Читать книгу The Call of the South - Robert Lee Durham - Страница 5

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After lingering at the entrance of the armory for a few minutes to see Hal Lodge, and failing to find him, Graham, still gloomily and resentfully meditating upon his rejection by the regiment, started briskly toward the temporary lodgings of his mother and himself as if he had some purpose in mind. Arrived there, he began catechizing her even while removing his overcoat.

"Look here, mother, put down that work for awhile, and tell me all about my people."

"What is it, Hayward? What do you want to know?" his mother asked.

"I want you to tell me all about my father and grandfathers and grandmothers, everything you know—who they were, and what they were, and what they did, and where they lived—the whole thing."

"And what is the matter that you want to know all that at once? Are you still worrying about not getting into that regiment?"

"Yes; I want to know why I am not good enough to go to war along with respectable people—if there is any reason."

"Honey, you are just as good as any of them, and better than most. I wouldn't think about it any more if I were you."

"Well, I'm not going to think about it any more—after to-night; but I want to know all about it right now. Where was father from? You have never told me that."

"Well, honey, I don't know myself; for he never told me nor any one else that. All I know is that something—he never would say what—made him leave his father and mother when he was not twenty years old and he never saw them afterwards,—didn't let them know where he was or even that he was alive. Your pa was mighty high-spirited, and he never seemed to forget whatever it was that came between him and his father; though he would talk about him some too, and appeared to worship his mother's memory. They must have been very prominent people from what he said of them. His mother died very soon after he left home, he told me; and your grandfather was killed not long after that in a battle right at the beginning of the war, I've heard him say; but he didn't seem to like to talk of them."

"Didn't father say which side my grandfather was on?"

"On our side—the Union side."

"And father was in the war?"

"Yes, but I forget what he did. He had some sort of a badge or medal tied up with a red, white and blue ribbon that I found in his trunk after he died; but I gave it to you to play with when you were little and you lost it. That had something to do with the war, but I didn't understand exactly what. He didn't like to talk about the war. When we were first married he used to say that the war was the first battle and the easiest, and that he was enlisted for the second and intended to see it through. But before he died I often heard him say that the war was only clearing away the brush, and what the crop would be depended on what was planted and how it was tended, and that his great-grandchildren might see the harvest."

"Where did you first meet him?"

"Down in Alabama. He went down there soon after the war to teach school, just as I did. I had been to college and got my diploma and I wanted to teach; but it seemed I could not get a position in the whole State of New Hampshire. So when some of the people offered to send me down to Alabama to teach the negroes, I went. Your father had a school for negroes not very far from mine, and he had had a hard time from the very first. None of the respectable white people would have anything to do with him, and he could not get board from any one but negroes. But the worse the people treated him the harder he worked, and his school grew. Finally it became so large that he could not do the work alone. He tried every way to get another teacher, but could not. As a last resort he asked me to combine my school with his and see if we could not manage in that way to teach all the children who came. I never saw anybody with a heart so set as his was on giving every little negro a chance to learn.

"So we combined the schools and were getting along very well when one day as your father was coming out of the post-office in the little town near which we taught, a young man named Bush stepped up in front of him and cursed him and said something about me that your father never would tell me. Your father knocked him down and he was nearly killed by striking his head against a hitching-post as he fell. The next morning a committee of some of the citizens came to the schoolhouse, and Colonel Allen, who was one of them, told your father that the community was greatly aroused by the condition of affairs, and that the injury done to young Bush, while they didn't approve of Bush's conduct, had brought the trouble to a head. He said that sober-minded citizens didn't want any outbreak, but that the peculiar relation existing between your father and me outraged the sentiments of every respectable man and woman in the county."

"Did father hit him?"

"No, honey; but he rose right up without waiting to hear any more and told Colonel Allen that as for the injury to young Bush he had done nothing more than defend the good name of a woman and had no apologies or explanations to offer. He talked quite a long time to them, and I could see that they didn't like some of the things he said. As he finished he told them that he could see that our condition, cut off as we were from association with respectable people by prejudice and from the lower classes because of their dense ignorance, and thrown into intimacy by our work, was somewhat unusual, but that was because of conditions we could not control and be true to our work. He would try to arrange, he told them, if they would give him a week, so that there would be no grounds for these criticisms. They asked him what he proposed to do, but he said he couldn't answer them then.

