The Atavism of Alaraaf

I.

“ BUT you might uv known somethin’ o’ the sort would happen when you took him from the porehouse, Ellen. All uv ’em was the same.” Mrs. Conder paused to match two quilt pieces, curling her fat foot about the hind leg of her chair. These signs betokened embarrassment on her part, for the worried pucker on Mrs. Jenkins’s lips went to her good-natured heart. Still, as Mrs. Conder was one who emphatically believed in “ speakin’ in open meetin’,” she pursued, taking hasty stitches in her work :

“ Back in mother’s time, and before, I reckon, the Pointres had the name uv takin’ things that didn’t b’long to ’em. Nobody Id have ’em for renters. They come out uv the porehouse and died in the porehouse.”

“ He’s never took anything from us,” Mrs. Jenkins put in hesitatingly, “leastwise if he has it ain’t come out. What could I do, Jane ?” she appealed to Mrs. Conder, turning from the cabbage she was washing. “ The porehouse was overrun. Mr. Murray he said Alaraaf ’Id have to go. He, nothin’ but a child, looked like I could n’t bear the notion uv ’im wantin’ for somethin’ to eat when we had plenty an’ to spare. I just thought, s’posin’ me an’ Mr. Jenkins was dead, — of little Katharine, an’ Polk, an’ Abraham wantin’ for somethin’ t’ eat, an’ everybody shuttin’ their doors on ’em.”

Mrs. Conder spluttered indignantly.

“ Land alive, Ellen ! We’d all jump to take yore be-utiful children. Why, ever’body ’Id want such little fellers as Abe an’ Polk, an’ they’d fight over little Katharine.”

Mrs. Jenkins’s face cleared, and was illumined by the mild glory of motherhood. She put her head out of the kitchen window, and looked with a swelling heart at the group of young things in the yard. The season, which was late, had burst from spring into summer. The sun had almost a sickening heat, but there was the ecstasy of new life in everything.

Alaraaf lazily weeded the rows of vegetables, and examined the curled leaves of young lettuce with painful exactness. There was more than a suspicion of indolence in every motion. The other children followed him along the rows, or fell into by-play with the clumsy grace of young lambs. On a rug of springing grass an old worthless dog disported herself among a vibrating litter of awkward puppies. A masculine-looking hen, toned down by a following of fluffy chickens, pecked and scratched in the grass, near the complaisant dog, and occasionally raised a fierce yellow eye with a warning word to her biddies, as a bird’s shadow crossed the sunny yard.

Mrs. Jenkins’s glance fell on the bare, bright head of little Katharine, pressed near the dark, tumbled hair of Alaraaf. They had found a “juny-bug.”

Presently the whole troop of children came clattering into the kitchen after a string for the juny-bug, and Mrs. Conder looked disapprovingly at Alaraaf lounging in the door, holding the bug ; but the mother smilingly broke off a long thread for the children, and they frolicked into the sunshine.

“ He ’s so no-count,” Mrs. Conder exclaimed acridly, as she cut pieces for her quilt with fierce scissors. “ Ellen, you do spoil ’im. Look at ’im ! ” —she glared through the door, — “ playin’ with them triflin’ puppies.”

“You Alaraaf!” Mrs. Jenkins admonished ; “ look at the hen scratchin’ up the strawberries. Oh, sakes! ” she cried despairingly, “I do have more trouble ’n my sheer. There’s that miserable old dawg gone an’ got puppies. I just been tryin’ to get spunk enough to have Mr. Jenkins put her out uv the way, easy-like. Pore thing! ” she said, with a catch in her voice, “ there she looks so happy among ’em, an’ me talkin’ ’bout killin’her. She loves’em, too. Jane, jus’ tell me one thing,” she demanded with a note of defiance: “ do we have any right to kill anything ? ”

“ Ever’ time Mr. Jenkins takes off the little lambs and calves to town to sell ’em to the butcher, I jus’ have a good cry.” She put her apron to her eyes, and said in muffled tones behind it: “ One time I seen one uv the little calves pokin’ its little shiny head through the slats uv its box, lookin’ back, an’ — it — must ’a’ seen its mammy, for it let out a bawl that’s in my ears yet. It wanted to live, too. What right was ourn to take the pore thing from its mammy — outer the green medder — so somebody could have their delikit eatin’s ” —

She turned away, and looked with blinded eyes at the worthless dog, tumbling with her foolish babies in the sunshine.

