declared that both of us were good enough to be Southrons. He promised
that in future he would take all the care he could not to run against
her prejudices, which merely grew out of her confused conception of
State rights and the right of self-government. Women never understood
anything about political economy and government, anyhow.
Having accomplished thus much with the colonel, I turned my attention,
on his departure, to smoothing Clara. I reminded her that nearly
everybody North and South had kinsmen or friends in both armies. To be
sure, it was unfortunate that we, having only one kinsman, should have
had him on the wrong side. That was better than having no kinsman at
all. (Clara was inclined to demur at this.) It had not been practicable
for him to divide himself; if it had been, he would probably have done
it, and the two halves would doubtless have arrayed themselves against
each other. They would, in a manner, have been bound to do so. However,
the war was over, we were victorious, and could afford to be
magnanimous.
"But he doesn't seem to have discovered that the war is over," returned
Clara. "He 'still waves.'"
"It is likely that certain obstinate persons on both sides of Mason and
Dixon's line will be a long time making the discovery. Some will never
make it--so much the worse for them and the country."
Mrs. Wesley meditated and said nothing, but I saw that so far as she
and the colonel were concerned the war was not over.
IV
This slight breeze cleared the atmosphere for the time being. My cousin
Flagg took pains to avoid all but the most indirect allusions to the
war, except when we were alone, and in several small ways
endeavored--with not too dazzling success--to be agreeable to Clara.
The transparency of the effort was perhaps the partial cause of its
failure. And then, too, the nature of his little attentions was not
always carefully considered on his part. For example, Mrs. Wesley could
hardly be expected to lend herself with any grace at all to the
proposal he made one sultry June evening to "knock her up" a
mint-julep, "the most refreshing beverage on earth, madam, in hot
weather, I can assure you." Judge Ashburton Todhunter, of Fauquier
County, had taught him to prepare this pungent elixir from a private
receipt for which the judge had once refused the sum of fifty dollars,
offered to him by Colonel Stanley Bluegrass, of Chattanooga, and this
was at a moment, too, when the judge had been losing very heavily at
draw poker.
"All quiet along the Potomac," whispered the colonel, with a momentary
pride in the pacific relations he had established between himself and
Mrs. Wesley.
As the mint and one or two other necessary ingredients were lacking to
our family stores, the idea of julep was dismissed as a vain dream, and
its place supplied by iced Congress water, a liquid which my cousin
characterized, in a hasty aside to me, as being a drink fit only for
imbecile infants of a tender age.
Washington Flagg's frequent and familiar mention of governors, judges,
colonels, and majors clearly indicated that he had moved in
aristocratic latitudes in the South, and threw light on his
disinclination to consider any of the humbler employments which might
have been open to him. He had so far conceded to the exigency of the
case as to inquire if there were a possible chance for him in the
Savonarola Fire Insurance Company. He had learned of my secretaryship.
There was no vacancy in the office, and if there had been, I would have
taken no steps to fill it with my cousin. He knew nothing of the
business. Besides, however deeply I had his interests at heart, I
should have hesitated to risk my own situation by becoming sponsor for
so unmanageable an element as he appeared to be.
At odd times in my snuggery after dinner Flagg glanced over the "wants"
columns of the evening journal, but never found anything he wanted. He
found many amusing advertisements that served him as pegs on which to
hang witty comment, but nothing to be taken seriously. I ventured to
suggest that he should advertise. He received the idea with little
warmth.
"No, my dear boy, I can't join the long procession of scullions, cooks,
butlers, valets, and bottle-washers which seem to make up so large a
part of your population. I couldn't keep step with them. It is
altogether impossible for me to conduct myself in this matter like a
menial-of-all-work out of place. 'Wanted, a situation, by a respectable
young person of temperate habits; understands the care of horses; is
willing to go into the country and milk the cow with the crumpled
horn.' No; many thanks."
"State your own requirements, Flagg. I didn't propose that you should
offer yourself as coachman."
"It would amount to the same thing, Wesley. I should at once be
relegated to his level. Some large opportunity is dead sure to present
itself to me if I wait. I believe the office should seek the man."
"I have noticed that a man has to meet his opportunities more than
halfway, or he doesn't get acquainted with them. Mohammed was obliged
to go to the mountain, after waiting for the mountain to come to him."
