Kitabı oku: «The Colonel's Dream», sayfa 7
Graciella was very much elated at this mark of the colonel's friendship. She did not dream of declining the proffered token, and during the next dance her mind was busily occupied with the question of what it should be—a ring, a bracelet, a bicycle, a set of books? She needed a dozen things, and would have liked to possess a dozen others.
She had not yet decided, when Ben came up to claim her for a dance. On his appearance, she was struck by a sudden idea. Colonel French was a man of affairs. In New York he must have a wide circle of influential acquaintances. Old Mr. Dudley was in failing health; he might die at any time, and Ben would then be free to seek employment away from Clarendon. What better place for him than New York? With a position there, he would be able to marry her, and take her there to live.
This, she decided, should be her request of the colonel—that he should help her lover to a place in New York.
Her conclusion was really magnanimous. She might profit by it in the end, but Ben would be the first beneficiary. It was an act of self-denial, for she was giving up a definite and certain good for a future contingency.
She was therefore in a pleasant glow of self-congratulatory mood when she accidentally overheard a conversation not intended for her ears. She had run out to the dining-room to speak to the housekeeper about the refreshments, and was returning through the hall, when she stopped for a moment to look into the library, where those who did not care to dance were playing cards.
Beyond the door, with their backs turned toward her, sat two ladies engaged in conversation. One was a widow, a well-known gossip, and the other a wife known to be unhappily married. They were no longer young, and their views were marked by the cynicism of seasoned experience.
"Oh, there's no doubt about it," said the widow. "He came down here to find a wife. He tried a Yankee wife, and didn't like the breed; and when he was ready for number two, he came back South."
"He showed good taste," said the other.
"That depends," said the widow, "upon whom he chooses. He can probably have his pick."
"No doubt," rejoined the married lady, with a touch of sarcasm, which the widow, who was still under forty, chose to ignore.
"I wonder which is it?" said the widow. "I suppose it's Laura; he spends a great deal of time there, and she's devoted to his little boy, or pretends to be."
"Don't fool yourself," replied the other earnestly, and not without a subdued pleasure in disabusing the widow's mind. "Don't fool yourself, my dear. A man of his age doesn't marry a woman of Laura Treadwell's. Believe me, it's the little one."
"But she has a beau. There's that tall nephew of old Mr. Dudley's. He's been hanging around her for a year or two. He looks very handsome to-night."
"Ah, well, she'll dispose of him fast enough when the time comes. He's only a poor stick, the last of a good stock run to seed. Why, she's been pointedly setting her cap at the colonel all the evening. He's perfectly infatuated; he has danced with her three times to once with Laura."
"It's sad to see a man make a fool of himself," sighed the widow, who was not without some remnants of beauty and a heart still warm and willing. "Children are very forward nowadays."
"There's no fool like an old fool, my dear," replied the other with the cheerful philosophy of the miserable who love company. "These fair women are always selfish and calculating; and she's a bold piece. My husband says Colonel French is worth at least a million. A young wife, who understands her business, could get anything from him that money can buy."
"What a pity, my dear," said the widow, with a spice of malice, seeing her own opportunity, "what a pity that you were older than your husband! Well, it will be fortunate for the child if she marries an old man, for beauty of her type fades early."
Old 'Poleon's fiddle, to which one of the guests was improvising an accompaniment on the colonel's new piano, had struck up "Camptown Races," and the rollicking lilt of the chorus was resounding through the house.
"Gwine ter run all night,
Gwine ter run all day,
I'll bet my money on de bobtail nag,
Oh, who's gwine ter bet on de bay?"
Ben ran out into the hall. Graciella had changed her position and was sitting alone, perturbed in mind.
"Come on, Graciella, let's get into the Virginia reel; it's the last one."
Graciella obeyed mechanically. Ben, on the contrary, was unusually animated. He had enjoyed the party better than any he had ever attended. He had not been at many.
Colonel French, who had entered with zest into the spirit of the occasion, participated in the reel. Every time Graciella touched his hand, it was with the consciousness of a new element in their relations. Until then her friendship for Colonel French had been perfectly ingenuous. She had liked him because he was interesting, and good to her in a friendly way. Now she realised that he was a millionaire, eligible for marriage, from whom a young wife, if she understood her business, might secure the gratification of every wish.
