Kitabı oku: «The Colonel's Dream», sayfa 16

Thirty

One morning the colonel, while overseeing the work at the new mill building, stepped on the rounded handle of a chisel, which had been left lying carelessly on the floor, and slipped and fell, spraining his ankle severely. He went home in his buggy, which was at the mill, and sent for Doctor Price, who put his foot in a plaster bandage and ordered him to keep quiet for a week.

Peter and Phil went around to the Treadwells' to inform the ladies of the accident. On reaching the house after the accident, the colonel had taken off his coat, and sent Peter to bring him one from the closet off his bedroom.

When the colonel put on the coat, he felt some papers in the inside pocket, and taking them out, recognised the two old letters he had taken from the lining of his desk several months before. The housekeeper, in a moment of unusual zeal, had discovered and mended the tear in the sleeve, and Peter had by chance selected this particular coat to bring to his master. When Peter started, with Phil, to go to the Treadwells', the colonel gave him the two letters.

"Give these," he said, "to Miss Laura, and tell her I found them in the old desk."

It was not long before Miss Laura came, with Graciella, to call on the colonel. When they had expressed the proper sympathy, and had been assured that the hurt was not dangerous, Miss Laura spoke of another matter.

"Henry," she said, with an air of suppressed excitement, "I have made a discovery. I don't quite know what it means, or whether it amounts to anything, but in one of the envelopes you sent me just now there was a paper signed by Mr. Fetters. I do not know how it could have been left in the desk; we had searched it, years ago, in every nook and cranny, and found nothing."

The colonel explained the circumstances of his discovery of the papers, but prudently refrained from mentioning how long ago they had taken place.

Miss Laura handed him a thin, oblong, yellowish slip of paper, which had been folded in the middle; it was a printed form, upon which several words had been filled in with a pen.

"It was enclosed in this," she said, handing him another paper.

The colonel took the papers and glanced over them.

"Mother thinks," said Miss Laura anxiously, "that they are the papers we were looking for, that prove that Fetters was in father's debt."

The colonel had been thinking rapidly. The papers were, indeed, a promissory note from Fetters to Mr. Treadwell, and a contract and memorandum of certain joint transactions in turpentine and cotton futures. The note was dated twenty years back. Had it been produced at the time of Mr. Treadwell's death, it would not have been difficult to collect, and would have meant to his survivors the difference between poverty and financial independence. Now it was barred by the lapse of time.

Miss Laura was waiting in eager expectation. Outwardly calm, her eyes were bright, her cheeks were glowing, her bosom rose and fell excitedly. Could he tell her that this seemingly fortunate accident was merely the irony of fate—a mere cruel reminder of a former misfortune? No, she could not believe it!

"It has made me happy, Henry," she said, while he still kept his eyes bent on the papers to conceal his perplexity, "it has made me very happy to think that I may not come to you empty-handed."

"Dear woman," he thought, "you shall not. If the note is not good, it shall be made good."

"Laura," he said aloud, "I am no lawyer, but Caxton shall look at these to-day, and I shall be very much mistaken if they do not bring you a considerable sum of money. Say nothing about them, however, until Caxton reports. He will be here to see me to-day and by to-morrow you shall have his opinion."

Miss Laura went away with a radiantly hopeful face, and as she and Graciella went down the street, the colonel noted that her step was scarcely less springy than her niece's. It was worth the amount of Fetters's old note to make her happy; and since he meant to give her all that she might want, what better way than to do it by means of this bit of worthless paper? It would be a harmless deception, and it would save the pride of three gentlewomen, with whom pride was not a disease, to poison and scorch and blister, but an inspiration to courtesy, and kindness, and right living. Such a pride was worth cherishing even at a sacrifice, which was, after all, no sacrifice.

He had already sent word to Caxton of his accident, requesting him to call at the house on other business. Caxton came in the afternoon, and when the matter concerning which he had come had been disposed of, Colonel French produced Fetters's note.

"Caxton," he said, "I wish to pay this note and let it seem to have come from Fetters."

Caxton looked at the note.

"Why should you pay it?" he asked. "I mean," he added, noting a change in the colonel's expression, "why shouldn't Fetters pay it?"

"Because it is outlawed," he replied, "and we could hardly expect him to pay for anything he didn't have to pay. The statute of limitations runs against it after fifteen years—and it's older than that, much older than that."

Caxton made a rapid mental calculation.

