The Forged Note Part 49

For a time that may have been a second, possibly more, he stood hesitant. Wild of eye and trembling in the legs, but conspicuous to a humorous degree, he soon came to appreciate the spectacle he made, and forthwith betook himself hurriedly back up the steps; but, alas! Not many had he ascended when he made a miss, and, with a smothered, embarra.s.sed cry, he fell, and the next moment came back.

While all this performing was going on, he was not aware that the officers had long since departed. And when he again landed at the feet of his onlookers, who were now given over to a fit of snickers, he cried in a subdued, but intensely excited voice: "Don't let them get me! Don't let them get me!" He was wild, as he hesitated before attempting to return. And in the meantime, he whined like a poor thing, which made the Negroes who stood about, give up to loud laughing.

At last, he was calmed to a point where he took himself hurriedly up the stairs, and disappeared. And then there was another commotion!

Apparently the house was coming down, from the scrambling, and the way chairs, and beds, and tables--and everything seemed to be turning over.

"Say, say!" came the voice of Glenview. "The officers have disappeared a half hour ago. Be quiet. Those are not officers below. They are curiosities." But it was some time before he was able to communicate this fact to a point that brought quiet. When he presently emerged, the onlookers saw not two, Glenview and the other, but five. They slipped down the steps like ghosts, looked wildly about for one brief second, and then melted into the night like vampires.

As they floated away, some one recognized one and called him out by name, and these words came back to those who listened:

"Hush calling my name, you fool!"

The plate at the head of the table was not turned that morning. The Mis', notwithstanding the words she uttered when the raid had been made: "I'm glad of it! It'll stop that gambling, and I hope, Murphy's whiskey selling," she was, nevertheless, sad-eyed, and all upset. All that day she so remained, grew worse, if anything.

"Don't worry, Mis'," comforted Glenview kindly. "As soon as some word comes from them, I'll hustle about and secure bail." But it was late in the morning before any word came, and then, alas! It was a surprise.

There is a law in regard to gaming in Effingham, which makes the penalty heavier if caught gaming during the week; whereas, it is lighter for Sunday. Therefore, being well aware of the fact, no serious antic.i.p.ation was held as to how the gamesters would be dealt with, since they had been caught after midnight Sat.u.r.day night. In fact, when the excitement attendant with the raid had pa.s.sed, those directly interested, looked hourly for those who were caught, to be released.

"What'll it cost them under this law?" inquired Wyeth of Glenview, who appeared to be fairly well informed regarding the matter.

"Oh, not much," he replied. "Perhaps five or six dollars. You see," he explained, "the city considers gambling through the week as a business indulged in by professionals; whereas Sunday, they construe that they may be workmen engaged in a pastime."

Wyeth understood, of course, but it appeared singular at first.

"They will be taken to the city lock-up," Glenview resumed, "and if collateral to the amount of twenty-five dollars be offered and approved, they will be allowed to return, and when they appear tomorrow morning, they will be fined five dollars and cost. If they were caught during the week, it would be ten and cost, and possibly more, depending."

It was at the end of this conversation that they got their surprise.

Murphy came in. He seemed tired and worn; he was a picture, in fact, of the result of such a raid. He sat himself down with a sigh that was not altogether one of relief. All waited, with drawn breath.

"That's the worst place I have seen the inside of," he said, and shook his head in emphasis.

"Where did the wagon pick you fellows up?" inquired Glenview. "I don't recall hearing any."

"No wagon picked us up. We walked all the way. They didn't carry us to the city pen, but to the county jail."

"What!" cried the Mis', while Glenview appeared to regard it with incredulity.

And then all were silent, with a cold feeling creeping through their veins, as the grim reality came upon them. It would now be thirty-seven fifty, and not five dollars, for the county made no exception for Sunday.

All the day through, John Moore raised from his hard seat, and gazed out through the heavy bars that penned him in. "Will they never come, will they never come!" he cried to himself, but only the heat and mult.i.tudes of Negroes greeted his gaze, as it eagerly sought the door to freedom.

And all day Glenview walked from one bondman to another.

"No," said the wealthiest Negro doctor, who had bailed out many. "I've quit going anybody's bond. I don't think, from the experience I have had, that I would be justified in going my brother's hereafter." He had a few to jump them, and it cost him a pretty penny, he afterwards told Wyeth, to get them back.

"He's worthless," said the druggist, apparently amused, at least satisfied with his solution for the present. "He owes me two fifty for medicine I sold him, and trusted to my sorrow. But I'll tell you what I will do." He changed his tone to one of thought, then went on. "Now you tell the Mis' if she will come down here and give me seven fifty, five of this is going the bond that'll put the thief on the street, because it is he who has been doing that stealing up there, and all of you don't seem to know it, and the remainder, two fifty, is what he owes me. Tell her to bring it to me in cash, understand, the long green, and out he comes, to go back soon where he ought to be, for he has honestly no right to be free."

