Mrs. Carteret was very much disturbed. It was supposed that the shock of
her aunt's death had affected her health, for since that event she had
fallen into a nervous condition which gave the major grave concern. Much
to the general surprise, Mrs. Ochiltree had left no will, and no
property of any considerable value except her homestead, which descended
to Mrs. Carteret as the natural heir. Whatever she may have had on hand
in the way of ready money had undoubtedly been abstracted from the cedar
chest by the midnight marauder, to whose visit her death was immediately
due. Her niece's grief was held to mark a deep-seated affection for the
grim old woman who had reared her.
Mrs. Carteret's present state of mind, of which her nervousness was a
sufficiently accurate reflection, did in truth date from her aunt's
death, and also in part from the time of the conversation with Mrs.
Ochiltree, one afternoon, during and after the drive past Miller's new
hospital. Mrs. Ochiltree had grown steadily more and more childish after
that time, and her niece had never succeeded in making her pick up the
thread of thought where it had been dropped. At any rate, Mrs. Ochiltree
had made no further disclosure upon the subject.
An examination, not long after her aunt's death, of the papers found
near the cedar chest on the morning after the murder had contributed to
Mrs. Carteret's enlightenment, but had not promoted her peace of mind.
When Mrs. Carteret reached home, after her hurried exploration of the
cedar chest, she thrust into a bureau drawer the envelope she had found.
So fully was her mind occupied, for several days, with the funeral, and
with the excitement attending the arrest of Sandy Campbell, that she
deferred the examination of the contents of the envelope until near the
end of the week.
One morning, while alone in her chamber, she drew the envelope from the
drawer, and was holding it in her hand, hesitating as to whether or not
she should open it, when the baby in the next room began to cry.
The child's cry seemed like a warning, and yielding to a vague
uneasiness, she put the paper back.
"Phil," she said to her husband at luncheon, "Aunt Polly said some
strange things to me one day before she died,--I don't know whether she
was quite in her right mind or not; but suppose that my father had left
a will by which it was provided that half his property should go to that
woman and her child?"
"It would never have gone by such a will," replied the major easily.
"Your Aunt Polly was in her dotage, and merely dreaming. Your father
would never have been such a fool; but even if he had, no such will
could have stood the test of the courts. It would clearly have been due
to the improper influence of a designing woman."
"So that legally, as well as morally," said Mrs. Carteret, "the will
would have been of no effect?"
"Not the slightest. A jury would soon have broken down the legal claim.
As for any moral obligation, there would have been nothing moral about
the affair. The only possible consideration for such a gift was an
immoral one. I don't wish to speak harshly of your father, my dear,
but his conduct was gravely reprehensible. The woman herself had no
right or claim whatever; she would have been whipped and expelled from
the town, if justice--blind, bleeding justice, then prostrate at the
feet of slaves and aliens--could have had her way!"
"But the child"--
"The child was in the same category. Who was she, to have inherited the
estate of your ancestors, of which, a few years before, she would
herself have formed a part? The child of shame, it was hers to pay the
penalty. But the discussion is all in the air, Olivia. Your father never
did and never would have left such a will."
This conversation relieved Mrs. Carteret's uneasiness. Going to her room
shortly afterwards, she took the envelope from her bureau drawer and
drew out a bulky paper. The haunting fear that it might be such a will
as her aunt had suggested was now removed; for such an instrument, in
the light of what her husband had said confirming her own intuitions,
would be of no valid effect. It might be just as well, she thought, to
throw the paper in the fire without looking at it. She wished to think
as well as might be of her father, and she felt that her respect for his
memory would not be strengthened by the knowledge that he had meant to
leave his estate away from her; for her aunt's words had been open to
the construction that she was to have been left destitute. Curiosity
strongly prompted her to read the paper. Perhaps the will contained no
such provision as she had feared, and it might convey some request or
direction which ought properly to be complied with.
She had been standing in front of the bureau while these thoughts passed
through her mind, and now, dropping the envelope back into the drawer
mechanically, she unfolded the document. It was written on legal paper,
in her father's own hand.
Mrs. Carteret was not familiar with legal verbiage, and there were
several expressions of which she did not perhaps appreciate the full
effect; but a very hasty glance enabled her to ascertain the purport of
the paper. It was a will, by which, in one item, her father devised to
his daughter Janet, the child of the woman known as Julia Brown, the sum
of ten thousand dollars, and a certain plantation or tract of land a
short distance from the town of Wellington. The rest and residue of his
estate, after deducting all legal charges and expenses, was bequeathed
to his beloved daughter, Olivia Merkell.
