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The House Behind The Cedars

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





Rena shed tears over this simple letter, which,
to her excited imagination, merely confirmed the
warning of her dream. At the date of its writing
her mother had been sick in bed, with the symptoms
of a serious illness. She had no nurse but a
purblind old woman. Three days of progressive
illness had evidently been quite sufficient to reduce
her parent to the condition indicated by the third
dream. The thought that her mother might die
without the presence of any one who loved her
pierced Rena's heart like a knife and lent wings
to her feet. She wished for the enchanted horse
of which her brother had read to her so many
years before on the front piazza of the house
behind the cedars, that she might fly through the air
to her dying mother's side. She determined to go
at once to Patesville.

Returning home, she wrote a letter to Warwick
inclosing their mother's letter, and stating that
she had dreamed an alarming dream for three
nights in succession; that she had left the house in
charge of the servants and gone to Patesville; and
that she would return as soon as her mother was
out of danger.

To her lover she wrote that she had been called
away to visit a sick-bed, and would return very
soon, perhaps by the time he got back to Clarence.
These letters Rena posted on her way to the train,
which she took at five o'clock in the afternoon.
This would bring her to Patesville early in the
morning of the following day.



XI

A LETTER AND A JOURNEY


War has been called the court of last resort.
A lawsuit may with equal aptness be compared to
a battle--the parallel might be drawn very closely
all along the line. First we have the casus belli,
the cause of action; then the various protocols and
proclamations and general orders, by way of pleas,
demurrers, and motions; then the preliminary
skirmishes at the trial table; and then the final
struggle, in which might is quite as likely to prevail
as right, victory most often resting with the
strongest battalions, and truth and justice not
seldom overborne by the weight of odds upon the
other side.

The lawsuit which Warwick and Tryon had
gone to try did not, however, reach this ultimate
stage, but, after a three days' engagement, resulted
in a treaty of peace. The case was compromised
and settled, and Tryon and Warwick set out on
their homeward drive. They stopped at a farm-
house at noon, and while at table saw the stage-
coach from the town they had just left, bound for
their own destination. In the mail-bag under the
driver's seat were Rena's two letters; they had
been delivered at the town in the morning, and
immediately remailed to Clarence, in accordance
with orders left at the post-office the evening
before. Tryon and Warwick drove leisurely homeward
through the pines, all unconscious of the fateful
squares of white paper moving along the road
a few miles before them, which a mother's yearning
and a daughter's love had thrown, like the apple of
discord, into the narrow circle of their happiness.

They reached Clarence at four o'clock. Warwick
got down from the buggy at his office. Tryon
drove on to his hotel, to make a hasty toilet before
visiting his sweetheart.

Warwick glanced at his mail, tore open the
envelope addressed in his sister's handwriting, and
read the contents with something like dismay.
She had gone away on the eve of her wedding, her
lover knew not where, to be gone no one knew
how long, on a mission which could not be frankly
disclosed. A dim foreboding of disaster flashed
across his mind. He thrust the letter into his
pocket, with others yet unopened, and started
toward his home. Reaching the gate, he paused a
moment and then walked on past the house. Tryon
would probably be there in a few minutes, and
he did not care to meet him without first having
had the opportunity for some moments of reflection.
He must fix upon some line of action in this
emergency.

Meanwhile Tryon had reached his hotel and
opened his mail. The letter from Rena was read
first, with profound disappointment. He had
really made concessions in the settlement of that
lawsuit--had yielded several hundred dollars of
his just dues, in order that he might get back to
Rena three days earlier. Now he must cool his
heels in idleness for at least three days before she
would return. It was annoying, to say the least.
He wished to know where she had gone, that he
might follow her and stay near her until she should
be ready to come back. He might ask Warwick--
no, she might have had some good reason for not
having mentioned her destination. She had
probably gone to visit some of the poor relations of
whom her brother had spoken so frankly, and she
would doubtless prefer that he should not see her
amid any surroundings but the best. Indeed, he
did not know that he would himself care to endanger,
by suggestive comparisons, the fine aureole of
superiority that surrounded her. She represented
in her adorable person and her pure heart the
finest flower of the finest race that God had ever
made--the supreme effort of creative power, than
which there could be no finer. The flower would
soon be his; why should he care to dig up the soil
in which it grew?

