“I'm gettin' round to that. It was my great grandfather come over here from England. His name was Richard Keppel Cavendish, same as mine is. He lived back yonder on the Carolina coast and went to raisin' tobacco. I've heard my grandfather tell how he'd heard folks say his father was always hintin' in his licker that he was a heap better than he seemed, and if people only knowed the truth about him they'd respect him mo', and mebby treat him better. Well, sir, he married and riz a family; there was my grandfather and a passel of girls—and that crop of children was the only decent crop he ever riz. I've heard my grandfather tell how, when he got old enough to notice such things, he seen that his father had the look of a man with something mysterious hangin' over him, but he couldn't make it out what it was, though he gave it a heap of study. He seen, too, that let him get a taste of licker and he'd begin to throw out them hints, how if folks only knowed the truth they'd be just naturally fallin' over themselves fo' to do him a favor, instead of pickin' on him and tryin' to down him.
“My grandfather said he never knowed a man, either, with the same aversion agin labor as his father had. Folks put it down to laziness, but they misjudged him, as come out later, yet he never let on. He just went around sorrowful-like, and when there was a piece of work fo' him to do he'd spend a heap of time studyin' it, or mebby he'd just set and look at it until he was ready fo' to give it up. Appeared like he couldn't bring himself down to toil.
“Then one day he got his hands on a paper that had come acrost in a ship from England. He was readin' it, settin' in the shade; my grandfather said he always noticed he was partial to the shade, and his wife was pesterin' of him fo' to go and plow out his truck-patch, when, all at once, he lit on something in the paper, and he started up and let out a yell like he'd been shot. 'By gum, I'm the Earl of Lambeth!' he says, and took out to the nearest tavern and got b'ilin' full. Afterward he showed 'em the paper and they seen with their own eyes where Richard Keppel Cavendish, Earl of Lambeth, had died in London. My great grandfather told 'em that was his uncle; that when he left home there was several cousins—which was printed in the paper, too—but they'd up and died, so the title naturally come to him.
“Well, sir, that was the first the family ever knowed of it, and then they seen what it was he'd meant when he throwed out them hints about bein' a heap better than he seemed. He said perhaps he wouldn't never have told, only he couldn't bear to be misjudged like he'd always been.
“He never done a lick of work after that. He said he couldn't bring himself down to it; that it was demeanin' fo' a person of title fo' to labor with his hands like a nigger or a common white man. He said he'd leave it to his family to see he didn't come to want, it didn't so much matter about them; and he lived true to his principles to the day of his death, and never riz his hand except to feed himself.”
Cavendish paused. Yancy was feeling that in his own person he had experienced some of the best symptoms of a title.
“Then what?” he asked.
“Well, sir, he lived along like that, never complainin', my grandfather said, but mighty sweet and gentlelike as long as there was plenty to eat in the house. He lived to be nigh eighty, and when he seen he was goin' to die he called my grandfather to him and says, 'She's yours, Dick,'—meanin' the title—and then he says, 'There's one thing I've kep' from you. You've been a viscount ever since I come into the title, and then he went on and explained what he wanted cut on his tombstone, and had my grandfather write it out, so there couldn't be any mistake. When he'd passed away, my grandfather took the title. He said it made him feel mighty solemn and grand-like, and it come over him all at once why it was his father hadn't no heart fo' work.”
“Does it always take 'em that way?” inquired Yancy.
“It takes the Earls of Lambeth that way. I reckon you might say it was hereditary with 'em. Where was I at?”