aloud alone. I have only tried to sing it in song in an impersonal way.
Your wonderful words of late have emboldened me to speak. It is this--I
am madly, desperately in love with your daughter.”
Lowell sprang to his feet as though a bolt of lightning had suddenly
shot down his backbone. He glared at the negro with wide dilated eyes
and heaving breath as though he had been transformed into a leopard or
tiger and was about to spring at his throat.
Before answering, and with a gesture commanding silence, he walked
rapidly to the library door and closed it.
“And I have come to ask you,” continued Harris ignoring his gesture, “if
I may pay my addresses to her with your consent.”
“Harris, this is crazy nonsense. Such an idea is preposterous. I am
amazed that it should ever have entered your head. Let this be the end
of it here and now, if you have any desire to retain my friendship.”
Lowell said this with a scowl, and an emphasis of indignant rising
inflection. The negro seemed stunned by this swift blow in his very
teeth, that seemed to place him outside the pale of a human being.
“Why is such a hope unreasonable, sir, to a man of your scientific
mind?”
“It is a question of taste,” snapped Lowell.
“Am I not a graduate of the same university with you? Did I not stand as
high, and age for age, am I not your equal in culture?”
“Granted. Nevertheless you are a negro, and I do not desire the infusion
of your blood in my family.”
“But I have more of white than Negro blood, sir.”
“So much the worse. It is the mark of shame.”
“But it is the one drop of Negro blood at which your taste revolts, is
it not?”
“To be frank, it is.”
“Why is it an unpardonable sin in me that my ancestors were born under
tropic skies where skin and hair were tanned and curled to suit the
sun’s fierce rays?”
“All tropic races are not negroes, and your race has characteristics
apart from accidents of climate that make it unique in the annals of
man,” rejoined Lowell.
“And yet you demand perfect equality of man with man, absolutely in form
and substance without reservation or subterfuge!”
“Yes, political equality.”
“Politics is but a secondary phenomenon of society. You said absolute
equality,” protested Harris.
“The question you broach is a question of taste, and the deeper social
instincts of racial purity and self preservation. I care not what your
culture, or your genius, or your position, I do not desire, and will not
permit, a mixture of Negro blood in my family. The idea is nauseating,
and to my daughter it would be repulsive beyond the power of words to
express it!”
“And yet,” pleaded Harris, “you invited me to your home, introduced me
to your daughter, seated me at your table, and used me in your appeal to
your constituents, and now when I dare ask the privilege of seeking her
hand in honourable marriage, you, the scholar, patriot, statesman and
philosopher of Equality and Democracy, slam the door in my face and tell
me that I am a negro! Is this fair or manly?”
“I fail to see its unfairness.”
“It is amazing. You are a master of history and sociology. You know as
clearly as I do that social intercourse is the only possible pathway to
love. And you opened it to me with your own hand. Could I control the
beat of my heart? There are some powers within us that are involuntary.
You could have prevented my meeting your daughter as an equal. But all
the will power of earth could not prevent my loving her, when once I had
seen her, and spoken to her. The sound of the human voice, the touch of
the human hand in social equality are the divine sacraments that open
the mystery of love.”
“Social rights are one thing, political rights another,” interrupted
Lowell.
“I deny it. If you are honest with yourself, you know it is not true.
Politics is but a manifestation of society. Society rests on the family.
The family is the unit of civilisation. The right to love and wed where
one loves is the badge of fellowship in the order of humanity. The man
who is denied this right in any society is not a member of it. He is
outside any manifestation of its essential life. You had as well talk
about the importance of clothes for a dead man, as political rights for
such a pariah. You have classed him with the beasts of the field. As a
human unit he does not exist for you.”
“Harris, it is utterly useless to argue a point like this,” Lowell
interrupted coldly. “This must be the end of our acquaintance. You must
not enter my house again.”
“My God, sir, you can’t kick me out of your home like this when you
brought me to it, and made it an issue of life or death!”
“I tell you again you are crazy. I have brought you here against her
wishes. She left the house with her friend this morning to avoid seeing
you. Your presence has always been repulsive to her, and with me it has
been a political study, not a social pleasure.”
“I beg for only a desperate chance to overcome this feeling. Surely a
man of your profound learning and genius can not sympathise with such
prejudices? Let me try--let her decide the issue.”
“I decline to discuss the question any further.”
“I can’t give up without a struggle!” the negro cried with desperation.
Lowell arose with a gesture of impatience.
“Now you are getting to be simply a nuisance. To be perfectly plain with
you, I haven’t the slightest desire that my family with its proud record
of a thousand years of history and achievement shall end in this stately
old house in a brood of mulatto brats!”
Harris winced and sprang to his feet, trembling with passion. “I see,”
he sneered, “the soul of Simon Le-gree has at last become the soul of
the nation. The South expresses the same luminous truth with a little
more clumsy brutality. But their way is after all more merciful. The
human body becomes unconscious at the touch of an oil-fed flame in sixty
seconds. Your methods are more refined and more hellish in cruelty. You
have trained my ears to hear, eyes to see, hands to touch and heart to
feel, that you might torture with the denial of every cry of body and
soul and roast me in the flames of impossible desires for time and
eternity!”
“That will do now. There’s the door!” thundered Lowell with a gesture of
stern emphasis. “I happen to know the important fact that a man or woman
of negro ancestry, though a century removed, will suddenly breed back
to a pure negro child, thick lipped, kinky headed, flat nosed, black
skinned. One drop of your blood in my family could push it backward
three thousand years in history. If you were able to win her consent, a
thing unthinkable, I would do what old Virginius did in the Roman Forum,
kill her with my own hand, rather than see her sink in your arms into
the black waters of a Negroid life! Now go!”
CHAPTER VIII--THE NEW SIMON LEGREE
HARRIS immediately resigned his office in the custom house which he
owed to Lowell and began a search for employment.
“I will not be a pensioner of a government of hypocrites and liars,” he
exclaimed as he sealed his letter of resignation.
And then began his weary tramp in search of work. Day after day, week
after week, he got the same answer--an emphatic refusal. The only thing
open to a negro was a position as porter, or bootblack, or waiter in
second-rate hotels and restaurants, or in domestic service as coachman,
butler or footman. He was no more fitted for these places than he was to
live with his head under water.
“I will blow my brains out before I will prostitute my intellect, and
my consciousness of free manhood by such degrading associates and such
menial service!” he declared with sullen fury.
At last he determined to lay aside his pride and education and learn a
manual trade. Not a labour union would allow him to enter its ranks.
He managed to earn a few dollars at odd jobs and went to New York. Here
he was treated with greater brutality than in Boston. At last he got a
position in a big clothing factory. He was so bright in colour that the
manager never suspected that he was a negro, as he was accustomed to
employing swarthy Jews from Poland and Russia.
When Harris entered the factory the employees discovered within an hour
his race, laid down their work, and walked out on a strike until he was
removed.
He again tried to break into a labour union and get the protection of
its constitution and laws. He managed at last to make the acquaintance
of a labour leader who had been a Quaker preacher, and was elated to
discover that his name was Hugh Halliday, and that he was a son of one
of the Hallidays who had assisted in the rescue of his mother and father
from slavery. He told Halliday his history and begged his intercession
with the labour union.
“I ’ll try for you, Harris,” he said, “but it’s a doubtful experiment.
The men fear the Negro as a pestilence.”
“Do the best you can for me. I must have bread. I only ask a man’s
chance,” answered Harris. Halliday proposed his name and backed it up
with a strong personal endorsement, gave a brief sketch of his
culture and accomplishments and asked that he be allowed to learn the
bricklayer’s trade.
When his name came up before the Brick Layers’ Union, and it was
announced that he was a negro, it precipitated a debate of such fury
that it threatened to develop into a riot.
One of the men sprang toward the presiding officer with blazing eyes,
gesticulating wildly until recognised.
“I have this to say,” he shouted. “No negro shall ever enter the door of
this Union except over my dead body. The Negro can under live us. We
can not compete with him, and as a race we can not organise him. Let him
stay in the South. We have no room for him here, and we will kill him if
he tries to take our bread from us!”
“Have you no sympathy for his age-long sufferings in slavery?”
interrupted Halliday.
“Slavery! of all the delusions the idea that slavery was abolished
in this country in 1865 is the silliest, Slavery was never firmly
established until the chattel form was abandoned for the wage system in
1865. Chattel slavery was too expensive. The wage system is cheaper.
Now they never have to worry about food, or clothes, or houses, or the
children, or the aged and infirm among wage slaves.
“Once the master hunted the slave,--now the slave must hunt the master,
beg for the privilege of serving him and trample others to death trying
to fasten the chains on when a brother slave drops dead in his tracks.
“No, I don’t shed any crocodile tears over the Negro slavery of the
South. It was a mild form of servitude, in which the Negro had plenty
to eat and wear, never suffered from cold, slept soundly and reared his
children in droves with never a thought for the morrow.
“Then mothers and babes were sometimes, though not often, separated by
an executor’s or sheriff’s sale. Now, we know better than to allow babes
to be born. Then, a babe was a valuable asset and received the utmost
care. Now, we have baby farms which we fertilise with their bones. I
know of one old hag in this city who has killed over two thousand babes.
“What chance has your girl or mine to marry and build a home? Not one in
a hundred will ever feel the breath of a babe at her breast.
“No!” he closed in thunder tones. “I ’ll fight the encroachment of the
Negro on our life with every power of body and soul!”
A hundred men leaped to their feet at once, shouting and gesticulating.
The chairman recognised a tall dark man with a Russian face, but who
spoke perfect English.
“I, gentlemen, am an anarchist in principle, and differ slightly in
the process by which I come to the same conclusion as my friend who
has taken his seat. I grieve at the necessity before the workingmen
of returning to slavery. All we can hope now for a century or two
centuries, is socialism. Socialism is simply a system of slavery--that
is, enforced labour in which a Bureaucracy is master. We must enter
again a condition of involuntary servitude for the guarantee by the
State of food and clothes, shelter and children.
“It is no time to weep over slavery. The one thing we demand now is the
nationalisation of industries under the control of State Bureaux which
will enforce labour from every citizen according to his capacity, for
the simple guarantee of what the negro slave received, the satisfaction
of the two elemental passions, hunger and love.”
Again a clamour broke out that drowned the speaker’s voice. A Socialist
and an Anarchist clinched in a fight, and for five minutes pandemonium
reigned, but at the end of it Harris was tying on the sidewalk with a
gash in his head, and Halliday was bending over him.
When Harris had recovered from his wound, Halliday took him on a round
of visits to big mills in a populous manufacturing city across in New
Jersey.
“These mills are all owned by Simon Legree,” he informed Harris, “and
the unions have been crushed out of them by methods of which he is past
master. I don’t know, but it may be possible to get you in there.”
They tried a half dozen mills in vain, and at last they met a foreman
who knew Halliday who consented to hear his plea.
“You are fooling away your time and this man’s time, Halliday,” he told
him in a friendly way. “I’d cut my right arm off sooner than take a
negro in these mills and precipitate a strike.”
“But would a strike occur with no union organisation?”
“Yes, in a minute. You know Simon Legree who owns these mills. If a
disturbance occurred here now the old devil wouldn’t hesitate to close
every mill next day and beggar fifty thousand people.”
“Why would he do such a stupid thing?”
“Just to show the brute power of his fifty millions of dollars over the
human body. The awful power in that brute’s hands, represented in that
money, is something appalling. Before the war he cracked a blacksnake
whip over the backs of a handful of negroes. Now look at him, in his
black silk hat and faultless dress. With his millions he can commit any
and every crime from theft to murder with impunity. His power is greater
than a monarch. He controls fleets of ships, mines and mills, and has
under his employ many thousands of men. Their families and associates
make a vast population. He buys Judges, Juries, Legislatures, and
Governors and with one stroke of his pen to-day can beggar thousands of
people. He can equip an army of hirelings, make peace or war on his own
account, or force the governments to do it for him. He has neither faith
in God, nor fear of the devil. He regards all men as his enemies and all
women his game.
“They say he used to haunt the New Orleans’ slave market, when he was
young and owned his Red River farm, occasionally spending his last
dollar to buy a handsome negro girl who took his fancy.
