Did England then set loose on us a pack of black savages and politicians to help us rebuild?Why,this very day I cannot walk on the other side of the river,I dare not venture off the New Bridge;and you who first beat us and then unleashed the blacks to riot in a new 'equality'that they were no more fit for than so many apes,you sat back at ease in your victory and your progress,having handed the vote to the negro as you might have handed a kerosene lamp to a child of three,and let us crushed,breathless people cope with the chaos and destruction that never came near you.Why,how can you dare--"Once again,admirably she pulled herself up as she had done when she spoke of the President."I mustn't!"she declared,half whispering,and then more clearly and calmly,"Imustn't."And she shook her head as if shaking something off."Nor must you,"she finished,charmingly and quietly,with a smile.
"I will not,"I assured her.She was truly noble.
"But I did think that you understood us,"she said pensively.
"Miss La Heu,when you talked to me about the President and the White House,I said that you were hard to answer.Do you remember?""Perfectly.I said I was glad you found me so.'
"You helped me to understand you then,and now I want to be helped to further understanding.Last night I heard the 'Ode for the Daughters of Dixie.'I had a bad time listening to that.""Do you presume to criticise it?Do we criticise your Grand Army reunions,and your 'Marching through Georgia,'and your 'John Brown's Body,'and your Arlington Museum?Can we not be allowed to celebrate our heroes and our glories and sing our songs?"She had helped me already!Still,still,the something I was groping for,the something which had given me such pain during the ode,remained undissolved,remained unanalyzed between us;I still had to have it out with her,and the point was that it had to be with her,and not simply with myself alone.We must thrash out together the way to an understanding;an agreement was not in the least necessary--we could agree to differ,for that matter,with perfect cordiality--but an understanding we must reach.And as I was thinking this my light increased,and I saw clearly the ultimate thing which lay at the bottom of my own feeling,and which had been strangely confusing me all along.
This discovery was the key to the whole remainder of my talk;I never let go of it.The first thing it opened for me was that Eliza La Heu didn't understand me,which was quite natural,since I had only just this moment become clear to myself.
"Many of us,"I began,"who have watched the soiling touch of politics make dirty one clean thing after another,would not be wholly desolated to learn that the Grand Army of the Republic had gone to another world to sing its songs and draw its pensions."She looked astonished,and then she laughed.Down in the South here she was too far away to feel the vile uses to which present politics had turned past heroism "But,"I continued,"we haven't any Daughters of the Union banded together and handing it down.""It?"she echoed."Well,if the deeds of your heroes are not a sacred trust to you,don't invite us,please,to resemble you."I waited for more,and a little more came.
"We consider Northerners foreigners,you know."Again I felt that hurt which hearing the ode had given me,but I now knew how I was going to take it,and where we were presently coming out;and Iknew she didn't mean quite all that--didn't mean it every day,at least--and that my speech had driven her to saying it.
"No,Miss La Heu;you don't consider Northerners,who understand you,to be foreigners.""We have never met any of that sort."
("Yes,"I thought,"but you really want to.Didn't you say you hoped Iwas one?Away down deep there's a cry of kinship in you;and that you don't hear it,and that we don't hear it,has been as much our fault as yours.I see that very well now,but I'm afraid to tell you so,yet.")What I said was:"We're handing the 'sacred trust'down,I hope.""I understood you to say you weren't."
"I said we were not handing 'it'down."
I didn't wonder that irritation again moulded her reply."You must excuse a daughter of Dixie if she finds the words of a son of the Union beyond her.We haven't had so many advantages."There she touched what I had thought over during my wakeful hours:the tale of the ashes,the desolate ashes!The war had not prevented my parents from sending me to school and college,but here the old had seen the young grow up starved of what their fathers had given them,and the young had looked to the old and known their stripped heritage.
"Miss La Heu,"I said,"I could not tell you,you would not wish me to tell you,what the sight of Kings Port has made me feel.But you will let me say this:I have understood for a long while about your old people,your old ladies,whose faces are so fine and sad."I paused,but she merely looked at me,and her eyes were hard.
"And I may say this,too.I thank you very sincerely for bringing completely home to me what I had begun to make out for myself.I hope the Daughters of Dixie will go on singing of their heroes."I paused again,and now she looked away,out of the window into Royal Street.
"Perhaps,"I still continued,"you will hardly believe me when I say that I have looked at your monuments here with an emotion more poignant even than that which Northern monuments raise in me.""Why?"
"Oh!"I exclaimed."Need you have asked that?The North won.""You are quite dispassionate!"Her eyes were always toward the window.
"That's my 'sacred trust.'"
It made her look at me."Yours?"
"Not yours--yet!It would be yours if you had won."I thought a slight change came in her steady scrutiny."And,Miss La Heu,it was awful about the negro.It is awful.The young North thinks so just as much as you do.
