"But what can be done for their elevation and relief, or to prevent the establishment of a medieval barbarism in our midst?" asked the doctor anxiously.
"Well, Doctor," said the Fool jocosely, "that question is for some one else to answer, and it must be answered in deeds, too, and not in words. I have given the years of my manhood to the consideration of these questions, and am accounted a fool in consequence. It seems to me that the cure for these evils is in a nutshell. The remedy, however, is one that must be applied from the outside. The sick man can not cure himself. The South will never purge itself of the evils which affect it. Its intellect, its pride, its wealth, in short, its power, is all arrayed against even the slow and tedious development which time and semi-barbarism would bring. Hour by hour, the chains will be riveted closer. Look at the history of slavery in our land! See how the law-makers, the courts, public sentiment, and all the power of the land, grew year by year more harsh and oppressive on the slave and his congener, the 'free person of color,' in all the slave States! I see you remember it, old friend. In direct conflict with all the predictions of statesmen, the thumb-screws of oppression were given a new and sharper turn with every passing year. The vestiges of liberty and right were shred away by legislative enactment, and the loop-holes of mercy closed by judicial construction, until only the black gulf of hopeless servitude remained."
"I see the prospect, and admit the truth of your prevision; but I do not get your idea of a remedy," said the elder man doubtfully.
"Well, you see that the remedy is not from within," said the Fool. "The minority knows its power, and the majority realizes its weakness so keenly as to render that impossible. That which has made bulldozing possible renders progress impossible. Then it seems to me that the question is already answered, — It must be from without!"
"But how?" queried the old man impatiently.
"How?" said the Fool. "I am amazed that you do not see; that the country will not see; or rather, that, seeing, they will let the ghost of a dogma, which rivers of blood have been shed to lay, frighten them from adopting the course which lies before us, broad and plain as the king's highway: The remedy for darkness is light; for ignorance, knowledge; for wrong, righteousness."
"True enough as an abstraction, my friend; but how shall it be reduced to practice?" queried his listener.
"The Nation nourished and protected slavery. The fruitage of slavery has been the ignorant freedman, the ignorant poor white man, and the arrogant master. The impotence of the freedman, the ignorance of the poor-white, the arrogance of the late master, are all the result of national power exercised in restraint of free thought, free labor, and free speech. Now, let the Nation undo the evil it has permitted and encouraged. Let it educate those whom it made ignorant, and protect those whom it made weak. It is not a matter of favor to the black, but of safety to the Nation. Make the spelling-book the scepter of national power. Let the Nation educate the colored man and the poor-white man because the Nation held them in bondage, and is responsible for their education; educate the Voter because the Nation can not afford that he should be ignorant. Do not try to shuffle off the responsibility, nor cloak the danger. Honest ignorance in the masses is more to be dreaded than malevolent intelligence in the few. It furnished the rank and file of rebellion and the prejudice-blinded multitudes who made the Policy of Repression effectual. Poor-Whites, Freedmen, Ku-Klux, and Bulldozers are all alike the harvest of ignorance. The Nation can not afford to grow such a crop."
"But how," asked the doctor, "shall these citizens of the States be educated by the Government without infringement of the rights of the States?"
"Ah, my good old friend," said Servosse, rising, and placing a hand upon the other's shoulder, "I will leave you, now that you have brought out for me to worship that Juggernaut of American politics by which so many hecatombs have been crushed and mangled. This demon required a million lives before he would permit slavery to be abolished: perhaps as many more would induce him to let the fettered souls be unbound and made free."
"You are bitter, my son," said the old man, rising also, and looking into his companion's eyes with a glance of calm reproof. "Do not indulge that spirit. Be patient, and remember that you would have felt just as we of your native North now feel, but for the glare of slumbering revolution in which you have lived. The man who has been in the crater ought not to wonder at his calmness who has only seen the smoke. I have often thought that St. Paul would have been more forbearing with his Jewish brethren if he had always kept in mind the miracle required for his own conversion."
"Perhaps you are right, Doctor," said the Fool; but ought not something also be allowed to the zeal of the poor old Jonah who disturbed the slumbers of Nineveh? At any rate, I leave your question for the Wise Men to answer. I will only say two words about it. The South — that pseudo South which has the power — does not wish this thing to be done to her people, and will oppose it with might and main. If done at all, it must be done by the North — by the Nation moved, instigated, and controlled by the North, I mean — in its own self-defense. It must be an act of sovereignty, an exercise of power. The Nation expected the liberated slave to be an ally of freedom. It was altogether right and proper that it should desire and expect this. But it made the fatal mistake of expecting the freedman to do successful battle on his part of the line, without training or knowledge. This mistake must be remedied. As to the means, I feel sure that when the Nation has smarted enough for its folly, it will find a way to undo the evil, whether the State-Rights Moloch stand in the way, or not."
