Chapter III: Part 3

He strode out into the night and toward the forelands, his ears guided by the monotonous crash and moan of the long Atlantic swell.

Standing on the cliff was a wind-fluttered figure that turned at the sound of his step, with eyes defiantly alert.

"You knew I'd come," he said simply, drawing close to her. "Peachey, little Peachey, what's them waves a-sayin' to the rocks? It's: `ME! YOU! ME! YOU!' Ain't they always been a-sayin' it? Kin you stop 'em, little Peachey? And that's the words I'm a-standin' here now fer to say to you."

"I ain't a-goin' to listen," she cried sharply, drawing back. "I don't want none o' your words. You just leave me alone, now, Mister--Mister----"

"Why, names don't count between us, chiquita," said he, with his great-hearted smile. "I'm just a man, I am, an' you're just a woman; and rightly I don't know no name for the thing that's been a-callin' between us ever since I seen you in the woods. But I kin see it in your face, Peachey, an' you kin see it in mine; it's a-lookin' at me through them eyes o' yourn----"

"Don't you look at me!" she cried, flinging an arm across her face. "I hate you, you--Man. Don't you come near me, naow! I hate you, I could kill you!"

But he only smiled down upon her kindly, understandingly.

"That's what the father said--aye, or somethin' mighty like it; but I told him, I wrastled with him till he savvied. And--makin' no secrets between us, Peachey--I paid him two hundred dollars down, to call it quits. Why, what's a few dollars? They don't cut no figure between you and me, 'cause I love you, little Peachey, an' I know right down in your heart you love me, too."

His voice quivered deeply as he drew near and laid his hands on her shoulders.

Instantly she raised her face, and their glances met in one quick flare. He felt her shiver in his grasp like some panic-stricken animal, then she turned and fled from him.

He followed, calling after her to stop; yet the lust of the chase swelled within him, and he knew he but loved this woman the more that she was not lying tamed within his arm. Breasting the house, he saw that she had swerved toward the island's long, leeward neck, from whence there was thrown a narrow pile-bridge connecting it with the mainland. His feet rang on the planks as she gained the opposite shore; and his heart laughed with joy, for he divined the instinct that had called her, not to her father's side, but to the mysterious heart of the woods.

Now he felt beneath him the soft pad of pine needles, little twigs switched his face, and warm, odorous airs breathed their welcome. Through the dimness he saw her gain the crest of a ridge, running lightly with long strides, and, as he reached the spot, from the hollow beneath there rang her voice flung back in mocking laughter. By the trail's wide curve and the shelving land he perceived that they were skirting the edge of inland waters; more than this he knew nothing save that, through vista after vista, mile by mile, her flying feet beckoned him onward, and that her heart was singing to his the last wild defiance of the almost-won.

At a sharp turn he came suddenly upon a cleared space shoring along the water's edge, lit by a blazing camp-fire. Within the circle of the glow she stood, a spent, panting figure, half supported by two men. A hunting-dog dashed forward, menacing the oncomer with stiffened back and bared teeth. The man strode into the group and said with quiet courtesy:

"Good evening, gentlemen. I am glad you rounded her up, for both consarned. Peachey, my hat's off to you an' all your tribe: you'd have run till you dropped. I see, gentlemen, that you're sizin' me up, which is natural an' gratifyin'. But things is square an' satisfactory between me and her, I do assure you."

The younger of the two--a tall, keen-faced man of city-bred appearance--turned to the girl and said with irritation:

"I don't understand. What does he mean? Are you his wife?"

She was leaning against a tree, her face averted. "No!" she panted vehemently. "No, no!"

"Tell yer it's Crane's gal," insisted the second man. "They live over yonder on the island. I pointed it aout a-comin' through the woods, the day you landed up here, Mr. Hemsley."

"Have you any claim on this girl?" demanded Hemsley, wheeling upon the stranger.

"Touchin' claims," returned the other, with sure emphasis, "I am not for filin' mine with the first party immediately convenient. The claim is filed O. K. elsewhere, and at present, as you're prospectin' on the hither side o' my line, I'll put one straight question to you: Did, or did not, Little Peachey ask you for protection?"

"Why, no," retorted Hemsley, a trifle confused, "she didn't--not in so many words." He turned to the girl. "Who is this man? Tell me everything; you needn't be afraid, Miss Crane."

"I'm not afraid!" she flashed sullenly. "He was a-layin' in Ragged Woods this afternoon, an' he carried my berry basket home an' stayed to supper. And afterward he caught hold o' me, he did, an' tried to kiss me; an' I ran away 'cause--'cause I hate him. I hate him!"

Her shrill cry ended in a passionate gesture. Wheeling, she marched down the slope to the water's edge, where she stood looking out into the night. All at once the man threw his face up to the sky and burst into a great roar of laughter.

"Right you are, Little Peachey!" he called. "Thar ain't no more to be said than that--just you an' me in the Ragged Woods at sundown. An' now--Blessed if we ain't downright stampeded! It's a reg'lar round-up, Peachey!" And he laughed again uncontrollably.

"Well," said Hemsley at length, "I don't like the looks of things, and I'm going to make it my business to take Miss Crane home to her father. I advise you not to make any trouble until you've proved who you are. Rockledge County Jail is only six miles away."

The other sobered to a statue, then turned, regarding Hemsley with mild fixity.

