"Then may I ask what are these _canaille_ to me? Why, old Steadman was
not a cousin within the first degree of Colonel Shepler,--a carter,
Sir,--a hodman! Colonel Shepler was a gentleman; there was ducal blood
in his veins."
"All of which did not render Steadman's sons less the heirs-at-law of
the Shepler properties," I replied, coolly.
"Which they will never inherit, Mr. Humphreys! I have seen them; I know
what the physique of that race is worth; I will walk over their graves
yet!"
And upon my soul, she looked diabolical enough to live forever, and
walk over all of our graves. I began to speak, but she waved her hand
imperiously.
"I have had enough of this. The old carter and his sons have prowled,
jackal-like, at my gate for years, waiting to prey on my dead body. If
they are needy, let them work. I thought better of your instincts than
to suppose you would hear the country gossip, and, worse still, regale
my ears with it."
"I spoke simply in the cause of humanity. If the country people judge
your conduct as I do, Madam, they are more just than I hoped."
She was silent a moment; but I think in her secret soul she liked the
coarse, rough blow.
"The matter is an old story to me," tapping her box impatiently. "I find
it wearisome. For this ring to which you allude, have you remarked it?
It is a Nubian antique,--rare, I fancy."
And so on, and on, sketching the history of the rings she wore, with a
curious felicity in throwing an interest about trifles. I dined with her
that day for the first time: a meagre repast, served on the family
plate. But her wines were exquisite, and dealt with an unsparing hand. I
left her that evening, as I supposed forever,--looking back at the bent
figure in the massive doorway, and thinking her the loneliest human
being I had ever seen. One of her morbid fancies was to intensify that
very solitude,--the negro-quarters being at some distance from the
house, and after she was undressed at night everything living was
banished thence out of her sight. Out of that long life she had not
brought the love of even a dog to bear her company in the last hour.
When I parted with Matthew Steadman, I said nothing to him of what I had
tried to do. I saw his eye grew brighter, and he laughed and joked as at
first.
"I told you I had a plan, and I find it will answer."
"Well, Matt?"
"Joe Carver is an old friend of ours,--Captain of the Belle Louise, you
know, runnin' to Orleans. He begun by pilotin', an' has gone up as they
do on these boats. He'll take me on as fireman, and for pay give mother
her passage down. Once there, I'll turn an honest penny."
"By carpentering?"
"Yes, I find one always clears the ground faster by keepin' in the same
road. Abe won't go with us. He thinks luck's comin' soon, and he'll wait
for it. That Luck has been a ghost in the house. I for one will breathe
freer to be clear of it."
"And Jane?"
His face showed that I had touched a sore chord.
"Jane will go out as seamstress somewhere. If ever the good day dawns,
I'll come back for her. But my first care is mother."
I left them the next day, with a real reluctance. I had few friends, and
these boys had come near to me in many ways. But years passed, and I
never heard from them again. Mails were uncertain in those days. I wrote
often, but they never received my letters.
But when I returned to the West, after thirty years' absence, this last
spring, one of my chief aims was to find some traces of them. I took
passage for W----, therefore, the largest town in their old county,
finding that a railroad had invaded that region,--passing, by the way,
through the very spot where we opened the mound. Business detained me in
W---- for several days, and at the close of the week, one close, sultry
evening, I was strolling about the dingy streets with the lonesome
feeling which always besets one in a strange place, when I came to a
little foot-bridge over the creek, from which opened a view of the river
below, and the foundries glaring red on either side. It was a lonely
place, though in the midst of a busy town. I stopped, leaning over the
little hand-rail, looking down into the muddy water, and at the silent,
melancholy lights burning dully in its depths and in the air above.
There was a solitary figure on the bridge, which strangely entered into
the quiet and dreariness of the scene, depressing it, giving to its
dingy and unclean shadows a human significance of loss and discomfort.
It was an old man, in a filthy suit of black, who stood smoking a coarse
cigar and looking vacantly down into the creek. His head was bald, a
fringe of uncombed red hair straggling about the pinched and pimpled
face; it shook weakly when he tried to look at me; the light eyes
blinked blindly in the dim light. A weak, tipsy bit of old human flesh,
which once might have made a man; yet you fancied he had become a
drunkard as a cowardly escape from pain,--that he had been disappointed
before he had begun life. Nearly an hour I stood quietly watching
him,--then, having known him for some time, I touched his arm.
"Abel," I said,--"Abel Steadman?"
