POPULAR NOVELS
BY
MRS. MARY J. HOLMES.
TEMPEST AND SUNSHINE.
DARKNESS AND DAYLIGHTS.
ENGLISH ORPHANS.
HUGH
WORTHINGTON.
HOMESTEAD ON HILLSIDE.
CAMERON PRIDE.
'LENA RIVERS.
ROSE MATHER.
MEADOW BROOK.
ETHELYN'S MISTAKE.
DORA DEANE.
MILBANK.
COUSIN MAUDE.
EDNA BROWNING.
MARIAN GREY.
WEST LAWN.
EDITH LYLE.
MILDRED.
DAISY THORNTON.
FOREST HOUSE.
CHATEAU D'OR.
MADELINE.
QUEENIE HETHERTON.
CHRISTMAS STORIES.
BESSIE'S FORTUNE.
GRETCHEN.
MARGUERITE.
DR. HATHERN'S DAUGHTERS.
MRS. HALLAM'S COMPANION.
PAUL RALSTON.
THE TRACY DIAMONDS.
THE CROMPTONS. (_NEW_)
"Mrs. Holmes is a peculiarly pleasant and fascinating writer. Her books
are always entertaining, and she has the rare faculty of enlisting the
sympathy and affections of her readers, and of holding their attention
to her pages with deep and absorbing interest."
Handsomely bound in cloth. Price, $1.00 each, and sent _free_ by mail on
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G.W. Dillingham Co., Publishers, NEW YORK.
[Illustration: “Here by this grave I promise all you ask.”]
The Cromptons
BY
MARY J. HOLMES
G.W. DILLINGHAM COMPANY
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT 1899, 1901,
By MRS. MARY J. HOLMES.
_All rights reserved._
_The Cromptons. Issued August, 1902._
CONTENTS
PART I
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE STRANGER AT THE BROCK HOUSE 9
II. THE PALMETTO CLEARING 20
III. THE INTERVIEW 32
IV. HOPING AND WAITING 44
V. MISS DORY 48
VI. THE SERVICES 58
VII. COL. CROMPTON 66
VIII. THE CHILD OF THE CLEARING 80
IX. THE COLONEL AND JAKE 88
X. EUDORA 102
PART II
I. HOWARD CROMPTON TO JACK HARCOURT 115
II. JACK HARCOURT TO HOWARD CROMPTON 122
III. ELOISE 127
IV. THE ACCIDENT 139
V. AMY 149
VI. AT MRS. BIGGS'S 160
VII. RUBY ANN PATRICK 178
VIII. MRS. BIGGS'S REMINISCENCES 189
IX. LETTER FROM REV. CHARLES MASON 199
X. PART SECOND OF REV. MR. MASON'S LETTER 211
XI. SUNDAY CALLS 218
XII. THE MARCH OF EVENTS 227
XIII. GETTING READY FOR THE RUMMAGE SALE 242
XIV. THE FIRST SALE 256
XV. AT THE RUMMAGE 261
XVI. THE AUCTION 271
PART III
I. THE BEGINNING OF THE END 285
II. THE LITTLE RED CLOAK 294
III. ELOISE AT THE CROMPTON HOUSE 304
IV. THE SHADOW OF DEATH 315
V. LOOKING FOR A WILL 323
VI. IN FLORIDA 336
VII. IN THE PALMETTO CLEARING 342
VIII. THE LITTLE HAIR TRUNK 350
IX. WHAT HOWARD FOUND 362
X. HOWARD'S TEMPTATION 371
XI. CONCLUSION 379
Illustrations:
"Here by this grave I promise all you ask."
THE CROMPTONS
PART I
CHAPTER I
THE STRANGER AT THE BROCK HOUSE
The steamer "Hatty" which plied between Jacksonville and Enterprise was
late, and the people who had come down from the Brock House to the
landing had waited half an hour before a puff of smoke in the distance
told that she was coming. There had been many conjectures as to the
cause of the delay, for she was usually on time, and those who had
friends on the boat were growing nervous, fearing an accident, and all
were getting tired, when she appeared in the distance, the puffs of
smoke increasing in volume as she drew nearer, and the sound of her
whistle echoing across the water, which at Enterprise spreads out into a
lake. She had not met with an accident, but had been detained at Palatka
waiting for a passenger of whom the captain had been apprised.
"He may be a trifle late, but if he is, wait. He must take your boat,"
Tom Hardy had said to the captain when engaging passage for his friend,
and Tom Hardy was not one whose wishes were often disregarded. "Them
Hardys does more business with me in one year than ten other families
and I can't go agin Tom, and if he says wait for his friend, why,
there's nothing to do but wait," the captain said, as he walked up and
down in front of his boat, growing more and more impatient, until at
last as he was beginning to swear he'd wait no longer for all the Hardys
in Christendom, two men came slowly towards the landing, talking
earnestly and not seeming to be in the least hurry, although the "Hatty"
began to scream herself hoarse as if frantic to be gone.
"How d'ye, Cap," Tom said, in his easy, off-hand way. "Hope we haven't
kept you long. This is my friend I told you about. I suppose his berth
is ready?"
He did not tell the name of his friend, who, as if loath to cross the
plank, held back for a few more words. Tom gave him a little push at
last, and said, "Good-bye, you really must go. Success to you, but don't
for a moment think of carrying out that quixotic plan you first
mentioned. Better jump into the river. Good-bye!"
The plank was crossed and pulled in, and a mulatto boy came forward to
take the stranger's bag and pilot him to his stateroom, which opened
from what was called the ladies' parlor. Coiled up in a corner on the
deck was a bundle of something which stirred as they came near to it,
and began to turn over, making the stranger start with a slight
exclamation.
"Doan you be skeert, sar," the boy said, "dat's nottin' but Mandy Ann,
an onery nigger what b'longs to ole Miss Harris in de clarin' up ter
Ent'prise. She's been hired out a spell in Jacksonville,--nuss to a
little gal, and now she's gwine home. Miss Dory done sent for her,
'case Jake is gone and ole Miss is wus,--never was very peart," and
turning to the girl the boy Ted continued: "You Mandy Ann, doan you know
more manners not to skeer a gemman, rollin' round like a punkin? Get
back wid yer."
He spurned the bundle with his foot, while the stranger stopped
suddenly, as if a blow had been struck him.
"Who did you say she was? To whom does she belong, I mean?" he asked,
and the boy replied, "Mandy Ann, a no count nigger, b'longs to Miss
Harris. Poor white trash! Crackers! Dis your stateroom, sar. Kin I do
somethin' for you?"
The boy's head was held high, indicative of his opinion of poor white
trash and Crackers in general, and Mandy Ann in particular.
"No, thanks," the stranger said, taking his bag and shutting himself
into his stuffy little stateroom.
"'Specs he's from de Norf; looks like it, an' dey allus askin' who we
'longs to. In course we 'longs to somebody. We has ter," Ted thought, as
he made his way back to Mandy Ann, who was wide-awake and ready for any
war of words which might come up between herself and Ted, "who felt
mighty smart 'case he was cabin boy on de 'Hatty.'"
As Ted suspected, the stranger was of Northern birth, which showed
itself in his accent and cold, proud bearing. He might have been thirty,
and he might have been more. His face did not show his age. His features
were regular, and his complexion pale as a woman's. His eyes were a
cross between blue and gray, with a look in them which made you feel
that they were reading your inmost secrets, and you involuntarily turned
away when they were fixed upon you. On this occasion he seemed colder
and prouder than usual, as he seated himself upon the stool in his
stateroom and looked about him,--not at any thing that was there, for he
did not see it, or think how small and uncomfortable his quarters were,
although recommended as one of the staterooms _de luxe_ on the boat. His
thoughts were outside, first on Mandy Ann,--not because of anything
about her personally. He had seen nothing except a woolly head, a dark
blue dress, and two black, bare feet and ankles, but because she was
Mandy Ann, bound slave of "ole Miss Harris, who lived in de clarin',"
and for that reason she connected him with something from which he
shrank with an indescribable loathing. At last he concluded to try the
narrow berth, but finding it too hard and too short went out upon the
rear deck, and taking a chair where he would be most out of the way and
screened from observation, he sat until the moon went down behind a
clump of palms, and the stars paled in the light of the sun which shone
down upon the beautiful river and the tangled mass of shrubbery and
undergrowth on either side of it.
At last the passengers began to appear one by one, with their cheery how
dye's and good mornings, and curious glances at this stranger in their
midst, who, although with them, did not seem to be one of them. They
were all Southerners and inclined to be friendly, but nothing in the
stranger's attitude invited sociability. He was looking off upon the
water in the direction from which they had come, and never turned his
head in response to the loud shouts, when an alligator was seen lying
upon the shore, or a big turtle was sunning itself on a log. He was a
Northerner, they knew from his general make-up, and a friend of Tom
Hardy, the captain said, when questioned with regard to him. This last
was sufficient to atone for any proclivities he might have antagonistic
to the South. Tom Hardy, although living in Georgia, was well known in
Florida. To be his friend was to be somebody; and two or three attempts
at conversation were made in the course of the morning. One man, bolder
than the rest, told him it was a fine day and a fine trip, but that the
"Hatty" was getting a little too _passée_ for real comfort. At the word
_passée_ the stranger looked up with something like interest, and
admitted that the boat was _passée_, and the day fine, and the trip,
too. A cigar was next offered, but politely declined, and then the
attempt at an acquaintance ceased on the part of the first to make it.
Later on an old Georgian planter, garrulous and good-humored, swore he'd
find out what stuff the Yankee was made of, and why he was down there
where few of his kind ever came. His first move was the offer of
tobacco, with the words: "How d'ye, sir? Have a chew?"
The stranger's head went up a little higher than its wont, and the proud
look on the pale face deepened as he declined the tobacco civilly, as he
had the cigar.
"Wall, now, don't chew tobacky? You lose a good deal. I couldn't live
without it. Sorter soothin', an' keeps my jaws goin', and when I'm so
full of vim,--mad, you know,--that I'm fit to bust, why, I spit and
spit,--backy juice in course,--till I spit it all out," the Georgian
said, taking an immense chew, and sitting down by the stranger, who gave
no sign that he knew of his proximity, but still kept his eyes on the
river as if absorbed in the scenery.
The Georgian was not to be easily rebuffed. Crossing his legs and
planting his big hat on his knees, he went on:
"You are from the North, I calculate?"
"Yes."
"I thought so. We can mostly tell 'em. From Boston, I reckon?"
"No."
"New York, mabby? No? Chicago? No? Wall, where in--" the Georgian
stopped, checked by a look in the bluish-gray eyes which seldom failed
in its effect.
Evidently the stranger didn't choose to tell where he lived, but the
Georgian, though somewhat subdued, was not wholly silenced, and he
continued: "Ever in Florida before?"
"No."
"Wall, I s'pose you're takin' a little pleasure trip like the rest of
us?"
To this there was no response, the stranger thinking with bitterness
that his trip was anything but one of pleasure. There was still one
chord left to pull and that was Tom Hardy, who in a way was voucher for
this interloper, and the Georgian's next question was: "Do you know Tom
well?"
"Do you mean, Mr. Hardy?" the stranger asked, and the Georgian replied.
"In course, but I allus calls him Tom. Have known him since he wore
gowns. My plantation jines old man Hardy's."
There was no doubt, now, that the stranger was interested, and had his
companion been a close observer he would have seen the kindling light in
his eyes, and the spots of red beginning to show on his face. Whether to
talk or not was a question in his mind. Cowardice prompted him to remain
silent, and something which defied silence prompted him at last to
talk.
"I was with Mr. Thomas Hardy in college," he said, "and I have visited
him in his home. He is my best friend."
"To-be-sure!" the Georgian said, hitching nearer to the stranger, as if
there was a bond of relationship between them.
The man had given no inkling of the date of his visit, and as it was
some years since Tom was graduated the Georgian did not dream of
associating the visit with a few weeks before, when he had heard that a
high buck was at old man Hardy's and with Tom was painting the
neighborhood red and scandalizing some of the more sober citizens with
his excesses. This quiet stranger with the proud face and hard eyes
never helped paint anything. It was somebody else, whose name he had
forgotten, but of whom he went on to speak in not very complimentary
terms.
"A high buck, I never happened to see squar in the face," he said. "Had
glimpses of him in the distance ridin' ole man Hardy's sorrel, like he
was crazy, and oncet reelin' in the saddle. Yes, sar, _reelin'_, as if
he'd took too much. I b'lieve in a drink when you are dry, but Lord
land, whar's the sense of _reelin'_? I don't see it, do you?"
The stranger said he didn't and the Georgian went on, now in a lower,
confidential voice.
"I actually hearn that this chap,--what the deuce was his name? Have you
an idee? He was from the North?"
If the stranger had an _idee_ he didn't give it, and the Georgian
continued: "These two young chaps--Tom ain't right young though, same
age as you, I reckon--called on some Cracker girls back in the woods and
the Northern feller staid thar two or three days. Think of it--Cracker
girls! Now, if'ted been niggers, instead of Crackers!"
"Ugh!" the stranger exclaimed, wakened into something like life. "Don't
talk any more about that man! He must have been a sneak and villain and
a low-lived dog, and if there is any meaner name you can give him, do
so. It will fit him well, and please me."
"Call him a Cracker, but a Florida one. Georgy is mostly better--not up
to so much snuff, you know," the Georgian suggested, while the
Northerner drew a quick breath and thought of Mandy Ann, and wondered
where she was and if he should see her again.
He felt as if there was not a dry thread in one of his garments when his
companion left him, and returning to his friends reported that he hadn't
made much out of the chap. He wasn't from New York, nor Boston, nor
Chicago, and "I don't know where in thunder he is from, nor his name
nuther. I forgot to ask it, he was so stiff and offish. He was in
college with Tom Hardy and visited him years ago; that's all I know,"
the planter said, and after that the stranger was left mostly to
himself, while the passengers busied themselves with gossip, and the
scenery, and trying to keep cool.
The day was hot and grew hotter as the sun rose higher in the heavens,
and the stranger felt very uncomfortable, but it was not the heat which
affected him as much as the terrible network of circumstances which he
had woven for himself. It was the harvest he was reaping as the result
of one false step, when his brain was blurred and he was somebody
besides the elegant gentleman whom people felt it an honor to know. He
was himself now, crushed inwardly, but carrying himself just as proudly
as if no mental fire were consuming him, making him think seriously more
than once of jumping into the river and ending it all. He was very
luxurious and fastidious in his tastes, and would have nothing unseemly
in his home at the North, where he had only to say to his servants come
and they came, and where, if he died on his rosewood bedstead with
silken hangings, they would make him a grand funeral--smother him with
flowers, and perhaps photograph him as he lay in state. Here, if he
ended his life, in the river, with alligators and turtles, he would be
fished up a sorry spectacle, and laid upon the deck with weeds and ferns
clinging to him, and no one knowing who he was till they sent for Tom
Hardy at that moment hurrying back to his home in Georgia, from which he
had come at the earnest request of his friend. He did not like the looks
of himself bedraggled and wet, and dead, on the deck of the "Hatty,"
with that curious crowd looking at him, Mandy Ann with the rest. Strange
that thoughts of Mandy Ann should flit through his mind as he decided
against the cold bath in the St. John's and _to face_ it, whatever it
was. Occasionally some one spoke to him, and he always answered
politely, and once offered his chair to a lady who seemed to be looking
for one. But she declined it, and he was again left alone. Once he went
to the other end of the boat for a little exercise and change, he said
to himself, but really for a chance of seeing Mandy Ann, who of all the
passengers interested him the most. But Mandy Ann was not in sight, nor
did he see her again till the boat was moving slowly up to the wharf at
Enterprise, and with her braided tags of hair standing up like little
horns, and her worldly goods tied up in a cotton handkerchief, she stood
respectfully behind the waiting crowd, each eager to be the first to
land.
The Brock House was full--"not so much as a cot or a shelf for one
more," the clerk said to the stranger, who was last at the desk. He had
lingered behind the others to watch Mandy Ann, with a half-formed
resolution to ask her to direct him to "ole Miss Harrises" if, as Ted
had said, she was going there. Mandy Ann did not seem to be in any hurry
and sauntered leisurely up the lane a little beyond the Brock House,
where she sat down and stretching out her bare feet began to suck an
orange Ted had given her at parting, telling her that though she was "an
onery nigger who belonged to a Cracker, she had rather far eyes and a
mouth that couldn't be beat for sass, adding that he reckoned that thar
tall man who didn't speak to nobody might be wantin' to buy her, as he
had done ast him oncet how far it was to the clarin', an' he couldn't
want nobody thar but her." Mandy Ann had taken the orange, but had
spurned what Ted had said of the tall man's intentions. She had been
told too many times, during her brief stay in Jacksonville as a nurse
girl, that she was of no manner of account to believe any one wished to
buy her, and she paid no attention to the tall man, except to see that
he was the last to enter the hotel, where he was told there was no room
for him.
"But I must have a place to sleep," he said. "It is only for the night.
I return on the 'Hatty.'"
"Why not stay on her then? Some do who only come up for the trip," was
the clerk's reply.
This was not a bad idea, although the stranger shuddered as he thought
of his ill-smelling stateroom and short berth. Still it was better than
camping out doors, or--the clearing--where he might be accommodated. He
shuddered again when he thought of that possibility--thanked the clerk
for his suggestion--and declined the book which had been pushed towards
him for his name. No use to register if he was not to be a guest; no use
to tell his name anyway, if he could avoid it, as he had successfully on
the boat, and with a polite good-evening he stepped outside just as
Mandy Ann, having finished her orange, peel and all, gathered herself up
with a view to starting for home.
CHAPTER II
THE PALMETTO CLEARING
The stranger had asked Ted on the boat, when he came with some lemonade
he had ordered, how far it was from the Brock House to the palmetto
clearing, and if there was any conveyance to take him there. Ted had
stared at him with wonder--first, as to what such as he could want at
the clearing, and second, if he was crazy enough to think there was a
conveyance. From being a petted cabin boy, Ted had grown to be something
of a spoiled one, and was what the passengers thought rather too "peart"
in his ways, while some of the crew insisted that he needed "takin' down
a button hole lower," whatever that might mean.
"Bless yer soul, Mas'r," he said, in reply to the question. "Thar ain't
no conveyance to the clarin'. It's off in de woods a piece, right smart.
You sticks to de road a spell, till you comes to a grave--what used to
be--but it's done sunk in now till nuffin's thar but de stun an' some
blackb'ry bushes clamberin' over it. Then you turns inter de wust piece
of road in Floridy, and turns agin whar some yaller jasmine is growin',
an fore long you're dar."
The direction was not very lucid, and the stranger thought of asking the
clerk for something more minute, but the surprise in Ted's eyes when he
inquired the way to the clearing had put him on his guard against a
greater surprise in the clerk. He would find his way somehow, and he
went out into the yard and looked in the direction of the sandy road
which led into the woods and which Mandy Ann was taking, presumably on
her way home. A second time the thought came to him that she might
direct him, and he started rather rapidly after her, calling as he went:
"I say girl, I want you. Do you hear?"
