curse of drunkenness. No liquor was sold in the vicinity, and David had
succeeded in keeping his scholars from wandering aimlessly about the
country from place to place--often the first use the blacks made of
their freedom. Jubilee did not go to the liquor; but, at last, the
liquor had come to Jubilee. Shall they not have all rights and
privileges, these new-born citizens of ours? The bringer of these
doctrines, and of the fluids to moisten them, was a white man, one of
that class which has gone down on the page of American history,
knighted with the initials C. B. "The Captain" the negroes called him;
and he was highly popular already, three hours of the Captain being
worth three weeks of David, as far as familiarity went. The man was a
glib-tongued, smartly dressed fellow, well supplied with money; and his
errand was, of course, to influence the votes at the next election.
David, meanwhile, had so carefully kept all talk of politics from his
scholars that they hardly knew that an election was near. It became now
a contest between the two higher intelligences. If the schoolmaster had
but won the easily won and strong affections of his pupils! But, in all
those months, he had gained only a dutiful attention. They did not even
respect him as they had respected their old masters, and the cause (poor
David!) was that very thrift and industry which he relied upon as an
example.
"Ole Mars Ammerton wouldn't wash his dishes ef dey was nebber washed,"
confided Maum June to Elsy, as they caught sight of David's shining
pans.
The schoolmaster could have had a retinue of servants for a small price,
or no price at all; but, to tell a truth which he never told, he could
not endure them about him.
"I must have one spot to myself," he said feverishly, after he had
labored all day among them, teaching, correcting untidy ways,
administering simple medicines, or binding up a bruised foot. But he
never dreamed that this very isolation of his personality, this very
thrift, were daily robbing him of the influence which he so earnestly
longed to possess. In New England every man's house was his castle, and
every man's hands were thrifty. He forgot the easy familiarity, the
lordly ways, the crowded households, and the royal carelessness to which
the slaves had always been accustomed in their old masters' homes.
At first the Captain attempted intimacy.
"No reason why you and me shouldn't work together," he said with a
confidential wink. "This thing's being done all over the South, and easy
done, too. Now's the time for smart chaps like us--'transition,' you
know. The old Southerners are mad, and won't come forward, so we'll just
sail in and have a few years of it. When they're ready to come
back--why, we'll give 'em up the place again, of course, if our pockets
are well lined. Come, now, just acknowledge that the negroes have got to
have somebody to lead 'em."
"It shall not be such as you," said David indignantly. "See those two
men quarreling; that is the work of the liquor you have given them!"
"They've as good a right to their liquor as other men have," replied the
Captain carelessly; "and that's what I tell 'em; they ain't slaves
now--they're free. Well, boss, sorry you don't like my ideas, but can't
help it; must go ahead. Remember, I offered you a chance, and you would
not take it. Morning."
The five months had grown into six and seven, and Jubilee Town was known
far and wide as a dangerous and disorderly neighborhood. The old people
and the children still came to school, but the young men and boys had
deserted in a body. The schoolmaster's cotton-field was neglected; he
did a little there himself every day, but the work was novel, and his
attempts were awkward and slow. One afternoon Harnett Ammerton rode by
on horseback; the road passed near the angle of the field where the
schoolmaster was at work.
"How is your experiment succeeding?" said the planter, with a little
smile of amused scorn as he saw the lonely figure.
"Not very well," replied David.
He paused and looked up earnestly into the planter's face. Here was a
man who had lived among the blacks all his life, and knew them: if he
would but give honest advice! The schoolmaster was sorely troubled that
afternoon. Should he speak? He would at least try.
"Mr. Ammerton," he said, "do you intend to vote at the approaching
election?"
"No," replied the planter; "nor any person of my acquaintance."
"Then incompetent, and, I fear, evil-minded men will be put into
office."
"Of course--the certain result of negro voting."
"But if you, sir, and the class to which you belong, would exert
yourselves, I am inclined to think much might be done. The breach will
only grow broader every year; act now, while you have still influence
left."
"Then you think that we have influence?" said the planter.
He was curious concerning the ideas of this man, who, although not like
the typical Yankee exactly, was yet plainly a fanatic; while as to dress
and air--why, Zip, his old valet, had more polish.
