he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sac--red rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never of-fended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemis--sphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither, thispiratical warfare, the opprobrium ofinfidelpowers, is the warfare of theChristianking of Great Britain determined to keep open a marketandwhere MEN should be bought & sold he has prostituted his negativefor suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain thisdetermining to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold:execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no factof distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in armsamong us, and to purchase that liberty of whichhehas deprived them,by murdering the people upon whomhealso obtruded them: thus payingoff former crimes committed against thelibertiesof one people, with crimeswhich he urges them to commit against thelivesof another.
There stands to this day that precious original,—hot first-thoughts and cold second-thoughts, all in Jefferson’s own hand. Look for a moment at the rich current of internal evidence running through that rough draught, and through all its erasures, changes, and emphatic markings,—evidence of the deepest hatred not only of all tyranny, but of all slavery. Thus, after he had written the passage, “determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold,” the idea continues hot in his mind; for, after smouldering a few moments, it flames forth again, is written again in the same phrasing, with the same show of emphasis, before he bethinks himself to erase it. Then, too, the words Christian and MEN are the only words emphasized by careful pen-printing in large letters;—and this labored movement of his pen marks the injury which he deemed the greater; for the largest letters and deepest emphasis are reserved for MEN. Evidently, that word points out the wrong which, as Jefferson thought, “a candid world” would forever regard as the supreme wrong.
We have now noted Jefferson’s battle against slavery in the founding of the Republic: let us go on to his work in the building of the Republic.
In 1782 he gave forth the “Notes on Virginia.” His opposition to slavery is as fierce here as of old, but it takes various phases,—sometimes sweeping against the hated system with a torrent of facts,—sometimes battering it with a hard, cold logic,—sometimes piercing it with deadly queries and suggestions,—and sometimes, with his blazing hate of all oppression, biting and burning through every pro-slavery theory.
But in taking up the “Notes,” we must understand the relation of Jefferson’s way of thinking to his way of working. In his thinking, the slave system was evidently a violation of the whole body of good principles, for he calls it an “evil”;—a violation of morality, for he calls it an “enormity”;—a violation of justice, for he calls it a “wrong”;—a violation of republican pretensions, for he calls it a “hideous blot”;—a violation of the healthy action of our institutions, for he calls it a “disease”;—a violation of our whole public happiness, for he calls it a “curse.” But his way of working was more calm and cool,—often displeasing those whose plans of action are formed far from any direct entanglement in the slave system.
This union of fervent thought and cool action has, of course, brought upon Jefferson the invectives of two great classes. One class have looked merely at his thinking, and have distrusted him as a dreamer. To these he is a dealer in oracles, at second-hand, from Voltaire and Diderot. The other class have studied his plans of practical philanthropy, with all his shrewd researches and homely discussions in agriculture, finance, mechanics, and architecture, and have ridiculed him as a tinker. To such Jefferson seems a grandmotherly sort of person,—riding about in a gig arranged to register the length of his rides,—walking about in boots arranged to register the length of his walks,—weatherwise, and profound in dealing with smoky chimneys and sheep-breeding.
But whether men have cavilled at him for a dreamer or laughed at him for a tinker, they have been mainly foolish, for they have cavilled and laughed at the very combination which made him powerful. In no other American have been so happily blended highest skill in theory and highest strength in practice.
The remarks, in the “Notes on Virginia,” on the colored race are clear and fair. He studied carefully and stated fully all that could be learned in his time. On the whole, his examination greatly encourages those who hope good things for that race. But one distinction must be made. As to those profound views of the character and destiny of the race which come only by observation of a long historic development, in a wide range of climate, in great variety of social position, Jefferson could, as he confesses, know almost nothing,—for the same reason that the keenest observer of William the Conqueror’s Norman robbers and Saxon swineherds would have failed to foretell the great dominant race which has come from them by free growth and good culture. But, on the other hand, of all that comes by observation of the daily life of the black race, as it then was, he knew almost everything.
He declares that the black race is inferior to the white in mind, but not in heart. The poems of black Phillis Wheatley seem to him to prove not much; but the letters of black Ignatius Sancho he praises for depth of feeling, happy turn of thought, and ease of style, though he finds no depth of reasoning. He does not praise the mental capacity of the race, but, at last, as if conscious, that, if developed under a free system, it might be far better, he quotes the Homeric lines,—
“Jove fixed it certain that whatever dayMakes man a slave takes half his worth away.”
“Jove fixed it certain that whatever dayMakes man a slave takes half his worth away.”
“Jove fixed it certain that whatever day
Makes man a slave takes half his worth away.”
And shortly after, he declares it “asuspiciononly that the blacks are inferior in the endowments of body or mind,”—that “in memory they are equal to the whites,”—that “in music they are more generally gifted than the whites with accurate ears for time and tune.”
But there is one statement which we especially commend to those in search of an effective military policy in the present crisis. Jefferson declares of the negroes, that they are “at least as brave as the whites, and more adventuresome.” May not this truth account for the fact that one of the most daring deeds in the present war was done by a black man?
Still later, Jefferson says,—“Whether further observation will or will not verify the conjecture that Nature has been less bountiful to them in the endowments of the head, I believe that in those of the heart she will be found to have done them justice. That disposition to theft with which they have been branded must be ascribed to their situation, and not to any depravity of the moral sense. The man in whose favor no laws of property exist probably feels himself less bound to respect those made in favor of others. When arguing for ourselves, we lay it down as fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give reciprocation of right,—that, without this, they are mere arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience; and it is a problem which I give to the master to solve, whether the religious precepts against the violation of property were not framed for him as well as his slave,—and whether the slave may not as justifiably take a little from one who has taken all from him as he may slay one who would slay him. That a change in the relations in which a man is placed should change his ideas of moral right and wrong is neither new, nor peculiar to the color of the blacks.”
Here Jefferson puts forth that very idea for which Gerrit Smith, a few years ago, was threatened with the penalties of treason.
But to quote further from the same source:—
“Notwithstanding these considerations, which must weaken their respect for the laws of property, we find among them numerous instances of the most rigid integrity, and as many as among their instructed masters, of benevolence, gratitude, and unshaken fidelity. The opinion that they are inferior in the faculties of reason and imagination must be hazarded with great diffidence.”
The old hot thought blazes forth again in the chapter on “Particular Manners and Customs.” Can men speak against the proclamations of Abolition Conventions after such fiery words from Jefferson?
“The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism, on the one part, and degrading submission on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for man is an imitative animal. If a parent could find no motive either in his philanthropy or his self-love for restraining the intemperance of passion toward his slave, it should always be a sufficient one that his child is present. But generally it is not sufficient. The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose rein to the worst of passions, and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by its odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances.” (Here fire begins to flicker up around the words.) “And with what execration should a statesman be loaded, who, permitting one half thecitizens” (note the word) “to trample on therights” (note the word) “of the other, transforms those into despots and these into enemies, destroys the morals of the one and theamor patriaeof the other! And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure, when we have removed their only firm basis,—a conviction in the minds of the people that their liberties are the gifts of God, that they are not to be violated but with His wrath?” (Now bursts forth prophecy. The whole page flames in a moment.) “Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever; that, considering numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of Fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events; that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest.”
