1111 COURT STREET,
BOSTON, MASS., _Nov._ 12, 1890.
_Mr. Francis B. Ellesworth, University Club,
Boston, Mass.:_
MY DEAR FRANK, I am sorry to inform you that the Benson note is
still uncollected. The party writes that he will try to pay it
soon. Our correspondent in Sunshine, S. C., considers the
Benson security in Cherokee first-class. As this is the only S.
C. mortgage that has slipped up so far on our hands, I should
advise you to be patient a few more days. Perhaps you had
better give the party leeway up to Dec. 1, if necessary, as it
is his first default since you took the papers, three years
ago. However, if you are impatient and wish to settle the
matter, send me down the trust deeds and notes. Run in any
time. I shall be glad to see you.
Very truly yours,
JOSEPH TODD.
Young Ellesworth carefully deposited his cigar in the bronze ash
receiver on the polished table by his side, and pulled out from his
breast pocket a notebook which he consulted. After a few moments he
seemed to satisfy himself as to the identity of his mortgager Benson;
put his papers up, and sank back into a reverie.
The gray November day seemed to have contented itself with monopolizing
the streets and the faded Common, and the poor tenements, and the ragged
stragglers, and to have passed by the windows of Beacon Street, and the
luxurious smoking-room of the new University Club. Francis Ellesworth
sprawled listlessly in the deep chair by the window, and vaguely
congratulated himself that he did not have to earn his supper. It was
lucky that he did not have to, for any tyro of a physiognomist could
have seen at a glance that the delicate features, the sallow complexion,
brightened by red spots upon his cheeks, the gentle black eyes and the
straight black hair, did not belong to a robust New England body.
The trouble with Ellesworth was, not that he was rich enough not to have
to work, but that he was born at all. He considered it only a fair
compensation for this insult that three years ago he had fallen heir to
seventy-five thousand dollars, which he had successfully invested and
reinvested ever since. This occupation, and the clubs and a few other
necessary amusements formed his life.
He was not handsome, but just interesting looking enough not to pass
unnoticed. He was not vulgar; that is to say, he did not drink too much,
did not swear, and was not the kind of a fellow who compromises a woman
by his attentions. He was neither clever nor stupid. Thousands of young
men in our great cities are of this type, unimportant to men of intent,
and a missionary field to women of character.
He needed an electric shock either to kill him or make a man of him. But
perhaps, after all, Ellesworth was not wholly to blame for not trying to
make his mark; for he was not so strong as other men, as I said before,
and had, besides, so thoroughly coddled himself into that belief that
useful activity was struck off of his list of possibilities.
Now it happened that this Benson mortgage was the first which he had
taken out under his inheritance; it had a certain special interest to
him for that reason; it had netted him eight per cent. clear, and he
considered his fifteen hundred dollars well invested. His Harvard
classmate, Todd, a good judge, had selected the mortgage for him, and
altogether it seemed to the young property-holder quite an important, if
not to say a public, financial affair that this first of October passed
without producing sixty dollars from Benson. He didn't know who Benson
was; nor did he care. How many a capitalist in the East knows the sturdy
settler whose hard-earned home he holds in his relentless safe! The
drought comes, the crops wither away; the cyclone sweeps the land; the
only horse that does the ploughing dies; the mother is sick and the
father tends the babies instead of the wheat--a hundred catastrophes
menace the farmer, but whatever happens, the semi-annual dividend must
be paid or the nightmare of his life comes to pass--the terrible
capitalist in the East, less compassionate than the cyclone or the
inundation or the drought, takes the home as a matter of course, just as
he takes his dinner. Who would dare complain? Not Benson surely, thought
Ellesworth, with the smile of a man who holds a "full hand."
"Work Benson for all he is worth," wrote Ellesworth on some blue
club-paper, "and give him until the first of December."
The first of December came, but no South Carolina interest. Francis
Ellesworth was greatly annoyed and told Todd so plainly.
