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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - "Die Leiden des jungen Werther Buch 2"

Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol - "Taras Bulba and Other Tales"

Charles Dickens - "Hard Times"

Christopher Morley - "The Haunted Bookshop"

The House Behind The Cedars

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




"My son Jeff," old Mrs. Wain would say, "is
de bes' man you ever seed. His fus' wife had de
easies' time an' de happies' time er ary woman in
dis settlement. He's grieve' fer her a long time, but
I reckon he's gittin' over it, an' de nex' 'oman w'at
marries him'll git a box er pyo' gol', ef I does say
it as is his own mammy."

Rena had thought Wain rather harsh with his
household, except in her immediate presence. His
mother and sister seemed more or less afraid of
him, and the children often anxious to avoid him.

One day, he timed his visit to the schoolhouse
so as to walk home with Rena through the woods.
When she became aware of his purpose, she called
to one of the children who was loitering behind the
others, "Wait a minute, Jenny. I'm going your
way, and you can walk along with me."

Wain with difficulty hid a scowl behind a
smiling front. When they had gone a little distance
along the road through the woods, he clapped his
hand upon his pocket.

"I declare ter goodness," he exclaimed, "ef I
ain't dropped my pocket-knife! I thought I felt
somethin' slip th'ough dat hole in my pocket jes'
by the big pine stump in the schoolhouse ya'd.
Jinny, chile, run back an' hunt fer my knife, an'
I'll give yer five cents ef yer find it. Me an'
Miss Rena'll walk on slow 'tel you ketches us."

Rena did not dare to object, though she was afraid
to be alone with this man. If she could have had
a moment to think, she would have volunteered to
go back with Jenny and look for the knife, which,
although a palpable subterfuge on her part, would
have been one to which Wain could not object;
but the child, dazzled by the prospect of reward,
had darted back so quickly that this way of escape
was cut off. She was evidently in for a declaration
of love, which she had taken infinite pains to
avoid. Just the form it would assume, she could
not foresee. She was not long left in suspense.
No sooner was the child well out of sight than
Wain threw his arms suddenly about her waist
and smilingly attempted to kiss her.

Speechless with fear and indignation, she tore
herself from his grasp with totally unexpected
force, and fled incontinently along the forest path.
Wain--who, to do him justice, had merely meant
to declare his passion in what he had hoped might
prove a not unacceptable fashion--followed in
some alarm, expostulating and apologizing as he
went. But he was heavy and Rena was light, and
fear lent wings to her feet. He followed her until
he saw her enter the house of Elder Johnson, the
father of several of her pupils, after which he
sneaked uneasily homeward, somewhat apprehensive
of the consequences of his abrupt wooing,
which was evidently open to an unfavorable
construction. When, an hour later, Rena sent one of
the Johnson children for some of her things, with
a message explaining that the teacher had been
invited to spend a few days at Elder Johnson's,
Wain felt a pronounced measure of relief. For an
hour he had even thought it might be better to
relinquish his pursuit. With a fatuousness born of
vanity, however, no sooner had she sent her excuse
than he began to look upon her visit to Johnson's as
a mere exhibition of coyness, which, together with
her conduct in the woods, was merely intended to
lure him on.

Right upon the heels of the perturbation caused
by Wain's conduct, Rena discovered that Tryon
lived in the neighborhood; that not only might she
meet him any day upon the highway, but that he
had actually driven by the schoolhouse. That he
knew or would know of her proximity there could
be no possible doubt, since she had freely told his
mother her name and her home. A hot wave of
shame swept over her at the thought that George
Tryon might imagine she were following him, throwing
herself in his way, and at the thought of the
construction which he might place upon her actions.
Caught thus between two emotional fires, at the
very time when her school duties, owing to the
approaching exhibition, demanded all her energies,
Rena was subjected to a physical and mental strain
that only youth and health could have resisted, and
then only for a short time.



