sincerity; but she had turned the locket so that she could see the likeness and did not catch the double meaning of his words. So she only answered calmly and earnestly, “He was a good brother.”
A shadow passed over his face as he noticed her inattention to his compliment, but he added heartily,
“And a gallant one. I am glad that my horse fell into his hands.”
She looked at him and said,
“You were very fond of your horse?”
“Yes, indeed!” he answered. “He was a great pet before we went into the service, and my constant companion for nearly three years of that struggle. But come out on the porch, and let me show you some of the tricks I taught him, and you will not only understand how I prized him, but will appreciate his sagacity more than you do now.”
He assisted her to a rocking-chair upon the porch, and, bidding a servant to bring out the horse, said:
“You must remember that I have but one arm and have not seen him, until lately, at least, for five years.
“Poor old fellow!” he added, as he went down the steps of the porch, and told the servant to turn him loose. He called him up with a snap of his thumb and finger as he entered the yard and patted his head which was stretched out to receive the caress. “Poor fellow! he is not so young as he was then, though he has had good care. The gray hairs are beginning to show on his muzzle, and I can detect, though no one else might notice them, the wrinkles coming about his eyes. Let me see, you are only nine years old, though,–nine past. But it’s the war that tells–tells on horses just as well as men. You ought to be credited with about five years for what you went through then, old fellow. And a man–Do you know, Miss Mollie,” he said, breaking suddenly off–“that a man who was in that war, even if he did not get a shot, discounted his life about ten years? It was the wear and tear of the struggle. We are different from other nations. We have no professional soldiers–at least none to speak of. To such, war is merely a business and peace an interlude. There is no mental strain in their case. But in our war we were all volunteers. Every man, on both sides, went into the army with the fate of a nation resting on his shoulders, and because he felt the burden of responsibility. It was that which killed–killed and weakened–more than shot and shell and frost and heat together. And then–what came afterward?”
He turned towards her as he spoke, his hand still resting on the neck of the horse which was rubbing against him and playfully nipping at him with his teeth, in manifestation of his delight.
Her face had settled into firm, hard lines. She seemed to be looking beyond him, and the gray coldness which we saw about her face when she read the telegram in the far-away Bankshire hills, settled on cheek and brow again, as she slowly repeated, as though unconscious of their meaning, the lines:
“In the world’s broad field of battle, In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!”
Hesden Le Moyne gazed at her a moment in confused wonder. Then he turned to the horse and made him perform various tricks at his bidding. He made him back away from him as far as he chose by the motion of his hand, and then, by reversing the gesture, brought him bounding back again. The horse lifted either foot at his instance, lay down, rolled over, stood upon his hind feet, and finally knelt upon the edge of the porch in obeisance to his mistress, who sat looking, although in a preoccupied manner, at all that was done. Hesden Le Moyne was surprised and somewhat disappointed at her lack of enthusiasm over what he thought would give her so much pleasure. She thanked him absently when it was over, and retired to her own room.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
WHAT THE MIST HID.
The darkness was already giving way to the gray light of a misty morning following the attack on Red Wing. The mocking birds, one after another, were responding to each other’s calls, at first sleepily and unwillingly, as though the imprisoned melody compelled expression, and then, thoroughly aroused and perched upon the highest dew-laden branches swaying and tossing beneath them, they poured forth their rival orisons. Other sounds of rising day were coming through the mist that still hung over the land, shutting out the brightness which was marching from the eastward. The crowing of cocks, the neighing of horses, and the lowing of cattle resounded from hill to hill across the wide bottom-lands and up and down the river upon either hand. Nature was waking from slumber–not to the full, boisterous wakefulness which greets the broad day, but the half-consciousness with which the sluggard turns himself for the light, sweet sleep of the summer morning.
There was a tap at the open window that stood at the head of Hesden Le Moyne’s bed. His room was across the hall from his mother’s, and upon the same floor. It had been his room from childhood. The window opened upon the wide, low porch which ran along three sides of the great rambling house. Hesden heard the tap, but it only served to send his half-awakened fancy on a fantastic trip through dreamland. Again came the low, inquiring tap, this time upon the headboard of the old mahogany bedstead. He thought it was one of the servants coming for orders about the day’s labors. He wondered, vaguely and dully, what could be wanted. Perhaps they would go away if he did not move. Again it came, cautious and low, but firm and imperative, made by the nail of one finger struck sharply and regularly against the polished headboard. It was a summons and a command for silence at once. Hesden raised himself quickly and looked toward the window. The outline of a human figure showed dimly against the gray darkness beyond.
“Who’s there?”–in a low, quiet voice, as though caution had been distinctly enjoined.
“Marse Hesden!”–a low whisper, full of suppressed excitement.
“You, Nimbus?” said Le Moyne, as he stepped quickly out of bed and approached the window. “What’s the matter?”
“Marse Hesden,” whispered the colored man, laying a hand trembling with excitement on his shoulder as he came near, “is yer a friend ter ‘Liab Hill?”
“Of course I am; you know that”–in an impatient undertone.
“Sh–sh! Marse Hesden, don’t make no noise, please,” whispered Nimbus. “I don’t mean ter ax ef yer’s jes got nothin’ agin’ him, but is yer that kind ob a friend ez ‘ll stan’ by him in trouble?”
“What do you mean, Nimbus?” asked Hesden in surprise.
“Will yer come wid me, Marse Hesden–slip on yer clo’es an’ come wid me, jist a minnit?” Hesden did not think of denying this request. It was evident that something of grave importance had occurred. Hardly a moment had elapsed before he stepped cautiously out upon the porch and followed Nimbus. The latter led the way quickly toward a spring which burst out of the hillside fifty yards away from the house, at the foot of a giant oak. Lying in the shadow of this tree and reclining against its base, lay Eliab Hill, his pallid face showing through the darkness like the face of the dead.
A few words served to tell Hesden Le Moyne what the reader already knows.
“I brought him here, Marse Hesden, kase ther ain’t no place else dat he’d be safe whar he could be tuk keer on. Dem ar Kluckers is bound ter kill him ef dey kin. He’s got ter be hid an’ tuk keer on till he’s well–ef he ever gits well at all.”
“Why, you don’t think he’s hurt–not seriously, do you?”
“Hurt, man!” said Nimbus, impatiently. “Dar ain’t much difference atwixt him an’ a dead man, now.
“Good God! Nimbus, you don’t mean that. He seems to sleep well,” said Hesden, bending over the prostrate form.
“Sleep! Marse Hesden, I’se kerried him tree miles sence he’s been a-sleepin’ like dat; an’ de blood’s been a runnin’ down on my hans an’ a-breakin’ my holt ebbery now an’ den, tu!”
“Why, Nimbus, what is this you tell me? Was any one else hurt?”
“Wal, dar’s a couple o’ white men a-layin’ mighty quiet dar, afo’ ‘Liab’s house.”
Hesden shuddered. The time he had dreaded had come! The smouldering passion of the South had burst forth at last! For years–ever since the war-prejudice and passion, the sense of insult and oppression had been growing thicker and blacker all over the South. Thunders had rolled over the land. Lightnings had fringed its edges. The country had heard, but had not heeded. The nation had looked on with smiling face, and declared the sunshine undimmed. It had taken no note of exasperation and prejudice. It had unconsciously trampled under foot the passionate pride of a conquered people. It had scorned and despised a sentiment more deeply inwrought than that of caste in the Hindoo breast.
The South believed, honestly believed, in its innate superiority over all other races and peoples. It did not doubt, has never doubted, that, man for man, it was braver, stronger, better than the North. Its men were “gentlemen”–grander, nobler beings than the North ever knew. Their women were “ladies”–gentle, refined, ethereal beings, passion and devotion wrapped in forms of ethereal mould, and surrounded by an impalpable effulgence which distinguished them from all others of the sex throughout the world. Whatever was of the South was superlative. To be Southern-born was to be _prima facie_ better than other men. So the self-love of every man was enlisted in this sentiment. To praise the South was to praise himself; to boast of its valor was to advertise his own intrepidity; to extol its women was to enhance the glory of his own achievements in the lists of love; to vaunt its chivalry was to avouch his own honor; to laud its greatness was to extol himself. He measured himself with his Northern compeer, and decided without hesitation in his own favor.
The South, he felt, was unquestionably greater than the North in all those things which were most excellent, and was only overtopped by it in those things which were the mere result of numbers. Outnumbered on the field of battle, the South had been degraded and insulted by a sordid and low-minded conqueror, in the very hour of victory. Outnumbered at the ballot-box, it had still dictated the policy of the Nation. The Southern white man naturally compared himself with his Northern brother. For comparison between himself and the African–the recent slave, the scarcely human anthropoid–he found no ground. Only contrast was possible there. To have these made co-equal rulers with him, seated beside him on the throne of popular sovereignty, merely, as he honestly thought, for the gratification of an unmanly spite against a fallen foe, aroused every feeling of exasperation and revenge which a people always restive of restraint could feel.
It was not from hatred to the negro, but to destroy his political power and restore again their own insulted and debased supremacy that such things were done as have been related. It was to show the conqueror that the bonds in which the sleeping Samson had been bound were green withes which he scornfully snapped asunder in his first waking moment. Pride the most overweening, and a prejudice of caste the most intense and ineradicable, stimulated by the chagrin of defeat and inflamed by the sense of injustice and oppression–both these lay at the bottom of the acts by which the rule of the majorities established by reconstructionary legislation were overthrown. It was these things that so blinded the eyes of a whole people that they called this bloody masquerading, this midnight warfare upon the weak, this era of unutterable horror, “redeeming the South!”
There was no good man, no honest man, no Christian man of the South who for an instant claimed that it was right to kill, maim, beat, wound and ill-treat the black man, either in his old or his new estate. He did not regard these acts as done to another _man_, a compeer, but only as acts of cruelty to an inferior so infinitely removed from himself as to forbid any comparison of rights or feelings. It was not right to do evil to a “nigger;” but it was infinitely less wrong than to do it unto one of their own color. These men did not consider such acts as right in themselves, but only as right in view of their comparative importance and necessity, and the unspeakable inferiority of their victims.
For generations the South had regarded the uprising of the black, the assertion of his manhood and autonomy, as the _ultima thule_ of possible evil. San Domingo and hell were twin horrors in their minds, with the odds, however, in favor of San Domingo. To prevent negro domination anything was justifiable. It was a choice of evils, where on one side was placed an evil which they had been taught to believe, and did believe, infinitely outweighed and overmatched all other evils in enormity. Anything, said these men in their hearts; anything, they said to each other; anything, they cried aloud to the world, was better, is better, must be better, than negro rule, than African domination.
