CHAPTER IIIAugustus Cæsar
Phil early found the home of the Camerons the most charming spot in town. As he sat in the old-fashioned parlour beside Margaret, his brain seethed with plans for building a hotel on a large scale on the other side of the Square and restoring her home intact.
The Cameron homestead was a large brick building with an ample porch looking out directly on the Court House Square, standing in the middle of a lawn full of trees, flowers, shrubbery, and a wilderness of evergreen boxwood planted fifty years before. It was located on the farm from which it had always derived its support. The farm extended up into the village itself, with the great barn easily seen from the street.
Phil was charmed with the doctor’s genial personality. He often found the father a decidedly easier person to get along with than his handsome daughter. The Rev. Hugh McAlpin was a daily caller, and Margaret had a tantalizing way of showing her deference to his opinions.
Phil hated this preacher from the moment he laid eyes on him. His pugnacious piety he might have endured but for the fact that he was good-looking and eloquent. When he rose in the pulpit in all his sacred dignity, fixed his eyes on Margaret, and began in tenderly modulatedvoice to tell about the love of God, Phil clinched his fist. He didn’t care to join the Presbyterian church, but he quietly made up his mind that, if it came to the worst and she asked him, he would join anything. What made him furious was the air of assurance with which the young divine carried himself about Margaret, as if he had but to say the word and it would be fixed as by a decree issued from before the foundations of the world.
He was pleased and surprised to find that his being a Yankee made no difference in his standing or welcome. The people seemed unconscious of the part his father played at Washington. Stoneman’s Confiscation Bill had not yet been discussed in Congress, and the promise of land to the negroes was universally regarded as a hoax of the League to win their followers. The old Commoner was not an orator. Hence his name was scarcely known in the South. The Southern people could not conceive of a great leader except one who expressed his power through the megaphone of oratory. They held Charles Sumner chiefly responsible for Reconstruction.
The fact that Phil was a Yankee who had no axe to grind in the South caused the people to appeal to him in a pathetic way that touched his heart. He had not been in town two weeks before he was on good terms with every youngster, had the entrée to every home, and Ben had taken him, protesting vehemently, to see every pretty girl there. He found that, in spite of war and poverty, troubles present and troubles to come, the young Southern woman was the divinity that claimed and received the chief worship of man.
The tremendous earnestness with which these youngsters pursued the work of courting, all of them so poor they scarcely had enough to eat, amazed and alarmed him beyond measure. He found in several cases as many as four making a dead set for one girl, as if heaven and earth depended on the outcome, while the girl seemed to receive it all as a matter of course—her just tribute.
Every instinct of his quiet reserved nature revolted at any such attempt to rush his cause with Margaret, and yet it made the cold chills run down his spine to see that Presbyterian preacher drive his buggy up to the hotel, take her to ride, and stay three hours. He knew where they had gone—to Lover’s Leap and along the beautiful road which led to the North Carolina line. He knew the way—Margaret had showed him. This road was the Way of Romance. Every farmhouse, cabin, and shady nook along its beaten track could tell its tale of lovers fleeing from the North to find happiness in the haven of matrimony across the line in South Carolina. Everything seemed to favour marriage in this climate. The state required no license. A legal marriage could be celebrated, anywhere, at any time, by a minister in the presence of two witnesses, with or without the consent of parent or guardian. Marriage was the easiest thing in the state—divorce the one thing impossible. Death alone could grant divorce.
He was now past all reason in love. He followed the movement of Margaret’s queenly figure with pathetic abandonment. Beneath her beautiful manners he swore with a shiver that she was laughing at him. Now andthen he caught a funny expression about her eyes, as if she were consumed with a sly sense of humour in her love affairs.
What he felt to be his manliest traits, his reserve, dignity, and moral earnestness, she must think cold and slow beside the dash, fire, and assurance of these Southerners. He could tell by the way she encouraged the preacher before his eyes that she was criticizing and daring him to let go for once. Instead of doing it, he sank back appalled at the prospect and let the preacher carry her off again.
He sought solace in Dr. Cameron, who was utterly oblivious of his daughter’s love affairs.
Phil was constantly amazed at the variety of his knowledge, the genuineness of his culture, his modesty, and the note of youth and cheer with which he still pursued the study of medicine.
His company was refreshing for its own sake. The slender graceful figure, ruddy face, with piercing, dark-brown eyes in startling contrast to his snow-white hair and beard, had for Phil a perpetual charm. He never tired listening to his talk, and noting the peculiar grace and dignity with which he carried himself, unconscious of the commanding look of his brilliant eyes.
“I hear that you have used hypnotism in your practice, Doctor,” Phil said to him one day, as he watched with fascination the changing play of his mobile features.
“Oh, yes! used it for years. Southern doctors have always been pioneers in the science of medicine. Dr.Crawford Long, of Georgia, you know, was the first practitioner in America to apply anesthesia to surgery.”
“But where did you run up against hypnotism? I thought this a new thing under the sun?”
The doctor laughed.
“It’s not a home industry, exactly. I became interested in it in Edinburgh while a medical student, and pursued it with increased interest in Paris.”
