This was tantamount to a dismissal, so Miller took his leave. Descending the doorsteps, he stood for a moment, undecided whether to return home or to go to the hotel and await the return of Dr. Burns, when he heard his name called from the house in a low tone.
“Oh, doctuh!”
He stepped back toward the door, outside of which stood the colored servant who had just let him out.
“Dat’s all a lie, doctuh,” he whispered, “ ’bout de operation bein’ already pe’fo’med. Dey-all had jes’ gone in de minute befo’ you come—Doctuh Price hadn’ even got out ’n de room. Dey be’n quollin’ ’bout you fer de las’ ha’f hour. Majah Ca’te’et say he wouldn’ have you, an’ de No’then doctuh say he wouldn’t do nothin’ widout you, an’ Doctuh Price he j’ined in on bofe sides, an’ dey had it hot an’ heavy, nip an’ tuck, till bimeby Majah Ca’te’et up an’ say it wa’n’t altogether yo’ color he objected to, an’ wid dat de No’then doctuh give in. He’s a fine man, suh, but dey wuz too much fer ’im!”
“Thank you, Sam, I’m much obliged,” returned Miller mechanically. “One likes to know the truth.”
Truth, it has been said, is mighty, and must prevail; but it sometimes leaves a bad taste in the mouth. In the ordinary course of events Miller would not have anticipated such an invitation, and for that reason had appreciated it all the more. The rebuff came with a corresponding shock. He had the heart of a man, the sensibilities of a cultivated gentleman; the one was sore, the other deeply wounded. He was not altogether sure, upon reflection, whether he blamed Dr. Price very much for the amiable lie, which had been meant to spare his feelings, or thanked Sam a great deal for the unpalatable truth.
Janet met him at the door. “How is the baby?” she asked excitedly.
“Dr. Price says he is doing well.”
“What is the matter, Will, and why are you back so soon?”
He would have spared her the story, but she was a woman, and would have it. He was wounded, too, and wanted sympathy, of which Janet was an exhaustless fountain. So he told her what had happened. She comforted him after the manner of a loving woman, and felt righteously indignant toward her sister’s husband, who had thus been instrumental in the humiliation of her own. Her anger did not embrace her sister, and yet she felt obscurely that their unacknowledged relationship had been the malignant force which had given her husband pain, and defeated his honorable ambition.
When Dr. Price entered the nursery, Dr. Burns was leaning attentively over the operating table. The implements needed for the operation were all in readiness—the knives, the basin, the sponge, the materials for dressing the wound—all the ghastly paraphernalia of vivisection.
Mrs. Carteret had been banished to another room, where Clara vainly attempted to soothe her. Old Mammy Jane, still burdened by her fears, fervently prayed the good Lord to spare the life of the sweet little grandson of her dear old mistress.
Dr. Burns had placed his ear to the child’s chest, which had been bared for the incision. Dr. Price stood ready to administer the anaesthetic. Little Dodie looked up with a faint expression of wonder, as if dimly conscious of some unusual event. The major shivered at the thought of what the child must undergo.
“There’s a change in his breathing,” said Dr. Burns, lifting his head. “The whistling noise is less pronounced, and he breathes easier. The obstruction seems to have shifted.”
Applying his ear again to the child’s throat, he listened for a moment intently, and then picking the baby up from the table, gave it a couple of sharp claps between the shoulders. Simultaneously a small object shot out from the child’s mouth, struck Dr. Price in the neighborhood of his waistband, and then rattled lightly against the floor. Whereupon the baby, as though conscious of his narrow escape, smiled and gurgled, and reaching upward clutched the doctor’s whiskers with his little hand, which, according to old Jane, had a stronger grip than any other infant’s in Wellington.
VIII
The Campaign Drags
The campaign for white supremacy was dragging. Carteret had set out, in the columns of the Morning Chronicle, all the reasons why this movement, inaugurated by the three men who had met, six months before, at the office of the Chronicle, should be supported by the white public. Negro citizenship was a grotesque farce—Sambo and Dinah raised from the kitchen to the cabinet were a spectacle to make the gods laugh. The laws by which it had been sought to put the negroes on a level with the whites must be swept away in theory, as they had failed in fact. If it were impossible, without a further education of public opinion, to secure the repeal of the fifteenth amendment, it was at least the solemn duty of the state to endeavor, through its own constitution, to escape from the domination of a weak and incompetent electorate and confine the negro to that inferior condition for which nature had evidently designed him.
In spite of the force and intelligence with which Carteret had expressed these and similar views, they had not met the immediate response anticipated. There were thoughtful men, willing to let well enough alone, who saw no necessity for such a movement. They believed that peace, prosperity, and popular education offered a surer remedy for social ills than the reopening of issues supposed to have been settled. There were timid men who shrank from civic strife. There were busy men, who had something else to do. There were a few fair men, prepared to admit, privately, that a class constituting half to two thirds of the population were fairly entitled to some representation in the lawmaking bodies. Perhaps there might have been found, somewhere in the state, a single white man ready to concede that all men
