TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
—Obvious print and punctuation errors were corrected.
—Bold text has been rendered as =bold text=
“SHORT SIXES.”
[Illustration: _LOUISE._]
“SHORT SIXES”
STORIES TO BE READ WHILE THE CANDLE BURNS
BY
H. C. BUNNER
_Author of “Airs from Arcady” “The Midge” etc._
ILLUSTRATED BY
C. JAY TAYLOR, F. OPPER AND S. B. GRIFFIN
PUCK
KEPPLER & SCHWARZMANN
NEW YORK
1891
Copyright, 1890, by KEPPLER & SCHWARZMANN.
[Illustration: LOGO]
TO
A. L. B.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
I. The Tenor 1
_Illustrated by C. Jay Taylor._
II. Col. Brereton’s Aunty 23
_Illustrated by C. Jay Taylor._
III. A Round–Up 39
_Illustrated by C. Jay Taylor._
IV. The Two Churches of ’Quawket 55
_Illustrated by F. Opper._
V. The Love–Letters of Smith 71
_Illustrated by C. Jay Taylor._
VI. Zenobia’s Infidelity 89
_Illustrated by S. B. Griffin._
VII. The Nine Cent–Girls 111
_Illustrated by S. B. Griffin._
VIII. The Nice People 129
_Illustrated by C. Jay Taylor._
IX. Mr. Copernicus and the Proletariat 147
_Illustrated by C. Jay Taylor._
X. Hector 165
_Illustrated by C. Jay Taylor._
XI. A Sisterly Scheme 181
_Illustrated by C. Jay Taylor._
XII. Zozo 199
_Illustrated by C. Jay Taylor._
XIII. An Old, Old Story 217
_Illustrated by C. Jay Taylor._
THE TENOR.
[Illustration: _“‘I kill hare! give me my knife—give me my
rivvolvare!’”_]
THE TENOR.
It was a dim, quiet room in an old–fashioned New York house, with
windows opening upon a garden that was trim and attractive, even in its
Winter dress—for the rose–bushes were all bundled up in straw ulsters.
The room was ample, yet it had a cosy air. Its dark hangings suggested
comfort and luxury, with no hint of gloom. A hundred pretty trifles
told that it was a young girl’s room: in the deep alcove nestled her
dainty white bed, draped with creamy lace and ribbons.
[Illustration]
“I was _so_ afraid that I’d be late!”
The door opened, and two pretty girls came in, one in hat and furs,
the other in a modest house–dress. The girl in the furs, who had been
afraid that she would be late, was fair, with a bright color in her
cheeks, and an eager, intent look in her clear brown eyes. The other
girl was dark–eyed and dark–haired, dreamy, with a soft, warm, dusky
color in her face. They were two very pretty girls indeed—or, rather,
two girls about to be very pretty, for neither one was eighteen years
old. The dark girl glanced at a little porcelain clock.
“You are in time, dear,” she said, and helped her companion to take off
her wraps.
Then the two girls crossed the room, and with a caressing and almost
a reverent touch, the dark girl opened the doors of a little carven
cabinet that hung upon the wall, above a small table covered with a
delicate white cloth. In its depths, framed in a mat of odorous double
violets, stood the photograph of the face of a handsome man of forty—a
face crowned with clustering black locks, from beneath which a pair of
large, mournful eyes looked out with something like religious fervor in
their rapt gaze. It was the face of a foreigner.
[Illustration]
“O Esther!” cried the other girl, “how beautifully you have dressed him
to–day!”
“I wanted to get more,” Esther said; “but I’ve spent almost all my
allowance—and violets do cost so shockingly. Come, now—” with another
glance at the clock—“don’t let’s lose any more time, Louise dear.”
She brought a couple of tiny candles in Sèvres candlesticks, and two
little silver saucers, in which she lit fragrant pastilles. As the
pale gray smoke arose, floating in faint wreaths and spirals before
the enshrined photograph, Louise sat down and gazed intently upon
the little altar. Esther went to her piano and watched the clock. It
struck two. Her hands fell softly on the keys, and, studying a printed
programme in front of her, she began to play an overture. After the
overture she played one or two pieces of the regular concert stock.
Then she paused.
“I can’t play the Tschaikowski piece.”
“Never mind,” said the other. “Let us wait for him in silence.”
The hands of the clock pointed to 2:29. Each girl drew a quick breath,
and then the one at the piano began to sing softly, almost inaudibly,
“les Rameaux” in a transcription for tenor of Faure’s great song. When
it was ended, she played and sang the _encore_. Then, with her fingers
touching the keys so softly that they awakened only an echo–like sound,
she ran over the numbers that intervened between the first tenor solo
and the second. Then she sang again, as softly as before.
The fair–haired girl sat by the little table, gazing intently on
the picture. Her great eyes seemed to devour it, and yet there was
something absent–minded, speculative, in her steady look. She did not
speak until Esther played the last number on the programme.
“He had three encores for that last Saturday,” she said, and Esther
played the three encores.
Then they closed the piano and the little cabinet, and exchanged an
innocent girlish kiss, and Louise went out, and found her father’s
coupé waiting for her, and was driven away to her great, gloomy,
brown–stone home near Central Park.
Louise Laura Latimer and Esther Van Guilder were the only children
of two families which, though they were possessed of the three “Rs”
which are all and more than are needed to insure admission to New York
society—Riches, Respectability and Religion—yet were not in Society;
or, at least, in the society that calls itself Society. This was not
because Society was not willing to have them. It was because they
thought the world too worldly. Perhaps this was one reason—although
the social horizon of the two families had expanded somewhat as the
girls grew up—why Louise and Esther, who had been playmates from their
nursery days, and had grown up to be two uncommonly sentimental,
fanciful, enthusiastically morbid girls, were to be found spending a
bright Winter afternoon holding a ceremonial service of worship before
the photograph of a fashionable French tenor.
