About two years after the close of the war, therefore, the colonel and
Peter were to be found in Lexington, ready to turn over a new leaf in
the volumes of their lives, which already had an old-fashioned binding,
a somewhat musty odor, and but few unwritten leaves remaining.
After a long, dry summer you may have seen two gnarled old apple-trees,
that stood with interlocked arms on the western slope of some quiet
hill-side, make a melancholy show of blooming out again in the autumn
of the year and dallying with the idle buds that mock their sapless
branches. Much the same was the belated, fruitless efflorescence of the
colonel and Peter.
The colonel had no business habits, no political ambition, no wish to
grow richer. He was too old for society, and without near family ties.
For some time he wandered through the streets like one lost--sick with
yearning for the fields and woods, for his cattle, for familiar faces.
He haunted Cheapside and the court-house square, where the farmers
always assembled when they came to town; and if his eye lighted on
one, he would button-hole him on the street-corner and lead him into
a grocery and sit down for a quiet chat. Sometimes he would meet an
aimless, melancholy wanderer like himself, and the two would go off
and discuss over and over again their departed days; and several times
he came unexpectedly upon some of his old servants who had fallen into
bitter want, and who more than repaid him for the help he gave by
contrasting the hardships of a life of freedom with the ease of their
shackled years.
In the course of time, he could but observe that human life in the town
was reshaping itself slowly and painfully, but with resolute energy.
The colossal structure of slavery had fallen, scattering its ruins far
and wide over the State; but out of the very débris was being taken
the material to lay the deeper foundations of the new social edifice.
Men and women as old as he were beginning life over and trying to fit
themselves for it by changing the whole attitude and habit of their
minds--by taking on a new heart and spirit. But when a great building
falls, there is always some rubbish, and the colonel and others like
him were part of this. Henceforth they possessed only an antiquarian
sort of interest, like the stamped bricks of Nebuchadnezzar.
Nevertheless he made a show of doing something, and in a year or two
opened on Cheapside a store for the sale of hardware and agricultural
implements. He knew more about the latter than anything else; and,
furthermore, he secretly felt that a business of this kind would enable
him to establish in town a kind of headquarters for the farmers. His
account-books were to be kept on a system of twelve months' credit; and
he resolved that if one of his customers couldn't pay then, it would
make no difference.
Business began slowly. The farmers dropped in and found a good
lounging-place. On county-court days, which were great market-days for
the sale of sheep, horses, mules, and cattle in front of the colonel's
door, they swarmed in from the hot sun and sat around on the counter
and the ploughs and machines till the entrance was blocked to other
customers.
When a customer did come in, the colonel, who was probably talking with
some old acquaintance, would tell him just to look around and pick
out what he wanted and the price would be all right. If one of those
acquaintances asked for a pound of nails, the colonel would scoop up
some ten pounds and say, "I reckon that's about a pound, Tom." He had
never seen a pound of nails in his life; and if one had been weighed on
his scales, he would have said the scales were wrong.
He had no great idea of commercial despatch. One morning a lady came in
for some carpet-tacks, an article that he had forgotten to lay in. But
he at once sent off an order for enough to have tacked a carpet pretty
well all over Kentucky; and when they came, two weeks later, he told
Peter to take her up a dozen papers with his compliments. He had laid
in, however, an ample and especially fine assortment of pocket-knives,
for that instrument had always been to him one of gracious and very
winning qualities. Then when a friend dropped in he would say,
"General, don't you need a new pocket-knife?" and, taking out one,
would open all the blades and commend the metal and the handle. The
"general" would inquire the price, and the colonel, having shut the
blades, would hand it to him, saying in a careless, fond way, "I reckon
I won't charge you anything for that." His mind could not come down to
the low level of such ignoble barter, and he gave away the whole case
of knives.
These were the pleasanter aspects of his business life which did not
lack as well its tedium and crosses. Thus there were many dark stormy
days when no one he cared to see came in; and he then became rather a
pathetic figure, wandering absently around amid the symbols of his past
activity, and stroking the ploughs, like dumb companions. Or he would
stand at the door and look across at the old court-house, where he had
seen many a slave sold and had listened to the great Kentucky orators.