Now, by negro rule _they_ meant the exercise of authority by a majority of citizens of African descent, or a majority of which they constituted any considerable factor. The white man who acted with the negro in any relation of political co-ordination was deemed even worse than the African himself. If he became a leader, he was anathematized for self-seeking. If he only co-operated with his ballot, he was denounced as a coward. In any event he was certain to be deemed a betrayer of his race, a renegade and an outcast. Hesden Le Moyne was a Southern white man. All that has just been written was essential truth to him. It was a part of his nature. He was as proud as the proudest of his fellows. The sting of defeat still rankled in his heart. The sense of infinite distance between his race and that unfortunate race whom he pitied so sincerely, to whose future he looked forward with so much apprehension, was as distinct and palpable to him as to any one of his compeers. The thousandth part of a drop of the blood of the despised race degraded, in his mind, the unfortunate possessor.
He had inherited a dread of the ultimate results of slavery. He wished–it had been accounted sensible in his family to wish–that slavery had never existed. Having existed, they never thought of favoring its extinction. They thought it corrupting and demoralizing to the white race. They felt that it was separating them, year by year, farther and farther from that independent self-relying manhood, which had built up American institutions and American prosperity. They feared the fruit of this demoralization. _For the sake of the white man_, they wished that the black had never been enslaved. As to the blacks–they did not question the righteousness of their enslavement. They did not care whether it were right or wrong. They simply did not consider them at all. When the war left them free, they simply said, “Poor fellows!” as they would of a dog without a master. When the blacks were entrusted with the ballot, they said again, “Poor fellows!” regarding them as the blameless instrument by which a bigoted and revengeful North sought to degrade and humiliate a foe overwhelmed only by the accident of numbers; the colored race being to these Northern people like the cat with whose paw the monkey dragged his chestnuts from the fire. Hesden had only wondered what the effect of these things would be upon “the South;” meaning by “the South” that regnant class to which his family belonged–a part of which, by a queer synecdoche, stood for the whole.
His love for his old battle-steed, and his curious interest in its new possessor, had led him to consider the experiment at Red Wing with some care. His pride and interest in Eliab as a former slave of his family had still further fixed his attention and awakened his thought. And, finally, his acquaintance with Mollie Ainslie had led him unconsciously to sympathize with the object of her constant care and devotion.
So, while he stood there beside the stricken man, whose breath came stertorous and slow, he was in that condition of mind of all others most perilous to the Southern man–he had begun to _doubt_: to doubt the infallibility of his hereditary notions; to doubt the super-excellence of Southern manhood, and the infinite superiority of Southern womanhood; to doubt the incapacity of the negro for self-maintenance and civilization; to doubt, in short, all those dogmas which constitute the differential characteristics of “the Southern man.” He had gone so far–a terrible distance to one of his origin–as to admit the possibility of error. He had begun to question–God forgive him, if it seemed like sacrilege–he had begun to question whether the South might not have been wrong–might not still be wrong–wrong in the principle and practice of slavery, wrong in the theory and fact of secession and rebellion, wrong in the hypothesis of hate on the part of the conquerors, wrong in the assumption of exceptional and unapproachable excellence.
The future was as misty as the gray morning.
CHAPTER XL
DAWNING.
Hesden Le Moyne stood with Nimbus under the great low-branching oak, in the chill morning, and listened to the labored breathing of the man for the sake of whose humanity his father had braved public opinion in the old slave-era, which already seemed centuries away in the dim past. The training of his life, the conditions of his growth, bore fruit in that moment. He pitied the outraged victim, he was shocked at the barbarity of his fellows; but there was no sense of injustice, no feeling of sacred rights trampled on and ignored in the person of the sufferer. He remembered when he had played with Eliab beside his mother’s hearth; when he had varied the monotony of study by teaching the crippled slave-boy the tasks he himself was required to perform. The tenderness of old associations sprang up in his mind and he felt himself affronted in the person of the protege of his family. He disliked cruelty; he hated cowardice; and he felt that Eliab Hill had been the victim of a cruel and cowardly assault. He remembered how faithfully this man’s mother had nursed his own. Above all, the sentiment of comradeship awoke. This man who had been his playfellow had been brutally treated because of his weakness. He would not see him bullied. He would stand by him to the death.
“The cowards!” he hissed through his teeth. “Bring him in, Nimbus, quick! They needn’t expect me to countenance such brutality as this!”
“Marse Hesden,” said the black Samson who had stood, silently watching the white playmate of his boyhood, while the latter recovered himself from the sort of stupor into which the revelation he had heard had thrown him, “God bress yer fer dem words! I ‘llowed yer’d stan’ by ‘Liab. Dat’s why I fotched him h’yer.”
“Of course I would, and by you too, Nimbus.”
“No, Marse Hesden, dat wouldn’t do no sort o’ good. Nimbus hez jes got ter cut an’ run fer it. I ‘specs them ar dat’s a lyin’ dar in front ob ‘Liab’s do’ ain’t like ter do no mo’ troublin’; an’ yer knows, Marse Hesden, ‘twouldn’t nebber be safe fer a cullu’d man dat’s done dat ar ter try an’ lib h’yerabouts no mo’!”
“But you did it in defense of life. You had a right to do it, Nimbus.”
“Dar ain’t no doubt o’ dat, Marse Hesden, but I’se larned dat de right ter du a ting an’ de doin’ on’t is two mighty diff’rent tings, when it’s a cullu’d man ez does it. I hed a right ter buy a plantation an’ raise terbacker; an’ ‘Liab hed a right ter teach an’ preach; an’ we both hed a right ter vote for ennybody we had a mind ter choose. An’ so we did; an’ dat’s all we done, tu. An’ now h’yer’s what’s come on’t, Marse Hesden.”
Nimbus pointed to the bruised creature before them as he spoke, and his tones sounded like an arraignment.
“I am afraid you are right, Nimbus,” said the white man, with a sense of self-abasement he had never thought to feel before one of the inferior race. “But bring him in, we must not waste time here.”
“Dat’s a fac’,” said Nimbus, with a glance at the East. “‘Tain’t more’n ’bout a hour till sun-up, an’ I mustn’t be seen hereabouts atter dat. Dey’ll be a lookin’ atter me, an’ ‘twon’t be safe fer Nimbus ter be no whar ‘cept in de mos’ lonesome places. But whar’s ye gwine ter put ‘Liab, Marse Hesden?”
“In the house–anywhere, only be quick about it. Don’t let him die here!” said Hesden, bending over the prostrate man and passing a hand over his forehead with a shudder.
“But whar’bouts in de house yer gwine ter put him, Marse Hesden?”
“Anywhere, man–in my room, if nowhere else. Come, take hold here!” was Hesden’s impatient rejoinder as he put his one hand under Eliab’s head and strove to raise him up.
“Dat won’t do, Marse Hesden,” said Nimbus, solemnly. ‘Liab had a heap better go back ter de woods an’ chance it wid Nimbus, dan be in your room.”
“Why so?”
“Why? Kase yer knows dat de men what done disting ain’t a-gwine ter let him lib ef dey once knows whar he’s ter be found. He’s de one dey wuz atter, jest ez much ez Nimbus, an’ p’raps a leetle more, dough yer knows ther ain’t a mite o’ harm in him, an’ nebber was, But dat don’t matter. Deytinks dat he keeps de cullu’d folks togedder, an’ makes’ em stan’ up for dere rights, an’ dat’s why dey went fer him. ‘Sides dat, ef he didn’t hurt none on ’em dey know he seed an’ heerd ’em, an’ so’ll be afeared ter let up on him on dat account.”
“I’d like to see the men that would take him out of my house!” said Le Moyne, indignantly.
“Dar’d jes be two men killed instead ob one, ef yer should,” said the other, dryly.
“Perhaps you’re right,” said Le Moyne, thoughtfully. “The men who did this will do anything. But where _shall_ we put him? He can’t lie here.”
“Marse Hesden, does yer mind de loft ober de ole dinin’-room, whar we all used ter play ob a Sunday?”
“Of course, I’ve got my tobacco bulked down there now,” was the answer. “Dat’s de place, Marse Hesden!”
“But there’s no way to get in there except by a ladder,” said Hesden.
“So much de better. You gits de ladder, an’ I brings ‘Liab.”
In a few minutes Eliab was lying on some blankets, hastily thrown over a bulk of leaf tobacco, in the loft over the old dining-room at Mulberry Hill, and Hesden Le Moyne was busy bathing his face, examining his wounds, and endeavoring to restore him to consciousness.
Nimbus waited only to hear his report that the wounds, though numerous and severe, were not such as would be likely to prove fatal. There were several cuts and bruises about the head; a shot had struck the arm, which had caused the loss of blood; and the weakened tendons of the cramped and unused legs had been torn asunder. These were all the injuries Le Moyne could find. Nimbus dropped upon his knees, and threw his arms about the neck of his friend at this report, and burst into tears.
“God bress yer, ‘Liab! God bress yer!” he sobbed.
“Nimbus can’t do no mo’ fer ye, an’ don’t ‘llow he’ll nebber see ye no mo’–no mo’ in dis world! Good-by, ‘Liab, good-by! Yer don’t know Nimbus’s gwine away, does yer? God bress yer, p’raps it’s better so–better so!”
He kissed again and again the pale forehead, from which the dark hair had been brushed back by repeated bathings. Then rising and turning away his head, he extended his hand to Le Moyne and said:
“Good-bye, Marse Hesden! God bress yer! Take good keer o’ ‘Liab, Mahs’r, an’–an’–ef he gits round agin, don’t let him try ter stay h’yrabouts–don’t, please! ‘Tain’t no use! See ef yer can’t git him ter go ter de Norf, er somewhar. Oh, my God!” he exclaimed, suddenly, as the memory of his care of the stricken friend came suddenly upon him, “my God! what’ll he ebber do widout Nimbus ter keer fer him?”
His voice was drowned in sobs and his grip on the hand of the white man was like the clasp of a vice.
“Don’t go, Nimbus, don’t!” pleaded Hesden.
“I must, Marse Hesden,” said he, repressing his sobs. “l’se got ter see what’s come o’ ‘Gena an’ de rest, an’ it’s best fer both. Good-by! God bress yer! Ef he comes tu, ax him sometimes ter pray for Nimbus. But’tain’t no use–no use–fer he’ll do it without axin’. Good-by!”
He opened the wooden shutter, ran down the ladder, and disappeared, as the misty morning gave way to the full and perfect day.
CHAPTER XLI.
Q. E. D.
As Mollie Ainslie grew stronger day by day, her kind host had done all in his power to aid her convalescence by offering pleasing attentions and cheerful surroundings. As soon as she was able to ride, she had been lifted carefully into the saddle, and under his watchful supervision had made, each day, longer and longer rides, until, for some days preceding the events of the last few chapters, her strength had so fully returned that they had ridden several miles. The flush of health had returned to her cheeks, and the sleep that followed her exercise was restful and refreshing.
