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Gilbert White - "Project Gutenberg surfs with a modem donated by Supra."

the American Tract Society - "Step by Step; or Tidy's Way to Freedom"

A. Light - "Poems of Sidney Lanier."

Stewart Edward White - "The Land of Footprints"

The House Behind The Cedars

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




Tryon found the subject a little tiresome, and
the doctor's enthusiasm not at all contagious. He
could not possibly have been interested in a colored
girl, under any circumstances, and he was
engaged to be married to the most beautiful white
woman on earth. To mention a negro woman in
the same room where he was thinking of Rena
seemed little short of profanation. His friend the
doctor was a jovial fellow, but it was surely doubtful
taste to refer to his wife in such a conversation.
He was very glad when the doctor dropped the
subject and permitted him to go more into detail
about the matter which formed his business in
Patesville. He took out of his pocket the papers
concerning the McSwayne claim and laid them on
the judge's desk.

"You'll find everything there, sir,--the note,
the contract, and some correspondence that will
give you the hang of the thing. Will you be able
to look over them to-day? I should like," he added
a little nervously, "to go back to-morrow."

"What!" exclaimed Dr. Green vivaciously,
"insult our town by staying only one day? It
won't be long enough to get acquainted with our
young ladies. Patesville girls are famous for their
beauty. But perhaps there's a loadstone in South
Carolina to draw you back? Ah, you change color!
To my mind there's nothing finer than the ingenuous
blush of youth. But we'll spare you if you'll
answer one question--is it serious?"

"I'm to be married in two weeks, sir," answered
Tryon. The statement sounded very pleasant, in
spite of the slight embarrassment caused by the
inquiry.

"Good boy!" rejoined the doctor, taking his
arm familiarly--they were both standing now.
"You ought to have married a Patesville girl, but
you people down towards the eastern counties
seldom come this way, and we are evidently too late
to catch you."

"I'll look your papers over this morning," said
the judge, "and when I come from dinner will
stop at the court house and examine the records
and see whether there's anything we can get hold
of. If you'll drop in around three or four o'clock,
I may be able to give you an opinion."

"Now, George," exclaimed the doctor, "we'll
go back to the office for a spell, and then I'll take
you home with me to luncheon."

Tryon hesitated.

"Oh, you must come! Mrs. Green would never
forgive me if I didn't bring you. Strangers are
rare birds in our society, and when they come we
make them welcome. Our enemies may overturn
our institutions, and try to put the bottom rail on
top, but they cannot destroy our Southern hospitality.
There are so many carpet-baggers and other
social vermin creeping into the South, with the
Yankees trying to force the niggers on us, that it's
a genuine pleasure to get acquainted with another
real Southern gentleman, whom one can invite into
one's house without fear of contamination, and before
whom one can express his feelings freely and
be sure of perfect sympathy."



XIII

AN INJUDICIOUS PAYMENT


When Judge Straight's visitors had departed,
he took up the papers which had been laid loosely
on the table as they were taken out of Tryon's breast-
pocket, and commenced their perusal. There was
a note for five hundred dollars, many years overdue,
but not yet outlawed by lapse of time; a
contract covering the transaction out of which the
note had grown; and several letters and copies of
letters modifying the terms of the contract. The
judge had glanced over most of the papers, and
was getting well into the merits of the case, when
he unfolded a letter which read as follows:--


MY DEAREST GEORGE,-- I am going away
for about a week, to visit the bedside of an old
friend, who is very ill, and may not live. Do not
be alarmed about me, for I shall very likely be
back by the time you are.
Yours lovingly,
ROWENA WARWICK.


The judge was unable to connect this letter with
the transaction which formed the subject of his
examination. Age had dimmed his perceptions
somewhat, and it was not until he had finished
the letter, and read it over again, and noted the
signature at the bottom a second time, that he
perceived that the writing was in a woman's hand,
that the ink was comparatively fresh, and that
the letter was dated only a couple of days before.
While he still held the sheet in his hand, it
dawned upon him slowly that he held also one of
the links in a chain of possible tragedy which he
himself, he became uncomfortably aware, had had
a hand in forging.

"It is the Walden woman's daughter, as sure as
fate! Her name is Rena. Her brother goes by
the name of Warwick. She has come to visit her
sick mother. My young client, Green's relation, is
her lover--is engaged to marry her--is in town,
and is likely to meet her!"

