The Marrow of Tradition by Charles W. Chesnutt (page 4)

brought up by a Delamere, for a crime of which he is innocent? Preposterous! I’ll speak to the authorities and see that you are properly protected until this mystery is unraveled. If Tom had been here, he would have had you out before now, Sandy. My grandson is a genuine Delamere, is he not, Sandy?”

“Yas, suh, yas, suh,” returned Sandy, with a lack of enthusiasm which he tried to conceal from his master. “An’ I s’pose ef he hadn’ gone fishin’ so soon dis mawnin’, he’d ‘a’ be’n lookin’ after me, suh.”

“It has been my love for him and your care of me, Sandy,” said the old gentleman tremulously, “that have kept me alive so long; but now explain to me everything concerning this distressing matter, and I shall then be able to state your case to better advantage.”

“Well, suh,” returned Sandy, “I mought’s well tell de whole tale an’ not hol’ nothin’ back. I wuz kind er lonesome las’ night, an’ sence I be’n tu’ned outen de chu’ch on account er dat cakewalk I didn’ go ter, so he’p me God! I didn’ feel like gwine ter prayer-meetin’, so I went roun’ ter see Solomon Williams, an’ he wa’n’t home, an’ den I walk’ down street an’ met Josh Green, an’ he ax’ me inter Sam Taylor’s place, an’ I sot roun’ dere wid Josh till ’bout ‘leven o’clock, w’en I sta’ted back home. I went straight ter de house, suh, an’ went ter bed an’ ter sleep widout sayin’ a wo’d ter a single soul excep’ Mistuh Tom, who wuz settin’ up readin’ a book w’en I come in. I wish I may drap dead in my tracks, suh, ef dat ain’t de God’s truf, suh, eve’y wo’d of it!”

“I believe every word of it, Sandy; now tell me about the clothes that you are said to have been found cleaning, and the suspicious articles that were found in your room?”

“Dat’s w’at beats me, Mars John,” replied Sandy, shaking his head mournfully. “Wen I lef home las’ night after supper, my clo’s wuz all put erway in de closet in my room, folded up on de she’f ter keep de moths out. Dey wuz my good clo’s,–de blue coat dat you wo’ ter de weddin’ fo’ty years ago, an’ dem dere plaid pants I gun Mistuh Cohen fo’ dollars fer three years ago; an’ w’en I looked in my closet dis mawnin’, suh, befo’ I got ready ter sta’t fer Belleview, dere wuz my clo’s layin’ on de flo’, all muddy an’ crumple’ up, des lack somebody had wo’ ’em in a fight! Somebody e’se had wo’ my clo’s,–er e’se dere’d be’n some witchcraf, er some sort er devilment gwine on dat I can’t make out, suh, ter save my soul!”

“There was no witchcraft, Sandy, but that there was some deviltry might well be. Now, what other negro, who might have been mistaken for you, could have taken your clothes? Surely no one about the house?”

“No, suh, no, suh. It couldn’t ‘a’ be’n Jeff, fer he wuz at Belleview wid you; an’ it couldn’t ‘a’ be’n Billy, fer he wuz too little ter wear my clo’s; an’ it couldn’t ‘a’ be’n Sally, fer she’s a ‘oman. It’s a myst’ry ter me, suh!”

“Have you no enemies? Is there any one in Wellington whom you imagine would like to do you an injury?”

“Not a livin’ soul dat I knows of, suh. I’ve be’n tu’ned out’n de chu’ch, but I don’ know who my enemy is dere, er ef it wuz all a mistake, like dis yer jailin’ is; but de Debbil is in dis somewhar, Mars John,–an’ I got my reasons fer sayin’ so.”

“What do you mean, Sandy?”

Sandy related his experience of the preceding evening: how he had seen the apparition preceding him to the house, and how he had questioned Tom upon the subject.

“There’s some mystery here, Sandy,” said Mr. Delamere reflectively. “Have you told me all, now, upon your honor? I am trying to save your life, Sandy, and I must be able to trust your word implicitly. You must tell me every circumstance; a very little and seemingly unimportant bit of evidence may sometimes determine the issue of a great lawsuit. There is one thing especially, Sandy: where did you get the gold which was found in your trunk?”

Sandy’s face lit up with hopefulness.

“Why, Mars John, I kin ‘splain dat part easy. Dat wuz money I had lent out, an’ I got back f’m–But no, suh, I promise’ not ter tell.”

“Circumstances absolve you from your promise, Sandy. Your life is of more value to you than any other thing. If you will explain where you got the gold, and the silk purse that contained it, which is said to be Mrs. Ochiltree’s, you will be back home before night.”

Old Mr. Delamere’s faculties, which had been waning somewhat in sympathy with his health, were stirred to unusual acuteness by his servant’s danger. He was watching Sandy with all the awakened instincts of the trial lawyer. He could see clearly enough that, in beginning to account for the possession of the gold, Sandy had started off with his explanation in all sincerity. At the mention of the silk purse, however, his face had blanched to an ashen gray, and the words had frozen upon his lips.

A less discerning observer might have taken these things as signs of guilt, but not so Mr. Delamere.

“Well, Sandy,” said his master encouragingly, “go on. You got the gold from”–

Sandy remained silent. He had had a great shock, and had taken a great resolution.

“Mars John,” he asked dreamily, “you don’ b’lieve dat I done dis thing?”

“Certainly not, Sandy, else why should I be here?”

“An’ nothin’ wouldn’ make you b’lieve it, suh?”

“No, Sandy,–I could not believe it of you. I’ve known you too long and too well.”

“An’ you wouldn’ b’lieve it, not even ef I wouldn’ say one wo’d mo’ about it?”

“No, Sandy, I believe you no more capable of this crime than I would be,–or my grandson, Tom. I wish Tom were here, that he might help me overcome your stubbornness; but you’ll not be so foolish, so absurdly foolish, Sandy, as to keep silent and risk your life merely to shield some one else, when by speaking you might clear up this mystery and be restored at once to liberty. Just tell me where you got the gold,” added the old gentleman persuasively. “Come, now, Sandy, that’s a good fellow!”

“Mars John,” asked Sandy softly, “w’en my daddy, ‘way back yander befo’ de wah, wuz about ter be sol’ away f’m his wife an’ child’en, you bought him an’ dem, an’ kep’ us all on yo’ place tergether, didn’t you, suh?”

“Yes, Sandy, and he was a faithful servant, and proved worthy of all I did for him.”

“And w’en he had wo’ked fer you ten years, suh, you sot ‘im free?”

“Yes, Sandy, he had earned his freedom.”

“An’ w’en de wah broke out, an’ my folks wuz scattered, an’ I didn’ have nothin’ ter do ner nowhar ter go, you kep’ me on yo’ place, and tuck me ter wait on you, suh, didn’t you?”

“Yes, Sandy, and you have been a good servant and a good friend; but tell me now about this gold, and I’ll go and get you out of this, right away, for I need you, Sandy, and you’ll not be of any use to me shut up here!”

“Jes’ hol’ on a minute befo’ you go, Mars John; fer ef dem people outside should git holt er me befo’ you _does_ git me out er here, I may never see you no mo’, suh, in dis worl’. W’en Mars Billy McLean shot me by mistake, w’ile we wuz out huntin’ dat day, who wuz it boun’ up my woun’s an’ kep’ me from bleedin’ ter def, an’ kyar’ed me two miles on his own shoulders ter a doctuh?”

“Yes, Sandy, and when black Sally ran away with your young mistress and Tom, when Tom was a baby, who stopped the runaway, and saved their lives at the risk of his own?”

“Dat wa’n’t nothin’, suh; anybody could ‘a’ done dat, w’at wuz strong ernuff an’ swif’ ernuff. You is be’n good ter me, suh, all dese years, an’ I’ve tried ter do my duty by you, suh, an’ by Mistuh Tom, who wuz yo’ own gran’son, an’ de las’ one er de fam’ly.”

“Yes, you have, Sandy, and when I am gone, which will not be very long, Tom will take care of you, and see that you never want. But we are wasting valuable time, Sandy, in these old reminiscences. Let us get back to the present. Tell me about the gold, now, so that I may at once look after your safety. It may not even be necessary for you to remain here all night.”

“Jes’ one wo’d mo’, Mars John, befo’ you go! I know you’re gwine ter do de bes’ you kin fer me, an’ I’m sorry I can’t he’p you no mo’ wid it; but ef dere should be any accident, er ef you _can’t_ git me out er here, don’ bother yo’ min’ ’bout it no mo’, suh, an’ don’ git yo’se’f ixcited, fer you know de doctuh says, suh, dat you can’t stan’ ixcitement; but jes’ leave me in de han’s er de Lawd, suh,–_He’ll_ look after me, here er hereafter. I know I’ve fell f’m grace mo’ d’n once, but I’ve done made my peace wid Him in dis here jail-house, suh, an’ I ain’t ‘feared ter die–ef I haf ter. I ain’ got no wife ner child’n ter mo’n fer me, an’ I’ll die knowin’ dat I’ve done my duty ter dem dat hi’ed me, an’ trusted me, an’ had claims on me. Fer I wuz raise’ by a Delamere, suh, an’ all de ole Delameres wuz gent’emen, an’ deir principles spread ter de niggers ’round ’em, suh; an’ ef I has ter die fer somethin’ I didn’ do,–I kin die, suh, like a gent’eman! But ez fer dat gol’, suh, I ain’ gwine ter say one wo’d mo’ ’bout it ter nobody in dis worl’!”

Nothing could shake Sandy’s determination. Mr. Delamere argued, expostulated, but all in vain. Sandy would not speak.

More and more confident of some mystery, which would come out in time, if properly investigated, Mr. Delamere, strangely beset by a vague sense of discomfort over and beyond that occasioned by his servant’s danger, hurried away upon his errand of mercy. He felt less confident of the outcome than when he had entered the jail, but was quite as much resolved that no effort should be spared to secure protection for Sandy until there had been full opportunity for the truth to become known.

“Take good care of your prisoner, sheriff,” he said sternly, as he was conducted to the door. “He will not be long in your custody, and I shall see that you are held strictly accountable for his safety.”

“I’ll do what I can, sir,” replied the sheriff in an even tone and seemingly not greatly impressed by this warning. “If the prisoner is taken from me, it will be because the force that comes for him is too strong for resistance.”

“There should be no force too strong for an honest man in your position to resist,–whether successfully or not is beyond the question. The officer who is intimidated by threats, or by his own fears, is recreant to his duty, and no better than the mob which threatens him. But you will have no such test, Mr. Wemyss! I shall see to it myself that there is no violence!”

