Chesnutt's Works





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Page 10 for the text "Rena," the story that will eventually become The House Behind the Cedars. Click on the manuscript image to get a version that can be magnified.

page 1 and 2
pages 3 and 4
pages 5 and 6
page 7
page 8
page 9
page 10 (See below.)
page 35
page 37

Some of this class attained to a measure of prosperity, and dreamed
of a still brighter future, when the storm and stress of the sla-
very agitation threw them back upon the black mass just beneath
them and quenched their budding hopes. Mis' Molly's father had been
one of these people, and at one time a man of some small
means. In an evil hour, with an overseening confidence in his
fellow-men, he endorsed a note for a white man who clapped him on
the back and called him brother, and in due time was called upon
to pay it. This was the beginning of a series of financial diffi-
culties which speedily involved him in ruin, and he died a prema-
ture death, a disappointed and disheartened man.

His widow and several surviving children lived for a time at
the house he had owned., just outside of Patesville, on the Wilmington Road, one of the main traveled highways. There was a famous deep well by the roadside near the house, and most travelers stopped there to the clear cool and sparkling water. More than one of them looked saw the fine girl. One day a white gentlemen on horseback
stopped at the house to see the widow on some business matter.
While he waited on the porch a girl brought him a fan and a gourd
of water. The house lay on the way from his plantation to the town,
and he stopped there often afterwards. The girl was pretty,
the gentleman was kind. It was the old song, pitched in a Southern
Soon Molly was living in a house of her own with a servant
to wait on her. Her friend proved a good friend to her and a
faithful one. He did not make her house openly his own, for he had
some regard for a public opinion, which, though lax, still drew
certain hard and fast lines beyond which it was not possible to go
without forfeiting social asteem. Their life was discreetly screened,