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HAT morning at the usual hour the store-keepers opened their dingy
houses in the main street and placed along the narrow brick sidewalks
the dusty, stock-worn samples of their wares. The clerks and porters as
they swept the floors would pause to discuss the happening of the
night just gone. Old Uncle Lewis and Mammy Linda Warren's boy had been
summarily dealt with, that was all. The longer word just used had of
late years become a part of the narrowest vocabulary, suggesting to
crude minds many meanings not thought of by lexicographers, not the
least of which was something pertaining to justice far-reaching, grim,
and unfailing in these days of bribery and graft. Only a few of the more
analytical and philosophical ventured to ask themselves if, after
all, the boy might have been innocent. If they put the question to the
average citizen it was tossed off with a shrug and a “Well, what's the
difference? It's such talk as he was guilty of that is at the bottom of
all the black crimes throughout the South.” Such venom as Pete's was
the very muscle of the black claws that were everywhere reaching out for
helpless white throats. Dead? Yes, he was dead. What of it? How else was
the black, constantly increasing torrent to be dammed?
And yet by ten o'clock that morning even these tongues were silenced,
for news strange and startling began to steal in from the mountains. The
party who had been in pursuit of the desperado Sam Dudlow had overtaken
him--found him hiding in a bam, covered with hay. He was unarmed and
made no resistance, laughing as if the whole thing were a joke. He
frankly told them that he would have given himself up earlier, but he
had hoped to live long enough to get even with the other leader of the
mob that had whipped him at Darley, a certain Dan Willis. He confessed
in detail exactly how he had murdered the Johnsons and that he had done
it alone. Pete Warren was in no way implicated in it. The lynchers, to
get the whole truth, threatened him; they tortured him; they tied him
to a tree and piled pine fagots about him, but he still stuck to his
statement, and when they had mercifully riddled him with bullets, just
as his clothing was igniting, they left him hanging by the road-side, a
grewsome scarecrow as a warning to his kind, and, led by Jabe Parsons,
they made all haste to reach the faction on Pete Warren's track to tell
them that the boy was innocent.
Jabe Parsons, carrying a load on his mind, remembering his wife's
valiant stand in behalf of the younger accused, rode faster than his
tired fellows, and near his own farm met the lynchers returning from
Darley. “Too late,” they told him, in response to his news, the Hillbend
boys had done away with the Darley jailbird and mysteriously hidden the
body to inspire fear among the negroes.
At Darley consternation swept the place as story after story of Aunt
Linda's prostration passed from house to house. “Poor, faithful old
woman! Poor old Uncle Lewis!” was heard on every side.
About half-past ten o'clock Helen, accompanied by Sanders, came
down-town. At the door of Carson's office they parted and Helen came
in. Carson happened to be alone. He rose suddenly from his seat and came
towards her, shocked by the sight of her wan face and dejected mien.
“Why, Helen!” he cried, “surely you don't think--” and then he checked
himself as he hastened to get a chair for her.
“I've just left mammy,” she began, in a voice that was husky with
emotion. “Oh, Carson, you can't imagine it! It is simply heart-rending,
awful! She is lying there at death's door staring up at the ceiling,
simply benumbed.”
Carson sat down at his desk and leaned his head on his hand. Could he
keep back the truth under such pressure? It was at this juncture that
Garner came in. Casting a hurried glance at the two, and seeing Helen's
grief-stricken attitude, he simply bowed.
“Excuse me, Miss Helen, just a moment,” he said. “Carson, I left a paper
in your pigeon-hole,” and as he bent and extracted a blank envelope from
the desk he whispered, warningly: “Remember, not one word of this! Don't
forget the agreement! Not a soul is to know!” And putting the envelope
into his pocket he went out of the room, casting back from the threshold
a warning, almost threatening glance.
“I've been with her since sunup,” Helen went on.
“She fainted at first, and when she came to--oh, Carson, you love her
as I do, and it would have broken your heart to have heard her! Oh, such
pitiful wailing and begging God to put her out of pain!”
“Awful, awful!” Dwight said; “but, Helen--” Again he checked himself.
Before his mind's eye rose the faces of the faithful group who had stood
by him the night before. He had pledged himself to them to keep the
thing secret, and no matter what his own faith in Helen's discretion
was he had no right, even under stress of her grief, to betray what had
occurred. No, he couldn't enlighten her--not just then, at all events.
