To go back a little, for several days after his child's birth Major
Carteret's chief interest in life had been confined to the four walls of
the chamber where his pale wife lay upon her bed of pain, and those of
the adjoining room where an old black woman crooned lovingly over a
little white infant. A new element had been added to the major's
consciousness, broadening the scope and deepening the strength of his
affections. He did not love Olivia the less, for maternity had crowned
her wifehood with an added glory; but side by side with this old and
tried attachment was a new passion, stirring up dormant hopes and
kindling new desires. His regret had been more than personal at the
thought that with himself an old name should be lost to the State; and
now all the old pride of race, class, and family welled up anew, and
swelled and quickened the current of his life.
Upon the major's first appearance at the office, which took place the
second day after the child's birth, he opened a box of cigars in honor
of the event. The word had been passed around by Ellis, and the whole
office force, including reporters, compositors, and pressmen, came in to
congratulate the major and smoke at his expense. Even Jerry, the colored
porter,--Mammy Jane's grandson and therefore a protégé of the
family,--presented himself among the rest, or rather, after the rest.
The major shook hands with them all except Jerry, though he acknowledged
the porter's congratulations with a kind nod and put a good cigar into
his outstretched palm, for which Jerry thanked him without manifesting
any consciousness of the omission. He was quite aware that under
ordinary circumstances the major would not have shaken hands with white
workingmen, to say nothing of negroes; and he had merely hoped that in
the pleasurable distraction of the moment the major might also overlook
the distinction of color. Jerry's hope had been shattered, though not
rudely; for the major had spoken pleasantly and the cigar was a good
one. Mr. Ellis had once shaken hands with Jerry,--but Mr. Ellis was a
young man, whose Quaker father had never owned any slaves, and he could
not be expected to have as much pride as one of the best "quality,"
whose families had possessed land and negroes for time out of mind. On
the whole, Jerry preferred the careless nod of the editor-in-chief to
the more familiar greeting of the subaltern.
Having finished this pleasant ceremony, which left him with a
comfortable sense of his new dignity, the major turned to his desk. It
had been much neglected during the week, and more than one matter
claimed his attention; but as typical of the new trend of his thoughts,
the first subject he took up was one bearing upon the future of his son.
Quite obviously the career of a Carteret must not be left to chance,--it
must be planned and worked out with a due sense of the value of good
blood.
There lay upon his desk a letter from a well-known promoter, offering
the major an investment which promised large returns, though several
years must elapse before the enterprise could be put upon a paying
basis. The element of time, however, was not immediately important. The
Morning Chronicle provided him an ample income. The money available for
this investment was part of his wife's patrimony. It was invested in a
local cotton mill, which was paying ten per cent., but this was a
beggarly return compared with the immense profits promised by the
offered investment,--profits which would enable his son, upon reaching
manhood, to take a place in the world commensurate with the dignity of
his ancestors, one of whom, only a few generations removed, had owned an
estate of ninety thousand acres of land and six thousand slaves.
This letter having been disposed of by an answer accepting the offer,
the major took up his pen to write an editorial. Public affairs in the
state were not going to his satisfaction. At the last state election his
own party, after an almost unbroken rule of twenty years, had been
defeated by the so-called "Fusion" ticket, a combination of Republicans
and Populists. A clean sweep had been made of the offices in the state,
which were now filled by new men. Many of the smaller places had gone to
colored men, their people having voted almost solidly for the Fusion
ticket. In spite of the fact that the population of Wellington was two
thirds colored, this state of things was gall and wormwood to the
defeated party, of which the Morning Chronicle was the acknowledged
organ. Major Carteret shared this feeling. Only this very morning, while
passing the city hall, on his way to the office, he had seen the steps
of that noble building disfigured by a fringe of job-hunting negroes,
for all the world--to use a local simile--like a string of buzzards
sitting on a rail, awaiting their opportunity to batten upon the
helpless corpse of a moribund city.