Mrs. Carteret breathed a sigh of relief. Her father had not preferred
another to her, but had left to his lawful daughter the bulk of his
estate. She felt at the same time a growing indignation at the thought
that that woman should so have wrought upon her father's weakness as to
induce him to think of leaving so much valuable property to her
bastard,--property which by right should go, and now would go, to her
own son, to whom by every rule of law and decency it ought to descend.
A fire was burning in the next room, on account of the baby,--there had
been a light frost the night before, and the air was somewhat chilly.
For the moment the room was empty. Mrs. Carteret came out from her
chamber and threw the offending paper into the fire, and watched it
slowly burn. When it had been consumed, the carbon residue of one sheet
still retained its form, and she could read the words on the charred
portion. A sentence, which had escaped her eye in her rapid reading,
stood out in ghostly black upon the gray background:--
"All the rest and residue of my estate I devise and bequeath to my
daughter Olivia Merkell, the child of my beloved first wife."
Mrs. Carteret had not before observed the word "first." Instinctively
she stretched toward the fire the poker which she held in her hand, and
at its touch the shadowy remnant fell to pieces, and nothing but ashes
remained upon the hearth.
Not until the next morning did she think again of the envelope which had
contained the paper she had burned. Opening the drawer where it lay, the
oblong blue envelope confronted her. The sight of it was distasteful.
The indorsed side lay uppermost, and the words seemed like a mute
reproach:--
"The Last Will and Testament of Samuel Merkell."
Snatching up the envelope, she glanced into it mechanically as she moved
toward the next room, and perceived a thin folded paper which had
heretofore escaped her notice. When opened, it proved to be a
certificate of marriage, in due form, between Samuel Merkell and Julia
Brown. It was dated from a county in South Carolina, about two years
before her father's death.
For a moment Mrs. Carteret stood gazing blankly at this faded slip of
paper. Her father _had_ married this woman!--at least he had gone
through the form of marriage with her, for to him it had surely been no
more than an empty formality. The marriage of white and colored persons
was forbidden by law. Only recently she had read of a case where both
the parties to such a crime, a colored man and a white woman, had been
sentenced to long terms in the penitentiary. She even recalled the
circumstances. The couple had been living together unlawfully,--they
were very low people, whose private lives were beneath the public
notice,--but influenced by a religious movement pervading the community,
had sought, they said at the trial, to secure the blessing of God upon
their union. The higher law, which imperiously demanded that the purity
and prestige of the white race be preserved at any cost, had intervened
at this point.
Mechanically she moved toward the fireplace, so dazed by this discovery
as to be scarcely conscious of her own actions. She surely had not
formed any definite intention of destroying this piece of paper when her
fingers relaxed unconsciously and let go their hold upon it. The draught
swept it toward the fireplace. Ere scarcely touching the flames it
caught, blazed fiercely, and shot upward with the current of air. A
moment later the record of poor Julia's marriage was scattered to the
four winds of heaven, as her poor body had long since mingled with the
dust of earth.
The letter remained unread. In her agitation at the discovery of the
marriage certificate, Olivia had almost forgotten the existence of the
letter. It was addressed to "John Delamere, Esq., as Executor of my Last
Will and Testament," while the lower left hand corner bore the
direction: "To be delivered only after my death, with seal unbroken."
The seal was broken already; Mr. Delamere was dead; the letter could
never be delivered. Mrs. Carteret unfolded it and read:--
MY DEAR DELAMERE,--I have taken the liberty of naming you as executor of
my last will, because you are my friend, and the only man of my
acquaintance whom I feel that I can trust to carry out my wishes,
appreciate my motives, and preserve the silence I desire.
I have, first, a confession to make. Inclosed in this letter you will
find a certificate of marriage between my child Janet's mother and
myself. While I have never exactly repented of this marriage, I have
never had the courage to acknowledge it openly. If I had not married
Julia, I fear Polly Ochiltree would have married me by main force,--as
she would marry you or any other gentleman unfortunate enough to fall in
the way of this twice-widowed man-hunter. When my wife died, three years
ago, her sister Polly offered to keep house for me and the child. I
would sooner have had the devil in the house, and yet I trembled with
alarm,--there seemed no way of escape,--it was so clearly and obviously
the proper thing.
But she herself gave me my opportunity. I was on the point of
consenting, when she demanded, as a condition of her coming, that I
discharge Julia, my late wife's maid. She was laboring under a
misapprehension in regard to the girl, but I grasped at the straw, and
did everything to foster her delusion. I declared solemnly that nothing
under heaven would induce me to part with Julia. The controversy
resulted in my permitting Polly to take the child, while I retained the
maid.
