BOOK I - Volume 1 - Chapter VI. Silas Whipple

________________________________________________
_ The trouble with many narratives is that they tell too much. Stephen's
interview with his mother was a quiet affair, and not historic. Miss
Crane's boarding-house is not an interesting place, and the tempest in
that teapot is better imagined than described. Out of consideration for
Mr. Stephen Brice, we shall skip likewise a most affecting scene at Mr.
Canter's second-hand furniture store.

That afternoon Stephen came again to the dirty flight of steps which led
to Judge Whipple's office. He paused a moment to gather courage, and
then, gripping the rail, he ascended. The ascent required courage now,
certainly. He halted again before the door at the top. But even as he
stood there came to him, in low, rich tones, the notes of a German song.
He entered And Mr. Richter rose in shirt-sleeves from his desk to greet
him, all smiling.

"Ach, my friend!" said he, "but you are late. The Judge has been
awaiting you."

"Has he?" inquired Stephen, with ill-concealed anxiety.

The big young German patted him on the shoulder.

Suddenly a voice roared from out the open transom of the private office,
like a cyclone through a gap.

"Mr. Richter!"

"Sir!"

"Who is that?"

"Mr. Brice, sir."

"Then why in thunder doesn't he come in?"

Mr. Richter opened the private door, and in Stephen walked. The door
closed again, and there he was in the dragon's dens face to face with the
dragon, who was staring him through and through. The first objects that
caught Stephen's attention were the grizzly gray eye brows, which seemed
as so much brush to mark the fire of the deep-set battery of the eyes.
And that battery, when in action, must have been truly terrible.

The Judge was shaven, save for a shaggy fringe of gray beard around his
chin, and the size of his nose was apparent even in the full face.

Stephen felt that no part of him escaped the search of Mr. Whipple's
glance. But it was no code or course of conduct that kept him silent.
Nor was it fear entirely.

"So you are Appleton Brice's son," said the Judge, at last. His tone was
not quite so gruff as it might have been.

"Yes, sir," said Stephen.

"Humph!" said the Judge, with a look that scarcely expressed approval.
"I guess you've been patted on the back too much by your father's
friends." He leaned back in his wooden chair. "How I used to detest
people who patted boys on the back and said with a smirk, 'I know your
father.' I never had a father whom people could say that about. But,
sir," cried the Judge, bringing down his fist on the litter of papers
that covered his desk, "I made up my mind that one day people should know
me. That was my spur. And you'll start fair here, Mr. Brice. They
won't know your father here--"

If Stephen thought the Judge brutal, he did not say so. He glanced
around the little room,--at the bed in the corner, in which the Judge
slept, and which during the day did not escape the flood of books and
papers; at the washstand, with a roll of legal cap beside the pitcher.

"I guess you think this town pretty crude after Boston, Mr. Brice," Mr.
Whipple continued. "From time immemorial it has been the pleasant habit
of old communities to be shocked at newer settlements, built by their own
countrymen. Are you shocked, sir?"

Stephen flushed. Fortunately the Judge did not give him time to answer.

"Why didn't your mother let me know that she was coming?"

"She didn't wish to put you to any trouble, sir."

"Wasn't I a good friend of your father's? Didn't I ask you to come here
and go into my office?"

"But there was a chance, Mr. Whipple--"

"A chance of what?"

"That you would not like me. And there is still a chance of it," added
Stephen, smiling.

For a second it looked as if the Judge might smile, too. He rubbed his
nose with a fearful violence.

"Mr. Richter tells me you were looking for a bank," said he, presently.

Stephen quaked.

"Yes, sir, I was, but--"

But Mr. Whipple merely picked up the 'Counterfeit Bank Note Detector'.

"Beware of Western State Currency as you would the devil," said he.
"That's one thing we don't equal the East in--yet. And so you want to
become a lawyer?"

"I intend to become a lawyer, sir."

"And so you shall, sir," cried the Judge, bringing down his yellow fist
upon the 'Bank Note Detector'. "I'll make you a lawyer, sir. But my
methods ain't Harvard methods, sir."

"I am ready to do anything, Mr. Whipple."

The Judge merely grunted. He scratched among his papers, and produced
some legal cap and a bunch of notes.