XXV

THE HONOR OF A FAMILY

Mr. Delamere’s coachman, who, in accordance with instructions left by Miller, had brought the carriage around to the jail and was waiting anxiously at the nearest corner, drove up with some trepidation as he saw his master emerge from the prison. The old gentleman entered the carriage and gave the order to be driven to the office of the Morning Chronicle. According to Jerry, the porter, whom he encountered at the door, Carteret was in his office, and Mr. Delamere, with the aid of his servant, climbed the stairs painfully and found the editor at his desk.

“Carteret,” exclaimed Mr. Delamere, “what is all this talk about lynching my man for murder and robbery and criminal assault? It’s perfectly absurd! The man was raised by me; he has lived in my house forty years. He has been honest, faithful, and trustworthy. He would no more be capable of this crime than you would, or my grandson Tom. Sandy has too much respect for the family to do anything that would reflect disgrace upon it.”

“My dear Mr. Delamere,” asked Carteret, with an indulgent smile, “how could a negro possibly reflect discredit upon a white family? I should really like to know.”

“How, sir? A white family raised him. Like all the negroes, he has been clay in the hands of the white people. They are what we have made them, or permitted them to become.”

“We are not God, Mr. Delamere! We do not claim to have created these–masterpieces.”

“No; but we thought to overrule God’s laws, and we enslaved these people for our greed, and sought to escape the manstealer’s curse by laying to our souls the flattering unction that we were making of barbarous negroes civilized and Christian men. If we did not, if instead of making them Christians we have made some of them brutes, we have only ourselves to blame, and if these prey upon society, it is our just punishment! But my negroes, Carteret, were well raised and well behaved. This man is innocent of this offense, I solemnly affirm, and I want your aid to secure his safety until a fair trial can be had.”

“On your bare word, sir?” asked Carteret, not at all moved by this outburst.

Old Mr. Delamere trembled with anger, and his withered cheek flushed darkly, but he restrained his feelings, and answered with an attempt at calmness:–

“Time was, sir, when the word of a Delamere was held as good as his bond, and those who questioned it were forced to maintain their skepticism upon the field of honor. Time was, sir, when the law was enforced in this state in a manner to command the respect of the world! Our lawyers, our judges, our courts, were a credit to humanity and civilization. I fear I have outlasted my epoch,–I have lived to hear of white men, the most favored of races, the heirs of civilization, the conservators of liberty, howling like red Indians around a human being slowly roasting at the stake.”

“My dear sir,” said Carteret soothingly, “you should undeceive yourself. This man is no longer your property. The negroes are no longer under our control, and with their emancipation ceased our responsibility. Their insolence and disregard for law have reached a point where they must be sternly rebuked.”

“The law,” retorted Mr. Delamere, “furnishes a sufficient penalty for any crime, however heinous, and our code is by no means lenient. To my old-fashioned notions, death would seem an adequate punishment for any crime, and torture has been abolished in civilized countries for a hundred years. It would be better to let a crime go entirely unpunished, than to use it as a pretext for turning the whole white population into a mob of primitive savages, dancing in hellish glee around the mangled body of a man who has never been tried for a crime. All this, however, is apart from my errand, which is to secure your assistance in heading off this mob until Sandy can have a fair hearing and an opportunity to prove his innocence.”

“How can I do that, Mr. Delamere?”

“You are editor of the Morning Chronicle. The Chronicle is the leading newspaper of the city. This morning’s issue practically suggested the mob; the same means will stop it. I will pay the expense of an extra edition, calling off the mob, on the ground that newly discovered evidence has shown the prisoner’s innocence.”

“But where is the evidence?” asked Carteret.

Again Mr. Delamere flushed and trembled. “My evidence, sir! I say the negro was morally incapable of the crime. A man of forty-five does not change his nature over-night. He is no more capable of a disgraceful deed than my grandson would be!”

Carteret smiled sadly.

“I am sorry, Mr. Delamere,” he said, “that you should permit yourself to be so exercised about a worthless scoundrel who has forfeited his right to live. The proof against him is overwhelming. As to his capability of crime, we will apply your own test. You have been kept in the dark too long, Mr. Delamere,–indeed, we all have,–about others as well as this negro. Listen, sir: last night, at the Clarendon Club, Tom Delamere was caught cheating outrageously at cards. He had been suspected for some time; a trap was laid for him, and be fell into it. Out of regard for you and for my family, he has been permitted to resign quietly, with the understanding that he first pay off his debts, which are considerable.”

Mr. Delamere’s face, which had taken on some color in the excitement of the interview, had gradually paled to a chalky white while Carteret was speaking. His head sunk forward; already an old man, he seemed to have aged ten years in but little more than as many seconds.

“Can this be true?” he demanded in a hoarse whisper. “Is it–entirely authentic?”

“True as gospel; true as it is that Mrs. Ochiltree has been murdered, and that this negro killed her. Ellis was at the club a few minutes after the affair happened, and learned the facts from one of the participants. Tom made no attempt at denial. We have kept the matter out of the other papers, and I would have spared your feelings,–I surely would not wish to wound them,–but the temptation proved too strong for me, and it seemed the only way to convince you: it was your own test. If a gentleman of a distinguished name and an honorable ancestry, with all the restraining forces of social position surrounding him, to hold him in check, can stoop to dishonor, what is the improbability of an illiterate negro’s being at least capable of crime?”

“Enough, sir,” said the old gentleman. “You have proved enough. My grandson may be a scoundrel,–I can see, in the light of this revelation, how he might be; and he seems not to have denied it. I maintain, nevertheless, that my man Sandy is innocent of the charge against him. He has denied it, and it has not been proved. Carteret, I owe that negro my life; he, and his father before him, have served me and mine faithfully and well. I cannot see him killed like a dog, without judge or jury,–no, not even if he were guilty, which I do not believe!”

Carteret felt a twinge of remorse for the pain he had inflicted upon this fine old man, this ideal gentleman of the ideal past,–the past which he himself so much admired and regretted. He would like to spare his old friend any further agitation; he was in a state of health where too great excitement might prove fatal. But how could he? The negro was guilty, and sure to die sooner or later. He had not meant to interfere, and his intervention might be fruitless.

“Mr. Delamere,” he said gently, “there is but one way to gain time. You say the negro is innocent. Appearances are against him. The only way to clear him is to produce the real criminal, or prove an alibi. If you, or some other white man of equal standing, could swear that the negro was in your presence last night at any hour when this crime could have taken place, it might be barely possible to prevent the lynching for the present; and when he is tried, which will probably be not later than next week, he will have every opportunity to defend himself, with you to see that he gets no less than justice. I think it can be managed, though there is still a doubt. I will do my best, for your sake, Mr. Delamere,–solely for your sake, be it understood, and not for that of the negro, in whom you are entirely deceived.”

“I shall not examine your motives, Carteret,” replied the other, “if you can bring about what I desire.”

“Whatever is done,” added Carteret, “must be done quickly. It is now four o’clock; no one can answer for what may happen after seven. If he can prove an alibi, there may yet be time to save him. White men might lynch a negro on suspicion; they would not kill a man who was proven, by the word of white men, to be entirely innocent.”

“I do not know,” returned Mr. Delamere, shaking his head sadly. “After what you have told me, it is no longer safe to assume what white men will or will not do;–what I have learned here has shaken my faith in humanity. I am going away, but shall return in a short time. Shall I find you here?”

“I will await your return,” said Carteret.

He watched Mr. Delamere pityingly as the old man moved away on the arm of the coachman waiting in the hall. He did not believe that Mr. Delamere could prove an alibi for his servant, and without some positive proof the negro would surely die,–as he well deserved to die.

XXVI

THE DISCOMFORT OF ELLIS

Mr. Ellis was vaguely uncomfortable. In the first excitement following the discovery of the crime, he had given his bit of evidence, and had shared the universal indignation against the murderer. When public feeling took definite shape in the intention to lynch the prisoner, Ellis felt a sudden sense of responsibility growing upon himself. When he learned, an hour later, that it was proposed to burn the negro, his part in the affair assumed a still graver aspect; for his had been the final word to fix the prisoner’s guilt.

Ellis did not believe in lynch law. He had argued against it, more than once, in private conversation, and had written several editorials against the practice, while in charge of the Morning Chronicle during Major Carteret’s absence. A young man, however, and merely representing another, he had not set up as a reformer, taking rather the view that this summary method of punishing crime, with all its possibilities of error, to say nothing of the resulting disrespect of the law and contempt for the time-honored methods of establishing guilt, was a mere temporary symptom of the unrest caused by the unsettled relations of the two races at the South. There had never before been any special need for any vigorous opposition to lynch law, so far as the community was concerned, for there had not been a lynching in Wellington since Ellis had come there, eight years before, from a smaller town, to seek a place for himself in the world of action. Twenty years before, indeed, there had been wild doings, during the brief Ku-Klux outbreak, but that was before Ellis’s time,–or at least when he was but a child. He had come of a Quaker family,–the modified Quakers of the South,–and while sharing in a general way the Southern prejudice against the negro, his prejudices had been tempered by the peaceful tenets of his father’s sect. His father had been a Whig, and a non-slaveholder; and while he had gone with the South in the civil war so far as a man of peace could go, he had not done so for love of slavery.

As the day wore on, Ellis’s personal responsibility for the intended _auto-da-fe_ bore more heavily upon him. Suppose he had been wrong? He had seen the accused negro; he had recognized him by his clothes, his whiskers, his spectacles, and his walk; but he had also seen another man, who resembled Sandy so closely that but for the difference in their clothes, he was forced to acknowledge, he could not have told them apart. Had he not seen the first man, he would have sworn with even greater confidence that the second was Sandy. There had been, he recalled, about one of the men–he had not been then nor was he now able to tell which–something vaguely familiar, and yet seemingly discordant to whichever of the two it was, or, as it seemed to him now, to any man of that race. His mind reverted to the place where he had last seen Sandy, and then a sudden wave of illumination swept over him, and filled him with a thrill of horror. The cakewalk,–the dancing,–the speech,–they were not Sandy’s at all, nor any negro’s! It was a white man who had stood in the light of the street lamp, so that the casual passer-by might see and recognize in him old Mr. Delamere’s servant. The scheme was a dastardly one, and worthy of a heart that was something worse than weak and vicious.

Ellis resolved that the negro should not, if he could prevent it, die for another’s crime; but what proof had he himself to offer in support of his theory? Then again, if he denounced Tom Delamere as the murderer, it would involve, in all probability, the destruction of his own hopes with regard to Clara. Of course she could not marry Delamere after the disclosure,–the disgraceful episode at the club would have been enough to make that reasonably certain; it had put a nail in Delamere’s coffin, but this crime had driven it in to the head and clinched it. On the other hand, would Miss Pemberton ever speak again to the man who had been the instrument of bringing disgrace upon the family? Spies, detectives, police officers, may be useful citizens, but they are rarely pleasant company for other people. We fee the executioner, but we do not touch his bloody hand. We might feel a certain tragic admiration for Brutus condemning his sons to death, but we would scarcely invite Brutus to dinner after the event. It would harrow our feelings too much.

