I
One sunny November day, in 1864, Colonel Archibald Corbin sat placidly
reading “The Spectator” in the shabby old library at Corbin Hall, in
Virginia. The Colonel had a fine, pale old face, clean shaven, except
for a bristly, white mustache, and his white hair, which was rather
long, was combed back in the fashion of the days when Bulwer’s heroes
set the style for hair-dressing. The Colonel--who was no more a colonel
than he was a cheese-box--had an invincible placidity, which could not
be disturbed by wars or rumors of wars. He had come into the world in a
calm and judicial frame of mind, and meant to go through it and out of
it calmly and judicially, in spite of rude shocks and upheavals.
Everything about Colonel Corbin had reached the stage of genteel
shabbiness--a shabbiness which is the exclusive mark of gentlemen. His
dignified frock-coat was white about the seams with much brushing, and
the tall, old-fashioned “stock” which supported his chin was neatly
but obviously mended. The furniture in the room was as archaic as the
Colonel’s coat and stock. A square of rag carpet covered the floor;
there had been a Brussels carpet once, but that had long since gone to
the hospital at Richmond--and the knob of the Colonel’s gold-headed
cane had gone into the collection-plate at church some months before.
For, as the Colonel said, with a sort of grandiose modesty--“I can give
but little, sir, in these disjointed times. But when I do give, I give
like a gentleman, sir.”
There had been a time, not long before that, when he had been compelled
to “realize,” as the Virginians euphemistically express it, upon
something that could be converted into cash. This was when it became
necessary to bring the body of his only son, who had been killed
early in the war, back to Corbin Hall--and likewise to bring the dead
man’s twelve-year-old daughter from the far South, where her mother
had quickly followed her father across the gulf. Even in that sad
extremity, the Colonel had never dreamed of “realizing” on the great
piles of silver plate, which would, in those times, have commanded
instant sale. The Corbins, who were perfectly satisfied to have their
dining-room furnished with some scanty horsehair sofas and a few
rickety chairs and tables, had a fancy for loading down rude cupboards
with enough plate for a great establishment, according to a provincial
fashion in Virginia. But instead of this, the Colonel sacrificed a
fine threshing-machine and some of his best stock without a qualm. The
Colonel had borne all this, and much more,--and the rare, salt tears
had worn little furrows in his cheeks,--but he was still calm, still
composed, under all circumstances.
The sun had just marked twelve o’clock on the old sun-dial in the
garden, when the Colonel, happening to glance up, saw Aunt Tulip,
the dairymaid, streaking past the window, with her petticoat over
her head, followed by Nancy, the scullion, by little Patsy Jane, who
picked up chips for the kitchen fire, by Tom Battercake, whose mission
in life was indicated by his name,--the bringing in of battercakes
being an important part of life in Virginia,--and by Juba, who was
just beginning his apprenticeship by carrying relays of the eternal
battercakes from the kitchen to the dining-room. And the next moment,
Miss Jemima, the Colonel’s sister and double, actually danced into the
room with her gray curls flying, and gasped, “Brother, the Yankees are
coming!”
“Are they, my dear Jemima?” remarked the Colonel, rising. “Then we must
prepare to meet them with all the dignity and composure possible.” As
the Colonel opened the door, his own man, Dad Davy, nearly ran over
him, blurting out the startling news, “Marse, de Yankees is comin’!”
and the same information was screeched at him by every negro, big and
little, on the plantation who had known it in time to make a bee-line
for the house.
“Disperse to your usual occupations,” cried the Colonel, waving his
hand majestically. The negroes dispersed, not to their business, but
with the African’s natural love of a sensation to spread the alarm all
over the place. By the time it got to the “quarters,”--the houses of
the field-hands, farthest away from “de gret house,”--it was reported
that Dad Davy had told Tom Battercake that he saw Aunt Tulip “runnin’
outen de gret house, and the Yankees wuz hol’in er pistol at ole Marse’
hade, and Miss Jemima, she wuz havin’ er fit with nobody but little
Patsy Jane,” etc., etc., etc. What really happened was, the Colonel
walked calmly out in the hall, urging Miss Jemima to be composed.