“Did you study medicine abroad?” Phil asked in surprise.
“Yes; I was poor, but I managed to raise and to borrow enough to take three years on the other side. I put all I had and all my credit in it. I’ve never regretted the sacrifice. The more I saw of the great world, the better I liked my own world. I’ve given these farmers and their families the best God gave to me.”
“Do you find much use for your powers of hypnosis?” Phil asked.
“Only in an experimental way. Naturally I am endowed with this gift—especially over certain classes who are easily the subjects of extreme fear. I owned a rascally slave named Gus whom I used to watch stealing. Suddenly confronting him, I’ve thrown him into unconsciousness with a steady gaze of the eye, until he would drop on his face, trembling like a leaf, unable to speak until I allowed him.”
“How do you account for such powers?”
“I don’t account for them at all. They belong to the world of spiritual phenomena of which we know so little and yet which touch our material lives at a thousandpoints every day. How do we account for sleep and dreams, or second sight, or the day dreams which we call visions?”
Phil was silent, and the doctor went on dreamily:
“The day my boy Richard was killed at Gettysburg, I saw him lying dead in a field near a house. I saw some soldiers bury him in the corner of that field, and then an old man go to the grave, dig up his body, cart it away into the woods, and throw it into a ditch. I saw it before I heard of the battle or knew that he was in it. He was reported killed, and his body has never been found. It is the one unspeakable horror of the war to me. I’ll never get over it.”
“How very strange!” exclaimed Phil.
“And yet the war was nothing, my boy, to the horrors I feel clutching the throat of the South to-day. I’m glad you and your father are down here. Your disinterested view of things may help us at Washington when we need it most. The South seems to have no friend at court.”
“Your younger men, I find, are hopeful, Doctor,” said Phil.
“Yes, the young never see danger until it’s time to die. I’m not a pessimist, but I was happier in jail. Scores of my old friends have given up in despair and died. Delicate and cultured women are living on cowpeas, corn bread, and molasses—and of such quality they would not have fed it to a slave. Children go to bed hungry. Droves of brutal negroes roam at large, stealing, murdering, and threatening blacker crimes. We are under the heel of petty military tyrants, few of whom ever smelled gunpowder in a battle. At the approaching election, not a decent white man in this country can take the infamous test oath. I am disfranchised because I gave a cup of water to the lips of one of my dying boys on the battlefield. My slaves are all voters. There will be a negro majority of more than one hundred thousand in this state. Desperadoes are here teaching these negroes insolence and crime in their secret societies. The future is a nightmare.”
HENRY WALTHALL AS BEN CAMERON.
HENRY WALTHALL AS BEN CAMERON.
“You have my sympathy, sir,” said Phil warmly, extending his hand. “These Reconstruction Acts, conceived in sin and brought forth in iniquity, can bring only shame and disgrace until the last trace of them is wiped from our laws. I hope it will not be necessary to do it in blood.”
The doctor was deeply touched. He could not be mistaken in the genuineness of any man’s feeling. He never dreamed this earnest straightforward Yankee youngster was in love with Margaret, and it would have made no difference in the accuracy of his judgment.
“Your sentiments do you honour, sir,” he said with grave courtesy. “And you honour us and our town with your presence and friendship.”
As Phil hurried home in a warm glow of sympathy for the people whose hospitality had made him their friend and champion, he encountered a negro trooper standing on the corner, watching the Cameron house with furtive glance.
Instinctively he stopped, surveyed the man from head to foot and asked:
“What’s the trouble?”
“None er yo’ business,” the negro answered, slouching across to the opposite side of the street.
Phil watched him with disgust. He had the short, heavy-set neck of the lower order of animals. His skin was coal black, his lips so thick they curled both ways up and down with crooked blood marks across them. His nose was flat, and its enormous nostrils seemed in perpetual dilation. The sinister bead eyes, with brown splotches in their whites, were set wide apart and gleamed apelike under his scant brows. His enormous cheekbones and jaws seemed to protrude beyond the ears and almost hide them.
“That we should send such soldiers here to flaunt our uniform in the faces of these people!” he exclaimed, with bitterness.
He met Ben hurrying home from a visit to Elsie. The two young soldiers whose prejudices had melted in the white heat of battle had become fast friends.
Phil laughed and winked:
“I’ll meet you to-night around the family altar!”
When he reached home, Ben saw, slouching in front of the house, walking back and forth and glancing furtively behind him, the negro trooper whom his friend had passed.
He walked quickly in front of him, and blinking his eyes rapidly, said:
“Didn’t I tell you, Gus, not to let me catch you hanging around this house again?”
The negro drew himself up, pulling his blue uniforminto position as his body stretched out of its habitual slouch, and answered:
“My name ain’t ‘Gus.’”
Ben gave a quick little chuckle and leaned back against the palings, his hand resting on one that was loose. He glanced at the negro carelessly and said:
“Well, Augustus Cæsar, I give your majesty thirty seconds to move off the block.”
Gus’ first impulse was to run, but remembering himself he threw back his shoulders and said:
“I reckon de streets free——”
“Yes, and so is kindling wood!”