"That is the law in New York," he said, "but here the statute doesn't begin to run for twenty years. The twenty years for which this note was given expires to-day."

"Then it is good?" demanded the colonel, looking at his watch.

"It is good," said Caxton, "provided there is no defence to it except the statute, and provided I can file a petition on it in the county clerk's office by four o'clock, the time at which the office closes. It is now twenty minutes of four."

"Can you make it?"

"I'll try."

Caxton, since his acquaintance with Colonel French, had learned something more about the value of half an hour than he had ever before appreciated, and here was an opportunity to test his knowledge. He literally ran the quarter of a mile that lay between the colonel's residence and the court house, to the open-eyed astonishment of those whom he passed, some of whom wondered whether he were crazy, and others whether he had committed a crime. He dashed into the clerk's office, seized a pen, and the first piece of paper handy, and began to write a petition. The clerk had stepped into the hall, and when he came leisurely in at three minutes to four, Caxton discovered that he had written his petition on the back of a blank marriage license. He folded it, ran his pen through the printed matter, endorsed it, "Estate of Treadwell vs. Fetters," signed it with the name of Ellen Treadwell, as executrix, by himself as her attorney, swore to it before the clerk, and handed it to that official, who raised his eyebrows as soon as he saw the endorsement.

"Now, Mr. Munroe," said Caxton, "if you'll enter that on the docket, now, as of to-day, I'll be obliged to you. I'd rather have the transaction all finished up while I wait. Your fee needn't wait the termination of the suit. I'll pay it now and take a receipt for it."

The clerk whistled to himself as he read the petition in order to make the entry.

"That's an old-timer," he said. "It'll make the old man cuss."

"Yes," said Caxton. "Do me a favour, and don't say anything about it for a day or two. I don't think the suit will ever come to trial."

Thirty-one

On the day following these events, the colonel, on the arm of old Peter, hobbled out upon his front porch, and seating himself in a big rocking chair, in front of which a cushion had been adjusted for his injured ankle, composed himself to read some arrears of mail which had come in the day before, and over which he had only glanced casually. When he was comfortably settled, Peter and Phil walked down the steps, upon the lowest of which they seated themselves. The colonel had scarcely begun to read before he called to the old man.

"Peter," he said, "I wish you'd go upstairs, and look in my room, and bring me a couple of light-coloured cigars from the box on my bureau—the mild ones, you know, Peter."

"Yas, suh, I knows, suh, de mil' ones, dem wid de gol' ban's 'roun' 'em. Now you stay right hyuh, chile, till Peter come back."

Peter came up the steps and disappeared in the doorway.

The colonel opened a letter from Kirby, in which that energetic and versatile gentleman assured the colonel that he had evolved a great scheme, in which there were millions for those who would go into it. He had already interested Mrs. Jerviss, who had stated she would be governed by what the colonel did in the matter. The letter went into some detail upon this subject, and then drifted off into club and social gossip. Several of the colonel's friends had inquired particularly about him. One had regretted the loss to their whist table. Another wanted the refusal of his box at the opera, if he were not coming back for the winter.

"I think you're missed in a certain quarter, old fellow. I know a lady who would be more than delighted to see you. I am invited to her house to dinner, ostensibly to talk about our scheme, in reality to talk about you.

"But this is all by the way. The business is the thing. Take my proposition under advisement. We all made money together before; we can make it again. My option has ten days to run. Wire me before it is up what reply to make. I know what you'll say, but I want your 'ipse dixit.'"

The colonel knew too what his reply would be, and that it would be very different from Kirby's anticipation. He would write it, he thought, next day, so that Kirby should not be kept in suspense, or so that he might have time to enlist other capital in the enterprise. The colonel felt really sorry to disappoint his good friends. He would write and inform Kirby of his plans, including that of his approaching marriage.

He had folded the letter and laid it down, and had picked up a newspaper, when Peter returned with the cigars and a box of matches.

"Mars Henry?" he asked, "w'at's gone wid de chile?"

"Phil?" replied the colonel, looking toward the step, from which the boy had disappeared. "I suppose he went round the house."

"Mars Phil! O Mars Phil!" called the old man.

There was no reply.

Peter looked round the corner of the house, but Phil was nowhere visible. The old man went round to the back yard, and called again, but did not find the child.

"I hyuhs de train comin'; I 'spec's he's gone up ter de railroad track," he said, when he had returned to the front of the house. "I'll run up dere an' fetch 'im back."