"Gentlemen," he said, "gentlemen both. I ain't askin' for your help, and, as far as I can see, neither is Peachey. I mean it. Gentlemen, a mule is a most onsafe critter. Even when you go to his funeral, you'll do well to sit at the head of the coffin."

Then all three turned quickly, for there had arisen from below the sound of a grating keel.

"That settles it," said Hemsley with dry satisfaction. "Miss Crane has gone home in the canoe. So much the better: I'm not looking for trouble." And he turned away.

But the Man gave one great laugh, then he was off like a shot, down the slope and into the water. At shoulder-depth he overtook the canoe and clung to its stern.

"Go up forward, Little Peachey," he cried, "an' sit mighty still till I swing in, else we'll be swimmin' in another minute. There!"

And drawing himself up over the stern, he seized the paddle, while the canoe leaped forward beneath his powerful strokes. From somewhere along the shore came the sound of voices, but the camp-fire blazed deserted. Gradually its light diminished to a twinkling spark in the blackness. For a while no word was spoken, the man bending to his task, the girl crouching with averted face in the extreme bow. Then a little new moon peered over the distant pine tops, the heavens spread their starry veil, and the hour of Susanna Crane's wooing had come.

"Me! You!" intoned the Man, to the sweep of his paddle. "Me! You! That's what the waves were sayin', that's what you kep' a-callin' to me through the woods, that's what the stars are writin' on the sky--Me! You! Big Chief, oh, you heap Big Chief, somewhar up yonder, ain't you l'arned me some things this day? Peachey, me and another man, down in the marble quarries, got fightin' in liquor, an' he drew a gun on me, an' I killed him with it. Then I got away quick and careless-like; but the Big Chief he leads me up here an' sets me in the woods, an' sends you along the trail. An' while I'm lyin' thar asleep, He tells me in a dream, `You proud man! You unbroke bucker! Maybe you kin kill a man, but I've got my own good way o' tamin' you and bringin' you home.' Blood for blood I thought He meant, but I wakes up and--Que gracia!--thar you stands. And your face it says to me, `Come on, you wicked, red-handed man. God's a-callin'.' And I says to myself real sudden, like I was at a camp meetin', `Praise God!' Then, when we ran into the camp, just now, who was thar but Hemsley, the county sheriff, whose deputies have been after me for a week! Maybe the Big Chief's savin' me to l'arn me something more. So again I says, `Praise God!'

"Will you travel with me, camarada?" he went on. "The whole big world's waitin' for us. I kin read an' write, an' my arms are strong. We'll ride the plains an' climb the hills an' swim in the rivers, and when you're tired I'll carry you on my shoulder. Then we'll take in the big, flat cities, Little Peachey, an' walk around 'em at night, lookin' on friendly. Yes, we'll drop in at all of 'em, stringin' out across the country like sideshows on the old Chicago Midway. And one o' these days, when we're gittin' real old, we'll pull up stakes an' start off to locate our last campin' ground. Thar ain't no maps nor surveys to it; it's just somewhar over yonder, and we'll know it on sight, Little Peachey. Maybe it's some picayune island chucked into the middle o' the ocean, with one high rock whar we can sit and watch the sun a-risin' an' the sun a-settin', an' the seagulls flyin'. And we'll talk over old times, Little Peachey, an' we'll just sit an' watch an' wait thar together till--till thar ain't nothin' left at all, only the rocks an' the sky an' the gulls a-screamin' at the sea.

"Peachey, a man read me some pieces out o' a book once, and I wrote 'em down an' learned 'em.

" `For springtime is here,' it says, `thou soul unloosened--the restlessness after I know not what. Oh, if we could but fly like a bird! Oh, to escape, to sail forth as on a ship!' Camarada, give me your hand. I will give you myself, more precious than money. Will you give me yourself? Will you travel with me? Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?"

The chant of his voice died away upon the night, and there was no sound but the soft ripple of the water under keel. In the bow sat the girl, motionless as a crouched Indian, her face fixed upon the nearing shore.

As the water shoaled, the Man stroked powerfully, landing the canoe sternforemost; then he stepped forth, drew it along the bank, and said:

"Camarada, give me your hand!"

But already the girl had risen, steadying herself with the bow paddle. With a sinuous movement she eluded his arms, and fled; then voices woke amid the pines, and the Man strode forward, to find his way blocked by two men holding the sobbing girl between them.

"I've seen enough of this," said Hemsley, facing him, "to know what you are. Miss Crane, can you find your way home alone? Jim, you and I will walk this man over to Rockledge."

"Peachey!" called the Man, retreating instantly. "Come on over here; thar's goin' to be trouble. Git behind me, Little Peachey!"

In the landing place there was driven a heavy stake. He drew this forth, then advanced, saying earnestly:

"Gentlemen both, you size me up wrong. Now, I ain't lookin' for trouble, but don't you bank too strong on takin' me anywhar with you to-night."

Hemsley's right hand drew backward, then came the level glitter of a long revolver barrel. "Drop that!" he began.

But suddenly something flashed before his face, and the keen edge of a boat-paddle bit numbingly into his extended hand; then the girl darted forward to where the revolver lay glistening among the pine needles.

"Well struck, Little Peachey," cried the Man; and he stepped protectingly in front of her, with upraised stake. But she stood from behind him and leveled the revolver full at Hemsley.

