we condense it here, but in substance to this effect: "The king never
dies; citizenship never ceases; a bereaved citizenship has no right to
put on expensive mourning, and linger through a dressy widowhood before
it marries again.... There are men who, when their tree has been cut
down even with the ground, will try to sit in the shade of the stump....
Such men are those who, now that slavery is gone, still cling to a civil
order based on the old plantation system.... They are like a wood-sawyer
robbed of his saw-horse and trying to saw wood in his lap."
All these darts struck and stung, but a little soft mud, such as any
editor could supply, would soon have drawn out the sting--but for an
additional line or two, which gave poisonous and mortal offense.
Blackland and Clearwater replied in a storm of indignation. The Suez
Courier bade him keep out of Dixie on peril of his life. He came,
nevertheless, canvassing for business, and was not molested, but got
very few shipments. What he mainly secured were the flippant pledges of
such as required the largest possible advances indefinitely ahead of the
least possible cotton. Also a few Yankees shipped to him.
* * * * *
"Gen'l Halliday, howdy, sah?" It was dusk of the last day of this tour.
The voice came from a dark place on the sidewalk in Suez. "Don't you
know me, Gen'l? You often used to see me an' Majo' Gyarnet togetheh;
yes, sah. My name's Cornelius Leggett, sah."
"Why, Cornelius, to be sure! I thought I smelt whiskey. What can I do
for you?"
"Gen'l, I has the honor to espress to you, sah, my thanks faw the way
you espress yo'self in yo' letteh on the concerns an' prospec's o' we'
colo'ed people, sah. An likewise, they's thousands would like to espress
the same espressions, sah."
"Oh, that's all right."
"Gen'l, I represents a quantity of ow people what's move' down into
Blackland fum Rosemont and other hill places. They espress they'se'ves
to me as they agent that they like to confawm some prearrangement with
you, sah."
"Are you all on one plantation?"
"Oh, no, sah, they ain't ezac'ly on no plantation. Me? Ob, I been
a-goin' to the Freedman' Bureau school in Pulaski City as they agent.
"Sah? Yass, sah, at they espenses--p-he!
"They? They mos'ly strowed round in the woods in pole cabins an' bresh
arbors.--Sah?
"Yaas, sah, livin' on game an' fish.--Sah?
"Yaas, sah.
"But they espress they doubts that the Gove'ment ain't goin' to give 'em
no fahms, an' they like to comprise with you, Gen'l, ef you please, sah,
to git holt o' some fahms o' they own, you know; sawt o' payin' faw'm
bes' way they kin; yass, sah. As you say in yo' letteh, betteh give 'm
lan's than keep 'em vagabones; yass, sir. Betteh no terms than none at
all; yass, sah." And so on.
From this colloquy resulted the Negro farm-village of Leggettstown. In
1866-68 it grew up on the old Halliday place, which had reverted to the
General by mortgage. Neatest among its whitewashed cabins, greenest with
gourd-vines, and always the nearest paid for, was that of the Reverend
Leviticus Wisdom, his wife, Virginia, and her step-daughter, Johanna.
In the fall of 1869 General Halliday came back to Suez to live. His
wife, a son, and daughter had died, two daughters had married and gone
to the Northwest, others were here and there. A daughter of sixteen was
with him--they two alone. The ebb-tide of the war values had left him
among the shoals; his black curls were full of frost, his bank box was
stuffed with plantation mortgages, his notes were protested. He had come
to operate, from Suez as a base, several estates surrendered to him by
debtors and entrusted to his management by his creditors. This he wished
to do on what seemed to him an original plan, of which Leggettstown was
only a clumsy sketch, a plan based on his belief in the profound
economic value of--"villages of small freeholding farmers, my dear sir!"
"It's the natural crystal of free conditions!" John heard him say in the
post-office corner of Weed & Usher's drug-store.
Empty words to John. He noted only the noble air of the speaker and his
hearers. Every man of the group had been a soldier. The General showed
much more polish than the others, but they all had the strong graces of
horsemen and masters, and many a subtle sign of civilization and cult
heated and hammered through centuries of search for good government and
honorable fortune. John stopped and gazed.
"Come on, son," said Judge March almost sharply. John began to back
away. "There!" exclaimed the father as his son sat down suddenly in a
box of sawdust and cigar stumps. He led him away to clean him off,
adding, "You hadn't ought to stare at people as you walk away fum them,
my son."
