9078
LOCAL institution in which “the gang” was more or less interested was known as the “Darley Club.” It occupied the entire upper floor of a considerable building on the main street, and had been organized, primarily, by the older married men of the town to give the young men of the best families a better meeting-place than the bar-rooms and offices of the hotels. At first the older men looked in occasionally to see that the rather rigid rules of the institution were being kept. But men of middle-age and past, who have comfortable firesides, are not fond of the noisy gatherings of their original prototypes, and the Club was soon left to the management of the permanent president, Mr. Wade Tingle, editor of theHeadlight.
Wade endeavored, to the best of his genial nature, to enforce all rules, collect all dues, and impose all fines, but he wasn't really the man for the place. He accepted what cash was handed to him, trying to remember the names of the payers and amounts as he wrote his editorials, political notes, and social gossip, ending up at the end of each month with no money at all to pay the rent or the wages of the negro factotum. However, there was always an outlet from this embarrassment, for Wade had only to draw a long face as he met some of the well-to-do stay-at-homes and say that “club expenses were somehow running short,” and without question the shortage was made up. Wade had tried to be officially stern, too, on occasion. Once when Keith Gordon had violated what Wade termed club discipline, not to say club etiquette, Wade threatened to be severe. But it happened to be a point upon which there was a division of opinion, and Keith also belonged to “the gang.” It had happened this way: Keith had a certain corner in the Club reading-room where he was wont to write his letters of an evening, and coming down after supper one night he discovered that the attendant had locked the door and gone off to supper. Keith was justly angry. He stood at the door for a few minutes, and then, being something of an athlete, he stepped back, made a run the width of the sidewalk, and broke the lock, left the door hanging on a single hinge, and went up and calmly wrote his letters. As has been intimated, Wade took a serious view of this violation of club dignity, his main contention being that Keith ought to have the lock repaired and the hinge replaced. However, Keith just as firmly stood on his rights, his contention being that a member of the Club in good standing could not be withheld from his rights by the mere carelessness of a negro or a twenty-five cent cast-iron lock. So it was that, in commemoration of the incident, the door remained without the lock and hinge for many a day.
It was in this building that the grand ball in honor of Helen Warren's home-coming was to be given. During the entire preceding day Bob Smith and Keith Gordon worked like happy slaves. The floor had been roughened by roller-skating, and a carpenter with plane and sand-paper was smoothing it, Bob giving it its finishing touch by whittling sperm candles over it and rubbing in the shavings with the soles of his shoes as he pirouetted about, his right arm curved around an imaginary waist. The billiard-tables were pushed back against the wall, the ladies' dressing-rooms thoroughly scoured and put in order, and the lamps cleaned and trimmed. Keith had brought down from his home some fine oil-paintings, and these were hung appropriately. But Keith'schef-d'ouvreof arrangement and decoration was a happy inspiration, and he was enjoining it on the initiated ones to keep it as a surprise for Helen. He had once heard her say that her favorite flower was the wild daisy, and as they were now in bloom, and grew in profusion in the fields around the town, Keith had ordered several wagon-loads of them gathered, and now the walls of the ballroom were fairly covered with them. Graceful festoons of the flowers hung from the ceiling, draped the doorways, and rose in beautiful mounds on the white-clothed refreshment-tables.
As a special favor he admitted Carson Dwight in at the carefully guarded door at dusk on the evening of the ball, first drawing down the blinds and lighting the candles and lamps that his chum might have the full benefit of the scene as it would strike Helen on her arrival.
“Isn't that simply superb?” he asked. “Do you reckon they gave her anything prettier while she was down there? I don't believe it, Carson. I think this is the dandiest room a girl ever tripped a toe in.”
“Yes, it's all right,” Dwight said, admiringly. “It is really great, and she will appreciate it keenly. She is that way.”
“I think so myself,” said Keith. “I've been nervous all day, though, old man. I've been watching every train.”
“Afraid the band wouldn't come?” asked Dwight.
“No, those coons can be depended on; they will be down in full force with the best figure-caller in the South. No, I was afraid, though, that Helen might have written to that Augusta chump, and that he would come up. That certainly would give the thing cold feet.”
“Ah!” Carson exclaimed; “I see.”
“The dear girl wouldn't rub it in on us to that extent, old man,” Keith said. “I know it now. She really may be engaged to him, and she may not, but she knows how we feel, and it's bully of her not to invite him. It would really have been a wet blanket to the whole business. We'd have to treat him decently, as a visitor, you know, but I'd rather have taken castor-oil for my part of it. All the gang except you were over to see her Sunday afternoon; why didn't you go?”
