John March, Southerner Part 36

"HENRY FAIR."

March started up, but sat again and gazed at the missive.

"Well, I will swear!" He smiled, held it at arm's length, and read again facetiously. "'Alliance with Leggett is, of course, out of the question; but if you can consent and undertake to exploit your lands on the line of operation sketched by him----'

"Now, where's that n.i.g.g.e.r's letter?--I wonder if I--" a knock at the door--"come in!--could have dropped it when my hat--O come in--ha!

ha!--this isn't a private bedroom; I'm dressed."

XL.

ROUGH GOING

"Ah! Mr. Pettigrew, why'n't you walk right in, sir? I wasn't at prayer."

Mr. Pettigrew, his voice made more than usually ghostly by the wind and a cold, whispered that he thought he had heard conversation.

"O no, sir, I was only blowing up my a.s.sistant for losing a letter. Why, well, I'll be dog--You picked it up in the street, didn't you? Well, Mr.

Pettigrew, I'm obliged to you, sir. Will you draw up a chair. Take the other one, sir; I threw that one at a friend the other day and broke it."

As the school-teacher sat down John dragged a chair close and threw himself into it loungingly but with tightly folded arms. Dinwiddie hitched back as if unpleasantly near big machinery. John smiled.

"I'm glad to see you, Mr. Pettigrew. I've been wanting a chance to say something to you for some time, sir."

Pettigrew whispered a similar desire.

"Yes, sir," said John, and was silent. Then: "It's about my mother, sir.

Your last call was your fourth, I believe." He frowned and waited while the pipe-clay of Mr. Pettigrew's complexion slowly took the tint of old red sandstone. Then he resumed: "You used to tell us boys it was our part not so much to accept the protection of the laws as to protect them--from their own mistakes no less than from the mistakes of those who owe them reverence--much as it becomes the part of a man to protect his mother. Wasn't that it?"

The school-master gave a husky a.s.sent.

"Well, Mr. Pettigrew, I'm a man, now, at least bodily--I think. Now, I'm satisfied, sir, that you hold my mother in high esteem--yes, sir, I'm sure of that--don't try to talk, sir, you only irritate your throat. I know you think as I do, sir, that one finger of her little faded hand is worth more than the whole bad lot of you and me, head, heart, and heels."

The listener's sub-acid smile protested, but John--

"I believe she thinks fairly well of you, sir, but she doesn't really know you. With me it's just the reverse. Hm! Yes, sir. You know, Mr.

Pettigrew, my dear mother is of a highly wrought imaginative temperament. Now, I'm not. She often complains that I've got no more romance in my nature than my dear father had. She idealizes people. I can't. But the result is I can protect her against the mistakes such a tendency might even at this stage of life lead her into, for they say the poet's heart never grows old. You understand."

The school-master bowed majestically.

"My mother, Mr. Pettigrew, can never love where she can't idealize, nor marry where she can't love; she's too true a woman for that. I expect you to consider this talk confidential, of course. Now, I don't know, sir, that she could ever idealize you, but against the bare possibility that she might, I must ask you not to call again. Hm! That's all, sir."

Mr. Pettigrew rose up ashen and as mad as an adder. His hair puffed out, his eyes glistened. John rose more leisurely, stepped to the hearth, picked up a piece of box stuff and knocked a nail out of one end.

"I'll only add this, sir: If you don't like the terms, you can have whatever satisfaction you want. But I remember"--he produced a large spring-back dirk-knife, sprung it open and began curling off long parings from the pine stick--"that in college, when any one of us vexed you, you took your spite out on us, and generally on me, in words.

That's all right. We were boys and couldn't hold malice." A shaving fell upon Mr. Pettigrew's shoulder and stayed there. "But once or twice your venomous contempt came near including my father's name. Still that's past, let it go. But now, if you do take your spite out in words be careful to let them be entirely foreign to the real subject, and be dead sure not to involve any name but mine. Or else don't begin till you've packed your trunk and bought your railroad ticket; and you'd better have a transatlantic steamer ticket, too."

Mr. Pettigrew had drawn near the door. With his hand on it he hissed, "You'll find this is not the last of this, sir."

"I reckon it is," drawled John, with his eyes on his whittling. As the door opened and shut he put away his knife, and was taking his hat when his eye fell upon Cornelius's letter. He opened and read it.

The writing was Leggett's, but between the lines could be caught a whisper that was plainly not the mulatto's.

