"Oh, you've ordered it. Well, now, if you hadn't ordered it you'd never've got a cent out of me. Don't believe I've got that much money about me," he added, stretching out his leg and thrusting his hand into his pocket, to draw forth a roll of bank notes; and on beholding this great display of wealth the negro's thick eyelids snapped. "Here you are," said the Senator, giving him the sum required. "And you tell that old fellow that if he rings the new bell in his sleep, he'll wake up with his black hide full of shot."
"Thank you, Senator. You mean Brother Sampson, Sir?"
"Hah? Sampson? I don't know his name, but I guess Sampson's about right. Wait a minute. Mr. Belford is going to remain with us. He is going to take charge of the theatre here, and in going about the neighborhood you may tell the people that we are—I say we because I want to see the town well entertained—tell the people that they are to have a series of the finest entertainments ever known in this part of the country. And, by the way, Belford, I forgot to speak of it, but you'd better board here at the house."
I looked up to meet the negro's eyes; a stare of blunt rebuke, as if the proposal had come from me, in violation of a compact made with him. I caught a vision of Mrs. Estell as I had seen her through the window, walking beneath the magnolia trees; I heard the warning voice of reason, and I saw lurking in ambush the sweetest and perhaps the deadliest of all dangers. I had seen much of the immorality of life, of passion that knew no law, but not for a moment did there live in my mind a suspicion that this woman could forget the exacting demands of a matron's duty. I felt that the danger lay for me alone; that the warm and sympathetic relationship of friend of the family and partner of the father would establish me almost as a member of the house-hold; that a sisterly regard would at most define the depth of the interest that she could take in my affairs, and even this must come with slow and almost unconscious ripening. It was true that I had come a stranger, that an old community, and especially in the South, is skeptical of a new man's respectability, but I had fallen helpless upon their hospitality, and my misfortune was stronger than an introduction.
It did not seem that I had time to reason as I sat there encountering the gaze of that black agent of a moral code; my reflections might have come like flying splinters, but as I look back and again bring up the scene, I feel that they must have fallen as one impression, a cold and benumbing weight.
"It will be a long walk out here for Mr. Belford, and he has not regained his strength," the negro said, still gazing at me.
"Nonsense!" the Senator replied. "He will be as strong as a buck in a day or two, and, besides, he is used to his room out here and might as well keep it. Confound your impudence, Washington, you always oppose me."
"I beg your pardon, Senator."
"That's all right, but I'm going to have my own way about my own affairs. Do you understand?"
"Better than you think, Sir."