“Oh, you know I live only next door, with an open gate between, and I thought I'd better give my place to you fellows who don't have my opportunity. I've already seen her. In fact, she ran over to see my mother yesterday.”
The ball was in full swing when Carson arrived that night. The street in front of the club was crowded with carriages, buggies, and livery-stable “hacks.” The introductory grand march was in progress, and when Carson went to the improvised dressing-room in charge of Skelt to check his hat he found Garner standing before a mirror tugging at the lapels of an evening coat and trying to adjust a necktie which kept climbing higher than it should. Darley was just at the point in its post-bellum struggle where evening dress for men was a thing more of the luxurious past than the stern present, and Dwight readily saw that his partner had persuaded himself for once to don borrowed plumage.
“What's the matter?” Carson asked, as he thrust his hat-check into the pocket of his immaculate white waistcoat.
“Oh, the damn thing don't fit!” said Garner, in high disgust. “I know now that my father has a hump, or did have when he ordered this suit for his wedding-trip. The tailor who designed thiscosteem de swaraytried to help him out, but he has transferred the hump to me by other means than heredity. Look how the back of it sticks out from my neck!”
“That's because you twist your body to see it in the glass,” said Carson, consolingly. “It's not so bad when you stand straight.”
“It's a case of not seeing others as they see you, eh?” Garner said, better satisfied. “I haven't taken a chew of tobacco to-night. I wouldn't splotch this shirt for the world. I couldn't spit farther than an inch with this collar on, anyway. She's holding the reel for me. I can't dance anything else, but I can go through that pretty well if I get at the end and watch the others. You'd better hurry up and see her card. There is a swell gang coming on the ten-o'clock train from Atlanta, and they all know her.”
It was during the interval following the third number on the programme that Carson met Helen promenading with Keith and offered her his arm.
“Oh, isn't it simply superb?” she said, when Keith had bowed himself away and they had joined the other strollers round the big, flower-perfumed room. “Carson, really I actually cried for joy just now in the dressing-room. I declare I never want to go away from home again. I'll never have such devoted friends as these.”
“It is nice of you to look at it that way, Helen,” he said, “after the gay time you have had in Augusta and other cities.”
“At least it is honest and sincere here at home,” she answered, “while down there it is—well, full of strife, social competition, and jealousies. I really; got homesick and simply had to come back.”
“We are simply delighted to have you again,” he said, almost fearing to look upon her, for in her exquisite evening gown and the proud poise of her head she seemed more beautiful and imperious, and farther removed from his hopes than he had thought her even in the darkest hours of her first refusal to condone his fatal offence.
She was looking straight into his eyes with a thoughtful, questioning stare, when she said: “They all seem the same, Carson, except you. Bob Smith, Keith, and even Mr. Garner are just like I left them, but somehow you are altered. You look so much older, so much more serious. Is it politics that is weighing you down—making you worry?”
“Well,” he laughed, evasively, “politics is not exactly the easiest game in the world, and the bare fear that I may not succeed, after all, is enough to make a fellow of my temperament worry. It seems to be my last throw of the dice, Helen. My father will lose all faith in me if this does not go through.”
“Yes, I know it is serious,” the girl said. “Keith and Mr. Garner have talked to me about it. They say they have never seen you so much absorbed in anything before. You really must win, Carson—you simply must!”
“But this is no time to talk over sordid politics,” he said, with a smile. “This is your party and it must be made delightful.”
“Oh, I have my worries, too,” she said, gravely. “I felt a queer twinge of conscience to-night when all the servants came to see me before I left home. They were all so happy except Mam' Linda. She tried to act like the rest, but, Carson, her trouble about that worthless boy is actually killing the dear old woman. She has her pride, too, and it has been wounded to the quick. She was always proud of the fact that my father never had whipped one of his slaves. I've heard her boast of it a hundred times; and now that she no longer belongs to us in reality, and her only child was beaten so cruelly, she simply can't get over it.”
“I knew she felt that way,” Dwight said, sympathetically.
Helen's hand tightened unconsciously on his arm as they were passing by the corner containing the orchestra. “Do you know,” she said, “Mam' Linda told me that of all the people who had been to see her since then that you had been the kindest, most thoughtful, the most helpful? Carson, that was very, very sweet of you.”
“I was only electioneering,” he said, with a flush. “I was after Uncle Lewis's vote and Mam' Linda's influence.”
“No, you were not,” Helen declared. “It was pure, unadulterated unselfishness on your part. You were sorry for her and for Uncle Lewis and even Pete, who certainly needed punishment of some sort for the way he's been conducting himself. Yes, it was only your good heart. I know that, for several persons have told me you have even gone so far as to let the affair hamper you in your political career. Oh, I know all about what your opponent is saying, and I know mountain people well enough to know you have given him a powerful weapon. They are terribly wrought up over the race troubles, and it would be easy enough for them to misunderstand your exact feeling. Oh, Carson, you must not let even Mam' Linda's trouble stand between you and your high aim. Taking up her cause will perhaps not do a bit of good, for no one person can solve so vital a problem as that is, and your agitation of it may wreck your last hope.”
