THE noon mail brought Gaston no answer. At night he felt sure it would come.
When the wagon dashed up to the post-office that night it was fifteen minutes late. He was walking up and down the street on the opposite pavement along the square, keeping under the shadows of the trees. He turned, quickly crossed the street, and stood inside the office, listening with a feeling of strange abstraction to the tramp of the postmaster’s feet back and forth as he distributed the mail. He never knew before what a tragedy might be concealed in the thrust of a bit of folded paper into a tiny glass-eyed box. As he waited, fearing to face his fate, he remembered the pathetic figure of a grey-haired old man who stood there one day hanging on that desk softly talking to himself. He was a stranger at the Springs, and they were alone in the office together. Now and then he brushed a tear from his eyes, glanced timidly at the window of the general delivery, starting at every quick movement inside as though afraid the window had opened. Gaston had gone up close to the old man, drawn by the look of anguish in his dignified face. The stranger intuitively recognised the sympathy of the movement, and explained tremblingly: “My son, I am waiting for a message of life or death”—he faltered, seized his hand, adding, “and I’m afraid to see it!”
Just then the window opened and he clutched his arm and gasped, with dilated staring eyes, “There, there it’s come! You go for me, my son, and ask while I pray!—I’m afraid.” How well Gaston remembered now with what trembling eagerness the old man had broken the seal, and then stood with head bowed low, crying, “I thank and bless thee, oh, Mother of Jesus, for this hour!” And looking up into his face with tear-streaming eyes he cried in a rich low voice like tender music, “How beautiful are the feet of them that bring glad tidings!”
He could feel now the warm pressure of his hand as he walked out of the office with him.
How vividly the whole scene came rushing over him! He thought he sympathised with his old friend that night, but now he entered into the fellowship of his sorrow. Now he knew.
At last he drew himself up, walked to his box and opened it. His heart leaped. A big square-cut envelope lay in it, addressed to him in her own beautiful hand. He snatched it out and hurried to his office. The moment he touched it, his heart sank. It was light and thin. Evidently there was but a single sheet of paper within.
He tore it open and stared at it with parted lips and half-seeing eyes. The first word struck his soul with a deadly chill. This was what he read:
“My Dear Mr. Gaston:
“I write in obedience to the wishes of my parents to say our engagement must end and our correspondence cease. I can not explain to you the reasons for this. I have acquiesced in their judgment, that it is best.
“I return your letters by to-morrow’s mail, and Mama requests that you return mine to her at Oakwood immediately.
“I leave to-night on the Limited for Atlanta where I join a friend. We go to Savannah, and thence by steamer to Boston where I shall visit Helen for a month.
“Sincerely,
“Sallie Worth.”
For a long time he looked at the letter in a stupor of amazement. That her father could coerce her hand into writing such a brutal commonplace note was a revelation of his power he had never dreamed. And then his anger began to rise. His fighting blood from soldier ancestors made his nerves tingle at this challenge.
He took up the letter and read it again curiously studying each word. He opened the folded sheet hoping to find some detached message. There was nothing inside. But he noticed on the other side of the sheet a lot of indentures as though made by the end of a needle. He turned it back and studied these dots under different letters in the words made by the needle points. He spelled,—
“My Darling—Unto the Uttermost!”
And then he covered the note with kisses, sprang to his feet and looked at his watch.
It was now ten-thirty. The Limited left Independence at eleven o’clock and made no stops for the first hundred miles toward Atlanta. But just to the south where the railroad skirted the foot of King’s Mountain, there was a water tank on the mountain side where he knew the train stopped for water about midnight.
With a fast horse he could make the eighteen miles and board the Limited at this water station. The only danger was if the sky should cloud over and the starlight be lost it would be difficult to keep in the narrow road that wound over the semi-mountainous hills, densely wooded, that must be crossed to make it.
“I ’ll try it!” he exclaimed. “Yes, I will do it!” he added setting his teeth. “I ’ll make that train.”
He got the best horse he could find in the livery stable, saw that his saddle girths were strong, sprang on and galloped toward the south. It was a quarter to eleven when he started, and it seemed a doubtful undertaking. The Limited would make the run from Independence, fifty-two miles, in an hour at the most. If she were on time it would be a close shave for him to make the eighteen miles.