Mandy Ann heard, gave one glance over her shoulder, saw who was
following her, and began at once to run, her bare feet and ankles
throwing up the sand, and her sunbonnet falling from her head down her
back, where it flapped from side to side as she ran. She remembered what
Ted had said of the stranger, who might be thinking of buying her; this
was possible after all, as he had said he wanted her, and though her
home in the clearing was not one of luxury, it was one of ease and
indolence, and she had no desire for a new one--certainly not with this
man whose face did not attract her. Just why she ran, she did not know.
It was of no use to appeal to _ole missus_, who would not know whether
she belonged to her or some one else. Miss Dory was her only hope. With
promises of future good behavior and abstinence from pilfering and
lying, and badness generally, she might enlist her sympathy and
protection till Jake came home, when all would be right. So she sped on
like a deer, glancing back occasionally to see the stranger following
her with rapid strides which, however, did not avail to overtake her.
The afternoon was very warm--the road sandy and uneven--and he soon gave
up the chase, wondering why the girl ran so fast, as if afraid of him.
The last sight he had of her was of her woolly head, turning off from
the road to the right, where it disappeared behind some thick
undergrowth. Ted had said, "Turn at the grave," and he walked on till he
reached the spot, and stood by the low railing enclosing a sunken grave,
whether of man or woman he could not tell, the lettering on the
discolored stone was so obscure. Studying it very carefully, he thought
he made out "Mrs." before the moss-blurred name.
"A woman," he said, with a feeling how terrible it must be to be buried
and left alone in that dreary, sandy waste, with no human habitation
nearer than the Brock House, and no sound of life passing by, except
from the same place, unless--and he started, as he noticed for the first
time what Ted had said was the worst road in Florida, and what was
scarcely more than a footpath leading off to the right, and to the
clearing, of course--and he must follow it past tangled weeds and
shrubs, and briers, and dwarf palmettoes, stumps of which impeded his
progress.
Mandy Ann had entirely disappeared, but here and there in the sand he
saw her footprints, the toes spread wide apart, and knew he was right.
Suddenly there came a diversion, and he leaned against a tree and
breathed hard and fast, as one does when a shock comes unexpectedly. His
ear had caught the sound of voices at no great distance from him. A
negro's voice--Mandy Ann's, he was sure--eager, excited, and pleading;
and another, soft and low, and reassuring, but wringing the sweat from
him in great drops, and making his heart beat rapidly. He knew who was
with Mandy Ann, and that she, too, was hurrying on to the clearing,
still in the distance. Had there been any doubt of her identity, it
would have been swept away when, through an opening in the trees, he
caught sight of a slender girlish figure, clad in the homely garments of
what Ted called poorwhite trash, and of which he had some knowledge.
There was, however, a certain grace in the movements of the girl which
moved him a little, for he was not blind to any point of beauty in a
woman, and the beauty of this girl, hurrying on so fast, had been his
ruin, as he in one sense had been hers.
"Eudora!" he said, with a groan, and with a half resolve to turn back
rather than go on.
Tom Hardy in their talk while the boat waited for them at Palatka, had
told him what _not_ to do, and he was there to follow Tom's
advice--though, to do him justice, there was a thought in his heart that
possibly he might do what he knew he ought to do, in spite of Tom.
"I'll wait and see, and if--" he said at last, as he began to pick his
way over the palmetto stumps and ridges of sand till he came upon the
clearing.
It was an open space of two or three acres, cleared from tanglewood and
dwarf palmettoes. In the centre was a log-house, larger and more
pretentious than many log-houses which he had seen in the South. A
Marshal Niel had climbed up one corner to the roof, and twined itself
around the chimney, giving a rather picturesque effect to the house, and
reminding the stranger of some of the cabins he had seen in Ireland,
with ivy growing over them. There was an attempt at a flower garden
where many roses were blooming. Some one was fond of flowers, and the
thought gave the stranger a grain of comfort, for a love of flowers was
associated in his mind with an innate refinement in the lover, and there
was for a moment a tinge of brightness in the darkness settling upon
his future. Around the house there was no sign of life or stir, except a
brood of well-grown chickens, which, with their mother, were huddled on
the door step, evidently contemplating an entrance into the house, the
door of which was open, as were the shutters to the windows, which were
minus glass, as was the fashion of many old Florida houses in the days
before the Civil War. With a shoo to the chickens, which sent some into
the house and others flying into the yard, the stranger stepped to the
door and knocked, once very gently, then more decidedly--then, as there
came no response, he ventured in, and driving out the chickens, one of
which had mounted upon a table and was pecking at a few crumbs of bread
left there, he sat down and looked about him. In the loft which could
hardly be dignified with the name chamber, he heard a low murmur of
voices, and the sound of footsteps moving rapidly, as if some one were
in a hurry. The room in which he sat was evidently living and
dining-room both, and was destitute of everything which he deemed
necessary to comfort. He had been in a Cracker's house before, and it
seemed to him now that his heart turned over when he recalled his visits
there, and his utter disregard of his surroundings.
"I was a fool, and blind, then; but I can see now," he said to himself,
as he looked around at the marks of poverty, or shiftlessness, or both,
and contrasted them with his home in the North.
The floor was bare, with the exception of a mat laid before the door
leading into another and larger room, before one of the windows of which
a white curtain was gently blowing in the wind. A rough, uncovered table
pushed against the wall, three or four chairs, and a hair-cloth settee
completed the furniture, with the exception of a low rocking-chair, in
which sat huddled and wrapped in a shawl a little old woman whose
yellow, wrinkled face told of the snuff habit, and bore a strong
resemblance to a mummy, except that the woman wore a cap with a fluted
frill, and moved her head up and down like Christmas toys of old men and
women. She was evidently asleep, as she gave no sign of consciousness
that any one was there.
"Old Miss," the stranger said, and his breath again came gaspingly, and
Tom Hardy's advice looked more and more reasonable, while he cursed
himself for the fool he had been, and would have given all he was worth,
and even half his life, to be rid of this thing weighing him down like a
nightmare from which he could not awaken.
He was roused at last by the sound of bare feet on the stairs in a
corner of the room. Some one was coming, and in a moment Mandy Ann stood
before him, her eyes shining, and her teeth showing white against the
ebony of her skin. In her rush through the woods Mandy Ann had come upon
her young mistress looking for the few berries which grew upon the
tangled bushes.
"Miss Dory, Miss Dory!" she exclaimed, clutching the girl's arm with
such force that the pail fell to the ground and the berries were
spilled, "you ain't gwine for ter sell me to nobody? Say you ain't, an'
fo' de Lawd I'll never touch nothin', nor lie, nor sass ole Miss, nor
make faces and mumble like she does. I'll be a fust cut nigger, an' say
my prars ebery night. I'se done got a new one down ter Jacksonville. Say
you ain't."
In her surprise Miss Dory did not at first speak; then, shaking Mandy
Ann's hand from her arm and pushing back her sunbonnet she said: "What
do you mean, and where did you come from? The 'Hatty,' I s'pose, but she
must be late. I'd given you up. Who's gwine ter buy yer?"
"Ted done tole me mabby de man on de boat from de Norf, what got on ter
Palatka, an' done as't the way hyar, might be after me--an'--"
She got no further, for her own arm was now clutched as her mistress's
had been, while Miss Dory asked, "What man? How did he look? Whar is
he?" and her eyes, shining with expectancy, looked eagerly around.
Very rapidly Mandy Ann told all she knew of the stranger, while the
girl's face grew radiant as she listened. "An' he done holler and say
how he want me an' follered me, an' when I turn off at the grave he was
still follerin' me. He's comin' hyar. You won't sell me, shoo'," Mandy
Ann said, and her mistress replied, "Sell you? No. It was one of Ted's
lies. He is my friend. He's comin' to see me. Hurry!"
Eudora was racing now through the briers, and weeds, and palmetto
stumps, and dragging Mandy Ann with her.
"Never mind granny," she said, when they reached the house and Mandy
stopped to say how d'ye to the old woman in the chair. "Come upstairs
with me and help me change my gown."
"Faw de Lawd's sake, is he yer beau?" Mandy Ann asked, as she saw the
excitement of her mistress, who was tearing around the room, now
laughing, now dashing the tears away and giving the most contradicting
orders as to what she was to wear and Mandy Ann was to get for her.
They heard the two knocks and knew that some one had entered the house,
but Mandy Ann was too busy blacking a pair of boots to go at once, as
she had her hands to wash, and yet, although it seemed to him an age, it
was scarcely two minutes before she came down the stairs, nimble as a
cat, and bobbed before him with a courtesy nearly to the floor. Her
mistress had said to her. "Mind your manners. You say you have learned a
heap in Jacksonville."
"To be shoo'. I've seen de quality thar in Miss Perkins's house," Mandy
Ann replied, and hence the courtesy she thought rather fetching,
although she shook a little as she confronted the stranger, whose
features never relaxed in the least, and who did not answer her. "How
d'ye, Mas'r," which she felt it incumbent to say, as there was no one
else to receive him.
Mandy Ann was very bright, and as she knew no restraint in her Florida
home, when alone with her old Miss and young Miss, she was apt to be
rather familiar for a negro slave, and a little inclined to humor. She
knew whom the gentleman had come to see, but when he said. "Is your
mistress at home?" she turned at once to the piece of parchment in the
rocking-chair and replied. "To be shoo. Dar she is in de char over dar.
Dat's ole Miss Lucy."
Going up to the chair, she screamed in the woman's ear, "Wake up, Miss
Lucy. I'se done comed home an' thar's a gemman to see you? Wake up!"
She shook the bundle of shawls vigorously, until the old lady was
thoroughly roused and glared at her with her dark, beady eyes, while she
mumbled, "You hyar, shakin' me so, you limb. You, Mandy Ann! Whar did
you come from?"
"Jacksonville, in course. Whar'd you think? An' hyar's a gemman come to
see you, I tell you. Wake up an' say how d'ye."
"Whar is he?" the old woman asked, beginning to show some interest,
while the stranger arose and coming forward said, "Excuse me, madam. It
is the young lady I wish to see--your daughter."
"She hain't her mother. She's her granny," Mandy Ann chimed in with a
good deal of contempt in her voice, as she nodded to the figure in the
chair, who, with some semblance of what she once was, put out a skinny
hand and said, "I'm very pleased to see you. Call Dory. She'll know what
to do."
This last to Mandy Ann, who flirted away from her and said to the
stranger, "She hain't no sense mostly--some days more, some days
littler, an' to-day she's littler. You wants to see Miss Dory? She's
upstars changin' her gown, 'case she knows you're hyar. I done tole her,
an' her face lit right up like de sun shinin' in de mawnin'. Will you
gim me your caird?"
This was Mandy Ann's master-stroke at good manners. She had seen such
things at "Miss Perkins's" in Jacksonville, and had once or twice taken
a card on a silver tray to that lady, and why not bring the fashion to
her own home, if it were only a log-cabin, and she a bare-foot,
bare-legged waitress, instead of Mrs. Perkins's maid Rachel, smart in
slippers and cap, and white apron. For a moment the stranger's face
relaxed into a broad smile at the ludicrousness of the situation. Mandy
Ann, who was quick of comprehension, understood the smile and hastened
to explain.
"I done larn't a heap of things at Miss Perkins's, which we can't do
hyar, 'case of ole Miss bein' so quar. Miss Dory'd like 'em right well."
"Certainly," the stranger said, beginning to have a good deal of respect
for the poor slave girl trying to keep up the dignity of her family.
Taking a card from his case he handed it to Mandy Ann, who looked at it
carefully as if reading the name, although she held it wrong side up.
There was no silver tray to take it on--there was no tray at all--but
there was a china plate kept as an ornament on a shelf, and on this
Mandy Ann placed the card, and then darted up the stairs, finding her
mistress nearly dressed, and waiting for her.
"Oh, his card? He gave it to you?" Eudora said, flushing with pleasure
that he had paid her this compliment, and pressing her lips to the name
when Mandy Ann did not see her.
"In course he done gin it to me. Dat's de way wid de quality both Souf
and Norf. We livin' hyar in de clarin' doan know noffin'." Mandy Ann
replied.
On the strength of her three months sojourn with Mrs. Perkins, who was
undeniably quality, she felt herself capable of teaching many things to
her young mistress, who had seldom repressed her, and who now made no
answer except to ask, "How do I look?"
She had hesitated a moment as to the dress she would wear in place of
the one discarded. She had very few to select from, and finally took
down a white gown sacred to her, because of the one occasion on which
she had worn it. It was a coarse muslin, but made rather prettily with
satin bows on the sleeves, and shoulders, and neck. Several times,
since she had hung it on a peg under a sheet to keep it from getting
soiled, she had looked at it and stroked it, wondering if she would ever
wear it again. Now she took it down and smoothed the bows of ribbon, and
brushed a speck from the skirt, while there came to her eyes a rush of
glad tears as she put it on, with a thought that he would like her in
it, and then tried to see its effect in the little eight by twelve
cracked glass upon the wall. All she could see was her head and
shoulders, and so she asked the opinion of Mandy Ann, who answered
quickly, "You done look beautiful--some like de young ladies in
Jacksonville, and some like you was gwine to be married."
"Perhaps I am," Eudora replied, with a joyous ring in her voice. "Would
you like to have me get married?"
Mandy Ann hesitated a moment and then said, "I'se promised never to tole
you no mo' lies, so dis is de truffe, ef I was to drap dead. I'd like
you to marry some de gemmans in Jacksonville, or some dem who comes to
de Brock House, but not him downstars!"
"Why not?" Eudora asked, and there was a little sharpness in her voice.
"'Case," Mandy Ann began, "you as't me, an' fo' de Lawd I mus' tell de
truffe. He's very tall an' gran', an' w'ars fine close, an' han's is
white as a cotton bat, but his eyes doan set right in his head. They
look hard, an' not a bit smilin', an' he looks proud as ef he thought we
was dirt, an' dem white han's--I do' know, but pears like they'd squeeze
body an' soul till you done cry wid pain. Doan you go for to marry him,
Miss Dory, will you?"
At first Mandy Ann had opened and shut her black fingers, as she showed
how the stranger's white hands would squeeze one's body and soul; then
they closed round her mistress's arm as she said, "Doan you marry him,
Miss Dory, will you?"
"No," Eudora answered, "don't be a silly, but go down and bring me a
rose, if you can find one two-thirds open. I wore one with this dress
before and he liked it, and as't me to give it to him. Mebby he will
now," she thought, while waiting for Mandy Ann, who soon came back with
a beautiful rose hidden under her apron.
"Strues I'm bawn, I b'lieve he's done gone to sleep like ole Miss--he's
settin' thar so still," she said.
But he was far from being asleep. He had gone over again and again with
everything within his range of vision, from the old woman nodding in her
chair, to the bucket of water standing outside the door, with a gourd
swimming on the top, and he was wondering at the delay, and feeling more
and more that he should take Tom Hardy's advice, when he heard steps on
the stairs, which he knew were not Mandy Ann's, and he rose to meet
Eudora.
CHAPTER III
THE INTERVIEW
She was a short, slender little girl, not more than sixteen or
seventeen, with a sweet face and soft brown eyes which drooped as she
came forward, and then looked at him shyly through a mist of tears which
she bravely kept back.
"How d'ye. I'm so glad to see you," she said, looking up at him with
quivering lips which were so unquestionably asking for a kiss that he
gave it, while her face beamed with delight at the caress, and she did
not mind how cold, and stiff, and reserved he grew the next moment.
He did not like her "How d'ye," although he knew how common a salutation
it was at the South. It savored of Mandy Ann, and her accent was like
Mandy Ann's, and her white dress instead of pleasing him filled him with
disgust for himself, as he remembered when he first saw it and thought
it fine. She had worn a rose then, and he had asked her for it, and put
it in his pocket, like an insane idiot, Tom had said. She wore a rose
now, but he didn't ask her for it, and he dropped her hand almost as
soon as he took it, and called himself a brute when he saw the color
come and go in her face, and how she trembled as she sat beside him. He
knew she was pretty, and graceful, and modest, and that she loved him
as no other woman ever would, but she was untrained, and uneducated, and
unused to the world--his world, which would scan her with cold,
wondering eyes. He couldn't do it, and he wouldn't--certainly, not yet.
He would wait and see what came of his plan which he must unfold, and
tell her why he had come. But not there where the old woman might hear
and understand, and where he felt sure Mandy Ann was listening. She had
stolen down the stairs and gone ostensibly to meet a woman whom Eudora
called Sonsie, and who, she said, came every day to do the work now Jake
was away.
"Who is Jake?" the man asked, and Eudora replied, "The negro who has
taken care of us since I can remember. He is free, but does for us, and
is in Richmond now, valleying for a gentleman who pays him big wage, and
he spends it all for us."
The stranger flushed at her words indicative of her station, and then
suggested that they go outside where they could be sure of being alone,
as he had much to say to her.
"Perhaps you will walk part way with me on my return to the 'Hatty,'" he
said, glancing at his watch and feeling surprised to find how late it
was.
Instantly Eudora, who had seemed so listless, woke up with all the
hospitality of her Southern nature roused to action. "Surely you'll have
supper with me," she said. "Sonsie is here to get it and will have it
directly."
There was no good reason for refusing, although he revolted against
taking supper in that humble cabin, with possibly that old woman at the
table; but he swallowed his pride and, signifying his assent, went
outside, where they came upon Mandy Ann in a crouching attitude under
the open casement. She was listening, of course, but sprang to her feet
as the two appeared, and said in response to her mistress's "What are
you doing here?" "Nothin', Miss Dory, fo' de Lawd, nothing, but huntin'
on de groun' for somethin' what done drap out de windy upstars."
The stranger knew she was lying, and Eudora knew it, but said nothing
except to bid the girl get up and assist Sonsie with the supper. Mandy
Ann had once said of her mistress to Jake, "She hain't no sperrit to
spar," and Jake had replied, "Lucky for you, Mandy Ann, that she hain't
no sperrit, for ef she had she'd of done pulled every har out of your
head afore now."
Mandy Ann knew that neither her hair, nor any part of her person, was in
danger from her young mistress, and after a few more scratches in the
dirt after an imaginary lost article, she arose and joined Sonsie, to
whom Eudora gave a few instructions, and then with her guest walked
across the clearing to a bench which Jake had made for her, and which
was partially sheltered by a tall palm. Here they sat down while he
unfolded his plan, plainly and concisely, and leaving no chance for
opposition, had the crushed, quivering creature at his side felt
inclined to make it. As Mandy Ann had said she hadn't much spirit, and
what little she had was slain as she listened, while her face grew white
as her dress, and her hands were linked together on her lap. The sun had
just gone down, and the full moon was rising and throwing its light upon
the clearing and the girl, whose face and attitude touched her
companion, cold and hard as he was, but he must carry his point.
"You see it is for the best and you promise; you will remember," he
said, taking one of her hands and wondering to find it so cold.
