United States or Pitcairn Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Death had cut a wound across Peter Siner's life. Not for days, nor weeks, nor months, would his existence knit solidly back together. The poison of his ingratitude to his faithful old black mother would for a long, long day prevent the healing. During a period following his mother's death Peter Siner's life drifted emptily and without purpose. He had the feeling of one convalescing in a hospital.
Three nights of vigil, each thinking miserably and wistfully of the other, had worn the nerves of both man and girl until they were ready to melt together at a touch. Her soft body clinging to his own, the little nervous pressures of her arms, her eased breathing at his neck, wiped away Siner's long sense of strain.
A carpet of needles hushed Siner's footfalls and spread a Sabbatical silence through the grove. The upward path was not smooth, but was broken with outcrops of the same reddish limestone that marks the whole stretch of the Tennessee River. Here and there in the grove were circles eight or ten feet in diameter, brushed perfectly clean of all needles and pebbles and twigs.
"Oh, Peter Siner; Caroline Siner's sick? All right I'll have Jallup run over; I'll phone him." Peter was beginning his thanks preparatory to going, when the old man interrupted. "No, just stay here until Jallup comes by in his or He'll pick us both up. It'll save time. Come on inside. What's the matter with old Caroline?"
The semi-daily passings of Cissie Dildine before the old Renfrew manor on her way to and from the Arkwright home upset Peter Siner's working schedule to an extraordinary degree. After watching for two or three days, Peter worked out a sort of time- table for Cissie. She passed up early in the morning, at about five forty-five.
The loneliness of the scene embraced the trading-points, the river, and the little gasolene launch struggling against the muddy current. It permeated the passengers, and was a finishing touch to Peter Siner's melancholy. The launch clacked on and on interminably. Sometimes it seemed to make no headway at all against the heavy, silty current.
And it is this quality that makes negroes the entertainers of children par excellence. Peter Siner's mental slackening made him understandable, and gave him a certain popularity in Nigger-town. Black men fell into the habit of dropping in at the Siner cabin, where they would sit outdoors, with chairs propped against the wall, and philosophize on the desultory life of the crescent.
There had been in the deed something concerning a mineral reservation that the negro purchasers knew nothing about until the phosphate was discovered. The whole matter had been perfectly legal. A hand shook Siner's shoulder and interrupted his review.
Their judgment lacks training. Peter Siner's simple assertion to the old Captain that he was not going to marry Cissie Dildine completely allayed the old gentleman's uneasiness. Even the further information that Peter had had such a marriage under advisement, but had rejected it, did not put him on his guard.
He looked down and saw his mother, Caroline Siner, looking up into his face and weeping with the general emotion of the negroes and this joy of her own. Caroline had changed since Peter last saw her. Her eyes were a little more wrinkled, her kinky hair was thinner and very gray. Something warm and melting moved in Peter Siner's breast.
Word Of The Day