named Moss. He had a son named Benjy, who ran away during the War. I
don't want to impeach the genealogy of your King, but I wonder--" She
stopped, as if recalling that her auditor was a stranger, then added,
with a smile: "Anyhow, we _must_ be waited on by him, now."
* * * * *
Moss was aware that the ladies at his table were scanning him with more
interest than even his size and legendary history usually evoked, and
he was not much surprised, therefore, when the eldest of them said:
"Excuse me, please, but is your real name Moss Harper?"
"Yassum," he answered, halting instantly in his employment, as old
Benjy had taught him to do, and dumbly waiting the lady's further
pleasure.
"Do you know your father's name?"
"Yassum. Ole Benjy."
"Is he still living?"
"Yassum; livin' with me."
The lady's small white hand closed rather quickly on the table-cloth.
"Do you know what county he came from?"
"Yassum. Ole Bubbon; he done live at Hahpeh Hall." Then the lady's
lighting eyes encouraged him to volunteer a word or two, contrary to
his habit. "The Hahpehs all daid and gone now, though. All killed in
the Wah."
One of the girls shot her sisters an amused glance, but Penelope
Harper's lips quivered. In a voice which struck Moss as the sweetest he
had ever heard, she continued: "I think I shall ask you to come to our
room--No. 120--as soon as you are through with your duties here. I have
something of interest to tell you."
To Moss, with the childish impatience of his race, it seemed as if he
would never escape from the dining-room that night; for when he was on
the point of leaving, at a little after nine, he was detailed to help
take care of a party of a dozen or more that had just come in. It was,
therefore, after ten when he gently tapped on the door of No. 120.
He had been too well bred by his father to sit down; and Mrs. Harper,
not wishing to disturb his conception of propriety, though some laxity
on the present occasion would have been permissible, let him stand just
inside the door, with his greasy old hat clutched awkwardly between his
hands and the shrunken sleeves of his butternut suit exposing four or
five inches of muscular black wrist.
"In the first place, Moss," she began, after ascertaining a little more
of his history, "I want to tell you that the Harpers are not all dead.
I am a Harper myself. I am the Miss Pen that old Benjy must have often
told you about."
"Not Miss Pen!" exclaimed Moss, with starting eyes, as if beholding an
apparition. "Not the one that mah'd Marse Willie Hahpeh?"
"The very same," she assured him, smiling. "And these are my daughters.
But Marse Willie is dead; he died a long time ago, during the War."
Verily, it was as if some magician had rung up the curtain on the
past--that beautiful past of which his father had told him so much. He
listened to Mrs. Harper's story in something like a trance, with his
blue-black eyes half lost in reverie. And, thus forgetting himself, his
awkwardness passed; his hands fell naturally by his side, his chest
came out, his head rose, and he stood before the ladies in all the
splendor of physique which Nature had invested him with.
"Now, Moss," Mrs. Harper concluded, "no Harper could ever neglect a
descendant of our faithful old Moss, even though his son did run away
during the War. We want to take care of you and Benjy. We'll give him
a cabin by himself, and we'll give you and your wife another cabin. As
fast as you learn the plantation work, you shall be advanced. With your
strength and intelligence, I am sure that you can soon be earning good
wages, and you will be much happier and better off than you are here.
To-morrow afternoon, when you are at home, we'll drive out to see old
Benjy, as he is probably too feeble to come here, and you can then tell
us what you have decided to do. Meanwhile, to relieve any immediate
needs, accept this." And she handed him a ten-dollar bill.
Just how he expressed his thanks, or how he got out of the room, Moss
never clearly recalled, for his brain was whirling. But when he found
himself in the street, with the cool evening air on his heated brow, he
started for home on a run. It was a rather dangerous thing for a black
man to do, too, at that hour of the night, in a Southern city, since a
policeman was likely to stop him with a tap on the head from a "billy."
[Illustration: "HEAH'S AN OLE DEVIL I USED TO WRASTLE WITH,' HE
EXCLAIMED SHRILLY"]
But the first thing that stopped Moss was the glowing front of a
pawnshop, near the head of Goosefoot Lane. In the window was a brooch
which Estelle had paused to gaze at, with covetous eyes, every day for
weeks. Moss had looked at it himself a good many times, dreaming rather
than hoping to carry it home some day as a surprise for Estelle. Now he
had the money, and, without a thought of the prodigality of his course,
he entered the shop.