“I've promised to keep my mouth shut, if Dan Willis and men of his sort will not stay right at my heels with their threats. My campaign managers—the gang, who hold a daily caucus at the den and lay down my rules of conduct—have exacted that much from me on the penalty of letting me go by the board if I disobey.”
“The dear boys!” Helen exclaimed. “I like every one of them, they are so loyal to you. The close friendship of you all for one another is simply beautiful.”
“Coming back to the inevitable Pete,” Dwight remarked, a few minutes later. “I've been watching him since he was whipped, and I know he is in great danger of getting even more deeply into trouble. He has a stupidly resentful disposition, as many of his race have, and he is going around making surly threats about Johnson, Wiggin, and others. If he keeps that up and they get hold of it he will certainly get into serious trouble.”
“My father was speaking of that to-night,” Helen said. “And he was thinking if there were any way of getting the boy away from his idle town associates that it might prevent trouble and ease Mam' Linda's mind.”
“I was thinking of that the other day when I saw Uncle Lewis searching for him among the idle negroes,” said Carson; “and I have an idea.”
“Oh, you have? What is it?” Helen asked, eagerly.
“Why, Pete always has seemed to like me and take my advice, and as there is, plenty of work on my farm for such a hand as he is I could give him a good place and wages over there where he'd be practically removed from his present associates.”
“Splendid, splendid!” Helen cried; “and will you do it?”
“Why, certainly, and right away,” Carson answered. “If you will have Mam' Linda send him down to me in the morning I'll give him some instructions and a good sharp talk, and I'll make my overseer at the farm put him to work.”
“Oh, it is splendid!” Helen declared. “It will be such good news for Mam' Linda. She'd rather have him work for you than any one in the world.”
“There comes Wade to claim his dance,” Dwight said, suddenly; “and I must be off.”
“Where are you going?” she asked, almost regretfully.
“To the office to work on political business—dozens and dozens of letters to answer. Then I'm coming back for my waltz with you. I sha'n't fail.” And as he put on his hat and threaded his way through the whirling mass of dancers down to the street, he recalled with something of a shock that not once in their talk had he eventhoughtof his rival. He slowed up in the darkness and leaned against a wall. There was a strange sinking of his heart as he faced the grim reality that stretched out drearily before him. She was, no doubt, to be the wife of another man. He had lost her. She was not for him, though there in the glare of the ballroom, amid the sensuous strains of music, in the perfume of the flowers dying in her service, she had seemed as close to him in heart, soul, and sympathy as the night he and she—
He had reached his office, a little one-story brick building in the row of lawyers' offices on the side street leading from the post-office to the courthouse, and he unlocked the door and went in and lighted the little murky lamp on his desk and pulled down a package of unanswered letters.
Yes, he must work—work with that awful pain in his breast, the dry, tightening sensation in his throat, the maddening vision of her dazzling beauty and grace and sweetness before him. He dipped his pen, drew the paper towards him, and began to write: “My dear Sir,—In receiving the cordial assurances of your support in the campaign before me, I desire to thank you most heartily and to—”
He laid the pen down and leaned back. “I can't do it, at least not to-night,” he said. “Not while she is there looking like that and with my waltz to come, and yet it must be done. I've lost her, and I am only making it harder to bear. Yes, I must work—work!”
The pen went into the ink again. On the still night air came the strains of music, the mellow, sing-song voice of the figure-caller in the “square” dance, the whir and patter of many feet.
9089
EAVING Carson Dwight, Wade Tingle, and Bob Smith chatting about the ball in the den the next morning, Garner went to the office, bit off a chew of tobacco, and plunged into work with a vigor which indicated that he was almost ashamed of his departure from his beaten track into the unusual fields of social gayety. He still wore the upright collar and white necktie of the night before, but the hitherto carefully guarded expanse of shirt-front was already in imminent danger of losing all that had once recommended it as a presentable garment.
With his small hand well spread over the page of the book he was consulting, he had become oblivious to his surroundings when suddenly a man stood in the doorway. He was tall and gaunt and wore a broad-brimmed hat, a cotton checked shirt, jean trousers supported by a raw-hide belt, and a pair of tall boots which, as he stood fiercely eying Garner, he angrily lashed with his riding-whip. It was Dan Willis. His face was slightly flushed from drink, and his eyes had the glare even his best friends had learned to tear and tried to avoid.
