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Jack London - "The Cruise of the Snark"

Gail Hamilton - "Gala Days"

Honore de Balzac - "Juana"

Richard Harding Davis - "Soldiers of Fortune"

The House Behind The Cedars

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




They soon arrived at the schoolhouse. School
had been out an hour, and the clearing was
deserted. Plato led the way by the road through
the woods to a point where, amid somewhat thick
underbrush, another path intersected the road they
were following.

"Now, Plato," said Tryon, pausing here, "this
would be a good spot for you to leave the teacher
and for me to take your place. This path leads
to the main road, and will take you to town very
quickly. I shouldn't say anything to the teacher
about it at all; but when you and she get here,
drop behind and run along this path until you
meet me,--I'll be waiting a few yards down the
road,--and then run to town as fast as your legs
will carry you. As soon as you are gone, I'll
come out and tell the teacher that I've sent you
away on an errand, and will myself take your
place. You shall have a dollar, and I'll ask her
to let you go home with her the next day. But
you mustn't say a word about it, Plato, or you
won't get the dollar, and I'll not ask the teacher
to let you go home with her again."

"All right, Mars Geo'ge, I ain't gwine ter say
no mo' d'n ef de cat had my tongue."



XXXI

IN DEEP WATERS


Rena was unusually fatigued at the close of her
school on Wednesday afternoon. She had been
troubled all day with a headache, which, beginning
with a dull pain, had gradually increased in intensity
until every nerve was throbbing like a trip-
hammer. The pupils seemed unusually stupid. A
discouraging sense of the insignificance of any part
she could perform towards the education of three
million people with a school term of two months
a year hung over her spirit like a pall. As the
object of Wain's attentions, she had begun to feel
somewhat like a wild creature who hears the
pursuers on its track, and has the fear of capture
added to the fatigue of flight. But when this
excitement had gone too far and had neared the limit
of exhaustion came Tryon's letter, with the resulting
surprise and consternation. Rena had keyed
herself up to a heroic pitch to answer it; but when
the inevitable reaction came, she was overwhelmed
with a sickening sense of her own weakness. The
things which in another sphere had constituted her
strength and shield were now her undoing, and
exposed her to dangers from which they lent her
no protection. Not only was this her position in
theory, but the pursuers were already at her heels.
As the day wore on, these dark thoughts took on
an added gloom, until, when the hour to dismiss
school arrived, she felt as though she had not a
friend in the world. This feeling was accentuated
by a letter which she had that morning
received from her mother, in which Mis' Molly
spoke very highly of Wain, and plainly expressed
the hope that her daughter might like him so well
that she would prefer to remain in Sampson
County.

Plato, bright-eyed and alert, was waiting in the
school-yard until the teacher should be ready to
start. Having warned away several smaller children
who had hung around after school as though
to share his prerogative of accompanying the
teacher, Plato had swung himself into the low
branches of an oak at the edge of the clearing,
from which he was hanging by his legs, head
downward. He dropped from this reposeful attitude
when the teacher appeared at the door, and took
his place at her side.

A premonition of impending trouble caused the
teacher to hesitate. She wished that she had kept
more of the pupils behind. Something whispered
that danger lurked in the road she customarily
followed. Plato seemed insignificantly small and
weak, and she felt miserably unable to cope with
any difficult or untoward situation.

"Plato," she suggested, "I think we'll go round
the other way to-night, if you don't mind."

Visions of Mars Geo'ge disappointed, of a dollar
unearned and unspent, flitted through the narrow
brain which some one, with the irony of ignorance
or of knowledge, had mocked with the name
of a great philosopher. Plato was not an untruthful
lad, but he seldom had the opportunity to earn
a dollar. His imagination, spurred on by the
instinct of self-interest, rose to the emergency.

"I's feared you mought git snake-bit gwine
roun' dat way, Miss Rena. My brer Jim kill't a
water-moccasin down dere yistiddy 'bout ten feet
long."

Rena had a horror of snakes, with which the
swamp by which the other road ran was infested.
Snakes were a vivid reality; her presentiment
was probably a mere depression of spirits due to
her condition of nervous exhaustion. A cloud had
come up and threatened rain, and the wind was
rising ominously. The old way was the shorter;
she wanted above all things to get to Elder
Johnson's and go to bed. Perhaps sleep would rest
her tired brain--she could not imagine herself
feeling worse, unless she should break down altogether.

