whatever satisfaction you want. But I remember"--he produced a large
spring-back dirk-knife, sprung it open and began curling off long
parings from the pine stick--"that in college, when any one of us vexed
you, you took your spite out on us, and generally on me, in words.
That's all right. We were boys and couldn't hold malice." A shaving fell
upon Mr. Pettigrew's shoulder and stayed there. "But once or twice your
venomous contempt came near including my father's name. Still that's
past, let it go. But now, if you do take your spite out in words be
careful to let them be entirely foreign to the real subject, and be dead
sure not to involve any name but mine. Or else don't begin till you've
packed your trunk and bought your railroad ticket; and you'd better have
a transatlantic steamer ticket, too."
Mr. Pettigrew had drawn near the door. With his hand on it he hissed,
"You'll find this is not the last of this, sir."
"I reckon it is," drawled John, with his eyes on his whittling. As the
door opened and shut he put away his knife, and was taking his hat when
his eye fell upon Cornelius's letter. He opened and read it.
The writing was Leggett's, but between the lines could be caught a
whisper that was plainly not the mulatto's.
He was ready, he wrote, "to interjuce an' suppote that bill to create
the Three Counties Colonization Company, Limited--which I has fo shawten
its name an takened out the tucks. The sed company will buy yo whole
Immense Track, paying for the same one third 1/3 its own stock--another
one third 1/3 to be subscribened by private parties--an the res to be
takened by the three counties and paid for in Cash to the sed Company
Limited--which the sed cash to be raised by a special tax to be voted by
the People. This money shell be used by the sed Company Limited to
construc damns an sich eloquent an discomojus impertinences which then
they kin sell the sed lans an impertinences to immigraters factorians an
minors an in that means pay divies on the Stock an so evvybody get mo or
less molasses on his finger an his vote Skewered. Thattle fetch white
immigration an thattle ketch the white-liner's vote. But where some
dever an as soon as any six miles square shell contain twenty white
children of school Age the sed Company Limited shell be boun to bill an
equip for them a free school house. An faw evvy school house so billden
sed Company Limited shell be likewise boun to bill another sommers in
the three Counties where a equal or greater number of collared children
are without one. Thattle skewer the white squatter and Nigger vote."
The next clause--there was only a line or two besides--brought an
audible exclamation from the reader: "Lassly faw evvy sich school house
so bilt the sed Co. Limited shell pay a sum not less than its cost to
some white male college in the three counties older then the sed Company
Limited."
John marvelled. What was Garnet doing or promising, that Leggett should
thus single out Rosemont for subsidies? And who was this in the letter's
closing line--certainly not Garnet--who would "buy both fists full" of
stock as soon as the bill should pass? He stepped out and walked along
the windy street immersed in thought.
"John!"--General Halliday beckoned to him. The General and Proudfit were
pushing into the lattice doors of a fragrant place whose bulletin
announced "Mock Turtle Soup and Venison for Lunch To-day." March joined
them. "Had your lunch, John? I heard you were looking for me."
"Well, yes, but there's no hurry." The three stood and ate, talking over
incidents of war times, with John at a manifest disadvantage, and
presently they passed from the luncheon trestles to the bar.
"No, Proudfit, if Garnet hadn't come in on our left just then and
charged the moment he did we'd have lost the whole battery. Garnet was a
poor soldier in camp, you're right; but on the field you'd only to tease
him and he'd fight like a wild bull."
They drank, lighted cigars, and sauntered out toward the General's
office. "John, I've read what you wrote me. I can't see it. We'll never
colonize any lands in Dixie, my boy, till we've changed the whole system
of laws under which we rent land and raise crops. You might as well try
to farm swamp lands without draining them."
"Why, General, my scheme doesn't include plantations at all."
"Yes, it does; Dixie's a plantation State, and you can't make your
little patch of it prosper till our planting prospers--can he,
Proudfit?"
The Colonel laughed. "No go, General; I'm not going to side with you.
Our prosperity, all around, hangs on the question whether you and the
darkey may tax us and spend the taxes as you please, or we shall tax
ourselves and spend the taxes as we please."
"Ah, Proudfit, you mean whether you may keep the taxes low enough to
hold the darky down or let them be raised high enough to lift him up.
Walk in, gentlemen. Proudfit, take the rocking-chair."
But the Colonel stood trying to return the General's last thrust, and
John was bored. "General, all I want to see you about is to say that I'm
going down into Blackland in a day or two to get as many darkies as I
can to settle on my lands, and if you'll tell me the ones that are in
your debt, I'll have nothing to do with them unless it is to tell them
they've got to stay where they are."
