THE PERCYS.
They were a very old Virginian family whose line of ancestry stretched
backward quite as far as that of Miss Hansford, and touched the days of
Cromwell, when white people were sent to Virginia and sold as slaves for
a longer or shorter period of years. Among them came Samuel Percy, a
Royalist, transported for some offense against the government and
condemned to servitude for five years. Just what he did during the five
years was not certainly known. Some said he was a blacksmith, some a
tailor, and others a common field laborer, or at best an overseer of the
negroes. That he was a bondman was sure and he worked out his time and
then, unbroken in spirit, resolved to make for himself a name and a
fortune and a family. With the latter he succeeded admirably, for the
descendants of his five sons were scattered all over the South, each
generation forgetting more and more that the root of the family tree in
America had been a slave, and growing more and more proud of its English
ancestry.
When the civil war broke out old Roger Percy owned a few negroes, a
worn-out plantation and a big, rambling house in Virginia, just across
the border of Maryland. Proud, morose and contrary, he seldom agreed
with the people with whom he came in contact. His opinion was always the
better one. With the Confederates he was a Federal,—with the Federals a
Confederate, hurling anathemas at the heads of each and ordering them
from his premises. As he was near the frontier he was visited at
intervals by detachments from both armies, who, as he said, squeezed him
dry, and at the close of the war he found himself alone, with his wife
dead, his negroes gone, his house a ruin, or nearly so, and his land
good for nothing. Too proud and indolent to work, he might have starved
but for his only son, James, who, scoffing at a pride which would
neither feed nor clothe him, found a position in the Treasury Department
in Washington and offered his father a home. Grumblingly the old man
accepted it, cursing the government and his small quarters and his
dinners and black Sally, who waited upon him, and who, of all his
negroes, had come back to him when peace was restored. Sometimes he
cursed his son for being willing to take a subordinate position and work
like a dog under somebody. This was what galled the worst,—working under
somebody, and doing it willingly.
“I believe you have some of your great-great-grandfather’s blood in
you,” he would say. “He hadn’t pluck enough to cut his master’s throat
and run away. By the lord, I’d have done it.”
“I’m proud of old Sam Percy’s grit,” James would reply, “and if I knew
just where he was buried I’d raise him a monument. I’m not ashamed to
work, or to have some one over me.”
“I’m ashamed for you, and you a Percy,” his father would growl,
forgetting that without the work he so despised he would be homeless and
almost a beggar.
The climax came when James brought home a wife,—a clerk like himself in
the Treasury Department. This was the straw too many and the bridal was
soon followed by a funeral, the old man saying he was glad to go where
the Percys could not be disgraced. Had he lived a few months longer he
would have seen his son’s wife an heiress in a small way. A maiden aunt,
for whom she was named and who all her life had hoarded her money earned
in the cotton mills of Lowell, died and left her niece ten thousand
dollars. This was a fortune to the young couple, who left their cramped
quarters for a larger house, where, with the father-in-law gone and a
sturdy baby boy in the cradle, they were perfectly happy for a time.
Then, with scarcely an hour’s warning, the wife was taken away, stricken
with cholera, and James was alone with Sally and his boy, the notorious
John, or Jack, the terror of Oak City and of every neighborhood he
frequented.
Jack was bright and handsome, but proud and rebellious, and learned very
soon that the woman his father married within two years of his wife’s
death was not his own mother. She was pretty and indolent and
easy-going, and could no more cope with her step-son’s will than she
could stem Niagara. She disliked him and he disliked her for no reason
except that she was his stepmother, and when Clarice was born the breach
widened between them, although the boy showed affection for his little
sister.
When she was five years old and Jack was ten their father died, leaving
to his widow the house in which they lived and a few thousand dollars,
besides the small fortune she had brought him as the result of her
father’s speculations. To Jack was left his mother’s ten thousand
dollars intact. Had Jack chosen he could have won his mother then when
her heart was sore and aching for some one to comfort her, if it were
only a boy. But he didn’t choose; he was wayward and headstrong, and
always an anxiety and trouble to her. With many good qualities, Mrs.