She plunged into the path and hastened forward
so as to reach home before the approaching
storm. So completely was she absorbed in her
own thoughts that she scarcely noticed that Plato
himself seemed preoccupied. Instead of capering
along like a playful kitten or puppy, he walked by
her side unusually silent. When they had gone a
short distance and were approaching a path which
intersected their road at something near a right
angle, the teacher missed Plato. He had dropped
behind a moment before; now he had disappeared
entirely. Her vague alarm of a few moments
before returned with redoubled force.

"Plato!" she called; "Plato!"

There was no response, save the soughing of the
wind through the swaying treetops. She stepped
hastily forward, wondering if this were some childish
prank. If so, it was badly timed, and she
would let Plato feel the weight of her displeasure.

Her forward step had brought her to the
junction of the two paths, where she paused
doubtfully. The route she had been following was the
most direct way home, but led for quite a distance
through the forest, which she did not care to
traverse alone. The intersecting path would soon
take her to the main road, where she might find
shelter or company, or both. Glancing around
again in search of her missing escort, she became
aware that a man was approaching her from each
of the two paths. In one she recognized the eager
and excited face of George Tryon, flushed with
anticipation of their meeting, and yet grave with
uncertainty of his reception. Advancing confidently
along the other path she saw the face of
Jeff Wain, drawn, as she imagined in her anguish,
with evil passions which would stop at nothing.

What should she do? There was no sign of
Plato--for aught she could see or hear of him,
the earth might have swallowed him up. Some
deadly serpent might have stung him. Some
wandering rabbit might have tempted him aside.
Another thought struck her. Plato had been
very quiet--there had been something on his
conscience--perhaps he had betrayed her! But to
which of the two men, and to what end?

The problem was too much for her overwrought
brain. She turned and fled. A wiser instinct
might have led her forward. In the two conflicting
dangers she might have found safety. The
road after all was a public way. Any number of
persons might meet there accidentally. But she
saw only the darker side of the situation. To
turn to Tryon for protection before Wain had by
some overt act manifested the evil purpose which
she as yet only suspected would be, she imagined,
to acknowledge a previous secret acquaintance
with Tryon, thus placing her reputation at Wain's
mercy, and to charge herself with a burden of
obligation toward a man whom she wished to avoid
and had refused to meet. If, on the other hand,
she should go forward to meet Wain, he would
undoubtedly offer to accompany her homeward.
Tryon would inevitably observe the meeting, and
suppose it prearranged. Not for the world would
she have him think so--why she should care
for his opinion, she did not stop to argue. She
turned and fled, and to avoid possible pursuit,
struck into the underbrush at an angle which she
calculated would bring her in a few rods to another
path which would lead quickly into the main
road. She had run only a few yards when she
found herself in the midst of a clump of prickly
shrubs and briars. Meantime the storm had
burst; the rain fell in torrents. Extricating
herself from the thorns, she pressed forward, but
instead of coming out upon the road, found herself
penetrating deeper and deeper into the forest.

The storm increased in violence. The air grew
darker and darker. It was near evening, the
clouds were dense, the thick woods increased the
gloom. Suddenly a blinding flash of lightning
pierced the darkness, followed by a sharp clap of
thunder. There was a crash of falling timber.
Terror-stricken, Rena flew forward through the
forest, the underbrush growing closer and closer
as she advanced. Suddenly the earth gave way
beneath her feet and she sank into a concealed
morass. By clasping the trunk of a neighboring
sapling she extricated herself with an effort, and
realized with a horrible certainty that she was
lost in the swamp.

Turning, she tried to retrace her steps. A flash
of lightning penetrated the gloom around her, and
barring her path she saw a huge black snake,--
harmless enough, in fact, but to her excited
imagination frightful in appearance. With a wild
shriek she turned again, staggered forward a few
yards, stumbled over a projecting root, and fell
heavily to the earth.

When Rena had disappeared in the underbrush,
Tryon and Wain had each instinctively set out in
pursuit of her, but owing to the gathering darkness,
the noise of the storm, and the thickness of
the underbrush, they missed not only Rena but
each other, and neither was aware of the other's
presence in the forest. Wain kept up the chase
until the rain drove him to shelter. Tryon, after
a few minutes, realized that she had fled to escape
him, and that to pursue her would be to defeat
rather than promote his purpose. He desisted,
therefore, and returning to the main road, stationed
himself at a point where he could watch Elder
Johnson's house, and having waited for a while
without any signs of Rena, concluded that she had
taken refuge in some friendly cabin. Turning
homeward disconsolately as night came on, he
intercepted Plato on his way back from town, and
pledged him to inviolable secrecy so effectually
that Plato, when subsequently questioned, merely
answered that he had stopped a moment to gather
some chinquapins, and when he had looked around
the teacher was gone.

