A	>>	B	>>	C	>>	D	>>	E
F	>>	G	>>	H	>>	I	>>	J
K	>>	L	>>	M	>>	N	>>	O
P	>>	R	>>	S	>>	T	>>	U
V	>>	W	>>			X	>>	Z

Jules Verne - "In Search of the Castaways"

Eleanor H. Porter - "Just David"

Frank T. Bullen - "The Cruise of the Cachalot"

Charles Mackay - "Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684"

The House Behind The Cedars

C >> Charles W. Chesnutt >> The House Behind The Cedars




If he should discover--the chance was one in
a thousand--that she was white; or if he should
find it too hard to leave her--ah, well! he was a
white man, one of a race born to command. He
would make her white; no one beyond the old
town would ever know the difference. If, perchance,
their secret should be disclosed, the world was
wide; a man of courage and ambition, inspired by
love, might make a career anywhere. Circumstances
made weak men; strong men mould circumstances
to do their bidding. He would not
let his darling die of grief, whatever the price
must be paid for her salvation. She was only a
few rods away from him now. In a moment he
would see her; he would take her tenderly in his
arms, and heart to heart they would mutually
forgive and forget, and, strengthened by their love,
would face the future boldly and bid the world do
its worst.



XXIII

THE GUEST OF HONOR


The evening of the party arrived. The house
had been thoroughly cleaned in preparation for the
event, and decorated with the choicest treasures of
the garden. By eight o'clock the guests had gathered.
They were all mulattoes,--all people of
mixed blood were called "mulattoes" in North
Carolina. There were dark mulattoes and bright
mulattoes. Mis' Molly's guests were mostly of the
bright class, most of them more than half white,
and few of them less. In Mis' Molly's small circle,
straight hair was the only palliative of a dark
complexion. Many of the guests would not have
been casually distinguishable from white people of
the poorer class. Others bore unmistakable traces
of Indian ancestry,--for Cherokee and Tuscarora
blood was quite widely diffused among the free
negroes of North Carolina, though well-nigh lost
sight of by the curious custom of the white people
to ignore anything but the negro blood in those
who were touched by its potent current. Very few
of those present had been slaves. The free colored
people of Patesville were numerous enough before
the war to have their own "society," and human
enough to despise those who did not possess
advantages equal to their own; and at this time they still
looked down upon those who had once been held in
bondage. The only black man present occupied a
chair which stood on a broad chest in one corner,
and extracted melody from a fiddle to which a
whole generation of the best people of Patesville
had danced and made merry. Uncle Needham
seldom played for colored gatherings, but made an
exception in Mis' Molly's case; she was not white,
but he knew her past; if she was not the rose,
she had at least been near the rose. When the
company had gathered, Mary B., as mistress of
ceremonies, whispered to Uncle Needham, who
tapped his violin sharply with the bow.

"Ladies an' gent'emens, take yo' pa'dners fer a
Fuhginny reel!"

Mr. Wain, as the guest of honor, opened the
ball with his hostess. He wore a broadcloth coat
and trousers, a heavy glittering chain across the
spacious front of his white waistcoat, and a large
red rose in his buttonhole. If his boots were
slightly run down at the heel, so trivial a detail
passed unnoticed in the general splendor of his
attire. Upon a close or hostile inspection there
would have been some features of his ostensibly
good-natured face--the shifty eye, the full and
slightly drooping lower lip--which might have
given a student of physiognomy food for reflection.
But whatever the latent defects of Wain's character,
he proved himself this evening a model of
geniality, presuming not at all upon his reputed
wealth, but winning golden opinions from those
who came to criticise, of whom, of course, there
were a few, the company being composed of human
beings.

