The Clansman Page 16

  “Would you have let him?”

  “I expected him to try.”

  “He is very popular in Piedmont?”

  “Every girl in town is in love with him.”

  “And he in love with all?”

  “He pretends to be—but between us, he’s a great flirt. He’s gone to Nashville now on some pretended business. Goodness only knows where he got the money to go. I believe there’s a girl there.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he was so mysterious about his trip. I’ll keep an eye on him at the hotel. You know Margaret, too, don’t you?”

  “Yes; we met her in Washington.”

  “Well, she’s the slyest flirt in town—it runs in the blood—has a half-dozen beaux to see her every day. She plays the organ in the Presbyterian Sunday school, and the young minister is dead in love with her. They say they are engaged. I don’t believe it. I think it’s another one. But I must hurry, I’ve so much to show and tell you. Come here to the honeysuckle——”

  Marion drew the vines apart from the top of the fence and revealed a mocking-bird on her nest.

  “She’s setting. Don’t let anything hurt her. I’d push her off and show you her speckled eggs, but it’s so late.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t hurt her for the world!” cried Elsie with delight.

  “And right here,” said Marion, bending gracefully over a tall bunch of grass, “is a pee-wee’s nest, four darling little eggs; look out for that.”

  Elsie bent and saw the pretty nest perched on stems of grass, and over it the taller leaves drawn to a point.

  “Isn’t it cute!” she murmured.

  “Yes; I’ve six of these and three mocking-bird nests. I’ll show them to you. But the most particular one of all is the wren’s nest in the fork of the cedar, close to the house.”

  She led Elsie to the tree, and about two feet from the ground, in the forks of the trunk, was a tiny hole from which peeped the eyes of a wren.

  “Whatever you do, don’t let anything hurt her. Her mate sings ‘Free-nigger! Free-nigger! Free-nigger!’ every morning in this cedar.”

  “And you think we will specially enjoy that?” asked Elsie, laughing.

  “Now, really,” cried Marion, taking Elsie’s hand, “you know I couldn’t think of such a mean joke. I forgot you were from the North. You seem so sweet and homelike. He really does sing that way. You will hear him in the morning, bright and early, ‘Free-nigger! Free-nigger! Free-nigger!’ just as plain as I’m saying it.”

  “And did you learn to find all these birds’ nests by yourself?”

  “Papa taught me. I’ve got some jay-birds and some cat-birds so gentle they hop right down at my feet. Some people hate jay-birds. But I like them, they seem to be having such a fine time and enjoy life so. You don’t mind jay-birds, do you?”

  “I love every bird that flies.”

  “Except hawks and owls and buzzards——”

  “Well, I’ve seen so few I can’t say I’ve anything particular against them.”

  “Yes, they eat chickens—except the buzzards, and they’re so ugly and filthy. Now, I’ve a chicken to show you—please don’t let Aunt Cindy—she’s to be your cook—please don’t let her kill him—he’s crippled—has something the matter with his foot. He was born that way. Everybody wanted to kill him, but I wouldn’t let them. I’ve had an awful time raising him, but he’s all right now.”

  Marion lifted a box and showed her the lame pet, softly clucking his protest against the disturbance of his rest.

  “I’ll take good care of him, never fear,” said Elsie, with a tremor in her voice.

  “And I have a queer little black cat I wanted to show you, but he’s gone off somewhere. I’d take him with me—only it’s bad luck to move cats. He’s awful wild—won’t let anybody pet him but me. Mamma says he’s an imp of Satan—but I love him. He runs up a tree when anybody else tries to get him. But he climbs right up on my shoulder. I never loved any cat quite as well as this silly, half-wild one. You don’t mind black cats, do you?”

  “No, dear; I like cats.”

  “Then I know you’ll be good to him.”

  “Is that all?” asked Elsie, with amused interest.

  “No, I’ve the funniest yellow dog that comes here at night to pick up the scraps and things. He isn’t my dog—just a little personal friend of mine—but I like him very much, and always give him something. He’s very cute. I think he’s a nigger dog.”

  “A nigger dog? What’s that?”