Already she talked of returning to Red Wing, and, but for the thoughtfulness of Eliab Hill in dismissing the school for a month during her illness, would have been present at the terrible scenes enacted there. She only lingered because she was not quite recovered, and because there was a charm about the old plantation, which she had never found elsewhere. A new light had come into her life. She loved Hesden Le Moyne, and Hesden Le Moyne loved the Yankee school-marm. No word of love had been spoken. No caress had been offered. A pall hung over the household, in the gloom of which the lips might not utter words of endearment. But the eyes spoke; and they greeted each other with kisses of liquid light when their glances met. Flushed cheeks and tones spoke more than words. She waited for his coming anxiously. He was restive and uneasy when away. The peace which each one brought to the other’s heart was the sure witness of well-grounded love. She had never asked herself where was the beginning or what would be the end. She had never said to herself, “I love him;” but his presence brought peace, and in her innocence she rested there as in an undisturbed haven.
As for him–he saw and trembled. He could not shut his eyes to her love or his own. He did not wish to do so. And yet, brave man as he was, he trembled at the thought. Hesden Le Moyne was proud. He knew that Mollie Ainslie was as proud as himself. He had the prejudices of his people and class, and he knew also that she had the convictions of that part of the country where she had been reared. He knew that she would never share his prejudices; he had no idea that he would ever share her convictions. He wished that she had never taught a “nigger school”–not for his own sake, he said to himself, with a flush of shame, but for hers. How could she face sneers? How could he endure insults upon his love? How could he ask her to come where sneers and insults awaited her? Love had set himself a hard task. He had set before him this problem: “New England Puritanism and Southern Prejudice; how shall they be reconciled?” For the solution of this question, there were given on one side a maiden who would have plucked out her heart and trampled it under her feet, rather than surrender one tenet in her creed of righteousness; and on the other side a man who had fought for a cause he did not approve rather than be taunted with having espoused one of the fundamental principles of her belief. To laugh at locksmiths was an easy thing compared with the reading of this riddle!
On the morning when Eliab was brought to Mulberry Hill, Mrs. Le Moyne and Mollie breakfasted together alone in the room of the former. Both were troubled at the absence of the master of the house.
“I cannot see why he does not come,” said Mrs. Le Moyne. “He is the soul of punctuality, and is never absent from a meal when about home. He sent in word by Laura early this morning that he would not be at breakfast, and that we should not wait for him, but gave no sort of reason. I don’t understand it.”
“I hope he is not sick. You don’t think he has the fever, do you?” said Mollie, with evident anxiety.
The elder woman glanced keenly at her as she replied in a careless tone:
“Oh, no indeed. You have no occasion for anxiety. I told Laura to take him a cup of coffee and a roll in his room, but she says he is not there. I suppose something about the plantation requires his attention. It is very kind of you, I am sure; but I have no doubt he is quite well.”
There was something in the tone as well as the words which cut the young girl to the heart. She could not tell what it was. She did not dream that it was aimed at herself. She only knew that it sounded harsh and cold, and unkind. Her heart was very tender. Sickness and love had thrown her off her guard against sneers and hardness. It did not once occur to her that the keen-sighted invalid, whose life was bound up in her son’s life, had looked into the heart which had never yet syllabled the love which filled it, and hated what she saw. She did not deem it possible that there should be aught but kindly feeling for her in the household she had all but died to serve. Moreover, she had loved the delicate invalid ever since she had received a letter from her hand. She had always been accustomed to that unconscious equality of common right and mutual courtesy that prevails so widely at the North, and had never thought of construing the letter as one of patronizing approval. She had counted it a friendly commendation, not only of herself, but of her work. This woman she had long pictured to herself as one that rose above the prejudice by which she was surrounded. She who, in the old times, had bravely taught Eliab Hill to read in defiance of the law, would surely approve of a work like hers.
So thought the silly girl, not knowing that the gentle invalid had taught Eliab Hill the little that he knew before emancipation more to show her defiance of meddling objectors, than for the good of the boy. In fact, she had had no idea of benefiting him, other than by furnishing him a means of amusement in the enforced solitude of his affliction. Mollie did not consider that Hester Le Moyne was a Southern woman, and as such, while she might admire courage and accomplishments in a woman of Northern birth, always did so with a mental reservation in favor of her own class. When, however, one came from the North to teach the negroes, in order that they might overpower and rule the whites, which she devoutly believed to be the sole purpose of the colored educational movement, no matter under what specious guise of charity it might be done, she could not go even so far as that.
Yet, if such a one came to her, overwhelmed by stress of weather, she would give her shelter; if she were ill she would minister unto her; for these were Christian duties. If she were fair and bright, and brave, she would delight to entertain her; for that was a part of the hospitality of which the South boasted. There was something enjoyable, too, in parading the riches of a well-stocked wardrobe and the lavish splendors of an old Southern home to one who, she believed, had never seen such magnificence before; for the belief that poverty and poor fare are the common lot of the country folks at the North is one of the fallacies commonly held by all classes at the South. As slavery, which was the universal criterion of wealth and culture at the South, did not prevail at all at the North, they unconsciously and naturally came to associate self-help with degradation, and likened the Northern farmer to the poor white “cropper.” Where social rank was measured by the length of the serving train, it was not strange that the Northern self-helper should be despised and his complacent assumption of equal gentility scorned.
So Mrs. Le Moyne had admired the courage of Mollie Ainslie before she saw her; she had been charmed with her beauty and artless grace on the first night of her stay at Mulberry Hill, and had felt obliged to her for her care of the little Hildreth; but she had not once thought of considering her the peer of the Richardses and the Le Moynes, or as standing upon the same social plane as herself. She was, no doubt, good and honest and brave, very well educated and accomplished, but by no means a lady in _her_ sense of the word. Mrs. Le Moyne’s feeling toward the Northern school-teacher was very like that which the English gentry express when they use the word “person.” There is no discredit in the term. The individual referred to may be the incarnation of every grace and virtue, only he is of a lower degree in the social scale. He is of another grade.
Entertaining such feelings toward Mollie, it was no wonder that Mrs. Le Moyne was not pleased to see the anxious interest that young lady freely exhibited in the health of her son.
On the other hand, the young New England girl never suspected the existence of such sentiments. Conscious of intellectual and moral equality with her hostess, she did not imagine that there could be anything of patronage, or anything less than friendly sympathy and approval, in the welcome she had received at Mulberry Hill. This house had seemed to her like a new home. The exile which she had undergone at Red Wing had unfitted her for the close analysis of such pleasing associations. Therefore, the undertone in Mrs. Le Moyne’s remarks came upon her like a blow from an unseen hand. She felt hurt and humbled, but she could not exactly tell why. Her heart grew suddenly heavy. Her eyes filled with tears. She dallied a little while with coffee and toast, declined the dainties pressed upon her with scrupulous courtesy, and presently, excusing her lack of appetite, fled away to her room and wept.
“I must be nervous this morning,” she said to herself smilingly, as she dried her eyes and prepared for her customary morning ride. On going down stairs she found a servant in waiting with her horse ready saddled, who said: “Mornin’, Miss Mollie. Marse Hesden said ez how I was ter tell yer dat he was dat busy dis mornin’ dat he couldn’t go ter ride wid yer to-day, nohow. I wuz ter gib yer his compliments, all de same, an’ say he hopes yer’ll hev a pleasant ride, an’ he wants ter see yer when yer gits back. He’s powerful sorry he can’t go.”
“Tell Mr. Le Moyne it is not a matter of any consequence at all, Charley,” she answered pleasantly.
“Yer couldn’t never make Marse Hesden b’lieve dat ar, no way in de world,” said Charles, with deft flattery, as he lifted her into the saddle. Then, glancing quickly around, he said in a low, earnest voice: “Hez ye heerd from Red Wing lately, Miss Mollie?”
“Not for a day or two. Why?” she asked, glancing quickly down at him.
“Oh, nuffin’, only I wuz afeared dar’d been somethin’ bad a gwine on dar, right lately.”
“What do you mean, Charles?” she asked, bending down and speaking anxiously.
“Don’t say nuffin’ ’bout it, Miss Mollie–dey don’t know nuffin’ ’bout it in h’yer,” nodding toward the house, “but de Ku Kluckers was dar las’ night.”
“You don’t mean it, Charles?”
“Dat’s what I hear,” he answered doggedly.
“Anybody hurt?” she asked anxiously.
“I don’t know dat, Miss Mollie. Dat’s all I hear–jes dat dey’d been dar.”
CHAPTER XLII.
THROUGH A CLOUD-RIFT.
It was with a heavy heart that Mollie Ainslie passed out of the gate and rode along the lane toward the highway. The autumn sun shone bright, and the trees were just beginning to put on the gay trappings in which they are wont to welcome wintry death. Yet, somehow, everything seemed suddenly to have grown dark and dull. Her poor weak brain was overwhelmed and dazed by the incongruity of the life she was leaving with that to which she was going back–for she had no hesitation in deciding as to the course she ought to pursue.
She did not need to question as to what had been done or suffered. If there was any trouble, actual or impending, affecting those she had served, her place was with them. They would look to her for guidance and counsel. She would not fail them. She did not once think of danger, nor did she dream that by doing as she proposed she was severing herself entirely from the pleasant life at the fine old country seat which had been so eventful.
She did, indeed, think of Hesden. She always thought of him of late. Everything, whether of joy or of sorrow, seemed somehow connected with him. She thought of him–not as going away from him, or as putting him out of her life, but as deserving his approval by her act. “He will miss me when he finds that I do not return. Perhaps he will be alarmed,” she said to herself, as she cantered easily toward the ford. “But then, if he hears what has happened, he will know where I have gone and will approve my going. Perhaps he will be afraid for me, and then he will–” Her heart seemed to stop beating! All its bright current flew into her face. The boundless beatitude of love burst on her all at once. She had obeyed its dictates and tasted its bliss for days and weeks, quite unconscious of the rapture which filled her soul. Now, it came like a great wave of light that overspread the earth and covered with a halo all that was in it. How bright upon the instant was everything! The sunshine was a beating, pulsing ether animated with love! The trees, the fields, the yellow-breasted lark, pouring forth his autumn lay, the swallows, glancing in the golden sunshine and weaving in and out on billowy wing the endless dance with which they hie them southward ere the winter comes–everything she saw or heard was eloquent with look and tones of love! The grand old horse that carried her so easily, how strange and how delightful was this double ownership, which yet was only one! Hers? Hesden’s? Hesden’s because hers, for–ah, glowing cheek! ah, bounding heart! how sweet the dear confession, breathed–nay told unspokenly–to autumn sky and air, to field and wood and bird and beast, to nature’s boundless heart–_she_ was but Hesden’s! The altar and the idol of his love! Oh, how its incense thrilled her soul and intoxicated every sense! There was no doubt, no fear, no breath of shame! He would come and ask, and she–would give? No! no! no! She could not give, but she would tell, with word and look and swift embrace, how she _had_ given–ah! given all–and knew it not! Oh, fairer than the opened heaven is earth illumined with love!
