"Come," whispered Archie, to the critic. "Let us leave them alone."
CHAPTER XX.
LIKE A STUCK PIG.
Hannibal was neither better nor worse, morally, because his color was black. There are men with white complexions who would have done exactly as he did. There are others as dark as Erebus who would have done nothing of the sort.
He was no ordinary negro. His intelligence was above the average. When he first entered the employ of Mr. Fern, that gentleman took every pains to encourage the aptitude for learning that he found in him. Hannibal accompanied his employer to his office, where he was entrusted with important commissions, which he seemed for a long time to execute with faithfulness and discrimination. At home he performed his duties in a way that gave great satisfaction. At the end of the first six months Mr. Fern would have hated to part with a servant that he believed difficult to replace.
But the great source of trouble arose gradually. Hannibal began to entertain a sentiment for his master's younger daughter that was impossible of fruition. Daisy treated him in the most considerate manner, never dreaming what was going on behind his serious brow. Millicent, ungovernable in all things, began early to show the bitterest enmity toward the negro, while her sister, seeing that her father liked and appreciated him, tried by her own kindness to compensate for the other's rudeness. What caused Millicent's feelings Daisy had no means of knowing, and she had not the least suspicion until she heard the conversation in the library the night the house was entered. Even then she did not take the subject much to heart, for she did not comprehend all that Hannibal had meant to convey in the brief and sarcastic expression he used. Daisy had a mind too pure to believe anything so heinous of her own sister as Hannibal had intimated.
The passion of love is a thing that grows in curious ways. What made it seem to Hannibal that there was hope for him was the discovery that Mr. Fern was committing forgeries and that the proofs might be his for the taking. If he could hold such a power as that over this gentleman, who could say that even so great a mésalliance as his daughter's marriage to an African might not be arranged?
The negro proceeded cautiously. He secured the proofs he wished, and let Mr. Fern know tacitly that he had them. The terror, the undisguised fear that followed, the admittance of the menial to a totally different position in the household and the office, showed that the servant had not underrated the importance of his acquisition.