A Rich Man's Relatives Volume I Part 1

A Rich Man's Relatives.

Vol. 1.

by Robert Cleland.

CHAPTER I.

HOW HIS RELATIONS VEXED THE RICH MAN.

One evening early in July, 1858, there might have been seen through the railings of a villa in a suburban street of Montreal, if only the thick shrubbery leaves would have permitted the view, a lady--Miss Judith Herkimer, to wit--seated in a quiet corner of the verandah, and partially concealed by the cl.u.s.ters of a wisteria trained to the pillar against which she leaned. Miss Judith had entered on that uninteresting middle time of life, when, though youth with its graces is undeniably of the past, the grey hairs which may perchance intrude among the brown, are not yet a crown of honour; the bloom and the promise of life are over, but the pathetic dignity of retrospect, with its suggestions of what has or what might have been, which make age beautiful, are not yet arrived. It was the sear and dusty afternoon stage of her pilgrimage and her spinsterhood, and there was a shade of severity in her aspect, as though living had grown into something to be struggled with and endured--the season for duty to a serious mind, seeing that the time for enjoyment is manifestly gone by.

The flatness with which her hair was laid upon her temples, and then drawn back tightly without wave or pad to the apex of her head, and secured in the form of an onion, left no doubt as to the seriousness of Miss Judith's mind, while the severe ungracefulness of her dress argued an ascetic tendency of that aggressive kind which says, "Brother, I would fast, therefore you shall go without your dinner"--a person tiresome rather than bad, but with the long chin of that obstinacy which can be so provoking when the understanding and imagination are too narrow to perceive the true relation of things.

On the lawn before her stood a mulatto lad of about eighteen, dressed in the white linen suit of a house servant, and with a long ap.r.o.n suspended from his neck, as though he had been called from his gla.s.s-washing in the pantry.

"You say, Miss Judith," he was saying, while he pulled the ap.r.o.n through his fingers with a puzzled look, "dat I b'long to myself and not to de cu'nel as owns me? Den w'y dis house as you owns not b'long to me too?"

"Because property in our fellow-men is not recognized in this free country, Cato. But you cannot be expected to understand these intricate questions all at once. Patience and humility, Cato! Now for your reading. Have you got your book? Ah! yes. Here is the place. What does r a t read?"

"Cat! Miss Judy."

"Fie! Cato. _C a t_ is cat. That is _rat!_ Begins with an R. You see?"

"'Cep' de cat hab done gone eaten de rat. Den whaar will he be, Miss Judy? All cat after dat! I reckon."

"Cato, you are foolish! Now, attend!"

"Cato," said another voice from the background, "go to your pantry and a.s.sist Bridget with her tea-things," and Miss Herkimer stepped out on the verandah from a window not far off. Miss Herkimer was a good many years older than her sister, but she admitted the fact that she was elderly, and did not seem to find it interfere with her comfort. Her hair was white, and hung in curls over her temples, and the folds of her black silk gown had a free and contented swing which refreshed the eye after the pinched exactness of Miss Judith's costume.

"Gerald and his friend have moved into the smoking-room with their cigars, and as the windows are open I was afraid your instructions might be overheard; and then, Judith, there would be a commotion which you would regret."

"We must think what is right, Susan, do it, and never mind the consequences."

"It cannot be right to interfere between our brother Gerald and his servant. If the customs in his country are different from ours, that cannot be helped. He follows his own, and while he is our guest, it is not for us to disturb."

"Think of the iniquity of slavery, Susan--that that young man should be held in bondage, in this free Canada! It seems awful. Look at him, and deny if you can that he is a man and a brother!"

"I have no objection whatever to admit his being a man and brother, but I certainly should not like to have to call him _nephew!_ And that is what it may come to if you provoke Gerald. You know how violent he can be when he is roused, and if he thought we were tampering with his negro, or attempting an abolitionist scheme, he is capable even of--_adopting_ him, we will call it--and leaving him his whole fortune."

"Do you think so? That would be most unprincipled conduct on his part."

