de fambly-room."
+
+When Siner opened the door, the vague resemblance of the slender, creamy
+girl on the threshold to Ida May again struck him; but Cissie Dildine
+was younger, and her polished black hair lay straight on her pretty
+head, and was done in big, shining puffs over her ears in a way that Ida
+May's unruly curls would never have permitted. Her eyes were the most
+limpid brown Peter had ever seen, but her oval face was faintly
+unnatural from the use of negro face powder, which colored women insist
+on, and which gives their yellows and browns a barely perceptible
+greenish hue. Cissie wore a fluffy yellow dress some three shades deeper
+than the throat and the glimpse of bosom revealed at the neck.
+
+The girl carried a big package in her arms, and now she manipulated this
+to put out a slender hand to Peter.
+
+"This is Cissie Dildine, Mister Siner." She smiled up at him. "I just
+came over to put my name down on your list. There was such a mob at the
+Benevolence Hall last night I couldn't get to you."
+
+The girl had a certain finical precision to her English that told Peter
+she had been away to some school, and had been taught to guard her
+grammar very carefully as she talked.
+
+Peter helped her inside amid the handshake and said he would go fetch
+the list. As he turned, Cissie offered her bundle. "Here is something I
+thought might be a little treat for you and Ahnt Carolin'." She paused,
+and then explained remotely, "Sometimes it is hard to get good things at
+the village market."
+
+Peter took the package, vaguely amused at Cissie's patronage of the
+Hooker's Bend market. It was an attitude instinctively assumed by every
+girl, white or black, who leaves the village and returns. The bundle was
+rather large and wrapped in newspapers. He carried it into the kitchen
+to his mother, and then returned with the list.
+
+The sheet was greasy from the handling of black fingers. The girl spread
+it on the little center-table with a certain daintiness, seated herself,
+and held out her hand for Peter's pencil. She made rather a graceful
+study in cream and yellow as she leaned over the table and signed her
+name in a handwriting as perfect and as devoid of character as a copy-
+book. She began discussing the speech Peter had made at the Benevolence
+Hall.
+
+"I don't know whether I am in favor of your project or not, Mr. Siner,"
+she said as she rose from the table.
+
+"No?" Peter was surprised and amused at her attitude and at her precise
+voice.
+
+"No, I'm rather inclined toward Mr. DuBois's theory of a literary
+culture than toward Mr. Washington's for a purely industrial training."
+
+Peter broke out laughing.
+
+"For the love of Mike, Cissie, you talk like the instructor in Sociology
+B! And haven't we met before somewhere? This 'Mister Siner' stuff--"
+
+The girl's face warmed under its faint, greenish powder.
+
+"If I aren't careful with my language, Peter," she said simply, "I'll be
+talking just as badly as I did before I went to the seminary. You know I
+never hear a proper sentence in Hooker's Bend except my own."
+
+A certain resignation in the girl's soft voice brought Peter a qualm for
+laughing at her. He laid an impulsive hand on her young shoulder.
+
+"Well, that's true, certainly, but it won't always be like that, Cissie.
+More of us go off to school every year. I do hope my school here in
+Hooker's Bend will be of some real value. If I could just show our
+people how badly we fare here, how ill housed, and unsanitary--"
+
+The girl pressed Peter's fingers with a woman's optimism for a man.
+
+"You'll succeed, Peter, I know you will. Some day the name Siner will
+mean the same thing to coloured people as Tanner and Dunbar and
+Braithwaite do. Anyway, I've put my name down for ten dollars to help
+out." She returned the pencil. "I'll have Tump Pack come around and pay
+you my subscription, Peter."
+
+"I'll watch out for Tump," promised Peter in a lightening mood, "--and
+make him pay."
+
+"He'll do it."
+
+"I don't doubt it. You ought to have him under perfect control. I meant
+to tell you what a pretty frock you have on."
+
+The girl dimpled, and dropped him a little curtsy, half ironical and
+wholly graceful.
+
+Peter was charmed.
+
+"Now keep that way, Cissie, smiling and human, not so grammatical. I
+wish I had a brooch."
+
+"A brooch?"
+
+"I'd give it to you. Your dress needs a brooch, an old gold brooch at
+the bosom, just a glint there to balance your eyes."
+
+Cissie flushed happily, and made the feminine movement of concealing the
+V-shaped opening at her throat.
+
+"It's a pleasure to doll up for a man like you, Peter. You see a girl's
+good points--if she has any," she tacked on demurely.
+
+"Oh, just any man--"
+
+"Don't think it! Don't think it!" waved down Cissie, humorously.
+
+"But, Cissie, how is it possible--"
+
+"Just blind." Cissie rippled into a boarding-school laugh. "I could wear
+the whole rue del Opera here in Niggertown, and nobody would ever see it
+but you."
+
+Cissie was moving toward the door. Peter tried to detain her. He enjoyed
+the implication of Tump Pack's stupidity, in their badinage, but she
+would not stay. He was finally reduced to thanking her for her present,
+then stood guard as she tripped out into the grimy street. In the
+sunshine her glossy black hair and canary dress looked as trim and
+brilliant as the plumage of a chaffinch.
+
+Peter Siner walked back into the kitchen with the fixed smile of a man
+who is thinking of a pretty girl. The black dowager in the kitchen
+received him in silence, with her thick lips pouted. When Peter observed
+it, he felt slightly amused at his mother's resentment.
+
+"Well, you sho had a lot o' chatter over signin' a lil ole paper."
+
+"She signed for ten dollars," said Peter, smiling.
+
+"Huh! she'll never pay it."
+
+"Said Tump Pack would pay it."
+
+"Huh!" The old negress dropped the subject, and nodded at a huge double
+pan on the table. "Dat's whut she brung you." She grunted
+disapprovingly.
+
+"And it's for you, too, Mother."
+
+"Ya-as, I 'magine she brung somp'n fuh me."
+
+Peter walked across to the double pans, and saw they held a complete
+dinner--chicken, hot biscuits, cake, pickle, even ice-cream.
+
+The sight of the food brought Peter a realization that he was keenly
+hungry. As a matter of fact, he had not eaten a palatable meal since he
+had been evicted from the white dining-car at Cairo, Illinois. Siner
+served his own and his mother's plate.
+
+The old woman sniffed again.
+
+"Seems to me lak you is mighty onobsarvin' fuh a nigger whut's been off
+to college."
+
+"Anything else?" Peter looked into the pans again.
+
+"Ain't you see whut it's all in?"
+
+"What it's in?"
+
+"Yeah; whut it's in. You heared whut I said."
+
+"What is it in?"
+
+"Why, it's in Miss Arkwright's tukky roaster, dat's whut it's in." The
+old negress drove her point home with an acid accent.
+
+Peter Siner was too loyal to his new friendship with Cissie Dildine to
+allow his mother's jealous suspicions to affect him; nevertheless the
+old woman's observations about the turkey roaster did prevent a complete
+and care-free enjoyment of the meal. Certainly there were other turkey
+roasters in Hooker's Bend than Mrs. Arkwright's. Cissie might very well
+own a roaster. It was absurd to think that Cissie, in the midst of her
+almost pathetic struggle to break away from the uncouthness of
+Niggertown, would stoop to--Even in his thoughts Peter avoided
+nominating the charge.
+
+And then, somehow, his memory fished up the fact that years ago Ida May,
+according to village rumor, was "light-fingered." At that time in
+Peter's life "light-fingeredness" carried with it no opprobrium
+whatever. It was simply a fact about Ida May, as were her sloe eyes and
+curling black hair. His reflections renewed his perpetual sense of
+queerness and strangeness that hall-marked every phase of Niggertown
+life since his return from the North.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+Cissie Dildine's contribution tailed out the one hundred dollars that
+Peter needed, and after he had finished his meal, the mulatto set out
+across the Big Hill for the white section of the village, to complete
+his trade.
+
+It was Peter's program to go to the Planter's Bank, pay down his
+hundred, and receive a deed from one Elias Tomwit, which the bank held
+in escrow. Two or three days before Peter had tried to borrow the
+initial hundred from the bank, but the cashier, Henry Hooker, after
+going into the transaction, had declined the loan, and therefore Siner
+had been forced to await a meeting of the Sons and Daughters of
+Benevolence. At this meeting the subscription had gone through promptly.
+The land the negroes purposed to purchase for an industrial school was a
+timbered tract tying southeast of Hooker's Bend on the head-waters of
+Ross Creek. A purchase price of eight hundred dollars had been agreed
+upon. The timber on the tract, sold on the stump, would bring almost
+that amount. It was Siner's plan to commandeer free labor in Niggertown,
+work off the timber, and have enough money to build the first unit of
+his school. A number of negro men already had subscribed a certain
+number of days' work in the timber. It was a modest and entirely
+practical program, and Peter felt set up over it.
+
+The brown man turned briskly out into the hot afternoon sunshine, down
+the mean semicircular street, where piccaninnies were kicking up clouds
+of dust. He hurried through the dusty area, and presently turned off a
+by-path that led over the hill, through a glade of cedars, to the white
+village.
+
+The glade was gloomy, but warm, for the shade of cedars somehow seems to
+hold heat. A carpet of needles hushed Siner's footfalls and spread a
+Sabbatical silence through the grove. The upward path was not smooth,
+but was broken with outcrops of the same reddish limestone that marks
+the whole stretch of the Tennessee River. Here and there in the grove
+were circles eight or ten feet in diameter, brushed perfectly clean of
+all needles and pebbles and twigs. These places were crap-shooters'
+circles, where black and white men squatted to shoot dice.
+
+Under the big stones on the hillside, Peter knew, was cached illicit
+whisky, and at night the boot-leggers carried on a brisk trade among the
+gamblers. More than that, the glade on the Big Hill was used for still
+more demoralizing ends. It became a squalid grove of Ashtoreth; but now,
+in the autumn evening, all the petty obscenities of white and black
+sloughed away amid the religious implications of the dark-green aisles.
+
+The sight of a white boy sitting on an outcrop of limestone with a strap
+of school-books dropped at his feet rather surprised Peter. The negro
+looked at the hobbledehoy for several seconds before he recognized in
+the lanky youth a little Arkwright boy whom he had known and played with
+in his pre-college days. Now there was such an exaggerated wistfulness
+in young Arkwright's attitude that Peter was amused.
+
+"Hello, Sam," he called. "What you doing out here?"
+
+The Arkwright boy turned with a start.
+
+"Aw, is that you, Siner?" Before the negro could reply, he added: "Was
+you on the Harvard football team, Siner? Guess the white fellers have a
+pretty gay time in Harvard, don't they, Siner? Geemenettie! but I git
+tired o' this dern town! D' reckon I could make the football team? Looks
+like I could if a nigger like you could, Siner."
+
+None of this juvenile outbreak of questions required answers. Peter
+stood looking at the hobbledehoy without smiling.
+
+"Aren't you going to school?" he asked.
+
+Arkwright shrugged.
+
+"Aw, hell!" he said self-consciously. "We got marched down to the
+protracted meetin' while ago--whole school did. My seat happened to be
+close to a window. When they all stood up to sing, I crawled out and
+skipped. Don't mention that, Siner."
+
+"I won't."
+
+"When a fellow goes to college he don't git marched to preachin', does
+he, Siner?"
+
+"I never did."
+
+"We-e-ll," mused young Sam, doubtfully, "you're a nigger."
+
+"I never saw any white men marched in, either."
+
+"Oh, hell! I wish I was in college."
+
+"What are you sitting out here thinking about?" inquired Peter of the
+ingenuous youngster.
+
+"Oh--football and--women and God and--how to stack cards. You think
+about ever'thing, in the woods. Damn it! I got to git out o' this little
+jay town. D' reckon I could git in the navy, Siner?"
+
+"Don't see why you couldn't, Sam. Have you seen Tump Pack anywhere?"
+
+"Yeah; on Hobbett's corner. Say, is Cissie Dildine at home?"
+
+"I believe she is."
+
+"She cooks for us," explained young Arkwright, "and Mammy wants her to
+come and git supper, too."
+
+The phrase "get supper, too," referred to the custom in the white homes
+of Hooker's Bend of having only two meals cooked a day, breakfast and
+the twelve-o'clock dinner, with a hot supper optional with the mistress.
+
+Peter nodded, and passed on up the path, leaving young Arkwright seated
+on the ledge of rock, a prey to all the boiling, erratic impulses of
+adolescence. The negro sensed some of the innumerable difficulties of
+this white boy's life, and once, as he walked on over the silent
+needles, he felt an impulse to turn back and talk to young Sam
+Arkwright, to sit down and try to explain to the youth what he could of
+this hazardous adventure called Life. But then, he reflected, very
+likely the boy would be offended at a serious talk from a negro. Also,
+he thought that young Arkwright, being white, was really not within the
+sphere of his ministry. He, Peter Siner, was a worker in the black world
+of the South. He was part of the black world which the white South was
+so meticulous to hide away, to keep out of sight and out of thought.
+
+A certain vague sense of triumph trickled through some obscure corner of
+Peter's mind. It was so subtle that Peter himself would have been the
+first, in all good faith, to deny it and to affirm that all his motives
+were altruistic. Once he looked back through the cedars. He could still
+see the boy hunched over, chin in fist, staring at the mat of needles.
+
+As Peter turned the brow of the Big Hill, he saw at its eastern foot the
+village church, a plain brick building with a decaying spire. Its side
+was perforated by four tall arched windows. Each was a memorial window
+of stained glass, which gave the building a black look from the outside.
+As Peter walked down the hill toward the church he heard the and
+somewhat nasal singing of uncultivated voices mingled with the snoring
+of a reed organ.
+
+When he reached Main Street, Peter found the whole business portion
+virtually deserted. All the stores were closed, and in every show-window
+stood a printed notice that no business would be transacted between the
+hours of two and three o'clock in the afternoon during the two weeks of
+revival then in progress. Beside this notice stood another card, giving
+the minister's text for the current day. On this particular day it read:
+
+
+                        GO YE INTO ALL THE WORLD
+
+                 Come hear Rev. E.B. Blackwater's great
+                         Missionary Address on
+
+                         CHRISTIANIZING AFRICA
+
+                  ELOQUENT, PROFOUND, HEART-SEARCHING.
+                        ILLUSTRATED WITH SLIDES.
+
+
+Half a dozen negroes lounged in the sunshine on Hobbett's corner as
+Peter came up. They were amusing themselves after the fashion of blacks,
+with mock fights, feints, sudden wrestlings. They would seize one
+another by the head and grind their knuckles into one another's wool.
+Occasionally, one would leap up and fall into one of those grotesque
+shuffles called "breakdowns." It all held a certain rawness, an
+irrepressible juvenility.
+
+As Peter came up, Tump Pack detached himself from the group and gave a
+pantomime of thrusting. He was clearly reproducing the action which had
+won for him his military medal. Then suddenly he fell down in the dust
+and writhed. He was mimicking with a ghastly realism the death-throes of
+his four victims. His audience howled with mirth at this dumb show of
+the bayonet-fight and of killing four men. Tump himself got up out of
+the dust with tears of laughter in his eyes. Peter caught the end of his
+sentence, "Sho put it to 'em, black boy. Fo' white men--"
+
+His audience roared again, swayed around, and pounded one another in an
+excess of mirth.
+
+Siner shouted from across the street two or three times before he caught
+Tump's attention. The ex-soldier looked around, sobered abruptly.
+
+"Whut-chu want, nigger?" His inquiry was not over-cordial.
+
+Peter nodded him across the street.
+
+The heavily built black in khaki hesitated a moment, then started across
+the street with the dragging feet of a reluctant negro. Peter looked at
+him as he came up.
+
+"What's the matter, Tump?" he asked playfully.
+
+"Ain't nothin' matter wid me, nigger." Peter made a guess at Tump's
+surliness.
+
+"Look here, are you puffed up because Cissie Dildine struck you for a
+ten?"
+
+Tump's expression changed.
+
+"Is she struck me fuh a ten?"
+
+"Yes; on that school subscription."
+
+"Is dat whut you two niggers wuz a-talkin' 'bout over thaiuh in yo'
+house?"
+
+"Exactly." Peter showed the list, with Cissie's name on it. "She told me
+to collect from you."
+
+Tump brightened up.
+
+"So dat wuz whut you two niggers wuz a-talkin' 'bout over at yo' house."
+He ran a fist down into his khaki, and drew out three or four one-dollar
+bills and about a pint of small change. It was the usual crap-shooter's
+offering. The two negroes sat down on the ramshackle porch of an old
+jeweler's shop, and Tump began a complicated tally of ten dollars.
+
+By the time he had his dimes, quarters, and nickels in separate stacks,
+services in the village church were finished, and the congregation came
+filing up the street. First came the school-children, running and
+chattering and swinging their books by the straps; then the business men
+of the hamlet, rather uncomfortable in coats and collars, hurrying back
+to their stores; finally came the women, surrounding the preacher.
+
+Tump and Peter walked on up to the entrance of the Planter's Bank and
+there awaited Mr. Henry Hooker, the cashier. Presently a skinny man
+detached himself from the church crowd and came angling across the dirty
+street toward the bank. Mr. Hooker wore somewhat shabby clothes for a
+banker; in fact, he never could recover from certain personal habits
+formed during a penurious boyhood. He had a thin hatchet face which just
+at this moment was shining though from some inward glow. Although he was
+an unhandsome little man, his expression was that of one at peace with
+man and God and was pleasant to see. He had been so excited by the
+minister that he was constrained to say something even to two negroes.
+So as he unlocked the little one-story bank, he told Tump and Peter that
+he had been listening to a man who was truly a man of God. He said
+Blackwater could touch the hardest heart, and, sure enough, Mr. Hooker's
+rather popped and narrow-set eyes looked as though he had been crying.
+
+All this encomium was given in a high, cracked voice as the cashier
+opened the door and turned the negroes into the bank. Tump, who stood
+with his hat off, listening to all the cashier had to say, said he
+thought so, too.
+
+The shabby interior of the little bank, the shabby little banker,
+renewed that sense of disillusion that pervaded Peter's home-coming. In
+Boston the mulatto had done his slight banking business in a white
+marble structure with tellers of machine-like briskness and neatness.
+
+Mr. Hooker strolled around into his grill-cage; when he was thoroughly
+ensconced he began business in his high voice:
+
+"You came to see me about that land, Peter?"
+
+Yes, sir."
+
+"Sorry to tell you, Peter, you are not back in time to get the Tomwit
+place."
+
+Peter came out of his musing over the Boston banks with a sense of
+bewilderment.
+
+"How's that? why, I bought that land--"
+
+"But you paid nothing for your option, Siner."
+
+"I had a clear-cut understanding with Mr. Tomwit--"
+
+Mr. Hooker smiled a smile that brought out sharp wrinkles around the
+thin nose on his thin face.
+
+"You should have paid him an earnest, Siner, if you wanted to bind your
+trade. You colored folks are always stumbling over the law."
+
+Peter stared through the grating, not knowing what to do.
+
+"I'll go see Mr. Tomwit," he said, and started uncertainly for the door.
+
+The cashier's falsetto stopped him:
+
+"No use, Peter. Mr. Tomwit surprised me, too, but no use talking about
+it. I didn't like to see such an important thing as the education of our
+colored people held up, myself. I've been thinking about it."
+
+"Especially when I had made a fair square trade," put in Peter, warmly.
+
+"Exactly," squeaked the cashier. "And rather than let your project be
+delayed, I'm going to offer you the old Dillihay place at exactly the
+same price, Peter--eight hundred."
+
+"The Dillihay place?"
+
+"Yes; that's west of town; it's bigger by twenty acres than old man
+Tomwit's place."
+
+Peter considered the proposition.
+
+"I'll have to carry this before the Sons and Daughters of Benevolence,
+Mr. Hooker."
+
+The cashier repeated the smile that bracketed his thin nose in wrinkles.
+
+"That's with you, but you know what you say goes with the niggers here
+in town, and, besides, I won't promise how long I'll hold the Dillihay
+place. Real estate is brisk around here now. I didn't want to delay a
+good work on account of not having a location." Mr. Hooker turned away
+to a big ledger on a breast-high desk, and apparently was about to
+settle himself to the endless routine of bank work.
+
+Peter knew the Dillihay place well. It lacked the timber of the other
+tract; still, it was fairly desirable. He hesitated before the tarnished
+grill.
+
+"What do you think about it, Tump?"
+
+"You won't make a mistake in buying," answered the high voice of Mr.
+Hooker at his ledger.
+
+"I don' think you'll make no mistake in buyin', Peter," repeated Tump's
+bass.
+
+Peter turned back a little uncertainly, and asked how long it would take
+to fix the new deed. He had a notion of making a flying canvass of the
+officers of the Sons and Daughters in the interim. He was surprised to
+find that Mr. Hooker already had the deed and the notes ready to sign,
+in anticipation of Peter's desires. Here the banker brought out the set
+of papers.
+
+"I'll take it," decided Peter; "and if the lodge doesn't want it, I'll
+keep the place myself."
+
+"I like to deal with a man of decision," piped the cashier, a wrinkled
+smile on his sharp face.
+
+Peter pushed in his bag of collections, then Mr. Hooker signed the deed,
+and Peter signed the land notes. They exchanged the instruments. Peter
+received the crisp deed, bound in blue manuscript cover. It rattled
+unctuously. To Peter it was his first step toward a second Tuskegee.
+
+The two negroes walked out of the Planter's Bank filled with a sense of
+well-doing. Tump Pack was openly proud of having been connected, even in
+a casual way, with the purchase. As he walked down the steps, he turned
+to Peter.
+
+"Don' reckon nobody could git a deed off on you wid stoppers in it, does
+you?"
+
+"We don't know any such word as 'stop,' Tump," declared Peter, gaily.
+
+For Peter was gay. The whole incident at the bank was beginning to
+please him. The meeting of a sudden difficulty, his quick decision--it
+held the quality of leadership. Napoleon had it.
+
+The two colored men stepped briskly through the afternoon sunshine along
+the mean village street. Here and there in front of their doorways sat
+the merchants yawning and talking, or watching pigs root in the piles of
+waste.
+
+In Peter's heart came a wonderful thought. He would make his industrial
+institution such a model of neatness that the whole village of Hooker's
+Bend would catch the spirit. The white people should see that something
+clean and uplifting could come out of Niggertown. The two races ought to
+live for a mutual benefit. It was a fine, generous thought. For some
+reason, just then, there flickered through Peter's mind a picture of the
+Arkwright boy sitting hunched over in the cedar glade, staring at the
+needles.
+
+All this musing was brushed away by the sight of old Mr. Tomwit crossing
+the street from the east side to the livery-stable on the west. That
+human desire of wanting the person who has wronged you to know that you
+know your injury moved Peter to hurry his steps and to speak to the old
+gentleman.
+
+Mr. Tomwit had been a Confederate cavalryman in the Civil War, and there
+was still a faint breeze and horsiness about him. He was a hammered-down
+old gentleman, with hair thin but still jet-black, a seamed, sunburned
+face, and a flattened nose. His voice was always a friendly roar. Now,
+when he saw Peter turning across the street to meet him, he halted and
+called out at once:
+
+"Now Peter, I know what's the matter with you. I didn't do you right."
+
+Peter went closer, not caring to take the whole village into his
+confidence.
+
+"How came you to turn down my proposition, Mr. Tomwit," he asked, "after
+we had agreed and drawn up the papers?"
+
+"We-e-ell, I had to do it, Peter," explained the old man, loudly.
+
+"Why, Mr. Tomwit?"
+
+"A white neighbor wanted me to, Peter," boomed the cavalryman.
+
+"Who, Mr. Tomwit?"
+
+"Henry Hooker talked me into it, Peter. It was a mean trick, Peter. I
+done you wrong." He stood nodding his head and rubbing his flattened
+nose in an impersonal manner. "Yes, I done you wrong, Peter," he
+acknowledged loudly, and looked frankly into Peter's eyes.
+
+The negro was immensely surprised that Henry Hooker had done such a
+thing. A thought came that perhaps some other Henry Hooker had moved
+into town in his absence.
+
+"You don't mean the cashier of the bank?"
+
+Old Mr. Tomwit drew out a plug of Black Mule tobacco, set some gapped,
+discolored teeth into corner, nodded at Peter silently, at the same time
+utilizing the nod to tear off a large quid. He rolled tin about with his
+tongue and after a few moments adjusted it so that he could speak.
+
+"Yeah," he proceeded in a muffled tone, "they ain't but one Henry
+Hooker; he is the one and only Henry. He said if I sold you my land,
+you'd put up a nigger school and bring in so many blackbirds you'd run
+me clean off my farm. He said it'd ruin the whole town, a nigger school
+would."
+
+Peter was astonished.
+
+"Why, he didn't talk that way to me!"
+
+"Natchelly, natchelly," agreed the old cavalryman, dryly.--"Henry has a
+different way to talk to ever' man, Peter."
+
+"In fact," proceeded Peter, "Mr. Hooker sold me the old Dillihay place
+in lieu of the deal I missed with you."
+
+Old Mr. Tomwit moved his quid in surprise.
+
+"The hell he did!"
+
+"That at least shows he doesn't think a negro school would ruin the
+value of his land. He owns farms all around the Dillihay place."
+
+Old Mr. Tomwit turned his quid over twice and spat thoughtfully.
+
+"That your deed in your pocket?" With the air of a man certain of being
+obeyed he held out his hand for the blue manuscript cover protruding
+from the mulatto's pocket. Peter handed it over. The old gentleman
+unfolded the deed, then moved it carefully to and from his eyes until
+the typewriting was adjusted to his focus. He read it slowly, with a
+movement of his lips and a drooling of tobacco-juice. Finally he
+finished, remarked, "I be damned!" in a deliberate voice, returned the
+deed, and proceeded across the street to the livery-stable, which was
+fronted by an old mulberry-tree, with several chairs under it. In one of
+these chairs he would sit for the remainder of the day, making an
+occasional loud remark about the weather or the crops, and watching the
+horses pass in and out of the stable.
+
+Siner had vaguely enjoyed old Mr. Tomwit's discomfiture over the deed,
+if it was discomfiture that had moved the old gentleman to his
+sententious profanity. But the negro did not understand Henry Hooker's
+action at all. The banker had abused his position of trust as holder of
+a deed in escrow snapping up the sale himself; then he had sold Peter
+the Dillihay place. It was a queer shift.
+
+Tump Pack caught his principal's mood with that chameleon-like mental
+quality all negroes possess.
+
+"Dat Henry Hooker," criticized Tump, "allus was a lil ole dried-up snake
+in de grass."
+
+"He abused his position of trust," said Peter, gloomily; "I must say,
+his motives seem very obscure to me."
+
+"Dat sho am a fine way to put hit," said Tump, admiringly.
+
+"Why do you suppose he bought in the Tomwit tract and sold me the
+Dillihay place?"
+
+Asked for an opinion, Tump began twiddling military medal and corrugated
+the skin on his inch-high brow.
+
+"Now you puts it to me lak dat, Peter," he answered with importance, "I
+wonders ef dat gimlet-haided white man ain't put some stoppers in dat
+deed he guv you. He mout of."
+
+Such remarks as that from Tump always annoyed Peter. Tump's intellectual
+method was to talk sense just long enough to gain his companion's ear,
+and then produce something absurd and quash the tentative interest.
+
+Siner turned away from him and said, "Piffle."
+
+Tump was defensive at once.
+
+"'T ain't piffle, either! I's talkin' sense, nigger."
+
+Peter shrugged, and walked a little way in silence, but the soldier's
+nonsense stuck in his brain and worried him. Finally he turned, rather
+irritably.
+
+"Stoppers--what do you mean by stoppers?"
+
+Tump opened his jet eyes and their yellowish whites. "I means nigger-
+stoppers," he reiterated, amazed in his turn.
+
+"Negro-stoppers--" Peter began to laugh sardonically, and abruptly quit
+the conversation.
+
+Such rank superiority irritated the soldier to the nth power.
+
+"Look heah, black man, I knows I _is_ right. Heah, lonme look at
+dat-aiuh, deed. Maybe I can find 'em. I knows I suttinly is right."
+
+Peter walked on, paying no attention to the request Until Tump caught
+his arm and drew him up short.
+
+"Look heah, nigger," said Tump, in a different tone, "I faded dad deed
+fuh ten iron men, an' I reckon I got a once-over comin' fuh my money."
+
+The soldier was plainly mobilized and ready to attack. To fight Tump, to
+fight any negro at all, would be Peter's undoing; it would forfeit the
+moral leadership he hoped to gain. Moreover, he had no valid grounds for
+a disagreement with Tump. He passed over the deed, and the two negroes
+moved on their way to Niggertown.
+
+Tump trudged forward with eyes glued to paper, his face puckered in the
+unaccustomed labor of reading.
+
+His thick lips moved at the individual letters, and constructed them
+bunglingly into syllables and words. He was trying to uncover the verbal
+camouflage by which the astute white brushed away all rights of all
+black men whatsoever.
+
+To Peter there grew up something sadly comical in Tump's efforts. The
+big negro might well typify all the colored folk of the South,
+struggling in a web of law and custom they did not understand,
+misplacing their suspicions, befogged and fearful. A certain penitence
+for having been irritated at Tump softened Peter.
+
+"That's all right, Tump; there's nothing to find."
+
+At that moment the soldier began to bob his head.
+
+"Eh! eh! eh! W-wait a minute!" he stammered. "Whut dis? B'lieve I done
+foun' it! I sho is! Heah she am! Heah's dis nigger-stopper, jes lak I
+tol' you!" Tump marked a sentence in the guaranty of the deed with a
+rusty forefinger and looked up at Peter in mixed triumph and accusation.
+
+Peter leaned over the deed, amused.
+
+"Let's see your mare's nest."
+
+"Well, she 'fo' God is thaiuh, an' you sho let loose a hundud dollars uv
+our 'ciety's money, an' got nothin' fuh hit but a piece o' paper wid a
+nigger-stopper on hit!"
+
+Tump's voice was so charged with contempt that Peter looked with a
+certain uneasiness at his find. He read this sentence switched into the
+guaranty of the indenture:
+
+
+"Be it further understood and agreed that no negro, black man, Afro-
+American, mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, or any person whatsoever of
+colored blood or lineage, shall enter upon, seize, hold, occupy, reside
+upon, till, cultivate, own or possess any part or parcel of said
+property, or garner, cut, or harvest therefrom, any of the usufruct,
+timber, or emblements thereof, but shall by these presents be estopped
+from so doing forever."
+
+
+Tump Pack drew a shaken, unhappy breath.
+
+"Now, I reckon you see whut a nigger-stopper is."
+
+Peter stood in the sunshine, looking at the estoppel clause, his lips
+agape. Twice he read it over. It held something of the quality of those
+comprehensive curses that occur in the Old Testament. He moistened his
+lips and looked at Tump.
+
+"Why that can't be legal." His voice sounded empty and shallow.
+
+"Legal! 'Fo' Gawd, nigger, whauh you been to school all dese yeahs,
+never to heah uv a nigger-stopper befo'!"
+
+"But--but how can a stroke of the pen, a mere gesture, estop a whole
+class of American citizens forever?" cried Peter, with a rising voice.
+"Turn it around. Suppose they had put in a line that no white man should
+own that land. It--it's empty! I tell you, it's mere words!"
+
+Tump cut into his diatribe: "No use talkin' lak dat. Our 'ciety thought
+you wuz a aidjucated nigger. We didn't think no white man could put
+nothin' over on you."
+
+"Education!" snapped Siner. "Education isn't supposed to keep you away
+from shysters!"
+
+"Keep you away fum 'em!" cried Tump, in a scandalized voice. "'Fo' Gawd,
+nigger, you don' know nothin'! O' co'se a aidjucation ain't to keep you
+away fum shysters; hit's to mek you one 'uv 'em!"
+
+Peter stood breathing irregularly, looking at his deed. A determination
+not to be cheated grew up and hardened in his nerves. With unsteady
+hands he refolded his deed and put it into his pocket, then he turned
+about and started back up the village street toward the bank.
+
+Tump stared after him a moment and presently called out:
+
+"Heah, nigger, whut you gwine do?" A moment later he repeated to his
+friend's back: "Look heah, nigger, I 'vise you ag'inst anything you's
+gwine do, less'n you's ready to pass in you' checks!" As Peter strode on
+he lifted his voice still higher: "Peter! Hey, Peter, I sho' 'vise you
+'g'inst anything you's 'gwine do!"
+
+A pulse throbbed in Siner's temples. The wrath of the cozened heated his
+body. His clothes felt hot. As he strode up the trash-piled street, the
+white merchants lolling in their doors began smiling. Presently a laugh
+broke out at one end of the street and was caught up here and there. It
+was the undying minstrel jest, the comedy of a black face. Dawson Bobbs
+leaned against the wide brick entrance of the livery-stable, his red
+face balled into shining convexities by a quizzical smile.
+
+"Hey, Peter," he drawled, winking at old Mr. Tomwit, "been investin' in
+real estate?" and broke into Homeric laughter.
+
+As Peter passed on, the constable dropped casually in behind the brown
+man and followed him up to the bank.
+
+To Peter Siner the walk up to the bank was an emotional confusion. He
+has a dim consciousness that voices said things to him along the way and
+that there was laughter. All this was drowned by desperate thoughts and
+futile plans to regain his lost money, flashing through his head. The
+cashier would exchange the money for the deed; he would enter suit and
+carry it to the Supreme Court; he would show the money had not been his,
+he had had no right to buy; he would beg the cashier. His head seemed to
+spin around and around.
+
+He climbed the steps into the Planter's Bank and opened the screen-door.
+The cashier glanced up briefly, but continued busily at his ledger.
+
+Peter walked shakenly to the barred window in the grill.
+
+"Mr. Hooker."
+
+"Very busy now, Peter," came the high voice.
+
+"I want to know about this deed."
+
+The banker was nimbly setting down long rows of figures. "No time to
+explain deeds, Peter."
+
+"But--but there is a clause in this deed, Mr. Hooter, estopping colored
+persons from occupying the Dillihay place."
+
+"Precisely. What about it?" Mr. Hooker snapped out his inquiry and
+looked up suddenly, catching Peter full in the face with his narrow-set
+eyes. It was the equivalent of a blow.
+
+"According to this, I--I can't establish a school on it."
+
+"You cannot."
+
+"Then what can I do with it?" cried Peter.
+
+"Sell it. You have what lawyers call a cloud on the title. Sell it. I'll
+give you ten dollars for your right in it, just to clear up my title."
+
+A queer trembling seized Peter. The little banker turned to a fantastic
+caricature of a man. His hatchet face, close-set eyes, harsh, straight
+hair, and squeaky voice made him seem like some prickly, dried-up gnome
+a man sees in a fever.
+
+At that moment the little wicket-door of the window opened under the
+pressure of Peter's shoulder. Inside on the desk, lay neat piles of
+bills of all denominations, ready to be placed in the vault. In a
+nervous tremor Peter dropped in his blue-covered deed and picked up a
+hundred-dollar bill.
+
+"I--I won't trade," he jibbered. "It--it wasn't my money. Here's your
+deed!" Peter was moving away. He felt a terrific impulse to run, but he
+walked.
+
+The banker straightened abruptly. "Stop there, Peter!" he screeched.
+
+At that moment Dawson Bobbs lounged in at the door, with his perpetual
+grin balling up his broad red face. He had a toothpick, in his mouth.
+
+"'S matter?" he asked casually.
+
+"Peter there," said the banker, with a pale, sharp face, "doesn't want
+to stick to his trade. He is just walking off with one of my hundred-
+dollar bills."
+
+"Sick o' yo' deal, Peter?" inquired Bobbs, smiling and shifting the
+toothpick. He bit down on it. "Well, whut-chu want done, Henry?"
+
+"Oh," hesitated the cashier in a quandary, "nothing, I suppose. Siner
+was excited; you know how niggers are. We can't afford to send every
+nigger to the pen that breaks the law." He stood studying Peter out of
+his close-set eyes. "Here's your deed, Peter." He shoved it back under
+the grill. "And lemme give you a little friendly advice. I'd just run an
+ordinary nigger school if I was you. This higher education don't seem to
+make a nigger much smarter when he comes back than when he starts out."
+A faint smile bracketed the thin nose.
+
+Dawson Bobbs roared with sudden appreciation, took the bill from Peter's
+fingers, and pushed it back under the grill.
+
+The cashier picked up the money, casually. He considered a moment, then
+reached for a long envelop. As he did so, the incident with Peter
+evidently passed from his mind, for his hatchet face lighted up as with
+some inward illumination.
+
+"Bobbs," he said warmly, "that was a great sermon Brother Blackwater
+preached. It made me want to help according as the Lord has blessed me.
+Couldn't you spare five dollars, Bobbs, to go along with this?"
+
+The constable tried to laugh and wriggle away, but the cashier's gimlet
+eyes kept boring him, and eventually he fished out a five-dollar bill
+and handed it in. Mr. Hooker placed the two bills in the envelop, sealed
+it, and handed it to the constable.
+
+"Jest drop that in the post-office as you go down the street, Bobbs," he
+directed in his high voice. Peter caught a glimpse of the type-written
+address.
+
+It was
+
+  Rev. Lemuel Hardiman,
+    c/o United Missions,
+      Katuako Post,
+        Bahr el Ghazal,
+          Sudan,
+            East Africa.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER III
+
+
+The white population of Hooker's Bend was much amused and gratified at
+the outcome of the Hooker-Siner land deal. Every one agreed that the
+cashier's chicanery was a droll and highly original turn to give to a
+negro exclusion clause drawn into a deed. Then, too, it involved several
+legal points highly congenial to the Hooker's Bend intellect Could the
+Sons and Daughters of Benevolence recover their hundred dollars? Could
+Henry Hooker force them to pay the remaining seven hundred? Could not
+Siner establish his school on the Dillihay place regardless of the
+clause, since the cashier would be estopped from obtaining an injunction
+by his own instrument?
+
+As a matter of fact, the Sons and Daughters of Benevolence sent a
+committee to wait on Mr. Hooker to see what action he meant to take on
+the notes that paid for his spurious deed. This brought another harvest
+of rumors. Street gossip reported that Henry had compromised for this,
+that, and the other amount, that he would not compromise, that he had
+persuaded the fool niggers into signing still other instruments. Peter
+never knew the truth. He was not on the committee.
+
+But high above the legal phase of interest lay the warming fact that
+Peter Siner, a negro graduate of Harvard, on his first tilt in Hooker's
+Bend affairs had ridden to a fall. This pleased even the village women,
+whose minds could not follow the subtle trickeries of legal disputation.
+The whole affair simply proved what the white village had known all
+along: you can't educate a nigger. Hooker's Bend warmed with pleasure
+that half of its population was ineducable.
+
+White sentiment in Hooker's Bend reacted strongly on Niggertown. Peter
+Siner's prestige was no more. The cause of higher education for negroes
+took a mighty slump. Junius Gholston, a negro boy who had intended to go
+to Nashville to attend Fisk University, reconsidered the matter, packed
+away his good clothes, put on overalls, and shipped down the river as a
+roustabout instead.
+
+In the Siner cabin old Caroline Siner berated her boy for his stupidity
+in ever trading with that low-down, twisting snake in the grass, Henry
+Hooker. She alternated this with floods of tears. Caroline had no
+sympathy for her offspring. She said she had thrown away years of self-
+sacrifice, years of washing, a thousand little comforts her money would
+have bought, all for nothing, for less than nothing, to ship a fool
+nigger up North and to ship him back.
+
+Of all Niggertown, Caroline was the most unforgiving because Peter had
+wounded her in her pride. Every other negro in the village felt that
+genial satisfaction in a great man's downfall that is balm to small
+souls. But the old mother knew not this consolation. Peter was her
+proxy. It was she who had fallen.
+
+The only person in Niggertown who continued amiable to Peter Siner was
+Cissie Dildine. The octoroon, perhaps, had other criteria by which to
+judge a man than his success or mishaps dealing with a pettifogger.
+
+Two or three days after the catastrophe, Cissie made an excursion to the
+Siner cabin with a plate of cookies. Cissie was careful to place her
+visit on exactly a normal footing. She brought her little cakes in the
+role of one who saw no evil, spoke no evil, and heard no evil. But
+somehow Cissie's visit increased the old woman's wrath. She remained
+obstinately in the kitchen, and made remarks not only audible, but
+arresting, through the thin partition that separated it from the poor
+living-room.
+
+Cissie was hardly inside when a voice stated that it hated to see a gal
+running after a man, trying to bait him with a lot of fum-diddles.
+
+Cissie gave Peter a single wide-eyed glance, and then attempted to
+ignore the bodiless comment.
+
+"Here are some cookies, Mr. Siner," began the girl, rather nervously. "I
+thought you and Ahnt Carolin'--"
+
+"Yeah, I 'magine dey's fuh me!" jeered the spectral voice.
+
+"Might like them," concluded the girl, with a little gasp.
+
+"I suttinly don' want no light-fingered hussy ma'yin' my son," proceeded
+the voice, "an' de whole Dildine fambly 'll bear watchin'."
+
+[Illustration: In the Siner cabin old Caroline Siner berated her boy.]
+
+"Won't you have a seat?" asked Peter, exquisitely uncomfortable.
+
+Cissie handed him her plate in confusion.
+
+"Why, no, Mr. Siner," she hastened on, in her careful grammar, "I just--
+ran over to--"
+
+"To fling herse'f in a nigger's face 'cause he's been North and got
+made a fool uv," boomed the hidden censor.
+
+"I must go now," gasped Cissie.
+
+Peter made a harried gesture.
+
+"Wait--wait till I get my hat."
+
+He put the plate down with a swift glance around for his hat. He found
+it, and strode to the door, following the girl. The two hurried out into
+the street, followed by indistinct strictures from the kitchen. Cissie
+breathed fast, with open lips. They moved rapidly along the semicircular
+street almost with a sense of flight. The heat of the early autumn sun
+stung them through their clothes. For some distance they walked in a
+nervous silence, then Cissie said:
+
+"Your mother certainly hates me, Peter."
+
+"No," said Peter, trying to soften the situation; "it's me; she's
+terribly hurt about--" he nodded to-ward the white section--"that
+business."
+
+Cissie opened her clear brown eyes.
+
+"Your own mother turned against you!"
+
+"Oh, she has a right to be," began Peter, defensively. "I ought to have
+read that deed. It's amazing I didn't, but I--I really wasn't expecting
+a trick, Mr. Hooker seemed so--so sympathetic--" He came to a lame halt,
+staring at the dust through which they picked their way.
+
+"Of course you weren't expecting tricks!" cried Cissie, warmly. "The
+whole thing shows you're a gentleman used to dealing with gentlemen. But
+of course these Hooker's Bend negroes will never see that!"
+
+Peter, surprised and grateful, looked at Cissie. Her construction of the
+swindle was more flattering than any apology he had been able to frame
+for himself.
+
+"Still, Cissie, I ought to have used the greatest care--"
+
+"I'm not talking about what you 'ought,'" stated the octoroon, crisply;
+"I'm talking about what you are. When it comes to 'ought,' we colored
+people must get what we can, any way we can. We fight from the bottom."
+The speech held a viperish quality which for a moment caught the brown
+man's attention; then he said:
+
+"One thing is sure, I've lost my prestige, whatever it was worth."
+
+The girl nodded slowly.
+
+"With the others you have, I suppose."
+
+Peter glanced at Cissie. The temptation was strong to give the
+conversation a personal turn, but he continued on the general topic:
+
+"Well, perhaps it's just as well. My prestige was a bit too flamboyant,
+Cissie. All I had to do was to mention a plan. The Sons and Daughters
+didn't even discuss it. They put it right through. That wasn't healthy.
+Our whole system of society, all democracies are based on discussion.
+Our old Witenagemot--"
+
+"But it wasn't _our_ old Witenagemot," said the girl.
+
+"Well--no," admitted the mulatto, "that's true."
+
+They moved along for some distance in silence, when the girl asked:
+
+"What are you going to do now, Peter?"
+
+"Teach, and keep working for that training-school," stated Peter, almost
+belligerently. "You didn't expect a little thing like a hundred dollars
+to stop me, did you?"
+
+"No-o-o," conceded Cissie, with some reserve of judgment in her tone.
+Presently she added, "You could do a lot better up North, Peter."
+
+"For whom?"
+
+"Why, yourself," said the girl, a little surprised.
+
+Siner nodded.
+
+"I thought all that out before I came back here, Cissie. A friend of
+mine named Farquhar offered me a place with him up in Chicago,--a string
+of garages. You'd like Farquhar, Cissie. He's a materialist with an
+absolutely inexorable brain. He mechanizes the universe. I told him I
+couldn't take his offer. 'It's like this,' I argued: 'if every negro
+with a little ability leaves the South, our people down there will never
+progress.' It's really that way, Cissie, it takes a certain mental
+atmosphere to develop a people as a whole. A few individuals here and
+there may have the strength to spring up by themselves, but the run of
+the people--no. I believe one of the greatest curses of the colored race
+in the South is the continual draining of its best individuals North.
+Farquhar argued--" just then Peter saw that Cissie was not attending his
+discourse. She was walking at his side in a respectful silence. He
+stopped talking, and presently she smiled and said:
+
+"You haven't noticed my new brooch, Peter." She lifted her hand to her
+bosom, and twisted the face of the trinket toward him. "You oughtn't to
+have made me show it to you after you recommended it yourself." She made
+a little _moue_ of disappointment.
+
+It was a pretty bit of old gold that complimented the creamy skin. Peter
+began admiring it at once, and, negro fashion, rather overstepped the
+limits white beaux set to their praise, as he leaned close to her.
+
+At the moment the two were passing one of the oddest houses in
+Niggertown. It was a two-story cabin built in the shape of a steamboat.
+A little cupola represented a pilot-house, and two iron chimneys served
+for smoke-stacks.
+
+This queer building had been built by a negro stevedore because of a
+deep admiration for the steamboats on which he had made his living.
+Instead of steps at the front door, this boat-like house had a stage-
+plank. As Peter strolled down the street with Cissie, admiring her
+brooch, and suffused with a sense of her nearness, he happened to glance
+up, and saw Tump Pack walk down the stage-plank, come out, and wait for
+them at the gate.
+
+There was something grim in the ex-soldier's face and in the set of his
+gross lips as the two came up, but the aura of the girl prevented Peter
+from paying much attention to it. As the two reached Tump, Peter had
+just lifted his hand to his hat when Tump made a quick step out at the
+gate, in front of them, and swung a furious blow at Peter's head.
+
+Cissie screamed. Siner staggered back with flames dancing before his
+eyes. The soldier lunged after his toppling man with gorilla-like blows.
+Hot pains shot through Peter's body. His head roared like a gong. The
+sunlight danced about him in flashes. The air was full of black fists
+smashing him, and not five feet away, the bullet head of Tump Pack
+bobbed this way and that in the rapid shifts of his attack. A stab of
+pain cut off Peter's breath. He stood with his diaphragm muscles tense
+and paralyzed, making convulsive efforts to breathe. At that moment he
+glimpsed the convexity of Tump's stomach. He drop-kicked at it with
+foot-ball desperation. Came a loud explosive groan. Tump seemed to rise
+a foot or two in air, turned over, and thudded down on his shoulders in
+the dust. The soldier made no attempt to rise, but curled up, twisting
+in agony.
+
+Peter stood in the dust-cloud, wabbly, with roaring head. His open mouth
+was full of dust. Then he became aware that negroes were running in from
+every direction, shouting. Their voices whooped out what had happened,
+who it was, who had licked. Tump Pack's agonized spasms brought howls of
+mirth from the black fellows. Negro women were in the crowd, grinning, a
+little frightened, but curious. Some were in Mother-Hubbards; one had
+her hair half combed, one side in a kinky mattress, the other lying flat
+and greased down to her scalp.
+
+When Peter gradually became able to breathe and could think at all,
+there was something terrible to him in Tump's silent attack and in this
+extravagant black mirth over mere suffering. Cissie was gone,--had fled,
+no doubt, at the beginning of the fight.
+
+The prostrate man's tortured abdomen finally allowed him to twist around
+toward Peter. His eyes were popped, and seemed all yellows and streaked
+with swollen veins.
+
+"I'll git you fuh dis," he wheezed, spitting dust "You did n' fight
+fair, you--"
+
+The black chorus rolled their heads and pounded one another in a gale of
+merriment.
+
+Peter Siner turned away toward his home filled with sick thought. He had
+never realized so clearly the open sore of Niggertown life and its great
+need of healing, yet this very episode would further bar him, Peter,
+from any constructive work. He foresaw, too plainly, how the white town
+and Niggertown would react to this fight. There would be no
+discrimination in the scandal. He, Peter Siner, would be grouped with
+the boot-leggers and crap-shooters and women-chasers who filled
+Niggertown with their brawls. As a matter of simple fact, he had been
+fighting with another negro over a woman. That he was subjected to an
+attack without warning or cause would never become a factor in the
+analysis. He knew that very well.
+
+Two of Peter's teeth were loose; his left jaw was swelling; his head
+throbbed. With that queer perversity of human nerves, he kept biting his
+sore teeth together as he walked along.
+
+When he reached home, his mother met him at the door. Thanks to the
+swiftness with which gossip spreads among black folk, she had already
+heard of the fight, and incidentally had formed her judgment of the
+matter. Now she looked in exasperation at her son's swelling face.
+
+"I 'cla' 'fo' Gawd!--ain't been home a week befo' he's fightin' over a
+nigger wench lak a roustabout!"
+
+Peter's head throbbed so he could hardly make out the details of
+Caroline's face.
+
+"But, Mother--" he began defensively, "I--"
+
+"Me sweatin' over de wash-pot," the negress went on, "so's you could go
+up North an' learn a lil sense; heah you comes back chasin' a dutty
+slut!"
+
+"But, Mother," he begged thickly, "I was simply walking home with Miss
+Dildine."
+
+"Miss Dildine! Miss Dildine!" exploded the ponderous woman, with an
+erasing gesture. "Ef you means dat stuck-up fly-by-night Cissie Dildine,
+say so, and don' stan' thaiuh mouthin', 'Miss Dildine, Miss Dildine'!"
+
+"Mother," asked Peter, thickly, through his swelling mouth, "do you want
+to know what did happen?"
+
+"I knows. I tol' you to keep away fum dat hussy. She's a fool 'bout her
+bright color an' straight hair. Needn't be givin' herse'f no airs!"
+
+Peter stood in the doorway, steadying himself by the jamb. The world
+still swayed from the blows he had received on the head.
+
+"What girl would you be willing for me to go with?" he asked in faint
+satire.
+
+"Heah in Niggertown?"
+
+Peter nodded. The movement increased his headache.
+
+"None a-tall. No Niggertown wench a-tall. When you mus' ma'y, I's
+'speckin' you to go off summuhs an' pick yo' gal, lak you went off to
+pick yo' aidjucation." She swung out a thick arm, and looked at Peter
+out of the corner of her eyes, her head tilted to one side, as negresses
+do when they become dramatically serious.
+
+Peter left his mother to her stare and went to his own room. This
+constant implication among Niggertown inhabitants that Niggertown and
+all it held was worthless, mean, unhuman depressed Peter. The mulatto
+knew the real trouble with Niggertown was it had adopted the white
+village's estimate of it. The sentiment of the white village was
+overpowering among the imitative negroes. The black folk looked into the
+eyes of the whites and saw themselves reflected as chaff and skum and
+slime, and no human being ever suggested that they were aught else.
+
+Peter's room was a rough shed papered with old newspapers. All sorts of
+yellow scare-heads streaked his walls. Hanging up was a crayon
+enlargement of his mother, her broad face as unwrinkled as an egg and
+drawn almost white, for the picture agents have discovered the only way
+to please their black patrons is to make their enlargements as nearly
+white as possible.
+
+In one corner, on a home-made book-rack, stood Peter's library,--a Greek
+book or two, an old calculus, a sociology, a psychology, a philosophy,
+and a score of other volumes he had accumulated in his four college
+years. As Peter, his head aching, looked at these, he realized how
+immeasurably removed he was from the cool abstraction of the study.
+
+The brown man sat down in an ancient rocking-chair by the window, leaned
+back, and closed his eyes. His blood still whispered in his ears from
+his fight. Notwithstanding his justification, he gradually became filled
+with self-loathing. To fight--to hammer and kick in Niggertown's dust--
+over a girl! It was an indignity.
+
+
+Peter shifted his position in his chair, and his thoughts took another
+trail. Tump's attack had been sudden and silent, much like a bulldog's.
+The possibility of a simple friendship between a woman and a man never
+entered Tump's head; it never entered any Niggertown head. Here all
+attraction was reduced to the simplest terms of sex. Niggertown held no
+delicate intimacies or reserves. Two youths could not go with the same
+girl. Black women had no very great powers of choice over their suitors.
+The strength of a man's arm isolated his sweetheart. That did not seem
+right, resting the power of successful mating entirely upon brawn.
+
+As Peter sat thinking it over, it came to him that the progress of any
+race depended, finally, upon the woman having complete power of choosing
+her mate. It is woman alone who consistently places the love accent upon
+other matters than mere flesh and muscle. Only woman has much sex
+selectiveness, or is inclined to select individuals with qualities of
+mind and spirit.
+
+For millions of years these instinctive spiritualizers of human breeding
+stock have been hampered in their choice of mates by the unrestrained
+right of the fighting male. Indeed, the great constructive work of
+chivalry in the middle ages was to lay, unconsciously, the corner-stone
+of modern civilization by resigning to the woman the power of choosing
+from a group of males.
+
+Siner stirred in his chair, surprised at whither his reverie had lead
+him. He wondered how he had stumbled upon these thoughts. Had he read
+them in a book? In point of fact, a beating administered by Tump Pack
+had brought the brown man the first original idea he had entertained in
+his life.
+
+By this time, Peter's jaw had reached its maximum swelling and was eased
+somewhat. He looked out of his little window, wondering whether Cissie
+Dildine would choose him--or Tump Pack.
+
+Peter was surprised to find blue dusk peering through his panes. All the
+scare-heads on his walls had lapsed into a common obscurity. As he rose
+slowly, so as not to start his head hurting again, he heard three rapid
+pistol shots in the cedar glade between Niggertown and the white
+village. He knew this to be the time-honored signal of boot-leggers
+announcing that illicit whisky was for sale in the blackness of the
+glade.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Next day the Siner-Pack fight was the focus of news interest in Hooker's
+Bend. White mistresses extracted the story from their black maids, and
+were amused by it or deprecated Cissie Dildine's morals as the mood
+moved them.
+
+Along Main Street in front of the village stores, the merchants and
+hangers-on discussed the affair. It was diverting that a graduate of
+Harvard should come back to Hooker's Bend and immediately drop into such
+a fracas. Old Captain Renfrew, one-time attorney at law and
+representative of his county in the state legislature, sat under the
+mulberry in front of the livery-stable and plunged into a long
+monologue, with old Mr. Tomwit as listener, on the uneducability of the
+black race.
+
+"Take a horse, sir," expounded the captain; "a horse can be trained to
+add and put its name together out of an alphabet, but no horse could
+ever write a promissory note and figure the interest on it, sir. Take a
+dog. I've known dogs, sir, that could bring your mail from the post-
+office, but I never saw a dog stop on the way home, sir, to read a post-
+card."
+
+Here the old ex-attorney spat and renewed the tobacco in a black brier,
+then proceeded to draw the parrallel between dogs and horses and Peter
+Siner newly returned from Harvard.
+
+"God'lmighty has set his limit on dogs, horses, and niggers, Mr. Tomwit.
+Thus far and no farther. Take a nigger baby at birth; a nigger baby has
+no fontanelles. It has no window toward heaven. Its skull is sealed up
+in darkness. The nigger brain can never expand and absorb the universe,
+sir. It can never rise on the wings of genius and weigh the stars, nor
+compute the swing of the Pleiades. Thus far and no farther! It's
+congenital.
+
+"Now, take this Peter Siner and his disgraceful fight over a nigger
+wench. Would you expect an educated stud horse to pay no attention to a
+mare, sir? You can educate a stud till--"
+
+"But hold on!" interrupted the old cavalryman. "I've known as
+gentlemanly stallions as--as anybody!"
+
+The old attorney cleared his throat, momentarily taken aback at this
+failure of his metaphor. However he rallied with legal suppleness:
+
+"You are talking about thoroughbreds, sir."
+
+"I am, sir."
+
+"Good God, Tomwit! you don't imagine I'm comparing a nigger to a
+thoroughbred, sir!"
+
+On the street corners, or piled around on cotton-bales down on the wharf,
+the negro men of the village discussed the fight. It was for the most
+part a purely technical discussion of blows and counters and kicks, and
+of the strange fact that a college education failed to enable Siner
+utterly to annihilate his adversary. Jim Pink Staggs, a dapper gentleman
+of ebony blackness, of pin-stripe flannels and blue serge coat--
+altogether a gentleman of many parts--sat on one of the bales and
+indolently watched an old black crone fishing from a ledge of rocks just
+a little way below the wharf-boat. Around Jim Pink lounged and sprawled
+black men and youths, stretching on the cotton-bales like cats in the
+sunshine.
+
+Jim Pink was discussing Peter's education.
+
+"I 'fo' Gawd kain't see no use goin' off lak dat an' den comin' back an'
+lettin' a white man cheat you out'n yo' hide an' taller, an' lettin' a
+black man beat you up tull you has to 'kick him in the spivit. Ef a
+aidjucation does you any good a-tall, you'd be boun' to beat de white man
+at one en' uv de line, or de black man at de udder. Ef Peter ain't to be
+foun' at eider en', wha is he?"
+
+"Um-m-m!" "Eh-h-h!" "You sho spoke a moufful, Jim Pink!" came an
+assenting chorus from the bales.
+
+Eventually such gossip died away and took another flurry when a report
+went abroad that Tump Pack was carrying a pistol and meant to shoot
+Peter on sight. Then this in turn ceased to be news and of human
+interest. It clung to Peter's mind longer than to any other person's in
+Hooker's Bend, and it presented to the brown man a certain problem in
+casuistry.
+
+Should he accede to Tump Pack's possession of Cissie Dildine and give up
+seeing the girl? Such a course cut across all his fine-spun theory about
+women having free choice of their mates. However, the Harvard man could
+not advocate a socialization of courtship when he himself would be the
+first beneficiary. The prophet whose finger points selfward is damned.
+Furthermore, all Niggertown would side with Tump Pack in such a
+controversy. It was no uncommon thing for the very negro women to fight
+over their beaux and husbands. As for any social theory changing this
+régime, in the first place the negroes couldn't understand the theory;
+in the second, it would have no effect if they could. Actions never grow
+out of theories; theories grow out of actions. A theory is a looking-
+glass that reflects the past and makes it look like the future, but the
+glass really hides the future, and when humanity comes to a turn in its
+course, there is always a smash-up, and a blind groping for the lost
+path.
+
+Now, in regard to Cissie Dildine, Peter was not precisely afraid of Tump
+Pack, but he could not clear his mind of the fact that Tump had been
+presented with a medal by the Congress of the United States for killing
+four men. Good sense and a care for his reputation and his skin told
+Peter to abandon his theory of free courtship for the time being. This
+meant a renunciation of Cissie Dildine; but he told himself he renounced
+very little. He had no reason to think that Cissie cared a picayune
+about him.
+
+Peter's work kept him indoors for a number of days following the
+encounter. He was reviewing some primary school work in order to pass a
+teacher's examination that would be held in Jonesboro, the county seat,
+in about three weeks.
+
+To the uninitiated it may seem strange to behold a Harvard graduate
+stuck down day after day poring over a pile of dog-eared school-books--
+third arithmetics, primary grammars, beginners' histories of Tennessee,
+of the United States, of England; physiology, hygiene. It may seem
+queer. But when it comes to standing a Wayne County teacher's
+examination, the specific answers to the specific questions on a dozen
+old examination slips are worth all the degrees Harvard ever did confer.
+
+So, in his newspapered study, Peter Siner looked up long lists of
+questions, and attempted to memorize the answers. But the series of
+missteps he had made since returning to Hooker's Bend besieged his brain
+and drew his thoughts from his catechism. It seemed strange that in so
+short a time he should have wandered so far from the course he had set
+for himself. His career in Niggertown formed a record of slight
+mistakes, but they were not to be undone, and their combined force had
+swung him a long way from the course he had plotted for himself. There
+was no way to explain. Hooker's Bend would judge him by the sheer
+surface of his works. What he had meant to do, his dreams and altruisms,
+they would never surmise. That was the irony of the thing.
+
+Then he thought of Cissie Dildine who did understand him. This thought
+might have been Cissie's cue to enter the stage of Peter's mind. Her
+oval, creamy face floated between Peter's eyes and the dog-eared primer.
+He thought of Cissie wistfully, and of her lonely fight for good
+English, good manners, and good taste. There was a pathos about Cissie.
+
+Peter got up from his chair and looked out at his high window into the
+early afternoon. He had been poring over primers for three days,
+stuffing the most heterogeneous facts. His head felt thick and slightly
+feverish. Through his window he saw the side of another negro cabin, but
+by looking at an angle eastward he could see a field yellow with corn, a
+valley, and, beyond, a hill wooded and glowing with the pageantry of
+autumn. He thought of Cissie Dildine again, of walking with her among
+the burning maples and the golden elms. He thought of the restfulness
+such a walk with Cissie would bring.
+
+As he mused, Peter's soul made one of those sharp liberating movements
+that occasionally visit a human being. The danger of Tump Pack's
+jealousy, the loss of his prestige, the necessity of learning the
+specific answers to the examination questions, all dropped away from him
+as trivial and inconsequent. He turned from the window, put away his
+books and question-slips, picked up his hat, and moved out briskly
+through his mother's room toward the door.
+
+The old woman in the kitchen must have heard him, for she called to him
+through the partition, and a moment later her bulky form filled the
+kitchen entrance. She wiped her hands on her apron and looked at him
+accusingly.
+
+"Wha you gwine, son?"
+
+"For a walk."
+
+The old negress tilted her head aslant and looked fixedly at him.
+
+"You's gwine to dat Cissie Dildine's, Peter."
+
+Peter looked at his mother, surprised and rather disconcerted that she
+had guessed his intentions from his mere footsteps. The young man
+changed his plans for his walk, and began a diplomatic denial:
+
+"No, I'm going to walk by myself. I'm tired; I'm played out."
+
+"Tired?" repeated his mother, doubtfully. "You ain't done nothin' but
+set an' turn th'ugh books an' write on a lil piece o' paper."
+
+Peter was vaguely amused in his weariness, but thought that he concealed
+his mirth from his mother.
+
+"That gets tiresome after a while."
+
+She grunted her skepticism. As Peter moved for the door she warned him:
+
+"Peter, you knows ef Tump Pack sees you, he's gwine to shoot you sho!"
+
+"Oh, no he won't; that's Tump's talk."
+
+"Talk! talk! Whut's matter wid you, Peter? Dat nigger done git crowned
+fuh killin' fo' men!" She stood staring at him with white eyes. Then she
+urged, "Now, look heah, Peter, come along an' eat yo' supper."
+
+"No, I really need a walk. I won't walk through Niggertown. I'll walk
+out in the woods."
+
+"I jes made some salmon coquettes fuh you whut'll spile ef you don' eat
+'em now."
+
+"I didn't know you were making croquettes," said Peter, with polite
+interest.
+
+"Well, I is. I gotta can o' salmon fum Miss Mollie Brownell she'd opened
+an' couldn't quite use. I doctered 'em up wid a lil vinegar an' sody,
+an' dey is 'bout as pink as dey ever wuz."
+
+A certain uneasiness and annoyance came over Peter at this persistent
+use of unwholesome foods.
+
+"Look here, Mother, you're not using old canned goods that have been
+left over?"
+
+The old negress stood looking at him in silence, but lost her coaxing
+expression.
+
+"I've told and told you about using any tainted or impure foods that the
+white people can't eat."
+
+"Well, whut ef you is?"
+
+"If it's too bad for them, it's too bad for you!"
+
+Caroline made a careless gesture.
+
+"Good Lawd, boy! I don' 'speck to eat whut's good fuh me! All I says is,
+'Grub, keep me alive. Ef you do dat, you done a good day's wuck.'"
+
+Peter was disgusted and shocked at his mother's flippancy. Modern
+colleges are atheistic, but they do exalt three gods,--food,
+cleanliness, and exercise. Now here was Peter's mother blaspheming one
+of his trinity.
+
+"I wish you 'd let me know when you want anything Mother. I'll get it
+fresh for you." His words were filial enough, but his tone carried his
+irritation.
+
+The old negress turned back to the kitchen.
+
+"Huh, boy! you been fotch up on lef'-overs," she said, and disappeared
+through the door.
+
+Peter walked to the gate, let himself out, and started off on his
+constitutional. His tiff with his mother renewed all his nervousness and
+sense of failure. His litany of mistakes renewed their dolor in his
+mind.
+
+An autumn wind was blowing, and long plumes of dust whisked up out of
+the curving street and swept over the ill-kept yards, past the cabins,
+and toward the sere fields and chromatic woods. The wind beat at the
+brown man; the dust whispered against his clothes, made him squint his
+eyes to a crack and tickled his nostrils at each breath.
+
+When Peter had gone two or three hundred yards, he became aware that
+somebody was walking immediately behind him. Tump Pack popped into his
+mind. He looked over his shoulder and then turned. Through the veils of
+flying dust he made out some one, and a moment later identified not Tump
+Pack, but the gangling form of Jim Pink Staggs, clad in a dark-blue
+sack-coat and white flannel trousers with pin stripes. It was the sort
+of costume affected by interlocutors of minstrel shows; it had a
+minstrel trigness about it.
+
+As a matter of fact, Jim Pink was a sort of semi-professional minstrel.
+Ordinarily, he ran a pressing-shop in the Niggertown crescent, but
+occasionally he impressed all the dramatic talent of Niggertown and
+really did take the road with a minstrel company. These barn-storming
+expeditions reached down into Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas.
+Sometimes they proved a great success, and the darkies rode back several
+hundred dollars ahead. Sometimes they tramped back.
+
+Jim Pink hailed Peter with a wave of his hand and a grotesque
+displacement of his mouth to one side of his face, which he had found
+effective in his minstrel buffoonery.
+
+"Whut you raisin' so much dus' about?" he called out of the corner of
+his mouth, while looking at Peter out of one half-closed eye.
+
+Peter shook his head and smiled.
+
+"Thought it mout be Mister Hooker deliverin' dat lan' you bought." Jim
+Pink flung his long, flexible face into an imitation of convulsed
+laughter, then next moment dropped it into an intense gravity and
+declared, "'Dus' thou art, to dus' returnest.'" The quotation seemed
+fruitless and silly enough, but Jim Pink tucked his head to one side as
+if listening intently to himself, then repeated sepulchrally, "'Dus'
+thou art, to dus' returnest.' By the way, Peter," he broke off cheerily,
+"you ain't happen to see Tump Pack, is you?"
+
+"No," said Peter, unamused.
+
+"Is he borrowed a gun fum you?" inquired the minstrel, solemnly.
+
+"No-o." Peter looked questioningly at the clown through half-closed
+eyes.
+
+"Huh, now dat's funny." Jim Pink frowned, and pulled down his loose
+mouth and seemed to study. He drew out a pearl-handled knife, closed his
+hand over it, blew on his fist, then opened the other hand, and
+exhibited the knife lying in its palm, with the blade open. He seemed
+surprised at the change and began cleaning his finger-nails. Jim Pink
+was the magician at his shows.
+
+Peter waited patiently for Jim Pink to impart his information, "Well,
+what's the idea?" he asked at last.
+
+"Don' know. 'Pears lak dat knife won't stay in any one han'." He looked
+at it, curiously.
+
+"I mean about Tump," said Peter, impatiently.
+
+"O-o-oh, yeah; you mean 'bout Tump. Well, I thought Tump mus' uv
+borrowed a gun fum you. He lef' Hobbett's corner wid a great big forty-
+fo', inquirin' wha you is." Just then he glanced up, looked
+penetratingly through the dust-cloud, and added, "Why, I b'lieve da' 's
+Tump now."
+
+With a certain tightening of the nerves, Peter followed his glance, but
+made out nothing through the fogging dust. When he looked around at Jim
+Pink again, the buffoon's face was a caricature of immense mirth. He
+shook it sober, abruptly, minstrel fashion.
+
+"Maybe I's mistooken," he said solemnly. "Tump did start over heah wid a
+gun, but Mister Dawson Bobbs done tuk him up fuh ca'yin' concealed
+squidjulums; so Tump's done los' dat freedom uv motion in de pu'suit uv
+happiness gua'anteed us niggers an' white folks by the Constitution uv
+de Newnighted States uv America." Here Jim Pink broke into genuine
+laughter, which was quite a different thing from his stage grimaces.
+Peter stared at the fool astonished.
+
+"Has he gone to jail?"
+
+"Not prezactly."
+
+"Well--confound it!--exactly what did happen, Jim Pink?"
+
+"He gone to Mr. Cicero Throgmartins'."
+
+"What did he go there for?"
+
+"Couldn't he'p hisse'f."
+
+"Look here, you tell me what's happened."
+
+"Mr. Bobbs ca'ied Tump thaiuh. Y' see, Mr. Throgmartin tried to hire
+Tump to pick cotton. Tump didn't haf to, because he'd jes shot fo'
+natchels in a crap game. So to-day, when Tump starts over heah wid his
+gun, Mr. Bobbs 'resses Tump. Mr. Throgmartin bails him out, so now
+Tump's gone to pick cotton fuh Mr. Throgmartin to pay off'n his fine."
+Here Jim Pink yelped into honest laughter at Tump's undoing so that dust
+got into his nose and mouth and set him sneezing and coughing.
+
+"How long's he up for?" asked Peter, astonished and immensely relieved
+at this outcome of Tump's expedition against himself.
+
+Jim Pink controlled his coughing long enough to gasp:
+
+"Th-thutty days, ef he don' run off," and fell to laughing again.
+
+Peter Siner, long before, had adopted the literate man's notion of what
+is humorous, and Tump's mishap was slap-stick to him. Nevertheless, he
+did smile. The incident filled him with extraordinary relief and
+buoyancy. At the next corner he made some excuse to Jim Pink, and turned
+off up an alley.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+Peter walked along with his shoulders squared and the dust peppering his
+back. Not till Tump was lifted from his mind did he realize what an
+incubus the soldier had been. Peter had been forced into a position
+where, if he had killed Tump, he would have been ruined; if he had not,
+he would probably have murdered. Now he was free--for thirty days.
+
+He swung along briskly in the warm sunshine toward the multicolored
+forest. The day had suddenly become glorious. Presently he found himself
+in the back alleys near Cissie's house. He was passing chicken-houses
+and stables. Hogs in open pens grunted expectantly at his footsteps.
+
+Peter had not meant to go to Cissie's at all, but now, when he saw he
+was right behind her dwelling, she seemed radiantly accessible to him.
+Still, it struck him that it would not be precisely the thing to call on
+Cissie immediately after Tump's arrest. It might look as if--Then the
+thought came that, as a neighbor, he should stop and tell Cissie of
+Tump's misfortune. He really ought to offer his services to Cissie, if
+he could do anything. At Cissie's request he might even aid Tump Pack
+himself. Peter got himself into a generous glow as he charged up a side
+alley, around to a rickety front gate. Let Niggertown criticize as it
+would, he was braced by a high altruism.
+
+Peter did not shout from the gate, as is the fashion of the crescent,
+but walked up a little graveled path lined with dusty box-shrubs and
+tapped at the unpainted door.
+
+Doors in Niggertown never open straight away to visitors. A covert
+inspection first takes place from the edges of the window-blinds.
+
+Peter stood in the whipping dust, and the caution of the inmates spurred
+his impatience to see Cissie. At last the door opened, and Cissie
+herself was in the entrance. She stood quite still a moment, looking at
+Peter with eyes that appeared frightened.
+
+"I--I wasn't expecting to see you," she stammered.
+
+"No? I came by with news, Cissie."
+
+"News?" She seemed more frightened than ever. "Peter, you--you haven't--
+" She paused, regarding him with big eyes.
+
+"Tump Pack's been arrested," explained Peter, quickly, sensing the
+tragedy in her thoughts. "I came by to tell you. If there's anything I
+can do for you--or him, I'll do it."
+
+His altruistic offer sounded rather foolish in the actual saying.
+
+He could not tell from her face whether she was glad or sorry.
+
+"What did they arrest him for?"
+
+"Carrying a pistol."
+
+She paused a moment.
+
+"Will he--get out soon?"
+
+"He's sentenced for thirty days."
+
+Cissie dropped her hands with a hopeless gesture.
+
+"Oh, isn't this all sickening!--sickening!" she exclaimed. She looked
+tired. Ghosts of sleepless nights circled her eyes. Suddenly she said,
+"Come in. Oh, do come in, Peter." She reached out and almost pulled him
+in. She was so urgent that Peter might have fancied Tump Pack at the
+gate with his automatic. He did glance around, but saw nobody passing
+except the Arkwright boy. The hobbledehoy walked down the other side of
+the street, hands thrust in pockets, with the usual discontented
+expression on his face.
+
+Cissie slammed the door shut, and the two stood rather at a loss in the
+sudden gloom of the hall. Cissie broke into a brief, mirthless laugh.
+
+"Peter, it's hard to be nice in Niggertown. I--I just happened to think
+how folks would gossip--you coming here as soon as Tump was arrested."
+
+"Perhaps I'd better go," suggested Peter, uncomfortably.
+
+Cissie reached up and caught his lapel.
+
+"Oh, no, don't feel that way! I'm glad you came, really. Here, let's go
+through this way to the arbor. It isn't a bad place to sit."
+
+She led the way silently through two dark rooms. Before she opened the
+back door, Peter could hear Cissie's mother and a younger sister moving
+around the outside of the house to give up the arbor to Cissie and her
+company.
+
+The arbor proved a trellis of honeysuckle over the back door, with a
+bench under it. A film of dust lay over the dense foliage, and a few
+withered blooms pricked its grayish green. The earthen floor of the
+arbor was beaten hard and bare by the naked feet of children.
+
+Cissie sat down on the bench and indicated a place beside her.
+
+"I've been so uneasy about you! I've been wondering what on earth you
+could do about it."
+
+"It's a snarl, all right," he said, and almost immediately began
+discussing the peculiar _impasse_ in which his difficulty with Tump
+had landed him. Cissie sat listening with a serious, almost tragic face,
+giving a little nod now and then. Once she remarked in her precise way:
+
+"The trouble with a gentleman fighting a rowdy, the gentleman has all to
+lose and nothing to gain. If you don't live among your own class, Peter,
+your life will simmer down to an endless diplomacy."
+
+"You mean deceit, I suppose."
+
+"No, I mean diplomacy. But that isn't a very healthy frame of mind,--
+always to be suppressing and guarding yourself."
+
+Peter didn't know about that. He was inclined to argue the matter, but
+Cissie wouldn't argue. She seemed to assume that all of her statements
+were axioms, truths reduced to the simplest possible mental terms, and
+that proof was unnecessary, if not impossible. So the topic went into
+the discard.
+
+"Been baking my brains over a lot of silly little exam questions,"
+complained Peter. "Can you trace the circulation of the blood? I think
+it leaves the grand central station through the right aorta, and then,
+after a schedule run of nine minutes, you can hear it coming up the
+track through the left ventricle, with all the passengers eager to get
+off and take some refreshment at the lungs. I have the general idea, but
+the exact routing gets me."
+
+Cissie laughed accommodatingly.
+
+"I wonder why it's necessary for everybody to know that once. I did. I
+could follow the circulation the right way or backward."
+
+"Must have been harder backward, going against the current."
+
+Cissie laughed again. A girl's part in a witty conversation might seem
+easy at first sight. She has only to laugh at the proper intervals.
+However, these intervals are not always distinctly marked. Some girls
+take no chances and laugh all the time.
+
+Cissie's appreciation was the sedative Peter needed. The relief of her
+laughter and her presence ran along his nerves and unkinked them, like a
+draft of Kentucky Special after a debauch. The curves of her cheek, the
+tilt of her head, and the lift of her dull-blue blouse at the bosom wove
+a great restfulness about Peter. The brooch of old gold glinted at her
+throat. The heavy screen of the arbor gave them a sweet sense of
+privacy. The conversation meandered this way and that, and became quite
+secondary to the feeling of the girl's nearness and sympathy. Their talk
+drifted back to Peter's mission here in Hooker's Bend, and Cissie was
+saying:
+
+"The trouble is, Peter, we are out of our _milieu_." Some portion
+of Peter's brain that was not basking in the warmth and invitation of
+the girl answered quite logically:
+
+"Yes, but if I could help these people, Cissie, reconstruct our life
+here culturally--"
+
+Cissie shook her head. "Not culturally."
+
+This opposition shunted more of Peter's thought to the topic in hand. He
+paused interrogatively.
+
+"Racially," said Cissie.
+
+"Racially?" repeated the man, quite lost.
+
+Cissie nodded, looking straight into his eyes. "You know very well,
+Peter, that you and I are not--are not anything near full bloods. You
+know that racially we don't belong in--Niggertown."
+
+Peter never knew exactly how this extraordinary sentence had come about,
+but in a kind of breath he realized that he and this almost white girl
+were not of Niggertown. No doubt she had been arguing that he, Peter,
+who was one sort of man, was trying to lead quite another sort of men
+moved by different racial impulses, and such leading could only come to
+confusion. He saw the implications at once.
+
+It was an extraordinary idea, an explosive idea, such as Cissie seemed
+to have the faculty of touching off. He sat staring at her.
+
+It was the white blood in his own veins that had sent him struggling up
+North, that had brought him back with this flame in his heart for his
+own people. It was the white blood in Cissie that kept her struggling to
+stand up, to speak an unbroken tongue, to gather around her the delicate
+atmosphere and charm of a gentlewoman. It was the Caucasian in them
+buried here in Niggertown. It was their part of the tragedy of millions
+of mixed blood in the South. Their common problem, a feeling of their
+joint isolation, brought Peter to a sense of keen and tingling nearness
+to the girl.
+
+She was talking again, very earnestly, almost tremulously:
+
+"Why don't you go North, Peter? I think and think about you staying
+here. You simply can't grow up and develop here. And now, especially,
+when everybody doubts you. If you'd go North--"
+
+"What about you, Cissie? You say we're together--"
+
+"Oh, I'm a woman. We haven't the chance to do as we will."
+
+A kind of titillation went over Peter's scalp and body.
+
+"Then you are going to stay here and marry--Tump?" He uttered the name
+in a queer voice.
+
+Tears started in Cissie's eyes; her bosom lifted to her quick breathing.
+
+
+"I--I don't know what I'm going to do," she stammered miserably.
+
+Peter leaned over her with a drumming heart; he heard her catch her
+breath.
+
+"You don't care for Tump?" he asked with a dry mouth.
+
+She gasped out something, and the next moment Peter felt her body sink
+limply in his groping arms. They clung together closely, quiveringly.
+Three nights of vigil, each thinking miserably and wistfully of the
+other, had worn the nerves of both man and girl until they were ready to
+melt together at a touch. Her soft body clinging to his own, the little
+nervous pressures of her arms, her eased breathing at his neck, wiped
+away Siner's long sense of strain. Strength and peace seemed to pour
+from her being into his by a sort of spiritual osmosis. She resigned her
+head to his palm in order that he might lift her lips to his when he
+pleased. After all, there is no way for a man to rest without a woman.
+All he can do is to stop work.
+
+For a long time they sat transported amid the dusty honeysuckles and
+withered blooms, but after a while they began talking a little at a time
+of the future, their future. They felt so indissolubly joined that they
+could not imagine the future finding them apart. There was no need for
+any more trouble with Tump Pack. They would marry quietly, and go away
+North to live. Peter thought of his friend Farquhar. He wondered if
+Farquhar's attitude would be just the same toward Cissie as it was
+toward him.
+
+"North," was the burden of the octoroon's dreams. They would go North to
+Chicago. There were two hundred and fifty thousand negroes in Chicago, a
+city within itself three times the size of Nashville. Up North she and
+Peter could go to theaters, art galleries, could enter any church, could
+ride in street-cars, railroad-trains, could sleep and eat at any hotel,
+live authentic lives.
+
+It was Cissie planning her emancipation, planning to escape her lifelong
+disabilities.
+
+"Oh, I'll be so glad! so glad! so glad!" she sobbed, and drew Peter's
+head passionately down to her deep bosom.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER V
+
+
+Peter Siner walked home from the Dildine cabin that night rather
+dreading to meet his mother, for it was late. Cissie had served
+sandwiches and coffee on a little table in the arbor, and then had kept
+Peter hours afterward. Around him still hung the glamour of Cissie's
+little supper. He could still see her rounded elbows that bent softly
+backward when she extended an arm, and the glimpses of her bosom when
+she leaned to hand him cream or sugar. She had accomplished the whole
+supper in the white manner, with all poise and daintiness. In fact, no
+one is more exquisitely polite than an octoroon woman when she desires
+to be polite, when she elevates the subserviency of her race into
+graciousness.
+
+However, the pleasure and charm of Cissie were fading under the
+approaching abuse that Caroline was sure to pour upon the girl. Peter
+dreaded it. He walked slowly down the dark semicircle, planning how he
+could best break to his mother the news of his engagement. Peter knew
+she would begin a long bill of complaints,--how badly she was treated,
+how she had sacrificed herself, her comfort, how she had washed and
+scrubbed. She would surely charge Cissie with being a thief and a drab,
+and all the announcements of engagements that Peter could make would
+never induce the old woman to soften her abuse. Indeed, they would make
+her worse.
+
+So Peter walked on slowly, smelling the haze of dust that hung in the
+blackness. Out on the Big Hill, in the glade, Peter caught an occasional
+glimmer of light where crap-shooters and boot-leggers were beginning
+their nightly carousal.
+
+These evidences of illicit trades brought Peter a thrill of disgust. In
+a sort of clear moment he saw that he could not keep Cissie in such a
+sty as this. He could not rear in such a place as this any children that
+might come to him and Cissie. His thoughts drifted back to his mother,
+and his dread of her tongue.
+
+The Siner cabin was dark and tightly shut when Peter let himself in at
+the gate and walked to the door. He stood a moment listening, and then
+gently pressed open the shutter. A faint light burned on the inside, a
+night-lamp with an old-fashioned brass bowl. It sat on the floor, turned
+low, at the foot of his mother's bed. The mean room was mainly in
+shadow. The old-style four-poster in which Caroline slept was an
+indistinct mound. The air was close and foul with the bad ventilation of
+all negro sleeping-rooms. The brass lamp, turned low, added smoke and
+gas to the tight quarters.
+
+The odor caught Peter in the nose and throat, and once more stirred up
+his impatience with his mother's disregard of hygiene. He tiptoed into
+the room and decided to remove the lamp and open the high, small window
+to admit a little air. He moved noiselessly and had stooped for the lamp
+when there came a creaking and a heavy sigh from the bed, and the old
+negress asked:
+
+"Is dat you, son?"
+
+Peter was tempted to stand perfectly still and wait till his mother
+dozed again, thus putting off her inevitable tirade against Cissie; but
+he answered in a low tone that it was he.
+
+"Whut you gwine do wid dat lamp, son?"
+
+"Go to bed by it, Mother."
+
+"Well, bring hit back." She breathed heavily, and moved restlessly in
+the old four-poster. As Peter stood up he saw that the patched quilts
+were all askew over her shapeless bulk. Evidently, she had not been
+resting well.
+
+Peter's conscience smote him again for worrying his mother with his
+courtship of Cissie, yet what could he do? If he had wooed any other
+girl in the world, she would have been equally jealous and grieved. It
+was inevitable that she should be disappointed and bitter; it was bound
+up in the very part and parcel of her sacrifice. A great sadness came
+over Peter. He almost wished his mother would berate him, but she
+continued to lie there, breathing heavily under her disarranged covers.
+As Peter passed into his room, the old negress called after him to
+remind him to bring the light back when he was through with it.
+
+This time something in her tone alarmed Peter.  He paused in the
+doorway.
+
+"Are you sick, Mother?" he asked.
+
+The old woman gave a yawn that changed to a groan.
+
+"I--I ain't feelin' so good."
+
+"What's the matter, Mother?"
+
+"My stomach, my--" But at that moment her sentence changed to an
+inarticulate sound, and she doubled up in bed as if caught in a spasm of
+acute agony.
+
+Peter hurried to her, thoroughly frightened, and saw sweat streaming
+down her face. He stared down at her.
+
+"Mother, you are sick! What can I do?" he cried, with a man's
+helplessness.
+
+She opened her eyes with an effort, panting now as the edge of the agony
+passed. There was a movement under the quilts, and she thrust out a
+rubber hot-water bottle.
+
+"Fill it--fum de kittle," she wheezed out, then relaxed into groans, and
+wiped clumsily at the sweat on her shining black face.
+
+Peter seized the bottle and ran into the kitchen. There he found a brisk
+fire popping in the stove and a kettle of water boiling. It showed him,
+to his further alarm, that his mother had been trying to minister to
+herself until forced to bed.
+
+The man scalded a finger and thumb pouring water into the flared mouth,
+but after a moment twisted on the top and hurried into the sick-room.
+
+He reached the old negress just as another knife of pain set her
+writhing and sweating. She seized the hot-water bottle, pushed it under
+the quilts, and pressed it to her stomach, then lay with eyes and teeth
+clenched tight, and her thick lips curled in a grin of agony.
+
+Peter set the lamp on the table, said he was going for the doctor, and
+started.
+
+The old woman hunched up in bed. With the penuriousness of her station
+and sacrifices, she begged Peter not to go; then groaned out, "Go tell
+Mars' Renfrew," but the next moment did not want Peter to leave her.
+
+Peter said he would get Nan Berry to stay while he was gone. The Berry
+cabin lay diagonally across the street. Peter ran over, thumped on the
+door, and shouted his mother's needs. As soon as he received an answer,
+he started on over the Big Hill toward the white town.
+
+Peter was seriously frightened. His run to Dr. Jallup's, across the Big
+Hill, was a series of renewed strivings for speed. Every segment of his
+journey seemed to seize him and pin him down in the midst of the night
+like a bug caught in a black jelly. He seemed to progress not at all.
+
+Now he was in the cedar glade. His muffled flight drove in the sentries
+of the crap-shooters, and gamesters blinked out their lights and
+listened to his feet stumbling on through the darkness.
+
+After an endless run in the glade, Peter found himself on top of the
+hill, amid boulders and outcrops limestone and cedar-shrubs. His flash-
+light picked out these objects, limned them sharply against the
+blackness, then dropped them into obscurity again.
+
+He tried to run faster. His impatience subdivided the distance into
+yards and feet. Now he was approaching that boulder, now he was passing
+it; now he was ten feet beyond, twenty, thirty. Perhaps his mother was
+dying, alone save for stupid Nan Berry.
+
+Now he was going down the hill past the white church. All that was
+visible was its black spire set against a web of stars. He was making no
+speed at all. He panted on. His heart hammered. His legs drummed with
+Lilliputian paces. Now he was among the village stores, all utterly
+black. At one point the echo of his feet chattered back at him, as if
+some other futile runner strained amid vast spaces of blackness.
+
+After a long time he found himself running up a residential street, and
+presently, far ahead, he saw the glow of Dr. Jallup's porch light. Its
+beam had the appearance of coming from a vast distance. When he reached
+the place, he flung his breast against the top panel of the doctor's
+fence and held on, exhausted. He drew in his breath, and began shouting,
+"Hello, Doctor!"
+
+Peter called persistently, and as he commanded more breath, he called
+louder and louder, "Hello, Doctor! Hello, Doctor! Hello, Doctor!" in
+tones edging on panic.
+
+The doctor's house might have been dead. Somewhere a dog began barking.
+High in the Southern sky a star looked down remotely on Peter's frantic
+haste. The black man stood in the black night with cries: "Hello,
+Doctor! Hello, Doctor! Hello, Doctor!"
+
+At last, in despair, he tried to think of other doctors. He thought of
+telephoning to Jonesboro. Just as he decided he must turn away there
+came a stirring in the dead house, a flicker of light appeared on the
+inside now here, now there; it steadied into a tiny beam and approached
+the door. The door opened, and Dr. Jallup's head and breast appeared,
+illuminated against the black interior.
+
+"My mother's sick, Doctor," began Peter, in immense relief.
+
+"Who is it?" inquired the half-clad man, impassively.
+
+"Caroline Siner; she's been taken with a--"
+
+The physician lifted his light a trifle in an effort to see Peter.
+
+"Lemme see: she's that fat nigger woman that lives in a three-roomed
+house--"
+
+"I'll show you the way," said Peter. "She's very ill."
+
+The half-dressed man shook his head.
+
+"No, Ca'line Siner owes me a five-dollar doctor's bill already. Our
+county medical association made a rule that no niggers should--"
+
+With a drying mouth, Peter Siner stared at the man of medicine.
+
+"But, my God, Doctor," gasped the son, "I'll pay you--"
+
+"Have you got the money there in your pocket?" asked Jallup,
+impassively.
+
+A sort of chill traveled deliberately over Peter's body and shook his
+voice.
+
+"N-no, but I can get it--"
+
+"Yes, you can all get it," stated the physician in dull irritation. "I'm
+tired of you niggers running up doctors' bills nobody can collect. You
+never have more than the law allows; your wages never get big enough to
+garnishee." His voice grew querulous as he related his wrongs. "No, I'm
+not going to see Ca'line Siner. If she wants me to visit her, let her
+send ten dollars to cover that and back debts, and I'll--" The end of
+his sentence was lost in the closing of his door. The light he carried
+declined from a beam to a twinkling here and there, and then vanished in
+blackness. Dr. Jallup's house became dead again. The little porch light
+in its glass box might have been a candle burning before a tomb.
+
+Peter Siner stood at the fence, licking his dry lips, with nerves
+vibrating like a struck bell. He pushed himself slowly away from the top
+plank and found his legs so weak that he could hardly walk. He moved
+slowly, back down the unseen street. The dog he had disturbed gave a few
+last growls and settled into silence.
+
+Peter moved along, wetting his dry lips, and stirring feebly among his
+dazed thoughts, hunting some other plan of action. There was a tiny
+burning spot on the left side of his occiput. It felt like a heated
+cambric needle which had been slipped into his scalp. Then he realized
+that he must go home, get ten dollars, and bring them back to Dr.
+Jallup. He started to run, but almost toppled over on his leaden legs.
+
+He plodded through the darkness, retracing the endless trail to
+Niggertown. As he passed a dark mass of shrubbery and trees, he recalled
+his mother's advice to ask aid of Captain Renfrew. It was the old
+Renfrew place that Peter was passing.
+
+The negro hesitated, then turned in at the gate in the bare hope of
+obtaining the ten dollars at once. Inside the gate Peter's feet
+encountered the scattered bricks of an old walk. The negro stood and
+called Captain Renfrew's name in a guarded voice. He was not at all sure
+of his action.
+
+Peter had called twice and was just about to go when a lamp appeared
+around the side of the house on a long portico that extended clear
+around the building. Bathed in the light of the lamp which he held over
+his head, there appeared an old man wearing a worn dressing gown.
+
+"Who is it?" he asked in a wavery voice.
+
+Peter told his name and mission.
+
+The old Captain continued holding up his light.
+
+"Oh, Peter Siner; Caroline Siner's sick? All right I'll have Jallup run
+over; I'll phone him."
+
+Peter was beginning his thanks preparatory to going, when the old man
+interrupted.
+
+"No, just stay here until Jallup comes by in his or He'll pick us both
+up. It'll save time. Come on inside. What's the matter with old
+Caroline?"
+
+The old dressing-gown led the way around the continuous piazza, to a
+room that stood open and brightly lighted on the north face of the old
+house.
+
+A great relief came to Peter at this unexpected succor. He followed
+around the piazza, trying to describe Caroline's symptoms. The room
+Peter entered was a library, a rather stately old room, lined with books
+all around the walls to about as high as a man could reach. Spaces for
+doors and windows were let in among the book-cases. The volumes
+themselves seemed composed mainly of histories and old-fashioned
+scientific books, if Peter could judge from a certain severity of their
+bindings. On a big library table burned a gasolene-lamp, which threw a
+brilliant whiteness all over the room. The table was piled with books
+and periodicals. Books and papers were heaped on every chair in the
+study except a deep Morris chair in which the old Captain had been
+sitting. A big meridional globe, about two and a half feet in diameter,
+gleamed through a film of dust in the embrasure of a window. The whole
+room had the womanless look of a bachelor's quarters, and was flavored
+with tobacco and just a hint of whisky.
+
+Old Captain Renfrew evidently had been reading when Peter called from
+the gate. Now the old man went to a telephone and rang long and briskly
+to awaken the boy who slept in the central office. Peter fidgeted as the
+old Captain stood with receiver to ear.
+
+"Hard to wake." The old gentleman spoke into the transmitter, but was
+talking to Peter. "Don't be so uneasy, Peter. Human beings are harder to
+kill than you think."
+
+There was a kindliness, even a fellowship, in Captain Renfrew's tones
+that spread like oil over Peter's raw nerves. It occurred to the negro
+that this was the first time he had been addressed as an authentic human
+being since his conversation with the two Northern men on the Pullman,
+up in Illinois. It surprised him. It was sufficient to take his mind
+momentarily from his mother. He looked a little closely at the old man
+at the telephone. The Captain wore few indices of kindness. Lines of
+settled sarcasm netted his eyes and drooped away from his old mouth. The
+very swell of his full temples and their crinkly veins marked a sardonic
+old man.
+
+At last he roused central over the wire, and impressed upon him the
+necessity of creating a stridor in Dr. Jallup's dead house, and a moment
+later a continued buzzing in the receiver betokened the operator's
+efforts to do so.
+
+The old gentleman turned around at last, holding the receiver a little
+distance from his ear.
+
+"I understand you went to Harvard, Peter."
+
+"Yes, sir." Peter took his eyes momentarily from the telephone. The old
+Southerner in the dressing-gown scrutinized the brown man. He cleared
+his throat.
+
+"You know, Peter, it gives me a--a certain satisfaction to see a Harvard
+man in Hooker's Bend. I'm a Harvard man myself."
+
+Peter stood in the brilliant light, astonished, not at Captain Renfrew's
+being a Harvard man,--he had known that,--but that this old gentleman
+was telling the fact to him, Peter Siner, a negro graduate of Harvard.
+
+It was extraordinary; it was tantamount to an offer of friendship, not
+patronage. Such an offer in the South disturbed Peter's poise; it
+touched him queerly. And it seemed to explain why Captain Renfrew had
+received Peter so graciously and was now arranging for Dr. Jallup to
+visit Caroline.
+
+Peter was moved to the conventional query, asking in what class the
+Captain had been graduated. But while his very voice was asking it,
+Peter thought what a strange thing it was that he, Peter Siner, a negro,
+and this lonely old gentleman, his benefactor, were spiritual brothers,
+both sprung from the loins of Harvard, that ancient mother of souls.
+
+[Illustration: The old gentleman turned around at last]
+
+From the darkness outside, Dr. Jallup's horn summmoned the two men.
+Captain Renfrew got out of his gown and into his coat and turned off his
+gasolene light. They walked around the piazza to the front of the house.
+In the street the head-lights of the roadster shot divergent rays
+through the darkness. They went out. The old Captain took a seat in the
+car beside the physician, while Peter stood on the running-board. A
+moment later, the clutch snarled, and the machine puttered down the
+street. Peter clung to the standards of the auto top, peering ahead.
+
+The men remained almost silent. Once Dr. Jallup, watching the dust that
+lay modeled in sharp lights and shadows under the head-lights, mentioned
+lack of rain. Their route did not lead over the Big Hill. They turned
+north at Hobbett's corner, drove around by River Street, and presently
+entered the northern end of the semicircle.
+
+The speed of the car was reduced to a crawl in the bottomless dust of
+the crescent. The head-lights swept slowly around the cabins on the
+concave side of the street, bringing them one by one into stark
+brilliance and dropping them into obscurity. The smell of refuse, of
+uncleaned stables and sties and outhouses hung in the darkness. Peter
+bent down under the top of the motor and pointed out his place. A minute
+later the machine came to a noisy halt and was choked into silence. At
+that moment, in the sweep of the head-light, Peter saw Viny Berry, one
+of Nan's younger sisters, coming up from Niggertown's public well,
+carrying two buckets of water.
+
+Viny was hurrying, plashing the water over the sides of her buckets. The
+importance of her mission was written in her black face.
+
+"She's awful thirsty," she called to Peter in guarded tones. "Nan called
+me to fetch some fraish water fum de well."
+
+Peter took the water that had been brought from the semi-cesspool at the
+end of the street. Viny hurried across the street to home and to bed.
+With the habitual twinge of his sanitary conscience, Peter considered
+the water in the buckets.
+
+"We'll have to boil this," he said to the doctor.
+
+"Boil it?" repeated Jallup, blankly. Then, he added: "Oh, yes--boil.
+Certainly."
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+A repellent odor of burned paper, breathed air, and smoky lights filled
+the close room. Nan had lighted another lamp and now the place was
+discernible in a dull yellow glow. In the corner lay a half-burned wisp
+of paper. Nan herself stood by the mound on the bed, putting straight
+the quilts that her patient had twisted awry.
+
+"She sho am bad, Doctor," said the colored woman, with big eyes.
+
+Seen in the light, Dr. Jallup was a little sandy-bearded man with a
+round, simple face, oddly overlaid with that inscrutability carefully
+cultivated by country doctors. With professional cheeriness, he
+approached the mound of bedclothes.
+
+"A little under the weather, Aunt Ca'line?" He slipped his fingers
+alongside her throat to test her temperature, at the same time drawing a
+thermometer from his waistcoat pocket.
+
+The old negress stirred, and looked up out of sick eyes.
+
+"Doctor," she gasped, "I sho got a misery heah." She indicated her
+stomach.
+
+"How do you feel?" he asked hopefully.
+
+The woman panted, then whispered:
+
+"Lak a knife was a-cuttin' an' a-tearin' out my innards." She rested,
+then added, "Not so bad now; feels mo' lak somp'n's tearin' in de nex'
+room."
+
+"Like something tearing in the next room?" repeated Jallup, emptily.
+
+"Yes, suh," she whispered. "I jes can feel hit--away off, lak."
+
+The doctor attempted to take her temperature, but the thermometer in her
+mouth immediately nauseated her, so he slipped the instrument under her
+arm.
+
+Old Caroline groaned at the slightest exertion, then, as she tossed her
+black head, she caught a glimpse of old Captain Renfrew.
+
+She halted abruptly in her restlessness, stared at the old gentleman,
+wet her dry lips with a queer brown-furred tongue.
+
+"Is dat you, Mars' Milt?" she gasped in feeble astonishment. A moment
+later she guessed the truth. "I s'pose you had to bring de doctor. 'Fo'
+Gawd, Mars' Milt--" She lay staring, with the covers rising and falling
+as she gasped for breath. Her feverish eyes shifted back and forth
+between the grim old gentleman and the tall, broad-shouldered brown man
+at the foot of her bed. She drew a baggy black arm from under the cover.
+
+"Da' 's Peter, Mars' Milt," she pointed. "Da' 's Peter, my son. He--he
+use' to be my son 'fo' he went off to school; but sence he come home, he
+been a-laughin' at me." Tears came to her eyes; she panted for a moment,
+then added: "Yeah, he done marked his mammy down fuh a nigger, Mars'
+Milt. Whut I thought wuz gwine be sweet lays bitter in my mouf." She
+worked her thick lips as if the rank taste of her sickness were the very
+flavor of her son's ingratitude.
+
+A sudden gasp and twist of her body told Nan that the old woman was
+again seized with a spasm. The neighbor woman took swift control, and
+waved out Peter and old Mr. Renfrew, while she and the doctor aided the
+huge negress.
+
+The two evicted men went into Peter's room and shut the door. Peter,
+unnerved, groped, and presently found and lighted a lamp. He put it down
+on his little table among his primary papers and examination papers. He
+indicated to Captain Renfrew the single chair in the room.
+
+But the old gentleman stood motionless in the mean room, with its head-
+line streaked walls. Sounds of the heavy lifting of Peter's mother came
+through the thin door and partition with painful clearness. Peter opened
+his own small window, for the air in his room was foul.
+
+Captain Renfrew stood in silence, with a remote sarcasm in his wrinkled
+eyes. What was in his heart, why he had subjected himself to the
+noisomeness of failing flesh, Peter had not the faintest idea. Once, out
+of studently habit, he glanced at Peter's philosophic books, but
+apparently he read the titles without really observing them. Once he
+looked at Peter.
+
+"Peter," he said colorlessly, "I hope you'll be careful of Caroline's
+feelings if she ever gets up again. She has been very faithful to you,
+Peter."
+
+Peter's eyes dampened. A great desire mounted in him to explain himself
+to this strange old gentleman, to show him how inevitable had been the
+breach. For some reason a veritable passion to reveal his heart to this
+his sole benefactor surged through the youth.
+
+"Mr. Renfrew," he stammered, "Mr. Renfrew--I--I--" His throat abruptly
+ached and choked. He felt his face distort in a spasm of uncontrollable
+grief. He turned quickly from this strange old man with a remote sarcasm
+in his eyes and a remote affection in his tones. Peter clenched his
+jaws, his nostrils spread in his effort stoically to bottle up his grief
+and remorse, like a white man; in an effort to keep from howling his
+agony aloud, like a negro. He stood with aching throat and blurred eyes,
+trembling, swallowing, and silent.
+
+Presently Nan Berry opened the door. She held a half-burned paper in her
+hand; Dr. Jallup stood near the bed, portioning out some calomel and
+quinine. The prevalent disease in Hooker's Bend is malaria; Dr. Jallup
+always physicked for malaria. On this occasion he diagnosed it must be a
+very severe attack of malaria indeed, so he measured out enormous doses.
+
+He took a glass of the water that Viny had brought, held up old
+Caroline's head, and washed down two big capsules into the already
+poisoned stomach of the old negress. His simple face was quite
+inscrutable as he did this. He left other capsules for Nan to administer
+at regular intervals. Then he and Captain Renfrew motored out of
+Niggertown, out of its dust and filth and stench.
+
+At four o'clock in the morning Caroline Siner died.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER VI
+
+
+When Nan Berry saw that Caroline was dead, the black woman dropped a
+glass of water and a capsule of calomel and stared. A queer terror
+seized her. She began such a wailing that it aroused others in
+Niggertown. At the sound they got out of their beds and came to the
+Siner cabin, their eyes big with mystery and fear. At the sight of old
+Caroline's motionless body they lifted their voices through the night.
+
+The lamentation carried far beyond the confines of Niggertown. The last
+gamblers in the cedar glade heard it, and it broke up their gaming and
+drinking. White persons living near the black crescent were waked out of
+their sleep and listened to the eerie sound. It rose and fell in the
+darkness like a melancholy organ chord. The wailing of the women
+quivered against the heavy grief of the men. The half-asleep listeners
+were moved by its weirdness to vague and sinister fancies. The dolor
+veered away from what the Anglo-Saxon knows as grief and was shot
+through with the uncanny and the terrible. White children crawled out of
+their small beds and groped their way to their parents. The women
+shivered and asked of the darkness, "_What_ makes the negroes howl
+so?"
+
+Nobody knew,--least of all, the negroes. Nobody suspected that the
+bedlam harked back to the jungle, to black folk in African kraals
+beating tom-toms and howling, not in grief, but in an ecstasy of terror
+lest the souls of their dead might come back in the form of tigers or
+pythons or devils and work woe to the tribe. Through the night the
+negroes wailed on, performing through custom an ancient rite of which
+they knew nothing. They supposed themselves heartbroken over the death
+of Caroline Siner.
+
+Amid this din Peter Siner sat in his room, stunned by the sudden taking
+off of his mother. The reproaches that she had expressed to old Captain
+Renfrew clung in Peter's brain. The brown man had never before realized
+the faint amusement and condescension that had flavored all his
+relations with his mother since his return home. But he knew now that
+she had felt his disapproval of her lifelong habits; that she saw he
+never explained or attempted to explain his thoughts to her, assuming
+her to be too ignorant; as she put it, "a fool."
+
+The pathos of his mother's last days, what she had expected, what she
+had received, came to Peter with the bitterness of what is finished and
+irrevocable. She had been dead only a few minutes, yet she could never
+know his grief and remorse; she could never forgive him. She was utterly
+removed in a few minutes, in a moment in the failing of a breath. The
+finality of death overpowered him.
+
+Into his room, through the thin wall, came the catch of numberless sobs,
+the long-drawn open wails, and the spasms of sobbing. Blurred voices
+called, "O Gawd! Gawd hab mercy! Hab mercy!" Now words were lost in the
+midst of confusion. The clamor boomed through the thin partition as if
+it would shake down his newspapered walls. With wet cheeks and an aching
+throat, Peter sat by his table, staring at his book-case in silence,
+like a white man.
+
+The dim light of his lamp fell over his psychologies and philosophies.
+These were the books that had given him precedence over the old
+washwoman who kept him in college. It was reading these books that had
+made him so wise that the old negress could not even follow his
+thoughts. Now in the hour of his mother's death the backs of his
+metaphysics blinked at him emptily. What signified their endless pages
+about dualism and monism, about phenomenon and noumenon? His mother was
+dead. And she had died embittered against him because he had read and
+had been bewildered by these empty, wordy volumes.
+
+A sense of profound defeat, of being ultimately fooled and cozened by
+the subtleties of white men, filled Peter Siner. He had eaten at their
+table, but their meat was not his meat. The uproar continued. Standing
+out of the din arose the burden of negro voices "Hab mercy! Gawd hab
+mercy!"
+
+In the morning the Ladies of Tabor came and washed and dressed Caroline
+Siner's body and made it ready for burial. For twenty years the old
+negress had paid ten cents a month to her society to insure her burial,
+and now the lodge made ready to fulfil its pledge. After many comings
+and goings, the black women called Peter to see their work, as if for
+his approval.
+
+The huge dead woman lay on the four-poster with a sheet spread over the
+lower part of her body. The ministrants had clothed it in the old black-
+silk dress, with its spreading seams and panels of different materials.
+It reminded Peter of the new dress he had meant to get his mother, and
+of the modish suit which at that moment molded his own shoulders and
+waist. The pitifulness of her sacrifices trembled in Peter's throat. He
+pressed his lips together, and nodded silently to the black Ladies of
+Tabor.
+
+Presently the white undertaker, a silent little man with a brisk yet
+sympathetic air, came and made some measurements. He talked to Peter in
+undertones about the finishing of the casket, how much the Knights of
+Tabor would pay, what Peter wanted. Then he spoke of the hour of burial,
+and mentioned a somewhat early hour because some of the negroes wanted
+to ship as roustabouts on the up-river packet, which was due at any
+moment.
+
+These decisions, asked of Peter, kept pricking him and breaking through
+the stupefaction of this sudden tragedy. He kept nodding a mechanical
+agreement until the undertaker had arranged all the details. Then the
+little man moved softly out of the cabin and went stepping away through
+the dust of Niggertown with professional briskness. A little later two
+black grave-diggers set out with picks and shovels for the negro
+graveyard.
+
+Numberless preparations for the funeral were going on all over
+Niggertown. The Knights of Tabor were putting on their regalia. Negro
+women were sending out hurry notices to white mistresses that they would
+be unable to cook the noonday meal. Dozens of negro girls flocked to the
+hair-dressing establishment of Miss Mallylou Speers. All were bent on
+having their wool straightened for the obsequies, and as only a few of
+them could be accommodated, the little room was packed. A smell of
+burning hair pervaded it. The girls sat around waiting their turn. Most
+of them already had their hair down,--or, rather loose, for it stood out
+in thick mats. The hair-dresser had a small oil stove on which lay
+heating half a dozen iron combs. With a hot comb she teased each strand
+of wool into perfect straightness and then plastered it down with a
+greasy pomade. The result was a stiff effect, something like the hair of
+the Japanese. It required about three hours to straighten the hair of
+one negress. The price was a dollar and a half.
+
+By half-past nine o'clock a crowd of negro men, in lodge aprons and with
+spears, and negro women, with sashes of ribbon over their shoulders and
+across the breasts, assembled about the Siner cabin. In the dusty
+curving street were ranged half a dozen battered vehicles,--a hearse, a
+delivery wagon, some rickety buggies, and a hack. Presently the
+undertaker arrived with a dilapidated black hearse which he used
+especially for negroes. He jumped down, got out his straps and coffin
+stands, directed some negro men to bring in the coffin, then hurried
+into the cabin with his air of brisk precision.
+
+He placed the coffin on the stands near the bed; then a number of men
+slipped the huge black body into it. The undertaker settled old
+Caroline's head against the cotton pillows, running his hand down beside
+her cheek and tipping her face just so. Then he put on the cover, which
+left a little oval opening just above her dead face. The sight of old
+Caroline's face seen through the little oval pane moved some of the
+women to renewed sobs. Eight black men took up the coffin and carried it
+out with the slow, wide-legged steps of roustabouts. Parson Ranson, in a
+rusty Prince Albert coat, took Peter's arm and led him to the first
+vehicle after the hearse. It was a delivery wagon, but it was the best
+vehicle in the procession.
+
+As Peter followed the coffin out, he saw the Knights and Ladies of Tabor
+lined up in marching order behind the van. The men held their spears and
+swords at attention; the women carried flowers. Behind the marchers came
+other old vehicles, a sorry procession.
+
+At fifteen minutes to ten the bell in the steeple of the colored church
+tolled a single stroke. The sound quivered through the sunshine over
+Niggertown. At its signal the poor procession moved away through the
+dust. At intervals the bell tolled after the vanishing train.
+
+As the negroes passed through the white town the merchants, lolling in
+their doors, asked passers-by what negro had died. The idlers under the
+mulberry in front of the livery-stable nodded at the old negro preacher
+in his long greenish-black coat, and Dawson Bobbs remarked:
+
+"Well, old Parson Ranson's going to tell 'em about it to-day," and he
+shifted his toothpick with a certain effect of humor.
+
+Old Mr. Tomwit asked if his companions had ever heard how Newt Bodler, a
+wit famous in Wayne County, once broke up a negro funeral with a
+hornets' nest. The idlers nodded a smiling affirmative as they watched
+the cortège go past. They had all heard it. But Mr. Tomwit would not be
+denied. He sallied forth into humorous reminiscence. Another loafer
+contributed an anecdote of how he had tied ropes to a dead negro so as
+to make the corpse sit up in bed and frighten the mourners.
+
+All their tales were of the vintage of the years immediately succeeding
+the Civil War,--pioneer humor, such as convulsed the readers of Peck's
+Bad Boy, Mr. Bowser, Sut Lovingood. The favorite dramatic properties of
+such writers were the hornets' nest, the falling ladder, the banana
+peel. They cultivated the humor of contusions, the wit of impact. This
+style still holds the stage of Hooker's Bend.
+
+In telling these tales the white villagers meant no special disrespect
+to the negro funeral. It simply reminded them of humorous things; so
+they told their jokes, like the naïve children of the soil that they
+were.
+
+At last the poor procession passed beyond the white church, around a
+bend in the road, and so vanished. Presently the bell in Niggertown
+ceased tolling.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+Peter always remembered his mother's funeral in fragments of intolerable
+pathos,--the lifting of old Parson Ranson's hands toward heaven, the
+songs of the black folk, the murmur of the first shovelful of dirt as it
+was lowered to the coffin, and the final raw mound of earth littered
+with a few dying flowers. With that his mother--who had been so near to,
+and so disappointed in, her son--was blotted from his life. The other
+events of the funeral flowed by in a sort of dream: he moved about; the
+negroes were speaking to him in the queer overtones one uses to the
+bereaved; he was being driven back to Niggertown; he reentered the Siner
+cabin. One or two of his friends stayed in the room with him for a while
+and said vague things, but there was nothing to say.
+
+Later in the afternoon Cissie Dildine and her mother brought his dinner
+to him. Vannie Dildine, a thin yellow woman, uttered a few disjointed
+words about Sister Ca'line being a good woman, and stopped amid
+sentence. There was nothing to say. Death had cut a wound across Peter
+Siner's life. Not for days, nor weeks, nor months, would his existence
+knit solidly back together. The poison of his ingratitude to his
+faithful old black mother would for a long, long day prevent the
+healing.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VII
+
+
+During a period following his mother's death Peter Siner's life drifted
+emptily and without purpose. He had the feeling of one convalescing in a
+hospital. His days passed unconnected by any thread of purpose; they
+were like cards scattered on a table, meaning nothing.
+
+At times he struggled against his lethargy. When he awoke in the morning
+and found the sun shining on his dusty primers and examination papers,
+he would think that he ought to go back to his old task; but he never
+did. In his heart grew a conviction that he would never teach school at
+Hooker's Bend.
+
+He would rise and dress slowly in the still cabin, thinking he must soon
+make new plans and take up some work. He never decided precisely what
+work; his thoughts trailed on in vague, idle designs.
+
+In fact, during Peter's reaction to his shock there began to assert
+itself in him that capacity for profound indolence inherent in his negro
+blood. To a white man time is a cumulative excitant. Continuous and
+absolute idleness is impossible; he must work, hunt, fish, play, gamble,
+or dissipate,--do something to burn up the accumulating sugar in his
+muscles. But to a negro idleness is an increasing balm; it is a
+stretching of his legs in the sunshine, a cat-like purring of his
+nerves; while his thoughts spread here and there in inconsequences, like
+water without a channel, making little humorous eddies, winding this way
+and that into oddities and fantasies without ever feeling that
+constraint of sequence which continually operates in a white brain. And
+it is this quality that makes negroes the entertainers of children
+_par excellence_.
+
+Peter Siner's mental slackening made him understandable, and gave him a
+certain popularity in Nigger-town. Black men fell into the habit of
+dropping in at the Siner cabin, where they would sit outdoors, with
+chairs propped against the wall, and philosophize on the desultory life
+of the crescent. Sometimes they would relate their adventures on the
+river packets and around the docks at Paducah, Cairo, St. Joe, and St.
+Louis; usually a recountal of drunkenness, gaming, fighting, venery,
+arrests, jail sentences, petty peculations, and escapes. Through these
+Iliads of vagabondage ran an irresponsible gaiety, a non-morality, and a
+kind of unbrave zest for adventure. They told of their defeats and
+flights with as much relish and humor as of their charges and victories.
+And while the spirit was thoroughly pagan, these accounts were full of
+the clichés of religion. A roustabout whom every one called the
+Persimmon confided to Peter that he meant to cut loose some logs in a
+raft up the river, float them down a little way, tie them up again, and
+claim the prize-money for salvaging them, God willing.
+
+The Persimmon was so called from a scar on his long slanting head. A
+steamboat mate had once found him asleep in the passageway of a lumber
+pile which the boat was lading, and he waked the negro by hitting him in
+the head with a persimmon bolt. In this there was nothing unusual or
+worthy of a nickname. The point was, the mate had been mistaken: the
+Persimmon was not working on his boat at all. In time this became one of
+the stock anecdotes which pilots and captains told to passengers
+traveling up and down the river.
+
+The Persimmon was a queer-looking negro; his head was a long diagonal
+from its peak down to his pendent lower lip, for he had no chin. The
+salient points on this black slope were the Persimmon's sad, protruding
+yellow eyeballs, over which the lids always drooped about half closed.
+An habitual tipping of this melancholy head to one side gave the
+Persimmon the look of one pondering and deploring the amount of sin
+there was in the world. This saintly impression the Persimmon's conduct
+and language never bore out.
+
+At the time of the Persimmon's remarks about the raft two of Peter's
+callers, Jim Pink Staggs and Parson Ranson, took the roustabout to task.
+Jim Pink based his objection on the grounds of glutting the labor
+market.
+
+"Ef us niggers keeps turnin' too many raf's loose fuh de prize-money,"
+he warned, "somebody's goin' to git 'spicious, an' you'll ruin a good
+thing."
+
+The Persimmon absorbed this with a far-away look in his half-closed
+eyes.
+
+"It's a ticklish job," argued Parson Ranson, "an' I wouldn't want to
+wuck at de debbil's task aroun' de ribber, ca'se you mout fall in,
+Persimmon, an' git drownded."
+
+"I wouldn't do sich a thing a-tall," admitted the Persimmon, "but I jes'
+natchelly got to git ten dollars to he'p pay on my divo'ce."
+
+"I kain't see whut you want wid a divo'ce," said Jim Pink, yawning,
+"when you been ma'ied three times widout any."
+
+"It's fuh a Christmas present," explained the Persimmon, carelessly,
+"fuh th' woman I'm libin' wid now. Mahaly's a great woman fuh style. I'm
+goin' to divo'ce my other wives, one at a time lak my lawyer say."
+
+"On what grounds?" asked Peter, curiously.
+
+"Desuhtion."
+
+"Desertion?"
+
+"Uh huh; I desuhted 'em."
+
+Jim Pink shook his head, picked up a pebble, and began idly juggling it,
+making it appear double, single, treble, then single again.
+
+"Too many divo'ces in dis country now, Persimmon," he moralized.
+
+"Well, whut's de cause uv 'em?" asked the Persimmon, suddenly bringing
+his protruding yellow eyes around on the sleight-of-hand performer.
+
+Jim Pink was slightly taken aback; then he said:
+
+"'Spicion; nothin' but 'spicion."
+
+"Yeah, 'spicion," growled the Persimmon; "'spicion an' de husban'
+leadin' a irreg'lar life."
+
+Jim Pink looked at his companion, curiously.
+
+"The husban'--leadin' a irreg'lar life?"
+
+"Yeah,"--the Persimmon nodded grimly,--"the husban' comin' home at
+onexpected hours. You know whut I means, Jim Pink."
+
+Jim Pink let his pebble fall and lowered the fore legs of his chair
+softly to the ground.
+
+"Now, look heah, Persimmon, you don' want to be draggin' no foreign
+disco'se into yo' talk heah befo' Mr. Siner an' Parson Ranson."
+
+The Persimmon rose deliberately.
+
+"All I want to say is, I drapped off'n de matrimonial tree three times
+a'ready, Jim Pink, an' I think I feels somebody shakin' de limb ag'in."
+
+The old negro preacher rose, too, a little behind Jim Pink.
+
+"Now, boys! boys!" he placated. "You jes think dat, Persimmon."
+
+"Yeah," admitted Persimmon, "I jes think it; but ef I b'lieve ever'thing
+is so whut I think is so, I'd part Jim Pink's wool wid a brickbat."
+
+Parson Ranson tried to make peace, but the Persimmon spread his hands in
+a gesture that included the three men. "Now, I ain't sayin' nothin'," he
+stated solemnly, "an' I ain't makin' no threats; but ef anything
+happens, you-all kain't say that nobody didn' tell nobody about
+nothin'."
+
+With this the Persimmon walked to the gate, let himself out, still
+looking back at Jim Pink, and then started down the dusty street.
+
+Mr. Staggs seemed uncomfortable under the Persimmon's protruding yellow
+stare, but finally, when the roustabout was gone, he shrugged, regained
+his aplomb, and remarked that some niggers spent their time in studyin'
+'bout things they hadn't no info'mation on whatever. Then he strolled
+off up the crescent in the other direction.
+
+All this would have made fair minstrel patter if Peter Siner had shared
+the white conviction that every emotion expressed in a negro's patois is
+humorous. Unfortunately, Peter was too close to the negroes to hold such
+a tenet. He knew this quarrel was none the less rancorous for having
+been couched in the queer circumlocution of black folk. And behind it
+all shone the background of racial promiscuity out of which it sprang.
+It was like looking at an open sore that touched all of Niggertown, men
+and boys, young girls and women. It caused tragedies, murders, fights,
+and desertions in the black village as regularly as the rotation of the
+calendar; yet there was no public sentiment against it. Peter wondered
+how this attitude of his whole people could possibly be.
+
+With the query the memory of Ida May came back to him, with its sense of
+dim pathos. It seemed to Peter now as if their young and uninstructed
+hands had destroyed a safety-vault to filch a penny.
+
+The reflex of a thought of Ida May always brought Peter to Cissie; it
+always stirred up in him a desire to make this young girl's path gentle
+and smooth. There was a fineness, a delicacy about Cissie, that, it
+seemed to Peter, Ida May had never possessed. Then, too, Cissie was
+moved by a passion for self-betterment. She deserved a cleaner field
+than the Niggertown of Hooker's Bend.
+
+Peter took Parson Ranson's arm, and the two moved to the gate by common
+consent. It was no longer pleasant to sit here. The quarrel they had
+heard somehow had flavored their surroundings.
+
+Peter turned his steps mechanically northward up the crescent toward the
+Dildine cabin. Nothing now restrained him from calling on Cissie; he
+would keep no dinner waiting; he would not be warned and berated on his
+return home. The nagging, jealous love of his mother had ended.
+
+As the two men walked along, it was borne in upon Peter that his
+mother's death definitely ended one period of his life. There was no
+reason why he should continue his present unsettled existence. It seemed
+best to marry Cissie at once and go North. Further time in this place
+would not be good for the girl. Even if he could not lift all
+Niggertown, he could at least help Cissie. He had had no idea, when he
+first planned his work, what a tremendous task he was essaying. The
+white village had looked upon the negroes so long as non-moral and non-
+human that the negroes, with the flexibility of their race, had
+assimilated that point of view. The whites tried to regulate the negroes
+by endless laws. The negroes had come to accept this, and it seemed that
+they verily believed that anything not discovered by the constable was
+permissible. Mr. Dawson Bobbs was Niggertown's conscience. It was best
+for Peter to take from this atmosphere what was dearest to him, and go
+at once.
+
+The brown man's thoughts came trailing back to the old negro parson
+hobbling at his side. He looked at the old man, hesitated a moment, then
+told him what was in his mind.
+
+Parson Ranson's face wrinkled into a grin.
+
+"You's gwine to git ma'ied?"
+
+"And I thought I'd have you perform the ceremony."
+
+This suggestion threw the old negro into excitement.
+
+"Me, Mr. Peter?"
+
+"Yes. Why not?"
+
+"Why, Mr. Peter, I kain't jine you an' Miss Cissie Dildine."
+
+Peter looked at him, astonished.
+
+"Why can't you?"
+
+"Whyn't you git a white preacher?"
+
+"Well," deliberated Peter, gravely, "it's a matter of principle with me,
+Parson Ranson. I think we colored people ought to be more self-reliant,
+more self-serving. We ought to lead our own lives instead of being mere
+echoes of white thought." He made a swift gesture, moved by this passion
+of his life. "I don't mean racial equality. To my mind racial equality
+is an empty term. One might as well ask whether pink and violet are
+equal. But what I do insist on is autonomous development."
+
+The old preacher nodded, staring into the dust. "Sho! 'tonomous
+'velopment."
+
+Peter saw that his language, if not his thought, was far beyond his old
+companion's grasp, and he lacked the patience to simplify himself.
+
+"Why don't you want to marry us, Parson?"
+
+Parson Ranson lifted his brows and filled his forehead with wrinkles.
+
+"Well, I dunno. You an' Miss Cissie acts too much lak white folks fuh a
+nigger lak me to jine you, Mr. Peter."
+
+Peter made a sincere effort to be irritated, but he was not.
+
+"That's no way to feel. It's exactly what I was talking about,--racial
+self-reliance. You've married hundreds of colored couples."
+
+"Ya-as, suh,"--the old fellow scratched his black jaw.--"I kin yoke up a
+pair uv ordina'y niggers all right. Sometimes dey sticks, sometimes dey
+don't." The old man shook his white, kinky head. "I'll bust in an' try
+to hitch up you-all. I--I dunno whedder de cer'mony will hol' away up
+North or not."
+
+"It'll be all right anywhere, Parson," said Peter, seriously. "Your name
+on the marriage-certificate will--can you write?"
+
+"N-no, suh."
+
+After a brief hesitation Peter repeated determinedly:
+
+"It'll be all right. And, by the way, of course, this will be a very
+quiet wedding."
+
+"Yas-suh." The old man bobbed importantly.
+
+"I wouldn't mention it to any one."
+
+"No, suh; no, suh. I don' blame you a-tall, Mr. Peter, wid dat Tump Pack
+gallivantin' roun' wid a forty-fo'. Hit would keep 'mos' anybody's
+weddin' ve'y quiet onless he wuz lookin' fuh a short cut to heab'n."
+
+As the two negroes passed the Berry cabin, Nan Berry thrust out her
+spiked head and called to Peter Captain Renfrew wanted to see him.
+
+Peter paused, with quickened interest in this strange old man who had
+come to his mother's death-bed with a doctor. Peter asked Nan what the
+Captain wanted.
+
+Nan did not know. Wince Washington had told Nan that the Captain wanted
+to see Peter. Bluegum Frakes had told Wince; Jerry Dillihay had told
+Bluegum; but any further meanderings of the message, when it started, or
+what its details might be, Nan could not state.
+
+It was a typical message from a resident of the white town to a denizen
+of Niggertown. Such messages are delivered to any black man for any
+other black man, not only in the village, but anywhere in the outlying
+country. It may be passed on by a dozen or a score of mouths before it
+reaches its objective. It may be a day or a week in transit, but
+eventually it will be delivered verbatim. This queer system of
+communication is a relic of slavery, when the master would send out word
+for some special negro out of two or three hundred slaves to report at
+the big house.
+
+However, as Peter approached the Dildine cabin, thoughts of his
+approaching marriage drove from his mind even old Captain Renfrew's
+message. His heart beat fast from having made his first formal step
+toward wedlock. The thought of having Cissie all to himself, swept his
+nerves in a gust.
+
+He opened the gate, and ran up between the dusty lines of dwarf box,
+eager to tell her what he had done. He thumped on the cracked, unpainted
+door, and impatiently waited the skirmish of observation along the edge
+of the window-blinds. This was unduly drawn out. Presently he heard
+women's voices whispering to each other inside. They seemed urgent,
+almost angry voices. Now and then he caught a sentence:
+
+"What difference will it make?" "I couldn't." "Why couldn't you?"
+"Because--" "That's because you've been to Nashville." "Oh, well--" A
+chair was moved over a bare floor. A little later footsteps came to the
+entrance, the door opened, and Cissie's withered yellow mother stood
+before him.
+
+Vannie offered her hand and inquired after Peter's health with a stopped
+voice that instantly recalled his mother's death. After the necessary
+moment of talk, the mulatto inquired for Cissie.
+
+The yellow woman seemed slightly ill at ease.
+
+"Cissie ain't so well, Peter."
+
+"She's not ill?"
+
+"N-no; but the excitement an' ever'thing--" answered Vannie, vaguely.
+
+In the flush of his plans, Peter was keenly disappointed.
+
+"It's very important, Mrs. Dildine."
+
+Vannie's dried yellow face framed the ghost of a smile.
+
+"Ever'thing a young man's got to say to a gal is ve'y important, Peter."
+
+It seemed to Peter a poor time for a jest; his face warmed faintly.
+
+"It--it's about some of the details of our--our wedding."
+
+"If you'll excuse her to-day, Peter, an' come after supper--"
+
+Peter hesitated, and was about to go away when Cissie's voice came from
+an inner room, telling her mother to admit him.
+
+The yellow woman glanced at the door on the left side of the hall,
+crossed over and opened it, stood to one side while Peter entered, and
+closed it after him, leaving the two alone.
+
+The room into which Peter stepped was dark, after the fashion of negro
+houses. Only after a moment's survey did he see Cissie sitting near a
+big fireplace made of rough stone. The girl started to rise as Peter
+advanced toward her, but he solicitously forbade it and hurried over to
+her. When he leaned over her and put his arms about her, his ardor was
+slightly dampened when she gave him her cheek instead of her lips to
+kiss.
+
+"Surely, you're not too ill to be kissed?" he rallied faintly.
+
+"You kissed me. I thought we had agreed, Peter, you were not to come in
+the daytime any more."
+
+"Oh, is that it?" Peter patted her shoulder, cheerfully. "Don't worry; I
+have just removed any reason why I shouldn't come any time I want to."
+
+Cissie looked at him, her dark eyes large in the gloom.
+
+"What have you done?"
+
+"Got a preacher to marry us; on my way now for a license. Dropped in to
+ask if you 'll be ready by tomorrow or next day."
+
+The girl gasped.
+
+"But, Peter--"
+
+Peter drew a chair beside her in a serious argumentative mood.
+
+"Yes I think we ought to get married at once. No reason why we shouldn't
+get it over with--Why, what's the matter?"
+
+"So soon after your mother's death, Peter?"
+
+"It's to get away from Hooker's Bend, Cissie--to get you away. I don't
+like for you to stay here. It's all so--" he broke off, not caring to
+open the disagreeable subject.
+
+The girl sat staring down at some fagots smoldering on the hearth. At
+that moment they broke into flame and illuminated her sad face.
+
+"You'll go, won't you?" asked Peter at last, with a faint uncertainty.
+
+The girl looked up.
+
+"Oh--I--I'd be glad to, Peter,"--she gave a little shiver. "Ugh! this
+Niggertown is a--a terrible place!"
+
+Peter leaned over, took one of her hands, and patted it.
+
+"Then we'll go," he said soothingly. "It's decided--tomorrow. And we'll
+have a perfectly lovely wedding trip," he planned cheerfully, to draw
+her mind from her mood. "On the car going North I'll get a whole
+drawing-room. I've always wanted a drawing-room, and you'll be my
+excuse. We'll sit and watch the fields and woods and cities slip past
+us, and know, when we get off, we can walk on the streets as freely as
+anybody. We'll be a genuine man and wife."
+
+His recital somehow stirred him. He took her in his arms, pressed her
+cheek to his, and after a moment kissed her lips with the trembling
+ardor of a bridegroom.
+
+Cissie remained passive a moment, then put up he hands, turned his face
+away, and slowly released herself.
+
+Peter was taken aback.
+
+"What _is_ the matter, Cissie?"
+
+"I can't go, Peter."
+
+Peter looked at her with a feeling of strangeness.
+
+"Can't go?"
+
+The girl shook her head.
+
+"You mean--you want us to live here?"
+
+Cissie sat exceedingly still and barely shook her head.
+
+The mulatto had a sensation as if the portals which disclosed a new and
+delicious life were slowly closing against him. He stared into her oval
+face.
+
+"You don't mean, Cissie--you don't mean you don't want to marry me?"
+
+The fagots on the hearth burned now with a cheerful flame. Cissie stared
+at it, breathing rapidly from the top of her lungs. She seemed about to
+faint. As Peter watched her the jealousy of the male crept over him.
+
+"Look here, Cissie," he said in a queer voice, "you--you don't mean,
+after all, that Tump Pack is--"
+
+"Oh no! No!" Her face showed her repulsion. Then she drew a long breath
+and apparently made up her mind to some sort of ordeal.
+
+"Peter," she asked in a low tone, "did you ever think what we colored
+people are trying to reach?" She stared into his uncomprehending eyes.
+"I mean what is our aim, our goal, whom are we trying to be like?"
+
+"We aren't trying to be like any one." Peter was entirely at a loss.
+
+"Oh, yes, we are," Cissie hurried on. "Why do colored girls straighten
+their hair, bleach their skins, pinch their feet? Aren't they trying to
+look like white girls?"
+
+Peter agreed, wondering at her excitement.
+
+"And you went North to college, Peter, so you could think and act like a
+white man--"
+
+Peter resisted this at once; he was copying nobody. The whole object of
+college was to develop one's personality, to bring out--
+
+The girl stopped his objections almost piteously.
+
+"Oh, don't argue! You know arguing throws me off. I--now I've forgotten
+how I meant to say it!" Tears of frustration welled up in her eyes.
+
+Her mood was alarming, almost hysterical. Peter began comforting her.