Perhaps, thought Ellis, there might be a way out of the dilemma. It might be possible to save this innocent negro without, for the time being, involving Delamere. He believed that murder will out, but it need not be through his initiative. He determined to go to the jail and interview the prisoner, who might give such an account of himself as would establish his innocence beyond a doubt. If so, Ellis would exert himself to stem the tide of popular fury. If, as a last resort, he could save Sandy only by denouncing Delamere, he would do his duty, let it cost him what it might.

The gravity of his errand was not lessened by what he saw and heard on the way to the jail. The anger of the people was at a white heat. A white woman had been assaulted and murdered by a brutal negro. Neither advanced age, nor high social standing, had been able to protect her from the ferocity of a black savage. Her sex, which should have been her shield and buckler, had made her an easy mark for the villainy of a black brute. To take the time to try him would be a criminal waste of public money. To hang him would be too slight a punishment for so dastardly a crime. An example must be made.

Already the preparations were under way for the impending execution. A T-rail from the railroad yard had been procured, and men were burying it in the square before the jail. Others were bringing chains, and a load of pine wood was piled in convenient proximity. Some enterprising individual had begun the erection of seats from which, for a pecuniary consideration, the spectacle might be the more easily and comfortably viewed.

Ellis was stopped once or twice by persons of his acquaintance. From one he learned that the railroads would run excursions from the neighboring towns in order to bring spectators to the scene; from another that the burning was to take place early in the evening, so that the children might not be kept up beyond their usual bedtime. In one group that he passed he heard several young men discussing the question of which portions of the negro’s body they would prefer for souvenirs. Ellis shuddered and hastened forward. Whatever was to be done must be done quickly, or it would be too late. He saw that already it would require a strong case in favor of the accused to overcome the popular verdict.

Going up the steps of the jail, he met Mr. Delamere, who was just coming out, after a fruitless interview with Sandy.

“Mr. Ellis,” said the old gentleman, who seemed greatly agitated, “this is monstrous!”

“It is indeed, sir!” returned the younger man. “I mean to stop it if I can. The negro did not kill Mrs. Ochiltree.”

Mr. Delamere looked at Ellis keenly, and, as Ellis recalled afterwards, there was death in his eyes. Unable to draw a syllable from Sandy, he had found his servant’s silence more eloquent than words. Ellis felt a presentiment that this affair, however it might terminate, would be fatal to this fine old man, whom the city could ill spare, in spite of his age and infirmities.

“Mr. Ellis,” asked Mr. Delamere, in a voice which trembled with ill-suppressed emotion, “do you know who killed her?”

Ellis felt a surging pity for his old friend; but every step that he had taken toward the jail had confirmed and strengthened his own resolution that this contemplated crime, which he dimly felt to be far more atrocious than that of which Sandy was accused, in that it involved a whole community rather than one vicious man, should be stopped at any cost. Deplorable enough had the negro been guilty, it became, in view of his certain innocence, an unspeakable horror, which for all time would cover the city with infamy. “Mr. Delamere,” he replied, looking the elder man squarely in the eyes, “I think I do,–and I am very sorry.”

“And who was it, Mr. Ellis?”

He put the question hopelessly, as though the answer were a foregone conclusion.

“I do not wish to say at present,” replied Ellis, with a remorseful pang, “unless it becomes absolutely necessary, to save the negro’s life. Accusations are dangerous,–as this case proves,–unless the proof, be certain.”

For a moment it seemed as though Mr. Delamere would collapse upon the spot. Rallying almost instantly, however, he took the arm which Ellis involuntarily offered, and said with an effort:–

“Mr. Ellis, you are a gentleman whom it is an honor to know. If you have time, I wish you would go with me to my house,–I can hardly trust myself alone,–and thence to the Chronicle office. This thing shall be stopped, and you will help me stop it.”

It required but a few minutes to cover the half mile that lay between the prison and Mr. Delamere’s residence.

XXVII

THE VAGARIES OF THE HIGHER LAW

Mr. Delamere went immediately to his grandson’s room, which he entered alone, closing and locking the door behind him. He had requested Ellis to wait in the carriage.

The bed had been made, and the room was apparently in perfect order. There was a bureau in the room, through which Mr. Delamere proceeded to look thoroughly. Finding one of the drawers locked, he tried it with a key of his own, and being unable to unlock it, took a poker from beside the stove and broke it ruthlessly open.

The contents served to confirm what he had heard concerning his grandson’s character. Thrown together in disorderly confusion were bottles of wine and whiskey; soiled packs of cards; a dice-box with dice; a box of poker chips, several revolvers, and a number of photographs and paper-covered books at which the old gentleman merely glanced to ascertain their nature.

So far, while his suspicion had been strengthened, he had found nothing to confirm it. He searched the room more carefully, and found, in the wood-box by the small heating-stove which stood in the room, a torn and crumpled bit of paper. Stooping to pick this up, his eye caught a gleam of something yellow beneath the bureau, which lay directly in his line of vision.

First he smoothed out the paper. It was apparently the lower half of a label, or part of the cover of a small box, torn diagonally from corner to corner. From the business card at the bottom, which gave the name, of a firm of manufacturers of theatrical supplies in a Northern city, and from the letters remaining upon the upper and narrower half, the bit of paper had plainly formed part of the wrapper of a package of burnt cork.

Closing his fingers spasmodically over this damning piece of evidence, Mr. Delamere knelt painfully, and with the aid of his cane drew out from under the bureau the yellow object which, had attracted his attention. It was a five-dollar gold piece of a date back toward the beginning of the century.

To make assurance doubly sure, Mr. Delamere summoned the cook from the kitchen in the back yard. In answer to her master’s questions, Sally averred that Mr. Tom had got up very early, had knocked at her window,–she slept in a room off the kitchen in the yard,–and had told her that she need not bother about breakfast for him, as he had had a cold bite from the pantry; that he was going hunting and fishing, and would be gone all day. According to Sally, Mr. Tom had come in about ten o’clock the night before. He had forgotten his night-key, Sandy was out, and she had admitted him with her own key. He had said that he was very tired and was going, immediately to bed.

Mr. Delamere seemed perplexed; the crime had been committed later in the evening than ten o’clock. The cook cleared up the mystery.

“I reckon he must ‘a’ be’n dead ti’ed, suh, fer I went back ter his room fifteen er twenty minutes after he come in fer ter fin’ out w’at he wanted fer breakfus’; an’ I knock’ two or three times, rale ha’d, an’ Mistuh Tom didn’ wake up no mo’ d’n de dead. He sho’ly had a good sleep, er he’d never ‘a’ got up so ea’ly.”

“Thank you, Sally,” said Mr. Delamere, when the woman had finished, “that will do.”

“Will you be home ter suppah, suh?” asked the cook.

“Yes.”

It was a matter of the supremest indifference to Mr. Delamere whether he should ever eat again, but he would not betray his feelings to a servant. In a few minutes he was driving rapidly with Ellis toward the office of the Morning Chronicle. Ellis could see that Mr. Delamere had discovered something of tragic import. Neither spoke. Ellis gave all his attention to the horses, and Mr. Delamere remained wrapped in his own sombre reflections.

When they reached the office, they were informed by Jerry that Major Carteret was engaged with General Belmont and Captain McBane. Mr. Delamere knocked peremptorily at the door of the inner office, which was opened by Carteret in person.

“Oh, it is you, Mr. Delamere.”

“Carteret,” exclaimed Mr. Delamere, “I must speak to you immediately, and alone.”

“Excuse me a moment, gentlemen,” said Carteret, turning to those within the room. “I’ll be back in a moment–don’t go away.”

Ellis had left the room, closing the door behind him. Mr. Delamere and Carteret were quite alone.

“Carteret,” declared the old gentleman, “this murder must not take place.”

“‘Murder’ is a hard word,” replied the editor, frowning slightly.

“It is the right word,” rejoined Mr. Delamere, decidedly. “It would be a foul and most unnatural murder, for Sandy did not kill Mrs. Ochiltree.”

Carteret with difficulty restrained a smile of pity. His old friend was very much excited, as the tremor in his voice gave proof. The criminal was his trusted servant, who had proved unworthy of confidence. No one could question Mr. Delamere’s motives; but he was old, his judgment was no longer to be relied upon. It was a great pity that he should so excite and overstrain himself about a worthless negro, who had forfeited his life for a dastardly crime. Mr. Delamere had had two paralytic strokes, and a third might prove fatal. He must be dealt with gently.

“Mr. Delamere,” he said, with patient tolerance, “I think you are deceived. There is but one sure way to stop this execution. If your servant is innocent, you must produce the real criminal. If the negro, with such overwhelming proofs against him, is not guilty, who is?”

“I will tell you who is,” replied Mr. Delamere. “The murderer is,”–the words came with a note of anguish, as though torn from his very heart,–“the murderer is Tom Delamere, my own grandson!”

“Impossible, sir!” exclaimed Carteret, starting back involuntarily. “That could not be! The man was seen leaving the house, and he was black!”

“All cats are gray in the dark, Carteret; and, moreover, nothing is easier than for a white man to black his face. God alone knows how many crimes have been done in this guise! Tom Delamere, to get the money to pay his gambling debts, committed this foul murder, and then tried to fasten it upon as honest and faithful a soul as ever trod the earth.”

Carteret, though at first overwhelmed by this announcement, perceived with quick intuition that it might easily be true. It was but a step from fraud to crime, and in Delamere’s need of money there lay a palpable motive for robbery,–the murder may have been an afterthought. Delamere knew as much about the cedar chest as the negro could have known, and more.

But a white man must not be condemned without proof positive.

“What foundation is there, sir,” he asked, “for this astounding charge?”

Mr. Delamere related all that had taken place since he had left Belleview a couple of hours before, and as he proceeded, step by step, every word carried conviction to Carteret. Tom Delamere’s skill as a mimic and a negro impersonator was well known; he had himself laughed at more than one of his performances. There had been a powerful motive, and Mr. Delamere’s discoveries had made clear the means. Tom’s unusual departure, before breakfast, on a fishing expedition was a suspicious circumstance. There was a certain devilish ingenuity about the affair which he would hardly have expected of Tom Delamere, but for which the reason was clear enough. One might have thought that Tom would have been satisfied with merely blacking his face, and leaving to chance the identification of the negro who might be apprehended. He would hardly have implicated, out of pure malignity, his grandfather’s old servant, who had been his own care-taker for many years. Here, however, Carteret could see where Tom’s own desperate position operated to furnish a probable motive for the crime. The surest way to head off suspicion from himself was to direct it strongly toward some particular person, and this he had been able to do conclusively by his access to Sandy’s clothes, his skill in making up to resemble him, and by the episode of the silk purse. By placing himself beyond reach during the next day, he would not be called upon to corroborate or deny any inculpating statements which Sandy might make, and in the very probable case that the crime should be summarily avenged, any such statements on Sandy’s part would be regarded as mere desperate subterfuges of the murderer to save his own life. It was a bad affair.

