Contending Forces

in an evil hour he went upon the bond of his employer, who, failing to meet his liabilities, involved Montfort in his ruin. Unmanned by recurring misfortunes, Jesse Montfort removed to Boston, and never again seemed to have the ambition to try to retrieve his losses. Born in an evil hour, under an unlucky planet, this man’s life was but a path of sorrow to the grave, which he welcomed as a refuge from all vicissitudes.

As Mr. Withington had said, the letters in his possession from Jesse to Charles Montfort, yellow and time-stained, completed a perfect chain of evidence. The sum of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars was awarded to Mrs. Smith as the last representative of the heirs of Jesse Montfort. Justice was appeased.

The case was a nine-days’ wonder; startled society and all the world⁠—a life drama whose power touched the deep wells of human feeling.

XXII

“So He Bringeth Them Into Their Desired Haven”

All is ended now, the hope and the fear and the sorrow;
All the aching of heart, the restless, unsatisfied longing,
All the dull, deep pain, and constant anguish of patience!

Even as rivulets twain, from distant and separate sources,
Seeing each other afar, as they leap from the rocks, and pursuing
Each one its devious path, but drawing nearer and nearer,
Rush together at last, at their trysting-place in the forest;
So these lives
Rushed together at last, and one was lost in the other.

Longfellow

Three years rolled slowly away and were numbered with the past. Will Smith had finished his course at Heidelberg, and for nine months had traveled in foreign capitals. He was much changed. Honors were thick upon him; honores mutant mores. His bearing was that of a man accustomed to the respectful attention of his equals, sure of himself, his position, his attainments⁠—a wealthy cosmopolitan. He had been a handsome young fellow; he added now to mere good looks, grace, ease, elegance, and an imposing, well-developed intellectuality which marked him as a thinker and an originator. His eyes alone were unchanged, and had the same kindly expression, although there lurked within their hazel depths a sadness which in repose became absolute mournfulness.

The ambition of his life was the establishment of a school which should embrace every known department of science, where the Negro youth of ability and genius could enter without money and without price. This was his pet scheme for the future. No wife or child would ever be his, he told himself; but he would be a father to the youth of his race. Thus he mused and planned until one day there came a letter from his sister saying that his mother’s health was very much broken, and that she longed for the presence of her boy. Will packed up, and April found him in the United States once more, at the home of his sister in New Orleans.

Thoughts of Sappho were seldom far from him; he thought of her as one gone to the land of delight⁠—purified by her sufferings here. The first night that he passed on board ship he had dreamed of her. He dreamed that he stood in a grand cathedral, and listened to strains of delicious melody chanted by an invisible choir. Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison, floated to his ears, and the glad strains of the Gloria. Presently upon the altar before him appeared a vision of the Virgin and Child, but the face of the mother was Sappho’s, the child by her side was the little Alphonse. He tried to reach her in vain. She smiled and beckoned him on as she receded at his approach; then he awoke. His dream haunted him. He interpreted it as a promise that they should be united in heaven. The meeting with his mother and sister and the renewal of old ties somewhat deadened painful memories, until reawakened when he heard them call his sister’s beautiful child “Sappho.”

The home to which Doctor Lewis had taken his bride was very beautiful. One passed from the highway down a long avenue framed by majestic palms, and so upon the college campus which was surrounded by dormitories built of substantial brick. Doctor Lewis’s house was a fine brick cottage, plentifully supplied with porches and piazzas. Its framework was a succession of terraces planted with gorgeous beds of flowers indigenous to the Southern clime. The long French windows stood open to catch the soft breezes of April. This house and the numerous dormitories, museums, the chapel, and buildings which held lecture-rooms and classrooms, were all built by the pupils of the school. The students made the brick which entered into the composition of the various buildings; the carpenter shop, carriage and blacksmith shops afforded fine facilities for imparting practical knowledge of these useful industries.

Beyond the college grounds⁠—to the right⁠—extended the market gardens, which not only supplied the school with vegetables, but also added a goodly sum to the college fund. There, too, were the grazing pastures for horses and cows. The dairy was a long, low, shedlike brick building, beautifully clean and sweet; its brick floors were spotless, the walls adorned with shining utensils for setting milk for cream, and for churning this same cream into butter. Hundreds of hens and chickens roved in small family bands about the immense poultry yards; from all of which came some revenue to help defray the expenses of this human hive of industry. “Many institutions do not spend one cent for domestic labor during the whole school term. The time usually given to football and other games in white colleges is utilized by the colored student in useful toil.” Doctor Lewis’s school was of this class. The tuition, board, lodging, laundry work and incidentals were not over twelve dollars per month. “People with such a love for knowledge that they are willing to toil for it, may be relied on to use that knowledge properly.”

Will threw himself into the work of visiting Doctor Lewis’s