A VOICE FROM THE DARKNESS.
It was two weeks after Miss Ainslie's involuntary flight from Red
Wing that Nimbus, when he arose one morning, found a large pine
board hung across his gateway. It was perhaps six feet long and
some eighteen or twenty inches wide in the widest part, smoothly
planed upon one side and shaped like a coffin lid. A hole had been
bored in either end, near the upper corner, and through each of
these a stout cord had been passed and tied into a loop, which,
being slipped over a paling, one on each side the gate, left the
board swinging before it so as effectually to bar its opening unless
the board were first removed.
The attention of Nimbus was first directed to it by a neighbor-woman
who, stopping in front of the gate, called out to him in great
excitement, as he sat with Berry Lawson on his porch waiting for
his breakfast:
"Oh, Bre'er Nimbus, what in de libbin' yairth is dis h'yer on your
gate? La sakes, but de Kluckers is after you now, shore 'nough!"
"Why, what's de matter wid yer, Cynthy?" said Nimbus, cheerfully.
"Yer hain't seen no ghosteses nor nuffin', bez ye?"
"Ghosteses, did yer say?" answered the excited woman. "Jes yer
come an' look, an' ef yer don't say hit wuss ner ghosteses, yer
may count Cynthy a fool. Dat's all."
Berry started down to the gate, Nimbus following him, carelessly.
"Why, hello, Bre'er Nimbus! Yer shore hez got a signboard cross de
passway. Jes look a' dat now! What yer 'spect it mout be, cousin?"
said Berry, stopping short and pointing to the board hung on the
fence.
"'Clar, I dunno," said Nimbus, as he strode forward and leaned over
the fence to get a sight of the other side of the board. "'Spec'
it must be some of dem Ku Kluck's work, ez Cynthy says."
After examining it a moment, he directed Berry to lift up the
other end, and together they carried it to the house of Eliab Hill,
where its grotesque characters were interpreted, so far as he was
able to translate them, as well as the purport of a warning letter
fastened on the board by means of a large pocket-knife thrust
through it, and left sticking in the soft wood.
Upon the head of the coffin-shaped board was roughly drawn, in
black paint, a skull and cross-bones and, underneath them, the
words "Eliab Hill and Nimbus Desmit," and below these still, the
mystic cabala, "K.K.K," a formulary at which, just at that time,
a great part of the nation was laughing as a capital illustration
of American humor. It was accounted simply a piece of grotesquerie
intended to frighten the ignorant and superstitious negro.
The old claim of the South, that the colored man could be controlled
and induced to labor only by the lash or its equivalent, had many
believers still, even among the most earnest opponents of slavery,
and not a few of these even laughed good-naturedly at the grotesque
pictures in illustrated journals of shadowy beings in horrible
masks and terrified negroes cowering in the darkness with eyes
distended, hair rising in kinky tufts upon their heads, and teeth
showing white from ear to ear, evidently clattering like castanets.
It was wonderfully funny to far-away readers, and it made uproarious
mirth in the aristocratic homes of the South. From the banks of
the Rio Grande to the waters of the Potomac, the lordly Southron
laughed over his glass, laughed on the train, laughed in the street,
and laughed under his black cowl of weirdly decorated muslin--not
so much at the victims of the terrible Klan, as at the silly North
which was shaking its sides at the mask he wore. It was an era of
fun. Everybody laughed. The street gamins imitated the _Kluck,_
which gave name to the Klan. It was one of the funniest things the
world had ever known.
The Yankee--Brother Jonathan--had long been noted as a droll.
A grin was as much a part of his stock apparel as tow breeches
or a palm-leaf hat. The negro, too, had from time immemorial been
portrayed upon the stage and in fiction as an irrepressible and
inimitably farcical fellow. But the "Southern gentleman" was a
man of different kidney from either of these. A sardonic dignity
hedged him about with peculiar sacredness. He was chivalrous and
baronial in his instincts, surroundings, and characteristics. He
was nervous, excitable, and bloodthirsty. He would "pluck up drowned
honor by the locks" and make a target of everyone who laughed. He
hunted, fought, gambled, made much of his ancestors, hated niggers,
despised Yankees, and swore and swaggered on all occasions. That was
the way he was pictured in the ancient days. He laughed--sometimes--not
often, and then somewhat sarcastically--but he did not make
himself ridiculous. His _amour propre_ was most intense. He
appreciated fun, but did not care that it should be at his expense.
