The Colonel's Dream Part 13

The owners, however, were widely scattered, for the mill had belonged to a joint-stock company composed of a dozen or more members. Colonel French was pleasantly surprised, upon looking up certain musty public records in the court house, to find that he himself was the owner, by inheritance, of several shares of stock which had been overlooked in the sale of his father's property. Retaining the services of Judge Bullard, the leading member of the Clarendon bar, he set out quietly to secure options upon the other shares. This involved an extensive correspondence, which occupied several weeks. For it was necessary first to find, and then to deal with the scattered representatives of the former owners.

_Thirteen_

In engaging Judge Bullard, the colonel had merely stated to the lawyer that he thought of building a cotton-mill, but had said nothing about his broader plan. It was very likely, he recognised, that the people of Clarendon might not relish the thought that they were regarded as fit subjects for reform. He knew that they were sensitive, and quick to resent criticism. If some of them might admit, now and then, among themselves, that the town was unprogressive, or declining, there was always some extraneous reason given--the War, the carpetbaggers, the Fifteenth Amendment, the Negroes. Perhaps not one of them had ever quite realised the awful handicap of excuses under which they laboured. Effort was paralysed where failure was so easily explained.

That the condition of the town might be due to causes within itself--to the general ignorance, self-satisfaction and lack of enterprise, had occurred to only a favoured few; the younger of these had moved away, seeking a broader outlook elsewhere; while those who remained were not yet strong enough nor brave enough to break with the past and urge new standards of thought and feeling.

So the colonel kept his larger purpose to himself until a time when greater openness would serve to advance it. Thus Judge Bullard, not being able to read his client's mind, a.s.sumed very naturally that the contemplated enterprise was to be of a purely commercial nature, directed to making the most money in the shortest time.

"Some day, Colonel," he said, with this thought in mind, "you might get a few pointers by running over to Carthage and looking through the Excelsior Mills. They get more work there for less money than anywhere else in the South. Last year they declared a forty per cent. dividend.

I know the superintendent, and will give you a letter of introduction, whenever you like."

The colonel bore the matter in mind, and one morning, a day or two after his party, set out by train, about eight o'clock in the morning, for Carthage, armed with a letter from the lawyer to the superintendent of the mills.

The town was only forty miles away; but a cow had been caught in a trestle across a ditch, and some time was required for the train crew to release her. Another stop was made in the middle of a swamp, to put off a light mulatto who had presumed on his complexion to ride in the white people's car. He had been successfully spotted, but had impudently refused to go into the stuffy little closet provided at the end of the car for people of his cla.s.s. He was therefore given an opportunity to reflect, during a walk along the ties, upon his true relation to society. Another stop was made for a gentleman who had sent a Negro boy ahead to flag the train and notify the conductor that he would be along in fifteen or twenty minutes with a couple of lady pa.s.sengers. A hot journal caused a further delay. These interruptions made it eleven o'clock, a three-hours' run, before the train reached Carthage.

The town was much smaller than Clarendon. It comprised a public square of several acres in extent, on one side of which was the railroad station, and on another the court house. One of the remaining sides was occupied by a row of shops; the fourth straggled off in various directions. The whole wore a neglected air. Bales of cotton goods were piled on the platform, apparently just unloaded from wagons standing near. Several white men and Negroes stood around and stared listlessly at the train and the few who alighted from it.

Inquiring its whereabouts from one of the bystanders, the colonel found the nearest hotel--a two-story frame structure, with a piazza across the front, extending to the street line. There was a buggy standing in front, its horse hitched to one of the piazza posts. Steps led up from the street, but one might step from the buggy to the floor of the piazza, which was without a railing.

The colonel mounted the steps and pa.s.sed through the door into a small room, which he took for the hotel office, since there were chairs standing against the walls, and at one side a table on which a register lay open. The only person in the room, beside himself, was a young man seated near the door, with his feet elevated to the back of another chair, reading a newspaper from which he did not look up.