+
+"There, there, dear, dear Cissie, what is the matter? Don't say it at
+all." Then, inconsistently, he added: "You said I copied white men.
+Well, what of it?"
+
+Cissie breathed her relief at having been given the thread of her
+discourse. She sat silent for a moment with the air of one screwing up
+her courage.
+
+"It's this," she said in an uncertain voice: "sometimes we--we--girls--
+here in Niggertown copy the wrong thing first."
+
+Peter looked blankly at her.
+
+"The wrong thing first, Cissie?"
+
+"Oh, yes; we--we begin on clothes and--and hair and--and that isn't the
+real matter."
+
+"Why, no-o-o, that isn't the real matter," said Peter puzzled.
+
+Cissie looked at his face and became hopeless.
+
+"Oh, _don't_ you understand! Lots of us--lots of us make that
+mistake! I--I did; so--so, Peter, I can't go with you!" She flung out
+the last phrase, and suddenly collapsed on the arm of her chair,
+sobbing.
+
+Peter was amazed. He got up, sat on the arm of his own chair next to
+hers and put his arms about her, bending over her, mothering her. Her
+distress was so great that he said as earnestly as his ignorance
+permitted:
+
+"Yes, Cissie, I understand now." But his tone belied his words, and the
+girl shook her head. "Yes, I do, Cissie," he repeated emptily. But she
+only shook her head as she leaned over him, and her tears slowly formed
+and trickled down on his hand. Then all at once old Caroline's
+accusation against Cissie flashed on Peter's mind. She had stolen that
+dinner in the turkey roaster, after all. It so startled him that he sat
+up straight. Cissie also sat up. She stopped crying, and sat looking
+into the fire.
+
+"You mean--morals?" said Peter in a low tone.
+
+Cissie barely nodded, her wet eyes fixed on the fire.
+
+"I see. I was stupid."
+
+The girl sat a moment, drawing deep breaths. At last she rose slowly.
+
+"Well--I'm glad it's over. I'm glad you know." She stood looking at him
+almost composedly except for her breathing and her tear-stained face.
+"You see, Peter, if you had been like Tump Pack or Wince or any of the
+boys around here, it--it wouldn't have made much difference; but--but
+you went off and--and learned to think and feel like a white man. You--
+you changed your code, Peter." She gave a little shaken sound, something
+between a sob and a laugh. "I--I don't think th-that's very fair, Peter,
+to--to go away an'--an' change an' come back an' judge us with yo' n-new
+code." Cissie's precise English broke down.
+
+Just then Peter's logic caught at a point.
+
+"If you didn't know anything about my code, how do you know what I feel
+now?" he asked.
+
+She looked at him with a queer expression.
+
+"I found out when you kissed me under the arbor. It was too late then."
+
+She stood erect, with dismissal very clearly written in her attitude.
+Peter walked out of the room.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+With a certain feeling of clumsiness Peter groped in the dark hall for
+his hat, then, as quietly as he could, let himself out at the door.
+Outside he was surprised to find that daylight still lingered in the
+sky. He thought night had fallen. The sun lay behind the Big Hill, but
+its red rays pouring down through the boles of the cedars tinted long
+delicate avenues in the dusty atmosphere above his head. A sharp chill
+in the air presaged frost for the night. Somewhere in the crescent a boy
+yodeled for his dog at about half-minute intervals, with the persistence
+of children.
+
+Peter walked a little distance, but finally came to a stand in the dust,
+looking at the negro cabins, not knowing where to go or what to do.
+Cissie's confession had destroyed all his plans. It had left him as
+adynamic as had his mother's death. It seemed to Peter that there was a
+certain similarity between the two events; both were sudden and
+desolating. And just as his mother had vanished utterly from his reach,
+so now it seemed Cissie was no more. Cissie the clear-eyed, Cissie the
+ambitious, Cissie the refined, had vanished away, and in her place stood
+a thief.
+
+The thing was grotesque. Peter began a sudden shuddering in the cold.
+Then he began moving toward the empty cabin where he slept and kept his
+things. He moved along, talking to himself in the dusty emptiness of the
+crescent. He decided that he would go home, pack his clothes, and
+vanish. A St. Louis boat would be down that night, and he would just
+have time to pack his clothes and catch it. He would not take his books,
+his philosophies. He would let them remain, in the newspapered room,
+until all crumbled into uniform philosophic dust, and the teachings of
+Aristotle blew about Niggertown.
+
+Then, as he thought of traveling North, the vision of the honeymoon he
+had just planned revived his numb brain into a dismal aching. He looked
+back through the dusk at the Dildine roof. It stood black against an
+opalescent sky. Out of the foreground, bending over it, arose a clump of
+tall sunflowers, in whose silhouette hung a suggestion of yellow and
+green. The whole scene quivered slightly at every throb of his heart. He
+thought what a fool he was to allow a picaresque past to keep him away
+from such a woman, how easy it would be to go back to the soft luxury of
+Cissie, to tell her it made no difference; and somehow, just at that
+moment it seemed not to.
+
+Then the point of view which Peter had been four years acquiring swept
+away the impulse, and it left him moving toward his cabin again, empty,
+cold, and planless.
+
+He was drawn out of his reverie by the soft voice of a little negro boy
+asking him apprehensively whom he was talking to.
+
+Peter stopped, drew forth a handkerchief and dabbed the moisture from
+his cold face in the meticulous fashion of college men.
+
+With the boy came a dog which was cautiously smelling Peter's shoes and
+trousers. Both boy and dog were investigating the phenomenon of Peter.
+Peter, in turn, looked down at them with a feeling that they had
+materialized out of nothing.
+
+"What did you say?" he asked vaguely.
+
+The boy was suddenly overcome with the excessive shyness of negro
+children, and barely managed to whisper:
+
+"I--I ast wh-who you wuz a-talkin' to."
+
+"Was I talking?"
+
+The little negro nodded, undecided whether to stand his ground or flee.
+Peter touched the child's crisp hair.
+
+"I was talking to myself," he said, and moved forward again.
+
+The child instantly gained confidence at the slight caress, took a fold
+of Peter's trousers in his hand for friendliness, and the two trudged on
+together.
+
+"Wh-whut you talkin' to yo' se'f for?"
+
+Peter glanced down at the little black head that promised to think up a
+thousand questions.
+
+"I was wondering where to go."
+
+"Lawsy! is you los' yo' way?"
+
+He stroked the little head with a rush of self-pity.
+
+"Yes, I have, son; I've completely lost my way."
+
+The child twisted his head around and peered up alongside Peter's arm.
+Presently he asked:
+
+"Ain't you Mr. Peter Siner?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Ain't you de man whut's gwine to ma'y Miss Cissie Dildine?"
+
+Peter looked down at his small companion with a certain concern that his
+marriage was already gossip known to babes.
+
+"I'm Peter Siner," he repeated.
+
+"Den I knows which way you wants to go," piped the youngster in sudden
+helpfulness. "You wants to go over to Cap'n Renfrew's place acrost de
+Big Hill. He done sont fuh you. Mr. Wince Washington tol' me, ef I seed
+you, to tell you dat Cap'n Renfrew wants to see you. I dunno whut hit's
+about. I ast Wince, an' he didn' know."
+
+Peter recalled the message Nan Berry had given him some hours before.
+Now the same summons had seeped around to him from another direction.
+
+"I--I'll show you de way to Cap'n Renfrew's ef--ef you'll come back wid
+me th'ugh de cedar glade," proposed the child. "I--I ain't skeered in de
+cedar glade, b-b-but hit's so dark I kain't see my way back home.
+I--I--"
+
+Peter thanked him and declined his services. After all, he might as well
+go to see Captain Renfrew. He owed the old gentleman some thanks--and
+ten dollars.
+
+The only thing of which Peter Siner was aware during his walk over the
+Big Hill and through the village was his last scene with Cissie. He went
+over it again and again, repeating their conversation, inventing new
+replies, framing new action, questioning more fully into the octoroon's
+vague confession and his benumbed acceptance of it. The moment his mind
+completed the little drama it started again from the very beginning.
+
+At Captain Renfrew's gate this mental mummery paused long enough for him
+to vacillate between walking in or going around and shouting from the
+back gate. It is a point of etiquette in Hooker's Bend that negroes
+shall enter a white house from the back stoop. Peter had no desire to
+transgress this custom. On the other hand, if Captain Renfrew was
+receiving him as a fellow of Harvard, the back door, in its way, would
+prove equally embarrassing.
+
+After a certain indecision he compromised by entering the front gate and
+calling the Captain's name from among the scattered bricks of the old
+walk.
+
+The house lay silent, half smothered in a dark tangle of shrubbery.
+Peter called twice before he heard the shuffle of house slippers, and
+then saw the Captain's dressing-gown at the piazza steps.
+
+"Is that you, Peter?" came a querulous voice.
+
+"Yes, Captain. I was told you wanted to see me."
+
+"You've been deliberate in coming," criticized the old gentleman,
+testily. "I sent you word by some black rascal three days ago."
+
+"I just received the message to-day." Peter remained discreetly at the
+gate.
+
+"Yes; well, come in, come in. See if you can do anything with this
+damnable lamp."
+
+The old man turned with a dignified drawing-together of his dressing-
+gown and moved back. Apparently, the renovation of a cranky lamp was the
+whole content of the Captain's summons to Peter.
+
+There was something so characteristic in this incident that Peter was
+moved to a vague sense of mirth. It was just like the old régime to call
+in a negro, a special negro, from ten miles away to move a jar of ferns
+across the lawn or trim a box hedge or fix a lamp.
+
+Peter followed the old gentleman around to the back piazza facing his
+study. There, laid out on the floor, were all the parts of a gasolene
+lamp, together with a pipe-wrench, a hammer, a little old-fashioned
+vise, a bar of iron, and an envelop containing the mantels and the more
+delicate parts of the lamp.
+
+"It's extraordinary to me," criticized the Captain, "why they can't make
+a gasolene lamp that will go, and remain in a going condition."
+
+"Has it been out of fix for three days?" asked Peter, sorry that the old
+gentleman should have lacked a light for so long.
+
+"No," growled the Captain; "it started gasping at four o'clock last
+night; so I put it out and went to bed. I've been working at it this
+evening. There's a little hole in the tip,--if I could see it,--a hair-
+sized hole, painfully small. Why any man wants to make gasolene lamps
+with microscopic holes that ordinary intelligence must inform him will
+become clogged I cannot conceive."
+
+Peter ventured no opinion on this trait of lampmakers, but said that if
+the Captain knew where he could get an oil hand-lamp for a little more
+light, he thought he could unstop the hole.
+
+The Captain looked at his helper and shook his head.
+
+"I am surprised at you, Peter. When I was your age, I could see an
+aperture like that hole under the last quarter of the moon. In this
+strong light I could have--er--lunged the cleaner through it, sir. You
+must have strained your eyes in college." He paused, then added: "You'll
+find hand-lamps in any of the rooms fronting this porch. I don't know
+whether they have oil in them or not--the shiftless niggers that come
+around to take care of this building--no dependence to be put in them.
+When I try it myself, I do even worse."
+
+The old gentleman's tone showed that he was thawing out of his irritable
+mood, and Peter sensed that he meant to be amusing in an austere,
+unsmiling fashion. The Captain rubbed his delicate wrinkled hands
+together in a pleased fashion and sat down in a big porch chair to await
+Peter's assembling of the lamp. The brown man started down the long
+piazza, in search of a hand-light.
+
+He found a lamp in the first room he entered, returned to the piazza,
+sat down on the edge of it, and began his tinkering. The old Captain
+apparently watched him with profound satisfaction. Presently, after the
+fashion of the senile, he began endless and minute instructions as to
+how the lamp should be cleaned.
+
+"Take the wire in your left hand, Peter,--that's right,--now hold the
+tip a little closer to the light--no, place the mantels on the right
+side--that's the way I do it. System...." the old man's monologue ran on
+and on, and became a murmur in Peter's ears. It was rather soothing than
+otherwise. Now and then it held tremulous vibrations that might have
+been from age or that might have been from some deep satisfaction
+mounting even to joy. But to Peter that seemed hardly probable. No doubt
+it was senility. The Captain was a tottery old man, past the age for any
+fundamental joy.
+
+Night had fallen now, and a darkness, musky with autumn weeds, hemmed in
+the sphere of yellow light on the old piazza. A black-and-white cat
+materialized out of the gloom, purring, and arching against a pillar.
+The whole place was filled with a sense of endless leisure. The old man,
+the cat, the perfume of the weeds, soothed in Peter even the rawness of
+his hurt at Cissie.
+
+Indeed, in a way, the old manor became a sort of apology for the
+octoroon girl. The height and the reach of the piazza, exaggerated by
+the darkness, suggested a time when retinues of negroes passed through
+its dignified colonnades. Those black folk were a part of the place.
+They came and went, picked up and used what they could, and that was all
+life held for them. They were without wage, without rights, even to the
+possession of their own bodies; so by necessity they took what they
+could. That was only fifty-odd years ago. Thus, in a way, Peter's
+surroundings began a subtle explanation of and apology for Cissie, the
+whole racial training of black folk in petty thievery. And that this
+should have touched Cissie--the meanness, the pathos of her fate moved
+Peter.
+
+The negro was aroused from his reverie by the old Captain's getting out
+of his chair and saying, "Very good," and then Peter saw that he had
+finished the lamp. The two men rose and carried it into the study, where
+Peter pumped and lighted it; a bit later its brilliant white light
+flooded the room.
+
+"Quite good." The old Captain stood rubbing his hands with his odd air
+of continued delight. "How do you like this place, anyway, Peter?" He
+wrapped his gown around him, sat down in the old Morris chair beside the
+book-piled table, and indicated another seat for Peter.
+
+The mulatto took it, aware of a certain flexing of Hooker's Bend custom,
+where negroes, unless old or infirm, are not supposed to sit in the
+presence of whites.
+
+"Do you mean the study, Captain?"
+
+"Yes, the study, the whole place."
+
+"It's very pleasant," replied Peter; "it has the atmosphere of age."
+
+Captain Renfrew nodded.
+
+"These old places," pursued Peter, "always give me an impression of
+statesmanship, somehow. I always think of grave old gentlemen busy with
+the cares of public policy."
+
+The old man seemed gratified.
+
+"You are sensitive to atmosphere. If I may say it, every Southron of the
+old régime was a statesman by nature and training. The complete care of
+two or three hundred negroes, a regard for their bodily, moral, and
+spiritual welfare, inevitably led the master into the impersonal
+attitude of statecraft. It was a training, sir, in leadership, in social
+thinking, in, if you please, altruism." The old gentleman thumped the
+arm of his chair with a translucent palm. "Yes, sir, negro slavery was
+God's great lesson to the South in altruism and loving-kindness, sir! My
+boy, I do believe with all my heart that the institution of slavery was
+placed here in God's country to rear up giants of political leadership,
+that our nation might weather the revolutions of the world. Oh, the
+Yankees are necessary! I know that!" The old Captain held up a palm at
+Peter as if repressing an imminent retort. "I know the Yankees are the
+Marthas of the nation. They furnish food and fuel to the ship of state,
+but, my boy, the reservoir of our country's spiritual and mental
+strength, the Mary of our nation, must always be the South. Virginia is
+the mother of Presidents!"
+
+The Captain's oration left him rather breathless. He paused a moment,
+then asked:
+
+"Peter, have you ever thought that we men of the leisure class owe a
+debt to the world?"
+
+Peter smiled.
+
+"I know the theory of the leisure class, but I've had very little
+practical experience with leisure."
+
+"Well, that's a subject close to my heart. As a scholar and a thinker, I
+feel that I should give the fruits of my leisure to the world. Er--in
+fact, Peter, that is why I sent for you to come and see me."
+
+"Why you sent for me?" Peter was surprised at this turn.
+
+"Precisely. You."
+
+Here the old gentleman got himself out of his chair, walked across to
+one of a series of drawers in his bookcases, opened it, and took out a
+sheaf of papers and a quart bottle. He brought the papers and the bottle
+back to the table, made room for them, put the papers in a neat pile,
+and set the bottle at a certain distance from the heap.
+
+"Now, Peter, please hand me one of those wineglasses in the religious
+section of my library--I always keep two or three glasses among my
+religious works, in memory of the fact that our Lord and Master wrought
+a miracle at the feast of Cana, especially to bless the cup. Indeed,
+Peter, thinking of that miracle at the wedding-feast, I wonder, sir, how
+the prohibitionists can defend their conduct even to their own
+consciences, because logically, sir, logically, the miracle of our
+gracious Lord completely cuts away the ground from beneath their feet!
+
+"No wonder, when the Mikado sent a Japanese envoy to America to make a
+tentative examination of Christianity as a proper creed for the state
+religion of Japan--no wonder, with this miracle flouted by the
+prohibitionists, the embassy carried back the report that Americans
+really have no faith in the religion they profess. Shameful! Shameful!
+Place the glass there on the left of the bottle. A little farther away
+from the bottle, please, just a trifle more. Thank you."
+
+The Captain poured himself a tiny glassful, and its bouquet immediately
+filled the room. There was no guessing how old that whisky was.
+
+"I will not break the laws of my country, Peter, no matter how godless
+and sacrilegious those laws may be; therefore I cannot offer you a
+drink, but you will observe a second glass among the religious works,
+and the bottle sits in plain view on the table--er--em." He watched
+Peter avail himself of his opportunity, and then added, "Now, you may
+just drink to me, standing, as you are, like that."
+
+They drank, Peter standing, the old gentleman seated.
+
+"It is just as necessary," pursued the old connoisseur, when Peter was
+reseated, "it is just as necessary for a gentleman to have a delicate
+palate for the tints of the vine as it is for him to have a delicate eye
+for the tints of the palette. Nature bestowed a taste both in art and
+wine on man, which he should strive to improve at every opportunity. It
+is a gift from God. Perhaps you would like another glass. No? Then
+accommodate me."
+
+He drained this one, with Peter standing, worked his withered lips back
+and forth to experience its full taste, then swallowed, and smacked.
+
+"Now, Peter," he said, "the reason I asked you to come to see me is that
+I need a man about this house. That will be one phase of your work. The
+more important part is that you shall serve as a sort of secretary. I
+have here a manuscript." He patted the pile of papers. "My handwriting
+is rather difficult. I want you to copy this matter out and get it ready
+for the printer."
+
+Peter became more and more astonished.
+
+"Are you offering me a permanent place, Captain Renfrew?" he asked.
+
+The old man nodded.
+
+"I need a man with a certain liberality of culture. I will no doubt have
+you run through books and periodicals and make note of any points
+germane to my thesis."
+
+Peter looked at the pile of script on the table.
+
+"That is very flattering, Captain; but the fact is, I came by your place
+at this hour because I am just in the act of leaving here on the
+steamboat to-night."
+
+The Captain looked at Peter with concern on his face. "Leaving Hooker's
+Bend?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Why?"
+
+Peter hesitated.
+
+"Well, my mother is dead--"
+
+"Yes, but your--your--your work is still here, Peter." The Captain fell
+into a certain confusion. "A man's work, Peter; a man's work."
+
+"Do you mean my school-teaching?"
+
+Then came a pause. The conversation somehow had managed to leave them
+both somewhat at sea. The Captain began again, in a different tone:
+
+"Peter, I wish you to remain here with me for another reason. I am an
+old man, Peter. Anything could happen to me here in this big house, and
+nobody would know it. I don't like to think of it." The old man's tone
+quite painted his fears. "I am not afraid of death, Peter. I have walked
+before God all my life save in one or two points, which, I believe, in
+His mercy, He has forgiven me; but I cannot endure the idea of being
+found here some day in some unconsidered posture, fallen out of a chair,
+or a-sprawl on the floor. I wish to die with dignity, Peter, as I have
+lived."
+
+"Then you mean that you want me to stay here with you until--until the
+end, Captain?"
+
+The old man nodded.
+
+"That is my desire, Peter, for an honorarium which you yourself shall
+designate. At my death, you will receive some proper portion of my
+estate; in fact, the bulk of my estate, because I leave no other heirs.
+I am the last Renfrew of my race, Peter."
+
+Peter grew more and more amazed as the old gentleman unfolded this
+strange proposal. What queerer, pleasanter berth could he find than that
+offered him here in the quietude of the old manor, among books, tending
+the feeble flame of this old aristocrat's life? An air of scholasticism
+hung about the library. In some corner of this dark oaken library his
+philosophies would rest comfortably.
+
+Then it occurred to Peter that he would have to continue his sleeping
+and eating in Niggertown, and since his mother had died and his rupture
+with Cissie, the squalor and smells of the crescent had become
+impossible. He told the old Captain his objections as diplomatically as
+possible. The old man made short work of them. He wanted Peter to sleep
+in the manor within calling distance, and he might begin this very night
+and stay on for a week or so as a sort of test whether he liked the
+position or not. The Captain waited with some concern until Peter agreed
+to a trial.
+
+After that the old gentleman talked on interminably of the South, of the
+suffrage movement, the destructive influence it would have on the home,
+the Irish question, the Indian question, whether the mound-builders did
+not spring from the two lost tribes of Israel--an endless outpouring of
+curious facts, quaint reasoning, and extraordinary conclusions, all
+delivered with the great dignity and in the flowing periods of an
+orator.
+
+It was fully two o'clock in the morning when it occurred to the Captain
+that his new secretary might like to go to bed. The old man took the
+hand-lamp which was still burning and led the way out to the back piazza
+past a number of doors to a corner bedroom. He shuffled along in his
+carpet slippers, followed by the black-and-white cat, which ran along,
+making futile efforts to rub itself against his lean shanks. Peter
+followed in a sort of stupor from the flood of words, ideas, and strange
+fancies that had been poured into his ears.
+
+The Captain turned off the piazza into one of those old-fashioned
+Southern rooms with full-length windows, which were really glazed doors,
+a ceiling so high that Peter could make out only vague concentric rings
+of stucco-work among the shadows overhead, and a floor space of ball-
+room proportions. In one corner was a huge canopy bed, across from it a
+clothes-press of dark wood, and in another corner a large screen hiding
+the bathing arrangements.
+
+Peter's bedroom was a sleeping apartment, in the old sense of the word
+before the term "apartment" had lost its dignity.
+
+The Captain placed the lamp on the great table and indicated Peter's
+possession with a wave of the hand.
+
+"If you stay here, Peter, I will put in a call-bell, so I can awaken you
+if I need you during the night. Now I wish you healthful slumbers and
+pleasant dreams." With that the old gentleman withdrew ceremoniously.
+
+When the Captain was gone, the mulatto remained standing in the vast
+expanse, marveling over this queer turn of fortune. Why Captain Renfrew
+had selected him as a secretary and companion Peter could not fancy.
+
+The magnificence of his surroundings revived his late dream of a
+honeymoon with Cissie. Certainly, in his fancy, he had visioned a
+honeymoon in Pullman parlor cars and suburban bungalows. He had been
+mistaken. This great chamber rose about him like a corrected proof of
+his desire.
+
+Into just such a room he would like to lead Cissie; into this great room
+that breathed pride and dignity. What a glowing heart the girl would
+have made for its somber magnificence!
+
+He walked over to the full-length windows and opened them; then he
+unbolted the jalousies outside and swung them back. The musk of autumn
+weeds breathed in out of the darkness. Peter drew a long breath, with a
+sort of wistful melting in his chest.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER IX
+
+
+A turmoil aroused Peter Siner the next morning, and when he discovered
+where he was, in the big canopy bed in the great room, he listened
+curiously and heard a continuous chattering and quarreling. After a
+minute or two he recognized the voice of old Rose Hobbett. Rose was
+cooking the Captain's breakfast, and she performed this function in a
+kind of solitary rage. She banged the vessels, slammed the stove-eyes on
+and off, flung the stove-wood about, and kept up a snarling
+animadversion upon every topic that drifted through her kinky head. She
+called the kitchen a rat-hole, stated the Captain must be as mean as the
+devil to live as long as he did, complained that no one ever paid any
+attention to her, that she might as well be a stray cat, and so on.
+
+As Peter grew wider awake, the monotony of the old negress's rancor
+faded into an unobserved noise. He sat up on the edge of his bed between
+the parted curtains and divined there was a bath behind the screen in
+the corner of his room. Sure enough, he found two frayed but clean
+towels, a pan, a pitcher, and a small tub all made of tin. Peter
+assembled his find and began splashing his heavily molded chest with a
+feeling of well-being. As he splashed on the water, he amused himself by
+listening again to old Rose. She was now complaining that some white
+young'uns had called her "raving Rose." She hoped "God'lmighty would
+send down two she bears and eat 'em up." Peter was amazed by the old
+crone's ability to maintain an unending flow of concentrated and aimless
+virulence.
+
+The kitchen of the Renfrew manor was a separate building, and presently
+Peter saw old Rose carrying great platters across the weed-grown
+compound into the dining-room. She bore plate after plate piled high
+with cookery,--enough for a company of men. A little later came a
+clangor on a rusty triangle, as if she were summoning a house party. Old
+Rose did things in a wholesale spirit.
+
+Peter started for his door, but when he had opened the shutter, he stood
+hesitating. Breakfast introduced another delicate problem. He decided
+not to go to the dining-room at once, but to wait and allow Captain
+Renfrew to indicate whether he, Peter, should break his fast with the
+master in the dining-room or with old Rose in the kitchen.
+
+A moment later he saw the Captain coming down the long back piazza.
+Peter almost addressed his host, but the old Southerner proceeded into
+the dining-room apparently without seeing Peter at all.
+
+The guest was gathering his breath to call good morning, but took the
+cue with a negro's sensitiveness, and let his eyes run along the weeds
+in the compound. The drying stalks were woven with endless spider-webs,
+all white with frost. Peter stood regarding their delicate geometries a
+moment longer and then reentered his room, not knowing precisely what to
+do. He could hear Rose walking across the piazza to and from the dining-
+room, and the clink of tableware. A few minutes later a knock came at
+his door, and the old woman entered with a huge salver covered with
+steaming dishes.
+
+The negress came into the room scowling, and seemed doubtful for a
+moment just how to shut the door and still hold the tray with both
+hands. She solved the problem by backing against the door tremendously.
+Then she saw Peter. She straightened and stared at him with outraged
+dignity.
+
+"Well, 'fo' Gawd! Is I bringin' dish-here breakfus' to a nigger?"
+
+"I suppose it's mine," agreed Peter, amused.
+
+"But whuffo, whuffo, nigger, is it dat you ain't come to de kitchen an'
+eat off'n de shelf? Is you sick?"
+
+Peter admitted fair bodily vigor.
+
+"Den whut de debbil is I got into!" cried Rose, angrily. "I ain't gwine
+wuck at no sich place, ca'yin' breakfus' to a big beef uv a nigger,
+stout as a mule. Say, nigger, wha-chu doin' in heah, anyway? Hoccum
+dis?"
+
+Peter tried to explain that he was there to do a little writing for the
+Captain.
+
+"Well, 'fo' Gawd, when niggers gits to writin' fuh white folks, ants'll
+be jumpin' fuh bullfrogs--an havin' other niggers bring dey breakfusses.
+You jes as much a nigger as I is, Peter Siner, de brightes' day you ever
+seen!"
+
+Peter began a conciliatory phrase.
+
+Old Rose banged the platter on the table and then threatened:
+
+"Dis is de las' time I fetches a moufful to you, Peter Siner, or any
+other nigger. You ain't no black Jesus, even ef you is a woods calf."
+
+Peter paused in drawing a chair to the table.
+
+"What did you say, Rose?" he asked sharply.
+
+"You heared whut I say."
+
+A wave of anger went over Peter.
+
+"Yes, I did. You ought to be ashamed to speak ill of the dead."
+
+The crone tossed her malicious head, a little abashed, perhaps, yet very
+glad she had succeeded in hurting Peter. She turned and went out the
+door, mumbling something which might have been apology or renewed
+invectives.
+
+Peter watched the old virago close the door and then sat down to his
+breakfast. His anger presently died away, and he sat wondering what
+could have happened to Rose Hobbett that had corroded her whole
+existence. Did she enjoy her vituperation, her continual malice? He
+tried to imagine how she felt.
+
+The breakfast Rose had brought him was delicious: hot biscuits of
+feathery lightness, three wide slices of ham, a bowl of scrambled eggs,
+a pot of coffee, some preserved raspberries, and a tiny glass of whisky.
+
+The plate which Captain Renfrew had set before his guest was a delicate
+dawn pink ringed with a wreath of holly. It was old Worcester porcelain
+of about the decade of 1760. The coffee-pot was really an old Whieldon
+teapot in broad cauliflower design. Age and careless heating had given
+the surface a fine reticulation. His cup and saucer, on the contrary,
+were thick pieces of ware such as the cabin-boys toss about on
+steamboats. The whole ceramic mélange told of the fortuities of English
+colonial and early American life, of the migration of families westward.
+No doubt, once upon a time, that dawn-pink Worcester had married into a
+Whieldon cauliflower family. A queer sort of genealogy might be traced
+among Southern families through their mixtures of tableware.
+
+As Peter mused over these implications of long ancestral lines, it
+reminded him that he had none. Over his own past, over the lineage of
+nearly every negro in the South, hung a curtain. Even the names of the
+colored folk meant nothing, and gave no hint of their kin and clan. At
+the end of the war between the States, Peter's people had selected names
+for themselves, casually, as children pick up a pretty stone. They meant
+nothing. It occurred to Peter for the first time, as he sat looking at
+the chinaware, that he knew nothing about himself; whether his kinsmen
+were valiant or recreant he did not know. Even his own father he knew
+little about except that his mother had said his name was Peter, like
+his own, and that he had gone down the river on a tie boat and was
+drowned.
+
+A faint sound attracted Peter's attention. He looked out at his open
+window and saw old Rose making off the back way with something concealed
+under her petticoat. Peter knew it was the unused ham and biscuits that
+she had cooked. For once the old negress hurried along without railing
+at the world. She moved with a silent, but, in a way, self-respecting,
+flight. Peter could see by the tilt of her head and the set of her
+shoulders that not only did her spoil gratify her enmity to mankind in
+general and the Captain in particular, but she was well within her
+rights in her acquisition. She disappeared around a syringa bush, and
+was heard no more until she reappeared to cook the noon meal, as
+vitriolic as ever.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Peter entered the library, old Captain Renfrew greeted him with
+morning wishes, thus sustaining the fiction that they had not seen each
+other before, that morning.
+
+The old gentleman seemed pleased but somewhat excited over his new
+secretary. He moved some of his books aimlessly from one table to
+another, placed them in exact piles as if he were just about to plunge
+into heroic labor, and could not give time to such details once he had
+begun.
+
+As he arranged his books just so, he cleared his throat.
+
+"Now, Peter, we want to get down to this," he announced dynamically; "do
+this thing, shove this work out!" He started with tottery briskness
+around to his manuscript drawer, but veered off to the left to aline
+some magazines. "System, Peter, system. Without system one may well be
+hopeless of performing any great literary labor; but with system, the
+constant piling up of brick on brick, stone on stone--it's the way Rome
+was built, my boy."
+
+Peter made a murmur supposed to acknowledge the correctness of this
+view.
+
+Eventually the old Captain drew out his drawer of manuscript, stood
+fumbling with it uncertainly. Now and then he glanced at Peter, a
+genuine secretary who stood ready to help him in his undertaking. The
+old gentleman picked up some sheets of his manuscript, seemed about to
+read them aloud, but after a moment shook his head, and said, "No, we'll
+do that to-night," and restored them to their places. Finally he turned
+to his helper.
+
+"Now, Peter," he explained, "in doing this work, I always write at
+night. It's quieter then,--less distraction. My mornings I spend
+downtown in conversation with my friends. If you should need me, Peter,
+you can walk down and find me in front of the livery-stable. I sit there
+for a while each morning."
+
+The gravity with which he gave this schedule of his personal habits
+amused Peter, who bowed with a serious, "Very well, Captain."
+
+"And in the meantime," pursued the old man, looking vaguely about the
+room, "you will do well to familiarize yourself with my library in order
+that you may be properly qualified for your secretarial labors."
+
+Peter agreed again.
+
+"And now if you will get my hat and coat, I will be off and let you go
+to work," concluded the Captain, with an air of continued urgency.
+
+Peter became thoroughly amused at such an outcome of the old gentleman's
+headlong attack on his work,--a stroll down to the village to hold
+conversation with friends. The mulatto walked unsmilingly to a little
+closet where the Captain hung his things. He took down the old
+gentleman's tall hat, a gray greatcoat worn shiny about the shoulders
+and tail, and a finely carved walnut cane. Some reminiscence of the
+manners of butlers which Peter had seen in theaters caused him to swing
+the overcoat across his left arm and polish the thin nap of the old hat
+with his right sleeve. He presented it to his employer with a certain
+duplication of a butler's obsequiousness. He offered the overcoat to the
+old gentleman's arms with the same air. Then he held up the collar of
+the greatcoat with one hand and with the other reached under its skirts,
+and drew down the Captain's long day coat with little jerks, as if he
+were going through a ritual.
+
+Peter grew more and more hilarious over his barber's manners. It was his
+contribution to the old gentleman's literary labors, and he was doing it
+beautifully, so he thought. He was just making some minute adjustments
+of the collar when, to his amazement, Captain Renfrew turned on him.
+
+"Damn it, sir!" he flared out. "What do you think you are? I didn't
+engage you for a kowtowing valet in waiting, sir! I asked you, sir, to
+come under my roof as an intellectual co-worker, as one gentleman asks
+another, and here you are making these niggery motions! They are
+disgusting! They are defiling! They are beneath the dignity of one
+gentleman to another, sir! What makes it more degrading, I perceive by
+your mannerism that you assume a specious servility, sir, as if you
+would flatter me by it!"
+
+The old lawyer's face was white. His angry old eyes jerked Peter out of
+his slight mummery. The negro felt oddly like a grammar-school boy
+caught making faces behind his master's back. It shocked him into
+sincerer manners.
+
+"Captain," he said with a certain stiffness, "I apologize for my
+mistake; but may I ask how you desire me to act?"
+
+"Simply, naturally, sir," thundered the Captain, "as one alumnus of
+Harvard to another! It is quite proper for a young man, sir, to assist
+an old gentleman with his hat and coat, but without fripperies and
+genuflections and absurdities!"
+
+The old man's hauteur touched some spring of resentment in Peter. He
+shook his head.
+
+"No, Captain; our lack of sympathy goes deeper than manners. My position
+here is anomalous. For instance, I can talk to you sitting, I can drink
+with you standing, but I can't breakfast with you at all. I do that
+_in camera_, like a disgraceful divorce proceeding. It's precisely
+as I was treated coming down here South again; it's as I've been treated
+ever since I've been back; it's--" He paused abruptly and swallowed down
+the rancor that filled him. "No," he repeated in a different tone,
+"there is no earthly excuse for me to remain here, Captain, or to let
+you go on measuring out your indulgences to me. There is no way for us
+to get together or to work together--not this far South. Let me thank
+you for a night's entertainment and go."
+
+Peter turned about, meaning to make an end of this queer adventure.
+
+The old Captain watched him, and his pallor increased. He lifted an
+unsteady hand.
+
+"No, no, Peter," he objected, "not so soon. This has been no trial, no
+fair trial. The little--little--er--details of our domestic life here,
+they will--er--arrange themselves, Peter. Gossip--talk, you know, we
+must avoid that." The old lawyer stood staring with strange eyes at his
+protégé. "I--I'm interested in you, Peter. My actions may seem--odd,
+but--er--a negro boy going off and doing what you have done--
+extraordinary. I--I have spoken to your mother, Caroline, about you
+often. In fact, Peter, I--I made some little advances in order that you
+might complete your studies. Now, now, don't thank me! It was purely
+impersonal. You seemed bright. I have often thought we gentle people of
+the South ought to do more to encourage our black folk--not--not as
+social equals--" Here the old gentleman made a wry mouth as if he had
+tasted salt.
+
+"Stay here and look over the library," he broke off abruptly. "We can
+arrange some ground of--of common action, some--"
+
+He settled the lapels of his great-coat with precision, addressed his
+palm to the knob of his stick, and marched stiffly out of the library,
+around the piazza, and along the dismantled walk to the front gate.
+
+Peter stood utterly astonished at this strange information. Suddenly he
+ran after the old lawyer, and rounded the turn of the piazza in time to
+see him walk stiffly down the shaded street with tremulous dignity. The
+old gentleman was much the same as usual, a little shakier, perhaps, his
+tall hat a little more polished, his shiny gray overcoat set a little
+more snugly at the collar.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER X
+
+
+The village of Hooker's Bend amuses itself mainly with questionable
+jests that range all the way from the slightly brackish to the
+hopelessly obscene. Now, in using this type of anecdote, the Hooker's-
+Benders must not be thought to design an attack upon the decencies of
+life; on the contrary, they are relying on the fact that their hearers
+have, in the depths of their beings, a profound reverence for the object
+of their sallies. And so, by taking advantage of the moral shock they
+produce and linking it to the idea of an absurdity, they convert the
+whole psychical reaction into an explosion of humor. Thus the ring of
+raconteurs telling blackguardly stories around the stoves in Hooker's
+Bend stores, are, in reality, exercising one another in the more
+delicate sentiments of life, and may very well be classed as a round
+table of Sir Galahads, _sans peur et sans reproche_.
+
+However, the best men weary in well doing, and for the last few days
+Hooker's Bend had switched from its intellectual staple of conversation
+to consider the comedy of Tump Pack's undoing. The incident held
+undeniably comic elements. For Tump to start out carrying a forty-four,
+meaning to blow a rival out of his path, and to wind up hard at work,
+picking cotton at nothing a day for a man whose offer of three dollars a
+day he had just refused, certainly held the makings of a farce.
+
+On the heels of this came the news that Peter Siner meant to take
+advantage of Tump's arrest and marry Cissie Dildine. Old Parson Ranson
+was responsible for the spread of this last rumor. He had fumbled badly
+in his effort to hold Peter's secret. Not once, but many times, always
+guarded by a pledge of secrecy, had he revealed the approaching wedding.
+When pressed for a date, the old negro said he was "not at lib'ty to
+tell."
+
+Up to this point white criticism viewed the stage-setting of the black
+comedy with the impersonal interest of a box party. Some of the round
+table said they believed there would be a dead coon or so before the
+scrape was over.
+
+Dawson Bobbs, the ponderous constable, went to the trouble to telephone
+Mr. Cicero Throgmartin, for whom Tump was working, cautioning
+Throgmartin to make sure that Tump Pack was in the sleeping-shack every
+night, as he might get wind of the wedding and take a notion to bolt and
+stop it. "You know, you can't tell what a fool nigger'll do," finished
+Bobbs.
+
+Throgmartin was mildly amused, promised the necessary precautions, and
+said:
+
+"It looks like Peter has put one over on Tump, and maybe a college
+education does help a nigger some, after all."
+
+The constable thought it was just luck.
+
+"Well, I dunno," said Throgmartin, who was a philosopher, and inclined
+to view every matter from various angles. "Peter may of worked this out
+somehow."
+
+"Have you heard what Henry Hooker done to Siner in the land deal?"
+
+Throgmartin said he had.
+
+"No, I don't mean _that_. I mean Henry's last wrinkle in
+garnisheeing old Ca'line's estate in his bank for the rest of the
+purchase money on the Dilihay place."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"You don't mean it!"
+
+"Damn 'f I don't."
+
+The constable's sentence shook with suppressed mirth, and the next
+moment roars of laughter came over the telephone wire.
+
+"Say, ain't he the bird!"
+
+"He's the original early bird. I'd like to get a snap-shot of the worm
+that gets away from him."
+
+Both men laughed heartily again.
+
+"But, say," objected Throgmartin, who was something of a lawyer
+himself,--as, indeed, all Southern men are,--"I thought the Sons and
+Daughters of Benevolence owed Hooker, not Peter Siner, nor Ca'line's
+estate."
+
+"Well, it _is_ the Sons and Daughters, but Ca'line was one of 'em,
+and they ain't no limited li'bility 'sociation. Henry can jump on
+anything any of 'em's got. Henry got the Persimmon to bring him a copy
+of their by-laws."
+
+"Well, I swear! Say, if Henry wasn't kind of held back by his religion,
+he'd use a gun, wouldn't he?"
+
+"I dunno. I can say this for Henry's religion: 'It's jest like Henry's
+wife,--it's the dearest thing to his heart; he'd give his life for it,
+but it don't do nobody a damn bit of good except jest Henry.'"
+
+The constable's little eyes twinkled as he heard Throgmartin roaring
+with laughter and sputtering appreciative oaths.
+
+At that moment a ringing of the bell jarred the ears of both
+telephonists. A voice asked for Dr. Jallup. It was an ill time to
+interrupt two gentlemen. The flair of a jest is lost in a pause. The
+officer stated sharply that he was the constable of Wayne County and was
+talking business about the county's prisoners. His tone was so charged
+with consequence that the voice that wanted a doctor apologized hastily
+and ceased.
+
+Came a pause in which neither man found anything to say. Laughter is
+like that,--a gay bubble that a touch will destroy. Presently Bobbs
+continued, gravely enough:
+
+"Talking about Siner, he's stayin' up at old man Renfrew's now."
+
+"'At so?"
+
+"Old Rose Hobbett swears he's doin' some sort of writin' up there and
+livin' in one of the old man's best rooms."
+
+"Hell he is!"
+
+"Yeah?" the constable's voice questioned Throgmartin's opinion about
+such heresy and expressed his own.
+
+"D' recken it's so? Old Rose is such a thief and a liar."
+
+"Nope," declared the constable, "the old nigger never would of made up a
+lie like that,--never would of thought of it. Old Cap'n Renfrew's
+gettin' childish; this nigger's takin' advantage of it. Down at the
+liver'-stable the boys were talkin' about Siner goin' to git married,
+an' dern if old man Renfrew didn't git cut up about it!"
+
+"Well," opined Throgmartin, charitably, "the old man livin' there all by
+himself--I reckon even a nigger is some comp'ny. They're funny damn
+things, niggers is; never know a care nor trouble. Lord! I wish I was as
+care-free as they are!"
+
+"Don't you, though!" agreed the constable, with the weight of the white
+man's burden on his shoulders. For this is a part of the Southern
+credo,--that all negroes are gay, care-free, and happy, and that if one
+could only be like the negroes, gay, care-free, and happy--Ah, if one
+could only be like the negroes!
+
+None of this gossip reached Peter directly, but a sort of back-wash did
+catch him keenly through young Sam Arkwright and serve as a conundrum
+for several days.
+
+One morning Peter was bringing an armful of groceries up the street to
+the old manor, and he met the boy coming in the opposite direction. The
+negro's mind was centered on a peculiar problem he had found in the
+Renfrew library, so, according to a habit he had acquired in Boston, he
+took the right-hand side of the pavement, which chanced to be the inner
+side. This violated a Hooker's-Bend convention, which decrees that when
+a white and a black meet on the sidewalk, the black man invariably shall
+take the outer side.
+
+For this _faux pas_ the gangling youth stopped Peter, fell to
+abusing and cursing him for his impudence, his egotism, his attempt at
+social equality,--all of which charges, no doubt, were echoes from the
+round table. Such wrath over such an offense was unusual. Ordinarily, a
+white villager would have thought several uncomplimentary things about
+Peter, but would have said nothing.
+
+Peter stopped with a shock of surprise, then listened to the whole
+diatribe with a rising sense of irritation and irony. Finally, without a
+word, he corrected his mistake by retracing his steps and passing Sam
+again, this time on the outside.
+
+Peter walked on up the street, outwardly calm, but his ears burned, and
+the queer indignity stuck in his mind. As he went along he invented all
+sorts of ironical remarks he might have made to Arkwright, which would
+have been unwise; then he thought of sober reasoning he could have used,
+which would perhaps have been just as ill-advised. Still later he
+wondered why Arkwright had fallen into such a rage over such a trifle.
+Peter felt sure there was some contributing rancor in the youth's mind.
+Perhaps he had received a scolding at home or a whipping at school, or
+perhaps he was in the midst of one of those queer attacks of megalomania
+from which adolescents are chronic sufferers. Peter fancied this and
+that, but he never came within hail of the actual reason.
+
+When the brown man reached the old manor, the quietude of the library,
+with its blackened mahogany table, its faded green Axminster, the
+meridional globe with its dusty twinkle, banished the incident from his
+mind. He returned to his work of card-indexing the Captain's books. He
+took half a dozen at a time from the shelves, dusted them on the piazza,
+then carried them to the embrasure of the window, which offered a
+pleasant light for reading and for writing the cards.
+
+He went through volume after volume,--speeches by Clay, Calhoun, Yancy,
+Prentiss, Breckenridge; an old life of General Taylor, Foxe's "Book of
+Martyrs"; a collection of the old middle-English dramatists, such as
+Lillo, Garrick, Arthur Murphy, Charles Macklin, George Colman, Charles
+Coffey, men whose plays have long since declined from the boards and
+disappeared from the reading-table.
+
+The Captain's collection of books was strongly colored by a religious
+cast,--John Wesley's sermons, Charles Wesley's hymns; a treatise
+presenting a biblical proof that negroes have no souls; a little book
+called "Flowers Gathered," which purported to be a compilation of the
+sayings of ultra-pious children, all of whom died young; an old book
+called "Elements of Criticism," by Henry Home of Kames; another tome
+entitled "Studies of Nature," by St. Pierre. This last was a long
+argument for the miraculous creation of the world as set forth in
+Genesis. The proof offered was a résumé of the vegetable, animal, and
+mineral kingdoms, showing their perfect fitness for man's use, and the
+immediate induction was that they were designed for man's use. Still
+another work calculated the exact age of the earth by the naïve method
+of counting the generations from Adam to Christ, to the total adding
+eighteen hundred and eighty-five years (for the book was written in
+1885), and the original six days it required the Lord to build the
+earth. By referring to Genesis and finding out precisely what the
+Creator did on the morning of the first day, the writer contrived to
+bring his calculation of the age of the earth and everything in the
+world to a precision of six hours, give or take,--a somewhat closer
+schedule than that made by the Tennessee river boats coming up from St.
+Louis.
+
+These and similar volumes formed the scientific section of Captain
+Renfrew's library, and it was this paucity of the natural sciences that
+formed the problem which Peter tried to solve. All scientific additions
+came to an abrupt stop about the decade of 1880-90. That was the date
+when Charles Darwin's great fructifying theory, enunciated in 1859,
+began to seep into the South.
+
+In the Captain's library the only notice of evolution was a book called
+"Darwinism Dethroned." As for the elaborations of the Darwinian
+hypothesis by Spencer, Fiske, DeVries, Weismann, Haeckel, Kidd, Bergson,
+and every subsequent philosophic or biologic writer, all these men might
+never have written a line so far as Captain Renfrew's library was
+informed.
+
+Now, why such extraordinary occlusions? Why should Captain Renfrew deny
+himself the very commonplaces of thought, theories familiarly held by
+the rest of America, and, indeed, by all the rest of the civilized
+world?
+
+Musing by the window, Peter succeeded in stating his problem more
+broadly: Why was Captain Renfrew an intellectual reactionist? The old
+gentleman was the reverse of stupid. Why should he confine his selection
+of books to a few old oddities that had lost their battle against a
+theory which had captured the intellectual world fifty years before?
+
+Nor was it Captain Renfrew alone. Now and then Peter saw editorials
+appearing in leading Southern journals, seriously attacking the
+evolutionary hypothesis. Ministers in respectable churches still
+fulminated against it. Peter knew that the whole South still clings, in
+a way, to the miraculous and special creation of the earth as described
+in Genesis. It clings with an intransigentism and bitterness far
+exceeding other part of America. Why? To Peter the problem appeared
+insoluble.
+
+He sat by the window lost in his reverie. Just outside the ledge half a
+dozen English sparrows abused one another with chirps that came faintly
+through the small diamond panes. Their quick movements held Peter's
+eyes, and their endless quarreling presently recalled his episode with
+young Arkwright. It occurred to him, casually, that when Arkwright grew
+up he would subscribe to every reactionary doctrine set forth in the
+library Peter was indexing.
+
+With that thought came a sort of mental flare, as if he were about to
+find the answer to the whole question through the concrete attack made
+on him by Sam.
+
+It is an extraordinary feeling,--the sudden, joyful dawn of a new idea.
+Peter sat up sharply and leaned forward with a sense of being right on
+the fringe of a new and a great perception. Young Arkwright, the old
+Captain, the whole South, were unfolding themselves in a vast answer,
+when a movement outside the window caught the negro's introspective
+eyes.
+
+A girl was passing; a girl in a yellow dress was passing the Renfrew
+gate. Even then Peter would not have wavered in his synthesis had not
+the girl paused slightly and given a swift side glance at the old manor.
+Then the man in the window recognized Cissie Dildine.
+
+A slight shock traveled through Siner's body at the sight of Cissie's
+colorless face and darkened eyes. He stood up abruptly, with a feeling
+that he had some urgent thing to say to the young woman. His sharp
+movement toppled over the big globe.
+
+The crash caused the girl to stop and look. For a moment they stood
+thus, the girl in the chill street, the man in the pleasant window,
+looking at each other. Next moment Cissie hurried on up the village
+street toward the Arkwright house. No doubt she was on her way to cook
+the noon meal.
+
+Peter remained standing at the window, with a heavily beating heart. He
+watched her until she vanished behind a wing of the shrubbery in the
+Renfrew yard.
+
+When she had gone, he looked at his books and cards, sat down, and tried
+to resume his indexing. But his mind played away from it like a restive
+horse. It had been two weeks since he last saw Cissie. Two weeks.... His
+nerves vibrated like the strings of a pianoforte. He had scarcely
+thought of her during the fortnight; but now, having seen her, he found
+himself powerless to go on with his work. He pottered a while longer
+among the books and cards, but they were meaningless. They appeared an
+utter futility. Why index a lot of nonsense? Somehow this recalled his
+flare, his adumbration of some great idea connected with young Arkwright
+and the old Captain, and the South.
+
+He put his trembling nerves to work, trying to recapture his line of
+thought. He sat for ten minutes, following this mental train, then that,
+losing one, groping for another. His thoughts were jumpy. They played
+about Arkwright, the Captain, Cissie, his mother's death, Tump Pack in
+prison, the quarrel between the Persimmon and Jim Pink Staggs. The whole
+of Niggertown came rushing down upon him, seizing him in its passion and
+dustiness and greasiness, putting to flight all his cultivated white-man
+ideas.
+
+After half an hour's searching he gave it up. Before he left the room he
+stooped, and tried to set up again the globe that the passing of the
+girl had caused him to throw down; but its pivot was out of plumb, and
+he had to lean it against the window-seat.
+
+The sight of Captain Renfrew coming in at the gate sent Peter to his
+room. The hour was near twelve, and it had become a little point of
+household etiquette for the mulatto and the white man not to be together
+when old Rose jangled the triangle. By this means they forestalled the
+mute discourtesy of the old Captain's walking away from his secretary to
+eat. The subject of their separate meals had never been mentioned since
+their first acrimonious morning. The matter had dropped into the
+abeyance of custom, just as the old gentleman had predicted.
+
+Peter had left open his jalousies, but his windows were closed, and now
+as he entered he found his apartment flooded with sunshine and filled
+with that equable warmth that comes of straining sunbeams through glass.
+
+
+He prepared for dinner with his mind still hovering about Cissie. He
+removed a book and a lamp from the lion-footed table, and drew up an old
+chair with which the Captain had furnished his room. It was a delicate
+old Heppelwhite of rosewood. It had lost a finial from one of its back
+standards, and a round was gone from the left side. Peter never moved
+the chair that vague plans sometime to repair it did not occur to him.
+
+When he had cleared his table and placed his chair beside it, he
+wandered over to his tall west window and stood looking up the street
+through the brilliant sunshine, toward the Arkwright home. No one was in
+sight. In Hooker's Bend every one dines precisely at twelve, and at that
+hour the streets are empty. It would be some time before Cissie came
+back down the street on her way to Niggertown. She first would have to
+wash and put away the Arkwright dishes. It would be somewhere about one
+o'clock. Nevertheless, he kept staring out through the radiance of the
+autumn sunlight with an irrational feeling that she might appear at any
+moment. He was afraid she would slip past and he not see her at all. The
+thought disturbed him somewhat. It kept him sufficiently on the alert to
+stand tapping the balls of his fingers against the glass and looking
+steadily toward the Arkwright house.
+
+Presently the watcher perceived that a myriad spider-webs filled the
+sunshine with a delicate dancing glister. It was the month of voyaging
+spiders. Invisible to Peter, the tiny spinners climbed to the tip-most
+twigs of the dead weeds, listed their abdomens, and lassoed the wind
+with gossamer lariats; then they let go and sailed away to a hazard of
+new fortunes. The air was full of the tiny adventurers. As he stared up
+the street, Peter caught the glint of these invisible airships whisking
+away to whatever chance might hold for them. There was something epic in
+it. It recalled to the mulatto's mind some of Fabre's lovely
+descriptions. It reminded him of two or three books on entomology which
+he had left in his mother's cabin. He felt he ought to go after them
+while the spiders were migrating. He suddenly made up his mind he would
+go at once, as soon as he had had dinner; somewhere about one o'clock.
+
+He looked again at the Arkwright house. The thought of walking down the
+street with Cissie, to get his books, quickened his heart.
+
+He was still at the window when his door opened and old Rose entered
+with his dinner. She growled under her breath all the way from the door
+to the table on which she placed the tray. Only a single phrase detached
+itself and stood out clearly amid her mutterings, "Hope it chokes you."
+
+Peter arranged his chair and table with reference to the window, so he
+could look up the street while he was eating his dinner.
+
+The ill-wishing Rose had again furnished a gourmet's meal, but Peter's
+preoccupation prevented its careful and appreciative gustation. An
+irrational feeling of the octoroon's imminence spurred him to fast
+eating. He had hardly begun his soup before he found himself drinking
+swiftly, looking up the street over his spoon, as if he meant to rush
+out and swing aboard a passing train.
+
+Siner checked his precipitation, annoyed at himself. He began again,
+deliberately, with an attempt to keep his mind on the savor of his food.
+He even thought of abandoning his little design of going for the books;
+or he would go at a different hour, or to-morrow, or not at all. He told
+himself he would far better allow Cissie Dildine to pass and repass
+unspoken to, instead of trying to arrange an accidental meeting. But the
+brown man's nerves wouldn't hear to it. That automatic portion of his
+brain and spinal column which, physiologists assert, performs three
+fourths of a man's actions and conditions nine tenths of his volitions--
+that part of Peter wouldn't consider it. It began to get jumpy and
+scatter havoc in Peter's thoughts at the mere suggestion of not seeing
+Cissie. Imperceptibly this radical left wing of his emotions speeded up
+his meal, again. He caught himself, stopped his knife and fork in the
+act of rending apart a broiled chicken.
+
+"Confound it! I'll start when she comes in sight, no matter whether I've
+finished this meal or not," he promised himself.
+
+And suddenly he felt unhurried, in the midst of a large leisure, with a
+savory broiled chicken dinner before him,--not exactly before him,
+either; most of it had been stuffed away. Only the fag-end remained on
+his plate. A perfectly good meal had been ruined by an ill-timed
+resistance to temptation.
+
+The glint of a yellow dress far up the street had just prompted him to
+swift action when the door opened and old Rose put her head in to say
+that Captain Renfrew wanted to see Peter in the library.
+
+The brown man came to a shocked standstill.
+
+"What! Right now?" he asked.
+
+"Yeah, right now," carped Rose. "Ever'thing he wants, he wants right
+now. He's been res'less as a cat in a bulldog's den ever sence he come
+home fuh dinner. Dunno whut's come into he ole bones, runnin' th'ugh his
+dinner lak a razo'-back." She withdrew in a continued mumble of censure.
+
+Peter cast a glance up the street, timed Cissie's arrival at the front
+gate, picked up his hat, and walked briskly to the library in the hope
+of finishing any business the Captain might have, in time to encounter
+the octoroon. He even began making some little conversational plans with
+which he could meet Cissie in a simple, unstudied manner. He recalled
+with a certain satisfaction that he had not said a word of condemnation
+the night of Cissie's confession. He would make a point of that, and was
+prepared to argue that, since he had said nothing, he meant nothing. In
+fact he was prepared to throw away the truth completely and enter the
+conversation as an out-and-out opportunist, alleging whatever appeared
+to fit the occasion, as all men talk to all women.
+
+The old Captain was just getting into his chair as Peter entered. He
+paused in the midst of lowering himself by the chair-arms and got erect
+again. He began speaking a little uncertainly:
+
+"Ah--by the way, Peter--I sent for you--"
+
+"Yes, sir." Peter looked out at the window.
+
+The old gentleman scrutinized Peter a moment; then his faded eyes
+wandered about the library.
+
+"Still working at the books, cross-indexing them--"
+
+"Yes, sir." Peter could divine by the crinkle of his nerves the very
+loci of the girl as she passed down the thoroughfare.
+
+"Very good," said the old lawyer, absently. He was obviously preoccupied
+with some other topic. "Very good," he repeated with racking
+deliberation; "quite good. How did that globe get bent?"
+
+Peter, looking at it, did not remember either knocking it over or
+setting it up.
+
+"I don't know," he said rapidly. "I hadn't noticed it."
+
+"Old Rose did it," meditated the Captain aloud, "but it's no use to
+accuse her of it; she'd deny it. And yet, on the other hand, Peter,
+she'll be nervous until I do accuse her of it. She'll be dropping
+things, breaking up my china. I dare say I'd best accuse her at once,
+storm at her some to quiet her nerves, and get it over."
+
+This monologue spurred Peter's impatience into an agony.
+
+"I believe you were wanting me, Captain?" he suggested, with a certain
+urge for action.
+
+The Captain's little pleasantry faded. He looked at Peter and became
+uncomfortable again.
+
+"Well, yes, Peter. Downtown I heard--well, a rumor connected with you--"
+
+Such an extraordinary turn caught the attention of even the fidgety
+Peter. He looked at his employer and wondered blankly what he had heard.
+
+"I don't want to intrude on your private affairs, Peter, not at all--
+not--not in the least--"
+
+"No-o-o," agreed Peter, completely at a loss.
+
+The old gentleman rubbed his thin hands together, lifted his eyebrows up
+and down nervously. "Are--are you about to--to leave me, Peter?"
+
+Peter was greatly surprised at the slightness and simplicity of this
+question and at the evidence of emotion it carried.
+
+"Why, no," he cried; "not at all! Who told you I was? It is a deep
+gratification to me--"
+
+"To be exact," proceeded the old man, with a vague fear still in his
+eyes, "I heard you were going to marry."
+
+"Marry!" This flaw took Peter's sails even more unexpectedly than the
+other. "Captain, who in the world--who could have told--"
+
+"Are you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You aren't?"
+
+"Indeed, no!"
+
+"I heard you were going to marry a negress here in town called Cissie
+Dildine." A question was audible in the silence that followed this
+statement. The obscure emotion that charged all the old man's queries
+affected Peter.
+
+"I am not, Captain," he declared earnestly; "that's settled."
+
+"Oh--you say it's settled," picked up the old lawyer, delicately.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then you had thought of it?" Immediately, however, he corrected this
+breach of courtesy into which his old legal habit of cross-questioning
+had led him. "Well, at any rate," he said in quite another voice, "that
+eases my mind, Peter. It eases my mind. It was not only, Peter, the
+thought of losing you, but this girl you were thinking of marrying--let
+me warn you, Peter--she's a negress."
+
+The mulatto stared at the strange objection.
+
+"A negress!"
+
+The old man paused and made that queer movement with his wrinkled lips
+as if he tasted some salty flavor.
+
+"I--I don't mean exactly a--a negress," stammered the old gentleman; "I
+mean she's not a--a good girl, Peter; she's a--a thief, in fact--she's a
+thief--a thief, Peter. I couldn't endure for you to marry a thief,
+Peter."
+
+It seemed to Peter Siner that some horrible compulsion kept the old
+Captain repeating over and over the fact that Cissie Dildine was a
+thief, a thief, a thief. The word cut the very viscera in the brown man.
+At last, when it seemed the old gentleman would never cease, Peter
+lifted a hand.
+
+"Yes, yes," he gasped, with a sickly face, "I--I've heard that before."
+
+He drew a shaken breath and moistened his lips. The two stood looking at
+each other, each profoundly at a loss as to what the other meant. Old
+Captain Renfrew collected himself first.
+
+"That is all, Peter." He tried to lighten his tones. "I think I'll get
+to work. Let me see, where do I keep my manuscript?"
+
+Peter pointed mechanically at a drawer as he walked out at the library
+door. Once outside, he ran to the front piazza, then to the front gate,
+and with a racing heart stood looking up and down the sleepy
+thoroughfare. The street was quite empty.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Old Captain Renfrew was a trustful, credulous soul, as, indeed, most
+gentleman who lead a bachelor's life are. Such men lack that moral
+hardening and whetting which is obtained only amid the vicissitudes of a
+home; they are not actively and continuously engaged in the employment
+and detection of chicane; want of intimate association with a woman and
+some children begets in them a soft and simple way of believing what is
+said to them. And their faith, easily raised, is just as easily
+shattered. Their judgment lacks training.
+
+Peter Siner's simple assertion to the old Captain that he was not going
+to marry Cissie Dildine completely allayed the old gentleman's
+uneasiness. Even the further information that Peter had had such a
+marriage under advisement, but had rejected it, did not put him on his
+guard.
+
+From long non-intimacy with any human creature, the old legislator had
+forgotten that human life is one long succession of doing the things one
+is not going to do; he had forgotten, if he ever knew, that the human
+brain is primarily not a master, but a servant; its function is not to
+direct, but to devise schemes and apologies to gratify impulses. It is
+the ways and means committee to the great legislature of the body.
+
+For several days after his fear that Peter Siner would marry Cissie
+Dildine old Captain Renfrew was as felicitous as a lover newly
+reconciled to his mistress. He ambled between the manor and the livery-
+stable with an abiding sense of well-being. When he approached his home
+in the radiance of high noon and saw the roof of the old mansion lying a
+bluish gray in the shadows of the trees, it filled his heart with joy to
+feel that it was not an old and empty house that awaited his coming, but
+that in it worked a busy youth who would be glad to see him enter the
+gate.
+
+The fear of some unattended and undignified death which had beset the
+old gentleman during the last eight or ten years of his life vanished
+under Peter's presence. When he thought of it at all now, he always
+previsioned himself being lifted in Peter's athletic arms and laid
+properly on his big four-poster.
+
+At times, when Peter sat working over the books in the library, the
+Captain felt a prodigious urge to lay a hand on the young man's broad
+and capable shoulder. But he never did. Again, the old lawyer would sit
+for minutes at a time watching his secretary's regular features as the
+brown man pursued his work with a trained intentness. The old gentleman
+derived a deep pleasure from such long scrutinies. It pleased him to
+imagine that, when he was young, he had possessed the same vigor, the
+same masculinity, the same capacity for persistent labor. Indeed, all
+old gentlemen are prone to choose the most personable and virile young
+man they can find for themselves to have been like.
+
+The two men had little to say to each other. Their thoughts beat to such
+different tempos that any attempt at continued speech discovered unequal
+measures. As a matter of fact, in all comfortable human conversation,
+words are used as mere buoys dropped here and there to mark well-known
+channels of thought and feeling. Similarity of mental topography is
+necessary to mutual understanding. Between any two generations the
+landscape is so changed as to be unrecognizable. Our fathers are
+monarchists; our sons, bolsheviki.
+
+Old Rose Hobbett was more of an age with the Captain, and these two
+talked very comfortably as the old virago came and went with food at
+meal-time. For instance, the Captain always asked his servant if she had
+fed his cat, and old Rose invariably would sulk and poke out her lips
+and put off answering to the last possible moment of insolence, then
+would grumble out that she was jes 'bout to feed the varmint, an' 't wuz
+funny nobody couldn't give a hard-wuckin' colored woman breathin'-space
+to turn roun' in.
+
+This reply was satisfactory to the Captain, because he knew what it
+meant,--that Rose had half forgotten the cat, and had meant wholly to
+forget it, but since she had been snapped up, so to speak, in the very
+act of forgetting, she would dole it out a piece or two of the meat that
+she had meant to abscond with as soon as the dishes were done.
+
+While Rose was fulminating, the old gentleman recalled his bent globe
+and decided the moment had come for a lecture on that point. It always
+vaguely embarrassed the Captain to correct Rose, and this increased his
+dignity. Now he cleared his throat in a certain way that brought the old
+negress to attention, so well they knew each other.
+
+"By the way, Rose, in the future I must request you to use extraordinary
+precautions in cleansing and dusting articles of my household furniture,
+or, in case of damage, I shall be forced to withhold an indemnification
+out of your pay."
+
+Eight or ten years ago, when the Captain first repeated this formula to
+his servant, the roll and swing of his rhetoric, and the last word,
+"pay," had built up lively hopes in Rose that the old gentleman was
+announcing an increase in her regular wage of a dollar a week.
+Experience, however, had long since corrected this faulty
+interpretation.
+
+She came to a stand in the doorway, with her kinky gray head swung
+around, half puzzled, wholly rebellious.
+
+"Whut is I bruk now?"
+
+"My globe."
+
+The old woman turned about with more than usual innocence.
+
+"Why, I ain't tech yo' globe!"
+
+"I foresaw that," agreed the Captain, with patient irony, "but in the
+future don't touch it more carefully. You bent its pivot the last time
+you refrained from handling it."
+
+"But I tell you I ain't tech yo' globe!" cried the negress, with the
+anger of an illiterate person who feels, but cannot understand, the
+satire leveled at her.
+
+"I agree with you," said the Captain, glad the affair was over.
+
+This verbal ducking into the cellar out of the path of her storm stirred
+up a tempest.
+
+"But I tell you I ain't bruk it!"
+
+"That's what I said."
+
+"Yeah, yeah, yeah," she flared; "you says I ain't, but when you says I
+ain't, you means I is, an' when you says I is, you means I ain't. Dat's
+de sort o' flapjack I's wuckin' fur!"
+
+The woman flirted out of the dining-room, and the old gentleman drew
+another long breath, glad it was over. He really had little reason to
+quarrel about the globe, bent or unbent; he never used it. It sat in his
+study year in and year out, its dusty twinkle brightened at long
+intervals by old Rose's spiteful rag.
+
+The Captain ate on placidly. There had been a time when he was dubious
+about such scenes with Rose. Once he felt it beneath his dignity as a
+Southern gentleman to allow any negro to speak to him disrespectfully.
+He used to feel that he should discharge her instantly and during the
+first years of their entente had done so a number of times. But he could
+get no one else who suited him so well; her biscuits, her corn-light-
+bread, her lye-hominy, which only the old darkies know how to make. And,
+to tell the truth, he missed the old creature herself, her understanding
+of him and his ideas, her contemporaneity; and no one else would work
+for a dollar a week.
+
+Presently in the course of his eating the old gentleman required another
+biscuit, and he wanted a hot one. Three mildly heated disks lay on a
+plate before him, but they had been out of the oven for five minutes and
+had been reduced to an unappetizing tepidity.
+
+A little hand-bell sat beside the Captain's plate whose special use was
+to summon hot biscuits. Now, the old lawyer looked at its worn handle
+speculatively. He was not at all sure Rose would answer the bell. She
+would say she hadn't heard it. He felt faintly disgruntled at not
+foreseeing this exigency and buttering two biscuits while they were hot,
+or even three.
+
+He considered momentarily a project of going after a hot biscuit for
+himself, but eventually put it by. South of the Mason-Dixon Line, self-
+help is half-scandal. At last, quite dubiously, he did pick up the bell
+and gave it a gentle ring, so if old Rose chose not to hear it, she
+probably wouldn't: thus he could believe her and not lose his temper and
+so widen an already uncomfortable breach.
+
+To the Captain's surprise, the old creature not only brought the
+biscuits, but she did it promptly. No sooner had she served them,
+however, than the Captain saw she really had returned with a new line of
+defense.
+
+She mumbled it out as usual, so that her employer was forced to guess at
+a number of words: "Dat nigger, Peter, mus' 'a' busted yo' gl--"
+
+"No, he didn't."
+
+"Mus' uv."
+
+"No, he didn't. I asked him, and he said he didn't."
+
+The old harridan stared, and her speech suddenly became clear-cut:
+
+"Well, 'fo' Gawd, I says I didn't, too!"
+
+At this point the Captain made an unintelligible sound and spread the
+butter on his hot biscuit.
+
+"He's jes a nigger, lak I is," stated the cook, warmly.
+
+The Captain buttered a second hot biscuit.
+
+"We's jes two niggers."
+
+The Captain hoped she would presently sputter herself out.
+
+"Now look heah," cried the crone, growing angrier and angrier as the
+reaches of the insult spread itself before her, "is you gwine to put one
+o' us niggers befo' de udder? Ca'se ef you is, I mus' say, it's Kady-
+lock-a-do' wid me."
+
+The Captain looked up satirically.
+
+"What do you mean by Katie-lock-the-door with you?" he asked, though he
+had an uneasy feeling that he knew.
+
+"You know whut I means. I means I 's gwine to leab dis place."
+
+"Now look here, Rose," protested the lawyer, with dignity, "Peter Siner
+occupies almost a fiduciary relation to me."
+
+The old negress stared with a slack jaw. "A relation o' yo's!"
+
+The lawyer hesitated some seconds, looking at the hag. His high-bred old
+face was quite inscrutable, but presently he said in a serious voice:
+
+"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'
+niggers 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
+passes 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-nigger an' a she-nigger 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-nigger" and "she-nigger" 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 passings 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 passed 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 passed back toward Niggertown, 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 passed she kept Peter watching the clock at
+nervous intervals, wondering if, after all, she had gone by unobserved.
+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
+entity, 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 passing 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 pass 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 reëstablish 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 passionate 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 passed 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 niggerish taste, and
+his dislike for the girl edged his stricture; then, on second thought,
+the oddness of sumac for a nosegay caught his attention. Nobody used
+sumac for a buttonhole. 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.
+
+All his life, Captain Renfrew's brain had been deliberate. He moved
+mentally, as he did physically, with dignity. To tell the truth, the
+Captain's thoughts had a way of absolutely stopping now and then, and
+for a space he would view the world as a simple collection of colored
+surfaces without depth or meaning. During these intervals, by a sort of
+irony of the gods the old gentleman's face wore a look of philosophic
+concentration, so that his mental hiatuses had given him a reputation
+for profundity, which was county wide. It had been this, years before,
+that had carried him by a powerful majority into the Tennessee
+legislature. The voters agreed, almost to a man, that they preferred
+depth to a shallow facility. The rival candidate had been shallow and
+facile. The polls returned the Captain, and the young gentleman--for the
+Captain was a young gentleman in those days--was launched on a typical
+politician's career. But some Republican member from east Tennessee had
+impugned the rising statesman's honor with some sort of improper
+liaison. In those days there seemed to be proper and improper liaisons.
+There had been a duel on the banks of the Cumberland River in which the
+Captain succeeded in wounding his traducer in the arm, and was thus
+vindicated by the gods. But the incident ended a career that might very
+well have wound up in the governor's chair, or even in the United States
+Senate, considering how very deliberate the Captain was mentally.
+
+To-day, as the Captain walked up the street following Cissie Dildine,
+one of these vacant moods fell upon him and it was not until they had
+reached his own gate that it suddenly occurred to the old gentleman just
+what Cissie's sumac did mean. It was a signal to Peter. The simplicity
+of the solution stirred the old man. Its meaning was equally easy to
+fathom. When a woman signals any man it conveys consent. Denials receive
+no signals; they are inferred. In this particular case Captain Renfrew
+found every reason to believe that this flaring bit of sumac was the
+prelude to an elopement.
+
+In the window of his library the Captain saw his secretary staring at
+his cards and books with an intentness plainly assumed. Peter's fixed
+stare had none of those small movements of the head that mark genuine
+intellectual labor. So Peter was posing, pretending he did not see the
+girl, to disarm his employer's suspicions,--pretending not to see a
+girl rigged out like that!
+
+Such duplicity sent a queer spasm of anguish through the old lawyer.
+Peter's action held half a dozen barbs for the Captain. A fellow-alumnus
+of Harvard staying in his house merely for his wage and keep! Peter bore
+not the slightest affection for him; the mulatto lacked even the
+chivalry to notify the Captain of his intentions, because he knew the
+Captain objected. And yet all these self-centered objections were
+nothing to what old Captain Renfrew felt for Peter's own sake. For Peter
+to marry a nigger and a strumpet, for him to elope with a wanton and a
+thief! For such an upstanding lad, the very picture of his own virility
+and mental alertness when he was of that age, for such a boy to fling
+himself away, to drop out of existence--oh, it was loathly!
+
+The old man entered the library feeling sick. It was empty. Peter had
+gone to his room, according to his custom. But in this particular
+instance it seemed to Captain Renfrew his withdrawal was flavored with a
+tang of guilt. If he were innocent, why should not such a big, strong
+youth have stayed and helped an old gentleman off with his overcoat?
+
+The old Captain blew out a windy breath as he helped himself out of his
+coat in the empty library. The bent globe still leaned against the
+window-seat. The room had never looked so somber or so lonely.
+
+At dinner the old man ate so little that Rose Hobbett ceased her
+monotonous grumbling to ask if he felt well. He said he had had a hard
+day, a difficult day. He felt so weak and thin that he foretold the gray
+days when he could no longer creep to the village and sit with his
+cronies at the livery-stable, when he would be house-fast, through
+endless days, creeping from room to room like a weak old rat in a huge
+empty house, finally to die in some disgusting fashion. And Now Peter
+was going to leave him, was going to throw himself away on a lascivious
+wench. A faint moisture dampened the old man's withered eyes. He drank
+an extra thimbleful of whisky to try to hearten himself. Its bouquet
+filled the time-worn stateliness of the dining-room.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+During the weeks of Peter's stay at the manor it had grown to be the
+Captain's habit really to write for two or three hours in the afternoon,
+and his pile of manuscript had thickened under his application.
+
+The old man was writing a book called "Reminiscences of Peace and War."
+His book would form another unit of that extraordinary crop of personal
+reminiscences of the old South which flooded the presses of America
+during the decade of 1908-18. During just that decade it seemed as if the
+aged men and women of the South suddenly realized that the generation who
+had lived through the picturesqueness and stateliness of the old slave
+régime was almost gone, and over their hearts swept a common impulse to
+commemorate, in the sunset of their own lives, its fading splendor and
+its vanished deeds.
+
+On this particular afternoon the Captain settled himself to work, but
+his reminiscences did not get on. He pinched a bit of floss from the nib
+of his pen and tried to swing into the period of which he was writing.
+He read over a few pages of his copy as mental priming, but his thoughts
+remained flat and dull. Indeed, his whole life, as he reviewed it in the
+waning afternoon, appeared empty and futile. It seemed hardly worth
+while to go on.
+
+The Captain had come to that point in his memoirs where the Republican
+representative from Knox County had set going the petard which had
+wrecked his political career.
+
+From the very beginnings of his labors the old lawyer had looked forward
+to writing just this period of his life. He meant to clear up his name
+once for all. He meant to use invective, argument, testimony and a
+powerful emotional appeal, such as a country lawyer invariably attempts
+with a jury.
+
+But now that he had arrived at the actual composition of his defense, he
+sat biting his penholder, with all the arguments he meant to advance
+slipped from his mind. He could not recall the points of the proof. He
+could not recall them with Peter Siner moving restlessly about the room,
+glancing through the window, unsettled, nervous, on the verge of eloping
+with a negress.
+
+His secretary's tragedy smote the old man. The necessity of doing
+something for Peter put his thoughts to rout. A wild idea occurred to
+the Captain that if he should write the exact truth, perhaps his memoirs
+might serve Peter as a signal against a futile, empty journey.
+
+But the thought no sooner appeared than it was rejected. In the Anglo-
+Saxon, especially the Anglo-Saxon of the Southern United States, abides
+no such Gallic frankness as moved a Jean-Jacques. Southern memoirs
+always sound like the conversation between two maiden ladies,--nothing
+intimate, simply a few general remarks designed to show from what nice
+families they came.
+
+So the Captain wrote nothing. During all the afternoon he sat at his
+desk with a leaden heart, watching Peter move about the room. The old
+man maintained more or less the posture of writing, but his thoughts
+were occupied in pitying himself and pitying Peter. Half a dozen times
+he looked up, on the verge of making some plea, some remonstrance,
+against the madness of this brown man. But the sight of Peter sitting in
+the window-seat staring out into the street silenced him. He was a weak
+old man, and Peter's nerves were strung with the desire of youth.
+
+At last the two men heard old Rose clashing in the kitchen. A few
+minutes later the secretary excused himself from the library, to go to
+his own room. As Peter was about to pass through the door, the Captain
+was suddenly galvanized into action by the thought that this perhaps was
+the last time he would ever see him. He got up from his chair and called
+shakenly to Peter. The negro paused. The Captain moistened his lips and
+controlled his voice.
+
+"I want to have a word with you, Peter, about a--a little matter. I--
+I've mentioned it before."
+
+"Yes, sir." The negro's tone and attitude reminded the Captain that the
+supper gong would soon sound and they would best separate at once.
+
+"It--it's about Cissie Dildine," the old lawyer hurried on.
+
+Peter nodded slightly.
+
+"Yes, you mentioned that before."
+
+The old man lifted a thin hand as if to touch Peter's arm, but he did
+not. A sort of desperation seized him.
+
+"But listen, Peter, you don't want to do--what's in your mind!"
+
+"What is in my mind, Captain?"
+
+"I mean marry a negress. You don't want to marry a negress!"
+
+The brown man stared, utterly blank.
+
+"Not marry a negress!"
+
+"No, Peter; no," quavered the old man. "For yourself it may make no
+difference, but your children--think of your children, your son growing
+up under a brown veil! You can't tear it off. God himself can't tear it
+off! You can never reach him through it. Your children, your children's
+children, a terrible procession that stretches out and out, marching
+under a black shroud, unknowing, unknown! All you can see are their sad
+forms beneath the shroud, marching away--marching away. God knows where!
+And yet it's your own flesh and blood!"
+
+Suddenly the old lawyer's face broke into the hard, tearless contortions
+of the aged. His terrible emotion communicated itself to the sensitive
+brown man.
+
+"But, Captain, I myself am a negro. Whom should I marry?"
+
+"No one; no one! Let your seed wither in your loins! It's better to do
+that; it's better--" At that moment the clashing of the supper gong fell
+on the old man's naked nerves. He straightened up by some reflex
+mechanism, turned away from what he thought was his last interview with
+his secretary, and proceeded down the piazza into the great empty
+dining-room.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+With overwrought nerves Peter Siner entered his room. At five o'clock
+that afternoon he had seen Cissie Dildine go up the street to the
+Arkwright home to cook one of those occasional suppers. He had been
+watching for her return, and in the midst of it the Captain's
+extraordinary outburst had stirred him up.
+
+Once in his room, the negro placed the broken Hepplewhite in such a
+position that he could rake the street with a glance. Then he tried to
+compose himself and await the coming of his supper and the passage of
+Cissie. There was something almost pathetic in Peter's endless watching,
+all for a mere glimpse or two of the girl in yellow. He himself had no
+idea how his nerves and thoughts had woven themselves around the young
+woman. He had no idea what a passion this continual doling out of
+glimpses had begotten. He did not dream how much he was, as folk naïvely
+put it, in love with her.
+
+His love was strong enough to make him forget for a while the old
+lawyer's outbreak. However, as the dusk thickened in the shrubbery and
+under the trees, certain of the old gentleman's phrases revisited the
+mulatto's mind: "A terrible procession ... marching under a black
+shroud.... Your children, your children's children, a terrible
+procession,... marching away, God knows where.... And yet--it's your own
+flesh and blood!" They were terrific sentences, as if the old man had
+been trying to tear from his vision some sport of nature, some
+deformity. As the implications spread before Peter, he became more and
+more astonished at its content. Even to Captain Renfrew black men were
+dehumanized,--shrouded, untouchable creatures.
+
+It delivered to Peter a slow but a profound shock. He glanced about at
+the faded magnificence of the room with a queer feeling that he had been
+introduced into it under a sort of misrepresentation. He had taken up
+his abode with the Captain, at least on the basis of belonging to the
+human family, but this passionate outbreak, this puzzling explosion, cut
+that ground from under his feet.
+
+The more Peter thought about it, the stranger grew his sensation. Not
+even to be classed as a human being by this old gentleman who in a weak,
+helpless fashion had crept somewhat into Peter's affections,--not to be
+considered a man! The mulatto drew a long, troubled breath, and by the
+mere mechanics of his desire kept staring through the gloom for Cissie.
+
+Peter Siner had known all along that the unread whites of Hooker's Bend
+--and that included nearly every white person in the village--considered
+black men as simple animals; but he had supposed that the more thoughtful
+men, of whom Captain Renfrew was a type, at least admitted the Afro-
+American to the common brotherhood of humanity. But they did not.
+
+As Peter sat staring into the darkness the whole effect of the
+dehumanizing of the black folk of the South began to unfold itself
+before his imagination. It explained to him the tragedies of his race,
+their sufferings at the hand of mob violence; the casualness, even the
+levity with which black men were murdered: the chronic dishonesty with
+which negroes were treated: the constant enactment of adverse
+legislation against them; the cynical use of negro women. They were all
+vermin, animals; they were one with the sheep and the swine; a little
+nearer the human in form, perhaps, and, oddly enough, one that could be
+bred to a human being, as testified a multitude of brown and yellow and
+cream-colored folk, but all marching away, as the Captain had so
+passionately said, marching away, their forms hidden from human
+intercourse under a shroud of black, an endless procession marching
+away, God knew whither! And yet they were the South's own flesh and
+blood.
+
+The horror of such a complex swelled in Peter's mind to monstrous
+proportions. As night thickened at his window, the negro sat dazed and
+wondering at the mightiness of his vision. His thoughts went groping,
+trying to solve some obscure problem it posed. He thought of the
+Arkwright boy; he thought of the white men smiling as his mother's
+funeral went past the livery-stable; he thought of Captain Renfrew's
+manuscript that he was transcribing. Through all the old man's memoirs
+ran a certain lack of sincerity. Peter always felt amid his labors that
+the old Captain was making an attorney's plea rather than a candid
+exposition. At this point in his thoughts there gradually limned itself
+in the brown man's mind the answer to that enigma which he almost had
+unraveled on the day he first saw Cissie Dildine pass his window. With
+it came the answer to the puzzle contained in the old Captain's library.
+The library was not an ordinary compilation of the world's thought; it,
+too, was an attorney's special pleading against the equality of man. Any
+book or theory that upheld the equality of man was carefully excluded
+from the shelves. Darwin's great hypothesis, and every development
+springing from it, had been banned, because the moment that a theory was
+propounded of the great biologic relationship of all flesh, from worms
+to vertebrates, there instantly followed a corollary of the brotherhood
+of man.
+
+What Christ did for theology, Darwin did for biology,--he democratized
+it. The One descended to man's brotherhood from the Trinity; the other
+climbed up to it from the worms.
+
+The old Captain's library lacked sincerity. Southern orthodoxy, which
+persists in pouring its religious thought into the outworn molds of
+special creation, lacks sincerity. Scarcely a department of Southern
+life escapes this fundamental attitude of special pleader and
+disingenuousness. It explains the Southern fondness for legal
+subtleties. All attempts at Southern poetry, belles-lettres, painting,
+novels, bear the stamp of the special plea, of authors whose exposition
+is careful.
+
+Peter perceived what every one must perceive, that when letters turn
+into a sort of glorified prospectus of a country, all value as
+literature ceases. The very breath of art and interpretation is an eager
+and sincere searching of the heart. This sincerity the South lacks. Her
+single talent will always be forensic, because she is a lawyer with a
+cause to defend. And such is the curse that arises from lynchings and
+venery and extortions and dehumanizings,--sterility; a dumbness of soul.
+
+Peter Siner's thoughts lifted him with the tremendous buoyancy of
+inspiration. He swung out of his chair and began tramping his dark room.
+The skin of his scalp tickled as if a ghost had risen before him. The
+nerves in his thighs and back vibrated. He felt light, and tingled with
+energy.
+
+Unaware of what he was doing, he set about lighting the gasolene-lamp.
+He worked with nervous quickness, as if he were in a great hurry.
+Presently a brilliant light flooded the room. It turned the gray
+illumination of the windows to blackness.
+
+Joy enveloped Peter. His own future developed under his eyes with the
+same swift clairvoyance that marked his vision of the ills of his
+country. He saw himself remedying those ills. He would go about showing
+white men and black men the simple truth, the spiritual necessity for
+justice and fairness. It was not a question of social equality; it was a
+question of clearing a road for the development of Southern life. He
+would show white men that to weaken, to debase, to dehumanize the negro,
+inflicted a more terrible wound on the South than would any strength the
+black man might develop. He would show black men that to hate the
+whites, constantly to suspect, constantly to pilfer from them, only
+riveted heavier shackles on their limbs.
+
+It was all so clear and so simple! The white South must humanize the
+black not for the sake of the negro, but for the sake of itself. No one
+could resist logic so fundamental.
+
+Peter's heart sang with the solemn joy of a man who had found his work.
+All through his youth he had felt blind yearnings and gropings for he
+knew not what. It had driven him with endless travail out of Niggertown,
+through school and college, and back to Niggertown,--this untiring Hound
+of Heaven. But at last he had reached his work. He, Peter Siner, a
+mulatto, with the blood of both white and black in his veins, would come
+as an evangel of liberty to both white and black. The brown man's eyes
+grew moist from Joy. His body seemed possessed of tremendous energy.
+
+As he paced his room there came into the glory of Peter's thoughts the
+memory of the Arkwright boy as he sat in the cedar glade brooding on the
+fallen needles Peter recalled the hobbledehoy's disjointed words as he
+wrestled with the moral and physical problems of adolescence. Peter
+recalled his impulse to sit down by young Sam Arkwright, and, as best he
+might, give him some clue to the critical and feverish period through
+which he was passing.
+
+He had not done so, but Peter remembered the instance down to the very
+desperation in the face of the brooding youngster. And it seemed to
+Peter that this rejected impulse had been a sign that he was destined to
+be an evangel to the whites as well as to the blacks.
+
+The joy of Peter's mission bore him aloft on vast wings. His room seemed
+to fall away from him, and he was moving about his country, releasing
+the two races from their bonds of suspicion and cruelty.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+Slowly the old manor formed about Peter again, and he perceived that a
+tapping on the door had summoned him back. He walked to the door with
+his heart full of kindness for old Rose. She was bringing him his
+supper. He felt as if he could take the old woman in his arms, and out
+of the mere hugeness of his love sweeten her bitter life. The mulatto
+opened the door as eagerly as if he were admitting some long-desired
+friend; but when the shutter swung back, the old crone and her salver
+were not there. All he could discern in the darkness were the white
+pillars marking the night into panels. There was no light in the outer
+kitchen. The whole manor was silent.
+
+As he stood listening, the knocking was repeated, this time more
+faintly. He fixed the sound at the window. He closed the door, walked
+across the brilliant room, and opened the shutters.
+
+For several moments he saw nothing more than the tall quadrangle of
+blackness which the window framed; then a star or two pierced it; then
+something moved. He saw a woman's figure standing close to the casement,
+and out of the darkness Cissie Dildine's voice asked in its careful
+English:
+
+"Peter, may I come in?"
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+For a full thirty seconds Peter Siner stared at the girl at the window
+before, even with her prompting, he thought of the amenity of asking her
+to come inside. As a further delayed courtesy, he drew the Heppelwhite
+chair toward her.
+
+Cissie's face looked bloodless in the blanched light of the gasolene-
+lamp. She forced a faint, doubtful smile.
+
+"You don't seem very glad to see me, Peter."
+
+"I am," he assured her, mechanically, but he really felt nothing but
+astonishment and dismay. They filled his voice. He was afraid some one
+would see Cissie in his room. His thoughts went flitting about the
+premises, calculating the positions of the various trees and shrubs in
+relation to the windows, trying to determine whether, and just where, in
+his brilliantly lighted chamber the girl could be seen from the street.
+
+The octoroon made no further comment on his confusion. Her eyes wandered
+from him over the stately furniture and up to the stuccoed ceiling.
+
+"They told me you lived in a wonderful room," she remarked absently.
+
+"Yes, it's very nice," agreed Peter in the same tone, wondering what
+might be the object of her hazardous visit. A flicker of suspicion
+suggested that she was trying to compromise him out of revenge for his
+renouncement of her, but the next instant he rejected this.
+
+The girl accepted the chair Peter offered and continued to look about.
+
+"I hope you don't mind my staring, Peter," she said.
+
+"I stared when I first came here to stay," assisted Peter, who was
+getting a little more like himself, even if a little uneasier at the
+consequences of this visit.
+
+"Is that a highboy?" She nodded nervously at the piece of furniture.
+"I've seen pictures of them."
+
+"Uh huh. Revolutionary, I believe. The night wind is a little raw." He
+moved across the room and closed the jalousies, and thus cut off the
+night wind and also the west view from the street. He glanced at the
+heavy curtains parted over his front windows, with a keen desire to
+swing them together. Some fragment of his mind continued the surface
+conversation with Cissie.
+
+"Is it post-Revolutionary or pre-Revolutionary?" she asked with a
+preoccupied air.
+
+"Post, I believe. No, pre. I always meant to examine closely."
+
+"To have such things would almost teach one history," Cissie said.
+
+"Yeah; very nice." Peter had decided that the girl was in direct line
+with the left front window and an opening between the trees to the
+street.
+
+The girl's eyes followed his.
+
+"Are those curtains velour, Peter?"
+
+"I--I believe so," agreed the man, unhappily.
+
+"I--I wonder how they look spread."
+
+Peter seized on this flimsy excuse with a wave of relief and
+thankfulness to Cissie. He had to restrain himself as he strode across
+the room and swung together the two halves of the somber curtains in
+order to preserve an appearance of an exhibit. His fingers were so
+nervous that he bungled a moment at the heavy cords, but finally the two
+draperies swung together, loosing a little cloud of dust. He drew
+together a small aperture where the hangings stood apart, and then
+turned away in sincere relief.
+
+Cissie's own interest in historic furniture and textiles came to an
+abrupt conclusion. She gave a deep sigh and settled back into her chair.
+She sat looking at Peter seriously, almost distressfully, as he came
+toward her.
+
+With the closing of the curtains and the establishment of a real privacy
+Peter became aware once again of the sweetness and charm Cissie always
+held for him. He still wondered what had brought her, but he was no
+longer uneasy.
+
+"Perhaps I'd better build a fire," he suggested, quite willing now to
+make her visit seem not unusual.
+
+"Oh, no,"--she spoke with polite haste,--"I'm just going to stay a
+minute. I don't know what you'll think of me." She looked intently at
+him.
+
+"I think it lovely of you to come." He was disgusted with the triteness
+of this remark, but he could think of nothing else.
+
+"I don't know," demurred the octoroon, with her faint doubtful smile.
+"Persons don't welcome beggars very cordially."
+
+"If all beggars were so charming--" Apparently he couldn't escape
+banalities.
+
+But Cissie interrupted whatever speech he meant to make, with a return
+of her almost painful seriousness.
+
+"I really came to ask you to help me, Peter."
+
+"Then your need has brought me a pleasure, at least." Some impulse kept
+the secretary making those foolish complimentary speeches which keep a
+conversation empty and insincere.
+
+"Oh, Peter, I didn't come here for you to talk like that! Will you do
+what I want?"
+
+"What do you want, Cissie?" he asked, sobered by her voice and manner.
+
+"I want you to help me, Peter."
+
+"All right, I will." He spaced his words with his speculations about the
+nature of her request. "What do you want me to do?"
+
+"I want you to help me go away."
+
+Peter looked at her in surprise. He hardly knew what he had been
+expecting, but it was not this.
+
+Some repressed emotion crept into the girl's voice.
+
+"Peter, I--I can't stay here in Hooker's Bend any longer. I want to go
+away. I--I've got to go away."
+
+Peter stood regarding her curiously and at the same time
+sympathetically.
+
+"Where do you want to go, Cissie?"
+
+The girl drew a long breath; her bosom lifted and dropped abruptly.
+
+"I don't know; that was one of the things I wanted to ask you about."
+
+"You don't know where you want to go?" He smiled faintly. "How do you
+know you want to go at all?"
+
+"Oh, Peter, all I know is I must leave Hooker's Bend!" She gave a little
+shiver. "I'm tired of it, sick of it--sick." She exhaled a breath, as if
+she were indeed physically ill. Her face suggested it; her eyes were
+shadowed. "Some Northern city, I suppose," she added.
+
+"And you want me to help you?" inquired Peter, puzzled.
+
+She nodded silently, with a woman's instinct to make a man guess the
+favor she is seeking.
+
+Then it occurred to Peter just what sort of assistance the girl did
+want. It gave him a faint shock that a girl could come to a man to beg
+or to borrow money. It was a white man's shock, a notion he had picked
+up in Boston, because it happens frequently among village negroes, and
+among them it holds as little significance as children begging one
+another for bites of apples.
+
+Peter thought over his bank balance, then started toward a chest of
+drawers where he kept his checkbook.
+
+"Cissie, if I can he of any service to you in a substantial way, I'll be
+more than glad to--"
+
+She put out a hand and stopped him; then talked on in justification of
+her determination to go away.
+
+"I just can't endure it any longer, Peter." She shuddered again. "I
+can't stand Niggertown, or this side of town--any of it. They--they have
+no _feeling_ for a colored girl, Peter, not--not a speck!" She rave
+a gasp, and after a moment plunged on into her wrongs: "When--when one
+of us even walks past on the street, they--they whistle and say a-all
+kinds of things out loud, j-just as if w-we weren't there at all. Th-
+they don't c-care; we're just n-nigger w-women." Cissie suddenly began
+sobbing with a faint catching noise, her full bosom shaken by the
+spasms; her tears slowly welling over. She drew out a handkerchief with
+a part of its lace edge gone, and wiped her eyes and cheeks, holding the
+bit of cambric in a ball in her palm, like a negress, instead of in her
+fingers, like a white woman, as she had been taught. Then she drew a
+deep breath, swallowed, and became more composed.
+
+Peter stood looking in helpless anger at this representative of all
+women of his race.
+
+"Cissie, that's street-corner scum--the dirty sewage--"
+
+"They make you feel naked," went on Cissie in the monotone that succeeds
+a fit of weeping, "and ashamed--and afraid." She blinked her eyes to
+press out the undue moisture, and looked at Peter as if asking what else
+she could do about it than to go away from the village.
+
+"Will it be any better away from here?" suggested Peter, doubtfully.
+
+Cissie shook her head.
+
+"I--I suppose not, if--if I go alone."
+
+"I shouldn't think so," agreed Peter, somberly. He started to hearten
+her by saying white women also underwent such trials, if that would be a
+consolation; but he knew very well that a white woman's hardships were
+as nothing compared to those of a colored woman who was endowed with any
+grace whatever.
+
+"And besides, Cissie," went on Peter, who somehow found himself arguing
+against the notion of her going, "I hardly see how a decent colored
+woman gets around at all. Colored boarding-houses are wretched places. I
+ate and slept in one or two, coming home. Rotten." The possibility of
+Cissie finding herself in such a place moved Peter.
+
+The girl nodded submissively to his judgment, and said in a queer voice:
+"That's why I--I didn't want to travel alone, Peter."
+
+"No, it's a bad idea--" and then Peter perceived that a queer quality
+was creeping into the tête-à-tête.
+
+She returned his look unsteadily, but with a curious persistence.
+
+[Illustration: "You-you mean you want m-me--to go with you, Cissie?" he
+stammered]
+
+"I--I d-don't want to travel a-alone, Peter," she gasped.
+
+Her look, her voice suddenly brought home to the an the amazing
+connotation of her words. He stared at her, felt his face grow warm with
+a sharp, peculiar embarrassment. He hardly knew what to say or do before
+her intent and piteous eyes.
+
+"You--you mean you want m-me--to go with you, Cissie?" he stammered.
+
+The girl suddenly began trembling, now that her last reserve of
+indirection had been torn away.
+
+"Listen, Peter," she began breathlessly. "I'm not the sort of woman you
+think. If I hadn't accused myself, we'd be married now. I--I wanted you
+more than anything in the world, Peter, but I did tell you. Surely,
+surely, Peter, that shows I am a good woman--th-the real I. Dear, dear
+Peter, there is a difference between a woman and her acts. Peter, you're
+the first man in all my life, in a-all my life who ever came to me k-
+kindly and gently; so I had to l-love you and t-tell you, Peter."
+
+The girl's wavering voice broke down completely; her face twisted with
+grief. She groped for her chair, sat down, buried her face in her arms
+on the table, and broke into a chattering outbreak of sobs that sounded
+like some sort of laughter.
+
+Her shoulders shook; the light gleamed on her soft, black Caucasian
+hair. There was a little rent in one of the seams in her cheap jacket,
+at one of the curves where her side molded into her shoulder. The
+customer made garment had found Cissie's body of richer mold than it had
+been designed to shield. And yet in Peter's distress and tenderness and
+embarrassment, this little rent held his attention and somehow misprized
+the wearer.
+
+It seemed symbolic in the searching white light. He could see the very
+break in the thread and the widened stitches at the ends of the rip. Her
+coat had given way because she was modeled more nearly like the Venus de
+Milo than the run of womankind. He felt the little irony of the thing,
+and yet was quite unable to resist the comparison.
+
+And then, too, she had referred again to her sin of peculation. A woman
+enjoys confessions from a man. A man's sins are mostly vague, indefinite
+things to a woman, a shadowy background which brings out the man in a
+beautiful attitude of repentance; but when a woman confesses, the man
+sees all her past as a close-up with full lighting. He has an intimate
+acquaintance with just what she's talking about, and the woman herself
+grows shadowy and unreal. Men have too many blots not to demand
+whiteness in women. By striking some such average, nature keeps the race
+a going moral concern.
+
+So Peter, as he stood looking down on the woman who was asking him to
+marry her, was filled with as unhappy and as impersonal a tenderness as
+a born brother. He recalled the thoughts which had come to him when he
+saw Cissie passing his window. She was not the sort of woman he wanted
+to marry; she was not his ideal. He cast about in his head for some
+gentle way of putting her off, so that he would not hurt her any
+further, if such an easement were possible.
+
+As he stood thinking, he found not a pretext, but a reality. He stooped
+over, and put a hand lightly on each of her arms.
+
+"Cissie," he said in a serious, even voice, "if I should ever marry any
+one, it would be you."
+
+The girl paused in her sobbing at his even, passionless voice.
+
+"Then you--you won't?" she whispered in her arms.
+
+"I can't, Cissie." Now that he was saying it, he uttered the words very
+evenly and smoothly. "I can't, dear Cissie, because a great work has
+just come into my life." He paused, expecting her to ask some question,
+but she lay silent, with her face in her arms, evidently listening.
+
+"Cissie, I think, in fact I know, I can demonstrate to all the South,
+both white and black, the need of a better and more sincere
+understanding between our two races."
+
+Peter did not feel the absurdity of such a speech in such a place. He
+patted her arm, but there was something in the warmth of her flesh that
+disturbed his austerity and caused him to lift his hand to the more
+impersonal axis of her shoulder. He proceeded to develop his idea.
+
+"Cissie, just a moment ago you were complaining of the insults you meet
+everywhere. I believe if I can spread my ideas, Cissie, that even a
+pretty colored girl like you may walk the streets without being
+subjected to obscenity on every corner." His tone unconsciously
+patronized Cissie's prettiness with the patronage of the male for the
+less significant thing, as though her ripeness for love and passion and
+children were, after all, not comparable with what he, a male, could do
+in the way of significantly molding life.
+
+Cissie lifted her head and dried her eyes.
+
+"So you aren't going to marry me, Peter?" Woman-like, now that she was
+well into the subject, she was far less embarrassed than Peter. She had
+had her cry.
+
+"Why--er--considering this work, Cissie--"
+
+"Aren't you going to marry anybody, Peter?"
+
+The artist in Peter, the thing the girl loved in him, caught again that
+Messianic vision of himself.
+
+"Why, no, Cissie," he said, with a return of his inspiration of an hour
+ago; "I'll be going here and there all over the South preaching this
+gospel of kindliness and tolerance, of forgiveness of the faults of
+others." Cissie looked at him with a queer expression. "I'll show the
+white people that they should treat the negro with consideration not for
+the sake of the negro, but for the sake of themselves. It's so simple,
+Cissie, it's so logical and clear--"
+
+The girl shook her head sadly.
+
+"And you don't want me to go with you, Peter?"
+
+"Why, n-no, Cissie; a girl like you couldn't go. Perhaps I'll be
+misunderstood in places, perhaps I may have to leave a town hurriedly,
+or be swung over the walls, like Paul, in a basket." He attempted to
+treat it lightly.
+
+But the girl looked at him with a horror dawning in her melancholy face.
+
+"Peter, do you really mean that?" she whispered.
+
+"Why, truly. You don't imagine--"
+
+The octoroon opened her dark eyes until she might have been some weird.
+
+"Oh, Peter, please, please put such a mad idea away from you! Peter,
+you've been living here alone in this old house until you don't see
+things clearly. Dear Peter, don't you _know?_ You can't go out and
+talk like that to white folks and--and not have some terrible thing
+happen to you! Oh, Peter, if you would only marry me, it would cure you
+of such wildness!" Involuntarily she got up, holding out her arms to
+him, offering herself to his needs, with her frightened eyes fixed on
+his.
+
+It made him exquisitely uncomfortable again. He made a little sound
+designed to comfort and reassure her. He would do very well. He was
+something of a diplomat in his way. He had got along with the boys in
+Harvard very well indeed. In fact, he was rather a man of the world. No
+need to worry about him, though it was awfully sweet of her.
+
+Cissie picked up her handkerchief with its torn edge, which she had laid
+on the table. Evidently she was about to go.
+
+"I surely don't know what will become of me," she said, looking at it.
+
+In a reversal of feeling Peter did not want her to go away quite then.
+He cast about for some excuse to detain her a moment longer.
+
+"Now, Cissie," he began, "if you are really going to leave Hooker's
+Bend--"
+
+"I'm not going," she said, with a long exhalation. "I--" she swallowed--
+"I just thought that up to--ask you to--to--You see," she explained, a
+little breathless, "I thought you still loved me and had forgiven me by
+the way you watched for me every day at the window."
+
+This speech touched Peter more keenly than any of the little drama the
+girl had invented. It hit him so shrewdly he could think of nothing more
+to say.
+
+Cissie moved toward the window and undid the latch.
+
+"Good night, Peter." She paused a moment, with her hand on the catch.
+"Peter," she said, "I'd almost rather see you marry some other girl than
+try so terrible a thing."
+
+The big, full-blooded athlete smiled faintly.
+
+"You seem perfectly sure marriage would cure me of my mission."
+
+Cissie's face reddened faintly.
+
+"I think so," she said briefly. "Good night," and she disappeared in the
+dark space she had opened, and closed the jalousies softly after her.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER XV
+
+
+Cissie Dildine's conviction that marriage would cure Peter of his
+mission persisted in the mulatto's mind long after the glamour of the
+girl had faded and his room had regained the bleak emptiness of a
+bachelor's bedchamber.
+
+Cissie had been so brief and positive in her statement that Peter, who
+had not thought on the point at all, grew more than half convinced she
+was right.
+
+Now that he pondered over it, it seemed there was a difference between
+the outlook of a bachelor and that of a married man. The former
+considered humanity as a balloonist surveys a throng,--immediately and
+without perspective,--but the latter always sees mankind through the
+frame of his family. A single man tends naturally to philosophy and
+reform; a married man to administration and statesmanship. There have
+been no great unmarried statesmen; there have been no great married
+philosophers or reformers.
+
+Now that Cissie had pointed out this universal rule, Peter saw it very
+clearly. And Peter suspected that beneath this rough classification, and
+conditioning it, lay a plexus of obscure mental and physical reactions
+set up by the relations between husband and wife. It might very well be
+there was a difference between the actual cerebral and nervous structure
+of a married man and that of a single man.
+
+At any rate, after these reflections, Peter now felt sure that marriage
+would cure him of his mission; but how had Cissie known it? How had she
+struck out so involved a theory, one might say, in the toss of a head?
+The more Peter thought it over the more extraordinary it became. It was
+another one of those explosive ideas which Cissie, apparently, had the
+faculty of creating out of a pure mental vacuum.
+
+All this philosophy aside, Cissie's appearance just in the nick of his
+inspiration, her surprising proposal of marriage, and his refusal, had
+accomplished one thing: it had committed Peter to the program he had
+outlined to the girl.
+
+Indeed, there seemed something fatalistic in such a concatenation of
+events. Siner wondered whether or not he would have obeyed his vision
+without this added impulse from Cissie. He did not know; but now, since
+it had all come about just as it had, he suspected he would have been
+neglectful. He felt as if a dangerous but splendid channel had been
+opened before his eyes, and almost at the same instant a hand had
+reached down and directed his life into it. This fancy moved the
+mulatto. As he got himself ready for bed, he kept thinking:
+
+"Well, my life is settled at last. There is nothing else for me to do.
+Even if this should end terribly for me, as Cissie imagines, my life
+won't be wasted."
+
+Next morning Peter Siner was awakened by old Rose Hobbett thrusting her
+head in at his door, staring around, and finally, seeing Peter in bed,
+grumbling:
+
+"Why is you still heah, black man?"
+
+The secretary opened his eyes in astonishment.
+
+"Why shouldn't I be here?"
+
+"Nobody wuz 'speckin' you to be heah." The crone withdrew her head and
+vanished.
+
+Peter wondered at this unaccustomed interest of Rose, then hurried out
+of bed, supposing himself late for breakfast.
+
+A dense fog had come up from the river, and the moisture floating into
+his open windows had dampened his whole room. Peter stepped briskly to
+the screen and began splashing himself. It was only in the midst of his
+ablutions that he remembered his inspiration and resolve of the previous
+evening. As he squeezed the water over his powerfully molded body, he
+recalled it almost impersonally. It might have happened to some third
+person. He did not even recall distinctly the threads of the logic which
+had lifted him to such a Pisgah, and showed him the whole South as a new
+and promised land. However, he knew that he could start his train of
+thought again, and again ascend the mountain.
+
+Floating through the fog into his open window came the noises of the
+village as it set about living another day, precisely as it had lived
+innumerable days in the past. The blast of the six-o'clock whistle from
+the planing-mill made the loose sashes of his windows rattle. Came a
+lowing of cows and a clucking of hens, a woman's calling. The voices of
+men in conversation came so distinctly through the pall that it seemed a
+number of persons must be moving about their morning work, talking and
+shouting, right in the Renfrew yard.
+
+But the thing that impressed Peter most was the solidity and stability
+of this Southern village that he could hear moving around him, and its
+certainty to go on in the future precisely as it had gone on in the
+past. It was a tremendous force. The very old manor about him seemed
+huge and intrenched in long traditions, while he, Peter Siner, was just
+a brown man, naked behind a screen and rather cold from the fog and damp
+of the morning.
+
+He listened to old Rose clashing the kitchen utensils. As he drew on his
+damp underwear, he wondered what he could say to old Rose that would
+persuade her into a little kindliness and tolerance for the white
+people. As he listened he felt hopeless; he could never explain to the
+old creature that her own happiness depended upon the charity she
+extended to others. She could never understand it. She would live and
+die precisely the same bitter old beldam that she was, and nothing could
+ever assuage her.
+
+While Peter was thinking of the old creature, she came shuffling along
+the back piazza with his breakfast. She let herself in by lifting one
+knee to a horizontal, balancing the tray on it, then opening the door
+with her freed hand.
+
+When the shutter swung open, it displayed the crone standing on one
+foot, wearing a man's grimy sock, which had fallen down over a broken,
+run-down shoe.
+
+In Peter's mood the thought of this wretched old woman putting on such
+garments morning after morning was unspeakably pathetic. He thought of
+his own mother, who had lived and died only a shade or two removed from
+the old crone's condition.
+
+Rose put down her foot, and entered the room with her lips poked out,
+ready to make instant attack if Peter mentioned his lack of supper the
+night before.
+
+"Aunt Rose," asked the secretary, with his friendly intent in his tones,
+"how came you to look in this morning and say you didn't expect to find
+me in my room?"
+
+She gave an unintelligible grunt, pushed the lamp to one side, and eased
+her tray to the table.
+
+Peter finished touching his tie before one of those old-fashioned
+mirrors, not of cut-glass, yet perfectly true. He came from the mirror
+and moved his chair, out of force of habit, so he could look up the
+street toward the Arkwrights'.
+
+"Aunt Rose," said the young man, wistfully, "why are you always angry?"
+
+She bridled at this extraordinary inquiry.
+
+"Me?"
+
+"Yes, you."
+
+She hesitated a moment, thinking how she could make her reply a personal
+assault on Peter.
+
+"'Cause you come heah, 'sputin' my rights, da' 's' why."
+
+"No," demurred Peter, "you were quarreling in the kitchen the first
+morning I came here, and you didn't know I was on the place."
+
+"Well--I got my tribulations," she snapped, staring suspiciously at
+these unusual questions.
+
+There was a pause; then Peter said placatingly:
+
+"I was just thinking, Aunt Rose, you might forget your tribulations if
+you didn't ride them all the time."
+
+"Hoccum! What you mean, ridin' my tribulations?"
+
+"Thinking about them. The old Captain, for instance; you are no happier
+always abusing the old Captain."
+
+The old virago gave a sniff, tossed her head, but kept her eyes rolled
+suspiciously on Peter.
+
+"Very often the way we think and act makes us happy or unhappy,"
+moralized Peter, broadly.
+
+"Look heah, nigger, you ain't no preacher sont out by de Lawd to me!"
+
+"Anyway, I am sure you would feel more friendly toward the Captain if
+you acted openly with him; for instance, if you didn't take off all his
+cold victuals, and handkerchiefs and socks, soap, kitchenware--"
+
+The cook snorted.
+
+"I'd feel dat much mo' nekked an' hongry, dat's how I'd feel."
+
+"Perhaps, if you'd start over, he might give you a better wage."
+
+"Huh!" she snorted in an access of irony. "I see dat skinflint gib'n' me
+a better wage. Puuh!" The suddenly she realized where the conversation
+had wandered, and stared at the secretary with widening eyes "Good Lawd!
+Did dat fool Cap'n set up a nigger in dis bedroom winder jes to ketch
+ole Rose packin' off a few ole lef'-overs?" Peter began a hurried
+denial, but she rushed on: "'Fo' Gawd, I hopes his viddles chokes him! I
+hope his ole smoke-house falls down on his ole haid. I hope to Jesus--"
+
+Peter pleaded with her not to think the Captain was behind his
+observations, but the hag rushed out of the bedroom, swinging her head
+from side to side, uttering the most terrible maledictions. She would
+show him! She wouldn't put another foot in his old kitchen. Wild horses
+couldn't drag her into his smoke-house again.
+
+Peter ran to the door and called after her down the piazza, trying to
+exonerate the Captain: but she either did not or would not hear, and
+vanished into the kitchen, still furious.
+
+Old Rose made Peter so uneasy that he deserted his breakfast midway and
+hurried to the library. In the solemn old room he found the Captain
+alone and in rather a pleased mood. The old gentleman stood patting and
+alining a pile of manuscript. As the mulatto entered he exclaimed:
+
+"Well, here's Peter again!" as if his secretary had been off on a long
+journey. Immediately afterward he added, "Peter, guess what I did last
+night." His voice was full of triumph.
+
+Peter was thinking about Aunt Rose, and stood looking at the Captain
+without the slightest idea.
+
+"I wrote all of this,"--he indicated his manuscript,--"over a hundred
+pages."
+
+Peter considered the work without much enthusiasm.
+
+"You must have worked all night."
+
+The old attorney rubbed his hands.
+
+"I think I may claim a touch of inspiration last night, Peter.
+Reminiscences rippled from under my pen, propitious words, prosperous
+sentences. Er--the fact is, Peter, you will see, when you begin copying,
+I had come to a matter--a--a matter of some moment in my life. Every
+life contains such moments, Peter. I had meant to write something in the
+nature of a defen--an explanation, Peter. But after you left the library
+last night it suddenly occurred to me just to give each fact as it took
+place, quite frankly. So I did that--not--not what I meant to write, at
+all--ah. As you copy it, you may find it not entirely without some
+interest to yourself, Peter."
+
+"To me?" repeated Peter, after the fashion of the unattentative.
+
+"Yes, to yourself." The Captain was oddly moved. He took his hands off
+the script, walked a little away from the table, came back to it. "It--
+ah--may explain a good many things that--er--may have puzzled you." He
+cleared his throat and shifted his subject briskly. "We ought to be
+thinking about a publisher. What publisher shall we have publish these
+reminiscences? Make some stir in Tennessee's political circles,
+Peter; tremendous sales; clear up questions everybody is interested in.
+H-m--well, I'll walk down town and you"--he motioned to the script--
+"begin copying--"
+
+"By the way, Captain," said Peter as the old gentleman turned for the
+door, "has Rose said anything to you yet?"
+
+The old man detached his mind from his script with an obvious effort.
+
+"What about?"
+
+"About leaving your service."
+
+"No-o, not especially; she's always leaving my service."
+
+"But in this case it was my fault; at least I brought it about. I
+remonstrated with her about taking your left-over victuals and socks and
+handkerchiefs and things. She was quite offended."
+
+"Yes, it always offends her," agreed the old man, impatiently. "I never
+mention it myself unless I catch her red-handed; then I storm a little
+to keep her in bounds."
+
+Naturally, Peter knew of this extraordinary system of service in the
+South; nevertheless he was shocked at its implications.
+
+"Captain," suggested Peter, "wouldn't you find it to your own interest
+to give old Rose a full cash payment for her services and allow her to
+buy her own things?"
+
+The Captain dismissed the subject with a wave of his hand. "She's a
+nigger, Peter; you can't hire a nigger not to steal. Born in 'em. Then
+I'm not sure but what it would be compounding a felony, hiring a person
+not to steal; might be so construed. Well, now, there's the script. Read
+it carefully, my boy, and remember that in order to gain a certain
+_status quo_ certain antecedents are--are absolutely necessary,
+Peter. Without them my--my life would have been quite empty, Peter.
+It's--it's very strange--amazing. You will understand as you read. I'll
+be back to dinner, so good-by." In the strangest agitation the old
+Captain walked out of the library. The last glimpse Peter had of him was
+his meager old figure silhouetted against the cold gray fog that filled
+the compound.
+
+Neither the Captain's agitation nor his obvious desire that Peter should
+at once read the new manuscript really got past the threshold of the
+mulatto's consciousness. Peter's thoughts still hovered about old Rose,
+and from that point spread to the whole system of colored service in the
+South. For Rose's case was typical. The wage of cooks in small Southern
+villages is a pittance--and what they can steal. The tragedy of the
+mothers of a whole race working for their board and thievings came over
+Peter with a rising grimness. And there was no public sentiment against
+such practice. It was accepted everywhere as natural and inevitable. The
+negresses were never prosecuted; no effort was made to regain the stolen
+goods. The employers realized that what they paid would not keep soul
+and body together; that it was steal or perish.
+
+It was a fantastic truth that for any colored girl to hire into domestic
+service in Hooker's Bend was more or less entering an apprenticeship in
+peculation. What she could steal was the major portion of her wage, if
+two such anomalous terms may be used in conjunction.
+
+Yet, strange to say, the negro women of the village were quite honest in
+other matters. They paid their small debts. They took their mistresses'
+pocket-books to market and brought back the correct change. And if a
+mistress grew too indignant about something they had stolen, they would
+bring it back and say: "Here is a new one. I'd rather buy you a new one
+than have you think I would take anything."
+
+The whole system was the lees of slavery, and was surely the most
+demoralizing, the most grotesque method of hiring service in the whole
+civilized world. It was so absurd that its mere relation lapses into
+humor, that bane of black folk.
+
+Such painful thoughts filled the gloomy library and harassed Peter in
+his copying. He took his work to the window and tried to concentrate
+upon it, but his mind kept playing away.
+
+Indeed, it seemed to Peter that to sit in this old room and rewrite the
+wordy meanderings of the old gentleman's book was the very height of
+emptiness. How utterly futile, when all around him, on every hand, girls
+like Cissie Dildine were being indentured to corruption! And, as far as
+Peter knew, he was the only person in the South who saw it or felt it or
+cared anything at all about it.
+
+When Cissie Dildine came to the surface of Peter's mind she remained
+there, whirling around and around in his chaotic thoughts. He began
+talking to her image, after a certain dramatic trick of his mind, and
+she began offering her environment as an excuse for what had come
+between them and estranged them. She stole, but she had been trained to
+steal. She was a thief, the victim of an immense immorality. The charm
+of Cissie, her queer, swift-working intuition, the candor of her
+confession, her voluptuousness--all came rushing down on Peter,
+harassing him with anger and love and desire. To copy any more script
+became impossible. He lost his place; he hardly knew what he was
+writing.
+
+He flung aside the whole work, got to his feet with the imperative need
+of an athlete for the open. He started out of the room, but as an
+afterthought scribbled a nervous line, telling the Captain he might not
+be back for dinner. Then he found his hat and coat and walked briskly
+around the piazza to the front gate.
+
+The trees and shrubs were dripping, but the fog had almost cleared away,
+leaving only a haze in the air. A pale, level line of it cut across the
+scarp of the Big Hill. The sun shone with a peculiar soft light through
+the vapors.
+
+As Peter passed out at the gate, the fancy came to him that he might
+very well be starting on his mission. It came with a sort of surprise.
+He wondered how other men had set about reforms. With unpremeditation?
+He wondered to whom Jesus of Nazareth preached his first sermon. The
+thought of that young Galilean, sensitive, compassionate, inexperienced,
+speaking to his first hearer, filled Peter with a strange trembling
+tenderness. He looked about the familiar street of Hooker's Bend, the
+old trees over the pavement, the shabby village houses, and it all held
+a strangeness when thus juxtaposed to the thought of Nazareth nineteen
+hundred years before.
+
+The mulatto started down the street with his footsteps quickened by a
+sense of spiritual adventure.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+On the corner, against the blank south wall of Hobbett's store, Peter
+Siner saw the usual crowd of negroes warming themselves in the soft
+sunshine. They were slapping one another, scuffling, making feints with
+knives or stones, all to an accompaniment of bragging, profanity, and
+loud laughter. Their behavior was precisely that of adolescent white
+boys of fifteen or sixteen years of age.
+
+Jim Pink Staggs was furnishing much amusement with an impromptu sleight-
+of-hand exhibition. The black audience clustered around Jim Pink in his
+pinstripe trousers and blue-serge coat. They exhibited not the least
+curiosity as to the mechanics of the tricks, but asked for more and
+still more, with the naïve delight of children in the mysterious.
+
+Peter Siner walked down the street with his Messianic impulse strong
+upon him. He was in that stage of feeling toward his people where a
+man's emotions take the color of religion. Now, as he approached the
+crowd of negroes, he wondered what he could say, how he could transfer
+to them the ideas and the emotion that lifted up his own heart.
+
+As he drew nearer, his concern mounted to anxiety. Indeed, what could he
+say? How could he present so grave a message? He was right among them
+now. One of the negroes jostled him by striking around his body at
+another negro. Peter stopped. His heart beat, and he had a queer
+sensation of being operated by some power outside himself. Next moment
+he heard himself saying in fairly normal tones:
+
+"Fellows, do you think we ought to be idling on the street corners like
+this? We ought to be at work, don't you think?"
+
+The horse-play stopped at this amazing sentiment.
+
+"Whuffo, Peter?" asked a voice.
+
+"Because the whole object of our race nowadays is to gain the respect of
+other races, and more particularly our own self-respect. We haven't it
+now. The only way to get it is to work, work, work."
+
+"Ef you feel lak you'd ought to go to wuck," suggested one astonished
+hearer, "you done got my p'mission, black boy, to hit yo' natchel gait
+to de fust job in sight."
+
+Peter was hardly less surprised than his hearers at what he was saying.
+He paid no attention to the interruption.
+
+"Fellows, it's the only way our colored people can get on and make the
+most out of life. Persistent labor is the very breath of the soul, men;
+it--it is." Here Peter caught an intimation of the whole flow of energy
+through the universe, focusing in man and being transformed into mental
+and moral values. And it suddenly occurred to him that the real worth of
+any people was their efficiency in giving this flow of force moral and
+spiritual forms. That is the end of man; that is what is prefigured when
+a baby's hand reaches for the sun. But Peter considered his audience,
+and his thought stammered on his tongue. The Persimmon, with his
+protruding, half-asleep eyes, was saying:
+
+"I don' know, Peter, as I 's so partic'lar 'bout makin' de mos' out'n
+dis worl'. You know de Bible say--hit say,"--here the Persimmon's voice
+dropped a tone lower, in unconscious imitation of negro preachers,--"la-
+ay not up yo' treasure on uth, wha moss do corrup', an' thieves break
+th'ugh _an'_ steal."
+
+Came a general nodding and agreement of soft, blurry voices.
+
+"'At sho whut it say, black man!"
+
+"Sho do!"
+
+"Lawd God loves a nigger on a street corner same as He do a millionaire
+in a six-cylinder, Peter."
+
+"Sho do, black man; but He's jes about de onlies' thing on uth 'at do."
+
+"Well, I don' know," came a troubled rejoinder. "Thaiuh 's de debbil,
+ketchin' mo' niggers nowadays dan he do white men, I 'fo' Gawd
+b'liebes."
+
+"Well, dat's because dey _is_ so many mo' niggers dan dey is white
+folks," put in a philosopher.
+
+"Whut you say 'bout dat, Brudder Peter?" inquired the Persimmon,
+seriously. None of this discussion was either derision or burlesque.
+None of the crowd had the slightest feeling that these questions were
+not just as practical and important as the suggestion that they all go
+to work.
+
+When Peter realized how their ignorant and undisciplined thoughts flowed
+off into absurdities, and that they were entirely unaware of it, it
+brought a great depression to his heart. He held up a hand with an
+earnestness that caught their vagrant attention.
+
+"Listen!" he pleaded. "Can't you see how much there is for us black
+folks to do, and what little we have done?"
+
+"Sho is a lot to do; we admits dat," said Bluegum Frakes. "But whut's de
+use doin' hit ef we kin manage to shy roun' some o' dat wuck an' keep on
+libin' anyhow, specially wid wages so high?"
+
+The question stopped Peter. Neither his own thoughts, nor any book that
+he had ever read nor any lecture that he had heard ever attempted to
+explain the enormous creative urge which is felt by every noble mind,
+and which, indeed, is shared to some extent by every human creature. Put
+to it like that, Siner concocted a sort of allegory, telling of a negro
+who was shiftless in the summer and suffered want in the winter, and
+applied it to the present high wage and to the low wage that was coming;
+but in his heart Peter knew such utilitarianism was not the true reason
+at all. Men do not weave tapestries to warm themselves, or build temples
+to keep the rain away.
+
+The brown man passed on around the corner, out of the faint warmth of
+the sunshine and away from the empty and endless arguments which his
+coming had provoked among the negroes.
+
+The futile ending of his first adventure surprised Peter. He walked
+uncertainly up the business street of the village, hardly knowing where
+to turn next.
+
+Cold weather had driven the merchants indoors, and the thoroughfare was
+quite deserted except for a few hogs rooting among the refuse heaps
+piled in front of the stores. It was not a pleasant sight, and it
+repelled Peter all the more because he was accustomed to the antiseptic
+look of a Northern city. He walked up to the third door from the corner,
+when a buzz of voices brought him to a standstill and finally persuaded
+him inside.
+
+At the back end of a badly lighted store a circle of white men and boys
+had formed around an old-fashioned, egg-shaped stove. Near by, on some
+meal-bags, sat two negroes, one of whom wore a broad grin, the other, a
+funny, sheepish look.
+
+The white men were teasing the latter negro about having gone to jail
+for selling a mortgaged cow. The men went about their fun-making
+leisurely, knowing quite well the negro could not get angry or make any
+retort or leave the store, all of these methods of self-defense being
+ruled out by custom.
+
+"You must have forgot your cow was mortgaged, Bob."
+
+"No-o-o, suh; I--I--I didn't fuhgit," drawling his vowels to a
+prodigious length.
+
+"Didn't you know you'd get into trouble?"
+
+"No-o-o, suh."
+
+"Know it now, don't you?"
+
+"Ya-a-s, suh."
+
+"Have a good time in jail, Bob?"
+
+"Ya-a-s, suh. Shot cra-a-aps nearly all de time tull de jailer broke hit
+up."
+
+"Wouldn't he let you shoot any more?"
+
+"No-o-o, suh; not after he won all our money." Here Bob flung up his
+head, poked out his lips like a bugle, and broke into a grotesque, "Hoo!
+hoo! hoo!" It was such an absurd laugh, and Bob's tale had come to such
+an absurd denouement, that the white men roared, and shuffled their feet
+on the flared base of the stove. Some spat in or near a box filled with
+sawdust, and betrayed other nervous signs of satisfaction. When a man so
+spat, he stopped laughing abruptly, straightened his face, and stared
+emptily at the rusty stove until further inquisition developed some
+other preposterous escapade in Bob's jail career.
+
+The merchant, looking up at one of these intermissions, saw Peter
+standing at his counter. He came out of the circle and asked Peter what
+he wanted. The mulatto bought a package of soda and went out.
+
+The chill north wind smelled clean after the odors of the store. Peter
+stood with his package of soda, breathing deeply, looking up and down
+the street, wondering what to do next. Without much precision of
+purpose, he walked diagonally across the street, northward toward a
+large faded sign that read, "Killibrew's Grocery." A little later Peter
+entered a big, rather clean store which smelled of spices, coffee, and a
+faint dash of decayed potatoes. Mr. Killibrew himself, a big, rotund
+man, with a round head of prematurely white hair, was visible in a
+little glass office at the end of his store. Even through the glazed
+partition Peter could see Mr. Killibrew smiling as he sat comfortably at
+his desk. Indeed, the grocer's chief assets were a really expansive
+friendliness and a pleasant, easily provoked laughter.
+
+He was fifty-two years old, and had been in the grocery business since
+he was fifteen. He had never been to school at all, but had learned
+bookkeeping, business mathematics, salesmanship, and the wisdom of the
+market-place from his store, from other merchants, and from the drummers
+who came every week with their samples and their worldly wisdom. These
+drummers were, almost to a man, very sincere friends of Mr. Killibrew,
+and not infrequently they would write the grocer from the city, or send
+him telegrams, advising him to buy this or to unload that, according to
+the exigencies of the market. As a result of this was very well off
+indeed, and all because he was a friendly, agreeable sort of man.
+
+The grocer heard Peter enter and started to come out of his office, when
+Peter stopped him and asked if he might speak with him alone.
+
+The white-haired man with the pink, good-natured face stood looking at
+Peter with rather a questioning but pleasant expression.
+
+"Why, certainly, certainly." He turned back to the swivel-chair at his
+desk, seated himself, and twisted about on Peter as he entered. Mr.
+Killibrew did not offer Peter a seat,--that would have been an
+infraction of Hooker's Bend custom,--but he sat leaning back, evidently
+making up his mind to refuse Peter credit, which he fancied the mulatto
+would ask for and yet do it pleasantly.
+
+"I was wondering, Mr. Killibrew," began Peter feeling his way along, "I
+was wondering if you would mind talking over a little matter with me.
+It's considered a delicate subject, I believe, but I thought a frank
+talk would help."
+
+During the natural pauses of Peter's explanation Mr. Killibrew kept up a
+genial series of nods and ejaculations.
+
+"Certainly, Peter. I don't see why, Peter. I'm sure it will help,
+Peter."
+
+"I'd like to talk frankly about the relations of our two races in the
+South, in Hooker's Bend."
+
+The grocer stopped his running accompaniment of affirmations and looked
+steadfastly at Peter. Presently he seemed to solve some question and
+broke into a pleasant laugh.
+
+"Now, Peter, if this is some political shenanigan, I must tell you I'm a
+Democrat. Besides that, I don't care a straw about politics. I vote, and
+that's all."
+
+Peter put down the suspicion that he was on a political errand.
+
+"Not that at all, Mr. Killibrew. It's a question of the white race and
+the black race. The particular feature I am working on is the wages paid
+to cooks."
+
+"I didn't know you were a cook," interjected the grocer in surprise.
+
+"I am not."
+
+Mr. Killibrew looked at Peter, thought intensely for a few moments, and
+came to an unescapable conclusion.
+
+"You don't mean you've formed a cook's union here in Hooker's Bend,
+Peter!" he cried, immensely amazed.
+
+"Not at all. It's this," clarified Peter. "It may seem trivial, but it
+illustrates the principle I'm trying to get at. Doesn't your cook carry
+away cold food?"
+
+It required perhaps four seconds for the merchant to stop his
+speculations on what Peter had come for and adjust his mind to the
+question.
+
+"Why, yes, I suppose so," he agreed, very much at sea. "I--I never
+caught up with her." He laughed a pleasant, puzzled laugh. "Of course
+she doesn't come around and show me what she's making off with. Why?"
+
+"Well, it's this. Wouldn't you prefer to give your cook a certain cash
+payment instead of having her taking uncertain amounts of your
+foodstuffs and wearing apparel?"
+
+The merchant leaned forward in his chair.
+
+"Did old Becky Davis send you to me with any such proposition as that,
+Peter?"
+
+"No, not at all. But, Mr. Killibrew, wouldn't you like better and more
+trustworthy servants as cooks, as farm-hands, chauffeurs, stable-boys?
+You see, you and your children and your children's children are going to
+have to depend on negro labor, as far as we can see, to the end of
+time."
+
+"We-e-ell, yes," admitted Mr. Killibrew, who was not accustomed to
+considering the end of time.
+
+"Wouldn't it be better to have honest, self-respecting help than
+dishonest help?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Then let's think about cooks. How can one hope to rear an honest, self-
+respecting citizenry as long as the mothers of the race are compelled to
+resort to thievery to patch out an insufficient wage?"
+
+"Why, I don't suppose niggers ever will be honest," admitted the grocer,
+very frankly. "You naturally don't trust a nigger. If you credit one for
+a dime, the next time he has any money he'll go trade somewhere else."
+The grocer broke into his contagious laugh. "Do you know how I've built
+up my business here, Peter? By never trusting a nigger." Mr. Killibrew
+continued his pleased chuckle. "Yes, I get the whole cash trade of the
+niggers in Hooker's Bend by never cheating one and never trusting one."
+
+The grocer leaned back in his squeaking chair and looked out through the
+glass partition, over the brightly colored packages that lined his
+shelves from floor to ceiling. All that prosperity had come about
+through a policy of honesty and distrust. It was something to be proud
+of.
+
+"Now, let me see," he proceeded, recurring pleasantly to what he
+recalled of Peter's original proposition: "Aunt Becky sent you here to
+tell me if I'd raise her pay, she'd stop stealin' and--and raise some
+honest children." Mr. Killibrew threw back his head broke into loud,
+jelly-like laughter. "Why, don't you know, Peter, she's an old liar. If
+I gave her a hundred a week, she'd steal. And children! Why, the old
+humbug! She's too old; she's had her crop. And, besides all that, I
+don't mind what the old woman takes. It isn't much. She's a good old
+darky, faithful as a dog." He arose from his swivel-chair briskly and
+floated Peter out before him. "Tell her, if she wants a raise," he
+concluded heartily, "and can't pinch enough out of my kitchen and the
+two dollars I pay her--tell her to come to me, straight out, and I'll
+give her more, and she can pinch more."
