Chapter 5

There once more we were making good speed when we burst into an open grove where about a small, unpainted frame church a saddle-horse was tied under every swinging limb. Before the church a gang of boys had sprung up from their whittling to be our gleeful spectators. Hardy waved them off with the assurance that we wanted neither their help nor company, and though the trail took us at slackened speed around two sides of the building we passed and were gone while the worshippers were in the first stanza of a hymn started to keep them on their benches.

Noon, afternoon; we made no pause. "It's ketch 'em before night," said Hardy as we bent low under beech boughs, "or not till noon to-morrow."

About mid-afternoon one of the court-house boys, who had been talking softly with the other, turned back with a bare good-by. His friend explained:

"Got to be at his desk early in the morning. But I'm with you till you run 'em down."

Happy for me that he was mistaken. Two hours more were hardly gone when, "My Prince is sick!" he cried, drew in, and under a smoke of his own curses began wildly to unsaddle. Hardy rode on.

"You'll have to get another mount," I said.

"Another hell! I wouldn't leave this horse sick in strange hands for a thousand dollars!" Suddenly he struck an imploring key: "Look here! I'll give you fifty dollars cash to stay with me till I get him out o' this!"

"Five hundred," I called, trotting after Hardy, "wouldn't hire me."

Till I was out of earshot I could hear him damning and cursing me in snorts and shouts as a sneak who would wear my coat of tar and feathers yet, and I was still wondering whether I ought to or not, when I overhauled the nigger-chaser cheering on his dogs. Their prey had again tricked them, and again the cry was, "Take him, Dandy!" and "Hi, Charmer, hi!"

Between shouts: "Is yo' nag gwine to hold out?"

"He's got to or perish," I laughed.

In time we found ourselves under a vast roof of towering pines. The high green grass beneath them had been burned over within a year. The declining sun gilded both the grass and the lower sides of the soaring boughs. Even Hardy glanced back exaltedly to bid me mark the beauty of the scene. But I dared not. The dogs were going more swiftly than ever, and there was a ticklish chance of one's horse breaking a leg in one of the many holes left by burnt-out pine roots. The main risk, moreover, was not to Hardy's trained hunter but to my worn-out livery "nag."

"We've started 'em, all four, on the run," he called, "but if we don't tree 'em befo' they make the river we'll lose 'em after all."

The land began a steady descent. Soon once more we were in underbrush and presently came square against a staked-and-ridered worm fence around a "deadening" dense with tall corn. Charmer and Dandy had climbed directly over it, scampered through the corn, and were waking every echo in a swamp beyond. The younger pair, still yoked, stood under the fence, yelping for Hardy's aid. He sprang down and unyoked them and over they scrambled and were gone, ringing like fire-bells. Outside the fence, both right and left, the ground was miry, yet for us it was best to struggle round through the bushy slough; which we had barely done when with sudden curses Hardy spurred forward. The younger dogs were off on a separate chase of their own. For at the river-bank the four negroes had divided by couples and gone opposite ways.

"Call them back!" I urged. "Blow your horn!" But I was ignored.

XVI

[Chester sat looking at a newly turned page as though it were illegible.

"I'm wondering," he lightly said, "what public enormity of to-day the next generation will be as amazed at as we are at this."

"Ah," Mme. Castanado responded, "never mine! Tha'z but the moral! Aline and me we are insane for the story to finizh!" And the story was resumed, to suffer no further interruption.]

At the river we burst out upon a broad, gentle bend up and down which we could see both heavily wooded banks for a good furlong either way.

The sun's last beams shone straight up the lower arm of the bend. On the upper bayed Charmer and Dandy, unseen. On the lower we heard the younger pair. On the upper we saw only the clear waters crinkling in a wide shallow over a gravel-bar, but down-stream we instantly discovered Luke and his wife. Silhouetted against the level sunlight, heaving forward with arms upthrown, waist deep in the main current, they were more than half-way across. At that moment two small dark objects, the two dogs, moved out from the shore, after them, each with its wake of two long silvery ripples. The "puppy" was leading.

With a curse their master threw the horn to his lips and blew an imperious note. The rear dog turned his head and would have reversed his course, but seeing his leader keep on he kept on with him. Again the angry horn re-echoed, and the rear dog promptly turned back though the other swam on.

