Time touches all things with destroying hand; and if he seem now and
then to bestow the bloom of youth, the sap of spring, it is but a brief
mockery, to be surely and swiftly followed by the wrinkles of old age,
the dry leaves and bare branches of winter. And yet there are places
where Time seems to linger lovingly long after youth has departed, and
to which he seems loath to bring the evil day. Who has not known some
even-tempered old man or woman who seemed to have drunk of the fountain
of youth? Who has not seen somewhere an old town that, having long
since ceased to grow, yet held its own without perceptible decline?
Some such trite reflection--as apposite to the subject as most random
reflections are--passed through the mind of a young man who came out of
the front door of the Patesville Hotel about nine o'clock one fine
morning in spring, a few years after the Civil War, and started down
Front Street toward the market-house. Arriving at the town late the
previous evening, he had been driven up from the steamboat in a
carriage, from which he had been able to distinguish only the shadowy
outlines of the houses along the street; so that this morning walk was
his first opportunity to see the town by daylight. He was dressed in a
suit of linen duck--the day was warm--a panama straw hat, and patent
leather shoes. In appearance he was tall, dark, with straight, black,
lustrous hair, and very clean-cut, high-bred features. When he paused
by the clerk's desk on his way out, to light his cigar, the day clerk,
who had just come on duty, glanced at the register and read the last
entry:--
"'JOHN WARWICK, CLARENCE, SOUTH CAROLINA.'
"One of the South Ca'lina bigbugs, I reckon--probably in cotton, or
turpentine." The gentleman from South Carolina, walking down the
street, glanced about him with an eager look, in which curiosity and
affection were mingled with a touch of bitterness. He saw little that
was not familiar, or that he had not seen in his dreams a hundred times
during the past ten years. There had been some changes, it is true,
some melancholy changes, but scarcely anything by way of addition or
improvement to counterbalance them. Here and there blackened and
dismantled walls marked the place where handsome buildings once had
stood, for Sherman's march to the sea had left its mark upon the town.
The stores were mostly of brick, two stories high, joining one another
after the manner of cities. Some of the names on the signs were
familiar; others, including a number of Jewish names, were quite
unknown to him.
A two minutes' walk brought Warwick--the name he had registered under,
and as we shall call him--to the market-house, the central feature of
Patesville, from both the commercial and the picturesque points of
view. Standing foursquare in the heart of the town, at the
intersection of the two main streets, a "jog" at each street corner
left around the market-house a little public square, which at this hour
was well occupied by carts and wagons from the country and empty drays
awaiting hire. Warwick was unable to perceive much change in the
market-house. Perhaps the surface of the red brick, long unpainted,
had scaled off a little more here and there. There might have been a
slight accretion of the moss and lichen on the shingled roof. But the
tall tower, with its four-faced clock, rose as majestically and
uncompromisingly as though the land had never been subjugated. Was it
so irreconcilable, Warwick wondered, as still to peal out the curfew
bell, which at nine o'clock at night had clamorously warned all
negroes, slave or free, that it was unlawful for them to be abroad
after that hour, under penalty of imprisonment or whipping? Was the
old constable, whose chief business it had been to ring the bell, still
alive and exercising the functions of his office, and had age lessened
or increased the number of times that obliging citizens performed this
duty for him during his temporary absences in the company of convivial
spirits? A few moments later, Warwick saw a colored policeman in the
old constable's place--a stronger reminder than even the burned
buildings that war had left its mark upon the old town, with which Time
had dealt so tenderly.
The lower story of the market-house was open on all four of its sides
to the public square. Warwick passed through one of the wide brick
arches and traversed the building with a leisurely step. He looked in
vain into the stalls for the butcher who had sold fresh meat twice a
week, on market days, and he felt a genuine thrill of pleasure when he
recognized the red bandana turban of old Aunt Lyddy, the ancient negro
woman who had sold him gingerbread and fried fish, and told him weird
tales of witchcraft and conjuration, in the old days when, as an idle
boy, he had loafed about the market-house. He did not speak to her,
however, or give her any sign of recognition. He threw a glance toward
a certain corner where steps led to the town hall above. On this
stairway he had once seen a manacled free negro shot while being taken
upstairs for examination under a criminal charge. Warwick recalled
vividly how the shot had rung out. He could see again the livid look
of terror on the victim's face, the gathering crowd, the resulting
confusion. The murderer, he recalled, had been tried and sentenced to
imprisonment for life, but was pardoned by a merciful governor after
serving a year of his sentence. As Warwick was neither a prophet nor
the son of a prophet, he could not foresee that, thirty years later,
even this would seem an excessive punishment for so slight a
misdemeanor.
Leaving the market-house, Warwick turned to the left, and kept on his
course until he reached the next corner. After another turn to the
right, a dozen paces brought him in front of a small weather-beaten
frame building, from which projected a wooden sign-board bearing the
inscription:--
ARCHIBALD STRAIGHT,
LAWYER.