+
+Mr. Killibrew moved down the aisle of his store between fragrant barrels
+and boxes, laughing mellowly at old Aunt Becky's ruse, as he saw it. As
+he turned Peter out, he invited him to come again when he needed
+anything in the grocery line.
+
+And he was so pleasant, hearty, and sincere in his friendliness toward
+both Peter and old Aunt Becky that Peter, even amid the complete side-
+tracking and derailing of his mission, decided that it ever he did have
+occasion to purchase any groceries, he would do his trading at this
+market ruled by an absolute honesty with, and a complete distrust in,
+his race.
+
+At the conclusion of the Killibrew interview Peter instinctively felt
+that he had just about touched the norm of Hooker's Bend. The village
+might contain men who would dive a little deeper into the race question
+with Peter; assuredly, there would be hundreds who would not dive so
+deep. Mr. Killibrew's attitude on the race question turned on how to
+hold the negro patronage of the village to his grocery. It was not an
+abstract question at all, but a concrete fact, which he had worked out
+to his own satisfaction. With Mr. Killibrew, with all Hooker's Bend,
+there was no negro question.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+When Peter Siner started on his indefinite errand among the village
+stores he believed it would require much tact and diplomacy to discuss
+the race question without offense. To his surprise, no precaution was
+necessary. Everybody agreed at once that the South would be benefited by
+a more trustworthy labor, that if the negroes were trustworthy they
+could be paid more; but nobody agreed that if negroes were paid more
+they would become more trustworthy. The prevailing dictum was, A
+nigger's a nigger.
+
+As Peter came out into the shabby little street of Hooker's Bend
+discouragement settled upon him. He felt as if he had come squarely
+against some blank stone wall that no amount of talking could budge. The
+black man would have to change his psychology or remain where he was, a
+creature of poverty, hovels, and dirt; but amid such surroundings he
+could not change his psychology.
+
+The point of these unhappy conclusions somehow turned against Cissie
+Dildine. The mulatto became aware that his whole crusade had been
+undertaken in behalf of the octoroon. Everything the merchants said
+against negroes became accusations against Cissie in a sharp personal
+way. "A nigger is a nigger"; "A thief is a thief"; "She wouldn't quit
+stealing if I paid her a hundred a week." Every stroke had fallen
+squarely on Cissie's shoulders. A nigger, a thief; and she would never
+be otherwise.
+
+It was all so hopeless, so unchangeable, that Peter walked down the
+bleak street unutterably depressed There was nothing he could do. The
+situation was static. It seemed best that he should go away North and
+save his own skin. It was impossible to take Cissie with him. Perhaps in
+time he would come to forget her, and in so doing he would forget the
+pauperism and pettinesses of all the black folk of the South. Because
+through Cissie Peter saw the whole negro race. She was flexuous and
+passionate, kindly and loving, childish and naïvely wise; on occasion
+she could falsify and steal, and in the depth of her Peter sensed a
+profound capacity for fury and violence. For all her precise English,
+she was untamed, perhaps untamable.
+
+Cissie was a far cry from the sort of woman Peter imagined he wanted for
+a mate; yet he knew that if he stayed on in Hooker's Bend, seeing her,
+desiring her, with her luxury mocking the loneliness of the old Renfrew
+manor, presently he would marry her. Already he had had his little
+irrational moments when it seemed to him that Cissie herself was quite
+fine and worthy and that her speculations were something foreign and did
+not pertain to her at all.
+
+He would better go North. It would be safer up there. No doubt he could
+find another colored girl in the North. The thought of fondling any
+other woman filled Peter with a sudden, sharp repulsion. However, Peter
+was wise. He knew he would get over that in time.
+
+With this plan in mind, Peter set out down the street, intending to
+cross the Big Hill at the church, walk over to his mother's shack, and
+pack his few belongings preparatory to going away.
+
+It was not a heroic retreat. The conversation which he had had with his
+college friend Farquhar recurred to Peter. Farquhar had tried to
+persuade Peter to remain North and take a position in a system of
+garages out of Chicago.
+
+"You can do nothing in the South, Siner," assured Farquhar; "your
+countrymen must stand on their own feet, just as you are doing."
+
+Peter had argued the vast majority of the negroes had no chance, but
+Farquhar pressed the point that Peter himself disproved his own
+statement. At the time Peter felt there was an clench in the
+Illinoisan's logic, but he was not skilful enough to analyze it. Now the
+mulatto began to see that Farquhar was right. The negro question was a
+matter of individual initiative. Critics forgot that a race was composed
+of individual men.
+
+Peter had an uneasy sense that this was exceedingly thin logic, a mere
+smoke screen behind which he meant to retreat back up North. He walked
+on down the poor village street, turning it over and over in his mind,
+affirming it positively to himself, after the manner of uneasy
+consciences.
+
+An unusual stir among the negroes on Hobbett's corner caught Peter's
+attention and broke into his chain of thought. Half a dozen negroes
+stood on the corner, staring down toward the white church. A black boy
+suddenly started running across the street, and disappeared among the
+stores on the other side. Peter caught glimpses of him among the
+wretched alleyways and vacant lots that lie east of Main Street. The boy
+was still running toward Niggertown.
+
+By this time Peter was just opposite the watchers on the corner. He
+lifted his voice and asked them the matter, but at the moment they began
+an excited talking, and no one heard him.
+
+Jim Pink Staggs jerked off his fur cap, made a gesture, contorted his
+long, black face into a caricature of fright, and came loping across the
+street, looking back over his shoulder, mimicking a run for life His
+mummery set his audience howling.
+
+The buffoon would have collided with Peter, but the mulatto caught Jim
+Pink by the arm and shoulder, brought him to a halt, and at the same
+time helped him keep his feet.
+
+To Peter's inquiry what was the matter, the black fellow whirled and
+blared out loudly, for the sake of his audience:
+
+"'Fo' Gawd, nigger, I sho thought Mr. Bobbs had me!" and he writhed his
+face into an idiotic grimace.
+
+The audience reeled about in their mirth. Because with negroes, as with
+white persons, two thirds of humor is in the reputation, and Jim Pink
+was of prodigious repute.
+
+Peter walked along with him patiently, because he knew that until they
+were out of ear-shot of the crowd there was no way of getting a sensible
+answer out of Jim Pink.
+
+"Where are you going?" he asked presently.
+
+"Thought I'd step over to Niggertown." Jim Pink's humorous air was still
+upon him.
+
+"What's doing over there? What were the boys raising such a hullabaloo
+about?"
+
+"Such me."
+
+"Why did that boy go running across like that?"
+
+Jim Pink rolled his eyes on Peter with a peculiar look.
+
+"Reckon he mus' 'a' wanted to git on t'other side o' town."
+
+Peter flattered the Punchinello by smiling a little.
+
+"Come, Jim Pink, what do you know?" he asked. The magician poked out his
+huge lips.
+
+"Mr. Bobbs turn acrost by de church, over de Big Hill. Da' 's always a
+ba-ad sign."
+
+Peter's brief interest in the matter flickered out. Another arrest for
+some niggerish peccadillo. The history of Niggertown was one long series
+of petty offenses, petty raids, and petty punishments. Peter would be
+glad to get well away from such a place.
+
+"Think I'll go North, Jim Pink," remarked Peter, chiefly to keep up a
+friendly conversation with his companion.
+
+"Whut-chu goin' to do up thaiuh?"
+
+"Take a position in a system of garages."
+
+"A position is a job wid a white color on it," defined the minstrel.
+"Whut you goin' to do wid Cissie?"
+
+Peter looked around at the foolish face.
+
+"With Cissie?--Cissie Dildine?"
+
+"Uh huh."
+
+"Why, what makes you think I'm going to do anything with Cissie?"
+
+"M-m, visitin' roun'." The fool flung his face into a grimace, and
+dropped it as one might shake out a sack.
+
+Peter watched the contortion uneasily.
+
+"What do you mean--visiting around?"
+
+
+   "Diff'nt folks go visitin' roun';
+    Some goes up an' some goes down."
+
+
+Apparently Jim Pink had merely quoted a few words from a poem he knew.
+He stared at the green-black depth of the glade, which set in about
+half-way up the hill they were climbing.
+
+"Ef this weather don' ever break," he observed sagely, "we sho am in fuh
+a dry spell."
+
+Peter did not pursue the topic of the weather. He climbed the hill in
+silence, wondering just what the buffoon meant. He suspected he was
+hinting at Cissie's visit to his room. However, he did not dare ask any
+questions or press the point in any manner, lest he commit himself.
+
+The minstrel had succeeded in making Peter's walk very uncomfortable, as
+somehow he always did. Peter went on thinking about the matter. If Jim
+Pink knew of Cissie's visit, all Niggertown knew it. No woman's
+reputation, nobody's shame or misery or even life, would stand between
+Jim Pink and what he considered a joke. The buffoon was the crudest
+thing in this world--a man who thought himself a wit.
+
+Peter could imagine all the endless tweaks to Cissie's pride Niggertown
+would give the octoroon. She had asked Peter to marry her and had been
+refused. She had humbled herself for naught. That was the very tar of
+shame. Peter knew that in the moral categories of Niggertown Cissie
+would suffer more from such a rebuff than if she had lied or committed
+theft and adultery every day in the calendar. She had been refused
+marriage. All the folk-ways of Niggertown were utterly topsyturvy. It
+was a crazy-house filled with the most grotesque moral measures.
+
+It seemed to Peter as he entered the cedar-glade that he had lost all
+sympathy with this people from which he had sprung. He looked upon them
+as strange, incomprehensible beings, just as a man will forget his own
+childhood and look upon children as strange, incomprehensible little
+creatures. In the midst of his thoughts he heard himself saying to Jim
+Pink:
+
+"I suppose it is as dusty as ever."
+
+"Dustier 'an ever," assured Jim Pink.
+
+Apparently their conversation had recurred to the weather, after all.
+
+A chill silence encompassed the glade. The path the negroes followed
+wound this way and that among reddish boulders, between screens of
+intergrown cedars, and over a bronze mat of needles. Their steps were
+noiseless. The odor of the cedars and the temple-like stillness brought
+to Peter's mind the night of his mother's death. It seemed to him a long
+time since he had come running through the glade after a doctor, and
+yet, by a queer distortion of his sense of time, his mother's death and
+burial bulked in his past as if it had occurred yesterday.
+
+There was no sound in the glade to disturb Peter's thoughts except a
+murmur of human voices from some of the innumerable privacies of the
+place, and the occasional chirp of a waxwing busy over clusters of
+cedar-balls.
+
+It had been five weeks and a day since Caroline died. Five weeks and a
+day; his mother's death drifting away into the mystery and oblivion of
+the past. Likewise, twenty-five years of his own life completed and
+gone.
+
+A procession of sad, wistful thoughts trailed through Peter's brain: his
+mother, and Ida May, and now Cissie. It seemed to Peter that all any
+woman had ever brought him was wistfulness and sadness. His mother had
+been jealous, and instead of the great happiness he had expected, his
+home life with her had turned out a series of small perplexities and
+pains. Before that was Ida May, and now here was her younger sister.
+Peter wondered if any man ever reached the peace and happiness
+foreshadowed in his dream of a woman.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+A voice calling his name checked Peter's stride mechanically, and caused
+him to look about with the slight bewilderment of a man aroused from a
+reverie.
+
+At the first sound, however, Jim Pink became suddenly alert. He took
+three strides ahead of Peter, and as he went he whispered over his
+shoulder:
+
+"Beat it, nigger! beat it!"
+
+The mulatto recognized one of Jim Pink's endless stupid attempts at
+comedy. It would be precisely Jim Pink's idea of a jest to give Peter a
+little start. As the mulatto stood looking about among the cedars for
+the person who had called his name, it amazed him that Jim Pink could be
+so utterly insane; that he performed some buffoonery instantly, by
+reflex action as it were, upon the slightest provocation. It was almost
+a mania with Jim Pink; it verged on the pathological.
+
+The clown, however, was pressing his joke. He was pretending great fear,
+and was shouting out in his loose minstrel voice:
+
+"Hey, don' shoot down dis way, black man, tull I makes my exit!" And a
+voice, rich with contempt, called back:
+
+"You needn't be skeered, you fool rabbit of a nigger!"
+
+Peter turned with a qualm. Quite close to him, and in another direction
+from which he had been looking, stood Tump Pack. The ex-soldier looked
+the worse for wear after his jail sentence. His uniform was frayed, and
+over his face lay a grayish cast that marks negroes in bad condition. At
+his side, attached by a belt and an elaborate shoulder holster, hung a
+big army revolver, while on the greasy lapel of his coat was pinned his
+military medal for exceptional bravery on the field of battle.
+
+"Been lookin' fuh you fuh some time, Peter," he stated grimly.
+
+Peter considered the formidable figure with a queer sensation. He tried
+to take Tump's appearance casually; he tried to maintain an air of
+ordinariness.
+
+"Didn't know you were back."
+
+"Yeah, I's back."
+
+"Have you--been looking for me?"
+
+"Yeah."
+
+"Didn't you know where I was staying?"
+
+"Co'se I did; up 'mong de white folks. You know dey don' 'low no
+shootin' an' killin' 'mong de white folks." He drew his pistol from the
+holster with the address of an expert marksman.
+
+[Illustration: "Naw yuh don't," he warned sharply. "You turn roun' an'
+march on to niggertown"]
+
+Peter stood, with a quickening pulse, studying his assailant. The glade,
+the air, the sunshine, seemed suddenly drawn to a tension, likely to,
+break into violent commotion. His abrupt danger brought Peter to a
+feeling of lightness and power. A quiver went along his spine. His
+nostrils widened unconsciously as he calculated a leap and a blow at
+Tump's gun.
+
+The soldier took a step backward, at the same time bringing the barrel
+to a ready.
+
+"Naw you don't," he warned sharply. "You turn roun' an' march on to
+Niggertown."
+
+"What for?" Peter still tried to be casual, but his voice held new
+overtones.
+
+"Because, nigger, I means to drap you right on de Main Street o'
+Niggertown, 'fo' all dem niggers whut's been a-raggin' me 'bout you an'
+Cissie. I's gwine show dem fool niggers I don' take no fumi-diddles
+off'n nobody."
+
+"Tump," gasped Jim Pink, in a husky voice, "you oughtn't shoot Peter; he
+mammy jes daid."
+
+"'En she won' worry none. Turn roun', Peter, an' when I says, 'March,'
+you march." He leveled his pistol. "'Tention! Rat about face! March!"
+
+Peter turned and moved off down the noiseless path, walking with the
+stiff gait of a man who expects a terrific blow from behind at any
+instant.
+
+The mulatto walked twenty or more paces amid a confusion of self-
+protective impulses. He thought of whirling on Tump even at this late
+date. He thought of darting behind a cedar, but he knew the man behind
+him was an expert shot, and something fundamental in the brown man
+forbade his getting himself killed while running away. It was too
+undignified a death.
+
+Presently he surprised himself by calling over his shoulder, as a sort
+of complaint:
+
+"How came you with the pistol, Tump? Thought it was against the law to
+carry one."
+
+"You kin ca'y 'em ef you don' keep 'em hid," explained the ex-soldier in
+a wooden voice. "Mr. Bobbs tol' me dat when he guv my gun back."
+
+The irony of the thing caught Peter, for the authorities to arrest Tump
+not because he was trying to kill Peter, but because he went about his
+first attempt in an illegal manner. For the first time in his life the
+mulatto felt that contempt for a white man's technicalities that flavors
+every negro's thoughts. Here for thirty days his life had been saved by
+a technical law of the white man; at the end of the thirty days, by
+another technical law, Tump was set at liberty and allowed to carry a
+weapon, in a certain way, to murder him. It was grotesque; it was
+absurd. It filled Peter with a sudden violent questioning of the whole
+white régime. His thoughts danced along in peculiar excitement.
+
+At the turn of the hill the trio came in sight of the squalid semicircle
+of Niggertown. Here and there from a tumbledown chimney a feather of
+pale wood smoke lifted into the chill sunshine. The sight of the houses
+brought Peter a sharp realization that his life would end in the curving
+street beneath him. A shock at the incomprehensible brevity of his life
+rushed over him. Just to that street, just as far as the curve, and his
+legs were swinging along, carrying him forward at an even gait.
+
+All at once he began talking, arguing. He tried to speak at an ordinary
+tempo, but his words kept edging on faster and faster:
+
+"Tump, I'm not going to marry Cissie Dildine."
+
+"I knows you ain't, Peter."
+
+"I mean, if you let me alone, I didn't mean to."
+
+"I ain't goin' to let you alone."
+
+"Tump, we had already decided not to marry."
+
+After a short pause Tump said in a slightly different tone:
+
+"'Pears lak you don' haf to ma'y her--comin' to yo' room."
+
+A queer sinking came over the mulatto. "Listen, Tump, I--we--in my room
+--we simply talked, that's all. She came to tell me she was goin away.
+I--I didn't harm her, Tump." Peter swallowed. He despaired of being
+believed.
+
+But his defense only infuriated the soldier. He suddenly broke into
+violent profanity.
+
+"Hot damn you! shut yo black mouf! Whut I keer whut-chu done! You weaned
+her away fum me. She won't speak to me! She won't look at me!" A sudden
+insanity of rage seized Tump. He poured on his victim every oath and
+obscenity he had raked out of the whole army.
+
+Strangely enough, the gunman's outbreak brought a kind of relief to
+Peter Siner. It exonerated him. He was not suspected of wronging Cissie;
+or, rather, whether he had or had not wronged her made no difference to
+Tump. Peter's crime consisted in mere being, in existing where Cissie
+could see him and desire him rather than Tump. Why it calmed Peter to
+know that Tump held no dishonorable charge against him the mulatto
+himself could not have told. Tump's violence showed Peter the certainty
+of his own death, and somehow it washed away the hope and the thought of
+escape.
+
+Half-way down the hill they entered the edge of Niggertown. The smell of
+sties and stables came to them. Peter's thoughts moved here and there,
+like the eyes of a little child glancing about as it is forced to leave
+a pleasure-ground.
+
+Peter knew that Jim Pink, who now made a sorry figure in their rear,
+would one day give a buffoon's mimicry of this his walk to death. He
+thought of Tump, who would have to serve a year or two in the Nashville
+Penitentiary, for the murder of negroes is seldom severely punished. He
+thought of Cissie. He was being murdered because Cissie desired him.
+
+And then Peter remembered the single bit of wisdom that his whole life
+had taught him. It was this: no people can become civilized until the
+woman has the power of choice among the males that sue for her hand. The
+history of the white race shows the gradual increase of the woman's
+power of choice. Among the yellow races, where this power is curtailed,
+civilization is curtailed. It was this principle that exalted chivalry.
+Upon it the white man has reared all his social fabric.
+
+So deeply ingrained is it that almost every novel written by white men
+revolves about some woman's choice of her mate being thwarted by power
+or pride or wealth, but in every instance the rightness of the woman's
+choice is finally justified. The burden of every song is love, true
+love, enduring love, a woman's true and enduring love.
+
+And in his moment of clairvoyance Peter saw that these songs and stories
+were profoundly true. Against a woman's selectiveness no other social
+force may count.
+
+That was why his own race was weak and hopeless and helpless. The males
+of his people were devoid of any such sentiment or self-repression. They
+were men of the jungle, creatures of tusk and claw and loin. This very
+act of violence against his person condemned his whole race.
+
+These thoughts brought the mulatto an unspeakable sadness, not only for
+his own particular death, but that this idea, this great redeeming
+truth, which burned so brightly in his brain, would in another moment
+flicker out, unrevealed, and be no more.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+The coughing and rattling of an old motor-car as it rounded the
+Niggertown curve delayed Tump Pack's act of violence. Instinctively, the
+three men waited for the machine to pass before Peter walked out into
+the road. Next moment it appeared around the turn, moving slowly through
+the dust and spreading a veritable fog behind it.
+
+All three negroes recognized the first glimpse of the hood and top, for
+there are only three or four cars in Hooker's Bend, and these are as
+well known as the faces of their owners. This particular motor belonged
+to Constable Bobbs, and the next moment the trio saw the ponderous body
+of the officer at the wheel, and by his side a woman. As the machine
+clacked toward them Peter felt a certain surprise to see that it was
+Cissie Dildine.
+
+The constable in the car scrutinized the black men, by the roadside in a
+very peculiar way. As he came near, he leaned across Cissie and almost
+eclipsed the girl. He eyed the trio with his perpetual menace of a grin
+on his broad red face. His right hand, lying across Cissie's lap, held a
+revolver. When closest he shouted above the clangor of his engine:
+
+"Now, none o' that, boys! None o' that! You'll prob'ly hit the gal if
+you shoot, an' I'll pick you off lak three black skunks."
+
+He brandished his revolver at them, but the gesture was barely seen, and
+instantly concealed by the cloud; of dust following the motor. Next
+moment it enveloped the negroes and hid them even from one another.
+
+It was only after Peter was lost in the dust-cloud that the mulatto
+really divined what was meant by Cissie's strange appearance with the
+constable, her chalky face, her frightened brown eyes. The significance
+of the scene grew in his mind. He stood with eyes screwed to slits
+staring into the apricot-colored dust in the direction of the vanishing
+noise.
+
+Presently Tump Pack's form outlined itself in the yellow obscurity,
+groping toward Peter. He still held his pistol, but it swung at his
+side. He called Peter's name in the strained voice of a man struggling
+not to cough:
+
+"Peter--is Mr. Bobbs done--'rested Cissie?"
+
+Peter could hardly talk himself.
+
+"Don't know. Looks like it."
+
+The two negroes stared at each other through the dust.
+
+"Fuh Gawd's sake! Cissie 'rested!" Tump began to cough. Then he wheezed:
+
+"Mine an' yo' little deal's off, Peter. You gotta he'p git her out."
+Here he fell into a violent fit of coughing, and started groping his way
+to the edge of the dust-cloud.
+
+In the rush of the moment the swift change in Peter's situation appeared
+only natural. He followed Tump, so distressed by the dust and disturbed
+over Cissie that he hardly thought of his peculiar position. The dust
+pinched the upper part of his throat, stung his nose. Tears trickled
+from his eyes, and he pressed his finger against his upper lip, trying
+not to sneeze. He was still struggling against the sneeze when Tump
+recovered his speech.
+
+"Wh-whut you reckon she done, Peter? She don' shoot craps, nor boot-
+laig, nor--" He fell to coughing.
+
+Peter got out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes.
+
+"Let's go--to the Dildine house," he said.
+
+The two moved hurriedly through the thinning cloud, and presently came
+to breathable air, where they could see the houses around them.
+
+"I know she done somp'n; I know she done somp'n," chanted Tump, with the
+melancholy cadence of his race. He shook his dusty head. "You ain't
+never been in jail, is you, black man?"
+
+Peter said he had not.
+
+"Lawd! it ain't no place fuh a woman," declared Tump. "You dunno nothin'
+'bout it, black man. It sho ain't no place fuh a woman."
+
+A notion of an iron cage floated before Peter's mind. The two negroes
+trudged on through the crescent side by side, their steps raising a
+little trail of dust in the air behind them. Their faces and clothes
+were of a uniform dust color. Streaks of mud marked the runnels of their
+tears down their cheeks.
+
+The shrubbery and weeds that grew alongside the negro thoroughfare were
+quite dead. Even the little avenue of dwarf box was withered that led
+from the gate to the door of the Dildine home. The two colored men
+walked up the little path to the door, knocked, and waited on the steps
+for the little skirmish of observation from behind the blinds. None
+came. The worst had befallen the house; there was nothing to guard. The
+door opened as soon as an inmate could reach it, and Vannie Dildine
+stood before them.
+
+The quadroon's eyes were red, and her face had the moist, slightly
+swollen appearance that comes of protracted weeping. She looked so frail
+and miserable that Peter instinctively stepped inside and took her arm
+to assist her in the mere physical effort of standing.
+
+"What is the matter, Mrs. Dildine?" he asked in a shocked tone. "What's
+happened to Cissie?"
+
+Vannie began weeping again with a faint gasping and a racking of her
+flat chest.
+
+"It's--it's--O-o-oh, Peter!" She put an arm about him and began weeping
+against him. He soothed her, patted her shoulder, at the same time
+staring at the side of her head, wondering what could have dealt her
+this blow.
+
+Presently she steadied herself and began explaining in feeble little
+phrases, sandwiched between sobs and gasps:
+
+"She--tuk a brooch--Kep'--kep' layin' it roun' in--h-her way, th-that
+young Sam Arkwright did,--a-an' finally she--she tuk hit. N-nen, when he
+seen he h-had her, he said sh-sh-she 'd haf to d-do wh-whut he said, or
+he'd sen' her to-to ja-a-il!" Vannie sobbed drearily for a few moments
+on Peter's breast. "Sh-she did fuh a while: 'n 'en sh-she broke off wid
+h-him, anyhow, an'--an' he swo' out a wa'nt an sont her to jail!" The
+mother sobbed without comfort, and finally added: "Sh-she in a delicate
+fix now, an' 'at jail goin' to be a gloomy place fuh Cissie."
+
+The three negroes stood motionless in the dusty hallway, motionless save
+for the racking of Vannie's sobs.
+
+Tump Pack stirred himself.
+
+"Well, we gotta git her out." His words trailed off. He stood wrinkling
+his half-inch of brow. "I wonder would dey exchange pris'ners; wonder ef
+I could go up an' serve out Cissie's term."
+
+"Oh, Tump!" gasped the woman, "ef you only could!"
+
+"I'll step an' see, Miss Vannie. 'At sho ain't no place fuh a nice gal
+lak Cissie." Tump turned on his mission, evidently intending to walk to
+Jonesboro and offer himself in the place of the prisoner.
+
+Peter supported Vannie back into the poor living-room, and placed her in
+the old rocking-chair before the empty hearth. There was where he had
+sat the evening Cissie made her painful confession to him. Only now did
+he realize the whole of what Cissie was trying to confess.
+
+Peter Siner overtook Tump Pack a little way down the crescent, opposite
+the Berry cabin. The thoroughfare was deserted, because the weather was
+cold and the scantily clad children were indoors. However, from every
+cabin came sound of laughing and romping, and now and then a youngster
+darted through the cold from one hut to another.
+
+It seemed to Peter Siner only a little while since he and Ida May were
+skittering through wintry weather from one fire to another, with Cissie,
+a wailing, wet-nosed little spoil-sport, trailing after them. And then,
+with a wheeling of the years, they were scattered everywhere.
+
+As the negroes passed the Berry cabin, Nan Berry came out with an old
+shawl around her bristling spikes. She stopped the two men and drew them
+to her gate with a gesture.
+
+"Wha you gwine?"
+
+"Jonesbuh."
+
+"Whut you goin' do 'bout po-o-o' Cissie?"
+
+"Goin' to see ef the sheriff won' take me 'stid o' Cissie."
+
+"Tha's right," said Nan, nodding solemnly. "I hopes he will. You is mo'
+used to it, Tump."
+
+"Yeah, an' 'at jail sho ain't no place fuh a nice gal lak Cissie."
+
+"Sho ain't," agreed Nan.
+
+Peter interrupted to say he was sure the sheriff would not exchange.
+
+The hopes of his listeners fell.
+
+"Weh-ul," dragged out Nan, with a long face, "of co'se now it's lak dis:
+ef Cissie goin' to stay in dat ja-ul, she's goin' to need some mo'
+clo'es 'cep'n whut she's got on,--specially lak she is."
+
+Tump stared down the swing of the crescent.
+
+"'Fo' Gawd, dis sho don' seem lak hit's right to me," he said.
+
+Nan let herself out at the rickety gate. "You niggers wait heah tull I
+runs up to Miss Vannie's an' git some o' Cissie's clo'es fuh you to tote
+her."
+
+Tump objected.
+
+"Jail ain't no place fuh clean clo'es. She jes better serve out her term
+lak she is, an' wash up when she gits th'ugh."
+
+"You fool nigger!" snapped Nan. "She kain't serve out her term lak she
+is!"
+
+"Da' 's so," said Tump.
+
+The three stood silent, Nan and Tump lost in blankness, trying to think
+of something to do for Cissie. Finally Nan said:
+
+"I heah she done commit gran' larceny, an' they goin' sen' her to de
+pen."
+
+"Whut is gran' larceny?" asked Tump.
+
+"It's takin' mo' at one time an' de white folks 'speck you to take,"
+defined the woman. "Well, I'll go git her clo'es." She hurried off up
+the crescent.
+
+Peter and Tump waited in the Berry cabin for Nan's return. Outside, the
+Berry cabin was the usual clapboard-roofed, weather-stained structure;
+inside, it was dark, windowless, and strong with the odor of black folk.
+Some children were playing around the hearth, roasting chestnuts. Their
+elders sat in a circle of decrepit chairs. It was so dark that when
+Peter first entered he could not make out the little group, but he soon
+recognized their voices: Parson Ranson, Wince Washington, Jerry
+Dillihay, and all of the Berry family.
+
+They were talking of Cissie, of course. They hoped Cissie wouldn't
+really be sent to the penitentiary, that the white folks would let her
+out in time for her to have her child at home. Parson Ranson thought it
+would be bad luck for a child to be born in jail.
+
+Wince Washington, who had been in jail a number of times, suggested that
+they bail Cissie out by signing their names to a paper. He had been set
+free by this means once or twice.
+
+Sally, Nan's little sister, observed tartly that if Cissie hadn't acted
+so, she wouldn't have been in jail.
+
+"Don' speak lak dat uv dem as is in trouble, Sally," reproved old Parson
+Ranson, solemnly; "anybody can say 'Ef.'"
+
+"Sho am de troof," agreed Jerry Dillihay.
+
+"Sho am, black man." The conversation drifted into the endless
+moralizing of their race, but it held no criticism or condemnation of
+Cissie. From the tone of the negroes one would have thought some
+impersonal disaster had overtaken her. Every one was planning how to
+help Cissie, how to make her present state more endurable. They were the
+black folk, the unfortunate of the earth, and the pride of righteousness
+is only to the well placed and the untempted.
+
+Presently Nan came back with a bundle of Cissie's clothes. Tump took the
+bundle of dainty lingerie, the intimate garments of the woman he loved,
+and set forth on his quixotic errand. He tied it to his shoulder-holster
+and set out. Peter went a little of the way with him. It was almost dusk
+when they started. The chill of approaching night stung the men's faces.
+As they walked past the footpath that led over the Big Hill, three
+pistol-shots from the glade announced that the boot-leggers had opened
+business for the night.
+
+Tump paused and shivered. He said it was a cold night. He thought he
+would like to get a kick of "white mule" to put a little heart in him.
+It was a long walk to Jonesboro. He hesitated a moment, then turned off
+the road around the crescent for the path through the glade.
+
+A thought to dissuade Tump from drinking the fiery "singlings" of the
+moonshiners crossed Peters mind, but he put it aside. Tump was a habitué
+of the glade. All the physiological arguments upon which Peter could
+base an argument were far beyond the ex-soldier's comprehension. So Tump
+turned off through the dark trees. Peter watched him until all he could
+see was the white blur of Cissie's underwear swinging against his
+holster.
+
+After Tump's disappearance, Peter stood for several minutes thinking.
+His brief crusade into Niggertown had ended in a situation far outside
+of his volition. That morning he had started out with some vague idea of
+taking Niggertown in his hands and molding it in accordance with his
+white ideas; but Niggertown had taken Peter into its hands, had
+threatened his life, had administered to him profound mental and moral
+shocks, and now had dropped him, like some bit of waste, with his face
+set over the Big Hill for white town.
+
+As Peter stood there it seemed to him there was something symbolic in
+his attitude. He was no longer of the black world; he was of the white.
+He did not understand his people; they eluded him.
+
+He belonged to the white world; not to the village across the hill, but
+to the North. Nothing now prevented him from going North and taking the
+position with Farquhar. Cissie Dildine was impossible for him now.
+Niggertown was immovable, at least for him. He was no Washington to lead
+his people to a loftier plane. In fact, Peter began to suspect that he
+was no leader at all. He saw now that his initial success with the Sons
+and Daughters of Benevolence had been effected merely by the aura of his
+college training. After his first misstep he had never rehabilitated
+himself. He perhaps had a dash of the artistic in him, and the power to
+mold ideas often confuses itself subjectively with the power to mold
+human beings. In reality he did not even understand the people he
+assumed to mold. A suspicion came to him that under the given conditions
+their ways were more rational than his own.
+
+As for Cissie Dildine, his duty by the girl, his queer protective
+passion for her--all that was surely past now. After her lapse from all
+decency there was no reason why he should spend another thought on her.
+He would go North to Chicago.
+
+The last of the twilight was fading in swift, visible gradations of
+light. The cedars, the cabins, and the hill faded in pulse-beats of
+darkness. Above the Big Hill the last ember of day smoldered against a
+green-blue infinity. Here and there a star pricked the dome with a
+wintry brilliance.
+
+Then, somehow, the thought of Cissie looking out on that chilly sky
+through iron bars tightened Peter's throat. He caught himself up sharply
+for his emotion. He began a vague defense of the white man's laws on
+grounds as cold and impersonal as the winter evening. Laws, customs, and
+conventions were for the strengthening of men, to seed the select, to
+winnow the weak. It was white logic, applied firmly, as by a white man.
+But somehow the stars multiplied and kept Cissie's image before Peter--a
+cold, frightened girl, harassed with coming motherhood, peering at those
+chill, distant lights out of the blackness of a jail.
+
+The mulatto decided to spend the night in his mother's cabin. He would
+do his packing, and be ready for the down-river boat in the morning. He
+found his way to his own gate in the darkness. He lifted it around,
+entered, and walked to his door. When he tried to open it, he found some
+one had bored holes through the shutter and the jamb and had wired it
+shut.
+
+Peter struck a match to see just what had been done. The flame displayed
+a small sheet tacked on the door. He spent two matches investigating it.
+It was a notice of levy, posted by the constable in an action of debt
+brought against the estate of Caroline Siner by Henry Hooker. The owner
+of the estate and the public in general were warned against removing
+anything whatsoever from the premises under penalty exacted by the law
+governing such offenses. Then Peter untwisted the wire and entered.
+
+Peter searched about and found the tiny brass night-lamp which his
+mother always had used. The larger glass-bowled lamp was gone. The
+interior of the cabin was clammy from cold and foul from long lack of
+airing. In the corner his mother's old four-poster loomed in the
+shadows, but he could see some of its covers had been taken. He passed
+into the kitchen with a notion of building a fire and eating a bite, but
+everything edible had been abstracted. Even one of the lids of the old
+step-stove was gone. Most of the pans and kettles had disappeared, but
+the pretty old Dutch sugar-bowl remained on a bare paper-covered shelf.
+Negro-like, whatever person or persons who had ransacked Peter's home
+considered the sugar-bowl too fine to take. Or they may have thought
+that Peter would want this bowl for a keepsake, and with that queer
+compassion that permeates a negro's worst moments they allowed it to
+remain. And Peter knew if he raised an outcry about his losses, much of
+the property would be surreptitiously restored, or perhaps his neighbors
+would bring back his things and say they had found them. They would help
+him as best they could, just as they of the crescent would help Cissie
+as best they could, and would receive her back as one of them when she
+and her baby were finally released from jail.
+
+They were a queer people. They were a people who would never get on well
+and do well. They lacked the steel-like edge that the white man
+achieves. By virtue of his hardness, a white man makes his very laws and
+virtues instruments to crush and mulct his fellow-man; but negroes are
+so softened by untoward streaks of sympathy that they lose the very uses
+of their crimes.
+
+The depression of the whole day settled upon Peter with the deepening
+night. He held his poor light above his head and picked his way to his
+own room. After the magnificence of the Renfrew manor, it had contracted
+to a grimy little box lined with yellowed papers. His books were still
+intact, but Henry Hooker would get them as part payment on the Dillihay
+place, which Henry owned. On his little table still lay the pile of old
+examination papers, lists of incoherent questions which somebody
+somewhere imagined formed a test of human ability to meet and answer the
+mysterious searchings of life.
+
+Peter was familiar with the books; many of the questions he had learned
+by rote, but the night and the crescent, and the thought of a pregnant
+girl caged in the blackness of a jail filled his soul with a great
+melancholy query to which he could find no answer.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+Two voices talking, interrupting each other with ejaculations, after the
+fashion of negroes under excitement, aroused Peter Siner from his sleep.
+He caught the words: "He did! Tump did! The jailer did! 'Fo' God! black
+man, whut's Cissie doin'?"
+
+Overtones of shock, even of horror, in the two voices brought Peter wide
+awake the moment he opened his eyes. He sat up suddenly in his bed,
+remained perfectly still, listening with his mouth open. The voices,
+however, were passing. The words became indistinct, then relapsed into
+that bubbling monotone of human voices at a distance, and presently
+ceased.
+
+These fragmentary phrases, however, feathered with consternation, filled
+Peter with vague premonitions. He whirled his legs out of bed and began
+drawing on his clothes. When he was up and into the crescent, however,
+nobody was in sight. He stood breathing the chill, damp air, blinking
+his eyes. Lack of his cold bath made him feel chilly and lethargic. He
+wriggled his shoulders and considered going back, after all, and having
+his splash. Just then he saw the Persimmon coming around the crescent.
+Peter called to the roustabout and asked about Tump Pack.
+
+The Persimmon looked at Peter with his half-asleep, protruding eyeballs.
+
+"Don' you know 'bout Tump Pack already, Mister Siner?"
+
+"No." Peter was astonished at the formality of the "Mr. Siner."
+
+"Then is you 'spectin' somp'n 'bout him?"
+
+"Why, no, but I was asleep in there a moment ago, and somebody came
+along talking about Tump and Cissie. They--they aren't married, are
+they?"
+
+"Oh, no-o, no-o-o, no-o-o-o-o." The Persimmon waggled his bullet head
+slowly from side to side. "I heared Tump got into a lil trouble wid de
+jailer las' night."
+
+"Serious?"
+
+"I dunno." The Persimmon closed one of his protruding yellow eyes.
+"Owin' to whut you call se'ius; maybe whut I call se'ius wouldn't be
+se'ius to you at all; 'n 'en maybe whut you call se'ius would be ve'y
+insince'ius to Tump." The roustabout's philosophy, which consisted in a
+monotonous recasting of a given proposition, trickled on and on in the
+cold wind. After a while it fizzled out to nothing at all, and the
+Persimmon asked in a queer manner: "Did you give Tump some women's
+clo'es, Peter?"
+
+It was such an odd question that at first Peter was at loss; then he
+recalled Nan Berry's despatching Cissie some underwear. He explained
+this to the Persimmon, and tacked on a curious, "Why?"
+
+"Oh, nothin'; nothin' 'tall. Ever'body say you a mighty long-haided
+nigger. Jim Pink he tell us 'bout Tump Pack marchin' you 'roun' wid a
+gun. I sho don' want you ever git mad at me, Mister Siner. Man wid a gun
+an' you turn yo' long haid on him an' blow him away wid a wad o' women's
+clo'es. I sho don' want you ever cross yo' fingers at me, Mister Siner."
+
+Peter stared at the grotesque, bullet-headed roustabout. "Persimmon," he
+said uneasily, "what in the world are you talking about?"
+
+The Persimmon smiled a sickly, white-toothed smile. "Jim Pink say yo'
+aidjucation is a flivver. I say, 'Jim Pink, no nigger don' go off an'
+study fo' yeahs in college whut 'n he comes back an' kin throw some kin'
+uv a hoodoo over us fool niggers whut ain't got no brains. Now, Tump wid
+a gun, an' you wid jes ordina'y women's clo'es! 'Fo' Gawd, aidjucation
+is a great thing; sho is a great thing." The Persimmon gave Peter an
+apprehensive wink and moved on.
+
+There was no use trying to extract information from the Persimmon unless
+he was minded to give it. His talk would merely become vaguer and
+vaguer. Peter watched him go, then turned and attempted to throw the
+whole matter off his mind by assuming a certain brisk Northern mood. He
+must pack, get ready for the down-river gasolene launch. The doings of
+Tump Pack and Cissie Dildine were, after all, nothing to him.
+
+He started inside, when the levy notice on the door again met his eyes.
+He paused, read it over once more, and decided that he must go over the
+hill to the Planter's Bank and get Henry Hooker's permission to remove
+certain small personal belongings that he wanted to take with him.
+
+The mere clear-cut decision to go invigorated Peter.
+
+Some of the energy that always filled him during his college days in
+Boston seemed to come to him now from the mere thought of the North.
+Soon he would be in the midst of it, moving briskly, talking to wide-
+awake men to whom a slightly unusual English word would not form a
+stumbling-block to conversation. He set out down the crescent and across
+the Big Hill at a swinging stride. He was glad to get away.
+
+Beyond the white church on the other side of the hill he heard a motor
+coming in on the Jonesboro road. Presently he saw a battered car moving
+around the long swing of the pike, spewing a trail of dust down the
+wind. Its clacking became prodigious.
+
+The mulatto was just entering that indefinite stretch of thoroughfare
+where a country road becomes a village street when there came a wail of
+brakes behind him and he looked around.
+
+It was Dawson Bobbs's car. The fat man now slowed up not far from the
+mulatto and called to him.
+
+"Yes, sir," said Peter.
+
+Dawson bobbed his fat head backward and upward in a signal for Peter to
+approach. It held the casualness of one certain to be obeyed.
+
+Although Peter had done no crime, nor had even harbored a criminal
+intention, a trickle of apprehension went through him at Bobbs's nod. He
+recalled Jim Pink's saying that it was bad luck to see the constable. He
+walked up to the shuddering motor and stood about three feet from the
+running-board.
+
+The officer bit on a sliver of toothpick that he held in his thin lips.
+
+"Accident up Jonesboro las' night, Peter."
+
+"What was it, Mr. Bobbs?"
+
+"Tump Pack got killed."
+
+Peter continued looking fixedly at Mr. Bobbs's broad red face. The dusty
+road beneath him seemed to give a little dip. He repeated the
+information emptily, trying to orient himself to this sudden change in
+his whole mental horizon.
+
+The officer was looking at Peter fixedly with his chill slits of eyes.
+
+"Yeah; trying to make a jail delivery."
+
+The two men continued looking at each other, one from the road, the
+other from the motor. The flow of Peter's thoughts seemed to divide. The
+greater part was occupied with Tump Pack. Peter could vision the
+formidable ex-soldier lying dead in Jonesboro jail, with his little
+congressional medal on his breast. Some lighter portion of his mind
+nickered about here and there on trivial things. He observed a little
+hole rusted in the running-board of the motor. He noticed that the
+officer's eyes were just the same chill, washed blue as the winter sky
+above his head. He remembered a tale that, before electrocution became a
+law in Tennessee the county sheriff's nerve had failed him at a hanging,
+and the constable Dawson Bobbs had sprung the drop. There was something
+terrible about the fat man. He would do anything, absolutely anything,
+that came to his hands in the way of legal sewage.
+
+In the midst of these thoughts Peter heard himself saying.
+
+"He--was trying to get Cissie out?"
+
+"Yep."
+
+"He--must have been drunk."
+
+"Oh, yeah."
+
+Mr. Bobbs sat studying the mulatto. As he studied him he said slowly:
+
+"Some of 'em say he was disguised as a woman. Others say he had some
+women's clothes along, ready to put on. Now, me and the sheriff knowed
+Tump Pack purty well, Peter, and we knowed that nigger never in the
+worl' would 'a' thought up sich a plan by hisself."
+
+He sat looking at Peter so interrogatively that the mulatto began, in a
+strained, earnest voice, telling the constable precisely what had
+happened in regard to the clothes.
+
+Mr. Bobbs sat listening impassively, moving his toothpick up and down
+from one side to the other of his small, thin-lipped mouth. At last he
+nodded.
+
+"Well, I guess that's about the way of it. I didn't exactly understand
+the women's clothes business,--damn' fool disguise,--but we figgered it
+might pop into the head of a' edjucated nigger." He sucked his teeth,
+reflectively. "Peter," he said at last, "seems to me, if I was you, I'd
+drift on away from this town. The niggers around here ain't strong for
+you now; some say you're a hoodoo; some say this an' some that. The
+white folks don't exactly like you trying to get up a cook's union. It's
+your right to do that if you want to, of course, but this is a mighty
+small city to have unions and things. The fact is, it ain't a big enough
+place for a nigger of yore ability, Peter. I b'lieve, if I was you, I'd
+jes drift on some'eres else."
+
+The officer tipped up his toothpick so that it lifted his upper lip in a
+little v-shaped opening and exposed a strong, yellowish tooth. At the
+moment his machine started slowly forward. It gave him the appearance of
+accidentally rolling off while immersed in deep thought.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+The death of Tump Pack moved Peter with a sense of strange pathos. He
+always remembered Tump tramping away through the night to carry Cissie
+some underclothes and, if possible, to take her place in jail. At the
+foundation of Tump's being lay a faithfulness and devotion to Cissie
+that reached the heights of a dog's. And yet, he might have deserted
+her, he would probably have beaten her, and he most certainly would have
+betrayed her many, many times. It was inexplicable.
+
+
+Now that Tump was dead, the mantle of his fidelity somehow seemed to
+fall on Peter. For some reason Peter felt that he should assume Tump's
+place as Cissie Dildine's husband and protector. Had Tump lived, Peter
+might have gone North in peace, if not in happiness. Now such a journey,
+without Cissie, had become impossible. He had a feeling that it would
+not be right.
+
+As for the disgrace of marrying such a woman as Cissie Dildine, Peter
+slowly gave that idea up. The "worthinesses" and "disgraces" implicit in
+Harvard atmosphere, which Peter had spent four years of his life
+imbibing, slowly melted away in the air of Niggertown. What was
+honorable there, what was disgraceful there, somehow changed its color
+here.
+
+By virtue of this change Peter felt intuitively that Cissie Dildine was
+neither disgraced by her arrest nor soiled by her physical condition.
+Somehow she seemed just as "nice" a girl, just as "good" a girl, as ever
+she was before. Moreover, every other darky in Niggertown held these
+same instinctive beliefs. Had it not been for that, Peter would have
+thought it was his passion pleading for the girl, justifying itself by a
+grotesque morality, as passions often do. But this was not the correct
+solution. The sentiment was enigmatic. Peter puzzled over it time and
+time again as he waited in Hooker's Bend for the outcome of Cissie's
+trial.
+
+The octoroon's imprisonment came to an end on the third day after Tump's
+death. Sam Arkwright's parents had not known of their son's legal
+proceedings, and Mr. Arkwright immediately quashed the warrant, and
+hushed up the unfortunate matter as best he could. Young Sam was
+suddenly sent away from home to college, as the best step in the
+circumstances. And so the wishes of the adolescent in the cedar-glade
+came queerly to pass, even if Peter did withhold any grave, mature
+advice on the subject which he may have possessed.
+
+Naturally, there was much mirth among the men of Hooker's Bend and much
+virulence among the women over the peculiar conditions under which young
+Sam made his pilgrimage in pursuit of wisdom and morals and the right
+conduct of life. And life being problematic and uncertain as it is, and
+prone to wind about in the strangest way, no one may say with certitude
+that young Sam did not make a promising start.
+
+Certainly, over the affair the Knights of the Round Table launched many
+a quip and jest, but that simply proved the fineness of their sentiments
+toward a certain delicate human relation which forms mankind's single
+awful approach to the creative and the holy.
+
+Tump Pack became almost a mythical figure in Niggertown. Jim Pink Staggs
+composed a saga relating the soldier's exploits in France, his assault
+on the jail to liberate Cissie, and his death.
+
+In his songs--and Jim Pink had composed a good many--the minstrel
+instinctively avoided humor. He always improvised them to the sobbing of
+a guitar, and they were as invariably sad as the poetry of adolescents.
+It was called "Tump Pack's Lament." The negroes of Hooker's Bend learned
+it from Jim Pink, and with them it drifted up and down the three great
+American rivers, and now it is sung by the roustabouts, stevedores, and
+underlings of our strange black American world.
+
+This song commemorating Tump Pack's bravery and faithfulness to his love
+may very well take the place of the Congressional medal which,
+unfortunately, was lost on the night the soldier was killed. Between the
+two, there is little doubt that the accolade of fame bestowed in the
+buffoon's simple melody is more vital and enduring than that accorded by
+special act of the Congress of the United States of America.
+
+When Cissie Dildine returned from jail, she and her mother arranged the
+Dildine-Siner wedding as nearly according to white standards in similar
+circumstances as they could conceive. They agreed that it should be a
+simple, quiet home wedding. However, as every soul in Niggertown, a
+number of colored friends in Jonesboro, and a contingent from up-river
+villages meant to attend, it became necessary to hold the service in the
+church.
+
+The officiating minister was not Parson Ranson after all, but a Reverend
+Cleotus Haidus, the presiding elder of that circuit of the Afro-American
+Methodist Church, whose duties happened to call him to Hooker's Bend
+that day. So, notwithstanding Cissie's efforts at simplicity, the
+wedding, after all, was resolved into an affair.
+
+Once, in one of her moments of clairvoyance, Cissie said to Peter:
+
+"Our trouble is, Peter, we are trying to mix what I have learned in
+Nashville and what you have learned in Boston with what we both feel in
+Hooker's Bend. I--I'm almost ashamed to say it, but I don't really feel
+sad and plaintive at all, Peter. I feel glad, gloriously glad. Oh, my
+dear, dear Peter!" and she flung her arms around Peter's neck and held
+him with all her might against her ripening bosom.
+
+To Cissie her theft, her jail sentence, her pregnancy, were nothing more
+than if she had taken a sip of water. However, with the imitativeness of
+her race and the histrionic ability of her sex, she appeared pensive and
+subdued during the elaborate double-ring ceremony performed by the
+Reverend Cleotus Haidus. Nobody in the packed church knew how
+tremendously Cissie's heart was beating except Peter, who held her hand.
+
+The ethical engine that Peter had patiently builded in Harvard almost
+ceased to function in this weird morality of Niggertown. Whether he were
+doing right or doing wrong, Peter could not determine. He lost all his
+moorings. At times he felt himself walking according to the ethnological
+law, which is the Harvard way of saying walking according to the will of
+God; but at other times he felt party to some unpardonable obscenity. So
+deeply was he disturbed that out of the dregs of his mind floated up old
+bits of the Scriptures that he was unaware of possessing: "There is a
+way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of
+death." And Peter wondered if he were not in that way.
+
+[Illustration: The bridal couple embarked for Cairo]
+
+The bridal couple embarked for Cairo on the _Red Cloud_, a packet
+in the Dubuque, Ohio, and Tennessee River trade. Peter and Cissie were
+not allowed to walk up the main stairway into the passengers' cabin, but
+were required to pick their way along the boiler-deck, through the
+stench of freight, lumber, live stock and sleeping roustabouts. Then
+they went through the heat and steam of the engine-room up a small
+companionway that led through the toilet, on to the rear guard of the
+main deck, and thence back to a little cuddy behind the main saloon
+called the chambermaid's cabin.
+
+The chambermaid's cabin was filled with the perpetual odor of hot soap-
+suds, soiled laundry, and the broader smell of steam and the boat's
+machinery. The little place trembled night and day, for the steamer's
+engines were just beneath them, and immediately behind them thundered
+the great stern-wheel of the packet. A single square window in the end
+of the chambermaid's cabin looked out on the wheel, but at all times,
+except when the wind was blowing from just the right quarter, this
+window was deluged with a veritable Niagara of water. The continual
+shake of the cabin, the creak of the rudder-beam working to and fro, the
+watery thunder of the wheel, and the solemn rumble of the engines made
+conversation impossible until the travelers grew accustomed to the
+noises. Still, Cissie found it pleasant. She liked to sit and look out
+into the main saloon, with its interminable gilded scrolls extending
+away up the long cabin, a suave perspective. She liked to watch the
+white passengers dine--the white napery, the bouquets, the endless
+tables all filled with diners; some swathed in napkins from chin to
+waistband, others less completely protected. It gave Cissie a certain
+tang of triumph to smile at the swathed ones and to think that she knew
+better than that.
+
+At night a negro string-band played for the white excursionists to
+dance, and Cissie would sit, with glowing eyes, clenching Peter's hand,
+every fiber of her asway to the music, and it seemed as if her heart
+would go mad. All these inhibitions, all this spreading before her of
+forbidden joys, did not daunt her delight. She reveled in them by
+propinquity.
+
+The chambermaid was a Mrs. Antolia Higgman, a strong, full-bodied
+_café-au-lait_ negress. She was a very sensible woman, and during
+her work on the boat she had picked up a Northern accent and a number of
+little mannerisms from the Chicago and St. Louis excursionists, who made
+ten-day round trips from Dubuque to Florence, Alabama, and return. When
+Mrs. Higgman was not running errands for the women passengers, she was
+working at her perpetual laundering.
+
+At first Peter was a little uneasy as to how Mrs. Higgman would treat
+Cissie, but she turned out a good-hearted woman, and did everything she
+could to make the young wife comfortable. It soon became clear that Mrs.
+Higgman knew the whole situation, for one day she said to Cissie in her
+odd dialect, burred with Yankeeish "r's" and "ing's."
+
+"These river-r towns, Mrs. Siner-r, are jest like one big village, with
+the river-r for its Main Street. I know ever-r'thang that goes on,
+through the cabin-boys an' cooks, an'--an'--you cerrtainly ar-re a dear-
+r, Mrs. Siner-r," and thereupon, quite unexpectedly, she kissed Cissie.
+
+So on about the second day down the river Cissie dropped her saddened
+manner and became frankly, freely, and riotously happy. After the
+fashion of village negresses, she insisted on helping Mrs. Higgman with
+her work, and, incidentally, she cultivated Mrs. Higgman's Northern
+accent. When the chambermaid was out on her errands and Cissie found a
+moment alone with Peter, she would tweak his ear or pull his cheek and
+provoke him to kiss her. Indeed, it was all the hot, shuddering little
+laundry-room could do to contain the gay and bubbling Cissie.
+
+Peter thought and thought, resignedly now, but persistently, how this
+strange happiness that belonged to them both could be. He was content,
+yet he felt he ought not to be content. He thought there must be
+something base in himself, yet he felt that there was not. He drank the
+wine of his honeymoon marveling.
+
+On the morning before the _Red Cloud_ entered the port of Cairo
+Mrs. Higgman was out of the cabin, and Peter stood at the little square
+window, with his arm about Cissie's waist, looking out to the rear of
+the steamer. A strong east wind blew the spray away from the glass, and
+Peter could see the huge wheel covered with a waterfall thundering
+beneath him. Back of the wheel stretched a long row of even waves and
+troughs. Every seventh or eighth wave tumbled over on itself in a swash
+of foam. These flashing stern waves strung far up the river. On each
+side of the great waterway stretched the flat shores of Kentucky and
+Ohio. Here and there over the broad clay-colored water moved other
+boats--tow-boats, a string of government auto-barges, a snag-boat,
+another packet.
+
+Peter gave up his question. The curves of Cissie's form in his arm held
+a sweetness and a restfulness that her maidenhood had never promised. He
+felt so deeply sure of his happiness that it seemed strange to him that
+he could not aline his emotions and his mind.
+
+As Peter stood staring up the Ohio River, it occurred to him that
+perhaps, in some queer way, the morals of black folk were not the morals
+of white folk; perhaps the laws that bound one race were not the laws
+that bound the other. It might be that white anathemas were black
+blessings. Peter thought along this line peacefully for several minutes.
+
+And finally he concluded that, after all, morals and conventions, right
+and wrong, are merely those precepts that a race have practised and
+found good in its evolution. Morals are the training rules that keep a
+people fit. It might very well be that one moral régime is applicable to
+one race, and quite another to another.
+
+The single object of all morals is racial welfare, the racial integrity,
+the breeding of strong children to perpetuate the species. If the black
+race possess a more exuberant vitality than some other race, then the
+black would not be forced to practise so severe a vital economy as some
+less virile folk. Racial morals are simply a question of having and
+spending within safety limits.
+
+Peter knew that for years white men had held a prejudice against
+marrying widows. This is utterly without grounds except for one reason:
+the first born of a woman is the lustiest. Among the still weaker Aryans
+of India the widows burn themselves. Among certain South Sea Islanders
+only the first-born may live and mate; all other children are slain.
+Among nearly every white race marriage lines are strictly drawn, and the
+tendency is to have few children to a family, to conserve the precious
+vital impulse. So strong is this feeling of birth control that to-day
+nearly all American white women are ashamed of large families. This
+shame is the beginning of a convention; the convention may harden into a
+cult, a law, or a religion.
+
+And here is the amazing part of morals. Morals are always directed
+toward one particular race, but the individual members of that race
+always feel that their brand of morals does and should apply to all the
+peoples of the earth; so one has the spectacle of nations sending out
+missionaries and battle-ships to teach and enforce their particular
+folk-ways. Another queer thing is that whereas the end of morals is
+designed solely for the betterment of the race, and is entirely
+regardless of the person, to the conscience of the person morals are
+always translated as something that binds him personally, that will
+shame him or honor him personally not only for the brief span of this
+worldly life, but through an eternity to come. To him, his particular
+code, surrounded by all the sanctions of custom, law, and religion,
+appears earth-embracing, hell-deep, and heaven-piercing, and any human
+creature who follows any other code appears fatally wicked, utterly
+shameless, and ineluctably lost.
+
+And yet there is no such thing as absolute morals. Morals are as
+transitory as the sheen on a blackbird's wing; they change perpetually
+with the necessities of the race. Any people with an abounding vitality
+will naturally practise customs which a less vital people must shun.
+
+Morals are nothing more than the engines controlling the stream of
+energy that propel a race on its course. All engines are not alike, nor
+are all races bound for the same port.
+
+Here Peter Siner made the amazing discovery that although he had spent
+four years in Harvard, he had come out, just as he went in, a negro.
+
+A great joy came over him. He took Cissie whole-heartedly in his arms
+and kissed again and again the deep crimson of her lips. His brain and
+his heart were together at last. As he stood looking out at the window,
+pressing Cissie to him, he wondered, when he reached Chicago, if he
+could ever make Farquhar understand.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Birthright, by T.S. Stribling
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+<meta content="pg2html (binary version 0.12a)"
+    name="generator">
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of
+    Birthright,
+    by T.S. Stribling.
+</title>
+<style type="text/css">
+    <!--
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+      }
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+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Birthright, by T.S. Stribling
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Birthright
+       A Novel
+
+Author: T.S. Stribling
+
+Release Date: January 7, 2004 [EBook #10621]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BIRTHRIGHT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Robert Shimmin and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<a name="image-1"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="birth01.png"
+alt="'Yes, Cissie, I Understand Now'
+">
+<br>'Yes, Cissie, I Understand Now'
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h1>
+    BIRTHRIGHT
+</h1>
+<center>
+    A NOVEL
+</center>
+<center><b>
+    BY T.S. STRIBLING
+</b></center>
+<hr>
+<center>
+    <b>Illustrated by F. Luis Mora</b>
+</center>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<center>
+    1922
+</center>
+<a name="2H_4_1"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<center>
+    TO MY MOTHER
+</center>
+<center>
+    AMELIA WAITS STRIBLING
+</center>
+<a name="2HLIS2"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+</h2>
+<p>
+    <a href="#image-1">"Yes, Cissie, I understand now"</a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    <a href="#image-2">Peter recognized the white aprons and the swords and spears of the
+    Knights and Ladies of Tabor</a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    <a href="#image-3">Up and down its street flows the slow negro life of the village</a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    <a href="#image-4">In the Siner cabin old Caroline Siner berated her boy</a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    <a href="#image-5">The old gentleman turned around at last</a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    <a href="#image-6">"You-you mean you want m-me&mdash;to go with you, Cissie?" he stammered</a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    <a href="#image-7">"Naw yuh don't," he warned sharply. "You turn roun' an' march on to
+    Niggertown"</a>
+</p>
+<p>
+    <a href="#image-8">The bridal couple embarked for Cairo</a>
+</p>
+<a name="2H_4_3"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    BIRTHRIGHT
+</h2>
+<a name="2HCH4"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER I
+</h2>
+<p>
+    At Cairo, Illinois, the Pullman-car conductor asked Peter Siner to take
+    his suitcase and traveling-bag and pass forward into the Jim Crow car.
+    The request came as a sort of surprise to the negro. During Peter
+    Siner's four years in Harvard the segregation of black folk on Southern
+    railroads had become blurred and reminiscent in his mind; now it was
+    fetched back into the sharp distinction of the present instant. With a
+    certain sense of strangeness, Siner picked up his bags, and saw his own
+    form, in the car mirrors, walking down the length of the sleeper. He
+    moved on through the dining-car, where a few hours before he had had
+    dinner and talked with two white men, one an Oregon apple-grower, the
+    other a Wisconsin paper-manufacturer. The Wisconsin man had furnished
+    cigars, and the three had sat and smoked in the drawing-room, indeed,
+    had discussed this very point; and now it was upon him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At the door of the dining-car stood the porter of his Pullman, a negro
+    like himself, and Peter mechanically gave him fifty cents. The porter
+    accepted it silently, without offering the amenities of his whisk-broom
+    and shoe-brush, and Peter passed on forward.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Beyond the dining-car and Pullmans stretched twelve day-coaches filled
+    with less-opulent white travelers in all degrees of sleepiness and
+    dishabille from having sat up all night. The thirteenth coach was the
+    Jim Crow car. Framed in a conspicuous place beside the entrance of the
+    car was a copy of the Kentucky state ordinance setting this coach apart
+    from the remainder of the train for the purposes therein provided.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Jim Crow car was not exactly shabby, but it was unkept. It was half
+    filled with travelers of Peter's own color, and these passengers were
+    rather more noisy than those in the white coaches. Conversation was not
+    restrained to the undertones one heard in the other day-coaches or the
+    Pullmans. Near the entrance of the car two negroes in soldiers' uniforms
+    had turned a seat over to face the door, and now they sat talking loudly
+    and laughing the loose laugh of the half intoxicated as they watched the
+    inflow of negro passengers coming out of the white cars.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The windows of the Jim Crow car were shut, and already it had become
+    noisome. The close air was faintly barbed with the peculiar, penetrating
+    odor of dark, sweating skins. For four years Peter Siner had not known
+    that odor. Now it came to him not so much offensively as with a queer
+    quality of intimacy and reminiscence. The tall, carefully tailored negro
+    spread his wide nostrils, vacillating whether to sniff it out with
+    disfavor or to admit it for the sudden mental associations it evoked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was a faint, pungent smell that played in the back of his nose and
+    somehow reminded him of his mother, Caroline Siner, a thick-bodied black
+    woman whom he remembered as always bending over a wash-tub. This was
+    only one unit of a complex. The odor was also connected with negro
+    protracted meetings in Hooker's Bend, and the Harvard man remembered a
+    lanky black preacher waving long arms and wailing of hell-fire, to the
+    chanted groans of his dark congregation; and he, Peter Siner, had
+    groaned with the others. Peter had known this odor in the press-room of
+    Tennessee cotton-gins, over a river packet's boilers, where he and other
+    roustabouts were bedded, in bunk-houses in the woods. It also recalled a
+    certain octoroon girl named Ida May, and an intimacy with her which it
+    still moved and saddened Peter to think of. Indeed, it resurrected
+    innumerable vignettes of his life in the negro village in Hooker's Bend;
+    it was linked with innumerable emotions, this pungent, unforgetable odor
+    that filled the Jim Crow car.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Somehow the odor had a queer effect of appearing to push his
+    conversation with the two white Northern men in the drawing-room back to
+    a distance, an indefinable distance of both space and time.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The negro put his suitcase under the seat, hung his overcoat on the
+    hook, and placed his hand-bag in the rack overhead; then with some
+    difficulty he opened a window and sat down by it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A stir of travelers in the Cairo station drifted into the car. Against a
+    broad murmur of hurrying feet, moving trucks, and talking there stood
+    out the thin, flat voice of a Southern white girl calling good-by to
+    some one on the train. Peter could see her waving a bright parasol and
+    tiptoeing. A sandwich boy hurried past, shrilling his wares. Siner
+    leaned out, with fifteen cents, and signaled to him. The urchin
+    hesitated, and was about to reach up one of his wrapped parcels, when a
+    peremptory voice shouted at him from a lower car. With a sort of start
+    the lad deserted Siner and went trotting down to his white customer. A
+    moment later the train bell began ringing, and the Dixie Flier puffed
+    deliberately out of the Cairo station and moved across the Ohio bridge
+    into the South.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Half an hour later the blue-grass fields of Kentucky were spinning
+    outside of the window in a vast green whirlpool. The distant trees and
+    houses moved forward with the train, while the foreground, with its
+    telegraph poles, its culverts, section-houses, and shrubbery, rushed
+    backward in a blur. Now and then into the Jim Crow window whipped a
+    blast of coal smoke and hot cinders, for the engine was only two cars
+    ahead.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter Siner looked out at the interminable spin of the landscape with a
+    certain wistfulness. He was coming back into the South, into his own
+    country. Here for generations his forebears had toiled endlessly and
+    fruitlessly, yet the fat green fields hurtling past him told with what
+    skill and patience their black hands had labored.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The negro shrugged away such thoughts, and with a certain effort
+    replaced them with the constructive idea that was bringing him South
+    once more. It was a very simple idea. Siner was returning to his native
+    village in Tennessee to teach school. He planned to begin his work with
+    the ordinary public school at Hooker's Bend, but, in the back of his
+    head, he hoped eventually to develop an institution after the plan of
+    Tuskeegee or the Hampton Institute in Virginia.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To do what he had in mind, he must obtain aid from white sources, and
+    now, as he traveled southward, he began conning in his mind the white
+    men and white women he knew in Hooker's Bend. He wanted first of all to
+    secure possession of a small tract of land which he knew adjoined the
+    negro school-house over on the east side of the village.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Before the negro's mind the different villagers passed in review with
+    that peculiar intimacy of vision that servants always have of their
+    masters. Indeed, no white Southerner knows his own village so minutely
+    as does any member of its colored population. The colored villagers see
+    the whites off their guard and just as they are, and that is an attitude
+    in which no one looks his best. The negroes might be called the black
+    recording angels of the South. If what they know should be shouted aloud
+    in any Southern town, its social life would disintegrate. Yet it is a
+    strange fact that gossip seldom penetrates from the one race to the
+    other.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So Peter Siner sat in the Jim Crow car musing over half a dozen
+    villagers in Hooker's Bend. He thought of them in a curious way.
+    Although he was now a B.A. of Harvard University, and although he knew
+    that not a soul in the little river village, unless it was old Captain
+    Renfrew, could construe a line of Greek and that scarcely two had ever
+    traveled farther north than Cincinnati, still, as Peter recalled their
+    names and foibles, he involuntarily felt that he was telling over a roll
+    of the mighty. The white villagers came marching through his mind as
+    beings austere, and the very cranks and quirks of their characters
+    somehow held that austerity. There were the Brownell sisters, two old
+    maids, Molly and Patti, who lived in a big brick house on the hill.
+    Peter remembered that Miss Molly Brownell always doled out to his
+    mother, at Monday's washday dinner, exactly one biscuit less than the
+    old negress wanted to eat, and she always paid her in old clothes. Peter
+    remembered, a dozen times in his life, his mother coming home and
+    wondering in an impersonal way how it was that Miss Molly Brownell could
+    skimp every meal she ate at the big house by exactly one biscuit. It was
+    Miss Brownell's thin-lipped boast that she understood negroes. She had
+    told Peter so several times when, as a lad, he went up to the big house
+    on errands. Peter Siner considered this remembrance without the faintest
+    feeling of humor, and mentally removed Miss Molly Brownell from his list
+    of possible subscribers. Yet, he recalled, the whole Brownell estate had
+    been reared on negro labor.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then there was Henry Hooker, cashier of the village bank. Peter knew
+    that the banker subscribed liberally to foreign missions; indeed, at the
+    cashier's behest, the white church of Hooker's Bend kept a paid
+    missionary on the upper Congo. But the banker had sold some village lots
+    to the negroes, and in two instances, where a streak of commercial
+    phosphate had been discovered on the properties, the lots had reverted
+    to the Hooker estate. There had been in the deed something concerning a
+    mineral reservation that the negro purchasers knew nothing about until
+    the phosphate was discovered. The whole matter had been perfectly legal.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A hand shook Siner's shoulder and interrupted his review. Peter turned,
+    and caught an alcoholic breath over his shoulder, and the blurred voice
+    of a Southern negro called out above the rumble of the car and the roar
+    of the engine:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'Fo' Gawd, ef dis ain't Peter Siner I's been lookin' at de las' twenty
+    miles, an' not knowin' him wid sich skeniptious clo'es on! Wha you fum,
+    nigger?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Siner took the enthusiastic hand offered him and studied the heavily
+    set, powerful man bending over the seat. He was in a soldier's uniform,
+    and his broad nutmeg-colored face and hot black eyes brought Peter a
+    vague sense of familiarity; but he never would have identified his
+    impression had he not observed on the breast of the soldier's uniform
+    the Congressional military medal for bravery on the field of battle. Its
+    glint furnished Peter the necessary clew. He remembered his mother's
+    writing him something about Tump Pack going to France and getting
+    "crowned" before the army. He had puzzled a long time over what she
+    meant by "crowned" before he guessed her meaning. Now the medal aided
+    Peter in reconstructing out of this big umber-colored giant the rather
+    spindling Tump Pack he had known in Hooker's Bend.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Siner was greatly surprised, and his heart warmed at the sight of his
+    old playmate.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What have you been doing to yourself, Tump?" he cried, laughing, and
+    shaking the big hand in sudden warmth. "You used to be the size of a
+    dime in a jewelry store."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Been in 'e army, nigger, wha I's been fed," said the grinning brown
+    man, delightedly. "I sho is picked up, ain't I?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And what are you doing here in Cairo?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Tryin' to bridle a lil white mule." Mr. Pack winked a whisky-brightened
+    eye jovially and touched his coat to indicate that some of the "white
+    mule" was in his pocket and had not been drunk.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "How'd you get here?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Wucked my way down on de St. Louis packet an' got paid off at Padjo
+    [Paducah, Kentucky]; 'n 'en I thought I'd come on down heah an' roll
+    some bones. Been hittin' 'em two days now, an' I sho come putty nigh
+    bein' cleaned; but I put up lil Joe heah, an' won 'em all back, 'n 'en
+    some." He touched the medal on his coat, winked again, slapped Siner on
+    the leg, and burst into loud laughter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter was momentarily shocked. He made a place on the seat for his
+    friend to sit. "You don't mean you put up your medal on a crap game,
+    Tump?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Sho do, black man." Pack became soberer. "Dat's one o' de great
+    benefits o' bein' dec'rated. Dey ain't a son uv a gun on de river whut
+    kin win lil Joe; dey all tried it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    A moment's reflection told Peter how simple and natural it was for Pack
+    to prize his military medal as a good-luck piece to be used as a last
+    resort in crap games. He watched Tump stroke the face of his medal with
+    his fingers.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "My mother wrote me; about your getting it, Tump. I was glad to hear
+    it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The brown man nodded, and stared down at the bit of gold on his barrel-
+    like chest.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yas-suh, dat 'uz guv to me fuh bravery. You know whut a skeery lil
+    nigger I wuz roun' Hooker's Ben'; well, de sahgeant tuk me an' he drill
+    ever' bit o' dat right out 'n me. He gimme a baynit an' learned me to
+    stob dummies wid it over at Camp Oglethorpe, ontil he felt lak I had de
+    heart to stob anything; 'n' 'en he sont me acrost. I had to git a new
+    pair breeches ever' three weeks, I growed so fas'." Here he broke out
+    into his big loose laugh again, and renewed the alcoholic scent around
+    Peter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And you made good?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Sho did, black man, an', 'fo' Gawd, I 'serve a medal ef any man ever
+    did. Dey gimme dish-heah fuh stobbin fo' white men wid a baynit. 'Fo'
+    Gawd, nigger, I never felt so quare in all my born days as when I wuz a-
+    jobbin' de livers o' dem white men lak de sahgeant tol' me to." Tump
+    shook his head, bewildered, and after a moment added, "Yas-suh, I never
+    wuz mo' surprised in all my life dan when I got dis medal fuh stobbin'
+    fo' white men."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter Siner looked through the Jim Crow window at the vast rotation of
+    the Kentucky landscape on which his forebears had toiled; presently he
+    added soberly:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You were fighting for your country, Tump. It was war then; you were
+    fighting for your country."
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    At Jackson, Tennessee, the two negroes were forced to spend the night
+    between trains. Tump Pack piloted Peter Siner to a negro cafe where they
+    could eat, and later they searched out a negro lodging-house on Gate
+    Street where they could sleep. It was a grimy, smelly place, with its
+    own odor spiked by a phosphate-reducing plant two blocks distant. The
+    paper on the wall of the room Peter slept in looked scrofulous. There
+    was no window, and Peter's four-years r&eacute;gime of open windows and fresh-
+    air sleep was broken. He arranged his clothing for the night so it would
+    come in contact with nothing in the room but a chair back. He felt dull
+    next morning, and could not bring himself either to shave or bathe in
+    the place, but got out and hunted up a negro barber-shop furnished with
+    one greasy red-plush barber-chair.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A few hours later the two negroes journeyed on down to Perryville,
+    Tennessee, a village on the Tennessee River where they took a gasolene
+    launch up to Hooker's Bend. The launch was about fifty feet long and had
+    two cabins, a colored cabin in front of, and a white cabin behind, the
+    engine-room.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This unremitting insistence on his color, this continual shunting him
+    into obscure and filthy ways, gradually gave Peter a loathly sensation.
+    It increased the unwashed feeling that followed his lack of a morning
+    bath. The impression grew upon him that he was being handled with tongs,
+    along back-alley routes; that he and his race were something to be kept
+    out of sight as much as possible, as careful housekeepers manoeuver
+    their slops.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At Perryville a number of passengers boarded the up-river boat; two or
+    three drummers; a yellowed old hill woman returning to her Wayne County
+    home; a red-headed peanut-buyer; a well-groomed white girl in a tailor
+    suit; a youngish man barely on the right side of middle age who seemed
+    to be attending her; and some negro girls with lunches. The passengers
+    trailed from the railroad station down the river bank through a slush of
+    mud, for the river had just fallen and had left a layer of liquid mud to
+    a height of about twenty feet all along the littoral. The passengers
+    picked their way down carefully, stepping into one another's tracks in
+    the effort not to ruin their shoes. The drummers grumbled. The youngish
+    man piloted the girl down, holding her hand, although both could have
+    managed better by themselves.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Following the passengers came the trunks and grips on a truck. A negro
+    deck-hand, the truck-driver, and the white master of the launch shoved
+    aboard the big sample trunks of the drummers with grunts, profanity, and
+    much stamping of mud. Presently, without the formality of bell or
+    whistle, the launch clacked away from the landing and stood up the wide,
+    muddy river.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The river itself was monotonous and depressing. It was perhaps half a
+    mile wide, with flat, willowed mud banks on one side and low shelves of
+    stratified limestone on the other.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Trading-points lay at ten- or fifteen-mile intervals along the great
+    waterway. The typical landing was a dilapidated shed of a store half
+    covered with tin tobacco signs and ancient circus posters. Usually, only
+    one man met the launch at each landing, the merchant, a democrat in his
+    shirt-sleeves and without a tie. His voice was always a flat, weary
+    drawl, but his eyes, wrinkled against the sun, usually held the
+    shrewdness of those who make their living out of two-penny trades.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At each place the red-headed peanut-buyer slogged up the muddy bank and
+    bargained for the merchant's peanuts, to be shipped on the down-river
+    trip of the first St. Louis packet. The loneliness of the scene embraced
+    the trading-points, the river, and the little gasolene launch struggling
+    against the muddy current. It permeated the passengers, and was a
+    finishing touch to Peter Siner's melancholy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The launch clacked on and on interminably. Sometimes it seemed to make
+    no headway at all against the heavy, silty current. Tump Pack, the white
+    captain, and the negro engineer began a game of craps in the negro
+    cabin. Presently, two of the white drummers came in from the white cabin
+    and began betting on the throws. The game was listless. The master of
+    the launch pointed out places along the shores where wildcat stills were
+    located. The crap-shooters, negro and white, squatted in a circle on the
+    cabin floor, snapping their fingers and calling their points
+    monotonously. One of the negro girls in the negro cabin took an apple
+    out of her lunch sack and began eating it, holding it in her palm after
+    the fashion of negroes rather than in her fingers, as is the custom of
+    white women.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Both doors of the engine-room were open, and Peter Siner could see
+    through into the white cabin. The old hill woman was dozing in her
+    chair, her bonnet bobbing to each stroke of the engines. The youngish
+    man and the girl were engaged in some sort of intimate lovers' dispute.
+    When the engines stopped at one of the landings, Peter discovered she
+    was trying to pay him what he had spent on getting her baggage trucked
+    down at Perryville. The girl kept pressing a bill into the man's hand,
+    and he avoided receiving the money. They kept up the play for sake of
+    occasional contacts.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When the launch came in sight of Hooker's Bend toward the middle of the
+    afternoon, Peter Siner experienced one of the profoundest surprises of
+    his life. Somehow, all through his college days he had remembered
+    Hooker's Bend as a proud town with important stores and unapproachable
+    white residences. Now he saw a skum of negro cabins, high piles of
+    lumber, a sawmill, and an ice-factory. Behind that, on a little rise,
+    stood the old Brownell manor, maintaining a certain shabby dignity in a
+    grove of oaks. Behind and westward from the negro shacks and lumber-
+    piles ranged the village stores, their roofs just visible over the top
+    of the bank. Moored to the shore, lay the wharf-boat in weathered greens
+    and yellows. As a background for the whole scene rose the dark-green
+    height of what was called the "Big Hill," an eminence that separated the
+    negro village on the east from the white village on the west. The hill
+    itself held no houses, but appeared a solid green-black with cedars.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The ensemble was merely another lonely spot on the south bank of the
+    great somnolent river. It looked dead, deserted, a typical river town,
+    unprodded even by the hoot of a jerk-water railroad.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As the launch chortled toward the wharf, Peter Siner stood trying to
+    orient himself to this unexpected and amazing minifying of Hooker's
+    Bend. He had left a metropolis; he was coming back to a tumble-down
+    village. Yet nothing was changed. Even the two scraggly locust-trees
+    that clung perilously to the brink of the river bank still held their
+    toe-hold among the strata of limestone.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The negro deck-hand came out and pumped the hand-power whistle in three
+    long discordant blasts. Then a queer thing happened. The whistle was
+    answered by a faint strain of music. A little later the passengers saw a
+    line of negroes come marching down the river bank to the wharf-boat.
+    They marched in military order, and from afar Peter recognized the white
+    aprons and the swords and spears of the Knights and Ladies of Tabor, a
+    colored burial association.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Siner wondered what had brought out the Knights and Ladies of Tabor. The
+    singing and the drumming gradually grew upon the air. The passengers in
+    the white cabin, came out on the guards at this unexpected fanfare. As
+    soon as the white travelers saw the marching negroes, they began joking
+    about what caused the demonstration. The captain of the launch thought
+    he knew, and began an oath, but stopped it out of deference to the girl
+    in the tailor suit. He said it was a dead nigger the society was going
+    to ship up to Savannah.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl in the tailor suit was much amused. She said the darkies looked
+    like a string of caricatures marching down the river bank. Peter noticed
+    her Northern accent, and fancied she was coming to Hooker's Bend to
+    teach school.
+</p>
+<p>
+    One of the drummers turned to another.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Did you ever hear Bob Taylor's yarn about Uncle 'Rastus's funeral?
+    Funniest thing Bob ever got off." He proceeded to tell it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Every one on the launch was laughing except the captain, who was
+    swearing quietly; but the line of negroes marched on down to the wharf-
+    boat with the unshakable dignity of black folk in an important position.
+    They came singing an old negro spiritual. The women's sopranos thrilled
+    up in high, weird phrasing against an organ-like background of male
+    voices.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But the black men carried no coffin, and suddenly it occurred to Peter
+    Siner that perhaps this celebration was given in honor of his own home-
+    coming. The mulatto's heart beat a trifle faster as he began planning a
+    suitable response to this ovation.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Sure enough, the singing ranks disappeared behind the wharf-boat, and a
+    minute later came marching around the stern and lined up on the outer
+    guard of the vessel. The skinny, grizzly-headed negro commander held up
+    his sword, and the Knights and Ladies of Tabor fell silent.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The master of the launch tossed his head-line to the wharf-boat, and
+    yelled for one of the negroes to make it fast. One did. Then the
+    commandant with the sword began his address, but it was not directed to
+    Peter. He said:
+</p>
+<a name="image-2"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="birth02.png"
+alt="Peter Recognized the White Aprons and The Swords And
+Spears of the Knights and Ladies Of Tabor
+">
+<br>Peter Recognized the White Aprons and The Swords And
+Spears of the Knights and Ladies Of Tabor
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    "Brudder Tump Pack, we, de Hooker's Ben' lodge uv de Knights an' Ladies
+    uv Tabor, welcome you back to yo' native town. We is proud uv you, a
+    colored man, who brings back de highes' crown uv bravery dis Newnighted
+    States has in its power to bestow.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Two yeahs ago, Brudder Tump, we seen you marchin' away fum Hooker's
+    Ben' wid thirteen udder boys, white an' colored, all marchin' away
+    togedder. Fo' uv them boys is already back home; three, we heah, is on
+    de way back, but six uv yo' brave comrades, Brudder Pack, is sleepin'
+    now in France, an' ain't never goin' to come home no mo'. When we honors
+    you, we honors them all, de libin' an' de daid, de white an' de black,
+    who fought togedder fuh one country, fuh one flag."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Gasps, sobs from the line of black folk, interrupted the speaker. Just
+    then a shriveled old negress gave a scream, and came running and half
+    stumbling out of the line, holding out her arms to the barrel-chested
+    soldier on the gang-plank. She seized him and began shrieking:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Bless Gawd! my son's done come home! Praise de Lawd! Bless His holy
+    name!" Here her laudation broke into sobbing and choking and laughing,
+    and she squeezed herself to her son.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tump patted her bony black form.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I's heah, Mammy," he stammered uncertainly. "I's come back, Mammy."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Half a dozen other negroes caught the joyful hysteria. They began a
+    religious shouting, clapping their hands, flinging up their arms,
+    shrieking.
+</p>
+<p>
+    One of the drummers grunted:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Good God! all this over a nigger getting back!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    At the extreme end of the dark line a tall cream-colored girl wept
+    silently. As Peter Siner stood blinking his eyes, he saw the octoroon's
+    shoulders and breasts shake from the sobs, which her white blood
+    repressed to silence.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A certain sympathy for her grief and its suppression kept Peter's eyes
+    on the young woman, and then, with the queer effect of one picture
+    melting into another, the strange girl's face assumed familiar curves
+    and softnesses, and he was looking at Ida May.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A quiver traveled deliberately over Peter from his crisp black hair to
+    the soles of his feet. He started toward her impulsively.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At that moment one of the drummers picked up his grip, and started down
+    the gang-plank, and with its leathern bulk pressed Tump Pack and his
+    mother out of his path. He moved on to the shore through the negroes,
+    who divided at his approach. The captain of the launch saw that other of
+    his white passengers were becoming impatient, and he shouted for the
+    darkies to move aside and not to block the gangway. The youngish man
+    drew the girl in the tailor suit close to him and started through with
+    her. Peter heard him say, "They won't hurt you, Miss Negley." And Miss
+    Negley, in the brisk nasal intonation of a Northern woman, replied: "Oh,
+    I'm not afraid. We waste a lot of sympathy on them back home, but when
+    you see them&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    At that moment Peter heard a cry in his ears and felt arms thrown about
+    his neck. He looked down and saw his mother, Caroline Siner, looking up
+    into his face and weeping with the general emotion of the negroes and
+    this joy of her own. Caroline had changed since Peter last saw her. Her
+    eyes were a little more wrinkled, her kinky hair was thinner and very
+    gray.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Something warm and melting moved in Peter Siner's breast. He caressed
+    his mother and murmured incoherently, as had Tump Pack. Presently the
+    master of the launch came by, and touched the old negress, not ungently,
+    with the end of a spike-pole.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You'll have to move, Aunt Ca'line," he said. "We're goin' to get the
+    freight off now."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The black woman paused in her weeping. "Yes, Mass' Bob," she said, and
+    she and Peter moved off of the launch onto the wharf-boat.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Knights and Ladies of Tabor were already up the river bank with
+    their hero. Peter and his mother were left alone. Now they walked around
+    the guards of the wharf-boat to the bank, holding each other's arms
+    closely. As they went, Peter kept looking down at his old black mother,
+    with a growing tenderness. She was so worn and heavy! He recognized the
+    very dress she wore, an old black silk which she had "washed out" for
+    Miss Patti Brownell when he was a boy. It had been then, it was now, her
+    best dress. During the years the old negress had registered her
+    increasing bulk by letting out seams and putting in panels. Some of the
+    panels did not agree with the original fabric either in color or in
+    texture and now the seams were stretching again and threatening a rip.
+    Peter's own immaculate clothes reproached him, and he wondered for the
+    hundredth, or for the thousandth time how his mother had obtained
+    certain remittances which she had forwarded him during his college
+    years.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As Peter and his mother crept up the bank of the river, stopping
+    occasionally to let the old negress rest, his impression of the meanness
+    and shabbiness of the whole village grew. From the top of the bank the
+    single business street ran straight back from the river. It was stony in
+    places, muddy in places, strewn with goods-boxes, broken planking,
+    excelsior, and straw that had been used for packing. Charred rubbish-
+    piles lay in front of every store, which the clerks had swept out and
+    attempted to burn. Hogs roamed the thoroughfare, picking up decaying
+    fruit and parings, and nosing tin cans that had been thrown out by the
+    merchants. The stores that Peter had once looked upon as show-places
+    were poor two-story brick or frame buildings, defiled by time and wear
+    and weather. The white merchants were coatless, listless men who sat in
+    chairs on the brick pavements before their stores and who moved slowly
+    when a customer entered their doors.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And, strange to say, it was this fall of his white townsmen that moved
+    Peter Siner with a sense of the greatest loss. It seemed fantastic to
+    him, this sudden land-slide of the mighty.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As Peter and his mother came over the brow of the river bank, they saw a
+    crowd collecting at the other end of the street. The main street of
+    Hooker's Bend is only a block long, and the two negroes could easily
+    hear the loud laughter of men hurrying to the focus of interest and the
+    blurry expostulations of negro voices. The laughter spread like a
+    contagion. Merchants as far up as the river corner became infected, and
+    moved toward the crowd, looking back over their shoulders at every tenth
+    or twelfth step to see that no one entered their doors.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Presently, a little short man, fairly yipping with laughter, stumbled
+    back up the street to his store with tears of mirth in his eyes. A
+    belated merchant stopped him by clapping both hands on his shoulders and
+    shaking some composure into him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What is it? What's so funny? Damn it! I miss ever'thing!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I-i-it's that f-fool Tum-Tump Pack. Bobbs's arrested him!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The inquirer was astounded.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "How the hell can he arrest him when he hit town this minute?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Wh-why, Bobbs had an old warrant for crap-shoot&mdash;three years old&mdash;
+    before the war. Just as Tump was a-coming down the street at the head of
+    the coons, out steps Bobbs&mdash;" Here the little man was overcome.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The merchant from the corner opened his eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Arrested him on an old crap charge?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The little man nodded. They gazed at each other. Then they exploded
+    simultaneously.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter left his obese mother and hurried to the corner, Dawson Bobbs, the
+    constable, had handcuffs on Tump's wrists, and stood with his prisoner
+    amid a crowd of arguing negroes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Bobbs was a big, fleshy, red-faced man, with chilly blue eyes and a
+    little straight slit of a mouth in his wide face. He was laughing and
+    chewing a sliver of toothpick.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "O Tump Pack," he called loudly, "you kain't git away from me! If you
+    roll bones in Hooker's Bend, you'll have to divide your winnings with
+    the county." Dawson winked a chill eye at the crowd in general.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But hit's out o' date, Mr. Bobbs," the old gray-headed minister, Parson
+    Ranson, was pleading.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "May be that, Parson, but hit's easier to come up before the J.P. and
+    pay off than to fight it through the circuit court."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Siner pushed his way through the crowd. "How much do you want, Mr.
+    Bobbs?" he asked briefly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The constable looked with reminiscent eyes at the tall, well-tailored
+    negro. He was plainly going through some mental card-index, hunting for
+    the name of Peter Siner on some long-forgotten warrant. Apparently, he
+    discovered nothing, for he said shortly:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "How do I know before he's tried? Come on, Tump!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The procession moved in a long noisy line up Pillow Street, the white
+    residential street lying to the west. It stopped before a large shaded
+    lawn, where a number of white men and women were playing a game with
+    cards. The cards used by the lawn party were not ordinary playing-cards,
+    but had figures on them instead of spots, and were called "rook" cards.
+    The party of white ladies and gentlemen were playing "rook." On a table
+    in the middle of the lawn glittered some pieces of silver plate which
+    formed the first, second, and third prizes for the three leading scores.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The constable halted his black company before the lawn, where they stood
+    in the sunshine patiently waiting for the justice of the peace to finish
+    his game and hear the case of the State of Tennessee, plaintiff, versus
+    Tump Pack, defendant.
+</p>
+<a name="2HCH5"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER II
+</h2>
+<p>
+    On the eastern edge of Hooker's Bend, drawn in a rough semicircle around
+    the Big Hill, lies Niggertown. In all the half-moon there are perhaps
+    not two upright buildings. The grimy cabins lean at crazy angles, some
+    propped with poles, while others hold out against gravitation at a
+    hazard.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Up and down its street flows the slow negro life of the village. Here
+    children of all colors from black to cream fight and play; deep-chested
+    negresses loiter to and fro, some on errands to the white section of the
+    village on the other side of the hill, where they go to scrub or cook or
+    wash or iron. Others go down to the public well with a bucket in each
+    hand and one balanced on the head.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The public well itself lies at the southern end of this miserable
+    street, just at a point where the drainage of the Big Hill collects. The
+    rainfall runs down through Niggertown, under its sties, stables, and
+    outdoor toilets, and the well supplies the negroes with water for
+    cooking, washing, and drinking. Or, rather, what was once a well
+    supplies this water, for it is a well no longer. Its top and curbing
+    caved in long ago, and now there is simply a big hole in the soft,
+    water-soaked clay, about fifteen feet wide, with water standing at the
+    bottom.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here come the unhurried colored women, who throw in their buckets, and
+    with a dexterity that comes of long practice draw them out full of
+    water. Black mothers shout at their children not to fall into this pit,
+    and now and then, when a pig fails to come up for its evening slops, a
+    black boy will go to the public well to see if perchance his porker has
+    met misfortune there.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The inhabitants of Niggertown suffer from divers diseases; they develop
+    strange ailments that no amount of physicking will overcome; young wives
+    grow sickly from no apparent cause. Although only three or four hundred
+    persons live in Niggertown, two or three negroes are always slowly dying
+    of tuberculosis; winter brings pneumonia; summer, malaria. About once a
+    year the state health officer visits Hooker's Bend and forces the white
+    soda-water dispensers on the other side of the hill to sterilize their
+    glasses in the name of the sovereign State of Tennessee.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Siner home was a three-room shanty about midway in the semicircle.
+    Peter Siner stood in the sunlight just outside the entrance, watching
+    his old mother clean the bugs out of a tainted ham that she had bought
+    for a pittance from some white housekeeper in the village. It had been
+    too high for white people to eat. Old Caroline patiently tapped the
+    honeycombed meat to scare out the last of the little green householders,
+    and then she washed it in a solution of soda to freshen it up.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The sight of his bulky old mother working at the spoiled ham and of the
+    negro women in the street moving to and from the infected well filled
+    Peter Siner with its terrible pathos. Although he had seen these
+    surroundings all of his life, he had a queer impression that he was
+    looking upon them for the first time. During his boyhood he had accepted
+    all this without question as the way the world was made. During his
+    college days a criticism had arisen in his mind, but it came slowly, and
+    was tempered by that tenderness every one feels for the spot called
+    home. Now, as he stood looking at it, he wondered how human beings lived
+    there at all. He wondered if Ida May used water from the Niggertown
+    well.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He turned to ask old Caroline, but checked himself with a man's
+    instinctive avoidance of mentioning his intimacies to his mother. At
+    that moment, oddly enough, the old negress brought up the topic herself.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ida May wuz 'quirin' 'bout you las' night, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    A faint tingle filtered through Peter's throat and chest, but he asked
+    casually enough what she had said.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Didn' say; she wrote."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter looked around, frankly astonished.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Wrote?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yeah; co'se she wrote."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What made her write?" a fantasy of Ida May dumb flickered before the
+    mulatto.
+</p>
+<a name="image-3"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="birth03.png"
+alt="Up and Down Its Street Flows the Slow Negro Life of The
+Village
+">
+<br>Up and Down Its Street Flows the Slow Negro Life of The Village
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    "Why, Ida May's in Nashville." Caroline looked at Peter. "She wrote to
+    Cissie, astin' 'bout you. She ast is you as bright in yo' books as you
+    is in yo' color." The old negress gave a pleased abdominal chuckle as
+    she admired her broad-shouldered brown son.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But I saw Ida May standing on the wharf-boat the day I came home,"
+    protested Peter, still bewildered.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No you ain't. I reckon you seen Cissie. Dey looks kind o' like when you
+    is fur off."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Cissie?" repeated Peter. Then he remembered a smaller sister of Ida
+    May's, a little, squalling, yellow, wet-nosed nuisance that had annoyed
+    his adolescence. So that little spoil-sport had grown up into the girl
+    he had mistaken for Ida May. This fact increased his sense of
+    strangeness&mdash;that sense of great change that had fallen on the village
+    in his absence which formed the groundwork of all his renewed
+    associations.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter's prolonged silence aroused certain suspicions in the old negress.
+    She glanced at her son out of the tail of her eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Cissie Dildine is Tump Pack's gal," she stated defensively, with the
+    jealousy all mothers feel toward all sons.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A diversion in the shouts of the children up the mean street and a
+    sudden furious barking of dogs drew Peter from the discussion. He looked
+    up, and saw a negro girl of about fourteen coming down the curved
+    street, with long, quick steps and an occasional glance over her
+    shoulder.
+</p>
+<p>
+    From across the thoroughfare a small chocolate-colored woman, with her
+    wool done in outstanding spikes, thrust her head out at the door and
+    called:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Whut's de matter, Ofeely?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl lifted a high voice:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, Miss Nan, it's that constable goin' th'ugh the houses!" The girl
+    veered across the street to the safety of the open door and one of her
+    own sex.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Good Lawd!" cried the spiked one in disgust, "ever', time a white
+    pusson gits somp'n misplaced&mdash;" She moved to one side to allow the girl
+    to enter, and continued staring up the street, with the whites of her
+    eyes accented against her dark face, after the way of angry negroes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Around the crescent the dogs were furious. They were Niggertown dogs,
+    and the sight of a white man always drove them to a frenzy. Presently in
+    the hullabaloo, Peter heard Dawson Bobbs's voice shouting:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Aunt Mahaly, if you kain't call off this dawg, I'm shore goin' to kill
+    him."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then an old woman's scolding broke in and complicated the m&ecirc;l&eacute;e.
+    Presently Peter saw the bulky form of Dawson Bobbs come around the
+    curve, moving methodically from cabin to cabin. He held some legal-
+    looking papers in his hands, and Peter knew what the constable was
+    doing. He was serving a blanket search-warrant on the whole black
+    population of Hooker's Bend. At almost every cabin a dog ran out to
+    blaspheme at the intruder, but a wave of the man's pistol sent them
+    yelping under the floors again.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When the constable entered a house, Peter could hear him bumping and
+    rattling among the furnishings, while the black householders stood
+    outside the door and watched him disturb their housekeeping
+    arrangements.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Presently Bobbs came angling across the street toward the Siner cabin.
+    As he entered the rickety gate, old Caroline called out:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Whut is you after, anyway, white man?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Bobbs turned cold, truculent eyes on the old negress. "A turkey
+    roaster," he snapped. "Some o' you niggers stole Miss Lou Arkwright's
+    turkey roaster."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Tukky roaster!" cried the old black woman, in great disgust. "Whut you
+    s'pose us niggers is got to roast in a tukky roaster?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The constable answered shortly that his business was to find the
+    roaster, not what the negroes meant to put in it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I decla'," satirized old Caroline, savagely, "dish-heah Niggertown is a
+    white man's pocket. Ever' time he misplace somp'n, he feel in his pocket
+    to see ef it ain't thaiuh. Don'-chu turn over dat sody-water, white man!
+    You know dey ain't no tukky roaster under dat sody-water. I 'cla' 'fo'
+    Gawd, ef a white man wuz to eat a flapjack, an' it did n' give him de
+    belly-ache, I 'cla' 'fo' Gawd he'd git out a search-wa'nt to see ef some
+    nigger had n' stole dat flapjack goin' down his th'oat."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Mr. Bobbs has to do his work, Mother," put in Peter. "I don't suppose
+    he enjoys it any more than we do."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Den let 'im git out'n dis business an' git in anudder," scolded the old
+    woman. "Dis sho is a mighty po' business."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The ponderous Mr. Bobbs finished with a practised thoroughness his
+    inspection of the cabin, and then the inquisition proceeded down the
+    street, around the crescent, and so out of sight and eventually out of
+    hearing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Old Caroline snapped her chair back beside her greasy table and sat down
+    abruptly to her spoiled ham again.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Dat make me mad," she grumbled. "Ever' time a white pusson fail to lay
+    dey han' on somp'n, dey comes an' turns over ever'thing in my house."
+    She paused a moment, closed her eyes in thought, and then mused aloud:
+    "I wonder who is got Miss Arkwright's roaster."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The commotion of the constable's passing died in his wake, and
+    Niggertown resumed its careless existence. Dogs reappeared from under
+    the cabins and stretched in the sunshine; black children came out of
+    hiding and picked up their play; the frightened Ophelia came out of
+    Nan's cabin across the street and went her way; a lanky negro youth in
+    blue coat and pin-striped trousers appeared, coming down the squalid
+    thoroughfare whistling the "Memphis Blues" with bird-like virtuosity.
+    The lightness with which Niggertown accepted the moral side glance of a
+    blanket search-warrant depressed Siner.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Caroline called her son to dinner, as the twelve-o'clock meal is called
+    in Hooker's Bend, and so ended his meditation. The Harvard man went back
+    into the kitchen and sat down at a rickety table covered with a red-
+    checked oil-cloth. On it were spread the spoiled ham, a dish of poke
+    salad, a corn pone, and a pot of weak coffee. A quaint old bowl held
+    some brown sugar. The fat old negress made a slight, habitual settling
+    movement in her chair that marked the end of her cooking and the
+    beginning of her meal. Then she bent her grizzled, woolly head and
+    mumbled off one of those queer old-fashioned graces which consist of a
+    swift string of syllables without pauses between either words or
+    sentences.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter sat watching his mother with a musing gaze. The kitchen was
+    illuminated by a single small square window set high up from the floor.
+    Now the disposition of its single ray of light over the dishes and the
+    bowed head of the massive negress gave Peter one of those sharp, tender
+    apprehensions of formal harmony that lie back of the genre in art. It
+    stirred his emotion in an odd fashion. When old Caroline raised her
+    head, she found her son staring with impersonal eyes not at herself, but
+    at the whole room, including her. The old woman was perplexed and a
+    little apprehensive.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, son!" she ejaculated, "didn' you bow yo' haid while yo' mammy ast
+    de grace?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter was a little confused at his remissness. Then he leaned a little
+    forward to explain the sudden glamour which for a moment had
+    transfigured the interior of their kitchen. But even as he started to
+    speak, he realized that what he meant to say would only confuse his
+    mother; therefore he cast about mentally for some other explanation of
+    his behavior, but found nothing at hand.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I hope you ain't forgot yo' 'ligion up at de 'versity, son."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, no, no, indeed, Mother, but just at that moment, just as you bowed
+    your head, you know, it struck me that&mdash;that there is something noble in
+    our race." That was the best he could put it to her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Noble&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes. You know," he went on a little quickly, "sometimes I&mdash;I've thought
+    my father must have been a noble man."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old negress became very still. She was not looking quite at her son,
+    or yet precisely away from him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Uh&mdash;uh noble nigger,"&mdash;she gave her abdominal chuckle. "Why&mdash;yeah, I
+    reckon yo' father wuz putty noble as&mdash;as niggers go." She sat looking at
+    her son, oddly, with a faint amusement in her gross black face, when a
+    careful voice, a very careful voice, sounded in the outer room, gliding
+    up politely on the syllables:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ahnt Carolin'! oh, Ahnt Carolin', may I enter?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old woman stirred.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Da''s Cissie, Peter. Go ast her in to de fambly-room."
+</p>
+<p>
+    When Siner opened the door, the vague resemblance of the slender, creamy
+    girl on the threshold to Ida May again struck him; but Cissie Dildine
+    was younger, and her polished black hair lay straight on her pretty
+    head, and was done in big, shining puffs over her ears in a way that Ida
+    May's unruly curls would never have permitted. Her eyes were the most
+    limpid brown Peter had ever seen, but her oval face was faintly
+    unnatural from the use of negro face powder, which colored women insist
+    on, and which gives their yellows and browns a barely perceptible
+    greenish hue. Cissie wore a fluffy yellow dress some three shades deeper
+    than the throat and the glimpse of bosom revealed at the neck.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl carried a big package in her arms, and now she manipulated this
+    to put out a slender hand to Peter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "This is Cissie Dildine, Mister Siner." She smiled up at him. "I just
+    came over to put my name down on your list. There was such a mob at the
+    Benevolence Hall last night I couldn't get to you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl had a certain finical precision to her English that told Peter
+    she had been away to some school, and had been taught to guard her
+    grammar very carefully as she talked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter helped her inside amid the handshake and said he would go fetch
+    the list. As he turned, Cissie offered her bundle. "Here is something I
+    thought might be a little treat for you and Ahnt Carolin'." She paused,
+    and then explained remotely, "Sometimes it is hard to get good things at
+    the village market."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter took the package, vaguely amused at Cissie's patronage of the
+    Hooker's Bend market. It was an attitude instinctively assumed by every
+    girl, white or black, who leaves the village and returns. The bundle was
+    rather large and wrapped in newspapers. He carried it into the kitchen
+    to his mother, and then returned with the list.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The sheet was greasy from the handling of black fingers. The girl spread
+    it on the little center-table with a certain daintiness, seated herself,
+    and held out her hand for Peter's pencil. She made rather a graceful
+    study in cream and yellow as she leaned over the table and signed her
+    name in a handwriting as perfect and as devoid of character as a copy-
+    book. She began discussing the speech Peter had made at the Benevolence
+    Hall.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I don't know whether I am in favor of your project or not, Mr. Siner,"
+    she said as she rose from the table.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No?" Peter was surprised and amused at her attitude and at her precise
+    voice.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, I'm rather inclined toward Mr. DuBois's theory of a literary
+    culture than toward Mr. Washington's for a purely industrial training."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter broke out laughing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "For the love of Mike, Cissie, you talk like the instructor in Sociology
+    B! And haven't we met before somewhere? This 'Mister Siner' stuff&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl's face warmed under its faint, greenish powder.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If I aren't careful with my language, Peter," she said simply, "I'll be
+    talking just as badly as I did before I went to the seminary. You know I
+    never hear a proper sentence in Hooker's Bend except my own."
+</p>
+<p>
+    A certain resignation in the girl's soft voice brought Peter a qualm for
+    laughing at her. He laid an impulsive hand on her young shoulder.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, that's true, certainly, but it won't always be like that, Cissie.
+    More of us go off to school every year. I do hope my school here in
+    Hooker's Bend will be of some real value. If I could just show our
+    people how badly we fare here, how ill housed, and unsanitary&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl pressed Peter's fingers with a woman's optimism for a man.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You'll succeed, Peter, I know you will. Some day the name Siner will
+    mean the same thing to coloured people as Tanner and Dunbar and
+    Braithwaite do. Anyway, I've put my name down for ten dollars to help
+    out." She returned the pencil. "I'll have Tump Pack come around and pay
+    you my subscription, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'll watch out for Tump," promised Peter in a lightening mood, "&mdash;and
+    make him pay."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He'll do it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I don't doubt it. You ought to have him under perfect control. I meant
+    to tell you what a pretty frock you have on."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl dimpled, and dropped him a little curtsy, half ironical and
+    wholly graceful.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter was charmed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now keep that way, Cissie, smiling and human, not so grammatical. I
+    wish I had a brooch."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "A brooch?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'd give it to you. Your dress needs a brooch, an old gold brooch at
+    the bosom, just a glint there to balance your eyes."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie flushed happily, and made the feminine movement of concealing the
+    V-shaped opening at her throat.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It's a pleasure to doll up for a man like you, Peter. You see a girl's
+    good points&mdash;if she has any," she tacked on demurely.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, just any man&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Don't think it! Don't think it!" waved down Cissie, humorously.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But, Cissie, how is it possible&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Just blind." Cissie rippled into a boarding-school laugh. "I could wear
+    the whole rue del Opera here in Niggertown, and nobody would ever see it
+    but you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie was moving toward the door. Peter tried to detain her. He enjoyed
+    the implication of Tump Pack's stupidity, in their badinage, but she
+    would not stay. He was finally reduced to thanking her for her present,
+    then stood guard as she tripped out into the grimy street. In the
+    sunshine her glossy black hair and canary dress looked as trim and
+    brilliant as the plumage of a chaffinch.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter Siner walked back into the kitchen with the fixed smile of a man
+    who is thinking of a pretty girl. The black dowager in the kitchen
+    received him in silence, with her thick lips pouted. When Peter observed
+    it, he felt slightly amused at his mother's resentment.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, you sho had a lot o' chatter over signin' a lil ole paper."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "She signed for ten dollars," said Peter, smiling.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Huh! she'll never pay it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Said Tump Pack would pay it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Huh!" The old negress dropped the subject, and nodded at a huge double
+    pan on the table. "Dat's whut she brung you." She grunted
+    disapprovingly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And it's for you, too, Mother."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ya-as, I 'magine she brung somp'n fuh me."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter walked across to the double pans, and saw they held a complete
+    dinner&mdash;chicken, hot biscuits, cake, pickle, even ice-cream.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The sight of the food brought Peter a realization that he was keenly
+    hungry. As a matter of fact, he had not eaten a palatable meal since he
+    had been evicted from the white dining-car at Cairo, Illinois. Siner
+    served his own and his mother's plate.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old woman sniffed again.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Seems to me lak you is mighty onobsarvin' fuh a nigger whut's been off
+    to college."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Anything else?" Peter looked into the pans again.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ain't you see whut it's all in?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What it's in?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yeah; whut it's in. You heared whut I said."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What is it in?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, it's in Miss Arkwright's tukky roaster, dat's whut it's in." The
+    old negress drove her point home with an acid accent.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter Siner was too loyal to his new friendship with Cissie Dildine to
+    allow his mother's jealous suspicions to affect him; nevertheless the
+    old woman's observations about the turkey roaster did prevent a complete
+    and care-free enjoyment of the meal. Certainly there were other turkey
+    roasters in Hooker's Bend than Mrs. Arkwright's. Cissie might very well
+    own a roaster. It was absurd to think that Cissie, in the midst of her
+    almost pathetic struggle to break away from the uncouthness of
+    Niggertown, would stoop to&mdash;Even in his thoughts Peter avoided
+    nominating the charge.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And then, somehow, his memory fished up the fact that years ago Ida May,
+    according to village rumor, was "light-fingered." At that time in
+    Peter's life "light-fingeredness" carried with it no opprobrium
+    whatever. It was simply a fact about Ida May, as were her sloe eyes and
+    curling black hair. His reflections renewed his perpetual sense of
+    queerness and strangeness that hall-marked every phase of Niggertown
+    life since his return from the North.
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    Cissie Dildine's contribution tailed out the one hundred dollars that
+    Peter needed, and after he had finished his meal, the mulatto set out
+    across the Big Hill for the white section of the village, to complete
+    his trade.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was Peter's program to go to the Planter's Bank, pay down his
+    hundred, and receive a deed from one Elias Tomwit, which the bank held
+    in escrow. Two or three days before Peter had tried to borrow the
+    initial hundred from the bank, but the cashier, Henry Hooker, after
+    going into the transaction, had declined the loan, and therefore Siner
+    had been forced to await a meeting of the Sons and Daughters of
+    Benevolence. At this meeting the subscription had gone through promptly.
+    The land the negroes purposed to purchase for an industrial school was a
+    timbered tract tying southeast of Hooker's Bend on the head-waters of
+    Ross Creek. A purchase price of eight hundred dollars had been agreed
+    upon. The timber on the tract, sold on the stump, would bring almost
+    that amount. It was Siner's plan to commandeer free labor in Niggertown,
+    work off the timber, and have enough money to build the first unit of
+    his school. A number of negro men already had subscribed a certain
+    number of days' work in the timber. It was a modest and entirely
+    practical program, and Peter felt set up over it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The brown man turned briskly out into the hot afternoon sunshine, down
+    the mean semicircular street, where piccaninnies were kicking up clouds
+    of dust. He hurried through the dusty area, and presently turned off a
+    by-path that led over the hill, through a glade of cedars, to the white
+    village.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The glade was gloomy, but warm, for the shade of cedars somehow seems to
+    hold heat. A carpet of needles hushed Siner's footfalls and spread a
+    Sabbatical silence through the grove. The upward path was not smooth,
+    but was broken with outcrops of the same reddish limestone that marks
+    the whole stretch of the Tennessee River. Here and there in the grove
+    were circles eight or ten feet in diameter, brushed perfectly clean of
+    all needles and pebbles and twigs. These places were crap-shooters'
+    circles, where black and white men squatted to shoot dice.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Under the big stones on the hillside, Peter knew, was cached illicit
+    whisky, and at night the boot-leggers carried on a brisk trade among the
+    gamblers. More than that, the glade on the Big Hill was used for still
+    more demoralizing ends. It became a squalid grove of Ashtoreth; but now,
+    in the autumn evening, all the petty obscenities of white and black
+    sloughed away amid the religious implications of the dark-green aisles.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The sight of a white boy sitting on an outcrop of limestone with a strap
+    of school-books dropped at his feet rather surprised Peter. The negro
+    looked at the hobbledehoy for several seconds before he recognized in
+    the lanky youth a little Arkwright boy whom he had known and played with
+    in his pre-college days. Now there was such an exaggerated wistfulness
+    in young Arkwright's attitude that Peter was amused.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Hello, Sam," he called. "What you doing out here?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Arkwright boy turned with a start.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Aw, is that you, Siner?" Before the negro could reply, he added: "Was
+    you on the Harvard football team, Siner? Guess the white fellers have a
+    pretty gay time in Harvard, don't they, Siner? Geemenettie! but I git
+    tired o' this dern town! D' reckon I could make the football team? Looks
+    like I could if a nigger like you could, Siner."
+</p>
+<p>
+    None of this juvenile outbreak of questions required answers. Peter
+    stood looking at the hobbledehoy without smiling.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Aren't you going to school?" he asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Arkwright shrugged.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Aw, hell!" he said self-consciously. "We got marched down to the
+    protracted meetin' while ago&mdash;whole school did. My seat happened to be
+    close to a window. When they all stood up to sing, I crawled out and
+    skipped. Don't mention that, Siner."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I won't."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "When a fellow goes to college he don't git marched to preachin', does
+    he, Siner?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I never did."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We-e-ll," mused young Sam, doubtfully, "you're a nigger."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I never saw any white men marched in, either."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, hell! I wish I was in college."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What are you sitting out here thinking about?" inquired Peter of the
+    ingenuous youngster.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh&mdash;football and&mdash;women and God and&mdash;how to stack cards. You think
+    about ever'thing, in the woods. Damn it! I got to git out o' this little
+    jay town. D' reckon I could git in the navy, Siner?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Don't see why you couldn't, Sam. Have you seen Tump Pack anywhere?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yeah; on Hobbett's corner. Say, is Cissie Dildine at home?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I believe she is."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "She cooks for us," explained young Arkwright, "and Mammy wants her to
+    come and git supper, too."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The phrase "get supper, too," referred to the custom in the white homes
+    of Hooker's Bend of having only two meals cooked a day, breakfast and
+    the twelve-o'clock dinner, with a hot supper optional with the mistress.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter nodded, and passed on up the path, leaving young Arkwright seated
+    on the ledge of rock, a prey to all the boiling, erratic impulses of
+    adolescence. The negro sensed some of the innumerable difficulties of
+    this white boy's life, and once, as he walked on over the silent
+    needles, he felt an impulse to turn back and talk to young Sam
+    Arkwright, to sit down and try to explain to the youth what he could of
+    this hazardous adventure called Life. But then, he reflected, very
+    likely the boy would be offended at a serious talk from a negro. Also,
+    he thought that young Arkwright, being white, was really not within the
+    sphere of his ministry. He, Peter Siner, was a worker in the black world
+    of the South. He was part of the black world which the white South was
+    so meticulous to hide away, to keep out of sight and out of thought.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A certain vague sense of triumph trickled through some obscure corner of
+    Peter's mind. It was so subtle that Peter himself would have been the
+    first, in all good faith, to deny it and to affirm that all his motives
+    were altruistic. Once he looked back through the cedars. He could still
+    see the boy hunched over, chin in fist, staring at the mat of needles.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As Peter turned the brow of the Big Hill, he saw at its eastern foot the
+    village church, a plain brick building with a decaying spire. Its side
+    was perforated by four tall arched windows. Each was a memorial window
+    of stained glass, which gave the building a black look from the outside.
+    As Peter walked down the hill toward the church he heard the and
+    somewhat nasal singing of uncultivated voices mingled with the snoring
+    of a reed organ.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When he reached Main Street, Peter found the whole business portion
+    virtually deserted. All the stores were closed, and in every show-window
+    stood a printed notice that no business would be transacted between the
+    hours of two and three o'clock in the afternoon during the two weeks of
+    revival then in progress. Beside this notice stood another card, giving
+    the minister's text for the current day. On this particular day it read:
+</p>
+<center>
+                        GO YE INTO ALL THE WORLD
+</center>
+<center>
+                 Come hear Rev. E.B. Blackwater's great<br>
+                         Missionary Address on
+</center>
+<center>
+                         CHRISTIANIZING AFRICA
+</center>
+<center>
+                  ELOQUENT, PROFOUND, HEART-SEARCHING.<br>
+                        ILLUSTRATED WITH SLIDES.
+</center>
+<p>
+    Half a dozen negroes lounged in the sunshine on Hobbett's corner as
+    Peter came up. They were amusing themselves after the fashion of blacks,
+    with mock fights, feints, sudden wrestlings. They would seize one
+    another by the head and grind their knuckles into one another's wool.
+    Occasionally, one would leap up and fall into one of those grotesque
+    shuffles called "breakdowns." It all held a certain rawness, an
+    irrepressible juvenility.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As Peter came up, Tump Pack detached himself from the group and gave a
+    pantomime of thrusting. He was clearly reproducing the action which had
+    won for him his military medal. Then suddenly he fell down in the dust
+    and writhed. He was mimicking with a ghastly realism the death-throes of
+    his four victims. His audience howled with mirth at this dumb show of
+    the bayonet-fight and of killing four men. Tump himself got up out of
+    the dust with tears of laughter in his eyes. Peter caught the end of his
+    sentence, "Sho put it to 'em, black boy. Fo' white men&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    His audience roared again, swayed around, and pounded one another in an
+    excess of mirth.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Siner shouted from across the street two or three times before he caught
+    Tump's attention. The ex-soldier looked around, sobered abruptly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Whut-chu want, nigger?" His inquiry was not over-cordial.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter nodded him across the street.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The heavily built black in khaki hesitated a moment, then started across
+    the street with the dragging feet of a reluctant negro. Peter looked at
+    him as he came up.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What's the matter, Tump?" he asked playfully.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ain't nothin' matter wid me, nigger." Peter made a guess at Tump's
+    surliness.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Look here, are you puffed up because Cissie Dildine struck you for a
+    ten?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tump's expression changed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Is she struck me fuh a ten?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes; on that school subscription."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Is dat whut you two niggers wuz a-talkin' 'bout over thaiuh in yo'
+    house?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Exactly." Peter showed the list, with Cissie's name on it. "She told me
+    to collect from you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tump brightened up.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "So dat wuz whut you two niggers wuz a-talkin' 'bout over at yo' house."
+    He ran a fist down into his khaki, and drew out three or four one-dollar
+    bills and about a pint of small change. It was the usual crap-shooter's
+    offering. The two negroes sat down on the ramshackle porch of an old
+    jeweler's shop, and Tump began a complicated tally of ten dollars.
+</p>
+<p>
+    By the time he had his dimes, quarters, and nickels in separate stacks,
+    services in the village church were finished, and the congregation came
+    filing up the street. First came the school-children, running and
+    chattering and swinging their books by the straps; then the business men
+    of the hamlet, rather uncomfortable in coats and collars, hurrying back
+    to their stores; finally came the women, surrounding the preacher.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tump and Peter walked on up to the entrance of the Planter's Bank and
+    there awaited Mr. Henry Hooker, the cashier. Presently a skinny man
+    detached himself from the church crowd and came angling across the dirty
+    street toward the bank. Mr. Hooker wore somewhat shabby clothes for a
+    banker; in fact, he never could recover from certain personal habits
+    formed during a penurious boyhood. He had a thin hatchet face which just
+    at this moment was shining though from some inward glow. Although he was
+    an unhandsome little man, his expression was that of one at peace with
+    man and God and was pleasant to see. He had been so excited by the
+    minister that he was constrained to say something even to two negroes.
+    So as he unlocked the little one-story bank, he told Tump and Peter that
+    he had been listening to a man who was truly a man of God. He said
+    Blackwater could touch the hardest heart, and, sure enough, Mr. Hooker's
+    rather popped and narrow-set eyes looked as though he had been crying.
+</p>
+<p>
+    All this encomium was given in a high, cracked voice as the cashier
+    opened the door and turned the negroes into the bank. Tump, who stood
+    with his hat off, listening to all the cashier had to say, said he
+    thought so, too.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The shabby interior of the little bank, the shabby little banker,
+    renewed that sense of disillusion that pervaded Peter's home-coming. In
+    Boston the mulatto had done his slight banking business in a white
+    marble structure with tellers of machine-like briskness and neatness.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Hooker strolled around into his grill-cage; when he was thoroughly
+    ensconced he began business in his high voice:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You came to see me about that land, Peter?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Yes, sir."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Sorry to tell you, Peter, you are not back in time to get the Tomwit
+    place."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter came out of his musing over the Boston banks with a sense of
+    bewilderment.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "How's that? why, I bought that land&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But you paid nothing for your option, Siner."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I had a clear-cut understanding with Mr. Tomwit&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Hooker smiled a smile that brought out sharp wrinkles around the
+    thin nose on his thin face.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You should have paid him an earnest, Siner, if you wanted to bind your
+    trade. You colored folks are always stumbling over the law."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter stared through the grating, not knowing what to do.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'll go see Mr. Tomwit," he said, and started uncertainly for the door.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The cashier's falsetto stopped him:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No use, Peter. Mr. Tomwit surprised me, too, but no use talking about
+    it. I didn't like to see such an important thing as the education of our
+    colored people held up, myself. I've been thinking about it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Especially when I had made a fair square trade," put in Peter, warmly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Exactly," squeaked the cashier. "And rather than let your project be
+    delayed, I'm going to offer you the old Dillihay place at exactly the
+    same price, Peter&mdash;eight hundred."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The Dillihay place?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes; that's west of town; it's bigger by twenty acres than old man
+    Tomwit's place."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter considered the proposition.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'll have to carry this before the Sons and Daughters of Benevolence,
+    Mr. Hooker."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The cashier repeated the smile that bracketed his thin nose in wrinkles.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That's with you, but you know what you say goes with the niggers here
+    in town, and, besides, I won't promise how long I'll hold the Dillihay
+    place. Real estate is brisk around here now. I didn't want to delay a
+    good work on account of not having a location." Mr. Hooker turned away
+    to a big ledger on a breast-high desk, and apparently was about to
+    settle himself to the endless routine of bank work.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter knew the Dillihay place well. It lacked the timber of the other
+    tract; still, it was fairly desirable. He hesitated before the tarnished
+    grill.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What do you think about it, Tump?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You won't make a mistake in buying," answered the high voice of Mr.
+    Hooker at his ledger.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I don' think you'll make no mistake in buyin', Peter," repeated Tump's
+    bass.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter turned back a little uncertainly, and asked how long it would take
+    to fix the new deed. He had a notion of making a flying canvass of the
+    officers of the Sons and Daughters in the interim. He was surprised to
+    find that Mr. Hooker already had the deed and the notes ready to sign,
+    in anticipation of Peter's desires. Here the banker brought out the set
+    of papers.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'll take it," decided Peter; "and if the lodge doesn't want it, I'll
+    keep the place myself."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I like to deal with a man of decision," piped the cashier, a wrinkled
+    smile on his sharp face.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter pushed in his bag of collections, then Mr. Hooker signed the deed,
+    and Peter signed the land notes. They exchanged the instruments. Peter
+    received the crisp deed, bound in blue manuscript cover. It rattled
+    unctuously. To Peter it was his first step toward a second Tuskegee.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The two negroes walked out of the Planter's Bank filled with a sense of
+    well-doing. Tump Pack was openly proud of having been connected, even in
+    a casual way, with the purchase. As he walked down the steps, he turned
+    to Peter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Don' reckon nobody could git a deed off on you wid stoppers in it, does
+    you?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We don't know any such word as 'stop,' Tump," declared Peter, gaily.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For Peter was gay. The whole incident at the bank was beginning to
+    please him. The meeting of a sudden difficulty, his quick decision&mdash;it
+    held the quality of leadership. Napoleon had it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The two colored men stepped briskly through the afternoon sunshine along
+    the mean village street. Here and there in front of their doorways sat
+    the merchants yawning and talking, or watching pigs root in the piles of
+    waste.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In Peter's heart came a wonderful thought. He would make his industrial
+    institution such a model of neatness that the whole village of Hooker's
+    Bend would catch the spirit. The white people should see that something
+    clean and uplifting could come out of Niggertown. The two races ought to
+    live for a mutual benefit. It was a fine, generous thought. For some
+    reason, just then, there flickered through Peter's mind a picture of the
+    Arkwright boy sitting hunched over in the cedar glade, staring at the
+    needles.
+</p>
+<p>
+    All this musing was brushed away by the sight of old Mr. Tomwit crossing
+    the street from the east side to the livery-stable on the west. That
+    human desire of wanting the person who has wronged you to know that you
+    know your injury moved Peter to hurry his steps and to speak to the old
+    gentleman.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Tomwit had been a Confederate cavalryman in the Civil War, and there
+    was still a faint breeze and horsiness about him. He was a hammered-down
+    old gentleman, with hair thin but still jet-black, a seamed, sunburned
+    face, and a flattened nose. His voice was always a friendly roar. Now,
+    when he saw Peter turning across the street to meet him, he halted and
+    called out at once:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now Peter, I know what's the matter with you. I didn't do you right."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter went closer, not caring to take the whole village into his
+    confidence.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "How came you to turn down my proposition, Mr. Tomwit," he asked, "after
+    we had agreed and drawn up the papers?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We-e-ell, I had to do it, Peter," explained the old man, loudly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, Mr. Tomwit?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "A white neighbor wanted me to, Peter," boomed the cavalryman.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Who, Mr. Tomwit?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Henry Hooker talked me into it, Peter. It was a mean trick, Peter. I
+    done you wrong." He stood nodding his head and rubbing his flattened
+    nose in an impersonal manner. "Yes, I done you wrong, Peter," he
+    acknowledged loudly, and looked frankly into Peter's eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The negro was immensely surprised that Henry Hooker had done such a
+    thing. A thought came that perhaps some other Henry Hooker had moved
+    into town in his absence.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You don't mean the cashier of the bank?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Old Mr. Tomwit drew out a plug of Black Mule tobacco, set some gapped,
+    discolored teeth into corner, nodded at Peter silently, at the same time
+    utilizing the nod to tear off a large quid. He rolled tin about with his
+    tongue and after a few moments adjusted it so that he could speak.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yeah," he proceeded in a muffled tone, "they ain't but one Henry
+    Hooker; he is the one and only Henry. He said if I sold you my land,
+    you'd put up a nigger school and bring in so many blackbirds you'd run
+    me clean off my farm. He said it'd ruin the whole town, a nigger school
+    would."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter was astonished.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, he didn't talk that way to me!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Natchelly, natchelly," agreed the old cavalryman, dryly.&mdash;"Henry has a
+    different way to talk to ever' man, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "In fact," proceeded Peter, "Mr. Hooker sold me the old Dillihay place
+    in lieu of the deal I missed with you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Old Mr. Tomwit moved his quid in surprise.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The hell he did!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That at least shows he doesn't think a negro school would ruin the
+    value of his land. He owns farms all around the Dillihay place."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Old Mr. Tomwit turned his quid over twice and spat thoughtfully.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That your deed in your pocket?" With the air of a man certain of being
+    obeyed he held out his hand for the blue manuscript cover protruding
+    from the mulatto's pocket. Peter handed it over. The old gentleman
+    unfolded the deed, then moved it carefully to and from his eyes until
+    the typewriting was adjusted to his focus. He read it slowly, with a
+    movement of his lips and a drooling of tobacco-juice. Finally he
+    finished, remarked, "I be damned!" in a deliberate voice, returned the
+    deed, and proceeded across the street to the livery-stable, which was
+    fronted by an old mulberry-tree, with several chairs under it. In one of
+    these chairs he would sit for the remainder of the day, making an
+    occasional loud remark about the weather or the crops, and watching the
+    horses pass in and out of the stable.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Siner had vaguely enjoyed old Mr. Tomwit's discomfiture over the deed,
+    if it was discomfiture that had moved the old gentleman to his
+    sententious profanity. But the negro did not understand Henry Hooker's
+    action at all. The banker had abused his position of trust as holder of
+    a deed in escrow snapping up the sale himself; then he had sold Peter
+    the Dillihay place. It was a queer shift.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tump Pack caught his principal's mood with that chameleon-like mental
+    quality all negroes possess.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Dat Henry Hooker," criticized Tump, "allus was a lil ole dried-up snake
+    in de grass."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He abused his position of trust," said Peter, gloomily; "I must say,
+    his motives seem very obscure to me."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Dat sho am a fine way to put hit," said Tump, admiringly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why do you suppose he bought in the Tomwit tract and sold me the
+    Dillihay place?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Asked for an opinion, Tump began twiddling military medal and corrugated
+    the skin on his inch-high brow.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now you puts it to me lak dat, Peter," he answered with importance, "I
+    wonders ef dat gimlet-haided white man ain't put some stoppers in dat
+    deed he guv you. He mout of."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Such remarks as that from Tump always annoyed Peter. Tump's intellectual
+    method was to talk sense just long enough to gain his companion's ear,
+    and then produce something absurd and quash the tentative interest.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Siner turned away from him and said, "Piffle."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tump was defensive at once.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'T ain't piffle, either! I's talkin' sense, nigger."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter shrugged, and walked a little way in silence, but the soldier's
+    nonsense stuck in his brain and worried him. Finally he turned, rather
+    irritably.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Stoppers&mdash;what do you mean by stoppers?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tump opened his jet eyes and their yellowish whites. "I means nigger-
+    stoppers," he reiterated, amazed in his turn.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Negro-stoppers&mdash;" Peter began to laugh sardonically, and abruptly quit
+    the conversation.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Such rank superiority irritated the soldier to the nth power.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Look heah, black man, I knows I <i>is</i> right. Heah, lonme look at
+    dat-aiuh, deed. Maybe I can find 'em. I knows I suttinly is right."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter walked on, paying no attention to the request Until Tump caught
+    his arm and drew him up short.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Look heah, nigger," said Tump, in a different tone, "I faded dad deed
+    fuh ten iron men, an' I reckon I got a once-over comin' fuh my money."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The soldier was plainly mobilized and ready to attack. To fight Tump, to
+    fight any negro at all, would be Peter's undoing; it would forfeit the
+    moral leadership he hoped to gain. Moreover, he had no valid grounds for
+    a disagreement with Tump. He passed over the deed, and the two negroes
+    moved on their way to Niggertown.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tump trudged forward with eyes glued to paper, his face puckered in the
+    unaccustomed labor of reading.
+</p>
+<p>
+    His thick lips moved at the individual letters, and constructed them
+    bunglingly into syllables and words. He was trying to uncover the verbal
+    camouflage by which the astute white brushed away all rights of all
+    black men whatsoever.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To Peter there grew up something sadly comical in Tump's efforts. The
+    big negro might well typify all the colored folk of the South,
+    struggling in a web of law and custom they did not understand,
+    misplacing their suspicions, befogged and fearful. A certain penitence
+    for having been irritated at Tump softened Peter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That's all right, Tump; there's nothing to find."
+</p>
+<p>
+    At that moment the soldier began to bob his head.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Eh! eh! eh! W-wait a minute!" he stammered. "Whut dis? B'lieve I done
+    foun' it! I sho is! Heah she am! Heah's dis nigger-stopper, jes lak I
+    tol' you!" Tump marked a sentence in the guaranty of the deed with a
+    rusty forefinger and looked up at Peter in mixed triumph and accusation.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter leaned over the deed, amused.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Let's see your mare's nest."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, she 'fo' God is thaiuh, an' you sho let loose a hundud dollars uv
+    our 'ciety's money, an' got nothin' fuh hit but a piece o' paper wid a
+    nigger-stopper on hit!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tump's voice was so charged with contempt that Peter looked with a
+    certain uneasiness at his find. He read this sentence switched into the
+    guaranty of the indenture:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Be it further understood and agreed that no negro, black man, Afro-
+    American, mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, or any person whatsoever of
+    colored blood or lineage, shall enter upon, seize, hold, occupy, reside
+    upon, till, cultivate, own or possess any part or parcel of said
+    property, or garner, cut, or harvest therefrom, any of the usufruct,
+    timber, or emblements thereof, but shall by these presents be estopped
+    from so doing forever."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tump Pack drew a shaken, unhappy breath.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now, I reckon you see whut a nigger-stopper is."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter stood in the sunshine, looking at the estoppel clause, his lips
+    agape. Twice he read it over. It held something of the quality of those
+    comprehensive curses that occur in the Old Testament. He moistened his
+    lips and looked at Tump.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why that can't be legal." His voice sounded empty and shallow.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Legal! 'Fo' Gawd, nigger, whauh you been to school all dese yeahs,
+    never to heah uv a nigger-stopper befo'!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But&mdash;but how can a stroke of the pen, a mere gesture, estop a whole
+    class of American citizens forever?" cried Peter, with a rising voice.