CHAPTER XLVI
HOME AT LAST
Table of Contents
THE year had nearly passed; and Comfort Servosse returned to Warrington a little in advance of the time set for his family to come, in order to see that the place was duly prepared for their reception.
He had been engaged by a company of capitalists to take charge of their interests in one of the republics of Central America. The work was of the most important character, not only to the parties having a pecuniary interest therein, but also as having a weighty bearing upon that strange contest between civilization and semi-barbarism which is constantly being waged in that wonderfully strange region, where Nature seems to have set her subtlest forces in battle-array against what, in these modern times, is denominated "progress." While the earth produces in an abundance unknown to other regions, the mind seems stricken with irresistible lassitude, and only the monitions of sense seem able to awaken the body from lethargic slumber.
The struggle suited his adventurous nature, and the enterprise afforded scope for his powers of projection and organization. He had returned only to fulfill the family compact, and meant, when the months of respite were over, to take back his household to a mountain villa in that land of the sun where the delights of nature are so sweetly blended, and incessantly varied, and its extremes so tempered by the concurring influences of wind and wave and mountain-heights, that the traveler wonders if the Fountain of Youth and the Aiden of sinless bliss are not yet to be found amid its enchantments.
On his return, he had to pass through that belt in the Southern States, where science is periodically called upon to wage unsuccessful warfare with that most inscrutable form of disease, that plague, which mocks at human skill. Two or three, upon whose brows the fell destroyer had already set his brazen seal, had been taken from the very train which brought him northward towards Warrington. He had wondered at the mystery before which science is as powerless as superstition, as he saw them borne from the train, which sped on its hurried way as if fleeing from the pestilence. He had seen, wondered, and swept on, thinking no more of the strange, sad fact of inexplicable doom.
It was the second morning after his return to Warrington. The day before, oppressed with the lassitude which always follows a long journey, he had wandered aimlessly about the familiar grounds. The colored people had gathered to welcome him, asking and answering a thousand interrogatories. In little groups of four and five
they had dropped in on the way to church (for it was the Sabbath) and on their return. All day long he had been repeatedly called on to rack his memory in order to recognize some once familiar face. Andy and his good wife were in a seventh heaven of delight. Old Lollard had recognized his master's whistle, and stiff with age, and almost blind, had followed him with sad pertinacity from place to place in the grounds. The house, the library, the lawn, were alive with pleasant memories of the loved ones whom he was soon to meet. His old neighbors dropped in: Eyebright and Nelson; John Burleson, still clamorous and insubordinate; the irrepressible Vaughn, still vaporing and effusive, but kindly flavored at the core; Durfee and Dawson, and a hundred more, — came to shake his hand, and chat of that past which was full of the shades of others whom they would greet no more, and waken memories of those days when his heart-strings were bound so close around a grand idea, which had yielded, as it seemed, only a Sodom-like fruitage of ashen words.
The night had found him sad and weary, his heart full of grateful tears for the pleasant greetings he had received, and fuller yet of tenderer tears for those whose greetings he had missed. He longed more than ever for the coming of his loved ones, and for the lapse of the brief period allotted for his stay amid the old familiar scenes. It was no longer home, but only the sepulcher of a dead past, whose joys had flitted with its sorrows, and brought but the sadness of the grave into his heart as they swept by in the funereal ghastliness of shadowy unreality.
When he woke in the morning, he felt a lethargic sensation, which he tried in vain to throw off. There were dull, heavy pains about the head, too, and sharp, shooting ones here and there in chest and limb. His feet dragged wearily. There was a burning sensation somewhere, he could not tell exactly where. He thought he would try a bath, and Andy prepared him one, — a great tub of the sparkling spring-water which used to be so grateful to his weary limbs, — ages ago, it seemed. He only dabbled in it with his hands and feet: the sun-burnished wavelets seemed full of barbed arrows to his strangely fevered flesh. When he dozed a little, the air seemed full of bright scintillating sparks.
Andy called in Dr. Gates, who happened to be passing.
"Good-morning, Colonel! Glad to see you," said the cheerful-minded physician, whose hair and beard Time had succeeded in bleaching, but whose rotund form, keen eye, and bounding heart seemed to bid him an unceasing defiance. "Got you down at last, eh?" he continued jocularly. "I was afraid I should never get a chance at you. That constitution of yours is magnificent. Used to think you were made of whip-cord. Been to Central America, eh? Going back there? And Miss Lily and the Madam — where are they?"
Servosse answered dully and wearily. The doctor watched him keenly.
"Let me feel your pulse, please."
"Ah! a little feverish considerably so. Bilious? No? Let me see your tongue. That will do. Where's that boy?"
The doctor went out upon the porch, and called, "Andy! O Andy! come here!" When the boy came, he asked him a great many questions. Then he went back, and examined his patient again very carefully. Then he recalled Andy, and said to him, —
"Andy, you think a good deal of the Colonel, don't you?"
"I should think I did, sir! More'n ub anybody else I ebber seed."
"Enough to stand by him, even at the risk of your life?"
