Unfettered Part 18

"Oh--hic--yes--hic--I've got--hic-hic-hic you--hic.

I'll--hic--kill--hic--hic--you--hic," stammered Bloodworth, attempting to impart force enough to his unsteady fingers to pull the trigger of the pistol.

Dorlan started in the direction of the drunken man intending to disarm him.

Just then some one implanted a blow upon the base of Bloodworth's skull, which sent that gentleman to the floor in a sprawling att.i.tude. The pistol which was in Bloodworth's hand exploded upon striking the floor, but no serious damage resulted.

A tall, somewhat slender white man had delivered the blow. This stranger now forced Bloodworth to rise and accompany him down the stairs. Bloodworth whined after the manner of a child, as he staggered along. The stranger hailed a pa.s.sing policeman and handed Bloodworth over to him. He then returned to Dorlan's room. As he entered, Dorlan was struck with the look of sorrow so legibly written in the face of the man. Such utter woe Dorlan had never before seen depicted in a human countenance. The man, though invited to sit down, declined to do so.

Looking Dorlan in the face, the stranger said, "My name is Lemuel Dalton. I perceive that you glean from my countenance that fate has hurled its harpoon into my soul." Lemuel Dalton's frame shook as a tempest of emotions swept through him. "My wife," he continued, "the most beautiful, the most angelic, the most beloved woman of earth, has been needlessly slain."

Dorlan was listening with absorbing interest and evident sympathy.

"Circ.u.mstances killed my wife, sir. Circ.u.mstances--cold, cruel, circ.u.mstances." Lemuel Dalton paused as though desiring to give his words ample opportunity to convey their awful message. "It was on this wise," he resumed. "She met a Negro who was fleeing from justice. She had heard so much of late of the crimes of Negroes against white women that she was terribly frightened by the mere fact of seeing this Negro. The Negro was frightened over the consequences likely to ensue as a result of her fright.

He sought to rea.s.sure her. She mistrusted him the more. To keep her from reaching me in time to inst.i.tute a successful pursuit, the Negro killed the horse that she was riding. The horse in falling caught my wife partially under his huge frame. She was fatally injured."

Lemuel Dalton now turned away from Dorlan to hide the tears that had gathered in his eyes. "She died," said he, in broken tones. "On her dying bed she begged me to not prosecute the Negro on the charge of murder. In her last moments she said to me, 'Lemuel, good bye. Save other homes from a like fate. Dispel this atmosphere of suspicion in which I have been stifled unto my death.' I have obeyed her request with regard to the Negro. A careful investigation demonstrated that he had told my wife and me the truth in every detail. He is now in prison serving his sentence for the offenses committed prior to his chance meeting with my wife."

Pointing his finger at Dorlan he raised his tremulous voice and said in ringing tones, "Do you realize, sir, that the social fabric of which you are a part, furnished the viper that has stung me in a vital spot? Where, sir, are your churches, your school rooms, all of your influences that are supposed to produce worthy beings?" Lemuel Dalton's manner was so frantic that Dorlan began to feel that he was dangerously near insanity.

Lemuel Dalton divined the thought that was pa.s.sing through Dorlan's mind and answered it, lowering his voice as he did so. "Oh, no! I am not at all unbalanced. To show you that I am not I shall answer my own question. You Negroes need more from us Southern whites than a feeling of indifference, or a spirit of 'make it if you can.' I have come to learn at so sad a cost that the safety and happiness of my race is inexorably bound up with the virtue and well-being of your race." The look of intensity now faded from his face; a sort of vacant expression appeared.

As though listlessly looking at something in the distance, he said, half musingly, "Morlene Dalton sent me to you. I went to her because she told me years ago that I would come to this. I am here to-night to offer my help to your race, and to ask what you all desire of me." He spoke slowly and in solemn tones.

"But, hold! before you speak, let me tell you that about me which is subject to no compromise," he burst forth excitedly. Said he: "I am an exclusive; I want no mixture of blood, thought or activities with the Negro race. I want this white race to keep on manifesting its true inwardness to the world. I wish our whole civilization to be permeated with our own peculiar fragrance and that only. Whatever I can do for your people without jeopardy to this conception I stand ready to do. True, this means that I desire you to be an alien in our midst. But my present position is an improvement on my former, in that I am now willing to do all that can be done to make this alien, happy, prosperous and virtuous; but an alien ever, remember. Will you kindly point out to a white man standing on this platform what _he_ may consistently do for the Negro?"