He turned the knob, but the door was locked. Retracing his steps past a
vacant lot, the young man entered a shop where a colored man was
employed in varnishing a coffin, which stood on two trestles in the
middle of the floor. Not at all impressed by the melancholy
suggestiveness of his task, he was whistling a lively air with great
gusto. Upon Warwick's entrance this effusion came to a sudden end, and
the coffin-maker assumed an air of professional gravity.
"Good-mawnin', suh," he said, lifting his cap politely.
"Good-morning," answered Warwick. "Can you tell me anything about
Judge Straight's office hours?"
"De ole jedge has be'n a little onreg'lar sence de wah, suh; but he
gin'ally gits roun' 'bout ten o'clock er so. He's be'n kin' er feeble
fer de las' few yeahs. An' I reckon," continued the undertaker
solemnly, his glance unconsciously seeking a row of fine caskets
standing against the wall,--"I reckon he'll soon be goin' de way er all
de earth. 'Man dat is bawn er 'oman hath but a sho't time ter lib, an'
is full er mis'ry. He cometh up an' is cut down lack as a flower.'
'De days er his life is three-sco' an' ten'--an' de ole jedge is libbed
mo' d'n dat, suh, by five yeahs, ter say de leas'."
"'Death,'" quoted Warwick, with whose mood the undertaker's remarks
were in tune, "'is the penalty that all must pay for the crime of
living.'"
"Dat 's a fac', suh, dat 's a fac'; so dey mus'--so dey mus'. An' den
all de dead has ter be buried. An' we does ou' sheer of it, suh, we
does ou' sheer. We conduc's de obs'quies er all de bes' w'ite folks er
de town, suh."
Warwick left the undertaker's shop and retraced his steps until he had
passed the lawyer's office, toward which he threw an affectionate
glance. A few rods farther led him past the old black Presbyterian
church, with its square tower, embowered in a stately grove; past the
Catholic church, with its many crosses, and a painted wooden figure of
St. James in a recess beneath the gable; and past the old Jefferson
House, once the leading hotel of the town, in front of which political
meetings had been held, and political speeches made, and political hard
cider drunk, in the days of "Tippecanoe and Tyler too."
The street down which Warwick had come intersected Front Street at a
sharp angle in front of the old hotel, forming a sort of flatiron block
at the junction, known as Liberty Point,--perhaps because slave
auctions were sometimes held there in the good old days. Just before
Warwick reached Liberty Point, a young woman came down Front Street
from the direction of the market-house. When their paths converged,
Warwick kept on down Front Street behind her, it having been already
his intention to walk in this direction.
Warwick's first glance had revealed the fact that the young woman was
strikingly handsome, with a stately beauty seldom encountered. As he
walked along behind her at a measured distance, he could not help
noting the details that made up this pleasing impression, for his mind
was singularly alive to beauty, in whatever embodiment. The girl's
figure, he perceived, was admirably proportioned; she was evidently at
the period when the angles of childhood were rounding into the
promising curves of adolescence. Her abundant hair, of a dark and
glossy brown, was neatly plaited and coiled above an ivory column that
rose straight from a pair of gently sloping shoulders, clearly outlined
beneath the light muslin frock that covered them. He could see that
she was tastefully, though not richly, dressed, and that she walked
with an elastic step that revealed a light heart and the vigor of
perfect health. Her face, of course, he could not analyze, since he
had caught only the one brief but convincing glimpse of it.
The young woman kept on down Front Street, Warwick maintaining his
distance a few rods behind her. They passed a factory, a warehouse or
two, and then, leaving the brick pavement, walked along on mother
earth, under a leafy arcade of spreading oaks and elms. Their way led
now through a residential portion of the town, which, as they advanced,
gradually declined from staid respectability to poverty, open and
unabashed. Warwick observed, as they passed through the respectable
quarter, that few people who met the girl greeted her, and that some
others whom she passed at gates or doorways gave her no sign of
recognition; from which he inferred that she was possibly a visitor in
the town and not well acquainted.
Their walk had continued not more than ten minutes when they crossed a
creek by a wooden bridge and came to a row of mean houses standing
flush with the street. At the door of one, an old black woman had
stooped to lift a large basket, piled high with laundered clothes. The
girl, as she passed, seized one end of the basket and helped the old
woman to raise it to her head, where it rested solidly on the cushion
of her head-kerchief. During this interlude, Warwick, though he had
slackened his pace measurably, had so nearly closed the gap between
himself and them as to hear the old woman say, with the dulcet negro
intonation:--
"T'anky', honey; de Lawd gwine bless you sho'. You wuz alluz a good
gal, and de Lawd love eve'ybody w'at he'p de po' ole nigger. You gwine
ter hab good luck all yo' bawn days."
"I hope you're a true prophet, Aunt Zilphy," laughed the girl in
response.
The sound of her voice gave Warwick a thrill. It was soft and sweet and
clear--quite in harmony with her appearance. That it had a faint
suggestiveness of the old woman's accent he hardly noticed, for the
current Southern speech, including his own, was rarely without a touch
of it. The corruption of the white people's speech was one
element--only one--of the negro's unconscious revenge for his own
debasement.