"Yes, oh, yes," she replied, every word a gasp. "I thought--I hoped--you
had done come to take,--or to stay--not here, but somewhar--but I see
you can't. You know best. I ain't fittin' to go yet, but I'll try, and I
promise all you ask; but don't let it be long. The days are so lonesome
since I come home, and things seem different since I knew you; but I
promise, and will remember and do my best."
Half his burden rolled away. He could be very kind now, for he knew he
could trust her to the death, and putting his arm around her, he drew
her close to him and said, "You are a good girl, Eudora. I shall not
forget it; but why do you tremble so? Are you cold?"
"Yes--no," she answered, nestling so close to him that the rose in her
dress was loosened and fell to the ground.
He picked it up, but did not put it in his pocket as a keepsake. He gave
it back to her, and she fastened it again to her dress, saying, "I do'
know why I shake, only it seems's if somethin' had died that I hoped
for. But it is all right, becase you care for me. You love me."
She lifted up her face on which the moonlight fell, making a picture the
man never forgot to the last day of his life. He did not tell her he
loved her, he could not; but for answer he stooped and kissed her, and
she--poor, simple girl--was satisfied.
"If I could tell Jake, it would be some comfort," she said at last,
timidly, and her companion answered quickly. "Tell Jake! Never! You must
not be too familiar with your servants."
"Jake is more than a servant. He is everything to me," the girl
answered, with rising spirit. "He would die for me, and if anything
happened to me and you did not come, I think he would kill you."
There was something of Southern fire in her eyes as she said this, which
made the stranger laugh as he replied, "Nothing will happen, and I'm not
afraid of Jake."
In his heart he was glad the negro was not there, for something warned
him that in the poor black man he might find a formidable obstacle to
his plan. Meanwhile in the house Mandy Ann had been busy with the
supper-table. They ought to have a good deal of light, she thought,
remembering the lamps at Mrs. Perkins's, and as there were only two
candlesticks in the house her fertile brain had contrived two more from
some large round potatoes, cutting a flat piece from one end, making a
hole in the centre to hold the candle, and wrapping some white paper
around the standard. She had taken great pains with the table, trying to
imitate Mrs. Perkins's, and the imitation was rather satisfactory to
herself. The best cloth had been brought out, and though it was yellow
with disuse it showed what it had been. A few roses in a pitcher were in
the centre of the table, and ranged around them were the four candles,
spluttering and running down as tallow candles are apt to do. The dishes
troubled her, they were so thick and nicked in so many places, that it
was difficult to find one which was whole. The stranger had the china
plate, which had done duty as a tray for his card, and he had the only
plated fork in the house: a Christmas gift from Jake to the ole Miss,
who scarcely appreciated it, but insisted that it be wrapped in several
folds of tissue paper and kept in her bureau drawer. Mandy Ann did not
ask if she could have it. She took it and rubbed it with soft sand to
remove some discolorations and laid it, with a horn-handled knife, by
the china plate.
"Ef we only had napkins," she said, while Sonsie, who had lived all her
life near the clearing, and knew nothing of the fashions of the world,
asked what napkins were. With a toss of her head indicative of her
superior knowledge, Mandy Ann replied, "You'd know if you'd lived wid de
quality in Jacksonville. Miss Perkins's allus had 'em. Dey's squar
little towels what you holds in yer lap to wipe yer fingers on when
you've done eatin'. Dat's what they is, an' de gemman or to hev one."
"Can't he wipe his hands on de table cloth, for oncet?" Sonsie asked,
with a sudden inspiration which was received with great scorn by Mandy
Ann, to whom there had also come an inspiration on which she at once
acted.
In one of ole Miss's bureau drawers was a large plain linen handkerchief
which was never used. It would serve the purpose nicely, and Mandy Ann
brought it out, holding it behind her lest it should be seen by the old
lady, who sometimes saw more than Mandy Ann cared to have her see. It
was rather yellow like the table cloth, and the creases where it was
folded were a little dark, but Mandy Ann turned it, and refolded and
pressed it, and laid it on the china plate, while Sonsie looked on and
admired. Everything was in readiness, and Mandy Ann called across the
clearing. "Hallo, Miss Dory. Supper's done served."
She had caught on to a good many things at Miss Perkins's, and "served"
was one of them. "I don't s'pose Miss Dory will understan'," she
thought, "but he will, and see dat dis nigger know sumptin'."
It was a novel situation in which the stranger found himself, seated at
that table with Eudora presiding and Mandy Ann waiting upon them, her
tray a dinner-plate which she flourished rather conspicuously. He was
quick to observe and nothing escaped him, from the improvised
candlesticks to the napkin by his china plate. He knew it was a
handkerchief, and smiled inwardly as he wondered what Tom Hardy would
say if he could see him now. The old lady was not at the table. Mandy
Ann had managed that and attended to her in her chair, but as if eating
brightened her faculties, she began to look about her and talk, and ask
why she couldn't sit at her own table.
"'Case thar's a gemman hyar an' you draps yer vittles so," Mandy Ann
said in a whisper, with her lips close to the old woman's ear.
"Gentleman? Who's he? Whar's he from?" the old woman asked--forgetting
that she had spoken to him.
"I told you oncet he's Miss Dory's frien' an' from de Norf. Do be
quiet," Mandy Ann blew into the deaf ears.
"From the Nawth. I don't like the Nawth, 'case I--" the old lady began,
but Mandy Ann choked her with a muffin, and she did not finish her
sentence and tell why she disliked the North.
Eudora's face was scarlet, but she did not interfere. Her grandmother
was in better hands than hers, and more forceful.
"Granny is queer sometimes," she said by way of apology, while her
guest bowed in token that he understood, and the meal proceeded in quiet
with one exception. Granny was choked with eating too fast, and Mandy
Ann struck her on her back and shook her up, and dropped her
dinner-plate and broke it in her excitement.
"For de Lawd's sake, 'tan't no use," she said, gathering up the pieces
and taking them to the kitchen, where Sonsie laughed till the tears ran
at Mandy Ann's attempt "to be gran'," and its result.
Meanwhile the stranger ate Sonsie's corn cakes and muffins, and said
they were good, and drank muddy coffee, sweetened with brown sugar out
of a big thick cup, and thought of his dainty service at home, and
glanced at the girl opposite him with a great pity, which, however, did
not move him one whit from his purpose. He had told her his plan and she
had accepted it, and he told it again when, after supper, she walked
with him through the clearing and the woods to the main road which led
to the river. He did the talking, while she answered yes or no, with a
sound of tears in her voice. When they reached the highway they stopped
by the sunken grave, and leaning against the fence which inclosed it,
Eudora removed her sunbonnet, letting the moon shine upon her face, as
it had done when she sat in the clearing. It was very white but there
were no tears now in her eyes. She was forcing them back and she tried
to smile as she said, "You are very kind, and I think I understand what
you want, and here by this grave I promise all you ask, and will do my
best--my very best."
Her lips began to quiver and her voice to break, for the visit from
which she had expected so much had proved a blank, and her high hopes
were dead as the woman by whose grave she stood. She had folded her
hands one over the other upon the top rail of the fence, and her
companion looked at them and thought how small they were and shapely,
too, although brown with the work she had to do when Jake and Mandy Ann
were both gone and Sonsie came only at meal times. He was not a brute.
He was simply a proud, cold, selfish man, whose will had seldom been
crossed, and who found himself in a tight place from which he could not
wholly extricate himself. He was sorry for Eudora, for he guessed how
desolate she would be when he was gone, and there was nothing left but
that home in the clearing, with old granny and Mandy Ann. He had not
seen Jake, of whom Eudora now spoke, saying, "Our house never seemed so
poor to me till I seen you in it. It will be better when Jake comes, for
he is to fix it up--he knows how."
It was the only excuse she had made, and she did it falteringly, while
her companion's heart rose up in his throat and made him very
uncomfortable, as he thought of Jake and Mandy Ann caring for this girl,
while his income was larger than he could spend. It had not occurred to
him to offer her money till that moment, and he did not know now that
she would take it. Turning his back to her as if looking at something
across the road, he counted a roll of bills, and turning back took one
of the little brown hands resting on the rail in his and pressed the
roll into it. Just for an instant the slim fingers held fast to his
hand--then, as she felt the bills and saw what they were, she drew back
and dropped them upon the sand.
"I can't; no, I can't," she said, when he urged them upon her, telling
her it was his right to give and hers to take.
As usual his will prevailed, and when at last he said good-by and walked
rapidly towards the river, while she went slowly through the woods and
across the clearing to the log-house, where Mandy Ann was having a
frightful time getting ole Miss to bed, she had in her possession more
money than Jake would earn in months.
"I would send it all back," she thought, "if we didn't need it badly,
and he said it was right for me to take it, but some of it _must_ go.
I'll send it just before the 'Hatty' sails."
There was no one to send but Mandy Ann, who, after many misgivings on
the part of her mistress, was entrusted with a part of the money, with
injunctions neither to look at nor lose it, but to hold it tight in her
hand until she gave it to the gentleman. Eudora had thought of writing a
note, but the effort was too great. Mandy Ann could say all she wanted
to have said, and in due time the negress started for the boat, nothing
loth to visit it again and bandy words with Ted. The "Hatty" was blowing
off steam preparatory to starting, when a pair of bare legs and feet
were seen racing down the lane to the landing, and Mandy Ann, waving her
hand, was calling out, "Hol' on dar, you cap'n. I'se sometin' berry
'portant for de gemman. Hol' on, I say," and she dashed across the
plank, nearly knocking Ted down in her headlong haste. "Whar is 'ee?"
she gasped, and continued, "Leg-go, I tell ye. Le' me be," as Ted seized
her arm, asking what she wanted, and if she was going back to
Jacksonville.
"No; leg-go, I tell you. I wants the man from de Norf, what comed to
see Miss Dory. I've sometin' for him very partic'lar."
She found him in his seat at the rear of the boat, where he had sat on
his way up, and had again appropriated to himself, with no one
protesting or noticing him beyond a civil bow. They called him Boston,
knowing no other name, and wondered why he had visited the Harrises as
they knew he had. Ted, who was allowed nearly as much freedom of speech
on the boat as Mandy Ann had at the clearing, had aired his opinion that
the gentleman wanted to buy Mandy Ann, but this idea was scouted. Boston
was not one to buy negroes. Probably he was some kin to old Granny
Harris, who had distant connections in the North, some one suggested.
This seemed reasonable, and the people settled upon it, and gave him a
wide berth as one who wished to be let alone. When Mandy Ann rushed in
and made her way to him curiosity was again roused, but no one was near
enough to hear her as she put into his hands a paper, saying
breathlessly, "Miss Dory done send some of it back with thanks, 'case
she can't keep it all, and she wants to know how d'ye, an' I mus' hurry,
or dey carries me off."
The stranger took the paper, opened it, and glanced at the bills; then
at the girl who stood as if she expected something. Taking a dollar from
his pocket he gave it to her saying, "Take this and be a good girl to
your young mistress, and now go."
Mandy Ann did not move, but stood with her lips twitching and her eyes
filling with tears. No one had ever given her a dollar before, and her
better nature cried out against what she had done.
"Fo' de Lawd, I can't help 'fessin," she said, thrusting her hand into
her bosom and bringing out a crumpled bill which she gave to the
gentleman, who saw that it was a ten and looked at her sternly as she
went on: "I done promised Miss Dory I'never tache a thing, if she
wouldn't sell me to you, but dar was sich a pile, an' I wanted some
beads, an' a red han'kercher, an' a ring, an' I done took one. I don'no
how much, 'case I can't read, an' dat's why I was late an' had to run so
fass. You're good, you is, an' I muss 'fess--may de Lawd forgive me."
At this point Ted, who had been on some of the large boats between
Jacksonville and Charleston, and had heard the cry warning the
passengers to leave, screamed close to her. "All asho', dat's gwine
asho'!" and seizing her arm he led her to the plank and pushed her on to
it, but not until she had shaken her bill in his face and said,
"Licke-e-dar, a dollar! All mine--he done gin it to me, an' I'se gwine
to buy a gown, an' a han'kercher, an' some shoes, an' some candy, an'
some--" the rest of her intended purchases were cut short by a jerk of
the plank, which sent her sprawling on her hands and knees, with a jeer
from Ted sounding in her ears. The "Hatty" was off, and with a feeling
of relief the stranger kept his seat on the rear deck, or staid in his
stateroom until Palatka was reached, where he went on shore, lifting his
hat politely to the passengers, shaking hands with the captain, and
giving a quarter to Ted, who nearly stood on his head for joy, and could
scarcely wait for the next trip to Enterprise, where he would find Mandy
Ann and tell her of his good fortune, doubling or trebling the amount as
he might feel inclined at the time.
CHAPTER IV
HOPING AND WAITING
The curiosity concerning the stranger at Enterprise had nearly died out
when it was roused again to fever heat by the arrival at the clearing of
a little girl, whom the young mother baptized with bitter tears, but
refused to talk of the father except to say, "It was all right and
people would know it was when he came, as he was sure to do."
He didn't come, and the girl's face grew sadder and whiter, and her eyes
had in them always an expectant, wistful look, as if waiting for some
one or something, which would lift from her the dark cloud under which
she was laboring. Jake, who had returned from Richmond, suffered nearly
as much as she did. His pride in his family--such as the family was--was
great, and his affection for his young mistress unbounded.
"Only tell me whar he is an' I'll done fetch him, or kill him," he said,
when in an agony of tears she laid her baby in his lap and said,
"Another for you to care for till he comes, as I know he will."
Eudora had said to the stranger that Jake would kill him if anything
happened to her, but now at the mention of killing him she shuddered and
replied, "No, Jake, not that. You'll know sometime. I can't explain. I
done promised more than once. The last time was by that grave yonder,
when he was sayin' good-by. It was same as an oath. I was to go to
school and learn to be a lady, but baby has come, and I can't go now. It
will make some differ with him perhaps, an' he'll come for baby's sake.
You b'lieve me, Jake?"
"Yes, honey--same as ef 'twas de Lawd himself talkin' to me, an' I'll
take keer of de little one till he comes, an' if I sees somebody winkin'
or hunchin' de shoulder, I'll--I'll--"
Jake clenched his fist to show what he would do, and hugging the baby to
him, continued, "Dis my 'ittle chile till its fader comes; doan' you
worry. I'se strong an' kin work, an' Mandy Ann's done got to stir de
stumps more'n she has."
He cast a threatening look at Mandy Ann, who had at first been appalled
at the advent of the baby, and for a while kept aloof even from Ted,
when the "Hatty" was in. Then she rallied and, like Jake, was ready to
do battle with any one who hunched their shoulders at Miss Dory. She had
two good square fights with Ted on the subject, and two or three more
with some of her own class near the clearing, and as she came off victor
each time it was thought wise not to provoke her, except as Ted from the
safety of the "Hatty's" deck sometimes called to her, when he saw her on
the shore with the baby in her arms and asked how little Boston was
getting along. Mandy Ann felt that she could kill him, and every one
else who spoke slightingly of her charge. She had told Jake over and
over again all she could remember of the stranger's visit, and more than
she could remember when she saw how eager he was for every detail. She
told him of the card taken to her mistress on a china plate, of the
table with its four candles, and ole Miss's handkerchief for a napkin,
and of her waiting just as she had seen it done at Miss Perkins's.
"The gemman was gran' an' tall, an' mighty fine spoken, like all dem
quality from de Norf," she said, although in fact he was the first
person she had ever seen from the North; but that made no difference
with Mandy Ann. "He was a gemman--he had given her a dollar, and he was
shoo to come back."
This she said many times to her young mistress, keeping her spirits up,
helping her to hope against hope, while the seasons came and went, and
letters were sometimes received or sent, first to Tom Hardy and
forwarded by him either to the North or to Eudora. There was no lack of
money, but this was not what the young girl wanted. Mandy Ann had said
she had not much _sperrit_, and she certainly had not enough to claim
her rights, but clung to a morbid fancy of what was her duty, bearing up
bravely for a long time, trying to learn, trying to read the books
recommended to her in her Northern letters, and sent for by Jake to
Palatka, trying to understand what she read, and, most pitiful of all,
trying to be a lady, fashioned after her own ideas, and those of Jake
and Mandy Ann. Jake told her what he had seen the quality do in
Richmond, while Mandy Ann boasted her superior knowledge, because of her
three months with Miss Perkins's in Jacksonville, and rehearsed many
times the way she had seen young ladies "come into de house, shake han's
an' say how d'ye, an' hole' thar kyard cases so" (illustrating with a
bit of block), "an' thar parasols so" (taking up granny's cane), "an'
set on the aidge of thar char straight up, an' Miss Perkins bowin' an'
smilin' an' sayin' how glad she was to see 'em, an' den when dey's gone
sayin' sometimes, 'I wonder what sent 'em hyar to-day, when it's so
powerful hot, an' I wants to take my sester'--dat's her nap, you know,
after dinner, what plenty ladies take--an' den you mus' sometimes speak
sharp like to Jake an' to me, an' not be so soff spoken, as if we wasn't
yer niggers, 'case we are, or I is, an' does a heap o' badness; an' you
orto pull my har f'or it."
Confused and bewildered Eudora listened, first to Jake and then to Mandy
Ann, but as she had no card case, no parasol, and no ladies called upon
her, she could only try to remember the proper thing to do when the time
came, if it ever did. But she lost heart at last. She was deserted.
There was no need for her to try to be a lady. Her life was slipping
away, but for baby there was hope, and many times in her chamber loft,
when Mandy Ann thought she was taking her _sester_, and so far imitating
"de quality," she was praying that when she was dead, as she felt she
soon would be, her little child might be recognized and taken where she
rightfully belonged.
And so the years went on till more than three were gone since the
stranger came on the "Hatty," and one morning when she lay again at the
wharf, and Mandy Ann came down for something ordered from Palatka, her
eyes were swollen with crying, and when Ted began his chaff she
answered, "Doan't, Teddy, doan't. I can't fought you now, nor sass you
back, 'case Miss Dory is dead, an' Jake's done gone for de minister."
CHAPTER V
MISS DORY
That day was one of the hottest of the season, and the sun was beating
down upon the piazza of the Brock House where the Rev. Charles Mason sat
fanning himself with a huge palm leaf, and trying to put together in his
mind some points for the sermon he was to preach the next Sunday in the
parlor of the hotel to the few guests who came there occasionally during
the summer. But it was of no use. With the thermometer at ninety degrees
in the shade, and not a breath of air moving, except that made by his
fan, points did not come readily, and all he could think of was Dives'
thirsting for a drop of water from the finger of Lazarus to cool his
parched tongue. "If it was hotter there than it is here I am sorry for
him," he thought, wiping his wet face and looking off across the broad
lake in the direction of Sanford, from which a rowboat was coming very
rapidly, the oarsman bending to his work with a will, which soon brought
him to the landing place, near the hotel. Securing his boat, he came up
the walk and approaching Mr. Mason accosted him with, "How d'ye, Mas'r
Mason. I knows you by sight, and I'se right glad to find you hyar. You
see, I'se that tuckered out I'm fit to drap."