As she dreamed, her horse’s swift feet consumed the way. She reached the river–a silver billow between emerald banks, to-day! Almost unheedingly she crossed the ford, just smiling, rapt in her vision, as memory brought back the darkness of her former crossing! Then she swept on, through the dark, over-arching pines, their odor mingling with the incense of love which filled her heart. She had forgotten Red Wing and all that pertained to it. The new song her lips had been taught to sing had made thin and weak every melody of the past, Shall care cumber the heart of the bride? She knew vaguely that she was going to Red Wing. She recognized the road, but it seemed glorified since she travelled it before. Once, she thought she heard her name called. The tone was full of beseeching. She smiled, for she thought that love had cheated her, and syllabled the cry of that heart which would not be still until she came again. She did not see the dark, pleading face which gazed after her as her horse bore her swiftly beyond his ken.
On and on, easily, softly! She knows she is approaching her journey’s end, but the glamour of love enthralls her senses yet. The last valley is passed. She ascends the last hill. Before her is Red Wing, bright and peaceful as Paradise before the spoiler came. She has forgotten the story which the hostler told. The sight of the little village but heightens her rapture. She almost greets it with a shout, as she gives her horse the rein and dashes down the little street. How her face glows! The wind toys with stray tresses of her hair! How dull and amazed the people seem whom she greets so gayly! Still on! Around the angle of the wood she turns–and comes upon the smouldering church!
Ah, how the visions melt! What a cry of agony goes up from her white lips! How pale her cheeks grow as she drops the rein from her nerveless fingers! The observant horse needs no words to check his swift career. The scene of desolation stops him in an instant. He stretches out his head and looks with staring eyes upon the ruin. He snuffs with distended nostrils the smoke that rises from the burning.
The villagers gather around. She answers every inquiry with low moans. Gently they lead her horse under the shadow of the great oak before the old Ordinary. Very tenderly she is lifted down and borne to the large-armed rocker on the porch, which the weeping, trembling old “mammy” has loaded with pillows to receive her.
All day long she heard the timid tread of dusky feet and listened to the tale of woe and fear. Old and young, those whom she had counselled, and those whom she had taught, alike sought her presence and advice. Lugena came, and showed her scarred form; brought her beaten children, and told her tale of sorrow. The past was black enough, but the shadow of a greater fear hung over the little hamlet. They feared for themselves and also for her. They begged her to go back to Mr. Le Moyne’s. She smiled and shook her head with a soft light in her eyes. She would not go back until the king came and entreated her. But she knew that would be very soon. So she roused herself to comfort and advise, and when the sun went down, she was once more the little Mollie Ainslie of the Bankshire hills, only fairer and ruddier and sweeter than ever before, as she sat upon the porch and watched with dewy, love-lit eyes the road which led to Mulberry Hill.
The shadows came. The night fell; the stars came out; the moon arose–he came not. Stealthy footsteps came and went. Faithful hearts whispered words of warning with trembling lips. She did not fear. Her heart was sick. She had not once dreamed that Hesden would fail to seek her out, or that he would allow her to pass one hour of darkness in this scene of horror. She almost began to wish the night might be a counterpart of that which had gone before. She took out her brother’s heavy revolver, loaded every chamber, laid it on the table beside her chair, and sat, sleepless but dry-eyed, until the morning.
The days went by. Hesden did not come, and sent no word. He was but five miles away; he knew how she loved him; yet the grave was not more voiceless! She hoped–a little–even after that first night. She pictured possibilities which she hoped might be true. Then the tones of the mother’s voice came back to her–the unexplained absence–the unfulfilled engagement–and doubt was changed to certainty! She did not weep or moan or pine. The Yankee girl had no base metal in her make. She folded up her vision of love and laid it away, embalmed in the fragrance of her own purity, in the inmost recess of her heart of hearts. The rack could not have wrung from her a whisper of her one day in Paradise. She was simply Mollie Ainslie, the teacher of the colored school at Red Wing, once more; quiet, cool, and practical, giving herself day by day, with increased devotion, to the people whom she had served so faithfully before her brief translation.
CHAPTER XLIII.
A GLAD GOOD-BY.
A few days after her departure from Mulberry Hill, Mollie Ainslie wrote to Mrs. Le Moyne:
“MY DEAR MADAM: You have no doubt heard of the terrible events which have occurred at Red Wing. I had an intimation of trouble just as I set out on my ride, but had no idea of the horror which awaited me upon my arrival here, made all the more fearful by contrast with your pleasant home.
“I cannot at such a time leave the people with whom I have labored so long, especially as their only other trusted adviser, the preacher, Eliab Hill, is missing. With the utmost exertion we have been able to learn nothing of him or of Nimbus since the night of the fire. There is no doubt that they are dead. Of course, there is great excitement, and I have had a very anxious time. I am glad to say, however, that my health continues to improve. I left some articles scattered about in the room I occupied, which I would be pleased if you would have a servant collect and give to the bearer.
“With the best wishes for the happiness of yourself and Mr. Hesden, and with pleasant memories of your delightful home, I remain,
“Yours very truly,
“MOLLIE AINSLIE.”
To this she received the following reply:
“Miss MOLLIE AINSLIE: I very much regret the unfortunate events which occasioned your hasty departure from Mulberry Hill. It is greatly to be hoped that all occasion for such violence will soon pass away. It is a great calamity that the colored people cannot be made to see that their old masters and mistresses are their best friends, and induced to follow their advice and leadership, instead of going after strangers and ignorant persons of their own color, or low-down white men, who only wish to use them for their own advantage. I am very sorry for Eliab and the others, but I must say I think they have brought it all on themselves. I am told they have been mighty impudent and obstreperous, until really the people in the neighborhood did not feel safe, expecting every day that their houses or barns would be burned down, or their wives or daughters insulted, or perhaps worse, by the lazy, saucy crowd they had gathered about them. “Eliab was a good boy, but I never did like that fellow Nimbus. He was that stubborn and headstrong, even in his young days, that I can believe anything of him. Then he was in the Yankee army during the war, you know, and I have no doubt that he is a desperate character. I learn he has been indicted once or twice, and the general belief is that he set the church on fire, and, with a crowd of his understrappers, fixed up to represent Ku Klux, attacked his own house, abused his wife and took Eliab off and killed him, in order to make the North believe that the people of Horsford are only a set of savages, and so get the Government to send soldiers here to carry the election, in order that a filthy negro and a low-down, dirty, no-account poor-white man may _mis_represent this grand old county in the Legislature again.
“I declare, Miss Ainslie, I don’t see how you endure such things. You seemed while here very much of a lady, for one in your sphere of life, and I cannot understand how you can reconcile it with your conscience to encourage and live with such a terrible gang.
“My son has been very busy since you left. He did not find time to inquire for you yesterday, and seemed annoyed that you had not apprised him of your intention to leave. I suppose he is afraid that his old horse might be injured if there should be more trouble at Red Wing.
“Yours truly,
“HESTER RICHARDS LE MOYNE.”
“P.S.–I understand that they are going to hunt the fellow Nimbus with dogs to-morrow. I hope they will catch him and hang him to the nearest tree. I have no doubt he killed poor Eliab, and did all the rest of the bad things laid to his charge. He is a desperate negro, and I don’t see how you can stand up for him. I hope you will let the people of the North know the truth of this affair, and make them understand that Southern gentlemen are not such savages and brutes as they are represented.”
The letter was full of arrows designed to pierce her breast; but Mollie Ainslie did not feel one of them. After what she had suffered, no ungenerous flings from such a source could cause her any pain. On the contrary, it was an object of interest to her, in that it disclosed how deep down in the heart of the highest and best, as well as the lowest and meanest, was that prejudice which had originally instigated such acts as had been perpetrated at Red Wing. The credulous animosity displayed by this woman to whom she had looked for sympathy and encouragement in what she deemed a holy work, revealed to her for the first time how deep and impassable was the channel which time had cut between the people of the North and those of the South.
She did not lose her respect or regard for Mrs. Le Moyne. She did not even see that any word which had been written was intended to stab her, as a woman. She only saw that the prejudice-blinded eyes had led a good, kind heart to endorse and excuse cruelty and outrage. The letter saddened but did not enrage her. She saw and pitied the pride of the sick lady whom she had learned to love in fancy too well to regard with anger on account of what was but the natural result of her life and training.
CHAPTER XLIV.
PUTTING THIS AND THAT TOGETHER.
After Mollie had read the letter of Mrs. Le Moyne, it struck her as a curious thing that she should write to her of the hunt which was to be made after Nimbus, and the great excitement which there was in regard to him. Knowing that Mrs. Le Moyne and Hesden were both kindly disposed toward Eliab, and the latter, as she believed, toward Nimbus also, it occurred to her that this might be intended as a warning, given on the hypothesis that those parties were in hiding and not dead.
At the same time, also, it flashed upon her mind that Lugena had not seemed so utterly cast down as might naturally be expected of a widow so suddenly and sadly bereaved. She knew something of the secretive powers of the colored race. She knew that in the old slave times one of the men now living in the little village had remained a hidden runaway for months, within five miles of his master’s house, only his wife knowing his hiding-place. She knew how thousands of these people had been faithful to our soldiers escaping from Confederate prisons during the war, and she felt that a secret affecting their own liberty, or the liberty of one acting or suffering in their behalf, might be given into the keeping of the whole race without danger of revelation. She remembered that amid all the clamorous grief of others, while Lugena had mourned and wept over the burning of the church and the scenes of blood and horror, she had exhibited little of that poignant and overwhelming grief or unappeasable anger which she would have expected, under the circumstances, from one of her temperament. She concluded, therefore, that the woman might have some knowledge in regard to the fate of her husband, Eliab, and Berry, which she had not deemed it prudent to reveal. With this thought in mind, she sent for Lugena and asked if she had heard that they were going to hunt for her husband with dogs.
“Yes, Miss Mollie, I’se heerd on’t,” was the reply, “but nebber you mind. Ef Nimbus is alive, dey’ll nebber git him in no sech way ez dat, an’ dey knows it. ‘Sides dat, it’s tree days ago, an’ Nimbus ain’t no sech fool ez ter stay round dat long, jes ter be cotched now. I’se glad ter hear it, dough, kase it shows ter me dat dey hain’t killed him, but wants ter skeer him off, an’ git him outen de kentry. De sheriff–not de high-sheriff, but one ob his understrappers–wuz up ter our house to-day, a-purtendin’ ter hunt atter Nimbus. I didn’t put no reliance in dat, but somehow I can’t make out cla’r how dey could hev got away with him an’ Berry an’ ‘Liab, all on ’em, atter de fight h’yer, an’ not left no trace nor sign on’ em nowhar.
