by Thomas Dixon
CHAPTER X
A NIGHT HAWK
When the old Commoner's private physician had gone and his mind had fullycleared, he would sit for hours in the sunshine of the vine-clad porch,asking Elsie of the village, its life, and its people. He smiledgood-naturedly at her eager sympathy for their sufferings as at theenthusiasm of a child who could not understand. He had come possessed by agreat idea--events must submit to it. Her assurance that the poverty andlosses of the people were far in excess of the worst they had known duringthe war was too absurd even to secure his attention.
He had refused to know any of the people, ignoring the existence ofElsie's callers. But he had fallen in love with Marion from the moment hehad seen her. The cold eye of the old fox hunter kindled with the fire ofhis forgotten youth at the sight of this beautiful girl seated on theglistening back of the mare she had saved from death.
As she rode through the village every boy lifted his hat as to passingroyalty, and no one, old or young, could allow her to pass without a cryof admiration. Her exquisite figure had developed into the full tropicsplendour of Southern girlhood.
She had rejected three proposals from ardent lovers, on one of whom hermother had quite set her heart. A great fear had grown in Mrs. Lenoir'smind lest she were in love with Ben Cameron. She slipped her arm aroundher one day and timidly asked her.
A faint flush tinged Marion's face up to the roots of her delicate blondehair, and she answered with a quick laugh:
"Mamma, how silly you are! You know I've always been in love withBen--since I can first remember. I know he is in love with Elsie Stoneman.I am too young, the world too beautiful, and life too sweet to grieve overmy first baby love. I expect to dance with him at his wedding, then meetmy fate and build my own nest."
Old Stoneman begged that she come every day to see him. He never tiredpraising her to Elsie. As she walked gracefully up to the house oneafternoon, holding Hugh by the hand, he said to Elsie:
"Next to you, my dear, she is the most charming creature I ever saw. Hertenderness for everything that needs help touches the heart of an old lameman in a very soft spot."
"I've never seen any one who could resist her," Elsie answered. "Hergloves may be worn, her feet clad in old shoes, yet she is always neat,graceful, dainty, and serene. No wonder her mother worships her."
Sam Ross, her simple friend, had stopped at the gate, and looked over intothe lawn as if afraid to come in.
When Marion saw Sam, she turned back to the gate to invite him in. Thekeeper of the poor, a vicious-looking negro, suddenly confronted him, andhe shrank in terror close to the girl's side.
"What you doin' here, sah?" the black keeper railed. "Ain't I done toleyou 'bout runnin' away?"
"You let him alone," Marion cried.
The negro pushed her roughly from his side and knocked Sam down. The girlscreamed for help, and old Stoneman hobbled down the steps, followingElsie.
When they reached the gate, Marion was bending over the prostrate form.
"Oh, my, my, I believe he's killed him!" she wailed.
"Run for the doctor, sonny, quick," Stoneman said to Hugh. The boy dartedaway and brought Dr. Cameron.
"How dare you strike that man, you devil?" thundered the old statesman.
"'Case I tole 'im ter stay home en do de wuk I put 'im at, en he all detime runnin' off here ter git somfin' ter eat. I gwine frail de life outen'im, ef he doan min' me."
"Well, you make tracks back to the Poorhouse. I'll attend to this man, andI'll have you arrested for this before night," said Stoneman, with ascowl.
The black keeper laughed as he left.
"Not 'less you'se er bigger man dan Gubner Silas Lynch, you won't!"
When Dr. Cameron had restored Sam, and dressed the wound on his head wherehe had struck a stone in falling, Stoneman insisted that the boy be put tobed.
Turning to Dr. Cameron, he asked:
"Why should they put a brute like this in charge of the poor?"
"That's a large question, sir, at this time," said the doctor politely,"and now that you have asked it, I have some things I've been longing foran opportunity to say to you."
"Be seated, sir," the old Commoner answered, "I shall be glad to hearthem."
Elsie's heart leaped with joy over the possible outcome of this appeal,and she left the room with a smile for the doctor.
"First, allow me," said the Southerner pleasantly, "to express my sorrowat your long illness, and my pleasure at seeing you so well. Your childrenhave won the love of all our people and have had our deepest sympathy inyour illness."
Stoneman muttered an inaudible reply, and the doctor went on:
"Your question brings up, at once, the problem of the misery anddegradation into which our country has sunk under negro rule----"
Stoneman smiled coldly and interrupted:
"Of course, you understand my position in politics, Doctor Cameron--I am aRadical Republican."
"So much the better," was the response. "I have been longing for months toget your ear. Your word will be all the more powerful if raised in ourbehalf. The negro is the master of our State, county, city, and towngovernments. Every school, college, hospital, asylum, and poorhouse is hisprey. What you have seen is but a sample. Negro insolence grows beyondendurance. Their women are taught to insult their old mistresses and mocktheir poverty as they pass in their old, faded dresses. Yesterday a blackdriver struck a white child of six with his whip, and when the motherprotested, she was arrested by a negro policeman, taken before a negromagistrate, and fined $10 for 'insulting a freedman.'"