When the dance began, Wain extended his
large, soft hand to Mary B., yellow, buxom, thirty,
with white and even teeth glistening behind her
full red lips. A younger sister of Mary B.'s was
paired with Billy Oxendine, a funny little tailor,
a great gossip, and therefore a favorite among the
women. Mis' Molly graciously consented, after
many protestations of lack of skill and want of
practice, to stand up opposite Homer Pettifoot,
Mary B.'s husband, a tall man, with a slight stoop,
a bald crown, and full, dreamy eyes,--a man of
much imagination and a large fund of anecdote.
Two other couples completed the set; others were
restrained by bashfulness or religious scruples,
which did not yield until later in the evening.

The perfumed air from the garden without and
the cut roses within mingled incongruously with the
alien odors of musk and hair oil, of which several
young barbers in the company were especially
redolent. There was a play of sparkling eyes and
glancing feet. Mary B. danced with the languorous
grace of an Eastern odalisque, Mis' Molly with
the mincing, hesitating step of one long out of
practice. Wain performed saltatory prodigies. This
was a golden opportunity for the display in which
his soul found delight. He introduced variations
hitherto unknown to the dance. His skill and
suppleness brought a glow of admiration into the
eyes of the women, and spread a cloud of jealousy
over the faces of several of the younger men, who
saw themselves eclipsed.

Rena had announced in advance her intention
to take no active part in the festivities. "I don't
feel like dancing, mamma--I shall never dance
again."

"Well, now, Rena," answered her mother, "of
co'se you're too dignified, sence you've be'n 'sociatin'
with white folks, to be hoppin' roun' an' kickin'
up like Ma'y B. an' these other yaller gals;
but of co'se, too, you can't slight the comp'ny
entirely, even ef it ain't jest exac'ly our party,--
you'll have to pay 'em some little attention, 'specially
Mr. Wain, sence you're goin' down yonder
with 'im."

Rena conscientiously did what she thought
politeness required. She went the round of the guests
in the early part of the evening and exchanged
greetings with them. To several requests for dances
she replied that she was not dancing. She did not
hold herself aloof because of pride; any instinctive
shrinking she might have felt by reason of her recent
association with persons of greater refinement
was offset by her still more newly awakened zeal
for humanity; they were her people, she must not
despise them. But the occasion suggested painful
memories of other and different scenes in
which she had lately participated. Once or twice
these memories were so vivid as almost to
overpower her. She slipped away from the company,
and kept in the background as much as possible
without seeming to slight any one.

The guests as well were dimly conscious of a
slight barrier between Mis' Molly's daughter and
themselves. The time she had spent apart from
these friends of her youth had rendered it impossible
for her ever to meet them again upon the plane
of common interests and common thoughts. It
was much as though one, having acquired the
vernacular of his native country, had lived in a foreign
land long enough to lose the language of his childhood
without acquiring fully that of his adopted
country. Miss Rowena Warwick could never again
become quite the Rena Walden who had left the
house behind the cedars no more than a year and
a half before. Upon this very difference were
based her noble aspirations for usefulness,--one
must stoop in order that one may lift others. Any
other young woman present would have been importuned
beyond her powers of resistance. Rena's
reserve was respected.

When supper was announced, somewhat early in
the evening, the dancers found seats in the hall or
on the front piazza. Aunt Zilphy, assisted by Mis'
Molly and Mary B., passed around the refreshments,
which consisted of fried chicken, buttered
biscuits, pound-cake, and eggnog. When the first
edge of appetite was taken off, the conversation
waxed animated. Homer Pettifoot related, with
minute detail, an old, threadbare hunting lie,
dating, in slightly differing forms, from the age of
Nimrod, about finding twenty-five partridges sitting
in a row on a rail, and killing them all with a
single buckshot, which passed through twenty-four
and lodged in the body of the twenty-fifth, from
which it was extracted and returned to the shot
pouch for future service.

This story was followed by a murmur of
incredulity--of course, the thing was possible, but
Homer's faculty for exaggeration was so well
known that any statement of his was viewed with
suspicion. Homer seemed hurt at this lack of
faith, and was disposed to argue the point, but
the sonorous voice of Mr. Wain on the other side
of the room cut short his protestations, in much
the same way that the rising sun extinguishes the
light of lesser luminaries.