The colonel, who wished to make some inquiries and to register for the dinner which he might return to take, looked around him for the clerk, or some one in authority, but no one was visible. While waiting, he walked over to the desk and turned over the leaves of the dog-eared register. He recognised only one name--that of Mr. William Fetters, who had registered there only a day or two before.

No one had yet appeared. The young man in the chair was evidently not connected with the establishment. His expression was so forbidding, not to say arrogant, and his absorption in the newspaper so complete, that the colonel, not caring to address him, turned to the right and crossed a narrow hall to a room beyond, evidently a parlour, since it was fitted up with a faded ingrain carpet, a centre table with a red plush photograph alb.u.m, and several enlarged crayon portraits hung near the ceiling--of the kind made free of charge in Chicago from photographs, provided the owner orders a frame from the company. No one was in the room, and the colonel had turned to leave it, when he came face to face with a lady pa.s.sing through the hall.

"Are you looking for some one?" she asked amiably, having noted his air of inquiry.

"Why, yes, madam," replied the colonel, removing his hat, "I was looking for the proprietor--or the clerk."

"Why," she replied, smiling, "that's the proprietor sitting there in the office. I'm going in to speak to him, and you can get his attention at the same time."

Their entrance did not disturb the young man's reposeful att.i.tude, which remained as unchanged as that of a graven image; nor did he exhibit any consciousness at their presence.

"I want a clean towel, Mr. d.i.c.kson," said the lady sharply.

The proprietor looked up with an annoyed expression.

"Huh?" he demanded, in a tone of resentment mingled with surprise.

"A clean towel, if you please."

The proprietor said nothing more to the lady, nor deigned to notice the colonel at all, but lifted his legs down from the back of the chair, rose with a sigh, left the room and returned in a few minutes with a towel, which he handed ungraciously to the lady. Then, still paying no attention to the colonel, he resumed his former att.i.tude, and returned to the perusal of his newspaper--certainly the most unconcerned of hotel keepers, thought the colonel, as a vision of s.p.a.cious lobbies, liveried porters, and obsequious clerks rose before his vision. He made no audible comment, however, but merely stared at the young man curiously, left the hotel, and inquired of a pa.s.sing Negro the whereabouts of the livery stable. A few minutes later he found the place without difficulty, and hired a horse and buggy.

While the stable boy was putting the harness on the horse, the colonel related to the liveryman, whose manner was energetic and business-like, and who possessed an open countenance and a sympathetic eye, his experience at the hotel.

"Oh, yes," was the reply, "that's Lee d.i.c.kson all over. That hotel used to be kep' by his mother. She was a widow woman, an' ever since she died, a couple of months ago, Lee's been playin' the big man, spendin' the old lady's money, and enjoyin' himself. Did you see that hoss'n'-buggy hitched in front of the ho-tel?"

"Yes."

"Well, that's Lee's buggy. He hires it from us. We send it up every mornin' at nine o'clock, when Lee gits up. When he's had his breakfas'

he comes out an' gits in the buggy, an' drives to the barber-shop nex'

door, gits out, goes in an' gits shaved, comes out, climbs in the buggy, an' drives back to the ho-tel. Then he talks to the cook, comes out an' gits in the buggy, an' drives half-way 'long that side of the square, about two hund'ed feet, to the grocery sto', and orders half a pound of coffee or a pound of lard, or whatever the ho-tel needs for the day, then comes out, climbs in the buggy and drives back. When the mail comes in, if he's expectin' any mail, he drives 'cross the square to the post-office, an' then drives back to the ho-tel. There's other lazy men roun' here, but Lee d.i.c.kson takes the cake. However, it's money in our pocket, as long as it keeps up."

"I shouldn't think it would keep up long," returned the colonel. "How can such a hotel prosper?"

"It don't!" replied the liveryman, "but it's the best in town."

"I don't see how there could be a worse," said the colonel.

"There couldn't--it's reached bed rock."