The houses they passed now grew scattering, and the quarter of the town
more neglected. Warwick felt himself wondering where the girl might be
going in a neighborhood so uninviting. When she stopped to pull a
half-naked negro child out of a mudhole and set him upon his feet, he
thought she might be some young lady from the upper part of the town,
bound on some errand of mercy, or going, perhaps, to visit an old
servant or look for a new one. Once she threw a backward glance at
Warwick, thus enabling him to catch a second glimpse of a singularly
pretty face. Perhaps the young woman found his presence in the
neighborhood as unaccountable as he had deemed hers; for, finding his
glance fixed upon her, she quickened her pace with an air of startled
timidity.
"A woman with such a figure," thought Warwick, "ought to be able to
face the world with the confidence of Phryne confronting her judges."
By this time Warwick was conscious that something more than mere grace
or beauty had attracted him with increasing force toward this young
woman. A suggestion, at first faint and elusive, of something
familiar, had grown stronger when he heard her voice, and became more
and more pronounced with each rod of their advance; and when she
stopped finally before a gate, and, opening it, went into a yard shut
off from the street by a row of dwarf cedars, Warwick had already
discounted in some measure the surprise he would have felt at seeing
her enter there had he not walked down Front Street behind her. There
was still sufficient unexpectedness about the act, however, to give him
a decided thrill of pleasure.
"It must be Rena," he murmured. "Who could have dreamed that she would
blossom out like that? It must surely be Rena!"
He walked slowly past the gate and peered through a narrow gap in the
cedar hedge. The girl was moving along a sanded walk, toward a gray,
unpainted house, with a steep roof, broken by dormer windows. The
trace of timidity he had observed in her had given place to the more
assured bearing of one who is upon his own ground. The garden walks
were bordered by long rows of jonquils, pinks, and carnations,
inclosing clumps of fragrant shrubs, lilies, and roses already in
bloom. Toward the middle of the garden stood two fine magnolia-trees,
with heavy, dark green, glistening leaves, while nearer the house two
mighty elms shaded a wide piazza, at one end of which a honeysuckle
vine, and at the other a Virginia creeper, running over a wooden
lattice, furnished additional shade and seclusion. On dark or wintry
days, the aspect of this garden must have been extremely sombre and
depressing, and it might well have seemed a fit place to hide some
guilty or disgraceful secret. But on the bright morning when Warwick
stood looking through the cedars, it seemed, with its green frame and
canopy and its bright carpet of flowers, an ideal retreat from the
fierce sunshine and the sultry heat of the approaching summer.
The girl stooped to pluck a rose, and as she bent over it, her profile
was clearly outlined. She held the flower to her face with a
long-drawn inhalation, then went up the steps, crossed the piazza,
opened the door without knocking, and entered the house with the air of
one thoroughly at home.
"Yes," said the young man to himself, "it's Rena, sure enough."
The house stood on a corner, around which the cedar hedge turned,
continuing along the side of the garden until it reached the line of
the front of the house. The piazza to a rear wing, at right angles to
the front of the house, was open to inspection from the side street,
which, to judge from its deserted look, seemed to be but little used.
Turning into this street and walking leisurely past the back yard,
which was only slightly screened from the street by a china-tree,
Warwick perceived the young woman standing on the piazza, facing an
elderly woman, who sat in a large rocking-chair, plying a pair of
knitting-needles on a half-finished stocking. Warwick's walk led him
within three feet of the side gate, which he felt an almost
irresistible impulse to enter. Every detail of the house and garden
was familiar; a thousand cords of memory and affection drew him
thither; but a stronger counter-motive prevailed. With a great effort
he restrained himself, and after a momentary pause, walked slowly on
past the house, with a backward glance, which he turned away when he
saw that it was observed.
Warwick's attention had been so fully absorbed by the house behind the
cedars and the women there, that he had scarcely noticed, on the other
side of the neglected by-street, two men working by a large open
window, in a low, rude building with a clapboarded roof, directly
opposite the back piazza occupied by the two women. Both the men were
busily engaged in shaping barrel-staves, each wielding a sharp-edged
drawing-knife on a piece of seasoned oak clasped tightly in a wooden
vise.
"I jes' wonder who dat man is, an' w'at he 's doin' on dis street,"
observed the younger of the two, with a suspicious air. He had noticed
the gentleman's involuntary pause and his interest in the opposite
house, and had stopped work for a moment to watch the stranger as he
went on down the street.
"Nev' min' 'bout dat man," said the elder one. "You 'ten' ter yo' wuk
an' finish dat bairl-stave. You spen's enti'ely too much er yo' time
stretchin' yo' neck atter other people. An' you need n' 'sturb yo'se'f
'bout dem folks 'cross de street, fer dey ain't yo' kin', an' you're
wastin' yo' time both'in' yo' min' wid 'em, er wid folks w'at comes on
de street on account of 'em. Look sha'p now, boy, er you'll git dat
stave trim' too much."
The younger man resumed his work, but still found time to throw a
slanting glance out of the window. The gentleman, he perceived, stood
for a moment on the rotting bridge across the old canal, and then
walked slowly ahead until he turned to the right into Back Street, a
few rods farther on.