Taking for his theme the unfitness of the negro to participate in
government,--an unfitness due to his limited education, his lack of
experience, his criminal tendencies, and more especially to his hopeless
mental and physical inferiority to the white race,--the major had
demonstrated, it seemed to him clearly enough, that the ballot in the
hands of the negro was a menace to the commonwealth. He had argued, with
entire conviction, that the white and black races could never attain
social and political harmony by commingling their blood; he had proved
by several historical parallels that no two unassimilable races could
ever live together except in the relation of superior and inferior; and
he was just dipping his gold pen into the ink to indite his conclusions
from the premises thus established, when Jerry, the porter, announced
two visitors.
"Gin'l Belmont an' Cap'n McBane would like ter see you, suh."
"Show them in, Jerry."
The man who entered first upon this invitation was a dapper little
gentleman with light-blue eyes and a Vandyke beard. He wore a frock
coat, patent leather shoes, and a Panama hat. There were crow's-feet
about his eyes, which twinkled with a hard and, at times, humorous
shrewdness. He had sloping shoulders, small hands and feet, and walked
with the leisurely step characteristic of those who have been reared
under hot suns.
Carteret gave his hand cordially to the gentleman thus described.
"How do you do, Captain McBane," he said, turning to the second visitor.
The individual thus addressed was strikingly different in appearance
from his companion. His broad shoulders, burly form, square jaw, and
heavy chin betokened strength, energy, and unscrupulousness. With the
exception of a small, bristling mustache, his face was clean shaven,
with here and there a speck of dried blood due to a carelessly or
unskillfully handled razor. A single deep-set gray eye was shadowed by a
beetling brow, over which a crop of coarse black hair, slightly streaked
with gray, fell almost low enough to mingle with his black, bushy
eyebrows. His coat had not been brushed for several days, if one might
judge from the accumulation of dandruff upon the collar, and his
shirt-front, in the middle of which blazed a showy diamond, was
plentifully stained with tobacco juice. He wore a large slouch hat,
which, upon entering the office, he removed and held in his hand.
Having greeted this person with an unconscious but quite perceptible
diminution of the warmth with which he had welcomed the other, the major
looked around the room for seats for his visitors, and perceiving only
one chair, piled with exchanges, and a broken stool propped against the
wall, pushed a button, which rang a bell in the hall, summoning the
colored porter to his presence.
"Jerry," said the editor when his servant appeared, "bring a couple of
chairs for these gentlemen."
While they stood waiting, the visitors congratulated the major on the
birth of his child, which had been announced in the Morning Chronicle,
and which the prominence of the family made in some degree a matter of
public interest.
"And now that you have a son, major," remarked the gentleman first
described, as he lit one of the major's cigars, "you'll be all the more
interested in doing something to make this town fit to live in, which is
what we came up to talk about. Things are in an awful condition! A negro
justice of the peace has opened an office on Market Street, and only
yesterday summoned a white man to appear before him. Negro lawyers get
most of the business in the criminal court. Last evening a group of
young white ladies, going quietly along the street arm-in-arm, were
forced off the sidewalk by a crowd of negro girls. Coming down the
street just now, I saw a spectacle of social equality and negro
domination that made my blood boil with indignation,--a white and a
black convict, chained together, crossing the city in charge of a negro
officer! We cannot stand that sort of thing, Carteret,--it is the last
straw! Something must be done, and that quickly!"
The major thrilled with responsive emotion. There was something
prophetic in this opportune visit. The matter was not only in his own
thoughts, but in the air; it was the spontaneous revulsion of white men
against the rule of an inferior race. These were the very men, above all
others in the town, to join him in a movement to change these degrading
conditions.
General Belmont, the smaller of the two, was a man of good family, a
lawyer by profession, and took an active part in state and local
politics. Aristocratic by birth and instinct, and a former owner of
slaves, his conception of the obligations and rights of his caste was
nevertheless somewhat lower than that of the narrower but more sincere
Carteret. In serious affairs Carteret desired the approval of his
conscience, even if he had to trick that docile organ into
acquiescence. This was not difficult to do in politics, for he believed
in the divine right of white men and gentlemen, as his ancestors had
believed in and died for the divine right of kings. General Belmont was
not without a gentleman's distaste for meanness, but he permitted no
fine scruples to stand in the way of success. He had once been minister,
under a Democratic administration, to a small Central American state.
