Southern Lights and Shadows Part 24

He sought her acquaintance, avoided with cleverness a number of annoying barriers, a.s.saulted her heart, and won it, all of which stood as mere play when compared with climbing over the pride and prejudice of Colonel Sommerton. For Bannister was n.o.body in a social way, as viewed from the lofty top of the hill at Sommerton Place; indeed, all of his kinspeople were mountaineers, honest, it is true, but decidedly woodsy, who tilled stony acres in a pocket beyond the first blue ridge yonder. His education seemed good, but it had been s.n.a.t.c.hed from the books by force, with the savage certainty of grip which belongs to genius.

Colonel Sommerton, having unbounded confidence in Phyllis's aristocratic breeding, would not open his eyes to the att.i.tude of the young people until suddenly it came into his head that possibly the almost briefless plebeian lawyer had ulterior designs while climbing the hill, as he was doing noticeably often, from town to Sommerton Place. But when this thought arrived the Colonel was prompt to act. He called up the subject at once, and we have seen the close of his interview with Phyllis.

Now he stood on the veranda and puffed his cigar with quick, short draughts, as a man does who falters between two horns of a dilemma. He turned his head to one side as if listening to his own thoughts, his tall, pointed collar meantime fitting snugly in a crease of his furrowed jaw.

At this moment the shambling, yet in a way facile, footsteps of Barnaby, the sporadic freedman of the household, were soothing. Colonel Sommerton turned his eyes on the comer inquiringly, almost eagerly.

"Well, Barn, you're back," he said.

"Yah, sah; I'se had er confab wid 'em," remarked the negro, seating himself on the top step of the veranda, and mopping his coal-black face with a red cotton handkerchief; "an' hit do beat all. n.i.g.g.ahs is mos'ly eejits, s.p.a.cially w'en yo' wants 'em to hab some sense."

He was a huge, ill-shapen, muscular fellow, old but still vigorous, and in his small black eyes twinkled an unsounded depth of shrewdness. He had been the Colonel's slave from his young manhood to the close of the war; since then he had hung around Ellijay what time he was not sponging a livelihood from Sommerton Place under color of doing various light turns in the vegetable garden, and of attending to his quondam master's horses.

Barnaby was a great banjoist, a charming song-singer, and a leader of the negroes around about. Lately he was gaining some reputation as a political boss.

There was but one political party in the county (for the colored people were so few that they could not be called a party), and the only struggle for office came in the pursuit of a nomination, which was always equivalent to election. Candidates were chosen at a convention or ma.s.s-meeting of the whites and the only figure that the blacks were able to cut in the matter was by reason of a pretended, rather than a real, prejudice against them which was used by the candidates (who are always white men) to further their electioneering schemes, as will presently appear.

"Hit do beat all," Barnaby repeated, shaking his heavy head reflectively, and making a grimace both comical and hideous. "Dat young man desput sma't and cunnin', sho's yo' bo'n he is. He done been foolin' wid dem n.i.g.g.ahs a'ready."

The reader may as well be told at once that if a candidate could by any means make the negroes support his opponent for the nomination it was the best card he could possibly play; or, if he could not quite do this, but make it appear that the other fellow was not unpopular in colored circles, it served nearly the same turn.

Phyllis, when she ran crying up-stairs after the conversation with her father, went to her room, and fell into a chair by the window. So it chanced that she overheard the conference between Colonel Sommerton and Barnaby, and long after it was ended she still sat there leaning on the window-sill. Her eyes showed a trifle of irritation, but the tears were all gone.

"Why didn't Tom tell me that he was going to run against my father?" she inquired of herself over and over. "I think he might have trusted me, so I do. It's mean of him. And if he should beat papa! Papa could bear that."

