I
There was but one letter for Jeff Sharp to-day; and the village
postmaster himself put it in his hand. It had not been this way always.
Only recently it was that white-haired Pompey, the oldest and most
respected of Jeff’s colored boys, always served up the daily mail along
with his master’s breakfast. Jeff used to go over his letters as he
sipped the black drip-coffee that was now fashionable in the
South—sitting alone at the head of his massive table, the friendly sun
pouring through the wide, clear windows. Jeff had never believed that
the Emancipation Proclamation could come between him and Pompey’s
adoring service; but this had been an idle fancy like many other things.
Pompey had been lost sight of in those unforgettable days following his
master’s return from war; and being now a freeman, he no longer ran the
white man’s errands to the postoffice. The table of old mahogany had
been chopped up, so Jeff had heard, for the fuel of an invader’s
campfire. The sun still beamed through the windows of the dining room,
but Jeff was not there to feel it. The old Sharp mansion had gone with
the rest. A man who had once been Jeff’s foreman owned it now.
Letters had come by the dozen there, not one by one. There were dainty
perfumed notes from the belles of Richmond and Augusta, New Orleans and
Memphis; there were invitations quaintly expressed; there were friendly
messages from old schoolmates. Had the black disaster of the war stifled
the sociability that was the Southern people’s dearest trait—or had his
friends simply forgotten him, Jeff Sharp of Bull Run and Shiloh, Lookout
Mountain and Gettysburg. People did not have the heart to write, these
bitter days, he thought. Besides, many of his friends were missing or
dead, the price of a lost cause.
Such thoughts had come rather frequently of late. The two years since
Lee, tremendous even in defeat, had shaken hands with him in farewell
had not seemed to heal the grievous wounds of bitterness and sorrow. He
was called from his reflections now more by the postmaster’s look of
resentment rather than by any interest in the white envelope in his
hand.
The postmaster was a veteran too, as was practically every white man
under fifty in the town, and although the carpetbaggers had not yet come
to take over his humble office, he also had known better days. Now he
stood watching Jeff, a curious, strained, and somewhat sullen expression
on his youthful face. His curiosity was not, however, the childish kind
that is the country postmaster’s special prerogative. He looked rather
grim, Jeff thought—a look he had seen so many times in men’s faces
these past two years. He was evidently waiting for Jeff to read the
return card on the top of the envelope.
Jeff glanced at it, and his tall figure stiffened ever so slightly as he
read the printed words:
From
WILLIAM H. SEWARD,
Secretary of State,
Washington, D. C.
Jeff’s full lip curled, his bold nostrils expanded, and his eye roved to
the wastebasket. He could not, however, throw the great statesman’s
letter away. Really, he had no personal animosity toward his mother’s
old friend—her sweetheart, in fact, in happier days before the great
rebellion. Seward’s genius had gone far toward crushing the Confederacy,
but such had been his idea of duty. Jeff had admired him once and still
conceded him immeasurable superiority over the rabble (so Jeff was fond
of speaking of the Yankees) that he helped to govern. It was the thing
he stood for that Jeff hated—the North, the Union, the Stars and
Stripes. Secretary of State indeed! Jeff’s heart seemed to swell with
resentment.
“If I were you I wouldn’t do him the honor of reading it,” he heard the
postmaster say. “He was next to Lincoln! I put him in the same class
with Sherman.”
Jeff looked into the man’s indignant eyes—and his own eyes held visions
of men fighting and dying—but he smiled quietly and started to open the
letter. “He was an old friend of the family, Roger,” he explained. “He
is our enemy, but he was rather an honorable enemy, as Yankees go. I
believe he did what he thought was right—according to his lights. I
always considered him a gentleman.”
Jeff was not aware that he pronounced the last word with a singular
inflection. It was evident that he set great store by the term; that it
had tremendous meaning to him. Of course his homeland had always been a
stronghold of aristocracy, but now, when so much was gone and so little
was left to cling to, pride of birth had become very close indeed to a
religion to such men as he. His entire manner showed that this was the
key-word of his cult. He stood erect, his curly brown hair brushed back
from his temples, his shoulders straight, his black eyes flashing.
“There is no such thing—as a _Yankee_ gentleman,” Roger persisted.
“You’ve always said that.”