Stoneman frowned: "Such things must be very exceptional."
"They are everyday occurrences and cease to excite comment. Lynch, theLieutenant-Governor, who has bought a summer home here, is urging thiscampaign of insult with deliberate purpose----"
The old man shook his head. "I can't think the Lieutenant-Governor guiltyof such petty villainy."
"Our school commissioner," the doctor continued, "is a negro who canneither read nor write. The black grand jury last week discharged a negrofor stealing cattle and indicted the owner for false imprisonment. No suchrate of taxation was ever imposed on a civilized people. A tithe of itcost Great Britain her colonies. There are 5,000 homes in thiscounty--2,900 of them are advertised for sale by the sheriff to meet histax bills. This house will be sold next court day----"
Stoneman looked up sharply. "Sold for taxes?"
"Yes; with the farm which has always been Mrs. Lenoir's support. In parther loss came from the cotton tax. Congress, in addition to the desolationof war, and the ruin of black rule, has wrung from the cotton farmers ofthe South a tax of $67,000,000. Every dollar of this money bears the stainof the blood of starving people. They are ready to give up, or to springsome desperate scheme of resistance----"
The old man lifted his massive head and his great jaws came together witha snap:
"Resistance to the authority of the National Government?"
"No; resistance to the travesty of government and the mockery ofcivilization under which we are being throttled! The bayonet is now in thehands of a brutal negro militia. The tyranny of military martinets waschild's play to this. As I answered your call this morning I was stoppedand turned back in the street by the drill of a company of negroes underthe command of a vicious scoundrel named Gus who was my former slave. Heis the captain of this company. Eighty thousand armed negro troops,answerable to no authority save the savage instincts of their officers,terrorize the State. Every white company has been disarmed and disbandedby our scallawag Governor. I tell you, sir, we are walking on the crust ofa volcano----"
Old Stoneman scowled as the doctor rose and walked nervously to the windowand back.
"An appeal from you to the conscience of the North might save us," he wenton eagerly. "Black hordes of former slaves, with the intelligence ofchildren and the instincts of savages, armed with modern rifles, paradedaily in front of their unarmed former masters. A white man has no right anegro need respect. Th
e children of the breed of men who speak the tongueof Burns and Shakespeare, Drake and Raleigh, have been disarmed and madesubject to the black spawn of an African jungle! Can human flesh endureit? When Goth and Vandal barbarians overran Rome, the negro was the slaveof the Roman Empire. The savages of the North blew out the light ofAncient Civilization, but in all the dark ages which followed they neverdreamed the leprous infamy of raising a black slave to rule over hisformer master! No people in the history of the world have ever before beenso basely betrayed, so wantonly humiliated and degraded!"
Stoneman lifted his head in amazement at the burst of passionate intensitywith which the Southerner poured out his protest.
"For a Russian to rule a Pole," he went on, "a Turk to rule a Greek, or anAustrian to dominate an Italian is hard enough, but for a thick-lipped,flat-nosed, spindle-shanked negro, exuding his nauseating animal odour, toshout in derision over the hearths and homes of white men and women is anatrocity too monstrous for belief. Our people are yet dazed by its horror.My God! when they realize its meaning, whose arm will be strong enough tohold them?"
"I should think the South was sufficiently amused with resistance toauthority," interrupted Stoneman.
"Even so. Yet there is a moral force at the bottom of every living race ofmen. The sense of right, the feeling of racial destiny--these areunconquered and unconquerable forces. Every man in South Carolina to-dayis glad that slavery is dead. The war was not too great a price for us topay for the lifting of its curse. And now to ask a Southerner to be theslave of a slave----"
"And yet, Doctor," said Stoneman coolly, "manhood suffrage is the oneeternal thing fixed in the nature of Democracy. It is inevitable."
"At the price of racial life? Never!" said the Southerner, with fieryemphasis. "This Republic is great, not by reason of the amount of dirt wepossess, the size of our census roll, or our voting register--we are greatbecause of the genius of the race of pioneer white freemen who settledthis continent, dared the might of kings, and made a wilderness the homeof Freedom. Our future depends on the purity of this racial stock. Thegrant of the ballot to these millions of semi-savages and the riot ofdebauchery which has followed are crimes against human progress."
"Yet may we not train him?" asked Stoneman.
"To a point, yes, and then sink to his level if you walk as his equal inphysical contact with him. His race is not an infant; it is adegenerate--older than yours in time. At last we are face to face with theman whom slavery concealed with its rags. Suffrage is but the new papercloak with which the Demagogue has sought to hide the issue. Can weassimilate the negro? The very question is pollution. In Hayti no whiteman can own land. Black dukes and marquises drive over them and swear atthem for getting under their wheels. Is civilization a patent cloak withwhich law-tinkers can wrap an animal and make him a king?"
"But the negro must be protected by the ballot," protested the statesman."The humblest man must have the opportunity to rise. The real issue isDemocracy."
"The issue, sir, is Civilization! Not whether a negro shall be protected,but whether Society is worth saving from barbarism."
"The statesman can educate," put in the Commoner.