"Mohammed's mistake was that he didn't wait long enough. He was too
impatient. But don't you fret. I have come to Yankeedom to make my
fortune. The despot's heel is on your shore, and it means to remain
there until he hears of something greatly to his advantage."
A few days following this conversation, Mr. Nelson, of Files & Nelson,
wholesale grocers on Front Street, mentioned to me casually that he was
looking for a shipping-clerk. Before the war the firm had done an
extensive Southern trade, which they purposed to build up again now
that the ports of the South were thrown open. The place in question
involved a great deal of outdoor work--the loading and unloading of
spicy cargoes, a life among the piers--all which seemed to me just
suited to my cousin's woodland nature. I could not picture him nailed
to a desk in a counting-room. The salary was not bewildering, but the
sum was to be elastic, if ability were shown. Here was an excellent
chance, a stepping-stone, at all events; perhaps the large opportunity
itself, artfully disguised as fifteen dollars a week. I spoke of Flagg
to Mr. Nelson, and arranged a meeting between them for the next day.
I said nothing of the matter at the dinner-table that evening; but an
encouraging thing always makes a lantern of me, and Clara saw the light
in my face. As soon as dinner was over I drew my cousin into the little
side room, and laid the affair before him.
"And I have made an appointment for you to meet Mr. Nelson to-morrow at
one o'clock," I said, in conclusion.
"My dear Wesley"--he had listened to me in silence, and now spoke
without enthusiasm--"I don't know what you were thinking of to do
anything of the sort. I will not keep the appointment with that person.
The only possible intercourse I could have with him would be to order
groceries at his shop. The idea of a man who has moved in the best
society of the South, who has been engaged in great if unsuccessful
enterprises, who has led the picked chivalry of his oppressed land
against the Northern hordes--the idea of a gentleman of this kidney
meekly simmering down into a factotum to a Yankee dealer in canned
goods! No, sir; I reckon I can do better than that."
The lantern went out.
I resolved that moment to let my cousin shape his own destiny--a task
which in no way appeared to trouble him. And, indeed, now that I look
back to it, why should he have troubled himself? He had a comfortable
if not luxurious apartment in Macdougal Street; a daily dinner that
asked only to be eaten; a wardrobe that was replenished when it needed
replenishing; a weekly allowance that made up for its modesty by its
punctuality. If ever a man was in a position patiently to await the
obsequious approach of large opportunities that man was Washington
Flagg. He was not insensible to the fact. He passed his time serenely.
He walked the streets--Flagg was a great walker--sometimes wandering
for hours in the Central Park. His Southern life, passed partly among
plantations, had given him a relish for trees and rocks and waters. He
was also a hungry reader of novels. When he had devoured our slender
store of fiction, which was soon done, he took books from a small
circulating library on Sixth Avenue. That he gave no thought whatever
to the future was clear. He simply drifted down the gentle stream of
the present. Sufficient to the day was the sunshine thereof.
In spite of his unforgivable inertia, and the egotism that enveloped
him like an atmosphere, there was a charm to the man that put my
impatience to sleep. I tried to think that this indifference and sunny
idleness were perhaps the natural reaction of that larger life of
emotion and activity from which he had just emerged. I reflected a
great deal on that life, and, though I lamented the fact that he had
drawn his sword on the wrong side, there was, down deep in my heart, an
involuntary sympathetic throb for the valor that had not availed. I
suppose the inexplicable ties of kinship had something to do with all
this.
Washington Flagg had now been with us five weeks. He usually lingered
awhile after dinner; sometimes spent the entire evening with the
family, or, rather, with me, for Mrs. Wesley preferred the sitting-room
to my den when I had company. Besides, there were Sheridan and Ulysses
to be looked to. Toward the close of the sixth week I noticed that
Flagg had fallen into a way of leaving immediately after dinner. He had
also fallen into another way not so open to pleasant criticism.
By degrees--by degrees so subtle as almost to escape measurement--he
had glided back to the forbidden and dangerous ground of the war. At
first it was an intangible reference to something that occurred on such
and such a date, the date in question being that of some sanguinary
battle; then a swift sarcasm, veiled and softly shod; then a sarcasm
that dropped its veil for an instant, and showed its sharp features. At
last his thought wore no disguise. Possibly the man could not help it;
possibly there was something in the atmosphere of the house that
impelled him to say things which he would have been unlikely to say
elsewhere. Whatever was the explanation, my cousin Flagg began to make
himself disagreeable again at meal-times.