"They gave him the week he asked for, and left us. He dismissed the school when the committee was gone, and when all the children had scampered out of the schoolhouse he told me that while we could not be blamed for the way things had come about, it was true that our being so much together and cut off from everybody else gave our critics a chance to talk, and his solution of the difficulty was for us to be married—at once. He went on to say a whole lot of things, honey, that I never imagined he thought of, and wound up by declaring that I owed it to the work we had begun to make any sacrifices to carry it on. Now, honey, there was never a better, braver man than your father, nor a better looking one, I think, and there was no reason why I should not love him. I was younger then than I am now and I was not a bad-looking girl myself, and I did not think till long afterwards that when he spoke of my sacrifices he was thinking of his own.

"Well, he made what arrangements were necessary that evening, and we were married by a Bureau officer of some kind or other next morning before time for school. When school assembled he sent a note by one of the boys to Colonel Allen, saying that we had arranged the matter so that there could be no further objection to our running the school in together, and informed him that we were married."

"And what reply did Colonel Allen send to that note?" Hayward asked his mother with great interest.

"He didn't send any," she replied; "but came along with some others of the committee in about half an hour to bring his answer himself."

"What did he say?"

"Well, he started off by saying to your father that there could be no doubt that what we had done would make the people forget their former objections, but he thought it would be because the former offence against their notions of propriety would be lost sight of in their unspeakable indignation at this method we had adopted, which, he said, struck at the very foundation of their civilization. He talked very high and mighty, I thought, and though he pretended to try to hold himself down and not get mad, he ripped and charged a long time right there before the whole school, and finally told us he would do all he could to keep the people from doing us harm, but he advised us to leave the community just as soon as we could, as he wouldn't be responsible for the result of our act."

"What did father say to that?" Hayward asked eagerly.

"Well, he waited until Colonel Allen got through and then said very quietly that he had done what he had because he had appreciated the force of the objections that had been raised to our intimate association and was always willing to be governed by the proprieties, but that he did not agree with Colonel Allen about uprooting any principle of civilization, that times and conditions had changed, and, while he knew the sentiment of the people would be against our marriage, he thought that sentiment was wrong and would have to give way before the pressure of the new order of things, that the law had married us and we would look to the law to protect us. He said that the work we were doing was worthy of any man's effort, that he had consecrated himself to it and was not going to be driven from it by any predictions of danger, that I was his wife and he would protect me."

"What did the honourable committee think of that?"

"I don't know. Colonel Allen and the other men just turned around without saying another word and left the schoolhouse."

"Did you run the school on after that?"

"Yes, honey, but not for long. One night when those awful people came to destroy things at the schoolhouse as they had done several times before, your father was there to meet them and identify them. Instead of running away as he thought they would, they crowded around him, and after a struggle in the dark they left him lying just outside the door with a broken arm, a pistol-ball through his side, and unconscious from a lick on the head. Some of the coloured people who lived near there heard the row, and after it was all over and all those folks were gone, they slipped up there and found your father and brought him home.

"It was hard for us to get a doctor at first. A young one who lived nearest to us wouldn't come, though we sent for him, and we were all frightened nearly to death. We could hear those awful people yell every once and awhile away off on all sides of the house, then they would fire off guns and pistols—it was an awful night, Hayward. At last old Doctor Wright came about three o'clock in the morning. He lived ten miles or more from us, and we thought that your father, who was raving and moaning, would surely die before he got there. But the old doctor told us as soon as he examined him that he would pull through all right. He said that he had been a surgeon in Stonewall Jackson's corps and that he had seen men forty times worse hurt back in the army in two months. That made us feel a great deal better, I tell you. Your father came to his senses before the old man quit working with him, and when he heard that the young doctor had refused to come to see him (because he was scared, the negro who went for him said), and that the old man had ridden so far through a very cold and wet night to help him, I never heard any one say more to express his thanks than your father did. The old doctor listened to it all without making any answer except an occasional grunt. When he got ready to go home I asked him if he would not prefer to wait till daylight, for fear those awful men would hurt him."

"And did he wait?" interrupted Graham.

"No. He stiffened up as straight as his rheumatism would let him and stumped indignantly out of the house with his pill-bags in one hand and in the other an old pair of home-knit woollen gloves he wouldn't stop to put on—I can see him now."

