Often when, arm in arm with black Double-headed Pete, the Radical
Judge went by the paling fence, Hope Carolina said to herself:
"W'en he comes all lonely, jus' by his own self, I'll frow a rock at
him. Yes, sholy!"
Unconscious of the danger that lurked in future ambush, the great
politician would pass on, the rear view of his little stiff, quickly
stepping figure showing a high silk hat and the parted tails of a
broadcloth coat, which in front buttoned importantly at the waist.
Dressed with exactly the same splendor, even to the waist-buttoning of
the coat, the huge negro towered a full head taller than his hated,
feared, and brilliant intimate.
In that secret, mysterious way which was a feature of the troublous
times, both were recognized targets for other missiles than stones
flung by dimpled baby hands.
* * * * *
It was an educating period for small maids of six, that long-ago time
of bitter party hatred. Though only a short half-dozen years crowned
her fair cropped head, and she lisped still in an adorable baby way,
Hope Carolina was very wise--"monstrous wise," the black people said.
She did not understand the meaning of "renegade" exactly,--the Radical
Judge was a renegade too,--but she knew all about Reconstruction. It
was what made _them_, the black people, so sassy, and your own darling
family wretched.
[Illustration: "'WADICAL!'"]
She knew, too, that Radical judges always wore chain shirts under
their white ones, because they were afraid; and that they carried
knives, oh, mighty big ones, forever up their sleeves, to show in
bar-rooms sometimes to Uncle John when anybody talked too loudly of
renegades and turn-coats. Then, too, and worst of all, they got rich
in a single night and took beautiful homes from dear Prestons and
lived in them themselves. The beloved Prestons, so nobly proud in
their fallen fortunes,--so right and proper in their politics,--had
once owned all the lovely grounds alongside the bald yard that
inclosed the child's own hired house; grounds where peacocks were as
much at home as in story-books--peacocks with tails more ravishing
than fly-brushes; where magnolia-trees flung down big scented petals
as fascinating as sheets of letter-paper, and tall poplars stood like
angels with half-closed wings against the sky. And with her own
tear-filled eyes Hope Carolina had seen the exiled ones depart from
this paradise crying, ah, so bitterly; turning back, as the breaking
heart turns, for long, last, kissing looks. And now the Radical Judge
lived there--the bad Radical Judge _who went locked-arms with
niggers_; lived there with the wife who took things to forget, and the
little crippled child who had never walked in her life because
somebody had let her fall long ago.
[Illustration: "AN UNTIDY MIDGET FOLLOWING CLOSELY AT HIS HEELS"]
Hope Carolina could never go over again and make brown writing marks
on the sweet magnolia petals. She could never steal suddenly through
the boxwood hedge which hid the paling fence at that side of the hired
yard, and frighten the peacocks so that they would spread their tails
proudly. Everything belonged to the Radical Judge, even the old yellow
satin sofas in the parlor, on which negroes sat now. And besides, no
matter how poor they were, Democrat families never had anything to do
with Radical families. They only threw "rocks" at them--safely from
behind fences.
One day the pile of stones near the broken paling fence seemed
splendidly high. They were muddy too, splendidly muddy, for it had
rained in the night, and Hope Carolina had gouged the last ones out of
the wet dirt with a sharp stick. She had even intentionally kept nice
pats of earth around some; and directly, with the enemy approaching in
the lonely way desired, there she was "scrouged" behind the paling
fence, as Robert Lee Preston scrouged when he threw stones at
Radicals. The brisk heels clicked nearer--passed; and then, with a
fine sweep of a fat arm, a loud "ooh, ooh, ooh," she let fly the
deadly missile.
The effect of it was magical. The enemy leaped as if the long-expected
bullet had indeed pierced his chain armor; for the stone, perhaps the
tiniest in Democracy's fort, had neatly nipped his stiff back. But the
dark frown he turned toward her changed instantly. A slow smile, and
then laughter--the doting laughter of the child-lover, to whom even
the naughtiest phases are dear--replaced it. And, indeed, Hope
Carolina did seem a sweet and comical figure in her low-necked,
short-sleeved calico, with her brass toes hitched in the paling fence
somehow, and her cropped head rising barely above it. Excitement, too,
had lent a warmer pink to her apple cheeks, and her blue eyes were
like deep and hating stars.
