CHAPTER IV.THE PERCYS.
They were a very old Virginian family whose line of ancestry stretched backward quite as far as that of Miss Hansford, and touched the days of Cromwell, when white people were sent to Virginia and sold as slaves for a longer or shorter period of years. Among them came Samuel Percy, a Royalist, transported for some offense against the government and condemned to servitude for five years. Just what he did during the five years was not certainly known. Some said he was a blacksmith, some a tailor, and others a common field laborer, or at best an overseer of the negroes. That he was a bondman was sure and he worked out his time and then, unbroken in spirit, resolved to make for himself a name and a fortune and a family. With the latter he succeeded admirably, for the descendants of his five sons were scattered all over the South, each generation forgetting more and more that the root of the family tree in America had been a slave, and growing more and more proud of its English ancestry.
When the civil war broke out old Roger Percy owned a few negroes, a worn-out plantation and a big, rambling house in Virginia, just across the border of Maryland. Proud, morose and contrary, he seldom agreed with the people with whom he came in contact. His opinion was always the better one. With the Confederates he was a Federal,—with the Federals a Confederate, hurling anathemas at the heads of each and ordering them from his premises.As he was near the frontier he was visited at intervals by detachments from both armies, who, as he said, squeezed him dry, and at the close of the war he found himself alone, with his wife dead, his negroes gone, his house a ruin, or nearly so, and his land good for nothing. Too proud and indolent to work, he might have starved but for his only son, James, who, scoffing at a pride which would neither feed nor clothe him, found a position in the Treasury Department in Washington and offered his father a home. Grumblingly the old man accepted it, cursing the government and his small quarters and his dinners and black Sally, who waited upon him, and who, of all his negroes, had come back to him when peace was restored. Sometimes he cursed his son for being willing to take a subordinate position and work like a dog under somebody. This was what galled the worst,—working under somebody, and doing it willingly.
“I believe you have some of your great-great-grandfather’s blood in you,” he would say. “He hadn’t pluck enough to cut his master’s throat and run away. By the lord, I’d have done it.”
“I’m proud of old Sam Percy’s grit,” James would reply, “and if I knew just where he was buried I’d raise him a monument. I’m not ashamed to work, or to have some one over me.”
“I’m ashamed for you, and you a Percy,” his father would growl, forgetting that without the work he so despised he would be homeless and almost a beggar.
The climax came when James brought home a wife,—a clerk like himself in the Treasury Department. This was the straw too many and the bridal was soon followed by a funeral, the old man saying he was glad to go where the Percys could not be disgraced. Had he lived a few monthslonger he would have seen his son’s wife an heiress in a small way. A maiden aunt, for whom she was named and who all her life had hoarded her money earned in the cotton mills of Lowell, died and left her niece ten thousand dollars. This was a fortune to the young couple, who left their cramped quarters for a larger house, where, with the father-in-law gone and a sturdy baby boy in the cradle, they were perfectly happy for a time. Then, with scarcely an hour’s warning, the wife was taken away, stricken with cholera, and James was alone with Sally and his boy, the notorious John, or Jack, the terror of Oak City and of every neighborhood he frequented.
Jack was bright and handsome, but proud and rebellious, and learned very soon that the woman his father married within two years of his wife’s death was not his own mother. She was pretty and indolent and easy-going, and could no more cope with her step-son’s will than she could stem Niagara. She disliked him and he disliked her for no reason except that she was his stepmother, and when Clarice was born the breach widened between them, although the boy showed affection for his little sister.
