“How could that be?” I asked.
“That is a part of the riddle,” said he.
“Are you the son?”
“That is another part of the same riddle.”
“Where was the son’s mother?” I asked.
“In the riddle—in the riddle,” he replied.
I could not unriddle the riddle, but it seemed to hint at some such villainy as I had read about in the books in my father’s library. Here was a man who had sold his son; that was enough for me. It gave me matter to dream on, and as I was a pretty heavy feeder in those days, my dreams followed hard on each other. But it isn’t worth while to relate them here, for the things that actually happened were infinitely worse than any dream could be.
As Featherstone had foretold, we camped the next night not far from the Sandhills, where the rich people of Augusta went every summer to escape the heat and malaria of the city. We might have gone on and reached Augusta during the night, but both men and mules were tired, and of the entire caravan only one wagon went forward. I shall remember the place as long as I live. In a little hollow, surrounded by live-oaks—we call them water-oaks up here—was a very bold spring, and around and about was plenty of grass for the mules. It was somewhat dry, the time being November, but it made excellent forage. On a little hill beyond the spring was a dwelling-house. I came to have a pretty good view of it afterward, but in the twilight it seemed to be a very substantial building. It was painted white and had green blinds, and it sat in the midst of a beautiful grove of magnolias and cedars. I remember, too,—it is all impressed on my mind so vividly—that the avenue leading to the house was lined on each side with Lombardy poplars, and their spindling trunks stood clearly out against the sky.
While I was helping Featherstone unhitch and unharness the mules, he suddenly remarked:—
“That’s the place.”
“What place?” I asked.
“The place the riddle tells about—where the son was sold by his father.”
“Well,” said I, by way of saying something, “what can’t be cured must be endured.”
“You are a very clever chap,” he said, after a while. “In fact you are the best chap I have seen for many a long day, and I like you. I’ve watched you like a hawk, and I know you have a mother at home.”
“Yes,” said I, “and she’s the dearest old mother you ever saw. I wish you knew her.”
He came up to me, laid his hand on my shoulder, and looked into my face with an air I can never forget.
“That is the trouble,” said he; “I don’t know her. If I did I would be a better man. I never had much of a mother.”
With that he turned away, and soon I heard him singing softly to himself as he mended a piece of the harness. All this time Crooked-leg Jake was cooking our supper beneath the live-oak trees. Other teamsters were doing the same, so that there were two dozen camp-fires burning brightly within an area of not more than a quarter of a mile. The weather was pleasant, too, and the whole scene struck me as particularly lively.
Crooked-leg Jake was always free-handed with his cooking. He went at it with a zest born of his own insatiate appetite, and it was not long before we were through with it; and while the other campers were fuming and stewing over their cooking, Jake was sitting by the fire nodding, and Featherstone was playing his fiddle. He never played it better than he did that night, and he played it a long time, while I sat listening. Meanwhile quite a number of the teamsters gathered around, some reclining in the leaves smoking their pipes, and others standing around in various positions. Suddenly I discovered that Featherstone had a new and an unexpected auditor. Just how I discovered this I do not know; it must have been proned in upon me, as the niggers say. I observed that he gripped the neck of his fiddle a little tighter, and suddenly he swung off from “Money-musk” into one of those queer serenades which you have heard now and again on the plantation. Where the niggers ever picked up such tunes the Lord only knows, but they are heart-breaking ones.
Following the glance of Featherstone’s eyes, I looked around, and I saw, standing within the circle of teamsters, a tall mulatto woman. She was a striking figure as she stood there gazing with all her eyes, and listening with all her ears. Her hair was black and straight as that of an Indian, her cheeks were sunken, and there was that in her countenance that gave her a wolfish aspect. As she stood there rubbing her skinny hands together and moistening her thin lips with her tongue, she looked like one distraught. When Featherstone stopped playing, pretending to be tuning his fiddle, the mulatto woman drew a long breath, and made an effort to smile. Her thin lips fell apart and her white teeth gleamed in the firelight like so many fangs. Finally she spoke, and it was an ungracious speech:—
“Ole Giles Featherstone, up yonder—he’s my marster—he sont me down here an’ tole me to tell you-all dat, bein’s he got some vittles lef’ over fum dinner, he’ll be glad ef some un you would come take supper ’long wid ’im. But, gentermens”—here she lowered her voice, giving it a most tragic tone—“you better not go, kaze he ain’t got nothin’ up dar dat’s fittin’ ter eat—some cole scraps an’ de frame uv a turkey. He scrimps hisse’f, an’ he scrimps me, an’ he scrimps eve’ybody on de place, an’ he’ll scrimp you-all ef you go dar. No, gentermens, ef you des got corn-bread an’ bacon you better stay ’way.”
Whatever response the teamsters might have made was drowned by Featherstone’s fiddle, which plunged suddenly into the wild and plaintive strains of a plantation melody. The mulatto woman stood like one entranced; she caught her breath, drew back a few steps, stretched forth her ebony arms, and cried out:—
“Who de name er God is dat man?”
With that Featherstone stopped his playing, fixed his eyes on the woman, and exclaimed:—
“Where’s Duncan?”
For a moment the woman stood like one paralyzed. She gasped for breath, her arms jerked convulsively, and there was a twitching of the muscles of her face pitiful to behold; then she rushed forward and fell on her knees at the fiddler’s feet, hugging his legs with her arms.
“Honey, who is you?” she cried in a loud voice. “In de name er de Lord, who is you! Does you know me? Say, honey, does you?”
Featherstone looked at the writhing woman serenely.
“Come, now,” he said, “I ask you once more, Where’s Duncan?”
His tone was most peculiar: it was thrilling, indeed, and it had a tremendous effect on the woman. She rose to her feet, flung her bony arms above her head, and ran off into the darkness, screaming:—
“He sold ’im!—he sold Duncan! He sold my onliest boy!”
This she kept on repeating as she ran, and her voice died away like an echo in the direction of the house on the hill. There was not much joking among the teamsters over this episode, and somehow there was very little talk of any kind. None of us accepted the invitation. Featherstone put his fiddle in his bag, and walked off toward the wagons, and it was not long before everybody had turned in for the night.
I suppose I had been asleep an hour when I felt some one shaking me by the shoulder. It was Crooked-leg Jake.
“Marse Isaiah,” said he, “dey er cuttin’ up a mighty rippit up dar at dat house on de hill. I ’spec’ somebody better go up dar.”
“What are they doing?” I asked him drowsily.
“Dey er cussin’ an’ gwine on scan’lous. Dat ar nigger ’oman, she’s a-cussin’ out de white man, an’ de white man, he’s a-cussin’ back at her.”
“Where’s Featherstone?” I inquired, still not more than half awake.