“Now, I tell yer what’s my notion, Miss Mollie,” she added, approaching closer, and speaking in a whisper; “I’se done a heap o’ tinkin’ on dis yer matter, an’ dis is de way I’se done figgered it out. I don’t keer ter let on ’bout it, an’ mebbe you kin see furder inter it nor I kin, but I’se jes made up my min’ dat Nimbus is all right somewhars. I don’t know whar, but it’s somewhar not fur from ‘Liab–dat yer may be shore on, honey. Now, yer see, Miss Mollie, dar’s two or tree tings makes me tink so. In de fus’ place, yer know, I see dat feller, Berry, atter all dis ting wuz ober, an’ talked wid him an’ told him dat Nimbus lef all right, an’ dat he tuk ‘Liab wid him, an’ dat Bre’er ‘Liab wuz mighty bad hurt. Wal, atter I told him dat, an’ he’d helped me hunt up de chillens dat wuz scattered in de co’n, an’ ’bout one place an’ anudder, Berry he ‘llows dat he’ll go an’ try ter fin’ Nimbus an’ ‘Liab. So he goes off fru de co’n wid dat ar won’ful gun dat jes keeps on a-shootin’ widout ary load.
“Atter a while I heahs him ober in de woods a-whistlin’ an’ a-carryin’ on like a mockin’-bird, ez you’se heerd de quar critter du many a time.” Mollie nodded affirmatively, and Lugena went on: “I couldn’t help but laugh den, dough I wuz nigh about skeered ter death, ter tink what a mighty cute trick it wuz. I knowed he wuz a callin’ Nimbus an’ dat Nimbus ‘ud know it, tu, jest ez soon ez he heerd it; but yer know ennybody dat hadn’t heerd it over an offen, wouldn’t nebber tink dat it warn’t a mocker waked up by de light, or jes mockin’ a cat-bird an’ rain-crow, an’ de like, in his dreams, ez dey say dey does when de moon shines, yer know.”
Mollie smiled at the quaint conceit, so well justified by the fact she had herself often observed. Lugena continued:
“I tell yer, Miss Mollie, dat ar Berry’s a right cute nigga, fer all dey say ’bout him. He ain’t stiddy, like Nimbus, yer know, ner pious like ‘Liab–dat is not ter hurt, yer know–but he sartin hab got a heap ob sense, fer all dat.”
“It was certainly a very shrewd thing, but I don’t see what it has to do with the fate of Nimbus,” said Mollie. “I don’t wish to seem to discourage you, but I am quite certain, myself, that we shall never see Nimbus or Eliab again.”
“Oh, yer can’t discourage _me_, Miss Mollie,” answered the colored woman bravely. “I jes knows, er ez good ez knows, dat Nimbus is all right yit awhile. Now I tells yer, honey, what dis yer’s got ter du wid it. Yer see, it must ha’ been nigh about a half-hour atter Nimbus left afore Berry went off; jes dat er way I tole yer “bout.”
“Well?” said Mollie, inquiringly.
“Wal,” continued Lugena, “don’t yer see? Dar hain’t been nary word heard from neither one o’ dem boys sence.”
“Well?” said Mollie, knitting her brows in perplexity.
“_Don’t_ yer see, Miss Mollie,” said the woman impatiently, “dat dey couldn’t hab got ’em bofe togedder, ‘cept Berry had found Nimbus fust?”
“Well?”
“_Wal!_ Don’t yer see dar would hev been a–a–_terrible_ fight afore dem two niggas would hev gin up Bre’er ‘Liab, let alone derselves? Yer must ‘member dat dey had dat ar gun. Sakes-a-massy! Miss Mollie, yer orter hev hearn it dat night. ‘Peared ter me yer could hab heard it clar’ roun’ de yairth, ef it _is_ round, ez yer say ’tis. Now, somebody–some cullu’d body–would have been shore ter heah dat gun ef dar’d been a fight.”
“I had not thought of that, Lugena,” said Mollie.
“Co’se yer hadn’t, honey; an’ dere’s sunthin’ else yer didn’t link ob, nuther, kase yer didn’t know it,” said Lugena. “Yer min’ dat boy Berry, he’d done borrered our mule, jest afo’ dat, ter take Sally an’ de chillen an’ what few duds dey hez down inter Hanson County, whar his brudder Rufe libs, an’ whar dey’s gwine ter libbin’ tu. Dar didn’t nobody ‘spect him ter git back till de nex’ day, any more’n Nimbus; an’ it war jes kinder accidental-like dat either on ’em got h’yer dat night. Now, Miss Mollie, what yer s’pose hez come ob dat ar mule an’ carryall? Dat’s de question.”
“I’m sure I don’t know, ‘Gena, said Mollie thoughtfully. “Ner I don’t know, nuther,” was the response; “but it’s jes my notion dat whar dey is, right dar yer’ll fin’ Nimbus an’ Berry, an’ not fur off from dem yer’ll find Bre’er ‘Liab.”
“You may be right,” said her listener, musingly.
“I’se pretty shore on’t, honey. Yer see when dat ar under-sheriff come ter day an’ had look all ’round fer Nimbus, he sed, finally, sez he, ‘I’se got a’tachment’–dat’s what he call it, Miss Mollie–a’tachment ‘gin de property, or sunthin’ o’ dat kine. I didn’t know nary ting ’bout it, but I spunked up an’ tole him ebbery ting in de house dar was mine. He argyfied ’bout it a right smart while, an’ finally sed dar wan’t nuffin’ dar ob no ‘count, ennyhow. Den he inquired ’bout de mule an’ de carryall, an’ atter dat he went out an’ levelled on de crap.”
“Did what?” asked Mollie.
“Levelled on de crap, Miss, dat’s what he said, least-a-ways. Den he called fer de key ob de ‘backer-barn, an’ I tole him ‘twan’t nowheres ’bout de house–good reason too, kase Nimbus allus do carry dat key in his breeches pocket, ‘long wid his money an’ terbacker. So he takes de axe an’ goes up ter de barn, an’ I goes ‘long wid him ter see what he’s gwine ter du. Den he breaks de staple an’ opens de do’. Now, Miss Mollie, ‘twan’t but a week er two ago, of a Sunday atternoon, Nimbus an’ I wuz in dar lookin’ roun’, an’ dar wuz a right smart bulk o’ fine terbacker dar–some two er tree-hundred poun’s on’t. Now when de sheriff went in, dar wa’n’t more’n four or five ban’s ob ‘backer scattered ‘long ‘twixt whar de pile had been an’ de do’. Yah! yah! I couldn’t help laughin’ right out, though I wuz dat mad dat I couldn’t hardly see, kase I knowed ter once how ’twas. D’yer see _now_, Miss Mollie?” “I confess I do not,” answered the teacher.
“No? Wal, whar yer ‘spose dat ‘backer gone ter, hey?”
“I’m sure I don’t know. Where do you think?”
“What I tink become ob dat ‘backer? Wal, Miss Mollie, I tink Nimbus an’ Berry put dat ‘backer in dat carryall, an’ den put Bre’er ‘Liab in on dat ‘backer, an’ jes druv off somewhar–‘Gena don’t know whar, but dat ‘backer ‘ll take ’em a long way wid dat ar mule an’ carryall. It’s all right, Miss Mollie, it’s all right wid Nimbus. ‘Gena ain’t feared. She knows her ole man too well fer dat!
“Yer know he runned away once afo’ in de ole slave times. He didn’t say nary word ter me ’bout gwine ober ter de Yanks, an’ de folks all tole me dat I nebber’d see him no mo’. But I knowed Nimbus, an’ shore ‘nough, atter ’bout two year, back he come! An’ dat’s de way it’ll be dis time–atter de trouble’s ober, he’ll come back. But dat ain’t what worries me now, Miss Mollie,” continued Lugena. “Co’se I’d like ter know jes whar Nimbus is, but I know he’s all right. I’se a heap fearder ’bout Bre’er ‘Liab, fer I ‘llow it’s jes which an’ t’other ef we ever sees him again. But what troubles me now, Miss Mollie, is ’bout myseff.”
“About yourself?” asked Mollie, in surprise.
“‘Bout me an’ my chillens, Miss Mollie,” was the reply.
“Why, how is that, ‘Gena?”
“Wal yer see, dar’s dat ar ‘tachment matter. I don’t understan’ it, nohow.”
“Nor I either,” said Mollie.
“P’raps yer could make out sunthin’ ’bout it from dese yer,” said the colored woman, drawing a mass of crumpled papers from her pocket.
Mollie smoothed them out upon the table beside her, and began her examination by reading the endorsements. The first was entitled, “_Peyton Winburn v. Nimbus Desmit_, et al. _Action for the recovery of real estate. Summons._” The next was endorsed, “_Copy of Complaint_,” and another, “_Affidavit and Order of Attachment against Non-Resident or Absconding Debtor._”
“What’s dat, Miss Mollie?” asked Lugena, eagerly, as the last title was read. “Dat’s what dat ar sheriff man said my Nimbus was–a non–_non_–what, Miss Mollie? I tole him ‘twan’t no sech ting; but la sakes! I didn’t know nothing in de worl’ ’bout it. I jes ‘llowed dat ’twas sunthin’ mighty mean, an’ I knowed dat I couldn’t be very fur wrong nohow, ef I jes contraried ebbery word what he said. What does it mean, Miss Mollie?”
“It just means,” said Mollie, “that Nimbus owes somebody–this Mr. Winburn, I judge, and–“
“It’s a lie! A clar, straight-out lie!” interrupted Lugena. “Nimbus don’t owe nobody nary cent–not nary cent, Miss Mollie! Tole me dat hisself jest a little time ago.”
“Yes, but this man _claims_ he owes him–swears so, in fact; and that he has run away or hidden to keep from paying it,” said Mollie. “He swears he is a non-resident–don’t live here, you know; lives out of the State somewhere.”
“An’ Peyton Winburn swars ter dat?” asked the woman, eagerly.
“Yes, certainly.”
“Didn’t I tell yer dat Nimbus was safe, Miss Mollie?” she cried, springing from her chair. “Don’t yer see how dey cotch derselves? Ef der’s ennybody on de green yairth dat knows all ’bout dis Ku Kluckin’ it’s Peyton Winburn, and dat ar Sheriff Gleason. Now, don’t yer know dat ef he was dead dey wouldn’t be a suin’ on him an’ a swearin’ he’d run away?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, but it would seem so,” responded Mollie.
“Seem so! it’s boun’ ter be so, honey,” said the colored woman, positively.
“I don’t know, I’m sure,” said Mollie. “It’s a matter I don’t understand. I think I had better take these papers over to Captain Pardee, and see what ought to be done about them. I am afraid there is an attempt to rob you of all your husband has acquired, while he is away.”
