_ When at last the pickles and preserved watermelon rind had been
presented with a finishing flourish, and Carraway had
successfully resisted Miss Saidie's final passionate insistence
in the matter of the big blackberry roll before her, Fletcher
noisily pushed back his chair, and, with a careless jerk of his
thumb in the direction of his guest, stamped across the hall into
the family sitting-room.
"Now we'll make ourselves easy and fall to threshing things out,"
he remarked, filling a blackened brier-root pipe, into the bowl
of which he packed the tobacco with his stubby forefinger. "Yes,
I'm a lover of the weed, you see--don't you smoke or chaw, suh?"
Carraway shook his head. "When I was young and wanted to I
couldn't," he explained, "and now that I am old and can I have
unfortunately ceased to want to. I've passed the time of life
when a man begins a habit merely for the sake of its being a
habit."
"Well, I reckon you're wise as things go, though for my part I
believe I took to the weed before I did to my mother's breast. I
cut my first tooth on a plug, she used to say."
He threw himself into a capacious cretonne-covered chair, and,
kicking his carpet slippers from him, sat swinging one massive
foot in its gray yarn sock. Through the thickening smoke Carraway
watched the complacency settle over his great hairy face.
"And now, to begin with the beginning, what do you think of my
grandchildren?" he demanded abruptly, taking his pipe from his
mouth after a long, sucking breath, and leaning forward with his
elbow on the arm of his chair.
The other hesitated. "You've done well by them, I should say."
"A fine pair, eh?"
"The admission is easy."
"Look at the gal, now," burst out Fletcher impulsively. "Would
you fancy, to see her stepping by, that her grandfather used to
crack the whip over a lot of dirty niggers?" He drove the fact in
squarely with big, sure blows of his fist, surveying it with an
enthusiasm the other found amazing. "Would you fancy, even," he
continued after a moment, "that her father warn't as good as I
am--that he left overseeing to jine the army, and came out to
turn blacksmith if I hadn't kept him till he drank himself to
death? His wife? Why, the woman couldn't read her own name unless
you printed it in letters as long as your finger--and now jest
turn and look at Maria!" he wound up in a puff of smoke.
"The girl's wonderful," admitted Carraway. "She's like a
dressed-up doll-baby, too; all the natural thing has been
squeezed out of her, and she's stuffed with sawdust."
"It's a pity she ain't a little better looking in the face,"
pursued Fletcher, waving the criticism aside. "She's a plagued
sight too pale and squinched-up for my taste--for all her fine
air. I like 'em red and juicy, and though you won't believe me,
most likely she can't hold a tallow candle to what Saidie was
when she was young. But then, Saidie never had her chance, and
Maria's had 'em doubled over. Why, she left home as soon as she'd
done sucking, and she hasn't spent a single summer here since she
was eight years old. Small thanks I'll get for it, I reckon, but
I've done a fair turn by Maria."
"The boy comes next, I suppose?" Carraway broke in, watching the
other's face broaden into a big, purple smile.
"Ah, thar you're right--it's the boy I've got my eye on now. His
name's the same as mine, you know, and I reckon one day William
Fletcher'll make his mark among the quality. He'll have it all,
too--the house, the land, everything, except a share of the money
which goes to the gal. It'll make her childbearing easier, I
reckon, and for my part, that's the only thing a woman's fit for.
Don't talk to me about a childless woman! Why, I'd as soon keep a
cow that wouldn't calve.
"You were speaking of the boy, I believe," coolly interrupted
Carraway. To a man of his old-fashioned chivalric ideal the
brutal allusion to the girl was like a deliberate blow in the
face.
"So I was--so I was. Well, he's to have it all, I say--every
mite, and welcome. I've had a pretty tough life in my time--you
can tell it from my hands, suh--but I ain't begrudging it if it
leaves the boy a bit better off. Lord, thar's many and many a
night,when I was little and my stepfather kicked me out of doors
without a bite, that I used to steal into somebody or other's
cow-shed and snuggle for warmth into the straw--yes, and suck the
udders of the cows for food, too. Oh, I've had a hard enough
life, for all the way it looks now--and I'm not saying that if
the choice was mine I'd go over it agin even as it stands to-day.
We're set here for better or for worse, that's my way of
thinking, and if thar's any harm comes of it Providence has got
to take a share of the blame."
"Hardly the preacher's view of the matter, is it?"
"Maybe not; and I ain't got a quarrel with 'em, the Lord knows. I
go to church like clockwork, and pay my pew-rent, too, which is
more than some do that gabble the most about salvation. If I pay
for the preacher's keep it's only fair that I should get some of
the good that comes to him hereafter; that's how it looks to me;
so I don't trouble my head much about the ins and the outs of
getting saved or damned. I've never puled in this world, thank
God, and let come what will, I ain't going to begin puling in the
next. But to go back to whar I started from, it all makes in the
end for that pretty little chap over yonder in the dining-room.