Percy was a weak woman and talked a great deal of her husband’s family
and the old Virginia homestead and the ancestral hall in England. On
this point she was a little shaky in her own mind, as the ancestral hall
was only a tradition; but it was a fine thing to talk about and no one
could dispute it. The Virginia homestead stood not many miles from what
is known as Cabin John. It had been partly repaired by her husband, and
some of the rooms made habitable for the time his family spent there.
Beechwood it was called, and to those who never saw it Mrs. Percy talked
of it as her country house, to which she went every summer for quiet and
rest from the fatigue of society, and because it was so lovely. In
reality she went there to economize, and not because she cared for the
great bare rooms, the leaky roof and decaying timbers, which let one end
of the broad piazza drop half a foot lower than the other. Economy was a
necessity if she made any show in Washington, where she struggled hard
to be recognized among the first and the best. A friend of hers, who
knew her circumstances, incidentally spoke to her of Oak City as a
change from Beechwood. It was, she said, one of the pleasantest and
cheapest watering places on the New England coast.
“Are there any nice people there? Anything but a camp-meeting?” Mrs.
Percy asked, and was assured that while the camp-meeting was a feature
of the place and an attraction, too, there were many nice people there
from the adjacent cities.
Satisfied on this point, Mrs. Percy concluded to try it, and took with
her Jack and Clarice and black Sally, who clung to this remnant of her
former master’s family with a pertinacity peculiar to the negro race.
Sally was both waiting maid and nurse, and from this Miss Hansford at
once decided that Mrs. Percy was airy, wondering why an able-bodied
woman like her should need a waiting maid, or a child as old as Clarice
a nurse. Still, as the lady was boarding near her, she made up her mind
to call, and, to her horror, found Mrs. Percy playing whist!
“I hadn’t seen a pack of cards before in years, and the sight of them
nearly knocked me down,” she said to her friend and confidante, Mrs.
Atwater, when recounting her experience. “Cards in broad daylight, for
it wasn’t four o’clock. She kept ’em in her hands all the time I was
there as if she wished I’d go, and, if you’ll believe it, she asked me
if I’d like to play a game! I didn’t stay long after that. Clarice was
playing with her. Fine way to bring up a child!”
Miss Hansford’s call was not returned, and through some channel it
reached her that Mrs. Percy did not care to make mixed acquaintances
which she could not recognize at home. After this there was war in Miss
Hansford’s heart against the Percys, and the feeling increased as time
went on. Mrs. Percy’s affairs were more freely discussed than would have
pleased her had she known it. Black Sally, who was loquacious, familiar
and communicative, went frequently to Miss Hansford’s cottage for water,
which was said to be the best on the Heights. Naturally, Miss Hansford
talked with her, and, although she would have repudiated with scorn a
charge that she was prying into her neighbor’s business, she managed to
learn a good deal about Mrs. Percy, and to know how she lived at home,
where Sally was cook, laundress, and maid of all work, as they kept no
other servant.
“My land!” ejaculated Miss Hansford, “I s’posed you kept a retinue.”
“No, Missus, we never had nobody by that name,” Sally said, seating
herself upon the doorstep, while Miss Hansford stood on the other side
of the netting, wiping her dishes. “We ain’t rich folks, and Miss Percy
has to save every way she can so’s to come here.”
“Why, how you talk,” Miss Hansford exclaimed, putting down the plate she
had polished a full two minutes in absorbed interest. “I s’posed she was
in society.”
“To be sho’ she is,” Sally rejoined. “Eberybody is in some kind of
society in Wassinton if they wants to be. A heap of receptions is free.
Dar’s de Presidents, and de Cabinet’s wives, and right smart more o’ de
big bugs, whar any body can go, and dar’s ways of getting noticed in de
papers and havin’ you close described ef you wants to. Wassinton is a
great place!”
“I should say so,” Miss Hansford rejoined, more convinced than ever that
Mrs. Percy was airy.
The next time Sally came for water she said that Mas’r James had been
clerk in the Treasury when he married Jack’s mother, who was also a
clerk in the same department.
“Well, if I ain’t beat. I s’posed Mr. Percy was the Great Mogul of the
city from the airs his widder puts on,” Miss Hansford thought. “I dare
say she was a clerk, too.”