"He is sick," explained Todd. "Somebody else wrote for him. The letter
came the other day. But he signed it. He asks for another fifteen days."
Ellesworth frowned.
"I'm deuced hard up just now," he said, "Christmas is coming on. That
would just settle my flower bill. Halvin has sent me three confoundedly
gentlemanly bills. That's the worst of it. Write and tell Benson I'll
give him until the fifteenth of December--not another day."
"Just as you say," answered Todd. "It's all safe enough, but it will
take some time to realize. Cherokee isn't exactly booming, but he's got
fifty acres and one half cleared, the other half is heavy yellow pine.
The timber is worth the whole amount, my correspondent assures me,
besides the house and out-buildings. You won't lose, not a cent, I'll
guarantee; but it's annoying, I will admit."
Then they fell to talking about the Yale foot-ball victory. Of course
they talked late and Ellesworth walked to his apartments in a heavy
shower.
That night, one of the catastrophes which prove demons or angels to our
lives, occurred to the young man. He was taken suddenly and violently
ill. Of the three physicians summoned by the excited janitor, to
prescribe for the sickness, one called the case pneumonia; another
preferred malaria; and the third, having just delivered an original
paper on the subject, suggested brain grippe. In only one respect the
three wise men agreed--their patient must spend the winter in the
South. Oddly enough, they recommended Sunshine, South Carolina; and as
Sunshine is a fashionable resort, with plenty of hotels and tennis and
girls, Ellesworth found no difficulty in obeying the medical counsel.
Thus in ten days he found himself in the land of the palmetto and the
japonica. It was an abrupt change, and therefore all the more natural
for that. The other day an invalid started for India on an eighteen
hours' notice.
Ellesworth's illness and the journey had entirely driven the Benson
matter out of his mind. He had drawn upon an emergency fund for his
trip, and the fact that he was sixty dollars short had escaped his easy
memory. Therefore the further announcement from Todd that Benson could
not pay at the date agreed upon came to him as a new shock. Todd had
written a formal letter to his classmate, merely stating the fact and
asking for instructions. As Ellesworth read it, he had a vague feeling
that there was something behind that was not told. But he had just lost
a game of billiards to an inferior player, and felt cross.
"Confound that Benson!" he ejaculated. Then he sat down and wrote:
"Foreclose at once. My attorneys, Squeeze & Claw, will give you the
Benson trust deeds on presentation of this. Hurry it through as soon as
you can."
He heaved a sigh of relief, and lighted a cigar with Todd's letter.
There are critics who assert that the modern story fails of its mission
unless it deals in extraordinary characters embedded like the rare
crystals of Hiddenite, in an extraordinary matrix; and that the public,
tired to suffocation of its own commonplaces, has a right to expect
something out of the usual run. If such a _dictum_ were final Francis
Ellesworth is in nowise a fit hero for a "penny-dreadful," nor was it
even an extraordinary circumstance that made him inquire how far
Cherokee Garden was from Sunshine.
"You can go by railroad," answered the Northern clerk, "or you can go
horseback. It's only eight miles by road through the pines. It's a very
pretty ride to take before dinner."
Ellesworth had two reasons for amusing himself by an easy trip to
Cherokee. He had a vague feeling of remorse which often follows the
decree of justice. Lincoln was made ill by being obliged to refuse a
pardon. The greater the power the heavier it hangs upon the heart.
Ellesworth, as he entertained himself in the conventional way, ever
spending, never earning, began to feel that he had done a brutal thing,
without even looking into the circumstances, to order a man's home sold
over his head, because he had failed to pay interest for the first
time. If Benson's farm were only eight miles away why did he not see him
before he sent the command to foreclose? There was an atonement owing,
and this feeling, rising like a mist in the mind of the young man, who
knew much of pleasure and little of misery, drew him to the mortgaged
plantation. And then, if Benson did prove a shiftless fellow, he wanted
to see what kind of a place he might be soon forced to own. He might
make it his winter resort and come down there every year. The more
selfish thought reinforced the generous one, and piqued his curiosity,
as he rode slowly into the wilderness, leaving Sunshine and its
fashionable savor behind.