“Dat what make me come atter you, suh. Dat white man what bin ’long wid us, he’s up dar, an’ it look like ter me dat he’s a-aggin’ de fuss on. Dey gwine ter be trouble up dar, sho ez you er born.”
“Bosh!” said I, “the woman’s master will call her up, give her a strapping, and that will be the end of it.”
“No, suh! no, suh!” exclaimed Jake; “dat ar nigger ’oman done got dat white man hacked. Hit’s des like I tell you, mon!”
I drove Jake off to bed, turned over on my pallet, and was about to go to sleep again, when I heard quite a stir in the camp. The mules and horses were snorting and tugging at their halters, the chickens on the hill were cackling, and somewhere near, a flock of geese was screaming. Just then Crooked-leg Jake came and shook me by the shoulder again. I spoke to him somewhat sharply, but he didn’t seem to mind it.
“What I tell you, Marse Isaiah?” he cried. “Look up yonder! Ef dat house ain’t afire on top, den Jake’s a liar!”
I turned on my elbow, and, sure enough, the house on the hill was outlined in flame. The hungry, yellow tongues of fire reached up the corners and ran along the roof, lapping the shingles, here and there, as if blindly searching for food. They found it, too, for by the time I reached the spot, and you may be sure I was not long getting there, the whole roof was in a blaze. I had never seen a house on fire before, and the sight of it made me quake; but in a moment I had forgotten all about the fire, for there, right before my eyes, was a spectacle that will haunt me to my dying day. In the dining-room—I suppose it must have been the dining-room, for there was a sideboard with a row of candles on it—I saw the mulatto woman (the same that had acted so queerly when Featherstone had asked her about Duncan) engaged in an encounter with a gray-haired white man. The candles on the sideboard and the flaring flames without lit up the affair until it looked like some of the spectacles I have since seen in theatres, only it was more terrible.
It was plain that the old man was no match for the woman, but he fought manfully for his life. Whatever noise they made must have been drowned by the crackling and roaring of the flames outside; but they seemed to be making none except a snarling sound when they caught their breath, like two bull-dogs fighting. The woman had a carving-knife in her right hand, and she was endeavoring to push the white man against the wall. He, on his side, was trying to catch and hold the hand in which the woman held the knife, and was also making a frantic effort to keep away from the wall. But the woman had the advantage; she was younger and stronger, and desperate as he was, she was more desperate still.
Of course, it is a very easy matter to ask why some of my companions or myself didn’t rush to the rescue. I think such an attempt was made; but the roof of the house was ablaze and crackling from one end to the other, and the heat and smoke were stifling. The smoke and flames, instead of springing upward, ranged downward, so that before anything could be done, the building appeared to be a solid sheet of fire; but through it all could be seen the writhing and wrestling of the nigger woman and the white man. Once, and only once, did I catch the sound of a voice; it was the voice of the nigger woman; she had her carving-knife raised in the air in one hand, and with the other she had the white man by the throat.
“Where’s Duncan?” she shrieked.
If the man had been disposed to reply, he had no opportunity, for the woman had no sooner asked the question than she plunged the carving-knife into his body, not only once, but twice. It was a sickening sight, indeed, and I closed my eyes to avoid seeing any more of it; but there was no need of that, for the writhing and struggling bodies of the two fell to the floor and so disappeared from sight.
Immediately afterward there was a tremendous crash. The roof had fallen in, and this was followed by an eruption of sparks and smoke and flame, accompanied by a violent roaring noise that sounded like the culmination of a storm. It was so loud that it aroused the pigeons on the place, and a great flock of them began circling around the burning building. Occasionally one more frightened than the rest would dart headlong into the flames, and it was curious to see the way it disappeared. There would be a fizz and a sputter, and the poor bird would be burnt harder than a crackling. I observed this and other commonplace things with unusual interest—an interest sharpened, perhaps, by the fact that there could be no hope for the two human beings on whom the roof had fallen.
Naturally, you will want to ask me a great many questions. I have asked them myself a thousand times, and I’ve tried to dream the answers to them while I sat dozing here in the sun, but when I dream about the affair at all, the fumes of burning flesh seem to fill my nostrils. Crooked-leg Jake insisted to the day of his death that the man who had driven our team sat in a chair in the corner of the dining-room, while the woman and the man were fighting, and seemed to be enjoying the spectacle. It may be so. At any rate none of us ever saw him again. As for the rest, you know just as much about it as I do.
The little town of Fairleigh, in South Carolina, was a noted place before the war, whatever it may be now. It had its atmosphere, as Judge Waynecroft used to say, and that atmosphere was one of distinction. It was a very quiet town, but there was something aristocratic, something exclusive, even in its repose. It was a rough wind that could disturb the stateliness of the live oaks with which the streets were lined, and it was indeed an inhospitable winter that could suppress the tendency of the roses to bloom.
Fairleigh made no public boast that it was not a commercial town, but there can be no doubt that it prided itself on the fact. Even the piney-woods crackers found a slow market there for the little “truck” they had to sell, for it was the custom of the people to get their supplies of all kinds from “the city.” It was to “the city,” indeed, that Fairleigh owed its prominence, and its inhabitants were duly mindful of that fact.
As late as 1854 there was no more insignificant village in South Carolina than Fairleigh; but in the summer of that year the fever plague flapped its yellow wings above Charleston, and the wealthier families sought safety in flight. Some went North and some went West; some went one way and some another; but the choice few, following the example of Judge Waynecroft, went no further than Fairleigh, which was far enough in the interior to be out of reach of the contagion.
They found the situation of the little village so convenient, and its climate so perfect, that they proceeded—still following the example of Judge Waynecroft—to build summer homes there; and in time Fairleigh became noted as a resort for the wealthiest and most refined people of Charleston.
Of this movement, as has been intimated, Judge Waynecroft was the pioneer; and for this and other reasons he was highly esteemed by the natives of Fairleigh. To their minds the Judge was an able and a public-spirited citizen, whom it was their pleasure to admire. In addition to this, he had a most charming household, in which simplicity lent grace to dignity.
There was one feature of Judge Waynecroft’s household, however, which the natives of Fairleigh did not admire, and that was “Mom Bi.” Perhaps they were justified in this. Mom Bi was a negro woman, who appeared to be somewhat past middle age, just how far past no one could guess. She was tall and gaunt, and her skin was black as jet. She walked rapidly, but with a sidewise motion, as if she had been overtaken with rheumatism or partial paralysis. Her left arm was bent and withered, and she carried it in front of her and across her body, as one would hold an infant. Her head-handkerchief was queerly tied. The folds of it stood straight up in the air, giving her the appearance of a black Amazon. This impression was heightened by the peculiar brightness of her eyes. They were not large eyes, but they shone like those of a wild animal that is not afraid of the hunter. Her nose was not flat, nor were her lips thick like those of the typical negro. Her whole appearance was aggressive. Moreover, her manner was abrupt, and her tongue sharp, especially when it was leveled at any of the natives of Fairleigh.