When she was five years old and Jack was ten their father died, leaving to his widow the house in which they lived and a few thousand dollars, besides the small fortune she had brought him as the result of her father’s speculations. To Jack was left his mother’s ten thousand dollars intact. Had Jack chosen he could have won his mother then when her heart was sore and aching for some one to comfort her, if it were only a boy. But he didn’t choose; he was wayward and headstrong, and always an anxiety and trouble to her. With many good qualities, Mrs. Percy was a weak woman and talked a great deal of her husband’s family and the old Virginia homestead and the ancestralhall in England. On this point she was a little shaky in her own mind, as the ancestral hall was only a tradition; but it was a fine thing to talk about and no one could dispute it. The Virginia homestead stood not many miles from what is known as Cabin John. It had been partly repaired by her husband, and some of the rooms made habitable for the time his family spent there. Beechwood it was called, and to those who never saw it Mrs. Percy talked of it as her country house, to which she went every summer for quiet and rest from the fatigue of society, and because it was so lovely. In reality she went there to economize, and not because she cared for the great bare rooms, the leaky roof and decaying timbers, which let one end of the broad piazza drop half a foot lower than the other. Economy was a necessity if she made any show in Washington, where she struggled hard to be recognized among the first and the best. A friend of hers, who knew her circumstances, incidentally spoke to her of Oak City as a change from Beechwood. It was, she said, one of the pleasantest and cheapest watering places on the New England coast.
“Are there any nice people there? Anything but a camp-meeting?” Mrs. Percy asked, and was assured that while the camp-meeting was a feature of the place and an attraction, too, there were many nice people there from the adjacent cities.
Satisfied on this point, Mrs. Percy concluded to try it, and took with her Jack and Clarice and black Sally, who clung to this remnant of her former master’s family with a pertinacity peculiar to the negro race. Sally was both waiting maid and nurse, and from this Miss Hansford at once decided that Mrs. Percy was airy, wondering why an able-bodied woman like her should need a waiting maid, or a child as old as Clarice a nurse. Still, as the lady wasboarding near her, she made up her mind to call, and, to her horror, found Mrs. Percy playing whist!
“I hadn’t seen a pack of cards before in years, and the sight of them nearly knocked me down,” she said to her friend and confidante, Mrs. Atwater, when recounting her experience. “Cards in broad daylight, for it wasn’t four o’clock. She kept ’em in her hands all the time I was there as if she wished I’d go, and, if you’ll believe it, she asked me if I’d like to play a game! I didn’t stay long after that. Clarice was playing with her. Fine way to bring up a child!”
Miss Hansford’s call was not returned, and through some channel it reached her that Mrs. Percy did not care to make mixed acquaintances which she could not recognize at home. After this there was war in Miss Hansford’s heart against the Percys, and the feeling increased as time went on. Mrs. Percy’s affairs were more freely discussed than would have pleased her had she known it. Black Sally, who was loquacious, familiar and communicative, went frequently to Miss Hansford’s cottage for water, which was said to be the best on the Heights. Naturally, Miss Hansford talked with her, and, although she would have repudiated with scorn a charge that she was prying into her neighbor’s business, she managed to learn a good deal about Mrs. Percy, and to know how she lived at home, where Sally was cook, laundress, and maid of all work, as they kept no other servant.
“My land!” ejaculated Miss Hansford, “I s’posed you kept a retinue.”
“No, Missus, we never had nobody by that name,” Sally said, seating herself upon the doorstep, while Miss Hansford stood on the other side of the netting, wiping her dishes.“We ain’t rich folks, and Miss Percy has to save every way she can so’s to come here.”
“Why, how you talk,” Miss Hansford exclaimed, putting down the plate she had polished a full two minutes in absorbed interest. “I s’posed she was in society.”
“To be sho’ she is,” Sally rejoined. “Eberybody is in some kind of society in Wassinton if they wants to be. A heap of receptions is free. Dar’s de Presidents, and de Cabinet’s wives, and right smart more o’ de big bugs, whar any body can go, and dar’s ways of getting noticed in de papers and havin’ you close described ef you wants to. Wassinton is a great place!”
“I should say so,” Miss Hansford rejoined, more convinced than ever that Mrs. Percy was airy.
The next time Sally came for water she said that Mas’r James had been clerk in the Treasury when he married Jack’s mother, who was also a clerk in the same department.
“Well, if I ain’t beat. I s’posed Mr. Percy was the Great Mogul of the city from the airs his widder puts on,” Miss Hansford thought. “I dare say she was a clerk, too.”
