CHAPTER XXIII
INTO THE LIGHT
HE is still asleep," said Giles, after he had greeted Virginia the following morning. "Leyden was up at six, after four hours of rest. Marvelous chap, Leyden; he'd had no sleep since he went into the swamp; said that Dessalines was in a fearful way when he found him, poor chap! Thought that he was back in Hayti at some sort of a heathen orgy. What a beastly place Hayti must be—what?"
"They have gone to Charleston?" asked Virginia.
"Yes, to see what can be done toward shipping poor old Aristide out."
"And you are sure that they were not discovered in coming here?"
"As sure as one can be of anything in a country like this. I say, Ginny, I beg your pardon, but really don't you think it's a devilish place?"
"I think that I prefer England," said Virginia smiling faintly.
"They came out under the very noses of those jackals around the fire by the main trunk," continued Giles. "Leyden said that the fire prevented them from seeing very far into the darkness, and that there are so many strange sounds about a swamp like that at night, that nobody noticed the splashing they made. When he was telling us about it I said: 'lucky,' and Leyden answered in his dry way, 'Yes; for them!' Do you know, I believe that he would have done for the last one of them if they had tried to stop him. Dangerous chaps, the quiet kind like Leyden—what?"
Virginia's face glowed. Perhaps it was fortunate for Giles that she had placed her affections before Leyden had come into her life; also that the naturalist was not twenty years younger,—but that is hardly fair.
"They waded all of the way from the swamp, over a mile, waist deep, in the canal of the closed reserve, then crossed into the Long Acre Canal, through the back sluice which cuts Turkey Island. There Leyden carried Dessalines across the road to the North Plantation, and from that place they waded through the salt marsh until they reached the cut-off. They waded up that to the mill, and will you believe it, Virginia, Leyden actually carried Dessalines on his back from the cut-off to the house. It must be half a mile; yet he didn't appear blown. Who would ever suspect that he was such a tremendous athlete?"
"He is not," said Virginia, "he is simply a naturally powerful man; an athlete would have needed a cinder track."
Giles stared. Sometimes Virginia puzzled him.
"Oh, I say, you're chaffing!" he began.
"So I am. Never mind, dear old pink-and-white!" and she gave him a kiss which puzzled him tremendously.
They spent a rather nervous morning; Dessalines still slept. As they were lunching, one of the house maids came breathlessly to the door of the dining room.
"Oh, Miss Faginny!" she gasped, "dey all white men a-gallupin' up de road wiv guns!"
Virginia, white as the tablecloth, half rose from her chair. Giles, also white, arose quickly and walked to the front of the house. The sound of many hoofs reached Virginia's ear; the need for action rallied her and she joined Giles who was standing in the doorway. As Virginia glanced at his face, she saw a look which was entirely new to her. Her "pink-and-white" boyish lover had stepped aside to make room for the man in him; it thrilled the girl and made the crisis less fearful.
A cavalcade of a dozen riders was slowly approaching the house; some of them Giles recognized as the men who, with Leyden, he had met upon the trail of the negro several days before. The leader was the same; a handsome fellow, young, apparently of better caste than his followers.
Giles stepped out of the doorway and stood at the head of the long flight of steps. Virginia, standing in the door, watched him with a rush of pride. His head was up, shoulders squared; there were lines in the swell of the strong figure which betokened fight.
Slowly and in silence the cavalcade rode straight to the door, where at a sign from the leader they drew rein. The leader pulled off his great sombrero.
"Good evenin', ma'am! Evenin', sir!"
Giles bowed stiffly. "Good evening," he answered.
"We have come, sir, for that negra; we know that he is heah because he was followed last night by one of my men when brought to this house by your officer."
"Have you a warrant for his arrest?" demanded Giles, in a voice quite new to Virginia.
"We have, sir. Our warrant is the sanctity of Southern homes, and the autho'ity which lies herein!" The man tapped his rifle.
"Have you any legal authority?" asked Giles. "Do you act in accordance with the Federal law?"
He had unwittingly blundered upon the very worst word. A fierce murmur swept the group of riders. These men, cruel, savage, vindictive as they were, would not curse before a lady; one saw the blasphemies writhing upon their thin, cruel lips.
"No, sir; we do not."
"Then you cannot have him," said Giles, his voice curt, scorning to equivocate.