Rebecca threw a look behind and it was pitiful to hear her outcry of despair and terror. But Luke faced about and, backing after her through the flood, prepared to meet the hound naked-handed. Hardy sprang to his tiptoes in the stirrups, his curses pealing across the water. "If you hurt that dog," he yelled, "I'll shoot you dead!"

Up-stream the other two runaways were out on the gravel-bar, Euonymus behind Robelia and Robelia splashing ludicrously across the shoal, tearing off and kicking off--in preparation for deep water--sunbonnet, skirt, waist, petticoat, and howling in the self-concern of abject cowardice.

"Thank heaven, she's a swimmer," thought I, "and won't drown her brother!" For only a swimmer ever cast off garments that way.

The flight of Euonymus, too, was bare-headed and swift, but it was unfrenzied and silent. Neither of them saw Luke or Rebecca; the sun was in their eyes and at that instant Charmer and Dandy, having met some momentary delay, once more bayed joyously and sprang into view. Like Luke, Euonymus faced the brutes. With another fierce outcry Hardy blew his recall of all the four dogs.

Three turned at once but the youngster launched himself at Luke's throat where he stood breast-high in the glassing current. The slave caught the dog's whole windpipe in both hands and went with him under the flood. Hardy's supreme care for Charmer had lost him the strategic moment, but he fired straight at Rebecca.

She did not fall and his weapon flew up for a second shot! but by some sheer luck I knocked the pistol spinning yards away into the river. While it spun I saw other things: Rebecca clasping a wounded arm; Luke and the dog reappearing apart, the dog about to repeat his onset; and Hardy dumb with rage.

"Call the puppy!" I cried, "you'll save him yet."

The master winded his horn, and the dog swam our way. At the same time his fellows came about us, while on the farther bank Luke helped his wife writhe up through the waterside vines, and with her disappeared. Only Euonymus remained in the water, at the far edge of the gravel-bar.

I was so happy that I laughed. "All right," I cried, "I'll pay for the revolver."

Foul epithets were Hardy's reply while he spurred madly to and fro in search of an opening in the vines to let his horse down into the stream. I rode with him, knee to knee. "You'll pay for this with your life !" he yelled down my throat. "I'll kill you, so help me God! _Charmer! Dandy! go, take the nigger!_"

The whole baying pack darted off for Euonymus's crossing. "_Take the nigger, Charmer! Ah! take him, my lady!_" We saw that Euonymus could not swim. Still knee to knee with Hardy, I drew and fired. "Puppy's" mate yelped and rolled over, dead.

"Call them back," I said, holding my weapon high; but Hardy only shrieked curses and cried:

"_Take the nigger, Charmer, take him!_"

I fired again. Poor Dandy! He sprang aside howling piteously, with melting eyes on his master.

"Oh, God!" cried Hardy, leaping down beside the wailing dog, that pushed its head into his bosom like a sick child. "Oh, God, but you shall die for this!"

He was half right but so was I and I checked up barely enough to cry back: "Call 'em off! Call 'em off or I'll shoot Charmer!"

With Dandy clasped close and with eyes streaming he blew the recall. Looking for its effect, I saw Euonymus trying to swim and Charmer quitting the chase. But the young dog kept on. The current was carrying Euonymus away. Twice through vines and brush, while I cried: "Catch the fallen tree below you! Catch the tree!" I tried to spur my horse down into the stream, and on the third trial I succeeded.

The flood had cut the bank from under a great buttonwood. It hung prone over the water, and one dipping fork seized and held the fainting swimmer. The dog was close, but had entered the current too far down and was breasting it while he bayed in protest to his master's horn. Now, as Euonymus struggled along the tree the brute struck for the bank, and the two gained it together. Euonymus ran, but on a bit of open grass dropped to one knee, at bay. The dog sprang. In the negro fashion the runaway's head ducked forward to receive the onset, while both hands clutched the brute's throat. Not dreaming that they would keep their hold till I could get there, I leaped down in the shoal to fire; but the grip held, though the dog's teeth sank into legs and arms, and all at once Euonymus straightened to full stature, lifting the dog till his hind legs could but just tiptoe the ground.

"Right!" I cried; "bully, my boy! Lift him one inch higher and he's whipped!"

But Euonymus could barely hold him off from face and throat.

"Turn him broadside to me!" I shouted, having come into water breast-deep. "Let me put a hole through him!"

But the fugitive's only response was: "Run, Robelia! 'Ever mind me! Run! Run!"