She sprang to her feet and walked across the room, stopping on the way to rub her apple-bloom cheeks before a looking-gla.s.s. Vaguely enough, but insistently, the outline of a political plot glimmered in her consciousness and troubled her understanding. Plainly her father and Tom Bannister were rival candidates, and just as plainly each was scheming to make it appear that the negroes were supporting his opponent; but the girl's little head could not gather up and comprehend all that such a condition of things meant. She supposed that a sort of disgrace would attach to defeat, and she clasped her hands and poised her winsome body melodramatically when she asked herself which she would rather the defeat would fall upon, her father or Tom. She leaned out of the window and saw Colonel Sommerton walking down the road towards town, with his cigar elevated at an acute angle with his nose, his hat pulled well down in front, by which she knew that he was still excited. Days went by, as days will in any state of affairs, with just such faultless weather as August engenders amid the cool hills of the old Cherokee country; and Phyllis noted, by an indirect attention to what she had never before been interested in, that Colonel Sommerton was growing strangely confidential and familiar with Barnaby. She had a distinct but remote impression that her father had hitherto never, at least never openly, shown such irenic solicitude in that direction, and she knew that his sudden peace-making with the old negro meant ill to her lover. She pondered the matter with such discrimination and logic as her clever little brain could compa.s.s; and at last she one evening called Barnaby to come into the garden with his banjo.

The sun was down, and the half-grown moon swung yellow and clear against the violet arch of mid-heaven. Through the sheen a softened outline of the town wavered fantastically.

Phyllis sat on a great fragment of limestone, which, embossed with curious fossils, formed the immovable centre-piece of the garden.

Barnaby, at a respectful distance, crumpled herself satyr-like on the ground, with his banjo across his knee, and gazed expectantly aslant at the girl's sweet face.

"Now play me my father's favorite song," she said.

They heard Mrs. Wren, the housekeeper, opening the windows in the upper rooms of the mansion to let in the night air, which was stirring over the valley with a delicious mountain chill on its wings. All around in the trees and shrubbery the katydids were rasping away in immelodious statement and denial of the ancient accusation.

Barnaby demurred. He did not imagine, so at least he said, that Miss Phyllis would be pleased with the ballad that recently had been the Colonel's chief musical delight; but he must obey the young lady, and so, after some throat--clearing and string--tuning, he proceeded:

"I'd rudder be er n.i.g.g.ah Dan ter be er whi' man, Dough the whi' man considdah He se'f biggah; But of yo' mus' be white, w'y be hones' of yo' can, An ac' es much es poss'ble like er n.i.g.g.ah!

"De colah ob yo' skin Hit don't constertoot no sin, An' yo' fambly ain't er-- Cuttin' any figgah; Min' w'at yo's er-doin', an' do de bes' yo' kin, An' ac' es much es poss'ble like er n.i.g.g.ah!"

The tune of this song was melody itself, br.i.m.m.i.n.g with that unkempt, sarcastic humor which always strikes as if obliquely, and with a flurry of tipsy fun, into one's ears.

When the performance was ended, and the final tinkle of the rollicking banjo accompaniment died away down the slope of Sommerton Hill, Phyllis put her plump chin in her hands and, with her elbows on her knees, looked steadily at Barnaby for a while.

"Barn," she said, "is my father going to get the colored people to indorse Mr. Tom Bannister?"

"Yes, ma'm," replied the old negro; and then he caught his breath and checked himself in confusion. "Da-da-dat is, er--I spec' so--er--I dun'no', ma'm," he stammered. "Fo' de Lor' I's--"

Phyllis interrupted him with an impatient laugh, but said no more. In due time Barnaby sang her some other ditties, and then she went into the house.

She gave the negro a large coin and on the veranda steps she called back to him, "Good-night, Uncle Barn," in a voice that made him shake his head and mutter:

"De bressed chile! De bressed chile!" And yet he was aware that she had outwitted him and gained his secret. He knew how matters stood between the young lady and Tom Bannister, and there arose in his mind a vivid sense of the danger that might result to his own and Colonel Sommerton's plans from a disclosure of this one vital detail. Would Phyllis tell her lover?

Barnaby shook his head in a dubious way.

"Gals is pow'ful onsartin so dey is," he muttered. "Dey tells der sweethearts mos'ly all what dey knows, s.p.a.cially secrets. Spec' de ole boss an' he plan done gone up de chimbly er-kally-hootin' fo' good."

