The Colonel's Dream Part 19

He found much pleasure in talking over these fine plans of his with Laura Treadwell. Caxton had entered into them with the enthusiasm of an impressionable young man, brought into close contact with a forceful personality. But in Miss Laura the colonel found a sympathy that was more than intellectual--that reached down to sources of spiritual strength and inspiration which the colonel could not touch but of which he was conscious and of which he did not hesitate to avail himself at second hand. Little Phil had made the house almost a second home; and the frequent visits of his father had only strengthened the colonel's admiration of Laura's character. He had learned, not from the lady herself, how active in good works she was.

A Lady Bountiful in any large sense she could not be, for her means, as she had so frankly said upon his first visit, were small. But a little went a long way among the poor of Clarendon, and the life after all is more than meat, and the body more than raiment, and advice and sympathy were as often needed as other kinds of help. He had offered to a.s.sist her charities in a substantial way, and she had permitted it now and then, but had felt obliged at last to cease mentioning them altogether. He was able to circ.u.mvent this delicacy now and then through the agency of Graciella, whose theory was that money was made to spend.

"Laura," he said one evening when at the house, "will you go with me to-morrow to visit the academy? I wish to see with your eyes as well as with mine what it needs and what can be done with it. It shall be our secret until we are ready to surprise the town."

They went next morning, without notice to the princ.i.p.al. The school was well ordered, but the equipment poor. The building was old and sadly in need of repair. The teacher was an ex-Confederate officer, past middle life, well taught by the methods in vogue fifty years before, but scarcely in harmony with modern ideals of education. In spite of his perfect manners and unimpeachable character, the Professor, as he was called, was generally understood to hold his position more by virtue of his need and his influence than of his fitness to instruct. He had several young lady a.s.sistants who found in teaching the only career open, in Clarendon, to white women of good family.

The recess hour arrived while they were still at school. When the pupils marched out, in orderly array, the colonel, seizing a moment when Miss Treadwell and the professor were speaking about some of the children whom the colonel did not know, went to the rear of one of the schoolrooms and found, without much difficulty, high up on one of the walls, the faint but still distinguishable outline of a pencil caricature he had made there thirty years before. If the wall had been whitewashed in the meantime, the lime had scaled down to the original plaster. Only the name, which had been written underneath, was illegible, though he could reconstruct with his mind's eye and the aid of a few shadowy strokes--"Bill Fetters, Sneak"--in angular letters in the printed form.

The colonel smiled at this survival of youthful bigotry. Yet even then his instinct had been a healthy one; his boyish characterisation of Fetters, schoolboy, was not an inapt description of Fetters, man--mortgage shark, labour contractor and political boss. Bill, seeking official favour, had reported to the Professor of that date some boyish escapade in which his schoolfellows had taken part, and it was in revenge for this meanness that the colonel had chased him ignominiously down Main Street and pilloried him upon the schoolhouse wall. Fetters the man, a Goliath whom no David had yet opposed, had fastened himself upon a weak and disorganised community, during a period of great distress and had succeeded by devious ways in making himself its master. And as the colonel stood looking at the picture he was conscious of a faint echo of his boyish indignation and sense of outraged honour. Already Fetters and he had clashed upon the subject of the cotton mill, and Fetters had retired from the field. If it were written that they should meet in a life-and-death struggle for the soul of Clarendon, he would not s.h.i.+rk the conflict.

"Laura," he said, when they went away, "I should like to visit the coloured school. Will you come with me?"

She hesitated, and he could see with half an eye that her answer was dictated by a fine courage.

"Why, certainly, I will go. Why not? It is a place where a good work is carried on."

"No, Laura," said the colonel smiling, "you need not go. On second thought, I should prefer to go alone."

She insisted, but he was firm. He had no desire to go counter to her instincts, or induce her to do anything that might provoke adverse comment. Miss Laura had all the fine glow of courage, but was secretly relieved at being excused from a trip so unconventional.

So the colonel found his way alone to the schoolhouse, an unpainted frame structure in a barren, sandy lot upon a street somewhat removed from the centre of the town and given over mainly to the humble homes of Negroes. That his unannounced appearance created some embarra.s.sment was quite evident, but his friendliness toward the Negroes had already been noised abroad, and he was welcomed with warmth, not to say effusion, by the princ.i.p.al of the school, a tall, stalwart and dark man with an intelligent expression, a deferential manner, and shrewd but guarded eyes--the eyes of the jungle, the colonel had heard them called; and the thought came to him, was it some ancestral jungle on the distant coast of savage Africa, or the wilderness of another sort in which the black people had wandered and were wandering still in free America? The attendance was not large; at a glance the colonel saw that there were but twenty-five pupils present.

"What is your total enrolment?" he asked the teacher.

"Well, sir," was the reply, "we have seventy-five or eighty on the roll, but it threatened rain this morning, and as a great many of them haven't got good shoes, they stayed at home for fear of getting their feet wet."

