Kitabı oku: «The Colonel's Dream», sayfa 17

Thirty-three

Fortune favoured Caxton in the matter of the note. Fetters was in Clarendon the following morning. Caxton saw him passing, called him into his office, and produced the note.

"That's no good," said Fetters contemptuously. "It was outlawed yesterday. I suppose you allowed I'd forgotten it. On the contrary, I've a memorandum of it in my pocketbook, and I struck it off the list last night. I always pay my lawful debts, when they're properly demanded. If this note had been presented yesterday, I'd have paid it. To-day it's too late. It ain't a lawful debt."

"Do you really mean to say, Mr. Fetters, that you have deliberately robbed those poor women of this money all these years, and are not ashamed of it, not even when you're found out, and that you are going to take refuge behind the statute?"

"Now, see here, Mr. Caxton," returned Fetters, without apparent emotion, "you want to be careful about the language you use. I might sue you for slander. You're a young man, that hopes to have a future and live in this county, where I expect to live and have law business done long after some of your present clients have moved away. I didn't owe the estate of John Treadwell one cent—you ought to be lawyer enough to know that. He owed me money, and paid me with a note. I collected the note. I owed him money and paid it with a note. Whoever heard of anybody's paying a note that wasn't presented?"

"It's a poor argument, Mr. Fetters. You would have let those ladies starve to death before you would have come forward and paid that debt."

"They've never asked me for charity, so I wasn't called on to offer it. And you know now, don't you, that if I'd paid the amount of that note, and then it had turned up afterward in somebody else's hands, I'd have had to pay it over again; now wouldn't I?"

Caxton could not deny it. Fetters had robbed the Treadwell estate, but his argument was unanswerable.

"Yes," said Caxton, "I suppose you would."

"I'm sorry for the women," said Fetters, "and I've stood ready to pay that note all these years, and it ain't my fault that it hasn't been presented. Now it's outlawed, and you couldn't expect a man to just give away that much money. It ain't a lawful debt, and the law's good enough for me."

"You're awfully sorry for the ladies, aren't you?" said Caxton, with thinly veiled sarcasm.

"I surely am; I'm honestly sorry for them."

"And you'd pay the note if you had to, wouldn't you?" asked Caxton.

"I surely would. As I say, I always pay my legal debts."

"All right," said Caxton triumphantly, "then you'll pay this. I filed suit against you yesterday, which takes the case out of the statute."

Fetters concealed his discomfiture.

"Well," he said, with quiet malignity, "I've nothing more to say till I consult my lawyer. But I want to tell you one thing. You are ruining a fine career by standing in with this Colonel French. I hear his son was killed to-day. You can tell him I say it's a judgment on him; for I hold him responsible for my son's condition. He came down here and tried to demoralise the labour market. He put false notions in the niggers' heads. Then he got to meddling with my business, trying to get away a nigger whose time I had bought. He insulted my agent Turner, and came all the way down to Sycamore and tried to bully me into letting the nigger loose, and of course I wouldn't be bullied. Afterwards, when I offered to let the nigger go, the colonel wouldn't have it so. I shall always believe he bribed one of my men to get the nigger off, and then turned him loose to run amuck among the white people and shoot my boy and my overseer. It was a low-down performance, and unworthy of a gentleman. No really white man would treat another white man so. You can tell him I say it's a judgment that's fallen on him to-day, and that it's not the last one, and that he'll be sorrier yet that he didn't stay where he was, with his nigger-lovin' notions, instead of comin' back down here to make trouble for people that have grown up with the State and made it what it is."

Caxton, of course, did not deliver the message. To do so would have been worse taste than Fetters had displayed in sending it. Having got the best of the encounter, Caxton had no objection to letting his defeated antagonist discharge his venom against the absent colonel, who would never know of it, and who was already breasting the waves of a sorrow so deep and so strong as almost to overwhelm him. For he had loved the boy; all his hopes had centred around this beautiful man child, who had promised so much that was good. His own future had been planned with reference to him. Now he was dead, and the bereaved father gave way to his grief.