With rare exceptions, the General's daily hearers were silent, but
resolute. They did not analyze. Their motives were their feelings; their
feelings were their traditions, and their traditions were back in the
old entrenchments. The time for large changes had slipped by. Haggard,
of the _Courier_, thought it "Equally just and damning" to reprint from
the General's odiously remembered letter of four years earlier, "If we
can't make our Negroes white, let us make them as white as we can," and
sign it "Social Equality Launcelot." Parson Tombs, sweet, aged, and
beloved, prayed from his pulpit--with the preface, "Thou knowest thy
servant has never mixed up politics and religion"--that "the
machinations of them who seek to join together what God hath put asunder
may come to naught."
Halliday laughed. "Why, I'm only a private citizen trying to retrieve my
private fortunes." But--
"These are times when a man can't choose whether he'll be public or
private!" said Garnet, and the _Courier_ made the bankrupt cotton factor
public every day. It quoted constantly from the unpardonable letter, and
charged him with "inflaming the basest cupidity of our Helots," and so
on, and on. But the General, with his silver-shot curls dancing half-way
down his shoulders, a six-shooter under each skirt of his black velvet
coat, and a knife down the back of his neck, went on pushing his private
enterprise.
"Private enterprise!" cried Garnet. "His jackals will run him for
Congress." And they did--against Garnet.
The times were seething. Halliday, viewing matters impartially in the
clear, calm light of petroleum torches, justified Congress in acts which
Garnet termed "the spume of an insane revenge;" while Garnet, with equal
calmness of judgment, under other petroleum torches, gloried in the
"masterly inactivity" of Dixie's whitest and best--which Launcelot
denounced as a foolish and wicked political strike. All the corruptions
bred by both sides in a gigantic war--and before it in all the crudeness
of the country's first century--were pouring down and spouting up upon
Dixie their rain of pitch and ashes. Negroes swarmed about the polls,
elbowed their masters, and challenged their votes. Ragged negresses
talked loudly along the sidewalk of one another as "ladies," and of
their mistresses as "women." White men of fortune and station were
masking, night-riding, whipping and killing; and blue cavalry rattled
again through the rocky streets of Suez.
Such was life when dashing Fannie Halliday joined the choir in Parson
Tombs's church, becoming at once its leading spirit, and John March
suddenly showed a deep interest in the Scriptures. He joined her
Sunday-school class.
X.
FANNIE
Was sixteen--she said; had black eyes--the dilating kind--was pretty,
and seductively subtle. Jeff-Jack liked her much. They met at Rosemont,
where he found her spending two or three days, on perfect terms with
Barbara, and treated with noticeable gravity, though with full kindness,
by Mrs. Garnet, whom she called, warmly, "Cousin Rose."
Ravenel had pushed forward only two or three pawns of conversation when
she moved at one step from news to politics. She played with the ugly
subject girlishly, even frivolously, though not insipidly--at least to a
young man's notion--riding its winds and waves like a sea-bird.
Politics, she said, seemed to her a kind of human weather, no more her
business and no less than any other kind. She never blamed the public,
or any party for this or that; did he? And when he said he did not, her
eyes danced and she declared she disliked him less.
"Why, we might as well scold the rain or the wind as the public," she
insisted. "What publics do, or think, or say, or want--are merely--I
don't know--sort o' chemical values. What makes you smile that way?"
"Did I smile? You're deep," he said.
"You're smiling again," she replied, and, turning, asked Garnet a
guileless question on a certain fierce matter of the hour. He answered
it with rash confidence, and her next question was a checkmate.
"Oh, understand," he cried, in reply; "we don't excuse these dreadful
practices."
"Yes, you do. You-all don't do anything else--except Mr. Ravenel; he
approves them barefaced."
Garnet tried to retort, but she laughed him down. When she was gone,
"She's as rude as a roustabout," he said to his wife.
For all this she was presently the belle of Suez. She invaded its small
and ill-assorted society and held it, a restless, but conquered
province. John's father marked with joy his son's sudden regularity in
Sunday-school. If his wife was less pleased it was because to her all
punctuality was a personal affront; it was some time before she
discovered the cause to be Miss Fannie Halliday. By that time half the
young men in town were in love with Fannie, and three-fourths of them in
abject fear of her wit; yet, in true Southern fashion, casting
themselves in its way with Hindoo abandon.
Her father and she had apartments in Tom Hersey's Swanee Hotel. Mr.
Ravenel called often. She entered Montrose Academy "in order to remain
sixteen," she told him. This institution was but a year or two old. It
had been founded, at Ravenel's suggestion, "as a sort o' little sister
to Rosemont." Its principal, Miss Kinsington, with her sister, belonged
to one of Dixie's best and most unfortunate families.
