Instead of using his really excellent powers of control and organization, he is hauling wood for a living during the week and preaching on Sunday; but his wife is perfectly happy in the high social life. It is the old, old tragedy of Eve and her misguided ambitions—the world, the flesh, and his satanic majesty. The apple pleased her eye; she longed to taste it, and then the subtle whisper came: "And it will make thee wise."
Marcus was making a handsome income; had a position of trust and responsibility, where all his faculties were in use during the week; and on Sundays he, no doubt, preached good, simple, useful sermons to his congregation of laborers, for he came fresh from his struggle with the earth and its realities. But to his wife came that desire for social eminence; to wear silk frock and shine, and she tugged and tugged until he consented to her going.
He remained a year alone on the plantation and then came the inevitable. He followed, and now all the dignity of his life and character has gone, and he is struggling to make himself contented with what is supposed to be a higher station; that is, he takes orders from no one. He will get accustomed to it after a time, but his powers will shrink away, unused, and without responsibility his character will crumble.
When he began as my foreman,[2] about fifteen years ago, his writing was illegible, his figures hopeless. Steadily, patiently, I have corrected his mistakes, looking over and deciphering his weekly accounts and copying them down in my book before him so that he could see how they should look. Now he writes a readable, nice letter and any one could examine his accounts, and he knows and realizes all this and knows that his standards have all grown and risen more even than his knowledge.
Meantime I will have to give up altogether planting on wages, and it looks as though there will be very little land rented. If I had money of my own I would hire a good overseer and plant 100 acres on wages and not rent any land to these recalcitrant hands, but it would be madness to put a mortgage on the place and borrow money at 8 per cent while rice is selling at 40 cents a bushel.
So I will simply remain passive and let the hands who wish to rent have the land and seed, but explain that I cannot pay out any money for extra work. I feel sure that some day rice will rise in price, but every one seems to think differently, and all the planters are either giving up entirely or diminishing their acreage very much and turning to upland crops.
So far I have only forty acres of rice land rented, and I feel very blue about the future. Then, again, my sheep and cattle at Casa Bianca, which have been so remunerative to me all these years, are giving me trouble now.
A friend and neighbor, who has been heretofore a confirmed rice planter, and never planted an acre of corn, has become disgusted with rice and enclosed a large body of land which has been thrown out for years, and is going to plant corn and cotton. This land touches mine, and my animals have had the run of it. The fence which has been put up is neither "horse high, bull strong, nor pig tight," and my cattle do not regard it at all, though it is a very nice looking, comme il faut wire fence, and I will have to sell my cattle, I fear, and confine the sheep in a limited pasture.
Ruth, my brag cow, who has given me fifteen fine calves, and Rubin, my picture bull, just light over that neat fence as though it did not exist, and the humble sheep go down on their knees and creep under it, and I lie awake at night and wonder what I am to do between my love for my creatures and my love for my neighbor.