“Whar's that that dude pardner o' yourn?” he asked.
“Oh, you mean Dwight!” Garner had had too much experience in the handling of men to change countenance over any sudden turn of affairs, either for or against his interests, and he had, also, acquired admirable skill in most effective temporizing. “Why, let me see, Dan,” he went on, after he had paused for fully a moment, carefully inspected the lines he was reading, frowned as if not quite satisfied therewith, and then slowly turned down a leaf. “Let me think. Oh, you want to see Carson! Sit down; take a chair.”
“I don't want to set down!” Willis thundered. “I want to see that damned dude, and I want to see him right off.”
“Oh, that's it!” said Garner. “You are in ahurry!” And then, from the rigid setting of his jaw, it was plain that the lawyer had decided on the best mode of handling the specimen glowering down upon him. “Oh yes, I remember now, Willis, that you were loaded up a few nights ago looking for that chap. Now, advice is cheap—that is, the sort I'm going to give you. Under ordinary circumstances I'd charge a fee for it. My advice to you is to straddle that horse of yours and get out of this town. You are looking for trouble—great, big, far-reaching trouble.”
“You hit the nail that pop, Bill Garner,” the mountaineer snorted. “I'm expectin' to git trouble, orgivetrouble, an' I hain't goin' to lose time nuther. This settlement was due several days ago, but got put off.”
“Look here, Willis”—Garner stood up facing him—“you may not be a fool, but you are acting powerfully like one. You are letting that measly little candidate for the legislature make a cat's-paw of you. That's what you're doing. He knows, if he can get up a shooting-scrap between you and my pardner over that negro-whipping business, it will turn a few mountain votes his way. If you get shot, Wiggin will have more charges to make; and if Carson was to get the worst of it, the boy would be clean out of the skunk's way. You and Wiggin are both in bad business.”
“Well, that'smylookout!” the mountaineer growled, beside himself in rage. “Carson Dwight said I was with Johnson the night the gang came in and whipped them coons, and—”
“Well, youwere,” said Garner, as suddenly as if he were browbeating a witness. “What's the use to lie about it?”
“Lie—you say I—?”
“I said I didn'twantyou to lie about it,” said Garner, calmly. “I know half the mob, and respect most of them. I have an idea that some of my own kinsfolk was along that night. They thought they were doing right and acting in the best interests of the community. That's neither here nor there. The men that were licked were negroes, and most of them bad ones at that, but when a big, strapping man of your stamp comes with blood in his eye and a hunk of metal on his hip, looking for the son of an old Confederate soldier, who is a Democratic candidate for the legislature, and a good all-round white citizen, why, I say that is the time to call a halt, and to call it out loud! I happen to know a few of the grand jury, and if there is trouble of a serious nature in this town to-day, I can personally testify to enough deliberation in your voice and eye this morning to jerk your neck out of joint.”
“What the hell do I care for you or your law?” Dan Willis snorted. “It's what that damned dude said aboutmethat he's got to swallow, and if he's in this town I'll find him. A fellow told me if he wasn't here he'd be in Keith Gordon's room. I don't know whar that is, but I kin find out.” Turning abruptly, Willis strode out into the street again.
“The devil certainly is to pay now,” Garner said, with his deepest frown as he closed the law-book, thrust it back into its dusty niche in his bookcase, and put on his hat. “Carson is still up there with those boys, and that fellow may find him any minute. Carson won't take back a thing. He's as mad about the business as Willis is. I wonder if I can possibly manage to keep them apart.”
On his way to the den he met Pole Baker standing on the corner of the street by a load of wood, which Pole had brought in to sell. Hurriedly, Garner explained the situation, ending by asking the farmer if he could see any way of getting Willis out of town.
“I couldn't work him myself,” Baker said, “fer the dern skunk hain't any more use fer me than I have fer him, but I reckon I kin put some of his pals onto the job.”
“Well, go ahead, Pole,” Garner urged. “I'll run up to the room and try to detain Carson. For all you do, don't let Willis come up there.”
Garner found the young men still in the den chatting about the ball and Carson's campaign.
Wade Tingle sat at the table with several sheets of paper before him, upon which, in a big, reporter's hand, he had been writing a glowing account of “the greatest social event” in the history of the town.
“I've got a corking write-up, Bill,” he said, enthusiastically. “I've just been reading it to the gang. It is immense. Miss Helen sent me a full memorandum of what the girls wore, and, for a green hand, I think I have dressed 'em up all right.”
