Books: The Man in Gray
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Thomas Dixon >> The Man in Gray
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"I can't stay," the barefoot boy sighed.
"Come on. There's three bird's nests in the orchard. The second layin'.
It ain't no harm to break up the second nest. Birds've no business
layin' twice in one season. We _ought_ to break 'em up."
"I'm afraid I can't."
His tone grew weaker and Robbie pressed him.
"Come on. We'll get the bird's eggs and chase the calves and colts till
the dinner bell rings, ride the horses home from the fields, and go
fishin' after dinner and stay till dark."
"No--"
"Come on!"
John glanced up the road toward the big gate beyond which his mother was
waiting his return. The temptation was more than his boy's soul could
resist. He shook his head--paused--and grinned.
"Come on, Sid, John's goin' with us," Robbie called to his young
henchman as he approached.
"All right," John consented, finally throwing every scruple to the
winds. "Ma'll whip me shore, but, by granny, it'll be worth it!"
The aristocrat slipped his arm around his chum and led him to the
orchard in triumph.
Custis laughed.
"He'd rather play with that little, poor white rascal than any boy in
the country."
"Don't blame him," Phil replied. "He may be dirty and ragged but he's a
real boy after a real boy's heart. And the handsomest little beggar I
ever saw--who is he?"
"The boy of a poor white family, the Doyles. They live just outside our
gate on a ten-acre farm. His mother's trying to make him go to school.
His father laughs and lets him go hunting and fishing."
They were strolling past the first neat row of houses in the servants'
quarters. Phil thought of them as the slave quarters. Yet he had not
heard the word slave spoken since his arrival. These black people were
"servants" and some of them were the friends and confidants of their
master and his household. Phil paused in front of a cottage. The yard
flamed with autumn flowers. Through the open door and windows came the
hum of spinning wheels and the low, sweet singing of the dark spinners,
spinning wool for the winter clothing of the estate. From the next door
came the click and crash of the looms weaving the warm cloth.
"You make your own cloth?" the Westerner asked in surprise.
"Of course, for the servants. It takes six spinners and three weavers
working steadily all year to keep up with it, too."
"Isn't it expensive?"
"Maybe. We never thought of it. We just make it. Always have in our
family for a hundred years."
They passed the blacksmith's shop and saw him shoeing a blooded colt.
Phil touched the horse's nostrils with a gentle hand and the colt nudged
him.
"It's funny how a horse knows a horseman instinctively--isn't it, Phil?"
"Yes. He knows I'm going to join the cavalry."
They moved down the long row of whitewashed cottages, each with its yard
of flowers and each with a huge pile of wood in the rear--wood enough
to keep a sparkling fire through the winter. Chubby-faced babies were
playing in the sanded walks and smiling young mothers watched them from
the doors.
Phil started to put a question, stammered and was silent.
"What is it?" Custis asked.
"You'll pardon my asking it, old boy, but are these black folks
married?"
The Southern boy laughed heartily.
"I should say so. A negro wedding is one of the joys of a plantation
boy's life."
"But isn't it awful when they're separated?"
"They're not separated."
"Never?"
"Not on this plantation. Nor on any estate whose master and mistress are
our friends. It's not done in our set."
"You keep them when they're old, lazy and worthless?"
"If they're married, yes. It's a luxury we never deny ourselves, this
softening of the rigor of the slave regime. It's not business. But
it's the custom of the country. To separate a husband and wife is an
unheard-of thing among our people."
The thing that impressed the Westerner in those white rows of little
homes was the order and quiet of it all. Every yard was swept clean.
There was nowhere a trace of filth or disease-breeding refuse. And birds
were singing in the bushes beside these slave cottages as sweetly as
they sang for the master and mistress in the pillared mansion on the
hill. They passed the stables and paused to watch a dozen colts playing
in the inclosure. Beyond the stable under the shadows of great oaks
was the dog kennel. A pack of fox hounds rushed to the gate with loud
welcome to their young master. He stooped to stroke each head and call
each dog's name. A wagging tail responded briskly to every greeting. In
another division of the kennel romped a dozen bird-dogs, pointers and
setters. The puppies were nearly grown and eager for the fields. They
climbed over Custis in yelping puppy joy that refused all rebuffs.
Phil looked in vain for the bloodhounds. He was afraid to ask about them
lest he offend his host. Custis had never seen a bloodhound and could
not guess the question back of his schoolmate's silence.