The judge was so absorbed in the situation
thus suggested that he laid the papers down and
pondered for a moment the curious problem
involved. He was quite aware that two races had
not dwelt together, side by side, for nearly three
hundred years, without mingling their blood in
greater or less degree; he was old enough, and had
seen curious things enough, to know that in this
mingling the current had not always flowed in
one direction. Certain old decisions with which
he was familiar; old scandals that had crept along
obscure channels; old facts that had come to the
knowledge of an old practitioner, who held in the
hollow of his hand the honor of more than one
family, made him know that there was dark blood
among the white people--not a great deal, and
that very much diluted, and, so long as it was
sedulously concealed or vigorously denied, or lost
in the mists of tradition, or ascribed to a foreign or
an aboriginal strain, having no perceptible effect
upon the racial type.

Such people were, for the most part, merely on
the ragged edge of the white world, seldom rising
above the level of overseers, or slave-catchers, or
sheriff's officers, who could usually be relied upon
to resent the drop of black blood that tainted them,
and with the zeal of the proselyte to visit their
hatred of it upon the unfortunate blacks that fell
into their hands. One curse of negro slavery
was, and one part of its baleful heritage is, that
it poisoned the fountains of human sympathy.
Under a system where men might sell their own
children without social reprobation or loss of
prestige, it was not surprising that some of them
should hate their distant cousins. There were
not in Patesville half a dozen persons capable
of thinking Judge Straight's thoughts upon the
question before him, and perhaps not another who
would have adopted the course he now pursued
toward this anomalous family in the house behind
the cedars.

"Well, here we are again, as the clown in the
circus remarks," murmured the judge. "Ten years
ago, in a moment of sentimental weakness and of
quixotic loyalty to the memory of an old friend,--
who, by the way, had not cared enough for his own
children to take them away from the South, as he
might have done, or to provide for them handsomely,
as he perhaps meant to do,--I violated the traditions
of my class and stepped from the beaten path
to help the misbegotten son of my old friend out of
the slough of despond, in which he had learned, in
some strange way, that he was floundering. Ten
years later, the ghost of my good deed returns to
haunt me, and makes me doubt whether I have
wrought more evil than good. I wonder," he mused,
"if he will find her out?"

The judge was a man of imagination; he had
read many books and had personally outlived some
prejudices. He let his mind run on the various
phases of the situation.

"If he found her out, would he by any
possibility marry her?"

"It is not likely," he answered himself. "If he
made the discovery here, the facts would probably
leak out in the town. It is something that a man
might do in secret, but only a hero or a fool would
do openly."

The judge sighed as he contemplated another
possibility. He had lived for seventy years under
the old regime. The young man was a gentleman
--so had been the girl's father. Conditions were
changed, but human nature was the same. Would
the young man's love turn to disgust and repulsion,
or would it merely sink from the level of worship
to that of desire? Would the girl, denied marriage,
accept anything less? Her mother had,--but
conditions were changed. Yes, conditions were
changed, so far as the girl was concerned; there
was a possible future for her under the new order
of things; but white people had not changed their
opinion of the negroes, except for the worse. The
general belief was that they were just as inferior as
before, and had, moreover, been spoiled by a
disgusting assumption of equality, driven into their
thick skulls by Yankee malignity bent upon humiliating
a proud though vanquished foe.

If the judge had had sons and daughters of his
own, he might not have done what he now proceeded
to do. But the old man's attitude toward society
was chiefly that of an observer, and the narrow
stream of sentiment left in his heart chose to flow
toward the weaker party in this unequal conflict,
--a young woman fighting for love and opportunity
against the ranked forces of society, against
immemorial tradition, against pride of family and
of race.

"It may be the unwisest thing I ever did," he
said to himself, turning to his desk and taking up
a quill pen, "and may result in more harm than
good; but I was always from childhood in sympathy
with the under dog. There is certainly as much
reason in my helping the girl as the boy, for being
a woman, she is less able to help herself."

He dipped his pen into the ink and wrote the
following lines:--


MADAM,--If you value your daughter's happiness,
keep her at home for the next day or two.


This note he dried by sprinkling it with sand
from a box near at hand, signed with his own name,
and, with a fine courtesy, addressed to "Mrs. Molly
Walden." Having first carefully sealed it in an
envelope, he stepped to the open door, and spied,
playing marbles on the street near by, a group
of negro boys, one of whom the judge called by
name.

"Here, Billy," he said, handing the boy the
note, "take this to Mis' Molly Walden. Do you
know where she lives--down on Front Street, in
the house behind the cedars?"