Proudfit whirled and stared. The General gave a low laugh.
"Why, John, that sounds mighty funny to come from you. Would you do such
a thing as that?--run off with another man's niggers?"
John bit his lip and looked at his cigar. "Are they yours, General?"
"By Jove! my son, they're not yours! O! of course, you've got the
legal--pshaw! I'm not going to dispute an abstraction with you. Go and
amuse yourself; you can't get 'em; the niggers that don't owe won't go;
that's the poetry of it. I'd rather you'd take the fellows that owe than
the one's that don't; but you won't get either kind."
"I can try, General." "No, sir, you can't!" exclaimed Proudfit. His
cigar went into the fireplace with a vicious spat, and his eyes snapped.
"Ow niggehs ah res'less an' discontented enough now, and whether you'll
succeed aw not you shan't come 'round amongst them tryin' to steal them
away! Damned if we don't run you out of the three counties! So long,
General!" He went by March to the door.
John stood straight, his jaws set, chin up, eyes down. Halliday, by
grimaces, was adjuring him to forbear. "But, Colonel Proudfit," he
said--Proudfit paused--"you'll not insist on the word 'steal?'"
"You can call it what you damn please, sir, but you mustn't do it." The
speaker passed out, leaving the door invitingly ajar.
The General caught John's arm--"Wait, I want to see you."
"I'll be back in a minute, General."
"My boy, the grave's full of nice fellows going to be back in a minute.
Son John, there's only one thing I'm thoroughly ashamed of you for----"
"I can see you half a dozen better, General; let me go."
"You've no need to go; Proudfit's coming right back; he's only gone for
his horse. There's plenty of time to hear the little I've got to say.
John March, I'm ashamed of this reputation you've got for being quick on
the trigger. O, you're much admired for it--by both sexes! Ye gods!
John, isn't it pitiful to see a fellow like you not able to keep a
kindly contempt for the opinion of fools! My dear boy--my dear boy!
you'll never be worth powder enough to blow you to the devil till you've
learned to let the sun go down on your wrath!"
John smiled and dropped his eyes, and the General, with an imperative
gesture detaining some one at the young man's back, spoke on. "John, the
old year's dying. For God's sake let it die in peace. Yes, and for your
own sake, and for the sake of us old murderers of the years long dead,
let as many old things as will die with it. I don't say bury anything
alive--that's not my prescription; but ease their righteous death and
give them a grave they'll stay in."
"General, all right! the Colonel may go for the present, but I'll tell
you now, and I'll soon show him, that whatever the laws of my State give
me leave to do I'll do if I choose, even if it's to help black men do
what white men say shan't be done." John reached behind him for the
latch.
His mentor smiled queerly. "Yes, even if it's to float a scheme drawing
twice as much water as we've got on our political sandbar. Ah! John
March, don't you know that the law's permission is never enough? Better
get all the permissions you can, and turn your 'I' into the most
multitudinous 'we' you can possibly make it. Seven legislatures can't
dig you too much channel."
March's reply was cut short by a voice behind him, which said:
"You can have the _Courier's_ permission."
As John wheeled about, Jeff-Jack came a step forward and Barbara Garnet
shrank against a window.
"Well, Miss Garnet," laughed March, as Ravenel conversed with Halliday,
"I _was_ absorbed, wa'n't I? You and Miss Fannie going to watch the old
year out and the new year in to-night?"
"No, sir, we're only going to the revival meeting," replied Barbara,
with mellow gravity. "All bad people are cordially invited, you know. I
reckon I've got to be there."
"Why, Miss Garnet, my name's Legion, too. I didn't know we were such
close kin." He said good-day and departed, mildly wondering what the
next incident would be. The retiring year seemed to be rushing him
through a great deal of unfinished business.
XLI.
SQUATTER SOVEREIGNTY
It was really a daring stroke, so to time the revival that the first
culmination of interest should be looked for on New Year's eve. On that
day business, the dry sorts, would be apt to decline faster than the
sun, and the nearness of New Year would make men--country buyers and
horsemen in particular--social, thirsty, and adventurous.