Lemuel Dalton ceased speaking and now sat in the chair which he had previously refused.

"I am grieved, profoundly grieved that your wife, who may be the prototype of hundreds, has been drawn into the awful vortex of this race trouble."

Lemuel Dalton arose from his seat and with glaring eyes looked down upon Dorlan intently.

Again the impression came to Dorlan that he was dealing with a mad man, and he began to ponder a line of action based on that thought.

"Tut, tut, you persist in thinking I am crazy," said Lemuel Dalton, again guessing Dorlan's thoughts and bringing his will to bear to cause a more calm expression to appear on his (Lemuel's) face.

Drawing near to Dorlan, he said: "I came to discuss the race question with you, but I am in no mood for that." He paused for an instant. Resuming in a lower tone of voice, he said, slowly, "You colored folks believe in G.o.d. I don't." Again he paused. "That is, I didn't. But the morning Eulalie, my wife, was brought home wounded, I called G.o.d's name for the first time since my early childhood." Here he paused again.

"Eulalie was a Christian," he said, looking into Dorlan's face piercingly.

"Tell me the truth. Do you, do you," he asked falteringly. "Do you think that--" here a pause--"I shall meet--Eulalie again?" The last words were uttered in a loud screeching voice. Without waiting for an answer Lemuel Dalton turned away to hide his fast falling tears. Out of the room he walked, out into the darkness he went, alternately imploring and cursing the great force, whatever it might be, that was operating through all creation, and had suffered so terrible a load to fall upon his shoulders.

As for Dorlan, he sat far into the night musing on the occurrences of the evening. "To-night I have been confronted with an epitome of the situation of the Negro in this country," he said. "One white man comes who is angry because I will not be his tool. Then follows the exclusive, who feels that my touch is contaminating. Truly the Negro is between the upper and the nether millstones.

"Ah, Morlene what a task you have a.s.signed unto this pilot, called by you to guide the bark of the Negro over this perilous sea. As I take my post, happy am I, that in my love of humanity I find my chart; in my love for my race I have a compa.s.s; and in my love for you I have a lighthouse on the sh.o.r.e.

"Shine on, sweet soul, that I may pilot this vessel through the breakers, above whose hidden heads the waves are ever chanting the solemn song of death."

Happy was Dorlan in this hour that his inherited riches would enable him to conquer ills which the poverty of the race had hitherto rendered insurmountable.

CHAPTER XXIX.

IN THE BALANCES.

At last the day came on which Dorlan was to submit his plan to Morlene.

He arose early that morning, packed his trunk, boxed up his most important papers and wrote out instructions as to the disposition to be made of his other possessions. These preparations completed, he walked down town to the post office and sent his plan to Morlene as registered matter. Having done this, Dorlan returned to his boarding place and bade all a sorrowful good-bye, stating that a great deal of uncertainty was attendant upon his journey, and that he knew not whether he would ever return to R----. Going down to the depot, he was soon aboard a train speeding away.

In the meanwhile Morlene had received the doc.u.ments sent to her. In addition to the plan, Dorlan had sent a personal letter, on the envelope of which were written these words, "Please do not read the enclosed letter until you have read and pa.s.sed upon the plan." Morlene lifted the envelope to her lips, kissed it, and laid it away, intending to read the letter after her study of the plan, in keeping with Dorlan's wishes.

Morlene was deeply conscious as to how much depended upon her verdict on Dorlan's plan. Her own and the happiness of Dorlan were involved. The suffering, restless Negroes were to be offered a panacea and she was their representative to accept or reject the proffered medicine. The welfare of the South and the peace of the nation were at stake. Upon the outcome of the race question in America the hopes of the darker races of the world depended. Even the cause of popular government was involved, she felt, for it was to be seen whether a republic could deal with a race problem of so virulent a type. Thus, with the eyes of the world upon her, Morlene unfolded the ma.n.u.script and began its study.