The perspiration was standing in great drops on his face as he sank
panting upon a step of the piazza.
"'Scuse me," he said, "but 'pears like I can't stan' another minit, what
with bein' up all night with Miss Dory, an' gwine 'crost the lake twiste
for nothin', 'case I didn't find him."
By this time Mr. Mason had recognized the negro as one he had seen
occasionally around the hotel selling vegetables and eggs, and who he
had heard the people say was worth his weight in gold.
"How d'ye, Jake," he said, pleasantly. "I didn't know you at first. Why
have you been across the lake twice this morning?"
Jake's face clouded as he drew his big black hand across his eyes.
"Miss Dory done died at sun up," he replied. "You know Miss Dory, in
course."
Mr. Mason was obliged to confess his ignorance with regard to Miss Dory,
and asked who she was.
Jake looked disgusted. Not to know Miss Dory was something inexcusable.
"Why, she's Miss Dory," he said, "an' ole Miss is her granny. We live up
in the palmetto clearing, back in de woods, an' I take keer of 'em."
"You mean you belong to Miss Dora's grandmother?" Mr. Mason asked, while
Jake looked more disgusted than ever.
Not to know Miss Dory was bad enough, but not to know who he was was
much worse.
"Lor' bless your soul, Mas'r Mason, I don't belong to nobody but myself.
I'se done bawn free, I was. But father belonged to ole Miss Lucy, an'
when my mother died she took keer of me, an' I've lived with her ever
sense, all but two or three times I hired out to some swells in
Virginny, whar I seen high life. They's mighty kine to me, dem folks
was, an' let me learn to read an' write, an' do some figgerin'. I'se
most as good a scholar as Miss Dory, an' I tole her some de big words,
an' what the quality in Virginny does, when she was tryin' so hard to
learn to be a lady. She's dead now, the lam', an' my cuss be on him as
killed her."
"Killed! Didn't she die a natural death?" Mr. Mason asked.
"No, sar. She jest pined an' pined for him, an' got de shakes bad, an'
died this mornin'," Jake replied, "an' ole Miss done gone clar out of
her head. She never was over-bright, an' 'pears like she don't know
nothin' now. 'I leave it to you to do,' she said, an I'm doin' on't the
best I kin. I seen her laid out decent in her best gownd--that's Miss
Dory--an' sent to Palatka for a coffin--a good one, too--an' have been
across the lake for Elder Covil to 'tend the burial, 'case she done
said, 'Send for him; he knows.' But he ain't thar, an' I'se come for
you. It'll be day after to-morrer at one o'clock."
Mr. Mason felt the water rolling down his back in streams as he thought
of a hot drive through the Florida sand and woods, but he could not say
no, Jake's honest face was so anxious and pleading.
"Yes, I'll come, but how?" he asked.
"Oh, I'll be hyar wid de mule an' de shay. Noon, sharp," Jake replied.
"Thankee, Mas'r Mason, thankee. We couldn't bury Miss Dory without a
word of pra'r. I kin say de Lawd's, but I want somethin' about de
resurrection an' de life what I hearn in Virginny. An' now I mus' go
'long home. Ole Miss'll be wantin' me an' de chile."
"What child?" Mr. Mason asked, in some surprise.
Jake's face was a study as he hesitated a minute, winking to keep his
tears back before he said, "Sartin', thar's a chile. Why shouldn't thar
be, but fo' God it's all right. Miss Dory said so, an' Elder Covil
knows, only he's done gone Norf or somewhar. It's all right, an' you'll
know 'tis the minit you see Miss Dory's face--innocent as a baby's. Good
day to you."
He doffed his hat with a kind of grace one would hardly have expected,
and walked rapidly away, leaving the Rev. Mr. Mason to think over what
he had heard, and wonder that he didn't ask the name of the family he
was to visit. "Miss Dory, ole Miss, and Jake," were all he had to guide
him, but the last name was sufficient.
"Oh, yes," the landlord said, when questioned. "It's old Mrs. Harris and
her grand-daughter out in the palmetto clearing; they're Crackers. The
old woman is half demented, the whole family was queer, and the girl the
queerest of all--won't talk and keeps her mouth shut as to her marriage,
if there was one."
"Who was the man?" Mr. Mason asked, and the landlord replied, "Some
Northern cuss she met in Georgia where she was staying a spell with her
kin. A high blood, they say. Attracted by her pretty face, I suppose,
and then got tired of her, or was too proud to own up. I wasn't landlord
then, but I've heard about it. I think he was here once three or four
years ago. He came on the 'Hatty' and staid on her--the house was so
full. Didn't register, nor anything--nor tell his name to a livin' soul.
One or two ast him square, I b'lieve, but he either pretended not to
hear 'em, or got out of it somehow. Acted prouder than Lucifer. Walked
along the shore and in the woods, and went to the clearin'--some said
to buy that limb of a Mandy Ann, but more to see Miss Dory. All the time
he was on the boat he was so stiff and starched that nobody wanted to
tackle him, and that girl--I mean Miss Dory--has kept a close mouth
about him, and when her baby was born, and some of the old cats talked
she only said, 'It is all right, I'm a good girl,' and I b'lieve she
was. But that Northern cuss needs killin'. He sends her money, they say,
through some friend in Palatka, who keeps his mouth shut tight, but
neither she nor Jake will use a cent of it. They are savin' it to
educate the little girl and make a lady of her, if nobody claims her. A
lady out of a Cracker! I'd laugh! That Jake is a dandy. He's free, but
has stuck to the Harrises because his father belonged to old Mrs.
Harris. He is smarter than chain lightnin', if he is a nigger, and knows
more than a dozen of some white men. He drives a white mule, and has
managed to put a top of sail cloth on an old ramshackle buggy, which he
calls a 'shay.' You'll go to the funeral in style."
Mr. Mason made no reply. He was thinking of Dory, and beginning to feel
a good deal of interest in her and her story, and anxious to see her,
even if she were dead. At precisely twelve o'clock on the day appointed
for the funeral Jake drove his white mule and shay to the door of the
Brock House. He had on his Sunday clothes, and around his tall hat was a
band of black alpaca, the nearest approach to mourning he could get, for
crape was out of the question. If possible, it was hotter than on the
previous day, and the sail cloth top was not much protection from the
sun as they drove along the sandy road, over bogs and stumps, palmetto
roots and low bridges, and across brooks nearly dried up by the heat.
The way seemed interminable to Mr. Mason, for the mule was not very
swift-footed, and Jake was too fond of him to touch him with a whip. A
pull at the lines, which were bits of rope, and a "Go 'long dar, you
lazy ole t'ing, 'fore I takes the hide off'n you" was the most he did to
urge the animal forward, and Mr. Mason was beginning to think he might
get on faster by walking, when a turn in the road brought the clearing
in view.
It had improved some since we first saw it, and was under what the
natives called right smart cultivation for such a place. Jake had worked
early and late to make it attractive for his young mistress. He had
given the log-house a coat of whitewash, and planted more climbing roses
than had been there when the man from the North visited it. A rude fence
of twisted poles had been built around it, and standing before this
fence were three or four ox-carts and a democrat wagon with two mules
attached to it. The people who had come in these vehicles were waiting
expectantly for Jake and the minister, and the moment they appeared in
sight the white portion hurried into the house and seated
themselves--some in the few chairs the room contained, some on the
table, and some on the long bench Jake had improvised with a board and
two boxes, and which threatened every moment to topple over. There were
a number of old women with sunbonnets on their heads--two or three
higher-toned ones with straw bonnets--a few younger ones with hats,
while the men and boys were all in their shirt sleeves. Some of them had
come miles that hot day to pay their last respects to Miss Dory, who,
in the room adjoining where they sat, lay in her coffin, clad, as Jake
had said, in her best gown, the white one she had worn with so much
pride the day the stranger came. She had never worn it since, but had
said to Mandy Ann a few days before she died, "I should like to be
buried in it, if you can smarten it up." And Mandy Ann who understood,
had done her best at smartening, and when Sonsie and others said it was
"yaller as saffern, an' not fittin' for a buryin'," she had washed and
ironed it, roughly, it is true, but it was white and clean, and Sonsie
was satisfied. Mandy Ann had tried to freshen the satin bows, but gave
it up, and put in their place bunches of wild flowers she had gathered
herself. With a part of the dollar given her by "the man from the Norf,"
she had commissioned Ted to buy her a ring in Jacksonville. It had
proved too small for any finger, except her little one, and she had
seldom worn it. Now, as she dressed her mistress for the last time an
idea came to her; she was a well-grown girl of sixteen, and understood
many things better than when she was younger. Going to Jake, she said,
"Ain't thar somethin' 'bout a ring in that pra'r book you got in
Richmon' an' reads on Sundays?"
"Yes, in de weddin' service," Jake replied, and Mandy continued: "Doan'
it show dey's married for shoo'!"
"For shoo? Yes. I wish Miss Dory had one," Jake answered.
Mandy Ann nodded. She had learned what she wanted to know, and going to
the little paper box where she kept her ring she took it up, looked at
it lovingly, and tried it on. She had paid fifty cents for it, and Ted
had told her the real price was a dollar, but he had got it for less,
because the jeweler was selling out. It tarnished rather easily, but she
could rub it up. It was her only ornament, and she prized it as much as
some ladies prize their diamonds, but she loved her young mistress more
than she loved the ring, and her mistress, though dead, should have it.
It needed polishing, and she rubbed it until it looked nearly as well as
when Ted brought it to her from Jacksonville.
"I wish to de Lawd I knew ef dar was any partic'lar finger," she
thought, as she stood by the coffin looking at the calm face of her
mistress.
By good luck she selected the right finger, on which the ring slipped
easily, then folding the hands one over the other, and putting in them
some flowers, which, while they did not hide the ring, covered it
partially, so that only a very close observer would be apt to think it
was not real, she said, "If you wasn't married with a ring you shall be
buried with one, an' it looks right nice on you, it do, an' I hope ole
granny Thomas'll be hyar an' see it wid her snaky eyes speerin' 'round.
Axed me oncet who I s'posed de baby's fader was, an' I tole her de
gemman from de Norf, in course, an' den made up de lie an' tole her dey
had a weddin' on de sly in Georgy--kinder runaway, an' his kin was mad
an' kep' him to home 'cept oncet when he comed hyar to see her, an' I
'clar for't I doan think she b'lieve a word 'cept that he was hyar.
Everybody knowd that. I reckon she will gin in when she see de ring."
Pleased with what she had done, Mandy Ann left the room just as the
first instalment of people arrived, and with them old granny Thomas. In
the little community of Crackers scattered through the neighborhood
there were two factions, the larger believing in Eudora, and the smaller
not willing to commit themselves until their leader Mrs. Thomas had done
so. On the strength of living in a frame house, owning two or three
negroes and a democrat wagon, she was a power among them. What she
thought some of those less favored than herself thought. When she "gave
in" they would, and not before. Up to the present time there had been no
signs of "giving in" on the part of the lady, whose shoulders still
hunched and whose head shook when Eudora was mentioned. She should go to
the funeral, in course, she said. She owed it to ole Miss Harris, and
she really had a good deal of respect for the nigger Jake. So she came
in her democrat wagon and straw bonnet, and because she was Mrs. Thomas,
walked uninvited into the room where the coffin stood, and looked at
Eudora.
"I'd forgot she was so purty. It's a good while sense I seen her," she
thought, a feeling of pity rising in her heart for the young girl whose
face had never looked fairer than it did now with the seal of death upon
it. "And s'true's I live she's got a ring on her weddin' finger! Why
didn't she never war it afore an' let it be known?" she said to herself,
stooping down to inspect the ring, which to her dim old eyes seemed like
the real coin. "She wouldn't _lie_ in her coffin, an' I b'lieve she was
good after all, an' I've been too hard on her," she continued, waddling
to a seat outside, and communicating her change of sentiment to the
woman next to her, who told it to the next, until it was pretty
generally known that "ole Miss Thomas had _gin in_, 'case Miss Dory had
on her weddin' ring."
Nearly every one else present had "gin in" long before, and now that
Mrs. Thomas had declared herself, the few doubtful ones followed her
lead, and there were only kind, pitying words said of poor Dory, as they
waited for the minister to come, and the services to begin.
CHAPTER VI
THE SERVICES
The blacks were outside the house, and the whites inside, when Jake
drove his shay to the door, and the Rev. Mr. Mason alighted, wiping the
sweat from his face and looking around with a good deal of curiosity. A
mulatto boy came forward to take charge of the mule, and Jake ushered
the minister into the room where the coffin stood, and where were the
four men he had asked to be bearers.
"I s'pose I'd or'ter of had six," he said in a whisper; "but she's so
light, four can tote her easy, an' they's all very 'spectable. No
low-downs. I means everything shall be fust-class."
Wrapped in shawls, with her head nodding up and down, old Mrs. Harris
sat, more deaf and more like a dried mummy than she had been on the
occasion of the stranger's visit. Jake had bought her an ear trumpet,
but she seldom used it, unless compelled by Mandy Ann, who now sat near
her with the little girl who, at sight of Jake, started to meet him.
But, Mandy Ann held her back and whispered, "Can't you done 'have
yerself at yer mammy's funeral an' we the only mourners?"
The child only understood that she was to keep quiet, and sat down in
her little chair, while Jake motioned to Mr. Mason that he was to see
Miss Dory.
During her illness her hair had fallen out so fast that it had been cut
off, and now lay in soft rings around her forehead, giving her more the
look of a child than of a girl of twenty, as the plate on her coffin
indicated. "Eudora, aged twenty," was all there was on it, and glancing
at it Mr. Mason wondered there was no other name. Jake saw the look and
whispered. "I wan't gwine to lie an' put on 'Eudora Harris,' for she
ain't Eudora Harris, an' I didn't know t'other name for shoo. Ain't she
lovely!"
"She is, indeed," Mr. Mason said, feeling the moisture in his eyes, as
he looked at the young, innocent face on which there was no trace of
guilt.
He was sure of that without Jake's repeated assertion, "Fo' God, it's
all right, for she tole me so. Mostly, she'd say nothin'. She'd promised
she wouldn't, but jess fo' she died she said agen to me, 'I tole him I'd
keep dark till he come for me, but it's all right. Send for Elder Covil
'crost the river. He knows.' I've tole you this afore, I reckon, but my
mind is so full I git rattled."
By this time the bent figure sitting in the rocking-chair, near the
coffin began to show signs of life and whimper a little.
"'Scuse me," Jake said, pulling a shawl more squarely around her
shoulders and straightening her up. "Mas'r Mason, this is ole Miss Lucy.
Miss Lucy, this is Mas'r Mason, come to 'tend Miss Dory's funeral. Peart
up a little, can't you, and speak to him."
There didn't seem to be much "peart up" in the woman, who began at once
to cry. Instantly Mandy Ann started up and wiped her face, and settled
her cap, and taking the trumpet screamed into it that she was to behave
herself and speak to the gemman.
"Dory's dead," she moaned, and subsided into her shawl and cap, with a
faint kind of cry.
"Dory's dead," was repeated, in a voice very different from that of the
old woman--a child's clear, sweet voice--and turning, Mr. Mason saw a
little dark-haired, dark-eyed girl standing by Mandy Ann.
Mr. Mason was fond of children, and stooping down he kissed the child,
who drew back and hid behind Jake.
"Me 'fraid," she said, covering her face with her hands, and looking
with her bright eyes through her fingers at the stranger.
Something in her eyes attracted and fascinated, and at the same time
troubled Mr. Mason, he scarcely knew why. The old grandmother was
certainly demented. The landlord had said Eudora and the whole family
were queer. Was the child going to be queer, too, and did she show it in
her eyes? They were very large and beautiful, and the long, curling
lashes, when she closed them, fell on her cheeks like those of her dead
mother, whom she resembled. She seemed out of place in her surroundings,
but he could not talk to her then. The people in the next room were
beginning to get restless, and to talk in low tones of their crops and
the weather, and the big alligator caught near the hotel. It was time to
begin, and taking the little girl in his arms, Jake motioned to Mr.
Mason. In the door between the two rooms was a stand covered with a
clean white towel. On it was a Bible, a hymn-book, a cup of water, and
two or three flowers in another cup. Mr. Mason did not need the Bible.
Jake had asked for the Resurrection and the Life, and he had brought
his prayer-book, and began the beautiful burial service of the Church,
to which the people listened attentively for a while; then they began to
get tired, and by the time the long reading was through there were
unmistakable signs of discontent among them. They had expected something
more than reading a chapter. They wanted remarks, with laudations of the
deceased. Miss Dory was worthy of them, and because there were none they
fancied the minister did not believe it was all right with her, and they
resented it. Even old Miss Thomas had "gin in," and thar was the weddin'
ring, an' no sermon,--no remarks, and they didn't like it. Another
grievance was that no hymn was given out, and there was the hymn-book at
hand. They had at least expected "Hark from the tombs," if nothing else,
but there was nothing. Singing constituted a large part of their
religious worship, and they did not mean to have Miss Dory buried
without this attention.
As Mr. Mason finished the services and sat down, he was startled with an
outburst of "Shall we meet beyond the river." Everybody joined in the
song, negroes and all, their rich, full voices dominating the others,
and making Mr. Mason thrill in every nerve as the quaint music filled
the house, and went echoing out upon the summer air. When the "Beautiful
River" was finished some one outside the door took up the refrain:
"Oh, that will be joyful, joyful, joyful;
Oh, that will be joyful,
When we meet to part no more."
This appealed to the blacks, who entered into the singing heart and
soul, some of the older ones keeping time with a swinging motion of
their bodies, and one old lady in her enthusiasm bringing down her fist
upon the doorstep, on which she was sitting, and shouting in a way which
warned Jake of danger. He knew the signs, and putting down the little
girl, who had fallen asleep in his lap, he went to the old negress, who
was beginning to get under full headway, and holding her uplifted arm,
said to her:
"Hush, Aunt Judy, hush; this ain't no place to have the pow'. This ain't
a pra'r meetin'; tis a 'Piscopal funeral, this is, such as they have in
Virginny."
What Judy might have said is uncertain, for there came a diversion in
the scene. The child had followed Jake to the door, where she stood
wide-eyed and attentive, and when the last words of the hymn ended, she
sang in a clear, shrill voice, "Be joyful when we meet to part no more."
Her voice was singularly sweet and full, and Mr. Mason said to himself,
"She'll be a singer some day, if she is not crazy first." Nothing now
could keep old Judy from one more burst, and her "Yes, thank de Lawd,
we'll meet to part no mo'," rang out like a clarion, and the religious
services were over.
There still remained what was the most interesting part to the
audience--taking leave of the corpse--and for a few minutes the sobs,
and cries, and ejaculations were bewildering to Mr. Mason, who had never
had an experience of this kind. Jake quieted the tumult as soon as
possible, reminding the people again that this was a first-class
'Piscopal funeral, such as the quality had in Virginny. The old
grandmother was led to the coffin by Mandy Ann, who shook her up and
told her to look at Miss Dory, but not cry much, if she could help it.
