THE excitement through which Tom Camp had passed in the death of his
daughter, and the stirring events connected with it, had been more than
his feeble body could endure. He had been stricken with paroxysms of
pain and nausea from his old wounds. For three days and nights he
had suffered unspeakable agonies. He had borne his pain with stoical
indifference.
“Tom, old man, do look at me! You skeer me,” said his wife leaning
tenderly over him.
“Oh! I’m all right, Annie.”
“What was you studyin’ about then?”
“I was just a thinkin’ we didn’t kill babies in the war. Them was awful
times, but they wuz nothin’ to what we’re goin’ through now. The Lord
knows best, but I can’t understand it.”
“Well, don’t talk any more. You’re too weak.”
“I must git up, Annie. Got to git out anyhow. The Sheriff’s goin’ to
sell us out to-day, and I want to sorter look ’round once before we
go.”
So, leaning on his wife’s arm, he hobbled around the place saying
good-bye to its familiar objects. They stopped before the garden gate.
“Don’t go in there, Tom, I can’t stand it,” cried his wife. “When I
think of leavin’ that garden I’ve worked so hard on all these years, and
that’s give us so many good things to eat, and never failed us the year
round, I just feel like it’ll tear my heart out.”
“Do you mind the day we set out these trees, Annie, an’ you, my own
purty gal holdin’ ’em fur me while I packed the dirt around ’em, and
told you how sweet you wuz?”
“Yes, and I love every twig of ’em. They’ve all helped me in times
of need. Oh! Lord, it’s hard to give it up!” She couldn’t keep back the
tears.
“Well, now, ole woman, you mustn’t break down. You’re strong and well
and I’m all shot to pieces and crippled and no ’count. But the Lord
still lives. We’ll get this place back. The Lord’s just trying our
faith. He thinks mebbe I’ll give up.”
“You think we can ever get it back?”
“General Worth sent me word he couldn’t do anything now, but to let it
go and keep a stiff upper lip. The General ain’t no fool.”
“Surely the Lord can’t let us starve.”
“Starve! I reckon not! The foxes have holes, the birds of the air nests,
but the Son of Man had not where to lay His head, but He never starved.
No, God’s in Heaven. I’ll trust Him.”
A mocking bird whose mate had just built her nest to rear a second brood
for the season was seated on the topmost branch of a cedar near the
house, and singing as though he would fill heaven and earth with the
glory of his love.
“Just listen at that bird, Tom!” whispered his wife. “He does sing
sweet, don’t he?”
“Oh dear, oh dear, how can I give it all up! I’ve fed that bird and his
mate for years. He knows my voice. I can call him down out of that tree.
Many a night when you were away in the war he sat close to my window
and sang softly to me all night. When I’d wake, I’d hear him singin’ low
like he was afraid he’d wake somebody. I’d sit down there by the window
and cry for you and dream of your comin’ home till he’d sing me to
sleep in the chair. And now we’ve got to leave him. Oh Lord, my heart is
broken! I can’t see the way!”
She buried her face on Tom’s shoulder and shook with sobs.
“Hush, hush, honey, we must face trouble. We are used to it.”
“But not this, Tom. It’ll tear my heart out when I have to leave.”
“It can’t be helped, Annie. We’ve got to pay for this nigger
government.”
Eleven o’clock was the hour fixed for the sale. At half past ten a crowd
of negroes had gathered. There were only two or three white men present,
the Agent of the Freedman’s Bureau and some of his henchmen.
They began to inspect the place. Tim Shelby was present, dressed in a
suit of broadcloth and a silk hat placed jauntily on his close-cropped
scalp.
“That’s a fine orchard, gentlemen,” Tim exclaimed.
“Yes, en dats er fine gyarden,” said a negro standing near.
“Let’s look at the house,” said Tim starting to the door.
Tom stood up in the doorway with a musket in his hand, “Put your foot on
that doorstep and I’ll blow your brains out, you flat-nosed baboon!”
Tim paused and bowed with a smile.
“Ain’t the premises for sale, Mr. Camp?”
“Yes, but my family ain’t for inspection by niggers.”
“Just wanted to see the condition of the house, sir,” said Tim still
smiling.
“Well, I’m livin’ here yet, and don’t you forget it,” answered Tom with
quiet emphasis. Tim walked away laughing.
Tom stepped out of the house, and with his wooden leg marked a dead
line around the house about ten feet from each corner. To the crowd
that stood near he said in a clear ringing voice as he stood up in the
doorway.
[Illustration: 0158]
“I’ll kill the first nigger that crosses that line.”
