Part 21 (2/2)

He was a man of gentle, humane impulses and looked out upon the world with the kindliest fatherly eyes. It was one of the curious freaks of fate that he should fall under the influence of Brown. The stern old Puritan was his ant.i.thesis in every line of face and mental make-up.

Smith was the preacher, the theorist, and the dreamer.

Brown had become the man of Action.

And by Action he meant exactly what the modern Social anarchist means by _direct action_. The plan he had developed was to come to ”close quarters” with Slavery. He had organized the Band of Gileadites to kill every officer of the law who attempted to enforce the provisions of the Const.i.tution of the United States relating to Slavery. His eyes were now fixed on the Territory of Kansas.

There could be no doubt about the abnormality of the mind of the man who had const.i.tuted himself the Chosen Instrument of Almighty G.o.d to destroy chattel Slavery in the South.

He was pacing the floor of the parlor of the New Astor House awaiting the arrival of his friend, Congressman Gerrit Smith, for a conference before the meeting scheduled for eight o'clock. It was a characteristic of Brown that he couldn't sit still. He paced the floor.

The way he walked marked him with distinction, if not eccentricity. He walked always with a quick, springing step. He didn't swing his foot. It worked on springs. And the spring in it had a furtive action not unlike the movement of a leopard. His muscles, in spite of his fifty-four years, were strong and sinewy. He was five feet ten inches in height.

His head was remarkable for its small size. The brain s.p.a.ce was limited and the hair grew low on his forehead, as if a hark back to the primitive man out of which humanity grew. His chin protruded into an aggressive threat. His mouth was not only stern, it was as inexorable as an oath.

His hair was turning gray and he wore it trimmed close to his small skull. His nose was an aggressive Roman type. The expression of his face was shrewd and serious, with a touch always of cunning.

A visitor at his house at North Elba whispered one day to one of his sons:

”Your father looks like an eagle.”

The boy hesitated and replied in deep seriousness:

”Yes, or some other carnivorous bird.”

The thing above all others that gave him the look of a bird of prey was his bluish-gray eye. An eye that was never still and always shone with a glitter. The only time this strange light was not noticeable was during the moments when he drew the lids down half-way. He was in the habit of holding his eyes half shut in times of deep thinking. At these moments if he raised his head, his eyes glowed two pin points of light.

No matter what the impression he made, either of attraction or repulsion, his personality was a serious proposition. No man looked once only. And no man ever attempted undue familiarity or ridicule. His life to this time had been a series of tragic failures in everything he had undertaken. A study of his intense Puritan face revealed at once his fundamental character. A soul at war with the world. A soul at war with himself. He was the incarnation of repressed emotions and desires. He had married twice and his fierce pa.s.sions had made him the father of twenty children before fifty years of age. His first wife had given birth to seven in ten years and died a raving maniac during the birth of her last. Two of his children had already shown the signs of unbalanced mentality.

The grip of his mind on the individuals who allowed themselves to be drawn within the circle of his influence became absolute.

He was a man of earnest and constant prayer to his G.o.d. The G.o.d he wors.h.i.+pped was one whose face was not yet revealed to the crowd that hung on his strangely halting words. He spoke in mystic symbols. His mysticism was always the source of his power over the religious leaders who had gathered about him. They had not stopped to a.n.a.lyze the meaning of this appeal. They looked once into his s.h.i.+ning blue-gray eyes and became his followers. He never stopped to reason.

He spoke with authority.

He claimed a divine commission for action and they did not pause to examine his credentials. He had failed at every enterprise he had undertaken. And then he suddenly discovered his power over the Puritan imagination.

To Brown's mind, from the day of his devotion to the fixed idea of destroying Slavery in the South, ”Action” had but one meaning--bloodshed. He knew that revolutionary ideas are matters of belief. He a.s.serted beliefs. The elect believed. The d.a.m.ned refused to believe.

Long before Smith had entered the room Brown had dropped into a seat by the window, his eyes two pin points. His abstraction was so deep, his absorption in his dreams so complete that when Smith spoke, he leaped to his feet and put himself in an att.i.tude of defense.

He gazed at his friend a moment and rubbed his eyes in a dazed way before he could come back to earth.

In a moment he had clasped hands with the philanthropist. Smith looked into his eyes and his will was one with the man of Action. He had not yet grasped the full meaning of the Action. He was to awake later to its tremendous import--primitive, barbaric, animal, linking man through hundreds of thousands of years to the beast who was his jungle father.

Smith did not know that he was to preside at the meeting until Brown told him. He consented without a moment's hesitation.

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