"Go out there," he said, "and take off your coat and copy this brief.
Mr. Richter will help you to-day. And tell your mother I shall do myself
the honor to call upon her this evening."

Stephen did as he was told, without a word. But Mr. Richter was not in
the outer office when he returned to it. He tried to compose himself to
write, although the recollection of each act of the morning hung like a
cloud over the back of his head. Therefore the first sheet of legal cap
was spoiled utterly. But Stephen had a deep sense of failure. He had
gone through the ground glass door with the firm intention of making a
clean breast of the ownership of Hester. Now, as he sat still, the
trouble grew upon him. He started a new sheet, and ruined that: Once he
got as far as his feet, and sat down again. But at length he had quieted
to the extent of deciphering ten lines of Mr. Whipple's handwriting when
the creak of a door shattered his nerves completely.

He glanced up from his work to behold--none other than Colonel Comyn
Carvel.

Glancing at Mr. Richter's chair, and seeing it empty, the Colonel's eye
roved about the room until it found Stephen. There it remained, and the
Colonel remained in the middle of the floor, his soft hat on the back of
his head, one hand planted firmly on the gold head of his stick, and the
other tugging at his goatee, pulling down his chin to the quizzical
angle.

"Whoopee!" he cried.

The effect of this was to make one perspire freely. Stephen perspired.
And as there seemed no logical answer, he made none.

Suddenly Mr. Carvel turned, shaking with a laughter he could not control,
and strode into the private office the door slammed behind him. Mr.
Brice's impulse was flight. But he controlled himself.

First of all there was an eloquent silence. Then a ripple of guffaws.
Then the scratch-scratch of a quill pen, and finally the Judge's voice.

"Carvel, what the devil's the matter with you, sir?"

A squall of guffaws blew through the transom, and the Colonel was heard
slapping his knee.

"Judge Whipple," said he, his voice vibrating from suppressed explosions,
"I am happy to see that you have overcome some of your ridiculous
prejudices, sir."

"What prejudices, sir?" the Judge was heard to shout.

"Toward slavery, Judge," said Mr. Carvel, seeming to recover his gravity.
"You are a broader man than I thought, sir."

An unintelligible gurgle came from the Judge. Then he said.

"Carvel, haven't you and I quarrelled enough on that subject?"

"You didn't happen to attend the nigger auction this morning when you
were at the court?" asked the Colonel, blandly.

"Colonel," said the Judge, "I've warned you a hundred times against the
stuff you lay out on your counter for customers."

"You weren't at the auction, then," continued the Colonel, undisturbed.
"You missed it, sir. You missed seeing this young man you've just
employed buy the prettiest quadroon wench I ever set eyes on."

Now indeed was poor Stephen on his feet. But whether to fly in at the
one entrance or out at the other, he was undecided.

"Colonel," said Mr. Whipple, "is that true?"

"Sir!"

"MR. BRICE!"

It did not seem to Stephen as if he was walking when he went toward the
ground glass door. He opened it. There was Colonel Carvel seated on the
bed, his goatee in his hand. And there was the Judge leaning forward
from his hips, straight as a ramrod. Fire was darting from beneath his
bushy eyebrows. "Mr. Brice," said he, "there is one question I always
ask of those whom I employ. I omitted it in your case because I have
known your father and your grandfather before you. What is your opinion,
sir, on the subject of holding human beings in bondage?"

The answer was immediate,--likewise simple.

"I do not believe in it, Mr. Whipple."

The Judge shot out of his chair like a long jack-in-the box, and towered
to his full height.

"Mr. Brice, did you, or did you not, buy a woman at auction to-day?"

"I did, sir."

Mr. Whipple literally staggered. But Stephen caught a glimpse of the
Colonel's hand slipping from his chin cover his mouth.

"Good God, sir!" cried the Judge, and he sat down heavily. "You say that
you are an Abolitionist?"

"No, sir, I do not say that. But it does not need an Abolitionist to
condemn what I saw this morning."

"Are you a slave-owner, sir?" said Mr. Whipple.

"Yes, sir."

"Then get your coat and hat and leave my office, Mr. Brice."

Stephen's coat was on his arm. He slipped it on, and turned to go. He
was, if the truth were told, more amused than angry. It was Colonel
Carvel's voice that stopped him.

"Hold on, Judge," he drawled, "I reckon you haven't got all the packing
out of that case."