It happened to be a French tenor whom they were worshiping. It might as
well have been anybody or any thing else. They were both at that period
of girlish growth when the young female bosom is torn by a hysterical
craving to worship something—any thing. They had been studying music,
and they had selected the tenor who was the sensation of the hour in
New York for their idol. They had heard him only on the concert stage;
they were never likely to see him nearer. But it was a mere matter of
chance that the idol was not a Boston Transcendentalist, a Popular
Preacher, a Faith–Cure Healer, or a ringleted old maid with advanced
ideas of Woman’s Mission. The ceremonies might have been different in
form: the worship would have been the same.
M. Hyppolite Rémy was certainly the musical hero of the hour. When
his advance notices first appeared, the New York critics, who are a
singularly unconfiding, incredulous lot, were inclined to discount his
European reputation.
When they learned that M. Rémy was not only a great artist, but a man
whose character was “wholly free from that deplorable laxity which is
so often a blot on the proud escutcheon of his noble profession;” that
he had married an American lady; that he had “embraced the Protestant
religion”—no sect was specified, possibly to avoid jealousy—and that
his health was delicate, they were moved to suspect that he might have
to ask that allowances be made for his singing. But when he arrived,
his triumph was complete. He was as handsome as his pictures, if he
_was_ a trifle short, a shade too stout.
He was a singer of genius, too; with a splendid voice and a sound
method—on the whole. It was before the days of the Wagner autocracy,
and perhaps his tremolo passed unchallenged as it could not now; but he
was a great artist. He knew his business as well as his advance–agent
knew his. The Rémy Concerts were a splendid success. Reserved seats,
$5. For the Series of Six, $25.
* * * * *
On the following Monday, Esther Van Guilder returned her friend’s
call, in response to an urgent invitation, despatched by mail.
Louise Latimer’s great bare room was incapable of transmutation into
a cosy nest of a boudoir. There was too much of its heavy raw silk
furniture—too much of its vast, sarcophagus–like bed—too much of its
upholsterer’s elegance, regardless of cost—and taste. An enlargement
from an ambrotype of the original Latimer, as he arrived in New York
from New Hampshire, and a photograph of a “child subject” by Millais,
were all her works of art. It was not to be doubted that they had
climbed upstairs from a front parlor of an earlier stage of social
development. The farm–house was six generations behind Esther; two
behind Louise.
Esther found her friend in a state of almost feverish excitement. Her
eyes shone; the color burned high on her clear cheeks.
“You never would guess what I’ve done, dear!” she began, as soon as
they were alone in the big room. “I’m going to see _him_—to speak to
him—_Esther_!” Her voice was solemnly hushed, “to _serve_ him!”
“Oh, Louise! what _do_ you mean?”
“To serve him—with my own hands! To—to—help him on with his coat—I
don’t know—to do something that a servant does—any thing, so that I can
say that once, once only, just for an hour, I have been near him, been
of use to him, served him in one little thing, as loyally as he serves
OUR ART.”
[Illustration]
Music was THEIR art, and no capitals could tell how much it was theirs
or how much of an art it was.
“Louise,” demanded Esther, with a frightened look, “are you crazy?”
“No. Read this!” She handed the other girl a clipping from the
advertising columns of a newspaper.
[Illustration:
CHAMBERMAID AND WAITRESS.—WANTED, A NEAT
and willing girl, for light work. Apply to Mme. Rémy, The
Midlothian, .... Broadway.]
“I saw it just by accident, Saturday, after I left you. Papa had left
his paper in the coupé. I was going up to my First Aid to the Injured
Class—it’s at four o’clock now, you know. I made up my mind right
off—it came to me like an inspiration. I just waited until it came to
the place where they showed how to tie up arteries, and then I slipped
out. Lots of the girls slip out in the horrid parts, you know. And
then, instead of waiting in the ante–room, I put on my wrap, and pulled
the hood over my head and ran off to the Midlothian—it’s just around
the corner, you know. And I saw his wife.”
“What was she like?” queried Esther, eagerly.
“Oh, I don’t know. Sort of horrid—actressy. She had a pink silk wrapper
with swansdown all over it—at four o’clock, think! I was _awfully_
frightened when I got there; but it wasn’t the least trouble. She
hardly looked at me, and she engaged me right off. She just asked me if
I was willing to do a whole lot of things—I forget what they were—and
where I’d worked before. I said at Mrs. Barcalow’s.”
“‘Mrs. Barcalow’s?’”
“Why, yes—my Aunt Amanda, don’t you know—up in Framingham. I always
have to wash the teacups when I go there. Aunty says that everybody has
got to do _something_ in _her_ house.”
“Oh, Louise!” cried her friend, in shocked admiration; “how can you
think of such things?”
“Well, I did. And she—his wife, you know—just said: ‘Oh, I suppose
you’ll do as well as any one—all you girls are alike.’”
“But did she really take you for a—_servant_?”
“Why, yes, indeed. It was raining. I had that old ulster on, you know.
I’m to go at twelve o’clock next Saturday.”
“But, Louise!” cried Esther, aghast, “you don’t truly mean to go!”
“I do!” cried Louise, beaming triumphantly.
“_Oh, Louise!_”
“Now, listen, dear, said Miss Latimer, with the decision of an
enthusiastic young lady with New England blood in her veins. ‘Don’t say
a word till I tell you what my plan is. I’ve thought it all out, and
you’ve got to help me.’”
Esther shuddered.