Mrs. Conder felt reproached somehow, and sewed with energy during this appeal, which was too ethical to be comfortable. She felt that a diversion must be created to dispel a constraint in the atmosphere.

Mrs. Jenkins was cleaning a smoked jowl to go with the cabbage, with hands that trembled. Her eyes were red with tears.

“ I tell you what ails Alaraaf,” Mrs. Conder said, reverting to the original topic, “ he’s a klip-to-maniac ! ” Her eyes started out, and she became apoplectic at the extent of her own knowledge. Mrs. Jenkins hastily brought water to her, and handed her a fan. When her visitor had somewhat recovered, she asked timidly the meaning of the word.

“ Can’t naturally keep his hands off uv nothin’ he hankers for,” Mrs. Conder explained in a deep voice, with the weariness of a savant. “ As I was tellin’ you, it comes straight from his granddaddy. If he had n’t died in the porehouse he would ’v’ in jail.”

“ Air y’ shore he took ’em ? ” Mrs. Jenkins asked tremulously, her mind on her troubles.

“Who?”

“ Alaraaf. Could n’t — they uv gone some’rs else ? ”

“He took ’em,” Mrs. Conder answered with emphasis. “ Now Ellen, don’t you go to shelterin’ ’im. There ain’t no religion in it. They was a dozen uv as fine aigs as a hen ever laid. He did n’t touch the common uns. Mr. Jackson up to the store bought ’em from Alaraaf. He was the one told me.” She saw the ready tears gathering in her friend’s eyes, and added hastily : —

“ Don’t worry, Ellen. I ain’t goin’ to say nothin’ if it don’t happ’n again.” She rose, her awkward errand dispatched, and stuffed her work into her black crocheted bag. She bade Mrs. Jenkins good-morning, and had reached the gate, when she came waddling rapidly back, and said in a low, deep voice : —

“ Ellen, just take ’im into the back shed, and tell ’im I found out about his thievin’, an’ then larrup ’im good. It’s better ’n the gallows,” she finished sharply, as she saw Mrs. Jenkins start and frown with pain.

All of the brightness had gone out of the sunshine for the tender-hearted woman. Even the shrill sweetness of her children’s voices as they romped in play did not lift the burden from her mothersoul. She had to punish the bound boy. If it had been possible, she would have postponed the evil hour, but she could not for fear her husband would whip him, and she knew that he would be so much more severe than herself.

She put on her brown sunbonnet, pulling it far over her face, and stepped out into the yard. She saw Alaraaf sprawled on his back at the end of the strawberrybed, his hat over his eyes, apparently asleep. Instead of hardening her, this only aggravated her pity. She called as firmly as possible to him, and as he struggled stupidly to his feet she waved him toward the back shed, and moving with nervous velocity, snapped off a syringa branch, and stripped it of its leaves as she almost ran after him.

She shut the door, casting out the sun, and said breathlessly, —

“ Alaraaf, Mis’ Conder has told me ever’thing about you takin’ them aigs o’ hern and sellin’ ’em to Jackson’s store, an’ she says if I give you a whippin’ she won’t let on to nobody else. She ’s mighty clever ’bout it. If Mr. Jenkins or her husbin found it out, they’d ’a’ most kill y’.” She broke off, a sob in her voice, and shutting her eyes tightly, she began threshing the air wildly, sometimes getting the boy, but oftener missing him.

When she had worn herself out, she threw back her bonnet fearfully and looked at her wreck. In the dim light she distinguished him wiping one eye with a ragged sleeve. The end of the switch had taken him in the corner of it. She thought him struggling with grief, and drew his head on her arm, uttering consolation, weeping herself, and wiping his large, tearless eyes with her apron.

When the door was thrown back, and the sun again admitted, Alaraaf lounged across the yard sulkily, while Mrs. Jenkins disappeared into the kitchen.

“ Did ma give y’ a lickin’ ? ” Polk asked morbidly. Alaraaf looked scornfully down on the smaller boy, and with a disconcerting gesture went to weeding strawberries.

II.

The circus was coming to town on the morrow. There had been tidings of it, — delicious mutterings on the horizon for weeks ; hints sufficient to make every youngster for miles around yearn for its unguessed allurements.

