The indorsed side lay uppermost, and the words seemed like a mute
reproach:--
"The Last Will and Testament of Samuel Merkell."
Snatching up the envelope, she glanced into it mechanically as she moved
toward the next room, and perceived a thin folded paper which had
heretofore escaped her notice. When opened, it proved to be a
certificate of marriage, in due form, between Samuel Merkell and Julia
Brown. It was dated from a county in South Carolina, about two years
before her father's death.
For a moment Mrs. Carteret stood gazing blankly at this faded slip of
paper. Her father _had_ married this woman!--at least he had gone
through the form of marriage with her, for to him it had surely been no
more than an empty formality. The marriage of white and colored persons
was forbidden by law. Only recently she had read of a case where both
the parties to such a crime, a colored man and a white woman, had been
sentenced to long terms in the penitentiary. She even recalled the
circumstances. The couple had been living together unlawfully,--they
were very low people, whose private lives were beneath the public
notice,--but influenced by a religious movement pervading the community,
had sought, they said at the trial, to secure the blessing of God upon
their union. The higher law, which imperiously demanded that the purity
and prestige of the white race be preserved at any cost, had intervened
at this point.
Mechanically she moved toward the fireplace, so dazed by this discovery
as to be scarcely conscious of her own actions.
Pages:
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269