Bennet was just exclaiming, "My, Doctor, but you raved.—Talk about my holding my tongue"—when there was a tap at the door and to their invitation to enter the door opened and a benign white haired, dignified man in clergyman's attire stepped into the room. He held out a hand as he said:
"I don't know your name but I want to thank you for the talk you gave. It was courageous."
Dr. Tansey accepted the extended hand with: "Dr. Tansey's my name and this is my friend Mr. Bennet."
"Glad to know you, Doctor—and Mr. Bennet. My name is Buntin, Windsor Buntin—I've an Episcopal parish up country away.—I've been trying to make these people see the error of their ways but have had no success. They simply ignore my preaching and my church. You've no idea how bitter they are."
"Never mind that, Father, your work will show some day.—I should not have spoken so but couldn't help myself. I witnessed a sight today that coupled with others I've seen made by blood boil. I wonder the colored people don't rise up in rebellion. And yet they're a docile people, so spiritual that they prefer to have patience."
Father Buntin, turned to go then wheeled again, extending his hand, saying: "Your words have given me new courage; new hope. I shall work on. Thank you, good night." A strong grip gave mutual courage as the two men stood, hands clasped. After a moment the clergyman was gone.
Dr. Tansey and Bennet soon retired and it was not long thereafter before the heavy breathing of the former told Bennet that his companion was sound asleep. Bennet, however, lay awake a long time, thinking over the experiences of the day, and Lida. His mind was filled with her. After the conversations on the ship and his experiences and observations in Charleston he was ready to believe that she had been persuaded to give him up.
"And yet," he debated with himself, "she knew all these things before she promised." Her words at their last meeting sounded in his soul: "I love you, and always will." Despite all the doubts that assailed him, this expression with her image cheered till he slept with a smile about his face.
Dr. Tansey was the first to awaken in the morning and by the time he and Bennet had prepared for their trip the chauffeur, engaged the previous day, arrived with the car. It was a Packard and its well oiled engine purred musically, as the two fares piled in their luggage, preparatory to departure.
Just as the sun was burnishing the waves of the harbor and reddening Forts Moultrie and Sumter they started from the hotel and after skirting the suburbs, headed for the open country along the road to Augusta. As they sped along the flat countryside, great fields of cotton lay spread before them interspersed here and there with other fields of corn. Acres and acres of full blown cotton, in the period of blossoming, row after row running straight from the road for a mile or more till lost in one mass of green far down the field. In the distance the white, large cuplike blossoms, gradually turning to purple, made the field appear a sea of green and star blooms.
Interspersed with these, now and then, were fields of other products, such as wheat, millet, oats, and other growing farm vegetation. Corn fields with their yellowing tassels and ears just showing silken in the breezes. Through this beautiful country the automobile in which Dr. Tansey and Bennet were riding, bore the two men; here and there passing through dense wooded areas whose tall, long-leaf pines towered above the other growth like huge sentinels. At the edge of the road nestled among these wooded areas could be seen yards with low thatched houses, here and there children playing about, climbing trees or at other games.
At work in the cotton fields and among the corn were huge groups of Negro boys and girls, of varying shades, but mostly black or brown; black men and women, quaintly and picturesquely garbed, in costumes that to Bennet seemed slovenly and in many cases tattered. The men were behind plows, while the women and some of the children were swinging hoes, the other children seemed to be pulling weeds from among the cotton and corn. From the crest of an elevation as they rode, they paused to view the magnificent outlook. For miles and miles the vista was one of fields, patches of woods, and houses.
At one place along the road the automobile slowed down a short distance from where a group were resting, having come to the end of their rows. A few were laughing, but most of them were serious. Suddenly, as Dr. Tansey and Bennet watched them interestedly, there seemed to rise from the ground itself a rumbling, rounded harmony. Both men turned, mystified, from one side to the other, looking off in the distance wondering if the strains came from some home in which there was an organ. The chauffeur, who had been silent throughout the ride offered, as he tinkered with his engine, an explanation; "They're singing," he said, lifting his head in the direction of the grouped laborers.
The two men could not understand the words, which were pronounced with an accent, suggestive of a French patois and an English inflection; a characteristic of all speech in the vicinity of Charleston. The music, however, was marvelous. To Dr. Tansey it was like the prelude to an offertory played by some master musician on a great organ. The blending of the voices was such as to make the music seem like some weird paean, each group of tones standing out just enough to make the drum of the ear quiver with the sound which brought delight to the hearers. Dr. Tansey and Bennet studied the singers, their eyes turning first from those producing the bass tones to those carrying the melody.
There was a haunting, semi-sad, plaintive shade to the song, with here and there the soprano of the women and the altos rising above the other voices while the lower tones seemed to moan their way from the diaphragms of the singers to their throats and out into the air. The song was one of the old slave melodies—a spiritual. The words, as Dr. Tansey afterward learned, were:
For Christ has set me free;
I want to be with Jesus,
And sing for liberty.
There was such deep pathos in the song that for a few moments both men stood as if transfixed. To Dr. Tansey's heart there came a gripping pain of sympathy while his eyes filled with tears. He turned aside to brush them away, and when he turned back again Bennet was in the act of putting a handkerchief to his face. There seemed to be a wailing note in the song, as if they were crying out against conditions which hemmed them about, and against which they were helpless except for the faith which their singing instilled in them and the hopes that filled them of a better day to come.