The buggy was ready by this time, and the colonel set out, with a black driver, to find the Excelsior Cotton Mills. They proved to be situated in a desolate sandhill region several miles out of town. The day was hot; the weather had been dry, and the road was deep with a yielding white sand into which the buggy tires sank. The horse soon panted with the heat and the exertion, and the colonel, dressed in brown linen, took off his hat and mopped his brow with his handkerchief. The driver, a taciturn Negro--most of the loquacious, fun-loving Negroes of the colonel's youth seemed to have disappeared--flicked a horsefly now and then, with his whip, from the horse's sweating back.

The first sign of the mill was a straggling group of small frame houses, built of unpainted pine lumber. The barren soil, which would not have supported a firm lawn, was dotted with scraggy bunches of wiregra.s.s. In the open doorways, through which the flies swarmed in and out, grown men, some old, some still in the prime of life, were lounging, pipe in mouth, while old women pottered about the yards, or pushed back their sunbonnets to stare vacantly at the advancing buggy.

Dirty babies were tumbling about the cabins. There was a lean and listless yellow dog or two for every baby; and several slatternly black women were was.h.i.+ng clothes on the shady sides of the houses. A general air of s.h.i.+ftlessness and squalor pervaded the settlement.

There was no sign of joyous childhood or of happy youth.

A turn in the road brought them to the mill, the distant hum of which had already been audible. It was a two-story brick structure with many windows, altogether of the cheapest construction, but situated on the bank of a stream and backed by a n.o.ble water power.

They drew up before an open door at one corner of the building. The colonel alighted, entered, and presented his letter of introduction.

The superintendent glanced at him keenly, but, after reading the letter, greeted him with a show of cordiality, and called a young man to conduct the visitor through the mill.

The guide seemed in somewhat of a hurry, and reticent of speech; nor was the noise of the machinery conducive to conversation. Some of the colonel's questions seemed unheard, and others were imperfectly answered. Yet the conditions disclosed by even such an inspection were, to the colonel, a revelation. Through air thick with flying particles of cotton, pale, anaemic young women glanced at him curiously, with lack-l.u.s.ter eyes, or eyes in which the gleam was not that of health, or hope, or holiness. Wizened children, who had never known the joys of childhood, worked side by side at long rows of spools to which they must give unremitting attention. Most of the women were using snuff, the odour of which was mingled with the flying particles of cotton, while the floor was thickly covered with unsightly brown splotches.

When they had completed the tour of the mills and returned to the office, the colonel asked some questions of the manager about the equipment, the output, and the market, which were very promptly and courteously answered. To those concerning hours and wages the replies were less definite, and the colonel went away impressed as much by what he had not learned as by what he had seen.

While settling his bill at the livery stable, he made further inquiries.

"Lord, yes," said the liveryman in answer to one of them, "I can tell you all you want to know about that mill. Talk about n.i.g.g.e.r slavery--the n.i.g.g.e.rs never were worked like white women and children are in them mills. They work 'em from twelve to sixteen hours a day for from fifteen to fifty cents. Them triflin' old pinelanders out there jus' lay aroun' and raise children for the mills, and then set down and chaw tobacco an' live on their children's wages. It's a sin an' a shame, an' there ought to be a law ag'inst it."

The conversation brought out the further fact that vice was rampant among the millhands.

"An' it ain't surprisin'," said the liveryman, with indignation tempered by the easy philosophy of hot climates. "Shut up in jail all day, an' half the night, never breathin' the pyo' air, or baskin' in G.o.d's bright suns.h.i.+ne; with no books to read an' no chance to learn, who can blame the po'r things if they have a little joy in the only way they know?"

"Who owns the mill?" asked the colonel.

"It belongs to a company," was the reply, "but Old Bill Fetters owns a majority of the stock--durn, him!"

The colonel felt a thrill of pleasure--he had met a man after his own heart.

"You are not one of Fetters's admirers then?" he asked.

"Not by a durn sight," returned the liveryman promptly. "When I look at them white gals, that ought to be rosy-cheeked an' bright-eyed an'

plump an' hearty an' happy, an' them po' little child'en that never get a chance to go fis.h.i.+n' or swimmin' or to learn anything, I allow I wouldn' mind if the durned old mill would catch fire an' burn down.