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A Black Adonis, a novel by Linn Boyd Porter |
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Chapter 18. Black And White |
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_ CHAPTER XVIII. BLACK AND WHITE When Daisy reached her own room again, she felt assured that no one but herself and Millicent knew what had occurred. This was something. Had her father awakened, she did not know what might have followed. She had seen him too often, pale and distraught, in the presence of his relentless enemy, not to entertain the greatest thankfulness that he had slept through this terrible experience. At any cost it must be kept from him. She would beg, pray, entreat Millicent to seal her lips. And in the morning she would go to the address Hannibal had given her and obtain his proofs of her father's guilt, removing the frightful nightmare that had so long hung over that dear head. Would Hannibal surrender his documents? He had made a tacit promise to do so, and she had faith that she could make him keep his word. She knew the negro had a liking for her that was very strong. She had made it possible for him to become a man--by giving him the money that took him to France. Why had he returned so suddenly? What new fancy had caused him to give up his studies and recross the sea to enter her doors at night, to plunder still further secrets from her father's private desk? There were a thousand reasons for fear, but the devoted daughter only thought of saving the one she loved at all risks. She would dare anything in his behalf. And this father of hers--that she had revered from babyhood--was a forger! He had made himself liable to a term of imprisonment in the common jail! He was a criminal, for whom the law would stretch out its hand as soon as his guilt was revealed! His previous high standing in the community could not save him; nor the love of his children; nor his new fortune--won by such means as this. Nothing could make his liberty secure but the silencing of the witness to his fault, the negro who had carefully possessed himself of certain facts with which to ruin his benefactor. What did Hannibal want? Surely he had no revenge to gratify, as against her or her father! They had treated him with the greatest consideration. Only once--that day on the lawn--had Daisy spoken to him in a sharp tone, and then the provocation was very great. Since then she had raised the money that was to make a man of him. What did he require now? An increased bribe to keep him away? Well, she would get it for him. She would spend one, two, three thousand dollars if necessary to purchase his silence; if it needed more she could borrow of--of Mr. Weil. Yes, Mr. Weil was the friend to whom she would turn in this emergency. He had lost nothing, apparently, by the unwarranted use of his name. The notes on which his endorsement had been forged were all paid. When she met Hannibal she would ascertain his price and then the rest would be easy. Her father need not even know the danger to which he had been exposed. In the morning she went to Millicent's room early, in order to have a conversation with her undisturbed. Millicent was sleeping soundly and was awakened with some difficulty. "I've only been unconscious a little while," she said, in explanation. "I thought I never should sleep again. Oh, what a disgrace! My father a forger! Liable to go to prison with common criminals, to wear the stripes of a convict! It seems as if my degradation could go no lower." Reddening with surprise at the attitude of her sister, Daisy answered that the thing to be thought of now was how to save Mr. Fern from the consequences of his errors. "You're a strange girl," was Millicent's reply. "You don't think of me at all! Won't it be nice to have people point after me in the street and say, 'There goes one of the Fern girls, whose father is in Sing Sing!' I never thought I should come to this. There's no knowing how far it will follow me. I doubt if any reputable man will marry me, when the facts are known." Thoroughly disgusted with her sister's selfishness, Daisy cried out that the facts must not be known--that they must be covered up and kept from the world, and that she was going to bring this about. She reminded Millicent of the evident suffering their father had undergone for the past two years, changed from a light-hearted man into the easily alarmed mood they had known so well. "If he deserved punishment, God knows he has had enough!" she added. "And there is another thing you and I ought not to forget, Millie. Whatever he did was in the hope of saving this home and enough to live on, for us! During the last week he has had an improvement in business. He has paid all of those people whose claims distressed him. You have seen how much brighter it has made him. Now, when he had a fair prospect of a few happy days, comes this terrible danger. Surely you and I will use our utmost endeavors to shield him from harm. Even if he were the worst of sinners he is still our father!" But Millicent did not seem at all convinced. She could only see that her reputation had been put in jeopardy, and that a dreadful fear would constantly hang over her on account of it. "It is your fault, as much as his, too!" she exclaimed, angrily. "You both made as much