“My dear Jemima, do not become agitated. David, you are an old fool.
Thomas Battercake, proceed to your usual employment at this time of
day, cleaning the knives, or whatever it is. Would you have these
Yankee miscreants to think us a body of Bedlamites?”
Just then, down the stairs came running pretty little twelve-year-old
Letty, his granddaughter. Letty seized his veined and nervous hand in
her two pink palms, and expressed a willingness to die on the spot for
him.
The Colonel marched solemnly out on the porch, and by that time, what
seemed to him an army of blue-coats was dashing across the lawn. A
lieutenant swung himself off his horse, and, coming up the steps,
demanded the keys of the barn, in a brogue that could be cut with a
knife.
“No, sir,” said the Colonel, firmly, his gray hair moved slightly by
the autumn wind, “you may break open my barn-door, but I decline to
surrender the keys.”
The lieutenant, at that, struck a match against the steps, and a
little point of flame was seen among the withered tendrils of the
Virginia creeper that clung to the wooden pillars of the porch.
“Now, will you give up those keys, you obstinate ould ribil?” asked the
lieutenant, fiercely.
“No!” responded the Colonel, quite unmoved. “The term that you apply to
me is the one that was borne with honor by the Father of his country.
Moreover, from your accent, which I may be permitted to observe, sir,
is grotesque to the last degree, I surmise that you yourself may be a
rebel to Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, for certainly there is nothing
American about you.”
At this, a general snicker went around among the enemy, for discipline
was not very well observed between officers and men in those days.
Then, half a dozen cavalrymen dropped off their horses and made for the
well, whence they returned in a twinkling with water to put out the
fire that had begun to crackle ominously. The Colonel had not turned a
hair, although Miss Jemima behind him and Letty had clung together with
a faint cry.
The lieutenant rode off in the direction of the barn, ordering most of
the men to follow him. Wagons were then seen coming down the lane, and
going toward the barn to cart off the Colonel’s corn and wheat. The
sympathies of those who were left behind were plainly with the Colonel.
Especially was this so with a tall, lanky, grizzled sergeant, who had
been the first man to put out the fire.
“I am much obliged to you, my good man,” said Colonel Corbin, loftily,
“for your efforts in extinguishing the flames started by that person,
who appears to be in command.”
“You’re welcome,” answered the lanky sergeant, with the easy
familiarity of the rural New-Englander.
The lieutenant had showed unmistakably the bullying resentment of a
peasant brought face to face with a gentleman, but the lanky sergeant
indirectly felt some subtile sympathy with a spirit as independent as
his own.
“I am glad, brother,” said Miss Jemima, “that these men who are left
to guard us are plainly Americans. They will be more humane than
foreigners.”
“Vastly more so,” answered the Colonel, calmly watching the loading of
his crops upon the wagons in the distance. “There is, particularly in
New England, a sturdy yeomanry, such as our friend here belongs to,”
indicating the sergeant, “which really represents an admirable type of
man.”
“Gosh,” exclaimed the sergeant, in admiration, “it’s the durndest,
gamest thing I ever see, you standin’ up here as cool as a cucumber,
when your property’s bein’ took. I kin stand fire; my grandfather, he
fought at Lexington, and he didn’t flunk nuther, and I ain’t flunked
much. But I swan, if you Johnny Rebs was a-cartin’ off my hay and
stuff, I’d be a deal more excited ’n you are. And my old woman--gosh t’
almighty!”
The lanky sergeant seemed completely staggered by the contemplation of
the old woman’s probable behavior upon such an occasion.
“There are other things, my friend,” answered the Colonel, putting his
hands under his coat-tails and turning his back upon the barn in the
distance, “which are of more consequence, I opine, than hay and corn.
That, I think, the most limited intelligence will admit.”