“The case seems clear,” said Carteret reluctantly but conclusively. “And now, what shall we do about it?”

“I want you to print a handbill,” said Mr. Delamere, “and circulate it through the town, stating that Sandy Campbell is innocent and Tom Delamere guilty of this crime. If this is not done, I will go myself and declare it to all who will listen, and I will publicly disown the villain who is no more grandson of mine. There is no deeper sink of iniquity into which he could fall.”

Carteret’s thoughts were chasing one another tumultuously. There could be no doubt that the negro was innocent, from the present aspect of affairs, and he must not be lynched; but in what sort of position would the white people be placed, if Mr. Delamere carried out his Spartan purpose of making the true facts known? The white people of the city had raised the issue of their own superior morality, and had themselves made this crime a race question. The success of the impending “revolution,” for which he and his _confreres_ had labored so long, depended in large measure upon the maintenance of their race prestige, which would be injured in the eyes of the world by such a fiasco. While they might yet win by sheer force, their cause would suffer in the court of morals, where they might stand convicted as pirates, instead of being applauded as patriots. Even the negroes would have the laugh on them,–the people whom they hoped to make approve and justify their own despoilment. To be laughed at by the negroes was a calamity only less terrible than failure or death.

Such an outcome of an event which had already been heralded to the four corners of the earth would throw a cloud of suspicion upon the stories of outrage which had gone up from the South for so many years, and had done so much to win the sympathy of the North for the white South and to alienate it from the colored people. The reputation of the race was threatened. They must not lynch the negro, and yet, for the credit of the town, its aristocracy, and the race, the truth of this ghastly story must not see the light,–at least not yet.

“Mr. Delamere,” he exclaimed, “I am shocked and humiliated. The negro must be saved, of course, but–consider the family honor.”

“Tom is no longer a member of my family. I disown him. He has covered the family name–my name, sir–with infamy. We have no longer a family honor. I wish never to hear his name spoken again!”

For several minutes Carteret argued with his old friend. Then he went into the other room and consulted with General Belmont. As a result of these conferences, and of certain urgent messages sent out, within half an hour thirty or forty of the leading citizens of Wellington were gathered in the Morning Chronicle office. Several other curious persons, observing that there was something in the wind, and supposing correctly that it referred to the projected event of the evening, crowded in with those who had been invited.

Carteret was in another room, still arguing with Mr. Delamere. “It’s a mere formality, sir,” he was saying suavely, “accompanied by a mental reservation. We know the facts; but this must be done to justify us, in the eyes of the mob, in calling them off before they accomplish their purpose.”

“Carteret,” said the old man, in a voice eloquent of the struggle through which he had passed, “I would not perjure myself to prolong my own miserable existence another day, but God will forgive a sin committed to save another’s life. Upon your head be it, Carteret, and not on mine!”

“Gentlemen,” said Carteret, entering with Mr. Delamere the room where the men were gathered, and raising his hand for silence, “the people of Wellington were on the point of wreaking vengeance upon a negro who was supposed to have been guilty of a terrible crime. The white men of this city, impelled by the highest and holiest sentiments, were about to take steps to defend their hearthstones and maintain the purity and ascendency of their race. Your purpose sprung from hearts wounded in their tenderest susceptibilities.”

“‘Rah, ‘rah!” shouted a tipsy sailor, who had edged in with the crowd.

“But this same sense of justice,” continued Carteret oratorically, “which would lead you to visit swift and terrible punishment upon the guilty, would not permit you to slay an innocent man. Even a negro, as long as he behaves himself and keeps in his place, is entitled to the protection of the law. We may be stern and unbending in the punishment of crime, as befits our masterful race, but we hold the scales of justice with even and impartial hand.”

“‘Rah f’ ‘mpa’tial ban’!” cried the tipsy sailor, who was immediately ejected with slight ceremony.

“We have discovered, beyond a doubt, that the negro Sandy Campbell, now in custody, did not commit this robbery and murder, but that it was perpetrated by some unknown man, who has fled from the city. Our venerable and distinguished fellow townsman, Mr. Delamere, in whose employment this Campbell has been for many years, will vouch for his character, and states, furthermore, that Campbell was with him all last night, covering any hour at which this crime could have been committed.”

“If Mr. Delamere will swear to that,” said some one in the crowd, “the negro should not be lynched.”

There were murmurs of dissent. The preparations had all been made. There would be great disappointment if the lynching did not occur.

“Let Mr. Delamere swear, if he wants to save the nigger,” came again from the crowd.

“Certainly,” assented Carteret. “Mr. Delamere can have no possible objection to taking the oath. Is there a notary public present, or a justice of the peace?”

A man stepped forward. “I am a justice of the peace,” he announced.

“Very well, Mr. Smith,” said Carteret, recognizing the speaker. “With your permission, I will formulate the oath, and Mr. Delamere may repeat it after me, if he will. I solemnly swear,”–

“I solemnly swear,”–

Mr. Delamere’s voice might have come from the tomb, so hollow and unnatural did it sound.

“So help me God,”–

“So help me God,”–

“That the negro Sandy Campbell, now in jail on the charge of murder, robbery, and assault, was in my presence last night between the hours of eight and two o’clock.”

Mr. Delamere repeated this statement in a firm voice; but to Ellis, who was in the secret, his words fell upon the ear like clods dropping upon the coffin in an open grave.

“I wish to add,” said General Belmont, stepping forward, “that it is not our intention to interfere, by anything which may be done at this meeting, with the orderly process of the law, or to advise the prisoner’s immediate release. The prisoner will remain in custody, Mr. Delamere, Major Carteret, and I guaranteeing that he will be proved entirely innocent at the preliminary hearing to-morrow morning.”

Several of those present looked relieved; others were plainly, disappointed; but when the meeting ended, the news went out that the lynching had been given up. Carteret immediately wrote and had struck off a handbill giving a brief statement of the proceedings, and sent out a dozen boys to distribute copies among the people in the streets. That no precaution might be omitted, a call was issued to the Wellington Grays, the crack independent military company of the city, who in an incredibly short time were on guard at the jail. Thus a slight change in the point of view had demonstrated the entire ability of the leading citizens to maintain the dignified and orderly processes of the law whenever they saw fit to do so.

* * * * *

The night passed without disorder, beyond the somewhat rough handling of two or three careless negroes that came in the way of small parties of the disappointed who had sought alcoholic consolation.

At ten o’clock the next morning, a preliminary hearing of the charge against Campbell was had before a magistrate. Mr. Delamere, perceptibly older and more wizened than he had seemed the day before, and leaning heavily on the arm of a servant, repeated his statement of the evening before. Only one or two witnesses were called, among whom was Mr. Ellis, who swore positively that in his opinion the prisoner was not the man whom he had seen and at first supposed to be Campbell. The most sensational piece of testimony was that of Dr. Price, who had examined the body, and who swore that the wound in the head was not necessarily fatal, and might have been due to a fall,–that she had more than likely died of shock attendant upon the robbery, she being of advanced age and feeble health. There was no evidence, he said, of any other personal violence.

Sandy was not even bound over to the grand jury, but was discharged upon the ground that there was not sufficient evidence upon which to hold him. Upon his release he received the congratulations of many present, some of whom would cheerfully have done him to death a few hours before. With the childish fickleness of a mob, they now experienced a satisfaction almost as great as, though less exciting than, that attendant upon taking life. We speak of the mysteries of inanimate nature. The workings of the human heart are the profoundest mystery of the universe. One moment they make us despair of our kind, and the next we see in them the reflection of the divine image. Sandy, having thus escaped from the Mr. Hyde of the mob, now received the benediction of its Dr. Jekyll. Being no cynical philosopher, and realizing how nearly the jaws of death had closed upon him, he was profoundly grateful for his escape, and felt not the slightest desire to investigate or criticise any man’s motives.

With the testimony of Dr. Price, the worst feature of the affair came to an end. The murder eliminated or rendered doubtful, the crime became a mere vulgar robbery, the extent of which no one could estimate, since no living soul knew how much money Mrs. Ochiltree had had in the cedar chest. The absurdity of the remaining charge became more fully apparent in the light of the reaction from the excitement of the day before.

Nothing further was ever done about the case; but though the crime went unpunished, it carried evil in its train. As we have seen, the charge against Campbell had been made against the whole colored race. All over the United States the Associated Press had flashed the report of another dastardly outrage by a burly black brute,–all black brutes it seems are burly,–and of the impending lynching with its prospective horrors. This news, being highly sensational in its character, had been displayed in large black type on the front pages of the daily papers. The dispatch that followed, to the effect that the accused had been found innocent and the lynching frustrated, received slight attention, if any, in a fine-print paragraph on an inside page. The facts of the case never came out at all. The family honor of the Delameres was preserved, and the prestige of the white race in Wellington was not seriously impaired.

* * * * *

Upon leaving the preliminary hearing, old Mr. Delamere had requested General Belmont to call at his house during the day upon professional business. This the general did in the course of the afternoon.

“Belmont,” said Mr. Delamere, “I wish to make my will. I should have drawn it with my own hand; but you know my motives, and can testify to my soundness of mind and memory.”

He thereupon dictated a will, by the terms of which he left to his servant, Sandy Campbell, three thousand dollars, as a mark of the testator’s appreciation of services rendered and sufferings endured by Sandy on behalf of his master. After some minor dispositions, the whole remainder of the estate was devised to Dr. William Miller, in trust for the uses of his hospital and training-school for nurses, on condition that the institution be incorporated and placed under the management of competent trustees. Tom Delamere was not mentioned in the will.

“There, Belmont,” he said, “that load is off my mind. Now, if you will call in some witnesses,–most of my people can write,–I shall feel entirely at ease.”

The will was signed by Mr. Delamere, and witnessed by Jeff and Billy, two servants in the house, neither of whom received any information as to its contents, beyond the statement that they were witnessing their master’s will. “I wish to leave that with you for safe keeping, Belmont,” said Mr. Delamere, after the witnesses had retired. “Lock it up in your safe until I die, which will not be very long, since I have no further desire to live.”

An hour later Mr. Delamere suffered a third paralytic stroke, from which he died two days afterwards, without having in the meantime recovered the power of speech.

The will was never produced. The servants stated, and General Belmont admitted, that Mr. Delamere had made a will a few days before his death; but since it was not discoverable, it seemed probable that the testator had destroyed it. This was all the more likely, the general was inclined to think, because the will had been of a most unusual character. What the contents of the will were, he of course did not state, it having been made under the seal of professional secrecy.