He started, reddened in his old womanish fashion, and, when he
recognized me at last, stood cringing, holding his frowzy hat in both
hands with a subservient humility pitiful to see. His manhood had
slipped from him so utterly, that his harmless vanity had left but the
dregs of self-disgust.
"Come, man," I said, "be cheery at seeing an old friend. Give an account
of yourself."
I forced him with me to the hotel, and ordered wine, seeing that he
needed a stimulant. He had come unwillingly, almost angrily, and now sat
on the edge of a chair, his hat held in both hands between his knees.
"That's no good,"--pushing the wine feebly away. "I only take it when I
cannot breathe without."
After a long time, however, the poor creature seemed to waken into a
faint likeness of his old self, and told me his story in a forlorn,
disjointed way. After I heard it, I thought, cruelly enough, that he had
had sufficient of his poor portion of life, and all that remained for
him was to die as weakly as he had lived. I tried to rouse him by asking
for his poems and essays.
"No good came of any of them yet. When I get my rights, I'll publish. It
won't be long to wait now."
"You mean"----
"That she's living yet? Yes, I do,--ninety-eight last spring."
The wreck before me was so miserable that I could not laugh.
"And meanwhile, Abel?"
"I've tried to shift as I could,--sometimes as day-laborer, or running
on railroads as brakeman; and I got once into a photographist's wagon to
help prepare the plates. Was no use going into anything regularly, you
know, when my luck might come any day. I kept my eye on that Shepler
land, though,"--something like life coming into his lack-lustre eye.
"She's mismanaging the bottom fields terribly these late years. All in
oats. But they'll bring in good returns some day, when they're properly
worked. There's surface indications of oil along the creek, too."
"About your studies, Steadman?"
"I've read a bit here and there. I mean to go in training when I get my
rights. Good God! the man I ought to be!"--suddenly putting his hand to
his head.
This feeble outcry was the only sign of manhood that he gave. It was
gone in a moment, and he droned down into the old speculations as to her
"holding out another winter."
"Did you ever meet her?" I asked, with perhaps idle curiosity.
"Only once,--last winter. I was creeping out one cold evening to
the----well, my boarding-house, and I met her face to face, in her pony
chaise, near her own gate. She's withered into something like wrinkled
leather now, with heavy opal ear-drops at each side of her skinny face.
She makes the black fellow pull up. 'So! you're prowling round still,
Steadman, hyena-like? Stand, and let me look at you.' With that her eyes
went all over, gloating like a beast of prey, I thought, but I said
nothing. Then she laughed. 'I'll walk over your grave yet!' she said.
'Drive on, Joe.' Nobody goes near her now but her blacks; her sharp
tongue keeps them off."
"And Matt?" I asked.
"Matt's in St. Louis. You'll see him, as you're going there. But you'll
not mention me, Mr. Humphreys? Matt often wanted me to join them. Matt's
kind; but I'll wait for my rights. It's long since he heard from me, and
I'd rather you would not mention me."
I gave the promise, and he rose to go. My face burned as I offered him
money, not knowing what the effect would be on him; but he took it
eagerly,--not for the first time, I saw.
"Are you comfortably quartered, Steadman?" I asked, when we reached the
door.
His lank jaws did redden at this.
"Yes, very comfortably, very; I have a----friends."
Graves, the landlord, laughed as he hurried down the street, and told me
that the poor wretch had been for two years in the county almshouse, at
times helpless from imbecility.
"He has days of sense," said Graves. "To-night was the best I've knowed.
Seeing you revived him like."
In St. Louis I found Matt Steadman head of a machine-foundry. His house,
a pretty, tasteful home, was back in the French quarter. I found Jane
there, pink-cheeked, bustling, cheery as ever,--and old Mrs. Steadman, a
placid old lady, in the corner, watching jealously over her
grandchildren.
"I told you no lady in the land would look like mother, when her turn
came to wear silks and laces," said Matt. "None does--to me,"--patting
her cheek tenderly.
Matt was the firm, tight-built, alert fellow of old, looking out of the
same shrewd, kindly eyes; but he talked pure English now, and put broad,
liberal views and true creeds into his vigorous Saxon, and, better
still, into his life. It was a good, wholesome home, even to look into
as I did; and I carried out of it a stronger breath and a warmer feeling
for my fellow-men. They talked of their brother often, but thought him
dead. I did not enlighten them; I kept my promise: and besides, I would
not raise in their house the evil spirit of the Luck of Abel Steadman.