Well may Jefferson say, immediately after this, that “it is impossible to be temperate and to pursue this subject through the various considerations of policy, of morals, of history natural and civil.” For no Abolitionist ever branded the slave-system with words more fiery.
In 1784 Jefferson drew up the ordinance for the government of the Western Territory. One famous clause runs thus:—
“After the year 1800 of the Christian era there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the said States, otherwise than in punishment of crimes whereof the party shall have been convicted to be personally guilty.”
In Randall’s “Life of Jefferson,” a work in many respects admirable, this clause is glossed with the declaration that Jefferson intended merely to prevent an immense new importation of slaves from Africa to fill the Territory; but Mr. Randall would have shown far greater insight, had he added to this half-truth, that the idea of legally grasping and strangling this curse flows from the ideas of the “Notes” as hot metal flows from fiery furnace,—that the Ordinance of 1784 was but a minting of that true metal drawn from those old glowing thoughts and words.
But Jefferson’s hatred of slavery is not less fierce in his letters.
Dr. Price writes a pamphlet in England against slavery, and straightway Jefferson seizes his pen to urge him to write more, and more clearly for America, and more directly at American young men, saying, in encouragement,—“Northward of the Chesapeake you may find, here and there, an opponent to your doctrine, as you may find, here and there, a murderer.” He speaks hopefully of the disposition in Virginia to “redress this enormity,”—calls the fight against slavery “the interesting spectacle of justice in conflict with avarice and oppression,”—speaks of the side hostile to slavery as “the sacred side.” The date is 1785.
This welcome to Dr. Price’s onslaught will serve as antidote to Mr. Randall’s poisonous declaration, that Jefferson was opposed to interference with slave institutions by those living outside of Slave States.
In 1786 Jefferson wrote to correct M. de Meusnier’s statement of the efforts already made for emancipation; and, referring to the holding of slaves by a people who had clamored loudly and fought bravely for freedom, he says,—
“What a stupendous, what an incomprehensible machine is man,—who can endure toil, famine, stripes, imprisonment, and death itself, in vindication of his own liberty, and, in the next moment, be deaf to all those motives whose power supported him through his trial, and inflict on his fellow-mena bondage one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose!”
Here, in Jefferson himself, then, is the source of that venom with which earnest men, throughout the land, are stinging to death the organization which stole his name to destroy his ideas.
In 1788, Jefferson, being Minister at Paris, receives a note from M. de Warville tendering him membership in the Society for the Abolition of the Slave-Trade. Jefferson is forced by his peculiar position to decline, but he takes pains to say,—“You know that nobody wishes more ardently to see an abolition not only of the trade, but of theconditionof slavery.”
Here is no non-committalism, no wistful casting about for loop-holes, no sly putting out of hooks to catch backers, not the feeblest germ of quibble or lie. The man answers more than he is asked. Is there not, in the present dearth, something refreshing in this old candor?
But some have thought Jefferson’s later expressions against slavery wanting in heartiness. Let us examine.
The whole world knows, that, when a wrong stings a man, making him fierce and loud, hisdirectexpressions have often small value; but that hisparentheticalexpressions often have great value. This is one of the simplest principles in homely every-day criticism, serving truth-seekers, wherever wordy war rages, whether among statesmen or hackmen.
Now, in Jefferson’s letter to Dr. Gordon,—written in 1788,—he is greatly stirred by his own recital of the shameful ravages on his property by the British army. Just at the moment when his indignation was at the hottest, there shot out of his heart, and off his pen, one of these side-thoughts, one of these fragments of the man’s ground-idea, which, at such moments, truth-seekers always watch for. Jefferson says of Cornwallis,—
“He destroyed all my growing crops of corn and tobacco; he burned all my barns containing the same articles of the last year, having first taken what corn he wanted; he used, as was to be expected, all my stock of cattle, sheep, and hogs, for the sustenance of his army, and carried off all the horses capable of service,—of those too young for service he cut the throats; and he burned all the fences in the plantation, so as to make it an absolute waste.He carried off also about thirty slaves. Had this been to give them their freedom, he would have done right.”
But we turn to a seeming discrepancy between these thousand earnest declarations of Jefferson the private citizen, and the cold, formal tone of Jefferson the Secretary of State. In this high office he reclaims slaves from the Spanish power in Florida, and demands compensation for slaves carried off by the British at the evacuation of New York. For a moment that transition from personal warmth to diplomatic coolness is as the Russian plunge from steam-bath to snow-heap.
Yet, if truth-seekers do not stop to moan, they may easily find a complete explanation. As private citizen, in a State, dealing with his home Government, Jefferson had the right to move heaven and earth against slavery, and bravely he did it; but, as public servant of the nation, dealing with foreign Governments, his rights and duties were different, and his tone must be different. As a private person, writing for man as man, Jefferson forgot readily enough all differences of nation. He wrote as readily and fully of the hideousness of slavery to Meusnier and Warville in France, or to Price and Priestley in England, as to any of his neighbors; but, as public servant of the nation, writing to Hammond or Viar, representatives of foreign powers, he made no apology for our miseries. England might be ready enough to act the part of Dives, but Jefferson was not the statesman to put America in the attitude of Lazarus,—begging, and showing sores.
But we have to note yet another change in Jefferson’s modes of work and warfare.
As he wrought and fought in this second period, which, for easy reference, we call the building period, he was forced into new methods. In the former period we saw him thinking and speaking and working against every effort to found pro-slavery theories or practices. Eagerness was then the best quality for work, and quickness the best quality for fight. But now the case was different. An institution which Jefferson hated had, in spite of his struggles, been firmly founded. The land was full of the towers of the slave aristocracy. He saw that his mode of warfare must be changed. His old way did well in the earlier days, for tower-builders may be driven from their work by a sweeping charge or sudden volley; but towers, when built, must be treated with steady battering and skilful mining.
In 1797, Jefferson, writing to St. George Tucker, speaks of the only possible emancipation as “a compromise between the passions, prejudices, and real difficulties, which will each have their weight in the operation.” Afterwards, in his letters to Monroe and Rufus King, he advocates a scheme of colonization to some point not too distant. But let no man, on this account, claim Jefferson as a supporter of the do-nothing school of Northern demagogues, or of the mad school of Southern fanatics who proclaim this ulcerous mass a beauty, and who howl at all who refuse its infection. For, note, in that same letter to St. George Tucker, the fervor of the Jeffersonian theory: bitter as Tucker’s pamphlet against slavery was, he says,—“You know my subscription to its doctrines.” Note also the vigor of the Jeffersonian practice: speaking of emancipation, he says,—“The sooner we put some plan under way, the greater hope there is that it may be permitted to proceed peaceably to its ultimate effect.” And now bursts forth prophecy again. “But if something is not done, and soon done, we shall be the murderers of our own children.” “If we had begun sooner, we might probably have been allowed a lengthier operation to clear ourselves; but every day’s delay lessens the time we may take for emancipation.”
