The Clansman: An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan

CHAPTER I

The Bruised Reed

The fair girl who was playing a banjo and singing to the wounded soldiers suddenly stopped, and, turning to the surgeon, whispered:

“What’s that?”

“It sounds like a mob – ”

With a common impulse they moved to the open window of the hospital and listened.

On the soft spring air came the roar of excited thousands sweeping down the avenue from the Capitol toward the White House. Above all rang the cries of struggling newsboys screaming an “Extra.” One of them darted around the corner, his shrill voice quivering with excitement:

“Extra! Extra! Peace! Victory!”

Windows were suddenly raised, women thrust their heads out, and others rushed into the street and crowded around the boy, struggling to get his papers. He threw them right and left and snatched the money – no one asked for change. Without ceasing rose his cry:

“Extra! Peace! Victory! Lee has surrendered!”

At last the end had come.

The great North, with its millions of sturdy people and their exhaustless resources, had greeted the first shot on Sumter with contempt and incredulity. A few regiments went forward for a month’s outing to settle the trouble. The Thirteenth Brooklyn marched gayly Southward on a thirty days’ jaunt, with pieces of rope conspicuously tied to their muskets with which to bring back each man a Southern prisoner to be led in a noose through the streets on their early triumphant return! It would be unkind to tell what became of those ropes when they suddenly started back home ahead of the scheduled time from the first battle of Bull Run.

People from the South, equally wise, marched gayly North, to whip five Yankees each before breakfast, and encountered unforeseen difficulties.

Both sides had things to learn, and learned them in a school whose logic is final – a four years’ course in the University of Hell – the scream of eagles, the howl of wolves, the bay of tigers, the roar of lions – all locked in Death’s embrace, and each mad scene lit by the glare of volcanoes of savage passions!

But the long agony was over.

The city bells began to ring. The guns of the forts joined the chorus, and their deep steel throats roared until the earth trembled.

Just across the street a mother who was reading the fateful news turned and suddenly clasped a boy to her heart, crying for joy. The last draft of half a million had called for him.

The Capital of the Nation was shaking off the long nightmare of horror and suspense. More than once the city had shivered at the mercy of those daring men in gray, and the reveille of their drums had startled even the President at his desk.

Again and again had the destiny of the Republic hung on the turning of a hair, and in every crisis, Luck, Fate, God, had tipped the scale for the Union.

A procession of more than five hundred Confederate deserters, who had crossed the lines in groups, swung into view, marching past the hospital, indifferent to the tumult. Only a nominal guard flanked them as they shuffled along, tired, ragged, and dirty. The gray in their uniforms was now the colour of clay. Some had on blue pantaloons, some, blue vests, others blue coats captured on the field of blood. Some had pieces of carpet, and others old bags around their shoulders. They had been passing thus for weeks. Nobody paid any attention to them.

“One of the secrets of the surrender!” exclaimed Doctor Barnes. “Mr. Lincoln has been at the front for the past weeks with offers of peace and mercy, if they would lay down their arms. The great soul of the President, even the genius of Lee could not resist. His smile began to melt those gray ranks as the sun is warming the earth to-day.”

“You are a great admirer of the President,” said the girl, with a curious smile.

“Yes, Miss Elsie, and so are all who know him.”

She turned from the window without reply. A shadow crossed her face as she looked past the long rows of cots, on which rested the men in blue, until her eyes found one on which lay, alone among his enemies, a young Confederate officer.

The surgeon turned with her toward the man.

“Will he live?” she asked.

“Yes, only to be hung.”

“For what?” she cried.

“Sentenced by court-martial as a guerilla. It’s a lie, but there’s some powerful hand back of it – some mysterious influence in high authority. The boy wasn’t fully conscious at the trial.”

“We must appeal to Mr. Stanton.”

“As well appeal to the devil. They say the order came from his office.”

“A boy of nineteen!” she exclaimed. “It’s a shame. I’m looking for his mother. You told me to telegraph to Richmond for her.”

“Yes, I’ll never forget his cries that night, so utterly pitiful and childlike. I’ve heard many a cry of pain, but in all my life nothing so heartbreaking as that boy in fevered delirium talking to his mother. His voice is one of peculiar tenderness, penetrating and musical. It goes quivering into your soul, and compels you to listen until you swear it’s your brother or sweetheart or sister or mother calling you. You should have seen him the day he fell. God of mercies, the pity and the glory of it!”

“Phil wrote me that he was a hero and asked me to look after him. Were you there?”

“Yes, with the battery your brother was supporting. He was the colonel of a shattered rebel regiment lying just in front of us before Petersburg. Richmond was doomed, resistance was madness, but there they were, ragged and half starved, a handful of men, not more than four hundred, but their bayonets gleamed and flashed in the sunlight. In the face of a murderous fire he charged and actually drove our men out of an entrenchment. We concentrated our guns on him as he crouched behind this earthwork. Our own men lay outside in scores, dead, dying, and wounded. When the fire slacked, we could hear their cries for water.