“You foolish child!” cried Louise. Her eyes were sparkling: she was
in a state of ecstatic excitement; she could see no obstacles to the
carrying out of her plan. “You don’t think I mean to _stay_ there, do
you? I’m just going at twelve o’clock, and at four he comes back from
the matinée, and at five o’clock I’m going to slip on my things and run
downstairs, and have you waiting for me in the coupé, and off we go.
Now do you see?”
It took some time to bring Esther’s less venturesome spirit up to the
point of assisting in this bold undertaking; but she began, after a
while, to feel the delights of vicarious enterprise, and in the end the
two girls, their cheeks flushed, their eyes shining feverishly, their
voices tremulous with childish eagerness, resolved themselves into
a committee of ways and means; for they were two well–guarded young
women, and to engineer five hours of liberty was difficult to the
verge of impossibility. However, there is a financial manœuvre known as
“kiting checks,” whereby A exchanges a check with B and B swaps with
A again, playing an imaginary balance against Time and the Clearing
House; and by a similar scheme, which an acute student of social
ethics has called “kiting calls,” the girls found that they could make
Saturday afternoon their own, without one glance from the watchful eyes
of Esther’s mother or Louise’s aunt—Louise had only an aunt to reckon
with.
“And, oh, Esther!” cried the bolder of the conspirators, “I’ve thought
of a trunk—of course I’ve got to have a trunk, or she would ask me
where it was, and I couldn’t tell her a fib. Don’t you remember the
French maid who died three days after she came here? Her trunk is up in
the store–room still, and I don’t believe anybody will ever come for
it—it’s been there seven years now. Let’s go up and look at it.”
The girls romped upstairs to the great unused upper story, where heaps
of household rubbish obscured the dusty half–windows. In a corner,
behind Louise’s baby chair and an unfashionable hat–rack of the old
steering–wheel pattern, they found the little brown–painted tin trunk,
corded up with clothes–line.
“Louise!” said Esther, hastily, “what did you tell her your name was?”
“I just said ‘Louise’.”
Esther pointed to the name painted on the trunk,
=Louise Lévy.=
“It is the hand of Providence,” she said. “Somehow, now, I’m _sure_
you’re quite right to go.”
And neither of these conscientious young ladies reflected for one
minute on the discomfort which might be occasioned to Madame Rémy by
the defection of her new servant a half–hour before dinner–time on
Saturday night.
* * * * *
“Oh, child, it’s you, is it?” was Mme. Rémy’s greeting at twelve
o’clock on Saturday. “Well, you’re punctual—and you look clean. Now,
are you going to break my dishes or are you going to steal my rings?
Well, we’ll find out soon enough. Your trunk’s up in your room. Go up
to the servants’ quarters—right at the top of those stairs there. Ask
for the room that belongs to apartment 11. You are to room with their
girl.”
[Illustration]
Louise was glad of a moment’s respite. She had taken the plunge; she
was determined to go through to the end. But her heart _would_ beat
and her hands _would_ tremble. She climbed up six flights of winding
stairs, and found herself weak and dizzy when she reached the top and
gazed around her. She was in a great half–story room, eighty feet
square. The most of it was filled with heaps of old furniture and
bedding, rolls of carpet, of canvas, of oilcloth, and odds and ends of
discarded or unused household gear—the dust thick over all. A little
space had been left around three sides, to give access to three rows of
cell–like rooms, in each of which the ceiling sloped from the very door
to a tiny window at the level of the floor. In each room was a bed, a
bureau that served for wash–stand, a small looking–glass, and one or
two trunks. Women’s dresses hung on the whitewashed walls. She found
No. 11, threw off, desperately, her hat and jacket, and sunk down on
the little brown tin trunk, all trembling from head to foot.
[Illustration]
“Hello,” called a cheery voice. She looked up and saw a girl in a dirty
calico dress.
“Just come?” inquired this person, with agreeable informality. She was
a good–looking large girl, with red hair and bright cheeks. She leaned
against the door–post and polished her finger–nails with a little
brush. Her hands were shapely.
“Ain’t got onto the stair–climbing racket yet, eh? You’ll get used to
it. ‘Louise Lévy,’” she read the name on the trunk. “You don’t look
like a sheeny. Can’t tell nothin’ ’bout names, can you? My name’s
Slattery. You’d think I was Irish, wouldn’t you? Well, I’m straight Ne’
York. I’d be dead before I was Irish. Born here. Ninth Ward an’ next to
an engine–house. How’s that? There’s white Jews, too. I worked for one,
pickin’ sealskins down in Prince Street. Most took the lungs out of me.
But that wasn’t why I shook the biz. It queered my hands—see? I’m goin’
to be married in the Fall to a German gentleman. He ain’t so Dutch when
you know him, though. He’s a grocer. Drivin’ now; but he buys out the
boss in the Fall. How’s that? He’s dead stuck on my hooks, an’ I have
to keep ’em lookin’ good. I come here because the work was light. I
don’t have to work—only to be doin’ somethin’, see? Only got five halls
and the lamps. You got a fam’ly job, I s’pose? I wouldn’t have that. I
don’t mind the Sooprintendent; but I’d be dead before I’d be bossed by
a woman, see? Say, what fam’ly did you say you was with?”
This stream of talk had acted like a nerve–tonic on Louise. She was
able to answer:
“M—Mr. Rémy.”
“Ramy?—oh, lord! Got the job with His Tonsils? Well, you won’t keep it
long. They’re meaner ’n three balls, see? Rent their room up here and
chip in with eleven. Their girls don’t never stay. Well, I got to step,
or the Sooprintendent’ll be borin’ my ear. Well—so long!”
But Louise had fled down the stairs. “His Tonsils” rang in her ears.
What blasphemy! What sacrilege! She could scarcely pretend to listen to
Mme. Rémy’s first instructions.
The household _was_ parsimonious. Louise washed the caterer’s dishes—he
made a reduction in his price. Thus she learned that a late breakfast
took the place of luncheon. She began to feel what this meant. The
beds had been made; but there was work enough. She helped Mme. Rémy to
sponge a heap of faded finery—_her_ dresses. If they had been _his_
coats! Louise bent her hot face over the tawdry silks and satins,
and clasped her parboiled little finger–tips over the wet sponge. At
half–past three Mme. Rémy broke the silence.
“We must get ready for Musseer,” she said. An ecstatic joy filled
Louise’s being. The hour of her reward was at hand.
Getting ready for “Musseer” proved to be an appalling process. First
they brewed what Mme. Rémy called a “teaze Ann.” After the _tisane_, a
host of strange foreign drugs and cosmetics were marshalled in order.
Then water was set to heat on a gas–stove. Then a little table was
neatly set.
“Musseer has his dinner at half–past four,” Madame explained. “I don’t
take mine till he’s laid down and I’ve got him off to the concert.
There, he’s coming now. Sometimes he comes home pretty nervous. If he’s
nervous, don’t you go and make a fuss, do you hear, child?”
The door opened, and Musseer entered, wrapped in a huge frogged
overcoat. There was no doubt that he was nervous. He cast his hat
upon the floor, as if he were Jove dashing a thunderbolt. Fire flashed
from his eyes. He advanced upon his wife and thrust a newspaper in her
face—a little pinky sheet, a notorious blackmailing publication.
“Zees,” he cried, “is your work!”
“What _is_ it, now, Hipleet?” demanded Mme. Rémy.
“Vot it ees?” shrieked the tenor. “It ees ze history of how zey have
heest me at Nice! It ees all zair—how I have been heest—in zis sacré
sheet—in zis hankairchif of infamy! And it ees you zat have told it to
zat devil of a Rastignac—_traitresse_!”
[Illustration]
“Now, Hipleet,” pleaded his wife, “if I can’t learn enough French
to talk with you, how am I going to tell Rastignac about your being
hissed?”
This reasoning silenced Mr. Rémy for an instant—an instant only.
“You _vood_ have done it!” he cried, sticking out his chin and
thrusting his face forward.
“Well, I didn’t,” said Madame, “and nobody reads that thing, any way.
Now, don’t you mind it, and let me get your things off, or you’ll be
catching cold.”
Mr. Rémy yielded at last to the necessity of self–preservation, and
permitted his wife to remove his frogged overcoat, and to unwind
him from a system of silk wraps to which the Gordian knot was a
slip–noose. This done, he sat down before the dressing–case, and Mme.
Rémy, after tying a bib around his neck, proceeded to dress his hair
and put brilliantine on his moustache. Her husband enlivened the
operation by reading from the pinky paper.
“It ees not gen–air–al–lee known—zat zees dees–tin–guished tenor vos
heest on ze pob–lic staidj at Nice—in ze year—“
Louise leaned against the wall, sick, faint and frightened, with a
strange sense of shame and degradation at her heart. At last the
tenor’s eye fell on her.
“Anozzair eediot?” he inquired.
“She ain’t very bright, Hipleet,” replied his wife; “but I guess she’ll
do. Louise, open the door—there’s the caterer.”
Louise placed the dishes upon the table mechanically. The tenor sat
himself at the board, and tucked a napkin in his neck.
“And how did the Benediction Song go this afternoon?” inquired his wife.
“Ze Bénédiction? Ah! One _encore_. One on–lee. Zese pigs of Américains.
I t’row my pairls biffo’ swine. _Chops once more!_ You vant to mordair
me? Vat do zis mean, madame? You ar–r–r–re in lig wiz my enemies. All
ze vorlt is against ze ar–r–r–teest!”
The storm that followed made the first seem a zephyr. The tenor
exhausted his execratory vocabulary in French and English. At last, by
way of a dramatic finale, he seized the plate of chops and flung it
from him. He aimed at the wall; but Frenchmen do not pitch well. With
a ring and a crash, plate and chops went through the broad window–pane.
In the moment of stricken speechlessness that followed, the sound of
the final smash came softly up from the sidewalk.
“Ah–a–a–a–a–a–a–a–a–a–ah!”
The tenor rose to his feet with the howl of an anguished hyena.
“Oh, good gracious!” cried his wife; “he’s going to have one of his
creezes—his creezes de nare!”
He did have a _crise de nerfs_. “Ten dollair!” he yelled, “for ten
dollair of glass!” He tore his pomaded hair; he tore off his bib and
his neck–tie, and for three minutes without cessation he shrieked
wildly and unintelligibly. It was possible to make out, however, that
“arteest” and “ten dollair” were the themes of his improvisation.
Finally he sank exhausted into the chair, and his white–faced wife
rushed to his side.
[Illustration]
“Louise!” she cried, “get the foot–tub out of the closet while I spray
his throat, or he can’t sing a note. Fill it up with warm water—102
degrees—there’s the thermometer—and bathe his feet.”
Trembling from head to foot, Louise obeyed her orders, and brought the
foot–tub, full of steaming water. Then she knelt down and began to
serve the maestro for the first time. She took off his shoes. Then she
looked at his socks. Could she do it?
“Eediot!” gasped the sufferer, “make haste! I die!”
“Hold your mouth open, dear,” said Madame, “I haven’t half sprayed you.”
“Ah! _you_!” cried the tenor. “Cat! Devil! It ees you zat have killed
me!” And moved by an access of blind rage, he extended his arm, and
thrust his wife violently from him.
