Birthright Part 20

Outside he was surprised to find that daylight still lingered in the sky. He thought night had fallen. The sun lay behind the Big Hill, but its red rays pouring down through the boles of the cedars tinted long delicate avenues in the dusty atmosphere above his head. A sharp chill in the air presaged frost for the night. Somewhere in the crescent a boy yodeled for his dog at about half-minute intervals, with the persistence of children.

Peter walked a little distance, but finally came to a stand in the dust, looking at the negro cabins, not knowing where to go or what to do.

Cissie's confession had destroyed all his plans. It had left him as adynamic as had his mother's death. It seemed to Peter that there was a certain similarity between the two events; both were sudden and desolating. And just as his mother had vanished utterly from his reach, so now it seemed Cissie was no more. Cissie the clear-eyed, Cissie the ambitious, Cissie the refined, had vanished away, and in her place stood a thief.

The thing was grotesque. Peter began a sudden shuddering in the cold.

Then he began moving toward the empty cabin where he slept and kept his things. He moved along, talking to himself in the dusty emptiness of the crescent. He decided that he would go home, pack his clothes, and vanish. A St. Louis boat would be down that night, and he would just have time to pack his clothes and catch it. He would not take his books, his philosophies. He would let them remain, in the newspapered room, until all crumbled into uniform philosophic dust, and the teachings of Aristotle blew about n.i.g.g.e.rtown.

Then, as he thought of traveling North, the vision of the honeymoon he had just planned revived his numb brain into a dismal aching. He looked back through the dusk at the Dildine roof. It stood black against an opalescent sky. Out of the foreground, bending over it, arose a clump of tall sunflowers, in whose silhouette hung a suggestion of yellow and green. The whole scene quivered slightly at every throb of his heart. He thought what a fool he was to allow a picaresque past to keep him away from such a woman, how easy it would be to go back to the soft luxury of Cissie, to tell her it made no difference; and somehow, just at that moment it seemed not to.

Then the point of view which Peter had been four years acquiring swept away the impulse, and it left him moving toward his cabin again, empty, cold, and planless.

He was drawn out of his reverie by the soft voice of a little negro boy asking him apprehensively whom he was talking to.

Peter stopped, drew forth a handkerchief and dabbed the moisture from his cold face in the meticulous fas.h.i.+on of college men.

With the boy came a dog which was cautiously smelling Peter's shoes and trousers. Both boy and dog were investigating the phenomenon of Peter.

Peter, in turn, looked down at them with a feeling that they had materialized out of nothing.

"What did you say?" he asked vaguely.

The boy was suddenly overcome with the excessive shyness of negro children, and barely managed to whisper:

"I--I ast wh-who you wuz a-talkin' to."

"Was I talking?"

The little negro nodded, undecided whether to stand his ground or flee.

Peter touched the child's crisp hair.

"I was talking to myself," he said, and moved forward again.

The child instantly gained confidence at the slight caress, took a fold of Peter's trousers in his hand for friendliness, and the two trudged on together.

"Wh-whut you talkin' to yo' se'f for?"

Peter glanced down at the little black head that promised to think up a thousand questions.

"I was wondering where to go."

"Lawsy! is you los' yo' way?"

He stroked the little head with a rush of self-pity.

"Yes, I have, son; I've completely lost my way."

The child twisted his head around and peered up alongside Peter's arm.

Presently he asked:

"Ain't you Mr. Peter Siner?"

"Yes."

"Ain't you de man whut's gwine to ma'y Miss Cissie Dildine?"

Peter looked down at his small companion with a certain concern that his marriage was already gossip known to babes.

"I'm Peter Siner," he repeated.

"Den I knows which way you wants to go," piped the youngster in sudden helpfulness. "You wants to go over to Cap'n Renfrew's place acrost de Big Hill. He done sont fuh you. Mr. Wince Was.h.i.+ngton tol' me, ef I seed you, to tell you dat Cap'n Renfrew wants to see you. I dunno whut hit's about. I ast Wince, an' he didn' know."

Peter recalled the message Nan Berry had given him some hours before.

Now the same summons had seeped around to him from another direction.

"I--I'll show you de way to Cap'n Renfrew's ef--ef you'll come back wid me th'ugh de cedar glade," proposed the child. "I--I ain't skeered in de cedar glade, b-b-but hit's so dark I kain't see my way back home.

I--I--"

Peter thanked him and declined his services. After all, he might as well go to see Captain Renfrew. He owed the old gentleman some thanks--and ten dollars.

The only thing of which Peter Siner was aware during his walk over the Big Hill and through the village was his last scene with Cissie. He went over it again and again, repeating their conversation, inventing new replies, framing new action, questioning more fully into the octoroon's vague confession and his benumbed acceptance of it. The moment his mind completed the little drama it started again from the very beginning.

At Captain Renfrew's gate this mental mummery paused long enough for him to vacillate between walking in or going around and shouting from the back gate. It is a point of etiquette in Hooker's Bend that negroes shall enter a white house from the back stoop. Peter had no desire to transgress this custom. On the other hand, if Captain Renfrew was receiving him as a fellow of Harvard, the back door, in its way, would prove equally embarra.s.sing.

After a certain indecision he compromised by entering the front gate and calling the Captain's name from among the scattered bricks of the old walk.

The house lay silent, half smothered in a dark tangle of shrubbery.

Peter called twice before he heard the shuffle of house slippers, and then saw the Captain's dressing-gown at the piazza steps.

"Is that you, Peter?" came a querulous voice.

"Yes, Captain. I was told you wanted to see me."

"You've been deliberate in coming," criticized the old gentleman, testily. "I sent you word by some black rascal three days ago."

"I just received the message to-day." Peter remained discreetly at the gate.

"Yes; well, come in, come in. See if you can do anything with this d.a.m.nable lamp."

The old man turned with a dignified drawing-together of his dressing- gown and moved back. Apparently, the renovation of a cranky lamp was the whole content of the Captain's summons to Peter.

There was something so characteristic in this incident that Peter was moved to a vague sense of mirth. It was just like the old regime to call in a negro, a special negro, from ten miles away to move a jar of ferns across the lawn or trim a box hedge or fix a lamp.

Peter followed the old gentleman around to the back piazza facing his study. There, laid out on the floor, were all the parts of a gasolene lamp, together with a pipe-wrench, a hammer, a little old-fas.h.i.+oned vise, a bar of iron, and an envelop containing the mantels and the more delicate parts of the lamp.

"It's extraordinary to me," criticized the Captain, "why they can't make a gasolene lamp that will go, and remain in a going condition."

"Has it been out of fix for three days?" asked Peter, sorry that the old gentleman should have lacked a light for so long.

"No," growled the Captain; "it started gasping at four o'clock last night; so I put it out and went to bed. I've been working at it this evening. There's a little hole in the tip,--if I could see it,--a hair- sized hole, painfully small. Why any man wants to make gasolene lamps with microscopic holes that ordinary intelligence must inform him will become clogged I cannot conceive."