witnesses--gave about the same kind of testimony that my Bob did. None
of them knew anything, or had seen anything, or could be induced to
tell anything but lies; and such lies! Every one of 'em, going out of
the witness box, would pull his wool and duck his head to Virginia;
she certainly had made those black people love her, and more than one
of her fights with Corbin had been about his shameful treatment of his
negroes. Severn--he's a first-class lawyer--he didn't cross-examine any
of them. He said, 'May it please the Court, I have but one witness,
and that is the prisoner herself. I desire to put her on the stand
that she may tell her own story.' So he gave her his arm and led Mrs.
Corbin to the witness box, where she sat down in a chair. You could
have heard a pin drop. At first she looked around her with a sort of
dazed look; it was so pitiful, I saw the foreman of the jury look away
while he wiped the tears from his eyes. Everybody waited until she
came to herself like. Then she began, in a low voice, to tell it all.
She looked as pale as a sheet until she got to where he struck her
for the first time. Then the blood poured to her face. 'I don't know
how I felt,' said she; 'I wanted to kill him--that was all. I rushed
away from him, and then I turned on him. He began to back when he saw
me advance. I told him that I would get a pistol, and if he struck me
again I would shoot him. Afterward I thought I had been to blame. I
determined I would try and get along better with him. I endured that
man Higgins in my house--I endured, O God! what did I not endure! and
it was the same. He would seize me by the throat and choke me. That was
dreadful, but it wasn't a blow. At last he struck me that other time
when Mr. Thornton came and beat him.' At that there was going to be the
devil of a row--the people hurrahing for Thornton; but Jack checked the
disturbance right away. 'Then,' she said, after everything was quiet,
'I felt that it would soon be over, one way or another; either he would
kill me or I would kill him. On the night he died he said that the man
Higgins should dine at Corbin Hall the next day, and I should appear at
the table. I replied that I would not. He lifted his hand against me,
and I asked him if he remembered what Mr. Thornton had done to him for
that. Then he said--but I can't repeat what he said; it was about Mr.
Thornton. I went to the bookcase and got out my pistol. "You may _say_
what you like," I said, "but don't touch me." After more words he came
toward me and struck me hard on my shoulder--here. At first the pain
stunned me. I held the pistol in my hand. He got it from me; I could
not resist with one arm. He said he would guarantee his life for that
one night, and standing by the table started to unload it. All at
once I heard it go off, and he staggered to the sofa. I don't remember
anything else until Colonel Randolph came.'
"When she stopped it was as still as the grave. Severn had just said
something about the other side asking any questions they pleased,
when the foreman of the jury talked a minute or two to the judge, and
then, nodding to the jurymen, rose up and said, 'The unanimous opinion
of this jury is that the prisoner is not guilty.' Such a shout! Mrs.
Corbin stood up for a minute, and then, without a word, fell over in a
dead faint in Jack Thornton's arms. The crowd made way for him as he
carried her, as if she had been a baby, out into the court-house yard.
The madam and I were there about as soon as he."
"An' me an' Patsy," added Yellow Bob.
"We put her in the carriage--"
"An' Unc' Torm Driver he lash he horses twell dey gallop ev'y foot o'
de way home."
"Hold your infernal tongue! I'm telling this story. When we got her
home, of course the reaction set in. She had been as brave as a lion
all the time before, but now she couldn't hold up her head. She just
lay on the bed up-stairs, with her great black eyes staring out of her
white face, and by George, sir, I thought she was certain to kick the
bucket. The only thing that roused her was when old Scaife Beverly,
Jack's uncle, died without a will, and Jack got every cent the old
curmudgeon left. Jack had hung around here ever since Mrs. Corbin
came, but she wouldn't see him, and so months and months went on. At
last one evening when she was well enough to sit up--it was more than
a year after the trial--she was sitting in the chamber there by the
dining-room, looking devilish pretty in a white wrapper, when--"
"I seen Marse Jack comin', and I run round de house an' tole him fur
Gord A'mighty's sake ter run in missis's chamber, kase I was feerd
Miss Ferginny Corbin had done had a fit er sumpin. Co'se she didn't
have no fit; I jes' say it ter git him in d'yar, an' he jump through
de winder openin' on de po'ch, and when he see her he say, kinder
solemn, 'Ferginny!' I never will forgit de way he say 'Ferginny.' 'Twas
jes' same as if he'd tole her, 'I loves you better'n anything in de
whole wide worl'.' An' Miss Ferginny she fall back in her cheer, an'
she begin ter cry, and say, 'Don't! don't! I'm too wicked to live!'