“The only criticism I made on it, Garner,” spoke up Keith from his bed in the corner, where he lay fully dressed, “is that Wade has ended all of Helen's descriptions by adding, 'and diamonds.' I'll swear I'm no critic of style in writing, but that eternal 'and diamonds, and diamonds, and diamonds,' at the end of every paragraph, sounds so monotonous that it gets funny. He even had Miss Sally Ware's plain black outfit tipped off with 'and diamonds.'”
“Well, I look at it this way, Bill,” Wade said, earnestly, as Garner sat down, “Of course, the girls who had them on would not like to see them left out, for they are nice things to have, and, on the other hand, those who were short in that direction would feel sorter out of it.”
“I think if he had just written 'jewels' once in awhile,” Keith said, “it would sound all right, and leave something to the imagination.”
“That might help,” Garner said, his troubled glance on Carson's rather grave face; “but see that you don't write it 'jewelry.'”
“Well, I'll accept the amendment,” Wade said, as he began to scratch his manuscript and rewrite.
Carson Dwight stood up. “Did you leave the office open?” he asked Garner. “I've got to shape up that Holcolm deed and consult the records.”
“Let it go for a while. I want to look it over first,” Garner said, rather suddenly. “Sit down. I want to talk to you about the—the race. You've got a ticklish proposition before you, old boy, and I'd like to see you put it through.”
“Hear, hear!” cried Keith, sitting up on the edge of his bed. “Balls and what girls wear belong to the regular run of life, but when the chief of the gang is about to be beaten by a scoundrel who will hesitate at nothing, it's time to be wide awake.”
“That's it,” said Garner, his brow ruffled, his ear open to sounds without, his uneasy eyes on the group around him. And for several minutes he held them where they sat, listening to his wise and observant views of the matter in hand. Suddenly, while he was in the midst of a remark, a foot-fall sounded on the long passage without. It was heavy, loud, and striding. Garner paused, rose, went to the bureau, and from the top drawer took out a revolver he always kept either there or in his desk at the office. There was a firm whiteness about his lips which was new to his friends.
“Carson,” he said, “have you got your gun?” and he stood staring at the doorway.
A shadow fell on the floor; a man entered. It was Pole Baker, and he looked around him in surprise, his inquiring stare on Garner's unwonted mien and revolver.
“Oh, it's you!” Garner exclaimed. “Ah, I thought—”
“Yes, I come to tell you that—” Baker hesitated, as if uncertain whether he was betraying confidence, and then catching Garner's warning glance, he said, non-committally: “Say, Bill, that feller you and me was talkin' about has jest gone home. I reckon you won't get yore money out of him to-day.”
“Oh, well, it was a small matter, anyway, Pole,” Garner said, in a tone of appreciative relief, as he put the revolver back in the drawer and closed it. “I'll mention it to him the next time he's in town.”
“Say, what was the matter with you just now, Garner?” Wade Tingle asked over the top of his manuscript. “I thought you were going to ask Carson to fight a duel.”
But with his hand on Dwight's arm Garner was moving to the door. “Come on, lot's get to work,” he said, with a deep breath and a grateful side glance at Baker.
In front of the office one of Carson's farm wagons drawn by a pair of mules was standing. Tom Hill-yer, Carson's overseer and general manager, sat on the seat, and behind him stood Pete Warren, ready for his stay in the country.
“Miss Helen's made quick work of it, I see,” Carson remarked. “She's determined to get that rascal out of temptation.”
“You ought to give him a sharp talking to,” said Garner. “He's got entirely too much lip for his own good. Skelt told me this morning that if Pete doesn't dry up some of that gang will hang him before he is a month older. He doesn't know any better, and means nothing by it, but he has already made open threats against Johnson and Willis. You understand those men well enough to know that in such times as these a negro can't do that with impunity.”
“I agree with you, and I'll stop and speak to him now.”
When Carson came in and sat down at his desk, a few moments later, Garner looked across at him and smiled.
“You certainly let him off easy,” he said. “I could have thrown a Christmas turkey down the scamp's throat through that grin of his. I saw you run your hand in your pocket and knew he was bleeding you.”
“Oh, well, I reckon I'm a failure at that sort of thing,” Dwight admitted, with a sheepish smile. “I started in by saying that he must not be so foolhardy as to make open threats against any of those men, and he said: 'Looky here, Marse Carson, dem white rapscallions cut gashes in my body deep enough ter plant corn in, an' I ain't gwine ter love 'em fer it.Youwouldn't, you know you wouldn't.'”
“And he had you there,” Garner said, grimly. “Well, they may say what they please up North about our great problem, but nothing but time and the good Lord can solve it. You and I can tell that negro to keep his mouth shut from sunup till sun-down, but I happen to know that he had a remote white ancestor that was the proudest, hardest fighter that ever swung a sword. Some of the rampant agitators say that deportation is the only solution. Huh! if you deported a lot of full-blood blacks along with such chaps as this one, it would be only a short time before the yellow ones would have the rest in bondage, and so history would be going backward instead of forward. I guess it's going forward right now if we only had the patience to see it that way.”
