XXIX
PLATO EARNS HALF A DOLLAR
Tryon's first feeling, when his mother at the
dinner-table gave an account of her visit to the
schoolhouse in the woods, was one of extreme
annoyance. Why, of all created beings, should this
particular woman be chosen to teach the colored
school at Sandy Run? Had she learned that he
lived in the neighborhood, and had she sought the
place hoping that he might consent to renew, on
different terms, relations which could never be
resumed upon their former footing? Six weeks before,
he would not have believed her capable of following
him; but his last visit to Patesville had revealed her
character in such a light that it was difficult to
predict what she might do. It was, however, no affair
of his. He was done with her; he had dismissed her
from his own life, where she had never properly
belonged, and he had filled her place, or would soon
fill it, with another and worthier woman. Even
his mother, a woman of keen discernment and
delicate intuitions, had been deceived by this girl's
specious exterior. She had brought away from her
interview of the morning the impression that Rena
was a fine, pure spirit, born out of place, through
some freak of Fate, devoting herself with heroic
self-sacrifice to a noble cause. Well, he had
imagined her just as pure and fine, and she had
deliberately, with a negro's low cunning, deceived
him into believing that she was a white girl. The
pretended confession of the brother, in which he
had spoken of the humble origin of the family, had
been, consciously or unconsciously, the most
disingenuous feature of the whole miserable
performance. They had tried by a show of frankness to
satisfy their own consciences,--they doubtless had
enough of white blood to give them a rudimentary
trace of such a moral organ,--and by the same
act to disarm him against future recriminations, in
the event of possible discovery. How was he to
imagine that persons of their appearance and
pretensions were tainted with negro blood? The more
he dwelt upon the subject, the more angry he became
with those who had surprised his virgin heart
and deflowered it by such low trickery. The man
who brought the first negro into the British colonies
had committed a crime against humanity and a
worse crime against his own race. The father of
this girl had been guilty of a sin against society
for which others--for which he, George Tryon--
must pay the penalty. As slaves, negroes were
tolerable. As freemen, they were an excrescence, an
alien element incapable of absorption into the body
politic of white men. He would like to send them
all back to the Africa from which their forefathers
had come,--unwillingly enough, he would admit,
--and he would like especially to banish this girl
from his own neighborhood; not indeed that her
presence would make any difference to him, except
as a humiliating reminder of his own folly and
weakness with which he could very well dispense.
Of this state of mind Tryon gave no visible
manifestation beyond a certain taciturnity, so
much at variance with his recent liveliness that the
ladies could not fail to notice it. No effort upon
the part of either was able to affect his mood, and
they both resigned themselves to await his lordship's
pleasure to be companionable.
For a day or two, Tryon sedulously kept away
from the neighborhood of the schoolhouse at
Sandy Rim. He really had business which would
have taken him in that direction, but made a
detour of five miles rather than go near his
abandoned and discredited sweetheart.
But George Tryon was wisely distrustful of his
own impulses. Driving one day along the road to
Clinton, he overhauled a diminutive black figure
trudging along the road, occasionally turning a
handspring by way of diversion.
"Hello, Plato," called Tryon, "do you want a
lift?"
"Hoddy, Mars Geo'ge. Kin I ride wid you?"
"Jump up."
Plato mounted into the buggy with the agility
to be expected from a lad of his acrobatic
accomplishments. The two almost immediately fell into
conversation upon perhaps the only subject of
common interest between them. Before the town
was reached, Tryon knew, so far as Plato could
make it plain, the estimation in which the teacher
was held by pupils and parents. He had learned
the hours of opening and dismissal of the school,
where the teacher lived, her habits of coming to
and going from the schoolhouse, and the road she
always followed.
"Does she go to church or anywhere else with
Jeff Wain, Plato?" asked Tryon.
"No, suh, she don' go nowhar wid nobody
excep'n' ole Elder Johnson er Mis' Johnson, an' de
child'en. She use' ter stop at Mis' Wain's, but
she's stayin' wid Elder Johnson now. She alluz
makes some er de child'en go home wid er f'm
school," said Plato, proud to find in Mars Geo'ge
an appreciative listener,--"sometimes one an'
sometimes anudder. I's be'n home wid 'er twice,
ann it'll be my tu'n ag'in befo' long."
"Plato," remarked Tryon impressively, as they
drove into the town, "do you think you could
keep a secret?"
"Yas, Mars Geo'ge, ef you says I shill."
"Do you see this fifty-cent piece?" Tryon
displayed a small piece of paper money, crisp and
green in its newness.
"Yas, Mars Geo'ge," replied Plato, fixing his
eyes respectfully on the government's promise to
pay. Fifty cents was a large sum of money. His
acquaintance with Mars Geo'ge gave him the privilege
of looking at money. When he grew up, he
would be able, in good times, to earn fifty cents a
day.
"I am going to give this to you, Plato."
Plato's eyes opened wide as saucers. "Me,
Mars Geo'ge?" he asked in amazement.
"Yes, Plato. I'm going to write a letter while
I'm in town, and want you to take it. Meet me
here in half an hour, and I'll give you the letter.
