John March, Southerner

"It's the natural crystal of free conditions!" John heard him say in the post-office corner of Weed & Usher's drug-store.

Empty words to John. He noted only the noble air of the speaker and his hearers. Every man of the group had been a soldier. The General showed much more polish than the others, but they all had the strong graces of horsemen and masters, and many a subtle sign of civilization and cult heated and hammered through centuries of search for good government and honorable fortune. John stopped and gazed.

"Come on, son," said Judge March almost sharply. John began to back away. "There!" exclaimed the father as his son sat down suddenly in a box of sawdust and cigar stumps. He led him away to clean him off, adding, "You hadn't ought to stare at people as you walk away fum them, my son."

With rare exceptions, the General's daily hearers were silent, but resolute. They did not analyze. Their motives were their feelings; their feelings were their traditions, and their traditions were back in the old entrenchments. The time for large changes had slipped by. Haggard, of the Courier, thought it "Equally just and damning" to reprint from the General's odiously remembered letter of four years earlier, "If we can't make our Negroes white, let us make them as white as we can," and sign it "Social Equality Launcelot." Parson Tombs, sweet, aged, and beloved, prayed from his pulpit – with the preface, "Thou knowest thy servant has never mixed up politics and religion" – that "the machinations of them who seek to join together what God hath put asunder may come to naught."

Halliday laughed. "Why, I'm only a private citizen trying to retrieve my private fortunes." But —

"These are times when a man can't choose whether he'll be public or private!" said Garnet, and the Courier made the bankrupt cotton factor public every day. It quoted constantly from the unpardonable letter, and charged him with "inflaming the basest cupidity of our Helots," and so on, and on. But the General, with his silver-shot curls dancing half-way down his shoulders, a six-shooter under each skirt of his black velvet coat, and a knife down the back of his neck, went on pushing his private enterprise.

"Private enterprise!" cried Garnet. "His jackals will run him for Congress." And they did – against Garnet.

The times were seething. Halliday, viewing matters impartially in the clear, calm light of petroleum torches, justified Congress in acts which Garnet termed "the spume of an insane revenge;" while Garnet, with equal calmness of judgment, under other petroleum torches, gloried in the "masterly inactivity" of Dixie's whitest and best – which Launcelot denounced as a foolish and wicked political strike. All the corruptions bred by both sides in a gigantic war – and before it in all the crudeness of the country's first century – were pouring down and spouting up upon Dixie their rain of pitch and ashes. Negroes swarmed about the polls, elbowed their masters, and challenged their votes. Ragged negresses talked loudly along the sidewalk of one another as "ladies," and of their mistresses as "women." White men of fortune and station were masking, night-riding, whipping and killing; and blue cavalry rattled again through the rocky streets of Suez.

Such was life when dashing Fannie Halliday joined the choir in Parson Tombs's church, becoming at once its leading spirit, and John March suddenly showed a deep interest in the Scriptures. He joined her Sunday-school class.

X.

FANNIE

Was sixteen – she said; had black eyes – the dilating kind – was pretty, and seductively subtle. Jeff-Jack liked her much. They met at Rosemont, where he found her spending two or three days, on perfect terms with Barbara, and treated with noticeable gravity, though with full kindness, by Mrs. Garnet, whom she called, warmly, "Cousin Rose."

Ravenel had pushed forward only two or three pawns of conversation when she moved at one step from news to politics. She played with the ugly subject girlishly, even frivolously, though not insipidly – at least to a young man's notion – riding its winds and waves like a sea-bird. Politics, she said, seemed to her a kind of human weather, no more her business and no less than any other kind. She never blamed the public, or any party for this or that; did he? And when he said he did not, her eyes danced and she declared she disliked him less.

"Why, we might as well scold the rain or the wind as the public," she insisted. "What publics do, or think, or say, or want – are merely – I don't know – sort o' chemical values. What makes you smile that way?"

"Did I smile? You're deep," he said.

"You're smiling again," she replied, and, turning, asked Garnet a guileless question on a certain fierce matter of the hour. He answered it with rash confidence, and her next question was a checkmate.

"Oh, understand," he cried, in reply; "we don't excuse these dreadful practices."

"Yes, you do. You-all don't do anything else – except Mr. Ravenel; he approves them barefaced."

Garnet tried to retort, but she laughed him down. When she was gone, "She's as rude as a roustabout," he said to his wife.