"Yes, do, Peter," returned the colonel. "He's probably all right, but you'd better see about him."

Little Phil, seeing his father absorbed in the newspaper, and not wishing to disturb him, had amused himself by going to the gate and looking down the street toward the railroad track. He had been doing this scarcely a moment, when he saw a black cat come out of a neighbour's gate and go down the street.

Phil instantly recalled Uncle Peter's story of the black cat. Perhaps this was the same one!

Phil had often been warned about the railroad.

"Keep 'way f'm dat railroad track, honey," the old man had repeated more than once. "It's as dange'ous as a gun, and a gun is dange'ous widout lock, stock, er bairl: I knowed a man oncet w'at beat 'is wife ter def wid a ramrod, an' wuz hung fer it in a' ole fiel' down by de ha'nted house. Dat gun couldn't hol' powder ner shot, but was dange'ous 'nuff ter kill two folks. So you jes' better keep 'way f'm dat railroad track, chile."

But Phil was a child, with the making of a man, and the wisest of men sometimes forget. For the moment Phil saw nothing but the cat, and wished for nothing more than to talk to it.

So Phil, unperceived by the colonel, set out to overtake the black cat. The cat seemed in no hurry, and Phil had very nearly caught up with him—or her, as the case might be—when the black cat, having reached the railroad siding, walked under a flat car which stood there, and leaping to one of the truck bars, composed itself, presumably for a nap. In order to get close enough to the cat for conversational purposes, Phil stooped under the overhanging end of the car, and kneeled down beside the truck.

"Kitty, Kitty!" he called, invitingly.

The black cat opened her big yellow eyes with every evidence of lazy amiability.

Peter shuffled toward the corner as fast as his rickety old limbs would carry him. When he reached the corner he saw a car standing on the track. There was a brakeman at one end, holding a coupling link in one hand, and a coupling pin in the other, his eye on an engine and train of cars only a rod or two away, advancing to pick up the single car. At the same moment Peter caught sight of little Phil, kneeling under the car at the other end.

Peter shouted, but the brakeman was absorbed in his own task, which required close attention in order to assure his own safety. The engineer on the cab, at the other end of the train, saw an old Negro excitedly gesticulating, and pulled a lever mechanically, but too late to stop the momentum of the train, which was not equipped with air brakes, even if these would have proved effective to stop it in so short a distance.

Just before the two cars came together, Peter threw himself forward to seize the child. As he did so, the cat sprang from the truck bar; the old man stumbled over the cat, and fell across the rail. The car moved only a few feet, but quite far enough to work injury.

A dozen people, including the train crew, quickly gathered. Willing hands drew them out and laid them upon the grass under the spreading elm at the corner of the street. A judge, a merchant and a Negro labourer lifted old Peter's body as tenderly as though it had been that of a beautiful woman. The colonel, somewhat uneasy, he scarcely knew why, had started to limp painfully toward the corner, when he was met by a messenger who informed him of the accident. Forgetting his pain, he hurried to the scene, only to find his heart's delight lying pale, bleeding and unconscious, beside the old Negro who had sacrificed his life to save him.

A doctor, who had been hastily summoned, pronounced Peter dead. Phil showed no superficial injury, save a cut upon the head, from which the bleeding was soon stanched. A Negro's strong arms bore the child to the house, while the bystanders remained about Peter's body until the arrival of Major McLean, recently elected coroner, who had been promptly notified of the accident. Within a few minutes after the officer's appearance, a jury was summoned from among the bystanders, the evidence of the trainmen and several other witnesses was taken, and a verdict of accidental death rendered. There was no suggestion of blame attaching to any one; it had been an accident, pure and simple, which ordinary and reasonable prudence could not have foreseen.

By the colonel's command, the body of his old servant was then conveyed to the house and laid out in the front parlour. Every honour, every token of respect, should be paid to his remains.

Thirty-two

Meanwhile the colonel, forgetting his own hurt, hovered, with several physicians, among them Doctor Price, around the bedside of his child. The slight cut upon the head, the physicians declared, was not, of itself, sufficient to account for the rapid sinking which set in shortly after the boy's removal to the house. There had evidently been some internal injury, the nature of which could not be ascertained. Phil remained unconscious for several hours, but toward the end of the day opened his blue eyes and fixed them upon his father, who was sitting by the bedside.

"Papa," he said, "am I going to die?"

