The Novels
The House behind the Cedars (1900)
I. A STRANGER FROM SOUTH CAROLINA
TIME TOUCHES ALL things with destroying hand; and if he seem now and then to bestow the bloom of youth, the sap of spring, it is but a brief mockery, to be surely and swiftly followed by the wrinkles of old age, the dry leaves and bare branches of winter. And yet there are places where Time seems to linger lovingly long after youth has departed, and to which he seems loath to bring the evil day. Who has not known some even-tempered old man or woman who seemed to have drunk of the fountain of youth? Who has not seen somewhere an old town that, having long since ceased to grow, yet held its own without perceptible decline?
Some such trite reflection â as apposite to the subject as most random reflections are â passed through the mind of a young man who came out of the front door of the Patesville Hotel about nine oâclock one fine morning in spring, a few years after the Civil War, and started down Front Street toward the market-house. Arriving at the town late the previous evening, he had been driven up from the steamboat in a carriage, from which he had been able to distinguish only the shadowy outlines of the houses along the street; so that this morning walk was his first opportunity to see the town by daylight. He was dressed in a suit of linen duck â the day was warm â a panama straw hat, and patent leather shoes. In appearance he was tall, dark, with straight, black, lustrous hair, and very clean-cut, high-bred features. When he paused by the clerkâs desk on his way out, to light his cigar, the day clerk, who had just come on duty, glanced at the register and read the last entry: â
ââJOHN WARWICK, CLARENCE, SOUTH CAROLINA.â
âOne of the South Caâlina bigbugs, I reckon â probably in cotton, or turpentine.â The gentleman from South Carolina, walking down the street, glanced about him with an eager look, in which curiosity and affection were mingled with a touch of bitterness. He saw little that was not familiar, or that he had not seen in his dreams a hundred times during the past ten years. There had been some changes, it is true, some melancholy changes, but scarcely anything by way of addition or improvement to counterbalance them. Here and there blackened and dismantled walls marked the place where handsome buildings once had stood, for Shermanâs march to the sea had left its mark upon the town. The stores were mostly of brick, two stories high, joining one another after the manner of cities. Some of the names on the signs were familiar; others, including a number of Jewish names, were quite unknown to him.
A two minutesâ walk brought Warwick â the name he had registered under, and as we shall call him â to the market-house, the central feature of Patesville, from both the commercial and the picturesque points of view. Standing foursquare in the heart of the town, at the intersection of the two main streets, a âjogâ at each street corner left around the market-house a little public square, which at this hour was well occupied by carts and wagons from the country and empty drays awaiting hire. Warwick was unable to perceive much change in the market-house. Perhaps the surface of the red brick, long unpainted, had scaled off a little more here and there. There might have been a slight accretion of the moss and lichen on the shingled roof. But the tall tower, with its four-faced clock, rose as majestically and uncompromisingly as though the land had never been subjugated. Was it so irreconcilable, Warwick wondered, as still to peal out the curfew bell, which at nine oâclock at night had clamorously warned all negroes, slave or free, that it was unlawful for them to be abroad after that hour, under penalty of imprisonment or whipping? Was the old constable, whose chief business it had been to ring the bell, still alive and exercising the functions of his office, and had age lessened or increased the number of times that obliging citizens performed this duty for him during his temporary absences in the company of convivial spirits? A few moments later, Warwick saw a colored policeman in the old constableâs place â a stronger reminder than even the burned buildings that war had left its mark upon the old town, with which Time had dealt so tenderly.
The lower story of the market-house was open on all four of its sides to the public square. Warwick passed through one of the wide brick arches and traversed the building with a leisurely step. He looked in vain into the stalls for the butcher who had sold fresh meat twice a week, on market days, and he felt a genuine thrill of pleasure when he recognized the red bandana turban of old Aunt Lyddy, the ancient negro woman who had sold him gingerbread and fried fish, and told him weird tales of witchcraft and conjuration, in the old days when, as an idle boy, he had loafed about the market-house. He did not speak to her, however, or give her any sign of recognition. He threw a glance toward a certain corner where steps led to the town hall above. On this stairway he had once seen a manacled free negro shot while being taken upstairs for examination under a criminal charge. Warwick recalled vividly how the shot had rung out. He could see again the livid look of terror on the victimâs face, the gathering crowd, the resulting confusion. The murderer, he recalled, had been tried and sentenced to imprisonment for life, but was pardoned by a merciful governor after serving a year of his sentence. As Warwick was neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, he could not foresee that, thirty years later, even this would seem an excessive punishment for so slight a misdemeanor.
