Читать книгу The Man in Gray - Jr. Thomas Dixon - Страница 11

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Lee had promised Edmund Ruffin his answer early in the week. Ruffin had just ridden up the hill and dismounted.

Mrs. Marshall, the Colonel's sister, on a visit from Baltimore, fled at his approach.

"Excuse me, Mary," she cried to Mrs. Lee. "I just can't stand these ranting fire-eating politicians. They make me ill. I'll go to my room."

She hurried up the stairway and left the frail mistress of the house to meet her formidable guest.

Ruffin was the product of the fierce Abolition Crusade. Hot-tempered, impulsive, intemperate in his emotions and their expression, he was the perfect counterpart of the men who were working night and day in the North to create a condition of mob feeling out of which a civil conflict might grow. Uncle Tom's Cabin had set him on fire with new hatreds. His vocabulary of profanity had been enlarged by the addition of every name in the novel. He had been compelled to invent new expressions to fit these characters. He damned them individually and collectively. He cursed each trait of each character, good and bad. He cursed the good points with equal unction and equal emphasis. In fact the good traits in Mrs. Stowe's people seemed to carry him to greater heights of wrath and profanity than the bad ones. He dissected each part of each character's anatomy, damned each part, put the parts together and damned the collection. And then he damned the whole story, characters, plot and scenes to the lowest pit and cursed the devil for not building a lower one to which he might consign it. And in a final burst of passion he always ended by damning himself for his utter inability to express anything which he really felt.

With all his ugly language, which he reserved for conversation with men, he was the soul of consideration for a woman. Mrs. Lee had no fear of any rude expression from his lips. She didn't like him because she felt in his personality the touch of mob insanity which the Slavery question had kindled. She dreaded this appeal to blind instinct and belief. With a woman's intuition she felt the tragic possibility of such leadership North and South.

She saw his leonine head and shaggy hair silhouetted against the red glow of the west with a shiver at its symbolism, but met him with the cordial greeting which every Southern woman gave instinctively to the friend of her husband.

"Come in, Mr. Ruffin," she welcomed.

He bowed over her hand and spoke in the soft drawl of the Southern planter.

"Thank you, Madame. I'm greatly honored in having you greet me at the door."

"Colonel Lee is expecting you."

The planter drew himself up with a touch of pride and importance.

"Yes'm. I sent him word I would be here at three. I was detained in Washington. But I succeeded in convincing the editor of The Daily Globe that my mission was one of grave importance. I not only desire to wish Colonel Lee God-speed on his journey to West Point and congratulate him on the honor conferred on Virginia by his appointment to the command of our Cadets—but—"

He paused, smiled and glanced toward the portico, as if he were holding back an important secret.

Mrs. Lee hastened to put him at his ease.

"You can trust my discretion in any little surprise you may have for the

Colonel."

Ruffin bowed.

"I'm sure I can, Madame. I'm sure I can."

He dropped his voice.

"You know perhaps that I sent him a few days ago a scurrilous attack on the South by a Yankee woman—a new novel?"

"He received it."

"Has he read it?"

"Carefully. He has read it twice."

"Good!"

The planter breathed deeply, squared his shoulders and paced the floor with a single quick turn. He stopped before Mrs. Lee and spoke in sharp emphasis.

"I'm going to spring a little surprise on the public, Madame! A sensation that will startle the country, and God knows we need a little shaking just now—"

He paused and whispered.

"I'm so sure of what the Colonel will say that I've brought a reporter from the Washington Daily Globe with me—"

Mrs. Lee lifted her hand in dismay.

"He is here?"

"He is seated on the lawn just outside, Madame," Ruffin hastened to reassure her. "I thought at the last moment I'd better have him wait until I received Colonel Lee's consent to the interview."

"I'm glad you did."

"Oh, it will be all right, I assure you!"

"He might not wish to see a reporter—"

"So I told the young man."

"I'm afraid—"

"I'll pave the way, Madame. I'll pave the way. Colonel Lee and I are life-long friends. Will you kindly announce me?"

"The Colonel has just ridden up to the stables to give some orders about his horses. He'll be here in a moment."

Lee stepped briskly into the room and extended his hand.

"It's you, Ruffin. My apologies. I was called out to see a neighbor. I should have been here to receive you."

"No apologies, Colonel, Mrs. Lee has been most gracious."

The mistress of the house smiled.

"Make yourself at home, Mr. Ruffin. I shall hope to see you at dinner."

Ruffin stood respectfully until Mrs. Lee had disappeared.

"Pray be seated," Lee invited.

Ruffin seated himself on the couch and watched his host keenly.

