Part 2

"Yes, honey, but not for long. One night when those awful people came to destroy things at the schoolhouse as they had done several times before, your father was there to meet them and identify them. Instead of running away as he thought they would, they crowded around him, and after a struggle in the dark they left him lying just outside the door with a broken arm, a pistol-ball through his side, and unconscious from a lick on the head. Some of the coloured people who lived near there heard the row, and after it was all over and all those folks were gone, they slipped up there and found your father and brought him home.

"It was hard for us to get a doctor at first. A young one who lived nearest to us wouldn't come, though we sent for him, and we were all frightened nearly to death. We could hear those awful people yell every once and awhile away off on all sides of the house, then they would fire off guns and pistols--it was an awful night, Hayward. At last old Doctor Wright came about three o'clock in the morning. He lived ten miles or more from us, and we thought that your father, who was raving and moaning, would surely die before he got there. But the old doctor told us as soon as he examined him that he would pull through all right. He said that he had been a surgeon in Stonewall Jackson's corps and that he had seen men forty times worse hurt back in the army in two months. That made us feel a great deal better, I tell you. Your father came to his senses before the old man quit working with him, and when he heard that the young doctor had refused to come to see him (because he was scared, the negro who went for him said), and that the old man had ridden so far through a very cold and wet night to help him, I never heard any one say more to express his thanks than your father did. The old doctor listened to it all without making any answer except an occasional grunt. When he got ready to go home I asked him if he would not prefer to wait till daylight, for fear those awful men would hurt him."

"And did he wait?" interrupted Graham.

"No. He stiffened up as straight as his rheumatism would let him and stumped indignantly out of the house with his pill-bags in one hand and in the other an old pair of home-knit woollen gloves he wouldn't stop to put on--I can see him now."

"Did he ever come back?" asked Graham.

"Oh, yes. The sight of him on his tall pacing bay mare made us glad every two or three days till your father got well."

"The old doctor evidently didn't agree with his neighbours about you and father, then."

"I don't know about that. He never would discuss our troubles or speak any words of sympathy; and on the last day he came, when your father was thanking him as he had done so often for his kindness to him, the old man asked him in his rather curt manner, 'Don't they need school-teachers up north?'"

"Did you and father leave that place as soon as he got well?"

"No. Your father said that we would stick to it to the end; and as soon as he was able to teach we opened the school again, but in less than a week the schoolhouse was burned down. We rented another after some trouble, but that was burned promptly also. Then it became impossible to get one.

"We decided it would be best for us to go away to some place where the people were not prejudiced against us. We moved more than a dozen times, but were never able to stay longer than a few months at most, and often had to pack up almost before we finished unpacking. Finally we lost all hope of being able to teach the negroes in the South, and decided to go home. Your father did go so far as to suggest that if I would go back North and leave him down there alone the people might not molest him. He certainly did have his heart in the work. As I did not like the idea, however, he dropped it."

"And that's when father got the professorship at Oberlin?"

"Yes; and kept it till his death."

"I can hardly recollect father at all," said the son, "though it seems sometimes I remember how he looked. I wish I could have been older before he died."

"Well, you were not two years old at your father's death, Hayward, and really saw very little of him. He never seemed to care for children. Your two sisters that died before you were born--it seemed that sometimes a week would pass without his being conscious that they were in the house. He was so absorbed in his work that he didn't have time for anything else. His hard work and disappointment over the failure that he had made down South was what killed him, I have always thought. Though he lingered for many years, he was so broken-spirited after we went to Ohio that his health gave way, and he was not more than a shadow when he died. I am not sorry that you do not remember how he looked at the last.

"But, honey," the mother continued after some moments of silence, "you ought to be proud of your father. I wish you could have heard the funeral sermon Doctor Johnson preached. He did not say anything about your father's being in the war of the rebellion, but he told about his trials and struggles to teach the negroes in the South, and said that in that work John Graham was as much a soldier and was as brave and faithful as any man who ever fought for the flag. If these folks here could have heard that sermon they never would have voted to keep you from joining the regiment."

"Oh, it's not because of what my father did or did not do," said Graham impatiently; "nor is it because of what I've done or left undone, nor of what they think I would do or would not do if they kindly permitted me to enlist. No, no. It's because I'm part negro--though I'm quite as white as a number I saw there to-night. Now, mother, exactly how much negro am I? You've told me your father was a white man; but who was your mother, and what do you know about her?"

