"What do you think of her, Dan?" Bob asked as we drove toward home.
"Tell me exactly what you think."
"She is beautiful, sir," I replied, "but somehow her features refuse to
remain with me."
"They remain with me--black eyes, black hair, rose-leaf ears. She is
an oration of the ancients set forth in nineteenth century flesh and
blood."
"Yes, sir," I assented, with my mind on the old man, "but I don't think
much of her stock, as Mr. Clem might say."
He snatched the lines from me, lashed the horse to a fierce trot, and
looked at me as I sat with my hands fallen in idle submission. "Dan,
what's the matter with you? You are getting to be a d---- cynic. Don't
like her stock! I suppose you mean her father? He has had to work his
way, no doubt, and may not have read as many fine books as certain
fellows who have been pampered, but he is a gentleman. Do you hear
me?" He lashed the horse. "Do you hear what I say?"
"If you say he is a gentleman, he is, Mars. Bob."
"But why the devil don't you make discoveries of your own?"
"I do, but I have not found the North Pole."
"What do you mean by that? Mean that as a gentleman Mr. Potter is a
North Pole to you and is therefore beyond your discovery? Is that what
you mean?"
At this instant my wretchedness must have smitten him. He pulled the
horse back to a walk; he laid his hand upon mine, limp in my lap, and
said: "Dan, I was a brute to talk that way when you've been so sick.
You are right. The old fellow is as ignorant as a boar but love poured
a basket of flowers over him. Please don't try to apologize--I'd
rather you'd hit me than to do that. Yes, the old man is ignorant
and coarse but the girl is intelligent and refined. Look there," he
added, pointing with his buggy whip, "you see a flower with a weed as
its parent. The weed has done some good, for it has brought forth the
flower, and after all it must have held an unconscious refinement.
Here, you take the lines and drive, just as you were doing back there,
and don't think of what I said. Now, you see, we are going along just
as if nothing had happened."
The fire and the tenderness of that boy! A passion almost mad, and
a gentleness nearly as soft as a young mother's religion, seeking
to possess him! I felt even then that he was not fitted to grapple
with stern success. Was intuition preparing me for a trial to come, a
struggle waiting down the mystic road? Nature may seem to mock her own
endeavors, but I believe she creates with a purpose, though the purpose
may remain hidden until the end. Nature is pressed upon our many moods,
and one mood may strive to pull down the work wrought by another mood.
One bent of nature must have had a glorious career marked out for Young
Master, though another bent--but of this I will not speak. It is bad
enough that it should be told in even the proper place.
That day for dinner there were several guests, among them old 'Squire
Boyle, now grown quite feeble. I had been permitted to leave off the
service of standing behind Young Master's chair, but on occasions my
help was really needed, so I took my old place in the dining-room.
It was not expected that even this little gathering could be wholly
at peace with itself. There was a rumble, North and South and
disputatious vapors floated in the air. And reason, among the party
leaders, had given way to fierce gesticulation, and a strife to say
something, not to convince but to cut an adversary. I remember that old
man Boyle paused with his mouth full of a turkey's white meat to listen
to a remark made by Old Master.
"Sir," said the 'squire, after swallowing as if his absorption had
dried his throat, "the institutions of this country are tottering, and
cool reason alone can prop them."
"And that's exactly what the South won't listen to," Mr. Clem spoke up.
"The South wants to block the humane progress of the world. She is not
satisfied with her present unhealthful domain, but wants to shove her
slave territory into new lands. Reason's voice is but the squeak of a
mouse, sir. They can hear nothing but the roar of a lion, and by G----,
sir, they want to be the lion."
"Clem," said Old Miss, "you forget where you are. You are not trading
horses on the turn-pike, you are seated at my table."
"Hanna, that's a fact, I am at your table; and I reckon that I'm the
first one that ever paid his way here."
"Oh, speaking of horses," interrupted the 'squire with a squeak,
"reminds me, Clem, that the one I got of you ain't worth his weight in
last year's bird-nests."
"What?" Mr. Clem cried, "I am astonished at you."
"Yes, sir, and I was astonished at him; wouldn't pull a settin' turkey
off her nest; lies down in the traces like he wants to go to sleep."
"Why, of course," Mr. Clem shouted. "You have profaned a fine saddle
horse. He's not intended to pull; he's intended for a gentleman to
ride, sir."
"But didn't you tell me that he was a wheel horse and would pull till
both eyes popped out?"
