A few months ago I made a collecting tour for Wirt and Company through
that stretch of country watered by the Ohio. Thirty years ago I had
spent a summer there, and the change bewildered me: not that the rough
buckeye and hemlock woods and mountain creeks had been railwayed,
canalled, bored for coal, and derricked for oil; I looked for that; but
the people had cropped out into a new phase of life.
They were lazy, smoky old towns,--those upper Virginia and Kentucky
villages,--when I was a young man; something of the solitude of "the
dark and bloody hunting-grounds" hanging about them yet; the old forts
still standing which had been the terror of the Indians; the
grandchildren of the pioneers holding baronial tracts of land under
grant from Washington: mule-raisers, most of them, droning out their
lives in great rambling stone houses, card-playing, Champagne-drinking,
waited on by a few slaves, and carrying in their own tawny skins, high
cheekbones, and beetling eyebrows, hints that the blood of these same
pioneers had mixed too freely, perhaps, with that of their savage foes
and allies.
By this time, however, the drowsy, sunshiny burghs have swelled, like
the frog in the fable, and burst out into jaunty modern cities, with
mills belching soot and oily smoke down into the muddy streets; the
pavements are crowded with Uncle Sam's boys in their light blue coats;
the shops are stocked by Northern capital; the hard-headed, taciturn
Western man, with his broad common-sense, has set his solid foot down on
the ground, and begins to dominate over both the sloth of the natives
and the keen Yankee speculators. The women of the old-country families
look out sullenly, talk a great deal of "shoddy"; are loyal, certainly,
but say nothing of "Jack" or "Ned" who hold commissions under Lee or
Hood.
However, this is not what I meant to tell you. While I was passing
through one of the border towns, I accidentally met again the traces of
a curious old character, well known through all that region, who, if
fate had but placed her in the compressed action of a court, instead of
the loose, inconsequent hurly-burly of a republic, would have made
herself a footing in history before now. She deserves a more thorough
record than this mere sketch must be.
But I must go back to my own first journey to that country. It was the
fulfilment of an old, boyish plan. My father had been a land-surveyor,
and had hunted and trapped, in those early days, from the fat
river-bottoms of the Monongahela and Cross-Creek valleys up to the great
Cheat Mountains. He was a contemporary of the pioneers Wetzel, the
Leets, M'Cullochs, etc., and when I was a boy, used to fill up the
winter evenings with wild stories of border Indian warfare,
bear-hunting, and the like. I formed a hotter resolve, each new time of
hearing, to make a pilgrimage, as soon as I was a man, to his old
camping-ground, ("the Ohio" we called it then,) to hunt out and open the
mounds left by the Creeks and Delawares, and to find the forts where
these battles of his had been won and lost. It always pleased my father
that I entered into his old stories with such zest.
"I hope I'll live to go with you, Zack," he would say, nodding his gray
head. "We'd hunt out Mrs. C ----, if we came within a hundred miles of
her. She could give you the history of every inch of ground from
Blennerhassets Island up to Fort Du Quesne,--that is, if she were so
minded. She had a sharp, suspicious eye of her own when she was a girl,
and age would not sweeten her temper. But there's no better authority
for old legends of that time,--none. She was a cousin of M'Culloch, who
made that leap from the mountain to escape the Indian arrows, you
remember? and was in the fort when Polly Scott went out to the
gate-house for powder, bringing it in her apron across the field, a
target for hundreds of the red devils. But I doubt if the old lady's
living yet; she was married when I was a stout young beau, dancing
Virginia reels out yonder: Shepler was her first husband."
The older my father grew, the more the idea haunted him of going with
"Zack" out to the banks of the Ohio, until, as second childhood crept on
him, it became a ruling whim. But crossing the Alleghany range was no
light task for even a young man in those days of wagons and
stage-coaches, and he never was gratified. When he was gone, I
reproached myself bitterly that it had not been accomplished: it seemed
so easy and natural a thing to do, now that it was too late. My old plan
grew, therefore, to have a morbid interest for me. I fancied that to go
over his old hunting-paths would bring my father back to me, and that,
wherever he might be now, he would choose to be so brought back.