Then the old scamp began to turn over in his brain a scheme which seemed to offer him a fair way of approaching Mr. Tom Bannister's pocket and the portemonnaie of Phyllis as well. He chuckled atrociously as a pretty comprehensive view of "practical politics" opened itself to him.

Tom Bannister had not been to see Phyllis since her father had delivered his opinion to her touching the intrinsic merits of that young man, and she felt uneasy.

Colonel Sommerton, though notably eccentric, could be depended upon for outright dealing in general; still Phyllis had a pretty substantial belief that in politics success lay largely on the side of the trickster. For many years the Colonel had been in the Legislature. No man had been able to beat him for the nomination. She had often heard him tell how he laid out his antagonists by taking excellent and popular short turns on them, and it was plain to her mind now that he was weaving a snare for Tom Bannister.

She thought of Tom's running for office against her father as something prodigiously strange. Certainly it was a bold and daring piece of youthful audacity for him to be guilty of. He, a young sprig of the law, with his brown mustache not yet grown, setting himself up to beat Colonel Mobley Sommerton! Phyllis blushed whenever she thought of it; but the Colonel had never once mentioned Tom's candidacy to her.

The convention was approaching, and day by day signs of popular interest in it increased as the time shortened. Colonel Sommerton was preparing a speech for the occasion. The ma.n.u.script of it lay on the desk in his library.

About this time--it was near September 1st and the watermelons and cantaloupes were in their glory--the Colonel was called away to a distant town for a few days. In his absence Tom Bannister chanced to visit Sommerton Place. Of course Phyllis was not expecting him; indeed, she told him that he ought not to have come; but Tom thought differently in a very persuasive way. The melons were good, the library delightfully cool, and conversation caught the fragrance of innocent albeit stolen pleasure.

Tom Bannister was unquestionably a handsome young fellow, carrying a hearty, whole-souled expression in his open, almost rosy face. His large brown eyes, curly brown hair, silken young mustache, and firmly set mouth and chin well matched his stalwart, symmetrical form. He was not only handsome, he was brilliant in a way, and his memory was something prodigious. Unquestionably he would rise rapidly.

"I am going to beat your father for the nomination," he remarked, midmost the discussion of their melons, speaking in a tone of the most absolute confidence.

"Tom," she exclaimed, "you mustn't do it!"

"Why, I'd like to know?"

She looked at him as if she felt a sudden fright. His eyes fell before her intense, searching gaze.

"It would be dreadful," she presently managed to say. "Papa couldn't bear it."

"It will ruin me forever if I let him beat me. I shall have to go away from here." It was now his turn to become intense.

"I don't see what makes men think so much of office," she complained, evasively. "I've heard papa say that there was absolutely no profit in going to the Legislature." Then, becoming insistent, she exclaimed, "Withdraw, Tom; please do, for my sake!"

She made a rudimentary movement as if to throw her arms around him, but it came to nothing. Her voice, however, carried a mighty appeal to Tom's heart. He looked at her, and thought how commonplace other young women were when compared with her.

"You will withdraw, won't you, Tom?" she prayed. One of her hands touched his arm. "Say yes, Tom."

For a moment his political ambition and his standing with men appeared to dissolve into a mere mist, a finely comminuted sentiment of love; but he kept a good hold upon himself.

"I cannot do it, Phyllis," he said, in a firm voice, which disclosed by some indescribable inflection how much it pained him to refuse. "My whole future depends upon success in this race. I am sorry it is your father I must beat, but, Phyllis, I must be nominated. I can't afford to sit down in your father's shadow. As sure as you live, I am going to beat him."

In her heart she was proud of him, and proud of this resolution that not even she could break. From that moment she was between the millstones. She loved her father, it seemed to her, more than ever, and she could not bear the thought of his defeat. Indeed, with that generosity characteristic of the s.e.x which can be truly humorous only when absolutely unconscious of it, she wanted both Tom and the Colonel nominated, and both elected. She was the partisan on Tom's side, the adherent on her father's.