From Place to Place Part 14

"What'll you bet you've got it now?" he demanded gleefully. "What'll you bet?"

"I'll bet my life--that's all," answered Trencher. "Here, I'll show you!"

He stood up. Because his wrists were chained he had to twist his body sidewise before he could slip one hand into his own trousers pocket.

He groped in its depths and then brought forth something and held it out in his palm.

The poor light of the single electric bulb glinted upon an object which threw off dulled translucent tints of bluish-green--not a trade dollar, but a big overcoat b.u.t.ton the size of a trade dollar--a flat, smooth, rimless disk of smoked pearl with a tiny depression in the middle where the thread holes went through. For a little s.p.a.ce of time both of them with their heads bent forward contemplated it.

Then with a flirt of his manacled hands Trencher flung it away from him, and with a sickly pallor of fright and surrender stealing up under the skin of his cheeks he stared at the detective.

"You win, Murtha," he said dully. "What's the use bucking the game after your luck is gone? Come on, let's go down-town. Yes, I b.u.mped off Sonntag."

CHAPTER V

QUALITY FOLKS

In our town formerly there were any number of negro children named for Caucasian friends of their parents. Some bore for their names the names of old masters of the slavery time, masters who had been kindly and gracious and whose memories thereby were affectionately perpetuated; these were mainly of a generation now growing into middle age. Others--I am speaking still of the namesakes, not of the original bearers of the names--had been christened with intent to do honour to indulgent and well-remembered employers of post-bellum days. Thus it might befall, for example, that Wadsworth Junius Courtney, Esquire, would be a prominent advocate practicing at the local bar and that Wadsworth Junius Courtney Jones, of colour, would be his janitor and sweep out his office for him.

Yet others had been named after white children--and soon after--for the reason that the white children had been given first names having a fine, full, sonorous sound or else a fascinatingly novel sound.

Of these last there were instances amounting in the aggregate to a small host.

I seem to remember, for example, that once a pink girl-mite came into the world by way of a bedroom in a large white house on Tilghman Avenue and was at the baptismal font sentenced for life to bear the Christian name of Rowena Hildegarde.

Or is Rowena Hildegarde a Christian name?

At any rate, within twelve months' time, there were to be found in more crowded and less affluent quarters of our thriving little city four more Rowena Hildegardes, of tender years, or rather, tender months--two black ones, one chrome-yellow one, and one sepia-brown one.

But so far as the available records show there was but one white child in our town who bore for its name, bestowed upon it with due knowledge of the fact and with deliberate intent, the name of a person of undoubted African descent. However, at this stage to reveal the circ.u.mstances governing this phenomenon would be to run ahead of our tale and to precipitate its climax before the groundwork were laid for its premise. Most stories should start at the beginning. This one must.

From round the left-hand corner of the house came with a sudden blare the sound of melody--words and music--growing steadily louder as the unseen singer drew nearer. The music was a l.u.s.ty, deep-volumed camp-meeting air, with long-drawn quavers and cadences in it. The words were as follows:

_Had a lovin' mother,_ _Been climbin' up de hill so long;_ _She been hopin' git to heaben in due time_ _Befo' dem heaben do's close!_

And then the chorus, voicing first a pa.s.sionate entreaty, then rising in the final bars to a great exultant shout:

_Den chain dat lion down, Good Lawd!_ _Den chain dat lion down!_ _Oh, please!_ _Good Lawd, done chained dat lion down!_ _Done chained dat deadly lion down!_ _Glor-e-e-e!_

The singer, still singing, issued into view, limping slightly--a wizen woman, coal-black and old, with a white cloth bound about her head, turban fashion, and a man's battered straw hat resting jauntily upon the knotted kerchief. Her calico frock was voluminous, unshapely and starch-clean. Her under lip was shoved forward as though permanently twisted into a spout-shape by the task of holding something against the gums of her lower front teeth, and from one side of her mouth protruded a bit of wood with the slivered bark on it. One versed in the science of forestry might have recognised the little stub of switch as a peach-tree switch; one bred of the soil would have known its purpose.

Neither puckered-out lip nor peach-tree twig seemed to interfere in the least with her singing. She flung the song out past them--over the lip, round the twig.

With her head thrown away back, her hands resting on her bony hips, and her feet clunking inside a pair of boys' shoes too large for her, she crossed the lawn at an angle. In all things about her--in her gait, despite its limp, in her pose, her figure--there was something masterful, something dominating, something tremendously proud.

Considering her spa.r.s.eness of bulk she had a most astoundingly big strong voice, and in the voice as in the strut was arrogant pride.

She crossed the yard and let herself out of a side gate opening upon an empty side street and went out of sight and ultimately out of hearing down the side street in the hot sunshine of the late afternoon. But before she was out of hearing she had made it plain that not only a loving mother and a loving father, but likewise a loving brother and a loving sister, a loving nephew and a loving uncle, a loving grandmother and divers other loving relatives--had all been engaged in the hill-climbing pilgrimage along a lion-guarded path.

The hush that succeeded her departure was a profound hush; indeed, by comparison with the clamorous outburst that had gone before it seemed almost ghastly. Not even the shrieks of the caucusing blue jays that might now be heard in the oak trees upon the lawn, where they were holding one of their excited powwows, served to destroy the illusion that a dead quiet had descended upon a spot lately racked by loud sounds. The well-dressed young man who had been listening with the air of one intent on catching and memorising the air, settled back in the hammock in which he was stretched behind the thick screen of vines that covered the wide front porch of the house.