Sam entered the inclosure with breakfast for the dogs.
Phil couldn't keep his eyes off the sunlit, ebony face. His smile was
contagious. His voice was music.
The Westerner couldn't resist the temptation to draw him out.
"You were certainly dressed up last night, Sam!"
"Yer lak dat suit I had on, sah?"
"It was a great combination."
"Yassah, dat's me, sah," the negro laughed. "I'se a great
combination--yassah!"
He paused and threw his head back as if to recall the words. Then in a
voice rich and vibrant with care-free joy he burst into song:
"Yassah!"
"When I goes out ter promenade
I dress so fine and gay
I'm bleeged to take my dog along
Ter keep de gals away."
Again his laughter rang in peals of sonorous fun. They joined in his
laugh.
A stable boy climbed the fence and called:
"Don't ye want yer hosses, Marse Custis?" He was jealous of Sam's
popularity.
Custis glanced at Phil.
"Sure. Let's ride."
"All right, Ned--saddle them."
The boy leaped to the ground and in five minutes led two horses to the
gate. As they galloped past the house for the long stretch of white
roadway that led across the river to the city, Phil smiled as he saw Jeb
Stuart emerge from the rose garden with Mary Lee. Custis ignored the
unimportant incident.
CHAPTER III
Stuart led Mary to a seat beneath an oak, brushed the dust away with his
cap and asked her to honor him. He bowed low over her hand and dared to
kiss it.
She passed the gallant act as a matter of course and sat down beside him
with quiet humor. She knew the symptoms. A born flirt, as every true
Southern girl has always been, she eyed his embarrassment with surprise.
She knew that he was going to speak under the resistless impulse of
youth and romance, and that no hearts would be broken on either side no
matter what the outcome.
She watched him indulgently. She had to like him. He was the kind of boy
a girl couldn't help liking. He was vital, magnetic and exceptionally
good looking. He sang and danced and flirted, but beneath the fun and
foolishness slumbered a fine spirit, tender, reverent, deeply religious.
It was this undercurrent of strength that drew the girl. He was always
humming a song, his heart bubbling over with joy. He had never uttered
an oath or touched a drop of liquor amid all the gaiety of the times in
which he lived.
"Miss Mary," he began slowly.
"Now Jeb," she interrupted. "You don't _have_ to, you know--"
Stuart threw his head back, laughed, and sang a stanza from "Annie
Laurie" in a low, tender voice. He paused and faced his fair tormentor.
"Miss Mary, I've got to!"
"You don't have to make love to me just because you're my brother's
classmate--"
"You know I'm not!" he protested.
"You're about to begin."
"But not for that reason, Miss Mary--"
He held her gaze so seriously that she blushed before she could recover
her poise. He saw his advantage and pressed it.
"I'm telling you that I love you because you're the most adorable girl
I've ever known."
His boyish, conventional words broke the spell.
"I appreciate the tribute which you so gallantly pay me, Sir Knight. But
I happen to know that the moonlight, the music of a dance, the song of
birds this morning and the beauty of the landscape move you, as they
should. You're young. You're too good looking. You're fine and unspoiled
and I like you, Jeb. But you don't know yet what love means."
"I do, Miss Mary, I do."
"You don't and neither do I. You're in love with love. And so am I. It's
the morning of life and why shouldn't we be like this?"
"There's no hope?" he asked dolefully.
"Of course, there's hope. There's something fine in you, and you'll find
yourself in the world when you ride forth to play your part. And I'll
follow you with tender pride."
"But not with love," he sighed.
"Maybe--who knows?" she smiled.
"Is that all the hope you can give me?"
"Isn't it enough?"
He gazed into her serious eyes a moment and laughed with boyish
enthusiasm.
"Yes, it is, Miss Mary! You're glorious. You're wonderful. You make me
ashamed of my foolishness. You inspire me to do things. And I'm going to
do them for your sake."
"For your own sake, because God has put the spark in your soul. Your
declaration of love has made me very happy. We're too young yet to take
it seriously. We must both live our life in its morning before we settle
down to the final things. They'll come too soon."
"I'm going to love you always, Miss Mary," he protested.
"I want you to. But you'll probably marry another girl."
"Never!"
"And I know you'll be her loyal knight, her devoted slave. It's a way
our Southern boys have. And it's beautiful."