Before Polly put this idea into my head, I had scarcely looked at Julia,
but this outbreak turned my attention toward her. She was a handsome
girl, and, as I soon found out, a good girl. My wife, who raised her,
was a Christian woman, and had taught her modesty and virtue. She was
free. The air was full of liberty, and equal rights, and all the
abolition claptrap, and she made marriage a condition of her remaining
longer in the house. In a moment of weakness I took her away to a place
where we were not known, and married her. If she had left me, I should
have fallen a victim to Polly Ochiltree,--to which any fate was
preferable.
And then, old friend, my weakness kept to the fore. I was ashamed of
this marriage, and my new wife saw it. Moreover, she loved me,--too
well, indeed, to wish to make me unhappy. The ceremony had satisfied her
conscience, had set her right, she said, with God; for the opinions of
men she did not care, since I loved her,--she only wanted to compensate
me, as best she could, for the great honor I had done my
handmaiden,--for she had read her Bible, and I was the Abraham to her
Hagar, compared with whom she considered herself at a great advantage.
It was her own proposition that nothing be said of this marriage. If any
shame should fall on her, it would fall lightly, for it would be
undeserved. When the child came, she still kept silence. No one, she
argued, could blame an innocent child for the accident of birth, and in
the sight of God this child had every right to exist; while among her
own people illegitimacy would involve but little stigma. I need not
say that I was easily persuaded to accept this sacrifice; but touched by
her fidelity, I swore to provide handsomely for them both. This I have
tried to do by the will of which I ask you to act as executor. Had I
left the child more, it might serve as a ground for attacking the will;
my acknowledgment of the tie of blood is sufficient to justify a
reasonable bequest.
I have taken this course for the sake of my daughter Olivia, who is dear
to me, and whom I would not wish to make ashamed; and in deference to
public opinion, which it is not easy to defy. If, after my death, Julia
should choose to make our secret known, I shall of course be beyond the
reach of hard words; but loyalty to my memory will probably keep her
silent. A strong man would long since have acknowledged her before the
world and taken the consequences; but, alas! I am only myself, and the
atmosphere I live in does not encourage moral heroism. I should like to
be different, but it is God who hath made us, and not we ourselves!
Nevertheless, old friend, I will ask of you one favor. If in the future
this child of Julia's and of mine should grow to womanhood; if she
should prove to have her mother's gentleness and love of virtue; if, in
the new era which is opening up for her mother's race, to which,
unfortunately, she must belong, she should become, in time, an educated
woman; and if the time should ever come when, by virtue of her education
or the development of her people, it would be to her a source of shame
or unhappiness that she was an illegitimate child,--if you are still
alive, old friend, and have the means of knowing or divining this thing,
go to her and tell her, for me, that she is my lawful child, and ask
her to forgive her father's weakness.
When this letter comes to you, I shall have passed to--the Beyond; but I
am confident that you will accept this trust, for which I thank you now,
in advance, most heartily.
The letter was signed with her father's name, the same signature which
had been attached to the will.
Having firmly convinced herself of the illegality of the papers, and of
her own right to destroy them, Mrs. Carteret ought to have felt relieved
that she had thus removed all traces of her dead father's folly. True,
the other daughter remained,--she had seen her on the street only the
day before. The sight of this person she had always found offensive, and
now, she felt, in view of what she had just learned, it must be even
more so. Never, while this woman lived in the town, would she be able to
throw the veil of forgetfulness over this blot upon her father's memory.
As the day wore on, Mrs. Carteret grew still less at ease. To herself,
marriage was a serious thing,--to a right-thinking woman the most
serious concern of life. A marriage certificate, rightfully procured,
was scarcely less solemn, so far as it went, than the Bible itself. Her
own she cherished as the apple of her eye. It was the evidence of her
wifehood, the seal of her child's legitimacy, her patent of
nobility,--the token of her own and her child's claim to social place
and consideration. She had burned this pretended marriage certificate
because it meant nothing. Nevertheless, she could not ignore the
knowledge of another such marriage, of which every one in the town
knew,--a celebrated case, indeed, where a white man, of a family quite
as prominent as her father's, had married a colored woman during the
military occupation of the state just after the civil war. The legality
of the marriage had never been questioned. It had been fully consummated
by twenty years of subsequent cohabitation. No amount of social
persecution had ever shaken the position of the husband. With an iron
will he had stayed on in the town, a living protest against the
established customs of the South, so rudely interrupted for a few short
years; and, though his children were negroes, though he had never
appeared in public with his wife, no one had ever questioned the
validity of his marriage or the legitimacy of his offspring.