For all this she was presently the belle of Suez. She invaded its small and ill-assorted society and held it, a restless, but conquered province. John's father marked with joy his son's sudden regularity in Sunday-school. If his wife was less pleased it was because to her all punctuality was a personal affront; it was some time before she discovered the cause to be Miss Fannie Halliday. By that time half the young men in town were in love with Fannie, and three-fourths of them in abject fear of her wit; yet, in true Southern fashion, casting themselves in its way with Hindoo abandon.

Her father and she had apartments in Tom Hersey's Swanee Hotel. Mr. Ravenel called often. She entered Montrose Academy "in order to remain sixteen," she told him. This institution was but a year or two old. It had been founded, at Ravenel's suggestion, "as a sort o' little sister to Rosemont." Its principal, Miss Kinsington, with her sister, belonged to one of Dixie's best and most unfortunate families.

"You don't bow down to Mrs. Grundy," something prompted Ravenel to say, as he and Fannie came slowly back from a gallop in the hills.

"Yes, I do. I only love to tease her now and then. I go to the races, play cards, waltz, talk slang, and read novels. But when I do bow down to her I bow away down. Why, at Montrose, I actually talk on serious subjects!"

"Do you touch often on religion? You never do to the gentlemen I bring to see you."

"Why, Mr. Ravenel, I don't understand you. What should I know about religion? You seem to forget that I belong to the choir."

"Well, politics, then. Don't you ever try to make a convert even in that?"

"I talk politics for fun only." She toyed with her whip. "I'd tell you something if I thought you'd never tell. It's this: Women have no conscience in their intellects. No, and the young gentlemen you bring to see me take after their mothers."

"I'll try to bring some other kind."

"Oh, no! They suit me. They're so easily pleased. I tell them they have a great insight into female character. Don't you tell them I told you!"

"Do you remember having told me the same thing?"

She dropped two wicked eyes and said, with sweet gravity, "I wish it were not so true of you. How did you like the sermon last evening?"

"The cunning flirt!" thought he that night, as his kneeling black boy drew off his boots.

Not so thought John that same hour. Servants' delinquencies had kept him from Sunday-school that morning and made him late at church. His mother had stayed at home with her headache and her husband. Her son was hesitating at the church-yard gate, alone and heavy-hearted, when suddenly he saw a thing that brought his heart into his throat and made a certain old mortification start from its long sleep with a great inward cry. Two shabby black men passed by on plough-mules, and between them, on a poor, smart horse, all store clothes, watch-chain, and shoe-blacking, rode the president of the Zion Freedom Homestead League, Mr. Cornelius Leggett, of Leggettstown. John went in. Fannie, seemingly fresh from heaven, stood behind the melodeon and sang the repentant prodigal's resolve; and he, in raging shame for the stripes once dealt him, the lie they had scared from him at the time, and the many he had told since to cover that one, shed such tears that he had to steal out, and, behind a tree in the rear of the church, being again without a handkerchief, dry his cheeks on his sleeves.

And now, in his lowly bed, his eyes swam once more as the girl's voice returned to his remembrance: "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son."

He left his bed and stood beside the higher one. But the father slept. Even if he should waken him, he felt that he could only weep and tell nothing, and so he went back and lay down again. With the morning, confession was impossible. He thought rather of revenge, and was hot with the ferocious plans of a boy's helplessness.

XI.

A BLEEDING HEART

One night early in November, when nearly all Rosemont's lights were out and a wet brisk wind was flirting and tearing the yellowed leaves of the oaks, the windows of Mrs. Garnet's room were still bright. She sat by a small fire with Barbara at her knee. It had been election-day and the college was silent with chagrin.

"Is pop-a going to get elected, mom-a?"

"I don't think he is, my child."

"But you hope he is, don't you?"

"Listen," murmured the mother.

Barbara heard a horse's feet. Presently her father's step was in the hall and on the stairs. He entered, kissed wife and child, and sat down with a look first of care and fatigue, and then a proud smile.

"Well, Launcelot's elected."

A solemn defiance came about his mouth, but on his brow was dejection and distress.

"You know, Rose," he said, "that for myself, I don't care."

She made no reply.

He leaned on the mantlepiece. "My heart bleeds for our people! All they ask is the God-given right to a pure government. Their petition is spurned! Rose," – tears shone in his eyes – "I this day saw the sabres and bayonets of the government of which Washington was once the head, shielding the scum of the earth while it swarmed up and voted honor and virtue out of office!" The handkerchief he snatched from his pocket brought out three or four written papers. He cast them upon the fire. One, under a chair, he overlooked. Barbara got it later – just the thing to carry in her reticule when she went calling on herself. She could not read its bad writing, but it served all the better for that.

