"Don't make a fire," were the first words I heard at morning. I looked
up and found the orator in bed, propped upon his elbow. He looked at
me--his eyes were always fascinating--and I waited to attend upon his
bidding.
"Do you know that what uncle said last night didn't strike me very
hard until just a few moments ago?" said he. "A stream of nonsense
was rippling through my mind at the time and I was too much taken up
with it to feel what he said, but it hit me hard just now. He has seen
trouble and I honor him for it. Know what I would have done? Shot that
fellow. If we are taught to die for love we ought to kill for it." He
lay back upon his pillow and after a moment's reflection, broke into a
tittering laugh.
"I wonder," said he, "if Uncle Clem would cheat that preacher. But of
course he would, since there is no such thing as cheating in a horse
trade--By a self-soothing turn of argument his conscience legitimizes
any advantage he may take over the judgment of his adversary. We'll go
out and see the preacher defend himself."
In the trade that followed, if indeed one did take place, the preacher
may have lost his eye-teeth for ought I know. I went down stairs that
morning with full determination to see the contest, but upon reaching
the hall-way, a loud voice, in the dining room, told that something of
graver moment had befallen--the return of Dr. Bates. Old Master sat
looking at him, and the expression on his face was not one to bespeak a
pleasurable emotion. The doctor glanced up as my Young Master entered,
and with a broad smile which I could see was pumped up with great
effort, he got out of his chair to shake hands. Bob took his hand,
though not with any pretense of welcome, said that he was surprised
at his quick return, and sat down without another word, the doctor
evidently waiting for him to say something more. But he waited in vain,
for the young man sat gazing hard at his plate, with his hands in his
pockets.
"I am glad to find the weather so delightful," said the doctor. "I have
just come from a place where icicles were hanging from the eaves."
"I should think that you would be likely to find places too warm," Bob
spoke up.
The doctor glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. "Well, that
depends," he replied, casting about for something else to say but not
finding it upon demand. "Some of us are influenced by one thing and
some by another," he added, still skirmishing. "But youth is often too
much lacking in judgment to estimate its surroundings--the dangers that
lie about, I might say. Talk comes early but sense follows very slowly
along." He had evidently found something to please him for he smiled at
Old Master, who, without a word, still sat looking at him. "Yes," said
Young Master, "sense not being so light of foot has a hard time trying
to overtake wordiness and there are cases where it does not succeed."
The doctor gave Bob a mere glance and addressed himself to Old Master.
"Since I have been traveling about," said he, "and particularly when
I have gone East, I have been compelled to listen to sharp criticisms
passed upon Southern society. They say our life is most unnatural, our
society, feverish; and they laugh at our intellectual intercourse--say
that our conversation is more observant of color than of sense, and
that our young men are taught to stride on sophomoric stilts. Of
course I was strong in my defense, but I couldn't hide an inward
acknowledgement of a part of these strictures. Our young men do
attempt to stand off the ground when they talk."
"It makes no difference to me what an envious person may find fit to
say," Old Master replied. "We of the South have our way of thinking and
talking and are willing to grant that privilege to other men. Why the
deuce don't these people come on to breakfast?"
From the rear veranda came the voices of Old Miss, Mr. Clem and the
preacher. "Dan," Old Master commanded, "tell them to come on here."
I hastened away, glancing back to see Young Master boring the doctor
with a look. Mr. Clem and the preacher were warm in an argument and Old
Miss was standing near, supporting the views of the preacher, but was,
I could see, persistent with suggesting that they give over the contest
and go to breakfast. And when I stepped forward with the announcement
that Old Master had sent for them, Mr. Clem said, "All right, soon
as I blow out my tobacco," and ducking his head over the "banister,"
he snorted out his quid and swore that he was as hungry as either of
the she-bears that ate up the forty children. The minister would have
stayed to rebuke him for this irreverence, but being himself pinched by
appetite, gave him merely a look of reproof and struck a trot for the
breakfast table.
The doctor had met Old Miss and the two men earlier in the morning. He
smiled at Old Miss, nodded at the preacher and addressing Mr. Clem,
said that he had ever wanted to meet him. Mr. Clem made no reply until
he had spread a napkin upon his knees, and then he said: "Well, sir,
you see me now, not quite as good a man as I have been, perhaps, but
pretty spry and ready to whet the edge of my judgment against every
gritty substance I come across. What do you know about a horse, sir?"
"Not a great deal, although I have owned several racers," the doctor
answered. Mr. Clem looked at him, moving back a little so that he could
measure him from head to foot. And when the survey was completed to the
satisfaction of the surveyor, he blurted forth his estimate: "The case
of a man who hasn't improved his time very much, I reckon. But you like
a good horse, pretty well, I take it."