To do Mom Bi justice, her manner was abrupt and her tongue sharp even in her master’s family, but there these matters were understood. Practically, she ruled the household, and though she quarreled from morning till night, and sometimes far into the night, everything she said was taken in a Pickwickian sense. She was an old family servant who not only had large privileges, but was defiantly anxious to take advantage of all of them.
Whatever effect slavery may have had on other negroes, or on negroes in general, it is certain that Mom Bi’s spirit remained unbroken. Whoever crossed her in the least, white or black, old or young, got “a piece of her mind,” and it was usually a very large piece. Naturally enough, under the circumstances, Mom Bi soon became as well known in Fairleigh and in all the region round about as any of the “quality people.” To some, her characteristics were intensely irritating; while to others they were simply amusing; but to all she was a unique figure, superior in her methods and ideas to the common run of negroes.
Once, after having a quarrel with her mistress—a quarrel which was a one-sided affair, however—Mom Bi heard one of the house girls making an effort to follow her example. The girl was making some impertinent remarks to her mistress, when Mom Bi seized a dog-whip that was hanging in the hall, and used it with such effect that the pert young wench remembered it for many a long day.
This was Mom Bi’s way. She was ready enough to quarrel with each and every member of her master’s family, but she was ready to defend the entire household against any and all comers. Altogether she was a queer combination of tyrant and servant, of virago and “mammy.” Yet her master and mistress appreciated and respected her, and the children loved her. Her strong individuality was not misunderstood by those who knew her best.
No one knew just how old she was, and no one knew her real name. Probably no one cared: but there was a tradition in the Waynecroft family that her name was Viola, and that it had been corrupted by the children into Bi—Mom Bi. As to her age, it is sufficient to say that she was the self-constituted repository of the oral history of three generations of the family. She was a young woman when her master’s grandfather died in 1799. Good, bad or indifferent, Mom Bi knew all about the family; and there were passages in the careers of some of its members that she was fond of retailing to her master and mistress, especially when in a bad humor.
Insignificant as she was, Mom Bi made her influence felt in Fairleigh. She was respected in her master’s family for her honesty and faithfulness, but outsiders shrank from her frank and fearless criticism. The “sandhillers”—the tackies—that marketed their poor little crops in and around the village, were the special objects of her aversion, and she lost no opportunity of harassing them. Whether these queer people regarded Mom Bi as a humorist of the grimmer sort, or whether they were indifferent to her opinions, it would be difficult to say, but it is certain that her remarks, no matter how personal or bitter, made little impression on them. The men would rub their thin beards, nudge each other and laugh silently, while the women would push their sunbonnets back and stare at her as if she were some rare curiosity on exhibition. At such times Mom Bi would laugh loudly and maliciously, and cry out in a shrill and an irritating tone:—
“De Lord know, I glad I nigger. Ef I ain’t bin born black, dee ain’t no tellin, what I mought bin born. I mought bin born lak some deze white folks what eat dirt un set in de chimerly-corner tell dee look lak dee bin smoke-dried. De Lord know what make Jesse Waynecroft fetch he famerly ’mongst folk lak deze.”
This was mildness itself compared with some of Mom Bi’s harangues later on, when the “sandhillers,” urged by some of the energetic citizens of the village, were forming a military company to be offered to the Governor of Virginia for the defense of that State. This was in the summer of 1861. There was a great stir in the South. The martial spirit of the people had been aroused by the fiery eloquence of the political leaders, and the volunteers were mustering in every town and village. The “sandhillers” were not particularly enthusiastic—they had but vague ideas of the issues at stake—but the military business was something new to them, and therefore alluring. They volunteered readily if not cheerfully, and it was not long before there was a company of them mustering under the name of the Rifle Rangers—an attractive title to the ear if not to the understanding.
Mom Bi was very much interested in the maneuvers of the Rifle Rangers. She watched them with a scornful and a critical eye. Even in their uniforms, which were of the holiday pattern, their appearance was the reverse of soldierly. They were hollow-chested and round-shouldered, and exceedingly awkward in all their movements. Their maneuvers on the outskirts of the village, accompanied by the music of fife and drum, always drew a crowd of idlers, and among these interested spectators Mom Bi was usually to be found.
“Dee gwine fight,” she would say to the Waynecroft children, in her loud and rasping voice. “Dee gwine kill folks right un left. Look at um! I done git skeer’d myse’f, dee look so ’vigrous. Ki! dee gwine eat dem Yankee up fer true. I sorry fer dem Yankee, un I skeer’d fer myse’f! When dee smell dem vittle what dem Yankee got, ’tis good-by, Yankee! Look at um, honey! dee gwine fight fer rich folks’ nigger.”
The drilling and mustering went on, however, and Mom Bi was permitted to say what she pleased. Some laughed at her, others regarded her with something like superstitious awe, while a great many thought she was merely a harmless simpleton. Above all, she was Judge Waynecroft’s family servant, and this fact was an ample apology in Fairleigh and its environs for anything that she might say.
The mustering of the “sandhillers” irritated Mom Bi; but when the family returned to Charleston in the winter, the preparations for war that she saw going on made a definite and profound impression on her. At night she would go into her mistress’s room, sit on the hearth in a corner of the fire-place, and watch the fire in the grate. Nursing her withered arm, she would sit silent for an hour at a time, and when she did speak it seemed as if her tongue had lost something of its characteristic asperity.
“I think,” said Mrs. Waynecroft, on one occasion, “that Mom Bi is getting religion.”
“Well, she’ll never get it any younger,” the Judge replied.
Mom Bi, sitting in her corner, pretended not to hear, but after a while she said: “Ef de Lord call me in de chu’ch, I gwine; ef he no call I no gwine—enty? I no yerry him call dis long time.”
“Well,” remarked the Judge, “something has cooled you off and toned you down, and I was in hopes you were in the mourners’ seat.”
“Huh!” exclaimed Mom Bi. “How come I gwine go in mourner seat? What I gwine do in dey?” Then pointing to a portrait of Gabriel Waynecroft hanging over the mantel, she cried out: “Wey he bin gone at?”
Gabriel was the eldest son, the hope and pride of the family. The Judge and his wife looked at each other.
“I think you know where he has gone,” said Mrs. Waynecroft, gently. “He has gone to fight for his country.”
“Huh!” the old woman grunted. Then, after a pause, “Wey dem san’hillers bin gone at? Wey de country what dee fight fer?”