“That’s so,” responded the lanky sergeant, “I kin do a sight better
keepin’ bees up in Vermont than down here in Virginny fightin’ the
rebs for eighteen dollars a month, but when Uncle Abe called for
seventy-five thousand men I couldn’t a-kep’ them bees another day,
not if I had been makin’ two hundred dollars a month at it. When I
heard ’bout it, I kem in, and I said to the old woman: ‘I’ve got a
call,’ and she screeched out, ‘A call to git converted, Silas?’--the
old woman’s powerful religious,--and I says, ‘No, Sary--a call to go
and fight for the Flag.’ And when we talked it over, and remembered
about my grandfather,--he lived to be selectman,--the old woman says,
‘Silas, you are a miser’bul man, and you’ll git killed in your sins,
and no insurance on your life, and it’ll take all I kin rake and scrape
to bring your body home, but mebbe it’s your duty to fight for your
country.’ And she said I might come, and here I am, and the bees is
goin’ to thunder.”
“Unfortunately for me, sir,” said the Colonel, with a faint smile, but
with unabated politeness. “However, I wish to say that you are pursuing
your humble but unpleasant duty in a most gentlemanlike manner. For,
look you, the term gentleman is comprehensive. It includes not only
a man who has had the advantages of birth and station,--advantages
which I may, with all modesty, claim, as enjoying them without any
merit of my own,--but a man like yourself, of honorable, though humble
parentage, who possesses a sturdy independence of spirit to which, I
may say, my friend with the violent brogue is a stranger.”
The lanky sergeant, who had a dry, Puritanical humor of his own, was
immensely tickled at this, and, at the same time, profoundly respectful
of a man who could enter into disquisitions respecting what constituted
a gentleman while his goods were being confiscated under his very nose.
“I tell you what,” said he, becoming quite friendly and confidential
with the Colonel, “there’s a fellow with our command,--an
Englishman,--and he’s got the same name as yours--Corbin--only he’s got
a handle to it. He is Sir Archibald Corbin, and I never see a young man
so like an old one as he is like you. He just seems to me to be your
very image. He ain’t reg’larly attached nor nothin’; he’s just one of
them aide’campers. He might be your son. Hain’t you got any son?”
At this, little Miss Letty, who had kept in the background clinging to
Miss Jemima, came forward, and the Colonel put one arm around her.
“I had a son,--a noble son,--but he laid down his life in defense of
his State, and this is his orphan child,” said he.
The lanky sergeant took off his cap and made a bow.
“And I’ll be bound,” he said, with infinite respect in his awkwardly
familiar manner, “that your son was true grit.” He stopped and hunted
about in his mind for a title to bestow upon the Colonel superior
to the one he had, and finally hit upon “Judge,” to which title the
Colonel was as much entitled as the one he bore.
“Judge, I don’t believe you’d turn a hair if there was a hundred pieces
of artillery trained on you. I believe you’d just go on talkin’ in
this ’ere highflown way, without kerin’ about anything except your
dignity. And if your son was like you, he didn’t have no skeer in him
at all, General.” By this time the sergeant had concluded that the old
gentleman deserved promotion even from the title of Judge.
The Colonel inclined his head, a slight flush creeping into his wan
face.
“You do me honor,” he said, “but you do my son only justice.”
By this time the wagons had been loaded up and were being driven off.
The scared negroes that had flocked about the house from all over the
plantation were peering, with ashy faces, around the corners and over
the garden fence. The men were ordered to fall in, the lieutenant
giving his orders at a considerable distance, and in his involuntary
and marked brogue. The lanky sergeant and the few men with him mounted,
and then all of them, simultaneously, took off their caps.
“Three cheers for the old game-cock!” cried the lanky sergeant
enthusiastically. The cheers were given with a will and with a grin.
The Colonel bowed profoundly, smiling all the time.
