at the start, and dropped his dry battery where it was.”
“Did you ring, Marse Sellers?”
“No, Marse Sellers didn’t.”
“Den it was you, Marse Washington. I’s heah, suh.”
“No, it wasn’t Marse Washington, either.”
“De good lan’! who did ring her, den?”
“Lord Rossmore rang it!”
The old negro flung up his hands and exclaimed:
“Blame my skin if I hain’t gone en forgit dat name agin! Come heah,
Jinny–run heah, honey.”
Jinny arrived.
“You take dish-yer order de lord gwine to give you I’s gwine down suller
and study dat name tell I git it.”
“I take de order! Who’s yo’ nigger las’ year? De bell rung for you.”
“Dat don’t make no diffunce. When a bell ring for anybody, en old
marster tell me to–”
“Clear out, and settle it in the kitchen!”
The noise of the quarreling presently sank to a murmur in the distance,
and the earl added: “That’s a trouble with old house servants that were
your slaves once and have been your personal friends always.”
“Yes, and members of the family.”
“Members of the family is just what they become–THE members of the
family, in fact. And sometimes master and mistress of the household.
These two are mighty good and loving and faithful and honest, but hang
it, they do just about as they please, they chip into a conversation
whenever they want to, and the plain fact is, they ought to be killed.”
It was a random remark, but it gave him an idea–however, nothing could
happen without that result.
“What I wanted, Hawkins, was to send for the family and break the news to
them.”
“O, never mind bothering with the servants, then. I will go and bring
them down.”
While he was gone, the earl worked his idea.
“Yes,” he said to himself, “when I’ve got the materializing down to a
certainty, I will get Hawkins to kill them, and after that they will be
under better control. Without doubt a materialized negro could easily be
hypnotized into a state resembling silence. And this could be made
permanent–yes, and also modifiable, at will–sometimes very silent,
sometimes turn on more talk, more action, more emotion, according to what
you want. It’s a prime good idea. Make it adjustable–with a screw or
something.”
The two ladies entered, now, with Hawkins, and the two negroes followed,
uninvited, and fell to brushing and dusting around, for they perceived
that there was matter of interest to the fore, and were willing to find
out what it was.
Sellers broke the, news with stateliness and ceremony, first warning the
ladies, with gentle art, that a pang of peculiar sharpness was about to
be inflicted upon their hearts–hearts still sore from a like hurt, still
lamenting a like loss–then he took the paper, and with trembling lips
and with tears in his voice he gave them that heroic death-picture.
The result was a very genuine outbreak of sorrow and sympathy from all
the hearers. The elder lady cried, thinking how proud that great-hearted
young hero’s mother would be, if she were living, and how unappeasable
her grief; and the two old servants cried with her, and spoke out their
applauses and their pitying lamentations with the eloquent sincerity and
simplicity native to their race. Gwendolen was touched, and the romantic
side of her nature was strongly wrought upon. She said that such a
nature as that young man’s was rarely and truly noble, and nearly
perfect; and that with nobility of birth added it was entirely perfect.
For such a man she could endure all things, suffer all things, even to
the sacrificing of her life. She wished she could have seen him; the
slightest, the most momentary, contact with such a spirit would have
ennobled her own character and made ignoble thoughts and ignoble acts
thereafter impossible to her forever.
“Have they found the body, Rossmore?” asked the wife.
“Yes, that is, they’ve found several. It must be one of them, but none
of them are recognizable.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I am going down there and identify one of them and send it home to the
stricken father.”
“But papa, did you ever see the young man?”