John Merryvale was growing old, people were beginning to say; and then
would add that the world, when he should pass away, would miss an
old-time gentleman. He was a tall, thin man, long of limb and deliberate
of speech. The impatient northern guest who tried to hurry him with the
mail could fidget to her fill without decreasing by a moment the time he
chose to spend upon his task. He could not be hurried but he could
easily be duped, and many of the acres that Lee Merryvale coveted, but
saw in other hands, had slipped from his father's by reason of
over-confidence in some speculator or old acquaintance. But, no matter
how often he was imposed upon, he never lost his equanimity. The man who
took advantage of him was not to be condemned; it was not his fault if
he had not been born a gentleman; the overreaching tradesman was to be
pitied. That he, John Merryvale, was to be pitied did not even enter his
thoughts.
The Negroes of the place loved and looked up to him, and he on his part
treated them as beloved children. When they were ill he doctored them;
when they quarreled, he acted as judge, and, without the cost of a
lawsuit, gave them more rational judgment than they would have obtained
in a court. While bearing a large part of the expense of the Episcopal
church under the live-oaks at the water's edge, he helped to keep open
the Methodist meeting among the pines where his black children went on
Sunday mornings. He looked askance at first at Ellen; and while he never
grew to like her ways, believing that she put false notions of equality
into the children's heads, he was just and admitted that she had
improved the morals of the place. For himself, he should always look
upon the Negro as the white man's charge and make every allowance for
his wrong-doing. What would be a sin in a white man, in a Negro would be
only the misdemeanor of a child. Once, when one of his Negro tenants
murdered a black neighbor in a drunken fight, he urged the judge to show
clemency, to make the sentence lenient. "Remember," he admonished, "this
man is black, and it is not one-tenth as bad for a black man to do a
deed like this as for a white one." This attitude did not prevent his
treating with respect the Negroes, men and women, whom he knew both at
his own place and up and down the river, and they in their turn loved to
drop a word with him, and looked with affectionate regard upon the tall
figure in its well-worn cutaway coat, its straw hat with the black
ribbon, its big, comfortable collar. One might see him of a Sunday
walking among the pines, inquiring for Lucindy or Rose or Ebenezer, as
the case might be.
On this Sunday afternoon, while Hertha sat with her mother on the steps,
John Merryvale was walking with his son in the orange grove. They had
been examining the trees when two colored lads, dressed in their Sunday
best, bowed in crossing their path. Lee nodded carelessly to the young
men, but his father raised his hat. The son noticed it, and spoke, half
jestingly, of this act of courtesy.
"There isn't another man in the state would do that, Father. A nigger's
a nigger to the folk I know about here."
"I remember," his father answered, "the retort Jefferson Davis gave when
questioned for returning the bow of a black man. 'I can't afford,' he
said, 'to be less of a gentleman than he.'"
Young Merryvale was silent, wondering whether the day had passed of both
the old-time white and colored gentleman.
"This is a beautiful tree," his father said, stopping to look with pride
at a plant filled with fast ripening fruit. "It's bearing well this
season."
"Yes."
"I cannot tell you, Son, how happy I am that you are redeeming these old
acres."
"So you're converted," Lee said, with a bright smile.
"Yes, entirely. And the best of it is the realization that you are busy
in your old home and do not stay in it merely for Patty and me."
"Oh, I couldn't keep away! This place grips me. It's well enough to go
to New York for a month to study the market, but this is the land of my
choice, darkies and all. I wish they could do a good day's work; but,
then, I don't pay them for a day's work, white man's reckoning."
A few steps further brought them to the tree where he and Hertha had
first played together.
The older man stopped again. "Why, here's a blossom at the end of a
bough," he said.
"Yes, but don't pick it!" Lee seized his father's arm. "I've a fancy to
keep it there--for good luck," he added, somewhat lamely.
Over the blossom, the previous morning, Hertha had bent like a happy
child, blowing upon the petals and calling on them to open.
"Lee!" The young man started at his father's voice; there was in it a
note of admonition, almost of severity. But there was nothing of
severity in the words that followed:
"I wish I could express to you my happiness that this old home that my
father and my father's father loved and strove to make beautiful will
now be guarded by you. And you will do better with it than we did."
"Oh, I don't know about that," Lee said.
"Yes, this is a mere fragment that comes into your hands."
