Iola Leroy - Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (suggested reading txt) 📗

white ribbon at her throat, he thought her superbly handsome. The lines which care had written upon her young face had faded away. There was no undertone of sorrow in her voice as she stood up before him in the calm loveliness of her ripened womanhood, radiant in beauty and gifted in intellect. Time and failing health had left their traces upon Dr. Gresham. His step was less bounding, his cheek a trifle paler, his manner somewhat graver than it was when he had parted from Iola in the hospital, but his meeting with her had thrilled his heart with unexpected pleasure. Hopes and sentiments which long had slept awoke at the touch of her hand and the tones of her voice, and Dr. Gresham found himself turning to the past, with its sad memories and disappointed hopes. No other face had displaced her image in his mind; no other love had woven itself around every tendril of his soul. His heart and hand were just as free as they were the hour they had parted.

“To see you again,” said Dr. Gresham, “is a great and unexpected pleasure.”

“You had not forgotten me, then?” said Iola, smiling.

“Forget you! I would just as soon forget my own existence. I do not think that time will ever efface the impressions of those days in which we met so often. When last we met you were intending to search for your mother. Have you been successful?”

“More than successful,” said Iola, with a joyous ring in her voice. “I have found my mother, brother, grandmother, and uncle, and, except my brother, we are all living together, and we are so happy. Excuse me a few minutes,” she said, and left the room. Iola soon returned, bringing with her her mother and grandmother.

“These,” said Iola, introducing her mother and grandmother, “are the once-severed branches of our family; and this gentleman you have seen before,” continued Iola, as Robert entered the room.

Dr. Gresham looked scrutinizingly at him and said: “Your face looks familiar, but I saw so many faces at the hospital that I cannot just now recall your name.”

“Doctor,” said Robert Johnson, “I was one of your last patients, and I was with Tom Anderson when he died.”

“Oh, yes,” replied Dr. Gresham; “it all comes back to me. You were wounded at the battle of Five Forks, were you not?”

“Yes,” said Robert.

“I saw you when you were recovering. You told me that you thought you had a clue to your lost relatives, from whom you had been so long separated. How have you succeeded?”

“Admirably! I have been fortunate in finding my mother, my sister, and her children.”

“Ah, indeed! I am delighted to hear it. Where are they?”

“They are right here. This is my mother,” said Robert, bending fondly over her, as she returned his recognition with an expression of intense satisfaction; “and this,” he continued, “is my sister, and Miss Leroy is my niece.”

“Is it possible? I am very glad to hear it. It has been said that every cloud has its silver lining, and the silver lining of our war cloud is the redemption of a race and the reunion of severed hearts. War is a dreadful thing; but worse than the war was the slavery which preceded it.”

“Slavery,” said Iola, “was a fearful cancer eating into the nation’s heart, sapping its vitality, and undermining its life.”

“And war,” said Dr. Gresham, “was the dreadful surgery by which the disease was eradicated. The cancer has been removed, but for years to come I fear that we will have to deal with the effects of the disease. But I believe that we have vitality enough to outgrow those effects.”

“I think, Doctor,” said Iola, “that there is but one remedy by which our nation can recover from the evil entailed upon her by slavery.”

“What is that?” asked Robert.

“A fuller comprehension of the claims of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and their application to our national life.”

“Yes,” said Robert; “while politicians are stumbling on the barren mountains of fretful controversy and asking what shall we do with the negro? I hold that Jesus answered that question nearly two thousand years ago when he said, ‘Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.’ ”

“Yes,” said Dr. Gresham; “the application of that rule in dealing with the negro would solve the whole problem.”

“Slavery,” said Mrs. Leroy, “is dead, but the spirit which animated it still lives; and I think that a reckless disregard for human life is more the outgrowth of slavery than any actual hatred of the negro.”

“The problem of the nation,” continued Dr. Gresham, “is not what men will do with the negro, but what will they do with the reckless, lawless white men who murder, lynch and burn their fellow-citizens. To me these lynchings and burnings are perfectly alarming. Both races have reacted on each other⁠—men fettered the slave and cramped their own souls; denied him knowledge, and darkened their spiritual insight; subdued him to the pliancy of submission, and in their turn became the thralls of public opinion. The negro came here from the heathenism of Africa; but the young colonies could not take into their early civilization a stream of barbaric blood without being affected by its influence and the negro, poor and despised as he is, has laid his hands on our Southern civilization and helped mould its character.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Leroy; “the colored nurse could not nestle her master’s child in her arms, hold up his baby footsteps on their floors, and walk with him through the impressible and formative period of his young life without leaving upon him the impress of her hand.”

“I am glad,” said Robert, “for the whole nation’s sake, that slavery has been destroyed.”

“And our work,” said Dr. Gresham, “is to build over the desolations of the past a better and brighter future. The great distinction between savagery and civilization is the creation and maintenance of law. A people cannot habitually trample on law and justice without retrograding toward barbarism. But I am hopeful that