Birthright - T.S. Stribling
The old preacher nodded, staring into the dust. "Sho! 'tonomous
'velopment."
Peter saw that his language, if not his thought, was far beyond his old
companion's grasp, and he lacked the patience to simplify himself.
"Why don't you want to marry us, Parson?"
Parson Ranson lifted his brows and filled his forehead with wrinkles.
"Well, I dunno. You an' Miss Cissie acts too much lak white folks fuh a
nigger lak me to jine you, Mr. Peter."
Peter made a sincere effort to be irritated, but he was not.
"That's no way to feel. It's exactly what I was talking about,--racial
self-reliance. You've married hundreds of colored couples."
"Ya-as, suh,"--the old fellow scratched his black jaw.--"I kin yoke up a
pair uv ordina'y niggers all right. Sometimes dey sticks, sometimes dey
don't." The old man shook his white, kinky head. "I'll bust in an' try
to hitch up you-all. I--I dunno whedder de cer'mony will hol' away up
North or not."
"It'll be all right anywhere, Parson," said Peter, seriously. "Your name
on the marriage-certificate will--can you write?"
"N-no, suh."
After a brief hesitation Peter repeated determinedly:
"It'll be all right. And, by the way, of course, this will be a very
quiet wedding."
"Yas-suh." The old man bobbed importantly.
"I wouldn't mention it to any one."
"No, suh; no, suh. I don' blame you a-tall, Mr. Peter, wid dat Tump Pack
gallivantin' roun' wid a forty-fo'. Hit would keep 'mos' anybody's
weddin' ve'y quiet onless he wuz lookin' fuh a short cut to heab'n."
As the two negroes passed the Berry cabin, Nan Berry thrust out her
spiked head and called to Peter Captain Renfrew wanted to see him.
Peter paused, with quickened interest in this strange old man who had
come to his mother's death-bed with a doctor. Peter asked Nan what the
Captain wanted.
Nan did not know. Wince Washington had told Nan that the Captain wanted
to see Peter. Bluegum Frakes had told Wince; Jerry Dillihay had told
Bluegum; but any further meanderings of the message, when it started, or
what its details might be, Nan could not state.
It was a typical message from a resident of the white town to a denizen
of Niggertown. Such messages are delivered to any black man for any
other black man, not only in the village, but anywhere in the outlying
country. It may be passed on by a dozen or a score of mouths before it
reaches its objective. It may be a day or a week in transit, but
eventually it will be delivered verbatim. This queer system of
communication is a relic of slavery, when the master would send out word
for some special negro out of two or three hundred slaves to report at
the big house.
However, as Peter approached the Dildine cabin, thoughts of his
approaching marriage drove from his mind even old Captain Renfrew's
message. His heart beat fast from having made his first formal step
toward wedlock. The thought of having Cissie all to himself, swept his
nerves in a gust.
He opened the gate, and ran up between the dusty lines of dwarf box,
eager to tell her what he had done. He thumped on the cracked, unpainted
door, and impatiently waited the skirmish of observation along the edge
of the window-blinds. This was unduly drawn out. Presently he heard
women's voices whispering to each other inside. They seemed urgent,
almost angry voices. Now and then he caught a sentence:
"What difference will it make?" "I couldn't." "Why couldn't you?"
"Because--" "That's because you've been to Nashville." "Oh, well--" A
chair was moved over a bare floor. A little later footsteps came to the
entrance, the door opened, and Cissie's withered yellow mother stood
before him.
Vannie offered her hand and inquired after Peter's health with a stopped
voice that instantly recalled his mother's death. After the necessary
moment of talk, the mulatto inquired for Cissie.
The yellow woman seemed slightly ill at ease.
"Cissie ain't so well, Peter."
"She's not ill?"
"N-no; but the excitement an' ever'thing--" answered Vannie, vaguely.
In the flush of his plans, Peter was keenly disappointed.
