Tongues of Flame (MacFarlane)/Chapter 38
CHOOSING his words haltingly but rather happily, Mayor Foster, in that high penetrating voice of his, boldly assumed to make confession for himself and for all.
"We did Henry Harrington about all the harm we could do him," he began bluntly, "and now we're here to 'fess up—to make his sore heart glad by telling him that he's about the most loyal citizen Socatullo County ever had and at last we've got sense enough to know it. When he was trying to tell us what was right, we wouldn't listen. We called him a traitor and we howled him down. He wasn't a traitor. We were a lot of suckers, and I guess I was the great big hesucker of 'em all. Furthermore, it's admitted he's not guilty of what he's been in jail for. The officers say so. Our hearts had acquitted him already. We are here to tell him how wrong we were—how ashamed we are—and to ask him what we can do to make it right."
The massed people had with difficulty restrained themselves. "That's right. That's right, Foster!" irrepressibles kept breaking in.
"Three cheers for Henry Harrington! Yip! Yip!" shouted a voice on the far edge of the throng to be followed immediately by a vast sustained outburst of emotional cheering, with hand-clappings, with wavings of head-gear and tossings of the same into the air. Harrington stood, thrilling to the satisfactions of the moment, eyes sweeping the crowd, shoulders lifting, blood tingling, nostrils quivering with delight in it all. This was vindication; this was the triumph he had looked forward to—this was everything . . . but Billie! If she could only be here now—but of course she couldn't be—and he would be rushing to her in a few minutes now anyway.
Henry was touched with realizing how completely his townsmen had forgot their own great wrongs to undo a wrong to him. It filled him with a respect, a yearning, a compassion for them that was wholly unexpected. He lifted his hand and the crowd slowly stilled.
"Forget it, won't you?" he urged gravely, generously. "It was all a mistake anyhow—a very human mistake. There were times when I almost doubted myself. Forget it, won't you, please!"
"We can't ever forget it, Henry!" declared Mayor Foster loudly, and from the mass there were cries of: "You're right, Foster!" and "You bet your life we can't!"
"Speech!" "Speech!" the crowd began to call; and it came to Henry who had been planning only to get away, that in this plastic hour he might help these people with a few words that flamed into mind out of his so recent and so poignant experiences.
But it was not until some one shouted: "Tell us what we are going to do, Henry!" and there were spontaneous vociferations from many quarters of: "Yes; that's it; tell us what we are going to do;" that it dawned on Harrington that these distressed contrite people were not only looking to him but were looking up to him, trusting him, desiring guidance of him. He thrilled afresh at the perception. They had cast him out, then hailed him guiltless; and now they appealed to him as leader—to him who in his bitterness had said that he would never lead again.
It came to him with a new tingling of his veins that this was his real vindication; it came to him that he could lead these people; that he must; that for him a rare opportunity had come, bought with a very great price, and that he would be the Judas they had called him at the Chamber of Commerce meeting if he did not embrace the opportunity. He felt his soul harden with a sort of spiritual hardness that had never been there before. He remembered too what it was the Salisheuttes were waiting an opportunity to tell these squatters on their ancient domain, and at that memory his enthusiasm kindled.
"I'll tell you what we're going to do!" he trumpeted suddenly, stern in his acceptance of their challenge to leadership. "We're going to triumph over our adversity. We're going to build our homes again and make them better homes—build Edgewater again and make it a better Edgewater. We'll give it better principles. We'll build a town where the little man is equal to the big man before the law—where no man's private interest can ever be made the public interest.
"We'll remember what President Coolidge once said, that 'a thing is not right because it will pay; but that it will pay because it is right.' If we do that, we will have a community in which legal crimes like those against Soderman and Adam John, with their inevitable train of bloodshed, will be impossible—or the little one against me even."
The crowd ceased to cheer, awed and self-convicted now.
"Oh, I do not say this with any bitterness," the speaker went on; "for the first thing I would insist upon in the new Edgewater is a spirit of charity, of brotherliness, where men at opposite poles of thought, like Jim Gaylord and Adolph Salzberg, can each recognize that the other has a point of view. Not that I am going to be mushy. Deliberate criminals must be punished, of course. I am not one who would line a murderer's cell with flowers, nor wash him with sentimental tears. I would send the flowers to the grave of his victim and reserve my tears for those bereft by his bloody hand. I would, as Roosevelt said once, 'rather seem hard in the heart than soft in the head.' But our crimes must be measured by the circumstances that created them. Our punishments must do justice and not injustice."
Again the audience was breathless, drinking down the thought—accepting it as authoritative from the man who had earned the right to speak with authority.