"Oh, you bad baby!" he called in a moment, plainly ravished with the
nature of his would-be assassin. He knew why the stone had come--only
too well. "You hateful little Democrat!"
Hope Carolina fired up furiously at that. "Wadical!" she called back,
her voice tremulous with rage. And then, deliberately, "Wenegade!
Seef!" fell from her pouting baby lips.
A change came over the Radical Judge's face. It did not smile any
longer; and yet, somehow--_somehow_--it did not seem exactly angry. He
came a step nearer the paling fence.
"Little girl," he began softly, pleadingly, almost prayerfully. But
the thrower of stones waited to hear no more. As he came nearer,
almost near enough to touch, holding her with dumb eyes so different
from those she had expected, she fired another shot--it seemed just to
fly out of her hand--and ran.
As she scrambled up the high house steps, which went rented-fashion in
Fairville, from the ground to the second story, she remembered the
black splotch it had made on his white shirt; and then she remembered
another thing--the chain one underneath, to keep away rocks and
bullets and everything. Ah, if he hadn't worn that she might have
killed him; and then all the trouble in dear South Carolina would be
over forever and ever, amen.
As she sat in her high-chair at supper, eating hot raised corn-bread
and sugar-sweet sorghum, it seemed a dreadful thing that she hadn't
really done it; and directly, when a blue-eyed, full-breasted goddess,
known in the hired house as Ma and Miss Kate, looked meaningly across
the table, she sighed profoundly.
The fair lady, whose beauty was clouded by a deep sadness, turned soon
to the third sitter at the table, a tall, lank gentleman of perhaps
thirty-five, who, with dark, brooding eyes and a serious limp, had
just entered. He was the redoubtable Uncle John, of loud and fearless
opinion; and, if the bar-room bowie had missed him, a stray Radical
bullet had been more successful. A political fight in the railroad
turn-table, some months ago, had been the scene of this heartbreaking
accident. "And all through the war without a scratch!" Ma had sobbed
out to Mrs. Preston when speaking of that bullet, still in the
long-booted leg now under the table.
Directly Hope Carolina forgot the reproof of mother eyes anent the
table manners of well-brought-up children. She began listening
attentively; for that was how, listening when Ma and Uncle John
talked, she had acquired all her deep knowledge of men and things. For
in this close domestic circle all the lurid happenings of the times
were touched upon: more fights in the turn-table; barbecues, black
enemy barbecues--at which the bad Radical Judge stood on stumps, with
his blacked shoes Close together and his beaver hat off, as if he were
talking, _truly_, to white people; where negroes, poor, pitiful,
hungry, corn-field negroes, were bought with scorched beef and bad
whisky to vote any which way. Even the price of bacon, the woeful
rises in the corn-meal market, were discussed here--all the poignant
things, indeed, which, as has been seen, had inspired Hope Carolina's
own poignant and beautiful name.
Now they were speaking of Double-headed Pete, sweet, sorry Ma and good
Uncle John, who must limp forever because he hadn't worn chain things
underneath. Pete was feeling the oats of his new office, Uncle John
said, and Ma said back, "To think!" and looked at Uncle John as if she
were sorry for him.
Hope Carolina sat very quietly, but she was thinking hard. She knew
Pete: he was a bad, bad nigger; and though he locked arms with white
Radicals, and got a big, big salary, he could only put crosses instead
of names at the bottom of the important papers. It seemed a strange
thing that anybody who couldn't write names should get big salaries,
when Uncle John, who did heavenly writing, couldn't get any at all.
Then, along with everything else, there was Pete's maiden speech on
the court-house steps--oh, a terrible maiden speech!
"_De white man is had his day._"
Whether there was any more of it Hope Carolina did not ask herself.
That was enough, for folks looked tiptoe if you only spoke Pete's
name.
