[Illustration: 9328]
F the audience was surprised at what next happened, what may be said of
the astounded candidate when he saw the powerful form of Mrs. Parsons
rise from her seat near him and calmly stride with the tread of an angry
man to the speaker's stand and take off her curtained bonnet and begin
to wave it up and down to indicate that she wanted them to keep their
places?
“I never made a speech in my life,” she gulped--“that is, not outside of
an experience meetin'. But, people, ef this ain't an experience meeting
I never went to one. Ef the Lord God had told me Hisse'f in a blazonin'
voice from heaven that any human bein' could take such a swivelled-up,
contemptible shape as the man that's yelled at you like a sick calf
to-day, I never would have believed it. I've got a right to be heard.
I couldn't set still. It would give me St. Vitus's dance to try it
ten minutes longer. I've got a right to talk, because, friends and
neighbors, this contemptible creature has, in a roundabout way, accused
_me_ of law-breaking, an'--”
“Why, madam!” Wiggin gasped, as he half rose and stared around in utter
bewilderment. “I don't even _know_ you! I never laid eyes on you before
this minute--”
“Well, take a good look at me now!” Mrs. Parsons hurled at him, “for I'm
the woman that helped Pete Warren git away from the sheriff, when your
sort were after the poor, silly nigger to lynch him for a crime he
had nothin' to do with. If you are right in all your empty tirade this
morning, I'm a woman unfit for the community I live in, and if I have
to share that honor with a man of your stamp, I'll lynch myself on the
first tree I come to.”
She turned from the astounded, suddenly crestfallen speaker to the
open-mouthed audience.
“Listen to me, men, women, and children!” she thundered, in a voice that
was as steady and clear in resonance as a bell. “If there was ever a
crafty, spider-like politician on earth you have listened to him spout
to-day. He's picked out the one big sore-spot in your kind natures and
he's punched it, and jabbed it, and lacerated it with every sort of
thorn he could stick into it, till he gained his aim in makin' you
one and all so blind with rage at the black race that you are about to
overlook the good in yore own.
“There are two sides to this matter, and you would be pore excuses for
men if you jest looked at one side of it. Carson Dwight is the other
candidate, and I don't know but one thing agin his character, and that
is that he ever allowed his name to be put up along with this
man's. It's a funny sort of race, anyway--run by a greyhound and a
jack-rabbit.”
A ripple of amusement passed over many faces, and there were several
open laughs over Wiggin's evident discomfiture. He started to rise, but
voices from all parts of the gathering cried out: “Sit down, Wiggin! Sit
down, it ain't yore time!”
“No, it _hain't_ his time,” said Mrs. Parsons, unrolling her bonnet
like a switchman's flag and waving it to and fro. “I started to tell
you about Carson Dwight. He can't help bein' born in a rich family any
more'n I could in a pore one, but I'm here to tell you that since I had
the moral backbone to aid that nigger to git away I've thanked God a
thousand times that I did that much to help genuine justice along. I
could listen to forty million men like this candidate expound his views
and it wouldn't alter me one smidgen in the belief that Carson Dwight
has acted only as a true Christian would. He knew that nigger. He had
known him, I'm told, from childhood up. He knew the sort of black stock
the boy sprung from, an' the white family he was trained in, an' he
simply didn't believe he was guilty of that crime. Believing that, thar
wasn't but one honest thing for him to do, and that was to fight for the
pore thing's rights. He knew that most of the racket agin the boy was
got up by t'other candidate, and he set about to save the pore, beggin'
darky's neck from the halter or his body from the burning brush-heap.
Did he do it at a sacrifice? Huh, answer me that! Where did you ever see
another politician on the eve of his election that would take up such a'
issue as that, infuriating nearly every person who had promised to vote
for him? Where will you find a young man with enough stamina to stand on
a horse-block over the heads of hundreds of howling demons, and with one
wound from a pistol on his brow, darin' 'em to shoot ag'in and holdin'
on like a bull-dog to the pore cowerin' wreck at his feet?”
