Birthright Part 15

A great relief came to Peter at this unexpected succor. He followed around the piazza, trying to describe Caroline's symptoms. The room Peter entered was a library, a rather stately old room, lined with books all around the walls to about as high as a man could reach. s.p.a.ces for doors and windows were let in among the book-cases. The volumes themselves seemed composed mainly of histories and old-fas.h.i.+oned scientific books, if Peter could judge from a certain severity of their bindings. On a big library table burned a gasolene-lamp, which threw a brilliant whiteness all over the room. The table was piled with books and periodicals. Books and papers were heaped on every chair in the study except a deep Morris chair in which the old Captain had been sitting. A big meridional globe, about two and a half feet in diameter, gleamed through a film of dust in the embrasure of a window. The whole room had the womanless look of a bachelor's quarters, and was flavored with tobacco and just a hint of whisky.

Old Captain Renfrew evidently had been reading when Peter called from the gate. Now the old man went to a telephone and rang long and briskly to awaken the boy who slept in the central office. Peter fidgeted as the old Captain stood with receiver to ear.

"Hard to wake." The old gentleman spoke into the transmitter, but was talking to Peter. "Don't be so uneasy, Peter. Human beings are harder to kill than you think."

There was a kindliness, even a fellows.h.i.+p, in Captain Renfrew's tones that spread like oil over Peter's raw nerves. It occurred to the negro that this was the first time he had been addressed as an authentic human being since his conversation with the two Northern men on the Pullman, up in Illinois. It surprised him. It was sufficient to take his mind momentarily from his mother. He looked a little closely at the old man at the telephone. The Captain wore few indices of kindness. Lines of settled sarcasm netted his eyes and drooped away from his old mouth. The very swell of his full temples and their crinkly veins marked a sardonic old man.

At last he roused central over the wire, and impressed upon him the necessity of creating a stridor in Dr. Jallup's dead house, and a moment later a continued buzzing in the receiver betokened the operator's efforts to do so.

The old gentleman turned around at last, holding the receiver a little distance from his ear.

"I understand you went to Harvard, Peter."

"Yes, sir." Peter took his eyes momentarily from the telephone. The old Southerner in the dressing-gown scrutinized the brown man. He cleared his throat.

"You know, Peter, it gives me a--a certain satisfaction to see a Harvard man in Hooker's Bend. I'm a Harvard man myself."

Peter stood in the brilliant light, astonished, not at Captain Renfrew's being a Harvard man,--he had known that,--but that this old gentleman was telling the fact to him, Peter Siner, a negro graduate of Harvard.

It was extraordinary; it was tantamount to an offer of friends.h.i.+p, not patronage. Such an offer in the South disturbed Peter's poise; it touched him queerly. And it seemed to explain why Captain Renfrew had received Peter so graciously and was now arranging for Dr. Jallup to visit Caroline.

Peter was moved to the conventional query, asking in what cla.s.s the Captain had been graduated. But while his very voice was asking it, Peter thought what a strange thing it was that he, Peter Siner, a negro, and this lonely old gentleman, his benefactor, were spiritual brothers, both sprung from the loins of Harvard, that ancient mother of souls.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The old gentleman turned around at last]

From the darkness outside, Dr. Jallup's horn summmoned the two men.

Captain Renfrew got out of his gown and into his coat and turned off his gasolene light. They walked around the piazza to the front of the house.

In the street the head-lights of the roadster shot divergent rays through the darkness. They went out. The old Captain took a seat in the car beside the physician, while Peter stood on the running-board. A moment later, the clutch snarled, and the machine puttered down the street. Peter clung to the standards of the auto top, peering ahead.

The men remained almost silent. Once Dr. Jallup, watching the dust that lay modeled in sharp lights and shadows under the head-lights, mentioned lack of rain. Their route did not lead over the Big Hill. They turned north at Hobbett's corner, drove around by River Street, and presently entered the northern end of the semicircle.

The speed of the car was reduced to a crawl in the bottomless dust of the crescent. The head-lights swept slowly around the cabins on the concave side of the street, bringing them one by one into stark brilliance and dropping them into obscurity. The smell of refuse, of uncleaned stables and sties and outhouses hung in the darkness. Peter bent down under the top of the motor and pointed out his place. A minute later the machine came to a noisy halt and was choked into silence. At that moment, in the sweep of the head-light, Peter saw Viny Berry, one of Nan's younger sisters, coming up from n.i.g.g.e.rtown's public well, carrying two buckets of water.

Viny was hurrying, plas.h.i.+ng the water over the sides of her buckets. The importance of her mission was written in her black face.

"She's awful thirsty," she called to Peter in guarded tones. "Nan called me to fetch some fraish water fum de well."

Peter took the water that had been brought from the semi-cesspool at the end of the street. Viny hurried across the street to home and to bed.

With the habitual twinge of his sanitary conscience, Peter considered the water in the buckets.

"We'll have to boil this," he said to the doctor.

"Boil it?" repeated Jallup, blankly. Then, he added: "Oh, yes--boil.

Certainly."