  “He belongs to some coloured people, who don’t give turn enough to eat. I love him because he’s so faithful to his own folks. He comes to see me at night and pretends to love me, but as soon as I feed him he trots back home. When he first came, I laughed till I cried at his antics over a carpet—we had a carpet then. He never saw one before, and barked at the colours and the figures in the pattern. Then he’d lie down and rub his back on it and growl. You won’t let anybody hurt him?”

  “No. Are there any others?”

  “Yes, I ’most forgot. If Sam Ross comes—Sam’s an idiot who lives at the poorhouse—if he comes, he’ll expect a dinner—my, my, I’m afraid he’ll cry when he finds we’re not here! But you can send him to the hotel to me. Don’t let Aunt Cindy speak rough to him. Aunt Cindy’s awfully good to me, but she can’t bear Sam. She thinks he brings bad luck.”

  “How on earth did you meet him?”

  “His father was rich. He was a good friend of my Papa’s. We came near losing our farm once, because a bank failed. Mr. Ross sent Papa a signed check on his own bank, and told him to write the amount he needed on it, and pay him when he was able. Papa cried over it, and wouldn’t use it, and wrote a poem on the back of the check—one of the sweetest of all, I think. In the war Mr. Ross lost his two younger sons, both killed at Gettysburg. His wife died heartbroken, and he only lived a year afterward. He sold his farm for Confederate money and everything was lost. Sam was sent to the poorhouse. He found out somehow that we loved him and comes to see us. He’s as harmless as a kitten, and works in the garden beautifully.”

  “I’ll remember,” Elsie promised.

  “And one thing more,” she said hesitatingly. “Mamma asked me to speak to you of this—that’s why she slipped away. There one little room we have locked. It was Papa’s study just as he left it, with his papers scattered on the desk, the books and pictures that he loved—you won’t mind?”

  Elsie slipped her arm about Marion, looked into the blue eyes, dim with tears, drew her close and said:

  “It shall be sacred, my child. You must come every day if possible, and help me.”

  “I will. I’ve so many beautiful places to show you in the woods—places he loved, and taught us to see and love. They won’t let me go in the woods any more alone. But you have a big brother. That must be very sweet.”

  Mrs. Lenoir hurried to Elsie.

  “Come, Marion, we must be going now.”

  “I am very sorry to see you leave the home you love so dearly, Mrs. Lenoir,” said the Northern girl, taking her extended hand. “I hope you can soon find a way to have it back.”

  “Thank you,” replied the mother cheerily. “The longer you stay, the better for us. You don’t know how happy I am over your coming. It has lifted a load from our hearts. In the liberal rent you pay us you are our benefactors. We are very grateful and happy.”

  Elsie watched them walk across the lawn to the street, the daughter leaning on the mother’s arm. She followed slowly and stopped behind one of the arbor-vitæ bushes beside the gate. The full moon had risen as the twilight fell and flooded the scene with soft white light. A whippoorwill struck his first plaintive note, his weird song seeming to come from all directions and yet to be under her feet. She heard the rustle of dresses returning along the walk, and Marion and her mother stood at the gate. They looked long and tenderly at the house. Mrs. Lenoir uttered a broken sob, Marion slipped an arm around her, brushed the short curling hair back from her forehea
d, and softly said:

  “Mamma, dear, you know it’s best. I don’t mind. Everybody in town loves us. Every boy and girl in Piedmont worships you. We will be just as happy at the hotel.”

  In the pauses between the strange bird’s cry, Elsie caught the sound of another sob, and then a soothing murmur as of a mother bending over a cradle, and they were gone.

  * * *

  CHAPTER II

  The Eyes of the Jungle

  Elsie stood dreaming for a moment in the shadow of the arbor-vitæ, breathing the sensuous perfumed air and listening to the distant music of the falls, her heart quivering in pity for the anguish of which she had been a witness. Again the spectral cry of the whippoorwill rang near-by, and she noted for the first time the curious cluck with which the bird punctuated each call. A sense of dim foreboding oppressed her.