“Why, what are you talking about?” said Judge Waynecroft, who had been listening behind his newspaper. “This is their country too, and they have gone to fight for it.”
“’Longside dat boy?” Mom Bi asked. Her voice rose as she pointed at Gabriel’s picture.
“Why, certainly,” said the Judge.
“Pishou!” exclaimed Mom Bi, with a hiss that was the very essence of scorn, contempt and unbelief. “Oona nee’n’ tell me dat ting. I nuttin’ but nigger fer true, but I know better dun dat. I bin nuss dat boy, un I know um troo un troo. Dat boy, ’e cut ’e t’roat fus’ fo’ ’e fight ’longside dem trash. When ’e be en tell-a you ’e gwine fight ’longside dem whut de Lord done fersooken dis long time?”
The Judge smiled, but Mrs. Waynecroft looked serious; Mom Bi rocked backward and forward, as if nursing her withered arm.
“Whut dem po’ white trash gwine fight fer? Nuttin’ ’tall ain’t bin tell me dat. Dee ain’t bin had no nigger; dee ain’t bin had no money; dee ain’t bin had no lan’; dee ain’t bin had nuttin’ ’tall. Un den ’pun top er dat, yer come folks fer tell me dat dat boy gwine fight ’longside dem creeturs.”
Mom Bi laughed loudly, and shook her long finger at the portrait of young Gabriel Waynecroft. As a work of art the portrait was a failure, having been painted by an ambitious amateur; but, crude as it was, it showed a face of wonderful refinement. The features were as delicate as those of a woman, with the exception of the chin, which was full and firm. The eyes, large and lustrous, gazed from the canvas with a suggestion of both tenderness and fearlessness.
During the long and dreary days that followed—days of waiting, days of suffering and of sorrow—there were many changes in the Waynecroft household, but Mom Bi held her place. She remained as virile and as active as ever. If any change was noticeable it was that her temper was more uncertain and her voice shriller. All her talk was about the war; and as the contest wore on, with no perceptible advantage to the Confederates, she assumed the character and functions of a prophetess. Among the negroes, especially those who had never come in familiar contact with the whites, she was looked upon as a person to be feared and respected. Naturally, they argued that any black who talked to the white people as Mom Bi did must possess at least sufficient occult power to escape punishment.
Sometimes, in the pleasant weather, while walking with her mistress and the children on the battery at Charleston she would reach forth her hand and exclaim:
“Oona see dem wharfs? Dee gwine be fill wid Yankee ships! Dee gwine sail right stret up, un nuttin’ ’t all gwine stop um.”
Then, turning to the town, she would say:
“Oona see dem street? Dee gwine fair swarm wid Yankee! Dee gwine march troo ’um, un nuttin’ ’t all gwine stop um. Oona see dem gang er nigger down dey? Dee gwine be free, un nuttin’ ’t all gwine stop um. Dee’l be free, un ole Bi gwine be free. Ah, Lord! when de drum start fer beat, un de trumpet start fer blow, de white folks gwine los de nigger. Ki! I mos’ yeddy dem now.”
This was repeated, not once, but hundreds of times—in the house and on the streets, wherever Mom Bi went. At the market, while the venders were weighing out supplies for the Waynecroft household, Mom Bi would take advantage of the occasion to preach a sermon about the war and to utter prophecies about the freedom of the negroes. Her fearlessness was her best protection. Those who heard her had no doubt that she was a lunatic, and so she was allowed to come and go in peace, at a time when the great mass of the negroes were under the strictest surveillance. It made no difference to Mom Bi, however, whether one or a thousand eyes were watching her, or whether the whole world thought she was crazy. She was in earnest, and thus presented a spectacle that is rarer than a great many people are willing to admit.
The old woman went her way, affording amusement to some and to others food for thought; and the rest of the world went its way, especially that part of it that was watching events from rifle-pits and trenches. To those at home the years seemed to drag, though they went fast enough, no doubt, for those at the front. They went fast enough to mark some marvelous changes and developments. Hundreds of thousands of times, it happened that a gun fired in Virginia sorely wounded the hearts of a household far away.
On the Shenandoah, one night, a sharpshooter in blue heard the clatter of a horse’s hoofs on the turnpike, and the jangling of sword, spurs and bit. As the horseman came into view in the moonlight, the sharpshooter leveled his rifle. There was a flash, a puff of smoke, and a report that broke into a hundred crackling echoes on the still night air. The horse that had been held so well in hand galloped wildly away with an empty saddle. The comrades of the cavalryman, who had been following him at a little distance, rushed forward at the report of the gun, and found their handsome young officer lying in the road, dead. They scoured the country for some distance around, but they saw nothing and heard nothing, and finally they lifted the dead soldier to a horse, and carried him back to their camp.
The sharpshooter had aimed only at the dashing young cavalryman, but his shot struck a father and a mother in Charleston, and an old negro woman who was supposed to be crazy; and the wounds that it made were grievous. The cavalryman was young Gabriel Waynecroft, and with the ending of his life the hope and expectations of the family seemed to be blotted out. He had been the darling of the household, the pride of his father, the joy of his mother, and the idol of Mom Bi. When the news of his death came, the grief of the household took the shape of consternation. It was terrible to behold. The mother was prostrated and the father crushed. Their sorrow was voiceless. Mom Bi went about wringing her hands and moaning and talking to herself day after day.
Once, Judge Waynecroft, passing through the hall in slippered feet, thought he heard voices in the sitting-room. In an aimless way, he glanced in the room, and the sight made him pause. Mom Bi was sitting in the middle of the room in a low chair, gazing at the portrait of Gabriel Waynecroft, and talking to it. She spoke in a soft and tender tone, in strange contrast to the usual rasping and irritating quality of her voice.
“Look at me, honey,” she was saying; “look at you’ ole nigger mammy! Whut make dee lef’ you fer go way down, dey wey one folks kill turrer folks? Tell de ole nigger mammy dat, honey. Whaffer dee no lef’ dem no ’count san’hillers fer do all de fightin’? Who gwine fer cry wun dee git kilt? Fightin’ fer nigger! Whaffer you’ daddy no sen’ he niggers fer fight? De Lord know dee plenty un um. Nummine, honey! ’T ain’t gwine fer be long, ’fo’ dee’ll all know whut de Lord know, un whut ole Bi know. Gi’ um time, honey! des gi’ um time!”
Judge Waynecroft turned away with a groan. To behold the bewildered grief of this old negro woman was to add a new pang to his own sorrow. Mom Bi paused, but did not turn her head. She heard her master pass down the hall with uncertain step, and then she heard the library door shut.