XXIX

PLATO EARNS HALF A DOLLAR


Tryon's first feeling, when his mother at the
dinner-table gave an account of her visit to the
schoolhouse in the woods, was one of extreme
annoyance. Why, of all created beings, should this
particular woman be chosen to teach the colored
school at Sandy Run? Had she learned that he
lived in the neighborhood, and had she sought the
place hoping that he might consent to renew, on
different terms, relations which could never be
resumed upon their former footing? Six weeks before,
he would not have believed her capable of following
him; but his last visit to Patesville had revealed her
character in such a light that it was difficult to
predict what she might do. It was, however, no affair
of his. He was done with her; he had dismissed her
from his own life, where she had never properly
belonged, and he had filled her place, or would soon
fill it, with another and worthier woman. Even
his mother, a woman of keen discernment and
delicate intuitions, had been deceived by this girl's
specious exterior. She had brought away from her
interview of the morning the impression that Rena
was a fine, pure spirit, born out of place, through
some freak of Fate, devoting herself with heroic
self-sacrifice to a noble cause. Well, he had
imagined her just as pure and fine, and she had
deliberately, with a negro's low cunning, deceived
him into believing that she was a white girl. The
pretended confession of the brother, in which he
had spoken of the humble origin of the family, had
been, consciously or unconsciously, the most
disingenuous feature of the whole miserable
performance. They had tried by a show of frankness to
satisfy their own consciences,--they doubtless had
enough of white blood to give them a rudimentary
trace of such a moral organ,--and by the same
act to disarm him against future recriminations, in
the event of possible discovery. How was he to
imagine that persons of their appearance and
pretensions were tainted with negro blood? The more
he dwelt upon the subject, the more angry he became
with those who had surprised his virgin heart
and deflowered it by such low trickery. The man
who brought the first negro into the British colonies
had committed a crime against humanity and a
worse crime against his own race. The father of
this girl had been guilty of a sin against society
for which others--for which he, George Tryon--
must pay the penalty. As slaves, negroes were
tolerable. As freemen, they were an excrescence, an
alien element incapable of absorption into the body
politic of white men. He would like to send them
all back to the Africa from which their forefathers
had come,--unwillingly enough, he would admit,
--and he would like especially to banish this girl
from his own neighborhood; not indeed that her
presence would make any difference to him, except
as a humiliating reminder of his own folly and
weakness with which he could very well dispense.

Of this state of mind Tryon gave no visible
manifestation beyond a certain taciturnity, so
much at variance with his recent liveliness that the
ladies could not fail to notice it. No effort upon
the part of either was able to affect his mood, and
they both resigned themselves to await his lordship's
pleasure to be companionable.

For a day or two, Tryon sedulously kept away
from the neighborhood of the schoolhouse at
Sandy Rim. He really had business which would
have taken him in that direction, but made a
detour of five miles rather than go near his
abandoned and discredited sweetheart.

But George Tryon was wisely distrustful of his
own impulses. Driving one day along the road to
Clinton, he overhauled a diminutive black figure
trudging along the road, occasionally turning a
handspring by way of diversion.

"Hello, Plato," called Tryon, "do you want a
lift?"

"Hoddy, Mars Geo'ge. Kin I ride wid you?"

"Jump up."

Plato mounted into the buggy with the agility
to be expected from a lad of his acrobatic
accomplishments. The two almost immediately fell into
conversation upon perhaps the only subject of
common interest between them. Before the town
was reached, Tryon knew, so far as Plato could
make it plain, the estimation in which the teacher
was held by pupils and parents. He had learned
the hours of opening and dismissal of the school,
where the teacher lived, her habits of coming to
and going from the schoolhouse, and the road she
always followed.

"Does she go to church or anywhere else with
Jeff Wain, Plato?" asked Tryon.

"No, suh, she don' go nowhar wid nobody
excep'n' ole Elder Johnson er Mis' Johnson, an' de
child'en. She use' ter stop at Mis' Wain's, but
she's stayin' wid Elder Johnson now. She alluz
makes some er de child'en go home wid er f'm
school," said Plato, proud to find in Mars Geo'ge
an appreciative listener,--"sometimes one an'
sometimes anudder. I's be'n home wid 'er twice,
ann it'll be my tu'n ag'in befo' long."

"Plato," remarked Tryon impressively, as they
drove into the town, "do you think you could
keep a secret?"

"Yas, Mars Geo'ge, ef you says I shill."

"Do you see this fifty-cent piece?" Tryon
displayed a small piece of paper money, crisp and
green in its newness.

"Yas, Mars Geo'ge," replied Plato, fixing his
eyes respectfully on the government's promise to
pay. Fifty cents was a large sum of money. His
acquaintance with Mars Geo'ge gave him the privilege
of looking at money. When he grew up, he
would be able, in good times, to earn fifty cents a
day.

"I am going to give this to you, Plato."

