So, for eighteen months, while he slowly groped out of mental twilight, each had waited—Elsie with a tender faith struggling with despair, and Phil in a torture of uncertainty and fear.
In the meantime, the young Northerner had become as radical in his sympathies with the Southern people as his father had ever been against them. This power of assimilation has always been a mark of Southern genius. The sight of the Black Hand on their throats now roused his righteous indignation. The patience with which they endured was to him amazing. The Southerner he had found to be the last man on earth to become a revolutionist. All his traits were against it. His genius for command, the deep sense of duty and honour, his hospitality, his deathless love of home, his supreme constancy and sense of civic unity, all combined to make him ultraconservative. He began now to see that it was reverence for authority as expressed in the Constitution under which slavery was established which made Secession inevitable.
Besides, the laziness and incapacity of the negro had been more than he could endure. With no ties of tradition or habits of life to bind him, he simply refused to tolerate them. In this feeling Elsie had grown early to sympathize. She discharged Aunt Cindy for feeding her children from the kitchen, and brought a cook and house girl from the North, while Phil would employ only white men in any capacity.
In the desolation of negro rule the Cameron farm had become worthless. The taxes had more than absorbed the income, and the place was only kept from execution by the indomitable energy of Mrs. Cameron, who made the hotel pay enough to carry the interest on a mortgage which was increasing from season to season.
The doctor’s practice was with him a divine calling. He never sent bills to his patients. They paid something if they had it. Now they had nothing.
Ben’s law practice was large for his age and experience, but his clients had no money.
While the Camerons were growing each day poorer, Phil was becoming rich. His genius, skill, and enterprise had been quick to see the possibilities of the waterpower. The old Eagle cotton mills had been burned during the war. Phil organized the Eagle & Phœnix Company, interested Northern capitalists, bought the falls, and erected two great mills, the dim hum of whose spindles added a new note to the river’s music. Eager, swift, modest, his head full of ideas, his heart full of faith, he had pressed forward to success.
As the old Commoner’s mind began to clear, and his recovery was sure, Phil determined to press his suit for Margaret’s hand to an issue.
Ben had dropped a hint of an interview of the Rev. Hugh McAlpin with Dr. Cameron, which had thrown Phil into a cold sweat.
He hurried to the hotel to ask Margaret to drive with him that afternoon. He would stop at Lover’s Leap and settle the question.