"I wuz a member er de fus' legislatur' after de
wah," Wain was saying. "When I went up f'm
Sampson in de fall, I had to pass th'ough Smithfiel',
I got in town in de afternoon, an' put up at
de bes' hotel. De lan'lo'd did n' have no s'picion
but what I wuz a white man, an' he gimme a room,
an' I had supper an' breakfas', an' went on ter
Rolly nex' mornin'. W'en de session wuz over,
I come along back, an' w'en I got ter Smithfiel', I
driv' up ter de same hotel. I noticed, as soon as I
got dere, dat de place had run down consid'able--
dere wuz weeds growin' in de yard, de winders wuz
dirty, an' ev'ything roun' dere looked kinder lonesome
an' shif'less. De lan'lo'd met me at de do';
he looked mighty down in de mouth, an' sezee:--

"`Look a-here, w'at made you come an' stop at
my place widout tellin' me you wuz a black man?
Befo' you come th'ough dis town I had a fus'-class
business. But w'en folks found out dat a nigger
had put up here, business drapped right off,
an' I've had ter shet up my hotel. You oughter
be'shamed er yo'se'f fer ruinin' a po' man w'at
had n' never done no harm ter you. You've done
a mean, low-lived thing, an' a jes' God'll punish
you fer it.'

"De po' man acshully bust inter tears,"
continued Mr. Wain magnanimously, "an' I felt so
sorry fer 'im--he wuz a po' white man tryin' ter
git up in de worl'--dat I hauled out my purse
an' gin 'im ten dollars, an' he 'peared monst'ous
glad ter git it."

" How good-hearted! How kin'!" murmured
the ladies. "It done credit to yo' feelin's."

" Don't b'lieve a word er dem lies," muttered
one young man to another sarcastically. "He
could n' pass fer white, 'less'n it wuz a mighty dark
night."

Upon this glorious evening of his life, Mr.
Jefferson Wain had one distinctly hostile critic,
of whose presence he was blissfully unconscious.
Frank Fowler had not been invited to the party,--
his family did not go with Mary B.'s set. Rena
had suggested to her mother that he be invited,
but Mis' Molly had demurred on the ground that
it was not her party, and that she had no right to
issue invitations. It is quite likely that she would
have sought an invitation for Frank from Mary
B.; but Frank was black, and would not harmonize
with the rest of the company, who would not have
Mis' Molly's reasons for treating him well. She
had compromised the matter by stepping across the
way in the afternoon and suggesting that Frank
might come over and sit on the back porch and
look at the dancing and share in the supper.

Frank was not without a certain honest pride.
He was sensitive enough, too, not to care to go
where he was not wanted. He would have curtly
refused any such maimed invitation to any other
place. But would he not see Rena in her best
attire, and might she not perhaps, in passing, speak
a word to him?

"Thank y', Mis' Molly," he replied, "I'll
prob'ly come over."

"You're a big fool, boy," observed his father after
Mis' Molly had gone back across the street, "ter
be stickin' roun' dem yaller niggers 'cross de street,
an' slobb'rin' an' slav'rin' over 'em, an' hangin'
roun' deir back do' wuss 'n ef dey wuz w'ite folks.
I'd see 'em dead fus'!"

Frank himself resisted the temptation for half
an hour after the music began, but at length he
made his way across the street and stationed himself
at the window opening upon the back piazza.
When Rena was in the room, he had eyes for her
only, but when she was absent, he fixed his
attention mainly upon Wain. With jealous
clairvoyance he observed that Wain's eyes followed
Rena when she left the room, and lit up when she
returned. Frank had heard that Rena was going
away with this man, and he watched Wain closely,
liking him less the longer he looked at him. To
his fancy, Wain's style and skill were affectation,
his good-nature mere hypocrisy, and his glance at
Rena the eye of the hawk upon his quarry. He
had heard that Wain was unmarried, and he could
not see how, this being so, he could help wishing
Rena for a wife. Frank would have been content
to see her marry a white man, who would have
raised her to a plane worthy of her merits. In
this man's shifty eye he read the liar--his wealth
and standing were probably as false as his seeming
good-humor.

