Tales of the Chesapeake

by George Alfred Townsend

In the little town of Chester, near the Bay of Chesapeake, lived an elegant man, with the softest manners in the world and a shadow forever on his countenance. He bore a blameless character and an honored name. He had one son of the same name as his own, Perry Whaley. This son was forever with him, for use or for pleasure; they could not be happy separated, nor congenial together. A destiny seemed to unite them, but with it also a baleful memory. The negroes whispered that in the boy's conception and birth was a secret of shame; he was not this father's son, and his mother had confessed it.

That mother was gone—fled to a distant part of the world with her betrayer—and the divorce was recorded while yet young Perry Whaley was a babe. But the boy never knew it: his origin reposed in the sensitive memory of his father only, and every day the father looked at the son long and distantly, and the son at the father with a most affectionate longing.

"Papa," he would say, "can't you try to love me? Do I disobey you? I am sure I am always unhappy out of your sight."

The father could not do without that boy, but could only hate him. "My son," he would reply, "you are obedient, but a demon! I could not love you if I would!"

"Never mind then, father, I can wait. There is plenty of time in life to make you love me!"

Judge Whaley—for he had been on the bench—was the highest example in Maryland of honor and pride. A General of militia, often in the Legislature, and once or twice a Senator at Washington, he had all the shattered sensibilities of a proud man wounded in the soul. Age was coming untimely upon his high temples and shadowed countenance, and as he walked along the market-place and green court-house yard, polite to men, boys, and negroes, they said in low tones, "Pity such a real gentleman can't be happy!"

In public affairs Judge Whaley was not silent: he led his party with intrepid utterances, and his prejudices, like his intellect, were strong; but though the election sometimes hung by a few votes, and his influence then gave every temptation on the part of low speakers and writers to allude to his domestic dishonor, the vile reminiscence was never mentioned. A profound respect for the man permeated society, and in his unsmiling way he was kind to whites and blacks. A slaveholder, and at the head of the principal slave-holding connection, and the particular champion in that region of slavery privileges, he would take his Bible and visit the cottages of his negroes and read to them even when sick of contagious fevers. He defended poor clients freely in the courts, and fought for the lives of free negroes under capital indictments. He was of the vestry of the aged Episcopal Church, which dominated the social influence of the town, and never omitted attendance on all the services, but with the shadow forever on his brow. Young Perry went everywhere with his father, and chattered and was active to oblige him, and sometimes by his boyish humor made a little light weaken the strong edges of that paternal shadow; but in a few minutes, looking up into the Judge's face, he would see that distant, accusing look returned again.

A great desire sprang up in the boy's heart to be fully loved by his father. He looked at other boys and saw that they received from their fathers a treatment not more gentle, but more real, as if a deep well of feeling lay in those parents which could send up cool water or tears, either in disagreement or sympathy. Young Perry had his own horse and his negro, and was the only inhabitant, besides the Judge, of the old black brick, square, colonial house on the brink of the river—that house whence the light had gone in lurid flight when the young wife, in the bravado of her shame, departed forever.

Judge Whaley was able, with his intellectual sympathy, to observe that his boy was apt and right-minded.

Perry read law precociously, and liked it. He was the best juvenile debater in the little old college on the slight hill overlooking the town. His appearance was good, and he had a cheerful nature; yet nowhere, among beautiful girls or riding companions, gunning on the river, crabbing on the bridge, or skating on the meadows, was he half so happy as with his father.