“Dat’s what I’se afeared on,” said the other. “An’ it wuz what Nimbus ‘spected from de fust ob dis h’yer Ku Kluck matter. Dear me, what ebber will I do, I dunno–I dunno!” The poor woman threw her apron over her head and began to weep.
“Don’t be discouraged, ‘Gena,” said Mollie, soothingly. “I’ll stand by you and get Mr. Pardee to look after the matter for you.”
“T’ank ye, Miss Mollie, t’ank ye. But I’se afeared it won’t do no good. Dey’s boun’ ter break us up, an’ dey’ll do it, sooner or later! It’s all of a piece–a Ku Kluckin’ by night, and a-suin’ by day. ‘Tain’t no use, t’ain’t no use! Dey’ll hab dere will fust er last, one way er anudder, shore!”
Without uncovering her head, the sobbing woman turned and walked out of the room, across the porch and down the path to the gate.
“Not if I can help it!” said the little Yankee woman, as she smoothed down her hair, shut her mouth close, and turned to make a more thorough perusal of the papers Lugena had left with her. Hardly had she finished when she was astonished by Lugena’s rushing into the room and exclaiming, as she threw herself on her knees:
“Oh, Miss Mollie, I done forgot–I was dat ar flustered ’bout de ‘tachment an’ de like, dat I done forgot what I want ter tell yer most ob all. Yer know, Miss Mollie, dem men dat got hurt dat ar night–de Ku Kluckers, two on ’em, one I ‘llow, killed out-an’-out, an’ de todder dat bad cut–oh, my God!” she cried with a shudder, “I nebber see de likes–no nebber, Miss Mollie. All down his face–from his forehead ter his chin, an’ dat too–yes, an’ his breast-bone, too–looked like dat wuz all split open an’ a-bleedin’! Oh, it war horrible, horrible, Miss Mollie!”
The woman buried her face in the teacher’s lap as if she would shut out the fearful spectacle.
“There, there,” said Mollie, soothingly, as she placed a hand upon her head. “You must not think of it. You must try and forget the horrors of that night.”
“Don’t yer know, Miss Mollie, dat dem Ku Kluckers ain’t a-gwine ter let de one ez done dat lib roun’ h’yer, ner ennywhar else dat dey can come at ’em, world widout end?”
“Well, I thought you were sure that Nimbus was safe?”
“Nimbus?” said the woman in surprise, uncovering her face and looking up. “Nimbus? ‘Twan’t him, Miss Mollie, ‘twan’t him. I ‘llows it mout hev been him dat hurt de one dat ‘peared ter hev been killed straight out; but it was _me_ dat cut de odder one, Miss Mollie.”
“You?” cried Mollie, in surprise, instinctively drawing back. “You?”
“Yes’m,” said Lugena, humbly, recognizing the repulse. “Me–wid de axe! I hope yer don’t fault me fer it, Miss Mollie.”
“Blame you? no indeed, ‘Gena!” was the reply. “Only it startled me to hear you say so. You did entirely right to defend yourself and Nimbus. You should not let that trouble you for a moment.”
“No, Miss Mollie, but don’t yer know dat de Ku Kluckers ain’t a-gwine ter fergit it?”
“Heavens!” said the Yankee girl, springing up from her chair in uncontrollable excitement. “You don’t think they would hurt you–a woman?”
“Dat didn’t save me from bein’ stripped an’ beat, did it?”
“Too true, too true!” moaned the teacher, as she walked back and forth wringing her hands. “Poor child! What can you do?–what can you do?”
“Dat’s what I want ter know, Miss Mollie,” said the woman. “I dassent sleep ter home at night, an’ don’t feel safe ary hour in de day. Dem folks won’t fergit, an’ ‘Gena won’t nebber be safe ennywhar dat dey kin come, night ner day. What will I do, Miss Mollie, what will I do? Yer knows Nimbus ‘ll ‘llow fer ‘Gena ter take keer ob herself an’ de chillen an’ de plantation, till he comes back, er sends fer me, an’ I dassent stay, not ‘nudder day, Miss Mollie! What’ll I do? What’ll I do?”
There was silence in the little room for a few moments, as the young teacher walked back and forth across the floor, and the colored woman sat and gazed in stupid hopelessness up into her face. Presently she stopped, and, looking down upon Lugena, said with impetuous fervor:
“You shall not stay, Lugena! You shall not stay! Can you stand it a few nights more?”
“Oh, yes, I kin stan’ it, ’cause I’se got ter. I’se been sleepin’ in de woods ebber sence, an’ kin keep on at it; but I knows whar it’ll end, an’ so der you, Miss Mollie.”
“No, it shall not, ‘Gena. You are right. It is not safe for you to stay. Just hide yourself a few nights more, till I can look after things for you here, and I will take you away to the North, where there are no Ku Klux!”
“Yer don’t mean it, Miss Mollie!”
“Indeed I do.”
“An’ de chillen?”
“They shall go too.”
“God bress yer, Miss Mollie! God bress yer!”
With moans and sobs, the torrent of her tears burst forth, as the poor woman fell prone upon the floor, and catching the hem of the teacher’s robe, kissed it again and again, in a transport of joy.
CHAPTER XLV.
ANOTHER OX GORED.
There was a caller who begged to see Mr. Le Moyne for a few minutes. Descending to the sitting-room, Hesden found there Mr. Jordan Jackson, who was the white candidate for the Legislature upon the same ticket with a colored man who had left the county in fright immediately after the raid upon Red Wing. Hesden was somewhat surprised at this call, for although he had known Mr. Jackson from boyhood, yet there had never been more than a passing acquaintance between them. It is true, Mr Jackson was a neighbor, living only two or three miles from Mulberry Hill; but he belonged to such an entirely different class of society that their knowledge of each other had never ripened into anything like familiarity.
Mr. Jackson was what used to be termed a poor man. He and his father before him, as Hesden knew, had lived on a little, poor plantation, surrounded by wealthy neighbors. They owned no slaves, and lived, scantily on the products of the farm worked by themselves. The present occupant was about Hesden’s own age. There being no free schools in that county, and his father having been unable, perhaps not even desiring, to educate him otherwise, he had grown up almost entirely illiterate. He had learned to sign his name, and only by strenuous exertions, after his arrival at manhood, had become able, with difficulty, to spell out words from the printed page and to write an ordinary letter in strangely-tangled hieroglyphics, in a spelling which would do credit to a phonetic reformer. He had entered the army, probably because he could not do otherwise, and being of stalwart build, and having great endurance and native courage, before the struggle was over had risen, despite his disadvantages of birth and education, to a lieutenancy.
This experience had been of advantage to him in more ways than one. Chief among these had been the opening of his eyes to the fact that he himself, although a poor man, and the scion of a poor family, was, in all the manly requisites that go to make up a soldier, always the equal, and very often the superior, of his aristocratic neighbors. Little by little, the self-respect which had been ground out of him and his family by generations of that condition of inferiority which the common-liver, the self-helper of the South, was forced to endure under the old slave _regime_, began to grow up in his heart. He began to feel himself a man, and prized the rank-marks on his collar as the certificate and endorsement of his manhood. As this feeling developed, he began to consider the relations between himself, his family, and others like them, and the rich neighbors by whom they were surrounded and looked down upon. And more and more, as he did so, the feeling grew upon him that he and his class had been wronged, cheated–“put upon,” he phrased it–in all the past. They had been the “chinking” between the “mud” of slavery and the “house-logs” of aristocracy in the social structure of the South–a little better than the mud because of the same grain and nature as the logs; but useless and nameless except as in relation to both. He felt the bitter truth of that stinging aphorism which was current among the privates of the Confederate army, which characterized the war of Rebellion as “the poor man’s war and the rich man’s fight.”
So, when the war was over, Lieutenant Jordan Jackson did not return easily and contentedly to the niche in the social life of his native region to which he had been born and bred. He found the habit of leadership and command very pleasant, and he determined that he would rise in the scale of Horsford society as he had risen in the army, simply because he was brave and strong. He knew that to do this he must acquire wealth, and looking about, he saw opportunities open before him which others had not noticed. Almost before the smoke of battle had cleared away, Jordan Jackson had opened trade with the invaders, and had made himself a prime favorite in the Federal camps. He coined money in those days of transition. Fortunately, he had been too poor to be in debt when the war broke out. He was independently poor, because beyond the range of credit.
He had lost nothing, for he had nothing but the few poor acres of his homestead to lose.
So he started fair, and before the period of reconstruction began he had by thrifty management accumulated quite a competency. He had bought several plantations whose aristocratic owners could no longer keep their grip upon half-worked lands, had opened a little store, and monopolized a considerable trade. Looking at affairs as they stood at that time, Jordan Jackson said to himself that the opportunity for him and his class had come. He had a profound respect for the power and authority of the Government of the United States, _because_ it had put down the Rebellion. He had been two or three times at the North, and was astounded at its collective greatness. He said that the colored man and the poor-whites of the South ought to put themselves on the side of this great, busy North, which had opened the way of liberty and progress before them, and establish free schools and free thought and free labor in the fair, crippled, South-land. He thought he saw a great and fair future looming up before his country. He freely gave expression to these ideas, and, as he traded very largely with the colored people, soon came to be regarded by them as a leader, and by “the good people of Horsford” as a low-down white nigger, for whom no epithet was too vile.
Nevertheless, he grew in wealth, for he attended to his business himself, early and late. He answered raillery with raillery, curses with cursing, and abuse with defiance. He was elected to conventions and Legislatures, where he did many foolish, some bad, and a few wise things in the way of legislation. He knew what he wanted–it was light, liberty, education, and a “fair hack” for all men. How to get it he did not know.
He had been warned a thousand times that he must abandon this way of life. The natural rulers of the county felt that if they could neutralize his influence and that which went out from Red Wing, they could prevent the exercise of ballatorial power by a considerable portion of the majority, and by that means “redeem” the county.
They did not wish to hurt Jordan Jackson. He was a good enough man. His father had been an honest man, and an old citizen. Nobody knew a word against his wife or her family, except that they had been poor. The people who had given their hearts to the Confederate cause, remembered too, at first, his gallant service; but that had all been wiped out from their minds by his subsequent “treachery.” Even after the attack on Red Wing, he had been warned by his friends to desist.
One morning, he had found on the door of his store a paper containing the following words, written inside a little sketch of a coffin:
[Illustration: JORDAN JACKSON, If you don’t get out of here in three days, you will go to the bone yard. K.K.K.]