About the time I was thirty, then, having no employment except an
opening which Fordyce offered me in New York, I chose, instead of
accepting it, to start alone on my voyage of discovery. One August
morning, the air full of a gentle languor, the heavy clouds of
bituminous smoke vanishing beyond the horizon in swells of intense
purple and orange, which I never had seen in our pale sky, I took a boat
at Pittsburg, and dropped lazily down the shining Ohio, through
thick-wooded hills, and dotting little islands that thrust themselves
out of the water to support only a clump of showery green willows, or an
old rock, may-be, draped with delicate trailing mosses. Chance favored
me.
"If you want the run of the Injun forts," said the Captain, as he stood
beside me on the Texas, "there's Abel Steadman aboard. He knows 'em
better than anybody hereabouts,--an' knows nothin' else," dropping his
voice. "I'll bring him up," which he did accordingly.
Steadman was a lank, yellow-haired country-lad, habited in a suit of
blue Kentucky jeans, ill-fitting, and ragged besides. He talked acutely
and intelligently, however, on this subject, and gave me a clear idea of
the discoveries made in Indian antiquities in that region. "The trouble
was," he said, "people who had means cared nothing about the matter."
The next day we naturally came together again: he had precisely the
information I needed. About noon he touched me on the elbow, as I stood
by the deck-railing,--
"There is where I live," pointing to a tumble-down old shanty back in a
field. "There is a small mound to be opened in the adjacent farm next
week. Would it interest you to see it? If so, come ashore, and stay with
me for a few days."
The invitation was given so simply, and as a matter of course, that I
accepted it without further parley. The Steadmans were miserably poor;
the young man, in his queer, blunt way, said as much, though by no means
apologetically.
"You are afraid of encroaching? No. We live by what we shoot or fish,
Matt and I. Matt's my brother. It's not much; but if you choose to throw
a line with us, it will make you easy about staying as long as you
please."
There was a straightforward delicacy in this that I liked. I remained
with the Steadmans, therefore. We went over to see the mound in the
evening, which proved to be much smaller than that at Elizabethtown,
thirty miles farther down the river, in which was found the famous
"mound-stone" that so puzzled French savans. Our mound was covered with
a thick undergrowth, when we first saw it; was oval in shape, and about
twelve feet in height. The next morning it was opened by the farm-owner,
(who wanted it out of the way to plant potatoes,)--Abel and I assisting
and digging with the best of them. After half a day's work we came to an
incrustation of clay, baked hard, as by internal heat. After this had
been penetrated and carefully removed, we discovered a stone block or
altar, immediately in front of which lay a skeleton, and the ornaments,
tomahawk, etc., of a chief. Forming a complete half-circle with this,
and in front of the altar, were thirteen other skeletons, their heads
towards the chief, the bones of the arms crossed as in obeisance. The
pith of our discovery lay in the fact, that about these inferior bones
was heaped a lightish, oily, brown dust,--burnt human flesh, in a
word,--proving that these skeletons belonged to criminals or prisoners
sacrificed at the death of the chief.
Abel Steadman kicked the bent skull and folded arms of one of them
aside.
"Even those savages made masters and slaves of each other," he said,
pettishly. "The costliest wampum made the chief then, as nowadays, I
suppose."
I remember I looked at him, thinking it an odd train of thought for a
carter's son.
I loitered away several weeks with the Steadmans, having induced the old
woman to take me as a boarder. The house was but a large hut, with a
wide kitchen below, and two lofts over it, in one of which the boys
slept, and in the other their mother and Cousin Jane, a young woman of
Abel's age. I had a bunk fitted up in a closet off the kitchen.
Perceiving that Abel took notes of our researches, making drawings with
me of the painted rocks, etc., I wondered to find a day-laborer with a
taste for such pursuits, unusual even among educated men. When our
supper of flitch and molasses was over one evening, therefore, I asked
him how he meant to use his papers. Abel ran his fingers through his
thin, red whiskers.
"Material for future work,--material," he said, vaguely staring into the
fire.
I saw that Mrs. Steadman, a thin, hollow-chested woman, looked up to
hear his answer, and Matt gave a keen glance round from his work. Matt
was a stout, clean-skinned lad, with a firm, decisive way of shutting
his lips, and a pair of shrewd, kindly blue eyes that I liked. He was
trying to be a carpenter without learning the trade: had put up a shed
outside, and was up by daylight every morning hewing away with his one
plane and saw. Boy-like, he had made a chum of me already. My question
had curiously disquieted Abel. He rose and left the room. Matt drew his
bench up.
"That hurt Abe, you see?"
"I do not see why."
"True for you. But" (in a whisper) "he can't help doin' them things; and
then, seein' they don't help, he worries like a girl."