Rather puny for his years now, but as sound as a nut, and he'll
grow, he'll grow. When his mother--poor, worthless drab--gave
birth to him and died, I told her it was the best day's work
she'd ever done."
Carraway's humour rippled over. "It's easy to imagine what her
answer must have been to such a pleasantry," he observed.
"Oh, she was a fool, that woman--a born fool!
Her answer was that it would be the best day for her only when I
came to call it the worst. She hated me a long sight more than
she hated the devil, and if she was to rise out of her grave
to-day she'd probably start right in scrubbing for those darned
Blakes."
"Ah!" said Carraway.
"It's the plain truth, but I don't visit it on the little lad.
Why should I? He's got my name--I saw to that--and mark my word,
he'll grow up yet to marry among the quality."
The secret was out at last--Fletcher's purpose was disclosed, and
even in the strong light of his past misdeeds it showed not
without a hint of pathos. The very renouncement of any personal
ambition served to invest the racial one with a kind of grandeur.
"There's evidently an enviable career before him," said the
lawyer at the end of a long pause, "and this brings me, by the
way, to the question I wish to as--had your desire to see me any
connection with the prospects of your grandson?"
"In a way, yes; though, to tell the truth, it has more to do with
that young Blake's. He's been bothering me a good deal of late,
and I mean to have it square with him before Bill Fletcher's a
year older."
"No difficulty about your title to the estate, I presume?"
"Oh, Lord, no; that's all fair and square, suh. I bought the
place, you know, when it went at auction jest a few years after
the war. I bought and paid for it right down, and that settled
things for good and all."
Carraway considered the fact for a moment. "If I remember
correctly--I mean unless gossip went very far afield--the place
brought exactly seven thousand dollars." His gaze plunged into
the moonlight beyond the open window and followed the clear sweep
of the distant fields. "Seven thousand dollars," he added softly;
"and there's not a finer in Virginia."
"Thar was nobody to bid agin me, you see," explained Fletcher
easily. "The old gentleman was as poor as Job's turkey then,
besides going doty mighty fast."
"The common report was, I believe," pursued the lawyer, "that the
old man himself did not know of the place being for sale until he
heard the auctioneer's hammer on the lawn, and that his mind left
him from the moment--this was, of course, mere idle talk."
"Oh, you'll hear anything," snorted Fletcher. "The old gentleman
hadn't a red copper to his name, and if he couldn't pay the
mortgages, how under heaven could he have bought in the place? As
a plain man I put the question."
"But his friends? Where were his friends, I wonder? In his youth
he was one of the most popular men in the State--a high liver and
good toaster, you remember--and later on he stood well in the
Confederate Government. That he should have fallen into abject
poverty seems really incomprehensible."
Fletcher twisted in his chair. "Why, that was jest three years
after the war, I tell you," he said with irritable emphasis; "he
hadn't a friend this side of Jordan, I reckon, who could have
raised fifty cents to save his soul. The quality were as bad off
as thar own niggers.
"True--true," admitted Carraway; "but the surprising thing is--I
don't hesitate to say--that you who had been overseer to the
Blakes for twenty years should have been able in those destitute
times and on the spot, as it were, to put down seven thousand
dollars."
He faced the fact unflinchingly, dragging it from the long
obscurity full into the red glare of the lamplight. Here was the
main thing, he knew, in Fletcher's history--here was the supreme
offense. For twenty years the man had been the trusted servant of
his feeble employer, and when the final crash came he had risen
with full hands from the wreck. The prodigal Blakes--burning the
candle at both ends, people said--had squandered a double fortune
before the war, and in an equally stupendous fashion Fletcher had
amassed one.
"Oh, thar're ways and ways of putting by a penny," he now
protested, "and I turned over a bit during the war, I may as well
own up, though folks had only black looks for speculators then."
"We used to call them 'bloodsuckers,' I remember."
"Well, that's neither here nor thar, suh. When the place went for
seven thousand I paid it down, and I've managed one way and
another--and in spite of the pesky niggers--to make a pretty bit
out of the tobacco crop, hard as times have been. The Hall is
mine now, thar's no going agin that, and, so help me God, it'll
belong to a William Fletcher long after I am dead."
"Ah, that brings us directly to the point."
Fletcher squared himself about in his chair while his pipe went
out slowly.
"The point, if you'll have it straight," he said, "is jest
this--I want the whole place--every inch of it--and I'll die or
git it, as sure's my name's my own. Thar's still that old frame
house and the piece of land tacked to it, whar the overseers used
to live, cutting straight into the heart of my tobacco fields--in
clear view of the Hall, too--right in the middle of my land, I
tell you!"