It was a December morning. To one not used to the tropics, the sun, the
heat, the greenness, the exhilaration were magical. Under what cold
comforter was Boston Common shivering on this winter day! What pneumonic
gales roared up Beacon Street and gnashed through Commonwealth Avenue,
seeking whom they might devour, and having not a great way to go! How
blue the street vendors looked--the Italian boys who gilded statuettes
on Tremont Street, and the man under the old courthouse who offers to
clean your gloves of the unpardonable sin--for five cents! How the
fellows shivered as they stamped the snow off in the club vestibule!
The wonder that New England is not depopulated when there is such an
Eden in which to spend the devastating winter! So Ellesworth thought as
he jogged along the uneven, sandy road, congratulating himself with
every deep breath, and sitting straight and straighter in the saddle. He
had never felt so happy and so free as he did this December morning.
Passing slowly by a deserted orchard, he could see the yellow larks
flying from tree to tree, and could hear the robins and the cat-birds
calling each other names, and mocking each other merrily. Now and then
he stopped his horse to watch a couple of quails leisurely hopping
across the road, and strained his ears to hear their thrum as they were
startled in the thicket. The very air seemed happy. Care and illness
slipped away as the sunshine slipped on the faces of the leaves. It was
December? No, it was summer with something thrown in that is never
present in our Northern June.
Ellesworth galloped along until his horse stumbled into a mud-hole.
Before him, in a hollow, a stream had to be forded in the usual Southern
way. Above and beyond, a cabin could be seen from whose outside chimney
smoke arose in a perpendicular column. Cocks crew in the distance, and
there was every indication that the outskirts of Cherokee were
represented in the hut before him. As Ellesworth halted in the deepest
part of the brook, allowing his horse to drink, he saw clusters of
mistletoe on the tops of slender trees. The dark green of this romantic
parasite set against the gray of the trees and their moss formed a new
picture for the Northerner. The glistening mistletoe with its white
berries recalled scenes that he had read about. Ellesworth had played
too lightly with life to have ever been seriously in love. The
flirtation of a few weeks or months and the solemn tenderness of devoted
love are not allied. The one passes into the other as seldom as silicon
passes into the cells of a fallen tree. Ellesworth had never gone beyond
conventional devotion: and this he had so far discreetly given to
married women. This emblem of Christmas troth actually growing before
his eyes, and seen by him in its native state for the first time,
produced a vague longing upon the young New Englander. He remembered a
precise and beautiful Boston girl, rich enough and all that, whom he had
vainly tried to consider in the light of a possible wife. What well-bred
surprise would she have poured upon him if he had attempted to claim the
right of the mistletoe branch! He had waited in order to give and
receive spontaneous, unconventional tokens of affection. He had dreamed
of walking in the fields by the side of the phantom he loved, clasping
her hand and swinging it with his, just like children in Arcadia. He
wanted no wife who would accept her husband's kiss as a matter of
necessity. He had seen them, and cynically watched the husband casting
furtive, longing looks at her who swore to cherish him unto death.
Thus spoke the chaste, the alluring mistletoe to his heart. These
thoughts surprised him, and he hurried along in vague discomfort over
the little slope (the natives called it a hill) and up to the straggling
village, called in his papers of description Cherokee Garden for no
earthly reason whatever.
"Is this Cherokee Garden?" he asked of the wrinkled white woman sitting
in the doorway of the solitary suburban residence.
"This ain't the hull of it, young man," she answered severely, taking
her corn-cob pipe out of her mouth and looking at Ellesworth as if he
had cast an aspersion upon a city. "Ye kin ride down the road a right
smart bit until ye come to the kyars. The post office is on the other
side o' the track." This she said with an accent of resentment.
"Do you know where a man called William Benson lives, whom I understand
has a--a farm here somewhere?"