“I have always said that the North was a nation of peasants—of
backwoodsmen and of slovenly, mule-driving women—and that our war was a
war between gentlemen and trash. Don’t believe for a minute, Roger, that
I take any stock in this stuff that some of the older men are trying to
tell us—that there was fault on both sides, that we should forgive and
forget, and that it will only be a matter of a few years until real
friendly relations are resumed between the North and the South. I am a
Rebel now, and I’ll be a Rebel when I die, and the Union is as hateful
to me as when, in defeat, we took down the Stars and Bars from the
Courthouse. Just the same, I have to be fair to Seward. My mother always
told me that he was a man of parts, and I have had many favors from him
in the past. He was an abolitionist because he didn’t know any better.
He was an enemy, and he’s an enemy still, but just the same I can’t
throw away his letter.”
“It’s your letter,” Roger said doggedly. “Go ahead and read it.”
So Jeff read it; and he read as follows:
July 25, 1866.
MY DEAR LITTLE JEFF:—
I suppose it is absurd to call you Little Jeff any more, when
you are long as a giraffe. Apart from those long legs you have
acquired a stature of achievement that withering old age can
never cheat you out of. It was hard for me to believe that
gallant Major Sharp of whom our boys told me so much was the
little boy with curls and an insatiable appetite for New York
apples! It makes me feel a veritable Methuselah myself.
Come down and see me, Jeff, at once. I have a fine opening for a
young fellow like you. Don’t linger, but start to-day. I want to
revive our old friendship now that the clouds are lifting; not
that mine for you has ever flagged. But I know young blood, the
blood of a twenty-five-year-old gentleman from North Carolina;
and I am anxious to prove to you that these black years of war
have not changed me from the man you used to call
UNCLE WILL.
Office of the Secretary
of State,
Washington, D. C.
Jeff Sharp experienced a mixture of emotions as he finished the letter.
Try hard as he might to repel it, a warm glow of an old friendship
overswept him; and a spark was struck on the flint of his heart. For the
moment it was hard to remember that Seward had been the arch enemy of
the Confederacy, the very head of the State he hated. He kept
remembering a slight, soft-voiced old friend who brought him New York
pippins—a gallant gentleman whose one-time courtship of his mother had
always been considered an honor to the family. Of course he would not
accept the invitation, much less an appointment. Jeff knew perfectly
well the kind of openings Seward had for young men: official jobs in the
pay of Uncle Sam. Indeed, what did Seward mean by daring to offer such a
post to him, Jeff Sharp? Did he for a moment dream that the conquered
Rebel would turn about, two years after Lee’s surrender, and serve in
any capacity the enemy government? He must think that Jeff was humbled
indeed, or he would not ask the conquered soldier so to swallow his
pride as to accept a daily wage from the Union.
Yet presently he was brought face to face with an ugly fact which for
months past he had been trying to disregard: the swift ebb of his own
fortunes. The war had ruined Jefferson Sharp. The estate that otherwise
would have sustained him according to the Sharp tradition had been spent
and lost during the black years; the half million in confederate
currency that remained would not buy a loaf of bread. He knew perfectly
and exactly how many American dollars he had left. These would last only
a few more days; then he must seek some means of livelihood.
He was not trained in any money-making profession. The profession of
being a gentleman had seemed sufficient. He was now struck with the
bitter fact that some of his own ex-slaves were better equipped to solve
the problem of living than himself simply because they had learned
trades. It might be that Seward knew of some business or professional
opening, rather than a government position, in which Jeff might have a
chance for life and respectability. It might be that this letter had
reached him in the precise nick of time.
“It is an offer of a position,” Jeff explained to Roger, the postmaster.
“He doesn’t say just what.”
The other veteran stiffened. “He certainly is presumptuous in offering
such a thing. I hope you are sufficiently frank in your letter of
refusal?”
“How do you know I’m going to write any letter of refusal?” The pleasant
way in which Jeff’s full lip drew into his brown cheek was faintly
suggestive of a smile.
“Because you are a rebel, like all of us. Because it is a government
position—”
Jeff’s grin escaped him completely now and made a big crescent in his
handsome, brunette face. “The beam in your own eye first, brother!” he
observed. “Speaking of government positions—isn’t this a U. S.
postoffice?”
Rightly thinking that this would hold Roger for a while, Jeff turned
homeward. He went to pack his bags.