Directly, thinking over it all, Hope Carolina said earnestly to
herself, "Maybe I'd better put 'em back," meaning the two thrown
stones. It looked, yes, truly, as if she would have to kill Pete, too;
so her arsenal for destruction must not lack ammunition. It must
rather flow over than fall short.
But a liberal allowance of hot corn-bread and sorghum are not
conducive to murderous zeal. Slowly, almost painfully, the child got
down from her high-chair. She went faster down the steep house steps;
but as she neared the stone fort by the paling fence she halted, all
but paralyzed by the audacity which was being committed under her very
eyes.
Somebody was stooping down outside the fence, with a hand through the
broken place, putting something--_two round, pinky somethings!_--on
top of the stone fort, putting them exactly where the two spent shots
had been.
[Illustration: "HOPE CAROLINA, FROM HER MARVELOUS BED, COULD SEE
EVERYTHING THAT WAS GOING ON IN THE RADICAL JUDGE'S GARDEN"]
[Illustration: "FOREVER TURNING BACK TO KISS HIM, WITH HER HANDS FULL
OF FLOWERS, AND WITH THE PEACOCKS TRAILING BESIDE"]
"Oh!" ejaculated Hope Carolina; and, reaching the fence with a rush,
she stared down lovingly. For they were peaches, real, live, human
peaches--the kind that you buy for five cents apiece, which was a
great price in the hired house.
The form outside the fence straightened up then, and two oldish gray
eyes looked over it into hers--the Radical Judge's eyes. "No more
stones, please," they seemed to say, with a trace of embarrassment at
being caught.
Hope Carolina nodded back with a lovely courtesy, as if to say in
return: "Sholy not."
For this was no moment for politics. Besides, something in the
watching eyes--a wistful something which spoke louder than words--had
awakened all the lady in her; and there was more of it, I can tell
you, than you may be inclined to believe.
Silently, with eyes still meeting eyes, they stood there for a moment;
the great Radical almost shrinkingly, the fiery little Democrat with a
new, sweet feeling which made her seem, for the instant, the bigger,
stronger one of the two. Then, still silent, he was gone; and
snatching the peaches with another ecstatic "Oh!" Hope Carolina did
the thing she had dumbly promised. She kicked down the stone fort.
After she was in bed, she explained the deed to herself; for there,
with reflection, had come some of the pangs that must pierce the
breast of the traitor in any decent camp. You can't take peaches and
throw stones too, no, not even if Democrats would almost want to hang
you for not doing it!
She had come to the pits by now, and these, after more rapturous
suckings, she put under her pillow for planting; for when you are six
you plant everything. She did not know that another and more wonderful
seed had already put forth a green shoot in her own so piteously
hardened little heart.
Hope Carolina slept in a marvelous bed, almost the only thing of
value, in fact, left in the hired house. Ma would not use it herself,
she told dear friends, because of its memories; but as the child of
the house had no recollections of other times, it seemed to her always
a downy and restful nest. There were carved pineapples at the top of
the high mahogany posts, and four more at the bottom of them; and when
Hope Carolina lay in it in the morning, she could see everything that
was going on in the Radical Judge's garden--that lovely paradise of
peacocks and poplars and magnolias which had once been the dear
Prestons'.
Sometimes, even before the truce of peaches, she had felt a little
regret that the decencies barred out all acquaintance with Radical
families. For always on the hot mornings--long, long before it was
time for her to get up--there were the Radical Judge and the little
crippled Grace going about among the shrubs and flowers as if they
were the nicest people. And always the little pale, laughing child
presented a very pretty picture in the wheeled chair, which her father
pushed so patiently; forever turning back to kiss him, with her hands
full of flowers, and with the peacocks trailing beside as if they had
forgotten the dear Prestons entirely.
Then, the Radical Judge seemed to know bushels and bushels of
fairy-stories; and when they came near the boxwood hedge, Hope
Carolina would sometimes hear him begin a new one. They always began
in the right way, "Once upon a time," and that seemed very remarkable,
for how could a Radical Judge know the right sort of fairy-stories?
When they moved away again, the child in the enemy house would feel
her throat gulp sometimes. She knew it was wrong, but oh, she would
have loved to hear the end!