“’Tis de gospel troot ’e bin yeddy me preachin’,” she exclaimed. Then she turned again to the portrait and gazed at it steadily and in silence for a long while, rocking herself and nursing her withered arm.
When the body of Gabriel Waynecroft was brought home, Mom Bi kneeled on the floor at the foot of the coffin and stayed there, giving utterance to the wildest lamentations. Some friend or acquaintance of the family made an attempt to remove her.
“This will never do,” he said kindly, but firmly. “You must get up and go away. The noise you are making distresses and disturbs the family.”
Trembling with mingled grief and rage, Mom Bi turned upon the officious person.
“I ain’t, I ain’t, I ain’t!” she almost shrieked. “I gwine fer stay right wey I is. Take you’ han’ fum off me, man! I bin cry on count dat chile mos’ ’fo’ he own mammy is. I bin nuss um, I bin worry wid um, I bin stay ’wake wid um wun ev’body wuz sleep, un I bin hol’ um in my lap day un night, wun ’e sick un wun ’e well. I ain’t gwine out! I ain’t! I ain’t!”
In fine, Mom Bi made a terrible scene, and the officious person who wanted to drive her out was glad to get out himself, which he was compelled to do in order to escape the clamor that he had unwittingly raised.
The death and burial of Gabriel Waynecroft was a gloomy episode in Mom Bi’s experience, and it left its marks upon her. She lost none of her old-time vigor, but her temper became almost unbearable. She was surly, irritable and sometimes violent, especially toward the negroes on the place, who regarded her with a superstitious fear that would be difficult to explain or describe. Left to herself she did well enough. She loved to sit in the sun and talk to herself. The other negroes had a theory that she saw spirits and conversed with them; but they were welcome to their theories, so far as Mom Bi was concerned, provided they didn’t pester her.
Meanwhile, Sherman’s army was marching through Georgia to Savannah, and in Virginia Grant was arranging the plans of his last campaign. Savannah fell, and then came the information that Sherman’s army was moving on Charleston. The city could be defended in only one direction: all its bristles pointed seaward; and the Confederate troops prepared to evacuate. All these movements were well known to the negroes, especially to Mom Bi, and she made use of her information to renew her prophecies. She stood in the porch of her master’s house and watched the Confederates file by, greeting them occasionally with irritating comment.
“Hi! Wey you gwine? Whaffer you no stop fer tell folks good-by? Nummine! Dem Yankee buckra, dee gwine shaky you by de han’. Dee mek you hot fer true. Wey you no stop fer see de nigger come free?”
Most of Mom Bi’s prophecies came true. Sherman marched northward, and then came Appomattox. One day, shortly after the surrender, Mom Bi appeared before Judge Waynecroft and his wife rigged out in her best clothes. She was rather more subdued than usual. She entered the room, and then stood still, looking first at one and then at the other.
“Well, Bi,” said the Judge, kindly, “what can we do for you?”
“Nuttin’ ’t all. I gwine down dey at Sawanny, wey my daughter is bin live.”
“Do you mean Maria?”
“My daughter ’Ria, w’at you bin sell to John Waynecroft. I gwine down dey wey she live at.”
“Why, you are too old to be gadding about,” said the Judge. “Why not stay here where you have a comfortable home?”
“I think you are very foolish to even dream of such a thing, Mom Bi. Maria is not able to take care of you.”
“I gwine down dey wey my daughter bin live at,” persisted Mom Bi. Then she looked at the portrait of Gabriel Waynecroft. The beautiful boyish face seemed to arouse her. Turning suddenly, she exclaimed:
“De Lord know I done bin fergive you-all fer sellin’ ’Ria ’way fum me. De Lord know I is! Wun I bin see you set down un let dat chile go off fer git kill’”—Mom Bi pointed her long and quivering finger at Gabriel’s portrait—“wun I see dis, I say ‘hush up, nigger! don’t bodder ’bout ’Ria.’ De Lord know I done bin fergive you!”
With this Mom Bi turned to the door and passed out.
“Won’t you tell us good-by?” the Judge asked.
“I done bin fergive you,” said Mom Bi.
“I think you might tell us good-by,” said Mrs. Waynecroft, with tears in her eyes and voice.
“I done bin fergive you,” was the answer.
This was in June. One morning months afterward Judge Waynecroft was informed by a policeman that a crazy old negro woman had been arrested in the cemetery.
“She is continually talking about Gabriel Waynecroft,” said the officer, “and the Captain thought you might know something about her. She’s got the temper of Old Harry,” he continued, “and old and crippled as she is, she’s as strong as a bull yearling.”
It was Mom Bi, and she was carried to her old master’s home. Little by little she told the story of her visit to Savannah. She found her daughter and her family in a most deplorable condition. The children had the small-pox, and finally Maria was seized with the disease. For lack of food and proper attention they all died, and Mom Bi found herself alone and friendless in a strange city. How she managed to make her way back home it is impossible to say, but she returned.
The Mom Bi who returned, however, was not the same Mom Bi that went away. Old age had overtaken her in Savannah. Her eyes were hollow, her face was pinched and shrunken, the flesh on her bones had shriveled, and her limbs shook as with the palsy. When she was helped into the house that had so long been her home she looked around at the furniture and the walls. Finally her eyes rested on the portrait of Gabriel Waynecroft. She smiled a little and then said feebly:
“I done bin come back. I bin come back fer stay; but I free, dough!”
In a little while she was freer still. She had passed beyond the reach of mortal care or pain; and, as in the old days, she went without bidding her friends good-by.
One Saturday afternoon in the spring of 1876, as Farmer Joe-Bob Grissom was on his way to Hillsborough for the purpose of hearing the news and having an evening’s chat with his town acquaintances,—as was his invariable custom at the close of the week,—he saw, as he passed the old Bascom Place, an old gentleman and a young lady walking slowly along the road. The old gentleman was tall and thin, and had silvery white hair. He wore a high-crowned, wide-brimmed felt hat, and his clothes, though neat, were too glossy to be new. The young lady was just developing into womanhood. She had a striking face and figure. Her eyes were large and brilliantly black; her hair, escaping from under her straw hat with its scarlet ribbons, fell in dusky masses to her waist.
The two walked slowly, and occasionally they paused while the old gentleman pointed in various directions with his cane, as though impressing on the mind of his companion the whereabouts of certain interesting landmarks. They were followed at a little distance by a negro, who carried across his arm a light wrap which seemed to be a part of the outfit of the young lady.