of that negro as if he were a prince in disguise. I've told you a hundred times that he ought to be discharged. I hope you'll admit I was right, at last." There was little use in reminding her sister that Hannibal had shown himself the possessor of some information that endangered Mr. Fern before either he or Daisy began to cultivate his good will; for she knew it well enough. What Daisy did say was more to the point. "Have you always hated him?" she asked, meaningly. "What did he mean last night by his reference to a time when you sought him, en dishabille?" Millicent sprang up in bed, with flashing eyes. "He is a lying scoundrel!" she cried, vehemently. "I never did anything of the kind, and I do not see how you can stand there and repeat such a calumny!" "The strange thing about it," replied Daisy, quietly, "is that you did not dispute him. But then, you did not know a third person was present. When I meet him this morning I shall ask for further particulars." Millicent sprang from the bed and threw herself at her sister's feet. "Would you drive me mad!" she exclaimed. "I am distracted already with the troubles of this house, and now you wish to hear the lying inventions of one you know to be a blackmailer and a robber! Don't mention my name to him, I entreat you. He is capable of any slander. You can't intend to listen to tales about your sister from such a low, base thing!" Having Millicent at her feet, Daisy was pleased to relent a little. "Very well," she said. "I will not let him tell me anything about you. But I want you to promise in return that you will do all you can to protect father from the slightest knowledge of what happened last night. I am afraid it would kill him. So far he believes us ignorant of his troubles. If I can make an arrangement to send Hannibal back to France he will remain so. Be sure you do not arouse his suspicions in any way, and we may come out all right yet." The promise was made, and, as nothing could be gained by prolonging the conversation, Daisy withdrew. In the lower hall she met her father, and his bright smile proved to her that he was still in blissful ignorance that any new cloud had crossed his sky. Millicent did not appear at breakfast, for which neither of the others were sorry. It enabled Mr. Fern to talk over some of his plans with his younger daughter. Among them was a possible trip abroad, for he said he felt the need of a long rest after his troubled business career. The last suggestion opened a new hope for Daisy. If worse came to worst, and there was no other way to escape the jail, flight in a European steamer could be resorted to. It would mean expatriation for life, as far as he was concerned, but that would be a thousand times better than a lingering death inside of stone walls. He could raise a large sum of ready money, and they would want for nothing. Millie would not wish to go with them, probably. She would stay and marry--how the thought choked Daisy--marry Mr. Roseleaf; unless indeed, the young novelist did what she had foreshadowed, repudiated the thought of allying himself with a tainted name. Roseleaf! The bright, happy love she had given him came back to the child like a wave of agony. Making an excuse that she had shopping to do, Daisy took the train to the city with her father, and parted from him at a point where the downtown and uptown street cars separated. Then she took a cab and drove to the address given her. It was not the finest quarter in the city, and she would have hesitated at any other time before taking such a risk as going there alone. At present she thought of nothing but the object of her visit. Inquiry at the door brought the information that the lady was expected and that she was to go upstairs and wait. The woman who let her in was a pleasant faced mullatress, and several young children of varying shades were playing on the stairs she had to ascend. Daisy mounted to the room designated, which proved to be a small parlor, with an alcove, behind the curtains of which was presumably a bed. As the weather was quite warm, the girl went to the front windows and opened them, in order to admit the fresh air. Then she sat down and waited impatiently. There was a scent in the room which she associated with the Ethiopian race, a subtle aroma that she found decidedly unpleasant. It gave her an indefinable uneasiness, and she mentally remarked that she would be glad when the ordeal was over. Her nerves were already beginning to suffer. After the lapse of fifteen minutes, Hannibal entered. He had the look of one who had passed a sleepless night, and despite the blackness of his complexion, his cheeks seemed pale. "Good-morning," said Daisy, rising. "Good-morning," he replied. And then there was a brief space of silence, each waiting for the other. "I am here, you see," said the girl, finally, with an attempt at a smile. "And now will you give me the things I came for, as I cannot stay long?" The negro tried to look at her, tried many times, but failed. His eyes shifted uneasily to all the other objects in the room, resting on none of them more than a second at a time. "You wonder," he said, after another pause, "why I returned to America, why I came to your house last night. I thought I could tell you--this morning--and I have been trying to prepare myself to do so--but I