Leaving the market-house, Warwick turned to the left, and kept on his course until he reached the next corner. After another turn to the right, a dozen paces brought him in front of a small weather-beaten frame building, from which projected a wooden sign-board bearing the inscription: â
ARCHIBALD STRAIGHT, LAWYER.
He turned the knob, but the door was locked. Retracing his steps past a vacant lot, the young man entered a shop where a colored man was employed in varnishing a coffin, which stood on two trestles in the middle of the floor. Not at all impressed by the melancholy suggestiveness of his task, he was whistling a lively air with great gusto. Upon Warwickâs entrance this effusion came to a sudden end, and the coffin-maker assumed an air of professional gravity.
âGood-mawninâ, suh,â he said, lifting his cap politely.
âGood-morning,â answered Warwick. âCan you tell me anything about Judge Straightâs office hours?â
âDe ole jedge has beân a little onregâlar sence de wah, suh; but he ginâally gits rounâ âbout ten oâclock er so. Heâs beân kinâ er feeble fer de lasâ few yeahs. Anâ I reckon,â continued the undertaker solemnly, his glance unconsciously seeking a row of fine caskets standing against the wall,â âI reckon heâll soon be goinâ de way er all de earth. âMan dat is bawn er âoman hath but a shoât time ter lib, anâ is full er misâry. He cometh up anâ is cut down lack as a flower.â âDe days er his life is three-scoâ anâ tenâ â anâ de ole jedge is libbed moâ dân dat, suh, by five yeahs, ter say de leasâ.â
ââDeath,ââ quoted Warwick, with whose mood the undertakerâs remarks were in tune, ââis the penalty that all must pay for the crime of living.ââ
âDat âs a facâ, suh, dat âs a facâ; so dey musâ â so dey musâ. Anâ den all de dead has ter be buried. Anâ we does ouâ sheer of it, suh, we does ouâ sheer. We conducâs de obsâquies er all de besâ wâite folks er de town, suh.â
Warwick left the undertakerâs shop and retraced his steps until he had passed the lawyerâs office, toward which he threw an affectionate glance. A few rods farther led him past the old black Presbyterian church, with its square tower, embowered in a stately grove; past the Catholic church, with its many crosses, and a painted wooden figure of St. James in a recess beneath the gable; and past the old Jefferson House, once the leading hotel of the town, in front of which political meetings had been held, and political speeches made, and political hard cider drunk, in the days of âTippecanoe and Tyler too.â
The street down which Warwick had come intersected Front Street at a sharp angle in front of the old hotel, forming a sort of flatiron block at the junction, known as Liberty Point, â perhaps because slave auctions were sometimes held there in the good old days. Just before Warwick reached Liberty Point, a young woman came down Front Street from the direction of the market-house. When their paths converged, Warwick kept on down Front Street behind her, it having been already his intention to walk in this direction.
Warwickâs first glance had revealed the fact that the young woman was strikingly handsome, with a stately beauty seldom encountered. As he walked along behind her at a measured distance, he could not help noting the details that made up this pleasing impression, for his mind was singularly alive to beauty, in whatever embodiment. The girlâs figure, he perceived, was admirably proportioned; she was evidently at the period when the angles of childhood were rounding into the promising curves of adolescence. Her abundant hair, of a dark and glossy brown, was neatly plaited and coiled above an ivory column that rose straight from a pair of gently sloping shoulders, clearly outlined beneath the light muslin frock that covered them. He could see that she was tastefully, though not richly, dressed, and that she walked with an elastic step that revealed a light heart and the vigor of perfect health. Her face, of course, he could not analyze, since he had caught only the one brief but convincing glimpse of it.
The young woman kept on down Front Street, Warwick maintaining his distance a few rods behind her. They passed a factory, a warehouse or two, and then, leaving the brick pavement, walked along on mother earth, under a leafy arcade of spreading oaks and elms. Their way led now through a residential portion of the town, which, as they advanced, gradually declined from staid respectability to poverty, open and unabashed. Warwick observed, as they passed through the respectable quarter, that few people who met the girl greeted her, and that some others whom she passed at gates or doorways gave her no sign of recognition; from which he inferred that she was possibly a visitor in the town and not well acquainted.
Their walk had continued not more than ten minutes when they crossed a creek by a wooden bridge and came to a row of mean houses standing flush with the street. At the door of one, an old black woman had stooped to lift a large basket, piled high with laundered clothes. The girl, as she passed, seized one end of the basket and helped the old woman to raise it to her head, where it rested solidly on the cushion of her head-kerchief. During this interlude, Warwick, though he had slackened his pace measurably, had so nearly closed the gap between himself and them as to hear the old woman say, with the dulcet negro intonation: â
âTâankyâ, honey; de Lawd gwine bless you shoâ. You wuz alluz a good gal, and de Lawd love eveâybody wâat heâp de poâ ole nigger. You gwine ter hab good luck all yoâ bawn days.â
âI hope youâre a true prophet, Aunt Zilphy,â laughed the girl in response.