Stuart studied the finely chiseled face with a new reverence.
"Miss Mary, you've let me down so gently. I don't feel hurt at all."
A sweet silence fell between them. A breeze blew the ringlets of the
girl's hair across the pink of her cheek. A breeze from the garden laden
with the mingled perfume of roses. A flock of wild ducks swung across
the lawn high in the clear sky and dipped toward the river. Across the
fields came a song of slaves at work in the cornfield, harvesting the
first crop of peas planted between the rows.
Stuart caught her hand, pressed it tenderly and kissed it.
"You're an angel, Miss Mary. And I'm going to worship you, if you won't
let me love you."
The girl returned his earnest look with a smile and slowly answered:
"All right, Beauty Stuart, we'll see--"
CHAPTER IV
The dinner at night was informal. Colonel Lee had invited three personal
friends from Washington. He hoped in the touch of the minds of these
leaders to find some relief from the uneasiness with which the reading
of Mrs. Stowe's book had shadowed his imagination.
The man about whom he was curious was Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois,
the most brilliant figure in the Senate. In the best sense he
represented the national ideal. A Northern man, he had always viewed the
opinions and principles of the South with broad sympathy.
The new Senator from Georgia, on the other hand, had made a sensation in
the house as the radical leader of the South. Lee wondered if he were as
dangerous a man as the conservative members of the Whig party thought.
Toombs had voted the Whig ticket, but his speeches on the rights of the
South on the Slavery issues had set him in a class by himself.
Mr. and Mrs. Pryor had spent the night of the dance at Arlington and had
consented to stay for dinner.
Douglas had captured the young Virginia congressman. And Mrs. Douglas
had become an intimate friend of Mrs. Pryor.
When Douglas entered the library and pressed Lee's hand, the master
of Arlington studied him with keen interest. He was easily the most
impressive figure in American politics. The death of Calhoun and Clay
and the sudden passing of Webster had left but one giant on the floor of
the Senate. They called him the "Little Giant." He was still a giant.
He had sensed the approaching storm of crowd madness and had sought the
age-old method of compromise as the safety valve of the nation.
He had not read history in vain. He knew that all statesmanship is the
record of compromise--that compromise is another name for reason. The
Declaration of Independence was a compromise between the radicalism of
Thomas Jefferson and the conservatism of the colonies. In the original
draft of the Declaration, Jefferson had written a paragraph arraigning
slavery which had been omitted:
"He (the King of Great Britain) has waged cruel war against human nature
itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the
persons of a distant people who never offended him; capturing and
carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable
death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the
opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the _Christian_ King
of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where men should
be bought and sold, he prostituted his negative for suppressing every
legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. And
that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished dye,
he is now exciting these very people to rise in arms among us, and to
purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the
people on whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes
committed against the liberties of one people with crimes which he urges
them to commit against the lives of another."
This indictment of Slavery and the Slave trade was stricken from the
Declaration of Independence in deference to the opposition of both
Northern and Southern slave owners who held that the struggling young
colonies must have labor at all hazards.
Lee knew that the Constitution also was a compromise of conflicting
interests. But for the spirit of compromise--of reason--this instrument
of human progress could never have been created. The word "Slave" or
"Slavery" does not occur within it, and yet three of its most important
provisions established the institution of chattel slavery as the basis
of industrial life. The statesmen who wrote the Constitution did not
wish these clauses embodied in it. Yet the Union could not have been
established without them. Our leaders reasoned, and reasoned wisely,
that Slavery must perish in the progress of human society, and,
therefore, they accepted the compromise.
There has never been a statesman in the history of the world who has
not used this method of constructive progress. There will never be a
statesman who succeeds who can use any other method in dealing with
masses of his fellow men.
Douglas was the coming constructive statesman of the republic and all
eyes were being focused on him. His life at the moment was the fevered
center of the nation's thought. That his ambitions were boundless no
one who knew the man doubted. That his patriotism was as genuine and as
great all knew at last.
Lee studied every feature of his fine face. No eye could miss him in
an assemblage of people, no matter how great the numbers. His compact
figure was erect, aggressive, dominant. A personage, whose sense of
power came from within, not without. He was master of himself and of
others. He looked the lion and he was one. The lines of his face were
handsome in the big sense, strong, regular, masculine. He drew young
men as a magnet. His vitality inspired them. His stature was small in
height, measured by inches, but of such dignity, power and magnetism
that he suggested Napoleon.
