Meantime Hamlin and Sophy were passing the outskirts of the town; the
open lots and cleared spaces were giving way to grassy stretches, willow
copses, and groups of cottonwood and sycamore; and beyond the level of
yellowing tules appeared the fringed and raised banks of the river.
Half tropical looking cottages with deep verandas--the homes of early
Southern pioneers--took the place of incomplete blocks of modern
houses, monotonously alike. In these sylvan surroundings Mr. Hamlin's
picturesque rusticity looked less incongruous and more Arcadian; the
young girl had lost some of her restraint with her confidences, and
lounging together side by side, without the least consciousness of any
sentiment in their words or actions, they nevertheless contrived to
impress the spectator with the idea that they were a charming pair of
pastoral lovers. So strong was this impression that, as they approached
Aunt Chloe's laundry, a pretty rose-covered cottage with an enormous
whitewashed barn-like extension in the rear, the black proprietress
herself, standing at the door, called her husband to come and look at
them, and flashed her white teeth in such unqualified commendation
and patronage that Mr. Hamlin, withdrawing himself from Sophy's side,
instantly charged down upon them.
“If you don't slide the lid back over that grinning box of dominoes of
yours and take it inside, I'll just carry Hannibal off with me,” he said
in a quick whisper, with a half-wicked, half-mischievous glitter in his
brown eyes. “That young lady's--A LADY--do you understand? No riffraff
friend of mine, but a regular NUN--a saint--do you hear? So you just
stand back and let her take a good look round, and rest herself, until
she wants you.” “Two black idiots, Miss Brown,” he continued cheerfully
in a higher voice of explanation, as Sophy approached, “who think
because one of 'em used to shave me and the other saved my life they've
got a right to stand at their humble cottage door and frighten horses!”
So great was Mr. Hamlin's ascendency over his former servants that even
this ingenious pleasantry was received with every sign of affection
and appreciation of the humorist, and of the profound respect for his
companion. Aunt Chloe showed them effusively into her parlor, a small
but scrupulously neat and sweet-smelling apartment, inordinately
furnished with a huge mahogany centre-table and chairs, and the most
fragile and meretricious china and glass ornaments on the mantel. But
the three jasmine-edged lattice windows opened upon a homely garden of
old-fashioned herbs and flowers, and their fragrance filled the room.
The cleanest and starchiest of curtains, the most dazzling and whitest
of tidies and chair-covers, bespoke the adjacent laundry; indeed, the
whole cottage seemed to exhale the odors of lavender soap and freshly
ironed linen. Yet the cottage was large for the couple and their
assistants. “Dar was two front rooms on de next flo' dat dey never
used,” explained Aunt Chloe; “friends allowed dat dey could let 'em to
white folks, but dey had always been done kep' for Marse Hamlin, ef he
ever wanted to be wid his old niggers again.” Jack looked up quickly
with a brightened face, made a sign to Hannibal, and the two left the
room together.
When he came through the passage a few moments later, there was a sound
of laughter in the parlor. He recognized the full, round lazy chuckle of
Aunt Chloe, but there was a higher girlish ripple that he did not know.
He had never heard Sophy laugh before. Nor, when he entered, had he
ever seen her so animated. She was helping Chloe set the table, to that
lady's intense delight at “Missy's” girlish housewifery. She was picking
the berries fresh from the garden, buttering the Sally Lunn, making the
tea, and arranging the details of the repast with apparently no trace
of her former discontent and unhappiness in either face or manner. He
dropped quietly into a chair by the window, and, with the homely scents
of the garden mixing with the honest odors of Aunt Chloe's cookery,
watched her with an amusement that was as pleasant and grateful as it
was strange and unprecedented.
“Now den,” said Aunt Chloe to her husband, as she put the finishing
touch to the repast in a plate of doughnuts as exquisitely brown and
shining as Jack's eyes were at that moment, “Hannibal, you just come
away, and let dem two white quality chillens have dey tea. Dey's done
starved, shuah.” And with an approving nod to Jack, she bundled her
husband from the room.