When Ellesworth had finished his question the old woman got up and,
supported by her stick, tottered to his side, and peered up into his
face.
"Air ye any kin ter Bill Benson? Air ye an'thin' to him?"
"No, no," stammered Ellesworth, taken aback. "I only wanted to call on
him. Why?"
"Ye'll hev'ter go right smart ways to find Bill Benson," replied the old
woman, grimly.
She peered up into his face again, and shook her head. Ellesworth,
wondering whether his creditor had "skipped to Cuba to avoid payment,"
awaited information.
"Bill Benson" (she stopped to take a whiff, and then proceeded with a
tone of awe caught from Methodist preachers) "hez gone to glory!"
"Where?" asked Boston, ignorant of the longitude and latitude of that
strange place.
"To glory, young man!" repeated the old woman, impressively. "Elder
Jones buried Bill in Tantallon buryin' ground, four mile from hyar down
the track," added the woman, severely.
Her voice dropped to a whisper on the last words, and she looked to see
their effect upon the horseman. The red handkerchief, tied over her head
and under her chin, had fallen down behind her neck and revealed a bald
head. The cock crew from the step of the hut.
Benson dead! This, then, accounted for the note so long overdue. Benson
had been sick, and could not pay. Why had Ellesworth not known this
before? He reddened with self-reproach. This was the first tragedy which
he had stumbled upon, and how much of it was his own doing! The old
woman looked at him suspiciously.
"When did he die?" he asked softly.
The woman counted backwards on her fingers with the stem of her pipe.
"Right smart onto two weeks," she answered after much calculation. Then
she shot this question at him with a scowl, "Ye hain't no Northerner,
air ye?"
Taken off his guard, Ellesworth hesitated, and then forswore his
section.
"I--I am living at--eh--Sunshine."
Her face lighted.
"Mebbe ye'r raised in Charleston. Ye look like a South Carolinian."
Ellesworth was drawn to it by some occult power, and nodded assent. The
old woman's manner was now totally different, and she approached him
confidentially, and offered him the use of her tin snuff-box, which he
courteously declined.
"Ye haint heerd, so Colonel Tom Garvin told me, that a dum Northerner
hez got a holt on Bill's place; and there ain't none left now 'cept
Georgy and Mrs. McCorkle as is a widder nigh on ten year. Colonel Tom is
kin to her mother's second cousin, and he says thet thet dum Yankee hed
better not show up 'round these parts, for he'd get plugged if he tries
to take Bill's place away from Georgy, poor, innercent thing that she
is." The old woman's cracked voice thrilled with the passion and
tenderness of her kind; but Ellesworth did not look at her as she
finished. He felt a little frightened, and he bent over his horse to
fleck a bit of bark with his whip to conceal it.
"How far do they live from here?" he asked after a pause, which she
interpreted as actuated by sympathy.
"'Tain't no fur at all. Ye take the next turn to yer left. It's the
first plantation ye come to. I reckon ye'll see Georgy a dustin' and
sweepin'. She's almighty pertikler, she is, poor creetur."
Ellesworth thanked the old woman dreamily and rode in the direction
which she pointed out.
Ellesworth had never thought of this view of the subject. It never
occurred to him that he would be an object of hatred in Cherokee Garden.
He glanced around furtively, as if he expected to see an enemy hiding
behind the trees. At any rate, so far, he was not known. He made up his
mind that he should not be. Benson's daughter was undoubtedly a sallow,
withered young girl, with a hot temper and a deep sense of injury; and,
if she found out his identity would probably call the country to arms
against him. But the Yankee had no idea of giving up his rights. His
hands tightened on reins and whip. He meant to see the plantation that
was mortgaged in his name at any cost. But about one thing he was now
certain. Cherokee would never be a winter resort for him.
He walked his horse to the cross-road, to the left, about a thousand
yards or so, until he came in front of a house. He halted and looked at
it long and critically. It was a two-story house, built of yellow pine,
that had not been painted. In spite of this, it did not look neglected.
