The Colonel's Dream Part 32

The funeral took place next day, from the Episcopal Church, in which communion the little boy had been baptised, and of which old Peter had always been an humble member, faithfully appearing every Sunday morning in his seat in the gallery, long after the rest of his people had deserted it for churches of their own. On this occasion Peter had, for the first time, a place on the main floor, a little to one side of the altar, in front of which, banked with flowers, stood the white velvet casket which contained all that was mortal of little Phil. The same beautiful sermon answered for both. In touching words, the rector, a man of culture, taste and feeling, and a faithful servant of his Master, spoke of the sweet young life brought to so untimely an end, and pointed the bereaved father to the best source of consolation. He paid a brief tribute to the faithful servant and humble friend, to whom, though black and lowly, the white people of the town were glad to pay this signal tribute of respect and appreciation for his heroic deed. The attendance at the funeral, while it might have been larger, was composed of the more refined and cultured of the townspeople, from whom, indeed, the church derived most of its members.h.i.+p and support; and the gallery overflowed with coloured people, whose hearts had warmed to the great honour thus paid to one of their race. Four young white men bore Phil's body and the six pallbearers of old Peter were from among the best white people of the town.

The double interment was made in Oak Cemetery. Simultaneously both bodies were lowered to their last resting-place. Simultaneously ashes were consigned to ashes and dust to dust. The earth was heaped above the graves. The mound above little Phil's was buried with flowers, and old Peter's was not neglected.

Beyond the cemetery wall, a few white men of the commoner sort watched the proceedings from a distance, and eyed with grim hostility the Negroes who had followed the procession. They had no part nor parcel in this sentimental folly, nor did they approve of it--in fact they disapproved of it very decidedly. Among them was the colonel's discharged foreman, Jim Green, who was p.r.o.nounced in his denunciation.

"Colonel French is an enemy of his race," he declared to his sympathetic following. "He hires n.i.g.g.e.rs when white men are idle; and pays them more than white men who work are earning. And now he is burying them with white people."

When the group around the grave began to disperse, the little knot of disgruntled spectators moved sullenly away. In the evening they might have been seen, most of them, around Clay Jackson's barroom. Turner, the foreman at Fetters's convict farm, was in town that evening, and Jackson's was his favourite haunt. For some reason Turner was more sociable than usual, and liquor flowed freely, at his expense. There was a great deal of intemperate talk, concerning the Negro in jail for shooting Haines and young Fetters, and concerning Colonel French as the protector of Negroes and the enemy of white men.

_Thirty-five_

At the same time that the colonel, dry-eyed and heavy-hearted, had returned to his empty house to nurse his grief, another series of events was drawing to a climax in the dilapidated house on Mink Run.

Even while the preacher was saying the last words over little Phil's remains, old Malcolm Dudley's illness had taken a sudden and violent turn. He had been sinking for several days, but the decline had been gradual, and there had seemed no particular reason for alarm. But during the funeral exercises Ben had begun to feel uneasy--some obscure premonition warned him to hurry homeward.

As soon as the funeral was over he spoke to Dr. Price, who had been one of the pallbearers, and the doctor had promised to be at Mink Run in a little while. Ben rode home as rapidly as he could; as he went up the lane toward the house a Negro lad came forward to take charge of the tired horse, and Ben could see from the boy's expression that he had important information to communicate.

"Yo' uncle is monst'ous low, sir," said the boy. "You bettah go in an'

see 'im quick, er you'll be too late. Dey ain' n.o.body wid 'im but ole Aun' Viney."

Ben hurried into the house and to his uncle's room, where Malcolm Dudley lay dying. Outside, the sun was setting, and his red rays, s.h.i.+ning through the trees into the open window, lit the stage for the last scene of this belated drama. When Ben entered the room, the sweat of death had gathered on the old man's brow, but his eyes, clear with the light of reason, were fixed upon old Viney, who stood by the bedside. The two were evidently so absorbed in their own thoughts as to be oblivious to anything else, and neither of them paid the slightest attention to Ben, or to the scared Negro lad, who had followed him and stood outside the door. But marvellous to hear, Viney was talking, strangely, slowly, thickly, but pa.s.sionately and distinctly.

"You had me whipped," she said. "Do you remember that? You had me whipped--whipped--whipped--by a poor white dog I had despised and spurned! You had said that you loved me, and you had promised to free me--and you had me whipped! But I have had my revenge!"

Her voice shook with pa.s.sion, a pa.s.sion at which Ben wondered. That his uncle and she had once been young he knew, and that their relations had once been closer than those of master and servant; but this outbreak of feeling from the wrinkled old mulattress seemed as strange and weird to Ben as though a stone image had waked to speech.

Spellbound, he stood in the doorway, and listened to this ghost of a voice long dead.

"Your uncle came with the money and left it, and went away. Only he and I knew where it was. But I never told you! I could have spoken at any time for twenty-five years, but I never told you! I have waited--I have waited for this moment! I have gone into the woods and fields and talked to myself by the hour, that I might not forget how to talk--and I have waited my turn, and it is here and now!"

Ben hung breathlessly upon her words. He drew back beyond her range of vision, lest she might see him, and the spell be broken. Now, he thought, she would tell where the gold was hidden!

"He came," she said, "and left the gold--two heavy bags of it, and a letter for you. An hour later _he came back and took it all away_, except the letter! The money was here one hour, but in that hour you had me whipped, and for that you have spent twenty-five years in looking for nothing--something that was not here! I have had my revenge! For twenty-five years I have watched you look for--nothing; have seen you waste your time, your property, your life, your mind--for nothing! For ah, Mars' Ma'colm, you had me whipped--_by another man_!"