"Did he ever come back?" asked Graham.

"Oh, yes. The sight of him on his tall pacing bay mare made us glad every two or three days till your father got well."

"The old doctor evidently didn't agree with his neighbours about you and father, then."

"I don't know about that. He never would discuss our troubles or speak any words of sympathy; and on the last day he came, when your father was thanking him as he had done so often for his kindness to him, the old man asked him in his rather curt manner, 'Don't they need school-teachers up north?'"

"Did you and father leave that place as soon as he got well?"

"No. Your father said that we would stick to it to the end; and as soon as he was able to teach we opened the school again, but in less than a week the schoolhouse was burned down. We rented another after some trouble, but that was burned promptly also. Then it became impossible to get one.

"We decided it would be best for us to go away to some place where the people were not prejudiced against us. We moved more than a dozen times, but were never able to stay longer than a few months at most, and often had to pack up almost before we finished unpacking. Finally we lost all hope of being able to teach the negroes in the South, and decided to go home. Your father did go so far as to suggest that if I would go back North and leave him down there alone the people might not molest him. He certainly did have his heart in the work. As I did not like the idea, however, he dropped it."

"And that's when father got the professorship at Oberlin?"

"Yes; and kept it till his death."

"I can hardly recollect father at all," said the son, "though it seems sometimes I remember how he looked. I wish I could have been older before he died."

"Well, you were not two years old at your father's death, Hayward, and really saw very little of him. He never seemed to care for children. Your two sisters that died before you were born—it seemed that sometimes a week would pass without his being conscious that they were in the house. He was so absorbed in his work that he didn't have time for anything else. His hard work and disappointment over the failure that he had made down South was what killed him, I have always thought. Though he lingered for many years, he was so broken-spirited after we went to Ohio that his health gave way, and he was not more than a shadow when he died. I am not sorry that you do not remember how he looked at the last.

"But, honey," the mother continued after some moments of silence, "you ought to be proud of your father. I wish you could have heard the funeral sermon Doctor Johnson preached. He did not say anything about your father's being in the war of the rebellion, but he told about his trials and struggles to teach the negroes in the South, and said that in that work John Graham was as much a soldier and was as brave and faithful as any man who ever fought for the flag. If these folks here could have heard that sermon they never would have voted to keep you from joining the regiment."

"Oh, it's not because of what my father did or did not do," said Graham impatiently; "nor is it because of what I've done or left undone, nor of what they think I would do or would not do if they kindly permitted me to enlist. No, no. It's because I'm part negro—though I'm quite as white as a number I saw there to-night. Now, mother, exactly how much negro am I? You've told me your father was a white man; but who was your mother, and what do you know about her?"

"Yes, my father was a white man. He was a German just come over to this country. He had a beer saloon in a New Hampshire town—at least he bought it afterwards. He worked in the saloon when my mother, who had run away from Kentucky, was hired to work in his employer's house. He boarded there and she was treated something like a member of the family, although she was a servant, and they were married after awhile. Some few of the people didn't like it, I've heard mammy say, but they got along without any trouble; and when my father saved up some money he bought the little saloon from his employer and made some little money before he died. We had a hard enough time getting it, though, goodness knows. I moved back to New Hampshire from Ohio after your father's death in order to push the case through the—"

"Yes, yes, I've heard that before," said Hayward; "but tell me about your mother's running away from her master. You have never told me anything about her, except that her name was Cindy or Lucinda, and that she belonged to General Young."

"Well, honey, she was just a slave girl that belonged to General Young over in Kentucky. She ran away and got across the river without being caught, and some of the white people helped her to get on as far as New Hampshire and got her that place to work where my father boarded. She and my father were—"

"Yes, yes, I know," the son interrupted again, "but what made her run away and leave her father and mother—did she know her father and mother?"

"I don't know that I remember it all," said the mother evasively, "and it doesn't make any difference anyway."

"Oh, well, go on and tell what you know or have heard. Let's get at the bottom of it. I declare I believe you don't like my being a negro any better than those dudes in the 71st."

The mother laughed at his statement; and seemed pleased at the interruption, for she made no move to proceed with the narrative. Graham looked at her quietly a few moments, and, ascribing her reticence to unwillingness to descant upon the negro element in her ancestry, which was indeed a part but a very small part of her motive, repeated his demand for information sharply.