+    "Turn it around. Suppose they had put in a line that no white man should
+    own that land. It&mdash;it's empty! I tell you, it's mere words!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tump cut into his diatribe: "No use talkin' lak dat. Our 'ciety thought
+    you wuz a aidjucated nigger. We didn't think no white man could put
+    nothin' over on you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Education!" snapped Siner. "Education isn't supposed to keep you away
+    from shysters!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Keep you away fum 'em!" cried Tump, in a scandalized voice. "'Fo' Gawd,
+    nigger, you don' know nothin'! O' co'se a aidjucation ain't to keep you
+    away fum shysters; hit's to mek you one 'uv 'em!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter stood breathing irregularly, looking at his deed. A determination
+    not to be cheated grew up and hardened in his nerves. With unsteady
+    hands he refolded his deed and put it into his pocket, then he turned
+    about and started back up the village street toward the bank.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tump stared after him a moment and presently called out:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Heah, nigger, whut you gwine do?" A moment later he repeated to his
+    friend's back: "Look heah, nigger, I 'vise you ag'inst anything you's
+    gwine do, less'n you's ready to pass in you' checks!" As Peter strode on
+    he lifted his voice still higher: "Peter! Hey, Peter, I sho' 'vise you
+    'g'inst anything you's 'gwine do!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    A pulse throbbed in Siner's temples. The wrath of the cozened heated his
+    body. His clothes felt hot. As he strode up the trash-piled street, the
+    white merchants lolling in their doors began smiling. Presently a laugh
+    broke out at one end of the street and was caught up here and there. It
+    was the undying minstrel jest, the comedy of a black face. Dawson Bobbs
+    leaned against the wide brick entrance of the livery-stable, his red
+    face balled into shining convexities by a quizzical smile.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Hey, Peter," he drawled, winking at old Mr. Tomwit, "been investin' in
+    real estate?" and broke into Homeric laughter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As Peter passed on, the constable dropped casually in behind the brown
+    man and followed him up to the bank.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To Peter Siner the walk up to the bank was an emotional confusion. He
+    has a dim consciousness that voices said things to him along the way and
+    that there was laughter. All this was drowned by desperate thoughts and
+    futile plans to regain his lost money, flashing through his head. The
+    cashier would exchange the money for the deed; he would enter suit and
+    carry it to the Supreme Court; he would show the money had not been his,
+    he had had no right to buy; he would beg the cashier. His head seemed to
+    spin around and around.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He climbed the steps into the Planter's Bank and opened the screen-door.
+    The cashier glanced up briefly, but continued busily at his ledger.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter walked shakenly to the barred window in the grill.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Mr. Hooker."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Very busy now, Peter," came the high voice.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I want to know about this deed."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The banker was nimbly setting down long rows of figures. "No time to
+    explain deeds, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But&mdash;but there is a clause in this deed, Mr. Hooter, estopping colored
+    persons from occupying the Dillihay place."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Precisely. What about it?" Mr. Hooker snapped out his inquiry and
+    looked up suddenly, catching Peter full in the face with his narrow-set
+    eyes. It was the equivalent of a blow.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "According to this, I&mdash;I can't establish a school on it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You cannot."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then what can I do with it?" cried Peter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Sell it. You have what lawyers call a cloud on the title. Sell it. I'll
+    give you ten dollars for your right in it, just to clear up my title."
+</p>
+<p>
+    A queer trembling seized Peter. The little banker turned to a fantastic
+    caricature of a man. His hatchet face, close-set eyes, harsh, straight
+    hair, and squeaky voice made him seem like some prickly, dried-up gnome
+    a man sees in a fever.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At that moment the little wicket-door of the window opened under the
+    pressure of Peter's shoulder. Inside on the desk, lay neat piles of
+    bills of all denominations, ready to be placed in the vault. In a
+    nervous tremor Peter dropped in his blue-covered deed and picked up a
+    hundred-dollar bill.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I&mdash;I won't trade," he jibbered. "It&mdash;it wasn't my money. Here's your
+    deed!" Peter was moving away. He felt a terrific impulse to run, but he
+    walked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The banker straightened abruptly. "Stop there, Peter!" he screeched.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At that moment Dawson Bobbs lounged in at the door, with his perpetual
+    grin balling up his broad red face. He had a toothpick, in his mouth.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'S matter?" he asked casually.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Peter there," said the banker, with a pale, sharp face, "doesn't want
+    to stick to his trade. He is just walking off with one of my hundred-
+    dollar bills."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Sick o' yo' deal, Peter?" inquired Bobbs, smiling and shifting the
+    toothpick. He bit down on it. "Well, whut-chu want done, Henry?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh," hesitated the cashier in a quandary, "nothing, I suppose. Siner
+    was excited; you know how niggers are. We can't afford to send every
+    nigger to the pen that breaks the law." He stood studying Peter out of
+    his close-set eyes. "Here's your deed, Peter." He shoved it back under
+    the grill. "And lemme give you a little friendly advice. I'd just run an
+    ordinary nigger school if I was you. This higher education don't seem to
+    make a nigger much smarter when he comes back than when he starts out."
+    A faint smile bracketed the thin nose.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dawson Bobbs roared with sudden appreciation, took the bill from Peter's
+    fingers, and pushed it back under the grill.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The cashier picked up the money, casually. He considered a moment, then
+    reached for a long envelop. As he did so, the incident with Peter
+    evidently passed from his mind, for his hatchet face lighted up as with
+    some inward illumination.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Bobbs," he said warmly, "that was a great sermon Brother Blackwater
+    preached. It made me want to help according as the Lord has blessed me.
+    Couldn't you spare five dollars, Bobbs, to go along with this?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The constable tried to laugh and wriggle away, but the cashier's gimlet
+    eyes kept boring him, and eventually he fished out a five-dollar bill
+    and handed it in. Mr. Hooker placed the two bills in the envelop, sealed
+    it, and handed it to the constable.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Jest drop that in the post-office as you go down the street, Bobbs," he
+    directed in his high voice. Peter caught a glimpse of the type-written
+    address.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was
+</p>
+<pre>
+  Rev. Lemuel Hardiman,
+    c/o United Missions,
+      Katuako Post,
+        Bahr el Ghazal,
+          Sudan,
+            East Africa.
+</pre>
+<a name="2HCH6"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER III
+</h2>
+<p>
+    The white population of Hooker's Bend was much amused and gratified at
+    the outcome of the Hooker-Siner land deal. Every one agreed that the
+    cashier's chicanery was a droll and highly original turn to give to a
+    negro exclusion clause drawn into a deed. Then, too, it involved several
+    legal points highly congenial to the Hooker's Bend intellect Could the
+    Sons and Daughters of Benevolence recover their hundred dollars? Could
+    Henry Hooker force them to pay the remaining seven hundred? Could not
+    Siner establish his school on the Dillihay place regardless of the
+    clause, since the cashier would be estopped from obtaining an injunction
+    by his own instrument?
+</p>
+<p>
+    As a matter of fact, the Sons and Daughters of Benevolence sent a
+    committee to wait on Mr. Hooker to see what action he meant to take on
+    the notes that paid for his spurious deed. This brought another harvest
+    of rumors. Street gossip reported that Henry had compromised for this,
+    that, and the other amount, that he would not compromise, that he had
+    persuaded the fool niggers into signing still other instruments. Peter
+    never knew the truth. He was not on the committee.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But high above the legal phase of interest lay the warming fact that
+    Peter Siner, a negro graduate of Harvard, on his first tilt in Hooker's
+    Bend affairs had ridden to a fall. This pleased even the village women,
+    whose minds could not follow the subtle trickeries of legal disputation.
+    The whole affair simply proved what the white village had known all
+    along: you can't educate a nigger. Hooker's Bend warmed with pleasure
+    that half of its population was ineducable.
+</p>
+<p>
+    White sentiment in Hooker's Bend reacted strongly on Niggertown. Peter
+    Siner's prestige was no more. The cause of higher education for negroes
+    took a mighty slump. Junius Gholston, a negro boy who had intended to go
+    to Nashville to attend Fisk University, reconsidered the matter, packed
+    away his good clothes, put on overalls, and shipped down the river as a
+    roustabout instead.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the Siner cabin old Caroline Siner berated her boy for his stupidity
+    in ever trading with that low-down, twisting snake in the grass, Henry
+    Hooker. She alternated this with floods of tears. Caroline had no
+    sympathy for her offspring. She said she had thrown away years of self-
+    sacrifice, years of washing, a thousand little comforts her money would
+    have bought, all for nothing, for less than nothing, to ship a fool
+    nigger up North and to ship him back.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Of all Niggertown, Caroline was the most unforgiving because Peter had
+    wounded her in her pride. Every other negro in the village felt that
+    genial satisfaction in a great man's downfall that is balm to small
+    souls. But the old mother knew not this consolation. Peter was her
+    proxy. It was she who had fallen.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The only person in Niggertown who continued amiable to Peter Siner was
+    Cissie Dildine. The octoroon, perhaps, had other criteria by which to
+    judge a man than his success or mishaps dealing with a pettifogger.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Two or three days after the catastrophe, Cissie made an excursion to the
+    Siner cabin with a plate of cookies. Cissie was careful to place her
+    visit on exactly a normal footing. She brought her little cakes in the
+    role of one who saw no evil, spoke no evil, and heard no evil. But
+    somehow Cissie's visit increased the old woman's wrath. She remained
+    obstinately in the kitchen, and made remarks not only audible, but
+    arresting, through the thin partition that separated it from the poor
+    living-room.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie was hardly inside when a voice stated that it hated to see a gal
+    running after a man, trying to bait him with a lot of fum-diddles.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie gave Peter a single wide-eyed glance, and then attempted to
+    ignore the bodiless comment.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Here are some cookies, Mr. Siner," began the girl, rather nervously. "I
+    thought you and Ahnt Carolin'&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yeah, I 'magine dey's fuh me!" jeered the spectral voice.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Might like them," concluded the girl, with a little gasp.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I suttinly don' want no light-fingered hussy ma'yin' my son," proceeded
+    the voice, "an' de whole Dildine fambly 'll bear watchin'."
+</p>
+<a name="image-4"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="birth04.png"
+alt="In the Siner Cabin Old Caroline Siner Berated Her Boy.
+">
+<br>In the Siner Cabin Old Caroline Siner Berated Her Boy.
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    "Won't you have a seat?" asked Peter, exquisitely uncomfortable.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie handed him her plate in confusion.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, no, Mr. Siner," she hastened on, in her careful grammar, "I just&mdash;
+    ran over to&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "To fling herse'f in a nigger's face 'cause he's been North and got
+    made a fool uv," boomed the hidden censor.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I must go now," gasped Cissie.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter made a harried gesture.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Wait&mdash;wait till I get my hat."
+</p>
+<p>
+    He put the plate down with a swift glance around for his hat. He found
+    it, and strode to the door, following the girl. The two hurried out into
+    the street, followed by indistinct strictures from the kitchen. Cissie
+    breathed fast, with open lips. They moved rapidly along the semicircular
+    street almost with a sense of flight. The heat of the early autumn sun
+    stung them through their clothes. For some distance they walked in a
+    nervous silence, then Cissie said:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Your mother certainly hates me, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No," said Peter, trying to soften the situation; "it's me; she's
+    terribly hurt about&mdash;" he nodded to-ward the white section&mdash;"that
+    business."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie opened her clear brown eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Your own mother turned against you!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, she has a right to be," began Peter, defensively. "I ought to have
+    read that deed. It's amazing I didn't, but I&mdash;I really wasn't expecting
+    a trick, Mr. Hooker seemed so&mdash;so sympathetic&mdash;" He came to a lame halt,
+    staring at the dust through which they picked their way.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Of course you weren't expecting tricks!" cried Cissie, warmly. "The
+    whole thing shows you're a gentleman used to dealing with gentlemen. But
+    of course these Hooker's Bend negroes will never see that!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter, surprised and grateful, looked at Cissie. Her construction of the
+    swindle was more flattering than any apology he had been able to frame
+    for himself.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Still, Cissie, I ought to have used the greatest care&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'm not talking about what you 'ought,'" stated the octoroon, crisply;
+    "I'm talking about what you are. When it comes to 'ought,' we colored
+    people must get what we can, any way we can. We fight from the bottom."
+    The speech held a viperish quality which for a moment caught the brown
+    man's attention; then he said:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "One thing is sure, I've lost my prestige, whatever it was worth."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl nodded slowly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "With the others you have, I suppose."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter glanced at Cissie. The temptation was strong to give the
+    conversation a personal turn, but he continued on the general topic:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, perhaps it's just as well. My prestige was a bit too flamboyant,
+    Cissie. All I had to do was to mention a plan. The Sons and Daughters
+    didn't even discuss it. They put it right through. That wasn't healthy.
+    Our whole system of society, all democracies are based on discussion.
+    Our old Witenagemot&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But it wasn't <i>our</i> old Witenagemot," said the girl.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well&mdash;no," admitted the mulatto, "that's true."
+</p>
+<p>
+    They moved along for some distance in silence, when the girl asked:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What are you going to do now, Peter?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Teach, and keep working for that training-school," stated Peter, almost
+    belligerently. "You didn't expect a little thing like a hundred dollars
+    to stop me, did you?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No-o-o," conceded Cissie, with some reserve of judgment in her tone.
+    Presently she added, "You could do a lot better up North, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "For whom?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, yourself," said the girl, a little surprised.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Siner nodded.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I thought all that out before I came back here, Cissie. A friend of
+    mine named Farquhar offered me a place with him up in Chicago,&mdash;a string
+    of garages. You'd like Farquhar, Cissie. He's a materialist with an
+    absolutely inexorable brain. He mechanizes the universe. I told him I
+    couldn't take his offer. 'It's like this,' I argued: 'if every negro
+    with a little ability leaves the South, our people down there will never
+    progress.' It's really that way, Cissie, it takes a certain mental
+    atmosphere to develop a people as a whole. A few individuals here and
+    there may have the strength to spring up by themselves, but the run of
+    the people&mdash;no. I believe one of the greatest curses of the colored race
+    in the South is the continual draining of its best individuals North.
+    Farquhar argued&mdash;" just then Peter saw that Cissie was not attending his
+    discourse. She was walking at his side in a respectful silence. He
+    stopped talking, and presently she smiled and said:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You haven't noticed my new brooch, Peter." She lifted her hand to her
+    bosom, and twisted the face of the trinket toward him. "You oughtn't to
+    have made me show it to you after you recommended it yourself." She made
+    a little <i>moue</i> of disappointment.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was a pretty bit of old gold that complimented the creamy skin. Peter
+    began admiring it at once, and, negro fashion, rather overstepped the
+    limits white beaux set to their praise, as he leaned close to her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At the moment the two were passing one of the oddest houses in
+    Niggertown. It was a two-story cabin built in the shape of a steamboat.
+    A little cupola represented a pilot-house, and two iron chimneys served
+    for smoke-stacks.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This queer building had been built by a negro stevedore because of a
+    deep admiration for the steamboats on which he had made his living.
+    Instead of steps at the front door, this boat-like house had a stage-
+    plank. As Peter strolled down the street with Cissie, admiring her
+    brooch, and suffused with a sense of her nearness, he happened to glance
+    up, and saw Tump Pack walk down the stage-plank, come out, and wait for
+    them at the gate.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There was something grim in the ex-soldier's face and in the set of his
+    gross lips as the two came up, but the aura of the girl prevented Peter
+    from paying much attention to it. As the two reached Tump, Peter had
+    just lifted his hand to his hat when Tump made a quick step out at the
+    gate, in front of them, and swung a furious blow at Peter's head.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie screamed. Siner staggered back with flames dancing before his
+    eyes. The soldier lunged after his toppling man with gorilla-like blows.
+    Hot pains shot through Peter's body. His head roared like a gong. The
+    sunlight danced about him in flashes. The air was full of black fists
+    smashing him, and not five feet away, the bullet head of Tump Pack
+    bobbed this way and that in the rapid shifts of his attack. A stab of
+    pain cut off Peter's breath. He stood with his diaphragm muscles tense
+    and paralyzed, making convulsive efforts to breathe. At that moment he
+    glimpsed the convexity of Tump's stomach. He drop-kicked at it with
+    foot-ball desperation. Came a loud explosive groan. Tump seemed to rise
+    a foot or two in air, turned over, and thudded down on his shoulders in
+    the dust. The soldier made no attempt to rise, but curled up, twisting
+    in agony.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter stood in the dust-cloud, wabbly, with roaring head. His open mouth
+    was full of dust. Then he became aware that negroes were running in from
+    every direction, shouting. Their voices whooped out what had happened,
+    who it was, who had licked. Tump Pack's agonized spasms brought howls of
+    mirth from the black fellows. Negro women were in the crowd, grinning, a
+    little frightened, but curious. Some were in Mother-Hubbards; one had
+    her hair half combed, one side in a kinky mattress, the other lying flat
+    and greased down to her scalp.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When Peter gradually became able to breathe and could think at all,
+    there was something terrible to him in Tump's silent attack and in this
+    extravagant black mirth over mere suffering. Cissie was gone,&mdash;had fled,
+    no doubt, at the beginning of the fight.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The prostrate man's tortured abdomen finally allowed him to twist around
+    toward Peter. His eyes were popped, and seemed all yellows and streaked
+    with swollen veins.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'll git you fuh dis," he wheezed, spitting dust "You did n' fight
+    fair, you&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The black chorus rolled their heads and pounded one another in a gale of
+    merriment.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter Siner turned away toward his home filled with sick thought. He had
+    never realized so clearly the open sore of Niggertown life and its great
+    need of healing, yet this very episode would further bar him, Peter,
+    from any constructive work. He foresaw, too plainly, how the white town
+    and Niggertown would react to this fight. There would be no
+    discrimination in the scandal. He, Peter Siner, would be grouped with
+    the boot-leggers and crap-shooters and women-chasers who filled
+    Niggertown with their brawls. As a matter of simple fact, he had been
+    fighting with another negro over a woman. That he was subjected to an
+    attack without warning or cause would never become a factor in the
+    analysis. He knew that very well.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Two of Peter's teeth were loose; his left jaw was swelling; his head
+    throbbed. With that queer perversity of human nerves, he kept biting his
+    sore teeth together as he walked along.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When he reached home, his mother met him at the door. Thanks to the
+    swiftness with which gossip spreads among black folk, she had already
+    heard of the fight, and incidentally had formed her judgment of the
+    matter. Now she looked in exasperation at her son's swelling face.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I 'cla' 'fo' Gawd!&mdash;ain't been home a week befo' he's fightin' over a
+    nigger wench lak a roustabout!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter's head throbbed so he could hardly make out the details of
+    Caroline's face.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But, Mother&mdash;" he began defensively, "I&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Me sweatin' over de wash-pot," the negress went on, "so's you could go
+    up North an' learn a lil sense; heah you comes back chasin' a dutty
+    slut!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But, Mother," he begged thickly, "I was simply walking home with Miss
+    Dildine."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Miss Dildine! Miss Dildine!" exploded the ponderous woman, with an
+    erasing gesture. "Ef you means dat stuck-up fly-by-night Cissie Dildine,
+    say so, and don' stan' thaiuh mouthin', 'Miss Dildine, Miss Dildine'!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Mother," asked Peter, thickly, through his swelling mouth, "do you want
+    to know what did happen?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I knows. I tol' you to keep away fum dat hussy. She's a fool 'bout her
+    bright color an' straight hair. Needn't be givin' herse'f no airs!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter stood in the doorway, steadying himself by the jamb. The world
+    still swayed from the blows he had received on the head.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What girl would you be willing for me to go with?" he asked in faint
+    satire.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Heah in Niggertown?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter nodded. The movement increased his headache.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "None a-tall. No Niggertown wench a-tall. When you mus' ma'y, I's
+    'speckin' you to go off summuhs an' pick yo' gal, lak you went off to
+    pick yo' aidjucation." She swung out a thick arm, and looked at Peter
+    out of the corner of her eyes, her head tilted to one side, as negresses
+    do when they become dramatically serious.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter left his mother to her stare and went to his own room. This
+    constant implication among Niggertown inhabitants that Niggertown and
+    all it held was worthless, mean, unhuman depressed Peter. The mulatto
+    knew the real trouble with Niggertown was it had adopted the white
+    village's estimate of it. The sentiment of the white village was
+    overpowering among the imitative negroes. The black folk looked into the
+    eyes of the whites and saw themselves reflected as chaff and skum and
+    slime, and no human being ever suggested that they were aught else.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter's room was a rough shed papered with old newspapers. All sorts of
+    yellow scare-heads streaked his walls. Hanging up was a crayon
+    enlargement of his mother, her broad face as unwrinkled as an egg and
+    drawn almost white, for the picture agents have discovered the only way
+    to please their black patrons is to make their enlargements as nearly
+    white as possible.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In one corner, on a home-made book-rack, stood Peter's library,&mdash;a Greek
+    book or two, an old calculus, a sociology, a psychology, a philosophy,
+    and a score of other volumes he had accumulated in his four college
+    years. As Peter, his head aching, looked at these, he realized how
+    immeasurably removed he was from the cool abstraction of the study.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The brown man sat down in an ancient rocking-chair by the window, leaned
+    back, and closed his eyes. His blood still whispered in his ears from
+    his fight. Notwithstanding his justification, he gradually became filled
+    with self-loathing. To fight&mdash;to hammer and kick in Niggertown's dust&mdash;
+    over a girl! It was an indignity.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter shifted his position in his chair, and his thoughts took another
+    trail. Tump's attack had been sudden and silent, much like a bulldog's.
+    The possibility of a simple friendship between a woman and a man never
+    entered Tump's head; it never entered any Niggertown head. Here all
+    attraction was reduced to the simplest terms of sex. Niggertown held no
+    delicate intimacies or reserves. Two youths could not go with the same
+    girl. Black women had no very great powers of choice over their suitors.
+    The strength of a man's arm isolated his sweetheart. That did not seem
+    right, resting the power of successful mating entirely upon brawn.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As Peter sat thinking it over, it came to him that the progress of any
+    race depended, finally, upon the woman having complete power of choosing
+    her mate. It is woman alone who consistently places the love accent upon
+    other matters than mere flesh and muscle. Only woman has much sex
+    selectiveness, or is inclined to select individuals with qualities of
+    mind and spirit.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For millions of years these instinctive spiritualizers of human breeding
+    stock have been hampered in their choice of mates by the unrestrained
+    right of the fighting male. Indeed, the great constructive work of
+    chivalry in the middle ages was to lay, unconsciously, the corner-stone
+    of modern civilization by resigning to the woman the power of choosing
+    from a group of males.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Siner stirred in his chair, surprised at whither his reverie had lead
+    him. He wondered how he had stumbled upon these thoughts. Had he read
+    them in a book? In point of fact, a beating administered by Tump Pack
+    had brought the brown man the first original idea he had entertained in
+    his life.
+</p>
+<p>
+    By this time, Peter's jaw had reached its maximum swelling and was eased
+    somewhat. He looked out of his little window, wondering whether Cissie
+    Dildine would choose him&mdash;or Tump Pack.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter was surprised to find blue dusk peering through his panes. All the
+    scare-heads on his walls had lapsed into a common obscurity. As he rose
+    slowly, so as not to start his head hurting again, he heard three rapid
+    pistol shots in the cedar glade between Niggertown and the white
+    village. He knew this to be the time-honored signal of boot-leggers
+    announcing that illicit whisky was for sale in the blackness of the
+    glade.
+</p>
+<a name="2HCH7"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER IV
+</h2>
+<p>
+    Next day the Siner-Pack fight was the focus of news interest in Hooker's
+    Bend. White mistresses extracted the story from their black maids, and
+    were amused by it or deprecated Cissie Dildine's morals as the mood
+    moved them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Along Main Street in front of the village stores, the merchants and
+    hangers-on discussed the affair. It was diverting that a graduate of
+    Harvard should come back to Hooker's Bend and immediately drop into such
+    a fracas. Old Captain Renfrew, one-time attorney at law and
+    representative of his county in the state legislature, sat under the
+    mulberry in front of the livery-stable and plunged into a long
+    monologue, with old Mr. Tomwit as listener, on the uneducability of the
+    black race.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Take a horse, sir," expounded the captain; "a horse can be trained to
+    add and put its name together out of an alphabet, but no horse could
+    ever write a promissory note and figure the interest on it, sir. Take a
+    dog. I've known dogs, sir, that could bring your mail from the post-
+    office, but I never saw a dog stop on the way home, sir, to read a post-
+    card."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here the old ex-attorney spat and renewed the tobacco in a black brier,
+    then proceeded to draw the parrallel between dogs and horses and Peter
+    Siner newly returned from Harvard.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "God'lmighty has set his limit on dogs, horses, and niggers, Mr. Tomwit.
+    Thus far and no farther. Take a nigger baby at birth; a nigger baby has
+    no fontanelles. It has no window toward heaven. Its skull is sealed up
+    in darkness. The nigger brain can never expand and absorb the universe,
+    sir. It can never rise on the wings of genius and weigh the stars, nor
+    compute the swing of the Pleiades. Thus far and no farther! It's
+    congenital.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now, take this Peter Siner and his disgraceful fight over a nigger
+    wench. Would you expect an educated stud horse to pay no attention to a
+    mare, sir? You can educate a stud till&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But hold on!" interrupted the old cavalryman. "I've known as
+    gentlemanly stallions as&mdash;as anybody!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old attorney cleared his throat, momentarily taken aback at this
+    failure of his metaphor. However he rallied with legal suppleness:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You are talking about thoroughbreds, sir."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I am, sir."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Good God, Tomwit! you don't imagine I'm comparing a nigger to a
+    thoroughbred, sir!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the street corners, or piled around on cotton-bales down on the wharf,
+    the negro men of the village discussed the fight. It was for the most
+    part a purely technical discussion of blows and counters and kicks, and
+    of the strange fact that a college education failed to enable Siner
+    utterly to annihilate his adversary. Jim Pink Staggs, a dapper gentleman
+    of ebony blackness, of pin-stripe flannels and blue serge coat&mdash;
+    altogether a gentleman of many parts&mdash;sat on one of the bales and
+    indolently watched an old black crone fishing from a ledge of rocks just
+    a little way below the wharf-boat. Around Jim Pink lounged and sprawled
+    black men and youths, stretching on the cotton-bales like cats in the
+    sunshine.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jim Pink was discussing Peter's education.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I 'fo' Gawd kain't see no use goin' off lak dat an' den comin' back an'
+    lettin' a white man cheat you out'n yo' hide an' taller, an' lettin' a
+    black man beat you up tull you has to 'kick him in the spivit. Ef a
+    aidjucation does you any good a-tall, you'd be boun' to beat de white man
+    at one en' uv de line, or de black man at de udder. Ef Peter ain't to be
+    foun' at eider en', wha is he?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Um-m-m!" "Eh-h-h!" "You sho spoke a moufful, Jim Pink!" came an
+    assenting chorus from the bales.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Eventually such gossip died away and took another flurry when a report
+    went abroad that Tump Pack was carrying a pistol and meant to shoot
+    Peter on sight. Then this in turn ceased to be news and of human
+    interest. It clung to Peter's mind longer than to any other person's in
+    Hooker's Bend, and it presented to the brown man a certain problem in
+    casuistry.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Should he accede to Tump Pack's possession of Cissie Dildine and give up
+    seeing the girl? Such a course cut across all his fine-spun theory about
+    women having free choice of their mates. However, the Harvard man could
+    not advocate a socialization of courtship when he himself would be the
+    first beneficiary. The prophet whose finger points selfward is damned.
+    Furthermore, all Niggertown would side with Tump Pack in such a
+    controversy. It was no uncommon thing for the very negro women to fight
+    over their beaux and husbands. As for any social theory changing this
+    r&eacute;gime, in the first place the negroes couldn't understand the theory;
+    in the second, it would have no effect if they could. Actions never grow
+    out of theories; theories grow out of actions. A theory is a looking-
+    glass that reflects the past and makes it look like the future, but the
+    glass really hides the future, and when humanity comes to a turn in its
+    course, there is always a smash-up, and a blind groping for the lost
+    path.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now, in regard to Cissie Dildine, Peter was not precisely afraid of Tump
+    Pack, but he could not clear his mind of the fact that Tump had been
+    presented with a medal by the Congress of the United States for killing
+    four men. Good sense and a care for his reputation and his skin told
+    Peter to abandon his theory of free courtship for the time being. This
+    meant a renunciation of Cissie Dildine; but he told himself he renounced
+    very little. He had no reason to think that Cissie cared a picayune
+    about him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter's work kept him indoors for a number of days following the
+    encounter. He was reviewing some primary school work in order to pass a
+    teacher's examination that would be held in Jonesboro, the county seat,
+    in about three weeks.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To the uninitiated it may seem strange to behold a Harvard graduate
+    stuck down day after day poring over a pile of dog-eared school-books&mdash;
+    third arithmetics, primary grammars, beginners' histories of Tennessee,
+    of the United States, of England; physiology, hygiene. It may seem
+    queer. But when it comes to standing a Wayne County teacher's
+    examination, the specific answers to the specific questions on a dozen
+    old examination slips are worth all the degrees Harvard ever did confer.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So, in his newspapered study, Peter Siner looked up long lists of
+    questions, and attempted to memorize the answers. But the series of
+    missteps he had made since returning to Hooker's Bend besieged his brain
+    and drew his thoughts from his catechism. It seemed strange that in so
+    short a time he should have wandered so far from the course he had set
+    for himself. His career in Niggertown formed a record of slight
+    mistakes, but they were not to be undone, and their combined force had
+    swung him a long way from the course he had plotted for himself. There
+    was no way to explain. Hooker's Bend would judge him by the sheer
+    surface of his works. What he had meant to do, his dreams and altruisms,
+    they would never surmise. That was the irony of the thing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then he thought of Cissie Dildine who did understand him. This thought
+    might have been Cissie's cue to enter the stage of Peter's mind. Her
+    oval, creamy face floated between Peter's eyes and the dog-eared primer.
+    He thought of Cissie wistfully, and of her lonely fight for good
+    English, good manners, and good taste. There was a pathos about Cissie.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter got up from his chair and looked out at his high window into the
+    early afternoon. He had been poring over primers for three days,
+    stuffing the most heterogeneous facts. His head felt thick and slightly
+    feverish. Through his window he saw the side of another negro cabin, but
+    by looking at an angle eastward he could see a field yellow with corn, a
+    valley, and, beyond, a hill wooded and glowing with the pageantry of
+    autumn. He thought of Cissie Dildine again, of walking with her among
+    the burning maples and the golden elms. He thought of the restfulness
+    such a walk with Cissie would bring.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As he mused, Peter's soul made one of those sharp liberating movements
+    that occasionally visit a human being. The danger of Tump Pack's
+    jealousy, the loss of his prestige, the necessity of learning the
+    specific answers to the examination questions, all dropped away from him
+    as trivial and inconsequent. He turned from the window, put away his
+    books and question-slips, picked up his hat, and moved out briskly
+    through his mother's room toward the door.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old woman in the kitchen must have heard him, for she called to him
+    through the partition, and a moment later her bulky form filled the
+    kitchen entrance. She wiped her hands on her apron and looked at him
+    accusingly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Wha you gwine, son?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "For a walk."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old negress tilted her head aslant and looked fixedly at him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You's gwine to dat Cissie Dildine's, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter looked at his mother, surprised and rather disconcerted that she
+    had guessed his intentions from his mere footsteps. The young man
+    changed his plans for his walk, and began a diplomatic denial:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, I'm going to walk by myself. I'm tired; I'm played out."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Tired?" repeated his mother, doubtfully. "You ain't done nothin' but
+    set an' turn th'ugh books an' write on a lil piece o' paper."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter was vaguely amused in his weariness, but thought that he concealed
+    his mirth from his mother.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That gets tiresome after a while."
+</p>
+<p>
+    She grunted her skepticism. As Peter moved for the door she warned him:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Peter, you knows ef Tump Pack sees you, he's gwine to shoot you sho!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, no he won't; that's Tump's talk."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Talk! talk! Whut's matter wid you, Peter? Dat nigger done git crowned
+    fuh killin' fo' men!" She stood staring at him with white eyes. Then she
+    urged, "Now, look heah, Peter, come along an' eat yo' supper."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, I really need a walk. I won't walk through Niggertown. I'll walk
+    out in the woods."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I jes made some salmon coquettes fuh you whut'll spile ef you don' eat
+    'em now."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I didn't know you were making croquettes," said Peter, with polite
+    interest.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, I is. I gotta can o' salmon fum Miss Mollie Brownell she'd opened
+    an' couldn't quite use. I doctered 'em up wid a lil vinegar an' sody,
+    an' dey is 'bout as pink as dey ever wuz."
+</p>
+<p>
+    A certain uneasiness and annoyance came over Peter at this persistent
+    use of unwholesome foods.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Look here, Mother, you're not using old canned goods that have been
+    left over?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old negress stood looking at him in silence, but lost her coaxing
+    expression.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I've told and told you about using any tainted or impure foods that the
+    white people can't eat."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, whut ef you is?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If it's too bad for them, it's too bad for you!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Caroline made a careless gesture.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Good Lawd, boy! I don' 'speck to eat whut's good fuh me! All I says is,
+    'Grub, keep me alive. Ef you do dat, you done a good day's wuck.'"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter was disgusted and shocked at his mother's flippancy. Modern
+    colleges are atheistic, but they do exalt three gods,&mdash;food,
+    cleanliness, and exercise. Now here was Peter's mother blaspheming one
+    of his trinity.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I wish you 'd let me know when you want anything Mother. I'll get it
+    fresh for you." His words were filial enough, but his tone carried his
+    irritation.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old negress turned back to the kitchen.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Huh, boy! you been fotch up on lef'-overs," she said, and disappeared
+    through the door.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter walked to the gate, let himself out, and started off on his
+    constitutional. His tiff with his mother renewed all his nervousness and
+    sense of failure. His litany of mistakes renewed their dolor in his
+    mind.
+</p>
+<p>
+    An autumn wind was blowing, and long plumes of dust whisked up out of
+    the curving street and swept over the ill-kept yards, past the cabins,
+    and toward the sere fields and chromatic woods. The wind beat at the
+    brown man; the dust whispered against his clothes, made him squint his
+    eyes to a crack and tickled his nostrils at each breath.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When Peter had gone two or three hundred yards, he became aware that
+    somebody was walking immediately behind him. Tump Pack popped into his
+    mind. He looked over his shoulder and then turned. Through the veils of
+    flying dust he made out some one, and a moment later identified not Tump
+    Pack, but the gangling form of Jim Pink Staggs, clad in a dark-blue
+    sack-coat and white flannel trousers with pin stripes. It was the sort
+    of costume affected by interlocutors of minstrel shows; it had a
+    minstrel trigness about it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As a matter of fact, Jim Pink was a sort of semi-professional minstrel.
+    Ordinarily, he ran a pressing-shop in the Niggertown crescent, but
+    occasionally he impressed all the dramatic talent of Niggertown and
+    really did take the road with a minstrel company. These barn-storming
+    expeditions reached down into Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas.
+    Sometimes they proved a great success, and the darkies rode back several
+    hundred dollars ahead. Sometimes they tramped back.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jim Pink hailed Peter with a wave of his hand and a grotesque
+    displacement of his mouth to one side of his face, which he had found
+    effective in his minstrel buffoonery.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Whut you raisin' so much dus' about?" he called out of the corner of
+    his mouth, while looking at Peter out of one half-closed eye.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter shook his head and smiled.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Thought it mout be Mister Hooker deliverin' dat lan' you bought." Jim
+    Pink flung his long, flexible face into an imitation of convulsed
+    laughter, then next moment dropped it into an intense gravity and
+    declared, "'Dus' thou art, to dus' returnest.'" The quotation seemed
+    fruitless and silly enough, but Jim Pink tucked his head to one side as
+    if listening intently to himself, then repeated sepulchrally, "'Dus'
+    thou art, to dus' returnest.' By the way, Peter," he broke off cheerily,
+    "you ain't happen to see Tump Pack, is you?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No," said Peter, unamused.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Is he borrowed a gun fum you?" inquired the minstrel, solemnly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No-o." Peter looked questioningly at the clown through half-closed
+    eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Huh, now dat's funny." Jim Pink frowned, and pulled down his loose
+    mouth and seemed to study. He drew out a pearl-handled knife, closed his
+    hand over it, blew on his fist, then opened the other hand, and
+    exhibited the knife lying in its palm, with the blade open. He seemed
+    surprised at the change and began cleaning his finger-nails. Jim Pink
+    was the magician at his shows.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter waited patiently for Jim Pink to impart his information, "Well,
+    what's the idea?" he asked at last.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Don' know. 'Pears lak dat knife won't stay in any one han'." He looked
+    at it, curiously.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I mean about Tump," said Peter, impatiently.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "O-o-oh, yeah; you mean 'bout Tump. Well, I thought Tump mus' uv
+    borrowed a gun fum you. He lef' Hobbett's corner wid a great big forty-
+    fo', inquirin' wha you is." Just then he glanced up, looked
+    penetratingly through the dust-cloud, and added, "Why, I b'lieve da' 's
+    Tump now."
+</p>
+<p>
+    With a certain tightening of the nerves, Peter followed his glance, but
+    made out nothing through the fogging dust. When he looked around at Jim
+    Pink again, the buffoon's face was a caricature of immense mirth. He
+    shook it sober, abruptly, minstrel fashion.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Maybe I's mistooken," he said solemnly. "Tump did start over heah wid a
+    gun, but Mister Dawson Bobbs done tuk him up fuh ca'yin' concealed
+    squidjulums; so Tump's done los' dat freedom uv motion in de pu'suit uv
+    happiness gua'anteed us niggers an' white folks by the Constitution uv
+    de Newnighted States uv America." Here Jim Pink broke into genuine
+    laughter, which was quite a different thing from his stage grimaces.
+    Peter stared at the fool astonished.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Has he gone to jail?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Not prezactly."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well&mdash;confound it!&mdash;exactly what did happen, Jim Pink?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He gone to Mr. Cicero Throgmartins'."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What did he go there for?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Couldn't he'p hisse'f."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Look here, you tell me what's happened."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Mr. Bobbs ca'ied Tump thaiuh. Y' see, Mr. Throgmartin tried to hire
+    Tump to pick cotton. Tump didn't haf to, because he'd jes shot fo'
+    natchels in a crap game. So to-day, when Tump starts over heah wid his
+    gun, Mr. Bobbs 'resses Tump. Mr. Throgmartin bails him out, so now
+    Tump's gone to pick cotton fuh Mr. Throgmartin to pay off'n his fine."
+    Here Jim Pink yelped into honest laughter at Tump's undoing so that dust
+    got into his nose and mouth and set him sneezing and coughing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "How long's he up for?" asked Peter, astonished and immensely relieved
+    at this outcome of Tump's expedition against himself.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jim Pink controlled his coughing long enough to gasp:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Th-thutty days, ef he don' run off," and fell to laughing again.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter Siner, long before, had adopted the literate man's notion of what
+    is humorous, and Tump's mishap was slap-stick to him. Nevertheless, he
+    did smile. The incident filled him with extraordinary relief and
+    buoyancy. At the next corner he made some excuse to Jim Pink, and turned
+    off up an alley.
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    Peter walked along with his shoulders squared and the dust peppering his
+    back. Not till Tump was lifted from his mind did he realize what an
+    incubus the soldier had been. Peter had been forced into a position
+    where, if he had killed Tump, he would have been ruined; if he had not,
+    he would probably have murdered. Now he was free&mdash;for thirty days.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He swung along briskly in the warm sunshine toward the multicolored
+    forest. The day had suddenly become glorious. Presently he found himself
+    in the back alleys near Cissie's house. He was passing chicken-houses
+    and stables. Hogs in open pens grunted expectantly at his footsteps.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter had not meant to go to Cissie's at all, but now, when he saw he
+    was right behind her dwelling, she seemed radiantly accessible to him.
+    Still, it struck him that it would not be precisely the thing to call on
+    Cissie immediately after Tump's arrest. It might look as if&mdash;Then the
+    thought came that, as a neighbor, he should stop and tell Cissie of
+    Tump's misfortune. He really ought to offer his services to Cissie, if
+    he could do anything. At Cissie's request he might even aid Tump Pack
+    himself. Peter got himself into a generous glow as he charged up a side
+    alley, around to a rickety front gate. Let Niggertown criticize as it
+    would, he was braced by a high altruism.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter did not shout from the gate, as is the fashion of the crescent,
+    but walked up a little graveled path lined with dusty box-shrubs and
+    tapped at the unpainted door.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Doors in Niggertown never open straight away to visitors. A covert
+    inspection first takes place from the edges of the window-blinds.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter stood in the whipping dust, and the caution of the inmates spurred
+    his impatience to see Cissie. At last the door opened, and Cissie
+    herself was in the entrance. She stood quite still a moment, looking at
+    Peter with eyes that appeared frightened.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I&mdash;I wasn't expecting to see you," she stammered.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No? I came by with news, Cissie."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "News?" She seemed more frightened than ever. "Peter, you&mdash;you haven't&mdash;
+    " She paused, regarding him with big eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Tump Pack's been arrested," explained Peter, quickly, sensing the
+    tragedy in her thoughts. "I came by to tell you. If there's anything I
+    can do for you&mdash;or him, I'll do it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    His altruistic offer sounded rather foolish in the actual saying.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He could not tell from her face whether she was glad or sorry.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What did they arrest him for?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Carrying a pistol."
+</p>
+<p>
+    She paused a moment.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Will he&mdash;get out soon?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He's sentenced for thirty days."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie dropped her hands with a hopeless gesture.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, isn't this all sickening!&mdash;sickening!" she exclaimed. She looked
+    tired. Ghosts of sleepless nights circled her eyes. Suddenly she said,
+    "Come in. Oh, do come in, Peter." She reached out and almost pulled him
+    in. She was so urgent that Peter might have fancied Tump Pack at the
+    gate with his automatic. He did glance around, but saw nobody passing
+    except the Arkwright boy. The hobbledehoy walked down the other side of
+    the street, hands thrust in pockets, with the usual discontented
+    expression on his face.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie slammed the door shut, and the two stood rather at a loss in the
+    sudden gloom of the hall. Cissie broke into a brief, mirthless laugh.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Peter, it's hard to be nice in Niggertown. I&mdash;I just happened to think
+    how folks would gossip&mdash;you coming here as soon as Tump was arrested."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Perhaps I'd better go," suggested Peter, uncomfortably.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie reached up and caught his lapel.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, no, don't feel that way! I'm glad you came, really. Here, let's go
+    through this way to the arbor. It isn't a bad place to sit."
+</p>
+<p>
+    She led the way silently through two dark rooms. Before she opened the
+    back door, Peter could hear Cissie's mother and a younger sister moving
+    around the outside of the house to give up the arbor to Cissie and her
+    company.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The arbor proved a trellis of honeysuckle over the back door, with a
+    bench under it. A film of dust lay over the dense foliage, and a few
+    withered blooms pricked its grayish green. The earthen floor of the
+    arbor was beaten hard and bare by the naked feet of children.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie sat down on the bench and indicated a place beside her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I've been so uneasy about you! I've been wondering what on earth you
+    could do about it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It's a snarl, all right," he said, and almost immediately began
+    discussing the peculiar <i>impasse</i> in which his difficulty with Tump
+    had landed him. Cissie sat listening with a serious, almost tragic face,
+    giving a little nod now and then. Once she remarked in her precise way:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The trouble with a gentleman fighting a rowdy, the gentleman has all to
+    lose and nothing to gain. If you don't live among your own class, Peter,
+    your life will simmer down to an endless diplomacy."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You mean deceit, I suppose."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, I mean diplomacy. But that isn't a very healthy frame of mind,&mdash;
+    always to be suppressing and guarding yourself."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter didn't know about that. He was inclined to argue the matter, but
+    Cissie wouldn't argue. She seemed to assume that all of her statements
+    were axioms, truths reduced to the simplest possible mental terms, and
+    that proof was unnecessary, if not impossible. So the topic went into
+    the discard.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Been baking my brains over a lot of silly little exam questions,"
+    complained Peter. "Can you trace the circulation of the blood? I think
+    it leaves the grand central station through the right aorta, and then,
+    after a schedule run of nine minutes, you can hear it coming up the
+    track through the left ventricle, with all the passengers eager to get
+    off and take some refreshment at the lungs. I have the general idea, but
+    the exact routing gets me."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie laughed accommodatingly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I wonder why it's necessary for everybody to know that once. I did. I
+    could follow the circulation the right way or backward."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Must have been harder backward, going against the current."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie laughed again. A girl's part in a witty conversation might seem
+    easy at first sight. She has only to laugh at the proper intervals.
+    However, these intervals are not always distinctly marked. Some girls
+    take no chances and laugh all the time.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie's appreciation was the sedative Peter needed. The relief of her
+    laughter and her presence ran along his nerves and unkinked them, like a
+    draft of Kentucky Special after a debauch. The curves of her cheek, the
+    tilt of her head, and the lift of her dull-blue blouse at the bosom wove
+    a great restfulness about Peter. The brooch of old gold glinted at her
+    throat. The heavy screen of the arbor gave them a sweet sense of
+    privacy. The conversation meandered this way and that, and became quite
+    secondary to the feeling of the girl's nearness and sympathy. Their talk
+    drifted back to Peter's mission here in Hooker's Bend, and Cissie was
+    saying:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The trouble is, Peter, we are out of our <i>milieu</i>." Some portion
+    of Peter's brain that was not basking in the warmth and invitation of
+    the girl answered quite logically:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, but if I could help these people, Cissie, reconstruct our life
+    here culturally&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie shook her head. "Not culturally."
+</p>
+<p>
+    This opposition shunted more of Peter's thought to the topic in hand. He
+    paused interrogatively.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Racially," said Cissie.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Racially?" repeated the man, quite lost.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie nodded, looking straight into his eyes. "You know very well,
+    Peter, that you and I are not&mdash;are not anything near full bloods. You
+    know that racially we don't belong in&mdash;Niggertown."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter never knew exactly how this extraordinary sentence had come about,
+    but in a kind of breath he realized that he and this almost white girl
+    were not of Niggertown. No doubt she had been arguing that he, Peter,
+    who was one sort of man, was trying to lead quite another sort of men
+    moved by different racial impulses, and such leading could only come to
+    confusion. He saw the implications at once.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was an extraordinary idea, an explosive idea, such as Cissie seemed
+    to have the faculty of touching off. He sat staring at her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was the white blood in his own veins that had sent him struggling up
+    North, that had brought him back with this flame in his heart for his
+    own people. It was the white blood in Cissie that kept her struggling to
+    stand up, to speak an unbroken tongue, to gather around her the delicate
+    atmosphere and charm of a gentlewoman. It was the Caucasian in them
+    buried here in Niggertown. It was their part of the tragedy of millions
+    of mixed blood in the South. Their common problem, a feeling of their
+    joint isolation, brought Peter to a sense of keen and tingling nearness
+    to the girl.
+</p>
+<p>
+    She was talking again, very earnestly, almost tremulously:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why don't you go North, Peter? I think and think about you staying
+    here. You simply can't grow up and develop here. And now, especially,
+    when everybody doubts you. If you'd go North&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What about you, Cissie? You say we're together&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, I'm a woman. We haven't the chance to do as we will."
+</p>
+<p>
+    A kind of titillation went over Peter's scalp and body.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then you are going to stay here and marry&mdash;Tump?" He uttered the name
+    in a queer voice.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tears started in Cissie's eyes; her bosom lifted to her quick breathing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I&mdash;I don't know what I'm going to do," she stammered miserably.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter leaned over her with a drumming heart; he heard her catch her
+    breath.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You don't care for Tump?" he asked with a dry mouth.
+</p>
+<p>
+    She gasped out something, and the next moment Peter felt her body sink
+    limply in his groping arms. They clung together closely, quiveringly.
+    Three nights of vigil, each thinking miserably and wistfully of the
+    other, had worn the nerves of both man and girl until they were ready to
+    melt together at a touch. Her soft body clinging to his own, the little
+    nervous pressures of her arms, her eased breathing at his neck, wiped
+    away Siner's long sense of strain. Strength and peace seemed to pour
+    from her being into his by a sort of spiritual osmosis. She resigned her
+    head to his palm in order that he might lift her lips to his when he
+    pleased. After all, there is no way for a man to rest without a woman.
+    All he can do is to stop work.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For a long time they sat transported amid the dusty honeysuckles and
+    withered blooms, but after a while they began talking a little at a time
+    of the future, their future. They felt so indissolubly joined that they
+    could not imagine the future finding them apart. There was no need for
+    any more trouble with Tump Pack. They would marry quietly, and go away
+    North to live. Peter thought of his friend Farquhar. He wondered if
+    Farquhar's attitude would be just the same toward Cissie as it was
+    toward him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "North," was the burden of the octoroon's dreams. They would go North to
+    Chicago. There were two hundred and fifty thousand negroes in Chicago, a
+    city within itself three times the size of Nashville. Up North she and
+    Peter could go to theaters, art galleries, could enter any church, could
+    ride in street-cars, railroad-trains, could sleep and eat at any hotel,
+    live authentic lives.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was Cissie planning her emancipation, planning to escape her lifelong
+    disabilities.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, I'll be so glad! so glad! so glad!" she sobbed, and drew Peter's
+    head passionately down to her deep bosom.
+</p>
+<a name="2HCH8"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER V
+</h2>
+<p>
+    Peter Siner walked home from the Dildine cabin that night rather
+    dreading to meet his mother, for it was late. Cissie had served
+    sandwiches and coffee on a little table in the arbor, and then had kept
+    Peter hours afterward. Around him still hung the glamour of Cissie's
+    little supper. He could still see her rounded elbows that bent softly
+    backward when she extended an arm, and the glimpses of her bosom when
+    she leaned to hand him cream or sugar. She had accomplished the whole
+    supper in the white manner, with all poise and daintiness. In fact, no
+    one is more exquisitely polite than an octoroon woman when she desires
+    to be polite, when she elevates the subserviency of her race into
+    graciousness.
+</p>
+<p>
+    However, the pleasure and charm of Cissie were fading under the
+    approaching abuse that Caroline was sure to pour upon the girl. Peter
+    dreaded it. He walked slowly down the dark semicircle, planning how he
+    could best break to his mother the news of his engagement. Peter knew
+    she would begin a long bill of complaints,&mdash;how badly she was treated,
+    how she had sacrificed herself, her comfort, how she had washed and
+    scrubbed. She would surely charge Cissie with being a thief and a drab,
+    and all the announcements of engagements that Peter could make would
+    never induce the old woman to soften her abuse. Indeed, they would make
+    her worse.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So Peter walked on slowly, smelling the haze of dust that hung in the
+    blackness. Out on the Big Hill, in the glade, Peter caught an occasional
+    glimmer of light where crap-shooters and boot-leggers were beginning
+    their nightly carousal.
+</p>
+<p>
+    These evidences of illicit trades brought Peter a thrill of disgust. In
+    a sort of clear moment he saw that he could not keep Cissie in such a
+    sty as this. He could not rear in such a place as this any children that
+    might come to him and Cissie. His thoughts drifted back to his mother,
+    and his dread of her tongue.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Siner cabin was dark and tightly shut when Peter let himself in at
+    the gate and walked to the door. He stood a moment listening, and then
+    gently pressed open the shutter. A faint light burned on the inside, a
+    night-lamp with an old-fashioned brass bowl. It sat on the floor, turned
+    low, at the foot of his mother's bed. The mean room was mainly in
+    shadow. The old-style four-poster in which Caroline slept was an
+    indistinct mound. The air was close and foul with the bad ventilation of
+    all negro sleeping-rooms. The brass lamp, turned low, added smoke and
+    gas to the tight quarters.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The odor caught Peter in the nose and throat, and once more stirred up
+    his impatience with his mother's disregard of hygiene. He tiptoed into
+    the room and decided to remove the lamp and open the high, small window
+    to admit a little air. He moved noiselessly and had stooped for the lamp
+    when there came a creaking and a heavy sigh from the bed, and the old
+    negress asked:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Is dat you, son?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter was tempted to stand perfectly still and wait till his mother
+    dozed again, thus putting off her inevitable tirade against Cissie; but
+    he answered in a low tone that it was he.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Whut you gwine do wid dat lamp, son?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Go to bed by it, Mother."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, bring hit back." She breathed heavily, and moved restlessly in
+    the old four-poster. As Peter stood up he saw that the patched quilts
+    were all askew over her shapeless bulk. Evidently, she had not been
+    resting well.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter's conscience smote him again for worrying his mother with his
+    courtship of Cissie, yet what could he do? If he had wooed any other
+    girl in the world, she would have been equally jealous and grieved. It
+    was inevitable that she should be disappointed and bitter; it was bound
+    up in the very part and parcel of her sacrifice. A great sadness came
+    over Peter. He almost wished his mother would berate him, but she
+    continued to lie there, breathing heavily under her disarranged covers.
+    As Peter passed into his room, the old negress called after him to
+    remind him to bring the light back when he was through with it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This time something in her tone alarmed Peter.  He paused in the
+    doorway.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Are you sick, Mother?" he asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old woman gave a yawn that changed to a groan.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I&mdash;I ain't feelin' so good."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What's the matter, Mother?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "My stomach, my&mdash;" But at that moment her sentence changed to an
+    inarticulate sound, and she doubled up in bed as if caught in a spasm of
+    acute agony.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter hurried to her, thoroughly frightened, and saw sweat streaming
+    down her face. He stared down at her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Mother, you are sick! What can I do?" he cried, with a man's
+    helplessness.
+</p>
+<p>
+    She opened her eyes with an effort, panting now as the edge of the agony
+    passed. There was a movement under the quilts, and she thrust out a
+    rubber hot-water bottle.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Fill it&mdash;fum de kittle," she wheezed out, then relaxed into groans, and
+    wiped clumsily at the sweat on her shining black face.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter seized the bottle and ran into the kitchen. There he found a brisk
+    fire popping in the stove and a kettle of water boiling. It showed him,
+    to his further alarm, that his mother had been trying to minister to
+    herself until forced to bed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The man scalded a finger and thumb pouring water into the flared mouth,
+    but after a moment twisted on the top and hurried into the sick-room.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He reached the old negress just as another knife of pain set her
+    writhing and sweating. She seized the hot-water bottle, pushed it under
+    the quilts, and pressed it to her stomach, then lay with eyes and teeth
+    clenched tight, and her thick lips curled in a grin of agony.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter set the lamp on the table, said he was going for the doctor, and
+    started.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old woman hunched up in bed. With the penuriousness of her station
+    and sacrifices, she begged Peter not to go; then groaned out, "Go tell
+    Mars' Renfrew," but the next moment did not want Peter to leave her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter said he would get Nan Berry to stay while he was gone. The Berry
+    cabin lay diagonally across the street. Peter ran over, thumped on the
+    door, and shouted his mother's needs. As soon as he received an answer,
+    he started on over the Big Hill toward the white town.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter was seriously frightened. His run to Dr. Jallup's, across the Big
+    Hill, was a series of renewed strivings for speed. Every segment of his
+    journey seemed to seize him and pin him down in the midst of the night
+    like a bug caught in a black jelly. He seemed to progress not at all.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now he was in the cedar glade. His muffled flight drove in the sentries
+    of the crap-shooters, and gamesters blinked out their lights and
+    listened to his feet stumbling on through the darkness.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After an endless run in the glade, Peter found himself on top of the
+    hill, amid boulders and outcrops limestone and cedar-shrubs. His flash-
+    light picked out these objects, limned them sharply against the
+    blackness, then dropped them into obscurity again.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He tried to run faster. His impatience subdivided the distance into
+    yards and feet. Now he was approaching that boulder, now he was passing
+    it; now he was ten feet beyond, twenty, thirty. Perhaps his mother was
+    dying, alone save for stupid Nan Berry.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now he was going down the hill past the white church. All that was
+    visible was its black spire set against a web of stars. He was making no
+    speed at all. He panted on. His heart hammered. His legs drummed with
+    Lilliputian paces. Now he was among the village stores, all utterly
+    black. At one point the echo of his feet chattered back at him, as if
+    some other futile runner strained amid vast spaces of blackness.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After a long time he found himself running up a residential street, and
+    presently, far ahead, he saw the glow of Dr. Jallup's porch light. Its
+    beam had the appearance of coming from a vast distance. When he reached
+    the place, he flung his breast against the top panel of the doctor's
+    fence and held on, exhausted. He drew in his breath, and began shouting,
+    "Hello, Doctor!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter called persistently, and as he commanded more breath, he called
+    louder and louder, "Hello, Doctor! Hello, Doctor! Hello, Doctor!" in
+    tones edging on panic.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The doctor's house might have been dead. Somewhere a dog began barking.
+    High in the Southern sky a star looked down remotely on Peter's frantic
+    haste. The black man stood in the black night with cries: "Hello,
+    Doctor! Hello, Doctor! Hello, Doctor!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    At last, in despair, he tried to think of other doctors. He thought of
+    telephoning to Jonesboro. Just as he decided he must turn away there
+    came a stirring in the dead house, a flicker of light appeared on the
+    inside now here, now there; it steadied into a tiny beam and approached
+    the door. The door opened, and Dr. Jallup's head and breast appeared,
+    illuminated against the black interior.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "My mother's sick, Doctor," began Peter, in immense relief.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Who is it?" inquired the half-clad man, impassively.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Caroline Siner; she's been taken with a&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The physician lifted his light a trifle in an effort to see Peter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Lemme see: she's that fat nigger woman that lives in a three-roomed
+    house&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'll show you the way," said Peter. "She's very ill."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The half-dressed man shook his head.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, Ca'line Siner owes me a five-dollar doctor's bill already. Our
+    county medical association made a rule that no niggers should&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    With a drying mouth, Peter Siner stared at the man of medicine.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But, my God, Doctor," gasped the son, "I'll pay you&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Have you got the money there in your pocket?" asked Jallup,
+    impassively.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A sort of chill traveled deliberately over Peter's body and shook his
+    voice.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "N-no, but I can get it&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, you can all get it," stated the physician in dull irritation. "I'm
+    tired of you niggers running up doctors' bills nobody can collect. You
+    never have more than the law allows; your wages never get big enough to
+    garnishee." His voice grew querulous as he related his wrongs. "No, I'm
+    not going to see Ca'line Siner. If she wants me to visit her, let her
+    send ten dollars to cover that and back debts, and I'll&mdash;" The end of
+    his sentence was lost in the closing of his door. The light he carried
+    declined from a beam to a twinkling here and there, and then vanished in
+    blackness. Dr. Jallup's house became dead again. The little porch light
+    in its glass box might have been a candle burning before a tomb.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter Siner stood at the fence, licking his dry lips, with nerves
+    vibrating like a struck bell. He pushed himself slowly away from the top
+    plank and found his legs so weak that he could hardly walk. He moved
+    slowly, back down the unseen street. The dog he had disturbed gave a few
+    last growls and settled into silence.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter moved along, wetting his dry lips, and stirring feebly among his
+    dazed thoughts, hunting some other plan of action. There was a tiny
+    burning spot on the left side of his occiput. It felt like a heated
+    cambric needle which had been slipped into his scalp. Then he realized
+    that he must go home, get ten dollars, and bring them back to Dr.
+    Jallup. He started to run, but almost toppled over on his leaden legs.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He plodded through the darkness, retracing the endless trail to
+    Niggertown. As he passed a dark mass of shrubbery and trees, he recalled
+    his mother's advice to ask aid of Captain Renfrew. It was the old
+    Renfrew place that Peter was passing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The negro hesitated, then turned in at the gate in the bare hope of
+    obtaining the ten dollars at once. Inside the gate Peter's feet
+    encountered the scattered bricks of an old walk. The negro stood and
+    called Captain Renfrew's name in a guarded voice. He was not at all sure
+    of his action.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter had called twice and was just about to go when a lamp appeared
+    around the side of the house on a long portico that extended clear
+    around the building. Bathed in the light of the lamp which he held over
+    his head, there appeared an old man wearing a worn dressing gown.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Who is it?" he asked in a wavery voice.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter told his name and mission.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old Captain continued holding up his light.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, Peter Siner; Caroline Siner's sick? All right I'll have Jallup run
+    over; I'll phone him."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter was beginning his thanks preparatory to going, when the old man
+    interrupted.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, just stay here until Jallup comes by in his or He'll pick us both
+    up. It'll save time. Come on inside. What's the matter with old
+    Caroline?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old dressing-gown led the way around the continuous piazza, to a
+    room that stood open and brightly lighted on the north face of the old
+    house.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A great relief came to Peter at this unexpected succor. He followed
+    around the piazza, trying to describe Caroline's symptoms. The room
+    Peter entered was a library, a rather stately old room, lined with books
+    all around the walls to about as high as a man could reach. Spaces for
+    doors and windows were let in among the book-cases. The volumes
+    themselves seemed composed mainly of histories and old-fashioned
+    scientific books, if Peter could judge from a certain severity of their
+    bindings. On a big library table burned a gasolene-lamp, which threw a
+    brilliant whiteness all over the room. The table was piled with books
+    and periodicals. Books and papers were heaped on every chair in the
+    study except a deep Morris chair in which the old Captain had been
+    sitting. A big meridional globe, about two and a half feet in diameter,
+    gleamed through a film of dust in the embrasure of a window. The whole
+    room had the womanless look of a bachelor's quarters, and was flavored
+    with tobacco and just a hint of whisky.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Old Captain Renfrew evidently had been reading when Peter called from
+    the gate. Now the old man went to a telephone and rang long and briskly
+    to awaken the boy who slept in the central office. Peter fidgeted as the
+    old Captain stood with receiver to ear.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Hard to wake." The old gentleman spoke into the transmitter, but was
+    talking to Peter. "Don't be so uneasy, Peter. Human beings are harder to
+    kill than you think."
+</p>
+<p>
+    There was a kindliness, even a fellowship, in Captain Renfrew's tones
+    that spread like oil over Peter's raw nerves. It occurred to the negro
+    that this was the first time he had been addressed as an authentic human
+    being since his conversation with the two Northern men on the Pullman,
+    up in Illinois. It surprised him. It was sufficient to take his mind
+    momentarily from his mother. He looked a little closely at the old man
+    at the telephone. The Captain wore few indices of kindness. Lines of
+    settled sarcasm netted his eyes and drooped away from his old mouth. The
+    very swell of his full temples and their crinkly veins marked a sardonic
+    old man.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At last he roused central over the wire, and impressed upon him the
+    necessity of creating a stridor in Dr. Jallup's dead house, and a moment
+    later a continued buzzing in the receiver betokened the operator's
+    efforts to do so.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old gentleman turned around at last, holding the receiver a little
+    distance from his ear.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I understand you went to Harvard, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, sir." Peter took his eyes momentarily from the telephone. The old
+    Southerner in the dressing-gown scrutinized the brown man. He cleared
+    his throat.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You know, Peter, it gives me a&mdash;a certain satisfaction to see a Harvard
+    man in Hooker's Bend. I'm a Harvard man myself."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter stood in the brilliant light, astonished, not at Captain Renfrew's
+    being a Harvard man,&mdash;he had known that,&mdash;but that this old gentleman
+    was telling the fact to him, Peter Siner, a negro graduate of Harvard.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was extraordinary; it was tantamount to an offer of friendship, not
+    patronage. Such an offer in the South disturbed Peter's poise; it
+    touched him queerly. And it seemed to explain why Captain Renfrew had
+    received Peter so graciously and was now arranging for Dr. Jallup to
+    visit Caroline.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter was moved to the conventional query, asking in what class the
+    Captain had been graduated. But while his very voice was asking it,
+    Peter thought what a strange thing it was that he, Peter Siner, a negro,
+    and this lonely old gentleman, his benefactor, were spiritual brothers,
+    both sprung from the loins of Harvard, that ancient mother of souls.
+</p>
+<a name="image-5"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="birth05.png"
+alt="The Old Gentleman Turned Around at Last
+">
+<br>The Old Gentleman Turned Around at Last
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    From the darkness outside, Dr. Jallup's horn summmoned the two men.
+    Captain Renfrew got out of his gown and into his coat and turned off his
+    gasolene light. They walked around the piazza to the front of the house.
+    In the street the head-lights of the roadster shot divergent rays
+    through the darkness. They went out. The old Captain took a seat in the
+    car beside the physician, while Peter stood on the running-board. A
+    moment later, the clutch snarled, and the machine puttered down the
+    street. Peter clung to the standards of the auto top, peering ahead.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The men remained almost silent. Once Dr. Jallup, watching the dust that
+    lay modeled in sharp lights and shadows under the head-lights, mentioned
+    lack of rain. Their route did not lead over the Big Hill. They turned
+    north at Hobbett's corner, drove around by River Street, and presently
+    entered the northern end of the semicircle.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The speed of the car was reduced to a crawl in the bottomless dust of
+    the crescent. The head-lights swept slowly around the cabins on the
+    concave side of the street, bringing them one by one into stark
+    brilliance and dropping them into obscurity. The smell of refuse, of
+    uncleaned stables and sties and outhouses hung in the darkness. Peter
+    bent down under the top of the motor and pointed out his place. A minute
+    later the machine came to a noisy halt and was choked into silence. At
+    that moment, in the sweep of the head-light, Peter saw Viny Berry, one
+    of Nan's younger sisters, coming up from Niggertown's public well,
+    carrying two buckets of water.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Viny was hurrying, plashing the water over the sides of her buckets. The
+    importance of her mission was written in her black face.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "She's awful thirsty," she called to Peter in guarded tones. "Nan called
+    me to fetch some fraish water fum de well."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter took the water that had been brought from the semi-cesspool at the
+    end of the street. Viny hurried across the street to home and to bed.
+    With the habitual twinge of his sanitary conscience, Peter considered
+    the water in the buckets.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We'll have to boil this," he said to the doctor.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Boil it?" repeated Jallup, blankly. Then, he added: "Oh, yes&mdash;boil.
+    Certainly."
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    A repellent odor of burned paper, breathed air, and smoky lights filled
+    the close room. Nan had lighted another lamp and now the place was
+    discernible in a dull yellow glow. In the corner lay a half-burned wisp
+    of paper. Nan herself stood by the mound on the bed, putting straight
+    the quilts that her patient had twisted awry.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "She sho am bad, Doctor," said the colored woman, with big eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Seen in the light, Dr. Jallup was a little sandy-bearded man with a
+    round, simple face, oddly overlaid with that inscrutability carefully
+    cultivated by country doctors. With professional cheeriness, he
+    approached the mound of bedclothes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "A little under the weather, Aunt Ca'line?" He slipped his fingers
+    alongside her throat to test her temperature, at the same time drawing a
+    thermometer from his waistcoat pocket.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old negress stirred, and looked up out of sick eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Doctor," she gasped, "I sho got a misery heah." She indicated her
+    stomach.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "How do you feel?" he asked hopefully.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The woman panted, then whispered:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Lak a knife was a-cuttin' an' a-tearin' out my innards." She rested,
+    then added, "Not so bad now; feels mo' lak somp'n's tearin' in de nex'
+    room."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Like something tearing in the next room?" repeated Jallup, emptily.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, suh," she whispered. "I jes can feel hit&mdash;away off, lak."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The doctor attempted to take her temperature, but the thermometer in her
+    mouth immediately nauseated her, so he slipped the instrument under her
+    arm.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Old Caroline groaned at the slightest exertion, then, as she tossed her
+    black head, she caught a glimpse of old Captain Renfrew.
+</p>
+<p>
+    She halted abruptly in her restlessness, stared at the old gentleman,
+    wet her dry lips with a queer brown-furred tongue.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Is dat you, Mars' Milt?" she gasped in feeble astonishment. A moment
+    later she guessed the truth. "I s'pose you had to bring de doctor. 'Fo'
+    Gawd, Mars' Milt&mdash;" She lay staring, with the covers rising and falling
+    as she gasped for breath. Her feverish eyes shifted back and forth
+    between the grim old gentleman and the tall, broad-shouldered brown man
+    at the foot of her bed. She drew a baggy black arm from under the cover.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Da' 's Peter, Mars' Milt," she pointed. "Da' 's Peter, my son. He&mdash;he
+    use' to be my son 'fo' he went off to school; but sence he come home, he
+    been a-laughin' at me." Tears came to her eyes; she panted for a moment,
+    then added: "Yeah, he done marked his mammy down fuh a nigger, Mars'
+    Milt. Whut I thought wuz gwine be sweet lays bitter in my mouf." She
+    worked her thick lips as if the rank taste of her sickness were the very
+    flavor of her son's ingratitude.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A sudden gasp and twist of her body told Nan that the old woman was
+    again seized with a spasm. The neighbor woman took swift control, and
+    waved out Peter and old Mr. Renfrew, while she and the doctor aided the
+    huge negress.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The two evicted men went into Peter's room and shut the door. Peter,
+    unnerved, groped, and presently found and lighted a lamp. He put it down
+    on his little table among his primary papers and examination papers. He
+    indicated to Captain Renfrew the single chair in the room.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But the old gentleman stood motionless in the mean room, with its head-
+    line streaked walls. Sounds of the heavy lifting of Peter's mother came
+    through the thin door and partition with painful clearness. Peter opened
+    his own small window, for the air in his room was foul.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Captain Renfrew stood in silence, with a remote sarcasm in his wrinkled
+    eyes. What was in his heart, why he had subjected himself to the
+    noisomeness of failing flesh, Peter had not the faintest idea. Once, out
+    of studently habit, he glanced at Peter's philosophic books, but
+    apparently he read the titles without really observing them. Once he
+    looked at Peter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Peter," he said colorlessly, "I hope you'll be careful of Caroline's
+    feelings if she ever gets up again. She has been very faithful to you,
+    Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter's eyes dampened. A great desire mounted in him to explain himself
+    to this strange old gentleman, to show him how inevitable had been the
+    breach. For some reason a veritable passion to reveal his heart to this
+    his sole benefactor surged through the youth.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Mr. Renfrew," he stammered, "Mr. Renfrew&mdash;I&mdash;I&mdash;" His throat abruptly
+    ached and choked. He felt his face distort in a spasm of uncontrollable
+    grief. He turned quickly from this strange old man with a remote sarcasm
+    in his eyes and a remote affection in his tones. Peter clenched his
+    jaws, his nostrils spread in his effort stoically to bottle up his grief
+    and remorse, like a white man; in an effort to keep from howling his
+    agony aloud, like a negro. He stood with aching throat and blurred eyes,
+    trembling, swallowing, and silent.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Presently Nan Berry opened the door. She held a half-burned paper in her
+    hand; Dr. Jallup stood near the bed, portioning out some calomel and
+    quinine. The prevalent disease in Hooker's Bend is malaria; Dr. Jallup
+    always physicked for malaria. On this occasion he diagnosed it must be a
+    very severe attack of malaria indeed, so he measured out enormous doses.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He took a glass of the water that Viny had brought, held up old
+    Caroline's head, and washed down two big capsules into the already
+    poisoned stomach of the old negress. His simple face was quite
+    inscrutable as he did this. He left other capsules for Nan to administer
+    at regular intervals. Then he and Captain Renfrew motored out of
+    Niggertown, out of its dust and filth and stench.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At four o'clock in the morning Caroline Siner died.
+</p>
+<a name="2HCH9"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER VI
+</h2>
+<p>
+    When Nan Berry saw that Caroline was dead, the black woman dropped a
+    glass of water and a capsule of calomel and stared. A queer terror
+    seized her. She began such a wailing that it aroused others in
+    Niggertown. At the sound they got out of their beds and came to the
+    Siner cabin, their eyes big with mystery and fear. At the sight of old
+    Caroline's motionless body they lifted their voices through the night.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The lamentation carried far beyond the confines of Niggertown. The last
+    gamblers in the cedar glade heard it, and it broke up their gaming and
+    drinking. White persons living near the black crescent were waked out of
+    their sleep and listened to the eerie sound. It rose and fell in the
+    darkness like a melancholy organ chord. The wailing of the women
+    quivered against the heavy grief of the men. The half-asleep listeners
+    were moved by its weirdness to vague and sinister fancies. The dolor
+    veered away from what the Anglo-Saxon knows as grief and was shot
+    through with the uncanny and the terrible. White children crawled out of
+    their small beds and groped their way to their parents. The women
+    shivered and asked of the darkness, "<i>What</i> makes the negroes howl
+    so?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nobody knew,&mdash;least of all, the negroes. Nobody suspected that the
+    bedlam harked back to the jungle, to black folk in African kraals
+    beating tom-toms and howling, not in grief, but in an ecstasy of terror
+    lest the souls of their dead might come back in the form of tigers or
+    pythons or devils and work woe to the tribe. Through the night the
+    negroes wailed on, performing through custom an ancient rite of which
+    they knew nothing. They supposed themselves heartbroken over the death
+    of Caroline Siner.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Amid this din Peter Siner sat in his room, stunned by the sudden taking
+    off of his mother. The reproaches that she had expressed to old Captain
+    Renfrew clung in Peter's brain. The brown man had never before realized
+    the faint amusement and condescension that had flavored all his
+    relations with his mother since his return home. But he knew now that
+    she had felt his disapproval of her lifelong habits; that she saw he
+    never explained or attempted to explain his thoughts to her, assuming
+    her to be too ignorant; as she put it, "a fool."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The pathos of his mother's last days, what she had expected, what she
+    had received, came to Peter with the bitterness of what is finished and
+    irrevocable. She had been dead only a few minutes, yet she could never
+    know his grief and remorse; she could never forgive him. She was utterly
+    removed in a few minutes, in a moment in the failing of a breath. The
+    finality of death overpowered him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Into his room, through the thin wall, came the catch of numberless sobs,
+    the long-drawn open wails, and the spasms of sobbing. Blurred voices
+    called, "O Gawd! Gawd hab mercy! Hab mercy!" Now words were lost in the
+    midst of confusion. The clamor boomed through the thin partition as if
+    it would shake down his newspapered walls. With wet cheeks and an aching
+    throat, Peter sat by his table, staring at his book-case in silence,
+    like a white man.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The dim light of his lamp fell over his psychologies and philosophies.
+    These were the books that had given him precedence over the old
+    washwoman who kept him in college. It was reading these books that had
+    made him so wise that the old negress could not even follow his
+    thoughts. Now in the hour of his mother's death the backs of his
+    metaphysics blinked at him emptily. What signified their endless pages
+    about dualism and monism, about phenomenon and noumenon? His mother was
+    dead. And she had died embittered against him because he had read and
+    had been bewildered by these empty, wordy volumes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A sense of profound defeat, of being ultimately fooled and cozened by
+    the subtleties of white men, filled Peter Siner. He had eaten at their
+    table, but their meat was not his meat. The uproar continued. Standing
+    out of the din arose the burden of negro voices "Hab mercy! Gawd hab
+    mercy!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the morning the Ladies of Tabor came and washed and dressed Caroline
+    Siner's body and made it ready for burial. For twenty years the old
+    negress had paid ten cents a month to her society to insure her burial,
+    and now the lodge made ready to fulfil its pledge. After many comings
+    and goings, the black women called Peter to see their work, as if for
+    his approval.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The huge dead woman lay on the four-poster with a sheet spread over the
+    lower part of her body. The ministrants had clothed it in the old black-
+    silk dress, with its spreading seams and panels of different materials.
+    It reminded Peter of the new dress he had meant to get his mother, and
+    of the modish suit which at that moment molded his own shoulders and
+    waist. The pitifulness of her sacrifices trembled in Peter's throat. He
+    pressed his lips together, and nodded silently to the black Ladies of
+    Tabor.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Presently the white undertaker, a silent little man with a brisk yet
+    sympathetic air, came and made some measurements. He talked to Peter in
+    undertones about the finishing of the casket, how much the Knights of
+    Tabor would pay, what Peter wanted. Then he spoke of the hour of burial,
+    and mentioned a somewhat early hour because some of the negroes wanted
+    to ship as roustabouts on the up-river packet, which was due at any
+    moment.
+</p>
+<p>
+    These decisions, asked of Peter, kept pricking him and breaking through
+    the stupefaction of this sudden tragedy. He kept nodding a mechanical
+    agreement until the undertaker had arranged all the details. Then the
+    little man moved softly out of the cabin and went stepping away through
+    the dust of Niggertown with professional briskness. A little later two
+    black grave-diggers set out with picks and shovels for the negro
+    graveyard.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Numberless preparations for the funeral were going on all over
+    Niggertown. The Knights of Tabor were putting on their regalia. Negro
+    women were sending out hurry notices to white mistresses that they would
+    be unable to cook the noonday meal. Dozens of negro girls flocked to the
+    hair-dressing establishment of Miss Mallylou Speers. All were bent on
+    having their wool straightened for the obsequies, and as only a few of
+    them could be accommodated, the little room was packed. A smell of
+    burning hair pervaded it. The girls sat around waiting their turn. Most
+    of them already had their hair down,&mdash;or, rather loose, for it stood out
+    in thick mats. The hair-dresser had a small oil stove on which lay
+    heating half a dozen iron combs. With a hot comb she teased each strand
+    of wool into perfect straightness and then plastered it down with a
+    greasy pomade. The result was a stiff effect, something like the hair of
+    the Japanese. It required about three hours to straighten the hair of
+    one negress. The price was a dollar and a half.
+</p>
+<p>
+    By half-past nine o'clock a crowd of negro men, in lodge aprons and with
+    spears, and negro women, with sashes of ribbon over their shoulders and
+    across the breasts, assembled about the Siner cabin. In the dusty
+    curving street were ranged half a dozen battered vehicles,&mdash;a hearse, a
+    delivery wagon, some rickety buggies, and a hack. Presently the
+    undertaker arrived with a dilapidated black hearse which he used
+    especially for negroes. He jumped down, got out his straps and coffin
+    stands, directed some negro men to bring in the coffin, then hurried
+    into the cabin with his air of brisk precision.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He placed the coffin on the stands near the bed; then a number of men
+    slipped the huge black body into it. The undertaker settled old
+    Caroline's head against the cotton pillows, running his hand down beside
+    her cheek and tipping her face just so. Then he put on the cover, which
+    left a little oval opening just above her dead face. The sight of old
+    Caroline's face seen through the little oval pane moved some of the
+    women to renewed sobs. Eight black men took up the coffin and carried it
+    out with the slow, wide-legged steps of roustabouts. Parson Ranson, in a
+    rusty Prince Albert coat, took Peter's arm and led him to the first
+    vehicle after the hearse. It was a delivery wagon, but it was the best
+    vehicle in the procession.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As Peter followed the coffin out, he saw the Knights and Ladies of Tabor
+    lined up in marching order behind the van. The men held their spears and
+    swords at attention; the women carried flowers. Behind the marchers came
+    other old vehicles, a sorry procession.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At fifteen minutes to ten the bell in the steeple of the colored church
+    tolled a single stroke. The sound quivered through the sunshine over
+    Niggertown. At its signal the poor procession moved away through the
+    dust. At intervals the bell tolled after the vanishing train.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As the negroes passed through the white town the merchants, lolling in
+    their doors, asked passers-by what negro had died. The idlers under the
+    mulberry in front of the livery-stable nodded at the old negro preacher
+    in his long greenish-black coat, and Dawson Bobbs remarked:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, old Parson Ranson's going to tell 'em about it to-day," and he
+    shifted his toothpick with a certain effect of humor.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Old Mr. Tomwit asked if his companions had ever heard how Newt Bodler, a
+    wit famous in Wayne County, once broke up a negro funeral with a
+    hornets' nest. The idlers nodded a smiling affirmative as they watched
+    the cort&egrave;ge go past. They had all heard it. But Mr. Tomwit would not be
+    denied. He sallied forth into humorous reminiscence. Another loafer
+    contributed an anecdote of how he had tied ropes to a dead negro so as
+    to make the corpse sit up in bed and frighten the mourners.
+</p>
+<p>
+    All their tales were of the vintage of the years immediately succeeding
+    the Civil War,&mdash;pioneer humor, such as convulsed the readers of Peck's
+    Bad Boy, Mr. Bowser, Sut Lovingood. The favorite dramatic properties of
+    such writers were the hornets' nest, the falling ladder, the banana
+    peel. They cultivated the humor of contusions, the wit of impact. This
+    style still holds the stage of Hooker's Bend.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In telling these tales the white villagers meant no special disrespect
+    to the negro funeral. It simply reminded them of humorous things; so
+    they told their jokes, like the na&iuml;ve children of the soil that they
+    were.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At last the poor procession passed beyond the white church, around a
+    bend in the road, and so vanished. Presently the bell in Niggertown
+    ceased tolling.
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    Peter always remembered his mother's funeral in fragments of intolerable
+    pathos,&mdash;the lifting of old Parson Ranson's hands toward heaven, the
+    songs of the black folk, the murmur of the first shovelful of dirt as it
+    was lowered to the coffin, and the final raw mound of earth littered
+    with a few dying flowers. With that his mother&mdash;who had been so near to,
+    and so disappointed in, her son&mdash;was blotted from his life. The other
+    events of the funeral flowed by in a sort of dream: he moved about; the
+    negroes were speaking to him in the queer overtones one uses to the
+    bereaved; he was being driven back to Niggertown; he reentered the Siner
+    cabin. One or two of his friends stayed in the room with him for a while
+    and said vague things, but there was nothing to say.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Later in the afternoon Cissie Dildine and her mother brought his dinner
+    to him. Vannie Dildine, a thin yellow woman, uttered a few disjointed
+    words about Sister Ca'line being a good woman, and stopped amid
+    sentence. There was nothing to say. Death had cut a wound across Peter
+    Siner's life. Not for days, nor weeks, nor months, would his existence
+    knit solidly back together. The poison of his ingratitude to his
+    faithful old black mother would for a long, long day prevent the
+    healing.
+</p>
+<a name="2HCH10"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER VII
+</h2>
+<p>
+    During a period following his mother's death Peter Siner's life drifted
+    emptily and without purpose. He had the feeling of one convalescing in a
+    hospital. His days passed unconnected by any thread of purpose; they
+    were like cards scattered on a table, meaning nothing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At times he struggled against his lethargy. When he awoke in the morning
+    and found the sun shining on his dusty primers and examination papers,
+    he would think that he ought to go back to his old task; but he never
+    did. In his heart grew a conviction that he would never teach school at
+    Hooker's Bend.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He would rise and dress slowly in the still cabin, thinking he must soon
+    make new plans and take up some work. He never decided precisely what
+    work; his thoughts trailed on in vague, idle designs.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In fact, during Peter's reaction to his shock there began to assert
+    itself in him that capacity for profound indolence inherent in his negro
+    blood. To a white man time is a cumulative excitant. Continuous and
+    absolute idleness is impossible; he must work, hunt, fish, play, gamble,
+    or dissipate,&mdash;do something to burn up the accumulating sugar in his
+    muscles. But to a negro idleness is an increasing balm; it is a
+    stretching of his legs in the sunshine, a cat-like purring of his
+    nerves; while his thoughts spread here and there in inconsequences, like
+    water without a channel, making little humorous eddies, winding this way
+    and that into oddities and fantasies without ever feeling that
+    constraint of sequence which continually operates in a white brain. And
+    it is this quality that makes negroes the entertainers of children
+    <i>par excellence</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter Siner's mental slackening made him understandable, and gave him a
+    certain popularity in Nigger-town. Black men fell into the habit of
+    dropping in at the Siner cabin, where they would sit outdoors, with
+    chairs propped against the wall, and philosophize on the desultory life
+    of the crescent. Sometimes they would relate their adventures on the
+    river packets and around the docks at Paducah, Cairo, St. Joe, and St.
+    Louis; usually a recountal of drunkenness, gaming, fighting, venery,
+    arrests, jail sentences, petty peculations, and escapes. Through these
+    Iliads of vagabondage ran an irresponsible gaiety, a non-morality, and a
+    kind of unbrave zest for adventure. They told of their defeats and
+    flights with as much relish and humor as of their charges and victories.
+    And while the spirit was thoroughly pagan, these accounts were full of
+    the clich&eacute;s of religion. A roustabout whom every one called the
+    Persimmon confided to Peter that he meant to cut loose some logs in a
+    raft up the river, float them down a little way, tie them up again, and
+    claim the prize-money for salvaging them, God willing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Persimmon was so called from a scar on his long slanting head. A
+    steamboat mate had once found him asleep in the passageway of a lumber
+    pile which the boat was lading, and he waked the negro by hitting him in
+    the head with a persimmon bolt. In this there was nothing unusual or
+    worthy of a nickname. The point was, the mate had been mistaken: the
+    Persimmon was not working on his boat at all. In time this became one of
+    the stock anecdotes which pilots and captains told to passengers
+    traveling up and down the river.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Persimmon was a queer-looking negro; his head was a long diagonal
+    from its peak down to his pendent lower lip, for he had no chin. The
+    salient points on this black slope were the Persimmon's sad, protruding
+    yellow eyeballs, over which the lids always drooped about half closed.
+    An habitual tipping of this melancholy head to one side gave the
+    Persimmon the look of one pondering and deploring the amount of sin
+    there was in the world. This saintly impression the Persimmon's conduct
+    and language never bore out.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At the time of the Persimmon's remarks about the raft two of Peter's
+    callers, Jim Pink Staggs and Parson Ranson, took the roustabout to task.
+    Jim Pink based his objection on the grounds of glutting the labor
+    market.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ef us niggers keeps turnin' too many raf's loose fuh de prize-money,"
+    he warned, "somebody's goin' to git 'spicious, an' you'll ruin a good
+    thing."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Persimmon absorbed this with a far-away look in his half-closed
+    eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It's a ticklish job," argued Parson Ranson, "an' I wouldn't want to
+    wuck at de debbil's task aroun' de ribber, ca'se you mout fall in,
+    Persimmon, an' git drownded."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I wouldn't do sich a thing a-tall," admitted the Persimmon, "but I jes'
+    natchelly got to git ten dollars to he'p pay on my divo'ce."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I kain't see whut you want wid a divo'ce," said Jim Pink, yawning,
+    "when you been ma'ied three times widout any."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It's fuh a Christmas present," explained the Persimmon, carelessly,
+    "fuh th' woman I'm libin' wid now. Mahaly's a great woman fuh style. I'm
+    goin' to divo'ce my other wives, one at a time lak my lawyer say."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "On what grounds?" asked Peter, curiously.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Desuhtion."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Desertion?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Uh huh; I desuhted 'em."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jim Pink shook his head, picked up a pebble, and began idly juggling it,
+    making it appear double, single, treble, then single again.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Too many divo'ces in dis country now, Persimmon," he moralized.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, whut's de cause uv 'em?" asked the Persimmon, suddenly bringing
+    his protruding yellow eyes around on the sleight-of-hand performer.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jim Pink was slightly taken aback; then he said:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'Spicion; nothin' but 'spicion."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yeah, 'spicion," growled the Persimmon; "'spicion an' de husban'
+    leadin' a irreg'lar life."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jim Pink looked at his companion, curiously.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The husban'&mdash;leadin' a irreg'lar life?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yeah,"&mdash;the Persimmon nodded grimly,&mdash;"the husban' comin' home at
+    onexpected hours. You know whut I means, Jim Pink."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jim Pink let his pebble fall and lowered the fore legs of his chair
+    softly to the ground.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now, look heah, Persimmon, you don' want to be draggin' no foreign
+    disco'se into yo' talk heah befo' Mr. Siner an' Parson Ranson."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Persimmon rose deliberately.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "All I want to say is, I drapped off'n de matrimonial tree three times
+    a'ready, Jim Pink, an' I think I feels somebody shakin' de limb ag'in."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old negro preacher rose, too, a little behind Jim Pink.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now, boys! boys!" he placated. "You jes think dat, Persimmon."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yeah," admitted Persimmon, "I jes think it; but ef I b'lieve ever'thing
+    is so whut I think is so, I'd part Jim Pink's wool wid a brickbat."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Parson Ranson tried to make peace, but the Persimmon spread his hands in
+    a gesture that included the three men. "Now, I ain't sayin' nothin'," he
+    stated solemnly, "an' I ain't makin' no threats; but ef anything
+    happens, you-all kain't say that nobody didn' tell nobody about
+    nothin'."
+</p>
+<p>
+    With this the Persimmon walked to the gate, let himself out, still
+    looking back at Jim Pink, and then started down the dusty street.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Staggs seemed uncomfortable under the Persimmon's protruding yellow
+    stare, but finally, when the roustabout was gone, he shrugged, regained
+    his aplomb, and remarked that some niggers spent their time in studyin'
+    'bout things they hadn't no info'mation on whatever. Then he strolled
+    off up the crescent in the other direction.
+</p>
+<p>
+    All this would have made fair minstrel patter if Peter Siner had shared
+    the white conviction that every emotion expressed in a negro's patois is
+    humorous. Unfortunately, Peter was too close to the negroes to hold such
+    a tenet. He knew this quarrel was none the less rancorous for having
+    been couched in the queer circumlocution of black folk. And behind it
+    all shone the background of racial promiscuity out of which it sprang.
+    It was like looking at an open sore that touched all of Niggertown, men
+    and boys, young girls and women. It caused tragedies, murders, fights,
+    and desertions in the black village as regularly as the rotation of the
+    calendar; yet there was no public sentiment against it. Peter wondered
+    how this attitude of his whole people could possibly be.
+</p>
+<p>
+    With the query the memory of Ida May came back to him, with its sense of
+    dim pathos. It seemed to Peter now as if their young and uninstructed
+    hands had destroyed a safety-vault to filch a penny.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The reflex of a thought of Ida May always brought Peter to Cissie; it
+    always stirred up in him a desire to make this young girl's path gentle
+    and smooth. There was a fineness, a delicacy about Cissie, that, it
+    seemed to Peter, Ida May had never possessed. Then, too, Cissie was
+    moved by a passion for self-betterment. She deserved a cleaner field
+    than the Niggertown of Hooker's Bend.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter took Parson Ranson's arm, and the two moved to the gate by common
+    consent. It was no longer pleasant to sit here. The quarrel they had
+    heard somehow had flavored their surroundings.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter turned his steps mechanically northward up the crescent toward the
+    Dildine cabin. Nothing now restrained him from calling on Cissie; he
+    would keep no dinner waiting; he would not be warned and berated on his
+    return home. The nagging, jealous love of his mother had ended.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As the two men walked along, it was borne in upon Peter that his
+    mother's death definitely ended one period of his life. There was no
+    reason why he should continue his present unsettled existence. It seemed
+    best to marry Cissie at once and go North. Further time in this place
+    would not be good for the girl. Even if he could not lift all
+    Niggertown, he could at least help Cissie. He had had no idea, when he
+    first planned his work, what a tremendous task he was essaying. The
+    white village had looked upon the negroes so long as non-moral and non-
+    human that the negroes, with the flexibility of their race, had
+    assimilated that point of view. The whites tried to regulate the negroes
+    by endless laws. The negroes had come to accept this, and it seemed that
+    they verily believed that anything not discovered by the constable was
+    permissible. Mr. Dawson Bobbs was Niggertown's conscience. It was best
+    for Peter to take from this atmosphere what was dearest to him, and go
+    at once.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The brown man's thoughts came trailing back to the old negro parson
+    hobbling at his side. He looked at the old man, hesitated a moment, then
+    told him what was in his mind.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Parson Ranson's face wrinkled into a grin.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You's gwine to git ma'ied?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And I thought I'd have you perform the ceremony."
+</p>
+<p>
+    This suggestion threw the old negro into excitement.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Me, Mr. Peter?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes. Why not?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, Mr. Peter, I kain't jine you an' Miss Cissie Dildine."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter looked at him, astonished.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why can't you?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Whyn't you git a white preacher?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well," deliberated Peter, gravely, "it's a matter of principle with me,
+    Parson Ranson. I think we colored people ought to be more self-reliant,
+    more self-serving. We ought to lead our own lives instead of being mere
+    echoes of white thought." He made a swift gesture, moved by this passion
+    of his life. "I don't mean racial equality. To my mind racial equality
+    is an empty term. One might as well ask whether pink and violet are
+    equal. But what I do insist on is autonomous development."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old preacher nodded, staring into the dust. "Sho! 'tonomous
+    'velopment."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter saw that his language, if not his thought, was far beyond his old
+    companion's grasp, and he lacked the patience to simplify himself.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why don't you want to marry us, Parson?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Parson Ranson lifted his brows and filled his forehead with wrinkles.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, I dunno. You an' Miss Cissie acts too much lak white folks fuh a
+    nigger lak me to jine you, Mr. Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter made a sincere effort to be irritated, but he was not.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That's no way to feel. It's exactly what I was talking about,&mdash;racial
+    self-reliance. You've married hundreds of colored couples."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ya-as, suh,"&mdash;the old fellow scratched his black jaw.&mdash;"I kin yoke up a
+    pair uv ordina'y niggers all right. Sometimes dey sticks, sometimes dey
+    don't." The old man shook his white, kinky head. "I'll bust in an' try
+    to hitch up you-all. I&mdash;I dunno whedder de cer'mony will hol' away up
+    North or not."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It'll be all right anywhere, Parson," said Peter, seriously. "Your name
+    on the marriage-certificate will&mdash;can you write?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "N-no, suh."
+</p>
+<p>
+    After a brief hesitation Peter repeated determinedly:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It'll be all right. And, by the way, of course, this will be a very
+    quiet wedding."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yas-suh." The old man bobbed importantly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I wouldn't mention it to any one."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, suh; no, suh. I don' blame you a-tall, Mr. Peter, wid dat Tump Pack
+    gallivantin' roun' wid a forty-fo'. Hit would keep 'mos' anybody's
+    weddin' ve'y quiet onless he wuz lookin' fuh a short cut to heab'n."
+</p>
+<p>
+    As the two negroes passed the Berry cabin, Nan Berry thrust out her
+    spiked head and called to Peter Captain Renfrew wanted to see him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter paused, with quickened interest in this strange old man who had
+    come to his mother's death-bed with a doctor. Peter asked Nan what the
+    Captain wanted.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nan did not know. Wince Washington had told Nan that the Captain wanted
+    to see Peter. Bluegum Frakes had told Wince; Jerry Dillihay had told
+    Bluegum; but any further meanderings of the message, when it started, or
+    what its details might be, Nan could not state.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was a typical message from a resident of the white town to a denizen
+    of Niggertown. Such messages are delivered to any black man for any
+    other black man, not only in the village, but anywhere in the outlying
+    country. It may be passed on by a dozen or a score of mouths before it
+    reaches its objective. It may be a day or a week in transit, but
+    eventually it will be delivered verbatim. This queer system of
+    communication is a relic of slavery, when the master would send out word
+    for some special negro out of two or three hundred slaves to report at
+    the big house.
+</p>
+<p>
+    However, as Peter approached the Dildine cabin, thoughts of his
+    approaching marriage drove from his mind even old Captain Renfrew's
+    message. His heart beat fast from having made his first formal step
+    toward wedlock. The thought of having Cissie all to himself, swept his
+    nerves in a gust.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He opened the gate, and ran up between the dusty lines of dwarf box,
+    eager to tell her what he had done. He thumped on the cracked, unpainted
+    door, and impatiently waited the skirmish of observation along the edge
+    of the window-blinds. This was unduly drawn out. Presently he heard
+    women's voices whispering to each other inside. They seemed urgent,
+    almost angry voices. Now and then he caught a sentence:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What difference will it make?" "I couldn't." "Why couldn't you?"
+    "Because&mdash;" "That's because you've been to Nashville." "Oh, well&mdash;" A
+    chair was moved over a bare floor. A little later footsteps came to the
+    entrance, the door opened, and Cissie's withered yellow mother stood
+    before him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Vannie offered her hand and inquired after Peter's health with a stopped
+    voice that instantly recalled his mother's death. After the necessary
+    moment of talk, the mulatto inquired for Cissie.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The yellow woman seemed slightly ill at ease.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Cissie ain't so well, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "She's not ill?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "N-no; but the excitement an' ever'thing&mdash;" answered Vannie, vaguely.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the flush of his plans, Peter was keenly disappointed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It's very important, Mrs. Dildine."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Vannie's dried yellow face framed the ghost of a smile.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ever'thing a young man's got to say to a gal is ve'y important, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    It seemed to Peter a poor time for a jest; his face warmed faintly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It&mdash;it's about some of the details of our&mdash;our wedding."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If you'll excuse her to-day, Peter, an' come after supper&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter hesitated, and was about to go away when Cissie's voice came from
+    an inner room, telling her mother to admit him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The yellow woman glanced at the door on the left side of the hall,
+    crossed over and opened it, stood to one side while Peter entered, and
+    closed it after him, leaving the two alone.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The room into which Peter stepped was dark, after the fashion of negro
+    houses. Only after a moment's survey did he see Cissie sitting near a
+    big fireplace made of rough stone. The girl started to rise as Peter
+    advanced toward her, but he solicitously forbade it and hurried over to
+    her. When he leaned over her and put his arms about her, his ardor was
+    slightly dampened when she gave him her cheek instead of her lips to
+    kiss.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Surely, you're not too ill to be kissed?" he rallied faintly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You kissed me. I thought we had agreed, Peter, you were not to come in
+    the daytime any more."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, is that it?" Peter patted her shoulder, cheerfully. "Don't worry; I
+    have just removed any reason why I shouldn't come any time I want to."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie looked at him, her dark eyes large in the gloom.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What have you done?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Got a preacher to marry us; on my way now for a license. Dropped in to
+    ask if you 'll be ready by tomorrow or next day."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl gasped.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But, Peter&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter drew a chair beside her in a serious argumentative mood.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes I think we ought to get married at once. No reason why we shouldn't
+    get it over with&mdash;Why, what's the matter?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "So soon after your mother's death, Peter?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It's to get away from Hooker's Bend, Cissie&mdash;to get you away. I don't
+    like for you to stay here. It's all so&mdash;" he broke off, not caring to
+    open the disagreeable subject.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl sat staring down at some fagots smoldering on the hearth. At
+    that moment they broke into flame and illuminated her sad face.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You'll go, won't you?" asked Peter at last, with a faint uncertainty.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl looked up.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh&mdash;I&mdash;I'd be glad to, Peter,"&mdash;she gave a little shiver. "Ugh! this
+    Niggertown is a&mdash;a terrible place!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter leaned over, took one of her hands, and patted it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then we'll go," he said soothingly. "It's decided&mdash;tomorrow. And we'll
+    have a perfectly lovely wedding trip," he planned cheerfully, to draw
+    her mind from her mood. "On the car going North I'll get a whole
+    drawing-room. I've always wanted a drawing-room, and you'll be my
+    excuse. We'll sit and watch the fields and woods and cities slip past
+    us, and know, when we get off, we can walk on the streets as freely as
+    anybody. We'll be a genuine man and wife."
+</p>
+<p>
+    His recital somehow stirred him. He took her in his arms, pressed her
+    cheek to his, and after a moment kissed her lips with the trembling
+    ardor of a bridegroom.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie remained passive a moment, then put up he hands, turned his face
+    away, and slowly released herself.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter was taken aback.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What <i>is</i> the matter, Cissie?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I can't go, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter looked at her with a feeling of strangeness.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Can't go?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl shook her head.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You mean&mdash;you want us to live here?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie sat exceedingly still and barely shook her head.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The mulatto had a sensation as if the portals which disclosed a new and
+    delicious life were slowly closing against him. He stared into her oval
+    face.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You don't mean, Cissie&mdash;you don't mean you don't want to marry me?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The fagots on the hearth burned now with a cheerful flame. Cissie stared
+    at it, breathing rapidly from the top of her lungs. She seemed about to
+    faint. As Peter watched her the jealousy of the male crept over him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Look here, Cissie," he said in a queer voice, "you&mdash;you don't mean,
+    after all, that Tump Pack is&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh no! No!" Her face showed her repulsion. Then she drew a long breath
+    and apparently made up her mind to some sort of ordeal.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Peter," she asked in a low tone, "did you ever think what we colored
+    people are trying to reach?" She stared into his uncomprehending eyes.
+    "I mean what is our aim, our goal, whom are we trying to be like?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We aren't trying to be like any one." Peter was entirely at a loss.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, yes, we are," Cissie hurried on. "Why do colored girls straighten
+    their hair, bleach their skins, pinch their feet? Aren't they trying to
+    look like white girls?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter agreed, wondering at her excitement.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And you went North to college, Peter, so you could think and act like a
+    white man&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter resisted this at once; he was copying nobody. The whole object of
+    college was to develop one's personality, to bring out&mdash;
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl stopped his objections almost piteously.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, don't argue! You know arguing throws me off. I&mdash;now I've forgotten
+    how I meant to say it!" Tears of frustration welled up in her eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Her mood was alarming, almost hysterical. Peter began comforting her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "There, there, dear, dear Cissie, what is the matter? Don't say it at
+    all." Then, inconsistently, he added: "You said I copied white men.
+    Well, what of it?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie breathed her relief at having been given the thread of her
+    discourse. She sat silent for a moment with the air of one screwing up
+    her courage.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It's this," she said in an uncertain voice: "sometimes we&mdash;we&mdash;girls&mdash;
+    here in Niggertown copy the wrong thing first."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter looked blankly at her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "The wrong thing first, Cissie?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, yes; we&mdash;we begin on clothes and&mdash;and hair and&mdash;and that isn't the
+    real matter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, no-o-o, that isn't the real matter," said Peter puzzled.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie looked at his face and became hopeless.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, <i>don't</i> you understand! Lots of us&mdash;lots of us make that
+    mistake! I&mdash;I did; so&mdash;so, Peter, I can't go with you!" She flung out
+    the last phrase, and suddenly collapsed on the arm of her chair,
+    sobbing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter was amazed. He got up, sat on the arm of his own chair next to
+    hers and put his arms about her, bending over her, mothering her. Her
+    distress was so great that he said as earnestly as his ignorance
+    permitted:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, Cissie, I understand now." But his tone belied his words, and the
+    girl shook her head. "Yes, I do, Cissie," he repeated emptily. But she
+    only shook her head as she leaned over him, and her tears slowly formed
+    and trickled down on his hand. Then all at once old Caroline's
+    accusation against Cissie flashed on Peter's mind. She had stolen that
+    dinner in the turkey roaster, after all. It so startled him that he sat
+    up straight. Cissie also sat up. She stopped crying, and sat looking
+    into the fire.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You mean&mdash;morals?" said Peter in a low tone.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie barely nodded, her wet eyes fixed on the fire.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I see. I was stupid."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl sat a moment, drawing deep breaths. At last she rose slowly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well&mdash;I'm glad it's over. I'm glad you know." She stood looking at him
+    almost composedly except for her breathing and her tear-stained face.
+    "You see, Peter, if you had been like Tump Pack or Wince or any of the
+    boys around here, it&mdash;it wouldn't have made much difference; but&mdash;but
+    you went off and&mdash;and learned to think and feel like a white man. You&mdash;
+    you changed your code, Peter." She gave a little shaken sound, something
+    between a sob and a laugh. "I&mdash;I don't think th-that's very fair, Peter,
+    to&mdash;to go away an'&mdash;an' change an' come back an' judge us with yo' n-new
+    code." Cissie's precise English broke down.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Just then Peter's logic caught at a point.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If you didn't know anything about my code, how do you know what I feel
+    now?" he asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    She looked at him with a queer expression.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I found out when you kissed me under the arbor. It was too late then."
+</p>
+<p>
+    She stood erect, with dismissal very clearly written in her attitude.
+    Peter walked out of the room.
+</p>
+<a name="2HCH11"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER VIII
+</h2>
+<p>
+    With a certain feeling of clumsiness Peter groped in the dark hall for
+    his hat, then, as quietly as he could, let himself out at the door.
+    Outside he was surprised to find that daylight still lingered in the
+    sky. He thought night had fallen. The sun lay behind the Big Hill, but
+    its red rays pouring down through the boles of the cedars tinted long
+    delicate avenues in the dusty atmosphere above his head. A sharp chill
+    in the air presaged frost for the night. Somewhere in the crescent a boy
+    yodeled for his dog at about half-minute intervals, with the persistence
+    of children.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter walked a little distance, but finally came to a stand in the dust,
+    looking at the negro cabins, not knowing where to go or what to do.
+    Cissie's confession had destroyed all his plans. It had left him as
+    adynamic as had his mother's death. It seemed to Peter that there was a
+    certain similarity between the two events; both were sudden and
+    desolating. And just as his mother had vanished utterly from his reach,
+    so now it seemed Cissie was no more. Cissie the clear-eyed, Cissie the
+    ambitious, Cissie the refined, had vanished away, and in her place stood
+    a thief.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The thing was grotesque. Peter began a sudden shuddering in the cold.
+    Then he began moving toward the empty cabin where he slept and kept his
+    things. He moved along, talking to himself in the dusty emptiness of the
+    crescent. He decided that he would go home, pack his clothes, and
+    vanish. A St. Louis boat would be down that night, and he would just
+    have time to pack his clothes and catch it. He would not take his books,
+    his philosophies. He would let them remain, in the newspapered room,
+    until all crumbled into uniform philosophic dust, and the teachings of
+    Aristotle blew about Niggertown.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then, as he thought of traveling North, the vision of the honeymoon he
+    had just planned revived his numb brain into a dismal aching. He looked
+    back through the dusk at the Dildine roof. It stood black against an
+    opalescent sky. Out of the foreground, bending over it, arose a clump of
+    tall sunflowers, in whose silhouette hung a suggestion of yellow and
+    green. The whole scene quivered slightly at every throb of his heart. He
+    thought what a fool he was to allow a picaresque past to keep him away
+    from such a woman, how easy it would be to go back to the soft luxury of
+    Cissie, to tell her it made no difference; and somehow, just at that
+    moment it seemed not to.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then the point of view which Peter had been four years acquiring swept
+    away the impulse, and it left him moving toward his cabin again, empty,
+    cold, and planless.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He was drawn out of his reverie by the soft voice of a little negro boy
+    asking him apprehensively whom he was talking to.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter stopped, drew forth a handkerchief and dabbed the moisture from
+    his cold face in the meticulous fashion of college men.
+</p>
+<p>
+    With the boy came a dog which was cautiously smelling Peter's shoes and
+    trousers. Both boy and dog were investigating the phenomenon of Peter.
+    Peter, in turn, looked down at them with a feeling that they had
+    materialized out of nothing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What did you say?" he asked vaguely.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The boy was suddenly overcome with the excessive shyness of negro
+    children, and barely managed to whisper:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I&mdash;I ast wh-who you wuz a-talkin' to."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Was I talking?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The little negro nodded, undecided whether to stand his ground or flee.
+    Peter touched the child's crisp hair.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I was talking to myself," he said, and moved forward again.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The child instantly gained confidence at the slight caress, took a fold
+    of Peter's trousers in his hand for friendliness, and the two trudged on
+    together.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Wh-whut you talkin' to yo' se'f for?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter glanced down at the little black head that promised to think up a
+    thousand questions.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I was wondering where to go."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Lawsy! is you los' yo' way?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    He stroked the little head with a rush of self-pity.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, I have, son; I've completely lost my way."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The child twisted his head around and peered up alongside Peter's arm.
+    Presently he asked:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ain't you Mr. Peter Siner?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ain't you de man whut's gwine to ma'y Miss Cissie Dildine?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter looked down at his small companion with a certain concern that his
+    marriage was already gossip known to babes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'm Peter Siner," he repeated.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Den I knows which way you wants to go," piped the youngster in sudden
+    helpfulness. "You wants to go over to Cap'n Renfrew's place acrost de
+    Big Hill. He done sont fuh you. Mr. Wince Washington tol' me, ef I seed
+    you, to tell you dat Cap'n Renfrew wants to see you. I dunno whut hit's
+    about. I ast Wince, an' he didn' know."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter recalled the message Nan Berry had given him some hours before.
+    Now the same summons had seeped around to him from another direction.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I&mdash;I'll show you de way to Cap'n Renfrew's ef&mdash;ef you'll come back wid
+    me th'ugh de cedar glade," proposed the child. "I&mdash;I ain't skeered in de
+    cedar glade, b-b-but hit's so dark I kain't see my way back home.
+</p>
+<center>
+    I&mdash;I&mdash;"
+</center>
+<p>
+    Peter thanked him and declined his services. After all, he might as well
+    go to see Captain Renfrew. He owed the old gentleman some thanks&mdash;and
+    ten dollars.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The only thing of which Peter Siner was aware during his walk over the
+    Big Hill and through the village was his last scene with Cissie. He went
+    over it again and again, repeating their conversation, inventing new
+    replies, framing new action, questioning more fully into the octoroon's
+    vague confession and his benumbed acceptance of it. The moment his mind
+    completed the little drama it started again from the very beginning.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At Captain Renfrew's gate this mental mummery paused long enough for him
+    to vacillate between walking in or going around and shouting from the
+    back gate. It is a point of etiquette in Hooker's Bend that negroes
+    shall enter a white house from the back stoop. Peter had no desire to
+    transgress this custom. On the other hand, if Captain Renfrew was
+    receiving him as a fellow of Harvard, the back door, in its way, would
+    prove equally embarrassing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After a certain indecision he compromised by entering the front gate and
+    calling the Captain's name from among the scattered bricks of the old
+    walk.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The house lay silent, half smothered in a dark tangle of shrubbery.
+    Peter called twice before he heard the shuffle of house slippers, and
+    then saw the Captain's dressing-gown at the piazza steps.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Is that you, Peter?" came a querulous voice.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, Captain. I was told you wanted to see me."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You've been deliberate in coming," criticized the old gentleman,
+    testily. "I sent you word by some black rascal three days ago."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I just received the message to-day." Peter remained discreetly at the
+    gate.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes; well, come in, come in. See if you can do anything with this
+    damnable lamp."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old man turned with a dignified drawing-together of his dressing-
+    gown and moved back. Apparently, the renovation of a cranky lamp was the
+    whole content of the Captain's summons to Peter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There was something so characteristic in this incident that Peter was
+    moved to a vague sense of mirth. It was just like the old r&eacute;gime to call
+    in a negro, a special negro, from ten miles away to move a jar of ferns
+    across the lawn or trim a box hedge or fix a lamp.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter followed the old gentleman around to the back piazza facing his
+    study. There, laid out on the floor, were all the parts of a gasolene
+    lamp, together with a pipe-wrench, a hammer, a little old-fashioned
+    vise, a bar of iron, and an envelop containing the mantels and the more
+    delicate parts of the lamp.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It's extraordinary to me," criticized the Captain, "why they can't make
+    a gasolene lamp that will go, and remain in a going condition."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Has it been out of fix for three days?" asked Peter, sorry that the old
+    gentleman should have lacked a light for so long.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No," growled the Captain; "it started gasping at four o'clock last
+    night; so I put it out and went to bed. I've been working at it this
+    evening. There's a little hole in the tip,&mdash;if I could see it,&mdash;a hair-
+    sized hole, painfully small. Why any man wants to make gasolene lamps
+    with microscopic holes that ordinary intelligence must inform him will
+    become clogged I cannot conceive."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter ventured no opinion on this trait of lampmakers, but said that if
+    the Captain knew where he could get an oil hand-lamp for a little more
+    light, he thought he could unstop the hole.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Captain looked at his helper and shook his head.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I am surprised at you, Peter. When I was your age, I could see an
+    aperture like that hole under the last quarter of the moon. In this
+    strong light I could have&mdash;er&mdash;lunged the cleaner through it, sir. You
+    must have strained your eyes in college." He paused, then added: "You'll
+    find hand-lamps in any of the rooms fronting this porch. I don't know
+    whether they have oil in them or not&mdash;the shiftless niggers that come
+    around to take care of this building&mdash;no dependence to be put in them.
+    When I try it myself, I do even worse."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old gentleman's tone showed that he was thawing out of his irritable
+    mood, and Peter sensed that he meant to be amusing in an austere,
+    unsmiling fashion. The Captain rubbed his delicate wrinkled hands
+    together in a pleased fashion and sat down in a big porch chair to await
+    Peter's assembling of the lamp. The brown man started down the long
+    piazza, in search of a hand-light.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He found a lamp in the first room he entered, returned to the piazza,
+    sat down on the edge of it, and began his tinkering. The old Captain
+    apparently watched him with profound satisfaction. Presently, after the
+    fashion of the senile, he began endless and minute instructions as to
+    how the lamp should be cleaned.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Take the wire in your left hand, Peter,&mdash;that's right,&mdash;now hold the
+    tip a little closer to the light&mdash;no, place the mantels on the right
+    side&mdash;that's the way I do it. System...." the old man's monologue ran on
+    and on, and became a murmur in Peter's ears. It was rather soothing than
+    otherwise. Now and then it held tremulous vibrations that might have
+    been from age or that might have been from some deep satisfaction
+    mounting even to joy. But to Peter that seemed hardly probable. No doubt
+    it was senility. The Captain was a tottery old man, past the age for any
+    fundamental joy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Night had fallen now, and a darkness, musky with autumn weeds, hemmed in
+    the sphere of yellow light on the old piazza. A black-and-white cat
+    materialized out of the gloom, purring, and arching against a pillar.
+    The whole place was filled with a sense of endless leisure. The old man,
+    the cat, the perfume of the weeds, soothed in Peter even the rawness of
+    his hurt at Cissie.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Indeed, in a way, the old manor became a sort of apology for the
+    octoroon girl. The height and the reach of the piazza, exaggerated by
+    the darkness, suggested a time when retinues of negroes passed through
+    its dignified colonnades. Those black folk were a part of the place.
+    They came and went, picked up and used what they could, and that was all
+    life held for them. They were without wage, without rights, even to the
+    possession of their own bodies; so by necessity they took what they
+    could. That was only fifty-odd years ago. Thus, in a way, Peter's
+    surroundings began a subtle explanation of and apology for Cissie, the
+    whole racial training of black folk in petty thievery. And that this
+    should have touched Cissie&mdash;the meanness, the pathos of her fate moved
+    Peter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The negro was aroused from his reverie by the old Captain's getting out
+    of his chair and saying, "Very good," and then Peter saw that he had
+    finished the lamp. The two men rose and carried it into the study, where
+    Peter pumped and lighted it; a bit later its brilliant white light
+    flooded the room.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Quite good." The old Captain stood rubbing his hands with his odd air
+    of continued delight. "How do you like this place, anyway, Peter?" He
+    wrapped his gown around him, sat down in the old Morris chair beside the
+    book-piled table, and indicated another seat for Peter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The mulatto took it, aware of a certain flexing of Hooker's Bend custom,
+    where negroes, unless old or infirm, are not supposed to sit in the
+    presence of whites.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Do you mean the study, Captain?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, the study, the whole place."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It's very pleasant," replied Peter; "it has the atmosphere of age."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Captain Renfrew nodded.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "These old places," pursued Peter, "always give me an impression of
+    statesmanship, somehow. I always think of grave old gentlemen busy with
+    the cares of public policy."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old man seemed gratified.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You are sensitive to atmosphere. If I may say it, every Southron of the
+    old r&eacute;gime was a statesman by nature and training. The complete care of
+    two or three hundred negroes, a regard for their bodily, moral, and
+    spiritual welfare, inevitably led the master into the impersonal
+    attitude of statecraft. It was a training, sir, in leadership, in social
+    thinking, in, if you please, altruism." The old gentleman thumped the
+    arm of his chair with a translucent palm. "Yes, sir, negro slavery was
+    God's great lesson to the South in altruism and loving-kindness, sir! My
+    boy, I do believe with all my heart that the institution of slavery was
+    placed here in God's country to rear up giants of political leadership,
+    that our nation might weather the revolutions of the world. Oh, the
+    Yankees are necessary! I know that!" The old Captain held up a palm at
+    Peter as if repressing an imminent retort. "I know the Yankees are the
+    Marthas of the nation. They furnish food and fuel to the ship of state,
+    but, my boy, the reservoir of our country's spiritual and mental
+    strength, the Mary of our nation, must always be the South. Virginia is
+    the mother of Presidents!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Captain's oration left him rather breathless. He paused a moment,
+    then asked:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Peter, have you ever thought that we men of the leisure class owe a
+    debt to the world?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter smiled.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I know the theory of the leisure class, but I've had very little
+    practical experience with leisure."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, that's a subject close to my heart. As a scholar and a thinker, I
+    feel that I should give the fruits of my leisure to the world. Er&mdash;in
+    fact, Peter, that is why I sent for you to come and see me."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why you sent for me?" Peter was surprised at this turn.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Precisely. You."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here the old gentleman got himself out of his chair, walked across to
+    one of a series of drawers in his bookcases, opened it, and took out a
+    sheaf of papers and a quart bottle. He brought the papers and the bottle
+    back to the table, made room for them, put the papers in a neat pile,
+    and set the bottle at a certain distance from the heap.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now, Peter, please hand me one of those wineglasses in the religious
+    section of my library&mdash;I always keep two or three glasses among my
+    religious works, in memory of the fact that our Lord and Master wrought
+    a miracle at the feast of Cana, especially to bless the cup. Indeed,
+    Peter, thinking of that miracle at the wedding-feast, I wonder, sir, how
+    the prohibitionists can defend their conduct even to their own
+    consciences, because logically, sir, logically, the miracle of our
+    gracious Lord completely cuts away the ground from beneath their feet!
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No wonder, when the Mikado sent a Japanese envoy to America to make a
+    tentative examination of Christianity as a proper creed for the state
+    religion of Japan&mdash;no wonder, with this miracle flouted by the
+    prohibitionists, the embassy carried back the report that Americans
+    really have no faith in the religion they profess. Shameful! Shameful!
+    Place the glass there on the left of the bottle. A little farther away
+    from the bottle, please, just a trifle more. Thank you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Captain poured himself a tiny glassful, and its bouquet immediately
+    filled the room. There was no guessing how old that whisky was.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I will not break the laws of my country, Peter, no matter how godless
+    and sacrilegious those laws may be; therefore I cannot offer you a
+    drink, but you will observe a second glass among the religious works,
+    and the bottle sits in plain view on the table&mdash;er&mdash;em." He watched
+    Peter avail himself of his opportunity, and then added, "Now, you may
+    just drink to me, standing, as you are, like that."
+</p>
+<p>
+    They drank, Peter standing, the old gentleman seated.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It is just as necessary," pursued the old connoisseur, when Peter was
+    reseated, "it is just as necessary for a gentleman to have a delicate
+    palate for the tints of the vine as it is for him to have a delicate eye
+    for the tints of the palette. Nature bestowed a taste both in art and
+    wine on man, which he should strive to improve at every opportunity. It
+    is a gift from God. Perhaps you would like another glass. No? Then
+    accommodate me."
+</p>
+<p>
+    He drained this one, with Peter standing, worked his withered lips back
+    and forth to experience its full taste, then swallowed, and smacked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now, Peter," he said, "the reason I asked you to come to see me is that
+    I need a man about this house. That will be one phase of your work. The
+    more important part is that you shall serve as a sort of secretary. I
+    have here a manuscript." He patted the pile of papers. "My handwriting
+    is rather difficult. I want you to copy this matter out and get it ready
+    for the printer."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter became more and more astonished.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Are you offering me a permanent place, Captain Renfrew?" he asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old man nodded.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I need a man with a certain liberality of culture. I will no doubt have
+    you run through books and periodicals and make note of any points
+    germane to my thesis."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter looked at the pile of script on the table.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That is very flattering, Captain; but the fact is, I came by your place
+    at this hour because I am just in the act of leaving here on the
+    steamboat to-night."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Captain looked at Peter with concern on his face. "Leaving Hooker's
+    Bend?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, sir."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter hesitated.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, my mother is dead&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, but your&mdash;your&mdash;your work is still here, Peter." The Captain fell
+    into a certain confusion. "A man's work, Peter; a man's work."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Do you mean my school-teaching?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then came a pause. The conversation somehow had managed to leave them
+    both somewhat at sea. The Captain began again, in a different tone:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Peter, I wish you to remain here with me for another reason. I am an
+    old man, Peter. Anything could happen to me here in this big house, and
+    nobody would know it. I don't like to think of it." The old man's tone
+    quite painted his fears. "I am not afraid of death, Peter. I have walked
+    before God all my life save in one or two points, which, I believe, in
+    His mercy, He has forgiven me; but I cannot endure the idea of being
+    found here some day in some unconsidered posture, fallen out of a chair,
+    or a-sprawl on the floor. I wish to die with dignity, Peter, as I have
+    lived."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then you mean that you want me to stay here with you until&mdash;until the
+    end, Captain?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old man nodded.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That is my desire, Peter, for an honorarium which you yourself shall
+    designate. At my death, you will receive some proper portion of my
+    estate; in fact, the bulk of my estate, because I leave no other heirs.
+    I am the last Renfrew of my race, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter grew more and more amazed as the old gentleman unfolded this
+    strange proposal. What queerer, pleasanter berth could he find than that
+    offered him here in the quietude of the old manor, among books, tending
+    the feeble flame of this old aristocrat's life? An air of scholasticism
+    hung about the library. In some corner of this dark oaken library his
+    philosophies would rest comfortably.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then it occurred to Peter that he would have to continue his sleeping
+    and eating in Niggertown, and since his mother had died and his rupture
+    with Cissie, the squalor and smells of the crescent had become
+    impossible. He told the old Captain his objections as diplomatically as
+    possible. The old man made short work of them. He wanted Peter to sleep
+    in the manor within calling distance, and he might begin this very night
+    and stay on for a week or so as a sort of test whether he liked the
+    position or not. The Captain waited with some concern until Peter agreed
+    to a trial.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After that the old gentleman talked on interminably of the South, of the
+    suffrage movement, the destructive influence it would have on the home,
+    the Irish question, the Indian question, whether the mound-builders did
+    not spring from the two lost tribes of Israel&mdash;an endless outpouring of
+    curious facts, quaint reasoning, and extraordinary conclusions, all
+    delivered with the great dignity and in the flowing periods of an
+    orator.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was fully two o'clock in the morning when it occurred to the Captain
+    that his new secretary might like to go to bed. The old man took the
+    hand-lamp which was still burning and led the way out to the back piazza
+    past a number of doors to a corner bedroom. He shuffled along in his
+    carpet slippers, followed by the black-and-white cat, which ran along,
+    making futile efforts to rub itself against his lean shanks. Peter
+    followed in a sort of stupor from the flood of words, ideas, and strange
+    fancies that had been poured into his ears.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Captain turned off the piazza into one of those old-fashioned
+    Southern rooms with full-length windows, which were really glazed doors,
+    a ceiling so high that Peter could make out only vague concentric rings
+    of stucco-work among the shadows overhead, and a floor space of ball-
+    room proportions. In one corner was a huge canopy bed, across from it a
+    clothes-press of dark wood, and in another corner a large screen hiding
+    the bathing arrangements.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter's bedroom was a sleeping apartment, in the old sense of the word
+    before the term "apartment" had lost its dignity.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Captain placed the lamp on the great table and indicated Peter's
+    possession with a wave of the hand.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If you stay here, Peter, I will put in a call-bell, so I can awaken you
+    if I need you during the night. Now I wish you healthful slumbers and
+    pleasant dreams." With that the old gentleman withdrew ceremoniously.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When the Captain was gone, the mulatto remained standing in the vast
+    expanse, marveling over this queer turn of fortune. Why Captain Renfrew
+    had selected him as a secretary and companion Peter could not fancy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The magnificence of his surroundings revived his late dream of a
+    honeymoon with Cissie. Certainly, in his fancy, he had visioned a
+    honeymoon in Pullman parlor cars and suburban bungalows. He had been
+    mistaken. This great chamber rose about him like a corrected proof of
+    his desire.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Into just such a room he would like to lead Cissie; into this great room
+    that breathed pride and dignity. What a glowing heart the girl would
+    have made for its somber magnificence!
+</p>
+<p>
+    He walked over to the full-length windows and opened them; then he
+    unbolted the jalousies outside and swung them back. The musk of autumn
+    weeds breathed in out of the darkness. Peter drew a long breath, with a
+    sort of wistful melting in his chest.
+</p>
+<a name="2HCH12"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER IX
+</h2>
+<p>
+    A turmoil aroused Peter Siner the next morning, and when he discovered
+    where he was, in the big canopy bed in the great room, he listened
+    curiously and heard a continuous chattering and quarreling. After a
+    minute or two he recognized the voice of old Rose Hobbett. Rose was
+    cooking the Captain's breakfast, and she performed this function in a
+    kind of solitary rage. She banged the vessels, slammed the stove-eyes on
+    and off, flung the stove-wood about, and kept up a snarling
+    animadversion upon every topic that drifted through her kinky head. She
+    called the kitchen a rat-hole, stated the Captain must be as mean as the
+    devil to live as long as he did, complained that no one ever paid any
+    attention to her, that she might as well be a stray cat, and so on.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As Peter grew wider awake, the monotony of the old negress's rancor
+    faded into an unobserved noise. He sat up on the edge of his bed between
+    the parted curtains and divined there was a bath behind the screen in
+    the corner of his room. Sure enough, he found two frayed but clean
+    towels, a pan, a pitcher, and a small tub all made of tin. Peter
+    assembled his find and began splashing his heavily molded chest with a
+    feeling of well-being. As he splashed on the water, he amused himself by
+    listening again to old Rose. She was now complaining that some white
+    young'uns had called her "raving Rose." She hoped "God'lmighty would
+    send down two she bears and eat 'em up." Peter was amazed by the old
+    crone's ability to maintain an unending flow of concentrated and aimless
+    virulence.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The kitchen of the Renfrew manor was a separate building, and presently
+    Peter saw old Rose carrying great platters across the weed-grown
+    compound into the dining-room. She bore plate after plate piled high
+    with cookery,&mdash;enough for a company of men. A little later came a
+    clangor on a rusty triangle, as if she were summoning a house party. Old
+    Rose did things in a wholesale spirit.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter started for his door, but when he had opened the shutter, he stood
+    hesitating. Breakfast introduced another delicate problem. He decided
+    not to go to the dining-room at once, but to wait and allow Captain
+    Renfrew to indicate whether he, Peter, should break his fast with the
+    master in the dining-room or with old Rose in the kitchen.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A moment later he saw the Captain coming down the long back piazza.
+    Peter almost addressed his host, but the old Southerner proceeded into
+    the dining-room apparently without seeing Peter at all.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The guest was gathering his breath to call good morning, but took the
+    cue with a negro's sensitiveness, and let his eyes run along the weeds
+    in the compound. The drying stalks were woven with endless spider-webs,
+    all white with frost. Peter stood regarding their delicate geometries a
+    moment longer and then reentered his room, not knowing precisely what to
+    do. He could hear Rose walking across the piazza to and from the dining-
+    room, and the clink of tableware. A few minutes later a knock came at
+    his door, and the old woman entered with a huge salver covered with
+    steaming dishes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The negress came into the room scowling, and seemed doubtful for a
+    moment just how to shut the door and still hold the tray with both
+    hands. She solved the problem by backing against the door tremendously.
+    Then she saw Peter. She straightened and stared at him with outraged
+    dignity.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, 'fo' Gawd! Is I bringin' dish-here breakfus' to a nigger?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I suppose it's mine," agreed Peter, amused.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But whuffo, whuffo, nigger, is it dat you ain't come to de kitchen an'
+    eat off'n de shelf? Is you sick?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter admitted fair bodily vigor.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Den whut de debbil is I got into!" cried Rose, angrily. "I ain't gwine
+    wuck at no sich place, ca'yin' breakfus' to a big beef uv a nigger,
+    stout as a mule. Say, nigger, wha-chu doin' in heah, anyway? Hoccum
+    dis?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter tried to explain that he was there to do a little writing for the
+    Captain.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, 'fo' Gawd, when niggers gits to writin' fuh white folks, ants'll
+    be jumpin' fuh bullfrogs&mdash;an havin' other niggers bring dey breakfusses.
+    You jes as much a nigger as I is, Peter Siner, de brightes' day you ever
+    seen!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter began a conciliatory phrase.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Old Rose banged the platter on the table and then threatened:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Dis is de las' time I fetches a moufful to you, Peter Siner, or any
+    other nigger. You ain't no black Jesus, even ef you is a woods calf."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter paused in drawing a chair to the table.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What did you say, Rose?" he asked sharply.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You heared whut I say."
+</p>
+<p>
+    A wave of anger went over Peter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, I did. You ought to be ashamed to speak ill of the dead."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The crone tossed her malicious head, a little abashed, perhaps, yet very
+    glad she had succeeded in hurting Peter. She turned and went out the
+    door, mumbling something which might have been apology or renewed
+    invectives.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter watched the old virago close the door and then sat down to his
+    breakfast. His anger presently died away, and he sat wondering what
+    could have happened to Rose Hobbett that had corroded her whole
+    existence. Did she enjoy her vituperation, her continual malice? He
+    tried to imagine how she felt.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The breakfast Rose had brought him was delicious: hot biscuits of
+    feathery lightness, three wide slices of ham, a bowl of scrambled eggs,
+    a pot of coffee, some preserved raspberries, and a tiny glass of whisky.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The plate which Captain Renfrew had set before his guest was a delicate
+    dawn pink ringed with a wreath of holly. It was old Worcester porcelain
+    of about the decade of 1760. The coffee-pot was really an old Whieldon
+    teapot in broad cauliflower design. Age and careless heating had given
+    the surface a fine reticulation. His cup and saucer, on the contrary,
+    were thick pieces of ware such as the cabin-boys toss about on
+    steamboats. The whole ceramic m&eacute;lange told of the fortuities of English
+    colonial and early American life, of the migration of families westward.
+    No doubt, once upon a time, that dawn-pink Worcester had married into a
+    Whieldon cauliflower family. A queer sort of genealogy might be traced
+    among Southern families through their mixtures of tableware.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As Peter mused over these implications of long ancestral lines, it
+    reminded him that he had none. Over his own past, over the lineage of
+    nearly every negro in the South, hung a curtain. Even the names of the
+    colored folk meant nothing, and gave no hint of their kin and clan. At
+    the end of the war between the States, Peter's people had selected names
+    for themselves, casually, as children pick up a pretty stone. They meant
+    nothing. It occurred to Peter for the first time, as he sat looking at
+    the chinaware, that he knew nothing about himself; whether his kinsmen
+    were valiant or recreant he did not know. Even his own father he knew
+    little about except that his mother had said his name was Peter, like
+    his own, and that he had gone down the river on a tie boat and was
+    drowned.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A faint sound attracted Peter's attention. He looked out at his open
+    window and saw old Rose making off the back way with something concealed
+    under her petticoat. Peter knew it was the unused ham and biscuits that
+    she had cooked. For once the old negress hurried along without railing
+    at the world. She moved with a silent, but, in a way, self-respecting,
+    flight. Peter could see by the tilt of her head and the set of her
+    shoulders that not only did her spoil gratify her enmity to mankind in
+    general and the Captain in particular, but she was well within her
+    rights in her acquisition. She disappeared around a syringa bush, and
+    was heard no more until she reappeared to cook the noon meal, as
+    vitriolic as ever.
