Miss Sarah Jack of Spanish Town | Page 5

to worse. In the good old times Mr.
Cumming's sugar produce had spread itself annually over some three
hundred acres; but by degrees this dwindle down to half that extent of
land. And then in those old golden days they had always taken a full
hogshead from the acre;--very often more. The estate had sometimes

given four hundred hogsheads in the year. But in the days of which we
now speak the crop had fallen below fifty.
At this time Maurice Cumming was eight-and-twenty, and it is hardly
too much to say that misfortune had nearly crushed him. But
nevertheless it had not crushed him. He, and some few like him, had
still hoped against hope; had still persisted in looking forward to a
future for the island which once was so generous with its gifts. When
his father died he might still have had enough for the wants of life had
he sold his property for what it would fetch. There was money in
England, and the remains of large wealth. But he would not sacrifice
Mount Pleasant or abandon Jamaica; and now after ten years' struggling
he still kept Mount Pleasant, and the mill was still going; but all other
property had parted from his hands.
By nature Maurice Cumming would have been gay and lively, a man
with a happy spirit and easy temper; but struggling had made him silent
if not morose, and had saddened if not soured his temper. He had lived
alone at Mount Pleasant, or generally alone. Work or want of money,
and the constant difficulty of getting labour for his estate, had left him
but little time for a young man's ordinary amusements. Of the charms
of ladies' society he had known but little. Very many of the estates
around him had been absolutely abandoned, as was the case with his
own coffee plantation, and from others men had sent away their wives
and daughters. Nay, most of the proprietors had gone themselves,
leaving an overseer to extract what little might yet be extracted out of
the property. It too often happened that that little was not sufficient to
meet the demands of the overseer himself.
The house at Mount Pleasant had been an irregular, low-roofed,
picturesque residence, built with only one floor, and surrounded on all
sides by large verandahs. In the old days it had always been kept in
perfect order, but now this was far from being the case. Few young
bachelors can keep a house in order, but no bachelor young or old can
do so under such a doom as that of Maurice Cumming. Every shilling
that Maurice Cumming could collect was spent in bribing negroes to
work for him. But bribe as he would the negroes would not work. "No,
massa: me pain here; me no workee to-day," and Sambo would lay his
fat hand on his fat stomach.
I have said that he lived generally alone. Occasionally his house on

Mount Pleasant was enlivened by visits of an aunt, a maiden sister of
his mother, whose usual residence was at Spanish Town. It is or should
be known to all men that Spanish Town was and is the seat of Jamaica
legislature.
But Maurice was not over fond of his relative. In this he was both
wrong and foolish, for Miss Sarah Jack--such was her name--was in
many respects a good woman, and was certainly a rich woman. It is
true that she was not a handsome woman, nor a fashionable woman,
nor perhaps altogether an agreeable woman. She was tall, thin, ungainly,
and yellow. Her voice, which she used freely, was harsh. She was a
politician and a patriot. She regarded England as the greatest of
countries, and Jamaica as the greatest of colonies. But much as she
loved England she was very loud in denouncing what she called the
perfidy of the mother to the brightest of her children. And much as she
loved Jamaica she was equally severe in her taunts against those of her
brother-islanders who would not believe that the island might yet
flourish as it had flourished in her father's days.
"It is because you and men like you will not do your duty by your
country," she had said some score of times to Maurice--not with much
justice considering the laboriousness of his life.
But Maurice knew well what she meant. "What could I do there up at
Spanish Town," he would answer, "among such a pack as there are
there? Here I may do something."
And then she would reply with the full swing of her eloquence, "It is
because you and such as you think only of yourself and not of Jamaica,
that Jamaica has come to such a pass as this. Why is there a pack there