"The estimable Aunt Charlotte appears to be in excellent voice and spirits to-day," he said with a wry smile. "I don't know that I ever heard her when her top notes carried farther than they did just now."

The slender black-haired girl who sat alongside him in a porch chair winced.

"It's perfectly awful--I know it," she lamented. "I suppose if Mildred and I have asked her once not to carry on like that here at the front of the house we've asked her a hundred times. It's bad enough to have her whooping like a wild Indian in the kitchen. But it never seems to do any good."

"Why don't you try getting rid of her altogether as a remedy?" suggested the young man.

"Get rid of Aunt Sharley! Why, Harvey--why, Mr. Winslow, I mean--we couldn't do that! Why, Aunt Sharley has always been in our family! Why, she's just like one of us--just like our own flesh and blood! Why, she used to belong to my Grandmother Helm before the war----"

"I see," he said dryly, breaking in on her. "She used to belong to your grandmother, and now you belong to her. The plan of ownership has merely been reversed, that's all. Tell me, Miss Emmy Lou, how does it feel to be a human chattel, with no prospect of emanc.i.p.ation?" Then catching the hurt look on her flushed face he dropped his raillery and hastened to make amends. "Well, never mind. You're the sweetest slave girl I ever met--I guess you're the sweetest one that ever lived. Besides, she's gone--probably won't be back for half an hour or so. Don't hitch your chair away from me--I've got something very important that I want to tell you--in confidence. It concerns you--and somebody else. It concerns me and somebody else--and yet only two persons are concerned in it."

He was wrong about the time, however, truthful as he may have been in a.s.serting his desire to deal confidentially with important topics.

Inside of ten minutes, which to him seemed no more than a minute, seeing that he was in love and time always speeds fast for a lover with his sweetheart, the old black woman came hurrying back up the side street, and turned in at the side gate and retraversed the lawn to the back of the old house, giving the vine-screened porch a swift searching look as she hobbled past its corner.

Her curiosity, if so this scrutiny was to be interpreted, carried her further. In a minute or two she suddenly poked her head out through the open front door. She had removed her damaged straw headgear, but still wore her kerchief. Hastily and guiltily the young man released his hold upon a slim white hand which somehow had found its way inside his own.

The sharp eyes of the old negress snapped. She gave a grunt as she withdrew her head. It was speedily to develop, though, that she had not entirely betaken herself away. Almost immediately there came to the ears of the couple the creak-creak of a rocking-chair just inside the hall, but out of view from their end of the porch.

"Make the old beldam go away, won't you?" whispered the man.

"I'll try," she whispered back rather nervously. Then, raising her voice, she called out in slightly strained, somewhat artificial voice, which to the understanding of the annoyed young man in the hammock appeared to have almost a suggestion of apprehension in it:

"Is--is that you, Aunt Sharley?"

The answer was little more than a grunt.

"Well, Aunt Sharley, hadn't you better be seeing about supper?"

"Num'mine 'bout supper. Ise tendin' to de supper. Ise bound de supper'll be ready 'fo' you two chillens is ready fur to eat it."

Within, the chair continued to creak steadily.

The girl spread out her hands with a gesture of helplessness.

"You see how it is," she explained under her breath. "Auntie is so set in her ways!"

"And she's so set in that rocking-chair too," he retorted grimly. Saying what he said next, he continued to whisper, but in his whisper was a suggestion of the proprietorial tone. Also for the first time in his life he addressed her without the prefix of Miss before her name. This affair plainly was progressing rapidly, despite the handicaps of a withered black duenna in the immediate offing.

"Emmy Lou," he said, "please try again. Go in there yourself and speak to her. Be firm with her--for once. Make her get away from that door.

She makes me nervous. Don't be afraid of the old nuisance. This is your house, isn't it--yours and your sister's? Well, then, I thought Southerners knew how to handle darkies. If you can handle this one, suppose you give me a small proof of the fact--right now!"

Reluctantly, as though knowing beforehand what the outcome would be, Emmy Lou stood up, revealing herself as a straight dainty figure in white. She entered the door. Outside in the hammock Harvey strained his ears to hear the dialogue. His sweetheart's voice came to him only in a series of murmurs, but for him there was no difficulty about distinguishing the replies, for the replies were pitched in a strident, belligerent key which carried almost to the yard fence. From them he was able to guess with the utmost accuracy just what arguments against the presence of the negress the girl was making. This, then, was what he heard:

". . . Now, Mizz Emmy Lou, you mout jes' ez well hush up an' save yore breath. You knows an' I knows, even ef he don't know it, dat 'tain't proper fur no young man to be cotein' a young lady right out on a front po'ch widout no chaperoner bein' clost by. Quality folks don't do sech ez dat. Dat's why I taken my feet in my hand an' come hurryin' back yere f'um dat grocery sto' where I'd done went to git a bottle of lemon extractors. I seen yore sister settin' in dat Mistah B. Weil's candy sto', drinkin' ice-cream sody wid a pa.s.sel of young folks, an' by dat I realise' I'd done lef' you 'lone in dis house wid a young man dat's a stranger yere, an' so I come right back. And yere I is, honey, and yere I stays. . . . Whut's dat you sayin'? De gen'l'man objec's? He do, do he?"