This suppression was justified by the usual race argument: Miller’s hospital was already well established, and, like most negro institutions, could no doubt rely upon Northern philanthropy for any further support it might need. Mr. Delamere’s property belonged of right to the white race, and by the higher law should remain in the possession of white people. Loyalty to one’s race was a more sacred principle than deference to a weak old man’s whims.

Having reached this conclusion, General Belmont’s first impulse was to destroy the will; on second thoughts he locked it carefully away in his safe. He would hold it awhile. It might some time be advisable to talk the matter over with young Delamere, who was of a fickle disposition and might wish to change his legal adviser.

XXVIII

IN SEASON AND OUT

Wellington soon resumed its wonted calm, and in a few weeks the intended lynching was only a memory. The robbery and assault, however, still remained a mystery to all but a chosen few. The affair had been dropped as absolutely as though it had never occurred. No colored man ever learned the reason of this sudden change of front, and Sandy Campbell’s loyalty to his old employer’s memory kept him silent. Tom Delamere did not offer to retain Sandy in his service, though he presented him with most of the old gentleman’s wardrobe. It is only justice to Tom to state that up to this time he had not been informed of the contents of his grandfather’s latest will. Major Carteret gave Sandy employment as butler, thus making a sort of vicarious atonement, on the part of the white race, of which the major felt himself in a way the embodiment, for the risk to which Sandy had been subjected.

Shortly after these events Sandy was restored to the bosom of the church, and, enfolded by its sheltering arms, was no longer tempted to stray from the path of rectitude, but became even a more rigid Methodist than before his recent troubles.

Tom Delamere did not call upon Clara again in the character of a lover. Of course they could not help meeting, from time to time, but he never dared presume upon their former relations. Indeed, the social atmosphere of Wellington remained so frigid toward Delamere that he left town, and did not return for several months.

Ellis was aware that Delamere had been thrown over, but a certain delicacy restrained him from following up immediately the advantage which the absence of his former rival gave him. It seemed to him, with the quixotry of a clean, pure mind, that Clara would pass through a period of mourning for her lost illusion, and that it would be indelicate, for the time being, to approach her with a lover’s attentions. The work of the office had been unusually heavy of late. The major, deeply absorbed in politics, left the detail work of the paper to Ellis. Into the intimate counsels of the revolutionary committee Ellis had not been admitted, nor would he have desired to be. He knew, of course, in a general way, the results that it was sought to achieve; and while he did not see their necessity, he deferred to the views of older men, and was satisfied to remain in ignorance of anything which he might disapprove. Moreover, his own personal affairs occupied his mind to an extent that made politics or any other subject a matter of minor importance.

As for Dr. Miller, he never learned of Mr. Delamere’s good intentions toward his institution, but regretted the old gentleman’s death as the loss of a sincere friend and well-wisher of his race in their unequal struggle.

Despite the untiring zeal of Carteret and his associates, the campaign for the restriction of the suffrage, which was to form the basis of a permanent white supremacy, had seemed to languish for a while after the Ochiltree affair. The lull, however, was only temporary, and more apparent than real, for the forces adverse to the negro were merely gathering strength for a more vigorous assault. While little was said in Wellington, public sentiment all over the country became every day more favorable to the views of the conspirators. The nation was rushing forward with giant strides toward colossal wealth and world-dominion, before the exigencies of which mere abstract ethical theories must not be permitted to stand. The same argument that justified the conquest of an inferior nation could not be denied to those who sought the suppression of an inferior race. In the South, an obscure jealousy of the negro’s progress, an obscure fear of the very equality so contemptuously denied, furnished a rich soil for successful agitation. Statistics of crime, ingeniously manipulated, were made to present a fearful showing against the negro. Vital statistics were made to prove that he had degenerated from an imaginary standard of physical excellence which had existed under the benign influence of slavery. Constant lynchings emphasized his impotence, and bred everywhere a growing contempt for his rights.

At the North, a new Pharaoh had risen, who knew not Israel,–a new generation, who knew little of the fierce passions which had played around the negro in a past epoch, and derived their opinions of him from the “coon song” and the police reports. Those of his old friends who survived were disappointed that he had not flown with clipped wings; that he had not in one generation of limited opportunity attained the level of the whites. The whole race question seemed to have reached a sort of _impasse_, a blind alley, of which no one could see the outlet. The negro had become a target at which any one might try a shot. Schoolboys gravely debated the question as to whether or not the negro should exercise the franchise. The pessimist gave him up in despair; while the optimist, smilingly confident that everything would come out all right in the end, also turned aside and went his buoyant way to more pleasing themes.

For a time there were white men in the state who opposed any reactionary step unless it were of general application. They were conscientious men, who had learned the ten commandments and wished to do right; but this class was a small minority, and their objections were soon silenced by the all-powerful race argument. Selfishness is the most constant of human motives. Patriotism, humanity, or the love of God may lead to sporadic outbursts which sweep away the heaped-up wrongs of centuries; but they languish at times, while the love of self works on ceaselessly, unwearyingly, burrowing always at the very roots of life, and heaping up fresh wrongs for other centuries to sweep away. The state was at the mercy of venal and self-seeking politicians, bent upon regaining their ascendency at any cost, stultifying their own minds by vague sophistries and high-sounding phrases, which deceived none but those who wished to be deceived, and these but imperfectly; and dulling the public conscience by a loud clamor in which the calm voice of truth was for the moment silenced. So the cause went on.

Carteret, as spokesman of the campaign, and sincerest of all its leaders, performed prodigies of labor. The Morning Chronicle proclaimed, in season and out, the doctrine of “White Supremacy.” Leaving the paper in charge of Ellis, the major made a tour of the state, rousing the white people of the better class to an appreciation of the terrible danger which confronted them in the possibility that a few negroes might hold a few offices or dictate the terms upon which white men should fill them. Difficulties were explained away. The provisions of the Federal Constitution, it was maintained, must yield to the “higher law,” and if the Constitution could neither be altered nor bent to this end, means must be found to circumvent it.

The device finally hit upon for disfranchising the colored people in this particular state was the notorious “grandfather clause.” After providing various restrictions of the suffrage, based upon education, character, and property, which it was deemed would in effect disfranchise the colored race, an exception was made in favor of all citizens whose fathers or grandfathers had been entitled to vote prior to 1867. Since none but white men could vote prior to 1867, this exception obviously took in the poor and ignorant whites, while the same class of negroes were excluded.

It was ingenious, but it was not fair. In due time a constitutional convention was called, in which the above scheme was adopted and submitted to a vote of the people for ratification. The campaign was fought on the color line. Many white Republicans, deluded with the hope that by the elimination of the negro vote their party might receive accessions from the Democratic ranks, went over to the white party. By fraud in one place, by terrorism in another, and everywhere by the resistless moral force of the united whites, the negroes were reduced to the apathy of despair, their few white allies demoralized, and the amendment adopted by a large majority. The negroes were taught that this is a white man’s country, and that the sooner they made up their minds to this fact, the better for all concerned. The white people would be good to them so long as they behaved themselves and kept their place. As theoretical equals,–practical equality being forever out of the question, either by nature or by law,–there could have been nothing but strife between them, in which the weaker party would invariably have suffered most.

Some colored men accepted the situation thus outlined, if not as desirable, at least as inevitable. Most of them, however, had little faith in this condescending friendliness which was to take the place of constitutional rights. They knew they had been treated unfairly; that their enemies had prevailed against them; that their whilom friends had stood passively by and seen them undone. Many of the most enterprising and progressive left the state, and those who remain still labor under a sense of wrong and outrage which renders them distinctly less valuable as citizens.

The great steal was made, but the thieves did not turn honest,–the scheme still shows the mark of the burglar’s tools. Sins, like chickens, come home to roost. The South paid a fearful price for the wrong of negro slavery; in some form or other it will doubtless reap the fruits of this later iniquity.

Drastic as were these “reforms,” the results of which we have anticipated somewhat, since the new Constitution was not to take effect immediately, they moved all too slowly for the little coterie of Wellington conspirators, whose ambitions and needs urged them to prompt action. Under the new Constitution it would be two full years before the “nigger amendment” became effective, and meanwhile the Wellington district would remain hopelessly Republican. The committee decided, about two months before the fall election, that an active local campaign must be carried on, with a view to discourage the negroes from attending the polls on election day.

The question came up for discussion one forenoon in a meeting at the office of the Morning Chronicle, at which all of the “Big Three” were present.

“Something must be done,” declared McBane, “and that damn quick. Too many white people are saying that it will be better to wait until the amendment goes into effect. That would mean to leave the niggers in charge of this town for two years after the state has declared for white supremacy! I’m opposed to leaving it in their hands one hour,–them’s my sentiments!”

This proved to be the general opinion, and the discussion turned to the subject of ways and means.

“What became of that editorial in the nigger paper?” inquired the general in his blandest tones, cleverly directing a smoke ring toward the ceiling. “It lost some of its point back there, when we came near lynching that nigger; but now that that has blown over, why wouldn’t it be a good thing to bring into play at the present juncture? Let’s read it over again.”

Carteret extracted the paper from the pigeon-hole where he had placed it some months before. The article was read aloud with emphasis and discussed phrase by phrase. Of its wording there could be little criticism,–it was temperately and even cautiously phrased. As suggested by the general, the Ochiltree affair had proved that it was not devoid of truth. Its great offensiveness lay in its boldness: that a negro should publish in a newspaper what white people would scarcely acknowledge to themselves in secret was much as though a Russian _moujik_ or a German peasant should rush into print to question the divine right of the Lord’s Anointed. The article was racial _lese-majeste_ in the most aggravated form. A peg was needed upon which to hang a _coup d’etat_, and this editorial offered the requisite opportunity. It was unanimously decided to republish the obnoxious article, with comment adapted to fire the inflammable Southern heart and rouse it against any further self-assertion of the negroes in politics or elsewhere.

“The time is ripe!” exclaimed McBane. “In a month we can have the niggers so scared that they won’t dare stick their heads out of doors on ‘lection day.”

“I wonder,” observed the general thoughtfully, after this conclusion had been reached, “if we couldn’t have Jerry fetch us some liquor?”

Jerry appeared in response to the usual summons. The general gave him the money, and ordered three Calhoun cocktails. When Jerry returned with the glasses on a tray, the general observed him with pointed curiosity.

“What, in h–ll is the matter with you, Jerry? Your black face is splotched with brown and yellow patches, and your hair shines as though you had fallen head-foremost into a firkin of butter. What’s the matter with you?”

Jerry seemed much embarrassed by this inquiry.

“Nothin’, suh, nothin’,” he stammered. “It’s–it’s jes’ somethin’ I be’n puttin’ on my hair, suh, ter improve de quality, suh.”

“Jerry,” returned the general, bending a solemn look upon the porter, “you have been playing with edged tools, and your days are numbered. You have been reading the Afro-American Banner.”