The sky clouded slightly before he reached the mountain. In spite of his vigilance he lost his way and had gone a quarter of a mile before a rift in the cloud showed him the north star suddenly, and he found he had taken the wrong road at the crossing and was going straight back home.
Wheeling his horse, he put spurs to him, and dashed at full speed back through the dense woods.
Just as he got within a mile of the tank he heard the train blow for the bridge-crossing at the river near by.
“Now, my boy,” he cried to his horse, patting him. “Now your level best!”
The horse responded with a spurt of desperate speed. He had a way of handling a horse that the animal responded to with almost human sympathy and intelligence. He seemed to breathe his own will into the horse’s spirit. He flew over the ground, and reached the train just as the fireman cut off the water and the engineer tapped his bell to start.
He flung his horse’s rein over a hitching post that stood near the silent little station-house, rushed to the track, and sprang on the day coach as it passed.
He had intended to ride fifty miles on this train, see his sweetheart face to face—learn the truth from her own lips—and then return on the up-train. He hoped to ride back to Hambright before day and keep the fact of his trip a secret.
Now a new difficulty arose—a very simple one—that he had not thought of for a moment. She was in a Pullman sleeper of course, and asleep.
There were three sleepers, one for Atlanta, one for New Orleans, and one for Memphis. He hoped she was in the Atlanta sleeper as that was her destination, though if that were crowded in its lower berths she might be in either of the others. But how under heaven could he locate her? The porter probably would not know her.
He was puzzled. The conductor approached and he paid his fare to the next stop, fifty miles.
“I’ve an important message for a passenger in one of these sleepers, Captain,” he exclaimed. “I have ridden across the mountains to catch the train here.”
“All right, sir,” said the genial conductor. “Go right in and deliver it. You look like you had a tussle to get here.”
“It was a close shave,” Gaston replied.
He stepped into the Atlanta sleeper and encountered the dusky potentate who presided over its aisles.
The porter looked up from the shoes he was shining at Gaston’s dishevelled hair and gave him no welcome.
Gaston dropped a half dollar into his hand and the porter dropped the shoes and grinned a royal welcome. “Any ting I kin do fer ye boss?”
“Got any ladies on your car?”
“Yassir, three un ’em.”
“Young, or old?”
“One young un, en two ole uns.”
“Did the young lady get on at Independence?”
“Yassir.”
“Going to Atlanta?”
“Yassir.”
“Is she very beautiful?”
“Boss, she’s de purtiess young lady I eber laid my eyes’ on—but look lak she been cryin’.”
“Then I want you to wake her. I must see her.”
“Lordy boss, I cain do dat. Hit ergin de rules.”
“But, I’m bound to see her. I’ve ridden eighteen miles across the mountains and scratched my face all to pieces rushing through those woods. I’ve a message of the utmost importance for her.”
“Cain do hit boss, hits ergin de rules. But you can go wake her yoself, ef you’se er mind ter. I cain keep you fum it. She’s dar in number seben.”
Gaston hesitated. “No, you must wake her,” he insisted, dropping another half dollar in the porter’s hand.
The porter got up with a grin. He felt he must rise to a great occasion.
“Well, I des fumble roun’ de berth en mebbe she wake herse’f, en den I tell her.”
Just then the electric bell overhead rang and the index pointed to 7. “Dar now, dat’s her callin’ me, sho!”
He approached the berth. “What kin I do fur ye M’am?” he whispered.
“Porter, who is that you are talking to? It sounds like some one I know.”
“Yassum, hit’s young gent name er Gaston, jump on bode at the water station—say he got ‘portant message fur you.”
“Tell him I will see him in a moment.”
The porter returned with the message.
“You des wait in dar, in number one—hits not made up—twell she come,” he added.
There was the soft rustle of a dressing gown—he sprang to his feet, clasped her hand passionately, kissed it, and silently she took her seat by his side. He still held her hand, and she pressed his gently in response. He saw that she was crying, and his heart was too full for words for a moment.
He looked long and wistfully in her face. In her dishevelled hair by the dim light of the car he thought her more beautiful than ever. At last she brushed the tears from her eyes and turned her face full on his with a sad smile.
