When she was five years old and Jack was ten their father died, leaving to his widow the house in which they lived and a few thousand dollars, besides the small fortune she had brought him as the result of her father’s speculations. To Jack was left his mother’s ten thousand dollars intact. Had Jack chosen he could have won his mother then when her heart was sore and aching for some one to comfort her, if it were only a boy. But he didn’t choose; he was wayward and headstrong, and always an anxiety and trouble to her. With many good qualities, Mrs. Percy was a weak woman and talked a great deal of her husband’s family and the old Virginia homestead and the ancestral hall in England. On this point she was a little shaky in her own mind, as the ancestral hall was only a tradition; but it was a fine thing to talk about and no one could dispute it. The Virginia homestead stood not many miles from what is known as Cabin John. It had been partly repaired by her husband, and some of the rooms made habitable for the time his family spent there. Beechwood it was called, and to those who never saw it Mrs. Percy talked of it as her country house, to which she went every summer for quiet and rest from the fatigue of society, and because it was so lovely. In reality she went there to economize, and not because she cared for the great bare rooms, the leaky roof and decaying timbers, which let one end of the broad piazza drop half a foot lower than the other. Economy was a necessity if she made any show in Washington, where she struggled hard to be recognized among the first and the best. A friend of hers, who knew her circumstances, incidentally spoke to her of Oak City as a change from Beechwood. It was, she said, one of the pleasantest and cheapest watering places on the New England coast.
“Are there any nice people there? Anything but a camp-meeting?” Mrs. Percy asked, and was assured that while the camp-meeting was a feature of the place and an attraction, too, there were many nice people there from the adjacent cities.
Satisfied on this point, Mrs. Percy concluded to try it, and took with her Jack and Clarice and black Sally, who clung to this remnant of her former master’s family with a pertinacity peculiar to the negro race. Sally was both waiting maid and nurse, and from this Miss Hansford at once decided that Mrs. Percy was airy, wondering why an able-bodied woman like her should need a waiting maid, or a child as old as Clarice a nurse. Still, as the lady was boarding near her, she made up her mind to call, and, to her horror, found Mrs. Percy playing whist!
“I hadn’t seen a pack of cards before in years, and the sight of them nearly knocked me down,” she said to her friend and confidante, Mrs. Atwater, when recounting her experience. “Cards in broad daylight, for it wasn’t four o’clock. She kept ’em in her hands all the time I was there as if she wished I’d go, and, if you’ll believe it, she asked me if I’d like to play a game! I didn’t stay long after that. Clarice was playing with her. Fine way to bring up a child!”
Miss Hansford’s call was not returned, and through some channel it reached her that Mrs. Percy did not care to make mixed acquaintances which she could not recognize at home. After this there was war in Miss Hansford’s heart against the Percys, and the feeling increased as time went on. Mrs. Percy’s affairs were more freely discussed than would have pleased her had she known it. Black Sally, who was loquacious, familiar and communicative, went frequently to Miss Hansford’s cottage for water, which was said to be the best on the Heights. Naturally, Miss Hansford talked with her, and, although she would have repudiated with scorn a charge that she was prying into her neighbor’s business, she managed to learn a good deal about Mrs. Percy, and to know how she lived at home, where Sally was cook, laundress, and maid of all work, as they kept no other servant.
“My land!” ejaculated Miss Hansford, “I s’posed you kept a retinue.”
“No, Missus, we never had nobody by that name,” Sally said, seating herself upon the doorstep, while Miss Hansford stood on the other side of the netting, wiping her dishes. “We ain’t rich folks, and Miss Percy has to save every way she can so’s to come here.”
“Why, how you talk,” Miss Hansford exclaimed, putting down the plate she had polished a full two minutes in absorbed interest. “I s’posed she was in society.”
“To be sho’ she is,” Sally rejoined. “Eberybody is in some kind of society in Wassinton if they wants to be. A heap of receptions is free. Dar’s de Presidents, and de Cabinet’s wives, and right smart more o’ de big bugs, whar any body can go, and dar’s ways of getting noticed in de papers and havin’ you close described ef you wants to. Wassinton is a great place!”
“I should say so,” Miss Hansford rejoined, more convinced than ever that Mrs. Percy was airy.