Tryon went on opening his letters. There were
several bills and circulars, and then a letter from
his mother, of which he broke the seal:--


MY DEAREST GEORGE,--This leaves us well.
Blanche is still with me, and we are impatiently
awaiting your return. In your absence she seems
almost like a daughter to me. She joins me in
the hope that your lawsuits are progressing favorably,
and that you will be with us soon. . . .

On your way home, if it does not keep you
away from us too long, would it not be well for
you to come by way of Patesville, and find out
whether there is any prospect of our being able
to collect our claim against old Mr. Duncan
McSwayne's estate? You must have taken the papers
with you, along with the rest, for I do not find
them here. Things ought to be settled enough now
for people to realize on some of their securities.
Your grandfather always believed the note was
good, and meant to try to collect it, but the war
interfered. He said to me, before he died, that if
the note was ever collected, he would use the money
to buy a wedding present for your wife. Poor
father! he is dead and gone to heaven; but I am
sure that even there he would be happier if he
knew the note was paid and the money used as he
intended.

If you go to Patesville, call on my cousin, Dr.
Ed. Green, and tell him who you are. Give him
my love. I haven't seen him for twenty years.
He used to be very fond of the ladies, a very gallant
man. He can direct you to a good lawyer,
no doubt. Hoping to see you soon,
Your loving mother,
ELIZABETH TRYON.

P. S. Blanche joins me in love to you.


This affectionate and motherly letter did not
give Tryon unalloyed satisfaction. He was glad
to hear that his mother was well, but he had
hoped that Blanche Leary might have finished her
visit by this time. The reasonable inference from
the letter was that Blanche meant to await his
return. Her presence would spoil the fine romantic
flavor of the surprise he had planned for his
mother; it would never do to expose his bride to
an unannounced meeting with the woman whom he
had tacitly rejected. There would be one advantage
in such a meeting: the comparison of the
two women would be so much in Rena's favor
that his mother could not hesitate for a moment
between them. The situation, however, would
have elements of constraint, and he did not care
to expose either Rena or Blanche to any disagreeable
contingency. It would be better to take his
wife on a wedding trip, and notify his mother,
before he returned home, of his marriage. In the
extremely improbable case that she should disapprove
his choice after having seen his wife, the ice
would at least have been broken before his arrival
at home.

"By Jove!" he exclaimed suddenly, striking
his knee with his hand, "why shouldn't I run up
to Patesville while Rena's gone? I can leave here
at five o'clock, and get there some time to-morrow
morning. I can transact my business during the
day, and get back the day after to-morrow; for
Rena might return ahead of time, just as we did, and
I shall want to be here when she comes; I'd rather
wait a year for a legal opinion on a doubtful old
note than to lose one day with my love. The
train goes in twenty minutes. My bag is already
packed. I'll just drop a line to George and tell
him where I've gone."

He put Rena's letter into his breast pocket, and
turning to his trunk, took from it a handful of
papers relating to the claim in reference to which
he was going to Patesville. These he thrust into
the same pocket with Rena's letter; he wished to
read both letter and papers while on the train. It
would be a pleasure merely to hold the letter before
his eyes and look at the lines traced by her hand.
The papers he wished to study, for the more practical
purpose of examining into the merits of his
claim against the estate of Duncan McSwayne.

When Warwick reached home, he inquired if
Mr. Tryon had called.

"No, suh," answered the nurse, to whom he had
put the question; "he ain't be'n here yet, suh."

Warwick was surprised and much disturbed.

"De baby 's be'n cryin' for Miss Rena,"
suggested the nurse, "an' I s'pec' he'd like to see you,
suh. Shall I fetch 'im?"

"Yes, bring him to me."

He took the child in his arms and went out upon
the piazza. Several porch pillows lay invitingly
near. He pushed them toward the steps with his
foot, sat down upon one, and placed little Albert
upon another. He was scarcely seated when a
messenger from the hotel came up the walk from
the gate and handed him a note. At the same
moment he heard the long shriek of the afternoon
train leaving the station on the opposite side of the
town.

He tore the envelope open anxiously, read the
note, smiled a sickly smile, and clenched the paper
in his hand unconsciously. There was nothing he
could do. The train had gone; there was no
telegraph to Patesville, and no letter could leave
Clarence for twenty-four hours. The best laid
schemes go wrong at times--the stanchest ships
are sometimes wrecked, or skirt the breakers
perilously. Life is a sea, full of strange currents
and uncharted reefs--whoever leaves the traveled
path must run the danger of destruction. Warwick
was a lawyer, however, and accustomed to
balance probabilities.

