University of Virginia Library

4. CHAPTER IV

The Squire left no will. Sarah informed Jason of the
fact when she felt obliged to call upon him for aid;
until she did he asked no question concerning the property,—then
he assumed the whole control of it. He
was months in mastering its details. There were no
debts, but it was widely scattered, and existed in a
variety of forms; that part of it situated in Crest was
the least productive, and therefore he sold it. This was
considered as a thorough break-up in the town of the
family interest, and Sarah winced more than once at his
innovations; but believing in his plain sense, and that
he was probably considering Parke's future, she compelled
herself not to interfere. When he laid the schedule
of what he had retained before her, and the amount
of her income, derived principally from the iron-works
at Copford, ten miles below Crest, and the tanyard at
Millville, six miles above, she was astonished. It
amounted to nine thousand a year.

“A hundred and fifty thousand dollars!” she exclaimed.
“Just enough.”

“The Squire did not know how much he was worth.
I have sold all the shipping interest in Crest,—all the
houses. You only own certain tracts of land here, which
will be worth more by-and-by. You have fifty thousand
dollars in money.”

“I don't recollect of any Parke's having so much before.
Of course, it will go to my Parke?”

She looked anxiously at him.

“Certainly, as it appears now, it is all yours, and his.
How much shall I pay you for my board?”

“Nonsense.”

“I have a few hundreds, what shall I do with them?”

She blushed, because she wished Parke and herself to
owe him nothing.

“You will accept my labor, but not my money?”

“You are my husband.”

“Because I have given you an heir?”

“If you wish to be odd, Jason, I cannot prevent it.”

“Your heir, not mine.”

“By the name of Auster.”

The expression with which she uttered the name
made him turn white. From that time he was proud
enough never to interpose his paternal feelings between
her and his child. Instead, therefore, of his being a bond
of unity, he was the means of an anomalous condition,
which is not supposed to exist between man and wife,
where there are children.

To all appearance the family flourished and were
happy. But one day, the day that Parke was nine years
old, Sarah beheld, “sitting at the king's gate,” her cousin
and co-heir, Osmond Luce, who had been absent twelve
years. He was not alone; a strange-looking little girl
came with him—named Philippa.

Day to be remembered in the annals of Sarah's experiences—as
well remembered as the day he left his grandfather's
house!

“Of course,” were his first words, “I am foolish in
expecting to see my grandfather.”

She withdrew her hand from his grasp, and mechanically

resumed her seat; her mouth moved as if she was
in a spasm.

“He is dead,” he continued.

“Five years ago,” she made out to say.

“And I have been as good as dead twelve years.”

“No, not as good,” she said, the lustre of her black
eyes returning.

“Ha, I recognize my native air.”

“He died without a thought of you; he had forgotten
you, I believe, and forgotten all your claims.”

“So much the better for him. Sarah, Sarah, I have
come thousands of miles with this girl,—she is mine,—
to leave her on ancestral ground. Her mother is dead.
Will you keep her?”

“Papa,” interposed Philippa, “will you allow me to
go about this funny house?”

“Go anywhere,” he said, and opened the door for her.

Philippa immediately mounted the wide stairs, and
tried to open the door of the great clock, which stood
on the landing in the middle of the flight.

“Take care,” cried a voice above her, “the pigeon
may fly out.”

“What boy are you?” she asked, stretching her slender
neck to get a glimpse of him.

“Don't you know me? I am Parke; this house is
mine.”

“I have come to live in it.”

He descended slowly, looking intently at her.

When he stood beside her, she said, “Tell me about
the pigeon.”

“I will; but I don't think you are handsome.”

“You are, indeed, you are.”

They sat down on the stair in front of the clock, and
after taking in his hands her braids of hair, and saying
how yellow they were, he told her that one day, when
the clock was open, and Elsa was going to wind it, a
pigeon flew in from the window into the clock, and that
it still lived there.

“That is all nonsense,” she commented.

“It makes a noise before the clock strikes, and I say
it is there.”

“What does it get to eat?”

“Nothing.”

“Then it starved to death long ago,” she said triumphantly.
“Why don't you have it stuffed? I've got a
stuffed macaw.”