9098
|NE beautiful morning near the first of June, as Carson was strolling on the upper veranda at home, waiting for the breakfast-bell, Keith Gordon came by on his horse on his way to town.
“Heard the news?” he called out, as he reined in at the gate and leaned on the neck of his mount.
“No; what's up?” Carson asked, and as he spoke he saw Helen Warren emerge from the front door of her father's house and step down among the dew-wet rose-bushes that bordered the brick walk.
“Horrible enough in all reason,” Keith replied. “There's been a cold-blooded murder over near your farm. Abe Johnson, who led that mob, you know, and his wife were killed by some negro with an axe. The whole country is up in arms and crazy with excitement.”
“Wait, I'll come right down,” Carson said, and he disappeared into the house. And when he came out a moment later he found Helen on the sidewalk talking to Keith, and from her grave face he knew she had overheard what had been said.
“Isn't it awful?” she said to Carson, as he came out at the gate. “Of course, it is the continuation of the trouble here in town.”
“How do they know a negro did it?” Carson asked, obeying the natural tendency of a lawyer to get at the facts.
“It seems,” answered Gordon, “that Mrs. Johnson lived barely long enough after the neighbors got there to say that it was done by a mulatto, as well as she could see in the darkness. In their fury, the people are roughly handling every yellow negro in the neighborhood. They say the darkies are all hiding out in the woods and mountains.”
Then the conversation paused, for old Uncle Lewis, who was at work with a pair of garden-sheafs behind some rose-bushes close by, uttered a groan and, wide-eyed and startled, came towards them.
“It's awful, awful, awful!” they heard him say. “Oh, my Gawd, have mercy!”
“Why, Uncle Lewis, what's the matter?” Helen asked, in sudden concern and wonder over his manner and tone.
“Oh, missy, missy!” he groaned, as he shook his head despondently. “My boy over dar 'mongst 'em right now. Oh, my Lawd! I know what dem white folks gwine ter say fust thing, kase Pete didn't had no mo' sense 'an ter—”
“Stop, Lewis!” Carson said, sharply. “Don't be the first to implicate your own son in a matter as serious as this is.”
“I ain't, marster!” the old man groaned, “but I know dem white folks done it 'fo' dis.”
“I'm afraid you are right, Lewis,” Keith said, sympathetically. “He may be absolutely innocent, but, since his trouble with that mob, Pete has really talked too much. Well, I must be going.”
As Keith was riding away, old Lewis, muttering softly to himself and groaning, turned towards the house.
“Where are you going?” Helen called out, as she still lingered beside Carson.
“I'm gwine try to keep Linda fum hearin' it right now,” he said. “Ef Pete git in it, missy, it gwine ter kill yo' old mammy.”
“I'm afraid it will,” Helen said. “Do what you can, Uncle Lewis. I'll be down to see her in a moment.” As the old man tottered away, Helen looked up and caught Carson's troubled glance.
“I wish I were a man,” she said.
“Why?” he inquired.
“Because I'd take a strong stand here in the South for law and order at any cost. We have a good example in this very thing of what our condition means. Pete may be innocent, and no doubt is, for I don't believe he would do a thing like that no matter what the provocation, and yet he hasn't any sort of chance to prove it.”
“You are right,” Carson said. “At such a time they would lynch him, if for nothing else than that he had dared to threaten the murdered man.”
“Poor, poor old mammy!” sighed Helen. “Oh, it is awful to think of what she will suffer if—if—Carson, do you really think Pete is in actual danger?” Dwight hesitated for a moment, and then he met her stare frankly.
“We may as well face the truth and be done with it,” he said. “No negro will be safe over there now, and Pete, I am sorry to say, least of all.”
“If he is guilty he may run away,” she said, shortsightedly.
“If he's guilty we don'twanthim to get away,” Carson said, firmly. “But I really don't think he had anything to do with it.”
Helen sighed. They had stepped back to the open gate, and there they paused side by side. “How discouraging life is!” she said. “Carson, in planning to get Pete over there, you and I were acting on our purest, noblest impulses, and yet the outcome of our efforts may be the gravest disaster.”
“Yes, it seems that way,” he responded, gloomily; “but we must try to look on the bright side and hope for the best.”
On parting with Helen, Carson went into the big, old-fashioned dining-room, and after hurriedly drinking a cup of coffee he went down to his office. Along the main thoroughfare, on the street comers, and in front of the stores he found little groups of men with grave faces, all discussing the tragedy. More than once in passing he heard Pete's name mentioned, and for fear of being questioned as to what he thought about it he hurried on. Garner was an early riser, and he found him at his desk writing letters.
