The House Behind the Cedars/XVI
XVI
THE BOTTOM FALLS OUT
The first effect of Tryon's discovery was,
figuratively speaking, to knock the bottom out of things
for him. It was much as if a boat on which he
had been floating smoothly down the stream of
pleasure had sunk suddenly and left him struggling
in deep waters. The full realization of the truth,
which followed speedily, had for the moment reversed
his mental attitude toward her, and love
and yearning had given place to anger and
disgust. His agitation could hardly have escaped
notice had not the doctor's attention, and that of
the crowd that quickly gathered, been absorbed by
the young woman who had fallen. During the
time occupied in carrying her into the drugstore,
restoring her to consciousness, and sending her
home in a carriage, Tryon had time to recover in
some degree his self-possession. When Rena had
been taken home, he slipped away for a long walk,
after which he called at Judge Straight's office and
received the judge's report upon the matter
presented. Judge Straight had found the claim, in
his opinion, a good one; he had discovered property
from which, in case the claim were allowed,
the amount might be realized. The judge, who had
already been informed of the incident at the drugstore,
observed Tryon's preoccupation and guessed
shrewdly at its cause, but gave no sign. Tryon
left the matter of the note unreservedly in the
lawyer's hands, with instructions to communicate
to him any further developments.
Returning to the doctor's office, Tryon listened
to that genial gentleman's comments on the accident,
his own concern in which he, by a great effort,
was able to conceal. The doctor insisted upon his
returning to the Hill for supper. Tryon pleaded
illness. The doctor was solicitous, felt his pulse,
examined his tongue, pronounced him feverish, and
prescribed a sedative. Tryon sought refuge in his
room at the hotel, from which he did not emerge
again until morning.
His emotions were varied and stormy. At first
he could see nothing but the fraud of which he had
been made the victim. A negro girl had been
foisted upon him for a white woman, and he had
almost committed the unpardonable sin against his
race of marrying her. Such a step, he felt, would
have been criminal at any time; it would have
been the most odious treachery at this epoch, when
his people had been subjugated and humiliated by
the Northern invaders, who had preached negro
equality and abolished the wholesome laws decreeing
the separation of the races. But no Southerner
who loved his poor, downtrodden country, or
his race, the proud Anglo-Saxon race which traced
the clear stream of its blood to the cavaliers of
England, could tolerate the idea that even in distant
generations that unsullied current could be
polluted by the blood of slaves. The very thought
was an insult to the white people of the South.
For Tryon's liberality, of which he had spoken so
nobly and so sincerely, had been confined unconsciously,
and as a matter of course, within the boundaries
of his own race. The Southern mind, in
discussing abstract questions relative to humanity,
makes always, consciously or unconsciously, the
mental reservation that the conclusions reached do
not apply to the negro, unless they can be made to
harmonize with the customs of the country.
But reasoning thus was not without effect upon
a mind by nature reasonable above the average.
Tryon's race impulse and social prejudice had
carried him too far, and the swing of the mental
pendulum brought his thoughts rapidly back in
the opposite direction. Tossing uneasily on the
bed, where he had thrown himself down without
undressing, the air of the room oppressed him, and
he threw open the window. The cool night air
calmed his throbbing pulses. The moonlight,
streaming through the window, flooded the room
with a soft light, in which he seemed to see Rena
standing before him, as she had appeared that
afternoon, gazing at him with eyes that implored
charity and forgiveness. He burst into tears,--
bitter tears, that strained his heartstrings. He
was only a youth. She was his first love, and he
had lost her forever. She was worse than dead
to him; for if he had seen her lying in her shroud
before him, he could at least have cherished her
memory; now, even this consolation was denied
him.
The town clock--which so long as it was wound
up regularly recked nothing of love or hate, joy or
sorrow--solemnly tolled out the hour of midnight
and sounded the knell of his lost love. Lost she
was, as though she had never been, as she had
indeed had no right to be. He resolutely determined
to banish her image from his mind. See
her again he could not; it would be painful to
them both; it could be productive of no good to
either. He had felt the power and charm of love,
and no ordinary shook could have loosened its
hold; but this catastrophe, which had so rudely
swept away the groundwork of his passion, had
stirred into new life all the slumbering pride of
race and ancestry which characterized his caste.