"I don't want your help," she said. The words came torn from her in sobbing whispers. "Git! Don't you come back no more. Don't you send no one lookin' for this man. I kin take care o' myself, I guess."

And the look in her eyes warned them to go. Now the Man and the Woman were alone in the black hush of the pine woods.

"I saved you," she said at length; "now go away from here. Yes, go!" And as her face lifted defiantly to his, her voice slid upward like the lonely, untamed wail of some wild creature. "Go back from whar you come! Don't you never let me see your face again, nor hear you speak; don't you never touch me no more, you Man! 'Cause I'm scairt o' you, I am; 'cause you're big an' strong, an' you'd forgit a gal like me. 'Cause I hate you, an' I hate myself!"

For an instant the man gazed at her, perplexed, irresolute; then he took her right hand and guided it until the revolver muzzle touched his forehead.

"Peachey," he whispered tenderly, "you hate me--but could you kill me; Little Peachey?" And he smiled his great, full-hearted smile.

Then her hand fell, her head sunk upon his breast, and a strong shuddering filled all her young body.

"Oh, Man, Man!" she breathed, as his arms closed about her.

***************************************************************** Vol. XXIII No.1 JULY 1910 {pages 74-83}

By Alice MacGowan and Grace MacGowan Cooke

Authors of "Return, A Story of the Sea Islands," etc.

"Is Ellen worse to-day?" The opening and closing of the front door brought in a swirl of red and yellow leaves from the porch outside. There came, too, a breath of sharp, sweet October air to tired little Mrs. Kendrick where she paused, foot on stair, the tray steadied in her hand, looking back at her husband.

"No. It's just that I got Mary Louise Jackson to come over and play with her. I can't ask Aunt Dicey to wait on a negro child like Ma'Lou is, and she's got to eat with Ellen; so I'm----"

"So you're waiting on her yourself," supplied Kendrick, hanging up a shabby overcoat on the hall rack.

"I'd do more than that to keep her here," his wife returned almost fiercely. "I tell you nobody knows till they've tried it what it is to have a child like Ellen, always lonesome and pining for company, and quarreling with every girl that comes about her. Sometimes I think it would be better if we moved away from Watauga. Everybody pities her--they all notice that she's backward in her studies--how can she help it, poor dear, with that hip joint the way it is?"

Kendrick came closer; he laid a kind arm along the frail, bent shoulders of his wife, and her senses were aware of the fresh outdoor air as he put his cool cheek to hers. "Don't you grieve, Fanny," he said. "Ma'Lou's a good companion for Ellen. The kid's better trained and better educated than half the white girls of her age in Watauga. If things go well, in a year or two we'll send Nellie to Baltimore and see what the big man there can do for her. You shall have a daughter that can dance like you used to, honey," and he patted her shoulder gently.

She turned with a little, gasping sigh to put up her tired face for his kiss. "You're good, Scott," she murmured, then went more cheerfully upstairs and to Ellen's room, glancing as she entered at the two girls, who were playing happily with paper dolls.

"Here's your feast," she called to them in the gay tone we use with sick children. "Come, Ellen. I'll go down and give your father his dinner, and you two can play any kind of party you want to with this."

The little girl with skin like white cotton cloth rolled her big, gray eves toward the tray and asked listlessly, "What you got for dinner, ma?" The brown-skinned one, tidily dressed from her carefully combed head with its crisp, black mass that was scarcely hair, held in place by spick-and-span hair ribbons, to the toes of her stout, handsome shoes, got up quickly and came forward to arrange the meal.

"They's molasses pie, Nell," Ma'Lou said joyously. "Oh, I'm going to bring it over there and fix it by the side of the lounge. We'll play you' a sick lady, and I'm you' trained nurse. Just wait till I fix my handkerchief into a cap like they wear."

Mrs. Kendrick turned away and left the children at their play. Mary Louise Jackson had been kept at home from school that she might come over and spend the day with Ellen. For when Ellen Kendrick was ill, her cry always was, "Oh, send for the doctor--and Mary Louise."

The old Kendrick place sat back in its grassy yard and concealed behind voluminous chinaberry trees such shabbiness as time had brought it; but on the corner, the home of Ezra Jackson perched proudly above its stone wall and added a considerable touch of elegance to the street.

It was in the early eighties, and the Queen Anne style of architecture was just coming into great popularity in the South. Jackson, who could well afford it, had let an architect have full sway in producing for him a dwelling in the new mode. Ezra Jackson, a full-blooded negro born a slave, had been a teamster on his master's Georgia plantation, and after the war that master, who still maintained friendly relations with his ex-slaves, gave him a start in life with a mule and a dray. From this the honest, industrious, and enterprising man had built up a transfer business which was the best of its sort in town. There were many teams and drivers now, and Ezra could walk in the garb of other men of means about him; yet he still wrote his name in the manner of the kings of old--he produced it as a sort of landscape effect without any idea of what the separate characters meant. He was a good citizen, a dignified man; and, except for his black skin, he would have been an acceptable neighbor to the Kendricks, and a desirable resident in their quarter of town. The young wife whom he had married rather late in life, and to whose taste the Queen Anne house catered, had a good grammar-school education, gained from those first devoted teachers that the Freedman's Bureau sent to the Southern negroes in the years immediately following the war. At first she had kept his books and made out his bills; and she always insisted on the best of schooling for their children.

