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FTER an almost sleepless night, spent for the greater part in despondent
reflections over his failure in the things to which he had directed
his hopes and energies, Carson rose about seven o'clock, went into his
mother's room to ask how she had rested through the night, and then
descended, to breakfast. It was eight o'clock when he arrived at the
office. Garner was there in a cloud of dust, sweeping a pile of torn
papers into the already filled fireplace.
“I'm going to touch a match to this the first rainy day--if I think of
it,” he said. “It's liable to set the roof on fire when it's dry as it
is now.”
“Any news from the mountains?” Carson asked, as he sat down at his desk.
“Yes; Pole Baker was in here just now.” Garner leaned his broom-handle
against the mantel-piece, and stood critically eying his partner's worn
face and dejected mien. “He said the mob, or mobs, for there are twenty
factions of them, had certainly hemmed Pete in. He was hiding somewhere
on Elk Knob, and they hadn't then located him. Pole left there long
before day and said they had already set in afresh. I reckon it will be
over soon. He told me to keep you here if I had to swear out a writ of
dangerous lunacy against you. He says you have not only killed your own
political chances, but that you couldn't save the boy if you were the
daddy of every man in the chase. They've smelled blood and they want to
taste it.”
“You needn't worry about me,” Carson said, dejectedly. “I realize how
helpless I was yesterday, and am still. There was only one thing that
might have been done if we had acted quickly, and that was to telegraph
the Governor for troops.”
“But you wouldn't sanction that; you know you wouldn't,” said Garner.
“You know every mother's son of those white men is acting according to
the purest dictates of his inner soul. They think they are right. They
believe in law, and while I am a member of the bar, by Heaven! I say
to you that our whole legal system is rotten to the core. Politics will
clear a criminal at the drop of a hat. A dozen voters can jerk a man
from life imprisonment to the streets of this town by a single telegram.
No, you know those sturdy men over there think they are right, and you
would not be the cause of armed men shooting them down like rabbits in a
fence corner.”
“No, they think they are right,” Carson said. “And they were my friends
till this came up. Any mail?”
“I haven't been to the post-office. I wish you'd go. You need exercise;
you are off color--you are as yellow as a new saddle. Drop this thing.
The Lord Himself can't make water run up-hill. Quit thinking about it.”
Carson went out into the quiet street and walked along to the
post-office. At the intersection of the streets near the Johnston
House, on any ordinary day, a dozen drays and hacks in the care of
negro drivers would have been seen, and on the drays and about the hacks
stood, as a rule, many idle negro men and boys; but this morning the
spot was significantly vacant. At the negro barber-shop, kept by Buck
Black, a mulatto of marked dignity and intelligence for one of his race,
only the black barbers might be seen, and they were not lounging about
the door, but stood at their chairs, their faces grave, their tongues
unusually silent. They might be asking themselves questions as to the
possible extent of the fires of race-hatred just now raging--if the
capture and death of Pete Warren would quench the conflagration, or
if it would roll on towards them like the licking flames of a burning
prairie--they might, I say, ask _themselves_ such questions, but to the
patrons of their trade they kept discreet silence. And no white man who
went near them that day would ask them what they believed or what they
felt, for the blacks are not a people who give much thought even to
their own social problems. They had leaned for many generations upon
white guidance, and, with childlike, hereditary instinct, they were
leaning still.
Finding no letters of importance in the little glass-faced and numbered
box at the post-office, Carson, sick at heart and utterly discouraged,
went up to the Club. Here, idly knocking the balls about on a
billiard-table, a cigar in his mouth, was Keith Gordon.
“Want to play a game of pool?” he asked.
“Not this morning, old man,” Carson answered.
“Well, I don't either,” said Keith. “I went to the bank and tried to add
up some figures for the old man, but my thinker wouldn't work. It's out
of whack. That blasted nigger Pete is the prime cause of my being upset.
I came by Major Warren's this morning. Sister feels awfully sorry
for Mam' Linda, and asked me to take her a jar of jelly. You know old
colored people love little attentions like that from white people, when
they are sick or in trouble. Well”--Keith held up his hands, the palms
outward--“I don't want any more in mine. I've been to death-bed scenes,
funerals, wrecks on railroads, and all sorts of horrors, but that was
simply too much. It simply beggars description--to see that old woman
bowed there in her door like a dumb brute with its tongue tied to a
stake. It made me ashamed of myself, though, for not at least trying
to do something. I glory in you, old man. You failed, but you _tried_.
By-the-way, that's the only comfort Mam' Linda has had--the only thing.
Helen was there, the dear girl--and to think her visit home has to be
like this!--she was there trying to soothe the old woman, but nothing
that was said could produce anything but that awful groaning of hers
till Lewis said something about your going over there yesterday, and
that stirred her up. She rose in her chair and walked to the gate and
folded her big arms across her breast.