"Well, I can't say that I'm more interested in a horse than in anything
else."
"You can't? Well, sir, I don't want to throw you off hard enough to
bruise you, but I don't reckon you and I can trot together. Good-bye."
"Oh, you are not going away, are you?" the doctor asked. Everyone
looked up, even the preacher, who had been exceedingly busy.
"No;" said Mr. Clem, "that is, I'm not going to leave here just now.
But as I have decided not to trot with you, I'm gone, so far as you are
concerned." And with that he turned from the doctor and I am almost
positive that not within my hearing did he ever give him another word.
It could not have been that the doctor's indifference toward the
horse was the real cause of Mr. Clem's contempt; I am of the opinion
that the old fellow had made up his mind not to like him and to tell
him so should opportunity offer, and then brought forward the horse
as a pretext. I have often speculated over what might have been the
result, had the doctor professed an absorbing fondness for the horse. I
imagine, though, that Mr. Clem would have tried one thing after another
until he had found a vital objection to the man, for as I say, he was
resolved not to like him, and I remember that on this very morning,
after I had followed my master to his room, Mr. Clem came in with an
oath directed at the doctor.
"I don't understand how you get along with him at all, Bob," said he.
"I don't," my young master replied, turning slowly the leaves of his
sheep-bound book. "We have come near having trouble, and, when we do,
it will be red trouble, I tell you. He's got some sort of a hold on
father, something other than an interest in the estate. I have no idea
what it is, but I know it's something. However, I don't believe that
the old gentleman will put up with him much longer."
"By the flint-hoofs, I wouldn't stand him a minute," Mr. Clem swore.
And then looking at me he asked my opinion of the man. I looked at
master.
"Tell him," said he.
"Exactly what I think, Mars. Bob?"
"Yes, say what you please."
This was indeed a rare occasion. I was to have an unfettered say--was
to talk as a man. The image of the doctor arose before me; I saw his
hateful grin, his eyes full of evil and deceit--and the insults that
he had put upon me freshened in my mind. Something in my manner must
have foretold the temper of my speech, for they looked at me with an
interest that never before had I beheld in an eye bent upon me. "Speak
out!" Bob cried, and I found my tongue and found it hot:
"I hate him deeper than any man was ever hated!" I almost shouted, for
my first free speech rose high. "He has done all he could to make
my life miserable. It burnt his skin to see that I was not sent to
the corn-field--bled him to know that I could be fitted for something
better; and his enmity passes through me and touches my master. If I
could choke his tongue out and see it covered with the vilest dust--if
I could see his eyes mashed into the ground--" I hesitated. The flight
of freedom held a threat to be too wild, and love for the man who sat
staring at me told me to drive it back to mean and humble earth.
"Go ahead," Mr. Clem cried, but master was silent, looking down.
"Gentlemen, I am a slave and you are American citizens," said I.
"For me, there are no privileges except those granted by individual
kindness. The law which I have studied page by page with my Master,
scarcely touches me, except so far as I am a piece of property. If I
run away, the law that I have studied will follow me and bring me back
with handcuffs on my wrists. If my master chooses, he can put me on the
auctioneer's block and sell me. I--"
"Don't, Dan," Master pleaded, lifting his hand. "Don't draw such a
picture as that. You are better off than many a white man; you can
think, you have been taught to reason; and you know that I would rather
starve than to sell you. I am not responsible for the melancholy fact
that you are a slave. You--"
"Who is?" I broke in.
"God," he answered.
"Oh, H--!" Mr. Clem shouted, leaping off the floor. "Bob, I think a
great deal of you, would do anything for you--fight for you--but let me
beg of you never again to give echo to that sounding rot. The greedcant
of a pandering pulpit gives us enough of such answers to flatter the
soul. Bob," he said, stepping forward and laying a hand on Master's
shoulder, "look at me. You have a heart," he went on, looking into the
young man's eyes. "The God you say made this boy a slave, made you an
uncommon man. Even as young as you are, you have the brains almost of
a philosopher--surely the power and the expression of an orator. You
are going to make a deep mark on the page of your country's history. I
believe it, I swear I do. Then, why do you care to own a man? Bob, set
this boy free."
Master got out of his chair and went to the window before a word of
reply came from him; he looked out upon the broad spread of green
sward, flooded with sun-light, he turned back toward his uncle and then
he said: "I can't. I want him, and he must stay with me. I don't want
him so much as a servant as I do as a companion. Other men may be
liars, but he tells me the truth. My thoughts are his and I hope that
his are mine. At midnight, when the world is still and my mind is in an
uproar, I do not struggle alone, but awake him and he steps gladly into
the whirl-wind. Uncle Clem, I have a real affection for him, so strong
that it is selfish. If I should set him free, he couldn't stay here,
and besides, not yet being of age, I cannot give him freedom."
