“Say it,” he suggested. “‘Damn’ is no longer a bad word. It has been taken up by the best people.”
“I believe you would!” she iterated.
“I would enjoy myself,” he agreed; “and quite possibly I would tap the refrigerator, if it were hungry time; and even more possibly I would loaf; and maybe I would tramp off. Ye-es,” he figured the matter over carefully, “I am sure I should enjoy it, too—immensely. Do you know, I am rather hoping the Big House will go to smash—although it’s a point of view I never suspected I should hold. In fact, I’m getting more delight out of the thought every minute.... My whole life is turning right over like a turtle that has been on his back for thirty years.... You can’t imagine how excited I am.”
“No,” she snapped; “praise be, I can’t. I’m—I’m——” a wave of emotion swept her—“dang it all, man, how can you sit there and grin with all this happenin’ to Jerry!”
“All what?” he asked with a fine affectation of innocence.
“All what!” she exploded. “They’ve lived in the Big House ever since there was a Big House, and even before that in the log-cabins where the negroes are now. Of course I’ve always known something like this would happen——”
“Ah! ha!” said the man, “you knew it, did you?”
“I have ears, man!” she snapped. “I hear without listenin’ at keyholes. Everybody in Jerusalem township knows the Big House is mortgaged, but mortgages are respectable enough. We always thought she preferred to invest her money in better paying stocks and things.... What has she done with it all? That’s what I should like to know.”
“She has over thirty negroes on the pay-roll,” he suggested without much concern, although he did not miss Phœbe’s agitation. “That should mean at least five thousand a year in wages; and from what I know of the Wells’ bounty, those negroes and their families get practically everything they need free. The gardens cost a couple of thousand a year. The accumulation of small wastage would amount to considerable; and then, you know, the income has been impaired mightily through the sale of the orchards, and the failure to get the most out of the grapes. They’ve been spending more than they earned—considerably more, I should judge—and they have tried the old expedient of making up the deficit each year by borrowing.”
He said not a word about the possible breach of trust as to the negroes. Phœbe would have given much to be able to ask him; but, somehow, she could not get the question out. She feared the truth.