"He may easily be in Patesville a day or two
without meeting her. She will spend most of her
time at mother's bedside, and he will be occupied
with his own affairs."

If Tryon should meet her--well, he was very
much in love, and he had spoken very nobly of
birth and blood. Warwick would have preferred,
nevertheless, that Tryon's theories should not be
put to this particular test. Rena's scruples had so
far been successfully combated; the question would
be opened again, and the situation unnecessarily
complicated, if Tryon should meet Rena in Patesville.

"Will he or will he not?" he asked himself.
He took a coin from his pocket and spun it upon
the floor. "Heads, he sees her; tails, he does
not."

The coin spun swiftly and steadily, leaving upon
the eye the impression of a revolving sphere. Little
Albert, left for a moment to his own devices, had
crept behind his father and was watching the whirling
disk with great pleasure. He felt that he would
like to possess this interesting object. The coin
began to move more slowly, and was wabbling to its
fall, when the child stretched forth his chubby fist
and caught it ere it touched the floor.



XII

TRYON GOES TO PATESVILLE


Tryon arrived in the early morning and put
up at the Patesville Hotel, a very comfortable inn.
After a bath, breakfast, and a visit to the barbershop,
he inquired of the hotel clerk the way to the
office of Dr. Green, his mother's cousin.

"On the corner, sir," answered the clerk, "by the
market-house, just over the drugstore. The doctor
drove past here only half an hour ago. You'll
probably catch him in his office."

Tryon found the office without difficulty. He
climbed the stair, but found no one in except a
young colored man seated in the outer office, who
rose promptly as Tryon entered.

"No, suh," replied the man to Tryon's question,
"he ain't hyuh now. He's gone out to see a
patient, suh, but he'll be back soon. Won't you
set down in de private office an' wait fer 'im, suh?"

Tryon had not slept well during his journey, and
felt somewhat fatigued. Through the open door
of the next room he saw an inviting armchair,
with a window at one side, and upon the other a
table strewn with papers and magazines.

"Yes," he answered, "I'll wait."

He entered the private office, sank into the armchair,
and looked out of the window upon the square
below. The view was mildly interesting. The old
brick market-house with the tower was quite
picturesque. On a wagon-scale at one end the public
weighmaster was weighing a load of hay. In the
booths under the wide arches several old negro
women were frying fish on little charcoal stoves--
the odor would have been appetizing to one who
had not breakfasted. On the shady side stood half
a dozen two-wheeled carts, loaded with lightwood
and drawn by diminutive steers, or superannuated
army mules branded on the flank with the cabalistic
letters "C. S. A.," which represented a vanished
dream, or "U. S. A.," which, as any negro about
the market-house would have borne witness, signified
a very concrete fact. Now and then a lady or
gentleman passed with leisurely step--no one ever
hurried in Patesville--or some poor white sandhiller
slouched listlessly along toward store or bar-room.

Tryon mechanically counted the slabs of gingerbread
on the nearest market-stall, and calculated
the cubical contents of several of the meagre loads
of wood. Having exhausted the view, he turned
to the table at his elbow and picked up a medical
journal, in which he read first an account of a
marvelous surgical operation. Turning the leaves
idly, he came upon an article by a Southern writer,
upon the perennial race problem that has vexed
the country for a century. The writer maintained
that owing to a special tendency of the negro blood,
however diluted, to revert to the African type, any
future amalgamation of the white and black races,
which foolish and wicked Northern negrophiles
predicted as the ultimate result of the new conditions
confronting the South, would therefore be an
ethnological impossibility; for the smallest trace
of negro blood would inevitably drag down the
superior race to the level of the inferior, and reduce
the fair Southland, already devastated by the hand
of the invader, to the frightful level of Hayti, the
awful example of negro incapacity. To forefend
their beloved land, now doubly sanctified by the
blood of her devoted sons who had fallen in the
struggle to maintain her liberties and preserve her
property, it behooved every true Southron to stand
firm against the abhorrent tide of radicalism, to
maintain the supremacy and purity of his all-
pervading, all-conquering race, and to resist by
every available means the threatened domination of
an inferior and degraded people, who were set to
rule hereditary freemen ere they had themselves
scarce ceased to be slaves.