"I know at least that I have none," said David. Then he came a step
nearer. "Do you think, sir," he began slowly, "that I have gone to work
in the wrong way? Would it have been wiser to have obtained some post of
authority over them--the office of justice of the peace, for instance,
with power of arrest?"
"I know nothing about it," said the planter curtly, touching his horse
with his whip and riding on. He had no intention of stopping to discuss
ways and means with an abolition schoolmaster!
Things grew from bad to worse at Jubilee. Most of the men had been
field-hands; there was but little intelligence among them. The few
bright minds among David's pupils caught the specious arguments of the
Captain, and repeated them to the others. The Captain explained how much
power they held; the Captain laid before them glittering plans; the
Captain said that by good rights each family ought to have a plantation
to repay them for their years of enforced labor; the Captain promised
them a four-story brick college for their boys, which was more than King
David had ever promised, teacher though he was. They found out that they
were tired of King David and his narrow talk; and they went over to
Hildore Corners, where a new store had been opened, which contained,
among other novelties, a bar. This was one of the Captain's
benefactions. "If you pay your money for it, you've as good a right to
your liquor as any one, I guess," he observed. "Not that it's anything
to me, of course; but I allow I like to see fair play!"
It was something to him, however: the new store had a silent partner;
and this was but one of many small and silent enterprises in which he
was engaged throughout the neighborhood.
The women of Jubilee, more faithful than the men, still sent their
children to school; but they did it with discouraged hearts, poor
things! Often now they were seen with bandaged heads and bruised bodies,
the result of drunken blows from husband or brother; and, left alone,
they were obliged to labor all day to get the poor food they ate, and to
keep clothes on their children. Patient by nature, they lived along as
best they could, and toiled in their small fields like horses; but the
little prides, the vague, grotesque aspirations and hopes that had come
to them with their freedom, gradually faded away. "A blue-painted front
do'," "a black-silk apron with red ribbons," "to make a minister of
little Job," and "a real crock'ry pitcher," were wishes unspoken now.
The thing was only how to live from day to day, and keep the patched
clothes together. In the mean while trashy finery was sold at the new
store, and the younger girls wore gilt ear-rings.
The master, toiling on at his vain task, was at his wit's end. "They
will not work; before long they must steal," he said. He brooded and
thought, and at last one morning he came to a decision. The same day in
the afternoon he set out for Hildore Corners. He had thought of a plan.
As he was walking rapidly through the pine-woods Harnett Ammerton on
horseback passed him. This time the Northerner had no questions to
ask--nay, he almost hung his head, so ashamed was he of the reputation
that had attached itself to the field of his labors. But the planter
reined in his horse when he saw who it was: he was the questioner now.
"Schoolmaster," he began, "in the name of all the white families about
here, I really must ask if you can do nothing to keep in order those
miserable, drinking, ruffianly negroes of yours over at Jubilee? Why, we
shall all be murdered in our beds before long! Are you aware of the
dangerous spirit they have manifested lately?"
"Only too well," said David.
"What are you going to do? How will it end?"
"God knows."
"God knows! Is that all you have to say? Of course he knows; but the
question is, Do you know? You have brought the whole trouble down upon
our heads by your confounded insurrectionary school! Just as I told you,
your negroes, with the little smattering of knowledge you have given
them, are now the most dangerous, riotous, thieving, murdering rascals
in the district."
"They are bad; but it is not the work of the school, I hope."
"Yes, it is," said the planter angrily.
"They have been led astray lately, Mr. Ammerton; a person has come among
them--"
"Another Northerner."
"Yes," said David, a flush rising in his cheek; "but not all Northerners
are like this man, I trust."
"Pretty much all we see are. Look at the State."
"Yes, I know it; I suppose time alone can help matters," said the
troubled teacher.
"Give up your school, and come and join us," said the planter abruptly.
"You, at least, are honest in your mistakes. We are going to form an
association for our own protection; join with us. You can teach my
grandsons if you like, provided you do not put any of your--your
fanaticism into them."
This was an enormous concession for Harnett Ammerton to make; something
in the schoolmaster's worn face had drawn it out.