But what hurt him most was the talk of the new farming and the abuse of
the old which he was forced to hear; and he generally refused to handle
the improved implements and mechanical devices by which labor and waste
were to be saved.
Altogether he grew tired of "the thing," and sold out at the end of the
year with a loss of over a thousand dollars, though he insisted he had
done a good business.
As he was then seen much on the streets again and several times heard
to make remarks in regard to the sidewalks, gutters, and crossings,
when they happened to be in bad condition, the _Daily Press_ one
morning published a card stating that if Colonel Romulus Fields would
consent to make the race for mayor he would receive the support of many
Democrats, adding a tribute to his virtues and his influential past. It
touched the colonel, and he walked down-town with a rather commanding
figure the next morning. But it pained him to see how many of his
acquaintances returned his salutations very coldly; and just as he was
passing the Northern Bank he met the young opposition candidate--a
little red-haired fellow, walking between two ladies, with a rose-bud
in his button-hole--who refused to speak at all, but made the ladies
laugh by some remark he uttered as the colonel passed. The card had
been inserted humorously, but he took it seriously; and when his
friends found this out, they rallied round him. The day of election
drew near. They told him he must buy votes. He said he wouldn't buy
a vote to be mayor of the New Jerusalem. They told him he must "mix"
and "treat." He refused. Foreseeing he had no chance, they besought
him to withdraw. He said he would not. They told him he wouldn't poll
twenty votes. He replied that _one_ would satisfy him, provided it was
neither begged nor bought. When his defeat was announced, he accepted
it as another evidence that he had no part in the present--no chance of
redeeming his idleness.
A sense of this weighed heavily on him at times; but it is not likely
that he realized how pitifully he was undergoing a moral shrinkage
in consequence of mere disuse. Actually, extinction had set in with
him long prior to dissolution, and he was dead years before his heart
ceased beating. The very basic virtues on which had rested his once
spacious and stately character were now but the mouldy corner-stones of
a crumbling ruin.
It was a subtle evidence of deterioration in manliness that he had
taken to dress. When he had lived in the country, he had never dressed
up unless he came to town. When he had moved to town, he thought he
must remain dressed up all the time; and this fact first fixed his
attention on a matter which afterwards began to be loved for its
own sake. Usually he wore a Derby hat, a black diagonal coat, gray
trousers, and a white necktie. But the article of attire in which he
took chief pleasure was hose; and the better to show the gay colors of
these, he wore low-cut shoes of the finest calf-skin, turned up at the
toes. Thus his feet kept pace with the present, however far his head
may have lagged in the past; and it may be that this stream of fresh
fashions, flowing perennially over his lower extremities like water
about the roots of a tree, kept him from drying up altogether.
Peter always polished his shoes with too much blacking, perhaps
thinking that the more the blacking the greater the proof of love. He
wore his clothes about a season and a half--having several suits--and
then passed them on to Peter, who, foreseeing the joy of such an
inheritance, bought no new ones. In the act of transferring them the
colonel made no comment until he came to the hose, from which he seemed
unable to part without a final tribute of esteem, as: "These are fine,
Peter;" or, "Peter, these are nearly as good as new." Thus Peter, too,
was dragged through the whims of fashion. To have seen the colonel
walking about his grounds and garden followed by Peter, just a year and
a half behind in dress and a yard and a half behind in space, one might
well have taken the rear figure for the colonel's double, slightly the
worse for wear, somewhat shrunken, and cast into a heavy shadow.
Time hung so heavily on his hands at night that with a happy
inspiration he added a dress suit to his wardrobe, and accepted the
first invitation to an evening party.
He grew excited as the hour approached, and dressed in a great fidget
for fear he should be too late.
"How do I look, Peter?" he inquired at length, surprised at his own
appearance.
"Splendid, Marse Rom," replied Peter, bringing in the shoes with more
blacking on them than ever before.
"I think," said the colonel, apologetically--"I think I'd look better
if I'd put a little powder on. I don't know what makes me so red in the
face."