Plato's eyes opened wide as saucers. "Me,
Mars Geo'ge?" he asked in amazement.

"Yes, Plato. I'm going to write a letter while
I'm in town, and want you to take it. Meet me
here in half an hour, and I'll give you the letter.
Meantime, keep your mouth shut."

"Yas, Mars Geo'ge," replied Plato with a grin
that distended that organ unduly. That he did
not keep it shut may be inferred from the fact that
within the next half hour he had eaten and drunk
fifty cents' worth of candy, ginger-pop, and other
available delicacies that appealed to the youthful
palate. Having nothing more to spend, and the
high prices prevailing for some time after the war
having left him capable of locomotion, Plato
was promptly on hand at the appointed time and
place.

Tryon placed a letter in Plato's hand, still sticky
with molasses candy,--he had inclosed it in a
second cover by way of protection. "Give that
letter," he said, "to your teacher; don't say a
word about it to a living soul; bring me an answer,
and give it into my own hand, and you shall
have another half dollar."

Tryon was quite aware that by a surreptitious
correspondence he ran some risk of compromising
Rena. But he had felt, as soon as he had indulged
his first opportunity to talk of her, an irresistible
impulse to see her and speak to her again.
He could scarcely call at her boarding-place,--
what possible proper excuse could a young white
man have for visiting a colored woman? At the
schoolhouse she would be surrounded by her pupils,
and a private interview would be as difficult, with
more eyes to remark and more tongues to comment
upon it. He might address her by mail, but
did not know how often she sent to the nearest
post-office. A letter mailed in the town must pass
through the hands of a postmaster notoriously
inquisitive and evil-minded, who was familiar with
Tryon's handwriting and had ample time to attend
to other people's business. To meet the teacher
alone on the road seemed scarcely feasible,
according to Plato's statement. A messenger, then, was
not only the least of several evils, but really the
only practicable way to communicate with Rena.
He thought he could trust Plato, though miserably
aware that he could not trust himself where this
girl was concerned.

The letter handed by Tryon to Plato, and by
the latter delivered with due secrecy and precaution,
ran as follows:--


DEAR MISS WARWICK,--You may think it
strange that I should address you after what has
passed between us; but learning from my mother
of your presence in the neighborhood, I am
constrained to believe that you do not find my
proximity embarrassing, and I cannot resist the wish
to meet you at least once more, and talk over the
circumstances of our former friendship. From a
practical point of view this may seem superfluous,
as the matter has been definitely settled. I have
no desire to find fault with you; on the contrary,
I wish to set myself right with regard to my own
actions, and to assure you of my good wishes. In
other words, since we must part, I would rather we
parted friends than enemies. If nature and society
--or Fate, to put it another way--have decreed
that we cannot live together, it is nevertheless
possible that we may carry into the future a pleasant
though somewhat sad memory of a past friendship.
Will you not grant me one interview? I
appreciate the difficulty of arranging it; I have
found it almost as hard to communicate with you
by letter. I will suit myself to your convenience
and meet you at any time and place you may
designate. Please answer by bearer, who I think is
trustworthy, and believe me, whatever your answer may be,
Respectfully yours,
G. T.


The next day but one Tryon received through
the mail the following reply to his letter:--

GEORGE TRYON, ESQ.

Dear Sir,--I have requested your messenger
to say that I will answer your letter by mail, which
I shall now proceed to do. I assure you that
I was entirely ignorant of your residence in this
neighborhood, or it would have been the last place
on earth in which I should have set foot.

As to our past relations, they were ended by
your own act. I frankly confess that I deceived
you; I have paid the penalty, and have no
complaint to make. I appreciate the delicacy which
has made you respect my brother's secret, and
thank you for it. I remember the whole affair
with shame and humiliation, and would willingly
forget it.

As to a future interview, I do not see what
good it would do either of us. You are white, and
you have given me to understand that I am black.
I accept the classification, however unfair, and the
consequences, however unjust, one of which is that
we cannot meet in the same parlor, in the same
church, at the same table, or anywhere, in social
intercourse; upon a steamboat we would not sit at
the same table; we could not walk together on the
street, or meet publicly anywhere and converse,
without unkind remark. As a white man, this
might not mean a great deal to you; as a woman,
shut out already by my color from much that
is desirable, my good name remains my most valuable
possession. I beg of you to let me alone.
The best possible proof you can give me of your
good wishes is to relinquish any desire or attempt
to see me. I shall have finished my work here in
a few days. I have other troubles, of which you
know nothing, and any meeting with you would
only add to a burden which is already as much as
I can bear. To speak of parting is superfluous--
we have already parted. It were idle to dream of
a future friendship between people so widely
different in station. Such a friendship, if possible
in itself, would never be tolerated by the lady
whom you are to marry, with whom you drove by
my schoolhouse the other day. A gentleman so
loyal to his race and its traditions as you have
shown yourself could not be less faithful to the
lady to whom he has lost his heart and his memory
in three short months.