“'I thank God young marster felt fer me dat way,' she said. 'He's
de best young man on de face o' de earth. I'll go down ter my grave
blessing 'im fer dis. He's got er _soul_ in 'im. He knows how old Mammy
Lindy feels en he was tryin' ter help her, God bless 'im! He couldn't do
nothin', but he tried--he tried, dough everybody was holdin' 'im back en
sayin' it would spile his 'lection. Well, if it _do_ harm 'im, it will
show dat Gawd done turn ergin white en black bofe.' I came away,” Keith
finished, after a pause, in which Carson said nothing. “I couldn't stand
it. Helen was crying like a child, her face wet with tears, and she
wasn't trying to hide it. I was looking for some one to come every
minute with the final news, and I didn't want to face that. Good God,
old man, what are we coming to? Historians, Northern ones, seem to think
the days of slavery were benighted, but God knows such things as this
never happened then. Now, did it?”
“No; it's terrible,” Carson agreed, and he stepped to a window and
looked out over the roofs of the near-by stores to the wagon-yard
beyond.
“Well, the great and only, the truly accepted one,” Keith went on, in
a lighter tone, “the man who did us all up brown, Mr. Earle Sanders, of
Augusta, has unwittingly chosen a gloomy date for his visit. He's here,
installed in the bridal-chamber of the Hotel de Johnston. Helen got a
note from him just as I was leaving. On my soul, old man--maybe it's
because I want to see it that way--but, really, it didn't seem to me
that she looked exactly elated, you know, like I imagined she would,
from the way the local gossips pile it on. You know, the idea struck me
that maybe she is not _really engaged_, after all.”
“She is worried; she is not herself to-day,” Carson said, coldly, though
in truth his blood was surging hotly through his veins. It had come
at last. The man who was to rob him of all he cared for in life was at
hand. Turning from Keith, he pretended to be looking over some of
the dog-eared magazines in the reading-room, and then feeling an
overwhelming desire to be alone with the dull pain in his breast, he
waved a careless signal to Keith and went down to the street. In front
of the hotel stood a pair of sleek, restive bays harnessed to a new
top-buggy. They were held by the owner of the best livery-stable in the
town, a rough ex-mountaineer.
“Say, Carson,” the man called out, proudly, “you'll have to git up early
in the morning to produce a better yoke of thorough-breds than these.
Never been driven over these roads before. I didn't intend to let 'em
out fer public use right now, but a big, rich fellow from Augusta is
here sparkin', and he wanted the best I had and wouldn't touch anything
else. Money wasn't any object. He turned up his nose at all my other
stock. Gee! look at them trim legs and thighs--a dead match as two
black-eyed peas.”
“Yes, they are all right.” Carson walked on and went into Blackburn's
store, for no other reason than that he wanted to avoid meeting people
and discussing the trouble Pete Warren was in, or hearing further
comments on the stranger's visit. He might have chosen a better retreat,
however, for in a group at the window nearest the hotel he found
Blackburn, Garner, Bob Smith, and Wade Tingle, all peering stealthily
out through the dingy glass at the team Carson had just inspected.
“He'll be out in a minute,” Wade was saying, in an undertone. “Quit
pushing me, Bob! They say he's got dead loads of money.”
“You bet he has,” Bob declared; “he had a wad of it in big bills large
enough to stuff a sofa-pillow with. Ike, the porter, who trucked his
trunk up, said he got a dollar tip. The head waiter is expecting to buy
a farm after he leaves. Gee! there he comes! Say, Garner, _you_ ought to
know; is that a brandy-and-soda complexion?”
“No, he doesn't drink a drop,” answered Garner. “Well, he looks all
right, as well as I can see through this immaculate window with my eyes
full of spiderwebs. My, what clothes! Say, Bob, is that style of derby
the thing now? It looks like an inverted milk-bucket. Come here, Carson,
and take a peep at the conqueror. If Keith were here we'd have a
quomm. By George, there's Keith now! He's watching at the window of the
barber-shop. Call him over, Blackburn. Let's have him here; we need more
pall-bearers.”
“Seems to me you boys are the corpses,” Blackburn jested. “I'd be
ashamed to let a clothing-store dummy like that beat me to the tank.”
Carson had heard enough. In his mood and frame of mind their open
frivolity cut him to the quick. Going out, unnoticed by the others, he
went to his office. In the little, dusty consultation-room in the rear
there was an old leather couch. On this he threw himself. There had been
moments in his life when he had worn the crown of misery, notably the day
Albert Warren was buried, when, on approaching Helen to offer her his
sympathies, she had turned from him with a shudder. That had been a
gloomy hour, but _this_--he covered his face with his hands and lay
still. On that day a faint hope had vaguely fluttered within him--a hope
of reformation; a hope of making a worthy place for himself in life
and of ultimately winning her favor and forgiveness. But now it was all
over. He had actually seen with his own eyes the man who was to be her
husband. He was sure now that the report was true. The visit at such a
grave crisis confirmed all that had been said. Helen had telegraphed him
of her trouble, and Sanders had made all haste to reach her side.