Читать книгу Mam' Linda - Will N. Harben - Страница 7

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N the rear of the long store, at a round table under a hanging-lamp with a tin shade, four young men sat playing poker. The floor of that portion of the room was raised several feet higher than that of the front, and between the two short flights of steps was the inclining door leading to the cellar, which was damp and dark and used only for the storage of salt, syrup, sugar, hardware, and general rubbish.

Near the front door the store-keeper, James Blackburn, a portly, bearded man of forty-five, sat chatting with Carson Dwight, a young lawyer of the town.

“I don't want any of you boys to think that I'm complaining,” the elder man was saying. “I've been young myself; in fact, as you know, I go the gaits too, considering that I'm tied down by a family and have a living to make. I love to have the gang around—I swear I do, though sometimes I declare it looks like this old shebang is more of a place of amusement than a business house in good standing.”

“Oh, I know we hang around here too much,” Carson Dwight replied; “and you ought to kick us out, the last one of us.”

“Oh, it isn't so bad at night like this, when trade's over, but it is sort o' embarrassing during the day. Why, what do you think? A Bradstreet commercial reporter was in the other day to get a statement of my standing, and while he was here Keith Gordon—look at him now, the scamp! holding his cards over his head; that's a bluff. I'll bet he hasn't got a ten-spot. While that agent was here Keith and a lot more of your gang were back there on the platform dancing a hoe-down. The dust was so thick you couldn't see the windows. The reporter looked surprised, but he didn't say anything. I told him I thought I'd be able to pay for all I bought in market, and that I had no idea how much I was worth. I haven't invoiced my stock in ten years. When I run low I manage to replenish somehow, and so it goes on from year to year.”

“Well, I am going to talk to the boys,” Dwight said. “They are taking advantage of your goodnature. The whole truth is they consider you one of them, Jim. Marrying didn't change you. You are as full of devilment as any of the rest, and they know it, and love to hang around you.”

“Well, I reckon that's a fact,” Blackburn answered, “and I believe I'd rather you wouldn't mention it. I think a sight of the gang, and I wouldn't hurt their feelings for the world. After all, what does it matter? Life is short, and if Trundle & Hodgson are getting more mountain custom than I am, I'll bet I get the biggest slice of life. They'll die rich, but, like as not, friendless. By-the-way, I see your partner coming across the street. I forgot to tell you; he was looking for you a few minutes ago. You had a streak of luck when you joined issues with him; Bill Gamer's a rough sort o' chap, but he is by all odds the brainiest lawyer in Georgia to-day.”

At this juncture a man of medium stature, with a massive head crowned by a shock of reddish hair, a smooth-shaven, freckled face, and small feet and hands stood in the doorway. He wore a long black broadcloth coat, a waistcoat of the same material, and baggy gray trousers. The exposed portion of his shirt-front and the lapels of his coat were stained by tobacco juice.

“I've been up to the den, over to the Club, and the Lord only knows where else looking for you,” he said to his partner, as he advanced, leaned against a showcase on the counter, and stretched out his arms behind him.

“Work for us, eh?” Carson smiled.

“No; since when have you ever done a lick after dark?” was the dry reply. “I've come to give you a piece of advice, and I'm glad Blackburn is here to join me. The truth is, Dan Willis is in town. He is full and loaded for bear. He's down at the wagon-yard with a gang of his mountain pals. Some meddling person—no doubt your beautiful political opponent Wiggin—has told him what you said about the part he took in the mob that raided! negro town.”

“Well, he doesn't deny it, does he?” Dwight asked, his eyes flashing.

“I don't know whether he does or not,” said Gamer. “But I know he's the most reckless and dangerous man in the county, and when he is drunk he will halt at nothing. I thought I'd advise you to avoid him.”

“Avoid him? You mean to say”—Dwight stood up in his anger—“that I, a free-born American citizen, must sneak around in my own home to avoid a man that puts on a white mask and sheet and with fifty others like himself steals into town and nearly thrashes the life out of a lot of banjo-picking negroes? Most of them were good-for-nothing, lazy scamps, but they were born that way, and there was one in the bunch that I know was harmless. Oh yes, I got mad about it, and I talked plainly, I know, but I couldn't help it.”

“You could have helped it,” Gamer said, testily; “and you ought to have protected your own interests better than to give Wiggin such a strong pull over you. If you are elected it will be by the aid of that very mob and their kin and friends. We may be able to smooth it all over, but if you have an open row with Dan Willis to-night, the cause of it will spread like wildfire, and bum votes for you in wads and bunches. Good God, man, the idea of giving Wiggin a torch like that to wave in the face of your constituency—you, a town man, standing up for the black criminal brutes that are plotting to pull down the white race! I say that's the way Wiggin and Dan Willis would interpret your platform.”