And here came Hardy across the gravel-bar, in the saddle. I aimed at him: "Stand, sir! Stand!"

He hauled in and lifted the horn. Euonymus had heaved the dog from his feet. The horn rang, and with a howl of terror the brute writhed free, leaped into the river and swam toward his master. I sprang on my horse and took the deep water: "Wait, boy! Wait!"

It was hard getting ashore. When I reached the spot of grass I found only the front half of the runaway's hickory shirt, in bloody rags. I spurred to a gap in the bushes, and there, face down, lay Euonymus, insensible. I knelt and turned the slender form; and then I whipped off my coat and laid it over the still, black bosom. For Euonymus was a girl.

XVII

Her eyelids quivered, opened. For a moment the orbs were vacant, but as she drew a deep breath she saw me. Her shapely hand sought her throat-button, and finding my coat instead she turned once more to the sod, moaning, "Brother! Mingo!"

"Is he Robelia?" I asked. "Come, we'll find him."

Clutching my coat to her breast, she staggered up. I helped her put the coat on and sprang into the saddle. "Now mount behind me," I said, reaching for her hand; but with an anguished look:

"Whah Mingo?" she asked. "Is dey kotch Mingo?"

"No, not yet. Your hand--now spring!"

She landed firmly and we sped into the woods.

My merely wounding Dandy was fortunate. It kept Hardy from following me hotfooted or rousing the neighborhood. I dare say he wanted no one but himself to have the joy of killing me.

At a "store" and telegraph-station I let my charge down into a wild plum-patch, bought a hickory shirt, left my half-dead beast, telegraphed my livery-stable client where to find him, and so avoided the complication of being a horse-thief. Then I recovered Euonymus and about ten that night the five of us met on the bank of a creek. Near its farther shore, on a lonely railroad siding, we found a waiting freight-train and stole into one of its empty cars; and when at close of the next day hunger drove us out our pursuers were beating the bush a hundred miles behind.

Fed from a negro-cabin and guided by the stars, we fled all of another night afoot, and on the following day lost Mingo. At broad noon, with an overseer and his gang close by in a corn-field, the seductions of a melon-patch overcame him and he howled away his freedom in the jaws of a bear-trap. His father and mother wept dumb tears and laid their faces to the ground in prayer. Euonymus was frantic. With all her superior sanity, she would not have left the region could she have persuaded us to go on without her.

Well! Day by day we lay in the brush, and night after night fled on. I could tell much about the sweet, droll piety of my three fellow runaways, and the humble generosity of their hearts. No ancient Israelite ever looked forward to the coming of a political Messiah with more pious confidence than they to a day when their whole dark race should be free and enjoy every right that any other race enjoys.

"Even a right to cross two races?" I once asked Luke, smilingly, though with intense aversion.

"No, suh; no, suh! De same Lawd what give' ev'y man a wuck he cayn't do ef he ain't dat man, give' ev'y ra-ace a wuck dey cayn't do ef dey ain't dat ra-ace." I fancy he had been years revolving that into a formula; or--he may have merely heard some master or mistress say it.

"Still," I suggested, "races have crossed, and made new and better ones."

"I don't 'spute dat, suh; no, suh. But de Lawd ain't neveh gwine to make a betteh ra-ace by cross'n' one what done-done e'en-a' most all what even yit been done, on to anotheh what, eh----"

Sidney (Onesimus) put in: "What ain't neveh yit done noth'n'!" And her mother sighed, "Amen!"

XVIII

"Yes?" inquired Mme. Castanado. "Well?"

"Ah, surely!" cried several, "Tha'z not all?"

Mme. De l'Isle appealed to her husband: "Even two, three hun'red mile', that din'n' bring the line of Canada, I think."

"No, but, I suppose, of the Ohio."

"And that undergroun' railway!" said Scipion.

"Yes," Mme. Alexandre agreed, "but that story remain' unfinizh' whiles that uncle of Mr. Chezter couldn' return at his home."

"Not even his State," ventured mademoiselle.

"But he did," Chester said; "he came back."

M. Dubroca spoke up: "Oh, 'tis easy to insert that, at the en'--foot-note."

"And Hardy?" asked Beloiseau, "him and yo' uncle, they di'n' shoot either the other?"

"I believe they did, each the other. I never quite understood the hints I got of it, till now. I know that six months in bed with a back full of _somebody's_ buckshot saved my uncle's life."

"From lynching! That also muz' be insert'!"

