THE ROOST
THE sun had set, and the dusk was falling rapidly. The boat was running
toward a precipitous bluff shore, above the crest of which, and some
forty or fifty yards inland, loomed the indistinct form of a house,
the two tall chimneys standing out sharply against the fading sky.
There was a dark mass of trees on the one side, and what appeared to
be a cluster of huts on the other. The barking of two or three dogs
sounded distantly across the water, and a dim light shone from one of
the windows. The boat drew nearer and nearer to the dark shore; then at
last, with a grinding jar of the keel upon the beach, the journey was
ended.
A flight of high, ladder-like steps reached from the sandy beach to the
summit of the bluff. Jack followed Mr. Parker up this stairway, leaving
the man who had brought them to furl and tie the sail. Excepting the
barking of dogs and the light in the window, there was at first no sign
of life about the place as they approached. Then suddenly there was a
pause in the dogs’ barking; then a renewed clamorous burst from half a
dozen throats at once. Suddenly the light in the room began to flicker
and move, and Jack could see a number of dim forms come around the end
of the house. The next minute a wide door was opened, and the figure
of a woman appeared, holding a candle above her head. Instantly half a
dozen hounds burst out of the house from behind her and came rushing
down toward Jack and Mr. Parker, barking and baying.
Mr. Parker paid no attention to the dogs, but led the way directly up
the flight of tall, steep steps and into the hallway. He nodded to the
woman as he passed, speaking briefly to her, and calling her Peggy.
She was rather a handsome woman, with a broad face and black hair and
eyes. She stood aside and the master passed her into the house, Jack
following close at his heels. “Here are two letters for you,” said
the woman, and she gave them to him from the table; and Mr. Parker,
without laying aside his hat, took them, tore one of them open and
began reading it by the light of the candle which she held for him. As
he read, his eyebrows drew together into a knot of a frown, and his
handsome florid face lowered.
Meantime Jack stood gazing about him at the large, barren hallway
barely lit by the light of the candle. At the further end he could just
distinguish the dim form of a broad bare, stairway leading up to the
floor above. It seemed to be very cheerless, and he felt strange and
lonely in the dark, gloomy space. Several negroes were standing just
outside of the door, looking in; he could see their forms dimly in the
darkness. They appeared weird and unreal, with their black faces and
shining teeth.
Suddenly Mr. Parker looked up from the letter he was reading and bade
the woman, Peggy, to take Jack out to the kitchen and to give him
something to eat.
When Jack entered the kitchen he found the man who had brought him and
Mr. Parker down the river in the boat, sitting at the table eating,
while a barefoot negro woman, with necklace and bracelets of blue glass
beads, waited upon him. The man looked up and welcomed Jack as he
came in, and then almost immediately began asking him questions about
England. The feeling of loneliness and depression was settling more
and more heavily upon Jack’s spirits, and he replied vaguely hardly
knowing what were the questions asked him, or what he said in answer.
After he had ended his supper, he went and stood in the doorway,
looking out into the starlit night. He thought he saw the dim forms
of human figures moving about in the gloom, and the black outlines of
rude buildings. The warm darkness was full of the ceaseless whispering
noises of night, broken now and then by the sudden sound of loud
gabbling negro voices. The mockingbirds were singing with intermittent
melody from the dark stillness of the distant woods. His feeling of
depression seemed to weigh upon Jack’s soul like a leaden weight. He
could almost have cried in his loneliness and homesickness.
* * * * *
When Jack woke at the dawning of the next day, in the little bare
room at the end of the upper hall where he slept within easy call
of Mr. Parker’s voice, he did not at first know where he was. Then
instantly came recollection, and with it a keen longing to see his new
surroundings. He arose, dressed hastily, and went down-stairs and out
of doors. Everything looked very different in the wide clear light of
early morning. The buildings he had seen in the blackness of the night
before resolved into a clustered jumble of negro huts,—some of frame,
some of wattled sticks,—about which moved the wild figures of the
half-savage black men, women, and children.
Jack walked out into the open yard, and turned and looked back at the
house.
It was a great rambling frame structure, weather-beaten and gray.
Several of the windows were open, and out of one of them hung a
patchwork bed-coverlet, moving lazily now and then in the wind. A thin
wreath of smoke curled away from one of the chimneys into the blue
air. Everything looked very fresh and keen in the bright light of the
morning.
A lot of negro children had been playing about the huts, some of them
entirely naked. They ceased their play and stood staring at Jack as
he came out into the open yard, and a negro lad of about his own age,
who was standing in the door of a wattled hut at a little distance,
came over and spoke to him. The black boy was lean and lanky, with
over-grown, spider-like legs and arms. He had a little round, nut-like
head covered with a close felt of wool. “Hi, boy!” he said, when he had
come up close to Jack, “what your name?”
“My name’s Jack Ballister,” said Jack; “what’s your name?”
“My name Little Coffee,” and the negro boy grinned with a flash of his
white teeth.
“Little Coffee! Why, to be sure, that’s a very queer name for any
Christian soul to have,” said Jack.
The negro boy’s grin disappeared into quick darkness. “My name no
queer,” he said, with a sudden childish sullenness. “My name Little
Coffee all right. My fader Big Coffee—I Little Coffee.”
“Well,” said Jack, “I never heard of anybody named Coffee in all my
life before.”
“Where you come from?” asked the negro boy.
“I came from England,” said Jack; “we drink coffee there; we don’t give
Coffee as a name to Christian souls. Where do you come from, Coffee?”
“Me come nowhere,” said Coffee, with a returning grin. “Me born here in
yan house.”
Beyond the row of negro huts was a small wooden cabin of a better
appearance than the others. Suddenly a white man came out of the door
of this hut, stood looking for a moment, and then walked forward
toward Jack. It was Dennis, the overseer. He—unless Peggy Pitcher
be excepted—became almost the most intimate friend Jack had for the
two months or so that he lived at the Roost; and in this curiously
strange fragment of his life, perhaps the most vivid recollections that
remained with him in his after memory were of intervals of time spent
in Dennis’s hut; of the great black, sooty fireplace; of the shelf-like
floor at the further end of the cabin, where was the dim form of the
bed with the bright coverlet; of Dennis’s negro wife, pattering about
the earthen floor in her bare feet, her scant red petticoat glowing
like a flame of fire in the shadowy interior; of Dennis himself,
crouching over the smoldering ashes, smoking his Indian clay pipe of
tobacco. As Dennis now approached, Jack thought that he had hardly ever
seen a stranger-looking figure, for a pair of gold ear-rings twinkled
in his ears, a broad hat of woven grass shaded his face, he wore a pair
of loose white cotton drawers, and a red beard covered his cheeks and
chin and throat. “I do suppose,” said Dennis, when he had come close
enough to Jack—“I do suppose that you are the new boy that came last
night.”
“Yes,” said Jack, “I am.”