I reckon it's having them ideas floating round in my head which makes me study Mr. Dallas 'specially close that New Year's Eve. For all that he's laughing and joking and carrying on, I figures that way down deep insides of him he ain't entirely happy over what's come out. By my calculations, he ain't got the true feelings which a forthcoming bridegroom should have. As near as I can judge, he ain't hopeful so much as he's sort of resignated. Also and furthermore, likewise, he's got a kind of a puzzled-up beflusterated look on his face as if he'd been took up short by something he wasn't exactly expecting to happen so soon, if at all. It ain't exactly bewildedment and it ain't exactly distressfulness; but it's something that's distant kinsfolks to both of 'em.
Chapter XIV
Oiled Skids
ANYWAY, that's that, as we says up here. I will now pass along to what comes to pass about two weeks later on. All along through them two weeks Mr. Dallas don't impress me like a young man should which he is starting out in the New Year full of good cheer and bright prospects. As the catch-word goes, he ain't at himself. At the breakfast table when I'm passing things to him he's often looking hard at nothing at all. It's plain his thoughts is far away and not so very happy in the place where they've strayed off to, neither.
Well, on this particular day, which it is along toward the middle of the present month of January, he don't get home from down-town until long after dinner-time and when he does get in he don't scarcely touch a morsel to eat; he just pecks at the vittles. After dinner is over and the dishes washed up I passes through the hall on the way out, being bound for the Pastime Club to consultate with 'Lisses Petty touching on our own private affairs. Mr. Dallas had told me at dinner that I could have the evening off and there was not no reason why I should linger on. But as I passes the setting-room door I looks in and he's setting there, sort of haunched down in his chair, with his elbows resting on a little table and his face in his hands, seemingly mighty lonesome. Something seems to come over me and I steps in and I says to him, I says:
"'Scuse me, Mr. Dallas, fur interruptin' yore ponderin's, but is they anythin' I kin do fur you befo' I goes on out?"
He sort of starts and looks up at me, and if ever I sees miserableness staring forth from a person's eyes I sees it now. He speaks to me then and what he says hits me with a jolt. Because this is what he says:
"Jeff, why is it that white people are forever committing suicide on account of their private worries but you never hear of a darky killing himself for the same reason?"
I studies for a minute and then I says: