CHAPTER X
MAN TO MAN
Cleo made good her vow of perfect service. In the weeks which followed shemade herself practically indispensable. Her energy was exhaustless, herstrength tireless. She not only kept the baby and the little mother happy,she watched the lawn and the flowers. The men did no more loafing. Thegrass was cut, the hedges trimmed, every dead limb from shrub and treeremoved and the old place began to smile with new life.
Her work of housekeeper and maid-of-all-work was a marvel of efficiency. Noorders were ever given to her. They were unnecessary. She knew by anunerring instinct what was needed and anticipated the need.
And then a thing happened that fixed her place in the house on the firmestbasis.
The baby had taken a violent cold which quickly developed into pneumonia.The doctor looked at the little red fever-scorched face and parched lipswith grave silence. He spoke at last with positive conviction:
"His life depends on a nurse, Norton. All I can do is to give orders. Thenurse must save him."
With a sob in her voice, Cleo said:
"Let me--I'll save him. He can't die if it depends on that."
The doctor turned to the mother.
"Can you trust her?"
"Absolutely. She's quick, strong, faithful, careful, and she loves him."
"You agree, major?"
"Yes, we couldn't do better," he answered gravely, turning away.
And so the precious life was given into her hands. Norton spent themornings in the nursery executing the doctor's orders with clock-likeregularity, while Cleo slept. At noon she quietly entered and took hisplace. Her meals were served in the room and she never left it until herelieved her the next day. The tireless, greenish eyes watched the cradlewith death-like stillness and her keen young ears bent low to catch everychange in the rising and falling of the little breast. Through the longwatches of the night, the quick alert figure with the velvet tread hurriedabout the room filling every order with skill and patience.
At the end of two weeks, the doctor smiled, patted her on the shoulder andsaid:
"You're a great nurse, little girl. You've saved his life."
Her head was bending low over the cradle, the baby reached up his hand,caught one of her red curls and lisped faintly:
"C-l-e-o!"
Her eyes were shining with tears as she rushed from the room and out on thelawn to have her cry alone. There could be no question after this of herposition.
When the new Legislature met in the old Capitol building four months later,it was in the atmosphere of the crisp clearness that follows the storm. Thethieves and vultures had winged their way to more congenial climes. Theydared not face the investigation of their saturnalia which the restoredwhite race would make. The wisest among them fled northward on the night ofthe election.
The Governor couldn't run. His term of office had two years more to befilled. And shivering in his room alone, shunned as a pariah, he awaitedthe assault of his triumphant foes.
And nothing succeeds like success. The brilliant young editor of the _Eagleand Phoenix_ was the man of the hour. When he entered the hall of the Houseof Representatives on the day the Assembly met, pandemonium broke loose. Ashout rose from the floor that fairly shook the old granite pile. Cheerafter cheer rent the air, echoed and re-echoed through the vaulted archesof the hall. Men overturned their desks and chairs as they rushed pellmellto seize his hand. They lifted him on their shoulders and carried him inprocession around the Assembly Chamber, through the corridors and aroundthe circle of the Rotunda, cheering like madmen, and on through the SenateChamber where every white Senator joined the procession and returned to theother end of the Capitol singing "Dixie" and shouting themselves hoarse.
He was elected Speaker of the House by his party without a dissentingvoice, and the first words that fell from his lips as he ascended the dais,gazed over the cheering House, and rapped sharply for order, sounded thedeath knell to the hopes of the Governor for a compromise with his enemies.His voice rang clear and cold as the notes of a bugle:
"The first business before this House, gentlemen, is the impeachment andremoval from office of the alleged Governor of this state!"
Again the long pent feelings of an outraged people passed all bounds. Invain the tall figure in the chair rapped for order. He had as well tried tocall a cyclone to order by hammering at it with a gavel. Shout after shout,cheer after cheer, shout and cheer in apparently unending succession!
They had not only won a great victory and redeemed a state's honor, butthey had found a leader who dared to lead in the work of cleansing andrebuilding the old commonwealth. It was ten minutes before order could berestored. And then with merciless precision the Speaker put in motion thelegal machine that was to crush the life out of the little Scalawag who satin his room below and listened to the roar of the storm over his head.
On the day the historic trial opened before the high tribunal of theSenate, sitting as judges, with the Chief Justice of the state as presidingofficer, the Governor looked in vain for a friendly face among hisaccusers. Now that he was down, even the dogs in his own party whom he hadreared and fed, men who had waxed fat on the spoils he had thrown them,were barking at his heels. They accused him of being the cause of theparty's downfall.