In fact, by the middle of the afternoon the streets around the
court-house square were wholly given up to the white male sex. One man
had, by accident, shot his own horse. Another had smashed a window, also
by accident, and clearly the fault of the bar-keeper, who shouldn't have
dodged. Men, and youths of men's stature, were laying arms about each
other's necks, advising one another, with profanely affectionate
assumptions of superiority, to come along home, promising on triple oath
to do so after one more drink, and breaking forth at unlooked-for
moments in blood-curdling yells. Three or four would take a fifth or
seventh stirrup cup, mount, start home, ride round the square and come
tearing up to the spot they had started from, as if they knew and were
showing how they brought the good news from Ghent to Aix, though beyond
a prefatory catamount shriek, the only news any of them brought was that
he could whip anything of his size, weight and age in the three
counties. The Jews closed their stores.
Proudfit had gone home. Enos had met a brother and a cousin, and come
back with them. John March, with his hat on, sat alone at his desk with
Fair's and Leggett's letters pinned under one elbow, his map under the
other, and the verbal counsels of Enos, General Halliday, and Proudfit
droning in his ears. He sank back with a baffled laugh.
He couldn't change a whole people's habit of thought, he reflected. Even
the _Courier_ followed the popular whim by miles and led it only by
inches. So it seemed, at least. And yet if one should try to make his
scheme a public one and leave the _Courier_ out--imagine it!
And must the _Courier_, then, be invited in? Must everybody and his
nigger "pass their plates?" Ah! how had a few years--a few
months--twisted and tangled the path to mastership! Through what
thickets of contradiction, what morasses of bafflement, what unimperial
acceptance of help and counsel did that path now lead! And this was no
merely personal fate of his. It was all Dixie's. He would never change
his politics; O no! But how if men's politics, asking no leave of their
owners, change themselves, and he who does not change ceases to be
steadfast?
Behold! All the way down the Swanee River, spite of what big levees of
prevention and draining wheels of antiquated cure, how invincibly were
the waters of a new order sweeping in upon the "old plantation."
And still the old plantation slumbered on below the level of the world's
great risen floods of emancipations and enfranchisements whereon party
platforms, measures, triumphs, and defeats only floated and eddied, mere
drift-logs of a current from which they might be cast up, but could not
turn back.
He bent over the desk. "Jove!" was all he said; but it stood for the
realization of the mighty difference between the map under his eyes and
what he was under oath to himself to make it. What "lots" of men--not
mountaineers only, but Blacklanders, too--had got to change their
notions--notions stuck as fast in their belief as his mountains were
stuck in the ground--before that map could suit him. To think harder, he
covered his face with his hands. The gale rattled his window. He failed
to hear Enos just outside his door, alone and very drunk, prying off the
tin sign of John March, Gentleman. He did not hear even the soft click
of the latch or the yet softer footsteps that brought the drunkard close
before his desk; but at the first word he glanced up and found himself
covered with a revolver.
"Set still," drawled Enos. In his left hand was the tin sign. "This yeh
trick looked ti-ud a-tellin' lies, so I fotch it in."
Without change of color--for despair stood too close for fear to come
between--John fixed his eyes upon the drunken man's and began to rise.
The weapon followed his face up.
"Enos, point that thing another way or I'll kill you." He took a slow
step outward from the desk, the pistol following with a drunken waver
more terrible than a steady aim. Enos spoke along its barrel, still
holding up the sign.
"Is this little trick gwine to stay fetch in? Say 'yass, mawsteh,' aw I
blow yo' head off."
But John still held the drunkard's eye. As he took up from his desk a
large piece of ore, he said, "Enos, when a man like you leaves a
gentleman's door open, the gentleman goes and shuts it himself."
"Yass, you bet! So do a niggah. Shell I shoot, aw does you 'llow----"
"I'm going to shut the door, Enos. If you shoot me in the back I swear
I'll kill you so quick you'll never know what hurt you." With the hand
that held the stone, while word followed word, the speaker made a slow
upward gesture. But at the last word the stone dropped, the pistol was
in March's hand, it flashed up and then down, and the drunkard, blinded
and sinking from a frightful blow of the weapon's butt, was dragging his
foe with him to the floor. Down they went, the pistol flying out of
reach, March's knuckles at Enos's throat and a knee on his breast.
"'Nough," gasped the mountaineer, "'nough!"
"Not yet! I know you too well! Not till one of us is dead!" John pressed
the throat tighter with one hand, plunged the other into his pocket, and
drew and sprung his dirk. The choking man gurgled for mercy, but March
pushed back his falling locks with his wrist and lifted the blade. There
it hung while he cried,
"O if you'd only done this sober I'd end you! I wish to God you wa'n't
drunk!"