“You'd better go home,” Parke said.

“I can't.”

“Must you stay?”

“We came with an awful trunk; the coachman said
`By vum,' when he put it by the gate.”

“Let us go and see it.”

They hopped out amicably, and Jason found them on
the top of the trunk deep in conversation when he came
home to supper.

“What little girl is this?” he asked kindly.

“I didn't ask,” Parke answered, “but she has come
to stay.”

“You had better go in; it is growing chilly.”

“If I choose to go in, I shall,” replied Parke in the
mildest, most indifferent of voices. Philippa looked at
them both in astonishment.

“I will go with you, sir,” she said, offering her hand.

Parke followed them at once to the parlor. It was

dark there, and perhaps Jason did not see Sarah's compressed
lips, nor the red spot on her cheeks; but he
divined who the stranger was before she introduced
him.

“I am the prodigal son, Mr. Auster,” he said; “but
you won't trouble yourself about the fatted calf.”

“No trouble,” replied Jason, “it is the time of year
for veal.”

He said this so seriously, that Osmond looked at him
attentively.

“Mother,” said Parke, “this little girl flew in as the
pigeon did, but we must feed her.”

“Yes, or she will starve,” she said, with a harsh attempt
at pleasantry which made Jason feel as if a grater
had passed over his nerves. “And I must attend to the
supper, as Elsa will go into a tantrum now.”

She went to her room first, however, and looked at
herself in the glass.

“Oh, I see how changed I am,” she said with a touch
of womanly regret; “how unbecoming light dresses are
to me. I should be dressed in mourning; yes, yes, in
black from head to foot. What has he got a child for?
How can I bear it? And it has not come into Jason's
head, how much poorer we are than we were this morning!”

“What a handsome boy!” exclaimed Osmond, as
soon as the door had closed on her. “Come here, you
rascal.”

“I do not think that I am a rascal,” answered Parke;
“but here I am.”

He climbed up on Osmond's knee, and looked him
frankly in the face. They were of the same race. Osmond,

though sunburnt, hardened, coarse, stamped with
lines that spoke a wasting history, bore a wonderful resemblance
to the boy.

“And his name,” said Jason, “is Parke.”

Osmond looked at him again closely.

“Where could Sarah have picked up that man?” he
thought.

“I like you,” Parke declared, satisfied with his inspection.

Osmond kissed him twice, and smiled for the first time
since he entered the house.

Jason was looking at Philippa. When her father
kissed Parke, she moved her eyes as if seeking to escape
something painful. Jason went to her quietly, removed
her bonnet, unpinned her brightly-flowered shawl whose
deep fringe had trailed in the dirt, and placed her upon
the sofa.

“I came here to stay once too,” he whispered.

“Cuth and Elsa,” said Osmond, starting up—“I must
see them, the old souls. I know where they are.”

He banged the door behind him, and passed through
the rooms whistling a lively air.

“That whistle,” said Jason to himself, “is a wind of
doctrine.”

“The Everlasting!” screamed Elsa, when Osmond
found her, “I knew you would come back. Now we are
in a mux. What will folks say?”

“Never mind, I am going again.”

“What did Sarah say, Osmond? You have seen
her.”

“Guess.”

She shook her head.

“Blood may be thicker than water, and it may not;
I ain't any judge.” And then she sobbed.

“What has happened in the last dozen years? Tell
me, old girl,” he demanded, carefully wiping her eyes.

“Haven't had any news since Mr. Auster came to
town, and the Squire died, till this very minute.”

“I did not expect his death—he was so hale—and the
Parkes live long, you know.”

“You did not expect to find Sarah married, either.”

He laughed.

“I am glad she is married, though,” she continued,
with a wrathful look. “You are as much like Satan as
ever.”

“You are not glad, and as for Satan—”

“If here ain't Osmond Luce!” she cried, for Sarah
came in with a jar of preserves. “I thought I should
have fainted when I saw him.”

“Elsa is the same, Osmond,” said Sarah.

“Not a day older. She is a system of wires made of
steel, and won't rust. Where is Cuth? Shall I find
him in the yard?” Elsa caught him, to pick some
threads from his coat, and then she brushed it.

“Where's your baggage?” she asked.