Louise rose to her feet, with a hard, set, good old New England look on
her face. She lifted the tub of water to the level of her breast, and
then she inverted it on the tenor’s head. For one instant she gazed at
the deluge, and at the bath–tub balanced on the maestro’s skull like a
helmet several sizes too large—then she fled like the wind.
Once in the servants’ quarters, she snatched her hat and jacket. From
below came mad yells of rage.
“I kill hare! give me my knife—give me my rivvolvare! Au secours!
Assassin!”
Miss Slattery appeared in the doorway, still polishing her nails.
“What have you done to His Tonsils?” she inquired. “He’s pretty hot,
this trip.”
“How can I get away from here?” cried Louise.
Miss Slattery pointed to a small door. Louise rushed down a long
stairway—another—and yet others—through a great room where there was
a smell of cooking and a noise of fires—past white–capped cooks and
scullions—through a long stone corridor, and out into the street. She
cried aloud as she saw Esther’s face at the window of the coupé.
She drove home—cured.
+----------------------–+
| Owing to the |
| Sudden Indisposition |
| of |
| M. Rémy, |
| There will be no |
| Concert |
| This Evening. |
| Money Refunded at the |
| Box Office. |
+----------------------–+
[Illustration]
COL. BRERETON’S AUNTY.
[Illustration: _“‘I will promise you nothing, seh!’ thundered the
Colonel.”_]
COL. BRERETON’S AUNTY.
The pleasant smell of freshly turned garden–mould and of young growing
things came in through the open window of the Justice of the Peace. His
nasturtiums were spreading, pale and weedy—I could distinguish their
strange, acrid scent from the odor of the rest of the young vegetation.
The tips of the morning–glory vines, already up their strings to the
height of a man’s head, curled around the window–frame, and beckoned
to me to come out and rejoice with them in the freshness of the mild
June day. It was pleasant enough inside the Justice’s front parlor,
with its bright ingrain carpet, its gilt clock, and its marble–topped
centre–table. But the Justice and the five gentlemen who were paying
him a business call—although it was Sunday morning—looked, the whole
half dozen of them, ill in accord with the spirit of the Spring day.
The Justice looked annoyed. The five assembled gentlemen looked stern.
“Well, as you say,” remarked the fat little Justice, who was an
Irishman, “if this divilment goes on—“
“It’s not a question of going on, Mr. O’Brien,” broke in Alfred
Winthrop; “it has gone on too long.”
Alfred is a little inclined to be arrogant with the unwinthropian
world; and, moreover, he was rushing the season in a very grand suit of
white flannels. He looked rather too much of a lord of creation for a
democratic community. Antagonism lit the Justice’s eye.
“I’m afraid we’ve got to do it, O’Brien,” I interposed, hastily. The
Justice and I are strong political allies. He was mollified.
“Well, well,” he assented; “let’s have him up and see what he’s got to
say for himself. Mike!” he shouted out the window; “bring up Colonel
Brereton!”
Colonel Brereton had appeared in our village about a year before that
Sunday. Why he came, whence he came, he never deigned to say. But he
made no secret of the fact that he was an unreconstructed Southron.
He had a little money when he arrived—enough to buy a tiny one–story
house on the outskirts of the town. By vocation he was a lawyer, and,
somehow or other, he managed to pick up enough to support him in his
avocation, which, we soon found out, was that of village drunkard. In
this capacity he was a glorious, picturesque and startling success.
Saturated with cheap whiskey, he sat all day long in the bar–room or
on the porch of the village groggery, discoursing to the neighborhood
loafers of the days befo’ the wah, when he had a vast plantation in
“Firginia”—“and five hundred niggehs, seh.”
So long as the Colonel’s excesses threatened only his own liver, no
one interfered with him. But on the night before we called upon the
Justice, the Colonel, having brooded long over his wrongs at the hands
of the Yankees, and having made himself a reservoir of cocktails,
decided to enter his protest against the whole system of free colored
labor by cutting the liver out of every negro in the town; and he had
slightly lacerated Winthrop’s mulatto coachman before a delegation
of citizens fell upon him, and finding him unwilling to relinquish
his plan, placed him for the night in the lock–up in Squire O’Brien’s
cellar.
We waited for the Colonel. From under our feet suddenly arose a sound
of scuffling and smothered imprecations. A minute later, Mike, the
herculean son of the Justice, appeared in the doorway, bearing a very
small man hugged to his breast as a baby hugs a doll.
“Let me down, seh!” shouted the Colonel. Mike set him down, and he
marched proudly into the room, and seated himself with dignity and
firmness on the extreme edge of a chair.
The Colonel was very small indeed for a man of so much dignity. He
could not have been more than five foot one or two; he was slender—but
his figure was shapely and supple. He was unquestionably a handsome
man, with fine, thin features and an aquiline profile—like a miniature
Henry Clay. His hair was snow–white—prematurely, no doubt—and at the
first glance you thought he was clean shaven. Then you saw that there
was scarcely a hair on his cheeks, and that only the finest imaginable
line of snowy white moustaches curled down his upper lip. His skin was
smooth as a baby’s and of the color of old ivory. His teeth, which he
was just then exhibiting in a sardonic smile, were white, small, even.
But if he was small, his carriage was large, and military. There was
something military, too, about his attire. He wore a high collar, a
long blue frock coat, and tight, light gray trousers with straps. That
is, the coat had once been blue, the trousers once light gray, but they
were now of many tints and tones, and, at that exact moment, they had
here and there certain peculiar high lights of whitewash.
The Colonel did not wait to be arraigned. Sweeping his black, piercing
eye over our little group, he arraigned us.