when Marse Jack he just tooken her in he arms an' kiss her. I got so
intrusted wid dem conjurements I jes' stan' like I done tooken root
and look in de winder twell arf' while Marse Jack seen me, an' he pick
up ole marse's boot-jack layin' on de flo' an' shy it at me. I dodge,
an' it broke missis's lookin'-glass an' her big red berangium in de
flower-pot. He gin me a dollar naix day, an' missis she quile wid him
'bout breakin' her lookin'-glass." Then the colonel took his turn.
"They wanted to go away from the county, but I told them they'd better
stay where they were known. It could be lived down sooner here
than anywhere else. Upon my soul they were the most devoted married
couple I ever saw. But the Thorntons were short-lived people, and
Jack died at forty. That killed Virginia. She never held up her head
afterward. I don't think she lived six months. The madam said it was
better she should die than live. They had no children. And a lot of
damned, thrifty, industrious Yankees bought Northend, and they've got
a confounded steam-plow that frightens all my horses, and they raise
hay all over the place, and they've built an infernal ice-house on
top of the ground instead of under it, and they work the whole place
with twenty hands instead of sixty, as Jack Thornton did, and make
more money than all the rest of the county put together, and I want a
julep--d'ye hear, you yellow rascal?"
THE VALBELLA BROTHERS.
It isn't necessary for me to tell how I drifted into the burnt-cork
profession, but I tell you, after my preliminary experience of life
without burnt cork, I was glad enough when I could march up to the
manager's office and get my fifteen dollars a week for amusing my
masters, the public. And I was always in such a hurry to get my
money--we were paid Saturday night, after the performance--that I
didn't wait to wash the burnt cork off before dropping in for the three
five-dollar notes which I was certain to get; for old Sam Stacker,
God bless him! was full of cranks, and always had a particular way of
paying us.
Now I can't say I was a brilliant performer. I never reached the
dignity of interlocutor, to say nothing of the envied height of Bones
or the end man. I just stood a good way back, and pretended to play
on the 'cello--I couldn't play a note, and was nothing but a dummy,
but I could sing pretty well. I remember how when I came to the front
I used to bring the house down with "The Nightingale." I was great on
sentimental songs. Sam Stacker used to say I was a good all-round
man. I was quick at figures--Sam wasn't--and I helped him out in his
accounts. Then I could talk to the theatre managers and write them
letters. I had had some education and bringing up in my pre-Sam Stacker
days, and so somehow I stayed on with the company, and saw it expand
from a small variety show into a first-class minstrel performance, and
old Sam always said it never would have come to that if it hadn't been
for me. Of course my salary was raised after a while, and I got to
putting some of it away for a rainy day.
Well, as I said, except as a singer, I wasn't good for much at first,
but after a while I got to singing first-rate. I took a few lessons
now and then, and I learned to sing falsetto. I was boyish looking,
although I was twenty-five years old, and I used to come out dressed in
a low-necked pink silk gown, with my hair all curled up, and a bunch of
puffs on the top of my head and a fan in my hand, and sing Il Bacio and
the Magnetic Waltz, as well as plenty of women concert singers, so the
people said. Those curls, though, on the top of my head, used to bother
me dreadfully. It took Sam and me a good quarter of an hour to get them
in place, and Sam invariably swore like a pirate during the operation.