“Look at him now with his bloated face, beastly jaw, and coarse lips. He
walks the streets with his lecherous eyes twinkling like a snake’s and
saliva trickling from the corners of his mouth practically monarch of
all he surveys. He selects his victims at his own sweet will, and with
his army of hirelings to do his bidding, backed by his millions, he
lives a charmed life in a round of daily crime.
“How many lives he has blasted among the population of the multitude
of souls dependent on him for bread, God only knows. It is said he has
murdered the souls of many innocent girls in these mills--”
“Surely that is an exaggeration,” broke in Halliday.
“On the other hand I believe the picture is far too mild. I tell you no
human mind can conceive the awful brute power over the human body his
millions hold under our present conditions of life.”
There was a tinge of deep personal bitterness in the man’s words
that held Halliday in a spell while he continued, “Under our present
conditions men and women must fight one another like beasts for food and
shelter. The wildest dreams of lust and cruelty under the old system of
Southern slavery would be laughed at by this modern master.”
He paused a moment in painful reverie.
“There lies his big yacht in the harbour now. She is just in from a
cruise in the Orient. She cost half a million dollars, and carries a
crew of fifty men. With them are beautiful girls hired at fancy wages
connected with the stewardess’ department. She ships a new crew every
trip. Not one of those young faces is ever lifted again among their
friends.”
He paused again and a tear coursed down his face.
“I confess I am bitter. I loved one of those girls once when I was
younger. She was a mere child of seventeen.” His voice broke. “Yes, she
came back shattered in health and ruined. I am supporting her now at a
quiet country place. She is dying.
“Think of the farce of it all!” he continued passionately.
“The picture of that brute with a whip in his hand beating a negro
caused the most terrible war in the history of the world. Three millions
of men flew at each other’s throats and for four years fought like
demons. A million men and six billions of dollars worth of property were
destroyed.
“He was a poor harmless fool there beating his own faithful slave to
death. Compare that Legree with the one of to-day, and you compare a
mere stupid man with a prince of hell. But does this fiend excite the
wrath of the righteous? Far from it. His very name is whispered in
admiring awe by millions. He boasts that dozens of proud mothers strip
their daughters to the limit the police law will allow at every social
function he honours with his presence, and offer to sell him their
own flesh and blood for the paltry consideration of a life interest in
one-third of his estate! And he laughs at them all. His name is magic!
“I know of one weak fool, a petty millionaire, whom Legree lured into a
speculative trap and ruined. On his knees in his Fifth Avenue palace the
whining coward kissed Legree’s feet and begged for mercy. He kicked him
and sneered at his misery. At last when he had tortured him to the verge
of madness he offered to spare him on one condition--that he should give
him his daughter as a ransom. And he did it.
“No, the brute power of such a man to-day is beyond the grasp of the
human mind. His chances for debauchery and cruelty are limitless. The
brain of his hirelings is put to the test to invent new crime against
nature to interest his appetites. The only limit to his power of evil is
the capacity of the human mind to think, and his body to act and endure.
When he is exhausted, he can command the knowledge and the skill of ages
and the masters of all Science to restore his strength, while satellites
lick his feet and sing his praises--
“Risk the whim of such a man with the lives of these poor people
dependent on me? No, I’d sooner kill that negro you have brought here
and take my chances of detection.”
Halliday gave up the task, returned to New York, and sought the aid of
the greatest labour leader in America, who had arrived in the city from
the West the day before.
“No, Halliday,” he said emphatically. “Send your negro back down South.
We don’t want any more of them, or to come in contact with them. I have
just come from the West where a desperate strike was in progress in one
of Legree’s mines. Our men were toiling in the depth of the earth in
midnight darkness, never seeing the light of day, for just enough to
keep body and soul together. They tried to wring one little concession
from their absent master, who had never condescended to honour them with
his presence. What did he do? Shut down his mines, and brought up from
the South a herd of negroes who came crowding to the mines to push our
men back into hell. We begged them to go home and let us alone. They
grinned, shuffled and looked at their white driver for the signal to
go to work. I ordered the men to shoot them down like dogs. We made the
Governor issue a proclamation driving them back South and warning their
race that if they attempted to enter the borders of the state he would
meet them with Gatling guns.
“No, send your friend South. The winters up here are too cold for him
and the summers too hot.”
In the meantime Harris walked the streets with a storm of furious
passion raging in his soul. The realisation of the shame and the horror
of his position! He was the son of Eliza Harris who had fled from the
kindliest form of slavery in Kentucky. He had a trained mind, and the
brightest gifts of musical genius. Yet he stood that day at the door
of Simon Legree and begged in vain for the privilege of serving in the
meanest capacity as his slave! What a strange circle of time, those
forty years of the past!
And then the tempter whispered the right word at the right moment, and
his fate was sealed.
“There’s but one thing left. I will do it!” he exclaimed.
He entered the employ of a gambling joint and deliberately began a
life of crime. After a month he won five hundred dollars, and went on
a strange journey, visiting the scenes in Colorado, Kansas, Indiana and
Ohio where negroes had recently been burned alive. He would find the
ash-heap, and place on it a wreath of costly flowers. He lingered
thoughtfully over the ash-piles he found in Kansas made from the flesh
of living negroes. He tried to imagine the figure of John Brown marching
by his side, but instead he felt the grip of Simon Legree’s hand on his
throat, living, militant, omnipotent. His soul had conquered the world.
Yet even Legree had never dared to burn a negro to death in the old days
of slavery.
He found one of these ash-heaps at the foot of the monument in Indiana
to the great Western colleague of Thaddeus Stevens, and with a sigh
placed his wreath on it, and passed on into Ohio.
He went to the spot where his mother had climbed up the banks of the
Ohio River into the promised land of liberty, and followed the track of
the old Underground Railroad for fugitive slaves a few miles. He came
to a village which was once a station of this system. Here strangest of
all, he found one of these ash-heaps in the public square.
CHAPTER IX--THE NEW AMERICA
ANOTHER year of struggle and suffering, hope and fear, Gaston had
passed, and still he was no nearer the dream of realised love. If
anything had changed, the General’s pride had added new force to his
determination that his daughter should not marry the man who had defied
him.
His chief reliance for Gaston’s defeat was on time, and the broadening
of Sallie’s mind by extended travel. He had sent her abroad twice, and
this year he sent her to spend another three months in Europe.
These absences seemed only to intensify her longing for her lover.
On her return the General would burst into a storm of rage at her
persistence. She had ceased to give him any bitter answers, only smiling
quietly and maintaining an ominous silence.
He had a new cause now of dislike for the man of her choice. Gaston had
become a man of acknowledged power in politics and was the leader of a
group of radical young men who demanded the complete reorganisation of
the Democratic party, the shelving of the old timers, among whom he was
numbered, and the announcement of a radical programme upon the Negro
issue.
Radicalism of any sort he had always hated. Now, as advanced by this
young upstart, it was doubly odious. The General had never given much
time to his political duties, but his name was a power, and he gave
regularly to the campaign committee the largest cash contribution they
received.
He tried in a clumsy way to put Gaston off the State Executive
Committee, but failed. He saw Gaston quietly laughing at him. Then he
opened his pocket book and worked up a machine. It was a formidable
power, and Gaston feared its influence in the coming convention.
While this fight was in progress, and Sallie was in Europe, the
destruction of the _Maine_ in Havana harbour stilled the world into
silence with the echo of its sullen roar. There was a moment’s pause,
and the nation lifted its great silk battle flags from the Capitol at
Washington, and called for volunteers to wipe the empire of Spain from
the map of the Western world.
The war lasted but a hundred days, but in those hundred days was packed
the harvest of centuries.
War is always the crisis that flashes the search light into the souls of
men and nations, revealing their unknown strength and weakness, and the
changes that have been silently wrought in the years of peace.
In these hundred days, statesmen who were giants suddenly shrivelled
into pigmies and disappeared from the nation’s life. Young men whose
names were unknown became leaders of the republic and won immortal fame.
We were afraid that our nation still lacked unity. The world said we
were a mob of money-grubbers, and had lost our grasp of principle. The
President called for 125,000 men to die for their flag, and next morning
800,000 were struggling for place in the line.
We feared that religion might threaten the future with its bitter feud
between the Roman Catholic and Protestant in a great crisis. We saw
our Catholic regiments march forth to that war with screaming fife and
throbbing drum and the flag of our country above them, going forth to
fight an army that had been blessed by the Pope of Rome. The flag had
become the common symbol of eternal justice, and the nation the organ
through which all creeds and cults sought for righteousness.
We feared the gulf between the rich and the poor had become impassable,
and we saw the millionaire’s son take his place in the ranks with
the workingman. The first soldier wearing our uniform who fell before
Santiago with a Spanish bullet in his breast, was an only son from a
palatial home in New York, and by his side lay a cowboy from the West
and a plowboy from the South. Once more we showed the world that classes
and clothes are but thin disguises that hide the eternal childhood of
the soul.
Sectionalism and disunity had been the most terrible realities in our
national history. Our fathers had a poet leader whose soul dreamed a
beautiful dream called _E Pluribus Unum._. But it had remained a dream.
New England had threatened secession years before South Carolina in
blind rage led the way. The Union was saved by a sacrifice of blood that
appalled the world. And still millions feared the South might be false
to her plighted honour at Appomattox. The ghost of Secession made and
unmade the men and measures of a generation.
Then came the trumpet call that put the South to the test of fire and
blood. The world waked next morning to find for the first time in
our history the dream of union a living fact. There was no North,
no South,--but from the James to the Rio Grande the children of the
Confederacy rushed with eager flushed faces to defend the flag their
fathers had once fought.
And God reserved in this hour for the South, land of ashes and tombs and
tears, the pain and the glory of the first offering of life on the altar
of the new nation. Our first and only officer who fell dead on the deck
of a warship, with the flag above him, was Worth Bagley, of North
Carolina, the son of a Confederate soldier. The gallant youngster who
stood on the bridge of the _Merrimac_, and between two towering
mountains of flaming cannon, in the darkness of night blew up his ship
and set a new standard of Anglo-Saxon daring, was the son of a
Confederate soldier of North Carolina.
The town of Hambright furnished a whole company of eighty-six men, a
Captain, three Lieutenants, and a Major, who saw service in the war.
When they were drawn up in the court house square under the old oak,
the Preacher stood before them and called the roll from four browned
parchments. They were Campbell county Confederate rosters. Every one
of the eighty-six men was a child of the Confederacy. And the immortal
company F, that was wiped out of existence at the battle of Gettysburg
furnished more than half these children.
“Ah, boys, blood will tell!” cried the Preacher, shaking hands with each
man as they left.
A single round from the guns, and it was over. The yellow flag of Spain,
lit with the sunset splendour of a world empire, faded from the sky of
the West.
A new naval power had arisen to disturb the dreams of statesmen. The
_Oregon_, that fierce leviathan of hammered steel, had made her mark
upon the globe. In a long black trail of smoke and ribbon of foam, she
had circled the earth without a pause for breath. The thunder of her
lips of steel over the shattered hulks of a European navy proclaimed the
advent of a giant democracy that struck terror to the hearts of titled
snobs.
He who dreamed this monster of steel, felt her heart beat, saw her rush
through foaming seas to victory, before the pick of a miner had
struck the ore for her ribs from a mountain side, was a child of the
Confederacy--that Confederacy whose desperate genius had sent then
_Alabama_ spinning round the globe in a whirlwind of fire.
America united at last and invincible, waked to the consciousness of her
resistless power.
And, most marvellous of all, this hundred days of war had re-united the
Anglo-Saxon race. This sudden union of the English speaking people in
friendly alliance disturbed the equilibrium of the world, and confirmed
the Anglo-Saxon in his title to the primacy of racial sway.
CHAPTER X--ANOTHER DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
ALMOST every problem of national life had been illumined and made more
hopeful by the searchlight of war save one--the irrepressible conflict
between the African and the Anglo-Saxon in the development of our
civilisation. The glare of war only made the blackness of this question
the more apparent.