Quick as a flash of lightning the paling suddenly left the fence and broke three times in such bewildering rapidity on the negro’s head he forgot everything he ever knew or thought he knew save one thing—the way to run. He didn’t fly, but he made remarkable use of the facilities with which he had been endowed.
Ben watched him disappear toward the camp.
He picked up the pieces of paling, pulled a strand of black wool from a splinter, looked at it curiously and said:
“A sprig of his majesty’s hair—I’ll doubtless remember him without it!”
CHAPTER IVAt the Point of the Bayonet
Within an hour from Ben’s encounter he was arrested without warrant by the military commandant, handcuffed, and placed on the train for Columbia, more than a hundred miles distant. The first purpose of sending him in charge of a negro guard was abandoned for fear of a riot. A squad of white troops accompanied him.
Elsie was waiting at the gate, watching for his coming, her heart aglow with happiness.
When Marion and little Hugh ran to tell the exciting news, she thought it a joke and refused to believe it.
“Come, dear, don’t tease me; you know it’s not true!”
“I wish I may die if ’tain’t so!” Hugh solemnly declared. “He run Gus away ’cause he scared Aunt Margaret so. They come and put handcuffs on him and took him to Columbia. I tell you Grandpa and Grandma and Aunt Margaret are mad!”
Elsie called Phil and begged him to see what had happened.
When Phil reported Ben’s arrest without a warrant, and the indignity to which he had been subjected on the amazing charge of resisting military authority, Elsie hurried with Marion and Hugh to the hotel to express herindignation, and sent Phil to Columbia on the next train to fight for his release.
By the use of a bribe Phil discovered that a special inquisition had been hastily organized to procure perjured testimony against Ben on the charge of complicity in the murder of a carpet-bag adventurer named Ashburn, who had been killed at Columbia in a row in a disreputable resort. This murder had occurred the week Ben Cameron was in Nashville. The enormous reward of $25,000 had been offered for the conviction of any man who could be implicated in the killing. Scores of venal wretches, eager for this blood money, were using every device of military tyranny to secure evidence on which to convict—no matter who the man might be. Within six hours of his arrival they had pounced on Ben.
They arrested as a witness an old negro named John Stapler, noted for his loyalty to the Camerons. The doctor had saved his life once in a dangerous illness. They were going to put him to torture and force him to swear that Ben Cameron had tried to bribe him to kill Ashburn. General Howle, the Commandant of the Columbia district, was in Charleston on a visit to headquarters.
Phil resorted to the ruse of pretending, as a Yankee, the deepest sympathy for Ashburn, and by the payment of a fee of twenty dollars to the Captain, was admitted to the fort to witness the torture.
They led the old man trembling into the presence of the Captain, who sat on an improvised throne in full uniform.
“Have you ordered a barber to shave this man’s head?” sternly asked the judge.
“Please, Marster, fer de Lawd’s sake, I ain’ done nuttin‘—doan’ shave my head. Dat ha’r been wropped lak dat fur ten year! I die sho’ ef I lose my ha’r.”
“Bring the barber, and take him back until he comes,” was the order. In an hour they led him again into the room blindfolded, and placed him in a chair.
“Have you let him see a preacher before putting him through?” the Captain asked. “I have an order from the General in Charleston to put him through to-day.”
“For Gawd’s sake, Marster, doan’ put me froo—I ain’t done nuttin’ en I doan’ know nuttin’!”
The old negro slipped to his knees, trembling from head to foot.
The guards caught him by the shoulders and threw him back into the chair. The bandage was removed, and just in front of him stood a brass cannon pointed at his head, a soldier beside it holding the string ready to pull. John threw himself backward, yelling:
“Goddermighty!”
When he scrambled to his feet and started to run, another cannon swung on him from the rear. He dropped to his knees and began to pray.
“Yas, Lawd, I’se er comin’. I hain’t ready—but, Lawd, I got ter come! Save me!”
“Shave him!” the Captain ordered.
While the old man sat moaning, they lathered his head with two scrubbing-brushes and shaved it clean.
“Now stand him up by the wall and measure him for his coffin,” was the order.
They snatched him from the chair, pushed him against the wall, and measured him. While they were taking his measure, the man next to him whispered:
“Now’s the time to save your hide—tell all about Ben Cameron trying to hire you to kill Ashburn.”
“Give him a few minutes,” said the Captain, “and maybe we can hear what Mr. Cameron said about Ashburn.”
“I doan’ know nuttin’, General,” pleaded the old darkey. “I ain’t heard nuttin’—I ain’t seed Marse Ben fer two monts.”
“You needn’t lie to us. The rebels have been posting you. But it’s no use. We’ll get it out of you.”
“‘Fo’ Gawd, Marster, I’se telling de truf!”
“Put him in the dark cell and keep him there the balance of his life unless he tells,” was the order.
At the end of four days, Phil was summoned again to witness the show.
John was carried to another part of the fort and shown the sweat-box.
“Now tell all you know or in you go!” said his tormentor.
