 | The Leopard's Spots |  |
Book Two—Love's Dream
3.
CHAPTER III
FLORA
Hambright had changed but little in the eighteen years of peace that had followed the terrors of Legree's régime. The population had doubled, though but few houses had been built. The town had not grown from the development of industry, but for a very simple reason—the country people had moved into the town, seeking refuge from a new terror that was growing of late more and more a menace to a country home, the roving criminal negro.
The birth of a girl baby was sure to make a father restless, and when the baby looked up into his face one day with the soft light of a maiden, he gave up his farm and moved to town.
The most important development of these eighteen years was the complete alienation of the white and black races as compared with the old familiar trust of domestic life.
When Legree finished his work as the master artificer of the Reconstruction Policy, he had dug a gulf between the races as deep as hell. It had never been bridged. The deed was done and it had crystallised into the solid rock that lies at the basis of society. It was done at a formative period, and it could no more be undone now than you could roll the universe back in its course.
The younger generation of white men only knew the Negro as an enemy of his people in politics and society.
With the Anglo-Saxon race guarding the door of marriage with fire and sword, the effort was being made to build a nation inside a nation of two antagonistic rices. No such thing had ever been done in the history of the human race, even under the development of the monarchial and aristocratic forms of society. How could it be done under the formulas of Democracy with Equality as the fundamental basis of law? And yet this was the programme of the age.
Gaston was feeling blue from the reaction which followed his temptation by McLeod. His duty was clear the night before as he walked firmly homeward, recalling the tragedy of the past. Now in the cold light of day, the past seemed for away and unreal. The present was near, pressing, vital. He laid down a book he was trying to read, locked his office and strolled down town to see Tom Camp.
The old soldier had come to be a sort oracle to him. His affection for the son of his Colonel was deep and abiding, and his extravagant flattery of his talents and future were so evidently sincere they always acted as a tonic. And he needed a tonic to-day.
Tom was seated in a chair in his yard under a big cedar, working on a basket, and a little golden-haired girl was playing at his feet. It was his old home he had lost in Legree's day, but had got back through the help of General Worth, who came up one day and paid back Tom's gift of lightwood in gleaming yellow metal. His long hair and full beard were white now, and his eyes
"Tom, I'm blue and heartsick. I've come down to have you cheer me up a little."
"You've got the blues? Well that is a joke!" cried Tom. "You, young and handsome, the best educated man in the county, the finest orator in the state, life all before you, and God fillin' the world to-day with sunshine and spring flowers, and all for you! You blue! That is a joke." And Tom's voice rang in hearty laughter.
"Come here, Flora, and kiss me, you won't laugh at me, will you?"
The child climbed up into his lap, slipped her little arms around his neck and hugged and him.
"Now, once more, dearie, long and close and hard—oh! That's worth a pound of candy!" Again she squeezed his neck and kissed him, looking into his face with a smile.
"I love you, Charlie," she said with quiet seriousness.
"Do you, dear? Well, that makes me glad. If I can win the love of as pretty a little girl as you I'm not a failure, am I?" And he smoothed her curls.
"Ain't she sweet?" cried Tom with pride as he laid aside his basket and looked at her with moistened eyes.
"Tom, she's the sweetest child I ever saw."
"Yes, she's God's last and best gift to me, to show me He still loved me. Talk about trouble. Man, you're a baby. You ain't cut your teeth yet. Wait till you've seen some things I've am. Wait till you've seen the light of the world go out, and staggerin' in the
Tom paused and looked at Gaston. "You weren't here when I come to the end of the world, the time when that baby was born, and Annie died with the little red bundle sleepin' on her breast. The oldest girl was murdered by Legree's nigger soldiers. Then Annie give me that little gal. Lord, I was the happiest old fool that ever lived that day! And then when I looked into Annie's dead face, I went down, down, down! But I looked up from the bottom of the pit and I saw the light of them blue eyes and I heard her callin' me to take her. How I watched her and nursed her, a mother and a father to her, day and night, through the long years, and how them little fingers of hers got hold of my heart! Now, I bless the Lord for all His goodness and mercy to me. She will make it all right. She's going to be a lady and such a beauty! She's goin' to school now, and me and the General's goin' to take her ter college bye and bye, and she's goin' to marry some big handsome fellow like you, and her crippled grey haired daddy'll live in her house in his old age. The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want."