How much of this sensitive superiority was essential
and how much accidental; how much of it
was due to the ever-suggested comparison with a
servile race; how much of it was ignorance and
self-conceit; to what extent the boasted purity of
his race would have been contaminated by the fair
woman whose image filled his memory,--of these
things he never thought. He was not influenced
by sordid considerations; he would have denied
that his course was controlled by any narrow
prudence. If Rena had been white, pure white (for
in his creed there was no compromise), he would
have braved any danger for her sake. Had she
been merely of illegitimate birth, he would have
overlooked the bar sinister. Had her people
been simply poor and of low estate, he would have
brushed aside mere worldly considerations, and
would have bravely sacrificed convention for love;
for his liberality was not a mere form of words.
But the one objection which he could not overlook
was, unhappily, the one that applied to the only
woman who had as yet moved his heart. He tried
to be angry with her, but after the first hour he
found it impossible. He was a man of too much
imagination not to be able to put himself, in some
measure at least, in her place,--to perceive that for
her the step which had placed her in Tryon's world
was the working out of nature's great law of self-
preservation, for which he could not blame her.
But for the sheerest accident,--no, rather, but for
a providential interference,--he would have married
her, and might have gone to the grave unconscious
that she was other than she seemed.
The clock struck the hour of two. With a
shiver he closed the window, undressed by the
moonlight, drew down the shade, and went to bed.
He fell into an unquiet slumber, and dreamed
again of Rena. He must learn to control his
waking thoughts; his dreams could not be curbed.
In that realm Rena's image was for many a day
to remain supreme. He dreamed of her sweet
smile, her soft touch, her gentle voice. In all her
fair young beauty she stood before him, and then
by some hellish magic she was slowly transformed
into a hideous black hag. With agonized eyes he
watched her beautiful tresses become mere wisps
of coarse wool, wrapped round with dingy cotton
strings; he saw her clear eyes grow bloodshot,
her ivory teeth turn to unwholesome fangs. With
a shudder he awoke, to find the cold gray dawn
of a rainy day stealing through the window.
He rose, dressed himself, went down to
breakfast, then entered the writing-room and penned a
letter which, after reading it over, he tore into
small pieces and threw into the waste basket. A
second shared the same fate. Giving up the task,
he left the hotel and walked down to Dr. Green's
office.
"Is the doctor in?" he asked of the colored
attendant.
"No, suh," replied the man; "he's gone ter see
de young cullud gal w'at fainted w'en de doctah
was wid you yistiddy."
Tryon sat down at the doctor's desk and hastily
scrawled a note, stating that business compelled
his immediate departure. He thanked the doctor
for courtesies extended, and left his regards for
the ladies. Returning. to the hotel, he paid his
bill and took a hack for the wharf, from which a
boat was due to leave at nine o'clock.
As the hack drove down Front Street, Tryon
noted idly the houses that lined the street. When
he reached the sordid district in the lower part of
the town, there was nothing to attract his
attention until the carriage came abreast of a row of
cedar-trees, beyond which could be seen the upper
part of a large house with dormer windows. Before
the gate stood a horse and buggy, which Tryon
thought he recognized as Dr. Green's. He leaned
forward and addressed the driver.
"Can you tell me who lives there?" Tryon
asked, pointing to the house.
"A callud 'oman, suh," the man replied,
touching his hat. "Mis' Molly Walden an' her daughter
Rena."
The vivid impression he received of this house,
and the spectre that rose before him of a pale,
broken-hearted girl within its gray walls, weeping
for a lost lover and a vanished dream of happiness,
did not argue well for Tryon's future peace of
mind. Rena's image was not to be easily expelled
from his heart; for the laws of nature are higher
and more potent than merely human institutions,
and upon anything like a fair field are likely to
win in the long ran.