Howard took his slow gaze from the negro and covered his face with his hands.
Of all men in the world this was the one whom Carter most honored and most loved--honored and loved, while he envied; he was the only man, perhaps, that could have touched Carter through his crust of bitterness. Carter listened with strained attention for what Howard would say, as if with some premonition that the words would be the cue for the most vital action of his life.
"My God! My God!" said Willoughby Howard, "will this thing never stop?" And then he straightened himself and turned toward the shadow into which Carter had retired, and there was the glow and glory of a large idea on his face; the thought of a line of men never lacking, when once aroused, in the courage to do and die for a principle or a human need. "There is one way," he cried, stretching out his hands impulsively to Carter, and not knowing to whom or to what manner of man he spoke--"there is one way to make them pause and think! If two of us white men of the better class offer our lives for these poor devils--die in their defense!--the mob will halt; the crowd will think; we can end it! Will you do it, with me? Will you do it?"
Two of us white men of the better class! Willoughby Howard had taken him for a white man!
It was like an accolade. A light blazed through the haunted caverns of his soul; he swelled with a vast exultation.
Willoughby Howard had taken him for a white man! Then, by God, he would be one! Since he was nothing in this life, he could at least die--and in his death he would be a white man! Nay, more:--he would die shoulder to shoulder with one of that family whose blood he shared. He would show that he, too, could shed that blood for an idea or a principle! For humanity! At the thought he could feel it singing in his veins. Oh, to be white, white, white! The dreams and the despairs of all his miserable and hampered life passed before him in a whirl, and now the cry was answered!
"Yes," he said, lifting his head, and rising at that instant into a larger thing than he had ever been, "I will stand by you. I will die with you." And under his breath he added--"my brother."
They had not long to wait. In the confused horror of that night things happened quickly. Even as Carter spoke the wounded negro struggled to his feet with a scarce articulate cry of alarm, for around the corner swept a mob, and the dwarf with matted hair was in the lead. He had come back with help to make sure of his job.