"Tom, you make me ashamed."
"You ought to be, man, a youngster like you to talk about gettin' the blues. What's all your education for?"
"Sometimes I think that only men like you have ever been educated."
"G'long with your foolishness, boy. I ain't never had a show in this world. The nigger's been on my back since I first toddled into the world, and I reckon he'll ride me into the grave. They are my only rivals now making them baskets and they always undersell me."
Gaston started as Tom uttered the last sentence.
"With you, boy, it's all plain sailin'. You're the best looking chap in the county. I was a dandy when I was young. It does me good to look at you if you don't care nothin' about fine clothes. Then you're as sharp as a razor. There ain't a man in No'th Caliny that can stand up agin you on the stump. I've heard 'em all. You'll be the Governor of this state.
That was always the climax of Tom's prophetic flattery. He could think of no grander end of a human life than to crown it in the Governor's Palace of North Carolina. He belonged to the old days when it was a bigger thing to be the Governor of a great state than to hold any office short of the Presidency,—when men resigned seats in the United States Senate to run for Governor, and when the national government was so puny a thing that the bankers of Europe refused to loan money on United States bonds unless countersigned by the State of Virginia. And that was not so long ago. The bankers sent that answer to Buchanan's Secretary of the Treasury.
"Tom, you've lifted me out of the dumps. I owe you a doctor's fee," cried Gaston with enthusiasm as he placed Flora back on the grass and started to his office.
"All I charge you is to come again. The old man's proud of his young friend. You make me feel like I'm somebody in the old world after all. And some day when you're great and rich and famous and the world's full of your name, I'll tell folks I know you like my own boy, and I'll brag about how many times you used to come to see me."
"Hush, Tom, you make me feel silly," said Gaston as he warmly pressed the old fellow's hand. He went back toward his office with lighter step and more buoyant heart. His mind was as clear as the noonday sun that was now flooding the green fresh world with its splendour. He
10.
CHAPTER X
THE HEART OF A VILLAIN
McLeod had developed into a man of undoubted power. He was but thirty-two years old, dictator of his party in the state.
He had the fighting temperament which Southern people demand in their leaders. With this temperament he combined the skill of subtle diplomatic tact. He had no moral scruples of any kind. The problem of expediency alone interested him in ethics.
McLeod's pet aversion was a preacher, especially a Baptist or a Methodist. His choicest oaths he reserved for them. He made a study of their weaknesses, and could tell dozens of stories to their discredit, many of them true. He had an instinct for finding their weak spots and holding them up to ridicule. He bought every book of militant infidelity he could find and memorised the bitterest of it. He took special pride in scoffing at religion before the young converts of Durham's church.
He was endowed with a personal magnetism that fascinated the young as the hiss of a snake holds a bird. His serious work was politics and sensualism. In politics he was at his best. Here he was cunning, plausible, careful, brilliant and daring. He never lost his head in defeat or victory. He never forgot a friend, or forgave an enemy. Of his foe he asked no quarter and gave none.
His ambitions were purely selfish. He meant to climb to the top. As to the means, the end would justify them. He preferred to associate with white people. But when it was necessary to win a negro, he never hesitated to go any length. The centre of the universe to his mind was A. McLeod.
He was fond of saying to a crowd of youngsters whom he taught to play poker and drink whiskey,
"Boys, I know the world. The great man is the man who gets there."
He was generous with his money, and the boys called him a jolly good fellow. He used to say in explanation of this careless habit,
"It won't do for an ordinary man to throw away money as I do. I play for big stakes. I'm not a spendthrift. I'm simply sowing seed. I can wait for the harvest."
And when they would admire this overmuch he would warn them,
"As a rule my advice is, Get money. Get it fairly and squarely if you can, but whatever you do,— get it. When you come right down to it, money's your first, last, best and only friend. Others promise well but when the scratch comes, they fail. Money never fails."
A boy of fifteen asked him one day when he was mellow with liquor,
"McLeod, which would you rather be, President of the United States or a big millionaire?"
