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The Hindered Hand, a novel by Sutton E. Griggs |
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Chapter 16. An Eager Searcher |
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_ CHAPTER XVI. An Eager Searcher Up and down the street on which he lived, Ramon Mansford, the affianced of Alene Daleman, walked as one in a trance. Night was coming and as the shadows deepened the bitterness deepened in his soul. "Think of it! my father sleeps in an unmarked grave somewhere in the South, and I know that the hope of freeing the slave actuated him to enlist in the army. For the Negro, my father buried his sword to the hilt in the blood of his Southern brother and in turn received a thrust, all for a race from which this vile miscreant has crept to murder Alene, my Alene." In the darkness of his own calamity distinctions between right and wrong began to fade away, and he found his hatred of the Negro race assuming a more violent form than that manifested by the native Southerner. In his heart there was the harking back to times more than a thousand years ago--to times when his race was a race of exterminators. At this particular time it seemed to him that nothing would have suited him better than to have taken the lead of forces bent on driving every black face from the land. Now and then he would pause and ask himself: "Is all this horror true? Is the sweet Alene gone? Was the dear one foully murdered while I slept? Great God of heaven, can all this be true? Must I go through life unsupported by the brave heart of Alene on which I was depending for strength to conquer worlds?" He sat down upon the curbstone and buried his face in his hands. About twelve o'clock that night a Negro woman came rushing along at full speed. Ramon seized her and she uttered a loud scream, falling in a helpless heap at his feet. With a tight grip on her arm he said, "Have you, too, blighted somebody's happiness? Have you murdered some one?" With terror stricken eyes the woman looked up into his face and said, "Mistah, please lemme go, please sah!" "What have you done?" sternly asked Ramon. "Nothin' sah," said she. "I'se been roun' ter Dilsy Harper's, settin' up ovah Bud Harper's daid body, whut wuz sent home frum de bridge. Wal, sah, ez shuah ez dis here chile is bawn ter die, while we wuz settin' up ovah Bud's body, Bud hisself walked in. We looked at Bud, den at de body, en we wuz skeert ter death. Den de livin' Bud, went up an looked down on de daid Bud, and de daid Bud skeert de livin' Bud, and de livin' Bud fairly flew outen dat house. Den, bless yer soul, honey, dat ole house wuz soon empty." This weird tale furnished the needed diversion to Ramon's overburdened mind. His thoughts began to run in another direction. "Was the mob mistaken? Is the man thought to have been killed yet alive? If one mistake has been made, who can say that two haven't been made? Is her real murderer yet alive?" Such were the thoughts that went crashing through Ramon's mind and his grip on the woman's arm slackened. The woman wrenched herself loose and continued her journey with increased speed. As late as it was Ramon hurried to the Harpers' home and found the Negroes standing about at a distance from the house, discussing the sudden reappearance and disappearance of Bud Harper, when there, all agreed, lay Bud before their very eyes. Ramon returned to his home strangely becalmed, and though late in the night he sat down and wrote the following letter to his home in the North. "MY DEAR NORFLEET: I am in the throes of an overwhelming sorrow. My Alene has been foully murdered. A mystery surrounds the case. We cannot fathom the motive of the crime. To-day (rather yesterday now, for it is two o'clock in the morning) a man accused of murdering her was lynched. To-night the man who was supposed to have been lynched made his appearance at his home. But the mother sticks to it that the real murderer, her son, is the corpse, and appearances seem to bear out the contention. Now it may be that Alene's murderer is yet alive and that an injustice has been wrought upon somebody. My heart is more firmly knit to my Southern white brethren than ever before. I fling ambition to the winds. Tell my friends that I shall not make the race for Congress, and thank them for me for the way in which they have always seconded my aspirations. It pains me much to not be in a position to attempt to scale the heights which their loving hearts fancied I could make with ease. I shall walk with my kith and kin of the South in the shadow, for in the furnace of a common sorrow, my heart has been melted into one with theirs. We of the South (you see I call myself one of them), know not what the future has in store for our beloved section, but we face the ordeal with the grim determination of our race. If you believe in prayer, pray that I may be just and may even in darkness do the right. When Alene had been laid to rest, Ramon, after lingering in Almaville for a few weeks, disappeared completely, leaving behind no trace of himself. He had previously given Mr. Daleman and friends assurances that he would do no violence to himself. So while they knew not where he was nor what was his mission, they were not unduly apprehensive as to his welfare. Ramon Mansford had simply stained himself a chocolate brown and had thus passed from the Anglo-Saxon to the Negro race. He had gone to fathom the mystery of Alene's murder. _ |
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