Next evening, at tea – back again from Suez – "Wife, did you see a letter in blue ink in your room this morning, with some pencil figures of my own across the face? If it was with those papers I burned it's all right, but I'd like to know." His unconcern was overdone.

Barbara was silent. She had battered the reticule's inner latch with a stone. To get the paper out, the latch would have to be broken. Silence saved it.

The election was over, but the turmoil only grew. Mere chemicals, did Fannie call these incidents and conditions? But they were corrosives and caustics dropped blazing hot upon white men's bare hands and black men's bare feet. The ex-master spurned political fellowship with his slave at every cost; the ex-slave laid taxes, stole them, and was murdered.

"Make way for robbery, he cries," drawled Ravenel; "makes way for robbery and dies."

"Mr. Ravenel," said Judge March, "I find no place for me, sir. I lament one policy and loathe the other. I need not say what distress of mind I suffer. I doubt not we are all doing that, sir."

"No," said Jeff-Jack, whittling a straw.

"I'll tell you what it is, Mr. Ravenel," said Fannie Halliday; "it's a war between decency in the wrong, and vulgarity in the right."

"No," said Jeff-Jack again, and her liking for him grew.

Cornelius's explanation in the House was more elaborate.

"This, Mr. Speaker, are that great wahfare predicated in the New Testament, betwix the Republicans an' sinnehs on one side an' the Phair-i-sees on the other. The white-liners, they is the Phair-i-sees! They is the whited sculptors befo' which, notinstan'in' all they chiselin', the Republicans an' sinnehs enters fust into the kingdom!"

So, for two more years, and John was fifteen.

Then the Judge decided to explain to him, confidentially, their long poverty.

"Daphne, dear" – he was going down into Blackland – "if you see no objection I'll take son with me. – Why, no, dear, not both on one hoss, you're quite right; that wouldn't be kind to son."

"A merciful man, Powhatan, is merciful to – "

"Yes, deah; Oh, I had the hoss in mind too; indeed I had! Do you know, my deah, I can tend to business betteh when I have ow son along? I'm gett'n' to feel like as if I'd left myself behind when he's not with me."

"You've always been so, Judge March." Her smile was sad. "Oh! no, I mustn't advise. Take him along if you're determined to."

XII.

JOHN THINKS HE IS NOT AFRAID

"Son," said the father as they rode, "I reckon you've often wondered why, owning ow hund'ed thousand an' sixty acres, we should appeah so sawt o' reduced; haven't you?"

"Sir?"

The father repeated the question, and John said, dreamily:

"No, sir."

"Well, son, I'll tell you, though I'd rather you'd not mention it – in school, faw instance – if we can eveh raise money to send you to school.

"It's because, in a sense, we a-got so much lan'. Many's the time I could a-sole pahts of it, an' refused, only because that particulah sale wouldn't a-met the object fo' which the whole tract has always been held. It was yo' dear grandfather's ambition, an' his father's befo' him, to fill these lan's with a great population, p'osp'ous an' happy. We neveh sole an acre, but we neveh hel' one back in a spirit o' lan' speculation, you understan'?"

"Sir? – I – yes, sir."

"The plan wa'n't adapted to a slave State. I see that now. I don't say slavery was wrong, but slave an' free labor couldn't thrive side by side. But, now, son, you know, all labor's free an' the time's come faw a change.

"You see, son, that's where Gen'l Halliday's village projec' is bad. His villages are boun' han' an' foot to cotton fahmin' an' can't bring forth the higher industries; but now, without concealin' anything fum him or anybody – of co'se we don't want to do that – if we can get enough of his best village residenters fum Leggettstown an' Libbetyville to come up an' take lan' in Widewood – faw we can give it to 'em an' gain by it, you know; an' a site or two faw a church aw school – why, then, you know, when capitalists come up an' look at ow minin' lan's – why, first thing you know, we'll have mines an' mills an' sto'es ev'y which away!"

They met and passed three horsemen armed to the teeth and very tipsy.

"Why, if to-morrow ain't election-day ag'in! Why, I quite fo'gotten that!"

At the edge of the town two more armed riders met them.

"Judge March, good mawnin', seh." All stopped. "Goin' to Suez?"

"We goin' on through into Blackland."

"I don't think you can, seh. Our pickets hold Swanee River bridge. Yes, sah, ow pickets. Why ow pickets, they're there. 'Twould be strange if they wa'n't – three hund'ed Blackland county niggehs marchin' on the town to burn it."