"'Nough, Johnnie, 'nough! You air a gentleman, Johnnie, sir."
"Will you nail that sign up again?"
"Yass."
The knife was shut and put away, and when Enos gained his feet March had
him covered with his magazine rifle. "Pick that pistol up wrong end
first and hand it to me! Now my hat! 'Ever mind yours! Now that sign."
The corners of the tin still held two small nails.
"Now stand back again." March thrust a finger into his vest-pocket. "I
had a thumb-tack." He found it. "Now, Enos, I'll tack this thing up
myself. But you'll stand behind me, sir, so's if anyone shoots he'll hit
you first, and if you try to get away or to uncover me in the least bit,
or if anybody even cocks a gun, you die right there, sir. Now go on!"
The sun was setting as they stepped out on the sidewalk. The mail hour
had passed. The square and the streets around it were lonely. The
saloons themselves were half deserted. In one near the _Courier_ office
there was some roystering, and before it three tipsy horsemen were just
mounting and turning to leave town by the pike. They so nearly hid Major
Garnet and Parson Tombs coming down the sidewalk on foot some distance
beyond, that March did not recognize them. At Weed and Usher's Captain
Champion joined the Major and the parson. But John's eye was on one lone
man much nearer by, who came riding leisurely among the trees of the
square, looking about as if in search of some one. He had a long,
old-fashioned rifle.
"Wait, Enos, there's your brother. Stand still."
John levelled his rifle just in time. "Halt! Drop that gun! Drop it to
the ground or I'll drop you!" The rifle fell to the earth. "Now get
away! Move!" The horseman wheeled and hurried off under cover of the
tree-trunks.
"Gentlemen!" cried Parson Tombs, "there'll be murder yonder!" He ran
forward.
"Brother Tombs," cried Garnet, walking majestically after him, "for
Heaven's sake, stop! you can't prevent anything that way." But the old
man ran on.
Champion, with a curse at himself for having only a knife and a
derringer, flew up a stair and into the _Courier_ office.
"Lend me something to shoot with, Jeff-Jack, the Yahoos are after John
March."
Ravenel handed from a desk-drawer, that stood open close to his hand, a
six-shooter. Champion ran down-stairs. Ravenel stepped, smiling, to a
window.
March had turned his back and was putting up the sign, pressing the
nails into their former places with his thumb. Men all about were
peeping from windows and doors. Champion ran to the nearest tree in the
square and from behind it peered here and there to catch sight of the
dismounted horseman, who was stealing back to his gun.
"Keep me well covered, you lean devil," growled John to Enos, "or I'll
shoot you without warning!" Working left-handed, he dropped the
thumb-tack. With a curse between his teeth he stooped and picked it up,
but could not press it firmly into place. He leaned his rifle against
the door-post, drew the revolver and used its butt as a hammer. Champion
saw an elbow bend back from behind a tree. The mountaineer's brother had
recovered his gun and was aiming it. The captain fired and hit the tree.
March whirled upon Enos with the revolver in his face, the drunkard
flinched violently when not to have flinched would have saved both
lives, and from the tree-trunk that Champion had struck a rifle puffed
and cracked. March heard the spat of a bullet, and with a sudden horrid
widening of the eyes Enos fell into his bosom.
"Great God! Enos, your brother didn't mean to----"
The only reply was a fixing of the eyes, and Enos slid through his arms
and sank to the pavement dead.
Champion had tripped on a root and got a cruel fall, losing his weapon
in a drift of leaves; but as the brother of Enos was just capping his
swiftly reloaded gun--
"Throw up your hands!" cried Parson Tombs, laying his aged eye along the
sights of March's rifle; the hands went up and in a moment were in the
clutch of the town marshal, while a growing crowd ran from the prisoner
and from Champion to John March, who knelt with Parson Tombs beside the
dead man, moaning,
"O good Lord! good Lord! this needn't 'a' been! O Enos, I'd better 'a'
killed you myself! O great God, why didn't I keep this from happening,
when I----"
Someone close to him, stooping over the dead under pretence of feeling
for signs of life, murmured, "Stop talking." Then to the Parson, "Take
him away with you," and then rising spoke across to Garnet, "Howdy,
Major," with the old smile that could be no one's but Ravenel's. He and
Garnet walked away together.