Meantime, keep your mouth shut."
"Yas, Mars Geo'ge," replied Plato with a grin
that distended that organ unduly. That he did
not keep it shut may be inferred from the fact that
within the next half hour he had eaten and drunk
fifty cents' worth of candy, ginger-pop, and other
available delicacies that appealed to the youthful
palate. Having nothing more to spend, and the
high prices prevailing for some time after the war
having left him capable of locomotion, Plato
was promptly on hand at the appointed time and
place.
Tryon placed a letter in Plato's hand, still sticky
with molasses candy,--he had inclosed it in a
second cover by way of protection. "Give that
letter," he said, "to your teacher; don't say a
word about it to a living soul; bring me an answer,
and give it into my own hand, and you shall
have another half dollar."
Tryon was quite aware that by a surreptitious
correspondence he ran some risk of compromising
Rena. But he had felt, as soon as he had indulged
his first opportunity to talk of her, an irresistible
impulse to see her and speak to her again.
He could scarcely call at her boarding-place,--
what possible proper excuse could a young white
man have for visiting a colored woman? At the
schoolhouse she would be surrounded by her pupils,
and a private interview would be as difficult, with
more eyes to remark and more tongues to comment
upon it. He might address her by mail, but
did not know how often she sent to the nearest
post-office. A letter mailed in the town must pass
through the hands of a postmaster notoriously
inquisitive and evil-minded, who was familiar with
Tryon's handwriting and had ample time to attend
to other people's business. To meet the teacher
alone on the road seemed scarcely feasible,
according to Plato's statement. A messenger, then, was
not only the least of several evils, but really the
only practicable way to communicate with Rena.
He thought he could trust Plato, though miserably
aware that he could not trust himself where this
girl was concerned.
The letter handed by Tryon to Plato, and by
the latter delivered with due secrecy and precaution,
ran as follows:--
DEAR MISS WARWICK,--You may think it
strange that I should address you after what has
passed between us; but learning from my mother
of your presence in the neighborhood, I am
constrained to believe that you do not find my
proximity embarrassing, and I cannot resist the wish
to meet you at least once more, and talk over the
circumstances of our former friendship. From a
practical point of view this may seem superfluous,
as the matter has been definitely settled. I have
no desire to find fault with you; on the contrary,
I wish to set myself right with regard to my own
actions, and to assure you of my good wishes. In
other words, since we must part, I would rather we
parted friends than enemies. If nature and society
--or Fate, to put it another way--have decreed
that we cannot live together, it is nevertheless
possible that we may carry into the future a pleasant
though somewhat sad memory of a past friendship.
Will you not grant me one interview? I
appreciate the difficulty of arranging it; I have
found it almost as hard to communicate with you
by letter. I will suit myself to your convenience
and meet you at any time and place you may
designate. Please answer by bearer, who I think is
trustworthy, and believe me, whatever your answer may be,
Respectfully yours,
G. T.
The next day but one Tryon received through
the mail the following reply to his letter:--
GEORGE TRYON, ESQ.
Dear Sir,--I have requested your messenger
to say that I will answer your letter by mail, which
I shall now proceed to do. I assure you that
I was entirely ignorant of your residence in this
neighborhood, or it would have been the last place
on earth in which I should have set foot.
As to our past relations, they were ended by
your own act. I frankly confess that I deceived
you; I have paid the penalty, and have no
complaint to make. I appreciate the delicacy which
has made you respect my brother's secret, and
thank you for it. I remember the whole affair
with shame and humiliation, and would willingly
forget it.
As to a future interview, I do not see what
good it would do either of us. You are white, and
you have given me to understand that I am black.
I accept the classification, however unfair, and the
consequences, however unjust, one of which is that
we cannot meet in the same parlor, in the same
church, at the same table, or anywhere, in social
intercourse; upon a steamboat we would not sit at
the same table; we could not walk together on the
street, or meet publicly anywhere and converse,
without unkind remark. As a white man, this
might not mean a great deal to you; as a woman,
shut out already by my color from much that
is desirable, my good name remains my most valuable
possession. I beg of you to let me alone.
The best possible proof you can give me of your
good wishes is to relinquish any desire or attempt
to see me. I shall have finished my work here in
a few days. I have other troubles, of which you
know nothing, and any meeting with you would
only add to a burden which is already as much as
I can bear. To speak of parting is superfluous--
we have already parted. It were idle to dream of
a future friendship between people so widely
different in station. Such a friendship, if possible
in itself, would never be tolerated by the lady
whom you are to marry, with whom you drove by
my schoolhouse the other day. A gentleman so
loyal to his race and its traditions as you have
shown yourself could not be less faithful to the
lady to whom he has lost his heart and his memory
in three short months.
No, Mr. Tryon, our romance is ended, and
better so. We could never have been happy. I have
found a work in which I may be of service to
others who have fewer opportunities than mine
have been. Leave me in peace, I beseech you,
and I shall soon pass out of your neighborhood as
I have passed out of your life, and hope to pass
out of your memory.
Yours very truly,
ROWENA WALDEN.
