Part 5

It was here that André François' early training enabled him to make an impression. He stood up on his toes, as he had once seen the Marquis de Boissé stand up on his toes, and slapped Jimmie McCarthy across the mouth with his open palm, as he had seen that noble marquis slap a count of France.

But what followed was not an exchange of ultra courteous priorities to a duel. It was a good American fight in the middle of a ring of small boys, and what happened is what always happens when natural and scientific force stand up before each other. That fight will be long remembered in the annals of the gang, which, like the records of the great Homeric fights or the sagas of the primitive Northmen, are first handed down by word of mouth.

"I wished yer'd seen it, kid," said Charlie Brown, to his wide-eyed, freckled-faced junior, whom he was trying to bring up in the right way. "It'd bin an eddycation fer yer. Andray Franswa jumped round jest like he was made o' rubber. Every time that Jim grabbed fer him, he was on the other side an' had landed him one on the nose. Gee, yer oughter seen it bleed--it was worse'n the time Jim beat Buck Paxell. Now, Teddy, yer want ter keep yer eye on Andray Franswa, an' do same as yer see him doin'--'cause he's goin' ter be a great man some day like Jim Jeffries--see?"

That afternoon the manager of the White Star chanced to look out of his window, and he saw André François, with his white sailor hat, fashioned after that of Prince Edward, set rakishly over one ear, his hands in his pockets, whistling at the top of his lungs, come down the street. His face was muddy and bleeding, a great scratch cut across it from ear to ear, his hair was wild and tangled, but his swagger was that of a conqueror, and he took the middle of the road. An admiring concourse of small boys followed along at a respectful distance.

Mr. Biron smiled to himself. Then he took down his ledger, for he was a careful man of business, and read over a certain page. On it was written fourteen times:

"To Andrew Francis, licking... $1.00"

"Um," said the manager of the White Star softly at the end of the addition, "fourteen dollars." Then he took another look out of the window:

"I never made a better bargain in my life."

AIN'T YOU GWINE TO COME?

BY

EDMUND VANCE COOKE

De debbil done ast me to be his chile; De debbil he's allus a follerin'; I run de debbil foh mos' a mile; Don' you hear de debbil a-hollerin'? I'se gwine to jine de fambly of de Lohd; I'se gwine to glory in de mawnin'; I'se gwine to be bohn in de grace of Gohd; Ain't you gwine to come to my bohnin'?

_Come along-a sisteh, come along-a bruddeh, Come along-a one an' a come along de uddeh, Bring along a frien' an' a-bring along anuddeh; Ain't you gwine to come to my bohnin'?_

De debbil done temp' me to visit his roof; De debbil he's allus a follerin'; I stomp my foot on de debbil's hoof; Don' you hear de debbil a-hollerin'? I'se gwine to jine de fambly of de Lohd; De debbil's done quit his harryin'; I'se gwine to be married to de son of Gohd; Ain't you gwine to come to my marryin'?

_Come along-a sisteh, come along-a bruddeh, Come along-a one an' a come along de uddeh, Bring along a frien' an a-bring along anuddeh; Ain't you gwine to come to my marryin'?_

De debbil done beg me to sail his ship; De debbil he's allus a follerin'; I smack my han' on de debbil's lip; Don' you hear de debbil a hollerin'? I'se gwine to sail in de ship of de Lohd Dat's a runnin' to glory at de ferryin'; I'se gwine to be buried in de grace of Gohd; Ain't you gwine to come to my buryin'?

_Come along-a sisteh an' a come along-a bruddeh, Come along-a one an' a come along de uddeh, Bring along a frien' an' a bring along anuddeh; Ain't you gwine to come to my buryin'?_

JUNGLE BLOOD

BY

ELMORE ELLIOTT PEAKE

ILLUSTRATIONS BY WALTER JACK DUNCAN

He was a coal-black, box-headed negro, of a bulk and stature never before admitted to the dining-room of the Bluegrass Hotel. The blacks preferred by the management of that fastidious hostelry were agile, under-sized fellows with round heads and small hands; and Moss Harper would assuredly never have effected an entrance to the dining-room, had it not been for a waiters' strike, which made almost any kind of help welcome.