The negro looked at the engine of torture in abject terror—a closet in the walls of the fort just big enough to admit the body, with an adjustable top to press down too low for the head to be held erect. The door closed tight against the breast of the victim. The only air admitted was through an auger-hole in the door.
The old man’s lips moved in prayer.
“Will you tell?” growled the Captain.
“I cain’t tell ye nuttin’ ‘cept’n’ a lie!” he moaned.
They thrust him in, slammed the door, and in a loud voice the Captain said:
“Keep him there for thirty days unless he tells.”
He was left in the agony of the sweat-box for thirty-three hours and taken out. His limbs were swollen and when he attempted to walk he tottered and fell.
The guard jerked him to his feet, and the Captain said:
“I’m afraid we’ve taken him out too soon, but if he don’t tell he can go back and finish the month out.”
The poor old negro dropped in a faint, and they carried him back to his cell.
Phil determined to spare no means, fair or foul, to secure Ben’s release from the clutches of these devils. He had as yet been unable to locate his place of confinement.
He continued his ruse of friendly curiosity, kept in touch with the Captain, and the Captain in touch with his pocketbook.
Summoned to witness another interesting ceremony, he hurried to the fort.
The officer winked at him confidentially, and took him out to a row of dungeons built of logs and ceiled inside with heavy boards. A single pane of glass about eight inches square admitted light ten feet from the ground.
There was a commotion inside, curses, groans, and cries for mercy mingling in rapid succession.
“What is it?” asked Phil.
“Hell’s goin’ on in there!” laughed the officer.
“Evidently.”
A heavy crash, as though a ton weight had struck the floor, and then all was still.
“By George, it’s too bad we can’t see it all!” exclaimed the officer.
“What does it mean?” urged Phil.
Again the Captain laughed immoderately.
“I’ve got a blue-blood in there taking the bluin’ out of his system. He gave me some impudence. I’m teaching him who’s running this country!”
“What are you doing to him?” Phil asked with a sudden suspicion.
“Oh, just having a little fun! I put two big white drunks in there with him—half-fighting drunks, you know—and told them to work on his teeth and manicure his face a little to initiate him into the ranks of the common people, so to speak!”
Again he laughed.
Phil, listening at the keyhole, held up his hand:
“Hush, they’re talking——”
He could hear Ben Cameron’s voice in the softest drawl:
“Say it again.”
“Please, Marster!”
“Now both together, and a little louder!”
“Please, Marster,” came the united chorus.
“Now what kind of a dog did I say you are?”
“The kind as comes when his marster calls.”
“Both together—the under dog seems to have too much cover, like his mouth might be full of cotton.”
They repeated it louder.
“A common—stump-tailed—cur-dog?”
“Yessir.”
“Say it.”
“A common—stump-tailed—cur-dog—Marster!”
“A pair of them.”
“A pair of ’em.”
“No, the whole thing—all together—‘we—are—a—pair!’”
“Yes—Marster.” They repeated it in chorus.
“With apologies to the dogs——”
“Apologies to the dogs——”
“And why does your master honour the kennel with his presence to-day?”
“He hit a nigger on the head so hard that he strained the nigger’s ankle, and he’s restin’ from his labours.”
“That’s right, Towser. If I had you and Tige a few hours every day I could make good squirrel-dogs out of you.”
There was a pause. Phil looked up and smiled.
“What does it sound like?” asked the Captain, with a shade of doubt in his voice.
“Sounds to me like a Sunday-school teacher taking his class through a new catechism.”
The Captain fumbled hurriedly for his keys.
“There’s something wrong in there.”
He opened the door and sprang in.
Ben Cameron was sitting on top of the two toughs, knocking their heads together as they repeated each chorus.
“Walk in, gentlemen. The show is going on now—the animals are doing beautifully,” said Ben.
The Captain muttered an oath. Phil suddenly grasped him by the throat, hurled him against the wall, and snatched the keys from his hand.
“Now open your mouth, you white-livered cur, and inside of twenty-four hours I’ll have you behind the bars. I have all the evidence I need. I’m an ex-officer of the United States Army, of the fighting corps—not the vulture division. This is my friend. Accompany us to the street and strike your charges from the record.”
The coward did as he was ordered, and Ben hurried back to Piedmont with a friend toward whom he began to feel closer than a brother.
When Elsie heard the full story of the outrage, she bore herself toward Ben with unusual tenderness, and yet he knew that the event had driven their lives farther apart. He felt instinctively the cold silent eye of her father, and his pride stiffened under it. The girl had never considered the possibility of a marriage without her father’s blessing. Ben Cameron was too proud to ask it. He began to fear that the differences between her father and his people reached to the deepest sources of life.
Phil found himself a hero at the Cameron House. Margaret said little, but her bearing spoke in deeper language than words. He felt it would be mean to take advantage of her gratitude.
But he was quick to respond to the motherly tenderness of Mrs. Cameron. In the groups of neighbours who gathered in the evenings to discuss with the doctor the hopes, fears, and sorrows of the people, Phil was a charmed listener to the most brilliant conversations hehad ever heard. It seemed the normal expression of their lives. He had never before seen people come together to talk to one another after this fashion. More and more the simplicity, dignity, patience, courtesy, and sympathy of these people in their bearing toward one another impressed him. More and more he grew to like them.