An audible murmur rippled beneath; the leader looked puzzled for an instant then smiled.
"I reckin' you are an Englishman, sir. No one else would talk as you do. I am afraid, sir, that you do not understand the customs of this country. We are bound to protect ourselves and we must do so in our own way. Your principles and your courage reflect great credit upon you, sir, if I may make bold to say so, but you mistake our purpose. We have not come to ask for the person of this negra; we have come to get him. When we get him we will take him quietly away and hang him. There is to be no exhibition. And now, sir, we shall proceed to enter the house." He made a motion to dismount, but Giles took a step forward and raised his hand.
"Mr. Moultrie has left me in charge here," he said. "As you say, I do not understand the customs of your country. Where I live we abide by the law; but I do not believe that there is any country where armed men have the right to enter the house of another man without his permission and without legal authority. You shall not enter this house while I live." Giles's voice was very quiet, very even, but it carried the ring of utter and unwavering finality.
A look of bewilderment passed from face to face; that a white man who was not an officer should deliberately lay down his life for a negro was more than these men could comprehend. Before the leader could reply Virginia sprang to Giles's side.
"Oh, please go," she cried. "Please! I am Miss Moultrie, Manning Moultrie's daughter." Her quick eyes picked out some white hairs in the troop. "You all knew Manning Moultrie!"
"And respected him, ma'am," answered one of the older men. "But Manning Moultrie would hev been with us, not against us."
"But you do not understand. This negro is a Haytian; it is the first time that he has been in this country." And in the same disjointed way Virginia poured out the whole tale, as she had heard it from Dessalines. Her words fell upon barren ground. Lack of imagination is the cause of many crises; the men before her were bewildered, not impressed. Failing to grasp the thought which she offered them, they clung stubbornly to their own preformed ideas. The ignorant prefer to follow a blind precept, rather than to strain the faculties of thought.
A silence ominous, ill-boding, followed Virginia's words. The leader, who was such by virtue of the greatest mentality, caught fragments of her argument. Alone he would have yielded; as it was, he felt that to yield would be to be supplanted. He possessed a little mind, but not enough to supply the wise, cool courage to be found only with a deal of mind.
"I'm sorry, ma'am," he answered softly, "but it don't make no sort of diffe'unce. We have come for this man; we mean to have him."
The high color was swept from Giles's face; a cold rage, a cold-blood rage, an inheritance direct from Berserker forefathers, welled up within him. He began to scent blood and it drove his wits from him. He was very young.
Ah, Leyden, Leyden; the wise, experienced, skilled player upon the emotions of men! How simple it might all have been—these single-unit brain cells would have lost their impulses in the wave of your fuller thought! You might have made them weep, laugh, rave, carry the man, whom they had come to slay, triumphant on their shoulders … recruit from their ranks a bodyguard! The pity of it!
"Come and get him then, you cursed cowards!" snarled Giles. He leaped backward, reached behind the door, whipped out a repeating rifle.
The ironic folly of it! The futility of blind courage!
The leader alone was stirred with something akin to sympathy. He was not a strong man; he was weak enough to be generous. He turned to the others.
"Boys," he said, "the dog-gone niggeh ain't wuth it! Let's go 'long."
There was a moment's silence, then a clamor; men slipped from their saddles, rifles in hand. Two aimed across their saddles at Giles; others ran, bent-kneed, to flank the house. Giles raised his piece. Virginia with a swift movement struck it from his hands and sent it clattering down the steps. The action was all that saved Giles's life in that instant.
Giles turned to her with a crazed, furious face, yet in his frenzy he realized her danger; then, as he glanced warily at his enemies, fearful for the nearness of Virginia, he saw that they had frozen in their tracks; rigid as wild beasts at first sight of their quarry, and the look in the cruel eyes told him that they had sighted theirs.
A heavy step sounded upon the planking over their heads.
"It is Dessalines—Dessalines!" gasped Virginia, pale as the fluted column against which she stood.
"Listen!" said Giles.
A deep voice rumbled out from above; a voice low in key, not loud, yet audible as the beat of a distant drum. Each word, though muffled, was distinct; it carried a cadence of infinite weariness, hopeless resignation.