All the time I was singing I was thinking about my back hair.
For a long time a notion had been in my head to bring out something
original in the show. All minstrel shows are alike, and I couldn't for
the life of me hit on anything that Sam Stacker didn't say, "Oh, I seen
that down in Tennessee in '58," or "That there thing was introduced in
New Orleens along about '61," or something discouraging of the kind. At
last I did hit upon something. It's old enough now, but it was new then.
The first thing I wanted to find was a fellow about my size and general
appearance. He wasn't easy to find. Some of them were as tall as I, but
too broad; some were just my shape, but too tall. At last I found him.
He was pretty nearly my double by the time we had made up alike. He
was exactly five feet seven--my height to a dot--and we were the same
shape and size, and the calves of our legs looked as if we were twin
brothers. This was a great point, because it was very important that
our legs should resemble each other--and the resemblance was startling.
Sometimes I could hardly tell which pair belonged to him and which to
me, but it was all one, as they were both remarkably fine-looking pairs
of legs, particularly in white silk tights and red silk stockings.
He was a pleasant fellow, too. His first name was Ted, and mine
was Ned; our last names are unimportant--no matter about mine
certainly--and we were advertised in the bills as
THE GREAT VALBELLA BROTHERS!!!
UNEQUALED GYMNASTS! EXQUISITE CLOG DANCERS!
and a great deal else, which isn't worth putting down here. We
certainly made a sensation the first night we appeared in our great
specialty. It was in a big opera house, and every seat was filled; and
immediately after the first part, "by the whole company," in which Ted
and I had stood in the background, I sawing away on the big 'cello with
a stop on it, and Ted making believe to blow the clarionet, both of us
joining in the singing as occasion required, our turn came to appear.
We had rehearsed pretty well, and when the big curtain rolled up,
and Ted and I bounded out on the stage dressed in a kind of jockey
costume--white silk tights with red silk stockings, blue satin shirts
with jockey caps of blue and red, and jockeys' whips in our hands--we
both felt pretty cool. Then we began our clog dance. It was the finest
kind of clog dancing, I will say, although I did part of it myself,
and then we introduced a new feature, singing while the clogs rattled
on the floor, and every muscle moving alike. Of course it took--the
singing as much as the dancing--and the people hurrahed and clapped
and shouted, and wouldn't leave off until we had gone over it three
times, and the end man had come on the stage and asked permission for
the other performers to go home and go to bed, as the audience seemed
fully satisfied with the Valbella Brothers. Then they laughed, and we
got back to our dressing-room, when old Sam Stacker stood ready to hug
us both.
But it was at the last scene that our really great performance came
off. I had a pretty hard time making Sam Stacker agree to the expense
for this act, but as we were playing a two weeks' engagement, I
finally bullied him into it. It required cutting away some of the
flies temporarily, and putting in a twenty-foot-square skylight over
the stage. This skylight opened in two sections, and after our second
appearance, more clog dancing and more scientific ground-tumbling, a
big red balloon descended slowly from the roof. At the bottom of this
was a double trapeze, and as soon as the balloon came within reach
the Valbella Brothers sprang up--we had to get rid of some weights
pretty cleverly to make the balloon rise, because we couldn't manage
the sand-bags commonly used--grabbed at the trapeze, and performed the
double-trapeze act while the great illuminated balloon rose slowly in
the air up--up, up, through the roof. Of course on the outside two or
three fellows stood on the roof, and we threw them a rope with which
they held on to the balloon while we jumped off; and then the gas was
let out, and the balloon folded up and laid away for the next day,
because after the first night we had to give two performances--one in
the afternoon and one in the evening--to satisfy the people, and then
the "standing-room only" sign was out before the doors were opened.
Nothing like the applause on that first night was ever known before.