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    When Peter entered the library, old Captain Renfrew greeted him with
+    morning wishes, thus sustaining the fiction that they had not seen each
+    other before, that morning.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old gentleman seemed pleased but somewhat excited over his new
+    secretary. He moved some of his books aimlessly from one table to
+    another, placed them in exact piles as if he were just about to plunge
+    into heroic labor, and could not give time to such details once he had
+    begun.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As he arranged his books just so, he cleared his throat.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now, Peter, we want to get down to this," he announced dynamically; "do
+    this thing, shove this work out!" He started with tottery briskness
+    around to his manuscript drawer, but veered off to the left to aline
+    some magazines. "System, Peter, system. Without system one may well be
+    hopeless of performing any great literary labor; but with system, the
+    constant piling up of brick on brick, stone on stone&mdash;it's the way Rome
+    was built, my boy."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter made a murmur supposed to acknowledge the correctness of this
+    view.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Eventually the old Captain drew out his drawer of manuscript, stood
+    fumbling with it uncertainly. Now and then he glanced at Peter, a
+    genuine secretary who stood ready to help him in his undertaking. The
+    old gentleman picked up some sheets of his manuscript, seemed about to
+    read them aloud, but after a moment shook his head, and said, "No, we'll
+    do that to-night," and restored them to their places. Finally he turned
+    to his helper.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now, Peter," he explained, "in doing this work, I always write at
+    night. It's quieter then,&mdash;less distraction. My mornings I spend
+    downtown in conversation with my friends. If you should need me, Peter,
+    you can walk down and find me in front of the livery-stable. I sit there
+    for a while each morning."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The gravity with which he gave this schedule of his personal habits
+    amused Peter, who bowed with a serious, "Very well, Captain."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And in the meantime," pursued the old man, looking vaguely about the
+    room, "you will do well to familiarize yourself with my library in order
+    that you may be properly qualified for your secretarial labors."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter agreed again.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And now if you will get my hat and coat, I will be off and let you go
+    to work," concluded the Captain, with an air of continued urgency.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter became thoroughly amused at such an outcome of the old gentleman's
+    headlong attack on his work,&mdash;a stroll down to the village to hold
+    conversation with friends. The mulatto walked unsmilingly to a little
+    closet where the Captain hung his things. He took down the old
+    gentleman's tall hat, a gray greatcoat worn shiny about the shoulders
+    and tail, and a finely carved walnut cane. Some reminiscence of the
+    manners of butlers which Peter had seen in theaters caused him to swing
+    the overcoat across his left arm and polish the thin nap of the old hat
+    with his right sleeve. He presented it to his employer with a certain
+    duplication of a butler's obsequiousness. He offered the overcoat to the
+    old gentleman's arms with the same air. Then he held up the collar of
+    the greatcoat with one hand and with the other reached under its skirts,
+    and drew down the Captain's long day coat with little jerks, as if he
+    were going through a ritual.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter grew more and more hilarious over his barber's manners. It was his
+    contribution to the old gentleman's literary labors, and he was doing it
+    beautifully, so he thought. He was just making some minute adjustments
+    of the collar when, to his amazement, Captain Renfrew turned on him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Damn it, sir!" he flared out. "What do you think you are? I didn't
+    engage you for a kowtowing valet in waiting, sir! I asked you, sir, to
+    come under my roof as an intellectual co-worker, as one gentleman asks
+    another, and here you are making these niggery motions! They are
+    disgusting! They are defiling! They are beneath the dignity of one
+    gentleman to another, sir! What makes it more degrading, I perceive by
+    your mannerism that you assume a specious servility, sir, as if you
+    would flatter me by it!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old lawyer's face was white. His angry old eyes jerked Peter out of
+    his slight mummery. The negro felt oddly like a grammar-school boy
+    caught making faces behind his master's back. It shocked him into
+    sincerer manners.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Captain," he said with a certain stiffness, "I apologize for my
+    mistake; but may I ask how you desire me to act?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Simply, naturally, sir," thundered the Captain, "as one alumnus of
+    Harvard to another! It is quite proper for a young man, sir, to assist
+    an old gentleman with his hat and coat, but without fripperies and
+    genuflections and absurdities!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old man's hauteur touched some spring of resentment in Peter. He
+    shook his head.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, Captain; our lack of sympathy goes deeper than manners. My position
+    here is anomalous. For instance, I can talk to you sitting, I can drink
+    with you standing, but I can't breakfast with you at all. I do that
+    <i>in camera</i>, like a disgraceful divorce proceeding. It's precisely
+    as I was treated coming down here South again; it's as I've been treated
+    ever since I've been back; it's&mdash;" He paused abruptly and swallowed down
+    the rancor that filled him. "No," he repeated in a different tone,
+    "there is no earthly excuse for me to remain here, Captain, or to let
+    you go on measuring out your indulgences to me. There is no way for us
+    to get together or to work together&mdash;not this far South. Let me thank
+    you for a night's entertainment and go."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter turned about, meaning to make an end of this queer adventure.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old Captain watched him, and his pallor increased. He lifted an
+    unsteady hand.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, no, Peter," he objected, "not so soon. This has been no trial, no
+    fair trial. The little&mdash;little&mdash;er&mdash;details of our domestic life here,
+    they will&mdash;er&mdash;arrange themselves, Peter. Gossip&mdash;talk, you know, we
+    must avoid that." The old lawyer stood staring with strange eyes at his
+    prot&eacute;g&eacute;. "I&mdash;I'm interested in you, Peter. My actions may seem&mdash;odd,
+    but&mdash;er&mdash;a negro boy going off and doing what you have done&mdash;
+    extraordinary. I&mdash;I have spoken to your mother, Caroline, about you
+    often. In fact, Peter, I&mdash;I made some little advances in order that you
+    might complete your studies. Now, now, don't thank me! It was purely
+    impersonal. You seemed bright. I have often thought we gentle people of
+    the South ought to do more to encourage our black folk&mdash;not&mdash;not as
+    social equals&mdash;" Here the old gentleman made a wry mouth as if he had
+    tasted salt.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Stay here and look over the library," he broke off abruptly. "We can
+    arrange some ground of&mdash;of common action, some&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    He settled the lapels of his great-coat with precision, addressed his
+    palm to the knob of his stick, and marched stiffly out of the library,
+    around the piazza, and along the dismantled walk to the front gate.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter stood utterly astonished at this strange information. Suddenly he
+    ran after the old lawyer, and rounded the turn of the piazza in time to
+    see him walk stiffly down the shaded street with tremulous dignity. The
+    old gentleman was much the same as usual, a little shakier, perhaps, his
+    tall hat a little more polished, his shiny gray overcoat set a little
+    more snugly at the collar.
+</p>
+<a name="2HCH13"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER X
+</h2>
+<p>
+    The village of Hooker's Bend amuses itself mainly with questionable
+    jests that range all the way from the slightly brackish to the
+    hopelessly obscene. Now, in using this type of anecdote, the Hooker's-
+    Benders must not be thought to design an attack upon the decencies of
+    life; on the contrary, they are relying on the fact that their hearers
+    have, in the depths of their beings, a profound reverence for the object
+    of their sallies. And so, by taking advantage of the moral shock they
+    produce and linking it to the idea of an absurdity, they convert the
+    whole psychical reaction into an explosion of humor. Thus the ring of
+    raconteurs telling blackguardly stories around the stoves in Hooker's
+    Bend stores, are, in reality, exercising one another in the more
+    delicate sentiments of life, and may very well be classed as a round
+    table of Sir Galahads, <i>sans peur et sans reproche</i>.
+</p>
+<p>
+    However, the best men weary in well doing, and for the last few days
+    Hooker's Bend had switched from its intellectual staple of conversation
+    to consider the comedy of Tump Pack's undoing. The incident held
+    undeniably comic elements. For Tump to start out carrying a forty-four,
+    meaning to blow a rival out of his path, and to wind up hard at work,
+    picking cotton at nothing a day for a man whose offer of three dollars a
+    day he had just refused, certainly held the makings of a farce.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the heels of this came the news that Peter Siner meant to take
+    advantage of Tump's arrest and marry Cissie Dildine. Old Parson Ranson
+    was responsible for the spread of this last rumor. He had fumbled badly
+    in his effort to hold Peter's secret. Not once, but many times, always
+    guarded by a pledge of secrecy, had he revealed the approaching wedding.
+    When pressed for a date, the old negro said he was "not at lib'ty to
+    tell."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Up to this point white criticism viewed the stage-setting of the black
+    comedy with the impersonal interest of a box party. Some of the round
+    table said they believed there would be a dead coon or so before the
+    scrape was over.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dawson Bobbs, the ponderous constable, went to the trouble to telephone
+    Mr. Cicero Throgmartin, for whom Tump was working, cautioning
+    Throgmartin to make sure that Tump Pack was in the sleeping-shack every
+    night, as he might get wind of the wedding and take a notion to bolt and
+    stop it. "You know, you can't tell what a fool nigger'll do," finished
+    Bobbs.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Throgmartin was mildly amused, promised the necessary precautions, and
+    said:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It looks like Peter has put one over on Tump, and maybe a college
+    education does help a nigger some, after all."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The constable thought it was just luck.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, I dunno," said Throgmartin, who was a philosopher, and inclined
+    to view every matter from various angles. "Peter may of worked this out
+    somehow."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Have you heard what Henry Hooker done to Siner in the land deal?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Throgmartin said he had.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, I don't mean <i>that</i>. I mean Henry's last wrinkle in
+    garnisheeing old Ca'line's estate in his bank for the rest of the
+    purchase money on the Dilihay place."
+</p>
+<p>
+    There was a pause.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You don't mean it!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Damn 'f I don't."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The constable's sentence shook with suppressed mirth, and the next
+    moment roars of laughter came over the telephone wire.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Say, ain't he the bird!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He's the original early bird. I'd like to get a snap-shot of the worm
+    that gets away from him."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Both men laughed heartily again.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But, say," objected Throgmartin, who was something of a lawyer
+    himself,&mdash;as, indeed, all Southern men are,&mdash;"I thought the Sons and
+    Daughters of Benevolence owed Hooker, not Peter Siner, nor Ca'line's
+    estate."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, it <i>is</i> the Sons and Daughters, but Ca'line was one of 'em,
+    and they ain't no limited li'bility 'sociation. Henry can jump on
+    anything any of 'em's got. Henry got the Persimmon to bring him a copy
+    of their by-laws."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, I swear! Say, if Henry wasn't kind of held back by his religion,
+    he'd use a gun, wouldn't he?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I dunno. I can say this for Henry's religion: 'It's jest like Henry's
+    wife,&mdash;it's the dearest thing to his heart; he'd give his life for it,
+    but it don't do nobody a damn bit of good except jest Henry.'"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The constable's little eyes twinkled as he heard Throgmartin roaring
+    with laughter and sputtering appreciative oaths.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At that moment a ringing of the bell jarred the ears of both
+    telephonists. A voice asked for Dr. Jallup. It was an ill time to
+    interrupt two gentlemen. The flair of a jest is lost in a pause. The
+    officer stated sharply that he was the constable of Wayne County and was
+    talking business about the county's prisoners. His tone was so charged
+    with consequence that the voice that wanted a doctor apologized hastily
+    and ceased.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Came a pause in which neither man found anything to say. Laughter is
+    like that,&mdash;a gay bubble that a touch will destroy. Presently Bobbs
+    continued, gravely enough:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Talking about Siner, he's stayin' up at old man Renfrew's now."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'At so?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Old Rose Hobbett swears he's doin' some sort of writin' up there and
+    livin' in one of the old man's best rooms."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Hell he is!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yeah?" the constable's voice questioned Throgmartin's opinion about
+    such heresy and expressed his own.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "D' recken it's so? Old Rose is such a thief and a liar."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Nope," declared the constable, "the old nigger never would of made up a
+    lie like that,&mdash;never would of thought of it. Old Cap'n Renfrew's
+    gettin' childish; this nigger's takin' advantage of it. Down at the
+    liver'-stable the boys were talkin' about Siner goin' to git married,
+    an' dern if old man Renfrew didn't git cut up about it!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well," opined Throgmartin, charitably, "the old man livin' there all by
+    himself&mdash;I reckon even a nigger is some comp'ny. They're funny damn
+    things, niggers is; never know a care nor trouble. Lord! I wish I was as
+    care-free as they are!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Don't you, though!" agreed the constable, with the weight of the white
+    man's burden on his shoulders. For this is a part of the Southern
+    credo,&mdash;that all negroes are gay, care-free, and happy, and that if one
+    could only be like the negroes, gay, care-free, and happy&mdash;Ah, if one
+    could only be like the negroes!
+</p>
+<p>
+    None of this gossip reached Peter directly, but a sort of back-wash did
+    catch him keenly through young Sam Arkwright and serve as a conundrum
+    for several days.
+</p>
+<p>
+    One morning Peter was bringing an armful of groceries up the street to
+    the old manor, and he met the boy coming in the opposite direction. The
+    negro's mind was centered on a peculiar problem he had found in the
+    Renfrew library, so, according to a habit he had acquired in Boston, he
+    took the right-hand side of the pavement, which chanced to be the inner
+    side. This violated a Hooker's-Bend convention, which decrees that when
+    a white and a black meet on the sidewalk, the black man invariably shall
+    take the outer side.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For this <i>faux pas</i> the gangling youth stopped Peter, fell to
+    abusing and cursing him for his impudence, his egotism, his attempt at
+    social equality,&mdash;all of which charges, no doubt, were echoes from the
+    round table. Such wrath over such an offense was unusual. Ordinarily, a
+    white villager would have thought several uncomplimentary things about
+    Peter, but would have said nothing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter stopped with a shock of surprise, then listened to the whole
+    diatribe with a rising sense of irritation and irony. Finally, without a
+    word, he corrected his mistake by retracing his steps and passing Sam
+    again, this time on the outside.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter walked on up the street, outwardly calm, but his ears burned, and
+    the queer indignity stuck in his mind. As he went along he invented all
+    sorts of ironical remarks he might have made to Arkwright, which would
+    have been unwise; then he thought of sober reasoning he could have used,
+    which would perhaps have been just as ill-advised. Still later he
+    wondered why Arkwright had fallen into such a rage over such a trifle.
+    Peter felt sure there was some contributing rancor in the youth's mind.
+    Perhaps he had received a scolding at home or a whipping at school, or
+    perhaps he was in the midst of one of those queer attacks of megalomania
+    from which adolescents are chronic sufferers. Peter fancied this and
+    that, but he never came within hail of the actual reason.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When the brown man reached the old manor, the quietude of the library,
+    with its blackened mahogany table, its faded green Axminster, the
+    meridional globe with its dusty twinkle, banished the incident from his
+    mind. He returned to his work of card-indexing the Captain's books. He
+    took half a dozen at a time from the shelves, dusted them on the piazza,
+    then carried them to the embrasure of the window, which offered a
+    pleasant light for reading and for writing the cards.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He went through volume after volume,&mdash;speeches by Clay, Calhoun, Yancy,
+    Prentiss, Breckenridge; an old life of General Taylor, Foxe's "Book of
+    Martyrs"; a collection of the old middle-English dramatists, such as
+    Lillo, Garrick, Arthur Murphy, Charles Macklin, George Colman, Charles
+    Coffey, men whose plays have long since declined from the boards and
+    disappeared from the reading-table.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Captain's collection of books was strongly colored by a religious
+    cast,&mdash;John Wesley's sermons, Charles Wesley's hymns; a treatise
+    presenting a biblical proof that negroes have no souls; a little book
+    called "Flowers Gathered," which purported to be a compilation of the
+    sayings of ultra-pious children, all of whom died young; an old book
+    called "Elements of Criticism," by Henry Home of Kames; another tome
+    entitled "Studies of Nature," by St. Pierre. This last was a long
+    argument for the miraculous creation of the world as set forth in
+    Genesis. The proof offered was a r&eacute;sum&eacute; of the vegetable, animal, and
+    mineral kingdoms, showing their perfect fitness for man's use, and the
+    immediate induction was that they were designed for man's use. Still
+    another work calculated the exact age of the earth by the na&iuml;ve method
+    of counting the generations from Adam to Christ, to the total adding
+    eighteen hundred and eighty-five years (for the book was written in
+    1885), and the original six days it required the Lord to build the
+    earth. By referring to Genesis and finding out precisely what the
+    Creator did on the morning of the first day, the writer contrived to
+    bring his calculation of the age of the earth and everything in the
+    world to a precision of six hours, give or take,&mdash;a somewhat closer
+    schedule than that made by the Tennessee river boats coming up from St.
+    Louis.
+</p>
+<p>
+    These and similar volumes formed the scientific section of Captain
+    Renfrew's library, and it was this paucity of the natural sciences that
+    formed the problem which Peter tried to solve. All scientific additions
+    came to an abrupt stop about the decade of 1880-90. That was the date
+    when Charles Darwin's great fructifying theory, enunciated in 1859,
+    began to seep into the South.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the Captain's library the only notice of evolution was a book called
+    "Darwinism Dethroned." As for the elaborations of the Darwinian
+    hypothesis by Spencer, Fiske, DeVries, Weismann, Haeckel, Kidd, Bergson,
+    and every subsequent philosophic or biologic writer, all these men might
+    never have written a line so far as Captain Renfrew's library was
+    informed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now, why such extraordinary occlusions? Why should Captain Renfrew deny
+    himself the very commonplaces of thought, theories familiarly held by
+    the rest of America, and, indeed, by all the rest of the civilized
+    world?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Musing by the window, Peter succeeded in stating his problem more
+    broadly: Why was Captain Renfrew an intellectual reactionist? The old
+    gentleman was the reverse of stupid. Why should he confine his selection
+    of books to a few old oddities that had lost their battle against a
+    theory which had captured the intellectual world fifty years before?
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nor was it Captain Renfrew alone. Now and then Peter saw editorials
+    appearing in leading Southern journals, seriously attacking the
+    evolutionary hypothesis. Ministers in respectable churches still
+    fulminated against it. Peter knew that the whole South still clings, in
+    a way, to the miraculous and special creation of the earth as described
+    in Genesis. It clings with an intransigentism and bitterness far
+    exceeding other part of America. Why? To Peter the problem appeared
+    insoluble.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He sat by the window lost in his reverie. Just outside the ledge half a
+    dozen English sparrows abused one another with chirps that came faintly
+    through the small diamond panes. Their quick movements held Peter's
+    eyes, and their endless quarreling presently recalled his episode with
+    young Arkwright. It occurred to him, casually, that when Arkwright grew
+    up he would subscribe to every reactionary doctrine set forth in the
+    library Peter was indexing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    With that thought came a sort of mental flare, as if he were about to
+    find the answer to the whole question through the concrete attack made
+    on him by Sam.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It is an extraordinary feeling,&mdash;the sudden, joyful dawn of a new idea.
+    Peter sat up sharply and leaned forward with a sense of being right on
+    the fringe of a new and a great perception. Young Arkwright, the old
+    Captain, the whole South, were unfolding themselves in a vast answer,
+    when a movement outside the window caught the negro's introspective
+    eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A girl was passing; a girl in a yellow dress was passing the Renfrew
+    gate. Even then Peter would not have wavered in his synthesis had not
+    the girl paused slightly and given a swift side glance at the old manor.
+    Then the man in the window recognized Cissie Dildine.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A slight shock traveled through Siner's body at the sight of Cissie's
+    colorless face and darkened eyes. He stood up abruptly, with a feeling
+    that he had some urgent thing to say to the young woman. His sharp
+    movement toppled over the big globe.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The crash caused the girl to stop and look. For a moment they stood
+    thus, the girl in the chill street, the man in the pleasant window,
+    looking at each other. Next moment Cissie hurried on up the village
+    street toward the Arkwright house. No doubt she was on her way to cook
+    the noon meal.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter remained standing at the window, with a heavily beating heart. He
+    watched her until she vanished behind a wing of the shrubbery in the
+    Renfrew yard.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When she had gone, he looked at his books and cards, sat down, and tried
+    to resume his indexing. But his mind played away from it like a restive
+    horse. It had been two weeks since he last saw Cissie. Two weeks.... His
+    nerves vibrated like the strings of a pianoforte. He had scarcely
+    thought of her during the fortnight; but now, having seen her, he found
+    himself powerless to go on with his work. He pottered a while longer
+    among the books and cards, but they were meaningless. They appeared an
+    utter futility. Why index a lot of nonsense? Somehow this recalled his
+    flare, his adumbration of some great idea connected with young Arkwright
+    and the old Captain, and the South.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He put his trembling nerves to work, trying to recapture his line of
+    thought. He sat for ten minutes, following this mental train, then that,
+    losing one, groping for another. His thoughts were jumpy. They played
+    about Arkwright, the Captain, Cissie, his mother's death, Tump Pack in
+    prison, the quarrel between the Persimmon and Jim Pink Staggs. The whole
+    of Niggertown came rushing down upon him, seizing him in its passion and
+    dustiness and greasiness, putting to flight all his cultivated white-man
+    ideas.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After half an hour's searching he gave it up. Before he left the room he
+    stooped, and tried to set up again the globe that the passing of the
+    girl had caused him to throw down; but its pivot was out of plumb, and
+    he had to lean it against the window-seat.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The sight of Captain Renfrew coming in at the gate sent Peter to his
+    room. The hour was near twelve, and it had become a little point of
+    household etiquette for the mulatto and the white man not to be together
+    when old Rose jangled the triangle. By this means they forestalled the
+    mute discourtesy of the old Captain's walking away from his secretary to
+    eat. The subject of their separate meals had never been mentioned since
+    their first acrimonious morning. The matter had dropped into the
+    abeyance of custom, just as the old gentleman had predicted.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter had left open his jalousies, but his windows were closed, and now
+    as he entered he found his apartment flooded with sunshine and filled
+    with that equable warmth that comes of straining sunbeams through glass.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He prepared for dinner with his mind still hovering about Cissie. He
+    removed a book and a lamp from the lion-footed table, and drew up an old
+    chair with which the Captain had furnished his room. It was a delicate
+    old Heppelwhite of rosewood. It had lost a finial from one of its back
+    standards, and a round was gone from the left side. Peter never moved
+    the chair that vague plans sometime to repair it did not occur to him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When he had cleared his table and placed his chair beside it, he
+    wandered over to his tall west window and stood looking up the street
+    through the brilliant sunshine, toward the Arkwright home. No one was in
+    sight. In Hooker's Bend every one dines precisely at twelve, and at that
+    hour the streets are empty. It would be some time before Cissie came
+    back down the street on her way to Niggertown. She first would have to
+    wash and put away the Arkwright dishes. It would be somewhere about one
+    o'clock. Nevertheless, he kept staring out through the radiance of the
+    autumn sunlight with an irrational feeling that she might appear at any
+    moment. He was afraid she would slip past and he not see her at all. The
+    thought disturbed him somewhat. It kept him sufficiently on the alert to
+    stand tapping the balls of his fingers against the glass and looking
+    steadily toward the Arkwright house.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Presently the watcher perceived that a myriad spider-webs filled the
+    sunshine with a delicate dancing glister. It was the month of voyaging
+    spiders. Invisible to Peter, the tiny spinners climbed to the tip-most
+    twigs of the dead weeds, listed their abdomens, and lassoed the wind
+    with gossamer lariats; then they let go and sailed away to a hazard of
+    new fortunes. The air was full of the tiny adventurers. As he stared up
+    the street, Peter caught the glint of these invisible airships whisking
+    away to whatever chance might hold for them. There was something epic in
+    it. It recalled to the mulatto's mind some of Fabre's lovely
+    descriptions. It reminded him of two or three books on entomology which
+    he had left in his mother's cabin. He felt he ought to go after them
+    while the spiders were migrating. He suddenly made up his mind he would
+    go at once, as soon as he had had dinner; somewhere about one o'clock.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He looked again at the Arkwright house. The thought of walking down the
+    street with Cissie, to get his books, quickened his heart.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He was still at the window when his door opened and old Rose entered
+    with his dinner. She growled under her breath all the way from the door
+    to the table on which she placed the tray. Only a single phrase detached
+    itself and stood out clearly amid her mutterings, "Hope it chokes you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter arranged his chair and table with reference to the window, so he
+    could look up the street while he was eating his dinner.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The ill-wishing Rose had again furnished a gourmet's meal, but Peter's
+    preoccupation prevented its careful and appreciative gustation. An
+    irrational feeling of the octoroon's imminence spurred him to fast
+    eating. He had hardly begun his soup before he found himself drinking
+    swiftly, looking up the street over his spoon, as if he meant to rush
+    out and swing aboard a passing train.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Siner checked his precipitation, annoyed at himself. He began again,
+    deliberately, with an attempt to keep his mind on the savor of his food.
+    He even thought of abandoning his little design of going for the books;
+    or he would go at a different hour, or to-morrow, or not at all. He told
+    himself he would far better allow Cissie Dildine to pass and repass
+    unspoken to, instead of trying to arrange an accidental meeting. But the
+    brown man's nerves wouldn't hear to it. That automatic portion of his
+    brain and spinal column which, physiologists assert, performs three
+    fourths of a man's actions and conditions nine tenths of his volitions&mdash;
+    that part of Peter wouldn't consider it. It began to get jumpy and
+    scatter havoc in Peter's thoughts at the mere suggestion of not seeing
+    Cissie. Imperceptibly this radical left wing of his emotions speeded up
+    his meal, again. He caught himself, stopped his knife and fork in the
+    act of rending apart a broiled chicken.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Confound it! I'll start when she comes in sight, no matter whether I've
+    finished this meal or not," he promised himself.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And suddenly he felt unhurried, in the midst of a large leisure, with a
+    savory broiled chicken dinner before him,&mdash;not exactly before him,
+    either; most of it had been stuffed away. Only the fag-end remained on
+    his plate. A perfectly good meal had been ruined by an ill-timed
+    resistance to temptation.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The glint of a yellow dress far up the street had just prompted him to
+    swift action when the door opened and old Rose put her head in to say
+    that Captain Renfrew wanted to see Peter in the library.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The brown man came to a shocked standstill.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What! Right now?" he asked.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yeah, right now," carped Rose. "Ever'thing he wants, he wants right
+    now. He's been res'less as a cat in a bulldog's den ever sence he come
+    home fuh dinner. Dunno whut's come into he ole bones, runnin' th'ugh his
+    dinner lak a razo'-back." She withdrew in a continued mumble of censure.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter cast a glance up the street, timed Cissie's arrival at the front
+    gate, picked up his hat, and walked briskly to the library in the hope
+    of finishing any business the Captain might have, in time to encounter
+    the octoroon. He even began making some little conversational plans with
+    which he could meet Cissie in a simple, unstudied manner. He recalled
+    with a certain satisfaction that he had not said a word of condemnation
+    the night of Cissie's confession. He would make a point of that, and was
+    prepared to argue that, since he had said nothing, he meant nothing. In
+    fact he was prepared to throw away the truth completely and enter the
+    conversation as an out-and-out opportunist, alleging whatever appeared
+    to fit the occasion, as all men talk to all women.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old Captain was just getting into his chair as Peter entered. He
+    paused in the midst of lowering himself by the chair-arms and got erect
+    again. He began speaking a little uncertainly:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ah&mdash;by the way, Peter&mdash;I sent for you&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, sir." Peter looked out at the window.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old gentleman scrutinized Peter a moment; then his faded eyes
+    wandered about the library.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Still working at the books, cross-indexing them&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, sir." Peter could divine by the crinkle of his nerves the very
+    loci of the girl as she passed down the thoroughfare.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Very good," said the old lawyer, absently. He was obviously preoccupied
+    with some other topic. "Very good," he repeated with racking
+    deliberation; "quite good. How did that globe get bent?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter, looking at it, did not remember either knocking it over or
+    setting it up.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I don't know," he said rapidly. "I hadn't noticed it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Old Rose did it," meditated the Captain aloud, "but it's no use to
+    accuse her of it; she'd deny it. And yet, on the other hand, Peter,
+    she'll be nervous until I do accuse her of it. She'll be dropping
+    things, breaking up my china. I dare say I'd best accuse her at once,
+    storm at her some to quiet her nerves, and get it over."
+</p>
+<p>
+    This monologue spurred Peter's impatience into an agony.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I believe you were wanting me, Captain?" he suggested, with a certain
+    urge for action.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Captain's little pleasantry faded. He looked at Peter and became
+    uncomfortable again.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, yes, Peter. Downtown I heard&mdash;well, a rumor connected with you&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Such an extraordinary turn caught the attention of even the fidgety
+    Peter. He looked at his employer and wondered blankly what he had heard.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I don't want to intrude on your private affairs, Peter, not at all&mdash;
+    not&mdash;not in the least&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No-o-o," agreed Peter, completely at a loss.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old gentleman rubbed his thin hands together, lifted his eyebrows up
+    and down nervously. "Are&mdash;are you about to&mdash;to leave me, Peter?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter was greatly surprised at the slightness and simplicity of this
+    question and at the evidence of emotion it carried.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, no," he cried; "not at all! Who told you I was? It is a deep
+    gratification to me&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "To be exact," proceeded the old man, with a vague fear still in his
+    eyes, "I heard you were going to marry."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Marry!" This flaw took Peter's sails even more unexpectedly than the
+    other. "Captain, who in the world&mdash;who could have told&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Are you?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You aren't?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Indeed, no!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I heard you were going to marry a negress here in town called Cissie
+    Dildine." A question was audible in the silence that followed this
+    statement. The obscure emotion that charged all the old man's queries
+    affected Peter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I am not, Captain," he declared earnestly; "that's settled."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh&mdash;you say it's settled," picked up the old lawyer, delicately.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then you had thought of it?" Immediately, however, he corrected this
+    breach of courtesy into which his old legal habit of cross-questioning
+    had led him. "Well, at any rate," he said in quite another voice, "that
+    eases my mind, Peter. It eases my mind. It was not only, Peter, the
+    thought of losing you, but this girl you were thinking of marrying&mdash;let
+    me warn you, Peter&mdash;she's a negress."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The mulatto stared at the strange objection.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "A negress!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old man paused and made that queer movement with his wrinkled lips
+    as if he tasted some salty flavor.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I&mdash;I don't mean exactly a&mdash;a negress," stammered the old gentleman; "I
+    mean she's not a&mdash;a good girl, Peter; she's a&mdash;a thief, in fact&mdash;she's a
+    thief&mdash;a thief, Peter. I couldn't endure for you to marry a thief,
+    Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    It seemed to Peter Siner that some horrible compulsion kept the old
+    Captain repeating over and over the fact that Cissie Dildine was a
+    thief, a thief, a thief. The word cut the very viscera in the brown man.
+    At last, when it seemed the old gentleman would never cease, Peter
+    lifted a hand.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, yes," he gasped, with a sickly face, "I&mdash;I've heard that before."
+</p>
+<p>
+    He drew a shaken breath and moistened his lips. The two stood looking at
+    each other, each profoundly at a loss as to what the other meant. Old
+    Captain Renfrew collected himself first.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That is all, Peter." He tried to lighten his tones. "I think I'll get
+    to work. Let me see, where do I keep my manuscript?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter pointed mechanically at a drawer as he walked out at the library
+    door. Once outside, he ran to the front piazza, then to the front gate,
+    and with a racing heart stood looking up and down the sleepy
+    thoroughfare. The street was quite empty.
+</p>
+<a name="2HCH14"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XI
+</h2>
+<p>
+    Old Captain Renfrew was a trustful, credulous soul, as, indeed, most
+    gentleman who lead a bachelor's life are. Such men lack that moral
+    hardening and whetting which is obtained only amid the vicissitudes of a
+    home; they are not actively and continuously engaged in the employment
+    and detection of chicane; want of intimate association with a woman and
+    some children begets in them a soft and simple way of believing what is
+    said to them. And their faith, easily raised, is just as easily
+    shattered. Their judgment lacks training.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter Siner's simple assertion to the old Captain that he was not going
+    to marry Cissie Dildine completely allayed the old gentleman's
+    uneasiness. Even the further information that Peter had had such a
+    marriage under advisement, but had rejected it, did not put him on his
+    guard.
+</p>
+<p>
+    From long non-intimacy with any human creature, the old legislator had
+    forgotten that human life is one long succession of doing the things one
+    is not going to do; he had forgotten, if he ever knew, that the human
+    brain is primarily not a master, but a servant; its function is not to
+    direct, but to devise schemes and apologies to gratify impulses. It is
+    the ways and means committee to the great legislature of the body.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For several days after his fear that Peter Siner would marry Cissie
+    Dildine old Captain Renfrew was as felicitous as a lover newly
+    reconciled to his mistress. He ambled between the manor and the livery-
+    stable with an abiding sense of well-being. When he approached his home
+    in the radiance of high noon and saw the roof of the old mansion lying a
+    bluish gray in the shadows of the trees, it filled his heart with joy to
+    feel that it was not an old and empty house that awaited his coming, but
+    that in it worked a busy youth who would be glad to see him enter the
+    gate.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The fear of some unattended and undignified death which had beset the
+    old gentleman during the last eight or ten years of his life vanished
+    under Peter's presence. When he thought of it at all now, he always
+    previsioned himself being lifted in Peter's athletic arms and laid
+    properly on his big four-poster.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At times, when Peter sat working over the books in the library, the
+    Captain felt a prodigious urge to lay a hand on the young man's broad
+    and capable shoulder. But he never did. Again, the old lawyer would sit
+    for minutes at a time watching his secretary's regular features as the
+    brown man pursued his work with a trained intentness. The old gentleman
+    derived a deep pleasure from such long scrutinies. It pleased him to
+    imagine that, when he was young, he had possessed the same vigor, the
+    same masculinity, the same capacity for persistent labor. Indeed, all
+    old gentlemen are prone to choose the most personable and virile young
+    man they can find for themselves to have been like.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The two men had little to say to each other. Their thoughts beat to such
+    different tempos that any attempt at continued speech discovered unequal
+    measures. As a matter of fact, in all comfortable human conversation,
+    words are used as mere buoys dropped here and there to mark well-known
+    channels of thought and feeling. Similarity of mental topography is
+    necessary to mutual understanding. Between any two generations the
+    landscape is so changed as to be unrecognizable. Our fathers are
+    monarchists; our sons, bolsheviki.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Old Rose Hobbett was more of an age with the Captain, and these two
+    talked very comfortably as the old virago came and went with food at
+    meal-time. For instance, the Captain always asked his servant if she had
+    fed his cat, and old Rose invariably would sulk and poke out her lips
+    and put off answering to the last possible moment of insolence, then
+    would grumble out that she was jes 'bout to feed the varmint, an' 't wuz
+    funny nobody couldn't give a hard-wuckin' colored woman breathin'-space
+    to turn roun' in.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This reply was satisfactory to the Captain, because he knew what it
+    meant,&mdash;that Rose had half forgotten the cat, and had meant wholly to
+    forget it, but since she had been snapped up, so to speak, in the very
+    act of forgetting, she would dole it out a piece or two of the meat that
+    she had meant to abscond with as soon as the dishes were done.
+</p>
+<p>
+    While Rose was fulminating, the old gentleman recalled his bent globe
+    and decided the moment had come for a lecture on that point. It always
+    vaguely embarrassed the Captain to correct Rose, and this increased his
+    dignity. Now he cleared his throat in a certain way that brought the old
+    negress to attention, so well they knew each other.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "By the way, Rose, in the future I must request you to use extraordinary
+    precautions in cleansing and dusting articles of my household furniture,
+    or, in case of damage, I shall be forced to withhold an indemnification
+    out of your pay."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Eight or ten years ago, when the Captain first repeated this formula to
+    his servant, the roll and swing of his rhetoric, and the last word,
+    "pay," had built up lively hopes in Rose that the old gentleman was
+    announcing an increase in her regular wage of a dollar a week.
+    Experience, however, had long since corrected this faulty
+    interpretation.
+</p>
+<p>
+    She came to a stand in the doorway, with her kinky gray head swung
+    around, half puzzled, wholly rebellious.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Whut is I bruk now?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "My globe."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old woman turned about with more than usual innocence.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, I ain't tech yo' globe!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I foresaw that," agreed the Captain, with patient irony, "but in the
+    future don't touch it more carefully. You bent its pivot the last time
+    you refrained from handling it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But I tell you I ain't tech yo' globe!" cried the negress, with the
+    anger of an illiterate person who feels, but cannot understand, the
+    satire leveled at her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I agree with you," said the Captain, glad the affair was over.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This verbal ducking into the cellar out of the path of her storm stirred
+    up a tempest.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But I tell you I ain't bruk it!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That's what I said."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yeah, yeah, yeah," she flared; "you says I ain't, but when you says I
+    ain't, you means I is, an' when you says I is, you means I ain't. Dat's
+    de sort o' flapjack I's wuckin' fur!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The woman flirted out of the dining-room, and the old gentleman drew
+    another long breath, glad it was over. He really had little reason to
+    quarrel about the globe, bent or unbent; he never used it. It sat in his
+    study year in and year out, its dusty twinkle brightened at long
+    intervals by old Rose's spiteful rag.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Captain ate on placidly. There had been a time when he was dubious
+    about such scenes with Rose. Once he felt it beneath his dignity as a
+    Southern gentleman to allow any negro to speak to him disrespectfully.
+    He used to feel that he should discharge her instantly and during the
+    first years of their entente had done so a number of times. But he could
+    get no one else who suited him so well; her biscuits, her corn-light-
+    bread, her lye-hominy, which only the old darkies know how to make. And,
+    to tell the truth, he missed the old creature herself, her understanding
+    of him and his ideas, her contemporaneity; and no one else would work
+    for a dollar a week.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Presently in the course of his eating the old gentleman required another
+    biscuit, and he wanted a hot one. Three mildly heated disks lay on a
+    plate before him, but they had been out of the oven for five minutes and
+    had been reduced to an unappetizing tepidity.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A little hand-bell sat beside the Captain's plate whose special use was
+    to summon hot biscuits. Now, the old lawyer looked at its worn handle
+    speculatively. He was not at all sure Rose would answer the bell. She
+    would say she hadn't heard it. He felt faintly disgruntled at not
+    foreseeing this exigency and buttering two biscuits while they were hot,
+    or even three.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He considered momentarily a project of going after a hot biscuit for
+    himself, but eventually put it by. South of the Mason-Dixon Line, self-
+    help is half-scandal. At last, quite dubiously, he did pick up the bell
+    and gave it a gentle ring, so if old Rose chose not to hear it, she
+    probably wouldn't: thus he could believe her and not lose his temper and
+    so widen an already uncomfortable breach.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To the Captain's surprise, the old creature not only brought the
+    biscuits, but she did it promptly. No sooner had she served them,
+    however, than the Captain saw she really had returned with a new line of
+    defense.
+</p>
+<p>
+    She mumbled it out as usual, so that her employer was forced to guess at
+    a number of words: "Dat nigger, Peter, mus' 'a' busted yo' gl&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, he didn't."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Mus' uv."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, he didn't. I asked him, and he said he didn't."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old harridan stared, and her speech suddenly became clear-cut:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, 'fo' Gawd, I says I didn't, too!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    At this point the Captain made an unintelligible sound and spread the
+    butter on his hot biscuit.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He's jes a nigger, lak I is," stated the cook, warmly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Captain buttered a second hot biscuit.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We's jes two niggers."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Captain hoped she would presently sputter herself out.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now look heah," cried the crone, growing angrier and angrier as the
+    reaches of the insult spread itself before her, "is you gwine to put one
+    o' us niggers befo' de udder? Ca'se ef you is, I mus' say, it's Kady-
+    lock-a-do' wid me."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Captain looked up satirically.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What do you mean by Katie-lock-the-door with you?" he asked, though he
+    had an uneasy feeling that he knew.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You know whut I means. I means I 's gwine to leab dis place."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now look here, Rose," protested the lawyer, with dignity, "Peter Siner
+    occupies almost a fiduciary relation to me."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old negress stared with a slack jaw. "A relation o' yo's!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The lawyer hesitated some seconds, looking at the hag. His high-bred old
+    face was quite inscrutable, but presently he said in a serious voice:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Peter occupies a position of trust with me, Rose."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yeah," mumbled Rose; "I see you trus' him."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "One day he is going to do me a service, a very great service, Rose."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The hag continued looking at him with a stubborn expression.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You know better than any one else, Rose, my dread of some&mdash;some
+    unmannerly death&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old woman made a sound that might have meant anything.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And Peter has promised to stay with me until&mdash;until the end."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old negress considered this solemn speech, and then grunted out:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Which en'?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Which end?" The Captain was irritated.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yeah; yo' en' or Peter's en'?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "By every law of probability, Peter will outlive me."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yeah, but Peter 'll come to a en' wid you when he ma'ies dat stuck-up
+    yellow fly-by-night, Cissie Dildine."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He's not going to marry her," said the Captain, comfortably.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Huh!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Peter told me he didn't intend to marry Cissie Dildine."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Shu! Then whut fur dey go roun' peepin' at each other lak a couple o'
+    niggers roun' a haystack?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old lawyer was annoyed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Peeping where?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, right in front o' dis house, dat's wha; ever' day when dat hussy
+    passes up to de Arkwrights', wha she wucks. She pokes along an' walls
+    her eyes roun' at dis house lak a calf wid de splivins."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That going on now?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ever' day."
+</p>
+<p>
+    A deep uneasiness went through the old man. He moistened his lips.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But Peter said&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Good Gawd! Mars' Renfrew, whut diff'ence do it make whut Peter say?
+    Ain't you foun' out yit when a he-nigger an' a she-nigger gits to
+    peepin' at each udder, whut dey says don't lib in de same neighbo'hood
+    wid whut dey does?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    This was delivered with such energy that it completely undermined the
+    Captain's faith in Peter, and the fact angered the old gentleman.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "That'll do, Rose; that'll do. That's all I need of you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    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.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The verjuice which old Rose had sprinkled over Peter and Cissie by
+    calling them "he-nigger" and "she-nigger" 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.
+</p>
+<p>
+    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.
+</p>
+<a name="2HCH15"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XII
+</h2>
+<p>
+    The semi-daily passings 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.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After watching for two or three days, Peter worked out a sort of time-
+    table for Cissie. She passed 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 passed back toward Niggertown, 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.
+</p>
+<p>
+    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 passed she kept Peter watching the clock at
+    nervous intervals, wondering if, after all, she had gone by unobserved.
+    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
+    entity, self-sufficient, individual, bearing no relation to any other
+    words except that of mere proximity,&mdash;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.
+</p>
+<p>
+    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&mdash;" 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 passing 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,&mdash;while his heart hammered, and the
+    lines of print under his eyes blurred into gray streaks across the page.
+</p>
+<p>
+    One afternoon Peter saw Cissie pass 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.
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    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.
+</p>
+<p>
+    By a little observation he identified Cissie Dildine and what he saw did
+    not re&euml;stablish 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 passionate 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.
+</p>
+<p>
+    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.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Just before Cissie passed 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.
+</p>
+<p>
+    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.
+</p>
+<p>
+    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.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But old Captain Renfrew was far from appreciating any such bravura in
+    scarlet and gold. At first he put it down to mere niggerish taste, and
+    his dislike for the girl edged his stricture; then, on second thought,
+    the oddness of sumac for a nosegay caught his attention. Nobody used
+    sumac for a buttonhole. 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?
+</p>
+<p>
+    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.
+</p>
+<p>
+    All his life, Captain Renfrew's brain had been deliberate. He moved
+    mentally, as he did physically, with dignity. To tell the truth, the
+    Captain's thoughts had a way of absolutely stopping now and then, and
+    for a space he would view the world as a simple collection of colored
+    surfaces without depth or meaning. During these intervals, by a sort of
+    irony of the gods the old gentleman's face wore a look of philosophic
+    concentration, so that his mental hiatuses had given him a reputation
+    for profundity, which was county wide. It had been this, years before,
+    that had carried him by a powerful majority into the Tennessee
+    legislature. The voters agreed, almost to a man, that they preferred
+    depth to a shallow facility. The rival candidate had been shallow and
+    facile. The polls returned the Captain, and the young gentleman&mdash;for the
+    Captain was a young gentleman in those days&mdash;was launched on a typical
+    politician's career. But some Republican member from east Tennessee had
+    impugned the rising statesman's honor with some sort of improper
+    liaison. In those days there seemed to be proper and improper liaisons.
+    There had been a duel on the banks of the Cumberland River in which the
+    Captain succeeded in wounding his traducer in the arm, and was thus
+    vindicated by the gods. But the incident ended a career that might very
+    well have wound up in the governor's chair, or even in the United States
+    Senate, considering how very deliberate the Captain was mentally.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To-day, as the Captain walked up the street following Cissie Dildine,
+    one of these vacant moods fell upon him and it was not until they had
+    reached his own gate that it suddenly occurred to the old gentleman just
+    what Cissie's sumac did mean. It was a signal to Peter. The simplicity
+    of the solution stirred the old man. Its meaning was equally easy to
+    fathom. When a woman signals any man it conveys consent. Denials receive
+    no signals; they are inferred. In this particular case Captain Renfrew
+    found every reason to believe that this flaring bit of sumac was the
+    prelude to an elopement.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the window of his library the Captain saw his secretary staring at
+    his cards and books with an intentness plainly assumed. Peter's fixed
+    stare had none of those small movements of the head that mark genuine
+    intellectual labor. So Peter was posing, pretending he did not see the
+    girl, to disarm his employer's suspicions,&mdash;pretending not to see a
+    girl rigged out like that!
+</p>
+<p>
+    Such duplicity sent a queer spasm of anguish through the old lawyer.
+    Peter's action held half a dozen barbs for the Captain. A fellow-alumnus
+    of Harvard staying in his house merely for his wage and keep! Peter bore
+    not the slightest affection for him; the mulatto lacked even the
+    chivalry to notify the Captain of his intentions, because he knew the
+    Captain objected. And yet all these self-centered objections were
+    nothing to what old Captain Renfrew felt for Peter's own sake. For Peter
+    to marry a nigger and a strumpet, for him to elope with a wanton and a
+    thief! For such an upstanding lad, the very picture of his own virility
+    and mental alertness when he was of that age, for such a boy to fling
+    himself away, to drop out of existence&mdash;oh, it was loathly!
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old man entered the library feeling sick. It was empty. Peter had
+    gone to his room, according to his custom. But in this particular
+    instance it seemed to Captain Renfrew his withdrawal was flavored with a
+    tang of guilt. If he were innocent, why should not such a big, strong
+    youth have stayed and helped an old gentleman off with his overcoat?
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old Captain blew out a windy breath as he helped himself out of his
+    coat in the empty library. The bent globe still leaned against the
+    window-seat. The room had never looked so somber or so lonely.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At dinner the old man ate so little that Rose Hobbett ceased her
+    monotonous grumbling to ask if he felt well. He said he had had a hard
+    day, a difficult day. He felt so weak and thin that he foretold the gray
+    days when he could no longer creep to the village and sit with his
+    cronies at the livery-stable, when he would be house-fast, through
+    endless days, creeping from room to room like a weak old rat in a huge
+    empty house, finally to die in some disgusting fashion. And Now Peter
+    was going to leave him, was going to throw himself away on a lascivious
+    wench. A faint moisture dampened the old man's withered eyes. He drank
+    an extra thimbleful of whisky to try to hearten himself. Its bouquet
+    filled the time-worn stateliness of the dining-room.
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    During the weeks of Peter's stay at the manor it had grown to be the
+    Captain's habit really to write for two or three hours in the afternoon,
+    and his pile of manuscript had thickened under his application.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old man was writing a book called "Reminiscences of Peace and War."
+    His book would form another unit of that extraordinary crop of personal
+    reminiscences of the old South which flooded the presses of America
+    during the decade of 1908-18. During just that decade it seemed as if the
+    aged men and women of the South suddenly realized that the generation who
+    had lived through the picturesqueness and stateliness of the old slave
+    r&eacute;gime was almost gone, and over their hearts swept a common impulse to
+    commemorate, in the sunset of their own lives, its fading splendor and
+    its vanished deeds.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On this particular afternoon the Captain settled himself to work, but
+    his reminiscences did not get on. He pinched a bit of floss from the nib
+    of his pen and tried to swing into the period of which he was writing.
+    He read over a few pages of his copy as mental priming, but his thoughts
+    remained flat and dull. Indeed, his whole life, as he reviewed it in the
+    waning afternoon, appeared empty and futile. It seemed hardly worth
+    while to go on.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Captain had come to that point in his memoirs where the Republican
+    representative from Knox County had set going the petard which had
+    wrecked his political career.
+</p>
+<p>
+    From the very beginnings of his labors the old lawyer had looked forward
+    to writing just this period of his life. He meant to clear up his name
+    once for all. He meant to use invective, argument, testimony and a
+    powerful emotional appeal, such as a country lawyer invariably attempts
+    with a jury.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But now that he had arrived at the actual composition of his defense, he
+    sat biting his penholder, with all the arguments he meant to advance
+    slipped from his mind. He could not recall the points of the proof. He
+    could not recall them with Peter Siner moving restlessly about the room,
+    glancing through the window, unsettled, nervous, on the verge of eloping
+    with a negress.
+</p>
+<p>
+    His secretary's tragedy smote the old man. The necessity of doing
+    something for Peter put his thoughts to rout. A wild idea occurred to
+    the Captain that if he should write the exact truth, perhaps his memoirs
+    might serve Peter as a signal against a futile, empty journey.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But the thought no sooner appeared than it was rejected. In the Anglo-
+    Saxon, especially the Anglo-Saxon of the Southern United States, abides
+    no such Gallic frankness as moved a Jean-Jacques. Southern memoirs
+    always sound like the conversation between two maiden ladies,&mdash;nothing
+    intimate, simply a few general remarks designed to show from what nice
+    families they came.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So the Captain wrote nothing. During all the afternoon he sat at his
+    desk with a leaden heart, watching Peter move about the room. The old
+    man maintained more or less the posture of writing, but his thoughts
+    were occupied in pitying himself and pitying Peter. Half a dozen times
+    he looked up, on the verge of making some plea, some remonstrance,
+    against the madness of this brown man. But the sight of Peter sitting in
+    the window-seat staring out into the street silenced him. He was a weak
+    old man, and Peter's nerves were strung with the desire of youth.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At last the two men heard old Rose clashing in the kitchen. A few
+    minutes later the secretary excused himself from the library, to go to
+    his own room. As Peter was about to pass through the door, the Captain
+    was suddenly galvanized into action by the thought that this perhaps was
+    the last time he would ever see him. He got up from his chair and called
+    shakenly to Peter. The negro paused. The Captain moistened his lips and
+    controlled his voice.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I want to have a word with you, Peter, about a&mdash;a little matter. I&mdash;
+    I've mentioned it before."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, sir." The negro's tone and attitude reminded the Captain that the
+    supper gong would soon sound and they would best separate at once.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It&mdash;it's about Cissie Dildine," the old lawyer hurried on.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter nodded slightly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, you mentioned that before."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old man lifted a thin hand as if to touch Peter's arm, but he did
+    not. A sort of desperation seized him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But listen, Peter, you don't want to do&mdash;what's in your mind!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What is in my mind, Captain?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I mean marry a negress. You don't want to marry a negress!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The brown man stared, utterly blank.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Not marry a negress!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, Peter; no," quavered the old man. "For yourself it may make no
+    difference, but your children&mdash;think of your children, your son growing
+    up under a brown veil! You can't tear it off. God himself can't tear it
+    off! You can never reach him through it. Your children, your children's
+    children, a terrible procession that stretches out and out, marching
+    under a black shroud, unknowing, unknown! All you can see are their sad
+    forms beneath the shroud, marching away&mdash;marching away. God knows where!
+    And yet it's your own flesh and blood!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Suddenly the old lawyer's face broke into the hard, tearless contortions
+    of the aged. His terrible emotion communicated itself to the sensitive
+    brown man.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But, Captain, I myself am a negro. Whom should I marry?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No one; no one! Let your seed wither in your loins! It's better to do
+    that; it's better&mdash;" At that moment the clashing of the supper gong fell
+    on the old man's naked nerves. He straightened up by some reflex
+    mechanism, turned away from what he thought was his last interview with
+    his secretary, and proceeded down the piazza into the great empty
+    dining-room.
+</p>
+<a name="2HCH16"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XIII
+</h2>
+<p>
+    With overwrought nerves Peter Siner entered his room. At five o'clock
+    that afternoon he had seen Cissie Dildine go up the street to the
+    Arkwright home to cook one of those occasional suppers. He had been
+    watching for her return, and in the midst of it the Captain's
+    extraordinary outburst had stirred him up.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Once in his room, the negro placed the broken Hepplewhite in such a
+    position that he could rake the street with a glance. Then he tried to
+    compose himself and await the coming of his supper and the passage of
+    Cissie. There was something almost pathetic in Peter's endless watching,
+    all for a mere glimpse or two of the girl in yellow. He himself had no
+    idea how his nerves and thoughts had woven themselves around the young
+    woman. He had no idea what a passion this continual doling out of
+    glimpses had begotten. He did not dream how much he was, as folk na&iuml;vely
+    put it, in love with her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    His love was strong enough to make him forget for a while the old
+    lawyer's outbreak. However, as the dusk thickened in the shrubbery and
+    under the trees, certain of the old gentleman's phrases revisited the
+    mulatto's mind: "A terrible procession ... marching under a black
+    shroud.... Your children, your children's children, a terrible
+    procession,... marching away, God knows where.... And yet&mdash;it's your own
+    flesh and blood!" They were terrific sentences, as if the old man had
+    been trying to tear from his vision some sport of nature, some
+    deformity. As the implications spread before Peter, he became more and
+    more astonished at its content. Even to Captain Renfrew black men were
+    dehumanized,&mdash;shrouded, untouchable creatures.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It delivered to Peter a slow but a profound shock. He glanced about at
+    the faded magnificence of the room with a queer feeling that he had been
+    introduced into it under a sort of misrepresentation. He had taken up
+    his abode with the Captain, at least on the basis of belonging to the
+    human family, but this passionate outbreak, this puzzling explosion, cut
+    that ground from under his feet.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The more Peter thought about it, the stranger grew his sensation. Not
+    even to be classed as a human being by this old gentleman who in a weak,
+    helpless fashion had crept somewhat into Peter's affections,&mdash;not to be
+    considered a man! The mulatto drew a long, troubled breath, and by the
+    mere mechanics of his desire kept staring through the gloom for Cissie.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter Siner had known all along that the unread whites of Hooker's Bend
+    &mdash;and that included nearly every white person in the village&mdash;considered
+    black men as simple animals; but he had supposed that the more thoughtful
+    men, of whom Captain Renfrew was a type, at least admitted the Afro-
+    American to the common brotherhood of humanity. But they did not.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As Peter sat staring into the darkness the whole effect of the
+    dehumanizing of the black folk of the South began to unfold itself
+    before his imagination. It explained to him the tragedies of his race,
+    their sufferings at the hand of mob violence; the casualness, even the
+    levity with which black men were murdered: the chronic dishonesty with
+    which negroes were treated: the constant enactment of adverse
+    legislation against them; the cynical use of negro women. They were all
+    vermin, animals; they were one with the sheep and the swine; a little
+    nearer the human in form, perhaps, and, oddly enough, one that could be
+    bred to a human being, as testified a multitude of brown and yellow and
+    cream-colored folk, but all marching away, as the Captain had so
+    passionately said, marching away, their forms hidden from human
+    intercourse under a shroud of black, an endless procession marching
+    away, God knew whither! And yet they were the South's own flesh and
+    blood.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The horror of such a complex swelled in Peter's mind to monstrous
+    proportions. As night thickened at his window, the negro sat dazed and
+    wondering at the mightiness of his vision. His thoughts went groping,
+    trying to solve some obscure problem it posed. He thought of the
+    Arkwright boy; he thought of the white men smiling as his mother's
+    funeral went past the livery-stable; he thought of Captain Renfrew's
+    manuscript that he was transcribing. Through all the old man's memoirs
+    ran a certain lack of sincerity. Peter always felt amid his labors that
+    the old Captain was making an attorney's plea rather than a candid
+    exposition. At this point in his thoughts there gradually limned itself
+    in the brown man's mind the answer to that enigma which he almost had
+    unraveled on the day he first saw Cissie Dildine pass his window. With
+    it came the answer to the puzzle contained in the old Captain's library.
+    The library was not an ordinary compilation of the world's thought; it,
+    too, was an attorney's special pleading against the equality of man. Any
+    book or theory that upheld the equality of man was carefully excluded
+    from the shelves. Darwin's great hypothesis, and every development
+    springing from it, had been banned, because the moment that a theory was
+    propounded of the great biologic relationship of all flesh, from worms
+    to vertebrates, there instantly followed a corollary of the brotherhood
+    of man.
+</p>
+<p>
+    What Christ did for theology, Darwin did for biology,&mdash;he democratized
+    it. The One descended to man's brotherhood from the Trinity; the other
+    climbed up to it from the worms.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old Captain's library lacked sincerity. Southern orthodoxy, which
+    persists in pouring its religious thought into the outworn molds of
+    special creation, lacks sincerity. Scarcely a department of Southern
+    life escapes this fundamental attitude of special pleader and
+    disingenuousness. It explains the Southern fondness for legal
+    subtleties. All attempts at Southern poetry, belles-lettres, painting,
+    novels, bear the stamp of the special plea, of authors whose exposition
+    is careful.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter perceived what every one must perceive, that when letters turn
+    into a sort of glorified prospectus of a country, all value as
+    literature ceases. The very breath of art and interpretation is an eager
+    and sincere searching of the heart. This sincerity the South lacks. Her
+    single talent will always be forensic, because she is a lawyer with a
+    cause to defend. And such is the curse that arises from lynchings and
+    venery and extortions and dehumanizings,&mdash;sterility; a dumbness of soul.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter Siner's thoughts lifted him with the tremendous buoyancy of
+    inspiration. He swung out of his chair and began tramping his dark room.
+    The skin of his scalp tickled as if a ghost had risen before him. The
+    nerves in his thighs and back vibrated. He felt light, and tingled with
+    energy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Unaware of what he was doing, he set about lighting the gasolene-lamp.
+    He worked with nervous quickness, as if he were in a great hurry.
+    Presently a brilliant light flooded the room. It turned the gray
+    illumination of the windows to blackness.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Joy enveloped Peter. His own future developed under his eyes with the
+    same swift clairvoyance that marked his vision of the ills of his
+    country. He saw himself remedying those ills. He would go about showing
+    white men and black men the simple truth, the spiritual necessity for
+    justice and fairness. It was not a question of social equality; it was a
+    question of clearing a road for the development of Southern life. He
+    would show white men that to weaken, to debase, to dehumanize the negro,
+    inflicted a more terrible wound on the South than would any strength the
+    black man might develop. He would show black men that to hate the
+    whites, constantly to suspect, constantly to pilfer from them, only
+    riveted heavier shackles on their limbs.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was all so clear and so simple! The white South must humanize the
+    black not for the sake of the negro, but for the sake of itself. No one
+    could resist logic so fundamental.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter's heart sang with the solemn joy of a man who had found his work.
+    All through his youth he had felt blind yearnings and gropings for he
+    knew not what. It had driven him with endless travail out of Niggertown,
+    through school and college, and back to Niggertown,&mdash;this untiring Hound
+    of Heaven. But at last he had reached his work. He, Peter Siner, a
+    mulatto, with the blood of both white and black in his veins, would come
+    as an evangel of liberty to both white and black. The brown man's eyes
+    grew moist from Joy. His body seemed possessed of tremendous energy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As he paced his room there came into the glory of Peter's thoughts the
+    memory of the Arkwright boy as he sat in the cedar glade brooding on the
+    fallen needles Peter recalled the hobbledehoy's disjointed words as he
+    wrestled with the moral and physical problems of adolescence. Peter
+    recalled his impulse to sit down by young Sam Arkwright, and, as best he
+    might, give him some clue to the critical and feverish period through
+    which he was passing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He had not done so, but Peter remembered the instance down to the very
+    desperation in the face of the brooding youngster. And it seemed to
+    Peter that this rejected impulse had been a sign that he was destined to
+    be an evangel to the whites as well as to the blacks.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The joy of Peter's mission bore him aloft on vast wings. His room seemed
+    to fall away from him, and he was moving about his country, releasing
+    the two races from their bonds of suspicion and cruelty.
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    Slowly the old manor formed about Peter again, and he perceived that a
+    tapping on the door had summoned him back. He walked to the door with
+    his heart full of kindness for old Rose. She was bringing him his
+    supper. He felt as if he could take the old woman in his arms, and out
+    of the mere hugeness of his love sweeten her bitter life. The mulatto
+    opened the door as eagerly as if he were admitting some long-desired
+    friend; but when the shutter swung back, the old crone and her salver
+    were not there. All he could discern in the darkness were the white
+    pillars marking the night into panels. There was no light in the outer
+    kitchen. The whole manor was silent.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As he stood listening, the knocking was repeated, this time more
+    faintly. He fixed the sound at the window. He closed the door, walked
+    across the brilliant room, and opened the shutters.
+</p>
+<p>
+    For several moments he saw nothing more than the tall quadrangle of
+    blackness which the window framed; then a star or two pierced it; then
+    something moved. He saw a woman's figure standing close to the casement,
+    and out of the darkness Cissie Dildine's voice asked in its careful
+    English:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Peter, may I come in?"
+</p>
+<a name="2HCH17"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XIV
+</h2>
+<p>
+    For a full thirty seconds Peter Siner stared at the girl at the window
+    before, even with her prompting, he thought of the amenity of asking her
+    to come inside. As a further delayed courtesy, he drew the Heppelwhite
+    chair toward her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie's face looked bloodless in the blanched light of the gasolene-
+    lamp. She forced a faint, doubtful smile.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You don't seem very glad to see me, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I am," he assured her, mechanically, but he really felt nothing but
+    astonishment and dismay. They filled his voice. He was afraid some one
+    would see Cissie in his room. His thoughts went flitting about the
+    premises, calculating the positions of the various trees and shrubs in
+    relation to the windows, trying to determine whether, and just where, in
+    his brilliantly lighted chamber the girl could be seen from the street.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The octoroon made no further comment on his confusion. Her eyes wandered
+    from him over the stately furniture and up to the stuccoed ceiling.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "They told me you lived in a wonderful room," she remarked absently.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, it's very nice," agreed Peter in the same tone, wondering what
+    might be the object of her hazardous visit. A flicker of suspicion
+    suggested that she was trying to compromise him out of revenge for his
+    renouncement of her, but the next instant he rejected this.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl accepted the chair Peter offered and continued to look about.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I hope you don't mind my staring, Peter," she said.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I stared when I first came here to stay," assisted Peter, who was
+    getting a little more like himself, even if a little uneasier at the
+    consequences of this visit.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Is that a highboy?" She nodded nervously at the piece of furniture.
+    "I've seen pictures of them."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Uh huh. Revolutionary, I believe. The night wind is a little raw." He
+    moved across the room and closed the jalousies, and thus cut off the
+    night wind and also the west view from the street. He glanced at the
+    heavy curtains parted over his front windows, with a keen desire to
+    swing them together. Some fragment of his mind continued the surface
+    conversation with Cissie.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Is it post-Revolutionary or pre-Revolutionary?" she asked with a
+    preoccupied air.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Post, I believe. No, pre. I always meant to examine closely."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "To have such things would almost teach one history," Cissie said.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yeah; very nice." Peter had decided that the girl was in direct line
+    with the left front window and an opening between the trees to the
+    street.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl's eyes followed his.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Are those curtains velour, Peter?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I&mdash;I believe so," agreed the man, unhappily.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I&mdash;I wonder how they look spread."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter seized on this flimsy excuse with a wave of relief and
+    thankfulness to Cissie. He had to restrain himself as he strode across
+    the room and swung together the two halves of the somber curtains in
+    order to preserve an appearance of an exhibit. His fingers were so
+    nervous that he bungled a moment at the heavy cords, but finally the two
+    draperies swung together, loosing a little cloud of dust. He drew
+    together a small aperture where the hangings stood apart, and then
+    turned away in sincere relief.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie's own interest in historic furniture and textiles came to an
+    abrupt conclusion. She gave a deep sigh and settled back into her chair.
+    She sat looking at Peter seriously, almost distressfully, as he came
+    toward her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    With the closing of the curtains and the establishment of a real privacy
+    Peter became aware once again of the sweetness and charm Cissie always
+    held for him. He still wondered what had brought her, but he was no
+    longer uneasy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Perhaps I'd better build a fire," he suggested, quite willing now to
+    make her visit seem not unusual.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, no,"&mdash;she spoke with polite haste,&mdash;"I'm just going to stay a
+    minute. I don't know what you'll think of me." She looked intently at
+    him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I think it lovely of you to come." He was disgusted with the triteness
+    of this remark, but he could think of nothing else.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I don't know," demurred the octoroon, with her faint doubtful smile.
+    "Persons don't welcome beggars very cordially."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "If all beggars were so charming&mdash;" Apparently he couldn't escape
+    banalities.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But Cissie interrupted whatever speech he meant to make, with a return
+    of her almost painful seriousness.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I really came to ask you to help me, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then your need has brought me a pleasure, at least." Some impulse kept
+    the secretary making those foolish complimentary speeches which keep a
+    conversation empty and insincere.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, Peter, I didn't come here for you to talk like that! Will you do
+    what I want?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What do you want, Cissie?" he asked, sobered by her voice and manner.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I want you to help me, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "All right, I will." He spaced his words with his speculations about the
+    nature of her request. "What do you want me to do?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I want you to help me go away."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter looked at her in surprise. He hardly knew what he had been
+    expecting, but it was not this.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Some repressed emotion crept into the girl's voice.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Peter, I&mdash;I can't stay here in Hooker's Bend any longer. I want to go
+    away. I&mdash;I've got to go away."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter stood regarding her curiously and at the same time
+    sympathetically.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Where do you want to go, Cissie?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl drew a long breath; her bosom lifted and dropped abruptly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I don't know; that was one of the things I wanted to ask you about."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You don't know where you want to go?" He smiled faintly. "How do you
+    know you want to go at all?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, Peter, all I know is I must leave Hooker's Bend!" She gave a little
+    shiver. "I'm tired of it, sick of it&mdash;sick." She exhaled a breath, as if
+    she were indeed physically ill. Her face suggested it; her eyes were
+    shadowed. "Some Northern city, I suppose," she added.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And you want me to help you?" inquired Peter, puzzled.
+</p>
+<p>
+    She nodded silently, with a woman's instinct to make a man guess the
+    favor she is seeking.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then it occurred to Peter just what sort of assistance the girl did
+    want. It gave him a faint shock that a girl could come to a man to beg
+    or to borrow money. It was a white man's shock, a notion he had picked
+    up in Boston, because it happens frequently among village negroes, and
+    among them it holds as little significance as children begging one
+    another for bites of apples.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter thought over his bank balance, then started toward a chest of
+    drawers where he kept his checkbook.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Cissie, if I can he of any service to you in a substantial way, I'll be
+    more than glad to&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    She put out a hand and stopped him; then talked on in justification of
+    her determination to go away.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I just can't endure it any longer, Peter." She shuddered again. "I
+    can't stand Niggertown, or this side of town&mdash;any of it. They&mdash;they have
+    no <i>feeling</i> for a colored girl, Peter, not&mdash;not a speck!" She rave
+    a gasp, and after a moment plunged on into her wrongs: "When&mdash;when one
+    of us even walks past on the street, they&mdash;they whistle and say a-all
+    kinds of things out loud, j-just as if w-we weren't there at all. Th-
+    they don't c-care; we're just n-nigger w-women." Cissie suddenly began
+    sobbing with a faint catching noise, her full bosom shaken by the
+    spasms; her tears slowly welling over. She drew out a handkerchief with
+    a part of its lace edge gone, and wiped her eyes and cheeks, holding the
+    bit of cambric in a ball in her palm, like a negress, instead of in her
+    fingers, like a white woman, as she had been taught. Then she drew a
+    deep breath, swallowed, and became more composed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter stood looking in helpless anger at this representative of all
+    women of his race.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Cissie, that's street-corner scum&mdash;the dirty sewage&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "They make you feel naked," went on Cissie in the monotone that succeeds
+    a fit of weeping, "and ashamed&mdash;and afraid." She blinked her eyes to
+    press out the undue moisture, and looked at Peter as if asking what else
+    she could do about it than to go away from the village.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Will it be any better away from here?" suggested Peter, doubtfully.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie shook her head.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I&mdash;I suppose not, if&mdash;if I go alone."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I shouldn't think so," agreed Peter, somberly. He started to hearten
+    her by saying white women also underwent such trials, if that would be a
+    consolation; but he knew very well that a white woman's hardships were
+    as nothing compared to those of a colored woman who was endowed with any
+    grace whatever.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And besides, Cissie," went on Peter, who somehow found himself arguing
+    against the notion of her going, "I hardly see how a decent colored
+    woman gets around at all. Colored boarding-houses are wretched places. I
+    ate and slept in one or two, coming home. Rotten." The possibility of
+    Cissie finding herself in such a place moved Peter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl nodded submissively to his judgment, and said in a queer voice:
+    "That's why I&mdash;I didn't want to travel alone, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, it's a bad idea&mdash;" and then Peter perceived that a queer quality
+    was creeping into the t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te.
+</p>
+<p>
+    She returned his look unsteadily, but with a curious persistence.
+</p>
+<a name="image-6"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="birth06.png"
+alt="'You-you Mean You Want M-me&mdash;to Go With You, Cissie?' He
+Stammered
+">
+<br>'You-you Mean You Want M-me&mdash;to Go With You, Cissie?' He
+Stammered
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    "I&mdash;I d-don't want to travel a-alone, Peter," she gasped.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Her look, her voice suddenly brought home to the an the amazing
+    connotation of her words. He stared at her, felt his face grow warm with
+    a sharp, peculiar embarrassment. He hardly knew what to say or do before
+    her intent and piteous eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You&mdash;you mean you want m-me&mdash;to go with you, Cissie?" he stammered.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl suddenly began trembling, now that her last reserve of
+    indirection had been torn away.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Listen, Peter," she began breathlessly. "I'm not the sort of woman you
+    think. If I hadn't accused myself, we'd be married now. I&mdash;I wanted you
+    more than anything in the world, Peter, but I did tell you. Surely,
+    surely, Peter, that shows I am a good woman&mdash;th-the real I. Dear, dear
+    Peter, there is a difference between a woman and her acts. Peter, you're
+    the first man in all my life, in a-all my life who ever came to me k-
+    kindly and gently; so I had to l-love you and t-tell you, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl's wavering voice broke down completely; her face twisted with
+    grief. She groped for her chair, sat down, buried her face in her arms
+    on the table, and broke into a chattering outbreak of sobs that sounded
+    like some sort of laughter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Her shoulders shook; the light gleamed on her soft, black Caucasian
+    hair. There was a little rent in one of the seams in her cheap jacket,
+    at one of the curves where her side molded into her shoulder. The
+    customer made garment had found Cissie's body of richer mold than it had
+    been designed to shield. And yet in Peter's distress and tenderness and
+    embarrassment, this little rent held his attention and somehow misprized
+    the wearer.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It seemed symbolic in the searching white light. He could see the very
+    break in the thread and the widened stitches at the ends of the rip. Her
+    coat had given way because she was modeled more nearly like the Venus de
+    Milo than the run of womankind. He felt the little irony of the thing,
+    and yet was quite unable to resist the comparison.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And then, too, she had referred again to her sin of peculation. A woman
+    enjoys confessions from a man. A man's sins are mostly vague, indefinite
+    things to a woman, a shadowy background which brings out the man in a
+    beautiful attitude of repentance; but when a woman confesses, the man
+    sees all her past as a close-up with full lighting. He has an intimate
+    acquaintance with just what she's talking about, and the woman herself
+    grows shadowy and unreal. Men have too many blots not to demand
+    whiteness in women. By striking some such average, nature keeps the race
+    a going moral concern.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So Peter, as he stood looking down on the woman who was asking him to
+    marry her, was filled with as unhappy and as impersonal a tenderness as
+    a born brother. He recalled the thoughts which had come to him when he
+    saw Cissie passing his window. She was not the sort of woman he wanted
+    to marry; she was not his ideal. He cast about in his head for some
+    gentle way of putting her off, so that he would not hurt her any
+    further, if such an easement were possible.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As he stood thinking, he found not a pretext, but a reality. He stooped
+    over, and put a hand lightly on each of her arms.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Cissie," he said in a serious, even voice, "if I should ever marry any
+    one, it would be you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl paused in her sobbing at his even, passionless voice.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then you&mdash;you won't?" she whispered in her arms.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I can't, Cissie." Now that he was saying it, he uttered the words very
+    evenly and smoothly. "I can't, dear Cissie, because a great work has
+    just come into my life." He paused, expecting her to ask some question,
+    but she lay silent, with her face in her arms, evidently listening.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Cissie, I think, in fact I know, I can demonstrate to all the South,
+    both white and black, the need of a better and more sincere
+    understanding between our two races."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter did not feel the absurdity of such a speech in such a place. He
+    patted her arm, but there was something in the warmth of her flesh that
+    disturbed his austerity and caused him to lift his hand to the more
+    impersonal axis of her shoulder. He proceeded to develop his idea.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Cissie, just a moment ago you were complaining of the insults you meet
+    everywhere. I believe if I can spread my ideas, Cissie, that even a
+    pretty colored girl like you may walk the streets without being
+    subjected to obscenity on every corner." His tone unconsciously
+    patronized Cissie's prettiness with the patronage of the male for the
+    less significant thing, as though her ripeness for love and passion and
+    children were, after all, not comparable with what he, a male, could do
+    in the way of significantly molding life.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie lifted her head and dried her eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "So you aren't going to marry me, Peter?" Woman-like, now that she was
+    well into the subject, she was far less embarrassed than Peter. She had
+    had her cry.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why&mdash;er&mdash;considering this work, Cissie&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Aren't you going to marry anybody, Peter?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The artist in Peter, the thing the girl loved in him, caught again that
+    Messianic vision of himself.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, no, Cissie," he said, with a return of his inspiration of an hour
+    ago; "I'll be going here and there all over the South preaching this
+    gospel of kindliness and tolerance, of forgiveness of the faults of
+    others." Cissie looked at him with a queer expression. "I'll show the
+    white people that they should treat the negro with consideration not for
+    the sake of the negro, but for the sake of themselves. It's so simple,
+    Cissie, it's so logical and clear&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The girl shook her head sadly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "And you don't want me to go with you, Peter?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, n-no, Cissie; a girl like you couldn't go. Perhaps I'll be
+    misunderstood in places, perhaps I may have to leave a town hurriedly,
+    or be swung over the walls, like Paul, in a basket." He attempted to
+    treat it lightly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But the girl looked at him with a horror dawning in her melancholy face.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Peter, do you really mean that?" she whispered.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, truly. You don't imagine&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The octoroon opened her dark eyes until she might have been some weird.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, Peter, please, please put such a mad idea away from you! Peter,
+    you've been living here alone in this old house until you don't see
+    things clearly. Dear Peter, don't you <i>know?</i> You can't go out and
+    talk like that to white folks and&mdash;and not have some terrible thing
+    happen to you! Oh, Peter, if you would only marry me, it would cure you
+    of such wildness!" Involuntarily she got up, holding out her arms to
+    him, offering herself to his needs, with her frightened eyes fixed on
+    his.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It made him exquisitely uncomfortable again. He made a little sound
+    designed to comfort and reassure her. He would do very well. He was
+    something of a diplomat in his way. He had got along with the boys in
+    Harvard very well indeed. In fact, he was rather a man of the world. No
+    need to worry about him, though it was awfully sweet of her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie picked up her handkerchief with its torn edge, which she had laid
+    on the table. Evidently she was about to go.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I surely don't know what will become of me," she said, looking at it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In a reversal of feeling Peter did not want her to go away quite then.
+    He cast about for some excuse to detain her a moment longer.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now, Cissie," he began, "if you are really going to leave Hooker's
+    Bend&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'm not going," she said, with a long exhalation. "I&mdash;" she swallowed&mdash;
+    "I just thought that up to&mdash;ask you to&mdash;to&mdash;You see," she explained, a
+    little breathless, "I thought you still loved me and had forgiven me by
+    the way you watched for me every day at the window."
+</p>
+<p>
+    This speech touched Peter more keenly than any of the little drama the
+    girl had invented. It hit him so shrewdly he could think of nothing more
+    to say.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie moved toward the window and undid the latch.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Good night, Peter." She paused a moment, with her hand on the catch.
+    "Peter," she said, "I'd almost rather see you marry some other girl than
+    try so terrible a thing."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The big, full-blooded athlete smiled faintly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You seem perfectly sure marriage would cure me of my mission."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie's face reddened faintly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I think so," she said briefly. "Good night," and she disappeared in the
+    dark space she had opened, and closed the jalousies softly after her.
+</p>
+<a name="2HCH18"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XV
+</h2>
+<p>
+    Cissie Dildine's conviction that marriage would cure Peter of his
+    mission persisted in the mulatto's mind long after the glamour of the
+    girl had faded and his room had regained the bleak emptiness of a
+    bachelor's bedchamber.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie had been so brief and positive in her statement that Peter, who
+    had not thought on the point at all, grew more than half convinced she
+    was right.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now that he pondered over it, it seemed there was a difference between
+    the outlook of a bachelor and that of a married man. The former
+    considered humanity as a balloonist surveys a throng,&mdash;immediately and
+    without perspective,&mdash;but the latter always sees mankind through the
+    frame of his family. A single man tends naturally to philosophy and
+    reform; a married man to administration and statesmanship. There have
+    been no great unmarried statesmen; there have been no great married
+    philosophers or reformers.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now that Cissie had pointed out this universal rule, Peter saw it very
+    clearly. And Peter suspected that beneath this rough classification, and
+    conditioning it, lay a plexus of obscure mental and physical reactions
+    set up by the relations between husband and wife. It might very well be
+    there was a difference between the actual cerebral and nervous structure
+    of a married man and that of a single man.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At any rate, after these reflections, Peter now felt sure that marriage
+    would cure him of his mission; but how had Cissie known it? How had she
+    struck out so involved a theory, one might say, in the toss of a head?
+    The more Peter thought it over the more extraordinary it became. It was
+    another one of those explosive ideas which Cissie, apparently, had the
+    faculty of creating out of a pure mental vacuum.
+</p>
+<p>
+    All this philosophy aside, Cissie's appearance just in the nick of his
+    inspiration, her surprising proposal of marriage, and his refusal, had
+    accomplished one thing: it had committed Peter to the program he had
+    outlined to the girl.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Indeed, there seemed something fatalistic in such a concatenation of
+    events. Siner wondered whether or not he would have obeyed his vision
+    without this added impulse from Cissie. He did not know; but now, since
+    it had all come about just as it had, he suspected he would have been
+    neglectful. He felt as if a dangerous but splendid channel had been
+    opened before his eyes, and almost at the same instant a hand had
+    reached down and directed his life into it. This fancy moved the
+    mulatto. As he got himself ready for bed, he kept thinking:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, my life is settled at last. There is nothing else for me to do.
+    Even if this should end terribly for me, as Cissie imagines, my life
+    won't be wasted."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Next morning Peter Siner was awakened by old Rose Hobbett thrusting her
+    head in at his door, staring around, and finally, seeing Peter in bed,
+    grumbling:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why is you still heah, black man?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The secretary opened his eyes in astonishment.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why shouldn't I be here?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Nobody wuz 'speckin' you to be heah." The crone withdrew her head and
+    vanished.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter wondered at this unaccustomed interest of Rose, then hurried out
+    of bed, supposing himself late for breakfast.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A dense fog had come up from the river, and the moisture floating into
+    his open windows had dampened his whole room. Peter stepped briskly to
+    the screen and began splashing himself. It was only in the midst of his
+    ablutions that he remembered his inspiration and resolve of the previous
+    evening. As he squeezed the water over his powerfully molded body, he
+    recalled it almost impersonally. It might have happened to some third
+    person. He did not even recall distinctly the threads of the logic which
+    had lifted him to such a Pisgah, and showed him the whole South as a new
+    and promised land. However, he knew that he could start his train of
+    thought again, and again ascend the mountain.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Floating through the fog into his open window came the noises of the
+    village as it set about living another day, precisely as it had lived
+    innumerable days in the past. The blast of the six-o'clock whistle from
+    the planing-mill made the loose sashes of his windows rattle. Came a
+    lowing of cows and a clucking of hens, a woman's calling. The voices of
+    men in conversation came so distinctly through the pall that it seemed a
+    number of persons must be moving about their morning work, talking and
+    shouting, right in the Renfrew yard.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But the thing that impressed Peter most was the solidity and stability
+    of this Southern village that he could hear moving around him, and its
+    certainty to go on in the future precisely as it had gone on in the
+    past. It was a tremendous force. The very old manor about him seemed
+    huge and intrenched in long traditions, while he, Peter Siner, was just
+    a brown man, naked behind a screen and rather cold from the fog and damp
+    of the morning.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He listened to old Rose clashing the kitchen utensils. As he drew on his
+    damp underwear, he wondered what he could say to old Rose that would
+    persuade her into a little kindliness and tolerance for the white
+    people. As he listened he felt hopeless; he could never explain to the
+    old creature that her own happiness depended upon the charity she
+    extended to others. She could never understand it. She would live and
+    die precisely the same bitter old beldam that she was, and nothing could
+    ever assuage her.
+</p>
+<p>
+    While Peter was thinking of the old creature, she came shuffling along
+    the back piazza with his breakfast. She let herself in by lifting one
+    knee to a horizontal, balancing the tray on it, then opening the door
+    with her freed hand.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When the shutter swung open, it displayed the crone standing on one
+    foot, wearing a man's grimy sock, which had fallen down over a broken,
+    run-down shoe.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In Peter's mood the thought of this wretched old woman putting on such
+    garments morning after morning was unspeakably pathetic. He thought of
+    his own mother, who had lived and died only a shade or two removed from
+    the old crone's condition.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Rose put down her foot, and entered the room with her lips poked out,
+    ready to make instant attack if Peter mentioned his lack of supper the
+    night before.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Aunt Rose," asked the secretary, with his friendly intent in his tones,
+    "how came you to look in this morning and say you didn't expect to find
+    me in my room?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    She gave an unintelligible grunt, pushed the lamp to one side, and eased
+    her tray to the table.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter finished touching his tie before one of those old-fashioned
+    mirrors, not of cut-glass, yet perfectly true. He came from the mirror
+    and moved his chair, out of force of habit, so he could look up the
+    street toward the Arkwrights'.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Aunt Rose," said the young man, wistfully, "why are you always angry?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    She bridled at this extraordinary inquiry.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Me?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, you."
+</p>
+<p>
+    She hesitated a moment, thinking how she could make her reply a personal
+    assault on Peter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'Cause you come heah, 'sputin' my rights, da' 's' why."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No," demurred Peter, "you were quarreling in the kitchen the first
+    morning I came here, and you didn't know I was on the place."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well&mdash;I got my tribulations," she snapped, staring suspiciously at
+    these unusual questions.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There was a pause; then Peter said placatingly:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I was just thinking, Aunt Rose, you might forget your tribulations if
+    you didn't ride them all the time."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Hoccum! What you mean, ridin' my tribulations?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Thinking about them. The old Captain, for instance; you are no happier
+    always abusing the old Captain."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old virago gave a sniff, tossed her head, but kept her eyes rolled
+    suspiciously on Peter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Very often the way we think and act makes us happy or unhappy,"
+    moralized Peter, broadly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Look heah, nigger, you ain't no preacher sont out by de Lawd to me!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Anyway, I am sure you would feel more friendly toward the Captain if
+    you acted openly with him; for instance, if you didn't take off all his
+    cold victuals, and handkerchiefs and socks, soap, kitchenware&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The cook snorted.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'd feel dat much mo' nekked an' hongry, dat's how I'd feel."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Perhaps, if you'd start over, he might give you a better wage."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Huh!" she snorted in an access of irony. "I see dat skinflint gib'n' me
+    a better wage. Puuh!" The suddenly she realized where the conversation
+    had wandered, and stared at the secretary with widening eyes "Good Lawd!
+    Did dat fool Cap'n set up a nigger in dis bedroom winder jes to ketch
+    ole Rose packin' off a few ole lef'-overs?" Peter began a hurried
+    denial, but she rushed on: "'Fo' Gawd, I hopes his viddles chokes him! I
+    hope his ole smoke-house falls down on his ole haid. I hope to Jesus&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter pleaded with her not to think the Captain was behind his
+    observations, but the hag rushed out of the bedroom, swinging her head
+    from side to side, uttering the most terrible maledictions. She would
+    show him! She wouldn't put another foot in his old kitchen. Wild horses
+    couldn't drag her into his smoke-house again.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter ran to the door and called after her down the piazza, trying to
+    exonerate the Captain: but she either did not or would not hear, and
+    vanished into the kitchen, still furious.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Old Rose made Peter so uneasy that he deserted his breakfast midway and
+    hurried to the library. In the solemn old room he found the Captain
+    alone and in rather a pleased mood. The old gentleman stood patting and
+    alining a pile of manuscript. As the mulatto entered he exclaimed:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, here's Peter again!" as if his secretary had been off on a long
+    journey. Immediately afterward he added, "Peter, guess what I did last
+    night." His voice was full of triumph.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter was thinking about Aunt Rose, and stood looking at the Captain
+    without the slightest idea.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I wrote all of this,"&mdash;he indicated his manuscript,&mdash;"over a hundred
+    pages."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter considered the work without much enthusiasm.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You must have worked all night."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old attorney rubbed his hands.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I think I may claim a touch of inspiration last night, Peter.
+    Reminiscences rippled from under my pen, propitious words, prosperous
+    sentences. Er&mdash;the fact is, Peter, you will see, when you begin copying,
+    I had come to a matter&mdash;a&mdash;a matter of some moment in my life. Every
+    life contains such moments, Peter. I had meant to write something in the
+    nature of a defen&mdash;an explanation, Peter. But after you left the library
+    last night it suddenly occurred to me just to give each fact as it took
+    place, quite frankly. So I did that&mdash;not&mdash;not what I meant to write, at
+    all&mdash;ah. As you copy it, you may find it not entirely without some
+    interest to yourself, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "To me?" repeated Peter, after the fashion of the unattentative.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, to yourself." The Captain was oddly moved. He took his hands off
+    the script, walked a little away from the table, came back to it. "It&mdash;
+    ah&mdash;may explain a good many things that&mdash;er&mdash;may have puzzled you." He
+    cleared his throat and shifted his subject briskly. "We ought to be
+    thinking about a publisher. What publisher shall we have publish these
+    reminiscences? Make some stir in Tennessee's political circles,
+    Peter; tremendous sales; clear up questions everybody is interested in.
+    H-m&mdash;well, I'll walk down town and you"&mdash;he motioned to the script&mdash;
+    "begin copying&mdash;"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "By the way, Captain," said Peter as the old gentleman turned for the
+    door, "has Rose said anything to you yet?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The old man detached his mind from his script with an obvious effort.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What about?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "About leaving your service."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No-o, not especially; she's always leaving my service."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "But in this case it was my fault; at least I brought it about. I
+    remonstrated with her about taking your left-over victuals and socks and
+    handkerchiefs and things. She was quite offended."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, it always offends her," agreed the old man, impatiently. "I never
+    mention it myself unless I catch her red-handed; then I storm a little
+    to keep her in bounds."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Naturally, Peter knew of this extraordinary system of service in the
+    South; nevertheless he was shocked at its implications.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Captain," suggested Peter, "wouldn't you find it to your own interest
+    to give old Rose a full cash payment for her services and allow her to
+    buy her own things?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Captain dismissed the subject with a wave of his hand. "She's a
+    nigger, Peter; you can't hire a nigger not to steal. Born in 'em. Then
+    I'm not sure but what it would be compounding a felony, hiring a person
+    not to steal; might be so construed. Well, now, there's the script. Read
+    it carefully, my boy, and remember that in order to gain a certain
+    <i>status quo</i> certain antecedents are&mdash;are absolutely necessary,
+    Peter. Without them my&mdash;my life would have been quite empty, Peter.
+    It's&mdash;it's very strange&mdash;amazing. You will understand as you read. I'll
+    be back to dinner, so good-by." In the strangest agitation the old
+    Captain walked out of the library. The last glimpse Peter had of him was
+    his meager old figure silhouetted against the cold gray fog that filled
+    the compound.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Neither the Captain's agitation nor his obvious desire that Peter should
+    at once read the new manuscript really got past the threshold of the
+    mulatto's consciousness. Peter's thoughts still hovered about old Rose,
+    and from that point spread to the whole system of colored service in the
+    South. For Rose's case was typical. The wage of cooks in small Southern
+    villages is a pittance&mdash;and what they can steal. The tragedy of the
+    mothers of a whole race working for their board and thievings came over
+    Peter with a rising grimness. And there was no public sentiment against
+    such practice. It was accepted everywhere as natural and inevitable. The
+    negresses were never prosecuted; no effort was made to regain the stolen
+    goods. The employers realized that what they paid would not keep soul
+    and body together; that it was steal or perish.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was a fantastic truth that for any colored girl to hire into domestic
+    service in Hooker's Bend was more or less entering an apprenticeship in
+    peculation. What she could steal was the major portion of her wage, if
+    two such anomalous terms may be used in conjunction.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Yet, strange to say, the negro women of the village were quite honest in
+    other matters. They paid their small debts. They took their mistresses'
+    pocket-books to market and brought back the correct change. And if a
+    mistress grew too indignant about something they had stolen, they would
+    bring it back and say: "Here is a new one. I'd rather buy you a new one
+    than have you think I would take anything."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The whole system was the lees of slavery, and was surely the most
+    demoralizing, the most grotesque method of hiring service in the whole
+    civilized world. It was so absurd that its mere relation lapses into
+    humor, that bane of black folk.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Such painful thoughts filled the gloomy library and harassed Peter in
+    his copying. He took his work to the window and tried to concentrate
+    upon it, but his mind kept playing away.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Indeed, it seemed to Peter that to sit in this old room and rewrite the
+    wordy meanderings of the old gentleman's book was the very height of
+    emptiness. How utterly futile, when all around him, on every hand, girls
+    like Cissie Dildine were being indentured to corruption! And, as far as
+    Peter knew, he was the only person in the South who saw it or felt it or
+    cared anything at all about it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When Cissie Dildine came to the surface of Peter's mind she remained
+    there, whirling around and around in his chaotic thoughts. He began
+    talking to her image, after a certain dramatic trick of his mind, and
+    she began offering her environment as an excuse for what had come
+    between them and estranged them. She stole, but she had been trained to
+    steal. She was a thief, the victim of an immense immorality. The charm
+    of Cissie, her queer, swift-working intuition, the candor of her
+    confession, her voluptuousness&mdash;all came rushing down on Peter,
+    harassing him with anger and love and desire. To copy any more script
+    became impossible. He lost his place; he hardly knew what he was
+    writing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He flung aside the whole work, got to his feet with the imperative need
+    of an athlete for the open. He started out of the room, but as an
+    afterthought scribbled a nervous line, telling the Captain he might not
+    be back for dinner. Then he found his hat and coat and walked briskly
+    around the piazza to the front gate.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The trees and shrubs were dripping, but the fog had almost cleared away,
+    leaving only a haze in the air. A pale, level line of it cut across the
+    scarp of the Big Hill. The sun shone with a peculiar soft light through
+    the vapors.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As Peter passed out at the gate, the fancy came to him that he might
+    very well be starting on his mission. It came with a sort of surprise.
+    He wondered how other men had set about reforms. With unpremeditation?
+    He wondered to whom Jesus of Nazareth preached his first sermon. The
+    thought of that young Galilean, sensitive, compassionate, inexperienced,
+    speaking to his first hearer, filled Peter with a strange trembling
+    tenderness. He looked about the familiar street of Hooker's Bend, the
+    old trees over the pavement, the shabby village houses, and it all held
+    a strangeness when thus juxtaposed to the thought of Nazareth nineteen
+    hundred years before.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The mulatto started down the street with his footsteps quickened by a
+    sense of spiritual adventure.
+</p>
+<a name="2HCH19"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XVI
+</h2>
+<p>
+    On the corner, against the blank south wall of Hobbett's store, Peter
+    Siner saw the usual crowd of negroes warming themselves in the soft
+    sunshine. They were slapping one another, scuffling, making feints with
+    knives or stones, all to an accompaniment of bragging, profanity, and
+    loud laughter. Their behavior was precisely that of adolescent white
+    boys of fifteen or sixteen years of age.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jim Pink Staggs was furnishing much amusement with an impromptu sleight-
+    of-hand exhibition. The black audience clustered around Jim Pink in his
+    pinstripe trousers and blue-serge coat. They exhibited not the least
+    curiosity as to the mechanics of the tricks, but asked for more and
+    still more, with the na&iuml;ve delight of children in the mysterious.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter Siner walked down the street with his Messianic impulse strong
+    upon him. He was in that stage of feeling toward his people where a
+    man's emotions take the color of religion. Now, as he approached the
+    crowd of negroes, he wondered what he could say, how he could transfer
+    to them the ideas and the emotion that lifted up his own heart.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As he drew nearer, his concern mounted to anxiety. Indeed, what could he
+    say? How could he present so grave a message? He was right among them
+    now. One of the negroes jostled him by striking around his body at
+    another negro. Peter stopped. His heart beat, and he had a queer
+    sensation of being operated by some power outside himself. Next moment
+    he heard himself saying in fairly normal tones:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Fellows, do you think we ought to be idling on the street corners like
+    this? We ought to be at work, don't you think?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The horse-play stopped at this amazing sentiment.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Whuffo, Peter?" asked a voice.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Because the whole object of our race nowadays is to gain the respect of
+    other races, and more particularly our own self-respect. We haven't it
+    now. The only way to get it is to work, work, work."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ef you feel lak you'd ought to go to wuck," suggested one astonished
+    hearer, "you done got my p'mission, black boy, to hit yo' natchel gait
+    to de fust job in sight."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter was hardly less surprised than his hearers at what he was saying.
+    He paid no attention to the interruption.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Fellows, it's the only way our colored people can get on and make the
+    most out of life. Persistent labor is the very breath of the soul, men;
+    it&mdash;it is." Here Peter caught an intimation of the whole flow of energy
+    through the universe, focusing in man and being transformed into mental
+    and moral values. And it suddenly occurred to him that the real worth of
+    any people was their efficiency in giving this flow of force moral and
+    spiritual forms. That is the end of man; that is what is prefigured when
+    a baby's hand reaches for the sun. But Peter considered his audience,
+    and his thought stammered on his tongue. The Persimmon, with his
+    protruding, half-asleep eyes, was saying:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I don' know, Peter, as I 's so partic'lar 'bout makin' de mos' out'n
+    dis worl'. You know de Bible say&mdash;hit say,"&mdash;here the Persimmon's voice
+    dropped a tone lower, in unconscious imitation of negro preachers,&mdash;"la-
+    ay not up yo' treasure on uth, wha moss do corrup', an' thieves break
+    th'ugh <i>an'</i> steal."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Came a general nodding and agreement of soft, blurry voices.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'At sho whut it say, black man!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Sho do!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Lawd God loves a nigger on a street corner same as He do a millionaire
+    in a six-cylinder, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Sho do, black man; but He's jes about de onlies' thing on uth 'at do."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, I don' know," came a troubled rejoinder. "Thaiuh 's de debbil,
+    ketchin' mo' niggers nowadays dan he do white men, I 'fo' Gawd
+    b'liebes."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, dat's because dey <i>is</i> so many mo' niggers dan dey is white
+    folks," put in a philosopher.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Whut you say 'bout dat, Brudder Peter?" inquired the Persimmon,
+    seriously. None of this discussion was either derision or burlesque.
+    None of the crowd had the slightest feeling that these questions were
+    not just as practical and important as the suggestion that they all go
+    to work.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When Peter realized how their ignorant and undisciplined thoughts flowed
+    off into absurdities, and that they were entirely unaware of it, it
+    brought a great depression to his heart. He held up a hand with an
+    earnestness that caught their vagrant attention.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Listen!" he pleaded. "Can't you see how much there is for us black
+    folks to do, and what little we have done?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Sho is a lot to do; we admits dat," said Bluegum Frakes. "But whut's de
+    use doin' hit ef we kin manage to shy roun' some o' dat wuck an' keep on
+    libin' anyhow, specially wid wages so high?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The question stopped Peter. Neither his own thoughts, nor any book that
+    he had ever read nor any lecture that he had heard ever attempted to
+    explain the enormous creative urge which is felt by every noble mind,
+    and which, indeed, is shared to some extent by every human creature. Put
+    to it like that, Siner concocted a sort of allegory, telling of a negro
+    who was shiftless in the summer and suffered want in the winter, and
+    applied it to the present high wage and to the low wage that was coming;
+    but in his heart Peter knew such utilitarianism was not the true reason
+    at all. Men do not weave tapestries to warm themselves, or build temples
+    to keep the rain away.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The brown man passed on around the corner, out of the faint warmth of
+    the sunshine and away from the empty and endless arguments which his
+    coming had provoked among the negroes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The futile ending of his first adventure surprised Peter. He walked
+    uncertainly up the business street of the village, hardly knowing where
+    to turn next.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cold weather had driven the merchants indoors, and the thoroughfare was
+    quite deserted except for a few hogs rooting among the refuse heaps
+    piled in front of the stores. It was not a pleasant sight, and it
+    repelled Peter all the more because he was accustomed to the antiseptic
+    look of a Northern city. He walked up to the third door from the corner,
+    when a buzz of voices brought him to a standstill and finally persuaded
+    him inside.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At the back end of a badly lighted store a circle of white men and boys
+    had formed around an old-fashioned, egg-shaped stove. Near by, on some
+    meal-bags, sat two negroes, one of whom wore a broad grin, the other, a
+    funny, sheepish look.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The white men were teasing the latter negro about having gone to jail
+    for selling a mortgaged cow. The men went about their fun-making
+    leisurely, knowing quite well the negro could not get angry or make any
+    retort or leave the store, all of these methods of self-defense being
+    ruled out by custom.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You must have forgot your cow was mortgaged, Bob."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No-o-o, suh; I&mdash;I&mdash;I didn't fuhgit," drawling his vowels to a
+    prodigious length.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Didn't you know you'd get into trouble?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No-o-o, suh."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Know it now, don't you?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ya-a-s, suh."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Have a good time in jail, Bob?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ya-a-s, suh. Shot cra-a-aps nearly all de time tull de jailer broke hit
+    up."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Wouldn't he let you shoot any more?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No-o-o, suh; not after he won all our money." Here Bob flung up his
+    head, poked out his lips like a bugle, and broke into a grotesque, "Hoo!
+    hoo! hoo!" It was such an absurd laugh, and Bob's tale had come to such
+    an absurd denouement, that the white men roared, and shuffled their feet
+    on the flared base of the stove. Some spat in or near a box filled with
+    sawdust, and betrayed other nervous signs of satisfaction. When a man so
+    spat, he stopped laughing abruptly, straightened his face, and stared
+    emptily at the rusty stove until further inquisition developed some
+    other preposterous escapade in Bob's jail career.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The merchant, looking up at one of these intermissions, saw Peter
+    standing at his counter. He came out of the circle and asked Peter what
+    he wanted. The mulatto bought a package of soda and went out.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The chill north wind smelled clean after the odors of the store. Peter
+    stood with his package of soda, breathing deeply, looking up and down
+    the street, wondering what to do next. Without much precision of
+    purpose, he walked diagonally across the street, northward toward a
+    large faded sign that read, "Killibrew's Grocery." A little later Peter
+    entered a big, rather clean store which smelled of spices, coffee, and a
+    faint dash of decayed potatoes. Mr. Killibrew himself, a big, rotund
+    man, with a round head of prematurely white hair, was visible in a
+    little glass office at the end of his store. Even through the glazed
+    partition Peter could see Mr. Killibrew smiling as he sat comfortably at
+    his desk. Indeed, the grocer's chief assets were a really expansive
+    friendliness and a pleasant, easily provoked laughter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He was fifty-two years old, and had been in the grocery business since
+    he was fifteen. He had never been to school at all, but had learned
+    bookkeeping, business mathematics, salesmanship, and the wisdom of the
+    market-place from his store, from other merchants, and from the drummers
+    who came every week with their samples and their worldly wisdom. These
+    drummers were, almost to a man, very sincere friends of Mr. Killibrew,
+    and not infrequently they would write the grocer from the city, or send
+    him telegrams, advising him to buy this or to unload that, according to
+    the exigencies of the market. As a result of this was very well off
+    indeed, and all because he was a friendly, agreeable sort of man.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The grocer heard Peter enter and started to come out of his office, when
+    Peter stopped him and asked if he might speak with him alone.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The white-haired man with the pink, good-natured face stood looking at
+    Peter with rather a questioning but pleasant expression.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, certainly, certainly." He turned back to the swivel-chair at his
+    desk, seated himself, and twisted about on Peter as he entered. Mr.
+    Killibrew did not offer Peter a seat,&mdash;that would have been an
+    infraction of Hooker's Bend custom,&mdash;but he sat leaning back, evidently
+    making up his mind to refuse Peter credit, which he fancied the mulatto
+    would ask for and yet do it pleasantly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I was wondering, Mr. Killibrew," began Peter feeling his way along, "I
+    was wondering if you would mind talking over a little matter with me.
+    It's considered a delicate subject, I believe, but I thought a frank
+    talk would help."
+</p>
+<p>
+    During the natural pauses of Peter's explanation Mr. Killibrew kept up a
+    genial series of nods and ejaculations.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Certainly, Peter. I don't see why, Peter. I'm sure it will help,
+    Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'd like to talk frankly about the relations of our two races in the
+    South, in Hooker's Bend."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The grocer stopped his running accompaniment of affirmations and looked
+    steadfastly at Peter. Presently he seemed to solve some question and
+    broke into a pleasant laugh.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now, Peter, if this is some political shenanigan, I must tell you I'm a
+    Democrat. Besides that, I don't care a straw about politics. I vote, and
+    that's all."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter put down the suspicion that he was on a political errand.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Not that at all, Mr. Killibrew. It's a question of the white race and
+    the black race. The particular feature I am working on is the wages paid
+    to cooks."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I didn't know you were a cook," interjected the grocer in surprise.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I am not."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Killibrew looked at Peter, thought intensely for a few moments, and
+    came to an unescapable conclusion.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You don't mean you've formed a cook's union here in Hooker's Bend,
+    Peter!" he cried, immensely amazed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Not at all. It's this," clarified Peter. "It may seem trivial, but it
+    illustrates the principle I'm trying to get at. Doesn't your cook carry
+    away cold food?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    It required perhaps four seconds for the merchant to stop his
+    speculations on what Peter had come for and adjust his mind to the
+    question.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, yes, I suppose so," he agreed, very much at sea. "I&mdash;I never
+    caught up with her." He laughed a pleasant, puzzled laugh. "Of course
+    she doesn't come around and show me what she's making off with. Why?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, it's this. Wouldn't you prefer to give your cook a certain cash
+    payment instead of having her taking uncertain amounts of your
+    foodstuffs and wearing apparel?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The merchant leaned forward in his chair.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Did old Becky Davis send you to me with any such proposition as that,
+    Peter?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No, not at all. But, Mr. Killibrew, wouldn't you like better and more
+    trustworthy servants as cooks, as farm-hands, chauffeurs, stable-boys?
+    You see, you and your children and your children's children are going to
+    have to depend on negro labor, as far as we can see, to the end of
+    time."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "We-e-ell, yes," admitted Mr. Killibrew, who was not accustomed to
+    considering the end of time.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Wouldn't it be better to have honest, self-respecting help than
+    dishonest help?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Certainly."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then let's think about cooks. How can one hope to rear an honest, self-
+    respecting citizenry as long as the mothers of the race are compelled to
+    resort to thievery to patch out an insufficient wage?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, I don't suppose niggers ever will be honest," admitted the grocer,
+    very frankly. "You naturally don't trust a nigger. If you credit one for
+    a dime, the next time he has any money he'll go trade somewhere else."
+    The grocer broke into his contagious laugh. "Do you know how I've built
+    up my business here, Peter? By never trusting a nigger." Mr. Killibrew
+    continued his pleased chuckle. "Yes, I get the whole cash trade of the
+    niggers in Hooker's Bend by never cheating one and never trusting one."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The grocer leaned back in his squeaking chair and looked out through the
+    glass partition, over the brightly colored packages that lined his
+    shelves from floor to ceiling. All that prosperity had come about
+    through a policy of honesty and distrust. It was something to be proud
+    of.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now, let me see," he proceeded, recurring pleasantly to what he
+    recalled of Peter's original proposition: "Aunt Becky sent you here to
+    tell me if I'd raise her pay, she'd stop stealin' and&mdash;and raise some
+    honest children." Mr. Killibrew threw back his head broke into loud,
+    jelly-like laughter. "Why, don't you know, Peter, she's an old liar. If
+    I gave her a hundred a week, she'd steal. And children! Why, the old
+    humbug! She's too old; she's had her crop. And, besides all that, I
+    don't mind what the old woman takes. It isn't much. She's a good old
+    darky, faithful as a dog." He arose from his swivel-chair briskly and
+    floated Peter out before him. "Tell her, if she wants a raise," he
+    concluded heartily, "and can't pinch enough out of my kitchen and the
+    two dollars I pay her&mdash;tell her to come to me, straight out, and I'll
+    give her more, and she can pinch more."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Killibrew moved down the aisle of his store between fragrant barrels
+    and boxes, laughing mellowly at old Aunt Becky's ruse, as he saw it. As
+    he turned Peter out, he invited him to come again when he needed
+    anything in the grocery line.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And he was so pleasant, hearty, and sincere in his friendliness toward
+    both Peter and old Aunt Becky that Peter, even amid the complete side-
+    tracking and derailing of his mission, decided that it ever he did have
+    occasion to purchase any groceries, he would do his trading at this
+    market ruled by an absolute honesty with, and a complete distrust in,
+    his race.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At the conclusion of the Killibrew interview Peter instinctively felt
+    that he had just about touched the norm of Hooker's Bend. The village
+    might contain men who would dive a little deeper into the race question
+    with Peter; assuredly, there would be hundreds who would not dive so
+    deep. Mr. Killibrew's attitude on the race question turned on how to
+    hold the negro patronage of the village to his grocery. It was not an
+    abstract question at all, but a concrete fact, which he had worked out
+    to his own satisfaction. With Mr. Killibrew, with all Hooker's Bend,
+    there was no negro question.
+</p>
+<a name="2HCH20"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XVII
+</h2>
+<p>
+    When Peter Siner started on his indefinite errand among the village
+    stores he believed it would require much tact and diplomacy to discuss
+    the race question without offense. To his surprise, no precaution was
+    necessary. Everybody agreed at once that the South would be benefited by
+    a more trustworthy labor, that if the negroes were trustworthy they
+    could be paid more; but nobody agreed that if negroes were paid more
+    they would become more trustworthy. The prevailing dictum was, A
+    nigger's a nigger.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As Peter came out into the shabby little street of Hooker's Bend
+    discouragement settled upon him. He felt as if he had come squarely
+    against some blank stone wall that no amount of talking could budge. The
+    black man would have to change his psychology or remain where he was, a
+    creature of poverty, hovels, and dirt; but amid such surroundings he
+    could not change his psychology.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The point of these unhappy conclusions somehow turned against Cissie
+    Dildine. The mulatto became aware that his whole crusade had been
+    undertaken in behalf of the octoroon. Everything the merchants said
+    against negroes became accusations against Cissie in a sharp personal
+    way. "A nigger is a nigger"; "A thief is a thief"; "She wouldn't quit
+    stealing if I paid her a hundred a week." Every stroke had fallen
+    squarely on Cissie's shoulders. A nigger, a thief; and she would never
+    be otherwise.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was all so hopeless, so unchangeable, that Peter walked down the
+    bleak street unutterably depressed There was nothing he could do. The
+    situation was static. It seemed best that he should go away North and
+    save his own skin. It was impossible to take Cissie with him. Perhaps in
+    time he would come to forget her, and in so doing he would forget the
+    pauperism and pettinesses of all the black folk of the South. Because
+    through Cissie Peter saw the whole negro race. She was flexuous and
+    passionate, kindly and loving, childish and na&iuml;vely wise; on occasion
+    she could falsify and steal, and in the depth of her Peter sensed a
+    profound capacity for fury and violence. For all her precise English,
+    she was untamed, perhaps untamable.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Cissie was a far cry from the sort of woman Peter imagined he wanted for
+    a mate; yet he knew that if he stayed on in Hooker's Bend, seeing her,
+    desiring her, with her luxury mocking the loneliness of the old Renfrew
+    manor, presently he would marry her. Already he had had his little
+    irrational moments when it seemed to him that Cissie herself was quite
+    fine and worthy and that her speculations were something foreign and did
+    not pertain to her at all.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He would better go North. It would be safer up there. No doubt he could
+    find another colored girl in the North. The thought of fondling any
+    other woman filled Peter with a sudden, sharp repulsion. However, Peter
+    was wise. He knew he would get over that in time.
+</p>
+<p>
+    With this plan in mind, Peter set out down the street, intending to
+    cross the Big Hill at the church, walk over to his mother's shack, and
+    pack his few belongings preparatory to going away.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was not a heroic retreat. The conversation which he had had with his
+    college friend Farquhar recurred to Peter. Farquhar had tried to
+    persuade Peter to remain North and take a position in a system of
+    garages out of Chicago.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You can do nothing in the South, Siner," assured Farquhar; "your
+    countrymen must stand on their own feet, just as you are doing."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter had argued the vast majority of the negroes had no chance, but
+    Farquhar pressed the point that Peter himself disproved his own
+    statement. At the time Peter felt there was an clench in the
+    Illinoisan's logic, but he was not skilful enough to analyze it. Now the
+    mulatto began to see that Farquhar was right. The negro question was a
+    matter of individual initiative. Critics forgot that a race was composed
+    of individual men.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter had an uneasy sense that this was exceedingly thin logic, a mere
+    smoke screen behind which he meant to retreat back up North. He walked
+    on down the poor village street, turning it over and over in his mind,
+    affirming it positively to himself, after the manner of uneasy
+    consciences.
+</p>
+<p>
+    An unusual stir among the negroes on Hobbett's corner caught Peter's
+    attention and broke into his chain of thought. Half a dozen negroes
+    stood on the corner, staring down toward the white church. A black boy
+    suddenly started running across the street, and disappeared among the
+    stores on the other side. Peter caught glimpses of him among the
+    wretched alleyways and vacant lots that lie east of Main Street. The boy
+    was still running toward Niggertown.
+</p>
+<p>
+    By this time Peter was just opposite the watchers on the corner. He
+    lifted his voice and asked them the matter, but at the moment they began
+    an excited talking, and no one heard him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jim Pink Staggs jerked off his fur cap, made a gesture, contorted his
+    long, black face into a caricature of fright, and came loping across the
+    street, looking back over his shoulder, mimicking a run for life His
+    mummery set his audience howling.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The buffoon would have collided with Peter, but the mulatto caught Jim
+    Pink by the arm and shoulder, brought him to a halt, and at the same
+    time helped him keep his feet.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To Peter's inquiry what was the matter, the black fellow whirled and
+    blared out loudly, for the sake of his audience:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'Fo' Gawd, nigger, I sho thought Mr. Bobbs had me!" and he writhed his
+    face into an idiotic grimace.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The audience reeled about in their mirth. Because with negroes, as with
+    white persons, two thirds of humor is in the reputation, and Jim Pink
+    was of prodigious repute.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter walked along with him patiently, because he knew that until they
+    were out of ear-shot of the crowd there was no way of getting a sensible
+    answer out of Jim Pink.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Where are you going?" he asked presently.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Thought I'd step over to Niggertown." Jim Pink's humorous air was still
+    upon him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What's doing over there? What were the boys raising such a hullabaloo
+    about?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Such me."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why did that boy go running across like that?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Jim Pink rolled his eyes on Peter with a peculiar look.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Reckon he mus' 'a' wanted to git on t'other side o' town."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter flattered the Punchinello by smiling a little.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Come, Jim Pink, what do you know?" he asked. The magician poked out his
+    huge lips.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Mr. Bobbs turn acrost by de church, over de Big Hill. Da' 's always a
+    ba-ad sign."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter's brief interest in the matter flickered out. Another arrest for
+    some niggerish peccadillo. The history of Niggertown was one long series
+    of petty offenses, petty raids, and petty punishments. Peter would be
+    glad to get well away from such a place.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Think I'll go North, Jim Pink," remarked Peter, chiefly to keep up a
+    friendly conversation with his companion.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Whut-chu goin' to do up thaiuh?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Take a position in a system of garages."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "A position is a job wid a white color on it," defined the minstrel.
+    "Whut you goin' to do wid Cissie?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter looked around at the foolish face.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "With Cissie?&mdash;Cissie Dildine?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Uh huh."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, what makes you think I'm going to do anything with Cissie?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "M-m, visitin' roun'." The fool flung his face into a grimace, and
+    dropped it as one might shake out a sack.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter watched the contortion uneasily.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What do you mean&mdash;visiting around?"
+</p>
+<blockquote>
+   "Diff'nt folks go visitin' roun';<br>
+    Some goes up an' some goes down."
+</blockquote>
+<p>
+    Apparently Jim Pink had merely quoted a few words from a poem he knew.
+    He stared at the green-black depth of the glade, which set in about
+    half-way up the hill they were climbing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Ef this weather don' ever break," he observed sagely, "we sho am in fuh
+    a dry spell."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter did not pursue the topic of the weather. He climbed the hill in
+    silence, wondering just what the buffoon meant. He suspected he was
+    hinting at Cissie's visit to his room. However, he did not dare ask any
+    questions or press the point in any manner, lest he commit himself.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The minstrel had succeeded in making Peter's walk very uncomfortable, as
+    somehow he always did. Peter went on thinking about the matter. If Jim
+    Pink knew of Cissie's visit, all Niggertown knew it. No woman's
+    reputation, nobody's shame or misery or even life, would stand between
+    Jim Pink and what he considered a joke. The buffoon was the crudest
+    thing in this world&mdash;a man who thought himself a wit.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter could imagine all the endless tweaks to Cissie's pride Niggertown
+    would give the octoroon. She had asked Peter to marry her and had been
+    refused. She had humbled herself for naught. That was the very tar of
+    shame. Peter knew that in the moral categories of Niggertown Cissie
+    would suffer more from such a rebuff than if she had lied or committed
+    theft and adultery every day in the calendar. She had been refused
+    marriage. All the folk-ways of Niggertown were utterly topsyturvy. It
+    was a crazy-house filled with the most grotesque moral measures.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It seemed to Peter as he entered the cedar-glade that he had lost all
+    sympathy with this people from which he had sprung. He looked upon them
+    as strange, incomprehensible beings, just as a man will forget his own
+    childhood and look upon children as strange, incomprehensible little
+    creatures. In the midst of his thoughts he heard himself saying to Jim
+    Pink:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I suppose it is as dusty as ever."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Dustier 'an ever," assured Jim Pink.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Apparently their conversation had recurred to the weather, after all.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A chill silence encompassed the glade. The path the negroes followed
+    wound this way and that among reddish boulders, between screens of
+    intergrown cedars, and over a bronze mat of needles. Their steps were
+    noiseless. The odor of the cedars and the temple-like stillness brought
+    to Peter's mind the night of his mother's death. It seemed to him a long
+    time since he had come running through the glade after a doctor, and
+    yet, by a queer distortion of his sense of time, his mother's death and
+    burial bulked in his past as if it had occurred yesterday.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There was no sound in the glade to disturb Peter's thoughts except a
+    murmur of human voices from some of the innumerable privacies of the
+    place, and the occasional chirp of a waxwing busy over clusters of
+    cedar-balls.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It had been five weeks and a day since Caroline died. Five weeks and a
+    day; his mother's death drifting away into the mystery and oblivion of
+    the past. Likewise, twenty-five years of his own life completed and
+    gone.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A procession of sad, wistful thoughts trailed through Peter's brain: his
+    mother, and Ida May, and now Cissie. It seemed to Peter that all any
+    woman had ever brought him was wistfulness and sadness. His mother had
+    been jealous, and instead of the great happiness he had expected, his
+    home life with her had turned out a series of small perplexities and
+    pains. Before that was Ida May, and now here was her younger sister.
+    Peter wondered if any man ever reached the peace and happiness
+    foreshadowed in his dream of a woman.
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    A voice calling his name checked Peter's stride mechanically, and caused
+    him to look about with the slight bewilderment of a man aroused from a
+    reverie.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At the first sound, however, Jim Pink became suddenly alert. He took
+    three strides ahead of Peter, and as he went he whispered over his
+    shoulder:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Beat it, nigger! beat it!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The mulatto recognized one of Jim Pink's endless stupid attempts at
+    comedy. It would be precisely Jim Pink's idea of a jest to give Peter a
+    little start. As the mulatto stood looking about among the cedars for
+    the person who had called his name, it amazed him that Jim Pink could be
+    so utterly insane; that he performed some buffoonery instantly, by
+    reflex action as it were, upon the slightest provocation. It was almost
+    a mania with Jim Pink; it verged on the pathological.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The clown, however, was pressing his joke. He was pretending great fear,
+    and was shouting out in his loose minstrel voice:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Hey, don' shoot down dis way, black man, tull I makes my exit!" And a
+    voice, rich with contempt, called back:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You needn't be skeered, you fool rabbit of a nigger!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter turned with a qualm. Quite close to him, and in another direction
+    from which he had been looking, stood Tump Pack. The ex-soldier looked
+    the worse for wear after his jail sentence. His uniform was frayed, and
+    over his face lay a grayish cast that marks negroes in bad condition. At
+    his side, attached by a belt and an elaborate shoulder holster, hung a
+    big army revolver, while on the greasy lapel of his coat was pinned his
+    military medal for exceptional bravery on the field of battle.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Been lookin' fuh you fuh some time, Peter," he stated grimly.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter considered the formidable figure with a queer sensation. He tried
+    to take Tump's appearance casually; he tried to maintain an air of
+    ordinariness.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Didn't know you were back."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yeah, I's back."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Have you&mdash;been looking for me?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yeah."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Didn't you know where I was staying?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Co'se I did; up 'mong de white folks. You know dey don' 'low no
+    shootin' an' killin' 'mong de white folks." He drew his pistol from the
+    holster with the address of an expert marksman.
+</p>
+<a name="image-7"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="birth07.png"
+alt="'naw Yuh Don't,' he Warned Sharply. 'you Turn Roun' An'
+March on to Niggertown'
+">
+<br>'Naw Yuh Don't,' He Warned Sharply. 'You Turn Roun' An'
+March on to Niggertown'</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    Peter stood, with a quickening pulse, studying his assailant. The glade,
+    the air, the sunshine, seemed suddenly drawn to a tension, likely to,
+    break into violent commotion. His abrupt danger brought Peter to a
+    feeling of lightness and power. A quiver went along his spine. His
+    nostrils widened unconsciously as he calculated a leap and a blow at
+    Tump's gun.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The soldier took a step backward, at the same time bringing the barrel
+    to a ready.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Naw you don't," he warned sharply. "You turn roun' an' march on to
+    Niggertown."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What for?" Peter still tried to be casual, but his voice held new
+    overtones.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Because, nigger, I means to drap you right on de Main Street o'
+    Niggertown, 'fo' all dem niggers whut's been a-raggin' me 'bout you an'
+    Cissie. I's gwine show dem fool niggers I don' take no fumi-diddles
+    off'n nobody."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Tump," gasped Jim Pink, in a husky voice, "you oughtn't shoot Peter; he
+    mammy jes daid."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'En she won' worry none. Turn roun', Peter, an' when I says, 'March,'
+    you march." He leveled his pistol. "'Tention! Rat about face! March!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter turned and moved off down the noiseless path, walking with the
+    stiff gait of a man who expects a terrific blow from behind at any
+    instant.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The mulatto walked twenty or more paces amid a confusion of self-
+    protective impulses. He thought of whirling on Tump even at this late
+    date. He thought of darting behind a cedar, but he knew the man behind
+    him was an expert shot, and something fundamental in the brown man
+    forbade his getting himself killed while running away. It was too
+    undignified a death.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Presently he surprised himself by calling over his shoulder, as a sort
+    of complaint:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "How came you with the pistol, Tump? Thought it was against the law to
+    carry one."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You kin ca'y 'em ef you don' keep 'em hid," explained the ex-soldier in
+    a wooden voice. "Mr. Bobbs tol' me dat when he guv my gun back."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The irony of the thing caught Peter, for the authorities to arrest Tump
+    not because he was trying to kill Peter, but because he went about his
+    first attempt in an illegal manner. For the first time in his life the
+    mulatto felt that contempt for a white man's technicalities that flavors
+    every negro's thoughts. Here for thirty days his life had been saved by
+    a technical law of the white man; at the end of the thirty days, by
+    another technical law, Tump was set at liberty and allowed to carry a
+    weapon, in a certain way, to murder him. It was grotesque; it was
+    absurd. It filled Peter with a sudden violent questioning of the whole
+    white r&eacute;gime. His thoughts danced along in peculiar excitement.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At the turn of the hill the trio came in sight of the squalid semicircle
+    of Niggertown. Here and there from a tumbledown chimney a feather of
+    pale wood smoke lifted into the chill sunshine. The sight of the houses
+    brought Peter a sharp realization that his life would end in the curving
+    street beneath him. A shock at the incomprehensible brevity of his life
+    rushed over him. Just to that street, just as far as the curve, and his
+    legs were swinging along, carrying him forward at an even gait.
+</p>
+<p>
+    All at once he began talking, arguing. He tried to speak at an ordinary
+    tempo, but his words kept edging on faster and faster:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Tump, I'm not going to marry Cissie Dildine."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I knows you ain't, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I mean, if you let me alone, I didn't mean to."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I ain't goin' to let you alone."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Tump, we had already decided not to marry."
+</p>
+<p>
+    After a short pause Tump said in a slightly different tone:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'Pears lak you don' haf to ma'y her&mdash;comin' to yo' room."
+</p>
+<p>
+    A queer sinking came over the mulatto. "Listen, Tump, I&mdash;we&mdash;in my room
+    &mdash;we simply talked, that's all. She came to tell me she was goin away.
+    I&mdash;I didn't harm her, Tump." Peter swallowed. He despaired of being
+    believed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    But his defense only infuriated the soldier. He suddenly broke into
+    violent profanity.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Hot damn you! shut yo black mouf! Whut I keer whut-chu done! You weaned
+    her away fum me. She won't speak to me! She won't look at me!" A sudden
+    insanity of rage seized Tump. He poured on his victim every oath and
+    obscenity he had raked out of the whole army.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Strangely enough, the gunman's outbreak brought a kind of relief to
+    Peter Siner. It exonerated him. He was not suspected of wronging Cissie;
+    or, rather, whether he had or had not wronged her made no difference to
+    Tump. Peter's crime consisted in mere being, in existing where Cissie
+    could see him and desire him rather than Tump. Why it calmed Peter to
+    know that Tump held no dishonorable charge against him the mulatto
+    himself could not have told. Tump's violence showed Peter the certainty
+    of his own death, and somehow it washed away the hope and the thought of
+    escape.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Half-way down the hill they entered the edge of Niggertown. The smell of
+    sties and stables came to them. Peter's thoughts moved here and there,
+    like the eyes of a little child glancing about as it is forced to leave
+    a pleasure-ground.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter knew that Jim Pink, who now made a sorry figure in their rear,
+    would one day give a buffoon's mimicry of this his walk to death. He
+    thought of Tump, who would have to serve a year or two in the Nashville
+    Penitentiary, for the murder of negroes is seldom severely punished. He
+    thought of Cissie. He was being murdered because Cissie desired him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And then Peter remembered the single bit of wisdom that his whole life
+    had taught him. It was this: no people can become civilized until the
+    woman has the power of choice among the males that sue for her hand. The
+    history of the white race shows the gradual increase of the woman's
+    power of choice. Among the yellow races, where this power is curtailed,
+    civilization is curtailed. It was this principle that exalted chivalry.
+    Upon it the white man has reared all his social fabric.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So deeply ingrained is it that almost every novel written by white men
+    revolves about some woman's choice of her mate being thwarted by power
+    or pride or wealth, but in every instance the rightness of the woman's
+    choice is finally justified. The burden of every song is love, true
+    love, enduring love, a woman's true and enduring love.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And in his moment of clairvoyance Peter saw that these songs and stories
+    were profoundly true. Against a woman's selectiveness no other social
+    force may count.
+</p>
+<p>
+    That was why his own race was weak and hopeless and helpless. The males
+    of his people were devoid of any such sentiment or self-repression. They
+    were men of the jungle, creatures of tusk and claw and loin. This very
+    act of violence against his person condemned his whole race.
+</p>
+<p>
+    These thoughts brought the mulatto an unspeakable sadness, not only for
+    his own particular death, but that this idea, this great redeeming
+    truth, which burned so brightly in his brain, would in another moment
+    flicker out, unrevealed, and be no more.
+</p>
+<a name="2HCH21"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XVIII
+</h2>
+<p>
+    The coughing and rattling of an old motor-car as it rounded the
+    Niggertown curve delayed Tump Pack's act of violence. Instinctively, the
+    three men waited for the machine to pass before Peter walked out into
+    the road. Next moment it appeared around the turn, moving slowly through
+    the dust and spreading a veritable fog behind it.
+</p>
+<p>
+    All three negroes recognized the first glimpse of the hood and top, for
+    there are only three or four cars in Hooker's Bend, and these are as
+    well known as the faces of their owners. This particular motor belonged
+    to Constable Bobbs, and the next moment the trio saw the ponderous body
+    of the officer at the wheel, and by his side a woman. As the machine
+    clacked toward them Peter felt a certain surprise to see that it was
+    Cissie Dildine.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The constable in the car scrutinized the black men, by the roadside in a
+    very peculiar way. As he came near, he leaned across Cissie and almost
+    eclipsed the girl. He eyed the trio with his perpetual menace of a grin
+    on his broad red face. His right hand, lying across Cissie's lap, held a
+    revolver. When closest he shouted above the clangor of his engine:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Now, none o' that, boys! None o' that! You'll prob'ly hit the gal if
+    you shoot, an' I'll pick you off lak three black skunks."
+</p>
+<p>
+    He brandished his revolver at them, but the gesture was barely seen, and
+    instantly concealed by the cloud; of dust following the motor. Next
+    moment it enveloped the negroes and hid them even from one another.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was only after Peter was lost in the dust-cloud that the mulatto
+    really divined what was meant by Cissie's strange appearance with the
+    constable, her chalky face, her frightened brown eyes. The significance
+    of the scene grew in his mind. He stood with eyes screwed to slits
+    staring into the apricot-colored dust in the direction of the vanishing
+    noise.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Presently Tump Pack's form outlined itself in the yellow obscurity,
+    groping toward Peter. He still held his pistol, but it swung at his
+    side. He called Peter's name in the strained voice of a man struggling
+    not to cough:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Peter&mdash;is Mr. Bobbs done&mdash;'rested Cissie?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter could hardly talk himself.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Don't know. Looks like it."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The two negroes stared at each other through the dust.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Fuh Gawd's sake! Cissie 'rested!" Tump began to cough. Then he wheezed:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Mine an' yo' little deal's off, Peter. You gotta he'p git her out."
+    Here he fell into a violent fit of coughing, and started groping his way
+    to the edge of the dust-cloud.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the rush of the moment the swift change in Peter's situation appeared
+    only natural. He followed Tump, so distressed by the dust and disturbed
+    over Cissie that he hardly thought of his peculiar position. The dust
+    pinched the upper part of his throat, stung his nose. Tears trickled
+    from his eyes, and he pressed his finger against his upper lip, trying
+    not to sneeze. He was still struggling against the sneeze when Tump
+    recovered his speech.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Wh-whut you reckon she done, Peter? She don' shoot craps, nor boot-
+    laig, nor&mdash;" He fell to coughing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter got out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Let's go&mdash;to the Dildine house," he said.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The two moved hurriedly through the thinning cloud, and presently came
+    to breathable air, where they could see the houses around them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I know she done somp'n; I know she done somp'n," chanted Tump, with the
+    melancholy cadence of his race. He shook his dusty head. "You ain't
+    never been in jail, is you, black man?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter said he had not.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Lawd! it ain't no place fuh a woman," declared Tump. "You dunno nothin'
+    'bout it, black man. It sho ain't no place fuh a woman."
+</p>
+<p>
+    A notion of an iron cage floated before Peter's mind. The two negroes
+    trudged on through the crescent side by side, their steps raising a
+    little trail of dust in the air behind them. Their faces and clothes
+    were of a uniform dust color. Streaks of mud marked the runnels of their
+    tears down their cheeks.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The shrubbery and weeds that grew alongside the negro thoroughfare were
+    quite dead. Even the little avenue of dwarf box was withered that led
+    from the gate to the door of the Dildine home. The two colored men
+    walked up the little path to the door, knocked, and waited on the steps
+    for the little skirmish of observation from behind the blinds. None
+    came. The worst had befallen the house; there was nothing to guard. The
+    door opened as soon as an inmate could reach it, and Vannie Dildine
+    stood before them.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The quadroon's eyes were red, and her face had the moist, slightly
+    swollen appearance that comes of protracted weeping. She looked so frail
+    and miserable that Peter instinctively stepped inside and took her arm
+    to assist her in the mere physical effort of standing.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What is the matter, Mrs. Dildine?" he asked in a shocked tone. "What's
+    happened to Cissie?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Vannie began weeping again with a faint gasping and a racking of her
+    flat chest.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It's&mdash;it's&mdash;O-o-oh, Peter!" She put an arm about him and began weeping
+    against him. He soothed her, patted her shoulder, at the same time
+    staring at the side of her head, wondering what could have dealt her
+    this blow.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Presently she steadied herself and began explaining in feeble little
+    phrases, sandwiched between sobs and gasps:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "She&mdash;tuk a brooch&mdash;Kep'&mdash;kep' layin' it roun' in&mdash;h-her way, th-that
+    young Sam Arkwright did,&mdash;a-an' finally she&mdash;she tuk hit. N-nen, when he
+    seen he h-had her, he said sh-sh-she 'd haf to d-do wh-whut he said, or
+    he'd sen' her to-to ja-a-il!" Vannie sobbed drearily for a few moments
+    on Peter's breast. "Sh-she did fuh a while: 'n 'en sh-she broke off wid
+    h-him, anyhow, an'&mdash;an' he swo' out a wa'nt an sont her to jail!" The
+    mother sobbed without comfort, and finally added: "Sh-she in a delicate
+    fix now, an' 'at jail goin' to be a gloomy place fuh Cissie."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The three negroes stood motionless in the dusty hallway, motionless save
+    for the racking of Vannie's sobs.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tump Pack stirred himself.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, we gotta git her out." His words trailed off. He stood wrinkling
+    his half-inch of brow. "I wonder would dey exchange pris'ners; wonder ef
+    I could go up an' serve out Cissie's term."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, Tump!" gasped the woman, "ef you only could!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I'll step an' see, Miss Vannie. 'At sho ain't no place fuh a nice gal
+    lak Cissie." Tump turned on his mission, evidently intending to walk to
+    Jonesboro and offer himself in the place of the prisoner.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter supported Vannie back into the poor living-room, and placed her in
+    the old rocking-chair before the empty hearth. There was where he had
+    sat the evening Cissie made her painful confession to him. Only now did
+    he realize the whole of what Cissie was trying to confess.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter Siner overtook Tump Pack a little way down the crescent, opposite
+    the Berry cabin. The thoroughfare was deserted, because the weather was
+    cold and the scantily clad children were indoors. However, from every
+    cabin came sound of laughing and romping, and now and then a youngster
+    darted through the cold from one hut to another.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It seemed to Peter Siner only a little while since he and Ida May were
+    skittering through wintry weather from one fire to another, with Cissie,
+    a wailing, wet-nosed little spoil-sport, trailing after them. And then,
+    with a wheeling of the years, they were scattered everywhere.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As the negroes passed the Berry cabin, Nan Berry came out with an old
+    shawl around her bristling spikes. She stopped the two men and drew them
+    to her gate with a gesture.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Wha you gwine?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Jonesbuh."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Whut you goin' do 'bout po-o-o' Cissie?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Goin' to see ef the sheriff won' take me 'stid o' Cissie."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Tha's right," said Nan, nodding solemnly. "I hopes he will. You is mo'
+    used to it, Tump."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yeah, an' 'at jail sho ain't no place fuh a nice gal lak Cissie."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Sho ain't," agreed Nan.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter interrupted to say he was sure the sheriff would not exchange.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The hopes of his listeners fell.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Weh-ul," dragged out Nan, with a long face, "of co'se now it's lak dis:
+    ef Cissie goin' to stay in dat ja-ul, she's goin' to need some mo'
+    clo'es 'cep'n whut she's got on,&mdash;specially lak she is."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tump stared down the swing of the crescent.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "'Fo' Gawd, dis sho don' seem lak hit's right to me," he said.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Nan let herself out at the rickety gate. "You niggers wait heah tull I
+    runs up to Miss Vannie's an' git some o' Cissie's clo'es fuh you to tote
+    her."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tump objected.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Jail ain't no place fuh clean clo'es. She jes better serve out her term
+    lak she is, an' wash up when she gits th'ugh."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "You fool nigger!" snapped Nan. "She kain't serve out her term lak she
+    is!"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Da' 's so," said Tump.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The three stood silent, Nan and Tump lost in blankness, trying to think
+    of something to do for Cissie. Finally Nan said:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I heah she done commit gran' larceny, an' they goin' sen' her to de
+    pen."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Whut is gran' larceny?" asked Tump.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "It's takin' mo' at one time an' de white folks 'speck you to take,"
+    defined the woman. "Well, I'll go git her clo'es." She hurried off up
+    the crescent.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter and Tump waited in the Berry cabin for Nan's return. Outside, the
+    Berry cabin was the usual clapboard-roofed, weather-stained structure;
+    inside, it was dark, windowless, and strong with the odor of black folk.
