Tryon arrived in the early morning and put up at the Patesville Hotel,
a very comfortable inn. After a bath, breakfast, and a visit to the
barbershop, he inquired of the hotel clerk the way to the office of Dr.
Green, his mother's cousin.
"On the corner, sir," answered the clerk, "by the market-house, just
over the drugstore. The doctor drove past here only half an hour ago.
You'll probably catch him in his office."
Tryon found the office without difficulty. He climbed the stair, but
found no one in except a young colored man seated in the outer office,
who rose promptly as Tryon entered.
"No, suh," replied the man to Tryon's question, "he ain't hyuh now.
He's gone out to see a patient, suh, but he'll be back soon. Won't you
set down in de private office an' wait fer 'im, suh?"
Tryon had not slept well during his journey, and felt somewhat
fatigued. Through the open door of the next room he saw an inviting
armchair, with a window at one side, and upon the other a table strewn
with papers and magazines.
"Yes," he answered, "I'll wait."
He entered the private office, sank into the armchair, and looked out
of the window upon the square below. The view was mildly interesting.
The old brick market-house with the tower was quite picturesque. On a
wagon-scale at one end the public weighmaster was weighing a load of
hay. In the booths under the wide arches several old negro women were
frying fish on little charcoal stoves--the odor would have been
appetizing to one who had not breakfasted. On the shady side stood
half a dozen two-wheeled carts, loaded with lightwood and drawn by
diminutive steers, or superannuated army mules branded on the flank
with the cabalistic letters "C. S. A.," which represented a vanished
dream, or "U. S. A.," which, as any negro about the market-house would
have borne witness, signified a very concrete fact. Now and then a
lady or gentleman passed with leisurely step--no one ever hurried in
Patesville--or some poor white sandhiller slouched listlessly along
toward store or bar-room.
Tryon mechanically counted the slabs of gingerbread on the nearest
market-stall, and calculated the cubical contents of several of the
meagre loads of wood. Having exhausted the view, he turned to the
table at his elbow and picked up a medical journal, in which he read
first an account of a marvelous surgical operation. Turning the leaves
idly, he came upon an article by a Southern writer, upon the perennial
race problem that has vexed the country for a century. The writer
maintained that owing to a special tendency of the negro blood, however
diluted, to revert to the African type, any future amalgamation of the
white and black races, which foolish and wicked Northern negrophiles
predicted as the ultimate result of the new conditions confronting the
South, would therefore be an ethnological impossibility; for the
smallest trace of negro blood would inevitably drag down the superior
race to the level of the inferior, and reduce the fair Southland,
already devastated by the hand of the invader, to the frightful level
of Hayti, the awful example of negro incapacity. To forefend their
beloved land, now doubly sanctified by the blood of her devoted sons
who had fallen in the struggle to maintain her liberties and preserve
her property, it behooved every true Southron to stand firm against the
abhorrent tide of radicalism, to maintain the supremacy and purity of
his all-pervading, all-conquering race, and to resist by every
available means the threatened domination of an inferior and degraded
people, who were set to rule hereditary freemen ere they had themselves
scarce ceased to be slaves.
When Tryon had finished the article, which seemed to him a
well-considered argument, albeit a trifle bombastic, he threw the book
upon the table. Finding the armchair wonderfully comfortable, and
feeling the fatigue of his journey, he yielded to a drowsy impulse,
leaned his head on the cushioned back of the chair, and fell asleep.
According to the habit of youth, he dreamed, and pursuant to his own
individual habit, he dreamed of Rena. They were walking in the
moonlight, along the quiet road in front of her brother's house. The
air was redolent with the perfume of flowers. His arm was around her
waist. He had asked her if she loved him, and was awaiting her answer
in tremulous but confident expectation. She opened her lips to speak.
The sound that came from them seemed to be:--
"Is Dr. Green in? No? Ask him, when he comes back, please, to call at
our house as soon as he can."
Tryon was in that state of somnolence in which one may dream and yet be
aware that one is dreaming,--the state where one, during a dream,
dreams that one pinches one's self to be sure that one is not dreaming.
He was therefore aware of a ringing quality about the words he had just
heard that did not comport with the shadowy converse of a dream--an
incongruity in the remark, too, which marred the harmony of the vision.
The shock was sufficient to disturb Tryon's slumber, and he struggled
slowly back to consciousness. When fully awake, he thought he heard a
light footfall descending the stairs.
"Was there some one here?" he inquired of the attendant in the outer
office, who was visible through the open door.
"Yas, suh," replied the boy, "a young cullud 'oman wuz in jes' now,
axin' fer de doctuh."
