CHAPTER II BREAKFAST ON THE GALLERY

Aspley Place, once the center of a large estate and the scene of much hospitality in Colonel Aspley Marshall’s lifetime, was now surrounded by a farm of less than two hundred acres. Mortimer, or “Morey” as he was always called, and his mother, had been left dependent upon the estate at Colonel Marshall’s death three years before. At first it was not known that Colonel Marshall was financially involved. But his debts almost consumed his supposed enormous and valuable tobacco plantation. Out of the settlement Major Carey, his executor, saved for the widow and her son the home. But it and the little farm immediately about the house was mortgaged to Major Carey himself, who from year to year renewed the notes for borrowed money.

On these few worn and almost exhausted acres a faithful retainer, an old negro, Marshall or “Marsh” Green, who had been Colonel Marshall’s servant from babyhood, made desperate efforts to provide a living for his mistress. He and his boy Amos Green lived in the sole remaining cabin of the old quarters, where, in the time of Colonel Marshall’s father and in the days when Amos Green’s grandfather was a boy, there had been a street of log huts beneath big oaks, and a hundred slaves might be counted. Marsh Green and his boy now lived in a cabin patched with store boxes, beneath a roof mended with flattened lard tins.

It was now many a day since the Marshalls had killed their own hogs, and as for the old oaks, Colonel Aspley himself had sold them. In truth, Morey’s father was neither a successful farmer nor a frugal business man. He believed in the past, was a kind parent and husband, had his mint juleps regularly, lived up to his patrimony and left for Morey nothing more than the recollection of a chivalrous and proud father, a mortgaged plantation, old Marsh Green and fat Betty, his hunter.

But these things Morey neither knew nor understood. Mrs. Marshall had a vague belief that what she called her “private fortune” would amply care for her and for Morey’s education. She neither knew the amount of this nor her real income. In fact, this fortune, left to her by an uncle, was a meagre five thousand dollars, and the $250 it produced annually, which Captain Barber’s bank at Lee’s Court House collected and held for her, was always overdrawn.

It was by Captain Barber and Major Carey that Mrs. Marshall’s taxes were looked after, her insurance cared for and her notes renewed from year to year, and she lived on in dignity and pride with little understanding of how the money came. Nor did she even suspect how much was due to the ceaseless efforts of Marsh Green.

“Colonel Aspley’s overseer,” she always said in referring to the faithful Green.

“Mrs. Marshall’s hired man,” said the newcomers who were turning old and historic tobacco fields into fruit orchards and vegetable gardens.

But Marsh could hardly be called a “hired” man. If he was “hired” it was without pay. All the money that the white-haired negro saw came from the vegetables he grew that “the place” did not need. And these were as much the property of old Marsh as if the plantation were his. Mrs. Marshall did not even think of the matter. Twice a year she and Marsh and Amos drove to Lee’s and the colored servitors were clothed.

The fall before, Morey, with much ceremony, had been forwarded to a school for boys in Richmond, famous both for its excellent curriculum and its high tuition. The bills for this had been met by Captain Barber as long as the little account in his bank warranted. Then came the inevitable.

On a day late in the winter Captain Barber and Major Carey, freshly shaven and carrying their gold-headed canes, drove slowly up to Aspley Place. Mammy Ca’line received them. In the musty old parlor, where Colonel Marshall’s picture in his red hunting coat glared down upon his old time friends, the nervous committee twirled two shiny canes.

Mrs. Marshall was not an old woman. Her veneration for the past was not based on any love for long gold chains, earrings, or corkscrew ear curls. There was something a little faded about her appearance but it was not in her hair, nor in her face. Perhaps it was in the gown she wore, but this neither the Captain nor the Major saw. Mrs. Marshall’s neighborly greeting, her courtesy, preserved with many other graces from the days of the old régime, her smile of peace and content, disconcerted the visitors.

“Madam,” began Major Carey at last, “theah is a little mattah—a trifle—but, ah, a mattah that we feel bound, Madam, to lay befoah you.”

“Ouah respect, Madam, foah yo’ husban’, the late Colonel Marshall, who was ouah friend,”—added Captain Barber.

“The regard we hold fo’ his memory and fo’ you and yo’ son Mortimer,”—went on the Major.

What they had come to say to Mrs. Marshall was that, in her circumstances, Mortimer could not be sent away to a fashionable school; that he could not hope to play the role of a gentleman, that the farm was non-productive and should be sold, that Mortimer, now a young man, should set about earning a living, and that she and her son ought to purchase a cottage in the nearby village where they might live on a reduced scale and dispense with the unremunerated services of old Marsh and his idle, lazy, hungry son.

But no such suggestions were made.

Mrs. Marshall listened to the explanation of her financial straits undisturbed. Where the agitated visitors expected tears and despair they found a paralyzing calmness.

“I regret to say, my dear Madam,” concluded Major Carey at last and with a dry throat, “that you now owe Mortimer’s school four hundred dollars, and the bill is so long overdue that they are, ah, becoming even impertinent.”

“I really thought it had been paid,” said Mrs. Marshall in her low, soft tone and looking at her banker, Captain Barber, in an injured way. The Captain only wiggled in his chair. He even dismissed the idea he had had of telling Mrs. Marshall that she had already overdrawn her account one hundred and eighty dollars. “Haven’t I some funds out at interest?” continued their hostess.

“I think you have about—”

Mrs. Marshall smiled and raised her still plump hand.

“Please don’t bother about the details,” she added hastily. “You have always been so good as to look after my business. I will take it as a favor if you will realize out of my funds whatever is needed to cover this obligation. I prefer to sacrifice my private fortune rather than encumber the family estate which, of course,” and she smiled comfortably, “is to be preserved for Mortimer.”