"Yas, suh, I knows de place."

"Make haste, now. When you come back and
tell me what she says, I'll give you ten cents. On
second thoughts, I shall be gone to lunch, so
here's your money," he added, handing the lad
the bit of soiled paper by which the United States
government acknowledged its indebtedness to the
bearer in the sum of ten cents.

Just here, however, the judge made his mistake.
Very few mortals can spare the spring of hope,
the motive force of expectation. The boy kept
the note in his hand, winked at his companions,
who had gathered as near as their awe of the judge
would permit, and started down the street. As
soon as the judge had disappeared, Billy beckoned
to his friends, who speedily overtook him. When
the party turned the corner of Front Street and
were safely out of sight of Judge Straight's office,
the capitalist entered the grocery store and
invested his unearned increment in gingerbread.
When the ensuing saturnalia was over, Billy
finished the game of marbles which the judge had
interrupted, and then set out to execute his
commission. He had nearly reached his objective
point when he met upon the street a young white
lady, whom he did not know, and for whom, the
path being narrow at that point, he stepped out
into the gutter. He reached the house behind
the cedars, went round to the back door, and
handed the envelope to Mis' Molly, who was
seated on the rear piazza, propped up by pillows
in a comfortable rocking-chair.

"Laws-a-massy!" she exclaimed weakly, "what
is it?"

"It's a lettuh, ma'm," answered the boy, whose
expanding nostrils had caught a pleasant odor
from the kitchen, and who was therefore in no
hurry to go away.

"Who's it fur?" she asked.

"It's fuh you, ma'm," replied the lad.

"An' who's it from?" she inquired, turning
the envelope over and over, and examining it with
the impotent curiosity of one who cannot read.

"F'm ole Jedge Straight, ma'm. He tole me
ter fetch it ter you. Is you got a roasted 'tater
you could gimme, ma'm?"

"Shorely, chile. I'll have Aunt Zilphy fetch
you a piece of 'tater pone, if you'll hol' on a
minute."

She called to Aunt Zilphy, who soon came
hobbling out of the kitchen with a large square of
the delicacy,--a flat cake made of mashed sweet
potatoes, mixed with beaten eggs, sweetened and
flavored to suit the taste, and baked in a Dutch
oven upon the open hearth.

The boy took the gratuity, thanked her, and
turned to go. Mis' Molly was still scanning the
superscription of the letter. "I wonder," she
murmured, "what old Judge Straight can be writin'
to me about. Oh, boy!"

"Yas 'm," answered the messenger, looking
back.

"Can you read writin'?"

"No 'm."

"All right. Never mind."

She laid the letter carefully on the chimney-
piece of the kitchen. "I reckon it's somethin'
mo' 'bout the taxes," she thought, "or maybe
somebody wants to buy one er my lots. Rena'll
be back terreckly, an' she kin read it an' find out.
I'm glad my child'en have be'n to school. They
never could have got where they are now if they
hadn't."



XIV

A LOYAL FRIEND


Mention has been made of certain addressed
envelopes which John Warwick, on the occasion
of his visit to Patesville, had left with his
illiterate mother, by the use of which she might
communicate with her children from time to time.
On one occasion, Mis' Molly, having had a letter
written, took one of these envelopes from the chest
where she kept her most valued possessions, and
was about to inclose the letter when some one
knocked at the back door. She laid the envelope
and letter on a table in her bedroom, and went to
answer the knock. The wind, blowing across the
room through the open windows, picked up the
envelope and bore it into the street. Mis' Molly,
on her return, missed it, looked for it, and being
unable to find it, took another envelope. An hour
or two later another gust of wind lifted the bit
of paper from the ground and carried it into the
open door of the cooper shop. Frank picked it
up, and observing that it was clean and unused,
read the superscription. In his conversations with
Mis' Molly, which were often about Rena,--the
subject uppermost in both their minds,--he had
noted the mystery maintained by Mis' Molly about
her daughter's whereabouts, and had often wondered
where she might be. Frank was an intelligent
fellow, and could put this and that together.
The envelope was addressed to a place in South
Carolina. He was aware, from some casual remark
of Mis' Molly's, that Rena had gone to live
in South Carolina. Her son's name was John--
that he had changed his last name was more than
likely. Frank was not long in reaching the
conclusion that Rena was to be found near the town
named on the envelope, which he carefully preserved
for future reference.