The marriage certificate which Mrs. Carteret had burned dated from the
period of the military occupation. Hence Mrs. Carteret, who was a good
woman, and would not have done a dishonest thing, felt decidedly
uncomfortable. She had destroyed the marriage certificate, but its ghost
still haunted her.
Major Carteret, having just eaten a good dinner, was in a very agreeable
humor when, that same evening, his wife brought up again the subject of
their previous discussion.
"Phil," she asked, "Aunt Polly told me that once, long before my father
died, when she went to remonstrate with him for keeping that Woman in
the house, he threatened to marry Julia if Aunt Polly ever said another
word to him about the matter. Suppose he _had_ married her, and had then
left a will,--would the marriage have made any difference, so far as the
will was concerned?"
Major Carteret laughed. "Your Aunt Polly," he said, "was a remarkable
woman, with a wonderful imagination, which seems to have grown more
vivid as her memory and judgment weakened. Why should your father marry
his negro housemaid? Mr. Merkell was never rated as a fool,--he had one
of the clearest heads in Wellington. I saw him only a day or two before
he died, and I could swear before any court in Christendom that he was
of sound mind and memory to the last. These notions of your aunt were
mere delusions. Your father was never capable of such a folly."
"Of course I am only supposing a case," returned Olivia. "Imagining such
a case, just for the argument, would the marriage have been legal?"
"That would depend. If he had married her during the military
occupation, or over in South Carolina, the marriage would have been
legally valid, though morally and socially outrageous."
"And if he had died afterwards, leaving a will?"
"The will would have controlled the disposition of his estate, in all
probability."
"Suppose he had left no will?"
"You are getting the matter down pretty fine, my dear! The woman would
have taken one third of the real estate for life, and could have lived
in the homestead until she died. She would also have had half the other
property,--the money and goods and furniture, everything except the
land,--and the negro child would have shared with you the balance of the
estate. That, I believe, is according to the law of descent and
distribution."
Mrs. Carteret lapsed into a troubled silence. Her father _had_ married
the woman. In her heart she had no doubt of the validity of the
marriage, so far as the law was concerned; if one marriage of such a
kind would stand, another contracted under similar conditions was
equally as good. If the marriage had been valid, Julia's child had been
legitimate. The will she had burned gave this sister of hers--she
shuddered at the word--but a small part of the estate. Under the law,
which intervened now that there was no will, the property should have
been equally divided. If the woman had been white,--but the woman had
_not_ been white, and the same rule of moral conduct did not, _could_
not, in the very nature of things, apply, as between white people! For,
if this were not so, slavery had been, not merely an economic mistake,
but a great crime against humanity. If it had been such a crime, as for
a moment she dimly perceived it might have been, then through the long
centuries there had been piled up a catalogue of wrong and outrage
which, if the law of compensation be a law of nature, must some time,
somewhere, in some way, be atoned for. She herself had not escaped the
penalty, of which, she realized, this burden placed upon her conscience
was but another installment.
If she should make known the facts she had learned, it would mean
what?--a division of her father's estate, a recognition of the legality
of her father's relations with Julia. Such a stain upon her father's
memory would be infinitely worse than if he had _not_ married her. To
have lived with her without marriage was a social misdemeanor, at which
society in the old days had winked, or at most had frowned. To have
married her was to have committed the unpardonable social sin. Such a
scandal Mrs. Carteret could not have endured. Should she seek to make
restitution, it would necessarily involve the disclosure of at least
some of the facts. Had she not destroyed the will, she might have
compromised with her conscience by producing it and acting upon its
terms, which had been so stated as not to disclose the marriage. This
was now rendered impossible by her own impulsive act; she could not
mention the will at all, without admitting that she had destroyed it.
Mrs. Carteret found herself in what might be called, vulgarly, a moral
"pocket." She could, of course, remain silent. Mrs. Carteret was a good
woman, according to her lights, with a cultivated conscience, to which
she had always looked as her mentor and infallible guide.
Hence Mrs. Carteret, after this painful discovery, remained for a long
time ill at ease,--so disturbed, indeed, that her mind reacted upon her
nerves, which had never been strong; and her nervousness affected her
strength, which had never been great, until Carteret, whose love for her
had been deepened and strengthened by the advent of his son, became
alarmed for her health, and spoke very seriously to Dr. Price concerning
it.