He shook open the paper, which he had retained in his hand, and read from one of the advertisements:–

“‘Kinky, curly hair made straight in two applications. Dark skins lightened two shades; mulattoes turned perfectly white.’

“This stuff is rank poison, Jerry,” continued the general with a mock solemnity which did not impose upon Jerry, who nevertheless listened with an air of great alarm. He suspected that the general was making fun of him; but he also knew that the general would like to think that Jerry believed him in earnest; and to please the white folks was Jerry’s consistent aim in life. “I can see the signs of decay in your face, and your hair will all fall out in a week or two at the latest,–mark my words!”

McBane had listened to this pleasantry with a sardonic sneer. It was a waste of valuable time. To Carteret it seemed in doubtful taste. These grotesque advertisements had their tragic side. They were proof that the negroes had read the handwriting on the wall. These pitiful attempts to change their physical characteristics were an acknowledgment, on their own part, that the negro was doomed, and that the white man was to inherit the earth and hold all other races under his heel. For, as the months had passed, Carteret’s thoughts, centring more and more upon the negro, had led him farther and farther, until now he was firmly convinced that there was no permanent place for the negro in the United States, if indeed anywhere in the world, except under the ground. More pathetic even than Jerry’s efforts to escape from the universal doom of his race was his ignorance that even if he could, by some strange alchemy, bleach his skin and straighten his hair, there would still remain, underneath it all, only the unbleached darky,–the ass in the lion’s skin.

When the general had finished his facetious lecture, Jerry backed out of the room shamefacedly, though affecting a greater confusion than he really felt. Jerry had not reasoned so closely as Carteret, but he had realized that it was a distinct advantage to be white,–an advantage which white people had utilized to secure all the best things in the world; and he had entertained the vague hope that by changing his complexion he might share this prerogative. While he suspected the general’s sincerity, he nevertheless felt a little apprehensive lest the general’s prediction about the effects of the face-bleach and other preparations might prove true,–the general was a white gentleman and ought to know,–and decided to abandon their use.

This purpose was strengthened by his next interview with the major. When Carteret summoned him, an hour later, after the other gentlemen had taken their leave, Jerry had washed his head thoroughly and there remained no trace of the pomade. An attempt to darken the lighter spots in his cuticle by the application of printer’s ink had not proved equally successful,–the retouching left the spots as much too dark as they had formerly been too light.

“Jerry,” said Carteret sternly, “when I hired you to work for the Chronicle, you were black. The word ‘negro’ means ‘black.’ The best negro is a black negro, of the pure type, as it came from the hand of God. If you wish to get along well with the white people, the blacker you are the better,–white people do not like negroes who want to be white. A man should be content to remain as God made him and where God placed him. So no more of this nonsense. Are you going to vote at the next election?”

“What would you ‘vise me ter do, suh?” asked Jerry cautiously.

“I do not advise you. You ought to have sense enough to see where your own interests lie. I put it to you whether you cannot trust yourself more safely in the hands of white gentlemen, who are your true friends, than in the hands of ignorant and purchasable negroes and unscrupulous white scoundrels?”

“Dere’s no doubt about it, suh,” assented Jerry, with a vehemence proportioned to his desire to get back into favor. “I ain’ gwine ter have nothin’ ter do wid de ‘lection, suh! Ef I don’ vote, I kin keep my job, can’t I, suh?”

The major eyed Jerry with an air of supreme disgust. What could be expected of a race so utterly devoid of tact? It seemed as though this negro thought a white gentleman might want to bribe him to remain away from the polls; and the negro’s willingness to accept the imaginary bribe demonstrated the venal nature of the colored race,–its entire lack of moral principle!

“You will retain your place, Jerry,” he said severely, “so long as you perform your duties to my satisfaction and behave yourself properly.”

With this grandiloquent subterfuge Carteret turned to his next article on white supremacy. Jerry did not delude himself with any fine-spun sophistry. He knew perfectly well that he held his job upon the condition that he stayed away from the polls at the approaching election. Jerry was a fool–

“The world of fools hath such a store, That he who would not see an ass,
Must stay at home and shut his door And break his looking-glass.”

But while no one may be entirely wise, there are degrees of folly, and Jerry was not all kinds of a fool.

XXIX

MUTTERINGS OF THE STORM

Events moved rapidly during the next few days. The reproduction, in the Chronicle, of the article from the Afro-American Banner, with Carteret’s inflammatory comment, took immediate effect. It touched the Southern white man in his most sensitive spot. To him such an article was an insult to white womanhood, and must be resented by some active steps,–mere words would be no answer at all. To meet words with words upon such a subject would be to acknowledge the equality of the negro and his right to discuss or criticise the conduct of the white people.

The colored people became alarmed at the murmurings of the whites, which seemed to presage a coming storm. A number of them sought to arm themselves, but ascertained, upon inquiring at the stores, that no white merchant would sell a negro firearms. Since all the dealers in this sort of merchandise were white men, the negroes had to be satisfied with oiling up the old army muskets which some of them possessed, and the few revolvers with which a small rowdy element generally managed to keep themselves supplied. Upon an effort being made to purchase firearms from a Northern city, the express company, controlled by local men, refused to accept the consignment. The white people, on the other hand, procured both arms and ammunition in large quantities, and the Wellington Grays drilled with great assiduity at their armory.

All this went on without any public disturbance of the town’s tranquillity. A stranger would have seen nothing to excite his curiosity. The white people did their talking among themselves, and merely grew more distant in their manner toward the colored folks, who instinctively closed their ranks as the whites drew away. With each day that passed the feeling grew more tense. The editor of the Afro-American Banner, whose office had been quietly garrisoned for several nights by armed negroes, became frightened, and disappeared from the town between two suns.

The conspirators were jubilant at the complete success of their plans. It only remained for them to so direct this aroused public feeling that it might completely accomplish the desired end,–to change the political complexion of the city government and assure the ascendency of the whites until the amendment should go into effect. A revolution, and not a riot, was contemplated.

With this end in view, another meeting was called at Carteret’s office.

“We are now ready,” announced General Belmont, “for the final act of this drama. We must decide promptly, or events may run away from us.”

“What do you suggest?” asked Carteret.

“Down in the American tropics,” continued the general, “they have a way of doing things. I was in Nicaragua, ten years ago, when Paterno’s revolution drove out Igorroto’s government. It was as easy as falling off a log. Paterno had the arms and the best men. Igorroto was not looking for trouble, and the guns were at his breast before he knew it. We have the guns. The negroes are not expecting trouble, and are easy to manage compared with the fiery mixture that flourishes in the tropics.”

“I should not advocate murder,” returned Carteret. “We are animated by high and holy principles. We wish to right a wrong, to remedy an abuse, to save our state from anarchy and our race from humiliation. I don’t object to frightening the negroes, but I am opposed to unnecessary bloodshed.”

“I’m not quite so particular,” struck in McBane. “They need to be taught a lesson, and a nigger more or less wouldn’t be missed. There’s too many of ’em now.”

“Of course,” continued Carteret, “if we should decide upon a certain mode of procedure, and the negroes should resist, a different reasoning might apply; but I will have no premeditated murder.”

“In Central and South America,” observed the general reflectively, “none are hurt except those who get in the way.”

“There’ll be no niggers hurt,” said McBane contemptuously, “unless they strain themselves running. One white man can chase a hundred of ’em. I’ve managed five hundred at a time. I’ll pay for burying all the niggers that are killed.”

The conference resulted in a well-defined plan, to be put into operation the following day, by which the city government was to be wrested from the Republicans and their negro allies.

“And now,” said General Belmont, “while we are cleansing the Augean stables, we may as well remove the cause as the effect. There are several negroes too many in this town, which will be much the better without them. There’s that yellow lawyer, Watson. He’s altogether too mouthy, and has too much business. Every nigger that gets into trouble sends for Watson, and white lawyers, with families to support and social positions to keep up, are deprived of their legitimate source of income.”

“There’s that damn nigger real estate agent,” blurted out McBane. “Billy Kitchen used to get most of the nigger business, but this darky has almost driven him to the poorhouse. A white business man is entitled to a living in his own profession and his own home. That nigger don’t belong here nohow. He came from the North a year or two ago, and is hand in glove with Barber, the nigger editor, which is enough of itself to damn him. _He’ll_ have to go!”

“How about the collector of the port?”

“We’d better not touch him. It would bring the government down upon us, which we want to avoid. We don’t need to worry about the nigger preachers either. They want to stay here, where the loaves and the fishes are. We can make ’em write letters to the newspapers justifying our course, as a condition of their remaining.”

“What about Billings?” asked McBane. Billings was the white Republican mayor. “Is that skunk to be allowed to stay in town?”

“No,” returned the general, “every white Republican office-holder ought to be made to go. This town is only big enough for Democrats, and negroes who can be taught to keep their place.”

“What about the colored doctor,” queried McBane, “with the hospital, and the diamond ring, and the carriage, and the other fallals?”

“I shouldn’t interfere with Miller,” replied the general decisively. “He’s a very good sort of a negro, doesn’t meddle with politics, nor tread on any one else’s toes. His father was a good citizen, which counts in his favor. He’s spending money in the community too, and contributes to its prosperity.”

“That sort of nigger, though, sets a bad example,” retorted McBane. “They make it all the harder to keep the rest of ’em down.”

“‘One swallow does not make a summer,'” quoted the general. “When we get things arranged, there’ll be no trouble. A stream cannot rise higher than its fountain, and a smart nigger without a constituency will no longer be an object of fear. I say, let the doctor alone.”

“He’ll have to keep mighty quiet, though,” muttered McBane discontentedly. “I don’t like smart niggers. I’ve had to shoot several of them, in the course of my life.”

“Personally, I dislike the man,” interposed Carteret, “and if I consulted my own inclinations, would say expel him with the rest; but my grievance is a personal one, and to gratify it in that way would be a loss to the community. I wish to be strictly impartial in this matter, and to take no step which cannot be entirely justified by a wise regard for the public welfare.”

“What’s the use of all this hypocrisy, gentlemen?” sneered McBane. “Every last one of us has an axe to grind! The major may as well put an edge on his. We’ll never get a better chance to have things our way. If this nigger doctor annoys the major, we’ll run him out with the rest. This is a white man’s country, and a white man’s city, and no nigger has any business here when a white man wants him gone!”

Carteret frowned darkly at this brutal characterization of their motives. It robbed the enterprise of all its poetry, and put a solemn act of revolution upon the plane of a mere vulgar theft of power. Even the general winced.

“I would not consent,” he said irritably, “to Miller’s being disturbed.”

McBane made no further objection.

There was a discreet knock at the door.

“Come in,” said Carteret.

Jerry entered. “Mistuh Ellis wants ter speak ter you a minute, suh,” he said.

Carteret excused himself and left the room.

“Jerry,” said the general, “you lump of ebony, the sight of you reminds me! If your master doesn’t want you for a minute, step across to Mr. Brown’s and tell him to send me three cocktails.”