Finally she put the question to Sally.
“I’se do’ know, but s’pecs not. She was bawn in Wassinton. T’other one was from de Noff,—a mighty nice woman, too, but she had a hard time wid ole Mar’s Roger, cussin’ at de house, and de dinners, and me, and de President, and all hands, and twittin’ Mar’s James for being like de fust Percy, who was a slave like de balance of us.”
“What are you talking about?” Miss Hansford almost screamed. “Was he a black man?”
“No, bless you; white as you is,” Sally answered, andMiss Hansford continued, “But there never was any white slaves.”
“Yes, thar was, way back, most to de flood, I reckon. I heard Mas’r James splainin’ to Miss’s onct after de ole Mas’r had been cussin’ bout him. It’s true’s you bawn, but mebby I didn’t orter speak of it,” and, picking up her pail of water, Sally hurried away, thinking that she had told too much and beginning to wish she had said nothing.
After that she was very reticent with regard to the family. But Miss Hansford had heard enough. Ordinarily, she would not have cared for the clerkship. She respected a man and woman who earned their own living if circumstances required it, but there had come to her rumors of Mrs. Percy’s remarks about the F. F. V.’s, and English ancestors, and now all this had resolved itself into Treasury clerks and white slaves. She did not believe the latter, but she never rested until she learned that white peoplehadbeen sold into slavery in Virginia under Cromwell and the Stuarts, and then she did not doubt that the original stock of the Percys had been among these bondmen. She was honorable enough to keep her knowledge to herself, and only shut her lips a little closer when she came in contact with the lady who had not returned her call because she did not care for mixed acquaintances whom she could not recognize in Washington.
This was Mrs. Percy’s first season in Oak City, and before the Ralstons came there. The following winter the two families met in Florida and in Washington and became quite friendly, for Mrs. Percy was very pleasant to those whom she considered her equals. She was ambitious and managing, and knew how to get desirable acquaintances and invitations. She did not intend to go to Oak City very early that summer, and as Jack wanted to go, and shewanted to be rid of him, she contrived to have him invited to spend a short time with the Ralstons when they were fairly settled. And this was how he chanced to be at the Ralston House with Paul when the watermelon was stolen. That summer Mrs. Percy rented a cottage on the Oceanside and Miss Hansford saw little or nothing of her. Jack, however, was a constant source of annoyance and seldom let an opportunity pass to worry her. She had not forgotten his jeer at her singing, and advice to join the Salvation Army the previous summer, nor the valentine sent to her in February, but the crowning insult was given the only time she ever went bathing at the fashionable hour.
“She didn’t believe in spoiling her clothes with salt water, nor in showing her arms and legs to Tom, Dick and Harry,” she said, and, habited in white knit stockings, a faded calico skirt, woolen sacque, and a dilapidated hat, left with her by a former lodger, she presented a startling appearance as she went into the water, treading very gingerly over the stones and trying in vain to keep her dress from floating around her like a balloon.
Paul, who had urged her coming, could not repress a smile, but when a big wave came rolling in and nearly knocked her down, he went to her at once and said, “Let me help you. The sea is rough this morning. Come out where it is deeper and away from the stones. I won’t let you fall.”
He led her out to where the water came nearly to her waist, and then, holding both her hands in his, danced her up and down, she protesting that he was beating the breath out of her body, while the dog, Sherry, who always took his bath with his master, swam around them in circles, barking furiously and making occasional dashes at Miss Hansford’s dress, which still floated in spite of Paul’s efforts to keep it down. Everybody stood still to watch the proceedingand everybody laughed. Jack Percy, who was near her on a raft, ready to dive, called out, “Go it, old gal. You waltz first rate. Where did you get your hat and what’ll you take for it?”
Then, with a whoop, he made the plunge and sent great splashes of water into the face of the indignant woman, who hurried to the shore and, divesting herself of her wet clothes, went home so enraged with Jack that she never forgave him until years after, when she wiped the death sweat from his face and felt that she would almost give her own life to save his.