"Boys," he replied, smacking his lips, and running his tongue around his cheeks inside and softly caressing them with one hand, while he half closed his eyes,
"They say old Simon Legree is worth fifty millions of dollars, and that his actual income is twenty per cent on that. They say he stole most of it, and that every dollar represents a broken life, and every cent of it could be painted red with the blood of his victims. Even so, I
And the shallow-pated satellites cheered this blasphemy with open-eyed wonder.
The weakest side of his nature was that turned toward women. He was vain as a peacock, and the darling wish of his soul was to be a successful libertine. This was the secret of the cruelty back of his desire of boundless wealth.
He had the intellectual forehead of his Scotch father, large, handsomely modelled features, nostrils that dilated and contracted widely, and the thick sensuous lips of his mother. His eyebrows were straight, thick and suggested undoubted force of intellect. His hair was a deep red, thick and coarse, but his moustache was finer and it was his special pride to point its delicately curved tips.
His vanity was being stimulated just now by two opposite forces. He was in love, as deeply as such a nature could love, with Sallie Worth. Her continued rejection of his suit had wounded his vanity, but had roused all pugnacity of his nature to strengthen this apparent weakness.
He had discovered recently that he exercised a potent influence over Mrs. Durham. The moment he was repulsed, his vanity turned for renewed strength toward her. He saw instantly the immense power even the slightest indiscretion on her part would give him over the Preacher's life. He knew that while he was not a demonstrative man, he loved his wife with intense devotion. He knew, too, that here was the Preacher's weakest spot. In his tireless devotion to his work, he had starved his wife's heart. He had noticed that she always called him "Dr. Durham" now, and that he had gradually fallen into the habit of calling her "Mrs. Durham."
This had been fixed in their habits, perhaps by the change from housekeeping to living at the hotel. Since old Aunt Mary's death, Mrs. Durham had given up her struggle with the modern negro servants, closed her house, and they had boarded for several years.
He saw that if he could entangle her name with his in the dirty gossip of village society, he could strike his enemy a mortal blow. He knew that she had grown more and more jealous of the crowds of silly women that always dog the heels of a powerful minister with flattery and open admiration. He determined to make the experiment.
Mrs. Durham, while nine years his senior, did not look a day over thirty. Her face was as smooth and soft and round as a girl's, her figure as straight and full, and her every movement instinct with stored vital powers that had never been drawn upon.
She was in a dangerous period of her mental development. She had been bitterly disappointed in life. Her loss of slaves and the ancestral prestige of great wealth had sent the steel shaft of a poisoned dagger into her soul. She was unreconciled to it. While she was passing through the anarchy of Legree's régime which followed the war, her unsatisfied maternal instincts absorbed her in the work of relieving the poor and the broken. But when the white race rose in its might and shook off this nightmare and order and a measure of prosperity had come, she had fallen back into brooding pessimism.
She had reached the hour of that soul crisis when she felt life would almost in a moment slip from her grasp, and she asked herself the question, "Have I lived?" And she could not answer.
She found herself asking the reason for things long accepted as fixed and eternal. What was good right and eternal? What was good, right, truth? And what made it good, right, or true?
And she beat the wings of her proud woman's head against the bars that held her, until tired, and bleeding she was exhausted but unconquered.
She was furious with McLeod for his open association with negro politicians.
"Allan, in my soul, I am ashamed for you when I see you thus degrade your manhood."
"Nonsense, Mrs. Durham," he replied, "the most beautiful flower grows in dirt, but the flower is not dirt."
"Well, I knew you were vain, but that caps the climax!"
"Isn't my figure true, whether you say I'm dog-fennel or a pink?"
"No, you are not a flower. Will is the soul of man. The flower is ruled by laws outside itself. A man's will is creative. You can make law. You can walk with your head among the stars, and you choose to crawl in a ditch. I am out of patience with you."
"But only for a purpose. You must judge by the end in view."
"There's no need to stoop so low."
"I assure you it is absolutely necessary to my aims in life. And they are high enough. I appreciate your interest in me, more than I dare to tell you. You have always been kind to me since I was a wild red-headed brute of a boy. And you have always been my supreme inspiration in work. While others have cursed and scoffed you smiled at me and your smile has warmed my heart in its blackest nights."
She looked at him with a mother-like tenderness.
"What ends could be high enough to justify such methods ?"