“Suddenly this boy sprang on the breastwork. He was dressed in a new gray colonel’s uniform that mother of his, in the pride of her soul, had sent him.

“He was a handsome figure – tall, slender, straight, a gorgeous yellow sash tasselled with gold around his waist, his sword flashing in the sun, his slouch hat cocked on one side and an eagle’s feather in it.

“We thought he was going to lead another charge, but just as the battery was making ready to fire he deliberately walked down the embankment in a hail of musketry and began to give water to our wounded men.

“Every gun ceased firing, and we watched him. He walked back to the trench, his naked sword flashed suddenly above that eagle’s feather, and his grizzled ragamuffins sprang forward and charged us like so many demons.

“There were not more than three hundred of them now, but on they came, giving that hellish rebel yell at every jump – the cry of the hunter from the hilltop at the sight of his game! All Southern men are hunters, and that cry was transformed in war into something unearthly when it came from a hundred throats in chorus and the game was human.

“Of course, it was madness. We blew them down that hill like chaff before a hurricane. When the last man had staggered back or fallen, on came this boy alone, carrying the colours he had snatched from a falling soldier, as if he were leading a million men to victory.

“A bullet had blown his hat from his head, and we could see the blood streaming down the side of his face. He charged straight into the jaws of one of our guns. And then, with a smile on his lips and a dare to death in his big brown eyes, he rammed that flag into the cannon’s mouth, reeled, and fell! A cheer broke from our men.

“Your brother sprang forward and caught him in his arms, and as we bent over the unconscious form, he exclaimed: ‘My God, doctor, look at him! He is so much like me I feel as if I had been shot myself!’ They were as much alike as twins – only his hair was darker. I tell you, Miss Elsie, it’s a sin to kill men like that. One such man is worth more to this nation than every negro that ever set his flat foot on this continent!”

The girl’s eyes had grown dim as she listened to the story.

“I will appeal to the President,” she said firmly.

“It’s the only chance. And just now he is under tremendous pressure. His friendly order to the Virginia Legislature to return to Richmond, Stanton forced him to cancel. A master hand has organized a conspiracy in Congress to crush the President. They curse his policy of mercy as imbecility, and swear to make the South a second Poland. Their watchwords are vengeance and confiscation. Four fifths of his party in Congress are in this plot. The President has less than a dozen real friends in either House on whom he can depend. They say that Stanton is to be given a free hand, and that the gallows will be busy. This cancelled order of the President looks like it.”

“I’ll try my hand with Mr. Stanton,” she said with slow emphasis.

“Good luck, Little Sister – let me know if I can help,” the surgeon answered cheerily as he passed on his round of work.

Elsie Stoneman took her seat beside the cot of the wounded Confederate and began softly to sing and play.

A little farther along the same row a soldier was dying, a faint choking just audible in his throat. An attendant sat beside him and would not leave till the last. The ordinary chat and hum of the ward went on indifferent to peace, victory, life, or death. Before the finality of the hospital all other events of earth fade. Some were playing cards or checkers, some laughing and joking, and others reading.

At the first soft note from the singer the games ceased, and the reader put down his book.

The banjo had come to Washington with the negroes following the wake of the army. She had laid aside her guitar and learned to play all the stirring camp songs of the South. Her voice was low, soothing, and tender. It held every silent listener in a spell.

As she played and sang the songs the wounded man loved, her eyes lingered in pity on his sun-bronzed face, pinched and drawn with fever. He was sleeping the stupid sleep that gives no rest. She could count the irregular pounding of his heart in the throb of the big vein on his neck. His lips were dry and burnt, and the little boyish moustache curled upward from the row of white teeth as if scorched by the fiery breath.

He began to talk in flighty sentences, and she listened – his mother – his sister – and yes, she was sure as she bent nearer – a little sweetheart who lived next door. They all had sweethearts – these Southern boys. Again he was teasing his dog – and then back in battle.

At length he opened his eyes, great dark-brown eyes, unnaturally bright, with a strange yearning look in their depths as they rested on Elsie. He tried to smile and feebly said:

“Here’s – a – fly – on – my – left – ear – my – guns – can’t – somehow – reach – him – won’t – you – ”

She sprang forward and brushed the fly away.

Again he opened his eyes.

“Excuse – me – for – asking – but am I alive?”

“Yes, indeed,” was the cheerful answer.

“Well, now, then, is this me, or is it not me, or has a cannon shot me, or has the devil got me?”

