Part 37 (1/2)
”I'll be back in a minute, General.”
”My boy, the grave's full of nice fellows going to be back in a minute.
Son John, there's only one thing I'm thoroughly ashamed of you for----”
”I can see you half a dozen better, General; let me go.”
”You've no need to go; Proudfit's coming right back; he's only gone for his horse. There's plenty of time to hear the little I've got to say.
John March, I'm ashamed of this reputation you've got for being quick on the trigger. O, you're much admired for it--by both s.e.xes! Ye G.o.ds!
John, isn't it pitiful to see a fellow like you not able to keep a kindly contempt for the opinion of fools! My dear boy--my dear boy!
you'll never be worth powder enough to blow you to the devil till you've learned to let the sun go down on your wrath!”
John smiled and dropped his eyes, and the General, with an imperative gesture detaining some one at the young man's back, spoke on. ”John, the old year's dying. For G.o.d's sake let it die in peace. Yes, and for your own sake, and for the sake of us old murderers of the years long dead, let as many old things as will die with it. I don't say bury anything alive--that's not my prescription; but ease their righteous death and give them a grave they'll stay in.”
”General, all right! the Colonel may go for the present, but I'll tell you now, and I'll soon show him, that whatever the laws of my State give me leave to do I'll do if I choose, even if it's to help black men do what white men say shan't be done.” John reached behind him for the latch.
His mentor smiled queerly. ”Yes, even if it's to float a scheme drawing twice as much water as we've got on our political sandbar. Ah! John March, don't you know that the law's permission is never enough? Better get all the permissions you can, and turn your 'I' into the most mult.i.tudinous 'we' you can possibly make it. Seven legislatures can't dig you too much channel.”
March's reply was cut short by a voice behind him, which said:
”You can have the _Courier's_ permission.”
As John wheeled about, Jeff-Jack came a step forward and Barbara Garnet shrank against a window.
”Well, Miss Garnet,” laughed March, as Ravenel conversed with Halliday, ”I _was_ absorbed, wa'n't I? You and Miss Fannie going to watch the old year out and the new year in to-night?”
”No, sir, we're only going to the revival meeting,” replied Barbara, with mellow gravity. ”All bad people are cordially invited, you know. I reckon I've got to be there.”
”Why, Miss Garnet, my name's Legion, too. I didn't know we were such close kin.” He said good-day and departed, mildly wondering what the next incident would be. The retiring year seemed to be rus.h.i.+ng him through a great deal of unfinished business.
XLI.
SQUATTER SOVEREIGNTY
It was really a daring stroke, so to time the revival that the first culmination of interest should be looked for on New Year's eve. On that day business, the dry sorts, would be apt to decline faster than the sun, and the nearness of New Year would make men--country buyers and hors.e.m.e.n in particular--social, thirsty, and adventurous.
In fact, by the middle of the afternoon the streets around the court-house square were wholly given up to the white male s.e.x. One man had, by accident, shot his own horse. Another had smashed a window, also by accident, and clearly the fault of the bar-keeper, who shouldn't have dodged. Men, and youths of men's stature, were laying arms about each other's necks, advising one another, with profanely affectionate a.s.sumptions of superiority, to come along home, promising on triple oath to do so after one more drink, and breaking forth at unlooked-for moments in blood-curdling yells. Three or four would take a fifth or seventh stirrup cup, mount, start home, ride round the square and come tearing up to the spot they had started from, as if they knew and were showing how they brought the good news from Ghent to Aix, though beyond a prefatory catamount shriek, the only news any of them brought was that he could whip anything of his size, weight and age in the three counties. The Jews closed their stores.
Proudfit had gone home. Enos had met a brother and a cousin, and come back with them. John March, with his hat on, sat alone at his desk with Fair's and Leggett's letters pinned under one elbow, his map under the other, and the verbal counsels of Enos, General Halliday, and Proudfit droning in his ears. He sank back with a baffled laugh.
He couldn't change a whole people's habit of thought, he reflected. Even the _Courier_ followed the popular whim by miles and led it only by inches. So it seemed, at least. And yet if one should try to make his scheme a public one and leave the _Courier_ out--imagine it!
And must the _Courier_, then, be invited in? Must everybody and his n.i.g.g.e.r ”pa.s.s their plates?” Ah! how had a few years--a few months--twisted and tangled the path to masters.h.i.+p! Through what thickets of contradiction, what mora.s.ses of bafflement, what unimperial acceptance of help and counsel did that path now lead! And this was no merely personal fate of his. It was all Dixie's. He would never change his politics; O no! But how if men's politics, asking no leave of their owners, change themselves, and he who does not change ceases to be steadfast?
Behold! All the way down the Swanee River, spite of what big levees of prevention and draining wheels of antiquated cure, how invincibly were the waters of a new order sweeping in upon the ”old plantation.”
And still the old plantation slumbered on below the level of the world's great risen floods of emanc.i.p.ations and enfranchis.e.m.e.nts whereon party platforms, measures, triumphs, and defeats only floated and eddied, mere drift-logs of a current from which they might be cast up, but could not turn back.