"You don't bow down to Mrs. Grundy," something prompted Ravenel to say,
as he and Fannie came slowly back from a gallop in the hills.
"Yes, I do. I only love to tease her now and then. I go to the races,
play cards, waltz, talk slang, and read novels. But when I do bow down
to her I bow away down. Why, at Montrose, I actually talk on serious
subjects!"
"Do you touch often on religion? You never do to the gentlemen I bring
to see you."
"Why, Mr. Ravenel, I don't understand you. What should I know about
religion? You seem to forget that I belong to the choir."
"Well, politics, then. Don't you ever try to make a convert even in
that?"
"I talk politics for fun only." She toyed with her whip. "I'd tell you
something if I thought you'd never tell. It's this: Women have no
conscience in their intellects. No, and the young gentlemen you bring to
see me take after their mothers."
"I'll try to bring some other kind."
"Oh, no! They suit me. They're so easily pleased. I tell them they have
a great insight into female character. Don't you tell them I told you!"
"Do you remember having told me the same thing?"
She dropped two wicked eyes and said, with sweet gravity, "I wish it
were not so true of you. How did you like the sermon last evening?"
"The cunning flirt!" thought he that night, as his kneeling black boy
drew off his boots.
Not so thought John that same hour. Servants' delinquencies had kept him
from Sunday-school that morning and made him late at church. His mother
had stayed at home with her headache and her husband. Her son was
hesitating at the church-yard gate, alone and heavy-hearted, when
suddenly he saw a thing that brought his heart into his throat and made
a certain old mortification start from its long sleep with a great
inward cry. Two shabby black men passed by on plough-mules, and between
them, on a poor, smart horse, all store clothes, watch-chain, and
shoe-blacking, rode the president of the Zion Freedom Homestead League,
Mr. Cornelius Leggett, of Leggettstown. John went in. Fannie, seemingly
fresh from heaven, stood behind the melodeon and sang the repentant
prodigal's resolve; and he, in raging shame for the stripes once dealt
him, the lie they had scared from him at the time, and the many he had
told since to cover that one, shed such tears that he had to steal out,
and, behind a tree in the rear of the church, being again without a
handkerchief, dry his cheeks on his sleeves.
And now, in his lowly bed, his eyes swam once more as the girl's voice
returned to his remembrance: "Father, I have sinned against heaven and
before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son."
He left his bed and stood beside the higher one. But the father slept.
Even if he should waken him, he felt that he could only weep and tell
nothing, and so he went back and lay down again. With the morning,
confession was impossible. He thought rather of revenge, and was hot
with the ferocious plans of a boy's helplessness.
XI.
A BLEEDING HEART
One night early in November, when nearly all Rosemont's lights were out
and a wet brisk wind was flirting and tearing the yellowed leaves of the
oaks, the windows of Mrs. Garnet's room were still bright. She sat by a
small fire with Barbara at her knee. It had been election-day and the
college was silent with chagrin.
"Is pop-a going to get elected, mom-a?"
"I don't think he is, my child."
"But you hope he is, don't you?"
"Listen," murmured the mother.
Barbara heard a horse's feet. Presently her father's step was in the
hall and on the stairs. He entered, kissed wife and child, and sat down
with a look first of care and fatigue, and then a proud smile.
"Well, Launcelot's elected."
A solemn defiance came about his mouth, but on his brow was dejection
and distress.
"You know, Rose," he said, "that for myself, I don't care."
She made no reply.
He leaned on the mantlepiece. "My heart bleeds for our people! All they
ask is the God-given right to a pure government. Their petition is
spurned! Rose,"--tears shone in his eyes--"I this day saw the sabres and
bayonets of the government of which Washington was once the head,
shielding the scum of the earth while it swarmed up and voted honor and
virtue out of office!" The handkerchief he snatched from his pocket
brought out three or four written papers. He cast them upon the fire.
One, under a chair, he overlooked. Barbara got it later--just the thing
to carry in her reticule when she went calling on herself. She could not
read its bad writing, but it served all the better for that.
Next evening, at tea--back again from Suez--"Wife, did you see a letter
in blue ink in your room this morning, with some pencil figures of my
own across the face? If it was with those papers I burned it's all
right, but I'd like to know." His unconcern was overdone.
Barbara was silent. She had battered the reticule's inner latch with a
stone. To get the paper out, the latch would have to be broken. Silence
saved it.
The election was over, but the turmoil only grew. Mere chemicals, did
Fannie call these incidents and conditions? But they were corrosives and
caustics dropped blazing hot upon white men's bare hands and black men's
bare feet. The ex-master spurned political fellowship with his slave at
every cost; the ex-slave laid taxes, stole them, and was murdered.
