Birthright Part 8

He climbed the steps into the Planter's Bank and opened the screen-door.

The cas.h.i.+er glanced up briefly, but continued busily at his ledger.

Peter walked shakenly to the barred window in the grill.

"Mr. Hooker."

"Very busy now, Peter," came the high voice.

"I want to know about this deed."

The banker was nimbly setting down long rows of figures. "No time to explain deeds, Peter."

"But--but there is a clause in this deed, Mr. Hooter, estopping colored persons from occupying the Dillihay place."

"Precisely. What about it?" Mr. Hooker snapped out his inquiry and looked up suddenly, catching Peter full in the face with his narrow-set eyes. It was the equivalent of a blow.

"According to this, I--I can't establish a school on it."

"You cannot."

"Then what can I do with it?" cried Peter.

"Sell it. You have what lawyers call a cloud on the t.i.tle. Sell it. I'll give you ten dollars for your right in it, just to clear up my t.i.tle."

A queer trembling seized Peter. The little banker turned to a fantastic caricature of a man. His hatchet face, close-set eyes, harsh, straight hair, and squeaky voice made him seem like some p.r.i.c.kly, dried-up gnome a man sees in a fever.

At that moment the little wicket-door of the window opened under the pressure of Peter's shoulder. Inside on the desk, lay neat piles of bills of all denominations, ready to be placed in the vault. In a nervous tremor Peter dropped in his blue-covered deed and picked up a hundred-dollar bill.

"I--I won't trade," he jibbered. "It--it wasn't my money. Here's your deed!" Peter was moving away. He felt a terrific impulse to run, but he walked.

The banker straightened abruptly. "Stop there, Peter!" he screeched.

At that moment Dawson Bobbs lounged in at the door, with his perpetual grin balling up his broad red face. He had a toothpick, in his mouth.

"'S matter?" he asked casually.

"Peter there," said the banker, with a pale, sharp face, "doesn't want to stick to his trade. He is just walking off with one of my hundred- dollar bills."

"Sick o' yo' deal, Peter?" inquired Bobbs, smiling and s.h.i.+fting the toothpick. He bit down on it. "Well, whut-chu want done, Henry?"

"Oh," hesitated the cas.h.i.+er in a quandary, "nothing, I suppose. Siner was excited; you know how n.i.g.g.e.rs are. We can't afford to send every n.i.g.g.e.r to the pen that breaks the law." He stood studying Peter out of his close-set eyes. "Here's your deed, Peter." He shoved it back under the grill. "And lemme give you a little friendly advice. I'd just run an ordinary n.i.g.g.e.r school if I was you. This higher education don't seem to make a n.i.g.g.e.r much smarter when he comes back than when he starts out."

A faint smile bracketed the thin nose.

Dawson Bobbs roared with sudden appreciation, took the bill from Peter's fingers, and pushed it back under the grill.

The cas.h.i.+er picked up the money, casually. He considered a moment, then reached for a long envelop. As he did so, the incident with Peter evidently pa.s.sed from his mind, for his hatchet face lighted up as with some inward illumination.

"Bobbs," he said warmly, "that was a great sermon Brother Blackwater preached. It made me want to help according as the Lord has blessed me.

Couldn't you spare five dollars, Bobbs, to go along with this?"

The constable tried to laugh and wriggle away, but the cas.h.i.+er's gimlet eyes kept boring him, and eventually he fished out a five-dollar bill and handed it in. Mr. Hooker placed the two bills in the envelop, sealed it, and handed it to the constable.

"Jest drop that in the post-office as you go down the street, Bobbs," he directed in his high voice. Peter caught a glimpse of the type-written address.

It was

Rev. Lemuel Hardiman, c/o United Missions, Katuako Post, Bahr el Ghazal, Sudan, East Africa.