His heavy breathing did not escape the sharp eyes of the Hebrew
proprietor, who would not have been at all surprised to see a pursuing
policeman heave in sight. But when Moss showed his bill and asked for
the brooch, the pawnbroker quickly went forward for the article, and,
after taking into consideration his customer's evident hurry, he set a
price of five dollars on it. Estelle would have got it for half that
sum, but Moss paid the price without a murmur, and then sped on down
the Lane, leaving the Hebrew well pleased with the transaction and
fully convinced that his customer was a thief.
Estelle was not at home, to Moss' keen disappointment, and, though he
took it that she was at the laundry, he woke his father to make sure.
Old Benjy, as torpid as a woodchuck in January, was not easily roused;
but Moss' repeated shouts and by no means gentle thumps finally brought
him to his elbow, blinking dazedly.
"Daddy, Miss Pen's alive! She's at the hotel, and she's foun' us out,
and gwine to teck us all back to Hahpeh Hall!"
Old Benjy continued to blink silently, and was evidently of the opinion
that he had been dreaming. But when Moss had repeated the news twice or
thrice, and the facts had finally filtered through Benjy's thick skull,
he let out a yelp that would have shamed a coyote.
"Halleluyer! Halleluyer! Glory to Gawd! Bress de Lam'! Bress de Lam'!"
Moss, after confirming his supposition as to Estelle's whereabouts, did
not wait for the broadside of questions which his father was sure to
fire at him, but ran out to the stoop. Should he wait for her? Should
he pin the brooch on her night-dress, and then, when she discovered it,
overwhelm her with the good news? That would be fine, but it was far
too severe a tax upon his patience. The next moment he was on the wing
again.
No negroes were allowed to enter the laundry by the front door, or,
indeed, by any door, unless employed about the place. But Moss stole
in through the engine-room at the rear, and managed to make his way as
far as the ironing-machines without challenge. Estelle was nowhere in
sight, however; and, raising his voice above the clatter, he inquired
as to where she was of a mulatto girl whom he had often seen with his
wife.
"She done gone to git some medicine fur a haidache," answered the girl.
"How long 'go?"
"Juss li'l' while--not ten minutes."
At this, a wrinkled old negress, who had bent her head forward to catch
the colloquy, showed her half-dozen yellow teeth in an evil grin.
"Sonny," she volunteered maliciously, "she been gone two hou's by the
clock. The medicine that gull gwine arfter don' come fum no drug-sto'."
Moss had no time for further parley, for the threatening voice of
the foreman warned him to depart without loss of time, and he glided
swiftly out again; but in the starlight outside he paused, with the
mist from the exhaust-pipe drifting into his upturned face.
Some of the joy had gone out of his eyes. Did the old woman mean that
Estelle drank? Once or twice, recently, he thought he had detected
liquor on her breath, but he had immediately dismissed the suspicion.
Drinking, of course, was no heinous offense in his eyes; he daily
saw too many white women drinking to hold such an opinion as that.
Nevertheless, he himself had forgone liquor for years--old Benjy had
preached him many a temperance sermon; and Estelle had allowed him to
believe that she, too, never drank.
But now that the accursed maggot of doubt was in his brain, he could
not cast it out, and its foul progeny multiplied thick and fast.
With feverish haste he made the round of all the drug-stores in the
vicinity; but Estelle was not to be seen. Twice he returned to the
cabin; but the measured snoring of old Benjy, who had swallowed the
good news as a child would a sugar-plum, and then calmly fallen asleep
again, was the only sound that greeted his ears.
How quiet the cabin was! A chill solitude already seemed brooding
over it, and the familiar objects of the room had taken on a strange
appearance. With an unnamed, unnamable fear compressing his heart and
making breathing difficult, he took his way back to the head of the
Lane. After standing there a moment, straining his eyes in either
direction, he began to wander slowly and a little wearily up and down
the avenue, scrutinizing every woman who came within his range of
vision.
[Illustration: "OLD BENJY CONTINUED TO BLINK SILENTLY"]
He finally found himself, by mere chance, in front of his landlord's
saloon. A passing thought brought his leaden feet to a stand-still. If
Estelle _should_ have gone out for a drink, and had had no money,--as
he believed to be the case,--would she not have come to Fitzpatrick's?