“In the parlor, talking with Cousin Jason.”

“Oh Lord! You haven't come with a wife?”

“Ask Sarah,” and he rushed out.

“He has brought his daughter to live with us.”

“Oh Lord, what an imbezzlement! But she has a
right here—no mistake in it, and I'll see to her.”

“Thank you.”

“How he favors the Parkes! He wants the Parke
money, I suppose.”

Sarah's eyes flashed, and her shining black ringlets set
up a dance round her forehead.

“Nothing like family affection. Oh pest and the
deuce take this teapot nose, it is choked with tea-grounds,”
continued Elsa, not appearing to notice Sarah,
who said, after a moment's silence, putting the jar on
the table with a hand which Elsa saw was trembling,
“These grapes are for tea.”

“The fathers haven't eaten the grapes this time,” said
Elsa, turning the jar round in her hands, after Sarah had
gone, “to set the children's teeth on edge. Sarah has
got fangs, fangs, I tell you,” tapping the jar sharply;
“and yet she remembers that Osmond liked grape preserves!”

Cuth was at the wood-pile. Osmond went up behind
him, and said, “Old Cuth, how are you?”

For a moment Cuth did not stir, then he turned, and
said, “Curse you, if you would go, why didn't you stay?
What are you here for?”

“Your blessing, Cuth.”

“You had that, you dog, along with the Squire's.”

Osmond offered him some plug tobacco, which he
seized, threw into his mouth, and seated himself on a
log.

“You've come for something,” he said, spitting furiously.

“For half of this wood-pile, and half of you, Cuth.”

Cuth growled, spit high in the air, and swore a deep
oath.

“What has Auster done?” Osmond asked abruptly.

“What you would never have done, if you had stayed
here a hundred years. How have you passed your time?”

“In riotous living, Cuth.”

“Well, Auster has passed his in no living at all. Tell
me some of your adventures,” and Cuth's shaggy eyebrows
lifted themselves above a savage sparkle in his
eyes.

“Have you been in the Spanish main?”

Osmond laughed so loud, that Cuth, disconcerted,
turned to the wood-pile, and began to lay the sticks
upon it with careful precision.

“I always thought you were mad, Cuth, and now I
know it. How have your passions stood this sort of
thing so long?”

“The Squire pared my heels, and pared my toes, and
cut out my tongue, and I loved him.”

“Ah, I never could do as he did.”

“In a measure, you are stormy though, raging and
raving, as you always were, I take it: by my own mind
just now, I take it so.”

“Cuth,” said Osmond absently, “I have brought my
daughter here. Do you think that the paring-the-heels-and-toes
system died with my grandfather?”

“Why, have ye now, Osmond? well, I like that. The
child is here, hey? Sarah Parke is sharp, but she don't
bind folks to her; and she is too likely a woman to be
afraid of,—or—to be, to be—”

“Loved,” added Osmond.

Before he was called to supper, Cuth had given him
so much information concerning Jason and the life of
the family, that there was little left for him to learn.

The taste of the grapes to Osmond, was the link between
what seemed to be two dreams; that of having
been in Crest, a boy, and the one of being there now, a

man. A wild feeling of loss and home-sickness swept
over him, and then, like a ship in a rough sea, whose
prow rises to meet the breakers, he overrode the feeling
with a determined will. Sarah watched him with a restless,
furtive eye, which betrayed to him her unquiet soul.

“Not one of you have asked how long I intend to
stay!” he exclaimed.

The bread on the way to Philippa's mouth was arrested.
A loaf of cake was near Jason's hand; he cut it in
two with one blow and offered the plate to Osmond.

“Elsa,” he said, with a smile, and taking a bit, “I
never thought you would have allegorical cake. Will
you share in it, Sarah?”

She understood it, and, with a bitter look at Jason,
answered, “Not just now.”

“None of your foreign lingo here,” cried Elsa; “I'll
warrant you haven't tasted such cake since you left.”

“None like this, so sweet, so good,” said Osmond in
a deep voice, and, with a gesture towards Jason, “has
been offered me.”

“Perhaps Philippa would like some,” said Sarah;
“she has your taste, Osmond, undoubtedly.”