“Well, from all accounts,” Garner said, “your man Friday seems to be in a ticklish place over there, innocent or not—that is, if he hasn't had the sense to skip out.”
“Somehow, I don't think Pete is guilty,” Carson said, as he sank into his big chair. “He's not that stamp of negro.”
“Well, I haven't made up my mind on that score,” the other remarked. “Up to the time he left here he seemed really harmless enough, but we don't know what may have taken place since then between him and Johnson. Funny we didn't think of the danger of sticking match to tinder like that. I admit I was in favor of sending him. Miss Helen was so pleased over it, too. I met her the other day at the post-office and she was telling me, with absolute delight, that Pete was doing well over there, working like an old-time cornfield darky, and behaving himself. Now, I suppose, she will be terribly upset.”
Carson sighed. “We blame the mountain people, in times of excitement, for acting rashly, and yet right here in this quiet town half the citizens have already made up their minds that Pete committed the crime. Think of it, Garner!”
“Well, you see, it's pretty hard to imagine whoelsedid it,” Garner declared.
“I don't agree with you,” disputed Carson, warmly; “when there are half a dozen negroes who were whipped just as Pete was and who have horrible characters. There's Sam Dudlow, the worst negro I ever saw, an ex-convict, and as full of devilment as an egg is of meat. I saw his scowling face the next day after he was whipped, and I never want to see it again. I'd hate to meet him in the dark, unarmed. He wasn't making open threats, as Pete was, but I'll bet he would have handled Johnson or Willis roughly if he had met either of them alone and got the advantage.”
“Well, we are not trying the case,” Garner said, dryly; “if we are, I don't know where the fees are to come from. Getting money out of an imaginary case is too much like a lawyer's first year under the shadow of his shingle.”
9103
IMMEDIATELY on parting with Carson, Helen went down to Linda's cottage. Lewis was leaning over the little, low fence talking to a negro, who walked on as she drew near.
“Where is Mam' Linda?” she asked, guardedly. “In de house, missy,” Lewis answered, pulling off his old slouch hat and wadding it tightly in his fingers. “She 'ain't heard nothin' yit. Jim was des tellin' me er whole string er talk folks was havin' down on de street; but I told 'im not to let 'er hear it. Oh, missy, it gwine ter kill 'er. She cayn't stan' it. Des no longer 'n las' night she was settin' in dat do' talkin' 'bout how happy she was to hear Pete was doin' so well over on Marse Carson's place. She said she never would forget young marster's kindness to er old nigger'oman, en now”—the old man spread out his hands in apathetic gesture before him—“now you see what it come to!”
“But nothing serious has really happened to Pete yet,” Helen had started to say, when the old man stopped her.
“Hush, honey, she comin'!”
There was a sound of a footstep in the cottage. Linda appeared in the doorway, and with a clouded face and disturbed manner invited her mistress into the cottage, placing a chair for the young lady, and dusting the bottom of it with her apron.
“How do you feel this morning, mammy?” Helen asked, as she sat down.
“I'm well emough in mybody, honey”—the old woman's face was averted—“but dat ain't all ter a pusson in dis life. Ef des my body was all I had, I wouldn't be so bad off, but it's mymind, honey. I'm worried 'bout dat boy ergin. I had bad dreams las' night, en thoo 'em all he seemed ter be in some trouble. Den when I woke dis mawnin' en tried ter think 'twas only des er dream, I ain't satisfied wid de way all of um act. Lewis look quar out'n de eyes, en everybody dat pass erlong hatter stop en lead Lewis off down de fence ter talk. I ain't no fool, honey! I notice things when dey ain't natcherl. Den here you come 'fo' yo' breakfust-time. I've watched you, chile, sence you was in de cradle en know every bat er yo' sweet eyes. Oh, honey”—Linda suddenly sat down and covered her face with her hands, pressing them firmly in—“honey,” she muttered, “suppen's done gone wrong. I've knowed it all dis mawnin' en I'm actually afeard ter ax youall ter tell me. I—can't think of but one thing, I'm so muddled up, en dat is dat my boy done thowed up his work en gone away off somers wid bad company; en yit, honey”—-she now rocked herself back and forth as if in torture and finished with a steady stare into Helen's face—“dat cayn't be it. Dat ain't bad ernough ter mek Lewis act like he is, en—en—well, honey, you might es well come out wid it. I've had trouble, en I kin have mo'.”
Helen sat pale and undecided, unable to formulate any adequate plan of procedure. At this juncture Lewis leaned in the doorway, and, as his wife's back was towards him, he could not see her face.
