WHAT THE MIST HID.
The darkness was already giving way to the gray light of a misty
morning following the attack on Red Wing. The mocking birds, one
after another, were responding to each other's calls, at first
sleepily and unwillingly, as though the imprisoned melody compelled
expression, and then, thoroughly aroused and perched upon the
highest dew-laden branches swaying and tossing beneath them, they
poured forth their rival orisons. Other sounds of rising day were
coming through the mist that still hung over the land, shutting out
the brightness which was marching from the eastward. The crowing of
cocks, the neighing of horses, and the lowing of cattle resounded
from hill to hill across the wide bottom-lands and up and down the
river upon either hand. Nature was waking from slumber--not to the
full, boisterous wakefulness which greets the broad day, but the
half-consciousness with which the sluggard turns himself for the
light, sweet sleep of the summer morning.
There was a tap at the open window that stood at the head of Hesden
Le Moyne's bed. His room was across the hall from his mother's,
and upon the same floor. It had been his room from childhood. The
window opened upon the wide, low porch which ran along three sides
of the great rambling house. Hesden heard the tap, but it only
served to send his half-awakened fancy on a fantastic trip through
dreamland. Again came the low, inquiring tap, this time upon the
headboard of the old mahogany bedstead. He thought it was one of
the servants coming for orders about the day's labors. He wondered,
vaguely and dully, what could be wanted. Perhaps they would go
away if he did not move. Again it came, cautious and low, but firm
and imperative, made by the nail of one finger struck sharply and
regularly against the polished headboard. It was a summons and
a command for silence at once. Hesden raised himself quickly and
looked toward the window. The outline of a human figure showed
dimly against the gray darkness beyond.
"Who's there?"--in a low, quiet voice, as though caution had been
distinctly enjoined.
"Marse Hesden!"--a low whisper, full of suppressed excitement.
"You, Nimbus?" said Le Moyne, as he stepped quickly out of bed and
approached the window. "What's the matter?"
"Marse Hesden," whispered the colored man, laying a hand trembling
with excitement on his shoulder as he came near, "is yer a friend
ter 'Liab Hill?"
"Of course I am; you know that"--in an impatient undertone.
"Sh--sh! Marse Hesden, don't make no noise, please," whispered
Nimbus. "I don't mean ter ax ef yer's jes got nothin' agin' him,
but is yer that kind ob a friend ez 'll stan' by him in trouble?"
"What do you mean, Nimbus?" asked Hesden in surprise.
"Will yer come wid me, Marse Hesden--slip on yer clo'es an' come
wid me, jist a minnit?" Hesden did not think of denying this
request. It was evident that something of grave importance had
occurred. Hardly a moment had elapsed before he stepped cautiously
out upon the porch and followed Nimbus. The latter led the way
quickly toward a spring which burst out of the hillside fifty yards
away from the house, at the foot of a giant oak. Lying in the shadow
of this tree and reclining against its base, lay Eliab Hill, his
pallid face showing through the darkness like the face of the dead.
A few words served to tell Hesden Le Moyne what the reader already
knows.
"I brought him here, Marse Hesden, kase ther ain't no place else
dat he'd be safe whar he could be tuk keer on. Dem ar Kluckers is
bound ter kill him ef dey kin. He's got ter be hid an' tuk keer
on till he's well--ef he ever gits well at all."
"Why, you don't think he's hurt--not seriously, do you?"
"Hurt, man!" said Nimbus, impatiently. "Dar ain't much difference
atwixt him an' a dead man, now.
"Good God! Nimbus, you don't mean that. He seems to sleep well,"
said Hesden, bending over the prostrate form.
"Sleep! Marse Hesden, I'se kerried him tree miles sence he's been
a-sleepin' like dat; an' de blood's been a runnin' down on my hans
an' a-breakin' my holt ebbery now an' den, tu!"
"Why, Nimbus, what is this you tell me? Was any one else hurt?"
"Wal, dar's a couple o' white men a-layin' mighty quiet dar, afo'
'Liab's house."
Hesden shuddered. The time he had dreaded had come! The smouldering
passion of the South had burst forth at last! For years--ever since
the war-prejudice and passion, the sense of insult and oppression
had been growing thicker and blacker all over the South. Thunders
had rolled over the land. Lightnings had fringed its edges. The
country had heard, but had not heeded. The nation had looked on with
smiling face, and declared the sunshine undimmed. It had taken no
note of exasperation and prejudice. It had unconsciously trampled
under foot the passionate pride of a conquered people. It had scorned
and despised a sentiment more deeply inwrought than that of caste
in the Hindoo breast.
The South believed, honestly believed, in its innate superiority over
all other races and peoples. It did not doubt, has never doubted,
that, man for man, it was braver, stronger, better than the North.
Its men were "gentlemen"--grander, nobler beings than the North
ever knew. Their women were "ladies"--gentle, refined, ethereal
beings, passion and devotion wrapped in forms of ethereal mould,
and surrounded by an impalpable effulgence which distinguished them
from all others of the sex throughout the world. Whatever was of
the South was superlative. To be Southern-born was to be _prima
facie_ better than other men. So the self-love of every man
was enlisted in this sentiment. To praise the South was to praise
himself; to boast of its valor was to advertise his own intrepidity;
to extol its women was to enhance the glory of his own achievements
in the lists of love; to vaunt its chivalry was to avouch his own
honor; to laud its greatness was to extol himself. He measured
himself with his Northern compeer, and decided without hesitation
in his own favor.
The South, he felt, was unquestionably greater than the North in
all those things which were most excellent, and was only overtopped
by it in those things which were the mere result of numbers.