"An argument," said a voice at the door, and looking up, we saw the
doctor stand there. No one spoke a word bidding him to enter, but he
stepped into the room. "Well," said Mr. Clem, speaking to Master, "I
must go."
"Won't you stay longer, Uncle?"
"No, I've got to go down the creek and kill a snake."
"I'll go with you," said master. "Come with us, Dan."
"May I have a few moments with this boy?" the doctor asked, looking at
Master and then leering at me.
Mr. Clem had reached the door but he turned back. Master wanted to know
of the doctor what business he could have with me, whereupon he said:
"Oh, just a little private matter."
"But, sir, Dan keeps none of his affairs private from me."
"Indeed! A very close relationship, I must say."
"Must you? I didn't know that you felt an obligation."
"An obligation? What do you mean by that?"
"Oh, you said you must say, and must moves us to discharge an
obligation."
"If a barber were as much given to the splitting of hairs, we'd never
be more than half shaved."
"And if the instinct of the wolf prompted bristles to grow
continuously, and if no barber cut them off, I could pick out a man
whose beard would soon drag the ground."
Mr. Clem laid his hands upon the door-facing and snorted. "What ails
you, sir?" the doctor asked, turning toward him, and Mr. Clem, without
looking round, said: "Bob, they've got a fish over in Illinois they
call the doctor. Hook one of them and you think you've got something,
but pull him out and you find he's all bill. Come on and let's go after
that snake."
We strode away without another word, the doctor tramping hard down the
stairs just behind me. He followed us to the yard, and seeing Old
Master standing near the garden gate, sheered off from our course. We
strolled along the grass-fringed margin of the creek, and when we came
to the rock whereon I had stood, listening to Mr. Clem's persuasive
tongue, urging me to run away, the kindness and the life-long
protection of my Master arose and smote me, for on that rock I had
almost rebelled against him. I did not want to stop when the others
halted, but Mr. Clem called me back. "Bob," said he, "I didn't always
know the feeling you have for Dan, and it was here, not long ago,
that I told him to run away--offered to furnish him money; but with a
fidelity that I had forgotten existed among men, he refused."
Bob turned his face from us, but I saw his neck stiffen with
resentment. There was something noble in his aspect, his head high,
his hat off; and his hair, lying in waves, looked like the leaves of a
wreath. But in a moment this was all gone and he looked as if a grief
had fallen upon him. "Uncle Clem," said he, turning slowly toward
the old man, "I wish you wouldn't give advice against the interest
of one who is very near to me. If he were to run away, he would lose
confidence in himself and his memory of the sunny days along this
stream would but serve as a reproach to him."
"My dear boy," Mr. Clem replied, "if I had intended to give him further
advice along the same line, I would not have mentioned it to you--would
not have hinted that I had said anything. So, now, as far as that is
concerned, you may rest at ease."
"All right, we'll say nothing more about it. Uncle Clem, do you think
that I'm stilted in my talk?"
"Why, not any more so than the average boy in this part of the
country. You know the Kentuckian is taught to talk with a flourish;
it is in keeping with the pretense of his surroundings; he must be
gallant with woman and lordly with man. No, you are not particularly
stilted, but there is one branch of information that you are stubbornly
overlooking--the horse. You have studied the orator, but I want to tell
you that the horse has done quite as much to make Kentucky known as the
orator. After all, oratory is nothing but talk, while there's action in
a horse. And, by the way, who's that riding along the pike? Too far off
or I'd yell at him. Good horse; no, little lame in the left hind foot.
See, he don't move evenly."
"I can't tell from here," said master.
"Ah, hah, and that goes to prove what I say, that you haven't given
enough study to that important subject. It isn't right for a man to
cultivate one lobe of his mind and neglect the other. Man's mind, you
know, has two lobes--one embracing the horse, and the other covering
the human family and other little things. I wonder how much longer
things are going to be as dull as they are now. Why, out in Illinois
we had something every day to interest us, up hill and down, but here
everything is on a dead level. There's not enough ginger in the air."
"But it's full of poetry, Uncle Clem."
"Full of poetry? Well, maybe it is, but you have to listen too close to
hear it."
"Ah, but the sweetest communications come in a whisper."
"By the hoofs, the boy's in love. Now, you take a horseman's advice and
keep out of it. It's a jolt, leaving you for a time to wonder whether
you're hurt or not, and after a while you find that you are. Yonder
come the General and that doctor. Let's sheer off this way and go back
to the house?"