  She wondered if the chatter of Marion about the girl in Nashville were only a child’s guess or more. She laughed softly at the absurdity of the idea. Never since she had first looked into Ben Cameron’s face did she feel surer of the honesty and earnestness of his love than to-day in this quiet home of his native village. It must be the queer call of the bird which appealed to superstitions she did not know were hidden within her being.

  Still dreaming under its spell, she was startled at the tread of two men approaching the gate.

  The taller, more powerful-looking man put his hand on the latch and paused.

  “Allow no white man to order you around. Remember you are a freeman and as good as any pale-face who walks this earth.”

  She recognized the voice of Silas Lynch.

  “Ben Cameron dare me to come about de house,” said the other voice.

  “What did he say?”

  “He say, wid his eyes batten’ des like lightnen’, ‘Ef I ketch you hangin’ ’roun’ dis place agin’, Gus, I’ll jump on you en stomp de life outen ye.’”

  “Well, you tell him that your name is Augustus, not ‘Gus,’ and that the United States troops quartered in this town will be with him soon after the stomping begins. You wear its uniform. Give the white trash in this town to understand that they are not even citizens of the nation. As a sovereign voter, you, once their slave, are not only their equal—you are their master.”

  “Dat I will!” was the firm answer.

  The negro to whom Lynch spoke disappeared in the direction taken by Marion and her mother, and the figure of the handsome mulatto passed rapidly up the walk, ascended the steps and knocked at the door.

  Elsie followed him.

  “My father is too much fatigued with his journey to be seen now; you must call to-morrow,” she said.

  The negro lifted his hat and bowed:

  “Ah, we are delighted to welcome you, Miss Stoneman, to our land! Your father asked me to call immediately on his arrival. I have but obeyed his orders.”

  Elsie shrank from the familiarity of his manner and the tones of authority and patronage with which he spoke.

  “He cannot be seen at this hour,” she answered shortly.

  “Perhaps you will present my card, then—say that I am at his service, and let him appoint the time at which I shall return?”

  She did not invite him in, but with easy assurance he took his seat on the joggle-board beside the door and awaited her return.

  Against her urgent protest, Stoneman ordered Lynch to be shown at once to his bedroom.

  When the door was closed, the old Commoner, without turning to greet his visitor or moving his position in bed, asked:

  “Are you following my instructions?”

  “To the letter, sir.”

  “You are initiating the negroes into the League and teaching them the new catechism?”

  “With remarkable success. Its secrecy and ritual appeal to them. Within six months we shall have the whole race under our control almost to a man.”

  “Almost to a man?”

  “We find some so attached to their former masters that reason is impossible with them. Even threats and the promise of forty acres of land have no influence.”

  The old man snorted with contempt.

  “If anything could reconcile me to the Satanic Institution it is the character of the wretches who submit to it and kiss the hand that strikes. After all, a slave deserves to be a slave. The man who is mean enough to wear chains ought to wear them. You must teach, teach, TEACH these black hounds to know they are men, not brutes!”

  The old man paused a moment, and his restless hands fumbled the cover.

  “Your first task, as I told you in the beginning, is to teach every negro to stand erect in the presence of his former master and assert his manhood. Unless he does this, the South will bristle with bayonets in vain. The man who believes he is a dog, is one. The man who believes himself a king, may become one. Stop this snivelling and sneaking round the back doors. I can do nothing, God Almighty can do nothing, for a coward. Fix this as the first law of your own life. Lift up your head! The world is yours. Take it. Beat this into the skulls of your people, if you do it with an axe. Teach them the military drill at once. I’ll see that Washington sends the guns. The state, when under your control, can furnish the powder.”

  “It will surprise you to know the thoroughness with which this has been done already by the League,” said Lynch. “The white master believed he could vote the negro as he worked him in the fields during the war. The League, with its blue flaming altar, under the shadows of night, has wrought a miracle. The negro is the enemy of his former master and will be for all time.”

  “For the present,” said the old man meditatively, “not a word to a living soul as to my connection with this work. When the time is ripe, I’ll show my hand.”

  Elsie entered, protesting against her father’s talking longer, and showed Lynch to the door.

  He paused on the moonlit porch and tried to engage her in familiar talk.