Marion went out of her way to express her open admiration for Phil and tease him about Margaret. The Rev. Hugh McAlpin was monopolizing her on the Wednesday following his return from Columbia and Phil sought Marion for sympathy.
“What will you give me if I tease you about Margaret right before her?” she asked.
He blushed furiously.
“Don’t you dare such a thing on peril of your life!”
“You know you like to be teased about her,” she cried, her blue eyes dancing with fun.
“With such a pretty little friend to do the teasing all by ourselves, perhaps——”
“You’ll never get her unless you have more spunk.”
“Then I’ll find consolation with you.”
“No, I mean to marry young.”
“And your ideal of life?”
“To fill the world with flowers, laughter, and music—especially my own home—and never do a thing I can make my husband do for me! How do you like it?”
“I think it very sweet,” Phil answered soberly.
At noon on the following Friday, the PiedmontEagleappeared with an editorial signed by Dr. Cameron, denouncingin the fine language of the old school the arrest of Ben as “despotism and the usurpation of authority.”
At three o’clock, Captain Gilbert, in command of the troops stationed in the village, marched a squad of soldiers to the newspaper office. One of them carried a sledge-hammer. In ten minutes he demolished the office, heaped the type and their splintered cases on top of the battered press in the middle of the street, and set fire to the pile.
On the courthouse door he nailed this proclamation:
To the People of Ulster County:The censures of the press, directed against the servants of the people, may be endured; but the military force in command of this district are not the servants of the people of South Carolina.We are your masters.The impertinence of newspaper comment on the military will not be brookedunder any circumstances whatever.G. C. Gilbert,Captain in Command.
To the People of Ulster County:
The censures of the press, directed against the servants of the people, may be endured; but the military force in command of this district are not the servants of the people of South Carolina.We are your masters.The impertinence of newspaper comment on the military will not be brookedunder any circumstances whatever.
G. C. Gilbert,Captain in Command.
G. C. Gilbert,
Captain in Command.
Not content with this display of power, he determined to make an example of Dr. Cameron, as the leader of public opinion in the county.
He ordered a squad of his negro troops to arrest him immediately and take him to Columbia for obstructing the execution of the Reconstruction Acts. He placed the squad under command of Gus, whom he promoted to be a corporal, with instructions to wait until the doctor was inside his house, boldly enter it and arrest him.
When Gus marched his black janizaries into the house, no one was in the office. Margaret had gone for a ridewith Phil, and Ben had strolled with Elsie to Lover’s Leap, unconscious of the excitement in town.
Dr. Cameron himself had heard nothing of it, having just reached home from a visit to a country patient.
Gus stationed his men at each door, and with another trooper walked straight into Mrs. Cameron’s bedroom, where the doctor was resting on a lounge.
Had an imp of perdition suddenly sprung through the floor, the master of the house of Cameron would not have been more enraged or surprised.
A sudden leap, as the spring of a panther, and he stood before his former slave, his slender frame erect, his face a livid spot in its snow-white hair, his brilliant eyes flashing with fury.
Gus suddenly lost control of his knees.
His old master transfixed him with his eyes, and in a voice, whose tones gripped him by the throat, said:
“How dare you?”
The gun fell from the negro’s hand, and he dropped to the floor on his face.
His companion uttered a yell and sprang through the door, rallying the men as he went:
“Fall back! Fall back! He’s killed Gus! Shot him dead wid his eye. He’s conjured him! Git de whole army quick.”
They fled to the Commandant.
Gilbert ordered the negroes to their tents and led his whole company of white regulars to the hotel, arrested Dr. Cameron, and rescued his fainting trooper, who had been revived and placed under a tree on the lawn.
The little Captain had a wicked look on his face. He refused to allow the doctor a moment’s delay to leave instructions for his wife, who had gone to visit a neighbour. He was placed in the guard-house, and a detail of twenty soldiers stationed around it.
The arrest was made so quickly, not a dozen people in town had heard of it. As fast as it was known, people poured into the house, one by one, to express their sympathy. But a greater surprise awaited them.
Within thirty minutes after he had been placed in prison, a Lieutenant entered, accompanied by a soldier and a negro blacksmith who carried in his hand two big chains with shackles on each end.
The doctor gazed at the intruders a moment with incredulity, and then, as the enormity of the outrage dawned on him, he flushed and drew himself erect, his face livid and rigid.
He clutched his throat with his slender fingers, slowly recovered himself, glanced at the shackles in the black hands and then at the young Lieutenant’s face, and said slowly, with heaving breast:
“My God! Have you been sent to place these irons on me?”
“Such are my orders, sir,” replied the officer, motioning to the negro smith to approach. He stepped forward, unlocked the padlock, and prepared the fetters to be placed on his arms and legs. These fetters were of enormous weight, made of iron rods three quarters of an inch thick and connected together by chains of like weight.
“This is monstrous!” groaned the doctor, with choking agony, glancing helplessly about the bare cell for some weapon with which to defend himself.