Chester thought not. "No, centre the interest in the runaway family, as in mademoiselle's 'Clock in the Sky.'" And so all agreed.

A second time he walked home with mademoiselle, under the same lenient escort as before. One thus occupied, by moonlight, can moralize as he cannot with any larger number. "It's hard enough at best," he said, "for us, in our pride of race, to sympathize--seriously--in the joys, the hopes, the sufferings of souls under dark skins yet as human as ours if not as white."

"Yes, 'tis true. Only one man, Mr. Chester, I ever knew, myself, who did that."

"Your father?"

"Yes, my dear father."

"Will you not some day tell me his story?"

"Mr. Castanado will tell you it. Any of those will tell you."

"I can't question them about you, and besides----"

"Well, here is my gate. 'And besides--' what?"

"Besides, why can't you tell me?"

"Ah, I'll do that--'some day,' as you say."

The gate-key went into the lock.

"But, mademoiselle, our 'Clock in the Sky'--our 'Angel of the Lord'--shan't we join them?"

"Ah, they are already one, but you have yet to hear that _first_ manuscript, and that is so very separate--as you will see."

"Isn't it also a story of dark skins?"

"Ah, but barely at all of souls under them; those souls we find it so hard to remember."

"_Chère fille_"--M. De l'Isle had come up, with Mme. Alexandre--"the three will go _gran'ly_ together! Not I al-lone perceive that, but Scipion also--Castanado--Dubroca. Mr. Chester, my dear sir, the pewblication of that book going to be heard roun' the worl'! Tha'z going produse an epoch, that book; yet same time--a bes'-seller!"

Mademoiselle beamed. "Does Mr. Chester think 'twill be that? A best-seller?"

Chester couldn't prophesy that of any book. "They say not even a publisher can tell."

"Hah!" monsieur cried, "those cunning pewblisher'! they pref-er _not_ to tell."

"Some poetry," Chester continued, urged by mademoiselle's eyes, "doesn't pay the poets over a few thousand a year--per volume; while some novels pay their authors--well--fortunes."

"That they go," madame broke in, "and buy some _palaces in Italie_! And tha'z but the biginning; you have not count' the dramatization--hundreds the week! and those movie'--the same! and those tranzlation'!"

"Well, I think we will be satisfied, Mr. Chester, with the tenth of that, eh?"

Chester's reply was drowned in monsieur's: "No, my child! But nine-tenth' _maybe_, yes! No-no-no! if those pewblisher' find out you are satisfi' by one-tenth, one-tenth is all you'll ever see!"

"Ah," said mademoiselle to madame, "even the one-tenth I mustn't tell to my aunts. They wouldn't sleep to-night. And myself--'publication, dramatization, movies, translation'--I believe I'll lie awake till daylight, making that into a song--a hymn!"

A wonderful sight she was, pausing in the open gate, with the little high-fenced garden at her back, a street-lamp lighting her face. Chester harked back to that first manuscript. It "ought not to wait another week," he declared.

"No," monsieur said, "and since we all have read that egcept only you."

Chester looked to mademoiselle: "Then I suppose I might read it with the Castanados alone."

"No," madame put in, "you see, you can't riturn at Castanado's immediately to-morrow or next day. That next day, tha'z Sunday, but you don't know if madame goin' to have the stren'th for that fati-gue. Yet same time you can't wait forever! And bisside', yo' Aunt Corinne, Aunt Yvonne--Mr. Chezter he's never have that lugsury to meet them, and that will be a very choice o'casion for Mr. Chezter to do that, if----"

"If he'll take the pains," the niece broke in, "to call Sunday afternoon. Then I'll have the manuscript back from Mr. Castanado and we'll read it to my Aunt Corinne and my Aunt Yvonne, all four together in the garden."

"Yes, yet not in this li'l' garden in the front, but in the large, far back from the house, in the h-arbor of 'oneysuckle and by the side of the li'l' lake, eh?" So prompted madame.

"Assuredly," said the smiling girl; "not in the front, where is no room for a place to sit down!"

Chester's acceptance was eager. Then once more the batten gate closed and the key grated between him and Aline--marvellous, marvellous Aline Chapdelaine.

XIX

The sunbeams of a tedious Sabbath began noticeably to slant.

For two days, night, morning, noon, and afternoon, Geoffry Chester had silently speculated on what he was to see, hear, and otherwise experience when, as early as he might in keeping with the Chapdelaine dignity and his, he should pull the tiny brass bell-knob on their tall gate-post.