He was grave, irritable and splenetic; but never comical. A braggart,
a rough-rider, an aristocrat; but never a masquerader. That was
the old-time idea.
Yet so had the war and the lapse of half a decade changed this
people that in one State forty thousand men, in another thirty, in
others more and in others less, banded together with solemn oaths
and bloody ceremonies, just to go up and down the earth in the
bright moonlight, and play upon the superstitious fears of the poor
ignorant and undeveloped people around them. They became a race
of jesters, moonlight masqueraders, personators of the dead. They
instituted clubs and paraded by hundreds, the trained cavalry of
a ghostly army organized into companies, battalions, divisions,
departments, having at their head the "Grand Wizard of the Empire."
It was all in sport--a great jest, or at the worst designed only
to induce the colored man to work somewhat more industriously from
apprehension of ghostly displeasure. It was a funny thing--the
gravest, most saturnine, and self-conscious people on the globe
making themselves ridiculous, ghostly masqueraders by the hundred
thousand! The world which had lately wept with sympathy for
the misfortunes of the "Lost Cause," was suddenly convulsed with
merriment at the midnight antics of its chivalric defenders. The
most vaunted race of warriors seized the cap and bells and stole
also the plaudits showered upon the fool. Grave statesmen, reverend
divines, legislators, judges, lawyers, generals, merchants, planters,
all who could muster a good horse, as it would seem, joined the
jolly cavalcade and rollicked through the moonlight nights, merely
to make fun for their conquerors by playing on the superstitious
fear of the sable allies of the Northmen. Never before was such
good-natured complaisance, such untiring effort to please. So the
North laughed, the South chuckled, and the world wondered.
But the little knot of colored men and women who stood around Eliab
Hill while he drew out the knife which was thrust through the paper
into the coffin-shaped board laid across the front of his "go-cart,"
and with trembling lips read the message it contained--these silly
creatures did not laugh. They did not even smile, and a joke which
Berry attempted, fell flat as a jest made at a funeral.
There is something very aggravating about the tendency of this race
to laugh at the wrong time, and to persist in being disconsolate
when every one can see that they ought to dance. Generation after
generation of these perverse creatures in the good old days of
slavery would insist on going in search of the North Pole under the
most discouraging circumstances. On foot and alone, without money
or script or food or clothing; without guide or chart or compass;
without arms or friends; in the teeth of the law and of nature,
they gave themselves to the night, the frost, and all the dangers
that beset their path, only to seek what they did not want!
We know there was never a happier, more contented, light-hearted,
and exuberant people on the earth than the Africo-American slave! He
had all that man could reasonably desire--and more too! Well-fed,
well-clothed, luxuriously housed, protected from disease with watchful
care, sharing the delights of an unrivalled climate, relieved of
all anxiety as to the future of his off-spring, without fear of
want, defiant of poverty, undisturbed by the bickerings of society
or heartburnings of politics, regardless of rank or station, wealth,
kindred, or descent, it must be admitted that, from an earthly point
of view, his estate was as near Elysian as the mind can conceive.
Besides all this, he had the Gospel preached unto him--for nothing;
and the law kindly secured him against being misled by false
doctrines, by providing that the Bread of Life should never be
broken to him unless some reputable Caucasian were present to vouch
for its quality and assume all responsibility as to its genuineness!
That a race thus carefully nourished, protected, and guarded from
error as well as evil should be happy, was just as natural as that
the sun should shine. That they were happy only lunatics could doubt.
All their masters said so. They even raved when it was denied. The
ministers of the Gospel--those grave and reverend men who ministered
unto them in holy things, who led their careless souls, blindfolded
and trustful, along the straight and narrow way--all declared
before high Heaven that they were happy, almost too happy, for
their spiritual good. Politicians, and parties, and newspapers;
those who lived among them and those who went and learned all about
them from the most intelligent and high-toned of their Caucasian
fellow-beings--nigh about everybody, in fact--declared, affirmed,
and swore that they were at the very utmost verge of human happiness!