Suddenly looking the Lieutenant in the face, he said:
“I demand, sir, to see your commanding officer. He cannot pretend that these shackles are needed to hold a weak unarmed man in prison, guarded by two hundred soldiers?”
“It is useless. I have his orders direct.”
“But I must see him. No such outrage has ever been recorded in the history of the American people. I appeal to the Magna Charta rights of every man who speaks the English tongue—no man shall be arrested or imprisoned or deprived of his own household, or of his liberties, unless by the legal judgment of his peers or by the law of the land!”
“The bayonet is your only law. My orders admit of no delay. For your own sake, I advise you to submit. As a soldier, Dr. Cameron, you know I must execute orders.”
“These are not the orders of a soldier!” shouted the prisoner, enraged beyond all control. “They are orders for a jailer, a hangman, a scullion—no soldier who wears the sword of a civilized nation can take such orders. The war is over; the South is conquered; I have no country save America. For the honour of the flag, for which I once poured out my blood on the heights of Buena Vista, I protest against this shame!”
The Lieutenant fell back a moment before the burst of his anger.
“Kill me! Kill me!” he went on passionately, throwing his arms wide open and exposing his breast. “Kill—I am in your power. I have no desire to live under such conditions. Kill, but you must not inflict on me and on my people this insult worse than death!”
“Do your duty, blacksmith,” said the officer, turning his back and walking toward the door.
The negro advanced with the chains cautiously, and attempted to snap one of the shackles on the doctor’s right arm.
With sudden maniac frenzy, Dr. Cameron seized the negro by the throat, hurled him to the floor, and backed against the wall.
The Lieutenant approached and remonstrated:
“Why compel me to add the indignity of personal violence? You must submit.”
“I am your prisoner,” fiercely retorted the doctor. “I have been a soldier in the armies of America, and I know how to die. Kill me, and my last breath will be a blessing. But while I have life to resist, for myself and for my people, this thing shall not be done!”
The Lieutenant called a sergeant and a file of soldiers, and the sergeant stepped forward to seize the prisoner.
Dr. Cameron sprang on him with the ferocity of a tiger, seized his musket, and attempted to wrench it from his grasp.
The men closed in on him. A short passionate fight and the slender, proud, gray-haired man lay panting on the floor.
Four powerful assailants held his hands and feet, andthe negro smith, with a grin, secured the rivet on the right ankle and turned the key in the padlock on the left.
As he drove the rivet into the shackle on his left arm, a spurt of bruised blood from the old Mexican War wound stained the iron.
Dr. Cameron lay for a moment in a stupor. At length he slowly rose. The clank of the heavy chains seemed to choke him with horror. He sank on the floor, covering his face with his hands and groaned:
“The shame! The shame! O God, that I might have died! My poor, poor wife!”
Captain Gilbert entered and said with a sneer:
“I will take you now to see your wife and friends if you would like to call before setting out for Columbia.”
The doctor paid no attention to him.
“Will you follow me while I lead you through this town, to show them their chief has fallen, or will you force me to drag you?”
Receiving no answer, he roughly drew the doctor to his feet, held him by the arm, and led him thus in half-unconscious stupor through the principal street, followed by a drove of negroes. He ordered a squad of troops to meet him at the depot. Not a white man appeared on the streets. When one saw the sight and heard the clank of those chains, there was a sudden tightening of the lip, a clinched fist, and an averted face.
When they approached the hotel, Mrs. Cameron ran to meet him, her face white as death.
In silence she kissed his lips, kissed each shackle on his wrists, took her handkerchief and wiped the bruisedblood from the old wound on his arm the iron had opened afresh, and then with a look, beneath which the Captain shrank, she said in low tones:
“Do your work quickly. You have but a few moments to get out of this town with your prisoner. I have sent a friend to hold my son. If he comes before you go, he will kill you on sight as he would a mad dog.”
With a sneer, the Captain passed the hotel and led the doctor, still in half-unconscious stupor, toward the depot down past his old slave quarters. He had given his negroes who remained faithful each a cabin and a lot.
They looked on in awed silence as the Captain proclaimed:
“Fellow citizens, you are the equal of any white man who walks the ground. The white man’s day is done. Your turn has come.”
As he passed Jake’s cabin, the doctor’s faithful man stepped suddenly in front of him, looking at the Captain out of the corners of his eyes, and asked:
“Is I yo’ equal?”
“Yes.”
“Des lak any white man?”
“Exactly.”
The negro’s fist suddenly shot into Gilbert’s nose with the crack of a sledge-hammer, laying him stunned on the pavement.
“Den take dat f’um yo’ equal, d—n you!” he cried, bending over his prostrate figure. “I’ll show you how to treat my ole marster, you low-down slue-footed devil!”
The stirring little drama roused the doctor and heturned to his servant with his old-time courtesy, and said:
“Thank you, Jake.”
“Come in here, Marse Richard; I knock dem things off’n you in er minute, ’en I get you outen dis town in er jiffy.”
“No, Jake, that is not my way; bring this gentleman some water, and then my horse and buggy. You can take me to the depot. This officer can follow with his men.” And he did.
