A Summer's Outing, and The Old Man's Story

by Carter H. Harrison

I watched Rita and could not find that I aroused one single feeling of reciprocation in her breast. I grew mad at the thought, and at night cried aloud in agony. Was it true—could it be true, that after all, I was nothing to this woman who, I believed, was made for me?

I spoke one day of the episode at the flower show, intimating nothing which could connect them with it. Minnie told how she, too, once had fallen in love the same way; suddenly she started and fixed her eyes on my black hair and olive hue. The look seemed to recall her; she had no suspicion.

I pondered on the thing. Years ago my glance sent the blood crimson to her brow. The sister now affected me as she had formerly done, but I seemed to be nothing to her. I spent sleepless nights trying to account for this. I reached the conclusion at last that love—passionate love, was a physical as well as a spiritual emotion; that I was wearing a mask covering my true self, and to win Rita I must unmask.

I have told you I could remove and replace my scar in a day, but to change the color of my hair or complexion requires from four to six months. I learned that Rita, with her aunt, whom I did not meet, would return to their home in Tennessee within a month, and she would then be a village fixture for perhaps a year. I grew madly jealous lest some one should love and win her before I could appear properly before her.

I swore to have her, and when won, I felt sure she would never change, but would wait and wait until she could be mine. I bade the sisters goodbye with a heavy heart—all the heavier, because on their part leave-taking was only kindly.

I hurried to Cincinnati; avoided places where I could meet you; gathered together my guns and fishing-tackle, my cosmetics and wardrobe sufficient for several months absence; arranged my bank account and went to Chicago, where I thought the Ethiopian might change his skin without observation. Jim being able to read my writing when in plain characters, was directed to pack up all my valuables and to hold himself in readiness to come to me at once on receipt of a letter.

He and his wife finally joined me. I sent him to Tennessee to learn the lay of the land in the town in which Rita's aunt resided. To escape any difficulties a Northern negro might encounter in a small Southern town, he went as a boat hand on a steamer running from St. Louis; managed to get sick when —— was reached, and was necessarily put ashore. In a month he returned full of the information I desired.

I learned that the father of the two sisters, Mr. Dixon, had been a wealthy merchant in one of the large southern cities. He was an Englishman by birth and had lost his wife, a high-born Spanish lady, when Rita was a small child. They had no relations in America, except the aunt, under whose care the youngest daughter was living and upon whom she was dependent. When the family was in England for Ralph's health in '50, the partner of Mr. Dixon contrived to raise a very large sum of money and decamped. Mr. Dixon reached home to find himself an absolute pauper. The blow prostrated him, and in a few months he was laid beside his wife. Rita had only a village education, but was a great reader and a good musician. Her aunt, Mrs. Allen, had been governess in a nobleman's house in England, was literary and decidedly uppish and withal intensely avaricious.

Mr. Wilton was the Boston correspondent of the ruined firm, and in the course of settling with it met and won Minnie. Rita's aunt, or rather, aunt-in-law, the widow of her father's only brother, took charge of her and made her home an unhappy one, not by direct unkindness, but by her querulous, carping and sarcastic disposition and manner. She would long since have gone to her sister but for a dislike of Wilton, who, though most kind to his wife, was a selfish man, and had given his young sister-in-law some great offense for which the Spanish blood, so hot in her veins, forbade forgiveness.

I do not remember ever to have told you that Jim Madison, the obedient servant and devoted slave of his once master, is a man of great native intellect. When a boy, I taught him to read a little and in Cincinnati spent much time trying to educate him. He was wonderfully apt and occasionally with strangers uses good English, but with me and my intimates prefers to be the negro servant and to use plantation language. He is intensely loving, absolutely honest, and at times startles me by an almost savage dignity inherited through a short line from his African forefathers. Reared among a thousand negroes, for Clifton and Brandon people mingled almost as if of one plantation—jolly and light in his heart, he courted popularity among his kind and became one of the most astute diplomats. I love him as my servant and honor him as a true and honest man; respect, and if he were not my friend, would almost fear him as a shrewd, self poised, ever alert diplomatist. I had known his qualities before, yet the thoroughness of his information brought me from —— amazed me. He managed to get a job of sawing a load of fire-wood and packing it in the aunt's yard, and from that he became domiciled in a room over the kitchen. With his open but shrewd honesty, he became almost a confident of Miss Rita.