“My own dear love!” she sobbed, “I prayed that I might see you somehow before I left. I was wide awake when I first heard the distant murmur of your voice. Oh! I am so glad you came!” and she pressed his hand.
“I got your letter at ten-thirty”—
“Oh! that awful letter! How I cried over it. Papa made me write it, and read and mailed it himself. But you saw my message between the lines?”
“Yes, and then I covered it with kisses. But what is the cause of this sudden change of the General toward me? What have I done?”
“Please don’t ask me. I can’t tell you,” she sobbed lowering her face a moment to his hand and kissing it. “Don’t ask me.”
“But, my dear, I must know. There can be no secrets between us.”
“My lips will never tell you. There have been a thousand slanders breathed against you. I met them with fury and scorn, and no one has dared repeat them in my hearing. I would not pollute my lips by repeating one of them.”
“But who is their author?”
“I can not tell you. I promised Mama I wouldn’t. She loves you, and she is on our side, but said it was best. Papa has made up his mind to break our engagement forever. And I defied him. We had a scene. I didn’t know I had the strength of will that came to me. I said some terrible things to him, and he said some very cruel things to me. Poor Mama was prostrated. Her heart is weak, and I only yielded at last as far as I have because of her tears and suffering. I could not endure her pleadings. So I promised to do as he wished for the present, leave for Boston, and cease to write to you.”
“My love, I must know my enemy to meet him and face the issues he raises. I can not be strangled in the dark like this.”
“You will find it out soon enough, I can not tell you,” she repeated. “I only ask you to trust me, in this the darkest hour that has ever come to my life. You will trust me, will you not, dear?” she pleaded.
“I have trusted you with my immortal soul. You know this.”
“Yes, yes, dear, I do. Then you can love and trust me without a letter or a word between us until Mama is better and I can get her consent to write to you? Oh, I never knew how tenderly and desperately I love you until this shadow came over our lives! No power shall ever separate us when the final test comes, unless you shall grow weary.”
“Do not say that,” he interrupted. “I love you with a love that has brought me out of the shadows and shown me the face of God. Death shall not bring weariness. But I dread with a sickening fear the efforts they will make to plunge you into the whirl of frivolous society. I shall be a lonely beggar a thousand miles away with not one friendly face near you to plead my cause.”
“Hush!” she broke in upon him. “You are for me the one living presence. You are always near—oh so near, closer than breathing!”
The roar of the train became sonorous with the vibration of a great bridge. He started and looked at his watch.
“We are more than half way to the stop where I must leave you and return.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Over a half hour. It does not seem two minutes. Only a few minutes more face to face, and all life crowding for utterance! How can I choose what to say, when my tongue only desires to say I love you! Bend near and whisper to me again your love vow,” he cried in trembling accents.
Close to his ear she placed her lips, holding fast his hand whispering again and again, “My own dear love—unto the uttermost. In life, in death, forever!”
He bent again and pressed his lips on her hand and she felt the hot tears.
“And now, love, comes the hardest thing of all,” she sobbed, “I must return to you my ring.”
“For God’s sake keep it!” he pleaded.
“No, I promised Mama for peace sake I would return it. She is very weak. I could not dare to hurt her now with a broken promise. She may not live long. I could never forgive myself. Keep it for me, dear, until I can wear it.”
She placed it in his hand and it burnt like a red hot coal. He placed it in an inside pocket next to his heart. It felt like a huge millstone crushing him. A lump rose in his throat and choked him until he gasped for breath.
She looked at him pathetically and saw his anguish.
“Come, my love,” she pleaded reproachfully, “you must not make it harder for me. You are a man. You are stronger than I am. Love is more my whole life than it can be yours. For this cruel thing I have said and done, you may press on my lips another kiss. If I am disobedient to my mother’s wishes God will forgive me.”
The train blew the long deep call for its hundred mile stop and they both rose, he took her hands in his.
“You have promised not to write to me, dear, but I have made no promise. I will write to you as often as I can send you a cheerful message,” he said.
“It is so sweet of you!”
“You have the little love-token still?” he asked.
“Yes, in my bosom. I feel it warm and throbbing with your love, and it shall not be taken from me in the grave!”
“That thought will cheer the darkest hours that can come and now, till we meet again, we must say goodbye,” he said huskily.