"I know he is quite capable of it; and besides, Judith, I think you are unnecessarily scrupulous about that ugly word 'slavery.' It really seems not so bad a thing after all, come to see it in action. Gerald, now, is extremely kind to the boy--spoils him, indeed, with indulgence, and makes him do very little work. How much better he is off than Stephen's foot-boy, with a pony to mind and the garden to weed when he is not splitting wood or acting butler in the house. It is Stephen's boy who is the slave, to my thinking. Again, I heard Gerald say he refused two thousand dollars for him from a barber in New Orleans. He is quite a valuable boy, and you would tempt him to leave his master!"

"Two thousand dollars for a black boy? Why! Stephen's white boy gets only ten dollars a month and some clothes. Does it not seem extravagant, now, to have so much money tied up in one negro?--and sinful? How much good might be done with that money if the boy were realized! One like Stephen's at ten dollars a month could do his work--it seems to be only shaving his master, and after that to do what he is bid--and the rest of the money might do such very great good. Five hundred dollars might be given to African missions to enlighten his pagan fellow-countrymen, and would carry the truth to so many!--and still there would be money over to do much good."

"And how do you propose to realize a negro boy, sister, except by selling him to another slave owner? And what about the man and brother?"

"True, Susan! Quite true. I admit the force of your objection.

It is another ill.u.s.tration of the mystery our good rector dwelt upon so touchingly last Sunday, that good and evil walk the earth hand-in-hand. A solemn thought! But in this case it really seems to me that the boy's bondage would be well compensated. He is a slave already, you must remember--has no idea what liberty means--and five hundred dollars would bring so many darkened savages within the influence of gospel light. If the poor ignorant creature knew enough to understand, I am sure he would rejoice to think that so slight a change in his own circ.u.mstances would bring so vast a benefit to his benighted brethren."

"And you'd still be fifteen hundred dollars to the good, Judith. Quite an _operation_ in another man's n.i.g.g.e.rs! Ha, ha! G.o.dliness is profitable! That's sound evangelical doctrine! Ha, ha, ha!"

These words rang forth in a discordant voice from a neighbouring window, the Venetians of which were now pushed open.

The ladies gasped and turned round in dismay. As they had grown earnest in their conversation their voices had been rising to the pitch at which they could not but be heard without eaves-dropping, and they had been overheard.

Within the window, which was open, stood the "Gerald" of whom they had been discoursing--a tall square-framed man, but sadly wasted and collapsed under prolonged attacks of malarial fever. He was between fifty and sixty years of age, with features which had once been stern and resolute, but now, under the stress of continued ill-health, had grown querulous and peevish in their expression. He had gone to Louisiana some thirty years before to push his fortune. From French-speaking Lower Canada to French-understanding Louisiana seemed less of an expatriation than to English New York or California, and such Frenchness as he was able to bring--he was English-born after all, and only Canadian by education--had prepossessed the Louisianians in his favour. He had pushed his fortune--married the heiress of a valuable plantation near Natchez, where he had resided ever since--and ama.s.sed wealth. He had lost, however, his wife, his child, and latterly his good-health; and at last had been compelled to return to his friends in the North to give his shattered const.i.tution a last chance to shake off the creeping agues which were dragging him to the grave. He had been a year already under his sisters' roof, greatly to his own worriment; for between his fever fits and the prostration which followed them, there would intervene hours of restless irritability, when it seemed to him that his affairs were entangling themselves into a knot of hopeless confusion, deprived as they were of the master's eye which alone sees clearly.

"What do you think of that, major?" Gerald continued, turning to his companion who was gnawing the end of a very large cigar--a tall sallow man with a much waxed and pointed black moustache and goatee, and an exuberant display of jewellery in his shirt front. "Who in Natchez would expect to find me summering in a nest of blazing abolitionists?

Better say nothing when you get home, or I may have to settle with the vigilance committee when I go back."

"I did not expect it, colonel," said the major, pulling down his waistcoat and looking dignified. "Among fanatical Yankees I reckon on hearing the inst.i.tootions of my country vilified, and so I give sech cattle a wide berth; but here, on British terri-tory, I expected some liberality. Bless my soul! trying to corrupt your servant under your very nose!"

The ladies had withdrawn in confusion under their brother's first attack, or civility to his hostesses must have kept the major silent.

At the same time he felt outraged. To think that he, one of the most "high-toned" men of his neighbourhood, and with the very soundest Southern principles, should have been trapped into a den of lowlived--it was always "lowlived"--abolitionism! His friend Herkimer too, had always pa.s.sed for a "high-toned gentleman" of sound principles when in Natchez, and to find him the member of such a family was inexpressibly shocking.

