"Within five years," he cried, "the intelligence and the wealth of this mighty State will be transferred to the negro race. Lift up your heads.
The world is yours. Take it. Here and now I serve notice on every white man who breathes that I am as good as he is. I demand, and I am going to have, the privilege of going to see him in his house or his hotel, eating with him and sleeping with him, and when I see fit, to take his daughter in marriage!"
As the doctor emerged from the stifling crowd with his friend, he drew a deep breath of fresh air, took from his pocket his conservative memorial, picked it into little bits, and scattered them along the street as he walked in silence back to his hotel.
CHAPTER IX
AT LOVER"S LEAP
In spite of the pitiful collapse of old Stoneman under his stroke of paralysis, his children still saw the unconquered soul shining in his colourless eyes. They had both been on the point of confessing their love affairs to him and joining in the inevitable struggle when he was stricken. They knew only too well that he would not consent to a dual alliance with the Camerons under the conditions of fierce hatreds and violence into which the State had drifted. They were too high-minded to consider a violation of his wishes while thus helpless, with his strange eyes following them about in childlike eagerness. His weakness was mightier than his iron will.
So, for eighteen months, while he slowly groped out of mental twilight, each had waited--Elsie with a tender faith struggling with despair, and Phil in a torture of uncertainty and fear.
In the meantime, the young Northerner had become as radical in his sympathies with the Southern people as his father had ever been against them. This power of a.s.similation has always been a mark of Southern genius. The sight of the Black Hand on their throats now roused his righteous indignation. The patience with which they endured was to him amazing. The Southerner he had found to be the last man on earth to become a revolutionist. All his traits were against it. His genius for command, the deep sense of duty and honour, his hospitality, his deathless love of home, his supreme constancy and sense of civic unity, all combined to make him ultraconservative. He began now to see that it was reverence for authority as expressed in the Const.i.tution under which slavery was established which made Secession inevitable.
Besides, the laziness and incapacity of the negro had been more than he could endure. With no ties of tradition or habits of life to bind him, he simply refused to tolerate them. In this feeling Elsie had grown early to sympathize. She discharged Aunt Cindy for feeding her children from the kitchen, and brought a cook and house girl from the North, while Phil would employ only white men in any capacity.
In the desolation of negro rule the Cameron farm had become worthless. The taxes had more than absorbed the income, and the place was only kept from execution by the indomitable energy of Mrs. Cameron, who made the hotel pay enough to carry the interest on a mortgage which was increasing from season to season.
The doctor"s practice was with him a divine calling. He never sent bills to his patients. They paid something if they had it. Now they had nothing.
Ben"s law practice was large for his age and experience, but his clients had no money.
While the Camerons were growing each day poorer, Phil was becoming rich.
His genius, skill, and enterprise had been quick to see the possibilities of the waterpower. The old Eagle cotton mills had been burned during the war. Phil organized the Eagle & Phoenix Company, interested Northern capitalists, bought the falls, and erected two great mills, the dim hum of whose spindles added a new note to the river"s music. Eager, swift, modest, his head full of ideas, his heart full of faith, he had pressed forward to success.
As the old Commoner"s mind began to clear, and his recovery was sure, Phil determined to press his suit for Margaret"s hand to an issue.
Ben had dropped a hint of an interview of the Rev. Hugh McAlpin with Dr.
Cameron, which had thrown Phil into a cold sweat.
He hurried to the hotel to ask Margaret to drive with him that afternoon.
He would stop at Lover"s Leap and settle the question.
He met the preacher, just emerging from the door, calm, handsome, serious, and Margaret by his side. The dark-haired beauty seemed strangely serene.
What could it mean? His heart was in his throat. Was he too late? Wreathed in smiles when the preacher had gone, the girl"s face was a riddle he could not solve.
To his joy, she consented to go.
As he left in his trim little buggy for the hotel, he stooped and kissed Elsie, whispering:
"Make an offering on the altar of love for me, Sis!"
