Читать книгу The Sins of the Father - Jr. Thomas Dixon - Страница 7

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The conference of the carpetbagger with the little Governor proved more ominous than even Norton had feared. The blow struck was so daring, so swift and unexpected it stunned for a moment the entire white race.

When the editor reached his office on the second morning after the raid, his desk was piled with telegrams from every quarter of the state. The Governor had issued a proclamation disarming every white military company and by wire had demanded the immediate surrender of their rifles to the negro Adjutant-General. The same proclamation had created an equal number of negro companies who were to receive these guns and equipments.

The negroid state Government would thus command an armed black guard of fifty thousand men and leave the white race without protection.

Evidently His Excellency was a man of ambitions. It was rumored that he aspired to the Vice-Presidency and meant to win the honor by a campaign of such brilliance that the solid negro-ruled South would back him in the National Convention.

Beyond a doubt, this act was the first step in a daring attempt inspired by the radical fanatics in Congress to destroy the structure of white civilization in the South.

And the Governor's resources were apparently boundless. President Johnson, though a native Southerner, was a puppet now in the hands of his powerful enemies who dominated Congress. These men boldly proclaimed their purpose to make the South negro territory by confiscating the property of the whites and giving it to the negroes. Their bill to do this, House Bill Number Twenty-nine, introduced by the government leader, Thaddeus Stevens, was already in the calendar and Mr. Stevens was pressing for its passage with all the skill of a trained politician inspired by the fiercest hate. The army had been sent back into the prostrate South to enforce the edicts of Congress and the negro state government could command all the Federal troops needed for any scheme concocted.

But the little Governor had a plan up his sleeve by which he proposed to startle even the Black Radical Administration at Washington. He was going to stamp out "Rebellion" without the aid of Federal troops, reserving his right to call them finally as a last resort. That they were ready at his nod gave him the moral support of their actual presence.

That any man born of a Southern mother and reared in the South under the conditions of refinement and culture, of the high ideals and the courage of the old régime, could fall so low as to use this proclamation, struck Norton at first as impossible. He refused to believe it. There must be some misunderstanding. He sent a messenger to the Capitol for a copy of the document before he was fully convinced.

And then he laughed in sheer desperation at the farce-tragedy to which the life of a brave people had been reduced. It was his business as an editor to record the daily history of the times. For a moment in imagination he stood outside his office and looked at his work.

"Future generations simply can't be made to believe it!" he exclaimed. "It's too grotesque to be credible even to-day."

It had never occurred to him that the war was unreasonable. Its passions, its crushing cost, its bloodstained fields, its frightful cruelties were of the great movements of the race from a lower to a higher order of life. Progress could only come through struggle. War was the struggle which had to be when two great moral forces clashed. One must die, the other live. A great issue had to be settled in the Civil War, an issue raised by the creation of the Constitution itself, an issue its creators had not dared to face. And each generation of compromisers and interpreters had put it off and put it off until at last the storm of thundering guns broke from a hundred hills at once.

It had never been decided by the builders of the Republic whether it should be a mighty unified nation or a loose aggregation of smaller sovereignties. Slavery made it necessary to decide this fundamental question on which the progress of America and the future leadership of the world hung.

He could see all this clearly now. He had felt it dimly true throughout every bloody scene of the war itself. And so he had closed the eyes of the lonely dying boy with a reverent smile. It was for his country. He had died for what he believed to be right and it was good. He had stood bareheaded in solemn court martials and sentenced deserters to death, led them out in the gray morning to be shot and ordered them dumped into shallow trenches without a doubt or a moment's hesitation. He had walked over battlefields at night and heard the groans of the wounded, the sighs of the dying, the curses of the living, beneath the silent stars and felt that in the end it must be good. It was war, and war, however cruel, was inevitable—the great High Court of Life and Death for the nations of earth.

But this base betrayal which had followed the honorable surrender of a brave, heroic army—this wanton humiliation of a ruined people by pot-house politicians—this war on the dead, the wounded, the dying, and their defenseless women—this enthronement of Savagery, Superstition, Cowardice and Brutality in high places where Courage and Honor and Chivalry had ruled—these vandals and camp followers and vultures provoking violence and exciting crime, set to rule a brave people who had risked all for a principle and lost—this was a nightmare; it was the reduction of human society to an absurdity!

For a moment he saw the world red. Anger, fierce and cruel, possessed him. The desire to kill gripped and strangled until he could scarcely breathe.

Nor did it occur to this man for a moment that he could separate his individual life from the life of his people. His paper was gaining in circulation daily. It was paying a good dividend now and would give his loved ones the luxuries he had dreamed for them. The greater the turmoil the greater his profits would be. And yet this idea never once flashed through his mind. His people were of his heart's blood. He had no life apart from them. Their joys were his, their sorrows his, their shame his. This proclamation of a traitor to his race struck him in the face as a direct personal insult. The hot shame of it found his soul.

When the first shock of surprise and indignation had spent itself, he hurried to answer his telegrams. His hand wrote now with the eager, sure touch of a master who knew his business. To every one he sent in substance the same message:

"Submit and await orders."

As he sat writing the fierce denunciation of this act of the Chief Executive of the state, he forgot his bitterness in the thrill of life that meant each day a new adventure. He was living in an age whose simple record must remain more incredible than the tales of the Arabian Nights. And the spell of its stirring call was now upon him.