"Oh, no; I said I would rather have him than any wheel horse that would
pull that blindly. Saddle horses, you know, are of a higher grade."
"I was in hopes so, sir, and I thought I would try to ride this one,
but blast me if he didn't try to shake me off him right into the creek!"
"Oh," said Mr. Clem, "I forgot to tell you that he used to travel with
a circus. Yes, sir, and an actor used to stand on him to jump headlong
into a tank of water, and he was taught to shake himself to announce
his readiness for the leap--"
"But he laid down with me, sir."
"Yes, and I was going to say, that a part of his duty was to go into
the tank after the actor. A fact, Bob," he added, nodding at Young
Master, who had begun to laugh at him. "Horses, you know, are taught to
do most anything. Yes, sir, but getting back to the question of unrest
now so strongly marked throughout the country, I want to say that
something is going to happen and happen blunt, too. No human government
can long stand the internal pullings and haulings that this one is
subjected to."
"But what is going to be done?" Old Master cried.
Mr. Clem shrugged his shoulders. "Something is going to pop pretty soon
and pop like a whip," said he. "A glass house is going to be broken and
hoar frost will gather on leaves never intended for the chill air. The
whole trouble comes from slavery and I, for one, am bold enough to say
that the end is surely not far off."
"I don't want you to say it at my table, sir," Old Master almost
fiercely shouted. "I don't want you to talk treason at my board."
Not in the least was Mr. Clem offended, nor was he at all put out by
Old Master's violence. "Guilford," said he, "the trouble is that the
South has got the negro mixed up with its religion and with its notion
of good government. To own a slave no longer stops at the possession
of a piece of property, but becomes so much of a sentiment that the
man who does not care to own one is looked upon as an outlaw. And if
he declares that he would not own one, that his conscience is against
it, he is put down as a traitor to the South, seeking to overturn the
American government."
Old Miss threw up her head and sniffed the unsavory air. "Clem," she
said, "I don't want you to talk that way in the presence of my son.
Why, it wouldn't astonish me to hear you say that a negro is as good as
a white man!"
'Squire Boyle listened with his fork raised and his mouth half open.
He had long been suspected of holding the views of the abolitionists;
it was known that he had favored Henry Clay's scheme for gradual
emancipation. He had been studiedly discreet, but being by birth a
Northern man, suspicion naturally turned an eye upon him. Sometimes
when he must have felt that his silence was eating him like an internal
cancer, he had come to Old Master to be bold with healthful utterances,
but of late, as the country became more deeply stirred, Old Master
warned him to swallow rapidly whenever he felt a strong disposition to
talk upon the subject of abolition. And now he swallowed with such
vigor and rapidity that a stranger to the precaution placed upon his
speech must surely have thought that he was choking to death.
"'Squire, did you swallow something the wrong way?" Mr. Clem asked,
leaning over toward him.
"No, something wants to come up the right way," the 'squire piped, the
red Adam's apple at his thin throat dodging like a wood-pecker. "I want
to say something, but I won't. But the time will come when I will stand
on a hill--I've got it picked out--and bawl what I think. Guilford, you
are fixing to scold me, sir, and I must ask you not to say a word."
Old Master laughed at this, the old 'squire's desperate threat of
rebellion, and had taken up a bit of bread to roll his customary bolus,
when yellow Sam, who had been sent to town, came in with a letter. Old
Miss began at once to speculate as to whom it could be from, and Old
Master, winking at Bob and looking at her as he wiped his glasses, said
that he supposed he could put the letter under his plate and wonder a
long time as to the identity of the writer. "But happily," said he,
again winking his mischievous eye, "we are provided with means whereby
we can cut through all speculation and get at once into the heart and
the truth of the subject. To be brief," he added, "we can open the
letter."
"Well, for goodness sake, why don't you?" his wife broke in, as she
always did when she saw him indulging a droll humor. "Give it to me."
"Oh, no," he laughed, putting back her hand. "There may be secrets in
this epistle that belong alone to the great free-masonry of men."
"And your organization is shameful enough," she said, not without a
show of ill-temper (for any allusion to an understanding in which she
was not included always appeared to cut her). "But I must acknowledge
its rare perfection as an organization," she went on. "Its devotees do
not have to be sworn, unless nature swears them at birth."
By this time the single leaf of the letter was shaking under Old
Master's gaze. "Read it," he said huskily, handing it to Bob. And he
bowed his head over the table. The note was from Miss May. It told us
that her husband was dead, and that she, with her little child, was
about to start for home.