CHAPTER VForty Acres and a Mule
When Phil returned with Margaret, he drove at Mrs. Cameron’s request to find Ben, brought him with all speed to the hotel, took him to his room, and locked the door before he told him the news. After an hour’s blind rage, he agreed to obey his father’s positive orders to keep away from the Captain until his return, and to attempt no violence against the authorities.
Phil undertook to manage the case in Columbia, and spent three days collecting his evidence before leaving.
Swifter feet had anticipated him. Two days after the arrival of Dr. Cameron at the fort in Colombia, a dust-stained, tired negro was ushered into the presence of General Howle.
He looked about timidly and laughed loudly.
“Well, my man, what’s the trouble? You seem to have walked all the way, and laugh as if you were glad of it.”
“I ‘spec’ I is, sah,” said Jake, sidling up confidentially.
“Well?” said Howle good-humouredly.
Jake’s voice dropped to a whisper.
“I hears you got my ole marster, Dr. Cameron, in dis place.”
“Yes. What do you know against him?”
“Nuttin’, sah. I des hurry ’long down ter take his place, so’s you can sen’ him back home. He’s erbleeged ter go. Dey’s er pow’ful lot er sick folks up dar in de country cain’t git ’long widout him, an er pow’ful lot er well ones gwiner be raisin’ de debbel ’bout dis. You can hol’ me, sah. Des tell my ole marster when ter be yere, en he sho’ come.”
Jake paused and bowed low.
“Yessah, hit’s des lak I tell you. Fuddermo’, I ’spec’ I’se de man what done de damages. I ’spec’ I bus’ de Capt’n’s nose so ’tain gwine be no mo’ good to ’im.”
Howle questioned Jake as to the whole affair, asked him a hundred questions about the condition of the county, the position of Dr. Cameron, and the possible effect of this event on the temper of the people.
The affair had already given him a bad hour. The news of this shackling of one of the most prominent men in the State had spread like wildfire, and had caused the first deep growl of anger from the people. He saw that it was a senseless piece of stupidity. The election was rapidly approaching. He was master of the State, and the less friction the better. His mind was made up instantly. He released Dr. Cameron with an apology, and returned with him and Jake for a personal inspection of the affairs of Ulster county.
In a thirty-minutes’ interview with Captain Gilbert, Howle gave him more pain than his broken nose.
“And why did you nail up the doors of that Presbyterian church?” he asked suavely.
“Because McAlpin, the young cub who preaches there,dared come to this camp and insult me about the arrest of old Cameron.”
“I suppose you issued an order silencing him from the ministry?”
“I did, and told him I’d shackle him if he opened his mouth again.”
“Good. The throne of Russia needn’t worry about a worthy successor. Any further ecclesiastical orders?”
“None, except the oaths I’ve prescribed for them before they shall preach again.”
“Fine! These Scotch Covenanters will feel at home with you.”
“Well, I’ve made them bite the dust—and they know who’s runnin’ this town, and don’t you forget it.”
“No doubt. Yet we may have too much of even a good thing. The League is here to run this country. The business of the military is to keep still and back them when they need it.”
“We’ve the strongest council here to be found in any county in this section,” said Gilbert with pride.
“Just so. The League meets once a week. We have promised them the land of their masters and equal social and political rights. Their members go armed to these meetings and drill on Saturdays in the public square. The white man is afraid to interfere lest his house or barn take fire. A negro prisoner in the dock needs only to make the sign to be acquitted. Not a negro will dare to vote against us. Their women are formed into societies, sworn to leave their husbands and refuse to marry any man who dares our anger. The negro churcheshave pledged themselves to expel him from their membership. What more do you want?”
“There’s another side to it,” protested the Captain. “Since the League has taken in the negroes, every Union white man has dropped it like a hot iron, except the lone scallawag or carpet-bagger who expects an office. In the church, the social circle, in business or pleasure, these men are lepers. How can a human being stand it? I’ve tried to grind this hellish spirit in the dirt under my heel, and unless you can do it they’ll beat you in the long run! You’ve got to have some Southern white men or you’re lost.”
“I’ll risk it with a hundred thousand negro majority,” said Howle with a sneer. “The fun will just begin then. In the meantime, I’ll have you ease up on this county’s government. I’ve brought that man back who knocked you down. Let him alone. I’ve pardoned him. The less said about this affair, the better.”
As the day of the election under the new régime of Reconstruction drew near, the negroes were excited by rumours of the coming great events. Every man was to receive forty acres of land for his vote, and the enthusiastic speakers and teachers had made the dream a resistless one by declaring that the Government would throw in a mule with the forty acres. Some who had hesitated about the forty acres of land, remembering that it must be worked, couldn’t resist the idea of owning a mule.
The Freedman’s Bureau reaped a harvest in $2 marriage fees from negroes who were urged thus to maketheir children heirs of landed estates stocked with mules.
Every stranger who appeared in the village was regarded with awe as a possible surveyor sent from Washington to run the lines of these forty-acre plots.