The serpent had entered Eden. Graciella had been tendered the apple. She must choose now whether she would eat.
When the party broke up, the colonel was congratulated on every hand. He had not only given his guests a delightful evening. He had restored an ancient landmark; had recalled, to a people whose life lay mostly in the past, the glory of days gone by, and proved his loyalty to their cherished traditions.
Ben Dudley walked home with Graciella. Miss Laura went ahead of them with Catherine, who was cheerful in the possession of a substantial reward for her services.
"You're not sayin' much to-night," said Ben to his sweetheart, as they walked along under the trees.
Graciella did not respond.
"You're not sayin' much to-night," he repeated.
"Yes," returned Graciella abstractedly, "it was a lovely party!"
Ben said no more. The house warming had also given him food for thought. He had noticed the colonel's attentions to Graciella, and had heard them remarked upon. Colonel French was more than old enough to be Graciella's father; but he was rich. Graciella was poor and ambitious. Ben's only assets were youth and hope, and priority in the field his only claim.
Miss Laura and Catherine had gone in, and when the young people came to the gate, the light still shone through the open door.
"Graciella," he said, taking her hand in his as they stood a moment, "will you marry me?"
"Still harping on the same old string," she said, withdrawing her hand. "I'm tired now, Ben, too tired to talk foolishness."
"Very well, I'll save it for next time. Good night, sweetheart."
She had closed the gate between them. He leaned over it to kiss her, but she evaded his caress and ran lightly up the steps.
"Good night, Ben," she called.
"Good night, sweetheart," he replied, with a pang of foreboding.
In after years, when the colonel looked back upon his residence in Clarendon, this seemed to him the golden moment. There were other times that stirred deeper emotions—the lust of battle, the joy of victory, the chagrin of defeat—moments that tried his soul with tests almost too hard. But, thus far, his new career in Clarendon had been one of pleasant experiences only, and this unclouded hour was its fitting crown.
Twelve
Whenever the colonel visited the cemetery, or took a walk in that pleasant quarter of the town, he had to cross the bridge from which was visible the site of the old Eureka cotton mill of his boyhood, and it was not difficult to recall that it had been, before the War, a busy hive of industry. On a narrow and obscure street, little more than an alley, behind the cemetery, there were still several crumbling tenements, built for the mill operatives, but now occupied by a handful of abjectly poor whites, who kept body and soul together through the doubtful mercy of God and a small weekly dole from the poormaster. The mill pond, while not wide-spreading, had extended back some distance between the sloping banks, and had furnished swimming holes, fishing holes, and what was more to the point at present, a very fine head of water, which, as it struck the colonel more forcibly each time he saw it, offered an opportunity that the town could ill afford to waste. Shrewd minds in the cotton industry had long ago conceived the idea that the South, by reason of its nearness to the source of raw material, its abundant water power, and its cheaper labour, partly due to the smaller cost of living in a mild climate, and the absence of labour agitation, was destined in time to rival and perhaps displace New England in cotton manufacturing. Many Southern mills were already in successful operation. But from lack of capital, or lack of enterprise, nothing of the kind had ever been undertaken in Clarendon although the town was the centre of a cotton-raising district, and there was a mill in an adjoining county. Men who owned land mortgaged it for money to raise cotton; men who rented land from others mortgaged their crops for the same purpose.
It was easy to borrow money in Clarendon—on adequate security—at ten per cent., and Mr. Fetters, the magnate of the county, was always ready, the colonel had learned, to accommodate the needy who could give such security. He had also discovered that Fetters was acquiring the greater part of the land. Many a farmer imagined that he owned a farm, when he was, actually, merely a tenant of Fetters. Occasionally Fetters foreclosed a mortgage, when there was plainly no more to be had from it, and bought in the land, which he added to his own holdings in fee. But as a rule, he found it more profitable to let the borrower retain possession and pay the interest as nearly as he could; the estate would ultimately be good for the debt, if the debtor did not live too long—worry might be counted upon to shorten his days—and the loan, with interest, could be more conveniently collected at his death. To bankrupt an estate was less personal than to break an individual; and widows, and orphans still in their minority, did not vote and knew little about business methods.
To a man of action, like the colonel, the frequent contemplation of the unused water power, which might so easily be harnessed to the car of progress, gave birth, in time, to a wish to see it thus utilised, and the further wish to stir to labour the idle inhabitants of the neighbourhood. In all work the shiftless methods of an older generation still survived. No one could do anything in a quarter of an hour. Nearly all tasks were done by Negroes who had forgotten how to work, or by white people who had never learned. But the colonel had already seen the reviving effect of a little money, directed by a little energy. And so he planned to build a new and larger cotton mill where the old had stood; to shake up this lethargic community; to put its people to work, and to teach them habits of industry, efficiency and thrift. This, he imagined, would be pleasant occupation for his vacation, as well as a true missionary enterprise—a contribution to human progress. Such a cotton mill would require only an inconsiderable portion of his capital, the body of which would be left intact for investment elsewhere; it would not interfere at all with his freedom of movement; for, once built, equipped and put in operation under a competent manager, it would no more require his personal oversight than had the New England bagging mills which his firm had conducted for so many years.
From impulse to action was, for the colonel's temperament, an easy step, and he had scarcely moved into his house, before he quietly set about investigating the title to the old mill site. It had been forfeited many years before, he found, to the State, for non-payment of taxes. There having been no demand for the property at any time since, it had never been sold, but held as a sort of lapsed asset, subject to sale, but open also, so long as it remained unsold, to redemption upon the payment of back taxes and certain fees. The amount of these was ascertained; it was considerably less than the fair value of the property, which was therefore redeemable at a profit.
The owners, however, were widely scattered, for the mill had belonged to a joint-stock company composed of a dozen or more members. Colonel French was pleasantly surprised, upon looking up certain musty public records in the court house, to find that he himself was the owner, by inheritance, of several shares of stock which had been overlooked in the sale of his father's property. Retaining the services of Judge Bullard, the leading member of the Clarendon bar, he set out quietly to secure options upon the other shares. This involved an extensive correspondence, which occupied several weeks. For it was necessary first to find, and then to deal with the scattered representatives of the former owners.
Thirteen
In engaging Judge Bullard, the colonel had merely stated to the lawyer that he thought of building a cotton-mill, but had said nothing about his broader plan. It was very likely, he recognised, that the people of Clarendon might not relish the thought that they were regarded as fit subjects for reform. He knew that they were sensitive, and quick to resent criticism. If some of them might admit, now and then, among themselves, that the town was unprogressive, or declining, there was always some extraneous reason given—the War, the carpetbaggers, the Fifteenth Amendment, the Negroes. Perhaps not one of them had ever quite realised the awful handicap of excuses under which they laboured. Effort was paralysed where failure was so easily explained.
That the condition of the town might be due to causes within itself—to the general ignorance, self-satisfaction and lack of enterprise, had occurred to only a favoured few; the younger of these had moved away, seeking a broader outlook elsewhere; while those who remained were not yet strong enough nor brave enough to break with the past and urge new standards of thought and feeling.
So the colonel kept his larger purpose to himself until a time when greater openness would serve to advance it. Thus Judge Bullard, not being able to read his client's mind, assumed very naturally that the contemplated enterprise was to be of a purely commercial nature, directed to making the most money in the shortest time.
"Some day, Colonel," he said, with this thought in mind, "you might get a few pointers by running over to Carthage and looking through the Excelsior Mills. They get more work there for less money than anywhere else in the South. Last year they declared a forty per cent. dividend. I know the superintendent, and will give you a letter of introduction, whenever you like."
The colonel bore the matter in mind, and one morning, a day or two after his party, set out by train, about eight o'clock in the morning, for Carthage, armed with a letter from the lawyer to the superintendent of the mills.
The town was only forty miles away; but a cow had been caught in a trestle across a ditch, and some time was required for the train crew to release her. Another stop was made in the middle of a swamp, to put off a light mulatto who had presumed on his complexion to ride in the white people's car. He had been successfully spotted, but had impudently refused to go into the stuffy little closet provided at the end of the car for people of his class. He was therefore given an opportunity to reflect, during a walk along the ties, upon his true relation to society. Another stop was made for a gentleman who had sent a Negro boy ahead to flag the train and notify the conductor that he would be along in fifteen or twenty minutes with a couple of lady passengers. A hot journal caused a further delay. These interruptions made it eleven o'clock, a three-hours' run, before the train reached Carthage.