As Farmer Joe-Bob Grissom passed the two, he bowed and tipped his hat by way of salutation. The old gentleman raised his hat and bowed with great courtliness, and the young lady nodded her head and smiled pleasantly at him. Farmer Joe-Bob was old enough to be grizzly, but the smile stirred him. It seemed to be a direct challenge to his memory. Where had he seen the young lady before? Where had he met the old gentleman? He was puzzled to such an extent that he paid no attention to the negro man, who touched his hat and bowed politely as the farmer passed—a fact that made the negro wonder a little; for day in and out he had known Mr. Joe-Bob Grissom nearly forty years, and never before had that worthy citizen failed to respond with a cordial “Howdy” when the negro took off his hat.
Farmer Joe-Bob Grissom walked on towards town, which was not far, and the old gentleman and the young lady walked slowly along the hedge of Cherokee roses that ran around the old Bascom Place, while the negro followed at a respectful distance. Once they paused, and the old gentleman rubbed his eyes with a hand that trembled a little.
“Why, darling!” he exclaimed in a tone of mingled grief and astonishment, “they have cut it down.”
“Cut what down, father?”
“Why, the weeping-willow. Don’t you remember it, daughter? It stood in the middle of the field yonder. It was a noble tree. Well, well, well! What next, I wonder?”
“I do not remember it, father; I have so much to”—
“Yes, yes,” the old gentleman interrupted. “Of course you couldn’t remember. The place has been so changed that I seem to have forgotten it myself. It has been turned topsy-turvy; it has been ruined—ruined!”
He leaned on his cane, and with quivering lips and moist eyes looked through the green perspective of the park, and over the fertile fields and meadows.
“Ruined!” exclaimed the young lady. “How can you say so, father? I never saw a more beautiful place. It would make a lovely picture.”
“And they have ruined the house, too. The whole roof has been changed.” The old man pulled his hat down over his eyes, his hand trembling more than ever. “Let us turn back, Mildred,” he said after a while. “The sight of all this frets and worries me more than I thought it would.”
“They say,” said the daughter, “that the gentleman who owns the place has made a good deal of money.”
“Yes,” replied the father, “I suppose so—I suppose so. Yes, so I have heard. A great many people are making money now who never made it before—a great many.”
“I wish they would tell us the secret,” said the young lady, laughing a little.
“There is no secret about it,” said the old gentleman; “none whatever. To make money you must be mean and niggardly yourself, and then employ others to be mean and niggardly for you.”
“Oh, it is not always so, father,” the young girl exclaimed.
“It was not always so, my daughter. There was a time when one could make money and remain a gentleman; but that was many years ago.”
The young lady was apparently not anxious to continue the argument, for she lightly turned the conversation into a more agreeable channel; and so the two, still followed by the negro, made their way through the shaded streets of the town.
That evening, when Mr. Joe-Bob Grissom, after making some little purchases about town, went to the hotel, which he persisted in calling a tavern, he found Major Jimmy Bass engaged in a hot political discussion with a crowd which included a number of the townspeople, as well as a sprinkling of commercial travelers. Major Jimmy was one of the ancient and venerable landmarks of that region. He had once been an active politician, and had been engaged in political discussion for forty years or more. Old and fat as he was, he knew how to talk, and nothing pleased him more than to get hold of a stranger when a crowd of sympathetic fellow-citizens, young and old, was present to applaud the points he made.
Whenever Mr. Joe-Bob Grissom appeared in the veranda of the hotel he made it a point to shake hands with every person present, friend and stranger alike. His politeness was a trifle elaborate, but it was genuine.
“Why, howdy, Joe-Bob, howdy!” exclaimed Major Bass with effusion. “You seem to turn up at the right time, like the spangled man in the circus. I’m glad you’ve come, an’ ef I’d ’a’ had my way you’d ’a’ come sooner, bekaze you’re jest a little too late fer to see me slap the argyments onto some of these here travelin’ drummers. They are gone now,” the major continued, with a sweeping gesture of his right arm. “They are gone, but I wisht mightily you’d ’a’ been here. New things is mortal nice, I know; but when these new-issue chaps set up to out-talk men that’s old enough to be their grand-daddy, it does me a sight of good fer to see ’em took down a peg er two.”
As soon as he could get in a word edgewise, farmer Joe-Bob Grissom attempted to turn the conversation in a direction calculated to satisfy his curiosity.
“Major,” he said in his deliberate way, “what’s this I see out yonder at the old Bascom Place?”
“The Lord only knows, Joe-Bob. What might be the complexion, er yet the character, of it?”
“Well,” said Mr. Grissom, “as I was makin’ to’rds town a little while ago, I seen some folks that don’t look like they b’long ’roun’ here. One of ’em was a old man, an’ t’ other one was a young gal, an’ a nigger man was a-follerin’ of ’em up—an’, ef I make no mistakes, the nigger man was your old Jess. I didn’t look close at the nigger, but arter I’d passed him it come to me that it wa’n’t nobody on the topside of the roun’ worl’ but Jess.”
“Why, bless your life an’ soul!” exclaimed Major Bass, giving farmer Joe-Bob a neighborly nudge, “don’t you know who them folks was? Well, well! Where’s your mind? Why, that was old Briscoe Bascom an’ his daughter.”
“I say it!” exclaimed farmer Joe-Bob, hitching his chair closer to the major.
“Yes, sir,” said the major, “that’s who it was. Why, where on earth have you been? The old Judge drapped in on the town some weeks ago, an’ he’s been here ever sence. He’s been here long enough for the gal to make up a school. Lord, Lord! What a big swing the world’s in! High on one side, high on t’ other, an’ the old cat a-dyin, in the middle! Why, bless your heart, Joe-Bob! I’ve seed the time when ef old Judge Briscoe Bascom jest so much as bowed to me I’d feel proud fer a week. An’ now look at ’im! Ef I knowed I’d be took off wi’ the dropsy the nex’ minute, I wouldn’t swap places wi’ the poor old creetur.”
“But what is old Jess a-doin’ doggin’ ’long arter ’em that a-way?” inquired Mr. Grissom, knitting his shaggy eyebrows.
“That’s what pesters me,” exclaimed the major. “Ef niggers was ree-sponsible fer what they done, it would be wuss than what it is. Now you take Jesse: you needn’t tell me that nigger ain’t got sense; yit what does he do? You seen ’im wi’ your own eyes. Why, sir,” continued the major, growing more emphatic, “I bought that nigger from Judge Bascom’s cousin when he wa’n’t nothin’ but a youngster, an’ I took him home an’ raised him up right in the house,—yes, sir, right in the house,—an’ he’s been a-hangin’ ’roun’ me off an’ on, gittin’ his vittles, his clozes, an’ his lodgin’. Yit, look at him now! I wisht I may die dead ef that nigger didn’t hitch onto old Judge Bascom the minute he landed in town. Yes, sir! I’m a-tellin’ you no lie. It’s a clean, naked fact. That nigger quit me an’ went an’ took up wi’ the old judge.”
