"Why, I beg your pardon. Was it not curious? I thought I saw there behind your man"--she hesitated, but he must be a servant, she argued--"the shadow of great, white wings. It was but the light on the drapery. What a turn it gave me." And she smiled again. With her came a tall, handsome, young naval officer. Hearing his lady refer to the servant, he hardly looked at him, but held his gilded cap carelessly toward him, and the stranger placed it carefully on the rack.
Last came the rector, a man of forty, and well-clothed. He started to pa.s.s the stranger, stopped, and looked at him inquiringly.
"I beg your pardon," he said. "I beg your pardon,--I think I have met you?"
The stranger made no answer, and the hostess nervously hurried the guests on. But the rector lingered and looked perplexed.
"Surely, I know you. I have met you somewhere," he said, putting his hand vaguely to his head. "You--you remember me, do you not?"
The stranger quietly swept his cloak aside, and to the hostess"
unspeakable relief pa.s.sed out of the door.
"I never knew you," he said in low tones as he went.
The lady murmured some vain excuse about intruders, but the rector stood with annoyance written on his face.
"I beg a thousand pardons," he said to the hostess absently. "It is a great pleasure to be here,--somehow I thought I knew that man. I am sure I knew him once."
The stranger had pa.s.sed down the steps, and as he pa.s.sed, the nurse, lingering at the top of the staircase, flew down after him, caught his cloak, trembled, hesitated, and then kneeled in the dust.
He touched her lightly with his hand and said: "Go, and sin no more!"
With a glad cry the maid left the house, with its open door, and turned north, running. The stranger turned eastward into the night. As they parted a long, low howl rose tremulously and reverberated through the night. The colonel"s wife within shuddered.
"The bloodhounds!" she said.
The rector answered carelessly:
"Another one of those convicts escaped, I suppose. Really, they need severer measures." Then he stopped. He was trying to remember that stranger"s name.
The judge"s wife looked about for the draft and arranged her shawl. The girl glanced at the white drapery in the hall, but the young officer was bending over her and the fires of life burned in her veins.
Howl after howl rose in the night, swelled, and died away. The stranger strode rapidly along the highway and out into the deep forest. There he paused and stood waiting, tall and still.
A mile up the road behind a man was running, tall and powerful and black, with crime-stained face and convicts" stripes upon him, and shackles on his legs. He ran and jumped, in little, short steps, and his chains rang. He fell and rose again, while the howl of the hounds rang louder behind him.
Into the forest he leapt and crept and jumped and ran, streaming with sweat; seeing the tall form rise before him, he stopped suddenly, dropped his hands in sullen impotence, and sank panting to the earth. A greyhound shot out of the woods behind him, howled, whined, and fawned before the stranger"s feet. Hound after hound bayed, leapt, and lay there; then silently, one by one, and with bowed heads, they crept backward toward the town.
The stranger made a cup of his hands and gave the man water to drink, bathed his hot head, and gently took the chains and irons from his feet.
By and by the convict stood up. Day was dawning above the treetops. He looked into the stranger"s face, and for a moment a gladness swept over the stains of his face.
"Why, you are a n.i.g.g.e.r, too," he said.
Then the convict seemed anxious to justify himself.
"I never had no chance," he said furtively.
"Thou shalt not steal," said the stranger.
The man bridled.
"But how about them? Can they steal? Didn"t they steal a whole year"s work, and then when I stole to keep from starving--" He glanced at the stranger.
"No, I didn"t steal just to keep from starving. I stole to be stealing.
I can"t seem to keep from stealing. Seems like when I see things, I just must--but, yes, I"ll try!"
The convict looked down at his striped clothes, but the stranger had taken off his long coat; he had put it around him and the stripes disappeared.
In the opening morning the black man started toward the low, log farmhouse in the distance, while the stranger stood watching him. There was a new glory in the day. The black man"s face cleared up, and the farmer was glad to get him. All day the black man worked as he had never worked before. The farmer gave him some cold food.
"You can sleep in the barn," he said, and turned away.
"How much do I git a day?" asked the black man.
The farmer scowled.
"Now see here," said he. "If you"ll sign a contract for the season, I"ll give you ten dollars a month."
"I won"t sign no contract," said the black man doggedly.
"Yes, you will," said the farmer, threateningly, "or I"ll call the convict guard." And he grinned.
The convict shrank and slouched to the barn. As night fell he looked out and saw the farmer leave the place. Slowly he crept out and sneaked toward the house. He looked through the kitchen door. No one was there, but the supper was spread as if the mistress had laid it and gone out.
He ate ravenously. Then he looked into the front room and listened. He could hear low voices on the porch. On the table lay a gold watch. He gazed at it, and in a moment he was beside it,--his hands were on it!
Quickly he slipped out of the house and slouched toward the field. He saw his employer coming along the highway. He fled back in tenor and around to the front of the house, when suddenly he stopped. He felt the great, dark eyes of the stranger and saw the same dark, cloak-like coat where the stranger sat on the doorstep talking with the mistress of the house. Slowly, guiltily, he turned back, entered the kitchen, and laid the watch stealthily where he had found it; then he rushed wildly back toward the stranger, with arms outstretched.
The woman had laid supper for her husband, and going down from the house had walked out toward a neighbor"s. She was gone but a little while, and when she came back she started to see a dark figure on the doorsteps under the tall, red oak. She thought it was the new Negro until he said in a soft voice:
"Will you give me bread?"
Rea.s.sured at the voice of a white man, she answered quickly in her soft, Southern tones:
"Why, certainly."
She was a little woman, and once had been pretty; but now her face was drawn with work and care. She was nervous and always thinking, wishing, wanting for something. She went in and got him some cornbread and a gla.s.s of cool, rich b.u.t.termilk; then she came out and sat down beside him. She began, quite unconsciously, to tell him about herself,--the things she had done and had not done and the things she had wished for.
She told him of her husband and this new farm they were trying to buy.
She said it was hard to get n.i.g.g.e.rs to work. She said they ought all to be in the chain-gang and made to work. Even then some ran away. Only yesterday one had escaped, and another the day before.
At last she gossiped of her neighbors, how good they were and how bad.
"And do you like them all?" asked the stranger.
She hesitated.
"Most of them," she said; and then, looking up into his face and putting her hand into his, as though he were her father, she said:
"There are none I hate; no, none at all."