"Is that you, Frank?" said a soft voice near at
hand.

He looked up with a joyful thrill. Rena was
peering intently at him, as if trying to distinguish
his features in the darkness. It was a bright
moonlight night, but Frank stood in the shadow of
the piazza.

"Yas 'm, it's me, Miss Rena. Yo' mammy said
I could come over an' see you-all dance. You ain'
be'n out on de flo' at all, ter-night."

" No, Frank, I don't care for dancing. I shall
not dance to-night."

This answer was pleasing to Frank. If he could
not hope to dance with her, at least the men inside
--at least this snake in the grass from down the
country--should not have that privilege.

"But you must have some supper, Frank," said
Rena. "I'll bring it myself."

"No, Miss Rena, I don' keer fer nothin'--I
did n' come over ter eat--r'al'y I didn't."

"Nonsense, Frank, there's plenty of it. I have
no appetite, and you shall have my portion."

She brought him a slice of cake and a glass of
eggnog. When Mis' Molly, a minute later, came
out upon the piazza, Frank left the yard and
walked down the street toward the old canal. Rena
had spoken softly to him; she had fed him with
her own dainty hands. He might never hope that
she would see in him anything but a friend; but
he loved her, and he would watch over her and
protect her, wherever she might be. He did not
believe that she would ever marry the grinning
hypocrite masquerading back there in Mis' Molly's
parlor; but the man would bear watching.

Mis' Molly had come to call her daughter into
the house. "Rena," she said, "Mr. Wain wants
ter know if you won't dance just one dance with
him."

"Yas, Rena," pleaded Mary B., who followed
Miss Molly out to the piazza, "jes' one dance. I
don't think you're treatin' my comp'ny jes' right,
Cousin Rena."

"You're goin' down there with 'im," added her
mother, "an' it 'd be just as well to be on friendly
terms with 'im."

Wain himself had followed the women. "Sho'ly,
Miss Rena, you're gwine ter honah me wid one
dance? I'd go 'way f'm dis pa'ty sad at hea't ef
I had n' stood up oncet wid de young lady er de
house."

As Rena, weakly persuaded, placed her hand
on Wain's arm and entered the house, a buggy,
coming up Front Street, paused a moment at the
corner, and then turning slowly, drove quietly up
the nameless by-street, concealed by the intervening
cedars, until it reached a point from which the
occupant could view, through the open front window,
the interior of the parlor.



XXIV

SWING YOUR PARTNERS


Moved by tenderness and thoughts of self-sacrifice,
which had occupied his mind to the momentary
exclusion of all else, Tryon had scarcely
noticed, as be approached the house behind the
cedars, a strain of lively music, to which was added,
as he drew still nearer, the accompaniment of other
festive sounds. He suddenly awoke, however, to
the fact that these signs of merriment came from
the house at which he had intended to stop;--
he had not meant that Rena should pass another
sleepless night of sorrow, or that he should himself
endure another needless hour of suspense.

He drew rein at the corner. Shocked surprise,
a nascent anger, a vague alarm, an insistent
curiosity, urged him nearer. Turning the mare into
the side street and keeping close to the fence, he
drove ahead in the shadow of the cedars until he
reached a gap through which he could see into the
open door and windows of the brightly lighted
hall.

