"My mother let me cut them from our yard, and she told me to thank you for coming that night. They'd have killed us if you hadn't come."
"Nonsense, they wouldn't have touched either you or your mother!"
"Yes, they would, too. Goodness—haven't you anything to put the flowers in?"
She tipped softly about the room, holding the roses up and arranging them gracefully.
Norton watched her with a lazy amused interest. He couldn't shake off the impression that she was a sleek young animal, playful and irresponsible, that had strayed from home and wandered into his office. And he loved animals. He never passed a stray dog or a cat without a friendly word of greeting. He had often laid on his lounge at home, when tired, and watched a kitten play an hour with unflagging interest. Every movement of this girl's lithe young body suggested such a scene—especially the velvet tread of her light foot, and the delicate motions of her figure followed suddenly by a sinuous quick turn and a childish laugh or cry. The faint shadows of negro blood in her creamy skin and the purring gentleness of her voice seemed part of the gathering twilight. Her eyes were apparently twice the size as when first he saw them, and the pupils, dilated in the dusk, flashed with unusual brilliance.
She had wandered into the empty reporters' room without permission looking for a vase, came back and stood in the doorway laughing:
"This is the dirtiest place I ever got into in my life. Gracious! Isn't there a thing to put the flowers in?"
The editor, roused from his reveries, smiled and answered:
"Put them in the pitcher."
"Why, yes, of course, the pitcher!" she cried, rushing to the little washstand.
"Why, there isn't a drop of water in it—I'll go to the well and get some."
She seized the pitcher, laid the flowers down in the bowl, darted out the door and flew across the street to the well in the Court House Square.
The young editor walked carelessly to the window and watched her. She simply couldn't get into an ungraceful attitude. Every movement was instinct with vitality. She was alive to her finger tips. Her body swayed in perfect rhythmic unison with her round, bare arms as she turned the old-fashioned rope windlass, drew the bucket to the top and dropped it easily on the wet wooden lids that flapped back in place.
She was singing now a crooning, half-savage melody her mother had taught her. The low vibrant notes of her voice, deep and tender and quivering with a strange intensity, floated across the street through the gathering shadows. The voice had none of the light girlish quality of her age of eighteen, but rather the full passionate power of a woman of twenty-five. The distance, the deepening shadows and the quiet of the town's lazy life, added to the dreamy effectiveness of the song.
"Beautiful!" the man exclaimed. "The negro race will give the world a great singer some day——"
And then for the first time in his life the paradox of his personal attitude toward this girl and his attitude in politics toward the black race struck him as curious. He had just finished an editorial in which he had met the aggressions of the negro and his allies with the fury, the scorn, the defiance, the unyielding ferocity with which the Anglo-Saxon conqueror has always treated his inferiors. And yet he was listening to the soft tones of this girl's voice with a smile as he watched with good-natured indulgence the light gleam mischievously from her impudent big eyes while she moved about his room.
Yet this was not to be wondered at. The history of the South and the history of slavery made such a paradox inevitable. The long association with the individual negro in the intimacy of home life had broken down the barriers of personal race repugnance. He had grown up with negro boys and girls as playmates. He had romped and wrestled with them. Every servant in every home he had ever known had been a negro. The first human face he remembered bending over his cradle was a negro woman's. He had fallen asleep in her arms times without number. He had found refuge there against his mother's stern commands and sobbed out on her breast the story of his fancied wrongs and always found consolation. "Mammy's darlin'" was always right—the world cruel and wrong! He had loved this old nurse since he could remember. She was now nursing his own and he would defend her with his life without a moment's hesitation.
And so it came about inevitably that while he had swung his white and scarlet legions of disguised Clansmen in solid line against the Governor and smashed his negro army without the loss of a single life, he was at the same moment proving himself defenseless against the silent and deadly purpose that had already shaped itself in the soul of this sleek, sensuous young animal. He was actually smiling with admiration at the beautiful picture he saw as she lifted the white pitcher, placed it on the crown of red hair, and crossed the street.
She was still softly singing as she entered the room and arranged the flowers in pretty confusion.
Norton had lighted his lamp and seated himself at his desk again. She came close and looked over his shoulder at the piles of papers.
"How on earth can you work in such a mess?" she asked with a laugh.
"Used to it," he answered without looking up from the final reading of his editorial.
"What's that you've written?"
The impudent greenish gray eyes bent closer.
"Oh, a little talk to the Governor——"
"I bet it's a hot one. Peeler says you don't like the Governor—read it to me!"
The editor looked up at the mischievous young face and laughed aloud:
"I'm afraid you wouldn't understand it."
The girl joined in the laugh and the dimples in the reddish brown cheeks looked prettier than ever.
"Maybe I wouldn't," she agreed.
He resumed his reading and she leaned over his chair until he felt the soft touch of her shoulder against his. She was staring at his paste-pot, extended her tapering, creamy finger and touched the paste.
"What in the world's that?" she cried, giggling again.
"Paste."
Another peal of silly laughter echoed through the room.
"Lord, I thought it was mush and milk—I thought it was your supper!—don't you eat no supper?"
"Sometimes."
The editor looked up with a slight frown and said:
"Run along now, child, I've got to work. And tell your mother I'm obliged for the flowers."
"I'm not going back home——"
"Why not?"
"I'm scared out there. I've come in town to live with my aunt."
"Well, tell her when you see her."
"Please let me clean this place up for you?" she pleaded.
"Not to-night."
"To-morrow morning, then? I'll come early and every morning—please—let me—it's all I can do to thank you. I'll do it a month just to show you how pretty I can keep it and then you can pay me if you want me. It's a bargain, isn't it?"
The editor smiled, hesitated, and said:
"All right—every morning at seven."
"Thank you, major—good night!"
She paused at the door and her white teeth gleamed in the shadows. She turned and tripped down the stairs, humming again the strangely appealing song she had sung at the well.
CHAPTER III
A BEAST