For a whole year Frank had yearned for a smile
or a kind word from the only woman in the world.
Peter, his father, had rallied him somewhat upon
his moodiness after Rena's departure.

"Now 's de time, boy, fer you ter be lookin'
roun' fer some nice gal er yo' own color, w'at'll
'preciate you, an' won't be 'shamed er you. You're
wastin' time, boy, wastin' time, shootin' at a mark
outer yo' range."

But Frank said nothing in reply, and afterwards
the old man, who was not without discernment,
respected his son's mood and was silent in turn;
while Frank fed his memory with his imagination,
and by their joint aid kept hope alive.

Later an opportunity to see her presented itself.
Business in the cooper shop was dull. A barrel
factory had been opened in the town, and had
well-nigh paralyzed the cooper's trade. The best
mechanic could hardly compete with a machine.
One man could now easily do the work of Peter's
shop. An agent appeared in town seeking laborers
for one of the railroads which the newly organized
carpet-bag governments were promoting.
Upon inquiry Frank learned that their destination
was near the town of Clarence, South Carolina.
He promptly engaged himself for the service, and
was soon at work in the neighborhood of Warwick's
home. There he was employed steadily
until a certain holiday, upon which a grand
tournament was advertised to take place in a
neighboring town. Work was suspended, and foremen and
laborers attended the festivities.

Frank had surmised that Rena would be present
on such an occasion. He had more than guessed,
too, that she must be looked for among the white
people rather than among the black. Hence the
interest with which he had scanned the grand stand.
The result has already been recounted. He had
recognized her sweet face; he had seen her
enthroned among the proudest and best. He had
witnessed and gloried in her triumph. He had seen
her cheek flushed with pleasure, her eyes lit up with
smiles. He had followed her carriage, had made
the acquaintance of Mimy the nurse, and had
learned all about the family. When finally he left
the neighborhood to return to Patesville, he had
learned of Tryon's attentions, and had heard the
servants' gossip with reference to the marriage,
of which they knew the details long before the
principals had approached the main fact. Frank
went away without having received one smile or
heard one word from Rena; but he had seen her:
she was happy; he was content in the knowledge of
her happiness. She was doubtless secure in the
belief that her secret was unknown. Why should he,
by revealing his presence, sow the seeds of doubt
or distrust in the garden of her happiness? He
sacrificed the deepest longing of a faithful heart,
and went back to the cooper shop lest perchance she
might accidentally come upon him some day and
suffer the shock which he had sedulously spared her.

"I would n' want ter skeer her," he mused, "er
make her feel bad, an' dat's w'at I'd mos' lackly do
ef she seed me. She'll be better off wid me out'n
de road. She'll marry dat rich w'ite gent'eman,--
he won't never know de diffe'nce,--an' be a w'ite
lady, ez she would 'a' be'n, ef some ole witch had n'
changed her in her cradle. But maybe some time
she'll 'member de little nigger w'at use' ter nuss
her w'en she woz a chile, an' fished her out'n de ole
canal, an' would 'a' died fer her ef it would 'a' done
any good."

Very generously too, and with a fine delicacy,
he said nothing to Mis' Molly of his having seen
her daughter, lest she might be disquieted by the
knowledge that he shared the family secret,--no
great mystery now, this pitiful secret, but more far-
reaching in its consequences than any blood-curdling
crime. The taint of black blood was the unpardonable
sin, from the unmerited penalty of which there
was no escape except by concealment. If there be
a dainty reader of this tale who scorns a lie, and
who writes the story of his life upon his sleeve for
all the world to read, let him uncurl his scornful
lip and come down from the pedestal of superior
morality, to which assured position and wide
opportunity have lifted him, and put himself in the
place of Rena and her brother, upon whom God had
lavished his best gifts, and from whom society would
have withheld all that made these gifts valuable.
To undertake what they tried to do required great
courage. Had they possessed the sneaking, cringing,
treacherous character traditionally ascribed
to people of mixed blood--the character which the
blessed institutions of a free slave-holding republic
had been well adapted to foster among them; had
they been selfish enough to sacrifice to their
ambition the mother who gave them birth, society would
have been placated or humbugged, and the voyage
of their life might have been one of unbroken
smoothness.