"No, no, Phil," said his father hopefully. "You are going to get well in a few days, I hope."

Phil was silent for a moment, and looked around him curiously. He gave no sign of being in pain.

"Is Miss Laura here?"

"Yes, Phil, she's in the next room, and will be here in a moment."

At that instant Miss Laura came in and kissed him. The caress gave him pleasure, and he smiled sweetly in return.

"Papa, was Uncle Peter hurt?"

"Yes, Phil."

"Where is he, papa? Was he hurt badly?"

"He is lying in another room, Phil, but he is not in any pain."

"Papa," said Phil, after a pause, "if I should die, and if Uncle Peter should die, you'll remember your promise and bury him near me, won't you, dear?"

"Yes, Phil," he said, "but you are not going to die!"

But Phil died, dozing off into a peaceful sleep in which he passed quietly away with a smile upon his face.

It required all the father's fortitude to sustain the blow, with the added agony of self-reproach that he himself had been unwittingly the cause of it. Had he not sent old Peter into the house, the child would not have been left alone. Had he kept his eye upon Phil until Peter's return the child would not have strayed away. He had neglected his child, while the bruised and broken old black man in the room below had given his life to save him. He could do nothing now to show the child his love or Peter his gratitude, and the old man had neither wife nor child in whom the colonel's bounty might find an object. But he would do what he could. He would lay his child's body in the old family lot in the cemetery, among the bones of his ancestors, and there too, close at hand, old Peter should have honourable sepulture. It was his due, and would be the fulfilment of little Phil's last request.

The child was laid out in the parlour, amid a mass of flowers. Miss Laura, for love of him and of the colonel, with her own hands prepared his little body for the last sleep. The undertaker, who hovered around, wished, with a conventional sense of fitness, to remove old Peter's body to a back room. But the colonel said no.

"They died together; together they shall lie here, and they shall be buried together."

He gave instructions as to the location of the graves in the cemetery lot. The undertaker looked thoughtful.

"I hope, sir," said the undertaker, "there will be no objection. It's not customary—there's a coloured graveyard—you might put up a nice tombstone there—and you've been away from here a long time, sir."

"If any one objects," said the colonel, "send him to me. The lot is mine, and I shall do with it as I like. My great-great-grandfather gave the cemetery to the town. Old Peter's skin was black, but his heart was white as any man's! And when a man reaches the grave, he is not far from God, who is no respecter of persons, and in whose presence, on the judgment day, many a white man shall be black, and many a black man white."

The funeral was set for the following afternoon. The graves were to be dug in the morning. The undertaker, whose business was dependent upon public favour, and who therefore shrank from any step which might affect his own popularity, let it be quietly known that Colonel French had given directions to bury Peter in Oak Cemetery.

It was inevitable that there should be some question raised about so novel a proceeding. The colour line in Clarendon, as in all Southern towns, was, on the surface at least, rigidly drawn, and extended from the cradle to the grave. No Negro's body had ever profaned the sacred soil of Oak Cemetery. The protestants laid the matter before the Cemetery trustees, and a private meeting was called in the evening to consider the proposed interment.

White and black worshipped the same God, in different churches. There had been a time when coloured people filled the galleries of the white churches, and white ladies had instilled into black children the principles of religion and good morals. But as white and black had grown nearer to each other in condition, they had grown farther apart in feeling. It was difficult for the poor lady, for instance, to patronise the children of the well-to-do Negro or mulatto; nor was the latter inclined to look up to white people who had started, in his memory, from a position but little higher than his own. In an era of change, the benefits gained thereby seemed scarcely to offset the difficulties of readjustment.

The situation was complicated by a sense of injury on both sides. Cherishing their theoretical equality of citizenship, which they could neither enforce nor forget, the Negroes resented, noisly or silently, as prudence dictated, its contemptuous denial by the whites; and these, viewing this shadowy equality as an insult to themselves, had sought by all the machinery of local law to emphasise and perpetuate their own superiority. The very word "equality" was an offence. Society went back to Egypt and India for its models; to break caste was a greater sin than to break any or all of the ten commandments. White and coloured children studied the same books in different schools. White and black people rode on the same trains in separate cars. Living side by side, and meeting day by day, the law, made and administered by white men, had built a wall between them.

