XII
THE NIGHT OF FEAR
Late in the afternoon, as the Governor neared the tavern, he was met by amessenger with the news; and at once turning his horse's head, he startedback to Uplands. A dim fear, which had been with him since boyhood, seemedto take shape and meaning with the words; and in a lightning flash ofunderstanding he knew that he had lived before through the horror of thismoment. If his fathers had sinned, surely the shadow of their wrong hadpassed them by to fall the heavier upon their sons; for even as his bloodrang in his ears, he saw a savage justice in the thing he feared--arecompense to natural laws in which the innocent should weigh as naughtagainst the guilty.
A fine rain was falling; and as he went on, the end of a drizzlingafternoon dwindled rapidly into night. Across the meadows he saw the lampsin scattered cottages twinkle brightly through the dusk which rolled likefog down from the mountains. The road he followed sagged between two grayhills into a narrow valley, and regaining its balance upon the fartherside, stretched over a cattle pasture into the thick cover of the woods.
As he reached the summit of the first hill, he saw the Major's coachcreeping slowly up the incline, and heard the old gentleman scoldingthrough the window at Congo on the box.
"My dear Major, home's the place for you," he said as he drew rein. "Is itpossible that the news hasn't reached you yet?"
Remembering Congo, he spoke cautiously, but the Major, in his anger, tosseddiscretion to the winds.
"Reached me?--bless my soul!--do you take me for a ground hog?" he cried,thrusting his red face through the window. "I met Tom Bickels four milesback, and the horses haven't drawn breath since. But it's what I expectedall along--I was just telling Congo so--it all comes from the mistakentolerance of black Republicans. Let me open my doors to them to-day, andthey'll be tempting Congo to murder me in my bed to-morrow."
"Go 'way f'om yer, Ole Marster," protested Congo from the box, flicking atthe harness with his long whip.
The Governor looked a little anxiously at the negro, and then shook hishead impatiently. Though a less exacting master than the Major, he had notthe same childlike trust in the slaves he owned.
"Shall you not turn back?" he asked, surprised.
"Champe's there," responded the Major, "so I came on for the particulars. Anight in town isn't to my liking, but I can't sleep a wink until I hear athing or two. You're going out, eh?"
"I'm riding home," said the Governor, "it makes me uneasy to be away fromUplands." He paused, hesitated an instant, and then broke out suddenly."Good God, Major, what does it mean?"
The Major shook his head until his long white hair fell across his eyes.
"Mean, sir?" he thundered in a rage. "It means, I reckon, that those damnedfriends of yours have a mind to murder you. It means that after all yourspeech-making and your brotherly love, they're putting pitchforks into thehands of savages and loosening them upon you. Oh, you needn't mind Congo,Governor. Congo's heart's as white as mine."
"Dat's so, Ole Marster," put in Congo, approvingly.
The Governor was trembling as he leaned down from his saddle.
"We know nothing as yet, sir," he began, "there must be some--"
"Oh, go on, go on," cried the Major, striking the carriage window. "Keep upyour speech-making and your handshaking until your wife gets murdered inher bed--but, by God, sir, if Virginia doesn't secede after this, I'llsecede without her!"
The coach moved on and the Governor, touching his horse with the whip, roderapidly down the hill.
As he descended into the valley, a thick mist rolled over him and the roadlost itself in the blur of the surrounding fields. Without slackening hispace, he lighted the lantern at his saddle-bow and turned up the collar ofhis coat about his ears. The fine rain was soaking through his clothes, butin the tension of his nerves he was oblivious of the weather. The sun mighthave risen overhead and he would not have known it.
With the coming down of the darkness a slow fear crept, like a physicalchill, from head to foot. A visible danger he felt that he might meet faceto face and conquer; but how could he stand against an enemy that creptupon him unawares?--against the large uncertainty, the utter ignorance ofthe depth or meaning of the outbreak, the knowledge of a hidden evil whichmight be even now brooding at his fireside?
A thousand hideous possibilities came toward him from out the stretch ofthe wood. The light of a distant window, seen through the thinned edge ofthe forest; the rustle of a small animal in the underbrush; the drop of awalnut on the wet leaves in the road; the very odours which rose from themoist earth and dripped from the leafless branches--all sent him faster onhis way, with a sound within his ears that was like the drumming of hisheart.
To quiet his nerves, he sought to bring before him a picture of the houseat Uplands, of the calm white pillars and the lamplight shining from thedoor; but even as he looked the vision of a slave-war rushed between, andthe old buried horrors of the Southampton uprising sprang suddenly to lifeand thronged about the image of his home. Yesterday those tales had beenfor him as colourless as history, as dry as dates; to-night, with this newfear at his heart, the past became as vivid as the present, and it seemedto him that beyond each lantern flash he saw a murdered woman, or an infantwith its brains dashed out at its mother's breast. This was what he feared,for this was what the message meant to him: "The slaves are armed andrising."
And yet with it all, he felt that there was some wild justice in the thinghe dreaded, in the revolt of an enslaved and ignorant people, in thepitiable and ineffectual struggle for a freedom which would mean, in thebeginning, but the power to go forth and kill. It was the recognition ofthis deeper pathos that made him hesitate to reproach even while histhoughts dwelt on the evils--that would, if the need came, send himfearless and gentle to the fight. For what he saw was that behind the newwrongs were the old ones, and that the sinners of to-day were, perhaps, thesinned against of yesterday.
When at last he came out into the turnpike, he had not the courage to lookamong the trees for the lights of Uplands; and for a while he rode with hiseyes following the lantern flash as it ran onward over the wet ground. Thesmall yellow circle held his gaze, and as if fascinated he watched itmoving along the road, now shining on the silver grains in a ring of sand,now glancing back from the standing water in a wheelrut, and nowilluminating a mossy stone or a weed upon the roadside. It was the onebright thing in a universe of blackness, until, as he came suddenly upon anelevation, the trees parted and he saw the windows of his home glowing uponthe night. As he looked a great peace fell over him, and he rode on,thanking God.