Rena not appearing at supper-time nor for an
hour later, the elder, somewhat anxious, made
inquiries about the neighborhood, and finding his
guest at no place where she might be expected to
stop, became somewhat alarmed. Wain's house
was the last to which he went. He had surmised
that there was some mystery connected with her
leaving Wain's, but had never been given any
definite information about the matter. In response
to his inquiries, Wain expressed surprise, but
betrayed a certain self-consciousness which did not
escape the elder's eye. Returning home, he organized
a search party from his own family and several
near neighbors, and set out with dogs and
torches to scour the woods for the missing teacher.
A couple of hours later, they found her lying
unconscious in the edge of the swamp, only a few
rods from a well-defined path which would soon
have led her to the open highway. Strong arms
lifted her gently and bore her home. Mrs. Johnson
undressed her and put her to bed, administering
a homely remedy, of which whiskey was
the principal ingredient, to counteract the effects
of the exposure. There was a doctor within five
miles, but no one thought of sending for him, nor
was it at all likely that it would have been possible
to get him for such a case at such an hour.

Rena's illness, however, was more deeply seated
than her friends could imagine. A tired body,
in sympathy with an overwrought brain, had left
her peculiarly susceptible to the nervous shock of
her forest experience. The exposure for several
hours in her wet clothing to the damps and miasma
of the swamp had brought on an attack of brain
fever. The next morning, she was delirious. One
of the children took word to the schoolhouse that
the teacher was sick and there would be no school
that day. A number of curious and sympathetic
people came in from time to time and suggested
various remedies, several of which old Mrs. Johnson,
with catholic impartiality, administered to
the helpless teacher, who from delirium gradually
sunk into a heavy stupor scarcely distinguishable
from sleep. It was predicted that she would
probably be well in the morning; if not, it would
then be time to consider seriously the question of
sending for a doctor.



XXXII

THE POWER OF LOVE


After Tryon's failure to obtain an interview
with Rena through Plato's connivance, he decided
upon a different course of procedure. In a few
days her school term would be finished. He was
not less desirous to see her, was indeed as much
more eager as opposition would be likely to make
a very young man who was accustomed to having
his own way, and whose heart, as he had discovered,
was more deeply and permanently involved than
he had imagined. His present plan was to wait
until the end of the school; then, when Rena went
to Clinton on the Saturday or Monday to draw
her salary for the month, he would see her in the
town, or, if necessary, would follow her to
Patesville. No power on earth should keep him from
her long, but he had no desire to interfere in any
way with the duty which she owed to others.
When the school was over and her work completed,
then he would have his innings. Writing
letters was too unsatisfactory a method of
communication--he must see her face to face.

The first of his three days of waiting had passed,
when, about ten o'clock on the morning of the
second day, which seemed very long in prospect,
while driving along the road toward Clinton, he
met Plato, with a rabbit trap in his hand.

"Well, Plato," he asked, "why are you absent
from the classic shades of the academy to-day?"

"Hoddy, Mars Geo'ge. W'at wuz dat you
say?"

"Why are you not at school to-day?"

"Ain' got no teacher, Mars Geo'ge. Teacher's
gone!"

"Gone!" exclaimed Tryon, with a sudden leap
of the heart. "Gone where? What do you
mean?"

"Teacher got los' in de swamp, night befo' las',
'cause Plato wa'n't dere ter show her de way out'n
de woods. Elder Johnson foun' 'er wid dawgs and
tawches, an' fotch her home an' put her ter bed.
No school yistiddy. She wuz out'n her haid las'
night, an' dis mawnin' she wuz gone."

"Gone where?"

"Dey don' nobody know whar, suh."

Leaving Plato abruptly, Tryon hastened down
the road toward Elder Johnson's cabin. This was
no time to stand on punctilio. The girl had been
lost in the woods in the storm, amid the thunder
and lightning and the pouring rain. She was
sick with fright and exposure, and he was the
cause of it all. Bribery, corruption, and falsehood
had brought punishment in their train, and the
innocent had suffered while the guilty escaped.
He must learn at once what had become of her.
Reaching Elder Johnson's house, he drew up by
the front fence and gave the customary halloa,
which summoned a woman to the door.