Of these latter, only Mary Louise concerns this history, since she chanced to be very near the age of Ellen Kendrick and had become a necessity in the life of that peevish little invalid. The negro girl had smooth features, and her mother saw to it that she was always spotlessly dressed and that her manners were perfect. The children of her race take to good manners very readily, being usually amiable and eager for approbation. Mrs. Jackson undoubtedly took pride in the connection with her aristocratic white neighbors, and Mrs. Kendrick was forced to be glad of the chance to have the Jackson child come over and play with Ellen. A nurse she could have hired, but a child near the afflicted girl's age, a sound-natured, sweet-tempered, well-bred little girl, was not to be had for money--love was the only coin current that could pay for that.

And the two girls loved each other--of course they did. Did not Ellen need Ma'Lou and is not service the basis of all love? The flame on the altar of their affection burned always clear and strong, unshaken by the peevish gusts that extinguished many a less sturdy light of friendship for the Kendrick girl. So that existence to Ellen--the pleasant part of it, anyhow--meant a great deal of Ma'Lou, and there was scarcely an object in her room, a game or a pursuit of her days, that was not associated with the brown girl. The pair grew up in a companionship closer than that of some born sisters.

The mere fact of this intimacy was not regarded by the Kendricks with any disfavor whatever. Scott and Fanny both had played with negro children, both had been reared by negro mammies. Neither realized that conditions were changed, that the negroes with whom they had associated were no longer an enslaved people, hopeless of any equality, nor that, with the coming of freedom, and still more with the growing ferment among the blacks, such association was different from the intimacy of slavery days.

And Ezra Jackson's wife watched jealously that the preponderance of gifts and favors should be always on her child's side. If any present were given Mary Louise in the Kendrick house, her mother always retorted instantly, as one might say, with something better or handsomer. Mrs. Kendrick was a slow woman, and such a point would naturally have been obscure to her; yet she finally came to be aware of the fact, and at last it vexed her a little. She turned the question in her mind and sought for some substantial favor or patronage which she might offer to the Jacksons, to quiet once for all her offended sense of fitness.

It fell out that about this time she was passing their home on her way to her own, loaded down with bundles from the market because her cook, Aunt Dicey, was old and feeble and there had been nobody else to go this morning, when she raised her eyes and saw the Jackson back yard full of snowy wash on the line. Mrs. Jackson stood in the kitchen door, and, at the juxtaposition of the dark skin and the well-washed clothes, an idea promptly occurred to the lawyer's wife.

"Good morning," she called in a friendly tone. "I wanted to ask you something; I guess I'll come through the gate and go out your front way, if you don't mind."

Ezra Jackson's wife ran down the steps and put out a hand to help the tired woman with her packages. Mrs. Kendrick rested them on the railing of the back porch.

"Your clothes look lovely," she said meditatively. "You get them out so early. Aunt Dicey's too old to do the washing and cooking both any longer. I've been thinking for some time that I would really have to get me a washerwoman."

"It is hard to have the person who cooks wash also," said Mrs. Jackson, choosing her words carefully, and speaking in that serious tone which the new generation of colored people are apt to use toward their white neighbors. It is always as though they were on guard, or perhaps on parade is the better word, determined not to be guilty of lapses which would be excusable in those whom they address, but which are not permitted to the inferior race.

Fanny Kendrick looked at the handsome, well-kept house and its dignified, serious-faced mistress, and a feeling of irritation rose within her.

"I thought maybe you--I want a washerwoman--and seeing your clothes looked so nice made me think that maybe you----"

She came to an uncertain halt, and glanced again half impatiently at the other woman. After all, Ezra Jackson's wife was just a negro, and there was no use in feeling embarrassed or in supposing you didn't know how to deal with negroes. Good gracious! what was the world coming to if you couldn't offer work to folks without blushing? But she did not complete her sentence. The Jackson woman waited for a while that she might do so, and finally said, still in that slow, correct utterance which was in itself an offense:

"You thought I might tell you of some one? Mrs. Payson does mine. As you say she does it very nicely, and is quick about it. Her prices are high. I pay her half a dollar, and she gets done, as you see, a good deal before noon. But the work is satisfactory, and I think it pays better. I don't know whether she has a free day--but--shall I send her to you when she comes next week?"

Mrs. Kendrick blushed burning red, and took up her bundles with a jerk.

"No, thank you," she said shortly. "I couldn't any more afford that than I could fly. I didn't know Sally Payson had got to charging like that--fifty cents for less than half a day's work! I declare, prices are enough to ruin a body these days."

She went on to her own home smarting. She had called the washer woman "Sally Payson," to be sure, in correction of Eliza Jackson's "Mrs. Payson," which was a minor victory, yet it was not enough to wipe away a feeling of stinging exasperation and a curious sense of defeat. And when she told her husband about it afterward, he received her recital with a sort of humorous impatience.

"Good Lord, Fan," he broke in finally, "don't you know that every woman with a black skin isn't hungry to do your washing? It's not a question of complexion; it's money that talks. Ezra Jackson could buy me out two or three times over. I'm trying to act all his legal business. He's bringing a big suit against the railroad. If he gives it to me I shall be able to send Ellen to Baltimore this year instead of next."