+    Some children were playing around the hearth, roasting chestnuts. Their
+    elders sat in a circle of decrepit chairs. It was so dark that when
+    Peter first entered he could not make out the little group, but he soon
+    recognized their voices: Parson Ranson, Wince Washington, Jerry
+    Dillihay, and all of the Berry family.
+</p>
+<p>
+    They were talking of Cissie, of course. They hoped Cissie wouldn't
+    really be sent to the penitentiary, that the white folks would let her
+    out in time for her to have her child at home. Parson Ranson thought it
+    would be bad luck for a child to be born in jail.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Wince Washington, who had been in jail a number of times, suggested that
+    they bail Cissie out by signing their names to a paper. He had been set
+    free by this means once or twice.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Sally, Nan's little sister, observed tartly that if Cissie hadn't acted
+    so, she wouldn't have been in jail.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Don' speak lak dat uv dem as is in trouble, Sally," reproved old Parson
+    Ranson, solemnly; "anybody can say 'Ef.'"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Sho am de troof," agreed Jerry Dillihay.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Sho am, black man." The conversation drifted into the endless
+    moralizing of their race, but it held no criticism or condemnation of
+    Cissie. From the tone of the negroes one would have thought some
+    impersonal disaster had overtaken her. Every one was planning how to
+    help Cissie, how to make her present state more endurable. They were the
+    black folk, the unfortunate of the earth, and the pride of righteousness
+    is only to the well placed and the untempted.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Presently Nan came back with a bundle of Cissie's clothes. Tump took the
+    bundle of dainty lingerie, the intimate garments of the woman he loved,
+    and set forth on his quixotic errand. He tied it to his shoulder-holster
+    and set out. Peter went a little of the way with him. It was almost dusk
+    when they started. The chill of approaching night stung the men's faces.
+    As they walked past the footpath that led over the Big Hill, three
+    pistol-shots from the glade announced that the boot-leggers had opened
+    business for the night.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tump paused and shivered. He said it was a cold night. He thought he
+    would like to get a kick of "white mule" to put a little heart in him.
+    It was a long walk to Jonesboro. He hesitated a moment, then turned off
+    the road around the crescent for the path through the glade.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A thought to dissuade Tump from drinking the fiery "singlings" of the
+    moonshiners crossed Peters mind, but he put it aside. Tump was a habitu&eacute;
+    of the glade. All the physiological arguments upon which Peter could
+    base an argument were far beyond the ex-soldier's comprehension. So Tump
+    turned off through the dark trees. Peter watched him until all he could
+    see was the white blur of Cissie's underwear swinging against his
+    holster.
+</p>
+<p>
+    After Tump's disappearance, Peter stood for several minutes thinking.
+    His brief crusade into Niggertown had ended in a situation far outside
+    of his volition. That morning he had started out with some vague idea of
+    taking Niggertown in his hands and molding it in accordance with his
+    white ideas; but Niggertown had taken Peter into its hands, had
+    threatened his life, had administered to him profound mental and moral
+    shocks, and now had dropped him, like some bit of waste, with his face
+    set over the Big Hill for white town.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As Peter stood there it seemed to him there was something symbolic in
+    his attitude. He was no longer of the black world; he was of the white.
+    He did not understand his people; they eluded him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He belonged to the white world; not to the village across the hill, but
+    to the North. Nothing now prevented him from going North and taking the
+    position with Farquhar. Cissie Dildine was impossible for him now.
+    Niggertown was immovable, at least for him. He was no Washington to lead
+    his people to a loftier plane. In fact, Peter began to suspect that he
+    was no leader at all. He saw now that his initial success with the Sons
+    and Daughters of Benevolence had been effected merely by the aura of his
+    college training. After his first misstep he had never rehabilitated
+    himself. He perhaps had a dash of the artistic in him, and the power to
+    mold ideas often confuses itself subjectively with the power to mold
+    human beings. In reality he did not even understand the people he
+    assumed to mold. A suspicion came to him that under the given conditions
+    their ways were more rational than his own.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As for Cissie Dildine, his duty by the girl, his queer protective
+    passion for her&mdash;all that was surely past now. After her lapse from all
+    decency there was no reason why he should spend another thought on her.
+    He would go North to Chicago.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The last of the twilight was fading in swift, visible gradations of
+    light. The cedars, the cabins, and the hill faded in pulse-beats of
+    darkness. Above the Big Hill the last ember of day smoldered against a
+    green-blue infinity. Here and there a star pricked the dome with a
+    wintry brilliance.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Then, somehow, the thought of Cissie looking out on that chilly sky
+    through iron bars tightened Peter's throat. He caught himself up sharply
+    for his emotion. He began a vague defense of the white man's laws on
+    grounds as cold and impersonal as the winter evening. Laws, customs, and
+    conventions were for the strengthening of men, to seed the select, to
+    winnow the weak. It was white logic, applied firmly, as by a white man.
+    But somehow the stars multiplied and kept Cissie's image before Peter&mdash;a
+    cold, frightened girl, harassed with coming motherhood, peering at those
+    chill, distant lights out of the blackness of a jail.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The mulatto decided to spend the night in his mother's cabin. He would
+    do his packing, and be ready for the down-river boat in the morning. He
+    found his way to his own gate in the darkness. He lifted it around,
+    entered, and walked to his door. When he tried to open it, he found some
+    one had bored holes through the shutter and the jamb and had wired it
+    shut.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter struck a match to see just what had been done. The flame displayed
+    a small sheet tacked on the door. He spent two matches investigating it.
+    It was a notice of levy, posted by the constable in an action of debt
+    brought against the estate of Caroline Siner by Henry Hooker. The owner
+    of the estate and the public in general were warned against removing
+    anything whatsoever from the premises under penalty exacted by the law
+    governing such offenses. Then Peter untwisted the wire and entered.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter searched about and found the tiny brass night-lamp which his
+    mother always had used. The larger glass-bowled lamp was gone. The
+    interior of the cabin was clammy from cold and foul from long lack of
+    airing. In the corner his mother's old four-poster loomed in the
+    shadows, but he could see some of its covers had been taken. He passed
+    into the kitchen with a notion of building a fire and eating a bite, but
+    everything edible had been abstracted. Even one of the lids of the old
+    step-stove was gone. Most of the pans and kettles had disappeared, but
+    the pretty old Dutch sugar-bowl remained on a bare paper-covered shelf.
+    Negro-like, whatever person or persons who had ransacked Peter's home
+    considered the sugar-bowl too fine to take. Or they may have thought
+    that Peter would want this bowl for a keepsake, and with that queer
+    compassion that permeates a negro's worst moments they allowed it to
+    remain. And Peter knew if he raised an outcry about his losses, much of
+    the property would be surreptitiously restored, or perhaps his neighbors
+    would bring back his things and say they had found them. They would help
+    him as best they could, just as they of the crescent would help Cissie
+    as best they could, and would receive her back as one of them when she
+    and her baby were finally released from jail.
+</p>
+<p>
+    They were a queer people. They were a people who would never get on well
+    and do well. They lacked the steel-like edge that the white man
+    achieves. By virtue of his hardness, a white man makes his very laws and
+    virtues instruments to crush and mulct his fellow-man; but negroes are
+    so softened by untoward streaks of sympathy that they lose the very uses
+    of their crimes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The depression of the whole day settled upon Peter with the deepening
+    night. He held his poor light above his head and picked his way to his
+    own room. After the magnificence of the Renfrew manor, it had contracted
+    to a grimy little box lined with yellowed papers. His books were still
+    intact, but Henry Hooker would get them as part payment on the Dillihay
+    place, which Henry owned. On his little table still lay the pile of old
+    examination papers, lists of incoherent questions which somebody
+    somewhere imagined formed a test of human ability to meet and answer the
+    mysterious searchings of life.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter was familiar with the books; many of the questions he had learned
+    by rote, but the night and the crescent, and the thought of a pregnant
+    girl caged in the blackness of a jail filled his soul with a great
+    melancholy query to which he could find no answer.
+</p>
+<a name="2HCH22"><!-- H2 anchor --></a>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>
+    CHAPTER XIX
+</h2>
+<p>
+    Two voices talking, interrupting each other with ejaculations, after the
+    fashion of negroes under excitement, aroused Peter Siner from his sleep.
+    He caught the words: "He did! Tump did! The jailer did! 'Fo' God! black
+    man, whut's Cissie doin'?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    Overtones of shock, even of horror, in the two voices brought Peter wide
+    awake the moment he opened his eyes. He sat up suddenly in his bed,
+    remained perfectly still, listening with his mouth open. The voices,
+    however, were passing. The words became indistinct, then relapsed into
+    that bubbling monotone of human voices at a distance, and presently
+    ceased.
+</p>
+<p>
+    These fragmentary phrases, however, feathered with consternation, filled
+    Peter with vague premonitions. He whirled his legs out of bed and began
+    drawing on his clothes. When he was up and into the crescent, however,
+    nobody was in sight. He stood breathing the chill, damp air, blinking
+    his eyes. Lack of his cold bath made him feel chilly and lethargic. He
+    wriggled his shoulders and considered going back, after all, and having
+    his splash. Just then he saw the Persimmon coming around the crescent.
+    Peter called to the roustabout and asked about Tump Pack.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Persimmon looked at Peter with his half-asleep, protruding eyeballs.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Don' you know 'bout Tump Pack already, Mister Siner?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "No." Peter was astonished at the formality of the "Mr. Siner."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Then is you 'spectin' somp'n 'bout him?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Why, no, but I was asleep in there a moment ago, and somebody came
+    along talking about Tump and Cissie. They&mdash;they aren't married, are
+    they?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, no-o, no-o-o, no-o-o-o-o." The Persimmon waggled his bullet head
+    slowly from side to side. "I heared Tump got into a lil trouble wid de
+    jailer las' night."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Serious?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "I dunno." The Persimmon closed one of his protruding yellow eyes.
+    "Owin' to whut you call se'ius; maybe whut I call se'ius wouldn't be
+    se'ius to you at all; 'n 'en maybe whut you call se'ius would be ve'y
+    insince'ius to Tump." The roustabout's philosophy, which consisted in a
+    monotonous recasting of a given proposition, trickled on and on in the
+    cold wind. After a while it fizzled out to nothing at all, and the
+    Persimmon asked in a queer manner: "Did you give Tump some women's
+    clo'es, Peter?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was such an odd question that at first Peter was at loss; then he
+    recalled Nan Berry's despatching Cissie some underwear. He explained
+    this to the Persimmon, and tacked on a curious, "Why?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, nothin'; nothin' 'tall. Ever'body say you a mighty long-haided
+    nigger. Jim Pink he tell us 'bout Tump Pack marchin' you 'roun' wid a
+    gun. I sho don' want you ever git mad at me, Mister Siner. Man wid a gun
+    an' you turn yo' long haid on him an' blow him away wid a wad o' women's
+    clo'es. I sho don' want you ever cross yo' fingers at me, Mister Siner."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter stared at the grotesque, bullet-headed roustabout. "Persimmon," he
+    said uneasily, "what in the world are you talking about?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    The Persimmon smiled a sickly, white-toothed smile. "Jim Pink say yo'
+    aidjucation is a flivver. I say, 'Jim Pink, no nigger don' go off an'
+    study fo' yeahs in college whut 'n he comes back an' kin throw some kin'
+    uv a hoodoo over us fool niggers whut ain't got no brains. Now, Tump wid
+    a gun, an' you wid jes ordina'y women's clo'es! 'Fo' Gawd, aidjucation
+    is a great thing; sho is a great thing." The Persimmon gave Peter an
+    apprehensive wink and moved on.
+</p>
+<p>
+    There was no use trying to extract information from the Persimmon unless
+    he was minded to give it. His talk would merely become vaguer and
+    vaguer. Peter watched him go, then turned and attempted to throw the
+    whole matter off his mind by assuming a certain brisk Northern mood. He
+    must pack, get ready for the down-river gasolene launch. The doings of
+    Tump Pack and Cissie Dildine were, after all, nothing to him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    He started inside, when the levy notice on the door again met his eyes.
+    He paused, read it over once more, and decided that he must go over the
+    hill to the Planter's Bank and get Henry Hooker's permission to remove
+    certain small personal belongings that he wanted to take with him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The mere clear-cut decision to go invigorated Peter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Some of the energy that always filled him during his college days in
+    Boston seemed to come to him now from the mere thought of the North.
+    Soon he would be in the midst of it, moving briskly, talking to wide-
+    awake men to whom a slightly unusual English word would not form a
+    stumbling-block to conversation. He set out down the crescent and across
+    the Big Hill at a swinging stride. He was glad to get away.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Beyond the white church on the other side of the hill he heard a motor
+    coming in on the Jonesboro road. Presently he saw a battered car moving
+    around the long swing of the pike, spewing a trail of dust down the
+    wind. Its clacking became prodigious.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The mulatto was just entering that indefinite stretch of thoroughfare
+    where a country road becomes a village street when there came a wail of
+    brakes behind him and he looked around.
+</p>
+<p>
+    It was Dawson Bobbs's car. The fat man now slowed up not far from the
+    mulatto and called to him.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yes, sir," said Peter.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Dawson bobbed his fat head backward and upward in a signal for Peter to
+    approach. It held the casualness of one certain to be obeyed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Although Peter had done no crime, nor had even harbored a criminal
+    intention, a trickle of apprehension went through him at Bobbs's nod. He
+    recalled Jim Pink's saying that it was bad luck to see the constable. He
+    walked up to the shuddering motor and stood about three feet from the
+    running-board.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The officer bit on a sliver of toothpick that he held in his thin lips.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Accident up Jonesboro las' night, Peter."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "What was it, Mr. Bobbs?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Tump Pack got killed."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter continued looking fixedly at Mr. Bobbs's broad red face. The dusty
+    road beneath him seemed to give a little dip. He repeated the
+    information emptily, trying to orient himself to this sudden change in
+    his whole mental horizon.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The officer was looking at Peter fixedly with his chill slits of eyes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yeah; trying to make a jail delivery."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The two men continued looking at each other, one from the road, the
+    other from the motor. The flow of Peter's thoughts seemed to divide. The
+    greater part was occupied with Tump Pack. Peter could vision the
+    formidable ex-soldier lying dead in Jonesboro jail, with his little
+    congressional medal on his breast. Some lighter portion of his mind
+    nickered about here and there on trivial things. He observed a little
+    hole rusted in the running-board of the motor. He noticed that the
+    officer's eyes were just the same chill, washed blue as the winter sky
+    above his head. He remembered a tale that, before electrocution became a
+    law in Tennessee the county sheriff's nerve had failed him at a hanging,
+    and the constable Dawson Bobbs had sprung the drop. There was something
+    terrible about the fat man. He would do anything, absolutely anything,
+    that came to his hands in the way of legal sewage.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In the midst of these thoughts Peter heard himself saying.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He&mdash;was trying to get Cissie out?"
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Yep."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "He&mdash;must have been drunk."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Oh, yeah."
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Bobbs sat studying the mulatto. As he studied him he said slowly:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Some of 'em say he was disguised as a woman. Others say he had some
+    women's clothes along, ready to put on. Now, me and the sheriff knowed
+    Tump Pack purty well, Peter, and we knowed that nigger never in the
+    worl' would 'a' thought up sich a plan by hisself."
+</p>
+<p>
+    He sat looking at Peter so interrogatively that the mulatto began, in a
+    strained, earnest voice, telling the constable precisely what had
+    happened in regard to the clothes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Mr. Bobbs sat listening impassively, moving his toothpick up and down
+    from one side to the other of his small, thin-lipped mouth. At last he
+    nodded.
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Well, I guess that's about the way of it. I didn't exactly understand
+    the women's clothes business,&mdash;damn' fool disguise,&mdash;but we figgered it
+    might pop into the head of a' edjucated nigger." He sucked his teeth,
+    reflectively. "Peter," he said at last, "seems to me, if I was you, I'd
+    drift on away from this town. The niggers around here ain't strong for
+    you now; some say you're a hoodoo; some say this an' some that. The
+    white folks don't exactly like you trying to get up a cook's union. It's
+    your right to do that if you want to, of course, but this is a mighty
+    small city to have unions and things. The fact is, it ain't a big enough
+    place for a nigger of yore ability, Peter. I b'lieve, if I was you, I'd
+    jes drift on some'eres else."
+</p>
+<p>
+    The officer tipped up his toothpick so that it lifted his upper lip in a
+    little v-shaped opening and exposed a strong, yellowish tooth. At the
+    moment his machine started slowly forward. It gave him the appearance of
+    accidentally rolling off while immersed in deep thought.
+</p>
+<hr>
+<p>
+    The death of Tump Pack moved Peter with a sense of strange pathos. He
+    always remembered Tump tramping away through the night to carry Cissie
+    some underclothes and, if possible, to take her place in jail. At the
+    foundation of Tump's being lay a faithfulness and devotion to Cissie
+    that reached the heights of a dog's. And yet, he might have deserted
+    her, he would probably have beaten her, and he most certainly would have
+    betrayed her many, many times. It was inexplicable.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Now that Tump was dead, the mantle of his fidelity somehow seemed to
+    fall on Peter. For some reason Peter felt that he should assume Tump's
+    place as Cissie Dildine's husband and protector. Had Tump lived, Peter
+    might have gone North in peace, if not in happiness. Now such a journey,
+    without Cissie, had become impossible. He had a feeling that it would
+    not be right.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As for the disgrace of marrying such a woman as Cissie Dildine, Peter
+    slowly gave that idea up. The "worthinesses" and "disgraces" implicit in
+    Harvard atmosphere, which Peter had spent four years of his life
+    imbibing, slowly melted away in the air of Niggertown. What was
+    honorable there, what was disgraceful there, somehow changed its color
+    here.
+</p>
+<p>
+    By virtue of this change Peter felt intuitively that Cissie Dildine was
+    neither disgraced by her arrest nor soiled by her physical condition.
+    Somehow she seemed just as "nice" a girl, just as "good" a girl, as ever
+    she was before. Moreover, every other darky in Niggertown held these
+    same instinctive beliefs. Had it not been for that, Peter would have
+    thought it was his passion pleading for the girl, justifying itself by a
+    grotesque morality, as passions often do. But this was not the correct
+    solution. The sentiment was enigmatic. Peter puzzled over it time and
+    time again as he waited in Hooker's Bend for the outcome of Cissie's
+    trial.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The octoroon's imprisonment came to an end on the third day after Tump's
+    death. Sam Arkwright's parents had not known of their son's legal
+    proceedings, and Mr. Arkwright immediately quashed the warrant, and
+    hushed up the unfortunate matter as best he could. Young Sam was
+    suddenly sent away from home to college, as the best step in the
+    circumstances. And so the wishes of the adolescent in the cedar-glade
+    came queerly to pass, even if Peter did withhold any grave, mature
+    advice on the subject which he may have possessed.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Naturally, there was much mirth among the men of Hooker's Bend and much
+    virulence among the women over the peculiar conditions under which young
+    Sam made his pilgrimage in pursuit of wisdom and morals and the right
+    conduct of life. And life being problematic and uncertain as it is, and
+    prone to wind about in the strangest way, no one may say with certitude
+    that young Sam did not make a promising start.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Certainly, over the affair the Knights of the Round Table launched many
+    a quip and jest, but that simply proved the fineness of their sentiments
+    toward a certain delicate human relation which forms mankind's single
+    awful approach to the creative and the holy.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Tump Pack became almost a mythical figure in Niggertown. Jim Pink Staggs
+    composed a saga relating the soldier's exploits in France, his assault
+    on the jail to liberate Cissie, and his death.
+</p>
+<p>
+    In his songs&mdash;and Jim Pink had composed a good many&mdash;the minstrel
+    instinctively avoided humor. He always improvised them to the sobbing of
+    a guitar, and they were as invariably sad as the poetry of adolescents.
+    It was called "Tump Pack's Lament." The negroes of Hooker's Bend learned
+    it from Jim Pink, and with them it drifted up and down the three great
+    American rivers, and now it is sung by the roustabouts, stevedores, and
+    underlings of our strange black American world.
+</p>
+<p>
+    This song commemorating Tump Pack's bravery and faithfulness to his love
+    may very well take the place of the Congressional medal which,
+    unfortunately, was lost on the night the soldier was killed. Between the
+    two, there is little doubt that the accolade of fame bestowed in the
+    buffoon's simple melody is more vital and enduring than that accorded by
+    special act of the Congress of the United States of America.
+</p>
+<p>
+    When Cissie Dildine returned from jail, she and her mother arranged the
+    Dildine-Siner wedding as nearly according to white standards in similar
+    circumstances as they could conceive. They agreed that it should be a
+    simple, quiet home wedding. However, as every soul in Niggertown, a
+    number of colored friends in Jonesboro, and a contingent from up-river
+    villages meant to attend, it became necessary to hold the service in the
+    church.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The officiating minister was not Parson Ranson after all, but a Reverend
+    Cleotus Haidus, the presiding elder of that circuit of the Afro-American
+    Methodist Church, whose duties happened to call him to Hooker's Bend
+    that day. So, notwithstanding Cissie's efforts at simplicity, the
+    wedding, after all, was resolved into an affair.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Once, in one of her moments of clairvoyance, Cissie said to Peter:
+</p>
+<p>
+    "Our trouble is, Peter, we are trying to mix what I have learned in
+    Nashville and what you have learned in Boston with what we both feel in
+    Hooker's Bend. I&mdash;I'm almost ashamed to say it, but I don't really feel
+    sad and plaintive at all, Peter. I feel glad, gloriously glad. Oh, my
+    dear, dear Peter!" and she flung her arms around Peter's neck and held
+    him with all her might against her ripening bosom.
+</p>
+<p>
+    To Cissie her theft, her jail sentence, her pregnancy, were nothing more
+    than if she had taken a sip of water. However, with the imitativeness of
+    her race and the histrionic ability of her sex, she appeared pensive and
+    subdued during the elaborate double-ring ceremony performed by the
+    Reverend Cleotus Haidus. Nobody in the packed church knew how
+    tremendously Cissie's heart was beating except Peter, who held her hand.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The ethical engine that Peter had patiently builded in Harvard almost
+    ceased to function in this weird morality of Niggertown. Whether he were
+    doing right or doing wrong, Peter could not determine. He lost all his
+    moorings. At times he felt himself walking according to the ethnological
+    law, which is the Harvard way of saying walking according to the will of
+    God; but at other times he felt party to some unpardonable obscenity. So
+    deeply was he disturbed that out of the dregs of his mind floated up old
+    bits of the Scriptures that he was unaware of possessing: "There is a
+    way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of
+    death." And Peter wondered if he were not in that way.
+</p>
+<a name="image-8"><!--IMG--></a>
+<center>
+<img src="birth08.png"
+alt="The Bridal Couple Embarked for Cairo
+">
+<br>The Bridal Couple Embarked for Cairo
+</center>
+<!--IMAGE END-->
+<p>
+    The bridal couple embarked for Cairo on the <i>Red Cloud</i>, a packet
+    in the Dubuque, Ohio, and Tennessee River trade. Peter and Cissie were
+    not allowed to walk up the main stairway into the passengers' cabin, but
+    were required to pick their way along the boiler-deck, through the
+    stench of freight, lumber, live stock and sleeping roustabouts. Then
+    they went through the heat and steam of the engine-room up a small
+    companionway that led through the toilet, on to the rear guard of the
+    main deck, and thence back to a little cuddy behind the main saloon
+    called the chambermaid's cabin.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The chambermaid's cabin was filled with the perpetual odor of hot soap-
+    suds, soiled laundry, and the broader smell of steam and the boat's
+    machinery. The little place trembled night and day, for the steamer's
+    engines were just beneath them, and immediately behind them thundered
+    the great stern-wheel of the packet. A single square window in the end
+    of the chambermaid's cabin looked out on the wheel, but at all times,
+    except when the wind was blowing from just the right quarter, this
+    window was deluged with a veritable Niagara of water. The continual
+    shake of the cabin, the creak of the rudder-beam working to and fro, the
+    watery thunder of the wheel, and the solemn rumble of the engines made
+    conversation impossible until the travelers grew accustomed to the
+    noises. Still, Cissie found it pleasant. She liked to sit and look out
+    into the main saloon, with its interminable gilded scrolls extending
+    away up the long cabin, a suave perspective. She liked to watch the
+    white passengers dine&mdash;the white napery, the bouquets, the endless
+    tables all filled with diners; some swathed in napkins from chin to
+    waistband, others less completely protected. It gave Cissie a certain
+    tang of triumph to smile at the swathed ones and to think that she knew
+    better than that.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At night a negro string-band played for the white excursionists to
+    dance, and Cissie would sit, with glowing eyes, clenching Peter's hand,
+    every fiber of her asway to the music, and it seemed as if her heart
+    would go mad. All these inhibitions, all this spreading before her of
+    forbidden joys, did not daunt her delight. She reveled in them by
+    propinquity.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The chambermaid was a Mrs. Antolia Higgman, a strong, full-bodied
+    <i>caf&eacute;-au-lait</i> negress. She was a very sensible woman, and during
+    her work on the boat she had picked up a Northern accent and a number of
+    little mannerisms from the Chicago and St. Louis excursionists, who made
+    ten-day round trips from Dubuque to Florence, Alabama, and return. When
+    Mrs. Higgman was not running errands for the women passengers, she was
+    working at her perpetual laundering.
+</p>
+<p>
+    At first Peter was a little uneasy as to how Mrs. Higgman would treat
+    Cissie, but she turned out a good-hearted woman, and did everything she
+    could to make the young wife comfortable. It soon became clear that Mrs.
+    Higgman knew the whole situation, for one day she said to Cissie in her
+    odd dialect, burred with Yankeeish "r's" and "ing's."
+</p>
+<p>
+    "These river-r towns, Mrs. Siner-r, are jest like one big village, with
+    the river-r for its Main Street. I know ever-r'thang that goes on,
+    through the cabin-boys an' cooks, an'&mdash;an'&mdash;you cerrtainly ar-re a dear-
+    r, Mrs. Siner-r," and thereupon, quite unexpectedly, she kissed Cissie.
+</p>
+<p>
+    So on about the second day down the river Cissie dropped her saddened
+    manner and became frankly, freely, and riotously happy. After the
+    fashion of village negresses, she insisted on helping Mrs. Higgman with
+    her work, and, incidentally, she cultivated Mrs. Higgman's Northern
+    accent. When the chambermaid was out on her errands and Cissie found a
+    moment alone with Peter, she would tweak his ear or pull his cheek and
+    provoke him to kiss her. Indeed, it was all the hot, shuddering little
+    laundry-room could do to contain the gay and bubbling Cissie.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter thought and thought, resignedly now, but persistently, how this
+    strange happiness that belonged to them both could be. He was content,
+    yet he felt he ought not to be content. He thought there must be
+    something base in himself, yet he felt that there was not. He drank the
+    wine of his honeymoon marveling.
+</p>
+<p>
+    On the morning before the <i>Red Cloud</i> entered the port of Cairo
+    Mrs. Higgman was out of the cabin, and Peter stood at the little square
+    window, with his arm about Cissie's waist, looking out to the rear of
+    the steamer. A strong east wind blew the spray away from the glass, and
+    Peter could see the huge wheel covered with a waterfall thundering
+    beneath him. Back of the wheel stretched a long row of even waves and
+    troughs. Every seventh or eighth wave tumbled over on itself in a swash
+    of foam. These flashing stern waves strung far up the river. On each
+    side of the great waterway stretched the flat shores of Kentucky and
+    Ohio. Here and there over the broad clay-colored water moved other
+    boats&mdash;tow-boats, a string of government auto-barges, a snag-boat,
+    another packet.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter gave up his question. The curves of Cissie's form in his arm held
+    a sweetness and a restfulness that her maidenhood had never promised. He
+    felt so deeply sure of his happiness that it seemed strange to him that
+    he could not aline his emotions and his mind.
+</p>
+<p>
+    As Peter stood staring up the Ohio River, it occurred to him that
+    perhaps, in some queer way, the morals of black folk were not the morals
+    of white folk; perhaps the laws that bound one race were not the laws
+    that bound the other. It might be that white anathemas were black
+    blessings. Peter thought along this line peacefully for several minutes.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And finally he concluded that, after all, morals and conventions, right
+    and wrong, are merely those precepts that a race have practised and
+    found good in its evolution. Morals are the training rules that keep a
+    people fit. It might very well be that one moral r&eacute;gime is applicable to
+    one race, and quite another to another.
+</p>
+<p>
+    The single object of all morals is racial welfare, the racial integrity,
+    the breeding of strong children to perpetuate the species. If the black
+    race possess a more exuberant vitality than some other race, then the
+    black would not be forced to practise so severe a vital economy as some
+    less virile folk. Racial morals are simply a question of having and
+    spending within safety limits.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Peter knew that for years white men had held a prejudice against
+    marrying widows. This is utterly without grounds except for one reason:
+    the first born of a woman is the lustiest. Among the still weaker Aryans
+    of India the widows burn themselves. Among certain South Sea Islanders
+    only the first-born may live and mate; all other children are slain.
+    Among nearly every white race marriage lines are strictly drawn, and the
+    tendency is to have few children to a family, to conserve the precious
+    vital impulse. So strong is this feeling of birth control that to-day
+    nearly all American white women are ashamed of large families. This
+    shame is the beginning of a convention; the convention may harden into a
+    cult, a law, or a religion.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And here is the amazing part of morals. Morals are always directed
+    toward one particular race, but the individual members of that race
+    always feel that their brand of morals does and should apply to all the
+    peoples of the earth; so one has the spectacle of nations sending out
+    missionaries and battle-ships to teach and enforce their particular
+    folk-ways. Another queer thing is that whereas the end of morals is
+    designed solely for the betterment of the race, and is entirely
+    regardless of the person, to the conscience of the person morals are
+    always translated as something that binds him personally, that will
+    shame him or honor him personally not only for the brief span of this
+    worldly life, but through an eternity to come. To him, his particular
+    code, surrounded by all the sanctions of custom, law, and religion,
+    appears earth-embracing, hell-deep, and heaven-piercing, and any human
+    creature who follows any other code appears fatally wicked, utterly
+    shameless, and ineluctably lost.
+</p>
+<p>
+    And yet there is no such thing as absolute morals. Morals are as
+    transitory as the sheen on a blackbird's wing; they change perpetually
+    with the necessities of the race. Any people with an abounding vitality
+    will naturally practise customs which a less vital people must shun.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Morals are nothing more than the engines controlling the stream of
+    energy that propel a race on its course. All engines are not alike, nor
+    are all races bound for the same port.
+</p>
+<p>
+    Here Peter Siner made the amazing discovery that although he had spent
+    four years in Harvard, he had come out, just as he went in, a negro.
+</p>
+<p>
+    A great joy came over him. He took Cissie whole-heartedly in his arms
+    and kissed again and again the deep crimson of her lips. His brain and
+    his heart were together at last. As he stood looking out at the window,
+    pressing Cissie to him, he wondered, when he reached Chicago, if he
+    could ever make Farquhar understand.<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Birthright, by T.S. Stribling
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@@ -0,0 +1,9065 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Birthright, by T.S. Stribling
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Birthright
+       A Novel
+
+Author: T.S. Stribling
+
+Release Date: January 7, 2004 [EBook #10621]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BIRTHRIGHT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Robert Shimmin and PG Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "Yes, Cissie, I understand now"]
+
+
+
+
+                               BIRTHRIGHT
+
+                                A NOVEL
+
+                           BY T.S. STRIBLING
+
+
+                             Illustrated by
+                              F. Luis Mora
+
+
+                                  1922
+
+
+
+
+                              TO MY MOTHER
+
+                         AMELIA WAITS STRIBLING
+
+
+
+
+                         LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+"Yes, Cissie, I understand now"
+
+Peter recognized the white aprons and the swords and spears of the
+Knights and Ladies of Tabor
+
+Up and down its street flows the slow negro life of the village
+
+In the Siner cabin old Caroline Siner berated her boy
+
+The old gentleman turned around at last
+
+"You-you mean you want m-me--to go with you, Cissie?" he stammered
+
+"Naw yuh don't," he warned sharply. "You turn roun' an' march on to
+Niggertown"
+
+The bridal couple embarked for Cairo
+
+
+
+
+
+                               BIRTHRIGHT
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER I
+
+
+At Cairo, Illinois, the Pullman-car conductor asked Peter Siner to take
+his suitcase and traveling-bag and pass forward into the Jim Crow car.
+The request came as a sort of surprise to the negro. During Peter
+Siner's four years in Harvard the segregation of black folk on Southern
+railroads had become blurred and reminiscent in his mind; now it was
+fetched back into the sharp distinction of the present instant. With a
+certain sense of strangeness, Siner picked up his bags, and saw his own
+form, in the car mirrors, walking down the length of the sleeper. He
+moved on through the dining-car, where a few hours before he had had
+dinner and talked with two white men, one an Oregon apple-grower, the
+other a Wisconsin paper-manufacturer. The Wisconsin man had furnished
+cigars, and the three had sat and smoked in the drawing-room, indeed,
+had discussed this very point; and now it was upon him.
+
+At the door of the dining-car stood the porter of his Pullman, a negro
+like himself, and Peter mechanically gave him fifty cents. The porter
+accepted it silently, without offering the amenities of his whisk-broom
+and shoe-brush, and Peter passed on forward.
+
+Beyond the dining-car and Pullmans stretched twelve day-coaches filled
+with less-opulent white travelers in all degrees of sleepiness and
+dishabille from having sat up all night. The thirteenth coach was the
+Jim Crow car. Framed in a conspicuous place beside the entrance of the
+car was a copy of the Kentucky state ordinance setting this coach apart
+from the remainder of the train for the purposes therein provided.
+
+The Jim Crow car was not exactly shabby, but it was unkept. It was half
+filled with travelers of Peter's own color, and these passengers were
+rather more noisy than those in the white coaches. Conversation was not
+restrained to the undertones one heard in the other day-coaches or the
+Pullmans. Near the entrance of the car two negroes in soldiers' uniforms
+had turned a seat over to face the door, and now they sat talking loudly
+and laughing the loose laugh of the half intoxicated as they watched the
+inflow of negro passengers coming out of the white cars.
+
+The windows of the Jim Crow car were shut, and already it had become
+noisome. The close air was faintly barbed with the peculiar, penetrating
+odor of dark, sweating skins. For four years Peter Siner had not known
+that odor. Now it came to him not so much offensively as with a queer
+quality of intimacy and reminiscence. The tall, carefully tailored negro
+spread his wide nostrils, vacillating whether to sniff it out with
+disfavor or to admit it for the sudden mental associations it evoked.
+
+It was a faint, pungent smell that played in the back of his nose and
+somehow reminded him of his mother, Caroline Siner, a thick-bodied black
+woman whom he remembered as always bending over a wash-tub. This was
+only one unit of a complex. The odor was also connected with negro
+protracted meetings in Hooker's Bend, and the Harvard man remembered a
+lanky black preacher waving long arms and wailing of hell-fire, to the
+chanted groans of his dark congregation; and he, Peter Siner, had
+groaned with the others. Peter had known this odor in the press-room of
+Tennessee cotton-gins, over a river packet's boilers, where he and other
+roustabouts were bedded, in bunk-houses in the woods. It also recalled a
+certain octoroon girl named Ida May, and an intimacy with her which it
+still moved and saddened Peter to think of. Indeed, it resurrected
+innumerable vignettes of his life in the negro village in Hooker's Bend;
+it was linked with innumerable emotions, this pungent, unforgetable odor
+that filled the Jim Crow car.
+
+Somehow the odor had a queer effect of appearing to push his
+conversation with the two white Northern men in the drawing-room back to
+a distance, an indefinable distance of both space and time.
+
+The negro put his suitcase under the seat, hung his overcoat on the
+hook, and placed his hand-bag in the rack overhead; then with some
+difficulty he opened a window and sat down by it.
+
+A stir of travelers in the Cairo station drifted into the car. Against a
+broad murmur of hurrying feet, moving trucks, and talking there stood
+out the thin, flat voice of a Southern white girl calling good-by to
+some one on the train. Peter could see her waving a bright parasol and
+tiptoeing. A sandwich boy hurried past, shrilling his wares. Siner
+leaned out, with fifteen cents, and signaled to him. The urchin
+hesitated, and was about to reach up one of his wrapped parcels, when a
+peremptory voice shouted at him from a lower car. With a sort of start
+the lad deserted Siner and went trotting down to his white customer. A
+moment later the train bell began ringing, and the Dixie Flier puffed
+deliberately out of the Cairo station and moved across the Ohio bridge
+into the South.
+
+Half an hour later the blue-grass fields of Kentucky were spinning
+outside of the window in a vast green whirlpool. The distant trees and
+houses moved forward with the train, while the foreground, with its
+telegraph poles, its culverts, section-houses, and shrubbery, rushed
+backward in a blur. Now and then into the Jim Crow window whipped a
+blast of coal smoke and hot cinders, for the engine was only two cars
+ahead.
+
+Peter Siner looked out at the interminable spin of the landscape with a
+certain wistfulness. He was coming back into the South, into his own
+country. Here for generations his forebears had toiled endlessly and
+fruitlessly, yet the fat green fields hurtling past him told with what
+skill and patience their black hands had labored.
+
+The negro shrugged away such thoughts, and with a certain effort
+replaced them with the constructive idea that was bringing him South
+once more. It was a very simple idea. Siner was returning to his native
+village in Tennessee to teach school. He planned to begin his work with
+the ordinary public school at Hooker's Bend, but, in the back of his
+head, he hoped eventually to develop an institution after the plan of
+Tuskeegee or the Hampton Institute in Virginia.
+
+To do what he had in mind, he must obtain aid from white sources, and
+now, as he traveled southward, he began conning in his mind the white
+men and white women he knew in Hooker's Bend. He wanted first of all to
+secure possession of a small tract of land which he knew adjoined the
+negro school-house over on the east side of the village.
+
+Before the negro's mind the different villagers passed in review with
+that peculiar intimacy of vision that servants always have of their
+masters. Indeed, no white Southerner knows his own village so minutely
+as does any member of its colored population. The colored villagers see
+the whites off their guard and just as they are, and that is an attitude
+in which no one looks his best. The negroes might be called the black
+recording angels of the South. If what they know should be shouted aloud
+in any Southern town, its social life would disintegrate. Yet it is a
+strange fact that gossip seldom penetrates from the one race to the
+other.
+
+So Peter Siner sat in the Jim Crow car musing over half a dozen
+villagers in Hooker's Bend. He thought of them in a curious way.
+Although he was now a B.A. of Harvard University, and although he knew
+that not a soul in the little river village, unless it was old Captain
+Renfrew, could construe a line of Greek and that scarcely two had ever
+traveled farther north than Cincinnati, still, as Peter recalled their
+names and foibles, he involuntarily felt that he was telling over a roll
+of the mighty. The white villagers came marching through his mind as
+beings austere, and the very cranks and quirks of their characters
+somehow held that austerity. There were the Brownell sisters, two old
+maids, Molly and Patti, who lived in a big brick house on the hill.
+Peter remembered that Miss Molly Brownell always doled out to his
+mother, at Monday's washday dinner, exactly one biscuit less than the
+old negress wanted to eat, and she always paid her in old clothes. Peter
+remembered, a dozen times in his life, his mother coming home and
+wondering in an impersonal way how it was that Miss Molly Brownell could
+skimp every meal she ate at the big house by exactly one biscuit. It was
+Miss Brownell's thin-lipped boast that she understood negroes. She had
+told Peter so several times when, as a lad, he went up to the big house
+on errands. Peter Siner considered this remembrance without the faintest
+feeling of humor, and mentally removed Miss Molly Brownell from his list
+of possible subscribers. Yet, he recalled, the whole Brownell estate had
+been reared on negro labor.
+
+Then there was Henry Hooker, cashier of the village bank. Peter knew
+that the banker subscribed liberally to foreign missions; indeed, at the
+cashier's behest, the white church of Hooker's Bend kept a paid
+missionary on the upper Congo. But the banker had sold some village lots
+to the negroes, and in two instances, where a streak of commercial
+phosphate had been discovered on the properties, the lots had reverted
+to the Hooker estate. There had been in the deed something concerning a
+mineral reservation that the negro purchasers knew nothing about until
+the phosphate was discovered. The whole matter had been perfectly legal.
+
+A hand shook Siner's shoulder and interrupted his review. Peter turned,
+and caught an alcoholic breath over his shoulder, and the blurred voice
+of a Southern negro called out above the rumble of the car and the roar
+of the engine:
+
+"'Fo' Gawd, ef dis ain't Peter Siner I's been lookin' at de las' twenty
+miles, an' not knowin' him wid sich skeniptious clo'es on! Wha you fum,
+nigger?"
+
+Siner took the enthusiastic hand offered him and studied the heavily
+set, powerful man bending over the seat. He was in a soldier's uniform,
+and his broad nutmeg-colored face and hot black eyes brought Peter a
+vague sense of familiarity; but he never would have identified his
+impression had he not observed on the breast of the soldier's uniform
+the Congressional military medal for bravery on the field of battle. Its
+glint furnished Peter the necessary clew. He remembered his mother's
+writing him something about Tump Pack going to France and getting
+"crowned" before the army. He had puzzled a long time over what she
+meant by "crowned" before he guessed her meaning. Now the medal aided
+Peter in reconstructing out of this big umber-colored giant the rather
+spindling Tump Pack he had known in Hooker's Bend.
+
+Siner was greatly surprised, and his heart warmed at the sight of his
+old playmate.
+
+"What have you been doing to yourself, Tump?" he cried, laughing, and
+shaking the big hand in sudden warmth. "You used to be the size of a
+dime in a jewelry store."
+
+"Been in 'e army, nigger, wha I's been fed," said the grinning brown
+man, delightedly. "I sho is picked up, ain't I?"
+
+"And what are you doing here in Cairo?"
+
+"Tryin' to bridle a lil white mule." Mr. Pack winked a whisky-brightened
+eye jovially and touched his coat to indicate that some of the "white
+mule" was in his pocket and had not been drunk.
+
+"How'd you get here?"
+
+"Wucked my way down on de St. Louis packet an' got paid off at Padjo
+[Paducah, Kentucky]; 'n 'en I thought I'd come on down heah an' roll
+some bones. Been hittin' 'em two days now, an' I sho come putty nigh
+bein' cleaned; but I put up lil Joe heah, an' won 'em all back, 'n 'en
+some." He touched the medal on his coat, winked again, slapped Siner on
+the leg, and burst into loud laughter.
+
+Peter was momentarily shocked. He made a place on the seat for his
+friend to sit. "You don't mean you put up your medal on a crap game,
+Tump?"
+
+"Sho do, black man." Pack became soberer. "Dat's one o' de great
+benefits o' bein' dec'rated. Dey ain't a son uv a gun on de river whut
+kin win lil Joe; dey all tried it."
+
+A moment's reflection told Peter how simple and natural it was for Pack
+to prize his military medal as a good-luck piece to be used as a last
+resort in crap games. He watched Tump stroke the face of his medal with
+his fingers.
+
+"My mother wrote me; about your getting it, Tump. I was glad to hear
+it."
+
+The brown man nodded, and stared down at the bit of gold on his barrel-
+like chest.
+
+"Yas-suh, dat 'uz guv to me fuh bravery. You know whut a skeery lil
+nigger I wuz roun' Hooker's Ben'; well, de sahgeant tuk me an' he drill
+ever' bit o' dat right out 'n me. He gimme a baynit an' learned me to
+stob dummies wid it over at Camp Oglethorpe, ontil he felt lak I had de
+heart to stob anything; 'n' 'en he sont me acrost. I had to git a new
+pair breeches ever' three weeks, I growed so fas'." Here he broke out
+into his big loose laugh again, and renewed the alcoholic scent around
+Peter.
+
+"And you made good?"
+
+"Sho did, black man, an', 'fo' Gawd, I 'serve a medal ef any man ever
+did. Dey gimme dish-heah fuh stobbin fo' white men wid a baynit. 'Fo'
+Gawd, nigger, I never felt so quare in all my born days as when I wuz a-
+jobbin' de livers o' dem white men lak de sahgeant tol' me to." Tump
+shook his head, bewildered, and after a moment added, "Yas-suh, I never
+wuz mo' surprised in all my life dan when I got dis medal fuh stobbin'
+fo' white men."
+
+Peter Siner looked through the Jim Crow window at the vast rotation of
+the Kentucky landscape on which his forebears had toiled; presently he
+added soberly:
+
+"You were fighting for your country, Tump. It was war then; you were
+fighting for your country."
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+At Jackson, Tennessee, the two negroes were forced to spend the night
+between trains. Tump Pack piloted Peter Siner to a negro cafe where they
+could eat, and later they searched out a negro lodging-house on Gate
+Street where they could sleep. It was a grimy, smelly place, with its
+own odor spiked by a phosphate-reducing plant two blocks distant. The
+paper on the wall of the room Peter slept in looked scrofulous. There
+was no window, and Peter's four-years regime of open windows and fresh-
+air sleep was broken. He arranged his clothing for the night so it would
+come in contact with nothing in the room but a chair back. He felt dull
+next morning, and could not bring himself either to shave or bathe in
+the place, but got out and hunted up a negro barber-shop furnished with
+one greasy red-plush barber-chair.
+
+A few hours later the two negroes journeyed on down to Perryville,
+Tennessee, a village on the Tennessee River where they took a gasolene
+launch up to Hooker's Bend. The launch was about fifty feet long and had
+two cabins, a colored cabin in front of, and a white cabin behind, the
+engine-room.
+
+This unremitting insistence on his color, this continual shunting him
+into obscure and filthy ways, gradually gave Peter a loathly sensation.
+It increased the unwashed feeling that followed his lack of a morning
+bath. The impression grew upon him that he was being handled with tongs,
+along back-alley routes; that he and his race were something to be kept
+out of sight as much as possible, as careful housekeepers manoeuver
+their slops.
+
+At Perryville a number of passengers boarded the up-river boat; two or
+three drummers; a yellowed old hill woman returning to her Wayne County
+home; a red-headed peanut-buyer; a well-groomed white girl in a tailor
+suit; a youngish man barely on the right side of middle age who seemed
+to be attending her; and some negro girls with lunches. The passengers
+trailed from the railroad station down the river bank through a slush of
+mud, for the river had just fallen and had left a layer of liquid mud to
+a height of about twenty feet all along the littoral. The passengers
+picked their way down carefully, stepping into one another's tracks in
+the effort not to ruin their shoes. The drummers grumbled. The youngish
+man piloted the girl down, holding her hand, although both could have
+managed better by themselves.
+
+Following the passengers came the trunks and grips on a truck. A negro
+deck-hand, the truck-driver, and the white master of the launch shoved
+aboard the big sample trunks of the drummers with grunts, profanity, and
+much stamping of mud. Presently, without the formality of bell or
+whistle, the launch clacked away from the landing and stood up the wide,
+muddy river.
+
+The river itself was monotonous and depressing. It was perhaps half a
+mile wide, with flat, willowed mud banks on one side and low shelves of
+stratified limestone on the other.
+
+Trading-points lay at ten- or fifteen-mile intervals along the great
+waterway. The typical landing was a dilapidated shed of a store half
+covered with tin tobacco signs and ancient circus posters. Usually, only
+one man met the launch at each landing, the merchant, a democrat in his
+shirt-sleeves and without a tie. His voice was always a flat, weary
+drawl, but his eyes, wrinkled against the sun, usually held the
+shrewdness of those who make their living out of two-penny trades.
+
+At each place the red-headed peanut-buyer slogged up the muddy bank and
+bargained for the merchant's peanuts, to be shipped on the down-river
+trip of the first St. Louis packet. The loneliness of the scene embraced
+the trading-points, the river, and the little gasolene launch struggling
+against the muddy current. It permeated the passengers, and was a
+finishing touch to Peter Siner's melancholy.
+
+The launch clacked on and on interminably. Sometimes it seemed to make
+no headway at all against the heavy, silty current. Tump Pack, the white
+captain, and the negro engineer began a game of craps in the negro
+cabin. Presently, two of the white drummers came in from the white cabin
+and began betting on the throws. The game was listless. The master of
+the launch pointed out places along the shores where wildcat stills were
+located. The crap-shooters, negro and white, squatted in a circle on the
+cabin floor, snapping their fingers and calling their points
+monotonously. One of the negro girls in the negro cabin took an apple
+out of her lunch sack and began eating it, holding it in her palm after
+the fashion of negroes rather than in her fingers, as is the custom of
+white women.
+
+Both doors of the engine-room were open, and Peter Siner could see
+through into the white cabin. The old hill woman was dozing in her
+chair, her bonnet bobbing to each stroke of the engines. The youngish
+man and the girl were engaged in some sort of intimate lovers' dispute.
+When the engines stopped at one of the landings, Peter discovered she
+was trying to pay him what he had spent on getting her baggage trucked
+down at Perryville. The girl kept pressing a bill into the man's hand,
+and he avoided receiving the money. They kept up the play for sake of
+occasional contacts.
+
+When the launch came in sight of Hooker's Bend toward the middle of the
+afternoon, Peter Siner experienced one of the profoundest surprises of
+his life. Somehow, all through his college days he had remembered
+Hooker's Bend as a proud town with important stores and unapproachable
+white residences. Now he saw a skum of negro cabins, high piles of
+lumber, a sawmill, and an ice-factory. Behind that, on a little rise,
+stood the old Brownell manor, maintaining a certain shabby dignity in a
+grove of oaks. Behind and westward from the negro shacks and lumber-
+piles ranged the village stores, their roofs just visible over the top
+of the bank. Moored to the shore, lay the wharf-boat in weathered greens
+and yellows. As a background for the whole scene rose the dark-green
+height of what was called the "Big Hill," an eminence that separated the
+negro village on the east from the white village on the west. The hill
+itself held no houses, but appeared a solid green-black with cedars.
+
+The ensemble was merely another lonely spot on the south bank of the
+great somnolent river. It looked dead, deserted, a typical river town,
+unprodded even by the hoot of a jerk-water railroad.
+
+As the launch chortled toward the wharf, Peter Siner stood trying to
+orient himself to this unexpected and amazing minifying of Hooker's
+Bend. He had left a metropolis; he was coming back to a tumble-down
+village. Yet nothing was changed. Even the two scraggly locust-trees
+that clung perilously to the brink of the river bank still held their
+toe-hold among the strata of limestone.
+
+The negro deck-hand came out and pumped the hand-power whistle in three
+long discordant blasts. Then a queer thing happened. The whistle was
+answered by a faint strain of music. A little later the passengers saw a
+line of negroes come marching down the river bank to the wharf-boat.
+They marched in military order, and from afar Peter recognized the white
+aprons and the swords and spears of the Knights and Ladies of Tabor, a
+colored burial association.
+
+Siner wondered what had brought out the Knights and Ladies of Tabor. The
+singing and the drumming gradually grew upon the air. The passengers in
+the white cabin, came out on the guards at this unexpected fanfare. As
+soon as the white travelers saw the marching negroes, they began joking
+about what caused the demonstration. The captain of the launch thought
+he knew, and began an oath, but stopped it out of deference to the girl
+in the tailor suit. He said it was a dead nigger the society was going
+to ship up to Savannah.
+
+The girl in the tailor suit was much amused. She said the darkies looked
+like a string of caricatures marching down the river bank. Peter noticed
+her Northern accent, and fancied she was coming to Hooker's Bend to
+teach school.
+
+One of the drummers turned to another.
+
+"Did you ever hear Bob Taylor's yarn about Uncle 'Rastus's funeral?
+Funniest thing Bob ever got off." He proceeded to tell it.
+
+Every one on the launch was laughing except the captain, who was
+swearing quietly; but the line of negroes marched on down to the wharf-
+boat with the unshakable dignity of black folk in an important position.
+They came singing an old negro spiritual. The women's sopranos thrilled
+up in high, weird phrasing against an organ-like background of male
+voices.
+
+But the black men carried no coffin, and suddenly it occurred to Peter
+Siner that perhaps this celebration was given in honor of his own home-
+coming. The mulatto's heart beat a trifle faster as he began planning a
+suitable response to this ovation.
+
+Sure enough, the singing ranks disappeared behind the wharf-boat, and a
+minute later came marching around the stern and lined up on the outer
+guard of the vessel. The skinny, grizzly-headed negro commander held up
+his sword, and the Knights and Ladies of Tabor fell silent.
+
+The master of the launch tossed his head-line to the wharf-boat, and
+yelled for one of the negroes to make it fast. One did. Then the
+commandant with the sword began his address, but it was not directed to
+Peter. He said:
+
+[Illustration: Peter recognized the white aprons and the swords and
+spears of the Knights and Ladies of Tabor]
+
+"Brudder Tump Pack, we, de Hooker's Ben' lodge uv de Knights an' Ladies
+uv Tabor, welcome you back to yo' native town. We is proud uv you, a
+colored man, who brings back de highes' crown uv bravery dis Newnighted
+States has in its power to bestow.
+
+"Two yeahs ago, Brudder Tump, we seen you marchin' away fum Hooker's
+Ben' wid thirteen udder boys, white an' colored, all marchin' away
+togedder. Fo' uv them boys is already back home; three, we heah, is on
+de way back, but six uv yo' brave comrades, Brudder Pack, is sleepin'
+now in France, an' ain't never goin' to come home no mo'. When we honors
+you, we honors them all, de libin' an' de daid, de white an' de black,
+who fought togedder fuh one country, fuh one flag."
+
+Gasps, sobs from the line of black folk, interrupted the speaker. Just
+then a shriveled old negress gave a scream, and came running and half
+stumbling out of the line, holding out her arms to the barrel-chested
+soldier on the gang-plank. She seized him and began shrieking:
+
+"Bless Gawd! my son's done come home! Praise de Lawd! Bless His holy
+name!" Here her laudation broke into sobbing and choking and laughing,
+and she squeezed herself to her son.
+
+Tump patted her bony black form.
+
+"I's heah, Mammy," he stammered uncertainly. "I's come back, Mammy."
+
+Half a dozen other negroes caught the joyful hysteria. They began a
+religious shouting, clapping their hands, flinging up their arms,
+shrieking.
+
+One of the drummers grunted:
+
+"Good God! all this over a nigger getting back!"
+
+At the extreme end of the dark line a tall cream-colored girl wept
+silently. As Peter Siner stood blinking his eyes, he saw the octoroon's
+shoulders and breasts shake from the sobs, which her white blood
+repressed to silence.
+
+A certain sympathy for her grief and its suppression kept Peter's eyes
+on the young woman, and then, with the queer effect of one picture
+melting into another, the strange girl's face assumed familiar curves
+and softnesses, and he was looking at Ida May.
+
+A quiver traveled deliberately over Peter from his crisp black hair to
+the soles of his feet. He started toward her impulsively.
+
+At that moment one of the drummers picked up his grip, and started down
+the gang-plank, and with its leathern bulk pressed Tump Pack and his
+mother out of his path. He moved on to the shore through the negroes,
+who divided at his approach. The captain of the launch saw that other of
+his white passengers were becoming impatient, and he shouted for the
+darkies to move aside and not to block the gangway. The youngish man
+drew the girl in the tailor suit close to him and started through with
+her. Peter heard him say, "They won't hurt you, Miss Negley." And Miss
+Negley, in the brisk nasal intonation of a Northern woman, replied: "Oh,
+I'm not afraid. We waste a lot of sympathy on them back home, but when
+you see them--"
+
+At that moment Peter heard a cry in his ears and felt arms thrown about
+his neck. He looked down and saw his mother, Caroline Siner, looking up
+into his face and weeping with the general emotion of the negroes and
+this joy of her own. Caroline had changed since Peter last saw her. Her
+eyes were a little more wrinkled, her kinky hair was thinner and very
+gray.
+
+Something warm and melting moved in Peter Siner's breast. He caressed
+his mother and murmured incoherently, as had Tump Pack. Presently the
+master of the launch came by, and touched the old negress, not ungently,
+with the end of a spike-pole.
+
+"You'll have to move, Aunt Ca'line," he said. "We're goin' to get the
+freight off now."
+
+The black woman paused in her weeping. "Yes, Mass' Bob," she said, and
+she and Peter moved off of the launch onto the wharf-boat.
+
+The Knights and Ladies of Tabor were already up the river bank with
+their hero. Peter and his mother were left alone. Now they walked around
+the guards of the wharf-boat to the bank, holding each other's arms
+closely. As they went, Peter kept looking down at his old black mother,
+with a growing tenderness. She was so worn and heavy! He recognized the
+very dress she wore, an old black silk which she had "washed out" for
+Miss Patti Brownell when he was a boy. It had been then, it was now, her
+best dress. During the years the old negress had registered her
+increasing bulk by letting out seams and putting in panels. Some of the
+panels did not agree with the original fabric either in color or in
+texture and now the seams were stretching again and threatening a rip.
+Peter's own immaculate clothes reproached him, and he wondered for the
+hundredth, or for the thousandth time how his mother had obtained
+certain remittances which she had forwarded him during his college
+years.
+
+As Peter and his mother crept up the bank of the river, stopping
+occasionally to let the old negress rest, his impression of the meanness
+and shabbiness of the whole village grew. From the top of the bank the
+single business street ran straight back from the river. It was stony in
+places, muddy in places, strewn with goods-boxes, broken planking,
+excelsior, and straw that had been used for packing. Charred rubbish-
+piles lay in front of every store, which the clerks had swept out and
+attempted to burn. Hogs roamed the thoroughfare, picking up decaying
+fruit and parings, and nosing tin cans that had been thrown out by the
+merchants. The stores that Peter had once looked upon as show-places
+were poor two-story brick or frame buildings, defiled by time and wear
+and weather. The white merchants were coatless, listless men who sat in
+chairs on the brick pavements before their stores and who moved slowly
+when a customer entered their doors.
+
+And, strange to say, it was this fall of his white townsmen that moved
+Peter Siner with a sense of the greatest loss. It seemed fantastic to
+him, this sudden land-slide of the mighty.
+
+As Peter and his mother came over the brow of the river bank, they saw a
+crowd collecting at the other end of the street. The main street of
+Hooker's Bend is only a block long, and the two negroes could easily
+hear the loud laughter of men hurrying to the focus of interest and the
+blurry expostulations of negro voices. The laughter spread like a
+contagion. Merchants as far up as the river corner became infected, and
+moved toward the crowd, looking back over their shoulders at every tenth
+or twelfth step to see that no one entered their doors.
+
+Presently, a little short man, fairly yipping with laughter, stumbled
+back up the street to his store with tears of mirth in his eyes. A
+belated merchant stopped him by clapping both hands on his shoulders and
+shaking some composure into him.
+
+"What is it? What's so funny? Damn it! I miss ever'thing!"
+
+"I-i-it's that f-fool Tum-Tump Pack. Bobbs's arrested him!"
+
+The inquirer was astounded.
+
+"How the hell can he arrest him when he hit town this minute?"
+
+"Wh-why, Bobbs had an old warrant for crap-shoot--three years old--
+before the war. Just as Tump was a-coming down the street at the head of
+the coons, out steps Bobbs--" Here the little man was overcome.
+
+The merchant from the corner opened his eyes.
+
+"Arrested him on an old crap charge?"
+
+The little man nodded. They gazed at each other. Then they exploded
+simultaneously.
+
+Peter left his obese mother and hurried to the corner, Dawson Bobbs, the
+constable, had handcuffs on Tump's wrists, and stood with his prisoner
+amid a crowd of arguing negroes.
+
+Bobbs was a big, fleshy, red-faced man, with chilly blue eyes and a
+little straight slit of a mouth in his wide face. He was laughing and
+chewing a sliver of toothpick.
+
+"O Tump Pack," he called loudly, "you kain't git away from me! If you
+roll bones in Hooker's Bend, you'll have to divide your winnings with
+the county." Dawson winked a chill eye at the crowd in general.
+
+"But hit's out o' date, Mr. Bobbs," the old gray-headed minister, Parson
+Ranson, was pleading.
+
+"May be that, Parson, but hit's easier to come up before the J.P. and
+pay off than to fight it through the circuit court."
+
+Siner pushed his way through the crowd. "How much do you want, Mr.
+Bobbs?" he asked briefly.
+
+The constable looked with reminiscent eyes at the tall, well-tailored
+negro. He was plainly going through some mental card-index, hunting for
+the name of Peter Siner on some long-forgotten warrant. Apparently, he
+discovered nothing, for he said shortly:
+
+"How do I know before he's tried? Come on, Tump!"
+
+The procession moved in a long noisy line up Pillow Street, the white
+residential street lying to the west. It stopped before a large shaded
+lawn, where a number of white men and women were playing a game with
+cards. The cards used by the lawn party were not ordinary playing-cards,
+but had figures on them instead of spots, and were called "rook" cards.
+The party of white ladies and gentlemen were playing "rook." On a table
+in the middle of the lawn glittered some pieces of silver plate which
+formed the first, second, and third prizes for the three leading scores.
+
+The constable halted his black company before the lawn, where they stood
+in the sunshine patiently waiting for the justice of the peace to finish
+his game and hear the case of the State of Tennessee, plaintiff, versus
+Tump Pack, defendant.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER II
+
+
+On the eastern edge of Hooker's Bend, drawn in a rough semicircle around
+the Big Hill, lies Niggertown. In all the half-moon there are perhaps
+not two upright buildings. The grimy cabins lean at crazy angles, some
+propped with poles, while others hold out against gravitation at a
+hazard.
+
+Up and down its street flows the slow negro life of the village. Here
+children of all colors from black to cream fight and play; deep-chested
+negresses loiter to and fro, some on errands to the white section of the
+village on the other side of the hill, where they go to scrub or cook or
+wash or iron. Others go down to the public well with a bucket in each
+hand and one balanced on the head.
+
+The public well itself lies at the southern end of this miserable
+street, just at a point where the drainage of the Big Hill collects. The
+rainfall runs down through Niggertown, under its sties, stables, and
+outdoor toilets, and the well supplies the negroes with water for
+cooking, washing, and drinking. Or, rather, what was once a well
+supplies this water, for it is a well no longer. Its top and curbing
+caved in long ago, and now there is simply a big hole in the soft,
+water-soaked clay, about fifteen feet wide, with water standing at the
+bottom.
+
+Here come the unhurried colored women, who throw in their buckets, and
+with a dexterity that comes of long practice draw them out full of
+water. Black mothers shout at their children not to fall into this pit,
+and now and then, when a pig fails to come up for its evening slops, a
+black boy will go to the public well to see if perchance his porker has
+met misfortune there.
+
+The inhabitants of Niggertown suffer from divers diseases; they develop
+strange ailments that no amount of physicking will overcome; young wives
+grow sickly from no apparent cause. Although only three or four hundred
+persons live in Niggertown, two or three negroes are always slowly dying
+of tuberculosis; winter brings pneumonia; summer, malaria. About once a
+year the state health officer visits Hooker's Bend and forces the white
+soda-water dispensers on the other side of the hill to sterilize their
+glasses in the name of the sovereign State of Tennessee.
+
+The Siner home was a three-room shanty about midway in the semicircle.
+Peter Siner stood in the sunlight just outside the entrance, watching
+his old mother clean the bugs out of a tainted ham that she had bought
+for a pittance from some white housekeeper in the village. It had been
+too high for white people to eat. Old Caroline patiently tapped the
+honeycombed meat to scare out the last of the little green householders,
+and then she washed it in a solution of soda to freshen it up.
+
+The sight of his bulky old mother working at the spoiled ham and of the
+negro women in the street moving to and from the infected well filled
+Peter Siner with its terrible pathos. Although he had seen these
+surroundings all of his life, he had a queer impression that he was
+looking upon them for the first time. During his boyhood he had accepted
+all this without question as the way the world was made. During his
+college days a criticism had arisen in his mind, but it came slowly, and
+was tempered by that tenderness every one feels for the spot called
+home. Now, as he stood looking at it, he wondered how human beings lived
+there at all. He wondered if Ida May used water from the Niggertown
+well.
+
+He turned to ask old Caroline, but checked himself with a man's
+instinctive avoidance of mentioning his intimacies to his mother. At
+that moment, oddly enough, the old negress brought up the topic herself.
+
+"Ida May wuz 'quirin' 'bout you las' night, Peter."
+
+A faint tingle filtered through Peter's throat and chest, but he asked
+casually enough what she had said.
+
+"Didn' say; she wrote."
+
+Peter looked around, frankly astonished.
+
+"Wrote?"
+
+"Yeah; co'se she wrote."
+
+"What made her write?" a fantasy of Ida May dumb flickered before the
+mulatto.
+
+[Illustration: Up and down its street flows the slow negro life of the
+village]
+
+"Why, Ida May's in Nashville." Caroline looked at Peter. "She wrote to
+Cissie, astin' 'bout you. She ast is you as bright in yo' books as you
+is in yo' color." The old negress gave a pleased abdominal chuckle as
+she admired her broad-shouldered brown son.
+
+"But I saw Ida May standing on the wharf-boat the day I came home,"
+protested Peter, still bewildered.
+
+"No you ain't. I reckon you seen Cissie. Dey looks kind o' like when you
+is fur off."
+
+"Cissie?" repeated Peter. Then he remembered a smaller sister of Ida
+May's, a little, squalling, yellow, wet-nosed nuisance that had annoyed
+his adolescence. So that little spoil-sport had grown up into the girl
+he had mistaken for Ida May. This fact increased his sense of
+strangeness--that sense of great change that had fallen on the village
+in his absence which formed the groundwork of all his renewed
+associations.
+
+Peter's prolonged silence aroused certain suspicions in the old negress.
+She glanced at her son out of the tail of her eyes.
+
+"Cissie Dildine is Tump Pack's gal," she stated defensively, with the
+jealousy all mothers feel toward all sons.
+
+A diversion in the shouts of the children up the mean street and a
+sudden furious barking of dogs drew Peter from the discussion. He looked
+up, and saw a negro girl of about fourteen coming down the curved
+street, with long, quick steps and an occasional glance over her
+shoulder.
+
+From across the thoroughfare a small chocolate-colored woman, with her
+wool done in outstanding spikes, thrust her head out at the door and
+called:
+
+"Whut's de matter, Ofeely?"
+
+The girl lifted a high voice:
+
+"Oh, Miss Nan, it's that constable goin' th'ugh the houses!" The girl
+veered across the street to the safety of the open door and one of her
+own sex.
+
+"Good Lawd!" cried the spiked one in disgust, "ever', time a white
+pusson gits somp'n misplaced--" She moved to one side to allow the girl
+to enter, and continued staring up the street, with the whites of her
+eyes accented against her dark face, after the way of angry negroes.
+
+Around the crescent the dogs were furious. They were Niggertown dogs,
+and the sight of a white man always drove them to a frenzy. Presently in
+the hullabaloo, Peter heard Dawson Bobbs's voice shouting:
+
+"Aunt Mahaly, if you kain't call off this dawg, I'm shore goin' to kill
+him."
+
+Then an old woman's scolding broke in and complicated the melee.
+Presently Peter saw the bulky form of Dawson Bobbs come around the
+curve, moving methodically from cabin to cabin. He held some legal-
+looking papers in his hands, and Peter knew what the constable was
+doing. He was serving a blanket search-warrant on the whole black
+population of Hooker's Bend. At almost every cabin a dog ran out to
+blaspheme at the intruder, but a wave of the man's pistol sent them
+yelping under the floors again.
+
+When the constable entered a house, Peter could hear him bumping and
+rattling among the furnishings, while the black householders stood
+outside the door and watched him disturb their housekeeping
+arrangements.
+
+Presently Bobbs came angling across the street toward the Siner cabin.
+As he entered the rickety gate, old Caroline called out:
+
+"Whut is you after, anyway, white man?"
+
+Bobbs turned cold, truculent eyes on the old negress. "A turkey
+roaster," he snapped. "Some o' you niggers stole Miss Lou Arkwright's
+turkey roaster."
+
+"Tukky roaster!" cried the old black woman, in great disgust. "Whut you
+s'pose us niggers is got to roast in a tukky roaster?"
+
+The constable answered shortly that his business was to find the
+roaster, not what the negroes meant to put in it.
+
+"I decla'," satirized old Caroline, savagely, "dish-heah Niggertown is a
+white man's pocket. Ever' time he misplace somp'n, he feel in his pocket
+to see ef it ain't thaiuh. Don'-chu turn over dat sody-water, white man!
+You know dey ain't no tukky roaster under dat sody-water. I 'cla' 'fo'
+Gawd, ef a white man wuz to eat a flapjack, an' it did n' give him de
+belly-ache, I 'cla' 'fo' Gawd he'd git out a search-wa'nt to see ef some
+nigger had n' stole dat flapjack goin' down his th'oat."
+
+"Mr. Bobbs has to do his work, Mother," put in Peter. "I don't suppose
+he enjoys it any more than we do."
+
+"Den let 'im git out'n dis business an' git in anudder," scolded the old
+woman. "Dis sho is a mighty po' business."
+
+The ponderous Mr. Bobbs finished with a practised thoroughness his
+inspection of the cabin, and then the inquisition proceeded down the
+street, around the crescent, and so out of sight and eventually out of
+hearing.
+
+Old Caroline snapped her chair back beside her greasy table and sat down
+abruptly to her spoiled ham again.
+
+"Dat make me mad," she grumbled. "Ever' time a white pusson fail to lay
+dey han' on somp'n, dey comes an' turns over ever'thing in my house."
+She paused a moment, closed her eyes in thought, and then mused aloud:
+"I wonder who is got Miss Arkwright's roaster."
+
+The commotion of the constable's passing died in his wake, and
+Niggertown resumed its careless existence. Dogs reappeared from under
+the cabins and stretched in the sunshine; black children came out of
+hiding and picked up their play; the frightened Ophelia came out of
+Nan's cabin across the street and went her way; a lanky negro youth in
+blue coat and pin-striped trousers appeared, coming down the squalid
+thoroughfare whistling the "Memphis Blues" with bird-like virtuosity.
+The lightness with which Niggertown accepted the moral side glance of a
+blanket search-warrant depressed Siner.
+
+Caroline called her son to dinner, as the twelve-o'clock meal is called
+in Hooker's Bend, and so ended his meditation. The Harvard man went back
+into the kitchen and sat down at a rickety table covered with a red-
+checked oil-cloth. On it were spread the spoiled ham, a dish of poke
+salad, a corn pone, and a pot of weak coffee. A quaint old bowl held
+some brown sugar. The fat old negress made a slight, habitual settling
+movement in her chair that marked the end of her cooking and the
+beginning of her meal. Then she bent her grizzled, woolly head and
+mumbled off one of those queer old-fashioned graces which consist of a
+swift string of syllables without pauses between either words or
+sentences.
+
+Peter sat watching his mother with a musing gaze. The kitchen was
+illuminated by a single small square window set high up from the floor.
+Now the disposition of its single ray of light over the dishes and the
+bowed head of the massive negress gave Peter one of those sharp, tender
+apprehensions of formal harmony that lie back of the genre in art. It
+stirred his emotion in an odd fashion. When old Caroline raised her
+head, she found her son staring with impersonal eyes not at herself, but
+at the whole room, including her. The old woman was perplexed and a
+little apprehensive.
+
+"Why, son!" she ejaculated, "didn' you bow yo' haid while yo' mammy ast
+de grace?"
+
+Peter was a little confused at his remissness. Then he leaned a little
+forward to explain the sudden glamour which for a moment had
+transfigured the interior of their kitchen. But even as he started to
+speak, he realized that what he meant to say would only confuse his
+mother; therefore he cast about mentally for some other explanation of
+his behavior, but found nothing at hand.
+
+"I hope you ain't forgot yo' 'ligion up at de 'versity, son."
+
+"Oh, no, no, indeed, Mother, but just at that moment, just as you bowed
+your head, you know, it struck me that--that there is something noble in
+our race." That was the best he could put it to her.
+
+"Noble--"
+
+"Yes. You know," he went on a little quickly, "sometimes I--I've thought
+my father must have been a noble man."
+
+The old negress became very still. She was not looking quite at her son,
+or yet precisely away from him.
+
+"Uh--uh noble nigger,"--she gave her abdominal chuckle. "Why--yeah, I
+reckon yo' father wuz putty noble as--as niggers go." She sat looking at
+her son, oddly, with a faint amusement in her gross black face, when a
+careful voice, a very careful voice, sounded in the outer room, gliding
+up politely on the syllables:
+
+"Ahnt Carolin'! oh, Ahnt Carolin', may I enter?"
+
+The old woman stirred.
+
+"Da''s Cissie, Peter. Go ast her in to de fambly-room."
+
+When Siner opened the door, the vague resemblance of the slender, creamy
+girl on the threshold to Ida May again struck him; but Cissie Dildine
+was younger, and her polished black hair lay straight on her pretty
+head, and was done in big, shining puffs over her ears in a way that Ida
+May's unruly curls would never have permitted. Her eyes were the most
+limpid brown Peter had ever seen, but her oval face was faintly
+unnatural from the use of negro face powder, which colored women insist
+on, and which gives their yellows and browns a barely perceptible
+greenish hue. Cissie wore a fluffy yellow dress some three shades deeper
+than the throat and the glimpse of bosom revealed at the neck.
+
+The girl carried a big package in her arms, and now she manipulated this
+to put out a slender hand to Peter.
+
+"This is Cissie Dildine, Mister Siner." She smiled up at him. "I just
+came over to put my name down on your list. There was such a mob at the
+Benevolence Hall last night I couldn't get to you."
+
+The girl had a certain finical precision to her English that told Peter
+she had been away to some school, and had been taught to guard her
+grammar very carefully as she talked.
+
+Peter helped her inside amid the handshake and said he would go fetch
+the list. As he turned, Cissie offered her bundle. "Here is something I
+thought might be a little treat for you and Ahnt Carolin'." She paused,
+and then explained remotely, "Sometimes it is hard to get good things at
+the village market."
+
+Peter took the package, vaguely amused at Cissie's patronage of the
+Hooker's Bend market. It was an attitude instinctively assumed by every
+girl, white or black, who leaves the village and returns. The bundle was
+rather large and wrapped in newspapers. He carried it into the kitchen
+to his mother, and then returned with the list.
+
+The sheet was greasy from the handling of black fingers. The girl spread
+it on the little center-table with a certain daintiness, seated herself,
+and held out her hand for Peter's pencil. She made rather a graceful
+study in cream and yellow as she leaned over the table and signed her
+name in a handwriting as perfect and as devoid of character as a copy-
+book. She began discussing the speech Peter had made at the Benevolence
+Hall.
+
+"I don't know whether I am in favor of your project or not, Mr. Siner,"
+she said as she rose from the table.
+
+"No?" Peter was surprised and amused at her attitude and at her precise
+voice.
+
+"No, I'm rather inclined toward Mr. DuBois's theory of a literary
+culture than toward Mr. Washington's for a purely industrial training."
+
+Peter broke out laughing.
+
+"For the love of Mike, Cissie, you talk like the instructor in Sociology
+B! And haven't we met before somewhere? This 'Mister Siner' stuff--"
+
+The girl's face warmed under its faint, greenish powder.
+
+"If I aren't careful with my language, Peter," she said simply, "I'll be
+talking just as badly as I did before I went to the seminary. You know I
+never hear a proper sentence in Hooker's Bend except my own."
+
+A certain resignation in the girl's soft voice brought Peter a qualm for
+laughing at her. He laid an impulsive hand on her young shoulder.
+
+"Well, that's true, certainly, but it won't always be like that, Cissie.
+More of us go off to school every year. I do hope my school here in
+Hooker's Bend will be of some real value. If I could just show our
+people how badly we fare here, how ill housed, and unsanitary--"
+
+The girl pressed Peter's fingers with a woman's optimism for a man.
+
+"You'll succeed, Peter, I know you will. Some day the name Siner will
+mean the same thing to coloured people as Tanner and Dunbar and
+Braithwaite do. Anyway, I've put my name down for ten dollars to help
+out." She returned the pencil. "I'll have Tump Pack come around and pay
+you my subscription, Peter."
+
+"I'll watch out for Tump," promised Peter in a lightening mood, "--and
+make him pay."
+
+"He'll do it."
+
+"I don't doubt it. You ought to have him under perfect control. I meant
+to tell you what a pretty frock you have on."
+
+The girl dimpled, and dropped him a little curtsy, half ironical and
+wholly graceful.
+
+Peter was charmed.
+
+"Now keep that way, Cissie, smiling and human, not so grammatical. I
+wish I had a brooch."
+
+"A brooch?"
+
+"I'd give it to you. Your dress needs a brooch, an old gold brooch at
+the bosom, just a glint there to balance your eyes."
+
+Cissie flushed happily, and made the feminine movement of concealing the
+V-shaped opening at her throat.
+
+"It's a pleasure to doll up for a man like you, Peter. You see a girl's
+good points--if she has any," she tacked on demurely.
+
+"Oh, just any man--"
+
+"Don't think it! Don't think it!" waved down Cissie, humorously.
+
+"But, Cissie, how is it possible--"
+
+"Just blind." Cissie rippled into a boarding-school laugh. "I could wear
+the whole rue del Opera here in Niggertown, and nobody would ever see it
+but you."
+
+Cissie was moving toward the door. Peter tried to detain her. He enjoyed
+the implication of Tump Pack's stupidity, in their badinage, but she
+would not stay. He was finally reduced to thanking her for her present,
+then stood guard as she tripped out into the grimy street. In the
+sunshine her glossy black hair and canary dress looked as trim and
+brilliant as the plumage of a chaffinch.
+
+Peter Siner walked back into the kitchen with the fixed smile of a man
+who is thinking of a pretty girl. The black dowager in the kitchen
+received him in silence, with her thick lips pouted. When Peter observed
+it, he felt slightly amused at his mother's resentment.
+
+"Well, you sho had a lot o' chatter over signin' a lil ole paper."
+
+"She signed for ten dollars," said Peter, smiling.
+
+"Huh! she'll never pay it."
+
+"Said Tump Pack would pay it."
+
+"Huh!" The old negress dropped the subject, and nodded at a huge double
+pan on the table. "Dat's whut she brung you." She grunted
+disapprovingly.
+
+"And it's for you, too, Mother."
+
+"Ya-as, I 'magine she brung somp'n fuh me."
+
+Peter walked across to the double pans, and saw they held a complete
+dinner--chicken, hot biscuits, cake, pickle, even ice-cream.
+
+The sight of the food brought Peter a realization that he was keenly
+hungry. As a matter of fact, he had not eaten a palatable meal since he
+had been evicted from the white dining-car at Cairo, Illinois. Siner
+served his own and his mother's plate.
+
+The old woman sniffed again.
+
+"Seems to me lak you is mighty onobsarvin' fuh a nigger whut's been off
+to college."
+
+"Anything else?" Peter looked into the pans again.
+
+"Ain't you see whut it's all in?"
+
+"What it's in?"
+
+"Yeah; whut it's in. You heared whut I said."
+
+"What is it in?"
+
+"Why, it's in Miss Arkwright's tukky roaster, dat's whut it's in." The
+old negress drove her point home with an acid accent.
+
+Peter Siner was too loyal to his new friendship with Cissie Dildine to
+allow his mother's jealous suspicions to affect him; nevertheless the
+old woman's observations about the turkey roaster did prevent a complete
+and care-free enjoyment of the meal. Certainly there were other turkey
+roasters in Hooker's Bend than Mrs. Arkwright's. Cissie might very well
+own a roaster. It was absurd to think that Cissie, in the midst of her
+almost pathetic struggle to break away from the uncouthness of
+Niggertown, would stoop to--Even in his thoughts Peter avoided
+nominating the charge.
+
+And then, somehow, his memory fished up the fact that years ago Ida May,
+according to village rumor, was "light-fingered." At that time in
+Peter's life "light-fingeredness" carried with it no opprobrium
+whatever. It was simply a fact about Ida May, as were her sloe eyes and
+curling black hair. His reflections renewed his perpetual sense of
+queerness and strangeness that hall-marked every phase of Niggertown
+life since his return from the North.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+Cissie Dildine's contribution tailed out the one hundred dollars that
+Peter needed, and after he had finished his meal, the mulatto set out
+across the Big Hill for the white section of the village, to complete
+his trade.
+
+It was Peter's program to go to the Planter's Bank, pay down his
+hundred, and receive a deed from one Elias Tomwit, which the bank held
+in escrow. Two or three days before Peter had tried to borrow the
+initial hundred from the bank, but the cashier, Henry Hooker, after
+going into the transaction, had declined the loan, and therefore Siner
+had been forced to await a meeting of the Sons and Daughters of
+Benevolence. At this meeting the subscription had gone through promptly.
+The land the negroes purposed to purchase for an industrial school was a
+timbered tract tying southeast of Hooker's Bend on the head-waters of
+Ross Creek. A purchase price of eight hundred dollars had been agreed
+upon. The timber on the tract, sold on the stump, would bring almost
+that amount. It was Siner's plan to commandeer free labor in Niggertown,
+work off the timber, and have enough money to build the first unit of
+his school. A number of negro men already had subscribed a certain
+number of days' work in the timber. It was a modest and entirely
+practical program, and Peter felt set up over it.
+
+The brown man turned briskly out into the hot afternoon sunshine, down
+the mean semicircular street, where piccaninnies were kicking up clouds
+of dust. He hurried through the dusty area, and presently turned off a
+by-path that led over the hill, through a glade of cedars, to the white
+village.
+
+The glade was gloomy, but warm, for the shade of cedars somehow seems to
+hold heat. A carpet of needles hushed Siner's footfalls and spread a
+Sabbatical silence through the grove. The upward path was not smooth,
+but was broken with outcrops of the same reddish limestone that marks
+the whole stretch of the Tennessee River. Here and there in the grove
+were circles eight or ten feet in diameter, brushed perfectly clean of
+all needles and pebbles and twigs. These places were crap-shooters'
+circles, where black and white men squatted to shoot dice.
+
+Under the big stones on the hillside, Peter knew, was cached illicit
+whisky, and at night the boot-leggers carried on a brisk trade among the
+gamblers. More than that, the glade on the Big Hill was used for still
+more demoralizing ends. It became a squalid grove of Ashtoreth; but now,
+in the autumn evening, all the petty obscenities of white and black
+sloughed away amid the religious implications of the dark-green aisles.
+
+The sight of a white boy sitting on an outcrop of limestone with a strap
+of school-books dropped at his feet rather surprised Peter. The negro
+looked at the hobbledehoy for several seconds before he recognized in
+the lanky youth a little Arkwright boy whom he had known and played with
+in his pre-college days. Now there was such an exaggerated wistfulness
+in young Arkwright's attitude that Peter was amused.
+
+"Hello, Sam," he called. "What you doing out here?"
+
+The Arkwright boy turned with a start.
+
+"Aw, is that you, Siner?" Before the negro could reply, he added: "Was
+you on the Harvard football team, Siner? Guess the white fellers have a
+pretty gay time in Harvard, don't they, Siner? Geemenettie! but I git
+tired o' this dern town! D' reckon I could make the football team? Looks
+like I could if a nigger like you could, Siner."
+
+None of this juvenile outbreak of questions required answers. Peter
+stood looking at the hobbledehoy without smiling.
+
+"Aren't you going to school?" he asked.
+
+Arkwright shrugged.
+
+"Aw, hell!" he said self-consciously. "We got marched down to the
+protracted meetin' while ago--whole school did. My seat happened to be
+close to a window. When they all stood up to sing, I crawled out and
+skipped. Don't mention that, Siner."
+
+"I won't."
+
+"When a fellow goes to college he don't git marched to preachin', does
+he, Siner?"
+
+"I never did."
+
+"We-e-ll," mused young Sam, doubtfully, "you're a nigger."
+
+"I never saw any white men marched in, either."
+
+"Oh, hell! I wish I was in college."
+
+"What are you sitting out here thinking about?" inquired Peter of the
+ingenuous youngster.
+
+"Oh--football and--women and God and--how to stack cards. You think
+about ever'thing, in the woods. Damn it! I got to git out o' this little
+jay town. D' reckon I could git in the navy, Siner?"
+
+"Don't see why you couldn't, Sam. Have you seen Tump Pack anywhere?"
+
+"Yeah; on Hobbett's corner. Say, is Cissie Dildine at home?"
+
+"I believe she is."
+
+"She cooks for us," explained young Arkwright, "and Mammy wants her to
+come and git supper, too."
+
+The phrase "get supper, too," referred to the custom in the white homes
+of Hooker's Bend of having only two meals cooked a day, breakfast and
+the twelve-o'clock dinner, with a hot supper optional with the mistress.
+
+Peter nodded, and passed on up the path, leaving young Arkwright seated
+on the ledge of rock, a prey to all the boiling, erratic impulses of
+adolescence. The negro sensed some of the innumerable difficulties of
+this white boy's life, and once, as he walked on over the silent
+needles, he felt an impulse to turn back and talk to young Sam
+Arkwright, to sit down and try to explain to the youth what he could of
+this hazardous adventure called Life. But then, he reflected, very
+likely the boy would be offended at a serious talk from a negro. Also,
+he thought that young Arkwright, being white, was really not within the
+sphere of his ministry. He, Peter Siner, was a worker in the black world
+of the South. He was part of the black world which the white South was
+so meticulous to hide away, to keep out of sight and out of thought.
+
+A certain vague sense of triumph trickled through some obscure corner of
+Peter's mind. It was so subtle that Peter himself would have been the
+first, in all good faith, to deny it and to affirm that all his motives
+were altruistic. Once he looked back through the cedars. He could still
+see the boy hunched over, chin in fist, staring at the mat of needles.
+
+As Peter turned the brow of the Big Hill, he saw at its eastern foot the
+village church, a plain brick building with a decaying spire. Its side
+was perforated by four tall arched windows. Each was a memorial window
+of stained glass, which gave the building a black look from the outside.
+As Peter walked down the hill toward the church he heard the and
+somewhat nasal singing of uncultivated voices mingled with the snoring
+of a reed organ.
+
+When he reached Main Street, Peter found the whole business portion
+virtually deserted. All the stores were closed, and in every show-window
+stood a printed notice that no business would be transacted between the
+hours of two and three o'clock in the afternoon during the two weeks of
+revival then in progress. Beside this notice stood another card, giving
+the minister's text for the current day. On this particular day it read:
+
+
+                        GO YE INTO ALL THE WORLD
+
+                 Come hear Rev. E.B. Blackwater's great
+                         Missionary Address on
+
+                         CHRISTIANIZING AFRICA
+
+                  ELOQUENT, PROFOUND, HEART-SEARCHING.
+                        ILLUSTRATED WITH SLIDES.
+
+
+Half a dozen negroes lounged in the sunshine on Hobbett's corner as
+Peter came up. They were amusing themselves after the fashion of blacks,
+with mock fights, feints, sudden wrestlings. They would seize one
+another by the head and grind their knuckles into one another's wool.
+Occasionally, one would leap up and fall into one of those grotesque
+shuffles called "breakdowns." It all held a certain rawness, an
+irrepressible juvenility.
+
+As Peter came up, Tump Pack detached himself from the group and gave a
+pantomime of thrusting. He was clearly reproducing the action which had
+won for him his military medal. Then suddenly he fell down in the dust
+and writhed. He was mimicking with a ghastly realism the death-throes of
+his four victims. His audience howled with mirth at this dumb show of
+the bayonet-fight and of killing four men. Tump himself got up out of
+the dust with tears of laughter in his eyes. Peter caught the end of his
+sentence, "Sho put it to 'em, black boy. Fo' white men--"
+
+His audience roared again, swayed around, and pounded one another in an
+excess of mirth.
+
+Siner shouted from across the street two or three times before he caught
+Tump's attention. The ex-soldier looked around, sobered abruptly.
+
+"Whut-chu want, nigger?" His inquiry was not over-cordial.
+
+Peter nodded him across the street.
+
+The heavily built black in khaki hesitated a moment, then started across
+the street with the dragging feet of a reluctant negro. Peter looked at
+him as he came up.
+
+"What's the matter, Tump?" he asked playfully.
+
+"Ain't nothin' matter wid me, nigger." Peter made a guess at Tump's
+surliness.
+
+"Look here, are you puffed up because Cissie Dildine struck you for a
+ten?"
+
+Tump's expression changed.
+
+"Is she struck me fuh a ten?"
+
+"Yes; on that school subscription."
+
+"Is dat whut you two niggers wuz a-talkin' 'bout over thaiuh in yo'
+house?"
+
+"Exactly." Peter showed the list, with Cissie's name on it. "She told me
+to collect from you."
+
+Tump brightened up.
+
+"So dat wuz whut you two niggers wuz a-talkin' 'bout over at yo' house."
+He ran a fist down into his khaki, and drew out three or four one-dollar
+bills and about a pint of small change. It was the usual crap-shooter's
+offering. The two negroes sat down on the ramshackle porch of an old
+jeweler's shop, and Tump began a complicated tally of ten dollars.
+
+By the time he had his dimes, quarters, and nickels in separate stacks,
+services in the village church were finished, and the congregation came
+filing up the street. First came the school-children, running and
+chattering and swinging their books by the straps; then the business men
+of the hamlet, rather uncomfortable in coats and collars, hurrying back
+to their stores; finally came the women, surrounding the preacher.
+
+Tump and Peter walked on up to the entrance of the Planter's Bank and
+there awaited Mr. Henry Hooker, the cashier. Presently a skinny man
+detached himself from the church crowd and came angling across the dirty
+street toward the bank. Mr. Hooker wore somewhat shabby clothes for a
+banker; in fact, he never could recover from certain personal habits
+formed during a penurious boyhood. He had a thin hatchet face which just
+at this moment was shining though from some inward glow. Although he was
+an unhandsome little man, his expression was that of one at peace with
+man and God and was pleasant to see. He had been so excited by the
+minister that he was constrained to say something even to two negroes.
+So as he unlocked the little one-story bank, he told Tump and Peter that
+he had been listening to a man who was truly a man of God. He said
+Blackwater could touch the hardest heart, and, sure enough, Mr. Hooker's
+rather popped and narrow-set eyes looked as though he had been crying.
+
+All this encomium was given in a high, cracked voice as the cashier
+opened the door and turned the negroes into the bank. Tump, who stood
+with his hat off, listening to all the cashier had to say, said he
+thought so, too.
+
+The shabby interior of the little bank, the shabby little banker,
+renewed that sense of disillusion that pervaded Peter's home-coming. In
+Boston the mulatto had done his slight banking business in a white
+marble structure with tellers of machine-like briskness and neatness.
+
+Mr. Hooker strolled around into his grill-cage; when he was thoroughly
+ensconced he began business in his high voice:
+
+"You came to see me about that land, Peter?"
+
+Yes, sir."
+
+"Sorry to tell you, Peter, you are not back in time to get the Tomwit
+place."
+
+Peter came out of his musing over the Boston banks with a sense of
+bewilderment.
+
+"How's that? why, I bought that land--"
+
+"But you paid nothing for your option, Siner."
+
+"I had a clear-cut understanding with Mr. Tomwit--"
+
+Mr. Hooker smiled a smile that brought out sharp wrinkles around the
+thin nose on his thin face.
+
+"You should have paid him an earnest, Siner, if you wanted to bind your
+trade. You colored folks are always stumbling over the law."
+
+Peter stared through the grating, not knowing what to do.
+
+"I'll go see Mr. Tomwit," he said, and started uncertainly for the door.
+
+The cashier's falsetto stopped him:
+
+"No use, Peter. Mr. Tomwit surprised me, too, but no use talking about
+it. I didn't like to see such an important thing as the education of our
+colored people held up, myself. I've been thinking about it."
+
+"Especially when I had made a fair square trade," put in Peter, warmly.
+
+"Exactly," squeaked the cashier. "And rather than let your project be
+delayed, I'm going to offer you the old Dillihay place at exactly the
+same price, Peter--eight hundred."
+
+"The Dillihay place?"
+
+"Yes; that's west of town; it's bigger by twenty acres than old man
+Tomwit's place."
+
+Peter considered the proposition.
+
+"I'll have to carry this before the Sons and Daughters of Benevolence,
+Mr. Hooker."
+
+The cashier repeated the smile that bracketed his thin nose in wrinkles.
+
+"That's with you, but you know what you say goes with the niggers here
+in town, and, besides, I won't promise how long I'll hold the Dillihay
+place. Real estate is brisk around here now. I didn't want to delay a
+good work on account of not having a location." Mr. Hooker turned away
+to a big ledger on a breast-high desk, and apparently was about to
+settle himself to the endless routine of bank work.
+
+Peter knew the Dillihay place well. It lacked the timber of the other
+tract; still, it was fairly desirable. He hesitated before the tarnished
+grill.
+
+"What do you think about it, Tump?"
+
+"You won't make a mistake in buying," answered the high voice of Mr.
+Hooker at his ledger.
+
+"I don' think you'll make no mistake in buyin', Peter," repeated Tump's
+bass.
+
+Peter turned back a little uncertainly, and asked how long it would take
+to fix the new deed. He had a notion of making a flying canvass of the
+officers of the Sons and Daughters in the interim. He was surprised to
+find that Mr. Hooker already had the deed and the notes ready to sign,
+in anticipation of Peter's desires. Here the banker brought out the set
+of papers.
+
+"I'll take it," decided Peter; "and if the lodge doesn't want it, I'll
+keep the place myself."
+
+"I like to deal with a man of decision," piped the cashier, a wrinkled
+smile on his sharp face.
+
+Peter pushed in his bag of collections, then Mr. Hooker signed the deed,
+and Peter signed the land notes. They exchanged the instruments. Peter
+received the crisp deed, bound in blue manuscript cover. It rattled
+unctuously. To Peter it was his first step toward a second Tuskegee.
+
+The two negroes walked out of the Planter's Bank filled with a sense of
+well-doing. Tump Pack was openly proud of having been connected, even in
+a casual way, with the purchase. As he walked down the steps, he turned
+to Peter.
+
+"Don' reckon nobody could git a deed off on you wid stoppers in it, does
+you?"
+
+"We don't know any such word as 'stop,' Tump," declared Peter, gaily.
+
+For Peter was gay. The whole incident at the bank was beginning to
+please him. The meeting of a sudden difficulty, his quick decision--it
+held the quality of leadership. Napoleon had it.
+
+The two colored men stepped briskly through the afternoon sunshine along
+the mean village street. Here and there in front of their doorways sat
+the merchants yawning and talking, or watching pigs root in the piles of
+waste.
+
+In Peter's heart came a wonderful thought. He would make his industrial
+institution such a model of neatness that the whole village of Hooker's
+Bend would catch the spirit. The white people should see that something
+clean and uplifting could come out of Niggertown. The two races ought to
+live for a mutual benefit. It was a fine, generous thought. For some
+reason, just then, there flickered through Peter's mind a picture of the
+Arkwright boy sitting hunched over in the cedar glade, staring at the
+needles.
+
+All this musing was brushed away by the sight of old Mr. Tomwit crossing
+the street from the east side to the livery-stable on the west. That
+human desire of wanting the person who has wronged you to know that you
+know your injury moved Peter to hurry his steps and to speak to the old
+gentleman.
+
+Mr. Tomwit had been a Confederate cavalryman in the Civil War, and there
+was still a faint breeze and horsiness about him. He was a hammered-down
+old gentleman, with hair thin but still jet-black, a seamed, sunburned
+face, and a flattened nose. His voice was always a friendly roar. Now,
+when he saw Peter turning across the street to meet him, he halted and
+called out at once:
+
+"Now Peter, I know what's the matter with you. I didn't do you right."
+
+Peter went closer, not caring to take the whole village into his
+confidence.
+
+"How came you to turn down my proposition, Mr. Tomwit," he asked, "after
+we had agreed and drawn up the papers?"
+
+"We-e-ell, I had to do it, Peter," explained the old man, loudly.
+
+"Why, Mr. Tomwit?"
+
+"A white neighbor wanted me to, Peter," boomed the cavalryman.
+
+"Who, Mr. Tomwit?"
+
+"Henry Hooker talked me into it, Peter. It was a mean trick, Peter. I
+done you wrong." He stood nodding his head and rubbing his flattened
+nose in an impersonal manner. "Yes, I done you wrong, Peter," he
+acknowledged loudly, and looked frankly into Peter's eyes.
+
+The negro was immensely surprised that Henry Hooker had done such a
+thing. A thought came that perhaps some other Henry Hooker had moved
+into town in his absence.
+
+"You don't mean the cashier of the bank?"
+
+Old Mr. Tomwit drew out a plug of Black Mule tobacco, set some gapped,
+discolored teeth into corner, nodded at Peter silently, at the same time
+utilizing the nod to tear off a large quid. He rolled tin about with his
+tongue and after a few moments adjusted it so that he could speak.
+
+"Yeah," he proceeded in a muffled tone, "they ain't but one Henry
+Hooker; he is the one and only Henry. He said if I sold you my land,
+you'd put up a nigger school and bring in so many blackbirds you'd run
+me clean off my farm. He said it'd ruin the whole town, a nigger school
+would."
+
+Peter was astonished.
+
+"Why, he didn't talk that way to me!"
+
+"Natchelly, natchelly," agreed the old cavalryman, dryly.--"Henry has a
+different way to talk to ever' man, Peter."
+
+"In fact," proceeded Peter, "Mr. Hooker sold me the old Dillihay place
+in lieu of the deal I missed with you."
+
+Old Mr. Tomwit moved his quid in surprise.
+
+"The hell he did!"
+
+"That at least shows he doesn't think a negro school would ruin the
+value of his land. He owns farms all around the Dillihay place."
+
+Old Mr. Tomwit turned his quid over twice and spat thoughtfully.
+
+"That your deed in your pocket?" With the air of a man certain of being
+obeyed he held out his hand for the blue manuscript cover protruding
+from the mulatto's pocket. Peter handed it over. The old gentleman
+unfolded the deed, then moved it carefully to and from his eyes until
+the typewriting was adjusted to his focus. He read it slowly, with a
+movement of his lips and a drooling of tobacco-juice. Finally he
+finished, remarked, "I be damned!" in a deliberate voice, returned the
+deed, and proceeded across the street to the livery-stable, which was
+fronted by an old mulberry-tree, with several chairs under it. In one of
+these chairs he would sit for the remainder of the day, making an
+occasional loud remark about the weather or the crops, and watching the
+horses pass in and out of the stable.
+
+Siner had vaguely enjoyed old Mr. Tomwit's discomfiture over the deed,
+if it was discomfiture that had moved the old gentleman to his
+sententious profanity. But the negro did not understand Henry Hooker's
+action at all. The banker had abused his position of trust as holder of
+a deed in escrow snapping up the sale himself; then he had sold Peter
+the Dillihay place. It was a queer shift.
+
+Tump Pack caught his principal's mood with that chameleon-like mental
+quality all negroes possess.
+
+"Dat Henry Hooker," criticized Tump, "allus was a lil ole dried-up snake
+in de grass."
+
+"He abused his position of trust," said Peter, gloomily; "I must say,
+his motives seem very obscure to me."
+
+"Dat sho am a fine way to put hit," said Tump, admiringly.
+
+"Why do you suppose he bought in the Tomwit tract and sold me the
+Dillihay place?"
+
+Asked for an opinion, Tump began twiddling military medal and corrugated
+the skin on his inch-high brow.
+
+"Now you puts it to me lak dat, Peter," he answered with importance, "I
+wonders ef dat gimlet-haided white man ain't put some stoppers in dat
+deed he guv you. He mout of."
+
+Such remarks as that from Tump always annoyed Peter. Tump's intellectual
+method was to talk sense just long enough to gain his companion's ear,
+and then produce something absurd and quash the tentative interest.
+
+Siner turned away from him and said, "Piffle."
+
+Tump was defensive at once.
+
+"'T ain't piffle, either! I's talkin' sense, nigger."
+
+Peter shrugged, and walked a little way in silence, but the soldier's
+nonsense stuck in his brain and worried him. Finally he turned, rather
+irritably.
+
+"Stoppers--what do you mean by stoppers?"
+
+Tump opened his jet eyes and their yellowish whites. "I means nigger-
+stoppers," he reiterated, amazed in his turn.
+
+"Negro-stoppers--" Peter began to laugh sardonically, and abruptly quit
+the conversation.
+
+Such rank superiority irritated the soldier to the nth power.
+
+"Look heah, black man, I knows I _is_ right. Heah, lonme look at
+dat-aiuh, deed. Maybe I can find 'em. I knows I suttinly is right."
+
+Peter walked on, paying no attention to the request Until Tump caught
+his arm and drew him up short.
+
+"Look heah, nigger," said Tump, in a different tone, "I faded dad deed
+fuh ten iron men, an' I reckon I got a once-over comin' fuh my money."
+
+The soldier was plainly mobilized and ready to attack. To fight Tump, to
+fight any negro at all, would be Peter's undoing; it would forfeit the
+moral leadership he hoped to gain. Moreover, he had no valid grounds for
+a disagreement with Tump. He passed over the deed, and the two negroes
+moved on their way to Niggertown.
+
+Tump trudged forward with eyes glued to paper, his face puckered in the
+unaccustomed labor of reading.
+
+His thick lips moved at the individual letters, and constructed them
+bunglingly into syllables and words. He was trying to uncover the verbal
+camouflage by which the astute white brushed away all rights of all
+black men whatsoever.
+
+To Peter there grew up something sadly comical in Tump's efforts. The
+big negro might well typify all the colored folk of the South,
+struggling in a web of law and custom they did not understand,
+misplacing their suspicions, befogged and fearful. A certain penitence
+for having been irritated at Tump softened Peter.
+
+"That's all right, Tump; there's nothing to find."
+
+At that moment the soldier began to bob his head.
+
+"Eh! eh! eh! W-wait a minute!" he stammered. "Whut dis? B'lieve I done
+foun' it! I sho is! Heah she am! Heah's dis nigger-stopper, jes lak I
+tol' you!" Tump marked a sentence in the guaranty of the deed with a
+rusty forefinger and looked up at Peter in mixed triumph and accusation.
+
+Peter leaned over the deed, amused.
+
+"Let's see your mare's nest."
+
+"Well, she 'fo' God is thaiuh, an' you sho let loose a hundud dollars uv
+our 'ciety's money, an' got nothin' fuh hit but a piece o' paper wid a
+nigger-stopper on hit!"
+
+Tump's voice was so charged with contempt that Peter looked with a
+certain uneasiness at his find. He read this sentence switched into the
+guaranty of the indenture:
+
+
+"Be it further understood and agreed that no negro, black man, Afro-
+American, mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, or any person whatsoever of
+colored blood or lineage, shall enter upon, seize, hold, occupy, reside
+upon, till, cultivate, own or possess any part or parcel of said
+property, or garner, cut, or harvest therefrom, any of the usufruct,
+timber, or emblements thereof, but shall by these presents be estopped
+from so doing forever."
+
+
+Tump Pack drew a shaken, unhappy breath.
+
+"Now, I reckon you see whut a nigger-stopper is."
+
+Peter stood in the sunshine, looking at the estoppel clause, his lips
+agape. Twice he read it over. It held something of the quality of those
+comprehensive curses that occur in the Old Testament. He moistened his
+lips and looked at Tump.
+
+"Why that can't be legal." His voice sounded empty and shallow.
+
+"Legal! 'Fo' Gawd, nigger, whauh you been to school all dese yeahs,
+never to heah uv a nigger-stopper befo'!"
+
+"But--but how can a stroke of the pen, a mere gesture, estop a whole
+class of American citizens forever?" cried Peter, with a rising voice.
+"Turn it around. Suppose they had put in a line that no white man should
+own that land. It--it's empty! I tell you, it's mere words!"
+
+Tump cut into his diatribe: "No use talkin' lak dat. Our 'ciety thought
+you wuz a aidjucated nigger. We didn't think no white man could put
+nothin' over on you."
+
+"Education!" snapped Siner. "Education isn't supposed to keep you away
+from shysters!"
+
+"Keep you away fum 'em!" cried Tump, in a scandalized voice. "'Fo' Gawd,
+nigger, you don' know nothin'! O' co'se a aidjucation ain't to keep you
+away fum shysters; hit's to mek you one 'uv 'em!"
+
+Peter stood breathing irregularly, looking at his deed. A determination
+not to be cheated grew up and hardened in his nerves. With unsteady
+hands he refolded his deed and put it into his pocket, then he turned
+about and started back up the village street toward the bank.
+
+Tump stared after him a moment and presently called out:
+
+"Heah, nigger, whut you gwine do?" A moment later he repeated to his
+friend's back: "Look heah, nigger, I 'vise you ag'inst anything you's
+gwine do, less'n you's ready to pass in you' checks!" As Peter strode on
+he lifted his voice still higher: "Peter! Hey, Peter, I sho' 'vise you
+'g'inst anything you's 'gwine do!"
+
+A pulse throbbed in Siner's temples. The wrath of the cozened heated his
+body. His clothes felt hot. As he strode up the trash-piled street, the
+white merchants lolling in their doors began smiling. Presently a laugh
+broke out at one end of the street and was caught up here and there. It
+was the undying minstrel jest, the comedy of a black face. Dawson Bobbs
+leaned against the wide brick entrance of the livery-stable, his red
+face balled into shining convexities by a quizzical smile.
+
+"Hey, Peter," he drawled, winking at old Mr. Tomwit, "been investin' in
+real estate?" and broke into Homeric laughter.
+
+As Peter passed on, the constable dropped casually in behind the brown
+man and followed him up to the bank.
+
+To Peter Siner the walk up to the bank was an emotional confusion. He
+has a dim consciousness that voices said things to him along the way and
+that there was laughter. All this was drowned by desperate thoughts and
+futile plans to regain his lost money, flashing through his head. The
+cashier would exchange the money for the deed; he would enter suit and
+carry it to the Supreme Court; he would show the money had not been his,
+he had had no right to buy; he would beg the cashier. His head seemed to
+spin around and around.
+
+He climbed the steps into the Planter's Bank and opened the screen-door.
+The cashier glanced up briefly, but continued busily at his ledger.
+
+Peter walked shakenly to the barred window in the grill.
+
+"Mr. Hooker."
+
+"Very busy now, Peter," came the high voice.
+
+"I want to know about this deed."
+
+The banker was nimbly setting down long rows of figures. "No time to
+explain deeds, Peter."
+
+"But--but there is a clause in this deed, Mr. Hooter, estopping colored
+persons from occupying the Dillihay place."
+
+"Precisely. What about it?" Mr. Hooker snapped out his inquiry and
+looked up suddenly, catching Peter full in the face with his narrow-set
+eyes. It was the equivalent of a blow.
+
+"According to this, I--I can't establish a school on it."
+
+"You cannot."
+
+"Then what can I do with it?" cried Peter.
+
+"Sell it. You have what lawyers call a cloud on the title. Sell it. I'll
+give you ten dollars for your right in it, just to clear up my title."
+
+A queer trembling seized Peter. The little banker turned to a fantastic
+caricature of a man. His hatchet face, close-set eyes, harsh, straight
+hair, and squeaky voice made him seem like some prickly, dried-up gnome
+a man sees in a fever.
+
+At that moment the little wicket-door of the window opened under the
+pressure of Peter's shoulder. Inside on the desk, lay neat piles of
+bills of all denominations, ready to be placed in the vault. In a
+nervous tremor Peter dropped in his blue-covered deed and picked up a
+hundred-dollar bill.
+
+"I--I won't trade," he jibbered. "It--it wasn't my money. Here's your
+deed!" Peter was moving away. He felt a terrific impulse to run, but he
+walked.
+
+The banker straightened abruptly. "Stop there, Peter!" he screeched.
+
+At that moment Dawson Bobbs lounged in at the door, with his perpetual
+grin balling up his broad red face. He had a toothpick, in his mouth.
+
+"'S matter?" he asked casually.
+
+"Peter there," said the banker, with a pale, sharp face, "doesn't want
+to stick to his trade. He is just walking off with one of my hundred-
+dollar bills."
+
+"Sick o' yo' deal, Peter?" inquired Bobbs, smiling and shifting the
+toothpick. He bit down on it. "Well, whut-chu want done, Henry?"
+
+"Oh," hesitated the cashier in a quandary, "nothing, I suppose. Siner
+was excited; you know how niggers are. We can't afford to send every
+nigger to the pen that breaks the law." He stood studying Peter out of
+his close-set eyes. "Here's your deed, Peter." He shoved it back under
+the grill. "And lemme give you a little friendly advice. I'd just run an
+ordinary nigger school if I was you. This higher education don't seem to
+make a nigger much smarter when he comes back than when he starts out."
+A faint smile bracketed the thin nose.
+
+Dawson Bobbs roared with sudden appreciation, took the bill from Peter's
+fingers, and pushed it back under the grill.
+
+The cashier picked up the money, casually. He considered a moment, then
+reached for a long envelop. As he did so, the incident with Peter
+evidently passed from his mind, for his hatchet face lighted up as with
+some inward illumination.
+
+"Bobbs," he said warmly, "that was a great sermon Brother Blackwater
+preached. It made me want to help according as the Lord has blessed me.
+Couldn't you spare five dollars, Bobbs, to go along with this?"
+
+The constable tried to laugh and wriggle away, but the cashier's gimlet
+eyes kept boring him, and eventually he fished out a five-dollar bill
+and handed it in. Mr. Hooker placed the two bills in the envelop, sealed
+it, and handed it to the constable.
+
+"Jest drop that in the post-office as you go down the street, Bobbs," he
+directed in his high voice. Peter caught a glimpse of the type-written
+address.
+
+It was
+
+  Rev. Lemuel Hardiman,
+    c/o United Missions,
+      Katuako Post,
+        Bahr el Ghazal,
+          Sudan,
+            East Africa.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER III
+
+
+The white population of Hooker's Bend was much amused and gratified at
+the outcome of the Hooker-Siner land deal. Every one agreed that the
+cashier's chicanery was a droll and highly original turn to give to a
+negro exclusion clause drawn into a deed. Then, too, it involved several
+legal points highly congenial to the Hooker's Bend intellect Could the
+Sons and Daughters of Benevolence recover their hundred dollars? Could
+Henry Hooker force them to pay the remaining seven hundred? Could not
+Siner establish his school on the Dillihay place regardless of the
+clause, since the cashier would be estopped from obtaining an injunction
+by his own instrument?
+
+As a matter of fact, the Sons and Daughters of Benevolence sent a
+committee to wait on Mr. Hooker to see what action he meant to take on
+the notes that paid for his spurious deed. This brought another harvest
+of rumors. Street gossip reported that Henry had compromised for this,
+that, and the other amount, that he would not compromise, that he had
+persuaded the fool niggers into signing still other instruments. Peter
+never knew the truth. He was not on the committee.
+
+But high above the legal phase of interest lay the warming fact that
+Peter Siner, a negro graduate of Harvard, on his first tilt in Hooker's
+Bend affairs had ridden to a fall. This pleased even the village women,
+whose minds could not follow the subtle trickeries of legal disputation.
+The whole affair simply proved what the white village had known all
+along: you can't educate a nigger. Hooker's Bend warmed with pleasure
+that half of its population was ineducable.
+
+White sentiment in Hooker's Bend reacted strongly on Niggertown. Peter
+Siner's prestige was no more. The cause of higher education for negroes
+took a mighty slump. Junius Gholston, a negro boy who had intended to go
+to Nashville to attend Fisk University, reconsidered the matter, packed
+away his good clothes, put on overalls, and shipped down the river as a
+roustabout instead.
+
+In the Siner cabin old Caroline Siner berated her boy for his stupidity
+in ever trading with that low-down, twisting snake in the grass, Henry
+Hooker. She alternated this with floods of tears. Caroline had no
+sympathy for her offspring. She said she had thrown away years of self-
+sacrifice, years of washing, a thousand little comforts her money would
+have bought, all for nothing, for less than nothing, to ship a fool
+nigger up North and to ship him back.
+
+Of all Niggertown, Caroline was the most unforgiving because Peter had
+wounded her in her pride. Every other negro in the village felt that
+genial satisfaction in a great man's downfall that is balm to small
+souls. But the old mother knew not this consolation. Peter was her
+proxy. It was she who had fallen.
+
+The only person in Niggertown who continued amiable to Peter Siner was
+Cissie Dildine. The octoroon, perhaps, had other criteria by which to
+judge a man than his success or mishaps dealing with a pettifogger.
+
+Two or three days after the catastrophe, Cissie made an excursion to the
+Siner cabin with a plate of cookies. Cissie was careful to place her
+visit on exactly a normal footing. She brought her little cakes in the
+role of one who saw no evil, spoke no evil, and heard no evil. But
+somehow Cissie's visit increased the old woman's wrath. She remained
+obstinately in the kitchen, and made remarks not only audible, but
+arresting, through the thin partition that separated it from the poor
+living-room.
+
+Cissie was hardly inside when a voice stated that it hated to see a gal
+running after a man, trying to bait him with a lot of fum-diddles.
+
+Cissie gave Peter a single wide-eyed glance, and then attempted to
+ignore the bodiless comment.
+
+"Here are some cookies, Mr. Siner," began the girl, rather nervously. "I
+thought you and Ahnt Carolin'--"
+
+"Yeah, I 'magine dey's fuh me!" jeered the spectral voice.
+
+"Might like them," concluded the girl, with a little gasp.
+
+"I suttinly don' want no light-fingered hussy ma'yin' my son," proceeded
+the voice, "an' de whole Dildine fambly 'll bear watchin'."
+
+[Illustration: In the Siner cabin old Caroline Siner berated her boy.]
+
+"Won't you have a seat?" asked Peter, exquisitely uncomfortable.
+
+Cissie handed him her plate in confusion.
+
+"Why, no, Mr. Siner," she hastened on, in her careful grammar, "I just--
+ran over to--"
+
+"To fling herse'f in a nigger's face 'cause he's been North and got
+made a fool uv," boomed the hidden censor.
+
+"I must go now," gasped Cissie.
+
+Peter made a harried gesture.
+
+"Wait--wait till I get my hat."
+
+He put the plate down with a swift glance around for his hat. He found
+it, and strode to the door, following the girl. The two hurried out into
+the street, followed by indistinct strictures from the kitchen. Cissie
+breathed fast, with open lips. They moved rapidly along the semicircular
+street almost with a sense of flight. The heat of the early autumn sun
+stung them through their clothes. For some distance they walked in a
+nervous silence, then Cissie said:
+
+"Your mother certainly hates me, Peter."
+
+"No," said Peter, trying to soften the situation; "it's me; she's
+terribly hurt about--" he nodded to-ward the white section--"that
+business."
+
+Cissie opened her clear brown eyes.
+
+"Your own mother turned against you!"
+
+"Oh, she has a right to be," began Peter, defensively. "I ought to have
+read that deed. It's amazing I didn't, but I--I really wasn't expecting
+a trick, Mr. Hooker seemed so--so sympathetic--" He came to a lame halt,
+staring at the dust through which they picked their way.
+
+"Of course you weren't expecting tricks!" cried Cissie, warmly. "The
+whole thing shows you're a gentleman used to dealing with gentlemen. But
+of course these Hooker's Bend negroes will never see that!"
+
+Peter, surprised and grateful, looked at Cissie. Her construction of the
+swindle was more flattering than any apology he had been able to frame
+for himself.
+
+"Still, Cissie, I ought to have used the greatest care--"
+
+"I'm not talking about what you 'ought,'" stated the octoroon, crisply;
+"I'm talking about what you are. When it comes to 'ought,' we colored
+people must get what we can, any way we can. We fight from the bottom."
+The speech held a viperish quality which for a moment caught the brown
+man's attention; then he said:
+
+"One thing is sure, I've lost my prestige, whatever it was worth."
+
+The girl nodded slowly.
+
+"With the others you have, I suppose."
+
+Peter glanced at Cissie. The temptation was strong to give the
+conversation a personal turn, but he continued on the general topic:
+
+"Well, perhaps it's just as well. My prestige was a bit too flamboyant,
+Cissie. All I had to do was to mention a plan. The Sons and Daughters
+didn't even discuss it. They put it right through. That wasn't healthy.
+Our whole system of society, all democracies are based on discussion.
+Our old Witenagemot--"
+
+"But it wasn't _our_ old Witenagemot," said the girl.
+
+"Well--no," admitted the mulatto, "that's true."
+
+They moved along for some distance in silence, when the girl asked:
+
+"What are you going to do now, Peter?"
+
+"Teach, and keep working for that training-school," stated Peter, almost
+belligerently. "You didn't expect a little thing like a hundred dollars
+to stop me, did you?"
+
+"No-o-o," conceded Cissie, with some reserve of judgment in her tone.
+Presently she added, "You could do a lot better up North, Peter."
+
+"For whom?"
+
+"Why, yourself," said the girl, a little surprised.
+
+Siner nodded.
+
+"I thought all that out before I came back here, Cissie. A friend of
+mine named Farquhar offered me a place with him up in Chicago,--a string
+of garages. You'd like Farquhar, Cissie. He's a materialist with an
+absolutely inexorable brain. He mechanizes the universe. I told him I
+couldn't take his offer. 'It's like this,' I argued: 'if every negro
+with a little ability leaves the South, our people down there will never
+progress.' It's really that way, Cissie, it takes a certain mental
+atmosphere to develop a people as a whole. A few individuals here and
+there may have the strength to spring up by themselves, but the run of
+the people--no. I believe one of the greatest curses of the colored race
+in the South is the continual draining of its best individuals North.
+Farquhar argued--" just then Peter saw that Cissie was not attending his
+discourse. She was walking at his side in a respectful silence. He
+stopped talking, and presently she smiled and said:
+
+"You haven't noticed my new brooch, Peter." She lifted her hand to her
+bosom, and twisted the face of the trinket toward him. "You oughtn't to
+have made me show it to you after you recommended it yourself." She made
+a little _moue_ of disappointment.
+
+It was a pretty bit of old gold that complimented the creamy skin. Peter
+began admiring it at once, and, negro fashion, rather overstepped the
+limits white beaux set to their praise, as he leaned close to her.
+
+At the moment the two were passing one of the oddest houses in
+Niggertown. It was a two-story cabin built in the shape of a steamboat.
+A little cupola represented a pilot-house, and two iron chimneys served
+for smoke-stacks.
+
+This queer building had been built by a negro stevedore because of a
+deep admiration for the steamboats on which he had made his living.
+Instead of steps at the front door, this boat-like house had a stage-
+plank. As Peter strolled down the street with Cissie, admiring her
+brooch, and suffused with a sense of her nearness, he happened to glance
+up, and saw Tump Pack walk down the stage-plank, come out, and wait for
+them at the gate.
+
+There was something grim in the ex-soldier's face and in the set of his
+gross lips as the two came up, but the aura of the girl prevented Peter
+from paying much attention to it. As the two reached Tump, Peter had
+just lifted his hand to his hat when Tump made a quick step out at the
+gate, in front of them, and swung a furious blow at Peter's head.
+
+Cissie screamed. Siner staggered back with flames dancing before his
+eyes. The soldier lunged after his toppling man with gorilla-like blows.
+Hot pains shot through Peter's body. His head roared like a gong. The
+sunlight danced about him in flashes. The air was full of black fists
+smashing him, and not five feet away, the bullet head of Tump Pack
+bobbed this way and that in the rapid shifts of his attack. A stab of
+pain cut off Peter's breath. He stood with his diaphragm muscles tense
+and paralyzed, making convulsive efforts to breathe. At that moment he
+glimpsed the convexity of Tump's stomach. He drop-kicked at it with
+foot-ball desperation. Came a loud explosive groan. Tump seemed to rise
+a foot or two in air, turned over, and thudded down on his shoulders in
+the dust. The soldier made no attempt to rise, but curled up, twisting
+in agony.
+
+Peter stood in the dust-cloud, wabbly, with roaring head. His open mouth
+was full of dust. Then he became aware that negroes were running in from
+every direction, shouting. Their voices whooped out what had happened,
+who it was, who had licked. Tump Pack's agonized spasms brought howls of
+mirth from the black fellows. Negro women were in the crowd, grinning, a
+little frightened, but curious. Some were in Mother-Hubbards; one had
+her hair half combed, one side in a kinky mattress, the other lying flat
+and greased down to her scalp.
+
+When Peter gradually became able to breathe and could think at all,
+there was something terrible to him in Tump's silent attack and in this
+extravagant black mirth over mere suffering. Cissie was gone,--had fled,
+no doubt, at the beginning of the fight.
+
+The prostrate man's tortured abdomen finally allowed him to twist around
+toward Peter. His eyes were popped, and seemed all yellows and streaked
+with swollen veins.
+
+"I'll git you fuh dis," he wheezed, spitting dust "You did n' fight
+fair, you--"
+
+The black chorus rolled their heads and pounded one another in a gale of
+merriment.
+
+Peter Siner turned away toward his home filled with sick thought. He had
+never realized so clearly the open sore of Niggertown life and its great
+need of healing, yet this very episode would further bar him, Peter,
+from any constructive work. He foresaw, too plainly, how the white town
+and Niggertown would react to this fight. There would be no
+discrimination in the scandal. He, Peter Siner, would be grouped with
+the boot-leggers and crap-shooters and women-chasers who filled
+Niggertown with their brawls. As a matter of simple fact, he had been
+fighting with another negro over a woman. That he was subjected to an
+attack without warning or cause would never become a factor in the
+analysis. He knew that very well.
+
+Two of Peter's teeth were loose; his left jaw was swelling; his head
+throbbed. With that queer perversity of human nerves, he kept biting his
+sore teeth together as he walked along.
+
+When he reached home, his mother met him at the door. Thanks to the
+swiftness with which gossip spreads among black folk, she had already
+heard of the fight, and incidentally had formed her judgment of the
+matter. Now she looked in exasperation at her son's swelling face.
+
+"I 'cla' 'fo' Gawd!--ain't been home a week befo' he's fightin' over a
+nigger wench lak a roustabout!"
+
+Peter's head throbbed so he could hardly make out the details of
+Caroline's face.
+
+"But, Mother--" he began defensively, "I--"
+
+"Me sweatin' over de wash-pot," the negress went on, "so's you could go
+up North an' learn a lil sense; heah you comes back chasin' a dutty
+slut!"
+
+"But, Mother," he begged thickly, "I was simply walking home with Miss
+Dildine."
+
+"Miss Dildine! Miss Dildine!" exploded the ponderous woman, with an
+erasing gesture. "Ef you means dat stuck-up fly-by-night Cissie Dildine,
+say so, and don' stan' thaiuh mouthin', 'Miss Dildine, Miss Dildine'!"
+
+"Mother," asked Peter, thickly, through his swelling mouth, "do you want
+to know what did happen?"
+
+"I knows. I tol' you to keep away fum dat hussy. She's a fool 'bout her
+bright color an' straight hair. Needn't be givin' herse'f no airs!"
+
+Peter stood in the doorway, steadying himself by the jamb. The world
+still swayed from the blows he had received on the head.
+
+"What girl would you be willing for me to go with?" he asked in faint
+satire.
+
+"Heah in Niggertown?"
+
+Peter nodded. The movement increased his headache.
+
+"None a-tall. No Niggertown wench a-tall. When you mus' ma'y, I's
+'speckin' you to go off summuhs an' pick yo' gal, lak you went off to
+pick yo' aidjucation." She swung out a thick arm, and looked at Peter
+out of the corner of her eyes, her head tilted to one side, as negresses
+do when they become dramatically serious.
+
+Peter left his mother to her stare and went to his own room. This
+constant implication among Niggertown inhabitants that Niggertown and
+all it held was worthless, mean, unhuman depressed Peter. The mulatto
+knew the real trouble with Niggertown was it had adopted the white
+village's estimate of it. The sentiment of the white village was
+overpowering among the imitative negroes. The black folk looked into the
+eyes of the whites and saw themselves reflected as chaff and skum and
+slime, and no human being ever suggested that they were aught else.
+
+Peter's room was a rough shed papered with old newspapers. All sorts of
+yellow scare-heads streaked his walls. Hanging up was a crayon
+enlargement of his mother, her broad face as unwrinkled as an egg and
+drawn almost white, for the picture agents have discovered the only way
+to please their black patrons is to make their enlargements as nearly
+white as possible.
+
+In one corner, on a home-made book-rack, stood Peter's library,--a Greek
+book or two, an old calculus, a sociology, a psychology, a philosophy,
+and a score of other volumes he had accumulated in his four college
+years. As Peter, his head aching, looked at these, he realized how
+immeasurably removed he was from the cool abstraction of the study.
+
+The brown man sat down in an ancient rocking-chair by the window, leaned
+back, and closed his eyes. His blood still whispered in his ears from
+his fight. Notwithstanding his justification, he gradually became filled
+with self-loathing. To fight--to hammer and kick in Niggertown's dust--
+over a girl! It was an indignity.
+
+
+Peter shifted his position in his chair, and his thoughts took another
+trail. Tump's attack had been sudden and silent, much like a bulldog's.
+The possibility of a simple friendship between a woman and a man never
+entered Tump's head; it never entered any Niggertown head. Here all
+attraction was reduced to the simplest terms of sex. Niggertown held no
+delicate intimacies or reserves. Two youths could not go with the same
+girl. Black women had no very great powers of choice over their suitors.
+The strength of a man's arm isolated his sweetheart. That did not seem
+right, resting the power of successful mating entirely upon brawn.
+
+As Peter sat thinking it over, it came to him that the progress of any
+race depended, finally, upon the woman having complete power of choosing
+her mate. It is woman alone who consistently places the love accent upon
+other matters than mere flesh and muscle. Only woman has much sex
+selectiveness, or is inclined to select individuals with qualities of
+mind and spirit.
+
+For millions of years these instinctive spiritualizers of human breeding
+stock have been hampered in their choice of mates by the unrestrained
+right of the fighting male. Indeed, the great constructive work of
+chivalry in the middle ages was to lay, unconsciously, the corner-stone
+of modern civilization by resigning to the woman the power of choosing
+from a group of males.
+
+Siner stirred in his chair, surprised at whither his reverie had lead
+him. He wondered how he had stumbled upon these thoughts. Had he read
+them in a book? In point of fact, a beating administered by Tump Pack
+had brought the brown man the first original idea he had entertained in
+his life.
+
+By this time, Peter's jaw had reached its maximum swelling and was eased
+somewhat. He looked out of his little window, wondering whether Cissie
+Dildine would choose him--or Tump Pack.
+
+Peter was surprised to find blue dusk peering through his panes. All the
+scare-heads on his walls had lapsed into a common obscurity. As he rose
+slowly, so as not to start his head hurting again, he heard three rapid
+pistol shots in the cedar glade between Niggertown and the white
+village. He knew this to be the time-honored signal of boot-leggers
+announcing that illicit whisky was for sale in the blackness of the
+glade.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Next day the Siner-Pack fight was the focus of news interest in Hooker's
+Bend. White mistresses extracted the story from their black maids, and
+were amused by it or deprecated Cissie Dildine's morals as the mood
+moved them.
+
+Along Main Street in front of the village stores, the merchants and
+hangers-on discussed the affair. It was diverting that a graduate of
+Harvard should come back to Hooker's Bend and immediately drop into such
+a fracas. Old Captain Renfrew, one-time attorney at law and
+representative of his county in the state legislature, sat under the
+mulberry in front of the livery-stable and plunged into a long
+monologue, with old Mr. Tomwit as listener, on the uneducability of the
+black race.
+
+"Take a horse, sir," expounded the captain; "a horse can be trained to
+add and put its name together out of an alphabet, but no horse could
+ever write a promissory note and figure the interest on it, sir. Take a
+dog. I've known dogs, sir, that could bring your mail from the post-
+office, but I never saw a dog stop on the way home, sir, to read a post-
+card."
+
+Here the old ex-attorney spat and renewed the tobacco in a black brier,
+then proceeded to draw the parrallel between dogs and horses and Peter
+Siner newly returned from Harvard.
+
+"God'lmighty has set his limit on dogs, horses, and niggers, Mr. Tomwit.
+Thus far and no farther. Take a nigger baby at birth; a nigger baby has
+no fontanelles. It has no window toward heaven. Its skull is sealed up
+in darkness. The nigger brain can never expand and absorb the universe,
+sir. It can never rise on the wings of genius and weigh the stars, nor
+compute the swing of the Pleiades. Thus far and no farther! It's
+congenital.
+
+"Now, take this Peter Siner and his disgraceful fight over a nigger
+wench. Would you expect an educated stud horse to pay no attention to a
+mare, sir? You can educate a stud till--"
+
+"But hold on!" interrupted the old cavalryman. "I've known as
+gentlemanly stallions as--as anybody!"
+
+The old attorney cleared his throat, momentarily taken aback at this
+failure of his metaphor. However he rallied with legal suppleness:
+
+"You are talking about thoroughbreds, sir."
+
+"I am, sir."
+
+"Good God, Tomwit! you don't imagine I'm comparing a nigger to a
+thoroughbred, sir!"
+
+On the street corners, or piled around on cotton-bales down on the wharf,
+the negro men of the village discussed the fight. It was for the most
+part a purely technical discussion of blows and counters and kicks, and
+of the strange fact that a college education failed to enable Siner
+utterly to annihilate his adversary. Jim Pink Staggs, a dapper gentleman
+of ebony blackness, of pin-stripe flannels and blue serge coat--
+altogether a gentleman of many parts--sat on one of the bales and
+indolently watched an old black crone fishing from a ledge of rocks just
+a little way below the wharf-boat. Around Jim Pink lounged and sprawled
+black men and youths, stretching on the cotton-bales like cats in the
+sunshine.
+
+Jim Pink was discussing Peter's education.
+
+"I 'fo' Gawd kain't see no use goin' off lak dat an' den comin' back an'
+lettin' a white man cheat you out'n yo' hide an' taller, an' lettin' a
+black man beat you up tull you has to 'kick him in the spivit. Ef a
+aidjucation does you any good a-tall, you'd be boun' to beat de white man
+at one en' uv de line, or de black man at de udder. Ef Peter ain't to be
+foun' at eider en', wha is he?"
+
+"Um-m-m!" "Eh-h-h!" "You sho spoke a moufful, Jim Pink!" came an
+assenting chorus from the bales.
+
+Eventually such gossip died away and took another flurry when a report
+went abroad that Tump Pack was carrying a pistol and meant to shoot
+Peter on sight. Then this in turn ceased to be news and of human
+interest. It clung to Peter's mind longer than to any other person's in
+Hooker's Bend, and it presented to the brown man a certain problem in
+casuistry.