“Yas, suh,” responded Jerry, hesitating. The general had said nothing about paying.

“And tell him, Jerry, to charge them. I’m short of change to-day.”

“Yas, suh; yas, suh,” replied Jerry, as he backed out of the presence, adding, when he had reached the hall: “Dere ain’ no change fer Jerry dis time, sho’: I’ll jes’ make dat _fo_’ cocktails, an’ de gin’l won’t never know de diffe’nce. I ain’ gwine ‘cross de road fer nothin’, not ef I knows it.”

Half an hour later, the conspirators dispersed. They had fixed the hour of the proposed revolution, the course to be pursued, the results to be obtained; but in stating their equation they had overlooked one factor,–God, or Fate, or whatever one may choose to call the Power that holds the destinies of man in the hollow of his hand.

XXX

THE MISSING PAPERS

Mrs. Carteret was very much disturbed. It was supposed that the shock of her aunt’s death had affected her health, for since that event she had fallen into a nervous condition which gave the major grave concern. Much to the general surprise, Mrs. Ochiltree had left no will, and no property of any considerable value except her homestead, which descended to Mrs. Carteret as the natural heir. Whatever she may have had on hand in the way of ready money had undoubtedly been abstracted from the cedar chest by the midnight marauder, to whose visit her death was immediately due. Her niece’s grief was held to mark a deep-seated affection for the grim old woman who had reared her.

Mrs. Carteret’s present state of mind, of which her nervousness was a sufficiently accurate reflection, did in truth date from her aunt’s death, and also in part from the time of the conversation with Mrs. Ochiltree, one afternoon, during and after the drive past Miller’s new hospital. Mrs. Ochiltree had grown steadily more and more childish after that time, and her niece had never succeeded in making her pick up the thread of thought where it had been dropped. At any rate, Mrs. Ochiltree had made no further disclosure upon the subject.

An examination, not long after her aunt’s death, of the papers found near the cedar chest on the morning after the murder had contributed to Mrs. Carteret’s enlightenment, but had not promoted her peace of mind.

When Mrs. Carteret reached home, after her hurried exploration of the cedar chest, she thrust into a bureau drawer the envelope she had found. So fully was her mind occupied, for several days, with the funeral, and with the excitement attending the arrest of Sandy Campbell, that she deferred the examination of the contents of the envelope until near the end of the week.

One morning, while alone in her chamber, she drew the envelope from the drawer, and was holding it in her hand, hesitating as to whether or not she should open it, when the baby in the next room began to cry.

The child’s cry seemed like a warning, and yielding to a vague uneasiness, she put the paper back.

“Phil,” she said to her husband at luncheon, “Aunt Polly said some strange things to me one day before she died,–I don’t know whether she was quite in her right mind or not; but suppose that my father had left a will by which it was provided that half his property should go to that woman and her child?”

“It would never have gone by such a will,” replied the major easily. “Your Aunt Polly was in her dotage, and merely dreaming. Your father would never have been such a fool; but even if he had, no such will could have stood the test of the courts. It would clearly have been due to the improper influence of a designing woman.”

“So that legally, as well as morally,” said Mrs. Carteret, “the will would have been of no effect?”

“Not the slightest. A jury would soon have broken down the legal claim. As for any moral obligation, there would have been nothing moral about the affair. The only possible consideration for such a gift was an immoral one. I don’t wish to speak harshly of your father, my dear, but his conduct was gravely reprehensible. The woman herself had no right or claim whatever; she would have been whipped and expelled from the town, if justice–blind, bleeding justice, then prostrate at the feet of slaves and aliens–could have had her way!”

“But the child”–

“The child was in the same category. Who was she, to have inherited the estate of your ancestors, of which, a few years before, she would herself have formed a part? The child of shame, it was hers to pay the penalty. But the discussion is all in the air, Olivia. Your father never did and never would have left such a will.”

This conversation relieved Mrs. Carteret’s uneasiness. Going to her room shortly afterwards, she took the envelope from her bureau drawer and drew out a bulky paper. The haunting fear that it might be such a will as her aunt had suggested was now removed; for such an instrument, in the light of what her husband had said confirming her own intuitions, would be of no valid effect. It might be just as well, she thought, to throw the paper in the fire without looking at it. She wished to think as well as might be of her father, and she felt that her respect for his memory would not be strengthened by the knowledge that he had meant to leave his estate away from her; for her aunt’s words had been open to the construction that she was to have been left destitute. Curiosity strongly prompted her to read the paper. Perhaps the will contained no such provision as she had feared, and it might convey some request or direction which ought properly to be complied with.

She had been standing in front of the bureau while these thoughts passed through her mind, and now, dropping the envelope back into the drawer mechanically, she unfolded the document. It was written on legal paper, in her father’s own hand.

Mrs. Carteret was not familiar with legal verbiage, and there were several expressions of which she did not perhaps appreciate the full effect; but a very hasty glance enabled her to ascertain the purport of the paper. It was a will, by which, in one item, her father devised to his daughter Janet, the child of the woman known as Julia Brown, the sum of ten thousand dollars, and a certain plantation or tract of land a short distance from the town of Wellington. The rest and residue of his estate, after deducting all legal charges and expenses, was bequeathed to his beloved daughter, Olivia Merkell.

Mrs. Carteret breathed a sigh of relief. Her father had not preferred another to her, but had left to his lawful daughter the bulk of his estate. She felt at the same time a growing indignation at the thought that that woman should so have wrought upon her father’s weakness as to induce him to think of leaving so much valuable property to her bastard,–property which by right should go, and now would go, to her own son, to whom by every rule of law and decency it ought to descend.

A fire was burning in the next room, on account of the baby,–there had been a light frost the night before, and the air was somewhat chilly. For the moment the room was empty. Mrs. Carteret came out from her chamber and threw the offending paper into the fire, and watched it slowly burn. When it had been consumed, the carbon residue of one sheet still retained its form, and she could read the words on the charred portion. A sentence, which had escaped her eye in her rapid reading, stood out in ghostly black upon the gray background:–

“All the rest and residue of my estate I devise and bequeath to my daughter Olivia Merkell, the child of my beloved first wife.”

Mrs. Carteret had not before observed the word “first.” Instinctively she stretched toward the fire the poker which she held in her hand, and at its touch the shadowy remnant fell to pieces, and nothing but ashes remained upon the hearth.

Not until the next morning did she think again of the envelope which had contained the paper she had burned. Opening the drawer where it lay, the oblong blue envelope confronted her. The sight of it was distasteful. The indorsed side lay uppermost, and the words seemed like a mute reproach:–

“The Last Will and Testament of Samuel Merkell.”

Snatching up the envelope, she glanced into it mechanically as she moved toward the next room, and perceived a thin folded paper which had heretofore escaped her notice. When opened, it proved to be a certificate of marriage, in due form, between Samuel Merkell and Julia Brown. It was dated from a county in South Carolina, about two years before her father’s death.

For a moment Mrs. Carteret stood gazing blankly at this faded slip of paper. Her father _had_ married this woman!–at least he had gone through the form of marriage with her, for to him it had surely been no more than an empty formality. The marriage of white and colored persons was forbidden by law. Only recently she had read of a case where both the parties to such a crime, a colored man and a white woman, had been sentenced to long terms in the penitentiary. She even recalled the circumstances. The couple had been living together unlawfully,–they were very low people, whose private lives were beneath the public notice,–but influenced by a religious movement pervading the community, had sought, they said at the trial, to secure the blessing of God upon their union. The higher law, which imperiously demanded that the purity and prestige of the white race be preserved at any cost, had intervened at this point.

Mechanically she moved toward the fireplace, so dazed by this discovery as to be scarcely conscious of her own actions. She surely had not formed any definite intention of destroying this piece of paper when her fingers relaxed unconsciously and let go their hold upon it. The draught swept it toward the fireplace. Ere scarcely touching the flames it caught, blazed fiercely, and shot upward with the current of air. A moment later the record of poor Julia’s marriage was scattered to the four winds of heaven, as her poor body had long since mingled with the dust of earth.

The letter remained unread. In her agitation at the discovery of the marriage certificate, Olivia had almost forgotten the existence of the letter. It was addressed to “John Delamere, Esq., as Executor of my Last Will and Testament,” while the lower left hand corner bore the direction: “To be delivered only after my death, with seal unbroken.”

The seal was broken already; Mr. Delamere was dead; the letter could never be delivered. Mrs. Carteret unfolded it and read:–

MY DEAR DELAMERE,–I have taken the liberty of naming you as executor of my last will, because you are my friend, and the only man of my acquaintance whom I feel that I can trust to carry out my wishes, appreciate my motives, and preserve the silence I desire.

I have, first, a confession to make. Inclosed in this letter you will find a certificate of marriage between my child Janet’s mother and myself. While I have never exactly repented of this marriage, I have never had the courage to acknowledge it openly. If I had not married Julia, I fear Polly Ochiltree would have married me by main force,–as she would marry you or any other gentleman unfortunate enough to fall in the way of this twice-widowed man-hunter. When my wife died, three years ago, her sister Polly offered to keep house for me and the child. I would sooner have had the devil in the house, and yet I trembled with alarm,–there seemed no way of escape,–it was so clearly and obviously the proper thing.

But she herself gave me my opportunity. I was on the point of consenting, when she demanded, as a condition of her coming, that I discharge Julia, my late wife’s maid. She was laboring under a misapprehension in regard to the girl, but I grasped at the straw, and did everything to foster her delusion. I declared solemnly that nothing under heaven would induce me to part with Julia. The controversy resulted in my permitting Polly to take the child, while I retained the maid.

Before Polly put this idea into my head, I had scarcely looked at Julia, but this outbreak turned my attention toward her. She was a handsome girl, and, as I soon found out, a good girl. My wife, who raised her, was a Christian woman, and had taught her modesty and virtue. She was free. The air was full of liberty, and equal rights, and all the abolition claptrap, and she made marriage a condition of her remaining longer in the house. In a moment of weakness I took her away to a place where we were not known, and married her. If she had left me, I should have fallen a victim to Polly Ochiltree,–to which any fate was preferable.

And then, old friend, my weakness kept to the fore. I was ashamed of this marriage, and my new wife saw it. Moreover, she loved me,–too well, indeed, to wish to make me unhappy. The ceremony had satisfied her conscience, had set her right, she said, with God; for the opinions of men she did not care, since I loved her,–she only wanted to compensate me, as best she could, for the great honor I had done my handmaiden,–for she had read her Bible, and I was the Abraham to her Hagar, compared with whom she considered herself at a great advantage. It was her own proposition that nothing be said of this marriage. If any shame should fall on her, it would fall lightly, for it would be undeserved. When the child came, she still kept silence. No one, she argued, could blame an innocent child for the accident of birth, and in the sight of God this child had every right to exist; while among her own people illegitimacy would involve but little stigma. I need not say that I was easily persuaded to accept this sacrifice; but touched by her fidelity, I swore to provide handsomely for them both. This I have tried to do by the will of which I ask you to act as executor. Had I left the child more, it might serve as a ground for attacking the will; my acknowledgment of the tie of blood is sufficient to justify a reasonable bequest.