"Yes, my father was a white man. He was a German just come over to this country. He had a beer saloon in a New Hampshire town--at least he bought it afterwards. He worked in the saloon when my mother, who had run away from Kentucky, was hired to work in his employer's house. He boarded there and she was treated something like a member of the family, although she was a servant, and they were married after awhile. Some few of the people didn't like it, I've heard mammy say, but they got along without any trouble; and when my father saved up some money he bought the little saloon from his employer and made some little money before he died. We had a hard enough time getting it, though, goodness knows. I moved back to New Hampshire from Ohio after your father's death in order to push the case through the--"

"Yes, yes, I've heard that before," said Hayward; "but tell me about your mother's running away from her master. You have never told me anything about her, except that her name was Cindy or Lucinda, and that she belonged to General Young."

"Well, honey, she was just a slave girl that belonged to General Young over in Kentucky. She ran away and got across the river without being caught, and some of the white people helped her to get on as far as New Hampshire and got her that place to work where my father boarded. She and my father were--"

"Yes, yes, I know," the son interrupted again, "but what made her run away and leave her father and mother--did she know her father and mother?"

"I don't know that I remember it all," said the mother evasively, "and it doesn't make any difference anyway."

"Oh, well, go on and tell what you know or have heard. Let's get at the bottom of it. I declare I believe you don't like my being a negro any better than those dudes in the 71st."

The mother laughed at his statement; and seemed pleased at the interruption, for she made no move to proceed with the narrative. Graham looked at her quietly a few moments, and, ascribing her reticence to unwillingness to descant upon the negro element in her ancestry, which was indeed a part but a very small part of her motive, repeated his demand for information sharply.

"Oh, honey," cried his mother, "don't ask me any more about it. I just made mammy tell me all about her father and mother and her running away from Kentucky, and I wish to the Lord I never had! It was just awful."

"So! Well, now I must know. Go on and tell it. The quicker you do the sooner it will be over. Go on, I say. What was your mother's father named?"

"Gumbo--Guinea Gumbo."

"Poetic name that! And her mother's name, what was it?"

"Big Lize."

"Not so poetic, though it sounds like some poetry I've read, too. And now what did this pair do or suffer that was so terrible? It's no use dodging any longer."

"Well, child, if I must, I suppose I must. My mother's mother didn't do anything that was awful; but Guinea Gumbo--I wish I knew I was no kin to him. Mammy said he was brought right from Africa and was as wild as a wolf. Nobody could understand much that he said, and General Young had a time keeping him from tearing things up. He used to run away and stay in the swamp for weeks at a time. The children on the place, black and white, were as scared of him as death, and none of the slave women would ever go about him if they could help it. Not long after General Young bought him, Gumbo and his first wife, who was brought over from Africa with him, had the plans all fixed to steal one of the General's little boys, five or six years old, and carry him off to the river-swamp and have a regular cannibal feast of him. General Young found it out in time; and mammy said the old negroes on the plantation said that was what killed the woman, the whipping she and Gumbo got for it. It laid Gumbo up for a long time, but he got over it. It seemed that nothing but shooting could kill him."

"Did they shoot him to kill him? What was that for?" asked Graham.

"Honey, that is the awful part of it. Mammy said that one day her young mistis, the General's oldest daughter, didn't come home from a ride she had taken, and the whole plantation was turned out to find her. But some one came along and told the General that she had eloped across the river with a young man he had forbidden to come on the place, and all the people on the plantation went back to their quarters. As the young man could not be found, everybody thought that he and Miss Lily had run away and married and were too much afraid of her father to come back home. The next day, however, the young man turned up, and swore he had not seen Miss Lily in a week. Then the plantation was in terror.--Honey, I can't tell you the rest.--They found her.--When they were calling out all the people from the quarters, the General learned that Gumbo had not been seen since Miss Lily was lost. He had run away so often that no attention was paid to it, for he always came back after a time.--They got the bloodhounds, mammy said, and went to the swamp. After a long time the dogs struck Gumbo's trail, and--yes, they found her,--tied hands and feet and her clothing torn to strings, in a kind of hut made of bark and brush way back in the swamp. She was dead, but she had not been dead an hour, from a gash in her head made by an axe. The dogs followed a hot scent from the hut for another hour, and led the men to where they had run Gumbo down. That was where they shot him--and left him. He still had the axe, and had killed one of the dogs, and nobody could get to him. They didn't want to, I suppose."

Graham had listened to his mother's last words without breathing, and when she stopped he dropped his face in his hands with a groan.... She began again in a few moments:

"Mammy said that when they brought her young mistis back home the General went off in a fit, and raved and cursed till the doctors and the rest of 'em had to hold him to keep him from killing somebody. Mammy was one of her old mistis's house-girls, and she heard all the General's ravings and screams that he would kill every nigger on the place; and he kept it up so long and kept breaking out again so after they thought they had him pacified that mammy said she was scared so bad she just couldn't stay there any longer: and that's what made her run away the very next night. She had a hard time getting across the river, but after she got over safe she didn't have much trouble, for some of the white people took charge of her and helped her to get further on north. Pappy always said--"

"Oh, Lord, that's enough!" the son broke in, raising his head out of his hands, and interrupting his mother's flow of words, of which he had noted little since hearing the tragic story of his savage great-grandfather. He rose from his chair impatiently.

