The Law of the Land by Emerson Hough (the reader ebook .TXT) 📕
The forest, the deep, vast forest of oak and ash and gum and ghostlysycamore; the forest, tangled with a thousand binding vines andbriers, wattled and laced with rank blue cane--sure proof of a soilexhaustlessly rich--this ancient forest still stood, mysterious andforbidding, all about the edges of the great plantation. Here andthere a tall white stump, fire-blackened at its foot, stood, even infields long cultivated, showing how laborious and slow had been thewhittling away of this jungle, which even now continually encroachedand claimed its own. The rim of the woods, marked white by thedeadened trees where the axes of the laborers were reclaiming yetother acres as the years rolled by, now showed in the morning sundistinctly, making a frame for the rich and restful picture of theBig House and it
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“Mr. Clerk, read the verdict,” the judge ordered; and the clerk read: “We, the jury, find the defendant not guilty.”
The words were received in utter silence.
Presently all, jury and bar and spectators, filed from the court-room, quietly, not with oaths or threats of violence for those others who at the outskirts of the town were waiting for their answer. And they, the waiting ones, found their answer in this silence, and so now slipped out into the forest. The crowds of white men in the town also quietly melted away.
That night at the hotel the judge and certain citizens were engaged in quiet conversation.
“I think,” said the judge, “that this young gentleman, Mr. Eddring, belongs somewhere in a position of trust. I believe that he can be depended upon to think, and not merely to play politics for the sake of office holding. We have had too much politics in the South, and too much in America. It’s time now we did a little thinking.”
“You’re right about that, Judge,” broke in the voice of Calvin Blount. “But it’s just as he says, we’ve got to begin. We’ve got to have some kind of law to begin under.”
The judge sighed. “It is humiliating to have to resort to any sort of subterfuge,” said he. “Of course, in law, the rule must apply to black and white alike. I see that one of our sister states has passed a law allowing no one to vote who can not read, or who can not write on dictation any section of the Constitution; or who has not paid state and county taxes for two preceding years. This test is not applied to any one who was entitled to vote in any one of the states of the Union on January first, 1867, or at some time prior thereto. It does not apply to any legitimate lineal descendant of persons entitled to vote prior to that time. That is an evasion. Yet, as this young gentleman said, we can not submit to the burglarizing of the house of our society. Until we may legally repel, we must legally evade.”
“Why, see here, men,” broke in Blount, again, “if you’ll let me say so, Judge, there ain’t no law higher than the law of poker. Now we’ve let Mr. Nigger into the game with us; or, anyhow, he’s here, and somebody gives him a few chips. He don’t buy ‘em for himself, and he don’t know the value of ‘em. His chips ought to be good as far as they last. The trouble with Mr. Nigger is, he’s wanting to get into every jack-pot with less’n a pair of deuces, and wanting to play on the ground that his white chips are as good as the other fellow’s blue ones. Now, that ain’t poker!”
“It Shirley ain’t,” said the tall foreman, wagging a scraggly beard.
The judge smiled softly and gravely. “No,” said he. “There should be justice to the white man as well as the black. You will notice the order in which I place those terms.”
Calvin Blount hitched his chair closer up to the table. “But now you were saying, Judge, that we ought to do something for this young fellow, Eddring. I have known him a long time, from the time he was claim agent on the railroad. I want to say he’s a man and a gentleman, not afraid of anything, and he wants to do what’s right. I don’t think he puts money ahead of everything else in the world. For my part, if he was my representative in the Legislature, or in Congress either, I’d feel right sure he’d represent me strictly according to the legitimate rules of poker; and that’s a blamed sight more than a whole lot of politicians are doing to-day, North or South.”
“It Shirley is!” again said the foreman, wagging his scraggly beard.
The days wore on not ungentle at the Big House, until the mild southern winter had taken the place of mellow fall, and until presently all the land was again full of the warm, sweet smell of spring. Softness and gentleness rested on all the world, and upon every side were tokens that calm had come again to a land late distraught. Slowly the signs of wreck and ruin disappeared about the plantation. The track of the receding waters was covered with a swift verdure. The cabins, late half-submerged and deserted, again found, at least in part, a tenantry. Songs were heard once more as the plowmen resumed their labors in the fields. Green and white and pink colors appeared, and gracious odors, and kindly sights filled now all the horizon. Peace, and content, and hope seemed now at hand once more. The master of the Big House saw about him his accustomed kingdom, and once more his subjects felt the hand of a master, if as firm, perhaps more kindly than ever before.