While the well-drilled negro regulars, led by white officers acquitted
themselves with honour at Santiago, the negro volunteers were the source
of riot and disorder wherever they appeared. From the first, it was seen
by thoughtful men that the Negro was an impossibility in the newborn
unity of national life. When the Anglo-Saxon race was united into one
homogeneous mass in the fire of this crisis, the Negro ceased that
moment to be a ward of the nation.
A negro regiment had been in camp at Independence during the war and
was still there awaiting orders to be mustered out. Its presence had
inflamed the passions of both races to the danger point of riot again
and again. The negro who was editing their paper at Independence had
gone to the length of the utmost license in seeking to influence race
antagonism.
When the regiment of which the Hambright company was a member was
mustered out at Independence, Gaston was invited to deliver the address
of welcome home to the soldiers, and a crowd of five thousand people
were present, one-half of whom were negroes.
While Gaston was speaking in the square, a negro trooper passing along
the street refused to give an inch of the sidewalk to a young lady and
her escort, who met him. He ran into the girl, jostling her roughly, and
the young white man knocked him down instantly and beat him to death.
The wildest passions of the negro regiment were roused. McLeod was among
them that day seeking to increase his popularity and influence in the
coming election, and he at once denounced Gaston as the cause of the
assault, and urged the leaders in secret to retaliate by putting a
bullet through his heart.
The white regiment had been mustered out, and their guns in most cases
had been retained by the men. The negro troops were to be mustered out
the next day.
Late in the afternoon Gaston had received information that a plot was on
foot to kill him that night, when a negro mob would batter down his door
on the pretense of searching for the man who had assaulted the trooper.
The Colonel of the regiment just disbanded heard it, and that night his
men bivouacked in the yard of the hotel and slept on their guns.
A little after twelve o’clock, a mob of five hundred negroes attempted
to force their way into the hotel. They met a regiment of bayonets,
broke, and fled in wild confusion.
This event was the last straw that broke the camel’s back. In the
morning paper a blazing notice in display capitals covered the first
page, calling a mass meeting of white citizens at noon in Independence
Hall.
The little city of Independence was one of the oldest in the nation.
It boasted the first declaration of independence from Great Britain
antedating a year the Philadelphia document. The people had never rested
tamely under tyranny nor accepted insult.
The McLeod Negro-Farmer Legislature had remodelled the ancient charter
of the city, and under the new instrument a combination of negroes and
criminal whites had taken possession of every office.
One half of these office holders were incompetent and insolent negroes.
The Chief of Police was an ignoramus in league with criminals, and their
Mayor, a white demagogue elected by pandering to the lowest passions of
a negro constituency.
Burglary and highway robbery were almost daily occurrences. The two
largest stores in the city and four residences had been burned within a
month. Appeal to the police became a farce, and it was necessary to
hire and arm a force of private guards to patrol the city at night.
When arrests were made, the servile authorities promptly released the
criminals. Negro insolence reached a height that made it impossible for
ladies to walk the streets without an armed escort, and white children
were waylaid and beaten on their way to the public schools.
The incendiary organ of the negroes, a newspaper that had been noted for
its virulent spirit of race hatred, had published an editorial defaming
the virtue of the white women of the community.
At eleven o’clock the quaint old hall, built in Revolutionary days
to seat five hundred people, was packed with a crowd of eight hundred
stern-visaged men standing so thick it was impossible to pass through
them and thousands were massed outside around the building.
Gaston, whose ancestors had been leaders in the great Revolution, was
called to the chair. The speech-making was brief, fiery, and to the
point.
Within one hour they unanimously adopted this resolution:
“_Resolved, that we issue a second Declaration of Independence from the
infamy of corrupt and degraded government. The day of Negro domination
over the Anglo-Saxon race shall close, now, once and forever. The
government of North Carolina was established by a race of pioneer white
freemen for white men and it shall remain in the hands of freemen._
“_We demand the overthrow of the criminal and semi-barbarian régime under
which we now live, and to this end serve notice on the present Mayor of
this city, its Chief of Police, and the six negro aldermen and their low
white associates that their resignations are expected by nine o’clock
to-morrow morning. We demand that the negro anarchist who edits a paper
in this city shall close his office, remove its fixtures and leave this
county within twenty-four hours.”_
A committee of twenty-five, with Gaston as its Chairman, was appointed
to enforce these resolutions.
By four o’clock an army of two thousand white men was organised, and
placed under the command of the Rev. Duncan McDonald, pastor of the
First Presbyterian Church of the city, who had been a brave young
officer in the Confederate army. Every minister in the county was
enrolled in this guard and carried a musket on picket duty, or in a
reserve camp that night.
At six o’clock, Gaston summoned thirty-five of the more prominent
negroes of the county including two of the professors in Miss Susan
Walker’s college, to meet the Committee of Twenty-Five and receive
its ultimatum. Stern and hard of face sat the twenty-five chosen
representatives of that world-conquering race of men at one end of the
room, while at the other end sat the thirty-five negroes anxious and
fearful, realising that their day of dominion had ended.
Gaston rose and handed them a copy of the resolutions.
“We give you till seven-thirty to-morrow morning as the leaders of your
race to carry out these demands,” he said gravely.
“But we have no authority, sir,” replied the negro preacher to whom he
handed the paper.
“Your authority is equal to ours--the authority of elemental manhood. If
you can not execute them in peace, we will do it by force.”
“We must decline such responsibility unless”--the negro started to argue
the question.
“The meeting stands adjourned!” quietly announced Gaston, taking up his
hat and leaving the room followed by his Committee.
At seven-thirty next morning no answer had been received. Gaston called
for seventy-five volunteers to execute the decrees.
Within thirty minutes, five hundred men swung into line at eight
o’clock, and marched four abreast to the office of the negro paper. It
was promptly burned to the ground, its editor paid its cash value, and
with a rope around his neck, escorted to the depot and placed on a north
bound train.
As Gaston handed him his ticket for Washington he quietly said to him,
“I have saved your life this morning. If you value it, never put your
foot on the soil of this state again.”
“Thank you, sir. I ’ll not return.”
While this guard, under strict military discipline, was executing this
decree, a mob of a thousand armed negroes concealed themselves in a
hedge-row and fired on them from ambush, killing one man and wounding
six. Gaston formed his men in line, returned the fire with deadly
effect, charged the mob, put them to flight, driving them into the woods
outside the city limits, and placed the town under informal but strict
martial law. By ten o’clock the resignation of every city and county
officer was in his hand, and the Mayor and Chief of Police were at his
feet begging for mercy.
He posted a notice over the county warning every negro and white
associate that no further insolence or criminality would be tolerated.
The county and municipal election was but three days off and there was
but one ticket on the field. When the white men elected were sworn in,
the guards went to the woods and told the terrified and half starving
negroes they could return to their homes, a competent police force was
organised, and the volunteer organisation disbanded. Negro refugees and
their associates once more filled the ear of the national government
with clamour for the return of the army to the South to uphold Negro
power, but for the first time since 1867, it fell on deaf ears. The
Anglo-Saxon race had been reunited. The Negro was no longer the ward
of the Republic. Henceforth, he must stand or fall on his own worth and
pass under the law of the survival of the fittest.
This event made a tremendous impression on the imagination of the
people. It increased the popularity and power of Gaston, its intended
victim, The General was more than ever determined to destroy Gaston’s
power in the convention which was to meet in a few weeks. He had his
candidate for Governor well groomed and he had captured the largest
number of pledged delegates. There were three other candidates, but none
of them apparently were backed by Gaston. The General was puzzled at
his methods, and failed to discover his programme, though he spent money
with liberality and exhausted every resource at his command.
A strange thing had occurred that had upset all calculations. Beginning
at Independence a race fire had broken into resistless fury and was
sweeping along the line of all the counties on the South Carolina border
and over the entire state with incredible rapidity. Everywhere, the
white men were arming themselves and parading the streets and public
roads in cavalry order dressed in scarlet shirts. This Red Shirt
movement was a spontaneous combustion of inflammable racial power that
had been accumulating for a generation.
The Democratic Executive Committee was called together in haste and made
the most frantic efforts to stop it. But there was no head to it. It had
no organisation except a local one, and it spread by a spark flying from
one county to another.
McLeod laughed at the address of the Democratic Committee and swore
Gaston was the organiser of the movement. He determined to nip it in the
bud by putting Gaston under a cloud that would destroy his influence.
He did not dare to attack him for his part in the Revolution at
Independence. He preferred to belittle that affair as a local
disturbance.
But at an election for Congressman to fill a vacancy, the Democratic
candidate had won by a narrow margin in a campaign of great bitterness
under Gaston’s leadership.
Charges of fraud were freely made on both sides. McLeod determined to
utilise these charges, and by producing perjured witnesses before a
packed court, place Gaston in jail without bail until the convention had
met.
He had every advantage in such a conspiracy. The United States judge
whom he intended to utilise was a creature of his own making, a
trickster whose confirmation had been twice defeated in the Senate by
the members of his own party on his shady record. But he had won the
place at last by hook and crook, and McLeod owned him body and soul.
Accordingly Gaston was arrested with a warrant McLeod had obtained
from his judge, arraigned before him and committed without bail. He was
charged with a felony under the election laws, taken to Asheville and
placed in jail.
The audacity of this arrest and the vehemence with which McLeod pressed
his charges created a profound sensation in the state. It was rumoured
that the graver charge of murder lay back of the charge of felony
and would be pressed in due time. A murder had been committed in the
district during the exciting campaign and no clue had ever been found to
its perpetrator. McLeod knew he had no evidence connecting Gaston with
this event, but he knew that he had henchmen who would swear to any
thing he told them and stick to it.
CHAPTER XI--THE HEART OF A WOMAN
A WEEK after Gaston’s imprisonment Sallie Worth arrived in New York
from her last trip abroad. She had cut her trip short and cabled her
father of her return.
She was in an agony of suspense and uncertainty about her lover.
Gaston’s letters had failed to reach her for a month by reason of the
war which had demoralised the mail service. Her own letters had failed
to reach Gaston for a similar reason.
The General hastened to New York to meet his wife and daughter and
persuade Sallie to remain in the North until December. He was hopeful
now that her long absence and Gaston’s absorption in politics, his
bitter opposition to him personally, and the cloud under which he rested
in prison, would be the final forces that would give him the victory in
the long conflict he had waged for the mastery of his daughter’s heart.
Before informing Sallie of the stirring events at Independence and
the part Gaston had taken in them, or allowing her to learn of his
imprisonment, the General sought to find the exact state of her mind.
“I trust, Sallie,” he began, “you are recovering from your infatuation
for this man. You know how dearly I love you. I have never taken a step
in life since I looked into your baby face that wasn’t for you and your
happiness.”
She only looked at him wistfully and her eyes seemed to be dreaming, “I
want you to have some pride. Gaston has attempted to kick me out of the
councils of the party, and become the dictator of the state. His course
is one of violence and radicalism. I regard him as a dangerous man, and
I want you to have nothing to do with him.”
She was gravely silent.
“Do you believe he has been faithfully dreaming of you in your absence?”
asked the General.
“Yes, I do!”
“Then let me disabuse your mind. It is not the way of strong men. He
is absolutely absorbed in a desperate political struggle in which his
personal ambition’s are first. I have seen him paying the most devoted
attentions to the daughter of our rival down east, whose influence he
wants, and it is rumoured among his friends that he has proposed to
her.”
“Who told you that?” she asked impetuously.
“I had it first from Allan, but I’ve heard it since from others.”
“I do not believe a word of it,” she declared.
“That’s because you’re a woman and hold such silly ideals. I tell
you, he wants you only because he knows you are rich, and he wishes to
brow-beat me. Such a man will try to whip you before you have been
his wife five years. I know that kind of man. Why can’t you trust my
judgment?”
“I had rather trust my heart’s intuitions, Papa, I can not be deceived
in such a question.”
“Well, you are being deceived. He is anything but a languishing lover.
At present he is a political tiger at bay. Unless you hold him to you by
some pledge he has given, he will forget you, and marry another in two
years. I am a man and I know men. I thought I was desperately in love
twice before I met your mother. I got over both attacks without a
scratch, fell in love with her, married and have lived happily ever
since. You have overestimated your own importance to him and your
influence over him.”