Political rivals had characterized him as a tricky demagogue, which may
of course have been a libel. He had an amiable disposition, possessed
the gift of eloquence, and was a prime social favorite.
Captain George McBane had sprung from the poor-white class, to which,
even more than to the slaves, the abolition of slavery had opened the
door of opportunity. No longer overshadowed by a slaveholding caste,
some of this class had rapidly pushed themselves forward. Some had made
honorable records. Others, foremost in negro-baiting and election
frauds, had done the dirty work of politics, as their fathers had done
that of slavery, seeking their reward at first in minor offices,--for
which men of gentler breeding did not care,--until their ambition began
to reach out for higher honors.
Of this class McBane--whose captaincy, by the way, was merely a polite
fiction--had been one of the most successful. He had held, until
recently, as the reward of questionable political services, a contract
with the State for its convict labor, from which in a few years he had
realized a fortune. But the methods which made his contract profitable
had not commended themselves to humane people, and charges of cruelty
and worse had been preferred against him. He was rich enough to escape
serious consequences from the investigation which followed, but when the
Fusion ticket carried the state he lost his contract, and the system of
convict labor was abolished. Since then McBane had devoted himself to
politics: he was ambitious for greater wealth, for office, and for
social recognition. A man of few words and self-engrossed, he seldom
spoke of his aspirations except where speech might favor them,
preferring to seek his ends by secret "deals" and combinations rather
than to challenge criticism and provoke rivalry by more open methods.
At sight, therefore, of these two men, with whose careers and characters
he was entirely familiar, Carteret felt sweep over his mind the
conviction that now was the time and these the instruments with which to
undertake the redemption of the state from the evil fate which had
befallen it.
Jerry, the porter, who had gone downstairs to the counting-room to find
two whole chairs, now entered with one in each hand. He set a chair for
the general, who gave him an amiable nod, to which Jerry responded with
a bow and a scrape. Captain McBane made no acknowledgment, but fixed
Jerry so fiercely with his single eye that upon placing the chair Jerry
made his escape from the room as rapidly as possible.
"I don' like dat Cap'n McBane," he muttered, upon reaching the hall.
"Dey says he got dat eye knock' out tryin' ter whip a cullud 'oman, when
he wuz a boy, an' dat he ain' never had no use fer niggers
sence,--'cep'n' fer what he could make outen 'em wid his convic' labor
contrac's. His daddy wuz a' overseer befo' 'im, an' it come nachul fer
him ter be a nigger-driver. I don' want dat one eye er his'n restin' on
me no longer 'n I kin he'p, an' I don' know how I'm gwine ter like dis
job ef he's gwine ter be comin' roun' here. He ain' nothin' but po'
w'ite trash nohow; but Lawd! Lawd! look at de money he's got,--livin'
at de hotel, wearin' di'mon's, an' colloguin' wid de bes' quality er dis
town! 'Pears ter me de bottom rail is gittin' mighty close ter de top.
Well, I s'pose it all comes f'm bein' w'ite. I wush ter Gawd I wuz
w'ite!"
After this fervent aspiration, having nothing else to do for the time
being, except to remain within call, and having caught a few words of
the conversation as he went in with the chairs, Jerry, who possessed a
certain amount of curiosity, placed close to the wall the broken stool
upon which he sat while waiting in the hall, and applied his ear to a
hole in the plastering of the hallway. There was a similar defect in the
inner wall, between the same two pieces of studding, and while this
inner opening was not exactly opposite the outer, Jerry was enabled,
through the two, to catch in a more or less fragmentary way what was
going on within.
He could hear the major, now and then, use the word "negro," and
McBane's deep voice was quite audible when he referred, it seemed to
Jerry with alarming frequency, to "the damned niggers," while the
general's suave tones now and then pronounced the word "niggro,"--a sort
of compromise between ethnology and the vernacular. That the gentlemen
were talking politics seemed quite likely, for gentlemen generally
talked politics when they met at the Chronicle office. Jerry could hear
the words "vote," "franchise," "eliminate," "constitution," and other
expressions which marked the general tenor of the talk, though he could
not follow it all,--partly because he could not hear everything
distinctly, and partly because of certain limitations which nature had
placed in the way of Jerry's understanding anything very difficult or
abstruse.
