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.