The Man in Gray | Page 3

the set knew his business better. He lifted his hand in a gesture of reverence and silence, as he glanced toward the library door.
"Jes' a minute la-dees, an' gem-mens," he softly drawled. "Marse Robert E. Lee and Missis will lead dis set!"
The Colonel briskly entered from the library with his wife on his arm. A ripple of applause swept the room as they took their places with the gay youngsters.
Sam lifted his hand; the music began--sweet and low, vibrating with the sensuous touch of the negro slave whose soul was free in its joyous melody.
At the first note of his triangle, loud above the music rang Sam's voice:
"Honors to yo' pardners!"
With graceful courtesies and stately bows the dance began. And over all a glad negro called the numbers:
"Forward Fours!"
The caller's eyes rolled and his body swayed with the rhythm of the dance as he watched each set with growing pride. They danced a quadrille, a mazurka, another quadrille, a schottische, the lancers, another quadrille, and another and another. They paused for supper at midnight and then danced them over again.
While the fine young forms swayed to exquisite rhythm and the music floated over all, the earnest young Congressman bent close to his host in a corner of the library.
"I sincerely hope, Colonel Lee, that you can see your way clear to make a reply to this book of Mrs. Stowe which Ruffin has sent you."
"I can't see it yet, Mr. Pryor--"
"Ruffin is a terrible old fire-eater, I know," the Congressman admitted. "But Uncle Tom's Cabin is the most serious blow the South has received from the Abolitionists. And what makes it so difficult is that its appeal is not to reason. It is to sentiment. To the elemental emotions of the mob. No matter whether its picture is true or false, the result will be the same unless the minds who read it can be cured of its poison. It has become a sensation. Every Northern Congressman has read it. A half million copies have been printed and the presses can't keep up with the demands. This book is storing powder in the souls of the masses who don't know how to think, because they've never been trained to think. This explosive emotion is the preparation for fanaticism. We only wait the coming of the fanatic--the madman who may lift a torch and hurl it into this magazine. The South is asleep. And when we don't sleep, we dance. There's no use fooling ourselves. We're dancing on the crust of a volcano."
Pryor rose.
"I've a number with Mrs. Pryor. I wish you'd think it over, Colonel. This message is my big reason for missing a night session to be here."
Lee nodded and strolled out on the lawn before the white pillars of the portico to consider the annoying request. He hated controversy.
Yet he was not the type of man to run from danger. The breed of men from which he sprang had always faced the enemy when the challenge came. In the carriage of his body there was a quiet pride--a feeling not of vanity, but of instinctive power. It was born in him through generations of men who had done the creative thinking of a nation in the building. His face might have been described as a little too regular--a little too handsome perhaps for true greatness, but for the look of deep thought in his piercing eyes. And the finely chiseled lines of character, positive, clean-cut, vigorous. He had backbone.
And yet he was not a bitter partisan. He used his brain. He reasoned. He looked at the world through kindly, conservative eyes. He feared God, only. He believed in his wife, his children, his blood. And he loved Virginia, counting it the highest honor to be--not seem to be--an old-fashioned Virginia gentleman.
He believed in democracy guided by true leaders. This reservation was not a compromise. It was a cardinal principle. He could conceive of no democracy worth creating or preserving which did not produce the superman to lead, shape, inspire and direct its life. The man called of God to this work was fulfilling a divine mission. He must be of the very necessity of his calling a nobleman.
Without vanity he lived daily in the consciousness of his own call to this exalted ideal. It made his face, in repose, grave. His gravity came from the sense of duty and the consciousness of problems to be met and solved as his fathers before him had met and solved great issues.
His conservatism had its roots in historic achievements and the chill that crept into his heart as he thought of this book came, not from the fear of the possible clash of forces in the future, but from the dread of changes which might mean the loss of priceless things