from the theater in the heavy downpour, and closed his umbrella
and let himself in; but when he would have shut the door,
he found that there was another person entering–doubtless another lodger;
this person closed the door and tramped upstairs behind Tom.
Tom found his door in the dark, and entered it, and turned
up the gas. When he faced about, lightly whistling, he saw the
back of a man. The man was closing and locking his door from him.
His whistle faded out and he felt uneasy. The man turned around,
a wreck of shabby old clothes, sodden with rain and all a-drip,
and showed a black face under an old slouch hat. Tom was frightened.
He tried to order the man out, but the words refused to come,
and the other man got the start. He said, in a low voice:
“Keep still–I’s yo’ mother!”
Tom sunk in a heap on a chair, and gasped out:
“It was mean of me, and base–I know it; but I meant it for
the best, I did indeed–I can swear it.”
Roxana stood awhile looking mutely down on him while he
writhed in shame and went on incoherently babbling self-accusations
mixed with pitiful attempts at explanation and
palliation of his crime; then she seated herself and took off her hat,
and her unkept masses of long brown hair tumbled down about her shoulders.
“It warn’t no fault o’ yo’n dat dat ain’t gray,” she said sadly,
noticing the hair.
“I know it, I know it! I’m a scoundrel. But I swear I
meant it for the best. It was a mistake, of course,
but I thought it was for the best, I truly did.”
Roxana began to cry softly, and presently words began to
find their way out between her sobs. They were uttered
lamentingly, rather than angrily.
“Sell a pusson down de river–DOWN DE RIVER!–for de bes’!
I wouldn’t treat a dog so! I is all broke down and en wore out
now, en so I reckon it ain’t in me to storm aroun’ no mo’,
like I used to when I ‘uz trompled on en ‘bused. I don’t know–
but maybe it’s so. Leastways, I’s suffered so much dat mournin’ seem
to come mo’ handy to me now den stormin’.”
These words should have touched Tom Driscoll, but if they did,
that effect was obliterated by a stronger one–one which
removed the heavy weight of fear which lay upon him, and gave his
crushed spirit a most grateful rebound, and filled all his small
soul with a deep sense of relief. But he kept prudently still,
and ventured no comment. There was a voiceless interval of some
duration now, in which no sounds were heard but the beating of
the rain upon the panes, the sighing and complaining of the
winds, and now and then a muffled sob from Roxana.
The sobs became more and more infrequent, and at least ceased.
Then the refugee began to talk again.
“Shet down dat light a little. More. More yit. A pusson
dat is hunted don’t like de light. Dah–dat’ll do. I kin see
whah you is, en dat’s enough. I’s gwine to tell you de tale,
en cut it jes as short as I kin, en den I’ll tell you what you’s got to do.
Dat man dat bought me ain’t a bad man; he’s good enough,
as planters goes; en if he could ‘a’ had his way I’d ‘a’ be’n a
house servant in his fambly en be’n comfortable: but his wife
she was a Yank, en not right down good lookin’, en she riz up
agin me straight off; so den dey sent me out to de quarter
‘mongst de common fiel’ han’s. Dat woman warn’t satisfied even
wid dat, but she worked up de overseer ag’in’ me, she ‘uz dat
jealous en hateful; so de overseer he had me out befo’ day in de
mawnin’s en worked me de whole long day as long as dey’uz any
light to see by; en many’s de lashin’s I got ‘ca’se I couldn’t
come up to de work o’ de stronges’. Dat overseer wuz a Yank too,
outen New Englan’, en anybody down South kin tell you what dat mean.