When Tryon had finished the article, which
seemed to him a well-considered argument, albeit
a trifle bombastic, he threw the book upon the table.
Finding the armchair wonderfully comfortable, and
feeling the fatigue of his journey, he yielded to a
drowsy impulse, leaned his head on the cushioned
back of the chair, and fell asleep. According to
the habit of youth, he dreamed, and pursuant to his
own individual habit, he dreamed of Rena. They
were walking in the moonlight, along the quiet road
in front of her brother's house. The air was
redolent with the perfume of flowers. His arm
was around her waist. He had asked her if she
loved him, and was awaiting her answer in tremulous
but confident expectation. She opened her lips
to speak. The sound that came from them seemed
to be:--

"Is Dr. Green in? No? Ask him, when he comes
back, please, to call at our house as soon as he can."

Tryon was in that state of somnolence in which
one may dream and yet be aware that one is
dreaming,--the state where one, during a dream,
dreams that one pinches one's self to be sure that
one is not dreaming. He was therefore aware of a
ringing quality about the words he had just heard
that did not comport with the shadowy converse
of a dream--an incongruity in the remark, too,
which marred the harmony of the vision. The
shock was sufficient to disturb Tryon's slumber,
and he struggled slowly back to consciousness.
When fully awake, he thought he heard a light
footfall descending the stairs.

"Was there some one here?" he inquired of
the attendant in the outer office, who was visible
through the open door.

"Yas, suh," replied the boy, "a young cullud
'oman wuz in jes' now, axin' fer de doctuh."

Tryon felt a momentary touch of annoyance that
a negro woman should have intruded herself into
his dream at its most interesting point. Nevertheless,
the voice had been so real, his imagination had
reproduced with such exactness the dulcet tones so
dear to him, that he turned his head involuntarily
and looked out of the window. He could just see
the flutter of a woman's skirt disappearing around
the corner.

A moment later the doctor came bustling in,--
a plump, rosy man of fifty or more, with a frank,
open countenance and an air of genial good nature.
Such a doctor, Tryon fancied, ought to enjoy a
wide popularity. His mere presence would suggest
life and hope and healthfulness.

"My dear boy," exclaimed the doctor cordially,
after Tryon had introduced himself, "I'm delighted
to meet you--or any one of the old blood.
Your mother and I were sweethearts, long ago,
when we both wore pinafores, and went to see our
grandfather at Christmas; and I met her more
than once, and paid her more than one compliment,
after she had grown to be a fine young woman.
You're like her! too, but not quite so handsome--
you've more of what I suppose to be the Tryon
favor, though I never met your father. So one of
old Duncan McSwayne's notes went so far as that?
Well, well, I don't know where you won't find
them. One of them turned up here the other day
from New York.

"The man you want to see," he added later in
the conversation, "is old Judge Straight. He's
getting somewhat stiff in the joints, but he knows
more law, and more about the McSwayne estate,
than any other two lawyers in town. If anybody
can collect your claim, Judge Straight can. I'll
send my boy Dave over to his office. Dave," he
called to his attendant, "run over to Judge
Straight's office and see if he's there.

"There was a freshet here a few weeks ago,"
he want on, when the colored man had departed,
"and they had to open the flood-gates and let the
water out of the mill pond, for if the dam had
broken, as it did twenty years ago, it would have
washed the pillars from under the judge's office
and let it down in the creek, and"--

"Jedge Straight ain't in de office jes' now,
suh," reported the doctor's man Dave, from the
head of the stairs.

"Did you ask when he'd be back?"

"No, suh, you didn't tell me ter, suh."

"Well, now, go back and inquire.

"The niggers," he explained to Tryon, "are
getting mighty trifling since they've been freed.
Before the war, that boy would have been around
there and back before you could say Jack Robinson;
now, the lazy rascal takes his time just like
a white man."

Dave returned more promptly than from his
first trip. "Jedge Straight's dere now, suh," he
said. "He's done come in."

"I'll take you right around and introduce you,"
said the doctor, running on pleasantly, like a
babbling brook. "I don't know whether the judge
ever met your mother or not, but he knows a
gentleman when he sees one, and will be glad to
meet you and look after your affair. See to the
patients, Dave, and say I'll be back shortly, and
don't forget any messages left for me. Look
sharp, now! You know your failing!"