When he turned into the drive, his past anxiety appeared to him to beridiculous, and as he glanced from the clear lights in the great house tothe chain of lesser ones that stretched along the quarters, he laughedaloud in the first exhilaration of his relief. This at least was safe, Godkeep the others.
At his first call as he alighted before the portico, Hosea came running forhis horse, and when he entered the house, the cheerful face of UncleShadrach looked out from the dining room.
"Hi! Marse Peyton, I 'lowed you wuz gwine ter spen' de night."
"Oh, I had to get back, Shadrach," replied the Governor. "No, I won't takeany supper--you needn't bring it--but give me a glass of Burgundy, and thengo to bed. Where is your mistress, by the way? Has she gone to her room?"
Uncle Shadrach brought the bottle of Burgundy from the cellaret and placedit upon the table.
"Naw, suh, Miss July she set out ter de quarters ter see atter Mahaley," hereturned. "Mahaley she's moughty bad off, but 'tain' no night fur MissJuly--dat's w'at I tell 'er--one er dese yer spittin' nights ain' no nightter be out in."
"You're right, Shadrach, you're right," responded the Governor; and risinghe drank the wine standing. "It isn't a fit night for her to be out, andI'll go after her at once."
He took up his lantern, and as the old negro opened the doors before him,went out upon the back porch and down the steps.
From the steps a na
rrow path ran by the kitchen, and skirting thegarden-wall, straggled through the orchard and past the house of theoverseer to the big barn and the cabins in the quarters. There was a lightfrom the barn door, and as he passed he heard the sound of fiddles and theshuffling steps of the field hands in a noisy "game." The words they sangfloated out into the night, and with the squeaking of the fiddles followedhim along his path.
When he reached the quarters, he went from door to door, asking for hiswife. "Is this Mahaley's cabin?" he anxiously inquired, "and has yourmistress gone by?"
In the first room an old negro woman sat on the hearth wrapping the hair ofher grandchild, and she rose with a courtesy and a smile of welcome. At thequestion her face fell and she shook her head.
"Dis yer ain' Mahaley, Marster," she replied. "En dis yer ain' Mahaley'scabin--caze Mahaley she ain' never set foot inside my do', en I ain' gwineset foot at her buryin'." She spoke shrilly, moved by a hidden spite, butthe Governor, without stopping, went on along the line of open doors. Inone a field negro was roasting chestnuts in the embers of a log fire, andwhile waiting he had fallen asleep, with his head on his breast and hisgnarled hands hanging between his knees. The firelight ran over him, and ashe slept he stirred and muttered something in his dreams.
After the first glance, his master passed him by and moved on to theadjoining cabin. "Does Mahaley live here?" he asked again and yet again,until, suddenly, he had no need to put the question for from the last roomhe heard a low voice praying, and upon looking in saw his wife kneelingwith her open Bible near the bedside.
With his hat in his hand, he stood within the shadow of the doorway andwaited for the earnest voice to fall silent. Mahaley was dying, this he sawwhen his glance wandered to the shrunken figure beneath the patchworkquilt; and at the same instant he realized how small a part was his inMahaley's life or death. He should hardly have known her had he met herlast week in the corn field; and it was by chance only that he knew her nowwhen she came to die.
As he stood there the burden of his responsibility weighed upon him likeold age. Here in this scant cabin things so serious as birth and deathshowed in a pathetic bareness, stripped of all ceremonial trappings, asmere events in the orderly working out of natural laws--events asseasonable as the springing up and the cutting down of the corn. In thesesimple lives, so closely lived to the ground, grave things were sweetenedby an unconscious humour which was of the soil itself; and even death lostsomething of its strangeness when it came like the grateful shadow whichfalls over a tired worker in the field.
Mrs. Ambler finished her prayer and rose from her knees; and as she did sotwo slave women, crouching in a corner by the fire, broke into loudmoaning, which filled the little room with an animal and inarticulate soundof grief.
"Come away, Julia," implored the Governor in a whisper, resisting animpulse to close his ears against the cry.
But his wife shook her head and spoke for a moment with the sick womanbefore she wrapped her shawl about her and came out into the open air. Thenshe gave a sigh of relief, and, with her hand through her husband's arm,followed the path across the orchard.
"So you came home, after all," she said. For a moment he made no response;then, glancing about him in the darkness, he spoke in a low voice, as iffearing the sound of his own words.
"Bad news brought me home, Julia," he replied, "At the tavern they told mea message had come to Leicesterburg from Harper's Ferry. An attack was madeon the arsenal at midnight, and, it may be but a rumour, my dear, it wasfeared that the slaves for miles around were armed for an uprising."
His voice faltered, and he put out his hand to steady her, but she lookedup at him and he saw her clear eyes shining in the gloom.
"Oh, poor creatures," she murmured beneath her breath.
"Julia, Julia," he said softly, and lifted the lantern that he might lookinto her face. As the light fell on her he knew that she was as much amystery to him now as she had been twenty years ago on her wedding-day.
When they went into the house, he followed Uncle Shadrach about andcarefully barred the windows, shooting bolts which were rusted from disuse.After the old negro had gone out he examined the locks again; and thengoing into the hall took down a bird gun and an army pistol from theirplaces on the rack. These he loaded and laid near at hand beside the booksupon his table.
There was no sleep for him that night, and until dawn he sat, watchful, inhis chair, or moved softly from window to window, looking for a torch uponthe road and listening for the sound of approaching steps.
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