I
The old woman stood at the back door of the cabin, shading her eyes with
her hand, and looking across the vegetable garden that ran up to the
very door. Beyond the garden she saw, bathed in the sunlight, a field of
corn, just in the ear, stretching for half a mile, its yellow,
pollen-laden tassels overtopping the dark green mass of broad glistening
blades; and in the distance, through the faint morning haze of
evaporating dew, the line of the woods, of a still darker green, meeting
the clear blue of the summer sky. Old Dinah saw, going down the path, a
tall, brown girl, in a homespun frock, swinging a slat-bonnet in one
hand and a splint basket in the other.
"Oh, Cicely!" she called.
The girl turned and answered in a resonant voice, vibrating with youth
and life,----
"Yes, granny!"
"Be sho' and pick a good mess er peas, chile, fer yo' gran'daddy's gwine
ter be home ter dinner ter-day."
The old woman stood a moment longer and then turned to go into the
house. What she had not seen was that the girl was not only young, but
lithe and shapely as a sculptor's model; that her bare feet seemed to
spurn the earth as they struck it; that though brown, she was not so
brown but that her cheek was darkly red with the blood of another race
than that which gave her her name and station in life; and the old woman
did not see that Cicely's face was as comely as her figure was superb,
and that her eyes were dreamy with vague yearnings.
Cicely climbed the low fence between the garden and the cornfield, and
started down one of the long rows leading directly away from the house.
Old Needham was a good ploughman, and straight as an arrow ran the
furrow between the rows of corn, until it vanished in the distant
perspective. The peas were planted beside alternate hills of corn, the
cornstalks serving as supports for the climbing pea-vines. The vines
nearest the house had been picked more or less clear of the long green
pods, and Cicely walked down the row for a quarter of a mile, to where
the peas were more plentiful. And as she walked she thought of her dream
of the night before.
She had dreamed a beautiful dream. The fact that it was a beautiful
dream, a delightful dream, her memory retained very vividly. She was
troubled because she could not remember just what her dream had been
about. Of one other fact she was certain, that in her dream she had
found something, and that her happiness had been bound up with the thing
she had found. As she walked down the corn-row she ran over in her mind
the various things with which she had always associated happiness. Had
she found a gold ring? No, it was not a gold ring--of that she felt
sure. Was it a soft, curly plume for her hat? She had seen town people
with them, and had indulged in day-dreams on the subject; but it was not
a feather. Was it a bright-colored silk dress? No; as much as she had
always wanted one, it was not a silk dress. For an instant, in a dream,
she had tasted some great and novel happiness, and when she awoke it was
dashed from her lips, and she could not even enjoy the memory of it,
except in a vague, indefinite, and tantalizing way.
Cicely was troubled, too, because dreams were serious things. Dreams had
certain meanings, most of them, and some dreams went by contraries. If
her dream had been a prophecy of some good thing, she had by forgetting
it lost the pleasure of anticipation. If her dream had been one of those
that go by contraries, the warning would be in vain, because she would
not know against what evil to provide. So, with a sigh, Cicely said to
herself that it was a troubled world, more or less; and having come to a
promising point, began to pick the tenderest pea-pods and throw them
into her basket.
By the time she had reached the end of the line the basket was nearly
full. Glancing toward the pine woods beyond the rail fence, she saw a
brier bush loaded with large, luscious blackberries. Cicely was fond of
blackberries, so she set her basket down, climbed the fence, and was
soon busily engaged in gathering the fruit, delicious even in its wild
state.
She had soon eaten all she cared for. But the berries were still
numerous, and it occurred to her that her granddaddy would like a
blackberry pudding for dinner. Catching up her apron, and using it as a
receptacle for the berries, she had gathered scarcely more than a
handful when she heard a groan.
Cicely was not timid, and her curiosity being aroused by the sound, she
stood erect, and remained in a listening attitude. In a moment the sound
was repeated, and, gauging the point from which it came, she plunged
resolutely into the thick underbrush of the forest. She had gone but a
few yards when she stopped short with an exclamation of surprise and
concern.
Upon the ground, under the shadow of the towering pines, a man lay at
full length,--a young man, several years under thirty, apparently, so
far as his age could be guessed from a face that wore a short soft
beard, and was so begrimed with dust and incrusted with blood that
little could be seen of the underlying integument. What was visible
showed a skin browned by nature or by exposure. His hands were of even a
darker brown, almost as dark as Cicely's own. A tangled mass of very
curly black hair, matted with burs, dank with dew, and clotted with
blood, fell partly over his forehead, on the edge of which, extending
back into the hair, an ugly scalp wound was gaping, and, though
apparently not just inflicted, was still bleeding slowly, as though
reluctant to stop, in spite of the coagulation that had almost closed
it.
Cicely with a glance took in all this and more. But, first of all, she
saw the man was wounded and bleeding, and the nurse latent in all
womankind awoke in her to the requirements of the situation. She knew
there was a spring a few rods away, and ran swiftly to it. There was
usually a gourd at the spring, but now it was gone. Pouring out the
blackberries in a little heap where they could be found again, she took
off her apron, dipped one end of it into the spring, and ran back to the
wounded man. The apron was clean, and she squeezed a little stream of
water from it into the man's mouth. He swallowed it with avidity. Cicely
then knelt by his side, and with the wet end of her apron washed the
blood from the wound lightly, and the dust from the man's face. Then she
looked at her apron a moment, debating whether she should tear it or
not.
"I 'm feared granny 'll be mad," she said to herself. "I reckon I 'll
jes' use de whole apron."
So she bound the apron around his head as well as she could, and then
sat down a moment on a fallen tree trunk, to think what she should do
next. The man already seemed more comfortable; he had ceased moaning,
and lay quiet, though breathing heavily.
"What shall I do with that man?" she reflected. "I don' know whether
he 's a w'ite man or a black man. Ef he 's a w'ite man, I oughter go an'
tell de w'ite folks up at de big house, an' dey 'd take keer of 'im. If
he 's a black man, I oughter go tell granny. He don' look lack a black
man somehow er nuther, an' yet he don' look lack a w'ite man; he 's too
dahk, an' his hair's too curly. But I mus' do somethin' wid 'im. He
can't be lef' here ter die in de woods all by hisse'f. Reckon I 'll go
an' tell granny."
She scaled the fence, caught up the basket of peas from where she had
left it, and ran, lightly and swiftly as a deer, toward the house. Her
short skirt did not impede her progress, and in a few minutes she had
covered the half mile and was at the cabin door, a slight heaving of her
full and yet youthful breast being the only sign of any unusual
exertion.
Her story was told in a moment. The old woman took down a black bottle
from a high shelf, and set out with Cicely across the cornfield, toward
the wounded man.
As they went through the corn Cicely recalled part of her dream. She had
dreamed that under some strange circumstances--what they had been was
still obscure--she had met a young man--a young man whiter than she and
yet not all white--and that he had loved her and courted her and married
her. Her dream had been all the sweeter because in it she had first
tasted the sweetness of love, and she had not recalled it before because
only in her dream had she known or thought of love as something
supremely desirable.
With the memory of her dream, however, her fears revived. Dreams were
solemn things. To Cicely the fabric of a vision was by no means
baseless. Her trouble arose from her not being able to recall, though
she was well versed in dream-lore, just what event was foreshadowed by a
dream of finding a wounded man. If the wounded man were of her own race,
her dream would thus far have been realized, and having met the young
man, the other joys might be expected to follow. If he should turn out
to be a white man, then her dream was clearly one of the kind that go by
contraries, and she could expect only sorrow and trouble and pain as the
proper sequences of this fateful discovery.