“Perhaps she would,” he cried, a light coming into
his face, “perhaps she would; `I thank thee, Jew.'”

But Philippa declined the cake, and patiently resumed
her bread. She was accustomed to her father's vagaries;
Elsa seemed to recall them too, and asked him if
he was as fond of his “reading books” as he used to be.

Jason proposed cigars after supper, and he, with Osmond,
started on a walk.

“Philippa is an outlandish name,” said Sarah, still at
the table. “How old are you?”

“Ten years.”

“Do you expect to be contented here?”

Philippa shrugged her shoulders, and fixed her brown
eyes upon Sarah, who could not repress a thrill of irritation.

“Philippa, Ippa, Ippa, Philippa,” Parke sang.

“Parke,” ordered Sarah, “go to bed.”

“Not yet,” continuing his song, “Ippa, Ippa, I must
nip her.”

“Ippa” smiled, and pushing from her ear her yellow
curls, offered it to him. “You may nip it if you like.”

“I am going to play with you for a while,” he said,
accepting her offer; “but you must play as I say.”

“Go into the kitchen, then,” Sarah begged.

“Along with you,” said Elsa.

The evening wore on, and Jason and Osmond did not
return. Sarah was curious enough to muffle herself in a
shawl, and dash out to Jason's office down the street to
see if there was a light there. The rays of a lamp
streamed from a hole in the paper window-curtain; she
hesitated a moment, then went forward and looked
through it. Jason was smoking a short clay pipe. His
hat was pushed back from his forehead, and he was tilting
on two legs of his chair; now and then with a ruler he
struck at and turned over the pages of a ledger, which
was on the desk before him. His appearance fascinated
her, so much depended with him, if he but willed so!
While she devoured his face, attitude, motions, she was
gauging the depth of his moral nature. “We never
know what we are till we are tried,” she reasoned for
him, in her mad hope that his conscience was solving a
problem which could not trouble hers. “We can't

make nice distinctions always. What is duty in such a
case? Haven't we every right to what we have so long
cared for, and he neglected? I would punish him.”
Osmond, who was beyond her vision, spoke; she could
not hear what he said, but she saw a frank smile spread
over Jason's countenance.

“I might have known,” she thought, “that Osmond
would strike at the heart of the business at once; and I
am a fool to have dreamed that he would not turn Jason
round his little finger.”

She would not let her anger admit that his honesty
was proof against any temptation, or rather, that temptation
could never approach him. She turned away
with a step that stirred the gravel on the walk, and
made Osmond listen.

“Somebody going by,” remarked Jason, observing
his attention.

The front door was ajar, as she had left it, and she
believed that she had not been missed. Parke had gone
to bed, probably, under Elsa's supervision; the house
was too still for him to be awake. But the girl!—no
arrangement had been made for her. It struck her,
then, that she would rather have Philippa under her
eye, as a hostage. Osmond might not cut and thrust so
liberally, with his plans and wishes, so long as she
should remain in Crest.

“Well,” said Elsa, “I have waited to hear where
Philippa is to be put, till her eyes are glued together
with sleep.”

“Keep her with you to-night.”

“She has a kind of way of saying prayers. I suppose
she thought she wasn't going to bed, and that she had

better mum 'em in her chair, and sleep there. She ain't
one bit like her father. I believe she is a Roman Catholic
myself.”

“Don't notice it, Elsa, if she is; she won't be one long
with me.”

“Where are they?” asked Elsa, abruptly. “At it, I
conclude.”

“No matter where they are,” Sarah replied, with a
stamp of her foot.

Elsa slammed the door for a retort, and vanished.

Jason lit the lamp in his office, exchanged a little
commonplace talk with Osmond, and then became silent.

Osmond lit another cigar, which he took from a Manilla
case, and asked, “How much was the old man
worth?”

“His estate is now worth a hundred and fifty thousand
dollars.”

“I had no idea of so much.”

“I have bettered it, since I took it in my hands.”

“You might have cheated me like the devil.”

Jason tapped a row of books in his desk.

“Sarah has supposed you would not return; I thought
you might. Look at these.”

“Do you mean to say that my half is ready?”

“Why not?”

