CHAPTER VI
I AM TREATED TO A SURPRISE
The rain was falling dismally as the coach in which I had made the journey rolled up the drive to Riverview, and I caught but a glimpse of the house as I was rushed up the steps and into the wide hall. A lady dressed in a loose green gown was seated in an easy-chair before the open fire, and she did not rise as I entered, doubtless because her lap was full of knitting.
"Gracious, how wet the child is!" she cried, looking me over critically. "Take him to his room, Sally, and see that he has a bath and change of clothing. I'm sure he needs both."
I turned away without a word and followed the negro maid. Of course the lady thought me a surly boor, but my heart was burning, for I had hoped for a different welcome. As I passed along the hall and up the broad staircase, the thought came to me that all of this would one day be mine, should I choose to claim it, and then, with crimson cheeks, I put the thought from me, as unworthy of my mother's son.
But my room looked very warm and cheerful even on this chilly day, and from the window I could see broad fields of new-planted tobacco, and beyond them the yellow road and then the river. I stood long looking out at it and wondering what my life here had in store. Half an hour later, word came from my grandfather that he wished to see me, and the same maid led me down the stairs and to his study, I stumbling along beside her with a madly beating heart. As I crossed the lower hall, I heard a burst of childish laughter, and saw a boy and girl, both younger than myself, playing near the chair where the lady sat. I looked at them with interest, but the sight of me seemed to freeze the laughter on their faces, and they gazed with staring eyes until I turned the corner and was out of sight. But I had little time to wonder at this astonishing behavior, for in a moment I was in my grandfather's office.
He was seated at a great table, and had apparently been going over some accounts, for the board in front of him was littered with books and papers. I saw, even beneath the disguise of his red face and white hair, his strong resemblance to my father, and my heart went out to him on the instant. For I had loved my father, despite the wild behavior which marred his later clays. Indeed, I always think of him during that time as suffering with a grievous malady, of which he could not rid himself, and which ate his heart out all the faster because he saw how great was the anguish it caused the woman he loved. That it was some such disease I am quite certain, so different was his naturally strong and sunny disposition.
My grandfather gazed at me some moments without speaking, as I stood there, longing to throw myself into his arms, and all the misery of the years that followed might never have been, had I buried my pride and followed the dictates of my heart. But I waited for him to speak, and the moment passed.
"So this is Tom's boy," he said at last. "My God, how like he is!"
He fell silent for a moment,—silenced, no doubt, by bitter memories.
"You wonder, perhaps," he said in a sterner tone, "why I have sent for you; but I could do no less. The letter from your pastor which announced the deaths of your father and your mother brought me the tidings also that your mother's fortune had been diced away down to the last penny, and that even the negroes must be sold to satisfy the claims against it. However undutiful your father may have been, I could not permit his son to become a charge upon the poor funds."
I felt my cheeks flushing, but I judged it best to choke back the words which trembled on my lips.
"I can read your thought," said my grandfather quickly. "You are thinking that the heir of Riverview could hardly be called a pauper. Do not forget that your father forfeited his claim to the estate by his ungentlemanly conduct."
"I shall not forget it," I burst out. "My father made sure that I should never forget it. I shall never claim the estate. And my father's conduct was never ungentlemanly."
"As you will," said my grandfather scornfully. "I am not apt at mincing words. I told him one thing many years ago which I should have thought he would remember, and which I now repeat to you. I told him that a gentleman ceased to be a gentleman when once he gambled beyond his means."
I waited to hear no more, but with crimson cheeks and head in air, I turned on my heel and started for the door.
"Damn my stars, sir!" he roared. "Wait to hear me out."
But I would not wait. After a moment's struggle with the latch, I had the door open and marched straight to my room. Once inside, I bolted the door, and throwing myself on the floor, sobbed myself to sleep.
What need to detail further? There were a hundred such scenes between us in the four years that followed, and as I look back upon them now, I realize that through it all I, too, showed my full share of Stewart obstinacy and temper. I more than suspect that my grandfather in his most violent outbursts was inwardly trembling with tenderness for me, as was I for him, and that a single gentle word, spoken at the right time, would have brought us into each other's arms. And I realize too late that it was for me, and not for him, to speak that word. It was only when I saw him lying in his bed, stricken with paralysis, bereft of the power of speech or movement, that I knew how great my love for him had been. His eyes, as they met mine on that last day, had in them infinite tenderness and pleading, and my heart melted as I bent and kissed his lips. He struggled to speak, and the sweat broke from his forehead at the effort, but what he would have said I can only guess, for he died that night, without the iron bands which held him fast loosening for an instant. Yet I love to fancy that his last words, could he have spoken them, would have been words of love and forgiveness, for my father as well as for myself, and such, I am sure, they would have been. With him there passed away the only one at Riverview whom I had grown to love.