As the doc.u.ment was somewhat voluminous, and as the issues involved were of such grave import to the cause of humanity, Morlene decided that she would proceed about her task with much deliberation. Had she known the contents of Dorlan's personal letter she would have proceeded with more dispatch.

This Dorlan knew, and not desiring the personal element to appear in her study of the plan enjoined that she should pursue her work without being influenced by what was contained in his letter.

So, after reading a while, Morlene laid the ma.n.u.script aside and spent the remainder of the day in meditating on what she had read. The second day she did likewise. Morlene began to be much elated, for, as the paper progressed, she saw that Dorlan was treating the subject in a most comprehensive way. Thus, from day to day, she read and pondered, her hopes rising higher and higher.

Sometimes when Dorlan would enter upon the discussion of some particularly difficult question, her old feeling of fear would return, but when in a most masterly manner he would sweep away the seeming difficulties just as though they were so many cobwebs, her heart would leap joyfully. By and by, after the lapse of many days Morlene drew near to the close of the doc.u.ment. When, on the last day of her perusal, she read the last words of the last page, and her mind flashed back to the beginning and surveyed in general outline the whole, her enthusiasm knew no bounds. In quavering tones the sweet voice of this girl, charged and surcharged with love and patriotism, murmured the words, "Columbia is saved. Let all mankind henceforth honor the name of Dorlan, the hero of humanity." She now secured Dorlan's letter, broke the seal and read as follows, a look of pain deepening on her beautiful face as she read.

THE LETTER.

"DEAR MORLENE:

"As best I could, heaven knows, I have wrestled with the problem a.s.signed to me by you, the queen of my heart. Some one has said that the most _sublime_ incident in all of human history was Martin Luther's standing alone before the Diet of Worms. Side by side with that statement let all men now write that my situation is the most excruciatingly _painful_ one that a human being has ever been called upon to endure. When I first met you, circ.u.mstances forced me to stifle the love that was ready to burst into a flame.

Subsequently, fate decreed that you should be free, and my heart ran riot.

"But fate was determined that one so beautiful and so worthy as yourself should not be won until the wooer appeared in some degree worthy of the lady whose hand was desired.

"Now, dear Morlene, tell me by what process, human or divine, I could be made in any measure worthy of you?

If this plan is supposed to achieve that result, is supposed to mark me as worthy of your hand, it has failure written on its face. This conclusion would seem to be beyond the realm of debate. And yet my reason tells me that the plan must of necessity succeed; that, being based upon incontrovertible laws there is no way for it to fail.

"Now, Morlene, my darling, with my powers of intuition telling me that I must fail of winning your hand and with my reason telling me I have successfully performed the task a.s.signed me, what must I do? Hope and Fear have come to terms in my bosom, and one occupies the throne one minute and the other the next. They alternate thus by day and by night. In my dreams I am sometimes as happy as the angels are reputed to be--happier than they, I should say. But the joy is short-lived, and in my dreams I find myself tumbling over precipices and wading through miry swamps.

"I could not stay in R----, and in quietness await your verdict. I have had to travel, to lessen, if possible, the strain of anxiety upon my mind. So, when you find yourself reading this letter, I shall be hundreds of miles away at Galveston, Texas, on the beach of the great Gulf. I am here awaiting your verdict. If it is favorable, I shall return to you forthwith. If unfavorable, I am at a port where ships are daily leaving for all parts of the world. Enough for that.

"Finally, dear one, if the scheme which I submitted to you affords the necessary a.s.surance that the problem will be solved, telegraph to me the one word, 'Unfettered.' If it does not afford such a.s.surance, let your message be 'Fettered still.'

"Am I yours,

_Forever or Never_?

"DORLAN WARTh.e.l.l."

When Morlene finished reading the letter it was covered with the tears that had sped down her cheeks. "Dear, dear boy! how much he must have suffered, if he loves me thus!" So saying, she arose and hastened toward the telegraph office for the purpose of sending a message to Dorlan.

"Suppose my delay has begotten in Dorlan the recklessness of despair,"

thought Morlene, and fear born of the terrible thought seemed to lend her wings.