LITTLE ARCADY VIEWS A PARADE
And so began the time of Miss Caroline among us,--one effect the more of
Fate's mad trickery. It was my privilege to be more intimately aware of
her concerns than was the town at large. And even to me in those days she
carried off the difficulties of her lot with a manner so plausible that
it clenched my admiration if it did not win my belief. I knew that she
daily bore a burden of ruin and faced a future of perilous uncertainty.
I knew that she must have journeyed into our strange land with a real
terror, nerved to that course only by a resolve to be no longer a burden
upon her impoverished kinsman. Surely it had been like dying a death for
her to leave the land of her own people, devastated though it was and
vacant of those who had made the world easy for her.
And I was not a little puzzled by the tie that bound her to her one
remaining stay. Both she and Clem, I saw, considered her coming to him
to be a thing so natural that it should excite no wonder, a thing
familiar in the thought and as little to be puzzled about as their own
breathing. I saw that her perplexities lay not at all in this black
fellow's unthinking adherence to his life of service, but rather in the
circumstance of her spirit-grieving exile and in the necessary doubts of
her chattel's competence for the feat he had undertaken.
I despaired very soon of ever comprehending the intricate strands of
their relationship. When I understood, as I was not long in doing, that
each was in certain ways genuinely afraid of the other, I knew that the
problem must always be far beyond my own little powers.
As to Little Arcady at large, some aspects of this complication were
simpler than they appeared to me; others were more obscure. Of the
tragedy of Miss Caroline's mere coming to us they could suspect nothing,
save it might be the humiliation her old-fashioned furniture must put
upon her in a prosperous town where so much of the furniture was elegant
to the point of extravagance.
In the much-discussed matter of mistress and slave, the town agreed
simply that Clem was stupid and had been deluded by Miss Caroline into
believing that a certain proclamation had stopped short of her personal
property. It was believed that she had terrorized him by threatening to
put bloodhounds on his trail if he ever tried to run off--for the town
knew its "Uncle Tom's Cabin" as well as it knew "Gaskell's Compendium."
It was thought that if Clem proved to be disobedient or rebellious, his
mistress would try to hire "Big Joe" Kestril or some equally strong
person to whip him with a "black-snake." Also it was said that she had
sold his wife away from him, and might try to sell Clem himself if ever
she got "hard up," though it was felt that she would be wise not to go
too far in that matter.
For the rest, Little Arcady rather rejoiced in the novelty of Miss
Caroline's establishment. There was a flavor of much-needed romance in
this survival at our very doors of an ante-bellum unrighteousness. The
town cherished a hope that Clem would try to run off some time, or that
Miss Caroline would have his back cut to ribbons, or try to sell or
mortgage him or something, thus creating entertainment of an agreeable
and exciting character.
If the town could have overheard Clem scolding the lady with frank
irritation in his voice,--as I chanced to do once or twice,--had it
beheld his scowl as he raged, "Miss Cahline, yo' sho'ly gittin' old
'nuff to know betteh'n _that_. I suttinly do wish yo' Paw was alive an'
yeh'bouts. Ah git him afteh yo' maghty quick. Now yo' jes' remembeh Ah
ain't go'n' a' _have_ no sech doin's!"--if it could have noted the
quailing consternation of the mistress at these moments, it might have
been puzzled; but of such phenomena it never knew. It was aware only
that Miss Caroline treated Clem with a despotic severity, issuing
commands to him as from a throne of power and in tones of acrid
authority that were the envy of all housekeepers among us who kept
"hired girls."
Even Mrs. Potts, long before the arrival of Miss Caroline, had despaired
of teaching Clem to make something of himself. He had refused to
subscribe for a "Compendium," and her cordial assurance that he was, by
the law of the land, both a man and a brother, did not even mildly elate
him. Mrs. Potts was soon in a like despair regarding Miss Caroline, whom
she regarded as too frivolous ever to make anything of herself. These
two ladies, indeed, were widely apart. Perhaps I can intimate the extent
of their unlikeness by revealing that Mrs. Potts, early in our
acquaintance, had observed of me that I was not serious enough; whereas
Miss Caroline was presently averring to my face that I was entirely too
serious. These judgments of myself seemed to contrast the ladies
informingly.
The impression that Miss Caroline was frivolous--or even worse--became
current the day after her arrival in Little Arcady. Arrayed in a
lavender silk dress of many flounces, with bonnet beribboned gayly
beyond her years, shod in low walking shoes of heel iniquitously high, a
toe minute and shining and an instep ornate to an unholy degree, bearing
a slender gold-tipped staff of polished ebony to assist theatrically in
her progress, and bestowing placid, patronizing looks to right and left,
she had flounced into Main Street, followed ceremoniously by her black
chattel, himself set up with a palpable and shameless pride in his
degradation, saluting stiffly and with an artificial grandeur those whom
he would otherwise have greeted with the unstudied ease of long
association.
This procession regaled both Main and Washington streets, where Miss
Caroline visited our shops to make inconsiderable purchases and many
friends. It was a function the pleasant data whereof I was not long in
collecting.
Her first conquest was Chester Pierce, our excellent hardware merchant,
whom she commissioned to make a needed repair to her range. It was a
simple business matter, and Chester Pierce is a simple business person
of plain manners. But as he slouched comfortably upon his counter and
listened to Miss Caroline's condescending exposition of her needs, he
became sensible of a strange influence stealing upon him. By degrees he
brought himself erect and slowly, dazedly performed an act which had
never before been perpetrated within his establishment. It was not that
he deliberated, nor that his reason dictated it; but instinctively,
almost from a purely reflex muscular action, he removed his hat while
Miss Caroline talked, feeling himself thrill with a foreign and most
suave deference. It was customary in our town to raise your hat to a
lady on the street; but for a merchant, and a solid citizen at that, to
do this thing in his own establishment, was a thing unheard of--and a
thing of pretentious and sickening foppery when it _was_ heard of, for
that matter, though this need not now concern us.
"And be sure to tell my servant to give you a glass of wine when your
work is done," concluded Miss Caroline, as she turned to rustle silkily
out. Whereat Chester Pierce, charter member and President of our Sons of
Temperance, a man primed with all statistics of the woe resulting
traditionally from that first careless glass, murmured words
unintelligible but of gratified import, and bowed low after the
retreating vision. A moment later he was staring with mystified
absorption at the hat in his hands, quite as if the hat were a
stranger's--and then he brushed it around and around with the cuff of
his coat sleeve as if the stranger had not been careful enough of it.
Thence paraded Miss Caroline to the City Drug Store, to be bowed well
out to the sidewalk by young Arthur Updyke when her errand within had
been done. But Arthur had attended a college of pharmacy far away from
Slocum County, and it was not unnatural that he should exhibit an alien
grace in times of emergency.
With Westley Keyts again, to whose shop Miss Caroline next progressed,
it was as with Chester Pierce, a phenomenon of instinctive muscular
reaction,--that of his hat coming off as he greeted the stately little
lady at his threshold and apologized for the sawdust on his floor which
was compelling her to raise a froth of skirts above the tops of those
sinful-looking shoes. I suspect that Miss Caroline was rather taken with
Westley. She called him "my good man," which made him feel that he had
been distinguished uncommonly, and she chatted with him at some length,
asking cordially about cuts of meat and his family, two matters in which
Westley was much absorbed. He declared later that she was "a grand
little woman."
There followed pilgrimages that June morning to the First National Bank
and to several of our lesser establishments; pilgrimages rarely
diverting to Little Arcady and which invariably provoked bows under
strangely lifted hats.
But there were Little Arcadians of Miss Caroline's own sex to whom she
might not so swiftly fetch confusion. Aunt Delia McCormick devoted a
chance view of the newcomer to discovering that the gown of lavender
satin had been turned and made over, none too expertly, from one
originally built some years before the war. Later she found what our
ladies agreed was its primal design, after much turning of the leaves of
ancient Godey's magazines.
Mrs. Judge Robinson, from one sidelong glance, brought off detailed
intelligence of the bonnet's checkered past.