The lynx-eyed head waiter, prejudiced from the start against his gigantic underling, quickly discovered that salt-cellars and other small objects eluded Moss' clumsy fingers like drops of quicksilver; also, that the channels between the tables were wholly inadequate for the safe navigation of a vessel of this draft. Hence Moss' term of service would doubtless have been a very brief one, had it not been for an unforeseen event. On his way home the very first night, he broke the heads of half a dozen union pickets who had waylaid him in a dark alley, and this feat gave the strike a shock from which it died the next day.

Out of gratitude, and possibly also a desire to give the recalcitrant negroes an object-lesson, the management decided to tolerate Moss for a month. It was clearly a case of toleration. He broke more dishes than any four of the other waiters; he forgot orders; he trod on toes; and, although he was of a singularly peaceful disposition, never taking part in the multitudinous squabbles of the dining-room, the incessant gibes, sneers, and threats of his unionized associates would occasionally prove too much for even his equanimity. Then, like an infuriated gorilla, he would spring upon his tormentors, regardless of their number, and dearly indeed would they pay for their sport.

He was, moreover, a silent fellow; and his silence was not that of the well-bred waiter, but a solemn, profound, brooding, depressing thing, acquired, one could almost believe, in the African jungles where his forefathers had crept like wild beasts or squatted in superstitious terror. People, consequently, were a little afraid of him. It was told that he had once carried a piano up three flights of stairs on his back; and when he would pass down the dining-room with a seventy-pound tray balanced on the tips of three fingers as lightly as if it were a pie-pan, a certain bald-headed, white-waist-coated, pink-faced old bachelor, who made his home at the hotel, never tired of observing to strangers, with his dry little chuckle: "How'd you like to meet that boy on a lonely road, suh, afteh dark, with your gun at home?" And, in truth, Moss' huge black paw, suddenly appearing over their shoulders from behind, as he served a meal, was a trifle disconcerting to ladies with delicate nerves.

There was, however, a force of some kind, a sort of dumb nobility about the fellow, which made itself felt; and, in spite of his manifold shortcomings, he had, when his month was up, made a fairly favorable impression. Still, his fate was hanging in the balance when Fortune once more intervened in his behalf. An imaginative reporter on one of the Louisville papers, being hard pressed for a Sunday story, concocted an article entitled "A Congo King," in which he solemnly averred that the herculean waiter at the Bluegrass was the grandson of an African prince who had been captured by slavers on the upper Congo, after a desperate fight, and landed in Charleston in 1832.

From that hour Moss became a show-piece which the proprietors of the Bluegrass would not willingly have parted with. Guests almost daily asked to be shown the "Congo King." A German ethnologist who was touring the country ran down from Chicago to get some exact measurements of the royal descendant's head. An artist of State reputation painted him in what was alleged to be his grandfather's court costume--a strip of leopard-skin around his loins; and a photograph from this painting made the most popular souvenir post-card which the hotel's news-stand had ever handled.

Curiously enough, his fame did not spoil him. Indeed, for any change in him, he might have been unaware of his fame, and possibly was unaware of it. At all events, he continued to pursue the simple routine of his life. He worked seven days in the week, from six in the morning until nine at night, with a respite from two till six. Most of the hotel negroes spent this recess in shooting craps and guzzling beer in an adjacent dive, but Moss devoted it to the prosecution of an enterprise very near to his heart. He was learning to read! He could already read a bill-of-fare, of course, to any near-sighted guest who had chanced to forget his glasses; but this was merely a mnemonic trick, assisted by the position of the words on the card. He yearned to be able to read "really and truly," out of a newspaper or a book.

One afternoon, after laying off his dining-room livery and getting into his own shabby clothes,--in which few of the Bluegrass guests would have recognized their Congo King!--he set off with unusual alacrity. At the street door he paused to turn up his collar and draw down his hat-brim, and then indifferently stepped out into a pelting shower. A block away he entered a second-hand book-store and bought a greasy, dog-eared Second Reader which he had priced the day before. Stowing his purchase in an inside pocket to keep it dry, he longingly eyed a passing street-car, for he was tired; but he put the temptation aside--five cents would buy a loaf of bread or two quarts of buttermilk--and stepped out into the rain again.