Here is no trace of the theory inflicting a present certain evil on a great white population in order to do a future doubtful good to a smaller black population. And this has been nowhere better understood than among the slave oligarchs of his own time. Note one marked example.
In 1801, Jefferson was elected to the Presidency on the thirty-sixth ballot. Thirty-five times Delaware, Maryland, and South Carolina voted against him. The following year Mr. Rutledge of South Carolina, feeling an itching to specify to Congress his interests in Buncombe and his relations to the universe, palavered in the usual style, but let out one truth, for which, as truth-searchers, we thank him. He said,—
“Permit me to state, that, beside the objections common to my friend from Delaware and myself, there was a strong one which I felt with peculiar force. It resulted from a firm belief that the gentleman in question [Jefferson]held opinions respecting a certain description of property in my State which, should they obtain generally, would endanger it.”44. Benton’sAbridgment, Vol. II. p. 636.
We come now to Jefferson’s Presidency. In this there was no great chance to deal an effective blow at slavery; but some have grown bitter over a story that he favored the schemes to break the slavery-limitation in Ohio. Such writers have not stopped to consider that it is more probable that a few Southern members, eager to drum in recruits, falsely claimed the favor of the President, than that Jefferson broke the slavery-limitation which he himself planned. Then, too, came the petitions of the abolition societies against slavery in Louisiana; and Hildreth blames Jefferson for his slowness to assist; but ought we not here to take some account of the difficulties of the situation? Ought not some weight to be given to Jefferson’s declaration to Kerchival, that in his administration his “efforts in relation to peace, slavery, and religious freedom were all in accordance with Quakerism”?
We pass now to the third great period, in which, as thinker and writer, he did so much to brace the Republic.
First of all, in this period we see him revising the translation and arranging the publication of De Tracy’s “Commentaire sur l’Esprit des Lois.” He takes endless pains to make its hold firm on America; engages his old companion in abolitionism, St. George Tucker, to circulate it; makes it a text-book in the University of Virginia; tells his friend Cabell to read it, for it is “the best book on government in the world.” Now this “best book on government” is killing to every form of tyranny or slavery; its arguments pierce all their fallacies and crush all their sophistries. That famous plea which makes Alison love Austria and Palmer love Louisiana—the plea that a people can be best educated for freedom and religion by dwarfing their minds and tying their hands—is, in this book, shivered by argument and burnt by invective.
As we approach the last years of Jefferson’s life we find several letters of his on slavery. Some have thought them mere heaps of ashes,—poor remains of the flaming thoughts and words of earlier years. This mistake is great. Touch the seeming heap of ashes, and those thoughts and words dart forth, fiery as of old.
In 1814, Edward Coles attacks slavery vigorously, and calls on the great Democrat to destroy it. Jefferson’s approving reply is the complete summary of his matured views on slavery. Take a few declarations as specimens.55. Randall, Vol. III., Appendix.
“The sentiments breathed through the whole do honor both to the head and heart of the writer. Mine, on the subject of the slavery of negroes, have long since been in possession of the public, and time has only served to give them stronger proof. The love of justice and the love of country plead equally the cause of these people, and it is a mortal reproach to us that they should have pleaded so long in vain.”
“The hour of emancipation is advancing in the march of time. It will come; and whether brought on by the generous energy of our own minds or by the bloody process of St. Domingo … is a leaf of our history not yet turned over.”
“As to the method by which this difficult work is to be effected, if permitted to be done by ourselves, I have seen no proposition so expedient, on the whole, as that of emancipation of those born after a given day.”
“This enterprise is for the young,—for those who can follow it up and bear it through to its consummation. It shall have all my prayers.”
No wonder that this letter of Jefferson to Coles seems to have been carefully suppressed by Southern editors of the Jeffersonian writings.
Take also the letters to Mr. Barrows and to Dr. Humphreys of 1815-17. Disappointment is expressed at the want of a more general anti-slavery feeling among the young men; hope is expressed that “time will soften down the master and educate the slave”; faith is expressed that slavery will yield, “because we are not in a world ungoverned by the laws and power of a Supreme Agent.”
Entering now the stormy period of the Missouri Debate, we have one declaration from Jefferson which, at first, surprises and pains us,—the opinion given in a letter to Lafayette, that spreading slavery will “dilute the evil everywhere, and facilitate the means of getting rid of it.” The mistake is gross indeed. To all of us, with the political knowledge forced upon us by events since Jefferson’s death, it seems atrocious. But unpardonable as such a theory isnow, was it sothen?
Jefferson had not before him the experience of these last forty years of weakness and poverty and barbarism in our new Slave States,—and of that tenacity of life which slavery shares with so many other noxious growths. Hastily, then, he broached this opinion. Let it stand; and let the remark on “geographical lines,” and the two or three severe criticisms of Northern men, wrested from him in the excitement of the Missouri struggle, be tied to it and given to the Oligarchs. These expressions were drawn from him in his old age,—in his vexation at unfair attacks,—in his depression at the approach of poverty,—in his suffering under the encroachments of disease. Any one of those bold declarations in the vigor of his manhood will forever efface all memory of them.
The opinion expressed by Jefferson, at the same period, that “the General Government cannot interfere with slavery in the States,” all our parties now accept—as apeacepolicy; but if we are forced into an oppositewarpolicy, let our generals remember Jefferson’s declaration as to the taking of his slaves by Cornwallis: “Had this been to give them their freedom, he would have done right.”
But there is one letter which all Northern statesmen should ponder. It warns them solemnly, for it was written a very short time before Jefferson’s death;—it warns them sharply, for it struck one whom the North has especially honored. This son of the North had made a well-known unfortunate speech in Congress, and had sent it to Jefferson. In his answer the old statesman declares,—
“On the question of the lawfulness of slavery, that is,of the right of one man to appropriate to himself the faculties of another without his consent, I certainly retain my early opinions. On that, however, of third persons to interfere between the parties, and the effect of Constitutional modifications of that pretension, we are probably nearer together.”
There was a blow well dealt,—though at one now greatly honored. We may refuse the subordinate idea in the letter, but we will glory in that main confession of political faith, in the last year of Jefferson’s life; and we will not forget that the last of his letters on slavery chastised the worst sin of Northern statesmanship.
Jefferson, then, in dealing with slavery, was a real political seer and giver of oracles,—always sure to saysomething; whereas the “leading men” who in these latter days have usurped his name are neither political seers nor givers of oracles, but mere political fakirs,—striving, their lives long, to enter political blessedness by solemnly doing and seeing and saying—nothing.
Jefferson was a true political warrior, and his battle for human rights compares with the Oligarchist battle against them as the warfare of Cortés compares with Aztec warfare. He is the man full of strong thought backed by civilization: they, the men trying to keep up their faith in idols, trying to scare with war-paint, trying to startle with war-whoop, trying to vex with showers of poor Aztec arrows.