"Thank you," said David slowly; "it is kindly meant, sir. But I can not
give up my work. I came down to help the freedmen, and--"
"Then stay with them," said the planter, doubly angry for the very
kindness of the moment before. "I thought you were a decent-living white
man, according to your fashion, but I see I was mistaken. Dark days are
coming, and you turn your back upon those of your own color and side
with the slaves! Go and herd with your negroes. But, look you, sir, we
are prepared. We will shoot down any one found upon our premises after
dark--shoot him down like a dog. It has come to that, and, by Heaven! we
shall protect ourselves."
He rode on. David sat down on a fallen tree for a moment, and leaned his
head upon his hand. Dark days were coming, as the planter had said; nay,
were already there. Was he in any way responsible for them? He tried to
think. "I know not," he said at last; "but I must still go on and do the
best I can. I must carry out my plan." He rose and went forward to the
Corners.
A number of Jubilee men were lounging near the new store, and one of
them was reading aloud from a newspaper which the Captain had given him.
He had been David's brightest scholar, and he could read readily; but
what he read was inflammable matter of the worst kind, a speech which
had been written for just such purposes, and which was now being
circulated through the district. Mephistopheles in the form of Harnett
Ammerton seemed to whisper in the schoolmaster's ears, "Do you take
pride to yourself that you taught that man to read?"
The reader stopped; he had discovered the new auditor. The men stared;
they had never seen the master at the Corners before. They drew together
and waited. He approached them, and paused a moment; then he began to
speak.
"I have come, friends," he said, "to make a proposition to you. You, on
your side, have nothing laid up for the winter, and I, on my side, am
anxious to have your work. I have a field, you know, a cotton-field;
what do you say to going to work there, all of you, for a month? I will
agree to pay you more than any man about here pays, and you shall have
the cash every Monday morning regularly. We will hold a meeting over at
Jubilee, and you shall choose your own overseer; for I am very ignorant
about cotton-fields; I must trust to you. What do you say?"
The men looked at each other, but no one spoke.
"Think of your little children without clothes."
Still silence.
"I have not succeeded among you," continued the teacher, "as well as I
hoped to succeed. You do not come to school any more, and I suppose it
is because you do not like me."
Something like a murmur of dissent came from the group. The voice went
on:
"I have thought of something I can do, however. I can write to the North
for another teacher to take my place, and he shall be a man of your own
race; one who is educated, and, if possible, also a clergyman of your
own faith. You can have a little church then, and Sabbath services. As
soon as he comes, I will yield my place to him; but, in the mean time,
will you not cultivate that field for me? I ask it as a favor. It will
be but for a little while, for, when the new teacher comes, I shall
go--unless, indeed," he added, looking around with a smile that was
almost pathetic in its appeal, "you should wish me to stay."
There was no answer. He had thrown out this last little test question
suddenly. It had failed.
"I am sorry I have not succeeded better at Jubilee," he said after a
short pause--and his voice had altered in spite of his
self-control--"but at least you will believe, I hope, that I have
tried."
"Dat's so"; "Dat's de trouf," said one or two; the rest stood
irresolute. But at this moment a new speaker came forward; it was the
Captain, who had been listening in ambush.
"All gammon, boys, all gammon," he began, seating himself familiarly
among them on the fence-rail. "The season for planting's over, and your
work would be thrown away in that field of his. He knows it, too; he
only wants to see you marching around to his whistling. And he pays you
double wages, does he? Double wages for perfectly useless work! Doesn't
that show, clear as daylight, what he's up to? If he hankers so after
your future--your next winter, and all that--why don't he give yer the
money right out, if he's so flush? But no; he wants to put you to work,
and that's all there is of it. He can't deny a word I've said, either."
"I do not deny that I wish you to work, friends," began David--
"There! he tells yer so himself," said the Captain; "he wants yer back
in yer old places again. _I_ seen him talking to old Ammerton the other
day. Give 'em a chance, them two classes, and they'll have you slaves a
second time before you know it."
"Never!" cried David. "Friends, it is not possible that you can believe
this man! We have given our lives to make you free," he added
passionately; "we came down among you, bearing your freedom in our
hands--"
"Come, now--I'm a Northerner too, ain't I?" interrupted the Captain.