One morning, weeks and weeks after the peaches, when the peacocks had
been gone for days,--they made too much noise, Hope Carolina
knew,--when all the empty, sunburned garden seemed to say weepingly,
"There will be no more fairy-tales," she woke with the morning star,
and, sitting bolt up in bed, blinked wonderingly, a little painfully,
in the direction of the Radical Judge's front door. It was too dark to
see the knob yet, but she knew the thing must be there, the long,
angelically sweet drop of white ribbon and flowers--the poetic and
wistful mourning which is only hung for little dead children.
A great doctor had come down from Baltimore and gone again; and the
Radical Judge's wife was still taking things to forget.
* * * * *
The heart of six is full of mystery. All that first morning, with a
piteous earnestness, a piteous heartlessness, Hope Carolina played
funeral in the front yard, in the place where the stone fort had once
been and where the peach-pits were now planted. Every now and then she
would stop patting the little mounds of earth--mounds of earth covered
with sweet flowers, in a place as beautiful as any garden, were the
chief thing in her idea of funerals--and, standing tiptoe, she would
stare over the paling fence, hoping the Radical Judge would come by.
At last, late in the forenoon, her dogged vigilance was rewarded; and
in a moment, bonnetless, an untidy midget in low-necked pink calico
which even had a hole behind--there she was out of the gate, following
closely at his heels. She couldn't tell exactly why she followed him;
she only knew she wanted to--perhaps to see if he thought, too, as
everybody said, that the little crippled Grace was better off up in
the sky. She fancied maybe he didn't, he was so different,
somehow--not like the old, fierce Radical Judge at all. And when
really nice white gentlemen--_Democrats_, who had never noticed him
before--stood respectfully aside with _their_ beaver hats off, he
walked still down the middle of the dirt sidewalk, and did not seem to
see them at all.
[Illustration: "IT WAS THE QUAINT CUSTOM AT FUNERALS IN FAIRVILLE TO
FOLLOW MOURNERS IN LINE FROM THE GRAVE"]
Once when her brass-toed shoe kicked his heel by the railroad,--along
which, the littlest distance away, was the historic spot where Uncle
John had got the bullet,--she said "Thank you" aloud.
She meant it for the peaches, for she had just remembered that it
wasn't very polite not to thank people for things. But still he seemed
not to see, not to hear; and directly, in this blind, groping way, as
if he were falling to pieces somehow, there he was turning into Miss
Sally and Miss Polly Graham's store, where they only sold lady things.
Hope Carolina waited outside, openly and shamelessly watching to see
what he was going to do. She never peeped secretly; that wouldn't be
respectable.
In a minute she said, "Oh!" her eyes stretched wide with delighted
wonder; for he was _buying_ lady things--fairy lace, shimmering satin,
narrow doll-baby ribbon, as lovely as heaven! When he went out,
quickly, as if he were almost running, Hope Carolina still waited,
wondering what Miss Sally and Miss Polly, the two old-maid sisters,
who were Democrats and very nice people themselves, were going to do
with the splendor which still lay upon the counter.
But they did not tell. They told something else--a thing so full of
wonder, so dreadful, that, with another exclamation, one which drew
four astonished maiden eyes to her suddenly blanched cheeks, the child
took to her heels and fled as if pursued by a thousand terrors.
She thought of it all the time she was eating more hot corn-bread and
sorghum at dinner--the thing Miss Sally and Miss Polly Graham had said
to each other; the thing which seemed so new, so strange, so _loud
and awful_, like the hellfire things Baptist ministers talked about.
Then, after supper, she fell asleep in the pineapple bed, still
thinking of it; and all the next day, still playing funeral by the
paling fence, she thought of it again. And that night, when once more
she lay in the pineapple bed, there it was again, the strange loud
thing Miss Sally and Miss Polly Graham had said to each other--said in
a soft, _crying_ way.