And in due time the surveyors appeared. Uncle Aleck, who now devoted his entire time to organizing the League, and drinking whiskey which the dues he collected made easy, was walking back to Piedmont from a League meeting in the country, dreaming of this promised land.
He lifted his eyes from the dusty way and saw before him two surveyors with their arms full of line stakes painted red, white, and blue. They were well-dressed Yankees—he could not be mistaken. Not a doubt disturbed his mind. The kingdom of heaven was at hand!
He bowed low and cried:
“Praise de Lawd! De messengers is come! I’se waited long, but I sees ’em now wid my own eyes!”
“You can bet your life on that, old pard,” said the spokesman of the pair. “We go two and two, just as the apostles did in the olden times. We have only a few left. The boys are hurrying to get their homes. All you’ve got to do is to drive one of these red, white, and blue stakes down at each corner of the forty acres of land you want, and every rebel in the infernal regions can’t pull it up.”
“Hear dat now!”
“Just like I tell you. When this stake goes into the ground, it’s like planting a thousand cannon at each corner.”
“En will the Lawd’s messengers come wid me rightnow to de bend er de creek whar I done pick out my forty acres?”
“We will, if you have the needful for the ceremony. The fee for the surveyor is small—only two dollars for each stake. We have no time to linger with foolish virgins who have no oil in their lamps. The bridegroom has come. They who have no oil must remain in outer darkness.” The speaker had evidently been a preacher in the North, and his sacred accent sealed his authority with the old negro, who had been an exhorter himself.
Aleck felt in his pocket the jingle of twenty gold dollars, the initiation fees of the week’s harvest of the League. He drew them, counted out eight, and took his four stakes. The surveyors kindly showed him how to drive them down firmly to the first stripe of blue. When they had stepped off a square of about forty acres of the Lenoir farm, including the richest piece of bottom land on the creek, which Aleck’s children under his wife’s direction were working for Mrs. Lenoir, and the four stakes were planted, old Aleck shouted:
“Glory ter God!”
“Now,” said the foremost surveyor, “you want a deed—a deed in fee simple with the big seal of the Government on it, and you’re fixed for life. The deed you can take to the courthouse and make the clerk record it.”
The man drew from his pocket an official-looking paper, with a red circular seal pasted on its face.
Uncle Aleck’s eyes danced.
“Is dat de deed?”
“It will be if I write your name on it and describe the land.”
“En what’s de fee fer dat?”
“Only twelve dollars; you can take it now or wait until we come again. There’s no particular hurry about this. The wise man, though, leaves nothing for to-morrow that he can carry with him to-day.”
“I takes de deed right now, gemmen,” said Aleck, eagerly counting out the remaining twelve dollars. “Fix ’im up for me.”
The surveyor squatted in the field and carefully wrote the document.
They went on their way rejoicing, and old Aleck hurried into Piedmont with the consciousness of lordship of the soil. He held himself so proudly that it seemed to straighten some of the crook out of his bow legs.
He marched up to the hotel where Margaret sat reading and Marion was on the steps playing with a setter.
“Why, Uncle Aleck!” Marion exclaimed, “I haven’t seen you in a long time.”
Aleck drew himself to his full height—at least, as full as his bow legs would permit, and said gruffly:
“Miss Ma’ian, I axes you to stop callin’ me ‘uncle’; my name is Mr. Alexander Lenoir——”
“Until Aunt Cindy gets after you,” laughed the girl. “Then it’s much shorter than that, Uncle Aleck.”
He shuffled his feet and looked out at the square unconcernedly.
“Yaas’m, dat’s what fetch me here now. I comes ter tell yer Ma ter tell dat ’oman Cindy ter take her chillunoff my farm. I gwine ’low no mo’ rent-payin’ ter nobody off’n my lan’!”
“Your land, Uncle Aleck? When did you get it?” asked Marion, placing her cheek against the setter.
“De Gubment gim it ter me to-day,” he replied, fumbling in his pocket, and pulling out the document. “You kin read it all dar yo’sef.”
He handed Marion the paper, and Margaret hurried down and read it over her shoulder.
Both girls broke into screams of laughter.
Aleck looked up sharply.
“Do you know what’s written on this paper, Uncle Aleck?” Margaret asked.
“Cose I do. Dat’s de deed ter my farm er forty acres in de land er de creek, whar I done stuck off wid de red, white, an’ blue sticks de Gubment gimme.”
“I’ll read it to you,” said Margaret.
“Wait a minute,” interrupted Marion. “I want Aunt Cindy to hear it—she’s here to see Mamma in the kitchen now.”
She ran for Uncle Aleck’s spouse. Aunt Cindy walked around the house and stood by the steps, eying her erstwhile lord with contempt.
“Got yer deed, is yer, ter stop me payin’ my missy her rent fum de lan’ my chillun wucks? Yu’se er smart boy, you is—let’s hear de deed!”
Aleck edged away a little, and said with a bow:
“Dar’s de paper wid de big mark er de Gubment.”
Aunt Cindy sniffed the air contemptuously.
“What is it, honey?” she asked of Margaret.
Margaret read in mock solemnity the mystic writing on the deed: