TROUBLED WATERS ARE STILLED
TROUBLED WATERS ARE STILLED
It was spring again, a Sunday in early May, warm, humid, scented with blossoms that were bodied souls of the laughing air. They starred the bank that fell away from my porch to the clear-watered river, and they sang of the young spirit that lives in this old earth so deceptively, defacing it with false scars of age, and craftily permitting us to count years by the thousand, yet remaining always as fresh in itself as on the primal morning when the world was found good by that ill-fated but joyous first pair of lovers. I marvel that so many are fooled by the trick; how so few of us detect that the soul of it all is ageless—has never even wearied. The blossoms told this secret now in quiet triumph over the denials of ancient oaks that towered above them and murmured solemn falsities in their tops about the incredible oldness of things.
There was the star-shaped bloodroot, with its ten or a dozen petals of waxen white set with jewel-like precision about a centre of dead gold. There was the less formal phlox of a pinkish purple; deer's-tongue, white and yellow; frail anemones, both pink and white; small but stately violets, and the wake-robin with its wine-red centre among long green leaves. There was a dogwood in the act of unfolding its little green tents that would presently be snow-white, and a plum tree ruffled with tiny flowers of a honied fragrance.
With a fine Japanese restraint, Clem had placed a single bough of these in a dull-colored vase on my out-of-doors breakfast table.
All these were to say that the soul of the world is ageless, and that time is but a cheap device to measure our infirmities. Above, the trees were hinting that life might still be lived acceptably, as in Eden days; though they seemed to suspect that the stage of it to which they were amazedly awakening must be at least the autumn, and timidly clothed themselves accordingly. The elm, the first big tree to stir in its sleep, showed tiny, curled leaflets of a doubting, yellowish green; and the later moving oaks were frankly sceptical, one glowing faintly brown and crimson, another silvery gray and pink. They would need at least ten more days to convince them into downright summer greenery, even though slender-throated doves already mated in their tops with a perfect confidence.
It was an early morning hour, when it was easy to believe in the perfect fitness of Little Arcady's name; an hour in a time when the Potts-troubled waters had been mercifully stilled by the hand of God; an hour when the spirit of each Little Arcadian might share to its own fulness in the large serenity of the ageless world-soul.
I recalled Mrs. Potts's paper on "The Lesson of Greek Art," which had enriched two columns of theArgusafter its reading to the ladies of the Literary and Home Study Club. It seemed to me that the Greeks must have divined this important secret of the vegetable world—the secret of ageless time—and that therein lay the charm of them; that spirit of ever freshening joy which they chiselled and sang into tangible grace for us of a later and heavier age.
At the moment I was on the porch, waiting for my coffee, and my thought seemed to be shared by Jim, my bony young setter, who, being but a scant year old, had not yet forgotten the lesson of Greek art. Over the grassy stretch before the porch he chased robins tirelessly, though with indifferent success. His was a spirit truly Greek. I knew it by reason of his inexhaustible enthusiasm for this present sport after a year's proving that chased birds will rise strangely but expertly into air that no dog can climb by any device of whining, leaping, or straining.
Living on into the Renaissance, I saw that Jim would be taught the grievous thing called wisdom—would learn his limitations and to form habits tamely contrary to his natural Greek likings. Then would he honorably neglect rabbits and all fur, cease pointing droves of pigs, and quit the silly chase of robins. Under check-cord and spike-collar he would become a fast and stylish dog, clean-cut in his bird work, perhaps a field-trial winner. He would learn to take reproof amiably, to "heel" at a word, to respect the whistle at any distance, to be steady to shot and wing, to retrieve promptly from land or water, and never to bolt or range beyond control or be guilty of false pointing.
I knew that coercion, steadily and tactfully applied, would thus educate him, for was he not of champion ancestry, wearing his pedigree in his looks, with the narrow shoulders so desirable and so rarely found, with just the right number of hairs at the end of his tail, the forelegs properly feathered, the feet and ankles strong, the right amount of leather in his ear to the fraction of an inch,—a dog, in short, of beauty, style, speed, nose, and brains?
But in this full moment of a glad morning I resolved that Jim should never know the Renaissance; he should never emerge from what Mrs. Potts had gracefully described as "the golden age of Pericles."
To the end of his days he should be blithely, naïvely Greek; a dog of wretched field manners, pointing cattle and quail impartially, shamefully gun-shy, inconsequent, volatile, ignorant, forever paganly joyous without due cause. For him I should do what no one had been able to do for me—detain him in that "world of fine fabling" where everything is true that ought to be; where the earth is a running course, fascinating in its surprises of open road and tangled hedgerow; where mere indiscriminate smelling is keenest ecstasy; and where the fact that robins have eluded one's fleetest rush to-day, by an amazing and unfair trick of levitation, is not the slightest promise that they can escape our interested mouthing on the morrow.
Doubtless he would be a remarkably foolish dog in his old age; but I, growing old beside him, would learn wisely foolish things from his excellent folly. I knew we should both be happier for it; knew it was best for us both to prove that my thin white friend had been born chiefly to display the acute elegance of his bones and the beauty of hopeful effort.
It was this last that kept him thin. When I took to the road, he travelled five miles to my every one, circling me widely, ranging far over the hills in mad dashes, or running straight and swiftly on the road, vanishing in a white fog of dust. Walking slowly to avoid this, I would only meet him emerging from a fresh cloud of it with a glad tongue thrown out to the breeze. Again, there were desperate plunges into wayside underbrush or down steep ravines, whence I would hear rapid splashing through a hidden stream and short, plaintive cries to tell that that wonderful, unseen wood-presence of a thousand provoking scents had once more cunningly evaded him.
