There was a kindliness, even a fellowship, in Captain Renfrew's tones that spread like oil over Peter's raw nerves. It occurred to the negro that this was the first time he had been addressed as an authentic human being since his conversation with the two Northern men on the Pullman, up in Illinois. It surprised him. It was sufficient to take his mind momentarily from his mother. He looked a little closely at the old man at the telephone. The Captain wore few indices of kindness. Lines of settled sarcasm netted his eyes and drooped away from his old mouth. The very swell of his full temples and their crinkly veins marked a sardonic old man.
At last he roused central over the wire, and impressed upon him the necessity of creating a stridor in Dr. Jallup's dead house, and a moment later a continued buzzing in the receiver betokened the operator's efforts to do so.
The old gentleman turned around at last, holding the receiver a little distance from his ear.
"I understand you went to Harvard, Peter."
"Yes, sir." Peter took his eyes momentarily from the telephone. The old Southerner in the dressing-gown scrutinized the brown man. He cleared his throat.
"You know, Peter, it gives me a—a certain satisfaction to see a Harvard man in Hooker's Bend. I'm a Harvard man myself."
Peter stood in the brilliant light, astonished, not at Captain Renfrew's being a Harvard man,—he had known that,—but that this old gentleman was telling the fact to him, Peter Siner, a negro graduate of Harvard.
It was extraordinary; it was tantamount to an offer of friendship, not patronage. Such an offer in the South disturbed Peter's poise; it touched him queerly. And it seemed to explain why Captain Renfrew had received Peter so graciously and was now arranging for Dr. Jallup to visit Caroline.
Peter was moved to the conventional query, asking in what class the Captain had been graduated. But while his very voice was asking it, Peter thought what a strange thing it was that he, Peter Siner, a negro, and this lonely old gentleman, his benefactor, were spiritual brothers, both sprung from the loins of Harvard, that ancient mother of souls.