He had answered this by a defiant, ill-spelled notice, pasted just beside it, in which he announced himself as always ready to meet any crowd of “cowards and villains who were ashamed of their own faces, at any time, night or day.” His card was English prose of a most vigorous type, interspersed with so much of illiterate profanity as to satisfy any good citizen that the best people of Horsford were quite right in regarding him as a most desperate and dangerous man–one of those whose influence upon the colored people was to array them against the whites, and unless promptly put down, bring about a war of races–which the white people were determined never to have in Horsford, if they had to kill every Radical in the county in order to live in peace with their former slaves, whom they had always nourished with paternal affection and still regarded with a most tender care.
This man met Hesden as the latter came out upon the porch, and with a flushed face and a peculiar twitching about his mouth, asked if he could see him in private for a moment.
Hesden led the way to his own room. Jackson then, having first shut the door, cautiously said:
“You know me, Mr. Le Moyne?”
“Certainly, Jackson.”
“An’ you knew my father before me?”
“Of course. I knew old man Billy Jackson very well in my young days.”
“Did you ever know anything mean or disreputable about him?”
“No, certainly not; he was a very correct man, so far as I ever heard.”
“Poor but honest?”–with a sneer.
“Well, yes; a poor man, but a very correct man.”
“Well, did you ever know anything disreputable about _me?_” keenly.
“Well–why–Mr. Jackson–you–” stammered Hesden, much confused.
“Out with it!” angrily. “I’m a Radical?”
“Yes–and–you know, your political course has rendered you very unpopular.”
“Of course! A man has no right to his own political opinions.”
“Well, but you know, Mr. Jackson, yours have been so peculiar and so obnoxious to our best people. Besides, you have expressed them so boldly and defiantly. I do not think our people have any ill-feeling against you, personally; but you cannot wonder that so great a change as we have had should excite many of them very greatly. You should not be so violent, Mr. Jackson.”
“Violent–Hell! You’d better go and preach peace to Eliab Hill. Poor fellow! I don’t reckon the man lives who ever heard him say a harsh thing to any one. He was always that mild I used to wonder the Lord didn’t take him long ago. Nigger as he was, and cripple as he was, I’d ruther had his religion than that of all the mean, hypocritical, murdering aristocrats in Horsford.”
“But, Mr. Jackson, you should not speak in that way of our best citizens.”
“Oh, the devil! I know–but that is no matter, Mr. Le Moyne. I didn’t come to argue with you. Did you ever hear anything agin’ me outside of my politics?”
“I don’t know that I ever did.”
“If you were in a tight place, would you have confidence in Jordan Jackson as a friend?”
“You know I have reason to remember that,” said Hesden, with feeling. “You helped me when I could not help myself. It’s not every man that would care about his horse carrying double when he was running away from the Yanks.”
“Ah! you remember that, then?” with a touch of pride in his voice.
“Yes, indeed! Jackson,” said Hesden, warmly.
“Well, would you do me a good turn to pay for that?”
“Certainly–anything that–” hesitating.
“Oh, damn it, man, don’t strain yourself! I didn’t ask any questions when I helped you!”
“Mr. Jackson,” said Hesden, with dignity, “I merely wished to say that I do not care at this time to embroil myself in politics. You know I have an old mother who is very feeble. I have long regretted that affairs are in the condition that they are in, and have wondered if something could not be done. Theoretically, you are right and those who are with you. Practically, the matter is very embarrassing. But I do not hesitate to say, Mr. Jackson, that those who commit such outrages as that perpetrated at Red Wing disgrace the name of gentleman, the county, and State, the age we live in, and the religion we profess. That I _will_ say.”
“And that’s quite enough, Mr. Le Moyne. All I wanted was to ask you to act as my trustee.”
“Your trustee in what?”
“There is a deed I have just executed conveying everything I have to you, and I want you to sell it off and dispose of it the best you can, and send me the money.”
“_Send_ it to you?”
“Yes, I’m going away.”
“Going away? Why? You are not in debt?”
“I don’t owe a hundred dollars.”
“Then why are you doing this? I don’t understand.”
“Mr. Le Moyne,” said Jackson, coming close to him and speaking in a low intense tone, “I was _whipped_ last night!”
“Whipped!”
“Yes.”
“By whom?”
“By my own neighbors, in the sight of my wife and daughter!”
“By the Ku Klux?”
“That’s what they call themselves.”
“My God, it cannot be!”
“Cannot?” The man’s face twitched nervously, as, dropping his hat, he threw off his light coat and, opening his shirt-collar and turning away his head, showed his shoulder covered with wales, still raw and bleeding.
“My God!” cried Hesden, as he put up his hand and started back in horror. “And you a white man?”
“Yes, Mr. Le Moyne,” said Jackson, turning his face, burning with shame and indignation, toward his high-bred neighbor, “and the only reason this was done–the only thing agin me–is that I was honestly in favor of giving to the colored man the rights which the law of the land says he shall have, like other men. When the war was over, Mr. Le Moyne, I didn’t ‘give up,’ as all you rich folks talked about doing, and try to put up with what was to come afterward. I hadn’t lost nothing by the war, but, on the contrary, had gained what I had no chance to git in any other way. So I jest looked things square in the face and made up my mind that it was a good thing for me, and all such as me, that the damned old Confederacy was dead. And the more I thought on’t the more I couldn’t help seein’ and believin’ that it was right and fair to free the niggers and let them have a fair show and a white man’s chance–votin’ and all. That’s what I call a fair hack, and I swear, Mr. Le Moyne, I don’t know how it may seem to you, but to my mind any man that ain’t willing to let any other man have that, is a damn coward! I’m as white as anybody, and hain’t no more reason to stand up for niggers than any of the rest of the white people–no, nor half as much as most of ’em, for, as fur as I know, I hain’t got no relations among ’em. But I do say that if the white folks of the South can’t stand up to a fair fight with the niggers at the polls, without cuttin’, and murderin’, and burnin’, and shootin’, and whippin’, and Ku Kluxin’, and cheatin’, and swindlin’, they are a damned no-‘count people, and don’t deserve no sort of show in the world–no more than a mean, sneakin’, venomous moccasin-snake–there!”
“But you don’t think–” Hesden began.
“Think? Damn it, I _know_!” broke in Jackson. “They said if I would quit standin’ up for the niggers, they’d let me off, even after they’d got me stripped and hung up. I wouldn’t do it! I didn’t believe then they’d cut me up this way; but they did! An’ now I’m goin’. I’d stay an’ fight, but ’tain’t no use; an’ I couldn’t look a man in the eye who I thought tuk a hand in that whippin’ without killin’ him. I’ve got to go, Le Moyne,” he said with clenched fists, “or I shall commit murder before the sun goes down.”
“Where are you going?”
“God knows! Somewhere where the world’s free and the earth’s fresh, and where it’s no crime to have been born poor or to uphold and maintain the laws of the land.”
“I’m sorry, Jackson, but I don’t blame you. You can’t live here in peace, and you are wise to go,” said Hesden, extending his hand.
“Will you be my trustee?”
“Yes.”
“God bless you!”
The angry, crushed, and outraged man broke into tears as he shook the hand he held.
There was an hour or two of close consultation, and then Hesden Le Moyne looked thoughtfully after this earnest and well-meaning man, who was compelled to flee from the land for which he had fought, simply because he had adopted the policy and principles which the conquering power had thrust into the fundamental law, and endeavored to carry them out in good faith. Like the fugitive from slavery in the olden time, he had started toward the North Pole on the quest for liberty.
CHAPTER XLVI.
BACKWARD AND FORWARD.
The task which Hesden Le Moyne undertook when he assumed the care and protection of Eliab Hill, was no trivial one, as he well understood.
He realized as fully as did Nimbus the necessity of absolute concealment, for he was well aware that the blaze of excitement which would sweep over Horsford, when the events that had occurred at Red Wing should become known, would spare no one who should harbor or conceal any of the recognized leaders of the colored men. He knew that not only that organization which had just shown its existence in the county, but the vast majority of all the white inhabitants as well, would look upon this affair as indubitable evidence of the irrepressible conflict of races, in which they all believed most devoutly.
He had looked forward to this time with great apprehension. Although he had scrupulously refrained from active participation in political life, it was not from any lack of interest in the political situation of the country. He had not only the ordinary instinct of the educated Southern man for political thought–an instinct which makes every man in that section first of all things a partisan, and constitutes politics the first and most important business of life–but besides this general interest in public affairs he had also an inherited bias of hostility to the right of secession, as well as to its policy. His father had been what was termed a “Douglas Democrat,” and the son had absorbed his views. With that belief in a father’s infallibility which is so general in that part of the country, Hesden, despite his own part in the war and the chagrin which defeat had brought, had looked only for evil results to come out of the present struggle, which he believed to have been uselessly precipitated.
It was in this state of mind that he had watched the new phase of the “irrepressible conflict” which supervened upon the downfall of the Rebellion In so doing, he had arrived at the following conclusions:
1. That it was a most fortunate and providential thing that the Confederacy had failed. He had begun to realize the wisdom of Washington when he referred to the dogma of “State rights” as “that bantling–I like to have said _that monster._”
2. That the emancipation of the slaves would ultimately prove advantageous to the white man,
3. That it was the part of honorable men fairly and honestly to carry out and give effect to all the conditions, expressed and implied, on which power, representation, and autonomy were restored to the recently rebellious States. This he believed to be a personal duty, and a failure so to do he regarded as a disgrace to every man in any way contributing to it, especially if he had been a soldier and had shared the defeat of which these conditions were a consequence.
4. He did not regard either the war or the legislation known as reconstructionary as having in any manner affected the natural relation of the races. In the old times he had never felt or believed that the slave was inherently endowed with the same rights as the master; and he did not see how the results of war could enhance his natural rights. He did not believe that the colored man had an inherent right to freedom or to self-government. Whatever right of that kind he might now have was simply by the free grace of the conqueror. He had a right to the fruit of his own labor, to the care, protection, and service of his own children, to the society and comfort of his wife, to the protection of his own person, to marriage, the ballot, possessory capacity, and all those things which distinguish the citizen from the chattel–not because of his manhood, nor because of inherent co-equality of right with the white man; but simply because the national legislation gave it to him as a condition precedent of statal rehabilitation.
These may seem to the Northern reader very narrow views; and so they are, as compared with those that underlay the spirit of resistance to rebellion, and the fever heat for human rights, which was the animating principle in the hearts of the people when they endorsed and approved those amendments which were the basis of reconstructionary legislation. It should be remembered, however, that even these views were infinitely in advance of the ideas generally entertained by his white fellow-citizens of the South. Nearly all of them regarded these matters in a very different light; and most naturally, too, as any one may understand who will lemember what had gone before, and will keep in mind that defeat does not mean a new birth, and that warfare leaves _men_ unchanged by its results, whatever may be its effects on nations and societies.