Also did he love to swim stoutly across a field of growing wheat, his head alone showing above the green waves. And if the wheat were tall, he still braved it—lost to sight at the bottom. Then one might observe the mystery of a furrow ploughing itself swiftly across the billows without visible agency.
When I do not walk, to give countenance to his running, he has a game of his own. He plays it with an ancient fur cap that he keeps conveniently stored. The cap represents a prey of considerable dignity which must be sprung upon and shaken again and again until it is finally disabled. Then it is to be seized by implacable jaws and swiftly run with about the yard in a feverish pretence that enemies wish to ravish it from its captor. Any chance observer is implored to humor this pretence, and upon his compliance he is fled from madly, or perhaps turned upon and growled at most directly, if he show signs of losing interest in the game.
This ceaseless motion, with its attendant nervous strains, has prevented any accumulation of flesh, and explains the name of Slim Jim affixed to him by my namesake.
Jim consented now to rest for a moment at my feet, though at a loss to know how I could be calm amid so many exciting smells. I promised him as he lay there that he should never be compelled to learn any but the fewest facts necessary to make him as harmless as he was happy; chiefly not to bark at old ladies and babies, no matter how threatening their aspect, as they passed our house. A few things he had already learned—to avoid fences of the barbed wire, to respect the big cat from across the way who sometimes called and treated him with watchful disdain, and not to chew a baby robin if by any chance he caught one. This last had been a hard lesson, his first contact with a problem only a few days younger than Eden itself. It came to his understanding, however, that if you mouth a helpless baby robin, a hand or a stick falls upon you hurtfully, even if you evade it for the moment and seclude yourself under a porch until it would seem that so trifling an occurrence must have been utterly forgotten. This was the one big sin—sin, to the best of our knowledge, being obedience to any natural desire, the satisfaction of which is unaccountably followed by pain.
I told him this would probably be all that he need ever know; and he looked up at me in a fashion he has, the silky brown ears falling either side of the white face. It is a look of languishing, melting adoration, and if I face him steadily, he must always turn away as if to avoid being overcome—as if the sight of beauty so great as mine could be borne full in the eyes only for the briefest of moments.
But Clem came now, ranging my breakfast dishes about the bowl of plum flowers, and I approached the table with all the ardor he could have wished at his softly spoken, "Yo' is suhved, Mahstah Majah."
The sight of Clem, however, inevitably suggests the person to whom I am indebted for his sustaining ministrations. Potts had been a necessary instrument in one of those complications which the gods devise among us human ephemera for their mild amusement on a day ofennui. And Potts, having served his purpose, had been neatly removed. I have said that the Potts-troubled waters of Little Arcady were for the moment stilled. By the hands of the gods had they been mercifully stilled so that not for a month had any citizen been asked to subscribe for any improving book or patented device of culture.
A month before, in a far-off place, J. Rodney Potts had suffered extinction through the apparently casual agency of a moving railway train, the intervention of the gods in all such matters being discreetly veiled so that the denser of us shall suspect nothing but that they were the merest of accidents.
One could only surmise that the widow viewed this happening with a kind of trustful resignation, sweetened perhaps by certain ancient memories attuned to a gentle melancholy. I know that she placed on view in her parlor for the first time a crayon portrait of Potts in his early manhood, one made ere life had broken so many of its promises to him, the portrait of one who might conceivably have enchained the fancy of even a superior woman. But the widow was not publicly anguished. She donned a gown and bonnet of black in testimony of her bereavement, but there was no unnecessary flaunt of crape in her decently symbolic garb. As Aunt Delia McCormick phrased it, she was not in "heavy mourning,"—merely "in light distress."
The town was content to let it go at that, especially after the adjustment of certain formalities which enabled the widow for a time to suspend her work of ministering to its higher wants.
The railway company had at first, it appeared, been disposed to view its removal of Potts very lightly indeed; not only because of his unimposing appearance, but by reason of his well-attested mental condition at the time of the occurrence—a condition clearly self-induced, and one that placed him beyond those measures of safety which a common carrier is obliged to exercise in behalf of its patrons.
But a package of letters had been discovered among the meagre belongings of the unfortunate man, and these had placed the matter in a very different light. They showed conclusively that the victim had been of importance, a citizen of rare values in any community that he might choose to favor with his presence.
Truman Baird settled the case and, after these letters had been appraised by the corporation's attorney, he succeeded in extorting the sum of eight hundred dollars from the railway as recompense to the widow for the loss of her husband's services. I considered that the company would have given up at least five hundred more to avoid being sued for the death of a man who had been able to evoke those letters; but I did not say so, for the case was Truman's and eight hundred dollars were many. Westley Keyts thought they were, indeed, a great many, and outrageously excessive as a cold money valuation of Potts. "She only got eight hundred dollars, but there's them that thinks she skinned the company atthat!" said Westley.
But there was no disposition to begrudge the widow a single dollar of this modest sum. A jury of Little Arcadians would have multiplied it tenfold without a blush; for, while that little hoard endured, any citizen, however public spirited, could flavor with a certain grace his refusal to subscribe for a book.