"Oh, honey," cried his mother, "don't ask me any more about it. I just made mammy tell me all about her father and mother and her running away from Kentucky, and I wish to the Lord I never had! It was just awful."

"So! Well, now I must know. Go on and tell it. The quicker you do the sooner it will be over. Go on, I say. What was your mother's father named?"

"Gumbo—Guinea Gumbo."

"Poetic name that! And her mother's name, what was it?"

"Big Lize."

"Not so poetic, though it sounds like some poetry I've read, too. And now what did this pair do or suffer that was so terrible? It's no use dodging any longer."

"Well, child, if I must, I suppose I must. My mother's mother didn't do anything that was awful; but Guinea Gumbo—I wish I knew I was no kin to him. Mammy said he was brought right from Africa and was as wild as a wolf. Nobody could understand much that he said, and General Young had a time keeping him from tearing things up. He used to run away and stay in the swamp for weeks at a time. The children on the place, black and white, were as scared of him as death, and none of the slave women would ever go about him if they could help it. Not long after General Young bought him, Gumbo and his first wife, who was brought over from Africa with him, had the plans all fixed to steal one of the General's little boys, five or six years old, and carry him off to the river-swamp and have a regular cannibal feast of him. General Young found it out in time; and mammy said the old negroes on the plantation said that was what killed the woman, the whipping she and Gumbo got for it. It laid Gumbo up for a long time, but he got over it. It seemed that nothing but shooting could kill him."

"Did they shoot him to kill him? What was that for?" asked Graham.

"Honey, that is the awful part of it. Mammy said that one day her young mistis, the General's oldest daughter, didn't come home from a ride she had taken, and the whole plantation was turned out to find her. But some one came along and told the General that she had eloped across the river with a young man he had forbidden to come on the place, and all the people on the plantation went back to their quarters. As the young man could not be found, everybody thought that he and Miss Lily had run away and married and were too much afraid of her father to come back home. The next day, however, the young man turned up, and swore he had not seen Miss Lily in a week. Then the plantation was in terror.—Honey, I can't tell you the rest.—They found her.—When they were calling out all the people from the quarters, the General learned that Gumbo had not been seen since Miss Lily was lost. He had run away so often that no attention was paid to it, for he always came back after a time.—They got the bloodhounds, mammy said, and went to the swamp. After a long time the dogs struck Gumbo's trail, and—yes, they found her,—tied hands and feet and her clothing torn to strings, in a kind of hut made of bark and brush way back in the swamp. She was dead, but she had not been dead an hour, from a gash in her head made by an axe. The dogs followed a hot scent from the hut for another hour, and led the men to where they had run Gumbo down. That was where they shot him—and left him. He still had the axe, and had killed one of the dogs, and nobody could get to him. They didn't want to, I suppose."

Graham had listened to his mother's last words without breathing, and when she stopped he dropped his face in his hands with a groan.... She began again in a few moments:

"Mammy said that when they brought her young mistis back home the General went off in a fit, and raved and cursed till the doctors and the rest of 'em had to hold him to keep him from killing somebody. Mammy was one of her old mistis's house-girls, and she heard all the General's ravings and screams that he would kill every nigger on the place; and he kept it up so long and kept breaking out again so after they thought they had him pacified that mammy said she was scared so bad she just couldn't stay there any longer: and that's what made her run away the very next night. She had a hard time getting across the river, but after she got over safe she didn't have much trouble, for some of the white people took charge of her and helped her to get further on north. Pappy always said—"

"Oh, Lord, that's enough!" the son broke in, raising his head out of his hands, and interrupting his mother's flow of words, of which he had noted little since hearing the tragic story of his savage great-grandfather. He rose from his chair impatiently.

"So I am Hayward Graham, son of Patricia Schmidt, daughter of Cindy—nothing, daughter of Gumbo—nothing."

"Guinea Gumbo," corrected his mother.

"Oh, I beg my distinguished ancestor's pardon for presuming to credit him with only one name. A gentleman with his record ought to have as many as Kaiser Bill," drawled Graham sarcastically. Then with better humour he said to his mother, "And will you please to inform me from which of your ancestors you inherited that name of Patricia?"

"Mammy named me that for her old mistis."