A great fear awed her into silence. For the first time in all her
struggle with her father the sense suddenly came into her heart of her
dependence on Gaston’s love for the very desire to live, and for the
first time she realised the possibility of losing him. What if he should
press his great ambitions to successful issue while she stood irresolute
and tortured him with her indecision? If he could win the world’s
applause without her, might he not, when successful, cease to need her?
Her breast heaved with the tumult of uncertainty. What if another woman
saw and loved him, and drew near to him in his hours of soul loneliness
and struggle, and he had learned to see her face with joy! The
conviction came crushing upon her that she had not responded bravely to
this powerful man’s singular devotion into which he had poured without
reserve his deepest passion. Had he weighed her and found her wanting
in some dark hour in her absence? Her heart was in her throat at the
thought!
The General watched her keenly for several moments, and thought at last
he had broken the spell. He believed he could now tell her of the cloud
that hung over Gaston.
“I said, Sallie, that I believed Gaston a dangerous man. I did not
speak lightly. We have had terrible riots in Independence while you
were absent in which Gaston was the leader of an armed revolution which
overturned the city and county government. Two thousand men were under
arms for a week and several were killed and wounded on both sides. The
results were good as a whole, I confess. We have a decent government
and we have security of property and life, but such methods will lead to
civil war.”
Her face grew tense, and she looked at her father with breathless
interest during this recital.
“Was he in danger in those riots?” she slowly asked.
“Yes, and I expect him to be killed at an early day if he continues his
present methods. A mob of five hundred negroes attempted to kill him.
This was one of the causes that led to the Revolution.”
She was on her feet now pale and trembling with excitement.
“Where is he?” she gasped.
“Now, my dear, it’s useless to get excited. The trouble is all over
and a new Mayor and police force are in charge of the city. But he
is resting under a serious cloud at present. He is held in jail at
Asheville on a charge of felony, and a charge of murder is being
pressed.”
“In jail! in jail!” she cried incredulously while her eyes filled with
tears.
“Yes, and Allan believes these ugly charges will be proved in the United
States court, and he will be convicted.”
She did not seem to hear the last sentence.
“In jail!” she repeated, “my lover, to whom I have given my life, and
you, my father, while I was three thousand miles away stood by and did
not lift a hand to help him?”
“Has he not been my bitterest enemy, seeking to insult me!” thundered
the General.
“No, he never insulted you, or spoke one unkind word about you in his
life. Oh! this is shameful! God forgive me that I was not here!” Tears
were streaming down her face.
“You hold me responsible for the crazy young scamp’s career?” cried the
General indignantly.
“Not another word to me!” she exclaimed. “You shall not abuse him in my
presence.”
The General was afraid of her when she used the tone of voice in which
she uttered that sentence. He had heard it but once before, and that was
when she told him she was a free woman twenty-one years old, and he had
broken down. He looked at her now, fearing to speak. At length he said,
“I have engaged a suite of rooms for you here at the Waldorf-Astoria,
my dear, for the winter. I hope you will enjoy the season. Let us change
this painful subject.”
“I do not want the rooms,” she firmly replied, “I am going to Asheville
on the first train.”
The General stormed and raged for an hour, but she made no reply. Her
mother was suffering from the effects of the voyage and took no part in
this storm.
“But your mother will not be able to accompany you. Surely you will not
disgrace me by visiting that man in jail!”
“I will. And when he is released I will return. I will visit Stella
Holt. I shall have ample protection.”
The General was afraid to oppose her in this dangerous mood, and begged
her mother to try to prevent her going. Sallie sent Gaston a telegram
that she was coming.
In obedience to the General’s request her mother called her into her
room that night and they had a long talk and cry in each other’s arms.
Mrs. Worth did not try very hard to persuade her not to go. Down in her
own woman’s soul she knew what she would do under similar conditions,
and she was too honest with her child to try to deceive her. She only
made love to her mother-fashion.
“Oh! Mama,” cried Sallie, burying her face beside her mother as she lay
in bed. “I am at a great soul crisis. I don’t know what to do. I feel
lonely, helpless and heart-sick. You are a woman. Put your dear arms
about me and help me to know the truth and my duty. I want to ask you a
question.”
“What is it, darling? I ’ll answer it, if I can,” she replied stroking
her dark hair tenderly.
“Do you believe these stories about Charlie’s character?”
“Not one word of them!” she promptly answered.
An impulsive kiss and a sob!
“Dear Mother!” she said in a low tearful voice. “And now one more. Papa
has been dinning into my ears his own fickleness in love when young and
the fact that he knows in a long life that love is of little importance
in a man’s existence. He says that I can forget and love again with
equal intensity and bet’ter judgment. Can one treat thus lightly the
soul’s deepest instincts and still find life rich and worthy of effort?”
Her voice broke and she continued slowly and tremblingly, as she held
one of her mother’s hands tightly, “Now, Mama dear, heart to heart, tell
me as you would talk in your inmost soul to God, do you believe this is
true? You have sounded life’s deep meaning Is this all you know of life?
You love me. Tell me truly?”
“No, darling, a woman can not deny this deep yearning of her soul and
live. I would tear my tongue out sooner than deceive you in such an
hour.”
“Sweet Mother!” she softly murmured again as she kissed her good night.
CHAPTER XII--THE SPLENDOUR OF SHAMELESS LOVE
WHEN Gaston received her telegram in jail he was seated by a window
looking out through the bars on Mt. Pisgah’s distant peak looming in
grandeur amid a sea of smaller blue mountain waves. He read the message
and his soul was filled with a great peace.
“At last! at last! These prison bars, they are good! I could kiss them.
I can never be grateful enough to my enemies!”
He had taken his prison as a joke from the first, sneering at the judge
who had committed him. He knew that every day he stayed in that jail he
was becoming more and more the master of the people. If McLeod had tried
he could not have played into his hands with more fatal certainty. Five
hundred citizens of Independence had wired him their congratulations and
offered him any assistance he desired, from unlimited money for defence
to a delegation to tear the jail down.
He declined any assistance. He knew the storm would break over their
heads soon enough, and they would be delighted to get rid of him. In the
meantime he gave himself up to his thoughts about the woman he loved,
and wondered what change had suddenly come over her to send him that
message. He felt sure the great crisis in their life had come. What
would it be? A sorrowful surrender on her part to her father’s iron will
and a tearful good-bye forever, or the full surrender of her woman’s
soul and body to the dominion of his love?
He was glad the hour had struck that should decide. He trembled at the
import of her answer but he was ready to receive it.
A carriage rolled into the jail enclosure and two young ladies alighted.
One of them stopped in the sitting room for visitors, and he heard the
tramp of a man’s heavy feet on the stairs and after it the tread of a
woman like a soft echo.
The key grated in the lock, the door opened. She looked into his eyes
for just an instant of searching soul revelation, saw the yearning and
the grateful tears, and with a glad cry sprang into his arms.
“You do love me!” she passionately cried.
“Love you? I drew you back across the sea with my love. I knew you would
come. I willed it with a power you couldn’t resist.”
“I never got your letters, and I was hungry to see you,” she whispered.
“And I never got yours, and drew you back by the power of a great heart
purpose.”
“Forgive me, for being away from you when you were in danger.”
“I was glad you were safe. Don’t let this jail alarm you. I ’ll be out
too soon for my good I’m afraid.”
“No other woman has come into your heart to cheer it even with her
friendship since I’ve been away, has she?”
“What a silly question. I’ve never looked at any other woman since the
day I first saw you!”
“Tell me you love me again!”
“I--love--you, unto the uttermost, in life, in death, forever!” he
whispered tenderly.
She sighed and smiled. “The sweetest music the ear of a woman ever
heard!” she half laughed, half cried.
“Now, my dear, you are a full-grown woman in the beauty of a perfect
womanhood. For five years and more, I have waited and suffered. My life
is an open book before you. When are you going to end this suspense? You
must decide now whether your father’s will shall rule your life or my
love?”
“Must I decide to-day?” she asked tremblingly.
“Yes,” he answered. “It is not fair to torture me longer.”
“Then I give up!” she tearfully exclaimed. “God forgive me if I am doing
wrong! I can not resist you longer. I do not desire to,--I _will_ not!
I am all yours, forever--soul, body, will, honour, life--all! I can not
live without you. I love you. I _love you!_--Kiss me!--again--ah, your
lips are sweeter than honey! Am I bold to say it? I do not care, I am
yours. Your arms are the bonds of my slavery and they are sweet!”
Gaston was trembling with the joy that flooded his being with these the
first words of perfect faith and submissive love that had come from her
lips. And he winced at the memory now of those hours of dissipation when
he had doubted her. He tried to confess it and receive her absolution.
“My dear, my joy is too great. It is pain, as well as joy. In the dark
days of our first year of separation I thought once you had forgotten
me. I went away into two weeks of debauchery. Your perfect love crushes
me with its beauty and purity. I must confess this wrong to you. I must
not deceive you in the smallest thing in this hour.”
She placed her hand over his lips, “I will not hear it. I ought to have
been braver and fought for my rights and yours. I will not hear one word
of humiliation from you. I love you. You are my king. I love you, good
or bad. I would love you if you were a murderer on the gallows. I
can not help it. I do not wish to help it. I will follow you to the
bottomless pit or to the throne of God and say it without fear to devil
or angel. Kiss me again!--There, do not cry--let me see your beautiful
brown eyes. I ’ll kiss the tears away. Tears are for my eyes not
yours!”
“Then you will fix the day, dear?” he softly urged.
“How soon would you like it?”
“The sooner the better.”
“Then I fix to-day,” she said impulsively.
“What, here, in this jail?”
“Yes, where you are is heaven to me. I haven’t noticed the jail,” she
said soberly.
He looked at her a moment, strained her to his heart and brushed the
tears of joy from his eyes.
“My beautiful queen! This hour is worth every pain and every throb of
anguish I have suffered. Its memory will encompass life with a great
light.”
“I ’ll go with Stella, see Dr. Durham who is here looking after your
case, have him get the license, and we will be back in half an hour!”
The Preacher greeted her with delight. “Ah! Miss Sallie, if I had known
a little thing like this would have brought you back, I would have hired
a jail for him long ago, and put him in it.”
“Doctor, I want you to get the license and marry us now, will you do
it?”
“Will I? Just watch me. I ’ll have the documents and be ready for the
ceremony in fifteen minutes!” cried the preacher as he hurried to the
office of the Register of Deeds.
Sallie ran up to Mrs. Durham’s room, told her, and asked her to be one
of the witnesses.
“Of course, I will, Sallie. You are the one girl in the world I have
always wanted Charlie to marry.”
Sallie slipped her arm around Mrs. Durham. “You don’t think I am doing
wrong to disobey my parents thus, do you?” she faltered. “I feel just
for a moment, now that I have decided, bruised and homesick,--I want my
mother. Let me feel your arms about my neck just once. You are a woman.
You love me as well as Charlie, tell me, am I doing wrong?”
Mrs. Durham kissed her. “I do love you child. It is a solemn hour for
your soul. You alone can decide such a question. Any intrusion of advice
in such a trial would be a sacrilege. Under ordinary conditions it would
be a dangerous thing for a girl thus to leave her father’s roof and take
this step that will decide forever her destiny. Marriage is something
that swallows up life, the past, the present, the future. We seem to
have never known anything else. I can only say, if I were in your place,
knowing all I would do as you are doing.”
Sallie impulsively kissed her, bit her lips to keep back a tear, and
held her hand.
“I know your father well,” she continued. “He is a man I greatly admire.
But he is unreasonable with any one who dares to cross his will. You
could never get his consent now that his pride is aroused except by
forcing it. When it is over, he will forgive you, and when he knows your
lover as I know him, he will be as proud of his son-in-law as a peacock
of his plumage.”
“Oh, it is so sweet to hear just the advice one wishes in such an hour,”
cried Sallie. “I shall always love you for these words.”
“Yes, I congratulate you on the end of your long hesitation. I know you
will be happy. Any woman would be happy with the love of such a man, and
he was made for you.”
“Then you don’t believe with Papa,” she said with a smile, “that his
mouth is cruel, and that he will try to whip me in five years, do you?”