She didn't cry at all, but nearly every one did in the adjoining room,
where they said to each other, "Ole Miss is takin' leave and don't sense
it an atom." The little girl was held up by Jake, who made her kiss her
mother.
"Mamma's s'eep," the child said, as she kissed the pale lips which would
never smile on her again.
There was a fresh outburst of sobs and tears from the spectators, and
then the coffin was closed, and the procession took its way across the
hot sands to the little enclosure in the clearing, where other members
of the Harris family were buried. Remembering the impatience of the
people in the house, Mr. Mason wished to shorten the service at the
grave, but Jake said: "No. We'll have the whole figger for Miss Dory."
Mr. Mason went the whole figure with uncovered head under the broiling
sun, and when he was through he felt as if his brains were baked. The
Crackers did not seem to mind the heat at all. They were accustomed to
it, and after their return from the grave, stayed round until the white
mule and sail-topped shay were brought up for Mr. Mason's return to the
hotel.
As Jake was very busy, a young negro boy was sent in his place.
Naturally loquacious, he kept up a constant stream of talk, but as he
stammered frightfully the most Mr. Mason could understand was that Miss
Dory was a dandy, ole Miss 'onery, whatever that might mean, and Jake a
big head, who thought he knew everything because he was free and could
read.
The next day was Sunday, and Mr. Mason took for the subject of his
remarks in the parlor of the hotel the story of Lazarus and Dives, and
every time he spoke of Dives receiving his good things in life, he
thought of the man whom the landlord had designated a "Northern cuss";
and every time he spoke of Lazarus, he thought of poor little Dory and
that humble grave in the sands of the palmetto clearing.
It was covered before night with young dwarf palmettoes, which Mandy Ann
laid upon it with a thought that they would keep her young mistress
cool. All through the day she had restrained her feelings, because Jake
told her that was the way to do.
"Seems ef I should bust," she said to herself more than once, and when
at last the day was over, and both ole Miss and the little girl were
asleep, she stole out to the newly made grave, and lying down upon it
among the palmettoes she cried bitterly, "Oh, Miss Dory, Miss Dory, kin
you har me? It's Mandy Ann, an' I'm so sorry you're dead, an' sorry I
was so bad sometimes. I have tried to be better lately, sense I got
growed. Now, hain't I, an' I hain't tole many lies, nor tached a thing
sense I took that bill from him. _Cuss_ him, wharever he is! Cuss him
to-night, ef he's alive; an' ef his bed is soff' as wool, doan let him
sleep for thinkin' of Miss Dory. Doan let him ever know peace of min'
till he owns the 'ittle girl; though, dear Lawd, what should we do
without her--me an' Jake?"
Mandy Ann was on her knees now, with her hands uplifted, as she prayed
for _cusses_ on the man who had wrought such harm to her mistress. When
the prayer was finished she fell on her face again and sobbed, "Miss
Dory, Miss Dory, I must go in now an' see to 'ittle chile, but I hates
to leave you hyar alone in de san'. Does you know you's got on my ring?
I gin it to you, an' ole granny Thomas 'gin in' when she seed it, an'
said you mus' be good. I'se mighty glad I gin it to you. 'Twas all I had
to give, an' it will tell 'em whar you've gone that you was good."
There was a dampness in the air that night, and Mandy Ann felt it as she
rose from the grave, and brushed bits of palmetto from her dress and
hair. But she did not mind it, and as she walked to the house she felt
greatly comforted with the thought that she had _cussed_ him, and that
Miss Dory was wearing her ring as a sign that she was good, and that
"ole granny Thomas had gin in."
CHAPTER VII
COL. CROMPTON
He was young to be a colonel, but the title was merely nominal and
complimentary, and not given for any service to his country. When only
twenty-one he had joined a company of militia--young bloods like
himself--who drilled for exercise and pleasure rather than from any idea
that they would ever be called into service. He was at first captain,
then he rose to the rank of colonel, and when the company disbanded he
kept the title, and was rather proud of it, as he was of everything
pertaining to himself and the Cromptons generally. It was an old English
family, tracing its ancestry back to the days of William the Conqueror,
and boasting of two or three titles and a coat-of-arms. The American
branch was not very prolific, and so far as he knew, the Colonel was the
only remaining Crompton of that line in this country, except the son of
a half-brother. This brother, who was now dead, had married against his
father's wishes, and been cut off from the Crompton property, which, at
the old man's death, all came to the Colonel. It was a fine estate, with
a very grand house for the New England town by the sea in which it was
situated. It was built by the elder Crompton, who was born in England,
and had carried out his foreign ideas of architecture, and with its
turrets and square towers it bore some resemblance to the handsome
places he had seen at home. It was of stone, and stood upon a rise of
ground, commanding a view of the sea two miles away, and the pretty
village on the shore with a background of wooded hills stretching to the
west. It was full of pictures and bric-à-brac, and statuary from all
parts of the world, for the Colonel's father had travelled extensively,
and brought home souvenirs from every country visited. Florida had
furnished her quota, and stuffed parokeets and red birds, and a huge
alligator skin adorned the walls of the wide hall, together with antlers
and pieces of old armor, and other curios. A small fortune was yearly
expended upon the grounds which were very large, and people wondered
that the Colonel lavished so much upon what he seemed to care so little
for, except to see that it was in perfect order, without a dried leaf,
or twig, or weed to mar its beauty.
It had not always been thus with him. When he first came into possession
of the place he was just through college, and had seemed very proud and
fond of his fine estate, and had extended his hospitality freely to his
acquaintances, keeping them, however, at a certain distance, for the
Crompton pride was always in the ascendant, and he tolerated no
familiarities, except such as he chose to allow. This genial social life
lasted a few years, and then there came a change, following a part of a
winter spent in South Carolina and Georgia with his intimate friend and
college chum, Tom Hardy. Communication between the North and South was
not as frequent and direct then as it is now, and but little was known
of his doings. At first he wrote occasionally to Peter, his head
servant, to whom he entrusted the care of the house; then his letters
ceased and nothing was heard from him until suddenly, without warning,
he came home, looking much older than when he went away, and with a look
upon his face which did not leave it as the days went on.
"'Spect he had a high old time with that Tom Hardy, and is all tuckered
out," Peter said, while the Colonel, thinking he must give some reason
for his changed demeanor, said he had malaria, taken in some Southern
swamp.
If there was any disease for which Peter had a special aversion it was
malaria, which he fancied he knew how to treat, having had it once
himself. Quinine, cholagogue, and whiskey were prescribed in large
quantities, and Peter wondered why they failed to cure. He did not
suspect that the quinine went into the fire, and the cholagogue down the
drain-pipe from the washstand. The Colonel's malaria was not the kind to
be cured by drugs, and there came a day when, after the receipt of a
letter from Tom Hardy, he collapsed entirely, and Peter found him
shivering in his room, his teeth chattering, and his fingers purple with
cold.
"You have got it bad this time," Peter said, suggesting the doctor, and
more quinine and cholagogue, and a dose of Warburg's Tincture.
The Colonel declined them all. What he needed was another blanket, and
to be let alone. Peter brought the blanket and left him alone, while he
faced this new trouble which bore no resemblance to malaria. He was just
beginning to be more hopeful of the future, and had his plans all laid,
and knew what he should do and say, and now this new complication had
arisen and brushed his scheme aside. He had sown the wind and was
reaping a cyclone, and he swore to himself, and hardened his heart
against the innocent cause of his trouble, and thought once of suicide
as he had on the St. John's the year before. He spent money, just the
same, upon his handsome grounds; but it was only for the pride he had in
keeping them up, and not for any pleasure he had in them. He never
picked a flower, or sat on any of the seats under the trees, and, unless
the day was very hot, was seldom seen upon his broad piazza, where every
day Peter spread rugs and placed chairs because his master liked to see
them there, if they were not used. His library was his favorite place,
where he sat for hours reading, smoking, and thinking, no one knew of
what, or tried to know, for he was not a man to be easily approached, or
questioned as to his business. If he had malaria it clung to him year
after year, while he grew more reserved and silent, and saw less and
less of the people. Proud as Lucifer they called him, and yet, because
he was a Crompton, and because of the money he gave so freely when it
was asked for, he was not unpopular; and when the town began to grow in
importance on account of its fine beach and safe bathing, and a movement
was made to change its name from Troutburg to something less plebeian,
Crompton was suggested, and met with general approval. No one was better
pleased with the arrangement than the Colonel himself, although he did
not smile when the news was brought to him. He seldom smiled at
anything, but there was a kindling light in his eyes, and his voice
shook a little as he thanked the committee who waited upon him. To be
known as "Col. Crompton of Crompton" was exceedingly gratifying to his
vanity, and seemed in a way to lift the malarious cloud from him for a
time at least.
It was more than three years since Tom Hardy's letter had thrown him
into a chill, and everything as yet was quiet. Nothing had come from the
South derogatory to him, and he had almost made himself believe that
this state of things might go on for years, perhaps forever, though that
was scarcely possible. At all events he'd wait till the storm burst, and
then meet it somehow. He was a Crompton and had faith in himself, and
the faith was increased by the compliment paid by his townspeople; and
as he was not one to receive a favor without returning it, he conceived
the idea of giving an immense lawn-party, to which nearly everybody
should be invited. He had shut himself up too much, he thought--he must
mingle more with the people, and build around himself a wall so strong
that nothing in the future could quite break it down.
Peter and the rest of his servants were consulted and entered heartily
into his plan. Cards of invitation were issued bearing the Crompton
monogram, and a notice inserted in the daily paper to the effect that
any who failed to receive a card were to know it was a mistake, and come
just the same. There was a great deal of excitement among the people,
for it had been a long time since any hospitality had been extended to
them, and they were eager to go, knowing that something fine was to be
expected, as the Colonel never did anything by halves. The day of the
lawn-party was perfect--neither too hot nor too cold--and the sun which
shone upon that humble funeral in the palmetto clearing shone upon a
very different scene in the Crompton grounds, where the people began to
assemble as early as one o'clock. The grass on the lawn was like velvet,
without a stick or stone to be seen, for two gardeners had been at work
upon it since sunrise, cutting and raking, and sprinkling, until it was
as fresh as after a soft summer shower. The late roses and white lilies
were in full bloom, the latter filling the air with a sweet odor and
making a lovely background. There were tables and chairs under the
maples and elms, and rugs and pieces of carpet wherever there was a
suspicion of dampness in the ground. There was a brass band in one part
of the grounds, and a string band in another, where the young people
danced under the trees. Refreshments were served at five o'clock, and
the festivities were kept up till the sun went down, and half the
children were sick from overeating--the mothers were tired, and some of
the men a little shaky in their legs, and thick in their speech, from a
too frequent acquaintance with the claret punch which stood here and
there in great bowls, free as water, and more popular. The crowning
event of the day came when the hundreds of lanterns were lighted on the
piazzas and in the trees, and every window in the house blazed with
candles placed in so close proximity to each other, that objects could
be plainly seen at some distance.
The Colonel was going to make a speech, and he came out upon an upper
balcony, where the light from ten tall lamps fell full upon him,
bringing out every feature of his face distinctly. He was rather pale
and haggard, but the people were accustomed to that, and charged it to
the malaria. He was very distinguished looking, they thought, as they
stood waiting for him to commence his speech. All the afternoon he had
been the most courteous of hosts--a little too patronizing, perhaps, for
that was his way, but very polite, with a pleasant word for every one.
He knew he was making an impression, and felt proud in a way as Crompton
of Crompton, when he stepped out upon the balcony and saw the eager,
upturned faces, and heard the shout which greeted him. And still there
was with him a feeling of unrest--a presentiment that on his horizon,
seemingly so bright, a dark cloud was lowering, which might at any
moment burst upon the head he held so high. He was always dreading it,
but for the last few days the feeling had been stronger until now it was
like a nightmare, and his knees shook as he bowed to the people
confronting him and filling the air with cheers.
No contrast could have been greater than that between the scene on which
he looked down--the park, the flowers, the fountains, and the
people--and the palmetto clearing in far away Florida. He did not know
of the funeral and the group assembled around the log-cabin. But he knew
of the clearing. He had been there, and always felt his blood tingle
when he thought of it, and it was the picture of it which had haunted
him all day, and which came and stood beside him, shutting out
everything else, as he began to thank the people for the honor conferred
upon him by calling the town by his name.
He didn't deserve it, he said. He didn't deserve anything from anybody.
"Yes, you do," went up from a hundred throats, for under the influence
of the good cheer and the attention paid them the man was for the time
being a hero.
"No, I don't," he continued. "I am a morally weak man--weaker than
water where my pride is concerned--and if you knew me as I know myself
you would say I was more deserving of tar and feathers than the honor
you have conferred upon me."
This was not at all what he intended to say, but the words seemed forced
from him by that picture of the palmetto clearing standing so close to
him. His audience did not know what he meant. So far as they knew he had
been perfectly upright, with no fault but his pride and coldness by
which he came rightfully as a Crompton. He must have visited the punch
bowls too often, they thought, and didn't know what he was talking
about. After a pause, during which he was trying to thrust aside the
clearing, and the log-house, and the old woman in her chair, and Mandy
Ann, and to pull himself together, he went on to say:
"You have been for a long time discussing the site of a new
school-house, in place of the old one which stands so near the marshes,
that it is a wonder your children have not all died with fever and ague.
Some of you want it on the hill--some under the hill--some in one place,
and some in another. Nobody wants it near his own premises. A
school-house with a lot of howling children is not a desirable neighbor
to most people. For my part I don't object to it. I like children."
Here he stopped suddenly as the image of a child he had never seen came
before him and choked his utterance, while the people looked at each
other, and wondered how long he had been so fond of children. It was
generally conceded that he did not care for them--disliked them in
fact--and he had never been known to notice one in any way. Surely he
had been too near the claret bowls. He detected the thought of those
nearest to him, and continued:
"I am not one to show all I feel. It is not my nature. I am interested
in children, and as proof of it I will tell you my plan. There are two
acres of land on the south side of the park. I fenced it off for an
artificial pond, but gave it up. There is a spring of good water there,
with plenty of shade trees for the children to play under. I will give
this land for the new school-house."
Here he was obliged to stop, the cheers were so deafening. When they
subsided he went on rapidly:
"I will build the house, too. Such an one as will not shame District No.
5 in Crompton. It shall be a model house, well lighted and ventilated,
with broad, comfortable seats, especially for the little ones, whose
feet shall touch the floor. It shall be commenced at once, and finished
before the winter term."
He bowed and sat down, white and perspiring at every pore, and hardly
knowing to what he had committed himself. The cheers were now a roar
which went echoing out into the night, and were heard nearly as far as
the village on the beach, the people wondering more and more at his
generosity, and sudden interest in their little ones. And no one
wondered more than himself. He did not care a picayune for children, nor
whether their feet touched the floor or not, and he had not intended
pledging himself to build the house when he began. But as he talked, the
palmetto clearing stared him in the face, shutting out everything from
his vision, except a long seat directly in front of him, on which
several little girls whose feet could not touch the ground were fast
asleep, their heads falling over upon each other, and the last one
resting upon the arm of the settee. It was a pretty picture, and stirred
in him feelings he had never experienced before. He would do something
for the children, expiatory, he said to himself, as he sat down,
thinking he ought to be the proudest and happiest of men to have the
town called for him, and to stand so high in the esteem of his fellow
citizens. What would they say if they knew what he did, and how cowardly
he was because of his pride. Sometime they must know. It could not be
otherwise, but he would put off the evil day as long as he could, and
when, at last, his guests began to leave, and he went down to bid them
good-night, his head was high with that air of patronage and superiority
natural to him, and which the people tolerated because he was Col.
Crompton.
That night he had a chill--the result of so much excitement to which he
was not accustomed, he said to Peter, who brought him a hot-water bag
and an extra blanket, and would like to have suggested his favorite
remedies, quinine and cholagogue, but experience had taught him wisdom,
and putting down the hot-water bag and blanket, he left the room with a
casual remark about the fine day, and how well everything had passed
off, "only a few men a little boozy," he said, "and three or four
children with bruised heads caused by a fall from a swing."
The lawn-party had been a great success, and the Colonel knew he ought
to be the happiest man in town, whereas he was the most miserable. He
could not hear Mandy Ann's curses as she knelt on her mistress's grave,
nor see her dusky arms swaying in the darkness to emphasize her
maledictions. He didn't know there was a grave, but something weighed
him down with unspeakable remorse. Every incident of his first visit
South came back to him with startling vividness, making him wonder why
God had allowed him to do what he had done. Then he remembered his trip
on the "Hatty," when he kept himself aloof from everybody, with a morbid
fear lest he should see some one who knew him, or had heard of him, or
would meet him again. He remembered the log-house and his supper, when
Mandy Ann served from a dinner-plate, and his napkin was a pocket
handkerchief. He remembered the mumbling old woman in her chair; but
most of all he remembered the girl who sat opposite him. Her face was
always with him, and it came before him now, just as it was in the
moonlight, when she said: "You can trust me. I will do the best I can."
She had stood with her hands upon the fence and he saw them as they
looked then, and holding up his own he said, "They were little brown
hands, but they should have been white like mine. Poor Dory!"
There was a throb of pity in his heart as his remorse increased, and the
hot night seemed to quiver with the echo of Mandy Ann's "cuss him, cuss
him wherever he may be, and if his bed is soff as wool doan' let him
sleep a wink." His bed was soft as wool, but it had no attraction for
him, and he sat with his hot-water bag and blanket until his chill
passed, and was succeeded by a heat which made him put blanket and bag
aside, and open both the windows of his room. The late moon had risen
and was flooding the grounds with its light, bringing out distinctly the
objects nearest to him. Some tables and chairs were left standing, a few
lanterns were hanging in the trees, and in front of him was the long
bench on which the little girls had been sleeping, with their feet from
the ground, when he made his speech. The sight of this brought to his
mind the day three years before when, just as his plans were perfected,
there had come a letter which made him stagger as from a heavy blow,
while all around him was chaos, dark and impenetrable. In most men the
letter would have awakened a feeling of tenderness, but he was not like
most men. He was utterly selfish, and prouder than any Crompton in the
long line of that proud race, and, instead of tenderness or pity, he
felt an intense anger against the fate which had thus dealt with him
when he was trying to do right.
What to do next was the question, which Tom Hardy, as cold and unfeeling
as himself, answered for him.
"You are in an awful mess," he wrote, "and the only course I see is to
keep them supplied with money, and let things run until they come to a
focus, as I suppose they must, though they may not. Florida is a long
ways from Massachusetts. Few Northerners ever go to Enterprise, and if
they do they may not hear of the clearing and its inmates. The girl is
not over-bright. I beg your pardon, but she isn't, and will be apt to be
quiet when she makes up her mind that she is deserted. The only one you
have to fear is that nigger, Jake; but I reckon we can manage him; so
cheer up and never make such an infernal fool of yourself again."