There was evidently a ball in progress. The
fiddle was squeaking merrily so a tune that he
remembered well,--it was associated with one of
the most delightful evenings of his life, that of
the tournament ball. A mellow negro voice was
calling with a rhyming accompaniment the figures
of a quadrille. Tryon, with parted lips and slowly
hardening heart, leaned forward from the buggy-
seat, gripping the rein so tightly that his nails
cut into the opposing palm. Above the clatter of
noisy conversation rose the fiddler's voice:--

"Swing yo' pa'dners; doan be shy,
Look yo' lady in de eye!
Th'ow yo' ahm aroun' huh wais';
Take yo' time--dey ain' no has'e!"

To the middle of the floor, in full view through
an open window, advanced the woman who all day
long had been the burden of his thoughts--not
pale with grief and hollow-eyed with weeping, but
flushed with pleasure, around her waist the arm
of a burly, grinning mulatto, whose face was
offensively familiar to Tryon.

With a muttered curse of concentrated
bitterness, Tryon struck the mare a sharp blow with
the whip. The sensitive creature, spirited even
in her great weariness, resented the lash and
started off with the bit in her teeth. Perceiving
that it would be difficult to turn in the narrow
roadway without running into the ditch at the
left, Tryon gave the mare rein and dashed down
the street, scarcely missing, as the buggy crossed
the bridge, a man standing abstractedly by the old
canal, who sprang aside barely in time to avoid
being run over.

Meantime Rena was passing through a trying
ordeal. After the first few bars, the fiddler
plunged into a well-known air, in which Rena,
keenly susceptible to musical impressions,
recognized the tune to which, as Queen of Love and
Beauty, she had opened the dance at her entrance
into the world of life and love, for it was there
she had met George Tryon. The combination of
music and movement brought up the scene with
great distinctness. Tryon, peering angrily through
the cedars, had not been more conscious than she
of the external contrast between her partners on
this and the former occasion. She perceived, too,
as Tryon from the outside had not, the difference
between Wain's wordy flattery (only saved by his
cousin's warning from pointed and fulsome adulation),
and the tenderly graceful compliment,
couched in the romantic terms of chivalry, with
which the knight of the handkerchief had charmed
her ear. It was only by an immense effort that she
was able to keep her emotions under control until
the end of the dance, when she fled to her chamber
and burst into tears. It was not the cruel Tryon
who had blasted her love with his deadly look that
she mourned, but the gallant young knight who
had worn her favor on his lance and crowned her
Queen of Love and Beauty.


Tryon's stay in Patesville was very brief. He
drove to the hotel and put up for the night. During
many sleepless hours his mind was in a turmoil
with a very different set of thoughts from those
which had occupied it on the way to town. Not
the least of them was a profound self-contempt for
his own lack of discernment. How had he been
so blind as not to have read long ago the character
of this wretched girl who had bewitched him?
To-night his eyes had been opened--he had seen
her with the mask thrown off, a true daughter of
a race in which the sensuous enjoyment of the
moment took precedence of taste or sentiment or any
of the higher emotions. Her few months of boarding-
school, her brief association with white people,
had evidently been a mere veneer over the underlying
negro, and their effects had slipped away as
soon as the intercourse had ceased. With the
monkey-like imitativeness of the negro she had copied
the manners of white people while she lived among
them, and had dropped them with equal facility
when they ceased to serve a purpose. Who but
a negro could have recovered so soon from what
had seemed a terrible bereavement?--she herself
must have felt it at the time, for otherwise she
would not have swooned. A woman of sensibility,
as this one had seemed to be, should naturally feel
more keenly, and for a longer time than a man,
an injury to the affections; but he, a son of the
ruling race, had been miserable for six weeks about
a girl who had so far forgotten him as already to
plunge headlong into the childish amusements of
her own ignorant and degraded people. What
more, indeed, he asked himself savagely,--what
more could be expected of the base-born child of
the plaything of a gentleman's idle hour, who to
this ignoble origin added the blood of a servile
race? And he, George Tryon, had honored her
with his love; he had very nearly linked his fate
and joined his blood to hers by the solemn sanctions
of church and state. Tryon was not a devout
man, but he thanked God with religious fervor
that he had been saved a second time from a
mistake which would have wrecked his whole future.
If he had yielded to the momentary weakness of
the past night,--the outcome of a sickly sentimentality
to which he recognized now, in the light
of reflection, that he was entirely too prone,--he
would have regretted it soon enough. The black
streak would have been sure to come out in some
form, sooner or later, if not in the wife, then in
her children. He saw clearly enough, in this hour
of revulsion, that with his temperament and training
such a union could never have been happy.
If all the world had been ignorant of the dark
secret, it would always have been in his own
thoughts, or at least never far away. Each fault
of hers that the close daily association of husband
and wife might reveal,--the most flawless of
sweethearts do not pass scathless through the long
test of matrimony,--every wayward impulse of
his children, every defect of mind, morals, temper,
or health, would have been ascribed to the dark
ancestral strain. Happiness under such conditions
would have been impossible.