"It's very important, Mrs. Dildine."
Vannie's dried yellow face framed the ghost of a smile.
"Ever'thing a young man's got to say to a gal is ve'y important, Peter."
It seemed to Peter a poor time for a jest; his face warmed faintly.
"It--it's about some of the details of our--our wedding."
"If you'll excuse her to-day, Peter, an' come after supper--"
Peter hesitated, and was about to go away when Cissie's voice came from
an inner room, telling her mother to admit him.
The yellow woman glanced at the door on the left side of the hall,
crossed over and opened it, stood to one side while Peter entered, and
closed it after him, leaving the two alone.
The room into which Peter stepped was dark, after the fashion of negro
houses. Only after a moment's survey did he see Cissie sitting near a
big fireplace made of rough stone. The girl started to rise as Peter
advanced toward her, but he solicitously forbade it and hurried over to
her. When he leaned over her and put his arms about her, his ardor was
slightly dampened when she gave him her cheek instead of her lips to
kiss.
"Surely, you're not too ill to be kissed?" he rallied faintly.
"You kissed me. I thought we had agreed, Peter, you were not to come in
the daytime any more."
"Oh, is that it?" Peter patted her shoulder, cheerfully. "Don't worry; I
have just removed any reason why I shouldn't come any time I want to."
Cissie looked at him, her dark eyes large in the gloom.
"What have you done?"
"Got a preacher to marry us; on my way now for a license. Dropped in to
ask if you 'll be ready by tomorrow or next day."
The girl gasped.
"But, Peter--"
Peter drew a chair beside her in a serious argumentative mood.
"Yes I think we ought to get married at once. No reason why we shouldn't
get it over with--Why, what's the matter?"
"So soon after your mother's death, Peter?"
"It's to get away from Hooker's Bend, Cissie--to get you away. I don't
like for you to stay here. It's all so--" he broke off, not caring to
open the disagreeable subject.
The girl sat staring down at some fagots smoldering on the hearth. At
that moment they broke into flame and illuminated her sad face.
"You'll go, won't you?" asked Peter at last, with a faint uncertainty.
The girl looked up.
"Oh--I--I'd be glad to, Peter,"--she gave a little shiver. "Ugh! this
Niggertown is a--a terrible place!"
Peter leaned over, took one of her hands, and patted it.
"Then we'll go," he said soothingly. "It's decided--tomorrow. And we'll
have a perfectly lovely wedding trip," he planned cheerfully, to draw
her mind from her mood. "On the car going North I'll get a whole
drawing-room. I've always wanted a drawing-room, and you'll be my
excuse. We'll sit and watch the fields and woods and cities slip past
us, and know, when we get off, we can walk on the streets as freely as
anybody. We'll be a genuine man and wife."
His recital somehow stirred him. He took her in his arms, pressed her
cheek to his, and after a moment kissed her lips with the trembling
ardor of a bridegroom.
Cissie remained passive a moment, then put up he hands, turned his face
away, and slowly released herself.
Peter was taken aback.
"What _is_ the matter, Cissie?"
"I can't go, Peter."
Peter looked at her with a feeling of strangeness.
"Can't go?"
The girl shook her head.
"You mean--you want us to live here?"
Cissie sat exceedingly still and barely shook her head.
The mulatto had a sensation as if the portals which disclosed a new and
delicious life were slowly closing against him. He stared into her oval
face.
"You don't mean, Cissie--you don't mean you don't want to marry me?"
The fagots on the hearth burned now with a cheerful flame. Cissie stared
at it, breathing rapidly from the top of her lungs. She seemed about to
faint. As Peter watched her the jealousy of the male crept over him.
"Look here, Cissie," he said in a queer voice, "you--you don't mean,
after all, that Tump Pack is--"
"Oh no! No!" Her face showed her repulsion. Then she drew a long breath
and apparently made up her mind to some sort of ordeal.