"Help?"
"Yes,"--then was silent, his mouth harder set. "Well," (a rush of blood
dyeing his face,)--"look yonder" (jerking his head back) "at mother.
Don't you think it's time somethin' was done?"
I had noticed that the woman was raw-boned and stoop-shouldered, with
that etiolated yellow flesh that comes of long overwork. I might have
heard her cough, but had paid no attention to it until now, when a fit
came on dry and hollow.
"How long has she had that?" I asked, gravely.
"Nigh on to a year. I knew it would come some day. She's slaved night
and day to keep us goin', since I could remember. It's time Abel an' me
was doin' somethin', beside diggin' an' cartin. We never could raise
enough to learn a trade."
He dropped his chin on his hand, and sat looking fixedly, but not
gloomily, into the fire. His mother could not overhear him, but I
thought Jane did,--she put so much vigor into her rubs on the washboard,
and spoke more tenderly to old Mrs. Steadman. Jane was a bustling,
pleasant, low-spoken girl: I think I mentioned her before.
"The truth is," said Matt, presently jerking out a nervous laugh, "we've
all our lives kept draggin' on, waitin' for a great stroke of luck. My
father did: he allays thought another year would bring it, and another.
He's dead now: he dug an' carted to the last; and here's his sons--men
without learnin', in the old rags they wore when they was boys--diggin'
an' cartin' just the same. See mother there? That old gown's her best.
Often think there's not a lady in the land would look like mother, if
she'd laces an' silks to wear; and she shall have them, by"----with a
tremendous oath. "There's Jane,"--after a long silence, the color fading
out of his face,----"Jane and I are like other people. We"----stopping
short.
"Yes," I nodded, gravely.
"Well, could I help it? I couldn't see her, and----But we never can
marry, this way of ongoin'. I mean to stand from under, and clear a way
for myself. I'm tryin' to be a carpenter, and have stuck to it pretty
steady these two years, gettin' a job now and then from the farmers.
They like to help a fellow through," with a smile. "I'll marry Jane yet,
and put mother where she ought to be."
"That's the true talk, anyhow, Matt."
He flushed again.
"Well," getting up and taking down the stable-lantern from the wall,
"it's been the curse of the Steadmans, waitin' for dead men's shoes.
That's so!"
An hour later Abel came in, and after lounging about awkwardly touched
me on the arm.
"I'd like you to come up 'loft, Mr. Humphreys."
I scrambled up the ladder into their garret, and sat down on an old hair
trunk, which he pulled up to a table. There was nothing in the room but
the bed and this table, which was strewed with papers, covered closely
with writing. Abel stood beside them, shuffling them with great
embarrassment.
"It's a good deal to ask of a stranger," he said; "but you spoke about
my sketches, and"----"Well, I have no funds."
"I think I understand," after waiting. "You have written something of
which you would like my opinion."
"Yes, that's it. Not that it would make _me_ think differently of it,
but I'd like to know how the world would take it,----see? And you could
give me a notion of that. Though whatten judges are they?" tossing the
papers. "See how they met Keats and Robbie Burns!"
He pushed over the sheets to me one by one, gravely silent as I read.
They were principally verses, as was to be expected,--one or two tales,
the scene laid in Italy or France, after the manner of young
authors,--and a tragedy. Not a line which did not show absurdly enough
his utter lack of knowledge,--mistakes as to fact, misspelt words,
deficient grammar, verses halting on all sorts of feet. Yet, with all
this, there were flashes here and there of power and feeling; and the
English was, strangest of all, not stilted, but the simple, homely words
which he used every day. I held the last paper a long time; I had not
the moral courage to tell the boy the truth. Evidently, however, he
cared very little for my opinion, but sat pinching his lips, vaguely
staring into space, as usual.
"You do not think any publisher would take them, I see. Well, it's
likely. Did you see these lines?"----picking up a page. "This passage,
now?"----reading it. "I think no one could have said that more finely."
He had chosen the best stanza; but the speech made me dumb.
"You need training, Steadman," I said, at last. "It is only right to be
honest with you. Two or three years of hard study would fit you to make
some mark in the world. But you need that; and my advice to you is, to
put your papers resolutely away, and go to work. Make enough money to
give yourself schooling, and you will be the more fit to hold the pen
when the time comes. The world's a big workshop, in which a man can
shape what fate he pleases; but it is a workshop still."
