He sank exhausted in his chair, and, extending his hand in an eloquent gesture, continued:
“Surely, surely, sir, the people of the North are not mad? We can yet appeal to the conscience and the brain of our brethren of a common race?”
Stoneman was silent as if stunned. Deep down in his strange soul he was drunk with the joy of a triumphant vengeance he had carried locked in the depths of his being, yet the intensity of this man’s suffering for a people’s cause surprised and distressed him as all individual pain hurt him.
Dr. Cameron rose, stung by his silence and the consciousness of the hostility with which Stoneman had wrapped himself.
“Pardon my apparent rudeness, Doctor,” he said at length, extending his hand. “The violence of your feeling stunned me for the moment. I’m obliged to you for speaking. I like a plain-spoken man. I am sorry to learn of the stupidity of the former military commandant in this town——”
“My personal wrongs, sir,” the doctor broke in, “are nothing!”
“I am sorry, too, about these individual cases of suffering. They are the necessary incidents of a great upheaval. But may it not all come out right in the end? After the Dark Ages, day broke at last. We have the printing press, railroad, and telegraph—a revolution in human affairs. We may do in years what it took ages to do in the past. May not the black man speedily emerge? Who knows? An appeal to the North will be a waste of breath. This experiment is going to be made. It is written in the book of Fate. But I like you. Come to see me again.”
Dr. Cameron left with a heavy heart. He had grown a great hope in this long-wished-for appeal to Stoneman. It had come to his ears that the old man, who had dwelt as one dead in their village, was a power.
It was ten o’clock before the doctor walked slowly back to the hotel. As he passed the armoury of the black militia, they were still drilling under the command of Gus. The windows were open, through which came the steady tramp of heavy feet and the cry of “Hep! Hep! Hep!” from the Captain’s thick cracked lips. The full-dress officer’s uniform, with its gold epaulets, yellow stripes, and glistening sword, only accentuated the coarse bestiality of Gus. His huge jaws seemed to hide completely the gold braid on his collar.
The doctor watched, with a shudder, his black bloated face covered with perspiration and the huge hand gripping his sword.