A walk of ten blocks brought him to the head of an ill-smelling, narrow alley, dotted with foul pools of water and bordered with tumble-down shanties. The rain had now ceased, and the sun, beating down more fiercely than ever, was raising a pestilential reek which had brought the black denizens of the alley to their tiny stoops for a breath of comparatively fresh air. Children, the smaller ones quite naked, pattered about like ducks in the black mud.

The number of men present, considering it was midday, would have surprised any one not familiar with the fact that the residents of Goosefoot Lane plied their varied trades mostly by night. Oily-skinned and blear-eyed from heat, drink, and loss of sleep, these gentlemen of color somewhat resembled the animals of an over-traveled menagerie, blinking stupidly, staring morosely into vacancy, slapping viciously at flies, and occasionally exposing their red mouths and gleaming teeth in a wide, fierce, carnivorous yawn. Some few, in a better humor, were drinking pailed beer and shooting craps. The women held their babies and chatted with their neighbors, while now and then some fat old mammy would waddle out into the lane to settle a row among the youngsters.

It was into this atmosphere that the student took his way, nodding at an acquaintance here and there, until he reached the shanty which the payment of four dollars a month in advance entitled him to call home. An old darky sat drowsing on the stoop. There was something ape-like about his long arms, his flat, wide-nostriled nose, and the mat of gray wool which crept down his forehead to within two inches of his eyebrows. Yet, on a closer inspection, his face was human, kindly, and benevolent, and even lit with a shrewd humor.

"This you' Secum Reader, sonny?" asked old Benjy, starting from his doze as Moss thrust the book into his hand. He fumbled in his pocket for his silver-rimmed spectacles,--cherished memento of better days,--pinched the book between his thick, knotted fingers, and opened it about as gracefully as a bear would open an oyster. Then he squinted at the page with an owl-like expression, moving the book now nearer, now farther, and turning it this way and that for a better light. For he was Moss' teacher, and it would be highly injurious to his prestige for him to show any flustration over this new volume. Nevertheless, he was not quite at ease.

"Yass--book-store man di'n' cheat you. He Secum Reader," he observed astutely, after moving his lips inaudibly for a moment. "Says so--right theh--top o' the page--in plain print. An' print don' lie! 'Member that, sonny,--print don' lie. Men lies, women lies, clouds lies--say it's gwine rain when it don' do nothin' but blow up a li'l' dust--but print neveh lies. 'Cause why? 'Cause the Good Book is print. But, sonny, if you gwine git an educashum, you gotter strike out for it--strike out--strike out."

"Ain't I strikin' out?" asked Moss in an aggrieved tone.

"Shuh, sonny, shuh. But this yere vollum make you scratch you' haid. Yass, indeed, sonny,--make you scratch you' haid. Purt' near makes me scratch mine!" The last, however, was accompanied by a low chuckle to indicate that it was only a joke; after which he adjusted his glasses afresh and again fixed his gaze on the book. "Wuds in heah, sonny, you neveh seen befo'. I done seen 'em, of co'se, 'cause ole Mis' tuk me mos' through the Thud Reader befo' the Wah broke out. But, of co'se, my eyesight ain't what it was--no, sonny, 'tain't what it was." He stared harder than ever, shutting first one eye, as though squinting along his old coon-gun, then the other, blinking, and moving his lips. Finally his black face lighted.

"Heah's an ole devil I used to wrastle with!" he exclaimed shrilly. "Lawd, Lawd, how I used to wrastle with that ole devil! _Succumstance! Succumstance!_ That's the ole devil!"

"Lemme see 'im," said Moss curiously, bending nearer.

"Right theh," answered Benjy proudly, pointing with his stub forefinger. "That long, crinkly, twis'ed feller. Looks a good 'eal like a dried fish-wum. Sonny, when you kin read a wud like him, easy-like, same as I do--_succumstance_--see!--_suc-cum-stance_--you' educashum mighty neah complete."

Satisfied with this feat, however, the old man turned from the text to the pictures, which were less trying, he declared, to his eyesight. His attention was at once caught by a little girl, in an old-fashioned pinafore, driving a hoop amid a fairly Edenic profusion of butterflies, flowers, and birds, with a squirrel eating a nut overhead. For a moment he stared fixedly through his grimy lenses, and then his hands trembled with excitement.