It would have been the last place to which he would have gone to ask
credit for a drink, for, in the first place, no negroes were allowed
to drink at Fitzpatrick's bar; in the second place, Fitzpatrick was no
friend of his. Yet Estelle had gone there once with the rent! Maybe she
had gone more than once; maybe----
A sound in the gloomy hallway along one side of the saloon suddenly
made his steady-going heart give one great bound. It was Estelle's
voice in silly, tipsy laughter, followed by a profane admonition, in
a masculine voice, to keep still. Next came the cautious closing of
a door and guarded footsteps. As rigid as iron, with his great fists
clenched and his nostrils spread like an angry bull's, Moss waited for
the pair to appear. But, instead of coming nearer, their footsteps
receded until he heard them ascending the stairs at the other end of
the hall; then they ceased.
One--two--three--four--five minutes Moss stood there, seeing nothing,
hearing nothing, a film over his eyes, a noise like rushing waters in
his ears. His sensations were very similar to those he had felt when
a careless carpenter had once dropped an oak two-by-four on his head
from the second story of a building; and now, as then, he automatically
raised his hand to his scalp.
But at last he came out of the curious obsession; he saw the twinkling
arc-lights, heard the humming of the trolley-cars, and was conscious
of people passing to and fro. With a strange smile, he took the packet
containing the brooch from his pocket, slowly unwrapped it, and
dropped the trinket to the sidewalk, after which he ground it under
his heel. Then he crossed the street to a negro saloon--that is, a
saloon for negroes, run by a white man. He poured himself a big drink.
The villainous liquor trickled pleasantly through his interior, and he
immediately ordered a second drink--then a third--then a fourth. This
time the bartender, after an uneasy glance at the herculean shoulders
and muddy eyes of his patron, substituted a weaker mixture for the
fiery stuff he had been setting out. He also shifted a revolver beneath
the bar into a slightly handier position.
But Moss walked quietly out and recrossed the street, with no hint of
unsteadiness in his gait, in spite of his unusual potations. He softly
entered Fitzpatrick's hallway, and in the dark recess behind the stairs
he took his stand--a silent, grim, fearsome statue of obsidian hue and
almost heroic size.
He waited for what seemed hours; but, queerly enough, he was not
impatient, nor was he in the least excited. Occasionally a policeman
sauntered past the entrance; at intervals a trolley-car thundered by;
the bartender of the saloon slammed and locked the back door. Finally,
a tower clock began to boom out the hour, and Moss, in the absence of
anything else to do, counted the strokes.
Only twelve! He would have guessed that it was at least two o'clock.
Then, having counted to twelve without much effort, he began to count
his fingers over and over, to see how far he could go. At thirty-nine,
being a little uncertain of the next number, he paused. During the
pause he heard the swish of a skirt in the hall above. They were coming!
A woman's agonized shriek, a man's curse, a chance shot into the dark
from his ever-ready revolver, a scuffle,--a very brief scuffle,--and
then all was as still as before. Estelle had told her last lie;
Fitzpatrick had dispensed his last drink.
Moss walked forward to the doorway, waited quietly until an officer
who had heard the report of the revolver came running up, and then
surrendered himself.
"I done kill 'em," he explained laconically.
Ten minutes later, in heavy manacles, he stepped down from the police
ambulance at the entrance to the jail--a huge brick building, covering
an entire block, with its barred windows rising story on story, a
somber architectural jest at Civilization.
* * * * *
Some two months later, the governor of Kentucky was standing with his
hands in his pockets at the window of his office, in the quaint capitol
building at Frankfort, and gazing idly at the tablet in the sidewalk
which marks the spot where William Goebel fell, the victim of an
assassin's ball. He turned, at the rustle of a lady's skirts.
"Why, Pen! What angel sent you?" he exclaimed, pushing forward his
easiest chair. "Pen, do you know you're just in time to save the
gov'neh of Kentucky from a spell of the blues? It's a fact. I read a
book last night, by a man named Buckle, about civilization and that
sawt of thing, and the pesky thoughts stick to me like a nightmare. I
was standin' by that window theh, just reviewin' the events which have
taken place in our deah old State in the past quarter of a century, and
I was askin' myself which way we were headed--up or down."