"So I am Hayward Graham, son of Patricia Schmidt, daughter of Cindy--nothing, daughter of Gumbo--nothing."

"Guinea Gumbo," corrected his mother.

"Oh, I beg my distinguished ancestor's pardon for presuming to credit him with only one name. A gentleman with his record ought to have as many as Kaiser Bill," drawled Graham sarcastically. Then with better humour he said to his mother, "And will you please to inform me from which of your ancestors you inherited that name of Patricia?"

"Mammy named me that for her old mistis."

* * * * *

Graham stood for awhile looking at the blank wall. Then he spoke as if he had settled his problem.

"Yes I'm a negro--no doubt about that; and a negro I'll be from to-morrow morning."

"Why, honey, you are not going to lower yourself to--"

"No, no. I'm not going to lower myself to anything; but I'm going to go with my own crowd, where I'll not be insulted by people who are no better than I am. I got along very well at college, but these people here are different. I'll show 'em. I'll go to the war, and I'll get as much glory out of it as any of 'em. My father was a soldier, and his father died in battle: I rather guess I can't stay out of it. Good night, mummer."

And he took himself off to bed.

*CHAPTER III*

Hayward Graham was twenty-three years old. He had half finished his senior year at Harvard--with credit, it must be said--when the imminence of war drove all desire for study from his mind. He wrote to Harry Lodge a former college chum who had graduated in the class ahead of him and gone to Ohio to make a name for himself--fortune he had already--and asked that his name be proposed for membership in Lodge's company of the 71st, as a regiment most likely to get in the scrimmage when it came. Lodge had done this and had written to Graham that doubtless he would be received on the next meeting night as war was at that time a certainty. Whereupon Graham had bundled up his traps and come without delay.

Graham's mother also had travelled to Ohio, for the double purpose of telling her soldier good-bye and making a passing, and what promised to be a last visit to some, of her old Oberlin friends, drawing for expenses upon limited funds she had religiously hoarded and applied to her son's tuition.

Her husband had always impressed upon her, and in his last moment enjoined, that the boy should be educated; and she had obeyed his wishes to the limit of her power and as a command from heaven. She had husbanded her small patrimony, recovered after a costly suit at law, slow-dragging through the New Hampshire courts, and had allowed it to accumulate while her son was in the graded schools against the time when it would be needed to send him to college. When that time had come it required no little faith to see how the small bank account would be sufficient to meet the expenses of four years at Harvard. She would better have sent the boy to a less expensive school, but no: John Graham had gone to Harvard, and nothing less than Harvard for his son would satisfy her idea of loyalty to his father's memory and admonitions. So to Harvard she sent him, while she planned and worked to stretch and patch out the limited purse; and--miracle of financiering--she had fetched him to the half of his last year, and could have carried him to his graduation and still had enough dollars left to attend that momentous ceremony in a new frock.

Hayward Graham had repaid his mother's sacrifices by diligence in his studies. He had been a close second to the leader of his class at the graded school, an exemplary and hard-working pupil in the grammar school, and at college his literary labours were diminished only by his efforts in athletics, which, indeed, did his work as a student little serious damage. He was quick to learn everything that his college career offered, not only the lore of books, but good-fellowship, easy manners and how to get on. His naturally friendly disposition did him little service at first in finding or making friends at Harvard, where there seemed to him to be so many desirable circles that he would be glad to enter, and he had thought for awhile his colour would bar him from any close friendships there. However, near the end of his freshman year he had occasion by personal combat to demonstrate his willingness to fight for the honour of his class and to show that his pugilistic powers were of no mean calibre, by thoroughly dressing down a couple of sophomores who had held him up to tell him what they thought of the whole tribe of freshmen, and who, upon his being so bold as to take issue with them, had attempted to "regulate" him. Kind-hearted Harry Lodge, himself a sophomore, had witnessed the trial of Graham's courage, class loyalty and fistic abilities, and being struck with admiration had shaken hands with him and congratulated him on his prowess. From that moment Graham was by every token a member of the small coterie known as "Lodge's Gang," to whom Lodge had introduced him as "the only freshman I know that's worth a damn."