"Sonny," he almost shouted, "dis the same Secum Reader ole Mis' done learn _me_ out of! Dar's li'l' gull with her hoop, and squ'ull up above. An' dar"--turning a page--"is li'l' boy with pony--spotted pony with a collah 'stid of breas'-strap. An' dar anudder li'l' boy with white rabbits. I 'members 'em all. I 'members what ole Mis' said about 'em all," he ran on eagerly, while Moss' own eyes grew large with wonder at the strange coincidence. "I 'members de day ole Mis' guve me de book. I done driv' her back that day fum the Law'ences', where she spend the day with ole Mis' Lutie. She spend lots of days with ole Mis' Lutie, 'cause ole Mis' Lutie's husband killed in Mexican Wah, same as ole Mistis'. An' as we driv' up the ca'igeway, Miss Pen and Marse Willie Hahpeh, her cousin, come kitin' by us on theh hosses, makin' sich a clatter, my hosses shied in the blackberry-bushes. But Miss Pen juss larf, like she always do when Marse Willie with her, and neveh slowed up a bit. Ole Mis' kind of sighed and sayed: 'Benjy, that gull gwine breck her neck some day on that hoss.' An' I say, 'Mis' Judie, neveh while Marse Willie aroun'. He got better use for her neck than breckin' it.' An' she say, 'Shut up, Benjy; you fohget they fust cousins.' So we kim on up to the po'ch. Then she han' me a book an' say, 'Benjy, that's Secum Reader. You done learn all they is in the Fust.' An', sonny, it's the same book, the same book."

For a moment he was lost in reverie. His faded, age-filmed eyes, lifted to an archipelago of fleecy cloudlets, grew dreamy as his mind wandered back to the shady driveways of the old Harper mansion; the spacious, rose-curtained veranda; the cool, high-ceiled rooms within; Old Marse and Old Mis', Miss Pen and Miss Patty, and the troops of guests who kept the great house ringing with merriment, with few intermissions, from January till December.

"Times is change, sonny," he murmured plaintively. "Ole Mistis been grave-dust fo' thutty yeahs, eenamost, I reckon. Miss Pen done mah'd Marse Willie, spite of bein' fust cousins; de Wah kem on, an' Benjy--fool Benjy--run away with the Linkum sojers. Yass, ole fool Benjy run away with the Linkum sojers, an' been livin' on 'taters and sow-belly eveh since."

The new Second Reader was forgotten, and he rambled on with the tale of the old days--a tale which had neither beginning nor end, whose characters and events grew sharper with each repetition, and of which the old man never grew weary.

It was a tale of which Moss never grew weary, either. In his childhood it had served him in lieu of the fairy-tales which a white child hears at its mother's knees, and throughout his later years it had served him in lieu of books, pictures, music--in short, had been the sole food of his esthetic nature. At Harper Hall, before the War, according to Benjy, it was never too hot or too cold; birds and flowers were present throughout the year; the grass was always green, the streams were always full of water; nobody ever worked very hard; there was always time to fish and hunt, to dance and play the banjo; there was always plenty to eat. Best of all, there was always love. In that Garden of Eden, a broken head or a broken heart was equally sure of healing balm. Old Mis', Miss Pen, and Miss Patty were little lower than the angels.

Moss had heard of slavery, of course. He even knew that his father had been a slave. But the word conveyed little meaning to him. The war of which his father so often spoke was equally vague. The only clear thing about it was that it had ended the old times and begun the new. How vastly superior those old times had been to the new! What possible comparison could there be, for instance, between Harper Hall and Goosefoot Lane? What a fallen creature was the landlord at the Bluegrass, compared with Benjy's old master! How miserable a thing was Moss' daily fare beside the feasts to which his father habitually used to sit down!

The old man was still muttering reminiscently, and Moss was still sitting with his chin buried in his hands, when an apparition appeared at the head of the Lane. It was a lady, with a white parasol and broad-brimmed white hat, daintily lifting a fluffy, many-ruffled white skirt, and exposing a pair of white shoes and stockings. She nodded amiably at the blacks on either side as she picked her way along, and halted once for a bit of chat; but at last she bore airily down on Moss Harper's stoop, where she folded her parasol as a dove might fold its wings on reaching its ledge.