“Well, _gentlemen_,” with keen irony in his tone, “I reckon you think
you’ve done a right smart thing, getting the Southern gentleman in a
hole? A pro–_dee_–gious fine thing, I reckon, since it’s kept you away
from chu’ch. _Baptis_’ church, I believe?” This was to poor Canfield,
who was suspected of having been of that communion in his youth, and
of being much ashamed of it after his marriage to an aristocratic
Episcopalian. “Nice Sunday mo’ning to worry a Southern gentleman!
Gentleman who’s owned a plantation that you could stick this hyeh
picayune town into one co’neh of! Owned mo’ niggehs than you eveh saw.
Robbed of his land and his niggehs by you Yankee gentlemen. Drinks a
little wine to make him fo’get what he’s suffehed. Gets ovehtaken.
Tries to avenge an insult to his honah. Put him in a felon’s cell and
whitewash his gyarments. And now you come hyeh—you come hyeh—” here
his eye fell with deep disapproval upon Winthrop’s white flannels—“you
come hyeh in youh underclothes, and you want to have him held fo’
Special Sessions.”
“You are mistaken, Colonel Brereton,” Winthrop interposed; “if we can
have your promise—“
“I will promise you nothing, seh!” thundered the Colonel, who had a
voice like a church–organ, whenever he chose to use it; “I will make no
conventions with you! I will put no restrictions on my right to defend
my honah. Put me in youh felon’s cell. I will rot in youh infehnal
dungeons; but I will make no conventions with you. You can put me in
striped breeches, but you cyan’t put my honah in striped breeches!”
“That settles it,” said the justice.
“And all,” continued the Colonel, oratorically, “and all this hyeh fuss
and neglect of youh religious duties, fo’ one of the cheapest and most
o’nery niggehs I eveh laid eyes on. Why, I wouldn’t have given one
hundred dollahs fo’ that niggeh befo’ the wah. No, seh, I give you my
wo’d, that niggeh ain’t wo’th ninety dollahs!”
“Mike!” said the Justice, significantly. The Colonel arose promptly, to
insure a voluntary exit. He bowed low to Winthrop.
“Allow me to hope, seh,” he said, “that you won’t catch cold.” And with
one lofty and comprehensive salute he marched haughtily back to his
dungeon, followed by the towering Mike.
The Justice sighed. An elective judiciary has its trials, like the rest
of us. It is hard to commit a voter of your own party for Special
Sessions. However—“I’ll drive him over to Court in the morning,” said
the little Justice.
* * * * *
I was sitting on my verandah that afternoon, reading. Hearing my name
softly spoken, I looked up and saw the largest and oldest negress I had
ever met. She was at least six feet tall, well–built but not fat, full
black, with carefully dressed gray hair. I knew at once from her neat
dress, her well–trained manner, the easy deference of the curtsey she
dropped me, that she belonged to the class that used to be known as
“house darkeys”—in contradistinction to the field hands.
[Illustration]
“I understand, seh,” she said, in a gentle, low voice, “that you
gentlemen have got Cunnle Bre’eton jailed?”
She had evidently been brought up among educated Southerners, for her
grammar was good and her pronunciation correct, according to Southern
standards. Only once or twice did she drop into negro talk.
I assented.
“How much will it be, seh, to get him out?” She produced a fat roll
of twenty and fifty dollar bills. “I do fo’ Cunnle Bre’eton,” she
explained: “I have always done fo’ him. I was his Mammy when he was a
baby.”
I made her sit down—when she did there was modest deprecation in her
attitude—and I tried to explain the situation to her.
“You may go surety for Colonel Brereton,” I said; “but he is certain to
repeat the offense.”
“No, seh,” she replied, in her quiet, firm tone; “the Cunnle won’t make
any trouble when I’m here to do fo’ him.”
“You were one of his slaves?”
“No, seh. Cunnle Bre’eton neveh had any slaves, seh. His father, Majah
Bre’eton, he had slaves one time, I guess, but when the Cunnle was
bo’n, he was playing kyards fo’ a living, and he had only me. When the
Cunnle’s mother died, Majah Bre’eton he went to Mizzoura, and he put
the baby in my ahms, and he said to me, ‘Sabrine,’ he sez, ‘you do fo’
him.’ And I’ve done fo’ him eveh since. Sometimes he gets away from
me, and then he gets kind o’ wild. He was in Sandusky a year, and in
Chillicothe six months, and he was in Tiffin once, and one time in a
place in the state of Massachusetts—I disremembeh the name. This is the
longest time he eveh got away from me. But I always find him, and then
he’s all right.”
“But you have to deal with a violent man.”
“The Cunnle won’t be violent with me, seh.”
“But you’re getting old, Aunty—how old?”
“I kind o’ lost count since I was seventy–one, seh. But I’m right spry,
yet.”
“Well, my good woman,” I said, decisively, “I can’t take the
responsibility of letting the Colonel go at large unless you give me
some better guarantee of your ability to restrain him. What means have
you of keeping him in hand?”
She hesitated a long time, smoothing the folds of her neat alpaca skirt
with her strong hands. Then she said:
“Well, seh, I wouldn’t have you say any thing about it, fo’ feah of
huhting Cunnle Bre’eton’s feelings; but when he gets that way, I jes’
nachully tuhn him up and spank him. I’ve done it eveh since he was a
baby,” she continued, apologetically, “and it’s the only way. But you
won’t say any thing about it, seh? The Cunnle’s powerful sensitive.”
I wrote a brief note to the Justice. I do not know what legal
formalities he dispensed with; but that afternoon the Colonel was free.
Aunt Sabrine took him home, and he went to bed for two days while
she washed his clothes. The next week he appeared in a complete new
outfit—in cut and color the counterpart of its predecessor.