The elder Miss Eubanks decried the mannishness of cane-bearing; and Mrs.
Westley Keyts, entering the shop as Miss Caroline was bowed out,
declared that her silk stockings were of a hue hardly respectable, and
that she wore shoes "twice too small for her."
The eyes of the suddenly urbane Westley glistened when he overheard
this, but he fell to dissecting a beef without further sign.
For better or worse, Miss Caroline and Little Arcady had exchanged
impressions of each other.
I met her by chance that morning and was charmed by her flattering
implication of reliance upon myself. She made me feel that our
understanding was secret and our attachment romantic. To complete her
round of our commercial centre I escorted her to the _Argus_ office. Her
greeting of Solon Denney was a thing to behold with unalloyed delight.
They seemed to understand each other at once. Two minutes after Solon
had looked up in some astonishment from his dusty, over-piled desk, they
were arrayed as North and South in a combat of blithest raillery.
Miss Caroline sat in Solon's battered chair with the missing castor,
surveyed his exchange-laden desk with a humorous eye, and seized the
last _Argus_, skimming its local columns with a lively interest and
professing to be enthralled by its word-magic. She read stray items that
commended themselves to her critical judgment, such as, "A wind blew
last week that you could lean up against like the side of the house;" or
"Westley Keyts has a bran-new 'No Admittance!' sign over the door of his
slaughter-house. We don't see why. He could put up a 'Come one, come
all!' sign and still not get _us_ into the place. They're messy."
Further she read, "Some fiend with sub-human instincts ravaged our
secret hoard of eating-apples while we were out meeting the farmers last
Saturday afternoon. We wish they had been of no value to any one except
the owner." And then, in her sprightliest manner, and with every sign of
enjoyment, she went on to an item during the reading of which I think we
both flushed a little, Solon and I:--
"The United States _Is_
"Some grammar sharp down East says you must say 'The United States are.'
But we guess not. Opinions to that effect prevailed widely to the south
of us some years ago, but the contrary was proved, we believe. The
United States _is_, brother, ever since Appomattox, and even the grammar
book should testify to its is-ness--to its everlasting and indivisible
oneness."
She carried it off so finely that I knew Miss Caroline had recovered
from the fatigues of her journey.
"I shall write you an item myself," she exclaimed, and seizing a stubby
pencil, she wrote rapidly:--
"A battered and ungrammatical old woman from the valley of Virginia has
settled in our midst. She will always believe that the United States
are, but she is harmless and otherwise sane."
"Have I caught the style?--have I used 'in our midst' correctly?" she
asked Solon. And he protested that her style was faultless but that her
matter was grossly misleading.
From this she was presently assuring him, in all pleasantness, that the
seed of Cain, descended through Ham, would, by reason of the curse of
God, be a "servant of servants" unto the end; while Solon was assuring
her, with equal good nature, that this scriptural law had been repealed
by President Lincoln.
Her retort, "I dare say your Mr. Lincoln was _capable_ of wishing to
repeal the Bible," was her nearest approach to asperity.
"A battered old woman!" said Solon to me later. "She looks more like a
candy saint, if they make such things,--one that a child has been
careless with." We agreed that she was an addition to Little Arcady.
The editor of the _Argus_ sighed at this point, and I thought he might
be wishing that all feminine newcomers could be like the latest. For
Mrs. Aurelia Potts, whose leisure Heaven had increased, was now
redoubling her efforts to make the _Argus_ a well of English
undefiled--undefiled by what she called "journalisms." Solon must not,
he confided to me, say "enthuse" nor "we opine" nor "disremember." He
might not say that the pastor "was given" a donation party when he
really meant that the party was given,--not that the pastor was given.
Further, he must be cautious in the uses of "who" and "whom," and try to
break himself of the "a good time was enjoyed by all present" habit.
"And she always says 'diddy-you' instead of 'dij-you,'" broke in my
namesake, who, loitering near us, had overheard the name of Mrs. Potts.
"That will _do_, Calvin!" said his father, shortly. It seemed to me that
the still young life of Solon was fast being blighted.