"Up, surely," answered Mrs. Harper. She looked at him with that candor
and seriousness which is permitted only between old friends, and then
continued: "Wilbur, I have a problem, too, and I want you to help me
solve it. I want you to pardon a negro who was convicted last June in
Louisville of a double murder, and who is now here in the penitentiary.
He is the son of that Benjy of ours that ran off during the War, and
the grandson of our old Moss. You remember them both. I never knew
either of them to be guilty of a vicious act, and this boy--he's only
twenty-five--killed his wife and the white man who had debauched her."
The governor sat playing with his pen-knife for some time after she had
finished her story.
"I wish this Moss of yours had killed only the man, Pen," he observed.
"That's what a white man would have done, and everybody would have
applauded. But, then, a niggeh ain't a white man--never will be a
white man. Pen, being gov'neh is a terribly responsible job. Now, you,
for instance, ask me, one man, to set aside the findings of twelve
men appointed by the people to determine this niggeh's guilt. Yet the
pahdoning power was certainly given me for a purpose, and I intend to
use it when I see fit. I'll take your word for it, Pen, that Moss is a
good niggeh; I'll look into his case, and if you are not mistaken as to
the facts, and will take him out to the Hall and keep him theh, I'll
pahdon him. But I can't do it right away. In the fust place, a little
punishment will do him good. In the second place, theh's politics.
Politics, Pen! To pahdon that niggeh now, my dear Pen, while the events
are still so fresh, would make an awful row. The press would froth at
the mouth. But in a year, mind you, or eighteen months at the most,
I'll turn him loose."
"Oh, Wilbur, a year is such a long time!" exclaimed Mrs. Harper
plaintively.
"Is it, Pen,--to you--at fifty-five?" he asked whimsically.
"Alas, no, not to _me_! I'm not in a cell. But I understand your
position, Wilbur, and I'll submit to the inevitable. It is so much
better than it might have been, and I am very, very grateful. But can I
not intimate the good news to him, just to keep up his courage?"
"If you do it very diplomatically, Pen, and do not mention me."
Then, after she had left, he sat chuckling in his chair at the idea of
asking a woman to be diplomatic under such circumstances.
The warden, after reading the Governor's note, turned to a guard. "Put
a coat on 1610 and bring him to the reception-room."
"If you please," interposed Mrs. Harper, "I should like to see him just
as he is, at his work."
She followed her conductor through the stifling prison-yard, cut off by
the encircling hills from every current of air. On the hill-side, where
the convicts were breaking stone, it seemed even hotter, the oven-like
breath of the dog-day sun rebounding into one's face in almost palpable
pulsations. Moss was one of a gang of fifty. He was naked to the waist,
and his broad, sweaty back glistened in the sunlight like the skin of a
porpoise; yet, in spite of the heat, his sledge rose and fell with the
regularity of machinery.
"Has he given you any trouble?" asked Mrs. Harper of the guard.
"No'm. He ain't that kind. He's the kind that gits gloomy and either
dies or goes nutty. But after a year or two we'll probably make a
trusty of him, and then he'll be happier. Murderers generally make the
best trusties."
When Mrs. Harper, after going forward a few steps alone, with a
quickened pulse, spoke his name, Moss' sledge hung in mid-air, and he
hearkened without looking up, as if doubting his ears. It was not until
she repeated his name that he turned toward her. His face was neither
bitter nor vindictive, but dull, oh, unutterably dull, as if he had
said farewell forever to hope. He did not speak--to speak was against
the rules. He did not even smile, but simply touched the brim of his
wool hat.
Mrs. Harper, with a catch in her breath, stepped still nearer.
"Moss, I remain your friend," she began tremulously. "Benjy is with us,
and we are taking the best care of him. And, listen, Moss! This is what
I came to tell you. I am authorized to say, positively, by a power that
is supreme, that, if your behavior is good, your detention here will
not be more than eighteen months, and I hope only twelve. You can stand
the work that long, can't you, knowing that we are waiting for you,
ready to give you a home?"
Still his expression did not change, and still he did not speak.
"Don't you--don't you understand, Moss?" she asked, with quivering
lips, fearful that his mind had already been shocked.
