Betty awoke the next morning with the impression that she was somewhere
on the border of a negro camp-meeting. She had passed more than one
when driving in the country, and been impressed with the religious
frenzy for which the human voice seemed the best possible medium. As
she achieved full consciousness, she understood that it was not a
chorus of voices that filled her ear, but one,--rich, sonorous,
impassioned. It was singing one of the popular Methodist hymns with a
fervour which not even its typical African drawl and wail could temper.
It was some moments before Betty realized that the singer was Harriet
Walker, and then she sprang out of bed and flung on her wrapper.
"Great heaven!" she thought. "How shall we ever be able to keep her
secret? A bandanna gown and a voice like a cornfield darky's! I suppose
all the servants are listening in the hall."
They were,--even the upper servants, who were English,--but they
scuttled away as their mistress appeared. She crossed the hall to
Harriet's room, rapped loudly, and entered. Her new sister, still in
her nightgown, was enjoying the deep motion of a rocking-chair,
hymn-book in hand. She brought her song to a halt as Betty appeared,
but it was some seconds before the inspired expression in her eyes gave
place to human greeting. Her face happened to be in shadow, and for the
moment Betty saw her black. Her finely cut features were indistinct,
and the ignorant fanaticism of a not remote grandmother looked from her
eyes. "Harriet!" exclaimed Betty. "I don't want to be unkind, but you
must not do that again. If you want to keep your secret, never sing a
hymn again as long as you live."
"Ah!" Harriet gave a gasp, then a half-sob. "Ah! But I love to sing
them, honey. I have sung them every Sunday all my life, and _he_ loved
them. He said I could sing with anybody, he wouldn't except angels. I
'most felt he was listening."
"You have a magnificent voice, and you must have it cultivated. But
never sing another hymn."
"When I go to church I know I'll just shout--without knowing what I'm
doing."
"Then don't go to church," said Betty, desperately.
"I must! I must! What'll the Lode say to me? Oh, my po' old uncle!"
She was weeping like a passionate child. Betty sat down beside her and
took her hand.
"Come," she said, "listen to me. The first time I saw you the deepest
impression I received of you was one of fine self-control. Doubtless
you wept and stormed a good deal before you acquired it--at all the
different stages of what was both renunciation and acquisition. The
last few days have unsettled you a little because you have found
yourself in a new world, minus all your old responsibilities and
trials, and the experience has made you feel younger, robbed you of
some of your hold on yourself. But that habit of self-control is in
your brain,--it is the last to leave us,--and all you have to do is to
sit down and think hard and adjust yourself. It is even more important
that you make no mistakes now than it was before. Fate seldom gives any
one two chances to begin life over again. Think hard and keep a tight
rein on yourself."
Betty had more than negro hymns in her mind, but she did not care to be
explicit. The generalities of the subject were disagreeable enough.
Harriet had ceased her sobbing and was listening intently. She dried
her eyes as Betty finished speaking.
"You are right, honey," she said. "And I reckon you haven't spoken any
too soon, for I was likely to get my head turned. I'll go to church and
I _won't_ sing. First I'll tie a string round my neck to remember, and
after that it'll be easy. I'm afraid I'm just naturally lazy, and if I
didn't watch myself I'd soon forget all the hard lessons I've learned
and get to be like some fat ornary old nigger who's got an easy job."
Betty shuddered. "The white race is not devoid of laziness. If you want
a reason for yours, just remember that the Southern sun has prevented
many a man from becoming great. Keep your mind as far away from the
other thing as possible."
"Oh, I think I'll forget it. I felt that way yesterday. But perhaps I'd
better not," she added anxiously, as her glance fell on the hymn-book.
"No cross, no crown."
"You will find crosses enough as you go through life," said Betty,
dryly. She rose to go, and Harriet rose also and drew herself up to her
full height. For the moment she looked again the tragic figure of the
first day of their acquaintance.
"You must have seen by this time how ignorant I am," she said
mournfully. "Poor old uncle gave me all the schooling he had himself,
but I knew even then it wasn't what they have nowadays. And I've had so
few books to read. Once I found a five-dollar bill, and as he wouldn't
take it--the most I could do--I tramped all the way to the nearest town
and back, twenty miles, and bought a big basket full of cheap reprints
of English standard novels. Those and the few old Latin books and the
Bible and the Pilgrim's Progress are about all I've ever read. I felt
like writing you that when I read his letter, and also telling you that
I was afraid you wouldn't find me a lady in your sense of the word--"
"You are my sister," interrupted Betty; "of course you are a lady.
Dismiss any other idea from your mind. And in a year you will know so
much that I shall be afraid of you. I have neglected my books for
several years."
"You are mighty good, and I'll humbly take all the advice you'll give
me."
Betty went back to her room and sought the warm nest she had left. "She
makes me feel old," she thought. "Am I to be responsible for the
development of her character? I can't send her off to Europe yet.
There's nothing to do but keep her for at least a year, until she knows
something of the world and feels at home in it. Meanwhile I suppose I
must be her guide and philosopher! I believe that my acquaintance with
Senator North has made me feel like a child. He is so much wiser in a
minute than I could be in a lifetime; and as I have made him the pivot
on which the world revolves, no wonder I feel small by contrast.
"But after all, I am twenty-seven, and what is more, I have seen a good
deal of men," she added abruptly. And in a moment she admitted that she
had allowed her heart, full of the youth of unrealities and dreams, to
act independently of her more mature intelligence.
"And that is the reason I have been so happy," she mused. "There is a
facer for the intelligence. As long as I have exercised it I have never
felt as if I were walking on air and song."
But still her imagination did not wander beyond today's meeting and
many like it. He was married, and, independent as she was, she had
received that sound training in the conventions from which the mind
never wholly recovers. She registered a vow then and there that she
would become his friend of friends, the woman to whom he came for all
his pleasant hours, in time his confidante. She would devote her
thought to the making of herself into the companion he most needed and
desired; and she would conceal her love lest he conceive it his duty to
avoid her. She wondered if she had betrayed herself, and concluded that
she had not. Even he could not guess how much of her admiration
emanated from frankness and how much from coquetry. She would be
careful in the future.
"That point settled," she thought, curling down deeper into her bed and
preparing for a nap, "I'll anticipate his coming and think about him
with all the youthful exuberance I please."