leakage, he was seized with stern, wrathful impatience. It was very
difficult for him to view the subject in any clear perspective. He had
been at first too far off; and now, being too near, he put his eye
against the object he wished to study and so blinded himself. One could
wish that all reformers should take a preliminary course in optics.
Why should a race be so childishly frivolous, behave with such naked
and unshamed untruthfulness, at so great a turning-point in its career?
Perhaps, he reflected, it was because they had not as yet been taught
their value as human beings,--free human beings, with a part, and that
no mean part, to play in the world. Yes, that must be it. John began
to teach them their great value as human beings, very persistently and
insistently.
But if black faces beamed approval, when he went abroad among his
new neighbors white faces looked upon him with a cold and hostile
contempt. He had come in their most evil hour, and he had been allied
with those forces which had crushed the South. Therefore they judged
him even as they were judged by him. They were engaged in the most
frightful struggle in which any people can engage,--the struggle to
preserve the integrity and purity of a race in the midst of a world
turned topsy-turvy. They neither asked nor desired outside help or
counsel; they insisted upon their inherent right to manage their own
affairs in their own way. And it was in order to do this that they had
of late called into being a force born of desperation and duty--the
Klan--against which John MacLean thundered without fear, but not
without fanged and ravening reproach.
John could no more understand that movement than the men behind it
could understand _him_. With flashing eyes and compressed lips he had
listened to dark and wild tales, to whispered, fearful confidences, to
terrified comments.
Of the seed that burned bravely at market crosses, fell singing
fighting hymns on lonesome moors, starved unwhimpering in forgotten
dungeons,--he was devoid of fear. A man of his hands, his utmost
Christianity could not keep his blood from kindling joyously to a
rousing battle. He had no faintest notion of counseling meekness.
Bareheaded, on the front steps of Linden, he called the colored
country-side around him and advised them to get guns and to use them.
For himself, he said disdainfully, he had no tinge of fear; and he
asked them to remember that for such a cause as this had his old friend
John Brown died at Charlestown.
They left Linden glory-hallelujahing; it was John MacLean’s gauntlet
thrown down openly for all members of the outlaw Klan to see.
The Klan watched silently. And presently they decided that they
had most grievous ground of complaint against this cantankerous
carpet-bagger; a fact perfectly well known to Mr. MacLean, who, like
a particularly bad-tempered St. George in conflict with a particularly
devilish dragon, honed up the tongue of denunciation accordingly.
And, while the storm lowered over Linden, and the cruel, bleak winter
of direst want and woe drew near to one of those sad, sad Christmases
after the war, Zeke and Sally, with the little boy between them,
were journeying homeward by ox-cart express. The baby was simply and
chastely clad in a parti-colored shift worn next to his grimy skin, a
man’s old coat with the sleeves rolled up to allow his small arms free
play, and a battered and shapeless felt hat pulled down over his ears
in the effective fashion of an extinguisher. Of shoes he had none.
Cindy’s bag, sewed up in a very dirty piece of calico, was tied about
his neck; and his cheeks--such as one might glimpse of them under the
enshrouding headgear--bore upon them etchings done in wet points of
bread and molasses.
On Christmas Eve, in a chill and dreary twilight, they left the ox-cart
in a thicket and entered the path that leads through the pines to
Linden. Wet, swaying pendants of trailing moss, hanging from the huge
oaks that interspersed the pines, brushed against them with a clammy
and ghostly touch. Zeke and Sally, both nervous and silent, were filled
with exaggerated fears. All along the long road, terrible and wild
stories had been whispered, filling tellers and listeners alike with
apprehension.
They breathed deep with relief when at last Linden lay before them,
dark, quiet deserted, with closed doors and windows, and light showing
in one room only. Stepping noiselessly upon the pillared porch, Zeke
swung the sleeping baby off his shoulder and plumped him down with his
back against the closed door. Linden had come home.
The baby was quite used to cold and darkness, but not at all used to
being left alone and supperless. He called softly: “Thally! Thally!”
But “Thally” did not come back. His lip trembled; tears filled his
eyes; the vague, formless fear of aloneness assailed him, and lifting
up his voice he cried loudly.
