XXXIX.
SAME AFTERNOON
Suez had never seen so busy a winter. Never before in the same number of weeks had so much cotton been hauled into town or shipped from it. Goods had never been so cheap, gross sales so large, or Blackland darkeys and Sandstone crackers so flush.
And naturally the prosperity that worked downward had worked upward all the more. Rosemont had a few more students than in any earlier year; Montrose gave her young ladies better molasses; the white professors in the colored "university," and their wives, looked less starved; and General Halliday, in spite of the fact that he was part owner of a steamboat, had at last dropped the title of "Agent." Even John March had somehow made something.
Barbara, in black, was shopping for Fannie. Johanna was at her side. The day was brisk. Ox-wagons from Clearwater, mule-teams from Blackland, bull-carts from Sandstone, were everywhere. Cotton bales were being tumbled, torn, sampled, and weighed; products of the truck-patch and door-yard, and spoils of the forest, were changing hands. Flakes of cotton blew about under the wheels and among the reclining oxen. In the cold upper blue the buzzards circled, breasted the wind, or turned and scudded down it. From chimney tops the smoke darted hither and yon, and went to shreds in the cedars and evergreen oaks. On one small space of sidewalk which was quiet, Johanna found breath and utterance.
"Umph! dis-yeh town is busy. Look like jess ev'ybody a-makin' money." She got her mistress to read a certain sign for her. "Jawn Mawch, Gen'lemun! – k-he-he! – dass a new kine o' business. An' yit, Miss Barb, I heah Gen'l Halliday tell Miss Fannie 'istiddy dat Mr. Mawch done come out ahade on dem-ah telegraph pole' what de contractors done git sicken' on an' th'ow up. He mus' be pow'ful smart, dat Mr. Mawch; ain't he, Miss Barb?"
"I don't know," murmured Barbara; "anybody can make money when everybody's making it." She bent her gaze into a milliner's window.
The maid eyed her anxiously. There were growing signs that Barbara's shopping was not for the bride-elect only, but for herself also, and for a long journey and a longer absence.
"Miss Barb, yondeh Mr. Mawch. Miss Barb, he de hayn'somess mayn in de three counties!"
"Ridiculous! Come, make haste." Haste was a thing they were beginning to make large quantities of in Suez. It has some resemblance to speed.
"Miss Garnet, pardon me." March gave the Rosemont bow, she gave the Montrose. "Don't let me stop you, please." He caught step.
"Is General Halliday in town? I suppose, of course, you've seen Miss Fannie this morning?" His boyish eyes looked hungry for a little teasing. She stopped in a store doorway. Her black garb heightened the charm of her red-brown hair, and of the countenance ready enough for laughter, yet well content without it.
"Yes. I'm shopping for her now." Her smiling lip implied the coming bridal, but her eyes told him teasing was no longer in order. General Halliday was in Blackland, she said, but would be back by noon. March gave the Rosemont bow, she gave the Montrose, Johanna unconsciously courtesied.
In the post-office John found two letters. One he saw instantly was from Leggett. He started for his office, opening the other, which was post-marked Boston. It ran:
"My Dear Mr. March. – My father has carefully considered your very clear and elaborate plan, and, while he freely admits his judgment may be wrong, he deems it but just to be perfectly frank with you."
The reader's step ceased. A maker of haste jostled him. He did not know it. His heart sank; he lost the place on the page. He leaned against an awning-post and read on:
"He feels bound to admire a certain masterly inventiveness and courage in your plan, but is convinced it will cost more than you estimate, and cannot be made at the same time safe and commercially remunerative."
There was plenty more, but the wind so ruffled the missive that, with unlifted eyes, he folded it. He looked across the corner of the court-house square to his office, whose second month's rent was due, and the first month's not yet paid. He saw his bright blue sign with the uncommercial title, which he had hoped to pay the painter for to-day. For, had his proposition been accepted, the letter was to have contained a small remittance. A gust of wind came scurrying round the post-office corner. Dust, leaves, and flakes of cotton rose on its wave, and – ah! – his hat went with them.
Johanna's teeth flashed in soft laughter as she waited in a doorway. "Run," she whispered, "run, Mr. Jawn Mawch, Gen'lemun. You so long gitt'n' to de awffice hat cayn't wait. Yass, betteh give it up. Bresh de ha'r out'n yo' eyes an' let dat-ah niggeh-felleh ketch it. K-he! I 'clare, dat's de mos' migracious hat I eveh see! Niggeh got it! Dass right, Mr. Mawch, give de naysty niggeh a dime. Po' niggeh! now run tu'n yo' dime into cawn-juice."