"Peter," she asked in a low tone, "did you ever think what we colored
people are trying to reach?" She stared into his uncomprehending eyes.
"I mean what is our aim, our goal, whom are we trying to be like?"
"We aren't trying to be like any one." Peter was entirely at a loss.
"Oh, yes, we are," Cissie hurried on. "Why do colored girls straighten
their hair, bleach their skins, pinch their feet? Aren't they trying to
look like white girls?"
Peter agreed, wondering at her excitement.
"And you went North to college, Peter, so you could think and act like a
white man--"
Peter resisted this at once; he was copying nobody. The whole object of
college was to develop one's personality, to bring out--
The girl stopped his objections almost piteously.
"Oh, don't argue! You know arguing throws me off. I--now I've forgotten
how I meant to say it!" Tears of frustration welled up in her eyes.
Her mood was alarming, almost hysterical. Peter began comforting her.
"There, there, dear, dear Cissie, what is the matter? Don't say it at
all." Then, inconsistently, he added: "You said I copied white men.
Well, what of it?"
Cissie breathed her relief at having been given the thread of her
discourse. She sat silent for a moment with the air of one screwing up
her courage.
"It's this," she said in an uncertain voice: "sometimes we--we--girls--
here in Niggertown copy the wrong thing first."
Peter looked blankly at her.
"The wrong thing first, Cissie?"
"Oh, yes; we--we begin on clothes and--and hair and--and that isn't the
real matter."
"Why, no-o-o, that isn't the real matter," said Peter puzzled.
Cissie looked at his face and became hopeless.
"Oh, _don't_ you understand! Lots of us--lots of us make that
mistake! I--I did; so--so, Peter, I can't go with you!" She flung out
the last phrase, and suddenly collapsed on the arm of her chair,
sobbing.
Peter was amazed. He got up, sat on the arm of his own chair next to
hers and put his arms about her, bending over her, mothering her. Her
distress was so great that he said as earnestly as his ignorance
permitted:
"Yes, Cissie, I understand now." But his tone belied his words, and the
girl shook her head. "Yes, I do, Cissie," he repeated emptily. But she
only shook her head as she leaned over him, and her tears slowly formed
and trickled down on his hand. Then all at once old Caroline's
accusation against Cissie flashed on Peter's mind. She had stolen that
dinner in the turkey roaster, after all. It so startled him that he sat
up straight. Cissie also sat up. She stopped crying, and sat looking
into the fire.
"You mean--morals?" said Peter in a low tone.
Cissie barely nodded, her wet eyes fixed on the fire.
"I see. I was stupid."
The girl sat a moment, drawing deep breaths. At last she rose slowly.
"Well--I'm glad it's over. I'm glad you know." She stood looking at him
almost composedly except for her breathing and her tear-stained face.
"You see, Peter, if you had been like Tump Pack or Wince or any of the
boys around here, it--it wouldn't have made much difference; but--but
you went off and--and learned to think and feel like a white man. You--
you changed your code, Peter." She gave a little shaken sound, something
between a sob and a laugh. "I--I don't think th-that's very fair, Peter,
to--to go away an'--an' change an' come back an' judge us with yo' n-new
code." Cissie's precise English broke down.
Just then Peter's logic caught at a point.
"If you didn't know anything about my code, how do you know what I feel
now?" he asked.
She looked at him with a queer expression.
"I found out when you kissed me under the arbor. It was too late then."
She stood erect, with dismissal very clearly written in her attitude.
Peter walked out of the room.
CHAPTER VIII
With a certain feeling of clumsiness Peter groped in the dark hall for
his hat, then, as quietly as he could, let himself out at the door.
Outside he was surprised to find that daylight still lingered in the
sky. He thought night had fallen. The sun lay behind the Big Hill, but
its red rays pouring down through the boles of the cedars tinted long
delicate avenues in the dusty atmosphere above his head. A sharp chill
in the air presaged frost for the night. Somewhere in the crescent a boy
yodeled for his dog at about half-minute intervals, with the persistence
of children.