Thirty-four

The funeral took place next day, from the Episcopal Church, in which communion the little boy had been baptised, and of which old Peter had always been an humble member, faithfully appearing every Sunday morning in his seat in the gallery, long after the rest of his people had deserted it for churches of their own. On this occasion Peter had, for the first time, a place on the main floor, a little to one side of the altar, in front of which, banked with flowers, stood the white velvet casket which contained all that was mortal of little Phil. The same beautiful sermon answered for both. In touching words, the rector, a man of culture, taste and feeling, and a faithful servant of his Master, spoke of the sweet young life brought to so untimely an end, and pointed the bereaved father to the best source of consolation. He paid a brief tribute to the faithful servant and humble friend, to whom, though black and lowly, the white people of the town were glad to pay this signal tribute of respect and appreciation for his heroic deed. The attendance at the funeral, while it might have been larger, was composed of the more refined and cultured of the townspeople, from whom, indeed, the church derived most of its membership and support; and the gallery overflowed with coloured people, whose hearts had warmed to the great honour thus paid to one of their race. Four young white men bore Phil's body and the six pallbearers of old Peter were from among the best white people of the town.

The double interment was made in Oak Cemetery. Simultaneously both bodies were lowered to their last resting-place. Simultaneously ashes were consigned to ashes and dust to dust. The earth was heaped above the graves. The mound above little Phil's was buried with flowers, and old Peter's was not neglected.

Beyond the cemetery wall, a few white men of the commoner sort watched the proceedings from a distance, and eyed with grim hostility the Negroes who had followed the procession. They had no part nor parcel in this sentimental folly, nor did they approve of it—in fact they disapproved of it very decidedly. Among them was the colonel's discharged foreman, Jim Green, who was pronounced in his denunciation.

"Colonel French is an enemy of his race," he declared to his sympathetic following. "He hires niggers when white men are idle; and pays them more than white men who work are earning. And now he is burying them with white people."

When the group around the grave began to disperse, the little knot of disgruntled spectators moved sullenly away. In the evening they might have been seen, most of them, around Clay Jackson's barroom. Turner, the foreman at Fetters's convict farm, was in town that evening, and Jackson's was his favourite haunt. For some reason Turner was more sociable than usual, and liquor flowed freely, at his expense. There was a great deal of intemperate talk, concerning the Negro in jail for shooting Haines and young Fetters, and concerning Colonel French as the protector of Negroes and the enemy of white men.

Thirty-five

At the same time that the colonel, dry-eyed and heavy-hearted, had returned to his empty house to nurse his grief, another series of events was drawing to a climax in the dilapidated house on Mink Run. Even while the preacher was saying the last words over little Phil's remains, old Malcolm Dudley's illness had taken a sudden and violent turn. He had been sinking for several days, but the decline had been gradual, and there had seemed no particular reason for alarm. But during the funeral exercises Ben had begun to feel uneasy—some obscure premonition warned him to hurry homeward.

As soon as the funeral was over he spoke to Dr. Price, who had been one of the pallbearers, and the doctor had promised to be at Mink Run in a little while. Ben rode home as rapidly as he could; as he went up the lane toward the house a Negro lad came forward to take charge of the tired horse, and Ben could see from the boy's expression that he had important information to communicate.

"Yo' uncle is monst'ous low, sir," said the boy. "You bettah go in an' see 'im quick, er you'll be too late. Dey ain' nobody wid 'im but ole Aun' Viney."

Ben hurried into the house and to his uncle's room, where Malcolm Dudley lay dying. Outside, the sun was setting, and his red rays, shining through the trees into the open window, lit the stage for the last scene of this belated drama. When Ben entered the room, the sweat of death had gathered on the old man's brow, but his eyes, clear with the light of reason, were fixed upon old Viney, who stood by the bedside. The two were evidently so absorbed in their own thoughts as to be oblivious to anything else, and neither of them paid the slightest attention to Ben, or to the scared Negro lad, who had followed him and stood outside the door. But marvellous to hear, Viney was talking, strangely, slowly, thickly, but passionately and distinctly.