There was no attempt to cross it. They did not like the look of Tom’s
face as he sat there pale and silent. And they could hear the sobs of
his wife inside.
The sale was a brief formality. There was but one bidder, the Honourable
Tim Shelby. It was knocked down to Tim for the sum of eighty-five
dollars, the exact amount of the tax levy which Legree and his brigands
had fixed.
Tim was not buying on his own account. He was the purchasing agent of
the subsidiary ring which Legree had organised to hold the real estate
forfeited for taxes until a rise in value would bring them millions of
profit. They had stolen from the state Treasury the money to capitalise
this company. Where it was possible to exact a cash ransom, they always
took it and cancelled the tax order, preferring the certainty of good
gold in their pockets to the uncertainties of politics.
They tried their best to get a cash ransom of ten thousand dollars for
the town of Hambright. But the ruined people could not raise a thousand.
So Tim Shelby as the agent of the “Union Land and Improvement Company,”
became the owner of farm after farm and home after home.
It was a vain hope that relief could come from any quarter. The red flag
of the Sheriff’s auctioneer fluttered from two thousand three hundred
and twenty doors in the county. This was over two-thirds of the total.
Those who were saved, just escaped by the skin of their teeth. They sold
old jewelry or plate that had been hidden in the war, or they sold their
corn and provisions, trusting to their ability to live on dried fruit,
berries, walnuts, hickory nuts, and such winter vegetables as they could
raise in their gardens.
The Preacher secured for Tom a tumbled-down log cabin on the outskirts
of town, with a half-acre of poor red hill land around it, which his
wife at once transformed into a garden. She took up the bulbs and
flowers that she had tended so lovingly about the door of their old
home, and planted them with tears around this desolate cabin. Now and
then she would look down at the work and cry. Then she would go bravely
back to it. As nobody occupied her old home, she went back and forth
until she moved all the jonquils and sweet pinks from the borders of
the garden walk, and reset them in the new garden. She moved then her
strawberries and rapsberries, and gooseberries, and set her fall cabbage
plants. In three weeks she had transformed a desolate red clay lot into
a smiling garden. She had watered every plant daily, and Tom had watched
her with growing wonder and love.
“Ole woman, you’re an angel!” he cried, “if God had sent one down from
the skies she couldn’t have done any more.”
* * * * *
The problem which pressed heaviest of all on the Preacher’s heart in
this crisis was how to save Mrs. Gaston’s home.
“If that place is sold next week, my dear,” he said to his wife, “she
will never survive.”
“I know it. She is sinking every day. It breaks my heart to look at
her.”
“What can we do?”
“I’m sure I can’t tell. We’ve given everything we have on earth except
the clothes on our back. I haven’t another piece of jewelry, or even an
old dress.”
“The tax and the costs may amount to a hundred and seventy-five dollars.
There isn’t a man in this county who has that much money, or I’d borrow
it if I had to mortgage my body and soul to do it.”
“I’ll tell you what you might do,” his wife suddenly exclaimed.
“Telegraph your old college mate in Boston that you will accept his
invitation to supply his pulpit those last two Sundays in August. They
will pay you handsomely.”
“It may be possible, but where am I to get the money for a telegram and
a ticket?”
“Surely you can borrow some here!”
“I don’t know a man in the county who has it.”
“Then go to the young Commandant of the post here. Tell him the facts.
Tell him that a widow of a brave Confederate soldier is about to be
turned out of her home because she can’t pay the taxes levied by
this infamous negro government. Ask him to loan you the money for the
telegram and the ticket.”
The Preacher seized his hat and made his way as fast as possible to the
camp. The young Captain heard his story with grave courtesy.
“Certainly, doctor,” he said, “I’ll loan you the forty dollars with
pleasure. I wish I could do more to relieve the distress of the people.
Believe me, sir, the people of the North do not dream of the awful
conditions of the South. They are being fooled by the politicians. I’ll
thank God when I am relieved of this job and get home. What has amazed
me is that you hot-headed Southern people have stood it thus far. I
don’t know a Northern community that would have endured it.”
“Ah, Captain, the people are heartsick of bloodshed, They surrendered in
good faith. They couldn’t foresee this. If they had”--
The Preacher paused, his eyes grew misty with tears, and he looked
thoughtfully out on the blue mountain peaks that loomed range after
range in the distance until the last bald tops were lost in the clouds.
“If General Lee had dreamed of such an infamy being forced on the South
two years after his surrender, as this attempt to make the old slaves
the rulers of their masters, and to destroy the Anglo-Saxon civilisation
of the South--he would have withdrawn his armies into that Appalachian
mountain wild and fought till every white man in the South was
exterminated.