All at once she had a waked-up feeling; she sat bolt upright in bed
and thought, "Comp'ny." There were voices coming across the passageway
from the parlor. A light streamed, too; and when she stood faintly
bathed in its glow, she saw that Mrs. Preston was there--Mrs. Preston,
in the deep mourning she had vowed never to put off as long as her
beloved State lay with her head in the dust. But something in her lap
brightened it now, this shabby, soldier-widow black: a slim cross,
divine with green and white, as daintily delicate, with its tremulous
myrtle stars, as had been the lady things in Miss Sally and Miss Polly
Graham's store.
Mrs. Preston was saying that she was going to send it "anonymously."
Then she asked Ma if she knew that _he_ had had to attend to all the
arrangements himself. "Even the dress," went on Mrs. Preston, crying a
little; and Uncle John coughed in the deep, growly way gentlemen
always cough when they are ashamed to cry themselves.
Then they all began talking about funerals, saying to each other they
would like to go, but how _could_ they? Uncle John saying at last,
with more of the growly, coughy way, that no, no, they "couldn't flout
him."
It would be more cruel, far, far more cruel, said Uncle John, than to
stay away. Besides,--didn't the ladies know?--it was private.
"Though," the speaker went on, his worn, somber face lighting up with
something like a gleam of comfort, "I reckon that was to keep those
other white hounds away as well as the rest of us."
Ma nodded. They weren't gentlemen-born, as he was, she sighed--"born
to Southern best." And then, with a "Poor wretch--poor, proud,
degraded wretch!" she handed out the thing she had been making--a
white rosette as beautiful as any rose--and told Mrs. Preston to put
it "there," touching the myrtle cross with fingers kissing-soft.
But Mrs. Preston only said back, "He's refused even the minister!" and
seemed more unhappy, oh, mighty unhappy.
Hope Carolina gasped with the wonderment of it all. How funny it
seemed, how dreadfully funny, that everybody had forgotten everything
just because a child had gone up into the sky: Uncle John the bullet,
and Mrs. Preston the lost paradise next door, and Ma the barbecue
speeches that made niggers vote any which way--all, all that Radicals
had ever done to them!
After a while one of the voices spoke again--whose, Hope Carolina
could never tell:
"_Think, there won't be a white face there!_" And then, after a pause,
another voice:
"_No, not one!_"
Hope Carolina jumped in bed, trembling.
Presently Mrs. Preston went, and then everybody else went to bed. But
still Hope Carolina trembled. For that was exactly what Miss Polly and
Miss Sally Graham had said--_about the white face_.
After a while she knew. It meant, oh, the mightiest, biggest disgrace
on earth not to have white people at your funerals. They went to black
funerals, even--_good_ black funerals.
"Oh!" moaned Hope Carolina suddenly, loud enough for everybody to
hear. But she cried silently. It was a way she had.
She cried again in the night, too--so loudly everybody did hear; but
the dream mother who came and loved her, putting her head on the dear
place, drove away all the lumps in her throat. After that the dark was
still like the dear place, and like arms around her, too.
She had forgotten the dream mother when breakfast came; but she hadn't
forgotten the other thing--the thing about the white face.
Ma said anxiously once to Uncle John, "Do you think she can be sick,
brother?" and Uncle John shook his head, though he knew, too, of the
tearful night.
Hope Carolina sat very still, not seeming to hear even when Ma
announced that the funeral was at nine o'clock. She ate her breakfast
like a ravenous cherub, smiling silently, mysteriously, whenever her
mother looked at her with adoring eyes. Sometimes these dear, watching
eyes, as blue as jewels, set wide apart under a low brow crowned with
waved, satin-bright brown hair, filled slowly. But the darling child,
who had certainly proved her excellent condition, only grinned back
sweetly. All Hope Carolina was thinking of was that she had a
_hole_--she was still wearing the soiled pink calico--and that her
frilled white apron was mussed, and that shoe-strings wouldn't tie
good. In the tarnished gilt-framed mirror behind Ma's lovely head she
could see her own. _That_ was all right; beautiful! She had doused it
with water, the round baby poll, and plastered the short hair smooth,
so that under this close, shining cap her apple cheeks seemed fresher
than ever.