His eyes had wandered off before I had finished,--a faint, dreamy smile
on his face.
"Yes, education. Oh, of course that will be included. I mean to be a
profound scholar, when the time comes. I thought of making the law my
profession. It will be a very short time now."
I asked no explanation, and he offered none, folded his papers and put
them away, then tried, in his simple, unobtrusive way, to play the
host. Whatever castle in the air these poor Steadmans had inherited,
the mere delusion had given a certain dignity, and an almost grace of
bearing to them, not to be hidden by their laborers' habits and speech.
Abel talked of different parts of the States with a hungry curiosity; he
never had been out of ---- County, I found.
"Nothing enlarges a man's mind like knocking about a bit," I said. "You
could easily make a trip down to the Gulf. Most of these lads hereabouts
that I meet have been down to New Orleans as raftsmen."
"Oh, _they_! Raftsmen? To be sure, to be sure. What would one see of
society in that way? Who would recognize you as other than a common
river-dog? Some day I mean to travel as a gentleman should."
Then stopped abruptly, and turned the conversation to the capital,
questioning me with regard to the District of Columbia, growing rapid
and eager as he found that I was familiar with the localities, and
showing a singular accuracy of information himself about them. About one
range of country, especially, he was curious,--the plantations in the
neighborhood of Washington, particularly certain belonging to a family
named Shepler, which were the finest, by the way, in the District.
Finding that I knew them, he made me describe the homestead,
negro-quarters, woods, and water-courses. I was puzzled at his
curiosity; but the lad was full of vagaries, I saw, and indulged him.
"The heirs are minors," I said, in conclusion. "I happen to know the
property; for my brother had a claim to prosecute against it, and sent
me to see the face of the country."
He grew suddenly reserved at that, drawing within his shell, and dropped
the subject instantly. Soon after, he took up an old violin.
"Shall I play for you?" he asked.
My ears shivered in anticipation, but I assented. He held the bow
firmly, playing a simple air or two with much genuine pathos, but in
ignorance of the art, of course. I said as much, adding,--
"Training, Steadman! training! You must have it to achieve anything
permanently good."
"Of course; I never doubted that. But I know what is in me. Some day the
world will understand."
The vanity was so unconscious and childish that it ceased to be
offensive.
I began to feel an interest in these boys, but most in the poor
overworked mother. I had picked up, in my scrambling life, enough
knowledge of medicine to judge of her case. The next morning, after
consulting Matthew, I made a thorough examination into the cause of her
disease. Matt waited outside. When I came out to him, his face was pale,
and he bit and moistened his dry lips unceasingly.
"Well, Mr. Humphreys?"
"Your mother must leave this place. The work and the fogs from these
swamps are killing her. Dry air and rest would effect a cure, I
believe."
He stood paler than before, but not speaking a word.
"You think it impossible, Matthew?" I said, gently.
"Nothing is impossible."
It troubled me to see the grave, stern look on the merry face, which
never had been there before. I fully explained my reasons for judging as
I did, knowing him to be reasonable and acute beyond his years. I
offered to do what I could, in my poor way.
"It is only due from one man to another, Matthew."
"No, this is for mother, Mr. Humphreys; I must take care of mother
myself,"--standing with his hands in his pockets, his eyes fixed on the
ground.
Abel had come up, and listened like a frightened woman, the muscles of
his face working, tears in his light-blue eyes.
"Cheer up, Abe," said the younger boy, heartily; "I've thought of a
plan."
"There's one way, Matthew," said Abel, eagerly. "If only"----
"No, none of that!"--sternly. "We've had enough of waitin' for an 'if.'
We'll help ourselves now."
An hour after, I saw him lock up his shed as if he had done with it,
and presently come out of the house with his face washed and his shoes
on, and take his way across the fields.
That afternoon, at the mound, Doctor Peters, the owner of the farm,
began a conversation with me about the Steadmans.
"It was the ruin of the old man," he said, "waiting for his rights. It
kept him a loafer all his life. What little he made was by digging, just
enough to hold body and soul together, hoping Mrs. C---- would not hold
out another year. But there's no die in her."
"C----!" I exclaimed.
"Yes, yon's her place. The way of it was this. She was a Fawcett,--Betty
Fawcett: I've heard my grandfather talk of her. Her first husband was a
Colonel Shepler."
"Of the District?"