The sound of her voice gave Warwick a thrill. It was soft and sweet and clear â quite in harmony with her appearance. That it had a faint suggestiveness of the old womanâs accent he hardly noticed, for the current Southern speech, including his own, was rarely without a touch of it. The corruption of the white peopleâs speech was one element â only one â of the negroâs unconscious revenge for his own debasement.
The houses they passed now grew scattering, and the quarter of the town more neglected. Warwick felt himself wondering where the girl might be going in a neighborhood so uninviting. When she stopped to pull a half-naked negro child out of a mudhole and set him upon his feet, he thought she might be some young lady from the upper part of the town, bound on some errand of mercy, or going, perhaps, to visit an old servant or look for a new one. Once she threw a backward glance at Warwick, thus enabling him to catch a second glimpse of a singularly pretty face. Perhaps the young woman found his presence in the neighborhood as unaccountable as he had deemed hers; for, finding his glance fixed upon her, she quickened her pace with an air of startled timidity.
âA woman with such a figure,â thought Warwick, âought to be able to face the world with the confidence of Phryne confronting her judges.â
By this time Warwick was conscious that something more than mere grace or beauty had attracted him with increasing force toward this young woman. A suggestion, at first faint and elusive, of something familiar, had grown stronger when he heard her voice, and became more and more pronounced with each rod of their advance; and when she stopped finally before a gate, and, opening it, went into a yard shut off from the street by a row of dwarf cedars, Warwick had already discounted in some measure the surprise he would have felt at seeing her enter there had he not walked down Front Street behind her. There was still sufficient unexpectedness about the act, however, to give him a decided thrill of pleasure.
âIt must be Rena,â he murmured. âWho could have dreamed that she would blossom out like that? It must surely be Rena!â
He walked slowly past the gate and peered through a narrow gap in the cedar hedge. The girl was moving along a sanded walk, toward a gray, unpainted house, with a steep roof, broken by dormer windows. The trace of timidity he had observed in her had given place to the more assured bearing of one who is upon his own ground. The garden walks were bordered by long rows of jonquils, pinks, and carnations, inclosing clumps of fragrant shrubs, lilies, and roses already in bloom. Toward the middle of the garden stood two fine magnolia-trees, with heavy, dark green, glistening leaves, while nearer the house two mighty elms shaded a wide piazza, at one end of which a honeysuckle vine, and at the other a Virginia creeper, running over a wooden lattice, furnished additional shade and seclusion. On dark or wintry days, the aspect of this garden must have been extremely sombre and depressing, and it might well have seemed a fit place to hide some guilty or disgraceful secret. But on the bright morning when Warwick stood looking through the cedars, it seemed, with its green frame and canopy and its bright carpet of flowers, an ideal retreat from the fierce sunshine and the sultry heat of the approaching summer.
The girl stooped to pluck a rose, and as she bent over it, her profile was clearly outlined. She held the flower to her face with a long-drawn inhalation, then went up the steps, crossed the piazza, opened the door without knocking, and entered the house with the air of one thoroughly at home.
âYes,â said the young man to himself, âitâs Rena, sure enough.â
The house stood on a corner, around which the cedar hedge turned, continuing along the side of the garden until it reached the line of the front of the house. The piazza to a rear wing, at right angles to the front of the house, was open to inspection from the side street, which, to judge from its deserted look, seemed to be but little used. Turning into this street and walking leisurely past the back yard, which was only slightly screened from the street by a china-tree, Warwick perceived the young woman standing on the piazza, facing an elderly woman, who sat in a large rocking-chair, plying a pair of knitting-needles on a half-finished stocking. Warwickâs walk led him within three feet of the side gate, which he felt an almost irresistible impulse to enter. Every detail of the house and garden was familiar; a thousand cords of memory and affection drew him thither; but a stronger counter-motive prevailed. With a great effort he restrained himself, and after a momentary pause, walked slowly on past the house, with a backward glance, which he turned away when he saw that it was observed.
Warwickâs attention had been so fully absorbed by the house behind the cedars and the women there, that he had scarcely noticed, on the other side of the neglected by-street, two men working by a large open window, in a low, rude building with a clapboarded roof, directly opposite the back piazza occupied by the two women. Both the men were busily engaged in shaping barrel-staves, each wielding a sharp-edged drawing-knife on a piece of seasoned oak clasped tightly in a wooden vise.