As for Miss Lady, she dropped back into the life of the place as though she had been gone but for a day. Care and responsibility sat upon the brow of Madame Delchasse, but Miss Lady, not less useful in the household economy, went about her employment as if she had never been away. Of those who welcomed her back to the Big House there was none more thankful and adoring than the old bear-dog, Hec. At the first sight of his divinity, not forgotten in all these long months, Hec, himself grown very old and gray, well-nigh wriggled his rheumatic frame apart, and lifted up his voice in a very wail of thanksgiving. From that time on he rarely allowed Miss Lady out of his sight, but pursued her about the place, hobbling and whimpering when her feet grew too swift; nor did his homage know any change save when Miss Lady deserted him to bestow her attentions elsewhere, whether upon little yellow chickens, or upon some of the toddling puppies which filled the yard about the Big House.
Of all little helpless things, Miss Lady could not find too many for her attention. Upon one certain morning in the spring, some time after the late trial at the Clarksville court, Miss Lady was sitting out on the board-pile beneath the evergreen trees in the front yard of the Big House. Her wide hat, confined loosely by its strings, had fallen back on her shoulders, so that the sun and the warm wind had their way of the brown hair, and the cheeks now flushed with tender solicitude for the three puppies she held in her lap. Yet other puppies scrambled at a pan of milk close by her feet, while at a distance old Hec, too dignified to engage in such procedures, lay in the shade and gazed at her with reproachful eyes. Calvin Blount, coming about the corner of the house, stood for a while and gazed at this picture in silence before he approached and interrupted.
“Miss Lady,” said he, “you never did know how glad I am to have you back here again. Why, a while ago I didn’t care what became of me, or of anything else. I wasn’t even half-training my pack of dogs. Now I have got more’n fifty of the best hounds that ever run a trail, and with you to take care of the cripples and the puppies, it certainly looks like the old pack is going to last a while yet. Yes, you surely are right useful on the place.”
“You are not any gladder than I am,” said Miss Lady. “I’ve every reason in the world to be glad.”
“Well,” said Blount, seating himself apart on the end of the board-pile, “I’ve got a few, myself. This here is a heap better than being in jail, or maybe getting hung.”
“Don’t talk about it,” said Miss Lady, shuddering.
“I don’t want to think—”
“Well, it was Jack Eddring got us out of it all, I reckon,” said Blount, breaking off a splinter from the board. “Did you ever stop to think, Miss Lady, that he’s a powerful fine young man?”
“Why do you always talk about him?” said Miss Lady, turning, to the sudden discomfort of one of the puppies. “Every time anything comes up—”
“Now, hold on,” said Blount, “you don’t say a word against that young man while I’m around. I want to tell you that fellow has showed me a heap. He’s a square, hard-working man, as honest as the day is long, straight as a string, square as they make ‘em, and not afraid of nothing on earth. I ask him to come down here and go b’ah hunting. He always says he has to work—works harder than any nigger I ever had on the place. Now that’s what he done showed me. I reckon he’d be a good sort of model for this whole southern country to-day. He’s proof enough to my mind that a man can work, and do his own work, and still be a gentleman. I’ve been right lazy in my time, I reckon, b’ah hunting and that sort of thing, but now I come to think it all over, I don’t know but what Jack Eddring is as near right as anybody I know of. He allows he’s got something to do in this world, and he’s starting out to do it. He sort of showed me that maybe that’s about the best thing a man can do with himself—just work.
“Besides, Miss Lady,”—and here Blount turned upon her suddenly, “that man’s done a heap for you.”
“Oh, well—” began Miss Lady.
“And he thinks a heap of you. That is,”—and here Blount undertook to save himself from what he swiftly fancied might be indiscretion— “he’s like all of us people down in here, you know. Now they tell me that up North, in the big cities where I’ve never been at, there’s so many women that folks think they’re right common. I don’t believe that, nohow, for it don’t stand to reason. Now we-all know that a woman is something a good ways off, and high up and hard to reach. That’s the way we-all feel. But now even if we allow it that way, I want to say that Jack Eddring has done a heap for you, Miss Lady, that maybe you don’t know about. He didn’t have to do it, either.”
“I never asked him to do anything—I never told him.”
“No, you didn’t,” said Cal Blount, gravely. “You sort of allowed that he was a meddling sneak-thief, Miss Lady. I want to say right here that I allow a lot different from that. Now, if I know that man at all, he ain’t going to come around you and make any sort of talk. You’ll have to go to him.”
“I’ll not!” said Miss Lady, again eliciting a yelp from one of the puppies in her lap.
“There, there, now,” said Blount, gently. “Just you hold on a minute. Don’t say you will or you won’t. I just want to ask you one thing, Miss Lady. Who do you reckon you are? I know you’re Miss Lady, and that’s all I want to know. But who do you think you are?”
The kindness of the keen gray eye disarmed Miss Lady. In the sheer instinct of youth and vitality she spread out her arms wide, her face turned up halfway toward the sky, her lips half-parted: “Oh, don’t ask me, Colonel Cal,” said she. “I’m alive, and it’s spring. I danced in the big room this morning, Colonel Cal! Isn’t it enough, just to be alive?” Thus she evaded that question, which she had so long shunned as impossible of answer.
“Yes, it’s
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