To Solon Denney the thing came as a deep and divine relief. In the satisfaction induced by it, he penned an obituary of Potts in which he employed the phrase "grim messenger of death" very cleverly indeed. For matters had been going from bad to worse. Murmurs at the demands of Mrs. Potts—likened by Asa Bundy to a daughter of the horse leech—had become passionately loud as our masses toiled expensively up that Potts-defined path of enlightenment. The old sneer at Solon's Boss-ship was again to be observed on every hand, that attitude of doubting ridicule, half-playful, half-contemptuous, which your public man finds more dangerous to his influence than downright hostility would be.
But the murmurs were again stilled, and Solon might breathe the peace of a golden age when as yet no Potts, male or female, had come unto us.
It was not felt at all that Solon's genius for the discretion of public affairs had availed him in this latest crisis. But the benefit was substantial, none the less, and the columns of theArguswere again buoyant as of yore. It was at this time, I remember, that theArgusfirst spoke of our town as "a gem at beauty's throat," and, touching the rare enterprise of our citizens, declared that, "If you put a Slocum County man astride a streak of lightning, he'd call for a pair of spurs."
For myself, I frankly mourned Potts. For I saw now that he had been truly and finely of that Greek spirit—one accepting gifts from the gods with a joyous young faith in their continuance. I felt that he had divined more of the lesson of Greek art than his one-time love could write down in papers unending. I should not have wished him back in Little Arcady, but I did breathe a prayer that he might in some early Greek elysium be indeed "Potts forever." Might it not be? Had not that other paper on "the message of Emerson" hinted of "compensation" in a jargon that sounded authoritative?
And now, as I breakfasted, my attention was invited anew to that fateful, never ending extension of the Potts-made ripples in our little pool. I was threatened with the loss of my domestic stay; again might I be forced to the City Hotel's refectory of a thousand blended smells and spotty table-linen; or even to irksome adventure at the board of the self-lauded Budd.
There was selfish wonder in my heart as I listened to Clem, who, now that my second cup of coffee competed with the May blossoms, stood by to tell me of his worldly advancement and the nearing of a time when Miss Caroline should come among us to be independent.
His stubborn industry had counted. The vegetable and melon crop of the year before had been abundant and well sold, despite sundry raids upon the latter by nameless boys, who, he assured me, "hain't had no raght raisin'." And he had further swelled that hoard of "reglah gole money" in Bundy's bank by his performances of house-cleaning, catering, and his work as janitor; not a little, too, by sales of the fish he caught. He was believed to possess a secret charm that made his fish-bait irresistible. Certainly his fortune in this matter was superior to that of any other frequenter of the bass nooks below the dam.
And now he had waxed so heavy of purse that a woman could come between us,—a selfish woman, I made no doubt, pampered survival of a pernicious and now happily destroyed system, who would not only unsettle my domestic tranquillity, but would, in all likelihood, fetch another alien ferment into our already sorely tried existence as a town needing elevation. It seemed, indeed, that we were never to be done with these consequences.
Separated from my house by a stretch of weedy lawn was a shambling structure built years before by one Azariah Prouse, who believed among other strange matters that the earth is flat and that houses are built higher than one story only at great peril, because of the earth's proneness to tip if overbalanced. Prouse had compromised with this belief, however, and made his house a story and a half high, in what I conceive to have been a dare-devil spirit. The reckless upper rooms were thus cut off untimely by ceilings of sudden slope, and might not be walked in uprightly save by persons of an inconsiderable stature.
In a fulness of years Azariah had died and been chested, like Joseph of old, his soul to be gathered, as he believed, to another horizontal plane, exalted far above this, as would befit an abode for spirits of the departed good.
His earthly home, now long vacant, had been rented by Clem for a monthly sum not particularly cheap in view of its surprising limitations above stairs. It was of this new home that he chiefly talked to me, of the persistence required to have it newly painted by the inheriting Prouse, and repairs made to doors, windows, and the blinds that hung awry from them.
"An' Ah been cleanin'—yes, seh, Mahstah Majah—fum celleh to gahet. Them floahs do shine an' them windows is jes' so clean they look lahk they ain't theah at all. Miss Cahline an' Little Miss, they reside on th' lowah floah, an' Ah tek mahse'f up to that theh gahet. Yes, seh, Ah haf to scrooge aw Ah git mah haid knocked off, but Ah reckon Ah sho' will luhn to remembeh in Gawd's own time. An' they's a tehible grand hen-house. Ah'm go'n' a' raise a hund'ed thousan' yellow-laiged pullets; an' theh's a staihway down to th' watah whah Ah kin tie up mah ole catfish boat, an' a monst'ous big gyahden whah Ah kin keep mah fie'ce look on them mush an' watah melons. Ah don' want t' git into any mo' alterations with them boys, but Ah suttinly will weah 'em out if they don't mind theah cautions. Yes, seh,—we all go'n' a' have a raght tolable homeplace."
Then my grievance prompted me.
"Yes, and who's going to get my breakfast and dinner for me, then?" I asked with a dark look, but he beamed upon me placatingly.
"Oh, Ah's still go'n' a' do fo yo', Mahstah Majah. Ah steddied huh all out twell she's plumb systemous. Miss Cahline sh' ain't wantin' huh breakfus' twell yo's done, an' she'll tek huh dinneh uhliah. Ah manage, Mahstah Majah. Ah mek all mah reddiments, yes, seh—yo's go'n' a' be jes' lahk mah own folks."
I affected to be made more cheerful by this, but I knew that no man can serve two masters, especially when he is the "pussenal propity" of one; but I forbore to warn the deluded African of the tribulations ahead of him.