"Good-morning," he said, nodding unconsciously,
with the careless politeness of a gentleman to his
inferiors. "I'm Mr. Tryon. I have come to
inquire about the sick teacher."

"Why, suh," the woman replied respectfully,
"she got los' in de woods night befo' las', an' she
wuz out'n her min' most er de time yistiddy.
Las' night she must 'a' got out er bed an' run
away w'en eve'ybody wuz soun' asleep, fer dis
mawnin' she wuz gone, an' none er us knows whar
she is."

"Has any search been made for her?"

"Yas, suh, my husban' an' de child'en has been
huntin' roun' all de mawnin', an' he's gone ter
borry a hoss now ter go fu'ther. But Lawd knows
dey ain' no tellin' whar she'd go, 'less'n she got
her min' back sence she lef'."

Tryon's mare was in good condition. He had
money in his pocket and nothing to interfere with
his movements. He set out immediately on the
road to Patesville, keeping a lookout by the
roadside, and stopping each person he met to inquire
if a young woman, apparently ill, had been seen
traveling along the road on foot. No one had met
such a traveler. When he had gone two or three
miles, he drove through a shallow branch that
crossed the road. The splashing of his horse's
hoofs in the water prevented him from hearing a
low groan that came from the woods by the
roadside.

He drove on, making inquiries at each
farmhouse and of every person whom he encountered.
Shortly after crossing the branch, he met a young
negro with a cartload of tubs and buckets and
piggins, and asked him if he had seen on the road
a young white woman with dark eyes and hair,
apparently sick or demented. The young man
answered in the negative, and Tryon pushed forward
anxiously.

At noon he stopped at a farmhouse and swallowed
a hasty meal. His inquiries here elicited no
information, and he was just leaving when a young
man came in late to dinner and stated, in response
to the usual question, that he had met, some two
hours before, a young woman who answered
Tryon's description, on the Lillington road, which
crossed the main road to Patesville a short distance
beyond the farmhouse. He had spoken to the
woman. At first she had paid no heed to his
question. When addressed a second time, she had
answered in a rambling and disconnected way,
which indicated to his mind that there was
something wrong with her.

Tryon thanked his informant and hastened to
the Lillington road. Stopping as before to inquire,
he followed the woman for several hours, each
mile of the distance taking him farther away from
Patesville. From time to time he heard of the
woman. Toward nightfall he found her. She
was white enough, with the sallowness of the
sandhill poor white. She was still young, perhaps, but
poverty and a hard life made her look older than
she ought. She was not fair, and she was not
Rena. When Tryon came up to her, she was sitting
on the doorsill of a miserable cabin, and held in
her hand a bottle, the contents of which had never
paid any revenue tax. She had walked twenty
miles that day, and had beguiled the tedium of the
journey by occasional potations, which probably
accounted for the incoherency of speech which
several of those who met her had observed. When
Tryon drew near, she tendered him the bottle with
tipsy cordiality. He turned in disgust and
retraced his steps to the Patesville road, which he
did not reach until nightfall. As it was too dark
to prosecute the search with any chance of success,
he secured lodging for the night, intending to
resume his quest early in the morning.



XXXIII

A MULE AND A CART


Frank Fowler's heart was filled with longing
for a sight of Rena's face. When she had gone away
first, on the ill-fated trip to South Carolina, her
absence had left an aching void in his life; he had
missed her cheerful smile, her pleasant words, her
graceful figure moving about across the narrow
street. His work had grown monotonous during
her absence; the clatter of hammer and mallet,
that had seemed so merry when punctuated now
and then by the strains of her voice, became a mere
humdrum rapping of wood upon wood and iron
upon iron. He had sought work in South Carolina
with the hope that be might see her. He had
satisfied this hope, and had tried in vain to do
her a service; but Fate had been against her; her
castle of cards had come tumbling down. He felt
that her sorrow had brought her nearer to him.
The distance between them depended very much
upon their way of looking at things. He knew
that her experience had dragged her through the
valley of humiliation. His unselfish devotion had
reacted to refine and elevate his own spirit. When
he heard the suggestion, after her second departure,
that she might marry Wain, he could not but
compare himself with this new aspirant. He, Frank,
was a man, an honest man--a better man than
the shifty scoundrel with whom she had ridden
away. She was but a woman, the best and sweetest
and loveliest of all women, but yet a woman.
After a few short years of happiness or sorrow,--
little of joy, perhaps, and much of sadness, which
had begun already,--they would both be food for
worms. White people, with a deeper wisdom perhaps
than they used in their own case, regarded
Rena and himself as very much alike. They were
certainly both made by the same God, in much the
same physical and mental mould; they breathed
the same air, ate the same food, spoke the same
speech, loved and hated, laughed and cried, lived
and would die, the same. If God had meant to
rear any impassable barrier between people of
contrasting complexions, why did He not express the
prohibition as He had done between other orders
of creation?