The two visitors could not look at each other. They sat silent and aghast. The “family estate” had been reduced to less than two hundred acres of worn out and almost unsalable tobacco land. Even this was mortgaged and Major Carey had been carrying the obligation for years. He had not even received a cent of interest since Colonel Marshall’s death.

“Certainly, Madam,” stammered Captain Barber at last, rising. “Just as you wish.”

“Mrs. Marshall,” said Major Carey bowing, “when Master Mortimer returns from school will you have him do me the honor to call upon me?”

“With great pleasure,” said Mortimer’s mother, “although the poor boy is not coming directly home at the close of school. He will first visit his uncle Douglas in Hammondsport, New York. And, by the way, Captain,” she added, turning to the flustered planter-banker, “I’m afraid his wardrobe may require replenishing and he will need a little pocket money. Will you kindly send him a hundred dollars and charge it to my account?”

There was no help for it. If she had been a man the thrifty banker would have been adamant. To the widow of his dead friend he only bowed.

“At once,” he answered politely. Then he added: “Madam, I trust you will not think me impertinent. But what are your plans for your son’s future?”

“Colonel Marshall was a tobacco grower,” she answered proudly. “The Aspley plantation has known nothing but tobacco for a hundred and fifty years.”

When Major Carey’s old buggy—he did not own or use an automobile—had creaked down the weed-grown Aspley Place private road to the highway and the unhinged gate had been dragged into place, Captain Barber turned to his companion.

“If Mrs. Marshall’s son hasn’t any more business sense than his mother the Barber Bank is going to have a tidy sum to charge up to profit and loss. We’re two old fools. What do you want to see the boy about?”

Major Carey grunted. “I’m goin’ to tell him what his mother doesn’t know—that she isn’t worth a cent and that he must go to work and care for her.”

This was in March.

On the day in June that Morey reached his home, raced with Amos, arranged to go in quest of “old Julius Cæsar” and his many “chilluns,” and then made his way free-hearted and devoid of care over the unkempt lawn toward the house, there was no thought in his mind of money, debts and little of the future.

“Aspley House” hardly merited such a formal title. The building itself was of wood, two stories high and long since denuded of paint. But the gallery, or porch, in front seemed part of some other architectural creation. The floor of it was flush with the yard and of brick, worn and with sections missing here and there. The columns, unencumbered with a second story floor, were of great round pillars of brick. They had once been covered with cement, but this coating had now fallen away and the soft red of the weather beaten bricks was almost covered with entwined swaying masses of honeysuckle.

Beneath these blossoming vines Morey’s mother awaited him.

“I saw it,” she exclaimed anxiously. “I’ve seen your poor father do the same. You are not hurt?”

“Hurt?” shouted Morey as his mother put her arm about his neck and wiped the blood from his face with her lace handkerchief. “I’ve forgotten it. Breakfast ready?”

In a fragrant, shaded corner of the gallery, where the brick pavement was reasonably intact, sat a little table. On the snow-white cloth rested a bowl of flowers. At two places thin, worn silver knives, forks and spoons glistened with a new polish. But the “M” had nearly disappeared from them.

“Say, mater,” laughed Morey, proud of his newly acquired Latin, “why don’t you fix this pavement? Some one’s going to break his neck on these broken bricks.”

“It should have been seen to before this,” his mother answered. “And I really believe we ought to paint the house.”

“Looks like a barn,” commented Morey, attacking a plate of Mammy Ca’line’s corn bread. “This some of our own butter?”

Mrs. Marshall looked up at the fat smiling Mammy Ca’line, beaming in her red bandanna.

“Mammy,” asked Mrs. Marshall, “is this some of our own butter?”

“Ouah own buttah!” exclaimed the grinning cook, maid and all-around servant. “Fo’ the lans’ sake, Miss Marshall, we ain’t made no buttah on dis place sense ole Marse done gone, fo’ yars come dis fall.”

Mrs. Marshall sighed.

“Why don’t you?” snapped Morey with a tone that reminded his mother of his dead father.

“Why don’t we?” laughed old Ca’line. “I reckon you boun’ to have cows to make buttah—leastways a cow. Dat ole Ma’sh Green don’ keep no cows no mo’.”

Morey laughed.

“Runnin’ on the cheaps, eh?”

But his mother only smiled and sipped her coffee.

As the hungry, happy boy helped himself to one of the three thin slices of bacon, old Ca’line leaned toward her mistress and said, in a low voice:

“Miss Ma’shall, dat’s de lastest of dat two poun’ of salt meat.”

Mrs. Marshall smiled again.

“Have the overseer go to town this morning, Ca’line, and lay in what supplies are needed. Have we any fowls on the place?”

“Yas ’um, dey’s fowls, but dey’s only ‘aiggers.’ Dey ain’t ‘eaters.’”

As Mrs. Marshall looked up in surprise, Morey experienced the first serious moment of his life.

“It’s one of Amos’ jokes, mater. I understand. I’ll tell you about it after a bit.”

“Amos is really very trying at times,” was Mrs. Marshall’s only comment.

“As for meat, Ca’line,” went on Morey gaily, “don’t bother. Amos and I are going for trout this morning. We’ll have a fish dinner today.”

“Your father was very fond of trout,” exclaimed Morey’s mother. “I’m so glad you’re going. By the way, Mortimer, the first day you find the time Major Carey wants you to call. He’s very fond of you.” Then, thoughtfully, “Have you any engagement this evening? We might drive over late today.”

“That’s a go,” exclaimed Morey, springing up, “unless the fishing makes me too late. Pleasure before business, you know.”

As old Ca’line shambled down the wide hall she shook her head and mumbled:

“His pappy’s own chile! An’ dat’s what took de paint offen dis house.”