"Died of a gunshot wound received by accident," the coroner came and
found. John March and the minister had gone into March's office, but
Captain Champion's word was quite enough. It was nearly tea-time when
John and the Parson came out again. The sidewalk was empty. As John
locked the door he felt a nail under his boot, picked it up, and seeming
not to realize his own action at all, stepped to the sidewalk's edge,
found a loose stone and went back to the door, all the time saying,
"No, sir, I've made it perfectly terrible to think of God and a
hereafter, but somehow I've never got so low down as to wish there
wa'n't any. I--" his thumb pressed the nail into its hole in the corner
of his sign--
"I do lots of things that are wrong, awfully wrong, though sometimes I
feel--" he hammered it home with the stone--"as if I'd rather"--he did
the same for the other two and the thumb-tack--"die trying to do right
than live,--well,--this way. But--" tossing away the stone and wiping his
hands--"that's only sometimes, and that's the very best I can say."
They walked slowly. The wind had ceased. By the _Courier_ office John
halted.
"Supper! O excuse me, Mr. Tombs really! I--I can't sir!--I--I'll eat at
the hotel. I've got to see a gentleman on business. But I pledge you my
word, sir, I'll come to the meeting." They shook hands. "You're mighty
kind to me, sir."
The gentleman he saw on business was Ravenel. They supped together in a
secluded corner of the Swanee Hotel dining-room, talking of Widewood and
colonization, and by the time their cigars were brought--by an
obsequious black waiter with soiled cuffs--March felt that he had never
despatched so much business at one sitting in his life before.
"John," said Ravenel as they took the first puff, "there's one thing you
can do for me if you will: I want you to stand up with me at my
wedding."
March stiffened and clenched his chair. "Jeff-Jack, you oughtn't to've
asked me that, sir! And least of all in connection with this Widewood
business, in which I'm so indebted to you! It's not fair, sir!"
Ravenel scarcely roused himself from reverie to reply, "You mustn't make
any connection. I don't."
"Well, then, I'll not," said March. "I'll even thank you for the honor.
But I don't deserve either the honor or the punishment, and I simply
can't do it!"
"Can't you 'hide in your breast every selfish care and flush your pale
cheek with wine'? Every man has got to eat a good deal of crow. It's not
so bad, from the hand of a friend. It shan't compromise you."
With head up and eyes widened John gazed at the friendly-cynical face
before him. "It would compromise me; you know it would! Yes, sir, you
may laugh, but you knew it when you asked me. You knew it would be
unconditional surrender. I don't say you hadn't a right to ask, but--I'm
a last ditcher, you know."
"Well," drawled Ravenel, pleasantly, when they rose, "if that's what you
prefer----"
"No, I don't prefer it, Jeff-Jack; but if you were me could you help
it?"
"I shouldn't try," said Ravenel.
XLII.
JOHN HEADS A PROCESSION
By the afternoon train on this last day of the year there had come into
Suez a missionary returning from China on leave of absence, ill from
scant fare and overwork.
General Halliday, Fannie, and Barbara were at tea when Parson Tombs
brought in the returned wanderer. The General sprang to his feet with an
energy that overturned his chair. "Why, Sammie Messenger, confound your
young hide! Well, upon my soul! I'm outrageous proud to see you!
Fan--Barb--come here! This is one of my old boys! Sam, this is the
daughter of your old Major; Miss Garnet. Why, confound your young hide!"
Parson Tombs giggled with joy. "Brother Messenger is going to add a word
of exhortation to Brother Garnet's discourse," he said with grave
elation, and when the General execrated such cruelty to a weary
traveler, he laughed again. But being called to the front door for a
moment's consultation with the pastor of the other church, he presently
returned, much embarrassed, with word that the missionary need not take
part, a prior invitation having been accepted by Uncle Jimmie Rankin, of
Wildcat Ridge. Fannie, in turn, cried out against this substitution, but
the gentle shepherd explained that what mercy could not obtain official
etiquette compelled.
"Tell us about John March," interposed the General. "They say you saved
his life."
"I reckon I did, sir, humanly speakin'." The Parson told the lurid
story, Fannie holding Barbara's hand as they listened. The church's
first bell began to ring and the Parson started up.
"If only the right man could talk to John! He's very persuadable
to-night and he'd take fum a stranger what he wouldn't take fum us." He
looked fondly to the missionary, who had risen with him. "I wish you'd
try him. You knew him when he was a toddler. He asks about you,
freck-wently."
"You'd almost certainly see him down-town somewhere now," said Fannie.
Barbara gave the missionary her most daring smile of persuasion.
* * * * *
March was found only a step or two from Fannie's gate.