"Well," said Mrs. Kendrick, submissively but acidly, "if you want me to go and apologize, I suppose I can. The South is getting to be a queer place when white gentlemen have to be under obligation to negro teamsters. I certainly don't want to interfere with your business in any way, Scott," she concluded plaintively. "We're hard up all the time; I feel it deeply that poor Ellen is such an expense to you."

Scott Kendrick's ready arm went round the weary little woman. "An apology would be worse than the offense, Fanny," he admonished gently. "It's just this. the Jacksons are in an absolutely new position, and have to be treated in a new way. You wouldn't go and ask Mrs. Ford or Mrs. Brashear to do your washing; and the Lord knows that neither Jim Brashear nor Bate Ford makes half what Ezra Jackson does. The world is changing, honey, and we have to change with it."

II

As they grew older, the association of the two girls, in spite of the affection between them--perhaps because of it--began to present almost daily problems and embarrassments. Ellen's health was worse, her nerves were shattered, and she clung with more and more insistence to this one healthy companion, who responded with a tireless devotion. Coming in from her wholesome outdoor life and her triumphs at school--where she always stood high--Ma'Lou brought to the sick room a very wind of comfort and cheer, which Mrs. Kendrick had not the heart to deny her pining young invalid. Once, when she spoke apprehensively of the matter to her husband, Scott Kendrick answered with astonishment:

"Why, Fanny, it's only a question of health--a little bodily improvement. We'd break it off to-morrow if Ellen was well. You'll see; there would never be any more of it if I could send her away for that operation."

But the white people had not, as they supposed, this anxiety all to themselves. The timid, conservative, colored mother regarded the friendship with growing anxiety. And before Scott Kendrick got together the money to send Ellen to Baltimore, Ezra Jackson's wife had coaxed her husband into letting Mary Louise go North to school. The Watauga public schools, with a term or two of Fiske, at Nashville, afterward, had been good enough for the other children. But the mother craved wider opportunities for this, her youngest; money was freer with them now; and Mary Louise went to a preparatory school, then to Oberlin.

Ellen Kendrick returned from the hands of the surgeons in Baltimore much improved in health. She was sent back twice afterward for treatment. Finally she walked as well as other girls, and hastily made up her arrears of education, as best she might, at a private school in Watauga. She would always be frail; the invalid habit had gotten into both mind and body; she would continue dependent, demanding; and somewhat irritable; yet there was a fragile prettiness about her, and her very childishness had its own charm.

Mary Louise Jackson passed one of two vacations at home; but, as time went on, there were opportunities for her to have trips of an educational nature, and one summer was spent at a Chautauqua taking a special course, so that after the first break in their association the two girls saw almost nothing of each other till they were women grown. There had been some letters; yet what the white girl had always demanded and received from her friend could not come through the mails, and the neglected correspondence finally died a natural death.

There was one person in Watauga, however, to whom Mary Louise wrote, and from whom she received letters regularly--Ulysses Grant Payson, the washerwoman's son, with whom she had gone to school. Grant Payson was a sober, ambitious, industrious fellow, who seemed to feel from childhood the weight of responsibility for his people. A widow's only boy, he had worked hard and studied hard. With a very fair mental endowment, he was able to get what the Watauga public schools could give him, secure a few years training at Nashville, then read law.

And, when, after her graduation, Mary Louise returned to her father's home, a very well-educated young lady indeed, wearing glasses and looking older than her years, she found Grant established in a good practice, and with some other prospects that were, for a colored man, flattering. Both families knew that Grant wanted Ma'Lou. Whether the girl would marry him and settle down in Watauga had been a matter of anxiety, often talked over between the two mothers. For they also knew of and discussed Ma'Lou's opportunity to take a position as private secretary to one of the instructors in her college. They understood that it was a situation which would pay fairly well, and give her associates who gained an added glory in the minds of these humble folk by their distance. In short, it would be a foothold in the white people's world; and Grant Payson's mother trembled for her son, while the mother of Mary Jackson feared to lose, once for all, her daughter. The two Southern-bred black women could see in such things as the girl reported only the wiping out of all race barrier, the sudden achievement of equality. Had Mary Louise been asked, no doubt she could have told them of a social ban at the North quite as definite as that in Watauga, if different; but her father's daughter kept a silence that was not without dignity over what she found irremediable, in the North as in the South.

To warm-hearted Mary Louise, Watauga meant, of course, father and mother; but directly after them--perhaps before them, in the calendar of youth--it meant Ellen Kendrick and Grant Payson. And the colored elders, looking on, felt that as these twin idols of the girl turned out, so rose or fell the chances of keeping her with them in Watauga.

Grant instituted at once a courtship as ardent and eager as it was open and avowed. His people, florid and colorful in temperament, are natural wooers, free of the language of affection and adroit in its use. Grant was very much in love with the girl, and she meant even more to him than that, since in aspiring to her his ambition stepped hand in hand with his affections.

Mary Louise received his advances with curious reservations, as though there were positions and premises she defended against him.