"A pretty good fragment, I think."
"Only a fragment. The acres stretching back through the pines should be
yours, and other acres by the river's edge. I did not know how to use
the place aright, but you will be wiser than I."
"Well, if I am wiser about such things," Lee admitted, "it's because the
world is wiser to-day than when you took over the place. People have
learned a heap of science since then."
John Merryvale did not heed this remark, but, turning his gaze from his
son, looked away down the river. "I could not give you the heritage in
land which should be yours," he said gravely, "but I hope I have given
you a heritage of kindly relationship to those about you, of
friendliness and honorable dealing."
"Indeed," Lee answered, "I know how you are loved and honored."
"And you, too, shall be honored by all on this old estate down to the
humblest colored child. It is a great consolation to me," he went on,
still looking away from his son and out over the water, "that the rights
of the poorest black girl have been respected from my father's father's
day through my own. There are no white faces among these cabins to tell
of our passion and our shame. I think of this sometimes when I see that
young servant of your aunt's. In her beautiful countenance is the sin
and the disgrace of the Southern gentleman."
"Don't you believe," Lee answered sharply, "that her mother thought she
was honored?"
"That's as it may be, but she was not honored, and her child was left to
the chance care of a black woman."
"He was a beast who did that!"
The father turned at this heated speech to see his son, face flushed,
anger in his eyes.
"If he took a responsibility, he had no right later to dodge it."
Lee spoke with vehemence. He had told Hertha that he had ceased to
think, but in reality he was thinking, every hour of the day, of the
thing that he was doing.
"Whoever started the damned business going," he went on, with an attempt
at a laugh, "got America into a frightful mess. But some one did start
it, and here they are, women--well, women such as you speak of, with all
the instincts and the beauty of the white race. Don't you believe a
woman like that would be happier under the protection of a white man who
loved her than if she took up with some coarse fellow as black as her
shoes?"
"No," John Merry vale answered, "the life of such a woman is the
loneliest life in the world. She may not enter the white world and the
black world casts her off."
"Aren't you mistaken?" The question came quickly, with an undertone of
anxiety. "It seems to me that the black race must understand that
there's nothing for it but to get whiter."
"There's nothing for it but to get blacker, Son. All, black and white,
are learning to know this. Within its own circle it may build up a
civilization that shall be a humble imitation of the civilization of the
white race, a race that has had a start of thousands of years. We must
be patient, helping when we can, not hindering."
Lee scanned his father's face, but could see nothing to show that he was
thinking of any present issue; rather he was striving to express his
belief on a vexed question that would trouble this country long after he
was gone. Nor did he glance at his listener, but stood, a tall, thin
figure in his long black coat, kindly, serious.
"It is a great problem, that of the two races," he continued musingly,
"a problem that the South alone can solve, since we know the black man,
his virtues and his limitations. He has come to us in his trouble and we
have helped and advised him. That is as it should be, but increasingly
he will have to live without our surveillance. For after all, no man is
fit to be the master of another; and not even the gentlemen of the South
were wise enough to be entrusted with the lives of other men. My father
fought to perpetuate the peculiar institution of slavery, and as a boy I
put a gun on my shoulder and went out in the last year of the war. We
thought that we were right, but we know now that we were mistaken."
"Yes."
"Sometimes I am afraid that as the country develops, as industry
increases, the friendly relations between the whites and the blacks will
wholly cease, and each will go his way, regardless of the other. But
that will never happen while you are here, I feel sure."
"Oh, no," Lee answered cheerfully, glad of the turn the conversation had
taken, "I like the darkies all right."
"That is not enough." John Merryvale turned and for the first time
looked straight into his son's face. "Men have stolen my acres from me,
but I have stolen from no man. I have tried to do no one an injustice,
honoring the least of His children. I have little to give you in money
and in acres; but I can give you this: the assurance that I have
wittingly wronged no man or woman. And I shall believe that when you
stand here, your hair gray, moving with slow feet, you will be able to
say to your son, 'I have wittingly wronged no man or woman.'
"It's getting late," he concluded, turning to leave. "I'll go to the
house to see if your aunt is needing me."
Lee stood alone for some minutes under the orange tree. He ran his hand
caressingly along the trunk as though he were touching something dear
and precious. Then, with sober face, as slowly as his father, he walked
through the twilight to the great house.