AN OLD FRIEND.
"Good-morning, Miss Leroy," said a cheery voice in tones of glad
surprise, and, intercepting her path, Dr. Gresham stood before Iola,
smiling, and reaching out his hand.
"Why, Dr. Gresham, is this you?" said Iola, lifting her eyes to that
well-remembered face. "It has been several years since we met. How have
you been all this time, and where?"
"I have been sick, and am just now recovering from malaria and nervous
prostration. I am attending a medical convention in this city, and hope
that I shall have the pleasure of seeing you again."
Iola hesitated, and then replied: "I should be pleased to have you
call."
"It would give me great pleasure. Where shall I call?"
"My home is 1006 South Street, but I am only at home in the evenings."
They walked together a short distance till they reached Mr. Cloten's
store; then, bidding the doctor good morning, Iola left him repeating to
himself the words of his favorite poet:--
"Thou art too lovely and precious a gem
To be bound to their burdens and sullied by them."
No one noticed the deep flush on Iola's face as she entered the store,
nor the subdued, quiet manner with which she applied herself to her
tasks. She was living over again the past, with its tender, sad, and
thrilling reminiscences.
In the evening Dr. Gresham called on Iola. She met him with a pleasant
welcome. Dr. Gresham gazed upon her with unfeigned admiration, and
thought that the years, instead of detracting from, had only
intensified, her loveliness. He had thought her very beautiful in the
hospital, in her gray dress and white collar, with her glorious wealth
of hair drawn over her ears. But now, when he saw her with that hair
artistically arranged, and her finely-proportioned form arrayed in a
dark crimson dress, relieved by a shimmer of lace and a bow of white
ribbon at her throat, he thought her superbly handsome. The lines which
care had written upon her young face had faded away. There was no
undertone of sorrow in her voice as she stood up before him in the calm
loveliness of her ripened womanhood, radiant in beauty and gifted in
intellect. Time and failing health had left their traces upon Dr.
Gresham. His step was less bounding, his cheek a trifle paler, his
manner somewhat graver than it was when he had parted from Iola in the
hospital, but his meeting with her had thrilled his heart with
unexpected pleasure. Hopes and sentiments which long had slept awoke at
the touch of her hand and the tones of her voice, and Dr. Gresham found
himself turning to the past, with its sad memories and disappointed
hopes. No other face had displaced her image in his mind; no other love
had woven itself around every tendril of his soul. His heart and hand
were just as free as they were the hour they had parted.
"To see you again," said Dr. Gresham, "is a great and unexpected
pleasure."
"You had not forgotten me, then?" said Iola, smiling.
"Forget you! I would just as soon forget my own existence. I do not
think that time will ever efface the impressions of those days in which
we met so often. When last we met you were intending to search for your
mother. Have you been successful?"
"More than successful," said Iola, with a joyous ring in her voice. "I
have found my mother, brother, grandmother, and uncle, and, except my
brother, we are all living together, and we are so happy. Excuse me a
few minutes," she said, and left the room. Iola soon returned, bringing
with her her mother and grandmother.
"These," said Iola, introducing her mother and grandmother, "are the
once-severed branches of our family; and this gentleman you have seen
before," continued Iola, as Robert entered the room.
Dr. Gresham looked scrutinizingly at him and said: "Your face looks
familiar, but I saw so many faces at the hospital that I cannot just now
recall your name."
"Doctor," said Robert Johnson, "I was one of your last patients, and I
was with Tom Anderson when he died."
"Oh, yes," replied Dr. Gresham; "it all comes back to me. You were
wounded at the battle of Five Forks, were you not?"
"Yes," said Robert.
"I saw you when you were recovering. You told me that you thought you
had a clue to your lost relatives, from whom you had been so long
separated. How have you succeeded?"
"Admirably! I have been fortunate in finding my mother, my sister, and
her children."
"Ah, indeed! I am delighted to hear it. Where are they?"
"They are right here. This is my mother," said Robert, bending fondly
over her, as she returned his recognition with an expression of intense
satisfaction; "and this," he continued, "is my sister, and Miss Leroy is
my niece."
"Is it possible? I am very glad to hear it. It has been said that every
cloud has its silver lining, and the silver lining of our war cloud is
the redemption of a race and the reunion of severed hearts. War is a
dreadful thing; but worse than the war was the slavery which preceded
it."
"Slavery," said Iola, "was a fearful cancer eating into the nation's
heart, sapping its vitality, and undermining its life."
"And war," said Dr. Gresham, "was the dreadful surgery by which the
disease was eradicated. The cancer has been removed, but for years to
come I fear that we will have to deal with the effects of the disease.
But I believe that we have vitality enough to outgrow those effects."
"I think, Doctor," said Iola, "that there is but one remedy by which our
nation can recover from the evil entailed upon her by slavery."
"What is that?" asked Robert.
"A fuller comprehension of the claims of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and
their application to our national life."
"Yes," said Robert; "while politicians are stumbling on the barren
mountains of fretful controversy and asking what shall we do with the
negro? I hold that Jesus answered that question nearly two thousand
years ago when he said, 'Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you,
do ye even so to them.'"