Since the first intimation of its invasion, little Katharine Jenkins had clamored to go. This was of course untkought of by her parents, for, like many country people, they had an abundance of good food and comfortable clothing, but a silver dollar looked as big as a cart-wheel to them. And it was so hard to deny their baby Katharine anything. Everybody loved her, she was such a darling. It almost tore her mother’s heart in twain to have the dimpled hands plucking at her apron, to hear the persistent, husky little voice, —

“ But mammy, I ’ant to go — I ’ant to go, mammy ! ”

And her father’s sharp blue eyes grew misty when she clambered to his knee, and put her wooing, baby fingers on his brawny neck, and iterated with passionate pleading: —

“ Pappy, I ’ant to go — I ’ant to go, pappy.”

“ But, honey, pappy just can’t take his lovey,” he would say hoarsely, and kiss her velvet lips gently into silence.

Of an evening, when Alaraaf went to the pasture to drive up the cows, she would skip along beside him, her beautiful little bud of a hand clasped in the dark calyx of his palm, and would chant, —

“ I ’ant to go, don’t you ? I ’ant to go, don’t you ? ”

Then a look of poetical beauty would fill the dark face with light, and his scornful, morose eyes would grow tender with rare tears.

That night before the circus he was milking the cows, and Katharine stood beside him.

“ I ’ant to go,” she whispered in a hoarse little voice to herself. The boy put aside his pail, and timidly drawing her close, he returned in a shaking voice : “You ’re goin’, Katharine, but don’t say nothin’ to yo’r pappy or mammy.”

She began to dance about him, but seeing his look of warning, she whispered, her eyes overflowing with awed joy : —

“ I ’on’t tell.”

The circus came into the town at ten o’clock the next morning. Mr. Jenkins had driven the children over to see the parade. At first he intended only taking Polk, Abraham, and Katharine, but Mrs. Jenkins had pleaded for Alaraaf to be taken too.

Little Katharine could scarcely be kept in order when the procession of wonderful things began. She shrieked, clapped her hands, and laughed so at the clowns that even their jaded, daubed faces lighted up, and she strained her eyes after the great, plodding elephants, — the restless tigers glaring at the heat and commotion, — the yellow, bearded lions swinging forth and back on their noiseless, cushioned feet, — at everything so intoxicatingly strange to her fresh understanding.

There were to be two performances, — one at two in the afternoon, and the other at eight o’clock at night.

After the noon dinner on the farm, Mr. Jenkins had to finish some late planting, and wanted Alaraaf to help him. The boy complained of being sick. His face was flushed, and he had eaten nothing at dinner. Mrs. Jenkins pleaded for the boy, saying he was not strong, and that he had a fever. So her husband, grumbling, consented to do without him.

The farmer’s wife was busy cleaning house that afternoon, and sent the children out to play. She did not see them any more until supper. When Polk and Abraham came in alone, she asked them anxiously where their little sister was.

They did not know, — had not seen her all the afternoon. She ran to her husband, who was watering the horses at the well, and asked with ashen face if Katharine had been in the field with him. He looked at her blankly, his tired face paling under the dust.

“ How long have y’ missed her ? ” he demanded with a dry throat.

“ Oh, sakes ! ” she sobbed, “ I ain’t seen her since dinner at twelve. Whur’s Alaraaf ? maybe he knows.” A gleam of hope came into her convulsed features.

The farmer, a look of pain hardening his face, searched through the outhouses without success, then went off toward the cow-pasture. The horses, still with the gearing looped up on their sweating sides, fell to grazing the stunted grass about the trough.

Mrs. Jenkins ran aimlessly into the house again, and told the frightened boys that their sister was lost, then fled up into the hot little garret. A wasp whined against the one tiny window, and a bar of sunshine struck across Alaraaf’s unmade pallet. The distracted woman pressed her hands to her forehead, and began pacing about the desolate place, uttering short sobs. It seemed to her that she had been hours up there with her agony, when across her distress rippled a baby’s chuckling laugh — downstairs. In a minute she was down the ladder, and had little Katharine in her arms.

To her mother’s wild inquiries, and her father’s sterner demands, she gave no satisfaction, but only gurgled excitedly, and the expression of transcendent happiness on her infantile features made her cherubic.

The next morning, before Mrs. Jenkins had put her house in order, Mrs. Conder came heaving in at the gate. She barely paused to greet her friend, before bursting out in invective against Alaraaf.