And now a word about the others among whom I passed the second period of my boyhood. My father's younger brother, James, had married seven or eight years before a lady whose estate adjoined Riverview,—Mrs. Constance Randolph, a widow some years older than himself. She had one child living, a daughter, Dorothy, who, at the time I came to Riverview, was a girl of nine, and a year after her second marriage she bore a son, who was named James, much against the wishes of his mother. She would have called him Thomas, a name which had for five generations been that of the head of the house. But this my grandfather would by no means allow, and so the child was christened after his father. I think that ever since the day she had entered the Stewart family, my aunt had thought me a spectre across her path, for she was an ambitious woman and wished the whole estate for her son,—in which I do not greatly blame her. But she had brooded over her fear until it had become a phantom which haunted her unceasingly, and she had come to deem me a kind of monster, who stood between her boy and his inheritance. Her second husband died three years after their marriage,—he was drowned one day in January while crossing the river on the ice, which gave way under him,—and after that she became the mistress of Riverview in earnest, ruling my grandfather with a rod of iron, for though bold enough with men, and especially with the men of his own family, he would succumb in a moment to a woman's shrewish temper.
Only twice had he revolted against her rule. The first time was when she had announced her intention of naming her boy Thomas, as I have already mentioned. The second was when he decided to summon me to Riverview. This she had opposed with all her might, but he had persisted, and finally ended the argument by putting her from the room,—doubtless with great inward trepidation. So I came to be a phantom in the flesh, and do not wonder that she hated me, so sour will the human heart become which broods forever on its selfishness. Her children she kept from me as from the plague, and during the years preceding my grandfather's death, I had almost no communication with them. He required, however, that every respect be shown me, placed me on his right at table,—how often have I looked up from my plate to find his eyes upon me,—selected half a dozen negroes to be my especial servants, engaged the Rev. James Scott, pastor of the Quantico church, as my tutor, and even ordered for me an elaborate wardrobe from his factor in London.
Mr. Scott was a man of parts, and under him I gained some knowledge of Latin, Greek, and mathematics. Certainly I made more progress than I should have done under different circumstances, for finding myself without companions or other occupation, I applied myself to my books for want of something better. My grandfather possessed above a hundred volumes, and when he saw how my bent lay, he ordered others for me, so that his library came to be one of the largest on the Northern Neck, though but indifferently selected. Absorbed in these books, I managed to forget the disorder of my circumstances.
The remainder of my time I spent in riding along the river road on the mare my grandfather had given me, or wandering over the estate and in and out among the negro cabins. To the negroes I was always "Mas' Tom," and I am proud to remember that I made many friends among them, treating them always with justice and sometimes with mercy, as, indeed, I try yet to do. Once I came suddenly upon old Gump, the major-domo of the house servants, preparing to give a little pickaninny a thrashing, and I stopped to ask what he had done.
"He's done been stealing Mas' Tom," answered Gump. "Ain' goin' t' hab no t'iefs roun' dis yere house, not if I knows it."
"What did he steal, uncle?" I asked.
"Dis yere whip," said Gump, and he held up an old riding-whip of mine.
I looked at it and hesitated for a moment. Was it worth beating a child for? The little beady eyes were gazing at me in an agony of supplication.
"Gump," I said, "don't beat him. That's all right. I want him to have the whip."
Gump stared at me in astonishment.
"What, Mas' Tom," he exclaimed, "you mean dat you gib him de whip?"
"Yes," I said, "I give him the whip, Gump," and luckily the old man could not distinguish between the past and present tenses of the verb, so that I was spared a lie. The little thief ran away with the whip in his hand, and it was long before the incident was recalled to me.
So I returned again to my books, and to the silent but no less active antagonism toward my aunt. Yet, I would not paint her treatment of me in too gloomy colors. Doubtless I gave her much just cause for offense, for I had grown into a surly and quick-tempered boy, with raw places ever open to her touch. That she loved her children I know well, and her love for them was at the bottom of her dislike for me. I have learned long since that there is no heart wholly bad and selfish.
While my grandfather yet lived, I think she had some hope that something would happen to make me an outcast utterly, but after his death this hope vanished, and she sent for me one morning to come to her. I found her seated in the selfsame chair in which I had first seen him, and the table was still littered with papers and accounts.
"Good-morning, Thomas," she said politely enough, as I entered, and, as I returned her greeting, motioned me to a chair. She seemed to hesitate at a beginning, and in the moment of silence that followed, I saw that her face was growing thinner, and that her hair was streaked with gray.
"I have sent for you, Thomas," she said at last, "to find out what your intention is with regard to this estate. You know, of course, that your father forfeited it voluntarily, and that you have no moral claim to it. Still, the law might sustain your claim, should you choose to assert it."