Outnumbered on the field of battle, the South had been degraded and
insulted by a sordid and low-minded conqueror, in the very hour of
victory. Outnumbered at the ballot-box, it had still dictated the
policy of the Nation. The Southern white man naturally compared
himself with his Northern brother. For comparison between himself
and the African--the recent slave, the scarcely human anthropoid--he
found no ground. Only contrast was possible there. To have these
made co-equal rulers with him, seated beside him on the throne
of popular sovereignty, merely, as he honestly thought, for the
gratification of an unmanly spite against a fallen foe, aroused
every feeling of exasperation and revenge which a people always
restive of restraint could feel.
It was not from hatred to the negro, but to destroy his political
power and restore again their own insulted and debased supremacy
that such things were done as have been related. It was to show
the conqueror that the bonds in which the sleeping Samson had been
bound were green withes which he scornfully snapped asunder in his
first waking moment. Pride the most overweening, and a prejudice of
caste the most intense and ineradicable, stimulated by the chagrin
of defeat and inflamed by the sense of injustice and oppression--both
these lay at the bottom of the acts by which the rule of the majorities
established by reconstructionary legislation were overthrown. It
was these things that so blinded the eyes of a whole people that
they called this bloody masquerading, this midnight warfare upon
the weak, this era of unutterable horror, "redeeming the South!"
There was no good man, no honest man, no Christian man of the South
who for an instant claimed that it was right to kill, maim, beat,
wound and ill-treat the black man, either in his old or his new
estate. He did not regard these acts as done to another _man_,
a compeer, but only as acts of cruelty to an inferior so infinitely
removed from himself as to forbid any comparison of rights or
feelings. It was not right to do evil to a "nigger;" but it was
infinitely less wrong than to do it unto one of their own color.
These men did not consider such acts as right in themselves, but
only as right in view of their comparative importance and necessity,
and the unspeakable inferiority of their victims.
For generations the South had regarded the uprising of the black,
the assertion of his manhood and autonomy, as the _ultima thule_
of possible evil. San Domingo and hell were twin horrors in their
minds, with the odds, however, in favor of San Domingo. To prevent
negro domination anything was justifiable. It was a choice of evils,
where on one side was placed an evil which they had been taught
to believe, and did believe, infinitely outweighed and overmatched
all other evils in enormity. Anything, said these men in their
hearts; anything, they said to each other; anything, they cried
aloud to the world, was better, is better, must be better, than
negro rule, than African domination.
Now, by negro rule _they_ meant the exercise of authority by
a majority of citizens of African descent, or a majority of which
they constituted any considerable factor. The white man who acted
with the negro in any relation of political co-ordination was deemed
even worse than the African himself. If he became a leader, he was
anathematized for self-seeking. If he only co-operated with his
ballot, he was denounced as a coward. In any event he was certain
to be deemed a betrayer of his race, a renegade and an outcast.
Hesden Le Moyne was a Southern white man. All that has just been
written was essential truth to him. It was a part of his nature.
He was as proud as the proudest of his fellows. The sting of defeat
still rankled in his heart. The sense of infinite distance between
his race and that unfortunate race whom he pitied so sincerely, to
whose future he looked forward with so much apprehension, was as
distinct and palpable to him as to any one of his compeers. The
thousandth part of a drop of the blood of the despised race degraded,
in his mind, the unfortunate possessor.
He had inherited a dread of the ultimate results of slavery. He
wished--it had been accounted sensible in his family to wish--that
slavery had never existed. Having existed, they never thought of
favoring its extinction. They thought it corrupting and demoralizing
to the white race. They felt that it was separating them, year by
year, farther and farther from that independent self-relying manhood,
which had built up American institutions and American prosperity.
They feared the fruit of this demoralization. _For the sake of the
white man_, they wished that the black had never been enslaved.
As to the blacks--they did not question the righteousness of their
enslavement. They did not care whether it were right or wrong. They
simply did not consider them at all. When the war left them free,
they simply said, "Poor fellows!" as they would of a dog without a
master. When the blacks were entrusted with the ballot, they said
again, "Poor fellows!" regarding them as the blameless instrument
by which a bigoted and revengeful North sought to degrade and humiliate a
foe overwhelmed only by the accident of numbers; the colored race
being to these Northern people like the cat with whose paw the monkey
dragged his chestnuts from the fire. Hesden had only wondered what
the effect of these things would be upon "the South;" meaning by
"the South" that regnant class to which his family belonged--a
part of which, by a queer synecdoche, stood for the whole.
His love for his old battle-steed, and his curious interest in its
new possessor, had led him to consider the experiment at Red Wing
with some care. His pride and interest in Eliab as a former slave
of his family had still further fixed his attention and awakened
his thought. And, finally, his acquaintance with Mollie Ainslie
had led him unconsciously to sympathize with the object of her
constant care and devotion.
So, while he stood there beside the stricken man, whose breath
came stertorous and slow, he was in that condition of mind of all
others most perilous to the Southern man--he had begun to _doubt_:
to doubt the infallibility of his hereditary notions; to doubt the
super-excellence of Southern manhood, and the infinite superiority
of Southern womanhood; to doubt the incapacity of the negro for
self-maintenance and civilization; to doubt, in short, all those
dogmas which constitute the differential characteristics of "the
Southern man." He had gone so far--a terrible distance to one
of his origin--as to admit the possibility of error. He had begun
to question--God forgive him, if it seemed like sacrilege--he had
begun to question whether the South might not have been wrong--might
not still be wrong--wrong in the principle and practice of slavery,
wrong in the theory and fact of secession and rebellion, wrong in
the hypothesis of hate on the part of the conquerors, wrong in the
assumption of exceptional and unapproachable excellence.
The future was as misty as the gray morning.