The door was hastily opened by a big, fair, bearded man who held a
candle in one hand and shaded his keen blue eyes with the other. The
bundle of rags upon the threshold waited no further invitation than the
opened door, but trotted into the hall, his small bare feet pattering
on the uncovered floor. A sleeve of the coat unrolled and flapped
beside him emptily, grotesquely.
Whether the outlandish waif were black or white John could not for the
moment tell; in truth, it mattered little, all children being dear
to him. He ushered his small visitor into a room warm with fire and
candlelight, and removed the evil odored coat, the shapeless hat.
Periwinkle eyes, white brow, gold hair, revealed themselves.
“And where will _you_ be from?” John wondered.
“Thally gone. Thally leave Linden,” said the baby gravely, shaking his
head over Thally’s defection.
“And who’s Sally, now?”
But the child had imparted all the information at his command. Sally
was Sally, and Sally had gone and left him. He patted the big man’s
hand to make him understand.
The big man was absurdly grateful for that friendly, light touch. He
had been feeling most horribly alone; he had, in all truth, felt that
same vague honor of aloneness which had made the child cry out at his
door. The house was quite deserted, save for himself, the cook having
gone into Bluffton for the night, on Christmas business of her own. But
the emptiness that John recognized was not so much in the house as in
himself, the inevitable result of social ostracism.
[Illustration: The bundle of rags on the threshold waited no further
invitation]
The Bible opened at random, which he had been reading when the cry at
his door interrupted him, had given him for his pains the lugubrious
eighty-eighth:
Thou hast put away mine acquaintance far from me; thou hast made me
an abomination unto them....
Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, _and_ mine acquaintance
into darkness.
The words stung him. For he was most absolutely cut off from his kind,
a thing calamitous for a white man. The evil, greedy carpet-baggers
exploiting ignorant ex-slaves, making of them political pawns upon the
bloody chess-board of the South, filled him with a stern disgust and
anger; and he viewed the ex-slaves’ former owners very much as, say, a
biblical Jew might have viewed Baal worshipers overthrown, hewed hip
and thigh by the sword of the Lord and of Gideon. He said, therefore,
in substance:
“Gentlemen, I am everybody’s enemy.”
And they replied unanimously: “For this, be anathema.”
And already the light, volatile natures, the easy, pilfering morality,
the irresponsible, gay inconsequence of the pupils and protégés for
whom he labored had begun to chafe and fret his own honest and truthful
nature. He had no thought, however, of giving up a fight just begun.
But to keep him sweet he needed communion with his equals.
That the wee visitor, come mysteriously out of the dusk of Christmas
Eve, should be a white child touched him curiously and tenderly. Blood
is thicker than water. He did not love the black babies less but the
white baby more.
Moreover, the white baby was looking at him with starry eyes full of
the sweetest trust and friendliness. And John did so greatly need trust
and friendliness just then. One may have very, very, very little,
and still not be without some inward and sure staff of comfort and of
hope; but, oh, to be alone and hated, without love, without intelligent
sympathy, without friendliness--on Christmas Eve!
The childless man felt his heart melt in his bosom, remembering old,
tender stories of that dear Baby of the Star, who at times delights to
reveal himself to sad men on pilgrimage; and always in the guise of the
beggar and of the lowly whom he loved.
On the table, beside the big Bible, stood the remains of John’s supper.
The child pointed to it eagerly, for he was very hungry.
“Linden wan’ thuppeh.”
Linden! Why, the child’s name was Linden! What a pleasant and curious
coincidence!
Having supped, the baby yawned, looking about him for a good spot to
curl up and go to sleep, like a puppy with a full stomach. He decided
upon the hearthrug. But John’s bachelor neatness and cleanliness were
scandalized at the bare idea of any human creature going to sleep
anywhere in such a shocking state of grime. He wished that Viny, the
cook, were there to help him; but she was not, and John rolled up his
sleeves and set himself seriously to the task, fearsome to any man, of
getting a thoroughly dirty child thoroughly clean. The one discolored
garment made him shudder, as he consigned it to the fire. Cindy’s bag
was laid upon the table for later investigation, and he handled it as
gingerly as if he had seen the old black woman mumbling her spells with
its aid.