THE BOOK OF MISS CAROLINE
"THE BOOK OF MISS CAROLINE"
"THE BOOK OF MISS CAROLINE"
A CATASTROPHE IN FURNITURE
A CATASTROPHE IN FURNITURE
"Miss Cahline comin' this yeh time a' yeah so's 't'll seem mo' soft an' homelike. Ah gaiss she go'n' a' sprighten raght up when she see th' summeh time all pleasant."
Thus Clem said to me a few weeks later, and I praised his thoughtfulness. But I nursed misgivings both for Miss Caroline and for Little Arcady. How would they take each other? I conceived Miss Caroline to be a formidable person whom Little Miss resembled, Clem said, "as aigs look lahk aigs." No further detail could I elicit from him save that his Mistress was "not fleshily inclahned," and that Little Miss was "sweetah'n honey on a rag!"
They would find our summer acceptable, even after a Southern summer heavy-sweet with magnolia and jasmine, honeysuckle and mimosa; with spirea and bridal-wreath and white-blossomed sloe trees. And the house as put to rights by Clem would be found at least endurable. It had not the solid grace nor the columned front of the houses I had somewhat hurriedly admired in the Southland some years before, but its lower rooms were wide, its windows abundant, and outwardly it had escaped the blight of the scroll saw.
But the civilization of Little Arcady would be alien to the newcomers, and I was apprehensive that it would also be difficult.
Further, I suspected that J.R.C. Tuckerman, with all his genius for hard work, lacked the administrative gifts of a true financier. He said a hundred thousand pullets when he should have said twenty-five, and he seemed to consider his banked hoard of gold money to be inexhaustible when it was in fact merely a sum slightly greater than he was wont to juggle with in his darkened mind.
I was not surprised, therefore, when I found him rather dejectedly sunk in figures one afternoon about a week after Miss Caroline's "home-fixin's" had begun to arrive.
These were all about him at the front door, in the hall, and extending far into the rooms, a truly depressing chaos of packing boxes, swathed tables, chairs, bureaus, and barrels of china. Nor was this all; for even as I loitered up to the door the dray of Sam Murdock halted in front with another huge load.
Clem raised his head from a sheet of sprawled figures and regarded this fresh trouble with something like consternation. In one hand he fluttered a packet of receipted freight bills, and he spoke as one in an evil dream.
"Yes, seh, Mahstah Majah, it suttinly do seem lahk them railroad genamen would git monst'ous rich a-runnin' them freight trains about th' kentry th' way lahk they do. Ah allus think them ole freight cyahs look maghty cheap an' common a-rattlin' around, but Ah teks mah ole hat off to um yehafteh. Yes, seh, Ah lays Ah will! Them engineahs an' fiahmen an' them Cunnels with gole on they hats, Ah gaiss they go'n' a' have all th' money in th' world maghty shawtly. They looks highly awdinahy an' unpetentious, but they suttinly p'duces th' revenue. Ah sho'ly go'n' a' repoht mahse'f to um ve'y honably when they pass me by yehafteh. Yo' don't gaiss they made a errah, Mahstah Majah?"
He searched my face with a sudden hope:—
"Yo' don't reckon they git a idy them funichas an' home-fixin's ain't been paid foh in th' fust place?"
I took the packet from his hands and glanced over it.
"No, these seem to be all right, Clem—only freight is charged for. But you must remember Virginia is a long way off."
"Yes, seh—it ain't neveh raghtly come upon me befoh."
"And freights are high, of course?"
"Yes, seh, th' freight p'fession does look lahk it ort a' be maghty gainful. Ah gaiss them engineahs go'n' a' do raght well in it, with evabody movin' 'round considable."
"Well, how many more loads do you expect?"
"Well, seh, Ah don't raghtly know. Ah tell that drivah yestaday Ah already got a gret abundance to mek evabody comf'table, an' a little bit oveh, but he jes' sais, 'Oh, tha's all raght,' an' so fothe, an' he still isa-bringin' it. Lohks ve'y strongly lahk he ain't go'n' a' stop atmahimplications. Mahstah Majah, maght happen lahk he'd ack mo' reasonin' ef yo' was t' have a good long talk with him."
"Oh, he hasn't anything to do with it. He only brings what your Miss Caroline has shipped. She shouldn't have sent so much, that's all."
He took the troubling bills again.
"Yo'soundsraght, Mahstah Majah—you suttinly do soundraght! Ah gaiss Ah got a' raise ten hund'ed thousan' pulletts an mo'."
For three more days the juggernaut of Sam Murdock's dray hauled heavy furniture over the prostrate spirit of Clem. Faster than he could unpack the stuff was it unpiled at his door. And it was poor stuff, moreover, in the opinion of Little Arcady. Clem's history was known, of course, and during these busy days the town made it a point to pass his door in friendly curiosity about the belongings of his mistress. When these could not be satisfactorily appraised from the yard, they sauntered up to the porch and surveyed Clem in the front room at his work of unpacking and cleaning. Often, indeed, some kindly disposed observer with time to spare would lend a hand in freeing some heavy bit of mahogany from its crate or wrappings.
The public opinion, thus advantageously formed, was for once unanimous. The house overflowed with worthless and unbeautiful junk. To Little Arcady this was a grievous disappointment. It had expected elegance, for Clem had been wont to enlarge upon the splendors of his former home. When it was finally known that the long-vaunted furnishings were coming, the town had prepared to be dazzled by sets of black walnut, ornate with gilt lines, by patent rockers done in plush, by fashionable sofas, gay with upholstery of flowered ingrain, by bedroom sets of ash, stencilled adroitly with pink-and-blue flowers, or set with veneered panels of burl; by writing-desks of maple and music-stands of cherry with many spindles and frettings, by sideboards of finest new oak with brass handles and mirrors in the backs.