* * * * *
Here began a new era for the Colonel. He was no longer the town
drunkard. Aunty Sabrine “allowanced” him—one cocktail in the “mo’ning:”
a “ho’n” at noon, and one at night. On this diet he was a model of
temperance. If occasionally he essayed a drinking bout, Aunty Sabrine
came after him at eve, and led him home. From my window I sometimes
saw the steady big figure and the wavering little one going home over
the crest of the hill, equally black in their silhouettes against the
sunset sky.
What happened to the Colonel we knew not. No man saw him for two days.
Then he emerged—with unruffled dignity. The two always maintained
genuine Southern relations. He called her his damn black nigger—and
would have killed any man who spoke ill of her. She treated him with
the humble and deferential familiarity of a “mammy” toward “young
mahse.”
For herself, Aunty Sabrine won the hearts of the town. She was an ideal
washerwoman, an able temporary cook in domestic _interregna_, a tender
and wise nurse, and a genius at jam and jellies. The Colonel, too, made
money in his line, and put it faithfully into the common fund.
In March of the next year, I was one of a Reform Town Committee,
elected to oust the usual local ring. We discharged the inefficient
Town Counsel, who had neglected our interests in a lot of suits brought
by swindling road–contractors. Aunty Sabrine came to me, and solemnly
nominated Colonel Brereton for the post. “He is sho’ly a fine loyyeh,”
she said.
I know not whether it was the Great American sense of humor, or
the Great American sense of fairness, but we engaged the Colonel,
conditionally.
He was a positive, a marvelous, an incredible success, and he won every
suit. Perhaps he did not know much law; but he was the man of men for
country judges and juries. Nothing like his eloquence had ever before
been heard in the county. He argued, he cajoled, he threatened, he
pleaded, he thundered, he exploded, he confused, he blazed, he fairly
dazzled—for silence stunned you when the Colonel ceased to speak, as
the lightning blinds your eyes long after it has vanished.
The Colonel was utterly incapable of seeing any but his own side of
the case. I remember a few of his remarks concerning Finnegan, the
contractor, who was suing for $31.27 payments withheld.
[Illustration]
“Fohty yahds!” the Colonel roared: “fohty yahds! This hyeh man
Finnegan, this hyeh cock–a–doodle–doo, he goes along this hyeh road,
and he casts his eye oveh this hyeh excavation, and he comes hyeh and
sweahs it’s fohty yahds good measure. Does he take a tape measure and
measure it? NO! Does he even pace it off with those hyeh corkscrew
legs of his that he’s trying to hide under his chaiah? NO!! He says,
‘I’m Finnegan, and this hyeh’s fohty yahds,’ and off he sashays up the
hill, wondering wheah Finnegan’s going to bring up when he’s walked off
the topmost peak of the snow–clad Himalayas of human omniscience! And
this hyeh man, this hyeh insult to humanity in a papeh collah, he comes
hyeh, to this august tribunal, and he asks you, gentlemen of the jury,
to let him rob you of the money you have earned in the sweat of youh
brows, to take the bread out of the mouths of the children whom youh
patient and devoted wives have bohne to you in pain _and_ anguish—but I
say to you, _gen_—_tel_—_men_—(_suddenly exploding_) HIS PAPEH COLLAH
SHALL ROAST IN HADES BEFO’ I WILL BE A PAHTY TO THIS HYEH INFAMY!”
Finnegan was found in hiding in his cellar when his counsel came to
tell him that he could not collect his $31.27. “Bedad, is _that_ all?”
he gasped; “I t’ought I’d get six mont’s.”
People flocked from miles about to hear the Colonel. Recalcitrant
jurymen were bribed to service by the promise of a Brereton case on the
docket. His performances were regarded in the light of a free show, and
a verdict in his favor was looked upon as a graceful gratuity.
He made money—and he gave it meekly to Aunty Sabrine.
* * * * *
It was the night of the great blizzard; but there was no sign of cold
or wind when I looked out, half–an–hour after midnight, before closing
my front door. I heard the drip of water from the trees, I saw a faint
mist rising from the melting snow. At the foot of my lawn I dimly saw
the Colonel’s familiar figure marching homeward from some political
meeting preliminary to Tuesday’s election. His form was erect, his step
steady. He swung his little cane and whistled as he walked. I was proud
of the Colonel.
[Illustration]
An hour later the storm was upon us. By noon of Monday, Alfred
Winthrop’s house, two hundred yards away, might as well have been two
thousand, so far as getting to it, or even seeing it, was concerned.
Tuesday morning the snow had stopped, and we looked out over a still
and shining deluge with sparkling fringes above the blue hollows of its
frozen waves. Across it roared an icy wind, bearing almost invisible
diamond dust to fill irritated eyes and throats. The election was held
that day. The result was to be expected. All the “hard” citizens were
at the polls. Most of the reformers were stalled in railroad trains.
The Reform Ticket failed of re–election, and Colonel Brereton’s term of
office was practically at an end.
I was outdoors most of the day, and that night, when I awoke about
three o’clock, suddenly and with a shock, thinking I had heard Aunty
Sabrine’s voice crying: “Cunnle! wheah are you, Cunnle?” my exhausted
brain took it for the echo of a dream. I must have dozed for an hour
before I sprang up with a certainty in my mind that I had heard her
voice in very truth. Then I hurried on my clothes, and ran to Alfred
Winthrop’s. He looked incredulous; but he got into his boots like a
man. We found Aunty Sabrine, alive but unconscious, on the crest of
the hill. When we had secured an asylum for her, we searched for the
Colonel. The next day we learned that he had heard the news of the
election and had boarded a snow–clearing train that was returning to
the Junction.
It was a week before Aunty Sabrine recovered. When I asked her if she
was going to look for the Colonel, she answered with gentle resignation:
“No, seh. I’m ’most too old. I’ll stay hyeh, wheah he knows wheah to
find me. He’ll come afteh me, sho’.”