Linden enjoyed the warm water hugely. He splashed and shouted and
laughed, and grabbed at the soap, and worried the wash-rag; and he
howled only when John, with more zeal than deftness, soaped his eyes
and mouth. It was a drastic scouring, but there presently emerged from
it a sweet and rosy cherub, hard to be recognized as the dirty little
grub of an hour since.
When he had been trussed in an undershirt by way of a nighty, and the
room decently put to order again, Master Linden decided that the nice
big man should sing him “nighty-night”; he stood on tiptoes to be taken
up and rocked.
“Thing by-bye,” he urged, settling himself comfortably in the crook
of a big arm, and the big arm that was all too empty closed about him
hungrily, instinctively, God having made all big arms for the great
purpose of cuddling soft, snuggling little bodies. An inexpressible,
exquisite sense of fatherhood welled up in John’s heart. He pressed his
face down against the damp curls. He began to sing:
“God rest you, merry gentlemen! Let nothing you dismay.
For Jesus Christ our Saviour was born on Christmas Day.”
The baby, with half-closed eyes, crooned a tuneless tune to the fire,
his hand patting John’s arm. Then he went to sleep in the arms of the
man who had taken his inheritance, and was held close and lovingly.
Reluctantly John laid him down upon the sofa and covered him with a
blanket brought from his own bed.
He had time then to examine the extremely dirty little bag tied with
knotted string, and to marvel at the unchancy plunder it contained.
But he whistled when, from the midst of the conjure stuff, there came
to light the rings Cindy had taken from a dead hand. With them was
a man’s very handsome and heavy gold watch-fob, stamped with a coat
of arms--the same arms blazoned upon the marble mantels and over the
great doors of Linden. John stared at the jewel almost unbelievingly.
Then he stole over and looked long and earnestly upon the sleeping
baby, and saw how race and breeding marked every lovely line of him.
John knew him now, bone of the bone and blood of the blood of those
proud patricians whose portraits still hung upon the walls of their
despoiled home, men and women allied to the lordliest names of England
and of France. Eh, but this was a bonny baby! In his secretest heart
the dour, doughty Puritan adored his strength and grace and comeliness.
When he had taken over Linden for the glory of the Lord, John had
heard, of course, of the little widow and her flight to Columbia; also
he knew that there had been an heir expected. But the little widow was
dead, and no one had heard of any child surviving. Yet--here he was!
Who had brought him home, or why, or how, John never knew; but he was
quite, quite sure Who had sent him, and he had no thought of refusing
the heavenly gift. He would have thought such a refusal sacrilegious,
he who saw the hand of the Almighty in all his affairs, shaping his
destiny and guiding his days. With all humility and willingness and
gratitude, he took over his new stewardship and all that it implied.
He sat by the fire, and, full of a happy awe, dreamed and planned.
There was a far, fair future in which he and this child, viewing the
great work they should do together, might, too, say reverently: “What
hath God wrought!” He smiled; he was no longer alone.
His Christmas present presently stirred in his sleep, woke, and sat up.
“Wanterjinkerwater!” said he plaintively. “Dimmyjinkerwater!”
Vain of the delightful fact that he so readily understood this angelic
lingo, John got the water, eager to wait fatherlily upon his child.
The little man drank slowly, with long and deliberate pauses between
little sips. Then he stuck his fat fingers in the glass, paddled them,
laughed, and looked up at John with bright, mischievous eyes.
And even then sheeted figures were dismounting from sheeted horses
before the pillared porch of Linden. They moved soundlessly, as might
the phantoms they resembled, and their appearance, in that lonely place
and hour, was such as froze the blood. Under the tall leader’s hand the
great hall door swung open, for in his surprise at the child’s entrance
John had forgotten to draw the bolts. Soundlessly they moved down the
wide hall toward the room from which light issued. The leader opened
this door, too.
Candles and firelight dancing on the walls; upon the table nothing
worse than bread and milk and an open bible. And John himself,
kneeling, smiling fatherlily upon a rosy and roguish elf who paddled in
a glass of water and laughed gleefully.