The Governor had quickly made up his mind to ask no favors of thesewretches. If the blow should fall, he knew to whom he would appeal that itmight be tempered with mercy. The men of his discredited party were of hisown type. His only chance lay in the generosity of a great foe.
It would be a bitter thing to beg a favor at the hands of the editor whohad hounded him with his merciless pen from the day he had entered office,but it would be easier than an appeal to the ungrateful hounds of his ownkennel who had deserted him in his hour of need.
The Bill of Impeachment which charged him with high crimes and misdemeanorsagainst the people whose rights he had sworn to defend was drawn by theSpeaker of the House, and it was a terrible document. It would not onlydeprive him of his great office, but strip him of citizenship, and send himfrom the Capitol a branded man for life.
The defense proved weak and the terrific assaults of the Impeachmentmanagers under Norton's leadership resistless. Step by step the remorselessprosecutors closed in on the doomed culprit. Each day he sat in his placebeside his counsel in the thronged Senate Chamber and heard his judges votewith practical unanimity "Guilty" on a new count in the Bill ofImpeachment. The Chief Executive of a million people cowered in his seatwhile his accusers told and re-told the story of his crimes and the packedgalleries cheered.
But one clause of the bill remained to be adjudged--the brand his accusersproposed to put upon his forehead. His final penalty should be the loss ofcitizenship. It was more than the Governor could bear. He begged anadjournment of the High Court for a conference with his attorneys and itwas granted.
He immediately sought the Speaker, who made no effort to conceal thecontempt in which he held the trembling petitioner.
"I've come to you, Major Norton," he began falteringly, "in the darkesthour of my life. I've come because I know that you are a brave and generousman. I appeal to your generosity. I've made mistakes in my administration.But I ask you to remember that few men in my place could have done better.I was set to make bricks without straw. I was told to make water run uphill and set at naught the law of gravitation.
"I struck at you personally--yes--but remember my provocation. You made methe target of your merciless ridicule, wit and invective for two years. Itwas more than flesh and blood could bear without a return blow. Putyourself in my place----"
"I've tried, Governor," Norton interrupted in kindly tones. "And it'sinconceivable to me that any man born and bred as you have been, among thebest people of the South, a man whose fiery speeches in the SecessionConvention helped to plunge this state into civil war--how you could baselybetray your own flesh and blood in the hour of their sorest need--it'sbeyond me! I can't understand it. I've tried to put myself in your p
laceand I can't."
The little ferret eyes were dim as he edged toward the tall figure of hisaccuser:
"I'm not asking of you mercy, Major Norton, on the main issue. I understandthe bitterness in the hearts of these men who sit as my judges to-day. Imake no fight to retain the office of Governor, but--major"--his thin voicebroke--"it's too hard to brand me a criminal by depriving me of mycitizenship and the right to vote, and hurl me from the highest officewithin the gift of a great people a nameless thing, a man without acountry! Come, sir, even if all you say is true, justice may be temperedwith mercy. Great minds can understand this. You are the representativeto-day of a brave and generous race of men. My life is in ruins--I am atyour feet. I have pride. I had high ambitions----"
His voice broke, he paused, and then continued in strained tones:
"I have loved ones to whom this shame will come as a bolt from the clearsky. They know nothing of politics. They simply love me. This finalignominy you would heap on my head may be just from your point of view. Butis it necessary? Can it serve any good purpose? Is it not mere wantoncruelty?
"Come now, man to man--our masks are off--my day is done. You are young.The world is yours. This last blow with which you would crush my spirit istoo cruel! Can you afford an act of such wanton cruelty in the hour of yourtriumph? A small man could, yes--but you? I appeal to the best that's inyou, to the spark of God that's in every human soul----"
Norton was deeply touched, far more than he dreamed any word from the manhe hated could ever stir him. The Governor saw his hesitation and pressedhis cause:
"I might say many things honestly in justification of my course inpolitics; but the time has not come. When passions have cooled and we canlook the stirring events of these years squarely in the face--there'll betwo sides to this question, major, as there are two sides to all questions.I might say to you that when I saw the frightful blunder I had made inhelping to plunge our country into a fatal war, I tried to make good mymistake and went to the other extreme. I was ambitious, yes, but we areconfronted with millions of ignorant negroes. What can we do with them?Slavery had an answer. Democracy now must give the true answer orperish----"
"That answer will never be to set these negroes up as rulers over whitemen!"
Norton raised his hand and spoke with bitter emphasis.