"Yes," said Dr. Gresham; "the application of that rule in dealing with
the negro would solve the whole problem."
"Slavery," said Mrs. Leroy, "is dead, but the spirit which animated it
still lives; and I think that a reckless disregard for human life is
more the outgrowth of slavery than any actual hatred of the negro."
"The problem of the nation," continued Dr. Gresham, "is not what men
will do with the negro, but what will they do with the reckless, lawless
white men who murder, lynch and burn their fellow-citizens. To me these
lynchings and burnings are perfectly alarming. Both races have reacted
on each other--men fettered the slave and cramped their own souls;
denied him knowledge, and darkened their spiritual insight; subdued him
to the pliancy of submission, and in their turn became the thralls of
public opinion. The negro came here from the heathenism of Africa; but
the young colonies could not take into their early civilization a stream
of barbaric blood without being affected by its influence and the negro,
poor and despised as he is, has laid his hands on our Southern
civilization and helped mould its character."
"Yes," said Mrs. Leroy; "the colored nurse could not nestle her master's
child in her arms, hold up his baby footsteps on their floors, and walk
with him through the impressible and formative period of his young life
without leaving upon him the impress of her hand."
"I am glad," said Robert, "for the whole nation's sake, that slavery
has been destroyed."
"And our work," said Dr. Gresham, "is to build over the desolations of
the past a better and brighter future. The great distinction between
savagery and civilization is the creation and maintenance of law.
A people cannot habitually trample on law and justice without
retrograding toward barbarism. But I am hopeful that time will bring us
changes for the better; that, as we get farther away from the war, we
will outgrow the animosities and prejudices engendered by slavery. The
short-sightedness of our fathers linked the negro's destiny to ours. We
are feeling the friction of the ligatures which bind us together, but I
hope that the time will speedily come when the best members of both
races will unite for the maintenance of law and order and the progress
and prosperity of the country, and that the intelligence and virtue of
the South will be strong to grapple effectually with its ignorance and
vice."
"I hope that time will speedily come," said Marie. "My son is in the
South, and I am always anxious for his safety. He is not only a teacher,
but a leading young man in the community where he lives."
"Yes," said Robert, "and when I see the splendid work he is doing in the
South, I am glad that, instead of trying to pass for a white man, he has
cast his lot with us."
"But," answered Dr. Gresham, "he would possess advantages as a white man
which he could not if he were known to be colored."
"Doctor," said Iola, decidedly, "he has greater advantages as a colored
man."
"I do not understand you," said Dr. Gresham, looking somewhat puzzled.
"Doctor," continued Iola, "I do not think life's highest advantages are
those that we can see with our eyes or grasp with our hands. To whom
to-day is the world most indebted--to its millionaires or to its
martyrs?"
"Taking it from the ideal standpoint," replied the doctor, "I should say
its martyrs."
"To be," continued Iola, "the leader of a race to higher planes of
thought and action, to teach men clearer views of life and duty, and to
inspire their souls with loftier aims, is a far greater privilege than
it is to open the gates of material prosperity and fill every home with
sensuous enjoyment."
"And I," said Mrs. Leroy, her face aglow with fervid feeling, "would
rather--ten thousand times rather--see Harry the friend and helper of
the poor and ignorant than the companion of men who, under the cover of
night, mask their faces and ride the country on lawless raids."
"Dr. Gresham," said Robert, "we ought to be the leading nation of the
earth, whose influence and example should give light to the world."
"Not simply," said Iola, "a nation building up a great material
prosperity, founding magnificent cities, grasping the commerce of the
world, or excelling in literature, art, and science, but a nation
wearing sobriety as a crown and righteousness as the girdle of her
loins."
Dr. Gresham gazed admiringly upon Iola. A glow of enthusiasm overspread
her beautiful, expressive face. There was a rapt and far-off look in her
eye, as if she were looking beyond the present pain to a brighter
future for the race with which she was identified, and felt the
grandeur of a divine commission to labor for its uplifting.
As Dr. Gresham was parting with Robert, he said: "This meeting has been
a very unexpected pleasure. I have spent a delightful evening. I only
regret that I had not others to share it with me. A doctor from the
South, a regular Bourbon, is stopping at the hotel. I wish he could have
been here to-night. Come down to the Concordia, Mr. Johnson, to-morrow
night. If you know any colored man who is a strong champion of equal
rights, bring him along. Good-night. I shall look for you," said the
doctor, as he left the door.
When Robert returned to the parlor he said to Iola: "Dr. Gresham has
invited me to come to his hotel to-morrow night, and to bring some
wide-awake colored man with me. There is a Southerner whom he wishes me
to meet. I suppose he wants to discuss the negro problem, as they call
it. He wants some one who can do justice to the subject. I wonder whom I
can take with me?"
"I will tell you who, I think, will be a capital one to take with you,
and I believe he would go," said Iola.
"Who?" asked Robert.
"Rev. Carmicle, your pastor."
"He is just the one," said Robert, "courteous in his manner and very
scholarly in his attainments. He is a man whom if everybody hated him no
one could despise him."