When Rena had departed for Sampson County,
Frank had reconciled himself to her absence by
the hope of her speedy return. He often stepped
across the street to talk to Mis' Molly about her.
Several letters had passed between mother and
daughter, and in response to Frank's inquiries his
neighbor uniformly stated that Rena was well and
doing well, and sent her love to all inquiring
friends. But Frank observed that Mis' Molly,
when pressed as to the date of Rena's return, grew
more and more indefinite; and finally the mother,
in a burst of confidential friendship, told Frank of
all her hopes with reference to the stranger from
down the country.

"Yas, Frank," she concluded, "it'll be her own
fault ef she don't become a lady of proputty, fer
Mr. Wain is rich, an' owns a big plantation, an'
hires a lot of hands, and is a big man in the county.
He's crazy to git her, an' it all lays in her own
han's."

Frank did not find this news reassuring. He
believed that Wain was a liar and a scoundrel.
He had nothing more than his intuitions upon
which to found this belief, but it was none the less
firm. If his estimate of the man's character were
correct, then his wealth might be a fiction, pure
and simple. If so, the truth should be known
to Mis' Molly, so that instead of encouraging
a marriage with Wain, she would see him in his
true light, and interpose to rescue her daughter
from his importunities. A day or two after this
conversation, Frank met in the town a negro from
Sampson County, made his acquaintance, and
inquired if he knew a man by the name of Jeff
Wain.

"Oh, Jeff Wain!" returned the countryman
slightingly; "yas, I knows 'im, an' don' know no
good of 'im. One er dese yer biggity, braggin'
niggers--talks lack he own de whole county, an'
ain't wuth no mo' d'n I is--jes' a big bladder wid
a handful er shot rattlin' roun' in it. Had a wife,
when I wuz dere, an' beat her an' 'bused her so
she had ter run away."

This was alarming information. Wain had
passed in the town as a single man, and Frank had
had no hint that he had ever been married. There
was something wrong somewhere. Frank determined
that he would find out the truth and, if
possible, do something to protect Rena against the
obviously evil designs of the man who had taken
her away. The barrel factory had so affected the
cooper's trade that Peter and Frank had turned
their attention more or less to the manufacture of
small woodenware for domestic use. Frank's mule
was eating off its own head, as the saying goes. It
required but little effort to persuade Peter that
his son might take a load of buckets and tubs and
piggins into the country and sell them or trade
them for country produce at a profit.

In a few days Frank had his stock prepared, and
set out on the road to Sampson County. He went
about thirty miles the first day, and camped by
the roadside for the night, resuming the journey
at dawn. After driving for an hour through the
tall pines that overhung the road like the stately
arch of a cathedral aisle, weaving a carpet for the
earth with their brown spines and cones, and
soothing the ear with their ceaseless murmur, Frank
stopped to water his mule at a point where the
white, sandy road, widening as it went, sloped
downward to a clear-running branch. On the
right a bay-tree bending over the stream mingled
the heavy odor of its flowers with the delicate
perfume of a yellow jessamine vine that had overrun
a clump of saplings on the left. From a neighboring
tree a silver-throated mocking-bird poured
out a flood of riotous melody. A group of minnows;
startled by the splashing of the mule's feet, darted
away into the shadow of the thicket, their quick
passage leaving the amber water filled with laughing
light.

The mule drank long and lazily, while over
Frank stole thoughts in harmony with the peaceful
scene,--thoughts of Rena, young and beautiful,
her friendly smile, her pensive dark eyes. He
would soon see her now, and if she had any cause
for fear or unhappiness, he would place himself at
her service--for a day, a week, a month, a year,
a lifetime, if need be.

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