The Law of the Land, Emerson Hough [best beach reads of all time TXT] 📗
- Author: Emerson Hough
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“No,” resumed Blount. “They’re not studying so much as they used to. Not long ago I had a number of northern philanthropists down here, who came down to look into the “conditions in this district.” I said I’d show them everything they wanted; so I sent out for some of my field hands. I said to one of them, “Bill,” said I, “these gentlemen want to ask you some questions. I suppose your name is William Henry Arnold, isn’t it?” “Yassah,” said Bill. “You was county supervisor here some years ago, wasn’t you, Bill?’ ‘Yassah,’ said Bill. I said, ‘I beg your pardon, Mr. William Henry Arnold, but will you please step up here to my desk and write your name for these gentlemen?’ ‘Why, sho’! boss,’ said he, ‘you know I kain’t write mah name.’ ‘That’s all,’ said I.
“‘Now, gentlemen,’ said I, ‘exhibit number two is Mr. George Washington Sims. ‘George,’ said I, ‘you used to be our county treasurer, didn’t you?’ He said he did. ‘Who paid the taxes, then, George?’ said I. ‘Why, boss, you white folks paid most of ‘um.’ ‘All right, Mr. George Washington Sims,’ said I, ‘you step up here and write your name for these gentlemen.’ He just laughed. ‘That’ll do,’ said I.
“‘Exhibit number three,’ said I to these northern philanthropists, ‘is our late distinguished fellow citizen, Abednego Shadrach Jones. He was our county clerk down here a while back. ‘Nego, who paid the taxes, time you was clerk?’ He was right uncomfortable. ‘Why, boss,’ said he, ‘you paid most of ‘um, you an’ the white folks in heah. No niggah man had nothin’ to pay taxes on.’
“‘You know that we white folks had to pay for the schools and bridges, and the county buildings—had to pay salaries—had to pay the county clerk and the janitor—had to pay everything?’ I said to him. ‘Yassah,’ said Nego.
“‘You were elected legally, and we white folks couldn’t out-vote you, nohow?’ ‘Yassah,’ said he. ‘I s’pose we wus all ‘lected legal ‘nough. I dunno rightly, but dey all done tol’ me dat wuz so.’
“‘Nego,’ said I, ‘step up here to your boss’ desk and write your name, just like you do when I give you credit for a bale of cotton.’ Nego he steps up and he makes a mark, and a mighty poor mark at that. ‘You can go,’ I said to him.
“‘Now, gentlemen,’ said I to them, ‘do you want exhibits number four and five and six?’ And they allowed they didn’t.
“There was one fellow in the lot who stepped up to me and took my hand. He was a Federal colonel in the war, but he said to me, ‘Colonel Blount, I beg your pardon. You have made this plainer to me than I ever saw it before. It would be the ruin of this country if you gave over the control of your homes and property and let them be run by people like these. You have solved this problem for yourselves, and you ought to be left to solve it all the time. As for us folks from the North, we are a lot of ignorant meddlers; and as for me, I’m going home.’”
Blount fell silent, musing for a time. “Some folks say, ‘Educate the negro,’” he resumed finally, “they say ‘Uplift him.’ They say ‘Give him a chance.’ So do I. I will give him more than a chance. I will let the negroes do all they can to help themselves, and I’ll do the balance myself. But they can’t rule me, until they are better than I am; and that’s going to be a long while yet. Constitution or no constitution, government or no government, the black rule can’t and don’t go in the Delta! It wouldn’t be right.
“Now, I’ll tell you about those two poor fellows to-day,” he continued. “There was Tom Sands, who works on a plantation about twelve miles from here. He has been getting drunk and beating his wife and scaring his children for about three months. Judge Williams had him up not long ago and bound him over to keep the peace, and when I last saw the judge he told me to take this negro up, if I was going by there any time, and bring him up and put him in jail for a while, until he got to behaving himself again. You know we have to do these things right along, to keep this country quiet.
“Well, when we were coming in from the hunt, we passed within a few miles of his cotton patch, and I rode over to see him. He was out in the field, and I found him and told him he had to come along. He refused to come. He swore at me—and he was not even a county surveyor in the old days! Then I ordered him in the name of the law to come along. He picked up a piece of fence rail and started at me. I had to get down off my horse to meet him. I own I struck him right hard. There was another boy, a big black negro, that must have come in here lately from some other part of the country, a big, stoop-shouldered fellow—well, he started for me, too. I took up the same piece of fence rail and knocked him down.
