Bricks Without Straw Part 14

"Is that all?" asked the lawyer.

"That is all," answered the officer.

"Has no other complaint been lodged against Colonel Desmit?"

"None."

"We cannot--that is--we did not expect this," said the attorney, and then after a whispered consultation with his client, he added, "We are quite willing to make this matter right. We had entirely misunderstood the nature of the complaint."

"Have you any further complaint to make against Colonel Desmit?"

asked the officer, of Nimbus.

"No," said that worthy, doubtfully. "He was pretty brash wid me, an' 'llowed ter hit me wid a stick; but he didn't--at least not ter speak on--so I don't make no 'count ob dat. 'Twas jes dis matter ob Lugeny's wuk dat made me bring him h'yer--nuffin' else."

"When did this matter of the stick occur?" asked the officer.

"On'y jes yeste'day, sah."

"Where was it?"

"Up ter Ma.r.s.e Potem's, sah. In his house."

"How did it happen?"

"Wal, you see, sah, I went up dar ter see ef I could buy a track ob lan" from him, an'--"

"What!" exclaimed Desmit, in astonishment. "You didn't say a word to me about land."

"No more I didn't," answered Nimbus, "kase yer didn't gib me no chance ter say a word 'bout it. 'Peared like de fus sight on me made yer mad, an' den yer jes feathered away on me, spite ob all I could do er say. Yer see, sah," to the officer, "I'd made a bit ob money in de wah, an' wanted ter see ef I could buy a bit ob pore lan' ob Ma.r.s.e Desmit--a track jes good fer nothin on'y fer a n.i.g.g.a ter starve on--but afore I could git to dat Ma.r.s.e Desmit got so uproarous-like dat I clean fergot what'twas I c.u.m fer."

"There was evidently a misunderstanding," said the attorney.

"I should think so," said the officer, dryly. "You say you have no complaint to make about that affair?" he added to Nimbus. "No,"

said he; "'twan't a tingob any 'count, nohow. I can't make out what'twas made Ma.r.s.e Potem so fractious anyhow. I reckon, as he says, dar must hev ben some mistake about it. Ef he'll fix up dis matter wid Lugena, I hain't no mo' complaint, an' I'se mighty sorry 'bout dat, kase Ma.r.s.e Desmit hab allus been mighty kin' ter me--all 'cept dis time an' once afo'."

"There's the money for the woman," said the attorney, laying some bills on the officer's table; "and I may say that my client greatly regrets the unfortunate misunderstanding with one of the best of his old slaves. He desires me to say that the woman's services have been entirely satisfactory, and that she can keep right on under the contract, if she desires."

So that was settled. The officer discharged Colonel Desmit, commended Nimbus for the sensible view he had taken of the quarrel, and the parties gave way for other matters which awaited the officer's attention.

This would not seem to have been so very oppressive, but anything growing out of the war which had resulted so disastrously for him was hateful to Colonel Desmit, and we should not wonder if his grandchildren told over, with burning cheeks, the story of the affront which was offered to their ancestor in haling him before that infamous tribunal, "the Bureau," to answer a charge preferred by a "n.i.g.g.e.r."

CHAPTER XV.

TO HIM AND HIS HEIRS FOREVER.

After leaving the office of "the Bureau," the parties repaired to that of the lawyer, and the trade for the land which had been so inopportunely forestalled by Colonel Desmit's hasty temper was entered upon in earnest. That gentleman's financial condition was such as to render the three or four hundred dollars of ready money which Nimbus could pay by no means undesirable, while the property itself seemed of so little value as to be regarded almost as an inc.u.mbrance to the plantation of which it was a part. Such was its well-established reputation for poverty of soil that Desmit had no idea that the purchaser would ever be able to meet one of his notes for the balance of the purchase money, and he looked forward to resuming the control of the property at no distant day, somewhat improved by the betterments which occupancy and attempted use would compel the purchaser to make. He regarded the cash to be paid in hand as just so much money accidentally found in his pathway, for which, in no event, was he to render any _quid pro quo_. But of this he said nothing. It was not his business to look after the interests of a "sa.s.sy n.i.g.g.e.r." In fact, he felt that the money was in a sense due to him on account of the scurvy trick that Nimbus had played him, in deserting to the Yankees after agreeing to look after his "n.i.g.g.e.rs" on the breast-works, although, as the event proved, his master would have gained nothing by his remaining. So the former master and slave met on the level of barter and sale, and gave and took in the conflict of trade.