The child saw them first, and gasped. At that John looked up and knew
his fate was upon him. Rage shook him head to foot, and he would have
rushed upon them, unarmed as he was, but--one could not endanger a
child’s life in such a mêlée of killing as must ensue. He got to his
feet and faced them, disdaining words, without a trace of fear, but
with eyes blazing with bitter contempt. Twenty pairs of eyes cold with
condemnation looked back at him, the carpet-bagger, the preaching
fire-brand, the enemy. The tall leader beckoned, an imperious and
menacing gesture. John shrugged his shoulders, a grim, scornful smile
curling his lips.
“So much mummery for one lone man’s murder!” said he, bitingly.
Something in that tense, electric atmosphere troubled the young child’s
spirit. He slipped off the sofa, and as the big undershirt tripped him,
and John, with a quick gesture, stooped to raise him, the little man
gripped the big one with warm, moist fingers. He frowned disapprovingly
at the things in the doorway.
“Go ’way, boogermans!” he ordered, with pretty imperiousness. “Go ’way!”
When the boogermans failed to go, the baby wished John to take him up
in his arms. But John shook his head regretfully. His brows puckered
then as the problem of the child’s fate presented itself. He looked
about desperately, praying for an inspiration for the child’s sake.
Then, holding up his hand impressively, he addressed the tall leader,
and told of the child’s coming, of what Cindy’s bag contained.
But the baby himself, after vainly twitching his friend’s trouser leg,
began to roar dismally, with the fearless lack of restraint that is a
baby’s most potent weapon. John and his visitors looked at one another,
not so much with hate as with perplexity. There was a thing to be done;
but, in the doing, what of the baby?
“And _you’re_ of his kin and his race!” spat John, with sudden
exasperation. “Christmas Eve--and an innocent roused from his sleep
to witness murder! Could you find no fitter time for your devil’s
prankjankins than the birth-night of the Lord?”
Nobody answered. In sheer desperation, John went on his knees to
comfort the wailing child, and as the baby strangled his sobs on the
big man’s breast, they in the door looked on through the slits of forty
eyeholes.
“If you can dare to handle innocence with bloody hands--if there’s one
among you that’s a father--take the child home to some woman to-night,
for the love of God!” said John. And gently he put the child aside. “It
goes sore against my grain to part with you, my bonny man,” he said
softly and regretfully. “I looked to be a father to you. But the will
of God be done! Never yet did John MacLean gainsay a decree of his
Maker. And in my Maker’s name I beseech my murderers to deal fairly
with you after I am done away with, and to put you into possession of
what must be yours. Stay!”
He fished a stubby pencil from his pocket, drew a chair to the table,
seated himself calmly, and on the fly-leaf of his Bible made his brief
will, leaving Linden to the child. When he had signed and dated it, he
rose and nodded.
“That will make it surer,” said he, with a satisfied smile.
And all the while the baby, refusing to be lightly put aside, clutched
at his knees, protesting against such neglectful treatment with raised,
tearful eyes and heartbroken sobs.
“And now,” said John to his gentlemen-in-waiting, “there is but one
thing more.” He fished a handful of small change from his pocket, bowed
to them, and laid the money on the table. “You will be so kind,” he
said politely, “as to buy with this some little baubles to please him?
It’s Christmas, remember--Christmas! I think it would ease me in my
extremity to remember I had made the wee thing happy on Christmas!” He
straightened his shoulders at that, and his head went up. “And now I’m
ready,” said he calmly.
Once more he had to put aside the clutching little hands as he bent
to kiss the child’s fair head. With a firm and manly tread, he walked
toward the men, who were already moving through the hall. The door shut
upon the baby’s wails.
“God forefend he’ll set himself on fire!” said John anxiously. “You
might hurry,” he suggested as they stepped upon the porch.
Night hung over the dark earth, wet with rain and sweet with woodsy
odors. Above the dim, slim pines clouds scurried about, trying to clear
a space in the sky for a few timid Christmas stars. One caught, too,
the salty sweetness of the tide-water. John drew a deep, deep breath,
filling his lungs with it.
At the foot of the steps, ghostly horses drifted up to meet ghostly
riders. Their movements were very deliberate.
“And the child alone with fire!” snarled John, and stamped his feet.
The tall leader spoke in a slow, low voice, and instantly the men
mounted and began to move off. From the house came a muffled cry,
and John sucked his teeth sympathetically. Dear baby,--so bright and
brave and beautiful, so loving and loyal and like the Holiest Baby of
all--good night, good night, and good-by!