“I want ter step down-town er minute, Lindy,” he said. “I'll be right back. I des want ter go ter de sto'. We're out er coffee, en—”
Linda suddenly turned her dark, agonized face upon him. “You are not goin' till you tell me what is gone wrong wid my child,” she said. “What de matter wid Pete, Lewis?”
The old man's surprised glance wavered between his Wife's face and Helen's. “Why, Lindy, who say—” he feebly began.
But she stopped him with a gesture at once impatient and full of fear. “Tell me!” she said, firmly—“tell me!”
Lewis shambled into the cottage and stood over her, a magnificent specimen of the manhood of his race. Helen's eyes were blinded by tears she could hot restrain.
“'Tain't tiothiri', Lindy, 'pon my word 'tain't nothin' but dis,” he said, gently. “Dar's been trouble over near Marse Carson's farm, but not one soul is done say Pete was in it—not one soul.”
“What sort o' trouble?” Linda pursued.
“Er man en his wife was killed over dar in baid last night.”
“What man en woman?” Linda asked, her mouth falling open in suspense, her thick lip hanging.
“Abe Johnson en his wife.”
Linda leaned forward, her hands locked like things of iron between her knees. “Who done it, Lewis?—who killed um?” she gasped.
“Nobody knows dat yit, Lindy. Mrs. Johnson lived er little while after de neighbors come, en she said it was er—she said it was er yaller nigger, en—en—” He went no further, being at the end of his diplomacy, and simply stood before her helplessly twisting his hat in his hands. The room was very still. Helen wondered if her own heart had stopped beating, so tense and strained was her emotion. Linda sat bent forward for a moment; they saw her raise her hands to her head, press them there convulsively, and then she groaned.
“Miz Johnson say it was a yaller nigger!” she moaned. “Oh, my Gawd!”
“Yes, but what dat, 'oman?” Lewis demanded in assumed sharpness of tone. “Dar's oodlin's en oodlin's er yaller niggers over dar.”
“Dey ain't none of 'em been whipped by de daid man, 'cepin' my boy.” Linda was now staring straight at him. “None of 'em never made no threats but Pete. Dey'll kill 'im—” She shuddered and her voice fell away into a prolonged sob. “You hear me? Dey'll hang my po' baby boy—hang 'im—hang'im!”
Linda suddenly rose to her full height and stood glowering upon them, her face dark and full of passion and grief combined. She raised her hands and held them straight upward.
“I want ter curse Gawd!” she cried. “You hear me? I ain't done nothin' ter deserve dis here thing I've been er patient slave of white folks, en my mammy an' daddy was 'fo' me. I've acted right en done my duty ter dem what owned me, en—en now I face dis. I hear my onliest child beggin' fer um to spare 'im en listen ter 'im. I hear 'im beggin' ter see his old mammy 'fo' dey kill 'im. I see 'em drag-gin' 'im off wid er rope roun'—” With a shriek the woman fell face downward on the floor. As if under the influence of a terrible nightmare, Helen bent over her. She was insensible. Without a word, Lewis lifted her in his arms and bore her to a bed in the corner.
“Dis gwine ter kill yo' old mammy, honey,” he gulped. “She ain't never gwine ter git up fum under it—never in dis world.”
But Helen, with womanly presence of mind, had dampened her handkerchief in some water and was gently stroking the dark face with it. After a moment Linda drew a deep, lingering breath and opened her eyes.
“Lewis,” was her first thought, “go try en find out all you kin. I'm gwine lie here en pray Gawd ter be merciful. I said I'd curse 'Im, but I won't. He my mainstay. Igotter trust 'Im. Ef He fail me I'm lost. Oh, honey, yo' old mammy never axed you many favors; stay here wid 'er en pray—pray wid all yo' might ter let dis cup pass. Oh, Gawd, don't let 'em!—don'tlet 'em! De po' boy didn't do it. He wouldn't harm a kitten. He talked too much, case he was smartin' under his whippin', but dat was all!”
Motioning to Lewis to leave them alone, Helen sat down on the edge of the bed and put her arm round Linda's shoulders, but the old woman rose and went to the door and closed it, then she came back and stood by Helen in the half-darkness that now filled the room.
“I want you ter git down here by my baid en pray fer me, honey,” she said. “Seem ter me lak de Lawd always have listen ter white folks mo' den de black, anyway, en I want you ter beg 'Im ter spare po' li'l' foolish Pete des dis time—des dis once.” Kneeling by the bed, Helen covered her wet face with her hands. Linda knelt beside her, and Helen prayed aloud, her clear, sweet voice ringing through the still room.