The colonel had often noticed the black children paddling around barefoot in the puddles on rainy days, but there was evidently some point of etiquette connected with attending school barefoot. He had pa.s.sed more than twenty-five children on the streets, on his way to the schoolhouse.

The building was even worse than that of the academy, and the equipment poorer still. Upon the colonel asking to hear a recitation, the teacher made some excuse and shrewdly requested him to make a few remarks. They could recite, he said, at any time, but an opportunity to hear Colonel French was a privilege not to be neglected.

The colonel, consenting good-humouredly, was introduced to the school in very flowery language. The pupils were sitting, the teacher informed them, in the shadow of a great man. A distinguished member of the grand old aristocracy of their grand old native State had gone to the great North and grown rich and famous. He had returned to his old home to scatter his vast wealth where it was most needed, and to give his fellow townsmen an opportunity to add their applause to his world-wide fame. He was present to express his sympathy with their feeble efforts to rise in the world, and he wanted the scholars all to listen with the most respectful attention.

Colonel French made a few simple remarks in which he spoke of the advantages of education as a means of forming character and of fitting boys and girls for the work of men and women. In former years his people had been charged with direct responsibility for the care of many coloured children, and in a larger and indirect way they were still responsible for their descendants. He urged them to make the best of their opportunities and try to fit themselves for useful citizens.h.i.+p. They would meet with the difficulties that all men must, and with some peculiarly their own. But they must look up and not down, forward and not back, seeking always incentives to hope rather than excuses for failure. Before leaving, he arranged with the teacher, whose name was Taylor, to meet several of the leading coloured men, with whom he wished to discuss some method of improving their school and directing their education to more definite ends. The meeting was subsequently held.

"What your people need," said the colonel to the little gathering at the schoolhouse one evening, "is to learn not only how to read and write and think, but to do these things to some definite end. We live in an age of specialists. To make yourselves valuable members of society, you must learn to do well some particular thing, by which you may reasonably expect to earn a comfortable living in your own home, among your neighbours, and save something for old age and the education of your children. Get together. Take advice from some of your own capable leaders in other places. Find out what you can do for yourselves, and I will give you three dollars for every one you can gather, for an industrial school or some similar inst.i.tution. Take your time, and when you're ready to report, come and see me, or write to me, if I am not here."

The result was the setting in motion of a stagnant pool. Who can measure the force of hope? The town had been neglected by mission boards. No able or ambitious Negro had risen from its midst to found an inst.i.tution and find a career. The coloured school received a grudging dole from the public funds, and was left entirely to the supervision of the coloured people. It would have been surprising had the money always been expended to the best advantage.

The fact that a white man, in some sense a local man, who had yet come from the far North, the land of plenty, with feelings friendly to their advancement, had taken a personal interest in their welfare and proved it by his presence among them, gave them hope and inspiration for the future. They had long been familiar with the friends.h.i.+p that curbed, restricted and restrained, and concerned itself mainly with their limitations. They were almost hysterically eager to welcome the co-operation of a friend who, in seeking to lift them up, was obsessed by no fear of pulling himself down or of narrowing in some degree the gulf that separated them--who was willing not only to help them, but to help them to a condition in which they might be in less need of help. The colonel touched the reserves of loyalty in the Negro nature, exemplified in old Peter and such as he. Who knows, had these reserves been reached sooner by strict justice and patient kindness, that they might not long since have helped to heal the wounds of slavery?

"And now, Laura," said the colonel, "when we have improved the schools and educated the people, we must give them something to occupy their minds. We must have a library, a public library."

"That will be splendid!" she replied with enthusiasm.

"A public library," continued the colonel, "housed in a beautiful building, in a conspicuous place, and decorated in an artistic manner--a shrine of intellect and taste, at which all the people, rich and poor, black and white, may wors.h.i.+p."

Miss Laura was silent for a moment, and thoughtful.

"But, Henry," she said with some hesitation, "do you mean that coloured people should use the library?"

"Why not?" he asked. "Do they not need it most? Perhaps not many of them might wish to use it; but to those who do, should we deny the opportunity? Consider their teachers--if the blind lead the blind, shall they not both fall into the ditch?"

"Yes, Henry, that is the truth; but I am afraid the white people wouldn't wish to handle the same books."

"Very well, then we will give the coloured folks a library of their own, at some place convenient for their use. We need not strain our ideal by going too fast. Where shall I build the library?"

"The vacant lot," she said, "between the post-office and the bank."

"The very place," he replied. "It belonged to our family once, and I shall be acquiring some more ancestral property. The cows will need to find a new pasture."

The announcement of the colonel's plan concerning the academy and the library evoked a hearty response on the part of the public, and the _Anglo-Saxon_ hailed it as the dawning of a new era. With regard to the colonel's friendly plans for the Negroes, there was less enthusiasm and some difference of opinion. Some commended the colonel's course. There were others, good men and patriotic, men who would have died for liberty, in the abstract, men who sought to walk uprightly, and to live peaceably with all, but who, by much brooding over the conditions surrounding their life, had grown hopelessly pessimistic concerning the Negro.