The masked horsemen, drifting into the shadows of the pines, melted
into the night. Then the leader drew near and laid a firm hand upon his
captive’s shoulder.
“Ah can’t spare any of my men to-night to tend babies,--not even
white babies,” he remarked in a soft, pleasant voice. “Didn’t reckon
_you_ ever had time to tend babies--white babies--either.” He paused
meditatively. “Ah don’t believe,” he murmured, “Ah don’t believe that
God A’mighty was just projeckin’ when He sent that little chap hyuh
to-night of all nights to you of all men. No, suh, Ah don’t believe it!
Aftuh you’ve had him a spell--and learned to use yo’ white man’s eyes,
you everlastin’ fool, you--you’ll understand it’s because of him and
his mothuh and his sistuh--that the Klan’s hyuh.”
He walked down the steps and swung a lithe leg over his mount.
“If Ah were you, Ah’d go on back in the house and keep that little chap
from burstin’ himself cryin’,” he said casually.
Once in the saddle, he leaned forward and waved a slim, capable
hand--such a hand as had gripped by the hair of its drowning head the
safety of a race and held it alive above a black flood. A note of
amused and tolerant understanding, of a new respect and kindness, crept
into his soft, dangerous voice.
“_Merry Christmas!_” said he, genially, and was off.
John’s throat, which had not tightened at the thought of a rope collar,
felt of a sudden a big, aching lump crowd into it. He swallowed
tolerance and understanding gulpingly; the underlying kindness helped
them go down--and stay down.
“M-merry Christmas!” he found himself stammering.
And as the flying horseman vanished, he ran back to the warm and
lighted room and gathered the weeping spirit of Christmas into fatherly
and consoling arms.
THE LITTLE BROWN HOUSE
THE LITTLE BROWN HOUSE
The senator’s wife was returning from the very smartest of afternoon
affairs; her white-haired and fresh-colored loveliness had charmed
and delighted the most famous and fastidious of diplomats, and the
Chinese minister had expressed frank amaze at the magical youthfulness
of the American Grandmother; as she stepped into her car the magically
youthful rose still blew in her cheeks.
To avoid a crush, her chauffeur had made a detour, swung down two or
three residential streets, slipped through the region of fashionable
boarding-houses, and turned into a side street, quiet, tree-shaded,
peaceful, as if, like the birds, it were going to bed with the sun. On
a corner, with a hedge between it and another small house next door,
stood the Little Brown House.
The chauffeur wasn’t speeding then, so the senator’s wife had a chance
really to see the place. It was quite as if the Little Brown House had
seen her first, and called out friendlily, as one may to one’s own.
She came out of her pleasant self-satisfaction with a start; as usual
she had been telling herself that she hadn’t failed _him_; that step
by step she had kept the pace set by his boundless ambition. An
international figure now, the West had hammered him out of her giant
forge--one of those wonderful Americans about whom, some day in the far
future, not the Great American Novel alone, but the greatest epic of
the entire race is going to be written. Not the least of his successes
was the fact that for forty years he had retained the single love and
adoration of his wife; she was proud of him with an almost terrible
pride.
There had been times when she had wanted to pause, and catch breath,
and rest; but always he had been marching upward, and she had gone
with him. Once she had thought that afterward--when, say, the children
had grown up and settled--they two might grow peacefully and gently
old together, in the evening of their day. But that dream had been
foregone; she had but grown old youthfully, wonderfully, with a
ripening beauty. Now it was only at times, when, disrobed and massaged,
she was at last alone, that she admitted she was--tired.
Her social secretary--and _she_ knew her social centers like the palm
of her hand--said that the senator’s new house was the one perfect
house in all America, and those affairs at which his wife presided the
most delightful outside of Vienna. She never knew that, deep down in
the other woman’s soul weariness, a longing for simpler things, stung
at times like a nettle.
But when her car rolled slowly by the Little Brown House something
broke in her breast; something became alive and fluttered as with
wings. Why, it was just such a little house as she had dreamed of,
always, in her secretest dreams! It was a pity, she thought, that a
great “For Sale” sign was nailed on the front porch, and that all the
windows were closed. Little brown houses should never, never be spoiled
by “For Sale” signs, and their windows should always be open.