They regretted the downfall of the Confederacy as the triumph of a lower and baser civilization–the ascendency of a false idea and an act of unrighteous and unjustifiable subversion. To their minds it was a forcible denial of their rights, and, to a large portion of them, a dishonorable violation of that contract or treaty upon which the Federal Union was based, and by which the right for which they fought had, according to their construction, been assured. As viewed by them, the result of the war had not changed these facts, nor justified the infraction of the rights of the South.
In the popular phrase of that day, they “accepted the situation”–which to _their_ minds, simply meant that they would not fight any more for independent existence. The North understood it to mean that they would accept cheerfully and in good faith any terms and conditions which might be imposed upon them as a condition of rehabilitation.
The masses of the Southern whites regarded the emancipation of the negro simply as an arbitrary exercise of power, intended as a punishment for the act of attempted secession–which act, while many believed it to have been impolitic, few believed to be in conflict with the true theory of our government. They considered the freeing of the slave merely a piece of wanton spite, inspired, in great measure, by sheer envy of Southern superiority, in part by angry hate because of the troubles, perils, and losses of the war, and, in a very small degree, by honest though absurd fanaticism. They did not believe that it was done for the sake of the slave, to secure his liberty or to establish his rights; but they believed most devoutly that it was done solely and purposely to injure the master, to punish the rebel, and to still further cripple and impoverish the South. It was, to them, an unwarrantable measure of unrighteous retribution inspired by the lowest and basest motives.
But if, to the mass of Southern white men, emancipation was a measure born of malicious spite in the breast of the North, what should they say of that which followed–the _enfranchisement_ of the black? It was a gratuitous insult–a causeless infamy! It was intended to humiliate, without even the mean motive of advantage to be derived. They did not for a moment believe–they do not believe to-day–that the negro was enfranchised for his own sake, or because the North believed that he was entitled to self-government, or was fit for self-government; but simply and solely because it was hoped thereby to degrade, overawe, and render powerless the white element of the Southern populations. They thought it a fraud in itself, by which the North pretended to give back to the South her place in the nation; but instead, gave her only a debased and degraded co-ordination with a race despised beyond the power of words to express.
This anger seemed–and still seems to the Northern mind–useless, absurd, and ridiculous. It appears to us as groundless and almost as laughable as the frantic and impotent rage of the Chinaman who has lost his sacred queue by the hand of the Christian spoiler. To the Northern mind the cause is entirely incommensurate with the anger displayed. One is inclined to ask, with a laugh, “Well, what of it?” Perhaps there is not a single Northern resident of the South who has not more than once offended some personal friend by smiling in his face while he raged, with white lips and glaring eyes, about this culminating ignominy. Yet it was sadly real to them. In comparison with this, all other evils seemed light and trivial, and whatever tended to prevent it, was deemed fair and just. For this reason, the Southerners felt themselves not only justified, but imperatively called upon, in every way and manner, to resist and annul all legislation having this end in view. Regarding it as inherently fraudulent, malicious, and violent, they felt no compunctions in defeating its operation by counter-fraud and violence.
It was thus that the elements of reconstruction affected the hearts and heads of most of the Southern whites. To admit that they were honest in holding such views as they did is only to give them the benefit of a presumption which, when applied to the acts and motives of whole peoples, becomes irrefutable. A mob may be wrong-headed, but it is always right-hearted. What it does may be infamous, but underlying its acts is always the sting of a great evil or the hope of a great good.
Thus it was, too, that to the subtler mind and less selfish heart of Hesden Le Moyne, every attempt to nullify the effect or evade the operation of the Reconstruction laws was tinged with the idea of personal dishonor. To his understanding, the terms of surrender were, not merely that he would not again fight for a separate governmental existence, but, also, that he would submit to such changes in the national polity as the conquering majority might deem necessary and desirable as conditions precedent to restored power; and would honestly and fairly, as an honorable man and a brave soldier, carry out those laws either to successful fruition or to fair and legitimate repeal.
He was not animated by any thought of advantage to himself or to his class to arise from such ideas. Unlike Jordan Jackson, and men of his type, there was nothing which his class could gain thereby, except a share in the ultimate glory and success of an enlarged and solidified nation. The self-abnegation which he had learned from three years of duty as a private soldier and almost a lifetime of patient attendance upon a loved but exacting invalid, inclined to him to study the movements of society and the world, without especial reference to himself, or the narrow circle of his family or class. To his mind, _honor_–that honor which he accounted the dearest birthright his native South had given–required that from and after the day of his surrender he should seek and desire, not the gratification of revenge nor the display of prejudice, but the success and glory of the great republic. He felt that the American Nation had become greater and more glorious by the very act of overcoming rebellion. He recognized that the initial right or wrong of that struggle, whatever it might have been, should be subordinated in all minds to the result–an individual Nation. It was a greater and a grander thing to be an American than to have been a Confederate! It was more honorable and knightly to be true in letter and in spirit to every law of his reunited land than to make the woes of the past an excuse for the wrongs of the present. He felt all the more scrupulous in regard to this, because those measures were not altogether such as he would have adopted, nor such as he could yet believe would prove immediately successful. He thought that every Southern man should see to it especially that, if any element of reconstruction failed, it should not be on account of any lack of honest, sincere and hearty co-operation on his part.
It was for this reason that he had taken such interest in the experiment that was going on at Red Wing in educating the colored people. He did not at first believe at all in the capacity of the negro for culture, progress, self-support, or self-government; but he believed that the experiment, having been determined on by the nation, should be fairly and honestly carried out and its success or failure completely demonstrated. He admitted frankly that, if they had such capacity, they undoubtedly had the right to use it; because he believed the right inherent and inalienable with any race or people having the capacity. He considered that it was only the lack of co-ordinate capacity that made the Africans unfit to exercise co-ordinate power with individuals of the white race.
He thought they should be encouraged by every means to develop what was in them, and readily admitted that, should the experiment succeed and all distinction of civil right and political power be successfully abolished, the strength and glory of the nation would be wonderfully enhanced. His partiality for the two chief promoters of the experiment at Red Wing had greatly increased his interest in the result, which had by no means been diminished by his acquaintance with Mollie Ainslie.
It was not, however, until he bent over his unconscious charge in the stillness of the morning, made an examination of the wounds of his old playmate by the flickering light of the lamp, and undertook the process of resuscitation and cure, that he began to realize how his ancient prejudice was giving way before the light of what he could not but regard as truth. The application of some simple remedies soon restored Eliab to consciousness, but he found that the other injuries were so serious as to demand immediate surgical attendance, and would require considerable time for their cure.
His first idea had been to keep Eliab’s presence at his house entirely concealed; but as soon as he realized the extent of his injuries, he saw that this would be impossible, and concluded that the safer way would be to entrust the secret to those servants who were employed “about the lot,” which includes, upon a Southern plantation, all who are not regularly engaged in the crop. He felt the more willing to do this because of the attachment felt for the sweet-tempered but deformed minister at Red Wing by all of his race in the county. He carefully impressed upon the two women and Charles, the stable-boy, the necessity of the utmost caution in regard to the matter, and arranged with them to care for his patient by turns, so as never to leave him alone. He sent to the post at Boyleston for a surgeon, whose coming chanced not to be noticed by the neighbors, as he arrived just after dark and went away before daylight to return to his duty. A comfortable cot was arranged for the wounded man, and, to make the care of him less onerous, as well as to avoid the remark which continual use of the ladder would be sure to excite, Charles was directed to cut a doorway through the other gable of the old house into one of the rooms in a newer part. Charles was one of those men found on almost every plantation, who can “turn a hand to almost anything.” In a short time he had arranged a door from the chamber above “Marse Hesden’s room,” and the task of nursing the stricken man back to life and such health as he might thereafter have, was carried on by the faithful band of watchers in the dim light of the old attic and amid the spicy odor of the “bulks” of tobacco, which was stored there awaiting a favorable market.
Hesden was so occupied with fhis care that it was not until the next day that he became aware of Mollie’s absence. As she had gone without preparation or farewell, he rightly judged that it was her intention to return. At first, he thought he would go at once to Red Wing and assure himself of her safety, but a moment’s consideration showed him not only that this was probably unnecessary, but also that to do so would attract attention, and perhaps reveal the hiding-place of Eliab. Besides, he felt confident that she would not be molested, and thought it quite as well that she should not be at Mulberry Hill for a few days, until the excitement had somewhat worn away.
On the next day, Eliab inquired so pitifully for both Miss Mollie and Nimbus, that Hesden, although he knew it was a half-delirious anxiety, had sent Charles on an errand to a plantation in that vicinity, with directions to learn all he could of affairs there, if possible without communicating directly with Miss Ainslie.
This he did, and reported everything quiet–Nimbus and Berry not heard from; Eliab supposed to have been killed; the colored people greatly alarmed; and “Miss Mollie a-comfortin’ an encouragin’ on ’em night an’ day.”
Together with this anxiety came the trust confided to Hesden by Jordan Jackson, and the new, and at first somewhat arduous, duties imposed thereby. In the discharge of these he was brought into communication with a great many of the best people of the county, and did not hesitate to express his opinion freely as to the outrage at Red Wing. He was several times warned to be prudent, but he answered all warnings so firmly, and yet with so much feeling, that he was undisturbed. He stood so high, and had led so pure a life, that he could even be allowed to entertain obnoxious sentiments without personal danger, so long as he did not attempt to reduce them to practice or attempt to secure for colored people the rights to which he thought them entitled. However, a great deal of remark was occasioned by the fact of his having become trustee for the fugitive Radical, and he was freely charged with having disgraced and degraded himself and his family by taking the part of a “renegade, Radical white nigger,” like Jackson. This duty took him from home during the day in a direction away from Red Wing, and a part of each night he sat by the bedside of Eliab. So that more than a week had passed, during which he had found opportunity to take but three meals with his mother, and had not yet been able to visit Red Wing.
CHAPTER XLVII.
BREASTING THE TORRENT.
To make up for the sudden loss of society occasioned by the simultaneous departure of Mollie and the unusual engrossment of Hesden in business matters of pressing moment, as he had informed her, Mrs. Le Moyne had sent for one of the sisters of her son’s deceased wife, Miss Hetty Lomax, to come and visit her. It was to this young lady that Hesden had appealed when the young teacher was suddenly stricken down in his house, and who had so rudely refused. Learning that the object of her antipathy was no longer there, Miss Hetty came and made herself very entertaining to the invalid by detailing to her all the horrors, real and imagined, of the past few days. Day by day she was in the invalid’s room, and it was from her that Mrs. Le Moyne had learned all that was contained in her letter to Mollie concerning the public feeling and excitement. A week had elapsed, when Miss Hetty one day appeared with a most interesting budget of news, the recital of which seemed greatly to excite Mrs. Le Moyne. At first she listened with incredulity and resentment; then conviction seemed to force itself upon her mind, and anger succeeded to astonishment. Calling her serving woman,