He had gathered enough, however, to realize, in a vague way, that
something serious was on foot, involving his own race, when a bell
sounded over his head, at which he sprang up hastily and entered the
room where the gentlemen were talking.
"Jerry," said the major, "wait on Captain McBane."
"Yas, suh," responded Jerry, turning toward the captain, whose eye he
carefully avoided meeting directly.
"Take that half a dollar, boy," ordered McBane, "an' go 'cross the
street to Mr. Sykes's, and tell him to send me three whiskies. Bring
back the change, and make has'e."
The captain tossed the half dollar at Jerry, who, looking to one side,
of course missed it. He picked the money up, however, and backed out of
the room. Jerry did not like Captain McBane, to begin with, and it was
clear that the captain was no gentleman, or he would not have thrown the
money at him. Considering the source, Jerry might have overlooked this
discourtesy had it not been coupled with the remark about the change,
which seemed to him in very poor taste.
Returning in a few minutes with three glasses on a tray, he passed them
round, handed Captain McBane his change, and retired to the hall.
"Gentlemen," exclaimed the captain, lifting his glass, "I propose a
toast: 'No nigger domination.'"
"Amen!" said the others, and three glasses were solemnly drained.
"Major," observed the general, smacking his lips, "_I_ should like to
use Jerry for a moment, if you will permit me."
Jerry appeared promptly at the sound of the bell. He had remained
conveniently near,--calls of this sort were apt to come in sequence.
"Jerry," said the general, handing Jerry half a dollar, "go over to Mr.
Brown's,--I get my liquor there,--and tell them to send me three glasses
of my special mixture. And, Jerry,--you may keep the change!"
"Thank y', gin'l, thank y', marster," replied Jerry, with unctuous
gratitude, bending almost double as he backed out of the room.
"Dat's a gent'eman, a rale ole-time gent'eman," he said to himself when
he had closed the door. "But dere's somethin' gwine on in dere,--dere
sho' is! 'No nigger damnation!' Dat soun's all right,--I'm sho' dere
ain' no nigger I knows w'at wants damnation, do' dere's lots of 'em w'at
deserves it; but ef dat one-eyed Cap'n McBane got anything ter do wid
it, w'atever it is, it don' mean no good fer de niggers,--damnation'd
be better fer 'em dan dat Cap'n McBane! He looks at a nigger lack he
could jes' eat 'im alive."
"This mixture, gentlemen," observed the general when Jerry had returned
with the glasses, "was originally compounded by no less a person than
the great John C. Calhoun himself, who confided the recipe to my father
over the convivial board. In this nectar of the gods, gentlemen, I drink
with you to 'White Supremacy!'"
"White Supremacy everywhere!" added McBane with fervor.
"Now and forever!" concluded Carteret solemnly.
When the visitors, half an hour later, had taken their departure,
Carteret, inspired by the theme, and in less degree by the famous
mixture of the immortal Calhoun, turned to his desk and finished, at a
white heat, his famous editorial in which he sounded the tocsin of a new
crusade.
At noon, when the editor, having laid down his pen, was leaving the
office, he passed Jerry in the hall without a word or a nod. The major
wore a rapt look, which Jerry observed with a vague uneasiness.
"He looks jes' lack he wuz walkin' in his sleep," muttered Jerry
uneasily. "Dere's somethin' up, sho 's you bawn! 'No nigger damnation!'
Anybody'd 'low dey wuz all gwine ter heaven; but I knows better! W'en a
passel er w'ite folks gits ter talkin' 'bout de niggers lack dem in
yander, it's mo' lackly dey're gwine ter ketch somethin' e'se dan
heaven! I got ter keep my eyes open an' keep up wid w'at's happenin'. Ef
dere's gwine ter be anudder flood 'roun' here, I wants ter git in de
ark wid de w'ite folks,--I may haf ter be anudder Ham, an' sta't de
cullud race all over ag'in."