"I hate poverty and squalour. It's been my fate. I've sworn to climb out of it, if I have to fight or buy my
"But how can you walk arm in arm with a big black negro, as they say you do, to get his vote?"
"Simply because they represent 120,000 votes I need. You can't tell their colour when they get in the box. I use these fools as so many worms. My political creed is for public consumption only. I never allow anybody to impose on me. I don't allow even Allan McLeod to deceive me with a proper platform, or a lot of articulated wind. I'm not a preacher."
She winced at that shot, blushed and looked at him curiously for a moment.
"No, you are not a preacher. I wish you were a better man."
"So do I, when I am with you," he answered in a low serious voice.
"But I can't get over the sense of personal degradation involved in your association with negroes as your equal," she persisted.
"The trouble is you're an unreconstructed rebel. Women never really forgive a social wrong."
"I am unreconstructed," she snapped with pride.
"And you thank God daily for it, don't you?"
"Yes, I do. Human nature can't be reconstructed by the fiat of fools who tinker with laws," she cried.
These thousands of black votes are here. They've got to be controlled. I'm doing the job."
"You don't try to get rid of them."
"Get rid of them? Ye gods, that would be a task! The Negro is the sentimental pet of the nation. Put him on a continent alone, and he will sink like an iron
"Why don't you come out like a man and defy this horde of fools?"
"Martyrdom has become too cheap. The preachers have a hundred thousand missionaries now we are trying to support."
"Allan, I thought you held below the rough surface of your nature high ideals,—you don't mean this."
"What could one man do against these millions?"
"Do!" she cried, her face ablaze. The history of the world is made up of the individuality of a few men. A little Yankee woman wrote a crude book. The single act of that woman's will caused the war, killed a million men, desolated and ruined the South, and changed the history of the world. The single dauntless personality of George Washington three times saved the colonies from surrender and created the Republic. I am surprised to hear a man of your brain and reading talk like that!"
"When I am with you and hear your voice I have heroic impulses. You are the only human being with whom I would take the time to discuss this question. But the current is too strong. The other way is easier, and it serves my ends better. Besides, I am not sure it isn't better from every point of view. We've got the Negro here, and must educate him."
"Hush! Tell that to somebody that hates you, not to me," she cried.
"Don't you think we must educate them?"
"No, I think it is a crime."
"Would you leave them in ignorance, a threat to society ?"
"Yes, until they can be moved. When I see these young negro men and women coming out of their schools and colleges well dressed, with their shallow veneer of an imitation culture, I feel like crying over the farce."
"Surely, Mrs. Durham, you believe they are better fitted for life?
"They are not. They are lifted out of their only possible sphere of menial service, and denied any career. It is simply inhuman. They are led to certain slaughter of soul and body at last. It is a horrible tragedy!"
Allan looked at her, smiled, and replied, "I knew you were a bitter and brilliant woman but I didn't think you would go to such lengths even with your pet aversions."
"It's not an aversion, or a prejudice, sir. It's a simple fact of history. Education increases the power of the brain to think and the heart to suffer. Sooner or later these educated negroes feel the clutch of the iron hand of the white man's unwritten laws on their throat. They have their choice between a suicide's grave or a prison cell. And the numbers who dare the grave and the prison cell daily increase. The South is kinder to the Negro when he is kept in his place."
"You are a quarter of a century behind the times."
"Am I so old?" she laughed.
"The sentiment, not the woman. You are the most beautiful woman I ever saw."
"I like all my boys to feel that way about me."
"You don't class me quite with the rest, do you?"
She blushed the slightest bit. "'No, I've always taken a peculiar interest in you. I have quarrelled with everybody who has hated and spoken evil of you. I have always believed you were capable of a high and noble life of great achievement."
"And your faith in me has been my highest incentive to give the lie to my enemies and succeed. And I will. I will be the master of this state within two years. And I want you to remember that I lay it all at your feet. The world need not know it,—you know it." He spoke with intense earnestness.
"But I don't want you to make such a success at the price of Negro equality. I feel a sense of unspeakable degradation for you when I hear your name hissed. At least I was your teacher once. Come Allan, give up Negro politics and devote yourself to an honourable career in law!"
He shook his head with calm persistence.