Mr. Whipple locked at him in a sort of stupefaction. Then he glanced at
Stephen.

"Come back here, sir," he cried. "I'll give you hearing. No man shall
say that I am not just."

Stephen looked gratefully at the Colonel.

"I did not expect one, sir," he said..

"And you don't deserve one, sir," cried the Judge.

"I think I do," replied Stephen, quietly.

The Judge suppressed something.

"What did you do with this person?" he demanded

"I took her to Miss Crane's boarding-house," said Stephen.

It was the Colonel's turn to explode. The guffaw which came from hire
drowned every other sound.

"Good God!" said the Judge, helplessly. Again he looked at the Colonel,
and this time something very like mirth shivered his lean frame. "And
what do you intend to do with her?" he asked in strange tones.

"To give her freedom, sir, as soon as I can find somebody to go on her
bond."

Again silence. Mr. Whipple rubbed his nose with more than customary
violence, and looked very hard at Mr. Carvel, whose face was inscrutable.
It was a solemn moment.

"Mr. Brice," said the Judge, at length, "take off your coat, sir I will
go her bond."

It was Stephen's turn to be taken aback. He stood regarding the Judge
curiously, wondering what manner of man he was. He did not know that
this question had puzzled many before him.

"Thank you, sir," he said.

His hand was on the knob of the door, when Mr. Whipple called him back
abruptly. His voice had lost some of its gruffness.

"What were your father's ideas about slavery, Mr. Brice?"

The young man thought a moment, as if seeking to be exact.

"I suppose he would have put slavery among the necessary evils, sir,"
he said, at length. "But he never could bear to have the liberator
mentioned in his presence. He was not at all in sympathy with Phillips,
or Parker, or Summer. And such was the general feeling among his
friends."

"Then," said the Judge, "contrary to popular opinion in the West and
South, Boston is not all Abolition."

Stephen smiled.

"The conservative classes are not at all Abolitionists, sir."

"The conservative classes!" growled the Judge, "the conservative classes!
I am tired of hearing about the conservative classes. Why not come out
with it, sir, and say the moneyed classes, who would rather see souls
held in bondage than risk their worldly goods in an attempt to liberate
them?"

Stephen flushed. It was not at all clear to him then how he was to get
along with Judge Whipple. But he kept his temper.

"I am sure that you do them an injustice, sir," he said, with more
feeling them he had yet shown. "I am not speaking of the rich alone, and
I think that if you knew Boston you would not say that the conservative
class there is wholly composed of wealthy people. Many of may father's
friends were by no means wealthy. And I know that if he had been poor he
would have held the same views."

Stephen did not mark the quick look of approval which Colonel Carvel gave
him. Judge Whipple merely rubbed his nose.

"Well, sir," he said, "what were his views, then?"

"My father regarded slaves as property, sir. And conservative people"
(Stephen stuck to the word) "respect property the world over. My
father's argument was this: If men are deprived by violence of one kind
of property which they hold under the law, all other kinds of property
will be endangered. The result will be anarchy. Furthermore, he
recognized that the economic conditions in the South make slavery
necessary to prosperity. And he regarded the covenant made between
the states of the two sections as sacred."

There was a brief silence, during which the uncompromising expression of
the Judge did not change.

"And do you, sir?" he demanded.

"I am not sure, sir, after what I saw yesterday. I--I must have time to
see more of it."

"Good Lord," said Colonel Carvel, "if the conservative people of the
North act this way when they see a slave sale, what will the
Abolitionists do? Whipple," he added slowly, but with conviction,
"this means war."

Then the Colonel got to his feet, and bowed to Stephen with ceremony.

 

"Whatever you believe, sir," he said, "permit me to shake your hand. You
are a brave man, sir. And although my own belief is that the black race
is held in subjection by a divine decree, I can admire what you have
done, Mr. Brice. It was a noble act, sir,--a right noble act. And I
have more respect for the people of Boston, now, sir, than I ever had
before, sir."

Having delivered himself of this somewhat dubious compliment (which he
meant well), the Colonel departed.

Judge Whipple said nothing. _

Read next: BOOK I: Volume 1: Chapter VII. Callers

Read previous: BOOK I: Volume 1: Chapter V. The First Spark Passes

Table of content of Crisis


GO TO TOP OF SCREEN

Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book