“I ought not to have told you this, ma’am,” said Blount, rising. “But then, maybe it’s just as well that I did. You never can tell what will come out of these things. We live over a black volcano in this country all the time. Now, I didn’t bring in either one of my prisoners. I hoped that maybe they would take this fence rail argument as a sort of temporary equivalent to a term in jail. But tomorrow I’m going down in there and bring that Sands boy in. We never dare give an inch in a matter of this kind.”
“Do you think they will make any trouble?” said Mrs. Ellison.
“Never you mind about the trouble part of it,” said Blount, quietly. “I reckon he’ll come in. I’m going to take a wagon this time. So that’s the kind of luck we had on this b’ah hunt.”
He arose to go, and left Mrs. Ellison sitting still in the shaded room, her fan now at rest, her eyes bent down thoughtfully, but her foot tapping at the floor. The incidents just related passed quickly from her mind. She remembered only that, as they talked, this man’s eye had wandered from her own. He was occupied with problems of politics, of business, of sport, and was letting go that great game for a strong man, the game of love! She could scarce tell at the moment whether she most felt for him contempt or hatred—or something far different from either.
At length she arose and paced the room, swiftly as the press of strange events which were hurrying her along. Indeed, she might, without any great shrewdness, have found warning in certain things happening of late in and around the Big House; but Alice Ellison ever most loved her own fancy as counsel. The blacks might rise if they liked; Miss Lady might do as she listed, after all. Delphine and young Decherd might go their several ways; but as for her, and as for this man Calvin Blount—ah, well!
She yawned and stretched out her arms, feline, easy, graceful, and so at length sank into her easy chair, half purring as she shifted now and again to a more comfortable position.
John Eddring, the heat of his late encounter past, sat moodily staring out from the platform of the little station to which he had returned. He was angry with all the world, and angry with himself most of all. It had been his duty to deal amicably with a man of the position of Colonel Calvin Blount, yet how had he comported himself? Like a school-boy! But for that he might have been the accepted guest now, there at the Big House, instead of being the only man ever known to turn back upon its door. But for his sudden choler, he reflected, he might perhaps at this very moment be within seeing and speaking distance of this tall girl of the scarlet ribbons, the very same whose presence he had vaguely felt about the place all that morning, in the occasional sound of a distant song, or the rush of feet upon the gallery, or the whisk of skirts frequently heard. The memory of that picture clung fast and would not vanish. She was so very beautiful, he reflected. It had been pleasanter to sit at table in such company than thus here alone, hungry, like an outcast.
He felt his gaze, like that of a love-sick boy, turning again and again toward the spot where he had seen her last. The realization of this angered him. He rebuked himself sternly, as having been unworthy of himself, as having been light, as having been unmanly, in thus allowing himself to be influenced by a mere irrational fancy. He summoned his strength to banish this chimera, and then with sudden horror which sent his brow half-moist, he realized that his faculties did not obey, that he was thinking of the same picture, that his eyes were still coveting it, his heart—ah, could there be truth in these stories of sudden and uncontrollable impulses of the heart? The very whisper of it gave him terror. His brow grew moister. For him, John Eddring—what could the world hold for him but this one thing of duty?
Duty! He laughed at the thought. These two iron bands before his eyes irked his soul, binding him, as they did, hard and fast to another world full of unwelcome things. There came again and again to his mind this picture of the maid with the bright ribbons. He gazed at the distant spot beneath the evergreens where he had seen her. He could picture so distinctly her high-headed carriage, the straight gaze of her eyes, the glow on her cheeks; could restore so clearly the very sweep of the dark hair tumbled about her brow. Smitten of this sight, he would fain have had view again. Alas! it was as when, upon a crowded street, one gazes at the passing figure of him whose presence smites with the swift call of friendship—and turns, only to see this unknown friend swallowed up in the crowd for ever. Thus had passed the view of this young girl of the Big House; and there remained no sort of footing upon which he could base a hope of a better fortune. Henceforth he must count himself apart from all Big House affairs. He was an outcast, a pariah. Disgusted, he rose from his rude seat at the window ledge and walked up the platform. He found it too sunny, and returned to take a seat again upon a broken truck near by.
There was a little country store close to the platform, so built that it almost adjoined the ware-room of the railway station; this being the place where the colored folk of the neighborhood purchased their supplies. At the present moment, this building seemed to lack much of its usual occupancy, yet there arose, now and again, sounds of low conversation partly audible through the open window. The voices were those of negroes, and they spoke guardedly, but eagerly, with some peculiar quality in their speech which caught the sixth sense of the Southerner, accustomed always to living upon the verge of a certain danger. The fact that they were speaking thus in so public a place, and at the mid-hour of the working day, was of itself enough to attract the attention of
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