Lee took a cigar from the mantel and offered it.

"A cigar, Ruffin?"

"Thanks."

"Now make yourself entirely at home, my good friend."

The planter lighted the cigar, blew a long cloud of smoke and settled in his seat.

"I'm glad to learn from Mrs. Lee that you have read the book I sent you—the Abolitionist firebrand."

"Yes."

Lee quietly walked to the mantel and got the volume.

"I have it here."

He turned the leaves thoughtfully.

Ruffin laughed.

"And, what do you think of it?"

The Colonel was silent a moment.

"Well, for those who like that kind of book—it's the kind of book they will like."

"Exactly!" Ruffin cried, slapping his knee with a blow that bruised it. "And you're the man in all the South to tell the fool who likes that sort of book just how big a fool he is!"

Lee opened the volume again and turned the pages slowly.

"Ruffin, I don't read many novels—"

He paused as if in deep study.

"But this one I have read twice."

"I'm glad you did, sir," the planter snapped.

"And I must confess it stunned me."

"Stunned you?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"When I finished reading it, I felt like the overgrown boy who stubbed his toe. It hurt too bad to laugh. And I'm too big to cry."

"You amaze me, sir."

"That's the way I feel, my friend."

He paused, walked to the window, and gazed out at the first lights that began to flicker in the windows of the Capitol across the river.

"That book," he went on evenly, "is an appeal to the heart of the world against Slavery. It is purely an appeal to sentiment, to the emotions, to passion, if you will—the passions of the mob and the men who lead mobs. And it's terrible. As terrible as an army with banners. I heard the throb of drums through its pages. It will work the South into a frenzy. It will make millions of Abolitionists in the North who could not be reached by the coarser methods of abuse. It will prepare the soil for a revolution. If the right man appears at the right moment with a lighted torch—"

"That's just why, sir, as the foremost citizen of Virginia, you must answer this slander. I have brought a reporter from the Globe with me for that purpose. Shall I call him,"

"A reporter from a daily paper with a circulation of fifteen thousand?"

"Your word, Colonel Lee, will be heard at this moment to the ends of the earth, sir!"

"In a newspaper interview?"

"Yes, sir."

"Nonsense."

"It's your character that will count."

"Such an answer would be a straw pitched against a hurricane. I am told that this book has already reached a circulation of half a million copies and it has only begun. That means already three million readers. To answer this book my pen should be better trained than my sword—"

"It is, sir, if you'll only use it."

"The South has only trained swords. And not so many of them as we think. We have no writers. We have no literature. We have no champions in the forum of the world's thought. We are being arraigned at the judgment bar of mankind and we are dumb. It's appalling."

"That's why you must speak for us. Speak in our defense. Speak with a tongue of flame—"

"I am not trained for speech, Ruffin. And the pen is mightier than the sword. I've never realized it before. The South will soon have the civilized world arraigned against her. The North with a thousand pens is stirring the faiths, the prejudices and the sentiments of the millions. This appeal is made in the face of History, Reason and Law. But its force will be as the gravitation of the earth, beyond the power of resistance, unless we can check it in time."

"When it comes to resistance," Ruffin snapped, "that's another question. The Yankees are a race of damned cowards and poltroons, sir. They won't fight."

Lee shook his head gravely.

"I've been in the service more than a quarter of a century, my friend. I've seen a lot of Yankees under fire. I've seen a lot of them die. And I know better. Your idea of a Yankee is about as correct as the Northern notion of Southern fighters. A notion they're beginning to exploit in cartoons which show an effeminate lady killer with an umbrella stuck in the end of his musket and a negro mixing mint juleps for him."

"We've got to denounce those slanders. I'm a man of cool judgment and I never lose my temper—"

He leaped to his feet purple with rage.

"But, by God, sir, we can't sit quietly under the assault of these narrow-minded bigots. You must give the lie to this infamous book!"

"How can I, my friend?"

"Doesn't she make heroes of law breakers?"

"Surely."

"Is there no reverence for law left in this country?"

"In Courts of Justice, yes. But not in the courts of passion, prejudice, beliefs, sentiment. The writers of sentiment sing the praises of law breakers—"

"But there can be no question of the right or wrong of this book. It is an infamous slander. I deny and impeach it!"

"I'm afraid that's all we can do, Ruffin—deny and impeach it. When we come down to brass tacks we can't answer it. From their standpoint the North is right. From our standpoint we are right, because our rights are clear under the Constitution. Slavery is not a Southern institution; it is a national inheritance. It is a national calamity. It was written into the Constitution by all the States, North and South. And if the North is ignorant of our rights under the laws of our fathers, we have failed to enlighten them—"

"We won't be dictated to, sir, by a lot of fanatics and hypocrites."