He was ready, he wrote, "to interjuce an' suppote that bill to create the Three Counties Colonization Company, Limited--which I has fo shawten its name an takened out the tucks. The sed company will buy yo whole Immense Track, paying for the same one third 1/3 its own stock--another one third 1/3 to be subscribened by private parties--an the res to be takened by the three counties and paid for in Cash to the sed Company Limited--which the sed cash to be raised by a special tax to be voted by the People. This money sh.e.l.l be used by the sed Company Limited to construc d.a.m.ns an sich eloquent an discomojus impertinences which then they kin sell the sed lans an impertinences to immigraters factorians an minors an in that means pay divies on the Stock an so evvybody get mo or less mola.s.ses on his finger an his vote Skewered. Thattle fetch white immigration an thattle ketch the white-liner's vote. But where some dever an as soon as any six miles square sh.e.l.l contain twenty white children of school Age the sed Company Limited sh.e.l.l be boun to bill an equip for them a free school house. An faw evvy school house so billden sed Company Limited sh.e.l.l be likewise boun to bill another sommers in the three Counties where a equal or greater number of collared children are without one. Thattle skewer the white squatter and n.i.g.g.e.r vote."

The next clause--there was only a line or two besides--brought an audible exclamation from the reader: "La.s.sly faw evvy sich school house so bilt the sed Co. Limited sh.e.l.l pay a sum not less than its cost to some white male college in the three counties older then the sed Company Limited."

John marvelled. What was Garnet doing or promising, that Leggett should thus single out Rosemont for subsidies? And who was this in the letter's closing line--certainly not Garnet--who would "buy both fists full" of stock as soon as the bill should pa.s.s? He stepped out and walked along the windy street immersed in thought.

"John!"--General Halliday beckoned to him. The General and Proudfit were pushing into the lattice doors of a fragrant place whose bulletin announced "Mock Turtle Soup and Venison for Lunch To-day." March joined them. "Had your lunch, John? I heard you were looking for me."

"Well, yes, but there's no hurry." The three stood and ate, talking over incidents of war times, with John at a manifest disadvantage, and presently they pa.s.sed from the luncheon trestles to the bar.

"No, Proudfit, if Garnet hadn't come in on our left just then and charged the moment he did we'd have lost the whole battery. Garnet was a poor soldier in camp, you're right; but on the field you'd only to tease him and he'd fight like a wild bull."

They drank, lighted cigars, and sauntered out toward the General's office. "John, I've read what you wrote me. I can't see it. We'll never colonize any lands in Dixie, my boy, till we've changed the whole system of laws under which we rent land and raise crops. You might as well try to farm swamp lands without draining them."

"Why, General, my scheme doesn't include plantations at all."

"Yes, it does; Dixie's a plantation State, and you can't make your little patch of it prosper till our planting prospers--can he, Proudfit?"

The Colonel laughed. "No go, General; I'm not going to side with you.

Our prosperity, all around, hangs on the question whether you and the darkey may tax us and spend the taxes as you please, or we shall tax ourselves and spend the taxes as we please."

"Ah, Proudfit, you mean whether you may keep the taxes low enough to hold the darky down or let them be raised high enough to lift him up.

Walk in, gentlemen. Proudfit, take the rocking-chair."

But the Colonel stood trying to return the General's last thrust, and John was bored. "General, all I want to see you about is to say that I'm going down into Blackland in a day or two to get as many darkies as I can to settle on my lands, and if you'll tell me the ones that are in your debt, I'll have nothing to do with them unless it is to tell them they've got to stay where they are."

Proudfit whirled and stared. The General gave a low laugh.

"Why, John, that sounds mighty funny to come from you. Would you do such a thing as that?--run off with another man's n.i.g.g.e.rs?"

John bit his lip and looked at his cigar. "Are they yours, General?"

"By Jove! my son, they're not yours! O! of course, you've got the legal--pshaw! I'm not going to dispute an abstraction with you. Go and amuse yourself; you can't get 'em; the n.i.g.g.e.rs that don't owe won't go; that's the poetry of it. I'd rather you'd take the fellows that owe than the one's that don't; but you won't get either kind."

"I can try, General." "No, sir, you can't!" exclaimed Proudfit. His cigar went into the fireplace with a vicious spat, and his eyes snapped.

"Ow niggehs ah res'less an' discontented enough now, and whether you'll succeed aw not you shan't come 'round amongst them tryin' to steal them away! d.a.m.ned if we don't run you out of the three counties! So long, General!" He went by March to the door.

John stood straight, his jaws set, chin up, eyes down. Halliday, by grimaces, was adjuring him to forbear. "But, Colonel Proudfit," he said--Proudfit paused--"you'll not insist on the word 'steal?'"

"You can call it what you d.a.m.n please, sir, but you mustn't do it." The speaker pa.s.sed out, leaving the door invitingly ajar.

The General caught John's arm--"Wait, I want to see you."