Read HF - 04 - Black Dawn for Free Online

There was decision, crisis, closer at hand than even that. Tomorrow he must resign from Bridle's Bank. What would Perkins say? What would Maurice say? Oh, Maurice would throw his hat in the air for joy. No doubts for Maurice. So, then, why doubts for Dick Hilton?
    But suppose . . .
    'Dick. Come in here, will you?'
    He checked his tiptoe, turned to the parlour door. The fire had burned low, and so had the candles. In the dim light he could just make out the loom of his mother's hair.
    'You should not have waited up.'
    'Should I not? To welcome you home on the most fateful evening of your life?'
    He closed the door behind him. ‘I was just considering that very fact.'
    'And you are exhaling port,' Suzanne said. 'Am I to take it that I can congratulate you?'
    'Oh, Mama.' He crossed the floor, knelt beside her chair. 'It had quite slipped my mind. The Taggarts were overwhelmed.'
    'And when is the great day?'
    'Well, I explained that I must make my mark with Uncle Robert first. We agreed to wait for a year, when I would hope to return to England. To see you all. And to be married.'
    'Sensible,' she said. 'Sober. You are very like your father.' She smiled, sadly. 'He once assaulted a young lady's house in just that fashion.'
    'Yours?'
    She shook her head. ‘N ot mine. And it led to tragedy. Pray God your venture shall be different. You have had no second thoughts?'
     
    'Second, third, and fourth, I am trembling like a jelly.' Her smile widened, and she thrust her fingers into his hair. 'But you'll not change your mind.' 'No, Mama. This is our chance. All of our chance.' 'To be rich, to be famous.'
     
    'You almost sound disapproving. I had thought . . .'
    'Quite correctly, Dick. Planting, money, power is in my blood. I have found it uncommonly hard these last twenty years. But I would have you understand what you do. Here, in London, not even Boney has been able to trouble us, to trouble you. You are blessed with some size, with splendid health, with a very level head, as you have just illustrated. You have naught to fear, from life.'
    'And as Master of Hilltop, I will have something to fear?’
    Her other hand joined the first, to hold his head. 'Something,' she said. 'Your past, to begin with. Hush. Listen. The Hiltons, the Warners, were not given their sugar plantations, their islands; they took them.'
    'You could say the same of every family, did you reach back far enough into their past.'
    'I am reaching back not two hundred years, Dick. And in that taking, they committed horrible crimes. Tom Warner, Tony Hilton the first, they once massacred an entire Indian nation, to obtain St Kitts. Your great-great-grandfather, Christopher Hilton, marched with Morgan on Panama. Your Uncle Robert, this man you go to live with, my own brother, once mutilated and hanged a Negro for uncovering himself before my sister.' 'Uncovering himself?'
    'You know what I mean, Dick. And the affair was Georgi ana's fault. Robert hoisted the boy with his own hands.' 'Thirty years ago.'
    'Is that so very long? But even that, even everything else, done individually, is as nothing beside the greater crime, that of populating the islands with slaves themselves. The Warners, the Hiltons, played their part in that.'
    'You sound like Father.'
    'Should I not? We have stood shoulder to shoulder, these twenty years.'
    ‘I have always supposed you supported him from love, and not conviction.'
    'I supported him. There is all that matters.'
    He kissed her fingers. 'And I support you both. I meant what I said, this evening. And slavery will soon be a thing of the past. Father says so, and he is winning his fight. The trade is already outlawed.'
    'The trade,' Suzanne said. 'What rubbish. There is a nation of Negroes in the West Indies now, Dick. They need no increments from Africa to grow. As for being over, do you think the planters will agree to emancipation? There is their wealth, this wealth you look forward to inheriting, gone at a stroke. And can you imagine,