wish I could express to you my happiness that this old home that my father and my father's father loved and strove to make beautiful will now be guarded by you. And you will do better with it than we did."
"Oh, I don't know about that," Lee said.
"Yes, this is a mere fragment that comes into your hands."
"A pretty good fragment, I think."
"Only a fragment. The acres stretching back through the pines should be yours, and other acres by the river's edge. I did not know how to use the place aright, but you will be wiser than I."
"Well, if I am wiser about such things," Lee admitted, "it's because the world is wiser to-day than when you took over the place. People have learned a heap of science since then."
John Merryvale did not heed this remark, but, turning his gaze from his son, looked away down the river. "I could not give you the heritage in land which should be yours," he said gravely, "but I hope I have given you a heritage of kindly relationship to those about you, of friendliness and honorable dealing."
"Indeed," Lee answered, "I know how you are loved and honored."
"And you, too, shall be honored by all on this old estate down to the humblest colored child. It is a great consolation to me," he went on, still looking away from his son and out over the water, "that the rights of the poorest black girl have been respected from my father's father's day through my own. There are no white faces among these cabins to tell of our passion and our shame. I think of this sometimes when I see that young servant of your aunt's. In her beautiful countenance is the sin and the disgrace of the Southern gentleman."
"Don't you believe," Lee answered sharply, "that her mother thought she was honored?"
"That's as it may be, but she was not honored, and her child was left to the chance care of a black woman."
"He was a beast who did that!"
The father turned at this heated speech to see his son, face flushed, anger in his eyes.
"If he took a responsibility, he had no right later to dodge it."
Lee spoke with vehemence. He had told Hertha that he had ceased to think, but in reality he was thinking, every hour of the day, of the thing that he was doing.
"Whoever started the damned business going," he went on, with an attempt at a laugh, "got America into a frightful mess. But some one did start it, and here they are, women—well, women such as you speak of, with all the instincts and the beauty of the white race. Don't you believe a woman like that would be happier under the protection of a white man who loved her than if she took up with some coarse fellow as black as her shoes?"
"No," John Merry vale answered, "the life of such a woman is the loneliest life in the world. She may not enter the white world and the black world casts her off."
"Aren't you mistaken?" The question came quickly, with an undertone of anxiety. "It seems to me that the black race must understand that there's nothing for it but to get whiter."
"There's nothing for it but to get blacker, Son. All, black and white, are learning to know this. Within its own circle it may build up a civilization that shall be a humble imitation of the civilization of the white race, a race that has had a start of thousands of years. We must be patient, helping when we can, not hindering."
Lee scanned his father's face, but could see nothing to show that he was thinking of any present issue; rather he was striving to express his belief on a vexed question that would trouble this country long after he was gone. Nor did he glance at his listener, but stood, a tall, thin figure in his long black coat, kindly, serious.
"It is a great problem, that of the two races," he continued musingly, "a problem that the South alone can solve, since we know the black man, his virtues and his limitations. He has come to us in his trouble and we have helped and advised him. That is as it should be, but increasingly he will have to live without our surveillance. For after all, no man is fit to be the master of another; and not even the gentlemen of the South were wise enough to be entrusted with the lives of other men. My father fought to perpetuate the peculiar institution of slavery, and as a boy I put a gun on my shoulder and went out in the last year of the war. We thought that we were right, but we know now that we were mistaken."
"Yes."
"Sometimes I am afraid that as the country develops, as industry increases, the friendly relations between the whites and the blacks will wholly cease, and each will go his way, regardless of the other. But that will never happen while you are here, I feel sure."
"Oh, no," Lee answered cheerfully, glad of the turn the conversation had taken, "I like the darkies all right."
"That is not enough." John Merryvale turned and for the first time looked straight into his son's face. "Men have stolen my acres from me, but I have stolen from no man. I have tried to do no one an injustice, honoring the least of His children. I have little to give you in money and in acres; but I can give you this: the assurance that I have wittingly wronged no man or woman. And I shall believe that when you stand here, your hair gray, moving with slow feet, you will be able to say to your son, 'I have wittingly wronged no man or woman.'
"It's getting late," he concluded, turning to leave. "I'll go to the house to see if your aunt is needing me."
Lee stood alone for some minutes under the orange tree. He ran his hand caressingly along the trunk as though he were touching something dear and precious. Then, with sober face, as slowly as his father, he walked through the twilight to the great house.
CHAPTER VIII
It seemed to Hertha as she sat at the open window after the others had gone to bed that it was the most beautiful night she had ever known. Utterly still, except for the eternal sound of the wind among the pines, it yet was full of music; for, borne on the breeze from the river, some one was calling, beseechingly, insistently, and she was answering in her heart.
The young moon was sinking in the west. She could not see it, but she could see the fleecy clouds that reflected its light. How lovely they were, moving wherever the light wind, high in the heavens, might desire. They had no will, these clouds, but were wafted into the shadow or the silvery brightness, living as they had the right to live, pliant to the spirit of the strong wind.
The house was perfectly still. The little watch that Ellen had given her when she went away to school told her that it lacked but a few minutes of the hour when he had called her to come. All day she had questioned and doubted and hesitated. She had asked her black mother to tell her the story of her adoption that she might surely guard her virtue and resist temptation; but now, looking into the night, she refused to believe that this was temptation, rather it was a glorious opportunity to give generously, without stint or questioning.
She slipped a coat over the white dress she was wearing, walked stealthily into the hallway, lifted the latch and was under the stars. No one had heard her, and she ran swiftly across the open yard, bright in the moonlight, to the darkness of the trees.
Standing in the gloom of the path and looking back at the cabin she hesitated. There were the roses by the porch and the goldenrod and aster, bits of bright weed, growing in the sand. Close