“I was there when Uncle Lewis came in to tell her that proof had come
of Pete's absolute innocence,” Helen went on, “but instead of comforting
her it seemed to drive her the more frantic. She--but I simply can't
describe it, and I won't try. You will be glad to know, Carson, that the
only thing in the shape of comfort she has had was your brave efforts in
her behalf. Over and over she called your name. Carson, she used to pray
to God; she never mentions Him now. You, and you alone, represent all
that is good and self-sacrificing to her. She sent me to you. That's why
I am here.”
“She sent you?” Carson was avoiding her eyes, fearful that she might
read in his own a hint of the burning thing he was trying to withhold.
“Yes, you see the report has reached her about what the lynchers said
in regard to hiding Pete's body. You know how superstitious the negroes
are, and she is simply crazy to recover the--the remains. She wants to
bury her boy, Carson, and she refuses to believe that some one can't
find him and bring him home. She seems to think you can.”
“She wants me to--” He went no further.
“If it is possible, Carson. The whole thing is so awful that it has
driven me nearly wild. You will know, perhaps, if anything can be done,
but, of course, if it is wholly out of the question--”
“Helen”--in his desperation he had formulated a plan--“there is
something that you ought to know. You have every right to know it, and
yet I'm bound in honor not to let it out to any one. Last night,” he
went on, modestly, “in the hope of formulating some plan to avert
the coming trouble, I asked Keith to get a number of my best friends
together. We met at Blackburn's store. No positive, sworn vows were
made. It was only the sacred understanding between men that the matter
was to be held inviolate, owing to the personal interests of every
man who had committed himself. You see, they came at my suggestion, as
friends of mine true and loyal, and it seems to me that I'd have a moral
right, even now, to take another into the body--another whom I trust as
thoroughly and wholly as any one of them. Do you understand, Helen?”
“No, I'm in the dark, Carson,” she said, with a feeble smile.
“You see, I want to speak freely to you,” he continued. “I want to
tell you some things you ought to know, and yet I am not free to do so
unless--unless you will tacitly join us. Helen, do you understand?
Are you willing to become one of us so far as absolute secrecy is
concerned?”
“I am willing to do anything you'd advise, Carson,” the girl replied,
groping for his possible meaning through the cloud of mystery his queer
words had thrown around him. “If something took place that I ought to
know, and you are willing to confide it to me, I assure you I can be
trusted. I'd die rather than betray it.”
“Then, as one of us, I'll tell you,” Carson said, impressively. “Helen,
Pete, is not dead.”
“Not dead?” She stared at him incredulously from her great, beautiful
eyes. Slowly her white hand went out till it rested on his, and remained
there, quivering.
“No, he's alive and so far in safe keeping, free from harm at present,
anyway.”
Her fingers tightened on his hand, her sweet, appealing face drew nearer
to his; she took a deep breath. “Oh, Carson, don't say that unless you
are _quite_ sure.”
“I am absolutely sure,” he said; and then, as they sat, her hand still
lingering unconsciously on his, he explained it all, leaving the part he
had taken out of the recital as much as possible, and giving the chief
credit to his supporters. She sat spellbound, her sympathetic soul
melting and flowing into the warm current of his own while he talked as
it seemed to her no human being had ever talked before.
When he had concluded she drew away her hand and sat erect, her bosom
heaving, her eyes glistening.
“Oh, Carson,” she cried; “I never was so happy in my life! It actually
pains me.” She pressed her hand to her breast. “Mammy will be so--but
you say she must not--must not yet--”
“That's the trouble,” Dwight said, regretfully.
“I'm sure I could put her and Lewis on their guard so that they
would act with discretion, but Blackburn and Garner--in fact, all the
rest--are afraid to risk them, just now anyway. You see, they
think Linda and Lewis might betray it in their emotions--their very
happiness--and so undo everything we have accomplished.”
“Surely, now that the report of Sam Dudlow's confession has gone out,
they would let Pete alone,” Helen said.
“I wouldn't like to risk it quite yet,” said Dwight. “Right now, while
they are under the impression that an innocent negro has been lynched,
they seem inclined to quiet down, but once let the news go out that a
few town men, through trickery, had freed the prisoner, and they would
rise more furious than ever. No, we must be careful. And, Helen, you
must remember your promise. Don't let even your sympathy for Linda draw
it out of you.”
“I can keep it, and I really shall,” Helen said.
“But you must release me as soon as you possibly can.”
“I'll do that,” he promised, as she rose to go.
“I'll keep it,” she repeated, when she had reached the door; “but to do
so I'll have to stay away from mammy. The sight of her agony would wring
it from me.”
“Then don't go near her till I see you,” Dwight cautioned her. “I'll
meet all the others to-day and put the matter before them. Perhaps they
may give in on that point.”