Ma kissed them in passing, going then swiftly, with her eyes closed
tight lest she herself should see, to shut windows on _that_ side of
the house. Hope Carolina knew. Children mustn't look out of windows
when funerals were going on. They mustn't play in the yard, either,
till after they were over.
The big clock in the corner ticked, ticked, ticked, seeming to say
always, "Hurry up, hurry up." And then--it was the longest, longest
while afterward--Ma called from another room that Hopey (it was the
foolish home name) could go and play in the yard now, for it was nine
o'clock.
"Quite half-past, darling," went on the liquid Southern voice, still
tremulous with emotion, still with the yearning anxiety for its own
that the death of any child of kindred age brings to the mother
breast. But there was no answer, and for a very good reason.
Down the long clay road which led from living and now pitying
Fairville to the little cemetery where slept its quiet dead, Hope
Carolina was running.
* * * * *
A mile and a half is a long way for a wee fat maiden to go when the
August sun is beating down upon bare heads and necks, and red clay
roads spread sun-baked ruts and furrows as sharp as knives. As many
times as her years, Hope Carolina fell by the way; oftener, indeed.
But the good folk in the scattered blind-closed houses along the
way--who, too, a half-hour ago had whispered tremulously, "There won't
be a white face"--saw no sign of tears.
"It's only Hope Carolina," called somebody, and other watchers
laughed; for all knew the wandering ways of this wise and fearless
child.
And so, stumbling, falling, struggling to her feet again,--wiping away
blood once, even, with impatient hand,--on, on the little figure in
pink and white had gone, a brave and storm-driven flower in the cruel
road. And at last there were the shining crosses and columns of the
dead. One inclosure, radiant with more magnolias and angel poplars,
more stately and wonderful than all the rest, was the dear Preston
plot.
The child, who had paused anxiously at the open gate, sighed, sighed
with immense relief, to see it still without the sacrilege of Radical
invasion. He hadn't taken _that_, too! Then, a step farther, she
stopped again. The red clayey place he had taken had neither fence nor
flowers. Only a tree grew near his place, a great solitary pine, with
the low wailing of whose softly swaying needles singing was mingled.
A single person was singing--a single _black_ person. She knew by the
soft mellow roll of the voice, the sweet, oh, honey-sweet sound of the
hymn words, which she herself had sung many times at the Baptist
Sunday-school, where she had to go when there was no Episcopal
minister. The great figure towering above the tiny, dusky group, with
bare woolly head and working, apelike face uplifted to the sky, took
on a new grandeur.
But only for a moment did she think of Pete, so marvelously changed.
The hymn was ending--they were a long way past the dear line, _Safe on
his gentle breast_.
Now they were moving, the little "crowd of mo'ners over yonder,"--all
black it looked, house-servants mostly,--and quickly, with a
breathless fear of being too late, she rushed forward and thrust her
head between the singer and a sobbing petticoated figure beside him.
Then she drew back smiling, smiling divinely.
The grief-stricken eyes at the other side of the little grave--a grave
heaped with Radical roses, sweet with one Democrat myrtle cross--had
seen it, _the white face_.
"You go fust, honey, jus' behin' him," Pete whispered, as, trudging
valiantly along with the rest, Hope Carolina passed out of the
cemetery gate.
It was the quaint custom at funerals in Fairville, especially funerals
with negroes, to follow mourners in line from the grave as well as to
it. What had been begun through a lack of sidewalks had been continued
as a ceremony of passionate respect.
Pete bent soft, wet, grateful eyes upon her, pushing her close behind
the one carriage as he spoke--eyes as dear and tender as any old
nigger eyes Hope Carolina had ever looked into. All at once she
understood: Pete, bad Pete, loved the Radical judge.
She nodded comprehendingly, including all the other black faces--which
seemed to look toward her, too, with a doglike gratitude--in her
flashing smile.
"Of course!"
* * * * *
So it came to pass that Fairville's terrible prophecy was falsified.
In his darkest hour the Radical Judge was not forsaken of all his
race; still unconscious of fatigue and hurt in the cruel clay road,
the little white Democrat, who had toiled this hard way before, led
and redeemed the funeral procession of his child.