It had an air of scrupulous neatness and care. Around the house ran a
simple fence, made to keep the chickens and the pigs that swarmed about
him, from the garden and the piazza. A huge rose-bush covered one whole
side of the house, while in the garden and on the veranda red and white
japonicas were in flower. Flanking the walk from the gate to the house,
high azalea bushes were pushing forth their buds for the spring
blooming, and little borders of box protected with wooden boards, and
bunches of holly intersected the little garden. It was more than a
home-like looking place: it was fascinatingly cozy, with its roses and
camellias and azaleas and a single protecting palmetto, and
over-towering live oaks, and majestic pines. It was just the place
Ellesworth had dreamed of possessing. It was luxuriant; it was tropical.
The air, semi-spiced with odors of gum and blooms mounted to his brain
like a narcotic. He sat upon his horse and looked about. His eyes roamed
past the house and caught the contrast of the unkempt fields with the
neatness within the enclosure. He noted the olive fingers of the high
pines beyond the ploughed land.
It was a fair and a sad sight--William Benson was not there to enjoy his
home.
With a sigh of longing and of self-reproach he turned his face toward
the house again. Before him, with one hand on the gate, stood a woman.
She was looking at him. Questions were in her eyes. Ellesworth stared at
her in amazement, and only superlatives crowded into his mind; for she
was the most glorious woman he had ever seen. She was tall, almost to
his own height, and with a proportional figure. Dressed without
ornament, without ruffle, or frill or white at the throat, in plain
black, her face revealed itself on the green background as if it were
upon a canvas by Bastien Lepage. It was a face in which there seemed to
be many nationalities blended: Italian eyes, Spanish coloring of the
cheeks, black Indian hair, rich Mexican lips,--these cooerdinated into
the most startling type he had ever seen, through a quick, sensitive,
high-spirited intelligence, the inheritance of Southern blood. He could
not analyze this beauty; he could only gasp at it.
Francis B. Ellesworth was, as has been intimated, not a captivating man
_per se_; but as he sat upon his horse, with the flush of excitement
upon his face, and a certain refinement in his carriage that looked as
much out of place in Cherokee Garden as the face of the girl before him,
he was not an unattractive fellow. Now, as the two were not over fifteen
feet apart, and were both looking at each other, one of them had to
speak. She waited for him to do so. He simply couldn't. So she spoke
first.
"Have you lost your way, sir?"
The tremor of the dimple in her chin and the marked effort which she
made to steady her voice, showed that she was much agitated. Had she not
been expecting the man who was to take away her home for a paltry sum of
unpaid money? She had looked upon the Yankee who held her fathers notes
as little more than a thief. And now that her father had died, she
seriously considered him in the light of a murderer. She thought of his
agent as his "minion," whom it was clearly due her dignity to resist.
The case had been the talk of the scraggly village, and the judge of the
district, who was reputed to know the intricacies of all the law that
ever was tabulated, asserted vehemently in her presence that to eject
her from her home was an outrage that could not and would not be
permitted as long as the able-bodied men of Cherokee could carry a gun.
This testimony of Southern chivalry the girl fully believed.
And now the invader had come at last. She clutched the gate and
collected herself to meet him.
"No, miss, that is--is this William Benson's?--I mean----" Ellesworth
halted, remembering that his debtor was no more, and not wishing to
remind her of the fact. "_Was_ this his place?"
The magnificent girl looked at him over that fence and measured him.
Yes, the worst had come at last, and an uncalled-for insult with it. How
the stranger gloated over the fact that the place was _not_ her
father's! She drew herself to her full height; her black eyes blazed;
her cheeks became carmine. She could hardly control her voice from
indignation.
"You mistake, sir. This _is_ his place, and I think, sir, it will remain
so."
She looked at him fiercely and waited to let that sentiment fructify in
the young man's soul.
"Indeed, I--I hope so," ventured Ellesworth.