Except the small tract just about the old hostel, which has already been mentioned, the plantation, which included Red Wing, was descended from an ancestor of the Richards family, who had come from the North about the close of the Revolution and "entered" an immense tract in this section. It had, however, pa.s.sed out of the family by purchase, and about the beginning of the war of Rebellion a life estate therein was held by its occupant, while the reversion belonged to certain parties in Indiana by virtue of the will of a common ancestor. This life-tenant's necessities compelled him to relinquish his estate, which was bought by Colonel Desmit, during the second year of the war, together with the fee which he had acquired in the tract belonging to the old Ordinary, not because he wanted the land about Red Wing, but because the plantation to which it was attached was a good one, and he could buy it on reasonable terms for Confederate currency. He expected to treat with the Indiana heirs and obtain their respective interests in the fee, which no doubt he would have been able to acquire very cheaply but for the intevening accident of war, as the life-tenant was yet of middle age and the succession consequently of little probable value to living reversioners. This, however, he had not done; but as his deed from the life-tenant was in form an exclusive and unlimited conveyance, it had been quite forgotten that the will of his grandfather limited it to a life estate. So when Nimbus and his friend and counsellor, Eliab Hill, sought to negotiate the purchase of Red Wing, no mention was made of that fact; neither was it alluded to when they came again to conclude the purchase, nor when instructions were given to Colonel Desmit's lawyer to prepare the necessary papers.

The trade was soon brought to an apparently happy conclusion. Nimbus bought two hundred acres at a price of eight hundred dollars, paying one half the price agreed upon in cash, and for the balance gave three notes of equal amounts, one maturing each year thereafter, and received from Colonel Uesmit a bond for t.i.tle to the whole tract, with full covenants of warranty and seizin. Colonel Desmit accounted the notes of little value; Nimbus prized the bond for t.i.tle above any patent of n.o.bility. Before the first note fell due all had been discharged, and the bond for t.i.tle was exchanged for a deed in fee, duly executed. So the recent slave, who had but lately been the subject of barter and sale, was clothed with the rights of a proprietor.

According to the former law, the slave was a sort of chattel-real.

Without being attached to the land, he was transferable from one owner to another only by deed or will. In some States he descended as realty, in others as personalty, while in others still, he const.i.tuted a separate kind of heritable estate, which was especially provided for in the canons of descent and statutes regulating administration. There was even then of record in the county of Horsford a deed of sale, bearing the hand and seal of P, Desmit, and executed little more than a year previously, conveying to one Peyton Winburn "all the right, t.i.tle, and interest of said Desmit, in and to a certain runaway negro boy named Nimbus." The said Winburn was a speculator in slaves who had long been the agent of Desmit in marketing his human crop, and who, in the very last hours of the Confederacy, was willing to risk a few dollars on the result.

As he well stated it to himself, it was only staking one form of loss against another. He paid Confederate money for a runaway negro. If the Confederacy failed, the negro would be free; but then, too, the money would be worthless. So with grim humor he said to himself that he was only changing the form of his risk and could not possibly lose by the result. Thus, by implication of law, the recent _subject_ of transfer by deed was elevated to the dignity of being a _party_ thereto. The very instrument of his bondage became thereby the sceptre of his power. It was only an incident of freedom, but the difference it measured was infinite.

No wonder the former slave tiembled with elation as he received this emblem of autonomy, or that there was a look of gloom on the face of the former master as he delivered the carefully-enrolled deed, made complete by his hand and seal, and attested by his attorney.

It was the first time the one had felt the dignity of proprietors.h.i.+p, or the other had known the shame of fraud. The one thought of the bright future which lay before his children, to whom he dedicated Red Wing at that moment in his heart, in terms more solemn than the legal phrases in which Potestatem Desmit had guaranteed to them the estate in fee therein. The other thought of the far-away Indiana reversioners, of whose rights none knew aught save himself--himself and Walter Greer, who had gone away to the wilds of Texas, and might never be heard of any more. It was the first time he had ever committed a deliberate fraud, and when he handed the freedman the deed and said sadly, "I never expected to come down to this,"

those who heard him thought he meant his low estate, and pitied his misfortunes. He smiled meaningly and turned hastily away, when Nimbus, forgetting his own elation, said, in tones of earnest feeling:

"I declar, Ma.r.s.e Desmit, I'se sorry fer you--I is dat; an' I hopes yer'll come outen dis yer trouble a heap better nor yer's lookin'

for."

Then they separated--the one to treasure his apples of Sodom, the other to nourish the memory of his shame.

CHAPTER XVI.

A CHILD OF THE HILLS.

"Come at once; Oscar very low."

This was the dispatch which an awkward telegraph messenger handed to the princ.i.p.al teacher of "No. 5," one soft September day of 1866. He waited upon the rough stone step, while she, standing in the doorway, read it again and again, or seemed to do so, as if she could not make out the import of the few simple words it contained.

'No 5' was a school-house in one of the towns.h.i.+ps of Banks.h.i.+re County, in the Commonwealth of Ma.s.sachusetts. In it were taught the children, within school age, of one of those little hamlets which have crept up the valleys of the White Mountains, toled on and on, year after year, farther and farther up the little rivulets that dash down the mountain slopes, by the rumble and clatter of newly-erected machinery.

