CHAPTER III—FLORA

HAMBRIGHT had changed but little in the eighteen years of peace that had followed the terrors of Legree’s r茅gime. The population had doubled, though but few houses had been built. The town had not grown from the development of industry, but for a very simple reason—the country people had moved into the town, seeking refuge from a new terror that was growing of late more and more a menace to a country home, the roving criminal negro.

The birth of a girl baby was sure to make a father restless, and when the baby looked up into his face one day with the soft light of a maiden, he gave up his farm and moved to town.

The most important development of these eighteen years was the complete alienation of the white and black races as compared with the old familiar trust of domestic life.

When Legree finished his work as the master artificer of the Reconstruction Policy, he had dug a gulf between the races as deep as hell. It had never been bridged. The deed was done and it had crystallised into the solid rock that lies at the basis of society. It was done at a formative period, and it could no more be undone now than you could roll the universe back in its course.

The younger generation of white men only knew the Negro as an enemy of his people in politics and society.

He never came in contact with him except in menial service, in which the service rendered was becoming more and more trifling, and his habits more insolent. He had his separate schools, churches, preachers and teachers, and his political leaders were the beneficiaries of Legree’s legacies.

With the Anglo-Saxon race guarding the door of marriage with fire and sword, the effort was being made to build a nation inside a nation of two antagonistic races. No such thing had ever been done in the history of the human race, even under the development of the monarchial and aristocratic forms of society. How could it be done under the formulas of Democracy with Equality as the fundamental basis of law? And yet this was the programme of the age.

Gaston was feeling blue from the reaction which followed his temptation by McLeod. His duty was clear the night before as he walked firmly homeward, recalling the tragedy of the past. Now in the cold light of day, the past seemed far away and unreal. The present was near, pressing, vital. He laid down a book he was trying to read, locked his office and strolled down town to see Tom Camp.

This old soldier had come to be a sort of oracle to him. His affection for the son of his Colonel was deep and abiding, and his extravagant flattery of his talents and future were so evidently sincere they always acted as a tonic. And he needed a tonic to-day.

Tom was seated in a chair in his yard under a big cedar, working on a basket, and a little golden-haired girl was playing at his feet. It was his old home he had lost in Legree’s day, but had got back through the help of General Worth, who came up one day and paid back Tom’s gift of lightwood in gleaming yellow metal. His long hair and full beard were white now, and his eyes had a soft deep look that told of sorrows borne in patience and faith beyond the ken of the younger man. It was this look on Tom’s face that held Gaston like a magnet when he was in trouble.

“Tom, I’m blue and heartsick. I’ve come down to have you cheer me up a little.”

“You’ve got the blues? Well that is a joke!” cried Tom. “You, young and handsome, the best educated man in the county, the finest orator in the state, life all before you, and God fillin’ the world to-day with sunshine and spring flowers, and all for you! You blue! That is a joke.” And Tom’s voice rang in hearty laughter.

“Come here, Flora, and kiss me, you won’t laugh at me, will you?”

The child climbed up into his lap, slipped her little arms around his neck and hugged and kissed him.

“Now, once more, dearie, long and close and hard—oh! That’s worth a pound of candy!” Again she squeezed his neck and kissed him, looking into his face with a smile.

“I love you, Charlie,” she said with quaint seriousness.

“Do you, dear? Well, that makes me glad. If I can win the love of as pretty a little girl as you I’m not a failure, am I?” And he smoothed her curls.

“Ain’t she sweet?” cried Tom with pride as he laid aside his basket and looked at her with moistened eyes.

“Tom, she’s the sweetest child I ever saw.”

“Yes, she’s God’s last and best gift to me, to show me He still loved me. Talk about trouble. Man, you’re a baby. You ain’t cut your teeth yet. Wait till you’ve seen some things I’ve seen. Wait till you’ve seen the light of the world go out, and staggerin’ in the dark met the devil face to face, and looked him in the eye, and smelled the pit. And then feel him knock you down in it, and the red waves roll over you and smother you. I’ve been there.”

Tom paused and looked at Gaston. “You weren’t here when I come to the end of the world, the time when that baby was born, and Annie died with the little red bundle sleepin’ on her breast. The oldest girl was murdered by Legree’s nigger soldiers. Then Annie give me that little gal. Lord, I was the happiest old fool that ever lived that day! And then when I looked into Annie’s dead face, I went down, down, down! But I looked up from the bottom of the pit and I saw the light of them blue eyes and I heard her callin’ me to take her. How I watched her and nursed her, a mother and a father to her, day and night, through the long years, and how them little fingers of hers got hold of my heart! Now, I bless the Lord for all His goodness and mercy to me. She will make it all right. She’s going to be a lady and such a beauty! She’s goin’ to school now, and me and the General’s goin’ to take her ter college bye and bye, and she’s goin’ to marry some big handsome fellow like you, and her crippled grey haired daddy ’ll live in her house in his old age. The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want.”

“Tom, you make me ashamed.”

“You ought to be, man, a youngster like you to talk about gettin’ the blues. What’s all your education for?”

“Sometimes I think that only men like you have ever been educated.”

“G’long with your foolishness, boy. I ain’t never had a show in this world. The nigger’s been on my back since I first toddled into the world, and I reckon he ’ll ride me into the grave. They are my only rivals now making them baskets and they always undersell me.”

Gaston started as Tom uttered the last sentence.

“With you, boy, it’s all plain sailin’. You’re the best looking chap in the county. I was a dandy when I was young. It does me good to look at you if you don’t care nothin’ about fine clothes. Then you’re as sharp as a razor. There ain’t a man in No’th Caliny that can stand up agin you on the stump. I’ve heard ’em all. You ’ll be the Governor of this state.”

That was always the climax of Tom’s prophetic flattery. He could think of no grander end of a human life than to crown it in the Governor’s Palace of North Carolina. He belonged to the old days when it was a bigger thing to be the Governor of a great state than to hold any office short of the Presidency,—when men resigned seats in the United States Senate to run for Governor, and when the national government was so puny a thing that the bankers of Europe refused to loan money on United States bonds unless countersigned by the State of Virginia. And that was not so long ago. The bankers sent that answer to Buchanan’s Secretary of the Treasury.

“Tom, you’ve lifted me out of the dumps. I owe you a doctor’s fee,” cried Gaston with enthusiasm as he placed Flora back on the grass and started to his office.

“All I charge you is to come again. The old man’s proud of his young friend. You make me feel like I’m somebody in the old world after all. And some day when you’re great and rich and famous and the world’s full of your name, I ’ll tell folks I know you like my own boy, and I ’ll brag about how many times you used to come to see me.”

“Hush, Tom, you make me feel silly,” said Gaston as he warmly pressed the old fellow’s hand. He went back toward his office with lighter step and more buoyant heart. His mind was as clear as the noonday sun that was now flooding the green fresh world with its splendour. He would stand by his own people. He would sink or swim with them. If poverty and failure were the result, let it be so. If success came, all the better. There were things more to be desired than gold.