The Prodigal Judge
Kester, Vaughan, 1869-1911
English
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THE PRODIGAL JUDGE BY VAUGHAN KESTER
CHAPTER I
THE BOY AT THE BARONY
The Quintards had not prospered on the barren lands of the pine
woods whither they had emigrated to escape the malaria of the low
coast, but this no longer mattered, for the last of his name and
race, old General Quintard, was dead in the great house his
father had built almost a century before and the thin acres of
the Barony, where he had made his last stand against age and
poverty, were to claim him, now that he had given up the struggle
in their midst. The two or three old slaves about the place,
stricken with a sense of the futility of the fight their master
had made, mourned for him and for themselves, but of his own
blood and class none was present.
Shy dwellers from the pine woods, lanky jeans-clad men and
sunbonneted women, who were gathering for the burial of the
famous man of their neighborhood, grouped themselves about the
lawn which had long since sunk to the uses of a pasture lot.
Singly or by twos and threes they stole up the steps and across
the wide porch to the open door. On the right of the long hall
another door stood open, and who wished could enter the
drawing-room, with its splendid green and gold paper, and the
wonderful fireplace with the Dutch tiles that graphically
depicted the story of Jonah and the whale.
Here the general lay in state. The slaves had dressed their old
master in the uniform he had worn as a colonel of the continental
line, but the thin shoulders of the wasted figure no longer
filled the buff and blue coat. The high-bred face, once proud
and masterful no doubt, as became the face of a Quintard, spoke
of more than age and poverty--it was infinitely sorrowful. Yet
there was something harsh and unforgiving in the lines death had
fixed there, which might have been taken as the visible impress
of that mystery, the bitterness of which had misshaped the dead
man's nature; but the resolute lips had closed for ever on their
secret, and the broken spirit had gone perhaps to learn how poor
a thing its pride had been.
Though he had lived continuously at the Barony for almost a
quarter of a century, there was none among his neighbors who
could say he had looked on that thin, aquiline face in all that
time. Yet they had known much of him, for the gossip of the
slaves, who had been his only friends in those years he had
chosen to deny himself to other friends, had gone far and wide
over the county.
That notable man of business, Jonathan Crenshaw--and this
superiority was especially evident when the business chanced to
be his own--was closeted in the library with a stranger to whom
rumor fixed the name of Bladen, supposing him to be the legal
representative of certain remote connections of the old
general's.
Crenshaw sat before the flat-topped mahogany desk in the center
of the room with several well-thumbed account-books open before
him. Bladen, in riding dress, stood by the window.
"I suppose you will buy in the property when it comes up for
sale?" the latter was saying.
Mr. Crenshaw had already made it plain that General Quintard's
creditors would have lean pickings at the Barony, intimating that
he himself was the chiefest of these and the one to suffer most
grievously in pocket. Further than this, Mr. Bladen saw that the
old house was a ruin, scarcely habitable, and that the thin
acres, though they were many and a royal grant, were of the
slightest value. Crenshaw nodded his acquiescence to the
lawyer's conjecture touching the ultimate fate of the Barony.
"I reckon, sir, I'll want to protect myself, but if there are any
of his own kin who have a fancy to the place I'll put no obstacle
in their way."
"Who are the other creditors?" asked Bladen.
"There ain't none, sir; they just got tired waiting on him, and
when they began to sue and get judgment the old general would
send me word to settle with them, and their claims passed into my
hands. I was in too deep to draw out. But for the last ten
years his dealings were all with me; I furnished the supplies for
the place here. It didn't amount to much, as there was only him
and the darkies, and the account ran on from year to year."
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