The town had anticipated, in short, up to its own high and difficult standards. And along had come a ruck of stuff that was dark and dingy and old-fashioned; awkward articles with a vast dull expanse of mahogany, ending in clumsy claw feet; spindle-legged tables inlaid with white wood; old-fashioned mirrors in scarred gilt frames; awkward-looking highboys and the plainest of sofas and lounges. The chief sideboard boasted not the tiniest bit of brass; even the handles were of cheap glass, and Clem had set candle-sticks upon it that were nothing but pewter.
Where Little Arcady had looked for the best Brussels carpets, there came only dull-colored rugs of a most aged and depressing lack of gayety. As for silver, we knew the worst when Aunt Delia McCormick declared, "They haven't even a swinging ice-pitcher—nothing but thin battered old stuff that was made in the year one!"
Aunt Delia had quite the newest and most fashionable furniture in town; her parlor was a feast of color for any eye, and her fine hardwood sideboard alone had cost twenty-two dollars, so she spoke as one having authority.
By the time that Clem's ancient treasures were all unpacked, Little Arcady felt a genuine if patronizing sympathy for his mistress. Ifthatwere the boasted elegance of the ante-bellum South, then Tradition had reported falsely. No plush rockers of the newest patent; no chenille curtains; no art chromos; no hat-racks, not even an imitation bronze mantle clock guarded by its mailed warrior. Such clocks as there were left only honest distress in the mind of the beholder,—tall, outlandish old things in wooden cases.
It was believed that Clem had wasted money in paying freight on this stuff. Certainly no one in Little Arcady would have paid those bills to possess the furniture. As to the folly of those who had originally purchased it, the town was likewise a unit.
If Clem was made aware of this public sentiment, he still did not waver in his loyalty to the old pieces. Day after day he unpacked and dusted and polished them with loving devotion. They spoke to him of other days, and when he was quite sure that the last freight bill had been paid, he seemed really to enjoy them. The unexpected drain had reduced his savings to a pittance, but were not the pullets which he could raise absolutely without number?
It was true that Miss Caroline would have to come alone now, leaving Little Miss still to teach in the school at Baltimore until a day of renewed surplus. This much Clem confided to me in sorrow. I sympathized with him, truly, but I felt it was a fortunate circumstance. I thought that one of the ladies at a time would be as much as Little Arcady could assimilate.
Slowly the house grew into a home awaiting its mistress, a home whose furnished rooms overflowed into others not furnished but merely crowded.
I foresaw, not without a certain wicked cheerfulness, that, even after the coming of Miss Caroline, Clem would be forced to pander to my breakfast appetites for the slight betterment it made in his fortunes, even must this be done surreptitiously. And at least one dinner was secured to me beyond the coming of this mistress; for Clem had conveyed to me, with appropriate ceremony, an invitation, which I promptly accepted, to dine with Mrs. Caroline Lansdale at six-thirty on the evening of her arrival, she having gleaned from his letters, it appeared, that I had been a rather friendly adviser of her servant.
In the days that followed I saw that Clem was regarding me with an embarrassed, troubled look. Something of weight lay upon his mind. Nor was it easy, to make him speak, but I achieved this at last.
"Well, seh, Mahstah Majah, yo'-all see, Ah ain't eveh told Miss Cahline that yo's a Majah in th' Nawthun ahmy."
"No?" I said.
"No, seh; Ah ain't even said yo's been a common soljah."
"Well?"
"'Cause Miss Cahline's tehible heahtfelt 'bout some mattehs. Th' Lansdales sho'ly kin ca'y a grudge powful long. An' so—seh—Ah ain't neveh tole on yo'."
"But she'll find it out."
"Yes, seh, an' she maght fuhgit it, but—Ah crave yo' pahdon, seh—theh's yo' ahm what's gone."
"It's too late to help that, Clem."
"Well, seh—now Ah was steddyin'—if yo' kin'ly grant yo' grace of pahdon, seh—lahkly 'twould compliment Miss Cahline ef yo' was to git yo'se'f fitted to one a' them unnatchel limbs, seh. Yo' sho'ly go'n' a' pesteh huh rec'lections with that theh saggin' sleeve, Mahstah Majah."
But this kindly meant proposal I felt compelled to reject.
"No, Clem, you'll have to fix it up with Miss Caroline the best you can."
"Ve'y well, seh, thank yo', seh—Ah do mah ve'y best fo' yo'."
But I saw that he had little hope of ever winning for me the favor of his captious owner.
THE COMING OF MISS CAROLINE
THE COMING OF MISS CAROLINE
She came to us auspiciously on a day in the first week of June.
Mistress Caroline Lansdale, a one-time belle of the Old Dominion, relict of the late Colonel Jere Lansdale, C.S.A., legislator and duellist, whose devotion to her in the days of their courtship had been the talk of two states. Not less notable than his eloquence in the forum, his skill in the duello, had been the determined fervor with which he knelt at her feet. And I waited no more than a hundred seconds in her presence to applaud his discernment.
I had pictured an old woman—some aged trifle of an elder day, sad, withered, devitalized, intemperately reminiscent—steeped in traditions that would leave her formidable, and impracticable as a friend to me. I had fancied her thus, from Clem's fragmentary and chance descriptions and my own knowledge of what she should be by all laws of the probable; and she was not as I had evolved her.
