XIII
AN INJUDICIOUS PAYMENT
When Judge Straight's visitors had departed,
he took up the papers which had been laid loosely
on the table as they were taken out of Tryon's breast-
pocket, and commenced their perusal. There was
a note for five hundred dollars, many years overdue,
but not yet outlawed by lapse of time; a
contract covering the transaction out of which the
note had grown; and several letters and copies of
letters modifying the terms of the contract. The
judge had glanced over most of the papers, and
was getting well into the merits of the case, when
he unfolded a letter which read as follows:--
MY DEAREST GEORGE,-- I am going away
for about a week, to visit the bedside of an old
friend, who is very ill, and may not live. Do not
be alarmed about me, for I shall very likely be
back by the time you are.
Yours lovingly,
ROWENA WARWICK.
The judge was unable to connect this letter with
the transaction which formed the subject of his
examination. Age had dimmed his perceptions
somewhat, and it was not until he had finished
the letter, and read it over again, and noted the
signature at the bottom a second time, that he
perceived that the writing was in a woman's hand,
that the ink was comparatively fresh, and that
the letter was dated only a couple of days before.
While he still held the sheet in his hand, it
dawned upon him slowly that he held also one of
the links in a chain of possible tragedy which he
himself, he became uncomfortably aware, had had
a hand in forging.
"It is the Walden woman's daughter, as sure as
fate! Her name is Rena. Her brother goes by
the name of Warwick. She has come to visit her
sick mother. My young client, Green's relation, is
her lover--is engaged to marry her--is in town,
and is likely to meet her!"
The judge was so absorbed in the situation
thus suggested that he laid the papers down and
pondered for a moment the curious problem
involved. He was quite aware that two races had
not dwelt together, side by side, for nearly three
hundred years, without mingling their blood in
greater or less degree; he was old enough, and had
seen curious things enough, to know that in this
mingling the current had not always flowed in
one direction. Certain old decisions with which
he was familiar; old scandals that had crept along
obscure channels; old facts that had come to the
knowledge of an old practitioner, who held in the
hollow of his hand the honor of more than one
family, made him know that there was dark blood
among the white people--not a great deal, and
that very much diluted, and, so long as it was
sedulously concealed or vigorously denied, or lost
in the mists of tradition, or ascribed to a foreign or
an aboriginal strain, having no perceptible effect
upon the racial type.
Such people were, for the most part, merely on
the ragged edge of the white world, seldom rising
above the level of overseers, or slave-catchers, or
sheriff's officers, who could usually be relied upon
to resent the drop of black blood that tainted them,
and with the zeal of the proselyte to visit their
hatred of it upon the unfortunate blacks that fell
into their hands. One curse of negro slavery
was, and one part of its baleful heritage is, that
it poisoned the fountains of human sympathy.
Under a system where men might sell their own
children without social reprobation or loss of
prestige, it was not surprising that some of them
should hate their distant cousins. There were
not in Patesville half a dozen persons capable
of thinking Judge Straight's thoughts upon the
question before him, and perhaps not another who
would have adopted the course he now pursued
toward this anomalous family in the house behind
the cedars.
"Well, here we are again, as the clown in the
circus remarks," murmured the judge. "Ten years
ago, in a moment of sentimental weakness and of
quixotic loyalty to the memory of an old friend,--
who, by the way, had not cared enough for his own
children to take them away from the South, as he
might have done, or to provide for them handsomely,
as he perhaps meant to do,--I violated the traditions
of my class and stepped from the beaten path
to help the misbegotten son of my old friend out of
the slough of despond, in which he had learned, in
some strange way, that he was floundering. Ten
years later, the ghost of my good deed returns to
haunt me, and makes me doubt whether I have
wrought more evil than good. I wonder," he mused,
"if he will find her out?"
The judge was a man of imagination; he had
read many books and had personally outlived some
prejudices. He let his mind run on the various
phases of the situation.
"If he found her out, would he by any
possibility marry her?"
"It is not likely," he answered himself. "If he
made the discovery here, the facts would probably
leak out in the town. It is something that a man
might do in secret, but only a hero or a fool would
do openly."
The judge sighed as he contemplated another
possibility. He had lived for seventy years under
the old regime. The young man was a gentleman
--so had been the girl's father. Conditions were
changed, but human nature was the same. Would
the young man's love turn to disgust and repulsion,
or would it merely sink from the level of worship
to that of desire? Would the girl, denied marriage,
accept anything less? Her mother had,--but
conditions were changed. Yes, conditions were
changed, so far as the girl was concerned; there
was a possible future for her under the new order
of things; but white people had not changed their
opinion of the negroes, except for the worse. The
general belief was that they were just as inferior as
before, and had, moreover, been spoiled by a
disgusting assumption of equality, driven into their
thick skulls by Yankee malignity bent upon humiliating
a proud though vanquished foe.