The town was much smaller than Clarendon. It comprised a public square of several acres in extent, on one side of which was the railroad station, and on another the court house. One of the remaining sides was occupied by a row of shops; the fourth straggled off in various directions. The whole wore a neglected air. Bales of cotton goods were piled on the platform, apparently just unloaded from wagons standing near. Several white men and Negroes stood around and stared listlessly at the train and the few who alighted from it.
Inquiring its whereabouts from one of the bystanders, the colonel found the nearest hotel—a two-story frame structure, with a piazza across the front, extending to the street line. There was a buggy standing in front, its horse hitched to one of the piazza posts. Steps led up from the street, but one might step from the buggy to the floor of the piazza, which was without a railing.
The colonel mounted the steps and passed through the door into a small room, which he took for the hotel office, since there were chairs standing against the walls, and at one side a table on which a register lay open. The only person in the room, beside himself, was a young man seated near the door, with his feet elevated to the back of another chair, reading a newspaper from which he did not look up.
The colonel, who wished to make some inquiries and to register for the dinner which he might return to take, looked around him for the clerk, or some one in authority, but no one was visible. While waiting, he walked over to the desk and turned over the leaves of the dog-eared register. He recognised only one name—that of Mr. William Fetters, who had registered there only a day or two before.
No one had yet appeared. The young man in the chair was evidently not connected with the establishment. His expression was so forbidding, not to say arrogant, and his absorption in the newspaper so complete, that the colonel, not caring to address him, turned to the right and crossed a narrow hall to a room beyond, evidently a parlour, since it was fitted up with a faded ingrain carpet, a centre table with a red plush photograph album, and several enlarged crayon portraits hung near the ceiling—of the kind made free of charge in Chicago from photographs, provided the owner orders a frame from the company. No one was in the room, and the colonel had turned to leave it, when he came face to face with a lady passing through the hall.
"Are you looking for some one?" she asked amiably, having noted his air of inquiry.
"Why, yes, madam," replied the colonel, removing his hat, "I was looking for the proprietor—or the clerk."
"Why," she replied, smiling, "that's the proprietor sitting there in the office. I'm going in to speak to him, and you can get his attention at the same time."
Their entrance did not disturb the young man's reposeful attitude, which remained as unchanged as that of a graven image; nor did he exhibit any consciousness at their presence.
"I want a clean towel, Mr. Dickson," said the lady sharply.
The proprietor looked up with an annoyed expression.
"Huh?" he demanded, in a tone of resentment mingled with surprise.
"A clean towel, if you please."
The proprietor said nothing more to the lady, nor deigned to notice the colonel at all, but lifted his legs down from the back of the chair, rose with a sigh, left the room and returned in a few minutes with a towel, which he handed ungraciously to the lady. Then, still paying no attention to the colonel, he resumed his former attitude, and returned to the perusal of his newspaper—certainly the most unconcerned of hotel keepers, thought the colonel, as a vision of spacious lobbies, liveried porters, and obsequious clerks rose before his vision. He made no audible comment, however, but merely stared at the young man curiously, left the hotel, and inquired of a passing Negro the whereabouts of the livery stable. A few minutes later he found the place without difficulty, and hired a horse and buggy.
While the stable boy was putting the harness on the horse, the colonel related to the liveryman, whose manner was energetic and business-like, and who possessed an open countenance and a sympathetic eye, his experience at the hotel.
"Oh, yes," was the reply, "that's Lee Dickson all over. That hotel used to be kep' by his mother. She was a widow woman, an' ever since she died, a couple of months ago, Lee's been playin' the big man, spendin' the old lady's money, and enjoyin' himself. Did you see that hoss'n'-buggy hitched in front of the ho-tel?"
"Yes."
