As they sat in brooding anguish, floating up from the river valley came the music of a banjo in a negro cabin, mingled with vulgar shout and song and dance. A verse of the ribald senseless lay of the player echoed above the banjo’s pert refrain:
| “Chicken in de bread tray, pickin’ up dough; Granny, will your dog bite? No, chile, no!” |
The mother shivered and drew Marion closer.
“Oh, dear! oh, dear! has it come to this—all my hopes of your beautiful life!”
The girl lifted her head and kissed the quivering lips.
“With what loving wonder we saw you grow,” she sighed, “from a tottering babe on to the hour we watched the mystic light of maidenhood dawn in your blue eyes—and all to end in this hideous, leprous shame. No—No! I will not have it! It’s only a horrible dream! God is not dead!”
The young mother sank to her knees and buried her face in Marion’s lap in a hopeless paroxysm of grief.
The girl bent, kissed the curling hair, and smoothed it with her soft hand.
A sparrow chirped in the tree above, a wren twittered in a bush, and down on the river’s bank a mocking-bird softly waked his mate with a note of thrilling sweetness. “The morning is coming, dearest; we must go,” said Marion. “This shame I can never forget, nor will the world forget. Death is the only way.”