"Make way for robbery, he cries," drawled Ravenel; "makes way for
robbery and dies."
"Mr. Ravenel," said Judge March, "I find no place for me, sir. I lament
one policy and loathe the other. I need not say what distress of mind I
suffer. I doubt not we are all doing that, sir."
"No," said Jeff-Jack, whittling a straw.
"I'll tell you what it is, Mr. Ravenel," said Fannie Halliday; "it's a
war between decency in the wrong, and vulgarity in the right."
"No," said Jeff-Jack again, and her liking for him grew.
Cornelius's explanation in the House was more elaborate.
"This, Mr. Speaker, are that great wahfare predicated in the New
Testament, betwix the Republicans an' sinnehs on one side an' the
Phair-i-sees on the other. The white-liners, they is the Phair-i-sees!
They is the whited sculptors befo' which, notinstan'in' all they
chiselin', the Republicans an' sinnehs enters fust into the kingdom!"
So, for two more years, and John was fifteen.
Then the Judge decided to explain to him, confidentially, their long
poverty.
"Daphne, dear"--he was going down into Blackland--"if you see no
objection I'll take son with me.--Why, no, dear, not both on one hoss,
you're quite right; that wouldn't be kind to son."
"A merciful man, Powhatan, is merciful to----"
"Yes, deah; Oh, I had the hoss in mind too; indeed I had! Do you know,
my deah, I can tend to business betteh when I have ow son along? I'm
gett'n' to feel like as if I'd left myself behind when he's not with
me."
"You've always been so, Judge March." Her smile was sad. "Oh! no, I
mustn't advise. Take him along if you're determined to."
XII.
JOHN THINKS HE IS NOT AFRAID
"Son," said the father as they rode, "I reckon you've often wondered
why, owning ow hund'ed thousand an' sixty acres, we should appeah so
sawt o' reduced; haven't you?"
"Sir?"
The father repeated the question, and John said, dreamily:
"No, sir."
"Well, son, I'll tell you, though I'd rather you'd not mention it--in
school, faw instance--if we can eveh raise money to send you to school.
"It's because, in a sense, we a-_got_ so much lan'. Many's the time I
could a-sole pahts of it, an' refused, only because that particulah sale
wouldn't a-met the object fo' which the whole tract has always been
held. It was yo' dear grandfather's ambition, an' his father's befo'
him, to fill these lan's with a great population, p'osp'ous an' happy.
We neveh sole an acre, but we neveh hel' one back in a spirit o' lan'
speculation, you understan'?"
"Sir?--I--yes, sir."
"The plan wa'n't adapted to a slave State. I see that now. I don't say
slavery was wrong, but slave an' free labor couldn't thrive side by
side. But, now, son, you know, all labor's free an' the time's come faw
a change.
"You see, son, that's where Gen'l Halliday's village projec' is bad. His
villages are boun' han' an' foot to cotton fahmin' an' can't bring forth
the higher industries; but now, without concealin' anything fum him or
anybody--of co'se we don't want to do that--if we can get enough of his
best village residenters fum Leggettstown an' Libbetyville to come up
an' take lan' in Widewood--faw we can give it to 'em an' gain by it, you
know; an' a site or two faw a church aw school--why, then, you know,
when capitalists come up an' look at ow minin' lan's--why, first thing
you know, we'll have mines an' mills an' sto'es ev'y _which_ away!"
They met and passed three horsemen armed to the teeth and very tipsy.
"Why, if to-morrow ain't election-day ag'in! Why, I quite fo'gotten
that!"
At the edge of the town two more armed riders met them.
"Judge March, good mawnin', seh." All stopped. "Goin' to Suez?"
"We goin' on through into Blackland."
"I don't think you can, seh. Our pickets hold Swanee River bridge. Yes,
sah, ow pickets. Why _ow_ pickets, they're there. 'Twould be strange if
they wa'n't--three hund'ed Blackland county niggehs marchin' on the town
to burn it."
"Is that really the news?"
"That's the latest, seh. We after reinfo'cements." They moved on.
Judge March rode slowly toward Suez. John rode beside him. In a moment
the Judge halted again, lifted his head, and listened. A long cheer
floated to them, attenuated by the distance.
"I thought it was a charge, but I reckon it's on'y a meet'n of ow people
in the square." He glanced at his son, who was listening, ashy pale.