Mrs. Durham laughed. “Yes, he will whip you, but they will be love licks
and you will cry for more. Your lover is a rare and brilliant man. He
is strong, rugged, resistless in will, fierce in his passions from the
blood of sunny France in his veins, and masterful in life from the iron
heritage of the hardier races. You have seen these traits. Wait until
you know him as I do in his daily life, and you will find a wealth of
patience and a depth of tenderness that will startle. I envy you.”
“Thank you,” Sallie interrupted. “You don’t know how glad your words are
to my heart. I’ve not seen much of that trait yet. I’ve been half afraid
of him sometimes. Let me kiss you again.”
The keeper of the jail treated Gaston with every consideration and
arranged for the marriage to take place in the little sitting room where
he allowed him to come on parole.
The bride wore a plain travelling dress in which she had come from New
York. She had driven from the depot past Stella Holt’s home, and with
her straight to the jail.
Gaston thought her the fairest vision that ever greeted the eye of
man as he stood by her side; for he had seen that day the soul of a
radiantly beautiful woman in the splendour of shameless love. His own
soul was drunk with the joy of it all and his eyes now devoured her with
their intense light.
Standing there before the Preacher whom he loved as his father, and the
foster mother who had wrapped his little shivering body in the warmth of
a great heart that night the light of life went out in his own mother’s
room, with Stella Holt’s sympathetic face reflecting her friend’s
happiness, the marriage ceremony was performed. He took Sallie’s
trembling hand in his and promised to love, honour and cherish her
as long as life endured. And under his breath he added, “Here and
hereafter--forever.” And then she looked into his smiling face with her
blue eyes full of unspeakable love, and in a voice low and soft as the
note of a flute, gave to him her life.
And the Preacher said, “What God hath joined together, let not man put
asunder!”
She stayed there with him until the gathering twilight.
“Now, I must hurry back to my father and win him. I will not come to you
a beggar. My father shall not disinherit me. I am going to bring you my
fortune, too.”
“Oh! curse that fortune, dear! I’ve feared it was that keeping us apart
so long.”
“Don’t curse it. I like it, and I am going to win it for you. You are a
man of genius. Your success is as sure as if it were already won. I
will not come to you a helpless pauper. I have never been taught to do
anything. I should like to cook for you if I knew how, and I am going to
learn how. I am going to make you the most beautiful home that the heart
of a woman can dream I’d rob the world for treasure for it. I am going
to rob my dear old father. He has sworn to disinherit me if I marry
without his consent. He shall not do it.”
“Then, don’t be long about it. You are my treasure. I can build you a
snug little nest at Hambright.”
“I will only ask four weeks. Now do what I tell you. Sit down and write
Papa a letter telling him I am your affianced bride and ask his consent
to the celebration of our marriage within three weeks. That will produce
an earthquake, and something will surely happen within four weeks.”
He wrote the letter, and she looked over his shoulder. “You see, dear,”
she said as she kissed him good-bye, “I love Papa so tenderly. You can’t
understand how close the tie is between us, perhaps some day in our own
home of which I’m dreaming you may understand as you can not now,” she
added softly.
“Then for your sake, dearest, I hope you can win him. But I’m afraid of
this plan of yours.”
“Leave it with me for a month, do just as I tell you, and then I ’ll
obey you all the rest of our lives,--if your orders suit me,” she
playfully added.
She returned to Stella Holt’s, and Gaston went back to his jail room and
dreamed that night he was sleeping in the Governor’s Palace.
CHAPTER XIII--A SPEECH THAT MADE HISTORY
WHEN General Worth received Gaston’s brief and startling letter,
the wires were hot between New York and Asheville for hours. His last
message was a peremptory command to his daughter to join him immediately
at Independence.
When Sallie arrived at Oakwood the General was already there, and the
storm broke in all its fury. At every bitter word she only quietly
smiled, until the General was on the verge of collapse. Day after day
he begged, pleaded, raged and finally took to hard swearing as he looked
into her calm happy face.
In the meantime McLeod and his henchman on the judge’s bench had seen
a new light. The excitement over the arrest of Gaston seemed to have
fanned the flames of the Red Shirt movement into a conflagration. He was
alarmed at its meaning. The judge heard a rumour that five thousand Red
Shirts were mobilising at the foot of the Blue Ridge near Hambright,
and that they were going to march across the mountains, into Asheville,
demolish the jail, liberate Gaston, and hang the judge who had committed
him without bail.
The rumour was a fake, but he was not taking any chances. He issued an
order releasing Gaston on his own recognisance, and left for a vacation.
Gaston returned to Hambright showered with congratulatory telegrams from
every quarter of the state.
He received a brief note from Sallie saying the war was on but had
not reached its final climax, as the General was now devoting his best
energies to the Democratic convention which was to meet in ten days,
when he expected to crush any “fool movement of young upstarts!”
Gaston knew of his organisation but he was sure the number of delegates
pledged to the General’s machine was not enough to dominate the body,
even if he could hold them in line.
When this convention met at Raleigh, no body of representative men were
ever more completely at sea as to the platform or policy upon which they
would appeal to the people for the overthrow of an enemy. The coalition
that conquered the state and held it with the grip of steel for four
years was stronger than ever and was absolutely certain of victory. The
enormous patronage of the Federal Government had been in their hands for
four years, and with the state, county and municipal officers, a host of
powerful leaders had been gathered around McLeod’s daring personality.
Apparently he was about to fasten the rule of the Negro and his allies
on the state for a generation.
When Gaston entered the convention hall he received an ovation,
heartfelt and generous, but it did not reach the point of a disturbing
element in the calculations of the three or four prominent candidates
for Governor. General Worth had drilled his cohorts so thoroughly in
opposition to him, that any sort of stampeding was out of the question.
The platform committee was composed of seven leaders, among whom was
Gaston. There was a long wrangle over the document, and at length when
they reported, a sensation was created. For the first time since their
triumph over Simon Legree the committee was divided, and, refusing to
agree, submitted majority and minority reports. The committee stood five
for the majority and two for the minority.
Gaston and a daring young politician from the heart of the Black Belt
signed the minority report. The majority report as submitted, was merely
a rehash of the old platform on which they had been defeated by
McLeod twice, with slight additional impeachment of the incapacity and
corruption of the State Administration. The delegates from the Black
Belt and the counties where the Red Shirts had been holding their
noonday parades received it with silence. General Worth’s machine
cheered it vigourously, and gave a rousing reception to their chosen
champion who made the presentation speech.
When Gaston rose to offer and defend his minority report, a sudden hush
fell on the sea of eager faces. A few men in the convention had heard
him speak. All had heard he was an orator of power, and were anxious
to see him. His leadership in the Revolution of Independence and his
subsequent arrest and imprisonment had made him a famous man.
“Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Convention,” he began with a deliberate
clear voice which spoke of greater reserve power than the words he
uttered conveyed--“I move to substitute for this document of meaningless
platitudes the following resolution on which to make this campaign.”
You could have heard a pin fall, as in ringing tones like the call of
a bugle to battle he read, “Whereas, it is impossible to build a state
inside a state of two antagonistic races, And whereas, the future North
Carolinian must therefore be an Anglo-Saxon or a Mulatto, Resolved, that
the hour has now come in our history to eliminate the Negro from our
life and reëstablish for all time the government of our fathers.”
The delegates from New Hanover, Craven, and Halifax counties, the great
centres of the Black Belt, sprang on their seats with a roar of applause
that shook the building, and pandemonium broke loose. When one great
wave subsided another followed. It was ten minutes before order was
restored while Gaston stood calmly surveying the storm.
Just before him sat General Worth, pale and trembling with excitement.
The audacity of those resolutions had swept him for a moment off his
feet and back into the years of his own daring young manhood. He could
not help admiring this challenge of the modern world to stand at the bar
of elemental manhood and make good its right to existence. He was about
to summon his messengers and rally his lieutenants when Gaston began to
speak, and his first words chained his attention.
While the tumult raised by his resolutions was in progress he lifted his
eye toward the gallery and there just above him where it curved toward
the platform sat his beautiful secret bride. His heart leaped. Her face
was aflame with emotion, her eyes flashing with love and pride. She
slyly touched with her lips the tip of her finger and blew a kiss across
the intervening space. He smiled into her soul a look of gratitude, and
with every nerve strung to its highest tension resumed his place by the
speaker’s stand. When the tumult died away he began a speech that fixed
the history of a state for a thousand years.
His resolutions had wrought the crowd to the highest pitch of
excitement, and his words, clear, penetrating, and deliberate thrilled
his hearers with electrical power.
“Gentlemen,” he said, and the slightest whisper was hushed. “The history
of man is a series of great pulse beats, whose flood overwhelms his
future and fixes its life. Like the dammed torrent on a mountain side,
it breaks the conservatism that holds it stagnant for generations and
floods the world with its sweep. Theories, creeds, and institutions
hallowed by age, are cast as rubbish on the scarred hills that mark its
course. The old world is buried and a new one appears.
“The Anglo-Saxon is entering the new century with the imperial crown of
the ages on his brow and the sceptre of the infinite in his hands.
“The Old South fought against the stars in their courses--the resistless
tide of the rising consciousness of Nationality and World-Mission. The
young South greets the new era and glories in its manhood. He joins his
voice in the cheers of triumph which are ushering in this all-conquering
Saxon. Our old men dreamed of local supremacy. We dream of the conquest
of the globe. Threads of steel have knit state to state. Steam and
electricity have silently transformed the face of the earth, annihilated
time and space, and swept the ocean barriers from the path of man. The
black steam shuttles of commerce have woven continent to continent.
“We believe that God has raised up our race, as he ordained Israel of
old, in this world-crisis to establish and maintain for weaker races, as
a trust for civilisation, the principles of civil and religious Liberty
and the forms of Constitutional Government.
“In this hour of crisis, our flag has been raised over ten millions of
semi-barbaric black men in the foulest slave pen of the Orient. Shall
we repeat the farce of ‘67, reverse the order of nature, and make these
black people our rulers? If not, why should the African here, who is not
their equal, be allowed to imperil our life?”
A whirlwind of applause shook the building.
“A crisis approaches in the history of the human race. The world is
stirred by its consciousness today. The nation must gird up her loins
and show her right to live,--to master the future or be mastered in the
struggle. New questions press upon us for solution.
“Shall this grand old commonwealth lag behind and sink into the filth
and degradation of a Negroid corruption in this solemn hour of the
world?”
“No! No!” screamed a thousand voices.
“What is our condition to-day in the dawn of the twentieth century? If
we attempt to move forward we are literally chained to the body of a
festering Black Death!
“Fifty of our great counties are again under the heel of the Negro, and
the state is in his clutches. Our city governments are debauched by his
vote. His insolence threatens our womanhood, and our children are beaten
by negro toughs on the way to school while we pay his taxes. Shall we
longer tolerate negro inspectors of white schools, and negroes in charge
of white institutions? Shall we longer tolerate the arrest of white
women by negro officers and their trial before negro magistrates?
“Let the manhood of the Aryan race with its four thousand years of
authentic history answer that question!”
With blazing eyes, and voice that rang with the deep peal of defiant
power, Gaston hurled that sentence like a thunder bolt into the souls
of his two thousand hearers. The surging host sprang to their feet and
shouted back an answer that made the earth tremble!
Lifting his hand for silence he continued, “It is no longer a question
of bad government. It is a question of impossible government. We lag
behind the age dragging the decaying corpse to which we are chained.
“Who shall deliver us from the body of this death?
“Hear me, men of my race, Norman and Celt, Angle and Saxon, Dane and
Frank, Huguenot and German martyr blood!
“The hour has struck when we must rise in our might, break the chains
that bind us to this corruption, strike down the Negro as a ruling
power, and restore to our children their birthright, which we received,
a priceless legacy, from our fathers.
“I believe in God’s call to our race to do His work in history. What
other races failed to do, you wrought in this continental wilderness,
fighting pestilence, hunger, cold, wild beasts, and savage hordes, until
out of it all has grown the mightiest nation of the earth.
“Is the Negro worthy to rule over you?
“Ask history. The African has held one fourth of this globe for 3000
years. He has never taken one step in progress or rescued one jungle
from the ape and the adder, except as the slave of a superior race.