Jefferson was an orator,—not in that he fed petty assemblages with narcotic words to stupefy conscience, or corrosive words to kill conscience, but in that he gave to the world those decisive, true words which shall yet pierce all tyranny and slavery.
Jefferson was the founder of a democratic system, strong and full-orbed: “leading men” have fastened his name to an aristocratic system with mobocratic cries.
This great tree of Liberty which we are all trying to plant will, of course, not grow aswewill, but as God and Nature will. Some branches will be exuberant through too great wealth of sunshine,—others gnarled and awry through too great fury of storms. We need find no fault with any growth, but we may admire some branches and prize some fruits more than others. Some grafts set by noblest hands have often blossomed in bad temper and borne fruit bitter and sour. Some fruitage has been of that poor Dead-Sea sort,—splendid in coating, but inwardly ashes,—wretched “protective” schemes and the like. The world may yet see that the limbs of toughest fibre and fruit of richest flavor have come from grafts set by just such strong men in theory and in practice as Thomas Jefferson.
An hour after, the evening came on sultry, the air murky, opaque, with yellow trails of color dragging in the west: a sullen stillness in the woods and farms; only, in fact, that dark, inexplicable hush that precedes a storm. But Lois, coming down the hill-road, singing to herself, and keeping time with her whip-end on the wooden measure, stopped when she grew conscious of it. It seemed to her blurred fancy more than a deadening sky: a something solemn and unknown, hinting of evil to come. The dwarf-pines on the road-side scowled weakly at her through the gray; the very silver minnows in the pools she passed flashed frightened away, and darkened into the muddy niches. There was a vague dread in the sudden silence. She called to the old donkey, and went faster down the hill, as if escaping from some overhanging peril, unseen. She saw Margaret coming up the road. There was a phaëton behind her, and some horsemen: she jolted the cart off into the stones to let them pass, seeing Mr. Holmes’s face in the carriage as she did so. He did not look at her; had his head turned towards the gray distance. Lois’s vivid eye caught the full meaning of the woman beside him. The face hurt her: not fair, as Polston called it: vapid and cruel. She was dressed in yellow: the color seemed jeering and mocking to the girl’s sensitive instinct, keenly alive to every trifle. She did not know that it is the color of shams, and that women like this are the most deadly of shams. As the phaëton went slowly down, Margaret came nearer, meeting it on the road-side, the dust from the wheels stifling the air. Lois saw her look up, and then suddenly stand still, holding to the fence, as they met her. Holmes’s cold, wandering eye turned on the little dusty figure standing there, poor and despised. Polston called his eyes hungry: it was a savage hunger that sprang into them now; a gray shadow creeping over his set face, as he looked at her, in that flashing moment. The phaëton was gone in an instant, leaving her alone in the muddy road. One of the men looked back, and then whispered something to the lady with a laugh. She turned to Holmes, when he had finished, fixing her light, confusing eyes on his face, and softening her voice.
“Fred swears that woman we passed was your first love. Were you, then, so chivalric? Was it to have been a second romaunt of ‘King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid’?”
He met her look, and saw the fierce demand through the softness and persiflage. He gave it no answer, but, turning to her, kindled into the man whom she was so proud to show as her capture,—a man far off from Stephen Holmes. Brilliant she called him,—frank, winning, generous. She thought she knew him well; held him a slave to her fluttering hand. Being proud of her slave, she let the hand flutter down now somehow with some flowers it held until it touched his hard fingers, her cheek flushing into rose. The nerveless, spongy hand,—what a death-grip it had on his life! He did not look back once at the motionless, dusty figure on the road. What was that Polston had said about starving to death for a kind word?Love?He was sick of the sickly talk,—crushed it out of his heart with a savage scorn. He remembered his father, the night he died, had said in his weak ravings that God was love. Was He? No wonder, then, He was the God of women, and children, and unsuccessful men. For him, he was done with it. He was here with stronger purpose than to yield to weaknesses of the flesh. He had made his choice,—a straight, hard path upwards; he was deaf now and forever to any word of kindness or pity. As for this woman beside him, he would be just to her, in justice to himself: she never should know the loathing in his heart: just to her as to all living creatures. Some little, mean doubt kept up a sullen whisper of bought and sold,—sold,—but he laughed it down. He sat there with his head steadily turned towards her: a kingly face, she called it, and she was right,—it was a kingly face: with the same shallow, fixed smile on his mouth,—no weary cry went up to God that day so terrible in its pathos, I think: with the same dull consciousness that this was the trial night of his life,—that with the homely figure on the road-side he had turned his back on love and kindly happiness and warmth, on all that was weak and useless in the world. He had made his choice; he would abide by it,—he would abide by it. He said that over and over again, dulling down the death-gnawing of his outraged heart.
Miss Herne was quite contented, sitting by him, with herself, and the admiring world. She had no notion of trial nights in life. Not many temptations pierced through her callous, flabby temperament to sting her to defeat or triumph. There was for her no under-current of conflict, in these people whom she passed, between self and the unseen power that Holmes sneered at, whose name was love; they were nothing but movables, pleasant or ugly to look at, well- or ill-dressed. There were no dark iron bars across her life for her soul to clutch and shake madly,—nothing “in the world amiss, to be unriddled by-and-by.” Little Margaret, sitting by the muddy road, digging her fingers dully into the clover-roots, while she looked at the spot where the wheels had passed, looked at life differently, it may be;—or old Joe Yare by the furnace-fire, his black face and gray hair bent over a torn old spelling-book Lois had given him. The night perhaps was going to be more to them than so many rainy hours for sleeping,—the time to be looked back on through coming lives as the hour when good and ill came to them, and they made their choice, and, as Holmes said, did abide by it.
It grew cool and darker. Holmes left the phaëton before they entered town, and turned back. He was going to see this Margaret Howth, tell her what he was going to do. Because he was going to leave a clean record. No one should accuse him of want of honor. This girl alone of all living beings had a right to see him as he stood, justified to himself. Why she had this right, I do not think he answered to himself. Besides, he must see her, if only on business. She must keep her place at the mill: he would not begin his new life by an act of injustice, taking the bread out of Margaret’s mouth.Little Margaret!He stopped suddenly, looking down into a deep pool of water by the road-side. What madness of weariness crossed his brain just then I do not know. He shook it off. Was he mad? Life was worth more to him than to other men, he thought; and perhaps he was right. He went slowly through the cool dusk, looking across the fields, up at the pale, frightened face of the moon hooded in clouds: he did not dare to look, with all his iron nerve, at the dark figure beyond him on the road. She was sitting there just where he had left her: be knew she would be. When he came closer, she got up, not looking towards him; but he saw her clasp her hands behind her, the fingers plucking weakly at each other. It was an old, childish fashion of hers, when she was frightened or hurt. It would only need a word, and he could be quiet and firm,—she was such a child compared to him: he always had thought of her so. He went on up to her slowly, and stopped; when she looked at him, he untied the linen bonnet that hid her face, and threw it back. How thin and tired the little face had grown! Poor child! He put his strong arm kindly about her, and stooped to kiss her hand, but she drew it away. God! what did she do that for? Did not she know that he could put his head beneath her foot then, he was so mad with pity for the woman he had wronged? Not love, he thought, controlling himself,—it was only justice to be kind to her.