cannot. You blame me a great deal, that is evident in every line of your face, but you do not know what I have suffered. Were your father to go to jail for the term the law prescribes, he would not endure the agony that has been mine." He looked every word he spoke and more. "I am sorry, truly sorry for you," she replied. "But why could you not leave all your troubles, when you went to France, and begin an entirely new life? You found it true what I told you, I am sure, about the lack of prejudice--on account of your--race." He nodded and cleared his throat before he spoke again. "Oh, yes; but it is not the prejudice there that worries me. It is the prejudice here. It is the barrier my color brings between me and the only being whose regard I crave!" The girl's cheeks grew rosier than ever, but she affected not to understand, and once more reverted to the errand that had brought her thither. "You promised me the documents with which my poor father has been tortured," she said, reproachfully; "let us not talk of other things until you have given them to me." The negro drew from a pocket of his coat a fair-sized package tied with a ribbon. "They are all there," he said. "Every scrap, every particle of proof, everything that could bring the breath of suspicion upon your father's honesty. All there, in that little envelope." She reached for it, but instead of giving it to her, Hannibal caught her hand, and before she dreamed what he intended, pressed a kiss upon it. The next moment the girl, with a look of outraged womanhood, was rubbing the spot with her handkerchief, as if he had covered it with poison. "You brute!" she exclaimed. "You--you--" She could not find the word she wanted; nothing in the language she spoke seemed detestable enough to fill the measure of her wrong. "You see!" he answered, bitterly. "Because I am black I cannot touch the hand of a woman that is white. You have claimed to be without the hatred of the African so ingrained among Americans; you have talked about the Almighty making of one blood all the nations of the earth; and yet you are like the rest! A viper's bite could not have aroused deeper disgust in you than my lips. And all because the sun shone more vertically on my ancestors than it did on yours!" Daisy was divided between her horror of the act he had committed and her anxiety to do something to free her father from his danger. She suppressed the hateful epithets that rose to her tongue and once more entreated the negro to give her the packet he held in his possession. "You can do nothing with it but injure a man who has been kind to you," she pleaded. "And if you use the information you have, and afterwards repent, it will be too late to remedy your error. Give it to me, and return to France with the proud consciousness that you are worthy the position you wish to occupy." Hannibal shook his head with decision. "That would be very well if I ever could be considered a man by the one for whose opinion I care most. But while I am to her a creature something below the ape, a mere crawling viper whose touch is pollution, I will act like the thing she thinks me. To-day I possess the power to make a high-born gentleman dance whenever I pull the string. You ask me to give up this power, and in return you offer--nothing." "One would suppose," remarked Daisy, struggling with herself in this dilemma, "that the ability to inflict pain was one a true nature would delight to surrender. My father has done no harm to you." The negro bent toward her and spoke with vehemence. "But his daughter has! She has made my life wretched. Whatever position I may attain will be worthless to me, without the love I had hoped might be mine." "Love!" cried the girl, recoiling. "Love!" "Love and marriage," he replied. "In France we could live without the hateful prejudices that prevail in America. I have natural ability enough, you have told me so a thousand times, and I could make myself worthy of you. As my wife--" Daisy rose and interrupted him fiercely. "Cease!" she exclaimed. "There is a limit to what I can endure. If you mean to make any promise of that kind a prelude to my father's freedom from persecution, we may as well end this conversation now as later. He would rather rot in prison than have his child sacrifice herself in such a manner!" She started toward the door, and he did not interrupt her passage, as she half expected he would do; but he spoke again. "All this because I am black," he said. "Because you are a cruel, heartless wretch!" she answered, her eyes flashing. "Because you have abused the goodwill of a generous family; because you have tortured a kind old man and a loving daughter. If you were as white as any person on earth, I would not marry you. Worse than all outward semblance is a dark and vile mind. Do what you like! I defy you!" The door opened and closed behind her. Hannibal heard her retreating footsteps grow fainter on the stairs, and then there was silence. "I might have known it," he said, aloud. "I did know it, but I kept hoping against hope. She would wed a Newfoundland dog sooner than me. Nothing is left but to make her repent her action. I will bring that father of hers to the dust, if only to revenge the long list of injuries his race has inflicted on mine!" _ |
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