At his desk March read again:
"We appreciate the latent value of your lands. Time must bring changes which will liberate that value and make it commercial; but it was more a desire to promote these changes than any belief in their nearness which prompted my father's gifts to Rosemont College and Suez University. Not that he shares the current opinion that you are having too much politics. Progress and thrift may go side by side with political storms, and I know he thinks your State would be worse off to-day if it could secure a mere political calm.
"In reply to your generous invitation to suggest changes in your plan, I will myself venture one or two questions.
"First – Is not the elaborateness of your plan an argument against it? Dixie is not a new, wild country; and therefore does not your scheme – to establish not only mines, mills and roads, but stores, banks, schools and churches under the patronage and control of the company – imply that as a community and commonwealth you are, in Dixie, in a state of arrested development?
"Else why propose to do through a private commercial corporation what is everywhere else done through public government – by legislation, taxation, education, and courts? Cannot – or will not – your lawmakers and taxpayers give you their co-operation?
"The spirit of your plan is certainly beyond criticism. It seeks a common welfare. It does not offer swift enrichment to the moneyed few through the use of ignorant labor unlifted from destitution and degradation, but rather the remuneration of capital through the social betterment of all the factors of a complete community. But will the plan itself pay? Have not the things around you which paid been those which cared little if savings-bank, church or school lived or died, or whether laws or customs favored them?
"Suppose that on your own lands your colony should seem for a time to succeed, would you not be an island in an ocean of misunderstanding and indifference? If you should need an act of county or township legislation, could you get it? Is this not why capital seeks wilder and more distant regions when it would rather be in Dixie?
"I make these points not for their own sake, but to introduce a practical suggestion which my father is tempted to submit to you. And this, it may surprise you to find, is based upon the contents of the paper handed you as I was leaving Suez, by the colored man, Leggett, whose peculiar station doubtless makes it easy for him to see relations and necessities which better or wiser men, from other points of view, might easily overlook.
"This man would make your scheme as public as you would make it private, and my father is inclined to think that if public interest, action, and credit could be enlisted as suggested in Leggett's memorandum, your problem would have new attractions much beyond its present merely problematic interest, and might find financial backers. Alliance with Leggett is, of course, out of the question; but if you can consent and undertake to exploit your lands on the line of operation sketched by him we can guarantee the pecuniary support necessary to the effort, and you may at once draw on us at sight for the small sum mentioned in your letter, if your need is still urgent. With cordial regard,
"Yours faithfully,
"Henry Fair."
March started up, but sat again and gazed at the missive.
"Well, I will swear!" He smiled, held it at arm's length, and read again facetiously. "'Alliance with Leggett is, of course, out of the question; but if you can consent and undertake to exploit your lands on the line of operation sketched by him – '
"Now, where's that nigger's letter? – I wonder if I – " a knock at the door – "come in! – could have dropped it when my hat – O come in – ha! ha! – this isn't a private bedroom; I'm dressed."
XL.
ROUGH GOING
"Ah! Mr. Pettigrew, why'n't you walk right in, sir? I wasn't at prayer."
Mr. Pettigrew, his voice made more than usually ghostly by the wind and a cold, whispered that he thought he had heard conversation.
"O no, sir, I was only blowing up my assistant for losing a letter. Why, well, I'll be dog – You picked it up in the street, didn't you? Well, Mr. Pettigrew, I'm obliged to you, sir. Will you draw up a chair. Take the other one, sir; I threw that one at a friend the other day and broke it."
As the school-teacher sat down John dragged a chair close and threw himself into it loungingly but with tightly folded arms. Dinwiddie hitched back as if unpleasantly near big machinery. John smiled.
"I'm glad to see you, Mr. Pettigrew. I've been wanting a chance to say something to you for some time, sir."
Pettigrew whispered a similar desire.
"Yes, sir," said John, and was silent. Then: "It's about my mother, sir. Your last call was your fourth, I believe." He frowned and waited while the pipe-clay of Mr. Pettigrew's complexion slowly took the tint of old red sandstone. Then he resumed: "You used to tell us boys it was our part not so much to accept the protection of the laws as to protect them – from their own mistakes no less than from the mistakes of those who owe them reverence – much as it becomes the part of a man to protect his mother. Wasn't that it?"
The school-master gave a husky assent.
"Well, Mr. Pettigrew, I'm a man, now, at least bodily – I think. Now, I'm satisfied, sir, that you hold my mother in high esteem – yes, sir, I'm sure of that – don't try to talk, sir, you only irritate your throat. I know you think as I do, sir, that one finger of her little faded hand is worth more than the whole bad lot of you and me, head, heart, and heels."