He smiled into Colonel Lee's face and his smile lighted the room. Every
man and woman present was warmed by it.
Douglas had scarcely greeted Mrs. Lee and passed into an earnest
conversation with the young Congressman when Robert Toombs of Georgia
entered.
Toombs had become within two years the successor of John C. Calhoun. He
had the genius of Calhoun, eloquence as passionate, as resistless;
and he had all of Calhoun's weaknesses. He called a spade a spade.
He loathed compromise. Three years before he had swept the floor and
galleries of the House with a burst of impassioned eloquence that had
made him a national figure.
Lifting his magnificent head he had cried:
"I do not hesitate to avow before this House and the Country, and in
the presence of the living God, that if by your legislation you seek to
drive us from the Territory of California and New Mexico, purchased
by the blood of Southern white people, and to abolish Slavery in the
District of Columbia, thereby attempting to fix a national degradation
upon half the States of this Confederacy, _I am for disunion_. The
Territories are the common property of the United States. You are their
common agents; it is your duty while they are in the Territorial state
to remove all impediments to their free enjoyment by both sections--the
slave holder and the non-slave holder!"
He was the man of iron will, of passionate convictions. He might lead a
revolution. He could not compromise.
His rapidly growing power was an ominous thing in the history of the
South. Lee studied his face with increasing fascination.
In this gathering no man or woman thought of wealth as the source of
power or end of life. No one spoke of it. Office, rank, position,
talent, beauty, charm, personality--these things alone could count.
These men and women _lived_. They did not merely exist. They were making
the history of the world and yet they refused to rush through life.
Their souls demanded hours of repose, of thought, of joy and they took
them.
Toombs' pocket was stuffed with a paper-backed edition of a French play.
It was his habit to read them in the original with keen enjoyment in
moments of leisure. The hum of social life filled the room and strife
was forgotten. Douglas and Toombs were boys again and Lee was their
companion.
Mary Lee managed to avoid Stuart and took her seat beside Phil
Sheridan--not to tease her admirer but to give to her Western guest
the warmest welcome of the old South. She knew the dinner would be a
revelation to Phil and she would enjoy his appreciation.
The long table groaned under the luxuries of the season. Course
succeeded course, cooked with a delicate skill unknown to the world of
to-day. The oysters, fresh, fat, luscious, were followed by diamond-back
terrapin stew as a soup.
Phil tasted it and whispered to his fair young hostess.
"Miss Mary, what is this I'm eating?"
"Don't you like it?"
"I never expected to taste it on earth. I've only dreamed about it on
high."
"It's only terrapin stew. We serve it as a soup."
"The angels made it."
"No, Aunt Hannah."
"I won't take it back. Angels only could brew this soup."
The terrapin was followed by old Virginia ham and turnip greens. And
then came the turkey with chestnut stuffing and jellies. The long table,
flashing with old china and silver, held the staples of ham and turkey
as ornaments as well as dainties for the palate. The real delicacies
were served later, the ducks which Doyle had sent the Colonel, and plate
after plate of little, brown, juicy birds called sora, so tender and
toothsome they could be eaten bones and all.
When Phil wound up with cakes and custards, apples, pears and nuts from
the orchard and fields, his mind was swimming in a dream of luxury. And
over it all the spirit of true hospitality brooded. A sense of home and
reality as intimate, as genuine as if he sat beside his mother's chair
in the little cottage in Ohio.
"Lord save me," he breathed. "If I stay here long I'll have but one
hope, to own a plantation and a home like this--"
Toombs sat on Lee's right and Douglas on his left. Mr. and Mrs. Pryor
occupied the places of honor beside Mrs. Lee.
The Colonel's keen eye studied Douglas with untiring patience. To his
rising star, the man who loved the Union, was drawn as by a magnet.
Toombs, the Whig, belonged to his own Party, the aristocracy of brains
and the inheritors of the right to leadership. He was studying Toombs
with growing misgivings. He dreaded the radicalism within the heart of
the Southern Whig.
His eye rested on Sam, serving the food as assistant butler in Ben's
absence. In the kink of his hair, the bulge of his smiling lips, the
spread of his nostrils, the whites of his rolling eyes, he saw
the Slave. He saw the mystery, the brooding horror, the baffling
uncertainty, the insoluble problem of such a man within a democracy of
self-governing freemen. He stood bowing and smiling over his guests, in
shape a man. And yet in racial development a million years behind the
wit and intelligence of the two leaders at his side.