Peter walked a little distance, but finally came to a stand in the dust,
looking at the negro cabins, not knowing where to go or what to do.
Cissie's confession had destroyed all his plans. It had left him as
adynamic as had his mother's death. It seemed to Peter that there was a
certain similarity between the two events; both were sudden and
desolating. And just as his mother had vanished utterly from his reach,
so now it seemed Cissie was no more. Cissie the clear-eyed, Cissie the
ambitious, Cissie the refined, had vanished away, and in her place stood
a thief.
The thing was grotesque. Peter began a sudden shuddering in the cold.
Then he began moving toward the empty cabin where he slept and kept his
things. He moved along, talking to himself in the dusty emptiness of the
crescent. He decided that he would go home, pack his clothes, and
vanish. A St. Louis boat would be down that night, and he would just
have time to pack his clothes and catch it. He would not take his books,
his philosophies. He would let them remain, in the newspapered room,
until all crumbled into uniform philosophic dust, and the teachings of
Aristotle blew about Niggertown.
Then, as he thought of traveling North, the vision of the honeymoon he
had just planned revived his numb brain into a dismal aching. He looked
back through the dusk at the Dildine roof. It stood black against an
opalescent sky. Out of the foreground, bending over it, arose a clump of
tall sunflowers, in whose silhouette hung a suggestion of yellow and
green. The whole scene quivered slightly at every throb of his heart. He
thought what a fool he was to allow a picaresque past to keep him away
from such a woman, how easy it would be to go back to the soft luxury of
Cissie, to tell her it made no difference; and somehow, just at that
moment it seemed not to.
Then the point of view which Peter had been four years acquiring swept
away the impulse, and it left him moving toward his cabin again, empty,
cold, and planless.
He was drawn out of his reverie by the soft voice of a little negro boy
asking him apprehensively whom he was talking to.
Peter stopped, drew forth a handkerchief and dabbed the moisture from
his cold face in the meticulous fashion of college men.
With the boy came a dog which was cautiously smelling Peter's shoes and
trousers. Both boy and dog were investigating the phenomenon of Peter.
Peter, in turn, looked down at them with a feeling that they had
materialized out of nothing.
"What did you say?" he asked vaguely.
The boy was suddenly overcome with the excessive shyness of negro
children, and barely managed to whisper:
"I--I ast wh-who you wuz a-talkin' to."
"Was I talking?"
The little negro nodded, undecided whether to stand his ground or flee.
Peter touched the child's crisp hair.
"I was talking to myself," he said, and moved forward again.
The child instantly gained confidence at the slight caress, took a fold
of Peter's trousers in his hand for friendliness, and the two trudged on
together.
"Wh-whut you talkin' to yo' se'f for?"
Peter glanced down at the little black head that promised to think up a
thousand questions.
"I was wondering where to go."
"Lawsy! is you los' yo' way?"
He stroked the little head with a rush of self-pity.
"Yes, I have, son; I've completely lost my way."
The child twisted his head around and peered up alongside Peter's arm.
Presently he asked:
"Ain't you Mr. Peter Siner?"
"Yes."
"Ain't you de man whut's gwine to ma'y Miss Cissie Dildine?"
Peter looked down at his small companion with a certain concern that his
marriage was already gossip known to babes.
"I'm Peter Siner," he repeated.
"Den I knows which way you wants to go," piped the youngster in sudden
helpfulness. "You wants to go over to Cap'n Renfrew's place acrost de
Big Hill. He done sont fuh you. Mr. Wince Washington tol' me, ef I seed
you, to tell you dat Cap'n Renfrew wants to see you. I dunno whut hit's
about. I ast Wince, an' he didn' know."
Peter recalled the message Nan Berry had given him some hours before.
Now the same summons had seeped around to him from another direction.