“You have been ill, Margaret, these two years, while I was gone?”
He could not hear her answer; only saw that she looked up with a white, pitiful smile. Only a word it needed, he thought,—very kind and firm: and he must be quick,—he could not bear this long. But he held the little worn fingers, stroking them with an unutterable tenderness.
“You must let these fingers work for me, Margaret,” he said, at last, “when I am master in the mill.”
“It is true, then, Stephen?”
“It is true,—yes.”
She lifted her hand to her head, uncertainly: he held it tightly, and then let it go. What right had he to touch the dust upon her shoes,—he, bought and sold? She did not speak for a time; when she did, it was a weak and sick voice.
“I am glad. I saw her, you know. She is very beautiful.”
The fingers were plucking at each other again; and a strange, vacant smile on her face, trying to look glad.
“You love her, Stephen?”
He was quiet and firm enough now.
“I do not. Her money will help me to become what I ought to be. She does not care for love. You want me to succeed, Margaret? No one ever understood me as you did, child though you were.”
Her whole face glowed.
“I know! I know! I did understand you!”
She said, lower, after a little while,—
“I knew you did not love her.”
“There is no such thing as love in real life,” he said, in his steeled voice. “You will know that, when you grow older. I used to believe in it once, myself.”
She did not speak, only watched the slow motion of his lips, not looking into his eyes,—as she used to do in the old time. Whatever secret account lay between the souls of this man and woman came out now, and stood bare on their faces.
“I used to think that I, too, loved,” he went on, in his low, hard tone. “But it kept me back, Margaret, and”—
He was silent.
“I know, Stephen. It kept you back”—
“And I put it away. I put it away to-night, forever.”
She did not speak; stood quite quiet, her head bent on her breast. His conscience was quite clear now. But he almost wished he had not said it, she was such a weak, sickly thing. She sat down at last, burying her face in her hands, with a shivering sob. He dared not trust himself to speak again.
“I am not proud,—as a woman ought to be,” she said, wearily, when he wiped her clammy forehead.
“You loved me, then?” he whispered.
Her face flashed at the unmanly triumph; her puny frame started up, away from him.
“I did love you, Stephen. I love you now,—as you might be, not as you are,—not with those cold, inhuman eyes. I do understand you,—I do. I know you for a better man than you know yourself this night.”
She turned to go. He put his hand on her arm; something we have never seen on his face struggled up,—the better soul that she knew.
“Come back,” he said, hoarsely; “don’t leave me with myself. Come back, Margaret.”
She did not come; stood leaning, her sudden strength gone, against the broken wall. There was a heavy silence. The night throbbed slow about them. Some late bird rose from the sedges of the pool, and with a frightened cry flapped its tired wings, and drifted into the dark. His eyes, through the gathering shadow, devoured the weak, trembling body, met the soul that looked at him, strong as his own. Was it because it knew and trusted him that all that was pure and strongest in his crushed nature struggled madly to be free? He thrust it down; the self-learned lesson of years was not to be conquered in a moment.
“There have been times,” he said, in a smothered, restless voice, “when I thought you belonged to me. Not here, but before this life. My soul and body thirst and hunger for you, then, Margaret.”
She did not answer; her hands worked feebly together.
He came nearer, and held up his arras to where she stood,—the heavy, masterful face pale and wet.
“I need you, Margaret. I shall be nothing without you, now. Come, Margaret, little Margaret!”
She came to him, and put her hands in his.
“No, Stephen,” she said.
If there were any pain in her tone, she kept it down, for his sake.
“Never, I could never help you,—as you are. It might have been, once. Good-bye, Stephen.”
Her childish way put him in mind of the old days when this girl was dearer to him than his own soul. She was so yet. He held her, looking down into her eyes. She moved uneasily; she dared not trust her resolution.
“You will come?” he said. “It might have been,—it shall be again.”
“It may be,” she said, humbly. “God is good. And I believe in you, Stephen. I will be yours some time: we cannot help it, if we would: but not as you are.”
“You do not love me?” he said, flinging off her hand.
She said nothing, gathered her damp shawl around her, and turned to go. Just a moment they stood, looking at each other. If the dark square figure standing there had been an iron fate trampling her young life down into hopeless wretchedness, she forgot it now. Women like Margaret are apt to forget. His eye never abated in its fierce question.
“I will wait for you yonder, if I die first,” she whispered.
He came closer, waiting for an answer.
“And—I love you, Stephen.”
He gathered her in his arms, and put his cold lips to hers, without a word; then turned and left her slowly.
She made no sign, shed no tear, as she stood watching him go. It was all over: she had willed it, herself, and yet—he could not go! God would not suffer it! Oh, he could not leave her,—he could not!—He went down the hill, slowly. If it were a trial of life and death for her, did he know or care?—He did not look back. What if he did not? his heart was true; he suffered in going; even now he walked wearily. God forgive her, if she had wronged him!—What did it matter, if he were hard in this life, and it hurt her a little? It would come right,—beyond, some time. But life was long.—She would not sit down, sick as she was: he might turn, and it would vex him to see her suffer.—He walked slowly; once he stopped to pick up something. She saw the deep-cut face and half-shut eyes. How often those eyes had looked into her soul, and it had answered! They never would look so any more.—There was a tree by the place where the road turned into town. If he came back, he would be sure to turn there.—How tired he walked, and slow!—If he was sick, that beautiful woman could be near him,—help him.—She never would touch his hand again,—never again, never,—unless he came back now.—He was near the tree: she closed her eyes, turning away. When she looked again, only the bare road lay there, yellow and wet. It was over, now.
How long she sat there she did not know. She tried once or twice to go to the house, but the lights seemed so far off that she gave it up and sat quiet, unconscious except of the damp stones her head leaned on and the stretch of muddy road. Some time, she knew not when, there was a heavy step beside her, and a rough hand shook hers where she stooped feebly tracing out the lines of mortar between the stones. It was Knowles. She looked up, bewildered.
“Hunting catarrhs, eh?” he growled, eying her keenly. “Got your father on the Bourbons, so took the chance to come and find you. He’ll not missmefor an hour. That man has a natural hankering after treason against the people. Lord, Margaret! what a stiff old head he’d have carried to the guillotine! How he’d have looked at thecanaille!”
He helped her up gently enough.
“Your bonnet’s like a wet rag,”—with a furtive glance at the worn-out face. A hungry face always, with her life unfed by its stingy few crumbs of good; but to-night it was vacant with utter loss.
She got up, trying to laugh cheerfully, and went beside him down the road.
“You saw that painted Jezebel to-night, and”—stopping abruptly.
She had not heard him, and he followed her doggedly, with an occasional snort or grunt or other inarticulate damn at the obstinate mud. She stopped at last, with a quick gasp. Looking at her, he chafed her limp hands,—his huge, uncouth face growing pale. When she was better, he said, gravely,—
“I want you, Margaret. Not at home, child. I want to show you something.”