A repellent odor of burned paper, breathed air, and smoky lights filled the close room. Nan had lighted another lamp and now the place was discernible in a dull yellow glow. In the corner lay a half-burned wisp of paper. Nan herself stood by the mound on the bed, putting straight the quilts that her patient had twisted awry.

"She sho am bad, Doctor," said the colored woman, with big eyes.

Seen in the light, Dr. Jallup was a little sandy-bearded man with a round, simple face, oddly overlaid with that inscrutability carefully cultivated by country doctors. With professional cheeriness, he approached the mound of bedclothes.

"A little under the weather, Aunt Ca'line?" He slipped his fingers alongside her throat to test her temperature, at the same time drawing a thermometer from his waistcoat pocket.

The old negress stirred, and looked up out of sick eyes.

"Doctor," she gasped, "I sho got a misery heah." She indicated her stomach.

"How do you feel?" he asked hopefully.

The woman panted, then whispered:

"Lak a knife was a-cuttin' an' a-tearin' out my innards." She rested, then added, "Not so bad now; feels mo' lak somp'n's tearin' in de nex'

room."

"Like something tearing in the next room?" repeated Jallup, emptily.

"Yes, suh," she whispered. "I jes can feel hit--away off, lak."

The doctor attempted to take her temperature, but the thermometer in her mouth immediately nauseated her, so he slipped the instrument under her arm.

Old Caroline groaned at the slightest exertion, then, as she tossed her black head, she caught a glimpse of old Captain Renfrew.

She halted abruptly in her restlessness, stared at the old gentleman, wet her dry lips with a queer brown-furred tongue.

"Is dat you, Mars' Milt?" she gasped in feeble astonishment. A moment later she guessed the truth. "I s'pose you had to bring de doctor. 'Fo'

Gawd, Mars' Milt--" She lay staring, with the covers rising and falling as she gasped for breath. Her feverish eyes s.h.i.+fted back and forth between the grim old gentleman and the tall, broad-shouldered brown man at the foot of her bed. She drew a baggy black arm from under the cover.

"Da' 's Peter, Mars' Milt," she pointed. "Da' 's Peter, my son. He--he use' to be my son 'fo' he went off to school; but sence he come home, he been a-laughin' at me." Tears came to her eyes; she panted for a moment, then added: "Yeah, he done marked his mammy down fuh a n.i.g.g.e.r, Mars'

Milt. Whut I thought wuz gwine be sweet lays bitter in my mouf." She worked her thick lips as if the rank taste of her sickness were the very flavor of her son's ingrat.i.tude.

A sudden gasp and twist of her body told Nan that the old woman was again seized with a spasm. The neighbor woman took swift control, and waved out Peter and old Mr. Renfrew, while she and the doctor aided the huge negress.

The two evicted men went into Peter's room and shut the door. Peter, unnerved, groped, and presently found and lighted a lamp. He put it down on his little table among his primary papers and examination papers. He indicated to Captain Renfrew the single chair in the room.

But the old gentleman stood motionless in the mean room, with its head- line streaked walls. Sounds of the heavy lifting of Peter's mother came through the thin door and part.i.tion with painful clearness. Peter opened his own small window, for the air in his room was foul.

Captain Renfrew stood in silence, with a remote sarcasm in his wrinkled eyes. What was in his heart, why he had subjected himself to the noisomeness of failing flesh, Peter had not the faintest idea. Once, out of studently habit, he glanced at Peter's philosophic books, but apparently he read the t.i.tles without really observing them. Once he looked at Peter.

"Peter," he said colorlessly, "I hope you'll be careful of Caroline's feelings if she ever gets up again. She has been very faithful to you, Peter."

Peter's eyes dampened. A great desire mounted in him to explain himself to this strange old gentleman, to show him how inevitable had been the breach. For some reason a veritable pa.s.sion to reveal his heart to this his sole benefactor surged through the youth.

"Mr. Renfrew," he stammered, "Mr. Renfrew--I--I--" His throat abruptly ached and choked. He felt his face distort in a spasm of uncontrollable grief. He turned quickly from this strange old man with a remote sarcasm in his eyes and a remote affection in his tones. Peter clenched his jaws, his nostrils spread in his effort stoically to bottle up his grief and remorse, like a white man; in an effort to keep from howling his agony aloud, like a negro. He stood with aching throat and blurred eyes, trembling, swallowing, and silent.

Presently Nan Berry opened the door. She held a half-burned paper in her hand; Dr. Jallup stood near the bed, portioning out some calomel and quinine. The prevalent disease in Hooker's Bend is malaria; Dr. Jallup always physicked for malaria. On this occasion he diagnosed it must be a very severe attack of malaria indeed, so he measured out enormous doses.

He took a gla.s.s of the water that Viny had brought, held up old Caroline's head, and washed down two big capsules into the already poisoned stomach of the old negress. His simple face was quite inscrutable as he did this. He left other capsules for Nan to administer at regular intervals. Then he and Captain Renfrew motored out of n.i.g.g.e.rtown, out of its dust and filth and stench.