The day she came was one of Little Arcady's best; quite all that her anxious servitor could have wished,—a day of summer's first abundance, when our green-bordered streets basked in a tempered sunlight, and our trim white cottages nestled coolly back of their flower gardens. Harried alien as she was, she would be welcomed with smiles, and I was glad for her sake and Clem's when I hurried home to dress for that first dinner with her.
On my way across the lawn at six-thirty I picked a bunch of the newly opened yellow roses as a peace offering, should one be needed. Clem, in his most formal dress, received me ceremoniously at the door, his look betraying only the faintest, formalest acknowledgment of having ever encountered mine before. With a superb bow toward the drawing-room and in tones stiffly magnificent, he announced, "Mistah Calvin Blake." It was excellently done, but I knew he had rehearsed the "Mistah."
Then a woman rose from one of the deep old chairs to offer me her hand, and a soft quick laugh came as she perceived my difficulty, for my one hand held the roses. These she gathered gracefully into her left hand, while her right fell into mine with a swift little pressure as she bade me welcome.
"Clem has told me of you, Mr. Blake. I feel that you are one of us. Let me thank you at once for the consideration you have shown him."
In the half light I hesitated awkwardly enough to speak her name, for I felt that this could not be the mother of Little Miss. Rather was it the daughter herself. I stammered words that must have revealed my uncertainty, for again she laughed, and then she ordered lights.
Clem came soft-footedly with a branching candelabra, which he placed on the round-topped old table by which she had been sitting. She moved a step to where the soft lights glowed up into her face, and with mock seriousness stood to be surveyed fairly.
"There, Mr. Blake! You see I confess all my years."
And I saw the truth, that she loitered gracefully among the vague and pleasant fifties. But then she did a thing which would have been injudicious in most women of her years. Her hand, still holding my roses, went up to her face, and her cheek glowed dusky and pink against the yellow petals. I saw that she rightly appraised her own daring and felt free to say:—
"Yousee! My confusion was inevitable. Not one of those candles can be spared if I am to believe you are Miss Caroline."
Again she laughed, revealing now a girlish freshness in the small mouth, that had somehow lingered to belie the deeper, graver lines about her dark eyes. As she still regarded me with that smiling, waiting lift of the short upper lip, I called out:—
"More lights, Clem! I need all you have."
Whereat Miss Caroline fell into her chair with a marvellous blush, an undeniable darkening of the pink on cheeks that were in texture like the finest, sheerest lawn.
Never thereafter could I refuse credence to tales, of which many came to me, exposing Miss Caroline as an able and relentless coquette. Nor could I fail to understand how the late Colonel Jere Lansdale would have found need to be a duellist after he became her lover, even had he aforetime been unskilled in that difficult art.
As she chatted, chiefly of her journey, I falsely pretended to listen, whereas I only stared and in spirit was prostrate before her. Mere kneeling at her feet savored too nearly of arrogance. I felt the need to be a spread rug in her presence. She sat back in the chair that embraced her loosely, a slight figure with a small head, on which the heavy strands of whitening hair seemed only a powdered lie above the curiously girlish face. A tiny black patch or two on the face, I thought, would have made this illusion perfect. And yet when she did not laugh, or in some little silence of recollection, the deeper lines stood out, and I could see that sorrow had long known its way to her face. It even lurked now back of her eyes, and I knew that she tried to keep her face lighted for me so that I should not detect it. She succeeded admirably, but the smile could not always be there, and ghosts of her dead years came stealthily to haunt her face as surely as the smile went.
When Clem, with an air of having had word from a numerous kitchen crew, stood before us and bowed out, "Miss Cahline, dinneh is suhved!" I gave her my arm with a feeling of vast relief. Not only was Miss Caroline an abiding joy, but apprehension as to my modest complicity in her late distress had, too, evidently been groundless. She had once, with what seemed to be an almost artificial politeness, asked me about our timber supply and the state of the lumber market; queries to which I had replied with an assumption of interest equally artificial, for I was ignorant of both topics, and not even remotely concerned about either.
Seated at the table, which Clem had arrayed with a faultless artistry, I promptly demanded the removal of a tall piece of cut glass and its burden of carnations, asserting that both glass and flowers might be well enough in their way, but that I could regard them only as a blank wall of exasperating ugliness while they interrupted a view of my hostess. Whereat I was again regaled with that imcomparable blush.
Clem served a soup that had been two days in the making and was worth the time. But even ere the stain had faded from the cheeks of my hostess, cheeks of slightly crumpled roseleaf, another look flashed the smile from her eyes—a quick, firm, woman look of suffering and defiance.
She had raised her glass, and I mechanically did the same.
"Mr. Blake, let us drink standing!—we women earned the right to stand with you."
A little puzzled, I stood up to face her, as Clem pulled back her chair. One hand on the table, the other reaching her slender stemmed glass aloft, she leaned toward me with a look of singular vehemence.
"To our murdered brothers and husbands and sons, Mr. Blake! To our lost leaders and our deathless lost cause! To Jefferson Davis and Robert Edmund Lee! To the Confederate States of America!"
A black wind seemed to blow across the face of her servitor's fluttering eyelids. But I drank loyally to Mrs. Caroline Lansdale and whatsoever that woman would. I could see that Clem exhaled a deep breath. How long he had held it I know not.
