Part 14 (2/2)
”The estimable Aunt Charlotte appears to be in excellent voice and spirits to-day,” he said with a wry smile. ”I don't know that I ever heard her when her top notes carried farther than they did just now.”
The slender black-haired girl who sat alongside him in a porch chair winced.
”It's perfectly awful--I know it,” she lamented. ”I suppose if Mildred and I have asked her once not to carry on like that here at the front of the house we've asked her a hundred times. It's bad enough to have her whooping like a wild Indian in the kitchen. But it never seems to do any good.”
”Why don't you try getting rid of her altogether as a remedy?” suggested the young man.
”Get rid of Aunt Sharley! Why, Harvey--why, Mr. Winslow, I mean--we couldn't do that! Why, Aunt Sharley has always been in our family! Why, she's just like one of us--just like our own flesh and blood! Why, she used to belong to my Grandmother Helm before the war----”
”I see,” he said dryly, breaking in on her. ”She used to belong to your grandmother, and now you belong to her. The plan of owners.h.i.+p has merely been reversed, that's all. Tell me, Miss Emmy Lou, how does it feel to be a human chattel, with no prospect of emanc.i.p.ation?” Then catching the hurt look on her flushed face he dropped his raillery and hastened to make amends. ”Well, never mind. You're the sweetest slave girl I ever met--I guess you're the sweetest one that ever lived. Besides, she's gone--probably won't be back for half an hour or so. Don't hitch your chair away from me--I've got something very important that I want to tell you--in confidence. It concerns you--and somebody else. It concerns me and somebody else--and yet only two persons are concerned in it.”
He was wrong about the time, however, truthful as he may have been in a.s.serting his desire to deal confidentially with important topics.
Inside of ten minutes, which to him seemed no more than a minute, seeing that he was in love and time always speeds fast for a lover with his sweetheart, the old black woman came hurrying back up the side street, and turned in at the side gate and retraversed the lawn to the back of the old house, giving the vine-screened porch a swift searching look as she hobbled past its corner.
Her curiosity, if so this scrutiny was to be interpreted, carried her further. In a minute or two she suddenly poked her head out through the open front door. She had removed her damaged straw headgear, but still wore her kerchief. Hastily and guiltily the young man released his hold upon a slim white hand which somehow had found its way inside his own.
The sharp eyes of the old negress snapped. She gave a grunt as she withdrew her head. It was speedily to develop, though, that she had not entirely betaken herself away. Almost immediately there came to the ears of the couple the creak-creak of a rocking-chair just inside the hall, but out of view from their end of the porch.
”Make the old beldam go away, won't you?” whispered the man.
”I'll try,” she whispered back rather nervously. Then, raising her voice, she called out in slightly strained, somewhat artificial voice, which to the understanding of the annoyed young man in the hammock appeared to have almost a suggestion of apprehension in it:
”Is--is that you, Aunt Sharley?”
The answer was little more than a grunt.
”Well, Aunt Sharley, hadn't you better be seeing about supper?”
”Num'mine 'bout supper. Ise tendin' to de supper. Ise bound de supper'll be ready 'fo' you two chillens is ready fur to eat it.”
Within, the chair continued to creak steadily.
The girl spread out her hands with a gesture of helplessness.
”You see how it is,” she explained under her breath. ”Auntie is so set in her ways!”
”And she's so set in that rocking-chair too,” he retorted grimly. Saying what he said next, he continued to whisper, but in his whisper was a suggestion of the proprietorial tone. Also for the first time in his life he addressed her without the prefix of Miss before her name. This affair plainly was progressing rapidly, despite the handicaps of a withered black duenna in the immediate offing.
”Emmy Lou,” he said, ”please try again. Go in there yourself and speak to her. Be firm with her--for once. Make her get away from that door.
She makes me nervous. Don't be afraid of the old nuisance. This is your house, isn't it--yours and your sister's? Well, then, I thought Southerners knew how to handle darkies. If you can handle this one, suppose you give me a small proof of the fact--right now!”
Reluctantly, as though knowing beforehand what the outcome would be, Emmy Lou stood up, revealing herself as a straight dainty figure in white. She entered the door. Outside in the hammock Harvey strained his ears to hear the dialogue. His sweetheart's voice came to him only in a series of murmurs, but for him there was no difficulty about distinguis.h.i.+ng the replies, for the replies were pitched in a strident, belligerent key which carried almost to the yard fence. From them he was able to guess with the utmost accuracy just what arguments against the presence of the negress the girl was making. This, then, was what he heard:
”. . . Now, Mizz Emmy Lou, you mout jes' ez well hush up an' save yore breath. You knows an' I knows, even ef he don't know it, dat 'tain't proper fur no young man to be cotein' a young lady right out on a front po'ch widout no chaperoner bein' clost by. Quality folks don't do sech ez dat. Dat's why I taken my feet in my hand an' come hurryin' back yere f'um dat grocery sto' where I'd done went to git a bottle of lemon extractors. I seen yore sister settin' in dat Mistah B. Weil's candy sto', drinkin' ice-cream sody wid a pa.s.sel of young folks, an' by dat I realise' I'd done lef' you 'lone in dis house wid a young man dat's a stranger yere, an' so I come right back. And yere I is, honey, and yere I stays. . . . Whut's dat you sayin'? De gen'l'man objec's? He do, do he?”
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