CHAPTER III

The white population of Hooker's Bend was much amused and gratified at the outcome of the Hooker-Siner land deal. Every one agreed that the cas.h.i.+er's chicanery was a droll and highly original turn to give to a negro exclusion clause drawn into a deed. Then, too, it involved several legal points highly congenial to the Hooker's Bend intellect Could the Sons and Daughters of Benevolence recover their hundred dollars? Could Henry Hooker force them to pay the remaining seven hundred? Could not Siner establish his school on the Dillihay place regardless of the clause, since the cas.h.i.+er would be estopped from obtaining an injunction by his own instrument?

As a matter of fact, the Sons and Daughters of Benevolence sent a committee to wait on Mr. Hooker to see what action he meant to take on the notes that paid for his spurious deed. This brought another harvest of rumors. Street gossip reported that Henry had compromised for this, that, and the other amount, that he would not compromise, that he had persuaded the fool n.i.g.g.e.rs into signing still other instruments. Peter never knew the truth. He was not on the committee.

But high above the legal phase of interest lay the warming fact that Peter Siner, a negro graduate of Harvard, on his first tilt in Hooker's Bend affairs had ridden to a fall. This pleased even the village women, whose minds could not follow the subtle trickeries of legal disputation.

The whole affair simply proved what the white village had known all along: you can't educate a n.i.g.g.e.r. Hooker's Bend warmed with pleasure that half of its population was ineducable.

White sentiment in Hooker's Bend reacted strongly on n.i.g.g.e.rtown. Peter Siner's prestige was no more. The cause of higher education for negroes took a mighty slump. Junius Gholston, a negro boy who had intended to go to Nashville to attend Fisk University, reconsidered the matter, packed away his good clothes, put on overalls, and s.h.i.+pped down the river as a roustabout instead.

In the Siner cabin old Caroline Siner berated her boy for his stupidity in ever trading with that low-down, twisting snake in the gra.s.s, Henry Hooker. She alternated this with floods of tears. Caroline had no sympathy for her offspring. She said she had thrown away years of self- sacrifice, years of was.h.i.+ng, a thousand little comforts her money would have bought, all for nothing, for less than nothing, to s.h.i.+p a fool n.i.g.g.e.r up North and to s.h.i.+p him back.

Of all n.i.g.g.e.rtown, Caroline was the most unforgiving because Peter had wounded her in her pride. Every other negro in the village felt that genial satisfaction in a great man's downfall that is balm to small souls. But the old mother knew not this consolation. Peter was her proxy. It was she who had fallen.

The only person in n.i.g.g.e.rtown who continued amiable to Peter Siner was Cissie Dildine. The octoroon, perhaps, had other criteria by which to judge a man than his success or mishaps dealing with a pettifogger.

Two or three days after the catastrophe, Cissie made an excursion to the Siner cabin with a plate of cookies. Cissie was careful to place her visit on exactly a normal footing. She brought her little cakes in the role of one who saw no evil, spoke no evil, and heard no evil. But somehow Cissie's visit increased the old woman's wrath. She remained obstinately in the kitchen, and made remarks not only audible, but arresting, through the thin part.i.tion that separated it from the poor living-room.

Cissie was hardly inside when a voice stated that it hated to see a gal running after a man, trying to bait him with a lot of fum-diddles.

Cissie gave Peter a single wide-eyed glance, and then attempted to ignore the bodiless comment.

"Here are some cookies, Mr. Siner," began the girl, rather nervously. "I thought you and Ahnt Carolin'--"

"Yeah, I 'magine dey's fuh me!" jeered the spectral voice.

"Might like them," concluded the girl, with a little gasp.

"I suttinly don' want no light-fingered hussy ma'yin' my son," proceeded the voice, "an' de whole Dildine fambly 'll bear watchin'."

[Ill.u.s.tration: In the Siner cabin old Caroline Siner berated her boy.]

"Won't you have a seat?" asked Peter, exquisitely uncomfortable.

Cissie handed him her plate in confusion.