She could make no response. He placed his arms around her, pressed her close to his heart for a moment,—one long wistful kiss, and he was gone.
He rode slowly back to Hambright. The eastern horizon was fringed with the light of dawn when he reached the town. The more he had thought of his position and the way the General had treated him in attempting to settle his fate by a fiat of his own will without a hearing, the more it roused his wrath, and nerved him for the struggle. They were to measure wills in a contest’ that on his part had life for its stake.
“I ’ll give the old warrior the fight of his career!” he muttered as he snapped his square jaw together with the grip of a vise. “My brains, and every power with which nature has endowed me against his will and his money. And for the dastard who has slandered me there will be a reckoning.”
He was fighting in the dark but deep down in him he had a soldier’s love for a fight. His soul rose to meet the challenge of this hidden foe armed in the steel of a proud heritage of courage. He went to bed and slept soundly for six hours.
GASTON awoke next morning at half past ten o’clock with a dull headache, and a sense of hopeless depression. His anger had cooled and left him the pitiful consciousness of his loss. He slowly and mechanically dressed.
When he buttoned his coat he felt something hard press against his heart. It was the ring. He sat down on his bed and drew it from his pocket. To his surprise he found coiled inside it and tied by a tiny ribbon a ringlet of her hair. She had taken off the ring in her mother’s presence and promised her to register and mail it in Atlanta. She had bound this little piece of herself with it. He kissed it tenderly.
“My God, it is hard!” he groaned. And all the unshed tears that his eager interest in her presence and his kindling anger the night before had kept back now blinded him.
He did not notice his door softly open, nor know his mother was near until she placed her hand gently on his shoulder. He looked up at her face full of tender sympathy, and poured out to her his trouble in a torrent of hot rebellious words.
“What have I done to be treated like a dog in this way?” he ended with a voice trembling with protest.
“Perhaps you have offended the General in some way?”
“Impossible. I’ve been the soul of deference to him.”
“He’s a very proud man when his vanity is touched, are you sure of it?”
“As sure as that I live. No, some scoundrel has interfered between us and in some unaccountable way covered me with infamy in the General’s eyes.”
“But who could have done it?”
“I used my utmost power of persuasion to get it from her. But she would not tell me. I have been stabbed in the dark.”
“Whom do you suspect? She has a dozen suitors.”
“There’s only one man among them who is capable of it, Allan McLeod.”
“Nonsense, child. He is not one of her suitors,” she protested warmly.
“Then why does he hang around the house with such dogged persistence?”
“He has always had the run of the house. His father committed him to the General when he died on the battle field.”
Her face clouded, and then a great pity for his sorrow filled her heart. She stooped and kissed him.
“Come, Charlie, you must cheer up. If she loves you, it’s everything. You will win her.”
“But what rankles in my soul is that I have been treated like a dog. If he objected to my poverty that was as evident the first day he welcomed me to his house as the day he dictated to her his brutal message, refusing me a word. He welcomed me to his house, and gave Miss Sallie his approval of our love while I was there. There could be no mistake, for she told me so.”
“I can’t understand it,” she interrupted.
“Now he suddenly shows me the door and refuses to allow me to even ask an explanation. If he thinks he can settle my life for me in that simple manner, I’ll show him that I ’ll at least help in the settlement.”
“Good. I like to see your eyes flash that fire. Don’t forget your resolution. Your enemies are your best friends.” She said this with a ring of her old aristocratic pride. “Come,” she continued, “I’ve a nice warm breakfast saved for you. You don’t know how much good you have done me in my lonely life.”
“Dear Mother!” he whispered pressing her hand. After breakfast he went to his office and read over slowly the letters he had received from Sallie, kissed them one by one, tied them up and sent them to her mother. He took the ring out of his pocket and locked it in one of his drawers.
“I can’t work to-day. It’s no use trying!” he muttered looking out of his window. He locked his office and started down town with no purpose except in the walk to try to fight his pain. Instinctively he found his way to Tom Camp’s cottage.
“Tom, old boy, I’m in deep water. You’ve been there. I just want to feel your hand.”
Tom was clearing up his kitchen with one hand and holding the other tight over the wound near his spinal column. He had suffered untold agonies through the night past and was suffering yet, but he never mentioned it.
