By an act of generosity he had helped the forlorn youth, then in his freshman year, over obstacles which bade fair to end his college days. Although the pecuniary obligation was long since paid, the affection and worship Reuel had conceived for his deliverer was doglike in its devotion.
“Beastly night,” he continued, as he stretched his full length luxuriously in the only easy chair the room afforded. “What are you mooning about all alone in the darkness?”
“Same old thing,” replied Briggs briefly.
“No wonder the men say that you have a twist, Reuel.”
“Ah, man! but the problem of whence and whither! To solve it is my life; I live for that alone; let’m talk.”
“You ought to be renamed the ‘Science of Trance-States,’ Reuel. How a man can grind day and night beats me.” Livingston handed him a cigar and for a time they smoked in silence. At length Reuel said:
“Shake hands with Poverty once, Aubrey, and you will solve the secret of many a student’s success in life.”
“Doubtless it would do me good,” replied Livingston with a laugh, “but just at present, it’s the ladies, bless their sweet faces who disturb me, and not delving in books nor weeping over ways and means. Shades of my fathers, forbid that I should ever have to work!”
“Lucky dog!” growled Reuel, enviously, as he gazed admiringly at the handsome face turned up to the ceiling and gazing with soft caressing eyes at the ugly whitewashed wall through rings of curling smoke. “Yet you have a greater gift of duality than I,” he added dreamily. “Say what you will; ridicule me, torment me, but you know as well as I that the wonders of a material world cannot approach those of the undiscovered country within ourselves—the hidden self lying quiescent in every human soul.”
“True, Reuel, and I often wonder what becomes of the mind and morals, distinctive entities grouped in the republic known as man, when death comes. Good and evil in me contend; which will gain the mastery? Which will accompany me into the silent land?”
“Good and evil, God and the devil,” suggested Reuel. “Yes, sinner or saint, body or soul, which wins in the life struggle? I am not sure that it matters which,” he concluded with a shrug of his handsome shoulders. “I should know if I never saw you again until the struggle was over. Your face will tell its own tale in another five years. Now listen to this:” He caught up the book he had been reading and rapidly turning the leaves read over the various passages that had impressed him.
“A curious accumulation of data; the writer evidently takes himself seriously,” Livingston commented.
“And why not?” demanded Reuel. “You and I know enough to credit the author with honest intentions.”
“Yes; but are we prepared to go so far?”
“This man is himself a mystic. He gives his evidence clearly enough.”
“And do you credit it?”
“Every word! Could I but get the necessary subject, I would convince you; I would go farther than M. Binet in unveiling the vast scheme of compensation and retribution carried about in the vast recesses of the human soul.”
“Find the subject and I will find the money,” laughed Aubrey.
“Do you mean it, Aubrey? Will you join me in carrying forward a search for more light on the mysteries of existence?”
“I mean it. And now, Reuel, come down from the clouds, and come with me to a concert.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes, ‘tonight,’ ” mimicked the other. “The blacker the night, the greater the need of amusement. You go out too little.”
“Who gives the concert?”
“Well, it’s a new departure in the musical world; something Northerners know nothing of; but I who am a Southerner, born and bred, or as the vulgar have it, ‘dyed in the wool,’ know and understand Negro music. It is a jubilee concert given by a party of Southern colored people at Tremont Temple. I have the tickets. Redpath has them in charge.”
“Well, if you say so, I suppose I must.” Briggs did not seem greatly impressed.
“Coming down to the practical, Reuel, what do you think of the Negro problem? Come to think of it, I have never heard you express an opinion about it. I believe it is the only burning question in the whole category of live issues and ologies about which you are silent.”
“I have a horror of discussing the woes of unfortunates, tramps, stray dogs and cats and Negroes—probably because I am an unfortunate myself.”
They smoked in silence.
II
The passing of slavery from the land marked a new era in the life of the nation. The war, too, had passed like a dream of horrors, and over the resumption of normal conditions in business and living, the whole country, as one man, rejoiced and heaved a deep sigh of absolute content.
Under the spur of the excitement occasioned by the Proclamation of Freedom, and the great need of schools for the blacks, thousands of dollars were contributed at the North, and agents were sent to Great Britain, where generosity towards the Negroes was boundless. Money came from all directions, pouring into the hands of philanthropists, who were anxious to prove that the country was able, not only to free the slave, but to pay the great debt it owed him—protection as he embraced freedom, and a share in the great Government he had aided to found by sweat and toil and blood. It was soon discovered that the Negro possessed a phenomenal gift of music, and it was determined to utilize this gift in helping to support educational institutions of color in the Southland.
A band of students from Fisk University were touring the country, and those who had been fortunate