"No, this is my calling."
"Then take a nobler one."
"To succeed grandly is the only title to nobility here."
"Is the Doctor on speaking terms with you now?"
"Oh! yes, I joke him about his hide-bound Bourbonism, and he tells me I am all sorts of a villain. But we have made an agreement to hate one another in a polite sort of way as becomes a teacher in Israel and a statesman with responsibilities. By the way, I saw him driving to the Springs with a bevy of pretty girls a few hours ago."
"Indeed, I didn't know it!"
"Yes, he seemed to be having a royal time and to have renewed his youth."
An angry flush came to her face and she made no reply. McLeod glanced at her furtively and smiled at this evidence that his shot had gone home.
"Would you drive with me to the Springs? We will get there before this party starts back." She hesitated, and answered, "yes."
18.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE WAYS OF BOSTON
When Helen Lowell reached Boston from her visit with Sallie Worth, she found her father in the midst of his political campaign. The Hon. Everett Lowell was the representative of Congress from the Boston Highlands district. His home was an old fashioned white Colonial house built during the American Revolution.
He was not a man of great wealth, but well-to-do, a successful politician, enthusiastic student, a graduate of Harvard, and he had always made a specialty of championing the cause of the "freedmen." He was a chronic proposer of a military force bill for the South.
His family was one of the proudest in America. He had a family tree five hundred years old—an unbroken line of unconquerable men who held liberty dearer than life. He believed in the heritage of good honest blood as he believed in blooded horses. His home was furnished in perfect taste, with beautiful old rosewood and mahogany stuff that had both character and history. On the walls hung the stately portraits of his ancestors representative of three hundred years of American life. He never confused his political theories about the abstract rights of the African with his personal choice of associates or his pride in his Anglo-Saxon blood. With him politics was one thing, society another.
His pet hobby, which combined in one his philanthropic
This young negro was a speaker of fair ability and was accompanying Lowell on his campaign tours of the district, making speeches for his patron, who had obtained for him a clerk's position in the United States Custom House. Harris was quite a drawing card at these meetings. He had a natural aptitude for politics; modest, affable handsome, and almost white, he was a fine argument in himself to support Lowell's political theories, who used him for all he was worth as he had at the previous election.
Harris had become a familiar figure at Lowell's home in the spacious library, where he had the free use of the books, and frequently he dined with the family, when there at dinner time hard at work on some political speech or some study for a piece of music.
Lowell had met his daughter at the depot behind his pair of Kentucky thoroughbreds. This daughter, his only child, was his pride and joy. She was a blonde beauty, and her resemblance to her father was remarkable. He was a widower, and this lovely girl, at once the incarnation of his lost love and so fair a reflection of his being, had ruled him with absolute sway during the past few years.
He was laughing like a boy at her coming.
"Oh! My beauty, the sight of your face gives me new life!" he cried smiling with love and admiration.
"You mustn't try to spoil me!" she laughed.
"Did you really have a good time in Dixie?" he whispered.
"Oh! Papa, such a time!" she exclaimed shutting her eyes as though she were trying to live it over again.
"Really?"
"Beaux, morning, noon and night,—dancing, moonlight rides, boats gliding along the beautiful river and mocking birds singing softly their love-song under the window all night!"
"Well you did have romance," he declared.
"Yes," she went on "and such people, such hospitality—oh! I feel as though I never had lived before."
"My dear, you mustn't desert us all like that," he protested.
"I can't help it, I'm a rebel now."
"Then keep still till the campaign's over!" he warned in mock fear.
"And the boys down there," she continued, "they are such boys! Time doesn't seem to be an object with them at all. Evidently they have never heard of our uplifting Yankee motto 'Time is money.' And such knightly deference! such charming old fashioned chivalrous ways!"
"But, dear, isn't that a little out of date?"
"How staid and proper and busy Boston seems! I know I am going to be depressed by it."
"I know what's the matter with you!" he whistled.
"What?" she slyly asked.
"One of those boys."
"I confess, Papa, he's as handsome as a prince."
"What does he look like?"
"He is tall, dark, with black hair, black eyes, slender, graceful, all fire and energy."
"What's his name?"
"St. Clare—Robert St. Clare. His father was away from home. He's a politician, I think."