These mountain streams are the magic handiwork of the nymphs and fays who for ages have lain hidden in the springs that burst out into little lakes upon the birch-crowned summits, and come rus.h.i.+ng and tumbling down the rocky defiles to join the waters of the Housatuck. School-house No. 5 was thriftily placed on a bit of refractory land just opposite the junction of two streams which had their rise in two lakelets miles away from each other--one lying under the shadow of Pixey Mountain, and the other hidden among the wooded hills of Birket. They were called "ponds," but are, in truth, great springs, in whose icy coldness the mountain trout delight.

Back of the school-house, which, indeed, was half built into it, was a sharp, rocky hillside; across the road which ran before it was a placid pond, bordered on the farther side by a dark fringe of evergreens that lay between it and the-wide expanse of white-armed birches and flaming maples, now beginning to feel the autumn's breath, on the rugged mountain-side above. A little to the left was the narrow gorge through which one of the streams discharged, its bottom studded with ponds and mills, and its sharp sides flecked with the little white-painted homes of well-to-do operatives; to the right and left along the other branch and the course of the united streams, the rumble of water-wheels, the puff of laboring engines, and the groan of tortured machinery never ceased.

Machine-shops and cotton-factories, bagging-mills and box-mills, and wrapping-mills, and print-mills, and fine-paper-mills, and even mills for the making of those filmy creations of marvellous texture and wonderful durability which become the representatives of value in the form of bank-notes, were crowded into the narrow gorges.

The water was fouled with chemic combinations from source to mouth.

For miles up and down one hardly got a breath of air untainted with the fumes of chemicals. Bales of rags, loads of straw, packages of woody pulp, boxes of ultramarine dye, pipes leading from the distant mountain springs, and, above all, the rumble and the groaning of the beating-engines told to every sense that this was one of the great hillside centres of paper-manufacture in New England.

The elegant residences of the owners were romantically situated on some half-isolated promonotory around which the stream sweeps, embowered with maples and begirt with willows at its base; or nestled away in some nook, moss-lined and hemlock-shaded, which marks where some spring brook bubbles down its brief career to the larger stream; or in some plateau upon the other side, backed by a scraggly old orchard, and hidden among great groves of rock-maples which the careful husbandman spared a hundred years ago for a "sugar-bush," little dreaming that the nabobs of the rus.h.i.+ng streams would build homesteads beneath their shade. And all along, here and there, wherever a house could find a foothold or the native ruggedness be forced to yield one lodgment, houses and shops and crowded tenements stood thick. It was a busy and a populous village, full of wealth and not barren of poverty, stretched along the rus.h.i.+ng tributary for more than a mile, and then branching with its const.i.tuent forks up into the mountain gorges.

In the very centre of this busy whirl of life stood the little white two-story school-house, flanked on one side by the dwelling of a mill-owner, and on the other by a boarding-house; and just below it, across the street, a machine-shop, and a little cottage of cased logs, with minute-paned windows, and a stone chimney which was built before the Revolution by the first inhabitant of the little valley. A little to the left of the school-house was a great granite boulder, rising almost to its eaves, which had been loosened from the mountain-side two miles up the gorge when the dam at the mouth of the pond gave way years before in a freshet, and brought down and left, by the respectful torrent almost at the threshold of the temple of knowledge.

Such was the scene the Indian summer sun looked down upon, while the teacher stood gazing fixedly at the message which she held.

Curious faces peered out of the windows and through the door, which she left ajar when she came into the hall. She took no note of this infraction of discipline. "Any answer, ma'arn?" The messenger-boy s.h.i.+fts his weight awkwardly upon the other foot, as he asks, but receives no reply.

For two years Mollie Ainslie, with her a.s.sistants, had dispensed the sweets of knowledge at "No. 5," to the children of the little hamlet. The hazy morning light revealed a small, lithe figure, scarcely taller than the messenger-boy that stood before her; a fair, white face; calm, gray eyes; hair with a glint of golden brown, which waved and rippled about a low, broad brow, and was gathered in a great s.h.i.+ning coil behind; and a mouth clear-cut and firm, but now drawn and quivering with deep emotion. The comely head was finely poised upon the slender neck, and in the whole figure there was an air of self-reliance and power that accorded well with the position which she held. A simple gray dress, with a bright ribbon at the throat and a bunch of autumn flowers carelessly tucked into the belt which circled the trim waist, completed the picture framed in the doorway of the white school-house. She stood, with eyes fastened on the paper which she held in one hand, while the other pressed a pencil-head against her cheek, unmindful of the curious glances that were fixed upon her from within, until the messenger-boy had twice repeated his customary question:

"Any answer, ma'am?"

She reached forth her hand, slowly and without reply. The boy looked up and saw that she was gazing far beyond him and had a strained, fixed look in her eyes.

"Want a blank?" he asked, in a tone of unconscious sympathy.