There was applause, slight at first, but increasing. There were,
too, under Mrs. Parson's eye many softening faces, and into them she
continued to throw her heart-felt appeal.
“You've been told this morning that Carson Dwight makes fun of us
country people. I'll admit I saw him do it once, but it was _only_ once.
He made fun of a mountain chap over at Darley one circus day. The fellow
had insulted a nice country gal, and Carson Dwight made a _lot_ of fun
of him. He hammered the dirty scamp's face till it looked like a ripe
tomato that the rats had been gnawin'.”
At this point there was laughter loud and prolonged.
“Now, listen,” the speaker went on. “I want you to hear something, and I
don't want you ever to forget it. I got it straight from a truthful man
who was there. The night you mountain men gathered from all sides like
the rising of the dead on Judgment Day, and got ready to march to Darley
to take that boy out of jail, the news reached Carson Dwight just an
hour or so before the appointed time. He got a few friends together
and told them if they cared for him to make one more effort to stop the
trouble.
“Gentlemen, to some extent they was like you. They wasn't--I'm
told--much interested in the fate of that nigger, one way or another,
and so they sat thar in judgment over Carson Dwight, and tried to argue
'im down. I'm told by a respectable man who was thar” (and here Pole
Baker lowered his head till his eyes were out of sight and continued to
whittle his stick) “that nothin' feazed 'im. Pity was in his big, boyish
heart, and it looked out of his eyes and clogged up his voice. They told
him it meant ruination to all his political hopes, and that it would
turn his daddy against him for good and all. But he said he didn't care.
They held out agin him a long time, and then one thing he said won 'em
over--one thing. Kin you imagine what that was, friends and neighbors?
It was this: Carson Dwight said he loved you mountain men with all his
heart; he said no better or braver blood ever flowed in human veins than
yours; he said he knew you _thought_ you was right, but that you hadn't
had the chance to discover what he had found out, and that was that
Pete Warren was innocent and as harmless as a baby, and that--now,
listen!--that he knew the time would come when you'd be convinced of the
truth and carry regret for your haste to your graves. 'It is because,'
he told them, 'I want to save men that I love from remorse and sorrow
that I am in for this thing!' Fellow-citizens, that shot went home.
Those worthless 'town dudes,' as they was called just now, saved you
from committing a crime against yourselves an' God on high. Did any
human bein' ever see a better illustration than that of the duty of
enlightened folks to-day--the duty of them who, with divine sight, see
great truths--to lead others in the right direction? As God Almighty
smiles over you to-day in this broad sunlight, that gang in that store,
headed by a new Joseph, was an' are the truest and best friends you ever
had.”
There was no open applause, but Mrs. Parsons saw something in the
melting faces before her that was infinitely more encouraging, and
after a moment's pause, and leaning slightly on the table, she went on:
“Before I set down, I want to say one word about this big race question,
anyway. I'm just a plain woman, but I read papers an' I've thought about
it a lot. We hear some white folks say that the education the niggers
are now gettin' is the prime cause of so much crime amongst the
blacks--they say this in spite of the fact that it is always the
uneducated niggers that commit the rascality. No, my friends, it ain't
education that's the cause, it is _the lack_ of it. Education ain't just
what is learnt in school-books. It is anything that makes folks higher
an' better. Before the war niggers was better educated, for they had the
education that come from bein' close to the white race an' profitin' by
the'r example. After slavery was abolished the poor, simple numskulls,
great, overgrown, fun-lovin' children, was turned loose without advice
or guidin' hand, an' the worst part of 'em went downhill. Slavery was
education, and I'll bet the Lord had a hand in it, for it has lifted
a race from the jungles of Africa to a civilized land full of free
schools. So I say, teach 'em the difference between right an' wrong, an'
then let 'em work out their own salvation.
“Who in the name of common-sense is to do this if it ain't you of the
superior race? _But!_ wait a minute, think! How can you possibly teach
'em what law an' order is without knowin' a little about it yourselves?