Something in this letter had grated on the Colonel's feelings--the
reference to the girl, perhaps--but he had decided to follow Tom's
advice, and let things run until they came to a focus. They had run
pretty smoothly for three years, and only a few letters, forwarded by
his friend who now lived in Palatka, and kept a kind of oversight of the
clearing, came to trouble him. These he always burned, but he could not
forget, and the past was always with him, not exactly as it was on the
night after his lawn-party, when it seemed to him that all the powers of
the bottomless pit had united against him, and if ever a man expiated
his wrong-doing in remorse and mental pain he was doing it. The
laudations of the crowd which had cheered him so lustily were of no
account, nor the honor conferred by giving the town his name. Nothing
helped him as he stood with the sweat rolling down his face, and looked
out upon his handsome grounds, which he did not see because of the
palmetto clearing, and the little child, and the young mother on whose
grave the moon was shining. Mandy Ann's curse was surely taking effect,
for no sleep came to him that night, and the next day found him worn and
pale, and when Peter, sure of a malarious attack worse than usual,
ventured to offer his cholagogue and quinine, he was sworn at, and told
to take himself off with his infernal drugs.
"I am tired with yesterday's mob. I shall be better when I am rested,
and get the taste out of my mouth of Tom, Dick, and Harry tramping over
the premises," he thought.
This was not very complimentary to the Tom's, and Dick's, and Harry's
who had tramped through his grounds, but they did not know his thoughts,
and were full of the lawn-party, and the new school-house, the work on
which was commenced early in August, when a large number of men
appeared, and were superintended and urged on by the Colonel himself.
He did not work, but he was there every day, issuing orders and making
suggestions, and in this way managing to dissipate in part the cloud
always hanging over him, and which before long was to assume a form
which he could not escape.
CHAPTER VIII
THE CHILD OF THE CLEARING
The school-house was finished, and was a model of comfort and
convenience. It was well lighted and ventilated, and every child of
whatever age could touch its feet to the floor. If it were in any sense
expiatory, it had proven a success, for the palmetto clearing did not
haunt the Colonel as it had done on the day of the lawn-party. It was a
long time since he had heard from there, and he was beginning to wonder
if anything had happened, when Peter brought him an odd-looking letter,
directed wrong side up, written with a pencil, and having about it a
faint perfume of very bad tobacco. It was addressed to "Mr. Kurnal
Krompton, Troutberg, Mass." The writer evidently did not know of the
recent change of name, and the letter had been long on the way, but had
reached its destination at last, and was soiled and worn, and very
second-class in its appearance, Peter decided, as he took it from the
office and studied it carefully. No such missive had, to his knowledge,
ever before found its way into the aristocratic precincts of Crompton
Place. If it had he had not seen it, and he wondered who could have sent
this one. He found his master taking his breakfast, and, holding the
letter between his thumb and fingers, as if there were contamination in
its touch, he handed it to him.
"Fairly turned speckled when he looked at it," Peter thought, as he left
the room. "Wish I had seen where it was mailed."
An hour later, Jane, the housemaid, came to him and said, "The Colonel
wants you."
Peter found him in his bedroom, packing a satchel with a shaking hand
and a face more speckled than it had been when he read the letter.
"Peter," he said, "fold up these shirts for me, and put in some collars
and socks. I am going on a little trip, and may be gone two weeks, maybe
more. Hold your tongue."
When he wished Peter to be particularly reticent, he told him to hold
his tongue. Peter understood, and held it, and finished packing the
satchel, ordered the carriage for the eleven o'clock train, and saw his
master off, without knowing where he was going, except that his ticket
was for New York.
"That smelly letter has something to do with it, of course," he said. "I
wish I knew where it was from."
He was arranging the papers on the library table, when he stopped
suddenly with an exclamation of surprise, for there, under his hand, lay
the smelly letter, which the Colonel had forgotten to put away.
"Phew! I thought I got a whiff of something bad," he said, and read
again the superscription, with a growing contempt for the writer.
"Nobody will know if I read it, and I shall hold my tongue, as usual,"
he thought, his curiosity at last overcoming his sense of honor.
Opening the envelope, he took out the piece of foolscap, on which was
neither date nor name of place.
"Kurnal Krompton," it began. "Yer fren' in Palatky done gone to Europe.
He tole me yer name 'fore he went, an' so I rite meself to tell you Miss
Dory's ded, an' ole Miss, too. She done dide a week ago, an' Miss Dory
las' July. What shal I do wid de chile? I shood of rit when Miss Dory
dide, but Mandy Ann an' me--you 'members Mandy Ann--sed how you'd be
comin' to fotch her rite away, an' we cuddent bar to part wid her whilst
ole Miss lived. But now she's done ded de chile doan or'to be brung up
wid Crackers an' niggers, an' den dar's de place belonged to ole Miss,
an' dar's Mandy Ann. She doan' or'ter be sole to nobody. I'd buy her an'
set her free ef I had de money, but I hain't. She's a rale purty
chile--de little girl. You mite buy Mandy Ann an' take her for lil
chile's nuss. Jake Harris."
"Jerusalem!" Peter exclaimed. "Here's a go. Who is Miss Dory? Some
trollop, of course--and she is dead, and old Miss, too. Who is old Miss?
and who is Mandy Ann the Colonel is to buy? I'd laugh, rank Abolitionist
as he is! And what will he do with a child? Crackers and niggers? What
is a Cracker?"
Peter had no opinion on that head. He knew what a nigger was, and at
once detected another odor besides bad tobacco, and opened the window to
air the room. Then he began to study the postmark to see where the
letter came from. It was not very clear, and it took him some time to
make out "Palatka, Fla." The latter baffled him, it was so illegible,
but he was sure of "Palatka," and wondered where it was. Hunting up an
atlas, he went patiently through State after State, till he found
Palatka, on the St. John's River, Florida.
"Florida! That's where he's gone. There are niggers enough there, but
who the Crackers are is beyond me," Peter said. "I believe I'll copy
this, letter."
He did copy it, and then waited for developments.
Meanwhile the Colonel was hurrying South as fast as steam could take
him. Arrived in New York, he found himself in time to take a boat bound
for Savannah, and shutting himself up in his stateroom sat down to
analyze his feelings, and solve the problem which had for so long been
confronting him. A part of it was solved for him. Eudora was dead; but
there was the child. Something must be done with her, and Jake's words
kept repeating themselves in his mind:
"She doan or'ter be brung up wid Crackers an' niggers."
"No, she don't or'ter," the Colonel thought, involuntarily adopting
Jake's dialect; but what to do with her was the question.
If Tom Hardy had been home he would have consulted him, but Tom was
away, and he must face the difficulty alone, knowing perfectly well what
his duty was, and finally making up his mind to do it. If he chose to
adopt a child it was no one's business. As a Crompton he was above
caring for gossip or public opinion. To be sure the child would be a
nuisance, and a constant reminder of what he would like to forget; but
it was right, and he owed it to the mother to care for her little girl.
He began to think a good deal of himself for this kind of reasoning, and
by the time he reached Jacksonville he had made up his mind that he was
a pretty nice man after all, and felt happier than he had in years.
Death had closed one page of his life, and the distance between Florida
and Massachusetts would close the other, and he was much like himself
when he at last stepped on board the "Hatty," and started up the river.
There was room for him at the Brock House this time, and he registered
his name. "Col. James Crompton, Crompton, Mass.," and said he had come
to look after a family in the palmetto clearing, Harris was the name,
and through a friend he was interested in them. The landlord was not the
same who had been there on the occasion of the Colonel's first visit,
but he knew something about the clearing, and volunteered whatever
information he had concerning the family, speaking of the recent death
of the demented old woman, and of the little child left to the care of
two negroes, and saying, he hoped the gentleman had come to take it to
its friends, if it had any.
The Colonel bowed and said that was his business, and early the next
morning started on foot along the road he had trodden twice before, and
which brought Eudora before him so vividly that it seemed as if she were
walking at his side, and once, as some animal ran through the bushes
near the grave at the turn of the road, he started at the sound as if it
had been the rustle of Eudora's white dress as he heard it that day. He
was beginning to get nervous, and by the time the clearing was reached
he was as cold as he had been at home, when Peter brought him the
hot-water bag and blanket. He noticed the improvements which had been
made in the place since he was there last, and knew it was Jake's
handiwork. He had never seen the man, and shrank a little from meeting
him, knowing how infinitely superior to himself in a moral way the poor
African was. He remembered Mandy Ann perfectly, and recognized her as
she came to the door, shading her eyes with her hand to look at him;
then she disappeared suddenly, and Jake, who was at the rear of the
house, fixing a barrel to catch rain-water, was clutched by the arm, and
nearly thrown backwards, as the girl exclaimed: "For the Lawd's sake,
Jake, it's comin'--it's comin'--it's hyar!"
"What's comin'? The las' day, that you look so skeered?" Jake said,
while Mandy Ann continued: "De man from de Norf, Cunnel Crompton, you
call him--done come for lill chile!"
She put her apron over her face and began to cry, while Jake wiped his
hands, and hurrying round the house, met the Colonel just as he reached
the door. There was not the least servility in Jake's manner, although
it was respectful, as he said, "How d'ye, Mas'r Crompton. I'm shoo it's
you, an' I'se right glad to see you, though I 'spects you done come for
the lill chile, an' I feel fit to bust when I think of partin' wid her.
Walk in, walk in; take a cheer, an' I'll sen' Mandy Ann for de lill
chile. She's in de play-house I made her, jess dis side de graves, whar
she sits an' plays. Thar's a tree thar an' she calls it de shady."
"Thanks!" the Colonel said, taking a chair, while Jake went for Mandy
Ann, and found her struggling with the child, not far from the door.
The _chile_ had seen the stranger as soon as Mandy Ann; and as visitors
were rare at the cabin, and she was fond of society, she left her sand
pies, and her slice of bread and molasses, and started for the house,
meeting Mandy Ann, who seized her, saying, "Come an' have on a clean
frock and be _wassed_. Your face is all sticky, an' han's, too--an' de
gemman from de Norf, de Cunnel, is hyar."
As it happened, the _chile_ didn't approve of changing her dress and
having her face washed. She was in a hurry to see the gentleman, and she
pulled back, and fought, and called Mandy Ann an "ole nigger," and told
her to "leg-go," and finally wrenched herself free, and ran like a
little spider to the house, and into the room where the Colonel was
sitting. Starting to his feet he stood looking down at the mite staring
at him with her great dark eyes, in which was a look which had puzzled
the Rev. Mr. Mason when he saw her at her mother's funeral. She was a
very pretty child, with a round, chubby face just now smeared with
molasses, as were her fat little hands, while her dress, open at the
back, showed signs of the sand and water with which it had come in
contact. And she stood, holding the Colonel with her eyes, until he
began to feel cold again, and to think of his hot-water bag. He did not
care for children, and this one--
"Heavens!" he thought to himself. "Can I do it? Yes, I must!"
Then, putting out his hand, he said, "Little girl, will you shake hands
with me."
Nothing abashed she was going forward, when Mandy Ann rushed in and
pulled her back, exclaiming: "Oh, sar, not wid dem han's; dey mus' be
wassed."
"You ole Mandy Ann nigger, you lemme be. I won't be wassed," was the
sharp reply, and the dark eyes flashed with a fire which made the
Colonel think of himself when roused, and he began to feel a good deal
of respect for the spoiled tyrant.
"Little girl," he said, very gently, but firmly, "Go with Mandy and be
washed, and then come and see--" he came very near saying "see what I
have brought you," without at all knowing why it should have come into
his mind.
It had never occurred to him to bring her anything, but he wished now
that he had, and began to wonder what he had that would please a child.
He was fond of jewelry, and wore on his watch-chain several ornaments,
and among them a very small, delicately carved book in ivory. He could
detach it easily, and he began to do so, while the child eyed him
curiously. She had seen very few gentlemen, and this one attracted her,
he was so tall and imposing; and when he said again, "Go and be washed,"
she obeyed him, and the Colonel was a second time alone, for Jake was
making his ablutions, and changing his working clothes for his best, in
which he looked very respectable, when he at last rejoined his guest,
and began at once in a trembling voice to speak of the business which
had brought the Colonel there.
CHAPTER IX
THE COLONEL AND JAKE
"I 'lowed you had the best right to her because 'twas you that sent the
money," he said.
The Colonel neither assented nor dissented, and Jake went on: "Thar is
nobody else. Miss Dory never tole nothin'; she was silent as de grave
about--him--de fader of de lill chile, I mean. 'It's all right,' she'd
say. 'I tole him I wouldn't tell till he came--an' I won't--but, it's
all right. Elder Covil knows--send for him.' That's just afore she
died."
"And did you send for him?" the Colonel asked with some alarm, and Jake
replied: "I went for him an' he wasn't thar--had moved off--an' another
gemman, the Rev. Mr. Charles Mason, what I foun' at the hotel, 'tended
de buryin' with his pra'r book, 'case I wanted somethin' 'bout de
Resurrection an' de Life. 'Twas as fust class a funeral as we could have
out hyer. She wore her white gown--the one Mandy Ann says she wore when
you war hyer. You members it?"
The Colonel nodded, and Jake, thinking he could do nothing better than
repeat all the particulars, went on: "She had a nice coffin from
Palatka, an' Mandy Ann done fixed her rale nice, wid flowers in her
han's, an' on her bosom, an', does you 'member givin' Mandy Ann a dollar
when you's here afore?"
Again the Colonel nodded and Jake went on: "Well, she done bought a
ring wid some of it--not rale gold, you know, but looked most like
it--an' what do you think Mandy Ann did, as the last thing she could do
for Miss Dory?"
Jake was growing excited, and the Colonel nervous, as the negro
continued: "It was too small for her, to be shue, but she thought a
sight on't, but more of Miss Dory's good name."
There was a great ridge in the Colonel's forehead, between his eyes, as
he repeated, "Her good name?"
"Yes, sar," Jake answered. "What could you 'spec when dar's a lill
chile, and no fader for shoo, as anybody knows, but me an' Mandy Ann,
an' Mas'r Hardy. Naterally they'd talk. But I 'shured 'em 'twas all
right, an' knocked down one or two Crackers what grinned when I tole
'em, an' Mandy Ann did a power of fitin'. She's great at it--jess like a
cat, an' we got 'em pretty much all under, except a few ole women, who
never quite gin in till de last. Ole granny Thomas was de worst, an' de
rest follered her; but she gin in when she seen de ring Mandy Ann
slipped on Miss Dory's weddin' finger, an' dar wasn't a s'picion on de
lam' as she lay in her coffin."
The Colonel's lips moved spasmodically, while Jake continued: "Thar was
a right smart of 'em hyar, an' the minister read from de pra'r book jest
as I seen 'em in Virginny 'mongst de quality, an' when de blacks set up
a singin' so loud that ole Aunt Judy nighly had de pow'--dat's a kind of
fit, you know, when dey gits to feelin' like kingdom come--I stopped
her. I was boun' to have de funeral fust class. When ole Miss died, I
let 'em have dar way, an' ole Aunt Judy had de pow' till her missus, who
was hyar, shook her out on't. That was ole Miss Thomas, who stood out
agin Miss Dory till she seen de ring. She says to me, says she, 'Does
you know whar de chile's fader is?' an' says I, 'S'posin' I do?' 'Then
sen' for him,' says she. 'Tain't fittin' de chile to stay on hyar.' 'I'm
gwine to sen',' says I, an' I did, an' you've done come. Is you gwine to
take her?"
Jake's broad chest heaved as he asked this question, to which the
Colonel replied, "That is what I came for."
Jake had assumed that he was the child's father, and he did not
contradict him, but said, "You call her the child. Has she no name?"
"Yes, Dory; dat's what her mother called her, but to me dar's only one
Dory, an' she's dead, an' 'twas handy to say de _lill chile_ or _honey_.
Is you gwine to take her right away?"
"Yes, when the 'Hatty' goes back," the Colonel replied, with a feeling
of pity for the negro, whose face was quivering, and whose voice shook
as he said, "It's best, I s'pose, but 'twill be mighty lonesome hyar,
with the chile gone from de 'shady' whar she plays, an' from de cradle
whar I rocks her, an' from dese arms what totes her many a time, when
she goes through de clarin' in de woods. You wouldn't be wantin' me an
Mandy Ann to go wid you? De chile is wonderfully 'tached to us, an' has
some spells only we can manage."
The Colonel shook his head. Jake and Mandy Ann knew too much for him to
take them North. The child would soon forget its surroundings. People
would stop wondering after a while, and the past would be bridged over,
as far as was possible. On the whole the future looked brighter than it
had done for years, and on this account the Colonel could afford to be
very suave and gentle with this poor negro.
"No, Jake," he said, very kindly. "You would not be happy at the North,
it is so different from the South. I cannot take you, nor Mandy Ann, but
I shall reward you for all you have done for the child, and for her
mother."
The last words came slowly, and there was a kind of tremor in the
Colonel's voice.
"I 'specs you are right," Jake said meekly; "but it'll be mighty hard,
an' what's gwine to become of Mandy Ann? Who does she 'long to, now Miss
Dory an' ole Miss is both dead? I 'longs to myself, but what of Mandy
Ann?"
Here was a problem the Colonel had not thought of. But his mind worked
rapidly and clearly, and he soon reached a decision, but before he could
speak of it the child appeared. It had taken a long time to wash and
dress her, for the little hands were grimy, and the face very sticky,
and a good deal of scrubbing had been necessary, with a good deal of
squabbling, too--and the Colonel had heard some of the altercations--the
child's voice the louder, as she protested against the soap and water
used so freely. Jake had closed one of the doors to shut out the noise,
saying as he did so, "She's got a heap of sperrit, but not from de
Harrises, dey hadn't an atom."
It did not puzzle the Colonel at all to know where the _sperrit_ came
from, and he did not like the child the less because of it. She was in
the room now, scrubbed till her face shone, and her hair, which was
curly, lay in rings upon her forehead. Mandy Ann had put on her best
frock, a white one, stiff with starch, and standing out like a small
balloon. The Colonel liked her better in the limp, soiled gown, as he
had seen her first, but she was clean, and she came to him and put up
her hand as Mandy Ann had told her to do. It was a little soft, fat,
baby hand, such as the Colonel had never touched in his life, and he
took it and held it a moment, while the old malarious feeling crept over
him, and he could have sworn that the thermometer, which, when he left
the "Hatty" had stood at seventy-five, had fallen to forty degrees. As a
quietus during the washing, Mandy Ann had suggested that "mabby de
gemman done brung somethin'," and remembering this the little girl at
once asked, "Has you done brung me sumptin'? Mandy Ann tole me so."
The Colonel's thermometer dropped lower still at the speech, so
decidedly African, and his pride rose up in rebellion, and his heart
sank, as in fancy he heard this dialect in his Northern home. But he
must bear it, and when, as he did not at once respond to her question,
she said, "Has you done brung me sumptin'?" he was glad he had removed
the little ivory book from his watch-chain. It was something, and he
gave it to her, saying, "This is for you--a little book. Do you know
what a book is?"
