I
I found the major standing in front of Delmonico's, interviewing a large,
bare-headed personage in brown cloth spotted with brass buttons. The major
was in search of his very particular friend, Mr. John Hardy of Madison
Square, and the personage in brown and brass was rather languidly
indicating, by a limp and indecisive forefinger, a route through a section
of the city which, correctly followed, would have landed the major in the
East River.
I knew him by the peculiar slant of his slouch hat, the rosy glow of his
face, and the way in which his trousers clung to the curves of his
well-developed legs, and ended in a sprawl that half covered his shoes. I
recognized, too, a carpet-bag, a ninety-nine-cent affair, an "occasion,"
with galvanized iron clasps and paper-leather sides,--the kind opened with
your thumb.
The major--or, to be more definite, Major Tom Slocomb of Pocomoke--was
from one of the lower counties of the Chesapeake. He was supposed to own,
as a gift from his dead wife, all that remained unmortgaged of a vast
colonial estate on Crab Island in the bay, consisting of several thousand
acres of land and water,--mostly water,--a manor house, once painted
white, and a number of outbuildings in various stages of dilapidation and
decay.
In his early penniless life he had migrated from his more northern native
State, settled in the county, and, shortly after his arrival, had married
the relict of the late lamented Major John Talbot of Pocomoke. This had
been greatly to the surprise of many eminent Pocomokians, who boasted of
the purity and antiquity of the Talbot blood, and who could not look on in
silence, and see it degraded and diluted by an alliance with a "harf
strainer or worse." As one possible Talbot heir put it, "a picayune,
low-down corncracker, suh, without blood or breedin'."
The objections were well taken. So far as the ancestry of the Slocomb
family was concerned, it was a trifle indefinite. It really could not be
traced back farther than the day of the major's arrival at Pocomoke,
notwithstanding the major's several claims that his ancestors came over
in the Mayflower, that his grandfather fought with General Washington, and
that his own early life had been spent on the James River. These
statements, to thoughtful Pocomokians, seemed so conflicting and
improbable, that his neighbors and acquaintances ascribed them either to
that total disregard for salient facts which characterized the major's
speech, or to the vagaries of that rich and vivid imagination which had
made his conquest of the widow so easy and complete.
Gradually, however, through the influence of his wife, and because of his
own unruffled good-humor, the antipathy had worn away. As years sped on,
no one, except the proudest and loftiest Pocomokian, would have cared to
trace the Slocomb blood farther back than its graft upon the Talbot tree.
Neither would the major. In fact, the brief honeymoon of five years left
so profound an impression upon his after life, that, to use his own words,
his birth and marriage had occurred at the identical moment,--he had never
lived until then.
There was no question in the minds of his neighbors as to whether the
major maintained his new social position on Crab Island with more than
ordinary liberality. Like all new vigorous grafts on an old stock, he not
only blossomed out with extraordinary richness, but sucked the sap of the
primeval family tree quite dry in the process. In fact, it was universally
admitted that could the constant drain of his hospitality have been
brought clearly to the attention of the original proprietor of the estate,
its draft-power would have raised that distinguished military gentleman
out of his grave. "My dear friends," Major Slocomb would say, when, after
his wife's death, some new extravagance was commented upon, "I felt I owed
the additional slight expenditure to the memory of that queen among women,
suh--Major Talbot's widow."
He had espoused, too, with all the ardor of the new settler, the several
articles of political faith of his neighbors,--loyalty to the State,
belief in the justice and humanity of slavery and the omnipotent rights of
man,--white, of course,--and he had, strange to say, fallen into the
peculiar pronunciation of his Southern friends, dropping his final _g_'s,
and slurring his _r_'s, thus acquiring that soft cadence of speech which
makes their dialect so delicious.
As to his title of "Major," no one in or out of the county could tell
where it originated. He had belonged to no company of militia, neither
had he won his laurels on either side during the war; nor yet had the
shifting politics of his State ever honored him with a staff appointment
of like grade. When pressed, he would tell you confidentially that he had
really inherited the title from his wife, whose first husband, as was well
known, had earned and borne that military distinction; adding tenderly,
that she had been so long accustomed to the honor that he had continued it
after her death simply out of respect to her memory.
But the major was still interviewing Delmonico's flunky, oblivious of
everything but the purpose in view, when I touched his shoulder, and
extended my hand.
"God bless me! Not you? Well, by gravy! Here, now, colonel, you can tell
me where Jack Hardy lives. I've been for half an hour walkin' round this
garden lookin' for him. I lost the letter with the number in it, so I came
over here to Delmonico's--Jack dines here often, I know, 'cause he told me
so. I was at his quarters once myself, but 't was in the night. I am
completely bamboozled. Left home yesterday--brought up a couple of
thoroughbred dogs that the owner wouldn't trust with anybody but me, and
then, too, I wanted to see Jack."