“You’ve just got your blues again!” Tom laughed.
“No, a devil has stabbed me in the back in the dark.” And he told Tom of his love and his inexplicable trouble.
“So, so!” Tom mused with dancing eyes, “The General’s gal Miss Sallie! My! my! but ain’t she a beauty! Next to my own little gal there she’s the purtiest thing in No’th Caliny. And you’re her sweetheart, and she told you she loved you?”
“Yes.”
“Then what ails you? Man, to hear that from such lips as she’s got’s music enough for a year. You want the whole regimental band to be playin’ all the time. If she loves you, that’s enough now to give you nerve to fight all earth and hell combined.” Tom urged this with an enthusiasm that admitted no reply.
Flora had climbed in his lap, and was going through his pockets to find some candy.
“You didn’t bring me a bit this time!” she cried reproachfully.
“Honey, I forgot it,” he apologised.
“I don’t believe you love me any more, Charlie,” she declared placing her hands on his cheeks and looking steadily into his eyes. “Am I your sweetheart yet?” she asked.
“Of course, dearie, and about the only one I can depend on!”
“La, Charlie, your eyes are red!” she cried in surprise. “Do you cry?”
“Sometimes, when my heart gets too full.”
“Then, I ’ll kiss the red away!” she said as she softly kissed his eyes.
“That’s good, Flora. It will make them better.’
“Now, Pappy,” she said triumphantly, “you say I’m getting too big to cry, and I ain’t but eleven years old, and Charlie’s big as you and he cries.”
Tom took her in his arms and smoothed his hand over her fair hair with a tenderness that had in its trembling touch all the mystery of both mother and father love in which his brooding soul had wrapped her.
Gaston returned home with lighter step. He met, as he crossed the square, the Preacher who was waiting for him.
“Come here and sit down a minute. I’ve heard of your trouble. You have my sympathy. But you ’ll come out all right. The oak that’s bent by the storm makes a fibre fit for a ship’s rib. You can’t make steel without white heat. God’s just trying your temper, boy, to see if there’s anything in you. When he has tried you in the fire, and the pure gold shines, he will call you to higher things.”
Gaston nodded his assent to this saying, “And yet, Doctor, none of us like the touch of fire or the smell of the smoke of our clothes.”
“You are right. But it’s good for the soul. You are learning now that we must face things that we don’t like in this world. I am older than you. I will tell you something that you can’t really know until you have lived through this. Love seems to you at this time the only thing in the world. But it is not. My deepest sympathy is with Sallie. She’s already pure gold. To such a woman love is the centre of gravity of all life. This is not true of a strong normal man. The centre of gravity of a strong man’s life as a whole is not in love and the emotions, but in justice and intellect and their expression in the wider social relations.”
“And that means that I must brace up for this political fight?”
“Exactly so. And it’s the best thing you can do for your love. Become a power and you can coerce even a man of the General’s character.”
“You are right, Doctor. I had my mind about fixed on that course.”
“You will find the County Committee in session in the Clerk’s office there now. They want to see you. I tell you to fight this coalition of McLeod and the farmers every inch up to the last hour it is formed, and if McLeod wins them, and the alliance is made, then fight to break it every day and every hour and every minute till the votes are counted out.”
Gaston went at once into the consultation with the Democratic county committee.
AS Gaston left the Preacher, the Rev. Ephraim Fox approached. He was the pastor of the Negro Baptist church, and had succeeded old Uncle Josh at his death ten years before.
He bowed deferentially, and, hat in hand, stood close to the seat on which Durham was still resting.
“How dis you doan come down ter our chu’ch en preach fur us no mo Brer’ Durham? We been er havin’ powerful times down dar lately, en de folks wants you ter come en preach some mo.”
“I can’t do it, Eph.”
“What de matter, Preacher? We ain’t hu’t yo feelin’s.”
“No, not in a personal way, but you’ve got beyond me.”
“How’s dat?” asked Ephraim rolling his eyes.
“Well, as long as I preach to your folks about heaven and the glory beyond this world, they shout and sweat and sing. And when I jump on the old sinners in the Bible, they are in glee. They like to see the fur fly. But the minute I pounce on them about stealing, and lying, and drinking, and lust,—they don’t want to furnish any of the fur.”
