"Ah, thar you're right--it's the boy I've got my eye on now.His name's the same as mine, you know, and I reckon one day William Fletcher'll make his mark among the quality.He'll have it all, too--the house, the land, everything, except a share of the money which goes to the gal.It'll make her childbearing easier, Ireckon, and for my part, that's the only thing a woman's fit for.
Don't talk to me about a childless woman! Why, I'd as soon keep a cow that wouldn't calve.
"You were speaking of the boy, I believe," coolly interrupted Carraway.To a man of his old-fashioned chivalric ideal the brutal allusion to the girl was like a deliberate blow in the face.
"So I was--so I was.Well, he's to have it all, I say--every mite, and welcome.I've had a pretty tough life in my time--you can tell it from my hands, suh--but I ain't begrudging it if it leaves the boy a bit better off.Lord, thar's many and many a night,when I was little and my stepfather kicked me out of doors without a bite, that I used to steal into somebody or other's cow-shed and snuggle for warmth into the straw--yes, and suck the udders of the cows for food, too.Oh, I've had a hard enough life, for all the way it looks now--and I'm not saying that if the choice was mine I'd go over it agin even as it stands to-day.
We're set here for better or for worse, that's my way of thinking, and if thar's any harm comes of it Providence has got to take a share of the blame.""Hardly the preacher's view of the matter, is it?""Maybe not; and I ain't got a quarrel with 'em, the Lord knows.Igo to church like clockwork, and pay my pew-rent, too, which is more than some do that gabble the most about salvation.If I pay for the preacher's keep it's only fair that I should get some of the good that comes to him hereafter; that's how it looks to me;so I don't trouble my head much about the ins and the outs of getting saved or damned.I've never puled in this world, thank God, and let come what will, I ain't going to begin puling in the next.But to go back to whar I started from, it all makes in the end for that pretty little chap over yonder in the dining-room.
Rather puny for his years now, but as sound as a nut, and he'll grow, he'll grow.When his mother--poor, worthless drab--gave birth to him and died, I told her it was the best day's work she'd ever done."Carraway's humour rippled over."It's easy to imagine what her answer must have been to such a pleasantry," he observed.
"Oh, she was a fool, that woman--a born fool!
Her answer was that it would be the best day for her only when Icame to call it the worst.She hated me a long sight more than she hated the devil, and if she was to rise out of her grave to-day she'd probably start right in scrubbing for those darned Blakes.""Ah!" said Carraway.
"It's the plain truth, but I don't visit it on the little lad.
Why should I? He's got my name--I saw to that--and mark my word, he'll grow up yet to marry among the quality."The secret was out at last--Fletcher's purpose was disclosed, and even in the strong light of his past misdeeds it showed not without a hint of pathos.The very renouncement of any personal ambition served to invest the racial one with a kind of grandeur.
"There's evidently an enviable career before him," said the lawyer at the end of a long pause, "and this brings me, by the way, to the question I wish to as--had your desire to see me any connection with the prospects of your grandson?""In a way, yes; though, to tell the truth, it has more to do with that young Blake's.He's been bothering me a good deal of late, and I mean to have it square with him before Bill Fletcher's a year older.""No difficulty about your title to the estate, I presume?""Oh, Lord, no; that's all fair and square, suh.I bought the place, you know, when it went at auction jest a few years after the war.I bought and paid for it right down, and that settled things for good and all."Carraway considered the fact for a moment."If I remember correctly--I mean unless gossip went very far afield--the place brought exactly seven thousand dollars." His gaze plunged into the moonlight beyond the open window and followed the clear sweep of the distant fields."Seven thousand dollars," he added softly;"and there's not a finer in Virginia."
"Thar was nobody to bid agin me, you see," explained Fletcher easily."The old gentleman was as poor as Job's turkey then, besides going doty mighty fast.""The common report was, I believe," pursued the lawyer, "that the old man himself did not know of the place being for sale until he heard the auctioneer's hammer on the lawn, and that his mind left him from the moment--this was, of course, mere idle talk.""Oh, you'll hear anything," snorted Fletcher."The old gentleman hadn't a red copper to his name, and if he couldn't pay the mortgages, how under heaven could he have bought in the place? As a plain man I put the question.""But his friends? Where were his friends, I wonder? In his youth he was one of the most popular men in the State--a high liver and good toaster, you remember--and later on he stood well in the Confederate Government.That he should have fallen into abject poverty seems really incomprehensible."Fletcher twisted in his chair."Why, that was jest three years after the war, I tell you," he said with irritable emphasis; "he hadn't a friend this side of Jordan, I reckon, who could have raised fifty cents to save his soul.The quality were as bad off as thar own niggers.