How can you learn a nigger what justice means when he sees his brother,
son, or father, shot dead in his tracks or hung, like a scare-crow to
the limb of a tree because some lower grade black man a hundred miles
off has committed a dastardly deed? No sensible white man ever thought
of puttin' the two races on equality. The duty of the white blood is
always to keep ahead of the black, and it will. This candidate openly
declares that the time is coming when the negroes will overpower the
whites. A man that has as poor an opinion of his own race as that ought
to be kicked out of it. Now I can't vote, but I want every woman in
this crowd that believes I know what I'm talkin' about to see that her
brother, father, or husband votes for a member of the legislature that
knows what law an' order means, an' not for a red-handed anarchist who
would lay this country in ruins to gain his own puny aims. That's all
I've got to say.”
When she had finished there was still no applause. They had learned that
it was unseemly to make a demonstration at church, when deeply moved by
a sermon, and they had heard something to-day that had lifted them as
high under her sway as they had sunken low under Wiggin's. The formal
part of the exercises was over, and they proceeded to spread out the
contents of their baskets. Wiggin, after his successful ascent, had
fallen with something like a thud. He saw Mrs. Parsons helped from the
platform by her proudly flushing husband and instantly surrounded by
people anxious to offer congratulations. Wiggin shuddered for he stood
quite alone. Those who were in sympathy with him seemed afraid to
openly signify it. Even Dan Willis lurked back under the trees, his face
flushed with liquor and inward rage.
Pole Baker, however, was more thoughtful of the candidate's comfort.
With a queer twinkle of amusement in his eyes, and polishing, with the
dexterity of a carver of cherry-stones, his little stick, he approached
the candidate.
“Say, Wiggin,” he drawled out, “I want to ax you a question.”
“All right, Baker, what is it?” the candidate asked, absent-mindedly.
“Don't you remember tellin' me,” Pole began, “that you never had in all
yore life met a man that made better an' truer predictions about things
to come than I did?”
“Yes, I think so, Baker--yes, I remember now,” answered Wiggin. “You do
seem to have a head that way. Some men have more than others, a sort of
foresight or intuition.”
Pole chuckled. “You remember I said Teddy Rusefelt would whip the socks
off of Parker. I'm a Democrat an' always will be, but I kin see things
that are goin' to be agin me as plain as them I'm prayin' for. Well, you
remember I was called a traitor jest beca'se I told what was comin', but
I hit the nail on the head, didn't I?”
“Yes, you did,” admitted the downcast candidate.
“An' I was right about the majority Towns would git for the State
senate, Mayhew for solicitor, an' Tim Bloodgood for the last
legislature.”
“Yes, you were, I remember that,” said Wiggin.
“I hit it on the Governor's race to a gnat's heel, too, didn't I?” Pole
pursued, his keen eyes fixed on those of the man before him.
“Yes, you did,” admitted Wiggin; “you really seem to have remarkable
foresight.”
“Well, then,” said Baker, “I've got a prediction to make about your race
agin Carson Dwight.”
“Oh, you have!” exclaimed Wiggin, now all attention.
“Yes, and this time I'd bet my two arms and the first joint of my right
leg agin a pinch o' snuff that Carson'll beat you worse than a man was
ever whipped in his life.”
“You think so, Baker?” Wiggin was trying to sneer.
“I don't think anything about it; I _know_ it,” said Pole.
Wiggin stared at the ground a moment aimlessly, then he said,
doggedly, and yet with an evident desire for information at any sort of
fountain-head: “What makes you think I'm beat, Baker?”
“Because you've showed you hain't no politician, an' you've got a born
one to beat. For one thing, you've stirred up a hornet's nest. Women,
when they set the'r heads agin a'body, are devils in petticoats, an' the
one that presided this mornin' has got more influence than forty
men. Before you are a day older every man who has a wife, mother, or
sweetheart will be afraid to speak to you in broad daylight. Then ag'in,
no candidate ever won a race on a platform of pure hate an' revenge. You
made that crowd as mad as hell just now, while you was belchin' out that
stuff, but as soon as Sister Parsons showed 'em what a friend of the'rs
Dwight was they melted to him like thin snow after a rain.”