Part 14 (2/2)

”You'd better take that basket into the house,” he said sharply.

In the negress's face an expression of surprise wavered for a second and then disappeared. Her features resumed their usual pa.s.sive and humble look--a look which said, if Cyrus could have read human nature as easily as he read finance, ”I don't understand, but I submit without understanding. Am I not what you have made me? Have I not been what you wanted? And yet you despise me for being the thing you made.”

”I didn't mean nuttin', Marster. I didn't mean nuttin',” she protested aloud.

”Then get into the house,” retorted Cyrus harshly, ”and don't stand gaping there. Any more of your insolence and I'll never let you set foot in this yard again.”

”'Fo' de Lawd, I didn't mean nuttin'! Gawd a' moughty, I didn't mean nuttin'! I jes lowed as you mought be willin' ter gun me fo' dollars a mont' fur de was.h.i.+n'. My boy Jubal----”

”I'll not give you a red cent more. If you don't want it, you can leave it. Get out of here!”

All the primitive antagonism of race--that instinct older than civilization--was in the voice with which he ordered her out of his sight. ”It was downright blackmail. The fool was trying to blackmail me,” he thought. ”If I'd yielded an inch I'd have been at her mercy.

It's a pretty pa.s.s things have come to when men have to protect themselves from negro women.” The more he reflected on her impudence, the stronger grew his conviction that he had acted remarkably well.

”Nipped it in the root. If I hadn't----” he thought.

And behind him in the doorway the washerwoman continued to regard him, over the lowered clothes basket, with her humble and deprecating look, which said, like the look of a beaten animal: ”I don't understand, but I submit without understanding because you are stronger than I.”

Taking down his hat, Cyrus turned away from her, and descended the steps. ”I'll look up Henry's son before supper,” he was thinking. ”Even if the boy's a fool, I'm not one to let those of my own blood come to want.”

CHAPTER X

OLIVER SURRENDERS

When Cyrus's knock came at his door, Oliver crossed the room to let in his visitor, and then fell back, startled, at the sight of his uncle. ”I wonder what has brought him here?” he thought inhospitably. But even if he had put the question, it is doubtful if Cyrus could have enlightened him--for the great man was so seldom visited by an impulse that when, as now, one actually took possession of him, he obeyed the pressure almost unconsciously. Like most men who pride themselves upon acting solely from reason, he was the abject slave of the few instincts which had managed to take root and thrive in the stony ground of his nature. The feeling for family, which was so closely entwined with his supreme feeling for property that the two had become inseparable, moved him to-day as it had done on the historic occasion when he had redeemed the mortgaged roof over the heads of his spinster relations. Perhaps, too, some of the vague softness of June had risen in him and made him gentler in his judgments of youth.

”I didn't expect you or I'd have straightened up a bit,” said Oliver, not overgraciously, while he hastily pushed his supper of bread and tea to one end of the table. He resented what he called in his mind ”the intrusion,” and he had no particular objection to his uncle's observing his resentment. His temper, never of the most perfect equilibrium, had been entirely upset by the effects of a June Sunday in Dinwiddie, and the affront of Cyrus's visit had become an indignity because of his unfortunate selection of the supper hour. Some hidden obliquity in the Treadwell soul, which kept it always at cross-purposes with life, prevented any lessening of the deep antagonism between the old and the young of the race. And so incurable was this obliquity in the soul of Cyrus, that it forced him now to take a tone which he had resolutely set his mind against from the moment of Mrs. Peachey's visit. He wanted to be pleasant, but something deep down within him--some inherited tendency to bully--was stronger than his will.

”I looked in to see if you hadn't about come to your senses,” he began.

”If you mean come to your way of looking at things--then I haven't,”

replied Oliver, and added in a more courteous tone, ”Won't you sit down?”

”No, sir, I can stand long enough to say what I came to say,” retorted the other, and it seemed to him that the pleasanter he tried to make his voice, the harsher grew the sound of it in his ears. What was it about the rascal that rubbed him the wrong way only to look at him?

”As you please,” replied Oliver quietly. ”What in thunder has he got to say to me?” he thought. ”And why can't he say it and have it over?”

While Cyrus merely despised him, he detested Cyrus with all the fiery intolerance of his age. ”Standing there like an old turkey gobbler, ugh!” he said contemptuously to himself.

”So you ain't hungry yet?” asked the old man, and felt that the words were forced out of him by that obstinate cross-grain in his nature over which he had no control.

”I've just had tea.”

”You haven't changed your mind since you last spoke to me, eh?”

”No, I haven't changed my mind. Why should I?”

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