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Updated: June 9, 2025
The young man quieted his horse, then looked straight into Gilcrest's eyes, his own blazing and his face gray with passion. "Hiram Gilcrest, put down that whip. By God, sir, you shall retract your words!" "I retract nothing," shouted Gilcrest, still brandishing the whip. "Get out of my sight, before I demean myself by striking you!"
That wrong, sir, I can never forget, and for that, sir, I can never forgive you." "But but, Major Gilcrest, I beg of you," began Abner, earnestly; but Gilcrest would not listen, and, with a wave of his hand to command silence, he continued: "No explanation, no apology, no reparation, or prayer of either you or your wife, can atone.
Major Gilcrest now also remembered that for several months prior to the showing of the two papers in fact, ever since Logan's visit to Virginia Drane had been dropping hints and insinuations against Abner.
Silas Gilcrest brought her at once into his own house, where she served first as nurse to the infant Hiram, and later as upper house servant. Her skin was black as ebony, but she was of superior intelligence and of stout and loyal heart. She nursed Hiram Gilcrest in his babyhood, was his caretaker and faithful attendant in boyhood, and his loyal adherent in early manhood.
Its manly resignation of Betty, and its undertone of hopeless sadness, touched Major Gilcrest; for now that his soul was no longer vexed with apprehension for his daughter's future, his better nature asserted itself, and he felt the most profound pity for the unfortunate youth in his undeserved disgrace.
The two men were seated at a center table littered with papers and documents. As Drane read the note, Gilcrest noticed that he appeared greatly disturbed; his cheeks and lips turned ashy pale, and the hand holding the note shook with agitation. He quickly commanded himself, however, thrust the note into his pocket, and explained that he was called to Lexington at once on urgent business.
Abner, however, detained him a moment to request an interview on the morrow, which Gilcrest hesitatingly granted, and in a way that boded ill for the lover's hopes. At the appointed hour next morning, the young man, screwing up his courage to the sticking-place, knocked at the door of Oaklands. The servant ushered him at once into her master's private office.
In August of that same summer, Hiram Gilcrest, the man of strong nerve and iron constitution, whose boast it had been that he had never known a day's real sickness, was stricken down with disease, and after a few days of wasting illness, he was muttering in the delirium of typhus fever. He had never forgiven his daughter and her husband their runaway marriage.
Gilcrest, the mistress was frail of health and unassertive by nature, the black mammy's authority became almost paramount. And such was the nature of Dilsey's authority. Silas Gilcrest, Hiram's father, had bought Dilsey from a Massachusetts slave-ship when she was a child of twelve years. She was just from Africa, and could not speak a word of English.
He was fumbling with some papers, too busy to take any notice of her. Finally, as he would not speak, she went to him. "Father, why have you sent Abner away?" Major Gilcrest was proud of his only girl, and, in his own way, extremely fond of her; but he would listen to no plea in behalf of her lover.
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