The doctor cleared his throat with a quick little nervous cough he was inthe habit of giving when deeply moved.
"Education, sir, is the development of that which _is_. Since the dawn ofhistory the negro has owned the continent of Africa--rich beyond the dreamof poet's fancy, crunching acres of diamonds beneath his bare black feet.Yet he never picked one up from the dust until a white man showed to himits glittering light. His land swarmed with powerful and docile animals,yet he never dreamed a harness, cart, or sled. A hunter by necessity, henever made an axe, spear, or arrowhead worth preserving beyond the momentof its use. He lived as an ox, content to graze for an hour. In a land ofstone and timber he never sawed a foot of lumber, carved a block, or builta house save of broken sticks and mud. With league on league of oceanstrand and miles of inland seas, for four thousand years he watched theirsurface ripple under the wind, heard the thunder of the surf on his beach,the howl of the storm over his head, gazed on the dim blue horizon callinghim to worlds that lie beyond, and yet he never dreamed a sail! He livedas his fathers lived--stole his food, worked his wife, sold his children,ate his brother, content to drink, sing, dance, and sport as the ape!
"And this creature, half child, half animal, the sport of impulse, whim,and conceit, 'pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw,' a being who,left to his will, roams at night and sleeps in the day, whose speech knowsno word of love, whose passions, once aroused, are as the fury of thetiger--they have set this thing to rule over the Southern people----"
The doctor sprang to his feet, his face livid, his eyes blazing withemotion. "Merciful God--it surpasses human belief!"
He sank exhausted in his chair, and, extending his hand in an eloquentgesture, continued:
"Surely, surely, sir, the people of the North are not mad? We can yetappeal to the conscience and the brain of our brethren of a common race?"
Stoneman was silent as if stunned. Deep down in his strange soul he wasdrunk with the joy of a triumphant vengeance he had carried locked in thedepths of his being, yet the intensity of this man's suffering for apeople's cause surprised and distressed him as all individual pain hurthim.
Dr. Cameron rose, stung by his silence and the consciousness of thehostility with which Stoneman had wrapped himself.
"Pardon my apparent rudeness, Doctor," he said at length, extending hishand. "The violence of your feeling stunned me for the moment. I'm obligedto you for speaking. I like a plain-spoken man. I am sorry to learn of thestupidity of the former military commandant in this town----"
"My personal wrongs, sir," the doctor broke in, "are nothing!"
"I am sorry, too, about these individual cases of suffering. They are thenecessary incidents of a great upheaval. But may it not all come out rightin the end? After the Dark Ages, day broke at last. We have the printingpress, railroad, and telegraph--a revolution in human affairs. We may doin years what it took ages to do in the past. May not the black manspeedily emerge? Who knows? An appeal to the North will be a waste ofbreath. This experiment is going to be made. It is written in the book ofFate. But I like you. Come to see me again."
Dr. Cameron left with a heavy heart. He had grown a great hope in thislong-wished-for appeal to Stoneman. It had come to his ears that the oldman, who had dwelt as one dead in their village, was a power.
It was ten o'clock before the doctor walked slowly back to the hotel. Ashe passed the armoury of the black militia, they were still drilling underthe command of Gus. The windows were open, through which came the steadytramp of heavy feet and the cry of "Hep! Hep! Hep!" from the Captain'sthick cracked lips. The full-dress officer's uniform, with its goldepaulets, yellow stripes, and glistening sword, only accentuated thecoarse bestiality of Gus. His huge jaws seemed to hide completely the goldbraid on his collar.
The doctor watched, with a shudder, his black bloated face covered withperspiration and the huge hand gripping his sword.
They suddenly halted in double ranks and Gus yelled:
"Odah, arms!"
The butts of their rifles crashed to the floor with precision, and theywere allowed to break ranks for a brief rest.
They sang "John Brown's Body," and as its echoes died away a big negroswung his rifle in a circle over his head, shouting:
"Here's your regulator for white trash! En dey's nine hundred ob 'em indis county!"
"Yas, Lawd!" howled another.
"We got 'em down now en we keep 'em dar, chile!" bawled another.
The doctor passed on slowly to the hotel. The night was dark, the streetswere without lights under their present rulers, and the stars were hiddenwith swift-flying clouds which threatened a storm. As he passed under theboughs of an oak in front of his house, a voice above him whispered:
"A message for you, sir."
Had the wings of a spirit suddenly brushed his cheek, he woul
d not havebeen more startled.
"Who are you?" he asked, with a slight tremor.
"A Night Hawk of the Invisible Empire, with a message from the GrandDragon of the Realm," was the low answer, as he thrust a note in thedoctor's hand. "I will wait for your answer."
The doctor fumbled to his office on the corner of the lawn, struck amatch, and read:
"A great Scotch-Irish leader of the South from Memphis is here to-nightand wishes to see you. If you will meet General Forrest, I will bring himto the hotel in fifteen minutes. Burn this. Ben."
The doctor walked quickly back to the spot where he had heard the voice,and said:
"I'll see him with pleasure."
The invisible messenger wheeled his horse, and in a moment the echo of hismuffled hoofs had died away in the distance.
