CHAPTER III—FLORA
HAMBRIGHT had changed but little in the eighteen years of peace that had followed the terrors of Legree’s régime. The population had doubled, though but few houses had been built. The town had not grown from the development of industry, but for a very simple reason—the country people had moved into the town, seeking refuge from a new terror that was growing of late more and more a menace to a country home, the roving criminal negro.
The birth of a girl baby was sure to make a father restless, and when the baby looked up into his face one day with the soft light of a maiden, he gave up his farm and moved to town.
The most important development of these eighteen years was the complete alienation of the white and black races as compared with the old familiar trust of domestic life.
When Legree finished his work as the master artificer of the Reconstruction Policy, he had dug a gulf between the races as deep as hell. It had never been bridged. The deed was done and it had crystallised into the solid rock that lies at the basis of society. It was done at a formative period, and it could no more be undone now than you could roll the universe back in its course.
The younger generation of white men only knew the Negro as an enemy of his people in politics and society.
He never came in contact with him except in menial service, in which the service rendered was becoming more and more trifling, and his habits more insolent. He had his separate schools, churches, preachers and teachers, and his political leaders were the beneficiaries of Legree’s legacies.
With the Anglo-Saxon race guarding the door of marriage with fire and sword, the effort was being made to build a nation inside a nation of two antagonistic races. No such thing had ever been done in the history of the human race, even under the development of the monarchial and aristocratic forms of society. How could it be done under the formulas of Democracy with Equality as the fundamental basis of law? And yet this was the programme of the age.
Gaston was feeling blue from the reaction which followed his temptation by McLeod. His duty was clear the night before as he walked firmly homeward, recalling the tragedy of the past. Now in the cold light of day, the past seemed far away and unreal. The present was near, pressing, vital. He laid down a book he was trying to read, locked his office and strolled down town to see Tom Camp.
This old soldier had come to be a sort of oracle to him. His affection for the son of his Colonel was deep and abiding, and his extravagant flattery of his talents and future were so evidently sincere they always acted as a tonic. And he needed a tonic to-day.