"Even so, in a Democracy with equality as the one fundamental law of life,what are you going to do with them? I could plead with you that in everyact of my ill-fated administration I was honestly, in the fear of God,trying to meet and solve this apparently insoluble problem. You are now inpower. What are you going to do with these negroes?"
"Send them back to the plow first," was the quick answer.
"All right; when they have bought those farms and their sons and daughtersare rich and cultured--what then?"
"We'll answer that question, Governor, when the time comes."
"Remember, major, that you have no answer to it now, and in the pride ofyour heart to-day let me suggest that you deal charitably with one whohonestly tried to find the answer when called to rule over both races.
"I have failed, I grant you. I have made mistakes, I grant you. Won't youaccept my humility in this hour in part atonement for my mistakes? I standalone before you, my bitterest and most powerful enemy, because I believein the strength and nobility of your character. You are my only hope. I ambefore you, broken, crushed, humiliated, deserted, friendless--at yourmercy!"
The last appeal stirred the soul of the young editor to its depths. He wassurprised and shocked to find the man he had so long ridiculed and hatedso thoroughly, human and appealing in his hour of need.
He spoke with a kindly deliberation he had never dreamed it possible to usewith this man.
"I'm sorry for you, Governor. Your appeal is to me a very eloquent one. Ithas opened a new view of your character. I can never again say bitter,merciless things about you in my paper. You have disarmed me. But as theleader of my race, in the crisis through which we are passing, I feel thata great responsibility has been placed on me. Now that we have met, withbared souls in this solemn hour, let me say that I have learned to like youbetter than I ever thought it possible. But I am to-day a judge who mustmake his decision, remembering that the lives and liberties of all thepeople are in his keeping when he pronounces the sentence of law. A judgehas no right to spare a man who has taken human life because he is sorryfor the prisoner. I have no right, as a leader, to suspend this penalty onyou. Your act in destroying the civil law, arresting men without warrantand holding them by military force without bail or date of trial, was, inmy judgment, a crime of the highest rank, not merely against me--oneindividual whom you happened to hate--but against every man, woman andchild in the state. Unless that crime is punished another man, as daring inhigh office, may repeat it in the future. I hold in my hands to-day notonly the lives and liberties of the people you have wronged, but ofgenerations yet unborn. Now that I have heard you, personally I am sorryfor you, but the law must take its course."
"You will deprive me of my citizenship?" he asked pathetically.
"It is my solemn duty. And when it is done no Governor will ever again dareto repeat your crime."
Norton turned away and the Governor laid his trembling hand on his arm:
"Your decision is absolutely final, Major Norton?"
"Absolutely," was the firm reply.
The Governor's shoulders drooped lower as he shuffled from the room and hiseyes were fixed on space as he pushed his way through the hostile crowdsthat filled the corridors of the Capitol.
The Court immediately reassembled and the Speaker rose to make his motionfor a vote on the last count in the bill depriving the Chief Executive ofthe state of his citizenship.
The silence was intense. The crowds that packed the lobby, the galleries,and every inch of the floor of the Senate Chamber expected a fierce speechof impassioned eloquence from their idolized leader. Every neck was cranedand breath held for his first ringing words.
To their surprise he began speaking in a low voice choking with emotion andmerely demanded a vote of the Senate on the final clause of the bill, andthe brown eyes of the tall orator had a suspicious look of moisture intheir depths as they rested on the forlorn figure of the little Scalawag.The crowd caught the spirit of solemnity and of pathos from the speaker'svoice and the vote was taken amid a silence that was painful.
When the Clerk announced the result and the Chief Justice of the statedeclared the office of Governor vacant there was no demonstration. As theLieutenant-Governor ascended the dais and took the oath of office, theScalawag rose and staggered through the crowd that opened with a look ofawed pity as he passed from the chamber.
Norton stepped to the window behind the President of the Senate and watchedthe pathetic figure shuffle down the steps of the Capitol and slowly walkfrom the grounds. The sun was shining in the radiant splendor of earlyspring. The first flowers were blooming in the hedges by the walk and birdswere chirping, chattering and singing from every tree and shrub. A squirrelstarted across the path in front of the drooping figure, stopped, cockedhis little head to one side, looked up and ran to cover. But the man withdrooping shoulders saw nothing. His dim eyes were peering into the shroudedfuture.
Norton was deeply moved.
"The judgment of posterity may deal kindlier with his life!" he exclaimed."Who knows? A politician, a trimmer and a time-server--yes, so we all aredown in our cowardly hearts--I'm sorry that it had to be!"
He was thinking of a skeleton in his own closet that grinned at himsometimes now when he least expected it.