Through the night the
negroes wailed on, performing through custom an ancient rite of which
they knew nothing. They supposed themselves heartbroken over the death
of Caroline Siner.
Amid this din Peter Siner sat in his room, stunned by the sudden taking
off of his mother. The reproaches that she had expressed to old Captain
Renfrew clung in Peter's brain. The brown man had never before realized
the faint amusement and condescension that had flavored all his
relations with his mother since his return home. But he knew now that
she had felt his disapproval of her lifelong habits; that she saw he
never explained or attempted to explain his thoughts to her, assuming
her to be too ignorant; as she put it, "a fool."
The pathos of his mother's last days, what she had expected, what she
had received, came to Peter with the bitterness of what is finished and
irrevocable. She had been dead only a few minutes, yet she could never
know his grief and remorse; she could never forgive him. She was utterly
removed in a few minutes, in a moment in the failing of a breath.
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