“The Confederacy went to pieces in a day, not because the South could no
longer fight, but because they were fighting the flag of their fathers,
and they were tired of it. They went back to the old flag. They expected
to lose their slaves and repudiate the dogma of Secession forever. But,
they never dreamed of Negro dominion, or Negro deification, of Negro
equality and amalgamation, now being rammed down their throats with
bayonets. They never dreamed of the confiscation of the desolate
homes of the poor and the weak and the brokenhearted. Over two hundred
thousand Southern men fought in the Union army in answer to Lincoln’s
call--even against their own flesh and blood. But if this program had
been announced, every one of the two hundred thousand Southern soldiers
who wore the blue, would have rallied around the firesides of the South.
This infamy was something undreamed save in the souls of a few desperate
schemers at Washington who waited their opportunity, and found it in the
nation’s blind agony over the death of a martyred leader.”
The Preacher pressed the Captain’s hand and hastened to tell Mrs. Gaston
of his plans. He found her seated pale and wistful at her window looking
out on the lawn, now being parched and ruined since Nelse was disabled
and could no longer tend it.
Charlie was trying to kiss the tears away from her eyes.
“Mama dear, you mustn’t cry any more!”
“I can’t help it, darling.”
“They can’t take our home away from us. I tore the sign down they nailed
on the door, and Dick burned it up!”
“But they will do it, Charlie. The Sheriff will sell it at auction next
week, and we will never have a home of our own again.”
Charlie bounded to the door and showed the Preacher in.
“I have good news for you, Mrs. Gaston! I start to Boston to-night to
preach two Sundays. I am going to try to borrow the money there to save
your home. We will not be too sure till it’s done, but you must cheer
up!”
“Oh! doctor, you’re giving me a new lease on life!” she cried, looking
up at him through tears of gratitude.
That night the Preacher hurried on his way to Boston.
The days dragged slowly one after another, and still no word came to the
anxious waiting woman. It was only two days now until the day fixed for
the sale.
She asked the Sheriff to come to see her. He was a brutal illiterate
henchman of Legree, who had been appointed to the office to do his
bidding. He was a brother of the immortal “Hog” Scoggins, who had
represented an adjoining county in the Legislature.
“Mr. Scoggins, I’ve sent for you to ask you to postpone the sale until
Dr. Durham returns from Boston. I expect to get the money from him to
pay the tax bill.”
“Can’t do it, M’um. They’s er lot er folks comin’ ter bid on the place.”
“But I tell you I’m going to pay the tax bill.”
“Well, M’um, hit’ll have ter be paid afore the time sot, er I’ll be
erbleeged to sell.”
“I’m sure Dr. Durham will get the money.”
“Ef he does, hit ’ll be the fust time hit’s happened in this county
sence the sales begun.”
In vain she waited for a letter or a telegram from Boston. Charlie went
faithfully asking Dave Haley, the postmaster, two or three times on the
arrival of each mail.
“I tell ye there’s nothin’ fur ye!” he yelled as he glared at the boy.
“Ef ye don’t go way from that winder, I’ll pitch ye out the door!”
The scoundrel had recognised the letter in Dr. Durham’s handwriting and
had hidden it, suspecting its contents.
When the day came for the sale Mrs. Gaston tried to face the trial
bravely. But it was too much for her. When she saw a great herd of
negroes trampling down her flowers, laughing, cracking vulgar jokes, and
swarming over the porches, she sank feebly into her chair, buried her
face in her hands and gave way to a passionate flood of tears. She was
roused by the thumping of heavy feet in the hall, and the unmistakable
odour of perspiring negroes. They had begun to ransack the house on
tours of inspection. The poor woman’s head drooped and she fell to the
floor in a dead swoon.
There was a sudden charge as of an armed host, the sound of blows, a
wild scramble, and the house was cleared. Aunt Eve with a fire shovel,
Charlie with a broken hoe handle, and Dick with a big black snake whip
had cleared the air.
Aunt Eve stood on the front door-step shaking the shovel at the crowd.
“Des put yo big flat hoofs in dis house ergin! I’ll split yo heads wide
open! You black cattle!”
“Dat we will!” railed Dick as he cracked the whip at a little negro
passing.
Charlie ran into his mother’s room to see what she was doing, and found
her lying across the floor on her face.
“Aunt Eve, come quick, Mama’s dying!” he shouted.
They lifted her to the bed, and Dick ran for the doctor.
Dr. Graham looked very grave when he had completed his examination.