âI jesâ wonder who dat man is, anâ wâat he âs doinâ on dis street,â observed the younger of the two, with a suspicious air. He had noticed the gentlemanâs involuntary pause and his interest in the opposite house, and had stopped work for a moment to watch the stranger as he went on down the street.
âNevâ minâ âbout dat man,â said the elder one. âYou âtenâ ter yoâ wuk anâ finish dat bairl-stave. You spenâs entiâely too much er yoâ time stretchinâ yoâ neck atter other people. Anâ you need nâ âsturb yoâseâf âbout dem folks âcross de street, fer dey ainât yoâ kinâ, anâ youâre wastinâ yoâ time bothâinâ yoâ minâ wid âem, er wid folks wâat comes on de street on account of âem. Look shaâp now, boy, er youâll git dat stave trimâ too much.â
The younger man resumed his work, but still found time to throw a slanting glance out of the window. The gentleman, he perceived, stood for a moment on the rotting bridge across the old canal, and then walked slowly ahead until he turned to the right into Back Street, a few rods farther on.
II. AN EVENING VISIT
TOWARD EVENING OF the same day, Warwick took his way down Front Street in the gathering dusk. By the time night had spread its mantle over the earth, he had reached the gate by which he had seen the girl of his morning walk enter the cedar-bordered garden. He stopped at the gate and glanced toward the house, which seemed dark and silent and deserted.
âItâs more than likely,â he thought, âthat they are in the kitchen. I reckon Iâd better try the back door.â
But as he drew cautiously near the corner, he saw a manâs figure outlined in the yellow light streaming from the open door of a small house between Front Street and the cooper shop. Wishing, for reasons of his own, to avoid observation, Warwick did not turn the corner, but walked on down Front Street until he reached a point from which he could see, at a long angle, a ray of light proceeding from the kitchen window of the house behind the cedars.
âThey are there,â he muttered with a sigh of relief, for he had feared they might be away. âI suspect Iâll have to go to the front door, after all. No one can see me through the trees.â
He retraced his steps to the front gate, which he essayed to open. There was apparently some defect in the latch, for it refused to work. Warwick remembered the trick, and with a slight sense of amusement, pushed his foot under the gate and gave it a hitch to the left, after which it opened readily enough. He walked softly up the sanded path, tiptoed up the steps and across the piazza, and rapped at the front door, not too loudly, lest this too might attract the attention of the man across the street. There was no response to his rap. He put his ear to the door and heard voices within, and the muffled sound of footsteps. After a moment he rapped again, a little louder than before.
There was an instant cessation of the sounds within. He rapped a third time, to satisfy any lingering doubt in the minds of those who he felt sure were listening in some trepidation. A moment later a ray of light streamed through the keyhole.
âWhoâs there?â a womanâs voice inquired somewhat sharply.
âA gentleman,â answered Warwick, not holding it yet time to reveal himself. âDoes Misâ Molly Walden live here?â
âYes,â was the guarded answer. âIâm Misâ Walden. Whatâs yoâr business?â
âI have a message to you from your son John.â
A key clicked in the lock. The door opened, and the elder of the two women Warwick had seen upon the piazza stood in the doorway, peering curiously and with signs of great excitement into the face of the stranger.
âYou âve got a message from my son, you say?â she asked with tremulous agitation. âIs he sick, or in trouble?â
âNo. Heâs well and doing well, and sends his love to you, and hopes youâve not forgotten him.â
âFergot him? No, God knows I ainât fergot him! But come in, sir, anâ tell me somethinâ moâ about him.â
Warwick went in, and as the woman closed the door after him, he threw a glance round the room. On the wall, over the mantelpiece, hung a steel engraving of General Jackson at the battle of New Orleans, and, on the opposite wall, a framed fashion-plate from âGodeyâs Ladyâs Book.â In the middle of the room an octagonal centre-table with a single leg, terminating in three sprawling feet, held a collection of curiously shaped sea-shells. There was a great haircloth sofa, somewhat the worse for wear, and a well-filled bookcase. The screen standing before the fireplace was covered with Confederate bank-notes of various denominations and designs, in which the heads of Jefferson Davis and other Confederate leaders were conspicuous.
âImperious Caesar, dead, and turned to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away,â
murmured the young man, as his eye fell upon this specimen of decorative art.
The woman showed her visitor to a seat. She then sat down facing him and looked at him closely. âWhen did you last see my son?â she asked.
âIâve never met your son,â he replied.
Her face fell. âThen the message comes through you from somebody else?â
âNo, directly from your son.â
She scanned his face with a puzzled look. This bearded young gentleman, who spoke so politely and was dressed so well, surely â no, it could not be! and yet â
Warwick was smiling at her through a ...