His slow words then came:
"Yassum, I kin stan' it. I could stan' it foreveh. But _she's_ daid,"
he cried hoarsely. "I kill her--I choke her--with that han'!" thrusting
out the member. "The same han' she used to put her li'l' han's roun'
and hole so tight--same han' I used to pat her cheek with--same han'--"
A shudder passed over his huge form until his teeth chattered.
"Oh, I know it's hard!" exclaimed the tender woman, suffering only
less than he. "You have sinned, and you must do penance. But we've all
sinned, and all done penance, and yet happiness comes again. Believe
me, Moss, some day you'll be happy again. Be brave, and one month from
to-day I'll be here to see you again. Meanwhile, can I do anything for
you--take any word to Benjy?"
His lusterless eyes seemed to brighten a little.
"Mis' Pen, will you sot up a li'l' tombstone on her grave? Juss a li'l'
one, so I kin fine it some day, when I gits out?"
And Penelope, with blinding eyes, promised.
AN AMERICAN MASTER OF LANDSCAPE
BY
T. M. CLELAND
A striking reversal of attitude may be noticed to-day toward
innovations in the field of art. Time was, we are told by the
biographers of the Old Masters, when the painter who dared to step
beyond the pale of conventions current in his day, suffered the
neglect and bitter scorn of his contemporaries. From the earliest
period of artistic endeavor, the innovator has been on the defensive;
whereas the cardinal sin in the modern artist is rather the _failure_
to innovate or to startle us by some new form of disregard for the
principles established by tradition. In the place of knowledge and
patient scholarship, we find sophistication and a restless, conscious
craving to produce an effect sufficiently startling to command the
instant attention of a busy world. In the art of landscape painting
particularly this desire to be effective at any cost has led many of
the younger generation of artists to adopt for themselves hastily
formed theories regarding the phenomena of light and air and to devote
their lives to these, forgetting all else.
The result of all this is a modern school of landscape, the aims of
which seem strangely more allied to scientific investigation than to
artistic study, and a class of pictures which expound, frequently with
great skill, the theories upon which they are accomplished; but which
are rarely intelligible to any one not directly concerned with the
study of art.
So it is with some sense of relief that we may turn our attention upon
the achievements of an artist like Thomas R. Manley, whose drawings
are reproduced here, not that they may be the subject of a written
discourse, but that of themselves they may give pleasure to a wider
public than it has hitherto been their fortune to command. They are
the product of a quiet and orderly development carried on outside the
clamor of the modern movement, simple masterpieces of landscape drawing
as it has been practised since the days of Claude Lorrain. They
present no "theory" upon which we may base a philosophical discussion,
and there is nothing "new" about them at all beyond a simple technical
invention of the artist's, whereby his line is rendered more soft and
pliable than by the ordinary mediums of crayon or pencil. What they do
possess, however, and to a high degree, is the evidence of a mastery
of the technique of design plus a finely trained intelligence and
feeling. This technical mastery of design is perhaps the rarest of
accomplishments at the present day, because it is the most difficult to
acquire and makes too great a demand upon patience. And yet it is this
which should and does satisfy most directly the unconscious esthetic
sense in us all; for who cannot experience some inward pleasure in
the form and movement of the hills and trees as they are expressed to
us in these drawings? It is not essential to our enjoyment of these
things that we should ourselves have knowledge of the technical means
whereby they are conveyed; but it is these studied accomplishments
which we are enjoying nevertheless; because through them our own sense
of harmony is aroused. Let us note, for instance, the character of the
lines used to represent the foliage in the first drawing reproduced,
and see with what beautiful, rythmic precision they produce at one
and the same time the required tone and the movement of the thing
represented. And again, in the trunks of the trees how fully the firm
lines record the upward growth and the vicissitudes of weather suffered
in their struggles to attain the majestic heights to which they rise.
This method of drawing, in which light and shade is produced by lines
which at the same time follow the form and movement of the objects
represented, is perhaps the oldest and most conventional; but in the
hands of a master like Mr. Manley it is more fully expressive and
beautiful in its results than any other.
[Illustration: FOUR DRAWINGS
OF
AMERICAN LANDSCAPE
BY
THOMAS R. MANLEY]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]