Tryon felt a momentary touch of annoyance that a negro woman should
have intruded herself into his dream at its most interesting point.
Nevertheless, the voice had been so real, his imagination had
reproduced with such exactness the dulcet tones so dear to him, that he
turned his head involuntarily and looked out of the window. He could
just see the flutter of a woman's skirt disappearing around the corner.
A moment later the doctor came bustling in,--a plump, rosy man of fifty
or more, with a frank, open countenance and an air of genial good
nature. Such a doctor, Tryon fancied, ought to enjoy a wide popularity.
His mere presence would suggest life and hope and healthfulness.
"My dear boy," exclaimed the doctor cordially, after Tryon had
introduced himself, "I'm delighted to meet you--or any one of the old
blood. Your mother and I were sweethearts, long ago, when we both wore
pinafores, and went to see our grandfather at Christmas; and I met her
more than once, and paid her more than one compliment, after she had
grown to be a fine young woman. You're like her! too, but not quite so
handsome--you've more of what I suppose to be the Tryon favor, though I
never met your father. So one of old Duncan McSwayne's notes went so
far as that? Well, well, I don't know where you won't find them. One
of them turned up here the other day from New York.
"The man you want to see," he added later in the conversation, "is old
Judge Straight. He's getting somewhat stiff in the joints, but he
knows more law, and more about the McSwayne estate, than any other two
lawyers in town. If anybody can collect your claim, Judge Straight
can. I'll send my boy Dave over to his office. Dave," he called to
his attendant, "run over to Judge Straight's office and see if he's
there.
"There was a freshet here a few weeks ago," he want on, when the
colored man had departed, "and they had to open the flood-gates and let
the water out of the mill pond, for if the dam had broken, as it did
twenty years ago, it would have washed the pillars from under the
judge's office and let it down in the creek, and"--
"Jedge Straight ain't in de office jes' now, suh," reported the
doctor's man Dave, from the head of the stairs.
"Did you ask when he'd be back?"
"No, suh, you didn't tell me ter, suh."
"Well, now, go back and inquire.
"The niggers," he explained to Tryon, "are getting mighty trifling
since they've been freed. Before the war, that boy would have been
around there and back before you could say Jack Robinson; now, the lazy
rascal takes his time just like a white man."
Dave returned more promptly than from his first trip. "Jedge
Straight's dere now, suh," he said. "He's done come in."
"I'll take you right around and introduce you," said the doctor,
running on pleasantly, like a babbling brook. "I don't know whether
the judge ever met your mother or not, but he knows a gentleman when he
sees one, and will be glad to meet you and look after your affair. See
to the patients, Dave, and say I'll be back shortly, and don't forget
any messages left for me. Look sharp, now! You know your failing!"
They found Judge Straight in his office. He was seated by the rear
window, and had fallen into a gentle doze--the air of Patesville was
conducive to slumber. A visitor from some bustling city might have
rubbed his eyes, on any but a market-day, and imagined the whole town
asleep--that the people were somnambulists and did not know it. The
judge, an old hand, roused himself so skillfully, at the sound of
approaching footsteps, that his visitors could not guess but that he
had been wide awake. He shook hands with the doctor, and acknowledged
the introduction to Tryon with a rare old-fashioned courtesy, which the
young man thought a very charming survival of the manners of a past and
happier age.
"No," replied the judge, in answer to a question by Dr. Green, "I never
met his mother; I was a generation ahead of her. I was at school with
her father, however, fifty years ago--fifty years ago! No doubt that
seems to you a long time, young gentleman?"
"It is a long time, sir," replied Tryon. "I must live more than twice
as long as I have in order to cover it."
"A long time, and a troubled time," sighed the judge. "I could wish
that I might see this unhappy land at peace with itself before I die.
Things are in a sad tangle; I can't see the way out. But the worst
enemy has been slain, in spite of us. We are well rid of slavery."
"But the negro we still have with us," remarked the doctor, "for here
comes my man Dave. What is it, Dave?" he asked sharply, as the negro
stuck his head in at the door.
"Doctuh Green," he said, "I fuhgot ter tell you, suh, dat dat young
'oman wuz at de office agin jes' befo' you come in, an' said fer you to
go right down an' see her mammy ez soon ez you could."
"Ah, yes, and you've just remembered it! I'm afraid you're entirely
too forgetful for a doctor's office. You forgot about old Mrs.
Latimer, the other day, and when I got there she had almost choked to
death. Now get back to the office, and remember, the next time you
forget anything, I'll hire another boy; remember that! That boy's
head," he remarked to his companions, after Dave had gone, "reminds me
of nothing so much as a dried gourd, with a handful of cowpeas rattling
around it, in lieu of gray matter. An old woman out in Redbank got a
fishbone in her throat, the other day, and nearly choked to death
before I got there. A white woman, sir, came very near losing her life
because of a lazy, trifling negro!"