“De Lawd, Preacher, hit’s des de same wid de white folks!” urged Ephraim with a wink.
“That’s so. But the difference is your people talk back at me after the meeting.”
“How’s dat?” Ephraim repeated.
“Why when I preach righteousness and judgment on the thief and accuse them of stealing, I lose my wood, and my corn, and my chickens.”
Ephraim was silent a moment and then he smiled as he said, “Preacher, dey ain’t er nigger in dis town doan lub you.”
“Yes, I know it. That’s why they steal from me so much.”
“Go long wid yo fun!” roared Ephraim. “You know you ain’t gone back on us des cause some nigger tuck er stick er wood—deys sumfin’ else—you cain fool me.”
“Well, you are right, that isn’t the main reason. There are others. You turned a man out of your church for voting the Democratic ticket.”
“Yes, but Preacher,” interrupted Eph impatiently, “dat wuz er low-down mean nigger. He didn’t hab no salvation nohow!”
“Then you keep a deacon in your church who served two terms in the penitentiary.”
“But dat’s de bes’ deacon I got,” pleaded Eph sadly.
“Turn him out I tell you!”
“But dey all does little tings.”
“Turn ’em all out!”
“Den we ain’t got no chu’ch, en de shepherd ain’t got no flock ter tend, er ter shear. You des splain how de Lawd tempers de win’ ter de shorn lam’. Den ef I doan shear ’em, de win’ mought blow too hard on ’em. En ef I doan keep ’em in de pen, how kin I shear ’em? I axes you dat?”
The Preacher smiled and continued, “Then I’ve heard some ugly things about you, Eph,” suddenly darting a piercing look straight into his face.
“Who, me?”
“Yes, you. And I can’t afford to go into the pulpit with you any more. In the old slavery days you were taught the religion of Christ. It didn’t mean crime, and lust, and lying, and drinking, whatever it meant. Your religion has come to be a stench. You are getting lower and lower. You will be governed by no one. I can’t use force. I leave you alone. You have gone beyond me.”
“But de Lawd lub a sinner, en his mercy enduref for-eber!” solemnly grumbled Ephraim.
“In the old days,” persisted the Preacher, “I used to preach to your people. I saw before me many men of character, carpenters, bricklayers, wheelwrights, farmers, faithful home servants that loved their masters and were faithful unto death. Now I see a cheap lot of thieves and jailbirds and trifling women seated in high places. You have shown no power to stand alone on the solid basis of character.”
“Why Brer’ Durham,” urged Eph in an injured voice, “I baptised inter de kingdom over a hundred precious souls las’ year!”
“Yes, but what they needed was not a baptism of water. You negroes need a racial baptism into truth, integrity, virtue, self-restraint, industry, courage, patience, and purity of manhood and womanhood. I used to be hopeful about you, but I’d just as well be frank with you, I’ve given you up. I’ve said the grace of God was sufficient for all problems. I don’t know now. I’m getting older and it grows darker to me. I have come to believe there are some things God Almighty can not do. Can God make a stone so big He can’t lift it? In either event, He is not omnipotent. It looks like He did just that thing when He made the Negro. Leave me out of your calculation, Ephraim.”
“Mus’ gib de nigger time, Preacher!” Eph muttered as he walked slowly away.
When Gaston emerged from the court house, the Preacher joined him and they walked home to the hotel together.
“What did the two farmers on your committee think of the chances of preventing the Alliance from joining the negroes?”
“Not much of them. They say we can’t do anything with them when the test comes, unless we will endorse their scheme of issuing money on corn and pumpkins and potatoes stored in a government barn. If it comes to that, I will not prostitute my intellect by advocating any such measure on the floor of our convention. We stand for one thing at least, the supremacy of Anglo-Saxon civilisation. I had rather be beaten by the negroes and their allies this time on such an issue.”
“But, my boy, if McLeod and his negroes get control of this state for four years, they can so corrupt its laws and its electorate, they may hold it a quarter of a century. We must fight to the last ditch.”
“I draw the line at pumpkin leaves for money,” insisted Gaston.
It was but ten days to the meeting of the Democratic state convention, and they were coming together divided in opinion, and at sea as to their policy, with a united militant Farmers’ Alliance demanding the uprooting of the foundations of the economic world, and a hundred thousand negro voters grinning at this opportunity to strike their white foes, while McLeod stood in the background smiling over the certainty of his triumph.
