The Man in Gray - Jr. Thomas Dixon

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to begin."

      "But not for that reason, Miss Mary—"

      He held her gaze so seriously that she blushed before she could recover her poise. He saw his advantage and pressed it.

      "I'm telling you that I love you because you're the most adorable girl

       I've ever known."

      His boyish, conventional words broke the spell.

      "I appreciate the tribute which you so gallantly pay me, Sir Knight. But I happen to know that the moonlight, the music of a dance, the song of birds this morning and the beauty of the landscape move you, as they should. You're young. You're too good looking. You're fine and unspoiled and I like you, Jeb. But you don't know yet what love means."

      "I do, Miss Mary, I do."

      "You don't and neither do I. You're in love with love. And so am I. It's the morning of life and why shouldn't we be like this?"

      "There's no hope?" he asked dolefully.

      "Of course, there's hope. There's something fine in you, and you'll find yourself in the world when you ride forth to play your part. And I'll follow you with tender pride."

      "But not with love," he sighed.

      "Maybe—who knows?" she smiled.

      "Is that all the hope you can give me?"

      "Isn't it enough?"

      He gazed into her serious eyes a moment and laughed with boyish enthusiasm.

      "Yes, it is, Miss Mary! You're glorious. You're wonderful. You make me ashamed of my foolishness. You inspire me to do things. And I'm going to do them for your sake."

      "For your own sake, because God has put the spark in your soul. Your declaration of love has made me very happy. We're too young yet to take it seriously. We must both live our life in its morning before we settle down to the final things. They'll come too soon."

      "I'm going to love you always, Miss Mary," he protested.

      "I want you to. But you'll probably marry another girl."

      "Never!"

      "And I know you'll be her loyal knight, her devoted slave. It's a way our Southern boys have. And it's beautiful."

      Stuart studied the finely chiseled face with a new reverence.

      "Miss Mary, you've let me down so gently. I don't feel hurt at all."

      A sweet silence fell between them. A breeze blew the ringlets of the girl's hair across the pink of her cheek. A breeze from the garden laden with the mingled perfume of roses. A flock of wild ducks swung across the lawn high in the clear sky and dipped toward the river. Across the fields came a song of slaves at work in the cornfield, harvesting the first crop of peas planted between the rows.

      Stuart caught her hand, pressed it tenderly and kissed it.

      "You're an angel, Miss Mary. And I'm going to worship you, if you won't let me love you."

      The girl returned his earnest look with a smile and slowly answered:

      "All right, Beauty Stuart, we'll see—"

       Table of Contents

      The dinner at night was informal. Colonel Lee had invited three personal friends from Washington. He hoped in the touch of the minds of these leaders to find some relief from the uneasiness with which the reading of Mrs. Stowe's book had shadowed his imagination.

      The man about whom he was curious was Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, the most brilliant figure in the Senate. In the best sense he represented the national ideal. A Northern man, he had always viewed the opinions and principles of the South with broad sympathy.

      The new Senator from Georgia, on the other hand, had made a sensation in the house as the radical leader of the South. Lee wondered if he were as dangerous a man as the conservative members of the Whig party thought. Toombs had voted the Whig ticket, but his speeches on the rights of the South on the Slavery issues had set him in a class by himself.

      Mr. and Mrs. Pryor had spent the night of the dance at Arlington and had consented to stay for dinner.

      Douglas had captured the young Virginia congressman. And Mrs. Douglas had become an intimate friend of Mrs. Pryor.

      When Douglas entered the library and pressed Lee's hand, the master of Arlington studied him with keen interest. He was easily the most impressive figure in American politics. The death of Calhoun and Clay and the sudden passing of Webster had left but one giant on the floor of the Senate. They called him the "Little Giant." He was still a giant. He had sensed the approaching storm of crowd madness and had sought the age-old method of compromise as the safety valve of the nation.

      He had not read history in vain. He knew that all statesmanship is the record of compromise—that compromise is another name for reason. The Declaration of Independence was a compromise between the radicalism of Thomas Jefferson and the conservatism of the colonies. In the original draft of the Declaration, Jefferson had written a paragraph arraigning slavery which had been omitted:

      "He (the King of Great Britain) has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him; capturing and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished dye, he is now exciting these very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another."

      This indictment of Slavery and the Slave trade was stricken from the

       Declaration of Independence in deference to the opposition of both

       Northern and Southern slave owners who held that the struggling young

       colonies must have labor at all hazards.

      Lee knew that the Constitution also was a compromise of conflicting interests. But for the spirit of compromise—of reason—this instrument of human progress could never have been created. The word "Slave" or "Slavery" does not occur within it, and yet three of its most important provisions established the institution of chattel slavery as the basis of industrial life. The statesmen who wrote the Constitution did not wish these clauses embodied in it. Yet the Union could not have been established without them. Our leaders reasoned, and reasoned wisely, that Slavery must perish in the progress of human society, and, therefore, they accepted the compromise.

      There has never been a statesman in the history of the world who has not used this method of constructive progress. There will never be a statesman who succeeds who can use any other method in dealing with masses of his fellow men.

      Douglas was the coming constructive statesman of the republic and all eyes were being focused on him. His life at the moment was the fevered center of the nation's thought. That his ambitions were boundless no one who knew the man doubted. That his patriotism was as genuine and as great all knew at last.

      Lee studied every feature of his fine face. No eye could miss him in an assemblage of people, no matter how great the numbers. His compact figure was erect, aggressive, dominant. A personage, whose sense of power came from within, not without. He was master of himself and of others. He looked the lion and he was one. The lines of his face were handsome in the big sense, strong, regular, masculine. He drew young men

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