It was when the girl's visit was three weeks old that the fine-looking, broad-shouldered, young colored man in his well-fitting business suit--a goodly figure in the eyes of the mother watching from her own room across the hall--left the parlor where he and Mary Louise had been sitting all evening, with so doleful a countenance that the older woman had a quickly suppressed impulse to go to him and speak. She did open the subject to the girl next morning, approaching it obliquely. In her own day a very progressive person, she felt that her daughter had far outstripped her, and she offered advice but timidly to this tall, perfectly dressed young woman who seemed so competent in all the affairs of life, and who knew so much more than she did upon many subjects. But after a little profitless skirmishing she came out with:

"Looks like you must have said something hard to Grant last night--he never came in to say good-by to me. Ain't you going to have him, Ma'Lou? Don't you care anything about him?"

"I care a great deal about Grant," Mary Louise told her, in a voice of pain. "I could love him dearly--if I'd let myself. But, mother, I just can't settle down to live here in Watauga. There's nobody and nothing here for me."

The woman looked at her child, and her mind misgave her sorely that she had done wrong to send the girl away among an alien people, where she would learn to despise her own.

"You're still grievin' about Ellen Kendrick," she said finally. "If I were you I wouldn't let that go the way it has. Don't--" she hesitated, with eyes full of helpless solicitude upon her daughter's face--"honey, don't wait for any sign from Ellen, because you won't get it. You just take those postal cards that you got for her on your Canadian trip, and some morning you step over to the side door and ask for her, if you want to see her. I know she thinks a great deal of you. She's stopped me on the street more than once and asked all about you and what you were doing. I don't see why you shouldn't go to the side door and go in and have a nice little visit with her."

Mary Louise considered this suggestion at some length. She had the wider outlook which some travel gives, and, in Oberlin, she had been where the race question was relatively negligible. Her mother's way of putting it jarred on her; yet the hungry craving she felt at this time for a touch of companionship with a girl of her own age, her longing for the beloved Ellen of her childhood, overbore all shrinking. That afternoon she brought the cards down in her hand, and, full of an unwelcome timidity, made her way to the side door of the Kendrick house and rapped. Mrs. Kendrick answered and received her with a certain thin cordiality that suggested reservations. The fact was that Ellen was having a little party that evening, and the colored girl would perhaps be in the way. Among the guests bidden were two young men, upon either one of whom Mrs. Kendrick looked with a hopeful maternal eye, and nothing could be less desirable than for her daughter to seem to "even herself with negroes" in the eyes of these possible suitors.

"Shall I stop and see Ellen a minute, or may I just leave these with you, Mrs. Kendrick?" asked the tall, brown-skinned young woman finally.

"Oh, come in--come right in here to the dining room and sit down," said the mistress of the house, remembering with a twinge how much she owed to this girl. "Ellen will be crazy about these. She's got a postal card album, and she hasn't anything in it from Canada. Ellen! Come downstairs, honey; Ma'Lou Jackson has brought you something pretty."

But even as she called up the stairway, and heard the quick response from above, it crossed Mrs. Kendrick's mind that her daughter would not be willing to put these postal cards in her album, for she would be ashamed to tell from whom they came.

She was annoyed when Ellen came flying down the stairs, her thin, blond hair all about her shoulders, and caught both the newcomer's hands--the mother feared for a moment that she would kiss her old playmate.

"And then if somebody saw it through the window, and went and told young Emery Ford or Mr. Hyatt, I don't know what on earth I should do," reflected the careworn matron.

"Mamma, do come and look at these lovely postals," Ellen cried effusively a little later, as her mother, plainly ill at ease, passed through the room. "I'm going to pull out those that Cousin Rob sent me from Texas, and put these in right after the California ones. See here, mamma; isn't this one beautiful? Ma'Lou was there a week. She's put a little cross over the hotel where they stayed."

Mrs. Kendrick looked at the strong, well-developed figure of her guest, and a certain dull anger arose in her mind. Why did health and money both go to this inferior creature, when they were lacking in higher quarters? Perhaps this prompted her query; "That hotel? It's a big one, isn't it? Did they--could you----?"

She broke off, and Mary Louise supplied, innocently enough: "Oh, they didn't let us travel during school term. This was a vacation trip."

She had been long away from the South; in the protective conditions of Oberlin she had been measurably free from the wounding of race prejudice; and now she failed to realize that Mrs. Kendrick's curiosity was as to whether she had been permitted to go to a hotel with white people.

Old Dicey's place in the kitchen had long been supplied by a negress of the newer generation--"the worst gossip and tattler in town," if you might take her mistress's word for it. Mrs. Kendrick now made her way thither, ostensibly to superintend the preparation of the evening's refreshments, but in reality to try to fix up an explanation of why Ezra Jackson's daughter sat visiting in the dining room with the young lady of the house. "Because if Penny goes out and tells her friends, every darky in town'll be retailing the story to the folks that hire them, and it'll soon be all over the place."

She came back into the dining room to find Ellen glowing with enthusiasm. Yes, her mind was still that of a sick child; she had dropped back into her old-time attitude toward Mary Louise.

"Mamma, Ma'Lou says that they used to give lunches at the college, and fix the floral centerpiece so it would all come apart, and each guest could draw a bunch of it with a ribbon. Oh, I don't understand very well, but she can tell you--it's just beautiful, and we could make it out of the chrysanthemums in the side yard, she says."

Mrs. Kendrick looked uneasy. But there was no window in the dining room which commanded the street except the side light of the bay, and at it Ellen herself sat. Nobody passing would be apt to see Mary Louise over in the room.