"You had me whipped," she said. "Do you remember that? You had me whipped—whipped—whipped—by a poor white dog I had despised and spurned! You had said that you loved me, and you had promised to free me—and you had me whipped! But I have had my revenge!"

Her voice shook with passion, a passion at which Ben wondered. That his uncle and she had once been young he knew, and that their relations had once been closer than those of master and servant; but this outbreak of feeling from the wrinkled old mulattress seemed as strange and weird to Ben as though a stone image had waked to speech. Spellbound, he stood in the doorway, and listened to this ghost of a voice long dead.

"Your uncle came with the money and left it, and went away. Only he and I knew where it was. But I never told you! I could have spoken at any time for twenty-five years, but I never told you! I have waited—I have waited for this moment! I have gone into the woods and fields and talked to myself by the hour, that I might not forget how to talk—and I have waited my turn, and it is here and now!"

Ben hung breathlessly upon her words. He drew back beyond her range of vision, lest she might see him, and the spell be broken. Now, he thought, she would tell where the gold was hidden!

"He came," she said, "and left the gold—two heavy bags of it, and a letter for you. An hour later he came back and took it all away, except the letter! The money was here one hour, but in that hour you had me whipped, and for that you have spent twenty-five years in looking for nothing—something that was not here! I have had my revenge! For twenty-five years I have watched you look for—nothing; have seen you waste your time, your property, your life, your mind—for nothing! For ah, Mars' Ma'colm, you had me whipped—by another man!"

A shadow of reproach crept into the old man's eyes, over which the mists of death were already gathering.

"Yes, Viney," he whispered, "you have had your revenge! But I was sorry, Viney, for what I did, and you were not. And I forgive you, Viney; but you are unforgiving—even in the presence of death."

His voice failed, and his eyes closed for the last time. When she saw that he was dead, by a strange revulsion of feeling the wall of outraged pride and hatred and revenge, built upon one brutal and bitterly repented mistake, and labouriously maintained for half a lifetime in her woman's heart that even slavery could not crush, crumbled and fell and let pass over it in one great and final flood the pent-up passions of the past. Bursting into tears—strange tears from eyes that had long forgot to weep—old Viney threw herself down upon her knees by the bedside, and seizing old Malcolm's emaciated hand in both her own, covered it with kisses, fervent kisses, the ghosts of the passionate kisses of their distant youth.

With a feeling that his presence was something like sacrilege, Ben stole away and left her with her dead—the dead master and the dead past—and thanked God that he lived in another age, and had escaped this sin.

As he wandered through the old house, a veil seemed to fall from his eyes. How old everything was, how shrunken and decayed! The sheen of the hidden gold had gilded the dilapidated old house, the neglected plantation, his own barren life. Now that it was gone, things appeared in their true light. Fortunately he was young enough to retrieve much of what had been lost. When the old man was buried, he would settle the estate, sell the land, make some provision for Aunt Viney, and then, with what was left, go out into the world and try to make a place for himself and Graciella. For life intrudes its claims even into the presence of death.

When the doctor came, a little later, Ben went with him into the death chamber. Viney was still kneeling by her master's bedside, but strangely still and silent. The doctor laid his hand on hers and old Malcolm's, which had remained clasped together.

"They are both dead," he declared. "I knew their story; my father told it to me many years ago."

Ben related what he had overheard.

"I'm not surprised," said the doctor. "My father attended her when she had the stroke, and after. He always maintained that Viney could speak—if she had wished to speak."

Thirty-six

The colonel's eyes were heavy with grief that night, and yet he lay awake late, and with his sorrow were mingled many consoling thoughts. The people, his people, had been kind, aye, more than kind. Their warm hearts had sympathised with his grief. He had sometimes been impatient of their conservatism, their narrowness, their unreasoning pride of opinion; but in his bereavement they had manifested a feeling that it would be beautiful to remember all the days of his life. All the people, white and black, had united to honour his dead.

