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Page 1
A murmur of protest rose, but there came through the window faintly yet
clearly a man's voice:
"Look up an look aroun,
Fro you burden on de groun"--
The brown eyes of the woman grew larger. There ran through her smile a
kind of frightened surprise, but she did not start nor act as if the
circumstance were singular.
One of the men in the room--Baron, an honest, blundering fellow--started
toward the window to see who the prompter was, but the host--of intuitive
perception--saw that this might not be agreeable to their entertainer and
said quietly: "Don't go to the window, Baron. See, Mrs. Detlor is going to
sing."
Baron sat down. There was an instant's pause, in which George Hagar, the
host, felt a strong thrill of excitement. To him Mrs. Detlor seemed in a
dream, though her lips still smiled and her eyes wandered pleasantly over
the heads of the company. She was looking at none of them, but her body
was bent slightly toward the window, listening with it, as the deaf and
dumb do.
Her fingers picked the strings lightly, then warmly, and her voice rose,
clear, quaint and high:
"Look up an look aroun,
Fro you burden on de groun,
Reach up an git de crown,
When de Lord comes in de mornin--
When de Lord comes in de mornin!"
The voice had that strange pathos, veined with humor, which marks most
negro hymns and songs, so that even those present who had never heard an
Americanized negro sing were impressed and grew almost painfully quiet,
till the voice fainted away into silence.
With the last low impulsion, however, the voice from without began again
as if in reply. At the first note one of the young girls present made a
start for the window. Mrs. Detlor laid a hand upon her arm. "No," she
said, "you will spoil--the effect. Let us keep up the mystery."
There was a strange, puzzled look on her face, apparent most to George
Hagar. The others only saw the lacquer of amusement, summoned for the
moment's use.
"Sit down," she added, and she drew the young girl to her feet and passed
an arm round her shoulder. This was pleasant to the young girl. It singled
her out for a notice which would make her friends envious.
It was not a song coming to them from without--not a melody, but a kind of
chant, hummed first in a low sonorous tone, and then rising and falling in
weird undulations. The night was still, and the trees at the window gave
forth a sound like the monotonous s-sh of rain. The chant continued for
about a minute. While it lasted Mrs. Detlor sat motionless and her hands
lay lightly on the shoulders of the young girl. Hagar dropped his foot on
the floor at marching intervals--by instinct he had caught at the meaning
of the sounds. When the voice had finished, Mrs. Detlor raised her head
toward the window with a quick, pretty way she had, her eyes much shaded
by the long lashes. Her lips were parted in the smile which had made both
men and women call her merry, amiable and fascinating.
"You don't know what it is, of course," she said, looking round, as though
the occurrence had been ordinary. "It is a chant hummed by the negro
woodcutters of Louisiana as they tramp homeward in the evening. It is
pretty, isn't it?"
"It's a rum thing," said one they called the Prince, though Alpheus
Richmond was the name by which his godmother knew him. "But who's the
gentleman behind the scenes--in the greenroom?"
As he said this he looked--or tried to look--knowingly at Mrs. Detlor,
for, the Prince desired greatly to appear familiar with people and things
theatrical, and Mrs. Detlor knew many in the actor and artist world.
Mrs. Detlor smiled in his direction, but the smile was not reassuring. He
was, however, delighted. He almost asked her then and there to ride with
him on the morrow, but he remembered that he could drive much better than
he could ride, and, in the pause necessary to think the matter out, the
chance passed--he could not concentrate himself easily.
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