"You"re too slow. The prayers of all the saints will not save you!" she replied with a laugh, throwing him a kiss as he disappeared in the dust.
As they drove through the great forest on the cliffs overlooking the river, the Southern world seemed lit with new splendours to-day for the Northerner. His heart beat with a strange courage. The odour of the pines, their sighing music, the subtone of the falls below, the subtle life-giving perfume of the fullness of summer, the splendour of the sun gleaming through the deep foliage, and the sweet sensuous air, all seemed incarnate in the calm, lovely face and gracious figure beside him.
They took their seat on the old rustic built against the beech, which was the last tree on the brink of the cliff. A hundred feet below flowed the river, rippling softly along a narrow strip of sand which its current had thrown against the rocks. The ledge of towering granite formed a cave eighty feet in depth at the water"s edge. From this projecting wall, tradition said a young Indian princess once leaped with her lover, fleeing from the wrath of a cruel father who had separated them. The cave below was inaccessible from above, being reached by a narrow footpath along the river"s edge when entered a mile downstream.
The view from the seat, under the beech, was one of marvellous beauty. For miles the broad river rolled in calm, shining glory seaward, its banks fringed with cane and trees, while fields of corn and cotton spread in waving green toward the distant hills and blue mountains of the west.
Every tree on this cliff was cut with the initials of generations of lovers from Piedmont.
They sat in silence for awhile, Margaret idly playing with a flower she had picked by the pathway, and Phil watching her devoutly. The Southern sun had tinged her face the reddish warm hue of ripened fruit, doubly radiant by contrast with her wealth of dark-brown hair. The l.u.s.trous glance of her eyes, half veiled by their long lashes, and the graceful, careless pose of her stately figure held him enraptured. Her dress of airy, azure blue, so becoming to her dark beauty, gave Phil the impression of eiderdown feathers of some rare bird of the tropics. He felt that if he dared to touch her she might lift her wings and sail over the cliff into the sky and forget to light again at his side.
"I am going to ask a very bold and impertinent question, Miss Margaret,"
Phil said with resolution. "May I?"
Margaret smiled incredulously.
"I"ll risk your impertinence, and decide as to its boldness."
"Tell me, please, what that preacher said to you to-day."
Margaret looked away, unable to suppress the merriment that played about her eyes and mouth.
"Will you never breathe it to a soul if I do?"
"Never."
"Honest Injun, here on the sacred altar of the princess?"
"On my honour."
"Then I"ll tell you," she said, biting her lips to keep back a laugh. "Mr.
McAlpin is very handsome and eloquent. I have always thought him the best preacher we have ever had in Piedmont----"
"Yes, I know," Phil interrupted with a frown. "He is very pious," she went on evenly, "and seeks Divine guidance in prayer in everything he does. He called this morning to see me, and I was playing for him in the little music-room off the parlour, when he suddenly closed the door and said:
""Miss Margaret, I am going to take, this morning, the most important step of my life----"
"Of course I hadn"t the remotest idea what he meant----
""Will you join me in a word of prayer?" he asked, and knelt right down. I was accustomed, of course, to kneel with him in family worship at his pastoral calls, and so from habit I slipped to one knee by the piano stool, wondering what on earth he was about. When he prayed with fervour for the Lord to bless the great love with which he hoped to hallow my life--I giggled. It broke up the meeting. He rose and asked me to marry him. I told him the Lord hadn"t revealed it to me----"
Phil seized her hand and held it firmly. The smile died from the girl"s face, her hand trembled, and the rose tint on her cheeks flamed to scarlet.
"Margaret, my own, I love you," he cried with joy. "You could have told that story only to the one man whom you love--is it not true?"
"Yes. I"ve loved you always," said the low, sweet voice.
"Always?" asked Phil through a tear.
"Before I saw you, when they told me you were as Ben"s twin brother, my heart began to sing at the sound of your name----"
"Call it," he whispered.