Chapdelaine! Impressive, patrician title. Impressive too those baptismal names; implying a refinement invincible in the vale of adversity. Killing time up one street and down another--Rampart, Ursuline, Burgundy--he pictured personalities to fit them: for Corinne a presence stately in advanced years and preserved beauty; for Yvonne a fragile form suggestive of mother-o'-pearl, of antique lace. Knowledge of Aline justified such inferences--within bounds. With other charms she had all these, and must have got them from ancestral sources as truly Mlle. Corinne's and Mlle. Yvonne's as hers.

"Oh, of course," he pondered, "there are contrary possibilities. They may easily fall short, far short, of her, in outer graces, and show their kinship only in a reflection of her inner fineness. They may be no more surprising than those dear old De l'Isles, or the Prieurs, or than Mrs. Thorndyke-Smith. So let it be! Aline----"

"Aline-Aline!" alarmingly echoed his heart.

"Aline is enough." Enough? Alas, too much! He felt himself far too forthpushing in--he would not confess more--a solicitude for her which he could not stifle; an inextinguishable wish to disentangle her from the officious care of those by whom she was surrounded--encumbered. "I've no right to this state of mind," he thought; "none." He reached the gate. He rang.

A footfall of daintiest lightness came running! ["Aline-Aline!"] So might Allegro have tripped it. The key rasped round, ["Aline-Aline!"] the portal drew in, and he found himself getting his first front view of Cupid, the small black satellite.

A pleasing object. Smaller than ever. White-collared as ever, starched and brushed to the sheen of a new penny and ugly of face as a gargoyle--ugly as his goddess was beautiful. Not merely negroidal, in lips, nose, ears, and tight black wool divided on the absolute equator; not racially but uniquely ugly--till he smiled--and spoke. He smiled and spoke with a joy of soul, a transparency of innocence, a rapture of love, that made his ugliness positively endearing even apart from the entranced recognition they radiated.

"Ladies at home? Yassuh," he said, with an ecstasy as if he announced the world's war suddenly over, all oceans safe, all peoples free. He led the way up the cramped white-shell walk with a ceremonial precision that gave the caller time to notice the garden. It was hardly an empire. It lay on either side in two right-angled figures, each, say, of sixty by fourteen feet, every foot repeating florally the smile of the child. The rigid beds were curbed with brick water-painted as red as Cupid's gums. The three fences were green with vines, and here and there against them bloomed tall evergreen shrubs. At one upper corner of the main path was a camellia and at the other a crape-myrtle, symbols respectively, to the visitor, of Aunt Corinne and Aunt Yvonne. The brick doorstep smiled as red as the garden borders, and as he reached the open door Aline, with her two aunts at her back, received him.

"Mr. Chester--Mlle. Chapdelaine. Mr. Chester--my Aunt Yvonne." Never had the niece seemed quite so fair--in face, dress, figure, or mental poise. She wore that rose whose petals are deep red in their outer circle and pass from middle pink to central white and deepen in tints with each day's age. If that rose could have been a girl, mind, soul, and all, a Creole girl, there would have been two on one stem.

And there, on either side of her sat the aunts: the elder much too lean, the younger much too dishevelled, and both as sun-tanned as harvesters, betraying their poverty in flimsy, faded gowns which the dismayed youth named to himself not draperies but hangings. Yet they were sweet-mannered, fluent, gay, cordial, and unreserved, though fluttering, twittering, and ultra-feminine.

The room was like the pair. "Doubtlezz Aline she's told you ab-out that 'ouse. No? Ah, chère! is that possible? 'Tis an ancient relique, that 'ouse. At the present they don't build any mo' like that 'ouse is build'! You see those wall', those floor'? Every wall they are not of lath an' plazter, like to-day; they are of solid plank' of a thicknezz of two-inch'--and from Kentucky!"

The guest recognized the second-hand lumber of broken-up flatboats.

"Tha'z a genuine antique, that 'ouse! Sometime' we think we ought to egspose that 'ouse, to those tourist', admission ten cent'." [A gay laugh.]

"But tha'z only when Aline want' to compel us to buy some new dresses. And tha'z pritty appropriate, that antique 'ouse, for two sizter' themselve' pritty antique--ha, ha, ha!--as well as their anceztors."

"I fancy they're from 'way back," said Chester.