"I shall not choose to assert it," I answered coldly, and as I spoke, her face was suffused with sudden joy. "I promised my father never to claim it,—never to take it unless it were offered to me openly and freely,—and I intend to keep my promise."
For a moment her emotion prevented her replying, and she pressed one hand against her breast as though to still the beating of her heart.
"Very well," she said at last. "Your resolution does credit to your honor, and I will see that you do not regret it. I will undertake the management of both estates until my son becomes of age. You shall have an ample allowance. Let me see; how old are you?"
"I am fifteen years old," I answered.
"And have about sounded the depths of Master Scott's learning, I suppose?" she asked, smiling, the first smile, I think, she had ever given me.
"He was saying only yesterday that I should soon have to seek another tutor."
"'T is as I thought. Well, what say you to a course at William and Mary?"
She smiled again as she saw how my cheeks flushed.
"I should like it above all things," I answered earnestly, and, indeed, I had often thought of it with longing, so lonely was my life at Riverview.
"It shall be done," she said. "The year opens in a fortnight's time, and you must be there at the beginning."
I thanked her and left the room, and ran to my tutor, who had arrived some time before, to acquaint him with my good fortune. He was no less pleased than I, and forthwith wrote me a letter to Dr. Thomas Dawson, president of the college, commending me to his good offices. So, in due course, I rode away from Riverview, not regretting it, nor, I dare say, regretted. In truth, I had no reason to love the place, nor had any within it reason to love me.
Of my life at college, little need be said. Indeed, I have small reason to be proud of it, for, reacting against earlier years, perhaps, I cultivated the Apollo room at the Raleigh rather than my books, and toasted the leaden bust of Sir Walter more times than I care to remember. Yet I never forgot that I was a gentleman, thank God! And previous years of study brought me through with some little honor despite my present carelessness. I had a liberal allowance, and elected to spend my vacations at Williamsburg or at Norfolk, or coasting up the Chesapeake as far as Baltimore, and did not once return to Riverview, where I knew I should get cold welcome. In fact, I was left to do pretty much as I pleased, my aunt being greatly occupied with the care of the estate, and doubtless happy to be rid of me so easily. So I entered my eighteenth year, and the time of my graduation was at hand. And it was then that the great event happened which changed my whole life by giving me something to live for.
It was the custom for the first class, the year of its graduation, to attend the second of the grand assemblies given by the governor while the House of Burgesses was in session, and we had been looking forward to the event with no small anticipation. Many of us, myself among the number, had ordered suits from London for the occasion, and I thought that I looked uncommon well as I arrayed myself that night before the glass. Such is the vanity of youth, for I have since been assured many times by one who saw me that I was a very ordinary looking fellow. Half a dozen of us, the better to gather courage, went down Duke of Gloucester Street arm in arm toward the governor's palace with its great lantern alight to honor the occasion, and mounted the steps together,—our trifling over our toilets had made us late,—and as we entered the high doorway, did our best to look as though a great assembly was an every-day event to us. A moment later, I saw a sight which took my breath away.
It was only a girl of seventeen—but such a girl! Can I describe her as I close my eyes and see her again before me? No, I cannot trust my pen, nor would any such description do her justice; for her charm lay not in beauty only, but in a certain rare, sweet girlishness, which seemed to form a nimbus round her. Yet was her beauty worth remarking, too; and I have loved to think that, while others saw that only, I, looking with more perceptive eyes, saw more truly to her heart. I did not reason all this out at the first; I only stood and stared at her amazed, until some one knocking against me brought me to my senses. There were a dozen men about her, and one of these I saw with delight was Dr. Price, our registrar at the college, a benign old man, who could deny me nothing. I waited with scarce concealed impatience until he turned away from the group, and then I was at his side in an instant.
"Dr. Price," I whispered eagerly, "will you do me the favor of presenting me to that young lady?"
"Why, bless my soul!" he exclaimed, looking at me over his glasses in astonishment, "you seem quite excited. Which young lady?"
"The one you have just left," I answered breathlessly.
He looked at me quizzically for a moment, and laughed to himself as though I had uttered a joke.
"Why, certainly," he said. "Come with me."
I could have kissed his hand in my gratitude, as he turned back toward the group. I followed a pace behind, and felt that my hands were trembling. The group opened a little as we approached, and in a moment we were before her.
"Miss Randolph," said Dr. Price, "here is a young gentleman who has just begged of me the favor of an introduction. Permit me to present Mr. Thomas Stewart."
"Why, 'pon my word," cried that young lady, "'t is cousin Tom!" and as I stood gaping at her like a fool, in helpless bewilderment, she came to me and gave me her hand with the prettiest grace in the world.