A shadow of reproach crept into the old man's eyes, over which the mists of death were already gathering.

"Yes, Viney," he whispered, "you have had your revenge! But I was sorry, Viney, for what I did, and you were not. And I forgive you, Viney; but you are unforgiving--even in the presence of death."

His voice failed, and his eyes closed for the last time. When she saw that he was dead, by a strange revulsion of feeling the wall of outraged pride and hatred and revenge, built upon one brutal and bitterly repented mistake, and labouriously maintained for half a lifetime in her woman's heart that even slavery could not crush, crumbled and fell and let pa.s.s over it in one great and final flood the pent-up pa.s.sions of the past. Bursting into tears--strange tears from eyes that had long forgot to weep--old Viney threw herself down upon her knees by the bedside, and seizing old Malcolm's emaciated hand in both her own, covered it with kisses, fervent kisses, the ghosts of the pa.s.sionate kisses of their distant youth.

With a feeling that his presence was something like sacrilege, Ben stole away and left her with her dead--the dead master and the dead past--and thanked G.o.d that he lived in another age, and had escaped this sin.

As he wandered through the old house, a veil seemed to fall from his eyes. How old everything was, how shrunken and decayed! The sheen of the hidden gold had gilded the dilapidated old house, the neglected plantation, his own barren life. Now that it was gone, things appeared in their true light. Fortunately he was young enough to retrieve much of what had been lost. When the old man was buried, he would settle the estate, sell the land, make some provision for Aunt Viney, and then, with what was left, go out into the world and try to make a place for himself and Graciella. For life intrudes its claims even into the presence of death.

When the doctor came, a little later, Ben went with him into the death chamber. Viney was still kneeling by her master's bedside, but strangely still and silent. The doctor laid his hand on hers and old Malcolm's, which had remained clasped together.

"They are both dead," he declared. "I knew their story; my father told it to me many years ago."

Ben related what he had overheard.

"I'm not surprised," said the doctor. "My father attended her when she had the stroke, and after. He always maintained that Viney could speak--if she had wished to speak."

_Thirty-six_

The colonel's eyes were heavy with grief that night, and yet he lay awake late, and with his sorrow were mingled many consoling thoughts.

The people, his people, had been kind, aye, more than kind. Their warm hearts had sympathised with his grief. He had sometimes been impatient of their conservatism, their narrowness, their unreasoning pride of opinion; but in his bereavement they had manifested a feeling that it would be beautiful to remember all the days of his life. All the people, white and black, had united to honour his dead.

He had wished to help them--had tried already. He had loved the town as the home of his ancestors, which enshrined their ashes. He would make of it a monument to mark his son's resting place. His fight against Fetters and what he represented should take on a new character; henceforward it should be a crusade to rescue from threatened barbarism the land which contained the tombs of his loved ones. Nor would he be alone in the struggle, which he now clearly foresaw would be a long one. The dear, good woman he had asked to be his wife could help him. He needed her clear, spiritual vision; and in his lifelong sorrow he would need her sympathy and companions.h.i.+p; for she had loved the child and would share his grief. She knew the people better than he, and was in closer touch with them; she could help him in his schemes of benevolence, and suggest new ways to benefit the people. Phil's mother was buried far away, among her own people; could he consult her, he felt sure she would prefer to remain there. Here she would be an alien note; and when Laura died she could lie with them and still be in her own place.

"Have you heard the news, sir," asked the housekeeper, when he came down to breakfast the next morning.

"No, Mrs. Hughes, what is it?"

"They lynched the Negro who was in jail for shooting young Mr. Fetters and the other man."

The colonel hastily swallowed a cup of coffee and went down town. It was only a short walk. Already there were excited crowds upon the street, discussing the events of the night. The colonel sought Caxton, who was just entering his office.

"They've done it," said the lawyer.

"So I understand. When did it happen?"

"About one o'clock last night. A crowd came in from Sycamore--not all at once, but by twos and threes, and got together in Clay Johnson's saloon, with Ben Green, your discharged foreman, and a lot of other riffraff, and went to the sheriff, and took the keys, and took Johnson and carried him out to where the shooting was, and----"

"Spare me the details. He is dead?"

"Yes."

A rope, a tree--a puff of smoke, a flash of flame--or a barbaric orgy of fire and blood--what matter which? At the end there was a lump of clay, and a hundred murderers where there had been one before.

"Can we do anything to punish _this_ crime?"

"We can try."

And they tried. The colonel went to the sheriff. The sheriff said he had yielded to force, but he never would have dreamed of shooting to defend a worthless Negro who had maimed a good white man, had nearly killed another, and had declared a vendetta against the white race.

By noon the colonel had interviewed as many prominent men as he could find, and they became increasingly difficult to find as it became known that he was seeking them. The town, he said, had been disgraced, and should redeem itself by prosecuting the lynchers. He may as well have talked to the empty air. The trail of Fetters was all over the town. Some of the officials owed Fetters money; others were under political obligations to him. Others were plainly of the opinion that the Negro got no more than he deserved; such a wretch was not fit to live. The coroner's jury returned a verdict of suicide, a grim joke which evoked some laughter. Doctor McKenzie, to whom the colonel expressed his feelings, and whom he asked to throw the influence of his church upon the side of law and order, said:

"It is too bad. I am sorry, but it is done. Let it rest. No good can ever come of stirring it up further."

Later in the day there came news that the lynchers, after completing their task, had proceeded to the Dudley plantation and whipped all the Negroes who did not learn of their coming in time to escape, the claim being that Johnson could not have maintained himself in hiding without their connivance, and that they were therefore parties to his crimes.

The colonel felt very much depressed when he went to bed that night, and lay for a long time turning over in his mind the problem that confronted him.