“This is truly grotesque,” he said. “You have just appropriated all
of my last year’s crops, and now you are assuring me of your personal
respect. For the last, I thank you,” and so, with cheering and
laughter, they rode off, leaving the Colonel with his self-respect
unimpaired, but minus several hundred bushels of corn and wheat. The
negroes gradually quieted down, and the Colonel and Miss Jemima and
little Miss Letty retired to the library. The Colonel took down his
family tree, and began gravely to study that perennially entertaining
document in order to place the Corbin who was serving as aide-de-camp
in the Union army. Miss Jemima, too, was deeply interested, and
remarked sagely:
“He is no doubt a great-grandson of Admiral Sir Archibald Corbin, who
adhered to the royal cause and was afterward made a baronet by George
III.”
At that very moment, the Colonel hit upon him.
“That is he, my dear Jemima. General Sir George Corbin, grandson of
the admiral and son of Sir Archibald Corbin, second, married to the
Honorable Evelyn Guilford-Hope, has one son and heir, Archibald, born
May 18, 1842. His father must be dead, and he has but little more
than reached his majority. Sister, if he were not in the Federal
army, I should be most happy to greet him as a kinsman. But I own to
an adamantine prejudice toward strangers who dare to meddle in civil
broils.”
So had Miss Jemima, of course, who regarded the Colonel’s prejudices as
direct inspirations from on high.
The very next week after the visitation of the Federal cavalry came
a descent upon the part of a squad of Confederate troopers. As the
Colonel and Miss Jemima entertained the commanding officers in the
library, with the most elaborate courtesy and home-made wine, the
shrill quacking and squawking of the ducks and chickens was painfully
audible as the hungry troopers chased and captured them. The Colonel
and Miss Jemima, though, were perfectly deaf to the clamor made by the
poultry as their necks were wrung, and when a cavalryman rode past the
window with one of Miss Jemima’s pet bronze turkeys hanging from his
saddle-bow and gobbling wildly, Miss Jemima only gave a faint sigh,
and looked very hard at little Miss Letty, who was about to shriek a
protest against such cruelty. Even next morning she made not a single
inquiry as to the startling deficit in the poultry yard. And when Aunt
Tulip began to grumble something about “dem po’ white trash dat cum ter
a gent’mun’ house, an’ cornfuscate he tu’keys settin’ on the nes’,”
Miss Jemima shut her up promptly.
“Not a word, not a word, Tulip. Confederate officers are welcome to
anything at Corbin Hall.”
A few nights after that, the Colonel sat in the library looking at
the hickory fire that danced up the chimney and shone on the polished
floor, and turned little Letty’s yellow hair into burnished gold.
Suddenly a terrific knocking resounded at the door.
In those strange times people’s hearts sometimes stood still when there
was a clamor for entrance; but the Colonel’s brave old heart went on
beating placidly. Not so Dad Davy’s, who, with a negro’s propensity to
get up an excitement about everything, exclaimed solemnly:
“D’yar dee come to bu’n de house over we all’s hades. I done dream lars
night ’bout a ole h’yar cotch hade fo’mos’ in er trap, an’ dat’s a sho’
sign o’ trouble and distrus’fulness.”
“David,” remarked the Colonel, according to custom, “you are a fool. Go
and open the hall door.”
Dad Davy hobbled toward the door and opened it. It was about dusk
on an autumn night, and there was a weird half-light upon the weedy
lawn, and the clumps of gnarled acacias, and the overgrown carriage
drive of pounded oyster-shells. Nor was there any light in the large,
low-pitched hall, with its hard mahogany sofa, and the walls ornamented
with riding-whips and old spurs. A tall and stalwart figure stood
before the door, and a voice out of the darkness asked:
“Is this the house of Mr. Archibald Corbin, and is he at home?”
The sound of that voice seemed to paralyze Dad Davy.
“Lord A’mighty,” he gasped, “’tis Marse Archy’s voice. Look a heah, is
you--is you a _ha’nt?_”[1]
“A what?”