"'You don't say! St. Clare. Well of all the jokes! His father is my Democratic chum in the House—an old fire-eating Bourbon, but a capital fellow."
"Did you ever see him?"
"No, but I've had good times with his father. He used to own a hundred slaves. He's a royal fellow, and pretty well fixed in life for a Southern politician. I don't think though I ever saw his boy. Anything really serious?"
"He hasn't said a word—but he's coming to see me next week."
"Well things are moving, I must say!"
"Yes, I pretended I must consult you, before telling him he could come. I didn't want to seem too anxious. I'm half afraid to let him wander about Boston much, there are too many girls here."
Her father laughed proudly and looked at her. "I hope you will find him all your heart most desires, and my congratulations on your first love!"
"It will be my last, too," she answered seriously.
"Ah! you're too young and petty to say that!"
"I mean it," she said earnestly with a smile trembling on her lips.
Her father was silent and pressed her hand for an answer. As they entered the gate of the house, they met young Harris coming out with some books under his arm. He bowed gracefully to them and passed on.
"Oh! Papa, I had forgotten all about your fad for that young negro!"
"Well, what of it, dear"
"You love me my very much, don't you?" she asked tenderly. "I'm going to ask you to be inconsistent, for my sake."
"That's easy. I'm often that for nobody's sake. Consistency is only the terror of weak minds."
"I'm going to ask you to keep that young negro out of the house when my Southern friends are here. After my sweetheart comes I expect Sallie and her mother. I wouldn't have either of them to meet him here in our
"Well, you have joined the rebels, haven't you?"
"You know I never did like negroes any way," she continued. "They always gave me the horrors. Young Harris is a scholarly gentleman, I know. He is good-looking, talented, and I've played his music for him sometimes to please you, but I can't get over that little kink in his hair, his big nostrils and full lips, and when he looks at me, it makes my flesh creep."
"Certainly, my darling, you don't need to coax me. The Lowells, I suspect, know by this time what is due to a guest. When your guests come, our home and our time are theirs. If eating meat offends, we will live on herbs. I'll send Harris down to the other side of the district and keep him at work there until the end of the campaign. My slightest wish is law for him."
"You see, Papa," she went on, "they never could understand that negro's easy ways around our house, and I know if he were to sit down at our table with them they would walk out of the dining-room with an excuse of illness and go home on the first train."
"And yet," returned her father lifting her from the carriage, "their homes were full of negroes were they not?"
"Yes, but they know their place. I've seen those beautiful Southern children kiss their old black 'Mammy.' It made me shudder, until I discovered they did it just as I kiss Fido."
"And this a daughter of Boston, the home of Garrison and Sumner!" he exclaimed.
"I've heard that Boston mobbed Garrison once," she observed.
"Yes, and I doubt if we have canonised Sumner yet. All right. If you say so, I'll order a steam calliope stationed
She laughed, and ran up the steps.
* * * * * *
Sallie determined to keep the secret of her sorrow in her own heart. On the ocean voyage she had cried the whole first day, and then kissed her lover's picture, put it down in the bottom of her trunk, brushed the tears away and determined the world should not look an her suffering.
She had written Helen of her lover's declaration, and of her happiness. She would find a good excuse for her sorrowful face in their separation. She knew he would write to her, for he had said so, and she had slipped the address into his hand as he left the car that night.
At first she was puzzled to think what she could do about answering these letters so Helen would not suspect her trouble. Then she hit on the plan of writing to him every day, posting the letters herself and placing them in her own trunk instead of the post-box.
"He will read them some day. They will relieve my heart," she sadly told herself.
Helen met her on the pier with a cry of girlish joy, and the first word she uttered was,
"Oh! Sallie, Bob loves me! He's been here two weeks, and he's just gone home. I have been in heaven. We are engaged!"
"Then I'll kiss you again, Helen!"—She gave her another kiss.
"And I've a big letter at home for you already! It's post-marked 'Hambright.' It came this morning. I know you will feast on it. If Bob don't write me faithfully I'll make him come here and live in Boston."
When Sallie got this letter, she sat down in her room,
She kissed the name and sighed. "Now I must go down and chat and smile with Helen. She's so silly about her own love, if I talk about Bob she will forget I live."
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