The leader of the song had just stepped to another row of cotton and started toward the other end of the field still singing when a man, evidently the overseer, rode up from somewhere out of sight. The crowd was now moving along down the lanes of cotton when the man, a rawboned, sandy-haired, fiery-eyed man, wearing a wide brimmed slouched hat, came into the group swinging a seven-foot four-braided whip with the end knotted.
"Here, you black devils. Get to work! Get to work!" With that he swung the whip viciously, the lash catching two of the women in its swish. One gave a groan and the other bit her lips in agony of pain and in an effort to repress the anguish she felt. The tall, lanky black who had led off with the singing and hoeing stopped and looked angrily at the man, gripping his hoe menacingly. He kept silent, however.
"None of your impudence, Obed, or I'll brain you," shouted the foreman. "Let me catch you all loafing again and I'll cowhide every durned one of you."
The Negro spoken to, lifted his head toward heaven as if in prayer, then turned to his hoeing.
The overseer turned to the men in the automobile.
"You have to drive them. They're so lazy. You have to keep at them and use force, too," he offered in explanation.
"You use force, all right"—commented Dr. Tansey drily. "I'd like to see if you'd not be a lot lazier if you had to swing a hoe in that sun on that hot field. I know I would."
"Oh, that's a nigger's job. Not a white man's."
"Suppose they decided to quit you. Who'd do the work."
"Nobody 'round here would hire my hands, 'less I said so. That's the rule. Besides I feed 'em. They've got to work for me."
"Don't you pay them in cash for their work?"
"Sometimes."
"How much?"
"Thirty-five cents a day."
"My God!" exclaimed Dr. Tansey. "Thirty-five cents a day to work in that field—from sunrise to dark. My God! and you call them lazy."
"Well, who's going to do the work?—Who'll I get to work my farm?" The overseer exclaimed.
"And you drive them with a whip for that pay. I wonder they don't all leave you."
"If they did that I'd break their backs. Durn them," returned the overseer.
"Well, we must be going. Good day," was Dr. Tansey's parting. With disgust in their hearts the two men resumed their journey. They had passed Branchville and were on the Orangeburg road going through a long stretch of pine woods, talking of commonplace things, Bennet's mind still centered on Lida and their imminent meeting, when suddenly Dr. Tansey listened acutely, above the purr of the automobile. They had just passed a little copse at the rear of which sat a small house. Dr. Tansey listened again. Bennet, too, had heard.
"What was that?" he turned to Dr. Tansey.
"Stop, driver," the latter ordered.
As the car came to a stop, off to the right of them from the woods a little way from the road came the most awful screams and groans. Both men leaped from the car and started for the spot.
"Watch out for snakes," cautioned the chauffeur.
"They're bad about here."
Neither man paid heed to the warning, however, but rushed to where the groans and screams had sounded. In the midst of the thicket, lashed to a holly tree, with back bared to the waist was a brown skinned girl, crying and groaning, blood running down her back. At her side, with coat off and sleeves rolled up was a man with a ministerial vestee and collar on, swinging a lash.
"I'll teach you to steal," he puffed vehemently as he swung the lash again. At the swish of the whip a large welt stood up from the girl's back, from which blood began to flow anew.
Bennet was ahead of Dr. Tansey, this time, his eyes blazing. He was just in time to catch the lash as it descended for another stroke. He only caught part of it, however. His grip had been in the middle. The tapering end of the lash wound itself about Bennet's shoulder with just a tip touching his flesh, raising a lump and firing his soul with madness. He jerked the whip from the man's hand, the force of the pull throwing the lasher off his balance and toward Bennet. As the man fell toward him, Bennet's fist shot out and caught the man flush on the jaw. He went down.
"I've seen about all of this I can stand, you brute," he growled, his voice subdued with pent up emotion. "Stand up and take some of your own medicine."
The man began to grovel at his feet, his senses clearing enough to make him realize that if he stood he would be struck down again. Bennet stood over him, feet extended, poised for another blow.
"Don't hit me. Don't hit me," he begged. "I'm a minister. I just wanted to teach her a lesson—not to steal."
"I didn't steal nothing. 'Fore God I didn't steal nothing," moaned the girl.
"Get up," commanded Bennet, "before I brain you. A big hulk of a man like you to be beating a woman. A minister—Pah!"
As they were talking, a rather pretty-faced white woman came toward them, holding her hand high displaying a purse. "George, I found it—I found it. Just where I put it on a shelf back of the clock on the mantel. I'm so glad I found it."
The girl was crying softly now, though her flesh was trembling as it bled. She was still tied to the tree. The minister's wife took in the scene and the two strangers, then turned, without a blush or a glance at the girl to the house.
"Free that girl," Bennet commanded.
The minister had now replaced his frock and busied himself untying the thongs that bound the girl. "I meant no harm. They all do it around here. I wanted to teach her not to steal. My wife had lost her purse," he offered as if in palliation.
"Shut up!" blazed Bennet as he stepped toward the minister, his fists clenched again. "You shame the name of minister. You—you—devil."
The girl, still crying with pain, threw her discarded clothing over her shoulder, covering her wounds, when freed, started off through the woods.
"If I had my gun here I'd kill you. White men don't interfere in one another's affairs with their servants 'round here."
"Go get your gun. I'll wait here," commanded Bennet.
The minister departed, the girl following still crying under her breath. The two men watched him disappear and enter his house. They waited some minutes longer and when he failed to make good his threat they returned to their car and were on their way again.
"What a miserable country this is," commented Bennet, as they started.
"Yes, miserable, for some people. It's a beautiful land, though, were it not for such things as these and—snakes. And yet, Bennet, we don't know half. It fairly sickens me when I think of the crimes wantonly committed in this land."