"Well, that's Lee's buggy. He hires it from us. We send it up every mornin' at nine o'clock, when Lee gits up. When he's had his breakfas' he comes out an' gits in the buggy, an' drives to the barber-shop nex' door, gits out, goes in an' gits shaved, comes out, climbs in the buggy, an' drives back to the ho-tel. Then he talks to the cook, comes out an' gits in the buggy, an' drives half-way 'long that side of the square, about two hund'ed feet, to the grocery sto', and orders half a pound of coffee or a pound of lard, or whatever the ho-tel needs for the day, then comes out, climbs in the buggy and drives back. When the mail comes in, if he's expectin' any mail, he drives 'cross the square to the post-office, an' then drives back to the ho-tel. There's other lazy men roun' here, but Lee Dickson takes the cake. However, it's money in our pocket, as long as it keeps up."
"I shouldn't think it would keep up long," returned the colonel. "How can such a hotel prosper?"
"It don't!" replied the liveryman, "but it's the best in town."
"I don't see how there could be a worse," said the colonel.
"There couldn't—it's reached bed rock."
The buggy was ready by this time, and the colonel set out, with a black driver, to find the Excelsior Cotton Mills. They proved to be situated in a desolate sandhill region several miles out of town. The day was hot; the weather had been dry, and the road was deep with a yielding white sand into which the buggy tires sank. The horse soon panted with the heat and the exertion, and the colonel, dressed in brown linen, took off his hat and mopped his brow with his handkerchief. The driver, a taciturn Negro—most of the loquacious, fun-loving Negroes of the colonel's youth seemed to have disappeared—flicked a horsefly now and then, with his whip, from the horse's sweating back.
The first sign of the mill was a straggling group of small frame houses, built of unpainted pine lumber. The barren soil, which would not have supported a firm lawn, was dotted with scraggy bunches of wiregrass. In the open doorways, through which the flies swarmed in and out, grown men, some old, some still in the prime of life, were lounging, pipe in mouth, while old women pottered about the yards, or pushed back their sunbonnets to stare vacantly at the advancing buggy. Dirty babies were tumbling about the cabins. There was a lean and listless yellow dog or two for every baby; and several slatternly black women were washing clothes on the shady sides of the houses. A general air of shiftlessness and squalor pervaded the settlement. There was no sign of joyous childhood or of happy youth.
A turn in the road brought them to the mill, the distant hum of which had already been audible. It was a two-story brick structure with many windows, altogether of the cheapest construction, but situated on the bank of a stream and backed by a noble water power.
They drew up before an open door at one corner of the building. The colonel alighted, entered, and presented his letter of introduction. The superintendent glanced at him keenly, but, after reading the letter, greeted him with a show of cordiality, and called a young man to conduct the visitor through the mill.
The guide seemed in somewhat of a hurry, and reticent of speech; nor was the noise of the machinery conducive to conversation. Some of the colonel's questions seemed unheard, and others were imperfectly answered. Yet the conditions disclosed by even such an inspection were, to the colonel, a revelation. Through air thick with flying particles of cotton, pale, anæmic young women glanced at him curiously, with lack-luster eyes, or eyes in which the gleam was not that of health, or hope, or holiness. Wizened children, who had never known the joys of childhood, worked side by side at long rows of spools to which they must give unremitting attention. Most of the women were using snuff, the odour of which was mingled with the flying particles of cotton, while the floor was thickly covered with unsightly brown splotches.
When they had completed the tour of the mills and returned to the office, the colonel asked some questions of the manager about the equipment, the output, and the market, which were very promptly and courteously answered. To those concerning hours and wages the replies were less definite, and the colonel went away impressed as much by what he had not learned as by what he had seen.
While settling his bill at the livery stable, he made further inquiries.
"Lord, yes," said the liveryman in answer to one of them, "I can tell you all you want to know about that mill. Talk about nigger slavery—the niggers never were worked like white women and children are in them mills. They work 'em from twelve to sixteen hours a day for from fifteen to fifty cents. Them triflin' old pinelanders out there jus' lay aroun' and raise children for the mills, and then set down and chaw tobacco an' live on their children's wages. It's a sin an' a shame, an' there ought to be a law ag'inst it."
The conversation brought out the further fact that vice was rampant among the millhands.
"An' it ain't surprisin'," said the liveryman, with indignation tempered by the easy philosophy of hot climates. "Shut up in jail all day, an' half the night, never breathin' the pyo' air, or baskin' in God's bright sunshine; with no books to read an' no chance to learn, who can blame the po'r things if they have a little joy in the only way they know?"