  She cut him short, and he left reluctantly.

  As he bowed his thick neck in pompous courtesy, she caught with a shiver the odour of pomade on his black half-kinked hair. He stopped on the lower step, looked back with smiling insolence, and gazed intently at her beauty. The girl shrank from the gleam of the jungle in his eyes and hurried within.

  She found her father sunk in a stupor. Her cry brought the young surgeon hurrying into the room, and at the end of an hour he said to Elsie and Phil:

  “He has had a stroke of paralysis. He may lie in mental darkness for months and then recover. His heart action is perfect. Patience, care, and love will save him. There is no cause for immediate alarm.”

  * * *

  CHAPTER III

  Augustus Cæsar

  Phil early found the home of the Camerons the most charming spot in town. As he sat in the old-fashioned parlour beside Margaret, his brain seethed with plans for building a hotel on a large scale on the other side of the Square and restoring her home intact.

  The Cameron homestead was a large brick building with an ample porch looking out directly on the Court House Square, standing in the middle of a lawn full of trees, flowers, shrubbery, and a wilderness of evergreen boxwood planted fifty years before. It was located on the farm from which it had always derived its support. The farm extended up into the village itself, with the great barn easily seen from the street.

  Phil was charmed with the doctor’s genial personality. He often found the father a decidedly easier person to get along with than his handsome daughter. The Rev. Hugh McAlpin was a daily caller, and Margaret had a tantalizing way of showing her deference to his opinions.

  Phil hated this preacher from the moment he laid eyes on him. His pugnacious piety he might have endured but for the fact that he was good-looking and eloquent. When he rose in the pulpit in all his sacred dignity, fixed his eyes on Margaret, and began in tenderly modulated voice to tell about the love of God, Phil clinched his fist. He didn’t care to join the Presbyterian church, but he quietly made up his mind that, if it came to the worst and she asked him, he would join any
thing. What made him furious was the air of assurance with which the young divine carried himself about Margaret, as if he had but to say the word and it would be fixed as by a decree issued from before the foundations of the world.

  He was pleased and surprised to find that his being a Yankee made no difference in his standing or welcome. The people seemed unconscious of the part his father played at Washington. Stoneman’s Confiscation Bill had not yet been discussed in Congress, and the promise of land to the negroes was universally regarded as a hoax of the League to win their followers. The old Commoner was not an orator. Hence his name was scarcely known in the South. The Southern people could not conceive of a great leader except one who expressed his power through the megaphone of oratory. They held Charles Sumner chiefly responsible for Reconstruction.

  The fact that Phil was a Yankee who had no axe to grind in the South caused the people to appeal to him in a pathetic way that touched his heart. He had not been in town two weeks before he was on good terms with every youngster, had the entrée to every home, and Ben had taken him, protesting vehemently, to see every pretty girl there. He found that, in spite of war and poverty, troubles present and troubles to come, the young Southern woman was the divinity that claimed and received the chief worship of man.

  The tremendous earnestness with which these youngsters pursued the work of courting, all of them so poor they scarcely had enough to eat, amazed and alarmed him beyond measure. He found in several cases as many as four making a dead set for one girl, as if heaven and earth depended on the outcome, while the girl seemed to receive it all as a matter of course—her just tribute.

  Every instinct of his quiet reserved nature revolted at any such attempt to rush his cause with Margaret, and yet it made the cold chills run down his spine to see that Presbyterian preacher drive his buggy up to the hotel, take her to ride, and stay three hours. He knew where they had gone—to Lover’s Leap and along the beautiful road which led to the North Carolina line. He knew the way—Margaret had showed him. This road was the Way of Romance. Every farmhouse, cabin, and shady nook along its beaten track could tell its tale of lovers fleeing from the North to find happiness in the haven of matrimony across the line in South Carolina. Everything seemed to favour marriage in this climate. The state required no license. A legal marriage could be celebrated, anywhere, at any time, by a minister in the presence of two witnesses, with or without the consent of parent or guardian. Marriage was the easiest thing in the state—divorce the one thing impossible. Death alone could grant divorce.