“Come here, my boy, I must tell you some sad news.”
Charlie’s big brown eyes glanced up with a startled look into the
doctor’s face.
“Don’t tell me she’s dying, doctor, I can’t stand it.”
The doctor took his hand. “You’re getting to be a man now, my son, you
will soon be thirteen. You must be brave. Your mother will not live
through the night.”
The boy sank on his knees beside the still white figure, tenderly
clasped her thin hand in his, and began to kiss it slowly. He would kiss
it, lay his wet cheek against it, and try to warm it with his hot young
blood.
It was about nine o’clock when she opened her eyes with a smile and
looked into his face.
“My sweet boy,” she whispered.
“Oh! Mama, do try to live! Don’t leave me,” he sobbed in quivering tones
as he leaned over and kissed her lips. She smiled faintly again.
“Yes, I must go, dear. I am tired. Your papa is waiting for me. I see
him smiling and beckoning to me now. I must go.”
A sob shook the boy with an agony no words could frame.
“There, there, dear, don’t,” she soothingly said, “you will grow to be a
brave strong man. You will fight this battle out, and win back our
home and bring your own bride here in the far away days of sunshine and
success I see for you. She will love you, and the flowers will blossom
on the lawn again. But I am tired. Kiss me--I must go.”
Her heart fluttered on for a while, but she never spoke again.
At ten o’clock Mrs. Durham tenderly lifted the boy from the bedside,
kissed him, and said as she led him to his room, “She’s done with
suffering, Charlie. You are going to live with me now, and let me love
you and be your mother.”
* * * * *
The Preacher had made a profound impression on his Boston congregation.
They were charmed by his simple direct appeal to the heart. His fiery
emphasis, impassioned dogmatic faith, his tenderness and the strange
pathos of his voice swept them off their feet. At night the big church
was crowded to the doors, and throngs were struggling in vain to gain
admittance. At the close of the services he was overwhelmed with the
expressions of gratitude and heartfelt sympathy with which they thanked
him for his messages.
He was feasted and dined and taken out into the parks behind spanking
teams, until his head was dizzy with the unaccustomed whirl.
The Preacher went through it all with a heavy heart. Those beautiful
homes with their rich carpets, handsome furniture, and those long lines
of beautiful carriages in the parks, made a contrast with the agony of
universal ruin which he left at home that crushed his soul.
He hastened to tell the story of Mrs. Gaston to a genial old merchant
who had taken a great fancy to him.
A tear glistened in the old man’s eye as he quickly rose.
“Come right down to my store. I’ll get you a money order before the
post-office closes. I’ve got tickets for you to go to the Coliseum
with me to-night and hear the music!--the great Peace Jubilee. We are
celebrating the return of peace and prosperity, and the preservation of
the Union. It’s the greatest musical festival the world ever saw.”
The Preacher was dazed with the sense of its sublimity and the pathetic
tragedy of the South that lay back of its joy.
The great Coliseum, constructed for the purpose, seated over forty
thousand people. Such a crowd he had never seen gathered together within
one building. The soul of the orator in him leaped with divine power
as he glanced over the swaying ocean of human faces. There were twelve
thousand trained voices in the chorus. He had dreamed of such music in
Heaven when countless hosts of angels should gather around God’s throne.
He had never expected to hear it on this earth. He was transported with
a rapture that thrilled and lifted him above the consciousness of time
and sense.
They rendered the masterpieces of all the ages. The music continued hour
after hour, day after day, and night after night.
The grand chorus within the Coliseum was accompanied by the ringing of
bells in the city, and the firing of cannon on the common, discharged
in perfect time with the melody that rolled upward from those twelve
thousand voices and broke against the gates of Heaven! When every
voice was in full cry, and every instrument of music that man had ever
devised, throbbed in harmony, and a hundred anvils were ringing a chorus
of steel in perfect time, Parepa Rosa stepped forward on the great
stage, and in a voice that rang its splendid note of triumph over all
like the trumpet of the archangel, sang the Star Spangled Banner!
Men and women fainted, and one woman died, unable to endure the strain.
The Preacher turned his head away and looked out of the window. A soft
wind was blowing from the South. On its wings were borne to his heart
the cry of the widow and orphan, the hungry and the dying still being
trampled to death by a war more terrible than the first, because it was
waged against the unarmed, women and children, the wounded, the starving
and the defenceless! He tried in vain to keep back the tears. Bending
low, he put his face in his hands and cried like a child.
“God forgive them! They know not what they do!” he moaned.
The kindly old man by his side said nothing, supposing he was overcome
by the grandeur of the music.