But his heart began to sink before he reached his hostess's, and
he had a fearful sense of being the observed of all observers as he
slipped through the hall and passed rapidly up to the gentlemen's room.
He stayed there after the others had gone down, bewildered and lonely,
dreading to go down himself. By-and-by the musicians struck up a waltz,
and with a little cracked laugh at his own performance he cut a few
shines of an unremembered pattern; but his ankles snapped audibly, and
he suddenly stopped with the thought of what Peter would say if he
should catch him at these antics. Then he boldly went down-stairs.
He had touched the new human life around him at various points: as he
now stretched out his arms towards its society, for the first time he
completely realized how far removed it was from him. Here he saw a
younger generation--the flowers of the new social order--sprung from
the very soil of fraternal battle-fields, but blooming together as
the emblems of oblivious peace. He saw fathers, who had fought madly
on opposite sides, talking quietly in corners as they watched their
children dancing, or heard them toasting their old generals and their
campaigns over their champagne in the supper-room. He was glad of it;
but it made him feel, at the same time, that, instead of treading
the velvety floors, he ought to step up and take his place among the
canvases of old-time portraits that looked down from the walls.
The dancing he had done had been not under the blinding glare of
gaslight, but by the glimmer of tallow-dips and star-candles and the
ruddy glow of cavernous firesides--not to the accompaniment of an
orchestra of wind-instruments and strings, but to a chorus of girls'
sweet voices, as they trod simpler measures, or to the maddening sway
of a gray-haired negro fiddler standing on a chair in the chimney
corner. Still, it is significant to note that his saddest thought, long
after leaving, was that his shirt bosom had not lain down smooth, but
stuck out like a huge cracked egg-shell; and that when, in imitation of
the others, he had laid his white silk handkerchief across his bosom
inside his vest, it had slipped out during the evening, and had been
found by him, on confronting a mirror, flapping over his stomach like a
little white masonic apron.
"Did you have a nice time, Marse Rom?" inquired Peter, as they drove
home through the darkness.
"Splendid time, Peter, splendid time," replied the colonel, nervously.
"Did you dance any, Marse Rom?"
"I didn't _dance_. Oh, I _could_ have danced if I'd _wanted_ to; but I
didn't."
Peter helped the colonel out of the carriage with pitying gentleness
when they reached home. It was the first and only party.
Peter also had been finding out that his occupation was gone.
Soon after moving to town, he had tendered his pastoral services
to one of the fashionable churches of the city--not because it was
fashionable, but because it was made up of his brethren. In reply
he was invited to preach a trial sermon, which he did with gracious
unction.
It was a strange scene, as one calm Sunday morning he stood on the edge
of the pulpit, dressed in a suit of the colonel's old clothes, with one
hand in his trousers-pocket, and his lame leg set a little forward at
an angle familiar to those who know the statues of Henry Clay.
How self-possessed he seemed, yet with what a rush of memories did
he pass his eyes slowly over that vast assemblage of his emancipated
people! With what feelings must he have contrasted those silk hats,
and walking-canes, and broadcloths; those gloves and satins, laces
and feathers, jewelry and fans--that whole many-colored panorama of
life--with the weary, sad, and sullen audiences that had often heard
him of old under the forest trees or by the banks of some turbulent
stream!
In a voice husky, but heard beyond the flirtation of the uttermost pew,
he took his text: "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow;
they toil not, neither do they spin." From this he tried to preach a
new sermon, suited to the newer day. But several times the thoughts of
the past were too much for him, and he broke down with emotion.
The next day a grave committee waited on him and reported that the
sense of the congregation was to call a colored gentleman from
Louisville. Private objections to Peter were that he had a broken leg,
wore Colonel Fields's second-hand clothes, which were too big for him,
preached in the old-fashioned way, and lacked self-control and repose
of manner.
Peter accepted his rebuff as sweetly as Socrates might have done.