But without waiting for an answer Dad Davy scurried off for a moment
and returned with a tallow candle in a tall silver candlestick. As
he appeared, shading the candle with one dusky hand, and rolling two
great eyeballs at the newcomer, he was handed a visiting card. This
further mystified him, as he had never seen such an implement in his
life before; he gazed with a fixed and frightened gaze at the young
man before him, and his skin gradually turned the ashy hue that terror
produces in a negro.
“Hi, hi,” he spluttered, “you is de spit and image o’ my young Marse,
that was kilt long o’ dis lars’ year. And you got he voice. I kin mos’
swar you wuz Marse Archy Corbin, like he wuz fo’ he got married.”
“And my name is Archibald Corbin, too,” said the young man,
comprehending the strange resemblance between himself and the dead
and gone Archy that had so startled the old negro. He poked his card
vigorously into Dad Davy’s hand.
“What I gwine to do with this heah?” asked Dad Davy, eying the card
suspiciously.
“Take this card to your master.”
“And if he ax me who k’yard ’tis, what I gwi’ tell him?”
At this the young man burst out into a ringing, full-chested laugh. The
negroes were new to him, and ever amusing, and he could not but laugh
at Dad Davy’s simplicity. That laugh brought the Colonel out into the
hall. He advanced with a low bow, which the stranger returned, and took
the card out of Dad Davy’s hand, meanwhile settling his spectacles
carefully on his nose, and reading deliberately:
“Sir Archibald Corbin, Fox Court.”
The Colonel fixed his eyes upon his guest, and, like Dad Davy, the
resemblance to the other Archibald Corbin overcame him instantly. His
lips trembled slightly, and it was a moment or two before he could say,
with his usual blandness:
“I see you are Archibald Corbin, and I am your kinsman, also Archibald
Corbin.”
“Being in your neighborhood,” said Sir Archibald, courteously, “I could
not forbear doing myself the pleasure of making myself known to the
only relatives I have on this side of the water.”
There was something winning and graceful about him, and the Colonel was
much surprised to find that any man born and bred outside of the State
of Virginia should have so fine an address.
“It gives me much gratification,” replied Colonel Corbin, in his most
imposing barytone, “to acknowledge the relationship existing between
the Corbins of Corbin Hall in Virginia and those of Fox Court in
England.”
In saying this he led the way toward the library, where two more tallow
dips in silver candlesticks had been lighted.
When young Corbin came within the circle of the fire’s red light--for
the tallow dips did not count--Miss Jemima uttered a faint scream.
This strange sensation that his appearance made in every member
of the family rather vexed the young Englishman, who was a robust
specimen, and with nothing uncanny about him, except the strange and
uncomfortable likeness to a dead man whom he had never seen or heard of
until that moment.
“Pardon me,” said the Colonel, after a moment, in a choked voice,
“but your resemblance to my only son, who was killed while gallantly
leading his regiment, is something extraordinary, and you will perhaps
understand a father’s agitation”--here two scanty tears rolled down
upon his white mustache. Even little Miss Letty looked at the newcomer
with troubled eyes and quivering lips.
Young Corbin, with a hearty and healthy desire to get upon more
comfortable subjects of discourse, mentioned that, having a taste for
adventure, he had come to America during the terrible upheaval, and
through the influence of friends in power he had obtained a temporary
staff appointment, by which he was able to see something of actual
warfare.
This statement was heard in absolute silence. Young Corbin received a
subtile impression that his new-found relatives rather disapproved
of him, and that the fact that he was a baronet with a big rent-roll,
which had hitherto brought him the highest consideration, ranked as
nothing with these primitive people. Naturally, this was a stab to
the self-love of a young fellow of twenty-two, but with the innate
independence of a man born to position and possessions, he refrained
from forcing his consequence upon his relatives. The Colonel talked
learnedly and eloquently upon the subject of the Corbins and their
pedigree, to which Miss Jemima listened complacently. Little Miss
Letty, though, seemed to regard the guest as a base intruder, and
glowered viciously upon him, while she knitted a large woolen sock.