"Is that really the news?"

"That's the latest, seh. We after reinfo'cements." They moved on.

Judge March rode slowly toward Suez. John rode beside him. In a moment the Judge halted again, lifted his head, and listened. A long cheer floated to them, attenuated by the distance.

"I thought it was a charge, but I reckon it's on'y a meet'n of ow people in the square." He glanced at his son, who was listening, ashy pale.

"Son, we ain't goin' into town. I'm going, but you needn't. You can ride back a piece an' wait faw me; aw faw further news which'll show you what to do. On'y don't in any case come into town. This ain't yo' fight, son, an' you no need to get mixed in with it. You hear, son?"

"I" – the lad tried twice before he could speak – "I want to go with you."

"Why, no, son, you no need to go. You ain't fitt'n' to go. Yo' too young. You a-trembling now fum head to foot. Ain't you got a chill?"

"N-no, sir." The boy shivered visibly. "I've got a pain in my side, but it don't – don't hurt. I want to go with you."

"But, son, there's goin' to be fight'n'. I'm goin' to try to p'vent it, but I shan't be able to. Why, if you was to get hurt, who'd eveh tell yo' po' deah mother? I couldn't. I jest couldn't! You betteh go 'long home, son."

"I c-c-can't do it, father."

"Why, air you that sick, son?"

"No, sir, but I don't feel well enough to go home – Father – I – I – t-t-told – I told – an awful lie, one time, about you, and – "

"Why, son!"

"Yes, sir. I've been tryin' for seven years to – k – own up, and – "

"Sev – O Law, son, I don't believe you eveh done it at all. You neveh so much as told a fib in yo' life. You jest imagine you done it."

"Yes, I have father, often. I can't explain now, but please lemme go with you."

"Why, son, I jest can't. Lawd knows I would if I could."

"Yes, you can, father, I won't be in the way. And I won't be af-raid. You don't think I would eveh be a-scared of a nigger, do you? But if the niggers should kill you, and me not there, I wouldn't ever be any account no more! I haven't ever been any yet, but I will be, father, if you'll – "

Three pistol shots came from the town, and two townward-bound horsemen broke their trot and passed at a gallop. "Come on, Judge," laughed one.

"I declare, son, I don't know what toe do. You betteh go 'long back."

"Oh, father, don't send me back! Lemme go 'long with you. Please don't send me back! I couldn't go. I'd just haf to turn round again an' follow you. Lemme go with you, father. I want to go 'long with you. Oh – thank you, sir!" They trotted down into the town. "D' you reckon C'nelius 'll be there, father? – I – hope he will." The pallor was gone.

As the turnpike became a tree-shaded street, they passed briskly by its old-fashioned houses set deep in grove gardens. Two or three weedy lanes at right and left showed the poor cabins of the town's darker life shut and silent. But presently,

"Father, look there!"

The Judge and his son turned quickly to a turfy bank where a ragged negro lay at the base of a large tree. He was moaning, rocking his head, and holding a hand against his side. His rags were drenched with blood. The white eyes rolled up to the face of the Judge, as he tossed his bridle to his son.

"Wateh," whispered the big lips, "wateh."

John threw his father's bridle back, galloped through a gate, and came with a gourd full.

"Gimme quick, son, he's swoonin' away." The draught brought back some life.

"Shan't I get a doctor, father?"

"Tain't a bit of use, son."

"No," moaned the negro. "I'm gwine fasteh dan docto's kin come. I'm in de deep watehs. Gwine to meet my Lawd Jesus. Good-by, wife; good-by, chillun. Oh, Jedge March, dey shot me in pyo devilment. I was jist lookin' out fo' my boy. Dey was comin' in to town an dey sees me, an awdehs me to halt, an' 'stid o' dat I runs, thinkin' that'd suit 'em jist as well. Oh, Lawd! – Oh, Lawd! Oh!" He stared into the Judge's face, a great pain heaved him slowly, his eyes set, and all was over. A single sob burst from the boy as he gazed on the dark, dead features. The Judge hasted to mount.

"Now, son, I got to get right into town. But you see now, you betteh go along back to yo' motheh, don't you?"

"I'm goin' with you."

XIII.

FOR FANNIE

They came where two men sat on horses in the way. "Sorry, Judge, but them's orders, seh; only enrolled men can pass."

