“Well, I don't either,” said Keith. “I went to the bank and tried to add up some figures for the old man, but my thinker wouldn't work. It's out of whack. That blasted nigger Pete is the prime cause of my being upset. I came by Major Warren's this morning. Sister feels awfully sorry for Mam' Linda, and asked me to take her a jar of jelly. You know old colored people love little attentions like that from white people, when they are sick or in trouble. Well”—Keith held up his hands, the palms outward—“I don't want any more in mine. I've been to death-bed scenes, funerals, wrecks on railroads, and all sorts of horrors, but that was simply too much. It simply beggars description—to see that old woman bowed there in her door like a dumb brute with its tongue tied to a stake. It made me ashamed of myself, though, for not at least trying to do something. I glory in you, old man. You failed, but you tried. By-the-way, that's the only comfort Mam' Linda has had—the only thing. Helen was there, the dear girl—and to think her visit home has to be like this!—she was there trying to soothe the old woman, but nothing that was said could produce anything but that awful groaning of hers till Lewis said something about your going over there yesterday, and that stirred her up. She rose in her chair and walked to the gate and folded her big arms across her breast.
“'I thank God young marster felt fer me dat way,' she said. 'He's de best young man on de face o' de earth. I'll go down ter my grave blessing 'im fer dis. He's got er soul in 'im. He knows how old Mammy Lindy feels en he was tryin' ter help her, God bless 'im! He couldn't do nothin', but he tried—he tried, dough everybody was holdin' 'im back en sayin' it would spile his 'lection. Well, if it do harm 'im, it will show dat Gawd done turn ergin white en black bofe.' I came away,” Keith finished, after a pause, in which Carson said nothing. “I couldn't stand it. Helen was crying like a child, her face wet with tears, and she wasn't trying to hide it. I was looking for some one to come every minute with the final news, and I didn't want to face that. Good God, old man, what are we coming to? Historians, Northern ones, seem to think the days of slavery were benighted, but God knows such things as this never happened then. Now, did it?”
“No; it's terrible,” Carson agreed, and he stepped to a window and looked out over the roofs of the near-by stores to the wagon-yard beyond.
“Well, the great and only, the truly accepted one,” Keith went on, in a lighter tone, “the man who did us all up brown, Mr. Earle Sanders, of Augusta, has unwittingly chosen a gloomy date for his visit. He's here, installed in the bridal-chamber of the Hotel de Johnston. Helen got a note from him just as I was leaving. On my soul, old man—maybe it's because I want to see it that way—but, really, it didn't seem to me that she looked exactly elated, you know, like I imagined she would, from the way the local gossips pile it on. You know, the idea struck me that maybe she is not really engaged, after all.”
“She is worried; she is not herself to-day,” Carson said, coldly, though in truth his blood was surging hotly through his veins. It had come at last. The man who was to rob him of all he cared for in life was at hand. Turning from Keith, he pretended to be looking over some of the dog-eared magazines in the reading-room, and then feeling an overwhelming desire to be alone with the dull pain in his breast, he waved a careless signal to Keith and went down to the street. In front of the hotel stood a pair of sleek, restive bays harnessed to a new top-buggy. They were held by the owner of the best livery-stable in the town, a rough ex-mountaineer.
“Say, Carson,” the man called out, proudly, “you'll have to git up early in the morning to produce a better yoke of thorough-breds than these. Never been driven over these roads before. I didn't intend to let 'em out fer public use right now, but a big, rich fellow from Augusta is here sparkin', and he wanted the best I had and wouldn't touch anything else. Money wasn't any object. He turned up his nose at all my other stock. Gee! look at them trim legs and thighs—a dead match as two black-eyed peas.”
“Yes, they are all right.” Carson walked on and went into Blackburn's store, for no other reason than that he wanted to avoid meeting people and discussing the trouble Pete Warren was in, or hearing further comments on the stranger's visit. He might have chosen a better retreat, however, for in a group at the window nearest the hotel he found Blackburn, Garner, Bob Smith, and Wade Tingle, all peering stealthily out through the dingy glass at the team Carson had just inspected.
“He'll be out in a minute,” Wade was saying, in an undertone. “Quit pushing me, Bob! They say he's got dead loads of money.”
“You bet he has,” Bob declared; “he had a wad of it in big bills large enough to stuff a sofa-pillow with. Ike, the porter, who trucked his trunk up, said he got a dollar tip. The head waiter is expecting to buy a farm after he leaves. Gee! there he comes! Say, Garner, you ought to know; is that a brandy-and-soda complexion?”
“No, he doesn't drink a drop,” answered Garner. “Well, he looks all right, as well as I can see through this immaculate window with my eyes full of spiderwebs. My, what clothes! Say, Bob, is that style of derby the thing now? It looks like an inverted milk-bucket. Come here, Carson, and take a peep at the conqueror. If Keith were here we'd have a quomm. By George, there's Keith now! He's watching at the window of the barber-shop. Call him over, Blackburn. Let's have him here; we need more pall-bearers.”