Captain Mugford | Page 4

Bill
Noakes'll have the whole of it, and you'll get none." Clump and Juno
being intelligent, trustworthy people, my father, as I have said, put
them in charge of the farm on the cape, which they in a short time
learned to manage with great judgment. Two other negroes he took into
his service at Bristol. One of them became his butler, and it would have
been difficult to find his equal in that capacity.
Now a lesson may be learned from this history. My father did what he
considered right, and prospered; his partners, neglecting to enlighten
themselves as they might have done, persisted in holding their black
fellow-creatures in abject slavery, refusing one of the great rights of
man--a sound education. Emancipation was carried, and they received a
large compensation, and rejoiced, spending their money extravagantly;
but the half-savage negroes whom they had neglected to educate
refused to work. Their estates were left uncultivated for want of
labourers, and they were ruined. My father, managing his mercantile
affairs wisely, was a prosperous man.
His business on this visit was to see an adjoining property which had
once belonged to the family, and which, being in the market, he hoped
to repurchase.
The house had been built as long back as 1540-1550. It was of stone--
the rough stone, as it had been taken from the beaches and cliffs, of
different shades and kinds. Above the ground floor was only an attic
storey; and the main part of the ground floor consisted of four large low
rooms, panelled in wood, and with ceiling of dark, heavy beams.
Adjoining the rear of these, my grandfather had built a comparatively

modern kitchen; but every fireplace in the old house preserved the
generous cheerful style of ample spread and fire-dogs. From the great
door of the main floor a narrow stairway, like cabin steps, led up, with
quaintly carved banisters, to five real old-fashioned bedrooms, rising
above to the ridge of the steep-sloping roof and its uncovered but
whitewashed rafters. The windows were at least five feet above the
floor, and had the many small panes we sometimes yet see in very old
houses. No doubt it was a house of pretension in its day. When I was a
boy it remained a precious ark of family legends and associations. How
splendid it is to possess a house nearly three hundred years old. To-day
nothing could induce me to exchange the walls of that dear old house
for the handsomest residence in Belgravia. A house can be built in a
few months; but to make a home--that is beyond the craft and
quickness of masons, carpenters, and architects.
Alone on that bold, sea-beaten cape, so sturdy, dark, and time-worn, it
looked out always with shrewd, steady little window-eyes on the great
troubled ocean, across which it had watched the Pilgrim Fathers sailing
away towards the new home they sought in the Western world, and
many a rich argosy in days of yore go forth, never to return. It might
have seen, too, the proud Spanish Armada gliding up channel for the
purpose of establishing Popery and the Inquisition in Protestant
England, to meet from the hands of a merciful Providence utter
discomfiture and destruction. With satisfaction and becoming dignity,
too, it seemed on fresh sunny mornings to gaze at the hundreds of sails
dotting the sea, and bound for all parts of the globe, recalling, perhaps
with some mournfulness, the days of its youth and the many other
varied scenes of interest which it had witnessed on those same tossing
billows from its lofty height.
All through our supper, which was laid in the largest of the first floor
rooms, did Juno stand by, repeating the refrain--
"Oh dat nigger, dat Clump,--why he no come? And here's Massa er
waitten and er waitten; but Clump, ole mon, he get berry slow--berry,
berry slow. Now Massa Bob, vy you laff at ole Juno so?--hi! hi!"
However, Clump came at last; and when he beheld us, great and

comical was his surprise. He dropped his basket to the floor, and, with
battered hat in hand and both hands on his knees, stood for a moment
and stared at us, and then his mouth stretched wide with joy and his
sides shook with delight, while the tears trickled down from the
wrinkled eyes to the laughing ivory.
"Tank de Lord! tank de Lord! Clump lib to see his ole Massa agin; and
dat young gemmen,--vy, lem'me see! vy, sure as I'm dat nigger Clump,
ef dat ain't--Massa Drake?--no,--Massa Walter?--no,--vy Juno, ole
woman! dat are Massa Bob!" He took my hands and shook and
squeezed them, saying over and over again, "Massa Bob am cum ter
see de ole cradle. Oh! hi hi!"
CHAPTER TWO.
THE DREAM CONFIRMED