The House Behind the Cedars | Page 5

den all de
dead has ter be buried. An' we does ou' sheer of it, suh, we does ou'
sheer. We conduc's de obs'quies er all de bes' w'ite folks er de town,
suh."
Warwick left the undertaker's shop and retraced his steps until he had
passed the lawyer's office, toward which he threw an affectionate
glance. A few rods farther led him past the old black Presbyterian
church, with its square tower, embowered in a stately grove; past the
Catholic church, with its many crosses, and a painted wooden figure of
St. James in a recess beneath the gable; and past the old Jefferson
House, once the leading hotel of the town, in front of which political
meetings had been held, and political speeches made, and political hard
cider drunk, in the days of "Tippecanoe and Tyler too."
The street down which Warwick had come intersected Front Street at a

sharp angle in front of the old hotel, forming a sort of flatiron block at
the junction, known as Liberty Point,--perhaps because slave auctions
were sometimes held there in the good old days. Just before Warwick
reached Liberty Point, a young woman came down Front Street from
the direction of the market-house. When their paths converged,
Warwick kept on down Front Street behind her, it having been already
his intention to walk in this direction.
Warwick's first glance had revealed the fact that the young woman was
strikingly handsome, with a stately beauty seldom encountered. As he
walked along behind her at a measured distance, he could not help
noting the details that made up this pleasing impression, for his mind
was singularly alive to beauty, in whatever embodiment. The girl's
figure, he perceived, was admirably proportioned; she was evidently at
the period when the angles of childhood were rounding into the
promising curves of adolescence. Her abundant hair, of a dark and
glossy brown, was neatly plaited and coiled above an ivory column that
rose straight from a pair of gently sloping shoulders, clearly outlined
beneath the light muslin frock that covered them. He could see that she
was tastefully, though not richly, dressed, and that she walked with an
elastic step that revealed a light heart and the vigor of perfect health.
Her face, of course, he could not analyze, since he had caught only the
one brief but convincing glimpse of it.
The young woman kept on down Front Street, Warwick maintaining
his distance a few rods behind her. They passed a factory, a warehouse
or two, and then, leaving the brick pavement, walked along on mother
earth, under a leafy arcade of spreading oaks and elms. Their way led
now through a residential portion of the town, which, as they advanced,
gradually declined from staid respectability to poverty, open and
unabashed. Warwick observed, as they passed through the respectable
quarter, that few people who met the girl greeted her, and that some
others whom she passed at gates or doorways gave her no sign of
recognition; from which he inferred that she was possibly a visitor in
the town and not well acquainted.
Their walk had continued not more than ten minutes when they crossed

a creek by a wooden bridge and came to a row of mean houses standing
flush with the street. At the door of one, an old black woman had
stooped to lift a large basket, piled high with laundered clothes. The
girl, as she passed, seized one end of the basket and helped the old
woman to raise it to her head, where it rested solidly on the cushion of
her head-kerchief. During this interlude, Warwick, though he had
slackened his pace measurably, had so nearly closed the gap between
himself and them as to hear the old woman say, with the dulcet negro
intonation:--
"T'anky', honey; de Lawd gwine bless you sho'. You wuz alluz a good
gal, and de Lawd love eve'ybody w'at he'p de po' ole nigger. You gwine
ter hab good luck all yo' bawn days."
"I hope you're a true prophet, Aunt Zilphy," laughed the girl in
response.
The sound of her voice gave Warwick a thrill. It was soft and sweet and
clear--quite in harmony with her appearance. That it had a faint
suggestiveness of the old woman's accent he hardly noticed, for the
current Southern speech, including his own, was rarely without a touch
of it. The corruption of the white people's speech was one
element--only one--of the negro's unconscious revenge for his own
debasement.
The houses they passed now grew scattering, and the quarter of the
town more neglected. Warwick felt himself wondering where the girl
might be going in a neighborhood so uninviting. When she stopped to
pull a half-naked negro child out of a mudhole and set him upon his
feet, he