Birthright Part 38

Peter Siner overtook Tump Pack a little way down the crescent, opposite the Berry cabin. The thoroughfare was deserted, because the weather was cold and the scantily clad children were indoors. However, from every cabin came sound of laughing and romping, and now and then a youngster darted through the cold from one hut to another.

It seemed to Peter Siner only a little while since he and Ida May were skittering through wintry weather from one fire to another, with Cissie, a wailing, wet-nosed little spoil-sport, trailing after them. And then, with a wheeling of the years, they were scattered everywhere.

As the negroes pa.s.sed the Berry cabin, Nan Berry came out with an old shawl around her bristling spikes. She stopped the two men and drew them to her gate with a gesture.

"Wha you gwine?"

"Jonesbuh."

"Whut you goin' do 'bout po-o-o' Cissie?"

"Goin' to see ef the sheriff won' take me 'stid o' Cissie."

"Tha's right," said Nan, nodding solemnly. "I hopes he will. You is mo'

used to it, Tump."

"Yeah, an' 'at jail sho ain't no place fuh a nice gal lak Cissie."

"Sho ain't," agreed Nan.

Peter interrupted to say he was sure the sheriff would not exchange.

The hopes of his listeners fell.

"Weh-ul," dragged out Nan, with a long face, "of co'se now it's lak dis: ef Cissie goin' to stay in dat ja-ul, she's goin' to need some mo'

clo'es 'cep'n whut she's got on,--specially lak she is."

Tump stared down the swing of the crescent.

"'Fo' Gawd, dis sho don' seem lak hit's right to me," he said.

Nan let herself out at the rickety gate. "You n.i.g.g.e.rs wait heah tull I runs up to Miss Vannie's an' git some o' Cissie's clo'es fuh you to tote her."

Tump objected.

"Jail ain't no place fuh clean clo'es. She jes better serve out her term lak she is, an' wash up when she gits th'ugh."

"You fool n.i.g.g.e.r!" snapped Nan. "She kain't serve out her term lak she is!"

"Da' 's so," said Tump.

The three stood silent, Nan and Tump lost in blankness, trying to think of something to do for Cissie. Finally Nan said:

"I heah she done commit gran' larceny, an' they goin' sen' her to de pen."

"Whut is gran' larceny?" asked Tump.

"It's takin' mo' at one time an' de white folks 'speck you to take,"

defined the woman. "Well, I'll go git her clo'es." She hurried off up the crescent.

Peter and Tump waited in the Berry cabin for Nan's return. Outside, the Berry cabin was the usual clapboard-roofed, weather-stained structure; inside, it was dark, windowless, and strong with the odor of black folk.

Some children were playing around the hearth, roasting chestnuts. Their elders sat in a circle of decrepit chairs. It was so dark that when Peter first entered he could not make out the little group, but he soon recognized their voices: Parson Ranson, Wince Was.h.i.+ngton, Jerry Dillihay, and all of the Berry family.

They were talking of Cissie, of course. They hoped Cissie wouldn't really be sent to the penitentiary, that the white folks would let her out in time for her to have her child at home. Parson Ranson thought it would be bad luck for a child to be born in jail.

Wince Was.h.i.+ngton, who had been in jail a number of times, suggested that they bail Cissie out by signing their names to a paper. He had been set free by this means once or twice.

Sally, Nan's little sister, observed tartly that if Cissie hadn't acted so, she wouldn't have been in jail.

"Don' speak lak dat uv dem as is in trouble, Sally," reproved old Parson Ranson, solemnly; "anybody can say 'Ef.'"

"Sho am de troof," agreed Jerry Dillihay.

"Sho am, black man." The conversation drifted into the endless moralizing of their race, but it held no criticism or condemnation of Cissie. From the tone of the negroes one would have thought some impersonal disaster had overtaken her. Every one was planning how to help Cissie, how to make her present state more endurable. They were the black folk, the unfortunate of the earth, and the pride of righteousness is only to the well placed and the untempted.

Presently Nan came back with a bundle of Cissie's clothes. Tump took the bundle of dainty lingerie, the intimate garments of the woman he loved, and set forth on his quixotic errand. He tied it to his shoulder-holster and set out. Peter went a little of the way with him. It was almost dusk when they started. The chill of approaching night stung the men's faces.

As they walked past the footpath that led over the Big Hill, three pistol-shots from the glade announced that the boot-leggers had opened business for the night.

Tump paused and s.h.i.+vered. He said it was a cold night. He thought he would like to get a kick of "white mule" to put a little heart in him.

It was a long walk to Jonesboro. He hesitated a moment, then turned off the road around the crescent for the path through the glade.