"Yes,--Alexandria. They had no children; but the Colonel, he leaves her
all for her life, and after she was gone it was to come back to the
Sheplers. Afterwards she married C----; but she holds on to every dollar
of the old Colonel's money. Now old Steadman was the only one of that
family living."
"Do you mean to say that there is but one life between these boys and
the Shepler properties?"
"Just so; but the 'life' is a tough one. She's been ailing these twenty
years. It will come to them soon, surely."
"Where did you say was her place?"
He pointed it out, on the other side of the creek. After a few moments'
consideration, I sauntered towards the ford. From his first mention of
this Mrs. C---- I recognized my father's heroine, and determined to see
her, at first from curiosity; but another reason was now added. If what
the man stated was true, this woman surely could not be aware of the
condition of almost pauperism to which these people were reduced whose
property she held. If the case were plainly set before her, she would at
least furnish means to save the poor woman's life whom I had just left,
etc., etc. Reasoning thus, I came to the creek, and picked my way over
on the stones raised about a foot above the water. The ground stretched
from the bank up to the house in a grassy slope set with one or two
alders and willows. It was a grazing farm. Rich meadows rolled away on
every side, except where a sugar-loaf-shaped hill rose abruptly in front
of me. The old Shepler mansion stood at its base. It was large, and,
with its out-houses, built of stone, solid, clean, and jail-like. The
absence of all look of comfort was curious,--not a curl of smoke from
the wide kitchen, no sleepy dog sunning himself, no flower in garden or
unshuttered window, the grass cleared away even from the well, and the
yellow clay left. Two or three stalwart negroes were gossiping over a
pile of half-sawed wood near where I stood. I had stopped but a moment,
when a shrill, rasping voice came across the creek, making the men jump
to their work with a will.
"No! I'll make my own way! I have crossed my own water-course for half a
century, and what is come to me to stop me now? I must see what this
fellow is staring about."
I turned and saw a man on the opposite bank, close to the water's edge,
remonstrating with a short, thin old woman about something. She made use
of violent gestures; her tones were acidulated into the essence of all
that was dogmatic and shrewish.
"Don't talk to me, Parker! If you want to know how I will cross the
ford, here!"
So saying, she squatted down on the ground, and removed her shoes and
stockings in a twinkling,--then, tucking them under her arm, made her
way over the stones with a chuckle as she touched the shore.
"Parker's a fool! Don't tire yourselves, I beg, Pike and Jerry! Now,
young Sir, what is _your_ errand?" facing me, sharply.
"To make myself known to a friend of my father's."
"So, so! I've heard that story before. Young people nowadays make a
show of Mrs. C----, and ferret her out with some story of old times and
their fathers. Your name's Humphreys? Pike told me of you. I keep a
sharp eye on all the country round. I think I did know a Humphreys in
Colonel Shepler's time. Get you before me into the house."
During this harangue, she had been composedly putting on her stockings,
and fastening a pair of low shoes with the old-fashioned buckles of
brilliants on the instep. I preceded her into the house, entering the
low-raftered kitchen, as she directed.
"There's a fire there. It's chilly."
She perched herself on a high chair, her toes on the rung, while she
subjected me to a rigid cross-examination about my father. I observed
her as closely. A small, withered old woman, as if Nature had at first
begrudged her the sap and genial juices of life, and dried them out of
her as speedily as might be; only her eyes blazed, fresh, keen,
vindictive. She sat bolt upright in her chair, her skinny hands crossed
over her coarse blue dress, the fingers loaded with rings, many of them
jewels of great value. Her white hair was drawn back in a thick puff
under a cap of cheap lace, and fastened there with a diamond pin. A
great turnip-shaped gold watch was fastened on her left shoulder, her
hollow chest garlanded with massive chains, a bunch of steel keys ending
them, among which those of the pantry and cellar were conspicuous.
She pronounced my verdict at last.
"I believe you are not lying. Come Marquise into my house. I am glad to
see Philip Humphreys's son. A shiftless dog, but good blood, good
blood,"--leading me into a spacious dining-room, uncarpeted and dreary,
the plaster falling from the walls, but a magnificent buffet filling up
one entire side and laden with massive plate, among which I noticed
several cups, prizes at Southern race-courses.
Her keen eye caught my passing glance at them.
"Yes, yes! I had a good eye for the the turf once! Keep clear of it,
young Humphreys! It has gone down into a money-making jobbery. Gentlemen
cannot keep even their vices intact--in--the--Republic," with a
delicate, fine smile of satire.