"I reckon we can't go into those things," she objected, a little irritably. "I suppose Ma'Lou has seen a heap of fine doings up North that we couldn't possibly attempt."

"But she's promised to make me a lot of cute little candies--like potatoes, and put them in paper baskets--to go at each plate," put in Ellen, jealously.

The brown-faced girl nodded and laughed, with a quick flash of white teeth. It was plain she was taking the attitude of an older person talking to a child about a juvenile party to which there could be no question of invitation, and Mrs. Kendrick's fears rather subsided. She was safe, if only Ellen would show some sense and judgment.

"Well, I must go on home, now, if I'm to make those candies and have them ready by this evening," said Ezra Jackson's daughter, getting to her feet. "They take a good while to harden properly."

Ellen went with her to the side door, clinging to her arm and insisting on some last remark. Mrs. Kendrick, in an agony of apprehension, hovered in the background.

"Oh, well," said the daughter of the house finally, "I won't bother you any more about it now, Ma'Lou. It's hard for you to explain just how to fix it, but you can show me when you come over this evening. I'll have the chrysanthemums ready. You come a little early--won't you, please?"

Mary Louise, in the doorway, glanced from mother to daughter in some confusion. Would this do? Her own mother had cautioned her to be certain to go to the side door.

"I--I don't know," she hesitated doubtfully. "I'll bring the candies over, if you like, and I might be able to show you a little about the table then." And again she looked from the face of the girl who had been her childhood's most intimate friend and associate to that of the woman who had accepted so much at her childish hands.

"Why, I supposed you'd be here when I was giving the party, Ma'Lou," argued Ellen petulantly. "I don't see why not! Isn't it all right, mother?" she appealed sharply. "Shouldn't Ma'Lou come over this evening?"

For one desperate moment Mrs. Kendrick sought to shape a policy; Ellen's words sounded frightfully like an invitation to the party. Would Mary Louise accept them so? Her worried, resentful glance traveled over the tall, dignified figure, the correct, quiet costume. Oh, it had no business to be as hard as this! But she must make the girl understand; she could not run the risk of injury to Ellen's belated social opportunities.

"Why--you see--we--" she began, in an agony of embarrassment, "we can't--we can't--" Her voice failed her. She looked fleetingly at Mary Louise, who returned the gaze with a look hurt, accusing, difficult to meet. She drew her breath sharply, and began again with more resolution. "We'll have an extra maid in to help with the serving. If you don't mind staying in the dining room with her--" She ceased and waited hopefully, to see if the girl understood. There was an uncertain silence. She must finish. "Ma'Lou, if you'd stay in the dining room with Tillie, and wouldn't mind wearing a--cap--and apron like she does, why you could come over and look on."

Ellen Kendrick had seen somebody coming down the street. It was Emory Ford, and she flushed and dimpled and smiled as she bowed to him, forgetting everything else, including the departing Mary Louise, who, after one mute look at Mrs. Kendrick's flushed, disturbed face, turned and walked with hanging head toward the house on the corner.

Arrived at home, she went methodically to work upon the promised candies and the little baskets that were to contain them. Ezra Jackson's wife, noting the face of set misery, forbore long to question her as she brought out the novel materials and pursued her work.

The afternoon wore on. Mrs. Jackson was at work at her sewing-machine in the front hall; but she could not keep out of the kitchen, she made continual futile errands through it, giving anxious, sidelong glances at the child over whom her heart yearned.

Finally, when she could bear it no more, "Did--did something hurt your feelings over there, Ma'Lou?" she asked huskily.

She spoke behind her daughter's shoulder. The girl set the last finished basket in its place in the row before she turned to answer. Then she showed a face so much more cheerful and composed than the elder woman had dared hope for that the relief was almost revulsion.

"Sit down, mother," said Mary Lou, pushing a chair with her foot. "Sit there while I fill the baskets, and I'll tell you about it."

The mother sat and watched the deft brown fingers, and marveled at the girl's collected manner, her quiet, even voice. For Ezra Jackson's wife was shaken by alternate gusts of anger and hurt pride, of shame and fear, as, with a judicial fairness extraordinary in one of her years and sex, the girl went over the details of that unhappy visit. The old teamster had given his child a heritage of rare good sense. Early in the recital the woman broke in bitterly with:

"And yet you're making candies for her party? Such as that is all they want of you. I wouldn't do it. And I'd never step foot in their house again!"

"Why, mother, I'd certainly make these. I promised them," said Mary Louise mildly. She put the last tiny candy potato in place, pushed back the basket, wiped her hands, and turned fully to her mother. "But you're exactly right about not entering Judge Kendrick's house again," she said, with increasing emphasis. "I can't go in at the front door as a friend--that's true; I can't. I certainly sha'n't go in at the back door as a servant--and--I've thought it all out now--I see it plain--our people make a great mistake when they hang around the side doors of white folks. There's no way but----"

"Don't say it, honey!" gasped the mother "Wait a minute." This was the end, and she could not quite face it. She was to lose her youngest and dearest. Mary Lou was going back North to live among the white people. Her head went down on the table the convulsed face hidden in her arms. Then broke forth the cry of the blood:

"Oh, Lord! I reckon I'm just another fool nigger woman that's raised a child too good for her own color. I wish I was dead--I wish I was dead!"