He turned with her suddenly off the main road into a by-path, helping her along, watching her stealthily, but going on with his disjointed, bearish growls. If it stung her from her pain, vexing her, he did not care.
“I want to show you a bit of hell: outskirt. You’re in a fit state: it’ll do you good. I’m minister there. The clergy can’t attend to it just now: they’re too busy measuring God’s truth by the States’-Rights doctrine or the Chicago Platform. Consequence, religion yields to majorities. Are you able? It’s only a step.”
She went on indifferently. The night was breathless and dark. Black, wet gusts dragged now and then through the skyless fog, striking her face with a chill. The Doctor quit talking, hurrying her, watching her anxiously. They came at last to the railway-track, with long trains of empty freight-cars.
“We are nearly there,” he whispered. “It’s time you knew your work, and forgot your weakness. The curse of pampered generations. ‘High Norman blood,’—pah!”
There was a broken gap in the fence. He led her through it into a muddy yard. Inside was one of those taverns you will find in the suburbs of large cities, haunts of the lowest vice. This one was a smoky frame standing on piles over an open space where hogs were rooting. Half a dozen drunken Irishmen were playing poker with a pack of greasy cards in an out-house. He led her up the rickety ladder to the one room, where a flaring tallow-dip threw a saffron glare into the darkness. A putrid odor met them at the door. She drew back, trembling.
“Come here!” he said, fiercely, clutching her hand. “Women as fair and pure as you have come into dens like this,—and never gone away. Does it make your delicate breath faint? And you a follower of the meek and lowly Jesus! Look here! and here!”
The room was swarming with human life. Women, idle trampers, whiskey-bloated, filthy, lay half-asleep or smoking on the floor, and set up a chorus of whining begging when they entered. Half-naked children crawled about in rags. On the damp, mildewed walls there was hung a picture of the Benicia Boy, and close by Pio Nono, crook in hand, with the usual inscription, “Feed my sheep.” The Doctor looked at it.
”’Tu es Petrus, et super hanc‘—Good God! what is truth?” he muttered, bitterly.
He dragged her closer to the women, through the darkness and foul smell.
“Look in their faces,” he whispered. “There is not one of them that is not a living lie. Can they help it? Think of the centuries of serfdom and superstition through which their blood has crawled. Come closer,—here.”
In the corner slept a heap of half-clothed blacks. Going on the underground railroad to Canada. Stolid, sensual wretches, with here and there a broad, melancholy brow and desperate jaws. One little pickaninny rubbed its sleepy eyes and laughed at them.
“So much flesh and blood out of the market, unweighed!”
Margaret took up the child, kissing its brown face. Knowles looked at her.
“Would you touch her? I forgot you were born down South. Put it down, and come on.”
They went out of the door. Margaret stopped, looking back.
“Did I call it a bit of hell? It’s only a glimpse of the under-life of America,—God help us!—where all men are born free and equal.”
The air in the passage grew fouler. She leaned back faint and shuddering. He did not heed her. The passion of the man, the terrible pity for these people, came out of his soul now, whitening his face and dulling his eyes.
“And you,” he said, savagely, “you sit by the road-side, with help in your hands, and Christ in your heart, and call your life lost, quarrel with your God, because that mass of selfishness has left you,—because you are balked in your puny hope! Look at these women. What is their loss, do you think? Go back, will you, and drone out your life whimpering over your lost dream, and go to Shakspeare for tragedy when you want it? Tragedy! Come here,—let me hear what you call this.”
He led her through the passage, up a narrow flight of stairs. An old woman in a flaring cap sat at the top, nodding,—wakening now and then, to rock herself to and fro, and give the shrill Irish keen.
“You know that stoker who was killed in the mill a month ago? Of course not,—what are such people to you? There was a girl who loved him,-you know what that is? She’s dead now, here. She drank herself to death,—a most unpicturesque suicide. I want you to look at her. You need not blush for her life of shame, now; she’s dead.—Is Hetty here?”
The woman got up.
“She is, Zur. She is, Mem. She’s lookin’ foine in her Sunday suit. Shrouds is gone out, Mem, they say.”
She went tipping over the floor to something white that lay on a board, a candle at the head, and drew off the sheet. A girl of fifteen, almost a child, lay underneath, dead,—her lithe, delicate figure decked out in a barred plaid skirt, and stained, faded velvet bodice,—her neck and arms bare. The small face was purely cut, haggard, patient in its sleep,—the soft, fair hair gathered off the tired forehead. Margaret leaned over her shuddering, pinning her handkerchief about the child’s dead neck.
“How young she is!” muttered Knowles. “Merciful God, how young she is!—What is that you say?” sharply, seeing Margaret’s lips move.
“‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.’”
“Ah, child, that is old-time philosophy. Put your hand here, on her dead face. Is your loss like hers?” he said lower, looking into the dull pain in her eyes. Selfish pain he called it.
“Let me go,” she said. “I am tired.”
He took her out into the cool, open road, leading her tenderly enough,—for the girl suffered, he saw.
“What will you do?” he asked her then. “It is not too late,—will you help me save these people?”
She wrung her hands helplessly.
“What do you want with me?” she cried, weakly. “I have enough to bear.”
The burly black figure before her seemed to tower and strengthen; the man’s face in the wan light showed a terrible life-purpose coming out bare.
“I want you to do your work. It is hard; it will wear out your strength and brain and heart. Give yourself to these people. God calls you to it. There is none to help them. Give up love, and the petty hopes of women. Help me. God calls you to the work.”
She went on blindly: he followed her. For years he had set apart this girl to help him in his scheme: he would not be balked now. He had great hopes from his plan: he meant to give all he had: it was the noblest of aims. He thought some day it would work like leaven through the festering mass under the country he loved so well, and raise it to a new life. If it failed,—if it failed, and saved one life, his work was not lost. But it could not fail.
“Home!” he said, stopping her as she reached the stile,—“oh, Margaret, what is home? There is a cry going up night and day from homes like that den yonder, for help,—and no man listens.”
She was weak; her brain faltered.
“Does God call me to this work? Does He call me?” she moaned.
He watched her eagerly.
“He calls you. He waits for your answer. Swear to me that you will help His people. Give up father and mother and love, and go down as Christ did. Help me to give liberty and truth and Jesus’ love to these wretches on the brink of hell. Live with them, raise them with you.”
She looked up, white; she was a weak, weak woman, sick for her natural food of love.
“Is it my work?”
“It is your work. Listen to me, Margaret,” softly. “Who cares for you? You stand alone to-night. There is not a single human heart that calls you nearest and best. Shiver, if you will,—it is true. The man you wasted your soul on left you in the night and cold to go to his bride,—is sitting by her now, holding her hand in his.”
He waited a moment, looking down at her, until she should understand.