Finally she put the question to Sally.
“I’se do’ know, but s’pecs not. She was bawn in Wassinton. T’other one
was from de Noff,—a mighty nice woman, too, but she had a hard time wid
ole Mar’s Roger, cussin’ at de house, and de dinners, and me, and de
President, and all hands, and twittin’ Mar’s James for being like de
fust Percy, who was a slave like de balance of us.”
“What are you talking about?” Miss Hansford almost screamed. “Was he a
black man?”
“No, bless you; white as you is,” Sally answered, and Miss Hansford
continued, “But there never was any white slaves.”
“Yes, thar was, way back, most to de flood, I reckon. I heard Mas’r
James splainin’ to Miss’s onct after de ole Mas’r had been cussin’ bout
him. It’s true’s you bawn, but mebby I didn’t orter speak of it,” and,
picking up her pail of water, Sally hurried away, thinking that she had
told too much and beginning to wish she had said nothing.
After that she was very reticent with regard to the family. But Miss
Hansford had heard enough. Ordinarily, she would not have cared for the
clerkship. She respected a man and woman who earned their own living if
circumstances required it, but there had come to her rumors of Mrs.
Percy’s remarks about the F. F. V.’s, and English ancestors, and now all
this had resolved itself into Treasury clerks and white slaves. She did
not believe the latter, but she never rested until she learned that
white people _had_ been sold into slavery in Virginia under Cromwell and
the Stuarts, and then she did not doubt that the original stock of the
Percys had been among these bondmen. She was honorable enough to keep
her knowledge to herself, and only shut her lips a little closer when
she came in contact with the lady who had not returned her call because
she did not care for mixed acquaintances whom she could not recognize in
Washington.
This was Mrs. Percy’s first season in Oak City, and before the Ralstons
came there. The following winter the two families met in Florida and in
Washington and became quite friendly, for Mrs. Percy was very pleasant
to those whom she considered her equals. She was ambitious and managing,
and knew how to get desirable acquaintances and invitations. She did not
intend to go to Oak City very early that summer, and as Jack wanted to
go, and she wanted to be rid of him, she contrived to have him invited
to spend a short time with the Ralstons when they were fairly settled.
And this was how he chanced to be at the Ralston House with Paul when
the watermelon was stolen. That summer Mrs. Percy rented a cottage on
the Oceanside and Miss Hansford saw little or nothing of her. Jack,
however, was a constant source of annoyance and seldom let an
opportunity pass to worry her. She had not forgotten his jeer at her
singing, and advice to join the Salvation Army the previous summer, nor
the valentine sent to her in February, but the crowning insult was given
the only time she ever went bathing at the fashionable hour.
“She didn’t believe in spoiling her clothes with salt water, nor in
showing her arms and legs to Tom, Dick and Harry,” she said, and,
habited in white knit stockings, a faded calico skirt, woolen sacque,
and a dilapidated hat, left with her by a former lodger, she presented a
startling appearance as she went into the water, treading very gingerly
over the stones and trying in vain to keep her dress from floating
around her like a balloon.
Paul, who had urged her coming, could not repress a smile, but when a
big wave came rolling in and nearly knocked her down, he went to her at
once and said, “Let me help you. The sea is rough this morning. Come out
where it is deeper and away from the stones. I won’t let you fall.”
He led her out to where the water came nearly to her waist, and then,
holding both her hands in his, danced her up and down, she protesting
that he was beating the breath out of her body, while the dog, Sherry,
who always took his bath with his master, swam around them in circles,
barking furiously and making occasional dashes at Miss Hansford’s dress,
which still floated in spite of Paul’s efforts to keep it down.
Everybody stood still to watch the proceeding and everybody laughed.
Jack Percy, who was near her on a raft, ready to dive, called out, “Go
it, old gal. You waltz first rate. Where did you get your hat and
what’ll you take for it?”
Then, with a whoop, he made the plunge and sent great splashes of water
into the face of the indignant woman, who hurried to the shore and,
divesting herself of her wet clothes, went home so enraged with Jack
that she never forgave him until years after, when she wiped the death
sweat from his face and felt that she would almost give her own life to
save his.