“Sherwan,” he shrieked out, “I can’t stand it any longer—I can’t stand it! It’s killing me! I must look at the face—I must know!”
With a sudden frenzied energy he darted at the cloaked shape. It hesitated, shrinking back from his onward rush as though daunted; but he fixed his clutching fingers in the crêpe veil and tore it in twisted rags from the front of its wearer, and the light shone full on the face revealed beneath the close black hood of the bonnet. … He gave one blubbery, slobbered, hideous yell and fell flat at the base of the lamp-post.
[157]
Old Sherwan saw the face too. Swollen and strengthened with senile rage, he seized the figure by both its arms and shook it.
“You hussy! You wench! You Jezebel! You she-devil!” he howled at the top of his cracked voice, and rocked his prisoner to and fro. “What’s this? What does this mean, you hell spawn?”
A dart of pain nipped at his diseased heart then, and closed his throat. For a moment, without words, they struggled together. With a heave of her supple arms she broke his hold. She shoved him off from her and reared back on her heels, breathing hard—a full-blooded negress, with chalky popeyes and thick, purplish lips that curled away in a wide snarl from the white teeth, and a skin that was blacker than sin.
“Whut does hit mean?” she answered; and, through stress of fear and mounting hope and exultation, her voice rose to a camp-meeting shout:
“I tells you whut hit means: Hit means Ise Minnie Brownell, Ole Miss’ cook. Hit means Ole Miss is been daid ’mos’ fo’teen years—ever sence she taken down sick endurin’ de big blizzard. Hit means dat w’en she lay a-dyin’ she put de promise onto me to bury her in secret; an’ den to put on her clo’es an’ to foller, walkin’ behine dat man, daytime an’ nighttime, twell he died. Dat’s whut hit means!”
[158]
She sought to peer past him and her tone sharpened down, fine and keen:
“Is he daid? Oh, bless de good Lawd A’mighty! Is he daid? ’Cause, ef he’s daid, me an’ Hennery, w’ich is my lawful wedded husban’, we kin go back to Furginia an’ claim de prop’ty dat Ole Miss lef in trust to come to me w’en I kin prove he’s daid. Oh, look, please, suh, mister, and see ef he ain’t dead?”
Old Sherwan ran to the lamp-post and dropped down on both his knees, and shook his friend by the shoulders.