_An Eager Searcher._
Up and down the street on which he lived, Ramon Mansford, the affianced
of Alene Daleman, walked as one in a trance. Night was coming and as the
shadows deepened the bitterness deepened in his soul.
"Think of it! my father sleeps in an unmarked grave somewhere in the
South, and I know that the hope of freeing the slave actuated him to
enlist in the army. For the Negro, my father buried his sword to the
hilt in the blood of his Southern brother and in turn received a thrust,
all for a race from which this vile miscreant has crept to murder Alene,
my Alene."
In the darkness of his own calamity distinctions between right and wrong
began to fade away, and he found his hatred of the Negro race assuming a
more violent form than that manifested by the native Southerner. In his
heart there was the harking back to times more than a thousand years
ago--to times when his race was a race of exterminators. At this
particular time it seemed to him that nothing would have suited him
better than to have taken the lead of forces bent on driving every black
face from the land. Now and then he would pause and ask himself:
"Is all this horror true? Is the sweet Alene gone? Was the dear one
foully murdered while I slept? Great God of heaven, can all this be
true? Must I go through life unsupported by the brave heart of Alene on
which I was depending for strength to conquer worlds?"
He sat down upon the curbstone and buried his face in his hands.
About twelve o'clock that night a Negro woman came rushing along at full
speed. Ramon seized her and she uttered a loud scream, falling in a
helpless heap at his feet. With a tight grip on her arm he said,
"Have you, too, blighted somebody's happiness? Have you murdered some
one?"
With terror stricken eyes the woman looked up into his face and said,
"Mistah, please lemme go, please sah!"
"What have you done?" sternly asked Ramon.
"Nothin' sah," said she. "I'se been roun' ter Dilsy Harper's, settin' up
ovah Bud Harper's daid body, whut wuz sent home frum de bridge. Wal,
sah, ez shuah ez dis here chile is bawn ter die, while we wuz settin' up
ovah Bud's body, Bud hisself walked in. We looked at Bud, den at de
body, en we wuz skeert ter death. Den de livin' Bud, went up an looked
down on de daid Bud, and de daid Bud skeert de livin' Bud, and de livin'
Bud fairly flew outen dat house. Den, bless yer soul, honey, dat ole
house wuz soon empty."
This weird tale furnished the needed diversion to Ramon's overburdened
mind. His thoughts began to run in another direction.
"Was the mob mistaken? Is the man thought to have been killed yet alive?
If one mistake has been made, who can say that two haven't been made? Is
her real murderer yet alive?"
Such were the thoughts that went crashing through Ramon's mind and his
grip on the woman's arm slackened. The woman wrenched herself loose and
continued her journey with increased speed.
As late as it was Ramon hurried to the Harpers' home and found the
Negroes standing about at a distance from the house, discussing the
sudden reappearance and disappearance of Bud Harper, when there, all
agreed, lay Bud before their very eyes.
Ramon returned to his home strangely becalmed, and though late in the
night he sat down and wrote the following letter to his home in the
North.
"MY DEAR NORFLEET: I am in the throes of an overwhelming
sorrow. My Alene has been foully murdered. A mystery surrounds
the case. We cannot fathom the motive of the crime. To-day
(rather yesterday now, for it is two o'clock in the morning) a
man accused of murdering her was lynched. To-night the man who
was supposed to have been lynched made his appearance at his
home. But the mother sticks to it that the real murderer, her
son, is the corpse, and appearances seem to bear out the
contention. Now it may be that Alene's murderer is yet alive
and that an injustice has been wrought upon somebody. My heart
is more firmly knit to my Southern white brethren than ever
before. I fling ambition to the winds. Tell my friends that I
shall not make the race for Congress, and thank them for me for
the way in which they have always seconded my aspirations. It
pains me much to not be in a position to attempt to scale the
heights which their loving hearts fancied I could make with
ease. I shall walk with my kith and kin of the South in the
shadow, for in the furnace of a common sorrow, my heart has
been melted into one with theirs. We of the South (you see I
call myself one of them), know not what the future has in store
for our beloved section, but we face the ordeal with the grim
determination of our race. If you believe in prayer, pray that
I may be just and may even in darkness do the right.
"RAMON, 'THE MAD.'"
When Alene had been laid to rest, Ramon, after lingering in Almaville
for a few weeks, disappeared completely, leaving behind no trace of
himself. He had previously given Mr. Daleman and friends assurances that
he would do no violence to himself. So while they knew not where he was
nor what was his mission, they were not unduly apprehensive as to his
welfare.
Ramon Mansford had simply stained himself a chocolate brown and had thus
passed from the Anglo-Saxon to the Negro race. He had gone to fathom the
mystery of Alene's murder.