I have taken this course for the sake of my daughter Olivia, who is dear to me, and whom I would not wish to make ashamed; and in deference to public opinion, which it is not easy to defy. If, after my death, Julia should choose to make our secret known, I shall of course be beyond the reach of hard words; but loyalty to my memory will probably keep her silent. A strong man would long since have acknowledged her before the world and taken the consequences; but, alas! I am only myself, and the atmosphere I live in does not encourage moral heroism. I should like to be different, but it is God who hath made us, and not we ourselves!

Nevertheless, old friend, I will ask of you one favor. If in the future this child of Julia’s and of mine should grow to womanhood; if she should prove to have her mother’s gentleness and love of virtue; if, in the new era which is opening up for her mother’s race, to which, unfortunately, she must belong, she should become, in time, an educated woman; and if the time should ever come when, by virtue of her education or the development of her people, it would be to her a source of shame or unhappiness that she was an illegitimate child,–if you are still alive, old friend, and have the means of knowing or divining this thing, go to her and tell her, for me, that she is my lawful child, and ask her to forgive her father’s weakness.

When this letter comes to you, I shall have passed to–the Beyond; but I am confident that you will accept this trust, for which I thank you now, in advance, most heartily.

The letter was signed with her father’s name, the same signature which had been attached to the will.

Having firmly convinced herself of the illegality of the papers, and of her own right to destroy them, Mrs. Carteret ought to have felt relieved that she had thus removed all traces of her dead father’s folly. True, the other daughter remained,–she had seen her on the street only the day before. The sight of this person she had always found offensive, and now, she felt, in view of what she had just learned, it must be even more so. Never, while this woman lived in the town, would she be able to throw the veil of forgetfulness over this blot upon her father’s memory.

As the day wore on, Mrs. Carteret grew still less at ease. To herself, marriage was a serious thing,–to a right-thinking woman the most serious concern of life. A marriage certificate, rightfully procured, was scarcely less solemn, so far as it went, than the Bible itself. Her own she cherished as the apple of her eye. It was the evidence of her wifehood, the seal of her child’s legitimacy, her patent of nobility,–the token of her own and her child’s claim to social place and consideration. She had burned this pretended marriage certificate because it meant nothing. Nevertheless, she could not ignore the knowledge of another such marriage, of which every one in the town knew,–a celebrated case, indeed, where a white man, of a family quite as prominent as her father’s, had married a colored woman during the military occupation of the state just after the civil war. The legality of the marriage had never been questioned. It had been fully consummated by twenty years of subsequent cohabitation. No amount of social persecution had ever shaken the position of the husband. With an iron will he had stayed on in the town, a living protest against the established customs of the South, so rudely interrupted for a few short years; and, though his children were negroes, though he had never appeared in public with his wife, no one had ever questioned the validity of his marriage or the legitimacy of his offspring.

The marriage certificate which Mrs. Carteret had burned dated from the period of the military occupation. Hence Mrs. Carteret, who was a good woman, and would not have done a dishonest thing, felt decidedly uncomfortable. She had destroyed the marriage certificate, but its ghost still haunted her.

Major Carteret, having just eaten a good dinner, was in a very agreeable humor when, that same evening, his wife brought up again the subject of their previous discussion.

“Phil,” she asked, “Aunt Polly told me that once, long before my father died, when she went to remonstrate with him for keeping that Woman in the house, he threatened to marry Julia if Aunt Polly ever said another word to him about the matter. Suppose he _had_ married her, and had then left a will,–would the marriage have made any difference, so far as the will was concerned?”

Major Carteret laughed. “Your Aunt Polly,” he said, “was a remarkable woman, with a wonderful imagination, which seems to have grown more vivid as her memory and judgment weakened. Why should your father marry his negro housemaid? Mr. Merkell was never rated as a fool,–he had one of the clearest heads in Wellington. I saw him only a day or two before he died, and I could swear before any court in Christendom that he was of sound mind and memory to the last. These notions of your aunt were mere delusions. Your father was never capable of such a folly.”

“Of course I am only supposing a case,” returned Olivia. “Imagining such a case, just for the argument, would the marriage have been legal?”

“That would depend. If he had married her during the military occupation, or over in South Carolina, the marriage would have been legally valid, though morally and socially outrageous.”

“And if he had died afterwards, leaving a will?”

“The will would have controlled the disposition of his estate, in all probability.”

“Suppose he had left no will?”

“You are getting the matter down pretty fine, my dear! The woman would have taken one third of the real estate for life, and could have lived in the homestead until she died. She would also have had half the other property,–the money and goods and furniture, everything except the land,–and the negro child would have shared with you the balance of the estate. That, I believe, is according to the law of descent and distribution.”

Mrs. Carteret lapsed into a troubled silence. Her father _had_ married the woman. In her heart she had no doubt of the validity of the marriage, so far as the law was concerned; if one marriage of such a kind would stand, another contracted under similar conditions was equally as good. If the marriage had been valid, Julia’s child had been legitimate. The will she had burned gave this sister of hers–she shuddered at the word–but a small part of the estate. Under the law, which intervened now that there was no will, the property should have been equally divided. If the woman had been white,–but the woman had _not_ been white, and the same rule of moral conduct did not, _could_ not, in the very nature of things, apply, as between white people! For, if this were not so, slavery had been, not merely an economic mistake, but a great crime against humanity. If it had been such a crime, as for a moment she dimly perceived it might have been, then through the long centuries there had been piled up a catalogue of wrong and outrage which, if the law of compensation be a law of nature, must some time, somewhere, in some way, be atoned for. She herself had not escaped the penalty, of which, she realized, this burden placed upon her conscience was but another installment.

If she should make known the facts she had learned, it would mean what?–a division of her father’s estate, a recognition of the legality of her father’s relations with Julia. Such a stain upon her father’s memory would be infinitely worse than if he had _not_ married her. To have lived with her without marriage was a social misdemeanor, at which society in the old days had winked, or at most had frowned. To have married her was to have committed the unpardonable social sin. Such a scandal Mrs. Carteret could not have endured. Should she seek to make restitution, it would necessarily involve the disclosure of at least some of the facts. Had she not destroyed the will, she might have compromised with her conscience by producing it and acting upon its terms, which had been so stated as not to disclose the marriage. This was now rendered impossible by her own impulsive act; she could not mention the will at all, without admitting that she had destroyed it.

Mrs. Carteret found herself in what might be called, vulgarly, a moral “pocket.” She could, of course, remain silent. Mrs. Carteret was a good woman, according to her lights, with a cultivated conscience, to which she had always looked as her mentor and infallible guide.

Hence Mrs. Carteret, after this painful discovery, remained for a long time ill at ease,–so disturbed, indeed, that her mind reacted upon her nerves, which had never been strong; and her nervousness affected her strength, which had never been great, until Carteret, whose love for her had been deepened and strengthened by the advent of his son, became alarmed for her health, and spoke very seriously to Dr. Price concerning it.

XXXI

THE SHADOW OF A DREAM

Mrs. Carteret awoke, with a start, from a troubled dream. She had been sailing across a sunlit sea, in a beautiful boat, her child lying on a bright-colored cushion at her feet. Overhead the swelling sail served as an awning to keep off the sun’s rays, which far ahead were reflected with dazzling brilliancy from the shores of a golden island. Her son, she dreamed, was a fairy prince, and yonder lay his kingdom, to which he was being borne, lying there at her feet, in this beautiful boat, across the sunlit sea.

Suddenly and without warning the sky was overcast. A squall struck the boat and tore away the sail. In the distance a huge billow–a great white wall of water–came sweeping toward their frail craft, threatening it with instant destruction. She clasped her child to her bosom, and a moment later found herself struggling in the sea, holding the child’s head above the water. As she floated there, as though sustained by some unseen force, she saw in the distance a small boat approaching over the storm-tossed waves. Straight toward her it came, and she had reached out her hand to grasp its side, when the rower looked back, and she saw that it was her sister. The recognition had been mutual. With a sharp movement of one oar the boat glided by, leaving her clutching at the empty air. She felt her strength begin to fail. Despairingly she signaled with her disengaged hand; but the rower, after one mute, reproachful glance, rowed on. Mrs. Carteret’s strength grew less and less. The child became heavy as lead. Herself floating in the water, as though it were her native element, she could no longer support the child. Lower and lower it sank,–she was powerless to save it or to accompany it,–until, gasping wildly for breath, it threw up its little hands and sank, the cruel water gurgling over its head,–when she awoke with a start and a chill, and lay there trembling for several minutes before she heard little Dodie in his crib, breathing heavily.

She rose softly, went to the crib, and changed the child’s position to an easier one. He breathed more freely, and she went back to bed, but not to sleep.

She had tried to put aside the distressing questions raised by the discovery of her father’s will and the papers accompanying it. Why should she be burdened with such a responsibility, at this late day, when the touch of time had well-nigh healed these old sores? Surely, God had put his curse not alone upon the slave, but upon the stealer of men! With other good people she had thanked Him that slavery was no more, and that those who once had borne its burden upon their consciences could stand erect and feel that they themselves were free. The weed had been cut down, but its roots remained, deeply imbedded in the soil, to spring up and trouble a new generation. Upon her weak shoulders was placed the burden of her father’s weakness, her father’s folly. It was left to her to acknowledge or not this shameful marriage and her sister’s rights in their father’s estate.

Balancing one consideration against another, she had almost decided that she might ignore this tie. To herself, Olivia Merkell,–Olivia Carteret,–the stigma of base birth would have meant social ostracism, social ruin, the averted face, the finger of pity or of scorn. All the traditional weight of public disapproval would have fallen upon her as the unhappy fruit of an unblessed union. To this other woman it could have had no such significance,–it had been the lot of her race. To them, twenty-five years before, sexual sin had never been imputed as more than a fault. She had lost nothing by her supposed illegitimacy; she would gain nothing by the acknowledgment of her mother’s marriage.

On the other hand, what would be the effect of this revelation upon Mrs. Carteret herself? To have it known that her father had married a negress would only be less dreadful than to have it appear that he had committed some terrible crime. It was a crime now, by the laws of every Southern State, for white and colored persons to intermarry. She shuddered before the possibility that at some time in the future some person, none too well informed, might learn that her father had married a colored woman, and might assume that she, Olivia Carteret, or her child, had sprung from this shocking _mesalliance_,–a fate to which she would willingly have preferred death. No, this marriage must never be made known; the secret should remain buried forever in her own heart!