"I--I'll show you de way to Cap'n Renfrew's ef--ef you'll come back wid
me th'ugh de cedar glade," proposed the child. "I--I ain't skeered in de
cedar glade, b-b-but hit's so dark I kain't see my way back home.
I--I--"
Peter thanked him and declined his services. After all, he might as well
go to see Captain Renfrew. He owed the old gentleman some thanks--and
ten dollars.
The only thing of which Peter Siner was aware during his walk over the
Big Hill and through the village was his last scene with Cissie. He went
over it again and again, repeating their conversation, inventing new
replies, framing new action, questioning more fully into the octoroon's
vague confession and his benumbed acceptance of it. The moment his mind
completed the little drama it started again from the very beginning.
At Captain Renfrew's gate this mental mummery paused long enough for him
to vacillate between walking in or going around and shouting from the
back gate. It is a point of etiquette in Hooker's Bend that negroes
shall enter a white house from the back stoop. Peter had no desire to
transgress this custom. On the other hand, if Captain Renfrew was
receiving him as a fellow of Harvard, the back door, in its way, would
prove equally embarrassing.
After a certain indecision he compromised by entering the front gate and
calling the Captain's name from among the scattered bricks of the old
walk.
The house lay silent, half smothered in a dark tangle of shrubbery.
Peter called twice before he heard the shuffle of house slippers, and
then saw the Captain's dressing-gown at the piazza steps.
"Is that you, Peter?" came a querulous voice.
"Yes, Captain. I was told you wanted to see me."
"You've been deliberate in coming," criticized the old gentleman,
testily. "I sent you word by some black rascal three days ago."
"I just received the message to-day." Peter remained discreetly at the
gate.
"Yes; well, come in, come in. See if you can do anything with this
damnable lamp."
The old man turned with a dignified drawing-together of his dressing-
gown and moved back. Apparently, the renovation of a cranky lamp was the
whole content of the Captain's summons to Peter.
There was something so characteristic in this incident that Peter was
moved to a vague sense of mirth. It was just like the old regime to call
in a negro, a special negro, from ten miles away to move a jar of ferns
across the lawn or trim a box hedge or fix a lamp.
Peter followed the old gentleman around to the back piazza facing his
study. There, laid out on the floor, were all the parts of a gasolene
lamp, together with a pipe-wrench, a hammer, a little old-fashioned
vise, a bar of iron, and an envelop containing the mantels and the more
delicate parts of the lamp.
"It's extraordinary to me," criticized the Captain, "why they can't make
a gasolene lamp that will go, and remain in a going condition."
"Has it been out of fix for three days?" asked Peter, sorry that the old
gentleman should have lacked a light for so long.
"No," growled the Captain; "it started gasping at four o'clock last
night; so I put it out and went to bed. I've been working at it this
evening. There's a little hole in the tip,--if I could see it,--a hair-
sized hole, painfully small. Why any man wants to make gasolene lamps
with microscopic holes that ordinary intelligence must inform him will
become clogged I cannot conceive."
Peter ventured no opinion on this trait of lampmakers, but said that if
the Captain knew where he could get an oil hand-lamp for a little more
light, he thought he could unstop the hole.
The Captain looked at his helper and shook his head.
"I am surprised at you, Peter. When I was your age, I could see an
aperture like that hole under the last quarter of the moon. In this
strong light I could have--er--lunged the cleaner through it, sir. You
must have strained your eyes in college." He paused, then added: "You'll
find hand-lamps in any of the rooms fronting this porch. I don't know
whether they have oil in them or not--the shiftless niggers that come
around to take care of this building--no dependence to be put in them.
When I try it myself, I do even worse."
The old gentleman's tone showed that he was thawing out of his irritable
mood, and Peter sensed that he meant to be amusing in an austere,
unsmiling fashion. The Captain rubbed his delicate wrinkled hands
together in a pleased fashion and sat down in a big porch chair to await
Peter's assembling of the lamp. The brown man started down the long
piazza, in search of a hand-light.
