Part 10 (2/2)

”Yes, entirely. And the best of it is the realization that you are busy in your old home and do not stay in it merely for Patty and me.”

”Oh, I couldn't keep away! This place grips me. It's well enough to go to New York for a month to study the market, but this is the land of my choice, darkies and all. I wish they could do a good day's work; but, then, I don't pay them for a day's work, white man's reckoning.”

A few steps further brought them to the tree where he and Hertha had first played together.

The older man stopped again. ”Why, here's a blossom at the end of a bough,” he said.

”Yes, but don't pick it!” Lee seized his father's arm. ”I've a fancy to keep it there--for good luck,” he added, somewhat lamely.

Over the blossom, the previous morning, Hertha had bent like a happy child, blowing upon the petals and calling on them to open.

”Lee!” The young man started at his father's voice; there was in it a note of admonition, almost of severity. But there was nothing of severity in the words that followed:

”I wish I could express to you my happiness that this old home that my father and my father's father loved and strove to make beautiful will now be guarded by you. And you will do better with it than we did.”

”Oh, I don't know about that,” Lee said.

”Yes, this is a mere fragment that comes into your hands.”

”A pretty good fragment, I think.”

”Only a fragment. The acres stretching back through the pines should be yours, and other acres by the river's edge. I did not know how to use the place aright, but you will be wiser than I.”

”Well, if I am wiser about such things,” Lee admitted, ”it's because the world is wiser to-day than when you took over the place. People have learned a heap of science since then.”

John Merryvale did not heed this remark, but, turning his gaze from his son, looked away down the river. ”I could not give you the heritage in land which should be yours,” he said gravely, ”but I hope I have given you a heritage of kindly relations.h.i.+p to those about you, of friendliness and honorable dealing.”

”Indeed,” Lee answered, ”I know how you are loved and honored.”

”And you, too, shall be honored by all on this old estate down to the humblest colored child. It is a great consolation to me,” he went on, still looking away from his son and out over the water, ”that the rights of the poorest black girl have been respected from my father's father's day through my own. There are no white faces among these cabins to tell of our pa.s.sion and our shame. I think of this sometimes when I see that young servant of your aunt's. In her beautiful countenance is the sin and the disgrace of the Southern gentleman.”

”Don't you believe,” Lee answered sharply, ”that her mother thought she was honored?”

”That's as it may be, but she was not honored, and her child was left to the chance care of a black woman.”

”He was a beast who did that!”

The father turned at this heated speech to see his son, face flushed, anger in his eyes.

”If he took a responsibility, he had no right later to dodge it.”

Lee spoke with vehemence. He had told Hertha that he had ceased to think, but in reality he was thinking, every hour of the day, of the thing that he was doing.

”Whoever started the d.a.m.ned business going,” he went on, with an attempt at a laugh, ”got America into a frightful mess. But some one did start it, and here they are, women--well, women such as you speak of, with all the instincts and the beauty of the white race. Don't you believe a woman like that would be happier under the protection of a white man who loved her than if she took up with some coa.r.s.e fellow as black as her shoes?”

”No,” John Merry vale answered, ”the life of such a woman is the loneliest life in the world. She may not enter the white world and the black world casts her off.”

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