“Why didn't Tom tell me that he was going to run against my father?” she inquired of herself over and over. “I think he might have trusted me, so I do. It's mean of him. And if he should beat papa! Papa could bear that.”
She sprang to her feet and walked across the room, stopping on the way to rub her apple-bloom cheeks before a looking-glass. Vaguely enough, but insistently, the outline of a political plot glimmered in her consciousness and troubled her understanding. Plainly her father and Tom Bannister were rival candidates, and just as plainly each was scheming to make it appear that the negroes were supporting his opponent; but the girl's little head could not gather up and comprehend all that such a condition of things meant. She supposed that a sort of disgrace would attach to defeat, and she clasped her hands and poised her winsome body melodramatically when she asked herself which she would rather the defeat would fall upon, her father or Tom. She leaned out of the window and saw Colonel Sommerton walking down the road towards town, with his cigar elevated at an acute angle with his nose, his hat pulled well down in front, by which she knew that he was still excited. Days went by, as days will in any state of affairs, with just such faultless weather as August engenders amid the cool hills of the old Cherokee country; and Phyllis noted, by an indirect attention to what she had never before been interested in, that Colonel Sommerton was growing strangely confidential and familiar with Barnaby. She had a distinct but remote impression that her father had hitherto never, at least never openly, shown such irenic solicitude in that direction, and she knew that his sudden peace-making with the old negro meant ill to her lover. She pondered the matter with such discrimination and logic as her clever little brain could compass; and at last she one evening called Barnaby to come into the garden with his banjo.
The sun was down, and the half-grown moon swung yellow and clear against the violet arch of mid-heaven. Through the sheen a softened outline of the town wavered fantastically.
Phyllis sat on a great fragment of limestone, which, embossed with curious fossils, formed the immovable centre-piece of the garden.
Barnaby, at a respectful distance, crumpled herself satyr-like on the ground, with his banjo across his knee, and gazed expectantly aslant at the girl's sweet face.
“Now play me my father's favorite song,” she said.
They heard Mrs. Wren, the housekeeper, opening the windows in the upper rooms of the mansion to let in the night air, which was stirring over the valley with a delicious mountain chill on its wings. All around in the trees and shrubbery the katydids were rasping away in immelodious statement and denial of the ancient accusation.
Barnaby demurred. He did not imagine, so at least he said, that Miss Phyllis would be pleased with the ballad that recently had been the Colonel's chief musical delight; but he must obey the young lady, and so, after some throat—clearing and string—tuning, he proceeded:
“I'd rudder be er niggah
Dan ter be er whi' man,
Dough the whi' man considdah
He se'f biggah;
But of yo' mus' be white, w'y be hones' of
yo' can,
An ac' es much es poss'ble like er niggah!
“De colah ob yo' skin
Hit don't constertoot no sin,
An' yo' fambly ain't er—
Cuttin' any figgah;
Min' w'at yo's er-doin', an' do de bes' yo' kin,
An' ac' es much es poss'ble like er niggah!”
The tune of this song was melody itself, brimming with that unkempt, sarcastic humor which always strikes as if obliquely, and with a flurry of tipsy fun, into one's ears.