The Under Dog Part 24

"My dear sir," he said, bending forward courteously and laying his hand on my wrist, "I owe you an apology. I had no idea anyone was opposite me."

If I was a surprise to him, he was doubly so to me.

My picture had vanished.

He was sixty-five, if a day; gray, with bushy eyebrows, piercing brown eyes, heavy, well-trimmed mustache, strong chin and nose, with fine determined lines about the mouth. A man in perfect health, his full throat browned with many weathers showing above a low collar caught together by a loose black cravat--a handsome, rather das.h.i.+ng sort of a man for one so old.

"I say it is a shame, sir," he continued, "the way they are lynching the negroes around here. Have you read the Extra?" pa.s.sing it over to me--"Another this morning at Cramptown. It's an infernal outrage, sir!"

I had read the "Extra," with all its sickening details, and so handed it back to him.

"I quite agree with you," I said; "but this man was a brute."

"No doubt of it, sir. We've got brutal negroes among us, just as we've got brutal white men. But that's no reason why we should hang them without a trial; we still owe them that justice. When we dealt fairly with them there was never any such trouble. There were hundreds of plantations in the South during the war where the only men left were negroes. We trusted our wives and children to them; and yet such outrages as these were unheard of and absolutely impossible. I don't expect you to agree with me, of course; but I tell you, sir, the greatest injustice the North over did the slave was in robbing him of his home. I am going to have a smoke before going to bed. Won't you join me?"

Acquaintances are quickly made and as quickly ended in a Pullman. Men's ways lie in such diverse directions, and the hours of contact are often so short, that no one can afford to be either ungracious or exclusive.

The "b.u.t.toned-up" misses the best part of travelling. He is like a camera with the cap on--he never gets a new impression. The man with the shutters of his ears thrown wide and the lids of his eyes tied back gets a new one every hour.

If, in addition to this, he wears the lens of his heart upon his sleeve, and will adjust it so as to focus the groups around him--it may be a pair of lovers, or some tired mother, or happy child, or lonely wayfarer, or a waif--he will often get a picture of joy, or sorrow, or hope--life dramas all--which will not only enrich the dull hours of travel, but will leave imprints on the mind which can be developed later into the richest and tenderest memories of his life.

I have a way of arranging my own sensitized plates, and I get a certain amount of entertainment out of the process, and now and then a Rembrandt effect whose lights and darks often thrill me for days.

So when this unknown man, with his young legs and his old face, asked me, on one minute's acquaintance, to smoke, I accepted at once.

"I am right about it, my dear sir," he continued, biting off the end of a cigar and sharing with me the lighted match. "The negro is infinitely worse off than in the slave days. We never had to hang any one of them then to make the others behave themselves."

"How do you account for it?" I asked, settling myself in my chair. (We were alone in the smoking compartment.)

"Account for what?"

"The change that has come over the South--to the negro," I answered.

"The negro has become a compet.i.tor, sir. The interests of the black man and the white man now lie apart. Once the white man was his friend; now he is his rival."

His eyes were boring into mine; his teeth set tight.

The doctrine was new to me, but I did not interrupt him.

"It wasn't so in the old days. We shared what we had with them.

One-third of the cabins of the South were filled with the old and helpless. Now these unfortunates are out in the cold; their own people can't help them, and the white man won't."

"Were you a slave-owner?" I asked, not wis.h.i.+ng to dispute the point.

"No, sir; but my father was. He had fifty of them on our plantation. He never whipped one of them, and he wouldn't let anybody else strike them, either. There wasn't one of them that wouldn't have come back if we had had a place to put him. The old ones are all dead now, thank G.o.d!--all except old Aleck; he's around yet."

"One of your father's slaves, did you say?"

I was tapping away at the door of his recollections, camera all ready.

"Yes; he carried me about on his back when I was so high," and he measured the distance with his hand. "Aleck and I were boys together. I was about eight and he about fifteen when my father got him."

My companion paused, drumming on the leather covering of his chair. I waited, hoping he would at least open his door wide enough to give me a glimpse inside.

"Curiously enough," he went on, "I've been thinking of Aleck all day. I heard yesterday that he was sick again, and it has worried me a good deal. He's pretty feeble now, and I don't know how long he'll last."

He flicked the ashes from his cigar, nursing his knee with the other hand. The leg must have pained him, for I noticed that he lifted it carefully and moved it on one side, as if for greater relief.

"Rheumatism?" I ventured, sympathetically.

"No; just _gets_ that way sometimes," he replied, carelessly. "But Aleck's got it bad; can hardly walk. Last time I saw him he was about bent double."

Again he relapsed into silence, smoking quietly.

"And you tell me," I said, "that this old slave was loyal to your family after his freedom?"

He hadn't told me anything of the kind; but I had found his key-hole now, and was determined to get inside his door, even if I picked the lock with a skeleton-key.

"Aleck!" he cried, rousing himself with a laugh; "well, I should say so!

Anybody would be loyal who'd been treated as my father treated Aleck. He took him out of jail and gave him a home, and would have looked after him till he died if the war hadn't broken out. Aleck wasn't raised on our plantation. He was a runaway from North Carolina. There were three of them that got across the river--a man and his wife and Aleck. The slave-driver had caught Aleck in our town and had locked him up in the caboose for safe-keeping. Then he came to my father to help him catch the other two. But my father wasn't that kind of a man. The old gentleman had curious notions about a good many things. He believed when a slave ran away that the fault was oftener the master's than the negro's. 'They are nothing but children,' he would say, 'and you must treat them like children. Whipping is a poor way to bring anybody up.'

"So when my father heard about the three runaways he refused to have anything to do with the case. This made the driver anxious.

"'Judge,' he said--my father had been a Judge of the County Court for years--'if you'll take the case I'll give you this boy Aleck as a fee.

He's worth a thousand dollars.'

"'Send for him,' said my father. 'I'll tell you when I see him.'

"So they brought him in. He was a big, strong boy, with powerful shoulders, black as a chunk of coal, and had a look about him that made you trust him at first sight. My father believed in him the moment he saw him.

"'What did you run away for, Aleck?' he asked.

"The boy held his head down.

"'My mother died, Marster, an' I couldn't stay dar no mo'.'

"'I'll take him,' said my father; 'but on condition that the boy wants to live with me.'

"This was another one of the old gentleman's notions. He wouldn't have a negro on the place that he had to watch, nor one that wasn't happy.

"The driver opened his eyes and laughed; but my father meant what he said, and the papers were made out on those terms. The boy was outside in charge of the Sheriff while the papers were being drawn, and when they were signed the driver brought him in and said:

"'He's your property, Judge.'

"'Aleck,' father said, 'you've heard?'

"'Yes, sah.'

"The boy stood with tears in his eyes. He thought he was going to get a life-sentence. He had never faced a judge before.