Humming the burden of an old hymn, he took his righteous coat from a
nail in the wall and folded it away in a little brass-nailed deer-skin
trunk, laying over it the spelling-book and the _Pilgrim's Progress_,
which he had ceased to read. Thenceforth his relations to his people
were never intimate, and even from the other servants of the colonel's
household he stood apart. But the colonel took Peter's rejection
greatly to heart, and the next morning gave him the new silk socks
he had worn at the party. In paying his servants the colonel would
sometimes say, "Peter, I reckon I'd better begin to pay you a salary;
that's the style now." But Peter would turn off, saying he didn't "have
no use fur no salary."
Thus both of them dropped more and more out of life, but as they did
so drew more and more closely to each other. The colonel had bought
a home on the edge of the town, with some ten acres of beautiful
ground surrounding. A high osage-orange hedge shut it in, and forest
trees, chiefly maples and elms, gave to the lawn and house abundant
shade. Wild-grape vines, the Virginia-creeper, and the climbing-oak
swung their long festoons from summit to summit, while honeysuckles,
clematis, and the Mexican-vine clambered over arbors and trellises, or
along the chipped stone of the low, old-fashioned house. Just outside
the door of the colonel's bedroom slept an ancient, broken sundial.
The place seemed always in half-shadow, with hedgerows of box, clumps
of dark holly, darker firs half a century old, and aged, crape-like
cedars.
It was in the seclusion of this retreat, which looked almost like a
wild bit of country set down on the edge of the town, that the colonel
and Peter spent more of their time as they fell farther in the rear
of onward events. There were no such flower-gardens in the city, and
pretty much the whole town went thither for its flowers, preferring
them to those that were to be had for a price at the nurseries.
There was, perhaps, a suggestion of pathetic humor in the fact that
it should have called on the colonel and Peter, themselves so nearly
defunct, to furnish the flowers for so many funerals; but, it is
certain, almost weekly the two old gentlemen received this chastening
admonition of their all-but-spent mortality. The colonel cultivated
the rarest fruits also, and had under glass varieties that were not
friendly to the climate; so that by means of the fruits and flowers
there was established a pleasant social bond with many who otherwise
would never have sought them out.
But others came for better reasons. To a few deep-seeing eyes the
colonel and Peter were ruined landmarks on a fading historic landscape,
and their devoted friendship was the last steady burning-down of that
pure flame of love which can never again shine out in the future of
the two races. Hence a softened charm invested the drowsy quietude of
that shadowy paradise in which the old master without a slave and the
old slave without a master still kept up a brave pantomime of their
obsolete relations. No one ever saw in their intercourse ought but
the finest courtesy, the most delicate consideration. The very tones
of their voices in addressing each other were as good as sermons on
gentleness, their antiquated playfulness as melodious as the babble of
distant water. To be near them was to be exorcised of evil passions.
The sun of their day had indeed long since set; but like twin clouds
lifted high and motionless into some far quarter of the gray twilight
skies, they were still radiant with the glow of the invisible orb.
Henceforth the colonel's appearances in public were few and regular.
He went to church on Sundays, where he sat on the edge of the choir
in the centre of the building, and sang an ancient bass of his own
improvisation to the older hymns, and glanced furtively around to
see whether any one noticed that he could not sing the new ones. At
the Sunday-school picnics the committee of arrangements allowed him
to carve the mutton, and after dinner to swing the smallest children
gently beneath the trees. He was seen on Commencement Day at Morrison
Chapel, where he always gave his bouquet to the valedictorian. It was
the speech of that young gentleman that always touched him, consisting
as it did of farewells.
In the autumn he might sometimes be noticed sitting high up in the
amphitheatre at the fair, a little blue around the nose, and looking
absently over into the ring where the judges were grouped around the
music-stand. Once he had strutted around as a judge himself, with a
blue ribbon in his button-hole, while the band played "Sweet Alice,
Ben Bolt," and "Gentle Annie." The ring seemed full of young men now,
and no one even thought of offering him the privileges of the grounds.
In his day the great feature of the exhibition had been cattle; now
everything was turned into a horse-show. He was always glad to get home
again to Peter, his true yoke-fellow. For just as two old oxen--one
white and one black--that have long toiled under the same yoke will,
when turned out to graze at last in the widest pasture, come and put
themselves horn to horn and flank to flank, so the colonel and Peter
were never so happy as when ruminating side by side.