Yet even under these circumstances the perverse creatures _would_
run away. Indeed, to run away seemed to be a characteristic of
the race like their black skin and kinkling hair! It would have
seemed, to an uninformed on-looker, that they actually desired to
escape from the paternal institution which had thrown around their
lives all these blissful and beatifying circumstances. But we know
it was not so. It was only the inherent perversity of the race!
Again, when the war was ended and they were thrown upon the cold
charity of an unfriendly world, naked, poor, nameless, and homeless,
without the sheltering and protecting care of that master who had
ever before been to them the incarnation of a kindly Providence
--at that moment when, by all the rules which govern Caucasian human
nature, their eyes should have been red with regretful tears, and
their hearts overburdened with sorrow, these addled-pated children
of Africa, moved and instigated by the perverse devil of inherent
contrariness, were grinning from ear to ear with exasperating
exultation, or bowed in still more exasperating devotion, were
rendering thanks to God for the calamity that had befallen them!
So, too, when the best people of the whole South masqueraded
for their special benefit, they stupidly or stubbornly failed and
refused to reward their "best friends" for the entertainment provided
for them, at infinite pains and regardless of expense, even with
the poor meed of approving cachinnation. They ought to have been
amused; they no doubt were amused; indeed, it is morally impossible
that they should not have been amused--but they would not laugh!
Well may the Caucasian of the South say of the ebony brother whom
he has so long befriended and striven to amuse: "I have piped unto
you, and you have not danced!"
So Eliab read, to a circle whose cheeks were gray with pallor, and
whose eyes glanced quickly at each other with affright, these words
"ELIAB HILL AND NIMBUS DESMIT: You've been warned twice, and it
hain't done no good. This is your last chance. If you don't git
up and git out of here inside of ten days, the buzzards will have
a bait that's been right scarce since the war. The white folks is
going to rule Horsford, and sassy niggers must look out. We're not
going to have any such San Domingo hole as Red Wing in it, neither.
Now just sell off and pack up and git clear off and out of the
country before we come again, which will be just as soon as the
moon gits in the left quarter, and has three stars in her lower
horn. If you're here then you'll both need coffins, and that boy
Berry Lawson that you coaxed away from his employer will hang with
you.
"Remember! _Remember!_ REMEMBER!
"By order of the Grand Cyclops of the Den and his two Night Hawks,
and in the presence of all the Ghouls, on the fifth night of the
sixth Dark Moon!
"K.K.K."
Hardly had he finished reading this when a letter was brought to
him which had been found on the porch of the old Ordinary. It was
addressed to "MISS MOLLIE AINSLIE, Nigger Teacher at Red Wing," but
as it was indorsed "K.K.K." Eliab felt no compunctions in opening
it in her absence. It read:
"MISS AINSLIE: We hain't got no spite against you and don't mean
you no harm; but the white folks owns this country, and is going
to rule it, and we can't stand no such nigger-equality schools as
you are running at Red Wing. It's got to stop, and you'd better
pick up and go back North where you come from, and that quick, if
you want to keep out of trouble. Remember!
"By order of the Grand Cyclops of the Den and his Ghouls, K.K.K."
"P.S. We don't mean to hurt you. We don't make no war on women and
children as the Yankees did, but we mean what we say--git out! And
don't come back here any more neither!"
The rumor of the mysterious Klan and its terrible doings had
been in the air for many months. From other States, and even from
adjoining counties, had come to their ears the wail of its victims.
But so preponderating was the colored population of Horsford, and
so dependent upon their labor was its prosperity, that they had
entertained little fear of its coming among them. Two or three
times before, Nimbus and Eliab had received warnings and had even
taken some precautions in regard to defense; but they did not
consider the matter of sufficient moment to require them to make
it public. Indeed, they were inclined to think that as there had
been no acts of violence in the county, these warnings were merely
the acts of mischievous youngsters who desired to frighten them into
a display of fear. This seemed to be a more serious demonstration,
but they were not yet prepared to give full credence to the threat
conveyed in so fantastic a manner.