When Rena came back unexpectedly at the
behest of her dream, Frank heard again the music
of her voice, felt the joy of her presence and the
benison of her smile. There was, however, a subtle
difference in her bearing. Her words were not less
kind, but they seemed to come from a remoter
source. She was kind, as the sun is warm or the
rain refreshing; she was especially kind to Frank,
because he had been good to her mother. If Frank
felt the difference in her attitude, he ascribed it to
the fact that she had been white, and had taken on
something of the white attitude toward the negro;
and Frank, with an equal unconsciousness, clothed
her with the attributes of the superior race. Only
her drop of black blood, he conceived, gave him the
right to feel toward her as he would never have
felt without it; and if Rena guessed her faithful
devotee's secret, the same reason saved his worship
from presumption. A smile and a kind word were
little enough to pay for a life's devotion.

On the third day of Rena's presence in Patesville,
Frank was driving up Front Street in the
early afternoon, when he nearly fell off his cart
in astonishment as he saw seated in Dr. Green's
buggy, which was standing in front of the Patesville
Hotel, the young gentleman who had won the
prize at the tournament, and who, as he had learned,
was to marry Rena. Frank was quite certain that
she did not know of Tryon's presence in the town.
Frank had been over to Mis' Molly's in the morning,
and had offered his services to the sick woman,
who had rapidly become convalescent upon her
daughter's return. Mis' Molly had spoken of some
camphor that she needed. Frank had volunteered
to get it. Rena had thanked him, and had spoken
of going to the drugstore during the afternoon. It
was her intention to leave Patesville on the following day.

"Ef dat man sees her in dis town," said Frank
to himself, "dere'll be trouble. She don't know
HE'S here, an' I'll bet he don't know SHE'S here."

Then Frank was assailed by a very strong
temptation. If, as he surmised, the joint presence of the
two lovers in Patesville was a mere coincidence, a
meeting between them would probably result in the
discovery of Rena's secret.

"If she's found out," argued the tempter,
"she'll come back to her mother, and you can see
her every day."

But Frank's love was not of the selfish kind.
He put temptation aside, and applied the whip to
the back of his mule with a vigor that astonished the
animal and moved him to unwonted activity. In
an unusually short space of time he drew up before
Mis' Molly's back gate, sprang from the cart, and
ran up to Mis' Molly on the porch.

"Is Miss Rena here?" he demanded breathlessly.

"No, Frank; she went up town 'bout an hour ago
to see the doctor an' git me some camphor gum."

Frank uttered a groan, rushed from the house,
sprang into the cart, and goaded the terrified mule
into a gallop that carried him back to the market
house in half the time it had taken him to reach
Mis' Molly's.

"I wonder what in the worl 's the matter with
Frank," mused Mis' Molly, in vague alarm. "Ef
he hadn't be'n in such a hurry, I'd 'a' axed him
to read Judge Straight's letter. But Rena'll be
home soon."

When Frank reached the doctor's office, he saw
Tryon seated in the doctor's buggy, which was
standing by the window of the drugstore. Frank
ran upstairs and asked the doctor's man if Miss
Walden had been there.

"Yas," replied Dave, "she wuz here a little
w'ile ago, an' said she wuz gwine downstairs ter de
drugsto'. I would n' be s'prise' ef you'd fin' her
dere now."



XV

MINE OWN PEOPLE


The drive by which Dr. Green took Tryon to
his own house led up Front Street about a mile, to
the most aristocratic portion of the town, situated
on the hill known as Haymount, or, more briefly,
"The Hill." The Hill had lost some of its former
glory, however, for the blight of a four years' war
was everywhere. After reaching the top of this
wooded eminence, the road skirted for some little
distance the brow of the hill. Below them lay the
picturesque old town, a mass of vivid green, dotted
here and there with gray roofs that rose above the
tree-tops. Two long ribbons of streets stretched
away from the Hill to the faint red line that marked
the high bluff beyond the river at the farther side
of the town. The market-house tower and the
slender spires of half a dozen churches were sharply
outlined against the green background. The face
of the clock was visible, but the hours could have
been read only by eyes of phenomenal sharpness.
Around them stretched ruined walls, dismantled
towers, and crumbling earthworks--footprints of
the god of war, one of whose temples had crowned
this height. For many years before the rebellion a
Federal arsenal had been located at Patesville.
Seized by the state troops upon the secession of
North Carolina, it had been held by the Confederates
until the approach of Sherman's victorious
army, whereupon it was evacuated and partially
destroyed. The work of destruction begun by the
retreating garrison was completed by the conquerors,
and now only ruined walls and broken cannon
remained of what had once been the chief ornament
and pride of Patesville.

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