Supper was presently announced by Dad Davy. There might be a rag carpet
on the floor at Corbin Hall, and tallow dips, but there was sure to
be enough on the table to feed a regiment. This supper was the most
satisfactory thing that young Sir Archy had seen yet among his Virginia
relations. There was an “old ham” cured in the smoke from hickory
ashes, and deviled turkey after Miss Jemima’s own recipe, and it took
Tom Battercake, Black Juba, and little Patsy Jane, all together, to
bring in supplies of battercakes, to which the invariable formula was:
“Take two, and butter them while they are hot.”
The Colonel kept up a steady fusillade, reinforced by Miss Jemima, of
all the family history, peculiarities, and what not, of the Corbin
family. The Corbins were, to a man, the best judges of wines in the
State of Virginia; they inherited great capacity for whist; and were
remarkable for putting a just estimate upon people, and inflexible in
maintaining their opinions. “Of which,” said the Colonel, suavely, “I
will give you an example:
“My honored father always believed that it was the guest’s duty, when
spending the night at a house, to make the motion toward retiring
for the night. My uncle, John Whiting Corbin, held the contrary. As
both knew the other’s inflexibility they avoided ever spending the
night at each other’s houses, although upon the most affectionate and
brotherly terms. Upon one occasion, however, my uncle was caught at
Corbin Hall by stress of weather. The evening passed pleasantly, but
toward midnight the rest of the family, including my sister Jemima and
myself, retired, leaving my father and his brother amicably discussing
the Virginia resolutions of ’98. As the night wore on both wished to
retire, but my father would not transgress the code of etiquette he
professed, by suggesting bedtime to his guest, nor would my uncle yield
the point by making the first move.
“When, at daylight the next morning, my boy Davy came in to make the
fire, here, sir, in this library, I assure you, my father and his
brother were still discussing the resolutions of ’98. They had been at
it all night.”
This was one of the Colonel’s crack stories, and Sir Archy laughed
at it heartily enough. But with all this studied hospitality toward
himself, he felt more, every moment, in spite of the Colonel’s sounding
periods, that he was merely tolerated at best, and as he had never
been snubbed before in his life, the experience did not please him. At
ten o’clock he rose to go, saying that he preferred traveling by night
under the circumstances. The Colonel invited him to remain longer, with
careful politeness, but when the invitation was declined, no more was
visible than civil regret. Nevertheless, the Colonel went himself to
see that Sir Archy’s horse had been properly fed and rubbed down, and
Miss Jemima went to fetch a glass of the home-made wine, which nearly
choked Sir Archy in the effort to gulp it down. He was alone for a few
moments with pretty little Letty, who had not for a moment abandoned
her standoffish attitude.
“Will you be glad to see me the next time I come, little cousin?” he
asked, mischievously.
Here was a chance for Letty to annihilate this brazen newcomer, and
she proceeded to do it by quoting one of the Colonel’s most elaborate
phrases. She got slightly mixed on the word “adamantine,” but still
Letty thought it sounded very well when she remarked, loftily, “I
have an anti-mundane prejudice toward foreigners meddling in domestic
broils.” And every word was punctuated by a scowl.
Miss Letty fondly imagined that the young Englishman would be awed and
delighted at this prodigious remark in one so young, but when Sir Archy
burst into one of his rich and ringing laughs, Letty promptly realized
that he was laughing at her, and could have pulled his hair with
pleasure.
Sir Archy was still laughing and Letty was still blushing and scowling
when their elders returned. In a little while Sir Archy was galloping
down the sandy lane at Corbin Hall, with the faint lights of the
grim old house twinkling far behind him. It was an odd experience,
and not altogether pleasing. For once, he had met people who knew he
was a baronet, and who did not care for it, and who knew he had a
great property, and who did not feel the slightest respect for it.
There was something sad, something ludicrous, and something noble and
disinterested about those refined, unsophisticated people at Corbin
Hall; and when that little sulky, frowning thing grew up, she would
be a beauty, Sir Archy decided, as he galloped along the sandy road
through the moonlight night.