No, Mr. Tryon, our romance is ended, and
better so. We could never have been happy. I have
found a work in which I may be of service to
others who have fewer opportunities than mine
have been. Leave me in peace, I beseech you,
and I shall soon pass out of your neighborhood as
I have passed out of your life, and hope to pass
out of your memory.
Yours very truly,
ROWENA WALDEN.


XXX

AN UNUSUAL HONOR


To Rena's high-strung and sensitive nature,
already under very great tension from her past
experience, the ordeal of the next few days was a
severe one. On the one hand, Jeff Wain's infatuation
had rapidly increased, in view of her speedy
departure. From Mrs. Tryon's remark about
Wain's wife Amanda, and from things Rena had
since learned, she had every reason to believe that
this wife was living, and that Wain must be aware
of the fact. In the light of this knowledge, Wain's
former conduct took on a blacker significance than,
upon reflection, she had charitably clothed it with
after the first flush of indignation. That he had
not given up his design to make love to her was
quite apparent, and, with Amanda alive, his attentions,
always offensive since she had gathered their
import, became in her eyes the expression of a
villainous purpose, of which she could not speak to
others, and from which she felt safe only so long
as she took proper precautions against it. In a
week her school would be over, and then she would
get Elder Johnson, or some one else than Wain,
to take her back to Patesville. True, she might
abandon her school and go at once; but her work
would be incomplete, she would have violated her
contract, she would lose her salary for the month,
explanations would be necessary, and would not be
forthcoming. She might feign sickness,--indeed,
it would scarcely be feigning, for she felt far from
well; she had never, since her illness, quite
recovered her former vigor--but the inconvenience
to others would be the same, and her self-sacrifice
would have had, at its very first trial, a lame and
impotent conclusion. She had as yet no fear of
personal violence from Wain; but, under the
circumstances, his attentions were an insult. He was
evidently bent upon conquest, and vain enough to
think he might achieve it by virtue of his personal
attractions. If he could have understood
how she loathed the sight of his narrow eyes, with
their puffy lids, his thick, tobacco-stained lips, his
doubtful teeth, and his unwieldy person, Wain,
a monument of conceit that he was, might have
shrunk, even in his own estimation, to something
like his real proportions. Rena believed that, to
defend herself from persecution at his hands, it
was only necessary that she never let him find her
alone. This, however, required constant watchfulness.
Relying upon his own powers, and upon
a woman's weakness and aversion to scandal, from
which not even the purest may always escape
unscathed, and convinced by her former silence
that he had nothing serious to fear, Wain made it
a point to be present at every public place where
she might be. He assumed, in conversation with
her which she could not avoid, and stated to
others, that she had left his house because of a
previous promise to divide the time of her stay
between Elder Johnson's house and his own. He
volunteered to teach a class in the Sunday-school
which Rena conducted at the colored Methodist
church, and when she remained to service, occupied
a seat conspicuously near her own. In addition
to these public demonstrations, which it was
impossible to escape, or, it seemed, with so thick-
skinned an individual as Wain, even to discourage,
she was secretly and uncomfortably conscious that
she could scarcely stir abroad without the risk of
encountering one of two men, each of whom was
on the lookout for an opportunity to find her
alone.

The knowledge of Tryon's presence in the
vicinity had been almost as much as Rena could
bear. To it must be added the consciousness that
he, too, was pursuing her, to what end she could
not tell. After his letter to her brother, and the
feeling therein displayed, she found it necessary to
crush once or twice a wild hope that, her secret
being still unknown save to a friendly few, he might
return and claim her. Now, such an outcome
would be impossible. He had become engaged to
another woman,--this in itself would be enough
to keep him from her, if it were not an index of
a vastly more serious barrier, a proof that he had
never loved her. If he had loved her truly, he
would never have forgotten her in three short
months,--three long months they had heretofore
seemed to her, for in them she had lived a lifetime
of experience. Another impassable barrier lay in
the fact that his mother had met her, and that she
was known in the neighborhood. Thus cut off
from any hope that she might be anything to
him, she had no wish to meet her former lover;
no possible good could come of such a meeting;
and yet her fluttering heart told her that if he
should come, as his letter foreshadowed that he
might,--if he should come, the loving George of
old, with soft words and tender smiles and specious
talk of friendship--ah! then, her heart
would break! She must not meet him--at any
cost she must avoid him.

