"He was a traitor," I said.
Mr. DeVere laughed musically, and stooping down drew a pine splinter
from one of his toes. Then he approached his mother and saluted her
with that chivalrous reverence and courtesy that still lingers among
sons of the South.
"What shall we have for supper, mammy?" he said.
"Whatever you d--- please," said Mrs. DeVere.
Aubrey DeVere reached out his hand and seized one of the chickens that
roosted upon the piano. He wrung its neck and threw its quivering and
fluttering body upon the delicate Brussels carpet. He took a long
stride and stood before me, towering like an avenging god, with one
arm upraised, the other pointing to the fowl, struggling in its death
agonies.
"That is the South," he cried, in a voice of thunder; "the bleeding
and dying South after Gettysburg. Tonight you will feast upon its
carcass, as your countrymen have been doing for the last thirty
years."
He hurled the head of the chicken into my face with a terrible oath,
and then dropped on one knee and bowed his kingly head.
"Pardon me, Miss Cook," he said, "I do not mean to offend you.
Twenty-eight years ago today, my father was killed at the battle of
Shiloh."
* * * * *
When the supper bell rang I was invited into a long, lofty room,
wainscoted with dark oak and lighted by paraffine candles.
Aubrey DeVere sat at the foot of the table and carved. He had taken
off his coat, and his clinging undershirt revealed every muscle of a
torso as grand as that of the Dying Gladiator in the Vatican at Rome.
The supper was truly a Southern one. At one end was an enormous
grinning opossum and sweet potatoes, while the table was covered with
dishes of cabbage, fried chicken, fruit cake, persimmons, hot raw
biscuits, blackhaws, Maypops, fried catfish, maple syrup, hominy, ice
cream, sausages, bananas, crackling bread, pineapples, squashes, wild
grapes and apple pies.
Pete, the colored man, waited upon us, and once in handing Mr. DeVere
the gravy he spilled a little of it upon the tablecloth. With a yell
like a tiger, Aubrey DeVere sprang to his feet and hurled his carving
knife to the handle in Pete's breast. The poor colored man fell to the
floor, and I ran and lifted his head.
"Goodbye, missie," he whispered. "I hear de angels singing, and I sees
de bressed Mars Abraham Linkum smilin' at me from near de great white
th'one. Goodbye missie, Ol' Pete am goin' home.'