PAGE 7
Gideon
by
He made a fire and cooked supper, eating enormously and with relish. His conscience did not trouble him at all. Stuhk and his own career seemed already distant; they took small place in his thoughts, and served merely as a background for his present absolute content. He picked some oranges, and ate them in meditative enjoyment. For a while he nodded, half asleep, beside his fire, watching the darkened river, where the mullet, shimmering with phosphorescence, still leaped starkly above the surface, and fell in spattering brilliance. Midnight found him sprawled asleep beside his fire.
Once he awoke. The moon had risen, and a little breeze waved the hanging moss, and whispered in the glossy foliage of orange and palmetto with a sound like falling rain. Gideon sat up and peered about him, rolling his eyes hither and thither at the menacing leap and dance of the jet shadows. His heart was beating thickly, his muscles twitched, and the awful terrors of night pulsed and shuddered over him. Nameless specters peered at him from every shadow, ingenerate familiars of his wild, forgotten blood. He groaned aloud in a delicious terror; and presently, still twitching and shivering, fell asleep again. It was as if something magical had happened; his fear remembered the fear of centuries, and yet with the warm daylight was absolutely forgotten.
He got up a little after sunrise, and went down to the river to bathe, diving deep with a joyful sense of freeing himself from the last alien dust of travel. Once ashore again, however, he began to prepare his breakfast with some haste. For the first time in his journey he was feeling a sense of loneliness and a longing for his kind. He was still happy, but his laughter began to seem strange to him in the solitude. He tried the defiant experiment of laughing for the effect of it, an experiment which brought him to his feet in startled terror; for his laughter was echoed. As he stood peering about him, the sound came again, not laughter this time, but a suppressed giggle. It was human beyond a doubt. Gideon’s face shone with relief and sympathetic amusement; he listened for a moment, and then strode surely forward toward a clump of low palms. There he paused, every sense alert. His ear caught a soft rustle, a little gasp of fear; the sound of a foot moved cautiously.
“Missy,” he said tentatively, “I reckon yo’-all’s come jes ’bout ‘n time foh breakfus. Yo’ betteh have some. Ef yo’ ain’ too white to sit down with a black man.”
The leaves parted, and a smiling face as black as Gideon’s own regarded him in shy amusement.
“Who is yo’, man?”
“I mought be king of Kongo,” he laughed, “but I ain’t. Yo’ see befo’ yo’ jes Gideon—at yo’r ‘steemed sehvice.” He bowed elaborately in the mock humility of assured importance, watching her face in pleasant anticipation.
But neither awe nor rapture dawned there. She repeated the name, inclining her head coquettishly; but it evidently meant nothing to her. She was merely trying its sound. “Gideon, Gideon. I don’ call to min’ any sech name ez that. Yo’-all’s f’om up No’th likely.” He was beyond the reaches of fame.
“No,” said Gideon, hardly knowing whether he was glad or sorry—”no, I live south of heah. What-all’s yo’ name?”
The girl giggled deliciously.
“Man,” she said, “I shu got the mos’ reediculoustest name you eveh did heah. They call me Vashti—yo’ bacon’s bu’nin’.” She stepped out, and ran past him to snatch his skillet deftly from the fire.
“Vashti”—a strange and delightful name. Gideon followed her slowly. Her romantic coming and her romantic name pleased him; and, too, he thought her beautiful. She was scarcely more than a girl, slim and strong and almost of his own height. She was barefooted, but her blue-checked gingham was clean and belted smartly about a small waist. He remembered only one woman who ran as lithely as she did, one of the numerous “diving beauties” of the vaudeville stage.
She cooked their breakfast, but he served her with an elaborate gallantry, putting forward all his new and foreign graces, garnishing his speech with imposing polysyllables, casting about their picnic breakfast a radiant aura of grandeur borrowed from the recent days of his fame. And he saw that he pleased her, and with her open admiration essayed still greater flights of polished manner.