“Do you think you deserved this of God? I know that yonder on the muddy road you looked up to Him, and knew it was not just; that you had done right, and this was your reward. I know that for these two years you have trusted in the Christ you worship to make it right, to give you your heart’s desire. Did He do it? Did He hear your prayer? Does He care for your weak love, when the nations of the earth are going down? What is your poor hope to Him, when the very land you live in is a wine-press that will be trodden some day by the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God? O Christ!—if there be a Christ,—help me to save it!”
He looked up,—his face white with pain. After a time he said to her,—
“Help me, Margaret! Your prayer was selfish; it was not heard. Give up your idle hope that Christ will aid you. Swear to me, this night when you have lost all, to give yourself to this work.”
The storm had been dark and windy: it cleared now slowly, the warm summer rain falling softly, the fresh blue stealing broadly from behind the gray. It seemed to Margaret like a blessing; for her brain rose up stronger, more healthful.
“I will not swear,” she said, weakly. “I think He heard my prayer. I think He will answer it. He was a man, and loved as we do. My love is not selfish; it is the best gift God has given me.”
Knowles went slowly with her to the house. He was not baffled. He knew that the struggle was yet to come; that, when she was alone, her faith in the far-off Christ would falter; that she would grasp at this work, to fill her empty hands and starved heart, if for no other reason,—to stifle by a sense of duty her unutterable feeling of loss. He was keenly read in woman’s heart, this Knowles. He left her silently, and she passed through the dark passage to her own room.
Putting her damp shawl off, she sat down on the floor, leaning her head on a low chair,—one her father had given her for a Christmas gift when she was little. How fond Holmes and her father used to be of each other! Every Christmas he spent with them. She remembered them all now. “He was sitting by her now, holding her hand in his.” She said that over to herself, though it was not hard to understand.
After a long time, her mother came with a candle to the door.
“Good-night, Margaret. Why, your hair is wet, child!”
For Margaret, kissing her good-night, had laid her head down a minute on her breast. She stroked the hair a moment, and then turned away.
“Mother, could you stay with me to-night?”
“Why, no, Maggie,—your father wants me to read to him.”
“Oh, I know. Did he miss me to-night,—father?”
“Not much; we were talking old times over,—in Virginia, you know.”
“I know; good-night.”
She went back to the chair. Tige was there,—for he used to spend half of his time on the farm. She put her arm about his head. God knows how lonely the poor child was when she drew the dog so warmly to her heart: not for his master’s sake alone; but it was all she had. He grew tired at last, and whined, trying to get out.
“Will you go, Tige?” she said, and opened the window.
He jumped out, and she watched him going towards town. Such a little thing, it was! But not even a dog “called her nearest and best.”
Let us be silent; the story of the night is not for us to read. Do you think that He, who in the far, dim Life holds the worlds in His hand, knew or cared how alone the child was? What if she wrung her thin hands, grew sick with the slow, mad, solitary tears?—was not the world to save, as Knowles said?
He, too, had been alone; He had come unto His own, and His own received him not: so, while the struggling world rested, unconscious, in infinite calm of right, He came close to her with human eyes that had loved, and not been loved, and had suffered with that pain. And, trusting Him, she only said, “Show me my work! Thou that takest away the pain of the world, have mercy upon me!”
For that night, at least, Holmes swept his soul clean of doubt and indecision; one of his natures was conquered,—finally, he thought. Polston, if he had seen his face as he paced the street slowly home to the mill, would have remembered his mother’s the day she died. How the stern old woman met death half-way! why should she fear? she was as strong as he. Wherein had she failed of duty? her hands were clean: she was going to meet her just reward.
It was different with Holmes, of course, with his self-existent soul. It was life he accepted to-night, he thought,—a life of growth, labor, achievement,—eternal.
“Ohne Hast, aber ohne Rast,”—favorite words with him. He liked to study the nature of the man who spoke them; because, I think, it was like his own,—a Titan strength of endurance, an infinite capability of love and hate and suffering, and over all (the peculiar identity of the man) a cold, speculative eye of reason, that looked down into the passion and depths of his growing self, and calmly noted them, a lesson for all time.
“Ohne Hast.” Going slowly through the night, he strengthened himself by marking how all things in Nature accomplish a perfected life through slow, narrow fixedness of purpose,—each life complete in itself: why not his own, then? The windless gray, the stars, the stone under his feet, stood alone in the universe, each working out its own soul into deed. If there were any all-embracing harmony, one soul through all, he did not see it. Knowles—that old skeptic—believed in it, and called it Love. Even Goethe himself, what was it he said? “Der Allumfasser, der Allerhalter, fasst und erhält er nicht dich, mich, sich selbst?”
There was a curious power in the words, as he lingered over them, like half-comprehended music,—as simple and tender as if they had come from the depths of a woman’s heart: it touched him deeper than his power of control. Pah! it was a dream of Faust’s; he, too, had his Margaret; he fell, through that love.
He went on slowly to the mill. If the name or the words woke a subtile remorse or longing, he buried them under restful composure. Whether they should ever rise like angry ghosts of what might have been, to taunt the man, only the future could tell.
Going through the gas-lit streets, Holmes met some cordial greeting at every turn. What a just, clever fellow he was! people said: one of those men improved by success: just to the defrauding of himself: saw the true worth of everybody, the very lowest: hadn’t one spark of self-esteem: despised all humbug and show, one could see, though he never said it: when he was a boy, he was moody, with passionate likes and dislikes; but success had improved him, vastly. So Holmes was popular, though the beggars shunned him, and the lazy Italian organ-grinders never held their tambourines up to him.
The mill street was dark; the building threw its great shadow over the square. It was empty, he supposed; only one hand generally remained to keep in the furnace-fires. Going through one of the lower passages, he heard voices, and turned aside to examine. The management was not strict, and in case of a fire the mill was not insured: like Knowles’s carelessness.
It was Lois and her father,—Joe Yare being feeder that night. They were in one of the great furnace-rooms in the cellar,—a very comfortable place that stormy night. Two or three doors of the wide brick ovens were open, and the fire threw a ruddy glow over the stone floor, and shimmered into the dark recesses of the shadows, very home-like after the rain and mud without. Lois seemed to think so, at any rate, for she had made a table of a store-box, put a white cloth on it, and was busy getting up a regular supper for her father,—down on her knees before the red coals, turning something on an iron plate, while some slices of ham sent up a cloud of juicy, hungry smell.
The old stoker had just finished slaking the out-fires, and was putting some blue plates on the table, gravely straightening them. He had grown old, as Polston said,—Holmes saw, stooped much, with a low, hacking cough; his coarse clothes were curiously clean: that was to please Lois, of course. She put the ham on the table, and some bubbling coffee, and then, from a hickory board in front of the fire, took off, with a jerk, brown, flaky slices of Virginia johnny-cake.
“Ther’ yoh are, father, hot ‘n’ hot,” with her face on fire,—“ther’—yoh—are,—coaxin’ to be eatin’.—Why, Mr. Holmes! Father! Now, ef yoh jes’ hedn’t hed yer supper?”
She came up, coaxingly. What brooding brown eyes the poor cripple had! Not many years ago he would have sat down with the two poor souls and made a hearty meal of it: he had no heart for such follies now.