He had never much regarded my disapproval, and now his early
ill-defined fear of Mrs. Wesley was evaporated. He no longer hesitated
to indulge in his war reminiscences, which necessarily brought his
personal exploits under a calcium-light. These exploits usually
emphasized his intimacy with some of the more dashing Southern leaders,
such as Stonewall Jackson and Jeb Stuart and Mosby. We found ourselves
practically conscripted in the Confederate army. We were taken on long
midnight rides through the passes of the Cumberland Mountains and
hurled on some Federal outpost; we were made--a mere handful as we
were--to assault and carry most formidable earthworks; we crossed
dangerous fords, and bivouacked under boughs hung with weird gonfalons
of gray moss, slit here and there by the edge of a star. Many a time we
crawled stealthily through tangled vines and shrubs to the skirt of a
wood, and across a fallen log sighted the Yankee picket whose bayonet
point glimmered now and then far off in the moonlight. We spent a great
many hours around the camp-fire counting our metaphorical scalps.
One evening the colonel was especially exasperating with anecdotes of
Stonewall Jackson, and details of what he said to the general and what
the general said to him.
"Stonewall Jackson often used to say to me, 'George'--he always called
me George, in just that off-hand way--'George, when we get to New York,
you shall have quarters in the Astor House, and pasture your mare
Spitfire in the Park."'
"That was very thoughtful of Stonewall Jackson," remarked Mrs. Wesley,
with the faintest little whiteness gathering at the lips. "I am sorry
that your late friend did not accompany you to the city, and personally
superintend your settlement here. He would have been able to surround
you with so many more comforts than you have in Macdougal Street."
The colonel smiled upon Clara, and made a deprecating gesture with his
left hand. Nothing seemed to pierce his ironclad composure. A moment
afterward he returned to the theme, and recited some verses called
"Stonewall Jackson's Way." He recited them very well. One stanza
lingers in my memory--
"We see him now--the old slouched hat
Cocked o'er his brow askew,
The shrewd, dry smile, the speech so pat,
So calm, so blunt, so true.
The Blue-light Elder knows 'em well.
Says he: 'That's Banks; he's fond of shell.
Lord save his soul! we'll give him'--Well,
That's Stonewall Jackson's way."
"His ways must have been far from agreeable," observed my wife, "if
that is a sample of them."
After the colonel had taken himself off, Mrs. Wesley, sinking wearily
upon the sofa, said, "I think I am getting rather tired of Stonewall
Jackson."
"We both are, my dear; and some of our corps commanders used to find
him rather tiresome now and then. He was really a great soldier, Clara;
perhaps the greatest on the other side."
"I suppose he was; but Flagg comes next--according to his own report.
Why, Tom, if your cousin had been in all the battles he says he has,
the man would have been killed ten times over. He'd have had at least
an arm or a leg shot off."
That Washington Flagg had all his limbs on was actually becoming a
grievance to Mrs. Wesley.
The situation filled me with anxiety. Between my cousin's deplorable
attitude and my wife's justifiable irritation, I was extremely
perplexed. If I had had a dozen cousins, the solution of the difficulty
would have been simple. But to close our door on our only kinsman was
an intolerable alternative.
If any word of mine has caused the impression that Clara was not gentle
and sympathetic and altogether feminine, I have wronged her. The
reserve which strangers mistook for coldness was a shell that melted at
the slightest kind touch, her masterful air the merest seeming. But
whatever latent antagonism lay in her nature the colonel had the
faculty of bringing to the surface. It must be conceded that the
circumstances in which she was placed were trying, and Clara was
without that strong, perhaps abnormal, sense of relationship which
sustained me in the ordeal. Later on, when matters grew more
complicated, I could but admire her resignation--if it were not
helpless despair. Sometimes, indeed, she was unable to obliterate
herself, and not only stood by her guns, but carried the war into the
enemy's country. I very frequently found myself between two fires, and
was glad to drag what small fragments were left of me from the scene of
action. In brief, the little house in Clinton Place was rapidly
transforming itself into a ghastly caricature of home.