And white and black buried their dead in separate graveyards. Not until they reached God's presence could they stand side by side in any relation of equality. There was a Negro graveyard in Clarendon, where, as a matter of course the coloured dead were buried. It was not an ideal locality. The land was low and swampy, and graves must be used quickly, ere the water collected in them. The graveyard was unfenced, and vagrant cattle browsed upon its rank herbage. The embankment of the railroad encroached upon one side of it, and the passing engines sifted cinders and ashes over the graves. But no Negro had ever thought of burying his dead elsewhere, and if their cemetery was not well kept up, whose fault was it but their own?

The proposition, therefore, of a white man, even of Colonel French's standing, to bury a Negro in Oak Cemetery, was bound to occasion comment, if nothing more. There was indeed more. Several citizens objected to the profanation, and laid their protest before the mayor, who quietly called a meeting of the board of cemetery trustees, of which he was the chairman.

The trustees were five in number. The board, with the single exception of the mayor, was self-perpetuating, and the members had been chosen, as vacancies occurred by death, at long intervals, from among the aristocracy, who had always controlled it. The mayor, a member and chairman of the board by virtue of his office, had sprung from the same class as Fetters, that of the aspiring poor whites, who, freed from the moral incubus of slavery, had by force of numbers and ambition secured political control of the State and relegated not only the Negroes, but the old master class, to political obscurity. A shrewd, capable man was the mayor, who despised Negroes and distrusted aristocrats, and had the courage of his convictions. He represented in the meeting the protesting element of the community.

"Gentlemen," he said, "Colonel French has ordered this Negro to be buried in Oak Cemetery. We all appreciate the colonel's worth, and what he is doing for the town. But he has lived at the North for many years, and has got somewhat out of our way of thinking. We do not want to buy the prosperity of this town at the price of our principles. The attitude of the white people on the Negro question is fixed and determined for all time, and nothing can ever alter it. To bury this Negro in Oak Cemetery is against our principles."

"The mayor's statement of the rule is quite correct," replied old General Thornton, a member of the board, "and not open to question. But all rules have their exceptions. It was against the law, for some years before the war, to manumit a slave; but an exception to that salutary rule was made in case a Negro should render some great service to the State or the community. You will recall that when, in a sister State, a Negro climbed the steep roof of St. Michael's church and at the risk of his own life saved that historic structure, the pride of Charleston, from destruction by fire, the muncipality granted him his freedom."

"And we all remember," said Mr. Darden, another of the trustees, "we all remember, at least I'm sure General Thornton does, old Sally, who used to belong to the McRae family, and was a member of the Presbyterian Church, and who, because of her age and infirmities—she was hard of hearing and too old to climb the stairs to the gallery—was given a seat in front of the pulpit, on the main floor."

"That was all very well," replied the mayor, stoutly, "when the Negroes belonged to you, and never questioned your authority. But times are different now. They think themselves as good as we are. We had them pretty well in hand until Colonel French came around, with his schools, and his high wages, and now they are getting so fat and sassy that there'll soon be no living with them. The last election did something, but we'll have to do something more, and that soon, to keep them in their places. There's one in jail now, alive, who has shot and disfigured and nearly killed two good white men, and such an example of social equality as burying one in a white graveyard will demoralise them still further. We must preserve the purity and prestige of our race, and we can only do it by keeping the Negroes down."

"After all," said another member, "the purity of our race is not apt to suffer very seriously from the social equality of a graveyard."

"And old Peter will be pretty effectually kept down, wherever he is buried," added another.

These sallies provoked a smile which lightened the tension. A member suggested that Colonel French be sent for.

"It seems a pity to disturb him in his grief," said another.

"It's only a couple of squares," suggested another. "Let's call in a body and pay our respects. We can bring up the matter incidentally, while there."

The muscles of the mayor's chin hardened.

"Colonel French has never been at my house," he said, "and I shouldn't care to seem to intrude."

"Come on, mayor," said Mr. Darden, taking the official by the arm, "these fine distinctions are not becoming in the presence of death. The colonel will be glad to see you."

The mayor could not resist this mark of intimacy on the part of one of the old aristocracy, and walked somewhat proudly through the street arm in arm with Mr. Darden. They paid their respects to the colonel, who was bearing up, with the composure to be expected of a man of strong will and forceful character, under a grief of which he was exquisitely sensible. Touched by a strong man's emotion, which nothing could conceal, no one had the heart to mention, in the presence of the dead, the object of their visit, and they went away without giving the colonel any inkling that his course had been seriously criticised. Nor was the meeting resumed after they left the house, even the mayor seeming content to let the matter go by default.