He found a lamp in the first room he entered, returned to the piazza,
sat down on the edge of it, and began his tinkering. The old Captain
apparently watched him with profound satisfaction. Presently, after the
fashion of the senile, he began endless and minute instructions as to
how the lamp should be cleaned.
"Take the wire in your left hand, Peter,--that's right,--now hold the
tip a little closer to the light--no, place the mantels on the right
side--that's the way I do it. System...." the old man's monologue ran on
and on, and became a murmur in Peter's ears. It was rather soothing than
otherwise. Now and then it held tremulous vibrations that might have
been from age or that might have been from some deep satisfaction
mounting even to joy. But to Peter that seemed hardly probable. No doubt
it was senility. The Captain was a tottery old man, past the age for any
fundamental joy.
Night had fallen now, and a darkness, musky with autumn weeds, hemmed in
the sphere of yellow light on the old piazza. A black-and-white cat
materialized out of the gloom, purring, and arching against a pillar.
The whole place was filled with a sense of endless leisure. The old man,
the cat, the perfume of the weeds, soothed in Peter even the rawness of
his hurt at Cissie.
Indeed, in a way, the old manor became a sort of apology for the
octoroon girl. The height and the reach of the piazza, exaggerated by
the darkness, suggested a time when retinues of negroes passed through
its dignified colonnades. Those black folk were a part of the place.
They came and went, picked up and used what they could, and that was all
life held for them. They were without wage, without rights, even to the
possession of their own bodies; so by necessity they took what they
could. That was only fifty-odd years ago. Thus, in a way, Peter's
surroundings began a subtle explanation of and apology for Cissie, the
whole racial training of black folk in petty thievery. And that this
should have touched Cissie--the meanness, the pathos of her fate moved
Peter.
The negro was aroused from his reverie by the old Captain's getting out
of his chair and saying, "Very good," and then Peter saw that he had
finished the lamp. The two men rose and carried it into the study, where
Peter pumped and lighted it; a bit later its brilliant white light
flooded the room.
"Quite good." The old Captain stood rubbing his hands with his odd air
of continued delight. "How do you like this place, anyway, Peter?" He
wrapped his gown around him, sat down in the old Morris chair beside the
book-piled table, and indicated another seat for Peter.
The mulatto took it, aware of a certain flexing of Hooker's Bend custom,
where negroes, unless old or infirm, are not supposed to sit in the
presence of whites.
"Do you mean the study, Captain?"
"Yes, the study, the whole place."
"It's very pleasant," replied Peter; "it has the atmosphere of age."
Captain Renfrew nodded.
"These old places," pursued Peter, "always give me an impression of
statesmanship, somehow. I always think of grave old gentlemen busy with
the cares of public policy."
The old man seemed gratified.
"You are sensitive to atmosphere. If I may say it, every Southron of the
old regime was a statesman by nature and training. The complete care of
two or three hundred negroes, a regard for their bodily, moral, and
spiritual welfare, inevitably led the master into the impersonal
attitude of statecraft. It was a training, sir, in leadership, in social
thinking, in, if you please, altruism." The old gentleman thumped the
arm of his chair with a translucent palm. "Yes, sir, negro slavery was
God's great lesson to the South in altruism and loving-kindness, sir! My
boy, I do believe with all my heart that the institution of slavery was
placed here in God's country to rear up giants of political leadership,
that our nation might weather the revolutions of the world. Oh, the
Yankees are necessary! I know that!" The old Captain held up a palm at
Peter as if repressing an imminent retort. "I know the Yankees are the
Marthas of the nation. They furnish food and fuel to the ship of state,
but, my boy, the reservoir of our country's spiritual and mental
strength, the Mary of our nation, must always be the South. Virginia is
the mother of Presidents!"