"You have come to kill me," welled the deep voice. "To shoot me, and to send my wicked soul to hell." The key sank lower; the words became a moan. "You cannot send my soul to hell; it is already there." He paused.
The men, startled, awe-struck, amazed at tone and words, stood spellbound. Giles and Virginia were unable to see Dessalines; there was little need. His imposing image was reflected from the awed faces of those who had come to take his life. If at that moment the negro had seen fit to employ his eloquence to save himself he might have done so; as it was, he had come to look upon himself as already dead.
The whole night he had spent in shuddering terror; the long-drawn breathings, which those listening at his door had taken to be the respiration of profound sleep, had been the fathomless sighs of a spirit crushed beneath an agony of dread, paralyzed to all emotion save that of primitive fear; the terror of the naked pagan of an early age who fled howling as the lava flowed into the recesses of his Cambrian fen.
From that, Dessalines had passed to the dull stage of inert hopelessness which characterizes the negro race. The arrival of the vigilantes had partially aroused him from this dull lethargy; it had awakened no further fears; this emotion, taxed beyond its powers of translation in the still hours of darkness, had, like a sensory nerve subjected to crushing force, undergone anæsthesia, paralysis. In its place had come the depression of profound self-pity, as impersonal as if referred to another entity; a childish sense of the overpowering pathos of his condition, and with this the pitiful generosity of the honest, true-hearted if erring child. He had committed a fault; it was unavoidable that he be punished for it. His conscience was guilty, yet he felt that if the thing could be understood as it appeared to him, all would be forgiven. Yet, in a dumb way, he realized the hopelessness of this. Punishment was inevitable. Very well, but his playmates should not be punished for his fault.
The deep voice quavered out again. "Here I am," it said, and there was a heart-breaking cadence which pierced. "Here I am," he repeated. "Shoot me if you wish, but don't shoot Giles. Giles has done no harm."
A silence fell. The men wavered, puzzled, disturbed, oddly moved, swept by an emotion which they could feel but not comprehend. In this pause Giles recovered himself.
"Dessalines!" he cried in a choked voice. "Dessalines!" He stepped forward throwing out both arms.
"I tell you that this man is not guilty of any crime, more than any poor brute might be if he were hounded and hunted and driven mad from fear and hunger and hurts! He is a Haytian … an exile … an educated man. When he was driven from Hayti he came here; we knew him in England. Let me tell you how he saved the lives of Miss Moultrie and myself." With eager, rapid words he poured out the story of the rescue from the river. "He is guilty of no crime!" cried Giles.
"Yes, I am guilty." The heavy tones fell from above, sad, hopeless, half-muffled. "I am guilty, Giles."
The rich voice quavered, whimpered. "I am very guilty, Giles."
"He is mad," said Giles to Virginia. "I must keep him quiet! Make him stop! he will say something. There, he is talking again!"
The sobbing whimper of a child quavered down from above. "I shall confess … and then you may shoot me. I did not mean to kill the man. …"
Giles sprang inside the door, and, followed by Virginia, he flew to the broad stairway, his only thought to reach Dessalines, to silence his self-incriminating words.
At the foot of the stairs they heard the rumble of the deep voice; halfway up the crash of a volley smote upon their ears.
Giles clutched Virginia's wrist. "Go back!" he cried. "Back to your room. Stay there until I come for you!"
Virginia leaned against the wall, sick, shivering. Giles rushed on, passed through the room occupied by Dessalines, then out upon the balcony. He saw the cavalcade wheel, move slowly down the broad avenue, pass beneath the live oaks.
Dessalines' great body was huddled against the threshold of the balcony door. He held his head between his hands; the blood from half a score of wounds drummed upon the planking.
Giles sank beside him; threw his arm about the great shoulders. The massive head tottered, fell upon the shoulder of the Englishman.
"Poor Dessalines," whimpered the deep voice. "Poor Dessalines! Poor Dessalines!"
The words came faintly and with a strangled sob; the great frame rocked to and fro.
The tears gushed from the eyes of Giles. "Aristide!" he faltered.
"Giles … Giles …" came the feeble, plaintive voice—the voice of a little child. "Stay with me, Giles. Poor Dessalines, he meant no harm, Giles. Poor Dessalines"
The head sank lower. "Poor Dessalines," came a soft whisper, and then the soul slipped out to greet the pitying God who made men Black and White.