"Who owns the mill?" asked the colonel.
"It belongs to a company," was the reply, "but Old Bill Fetters owns a majority of the stock—durn, him!"
The colonel felt a thrill of pleasure—he had met a man after his own heart.
"You are not one of Fetters's admirers then?" he asked.
"Not by a durn sight," returned the liveryman promptly. "When I look at them white gals, that ought to be rosy-cheeked an' bright-eyed an' plump an' hearty an' happy, an' them po' little child'en that never get a chance to go fishin' or swimmin' or to learn anything, I allow I wouldn' mind if the durned old mill would catch fire an' burn down. They work children there from six years old up, an' half of 'em die of consumption before they're grown. It's a durned outrage, an' if I ever go to the Legislatur', for which I mean to run, I'll try to have it stopped."
"I hope you will be elected," said the colonel. "What time does the train go back to Clarendon?"
"Four o'clock, if she's on time—but it may be five."
"Do you suppose I can get dinner at the hotel?"
"Oh, yes! I sent word up that I 'lowed you might be back, so they'll be expectin' you."
The proprietor was at the desk when the colonel went in. He wrote his name on the book, and was served with an execrable dinner. He paid his bill of half a dollar to the taciturn proprietor, and sat down on the shady porch to smoke a cigar. The proprietor, having put the money in his pocket, came out and stepped into his buggy, which was still standing alongside the piazza. The colonel watched him drive a stone's throw to a barroom down the street, get down, go in, come out a few minutes later, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, climb into the buggy, drive back, step out and re-enter the hotel.
It was yet an hour to train time, and the colonel, to satisfy an impulse of curiosity, strolled over to the court house, which could be seen across the square, through the trees. Requesting leave of the Clerk in the county recorder's office to look at the records of mortgages, he turned the leaves over and found that a large proportion of the mortgages recently recorded—among them one on the hotel property—had been given to Fetters.
The whistle of the train was heard in the distance as the colonel recrossed the square. Glancing toward the hotel, he saw the landlord come out, drive across the square to the station, and sit there until the passengers had alighted. To a drummer with a sample case, he pointed carelessly across the square to the hotel, but made no movement to take the baggage; and as the train moved off, the colonel, looking back, saw him driving back to the hotel.
Fetters had begun to worry the colonel. He had never seen the man, and yet his influence was everywhere. He seemed to brood over the country round about like a great vampire bat, sucking the life-blood of the people. His touch meant blight. As soon as a Fetters mortgage rested on a place, the property began to run down; for why should the nominal owner keep up a place which was destined in the end to go to Fetters? The colonel had heard grewsome tales of Fetters's convict labour plantation; he had seen the operation of Fetters's cotton-mill, where white humanity, in its fairest and tenderest form, was stunted and blighted and destroyed; and he had not forgotten the scene in the justice's office.
The fighting blood of the old Frenches was stirred. The colonel's means were abundant; he did not lack the sinews of war. Clarendon offered a field for profitable investment. He would like to do something for humanity, something to offset Fetters and his kind, who were preying upon the weaknesses of the people, enslaving white and black alike. In a great city, what he could give away would have been but a slender stream, scarcely felt in the rivers of charity poured into the ocean of want; and even his considerable wealth would have made him only a small stockholder in some great aggregation of capital. In this backward old town, away from the great centres of commerce, and scarcely feeling their distant pulsebeat, except when some daring speculator tried for a brief period to corner the cotton market, he could mark with his own eyes the good he might accomplish. It required no great stretch of imagination to see the town, a few years hence, a busy hive of industry, where no man, and no woman obliged to work, need be without employment at fair wages; where the trinity of peace, prosperity and progress would reign supreme; where men like Fetters and methods like his would no longer be tolerated. The forces of enlightenment, set in motion by his aid, and supported by just laws, should engage the retrograde forces represented by Fetters. Communities, like men, must either grow or decay, advance or decline; they could not stand still. Clarendon was decaying. Fetters was the parasite which, by sending out its roots toward rich and poor alike, struck at both extremes of society, and was choking the life of the town like a rank and deadly vine.