They found Judge Straight in his office. He
was seated by the rear window, and had fallen
into a gentle doze--the air of Patesville was
conducive to slumber. A visitor from some
bustling city might have rubbed his eyes, on any but a
market-day, and imagined the whole town asleep
--that the people were somnambulists and did not
know it. The judge, an old hand, roused himself
so skillfully, at the sound of approaching footsteps,
that his visitors could not guess but that he had
been wide awake. He shook hands with the doctor,
and acknowledged the introduction to Tryon with
a rare old-fashioned courtesy, which the young man
thought a very charming survival of the manners
of a past and happier age.

"No," replied the judge, in answer to a question
by Dr. Green, "I never met his mother; I was a
generation ahead of her. I was at school with her
father, however, fifty years ago--fifty years ago!
No doubt that seems to you a long time, young
gentleman?"

"It is a long time, sir," replied Tryon. "I
must live more than twice as long as I have in
order to cover it."

"A long time, and a troubled time," sighed the
judge. "I could wish that I might see this unhappy
land at peace with itself before I die.
Things are in a sad tangle; I can't see the way
out. But the worst enemy has been slain, in spite
of us. We are well rid of slavery."

"But the negro we still have with us,"
remarked the doctor, "for here comes my man
Dave. What is it, Dave?" he asked sharply, as
the negro stuck his head in at the door.

"Doctuh Green," he said, "I fuhgot ter tell
you, suh, dat dat young 'oman wuz at de office
agin jes' befo' you come in, an' said fer you to go
right down an' see her mammy ez soon ez you
could."

"Ah, yes, and you've just remembered it! I'm
afraid you're entirely too forgetful for a doctor's
office. You forgot about old Mrs. Latimer, the
other day, and when I got there she had almost
choked to death. Now get back to the office, and
remember, the next time you forget anything, I'll
hire another boy; remember that! That boy's
head," he remarked to his companions, after Dave
had gone, "reminds me of nothing so much as a
dried gourd, with a handful of cowpeas rattling
around it, in lieu of gray matter. An old woman
out in Redbank got a fishbone in her throat, the
other day, and nearly choked to death before I got
there. A white woman, sir, came very near losing
her life because of a lazy, trifling negro!"

"I should think you would discharge him, sir,"
suggested Tryon.

"What would be the use?" rejoined the doctor.
"All negroes are alike, except that now and then
there's a pretty woman along the border-line.
Take this patient of mine, for instance,--I'll call
on her after dinner, her case is not serious,--thirty
years ago she would have made any man turn his
head to look at her. You know who I mean,
don't you, judge?"

"Yes. I think so," said the judge promptly.
"I've transacted a little business for her now and
then."

"I don't know whether you've seen the daughter
or not--I'm sure you haven't for the past
year or so, for she's been away. But she's in
town now, and, by Jove, the girl is really beautiful.
And I'm a judge of beauty. Do you remember
my wife thirty years ago, judge?"

"She was a very handsome woman, Ed," replied
the other judicially. "If I had been twenty years
younger, I should have cut you out."

"You mean you would have tried. But as I
was saying, this girl is a beauty; I reckon we
might guess where she got some of it, eh, Judge?
Human nature is human nature, but it's a d--d
shame that a man should beget a child like that
and leave it to live the life open for a negro. If
she had been born white, the young fellows would
be tumbling over one another to get her. Her
mother would have to look after her pretty closely
as things are, if she stayed here; but she
disappeared mysteriously a year or two ago, and has
been at the North, I'm told, passing for white.
She'll probably marry a Yankee; he won't know
any better, and it will serve him right--she's
only too white for them. She has a very striking
figure, something on the Greek order, stately and
slow-moving. She has the manners of a lady, too
--a beautiful woman, if she is a nigger!"

"I quite agree with you, Ed," remarked the
judge dryly, "that the mother had better look
closely after the daughter."

"Ah, no, judge," replied the other, with a
flattered smile, "my admiration for beauty is purely
abstract. Twenty-five years ago, when I was
younger"--

"When you were young," corrected the judge.

"When you and I were younger," continued
the doctor ingeniously,--"twenty-five years ago, I
could not have answered for myself. But I would
advise the girl to stay at the North, if she can.
She's certainly out of place around here."

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