A thought to dissuade Tump from drinking the fiery "singlings" of the moons.h.i.+ners crossed Peters mind, but he put it aside. Tump was a habitue of the glade. All the physiological arguments upon which Peter could base an argument were far beyond the ex-soldier's comprehension. So Tump turned off through the dark trees. Peter watched him until all he could see was the white blur of Cissie's underwear swinging against his holster.

After Tump's disappearance, Peter stood for several minutes thinking.

His brief crusade into n.i.g.g.e.rtown had ended in a situation far outside of his volition. That morning he had started out with some vague idea of taking n.i.g.g.e.rtown in his hands and molding it in accordance with his white ideas; but n.i.g.g.e.rtown had taken Peter into its hands, had threatened his life, had administered to him profound mental and moral shocks, and now had dropped him, like some bit of waste, with his face set over the Big Hill for white town.

As Peter stood there it seemed to him there was something symbolic in his att.i.tude. He was no longer of the black world; he was of the white.

He did not understand his people; they eluded him.

He belonged to the white world; not to the village across the hill, but to the North. Nothing now prevented him from going North and taking the position with Farquhar. Cissie Dildine was impossible for him now.

n.i.g.g.e.rtown was immovable, at least for him. He was no Was.h.i.+ngton to lead his people to a loftier plane. In fact, Peter began to suspect that he was no leader at all. He saw now that his initial success with the Sons and Daughters of Benevolence had been effected merely by the aura of his college training. After his first misstep he had never rehabilitated himself. He perhaps had a dash of the artistic in him, and the power to mold ideas often confuses itself subjectively with the power to mold human beings. In reality he did not even understand the people he a.s.sumed to mold. A suspicion came to him that under the given conditions their ways were more rational than his own.

As for Cissie Dildine, his duty by the girl, his queer protective pa.s.sion for her--all that was surely past now. After her lapse from all decency there was no reason why he should spend another thought on her.

He would go North to Chicago.

The last of the twilight was fading in swift, visible gradations of light. The cedars, the cabins, and the hill faded in pulse-beats of darkness. Above the Big Hill the last ember of day smoldered against a green-blue infinity. Here and there a star p.r.i.c.ked the dome with a wintry brilliance.

Then, somehow, the thought of Cissie looking out on that chilly sky through iron bars tightened Peter's throat. He caught himself up sharply for his emotion. He began a vague defense of the white man's laws on grounds as cold and impersonal as the winter evening. Laws, customs, and conventions were for the strengthening of men, to seed the select, to winnow the weak. It was white logic, applied firmly, as by a white man.

But somehow the stars multiplied and kept Cissie's image before Peter--a cold, frightened girl, hara.s.sed with coming motherhood, peering at those chill, distant lights out of the blackness of a jail.

The mulatto decided to spend the night in his mother's cabin. He would do his packing, and be ready for the down-river boat in the morning. He found his way to his own gate in the darkness. He lifted it around, entered, and walked to his door. When he tried to open it, he found some one had bored holes through the shutter and the jamb and had wired it shut.

Peter struck a match to see just what had been done. The flame displayed a small sheet tacked on the door. He spent two matches investigating it.

It was a notice of levy, posted by the constable in an action of debt brought against the estate of Caroline Siner by Henry Hooker. The owner of the estate and the public in general were warned against removing anything whatsoever from the premises under penalty exacted by the law governing such offenses. Then Peter untwisted the wire and entered.

Peter searched about and found the tiny bra.s.s night-lamp which his mother always had used. The larger gla.s.s-bowled lamp was gone. The interior of the cabin was clammy from cold and foul from long lack of airing. In the corner his mother's old four-poster loomed in the shadows, but he could see some of its covers had been taken. He pa.s.sed into the kitchen with a notion of building a fire and eating a bite, but everything edible had been abstracted. Even one of the lids of the old step-stove was gone. Most of the pans and kettles had disappeared, but the pretty old Dutch sugar-bowl remained on a bare paper-covered shelf.

Negro-like, whatever person or persons who had ransacked Peter's home considered the sugar-bowl too fine to take. Or they may have thought that Peter would want this bowl for a keepsake, and with that queer compa.s.sion that permeates a negro's worst moments they allowed it to remain. And Peter knew if he raised an outcry about his losses, much of the property would be surrept.i.tiously restored, or perhaps his neighbors would bring back his things and say they had found them. They would help him as best they could, just as they of the crescent would help Cissie as best they could, and would receive her back as one of them when she and her baby were finally released from jail.

They were a queer people. They were a people who would never get on well and do well. They lacked the steel-like edge that the white man achieves. By virtue of his hardness, a white man makes his very laws and virtues instruments to crush and mulct his fellow-man; but negroes are so softened by untoward streaks of sympathy that they lose the very uses of their crimes.