"I should think you would discharge him, sir," suggested Tryon.
"What would be the use?" rejoined the doctor. "All negroes are alike,
except that now and then there's a pretty woman along the border-line.
Take this patient of mine, for instance,--I'll call on her after
dinner, her case is not serious,--thirty years ago she would have made
any man turn his head to look at her. You know who I mean, don't you,
judge?"
"Yes. I think so," said the judge promptly. "I've transacted a little
business for her now and then."
"I don't know whether you've seen the daughter or not--I'm sure you
haven't for the past year or so, for she's been away. But she's in
town now, and, by Jove, the girl is really beautiful. And I'm a judge
of beauty. Do you remember my wife thirty years ago, judge?"
"She was a very handsome woman, Ed," replied the other judicially. "If
I had been twenty years younger, I should have cut you out."
"You mean you would have tried. But as I was saying, this girl is a
beauty; I reckon we might guess where she got some of it, eh, Judge?
Human nature is human nature, but it's a d--d shame that a man should
beget a child like that and leave it to live the life open for a negro.
If she had been born white, the young fellows would be tumbling over
one another to get her. Her mother would have to look after her pretty
closely as things are, if she stayed here; but she disappeared
mysteriously a year or two ago, and has been at the North, I'm told,
passing for white. She'll probably marry a Yankee; he won't know any
better, and it will serve him right--she's only too white for them.
She has a very striking figure, something on the Greek order, stately
and slow-moving. She has the manners of a lady, too--a beautiful
woman, if she is a nigger!"
"I quite agree with you, Ed," remarked the judge dryly, "that the
mother had better look closely after the daughter."
"Ah, no, judge," replied the other, with a flattered smile, "my
admiration for beauty is purely abstract. Twenty-five years ago, when
I was younger"--
"When you were young," corrected the judge.
"When you and I were younger," continued the doctor
ingeniously,--"twenty-five years ago, I could not have answered for
myself. But I would advise the girl to stay at the North, if she can.
She's certainly out of place around here."
Tryon found the subject a little tiresome, and the doctor's enthusiasm
not at all contagious. He could not possibly have been interested in a
colored girl, under any circumstances, and he was engaged to be married
to the most beautiful white woman on earth. To mention a negro woman
in the same room where he was thinking of Rena seemed little short of
profanation. His friend the doctor was a jovial fellow, but it was
surely doubtful taste to refer to his wife in such a conversation. He
was very glad when the doctor dropped the subject and permitted him to
go more into detail about the matter which formed his business in
Patesville. He took out of his pocket the papers concerning the
McSwayne claim and laid them on the judge's desk.
"You'll find everything there, sir,--the note, the contract, and some
correspondence that will give you the hang of the thing. Will you be
able to look over them to-day? I should like," he added a little
nervously, "to go back to-morrow."
"What!" exclaimed Dr. Green vivaciously, "insult our town by staying
only one day? It won't be long enough to get acquainted with our young
ladies. Patesville girls are famous for their beauty. But perhaps
there's a loadstone in South Carolina to draw you back? Ah, you change
color! To my mind there's nothing finer than the ingenuous blush of
youth. But we'll spare you if you'll answer one question--is it
serious?"
"I'm to be married in two weeks, sir," answered Tryon. The statement
sounded very pleasant, in spite of the slight embarrassment caused by
the inquiry.
"Good boy!" rejoined the doctor, taking his arm familiarly--they were
both standing now. "You ought to have married a Patesville girl, but
you people down towards the eastern counties seldom come this way, and
we are evidently too late to catch you."
"I'll look your papers over this morning," said the judge, "and when I
come from dinner will stop at the court house and examine the records
and see whether there's anything we can get hold of. If you'll drop in
around three or four o'clock, I may be able to give you an opinion."
"Now, George," exclaimed the doctor, "we'll go back to the office for a
spell, and then I'll take you home with me to luncheon."
Tryon hesitated.
"Oh, you must come! Mrs. Green would never forgive me if I didn't
bring you. Strangers are rare birds in our society, and when they come
we make them welcome. Our enemies may overturn our institutions, and
try to put the bottom rail on top, but they cannot destroy our Southern
hospitality. There are so many carpet-baggers and other social vermin
creeping into the South, with the Yankees trying to force the niggers
on us, that it's a genuine pleasure to get acquainted with another real
Southern gentleman, whom one can invite into one's house without fear
of contamination, and before whom one can express his feelings freely
and be sure of perfect sympathy."