“It’s you. The cannon didn’t shoot you, but three muskets did. The devil hasn’t got you yet, but he will unless you’re good.”

“I’ll be good if you won’t leave me – ”

Elsie turned her head away smiling, and he went on slowly:

“But I’m dead, I know. I’m sleeping on a cot with a canopy over it. I ain’t hungry any more, and an angel has been hovering over me playing on a harp of gold – ”

“Only a little Yankee girl playing the banjo.”

“Can’t fool me – I’m in heaven.”

“You’re in the hospital.”

“Funny hospital – look at that harp and that big trumpet hanging close by it – that’s Gabriel’s trumpet – ”

“No,” she laughed. “This is the Patent Office building, that covers two blocks, now a temporary hospital. There are seventy thousand wounded soldiers in town, and more coming on every train. The thirty-five hospitals are overcrowded.”

He closed his eyes a moment in silence, and then spoke with a feeble tremor:

“I’m afraid you don’t know who I am – I can’t impose on you – I’m a rebel – ”

“Yes, I know. You are Colonel Ben Cameron. It makes no difference to me now which side you fought on.”

“Well, I’m in heaven – been dead a long time. I can prove it, if you’ll play again.”

“What shall I play?”

“First, ‘O Jonny Booker Help dis Nigger.’”

She played and sang it beautifully.

“Now, ‘Wake Up in the Morning.’”

Again he listened with wide, staring eyes that saw nothing except visions within.

“Now, then, ‘The Ole Gray Hoss.’”

As the last notes died away he tried to smile again:

“One more – ‘Hard Times an’ Wuss er Comin‘.’”

With deft, sure touch and soft negro dialect she sang it through.

“Now, didn’t I tell you that you couldn’t fool me? No Yankee girl could play and sing these songs, I’m in heaven, and you’re an angel.”

“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself to flirt with me, with one foot in the grave?”

“That’s the time to get on good terms with the angels – but I’m done dead – ”

Elsie laughed in spite of herself.

“I know it,” he went on, “because you have shining golden hair and amber eyes instead of blue ones. I never saw a girl in my life before with such eyes and hair.”

“But you’re young yet.”

“Never – was – such – a – girl – on – earth – you’re – an – ”

She lifted her finger in warning, and his eyelids drooped In exhausted stupor.

“You musn’t talk any more,” she whispered, shaking her head.

A commotion at the door caused Elsie to turn from the cot. A sweet motherly woman of fifty, in an old faded black dress, was pleading with the guard to be allowed to pass.

“Can’t do it, m’um. It’s agin the rules.”

“But I must go in. I’ve tramped for four days through a wilderness of hospitals, and I know he must be here.”

“Special orders, m’um – wounded rebels in here that belong in prison.”

“Very well, young man,” said the pleading voice. “My baby boy’s in this place, wounded and about to die. I’m going in there. You can shoot me if you like, or you can turn your head the other way.”

She stepped quickly past the soldier, who merely stared with dim eyes out the door and saw nothing.

She stood for a moment with a look of helpless bewilderment. The vast area of the second story of the great monolithic pile was crowded with rows of sick, wounded, and dying men – a strange, solemn, and curious sight. Against the walls were ponderous glass cases, filled with models of every kind of invention the genius of man had dreamed. Between these cases were deep lateral openings, eight feet wide, crowded with the sick, and long rows of them were stretched through the centre of the hall. A gallery ran around above the cases, and this was filled with cots. The clatter of the feet of passing surgeons and nurses over the marble floor added to the weird impression.

Elsie saw the look of helpless appeal in the mother’s face and hurried forward to meet her:

“Is this Mrs. Cameron, of South Carolina?”

The trembling figure in black grasped her hand eagerly:

“Yes, yes, my dear, and I’m looking for my boy, who is wounded unto death. Can you help me?”

“I thought I recognized you from a miniature I’ve seen,” she answered softly. “I’ll lead you direct to his cot.”

“Thank you, thank you!” came the low reply.

In a moment she was beside him, and Elsie walked away to the open window through which came the chirp of sparrows from the lilac bushes in full bloom below.

The mother threw one look of infinite tenderness on the drawn face, and her hands suddenly clasped in prayer:

“I thank Thee, Lord Jesus, for this hour! Thou hast heard the cry of my soul and led my feet!” She gently knelt, kissed the hot lips, smoothed the dark tangled hair back from his forehead, and her hand rested over his eyes.

A faint flush tinged his face.

“It’s you, Mamma – I – know – you – that’s – your – hand – or – else – it’s – God’s!”

She slipped her arms about him.

“My hero, my darling, my baby!”

“I’ll get well now, Mamma, never fear. You see, I had whipped them that day as I had many a time before. I don’t know how it happened – my men seemed all to go down at once. You know – I couldn’t surrender in that new uniform of a colonel you sent me – we made a gallant fight, and – now – I’m – just – a – little – tired – but you are here, and it’s all right.”