It was then, and not till then, that a stranger, unless a Southerner, would have discovered that black blood flowed in her veins--that she was, in the vernacular of the South, a "nigger"--no more so and no less so than her thick-lipped, ebon-hued husband, Moss Harper.

She paused for a last covetous glimpse of the stream of life flowing past the head of the Lane, out there in the white man's world, and then, with a careless nod at her husband, she passed through the squat doorway of the musty den--a butterfly entering a rat-hole.

Moss had not spoken,--with elemental human nature mere words count for little,--but his mind glided from Benjy's broken recital to his wife. He never thought of her as half white, for she had been suckled at a black breast; she had played with black pickaninnies; her present associates were black, like her husband; and she spoke the jargon of the blacks. He preferred, in fact, to think of her as of his own race. Yet her undeniable beauty, her fair skin and her wavy hair, were facts to be reckoned with. And beneath that fair skin and wavy hair were other things to be reckoned with--yearnings and ambitions unknown to an Ethiopian, a taste for fine clothes, a discontent with her present state and a blind groping for something better in the way of life, all handed down in her white father's blood.

It is true that the ladies for whom Estelle formerly acted as maid had pronounced her worthless--vain, frivolous, and dishonest. And they were right. She was a thief. The beautiful skirt which she had this day flaunted in the envious eyes of the wenches of Goosefoot Lane had been stolen from the laundry at which she worked three days in a week, and many a neat job of shoplifting had she done. Yet, after all, these were only mistaken means to a great End--means which, if history speaks true, were not unknown to a far-distant generation of our own race when they were groping _their_ way out of the darkness of barbarism.

Of these means Moss, fortunately, knew nothing; for old Benjy, rigidly drilled in honesty by his mistress, had done the same for his son. But the End he saw, mistily and uncertainly, for Estelle had handed over to him a great deal of that which her father had handed down to her; and it was toward this end that he himself was now making his slow and painful way, with a Second Reader in his hand.

Estelle laid off her scented finery lingeringly and lovingly, put on a calico wrapper, and passed into the diminutive lean-to which they called a kitchen. Five minutes later she appeared at the front door, shot a searching glance up the Lane for anything of interest, and coolly announced supper. Then the man who, for eleven hours of seven days in the week, served other men with every luxury which the four quarters of the globe could supply, sat down to a meal of buttermilk, cold potatoes, and dry bread.

* * * * *

When Moss got home again that night, Estelle was sitting on the stoop alone, old Benjy having gone to bed with the chickens, as usual. His eyes brightened, for very often she was summoned to the laundry at night to take care of "immediate" work from the hotels, she being an expert at ironing women's fine fabrics. He sat down beside her on one of the benches which flanked the stoop, and she rested her head on his arm, as if weary.

"You done paid Fitzpatrick the rent to-day?" he finally asked.

"Yass."

"You show him that hole in the flo'?"

"Yass." She dropped her long dark lashes for an instant, and then added: "I _tole_ him about it. He di'n' come here. I took the money to his saloom. You know, he sayed if he haved to come here again fo' that money, he th'ow us out in the alley."

"He ain' neveh tried to th'ow _me_ yet," observed Moss quietly. "We'll th'ow ourseffs out befo' long. We ain' gwine to live in this hawg-pen all the time." He paused, and added more gently: "I don' want you to go to his saloom no mo', 'Stelle."

"I went in the side do'," she explained. "Nobody di'n' see me. An' I di'n' go no furder than the do'. But I won' go no mo' ef you don' want me to."

"I don' want you to," he repeated definitely. "I don' want him to insult you like he did me when I axed him to fix that hole what you could th'ow a bull thoo."

"Why, Mossie, you neveh tole me about that! What he say?" There was an indescribable undertone--possibly of amusement--in her velvety voice.

"He sayed he'd hoss-whip me ef I eveh come to his saloom again beggin' for repai's."

Estelle's lashes again quivered slightly, and her lips parted in the shadow of a smile--just enough to reveal the straight, faultless joint between her two rows of glistening teeth. She reached for the great black hand which rested on his knee and laid it in her lap, covering it with her own. It was as if she recognized in that member of sledge-hammer size and hardness a sure defense from all harm. Yet the light which played in her eyes, as she lazily turned her face toward his, was still half-ironical. Was it Caucasian fleering at Ethiopian--white blood mocking black?