Up to the present state of affairs the colonel had never once failed to
appear at dinner-time. We had become so accustomed to his ring at the
prescribed hour, and to hearing him outside in the hall softly humming
The Bonny Blue Flag, or I wish I was in Dixie's Land (a wish which he
did not wholly monopolize)--we had, I repeat, become so accustomed to
these details that one night when he absented himself we experienced a
kind of alarm. It was not until the clock struck ten that we gave over
expecting him. Then, fearing that possibly he was ill, I put on my hat
and stepped round to Macdougal Street. Mr. Flagg had gone out late in
the afternoon, and had not returned. No, he had left no word in case
any one called. What had happened? I smile to myself now, and I have
smiled a great many times, at the remembrance of how worried I was that
night as I walked slowly back to Clinton Place.
The next evening my cousin explained his absence. He had made the
acquaintance of some distinguished literary gentlemen, who had invited
him to dine with them at a certain German cafe, which at an earlier
date had been rather famous as the rendezvous of a group of young
journalists, wits, and unblossomed poets, known as "The Bohemians." The
war had caused sad havoc with these light--hearted Knights of the Long
Table, and it was only upon a scattered remnant of the goodly company
that the colonel had fallen. How it came about, I do not know. I know
that the acquaintance presently flowered into intimacy, and that at
frequent intervals after this we had a vacant chair at table. My cousin
did not give himself the pains to advise us of his engagements, so
these absences were not as pleasant as they would have been if we had
not expected him every minute.
Recently, too, our expectation of his coming was tinged with a dread
which neither I nor Mrs. Wesley had named to each other. A change was
gradually taking place in my cousin. Hitherto his amiability, even when
he was most unendurable, had been a part of him. Obviously he was
losing that lightness of spirit which we once disliked and now began to
regret. He was inclined to be excitable and sullen by turns, and often
of late I had been obliged to go to the bottom of my diplomacy in
preventing some painful scene. As I have said, neither my wife nor I
had spoken definitely of this alteration; but the cause and nature of
it could not long be ignored between us.
"How patient you are with him, dear!" said Mrs. Wesley, as I was
turning out the gas after one of our grim and grotesque little dinners:
the colonel had not dined with us before for a week. "I don't see how
you can be so patient with the man."
"Blood is thicker than water, Clara."
"But it isn't thicker than whiskey and water, is it?"
She had said it. The colonel was drinking. It was not a question of
that light elixir the precious receipt for which had been confided to
him by Judge Ashburton Todhunter, of Fauquier County; it was a question
of a heavier and more immediate poison. The fact that Flagg might in
some desperate state drop in on us at any moment stared us in the face.
That was a very serious contingency, and it was one I could not guard
against. I had no false ideas touching my influence over Washington
Flagg. I did not dream of attempting to influence him; I was powerless.
I could do nothing but wait, and wonder what would happen. There was
nothing the man might not be capable of in some insane moment.
In the meanwhile I was afraid to go out of an evening and leave Clara
alone. It was impossible for us to ask a friend to dinner, though,
indeed, we had not done that since my cousin dropped down on us. It was
no relief that his visits grew rarer and rarer; the apprehension
remained. It was no relief when they ceased altogether, for it came to
that at last.
A month had elapsed since he had called at the house. I had caught
sight of him once on Broadway as I was riding up town in an omnibus. He
was standing at the top of the steep flight of steps that led to Herr
Pfaff's saloon in the basement. It was probably Flagg's dinner hour.
Mrs. Morgan, the landlady in Macdougal Street, a melancholy little
soul, was now the only link between me and my kinsman. I had a weekly
interview with her. I learned that Mr. Flagg slept late, was seldom in
during the day, and usually returned after midnight. A person with this
eccentric scheme of life was not likely to be at home at such hours as
I might find it convenient to call. Nevertheless, from time to time I
knocked at the unresponsive door of his room. The two notes I had
written to him he left unanswered.
