Part 23 (1/2)

”Miss La Heu,” I said, ”I could not tell you, you would not wish me to tell you, what the sight of Kings Port has made me feel. But you will let me say this: I have understood for a long while about your old people, your old ladies, whose faces are so fine and sad.”

I paused, but she merely looked at me, and her eyes were hard.

”And I may say this, too. I thank you very sincerely for bringing completely home to me what I had begun to make out for myself. I hope the Daughters of Dixie will go on singing of their heroes.”

I paused again, and now she looked away, out of the window into Royal Street.

”Perhaps,” I still continued, ”you will hardly believe me when I say that I have looked at your monuments here with an emotion more poignant even than that which Northern monuments raise in me.”

”Why?”

”Oh!” I exclaimed. ”Need you have asked that? The North won.”

”You are quite dispa.s.sionate!” Her eyes were always toward the window.

”That's my 'sacred trust.'”

It made her look at me. ”Yours?”

”Not yours--yet! It would be yours if you had won.” I thought a slight change came in her steady scrutiny. ”And, Miss La Heu, it was awful about the negro. It is awful. The young North thinks so just as much as you do. Oh, we shock our old people! We don't expect them to change, but they mustn't expect us not to. And even some of them have begun to whisper a little doubtfully. But never mind them--here's the negro. We can't kick him out. That plan is childish. So, it's like two men having to live in one house. The white man would keep the house in repair, the black would let it rot. Well, the black must take orders from the white.

And it will end so.”

She was eager. ”Slavery again, you think?”

”Oh, never! It was too injurious to ourselves. But something between slavery and equality.” And I ended with a quotation: ”'Patience, cousin, and shuffle the cards.'”

”You may call me cousin--this once--because you have been, really, quite nice--for a Northerner.”

Now we had come to the place where she must understand me.

”Not a Northerner, Miss La Heu.”

She became mocking. ”Scarcely a Southerner, I presume?”

But I kept my smile and my directness. ”No more a Southerner than a Northerner.”

”Pray what, then?”

”An American.”

She was silent.

”It's the 'sacred trust'--for me.”

She was still silent.

”If my state seceded from the Union tomorrow, I should side with the Union against her.”

She was frankly astonished now. ”Would you really?” And I think some light about me began to reach her. A Northerner willing to side against a Northern state! I was very glad that I had found that phrase to make clear to her my American creed.