"Oh, I see--I see," muttered Carraway; "that's the little farm in
the midst of the estate which the old gentleman--bless his weak
head and strong heart gave his wife's brother, Colonel Corbin,
who came back crippled from the war. Yes, I remember now, there
was a joke at the time about his saying that land was the
cheapest present he could give."
"It was all his besotted foolishness, you know to think of a sane
man deeding away seventy acres right in the heart of his tract of
two thousand. He meant it for a joke, of course. Mr. Tucker or
Colonel Corbin, if you choose, was like one of the family, but he
was as sensitive as a kid about his wounds, and he wanted to live
off somewhar, shut up by himself. Well, he's got enough folks
about him now, the Lord knows. Thar's the old lady, and the two
gals, and Mr. Christopher, to say nothing of Uncle Boaz and a
whole troop of worthless niggers that are eating him out of house
and home. Tom Spade has a deed of trust on the place for three
hundred dollars; he told me so himself."
"So I understand; and all this is a serious inconvenience to you,
I may suppose."
"Inconvenience! Blood and thunder! It takes the heart right out
of my land, I tell you. Why, the very road I cut to save myself
half a mile of mudholes came to a dead stop because Mr.
Christopher wouldn't let it cross his blamed pasture."
Carraway thoughtfully regarded his finger nails. "Then, bless my
soul!--seeing it's your private affair--what are you going to do
about it?" he inquired.
"Git it. The devil knows how--I don't; but git it I will. I
brought you down here to talk those fools over, and I mean you to
do it. It's all spite, pure, rotten spite; that's what it is.
Look here, I'll gladly give 'em three thousand dollars for that
strip of land, and it wouldn't bring nine hundred, on my oath!"
"Have you made the offer?"
"Made it? Why, if I set foot on the tip edge of that land I'd
have every lean hound in the pack snapping at my heels. As for
that young rascal, he'd knock me down if I so much as scented the
matter."
He rapped his pipe sharply on the wood of his chair and a little
pile of ashes settled upon the floor. With a laugh, the other
waved his hand in protest.
"So you prefer to make the proposition by proxy. My dear sir--I'm
not a rubber ball."
"Oh, he won't hurt you. It would spoil the sport to punch
anybody's head but mine, you know. Come, now, isn't it a fair
offer I'm making?"
"It appears so, certainly--and I really do not see why he should
wish to hold the place. It isn't worth much, I fancy, to anybody
but the owner of the Hall, and with the three thousand clear he
could probably get a much better one at a little distance--with
the additional value of putting a few square miles between
himself and you--whom, I may presume, he doesn't love."
"Oh, you may presume he hates me if you'll only work it," snorted
Fletcher. "Go over thar boldly--no slinking, mind you--to-morrow
morning, and talk them into reason. Lord, man, you ought to be
able to do it--don't you know Greek?"
Carraway nodded. "Not that it ever availed me much in an
argument," he confessed frankly.
"It's a good thing to stop a mouth with, anyway. Thar's many and
many a time, I tell you, I've lost a bargain for the lack of a
few rags of Latin or Greek. Drag it in; stuff it down 'em; gag
thar mouths--it's better than all the swearing under heaven. Why,
taking the Lord's name in vain ain't nothing to a line of poetry
spurted of a sudden in one of them dead-and-gone languages. It's
been done at me, suh, and I know how it works--that's why I've
put the boy upstairs on 'em from the start. 'Tain't much matter
whether he goes far in his own tongue or not, that's what I said,
but dose him well with something his neighbours haven't learnt."
He rose with a lurch, laid his pipe on the mantel, and drew out
his big silver watch.
"Great Jehosaphat! it's eleven and after," he exclaimed. "Well,
it's time for us to turn in, I reckon, and dream of breakfast. If
you'll hold the lamp while I bolt up, I'll show you to your
room."
Carraway picked up the lamp, and, cautiously following his host
into the darkened hall, waited until he had fastened the
night-chains and shot the heavy bolts.
"If you want a drink of water thar's a bucket in the porch," said
Fletcher, as he opened the back door and reached out into the
moonlight. "Wait thar a second and I'll hand you the dipper."
He stepped out upon the porch, and a moment later Carraway heard
a heavy stumble followed by a muttered oath.
"Why, blast the varmints! I've upset the boy's cage of white mice
and they're skedaddling about my legs. Here! hold the lamp, will
you--I'm squashing a couple of 'em under each of my hands."
Carraway, leaning out with the lamp, which drew a brilliant
circle on the porch, saw Fletcher floundering helplessly upon his
hands and knees in the midst of the fleeing family of mice.
"They're a plagued mess of beasts, that's what they are," he
exclaimed, "but the little lad sets a heap of store by 'em, and
when he comes down tomorrow he'll find that I got some of 'em
back, anyway."
He fastened the cage and placed it carefully beneath the bench.
Then, closing and bolting the door, he took the lamp from
Carraway and motioned him up the dusky staircase to the spare
chamber at the top. _