Mary Cresswell walked slowly on, flushing and paling by turns. Could it be that this Negro had dared to misunderstand her—had presumed? She reviewed her conduct. Perhaps she had been indiscreet in thus making a confidant of him in her trouble. She had thought of him as a boy—an old student, a sort of confidential servant; but what had he thought? She remembered Miss Smith’s warning of years before—and he had been North since and acquired Northern notions of freedom and equality. She bit her lip cruelly.
Yet, she mused, she was herself to blame. She had unwittingly made the intimacy and he was but a Negro, looking on every white woman as a goddess and ready to fawn at the slightest encouragement. There had been no one else here to confide in. She could not tell Miss Smith her troubles, although she knew Miss Smith must suspect. Harry Cresswell, apparently, had written nothing home of their quarrel. All the neighbors behaved as if her excuse of ill-health were sufficient to account for her return South to escape the rigors of a Northern winter. Alwyn, and Alwyn alone, really knew. Well, it was her blindness, and she must right it quietly and quickly with hard ruthless plainness. She blushed again at the shame of it; then she began to excuse.
After all, which was worse—a Cresswell or an Alwyn? It was no sin that Alwyn had done; it was simply ignorant presumption, and she must correct him firmly, but gently, like a child. What a crazy muddle the world was! She thought of Harry Cresswell and the tale he told her in the swamp. She thought of the flitting ghosts that awful night in Washington. She thought of Miss Wynn who had jilted Alwyn and given her herself a very bad quarter of an hour. What a world it was, and after all how far was this black boy wrong? Just then Colonel Cresswell rode up behind and greeted her.
She started almost guiltily, and again a sense of the awkwardness of her position reddened her face and neck. The Colonel dismounted, despite her protest, and walked beside her. They chatted along indifferently, of the crops, her brother’s new baby, the proposed mill.
“Mary,” his voice abruptly struck a new note. “I don’t like the way you talk with that Alwyn nigger.”
She was silent.
“Of course,” he continued, “you’re Northern born and you have been a teacher in this school and feel differently from us in some ways; but mark what I say, a nigger will presume on the slightest pretext, and you must keep them in their place. Then, too, you are a Cresswell now—”
She smiled bitterly; he noticed it, but went on:
“You are a Cresswell, even if you have caught Harry up to some of his deviltry,”—she started—“and got miffed about it. It’ll all come out right. You’re a Cresswell, and you must hold yourself too high to ‘Mister’ a nigger or let him dream of any sort of equality.”
He spoke pleasantly, but with a certain sharp insistence that struck a note of fear in Mary’s heart. For a moment she thought of writing Alwyn not to call. But, no; a note would be unwise. She and Colonel Cresswell lunched rather silently.
“Well, I must get to town,” he finally announced. “The mill directors meet today. If Maxwell calls by about that lumber tell him I’ll see him in town.” And away he went.
He had scarcely reached the highway and ridden a quarter of a mile or so when he spied Bles Alwyn hurrying across the field toward the Cresswell Oaks. He frowned and rode on. Then reining in his horse, he stopped in the shadow of the trees and watched Alwyn.
It was here that Zora saw him as she came up from her house. She, too, stopped, and soon saw whom he was watching. She had been planning to see Mr. Cresswell about the cut timber on her land. By legal right it was hers but she knew he would claim half, treating her like a mere tenant. Seeing him watching Alwyn she paused in the shadow and waited, fearing trouble. She, too, had felt that the continued conversations of Alwyn and Mrs. Cresswell were indiscreet, but she hoped that they had attracted no one else’s attention. Now she feared the Colonel was suspicious and her heart sank. Alwyn went straight toward the house and disappeared in the oak avenue. Still Colonel Cresswell waited but Zora waited no longer. Alwyn must be warned. She must reach Cresswell’s mansion before Cresswell did and without him seeing her. This meant a long detour of the swamp to approach the Oaks from the west. She silently gathered up her skirts and walked quickly and carefully away.
She was a strong woman, lithe and vigorous, living in the open air and used to walking. Once out of hearing she threw away her hat and bending forward ran through the swamp. For a while she ran easily and swiftly. Then for a moment she grew dizzy and it seemed as though she was standing still and the swamp in solemn grandeur marching past—in solemn mocking grandeur. She loosened her dress at the neck and flew on.
She sped at last through the oaks, up the terraces, and slowing down to an unsteady walk, staggered into the house. No one would wonder at her being there. She came up now and then and sorted the linen and piled the baskets for her girls. She entered a side door and listened. The Colonel’s voice sounded impatiently in the front hall.
“Mary! Mary?”
A pause, then an answer:
“Yes, father!”
He started up the front stairway and Zora hurried up the narrow back stairs, almost overturning a servant.
“I’m after the clothes,” she explained. She reached the back landing just in time to see Colonel Cresswell’s head rising up the front staircase.