We resumed our seats, and the dinner went forward with my hostess again herself. It was a dinner not heavy but choice, a repast upon which Clem had magically worked all his spells. There was a bass that had nosed the river's current that morning, two pullets cut off in the very dawn of adolescence, and a mysteriously perfect pastry whose secret I had never been able to wring from him beyond the uninforming and obvious enough data that it contained "some sugah an' a little spicin's."
Having for my luncheon that day suffered an up-to-date dinner at Budds's, I felt a genuine craving for food; yet the spell of my hostess was such that I left her table ahungered.
Again there was an inexplicable reference from her to the timber and sawed-lumber interests of the Little Country, and the circumstance that another black wind seemed to shiver the eyelids of Clem lent no light to the mystery of it. But then, as if some recondite duty to me had been safely performed, she talked to me of herself, of days when the youth of the Old Dominion had been covetous of her smiles, of nightly triumphs in ball and rout, of gay seasons at the nation's capital, amid the fashion and beauty and wit of Pierce's administration and of Buchanan's, of rounds of calls made in her calash, of bewitching gowns she had worn, of theatres and musicales and teas and embassy receptions, in a day when Harriet Lane was mistress of the White House.
For my pleasing she laughed her sprightly way through memories of that romantic past, when she danced and chattered in the fulness of her bellehood, bringing out a multitude of treasured mementoes, compliments she had compelled, witticisms she had prompted, pranks she had played, delectable repasts she had eaten at Lady Napier's or another's, the splendor of pageants she had witnessed. And though she was back in an elder day, she glowed young as she talked, whether recalling official solemnities or a once-cherished gown of embroidered tulle, caught up with bunches of grapes. The girl's mouth was her's—fresh and full, unlined by care.
It was not until she talked of later, younger days that her face took on an old look.
"When our federated states rose up in their might," was a phrase that brought the change. Thereafter she spoke in subdued tones of a time more eventful than romantic, but still absorbing.
She remembered the words in which she felicitated General Pope Walker for having issued the order to fire on Sumter. She gave details of the privation that Richmond on her seven hills had suffered in the latter days, and she made plain why their women should rise with their men to drink certain toasts; how they, too, had sacrificed and toiled and suffered with the same loyal tenacity. She mentioned "the present government" casually, as the affair of a day; and spoke of "Mr. Lincoln, their Northern President," in a tone implying confidence that I shared her feeling for him.
As we went back to the drawing-room for coffee, she summed up herself to me, though she thought to sum up more than herself.
"They swept us with the besom of war, Mr. Blake, and they overwhelmed—but they could not subjugate us."
As she spoke, my eyes caught for the first time a portrait that hung on the wall back of her. It was the portrait of one dark but fair, with shoulders of a girlish slenderness all but thin, with eyes of glowing dusk and a half-smile upon her lips. It was like my hostess in a fashion of line and color, and yet enough unlike her so that I knew it must be the daughter. The face was a shade narrower of chin, a bit longer, and in some obscure differing of the features there was an effect of more poise, almost of a maturer dignity, so that while I divined it was the face of her daughter, it would seem to have been better planned for the face of her mother.
She followed my eyes to the picture, and her face was still almost stern from her last speech, though it is true that the sternness was a dimpled sternness, for the chin of my hostess was rounded.
"They overwhelmed us, Mr. Blake,—my daughter there, and me, and God alone has counted how many other wretched women. Her they struck a double blow—they killed the two men she loved. One was her father, but she flew to the other. She found her picture in his dead hands. Our young men were apt to die in that fashion; and when she put it back to be buried with him, her eyes were dry. Even under her double blow, she was stronger than I. She has been stronger ever since, but she suffered more than I was made to. Oh, it was a fine thing for them to do!"
Her voice rose at the last into a little trembling gust of passion, and I saw again the spirit that gave those women the right to stand with the men. She recovered herself quickly, and the girl in her smiled upon me again.
"You must overlook my forgetfulness. I shall not forget often, especially now that I am among these murderous fanatics. But I was tired to-night, and I was so glad when I knew I could talk to you freely."
Her eyes were upon me in friendly unreserve, in confident appeal.
In the face of what I should have felt, I was ashamed at that moment, and in the nervousness of hidden guilt I handled the minute coffee cup awkwardly. Clem, who must have been equally nervous, stepped to right the thing in its saucer, with "Yes, seh, Mahstah Majah!"
From across the table I knew, without raising my eyes, that his mistress glanced up at Clem in quick astonishment, then that her eyes were fastened upon my face. I still regarded the coffee interestedly, but I knew that I myself blushed now and I suspected that my hostess was pale.
"Major?" she began questioningly, then more decidedly, "MajorBlake?"
I raised my eyes to hers and nodded idiotically.
She laughed a little laugh that was icy in its politeness.
"How stupid of me, and now I must ask your pardon for all my tirade, for my blasphemies, and for that monstrous toast I—really—"
She shot a look at Clem, under which he blanched visibly, then her eyes were again upon me and she smiled with a rare art.
"Really, you will overlook an old woman's weakness."
It was the inimical, remote, icy superiority of her tone that nettled me—perhaps her implied assumption that I would not know it for such. But also I felt curiously stricken by that swift withdrawal of her confidence, for Mrs. Caroline Lansdale had won me by her laugh and blush of ancient girlishness. Further, I would not now be hurt by any woman, though she were ten times my years, without a show of defence.
I arose as Clem hastily fled from the room.
"Miss Caroline—" I waited for the fine little brows to go up at that. I had not long to wait.