Of course, Mis' never had such an amount, so Moore, insofar as this source was concerned, was doomed to stay in the hot place for some time.

Glenview went to another.

"That n.i.g.g.a! h.e.l.l! Why I wouldn't go his bond to stay in Heaven, he is so crooked and undependable."

That was the end of it for that day, and the night settled down.

It would cost ten dollars cash to secure release through professional bondsmen; and, inasmuch as John had not the tenth part of that, he reposed for several days in his new place of abode, and became very dirty and bedraggled in the meantime. Always so clean and tidy--thus the Mis' kept him, that he was hardly recognizable, when a few days afterward, he returned. It was Murphy who secured bond, and Wyeth came upon him in some surprise that evening. He sat quietly on the porch with the Bible in his hand, so, greeting him, Wyeth asked how he "liked" it.

The other said:

"Whew! The worse place I was ever in." He had been in them before, but not this one; but he did not, of course, deem it necessary to make this mention. It had been made by others. "Two hundred n.i.g.g.a's in the room I was in, and G.o.d knows how many more elsewhere. And they were one-armed and one-legged, one-eyed and toothless, earless and one-eared; but the whole bunch, every one of them, were filthy. And the place was rotten!"

Yet more than five hundred Negroes, most of them young men, preferred the place to freedom.

CHAPTER TWENTY

_"I Love You!" She Said_

Miss Annie Palmer had about despaired of winning Sidney Wyeth, and by this time was not nearly so considerate when he called, as she had been some weeks before. And, besides, Wyeth had an insistent way of seeing things, which was not the custom of her friends. When he called, sometimes, instead of giving up to the easier things in life, and which concerned the select few, he was liable to bring up a subject concerning the future of the Negro of the south, as he is today, etc., etc., etc.

So it came to pa.s.s, that Miss Palmer was only good at times; and at those times, she was liable to be good by fits and starts, and then she "got cranky." Notwithstanding the fact, they were still friends, nothing more, and, as Miss Palmer sometimes sighed to herself, "Will never be anything more."

"You were, I thought," she declared one day, "the sweetest kind of a boy. But of late you are so concerned about Y.M.C.A.'s, and libraries, and schools, and the like, for our people, and how many are being killed and all that, that I am sometimes serious in my belief that you are losing your mind."

"I came to show you the article in _The Herald_, by the park commissioner, with regard to the establis.h.i.+ng of a park for Negroes. I suppose you have read it? I am certainly glad to know that you have white people in your city, who are showing some interest in the civic welfare of our race; and from what he has suggested, with regard to this park for our people, to be centrally located, there is conclusive evidence, that the white people are coming to appreciate that the evolution of these black people can be brought about otherwise than in the chain gang."

"Please don't today, Mr. Wyeth, please don't," she begged. "Promise just once that you will try to be, if it's only for a minute, as you were when I became acquainted with you. Let's drop this matter about the park and all that today. These Negroes here would do nothing with a park but fight in it. And a library, they don't read; so what's the use." She came to him, and before he could say a word in protest, she had gotten on the davenport, and beside him very closely. In that moment, Miss Palmer felt that she wanted to hear him say something about her.

"Listen," she said, in a voice that was full of feigned pa.s.sion. "Do you care for me?" It was so sudden that he did not know how to accept it, whether as a joke or serious. He had, of late, been backing up on the flirtation. However, she was evidently serious, so, with a jolly word, he talked with her at some length about nothing. Presently she became meditative. She spoke of her unhappy life with a sigh, and then fell to accounts regarding her little boy.

"My entire hope is centered in him. I intend to make a doctor out of him, and to do that, I will have to work hard and save money to put him through school when he is grown up, and you see what that will call for."

He was a lad of ten years, and the image of his mother. The future of the American Negro was bright in his eyes; and he a.s.sisted commerce to a degree, by consuming as much coca cola as he could buy, with as many nickels as he could gather; likewise, peanuts, crackerjack and candies.

"He's _some_ boy," glowed Wyeth, enthusiastically. "I wish I possessed a lad like him. I would feel proud."

"Wouldn't you like to have something to do with him?" she said, and he replied jokingly:

"Sure."

She nestled close, very close. So close that he felt her hot breath upon his cheek. "You do care for me a little, don't you?" she almost implored. He was embarra.s.sed, but replied:

"Of course, I _like_ you."