“In Hayti and San Domingo he rose in servile insurrection and butchered
fifty thousand white men, women and children a hundred years ago. He
has ruled these beautiful islands since. Did he make progress with the
example of Aryan civilisation before him? No. But yesterday we received
reports of the discovery of cannibalism in Hayti.
“He has had one hundred years of trial in the Northern states of this
Union with every facility of culture and progress, and he has not
produced one man who has added a feather’s weight to the progress of
humanity. In an hour of madness the dominion of the ten great states
of the South was given him without a struggle. A saturnalia of infamy
followed.
“Shall we return to this? You must answer. The corruption of his
presence in our body politic is beyond the power of reckoning. We drove
the Carpet-bagger from our midst, but the Scalawag, our native product,
is always with us to fatten on this corruption and breed death to
society. The Carpet-bagger was a wolf, the Scalawag is a hyena. The one
was a highwayman, the other a sneak.
“So long as the Negro is a factor in our political life, will violence
and corruption stain our history. We can not afford longer to play with
violence. We must remove the cause.
“Suffrage in America has touched the lowest tide-mud of degradation. If
our cities and our Southern civilisation are to be preserved, there must
be a return to the sanity of the founders of this Republic.
“A government of the wealth, virtue and intelligence of the community,
by the debased and the criminal, is a relapse to elemental barbarism to
which no race of freemen can submit.
“Shall the future North Carolinian be an Anglo-Saxon or a Mulatto? That
is the question before you.
“Nations are made by men, not by paper constitutions and paper ballots.
We are not free because we have a Constitution. We have a Constitution
because our pioneer fathers who cleared the wilderness and dared the
might of kings, were freemen. It was in their blood, the tutelage of
generation on generation beyond the seas, the evolution of centuries of
struggle and sacrifice.
“If you can make men out of paper, then it is possible with a scratch of
a pen in the hand of a madman to transform by its magic a million slaves
into a million kings.
“We grant the Negro the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness if he can be happy without exercising kingship over the
Anglo-Saxon race, or dragging us down to his level. But if he can not
find happiness except in lording it over a superior race, let him look
for another world in which to rule. There is not room for both of us on
this continent!”
Again and again Gaston raised his hand to still the mad tumult of
applause his words evoked.
“And we will fight it out on this line, if it takes a hundred years, two
hundred, five hundred, or a thousand. It took Spain eight hundred years
to expel the Moors. When the time comes the Anglo-Saxon can do in one
century what the Spaniard did in eight.
“We have been congratulated on our self-restraint under the awful
provocation of the past four years. There is a limit beyond which we
dare not go, for at this point, self-restraint becomes pusillanimous and
means the loss of manhood.”
He then reviewed with thrilling power the history of the state and the
proud part played in the development of the Republic. He showed how
this border wilderness of North Carolina became the cradle of American
Democracy and the typical commonwealth of freemen.
He played with the heart-strings of his hearers in this close personal
history as a great master touches the strings of a harp. His voice
was now low and quivering with the music of passion, and then soft
and caressing. He would swing them from laughter to tears in a single
sentence, and in the next, the lightning flash of a fierce invective
drove into their hearts its keen blade so suddenly the vast crowd
started as one man and winced at its power.
Through it all he was conscious of two blue eyes swimming in tears
looking down on him from the gallery.
The crowd now had grown so entranced, and the torrent of his speech so
rapid they forgot to cheer and feared to cheer lest they should lose
a word of the next sentence. They hung breathless on every flash of
feeling from his face or eloquent gesture.
“I am not talking of a vague theory of constructive dominion,” he
continued, “when I refer to the Negro supremacy under which our
civilisation is being degraded. I use words in their plain meaning.
Negro supremacy means the rule of a party in which negroes predominate
and that means a Negro oligarchy.
“I call your attention to one typical county of over forty thus
degraded, the county of Craven, whose quaint old city was once
the Capital of this commonwealth. What are the facts? The negro
office-holders of Craven county include a Congressman, a member of the
Legislature, a Register of Deeds, the City Attorney, the Coroner, two
Deputy Sheriffs, two County Commissioners, a Member of the School Board,
three Road Overseers, four Constables, twenty-seven Magistrates, three
City Aldermen and four Policemen. There are sixty-two negro officials in
this county of 12,000 inhabitants, and their member of the Legislature
is a convicted felon. The white people represent ninety-five per cent
of the wealth and intelligence of the community, and pay ninety-five per
cent of its taxes and are voiceless in its government.
“Would a county in Massachusetts submit to such infamy? No, ten thousand
times, no! There is not a county in the North from Maine to California
that would submit to it twenty-four hours. Will the children of
Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill demand such submission from the
children of Washington and Jefferson? No. The passions that obscured
reason have subsided. The Anglo-Saxon race is united and has entered
upon its world mission.
“We will take from an unprofitable servant the ballot he has abused. To
him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be taken
away even that which he hath. It is the law of nature. It is the law of
God.
“Yes, I confess it,” he continued, “I am in a sense narrow and
provincial. I love mine own people. Their past is mine, their present
mine, their future is a divine trust. I hate the dish water of modern
world-citizenship. A shallow cosmopolitanism is the mask of death for
the individual. It is the froth of civilisation, as crime is its dregs.
Race, and race pride, are the ordinances of life. The true citizen of
the world loves his country. His country is a part of God’s world.
“So I confess I love my people. I love the South,--the stolid silent
South, that for a generation has sneered at paper-made policies, and
scorned public opinion. The South, old-fashioned, mediaeval, provincial,
worshipping the dead, and raising men rather than making money, family
loving, home building, tradition ridden. The South, cruel and cunning
when fighting a treacherous foe, with brief volcanic bursts of wrath
and vengeance. The South, eloquent, bombastic, romantic, chivalrous,
lustful, proud, kind and hospitable. The South with her beautiful women
and brave men. The South, generous and reckless, never knowing her own
interest, but living her own life in her own way!--Yes, I love her! In
my soul are all her sins and virtues. And with it all she is worthy to
live.
“The historian tells us that all things pass in time. Wolves whelp
and stable in the palaces of dead kings and forgotten civilisations.
Memphis, Thebes and Babylon are but names to-day. So New Orleans and
New York may perish. African antiquarians may explore their ruins
and speculate upon their life; but we may safely fix upon a thousand
centuries of intervening time. On your shoulders now rests the burden of
civilisation. We must face its responsibilities. For my part, I believe
in your future.
“The courage of the Celt, the nobility of the Norman, the vigour of the
Viking, the energy of the Angle, the tenacity of the Saxon, the daring
of the Dane, the gallantry of the Gaul, the freedom of the Frank, the
earth-hunger of the Roman and the stoicism of the Spartan are all yours
by the lineal heritage of blood, from sire and dame through hundreds of
generations and through centuries of culture.
“Will you halt now and surrender to a mob of ragged negroes led by white
cowards who at the first clash of conflict will hide in sewers?
“I ask you, my people, freemen, North Carolinians, to rise to-day and
make good your right to live! The time for platitudes is past. Let us as
men face the world and say what we mean.
“This is a white man’s government, conceived by white men, and
maintained by white men through every year of its history,--and by the
God of our Fathers it shall be ruled by white men until the Arch-angel
shall call the end of time!
“If this be treason, let them that hear it make the most of it.
“From the eighth day of November we will not submit to Negro dominion
another day, another hour, another moment! Back of every ballot is a
bayonet, and the red blood of the man who holds it. Let cowards
hear, and remember this! Man has never yet voted away his right to a
revolution.
“Citizen kings, I call you to the consciousness of your kingship!”
Gaston closed and turned toward his seat, while the crowd hung
breathless waiting for his next word. When they realised that he had
finished, a rumble like the crash in midheaven of two storms rolled over
the surging sea of men, broke against the girders of the roof like the
thunder of the Hatteras surf lashed by a hurricane. Two thousand men
went mad. With one common impulse they sprang to their feet, screaming,
shouting, cheering, shaking each other’s hands, crying and laughing.
With the sullen roar of crashing thunder another whirlwind of cheers
swept the crowd, shook the earth, and pierced the sky with its
challenge. Wave after wave of applause swept the building and flung
their rumbling echoes among the stars. These patient kindly people, slow
to anger, now terrible in wrath, were trembling with the pent-up passion
and fury of years.
What power could resist their wrath!
Through it all Gaston sat silent behind the group of the majority of the
platform committee, with eyes devouring a beautiful face bending toward
him from the gallery. She was softly weeping with love and pride too
deep for words.
While the tumult was still raging, before he was conscious of his
presence, General Worth’s stalwart figure was bending over him, and
grasping his hand.
“My boy, I give it up. You have beaten me. I’m proud of you. I forgive
everything for that speech. You can have my girl. The date you’ve fixed
for the marriage suits me. Let us forget the past.”
Gaston pressed his hand muttering brokenly his thanks, and his soul sank
within him at the thought of this proud old iron-willed warrior’s anger
if he discovered their secret marriage.
The General turned toward the side of the platform; for he had seen
the flash of Sallie’s dress on the stairs of the balcony leading to the
stage. He knew her keen eye had seen his surrender and his heart was
hungry for the kiss of reconciliation that would restore their old
perfect love.
He met her at the foot of the stairs and she threw her arms impulsively
around his neck.
“Oh! Papa, dear! I am the happiest girl in the world. The two men of all
men--the only two I love--are mine forever!”
While the applause was still echoing and reëchoing over the sea of
surging men, and thousands of excited people were crowding the windows
from the outside and blocking the streets in every direction clamouring
for admittance, a tall man with grey beard and stentorian voice, sprang
on the platform. It was General Worth’s candidate for Governor. He had
not consulted the General but he had an important motion to make. The
crowd was stilled at last and his deep voice rang through the building,
“Gentlemen, I move that the minority report offered by Charles
Gaston”--again a thunder peal of applause--“be adopted as the platform
by acclamation!”
A storm of “ayes” burst from the throats of the delegates in a single
breath like the crash of an explosion of dynamite.
“And now that our eyes have seen the glory of the Lord, as we heard
His messenger anointed to lead His people, I move that this convention
nominate by acclamation for Governor--_Charles Gaston!_”
Again two thousand men were on their feet shouting, cheering, shaking
hands, hugging one another and weeping and yelling like maniacs.
A speech had been made that changed the current of history, and fixed
the status of life for millions of people.
CHAPTER XIV--THE RED SHIRTS
AS soon as Gaston could leave the throngs of friends who were
congratulating him on his remarkable speech and his certainty of
election, he hastened to find Sallie.
“My lover, my king!” she cried impulsively as he clasped her in his
arms.
“Your eyes kindled the fire in my soul and gave me the power to mould
that crowd to my will!” he softly told her.
“It is sweet to hear you say that!”
“‘Now, my love, we are in an awful situation. What are we to do with
the General storming around preparing for a grand wedding? What if
that jailer gives out the news? McLeod can get it out of him if he ever
suspects anything.”
“Don’t worry, dear. I ’ll manage everything. We’ve fixed the wedding
on the Inauguration day--so you can’t be defeated. We will be busy day
and night getting ready my trousseau, and issuing our invitations. Papa
will never dream that one ceremony has been performed already. He need
never know it until we are ready to tell him.”
“If he discovers it, he will swear I have tried to humiliate him, and he
will never forgive it. Telegraph me if anything happens, and I will come
immediately. I can’t see you for weeks in the campaign, but I will write
to you every day.”
“His Excellency, the Governor of North Carolina!” she softly exclaimed
with a dreamy look into his face. “My lover!”
“Don’t make me vain. I may be the Governor, but I shall always be the
slave of a beautiful woman who came one day to a jail and made it a
palace with the glory of her love!”
“I’m glad I didn’t wait for your success.”
*****
The campaign which followed was the most remarkable ever conducted in
the history of an American commonwealth. In the dawn of the twentieth
century, a resistless movement was inaugurated to destroy the party
in control of a state, and affiliated with the most powerful National
Administration since Andrew Jackson’s, on the open declaration of their
intention to nullify the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the
Constitution of the Republic.
There was no violence except the calm demonstration in open daylight of
omnipotent racial power, and the defiance of any foe to lift a hand in
protest.