Old Yare stood in the background, his hat in his hand, stooping in his submissive negro fashion, with a frightened watch on Holmes.
“Do you stay here, Lois?” he asked, kindly, turning his back on the old man.
“On’y to bring his supper. I couldn’t bide all night ’n th’ mill,”—the old shadow coming on her face,—“I couldn’t, yoh know.Hedoesn’t mind it.”
She glanced quickly from one to the other in the silence, seeing the fear on her father’s face.
“Yoh know father, Mr. Holmes? He’s back now. This is him.”
The old man came forward, humbly.
“It’s me, Master Stephen.”
The sullen, stealthy face disgusted Holmes. He nodded, shortly.
“Yoh’ve been kind to my little girl while I was gone,” he said, catching his breath. “I thank yoh, master.”
“You need not. It was for Lois.”
“’Twas fur her I comed back hyur. ’Twas a resk,”—with a dumb look of entreaty at Holmes,—“but fur her I thort I’d try it. I know ’twas a resk; but I thort them as cared fur Lo wud be merciful. She’s a good girl, Lo. She’s all I hev.”
Lois brought a box over, lugging it heavily.
“We hevn’t chairs; but yoh’ll sit down, Mr. Holmes?” laughing as she covered it with a cloth. “It’s a warrm place, here. Father studies ‘n his watch, ‘n’ I’m teacher,”—showing the torn old spelling-book.
The old man came eagerly forward, seeing the smile flicker on Holmes’s face.
“It’s slow work, master,—slow. But Lo’s a good teacher, ’n’ I’m tryin’,—I’m tryin’ hard.”
“It’s not slow, Sir, seein’ father hedn’t ’dvantages, like me. He was a”—
She stopped, lowering her voice, a hot flush of shame on her face.
“I know.”
“Ben’t that ’n ’xcuse, master, seein’ I knowed noght at the beginnin’? Thenk o’ that, master. I’m tryin’ to be a different man. Fur Lo. Iamtryin’.”
Holmes did not notice him.
“Good-night, Lois,” he said, kindly, as she lighted his lamp.
He put some money on the table.
“You must take it,” as she looked uneasy. “For Tiger’s board, say. I never see him now. A bright new frock, remember.”
She thanked him, her eyes brightening, looking at her father’s patched coat.
The old man followed Holmes out.
“Master Holmes”—
“Have done with this,” said Holmes, sternly. “Whoever breaks law abides by it. It is no affair of mine.”
The old man clutched his hands together fiercely, struggling to be quiet.
“Ther’s none knows it but yoh,” he said, in a smothered voice. “Fur God’s sake be merciful! It’ll kill my girl,—it’ll kill her. Gev me a chance, master.”
“You trouble me. I must do what is just.”
“It’s not just,” he said, savagely. “What good’ll it do me to go back ther’? I was goin’ down, down, an’ bringin’ th’ others with me. What good’ll it do you or the rest to hev me ther’? To make me afraid? It’s poor learnin’ frum fear. Who taught me what was right? Who cared? No man cared fur my soul, till I thieved ’n’ robbed; ‘n’ then judge ’n’ jury ’n’ jailers was glad to pounce on me. Will yoh gev me a chance? will yoh?”
It was a desperate face before him; but Holmes never knew fear.
“Stand aside,” he said, quietly. “To-morrow I will see you. You need not try to escape.”
He passed him, and went slowly up through the vacant mill to his chamber.
The man sat down on the lower step a few moments, quite quiet, crushing his hat up in a slow, steady way, looking up at the mouldy cobwebs on the wall. He got up at last, and went in to Lois. Had she heard? The old scarred face of the girl looked years older, he thought,—but it might be fancy. She did not say anything for a while, moving slowly, with a new gentleness, about him; her very voice was changed, older. He tried to be cheerful, eating his supper: she need not know until to-morrow. He would get out of the town to-night, or—There were different ways to escape. When he had done, he told her to go; but she would not.
“Let me stay th’ night,” she said. “I ben’t afraid o’ th’ mill.”
“Why, Lo,” he said, laughing, “yoh used to say yer death was hid here, somewheres.”
“I know. But ther’s worse nor death. But it’ll come right,” she said, persistently, muttering to herself, as she leaned her face on her knees, watching,—“it’ll come right.”
The glimmering shadows changed and faded for an hour. The man sat quiet. There was not much in the years gone to soften his thought, as it grew desperate and cruel: there was oppression and vice heaped on him, and flung back out of his bitter heart. Nor much in the future: a blank stretch of punishment to the end. He was an old man: was it easy to bear? What if he were black? what if he were born a thief? what if all the sullen revenge of his nature had made him an outcast from the poorest poor? Was there no latent good in this soul for which Christ died, that a kind hand might not have brought to life? None? Something, I think, struggled up in the touch of his hand, catching the skirt of his child’s dress, when it came near him, with the timid tenderness of a mother touching her dead baby’s hair,—as something holy, far off, yet very near: something in his old crime-marked face,—a look like this dog’s, putting his head on my knee,—a dumb, unhelpful love in his eyes, and the slow memory of a wrong done to his soul in a day long past. A wrong to both, you say, perhaps; but if so, irreparable, and never to be recompensed. Never?
“Yoh must go, my little girl,” he said at last.
Whatever he did must be done quickly. She came up, combing the thin gray hairs through her fingers.
“Father, I dunnot understan’ what it is, rightly. But stay with me,—stay, father!”
“Yoh’ve a many frien’s, Lo,” he said, with a keen flash of jealousy. “Ther’s none like yoh,—none.”
She put her misshapen head and scarred face down on his hand, where he could see them. If it had ever hurt her to be as she was, if she had ever compared herself bitterly with fair, beloved women, she was glad now and thankful for every fault and deformity that brought her nearer to him, and made her dearer.
“They’re kind, but ther’s not many loves me with true love, like yoh. Stay, father! Bear it out, whatever it be. Th’ good time’ll come, father.”
He kissed her, saying nothing, and went with her down the street. When he left her, she waited, and, creeping back, hid near the mill. God knows what vague dread was in her brain; but she came back to watch and help.
Old Yare wandered through the great loom-rooms of the mill with but one fact clear in his cloudy, faltering perception,—that above him the man lay quietly sleeping who would bring worse than death on him to-morrow. Up and down, aimlessly, with his stoker’s torch in his hand, going over the years gone and the years to come, with the dead hatred through all of the pitiless man above him,—with now and then, perhaps, a pleasanter thought of things that had been warm and cheerful in his life,—of the corn-huskings long ago, when he was a boy, down in “th’ Alabam’,”—of the scow his young master gave him once, the first thing he really owned: he was almost as proud of it as he was of Lois when she was born. Most of all remembering the good times in his life, he went back to Lois. It was all good, there, to go back to. What a little chub she used to be! Remembering, with bitter remorse, how all his life he had meant to try and do better, on her account, but had kept putting off and putting off until now. And now—Did nothing lie before him but to go back and rot yonder? Was that the end, because he never had learned better, and was a “dam’ nigger”?