"Son, we ain't goin' into town. I'm going, but you needn't. You can ride
back a piece an' wait faw me; aw faw further news which'll show you what
to do. On'y don't in any case come into town. This ain't yo' fight, son,
an' you no need to get mixed in with it. You hear, son?"
"I"--the lad tried twice before he could speak--"I want to go with you."
"Why, no, son, you no need to go. You ain't fitt'n' to go. Yo' too
young. You a-trembling now fum head to foot. Ain't you got a chill?"
"N-no, sir." The boy shivered visibly. "I've got a pain in my side, but
it don't--don't hurt. I want to go with you."
"But, son, there's goin' to be fight'n'. I'm goin' to try to p'vent it,
but I shan't be able to. Why, if you was to get hurt, who'd eveh tell
yo' po' deah mother? I couldn't. I jest couldn't! You betteh go 'long
home, son."
"I c-c-can't do it, father."
"Why, air you that sick, son?"
"No, sir, but I don't feel well enough to go
home--Father--I--I--t-t-told--I told--an awful lie, one time, about you,
and----"
"Why, son!"
"Yes, sir. I've been tryin' for seven years to--k--own up, and----"
"Sev--O Law, son, I don't believe you eveh done it at all. You neveh so
much as told a fib in yo' life. You jest imagine you done it."
"Yes, I have father, often. I can't explain now, but please lemme go
with you."
"Why, son, I jest can't. Lawd knows I would if I could."
"Yes, you can, father, I won't be in the way. And I won't be af-raid.
You don't think I would eveh be a-scared of a nigger, do you? But if the
niggers should kill you, and me not there, I wouldn't ever be any
account no more! I haven't ever been any yet, but I will be, father, if
you'll----"
Three pistol shots came from the town, and two townward-bound horsemen
broke their trot and passed at a gallop. "Come on, Judge," laughed one.
"I declare, son, I don't know what _toe_ do. You betteh go 'long back."
"Oh, father, don't send me back! Lemme go 'long with you. Please don't
send me back! I couldn't go. I'd just haf to turn round again an' follow
you. Lemme go with you, father. I want to go 'long with you. Oh--thank
you, sir!" They trotted down into the town. "D' you reckon C'nelius 'll
be there, father?--I--hope he will." The pallor was gone.
As the turnpike became a tree-shaded street, they passed briskly by its
old-fashioned houses set deep in grove gardens. Two or three weedy lanes
at right and left showed the poor cabins of the town's darker life shut
and silent. But presently,
"Father, look there!"
The Judge and his son turned quickly to a turfy bank where a ragged
negro lay at the base of a large tree. He was moaning, rocking his head,
and holding a hand against his side. His rags were drenched with blood.
The white eyes rolled up to the face of the Judge, as he tossed his
bridle to his son.
"Wateh," whispered the big lips, "wateh."
John threw his father's bridle back, galloped through a gate, and came
with a gourd full.
"Gimme quick, son, he's swoonin' away." The draught brought back some
life.
"Shan't I get a doctor, father?"
"Tain't a bit of use, son."
"No," moaned the negro. "I'm gwine fasteh dan docto's kin come. I'm in
de deep watehs. Gwine to meet my Lawd Jesus. Good-by, wife; good-by,
chillun. Oh, Jedge March, dey shot me in pyo devilment. I was jist
lookin' out fo' my boy. Dey was comin' in to town an dey sees me, an
awdehs me to halt, an' 'stid o' dat I runs, thinkin' that'd suit 'em
jist as well. Oh, Lawd!--Oh, Lawd! Oh!" He stared into the Judge's face,
a great pain heaved him slowly, his eyes set, and all was over. A single
sob burst from the boy as he gazed on the dark, dead features. The Judge
hasted to mount.
"Now, son, I got to get right into town. But you see now, you betteh go
along back to yo' motheh, don't you?"
"I'm goin' with you."
XIII.
FOR FANNIE
They came where two men sat on horses in the way. "Sorry, Judge, but
them's orders, seh; only enrolled men can pass."
But the speakers presently concluded that it could never have been
intended to shut out such a personage as Judge March, and on pledge to
report to Captain Shotwell, at the Swanee Hotel, or else to Captain
Champion at the court-house, father and son proceeded. Montrose Academy
showed no sign of life as they went by.
Yet John had never seen the town so populous. Saddled horses were tied
everywhere. Men rode here or there in the yellow dust, idly or
importantly, mounted, dismounted, or stood on the broken sidewalks in
groups, some sober, some not, all armed and spurred, and more arriving
from all directions. Handsome Captain Shotwell, sitting in civil dress,
a sword belted on him and lying across his lap, explained to the Judge.