Word: handback
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Dates: during 1932-1932
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...middle of his middle-aged decay Miltiades looks about Florence for some foothold to begin his climb. A drunken confession on the part of T. Handback, the town's wealthy merchant, gives him his chance. Years ago Handback had cheated Miltiades of his small fortune in cotton ; now, when the Colonel learns that the highly respectable Handback keeps a quadroon mistress, Gracie Vaiden, one of the old Vaiden slaves, he uses the information to pry himself, as a clerk at $7.50 a week, into Handback's store. Straight way he makes friends with the Negroes and poor whites, by selling...
Trusted entirely by the rascally Handback, Miltiades oversees the collection of his crops. Chance brings him the opportunity to settle old scores ? he ships 500 bales of Handback cotton to New Orleans, puts the proceeds in a valise in Gracie Vaiden's attic. Though Handback's mistress, she is an old Vaiden slave and will never tell. Miltiades goes about his business, calmly awaits the storm. The whole town knows of his peculation, accepts it philosophically : "Hit's nachel ? hit's nachel . . . evahthing what's bad is nachel...
...Handback, ruined, is philosophical until he can collect legal proof against Miltiades. Then he starts trouble, mostly for himself. In his frantic search of Miltiades' house for the money, Ponny, whose pulling & groaning at last mean more than obesity, is frightened into a miscarriage and death. Handback finds himself glad to accept Miltiades' trifling settlement...
Miltiades' troubles do not end with his wedding. His investments go bad, his tenants try to bully him. But by means of his extraordinary pertinacity he wins at least respite. Handback. on discovering how Gracie took part against him. commits suicide. The force behind Miltiades' tragic story has, willy-nilly, affected everybody in Florence ? Landers, the second- sighted postmaster; Toussaint, a Vaiden octoroon; Miltiades' nephew, particularly a young highly Jerry Catlin, attractive character whose undeveloped capabilities leave the book with an aftermath to be harvested, presumably, in the closing novel of Author Stribling's cycle...
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