If the judge had had sons and daughters of his
own, he might not have done what he now proceeded
to do. But the old man's attitude toward society
was chiefly that of an observer, and the narrow
stream of sentiment left in his heart chose to flow
toward the weaker party in this unequal conflict,
--a young woman fighting for love and opportunity
against the ranked forces of society, against
immemorial tradition, against pride of family and
of race.
"It may be the unwisest thing I ever did," he
said to himself, turning to his desk and taking up
a quill pen, "and may result in more harm than
good; but I was always from childhood in sympathy
with the under dog. There is certainly as much
reason in my helping the girl as the boy, for being
a woman, she is less able to help herself."
He dipped his pen into the ink and wrote the
following lines:--
MADAM,--If you value your daughter's happiness,
keep her at home for the next day or two.
This note he dried by sprinkling it with sand
from a box near at hand, signed with his own name,
and, with a fine courtesy, addressed to "Mrs. Molly
Walden." Having first carefully sealed it in an
envelope, he stepped to the open door, and spied,
playing marbles on the street near by, a group
of negro boys, one of whom the judge called by
name.
"Here, Billy," he said, handing the boy the
note, "take this to Mis' Molly Walden. Do you
know where she lives--down on Front Street, in
the house behind the cedars?"
"Yas, suh, I knows de place."
"Make haste, now. When you come back and
tell me what she says, I'll give you ten cents. On
second thoughts, I shall be gone to lunch, so
here's your money," he added, handing the lad
the bit of soiled paper by which the United States
government acknowledged its indebtedness to the
bearer in the sum of ten cents.
Just here, however, the judge made his mistake.
Very few mortals can spare the spring of hope,
the motive force of expectation. The boy kept
the note in his hand, winked at his companions,
who had gathered as near as their awe of the judge
would permit, and started down the street. As
soon as the judge had disappeared, Billy beckoned
to his friends, who speedily overtook him. When
the party turned the corner of Front Street and
were safely out of sight of Judge Straight's office,
the capitalist entered the grocery store and
invested his unearned increment in gingerbread.
When the ensuing saturnalia was over, Billy
finished the game of marbles which the judge had
interrupted, and then set out to execute his
commission. He had nearly reached his objective
point when he met upon the street a young white
lady, whom he did not know, and for whom, the
path being narrow at that point, he stepped out
into the gutter. He reached the house behind
the cedars, went round to the back door, and
handed the envelope to Mis' Molly, who was
seated on the rear piazza, propped up by pillows
in a comfortable rocking-chair.
"Laws-a-massy!" she exclaimed weakly, "what
is it?"
"It's a lettuh, ma'm," answered the boy, whose
expanding nostrils had caught a pleasant odor
from the kitchen, and who was therefore in no
hurry to go away.
"Who's it fur?" she asked.
"It's fuh you, ma'm," replied the lad.
"An' who's it from?" she inquired, turning
the envelope over and over, and examining it with
the impotent curiosity of one who cannot read.
"F'm ole Jedge Straight, ma'm. He tole me
ter fetch it ter you. Is you got a roasted 'tater
you could gimme, ma'm?"
"Shorely, chile. I'll have Aunt Zilphy fetch
you a piece of 'tater pone, if you'll hol' on a
minute."
She called to Aunt Zilphy, who soon came
hobbling out of the kitchen with a large square of
the delicacy,--a flat cake made of mashed sweet
potatoes, mixed with beaten eggs, sweetened and
flavored to suit the taste, and baked in a Dutch
oven upon the open hearth.
The boy took the gratuity, thanked her, and
turned to go. Mis' Molly was still scanning the
superscription of the letter. "I wonder," she
murmured, "what old Judge Straight can be writin'
to me about. Oh, boy!"
"Yas 'm," answered the messenger, looking
back.
"Can you read writin'?"
"No 'm."
"All right. Never mind."
She laid the letter carefully on the chimney-
piece of the kitchen. "I reckon it's somethin'
mo' 'bout the taxes," she thought, "or maybe
somebody wants to buy one er my lots. Rena'll
be back terreckly, an' she kin read it an' find out.
I'm glad my child'en have be'n to school. They
never could have got where they are now if they
hadn't."