* * * * *
Sixteen months passed, and he did not come. Then, one evening, a Summer
walk took me by the little house. I heard a voice I could not forget.
“Hyeh, you black niggeh, get along with that suppeh, or I come in theah
and cut youh damn haid off!”
Looking up, I saw Colonel Brereton, a little the worse for wear, seated
on the snake fence. No ... he was not seated; he was hitched on by the
crook of his knees, his toes braced against the inside of the lower
rail. His coat–tails hung in the vacant air.
[Illustration]
He descended, a little stiffly, I thought, and greeted me cordially,
with affable dignity. His manner somehow implied that it was _I_ who
had been away.
He insisted on my coming into his front yard and sitting down on the
bench by the house, while he condescendingly and courteously inquired
after the health of his old friends and neighbors. I stayed until
supper was announced. The Colonel was always the soul of hospitality;
but on this occasion he did not ask me to join him. And I reflected, as
I went away, that although he had punctiliously insisted on my sitting
down, the Colonel had remained standing during our somewhat protracted
conversation.
[Illustration]
A ROUND–UP.
[Illustration: “_She was beautiful as the Queen of Sheba was
beautiful._”]
A ROUND–UP.
I.
When Rhodora Boyd—Rhodora Pennington that was—died in her little house,
with no one near her but one old maid who loved her, the best society
of the little city of Trega Falls indulged in more or less complacent
reminiscence.
Except to Miss Wimple, the old maid, Rhodora had been of no importance
at all in Trega for ten long years, and yet she had once given Trega
society the liveliest year it had ever known. (I should tell you that
Trega people never mentioned the Falls in connection with Trega. Trega
was too old to admit any indebtedness to the Falls.)
Rhodora Pennington came to Trega with her invalid mother as the guest
of her uncle, the Commandant at the Fort—for Trega was a garrison town.
She was a beautiful girl. I do not mean a pretty girl: there were
pretty girls in Trega—several of them. She was beautiful as the Queen
of Sheba was beautiful—grand, perfect, radiantly tawny of complexion,
without a flaw or a failing in her pulchritude—almost too fine a being
for family use, except that she had plenty of hot woman’s blood in her
veins, and was an accomplished, delightful, impartial flirt.
All the men turned to her with such prompt unanimity that all the girls
of Trega’s best society joined hands in one grand battle for their
prospective altars and hearths. From the June day when Rhodora came, to
the Ash Wednesday of the next year when her engagement was announced,
there was one grand battle, a dozen girls with wealth and social
position and knowledge of the ground to help them, all pitted against
one garrison girl, with not so much as a mother to back her—Mrs.
Pennington being hopelessly and permanently on the sick–list.
Trega girls who had never thought of doing more than wait at their
leisure for the local young men to marry them at _their_ leisure now
went in for accomplishments of every sort. They rode, they drove, they
danced new dances, they read Browning and Herbert Spencer, they sang,
they worked hard at archery and lawn–tennis, they rowed and sailed and
fished, and some of the more desperate even went shooting in the Fall,
and in the Winter played billiards and—penny ante. Thus did they, in
the language of a somewhat cynical male observer, back Accomplishments
against Beauty.
The Shakspere Club and the Lake Picnic, which had hitherto divided
the year between them, were submerged in the flood of social
entertainments. Balls and parties followed one another. Trega’s square
stone houses were lit up night after night, and the broad moss–grown
gardens about them were made trim and presentable, and Chinese lanterns
turned them into a fairy–land for young lovers.
[Illustration]
It was a great year for Trega! The city had been dead, commercially,
ever since the New York Central Railroad had opened up the great West;
but the unprecedented flow of champagne and Apollinaris actually
started a little business boom, based on the inferable wealth of Trega,
and two or three of Trega’s remaining firms went into bankruptcy
because of the boom. And Rhodora Pennington did it all.
Have you ever seen the end of a sham–fight? You have been shouting
and applauding, and wasting enough enthusiasm for a foot–ball match.
And now it is all finished, and nothing has been done, and you go
home somewhat ashamed of yourself, and glad only that the blue–coated
participants must feel more ashamed of themselves; and the smell of the
villainous saltpetre, that waked the Berserker in your heart an hour
ago, is now noisome and disgusting, and makes you cough and sneeze.
Even so did the girls of Trega’s best society look each in the face of
the other, when Ash Wednesday ended that nine months of riot, and ask
of each other, “What has it all been about?”
True, there were nine girls engaged to be married, and engagement meant
marriage in Trega. Alma Lyle was engaged to Dexter Townsend, Mary Waite
to John Lang, Winifred Peters to McCullom McIntosh, Ellen Humphreys to
George Lister, Laura Visscher to William Jans, (Oranje boven!—Dutch
blood stays Dutch,) Millicent Smith to Milo Smith, her cousin, Olive
Cregier to Aleck Sloan, Aloha Jones, (niece of a Sandwich Islands
missionary,) to Parker Hall, and Rhodora Pennington to Charley Boyd.
But all of these matches, save the last, would have been made in the
ordinary course of things. The predestination of propinquity would
have settled that. And even if Ellen Humphreys had married John Lang
instead of George Lister, and George Lister had wedded Mary Waite—why,
there would have been no great difference to admire or to deplore.
The only union of the nine which came as a surprise to the community
was the engagement of Rhodora to Charley Boyd. The beauty of the
season had picked up the one crooked stick in the town—a dissolute,
ne’er–do–well hanger–on of Trega’s best society, who would never have
seen a dinner–card if he had not been a genius at amateur theatricals,
an artist on the banjo, and a half–bred Adonis.
[Illustration]