"Exactly, we stand on our dignity. We deny and we are ready to fight. But we will not argue. As an abstract proposition in ethics or economics, Slavery does not admit of argument. It is a curse. It's on us and we can't throw it off at once. My quarrel with the North is that they do not give us their sympathy and their help in our dilemma. Instead they rave and denounce and insult us. They are even more responsible than we for the existence of Slavery, since their ships, not ours, brought the negro to our shores. Slavery is an outgrown economic folly, a bar to progress, a political and social curse to the white race. It must die of its own weakness, South, as it died of its own weakness, North. It is now in the process of dying. The South has freed over three hundred thousand slaves by the voluntary act of the master. If these appeals of the mob leader to the spirit of the mob can be stopped, a solution will be found."

"It will never be found in the ravings of Abolitionists."

"Nor in the hot tempers of our Southern partisans, Ruffin. Look in the mirror, my good friend. Chattel Slavery is doomed because of the superior efficiency of the wage system. Morals have nothing to do with it. The Captain of Industry abolished Chattel Slavery in the North, not the preacher or the agitator. He established the wage system in its place because it is a mightier weapon in his hand. It is subject to but one law. The iron law of supply and demand. Labor is a commodity to be bought and sold to the highest bidder. And the highest bidder is at liberty to bid lower than the price of bread, clothes, fuel and shelter, if he chooses. This system is now moving Southward like a glacier from the frozen heart of the Northern mountains, eating all in its path. It is creeping over Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri. It will slowly engulf Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee and the end is sure. Its propelling force is not moral. It is soulless. It is purely economic. The wage earner, driven by hunger and cold, by the fear of the loss of life itself—is more efficient in his toil than the care-free negro slave of the South, who is assured of bread, of clothes, of fuel and shelter, with or without work. Slavery does not admit of argument, my friend. To argue about it is to destroy it."

"I disagree with you, sir!" Ruffin thundered.

"I know you do. But you can't answer this book."

"It can be answered, sir."

Lee paced the floor, his arms folded behind his back, paused and watched

Ruffin's flushed face. He shook his head again.

"The book is unanswerable, because it is an appeal to emotion based on a study of Slavery in the abstract. If no allowance be made for the tender and humane character of the Southern people or the modification of statutory law by the growth of public sentiment, its imaginary scenes are within the bounds of the probable. The story is crude, but it is told with singular power without a trace of bitterness. The blind ferocity of Garrison, who sees in every slaveholder a fiend, nowhere appears in its pages. On the other hand, Mrs. Stowe has painted one slaveholder as gentle and generous. Simon Legree, her villain, is a Yankee who has moved South and taken advantage of the power of a master to work evil. Such men have come South. Such things might be done. It is precisely this possibility that makes Slavery indefensible. You know this. And I know it."

"You astound me, Colonel."

"Yes, I'm afraid I do. I'd like to speak a message to the South about this book. I've a great deal more to say to my own people than to our critics."

Ruffin rose, thrust his hands in his pockets, walked to the window, turned suddenly and faced his host.

"But look here, Colonel Lee, I'm damned if I can agree with you, sir! Suppose Slavery is wrong—an economic fallacy and a social evil—I don't say it is, mind you. Just suppose for the sake of argument that it is. We don't propose to be lectured on this subject by our inferiors in the North. The children of the men who stole these slaves from Africa and sold them to us at a profit!"

Lee laughed softly.

"The sins of an inferior cannot excuse the mistakes of a superior. The man of superior culture and breeding should lead the world in progress. What has come over us in the South, Ruffin? Your father and mine never defended Slavery. They knew it was to them, their children and this land, a curse. It was a blessing only to the savage who was being taught the rudiments of civilization at a tremendous cost to his teacher. The first Abolition Societies were organized in the South. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Randolph, all the great leaders of the old South, the men whose genius created this republic—all denounced Slavery. They told us that it is a poison, breeding pride and tyranny of character, that it corrupts the mind of the child, that it degrades labor, wears out our land, destroys invention, and saps our ideal of liberty. And yet we have begun to defend it."

"Because we are being hounded, traduced and insulted by the North, yes—"

"Yes, but also because we must have more land."

"We've as much right in the West as the North."

"That's not the real reason we demand the right of entry. We are exhausting the soil of the South by our slipshod farming on great plantations where we use old-fashioned tools and slave labor. We refuse to study history. Ancient empires tried this system and died. The Carthagenians developed it to perfection and fell before the Romans. The Romans borrowed it from Carthage. It destroyed the small farms and drove out the individual land owners. It destroyed respect for trades and crafts. It strangled the development of industrial art. And when the test came Roman civilization passed. You hot-heads under the goading of Abolition crusaders now blindly propose to build the whole structure of Southern Society on this system."