Once within this inner court of hospitality, her manner had changed
instantly. The change was so unnatural as to be almost appalling: it was
like a corpse putting on a gracious, gay life again. Evening found me
still charmed to my seat, a willing listener. I do not think even now
that it was because I was an inexperienced, uncritical youth, that I was
so readily puzzled and interested. I have written this paper mainly for
the purpose of sketching a real character, thinking her now, as I did
then, a curious study for the dilettante in anomalies of human nature,
as well as one of the most noteworthy women of her time from extraneous
circumstances. Once having taken up her _role_ as hostess, the roughness
and vulgarity slid from her as by a magic touch,--as coarse armor with
which she kept her neighbors at bay. She had the keen insight, the
delicate instinct, dainty in expression of manner and speech, of a woman
_habituee du monde_ for many crowded and watchful years. From the time
of her first marriage she spent her winters in Washington, at first
notes as a beauty and _bel esprit_, then an object of interest from her
eccentricities, her cool skill, and long familiarity with the private
political life of the capital. Her manner had the quaint archness,
over-lying intense pride, of an old French Marquise, to whom Bonaparte
is "plebeian," and the fruitful, vulgar present worthy only of being
dismissed with a shrug of the shoulders.
I went day after day to see her,--of course, at her own request: with
the same odd, half-rebuked feeling with which I opened the Indian
mound,--only that which was to be unearthed from this grave was of far
more interest to a man of the world, and much less holy, than the poor
savages' _cache_ with their dead in it. I did not broach the subject of
the Steadmans, hoping to obtain some clew to a weak point in her nature
which could be touched and roused to sympathy. I never found it. I think
she enjoyed my visits. I was fresh from the world from which she had
long been shut out, brought its breath with me, was eager and
appreciative. As a reward, she poured out an exhaustless store of
anecdote. Her times had covered a broad field, and one of glaring
contrasts; not an Indian war back to the Colonial era with which she was
not familiar; she remembered the first proclamation of the Declaration
of Independence; had known Paine, Lafayette, and Lee; sat on the side of
the court-room devoted to Burr's adherents during his trial at Richmond,
a young and brilliant beauty, while her husband faced her on the other;
talked of Benton, Clay, Webster, then political leaders, as "those young
men,--promising, but crude, Sir! crude!" I afterwards learned the
estimation these men had for her.
"I never passed her house," said Mr. C----, "without stopping to pay my
respects to her. She had a powerful intellect in her younger
days.--power enough to make men overlook her coarseness. Many of our
caucuses were held in her drawing-rooms; she could keep a secret better
than most men; but she was too fond of petty sarcasm and intrigue to be
effective in any cause. We respected her, too, for her mental strength
only; in her most brilliant days, she was selfish and a miser."
The manner in which this latter trait of avarice showed itself, and its
struggle with her finer taste, were ludicrous enough,--for instance, in
her cheap servant's gown and old jewelry. One day she took me up to a
large chamber, filled with chests of drawers, in which were stowed away
the dresses she had worn for half a century.
"Every year I put away two, made in the current mode. I like to turn
them over, as you do to look at pictures, perhaps?"--unfolding heavy
velvets, brocades, and then, out of spicy red boxes, lifting fold after
fold of yellow old lace, daintily as a mother would caress a baby's
limbs.
But this woman never had children.
"It will be a precious legacy for some young beauty," I said,
thoughtlessly. "A warning one, too."
"Legacy? You look far ahead, young Sir!" her bony old hands shaking, as
she shut the boxes and locked them wickedly.
Yet in one of these upper rooms she had her tombstone,--a shaft of
Carrara marble, with a base containing niches, which she filled in her
younger and more generous days with finely wrought figures, but lately
with plaster groups purchased from itinerant image-vendors.
It was with little hope of success, therefore, that I broached the
subject of the Steadmans on the last day of my stay. I did it, however,
resolutely, affecting not to see that the old woman's face grew set at
the first mention of their names. She sat stiffly erect, and permitted
me to finish without a word of interruption. I did what I could,--showed
how a little present help would enable the brothers to start in life
utterly different men from their present selves,--stated in plain terms
the peril in which the woman stood, and the immediate necessity for aid.
"But little, Madam," I said,----"not more than the value of that least
ring on your finger, but immediate. It will save her life, in all
probability."
"Have you finished?" taking snuff from her jewelled box, nervously.