But the speakers presently concluded that it could never have been intended to shut out such a personage as Judge March, and on pledge to report to Captain Shotwell, at the Swanee Hotel, or else to Captain Champion at the court-house, father and son proceeded. Montrose Academy showed no sign of life as they went by.

Yet John had never seen the town so populous. Saddled horses were tied everywhere. Men rode here or there in the yellow dust, idly or importantly, mounted, dismounted, or stood on the broken sidewalks in groups, some sober, some not, all armed and spurred, and more arriving from all directions. Handsome Captain Shotwell, sitting in civil dress, a sword belted on him and lying across his lap, explained to the Judge.

"Why, you know, Judge, how ow young men ah; always up to some ridiculous praank, jest in mere plaay, you know, seh. Yeste'd'y some of 'em taken a boyish notion to put some maasks on an' ride through Leggettstown in 'slo-ow p'ocession, with a sawt o' banneh marked, 'See You again To-night.' They had guns – mo' f'om fo'ce o' habit, I reckon, than anything else – you know how ow young men ah, seh – one of 'em carry a gun a yeah, an' nevah so much as hahm a floweh, you know. Well, seh, unfawtunately, the niggehs had no mo' sense than to take it all in dead earnest. They put they women an' child'en into the church an' ahmed theyse'ves, some thirty of 'em, with shotguns an' old muskets – yondeh's some of 'em in the cawneh. Then they taken up a position in the road just this side the village, an' sent to Sherman an' Libbetyville fo' reinfo'cements.

"Well, of co'se, you know, seh, what was jes' boun' to happm. Some of ow ve'y best young men mounted an' moved to dislodge an' scatteh them befo' they could gatheh numbehs enough to take the offensive an' begin they fiendish work. Well, seh, about daay-break, while sawt o' reconnoiterin' in fo'ce, they come suddenly upon the niggehs' position, an' the niggehs, without the slightes' p'ovocation, up an' fi-ud! P'ovidentially, they shot too high, an' only one man was inju'ed – by fallin' from his hawss. Well, seh, ow boys fi-ud an' cha'ged, an' the niggehs, of co'se, run, leavin' three dead an' fo' wounded; aw, accawdin' to latest accounts, seven dead an' no wounded. The niggehs taken shelteh in the church, ow boys fallen back fo' reinfo'cements, an' about a' hour by sun comes word that the niggehs, frenzied with raage an' liquo', a-comin' this way to the numbeh o' three hund'ed, an' increasin' as they come. – No, seh, I don't know that it is unfawtunate. It's just as well faw this thing to happm, an' to happm now. It'll teach both sides, as Garnet said awhile ago addressin' the crowd, that the gov'ment o' Dixie's simply got to paass, this time, away f'om a raace that can't p'eserve awdeh, an' be undividedly transfehed oveh to the raace God-A'mighty appointed to gov'n!"

Judge March's voice was full of meek distress. "Captain Shotwell, where is Major Garnet, sir?"

"Garnet? Oh, he's over in the Courier office, consultin' with Haggard an' Jeff-Jack."

"Do you know whether Gen'l Halliday's in town, sir?"

The Captain smiled. "He's in the next room, seh. He's been undeh my – p'otection, as you might say, since daylight."

"Gen'l Halliday could stop all this, Captain."

"Stop it? He could stop it in two hours, seh! If he'd just consent to go under parole to Leggettstown an' tell them niggehs that if they'll simply lay down they ahms an' stay quietly at home – jest faw a day aw two – all 'll be freely fo'givm an' fo'gotten, seh! Instead o' that, he sits there, ca'mly smilin' – you know his way – an' threatenin' us with the ahm of the United States Gov'ment. He fo'gets that by a wise p'ovision o' that Gov'ment's foundehs it's got sev'l ahms, an' one holds down anotheh. The S'preme Cote – Judge March, you go in an' see him; you jest the man to do it, seh!"

John waited without. Presently father and son were seen to leave Captain Shotwell's headquarters and cross the square to the Courier office. There a crowd was reading a bulletin which stated that scouting parties reported no negro force massed anywhere. At the top of a narrow staircase the Judge and his son were let into the presence of Major Garnet and his advisers.

Here John had one more good gaze at Ravenel. He was in the physical perfection of twenty-six, his eyes less playful than once, but his smile less cynical. His dress was faultlessly neat. Haggard was almost as noticeable, though less interesting; a slender, high-strung man, with a pale face seamed by a long scar got in a duel. One could see that he had been trying to offset the fatigues of the night with a popular remedy. Garnet was dictating, Haggard writing.