The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863

Hallet signified assent, and turning to David, I asked:

'David, what do you say? Will you take him?'

'I will,' said the old bookkeeper, showing in his expenditure of breath the close economy which was the rule of his life.

'Nothing remains but to arrange his salary and the share he shall have when he becomes a partner,' I remarked to Hallet.

'Will an average of seven hundred a year, and an eighth interest when he's twenty-one, be satisfactory?'

'Entirely so. An eighth in your house will be better than a quarter in ours. As it is now all understood, let David draw up the papers. We will sign them, and leave them with him till I see Frank.'

'Very well. David, please to draw them up,' said Hallet; and then, his voice again trembling a little, he added, 'All is understood, Mr. Kirke, but the compensation I shall make you for your fatherly care of my much neglected son. Money cannot pay for such service, but it will relieve me to reimburse you for your expenditures.'

'I have had my pay, sir, in the love of the boy. I ask no more.'

Hallet was sensibly affected, but without speaking, he turned to the desk, and took down his bankbook. In a few moments he handed me a check. It was for five thousand dollars. I took it, and, hesitating an instant, said:

'I will keep this, sir; not for myself, but for Frank. It may be of service to him at some future time.'

'Keep it for yourself, sir, not for him. He will not need it. He shall share equally with my other children.'

'I am glad to see this spirit in you, sir. Frank will be worthy of all you may do for him.'

'It is not for his sake that I will do it,' replied Hallet, his voice tremulous with emotion; 'it is that I may have the forgiveness of the one I—I—' He said no more, but leaning his head on his hand, he wept!

If there is joy among the angels over one that repents, was there not, then, forgiveness in her heart for him?

No one spoke for some minutes; then David rose, and handing me one of the papers, laid the other before Hallet.

'This appears right,' I said, after reading it over carefully.

'Yes,' replied Hallet, taking up a pen and signing the other. Passing it to me, he added: 'Keep them both—take them now.'

'But Frank may not wish to come.'

'Then I will find some other way of helping him. He is my son! Take the papers.'

'Well, as you say,' I replied. 'David, please to witness this.'

Hallet pressed me to pass the night at his house, but I declined, and rode out to Cambridge with the old bookkeeper. With many injunctions to watch carefully over Frank, I left him about twelve o'clock, rode into town with Cragin, and the next morning started for New York.

That night, as I recounted the interview to Kate, I said:

'I never did believe in these double-quick conversions; but Hallet is an altered man.'

'Then, indeed, can the leopard change his spots.'

As usual, her womanly intuitions were right; my worldly wisdom was wrong!

CHAPTER XV.

Not long after the events I have just related, the mail brought me the following letter from Preston:

My very dear Friend:—Circumstances, which I cannot explain by letter, render it imperatively necessary that I should provide another home for my daughter. Her education has been sadly neglected, and she should be where she can have experienced tutors, and good social surroundings. With her delicate organization, and sensitive and susceptible nature, she needs motherly care and affection, and I shrink from committing her to the hands of strangers. I should feel at rest about her only with you. You have been my steadfast friend through many years; you have stood by me in, sore trials—may I not then ask you to do me now a greater service than you have ever done, by receiving my little daughter into your family? I know this is an unusual, almost presumptuous request; but if you knew her as she is—gentle, loving, obedient—the light and joy of all about her, I am sure you, and your excellent lady, would love her, and be willing to make her the companion of your children. She is my only earthly comfort, and it will rend my heart to part with her, but—I must.

Write me at once. You are yourself a father—do not refuse me.

To this, on the next day, I sent the following reply:

My dear Friend:—I would most cheerfully take your daughter into my family, did my wife's health, which has been failing all the summer, allow of her assuming any additional care.

I think, however, I can provide Selma with a home equally as good as my own; one where good influences will be about her, and she will have the best educational advantages. I refer to the family of Mr. David Gray, of Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was my father's friend. The years I was a boy with Russell, Rollins & Co., I was an inmate of his house, and my adopted son, Frank, is now in his care. His daughter Alice is a most suitable person to have charge of a young girl. She is like a sister to me, and to oblige me, would no doubt take Selma.

Please advise me of your wishes; and believe, my dear friend, I will do all in my power to serve you.

I was sitting down at supper, one evening, about a fortnight after sending this letter, when a gentleman was announced as wishing to see me. I rose and went into the parlor. It was Preston, and with him was Selma, then a beautiful little girl of about eleven years.

Asking Preston to lay aside his outside coat, I was struck by his altered appearance. It was four years since we had met, but looking at him, I imagined it might be ten. His eyes were sunken, deep furrows were about his mouth, and his brown hair was thickly streaked with gray.

'My dear friend,' I exclaimed, as I grasped his hand a second time, 'you are not well!'

'I am as well as usual, Kirke. Time has not done this!'

Fatigued with the long journey, Selma had retired, and our own little ones were in bed, when Kate joined us in the parlor.

'You do look ill, Mr. Preston,' she said, seating herself beside him. 'You must stay a while with us, and rest.'

'I would be glad to stay here, madam—anywhere away from home.'

'The care of two plantations, such as yours, must be a burden!'

'It is not that, madam; Joe relieves me entirely from oversight of one of them. My difficulty is at home—mine is not what yours is.'

Kate's sympathizing words soon drew him out (she has a way of winning the confidence of people, and is the depositary of more family secrets than any other woman in the State); and he told us what his home had become since his union with the governess.

Within two months after the marriage her real character began to display itself, and she soon developed into a genuine Xantippe. Getting control of Mulock, who had been made overseer, she had the negroes dreadfully whipped and overworked; she treated young master Joe so badly that the lad rebelled, and in his father's absence ran away to his uncle at Mobile; and locking Selma up in a dark room without food, or beating her till her back was actually discolored, she made the child's home intolerable to her.

After master Joe went away, no one dared complain; and shut up in his library, brooding over his still fresh grief for the death of his wife, Preston knew nothing of the real state of affairs till more than a year had elapsed. Then one day he found Selma in tears. He questioned her, and learned the whole. A scene followed, in which Mrs. Preston asserted her rights as mistress of the plantation, and defied him. She had run into all sorts of extravagance, the yearly bills which had come in a short time previous were appallingly large, but to secure peace, Preston consented to buy and furnish a winter residence at Newbern. To that she had removed, but with the coming spring she would return to the plantation, and in the mean time Selma must be provided with another home.

'Feel no anxiety about her, sir,' said Kate, as he concluded; 'if Alice Gray will not take her, we will.'

'I thank you, madam; I cannot thank you enough for saying that,' replied Preston, his eyes filling with tears.

I wrote at once to David, and soon received a letter from Alice consenting to take charge of the little girl. Thanksgiving, at which time Kate made annual visits to her early home, was approaching, and it was decided that Selma should accompany her to Boston.

This being arranged, Preston, at the end of a fortnight, took leave of us, and returned to the South. The parting between the father and the child gave evidence of what they were to each other. Preston wept like a woman; but as Kate brushed back the brown curls from the broad forehead of little Selly, she raised her eyes to my wife's face, and while her thin nostrils dilated, and her sensitive chin slightly quivered, said;

'I must not cry for poor papa's sake—it is so very hard for him to go home alone; and he will miss his little girl so much.'