She was examining the ornament on the back of which was carved a
miniature bar of music, with three or four notes. The child had seen
written music in a hymn-book, which belonged to her mother, and from
which she had often pretended to sing, when she played at a _funeral_,
or prayer meeting, as she sometimes did under the _shady_. Jake had not
spoken of this habit to the Colonel. He was waiting to take him to the
graves, and the play-house near them, and he was watching the child as
she examined the carving. Lifting up her bright eyes to the Colonel,
she said, "Moosich--me sing," and a burst of childish song rang through
the room--part of a negro melody, and "Me wants to be an angel"
alternating in a kind of melody, to which the Colonel listened in
wonder.
"Me done sing dood," she said, and her eyes shone and flashed, and her
bosom rose and fell, as if she were standing before an audience, sure of
success and applause.
Jake did clap his hands when she finished, and said to the Colonel, "She
done goes on dat way very often. She's wonderful wid her voice an' eyes.
'Specs she'll make a singer. She's a little quar--dem Harrises--"
Here he stopped suddenly, and asked, "Is you cole?" as he saw the
Colonel shiver. He knew the Harrises were _quar_, and this dark-haired,
dark-eyed child singing in a shrill, high-pitched, but very sweet voice,
seemed to him uncanny, and he shrank from her as she said. "Me sing some
mo'."
Jake now interfered, saying, "No, honey; we're gwine to yer mother's
grave."
"Me go, too," the child answered, slipping her hand into the Colonel's
and leading the way to a little enclosure where the Harrises were
buried.
The Colonel felt _quar_ with that hand holding his so tight, and the
child hippy-ty-hopping by his side over the boards Jake had put down for
a walk to the graveyard.
"Dis mine. Me play here," the child said, more intent upon her
play-house than upon her mother's grave.
The play-house was a simple affair, which Jake had constructed. There
were two pieces of board for a floor, and a small bench for a table, on
which were bits of broken cups and saucers, the slice of bread and
molasses the child had left when she went to see the stranger, a rag
doll, fashioned from a cob, with a cloth head stuffed with bran, and a
book, soiled and worn as from frequent usage. The child made the Colonel
look at the doll which she called Judy, "after ole mammy Judy, who came
nigh havin' de pow' at de funeral, an' who done made it for her," Jake
explained. The book--a child's reader--was next taken up, the little
girl saying, "Mamma's book--me read," and opening it she made a pretense
of reading something which sounded like "Now I lay me." The Colonel, who
had freed his hand from the fingers which had held it so fast, looked
inquiringly at Jake, who said, "Miss Dory's book; she done read it a
sight, 'case 'twas easier readin' dan dem books from Palatka; an' she
could larn somethin' from it, but de long words floored her an' me, too,
who tried to help her."
For a moment the Colonel seemed agitated, and taking the book from the
child he said, "Can I have it?"
"No, sar!" Jake answered emphatically. "I wouldn't part wid it for de
world. It's a part of Miss Dory, an' she tried so hard to read good an'
be a lady. Mandy Ann lived a spell wid de quality, an' got some o' dar
ways, an' I got some in Virginny, an' we tole 'em to her, an' she done
tried till towards de las' she gin it up. ''Taint no use,' she said to
me. 'I'm 'scouraged. I can never be a lady. Ef he comes after I'm dead,
tell him I tried an' couldn't.' She meant the chile's fader, her
husband. Ain't you her husband?"
It was a direct question, and Jake's honest eyes were looking steadily
at the Colonel, whose lips were white, and opened and shut two or three
times before he answered, "I am nobody's husband, and never shall be. I
knew your young mistress, and was interested in her, and shall care for
the child. Don't ask me any more questions."
Up to this moment Jake had felt quite softened towards the man he had
once thought to kill. But now he wanted to knock him down, but
restrained himself with a great effort, and answered, "I axes yer
pardon, but I'se allus thought so--an'--an'--I thinks so still."
To this there was no reply, and Jake, who had sent home his shaft, which
he knew was making the proud man quiver, spoke next of a monument for
Miss Dory, and asked where he'd better get it.
"Where you think best," the Colonel answered. "Only get a good one, and
send the bill to me."
"Yes, sar; thank'ee, Mas'r," Jake said, beginning to feel somewhat less
like knocking the Colonel down. "What shall I put on it?" he asked, and
the Colonel replied, "What was on her coffin?"
"Jess 'Eudora, aged twenty.' I didn' know no odder name--las' name, I
mean. I was shue 'twan't Harris."
"Put the same on the monument," the Colonel said; "and, Jake, keep the
grave up. She was a good girl."
"Fo' de Lawd, I knows dat, an' I thank'ee, Mas'r, for sayin' dem words
by de grave whar mabby she done har'em; thank'ee."
The tears were in Jake's eyes, as he grasped the Colonel's hand and
looked into the face which had relaxed from its sternness, and was
quivering in every muscle. The proud man was moved, and felt that if he
were alone he would have knelt in the hot sand by Eudora's grave, and
asked pardon for the wrong he had done her. But Jake was there, and the
child looking on with wide-open eyes, and though she did not understand
what was said she knew that Jake was crying, and charged it to the
stranger--"the bad man, to make Shaky cry--I hates 'oo," she said,
beginning to strike at him.
"Hush! honey, hush!" Jake said, while the Colonel began to feel the need
of several hot-water bags as he went back to the house where Mandy Ann,
remembering the hospitable ways at Miss Perkins's when people called,
had set out for him the best the house afforded, including the china
plate he remembered so well.
He felt that to eat would choke him, but forced himself to take a sip of
coffee and a bit of corn bread. The little girl had remained behind in
her play-house, and he was glad of that. She was a restraint upon him.
He wanted to talk business, and he did not know how much she would
understand. When her great bright eyes were on him he felt nervous as if
she were reading his thoughts, and was more himself with her away. He
must talk about her and her going with him on the "Hatty," and Jake
listened with a swelling heart, and Mandy Ann with her apron over her
head to hide her tears. They knew it must be, and tried to suppress
their feelings.
"It's like takin' my life," Jake said, "but it's for de best. Miss Dory
would say so, but, Mas'r Crompton, you'll fotch her back sometime to de
ole place. You'll tell her of her mudder, an' me, an' Mandy Ann. You
won't let her done forget."
Nothing could be further from the Colonel's intentions than to let the
child come back, and everything he could do to make her forget was to be
done, but he could not say so to Jake, and with some evasive answer he
hurried on to business, and spoke of the house and clearing, which now
by right of inheritance belonged to the child. As he assumed her
guardianship he should also assume an oversight of her property, and it
was his wish that Jake should stay on the place, receiving a certain sum
yearly for his services, and having all he could make besides. For
anything of his own which he had spent on the clearing he was to be
repaid, and all the money Eudora had put by was to be his. Jake felt
like a millionaire, and expressed his thanks with choking sobs. Then,
glancing at Mandy Ann, he asked as he had asked before, "An' what 'bout
Mandy Ann? I 'longs to myself, but who's she 'long to, now ole Miss an'
young Miss is dead?"
"Yes, who's nigger be I? Whar am I gwine?" Mandy Ann cried, jerking her
apron from her head.
"In the natural sequence of things you belong to the little girl," the
Colonel replied, adding, "I might buy you--"
But he got no further. All of Mandy Ann's animosity, when Ted suggested
that the man from the North had come to buy her, and she had begged her
mistress to save her from such a fate, had returned, and she exclaimed
vehemently, "Fo' de Lawd, not dat ar. Lemme stay hyar. You 'members Ted,
de colored boy on de 'Hatty.' We's kep' company, off an' on, a year,
sometimes quarrelin', and den makin' up. I can't leave Ted."
Her soul was in her eyes, as she begged for herself and Ted, and the
Colonel hastened to say, "You did not let me finish. I couldn't buy you,
if I would, and if I did I'd set you free. I will see that this is done
some time."
"Bress you, Mas'r, for dat ar," Mandy Ann began, but the Colonel stopped
her by saying, "You are young to be keeping company."
"I'se 'most as ole as Miss Dory when lill chile was born," was the
reply, which silenced the Colonel with regard to her age.
He had quite a liking for Mandy Ann, and meant to do all he could for
her and Jake, and after some further conversation it was arranged that
she should stay with the latter, the Colonel promising to see that her
wages were paid, and saying that she could keep the money for herself.
He was certainly acting generously towards the two blacks, who would
have been happy but for the parting with the child, which weighed so
heavily upon them. There was not much time left, for the "Hatty" sailed
early the next morning, and the Colonel must be on board that night.
Great as was their grief it was nothing compared to the antagonism of
the child, when she heard she was to go with the Colonel, and leave Jake
and Mandy Ann behind. She would _not_ go, she said, and fought like a
little tiger when that evening the Colonel came for her, and Mandy Ann
tried to dress her for the journey. Under the table, and lounge, and
chairs she crawled in her efforts to hide, and finally springing into
Jake's lap begged him to keep her, promising to be good and never call
him nor Mandy Ann niggers again, and nearly breaking Jake's heart with
her tears and pretty coaxings. At last worn out with excitement, and
feeling that the battle was against her, she sobbed, "Go wid me, Shaky,
if I goes."
"I 'spects I'll hev to go part way--say to Savannah--ef you gets her off
quiet. Thar's that in her will make her jump inter de river ef we pushes
her too far," Jake said, and the Colonel, who was sweating like rain,
and did not care for a scene on the "Hatty," finally consented for Jake
to accompany them to Savannah, trusting Providence for what might
follow.
Thus quieted the child made no resistance when Mandy Ann changed her
soiled white dress for one more suitable for the trip, and then began to
pack her few belongings. Here the Colonel stopped her. He did not know
much about children's clothes, but he felt intuitively that nothing of
the child's present wardrobe would ever be worn at Crompton Place. He
did not say this in so many words, but Mandy Ann understood him and
asked, "Ain't she to carry nothin'?"
"Nothing but what is necessary on the road," the Colonel replied, and an
old satchel was filled with a night-dress, a clean apron, a pair of
stockings, and Mandy Ann's tears, which fell like rain as she performed
her last office for the little girl, who, now that Jaky was going, began
to look forward to the trip with childish delight.
Judy was wrapped carefully in paper and put into the satchel, and then
she was ready. Mandy Ann went with her to the boat, where, as it was
late, scarcely any one was visible except Ted, to whom Mandy Ann
intrusted her charge, bidding him _'muse_ her when he could, and
whispering to him the good luck which had come to her and Jake through
the Colonel's generosity. Then with a terrible wrench in her heart, she
took the child in her arms and said, "Doan' you forget me, honey, an'
some time you'll be comin' agen. Oh, I can't bar it!" and with a wail
which was scarcely like a human cry she dropped the child, and hurrying
from the boat ran swiftly up the lane, and was soon out of sight. There
were two or three bursts of tears for Mandy Ann, but for the most part
the little girl was quiet until Savannah was reached, and she heard Jake
was to leave her. Then she showed of what she was capable, and the
Colonel looked on aghast, wondering what he should do when Jake was
gone. She had played on the way with Judy, whose appearance had provoked
a smile from some of the passengers, making the Colonel wonder if there
were not something more reputable in looks than Judy, with her features
of ink and the sewed-up gash in the side of her neck from which a little
bran was still oozing. He didn't know much about dolls, but was sure
there must be some in Savannah, and he went on a tour of inspection, and
found a gold ring with a small stone in it for Mandy Ann in place of the
one buried with poor Dory. This he would give to Jake to take home to
the negro girl, he thought, and then continued his search for dolls,
finding one which could stand up, and sit down, and was gorgeous in a
satin dress, with earrings in its ears. This was more in keeping with
his ideas, and he took it to the hotel, hoping he had seen the last of
Judy, who, he suggested, should be thrown away. He didn't know children.
The little girl was delighted with her new doll, which she handled
gingerly, as if afraid to touch it, and which she called Mandy Ann. But
she clung to Judy just the same, quite to the disgust of the Colonel.
Poor Jake grew thin during the few days they spent in Savannah, and he
knew he was nearing the end.
"I must buy her somfin'," he thought, and one morning when he was
walking with her past a dry goods store he saw in the window a little
scarlet merino cloak, lined with white satin, and looking so pretty that
he stopped to look at it, while the little girl jumped up and down,
exclaiming, "Oh, the buffitel cloak. Me wants it, Shaky; me wants it."
Going into the store Jake inquired the price, which was so large that
his heart sank. It would take nearly all the money he had with him to
buy it, but reflecting that the Colonel was paying his bills, and that
on his return home he could eat two meals a day, and light ones at that,
until he had saved the required sum, he bought the cloak; and, when the
final parting came, wrapped it round the little girl, and carrying her
to the steamer put her down, and left hurriedly, while she rolled on the
floor screaming for Shaky, and bumping her head against a settee. As the
boat moved off, Jake stood on the wharf watching it for a long distance,
with a feeling that all the brightness of his life had vanished with the
little girl, whom the harassed and half-crazed Colonel would have given
much to have left with him had it been practicable.
CHAPTER X
EUDORA
The Colonel had been gone nearly three weeks and no one knew where he
was, or thought it strange that they didn't. It was his habit to go
suddenly and return just as suddenly. Peter had his opinion, and felt
curious to know if the Colonel would bring back Jake and Mandy Ann
besides the child, and had many a hearty laugh by himself as he imagined
the consternation of the household when this menagerie was turned in
upon them. Naturally his master would let him know when to expect him,
he thought, and was greatly surprised one morning when a station hack
drove into the yard, and the Colonel entered the house looking years
older than when he went away.
With him was a little girl, three years old or more, clinging to his
hand as if in fear. Her garments were all coarse and old-fashioned,
except the scarlet merino cloak. The hood was drawn over her head, and
from it there looked out a pair of eyes, which, had Peter ever heard of
the word, he would have said were uncanny, they were so large, and
bright, and moved so rapidly from one object to another. She dropped the
hood from her head, and began tugging at the ribbons of her cloak, while
her lip quivered as if she were about to cry. It came at last, not like
anything Peter had ever heard, and was more like a howl than a cry, for
"Shaky; me wants Shaky."
It was loud, and shrill, and penetrated to all parts of the house,
bringing Sally, the cook, Jane, the chambermaid, and Sam, the coachman,
all into the hall, where they stood appalled at what they saw.
"Shaky, Shaky," the child wailed on, frightened by the strange faces
around her, and as he did not come she threw herself upon the floor, and
began to bump her head up and down, her last resort when her paroxysms
were at their height.
The Colonel had borne a good deal since leaving Savannah, and had more
than once been tempted to turn back and either bring Shaky, or leave the
child with him. She had cried for him till she was purple in the face,
and the stewardess had struck her on her back to make her catch her
breath, and then taken her in her arms, and tried to comfort her.
Perhaps it was owing to her color that the child took to her so readily
that the Colonel said to her, "Keep her quiet, if you can, and I do not
care what I pay you."
After that the little girl staid mostly with the stewardess, and was
comparatively happy. Judy was a great comfort to her, and she kept it
hugged to her bosom through the day, and slept with it at night, and
when she reached the Crompton House it was in the inside pocket of her
cloak. Becoming detached from the pocket as she rolled on the floor it
fell at Peter's feet, making him start, it was so unlike anything he had
seen in years.
"Great guns!" he exclaimed, spurning it with his foot, and sending it
near the child, who snatched it up with a cry of "Judy, Judy, my Judy."
"Who is she, and where did she come from?" the cook asked, while Jane
tried to soothe the excited child.
"Her name is Eudora Harris," the Colonel said. "Her father is a sneaking
scoundrel; her mother was a good woman, and my friend. She is dead, and
there is no one to care for her child but myself. I have brought her
home to bring up as my own. Jaky is the colored man who took care of her
with Mandy Ann, a colored girl. She will cry for her by and by."
As if to prove his words true the child set up a howl for Mandy Ann; "me
wants Mandy Ann," while the Colonel continued, "She is to be treated in
all respects as a daughter of the house. Get her some decent clothes at
once, you women who understand such things. Don't mind expense. Give her
a pretty room, and I think you'd better hunt up some young person to
look after her. Until the girl comes Jane must sleep in the room with
her, and don't bother me unless it is necessary; I feel quite used up,
and as if I had been through a thrashing-machine. I am not used to
children, and this one is--well, to say the least, very extraordinary."
This was a good deal for the Colonel to say at one time to his servants,
who listened in wonder, none of them knowing anything except Peter, who
kept his knowledge to himself. And this was all the explanation the
Colonel gave, either to his servants, or to the people outside who knew
better than to question him, and who never mentioned the child in his
presence. Gossip, however, was rife in the neighborhood, and many were
the surmises as to the parentage of the little girl who for a time
turned the Crompton House upside down, and made it a kind of bedlam when
her fits were on, and she was rolling on the floor, and bumping her
head, with cries for Shaky and Mandy Ann. She was homesick, and cared
nothing for the beautiful things they brought her. Against the pretty
dresses she fought at first, and then submitted to them, but kept her
old one in a corner of her room, and Susie, the girl hired to attend
her, sometimes found her there asleep with her head upon it, and Judy
held closely in her arms. They bought her a doll-house which was fitted
up with everything calculated to please a child, but after inspecting it
a while she turned from it with a cry for her "shady" under the palm
tree in the clearing. The doll, Mandy Ann, which the Colonel had bought
in Savannah, never took the place of Judy, who was her favorite,
together with the scarlet cloak, which she would seldom let out of her
sight. During the day she kept it round her, saying, "Me's cold," and at
night she had it near her bed where she could see it the first thing in
the morning.
The Colonel knew the town was full of speculation and surmises, but he
did not care. Surmises which went wide of the mark were better than the
real truth would have been, and that he could not tell. He had left a
large part of his past in Florida, and trusted it would not follow him.
He could not leave the little girl, and he meant to do his duty by her,
outwardly at least. He had no love for her, and could not manufacture
one. He would rather she had never been born; but inasmuch as she was
born, and was very much alive, she must be cared for.
There was a private baptism in his library one Sunday afternoon, and she
was christened Amy Eudora. Amy was for his mother; Eudora for no one
knew whom, except Peter, who thought of the smelly letter, and knew
that Eudora was for the young mother, dead somewhere in Florida. But he
held his tongue, and tried to make up to the little girl her loss of
Shaky, for whom she cried for days. Then, as she grew accustomed to her
surroundings, she became contented, and her merry chatter filled the
house from morning till night. Every one was devoted to her, except the
Colonel. He was kind, but never encouraged her advances; never kissed
her, never took her in his lap, or allowed her in his library. She
called him father, and he answered to the name, while she was Eudora
Harris to others. He tried at first to call her Amy, but she stoutly
resisted.
"Me's Dory. Shaky and Mandy Ann calls me Dory," she would say, with a
stamp of her foot, refusing to answer to any name but Dory, which came
at last to be Dora as she grew older.
She learned to read in the new school-house by the south gate of the
park, and when she heard that the Colonel built it, she called it hers,
and queened it over her companions with an imperiousness worthy of the
Colonel himself. When questioned of her old home her answers were vague.
There was a river somewhere, and her mother was sick, and she reckoned
she had no father but Shaky.