From the time of his admission into this set of good fellows Graham's social side was provided with all it desired. Lodge and his friends seemed to think nothing at all of Graham's colour; or, if they did, made the more of him in their enthusiastic support of the idea that "a man's a man for a' that." They had enough rollicking fun to keep their spare hours filled to the brim and sought the society of women very seldom; but when they did go to pay their vows at the shrine of the feminine, Graham was as often of the party as any other of "the gang."

The young women they visited seemed to find no fault with his coming; for he could do his share of stunts, had a good voice and a musical ear, and was never at a loss for something to say, while his colour meant no more to them than that of a Chinaman or a Jap. He was promptly and effectually smitten with each new pretty face that he saw on these occasional forays, just as were Hal and Jim Aldrich; but his ever-changing devotions showed plainly that it was as yet to no one woman, but to women, that his soul paid homage. As for the young women, any of them as soon would have thought of marrying one of the Chinese students in the University as him. In fact they did not associate him with the matrimonial idea, but were interested in him as in an unusual species of that ever-interesting genus, man. They made quite a lion of him for a time after his performance in the Harvard-Yale football game of 19--; so much so that he had become just a mite vain, which condition of mind precluded his falling in love with anybody for several weeks.

It was right at the height of his popularity that he had left Harvard to join the ranks of the 71st. But Corporal Lodge had written with too much assurance. Lieutenant Morgan of Lodge's company caught the sound of that name, Hayward Graham, and remarked casually, "He has the same name as that Harvard nigger who was smashed up in the Yale game."

Some of the men thought the lieutenant said the applicant was a negro, and began to question Lodge. When that gentleman stood up to speak for his friend he quite captured them with his description of Graham's courage and other excellences, but when he answered "yes" to a direct question whether his candidate was a negro, the enthusiasm and Graham's chance of enlistment in the 71st died together, and suddenly. Lieutenant Morgan, who was presiding at the company meeting, sneered, "This is not a negro regiment," and the ballot was overwhelmingly adverse.

Lodge was offended deeply at Graham's rejection, and said hotly that if the regiment was too good for Graham it was too good for him, and he would apply for his discharge at once. Lieutenant Morgan replied drily that "one pretext is as good as another if a man really doesn't want to get into the fighting." This angered Harry to the point of profanity, but he thought no more of a discharge.

This blackballing of his name was Graham's first rebuff, and it bore hard upon his spirits. He had never had an occasion to take an inventory of the elements in his blood, and this sudden jolt to his pride and eager patriotic impulses made him first angry, then heart-sick, then cynically scornful.

The morning after his mother had gone into the history of his ancestry, as far as she knew it, he sought an army recruiting station without delay. The gray-headed captain in charge did not betray the surprise he felt when Graham told him he desired to enlist,--his recruits, especially negroes, did not often come from the class to which Graham evidently belonged.

"May I join any branch of the service I prefer?" Hayward asked.

"Yes," said the officer; and added, as a fleeting suspicion entered his mind that this negro might intend passing himself off for a white man if possible, "that is, of course, infantry or cavalry. There are no negroes in the artillery."

Graham winced in spite of himself at this blunt reminder of his compromising blood, and mentally resented the statement as an unnecessary taunt. But he had determined to fight for the flag if he had to swallow his pride, and he was quickly put through all the necessary formalities of enlistment. His physical qualifications aroused the unbounded admiration of the examining surgeon, who called the old captain back into the room where Graham stood stripped for the examination, to look upon his perfect physique.

"I don't know about that broken leg, though," the surgeon said. "How long has it been well?"

"I've had the full use of it for more than a month now," Graham answered. "It's as good as the other, I think. It wasn't such a bad break anyway."

"How did you break it?"

"In the Yale game at Cambridge last November."

"Say," the surgeon broke out, "were you the Harvard man that was laid out in that last rush?"

"Yes."

"Well, I saw that game," the surgeon went on; "and I say, Captain, be sure to assign this young fellow to a regiment that will get into the scrimmage. Nothing but the firing-line will suit his style."

"Which do you prefer, infantry or cavalry?" questioned the Captain briefly.

"As I've walked all my life, I think that I'll ride now that I have the chance," Graham answered.

"Very well. You are over regulation weight and length for a trooper, but special orders will let you in for the war only."

"The fighting is all I want," said Graham

"All right," replied the officer. "I'll send you to the 10th. They have always gotten into it so far, and likely nobody will miss seeing service in this affair."

Graham was given a suit of uniform and ordered to report morning and afternoon each day till his squad would be sent to join the regiment. He carried the uniform to a tailor to have it fitted to his figure, in which he took some little pride; and lost no time in getting into it when the tailor had finished with it, and hurrying to parade himself before his mother's admiring eyes. That worthy woman was as proud of him as only a combination of mother love, womanly admiration for a soldier, and a negro's surpassing delight in brass buttons, could make her.