WHEN Helen Lowell reached Boston from her visit with Sallie Worth, she found her father in the midst of his political campaign. The Hon. Everett Lowell was the representative of Congress from the Boston Highlands district. His home was an old fashioned white Colonial house built during the American Revolution.
He was not a man of great wealth, but well-to-do, a successful politician, enthusiastic student, a graduate of Harvard, and he had always made a specialty of championing the cause of the “freedmen.” He was a chronic proposer of a military force bill for the South.
His family was one of the proudest in America. He had a family tree five hundred years old—an unbroken line of unconquerable men who held liberty dearer than life. He believed in the heritage of good honest blood as he believed in blooded horses. His home was furnished in perfect taste, with beautiful old rosewood and mahogany stuff that had both character and history. On the walls hung the stately portraits of his ancestors representative of three hundred years of American life. He never confused his political theories about the abstract rights of the African with his personal choice of associates or his pride in his Anglo-Saxon blood. With him politics was one thing, society another.
His pet hobby, which combined in one his philanthropic ideals and his practical politics, was of late a patronage he had extended to young George Harris, the bright mulatto son of Eliza and George Harris whose dramatic slave history had made their son famous at Harvard.
This young negro was a speaker of fair ability and was accompanying Lowell on his campaign tours of the district, making speeches for his patron, who had obtained for him a clerk’s position in the United States Custom House. Harris was quite a drawing card at these meetings. He had a natural aptitude for politics; modest, affable, handsome, and almost white, he was a fine argument in himself to support Lowell’s political theories, who used him for all he was worth as he had at the previous election.
Harris had become a familiar figure at Lowell’s home in the spacious library, where he had the free use of the books, and frequently he dined with the family, when there at dinner time hard at work on some political speech or some study for a piece of music.
Lowell had met his daughter at the depot behind his pair of Kentucky thoroughbreds. This daughter, his only child, was his pride and joy. She was a blonde beauty, and her resemblance to her father was remarkable. He was a widower, and this lovely girl, at once the incarnation of his lost love and so fair a reflection of his being, had ruled him with absolute sway during the past few years.
He was laughing like a boy at her coming.
“Oh! my beauty, the sight of your face gives me new life!” he cried smiling with love and admiration.
“You mustn’t try to spoil me!” she laughed.
“Did you really have a good time in Dixie?” he whispered.
“Oh! Papa, such a time!” she exclaimed shutting her eyes as though she were trying to live it over again.
“Really?”
“Beaux, morning, noon and night,—dancing, moonlight rides, boats gliding along the beautiful river and mocking birds singing softly their love-song under the window all night!”
“Well you did have romance,” he declared.
“Yes,” she went on “and such people, such hospitality—oh! I feel as though I never had lived before.”
“My dear, you mustn’t desert us all like that,” he protested.
“I can’t help it, I’m a rebel now.”
“Then keep still till the campaign’s over!” he warned in mock fear.
“And the boys down there,” she continued, “they are such boys! Time doesn’t seem to be an object with them at all. Evidently they have never heard of our uplifting Yankee motto ‘Time is money.’ And such knightly deference! such charming old fashioned chivalrous ways!”
“But, dear, isn’t that a little out of date?”
“How staid and proper and busy Boston seems! I know I am going to be depressed by it.”
“I know what’s the matter with you!” he whistled.
“What?” she slyly asked.
“One of those boys.”
“I confess. Papa, he’s as handsome as a prince.”
“What does he look like?”
“He is tall, dark, with black hair, black eyes, slender, graceful, all fire and energy.”
“What’s his name?”
“St. Clare—Robert St. Clare. His father was away from home. He’s a politician, I think.”
“You don’t say! St. Clare. Well of all the jokes! His father is my Democratic chum in the House—an old fire-eating Bourbon, but a capital fellow.”
“Did you ever see him?”
“No, but I’ve had good times with his father. He used to own a hundred slaves. He’s a royal fellow, and pretty well fixed in life for a Southern politician. I don’t think though I ever saw his boy. Anything really serious?”
“He hasn’t said a word—but he’s coming to see me next week.”