"Yes," said Herkimer, "it is bad--shows what fools women can be when they don't know, and swallow all the rant that gets into print. After that they think they know so much that they won't believe a word those who could tell them can say. If my boy, Cato, now, had not been an extra good n.i.g.g.e.r, these sisters of mine would have made him leave me long ago. When his mother, Amanda, died, I promised her I would always keep him about myself--and he does, I will say, understand my little ways--or I never would have ventured to bring him to Canada; but the fact is, the boy's fond of me, and won't leave me, say what they like.

Still it provokes a man to see his property being tampered with. Then, too, my sister Judith feels it her dooty, she says, to speak to me about the sinfulness of having property in human beings. I ask her to prove that they _are_ human, but she just rolls her eyes and looks solemn. She calls her talk 'a word in season,' but she chooses the most unseasonable times to hold forth; generally when my chill is coming on, and the long yawn creeping up my back that we all know, when I don't feel man enough to say 'bo' to a goose. My wig! If I could I'd say more than 'bo' to Judith. She holds on steady till I begin to grow blue and my teeth chatter, then I pull the bell for Cato to bring more blankets, and he--good lad--always sends her away, first tiling. Susan bothers too--money, generally--but I'm free to allow she has more gumption than Judith. Old maids both. That's a sort of critter we don't have down Natchez way. There they marry. Reckon you never saw any before, major? Pecoolier, ain't they?"

"The ladies are your sisters, colonel. Estimable, I doubt not; but they do not understand our Southern inst.i.tootions."

"Talking of understanding, major, do you see much of my nephew, Ralph?

When he went down to the plantation I gave him a letter to you, as being my nearest neighbour, and a good friend. I told him he might place implicit reliance on your opinion in any case of doubt which might arise. The overseers are men whom I could trust to make a crop if I was on the spot myself; but of course the young man had to learn, and circ.u.mstances were sure to arise in which your advice would be most val'able. Do you see him often?"

Major Considine--I omitted to mention his name earlier, and I may now add by way of making amends for the neglect, that the "_major_" was a prefix of courtesy conferred by his neighbours to describe his social status and the extent of his possessions; Herkimer's colonelcy was of the same kind, but the higher rank implied a larger holding in land and negroes--Major Considine coughed dryly, drew himself up, and looked sallower if possible than his wont, while his eyes sought the ground.

"I have seen your nephew, sir," he said, "frequently. When he came down first I invited him to come and see me, and treated him in all respects as I would any other gentleman, your friend; but I am bound to own that lately we have not met;" and he gave the waxed points of his moustache a further twirl with something of an aggrieved air, as if to intimate that while he had done _his_ part unimpeachably, he had reason to complain of the way in which his advances had been met.

Herkimer frowned and threw away his cigar. "Fact is, major," he said, "I have a letter from Taine. Taine has been my overseer for a good many years, as you know, and I have found him a good man. He talks of leaving my employment at the end of the year, and asks me to send him a letter stating my satisfaction with him during the years he has been overseeing for me. I can well do that, but I'd hate to lose him. Good overseers are scarce. He complains that Ralph has discharged one of the a.s.sistant overseers against his wish, that he interferes with the field work, and has damaged ten of the hands to the extent of two or three hundred dollars apiece, and the crop prospect is reduced by forty or fifty bales. He says that his character for getting more bales to the hand than any other overseer in the section is at stake, and he has concluded, if I feel unable to return to the plantation, that he will leave. What do you think of it?"

"Not at all surprised, sir; Taine is not to be blamed. Mr. Ralph Herkimer came to me shortly after he had discharged that a.s.sistant you mention, to ask my advice. It seems they had met accidentally immediately after the discharge, in some saloon, and Mister Ralph Herkimer being ignorant, it appears, that in our glorious land of freedom all white men are equal, had put on some of his plantation airs. He has those plantation airs mighty strong, having, as you say yourself, knocked three or four thousand dollars off the value of your field gangs, by nothing but whipping--clear unmerciful whipping, they do say around Natchez. Waal, his tale was a good deal mixed, and I don't pretend to know the rights, but it seems the discharged overseer asked him to drink, to show he bore no spite. Mr. Ralph Herkimer refused, said something about white trash, and flung the liquor in his face. The overseer drew his pistol, and would have fired, but the folks in the bar-room interfered to protect an unarmed man, and so Mr.