The door closed; the young girl began to pour out the tea, but Jack
remained in his seat by the window. It was a singular sensation which
he did not care to disturb. It was no new thing for Mr. Hamlin to find
himself at a tete-a-tete repast with the admiring and complaisant fair;
there was a 'cabinet particulier' in a certain San Francisco restaurant
which had listened to their various vanities and professions of undying
faith; he might have recalled certain festal rendezvous with a widow
whose piety and impeccable reputation made it a moral duty for her to
come to him only in disguise; it was but a few days ago that he had
been let privately into the palatial mansion of a high official for a
midnight supper with a foolish wife. It was not strange, therefore, that
he should be alone here, secretly, with a member of that indiscreet,
loving sex. But that he should be sitting there in a cheap negro laundry
with absolutely no sentiment of any kind towards the heavy-haired,
freckle-faced country schoolgirl opposite him, from whom he sought
and expected nothing, and ENJOYING it without scorn of himself or his
companion, to use his own expression, “got him.” Presently he rose and
sauntered to the table with shining eyes.
“Well, what do you think of Aunt Chloe's shebang?” he asked smilingly.
“Oh, it's so sweet and clean and homelike,” said the girl quickly. At
any other time he would have winced at the last adjective. It struck him
now as exactly the word.
“Would you like to live here, if you could?”
Her face brightened. She put the teapot down and gazed fixedly at Jack.
“Because you can. Look here. I spoke to Hannibal about it. You can have
the two front rooms if you want to. One of 'em is big enough and light
enough for a studio to do your work in. You tell that nigger what you
want to put in 'em, and he's got my orders to do it. I told him about
your painting; said you were the daughter of an old friend, you know.
Hold on, Sophy; d--n it all, I've got to do a little gilt-edged lying;
but I let you out of the niece business this time. Yes, from this moment
I'm no longer your uncle. I renounce the relationship. It's hard,”
continued the rascal, “after all these years and considering sister
Mary's feelings; but, as you seem to wish it, it must be done.”
Sophy's steel-blue eyes softened. She slid her long brown hand across
the table and grasped Jack's. He returned the pressure quickly and
fraternally, even to that half-shamed, half-hurried evasion of emotion
peculiar to all brothers. This was also a new sensation; but he liked
it.
“You are too--too good, Mr. Hamlin,” she said quietly.
“Yes,” said Jack cheerfully, “that's what's the matter with me. It isn't
natural, and if I keep it up too long it brings on my cough.”
Nevertheless, they were happy in a boy and girl fashion, eating
heartily, and, I fear, not always decorously; scrambling somewhat for
the strawberries, and smacking their lips over the Sally Lunn. Meantime,
it was arranged that Mr. Hamlin should inform Miss Mix that Sophy would
leave school at the end of the term, only a few days hence, and then
transfer herself to lodgings with some old family servants, where she
could more easily pursue her studies in her own profession. She need not
make her place of abode a secret, neither need she court publicity. She
would write to Jack regularly, informing him of her progress, and he
would visit her whenever he could. Jack assented gravely to the further
proposition that he was to keep a strict account of all the moneys he
advanced her, and that she was to repay him out of the proceeds of her
first pictures. He had promised also, with a slight mental reservation,
not to buy them all himself, but to trust to her success with the
public. They were never to talk of what had happened before; she was to
begin life anew. Of such were their confidences, spoken often together
at the same moment, and with their mouths full. Only one thing troubled
Jack; he had not yet told her frankly who he was and what was his
reputation; he had hitherto carelessly supposed she would learn it,
and in truth had cared little if she did; but it was evident from her
conversation that day that by some miracle she was still in ignorance.
Unable now to tell her himself, he had charged Hannibal to break it to
her casually after he was gone. “You can let me down easy if you like,
but you'd better make a square deal of it while you're about it. And,”
Jack had added cheerfully, “if she thinks after that she'd better drop
me entirely, you just say that if she wishes to STAY, you'll see that
I don't ever come here again. And you keep your word about it too, you
black nigger, or I'll be the first to thrash you.”
Nevertheless, when Hannibal and Aunt Chloe returned to clear away the
repast, they were a harmonious party; albeit, Mr. Hamlin seemed more
content to watch them silently from his chair by the window, a cigar
between his lips, and the pleasant distraction of the homely scents and
sounds of the garden in his senses. Allusion having been made again to
the morning performance of the organ, he was implored by Hannibal to
diversify his talent by exercising it on an old guitar which had passed
into that retainer's possession with certain clothes of his master's
when they separated. Mr. Hamlin accepted it dubiously; it had twanged
under his volatile fingers in more pretentious but less innocent halls.
But presently he raised his tenor voice and soft brown lashes to the
humble ceiling and sang.
“Way down upon the Swanee River,”