“Upon my word,” said the General, when they allowed him to reply, “I am almost afraid to tell you what occurred in the room I slept in night before last, for fear you will think I have trumped it up to answer Miss Blanche’s requisition.”
“How awfully jolly,” exclaimed Louisa Stapleton, pulling out the fringe of curls upon her forehead.
“It was nothing of the kind, Miss Stapleton. In point of fact it was about as disagreeable an experience as I remember. But to tell the tale connectedly I shall have to go back many, many years, to the time when the old mansion that sheltered me night before last was in its prime of hospitable attraction for every one that strayed within its gates. About a day’s ride from here is ‘Betsey’s Pride,’ for by this quaint appellation is still known the house built for his young wife by a wealthy Virginian land-owner, just before this century came in.”
“Not old enough by half,” exclaimed Blanche, pouting.
“Truth will out, however,” answered the narrator, accustomed to lawless interruptions. “It is a fine old house built like Lee’s birthplace, Stratford, in the form of a letter H. The cross of the H is a large salon, now absolutely bare of furniture. At the juncture of each wing with the house arises a pile of chimneys, serving to support a pavilion on the roof, where in old days a darky band used to play for the gentry, of an evening. There was a fish-pond up there, too, in my boyhood; and there still is, at the back of the house, an old ruined garden. When a lad I loved nothing better than a visit in vacation to ‘Betsey’s Pride.’ The oldest son of this house was my chum at the University, and also a kinsman, though remote. We will call him, for dramatic purposes, Llewellyn Chester. Chester was always a handsome, easy-going, free-handed fellow, brought up to consider himself the master of abundant means. His people gave him the best education of the times, and in due course sent him to travel abroad, attended only by the ‘boy,’ who in old Virginian fashion had been told off at a very tender age from among the slaves to wait on him. Leander Jameson was the ‘boy’s’ name. Smile if you will, young ladies, but gentle and simple, white and colored, we Virginians always relish fine-sounding names. Leander was a very light mulatto, tall, erect, manly, good-looking as his master, and of astonishing versatility of talent. He could sing, whistle, impersonate any one on the plantation, was an adept in athletic exercises, and had, as we said, the manners of a prince. Chester, dependent on him for so many long years for companionship, treated him with lavish indulgence and generosity. While they were in Paris, where Leander was, of course, received as an equal by his class among the whites, Chester had him take lessons in singing, dancing, fencing, and the like; filled his pockets with money, and turned him loose upon what, as it seems, was a very wild career for both of them.
“When, a few years before the war broke out, I again visited ‘Betsey’s Pride,’ it was to see a woeful change in the circumstances of the returned prodigal, my cousin. Chester’s parents had died, his sisters had lived on there in seclusion, little knowing that his extravagance had wasted all his own and involved their substance. When he finally turned up again, like a bad penny, at their home, it was to linger a few months and die. In his last illness poor Llewellyn was nursed by Leander as no one else could have nursed him. Such fidelity, tenderness! Well, it’s not of that I started out to tell. Llew Chester under the cedars of the family burying-ground, his sisters had to hear that they were ruined in fortune. But, then or since, those two women would never hear a word said against ‘poor Llew.’
“Here comes in,” went on the General, doughtily, “a chapter fortunately not common among the slave-holding families of those days. As the negroes on large plantations went on multiplying and exacting care and outlay, the revenues of their owners were naturally consumed. But it was part of our religion to hold fast to the trust committed to us by our fathers. Nothing but dire want ever made a Virginian of ‘the real sort’ part with a slave for money. When dire want came, so much the worse for slave and master. It was a degradation that bowed down the seller to the earth with shame—to have to part with these people of our black families. If anybody ever tells you to the contrary, Miss Eunice, send him to me to be convinced.”
The General, growing red in the face, winked, gulped, got up and walked up and down the room, tugged at his mustache, then sat down.
“I suppose none of you ever heard of the character as much avoided in the society of decent men with us as the headsman is in France—the negro broker and trader. But there he was, often growing fat and rich on the proceeds of his horrid business; and, like the headsman, when occasion demanded he turned up. Chester had slighted in public one of the most formidable of this fraternity, a man named Israel Johns, a sullen bully, who laid up the slight in silence and bided his time for revenge.