He had wished to help them—had tried already. He had loved the town as the home of his ancestors, which enshrined their ashes. He would make of it a monument to mark his son's resting place. His fight against Fetters and what he represented should take on a new character; henceforward it should be a crusade to rescue from threatened barbarism the land which contained the tombs of his loved ones. Nor would he be alone in the struggle, which he now clearly foresaw would be a long one. The dear, good woman he had asked to be his wife could help him. He needed her clear, spiritual vision; and in his lifelong sorrow he would need her sympathy and companionship; for she had loved the child and would share his grief. She knew the people better than he, and was in closer touch with them; she could help him in his schemes of benevolence, and suggest new ways to benefit the people. Phil's mother was buried far away, among her own people; could he consult her, he felt sure she would prefer to remain there. Here she would be an alien note; and when Laura died she could lie with them and still be in her own place.

"Have you heard the news, sir," asked the housekeeper, when he came down to breakfast the next morning.

"No, Mrs. Hughes, what is it?"

"They lynched the Negro who was in jail for shooting young Mr. Fetters and the other man."

The colonel hastily swallowed a cup of coffee and went down town. It was only a short walk. Already there were excited crowds upon the street, discussing the events of the night. The colonel sought Caxton, who was just entering his office.

"They've done it," said the lawyer.

"So I understand. When did it happen?"

"About one o'clock last night. A crowd came in from Sycamore—not all at once, but by twos and threes, and got together in Clay Johnson's saloon, with Ben Green, your discharged foreman, and a lot of other riffraff, and went to the sheriff, and took the keys, and took Johnson and carried him out to where the shooting was, and–"

"Spare me the details. He is dead?"

"Yes."

A rope, a tree—a puff of smoke, a flash of flame—or a barbaric orgy of fire and blood—what matter which? At the end there was a lump of clay, and a hundred murderers where there had been one before.

"Can we do anything to punish this crime?"

"We can try."

And they tried. The colonel went to the sheriff. The sheriff said he had yielded to force, but he never would have dreamed of shooting to defend a worthless Negro who had maimed a good white man, had nearly killed another, and had declared a vendetta against the white race.

By noon the colonel had interviewed as many prominent men as he could find, and they became increasingly difficult to find as it became known that he was seeking them. The town, he said, had been disgraced, and should redeem itself by prosecuting the lynchers. He may as well have talked to the empty air. The trail of Fetters was all over the town. Some of the officials owed Fetters money; others were under political obligations to him. Others were plainly of the opinion that the Negro got no more than he deserved; such a wretch was not fit to live. The coroner's jury returned a verdict of suicide, a grim joke which evoked some laughter. Doctor McKenzie, to whom the colonel expressed his feelings, and whom he asked to throw the influence of his church upon the side of law and order, said:

"It is too bad. I am sorry, but it is done. Let it rest. No good can ever come of stirring it up further."

Later in the day there came news that the lynchers, after completing their task, had proceeded to the Dudley plantation and whipped all the Negroes who did not learn of their coming in time to escape, the claim being that Johnson could not have maintained himself in hiding without their connivance, and that they were therefore parties to his crimes.

The colonel felt very much depressed when he went to bed that night, and lay for a long time turning over in his mind the problem that confronted him.

So far he had been beaten, except in the matter of the cotton mill, which was yet unfinished. His efforts in Bud Johnson's behalf—the only thing he had undertaken to please the woman he loved, had proved abortive. His promise to the teacher—well, he had done his part, but to no avail. He would be ashamed to meet Taylor face to face. With what conscience could a white man in Clarendon ever again ask a Negro to disclose the name or hiding place of a coloured criminal? In the effort to punish the lynchers he stood, to all intents and purposes, single-handed and alone; and without the support of public opinion he could do nothing.

The colonel was beaten, but not dismayed. Perhaps God in his wisdom had taken Phil away, that his father might give himself more completely and single-mindedly to the battle before him. Had Phil lived, a father might have hesitated to expose a child's young and impressionable mind to the things which these volcanic outbursts of passion between mismated races might cause at any unforeseen moment. Now that the way was clear, he could go forward, hand in hand with the good woman who had promised to wed him, in the work he had laid out. He would enlist good people to demand better laws, under which Fetters and his kind would find it harder to prey upon the weak.