When Tryon lay awake in the early morning,
after a few brief hours of sleep, the business which
had brought him to Patesville seemed, in the cold
light of reason, so ridiculously inadequate that he
felt almost ashamed to have set up such a pretext
for his journey. The prospect, too, of meeting
Dr. Green and his family, of having to explain
his former sudden departure, and of running a
gauntlet of inquiry concerning his marriage to the
aristocratic Miss Warwick of South Carolina;
the fear that some one at Patesville might have
suspected a connection between Rena's swoon and
his own flight,--these considerations so moved
this impressionable and impulsive young man that
he called a bell-boy, demanded an early breakfast,
ordered his horse, paid his reckoning, and started
upon his homeward journey forthwith. A certain
distrust of his own sensibility, which he felt to
be curiously inconsistent with his most positive
convictions, led him to seek the river bridge by a
roundabout route which did not take him past the
house where, a few hours before, he had seen the
last fragment of his idol shattered beyond the hope
of repair.


The party broke up at an early hour, since most
of the guests were working-people, and the travelers
were to make an early start next day. About
nine in the morning, Wain drove round to Mis'
Molly's. Rena's trunk was strapped behind the
buggy, and she set out, in the company of Wain,
for her new field of labor. The school term was
only two months in length, and she did not expect
to return until its expiration. Just before taking
her seat in the buggy, Rena felt a sudden sinking
of the heart.

"Oh, mother," she whispered, as they stood
wrapped in a close embrace, "I'm afraid to leave
you. I left you once, and it turned out so miserably."

"It'll turn out better this time, honey," replied
her mother soothingly. "Good-by, child. Take
care of yo'self an' yo'r money, and write to yo'r
mammy."

One kiss all round, and Rena was lifted into
the buggy. Wain seized the reins, and under his
skillful touch the pretty mare began to prance and
curvet with restrained impatience. Wain could
not resist the opportunity to show off before the
party, which included Mary B.'s entire family and
several other neighbors, who had gathered to see
the travelers off.

"Good-by ter Patesville! Good-by, folkses all!"
he cried, with a wave of his disengaged hand.

"Good-by, mother! Good-by, all!" cried Rena,
as with tears in her heart and a brave smile on her
face she left her home behind her for the second
time.

When they had crossed the river bridge, the
travelers came to a long stretch of rising ground,
from the summit of which they could look back
over the white sandy road for nearly a mile.
Neither Rena nor her companion saw Frank Fowler
behind the chinquapin bush at the foot of the hill,
nor the gaze of mute love and longing with which
he watched the buggy mount the long incline. He
had not been able to trust himself to bid her
farewell. He had seen her go away once before with
every prospect of happiness, and come back, a dove
with a wounded wing, to the old nest behind the
cedars. She was going away again, with a man
whom he disliked and distrusted. If she had met
misfortune before, what were her prospects for
happiness now?

Copyright (c) 2007. fullstories.net. All rights reserved.