Ralph Herkimer rode safe home, and shortly after arriving there received a hostile message. He rode over to see me with the letter in his hand, and that is how I come to know the circ.u.mstance, colonel.

And let me add, sir, that though I fear no man living, I would not have pained your feelin's by alluding to it, if you had not made it necessary yourself, by bringing up the subject. The young man showed me his letter of defiance, and I spoke to him, as an older man and a gentleman, I hope, colonel, should speak to your nephew on such an occasion. He said he was indignant at being addressed in that style by a common fellow, and that where there was no equality there could be no claim to satisfaction. I pointed out to him that under the const.i.tootion of our State all white men are equal, and that we, the first families, were always scrupulously courteous to our poorer neighbours, that being the only way to hold the community together. We want their help often, I told him, as at election times, in case of jury trials, when their goodwill goes farther to gain a verdict than all the blathering of the lawyers; and in case of serious trouble with the hands we can always depend on a white man, and it is well worth our while to accord him such equality as he can understand. Our first families, I told him, yield all that cheerfully, and find they can still be exclusive enough. As he had gone so far, I a.s.sured him he must fight, which after all would be a high compliment to the poor devil, and would make him--your nephew--popular with the meaner sort, which he would find profitable at an election, if by-and-by he were to naturalize and go into politics. I offered to undertake the management of the whole affair, and you are aware, colonel, I have some experience. I even showed him my French case of spring triggers, and my new patent Colt's revolvers, in case he had any preference as to arms, the choice resting with him; and--would you believe it, sir?--but really, really I dare not call up the blush of shame on your honourable features. The--this young man--declined my offer with thanks! He said it did not become him as a gentleman to go cut-throating with common fellows. I suggested that it was often nothing but a reverse of fortune which turned a gentleman into an a.s.sistant overseer. Then he said that bloodshed on account of a trifling misunderstanding was against his principles, when I replied that he must have mistaken Mississippi for Pennsylvania, and warned him that if he did not fight when it was put upon him, he would be insulted every time he appeared outside his own plantation. Then he asked me to use my good offices to accommodate things, but I explained to him that I could only meet the cla.s.s to which his adversary belonged, either to fight them or to order them what they should do.

After that Mr. Ralph Herkimer grew sulky--I thought at one time he was going to be offensive--but the pistol cases stood open on the table, and the gentleman don't like firearms I think; anyhow, he simmered down. I believe he ended by apologizing to the a.s.sistant overseer for not drinking his liquor; but I do know, I have never spoken to Mr.

Ralph Herkimer since."

"I don't blame you, major," said Herkimer. "The young man is not what my father's grandson ought to be. He won't do for Mississippi, that's clear; and I ain't going to let Taine leave me on account of him. I was wise to let him go down for the first year alone, leaving his wife and child here till he knew how he liked it. He had better come home again, for _I_ don't like it, whether he does or no. I had meant him to succeed me down there, major; but the man who first pays off overseers and then apologizes to them cannot do that. He is my only brother Stephen's only son. It is disappointing. My two sisters, whom you have seen, would not do for planteresses in Mississippi; but I have another sister yet--young, major, and handsome--my half-sister; just about the age of Ralph. She might be made my heiress, and if she marries as I would wish, she shall! I need not conceal the truth from myself, major. The doctors have as good as told me I shall never return to Mississippi. You have not seen her yet, Considine, this sister of mine, Mary. She is just about the age of Jeanne de Beaulieu when I married her--poor Jeanne!--not unlike her, and quite as handsome. Strange, would it not be, if Beaulieu went with an heiress again? Here comes Cato to call us into the drawing-room for tea. We'll go, Considine, if you have finished your cigar; and--who knows?--we may see Mary."

CHAPTER II.

STEADFAST MARY.

It was late in November. The screen of foliage which hid the villa from the road had grown thin, changing to all gay colours, and dropping leaf by leaf. Old Gerald's health had not improved. The clear autumnal airs had failed to invigorate his fever-worn system, or brace it into vigour. They only chilled him, and forced him to keep his room.