"Mother--mother!" The girl flung herself on her knees beside the chair, and caught at the other's dress. "Don't take on that way. You don't understand. I'm--look around here--I'm glad of what happened over there to-day. It's shown me the truth about a good many things. We're all black people together. It's the only way for us now. I'm not going back to be Professor Sheridan's secretary--a black woman among white people. I'm going to marry Grant--he's everything to me; these people are nothing--and settle right down here in Watauga with him--and be happy and useful. Mother, you didn't make any mistake in the way you brought me up. I'll be a credit and a comfort to you yet."

***************************************************************** Vol. XXIII No. 1 JULY 1910

THE TRIAL BALANCE {pages 83-94}

By MAXIMILIAN FOSTER

Author of "Corrie Who?" etc.

Like so many others of her class, Stella Willoughby was a satisfied, confident woman, placidly aware of the station her husband's money assured to her. For Willoughby was accounted wealthy even in this lake town, where riches were so much in evidence; and if the wife betrayed a cool superiority because of his money, it was only natural, perhaps, since she and most of her associates knew no other means of gauging success, or worth, or the individual's place in life. Looking over her shoulder now, she glanced nonchalantly across the club dining-room.

"You mean those people--the Severances, Mrs. Kinsman?" There was a bland indifference in her tone that made the guest beside Mrs. Willoughby look at her curiously, for she knew that Severance had once been a suitor for Mrs. Willoughby's hand. "I believe we did know them before they dropped out. He lost everything, didn't he?--went to smash, as I vaguely remember."

Still with the same air of unconcern, she dipped the tips of her fingers in the finger-bowl, and prepared to rise. "Queer they should come back here, isn't it?" she commented idly; and then, as if the subject had passed from her mind with the observation, Mrs. Willoughby pushed back her chair in signal to her guests, and led the way from the room. In the hall, while the maid was putting on her wraps, she turned and looked back, still idly as before. Her eyes, traveling about, rested a moment on the man sitting at the distant table, and then, when he half rose from his place as if to bow, they journeyed on again, coolly unconcerned. A moment later, smiling gayly, she walked down the steps to her carriage, and, with her guests, was driven away to the theatre.

Yet, somehow, in spite of this sureness of speech and manner, the sight of her old-time suitor had wakened in Mrs. Willoughby the subtle discontent that occasionally affected her--the discontent of women who have only themselves to think about. One might have said that at these times she was subconsciously wearied of her form of life; that, in so many words, though ignorant of the fact, though, consciously, her vacuous life immensely satisfied her, she was BORED. But to-day, bluntly speaking, it was about her husband that her vague dissatisfaction centered; and when she had glanced coolly at her former suitor, it was for the purpose of comparison.

Willoughby was a fair type of the money-getter. Furthermore, what he had built had been raised by his own hands unaided; he was a self-made man, whose one boast was that he owed nothing to any one, not even so little as a debt of gratitude. One realized the fact, too, in the way he carried on his affairs; for in his business he was alert and determined, implacably pursuing his money-making as if it were a warfare, and considerate of none but those joined with him in the moment's harvesting venture. Perhaps his reasons were sufficient--who knows? Perhaps Willoughby was as well aware as they that the friends of to-day might reasonably become the enemies of to-morrow.

But at home the money gathered so ruthlessly elsewhere was thrown about with a lavish hand. Nothing that wealth could provide was denied Mrs. Willoughby or her boy; and though she had been poor when she married, money, in the mere crudity of having it to spend, had long since lost its novelty. To-day, beyond the pride of having it, and beyond the luxury and ostentation it could buy, money possessed for her a far greater significance in its power to make one powerful. In that she had already tasted the illogical enjoyment of one that can obtain power in no other way. And it was because of this place that his money had bought her that Mrs. Willoughby began to look on her husband with a critical eye.

For she was an ambitious woman, though one with definite limitations. Among different surroundings and in an atmosphere less sordidly striving and commonplace, she was fitted to have become, with some encouragement, an admirable and utterly inconspicuous wife and mother. But here, in this narrow, money-getting environment, many things prevented; among them, primarily, the way in which she had been brought up. For her father, too, had been driven by this lust for riches; and though he had failed, to the last he had been goaded on by his one eager, grasping hope. He had drummed into her head the single lesson that without money one is nothing.

In itself it suggested to the few a plausible reason why she had married Willoughby. There had been nothing openly unhappy in their life together. Still, as others saw, Willoughby was much older than his wife, radically without her social instincts, and, furthermore, when she had accepted him, it had been pretty generally understood that Severance had won her heart.

And now, as she sat back in her carriage, remembrance came rapping like an unwelcome, unadmitted visitant. She tried to put it away by chattering smartly; the theatre-wagon rolled along to the clicking of hoofs on the asphalt; but through it all the troublous knocking persistently recurred. For this was one of the few times when she had lingered upon a thought of that first romance of hers; and now, coupled with her hardening criticism of Willoughby, it brought forth insistent questions.

Whether she had really loved her husband when she married him, or whether she had not instead been dazzled by his peculiar abilities remained in doubt.

Severance had come first; he had a little money to begin, and he was doing well with it and seemed on the road to do better. Therefore, her friends were secure in the belief that she would marry him, when Willoughby had made his appearance.