"I shall positively never call you anything else but Miss Caroline while you permit me to address you at all—understand it—I've associated with your boy too long. Well, I did do four years of fighting, and I was mustered out with the rank of Major. You might as well know it now as later. You'll have longer to forget it. I wish I could forget it myself. Not the fact, for I should fight again as long and try to fight harder in the same cause, but the hellishness of it—the damnable, inhuman obscenity of it—I should like to forget. I never said so before, Miss Caroline,—there was no one to say it to,—but it made me old before my time. Why, I could almost be a son of yours, if you will pardon that minor brutality, and the thing is aging me to this day. I helped to kill your young men and your old men, but you ought to know that I didn't do it for holiday sport. The first one of your men I saw dead lay alone by the roadside, a boy, foolishly young, with a tired face that was still smiling. He'd fallen there as if sleep had overtaken him on the march. Our column had halted, and I went to him. It must have taken a full minute for me to realize that this was dignified war and not the murder of a boy in a homely gray uniform. When I did realize it, I was so weakened that I broke down and cried. I was a private then. I covered his face, and got up strong enough to assault two other privates who had found my snivelling funny. One of them went to the field hospital, and I went under arrest when I'd finished with the other. You ought to know, Miss Caroline, that the sight of thousands of your other dead never moved me to any merriment. I tried to be a good soldier, but I felt the death pains of every fallen man I saw. I didn't stop to note the color of his uniform. Miss Caroline—"
I waited until I had made her look at me.
"The war is over, you know. Suppose you forget me as a soldier and take me as a man. Really, I believe we ought to know each other better."
Clem had once found occasion to say, "When Miss Cahline tek th' notion to shine huh eyes up, she sho' is a highly illuminous puhsonality."
I saw then what he meant, for Miss Caroline had "shined" her eyes, and they flooded me with a distracting medley of lights. I thought she struggled very uncertainly with herself. Her eyes shifted from my face to the empty sleeve. Twice before that evening—I remembered it had been when she spoke so enigmatically of the lumber industry—her eyes had rested there briefly, discreetly, but in all sympathy. Now the look was different. It wavered. At one instant I seemed to read regret that I had come off so well—her eyes flickered suggestively to my remaining arm.
"Be fair," I said; "did I not drink your toast?"
I thought she wavered at this, for a blush deeper than all the others suffused her.
"Besides," I continued warningly, "you are within the enemy's lines now, and you may find me a help. Come!" and I held out my hand.
Very slowly she put her own within it. I noticed that it was still plump, the fine skin not yet withered.
"You are very kind, Major Blake. I had been misinformed, or you should have had no occasion to think me rude."
It was then that I wished definitely to shake Miss Caroline.
"Come, come," I said, "you are not giving me what you gave at first. I'm not to be put off that way, you know. If I call you Miss Caroline,—and I've sworn to call you nothing else,—you must be Miss Caroline."
She searched my face eagerly,—then—
"Youshallcall me Miss Caroline—but remember, sir, it makes you my servant." She smiled again, without the icy reserve this time, whereat I was glad—but back of the smile I could see that she felt a bitter homesickness of the new place.
"Your most obedient servant," I said. "You have another slave, Miss Caroline, another that refuses manumission—another bit of personal property, clumsy but willing."
"Thank you, Major, I need your kindness more than I might seem to need it. Good night!" and even then she gave me a rose, with the same coquetry, I doubt not, that had once made Colonel Jere Lansdale quick to think of his pistols when another evoked it. Only now it masked her weariness, her sense of desperate desolation. I took the rose and kissed her hand. I left her wilting in the big chair, staring hard into the fireplace that Clem had rilled with summer green things.
When my fellow-chattel appeared next morning with my coffee, he was embarrassed. With guile he strove to be talkative about matters of no consequence. But this availed him not.
"Clem," I said frigidly, "tell me just what you said to Mrs. Lansdale about me."
He paltered, shifting on his feet, his brow contracted in perplexity, as if I had propounded some intricate trifle of the higher mathematics.
"Huh! Wha—what's that yo'-all is a-sayin', Mahstah Majah?"
"Stop that, now! I needn't tell you twice what I said. Out with it!"
"Well, seh, Mahstah Majah, of co'se, yo'-all tole me to fix it man own way, an' Ah lay Ah'd do it raghtly—an' so Miss Cahline is ve'y busy goin' th'oo th' rooms an' spressin' huhse'f how grand evehthing suttinly do look an' so fothe an' so on, an' sh' ain't payin' much attention—Ah reckon sh' ain't huhd raghtly—"
"Clem—the Bible says, 'How forceful are right words!'"
He stopped at my look, despaired, and became succinct.
"Well, seh, Ah jes' think Ah brek it to huh easy-lahk, by degrees, so Ah sais yo' is a genaman of wahm South'n lahkings. Ah sais yo' been so hot fo' th' South all th'oo that theh wah that evehbody yeh'bouts despised an' reviled you. An' she sais why ain't yo' gone faght fo' th' South ef yo'-all so hot about it, an' Ah sais yo' was eageh to go, but yo' been in the timbeh business, an' one day yo' got rash about yo' saw-mill, an' th' ole buzz-saw jes' natchelly tuk off yo' ahm, so's yo' couldn't go to th' wah. Yes, seh, Mahstah Majah—Ah laid Ah'd brek it grajally—an' Ah suttingly did have that lady a-thinkin' ve'y highly of yo' at th' time of yo' entrance, seh,—yes, seh!"