"There's two kinds of Northerners, boys. _I_ was in the army, and that's
more than he can say. Much freedom _he_ brought down in _his_ hands,
safe at home in his narrer-minded, penny-scraping village! He wasn't in
the army at all, boys, and he can't tell you he was."
This was true; the schoolmaster could not. Neither could he tell them
what was also true, namely, that the Captain had been an _attaché_ of a
sutler's tent, and nothing more. But the sharp-witted Captain had the
whole history of his opponent at his fingers' ends.
"Come along, boys," said this jovial leader; "we'll have suthin' to
drink the health of this tremenjous soldier in--this fellow as fought so
hard for you and for your freedom. I always thought he looked like a
fighting man, with them fine broad shoulders of his!" He laughed loudly,
and the men trooped into the store after him. The schoolmaster, alone
outside, knew that his chance was gone. He turned away and took the
homeward road. One of his plans had failed; there remained now nothing
save to carry out the other.
Prompt as usual, he wrote his letter as soon as he reached his cabin,
asking that another teacher, a colored man if possible, should be sent
down to take his place.
"I fear I am not fitted for the work," he wrote. "I take shame to myself
that this is so; yet, being so, I must not hinder by any disappointed
strivings the progress of the great mission. I will go back among my own
kind; it may be that some whom I shall teach may yet succeed where I
have failed." The letter could not go until the next morning. He went
out and walked up and down in the forest. A sudden impulse came to him;
he crossed over to the schoolhouse and rang the little tinkling
belfry-bell. His evening class had disbanded some time before; the poor
old aunties and uncles crept off to bed very early now, in order to be
safely out of the way when their disorderly sons and grandsons came
home. But something moved the master to see them all together once more.
They came across the green, wondering, and entered the schoolroom; some
of the younger wives came too, and the children. The master waited,
letter in hand. When they were all seated--
"Friends," he said, "I have called you together to speak to you of a
matter which lies very near my own heart. Things are not going on well
at Jubilee. The men drink; the children go in rags. Is this true?"
Groans and slow assenting nods answered him. One old woman shrieked out
shrilly, "It is de Lord's will," and rocked her body to and fro.
"No, it is not the Lord's will," answered the schoolmaster gently; "you
must not think so. You must strive to reclaim those who have gone
astray; you must endeavor to inspire them with renewed aspirations
toward a higher plane of life; you must--I mean," he said, correcting
himself, "you must try to keep the men from going over to the Corners
and getting drunk."
"But dey will do it, sah; what can we do?" said Uncle Scipio, who sat
leaning his chin upon his crutch and peering at the teacher with sharp
intelligence in his old eyes. "If dey won't stay fo' you, sah, will dey
stay fo' us?"
"That is what I was coming to," said the master. (They had opened the
subject even before he could get to it! They saw it too, then--his utter
lack of influence.) "I have not succeeded here as I hoped to succeed,
friends; I have not the influence I ought to have." Then he paused.
"Perhaps the best thing I can do will be to go away," he added, looking
quickly from face to face to catch the expression. But there was nothing
visible. The children stared stolidly back, and the old people sat
unmoved; he even fancied that he could detect relief in the eyes of one
or two, quickly suppressed, however, by the innate politeness of the
race. A sudden mist came over his eyes; he had thought that perhaps some
of them would care a little. He hurried on: "I have written to the North
for a new teacher for you, a man of your own people, who will not only
teach you, but also, as a minister, hold services on the Sabbath; you
can have a little church of your own then. Such a man will do better for
you than I have done, and I hope you will like him"--he was going to
say, "better than you have liked me," but putting down all thought of
self, he added, "and that his work among you will be abundantly
blessed."
"Glory! glory!" cried an old aunty. "A color'd preacher ob our own!
Glory! glory!"
Then Uncle Scipio rose slowly, with the aid of his crutches, and, as
orator of the occasion, addressed the master.
"You see, sah, how it is; you see, Mars King David," he said, waving his
hand apologetically, "a color'd man will unnerstan us, 'specially ef he
hab lib'd at de Souf; we don't want no Nordern free niggahs hyar. But a
'spectable color'd preacher, now, would be de makin' ob Jubilee, fo' dis
worl' an' de nex'."