As she grew older, she became very reticent of her past, and, if she
remembered it at all, she held her tongue, like Peter. Once, when she
was more than usually aggressive, claiming not only the school-house but
everything in and around it, she was told by the children that she lived
with niggers till she came to Crompton Place, and they guessed her
mother was one, and nobody knew anything about her anyway. There was a
fierce fight in which Dora came off victorious, with a scratch or two
on her face and a torn dress. That afternoon the Colonel was confronted
by what seemed a little maniac, demanding to know if her mother was
black, and if she had lived only with negroes until she came to
Crompton.
"No, to both questions, and never let me hear another word on the
subject as long as you live," was the Colonel's answer, given with a
sternness before which the girl always quailed.
She was afraid of the Colonel, and kept aloof from him as much as
possible, rarely seeing him except at meal times, and then saying very
little to him and never dreaming how closely he watched her, attributing
every pecularity, and she had many, to the Harris taint, of which he had
a mortal terror. But however much or little there might have been of the
Harris blood in her, the few who knew her found her charming, as she
grew from childhood into a beautiful girl of eighteen, apparently
forgetful of everything pertaining to her Florida home. The doll-house,
with all the expensive toys bought for her, had been banished to a room
in the attic, and with them finally went Judy and Mandy Ann. The red
cloak she seemed to prize more than all her possessions. It was more in
keeping with her surroundings than Judy, and she often wrapped it around
her as she sat upon the piazza, when the day was cool, and sometimes
wore it on her shoulders to breakfast in the morning. Once she asked the
Colonel where it came from, and he answered "Savannah," and went on
reading his paper with a scowl on his forehead which warned her she was
on dangerous ground. He was not fond of questions, and she did not often
trouble him with them, but lived her silent life, increasing in beauty
with every year, and guarded so closely from contact with the outer
world that she scarcely had an intimate acquaintance.
It was not the Colonel's wish that she should have any. Indeed, he
hardly knew what he did want. He was aristocratic, and exclusive, and
wished to make her so, and keep her from contact with the common herd,
as he secretly designated the people around him. He knew she was
beautiful, with an imperiousness of manner she took from him, and a
sweet yielding graciousness she took from her mother. Sometimes a smile,
or turn of her head, or kindling in her eyes, would bring the dead woman
so vividly to his mind that he would rise suddenly and leave the room,
as if a ghost were haunting him. On these occasions he was sterner than
usual with Eudora, who chafed under the firm rein held upon her, and
longed to be free.
The Colonel had it in his mind to take her to Europe, hoping to secure a
desirable marriage for her. He should tell her husband, of course, who
she was, knowing that money and position would atone for the Harris
blood, and feeling that in this way he would be entirely freed from the
page of life which did not now trouble him much. He was still Crompton
of Crompton, with his head as high as ever. The Civil War had swept over
the land like a whirlwind. Tom Hardy had been among the first to enlist
in the Southern army, and been killed in a battle. The Colonel had heard
of his death with a pang, and also with a certain feeling of relief,
knowing that he was about the only one who possessed a knowledge of his
folly, or his whereabouts. There was still Jake, who wrote occasionally,
asking for his _lill Miss_ and telling of Mandy Ann, whom the war had
made free, and who had married Ted, and was living in her own house
outside the clearing. Everything was out of the way except Eudora, who,
before he had proposed his trip to Europe, took herself from him in a
most summary manner. The restraint laid upon her was becoming more than
she could bear, and she rebelled against it.
"I shall elope some day--see if I don't," she said to Peter, who still
remained in the family, and was her confidant in most things. "I shall
say 'yes' to the first man who proposes, and leave this prison for the
world, and the grand sights which Adolph says are everywhere. Here I am,
cooped up with no young society, and seldom allowed to attend a picnic,
or party, or concert, and I do so enjoy the latter, only I often feel as
if I could do better than the professionals. Adolph says I can, and he
knows."
Adolph Candida was her music teacher, who, alone of the young men in
Crompton, had free access to the house. He was a fine fellow as well as
teacher, and had done much to develop Dora's taste and love for music,
which had strengthened with her years, until her voice was wonderful for
its scope and sweetness. Naturally there sprang up between the young
people an affection which ripened into love, and Candida was told by
Eudora to ask her father's sanction to their marriage. That she could
stoop to care for her music teacher the Colonel never dreamed, and was
speechless with surprise and anger when asked by the young Italian for
her hand. To show him the door was the work of a moment, and then Dora
was sent for. She came at once, with a look in her eyes which made the
Colonel hesitate a little before he told her what he had done, and what
he expected her to do.
"If you disobey me in the slightest, you are no longer a daughter of my
house," he said, in the cold, hard tone which Dora knew so well, and had
feared so much.
But the fear was over now. Something had transformed the timid girl into
a woman, with a courage equal to the Colonel's. For a time she stood
perfectly still, with her eyes fixed upon the angry man, listening to
him until he spoke of her as the daughter of the house; then, with a
gesture of her hands, which bade him stop, she exclaimed, "I did not
know I was daughter of anything. For fifteen years I have lived here,
and though you have been kind to me in your way, you have surrounded
yourself with an air of reserve so cold and impregnable that I have
never dared ask you who I am, since I was a child, and asked you about
my mother. You told me then never to mention that subject again, and I
never have. But do you think I have forgotten that I had a mother? I
have not. I do forget some things in a strange way. They come in a
moment and go, and I cannot bring them back, but the face I think was
mother's is not one of them. Of my father I remember nothing. I have
been told that when you brought me here you said he was a scoundrel! Are
you he? Are you my father?"
The Colonel was white as a sheet, and his lips twitched nervously, as if
it were hard for them to frame the word No, which came at last
decidedly. Over Dora's face a look of disappointment passed, and her
hands grasped the back of a chair in front of her, as if she needed
support.
"If you are not my father, who and what was my mother?" was her next
question, and the Colonel replied, "She was an honest woman. Be
satisfied with that."
"I never for a moment thought her dishonest," the girl exclaimed,
vehemently. "I remember her as some one seen in a dream--a frail little
body, with a sweet face which seldom smiled. There were other faces
round us--dusky ones--negroes, weren't they?"
Her eyes compelled the Colonel to bow assent, and she continued, "I
thought so, and our home was South; not a grand home like this, but a
cabin, I think. Wasn't it a cabin?"
Again the Colonel bowed, and Dora went on, "There came a day when it was
full of people, and somebody was in a box, and I sat in Shaky's lap. I
have never forgotten him. He was all the father I knew."
The Colonel drew a long breath, and she went on, "He held me up, and
bade me kiss the white face in the box. That was my mother?"
Again her eyes made the Colonel bow assent, and she continued, "After
that there is a blank, with misty recollections of another box on the
table, and a walk across hot sands with Shaky, and then I came here,
where you have tried hard to blot all the past from my memory, as if it
were something of which to be ashamed. But I shall find my mother's
family some day, and Shaky, if he is living, and shall know all about
it. There was a girl, too--Mandy Ann. I called the doll you gave me for
her. She took care of me when Shaky didn't. He is more distinct. He took
you to the graves the day you came for me, and I went with you and
showed you my play-house under the palm tree--the poor little thing,
but dearer to me than the best you have ever given me, because it was
hedged round with love, even if it were the love of negroes. Things are
coming back to me now so vividly, pressing on my brain which feels as if
it would burst, and I remember the blacks, and their prayer meetings,
and the songs they sang, and their hallelujahs and amens sound in my
ears, and I think they always have, and helped me on and up when I have
been practising difficult music. When a child at school I was often
taunted and mocked for what the children called my negro brogue and
talk. We had several battles in which I generally beat, although I was
one against a dozen. There is a good deal of fight in me which I must
have inherited from my father, who, I suppose, was a Southerner, if you
are not he."
The Colonel only glared at her, and she continued, "I have been told,
too, that there is a negro twang in my voice, and I am glad of it, and
try to imitate the sounds which come to me from a past I so dimly
remember, and which I think are echoes from some negro _prar_ meeting.
You see I have not forgotten the dialect of my early surroundings, and
some day--I tell you again, I shall find the place and the graves of my
people, and know what you have kept from me so carefully."
"Better not. You'll be sorry if you do. Your mother's family were
Crackers," the Colonel said. "You would not be proud of the connection,
although they were respectable people."
If Dora had ever heard of Crackers she knew very little about them, and
cared less. She was greatly excited, and her eyes flashed and glowed
with that light which Mr. Mason and Peter had noticed years before, and
from which the Colonel turned away as from something dangerous.
"My mother was a Cracker? My father was a Mr. Harris--a Cracker, too. I
am not your daughter, as I have been weak enough at times to believe,
and--yes, I will confess it--I was weak enough to be proud that I was a
Crompton; but that is over now; my father and mother were Crackers. I am
a Cracker, and Eudora Harris. I am eighteen, and my own
mistress--amenable to the authority of no one. I am glad for that, as it
makes me free to do as I please. Good evening."
She bowed and left the room, leaving him stunned that she dared defy
him, and half resolved to call her back and tell her the truth. But he
didn't, and it was years before he saw her again.
The next morning she was missing. She had gone with Candida--where, he
took no pains to inquire. She sent him a New York paper, with a notice
of her marriage, and the names of herself and husband in the list of
passengers sailing on the Celtic. He put the paper in the fire with the
tongs, and after that a great silence fell upon the house, and the
Colonel grew more reserved than ever, and more peculiar. He forbade the
servants to mention Dora's name, or tell him where she was, if they
knew. They didn't know, and many years went by, and to all intents and
purposes she was dead to those who had known her as a bright, beautiful
girl. Jake, who wrote to inquire for her, was told that she had run away
and married, and the Colonel neither knew nor cared where she was, and
was not to be troubled with any more letters, which he should not
answer. Jake was silenced, and there was no link connecting the Colonel
with the past, except his memory which lashed him like the stings of
scorpions. His hair turned white as snow; there was a stoop between his
shoulders, and his fifty-five years might have been sixty-five, he aged
so fast, as time went on, and his great house became so intolerable to
him that he at last hailed with delight an event which, sad as it was in
some respects, brought him something of life and an interest in it.
PART II
CHAPTER I
HOWARD CROMPTON TO JACK HARCOURT
"Crompton House, June --, 18--.
"Dear Jack:
"I have bearded the lion in his den and found him a harmless old cove,
after all, with many of his fangs extracted. You know, I am the son of
his half-brother, who was many years his junior. I fancy the two never
agreed very well, and when I wrote, proposing that I should visit
Crompton House, I was surprised at the cordial reply, bidding me pack up
my traps and come at once. I packed up and came, and, if I know myself,
I shall stay. I am the only near relative he has in the world. He has a
large estate to dispose of, was never married, and, of course, has no
children, unless--
"There must everlastingly be an _unless_, or a _but_ somewhere, and here
it is--a big one in the shape of a woman--a lovely woman, too, if she is
nearer forty than twenty. Don't you remember I once told you of a girl
whom my uncle brought home from the South, and who ran off with her
music teacher, an Italian. Well, she is here--a wreck physically and
mentally in one sense; not exactly insane, but with memory so impaired
that she can tell nothing of her past, or perhaps she does not wish to.
She always says, when questioned about it, 'I don't remember, and it
makes my head ache to try.'
"It seems her first husband, Candida, took her abroad and gave her every
advantage in music, both in Paris and Italy. When he died she married
Homer Smith, an American, who was associated with him in some way. After
his return to America he got up what was known as the 'Homer Troupe.' He
dropped his last name, thinking the _Smith_ Troupe would not sound as
well as Homer. His wife was the drawing card. She had a wonderful voice
as a girl, they say, with a peculiarly pathetic tone in it, like what
you hear in negro concerts, and it was this and her beauty which took
with the people. She hated the business, but was compelled to sing by
her husband, who, I fancy, was a tyrant and a brute. They starred it in
the far West mostly, until her health and mind gave way, and she went
raving mad on the stage, I believe. He put her in a private asylum in
San Francisco. How long she was there I don't know, and she don't know.
She was always a little queer, they say, and people predicted she would
be crazy some time. Her husband died suddenly in Santa Barbara. Just
before he died he tried to say something, but could only manage to give
his physician the Colonel's address, and say, 'Tell him where my wife
is.'
"Off started the Colonel, lame, and gouty, and rheumatic as he is, and
brought her home, and has set her up as a kind of queen whose slightest
wish is to be obeyed. To do her justice she has not many wishes. She is
very quiet, talks but little, and seems in a kind of brown study most of
the time. Occasionally she rouses up and asks if we are sure he is
dead--the he being her husband--the last one, presumably. When we tell
her he is she smiles and says, 'I think I'm glad, for now I shall never
have to sing again in public.' Then she says in a very different tone,
'Baby is dead, too; and my head has ached so hard ever since that I
cannot think or remember, only it was sudden and took my life away.'
"She has an old red cloak which at times she wraps around a shawl, and
cuddles it as if it were a baby, crooning some negro melody she heard
South. There must have been a little child who died, but she is not
clear on the subject. Sometimes it is a baby; sometimes a grown girl;
sometimes it died in one place; sometimes in another; but always just
before she was going to sing, and the room was full of coffins until she
sank down, and knew no more. Whether my uncle has taken pains to inquire
about the child, I don't know. He does not like children, and is
satisfied to have Amy back, and is trying to atone for his former
harshness. He calls her Amy, instead of Eudora, because the latter was
the name by which she was known in the Homer Troupe, and he saw it
flaunted on a handbill advertising the last concert in which she took
part.
"Don't think I have heard all this from him. He is tighter than the bark
of a tree with regard to his affairs, and I do not think any one in the
town knows anything definite about her singing in public, or the asylum;
but there is a servant, Peter, who has grown old in the family. He knows
everything, and has told me about my uncle bringing the child home, and
how she cried for days for Shaky, a colored man, and slept in the red
cloak, and kept it around her in the day-time because he gave it to
her. I have learned that she was never lawfully adopted, and that my
uncle has made no will. Still she must be something to him, but
certainly not his lawful child, or why his reticence with regard to her.
I am the only near relative bearing the Crompton name. I have made
myself very necessary to him--am in fact, in a way, a son of the house.
He is very much broken, and if he dies without a will--
"Well, all things come to him who waits, and I can afford to wait in
such comfortable quarters. Do you catch on, and call me a scamp with
your Puritanical notions? Not so fast, old fellow. You have chosen to
earn your living delving at the law. I earn mine by being so useful to
my uncle that he will not part with me. He has already made me a kind of
agent to attend to his business, so that I look upon myself as
permanently fixed at Crompton House for as long as I choose to stay. It
is a grand old place, with an income of I do not know how many
thousands, and if I should ever be fortunate enough to be master, I
shall say that for once in his life Howard Crompton was in luck. I want
you to come here, Jack, when you have finished visiting your sister. I
asked my uncle if I could invite you, and he said, 'Certainly; I like to
have young people in the house. It pleases Amy.'
"This is wonderful, as they say he used to keep young people away,
almost with lock and key, when she was young. But now anything which
pleases Amy pleases him.
"And now for another matter which involves a girl, Eloise Smith. Who is
she, you ask? Well, she is neither high born, I fancy, nor city bred;
nor much like the girls from Wellesley and Lasell, with whom we used to
flirt. She is a country school-ma'am, and is to be graduated this month
in the Normal School in Mayville, where you are visiting. What is she to
me? Nothing, except this: She has haunted me ever since I heard of her,
and I can't get rid of an idea that in some way she is to influence my
life. You know I was always given to presentiments and vagaries, and she
is the last one. I might not have thought much of her if my uncle were
not in a great way on her account. Long ago when they changed the name
of the town from Troutburg to Crompton in his honor, he built a
school-house on his premises, and gave it to the town. Since then he has
felt that he had a right to control it, and say who should teach, and
who shouldn't. For a long time the people humored him, and made him
school inspector, whose business it was to examine the teachers with
regard to their qualifications. With his old time notions, he had some
very old-time questions, which with others, he always propounded. As a
test of scholarship they were ridiculous; but he was Col. Crompton, and
the people shrugged their shoulders and laughed at what they called the
Crompton formula. Here are a few of the questions: First, What is logic?
Second, Why does the wind usually stop blowing when the sun goes down? I
don't know; do you? and we are both Harvarders. The third introduces a
man in old Colburn's Arithmetic, driving his sheep or geese to market.
The fourth is a scorcher, and has to do with the diameter of a
grindstone, after a certain number of inches have been ground from it.
Then comes what I call the _pièce de résistance_, but which my uncle
called 'killing two birds with one stone.' He has a fad on writing and
spelling, and required his victims to put on paper the following:
"'Mr. Wright has a right To write the rites of the church.'
"Blamed if I didn't get stuck on that last _rite_ when he gave it to me!
If the teachers got safely through with the sheep, or geese, and the
grindstone, and Mr. Wright, and the rest of them, he gave them a
certificate declaring them qualified to teach a district school. In
these days of methods, and analysis, and different ways of looking at
things, all that is exploded, and the Crompton people have dropped my
uncle, who is furious, and charges it to young blood, and the normal
schools which have sprung up, and in which he does not believe. 'No
matter how many diplomas a girl may have,' he says, 'proving that she
has stood up in a white gown, and read an essay nobody within four feet
of the rostrum could hear, or care to hear, if they could, she ought to
pass a good solid examination to see if she were rooted and grounded in
the fundamentals,' and when he heard that a normal graduate was engaged
for District No. 5, he swore a blue streak at the girl, the trustee who
hired her, and the attack of gout which keeps him a prisoner in the
house, and will prevent his interviewing Miss Smith, as he certainly
would if he were able. I tried to quiet him by offering to interview her
myself. Think of me in a district school-house, talking to the teacher
about the diameter of a grindstone! The absurdity must have struck my
uncle. You should have seen the look he gave me over his spectacles, as
he said, 'You, who know nothing, except ball games, and boat races, and
raising the devil generally, interview a girl with a diploma! You would
probably end by making love to her, but I won't have it; mind, I won't
have it! Remember, you are a Crompton, and no Crompton ever married
beneath him!' Here he stopped suddenly, and turned so white that I was
alarmed, and asked what ailed him.
"'Nothing,' he said, 'nothing but a twinge. I had an awful one.'
"I suppose he referred to his foot, which was pretty bad that day. After
a little, quite to my surprise, he said, 'If you knew anything yourself,
you might manage to see if this Smith girl knows anything. Amy can coach
you. She is rooted and grounded. She was taught in the old school-house,
which I would never have given the town but for her.'
"What he meant I don't know. What I do know is that Amy has told me why
the wind stops blowing when the sun goes down, but I'll be hanged if I
understand much about the rarefaction of the air. Do you? She was very
glib with the sheep and the geese, but the grindstone made her head
ache, and she gave it up. I think, however, I have all the knowledge
necessary to judge whether a girl is rooted and grounded, and now I want
to know something about the girl. Manage to see her while you are in
Mayville. Attend the commencement exercises. She is sure to read an
essay in a white gown. Write me what she is like, and if I am likely to
fall in love with her. Come as soon as you can.
"Always your friend,
"HOWARD CROMPTON."