“I can't help it,” Dwight repeated, more calmly, though his voice shook with suppressed feeling as he went on. “If I lose all I hope for politically—and this seems like the best chance I'll ever have to get to the legislature—I'll stand by my convictions. We must have law and order among ourselves if we expect to teach such things to poor, half-witted black people. I was mad that night. You know that I love the South. Its blood is my blood. Three of my mother's brothers and two of my father's died fighting for the 'Lost Cause,' and my father was under fire from the beginning of the war to the end. In fact, it is my love for the South, and all that is good and pure and noble in it, that made my blood boil that night. I saw a part of it you didn't see.”

“What was that?” Garner asked.

“It was a clear moonlight night,” Dwight went on. “I was sitting at the window of my room at home, looking out over Major Warren's yard, when the first screams and shouts came from the negro quarter. I suspected what it was, for I'd heard of the threats the mountaineers had made against that part of town, but I wasn't prepared for what I actually saw. The cottage of old Uncle Lewis and Mammy Linda is just behind the Major's house, you know, and in plain view of my window. I saw the old pair come to the door and run out into the yard, and then I heard Linda's voice. 'It's my child!' she screamed. 'They are killing him!' Uncle Lewis tried to quiet her, but she stood there wringing her hands and sobbing and praying. The Major raised the window of his room and looked out, and I heard him ask what was wrong. Uncle Lewis tried to explain, but his voice could not be heard above his wife's cries. A few minutes later Pete came running down the street. They had let him go. His clothes were torn to strips and his back was livid with great whelks. He had no sooner reached the old folks than he keeled over in a faint. The Major came down, and he and I bent over the boy and finally restored him to consciousness. Major Warren was the maddest man I ever saw, and a mob a hundred strong couldn't have touched the negro and left him alive.”

“I know, that was all bad enough,” Garner admitted, “but antagonizing those men now won't better the matter and may do you more political damage than you'll get over in a lifetime. You can't be a politician and a preacher both; they don't go together. You can't dispute that the negro quarter of this town was a disgrace to a civilized community before the White Caps raided it. Look at it now. There never was such a change. It is as quiet as a Philadelphia graveyard.”

“It's the way they went about it that made me mad,” Carson Dwight retorted. “Besides, I know that boy. He is as harmless as a kitten, and he only hung around those dives because he loved to sing and dance with the rest. I did get mad; I'm mad yet. My people never lashed their slaves when they were in bondage; why should I stand by and see them beaten now by men who never owned negroes and never loved or understood them? Before the war a white man would stand up and protect his slaves; why shouldn't he now take up for at least the most faithful of their descendants?”

“That's it,” Blackburn spoke up, admiringly. “You are a chip off of the old block, Carson. Your daddy would have shot any man who tried to whip one of his negroes. You can't help the way you feel; but I agree with Bill here, you can't get the support of mountain people if you don't, at least, pretend to see things their way.”,

“Well, I can't see this thing their way,” fumed Dwight; “and I'm not going to try. When I saw that old black man and woman that awful night with their very heart-strings torn and bleeding, and remembered that they had been kind to my mother when she was at the point of death—sitting by her bedside all night long as patiently as blocks of stone, and shedding tears of joy at the break of day when the doctor said the crisis had passed—when I think of that and admit that I stand by with folded hands and see their only child beaten till he is insensible, my blood boils with utter shame. It has burned a great lesson into my brain, and that is that we have got to have law and order among ourselves if we expect to keep the good opinion of the world at large.”

“I understand Pete would have got off much easier if he hadn't fought them like a tiger,” said Blackburn. “They say—”

“And why shouldn't he have fought?” Carson asked, quickly. “The nearer the brute creation a man is the more he'll fight. A tame dog will fight if you drive him into a corner and strike him hard enough.”

“Well, you busted up our game,” joined in Keith Gordon, who had left the table in the rear and now came forward, accompanied by another young man, Wade Tingle, the editor of the Headlight. “Wade and I both agree, Carson, that you've got to handle Dan Willis cautiously. We are backing you tooth and toe-nail in this campaign, but you'll tie our hands if you antagonize the mountain element. Wiggin knows that, and he is working it for all it's worth.”

“That's right, old man,” the editor joined in, earnestly. “I may as well be plain with you. I'm making a big issue out of my support of you, but if you make the country people mad they will stop taking my paper. I can't live without their patronage, and I simply can't back you if you don't stick to me.”

“I wasn't raising a row,” the young candidate said. “But Garner came to me just now, actually advising me to avoid that dirty scoundrel. I won't dodge any blustering bully who is going about threatening what he will do to me when he meets me face to face. I want your support, but I can't buy it that way.”

“Well,” Garner said, grimly, more to the others than to his partner, “there will be a row right here inside of ten minutes. I see that now. Willis has heard certain things Carson has said about the part he took in that raid, and he is looking for trouble. Carson isn't in the mood to take back anything, and a fool can see how it will end.”