All this was very grievous. He had been a trouble to me when I had him,
and he was a trouble to me now I had lost him. My trouble had merely
changed its color. On what downward way were his footsteps? What was to
be the end of it? Sometimes I lay awake at night thinking of him. Of
course, if he went to the dogs, he had nobody to blame but himself. I
was not responsible for his wrong-going; nevertheless, I could not
throw off my anxiety in the matter. That Flagg was leading a wild life
in these days was presumable. Indeed, certain rumors to that effect
were indirectly blown to me from the caves of Gambrinus. Not that I
believe the bohemians demoralized him. He probably demoralized the
bohemians. I began to reflect whether fate had not behaved rather
handsomely, after all, in not giving me a great many relatives.
If I remember rightly, it was two months since I had laid eyes on my
cousin, when, on returning home one evening, I noticed that the front
door stood wide open, and had apparently been left to take care of
itself. As I mounted the steps, a little annoyed at Mary's
carelessness, I heard voices in the hall. Washington Flagg was standing
at the foot of the staircase, with his hand on the newel-post, and Mrs.
Wesley was halfway up the stairs, as if in the act of descending. I
learned later that she had occupied this position for about three
quarters of an hour. She was extremely pale and much agitated. Flagg's
flushed face and tilted hat told his part of the story. He was not in
one of his saturnine moods. He was amiably, and, if I may say it,
gracefully drunk, and evidently had all his wits about him.
"I've been telling Mrs. Wesley," he began at once, as if I had been
present all the while, and he was politely lifting me into the
conversation--"I've been telling Mrs. Wesley that I'm a Lost Cause."
"A lost soul," was Mrs. Wesley's amendment from the staircase. "Oh,
Tom, I am so glad you have come! I thought you never would! I let him
in an hour or two ago, and he has kept me here ever since."
"You were so entertaining," said my cousin, with a courteous sweep of
his disengaged hand, and speaking with that correctness of enunciation
which sometimes survives everything.
"Flagg," I said, stepping to his side, "you will oblige me by returning
to your lodgings."
"You think I'm not all right?"
"I am sure of it."
"And you don't want me here, dear old boy?"
"No, I don't want you here. The time has come for me to be frank with
you, Flagg, and I see that your mind is clear enough to enable you to
understand what I say."
"I reckon I can follow you, Thomas."
"My stock of romantic nonsense about kinship and family duties, and all
that, has given out, and will not be renewed."
"Won't do business any more at the old stand?"
"Exactly so. I have done everything I could to help you, and you have
done nothing whatever for yourself. You have not even done yourself the
scant justice of treating Clara and me decently. In future you will be
obliged to look after your own affairs, financial as well as social.
Your best plan now is to go to work. I shall no longer concern myself
with your comings and goings, except so far as to prevent you from
coming here and disturbing Clara. Have you put that down?"
"Wesley, my boy, I'll pay you for this."
"If you do, it will be the first thing you have paid for since you came
North."
My statement, however accurate, was not wholly delicate, and I
subsequently regretted it, but when a patient man loses his patience he
goes to extremes. Washington Flagg straightened himself for an instant,
and then smiled upon me in an amused, patronizing way quite
untranslatable.
"Thomas, that was neat, very neat--for you. When I see Judge Ashburton
Todhunter I'll tell him about it. It's the sort of mild joke he likes."
"I should be proud to have Judge Ashburton Todhunter's approval of any
remark of mine, but in the meanwhile it would be a greater pleasure to
me to have you return at once to Macdougal Street, where, no doubt,
Mrs. Morgan is delaying dinner for you."
"Say no more, Wesley. I'll never set foot in your house again, as sure
as my name is Flagg--and long may I wave o'er the land of the free and
the home of the brave."
"He is a kind of Flagg that I don't wish to have wave over MY home,"
said Mrs. Wesley, descending the stairs as my cousin with painful care
closed the door softly behind him.
So the end was come. It had come with less unpleasantness than I should
have predicted. The ties of kindred, too tightly stretched, had
snapped; but they had snapped very gently, so to speak.
V
Washington Flagg was as good as his word, which is perhaps not a strong
indorsement. He never again set foot in my house. A week afterward I
found that he had quitted Macdougal Street.
"He has gone South," said Mrs. Morgan.
"Did he leave no message for me?"
"He didn't leave a message for nobody."
"Did he happen to say to what part of the South he was bound?"
"He said he was going back to Dixie's Land, and didn't say no more."