Diligently he would work to lay wide and deep the foundations of prosperity, education and enlightenment, upon which should rest justice, humanity and civic righteousness. In this he would find a worthy career. Patiently would he await the results of his labours, and if they came not in great measure in his own lifetime, he would be content to know that after years would see their full fruition.

So that night he sat down and wrote a long answer to Kirby's letter, in which he told him of Phil's death and burial, and his own grief. Something there was, too, of his plans for the future, including his marriage to a good woman who would help him in them. Kirby, he said, had offered him a golden opportunity for which he thanked him heartily. The scheme was good enough for any one to venture upon. But to carry out his own plans, would require that he invest his money in the State of his residence, where there were many openings for capital that could afford to wait upon development for large returns. He sent his best regards to Mrs. Jerviss, and his assurance that Kirby's plan was a good one. Perhaps Kirby and she alone could handle it; if not, there must be plenty of money elsewhere for so good a thing.

He sealed the letter, and laid it aside to be mailed in the morning. To his mind it had all the force of a final renunciation, a severance of the last link that bound him to his old life.

Long the colonel lay thinking, after he retired to rest, and the muffled striking of the clock downstairs had marked the hour of midnight ere he fell asleep. And he had scarcely dozed away, when he was awakened by a scraping noise, as though somewhere in the house a heavy object was being drawn across the floor. The sound was not repeated, however, and thinking it some trick of the imagination, he soon slept again.

As the colonel slept this second time, he dreamed of a regenerated South, filled with thriving industries, and thronged with a prosperous and happy people, where every man, having enough for his needs, was willing that every other man should have the same; where law and order should prevail unquestioned, and where every man could enter, through the golden gate of hope, the field of opportunity, where lay the prizes of life, which all might have an equal chance to win or lose.

For even in his dreams the colonel's sober mind did not stray beyond the bounds of reason and experience. That all men would ever be equal he did not even dream; there would always be the strong and the weak, the wise and the foolish. But that each man, in his little life in this our little world might be able to make the most of himself, was an ideal which even the colonel's waking hours would not have repudiated.

Following this pleasing thread with the unconscious rapidity of dreams, the colonel passed, in a few brief minutes, through a long and useful life to a happy end, when he too rested with his fathers, by the side of his son, and on his tomb was graven what was said of Ben Adhem: "Here lies one who loved his fellow men," and the further words, "and tried to make them happy."

Shortly after dawn there was a loud rapping at the colonel's door:

"Come downstairs and look on de piazza, Colonel," said the agitated voice of the servant who had knocked. "Come quick, suh."

There was a vague terror in the man's voice that stirred the colonel strangely. He threw on a dressing gown and hastened downstairs, and to the front door of the hall, which stood open. A handsome mahogany burial casket, stained with earth and disfigured by rough handling, rested upon the floor of the piazza, where it had been deposited during the night. Conspicuously nailed to the coffin lid was a sheet of white paper, upon which were some lines rudely scrawled in a handwriting that matched the spelling:

Kurnell French:

Take notis. Berry yore ole nigger somewhar else. He can't stay in Oak Semitury. The majority of the white people of this town, who dident tend yore nigger funarl, woant have him there. Niggers by there selves, white peepul by there selves, and them that lives in our town must bide by our rules.

By order of

Cumitty.

The colonel left the coffin standing on the porch, where it remained all day, an object of curious interest to the scores and hundreds who walked by to look at it, for the news spread quickly through the town. No one, however, came in. If there were those who reprobated the action they were silent. The mob spirit, which had broken out in the lynching of Johnson, still dominated the town, and no one dared to speak against it.

As soon as Colonel French had dressed and breakfasted, he drove over to the cemetery. Those who had exhumed old Peter's remains had not been unduly careful. The carelessly excavated earth had been scattered here and there over the lot. The flowers on old Peter's grave and that of little Phil had been trampled under foot—whether wantonly or not, inevitably, in the execution of the ghoulish task.

The colonel's heart hardened as he stood by his son's grave. Then he took a long lingering look at the tombs of his ancestors and turned away with an air of finality.

From the cemetery he went to the undertaker's, and left an order; thence to the telegraph office, from which he sent a message to his former partner in New York; and thence to the Treadwells'.