“Yes, yes, dear. It’s all over now. General Lee has surrendered, and when you are better I’ll take you home, where the sunshine and flowers will give you strength again.”

“How’s my little sis?”

“Hunting in another part of the city for you. She’s grown so tall and stately you’ll hardly know her. Your papa is at home, and don’t know yet that you are wounded.”

“And my sweetheart, Marion Lenoir?”

“The most beautiful little girl in Piedmont – as sweet and mischievous as ever. Mr. Lenoir is very ill, but he has written a glorious poem about one of your charges. I’ll show it to you to-morrow. He is our greatest poet. The South worships him. Marion sent her love to you and a kiss for the young hero of Piedmont. I’ll give it to you now.”

She bent again and kissed him.

“And my dogs?”

“General Sherman left them, at least.”

“Well, I’m glad of that – my mare all right?”

“Yes, but we had a time to save her – Jake hid her in the woods till the army passed.”

“Bully for Jake.”

“I don’t know what we should have done without him.”

“Old Aleck still at home and getting drunk as usual?”

“No, he ran away with the army and persuaded every negro on the Lenoir place to go, except his wife, Aunt Cindy.”

“The old rascal, when Mrs. Lenoir’s mother saved him from burning to death when he was a boy!”

“Yes, and he told the Yankees those fire scars were made with the lash, and led a squad to the house one night to burn the barns. Jake headed them off and told on him. The soldiers were so mad they strung him up and thrashed him nearly to death. We haven’t seen him since.”

“Well, I’ll take care of you, Mamma, when I get home. Of course I’ll get well. It’s absurd to die at nineteen. You know I never believed the bullet had been moulded that could hit me. In three years of battle I lived a charmed life and never got a scratch.”

His voice had grown feeble and laboured, and his face flushed. His mother placed her hand on his lips.

“Just one more,” he pleaded feebly. “Did you see the little angel who has been playing and singing for me? You must thank her.”

“Yes, I see her coming now. I must go and tell Margaret, and we will get a pass and come every day.”

She kissed him, and went to meet Elsie.

“And you are the dear girl who has been playing and singing for my boy, a wounded stranger here alone among his foes?”

“Yes, and for all the others, too.”

Mrs. Cameron seized both of her hands and looked at her tenderly.

“You will let me kiss you? I shall always love you.”

She pressed Elsie to her heart. In spite of the girl’s reserve, a sob caught her breath at the touch of the warm lips. Her own mother had died when she was a baby, and a shy, hungry heart, long hidden from the world, leaped in tenderness and pain to meet that embrace.

Elsie walked with her to the door, wondering how the terrible truth of her boy’s doom could be told.

She tried to speak, looked into Mrs. Cameron’s face, radiant with grateful joy, and the words froze on her lips. She decided to walk a little way with her. But the task became all the harder.

At the corner she stopped abruptly and bade her good-bye:

“I must leave you now, Mrs. Cameron. I will call for you in the morning and help you secure the passes to enter the hospital.”

The mother stroked the girl’s hand and held it lingeringly.

“How good you are,” she said softly. “And you have not told me your name?”

Elsie hesitated and said:

“That’s a little secret. They call me Sister Elsie, the Banjo Maid, in the hospitals. My father is a man of distinction. I should be annoyed if my full name were known. I’m Elsie Stoneman. My father is the leader of the House. I live with my aunt.”

“Thank you,” she whispered, pressing her hand.

Elsie watched the dark figure disappear in the crowd with a strange tumult of feeling.

The mention of her father had revived the suspicion that he was the mysterious power threatening the policy of the President and planning a reign of terror for the South. Next to the President, he was the most powerful man in Washington, and the unrelenting foe of Mr. Lincoln, although the leader of his party in Congress, which he ruled with a rod of iron. He was a man of fierce and terrible resentments. And yet, in his personal life, to those he knew, he was generous and considerate. “Old Austin Stoneman, the Great Commoner,” he was called, and his name was one to conjure with in the world of deeds. To this fair girl he was the noblest Roman of them all, her ideal of greatness. He was an indulgent father, and while not demonstrative, loved his children with passionate devotion.

She paused and looked up at the huge marble columns that seemed each a sentinel beckoning her to return within to the cot that held a wounded foe. The twilight had deepened, and the soft light of the rising moon had clothed the solemn majesty of the building with shimmering tenderness and beauty.

“Why should I be distressed for one, an enemy, among these thousands who have fallen?” she asked herself. Every detail of the scene she had passed through with him and his mother stood out in her soul with startling distinctness – and the horror of his doom cut with the deep sense of personal anguish.