“Well things are moving, I must say!”
“Yes, I pretended I must consult you, before telling him he could come. I didn’t want to seem too anxious. I’m half afraid to let him wander about Boston much, there are too many girls here.”
Her father laughed proudly and looked at her. “I hope you will find him all your heart most desires, and my congratulations on your first love!”
“It will be my last, too,” she answered seriously.
“Ah! you’re too young and pretty to say that!”
“I mean it,” she said earnestly with a smile trembling on her lips.
Her father was silent and pressed her hand for an answer. As they entered the gate of the home, they met young Harris coming out with some books under his arm. He bowed gracefully to them and passed on.
“Oh! Papa, I had forgotten all about your fad for that young negro!”
“Well, what of it, dear?”
“You love me very much, don’t you?” she asked tenderly. “I’m going to ask you to be inconsistent, for my sake.”
“That’s easy. I’m often that for nobody’s sake. Consistency is only the terror of weak minds.”
“I’m going to ask you to keep that young negro out of the house when my Southern friends are here. After my sweetheart comes I expect Sallie and her mother. I wouldn’t have either of them to meet him here in our library and especially in our dining-room for anything on earth!”
“Well, you have joined the rebels, haven’t you?”
“You know I never did like negroes any way,” she continued. “They always gave me the horrors. Young Harris is a scholarly gentleman, I know. He is good-looking, talented, and I’ve played his music for him sometimes to please you, but I can’t get over that little kink in his hair, his big nostrils and full lips, and when he looks at me, it makes my flesh creep.”
“Certainly, my darling, you don’t need to coax me. The Lowells, I suspect, know by this time what is due to a guest. When your guests come, our home and our time are theirs. If eating meat offends, we will live on herbs. I ’ll send Harris down to the other side of the district and keep him at work there until the end of the campaign. My slightest wish is law for him.”
“You see, Papa,” she went on, “they never could understand that negro’s easy ways around our house, and I know if he were to sit down at our table with them they would walk out of the dining-room with an excuse of illness and go home on the first train.”
“And yet,” returned her father lifting her from the carriage, “their homes were full of negroes were they not?”
“Yes, but they know their place. I’ve seen those beautiful Southern children kiss their old black ‘Mammy.’ It made me shudder, until I discovered they did it just as I kiss Fido.”
“And this a daughter of Boston, the home of Garrison and Sumner!” he exclaimed.
“I’ve heard that Boston mobbed Garrison once,” she observed.
“Yes, and I doubt if we have canonised Sumner yet. All right. If you say so, I ’ll order a steam calliope stationed at the gate and hire a man to play Dixie for you!”
She laughed, and ran up the steps.
Sallie determined to keep the secret of her sorrow in her own heart. On the ocean voyage she had cried the whole first day, and then kissed her lover’s picture, put it down in the bottom of her trunk, brushed the tears away and determined the world should not look on her suffering.
She had written Helen of her lover’s declaration, and of her happiness. She would find a good excuse for her sorrowful face in their separation. She knew he would write to her, for he had said so, and she had slipped the address into his hand as he left the car that night.
At first she was puzzled to think what she could do about answering these letters so Helen would not suspect her trouble. Then she hit on the plan of writing to him every day, posting the letters herself and placing them in her own trunk instead of the post-box.
“He will read them some day. They will relieve my heart,” she sadly told herself.
Helen met her on the pier with a cry of girlish joy, and the first word she uttered was, “Oh! Sallie, Bob loves me! He’s been here two weeks, and he’s just gone home. I have been in heaven. We are engaged!”
“Then I ’ll kiss you again, Helen.”—She gave her another kiss.
“And I’ve a big letter at home for you already! It’s post-marked ‘Hambright.’ It came this morning. I know you will feast on it. If Bob don’t write me faithfully I ’ll make him come here and live in Boston.”
When Sallie got this letter, she sat down in her room, and read and re-read its passionate words. There was a tone of bitterness and wounded pride in it. She struggled bravely to keep the tears back. Then the tone of the letter changed to tenderness and faith and infinite love that struggled in vain for utterance.
She kissed the name and sighed. “Now I must go down and chat and smile with Helen. She’s so silly about her own love, if I talk about Bob she will forget I live.”