"And now let me tell you, my friends, that our most immediate duty is to be hopeful. There's hope in most any situation if you'll look for it. Today, instead of owning the ground you stand on, the Salisheuttes are your landlords; yet there's hope even in that."
But the mental attitude of the crowd was instantly changed and up from the face of it came a sort of mass groan; but Henry challenged this by going on stoutly:
"You will have to make your terms with them. They are not absentee landlords. They are here. I see them about me on the steps—curious spectators of a scene that we as white men can't be altogether proud of. Their missionary pastor, Mr. Collins, was just in the jail conferring with me. As this seems as representative an audience as can be gathered in Edgewater under present circumstances, I take for you the liberty of suggesting that he step up here and announce to you the terms of the Salisheuttes who have been declared by the highest court to be the owners of all that their eyes rest upon and far beyond."
There was an instant snarl. Terms? With the Salisheuttes? The idea was still unthinkable. Henry had jeopardized his new-gained leadership. Angry voices ejaculated and mutterings arose on every side; yet as the tall form of the Reverend Jedediah Collins forced its way upward to the flagged stone porch, a mildly intent expression on his bony, serious face, crowd anger was giving way to crowd anxiety. Facts were facts—and stubborn things.
Gaylord, over-excited, made himself the spokesman of this increasing chord of anxiety, and broke in upon the Reverend Jedediah before he could utter a word. "If you'll give us deeds and help us quiet title," he shouted rather frantically, from the base of a column that raised him over the heads of those about him, "we can bond the city for enough to make your Indians rich, them and their children till the end of time."
"Bonds!" reproved the Reverend Jedediah placidly, but in a trained speaking voice that carried easily as far as Gaylord's excited tone. Yet mildness and the timber of suasion was lost on the banker.
"They did nothing to make this town—to make it rich," Gaylord complained. "Let 'em be fair—let 'em be half-way fair!"
"Fair?" reproached the Reverend Jedediah in a voice of sweetness and calm, and then rather lifted himself above Gaylord. "Be patient, my friends," he appealed; "and hear the message of the Salisheutte Indians to the distressed people of Edgewater. Chief Charlie, come here and stand beside me. Chief Big Fish, Chief William, and the others of you, come and stand in front of me on the top step here and witness to these distressed people if I correctly interpret your wishes."
Chief Charlie came, dignified as majesty, and stood below the missionary, facing the once more breathless masses. He was impassive as a graven image, except that his hand still nursed the bowl of the short pipe and his lips from time to time appeared to suck sustenance from it. Beside him ranged the other chiefs. Over them their spiritual leader lifted his voice once more.
"They ask me to assure you at once that it is white men who have tricked you; that they will not take advantage of your distresses; and to admit that the great court at Washington, in doing its duty, has given to them wealth which they did not create. It has snatched the ground from under you and given it to them. They ask me to tell you that you can have it back—freely. They give it to you now. They would put your minds at ease as quickly as possible."
Instant sensation swept the close packed masses.
"What? What's that? . . . What'd he say?"
Breathless questionings raced through the gaping crowd. Gaylord formulated the mental confusion of all when he lifted his voice to urge: "Make it plainer, Parson. I'm not sure I get you."
The missionary smiled, a patient, indulgent sort of smile, as if he, an apostle of light, dealt with a groping child of darkness. "Why, Mr. Gaylord, the banker—for they tell me that is who you are—I'm just saying that the Salisheutte Indians are not grasping like some white men. They have not learned to covet. They have been treated badly for so long, robbed of homes and hunting ground for so long, that they have a great sympathy for people deceived and despoiled and exploited as you have been. Therefore they give you back your homes."
"Give 'em back? How?" Gaylord seemed still not quite able to grasp the idea.
"Yes," affirmed the Reverend Jedediah. "They have decided to ask the Great Father at Washington to appoint a trustee for them—a man whom they trust very much and whom they are glad to see now that you have begun to trust again—a lawyer, a missionary of the human law, as I, in my humble way, am a missionary of the divine—Henry Harrington! He will act for them. When the proper power is given to him, he will confirm the titles of each of you."
"Without payment of any kind?" demanded Gaylord, incredulous to the last.
"Except in good will," smiled the Reverend Jedediah benevolently. "The Salisheuttes hope that the white men will treat them a little more as brothers hereafter." This hope was uttered modestly, appealingly.
"For nothing?" inquired the amazed citizens incredulously one of another.
"Why, that's not human nature!" echoed somebody right under the Reverend Jedediah's ear.
"It's Christian nature, my brother," he replied.
"It just shows you never can civilize an Indian!" complained Julius Hornblower in disgust.