Over this dusky figure, from the dawn of American history our fathers
had wrangled and compromised. More than once he had threatened to divide
or destroy the Union. Reason and the compromises of great minds had
saved us. In Sam he saw this grinning skeleton at his feast.
He could depend on the genius of Douglas when the supreme crisis came.
He felt the quality of his mind tonight. But could Douglas control the
mob impulse of the North where such appeals as _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ had
gripped the souls of millions and reason no longer ruled life?
There was the rub.
There was no question of the genius of Douglas. The question was could
any leadership count if the mob, not the man, became our real ruler? The
task of Douglas was to hold the fanatic of the North while he soothed
the passions of the radical of the South. Henry Clay had succeeded. But
_Uncle Tom's Cabin_ had not been written in his day.
Toombs was becoming a firebrand. His eloquence was doing in the South
what Mrs. Stowe's novel was doing in the North--preparing the soil for
revolution--planting gunpowder under the foundations of society.
Could these forces yet be controlled or were they already beyond
control?
CHAPTER V
After dinner, Jeb Stuart succeeded in separating Mary from Phil and
began again his adoration. The men adjourned to the library to discuss
the Presidential Campaign and weigh the chances of General Scott against
Franklin Pierce. The comment of Toombs was grim in its sarcasm and early
let him out of the discussion.
"It doesn't matter in the least, gentlemen, who is elected in November,"
he observed. "There's nothing before the country as yet. Not even an
honest-to-God man."
Lee shook his head gravely.
Toombs parried his protest.
"I know, Colonel Lee, you're fond of the old General. You fought with
him in Mexico. But--" he dropped his voice to a friendly whisper--"all
the same, you know that what I say is true."
He took a cigar from the mantel, lighted it and waved to the group.
"I'll take a little stroll and smoke."
Custis took Phil to the cottage of the foreman to see a night school in
session.
"You mean the overseer's place?" Phil asked eagerly, as visions of Simon
Legree flashed through his mind.
"No--I mean Uncle Ike's cottage. He's the foreman of the farm. We have
no white overseer."
Phil was shocked. He had supposed every Southern plantation had a white
overseer as slave driver with a blacksnake whip in his hand. A negro
foreman was incredible. As a matter of fact there were more negro
foremen than white overseers in the South.
In Uncle Ike's cottage by the light of many candles the school for boys
was in session. Custis' brother "Rooney," was the teacher. He had six
pupils besides Sam. Not one of them knew his lesson to-night and Rooney
was furious.
As Phil and Custis entered, he was just finishing a wrathful lecture.
His pupils were standing in a row grinning their apologies.
"I've told you boys for the last three weeks that I won't stand this.
You don't have to go to school to me if you don't want to. But if you
join my school you've got to study. Do you hear me?"
"Yassah!" came the answer in solid chorus.
"Well, you'll do more than hear me to-night. You're going to heed what I
say. I'm going to thrash the whole school."
Sam broke into a loud laugh. And a wail of woe came from every dusky
figure.
"Dar now!"
"Hear dat, folks--?"
"I been a tellin' ye chillun--"
"I lubs my spellin' book--but, oh, dat hickory switch!"
"Oh, Lordy--"
"Gib us anudder chance, Marse Rooney!"
"Not another chance," was the stern answer. "Lay off your coats."
They began to peel their coats. Big, strapping, husky fellows nudging
one another and grinning at their fourteen-year-old schoolmaster. It was
no use to protest.
They knew they deserved it. A whipping was one of the minor misfortunes
of life. Its application was universal. No other method of discipline
had yet been dreamed by the advanced thinkers and rulers of the world.
"Spare the rod and spoil the child" was accepted as the Word of God and
only a fool could doubt it. The rod was the emblem of authority for
child, pupil, apprentice and soldier. The negro slave as a workman got
less of it than any other class. It was the rule of a Southern master
never to use the rod on a slave except for crime if it could be avoided.
To flog one for laziness was the exception, not the rule.
The old Virginia gentleman prided himself particularly on the tenderness
and care with which he guarded the life of his servants. If the weather
was cold and his men exposed, he waited to see that they had dry clothes
and a warm drink before they went to bed. He never failed to remember
that his white skin could endure more than their sunburned dark ones.
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