Andy looked around at the bright sunshine, and thought of the wife, and three ebon-hued children who were sprawling about the kitchen.
"Because, if you don't," said the doctor, who had watched him keenly, "I must get some one else."
That settled it.
"Nobody else ain't gwine ter nuss de kunnel, dat's shore!" he said with emphasis. "I'll do it."
"The Colonel is going to be mighty sick, Andy, and the disease may be contagious, — catching, you know. I don't think there's very much danger; but he's got to have some one to stay right by him all the time."
"All right, Doctor, I'll do it," said the colored man promptly.
"Very well, Andy," said the Doctor. "I'll get some one to help you: but you must always be here; you mustn't leave the house. A heap depends on the nursing he gets, and you know there's none of his own folks here to take care of him."
"Nebber you mind, Doctor," said Andy. "Kunnel Servosse won't have no lack ub 'tention while dar's a colored man lives dat ebber seed his face. I can git plenty ub 'em to help me."
"But you must not leave the house."
"Don't want to. They'll come here."
"All right. I shall be out two or three times a day till it's over. Go and tell your wife; bid her not to trouble you, nor be alarmed."
"Don't you be afraid fer her, Doctor," said Andy stoutly: "she'd go jes' as fur ez I would ter sarve de Kunnel.
The colored man did as directed, and, returning to the room where Servosse lay, received minute directions as to his care. While the doctor was engaged in giving these, Servosse roused himself from the stupor into which he had fallen, and listened to the conversation between his physician and his nurse.
"You think me pretty sick, Doctor?" he asked presently.
"Pretty sick," answered the doctor sententiously, as he went on putting up his prescription.
"Very sick, perhaps, Doctor?"
"Well, yes, very sick, Colonel."
"What is the matter?"
"Well, you have some fever, you know."
"You are trying to deceive me, Doctor," said the patient. "Don't do it. I have heard and noted enough of what you have done and said since you have been here, to know that you consider the case a very serious one. Let me know now just how serious."
"I do not wish to alarm you needlessly, and the disease has not yet developed so that I can speak with certainty," replied the doctor.
"You are still evasive, Doctor," said Servosse. "Well, then, let me tell you what I think is your opinion. You think I have the yellow-fever."
"I can not deny, Colonel, that I have such a suspicion. You have just come through the infected belt, and your symptoms certainly do point that way. But then we are very often mistaken in those things. The symptoms of yellow-fever are not at first sufficiently distinctive to enable a physician who has not recently met it to pronounce with certainty in regard to it. Now, I haven't seen a case of yellow fever in — let me see — twenty years and better. And, for that matter, I hoped I never should see another. But your case does look very like what I remember of that. So far as concerns the technical symptoms, those we find in the books, they are at first about the same as other fevers of its class."
"I have no doubt your surmise is correct," answered Servosse calmly. "I remember now that two cases of the fever, or what was said to be the fever, were taken off the train at Meridien when I came through."
"Well," said the physician, "the best way is to treat it for that, anyhow. There is a fair chance, even with Yellow Jack, when one has your courage and constitutional stamina. We'll do the best we can, Colonel, and I trust you may pull through."
The doctor had completed his directions, and was about to leave, when his patient said earnestly, —
"Doctor, you said just now that it was wise to treat this as if you were sure of the worst. I think that is true for me too. I ought to do as I would if I were sure of the worst. I have not much to do, but I must do that now. How long before this thing will be over — if — if you are correct?"
"Well," said the doctor, "in that case — well, the worst ought to be over by, say, Saturday."
"Thank you, Doctor," said the patient solemnly. "Now, if you will wait on the porch a little while? I am sorry to detain you; but I must do a little writing, and wish you would stay until it is done. Andy will wait on me," he added in reply to a questioning look.
"Certainly, Colonel," answered the doctor; "and you had better make all your arrangements for — well, for a long sickness, anyhow."
"I understand," said the patient quietly.
Nearly an hour passed by before the doctor was called in again.
"My head is a little confused
, Doctor," said the sick man; "and I wish you would glance over this codicil which I have added to my will, just to see that it is properly expressed."
The doctor read it aloud.
"That will do," said Servosse: "I merely wished to leave some directions as to my burial, and so forth. I thought of it yesterday. I don't know why; but there came over me a sort of impression that I should not live long, and I thought, that, if I should die here, I would like to select my burial-place, and prescribe the inscription on my tomb."
"But this — you are quite sure this is what you wish?" asked the doctor. "Your head is not" —
"Oh, yes! my head is all right," said the sick man with an amused smile. "You need not have any fear about that. I have said what I mean, and mean what I say. — Then there is, the little legacy to Andy and his heirs; that is, on condition that he nurse me through my last sickness. That is all right. Now, Doctor, I wish you and Andy to witness this will. I had always intended to leave it as a holograph; but it is perhaps as well to have it attested, under the circumstances."
A Fool's Errand & Bricks without Straw Page 38