"Fo' dis worl' and de nex'," echoed the old woman.
"Our service to you, sah, all de same," continued Scipio, with a grand
bow of ceremony; "but you hab nebber _quite_ unnerstan us, sah, nebber
quite; an' you can nebber do much fo' us, sah, on 'count ob dat fack--ef
you'll scuse my saying so. But it is de trouf. We give you our t'anks
and our congratturrurlations, an' we hopes you'll go j'yful back to your
own people, an' be a shining light to 'em for ebbermore."
"A shinin' light for ebbermore," echoed the rest. One old woman,
inspired apparently by the similarity of words, began a hymn about "the
shining shore," and the whole assembly, thinking no doubt that it was an
appropriate and complimentary termination to the proceedings, joined in
with all their might, and sang the whole six verses through with fervor.
"I should like to shake hands with you all as you go out," said the
master, when at last the song was ended, "and--and I wish, my friends,
that you would all remember me in your prayers to-night before you
sleep."
What a sight was that when the pale Caucasian, with the intelligence of
generations on his brow, asked for the prayers of these sons of Africa,
and gently, nay, almost humbly, received the pressure of their black,
toil-hardened hands as they passed out! They had taught him a great
lesson, the lesson of a failure.
The schoolmaster went home, and sat far into the night, with his head
bowed upon his hands. "Poor worm!" he thought--"poor worm! who even went
so far as to dream of saying, 'Here am I, Lord, and these brethren whom
thou hast given me!'"
The day came for him to go; he shouldered his bag and started away. At a
turn in the road, some one was waiting for him; it was dull-faced Esther
with a bunch of flowers, the common flowers of her small garden-bed.
"Good-by, Esther," said the master, touched almost to tears by the sight
of the solitary little offering.
"Good-by, mars," said Esther. But she was not moved; she had come out
into the woods from a sort of instinct, as a dog follows a little way
down the road to look after a departing carriage.
* * * * *
"David King has come back home again, and taken the district school,"
said one village gossip to another.
"Has he, now? Didn't find the blacks what he expected, I guess."
UP IN THE BLUE RIDGE.
"Every rose, you sang, has its thorn;
But this has none, I know."
She clasped my rival's rose
Over her breast of snow.
I bowed to hide my pain,
With a man's unskillful art;
I moved my lips, and could not say
The thorn was in my heart.
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS.
I.
"Instead of going through the whole book, you can read this abstract,
Miss Honor."
The speaker drew forth five or six sheets of paper, closely covered with
fine, small handwriting. The letters were not in the least beautiful, or
even straight, if you examined them closely, for they carried themselves
crookedly, and never twice alike; but, owing to their extreme smallness,
and the careful way in which they stood on the line, rigidly particular
as to their feet, although their spines were misshapen, they looked not
unlike a regiment of little humpbacked men, marching with extreme
precision, and daring you to say that they were crooked. Stephen
Wainwright had partly taught himself this hand, and partly it was due to
temperament. He despised a clerkly script; yet he could not wander down
a page, or blur his words, any more than he could wander down a street,
or blur his chance remarks; in spite of himself, he always knew exactly
where he was going, and what he intended to say. He was not a man who
attracted attention in any way. He was small, yet not so small as to be
noticed for smallness; he was what is called plain-looking, yet without
that marked ugliness which, in a man, sometimes amounts to distinction.
As to his dress, he was too exact for carelessness; you felt that the
smallest spot on his loose flannel coat would trouble him; and yet he
was entirely without that trim, fresh, spring-morning appearance which
sometimes gives a small man an advantage over his larger brethren, as
the great coach-dogs seem suddenly coarse and dirty when the shining
little black-and-tan terrier bounds into the yard beside them. Stephen
was a man born into the world with an over-weight of caution and doubt.
They made the top of his head so broad and square that Reverence, who
likes a rounded curve, found herself displaced; she clung on desperately
through his schoolboy days, but was obliged at last to let go as the
youth began to try his muscles, shake off extraneous substances, and
find out what he really was himself, after the long succession of tutors
and masters had done with him.