“Well,” said Mr. Grissom, stroking his unshorn face, “you know what the sayin’ is: Niggers ’ll be niggers even ef you whitewash ’em twice a week.”
“Yes,” remarked the major thoughtfully; “I hope to goodness they’ve got souls, but I misdoubt it. Lord, yes, I misdoubt it mightily.”
As Major Jimmy Bass used to say, the years cut many queer capers as they go by. The major in his own proper person had not only witnessed, but had been the victim, of these queer capers. Hillsborough was a very small place indeed, and, for that very reason perhaps, it was more sensitive to changes in the way of progress and decay than many larger and more ambitious towns.
However this may have been, it is certain that the town, assisted by the major, had noted the queer capers the years had cut in the neighborhood of the old Bascom Place. This attitude on the part of Hillsborough—including, of course, Major Jimmy Bass—may be accounted for partly by the fact that the old place had once been the pride and delight of the town, and partly by the fact that the provincial eye and mind are nervously alert to whatever happens within range of their observation.
Before and during the war the Bascom Place was part and parcel of a magnificent estate. The domain was so extensive and so well managed that it was noted far and wide. Its boundary lines inclosed more than four thousand acres of forests and cultivated fields. This immense body of land was known as the old Bascom Place.
Bolling Bascom, its first owner, went to Georgia not long after the close of the Revolution, with a large number of Virginians who proposed to establish a colony in what was then the far South. The colony settled in Wilkes County; but Bolling Bascom, more adventurous than the rest, pushed on into middle Georgia, crossed the Oconee, and built him a home, and such was his taste, his energy, and his thrift, that the results thereof may be seen and admired in Hillsborough to this day.
But the man, like so many of his fellow-citizens then and thereafter, was land-hungry. He bought and bought until he had acquired the immense domain, which, by some special interposition of fate or circumstance, is still intact. Meantime he had built him a house which was in keeping with the extent and richness of his landed possessions. It was planned in the old colonial style, but its massive proportions were relieved by the tall red chimneys and the long and gracefully fashioned colonnade that gave both strength and beauty to the spacious piazza which ran, and still runs, the whole length of the house.
When Bolling Bascom died, in 1830, aged seventy years, as the faded inscription on the storm-beaten tablet in the churchyard shows, he left his son, Briscoe Bascom, to own and manage the vast estate. This son was thirty years old, and it was said of him that he inherited the gentle qualities of his mother rather than the fiery energy and ambition of his father.
Bolling Bascom was neither vicious nor reckless, but he was a thorough man of the world. He was, in short, a typical Virginian gentleman, who for his own purposes had settled in Georgia.
Whatever the cause of his emigration, it is certain that Georgia gained a good citizen. It was said of him that he was a little too fond of a fiddle, but with all his faults—with all his love for horse-racing and fox-hunting—he found time to be kind to his neighbors, generous to his friends, and the active leader of every movement calculated to benefit the State or the people; and it may be remarked in passing, that he also found time to look after his own affairs.
Naturally, he was prominent in politics. He represented his county in the legislature, was at one time a candidate for governor, and was altogether a man who had the love and the confidence of his neighbors. He gave his son the benefit of the best education the country afforded, and made the tour of Europe with him, going over the ground that he himself had gone over in his young days.
But his European trip, undertaken when he was an old man, was too much for him. He was seized with an illness on his return voyage, and, although he lived long enough to reach home, he never recovered. In a few years his wife died; and his son, with little or no experience in such matters,—since his time had been taken up by the schools and colleges,—was left to manage the estate as best he could.
It was the desire of Bolling Bascom that his son should study law and make that profession a stepping-stone to a political career. He had been ambitious himself, and he hoped his son would also be ambitious. Besides, was not politics the most respectable of all the professions? This was certainly the view in Bolling Bascom’s day and time, and much might be said to support it. Of all the professions, politics opened up the one career best calculated to tickle the fancy of the rich young men.
To govern, to control, to make laws, to look after the welfare of the people, to make great speeches, to become statesmen—these were the ideas that filled the minds of ambitious men in Bolling Bascom’s time, and for years thereafter. And why not? There were the examples of Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Randolph, Hamilton, Webster, Calhoun, and the Adamses of Massachusetts. What better could a young man do than to follow in the footsteps of these illustrious citizens?
It may be supposed, therefore, that Bolling Bascom had mapped out a tremendous career for his son and heir. No doubt, as he sat dozing on his piazza in the long summer afternoons near the close of his life, he fancied he could hear the voice of his boy in the halls of legislation, or hear the wild shouts of the multitudes that greeted his efforts on the stump in the heat and fury of a campaign. But it was not to be. The stormy politics of that period had no charms for Briscoe Bascom. He was a student, and he preferred his book to the companionship of the crowd.
He possessed both courage and sociability in the highest degree, but he was naturally indolent, and he was proud—too indolent to find pleasure in the whirling confusion of active politics, and too proud to go about his county or his State in the attitude of soliciting the suffrages of his fellow-citizens. That he would have made his mark in politics is certain, for he made it at the bar, where success is much more dearly bought. He finally became judge of the superior court, at a time when the judges of the circuit courts met annually and formed a court of appeals. His decisions in this appellate court attracted attention all over the country, and are still referred to in the legal literature of to-day as models of their kind.
And yet all that Briscoe Bascom accomplished at the bar and on the bench was the result of intuition rather than of industry. Indolence sat enthroned in his nature, patient but vigilant. When he retired from the bench, he gave up the law altogether. He might have reclaimed his large practice, but he preferred the ease and quiet of his home.
He was an old man before he married—old enough, that is to say, to marry a woman many years his junior. His wife had been reared in an atmosphere of extravagance; and although she was a young woman of gentle breeding and of the best intentions, it is certain that she did not go to the Bascom Place as its mistress for the purpose of stinting or economizing. She simply gave no thought to the future. But she was so bright and beautiful, so gentle and unaffected in speech and manner, so gracious and so winsome in all directions, that it seemed nothing more than natural and right that her every whim and wish should be gratified.
Judge Bascom was indulgent and more than indulgent. He applauded his wife’s extravagance and followed her example. Before many years he began to reap some of the fruits thereof, and they were exceeding bitter to the taste. The longest purse that ever was made has a bottom to it, unless, indeed, it be lined with Franklin’s maxims.
The Judge was forty-eight years old when he married, and even before the beginning of the war he found his financial affairs in an uncomfortable condition. The Bascom Place was intact, but the pocket-book of its master was in a state bordering on collapse.