+
+Should he accede to Tump Pack's possession of Cissie Dildine and give up
+seeing the girl? Such a course cut across all his fine-spun theory about
+women having free choice of their mates. However, the Harvard man could
+not advocate a socialization of courtship when he himself would be the
+first beneficiary. The prophet whose finger points selfward is damned.
+Furthermore, all Niggertown would side with Tump Pack in such a
+controversy. It was no uncommon thing for the very negro women to fight
+over their beaux and husbands. As for any social theory changing this
+regime, in the first place the negroes couldn't understand the theory;
+in the second, it would have no effect if they could. Actions never grow
+out of theories; theories grow out of actions. A theory is a looking-
+glass that reflects the past and makes it look like the future, but the
+glass really hides the future, and when humanity comes to a turn in its
+course, there is always a smash-up, and a blind groping for the lost
+path.
+
+Now, in regard to Cissie Dildine, Peter was not precisely afraid of Tump
+Pack, but he could not clear his mind of the fact that Tump had been
+presented with a medal by the Congress of the United States for killing
+four men. Good sense and a care for his reputation and his skin told
+Peter to abandon his theory of free courtship for the time being. This
+meant a renunciation of Cissie Dildine; but he told himself he renounced
+very little. He had no reason to think that Cissie cared a picayune
+about him.
+
+Peter's work kept him indoors for a number of days following the
+encounter. He was reviewing some primary school work in order to pass a
+teacher's examination that would be held in Jonesboro, the county seat,
+in about three weeks.
+
+To the uninitiated it may seem strange to behold a Harvard graduate
+stuck down day after day poring over a pile of dog-eared school-books--
+third arithmetics, primary grammars, beginners' histories of Tennessee,
+of the United States, of England; physiology, hygiene. It may seem
+queer. But when it comes to standing a Wayne County teacher's
+examination, the specific answers to the specific questions on a dozen
+old examination slips are worth all the degrees Harvard ever did confer.
+
+So, in his newspapered study, Peter Siner looked up long lists of
+questions, and attempted to memorize the answers. But the series of
+missteps he had made since returning to Hooker's Bend besieged his brain
+and drew his thoughts from his catechism. It seemed strange that in so
+short a time he should have wandered so far from the course he had set
+for himself. His career in Niggertown formed a record of slight
+mistakes, but they were not to be undone, and their combined force had
+swung him a long way from the course he had plotted for himself. There
+was no way to explain. Hooker's Bend would judge him by the sheer
+surface of his works. What he had meant to do, his dreams and altruisms,
+they would never surmise. That was the irony of the thing.
+
+Then he thought of Cissie Dildine who did understand him. This thought
+might have been Cissie's cue to enter the stage of Peter's mind. Her
+oval, creamy face floated between Peter's eyes and the dog-eared primer.
+He thought of Cissie wistfully, and of her lonely fight for good
+English, good manners, and good taste. There was a pathos about Cissie.
+
+Peter got up from his chair and looked out at his high window into the
+early afternoon. He had been poring over primers for three days,
+stuffing the most heterogeneous facts. His head felt thick and slightly
+feverish. Through his window he saw the side of another negro cabin, but
+by looking at an angle eastward he could see a field yellow with corn, a
+valley, and, beyond, a hill wooded and glowing with the pageantry of
+autumn. He thought of Cissie Dildine again, of walking with her among
+the burning maples and the golden elms. He thought of the restfulness
+such a walk with Cissie would bring.
+
+As he mused, Peter's soul made one of those sharp liberating movements
+that occasionally visit a human being. The danger of Tump Pack's
+jealousy, the loss of his prestige, the necessity of learning the
+specific answers to the examination questions, all dropped away from him
+as trivial and inconsequent. He turned from the window, put away his
+books and question-slips, picked up his hat, and moved out briskly
+through his mother's room toward the door.
+
+The old woman in the kitchen must have heard him, for she called to him
+through the partition, and a moment later her bulky form filled the
+kitchen entrance. She wiped her hands on her apron and looked at him
+accusingly.
+
+"Wha you gwine, son?"
+
+"For a walk."
+
+The old negress tilted her head aslant and looked fixedly at him.
+
+"You's gwine to dat Cissie Dildine's, Peter."
+
+Peter looked at his mother, surprised and rather disconcerted that she
+had guessed his intentions from his mere footsteps. The young man
+changed his plans for his walk, and began a diplomatic denial:
+
+"No, I'm going to walk by myself. I'm tired; I'm played out."
+
+"Tired?" repeated his mother, doubtfully. "You ain't done nothin' but
+set an' turn th'ugh books an' write on a lil piece o' paper."
+
+Peter was vaguely amused in his weariness, but thought that he concealed
+his mirth from his mother.
+
+"That gets tiresome after a while."
+
+She grunted her skepticism. As Peter moved for the door she warned him:
+
+"Peter, you knows ef Tump Pack sees you, he's gwine to shoot you sho!"
+
+"Oh, no he won't; that's Tump's talk."
+
+"Talk! talk! Whut's matter wid you, Peter? Dat nigger done git crowned
+fuh killin' fo' men!" She stood staring at him with white eyes. Then she
+urged, "Now, look heah, Peter, come along an' eat yo' supper."
+
+"No, I really need a walk. I won't walk through Niggertown. I'll walk
+out in the woods."
+
+"I jes made some salmon coquettes fuh you whut'll spile ef you don' eat
+'em now."
+
+"I didn't know you were making croquettes," said Peter, with polite
+interest.
+
+"Well, I is. I gotta can o' salmon fum Miss Mollie Brownell she'd opened
+an' couldn't quite use. I doctered 'em up wid a lil vinegar an' sody,
+an' dey is 'bout as pink as dey ever wuz."
+
+A certain uneasiness and annoyance came over Peter at this persistent
+use of unwholesome foods.
+
+"Look here, Mother, you're not using old canned goods that have been
+left over?"
+
+The old negress stood looking at him in silence, but lost her coaxing
+expression.
+
+"I've told and told you about using any tainted or impure foods that the
+white people can't eat."
+
+"Well, whut ef you is?"
+
+"If it's too bad for them, it's too bad for you!"
+
+Caroline made a careless gesture.
+
+"Good Lawd, boy! I don' 'speck to eat whut's good fuh me! All I says is,
+'Grub, keep me alive. Ef you do dat, you done a good day's wuck.'"
+
+Peter was disgusted and shocked at his mother's flippancy. Modern
+colleges are atheistic, but they do exalt three gods,--food,
+cleanliness, and exercise. Now here was Peter's mother blaspheming one
+of his trinity.
+
+"I wish you 'd let me know when you want anything Mother. I'll get it
+fresh for you." His words were filial enough, but his tone carried his
+irritation.
+
+The old negress turned back to the kitchen.
+
+"Huh, boy! you been fotch up on lef'-overs," she said, and disappeared
+through the door.
+
+Peter walked to the gate, let himself out, and started off on his
+constitutional. His tiff with his mother renewed all his nervousness and
+sense of failure. His litany of mistakes renewed their dolor in his
+mind.
+
+An autumn wind was blowing, and long plumes of dust whisked up out of
+the curving street and swept over the ill-kept yards, past the cabins,
+and toward the sere fields and chromatic woods. The wind beat at the
+brown man; the dust whispered against his clothes, made him squint his
+eyes to a crack and tickled his nostrils at each breath.
+
+When Peter had gone two or three hundred yards, he became aware that
+somebody was walking immediately behind him. Tump Pack popped into his
+mind. He looked over his shoulder and then turned. Through the veils of
+flying dust he made out some one, and a moment later identified not Tump
+Pack, but the gangling form of Jim Pink Staggs, clad in a dark-blue
+sack-coat and white flannel trousers with pin stripes. It was the sort
+of costume affected by interlocutors of minstrel shows; it had a
+minstrel trigness about it.
+
+As a matter of fact, Jim Pink was a sort of semi-professional minstrel.
+Ordinarily, he ran a pressing-shop in the Niggertown crescent, but
+occasionally he impressed all the dramatic talent of Niggertown and
+really did take the road with a minstrel company. These barn-storming
+expeditions reached down into Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas.
+Sometimes they proved a great success, and the darkies rode back several
+hundred dollars ahead. Sometimes they tramped back.
+
+Jim Pink hailed Peter with a wave of his hand and a grotesque
+displacement of his mouth to one side of his face, which he had found
+effective in his minstrel buffoonery.
+
+"Whut you raisin' so much dus' about?" he called out of the corner of
+his mouth, while looking at Peter out of one half-closed eye.
+
+Peter shook his head and smiled.
+
+"Thought it mout be Mister Hooker deliverin' dat lan' you bought." Jim
+Pink flung his long, flexible face into an imitation of convulsed
+laughter, then next moment dropped it into an intense gravity and
+declared, "'Dus' thou art, to dus' returnest.'" The quotation seemed
+fruitless and silly enough, but Jim Pink tucked his head to one side as
+if listening intently to himself, then repeated sepulchrally, "'Dus'
+thou art, to dus' returnest.' By the way, Peter," he broke off cheerily,
+"you ain't happen to see Tump Pack, is you?"
+
+"No," said Peter, unamused.
+
+"Is he borrowed a gun fum you?" inquired the minstrel, solemnly.
+
+"No-o." Peter looked questioningly at the clown through half-closed
+eyes.
+
+"Huh, now dat's funny." Jim Pink frowned, and pulled down his loose
+mouth and seemed to study. He drew out a pearl-handled knife, closed his
+hand over it, blew on his fist, then opened the other hand, and
+exhibited the knife lying in its palm, with the blade open. He seemed
+surprised at the change and began cleaning his finger-nails. Jim Pink
+was the magician at his shows.
+
+Peter waited patiently for Jim Pink to impart his information, "Well,
+what's the idea?" he asked at last.
+
+"Don' know. 'Pears lak dat knife won't stay in any one han'." He looked
+at it, curiously.
+
+"I mean about Tump," said Peter, impatiently.
+
+"O-o-oh, yeah; you mean 'bout Tump. Well, I thought Tump mus' uv
+borrowed a gun fum you. He lef' Hobbett's corner wid a great big forty-
+fo', inquirin' wha you is." Just then he glanced up, looked
+penetratingly through the dust-cloud, and added, "Why, I b'lieve da' 's
+Tump now."
+
+With a certain tightening of the nerves, Peter followed his glance, but
+made out nothing through the fogging dust. When he looked around at Jim
+Pink again, the buffoon's face was a caricature of immense mirth. He
+shook it sober, abruptly, minstrel fashion.
+
+"Maybe I's mistooken," he said solemnly. "Tump did start over heah wid a
+gun, but Mister Dawson Bobbs done tuk him up fuh ca'yin' concealed
+squidjulums; so Tump's done los' dat freedom uv motion in de pu'suit uv
+happiness gua'anteed us niggers an' white folks by the Constitution uv
+de Newnighted States uv America." Here Jim Pink broke into genuine
+laughter, which was quite a different thing from his stage grimaces.
+Peter stared at the fool astonished.
+
+"Has he gone to jail?"
+
+"Not prezactly."
+
+"Well--confound it!--exactly what did happen, Jim Pink?"
+
+"He gone to Mr. Cicero Throgmartins'."
+
+"What did he go there for?"
+
+"Couldn't he'p hisse'f."
+
+"Look here, you tell me what's happened."
+
+"Mr. Bobbs ca'ied Tump thaiuh. Y' see, Mr. Throgmartin tried to hire
+Tump to pick cotton. Tump didn't haf to, because he'd jes shot fo'
+natchels in a crap game. So to-day, when Tump starts over heah wid his
+gun, Mr. Bobbs 'resses Tump. Mr. Throgmartin bails him out, so now
+Tump's gone to pick cotton fuh Mr. Throgmartin to pay off'n his fine."
+Here Jim Pink yelped into honest laughter at Tump's undoing so that dust
+got into his nose and mouth and set him sneezing and coughing.
+
+"How long's he up for?" asked Peter, astonished and immensely relieved
+at this outcome of Tump's expedition against himself.
+
+Jim Pink controlled his coughing long enough to gasp:
+
+"Th-thutty days, ef he don' run off," and fell to laughing again.
+
+Peter Siner, long before, had adopted the literate man's notion of what
+is humorous, and Tump's mishap was slap-stick to him. Nevertheless, he
+did smile. The incident filled him with extraordinary relief and
+buoyancy. At the next corner he made some excuse to Jim Pink, and turned
+off up an alley.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+Peter walked along with his shoulders squared and the dust peppering his
+back. Not till Tump was lifted from his mind did he realize what an
+incubus the soldier had been. Peter had been forced into a position
+where, if he had killed Tump, he would have been ruined; if he had not,
+he would probably have murdered. Now he was free--for thirty days.
+
+He swung along briskly in the warm sunshine toward the multicolored
+forest. The day had suddenly become glorious. Presently he found himself
+in the back alleys near Cissie's house. He was passing chicken-houses
+and stables. Hogs in open pens grunted expectantly at his footsteps.
+
+Peter had not meant to go to Cissie's at all, but now, when he saw he
+was right behind her dwelling, she seemed radiantly accessible to him.
+Still, it struck him that it would not be precisely the thing to call on
+Cissie immediately after Tump's arrest. It might look as if--Then the
+thought came that, as a neighbor, he should stop and tell Cissie of
+Tump's misfortune. He really ought to offer his services to Cissie, if
+he could do anything. At Cissie's request he might even aid Tump Pack
+himself. Peter got himself into a generous glow as he charged up a side
+alley, around to a rickety front gate. Let Niggertown criticize as it
+would, he was braced by a high altruism.
+
+Peter did not shout from the gate, as is the fashion of the crescent,
+but walked up a little graveled path lined with dusty box-shrubs and
+tapped at the unpainted door.
+
+Doors in Niggertown never open straight away to visitors. A covert
+inspection first takes place from the edges of the window-blinds.
+
+Peter stood in the whipping dust, and the caution of the inmates spurred
+his impatience to see Cissie. At last the door opened, and Cissie
+herself was in the entrance. She stood quite still a moment, looking at
+Peter with eyes that appeared frightened.
+
+"I--I wasn't expecting to see you," she stammered.
+
+"No? I came by with news, Cissie."
+
+"News?" She seemed more frightened than ever. "Peter, you--you haven't--
+" She paused, regarding him with big eyes.
+
+"Tump Pack's been arrested," explained Peter, quickly, sensing the
+tragedy in her thoughts. "I came by to tell you. If there's anything I
+can do for you--or him, I'll do it."
+
+His altruistic offer sounded rather foolish in the actual saying.
+
+He could not tell from her face whether she was glad or sorry.
+
+"What did they arrest him for?"
+
+"Carrying a pistol."
+
+She paused a moment.
+
+"Will he--get out soon?"
+
+"He's sentenced for thirty days."
+
+Cissie dropped her hands with a hopeless gesture.
+
+"Oh, isn't this all sickening!--sickening!" she exclaimed. She looked
+tired. Ghosts of sleepless nights circled her eyes. Suddenly she said,
+"Come in. Oh, do come in, Peter." She reached out and almost pulled him
+in. She was so urgent that Peter might have fancied Tump Pack at the
+gate with his automatic. He did glance around, but saw nobody passing
+except the Arkwright boy. The hobbledehoy walked down the other side of
+the street, hands thrust in pockets, with the usual discontented
+expression on his face.
+
+Cissie slammed the door shut, and the two stood rather at a loss in the
+sudden gloom of the hall. Cissie broke into a brief, mirthless laugh.
+
+"Peter, it's hard to be nice in Niggertown. I--I just happened to think
+how folks would gossip--you coming here as soon as Tump was arrested."
+
+"Perhaps I'd better go," suggested Peter, uncomfortably.
+
+Cissie reached up and caught his lapel.
+
+"Oh, no, don't feel that way! I'm glad you came, really. Here, let's go
+through this way to the arbor. It isn't a bad place to sit."
+
+She led the way silently through two dark rooms. Before she opened the
+back door, Peter could hear Cissie's mother and a younger sister moving
+around the outside of the house to give up the arbor to Cissie and her
+company.
+
+The arbor proved a trellis of honeysuckle over the back door, with a
+bench under it. A film of dust lay over the dense foliage, and a few
+withered blooms pricked its grayish green. The earthen floor of the
+arbor was beaten hard and bare by the naked feet of children.
+
+Cissie sat down on the bench and indicated a place beside her.
+
+"I've been so uneasy about you! I've been wondering what on earth you
+could do about it."
+
+"It's a snarl, all right," he said, and almost immediately began
+discussing the peculiar _impasse_ in which his difficulty with Tump
+had landed him. Cissie sat listening with a serious, almost tragic face,
+giving a little nod now and then. Once she remarked in her precise way:
+
+"The trouble with a gentleman fighting a rowdy, the gentleman has all to
+lose and nothing to gain. If you don't live among your own class, Peter,
+your life will simmer down to an endless diplomacy."
+
+"You mean deceit, I suppose."
+
+"No, I mean diplomacy. But that isn't a very healthy frame of mind,--
+always to be suppressing and guarding yourself."
+
+Peter didn't know about that. He was inclined to argue the matter, but
+Cissie wouldn't argue. She seemed to assume that all of her statements
+were axioms, truths reduced to the simplest possible mental terms, and
+that proof was unnecessary, if not impossible. So the topic went into
+the discard.
+
+"Been baking my brains over a lot of silly little exam questions,"
+complained Peter. "Can you trace the circulation of the blood? I think
+it leaves the grand central station through the right aorta, and then,
+after a schedule run of nine minutes, you can hear it coming up the
+track through the left ventricle, with all the passengers eager to get
+off and take some refreshment at the lungs. I have the general idea, but
+the exact routing gets me."
+
+Cissie laughed accommodatingly.
+
+"I wonder why it's necessary for everybody to know that once. I did. I
+could follow the circulation the right way or backward."
+
+"Must have been harder backward, going against the current."
+
+Cissie laughed again. A girl's part in a witty conversation might seem
+easy at first sight. She has only to laugh at the proper intervals.
+However, these intervals are not always distinctly marked. Some girls
+take no chances and laugh all the time.
+
+Cissie's appreciation was the sedative Peter needed. The relief of her
+laughter and her presence ran along his nerves and unkinked them, like a
+draft of Kentucky Special after a debauch. The curves of her cheek, the
+tilt of her head, and the lift of her dull-blue blouse at the bosom wove
+a great restfulness about Peter. The brooch of old gold glinted at her
+throat. The heavy screen of the arbor gave them a sweet sense of
+privacy. The conversation meandered this way and that, and became quite
+secondary to the feeling of the girl's nearness and sympathy. Their talk
+drifted back to Peter's mission here in Hooker's Bend, and Cissie was
+saying:
+
+"The trouble is, Peter, we are out of our _milieu_." Some portion
+of Peter's brain that was not basking in the warmth and invitation of
+the girl answered quite logically:
+
+"Yes, but if I could help these people, Cissie, reconstruct our life
+here culturally--"
+
+Cissie shook her head. "Not culturally."
+
+This opposition shunted more of Peter's thought to the topic in hand. He
+paused interrogatively.
+
+"Racially," said Cissie.
+
+"Racially?" repeated the man, quite lost.
+
+Cissie nodded, looking straight into his eyes. "You know very well,
+Peter, that you and I are not--are not anything near full bloods. You
+know that racially we don't belong in--Niggertown."
+
+Peter never knew exactly how this extraordinary sentence had come about,
+but in a kind of breath he realized that he and this almost white girl
+were not of Niggertown. No doubt she had been arguing that he, Peter,
+who was one sort of man, was trying to lead quite another sort of men
+moved by different racial impulses, and such leading could only come to
+confusion. He saw the implications at once.
+
+It was an extraordinary idea, an explosive idea, such as Cissie seemed
+to have the faculty of touching off. He sat staring at her.
+
+It was the white blood in his own veins that had sent him struggling up
+North, that had brought him back with this flame in his heart for his
+own people. It was the white blood in Cissie that kept her struggling to
+stand up, to speak an unbroken tongue, to gather around her the delicate
+atmosphere and charm of a gentlewoman. It was the Caucasian in them
+buried here in Niggertown. It was their part of the tragedy of millions
+of mixed blood in the South. Their common problem, a feeling of their
+joint isolation, brought Peter to a sense of keen and tingling nearness
+to the girl.
+
+She was talking again, very earnestly, almost tremulously:
+
+"Why don't you go North, Peter? I think and think about you staying
+here. You simply can't grow up and develop here. And now, especially,
+when everybody doubts you. If you'd go North--"
+
+"What about you, Cissie? You say we're together--"
+
+"Oh, I'm a woman. We haven't the chance to do as we will."
+
+A kind of titillation went over Peter's scalp and body.
+
+"Then you are going to stay here and marry--Tump?" He uttered the name
+in a queer voice.
+
+Tears started in Cissie's eyes; her bosom lifted to her quick breathing.
+
+
+"I--I don't know what I'm going to do," she stammered miserably.
+
+Peter leaned over her with a drumming heart; he heard her catch her
+breath.
+
+"You don't care for Tump?" he asked with a dry mouth.
+
+She gasped out something, and the next moment Peter felt her body sink
+limply in his groping arms. They clung together closely, quiveringly.
+Three nights of vigil, each thinking miserably and wistfully of the
+other, had worn the nerves of both man and girl until they were ready to
+melt together at a touch. Her soft body clinging to his own, the little
+nervous pressures of her arms, her eased breathing at his neck, wiped
+away Siner's long sense of strain. Strength and peace seemed to pour
+from her being into his by a sort of spiritual osmosis. She resigned her
+head to his palm in order that he might lift her lips to his when he
+pleased. After all, there is no way for a man to rest without a woman.
+All he can do is to stop work.
+
+For a long time they sat transported amid the dusty honeysuckles and
+withered blooms, but after a while they began talking a little at a time
+of the future, their future. They felt so indissolubly joined that they
+could not imagine the future finding them apart. There was no need for
+any more trouble with Tump Pack. They would marry quietly, and go away
+North to live. Peter thought of his friend Farquhar. He wondered if
+Farquhar's attitude would be just the same toward Cissie as it was
+toward him.
+
+"North," was the burden of the octoroon's dreams. They would go North to
+Chicago. There were two hundred and fifty thousand negroes in Chicago, a
+city within itself three times the size of Nashville. Up North she and
+Peter could go to theaters, art galleries, could enter any church, could
+ride in street-cars, railroad-trains, could sleep and eat at any hotel,
+live authentic lives.
+
+It was Cissie planning her emancipation, planning to escape her lifelong
+disabilities.
+
+"Oh, I'll be so glad! so glad! so glad!" she sobbed, and drew Peter's
+head passionately down to her deep bosom.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER V
+
+
+Peter Siner walked home from the Dildine cabin that night rather
+dreading to meet his mother, for it was late. Cissie had served
+sandwiches and coffee on a little table in the arbor, and then had kept
+Peter hours afterward. Around him still hung the glamour of Cissie's
+little supper. He could still see her rounded elbows that bent softly
+backward when she extended an arm, and the glimpses of her bosom when
+she leaned to hand him cream or sugar. She had accomplished the whole
+supper in the white manner, with all poise and daintiness. In fact, no
+one is more exquisitely polite than an octoroon woman when she desires
+to be polite, when she elevates the subserviency of her race into
+graciousness.
+
+However, the pleasure and charm of Cissie were fading under the
+approaching abuse that Caroline was sure to pour upon the girl. Peter
+dreaded it. He walked slowly down the dark semicircle, planning how he
+could best break to his mother the news of his engagement. Peter knew
+she would begin a long bill of complaints,--how badly she was treated,
+how she had sacrificed herself, her comfort, how she had washed and
+scrubbed. She would surely charge Cissie with being a thief and a drab,
+and all the announcements of engagements that Peter could make would
+never induce the old woman to soften her abuse. Indeed, they would make
+her worse.
+
+So Peter walked on slowly, smelling the haze of dust that hung in the
+blackness. Out on the Big Hill, in the glade, Peter caught an occasional
+glimmer of light where crap-shooters and boot-leggers were beginning
+their nightly carousal.
+
+These evidences of illicit trades brought Peter a thrill of disgust. In
+a sort of clear moment he saw that he could not keep Cissie in such a
+sty as this. He could not rear in such a place as this any children that
+might come to him and Cissie. His thoughts drifted back to his mother,
+and his dread of her tongue.
+
+The Siner cabin was dark and tightly shut when Peter let himself in at
+the gate and walked to the door. He stood a moment listening, and then
+gently pressed open the shutter. A faint light burned on the inside, a
+night-lamp with an old-fashioned brass bowl. It sat on the floor, turned
+low, at the foot of his mother's bed. The mean room was mainly in
+shadow. The old-style four-poster in which Caroline slept was an
+indistinct mound. The air was close and foul with the bad ventilation of
+all negro sleeping-rooms. The brass lamp, turned low, added smoke and
+gas to the tight quarters.
+
+The odor caught Peter in the nose and throat, and once more stirred up
+his impatience with his mother's disregard of hygiene. He tiptoed into
+the room and decided to remove the lamp and open the high, small window
+to admit a little air. He moved noiselessly and had stooped for the lamp
+when there came a creaking and a heavy sigh from the bed, and the old
+negress asked:
+
+"Is dat you, son?"
+
+Peter was tempted to stand perfectly still and wait till his mother
+dozed again, thus putting off her inevitable tirade against Cissie; but
+he answered in a low tone that it was he.
+
+"Whut you gwine do wid dat lamp, son?"
+
+"Go to bed by it, Mother."
+
+"Well, bring hit back." She breathed heavily, and moved restlessly in
+the old four-poster. As Peter stood up he saw that the patched quilts
+were all askew over her shapeless bulk. Evidently, she had not been
+resting well.
+
+Peter's conscience smote him again for worrying his mother with his
+courtship of Cissie, yet what could he do? If he had wooed any other
+girl in the world, she would have been equally jealous and grieved. It
+was inevitable that she should be disappointed and bitter; it was bound
+up in the very part and parcel of her sacrifice. A great sadness came
+over Peter. He almost wished his mother would berate him, but she
+continued to lie there, breathing heavily under her disarranged covers.
+As Peter passed into his room, the old negress called after him to
+remind him to bring the light back when he was through with it.
+
+This time something in her tone alarmed Peter.  He paused in the
+doorway.
+
+"Are you sick, Mother?" he asked.
+
+The old woman gave a yawn that changed to a groan.
+
+"I--I ain't feelin' so good."
+
+"What's the matter, Mother?"
+
+"My stomach, my--" But at that moment her sentence changed to an
+inarticulate sound, and she doubled up in bed as if caught in a spasm of
+acute agony.
+
+Peter hurried to her, thoroughly frightened, and saw sweat streaming
+down her face. He stared down at her.
+
+"Mother, you are sick! What can I do?" he cried, with a man's
+helplessness.
+
+She opened her eyes with an effort, panting now as the edge of the agony
+passed. There was a movement under the quilts, and she thrust out a
+rubber hot-water bottle.
+
+"Fill it--fum de kittle," she wheezed out, then relaxed into groans, and
+wiped clumsily at the sweat on her shining black face.
+
+Peter seized the bottle and ran into the kitchen. There he found a brisk
+fire popping in the stove and a kettle of water boiling. It showed him,
+to his further alarm, that his mother had been trying to minister to
+herself until forced to bed.
+
+The man scalded a finger and thumb pouring water into the flared mouth,
+but after a moment twisted on the top and hurried into the sick-room.
+
+He reached the old negress just as another knife of pain set her
+writhing and sweating. She seized the hot-water bottle, pushed it under
+the quilts, and pressed it to her stomach, then lay with eyes and teeth
+clenched tight, and her thick lips curled in a grin of agony.
+
+Peter set the lamp on the table, said he was going for the doctor, and
+started.
+
+The old woman hunched up in bed. With the penuriousness of her station
+and sacrifices, she begged Peter not to go; then groaned out, "Go tell
+Mars' Renfrew," but the next moment did not want Peter to leave her.
+
+Peter said he would get Nan Berry to stay while he was gone. The Berry
+cabin lay diagonally across the street. Peter ran over, thumped on the
+door, and shouted his mother's needs. As soon as he received an answer,
+he started on over the Big Hill toward the white town.
+
+Peter was seriously frightened. His run to Dr. Jallup's, across the Big
+Hill, was a series of renewed strivings for speed. Every segment of his
+journey seemed to seize him and pin him down in the midst of the night
+like a bug caught in a black jelly. He seemed to progress not at all.
+
+Now he was in the cedar glade. His muffled flight drove in the sentries
+of the crap-shooters, and gamesters blinked out their lights and
+listened to his feet stumbling on through the darkness.
+
+After an endless run in the glade, Peter found himself on top of the
+hill, amid boulders and outcrops limestone and cedar-shrubs. His flash-
+light picked out these objects, limned them sharply against the
+blackness, then dropped them into obscurity again.
+
+He tried to run faster. His impatience subdivided the distance into
+yards and feet. Now he was approaching that boulder, now he was passing
+it; now he was ten feet beyond, twenty, thirty. Perhaps his mother was
+dying, alone save for stupid Nan Berry.
+
+Now he was going down the hill past the white church. All that was
+visible was its black spire set against a web of stars. He was making no
+speed at all. He panted on. His heart hammered. His legs drummed with
+Lilliputian paces. Now he was among the village stores, all utterly
+black. At one point the echo of his feet chattered back at him, as if
+some other futile runner strained amid vast spaces of blackness.
+
+After a long time he found himself running up a residential street, and
+presently, far ahead, he saw the glow of Dr. Jallup's porch light. Its
+beam had the appearance of coming from a vast distance. When he reached
+the place, he flung his breast against the top panel of the doctor's
+fence and held on, exhausted. He drew in his breath, and began shouting,
+"Hello, Doctor!"
+
+Peter called persistently, and as he commanded more breath, he called
+louder and louder, "Hello, Doctor! Hello, Doctor! Hello, Doctor!" in
+tones edging on panic.
+
+The doctor's house might have been dead. Somewhere a dog began barking.
+High in the Southern sky a star looked down remotely on Peter's frantic
+haste. The black man stood in the black night with cries: "Hello,
+Doctor! Hello, Doctor! Hello, Doctor!"
+
+At last, in despair, he tried to think of other doctors. He thought of
+telephoning to Jonesboro. Just as he decided he must turn away there
+came a stirring in the dead house, a flicker of light appeared on the
+inside now here, now there; it steadied into a tiny beam and approached
+the door. The door opened, and Dr. Jallup's head and breast appeared,
+illuminated against the black interior.
+
+"My mother's sick, Doctor," began Peter, in immense relief.
+
+"Who is it?" inquired the half-clad man, impassively.
+
+"Caroline Siner; she's been taken with a--"
+
+The physician lifted his light a trifle in an effort to see Peter.
+
+"Lemme see: she's that fat nigger woman that lives in a three-roomed
+house--"
+
+"I'll show you the way," said Peter. "She's very ill."
+
+The half-dressed man shook his head.
+
+"No, Ca'line Siner owes me a five-dollar doctor's bill already. Our
+county medical association made a rule that no niggers should--"
+
+With a drying mouth, Peter Siner stared at the man of medicine.
+
+"But, my God, Doctor," gasped the son, "I'll pay you--"
+
+"Have you got the money there in your pocket?" asked Jallup,
+impassively.
+
+A sort of chill traveled deliberately over Peter's body and shook his
+voice.
+
+"N-no, but I can get it--"
+
+"Yes, you can all get it," stated the physician in dull irritation. "I'm
+tired of you niggers running up doctors' bills nobody can collect. You
+never have more than the law allows; your wages never get big enough to
+garnishee." His voice grew querulous as he related his wrongs. "No, I'm
+not going to see Ca'line Siner. If she wants me to visit her, let her
+send ten dollars to cover that and back debts, and I'll--" The end of
+his sentence was lost in the closing of his door. The light he carried
+declined from a beam to a twinkling here and there, and then vanished in
+blackness. Dr. Jallup's house became dead again. The little porch light
+in its glass box might have been a candle burning before a tomb.
+
+Peter Siner stood at the fence, licking his dry lips, with nerves
+vibrating like a struck bell. He pushed himself slowly away from the top
+plank and found his legs so weak that he could hardly walk. He moved
+slowly, back down the unseen street. The dog he had disturbed gave a few
+last growls and settled into silence.
+
+Peter moved along, wetting his dry lips, and stirring feebly among his
+dazed thoughts, hunting some other plan of action. There was a tiny
+burning spot on the left side of his occiput. It felt like a heated
+cambric needle which had been slipped into his scalp. Then he realized
+that he must go home, get ten dollars, and bring them back to Dr.
+Jallup. He started to run, but almost toppled over on his leaden legs.
+
+He plodded through the darkness, retracing the endless trail to
+Niggertown. As he passed a dark mass of shrubbery and trees, he recalled
+his mother's advice to ask aid of Captain Renfrew. It was the old
+Renfrew place that Peter was passing.
+
+The negro hesitated, then turned in at the gate in the bare hope of
+obtaining the ten dollars at once. Inside the gate Peter's feet
+encountered the scattered bricks of an old walk. The negro stood and
+called Captain Renfrew's name in a guarded voice. He was not at all sure
+of his action.
+
+Peter had called twice and was just about to go when a lamp appeared
+around the side of the house on a long portico that extended clear
+around the building. Bathed in the light of the lamp which he held over
+his head, there appeared an old man wearing a worn dressing gown.
+
+"Who is it?" he asked in a wavery voice.
+
+Peter told his name and mission.
+
+The old Captain continued holding up his light.
+
+"Oh, Peter Siner; Caroline Siner's sick? All right I'll have Jallup run
+over; I'll phone him."
+
+Peter was beginning his thanks preparatory to going, when the old man
+interrupted.
+
+"No, just stay here until Jallup comes by in his or He'll pick us both
+up. It'll save time. Come on inside. What's the matter with old
+Caroline?"
+
+The old dressing-gown led the way around the continuous piazza, to a
+room that stood open and brightly lighted on the north face of the old
+house.
+
+A great relief came to Peter at this unexpected succor. He followed
+around the piazza, trying to describe Caroline's symptoms. The room
+Peter entered was a library, a rather stately old room, lined with books
+all around the walls to about as high as a man could reach. Spaces for
+doors and windows were let in among the book-cases. The volumes
+themselves seemed composed mainly of histories and old-fashioned
+scientific books, if Peter could judge from a certain severity of their
+bindings. On a big library table burned a gasolene-lamp, which threw a
+brilliant whiteness all over the room. The table was piled with books
+and periodicals. Books and papers were heaped on every chair in the
+study except a deep Morris chair in which the old Captain had been
+sitting. A big meridional globe, about two and a half feet in diameter,
+gleamed through a film of dust in the embrasure of a window. The whole
+room had the womanless look of a bachelor's quarters, and was flavored
+with tobacco and just a hint of whisky.
+
+Old Captain Renfrew evidently had been reading when Peter called from
+the gate. Now the old man went to a telephone and rang long and briskly
+to awaken the boy who slept in the central office. Peter fidgeted as the
+old Captain stood with receiver to ear.
+
+"Hard to wake." The old gentleman spoke into the transmitter, but was
+talking to Peter. "Don't be so uneasy, Peter. Human beings are harder to
+kill than you think."
+
+There was a kindliness, even a fellowship, in Captain Renfrew's tones
+that spread like oil over Peter's raw nerves. It occurred to the negro
+that this was the first time he had been addressed as an authentic human
+being since his conversation with the two Northern men on the Pullman,
+up in Illinois. It surprised him. It was sufficient to take his mind
+momentarily from his mother. He looked a little closely at the old man
+at the telephone. The Captain wore few indices of kindness. Lines of
+settled sarcasm netted his eyes and drooped away from his old mouth. The
+very swell of his full temples and their crinkly veins marked a sardonic
+old man.
+
+At last he roused central over the wire, and impressed upon him the
+necessity of creating a stridor in Dr. Jallup's dead house, and a moment
+later a continued buzzing in the receiver betokened the operator's
+efforts to do so.
+
+The old gentleman turned around at last, holding the receiver a little
+distance from his ear.
+
+"I understand you went to Harvard, Peter."
+
+"Yes, sir." Peter took his eyes momentarily from the telephone. The old
+Southerner in the dressing-gown scrutinized the brown man. He cleared
+his throat.
+
+"You know, Peter, it gives me a--a certain satisfaction to see a Harvard
+man in Hooker's Bend. I'm a Harvard man myself."
+
+Peter stood in the brilliant light, astonished, not at Captain Renfrew's
+being a Harvard man,--he had known that,--but that this old gentleman
+was telling the fact to him, Peter Siner, a negro graduate of Harvard.
+
+It was extraordinary; it was tantamount to an offer of friendship, not
+patronage. Such an offer in the South disturbed Peter's poise; it
+touched him queerly. And it seemed to explain why Captain Renfrew had
+received Peter so graciously and was now arranging for Dr. Jallup to
+visit Caroline.
+
+Peter was moved to the conventional query, asking in what class the
+Captain had been graduated. But while his very voice was asking it,
+Peter thought what a strange thing it was that he, Peter Siner, a negro,
+and this lonely old gentleman, his benefactor, were spiritual brothers,
+both sprung from the loins of Harvard, that ancient mother of souls.
+
+[Illustration: The old gentleman turned around at last]
+
+From the darkness outside, Dr. Jallup's horn summmoned the two men.
+Captain Renfrew got out of his gown and into his coat and turned off his
+gasolene light. They walked around the piazza to the front of the house.
+In the street the head-lights of the roadster shot divergent rays
+through the darkness. They went out. The old Captain took a seat in the
+car beside the physician, while Peter stood on the running-board. A
+moment later, the clutch snarled, and the machine puttered down the
+street. Peter clung to the standards of the auto top, peering ahead.
+
+The men remained almost silent. Once Dr. Jallup, watching the dust that
+lay modeled in sharp lights and shadows under the head-lights, mentioned
+lack of rain. Their route did not lead over the Big Hill. They turned
+north at Hobbett's corner, drove around by River Street, and presently
+entered the northern end of the semicircle.
+
+The speed of the car was reduced to a crawl in the bottomless dust of
+the crescent. The head-lights swept slowly around the cabins on the
+concave side of the street, bringing them one by one into stark
+brilliance and dropping them into obscurity. The smell of refuse, of
+uncleaned stables and sties and outhouses hung in the darkness. Peter
+bent down under the top of the motor and pointed out his place. A minute
+later the machine came to a noisy halt and was choked into silence. At
+that moment, in the sweep of the head-light, Peter saw Viny Berry, one
+of Nan's younger sisters, coming up from Niggertown's public well,
+carrying two buckets of water.
+
+Viny was hurrying, plashing the water over the sides of her buckets. The
+importance of her mission was written in her black face.
+
+"She's awful thirsty," she called to Peter in guarded tones. "Nan called
+me to fetch some fraish water fum de well."
+
+Peter took the water that had been brought from the semi-cesspool at the
+end of the street. Viny hurried across the street to home and to bed.
+With the habitual twinge of his sanitary conscience, Peter considered
+the water in the buckets.
+
+"We'll have to boil this," he said to the doctor.
+
+"Boil it?" repeated Jallup, blankly. Then, he added: "Oh, yes--boil.
+Certainly."
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+A repellent odor of burned paper, breathed air, and smoky lights filled
+the close room. Nan had lighted another lamp and now the place was
+discernible in a dull yellow glow. In the corner lay a half-burned wisp
+of paper. Nan herself stood by the mound on the bed, putting straight
+the quilts that her patient had twisted awry.
+
+"She sho am bad, Doctor," said the colored woman, with big eyes.
+
+Seen in the light, Dr. Jallup was a little sandy-bearded man with a
+round, simple face, oddly overlaid with that inscrutability carefully
+cultivated by country doctors. With professional cheeriness, he
+approached the mound of bedclothes.
+
+"A little under the weather, Aunt Ca'line?" He slipped his fingers
+alongside her throat to test her temperature, at the same time drawing a
+thermometer from his waistcoat pocket.
+
+The old negress stirred, and looked up out of sick eyes.
+
+"Doctor," she gasped, "I sho got a misery heah." She indicated her
+stomach.
+
+"How do you feel?" he asked hopefully.
+
+The woman panted, then whispered:
+
+"Lak a knife was a-cuttin' an' a-tearin' out my innards." She rested,
+then added, "Not so bad now; feels mo' lak somp'n's tearin' in de nex'
+room."
+
+"Like something tearing in the next room?" repeated Jallup, emptily.
+
+"Yes, suh," she whispered. "I jes can feel hit--away off, lak."
+
+The doctor attempted to take her temperature, but the thermometer in her
+mouth immediately nauseated her, so he slipped the instrument under her
+arm.
+
+Old Caroline groaned at the slightest exertion, then, as she tossed her
+black head, she caught a glimpse of old Captain Renfrew.
+
+She halted abruptly in her restlessness, stared at the old gentleman,
+wet her dry lips with a queer brown-furred tongue.
+
+"Is dat you, Mars' Milt?" she gasped in feeble astonishment. A moment
+later she guessed the truth. "I s'pose you had to bring de doctor. 'Fo'
+Gawd, Mars' Milt--" She lay staring, with the covers rising and falling
+as she gasped for breath. Her feverish eyes shifted back and forth
+between the grim old gentleman and the tall, broad-shouldered brown man
+at the foot of her bed. She drew a baggy black arm from under the cover.
+
+"Da' 's Peter, Mars' Milt," she pointed. "Da' 's Peter, my son. He--he
+use' to be my son 'fo' he went off to school; but sence he come home, he
+been a-laughin' at me." Tears came to her eyes; she panted for a moment,
+then added: "Yeah, he done marked his mammy down fuh a nigger, Mars'
+Milt. Whut I thought wuz gwine be sweet lays bitter in my mouf." She
+worked her thick lips as if the rank taste of her sickness were the very
+flavor of her son's ingratitude.
+
+A sudden gasp and twist of her body told Nan that the old woman was
+again seized with a spasm. The neighbor woman took swift control, and
+waved out Peter and old Mr. Renfrew, while she and the doctor aided the
+huge negress.
+
+The two evicted men went into Peter's room and shut the door. Peter,
+unnerved, groped, and presently found and lighted a lamp. He put it down
+on his little table among his primary papers and examination papers. He
+indicated to Captain Renfrew the single chair in the room.
+
+But the old gentleman stood motionless in the mean room, with its head-
+line streaked walls. Sounds of the heavy lifting of Peter's mother came
+through the thin door and partition with painful clearness. Peter opened
+his own small window, for the air in his room was foul.
+
+Captain Renfrew stood in silence, with a remote sarcasm in his wrinkled
+eyes. What was in his heart, why he had subjected himself to the
+noisomeness of failing flesh, Peter had not the faintest idea. Once, out
+of studently habit, he glanced at Peter's philosophic books, but
+apparently he read the titles without really observing them. Once he
+looked at Peter.
+
+"Peter," he said colorlessly, "I hope you'll be careful of Caroline's
+feelings if she ever gets up again. She has been very faithful to you,
+Peter."
+
+Peter's eyes dampened. A great desire mounted in him to explain himself
+to this strange old gentleman, to show him how inevitable had been the
+breach. For some reason a veritable passion to reveal his heart to this
+his sole benefactor surged through the youth.
+
+"Mr. Renfrew," he stammered, "Mr. Renfrew--I--I--" His throat abruptly
+ached and choked. He felt his face distort in a spasm of uncontrollable
+grief. He turned quickly from this strange old man with a remote sarcasm
+in his eyes and a remote affection in his tones. Peter clenched his
+jaws, his nostrils spread in his effort stoically to bottle up his grief
+and remorse, like a white man; in an effort to keep from howling his
+agony aloud, like a negro. He stood with aching throat and blurred eyes,
+trembling, swallowing, and silent.
+
+Presently Nan Berry opened the door. She held a half-burned paper in her
+hand; Dr. Jallup stood near the bed, portioning out some calomel and
+quinine. The prevalent disease in Hooker's Bend is malaria; Dr. Jallup
+always physicked for malaria. On this occasion he diagnosed it must be a
+very severe attack of malaria indeed, so he measured out enormous doses.
+
+He took a glass of the water that Viny had brought, held up old
+Caroline's head, and washed down two big capsules into the already
+poisoned stomach of the old negress. His simple face was quite
+inscrutable as he did this. He left other capsules for Nan to administer
+at regular intervals. Then he and Captain Renfrew motored out of
+Niggertown, out of its dust and filth and stench.
+
+At four o'clock in the morning Caroline Siner died.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER VI
+
+
+When Nan Berry saw that Caroline was dead, the black woman dropped a
+glass of water and a capsule of calomel and stared. A queer terror
+seized her. She began such a wailing that it aroused others in
+Niggertown. At the sound they got out of their beds and came to the
+Siner cabin, their eyes big with mystery and fear. At the sight of old
+Caroline's motionless body they lifted their voices through the night.
+
+The lamentation carried far beyond the confines of Niggertown. The last
+gamblers in the cedar glade heard it, and it broke up their gaming and
+drinking. White persons living near the black crescent were waked out of
+their sleep and listened to the eerie sound. It rose and fell in the
+darkness like a melancholy organ chord. The wailing of the women
+quivered against the heavy grief of the men. The half-asleep listeners
+were moved by its weirdness to vague and sinister fancies. The dolor
+veered away from what the Anglo-Saxon knows as grief and was shot
+through with the uncanny and the terrible. White children crawled out of
+their small beds and groped their way to their parents. The women
+shivered and asked of the darkness, "_What_ makes the negroes howl
+so?"
+
+Nobody knew,--least of all, the negroes. Nobody suspected that the
+bedlam harked back to the jungle, to black folk in African kraals
+beating tom-toms and howling, not in grief, but in an ecstasy of terror
+lest the souls of their dead might come back in the form of tigers or
+pythons or devils and work woe to the tribe. Through the night the
+negroes wailed on, performing through custom an ancient rite of which
+they knew nothing. They supposed themselves heartbroken over the death
+of Caroline Siner.
+
+Amid this din Peter Siner sat in his room, stunned by the sudden taking
+off of his mother. The reproaches that she had expressed to old Captain
+Renfrew clung in Peter's brain. The brown man had never before realized
+the faint amusement and condescension that had flavored all his
+relations with his mother since his return home. But he knew now that
+she had felt his disapproval of her lifelong habits; that she saw he
+never explained or attempted to explain his thoughts to her, assuming
+her to be too ignorant; as she put it, "a fool."
+
+The pathos of his mother's last days, what she had expected, what she
+had received, came to Peter with the bitterness of what is finished and
+irrevocable. She had been dead only a few minutes, yet she could never
+know his grief and remorse; she could never forgive him. She was utterly
+removed in a few minutes, in a moment in the failing of a breath. The
+finality of death overpowered him.
+
+Into his room, through the thin wall, came the catch of numberless sobs,
+the long-drawn open wails, and the spasms of sobbing. Blurred voices
+called, "O Gawd! Gawd hab mercy! Hab mercy!" Now words were lost in the
+midst of confusion. The clamor boomed through the thin partition as if
+it would shake down his newspapered walls. With wet cheeks and an aching
+throat, Peter sat by his table, staring at his book-case in silence,
+like a white man.
+
+The dim light of his lamp fell over his psychologies and philosophies.
+These were the books that had given him precedence over the old
+washwoman who kept him in college. It was reading these books that had
+made him so wise that the old negress could not even follow his
+thoughts. Now in the hour of his mother's death the backs of his
+metaphysics blinked at him emptily. What signified their endless pages
+about dualism and monism, about phenomenon and noumenon? His mother was
+dead. And she had died embittered against him because he had read and
+had been bewildered by these empty, wordy volumes.
+
+A sense of profound defeat, of being ultimately fooled and cozened by
+the subtleties of white men, filled Peter Siner. He had eaten at their
+table, but their meat was not his meat. The uproar continued. Standing
+out of the din arose the burden of negro voices "Hab mercy! Gawd hab
+mercy!"
+
+In the morning the Ladies of Tabor came and washed and dressed Caroline
+Siner's body and made it ready for burial. For twenty years the old
+negress had paid ten cents a month to her society to insure her burial,
+and now the lodge made ready to fulfil its pledge. After many comings
+and goings, the black women called Peter to see their work, as if for
+his approval.
+
+The huge dead woman lay on the four-poster with a sheet spread over the
+lower part of her body. The ministrants had clothed it in the old black-
+silk dress, with its spreading seams and panels of different materials.
+It reminded Peter of the new dress he had meant to get his mother, and
+of the modish suit which at that moment molded his own shoulders and
+waist. The pitifulness of her sacrifices trembled in Peter's throat. He
+pressed his lips together, and nodded silently to the black Ladies of
+Tabor.
+
+Presently the white undertaker, a silent little man with a brisk yet
+sympathetic air, came and made some measurements. He talked to Peter in
+undertones about the finishing of the casket, how much the Knights of
+Tabor would pay, what Peter wanted. Then he spoke of the hour of burial,
+and mentioned a somewhat early hour because some of the negroes wanted
+to ship as roustabouts on the up-river packet, which was due at any
+moment.
+
+These decisions, asked of Peter, kept pricking him and breaking through
+the stupefaction of this sudden tragedy. He kept nodding a mechanical
+agreement until the undertaker had arranged all the details. Then the
+little man moved softly out of the cabin and went stepping away through
+the dust of Niggertown with professional briskness. A little later two
+black grave-diggers set out with picks and shovels for the negro
+graveyard.
+
+Numberless preparations for the funeral were going on all over
+Niggertown. The Knights of Tabor were putting on their regalia. Negro
+women were sending out hurry notices to white mistresses that they would
+be unable to cook the noonday meal. Dozens of negro girls flocked to the
+hair-dressing establishment of Miss Mallylou Speers. All were bent on
+having their wool straightened for the obsequies, and as only a few of
+them could be accommodated, the little room was packed. A smell of
+burning hair pervaded it. The girls sat around waiting their turn. Most
+of them already had their hair down,--or, rather loose, for it stood out
+in thick mats. The hair-dresser had a small oil stove on which lay
+heating half a dozen iron combs. With a hot comb she teased each strand
+of wool into perfect straightness and then plastered it down with a
+greasy pomade. The result was a stiff effect, something like the hair of
+the Japanese. It required about three hours to straighten the hair of
+one negress. The price was a dollar and a half.
+
+By half-past nine o'clock a crowd of negro men, in lodge aprons and with
+spears, and negro women, with sashes of ribbon over their shoulders and
+across the breasts, assembled about the Siner cabin. In the dusty
+curving street were ranged half a dozen battered vehicles,--a hearse, a
+delivery wagon, some rickety buggies, and a hack. Presently the
+undertaker arrived with a dilapidated black hearse which he used
+especially for negroes. He jumped down, got out his straps and coffin
+stands, directed some negro men to bring in the coffin, then hurried
+into the cabin with his air of brisk precision.
+
+He placed the coffin on the stands near the bed; then a number of men
+slipped the huge black body into it. The undertaker settled old
+Caroline's head against the cotton pillows, running his hand down beside
+her cheek and tipping her face just so. Then he put on the cover, which
+left a little oval opening just above her dead face. The sight of old
+Caroline's face seen through the little oval pane moved some of the
+women to renewed sobs. Eight black men took up the coffin and carried it
+out with the slow, wide-legged steps of roustabouts. Parson Ranson, in a
+rusty Prince Albert coat, took Peter's arm and led him to the first
+vehicle after the hearse. It was a delivery wagon, but it was the best
+vehicle in the procession.
+
+As Peter followed the coffin out, he saw the Knights and Ladies of Tabor
+lined up in marching order behind the van. The men held their spears and
+swords at attention; the women carried flowers. Behind the marchers came
+other old vehicles, a sorry procession.
+
+At fifteen minutes to ten the bell in the steeple of the colored church
+tolled a single stroke. The sound quivered through the sunshine over
+Niggertown. At its signal the poor procession moved away through the
+dust. At intervals the bell tolled after the vanishing train.
+
+As the negroes passed through the white town the merchants, lolling in
+their doors, asked passers-by what negro had died. The idlers under the
+mulberry in front of the livery-stable nodded at the old negro preacher
+in his long greenish-black coat, and Dawson Bobbs remarked:
+
+"Well, old Parson Ranson's going to tell 'em about it to-day," and he
+shifted his toothpick with a certain effect of humor.
+
+Old Mr. Tomwit asked if his companions had ever heard how Newt Bodler, a
+wit famous in Wayne County, once broke up a negro funeral with a
+hornets' nest. The idlers nodded a smiling affirmative as they watched
+the cortege go past. They had all heard it. But Mr. Tomwit would not be
+denied. He sallied forth into humorous reminiscence. Another loafer
+contributed an anecdote of how he had tied ropes to a dead negro so as
+to make the corpse sit up in bed and frighten the mourners.
+
+All their tales were of the vintage of the years immediately succeeding
+the Civil War,--pioneer humor, such as convulsed the readers of Peck's
+Bad Boy, Mr. Bowser, Sut Lovingood. The favorite dramatic properties of
+such writers were the hornets' nest, the falling ladder, the banana
+peel. They cultivated the humor of contusions, the wit of impact. This
+style still holds the stage of Hooker's Bend.
+
+In telling these tales the white villagers meant no special disrespect
+to the negro funeral. It simply reminded them of humorous things; so
+they told their jokes, like the naive children of the soil that they
+were.
+
+At last the poor procession passed beyond the white church, around a
+bend in the road, and so vanished. Presently the bell in Niggertown
+ceased tolling.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+Peter always remembered his mother's funeral in fragments of intolerable
+pathos,--the lifting of old Parson Ranson's hands toward heaven, the
+songs of the black folk, the murmur of the first shovelful of dirt as it
+was lowered to the coffin, and the final raw mound of earth littered
+with a few dying flowers. With that his mother--who had been so near to,
+and so disappointed in, her son--was blotted from his life. The other
+events of the funeral flowed by in a sort of dream: he moved about; the
+negroes were speaking to him in the queer overtones one uses to the
+bereaved; he was being driven back to Niggertown; he reentered the Siner
+cabin. One or two of his friends stayed in the room with him for a while
+and said vague things, but there was nothing to say.
+
+Later in the afternoon Cissie Dildine and her mother brought his dinner
+to him. Vannie Dildine, a thin yellow woman, uttered a few disjointed
+words about Sister Ca'line being a good woman, and stopped amid
+sentence. There was nothing to say. Death had cut a wound across Peter
+Siner's life. Not for days, nor weeks, nor months, would his existence
+knit solidly back together. The poison of his ingratitude to his
+faithful old black mother would for a long, long day prevent the
+healing.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VII
+
+
+During a period following his mother's death Peter Siner's life drifted
+emptily and without purpose. He had the feeling of one convalescing in a
+hospital. His days passed unconnected by any thread of purpose; they
+were like cards scattered on a table, meaning nothing.
+
+At times he struggled against his lethargy. When he awoke in the morning
+and found the sun shining on his dusty primers and examination papers,
+he would think that he ought to go back to his old task; but he never
+did. In his heart grew a conviction that he would never teach school at
+Hooker's Bend.
+
+He would rise and dress slowly in the still cabin, thinking he must soon
+make new plans and take up some work. He never decided precisely what
+work; his thoughts trailed on in vague, idle designs.
+
+In fact, during Peter's reaction to his shock there began to assert
+itself in him that capacity for profound indolence inherent in his negro
+blood. To a white man time is a cumulative excitant. Continuous and
+absolute idleness is impossible; he must work, hunt, fish, play, gamble,
+or dissipate,--do something to burn up the accumulating sugar in his
+muscles. But to a negro idleness is an increasing balm; it is a
+stretching of his legs in the sunshine, a cat-like purring of his
+nerves; while his thoughts spread here and there in inconsequences, like
+water without a channel, making little humorous eddies, winding this way
+and that into oddities and fantasies without ever feeling that
+constraint of sequence which continually operates in a white brain. And
+it is this quality that makes negroes the entertainers of children
+_par excellence_.
+
+Peter Siner's mental slackening made him understandable, and gave him a
+certain popularity in Nigger-town. Black men fell into the habit of
+dropping in at the Siner cabin, where they would sit outdoors, with
+chairs propped against the wall, and philosophize on the desultory life
+of the crescent. Sometimes they would relate their adventures on the
+river packets and around the docks at Paducah, Cairo, St. Joe, and St.
+Louis; usually a recountal of drunkenness, gaming, fighting, venery,
+arrests, jail sentences, petty peculations, and escapes. Through these
+Iliads of vagabondage ran an irresponsible gaiety, a non-morality, and a
+kind of unbrave zest for adventure. They told of their defeats and
+flights with as much relish and humor as of their charges and victories.
+And while the spirit was thoroughly pagan, these accounts were full of
+the cliches of religion. A roustabout whom every one called the
+Persimmon confided to Peter that he meant to cut loose some logs in a
+raft up the river, float them down a little way, tie them up again, and
+claim the prize-money for salvaging them, God willing.
+
+The Persimmon was so called from a scar on his long slanting head. A
+steamboat mate had once found him asleep in the passageway of a lumber
+pile which the boat was lading, and he waked the negro by hitting him in
+the head with a persimmon bolt. In this there was nothing unusual or
+worthy of a nickname. The point was, the mate had been mistaken: the
+Persimmon was not working on his boat at all. In time this became one of
+the stock anecdotes which pilots and captains told to passengers
+traveling up and down the river.
+
+The Persimmon was a queer-looking negro; his head was a long diagonal
+from its peak down to his pendent lower lip, for he had no chin. The
+salient points on this black slope were the Persimmon's sad, protruding
+yellow eyeballs, over which the lids always drooped about half closed.
+An habitual tipping of this melancholy head to one side gave the
+Persimmon the look of one pondering and deploring the amount of sin
+there was in the world. This saintly impression the Persimmon's conduct
+and language never bore out.
+
+At the time of the Persimmon's remarks about the raft two of Peter's
+callers, Jim Pink Staggs and Parson Ranson, took the roustabout to task.
+Jim Pink based his objection on the grounds of glutting the labor
+market.
+
+"Ef us niggers keeps turnin' too many raf's loose fuh de prize-money,"
+he warned, "somebody's goin' to git 'spicious, an' you'll ruin a good
+thing."
+
+The Persimmon absorbed this with a far-away look in his half-closed
+eyes.
+
+"It's a ticklish job," argued Parson Ranson, "an' I wouldn't want to
+wuck at de debbil's task aroun' de ribber, ca'se you mout fall in,
+Persimmon, an' git drownded."
+
+"I wouldn't do sich a thing a-tall," admitted the Persimmon, "but I jes'
+natchelly got to git ten dollars to he'p pay on my divo'ce."
+
+"I kain't see whut you want wid a divo'ce," said Jim Pink, yawning,
+"when you been ma'ied three times widout any."
+
+"It's fuh a Christmas present," explained the Persimmon, carelessly,
+"fuh th' woman I'm libin' wid now. Mahaly's a great woman fuh style. I'm
+goin' to divo'ce my other wives, one at a time lak my lawyer say."
+
+"On what grounds?" asked Peter, curiously.
+
+"Desuhtion."
+
+"Desertion?"
+
+"Uh huh; I desuhted 'em."
+
+Jim Pink shook his head, picked up a pebble, and began idly juggling it,
+making it appear double, single, treble, then single again.
+
+"Too many divo'ces in dis country now, Persimmon," he moralized.
+
+"Well, whut's de cause uv 'em?" asked the Persimmon, suddenly bringing
+his protruding yellow eyes around on the sleight-of-hand performer.
+
+Jim Pink was slightly taken aback; then he said:
+
+"'Spicion; nothin' but 'spicion."
+
+"Yeah, 'spicion," growled the Persimmon; "'spicion an' de husban'
+leadin' a irreg'lar life."
+
+Jim Pink looked at his companion, curiously.
+
+"The husban'--leadin' a irreg'lar life?"
+
+"Yeah,"--the Persimmon nodded grimly,--"the husban' comin' home at
+onexpected hours. You know whut I means, Jim Pink."
+
+Jim Pink let his pebble fall and lowered the fore legs of his chair
+softly to the ground.
+
+"Now, look heah, Persimmon, you don' want to be draggin' no foreign
+disco'se into yo' talk heah befo' Mr. Siner an' Parson Ranson."
+
+The Persimmon rose deliberately.
+
+"All I want to say is, I drapped off'n de matrimonial tree three times
+a'ready, Jim Pink, an' I think I feels somebody shakin' de limb ag'in."
+
+The old negro preacher rose, too, a little behind Jim Pink.
+
+"Now, boys! boys!" he placated. "You jes think dat, Persimmon."
+
+"Yeah," admitted Persimmon, "I jes think it; but ef I b'lieve ever'thing
+is so whut I think is so, I'd part Jim Pink's wool wid a brickbat."
+
+Parson Ranson tried to make peace, but the Persimmon spread his hands in
+a gesture that included the three men. "Now, I ain't sayin' nothin'," he
+stated solemnly, "an' I ain't makin' no threats; but ef anything
+happens, you-all kain't say that nobody didn' tell nobody about
+nothin'."
+
+With this the Persimmon walked to the gate, let himself out, still
+looking back at Jim Pink, and then started down the dusty street.
+
+Mr. Staggs seemed uncomfortable under the Persimmon's protruding yellow
+stare, but finally, when the roustabout was gone, he shrugged, regained
+his aplomb, and remarked that some niggers spent their time in studyin'
+'bout things they hadn't no info'mation on whatever. Then he strolled
+off up the crescent in the other direction.
+
+All this would have made fair minstrel patter if Peter Siner had shared
+the white conviction that every emotion expressed in a negro's patois is
+humorous. Unfortunately, Peter was too close to the negroes to hold such
+a tenet. He knew this quarrel was none the less rancorous for having
+been couched in the queer circumlocution of black folk. And behind it
+all shone the background of racial promiscuity out of which it sprang.
+It was like looking at an open sore that touched all of Niggertown, men
+and boys, young girls and women. It caused tragedies, murders, fights,
+and desertions in the black village as regularly as the rotation of the
+calendar; yet there was no public sentiment against it. Peter wondered
+how this attitude of his whole people could possibly be.
+
+With the query the memory of Ida May came back to him, with its sense of
+dim pathos. It seemed to Peter now as if their young and uninstructed
+hands had destroyed a safety-vault to filch a penny.
+
+The reflex of a thought of Ida May always brought Peter to Cissie; it
+always stirred up in him a desire to make this young girl's path gentle
+and smooth. There was a fineness, a delicacy about Cissie, that, it
+seemed to Peter, Ida May had never possessed. Then, too, Cissie was
+moved by a passion for self-betterment. She deserved a cleaner field
+than the Niggertown of Hooker's Bend.
+
+Peter took Parson Ranson's arm, and the two moved to the gate by common
+consent. It was no longer pleasant to sit here. The quarrel they had
+heard somehow had flavored their surroundings.
+
+Peter turned his steps mechanically northward up the crescent toward the
+Dildine cabin. Nothing now restrained him from calling on Cissie; he
+would keep no dinner waiting; he would not be warned and berated on his
+return home. The nagging, jealous love of his mother had ended.
+
+As the two men walked along, it was borne in upon Peter that his
+mother's death definitely ended one period of his life. There was no
+reason why he should continue his present unsettled existence. It seemed
+best to marry Cissie at once and go North. Further time in this place
+would not be good for the girl. Even if he could not lift all
+Niggertown, he could at least help Cissie. He had had no idea, when he
+first planned his work, what a tremendous task he was essaying. The
+white village had looked upon the negroes so long as non-moral and non-
+human that the negroes, with the flexibility of their race, had
+assimilated that point of view. The whites tried to regulate the negroes
+by endless laws. The negroes had come to accept this, and it seemed that
+they verily believed that anything not discovered by the constable was
+permissible. Mr. Dawson Bobbs was Niggertown's conscience. It was best
+for Peter to take from this atmosphere what was dearest to him, and go
+at once.
+
+The brown man's thoughts came trailing back to the old negro parson
+hobbling at his side. He looked at the old man, hesitated a moment, then
+told him what was in his mind.
+
+Parson Ranson's face wrinkled into a grin.
+
+"You's gwine to git ma'ied?"
+
+"And I thought I'd have you perform the ceremony."
+
+This suggestion threw the old negro into excitement.
+
+"Me, Mr. Peter?"
+
+"Yes. Why not?"
+
+"Why, Mr. Peter, I kain't jine you an' Miss Cissie Dildine."
+
+Peter looked at him, astonished.
+
+"Why can't you?"
+
+"Whyn't you git a white preacher?"
+
+"Well," deliberated Peter, gravely, "it's a matter of principle with me,
+Parson Ranson. I think we colored people ought to be more self-reliant,
+more self-serving. We ought to lead our own lives instead of being mere
+echoes of white thought." He made a swift gesture, moved by this passion
+of his life. "I don't mean racial equality. To my mind racial equality
+is an empty term. One might as well ask whether pink and violet are
+equal. But what I do insist on is autonomous development."
+
+The old preacher nodded, staring into the dust. "Sho! 'tonomous
+'velopment."
+
+Peter saw that his language, if not his thought, was far beyond his old
+companion's grasp, and he lacked the patience to simplify himself.
+
+"Why don't you want to marry us, Parson?"
+
+Parson Ranson lifted his brows and filled his forehead with wrinkles.
+
+"Well, I dunno. You an' Miss Cissie acts too much lak white folks fuh a
+nigger lak me to jine you, Mr. Peter."
+
+Peter made a sincere effort to be irritated, but he was not.
+
+"That's no way to feel. It's exactly what I was talking about,--racial
+self-reliance. You've married hundreds of colored couples."
+
+"Ya-as, suh,"--the old fellow scratched his black jaw.--"I kin yoke up a
+pair uv ordina'y niggers all right. Sometimes dey sticks, sometimes dey
+don't." The old man shook his white, kinky head. "I'll bust in an' try
+to hitch up you-all. I--I dunno whedder de cer'mony will hol' away up
+North or not."
+
+"It'll be all right anywhere, Parson," said Peter, seriously. "Your name
+on the marriage-certificate will--can you write?"
+
+"N-no, suh."
+
+After a brief hesitation Peter repeated determinedly:
+
+"It'll be all right. And, by the way, of course, this will be a very
+quiet wedding."
+
+"Yas-suh." The old man bobbed importantly.
+
+"I wouldn't mention it to any one."
+
+"No, suh; no, suh. I don' blame you a-tall, Mr. Peter, wid dat Tump Pack
+gallivantin' roun' wid a forty-fo'. Hit would keep 'mos' anybody's
+weddin' ve'y quiet onless he wuz lookin' fuh a short cut to heab'n."
+
+As the two negroes passed the Berry cabin, Nan Berry thrust out her
+spiked head and called to Peter Captain Renfrew wanted to see him.
+
+Peter paused, with quickened interest in this strange old man who had
+come to his mother's death-bed with a doctor. Peter asked Nan what the
+Captain wanted.
+
+Nan did not know. Wince Washington had told Nan that the Captain wanted
+to see Peter. Bluegum Frakes had told Wince; Jerry Dillihay had told
+Bluegum; but any further meanderings of the message, when it started, or
+what its details might be, Nan could not state.
+
+It was a typical message from a resident of the white town to a denizen
+of Niggertown. Such messages are delivered to any black man for any
+other black man, not only in the village, but anywhere in the outlying
+country. It may be passed on by a dozen or a score of mouths before it
+reaches its objective. It may be a day or a week in transit, but
+eventually it will be delivered verbatim. This queer system of
+communication is a relic of slavery, when the master would send out word
+for some special negro out of two or three hundred slaves to report at
+the big house.
+
+However, as Peter approached the Dildine cabin, thoughts of his
+approaching marriage drove from his mind even old Captain Renfrew's
+message. His heart beat fast from having made his first formal step
+toward wedlock. The thought of having Cissie all to himself, swept his
+nerves in a gust.
+
+He opened the gate, and ran up between the dusty lines of dwarf box,
+eager to tell her what he had done. He thumped on the cracked, unpainted
+door, and impatiently waited the skirmish of observation along the edge
+of the window-blinds. This was unduly drawn out. Presently he heard
+women's voices whispering to each other inside. They seemed urgent,
+almost angry voices. Now and then he caught a sentence:
+
+"What difference will it make?" "I couldn't." "Why couldn't you?"
+"Because--" "That's because you've been to Nashville." "Oh, well--" A
+chair was moved over a bare floor. A little later footsteps came to the
+entrance, the door opened, and Cissie's withered yellow mother stood
+before him.
+
+Vannie offered her hand and inquired after Peter's health with a stopped
+voice that instantly recalled his mother's death. After the necessary
+moment of talk, the mulatto inquired for Cissie.
+
+The yellow woman seemed slightly ill at ease.
+
+"Cissie ain't so well, Peter."
+
+"She's not ill?"
+
+"N-no; but the excitement an' ever'thing--" answered Vannie, vaguely.
+
+In the flush of his plans, Peter was keenly disappointed.
+
+"It's very important, Mrs. Dildine."
+
+Vannie's dried yellow face framed the ghost of a smile.
+
+"Ever'thing a young man's got to say to a gal is ve'y important, Peter."
+
+It seemed to Peter a poor time for a jest; his face warmed faintly.
+
+"It--it's about some of the details of our--our wedding."
+
+"If you'll excuse her to-day, Peter, an' come after supper--"
+
+Peter hesitated, and was about to go away when Cissie's voice came from
+an inner room, telling her mother to admit him.
+
+The yellow woman glanced at the door on the left side of the hall,
+crossed over and opened it, stood to one side while Peter entered, and
+closed it after him, leaving the two alone.
+
+The room into which Peter stepped was dark, after the fashion of negro
+houses. Only after a moment's survey did he see Cissie sitting near a
+big fireplace made of rough stone. The girl started to rise as Peter
+advanced toward her, but he solicitously forbade it and hurried over to
+her. When he leaned over her and put his arms about her, his ardor was
+slightly dampened when she gave him her cheek instead of her lips to
+kiss.
+
+"Surely, you're not too ill to be kissed?" he rallied faintly.
+
+"You kissed me. I thought we had agreed, Peter, you were not to come in
+the daytime any more."
+
+"Oh, is that it?" Peter patted her shoulder, cheerfully. "Don't worry; I
+have just removed any reason why I shouldn't come any time I want to."
+
+Cissie looked at him, her dark eyes large in the gloom.
+
+"What have you done?"
+
+"Got a preacher to marry us; on my way now for a license. Dropped in to
+ask if you 'll be ready by tomorrow or next day."
+
+The girl gasped.
+
+"But, Peter--"
+
+Peter drew a chair beside her in a serious argumentative mood.
+
+"Yes I think we ought to get married at once. No reason why we shouldn't
+get it over with--Why, what's the matter?"
+
+"So soon after your mother's death, Peter?"
+
+"It's to get away from Hooker's Bend, Cissie--to get you away. I don't
+like for you to stay here. It's all so--" he broke off, not caring to
+open the disagreeable subject.
+
+The girl sat staring down at some fagots smoldering on the hearth. At
+that moment they broke into flame and illuminated her sad face.
+
+"You'll go, won't you?" asked Peter at last, with a faint uncertainty.
+
+The girl looked up.
+
+"Oh--I--I'd be glad to, Peter,"--she gave a little shiver. "Ugh! this
+Niggertown is a--a terrible place!"
+
+Peter leaned over, took one of her hands, and patted it.
+
+"Then we'll go," he said soothingly. "It's decided--tomorrow. And we'll
+have a perfectly lovely wedding trip," he planned cheerfully, to draw
+her mind from her mood. "On the car going North I'll get a whole
+drawing-room. I've always wanted a drawing-room, and you'll be my
+excuse. We'll sit and watch the fields and woods and cities slip past
+us, and know, when we get off, we can walk on the streets as freely as
+anybody. We'll be a genuine man and wife."
+
+His recital somehow stirred him. He took her in his arms, pressed her
+cheek to his, and after a moment kissed her lips with the trembling
+ardor of a bridegroom.
+
+Cissie remained passive a moment, then put up he hands, turned his face
+away, and slowly released herself.
+
+Peter was taken aback.
+
+"What _is_ the matter, Cissie?"
+
+"I can't go, Peter."
+
+Peter looked at her with a feeling of strangeness.
+
+"Can't go?"
+
+The girl shook her head.
+
+"You mean--you want us to live here?"
+
+Cissie sat exceedingly still and barely shook her head.
+
+The mulatto had a sensation as if the portals which disclosed a new and
+delicious life were slowly closing against him. He stared into her oval
+face.
+
+"You don't mean, Cissie--you don't mean you don't want to marry me?"
+
+The fagots on the hearth burned now with a cheerful flame. Cissie stared
+at it, breathing rapidly from the top of her lungs. She seemed about to
+faint. As Peter watched her the jealousy of the male crept over him.
+
+"Look here, Cissie," he said in a queer voice, "you--you don't mean,
+after all, that Tump Pack is--"
+
+"Oh no! No!" Her face showed her repulsion. Then she drew a long breath
+and apparently made up her mind to some sort of ordeal.
+
+"Peter," she asked in a low tone, "did you ever think what we colored
+people are trying to reach?" She stared into his uncomprehending eyes.
+"I mean what is our aim, our goal, whom are we trying to be like?"
+
+"We aren't trying to be like any one." Peter was entirely at a loss.
+
+"Oh, yes, we are," Cissie hurried on. "Why do colored girls straighten
+their hair, bleach their skins, pinch their feet? Aren't they trying to
+look like white girls?"
+
+Peter agreed, wondering at her excitement.
+
+"And you went North to college, Peter, so you could think and act like a
+white man--"
+
+Peter resisted this at once; he was copying nobody. The whole object of
+college was to develop one's personality, to bring out--
+
+The girl stopped his objections almost piteously.
+
+"Oh, don't argue! You know arguing throws me off. I--now I've forgotten
+how I meant to say it!" Tears of frustration welled up in her eyes.
+
+Her mood was alarming, almost hysterical. Peter began comforting her.
+
+"There, there, dear, dear Cissie, what is the matter? Don't say it at
+all." Then, inconsistently, he added: "You said I copied white men.
+Well, what of it?"
+
+Cissie breathed her relief at having been given the thread of her
+discourse. She sat silent for a moment with the air of one screwing up
+her courage.
+
+"It's this," she said in an uncertain voice: "sometimes we--we--girls--
+here in Niggertown copy the wrong thing first."
+
+Peter looked blankly at her.
+
+"The wrong thing first, Cissie?"
+
+"Oh, yes; we--we begin on clothes and--and hair and--and that isn't the
+real matter."
+
+"Why, no-o-o, that isn't the real matter," said Peter puzzled.
+
+Cissie looked at his face and became hopeless.
+
+"Oh, _don't_ you understand! Lots of us--lots of us make that
+mistake! I--I did; so--so, Peter, I can't go with you!" She flung out
+the last phrase, and suddenly collapsed on the arm of her chair,
+sobbing.
+
+Peter was amazed. He got up, sat on the arm of his own chair next to
+hers and put his arms about her, bending over her, mothering her. Her
+distress was so great that he said as earnestly as his ignorance
+permitted:
+
+"Yes, Cissie, I understand now." But his tone belied his words, and the
+girl shook her head. "Yes, I do, Cissie," he repeated emptily. But she
+only shook her head as she leaned over him, and her tears slowly formed
+and trickled down on his hand. Then all at once old Caroline's
+accusation against Cissie flashed on Peter's mind. She had stolen that
+dinner in the turkey roaster, after all. It so startled him that he sat
+up straight. Cissie also sat up. She stopped crying, and sat looking
+into the fire.
+
+"You mean--morals?" said Peter in a low tone.
+
+Cissie barely nodded, her wet eyes fixed on the fire.
+
+"I see. I was stupid."
+
+The girl sat a moment, drawing deep breaths. At last she rose slowly.
+
+"Well--I'm glad it's over. I'm glad you know." She stood looking at him
+almost composedly except for her breathing and her tear-stained face.
+"You see, Peter, if you had been like Tump Pack or Wince or any of the
+boys around here, it--it wouldn't have made much difference; but--but
+you went off and--and learned to think and feel like a white man. You--
+you changed your code, Peter." She gave a little shaken sound, something
+between a sob and a laugh. "I--I don't think th-that's very fair, Peter,
+to--to go away an'--an' change an' come back an' judge us with yo' n-new
+code." Cissie's precise English broke down.
+
+Just then Peter's logic caught at a point.
+
+"If you didn't know anything about my code, how do you know what I feel
+now?" he asked.
+
+She looked at him with a queer expression.
+
+"I found out when you kissed me under the arbor. It was too late then."
+
+She stood erect, with dismissal very clearly written in her attitude.
+Peter walked out of the room.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+With a certain feeling of clumsiness Peter groped in the dark hall for
+his hat, then, as quietly as he could, let himself out at the door.
+Outside he was surprised to find that daylight still lingered in the
+sky. He thought night had fallen. The sun lay behind the Big Hill, but
+its red rays pouring down through the boles of the cedars tinted long
+delicate avenues in the dusty atmosphere above his head. A sharp chill
+in the air presaged frost for the night. Somewhere in the crescent a boy
+yodeled for his dog at about half-minute intervals, with the persistence
+of children.
+
+Peter walked a little distance, but finally came to a stand in the dust,
+looking at the negro cabins, not knowing where to go or what to do.
+Cissie's confession had destroyed all his plans. It had left him as
+adynamic as had his mother's death. It seemed to Peter that there was a
+certain similarity between the two events; both were sudden and
+desolating. And just as his mother had vanished utterly from his reach,
+so now it seemed Cissie was no more. Cissie the clear-eyed, Cissie the
+ambitious, Cissie the refined, had vanished away, and in her place stood
+a thief.
+
+The thing was grotesque. Peter began a sudden shuddering in the cold.
+Then he began moving toward the empty cabin where he slept and kept his
+things. He moved along, talking to himself in the dusty emptiness of the
+crescent. He decided that he would go home, pack his clothes, and
+vanish. A St. Louis boat would be down that night, and he would just
+have time to pack his clothes and catch it. He would not take his books,
+his philosophies. He would let them remain, in the newspapered room,
+until all crumbled into uniform philosophic dust, and the teachings of
+Aristotle blew about Niggertown.
+
+Then, as he thought of traveling North, the vision of the honeymoon he
+had just planned revived his numb brain into a dismal aching. He looked
+back through the dusk at the Dildine roof. It stood black against an
+opalescent sky. Out of the foreground, bending over it, arose a clump of
+tall sunflowers, in whose silhouette hung a suggestion of yellow and
+green. The whole scene quivered slightly at every throb of his heart. He
+thought what a fool he was to allow a picaresque past to keep him away
+from such a woman, how easy it would be to go back to the soft luxury of
+Cissie, to tell her it made no difference; and somehow, just at that
+moment it seemed not to.
+
+Then the point of view which Peter had been four years acquiring swept
+away the impulse, and it left him moving toward his cabin again, empty,
+cold, and planless.
+
+He was drawn out of his reverie by the soft voice of a little negro boy
+asking him apprehensively whom he was talking to.
+
+Peter stopped, drew forth a handkerchief and dabbed the moisture from
+his cold face in the meticulous fashion of college men.
+
+With the boy came a dog which was cautiously smelling Peter's shoes and
+trousers. Both boy and dog were investigating the phenomenon of Peter.
+Peter, in turn, looked down at them with a feeling that they had
+materialized out of nothing.
+
+"What did you say?" he asked vaguely.
+
+The boy was suddenly overcome with the excessive shyness of negro
+children, and barely managed to whisper:
+
+"I--I ast wh-who you wuz a-talkin' to."
+
+"Was I talking?"
+
+The little negro nodded, undecided whether to stand his ground or flee.
+Peter touched the child's crisp hair.
+
+"I was talking to myself," he said, and moved forward again.
+
+The child instantly gained confidence at the slight caress, took a fold
+of Peter's trousers in his hand for friendliness, and the two trudged on
+together.
+
+"Wh-whut you talkin' to yo' se'f for?"
+
+Peter glanced down at the little black head that promised to think up a
+thousand questions.
+
+"I was wondering where to go."
+
+"Lawsy! is you los' yo' way?"
+
+He stroked the little head with a rush of self-pity.
+
+"Yes, I have, son; I've completely lost my way."
+
+The child twisted his head around and peered up alongside Peter's arm.
+Presently he asked:
+
+"Ain't you Mr. Peter Siner?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Ain't you de man whut's gwine to ma'y Miss Cissie Dildine?"
+
+Peter looked down at his small companion with a certain concern that his
+marriage was already gossip known to babes.
+
+"I'm Peter Siner," he repeated.
+
+"Den I knows which way you wants to go," piped the youngster in sudden
+helpfulness. "You wants to go over to Cap'n Renfrew's place acrost de
+Big Hill. He done sont fuh you. Mr. Wince Washington tol' me, ef I seed
+you, to tell you dat Cap'n Renfrew wants to see you. I dunno whut hit's
+about. I ast Wince, an' he didn' know."
+
+Peter recalled the message Nan Berry had given him some hours before.
+Now the same summons had seeped around to him from another direction.
+
+"I--I'll show you de way to Cap'n Renfrew's ef--ef you'll come back wid
+me th'ugh de cedar glade," proposed the child. "I--I ain't skeered in de
+cedar glade, b-b-but hit's so dark I kain't see my way back home.
+I--I--"
+
+Peter thanked him and declined his services. After all, he might as well
+go to see Captain Renfrew. He owed the old gentleman some thanks--and
+ten dollars.
+
+The only thing of which Peter Siner was aware during his walk over the
+Big Hill and through the village was his last scene with Cissie. He went
+over it again and again, repeating their conversation, inventing new
+replies, framing new action, questioning more fully into the octoroon's
+vague confession and his benumbed acceptance of it. The moment his mind
+completed the little drama it started again from the very beginning.
+
+At Captain Renfrew's gate this mental mummery paused long enough for him
+to vacillate between walking in or going around and shouting from the
+back gate. It is a point of etiquette in Hooker's Bend that negroes
+shall enter a white house from the back stoop. Peter had no desire to
+transgress this custom. On the other hand, if Captain Renfrew was
+receiving him as a fellow of Harvard, the back door, in its way, would
+prove equally embarrassing.
+
+After a certain indecision he compromised by entering the front gate and
+calling the Captain's name from among the scattered bricks of the old
+walk.
+
+The house lay silent, half smothered in a dark tangle of shrubbery.
+Peter called twice before he heard the shuffle of house slippers, and
+then saw the Captain's dressing-gown at the piazza steps.
+
+"Is that you, Peter?" came a querulous voice.
+
+"Yes, Captain. I was told you wanted to see me."
+
+"You've been deliberate in coming," criticized the old gentleman,
+testily. "I sent you word by some black rascal three days ago."
+
+"I just received the message to-day." Peter remained discreetly at the
+gate.
+
+"Yes; well, come in, come in. See if you can do anything with this
+damnable lamp."
+
+The old man turned with a dignified drawing-together of his dressing-
+gown and moved back. Apparently, the renovation of a cranky lamp was the
+whole content of the Captain's summons to Peter.
+
+There was something so characteristic in this incident that Peter was
+moved to a vague sense of mirth. It was just like the old regime to call
+in a negro, a special negro, from ten miles away to move a jar of ferns
+across the lawn or trim a box hedge or fix a lamp.
+
+Peter followed the old gentleman around to the back piazza facing his
+study. There, laid out on the floor, were all the parts of a gasolene
+lamp, together with a pipe-wrench, a hammer, a little old-fashioned
+vise, a bar of iron, and an envelop containing the mantels and the more
+delicate parts of the lamp.
+
+"It's extraordinary to me," criticized the Captain, "why they can't make
+a gasolene lamp that will go, and remain in a going condition."
+
+"Has it been out of fix for three days?" asked Peter, sorry that the old
+gentleman should have lacked a light for so long.
+
+"No," growled the Captain; "it started gasping at four o'clock last
+night; so I put it out and went to bed. I've been working at it this
+evening. There's a little hole in the tip,--if I could see it,--a hair-
+sized hole, painfully small. Why any man wants to make gasolene lamps
+with microscopic holes that ordinary intelligence must inform him will
+become clogged I cannot conceive."
+
+Peter ventured no opinion on this trait of lampmakers, but said that if
+the Captain knew where he could get an oil hand-lamp for a little more
+light, he thought he could unstop the hole.
+
+The Captain looked at his helper and shook his head.
+
+"I am surprised at you, Peter. When I was your age, I could see an
+aperture like that hole under the last quarter of the moon. In this
+strong light I could have--er--lunged the cleaner through it, sir. You
+must have strained your eyes in college." He paused, then added: "You'll
+find hand-lamps in any of the rooms fronting this porch. I don't know
+whether they have oil in them or not--the shiftless niggers that come
+around to take care of this building--no dependence to be put in them.
+When I try it myself, I do even worse."
+
+The old gentleman's tone showed that he was thawing out of his irritable
+mood, and Peter sensed that he meant to be amusing in an austere,
+unsmiling fashion. The Captain rubbed his delicate wrinkled hands
+together in a pleased fashion and sat down in a big porch chair to await
+Peter's assembling of the lamp. The brown man started down the long
+piazza, in search of a hand-light.
+
+He found a lamp in the first room he entered, returned to the piazza,
+sat down on the edge of it, and began his tinkering. The old Captain
+apparently watched him with profound satisfaction. Presently, after the
+fashion of the senile, he began endless and minute instructions as to
+how the lamp should be cleaned.
+
+"Take the wire in your left hand, Peter,--that's right,--now hold the
+tip a little closer to the light--no, place the mantels on the right
+side--that's the way I do it. System...." the old man's monologue ran on
+and on, and became a murmur in Peter's ears. It was rather soothing than
+otherwise. Now and then it held tremulous vibrations that might have
+been from age or that might have been from some deep satisfaction
+mounting even to joy. But to Peter that seemed hardly probable. No doubt
+it was senility. The Captain was a tottery old man, past the age for any
+fundamental joy.
+
+Night had fallen now, and a darkness, musky with autumn weeds, hemmed in
+the sphere of yellow light on the old piazza. A black-and-white cat
+materialized out of the gloom, purring, and arching against a pillar.
+The whole place was filled with a sense of endless leisure. The old man,
+the cat, the perfume of the weeds, soothed in Peter even the rawness of
+his hurt at Cissie.
+
+Indeed, in a way, the old manor became a sort of apology for the
+octoroon girl. The height and the reach of the piazza, exaggerated by
+the darkness, suggested a time when retinues of negroes passed through
+its dignified colonnades. Those black folk were a part of the place.
+They came and went, picked up and used what they could, and that was all
+life held for them. They were without wage, without rights, even to the
+possession of their own bodies; so by necessity they took what they
+could. That was only fifty-odd years ago. Thus, in a way, Peter's
+surroundings began a subtle explanation of and apology for Cissie, the
+whole racial training of black folk in petty thievery. And that this
+should have touched Cissie--the meanness, the pathos of her fate moved
+Peter.
+
+The negro was aroused from his reverie by the old Captain's getting out
+of his chair and saying, "Very good," and then Peter saw that he had
+finished the lamp. The two men rose and carried it into the study, where
+Peter pumped and lighted it; a bit later its brilliant white light
+flooded the room.
+
+"Quite good." The old Captain stood rubbing his hands with his odd air
+of continued delight. "How do you like this place, anyway, Peter?" He
+wrapped his gown around him, sat down in the old Morris chair beside the
+book-piled table, and indicated another seat for Peter.
+
+The mulatto took it, aware of a certain flexing of Hooker's Bend custom,
+where negroes, unless old or infirm, are not supposed to sit in the
+presence of whites.
+
+"Do you mean the study, Captain?"
+
+"Yes, the study, the whole place."
+
+"It's very pleasant," replied Peter; "it has the atmosphere of age."
+
+Captain Renfrew nodded.
+
+"These old places," pursued Peter, "always give me an impression of
+statesmanship, somehow. I always think of grave old gentlemen busy with
+the cares of public policy."
+
+The old man seemed gratified.
+
+"You are sensitive to atmosphere. If I may say it, every Southron of the
+old regime was a statesman by nature and training. The complete care of
+two or three hundred negroes, a regard for their bodily, moral, and
+spiritual welfare, inevitably led the master into the impersonal
+attitude of statecraft. It was a training, sir, in leadership, in social
+thinking, in, if you please, altruism." The old gentleman thumped the
+arm of his chair with a translucent palm. "Yes, sir, negro slavery was
+God's great lesson to the South in altruism and loving-kindness, sir! My
+boy, I do believe with all my heart that the institution of slavery was
+placed here in God's country to rear up giants of political leadership,
+that our nation might weather the revolutions of the world. Oh, the
+Yankees are necessary! I know that!" The old Captain held up a palm at
+Peter as if repressing an imminent retort. "I know the Yankees are the
+Marthas of the nation. They furnish food and fuel to the ship of state,
+but, my boy, the reservoir of our country's spiritual and mental
+strength, the Mary of our nation, must always be the South. Virginia is
+the mother of Presidents!"
+
+The Captain's oration left him rather breathless. He paused a moment,
+then asked:
+
+"Peter, have you ever thought that we men of the leisure class owe a
+debt to the world?"
+
+Peter smiled.
+
+"I know the theory of the leisure class, but I've had very little
+practical experience with leisure."
+
+"Well, that's a subject close to my heart. As a scholar and a thinker, I
+feel that I should give the fruits of my leisure to the world. Er--in
+fact, Peter, that is why I sent for you to come and see me."
+
+"Why you sent for me?" Peter was surprised at this turn.
+
+"Precisely. You."
+
+Here the old gentleman got himself out of his chair, walked across to
+one of a series of drawers in his bookcases, opened it, and took out a
+sheaf of papers and a quart bottle. He brought the papers and the bottle
+back to the table, made room for them, put the papers in a neat pile,
+and set the bottle at a certain distance from the heap.
+
+"Now, Peter, please hand me one of those wineglasses in the religious
+section of my library--I always keep two or three glasses among my
+religious works, in memory of the fact that our Lord and Master wrought
+a miracle at the feast of Cana, especially to bless the cup. Indeed,
+Peter, thinking of that miracle at the wedding-feast, I wonder, sir, how
+the prohibitionists can defend their conduct even to their own
+consciences, because logically, sir, logically, the miracle of our
+gracious Lord completely cuts away the ground from beneath their feet!
+
+"No wonder, when the Mikado sent a Japanese envoy to America to make a
+tentative examination of Christianity as a proper creed for the state
+religion of Japan--no wonder, with this miracle flouted by the
+prohibitionists, the embassy carried back the report that Americans
+really have no faith in the religion they profess. Shameful! Shameful!
+Place the glass there on the left of the bottle. A little farther away
+from the bottle, please, just a trifle more. Thank you."
+
+The Captain poured himself a tiny glassful, and its bouquet immediately
+filled the room. There was no guessing how old that whisky was.
+
+"I will not break the laws of my country, Peter, no matter how godless
+and sacrilegious those laws may be; therefore I cannot offer you a
+drink, but you will observe a second glass among the religious works,
+and the bottle sits in plain view on the table--er--em." He watched
+Peter avail himself of his opportunity, and then added, "Now, you may
+just drink to me, standing, as you are, like that."
+
+They drank, Peter standing, the old gentleman seated.
+
+"It is just as necessary," pursued the old connoisseur, when Peter was
+reseated, "it is just as necessary for a gentleman to have a delicate
+palate for the tints of the vine as it is for him to have a delicate eye
+for the tints of the palette. Nature bestowed a taste both in art and
+wine on man, which he should strive to improve at every opportunity. It
+is a gift from God. Perhaps you would like another glass. No? Then
+accommodate me."
+
+He drained this one, with Peter standing, worked his withered lips back
+and forth to experience its full taste, then swallowed, and smacked.
+
+"Now, Peter," he said, "the reason I asked you to come to see me is that
+I need a man about this house. That will be one phase of your work. The
+more important part is that you shall serve as a sort of secretary. I
+have here a manuscript." He patted the pile of papers. "My handwriting
+is rather difficult. I want you to copy this matter out and get it ready
+for the printer."
+
+Peter became more and more astonished.
+
+"Are you offering me a permanent place, Captain Renfrew?" he asked.
+
+The old man nodded.
+
+"I need a man with a certain liberality of culture. I will no doubt have
+you run through books and periodicals and make note of any points
+germane to my thesis."
+
+Peter looked at the pile of script on the table.
+
+"That is very flattering, Captain; but the fact is, I came by your place
+at this hour because I am just in the act of leaving here on the
+steamboat to-night."
+
+The Captain looked at Peter with concern on his face. "Leaving Hooker's
+Bend?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Why?"
+
+Peter hesitated.
+
+"Well, my mother is dead--"
+
+"Yes, but your--your--your work is still here, Peter." The Captain fell
+into a certain confusion. "A man's work, Peter; a man's work."
+
+"Do you mean my school-teaching?"
+
+Then came a pause. The conversation somehow had managed to leave them
+both somewhat at sea. The Captain began again, in a different tone:
+
+"Peter, I wish you to remain here with me for another reason. I am an
+old man, Peter. Anything could happen to me here in this big house, and
+nobody would know it. I don't like to think of it." The old man's tone
+quite painted his fears. "I am not afraid of death, Peter. I have walked
+before God all my life save in one or two points, which, I believe, in
+His mercy, He has forgiven me; but I cannot endure the idea of being
+found here some day in some unconsidered posture, fallen out of a chair,
+or a-sprawl on the floor. I wish to die with dignity, Peter, as I have
+lived."
+
+"Then you mean that you want me to stay here with you until--until the
+end, Captain?"
+
+The old man nodded.
+
+"That is my desire, Peter, for an honorarium which you yourself shall
+designate. At my death, you will receive some proper portion of my
+estate; in fact, the bulk of my estate, because I leave no other heirs.
+I am the last Renfrew of my race, Peter."
+
+Peter grew more and more amazed as the old gentleman unfolded this
+strange proposal. What queerer, pleasanter berth could he find than that
+offered him here in the quietude of the old manor, among books, tending
+the feeble flame of this old aristocrat's life? An air of scholasticism
+hung about the library. In some corner of this dark oaken library his
+philosophies would rest comfortably.
+
+Then it occurred to Peter that he would have to continue his sleeping
+and eating in Niggertown, and since his mother had died and his rupture
+with Cissie, the squalor and smells of the crescent had become
+impossible. He told the old Captain his objections as diplomatically as
+possible. The old man made short work of them. He wanted Peter to sleep
+in the manor within calling distance, and he might begin this very night
+and stay on for a week or so as a sort of test whether he liked the
+position or not. The Captain waited with some concern until Peter agreed
+to a trial.
+
+After that the old gentleman talked on interminably of the South, of the
+suffrage movement, the destructive influence it would have on the home,
+the Irish question, the Indian question, whether the mound-builders did
+not spring from the two lost tribes of Israel--an endless outpouring of
+curious facts, quaint reasoning, and extraordinary conclusions, all
+delivered with the great dignity and in the flowing periods of an
+orator.
+
+It was fully two o'clock in the morning when it occurred to the Captain
+that his new secretary might like to go to bed. The old man took the
+hand-lamp which was still burning and led the way out to the back piazza
+past a number of doors to a corner bedroom. He shuffled along in his
+carpet slippers, followed by the black-and-white cat, which ran along,
+making futile efforts to rub itself against his lean shanks. Peter
+followed in a sort of stupor from the flood of words, ideas, and strange
+fancies that had been poured into his ears.
+
+The Captain turned off the piazza into one of those old-fashioned
+Southern rooms with full-length windows, which were really glazed doors,
+a ceiling so high that Peter could make out only vague concentric rings
+of stucco-work among the shadows overhead, and a floor space of ball-
+room proportions. In one corner was a huge canopy bed, across from it a
+clothes-press of dark wood, and in another corner a large screen hiding
+the bathing arrangements.
+
+Peter's bedroom was a sleeping apartment, in the old sense of the word
+before the term "apartment" had lost its dignity.
+
+The Captain placed the lamp on the great table and indicated Peter's
+possession with a wave of the hand.
+
+"If you stay here, Peter, I will put in a call-bell, so I can awaken you
+if I need you during the night. Now I wish you healthful slumbers and
+pleasant dreams." With that the old gentleman withdrew ceremoniously.
+
+When the Captain was gone, the mulatto remained standing in the vast
+expanse, marveling over this queer turn of fortune. Why Captain Renfrew
+had selected him as a secretary and companion Peter could not fancy.
+
+The magnificence of his surroundings revived his late dream of a
+honeymoon with Cissie. Certainly, in his fancy, he had visioned a
+honeymoon in Pullman parlor cars and suburban bungalows. He had been
+mistaken. This great chamber rose about him like a corrected proof of
+his desire.
+
+Into just such a room he would like to lead Cissie; into this great room
+that breathed pride and dignity. What a glowing heart the girl would
+have made for its somber magnificence!
+
+He walked over to the full-length windows and opened them; then he
+unbolted the jalousies outside and swung them back. The musk of autumn
+weeds breathed in out of the darkness. Peter drew a long breath, with a
+sort of wistful melting in his chest.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER IX
+
+
+A turmoil aroused Peter Siner the next morning, and when he discovered
+where he was, in the big canopy bed in the great room, he listened
+curiously and heard a continuous chattering and quarreling. After a
+minute or two he recognized the voice of old Rose Hobbett. Rose was
+cooking the Captain's breakfast, and she performed this function in a
+kind of solitary rage. She banged the vessels, slammed the stove-eyes on
+and off, flung the stove-wood about, and kept up a snarling
+animadversion upon every topic that drifted through her kinky head. She
+called the kitchen a rat-hole, stated the Captain must be as mean as the
+devil to live as long as he did, complained that no one ever paid any
+attention to her, that she might as well be a stray cat, and so on.
+
+As Peter grew wider awake, the monotony of the old negress's rancor
+faded into an unobserved noise. He sat up on the edge of his bed between
+the parted curtains and divined there was a bath behind the screen in
+the corner of his room. Sure enough, he found two frayed but clean
+towels, a pan, a pitcher, and a small tub all made of tin. Peter
+assembled his find and began splashing his heavily molded chest with a
+feeling of well-being. As he splashed on the water, he amused himself by
+listening again to old Rose. She was now complaining that some white
+young'uns had called her "raving Rose." She hoped "God'lmighty would
+send down two she bears and eat 'em up." Peter was amazed by the old
+crone's ability to maintain an unending flow of concentrated and aimless
+virulence.
+
+The kitchen of the Renfrew manor was a separate building, and presently
+Peter saw old Rose carrying great platters across the weed-grown
+compound into the dining-room. She bore plate after plate piled high
+with cookery,--enough for a company of men. A little later came a
+clangor on a rusty triangle, as if she were summoning a house party. Old
+Rose did things in a wholesale spirit.
+
+Peter started for his door, but when he had opened the shutter, he stood
+hesitating. Breakfast introduced another delicate problem. He decided
+not to go to the dining-room at once, but to wait and allow Captain
+Renfrew to indicate whether he, Peter, should break his fast with the
+master in the dining-room or with old Rose in the kitchen.
+
+A moment later he saw the Captain coming down the long back piazza.
+Peter almost addressed his host, but the old Southerner proceeded into
+the dining-room apparently without seeing Peter at all.
+
+The guest was gathering his breath to call good morning, but took the
+cue with a negro's sensitiveness, and let his eyes run along the weeds
+in the compound. The drying stalks were woven with endless spider-webs,
+all white with frost. Peter stood regarding their delicate geometries a
+moment longer and then reentered his room, not knowing precisely what to
+do. He could hear Rose walking across the piazza to and from the dining-
+room, and the clink of tableware. A few minutes later a knock came at
+his door, and the old woman entered with a huge salver covered with
+steaming dishes.
+
+The negress came into the room scowling, and seemed doubtful for a
+moment just how to shut the door and still hold the tray with both
+hands. She solved the problem by backing against the door tremendously.
+Then she saw Peter. She straightened and stared at him with outraged
+dignity.
+
+"Well, 'fo' Gawd! Is I bringin' dish-here breakfus' to a nigger?"
+
+"I suppose it's mine," agreed Peter, amused.
+
+"But whuffo, whuffo, nigger, is it dat you ain't come to de kitchen an'
+eat off'n de shelf? Is you sick?"
+
+Peter admitted fair bodily vigor.
+
+"Den whut de debbil is I got into!" cried Rose, angrily. "I ain't gwine
+wuck at no sich place, ca'yin' breakfus' to a big beef uv a nigger,
+stout as a mule. Say, nigger, wha-chu doin' in heah, anyway? Hoccum
+dis?"
+
+Peter tried to explain that he was there to do a little writing for the
+Captain.
+
+"Well, 'fo' Gawd, when niggers gits to writin' fuh white folks, ants'll
+be jumpin' fuh bullfrogs--an havin' other niggers bring dey breakfusses.
+You jes as much a nigger as I is, Peter Siner, de brightes' day you ever
+seen!"
+
+Peter began a conciliatory phrase.
+
+Old Rose banged the platter on the table and then threatened:
+
+"Dis is de las' time I fetches a moufful to you, Peter Siner, or any
+other nigger. You ain't no black Jesus, even ef you is a woods calf."
+
+Peter paused in drawing a chair to the table.
+
+"What did you say, Rose?" he asked sharply.
+
+"You heared whut I say."
+
+A wave of anger went over Peter.
+
+"Yes, I did. You ought to be ashamed to speak ill of the dead."
+
+The crone tossed her malicious head, a little abashed, perhaps, yet very
+glad she had succeeded in hurting Peter. She turned and went out the
+door, mumbling something which might have been apology or renewed
+invectives.
+
+Peter watched the old virago close the door and then sat down to his
+breakfast. His anger presently died away, and he sat wondering what
+could have happened to Rose Hobbett that had corroded her whole
+existence. Did she enjoy her vituperation, her continual malice? He
+tried to imagine how she felt.
+
+The breakfast Rose had brought him was delicious: hot biscuits of
+feathery lightness, three wide slices of ham, a bowl of scrambled eggs,
+a pot of coffee, some preserved raspberries, and a tiny glass of whisky.
+
+The plate which Captain Renfrew had set before his guest was a delicate
+dawn pink ringed with a wreath of holly. It was old Worcester porcelain
+of about the decade of 1760. The coffee-pot was really an old Whieldon
+teapot in broad cauliflower design. Age and careless heating had given
+the surface a fine reticulation. His cup and saucer, on the contrary,
+were thick pieces of ware such as the cabin-boys toss about on
+steamboats. The whole ceramic melange told of the fortuities of English
+colonial and early American life, of the migration of families westward.
+No doubt, once upon a time, that dawn-pink Worcester had married into a
+Whieldon cauliflower family. A queer sort of genealogy might be traced
+among Southern families through their mixtures of tableware.
+
+As Peter mused over these implications of long ancestral lines, it
+reminded him that he had none. Over his own past, over the lineage of
+nearly every negro in the South, hung a curtain. Even the names of the
+colored folk meant nothing, and gave no hint of their kin and clan. At
+the end of the war between the States, Peter's people had selected names
+for themselves, casually, as children pick up a pretty stone. They meant
+nothing. It occurred to Peter for the first time, as he sat looking at
+the chinaware, that he knew nothing about himself; whether his kinsmen
+were valiant or recreant he did not know. Even his own father he knew
+little about except that his mother had said his name was Peter, like
+his own, and that he had gone down the river on a tie boat and was
+drowned.
+
+A faint sound attracted Peter's attention. He looked out at his open
+window and saw old Rose making off the back way with something concealed
+under her petticoat. Peter knew it was the unused ham and biscuits that
+she had cooked. For once the old negress hurried along without railing
+at the world. She moved with a silent, but, in a way, self-respecting,
+flight. Peter could see by the tilt of her head and the set of her
+shoulders that not only did her spoil gratify her enmity to mankind in
+general and the Captain in particular, but she was well within her
+rights in her acquisition. She disappeared around a syringa bush, and
+was heard no more until she reappeared to cook the noon meal, as
+vitriolic as ever.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Peter entered the library, old Captain Renfrew greeted him with
+morning wishes, thus sustaining the fiction that they had not seen each
+other before, that morning.
+
+The old gentleman seemed pleased but somewhat excited over his new
+secretary. He moved some of his books aimlessly from one table to
+another, placed them in exact piles as if he were just about to plunge
+into heroic labor, and could not give time to such details once he had
+begun.
+
+As he arranged his books just so, he cleared his throat.
+
+"Now, Peter, we want to get down to this," he announced dynamically; "do
+this thing, shove this work out!" He started with tottery briskness
+around to his manuscript drawer, but veered off to the left to aline
+some magazines. "System, Peter, system. Without system one may well be
+hopeless of performing any great literary labor; but with system, the
+constant piling up of brick on brick, stone on stone--it's the way Rome
+was built, my boy."
+
+Peter made a murmur supposed to acknowledge the correctness of this
+view.
+
+Eventually the old Captain drew out his drawer of manuscript, stood
+fumbling with it uncertainly. Now and then he glanced at Peter, a
+genuine secretary who stood ready to help him in his undertaking. The
+old gentleman picked up some sheets of his manuscript, seemed about to
+read them aloud, but after a moment shook his head, and said, "No, we'll
+do that to-night," and restored them to their places. Finally he turned
+to his helper.
+
+"Now, Peter," he explained, "in doing this work, I always write at
+night. It's quieter then,--less distraction. My mornings I spend
+downtown in conversation with my friends. If you should need me, Peter,
+you can walk down and find me in front of the livery-stable. I sit there
+for a while each morning."
+
+The gravity with which he gave this schedule of his personal habits
+amused Peter, who bowed with a serious, "Very well, Captain."
+
+"And in the meantime," pursued the old man, looking vaguely about the
+room, "you will do well to familiarize yourself with my library in order
+that you may be properly qualified for your secretarial labors."
+
+Peter agreed again.
+
+"And now if you will get my hat and coat, I will be off and let you go
+to work," concluded the Captain, with an air of continued urgency.
+
+Peter became thoroughly amused at such an outcome of the old gentleman's
+headlong attack on his work,--a stroll down to the village to hold
+conversation with friends. The mulatto walked unsmilingly to a little
+closet where the Captain hung his things. He took down the old
+gentleman's tall hat, a gray greatcoat worn shiny about the shoulders
+and tail, and a finely carved walnut cane. Some reminiscence of the
+manners of butlers which Peter had seen in theaters caused him to swing
+the overcoat across his left arm and polish the thin nap of the old hat
+with his right sleeve. He presented it to his employer with a certain
+duplication of a butler's obsequiousness. He offered the overcoat to the
+old gentleman's arms with the same air. Then he held up the collar of
+the greatcoat with one hand and with the other reached under its skirts,
+and drew down the Captain's long day coat with little jerks, as if he
+were going through a ritual.
+
+Peter grew more and more hilarious over his barber's manners. It was his
+contribution to the old gentleman's literary labors, and he was doing it
+beautifully, so he thought. He was just making some minute adjustments
+of the collar when, to his amazement, Captain Renfrew turned on him.
+
+"Damn it, sir!" he flared out. "What do you think you are? I didn't
+engage you for a kowtowing valet in waiting, sir! I asked you, sir, to
+come under my roof as an intellectual co-worker, as one gentleman asks
+another, and here you are making these niggery motions! They are
+disgusting! They are defiling! They are beneath the dignity of one
+gentleman to another, sir! What makes it more degrading, I perceive by
+your mannerism that you assume a specious servility, sir, as if you
+would flatter me by it!"
+
+The old lawyer's face was white. His angry old eyes jerked Peter out of
+his slight mummery. The negro felt oddly like a grammar-school boy
+caught making faces behind his master's back. It shocked him into
+sincerer manners.
+
+"Captain," he said with a certain stiffness, "I apologize for my
+mistake; but may I ask how you desire me to act?"
+
+"Simply, naturally, sir," thundered the Captain, "as one alumnus of
+Harvard to another! It is quite proper for a young man, sir, to assist
+an old gentleman with his hat and coat, but without fripperies and
+genuflections and absurdities!"
+
+The old man's hauteur touched some spring of resentment in Peter. He
+shook his head.
+
+"No, Captain; our lack of sympathy goes deeper than manners. My position
+here is anomalous. For instance, I can talk to you sitting, I can drink
+with you standing, but I can't breakfast with you at all. I do that
+_in camera_, like a disgraceful divorce proceeding. It's precisely
+as I was treated coming down here South again; it's as I've been treated
+ever since I've been back; it's--" He paused abruptly and swallowed down
+the rancor that filled him. "No," he repeated in a different tone,
+"there is no earthly excuse for me to remain here, Captain, or to let
+you go on measuring out your indulgences to me. There is no way for us
+to get together or to work together--not this far South. Let me thank
+you for a night's entertainment and go."
+
+Peter turned about, meaning to make an end of this queer adventure.
+
+The old Captain watched him, and his pallor increased. He lifted an
+unsteady hand.
+
+"No, no, Peter," he objected, "not so soon. This has been no trial, no
+fair trial. The little--little--er--details of our domestic life here,
+they will--er--arrange themselves, Peter. Gossip--talk, you know, we
+must avoid that." The old lawyer stood staring with strange eyes at his
+protege. "I--I'm interested in you, Peter. My actions may seem--odd,
+but--er--a negro boy going off and doing what you have done--
+extraordinary. I--I have spoken to your mother, Caroline, about you
+often. In fact, Peter, I--I made some little advances in order that you
+might complete your studies. Now, now, don't thank me! It was purely
+impersonal. You seemed bright. I have often thought we gentle people of
+the South ought to do more to encourage our black folk--not--not as
+social equals--" Here the old gentleman made a wry mouth as if he had
+tasted salt.
+
+"Stay here and look over the library," he broke off abruptly. "We can
+arrange some ground of--of common action, some--"
+
+He settled the lapels of his great-coat with precision, addressed his
+palm to the knob of his stick, and marched stiffly out of the library,
+around the piazza, and along the dismantled walk to the front gate.
+
+Peter stood utterly astonished at this strange information. Suddenly he
+ran after the old lawyer, and rounded the turn of the piazza in time to
+see him walk stiffly down the shaded street with tremulous dignity. The
+old gentleman was much the same as usual, a little shakier, perhaps, his
+tall hat a little more polished, his shiny gray overcoat set a little
+more snugly at the collar.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER X
+
+
+The village of Hooker's Bend amuses itself mainly with questionable
+jests that range all the way from the slightly brackish to the
+hopelessly obscene. Now, in using this type of anecdote, the Hooker's-
+Benders must not be thought to design an attack upon the decencies of
+life; on the contrary, they are relying on the fact that their hearers
+have, in the depths of their beings, a profound reverence for the object
+of their sallies. And so, by taking advantage of the moral shock they
+produce and linking it to the idea of an absurdity, they convert the
+whole psychical reaction into an explosion of humor. Thus the ring of
+raconteurs telling blackguardly stories around the stoves in Hooker's
+Bend stores, are, in reality, exercising one another in the more
+delicate sentiments of life, and may very well be classed as a round
+table of Sir Galahads, _sans peur et sans reproche_.
+
+However, the best men weary in well doing, and for the last few days
+Hooker's Bend had switched from its intellectual staple of conversation
+to consider the comedy of Tump Pack's undoing. The incident held
+undeniably comic elements. For Tump to start out carrying a forty-four,
+meaning to blow a rival out of his path, and to wind up hard at work,
+picking cotton at nothing a day for a man whose offer of three dollars a
+day he had just refused, certainly held the makings of a farce.
+
+On the heels of this came the news that Peter Siner meant to take
+advantage of Tump's arrest and marry Cissie Dildine. Old Parson Ranson
+was responsible for the spread of this last rumor. He had fumbled badly
+in his effort to hold Peter's secret. Not once, but many times, always
+guarded by a pledge of secrecy, had he revealed the approaching wedding.
+When pressed for a date, the old negro said he was "not at lib'ty to
+tell."
+
+Up to this point white criticism viewed the stage-setting of the black
+comedy with the impersonal interest of a box party. Some of the round
+table said they believed there would be a dead coon or so before the
+scrape was over.
+
+Dawson Bobbs, the ponderous constable, went to the trouble to telephone
+Mr. Cicero Throgmartin, for whom Tump was working, cautioning
+Throgmartin to make sure that Tump Pack was in the sleeping-shack every
+night, as he might get wind of the wedding and take a notion to bolt and
+stop it. "You know, you can't tell what a fool nigger'll do," finished
+Bobbs.
+
+Throgmartin was mildly amused, promised the necessary precautions, and
+said:
+
+"It looks like Peter has put one over on Tump, and maybe a college
+education does help a nigger some, after all."
+
+The constable thought it was just luck.
+
+"Well, I dunno," said Throgmartin, who was a philosopher, and inclined
+to view every matter from various angles. "Peter may of worked this out
+somehow."
+
+"Have you heard what Henry Hooker done to Siner in the land deal?"
+
+Throgmartin said he had.
+
+"No, I don't mean _that_. I mean Henry's last wrinkle in
+garnisheeing old Ca'line's estate in his bank for the rest of the
+purchase money on the Dilihay place."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"You don't mean it!"
+
+"Damn 'f I don't."
+
+The constable's sentence shook with suppressed mirth, and the next
+moment roars of laughter came over the telephone wire.
+
+"Say, ain't he the bird!"
+
+"He's the original early bird. I'd like to get a snap-shot of the worm
+that gets away from him."
+
+Both men laughed heartily again.
+
+"But, say," objected Throgmartin, who was something of a lawyer
+himself,--as, indeed, all Southern men are,--"I thought the Sons and
+Daughters of Benevolence owed Hooker, not Peter Siner, nor Ca'line's
+estate."
+
+"Well, it _is_ the Sons and Daughters, but Ca'line was one of 'em,
+and they ain't no limited li'bility 'sociation. Henry can jump on
+anything any of 'em's got. Henry got the Persimmon to bring him a copy
+of their by-laws."
+
+"Well, I swear! Say, if Henry wasn't kind of held back by his religion,
+he'd use a gun, wouldn't he?"
+
+"I dunno. I can say this for Henry's religion: 'It's jest like Henry's
+wife,--it's the dearest thing to his heart; he'd give his life for it,
+but it don't do nobody a damn bit of good except jest Henry.'"
+
+The constable's little eyes twinkled as he heard Throgmartin roaring
+with laughter and sputtering appreciative oaths.
+
+At that moment a ringing of the bell jarred the ears of both
+telephonists. A voice asked for Dr. Jallup. It was an ill time to
+interrupt two gentlemen. The flair of a jest is lost in a pause. The
+officer stated sharply that he was the constable of Wayne County and was
+talking business about the county's prisoners. His tone was so charged
+with consequence that the voice that wanted a doctor apologized hastily
+and ceased.
+
+Came a pause in which neither man found anything to say. Laughter is
+like that,--a gay bubble that a touch will destroy. Presently Bobbs
+continued, gravely enough:
+
+"Talking about Siner, he's stayin' up at old man Renfrew's now."
+
+"'At so?"
+
+"Old Rose Hobbett swears he's doin' some sort of writin' up there and
+livin' in one of the old man's best rooms."
+
+"Hell he is!"
+
+"Yeah?" the constable's voice questioned Throgmartin's opinion about
+such heresy and expressed his own.
+
+"D' recken it's so? Old Rose is such a thief and a liar."
+
+"Nope," declared the constable, "the old nigger never would of made up a
+lie like that,--never would of thought of it. Old Cap'n Renfrew's
+gettin' childish; this nigger's takin' advantage of it. Down at the
+liver'-stable the boys were talkin' about Siner goin' to git married,
+an' dern if old man Renfrew didn't git cut up about it!"
+
+"Well," opined Throgmartin, charitably, "the old man livin' there all by
+himself--I reckon even a nigger is some comp'ny. They're funny damn
+things, niggers is; never know a care nor trouble. Lord! I wish I was as
+care-free as they are!"
+
+"Don't you, though!" agreed the constable, with the weight of the white
+man's burden on his shoulders. For this is a part of the Southern
+credo,--that all negroes are gay, care-free, and happy, and that if one
+could only be like the negroes, gay, care-free, and happy--Ah, if one
+could only be like the negroes!
+
+None of this gossip reached Peter directly, but a sort of back-wash did
+catch him keenly through young Sam Arkwright and serve as a conundrum
+for several days.
+
+One morning Peter was bringing an armful of groceries up the street to
+the old manor, and he met the boy coming in the opposite direction. The
+negro's mind was centered on a peculiar problem he had found in the
+Renfrew library, so, according to a habit he had acquired in Boston, he
+took the right-hand side of the pavement, which chanced to be the inner
+side. This violated a Hooker's-Bend convention, which decrees that when
+a white and a black meet on the sidewalk, the black man invariably shall
+take the outer side.
+
+For this _faux pas_ the gangling youth stopped Peter, fell to
+abusing and cursing him for his impudence, his egotism, his attempt at
+social equality,--all of which charges, no doubt, were echoes from the
+round table. Such wrath over such an offense was unusual. Ordinarily, a
+white villager would have thought several uncomplimentary things about
+Peter, but would have said nothing.
+
+Peter stopped with a shock of surprise, then listened to the whole
+diatribe with a rising sense of irritation and irony. Finally, without a
+word, he corrected his mistake by retracing his steps and passing Sam
+again, this time on the outside.
+
+Peter walked on up the street, outwardly calm, but his ears burned, and
+the queer indignity stuck in his mind. As he went along he invented all
+sorts of ironical remarks he might have made to Arkwright, which would
+have been unwise; then he thought of sober reasoning he could have used,
+which would perhaps have been just as ill-advised. Still later he
+wondered why Arkwright had fallen into such a rage over such a trifle.
+Peter felt sure there was some contributing rancor in the youth's mind.
+Perhaps he had received a scolding at home or a whipping at school, or
+perhaps he was in the midst of one of those queer attacks of megalomania
+from which adolescents are chronic sufferers. Peter fancied this and
+that, but he never came within hail of the actual reason.
+
+When the brown man reached the old manor, the quietude of the library,
+with its blackened mahogany table, its faded green Axminster, the
+meridional globe with its dusty twinkle, banished the incident from his
+mind. He returned to his work of card-indexing the Captain's books. He
+took half a dozen at a time from the shelves, dusted them on the piazza,
+then carried them to the embrasure of the window, which offered a
+pleasant light for reading and for writing the cards.
+
+He went through volume after volume,--speeches by Clay, Calhoun, Yancy,
+Prentiss, Breckenridge; an old life of General Taylor, Foxe's "Book of
+Martyrs"; a collection of the old middle-English dramatists, such as
+Lillo, Garrick, Arthur Murphy, Charles Macklin, George Colman, Charles
+Coffey, men whose plays have long since declined from the boards and
+disappeared from the reading-table.
+
+The Captain's collection of books was strongly colored by a religious
+cast,--John Wesley's sermons, Charles Wesley's hymns; a treatise
+presenting a biblical proof that negroes have no souls; a little book
+called "Flowers Gathered," which purported to be a compilation of the
+sayings of ultra-pious children, all of whom died young; an old book
+called "Elements of Criticism," by Henry Home of Kames; another tome
+entitled "Studies of Nature," by St. Pierre. This last was a long
+argument for the miraculous creation of the world as set forth in
+Genesis. The proof offered was a resume of the vegetable, animal, and
+mineral kingdoms, showing their perfect fitness for man's use, and the
+immediate induction was that they were designed for man's use. Still
+another work calculated the exact age of the earth by the naive method
+of counting the generations from Adam to Christ, to the total adding
+eighteen hundred and eighty-five years (for the book was written in
+1885), and the original six days it required the Lord to build the
+earth. By referring to Genesis and finding out precisely what the
+Creator did on the morning of the first day, the writer contrived to
+bring his calculation of the age of the earth and everything in the
+world to a precision of six hours, give or take,--a somewhat closer
+schedule than that made by the Tennessee river boats coming up from St.
+Louis.
+
+These and similar volumes formed the scientific section of Captain
+Renfrew's library, and it was this paucity of the natural sciences that
+formed the problem which Peter tried to solve. All scientific additions
+came to an abrupt stop about the decade of 1880-90. That was the date
+when Charles Darwin's great fructifying theory, enunciated in 1859,
+began to seep into the South.
+
+In the Captain's library the only notice of evolution was a book called
+"Darwinism Dethroned." As for the elaborations of the Darwinian
+hypothesis by Spencer, Fiske, DeVries, Weismann, Haeckel, Kidd, Bergson,
+and every subsequent philosophic or biologic writer, all these men might
+never have written a line so far as Captain Renfrew's library was
+informed.
+
+Now, why such extraordinary occlusions? Why should Captain Renfrew deny
+himself the very commonplaces of thought, theories familiarly held by
+the rest of America, and, indeed, by all the rest of the civilized
+world?
+
+Musing by the window, Peter succeeded in stating his problem more
+broadly: Why was Captain Renfrew an intellectual reactionist? The old
+gentleman was the reverse of stupid. Why should he confine his selection
+of books to a few old oddities that had lost their battle against a
+theory which had captured the intellectual world fifty years before?
+
+Nor was it Captain Renfrew alone. Now and then Peter saw editorials
+appearing in leading Southern journals, seriously attacking the
+evolutionary hypothesis. Ministers in respectable churches still
+fulminated against it. Peter knew that the whole South still clings, in
+a way, to the miraculous and special creation of the earth as described
+in Genesis. It clings with an intransigentism and bitterness far
+exceeding other part of America. Why? To Peter the problem appeared
+insoluble.
+
+He sat by the window lost in his reverie. Just outside the ledge half a
+dozen English sparrows abused one another with chirps that came faintly
+through the small diamond panes. Their quick movements held Peter's
+eyes, and their endless quarreling presently recalled his episode with
+young Arkwright. It occurred to him, casually, that when Arkwright grew
+up he would subscribe to every reactionary doctrine set forth in the
+library Peter was indexing.
+
+With that thought came a sort of mental flare, as if he were about to
+find the answer to the whole question through the concrete attack made
+on him by Sam.
+
+It is an extraordinary feeling,--the sudden, joyful dawn of a new idea.
+Peter sat up sharply and leaned forward with a sense of being right on
+the fringe of a new and a great perception. Young Arkwright, the old
+Captain, the whole South, were unfolding themselves in a vast answer,
+when a movement outside the window caught the negro's introspective
+eyes.
+
+A girl was passing; a girl in a yellow dress was passing the Renfrew
+gate. Even then Peter would not have wavered in his synthesis had not
+the girl paused slightly and given a swift side glance at the old manor.
+Then the man in the window recognized Cissie Dildine.
+
+A slight shock traveled through Siner's body at the sight of Cissie's
+colorless face and darkened eyes. He stood up abruptly, with a feeling
+that he had some urgent thing to say to the young woman. His sharp
+movement toppled over the big globe.
+
+The crash caused the girl to stop and look. For a moment they stood
+thus, the girl in the chill street, the man in the pleasant window,
+looking at each other. Next moment Cissie hurried on up the village
+street toward the Arkwright house. No doubt she was on her way to cook
+the noon meal.
+
+Peter remained standing at the window, with a heavily beating heart. He
+watched her until she vanished behind a wing of the shrubbery in the
+Renfrew yard.
+
+When she had gone, he looked at his books and cards, sat down, and tried
+to resume his indexing. But his mind played away from it like a restive
+horse. It had been two weeks since he last saw Cissie. Two weeks.... His
+nerves vibrated like the strings of a pianoforte. He had scarcely
+thought of her during the fortnight; but now, having seen her, he found
+himself powerless to go on with his work. He pottered a while longer
+among the books and cards, but they were meaningless. They appeared an
+utter futility. Why index a lot of nonsense? Somehow this recalled his
+flare, his adumbration of some great idea connected with young Arkwright
+and the old Captain, and the South.
+
+He put his trembling nerves to work, trying to recapture his line of
+thought. He sat for ten minutes, following this mental train, then that,
+losing one, groping for another. His thoughts were jumpy. They played
+about Arkwright, the Captain, Cissie, his mother's death, Tump Pack in
+prison, the quarrel between the Persimmon and Jim Pink Staggs. The whole
+of Niggertown came rushing down upon him, seizing him in its passion and
+dustiness and greasiness, putting to flight all his cultivated white-man
+ideas.
+
+After half an hour's searching he gave it up. Before he left the room he
+stooped, and tried to set up again the globe that the passing of the
+girl had caused him to throw down; but its pivot was out of plumb, and
+he had to lean it against the window-seat.
+
+The sight of Captain Renfrew coming in at the gate sent Peter to his
+room. The hour was near twelve, and it had become a little point of
+household etiquette for the mulatto and the white man not to be together
+when old Rose jangled the triangle. By this means they forestalled the
+mute discourtesy of the old Captain's walking away from his secretary to
+eat. The subject of their separate meals had never been mentioned since
+their first acrimonious morning. The matter had dropped into the
+abeyance of custom, just as the old gentleman had predicted.
+
+Peter had left open his jalousies, but his windows were closed, and now
+as he entered he found his apartment flooded with sunshine and filled
+with that equable warmth that comes of straining sunbeams through glass.
+
+
+He prepared for dinner with his mind still hovering about Cissie. He
+removed a book and a lamp from the lion-footed table, and drew up an old
+chair with which the Captain had furnished his room. It was a delicate
+old Heppelwhite of rosewood. It had lost a finial from one of its back
+standards, and a round was gone from the left side. Peter never moved
+the chair that vague plans sometime to repair it did not occur to him.
+
+When he had cleared his table and placed his chair beside it, he
+wandered over to his tall west window and stood looking up the street
+through the brilliant sunshine, toward the Arkwright home. No one was in
+sight. In Hooker's Bend every one dines precisely at twelve, and at that
+hour the streets are empty. It would be some time before Cissie came
+back down the street on her way to Niggertown. She first would have to
+wash and put away the Arkwright dishes. It would be somewhere about one
+o'clock. Nevertheless, he kept staring out through the radiance of the
+autumn sunlight with an irrational feeling that she might appear at any
+moment. He was afraid she would slip past and he not see her at all. The
+thought disturbed him somewhat. It kept him sufficiently on the alert to
+stand tapping the balls of his fingers against the glass and looking
+steadily toward the Arkwright house.
+
+Presently the watcher perceived that a myriad spider-webs filled the
+sunshine with a delicate dancing glister. It was the month of voyaging
+spiders. Invisible to Peter, the tiny spinners climbed to the tip-most
+twigs of the dead weeds, listed their abdomens, and lassoed the wind
+with gossamer lariats; then they let go and sailed away to a hazard of
+new fortunes. The air was full of the tiny adventurers. As he stared up
+the street, Peter caught the glint of these invisible airships whisking
+away to whatever chance might hold for them. There was something epic in
+it. It recalled to the mulatto's mind some of Fabre's lovely
+descriptions. It reminded him of two or three books on entomology which
+he had left in his mother's cabin. He felt he ought to go after them
+while the spiders were migrating. He suddenly made up his mind he would
+go at once, as soon as he had had dinner; somewhere about one o'clock.
+
+He looked again at the Arkwright house. The thought of walking down the
+street with Cissie, to get his books, quickened his heart.
+
+He was still at the window when his door opened and old Rose entered
+with his dinner. She growled under her breath all the way from the door
+to the table on which she placed the tray. Only a single phrase detached
+itself and stood out clearly amid her mutterings, "Hope it chokes you."
+
+Peter arranged his chair and table with reference to the window, so he
+could look up the street while he was eating his dinner.
+
+The ill-wishing Rose had again furnished a gourmet's meal, but Peter's
+preoccupation prevented its careful and appreciative gustation. An
+irrational feeling of the octoroon's imminence spurred him to fast
+eating. He had hardly begun his soup before he found himself drinking
+swiftly, looking up the street over his spoon, as if he meant to rush
+out and swing aboard a passing train.
+
+Siner checked his precipitation, annoyed at himself. He began again,
+deliberately, with an attempt to keep his mind on the savor of his food.
+He even thought of abandoning his little design of going for the books;
+or he would go at a different hour, or to-morrow, or not at all. He told
+himself he would far better allow Cissie Dildine to pass and repass
+unspoken to, instead of trying to arrange an accidental meeting. But the
+brown man's nerves wouldn't hear to it. That automatic portion of his
+brain and spinal column which, physiologists assert, performs three
+fourths of a man's actions and conditions nine tenths of his volitions--
+that part of Peter wouldn't consider it. It began to get jumpy and
+scatter havoc in Peter's thoughts at the mere suggestion of not seeing
+Cissie. Imperceptibly this radical left wing of his emotions speeded up
+his meal, again. He caught himself, stopped his knife and fork in the
+act of rending apart a broiled chicken.
+
+"Confound it! I'll start when she comes in sight, no matter whether I've
+finished this meal or not," he promised himself.
+
+And suddenly he felt unhurried, in the midst of a large leisure, with a
+savory broiled chicken dinner before him,--not exactly before him,
+either; most of it had been stuffed away. Only the fag-end remained on
+his plate. A perfectly good meal had been ruined by an ill-timed
+resistance to temptation.
+
+The glint of a yellow dress far up the street had just prompted him to
+swift action when the door opened and old Rose put her head in to say
+that Captain Renfrew wanted to see Peter in the library.
+
+The brown man came to a shocked standstill.
+
+"What! Right now?" he asked.
+
+"Yeah, right now," carped Rose. "Ever'thing he wants, he wants right
+now. He's been res'less as a cat in a bulldog's den ever sence he come
+home fuh dinner. Dunno whut's come into he ole bones, runnin' th'ugh his
+dinner lak a razo'-back." She withdrew in a continued mumble of censure.
+
+Peter cast a glance up the street, timed Cissie's arrival at the front
+gate, picked up his hat, and walked briskly to the library in the hope
+of finishing any business the Captain might have, in time to encounter
+the octoroon. He even began making some little conversational plans with
+which he could meet Cissie in a simple, unstudied manner. He recalled
+with a certain satisfaction that he had not said a word of condemnation
+the night of Cissie's confession. He would make a point of that, and was
+prepared to argue that, since he had said nothing, he meant nothing. In
+fact he was prepared to throw away the truth completely and enter the
+conversation as an out-and-out opportunist, alleging whatever appeared
+to fit the occasion, as all men talk to all women.
+
+The old Captain was just getting into his chair as Peter entered. He
+paused in the midst of lowering himself by the chair-arms and got erect
+again. He began speaking a little uncertainly:
+
+"Ah--by the way, Peter--I sent for you--"
+
+"Yes, sir." Peter looked out at the window.
+
+The old gentleman scrutinized Peter a moment; then his faded eyes
+wandered about the library.
+
+"Still working at the books, cross-indexing them--"
+
+"Yes, sir." Peter could divine by the crinkle of his nerves the very
+loci of the girl as she passed down the thoroughfare.
+
+"Very good," said the old lawyer, absently. He was obviously preoccupied
+with some other topic. "Very good," he repeated with racking
+deliberation; "quite good. How did that globe get bent?"
+
+Peter, looking at it, did not remember either knocking it over or
+setting it up.
+
+"I don't know," he said rapidly. "I hadn't noticed it."
+
+"Old Rose did it," meditated the Captain aloud, "but it's no use to
+accuse her of it; she'd deny it. And yet, on the other hand, Peter,
+she'll be nervous until I do accuse her of it. She'll be dropping
+things, breaking up my china. I dare say I'd best accuse her at once,
+storm at her some to quiet her nerves, and get it over."
+
+This monologue spurred Peter's impatience into an agony.
+
+"I believe you were wanting me, Captain?" he suggested, with a certain
+urge for action.
+
+The Captain's little pleasantry faded. He looked at Peter and became
+uncomfortable again.
+
+"Well, yes, Peter. Downtown I heard--well, a rumor connected with you--"
+
+Such an extraordinary turn caught the attention of even the fidgety
+Peter. He looked at his employer and wondered blankly what he had heard.