The drama had its comedy moments, too. He could but laugh at the sorry figures the little puppets cut who were strutting for a day in pomp and splendor. Their end was as sure as the sweep of eternal law. Water could not be made to run up hill by the proclamation of a Governor.

He had made up his mind within an hour to give the Scalawag a return blow that would be more swift and surprising than his own. On the little man's reception of that counter stroke would hang the destiny of his administration and the history of the state for the next generation.

On the day the white military companies surrendered their arms to their negro successors something happened that was not on the programme of the Governor.

The Ku Klux Klan held its second grand parade. It was not merely a dress affair. A swift and silent army of drilled, desperate men, armed and disguised, moved with the precision of clockwork at the command of one mind. At a given hour the armory of every negro military company in the state was broken open and its guns recovered by the white and scarlet cavalry of the "Invisible Empire."

Within the next hour every individual negro in the state known to be in possession of a gun or pistol was disarmed. Resistance was futile. The attack was so sudden and so unexpected, the attacking party so overwhelming at the moment, each black man surrendered without a blow and a successful revolution was accomplished in a night without a shot or the loss of a life.

Next morning the Governor paced the floor of his office in the Capitol with the rage of a maddened beast, and Schlitz, the Carpetbagger, was summoned for a second council of war. It proved to be a very important meeting in the history of His Excellency.

The editor sat at his desk that day smiling in quiet triumph as he read the facetious reports wired by his faithful lieutenants from every district of the Klan. An endless stream of callers had poured through his modest little room and prevented any attempt at writing. He had turned the columns over to his assistants and the sun was just sinking in a smother of purple glory when he turned from his window and began to write his leader for the day.

It was an easy task. A note of defiant power ran through a sarcastic warning to the Governor that found the quick. The editorial flashed with wit and stung with bitter epigram. And there was in his consciousness of power a touch of cruelty that should have warned the Scalawag against his next act of supreme folly.

But His Excellency had bad advisers, and the wheels of Fate moved swiftly toward the appointed end.

Norton wrote this editorial with a joy that gave its crisp sentences the ring of inspired leadership. He knew that every paper in the state read by white men and women would copy it and he already felt in his heart the reflex thrill of its call to his people.

He had just finished his revision of the last paragraph when a deep, laughing voice beside his chair slowly said:

"May I come in?"

He looked up with a start to find the tawny figure of the girl whose red hair he had stroked that night bowing and smiling. Her white, perfect teeth gleamed in the gathering twilight and her smile displayed two pretty dimples in the brownish red cheeks.

"I say, may I come in?" she repeated with a laugh.

"It strikes me you are pretty well in," Norton said good-humoredly.

"Yes, I didn't have any cards. So I came right up. It's getting dark and nobody saw me——"

The editor frowned and moved uneasily

"You're alone, aren't you?" she asked.

"The others have all gone to supper, I believe."

"Yes, I waited 'til they left. I watched from the Square 'til I saw them go."

"Why?" he asked sharply.

"I don't know. I reckon I was afraid of 'em."

"And you're not afraid of me?" he laughed.

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because I know you."

Norton smiled:

"You wish to see me?"

"Yes."

"Is there anything wrong at Mr. Peeler's?"

"No, I just came to thank you for what you did and see if you wouldn't let me work for you?"

"Work? Where—here?"

"Yes. I can keep the place clean. My mother said it was awful. And, honest, it's worse than I expected. It doesn't look like it's been cleaned in a year."

"I don't believe it has," the editor admitted.

"Let me keep it decent for you."

"Thanks, no. It seems more home-like this way."

"Must it be so dirty?" she asked, looking about the room and picking up the scattered papers from the floor.

Norton, watching her with indulgent amusement at her impudence, saw that she moved her young form with a rhythmic grace that was perfect. The simple calico dress, with a dainty little check, fitted her perfectly. It was cut low and square at the neck and showed the fine lines of a beautiful throat. Her arms were round and finely shaped and bare to an inch above the elbows. The body above the waistline was slender, and the sinuous free movement of her figure showed that she wore no corset. Her step was as light as a cat's and her voice full of good humor and the bubbling spirits of a perfectly healthy female animal.

His first impulse was to send her about her business with a word of dismissal. But when she laughed it was with such pleasant assurance and such faith in his friendliness it was impossible to be rude.

She picked up the last crumpled paper and laid it on a table beside the wall, turned and said softly:

"Well, if you don't want me to clean up for you, anyhow, I brought you some flowers for your room—they're outside."

She darted through the door and returned in a moment with an armful of roses.

"My mother let me cut them from our yard, and she told me to thank you for coming that night. They'd have killed us if you hadn't come."

"Nonsense, they wouldn't have touched either you or your mother!"

"Yes, they would, too. Goodness—haven't you anything to put the flowers in?"

She tipped softly about the room, holding the roses up and arranging them gracefully.

Norton watched her with a lazy amused interest. He couldn't shake off the impression that she was a sleek young animal, playful and irresponsible, that had strayed from home and wandered into his office. And he loved animals. He never passed a stray dog or a cat without a friendly word of greeting. He had often laid on his lounge at home, when tired, and watched a kitten play an hour with unflagging interest. Every movement of this girl's lithe young body suggested such a scene—especially the velvet tread of her light foot, and the delicate motions of her figure followed suddenly by a sinuous quick turn and a childish laugh or cry. The faint shadows of negro blood in her creamy skin and the purring gentleness of her voice seemed part of the gathering twilight. Her eyes were apparently twice the size as when first he saw them, and the pupils, dilated in the dusk, flashed with unusual brilliance.