The listener's sub-acid smile protested, but John —
"I believe she thinks fairly well of you, sir, but she doesn't really know you. With me it's just the reverse. Hm! Yes, sir. You know, Mr. Pettigrew, my dear mother is of a highly wrought imaginative temperament. Now, I'm not. She often complains that I've got no more romance in my nature than my dear father had. She idealizes people. I can't. But the result is I can protect her against the mistakes such a tendency might even at this stage of life lead her into, for they say the poet's heart never grows old. You understand."
The school-master bowed majestically.
"My mother, Mr. Pettigrew, can never love where she can't idealize, nor marry where she can't love; she's too true a woman for that. I expect you to consider this talk confidential, of course. Now, I don't know, sir, that she could ever idealize you, but against the bare possibility that she might, I must ask you not to call again. Hm! That's all, sir."
Mr. Pettigrew rose up ashen and as mad as an adder. His hair puffed out, his eyes glistened. John rose more leisurely, stepped to the hearth, picked up a piece of box stuff and knocked a nail out of one end.
"I'll only add this, sir: If you don't like the terms, you can have whatever satisfaction you want. But I remember" – he produced a large spring-back dirk-knife, sprung it open and began curling off long parings from the pine stick – "that in college, when any one of us vexed you, you took your spite out on us, and generally on me, in words. That's all right. We were boys and couldn't hold malice." A shaving fell upon Mr. Pettigrew's shoulder and stayed there. "But once or twice your venomous contempt came near including my father's name. Still that's past, let it go. But now, if you do take your spite out in words be careful to let them be entirely foreign to the real subject, and be dead sure not to involve any name but mine. Or else don't begin till you've packed your trunk and bought your railroad ticket; and you'd better have a transatlantic steamer ticket, too."
Mr. Pettigrew had drawn near the door. With his hand on it he hissed, "You'll find this is not the last of this, sir."
"I reckon it is," drawled John, with his eyes on his whittling. As the door opened and shut he put away his knife, and was taking his hat when his eye fell upon Cornelius's letter. He opened and read it.
The writing was Leggett's, but between the lines could be caught a whisper that was plainly not the mulatto's.
He was ready, he wrote, "to interjuce an' suppote that bill to create the Three Counties Colonization Company, Limited – which I has fo shawten its name an takened out the tucks. The sed company will buy yo whole Immense Track, paying for the same one third 1/3 its own stock – another one third 1/3 to be subscribened by private parties – an the res to be takened by the three counties and paid for in Cash to the sed Company Limited – which the sed cash to be raised by a special tax to be voted by the People. This money shell be used by the sed Company Limited to construc damns an sich eloquent an discomojus impertinences which then they kin sell the sed lans an impertinences to immigraters factorians an minors an in that means pay divies on the Stock an so evvybody get mo or less molasses on his finger an his vote Skewered. Thattle fetch white immigration an thattle ketch the white-liner's vote. But where some dever an as soon as any six miles square shell contain twenty white children of school Age the sed Company Limited shell be boun to bill an equip for them a free school house. An faw evvy school house so billden sed Company Limited shell be likewise boun to bill another sommers in the three Counties where a equal or greater number of collared children are without one. Thattle skewer the white squatter and Nigger vote."
The next clause – there was only a line or two besides – brought an audible exclamation from the reader: "Lassly faw evvy sich school house so bilt the sed Co. Limited shell pay a sum not less than its cost to some white male college in the three counties older then the sed Company Limited."
John marvelled. What was Garnet doing or promising, that Leggett should thus single out Rosemont for subsidies? And who was this in the letter's closing line – certainly not Garnet – who would "buy both fists full" of stock as soon as the bill should pass? He stepped out and walked along the windy street immersed in thought.
"John!" – General Halliday beckoned to him. The General and Proudfit were pushing into the lattice doors of a fragrant place whose bulletin announced "Mock Turtle Soup and Venison for Lunch To-day." March joined them. "Had your lunch, John? I heard you were looking for me."
"Well, yes, but there's no hurry." The three stood and ate, talking over incidents of war times, with John at a manifest disadvantage, and presently they passed from the luncheon trestles to the bar.
"No, Proudfit, if Garnet hadn't come in on our left just then and charged the moment he did we'd have lost the whole battery. Garnet was a poor soldier in camp, you're right; but on the field you'd only to tease him and he'd fight like a wild bull."
They drank, lighted cigars, and sauntered out toward the General's office. "John, I've read what you wrote me. I can't see it. We'll never colonize any lands in Dixie, my boy, till we've changed the whole system of laws under which we rent land and raise crops. You might as well try to farm swamp lands without draining them."