The subject came up in a little company of gentlemen who were gathered around the colonel's table one evening, after the coffee had been served, and the Havanas pa.s.sed around.

"Your zeal for humanity does you infinite credit, Colonel French,"

said Dr. Mackenzie, minister of the Presbyterian Church, who was one of these prophetic souls, "but I fear your time and money and effort will be wasted. The Negroes are hopelessly degraded. They have degenerated rapidly since the war."

"How do you know, doctor? You came here from the North long after the war. What is your standard of comparison?"

"I voice the unanimous opinion of those who have known them at both periods."

"_I_ don't agree with you; and I lived here before the war. There is certainly one smart Negro in town. Nichols, the coloured barber, owns five houses, and overreached me in a bargain. Before the war he was a chattel. And Taylor, the teacher, seems to be a very sensible fellow."

"Yes," said Dr. Price, who was one of the company, "Taylor is a very intelligent Negro. Nichols and he have learned how to live and prosper among the white people."

"They are exceptions," said the preacher, "who only prove the rule.

No, Colonel French, for a long time _I_ hoped that there was a future for these poor, helpless blacks. But of late I have become profoundly convinced that there is no place in this nation for the Negro, except under the sod. We will not a.s.similate him, we cannot deport him----"

"And therefore, O man of G.o.d, must we exterminate him?"

"It is G.o.d's will. We need not stain our hands with innocent blood. If we but sit pa.s.sive, and leave their fate to time, they will die away in discouragement and despair. Already disease is sapping their vitals. Like other weak races, they will vanish from the pathway of the strong, and there is no place for them to flee. When they go hence, it is to go forever. It is the law of life, which G.o.d has given to the earth. To coddle them, to delude them with false hopes of an unnatural equality which not all the power of the Government has been able to maintain, is only to increase their unhappiness. To a doomed race, ignorance is euthanasia, and knowledge is but pain and sorrow.

It is His will that the fittest should survive, and that those shall inherit the earth who are best prepared to utilise its forces and gather its fruits."

"My dear doctor, what you say may all be true, but, with all due respect, I don't believe a word of it. I am rather inclined to think that these people have a future; that there is a place for them here; that they have made fair progress under discouraging circ.u.mstances; that they will not disappear from our midst for many generations, if ever; and that in the meantime, as we make or mar them, we shall make or mar our civilisation. No society can be greater or wiser or better than the average of all its elements. Our ancestors brought these people here, and lived in luxury, some of them--or went into bankruptcy, more of them--on their labour. After three hundred years of toil they might be fairly said to have earned their liberty. At any rate, they are here. They const.i.tute the bulk of our labouring cla.s.s.

To teach them is to make their labour more effective and therefore more profitable; to increase their needs is to increase our profits in supplying them. I'll take my chances on the Golden Rule. I am no lover of the Negro, _as_ Negro--I do not know but I should rather see him elsewhere. I think our land would have been far happier had none but white men ever set foot upon it after the red men were driven back.

But they are here, through no fault of theirs, as we are. They were born here. We have given them our language--which they speak more or less corruptly; our religion--which they practise certainly no better than we; and our blood--which our laws make a badge of disgrace.

Perhaps we could not do them strict justice, without a great sacrifice upon our own part. But they are men, and they should have their chance--at least _some_ chance."

"I shall pray for your success," sighed the preacher. "With G.o.d all things are possible, if He will them. But I can only antic.i.p.ate your failure."

"The colonel is growing so popular, with his ready money and his cheerful optimism," said old General Thornton, another of the guests, "that we'll have to run him for Congress, as soon as he is reconverted to the faith of his fathers."

Colonel French had more than once smiled at the a.s.sumption that a mere change of residence would alter his matured political convictions. His friends seemed to look upon them, so far as they differed from their own, as a mere veneer, which would scale off in time, as had the multiplied coats of whitewash over the pencil drawing made on the school-house wall in his callow youth.

"You see," the old general went on, "it's a social matter down here, rather than a political one. With this ignorant black flood sweeping up against us, the race question a.s.sumes an importance which overshadows the tariff and the currency and everything else. For instance, I had fully made up my mind to vote the other ticket in the last election. I didn't like our candidate nor our platform. There was a clean-cut issue between sound money and financial repudiation, and _I_ was tired of the domination of populists and demagogues. All my better instincts led me toward a change of att.i.tude, and I boldly proclaimed the fact. I declared my political and intellectual independence, at the cost of many friends; even my own son-in-law scarcely spoke to me for a month. When I went to the polls, old Sam Brown, the triflingest n.i.g.g.e.r in town, whom I had seen sentenced to jail more than once for stealing--old Sam Brown was next to me in the line.

"'Well, Gin'l,' he said, 'I'm glad you is got on de right side at las', an' is gwine to vote _our_ ticket.'"