When Gaston spoke at Independence, five thousand white men dressed in
scarlet shirts rode silently through the streets in solemn parade, and
six thousand negroes watched them with fear. There was no cheering or
demonstration of any kind. The silence of the procession gave it the
import of a religious rite. A thousand picked men were in line from
Hambright and Campbell county and they formed the guard of honour for
their candidate for Governor.
Like scenes were enacted everywhere. Again the Anglo-Saxon race was
fused into a solid mass. The result was a foregone conclusion.
CHAPTER XV--THE HIGHER LAW
McLEOD knew from the day of that outburst which followed Gaston’s
speech in the Democratic convention that no power on earth could save
his ticket. To the world he put on a bold face and made his fight to the
last ditch, predicting victory.
His secret anger against the Preacher and Gaston, his pet, knew no
bounds. Chagrined at his repulse by Mrs. Durham and the attitude of
contempt she had maintained toward him, his tongue began to wag her name
in slander to the crowd of young satellites loafing around his office in
Hambright.
“Yes, boys,” he said, “the Preacher is a great man, but his wife is
greater. She’s the handsomest woman in the state in spite of a grey
thread or two in her rich chestnut hair. She has the most beautiful
mouth that ever tempted the soul of a man--and boys, my lips know what
it means to touch it.”
And when they stared with open eyes at this statement, McLeod shook
his head, laughed and whispered, “Say nothing about it--but facts are
facts!”
McLeod chuckled over the certainty of the shame and suffering that would
wring the Preacher’s heart when dirty gossips of a village had magnified
these words into a complete drama of scandal. For all preachers McLeod
had profound contempt, and he felt secure now from personal harm.
The day the Preacher first heard of these rumours was the occasion of
Gaston’s campaign address under the old oak in the square. He had looked
forward to this day with boyish pride mingled with a great fatherly
love. It would be his triumph. He had stirred this boy’s imagination and
moulded his character in the pliant hours of his childhood. He had told
himself that day he spent with him in the woods fishing, that he had
kindled a fire in his soul that would not go out till it blazed on the
altar of a redeemed country. And he was living to see that day.
The streets and square were thronged with such a multitude as the
village had never seen since it was built. But the Preacher was not
among them at the hour the speaking began.
A simple old friend from the country asked him about these rumours.
He turned pale as death, made no answer, and walked rapidly toward his
study in the church where his library was now arranged. He was dazed
with horror. It was the first he had heard of it. One thing in his
estimate of life had always been as securely fixed and sheltered in his
thought as his faith in God, and that was his love for his wife, and his
perfect faith in her honour.
He closed his door and locked it and sat down trying to think.
Had he not grown careless in the certainty of his wife’s devotion, and
his own quiet but intense love? Had he not forgotten the yearning of a
woman’s heart for the eternal repetition of love’s language of sign and
word?
The tears were in his eyes now, and he felt that his heart would beat to
death and break within him!
He saw that his enemy had struck at his weakest spot, and struck to
kill.
He lifted his face toward the walls in a vague unseeing look and his
eyes rested on a pair of crossed swords over a bookcase. They had been
handed down to him from a long line of fighting ancestors. He arose,
took them down mechanically, and drew one from its scabbard. How snugly
its rough hilt fitted his nervous hand grip! He felt a curious throbbing
in this hilt like a pulse, it was alive, and its spirit stirred deep
waters in his soul that had never been ruffled before.
He recalled vaguely in memory things he knew had never happened to him
and yet were part of his inmost life.
“Damn him!” he involuntarily hissed as he gripped the sword hilt with
the instinctive power of the fighting animal that sleeps beneath the
skin of all our culture and religion.
And then his eyes rested on a quaint little daguerreotype picture of his
wife in her bridal dress, her sweet girlish face full of innocent pride
and warm with his love. By its side he saw the portrait of their dead
boy. How he recalled now every hour of that wonderful period preceding
his birth--the unspeakable pride and tenderness with which he watched
over his young wife! He recalled the morning of his birth, and the heart
rending, piteous cries of young motherhood that tore his heart until
the nails of his own fingers cut the flesh and drew the blood. How the
minutes seemed long hours, and how at last he bent over her, softly
kissed the drawn white lips, and gazed with tearful wonder and awe on
the little red bundle resting on her breast! He recalled the tremor of
weariness in her voice when she drew his head down close and whispered,
“I didn’t mind the pain, John, though I couldn’t help the cries. He’s
yours and mine--I am as proud as a queen. Now our souls are one in
him--I am tired--I must sleep.”
Every movement of his past life seemed to stand out in this crisis with
fiery clearness. He seemed to live in an instant whole years in every
detail of that closeness of personal life that makes marriage a part of
every stroke of the heart.
At last he set his lips firmly and said, “Yes, damn him, I will kill him
as I would a snake!” He sat down and wrote his resignation as pastor
of the church, left it on his desk, and strode hurriedly from the study
leaving his door open. He purchased a revolver and a box of cartridges
and walked straight to McLeod’s office.
The speaking was over, and McLeod was alone writing letters. He looked
up with scant politeness as the Preacher entered and motioned him to a
seat.
Instead of seating himself, he closed the door, and standing erect in
front of it, said, “Allan McLeod, you are the author of an infamous
slander reflecting on the honour of my wife!”
“Indeed!” McLeod sneered, wheeling in his chair.
“I always knew that you were a moral leper”--
“Of course, Doctor, of course, but don’t get excited,” laughed McLeod
enjoying the marks of anguish on his face.
“But that your lecherous body should dream of invading the sanctity of
my home, and your tongue attempt to smirch its honour, was beyond my
wildest dream of your effrontery. How dare you?”--
“Dare? Dare, Preacher?” interrupted McLeod still sneering. “Why, by ‘The
Higher Law,’ of course. You have been teaching all your life that there
are higher laws than paper-made statutes. You have trained this county
in crime under this beautiful ideal. Surely I may follow the teachings
of a master in Israel?”
“What do you mean, you red-headed devil?”
“Softly, Preacher,” smiled McLeod. “Simply this. You expound ‘The Higher
Law,’ for political consumption. I apply it to all life.
“There are but two real laws of man’s nature, hunger and love--all
others change with time and progress. These are the higher laws, in fact
they are the highest laws. The stupid conventions that superstition has
built around them may hold back the weak, but the powerful have always
defied them. Your brilliant exposition of the higher law in politics
first set my mind to work, and led me to a complete emancipation from
the slavery of conventionalism in which fools have held society for
centuries. There are conventional laws and superstitions about the
little ceremony called marriage cherished by the weak-minded. There is a
higher law of nature. The brave live this life of daring freedom, while
cowards cling to forms. Do I make myself clear?”
“Perfectly so, you mottled leper. You think that because I am a
preacher, I am a poltroon, and that you can play with me without danger
to your skin. Well, I was a man before I was a preacher. There are some
things deeper than the forms of religion, if you wish to push the higher
law to its last application. You have found that quick in my soul, mine
enemy! I have resigned my church--to kill you. There is not room for you
and me on this earth”--
[Illustration: 0484]
McLeod sprang to his feet, his soul chilled by the tone in which the
threat was uttered. He started to call for help, and looked down the
gleaming barrel of a revolver.
“Move now or open your mouth, and I kill you instantly. Sit down. I give
you five minutes to write your last message to this world.”
McLeod sank into his seat trembling like a leaf, with the perspiration
standing out on his forehead in cold beads. Now and then he glanced
furtively at the stem face of blind fury towering over his crouching
form.
Unable to endure the terrible strain, he sank to the floor whining,
slobbering, begging in abject cowardice for his life. He crawled toward
the Preacher, reached out his hand and touched his foot.
“My God, Doctor, you are mad. You will not commit murder. You are a
minister of Jesus Christ. Have mercy. I am at your feet. Your wife is as
pure as an angel. I only said what I did to torture you”--
“Get up you snake!” hissed the Preacher, stamping his body with all his
might until McLeod screamed with pain and scrambled to his feet cowering
and whining like a cur.
“Finish your letter. You will never leave this room alive.”
A long pitiful sob broke the stillness, and McLeod was looking into the
Preacher’s face in vain for a ray of hope.
Suddenly Gaston burst into the room trembling with excitement. “My God,
Doctor, what does this mean?” he cried seizing the revolver.
McLeod sprang toward Gaston, groaning and crawling toward his feet.
“Save me Gaston,--the Doctor’s gone mad--he is about to kill me!”
“Charlie, I must!” pleaded the Preacher.
“No, no, this is madness. I thank God I am in time. I missed you at the
speaking, and hearing a rumour of this slander I hurried to find you.
I saw your study open and read your letter. I knew I’d find you here. I
’ll manage McLeod.”
The Preacher sat down crying. McLeod had crawled back to his desk and
was mopping his face. Gaston walked over to him and said with slow
trembling emphasis, “I give you twelve hours to close this office, wind
up your business, and leave. In the meantime you will write a denial of
this slander satisfactory to me for publication. If you ever open your
mouth again about my foster-mother or put your foot in this county, I
will kill you. I expect your letter ready in two hours.”
Gaston took the Preacher by the arm and led him down the stairs and back
to his study. In the reaction, there was a pitiable breakdown.
“Oh! Charlie, you’ve saved me from an unspeakable horror. Yes, I was
mad. I was proud and wilful. I thought I knew myself. To-day, I have
looked into the bottom of hell. I have seen the depths of my own heart.
Yes, I have in me the germs of all sin and crime. I am the brother of
every thief, of every murderer, of every scarlet woman of the streets,
that ever stood in the stocks, or climbed the steps of a gallows”--
“Hush, I will not listen to such talk. You are a man, that’s all,”
interrupted Gaston.
“But God’s mercy is great,” he went on. “I have tried to live for my
people and my country, not for myself. If I have failed to be a faithful
husband, this is my plea to God, I have not thought of myself, or of my
own, but of others.”
After an hour he was quiet, and turning to Gaston he said, “Charlie, go
tell your mother to come here, I want to see her.”
When she came, and sat down beside him with quiet dignity, she said,
“Now Doctor, say what you wish, Charlie has told me much, but not all.
Let us look into each other’s souls to-day.”
“I only want to ask you, dear,” he said tenderly, “just how far your
friendship for this villain may have led you. I know you are innocent of
any crime. I only want to know the measure of my own guilt.”
“You know, John,” she said, using his first name, as she had not for
years, “he has always interested me from a boy, and in the darkest hour
of my heart’s life, when I felt your love growing cold and slipping away
from me, and my faith in all things fading, he attempted to make vulgar
love to me. I repulsed him with scorn, and have since treated him with
contempt. You know that I kissed him once when he was a boy. I have told
you all. What do you propose to do?”
“What will I do, my darling?” he softly asked, taking her hand. “Begin
anew from this moment to love and cherish, honour and protect you unto
death. You are my wife. I took you a beautiful child, innocent of the
world. If you have failed in the least, I have failed. If you have
stumbled in the dark even in your thought, I will lift you up in my arms
and soothe you as a mother would her babe. If you should fall into the
bottomless pit, into the pit and down to the lowest depths of hell I
would go, and lift you in the arms of my love. To break the tie that
binds us is unthinkable. It has passed into the infinite. Not only
are our souls one in a little boy’s grave, but there is something so
absorbing, so interwoven with the hidden things of nature in our union
that I defy all the fiends in perdition to break it. Love is eternal.
And your love for me was the great fixed thing in my life like my faith
in the living God!”
“Oh, John, you are breaking my heart now, when I think that I doubted
your love! I could have brooked your anger, but this overwhelms me!”
“It has always been my character,” he gravely said.
“Then I have never known you until now,”--and in a moment she was
sobbing on his breast, the years had rolled back, and they were in the
sweet springtime of life again.
CHAPTER XVI--THE END OF A MODERN VILLAIN
TWO days after McLeod’s flight from Hambright the press despatches
flashed from New York a startling two-column account of the attempted
assassination of the Hon. Allan McLeod, the Republican leader of
North Carolina, in the terrific campaign in progress, and that he was
compelled to flee from the state to save his life.
Gaston was elected Governor by the largest majority ever given a
candidate for that office in the history of North Carolina.