"Why, General, my scheme doesn't include plantations at all."
"Yes, it does; Dixie's a plantation State, and you can't make your little patch of it prosper till our planting prospers – can he, Proudfit?"
The Colonel laughed. "No go, General; I'm not going to side with you. Our prosperity, all around, hangs on the question whether you and the darkey may tax us and spend the taxes as you please, or we shall tax ourselves and spend the taxes as we please."
"Ah, Proudfit, you mean whether you may keep the taxes low enough to hold the darky down or let them be raised high enough to lift him up. Walk in, gentlemen. Proudfit, take the rocking-chair."
But the Colonel stood trying to return the General's last thrust, and John was bored. "General, all I want to see you about is to say that I'm going down into Blackland in a day or two to get as many darkies as I can to settle on my lands, and if you'll tell me the ones that are in your debt, I'll have nothing to do with them unless it is to tell them they've got to stay where they are."
Proudfit whirled and stared. The General gave a low laugh.
"Why, John, that sounds mighty funny to come from you. Would you do such a thing as that? – run off with another man's niggers?"
John bit his lip and looked at his cigar. "Are they yours, General?"
"By Jove! my son, they're not yours! O! of course, you've got the legal – pshaw! I'm not going to dispute an abstraction with you. Go and amuse yourself; you can't get 'em; the niggers that don't owe won't go; that's the poetry of it. I'd rather you'd take the fellows that owe than the one's that don't; but you won't get either kind."
"I can try, General." "No, sir, you can't!" exclaimed Proudfit. His cigar went into the fireplace with a vicious spat, and his eyes snapped. "Ow niggehs ah res'less an' discontented enough now, and whether you'll succeed aw not you shan't come 'round amongst them tryin' to steal them away! Damned if we don't run you out of the three counties! So long, General!" He went by March to the door.
John stood straight, his jaws set, chin up, eyes down. Halliday, by grimaces, was adjuring him to forbear. "But, Colonel Proudfit," he said – Proudfit paused – "you'll not insist on the word 'steal?'"
"You can call it what you damn please, sir, but you mustn't do it." The speaker passed out, leaving the door invitingly ajar.
The General caught John's arm – "Wait, I want to see you."
"I'll be back in a minute, General."
"My boy, the grave's full of nice fellows going to be back in a minute. Son John, there's only one thing I'm thoroughly ashamed of you for – "
"I can see you half a dozen better, General; let me go."
"You've no need to go; Proudfit's coming right back; he's only gone for his horse. There's plenty of time to hear the little I've got to say. John March, I'm ashamed of this reputation you've got for being quick on the trigger. O, you're much admired for it – by both sexes! Ye gods! John, isn't it pitiful to see a fellow like you not able to keep a kindly contempt for the opinion of fools! My dear boy – my dear boy! you'll never be worth powder enough to blow you to the devil till you've learned to let the sun go down on your wrath!"
John smiled and dropped his eyes, and the General, with an imperative gesture detaining some one at the young man's back, spoke on. "John, the old year's dying. For God's sake let it die in peace. Yes, and for your own sake, and for the sake of us old murderers of the years long dead, let as many old things as will die with it. I don't say bury anything alive – that's not my prescription; but ease their righteous death and give them a grave they'll stay in."
"General, all right! the Colonel may go for the present, but I'll tell you now, and I'll soon show him, that whatever the laws of my State give me leave to do I'll do if I choose, even if it's to help black men do what white men say shan't be done." John reached behind him for the latch.
His mentor smiled queerly. "Yes, even if it's to float a scheme drawing twice as much water as we've got on our political sandbar. Ah! John March, don't you know that the law's permission is never enough? Better get all the permissions you can, and turn your 'I' into the most multitudinous 'we' you can possibly make it. Seven legislatures can't dig you too much channel."
March's reply was cut short by a voice behind him, which said:
"You can have the Courier's permission."
As John wheeled about, Jeff-Jack came a step forward and Barbara Garnet shrank against a window.
"Well, Miss Garnet," laughed March, as Ravenel conversed with Halliday, "I was absorbed, wa'n't I? You and Miss Fannie going to watch the old year out and the new year in to-night?"
"No, sir, we're only going to the revival meeting," replied Barbara, with mellow gravity. "All bad people are cordially invited, you know. I reckon I've got to be there."
"Why, Miss Garnet, my name's Legion, too. I didn't know we were such close kin." He said good-day and departed, mildly wondering what the next incident would be. The retiring year seemed to be rushing him through a great deal of unfinished business.