“I might have been a magnate here, if my grandfather
had not treated me as a boy,” said Osmond irrelevantly,
for Jason had so astonished him that he hardly
knew what to say.

“You were a boy when you left him,” said Jason,
gently. “I was a man when I entered the family, and
yet he never trusted any thing to me.”

“I vow to God, if it were not for Philippa, I would
give you every dollar that may be mine; then”—he
stopped, for something in Jason's face struck him.
“Sarah would not have it so,” he resumed. “She must
have Nemesis, though.”

“Who is that?”

“A relation of the owner of that sword which was
suspended by a hair over the head of one of the ancients.”

“Cut it,” said Jason, looking up as if he saw the
sword in the air.

“I decided to-night to renounce my claim here, and
give Philippa all my rights; having done this, I shall
cut my stick; did you mean that? Will you be her
guardian?”

“Yes. Why did you bring her here?”

“From mixed motives. I will confide to you, however,
that she is an obstacle in my way of life, and that
I have never felt a strong interest in her. I have
studied out the means of happiness for her notwithstanding.
She will be happy here; hers is no Southern
nature; she belongs to the North.”

“Well,” said Jason, thoughtfully, “she is one of the
family.”

“And will hold her own sooner or later. I shall
plant a few ideas in her brain which will take root, and
in time bear fruit.”

“There will be nothing for me to do.”

“Who knows how much? I should have made a different
arrangement, had I found you a different man.
Excuse me, I shall not find a man I dare be so frank
with again;—how came you and Sarah to marry?”

Jason turned white, and looked up into the air again.

“I'll think about it, and let you know,” he answered,
presently.

“Cousin Jason, you are a trump. Now about your
fees, or your salary, or salvage, or commission, whatever
you may please to call the emolument of guardianship.”

The preliminaries were settled in a moment, and Osmond
proposed a walk round the town. His memory
was still green, he said, as they passed through the silent
streets, and he recounted boyish episodes, which let Jason
into the secret of his character. The story of his later
life was also told, and his listener heard an experience,
so different from his own, related as a matter of course
in the history of men's lives, that he felt his past had
been but a sleep-walking. Osmond's tongue was like a
wedge, hard, insinuating, forcible; in spite of Jason's
impassibility it made its cleaving way into undisturbed
recesses, which being once invaded might prove him a
man like other men.

Osmond remained a few days only. He made what
he called the hereditary tour,—that of the old burying-ground,
and a few visits to his grandfather's friends, but
renewed none of his own early associations. He could
not escape, however, the spirit of the past which Sarah
evoked for him. The fire burned on the same altar
which he refused to sacrifice upon years ago, where he
might have flung himself and been consumed. Hatred
and love were equally probable passions between such
temperaments, and equally fatal. Her manner was so
stinging, so bitter and excited towards him, his so cool,
daring, watchful, and resolute towards her, that they
were obliged to be only mindful of each other; even

Philippa, who might have been tossed from one to the
other, like a bone between hungry dogs, was neglected.
Jason had given her an account of his business interview
with Osmond, but she made no comments upon it, either
to him or to Osmond. There was a squareness in Jason's
way of setting forth facts which made her distrust her
influence with him. Osmond was satisfied that she had
at once acquiesced in Jason's guardianship, and so
Philippa was ignored. The day he left he was closeted
with her for a long time; she shed no tears when he departed,
but Parke cried in his arms, and begged him,
with kisses, to come again. Osmond promised, with a
significant look at Sarah, to be with them in ten years,
for by that time there would be questions to ask which
he would be old enough to answer. He demanded of
Cuth and Elsa that they should live till then, and rode
away with a careless ease which made Sarah grind her
teeth and Jason smile.

“He sows to the wind,” said Elsa, “and always will.”

“And we reap the whirlwind,” said Sarah, looking at
Philippa.

“The wind don't blow,” cried Parke, looking out of
the window.

“I wish it did,” said Philippa, whistling, as she had
heard the sailors whistle at sea; “I wish a hurricane
would come this way.”

If the faculty to detect the principle which directs the
march of circumstances had been given to Jason, it is
probable that his history would be impossible; he would
have rendered it nugatory from the moment that Osmond
Luce returned to Crest.