But this heaping up of cares strained her
endurance to the breaking-point. Toward the middle of
the last week, she knew that she had almost reached
the limit, and was haunted by a fear that she
might break down before the week was over. Now
her really fine nature rose to the emergency, though
she mustered her forces with a great effort. If she
could keep Wain at his distance and avoid Tryon
for three days longer, her school labors would be
ended and she might retire in peace and honor.

"Miss Rena," said Plato to her on Tuesday,
"ain't it 'bout time I wuz gwine home wid you
ag'in?"

"You may go with me to-morrow, Plato,"
answered the teacher.

After school Plato met an anxious eyed young
man in the woods a short distance from the schoolhouse.

"Well, Plato, what news?"

"I's gwine ter see her home ter-morrer, Mars
Geo'ge."

"To-morrow!" replied Tryon; "how very
fortunate! I wanted you to go to town to-morrow
to take an important message for me. I'm sorry,
Plato--you might have earned another dollar."

To lie is a disgraceful thing, and yet there are
times when, to a lover's mind, love dwarfs all
ordinary laws. Plato scratched his head
disconsolately, but suddenly a bright thought struck him.

"Can't I go ter town fer you atter I've seed her
home, Mars Geo'ge?"

"N-o, I'm afraid it would be too late," returned Tryon
doubtfully.

"Den I'll haf ter ax 'er ter lemme go nex' day,"
said Plato, with resignation. The honor might be
postponed or, if necessary, foregone; the opportunity
to earn a dollar was the chance of a lifetime
and must not be allowed to slip.

"No, Plato," rejoined Tryon, shaking his head,
"I shouldn't want to deprive you of so great a
pleasure." Tryon was entirely sincere in this
characterization of Plato's chance; he would have
given many a dollar to be sure of Plato's place and
Plato's welcome. Rena's letter had re-inflamed his
smouldering passion; only opposition was needed
to fan it to a white heat. Wherein lay the great
superiority of his position, if he was denied the
right to speak to the one person in the world whom
he most cared to address? He felt some dim
realization of the tyranny of caste, when he found
it not merely pressing upon an inferior people who
had no right to expect anything better, but barring
his own way to something that he desired. He
meant her no harm--but he must see her. He
could never marry her now--but he must see her.
He was conscious of a certain relief at the thought
that he had not asked Blanche Leary to be his
wife. His hand was unpledged. He could not
marry the other girl, of course, but they must meet
again. The rest he would leave to Fate, which
seemed reluctant to disentangle threads which it
had woven so closely.

"I think, Plato, that I see an easier way out of
the difficulty. Your teacher, I imagine, merely
wants some one to see her safely home. Don't
you think, if you should go part of the way, that
I might take your place for the rest, while you did
my errand?"

"Why, sho'ly, Mars Geo'ge, you could take keer
er her better 'n I could--better 'n anybody could
--co'se you could!"

Mars Geo'ge was white and rich, and could do
anything. Plato was proud of the fact that he
had once belonged to Mars Geo'ge. He could
not conceive of any one so powerful as Mars
Geo'ge, unless it might be God, of whom Plato
had heard more or less, and even here the
comparison might not be quite fair to Mars Geo'ge,
for Mars Geo'ge was the younger of the two. It
would undoubtedly be a great honor for the teacher
to be escorted home by Mars Geo'ge. The teacher
was a great woman, no doubt, and looked white;
but Mars Geo'ge was the real article. Mars
Geo'ge had never been known to go with a black
woman before, and the teacher would doubtless
thank Plato for arranging that so great an honor
should fall upon her. Mars Geo'ge had given him
fifty cents twice, and would now give him a dollar.
Noble Mars Geo'ge! Fortunate teacher! Happy
Plato!

"Very well, Plato. I think we can arrange it
so that you can kill the two rabbits at one shot.
Suppose that we go over the road that she will
take to go home."

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