"We've no choice, sir."

"Then we must find one. Slowly but surely the clouds gather for the storm. We catch only the first rumblings now but it's coming."

Ruffin flared.

"Now listen to me, Colonel. I'm a man of cool judgment and I never lose my temper, sir—"

He choked with passion, recovered and rushed on.

"If they ever dare attack us, we won't need writers. We'll draw our swords and thrash them! The South is growing rich and powerful."

Lee lifted his hand in a quick gesture of protest.

"A popular delusion, my friend. Under Slave labor the South is growing poorer daily. While the Northern States, under the wage system, ten times more efficient, are draining the blood and treasure of Europe and growing richer by leaps and bounds. Norfolk, Richmond and Charleston should have been the great cities of the Eastern Seaboard. They are as yet unimportant towns in the world commerce. Boston, Philadelphia and New York have become the centers of our business life, of our trade, our culture, our national power. While slavery is scratching the surface of our soil with old-fashioned plows, while we quit work at twelve o'clock every Saturday, spend our Sundays at church, and set two negroes to help one do nothing Monday morning, the North is sweeping onward in the science of agriculture. While they invent machines which double their crops, cut their labor down a hundred per cent, we are fighting for new lands in the West to exhaust by our primitive methods. The treasures of the earth yet lie in our mines untouched by pick or spade. Our forests stand unbroken—vast reaches of wilderness. The slave is slow and wasteful. Wage labor, quick, efficient. Our chief industry is the breeding of a race of feverish politicians."

"You know, Colonel Lee, as well as I do that Slavery in the South has been a blessing to the negro."

Lee moved his head in quick assent.

"I admit that Slavery took the negro from the jungle, from a slavery the most cruel known to human history, that it has taught him the use of tools, the science of agriculture, the worship of God, the first lessons in the alphabet of humanity. But unless we can now close this school, my friend, somebody is going to try to divide this Union some day—"

Ruffin struck his hands together savagely.

"The quicker the better, I say! If the children of the men who created this republic are denied equal rights under its laws and in its Territories, then I say, to your tents, oh, Israel!"

"And do you know what that may mean?"

"A Southern and a Northern Nation. Let them come!"

"The States have been knit together slowly, but inevitably by steam and electricity. I can conceive of no greater tragedy than an attempt to-day to divide them."

"I can conceive of no greater blessing!" Ruffin fairly shouted.

"So William Lloyd Garrison, the leader of Abolition, is saying in his paper The Liberator. And, Ruffin, unless we can lock up some hot-heads in the South and such fanatics as Garrison in the North, the mob, not the statesman, is going to determine the laws and the policy of this country. Somebody will try to divide the Union. And then comes the deluge! When I think of it, the words of Thomas Jefferson ring through my soul like an alarm bell in the night. 'I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just and that His justice cannot sleep forever. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than these black people shall be free—'"

Ruffin lifted his hand in a commanding gesture.

"Don't omit his next sentence, sir—'nor is it less certain, that the two races, equally free, cannot live under the same government—'"

"Exactly," Lee answered solemnly. "And that is the only reason why I have ever allowed myself to own a slave for a moment—the insoluble problem of what to do with him when freed. The one excuse for Slavery which the South can plead without fear before the judgment bar of God is the blacker problem which their emancipation will create. Unless it can be brought about in a miracle of patience, wisdom and prayer."

He paused and smiled at Ruffin's forlorn expression.

"Will you call your reporter now to take my views?"

"No, sir," the planter growled. "I've changed my mind."

The Colonel laughed softly.

"I thought you might."

Ruffin gazed in silence through the window at the blinking lights in Washington, turned and looked moodily at his calm host. He spoke in a slow, dreamy monotone, his eyes on space seeing nothing:

"Colonel Lee, this country is hell bent and hell bound. I can see no hope for it."

Lee lifted his head with firm faith.

"Ruffin, this country is in God's hands—and He will do what's right—"

"That's just what I'm afraid, sir!" Ruffin mused. "Oh, no—I—don't mean that exactly. I mean that we must anticipate—"

"The wisdom of God?"

"That we must prepare to meet our enemies, sir."

"I agree with you. And I'm going to do it. I've been doing a lot of thinking and soul searching since you gave me this troublesome book to read—"

He stopped short, rose and drew the old-fashioned bell cord.

Ben appeared in full blue cloth and brass buttons, on duty again as butler.