“ After ever’thing, me lettin’ him off so easy, come an’ stole a settin’ — a settin’, mind y’ — uv aigs from the Black Spanish. Land alive ! they was more ’n half addled,” she said angrily.

“ It can’t be ! ” protested her friend faintly. “ I a’most killed ’im before. I jus’ can’t whip ’im no more.”

“ Then my husbin will, or Mr. Jenkins, or he ’ll go to jail. I’m a ’termined woman, Ellen,” Mrs. Conder answered inflexibly.

“Oh, sakes ! ” moaned Mrs. Jenkins in sore distress. “ Whur did he sell ’em this time ? ”

“That’s what I can’t find out. I want to get ’em back, an’ put ’em under the old Black. She’s jus’ wild. They ain’t no manner o’ good to nobody, now. I tried up to Jackson’s store this mornin’. I only noticed last night when the old Black acted so queer. He ain’t been to any o’ the neighbors as I can find out.”

The other woman’s face cleared, and a look compounded of relief and sorrow came into it, as she said in a broken voice: —

“ Well, it ain’t Alaraaf this time, Jane ; I know it. — It’s that dawg of ourn ”—

“ Why, Ellen ! ”

“ Yes, Jane, I ’lowed never to tell y’, but she’s an aig-suckin’ dawg. I thought she was broke uv it, but when they start it you can’t stop ’em. They have t’ be killed. I’ve been missin’ aigs the last week, an’ I know Alaraaf ain’t taken a one. Mr. Jenkins ’ll have to kill her.” The eyes of both women followed the mother-dog, encircled by a straggling ring of puppies, as she gamboled ungracefully over the grass.

Mrs. Jenkins turned away hastily, and her neighbor saw her apron furtively lifted.

Alaraaf was visible through the window, making a seesaw for the children at the barn. Mrs. Conder espied him, and said vindictively, —

“ But I don’t trust that Alaraaf ! ” She lowered her voice, and grew apoplectic:

“ He’s a Latin! ”

“ A what ? ” her friend gasped, her cup of distress indeed full.

Mrs. Conder fanned awhile, took several slow sips of water, and explained languidly : “ A Latin ; you know the breed, — such as Eyetalians, Frenchers, and so on. He’s one o’ that kind. I ain’t got no manner o’ use for Latins myself.”

That day at noon, as the farmer watered the horses, and Alaraaf eased the harness on them, Mrs. Jenkins told her husband that the dog must be killed, — she had been stealing eggs from Mrs. Conder. He was for promptly shooting her, and knocking the puppies in the head ; but with tears she persuaded him to get some chloroform at the town, and kill them in that way.

When her husband had gone back to the field, and she was busy baking in the kitchen, Alaraaf came slowly to the table where she kneaded bread, and said in a surly voice, —

“ Don’t kill the dawg. It wa’n’t her took the aigs. I done it.”

“ What ? ” She dropped the dough, and looked stupidly at him.

“ I took them aigs from Mis’ Conder, — an’ from you. The ol’ dawg ain’t sucked n’ary a one. You tell ’im, an’ he ’ll whip me.”

She did tell her husband, and when she had finished, ran into her bedroom, and clenching her eyes tightly, crowded her fingers into her ears.

That night she was putting little Katharine to bed, and the child said suddenly: —

“ Mammy, I wented to the circus.”

“ Baby ! ”

“ He took me,” she continued in a drowsier voice. “ He toted me pick-apack all the way — an’ — we saw — ever’fing.”

“ Who took you ? ” her mother gasped ; and baby murmured, as she was sucked into the soft whirlpool of dreams, “ Ala’af.”

It took the mother a long, painful hour to realize everything. Now how plain it all was at last, — baby’s disappearance on the afternoon of the circus, and Alaraaf’s plea of sickness. He had carried the great fat girl two long miles through the sunshine and dust, and he was not strong. But overshadowing everything else, casting a shadow on the mother’s heart, he had stolen so that he could take sweet, selfish little Katharine to the circus. Of course it was very wicked of him, but —

He lay supperless in the stifling garret, smarting from a severe flogging.

Mrs. Jenkins took up the candle, and climbed the ladder. She paused at the top, and cast a light on the boy’s pallet. He lay facing her, asleep. She could see his features swollen from secret weeping, and her mother-bosom shook with sobs, but even as she looked, his face was crossed by a defiant smile, and he gave a disconcerting, Southern gesture.

Lydia T. Perkins.