A MORNING RIDE.
We are at the Dalton house once more. It is the night on which we followed
Tony Marshall to the gambling den, which we saw raided by the officers of
the law. Under the window of Lemuel Dalton's bed room a dog had stationed
himself, and throughout the night uttered long, loud and piteous howls.
Lemuel Dalton professed to be above superstition and detested that in the
Negroes more than he did anything else, perhaps. While professing to the
contrary, he was in reality superstitious to a marked degree, even against
his own better sense. This semi-consciousness of the presence of a latent
superstition in the crevices of his inner-self, no doubt served to
intensify his antipathies against a people who had thus in spite of himself
injected superstition into him; for he blamed the Negroes for the
prevalence of superstition in the Southern States. So the howling of this
homeless dog bothered Lemuel, although he sought to assure himself, over
and over again, that it did not. He had arisen more than once and fired his
pistol out of the window in order to stop the noise of the dog. The dog
would quiet down for a brief period and then resume his canine
lamentations. The howling of the dog, coupled with its persistence,
produced in Lemuel Dalton a state of mind bordering on terror. The Negroes
held that the howling of a dog beneath a window was a sure sign that an
inmate of the house was soon to die.
Arising very early the next morning, Lemuel Dalton entered his library and
took a seat. He wheeled his chair until it faced the east window and,
tilting back in it, mechanically twirled his mustache, a look of deep
meditation coming over his face. "Confound the people who first brought the
Negroes to this country," he said. He was worried that he could not shake
off the superstition as to death following the howling of a dog.
In the midst of his broodings Lemuel Dalton's pretty little wife (for he is
married now) came dashing into the room attired in a riding habit. Lemuel
Dalton wheeled around to meet her and her quick eye caught the cloud that
was just vanishing from his face.
"Lemuel, my dear, what on earth are you allowing to trouble you?" she said,
shaking her riding whip at him, playfully, while her eyes were shining with
the love that she cherished for him.
"I may tell you when you return from your morning ride," he said, opening
his arms to receive his wife.
"You naughty lad," she cried, looking into his eyes with mock earnestness.
"When did you ever hear of a woman consenting to wait a moment to obtain a
secret? Tell me _now_ on pain of being doomed to bear this burden, my
humble self, in your arms for ever."
"The very penalty that you affix as a menace is an inducement for me to
disobey. I resist the temptation, however, and tell you the subject of my
thoughts. I was thinking of the Negroes."
A shiver ran over the frame of Mrs. Dalton and the cheerful smile died out
of her face. "Lemuel, will you people of the South ever be rid of this
eternal nightmare?" queried Mrs. Dalton, looking up into Lemuel's face.
Lemuel tenderly stroked her beautiful hair, but did not essay to answer her
question. The fact of the matter was, he regarded the Negro problem as
growing graver and more complicated as time wore on. The strenuous efforts
of the Negro to rise and the decrease of the distance between the two races
he viewed with alarm. He did not care to communicate his real feelings to
his wife, so he said nothing.
Mrs. Dalton's nature was of a light and volatile kind and she thought of
the Negroes only for an instant. Wresting herself out of her husband's
arms, she skipped out of the room. She immediately reappeared at the door
of the library and threw a kiss at Lemuel in girlish fashion and was soon
mounted and riding out to get the benefit of the brisk morning air. As she
saunters along, we may learn a few points in her history that bear upon
the case unto which events are leading. She was born and reared in a
section of the State of Maine where no Negroes whatever live. It was here
that Lemuel Dalton found, wooed, and wedded her. She had read from time to
time of the crimes of brutal Negroes and the summary punishments
administered to them, and she had rather imperceptibly grown to regard the
prevailing race type of the Negroes as being criminal. This opinion was not
an unnatural outgrowth of the newspaper habit of giving unlimited space and
flaming headlines to the vicious Negro, the exotic, while the many millions
who day by day went uncomplainingly to their daily tasks and wrought
worthily for the country's welfare, received but scant attention.
The opinion that this state of affairs caused Mrs. Dalton to imbibe, was
the further fostered by the atmosphere of the Dalton house, which was so
thoroughly hostile to the Negro. The whole of the Dalton place was now
manned by white help, and Negroes would not so much as go there on errands
of business. It was from such a home and under the conditions outlined that
Mrs. Dalton went forth for her morning ride.
It was the noise of Mrs. Dalton's horse that caused Tony Marshall to pause
in his attempt to kill the squirrel.