Part 31 (1/2)
”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 doc.u.ments 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 sc.r.a.p, 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 pa.s.sage, 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 flas.h.i.+ng. ”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.