+
+"I don't want to intrude on your private affairs, Peter, not at all--
+not--not in the least--"
+
+"No-o-o," agreed Peter, completely at a loss.
+
+The old gentleman rubbed his thin hands together, lifted his eyebrows up
+and down nervously. "Are--are you about to--to leave me, Peter?"
+
+Peter was greatly surprised at the slightness and simplicity of this
+question and at the evidence of emotion it carried.
+
+"Why, no," he cried; "not at all! Who told you I was? It is a deep
+gratification to me--"
+
+"To be exact," proceeded the old man, with a vague fear still in his
+eyes, "I heard you were going to marry."
+
+"Marry!" This flaw took Peter's sails even more unexpectedly than the
+other. "Captain, who in the world--who could have told--"
+
+"Are you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You aren't?"
+
+"Indeed, no!"
+
+"I heard you were going to marry a negress here in town called Cissie
+Dildine." A question was audible in the silence that followed this
+statement. The obscure emotion that charged all the old man's queries
+affected Peter.
+
+"I am not, Captain," he declared earnestly; "that's settled."
+
+"Oh--you say it's settled," picked up the old lawyer, delicately.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then you had thought of it?" Immediately, however, he corrected this
+breach of courtesy into which his old legal habit of cross-questioning
+had led him. "Well, at any rate," he said in quite another voice, "that
+eases my mind, Peter. It eases my mind. It was not only, Peter, the
+thought of losing you, but this girl you were thinking of marrying--let
+me warn you, Peter--she's a negress."
+
+The mulatto stared at the strange objection.
+
+"A negress!"
+
+The old man paused and made that queer movement with his wrinkled lips
+as if he tasted some salty flavor.
+
+"I--I don't mean exactly a--a negress," stammered the old gentleman; "I
+mean she's not a--a good girl, Peter; she's a--a thief, in fact--she's a
+thief--a thief, Peter. I couldn't endure for you to marry a thief,
+Peter."
+
+It seemed to Peter Siner that some horrible compulsion kept the old
+Captain repeating over and over the fact that Cissie Dildine was a
+thief, a thief, a thief. The word cut the very viscera in the brown man.
+At last, when it seemed the old gentleman would never cease, Peter
+lifted a hand.
+
+"Yes, yes," he gasped, with a sickly face, "I--I've heard that before."
+
+He drew a shaken breath and moistened his lips. The two stood looking at
+each other, each profoundly at a loss as to what the other meant. Old
+Captain Renfrew collected himself first.
+
+"That is all, Peter." He tried to lighten his tones. "I think I'll get
+to work. Let me see, where do I keep my manuscript?"
+
+Peter pointed mechanically at a drawer as he walked out at the library
+door. Once outside, he ran to the front piazza, then to the front gate,
+and with a racing heart stood looking up and down the sleepy
+thoroughfare. The street was quite empty.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Old Captain Renfrew was a trustful, credulous soul, as, indeed, most
+gentleman who lead a bachelor's life are. Such men lack that moral
+hardening and whetting which is obtained only amid the vicissitudes of a
+home; they are not actively and continuously engaged in the employment
+and detection of chicane; want of intimate association with a woman and
+some children begets in them a soft and simple way of believing what is
+said to them. And their faith, easily raised, is just as easily
+shattered. Their judgment lacks training.
+
+Peter Siner's simple assertion to the old Captain that he was not going
+to marry Cissie Dildine completely allayed the old gentleman's
+uneasiness. Even the further information that Peter had had such a
+marriage under advisement, but had rejected it, did not put him on his
+guard.
+
+From long non-intimacy with any human creature, the old legislator had
+forgotten that human life is one long succession of doing the things one
+is not going to do; he had forgotten, if he ever knew, that the human
+brain is primarily not a master, but a servant; its function is not to
+direct, but to devise schemes and apologies to gratify impulses. It is
+the ways and means committee to the great legislature of the body.
+
+For several days after his fear that Peter Siner would marry Cissie
+Dildine old Captain Renfrew was as felicitous as a lover newly
+reconciled to his mistress. He ambled between the manor and the livery-
+stable with an abiding sense of well-being. When he approached his home
+in the radiance of high noon and saw the roof of the old mansion lying a
+bluish gray in the shadows of the trees, it filled his heart with joy to
+feel that it was not an old and empty house that awaited his coming, but
+that in it worked a busy youth who would be glad to see him enter the
+gate.
+
+The fear of some unattended and undignified death which had beset the
+old gentleman during the last eight or ten years of his life vanished
+under Peter's presence. When he thought of it at all now, he always
+previsioned himself being lifted in Peter's athletic arms and laid
+properly on his big four-poster.
+
+At times, when Peter sat working over the books in the library, the
+Captain felt a prodigious urge to lay a hand on the young man's broad
+and capable shoulder. But he never did. Again, the old lawyer would sit
+for minutes at a time watching his secretary's regular features as the
+brown man pursued his work with a trained intentness. The old gentleman
+derived a deep pleasure from such long scrutinies. It pleased him to
+imagine that, when he was young, he had possessed the same vigor, the
+same masculinity, the same capacity for persistent labor. Indeed, all
+old gentlemen are prone to choose the most personable and virile young
+man they can find for themselves to have been like.
+
+The two men had little to say to each other. Their thoughts beat to such
+different tempos that any attempt at continued speech discovered unequal
+measures. As a matter of fact, in all comfortable human conversation,
+words are used as mere buoys dropped here and there to mark well-known
+channels of thought and feeling. Similarity of mental topography is
+necessary to mutual understanding. Between any two generations the
+landscape is so changed as to be unrecognizable. Our fathers are
+monarchists; our sons, bolsheviki.
+
+Old Rose Hobbett was more of an age with the Captain, and these two
+talked very comfortably as the old virago came and went with food at
+meal-time. For instance, the Captain always asked his servant if she had
+fed his cat, and old Rose invariably would sulk and poke out her lips
+and put off answering to the last possible moment of insolence, then
+would grumble out that she was jes 'bout to feed the varmint, an' 't wuz
+funny nobody couldn't give a hard-wuckin' colored woman breathin'-space
+to turn roun' in.
+
+This reply was satisfactory to the Captain, because he knew what it
+meant,--that Rose had half forgotten the cat, and had meant wholly to
+forget it, but since she had been snapped up, so to speak, in the very
+act of forgetting, she would dole it out a piece or two of the meat that
+she had meant to abscond with as soon as the dishes were done.
+
+While Rose was fulminating, the old gentleman recalled his bent globe
+and decided the moment had come for a lecture on that point. It always
+vaguely embarrassed the Captain to correct Rose, and this increased his
+dignity. Now he cleared his throat in a certain way that brought the old
+negress to attention, so well they knew each other.
+
+"By the way, Rose, in the future I must request you to use extraordinary
+precautions in cleansing and dusting articles of my household furniture,
+or, in case of damage, I shall be forced to withhold an indemnification
+out of your pay."
+
+Eight or ten years ago, when the Captain first repeated this formula to
+his servant, the roll and swing of his rhetoric, and the last word,
+"pay," had built up lively hopes in Rose that the old gentleman was
+announcing an increase in her regular wage of a dollar a week.
+Experience, however, had long since corrected this faulty
+interpretation.
+
+She came to a stand in the doorway, with her kinky gray head swung
+around, half puzzled, wholly rebellious.
+
+"Whut is I bruk now?"
+
+"My globe."
+
+The old woman turned about with more than usual innocence.
+
+"Why, I ain't tech yo' globe!"
+
+"I foresaw that," agreed the Captain, with patient irony, "but in the
+future don't touch it more carefully. You bent its pivot the last time
+you refrained from handling it."
+
+"But I tell you I ain't tech yo' globe!" cried the negress, with the
+anger of an illiterate person who feels, but cannot understand, the
+satire leveled at her.
+
+"I agree with you," said the Captain, glad the affair was over.
+
+This verbal ducking into the cellar out of the path of her storm stirred
+up a tempest.
+
+"But I tell you I ain't bruk it!"
+
+"That's what I said."
+
+"Yeah, yeah, yeah," she flared; "you says I ain't, but when you says I
+ain't, you means I is, an' when you says I is, you means I ain't. Dat's
+de sort o' flapjack I's wuckin' fur!"
+
+The woman flirted out of the dining-room, and the old gentleman drew
+another long breath, glad it was over. He really had little reason to
+quarrel about the globe, bent or unbent; he never used it. It sat in his
+study year in and year out, its dusty twinkle brightened at long
+intervals by old Rose's spiteful rag.
+
+The Captain ate on placidly. There had been a time when he was dubious
+about such scenes with Rose. Once he felt it beneath his dignity as a
+Southern gentleman to allow any negro to speak to him disrespectfully.
+He used to feel that he should discharge her instantly and during the
+first years of their entente had done so a number of times. But he could
+get no one else who suited him so well; her biscuits, her corn-light-
+bread, her lye-hominy, which only the old darkies know how to make. And,
+to tell the truth, he missed the old creature herself, her understanding
+of him and his ideas, her contemporaneity; and no one else would work
+for a dollar a week.
+
+Presently in the course of his eating the old gentleman required another
+biscuit, and he wanted a hot one. Three mildly heated disks lay on a
+plate before him, but they had been out of the oven for five minutes and
+had been reduced to an unappetizing tepidity.
+
+A little hand-bell sat beside the Captain's plate whose special use was
+to summon hot biscuits. Now, the old lawyer looked at its worn handle
+speculatively. He was not at all sure Rose would answer the bell. She
+would say she hadn't heard it. He felt faintly disgruntled at not
+foreseeing this exigency and buttering two biscuits while they were hot,
+or even three.
+
+He considered momentarily a project of going after a hot biscuit for
+himself, but eventually put it by. South of the Mason-Dixon Line, self-
+help is half-scandal. At last, quite dubiously, he did pick up the bell
+and gave it a gentle ring, so if old Rose chose not to hear it, she
+probably wouldn't: thus he could believe her and not lose his temper and
+so widen an already uncomfortable breach.
+
+To the Captain's surprise, the old creature not only brought the
+biscuits, but she did it promptly. No sooner had she served them,
+however, than the Captain saw she really had returned with a new line of
+defense.
+
+She mumbled it out as usual, so that her employer was forced to guess at
+a number of words: "Dat nigger, Peter, mus' 'a' busted yo' gl--"
+
+"No, he didn't."
+
+"Mus' uv."
+
+"No, he didn't. I asked him, and he said he didn't."
+
+The old harridan stared, and her speech suddenly became clear-cut:
+
+"Well, 'fo' Gawd, I says I didn't, too!"
+
+At this point the Captain made an unintelligible sound and spread the
+butter on his hot biscuit.
+
+"He's jes a nigger, lak I is," stated the cook, warmly.
+
+The Captain buttered a second hot biscuit.
+
+"We's jes two niggers."
+
+The Captain hoped she would presently sputter herself out.
+
+"Now look heah," cried the crone, growing angrier and angrier as the
+reaches of the insult spread itself before her, "is you gwine to put one
+o' us niggers befo' de udder? Ca'se ef you is, I mus' say, it's Kady-
+lock-a-do' wid me."
+
+The Captain looked up satirically.
+
+"What do you mean by Katie-lock-the-door with you?" he asked, though he
+had an uneasy feeling that he knew.
+
+"You know whut I means. I means I 's gwine to leab dis place."
+
+"Now look here, Rose," protested the lawyer, with dignity, "Peter Siner
+occupies almost a fiduciary relation to me."
+
+The old negress stared with a slack jaw. "A relation o' yo's!"
+
+The lawyer hesitated some seconds, looking at the hag. His high-bred old
+face was quite inscrutable, but presently he said in a serious voice:
+
+"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'
+niggers 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
+passes 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-nigger an' a she-nigger 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-nigger" and "she-nigger" 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 passings 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 passed 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 passed back toward Niggertown, 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 passed she kept Peter watching the clock at
+nervous intervals, wondering if, after all, she had gone by unobserved.
+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
+entity, 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 passing 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 pass 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 passionate 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 passed 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 niggerish taste, and
+his dislike for the girl edged his stricture; then, on second thought,
+the oddness of sumac for a nosegay caught his attention. Nobody used
+sumac for a buttonhole. 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.
+
+All his life, Captain Renfrew's brain had been deliberate. He moved
+mentally, as he did physically, with dignity. To tell the truth, the
+Captain's thoughts had a way of absolutely stopping now and then, and
+for a space he would view the world as a simple collection of colored
+surfaces without depth or meaning. During these intervals, by a sort of
+irony of the gods the old gentleman's face wore a look of philosophic
+concentration, so that his mental hiatuses had given him a reputation
+for profundity, which was county wide. It had been this, years before,
+that had carried him by a powerful majority into the Tennessee
+legislature. The voters agreed, almost to a man, that they preferred
+depth to a shallow facility. The rival candidate had been shallow and
+facile. The polls returned the Captain, and the young gentleman--for the
+Captain was a young gentleman in those days--was launched on a typical
+politician's career. But some Republican member from east Tennessee had
+impugned the rising statesman's honor with some sort of improper
+liaison. In those days there seemed to be proper and improper liaisons.
+There had been a duel on the banks of the Cumberland River in which the
+Captain succeeded in wounding his traducer in the arm, and was thus
+vindicated by the gods. But the incident ended a career that might very
+well have wound up in the governor's chair, or even in the United States
+Senate, considering how very deliberate the Captain was mentally.
+
+To-day, as the Captain walked up the street following Cissie Dildine,
+one of these vacant moods fell upon him and it was not until they had
+reached his own gate that it suddenly occurred to the old gentleman just
+what Cissie's sumac did mean. It was a signal to Peter. The simplicity
+of the solution stirred the old man. Its meaning was equally easy to
+fathom. When a woman signals any man it conveys consent. Denials receive
+no signals; they are inferred. In this particular case Captain Renfrew
+found every reason to believe that this flaring bit of sumac was the
+prelude to an elopement.
+
+In the window of his library the Captain saw his secretary staring at
+his cards and books with an intentness plainly assumed. Peter's fixed
+stare had none of those small movements of the head that mark genuine
+intellectual labor. So Peter was posing, pretending he did not see the
+girl, to disarm his employer's suspicions,--pretending not to see a
+girl rigged out like that!
+
+Such duplicity sent a queer spasm of anguish through the old lawyer.
+Peter's action held half a dozen barbs for the Captain. A fellow-alumnus
+of Harvard staying in his house merely for his wage and keep! Peter bore
+not the slightest affection for him; the mulatto lacked even the
+chivalry to notify the Captain of his intentions, because he knew the
+Captain objected. And yet all these self-centered objections were
+nothing to what old Captain Renfrew felt for Peter's own sake. For Peter
+to marry a nigger and a strumpet, for him to elope with a wanton and a
+thief! For such an upstanding lad, the very picture of his own virility
+and mental alertness when he was of that age, for such a boy to fling
+himself away, to drop out of existence--oh, it was loathly!
+
+The old man entered the library feeling sick. It was empty. Peter had
+gone to his room, according to his custom. But in this particular
+instance it seemed to Captain Renfrew his withdrawal was flavored with a
+tang of guilt. If he were innocent, why should not such a big, strong
+youth have stayed and helped an old gentleman off with his overcoat?
+
+The old Captain blew out a windy breath as he helped himself out of his
+coat in the empty library. The bent globe still leaned against the
+window-seat. The room had never looked so somber or so lonely.
+
+At dinner the old man ate so little that Rose Hobbett ceased her
+monotonous grumbling to ask if he felt well. He said he had had a hard
+day, a difficult day. He felt so weak and thin that he foretold the gray
+days when he could no longer creep to the village and sit with his
+cronies at the livery-stable, when he would be house-fast, through
+endless days, creeping from room to room like a weak old rat in a huge
+empty house, finally to die in some disgusting fashion. And Now Peter
+was going to leave him, was going to throw himself away on a lascivious
+wench. A faint moisture dampened the old man's withered eyes. He drank
+an extra thimbleful of whisky to try to hearten himself. Its bouquet
+filled the time-worn stateliness of the dining-room.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+During the weeks of Peter's stay at the manor it had grown to be the
+Captain's habit really to write for two or three hours in the afternoon,
+and his pile of manuscript had thickened under his application.
+
+The old man was writing a book called "Reminiscences of Peace and War."
+His book would form another unit of that extraordinary crop of personal
+reminiscences of the old South which flooded the presses of America
+during the decade of 1908-18. During just that decade it seemed as if the
+aged men and women of the South suddenly realized that the generation who
+had lived through the picturesqueness and stateliness of the old slave
+regime was almost gone, and over their hearts swept a common impulse to
+commemorate, in the sunset of their own lives, its fading splendor and
+its vanished deeds.
+
+On this particular afternoon the Captain settled himself to work, but
+his reminiscences did not get on. He pinched a bit of floss from the nib
+of his pen and tried to swing into the period of which he was writing.
+He read over a few pages of his copy as mental priming, but his thoughts
+remained flat and dull. Indeed, his whole life, as he reviewed it in the
+waning afternoon, appeared empty and futile. It seemed hardly worth
+while to go on.
+
+The Captain had come to that point in his memoirs where the Republican
+representative from Knox County had set going the petard which had
+wrecked his political career.
+
+From the very beginnings of his labors the old lawyer had looked forward
+to writing just this period of his life. He meant to clear up his name
+once for all. He meant to use invective, argument, testimony and a
+powerful emotional appeal, such as a country lawyer invariably attempts
+with a jury.
+
+But now that he had arrived at the actual composition of his defense, he
+sat biting his penholder, with all the arguments he meant to advance
+slipped from his mind. He could not recall the points of the proof. He
+could not recall them with Peter Siner moving restlessly about the room,
+glancing through the window, unsettled, nervous, on the verge of eloping
+with a negress.
+
+His secretary's tragedy smote the old man. The necessity of doing
+something for Peter put his thoughts to rout. A wild idea occurred to
+the Captain that if he should write the exact truth, perhaps his memoirs
+might serve Peter as a signal against a futile, empty journey.
+
+But the thought no sooner appeared than it was rejected. In the Anglo-
+Saxon, especially the Anglo-Saxon of the Southern United States, abides
+no such Gallic frankness as moved a Jean-Jacques. Southern memoirs
+always sound like the conversation between two maiden ladies,--nothing
+intimate, simply a few general remarks designed to show from what nice
+families they came.
+
+So the Captain wrote nothing. During all the afternoon he sat at his
+desk with a leaden heart, watching Peter move about the room. The old
+man maintained more or less the posture of writing, but his thoughts
+were occupied in pitying himself and pitying Peter. Half a dozen times
+he looked up, on the verge of making some plea, some remonstrance,
+against the madness of this brown man. But the sight of Peter sitting in
+the window-seat staring out into the street silenced him. He was a weak
+old man, and Peter's nerves were strung with the desire of youth.
+
+At last the two men heard old Rose clashing in the kitchen. A few
+minutes later the secretary excused himself from the library, to go to
+his own room. As Peter was about to pass through the door, the Captain
+was suddenly galvanized into action by the thought that this perhaps was
+the last time he would ever see him. He got up from his chair and called
+shakenly to Peter. The negro paused. The Captain moistened his lips and
+controlled his voice.
+
+"I want to have a word with you, Peter, about a--a little matter. I--
+I've mentioned it before."
+
+"Yes, sir." The negro's tone and attitude reminded the Captain that the
+supper gong would soon sound and they would best separate at once.
+
+"It--it's about Cissie Dildine," the old lawyer hurried on.
+
+Peter nodded slightly.
+
+"Yes, you mentioned that before."
+
+The old man lifted a thin hand as if to touch Peter's arm, but he did
+not. A sort of desperation seized him.
+
+"But listen, Peter, you don't want to do--what's in your mind!"
+
+"What is in my mind, Captain?"
+
+"I mean marry a negress. You don't want to marry a negress!"
+
+The brown man stared, utterly blank.
+
+"Not marry a negress!"
+
+"No, Peter; no," quavered the old man. "For yourself it may make no
+difference, but your children--think of your children, your son growing
+up under a brown veil! You can't tear it off. God himself can't tear it
+off! You can never reach him through it. Your children, your children's
+children, a terrible procession that stretches out and out, marching
+under a black shroud, unknowing, unknown! All you can see are their sad
+forms beneath the shroud, marching away--marching away. God knows where!
+And yet it's your own flesh and blood!"
+
+Suddenly the old lawyer's face broke into the hard, tearless contortions
+of the aged. His terrible emotion communicated itself to the sensitive
+brown man.
+
+"But, Captain, I myself am a negro. Whom should I marry?"
+
+"No one; no one! Let your seed wither in your loins! It's better to do
+that; it's better--" At that moment the clashing of the supper gong fell
+on the old man's naked nerves. He straightened up by some reflex
+mechanism, turned away from what he thought was his last interview with
+his secretary, and proceeded down the piazza into the great empty
+dining-room.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+With overwrought nerves Peter Siner entered his room. At five o'clock
+that afternoon he had seen Cissie Dildine go up the street to the
+Arkwright home to cook one of those occasional suppers. He had been
+watching for her return, and in the midst of it the Captain's
+extraordinary outburst had stirred him up.
+
+Once in his room, the negro placed the broken Hepplewhite in such a
+position that he could rake the street with a glance. Then he tried to
+compose himself and await the coming of his supper and the passage of
+Cissie. There was something almost pathetic in Peter's endless watching,
+all for a mere glimpse or two of the girl in yellow. He himself had no
+idea how his nerves and thoughts had woven themselves around the young
+woman. He had no idea what a passion this continual doling out of
+glimpses had begotten. He did not dream how much he was, as folk naively
+put it, in love with her.
+
+His love was strong enough to make him forget for a while the old
+lawyer's outbreak. However, as the dusk thickened in the shrubbery and
+under the trees, certain of the old gentleman's phrases revisited the
+mulatto's mind: "A terrible procession ... marching under a black
+shroud.... Your children, your children's children, a terrible
+procession,... marching away, God knows where.... And yet--it's your own
+flesh and blood!" They were terrific sentences, as if the old man had
+been trying to tear from his vision some sport of nature, some
+deformity. As the implications spread before Peter, he became more and
+more astonished at its content. Even to Captain Renfrew black men were
+dehumanized,--shrouded, untouchable creatures.
+
+It delivered to Peter a slow but a profound shock. He glanced about at
+the faded magnificence of the room with a queer feeling that he had been
+introduced into it under a sort of misrepresentation. He had taken up
+his abode with the Captain, at least on the basis of belonging to the
+human family, but this passionate outbreak, this puzzling explosion, cut
+that ground from under his feet.
+
+The more Peter thought about it, the stranger grew his sensation. Not
+even to be classed as a human being by this old gentleman who in a weak,
+helpless fashion had crept somewhat into Peter's affections,--not to be
+considered a man! The mulatto drew a long, troubled breath, and by the
+mere mechanics of his desire kept staring through the gloom for Cissie.
+
+Peter Siner had known all along that the unread whites of Hooker's Bend
+--and that included nearly every white person in the village--considered
+black men as simple animals; but he had supposed that the more thoughtful
+men, of whom Captain Renfrew was a type, at least admitted the Afro-
+American to the common brotherhood of humanity. But they did not.
+
+As Peter sat staring into the darkness the whole effect of the
+dehumanizing of the black folk of the South began to unfold itself
+before his imagination. It explained to him the tragedies of his race,
+their sufferings at the hand of mob violence; the casualness, even the
+levity with which black men were murdered: the chronic dishonesty with
+which negroes were treated: the constant enactment of adverse
+legislation against them; the cynical use of negro women. They were all
+vermin, animals; they were one with the sheep and the swine; a little
+nearer the human in form, perhaps, and, oddly enough, one that could be
+bred to a human being, as testified a multitude of brown and yellow and
+cream-colored folk, but all marching away, as the Captain had so
+passionately said, marching away, their forms hidden from human
+intercourse under a shroud of black, an endless procession marching
+away, God knew whither! And yet they were the South's own flesh and
+blood.
+
+The horror of such a complex swelled in Peter's mind to monstrous
+proportions. As night thickened at his window, the negro sat dazed and
+wondering at the mightiness of his vision. His thoughts went groping,
+trying to solve some obscure problem it posed. He thought of the
+Arkwright boy; he thought of the white men smiling as his mother's
+funeral went past the livery-stable; he thought of Captain Renfrew's
+manuscript that he was transcribing. Through all the old man's memoirs
+ran a certain lack of sincerity. Peter always felt amid his labors that
+the old Captain was making an attorney's plea rather than a candid
+exposition. At this point in his thoughts there gradually limned itself
+in the brown man's mind the answer to that enigma which he almost had
+unraveled on the day he first saw Cissie Dildine pass his window. With
+it came the answer to the puzzle contained in the old Captain's library.
+The library was not an ordinary compilation of the world's thought; it,
+too, was an attorney's special pleading against the equality of man. Any
+book or theory that upheld the equality of man was carefully excluded
+from the shelves. Darwin's great hypothesis, and every development
+springing from it, had been banned, because the moment that a theory was
+propounded of the great biologic relationship of all flesh, from worms
+to vertebrates, there instantly followed a corollary of the brotherhood
+of man.
+
+What Christ did for theology, Darwin did for biology,--he democratized
+it. The One descended to man's brotherhood from the Trinity; the other
+climbed up to it from the worms.
+
+The old Captain's library lacked sincerity. Southern orthodoxy, which
+persists in pouring its religious thought into the outworn molds of
+special creation, lacks sincerity. Scarcely a department of Southern
+life escapes this fundamental attitude of special pleader and
+disingenuousness. It explains the Southern fondness for legal
+subtleties. All attempts at Southern poetry, belles-lettres, painting,
+novels, bear the stamp of the special plea, of authors whose exposition
+is careful.
+
+Peter perceived what every one must perceive, that when letters turn
+into a sort of glorified prospectus of a country, all value as
+literature ceases. The very breath of art and interpretation is an eager
+and sincere searching of the heart. This sincerity the South lacks. Her
+single talent will always be forensic, because she is a lawyer with a
+cause to defend. And such is the curse that arises from lynchings and
+venery and extortions and dehumanizings,--sterility; a dumbness of soul.
+
+Peter Siner's thoughts lifted him with the tremendous buoyancy of
+inspiration. He swung out of his chair and began tramping his dark room.
+The skin of his scalp tickled as if a ghost had risen before him. The
+nerves in his thighs and back vibrated. He felt light, and tingled with
+energy.
+
+Unaware of what he was doing, he set about lighting the gasolene-lamp.
+He worked with nervous quickness, as if he were in a great hurry.
+Presently a brilliant light flooded the room. It turned the gray
+illumination of the windows to blackness.
+
+Joy enveloped Peter. His own future developed under his eyes with the
+same swift clairvoyance that marked his vision of the ills of his
+country. He saw himself remedying those ills. He would go about showing
+white men and black men the simple truth, the spiritual necessity for
+justice and fairness. It was not a question of social equality; it was a
+question of clearing a road for the development of Southern life. He
+would show white men that to weaken, to debase, to dehumanize the negro,
+inflicted a more terrible wound on the South than would any strength the
+black man might develop. He would show black men that to hate the
+whites, constantly to suspect, constantly to pilfer from them, only
+riveted heavier shackles on their limbs.
+
+It was all so clear and so simple! The white South must humanize the
+black not for the sake of the negro, but for the sake of itself. No one
+could resist logic so fundamental.
+
+Peter's heart sang with the solemn joy of a man who had found his work.
+All through his youth he had felt blind yearnings and gropings for he
+knew not what. It had driven him with endless travail out of Niggertown,
+through school and college, and back to Niggertown,--this untiring Hound
+of Heaven. But at last he had reached his work. He, Peter Siner, a
+mulatto, with the blood of both white and black in his veins, would come
+as an evangel of liberty to both white and black. The brown man's eyes
+grew moist from Joy. His body seemed possessed of tremendous energy.
+
+As he paced his room there came into the glory of Peter's thoughts the
+memory of the Arkwright boy as he sat in the cedar glade brooding on the
+fallen needles Peter recalled the hobbledehoy's disjointed words as he
+wrestled with the moral and physical problems of adolescence. Peter
+recalled his impulse to sit down by young Sam Arkwright, and, as best he
+might, give him some clue to the critical and feverish period through
+which he was passing.
+
+He had not done so, but Peter remembered the instance down to the very
+desperation in the face of the brooding youngster. And it seemed to
+Peter that this rejected impulse had been a sign that he was destined to
+be an evangel to the whites as well as to the blacks.
+
+The joy of Peter's mission bore him aloft on vast wings. His room seemed
+to fall away from him, and he was moving about his country, releasing
+the two races from their bonds of suspicion and cruelty.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+Slowly the old manor formed about Peter again, and he perceived that a
+tapping on the door had summoned him back. He walked to the door with
+his heart full of kindness for old Rose. She was bringing him his
+supper. He felt as if he could take the old woman in his arms, and out
+of the mere hugeness of his love sweeten her bitter life. The mulatto
+opened the door as eagerly as if he were admitting some long-desired
+friend; but when the shutter swung back, the old crone and her salver
+were not there. All he could discern in the darkness were the white
+pillars marking the night into panels. There was no light in the outer
+kitchen. The whole manor was silent.
+
+As he stood listening, the knocking was repeated, this time more
+faintly. He fixed the sound at the window. He closed the door, walked
+across the brilliant room, and opened the shutters.
+
+For several moments he saw nothing more than the tall quadrangle of
+blackness which the window framed; then a star or two pierced it; then
+something moved. He saw a woman's figure standing close to the casement,
+and out of the darkness Cissie Dildine's voice asked in its careful
+English:
+
+"Peter, may I come in?"
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+For a full thirty seconds Peter Siner stared at the girl at the window
+before, even with her prompting, he thought of the amenity of asking her
+to come inside. As a further delayed courtesy, he drew the Heppelwhite
+chair toward her.
+
+Cissie's face looked bloodless in the blanched light of the gasolene-
+lamp. She forced a faint, doubtful smile.
+
+"You don't seem very glad to see me, Peter."
+
+"I am," he assured her, mechanically, but he really felt nothing but
+astonishment and dismay. They filled his voice. He was afraid some one
+would see Cissie in his room. His thoughts went flitting about the
+premises, calculating the positions of the various trees and shrubs in
+relation to the windows, trying to determine whether, and just where, in
+his brilliantly lighted chamber the girl could be seen from the street.
+
+The octoroon made no further comment on his confusion. Her eyes wandered
+from him over the stately furniture and up to the stuccoed ceiling.
+
+"They told me you lived in a wonderful room," she remarked absently.
+
+"Yes, it's very nice," agreed Peter in the same tone, wondering what
+might be the object of her hazardous visit. A flicker of suspicion
+suggested that she was trying to compromise him out of revenge for his
+renouncement of her, but the next instant he rejected this.
+
+The girl accepted the chair Peter offered and continued to look about.
+
+"I hope you don't mind my staring, Peter," she said.
+
+"I stared when I first came here to stay," assisted Peter, who was
+getting a little more like himself, even if a little uneasier at the
+consequences of this visit.
+
+"Is that a highboy?" She nodded nervously at the piece of furniture.
+"I've seen pictures of them."
+
+"Uh huh. Revolutionary, I believe. The night wind is a little raw." He
+moved across the room and closed the jalousies, and thus cut off the
+night wind and also the west view from the street. He glanced at the
+heavy curtains parted over his front windows, with a keen desire to
+swing them together. Some fragment of his mind continued the surface
+conversation with Cissie.
+
+"Is it post-Revolutionary or pre-Revolutionary?" she asked with a
+preoccupied air.
+
+"Post, I believe. No, pre. I always meant to examine closely."
+
+"To have such things would almost teach one history," Cissie said.
+
+"Yeah; very nice." Peter had decided that the girl was in direct line
+with the left front window and an opening between the trees to the
+street.
+
+The girl's eyes followed his.
+
+"Are those curtains velour, Peter?"
+
+"I--I believe so," agreed the man, unhappily.
+
+"I--I wonder how they look spread."
+
+Peter seized on this flimsy excuse with a wave of relief and
+thankfulness to Cissie. He had to restrain himself as he strode across
+the room and swung together the two halves of the somber curtains in
+order to preserve an appearance of an exhibit. His fingers were so
+nervous that he bungled a moment at the heavy cords, but finally the two
+draperies swung together, loosing a little cloud of dust. He drew
+together a small aperture where the hangings stood apart, and then
+turned away in sincere relief.
+
+Cissie's own interest in historic furniture and textiles came to an
+abrupt conclusion. She gave a deep sigh and settled back into her chair.
+She sat looking at Peter seriously, almost distressfully, as he came
+toward her.
+
+With the closing of the curtains and the establishment of a real privacy
+Peter became aware once again of the sweetness and charm Cissie always
+held for him. He still wondered what had brought her, but he was no
+longer uneasy.
+
+"Perhaps I'd better build a fire," he suggested, quite willing now to
+make her visit seem not unusual.
+
+"Oh, no,"--she spoke with polite haste,--"I'm just going to stay a
+minute. I don't know what you'll think of me." She looked intently at
+him.
+
+"I think it lovely of you to come." He was disgusted with the triteness
+of this remark, but he could think of nothing else.
+
+"I don't know," demurred the octoroon, with her faint doubtful smile.
+"Persons don't welcome beggars very cordially."
+
+"If all beggars were so charming--" Apparently he couldn't escape
+banalities.
+
+But Cissie interrupted whatever speech he meant to make, with a return
+of her almost painful seriousness.
+
+"I really came to ask you to help me, Peter."
+
+"Then your need has brought me a pleasure, at least." Some impulse kept
+the secretary making those foolish complimentary speeches which keep a
+conversation empty and insincere.
+
+"Oh, Peter, I didn't come here for you to talk like that! Will you do
+what I want?"
+
+"What do you want, Cissie?" he asked, sobered by her voice and manner.
+
+"I want you to help me, Peter."
+
+"All right, I will." He spaced his words with his speculations about the
+nature of her request. "What do you want me to do?"
+
+"I want you to help me go away."
+
+Peter looked at her in surprise. He hardly knew what he had been
+expecting, but it was not this.
+
+Some repressed emotion crept into the girl's voice.
+
+"Peter, I--I can't stay here in Hooker's Bend any longer. I want to go
+away. I--I've got to go away."
+
+Peter stood regarding her curiously and at the same time
+sympathetically.
+
+"Where do you want to go, Cissie?"
+
+The girl drew a long breath; her bosom lifted and dropped abruptly.
+
+"I don't know; that was one of the things I wanted to ask you about."
+
+"You don't know where you want to go?" He smiled faintly. "How do you
+know you want to go at all?"
+
+"Oh, Peter, all I know is I must leave Hooker's Bend!" She gave a little
+shiver. "I'm tired of it, sick of it--sick." She exhaled a breath, as if
+she were indeed physically ill. Her face suggested it; her eyes were
+shadowed. "Some Northern city, I suppose," she added.
+
+"And you want me to help you?" inquired Peter, puzzled.
+
+She nodded silently, with a woman's instinct to make a man guess the
+favor she is seeking.
+
+Then it occurred to Peter just what sort of assistance the girl did
+want. It gave him a faint shock that a girl could come to a man to beg
+or to borrow money. It was a white man's shock, a notion he had picked
+up in Boston, because it happens frequently among village negroes, and
+among them it holds as little significance as children begging one
+another for bites of apples.
+
+Peter thought over his bank balance, then started toward a chest of
+drawers where he kept his checkbook.
+
+"Cissie, if I can he of any service to you in a substantial way, I'll be
+more than glad to--"
+
+She put out a hand and stopped him; then talked on in justification of
+her determination to go away.
+
+"I just can't endure it any longer, Peter." She shuddered again. "I
+can't stand Niggertown, or this side of town--any of it. They--they have
+no _feeling_ for a colored girl, Peter, not--not a speck!" She rave
+a gasp, and after a moment plunged on into her wrongs: "When--when one
+of us even walks past on the street, they--they whistle and say a-all
+kinds of things out loud, j-just as if w-we weren't there at all. Th-
+they don't c-care; we're just n-nigger w-women." Cissie suddenly began
+sobbing with a faint catching noise, her full bosom shaken by the
+spasms; her tears slowly welling over. She drew out a handkerchief with
+a part of its lace edge gone, and wiped her eyes and cheeks, holding the
+bit of cambric in a ball in her palm, like a negress, instead of in her
+fingers, like a white woman, as she had been taught. Then she drew a
+deep breath, swallowed, and became more composed.
+
+Peter stood looking in helpless anger at this representative of all
+women of his race.
+
+"Cissie, that's street-corner scum--the dirty sewage--"
+
+"They make you feel naked," went on Cissie in the monotone that succeeds
+a fit of weeping, "and ashamed--and afraid." She blinked her eyes to
+press out the undue moisture, and looked at Peter as if asking what else
+she could do about it than to go away from the village.
+
+"Will it be any better away from here?" suggested Peter, doubtfully.
+
+Cissie shook her head.
+
+"I--I suppose not, if--if I go alone."
+
+"I shouldn't think so," agreed Peter, somberly. He started to hearten
+her by saying white women also underwent such trials, if that would be a
+consolation; but he knew very well that a white woman's hardships were
+as nothing compared to those of a colored woman who was endowed with any
+grace whatever.
+
+"And besides, Cissie," went on Peter, who somehow found himself arguing
+against the notion of her going, "I hardly see how a decent colored
+woman gets around at all. Colored boarding-houses are wretched places. I
+ate and slept in one or two, coming home. Rotten." The possibility of
+Cissie finding herself in such a place moved Peter.
+
+The girl nodded submissively to his judgment, and said in a queer voice:
+"That's why I--I didn't want to travel alone, Peter."
+
+"No, it's a bad idea--" and then Peter perceived that a queer quality
+was creeping into the tete-a-tete.
+
+She returned his look unsteadily, but with a curious persistence.
+
+[Illustration: "You-you mean you want m-me--to go with you, Cissie?" he
+stammered]
+
+"I--I d-don't want to travel a-alone, Peter," she gasped.
+
+Her look, her voice suddenly brought home to the an the amazing
+connotation of her words. He stared at her, felt his face grow warm with
+a sharp, peculiar embarrassment. He hardly knew what to say or do before
+her intent and piteous eyes.
+
+"You--you mean you want m-me--to go with you, Cissie?" he stammered.
+
+The girl suddenly began trembling, now that her last reserve of
+indirection had been torn away.
+
+"Listen, Peter," she began breathlessly. "I'm not the sort of woman you
+think. If I hadn't accused myself, we'd be married now. I--I wanted you
+more than anything in the world, Peter, but I did tell you. Surely,
+surely, Peter, that shows I am a good woman--th-the real I. Dear, dear
+Peter, there is a difference between a woman and her acts. Peter, you're
+the first man in all my life, in a-all my life who ever came to me k-
+kindly and gently; so I had to l-love you and t-tell you, Peter."
+
+The girl's wavering voice broke down completely; her face twisted with
+grief. She groped for her chair, sat down, buried her face in her arms
+on the table, and broke into a chattering outbreak of sobs that sounded
+like some sort of laughter.
+
+Her shoulders shook; the light gleamed on her soft, black Caucasian
+hair. There was a little rent in one of the seams in her cheap jacket,
+at one of the curves where her side molded into her shoulder. The
+customer made garment had found Cissie's body of richer mold than it had
+been designed to shield. And yet in Peter's distress and tenderness and
+embarrassment, this little rent held his attention and somehow misprized
+the wearer.
+
+It seemed symbolic in the searching white light. He could see the very
+break in the thread and the widened stitches at the ends of the rip. Her
+coat had given way because she was modeled more nearly like the Venus de
+Milo than the run of womankind. He felt the little irony of the thing,
+and yet was quite unable to resist the comparison.
+
+And then, too, she had referred again to her sin of peculation. A woman
+enjoys confessions from a man. A man's sins are mostly vague, indefinite
+things to a woman, a shadowy background which brings out the man in a
+beautiful attitude of repentance; but when a woman confesses, the man
+sees all her past as a close-up with full lighting. He has an intimate
+acquaintance with just what she's talking about, and the woman herself
+grows shadowy and unreal. Men have too many blots not to demand
+whiteness in women. By striking some such average, nature keeps the race
+a going moral concern.
+
+So Peter, as he stood looking down on the woman who was asking him to
+marry her, was filled with as unhappy and as impersonal a tenderness as
+a born brother. He recalled the thoughts which had come to him when he
+saw Cissie passing his window. She was not the sort of woman he wanted
+to marry; she was not his ideal. He cast about in his head for some
+gentle way of putting her off, so that he would not hurt her any
+further, if such an easement were possible.
+
+As he stood thinking, he found not a pretext, but a reality. He stooped
+over, and put a hand lightly on each of her arms.
+
+"Cissie," he said in a serious, even voice, "if I should ever marry any
+one, it would be you."
+
+The girl paused in her sobbing at his even, passionless voice.
+
+"Then you--you won't?" she whispered in her arms.
+
+"I can't, Cissie." Now that he was saying it, he uttered the words very
+evenly and smoothly. "I can't, dear Cissie, because a great work has
+just come into my life." He paused, expecting her to ask some question,
+but she lay silent, with her face in her arms, evidently listening.
+
+"Cissie, I think, in fact I know, I can demonstrate to all the South,
+both white and black, the need of a better and more sincere
+understanding between our two races."
+
+Peter did not feel the absurdity of such a speech in such a place. He
+patted her arm, but there was something in the warmth of her flesh that
+disturbed his austerity and caused him to lift his hand to the more
+impersonal axis of her shoulder. He proceeded to develop his idea.
+
+"Cissie, just a moment ago you were complaining of the insults you meet
+everywhere. I believe if I can spread my ideas, Cissie, that even a
+pretty colored girl like you may walk the streets without being
+subjected to obscenity on every corner." His tone unconsciously
+patronized Cissie's prettiness with the patronage of the male for the
+less significant thing, as though her ripeness for love and passion and
+children were, after all, not comparable with what he, a male, could do
+in the way of significantly molding life.
+
+Cissie lifted her head and dried her eyes.
+
+"So you aren't going to marry me, Peter?" Woman-like, now that she was
+well into the subject, she was far less embarrassed than Peter. She had
+had her cry.
+
+"Why--er--considering this work, Cissie--"
+
+"Aren't you going to marry anybody, Peter?"
+
+The artist in Peter, the thing the girl loved in him, caught again that
+Messianic vision of himself.
+
+"Why, no, Cissie," he said, with a return of his inspiration of an hour
+ago; "I'll be going here and there all over the South preaching this
+gospel of kindliness and tolerance, of forgiveness of the faults of
+others." Cissie looked at him with a queer expression. "I'll show the
+white people that they should treat the negro with consideration not for
+the sake of the negro, but for the sake of themselves. It's so simple,
+Cissie, it's so logical and clear--"
+
+The girl shook her head sadly.
+
+"And you don't want me to go with you, Peter?"
+
+"Why, n-no, Cissie; a girl like you couldn't go. Perhaps I'll be
+misunderstood in places, perhaps I may have to leave a town hurriedly,
+or be swung over the walls, like Paul, in a basket." He attempted to
+treat it lightly.
+
+But the girl looked at him with a horror dawning in her melancholy face.
+
+"Peter, do you really mean that?" she whispered.
+
+"Why, truly. You don't imagine--"
+
+The octoroon opened her dark eyes until she might have been some weird.
+
+"Oh, Peter, please, please put such a mad idea away from you! Peter,
+you've been living here alone in this old house until you don't see
+things clearly. Dear Peter, don't you _know?_ You can't go out and
+talk like that to white folks and--and not have some terrible thing
+happen to you! Oh, Peter, if you would only marry me, it would cure you
+of such wildness!" Involuntarily she got up, holding out her arms to
+him, offering herself to his needs, with her frightened eyes fixed on
+his.
+
+It made him exquisitely uncomfortable again. He made a little sound
+designed to comfort and reassure her. He would do very well. He was
+something of a diplomat in his way. He had got along with the boys in
+Harvard very well indeed. In fact, he was rather a man of the world. No
+need to worry about him, though it was awfully sweet of her.
+
+Cissie picked up her handkerchief with its torn edge, which she had laid
+on the table. Evidently she was about to go.
+
+"I surely don't know what will become of me," she said, looking at it.
+
+In a reversal of feeling Peter did not want her to go away quite then.
+He cast about for some excuse to detain her a moment longer.
+
+"Now, Cissie," he began, "if you are really going to leave Hooker's
+Bend--"
+
+"I'm not going," she said, with a long exhalation. "I--" she swallowed--
+"I just thought that up to--ask you to--to--You see," she explained, a
+little breathless, "I thought you still loved me and had forgiven me by
+the way you watched for me every day at the window."
+
+This speech touched Peter more keenly than any of the little drama the
+girl had invented. It hit him so shrewdly he could think of nothing more
+to say.
+
+Cissie moved toward the window and undid the latch.
+
+"Good night, Peter." She paused a moment, with her hand on the catch.
+"Peter," she said, "I'd almost rather see you marry some other girl than
+try so terrible a thing."
+
+The big, full-blooded athlete smiled faintly.
+
+"You seem perfectly sure marriage would cure me of my mission."
+
+Cissie's face reddened faintly.
+
+"I think so," she said briefly. "Good night," and she disappeared in the
+dark space she had opened, and closed the jalousies softly after her.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER XV
+
+
+Cissie Dildine's conviction that marriage would cure Peter of his
+mission persisted in the mulatto's mind long after the glamour of the
+girl had faded and his room had regained the bleak emptiness of a
+bachelor's bedchamber.
+
+Cissie had been so brief and positive in her statement that Peter, who
+had not thought on the point at all, grew more than half convinced she
+was right.
+
+Now that he pondered over it, it seemed there was a difference between
+the outlook of a bachelor and that of a married man. The former
+considered humanity as a balloonist surveys a throng,--immediately and
+without perspective,--but the latter always sees mankind through the
+frame of his family. A single man tends naturally to philosophy and
+reform; a married man to administration and statesmanship. There have
+been no great unmarried statesmen; there have been no great married
+philosophers or reformers.
+
+Now that Cissie had pointed out this universal rule, Peter saw it very
+clearly. And Peter suspected that beneath this rough classification, and
+conditioning it, lay a plexus of obscure mental and physical reactions
+set up by the relations between husband and wife. It might very well be
+there was a difference between the actual cerebral and nervous structure
+of a married man and that of a single man.
+
+At any rate, after these reflections, Peter now felt sure that marriage
+would cure him of his mission; but how had Cissie known it? How had she
+struck out so involved a theory, one might say, in the toss of a head?
+The more Peter thought it over the more extraordinary it became. It was
+another one of those explosive ideas which Cissie, apparently, had the
+faculty of creating out of a pure mental vacuum.
+
+All this philosophy aside, Cissie's appearance just in the nick of his
+inspiration, her surprising proposal of marriage, and his refusal, had
+accomplished one thing: it had committed Peter to the program he had
+outlined to the girl.
+
+Indeed, there seemed something fatalistic in such a concatenation of
+events. Siner wondered whether or not he would have obeyed his vision
+without this added impulse from Cissie. He did not know; but now, since
+it had all come about just as it had, he suspected he would have been
+neglectful. He felt as if a dangerous but splendid channel had been
+opened before his eyes, and almost at the same instant a hand had
+reached down and directed his life into it. This fancy moved the
+mulatto. As he got himself ready for bed, he kept thinking:
+
+"Well, my life is settled at last. There is nothing else for me to do.
+Even if this should end terribly for me, as Cissie imagines, my life
+won't be wasted."
+
+Next morning Peter Siner was awakened by old Rose Hobbett thrusting her
+head in at his door, staring around, and finally, seeing Peter in bed,
+grumbling:
+
+"Why is you still heah, black man?"
+
+The secretary opened his eyes in astonishment.
+
+"Why shouldn't I be here?"
+
+"Nobody wuz 'speckin' you to be heah." The crone withdrew her head and
+vanished.
+
+Peter wondered at this unaccustomed interest of Rose, then hurried out
+of bed, supposing himself late for breakfast.
+
+A dense fog had come up from the river, and the moisture floating into
+his open windows had dampened his whole room. Peter stepped briskly to
+the screen and began splashing himself. It was only in the midst of his
+ablutions that he remembered his inspiration and resolve of the previous
+evening. As he squeezed the water over his powerfully molded body, he
+recalled it almost impersonally. It might have happened to some third
+person. He did not even recall distinctly the threads of the logic which
+had lifted him to such a Pisgah, and showed him the whole South as a new
+and promised land. However, he knew that he could start his train of
+thought again, and again ascend the mountain.
+
+Floating through the fog into his open window came the noises of the
+village as it set about living another day, precisely as it had lived
+innumerable days in the past. The blast of the six-o'clock whistle from
+the planing-mill made the loose sashes of his windows rattle. Came a
+lowing of cows and a clucking of hens, a woman's calling. The voices of
+men in conversation came so distinctly through the pall that it seemed a
+number of persons must be moving about their morning work, talking and
+shouting, right in the Renfrew yard.
+
+But the thing that impressed Peter most was the solidity and stability
+of this Southern village that he could hear moving around him, and its
+certainty to go on in the future precisely as it had gone on in the
+past. It was a tremendous force. The very old manor about him seemed
+huge and intrenched in long traditions, while he, Peter Siner, was just
+a brown man, naked behind a screen and rather cold from the fog and damp
+of the morning.
+
+He listened to old Rose clashing the kitchen utensils. As he drew on his
+damp underwear, he wondered what he could say to old Rose that would
+persuade her into a little kindliness and tolerance for the white
+people. As he listened he felt hopeless; he could never explain to the
+old creature that her own happiness depended upon the charity she
+extended to others. She could never understand it. She would live and
+die precisely the same bitter old beldam that she was, and nothing could
+ever assuage her.
+
+While Peter was thinking of the old creature, she came shuffling along
+the back piazza with his breakfast. She let herself in by lifting one
+knee to a horizontal, balancing the tray on it, then opening the door
+with her freed hand.
+
+When the shutter swung open, it displayed the crone standing on one
+foot, wearing a man's grimy sock, which had fallen down over a broken,
+run-down shoe.
+
+In Peter's mood the thought of this wretched old woman putting on such
+garments morning after morning was unspeakably pathetic. He thought of
+his own mother, who had lived and died only a shade or two removed from
+the old crone's condition.
+
+Rose put down her foot, and entered the room with her lips poked out,
+ready to make instant attack if Peter mentioned his lack of supper the
+night before.
+
+"Aunt Rose," asked the secretary, with his friendly intent in his tones,
+"how came you to look in this morning and say you didn't expect to find
+me in my room?"
+
+She gave an unintelligible grunt, pushed the lamp to one side, and eased
+her tray to the table.
+
+Peter finished touching his tie before one of those old-fashioned
+mirrors, not of cut-glass, yet perfectly true. He came from the mirror
+and moved his chair, out of force of habit, so he could look up the
+street toward the Arkwrights'.
+
+"Aunt Rose," said the young man, wistfully, "why are you always angry?"
+
+She bridled at this extraordinary inquiry.
+
+"Me?"
+
+"Yes, you."
+
+She hesitated a moment, thinking how she could make her reply a personal
+assault on Peter.
+
+"'Cause you come heah, 'sputin' my rights, da' 's' why."
+
+"No," demurred Peter, "you were quarreling in the kitchen the first
+morning I came here, and you didn't know I was on the place."
+
+"Well--I got my tribulations," she snapped, staring suspiciously at
+these unusual questions.
+
+There was a pause; then Peter said placatingly:
+
+"I was just thinking, Aunt Rose, you might forget your tribulations if
+you didn't ride them all the time."
+
+"Hoccum! What you mean, ridin' my tribulations?"
+
+"Thinking about them. The old Captain, for instance; you are no happier
+always abusing the old Captain."
+
+The old virago gave a sniff, tossed her head, but kept her eyes rolled
+suspiciously on Peter.
+
+"Very often the way we think and act makes us happy or unhappy,"
+moralized Peter, broadly.
+
+"Look heah, nigger, you ain't no preacher sont out by de Lawd to me!"
+
+"Anyway, I am sure you would feel more friendly toward the Captain if
+you acted openly with him; for instance, if you didn't take off all his
+cold victuals, and handkerchiefs and socks, soap, kitchenware--"
+
+The cook snorted.
+
+"I'd feel dat much mo' nekked an' hongry, dat's how I'd feel."
+
+"Perhaps, if you'd start over, he might give you a better wage."
+
+"Huh!" she snorted in an access of irony. "I see dat skinflint gib'n' me
+a better wage. Puuh!" The suddenly she realized where the conversation
+had wandered, and stared at the secretary with widening eyes "Good Lawd!
+Did dat fool Cap'n set up a nigger in dis bedroom winder jes to ketch
+ole Rose packin' off a few ole lef'-overs?" Peter began a hurried
+denial, but she rushed on: "'Fo' Gawd, I hopes his viddles chokes him! I
+hope his ole smoke-house falls down on his ole haid. I hope to Jesus--"
+
+Peter pleaded with her not to think the Captain was behind his
+observations, but the hag rushed out of the bedroom, swinging her head
+from side to side, uttering the most terrible maledictions. She would
+show him! She wouldn't put another foot in his old kitchen. Wild horses
+couldn't drag her into his smoke-house again.
+
+Peter ran to the door and called after her down the piazza, trying to
+exonerate the Captain: but she either did not or would not hear, and
+vanished into the kitchen, still furious.
+
+Old Rose made Peter so uneasy that he deserted his breakfast midway and
+hurried to the library. In the solemn old room he found the Captain
+alone and in rather a pleased mood. The old gentleman stood patting and
+alining a pile of manuscript. As the mulatto entered he exclaimed:
+
+"Well, here's Peter again!" as if his secretary had been off on a long
+journey. Immediately afterward he added, "Peter, guess what I did last
+night." His voice was full of triumph.
+
+Peter was thinking about Aunt Rose, and stood looking at the Captain
+without the slightest idea.
+
+"I wrote all of this,"--he indicated his manuscript,--"over a hundred
+pages."
+
+Peter considered the work without much enthusiasm.
+
+"You must have worked all night."
+
+The old attorney rubbed his hands.
+
+"I think I may claim a touch of inspiration last night, Peter.
+Reminiscences rippled from under my pen, propitious words, prosperous
+sentences. Er--the fact is, Peter, you will see, when you begin copying,
+I had come to a matter--a--a matter of some moment in my life. Every
+life contains such moments, Peter. I had meant to write something in the
+nature of a defen--an explanation, Peter. But after you left the library
+last night it suddenly occurred to me just to give each fact as it took
+place, quite frankly. So I did that--not--not what I meant to write, at
+all--ah. As you copy it, you may find it not entirely without some
+interest to yourself, Peter."
+
+"To me?" repeated Peter, after the fashion of the unattentative.
+
+"Yes, to yourself." The Captain was oddly moved. He took his hands off
+the script, walked a little away from the table, came back to it. "It--
+ah--may explain a good many things that--er--may have puzzled you." He
+cleared his throat and shifted his subject briskly. "We ought to be
+thinking about a publisher. What publisher shall we have publish these
+reminiscences? Make some stir in Tennessee's political circles,
+Peter; tremendous sales; clear up questions everybody is interested in.
+H-m--well, I'll walk down town and you"--he motioned to the script--
+"begin copying--"
+
+"By the way, Captain," said Peter as the old gentleman turned for the
+door, "has Rose said anything to you yet?"
+
+The old man detached his mind from his script with an obvious effort.
+
+"What about?"
+
+"About leaving your service."
+
+"No-o, not especially; she's always leaving my service."
+
+"But in this case it was my fault; at least I brought it about. I
+remonstrated with her about taking your left-over victuals and socks and
+handkerchiefs and things. She was quite offended."
+
+"Yes, it always offends her," agreed the old man, impatiently. "I never
+mention it myself unless I catch her red-handed; then I storm a little
+to keep her in bounds."
+
+Naturally, Peter knew of this extraordinary system of service in the
+South; nevertheless he was shocked at its implications.
+
+"Captain," suggested Peter, "wouldn't you find it to your own interest
+to give old Rose a full cash payment for her services and allow her to
+buy her own things?"
+
+The Captain dismissed the subject with a wave of his hand. "She's a
+nigger, Peter; you can't hire a nigger not to steal. Born in 'em. Then
+I'm not sure but what it would be compounding a felony, hiring a person
+not to steal; might be so construed. Well, now, there's the script. Read
+it carefully, my boy, and remember that in order to gain a certain
+_status quo_ certain antecedents are--are absolutely necessary,
+Peter. Without them my--my life would have been quite empty, Peter.
+It's--it's very strange--amazing. You will understand as you read. I'll
+be back to dinner, so good-by." In the strangest agitation the old
+Captain walked out of the library. The last glimpse Peter had of him was
+his meager old figure silhouetted against the cold gray fog that filled
+the compound.
+
+Neither the Captain's agitation nor his obvious desire that Peter should
+at once read the new manuscript really got past the threshold of the
+mulatto's consciousness. Peter's thoughts still hovered about old Rose,
+and from that point spread to the whole system of colored service in the
+South. For Rose's case was typical. The wage of cooks in small Southern
+villages is a pittance--and what they can steal. The tragedy of the
+mothers of a whole race working for their board and thievings came over
+Peter with a rising grimness. And there was no public sentiment against
+such practice. It was accepted everywhere as natural and inevitable. The
+negresses were never prosecuted; no effort was made to regain the stolen
+goods. The employers realized that what they paid would not keep soul
+and body together; that it was steal or perish.
+
+It was a fantastic truth that for any colored girl to hire into domestic
+service in Hooker's Bend was more or less entering an apprenticeship in
+peculation. What she could steal was the major portion of her wage, if
+two such anomalous terms may be used in conjunction.
+
+Yet, strange to say, the negro women of the village were quite honest in
+other matters. They paid their small debts. They took their mistresses'
+pocket-books to market and brought back the correct change. And if a
+mistress grew too indignant about something they had stolen, they would
+bring it back and say: "Here is a new one. I'd rather buy you a new one
+than have you think I would take anything."
+
+The whole system was the lees of slavery, and was surely the most
+demoralizing, the most grotesque method of hiring service in the whole
+civilized world. It was so absurd that its mere relation lapses into
+humor, that bane of black folk.
+
+Such painful thoughts filled the gloomy library and harassed Peter in
+his copying. He took his work to the window and tried to concentrate
+upon it, but his mind kept playing away.
+
+Indeed, it seemed to Peter that to sit in this old room and rewrite the
+wordy meanderings of the old gentleman's book was the very height of
+emptiness. How utterly futile, when all around him, on every hand, girls
+like Cissie Dildine were being indentured to corruption! And, as far as
+Peter knew, he was the only person in the South who saw it or felt it or
+cared anything at all about it.
+
+When Cissie Dildine came to the surface of Peter's mind she remained
+there, whirling around and around in his chaotic thoughts. He began
+talking to her image, after a certain dramatic trick of his mind, and
+she began offering her environment as an excuse for what had come
+between them and estranged them. She stole, but she had been trained to
+steal. She was a thief, the victim of an immense immorality. The charm
+of Cissie, her queer, swift-working intuition, the candor of her
+confession, her voluptuousness--all came rushing down on Peter,
+harassing him with anger and love and desire. To copy any more script
+became impossible. He lost his place; he hardly knew what he was
+writing.
+
+He flung aside the whole work, got to his feet with the imperative need
+of an athlete for the open. He started out of the room, but as an
+afterthought scribbled a nervous line, telling the Captain he might not
+be back for dinner. Then he found his hat and coat and walked briskly
+around the piazza to the front gate.
+
+The trees and shrubs were dripping, but the fog had almost cleared away,
+leaving only a haze in the air. A pale, level line of it cut across the
+scarp of the Big Hill. The sun shone with a peculiar soft light through
+the vapors.
+
+As Peter passed out at the gate, the fancy came to him that he might
+very well be starting on his mission. It came with a sort of surprise.
+He wondered how other men had set about reforms. With unpremeditation?
+He wondered to whom Jesus of Nazareth preached his first sermon. The
+thought of that young Galilean, sensitive, compassionate, inexperienced,
+speaking to his first hearer, filled Peter with a strange trembling
+tenderness. He looked about the familiar street of Hooker's Bend, the
+old trees over the pavement, the shabby village houses, and it all held
+a strangeness when thus juxtaposed to the thought of Nazareth nineteen
+hundred years before.
+
+The mulatto started down the street with his footsteps quickened by a
+sense of spiritual adventure.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+On the corner, against the blank south wall of Hobbett's store, Peter
+Siner saw the usual crowd of negroes warming themselves in the soft
+sunshine. They were slapping one another, scuffling, making feints with
+knives or stones, all to an accompaniment of bragging, profanity, and
+loud laughter. Their behavior was precisely that of adolescent white
+boys of fifteen or sixteen years of age.
+
+Jim Pink Staggs was furnishing much amusement with an impromptu sleight-
+of-hand exhibition. The black audience clustered around Jim Pink in his
+pinstripe trousers and blue-serge coat. They exhibited not the least
+curiosity as to the mechanics of the tricks, but asked for more and
+still more, with the naive delight of children in the mysterious.
+
+Peter Siner walked down the street with his Messianic impulse strong
+upon him. He was in that stage of feeling toward his people where a
+man's emotions take the color of religion. Now, as he approached the
+crowd of negroes, he wondered what he could say, how he could transfer
+to them the ideas and the emotion that lifted up his own heart.
+
+As he drew nearer, his concern mounted to anxiety. Indeed, what could he
+say? How could he present so grave a message? He was right among them
+now. One of the negroes jostled him by striking around his body at
+another negro. Peter stopped. His heart beat, and he had a queer
+sensation of being operated by some power outside himself. Next moment
+he heard himself saying in fairly normal tones:
+
+"Fellows, do you think we ought to be idling on the street corners like
+this? We ought to be at work, don't you think?"
+
+The horse-play stopped at this amazing sentiment.
+
+"Whuffo, Peter?" asked a voice.
+
+"Because the whole object of our race nowadays is to gain the respect of
+other races, and more particularly our own self-respect. We haven't it
+now. The only way to get it is to work, work, work."
+
+"Ef you feel lak you'd ought to go to wuck," suggested one astonished
+hearer, "you done got my p'mission, black boy, to hit yo' natchel gait
+to de fust job in sight."
+
+Peter was hardly less surprised than his hearers at what he was saying.
+He paid no attention to the interruption.
+
+"Fellows, it's the only way our colored people can get on and make the
+most out of life. Persistent labor is the very breath of the soul, men;
+it--it is." Here Peter caught an intimation of the whole flow of energy
+through the universe, focusing in man and being transformed into mental
+and moral values. And it suddenly occurred to him that the real worth of
+any people was their efficiency in giving this flow of force moral and
+spiritual forms. That is the end of man; that is what is prefigured when
+a baby's hand reaches for the sun. But Peter considered his audience,
+and his thought stammered on his tongue. The Persimmon, with his
+protruding, half-asleep eyes, was saying:
+
+"I don' know, Peter, as I 's so partic'lar 'bout makin' de mos' out'n
+dis worl'. You know de Bible say--hit say,"--here the Persimmon's voice
+dropped a tone lower, in unconscious imitation of negro preachers,--"la-
+ay not up yo' treasure on uth, wha moss do corrup', an' thieves break
+th'ugh _an'_ steal."
+
+Came a general nodding and agreement of soft, blurry voices.
+
+"'At sho whut it say, black man!"
+
+"Sho do!"
+
+"Lawd God loves a nigger on a street corner same as He do a millionaire
+in a six-cylinder, Peter."
+
+"Sho do, black man; but He's jes about de onlies' thing on uth 'at do."
+
+"Well, I don' know," came a troubled rejoinder. "Thaiuh 's de debbil,
+ketchin' mo' niggers nowadays dan he do white men, I 'fo' Gawd
+b'liebes."
+
+"Well, dat's because dey _is_ so many mo' niggers dan dey is white
+folks," put in a philosopher.
+
+"Whut you say 'bout dat, Brudder Peter?" inquired the Persimmon,
+seriously. None of this discussion was either derision or burlesque.
+None of the crowd had the slightest feeling that these questions were
+not just as practical and important as the suggestion that they all go
+to work.
+
+When Peter realized how their ignorant and undisciplined thoughts flowed
+off into absurdities, and that they were entirely unaware of it, it
+brought a great depression to his heart. He held up a hand with an
+earnestness that caught their vagrant attention.
+
+"Listen!" he pleaded. "Can't you see how much there is for us black
+folks to do, and what little we have done?"
+
+"Sho is a lot to do; we admits dat," said Bluegum Frakes. "But whut's de
+use doin' hit ef we kin manage to shy roun' some o' dat wuck an' keep on
+libin' anyhow, specially wid wages so high?"
+
+The question stopped Peter. Neither his own thoughts, nor any book that
+he had ever read nor any lecture that he had heard ever attempted to
+explain the enormous creative urge which is felt by every noble mind,
+and which, indeed, is shared to some extent by every human creature. Put
+to it like that, Siner concocted a sort of allegory, telling of a negro
+who was shiftless in the summer and suffered want in the winter, and
+applied it to the present high wage and to the low wage that was coming;
+but in his heart Peter knew such utilitarianism was not the true reason
+at all. Men do not weave tapestries to warm themselves, or build temples
+to keep the rain away.
+
+The brown man passed on around the corner, out of the faint warmth of
+the sunshine and away from the empty and endless arguments which his
+coming had provoked among the negroes.
+
+The futile ending of his first adventure surprised Peter. He walked
+uncertainly up the business street of the village, hardly knowing where
+to turn next.
+
+Cold weather had driven the merchants indoors, and the thoroughfare was
+quite deserted except for a few hogs rooting among the refuse heaps
+piled in front of the stores. It was not a pleasant sight, and it
+repelled Peter all the more because he was accustomed to the antiseptic
+look of a Northern city. He walked up to the third door from the corner,
+when a buzz of voices brought him to a standstill and finally persuaded
+him inside.
+
+At the back end of a badly lighted store a circle of white men and boys
+had formed around an old-fashioned, egg-shaped stove. Near by, on some
+meal-bags, sat two negroes, one of whom wore a broad grin, the other, a
+funny, sheepish look.
+
+The white men were teasing the latter negro about having gone to jail
+for selling a mortgaged cow. The men went about their fun-making
+leisurely, knowing quite well the negro could not get angry or make any
+retort or leave the store, all of these methods of self-defense being
+ruled out by custom.
+
+"You must have forgot your cow was mortgaged, Bob."
+
+"No-o-o, suh; I--I--I didn't fuhgit," drawling his vowels to a
+prodigious length.
+
+"Didn't you know you'd get into trouble?"
+
+"No-o-o, suh."
+
+"Know it now, don't you?"
+
+"Ya-a-s, suh."
+
+"Have a good time in jail, Bob?"
+
+"Ya-a-s, suh. Shot cra-a-aps nearly all de time tull de jailer broke hit
+up."
+
+"Wouldn't he let you shoot any more?"
+
+"No-o-o, suh; not after he won all our money." Here Bob flung up his
+head, poked out his lips like a bugle, and broke into a grotesque, "Hoo!
+hoo! hoo!" It was such an absurd laugh, and Bob's tale had come to such
+an absurd denouement, that the white men roared, and shuffled their feet
+on the flared base of the stove. Some spat in or near a box filled with
+sawdust, and betrayed other nervous signs of satisfaction. When a man so
+spat, he stopped laughing abruptly, straightened his face, and stared
+emptily at the rusty stove until further inquisition developed some
+other preposterous escapade in Bob's jail career.
+
+The merchant, looking up at one of these intermissions, saw Peter
+standing at his counter. He came out of the circle and asked Peter what
+he wanted. The mulatto bought a package of soda and went out.
+
+The chill north wind smelled clean after the odors of the store. Peter
+stood with his package of soda, breathing deeply, looking up and down
+the street, wondering what to do next. Without much precision of
+purpose, he walked diagonally across the street, northward toward a
+large faded sign that read, "Killibrew's Grocery." A little later Peter
+entered a big, rather clean store which smelled of spices, coffee, and a
+faint dash of decayed potatoes. Mr. Killibrew himself, a big, rotund
+man, with a round head of prematurely white hair, was visible in a
+little glass office at the end of his store. Even through the glazed
+partition Peter could see Mr. Killibrew smiling as he sat comfortably at
+his desk. Indeed, the grocer's chief assets were a really expansive
+friendliness and a pleasant, easily provoked laughter.
+
+He was fifty-two years old, and had been in the grocery business since
+he was fifteen. He had never been to school at all, but had learned
+bookkeeping, business mathematics, salesmanship, and the wisdom of the
+market-place from his store, from other merchants, and from the drummers
+who came every week with their samples and their worldly wisdom. These
+drummers were, almost to a man, very sincere friends of Mr. Killibrew,
+and not infrequently they would write the grocer from the city, or send
+him telegrams, advising him to buy this or to unload that, according to
+the exigencies of the market. As a result of this was very well off
+indeed, and all because he was a friendly, agreeable sort of man.
+
+The grocer heard Peter enter and started to come out of his office, when
+Peter stopped him and asked if he might speak with him alone.
+
+The white-haired man with the pink, good-natured face stood looking at
+Peter with rather a questioning but pleasant expression.
+
+"Why, certainly, certainly." He turned back to the swivel-chair at his
+desk, seated himself, and twisted about on Peter as he entered. Mr.
+Killibrew did not offer Peter a seat,--that would have been an
+infraction of Hooker's Bend custom,--but he sat leaning back, evidently
+making up his mind to refuse Peter credit, which he fancied the mulatto
+would ask for and yet do it pleasantly.
+
+"I was wondering, Mr. Killibrew," began Peter feeling his way along, "I
+was wondering if you would mind talking over a little matter with me.
+It's considered a delicate subject, I believe, but I thought a frank
+talk would help."
+
+During the natural pauses of Peter's explanation Mr. Killibrew kept up a
+genial series of nods and ejaculations.
+
+"Certainly, Peter. I don't see why, Peter. I'm sure it will help,
+Peter."
+
+"I'd like to talk frankly about the relations of our two races in the
+South, in Hooker's Bend."
+
+The grocer stopped his running accompaniment of affirmations and looked
+steadfastly at Peter. Presently he seemed to solve some question and
+broke into a pleasant laugh.
+
+"Now, Peter, if this is some political shenanigan, I must tell you I'm a
+Democrat. Besides that, I don't care a straw about politics. I vote, and
+that's all."
+
+Peter put down the suspicion that he was on a political errand.
+
+"Not that at all, Mr. Killibrew. It's a question of the white race and
+the black race. The particular feature I am working on is the wages paid
+to cooks."
+
+"I didn't know you were a cook," interjected the grocer in surprise.
+
+"I am not."
+
+Mr. Killibrew looked at Peter, thought intensely for a few moments, and
+came to an unescapable conclusion.
+
+"You don't mean you've formed a cook's union here in Hooker's Bend,
+Peter!" he cried, immensely amazed.
+
+"Not at all. It's this," clarified Peter. "It may seem trivial, but it
+illustrates the principle I'm trying to get at. Doesn't your cook carry
+away cold food?"
+
+It required perhaps four seconds for the merchant to stop his
+speculations on what Peter had come for and adjust his mind to the
+question.
+
+"Why, yes, I suppose so," he agreed, very much at sea. "I--I never
+caught up with her." He laughed a pleasant, puzzled laugh. "Of course
+she doesn't come around and show me what she's making off with. Why?"
+
+"Well, it's this. Wouldn't you prefer to give your cook a certain cash
+payment instead of having her taking uncertain amounts of your
+foodstuffs and wearing apparel?"
+
+The merchant leaned forward in his chair.
+
+"Did old Becky Davis send you to me with any such proposition as that,
+Peter?"
+
+"No, not at all. But, Mr. Killibrew, wouldn't you like better and more
+trustworthy servants as cooks, as farm-hands, chauffeurs, stable-boys?
+You see, you and your children and your children's children are going to
+have to depend on negro labor, as far as we can see, to the end of
+time."
+
+"We-e-ell, yes," admitted Mr. Killibrew, who was not accustomed to
+considering the end of time.
+
+"Wouldn't it be better to have honest, self-respecting help than
+dishonest help?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Then let's think about cooks. How can one hope to rear an honest, self-
+respecting citizenry as long as the mothers of the race are compelled to
+resort to thievery to patch out an insufficient wage?"
+
+"Why, I don't suppose niggers ever will be honest," admitted the grocer,
+very frankly. "You naturally don't trust a nigger. If you credit one for
+a dime, the next time he has any money he'll go trade somewhere else."
+The grocer broke into his contagious laugh. "Do you know how I've built
+up my business here, Peter? By never trusting a nigger." Mr. Killibrew
+continued his pleased chuckle. "Yes, I get the whole cash trade of the
+niggers in Hooker's Bend by never cheating one and never trusting one."
+
+The grocer leaned back in his squeaking chair and looked out through the
+glass partition, over the brightly colored packages that lined his
+shelves from floor to ceiling. All that prosperity had come about
+through a policy of honesty and distrust. It was something to be proud
+of.
+
+"Now, let me see," he proceeded, recurring pleasantly to what he
+recalled of Peter's original proposition: "Aunt Becky sent you here to
+tell me if I'd raise her pay, she'd stop stealin' and--and raise some
+honest children." Mr. Killibrew threw back his head broke into loud,
+jelly-like laughter. "Why, don't you know, Peter, she's an old liar. If
+I gave her a hundred a week, she'd steal. And children! Why, the old
+humbug! She's too old; she's had her crop. And, besides all that, I
+don't mind what the old woman takes. It isn't much. She's a good old
+darky, faithful as a dog." He arose from his swivel-chair briskly and
+floated Peter out before him. "Tell her, if she wants a raise," he
+concluded heartily, "and can't pinch enough out of my kitchen and the
+two dollars I pay her--tell her to come to me, straight out, and I'll
+give her more, and she can pinch more."
+
+Mr. Killibrew moved down the aisle of his store between fragrant barrels
+and boxes, laughing mellowly at old Aunt Becky's ruse, as he saw it. As
+he turned Peter out, he invited him to come again when he needed
+anything in the grocery line.
+
+And he was so pleasant, hearty, and sincere in his friendliness toward
+both Peter and old Aunt Becky that Peter, even amid the complete side-
+tracking and derailing of his mission, decided that it ever he did have
+occasion to purchase any groceries, he would do his trading at this
+market ruled by an absolute honesty with, and a complete distrust in,
+his race.
+
+At the conclusion of the Killibrew interview Peter instinctively felt
+that he had just about touched the norm of Hooker's Bend. The village
+might contain men who would dive a little deeper into the race question
+with Peter; assuredly, there would be hundreds who would not dive so
+deep. Mr. Killibrew's attitude on the race question turned on how to
+hold the negro patronage of the village to his grocery. It was not an
+abstract question at all, but a concrete fact, which he had worked out
+to his own satisfaction. With Mr. Killibrew, with all Hooker's Bend,
+there was no negro question.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+When Peter Siner started on his indefinite errand among the village
+stores he believed it would require much tact and diplomacy to discuss
+the race question without offense. To his surprise, no precaution was
+necessary. Everybody agreed at once that the South would be benefited by
+a more trustworthy labor, that if the negroes were trustworthy they
+could be paid more; but nobody agreed that if negroes were paid more
+they would become more trustworthy. The prevailing dictum was, A
+nigger's a nigger.
+
+As Peter came out into the shabby little street of Hooker's Bend
+discouragement settled upon him. He felt as if he had come squarely
+against some blank stone wall that no amount of talking could budge. The
+black man would have to change his psychology or remain where he was, a
+creature of poverty, hovels, and dirt; but amid such surroundings he
+could not change his psychology.
+
+The point of these unhappy conclusions somehow turned against Cissie
+Dildine. The mulatto became aware that his whole crusade had been
+undertaken in behalf of the octoroon. Everything the merchants said
+against negroes became accusations against Cissie in a sharp personal
+way. "A nigger is a nigger"; "A thief is a thief"; "She wouldn't quit
+stealing if I paid her a hundred a week." Every stroke had fallen
+squarely on Cissie's shoulders. A nigger, a thief; and she would never
+be otherwise.
+
+It was all so hopeless, so unchangeable, that Peter walked down the
+bleak street unutterably depressed There was nothing he could do. The
+situation was static. It seemed best that he should go away North and
+save his own skin. It was impossible to take Cissie with him. Perhaps in
+time he would come to forget her, and in so doing he would forget the
+pauperism and pettinesses of all the black folk of the South. Because
+through Cissie Peter saw the whole negro race. She was flexuous and
+passionate, kindly and loving, childish and naively wise; on occasion
+she could falsify and steal, and in the depth of her Peter sensed a
+profound capacity for fury and violence. For all her precise English,
+she was untamed, perhaps untamable.
+
+Cissie was a far cry from the sort of woman Peter imagined he wanted for
+a mate; yet he knew that if he stayed on in Hooker's Bend, seeing her,
+desiring her, with her luxury mocking the loneliness of the old Renfrew
+manor, presently he would marry her. Already he had had his little
+irrational moments when it seemed to him that Cissie herself was quite
+fine and worthy and that her speculations were something foreign and did
+not pertain to her at all.
+
+He would better go North. It would be safer up there. No doubt he could
+find another colored girl in the North. The thought of fondling any
+other woman filled Peter with a sudden, sharp repulsion. However, Peter
+was wise. He knew he would get over that in time.
+
+With this plan in mind, Peter set out down the street, intending to
+cross the Big Hill at the church, walk over to his mother's shack, and
+pack his few belongings preparatory to going away.
+
+It was not a heroic retreat. The conversation which he had had with his
+college friend Farquhar recurred to Peter. Farquhar had tried to
+persuade Peter to remain North and take a position in a system of
+garages out of Chicago.
+
+"You can do nothing in the South, Siner," assured Farquhar; "your
+countrymen must stand on their own feet, just as you are doing."
+
+Peter had argued the vast majority of the negroes had no chance, but
+Farquhar pressed the point that Peter himself disproved his own
+statement. At the time Peter felt there was an clench in the
+Illinoisan's logic, but he was not skilful enough to analyze it. Now the
+mulatto began to see that Farquhar was right. The negro question was a
+matter of individual initiative. Critics forgot that a race was composed
+of individual men.
+
+Peter had an uneasy sense that this was exceedingly thin logic, a mere
+smoke screen behind which he meant to retreat back up North. He walked
+on down the poor village street, turning it over and over in his mind,
+affirming it positively to himself, after the manner of uneasy
+consciences.
+
+An unusual stir among the negroes on Hobbett's corner caught Peter's
+attention and broke into his chain of thought. Half a dozen negroes
+stood on the corner, staring down toward the white church. A black boy
+suddenly started running across the street, and disappeared among the
+stores on the other side. Peter caught glimpses of him among the
+wretched alleyways and vacant lots that lie east of Main Street. The boy
+was still running toward Niggertown.
+
+By this time Peter was just opposite the watchers on the corner. He
+lifted his voice and asked them the matter, but at the moment they began
+an excited talking, and no one heard him.
+
+Jim Pink Staggs jerked off his fur cap, made a gesture, contorted his
+long, black face into a caricature of fright, and came loping across the
+street, looking back over his shoulder, mimicking a run for life His
+mummery set his audience howling.
+
+The buffoon would have collided with Peter, but the mulatto caught Jim
+Pink by the arm and shoulder, brought him to a halt, and at the same
+time helped him keep his feet.
+
+To Peter's inquiry what was the matter, the black fellow whirled and
+blared out loudly, for the sake of his audience:
+
+"'Fo' Gawd, nigger, I sho thought Mr. Bobbs had me!" and he writhed his
+face into an idiotic grimace.
+
+The audience reeled about in their mirth. Because with negroes, as with
+white persons, two thirds of humor is in the reputation, and Jim Pink
+was of prodigious repute.
+
+Peter walked along with him patiently, because he knew that until they
+were out of ear-shot of the crowd there was no way of getting a sensible
+answer out of Jim Pink.
+
+"Where are you going?" he asked presently.
+
+"Thought I'd step over to Niggertown." Jim Pink's humorous air was still
+upon him.
+
+"What's doing over there? What were the boys raising such a hullabaloo
+about?"
+
+"Such me."
+
+"Why did that boy go running across like that?"
+
+Jim Pink rolled his eyes on Peter with a peculiar look.
+
+"Reckon he mus' 'a' wanted to git on t'other side o' town."
+
+Peter flattered the Punchinello by smiling a little.
+
+"Come, Jim Pink, what do you know?" he asked. The magician poked out his
+huge lips.
+
+"Mr. Bobbs turn acrost by de church, over de Big Hill. Da' 's always a
+ba-ad sign."
+
+Peter's brief interest in the matter flickered out. Another arrest for
+some niggerish peccadillo. The history of Niggertown was one long series
+of petty offenses, petty raids, and petty punishments. Peter would be
+glad to get well away from such a place.
+
+"Think I'll go North, Jim Pink," remarked Peter, chiefly to keep up a
+friendly conversation with his companion.
+
+"Whut-chu goin' to do up thaiuh?"
+
+"Take a position in a system of garages."
+
+"A position is a job wid a white color on it," defined the minstrel.
+"Whut you goin' to do wid Cissie?"
+
+Peter looked around at the foolish face.
+
+"With Cissie?--Cissie Dildine?"
+
+"Uh huh."
+
+"Why, what makes you think I'm going to do anything with Cissie?"
+
+"M-m, visitin' roun'." The fool flung his face into a grimace, and
+dropped it as one might shake out a sack.
+
+Peter watched the contortion uneasily.
+
+"What do you mean--visiting around?"
+
+
+   "Diff'nt folks go visitin' roun';
+    Some goes up an' some goes down."
+
+
+Apparently Jim Pink had merely quoted a few words from a poem he knew.
+He stared at the green-black depth of the glade, which set in about
+half-way up the hill they were climbing.
+
+"Ef this weather don' ever break," he observed sagely, "we sho am in fuh
+a dry spell."
+
+Peter did not pursue the topic of the weather. He climbed the hill in
+silence, wondering just what the buffoon meant. He suspected he was
+hinting at Cissie's visit to his room. However, he did not dare ask any
+questions or press the point in any manner, lest he commit himself.
+
+The minstrel had succeeded in making Peter's walk very uncomfortable, as
+somehow he always did. Peter went on thinking about the matter. If Jim
+Pink knew of Cissie's visit, all Niggertown knew it. No woman's
+reputation, nobody's shame or misery or even life, would stand between
+Jim Pink and what he considered a joke. The buffoon was the crudest
+thing in this world--a man who thought himself a wit.
+
+Peter could imagine all the endless tweaks to Cissie's pride Niggertown
+would give the octoroon. She had asked Peter to marry her and had been
+refused. She had humbled herself for naught. That was the very tar of
+shame. Peter knew that in the moral categories of Niggertown Cissie
+would suffer more from such a rebuff than if she had lied or committed
+theft and adultery every day in the calendar. She had been refused
+marriage. All the folk-ways of Niggertown were utterly topsyturvy. It
+was a crazy-house filled with the most grotesque moral measures.
+
+It seemed to Peter as he entered the cedar-glade that he had lost all
+sympathy with this people from which he had sprung. He looked upon them
+as strange, incomprehensible beings, just as a man will forget his own
+childhood and look upon children as strange, incomprehensible little
+creatures. In the midst of his thoughts he heard himself saying to Jim
+Pink:
+
+"I suppose it is as dusty as ever."
+
+"Dustier 'an ever," assured Jim Pink.
+
+Apparently their conversation had recurred to the weather, after all.
+
+A chill silence encompassed the glade. The path the negroes followed
+wound this way and that among reddish boulders, between screens of
+intergrown cedars, and over a bronze mat of needles. Their steps were
+noiseless. The odor of the cedars and the temple-like stillness brought
+to Peter's mind the night of his mother's death. It seemed to him a long
+time since he had come running through the glade after a doctor, and
+yet, by a queer distortion of his sense of time, his mother's death and
+burial bulked in his past as if it had occurred yesterday.
+
+There was no sound in the glade to disturb Peter's thoughts except a
+murmur of human voices from some of the innumerable privacies of the
+place, and the occasional chirp of a waxwing busy over clusters of
+cedar-balls.
+
+It had been five weeks and a day since Caroline died. Five weeks and a
+day; his mother's death drifting away into the mystery and oblivion of
+the past. Likewise, twenty-five years of his own life completed and
+gone.
+
+A procession of sad, wistful thoughts trailed through Peter's brain: his
+mother, and Ida May, and now Cissie. It seemed to Peter that all any
+woman had ever brought him was wistfulness and sadness. His mother had
+been jealous, and instead of the great happiness he had expected, his
+home life with her had turned out a series of small perplexities and
+pains. Before that was Ida May, and now here was her younger sister.
+Peter wondered if any man ever reached the peace and happiness
+foreshadowed in his dream of a woman.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+A voice calling his name checked Peter's stride mechanically, and caused
+him to look about with the slight bewilderment of a man aroused from a
+reverie.
+
+At the first sound, however, Jim Pink became suddenly alert. He took
+three strides ahead of Peter, and as he went he whispered over his
+shoulder:
+
+"Beat it, nigger! beat it!"
+
+The mulatto recognized one of Jim Pink's endless stupid attempts at
+comedy. It would be precisely Jim Pink's idea of a jest to give Peter a
+little start. As the mulatto stood looking about among the cedars for
+the person who had called his name, it amazed him that Jim Pink could be
+so utterly insane; that he performed some buffoonery instantly, by
+reflex action as it were, upon the slightest provocation. It was almost
+a mania with Jim Pink; it verged on the pathological.
+
+The clown, however, was pressing his joke. He was pretending great fear,
+and was shouting out in his loose minstrel voice:
+
+"Hey, don' shoot down dis way, black man, tull I makes my exit!" And a
+voice, rich with contempt, called back:
+
+"You needn't be skeered, you fool rabbit of a nigger!"
+
+Peter turned with a qualm. Quite close to him, and in another direction
+from which he had been looking, stood Tump Pack. The ex-soldier looked
+the worse for wear after his jail sentence. His uniform was frayed, and
+over his face lay a grayish cast that marks negroes in bad condition. At
+his side, attached by a belt and an elaborate shoulder holster, hung a
+big army revolver, while on the greasy lapel of his coat was pinned his
+military medal for exceptional bravery on the field of battle.
+
+"Been lookin' fuh you fuh some time, Peter," he stated grimly.
+
+Peter considered the formidable figure with a queer sensation. He tried
+to take Tump's appearance casually; he tried to maintain an air of
+ordinariness.
+
+"Didn't know you were back."
+
+"Yeah, I's back."
+
+"Have you--been looking for me?"
+
+"Yeah."
+
+"Didn't you know where I was staying?"
+
+"Co'se I did; up 'mong de white folks. You know dey don' 'low no
+shootin' an' killin' 'mong de white folks." He drew his pistol from the
+holster with the address of an expert marksman.
+
+[Illustration: "Naw yuh don't," he warned sharply. "You turn roun' an'
+march on to niggertown"]
+
+Peter stood, with a quickening pulse, studying his assailant. The glade,
+the air, the sunshine, seemed suddenly drawn to a tension, likely to,
+break into violent commotion. His abrupt danger brought Peter to a
+feeling of lightness and power. A quiver went along his spine. His
+nostrils widened unconsciously as he calculated a leap and a blow at
+Tump's gun.
+
+The soldier took a step backward, at the same time bringing the barrel
+to a ready.
+
+"Naw you don't," he warned sharply. "You turn roun' an' march on to
+Niggertown."
+
+"What for?" Peter still tried to be casual, but his voice held new
+overtones.
+
+"Because, nigger, I means to drap you right on de Main Street o'
+Niggertown, 'fo' all dem niggers whut's been a-raggin' me 'bout you an'
+Cissie. I's gwine show dem fool niggers I don' take no fumi-diddles
+off'n nobody."
+
+"Tump," gasped Jim Pink, in a husky voice, "you oughtn't shoot Peter; he
+mammy jes daid."
+
+"'En she won' worry none. Turn roun', Peter, an' when I says, 'March,'
+you march." He leveled his pistol. "'Tention! Rat about face! March!"
+
+Peter turned and moved off down the noiseless path, walking with the
+stiff gait of a man who expects a terrific blow from behind at any
+instant.
+
+The mulatto walked twenty or more paces amid a confusion of self-
+protective impulses. He thought of whirling on Tump even at this late
+date. He thought of darting behind a cedar, but he knew the man behind
+him was an expert shot, and something fundamental in the brown man
+forbade his getting himself killed while running away. It was too
+undignified a death.
+
+Presently he surprised himself by calling over his shoulder, as a sort
+of complaint:
+
+"How came you with the pistol, Tump? Thought it was against the law to
+carry one."
+
+"You kin ca'y 'em ef you don' keep 'em hid," explained the ex-soldier in
+a wooden voice. "Mr. Bobbs tol' me dat when he guv my gun back."
+
+The irony of the thing caught Peter, for the authorities to arrest Tump
+not because he was trying to kill Peter, but because he went about his
+first attempt in an illegal manner. For the first time in his life the
+mulatto felt that contempt for a white man's technicalities that flavors
+every negro's thoughts. Here for thirty days his life had been saved by
+a technical law of the white man; at the end of the thirty days, by
+another technical law, Tump was set at liberty and allowed to carry a
+weapon, in a certain way, to murder him. It was grotesque; it was
+absurd. It filled Peter with a sudden violent questioning of the whole
+white regime. His thoughts danced along in peculiar excitement.
+
+At the turn of the hill the trio came in sight of the squalid semicircle
+of Niggertown. Here and there from a tumbledown chimney a feather of
+pale wood smoke lifted into the chill sunshine. The sight of the houses
+brought Peter a sharp realization that his life would end in the curving
+street beneath him. A shock at the incomprehensible brevity of his life
+rushed over him. Just to that street, just as far as the curve, and his
+legs were swinging along, carrying him forward at an even gait.
+
+All at once he began talking, arguing. He tried to speak at an ordinary
+tempo, but his words kept edging on faster and faster:
+
+"Tump, I'm not going to marry Cissie Dildine."
+
+"I knows you ain't, Peter."
+
+"I mean, if you let me alone, I didn't mean to."
+
+"I ain't goin' to let you alone."
+
+"Tump, we had already decided not to marry."
+
+After a short pause Tump said in a slightly different tone:
+
+"'Pears lak you don' haf to ma'y her--comin' to yo' room."
+
+A queer sinking came over the mulatto. "Listen, Tump, I--we--in my room
+--we simply talked, that's all. She came to tell me she was goin away.
+I--I didn't harm her, Tump." Peter swallowed. He despaired of being
+believed.
+
+But his defense only infuriated the soldier. He suddenly broke into
+violent profanity.
+
+"Hot damn you! shut yo black mouf! Whut I keer whut-chu done! You weaned
+her away fum me. She won't speak to me! She won't look at me!" A sudden
+insanity of rage seized Tump. He poured on his victim every oath and
+obscenity he had raked out of the whole army.
+
+Strangely enough, the gunman's outbreak brought a kind of relief to
+Peter Siner. It exonerated him. He was not suspected of wronging Cissie;
+or, rather, whether he had or had not wronged her made no difference to
+Tump. Peter's crime consisted in mere being, in existing where Cissie
+could see him and desire him rather than Tump. Why it calmed Peter to
+know that Tump held no dishonorable charge against him the mulatto
+himself could not have told. Tump's violence showed Peter the certainty
+of his own death, and somehow it washed away the hope and the thought of
+escape.
+
+Half-way down the hill they entered the edge of Niggertown. The smell of
+sties and stables came to them. Peter's thoughts moved here and there,
+like the eyes of a little child glancing about as it is forced to leave
+a pleasure-ground.
+
+Peter knew that Jim Pink, who now made a sorry figure in their rear,
+would one day give a buffoon's mimicry of this his walk to death. He
+thought of Tump, who would have to serve a year or two in the Nashville
+Penitentiary, for the murder of negroes is seldom severely punished. He
+thought of Cissie. He was being murdered because Cissie desired him.
+
+And then Peter remembered the single bit of wisdom that his whole life
+had taught him. It was this: no people can become civilized until the
+woman has the power of choice among the males that sue for her hand. The
+history of the white race shows the gradual increase of the woman's
+power of choice. Among the yellow races, where this power is curtailed,
+civilization is curtailed. It was this principle that exalted chivalry.
+Upon it the white man has reared all his social fabric.
+
+So deeply ingrained is it that almost every novel written by white men
+revolves about some woman's choice of her mate being thwarted by power
+or pride or wealth, but in every instance the rightness of the woman's
+choice is finally justified. The burden of every song is love, true
+love, enduring love, a woman's true and enduring love.
+
+And in his moment of clairvoyance Peter saw that these songs and stories
+were profoundly true. Against a woman's selectiveness no other social
+force may count.
+
+That was why his own race was weak and hopeless and helpless. The males
+of his people were devoid of any such sentiment or self-repression. They
+were men of the jungle, creatures of tusk and claw and loin. This very
+act of violence against his person condemned his whole race.
+
+These thoughts brought the mulatto an unspeakable sadness, not only for
+his own particular death, but that this idea, this great redeeming
+truth, which burned so brightly in his brain, would in another moment
+flicker out, unrevealed, and be no more.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+The coughing and rattling of an old motor-car as it rounded the
+Niggertown curve delayed Tump Pack's act of violence. Instinctively, the
+three men waited for the machine to pass before Peter walked out into
+the road. Next moment it appeared around the turn, moving slowly through
+the dust and spreading a veritable fog behind it.
+
+All three negroes recognized the first glimpse of the hood and top, for
+there are only three or four cars in Hooker's Bend, and these are as
+well known as the faces of their owners. This particular motor belonged
+to Constable Bobbs, and the next moment the trio saw the ponderous body
+of the officer at the wheel, and by his side a woman. As the machine
+clacked toward them Peter felt a certain surprise to see that it was
+Cissie Dildine.
+
+The constable in the car scrutinized the black men, by the roadside in a
+very peculiar way. As he came near, he leaned across Cissie and almost
+eclipsed the girl. He eyed the trio with his perpetual menace of a grin
+on his broad red face. His right hand, lying across Cissie's lap, held a
+revolver. When closest he shouted above the clangor of his engine:
+
+"Now, none o' that, boys! None o' that! You'll prob'ly hit the gal if
+you shoot, an' I'll pick you off lak three black skunks."
+
+He brandished his revolver at them, but the gesture was barely seen, and
+instantly concealed by the cloud; of dust following the motor. Next
+moment it enveloped the negroes and hid them even from one another.
+
+It was only after Peter was lost in the dust-cloud that the mulatto
+really divined what was meant by Cissie's strange appearance with the
+constable, her chalky face, her frightened brown eyes. The significance
+of the scene grew in his mind. He stood with eyes screwed to slits
+staring into the apricot-colored dust in the direction of the vanishing
+noise.
+
+Presently Tump Pack's form outlined itself in the yellow obscurity,
+groping toward Peter. He still held his pistol, but it swung at his
+side. He called Peter's name in the strained voice of a man struggling
+not to cough:
+
+"Peter--is Mr. Bobbs done--'rested Cissie?"
+
+Peter could hardly talk himself.
+
+"Don't know. Looks like it."
+
+The two negroes stared at each other through the dust.
+
+"Fuh Gawd's sake! Cissie 'rested!" Tump began to cough. Then he wheezed:
+
+"Mine an' yo' little deal's off, Peter. You gotta he'p git her out."
+Here he fell into a violent fit of coughing, and started groping his way
+to the edge of the dust-cloud.
+
+In the rush of the moment the swift change in Peter's situation appeared
+only natural. He followed Tump, so distressed by the dust and disturbed
+over Cissie that he hardly thought of his peculiar position. The dust
+pinched the upper part of his throat, stung his nose. Tears trickled
+from his eyes, and he pressed his finger against his upper lip, trying
+not to sneeze. He was still struggling against the sneeze when Tump
+recovered his speech.
+
+"Wh-whut you reckon she done, Peter? She don' shoot craps, nor boot-
+laig, nor--" He fell to coughing.
+
+Peter got out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes.
+
+"Let's go--to the Dildine house," he said.
+
+The two moved hurriedly through the thinning cloud, and presently came
+to breathable air, where they could see the houses around them.
+
+"I know she done somp'n; I know she done somp'n," chanted Tump, with the
+melancholy cadence of his race. He shook his dusty head. "You ain't
+never been in jail, is you, black man?"
+
+Peter said he had not.
+
+"Lawd! it ain't no place fuh a woman," declared Tump. "You dunno nothin'
+'bout it, black man. It sho ain't no place fuh a woman."
+
+A notion of an iron cage floated before Peter's mind. The two negroes
+trudged on through the crescent side by side, their steps raising a
+little trail of dust in the air behind them. Their faces and clothes
+were of a uniform dust color. Streaks of mud marked the runnels of their
+tears down their cheeks.
+
+The shrubbery and weeds that grew alongside the negro thoroughfare were
+quite dead. Even the little avenue of dwarf box was withered that led
+from the gate to the door of the Dildine home. The two colored men
+walked up the little path to the door, knocked, and waited on the steps
+for the little skirmish of observation from behind the blinds. None
+came. The worst had befallen the house; there was nothing to guard. The
+door opened as soon as an inmate could reach it, and Vannie Dildine
+stood before them.
+
+The quadroon's eyes were red, and her face had the moist, slightly
+swollen appearance that comes of protracted weeping. She looked so frail
+and miserable that Peter instinctively stepped inside and took her arm
+to assist her in the mere physical effort of standing.
+
+"What is the matter, Mrs. Dildine?" he asked in a shocked tone. "What's
+happened to Cissie?"
+
+Vannie began weeping again with a faint gasping and a racking of her
+flat chest.
+
+"It's--it's--O-o-oh, Peter!" She put an arm about him and began weeping
+against him. He soothed her, patted her shoulder, at the same time
+staring at the side of her head, wondering what could have dealt her
+this blow.
+
+Presently she steadied herself and began explaining in feeble little
+phrases, sandwiched between sobs and gasps:
+
+"She--tuk a brooch--Kep'--kep' layin' it roun' in--h-her way, th-that
+young Sam Arkwright did,--a-an' finally she--she tuk hit. N-nen, when he
+seen he h-had her, he said sh-sh-she 'd haf to d-do wh-whut he said, or
+he'd sen' her to-to ja-a-il!" Vannie sobbed drearily for a few moments
+on Peter's breast. "Sh-she did fuh a while: 'n 'en sh-she broke off wid
+h-him, anyhow, an'--an' he swo' out a wa'nt an sont her to jail!" The
+mother sobbed without comfort, and finally added: "Sh-she in a delicate
+fix now, an' 'at jail goin' to be a gloomy place fuh Cissie."
+
+The three negroes stood motionless in the dusty hallway, motionless save
+for the racking of Vannie's sobs.
+
+Tump Pack stirred himself.
+
+"Well, we gotta git her out." His words trailed off. He stood wrinkling
+his half-inch of brow. "I wonder would dey exchange pris'ners; wonder ef
+I could go up an' serve out Cissie's term."
+
+"Oh, Tump!" gasped the woman, "ef you only could!"
+
+"I'll step an' see, Miss Vannie. 'At sho ain't no place fuh a nice gal
+lak Cissie." Tump turned on his mission, evidently intending to walk to
+Jonesboro and offer himself in the place of the prisoner.
+
+Peter supported Vannie back into the poor living-room, and placed her in
+the old rocking-chair before the empty hearth. There was where he had
+sat the evening Cissie made her painful confession to him. Only now did
+he realize the whole of what Cissie was trying to confess.
+
+Peter Siner overtook Tump Pack a little way down the crescent, opposite
+the Berry cabin. The thoroughfare was deserted, because the weather was
+cold and the scantily clad children were indoors. However, from every
+cabin came sound of laughing and romping, and now and then a youngster
+darted through the cold from one hut to another.
+
+It seemed to Peter Siner only a little while since he and Ida May were
+skittering through wintry weather from one fire to another, with Cissie,
+a wailing, wet-nosed little spoil-sport, trailing after them. And then,
+with a wheeling of the years, they were scattered everywhere.
+
+As the negroes passed the Berry cabin, Nan Berry came out with an old
+shawl around her bristling spikes. She stopped the two men and drew them
+to her gate with a gesture.
+
+"Wha you gwine?"
+
+"Jonesbuh."
+
+"Whut you goin' do 'bout po-o-o' Cissie?"
+
+"Goin' to see ef the sheriff won' take me 'stid o' Cissie."
+
+"Tha's right," said Nan, nodding solemnly. "I hopes he will. You is mo'
+used to it, Tump."
+
+"Yeah, an' 'at jail sho ain't no place fuh a nice gal lak Cissie."
+
+"Sho ain't," agreed Nan.
+
+Peter interrupted to say he was sure the sheriff would not exchange.
+
+The hopes of his listeners fell.
+
+"Weh-ul," dragged out Nan, with a long face, "of co'se now it's lak dis:
+ef Cissie goin' to stay in dat ja-ul, she's goin' to need some mo'
+clo'es 'cep'n whut she's got on,--specially lak she is."
+
+Tump stared down the swing of the crescent.
+
+"'Fo' Gawd, dis sho don' seem lak hit's right to me," he said.
+
+Nan let herself out at the rickety gate. "You niggers wait heah tull I
+runs up to Miss Vannie's an' git some o' Cissie's clo'es fuh you to tote
+her."
+
+Tump objected.
+
+"Jail ain't no place fuh clean clo'es. She jes better serve out her term
+lak she is, an' wash up when she gits th'ugh."
+
+"You fool nigger!" snapped Nan. "She kain't serve out her term lak she
+is!"
+
+"Da' 's so," said Tump.
+
+The three stood silent, Nan and Tump lost in blankness, trying to think
+of something to do for Cissie. Finally Nan said:
+
+"I heah she done commit gran' larceny, an' they goin' sen' her to de
+pen."
+
+"Whut is gran' larceny?" asked Tump.
+
+"It's takin' mo' at one time an' de white folks 'speck you to take,"
+defined the woman. "Well, I'll go git her clo'es." She hurried off up
+the crescent.
+
+Peter and Tump waited in the Berry cabin for Nan's return. Outside, the
+Berry cabin was the usual clapboard-roofed, weather-stained structure;
+inside, it was dark, windowless, and strong with the odor of black folk.
+Some children were playing around the hearth, roasting chestnuts. Their
+elders sat in a circle of decrepit chairs. It was so dark that when
+Peter first entered he could not make out the little group, but he soon
+recognized their voices: Parson Ranson, Wince Washington, Jerry
+Dillihay, and all of the Berry family.
+
+They were talking of Cissie, of course. They hoped Cissie wouldn't
+really be sent to the penitentiary, that the white folks would let her
+out in time for her to have her child at home. Parson Ranson thought it
+would be bad luck for a child to be born in jail.
+
+Wince Washington, who had been in jail a number of times, suggested that
+they bail Cissie out by signing their names to a paper. He had been set
+free by this means once or twice.
+
+Sally, Nan's little sister, observed tartly that if Cissie hadn't acted
+so, she wouldn't have been in jail.
+
+"Don' speak lak dat uv dem as is in trouble, Sally," reproved old Parson
+Ranson, solemnly; "anybody can say 'Ef.'"
+
+"Sho am de troof," agreed Jerry Dillihay.
+
+"Sho am, black man." The conversation drifted into the endless
+moralizing of their race, but it held no criticism or condemnation of
+Cissie. From the tone of the negroes one would have thought some
+impersonal disaster had overtaken her. Every one was planning how to
+help Cissie, how to make her present state more endurable. They were the
+black folk, the unfortunate of the earth, and the pride of righteousness
+is only to the well placed and the untempted.
+
+Presently Nan came back with a bundle of Cissie's clothes. Tump took the
+bundle of dainty lingerie, the intimate garments of the woman he loved,
+and set forth on his quixotic errand. He tied it to his shoulder-holster
+and set out. Peter went a little of the way with him. It was almost dusk
+when they started. The chill of approaching night stung the men's faces.
+As they walked past the footpath that led over the Big Hill, three
+pistol-shots from the glade announced that the boot-leggers had opened
+business for the night.
+
+Tump paused and shivered. He said it was a cold night. He thought he
+would like to get a kick of "white mule" to put a little heart in him.
+It was a long walk to Jonesboro. He hesitated a moment, then turned off
+the road around the crescent for the path through the glade.
+
+A thought to dissuade Tump from drinking the fiery "singlings" of the
+moonshiners crossed Peters mind, but he put it aside. Tump was a habitue
+of the glade. All the physiological arguments upon which Peter could
+base an argument were far beyond the ex-soldier's comprehension. So Tump
+turned off through the dark trees. Peter watched him until all he could
+see was the white blur of Cissie's underwear swinging against his
+holster.
+
+After Tump's disappearance, Peter stood for several minutes thinking.
+His brief crusade into Niggertown had ended in a situation far outside
+of his volition. That morning he had started out with some vague idea of
+taking Niggertown in his hands and molding it in accordance with his
+white ideas; but Niggertown had taken Peter into its hands, had
+threatened his life, had administered to him profound mental and moral
+shocks, and now had dropped him, like some bit of waste, with his face
+set over the Big Hill for white town.
+
+As Peter stood there it seemed to him there was something symbolic in
+his attitude. He was no longer of the black world; he was of the white.
+He did not understand his people; they eluded him.
+
+He belonged to the white world; not to the village across the hill, but
+to the North. Nothing now prevented him from going North and taking the
+position with Farquhar. Cissie Dildine was impossible for him now.
+Niggertown was immovable, at least for him. He was no Washington to lead
+his people to a loftier plane. In fact, Peter began to suspect that he
+was no leader at all. He saw now that his initial success with the Sons
+and Daughters of Benevolence had been effected merely by the aura of his
+college training. After his first misstep he had never rehabilitated
+himself. He perhaps had a dash of the artistic in him, and the power to
+mold ideas often confuses itself subjectively with the power to mold
+human beings. In reality he did not even understand the people he
+assumed to mold. A suspicion came to him that under the given conditions
+their ways were more rational than his own.
+
+As for Cissie Dildine, his duty by the girl, his queer protective
+passion for her--all that was surely past now. After her lapse from all
+decency there was no reason why he should spend another thought on her.
+He would go North to Chicago.
+
+The last of the twilight was fading in swift, visible gradations of
+light. The cedars, the cabins, and the hill faded in pulse-beats of
+darkness. Above the Big Hill the last ember of day smoldered against a
+green-blue infinity. Here and there a star pricked the dome with a
+wintry brilliance.
+
+Then, somehow, the thought of Cissie looking out on that chilly sky
+through iron bars tightened Peter's throat. He caught himself up sharply
+for his emotion. He began a vague defense of the white man's laws on
+grounds as cold and impersonal as the winter evening. Laws, customs, and
+conventions were for the strengthening of men, to seed the select, to
+winnow the weak. It was white logic, applied firmly, as by a white man.
+But somehow the stars multiplied and kept Cissie's image before Peter--a
+cold, frightened girl, harassed with coming motherhood, peering at those
+chill, distant lights out of the blackness of a jail.
+
+The mulatto decided to spend the night in his mother's cabin. He would
+do his packing, and be ready for the down-river boat in the morning. He
+found his way to his own gate in the darkness. He lifted it around,
+entered, and walked to his door. When he tried to open it, he found some
+one had bored holes through the shutter and the jamb and had wired it
+shut.
+
+Peter struck a match to see just what had been done. The flame displayed
+a small sheet tacked on the door. He spent two matches investigating it.
+It was a notice of levy, posted by the constable in an action of debt
+brought against the estate of Caroline Siner by Henry Hooker. The owner
+of the estate and the public in general were warned against removing
+anything whatsoever from the premises under penalty exacted by the law
+governing such offenses. Then Peter untwisted the wire and entered.
+
+Peter searched about and found the tiny brass night-lamp which his
+mother always had used. The larger glass-bowled lamp was gone. The
+interior of the cabin was clammy from cold and foul from long lack of
+airing. In the corner his mother's old four-poster loomed in the
+shadows, but he could see some of its covers had been taken. He passed
+into the kitchen with a notion of building a fire and eating a bite, but
+everything edible had been abstracted. Even one of the lids of the old
+step-stove was gone. Most of the pans and kettles had disappeared, but
+the pretty old Dutch sugar-bowl remained on a bare paper-covered shelf.
+Negro-like, whatever person or persons who had ransacked Peter's home
+considered the sugar-bowl too fine to take. Or they may have thought
+that Peter would want this bowl for a keepsake, and with that queer
+compassion that permeates a negro's worst moments they allowed it to
+remain. And Peter knew if he raised an outcry about his losses, much of
+the property would be surreptitiously restored, or perhaps his neighbors
+would bring back his things and say they had found them. They would help
+him as best they could, just as they of the crescent would help Cissie
+as best they could, and would receive her back as one of them when she
+and her baby were finally released from jail.
+
+They were a queer people. They were a people who would never get on well
+and do well. They lacked the steel-like edge that the white man
+achieves. By virtue of his hardness, a white man makes his very laws and
+virtues instruments to crush and mulct his fellow-man; but negroes are
+so softened by untoward streaks of sympathy that they lose the very uses
+of their crimes.
+
+The depression of the whole day settled upon Peter with the deepening
+night. He held his poor light above his head and picked his way to his
+own room. After the magnificence of the Renfrew manor, it had contracted
+to a grimy little box lined with yellowed papers. His books were still
+intact, but Henry Hooker would get them as part payment on the Dillihay
+place, which Henry owned. On his little table still lay the pile of old
+examination papers, lists of incoherent questions which somebody
+somewhere imagined formed a test of human ability to meet and answer the
+mysterious searchings of life.
+
+Peter was familiar with the books; many of the questions he had learned
+by rote, but the night and the crescent, and the thought of a pregnant
+girl caged in the blackness of a jail filled his soul with a great
+melancholy query to which he could find no answer.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+Two voices talking, interrupting each other with ejaculations, after the
+fashion of negroes under excitement, aroused Peter Siner from his sleep.
+He caught the words: "He did! Tump did! The jailer did! 'Fo' God! black
+man, whut's Cissie doin'?"
+
+Overtones of shock, even of horror, in the two voices brought Peter wide
+awake the moment he opened his eyes. He sat up suddenly in his bed,
+remained perfectly still, listening with his mouth open. The voices,
+however, were passing. The words became indistinct, then relapsed into
+that bubbling monotone of human voices at a distance, and presently
+ceased.
+
+These fragmentary phrases, however, feathered with consternation, filled
+Peter with vague premonitions. He whirled his legs out of bed and began
+drawing on his clothes. When he was up and into the crescent, however,
+nobody was in sight. He stood breathing the chill, damp air, blinking
+his eyes. Lack of his cold bath made him feel chilly and lethargic. He
+wriggled his shoulders and considered going back, after all, and having
+his splash. Just then he saw the Persimmon coming around the crescent.
+Peter called to the roustabout and asked about Tump Pack.
+
+The Persimmon looked at Peter with his half-asleep, protruding eyeballs.
+
+"Don' you know 'bout Tump Pack already, Mister Siner?"
+
+"No." Peter was astonished at the formality of the "Mr. Siner."
+
+"Then is you 'spectin' somp'n 'bout him?"
+
+"Why, no, but I was asleep in there a moment ago, and somebody came
+along talking about Tump and Cissie. They--they aren't married, are
+they?"
+
+"Oh, no-o, no-o-o, no-o-o-o-o." The Persimmon waggled his bullet head
+slowly from side to side. "I heared Tump got into a lil trouble wid de
+jailer las' night."
+
+"Serious?"
+
+"I dunno." The Persimmon closed one of his protruding yellow eyes.
+"Owin' to whut you call se'ius; maybe whut I call se'ius wouldn't be
+se'ius to you at all; 'n 'en maybe whut you call se'ius would be ve'y
+insince'ius to Tump." The roustabout's philosophy, which consisted in a
+monotonous recasting of a given proposition, trickled on and on in the
+cold wind. After a while it fizzled out to nothing at all, and the
+Persimmon asked in a queer manner: "Did you give Tump some women's
+clo'es, Peter?"
+
+It was such an odd question that at first Peter was at loss; then he
+recalled Nan Berry's despatching Cissie some underwear. He explained
+this to the Persimmon, and tacked on a curious, "Why?"
+
+"Oh, nothin'; nothin' 'tall. Ever'body say you a mighty long-haided
+nigger. Jim Pink he tell us 'bout Tump Pack marchin' you 'roun' wid a
+gun. I sho don' want you ever git mad at me, Mister Siner. Man wid a gun
+an' you turn yo' long haid on him an' blow him away wid a wad o' women's
+clo'es. I sho don' want you ever cross yo' fingers at me, Mister Siner."
+
+Peter stared at the grotesque, bullet-headed roustabout. "Persimmon," he
+said uneasily, "what in the world are you talking about?"
+
+The Persimmon smiled a sickly, white-toothed smile. "Jim Pink say yo'
+aidjucation is a flivver. I say, 'Jim Pink, no nigger don' go off an'
+study fo' yeahs in college whut 'n he comes back an' kin throw some kin'
+uv a hoodoo over us fool niggers whut ain't got no brains. Now, Tump wid
+a gun, an' you wid jes ordina'y women's clo'es! 'Fo' Gawd, aidjucation
+is a great thing; sho is a great thing." The Persimmon gave Peter an
+apprehensive wink and moved on.
+
+There was no use trying to extract information from the Persimmon unless
+he was minded to give it. His talk would merely become vaguer and
+vaguer. Peter watched him go, then turned and attempted to throw the
+whole matter off his mind by assuming a certain brisk Northern mood. He
+must pack, get ready for the down-river gasolene launch. The doings of
+Tump Pack and Cissie Dildine were, after all, nothing to him.
+
+He started inside, when the levy notice on the door again met his eyes.
+He paused, read it over once more, and decided that he must go over the
+hill to the Planter's Bank and get Henry Hooker's permission to remove
+certain small personal belongings that he wanted to take with him.
+
+The mere clear-cut decision to go invigorated Peter.
+
+Some of the energy that always filled him during his college days in
+Boston seemed to come to him now from the mere thought of the North.
+Soon he would be in the midst of it, moving briskly, talking to wide-
+awake men to whom a slightly unusual English word would not form a
+stumbling-block to conversation. He set out down the crescent and across
+the Big Hill at a swinging stride. He was glad to get away.
+
+Beyond the white church on the other side of the hill he heard a motor
+coming in on the Jonesboro road. Presently he saw a battered car moving
+around the long swing of the pike, spewing a trail of dust down the
+wind. Its clacking became prodigious.
+
+The mulatto was just entering that indefinite stretch of thoroughfare
+where a country road becomes a village street when there came a wail of
+brakes behind him and he looked around.
+
+It was Dawson Bobbs's car. The fat man now slowed up not far from the
+mulatto and called to him.
+
+"Yes, sir," said Peter.
+
+Dawson bobbed his fat head backward and upward in a signal for Peter to
+approach. It held the casualness of one certain to be obeyed.
+
+Although Peter had done no crime, nor had even harbored a criminal
+intention, a trickle of apprehension went through him at Bobbs's nod. He
+recalled Jim Pink's saying that it was bad luck to see the constable. He
+walked up to the shuddering motor and stood about three feet from the
+running-board.
+
+The officer bit on a sliver of toothpick that he held in his thin lips.
+
+"Accident up Jonesboro las' night, Peter."
+
+"What was it, Mr. Bobbs?"
+
+"Tump Pack got killed."
+
+Peter continued looking fixedly at Mr. Bobbs's broad red face. The dusty
+road beneath him seemed to give a little dip. He repeated the
+information emptily, trying to orient himself to this sudden change in
+his whole mental horizon.
+
+The officer was looking at Peter fixedly with his chill slits of eyes.
+
+"Yeah; trying to make a jail delivery."
+
+The two men continued looking at each other, one from the road, the
+other from the motor. The flow of Peter's thoughts seemed to divide. The
+greater part was occupied with Tump Pack. Peter could vision the
+formidable ex-soldier lying dead in Jonesboro jail, with his little
+congressional medal on his breast. Some lighter portion of his mind
+nickered about here and there on trivial things. He observed a little
+hole rusted in the running-board of the motor. He noticed that the
+officer's eyes were just the same chill, washed blue as the winter sky
+above his head. He remembered a tale that, before electrocution became a
+law in Tennessee the county sheriff's nerve had failed him at a hanging,
+and the constable Dawson Bobbs had sprung the drop. There was something
+terrible about the fat man. He would do anything, absolutely anything,
+that came to his hands in the way of legal sewage.
+
+In the midst of these thoughts Peter heard himself saying.
+
+"He--was trying to get Cissie out?"
+
+"Yep."
+
+"He--must have been drunk."
+
+"Oh, yeah."
+
+Mr. Bobbs sat studying the mulatto. As he studied him he said slowly:
+
+"Some of 'em say he was disguised as a woman. Others say he had some
+women's clothes along, ready to put on. Now, me and the sheriff knowed
+Tump Pack purty well, Peter, and we knowed that nigger never in the
+worl' would 'a' thought up sich a plan by hisself."
+
+He sat looking at Peter so interrogatively that the mulatto began, in a
+strained, earnest voice, telling the constable precisely what had
+happened in regard to the clothes.
+
+Mr. Bobbs sat listening impassively, moving his toothpick up and down
+from one side to the other of his small, thin-lipped mouth. At last he
+nodded.
+
+"Well, I guess that's about the way of it. I didn't exactly understand
+the women's clothes business,--damn' fool disguise,--but we figgered it
+might pop into the head of a' edjucated nigger." He sucked his teeth,
+reflectively. "Peter," he said at last, "seems to me, if I was you, I'd
+drift on away from this town. The niggers around here ain't strong for
+you now; some say you're a hoodoo; some say this an' some that. The
+white folks don't exactly like you trying to get up a cook's union. It's
+your right to do that if you want to, of course, but this is a mighty
+small city to have unions and things. The fact is, it ain't a big enough
+place for a nigger of yore ability, Peter. I b'lieve, if I was you, I'd
+jes drift on some'eres else."
+
+The officer tipped up his toothpick so that it lifted his upper lip in a
+little v-shaped opening and exposed a strong, yellowish tooth. At the
+moment his machine started slowly forward. It gave him the appearance of
+accidentally rolling off while immersed in deep thought.
+
+                    *       *       *       *       *
+
+The death of Tump Pack moved Peter with a sense of strange pathos. He
+always remembered Tump tramping away through the night to carry Cissie
+some underclothes and, if possible, to take her place in jail. At the
+foundation of Tump's being lay a faithfulness and devotion to Cissie
+that reached the heights of a dog's. And yet, he might have deserted
+her, he would probably have beaten her, and he most certainly would have
+betrayed her many, many times. It was inexplicable.
+
+
+Now that Tump was dead, the mantle of his fidelity somehow seemed to
+fall on Peter. For some reason Peter felt that he should assume Tump's
+place as Cissie Dildine's husband and protector. Had Tump lived, Peter
+might have gone North in peace, if not in happiness. Now such a journey,
+without Cissie, had become impossible. He had a feeling that it would
+not be right.
+
+As for the disgrace of marrying such a woman as Cissie Dildine, Peter
+slowly gave that idea up. The "worthinesses" and "disgraces" implicit in
+Harvard atmosphere, which Peter had spent four years of his life
+imbibing, slowly melted away in the air of Niggertown. What was
+honorable there, what was disgraceful there, somehow changed its color
+here.
+
+By virtue of this change Peter felt intuitively that Cissie Dildine was
+neither disgraced by her arrest nor soiled by her physical condition.
+Somehow she seemed just as "nice" a girl, just as "good" a girl, as ever
+she was before. Moreover, every other darky in Niggertown held these
+same instinctive beliefs. Had it not been for that, Peter would have
+thought it was his passion pleading for the girl, justifying itself by a
+grotesque morality, as passions often do. But this was not the correct
+solution. The sentiment was enigmatic. Peter puzzled over it time and
+time again as he waited in Hooker's Bend for the outcome of Cissie's
+trial.
+
+The octoroon's imprisonment came to an end on the third day after Tump's
+death. Sam Arkwright's parents had not known of their son's legal
+proceedings, and Mr. Arkwright immediately quashed the warrant, and
+hushed up the unfortunate matter as best he could. Young Sam was
+suddenly sent away from home to college, as the best step in the
+circumstances. And so the wishes of the adolescent in the cedar-glade
+came queerly to pass, even if Peter did withhold any grave, mature
+advice on the subject which he may have possessed.
+
+Naturally, there was much mirth among the men of Hooker's Bend and much
+virulence among the women over the peculiar conditions under which young
+Sam made his pilgrimage in pursuit of wisdom and morals and the right
+conduct of life. And life being problematic and uncertain as it is, and
+prone to wind about in the strangest way, no one may say with certitude
+that young Sam did not make a promising start.
+
+Certainly, over the affair the Knights of the Round Table launched many
+a quip and jest, but that simply proved the fineness of their sentiments
+toward a certain delicate human relation which forms mankind's single
+awful approach to the creative and the holy.
+
+Tump Pack became almost a mythical figure in Niggertown. Jim Pink Staggs
+composed a saga relating the soldier's exploits in France, his assault
+on the jail to liberate Cissie, and his death.
+
+In his songs--and Jim Pink had composed a good many--the minstrel
+instinctively avoided humor. He always improvised them to the sobbing of
+a guitar, and they were as invariably sad as the poetry of adolescents.
+It was called "Tump Pack's Lament." The negroes of Hooker's Bend learned
+it from Jim Pink, and with them it drifted up and down the three great
+American rivers, and now it is sung by the roustabouts, stevedores, and
+underlings of our strange black American world.
+
+This song commemorating Tump Pack's bravery and faithfulness to his love
+may very well take the place of the Congressional medal which,
+unfortunately, was lost on the night the soldier was killed. Between the
+two, there is little doubt that the accolade of fame bestowed in the
+buffoon's simple melody is more vital and enduring than that accorded by
+special act of the Congress of the United States of America.
+
+When Cissie Dildine returned from jail, she and her mother arranged the
+Dildine-Siner wedding as nearly according to white standards in similar
+circumstances as they could conceive. They agreed that it should be a
+simple, quiet home wedding. However, as every soul in Niggertown, a
+number of colored friends in Jonesboro, and a contingent from up-river
+villages meant to attend, it became necessary to hold the service in the
+church.
+
+The officiating minister was not Parson Ranson after all, but a Reverend
+Cleotus Haidus, the presiding elder of that circuit of the Afro-American
+Methodist Church, whose duties happened to call him to Hooker's Bend
+that day. So, notwithstanding Cissie's efforts at simplicity, the
+wedding, after all, was resolved into an affair.
+
+Once, in one of her moments of clairvoyance, Cissie said to Peter:
+
+"Our trouble is, Peter, we are trying to mix what I have learned in
+Nashville and what you have learned in Boston with what we both feel in
+Hooker's Bend. I--I'm almost ashamed to say it, but I don't really feel
+sad and plaintive at all, Peter. I feel glad, gloriously glad. Oh, my
+dear, dear Peter!" and she flung her arms around Peter's neck and held
+him with all her might against her ripening bosom.
+
+To Cissie her theft, her jail sentence, her pregnancy, were nothing more
+than if she had taken a sip of water. However, with the imitativeness of
+her race and the histrionic ability of her sex, she appeared pensive and
+subdued during the elaborate double-ring ceremony performed by the
+Reverend Cleotus Haidus. Nobody in the packed church knew how
+tremendously Cissie's heart was beating except Peter, who held her hand.
+
+The ethical engine that Peter had patiently builded in Harvard almost
+ceased to function in this weird morality of Niggertown. Whether he were
+doing right or doing wrong, Peter could not determine. He lost all his
+moorings. At times he felt himself walking according to the ethnological
+law, which is the Harvard way of saying walking according to the will of
+God; but at other times he felt party to some unpardonable obscenity. So
+deeply was he disturbed that out of the dregs of his mind floated up old
+bits of the Scriptures that he was unaware of possessing: "There is a
+way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of
+death." And Peter wondered if he were not in that way.
+
+[Illustration: The bridal couple embarked for Cairo]
+
+The bridal couple embarked for Cairo on the _Red Cloud_, a packet
+in the Dubuque, Ohio, and Tennessee River trade. Peter and Cissie were
+not allowed to walk up the main stairway into the passengers' cabin, but
+were required to pick their way along the boiler-deck, through the
+stench of freight, lumber, live stock and sleeping roustabouts. Then
+they went through the heat and steam of the engine-room up a small
+companionway that led through the toilet, on to the rear guard of the
+main deck, and thence back to a little cuddy behind the main saloon
+called the chambermaid's cabin.
+
+The chambermaid's cabin was filled with the perpetual odor of hot soap-
+suds, soiled laundry, and the broader smell of steam and the boat's
+machinery. The little place trembled night and day, for the steamer's
+engines were just beneath them, and immediately behind them thundered
+the great stern-wheel of the packet. A single square window in the end
+of the chambermaid's cabin looked out on the wheel, but at all times,
+except when the wind was blowing from just the right quarter, this
+window was deluged with a veritable Niagara of water. The continual
+shake of the cabin, the creak of the rudder-beam working to and fro, the
+watery thunder of the wheel, and the solemn rumble of the engines made
+conversation impossible until the travelers grew accustomed to the
+noises. Still, Cissie found it pleasant. She liked to sit and look out
+into the main saloon, with its interminable gilded scrolls extending
+away up the long cabin, a suave perspective. She liked to watch the
+white passengers dine--the white napery, the bouquets, the endless
+tables all filled with diners; some swathed in napkins from chin to
+waistband, others less completely protected. It gave Cissie a certain
+tang of triumph to smile at the swathed ones and to think that she knew
+better than that.
+
+At night a negro string-band played for the white excursionists to
+dance, and Cissie would sit, with glowing eyes, clenching Peter's hand,
+every fiber of her asway to the music, and it seemed as if her heart
+would go mad. All these inhibitions, all this spreading before her of
+forbidden joys, did not daunt her delight. She reveled in them by
+propinquity.
+
+The chambermaid was a Mrs. Antolia Higgman, a strong, full-bodied
+_cafe-au-lait_ negress. She was a very sensible woman, and during
+her work on the boat she had picked up a Northern accent and a number of
+little mannerisms from the Chicago and St. Louis excursionists, who made
+ten-day round trips from Dubuque to Florence, Alabama, and return. When
+Mrs. Higgman was not running errands for the women passengers, she was
+working at her perpetual laundering.
+
+At first Peter was a little uneasy as to how Mrs. Higgman would treat
+Cissie, but she turned out a good-hearted woman, and did everything she
+could to make the young wife comfortable. It soon became clear that Mrs.
+Higgman knew the whole situation, for one day she said to Cissie in her
+odd dialect, burred with Yankeeish "r's" and "ing's."
+
+"These river-r towns, Mrs. Siner-r, are jest like one big village, with
+the river-r for its Main Street. I know ever-r'thang that goes on,
+through the cabin-boys an' cooks, an'--an'--you cerrtainly ar-re a dear-
+r, Mrs. Siner-r," and thereupon, quite unexpectedly, she kissed Cissie.
+
+So on about the second day down the river Cissie dropped her saddened
+manner and became frankly, freely, and riotously happy. After the
+fashion of village negresses, she insisted on helping Mrs. Higgman with
+her work, and, incidentally, she cultivated Mrs. Higgman's Northern
+accent. When the chambermaid was out on her errands and Cissie found a
+moment alone with Peter, she would tweak his ear or pull his cheek and
+provoke him to kiss her. Indeed, it was all the hot, shuddering little
+laundry-room could do to contain the gay and bubbling Cissie.
+
+Peter thought and thought, resignedly now, but persistently, how this
+strange happiness that belonged to them both could be. He was content,
+yet he felt he ought not to be content. He thought there must be
+something base in himself, yet he felt that there was not. He drank the
+wine of his honeymoon marveling.
+
+On the morning before the _Red Cloud_ entered the port of Cairo
+Mrs. Higgman was out of the cabin, and Peter stood at the little square
+window, with his arm about Cissie's waist, looking out to the rear of
+the steamer. A strong east wind blew the spray away from the glass, and
+Peter could see the huge wheel covered with a waterfall thundering
+beneath him. Back of the wheel stretched a long row of even waves and
+troughs. Every seventh or eighth wave tumbled over on itself in a swash
+of foam. These flashing stern waves strung far up the river. On each
+side of the great waterway stretched the flat shores of Kentucky and
+Ohio. Here and there over the broad clay-colored water moved other
+boats--tow-boats, a string of government auto-barges, a snag-boat,
+another packet.
+
+Peter gave up his question. The curves of Cissie's form in his arm held
+a sweetness and a restfulness that her maidenhood had never promised. He
+felt so deeply sure of his happiness that it seemed strange to him that
+he could not aline his emotions and his mind.
+
+As Peter stood staring up the Ohio River, it occurred to him that
+perhaps, in some queer way, the morals of black folk were not the morals
+of white folk; perhaps the laws that bound one race were not the laws
+that bound the other. It might be that white anathemas were black
+blessings. Peter thought along this line peacefully for several minutes.
+
+And finally he concluded that, after all, morals and conventions, right
+and wrong, are merely those precepts that a race have practised and
+found good in its evolution. Morals are the training rules that keep a
+people fit. It might very well be that one moral regime is applicable to
+one race, and quite another to another.
+
+The single object of all morals is racial welfare, the racial integrity,
+the breeding of strong children to perpetuate the species. If the black
+race possess a more exuberant vitality than some other race, then the
+black would not be forced to practise so severe a vital economy as some
+less virile folk. Racial morals are simply a question of having and
+spending within safety limits.
+
+Peter knew that for years white men had held a prejudice against
+marrying widows. This is utterly without grounds except for one reason:
+the first born of a woman is the lustiest. Among the still weaker Aryans
+of India the widows burn themselves. Among certain South Sea Islanders
+only the first-born may live and mate; all other children are slain.
+Among nearly every white race marriage lines are strictly drawn, and the
+tendency is to have few children to a family, to conserve the precious
+vital impulse. So strong is this feeling of birth control that to-day
+nearly all American white women are ashamed of large families. This
+shame is the beginning of a convention; the convention may harden into a
+cult, a law, or a religion.
+
+And here is the amazing part of morals. Morals are always directed
+toward one particular race, but the individual members of that race
+always feel that their brand of morals does and should apply to all the
+peoples of the earth; so one has the spectacle of nations sending out
+missionaries and battle-ships to teach and enforce their particular
+folk-ways. Another queer thing is that whereas the end of morals is
+designed solely for the betterment of the race, and is entirely
+regardless of the person, to the conscience of the person morals are
+always translated as something that binds him personally, that will
+shame him or honor him personally not only for the brief span of this
+worldly life, but through an eternity to come. To him, his particular
+code, surrounded by all the sanctions of custom, law, and religion,
+appears earth-embracing, hell-deep, and heaven-piercing, and any human
+creature who follows any other code appears fatally wicked, utterly
+shameless, and ineluctably lost.
+
+And yet there is no such thing as absolute morals. Morals are as
+transitory as the sheen on a blackbird's wing; they change perpetually
+with the necessities of the race. Any people with an abounding vitality
+will naturally practise customs which a less vital people must shun.
+
+Morals are nothing more than the engines controlling the stream of
+energy that propel a race on its course. All engines are not alike, nor
+are all races bound for the same port.
+
+Here Peter Siner made the amazing discovery that although he had spent
+four years in Harvard, he had come out, just as he went in, a negro.
+
+A great joy came over him. He took Cissie whole-heartedly in his arms
+and kissed again and again the deep crimson of her lips. His brain and
+his heart were together at last. As he stood looking out at the window,
+pressing Cissie to him, he wondered, when he reached Chicago, if he
+could ever make Farquhar understand.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Birthright, by T.S. Stribling
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