McLeod was promptly rewarded for his long career of villainy by an
appointment as our Ambassador to one of the Republics of South America,
and the Senate at once confirmed him. The salary attached to his office
was $15,000, and his dream of a life of ease and luxury had come at
last.
For six months he had been quietly going to Boston paying the most
ardent court to Miss Susan Walker, whom he had met at her college at
Independence. She was a matured spinster now appproaching sixty years of
age, and worth $5,000 000 in her own name.
He had easy sailing from the first. He joined her church in Boston,
after a brilliant profession of religion that moved Miss Walker to
tears, for he had told her it was her love that had opened his eyes. And
it was true. McLeod timed his last visit to Boston so that he arrived
the day the city was ringing with the sensation of his attempted
assassination, and the desperate fight he was making to uphold law and
order in the South.
When Miss Walker read that article in her paper she resolved to marry
him immediately. She gave McLeod a wedding present of a half million
dollars. He wept for joy and gratitude, and kissed her with a fervour
that satisfied her hungry heart that he was the one peerless lover of
the world.
CHAPTER XVII--WEDDING BELLS IN THE GOVERNOR’S MANSION
TWO days after McLeod and his bride reached Asheville on their wedding
trip, General Worth received a letter which threw him into a paroxysm of
rage. Sallie’s wedding had been fixed for the day of the inauguration
of the Governor. The invitations were out and society in a flutter
of comment and gossip over the romantic and brilliant career of young
Gaston, and his luck in winning power, love, and fortune in a day.
The letter was from McLeod, at Asheville, informing him that his
daughter was already married, and that Gaston was simply seeking his
fortune by a subterfuge, and showing his power over him by humiliating
him at the last moment before the world. He enclosed a transcript of the
marriage record, signed by the Rev. John Durham, and witnessed by Mrs.
Durham and Stella Holt. This record was certified before the Clerk of
the Court and bore his seal. There was no doubt whatever of the facts.
When the General handed this letter to Sallie she flushed, looked
wistfully into his face, saw its hard expression of speechless anger,
turned pale and burst into tears.
Her father without a word went to his room, and locked himself in for
twenty-four hours, refusing to see her or speak to her.
On the following day she forced her way into his presence, and they had
the last great battle of wills. All the iron power of his unconquered
pride, accustomed for a lifetime to command men and receive instant
obedience, was roused to the pitch of madness.
“If you marry him I swear to you a thousand times you shall never cross
my doorstep, and you shall never receive one penny of my fortune. He is
a gambler and an adventurer, and seeks to make me a laughing stock for
the world!”
“Papa, nothing could be further from his thoughts. He has always loved
and respected you. I assume all the responsibility for our secret
marriage.”
“Then sharper than a serpent’s tooth is the ingratitude of a disobedient
child!”
“But, Papa, I waited five years of patient suffering trying to obey
you,” she protested.
“I had rather see you dead than to see you marry that man now, and have
him sneer his triumph in my face.”
“We are already married. Why talk like that?” she pleaded tearfully.
“I deny it. I am going to annul that marriage. Felony is ground for
the dissolution of the marriage tie. A ceremony performed under such
conditions, when one of the parties is in prison charged with felony
without bail, is illegal, and I ’ll show it. The lawyers will be here
in an hour and I will take action to-morrow.”
“Never, with my consent!” she firmly replied. She left the room,
consulted with her mother, and hastily despatched a telegram to
Hambright summoning Gaston to Independence immediately.
When this telegram came he was in his office hard at work on his
inaugural address, outlining the policy of his administration. He was in
a heated argument with the Preacher about the article on education,
which followed his recommendation of the disfranchisement of the Negro.
He had advised large appropriations for the industrial training of
negroes along the lines of the new movement of their more sober leaders.
“It’s a mistake,” argued the Preacher, “if the Negro is made master
of the industries of the South he will become the master of the South.
Sooner than allow him to take the bread from their mouths, the white
men will kill him here, as they do North, when the struggle for bread
becomes as tragic. The Negro must ultimately leave this continent. You
might as well begin to prepare for it.”
“But we propose to train him principally in Agriculture. We need
millions of good farmers,” persisted Gaston.
“So much the worse, I tell you,” replied the Preacher. “Make the Negro
a scientific and successful farmer, and let him plant his feet deep in
your soil, and it will mean a race war.”
“It seems to me impracticable ever to move him.”
“Why?” asked the Preacher. “Those over certain ages can be left to
end their days here. The Negro has cost us already the loss of
$7,000,000,000, a war that killed a half million men, the debauchery of
our suffrage, the corruption of our life, and threatens the future with
anarchy. Lincoln was right when he said, ‘There is a physical difference
between the white and the black races, which I believe will forever
forbid them living together on terms of social and political equality.’
“Even you are still labouring under the delusions of ‘Reconstruction.’
The Ethiopian can not change his skin, or the leopard his spots. Those
who think it possible will always tell you that the place to work this
miracle is in the South. Exactly. If a man really believes in equality,
let him prove it by giving his daughter to a negro in marriage. That is
the test. When she sinks with her mulatto children into the black abyss
of a Negroid life, then ask him! Your scheme of education is humbug. You
don’t believe that any amount of education can fit a negro to rule an
Anglo-Saxon, or to marry his daughter. Then don’t be a hypocrite.”
“But can we afford to stop his education?”
“The more you educate, the more impossible you make his position in a
democracy. Education! Can you change the colour of his skin, the kink of
his hair, the bulge of his lips, the spread of his nose, or the beat of
his heart, with a spelling book? The Negro is the human donkey. You can
train him, but you can’t make of him a horse. Mate him with a horse,
you lose the horse, and get a larger donkey called a mule, incapable
of preserving his species. What is called our race prejudice is simply
God’s first law of nature--the instinct of selfpreservation.”
Gaston was gazing at the ceiling with an absent look in his eyes and a
smile playing around his lips.
“You are not listening to me now, you young rascal! You are dreaming
about your bride.”
Gaston quickly lowered his eyes, and saw the messenger boy who had been
standing several minutes with his telegram.
He read Sallie’s message with amazement.
“What can that mean?” He handed the telegram to the Preacher.
“It means he has discovered the facts, and there is going to be trouble.
He is a man of terrific passions when his pride is roused.”
“I must go immediately.”
He closed his office and caught his train after a hard drive. When he
reached Independence he sprang into a carriage and ordered the driver to
take him direct to Oakwood. What had happened he did not know and he did
not care. Of one thing he was now sure--Sallie’s love and the swift end
of their separation.
His heart was singing with a great joy as he drove over the familiar
avenue through the deep shadows of the woods, and turning through the
gate saw the light gleaming from her room.
“God bless her, she’s mine now--I hope I can take her home to-night!” he
cried.
She had walked down the drive to meet him. He leaped from the carriage,
kissed her and asked, “What is it, dear?”
“McLeod wrote him about our marriage, and now he swears he will bring a
suit to annul it. Leave your carriage here and come with me. If he don’t
send these lawyers away and receive you, I will be ready to go with you
in an hour.”
“Queen of my heart!” he whispered. “You are all mine at last!”
She called her father from the library into the parlour and stood on
the very spot where Gaston had writhed in agony on that night of his
interview with the General.
He started at the expression on her face and the tense vigour with which
she held herself erect. His suit had not been progressing well with his
lawyers. They had tried to humour him, but had declined to express any
hope of success in such an action. He saw they were halfhearted and it
depressed him.
“Now, Papa,” she firmly said, “It will not take us ten minutes to decide
forever the question of our lives. If you take another step with these
lawyers,--if you do not dismiss them at once, I will leave this house
in an hour, go with the man of my choice to his home, and you will never
see me again. You shall not humiliate me or him another hour.”
The General looked at her as though stunned, his voice trembled as he
replied, “Would you leave me so in an hour, dear?”
“Yes, Charlie is waiting there on the porch for me now, and his carriage
is outside. I will not subject him to another insult, nor allow any one
else to do it.”
The General sank heavily into a chair, and stretched out his hands
toward her in a gesture of tender entreaty.
“Come child and kiss me,--you know I can’t live without you! Forgive all
the foolish things I’ve said in anger and pride. Your happiness is more
to me than all else.” She was crying now in his arms.
“Go, bring Charlie. The youngster has beaten me. I’ve fought a foeman
worthy of my steel. It’s no disgrace to surrender to him.”
In a moment she led Gaston into the room, and the General grasped his
hand.
“Young man, for the last time I welcome you to this house. Now, it is
yours. You can run this place to suit yourself. I’ve worked all my life
for Sallie. I give up the ship to you.”
“General, let me assure you of my warmest love. I have never said an
unkind thing or harboured a harsh thought toward you. I shall be proud
of you as my father. I have loved you and Mrs. Worth since the first day
I looked into Sallie’s face.”
The invitations stood. Gaston returned immediately to Hambright, and on
the morning of the inauguration, accompanied by Bob St. Clare, and the
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, he entered the grand old mansion
with its stately pillars and claimed his bride. The Chief Justice
performed a civil ceremony, and the party started on a triumphal
procession to the Capital. The General was bubbling over with pride in
the handsome appearance the bride and groom made, and tried to outdo
himself in kindliness toward Gaston.
“Come to think it over, Governor,” he said to him after the
inauguration, “it was a brave thing in my little girl marching into that
jail alone and marrying her lover in a prison, wasn’t it? By George,
she’s a chip off the old block! I don’t care if the world does know it!”
“General, that was the bravest thing a woman could do. She is the
heroine of the drama. I play second part.”
They did not wait long for the people to know it. At four o’clock in the
afternoon an extra appeared with a startling account of the fact that
the Governor’s beautiful bride had braved the world and secretly married
him when his fortunes were at ebb-tide, and he was a prisoner in the
Asheville jail.
That night when Sallie entered the Banquet Hall of the Governor’s
Mansion, leaning proudly on Gaston’s arm, she was greeted with an
outburst of homage and deep feeling she had never dreamed of receiving.
When the Governor acknowledged the applause of his name, he bowed to his
bride, not to the crowd.
The Preacher rose to respond to the toast, “The Master and the Mistress
of the Governor’s Mansion,” and seemed to pay no attention to the
Governor, but turning to Sallie, he said, “To the queenly daughter of
the South, who had eyes to see a glorious manhood behind prison bars,
the nobility to stoop from wealth to poverty and transform a jail into
a palace with the beauty of her face and the splendour of her love--to
her, the heroine who inspired Charles Gaston with power to mould a
million wills in his, change the current of history, and become the
Governor of the Commonwealth--to her all honour, and praise, and homage.
“My daughter, it is meet that our wealth and beauty should mate with
the genius and chivalry of the South. May it ever be so, and may your
children’s children be as the sands of the sea!”
Sallie bowed her head as every eye was turned admiringly upon her. The
General trembled, and, when the crowd rose to their feet and reëchoed,
“To her all honour and praise and homage,” and the Governor bent proudly
kissing her hand, he bowed his head and wept.
Her mother sitting by her side with shining eyes pressed her hand and
whispered, “My beautiful daughter, now my work is done.”
As Gaston strolled out on the lawn with his bride after the banquet,
they found a seat in a secluded spot amid the shrubbery.
“My sweet wife!” he exclaimed.
“My husband!” she whispered, as they tenderly clasped hands.
“Tell me now who was the author of all those lies about me to your
father?”
“Why ask it, dear? You know Allan wrote the last letter.”
“The dastard. I was sure of it from the first. Well, he had the facts in
that last letter, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” she answered with a smile.
They rose to return to the Mansion, roused by the stroke of midnight
from the clock in the tower of the City Hall.
“From to-night, my dear,” he said, with enthusiasm, “you will share with
me all the honours and responsibilities of public life.”
“No, my love, I do not desire any part in public life except through
you. You are my world. I ask no higher gift of God than your love,
whether you live in a Governor’s Mansion, or the humblest cottage. I
desire no career save that of a wife--your wife”--she hid her face on
his breast as a little sob caught her voice, “and I would not change
places with the proudest queen that ever wore a crown!” She said this
looking up into his face through a mist of tears.
With trembling lips and dimmed eyes he stooped and kissed her as he
replied, “And I had rather be the husband of such a woman than to be the
ruler of the world.”
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's The Leopard's Spots, by Thomas Dixon, Jr.