The slow but sure approach to the inevitable need not be described here. It is familiar to all people in all lands and times. In the case of Judge Bascom, however, the war was in the nature of a breathing-spell. It brought with it an era of extravagance that overshadowed everything that had been dreamed of theretofore. During the first two years there was money enough for everybody and to spare. It was manufactured in Richmond in great stacks. General Robert Toombs, who was an interested observer, has aptly described the facility with which the Confederacy supplied itself with money. “A dozen negroes,” said he, “printed money on the hand-presses all day to supply the government, and then they worked until nine o’clock at night printing money enough to pay themselves off.”
Under these circumstances, Judge Bascom and his charming wife could be as extravagant or as economical as they pleased without attracting the attention of their neighbors or their creditors. Nobody had time to think or care about such small matters. The war-fever was at its height, and nothing else occupied the attention of the people. The situation was so favorable, indeed, that Judge Bascom began to redeem his fortune—in Confederate money. He had land enough and negroes a plenty, and so he saved his money by storing it away; and he was so successful in this business that it is said that when the war closed he had a wagon-load of Confederate notes and shin-plaster packed in trunks and chests.
The crash came when General Sherman went marching through Hillsborough. The Bascom Place, being the largest and the richest plantation in that neighborhood, suffered the worst. Every horse, every mule, every living thing with hide and hoof, was driven off by the Federals; and a majority of the negroes went along with the army. It was often said of Judge Bascom that “he had so many negroes he didn’t know them when he met them in the big road;” and this was probably true. His negroes knew him, and knew that he was a kind master in many respects, but they had no personal affection for him. They were such strangers to the Judge that they never felt justified in complaining to him even when the overseers ill-treated them. Consequently, when Sherman went marching along, the great majority of them bundled up their little effects and followed after the army. They had nothing to bind them to the old place. The house-servants, and a few negroes in whom the Judge took a personal interest, remained, but all the rest went away.
Then, in a few months, came the news of the surrender, bringing with it a species of paralysis or stupefaction from which the people were long in recovering—so long, indeed, that some of them died in despair, while others lingered on the stage, watching, with dim eyes and trembling limbs, half-hopefully and half-fretfully, the representatives of a new generation trying to build up the waste places. There was nothing left for Judge Bascom to do but to take his place among the spectators. He would have returned to his law-practice, but the people had well-nigh forgotten that he had ever been a lawyer; moreover, the sheriffs were busier in those days than the lawyers. He had the incentive,—for the poverty of those days was pinching,—but he lacked the energy and the strength necessary to begin life anew. He and hundreds like him were practically helpless. Ordinarily experience is easily learned when necessity is the teacher, but it was too late for necessity to teach Judge Bascom anything. During all his life he had never known what want was. He had never had occasion to acquire tact, business judgment, or economy. Inheriting a vast estate, he had no need to practice thrift or become familiar with the shifty methods whereby business men fight their way through the world. Of all such matters he was entirely ignorant.
To add to his anxiety, a girl had been born to him late in life, his first and only child. In his confusion and perplexity he was prepared to regard the little stranger as merely a new and dreadful responsibility, but it was not long before his daughter was a source of great comfort to him. Yet, as the negroes said, she was not a “luck-child;” and bad as the Judge’s financial condition was, it grew steadily worse.
Briefly, the world had drifted past him and his contemporaries and left them stranded. Under the circumstances, what was he to do? It is true he had a magnificent plantation, but this merely added to his poverty. Negro labor was demoralized, and the overseer class had practically disappeared. He would have sold a part of his landed estate; indeed, so pressing were his needs that he would have sold everything except the house which his father had built, and where he himself was born,—that he would not have parted with for all the riches in the world,—but there was nobody to buy. The Judge’s neighbors and his friends, with the exception of those who had accustomed themselves to seizing all contingencies by the throat and wresting tribute from them, were in as severe a strait as he was; and to make matters worse, the political affairs of the State were in the most appalling condition. It was the period of reconstruction—a scheme that paralyzed all whom it failed to corrupt.
Finally the Judge’s wife took matters into her own hand. She had relatives in Atlanta, and she prevailed on him to go to that lively and picturesque town. He closed his house, being unable to rent it, and became a citizen of the thrifty city. He found himself in a new atmosphere. The north Georgia crackers, the east Tennesseeans,—having dropped their “you-uns” and “we-uns,”—and the Yankees had joined hands in building up and pushing Atlanta forward. Business was more important than politics; and the rush and whirl of men and things were enough to make a mere spectator dizzy. Judge Bascom found himself more helpless than ever; but through the influence of his wife’s brother he was appointed to a small clerkship in one of the State departments, and—“Humiliation of humiliations!” his friends exclaimed—he promptly accepted it, and became a part of what was known as the “carpet-bag” government. The appointment was in the nature of a godsend, but the Judge found himself ostracized. His friends and acquaintances refused to return his salutation as he met them on the street. To a proud and sensitive man this was the bitterness of death, but Judge Bascom stuck to his desk and made no complaint.
By some means or other, no doubt through the influence of Mrs. Bascom, the Judge’s brother-in-law, a thrifty and not over-scrupulous man, obtained a power of attorney, and sold the Bascom Place, house and all, to a gentleman from western New York who was anxious to settle in middle Georgia. Just how much of the purchase-money went into the Judge’s hands it is impossible to say, but it is known that he fell into a terrible rage when he was told that the house had been sold along with the place. He denounced the sale as a swindle, and declared that as he had been born in the house he would die there, and not all the powers of earth could prevent him.
But the money that he received was a substantial thing as far as it went. Gradually he found himself surrounded by various comforts that he had sadly missed, and in time he became somewhat reconciled to the sale, though he never gave up the idea that he would buy the old place back and live there again. The idea haunted him day and night.
After the downfall of the carpet-bag administration a better feeling took possession of the people and politicians, and it was not long before Judge Bascom found congenial work in codifying the laws of the State, which had been in a somewhat confused and tangled condition since the war. Meanwhile his daughter Mildred was growing up, developing remarkable beauty as well as strength of mind. At a very early age she began to “take the responsibility,” as the Judge put it, of managing the household affairs, and she continued to manage them even while going to school. At school she won the hearts of teachers and pupils, not less by her aptitude in her books than by her beauty and engaging manners.
But in spite of the young girl’s management—in spite of the example she set by her economy—the Judge and his wife continued to grow poorer and poorer. Neither of them knew the value of a dollar, and the money that had been received from the sale of the Bascom Place was finally exhausted. About this time Mrs. Bascom died, and the Judge was so prostrated by his bereavement that it was months before he recovered. When he did recover he had lost all interest in his work of codification, but it was so nearly completed and was so admirably done that the legislature voted him extra pay. This modest sum the daughter took charge of, and when her father was well enough she proposed that they return to Hillsborough, where they could take a small house, and where she could give music lessons and teach a primary school. It need not be said that the Judge gave an eager assent to the proposition.