The people yelled and stamped and shouted, and the ladies waved their
handkerchiefs. After a considerable time had passed, Sam Stacker
came to the foot-lights and made a speech. Sam never lost a chance
of making a speech. He said the balloon couldn't rise more than six
miles in the air, and neither one of the Valbella brothers could swim
a stroke, and if we were killed he intended to support our wives and
children during the rest of his natural life. We didn't either of us
have a wife and children, but Sam didn't stick at a little thing like
that. "Anything to advertise," was Sam's motto. "I'd let them durned
newspapers say I choked my mother, beat the ladies in the company
every time I got drunk, gambled on a coffin, and stole the cents off
a dead man's eyes, just to get the 'ad.'" As Sam was the kindest,
gentlest, softest-hearted old ruffian that ever lived, there was,
unfortunately, no chance of any of this sort of thing being printed
about him, and this grieved him sincerely. Meanwhile Ted and I were
drinking ginger-pop behind the scenes, and hearing every word Sam
was saying. Then Sam made his bow, and retired to find our mangled
remains, according to his alleged anticipations; and finding us whole
and sound, punishing the ginger beer, he led us before the curtain,
and we received what the newspapers the next day called "a magnificent
ovation." And old Sam Stacker almost cried with pleasure when he
counted up the box receipts and took us up to his hotel and gave us
champagne as if it was Apollinaris water.
I haven't said anything all this time about Jenny Hobbs, but she was
a person of great importance to me just then. She was a dancer--we
had quite a respectable ballet troupe with us that year. She wasn't
the _première danseuse_, but she stood in the front row, and figured
in the bills as Mlle. Celestine Buzac de la Montigny. Sam Stacker
himself invented that name. He said it sounded fine. It certainly did.
She had come to him one morning just before we started on the road and
had asked for work. She was a modest little thing, like a plenty of
other ballet girls I know; and I found out afterward she supported her
bedridden sister and took care of her little brother out of her small
wages. Sam was in a hurry, and told her I was his representative--a
great way he had when he didn't want to be troubled with people; so I
put Miss Jenny Hobbs through her paces, and saw she was a pretty good
little dancer. We had as the _première danseuse_ Mlle. Dagmar--I don't
know what her name in private life was. She was a fine dancer, but a
stupid creature, without any invention, and couldn't do anything she
hadn't been taught; and in a company like ours, we wanted somebody
who was equal to emergencies, which Dag--we called her that for
short--wasn't. Jenny Hobbs was just that. She turned out a trump. Of
course we couldn't bring her forward over Dag's nose, nor have her name
very prominently billed; but she didn't seem to mind that, so long as
she got an increase of wages, and something for her little brother to
do along with the company; and she was worth all she got, and more too.
She never put herself forward, but when Dagmar was ill, which at first
was about twice a week regularly, she took her place, and did almost as
well--so well in fact that it acted on Dag as the advertisements say
Hop Bitters acts--it cured her right off of several chronic complaints
of long standing, and from being ill half her time (though nobody
would have suspected it from her robust appearance) she got able to
dance six nights and two afternoons in the week the whole season, and
never gave Jenny Hobbs another chance to take her place. Then Jenny
used to suggest little alterations and improvements in the performance
that Dagmar listened to readily enough, as it always brought her
bouquets and applause, and Jenny actually made her think that Dagmar
originated them herself.
Well, the night of our first ascent--it wasn't more than thirty-five
feet--after the fellows who managed the balloon had got it anchored
to the roof, and we had climbed down and had got back in the theatre
and made our appearance before the foot-lights, and the curtain had
been rung up and down half a dozen times, and at last the audience
had dispersed, somebody inquired for Jenny--for, of course, nobody in
the company ever thought of calling her by that ridiculous name Sam
had given her. Just then her brother, little Jack Hobbs, tore upon
the stage, yelling for somebody to go to Jenny. Of course there was a
rush for her dressing-room, headed by Sam Stacker and Dag, with Ted
and me following close behind. There lay Jenny on the floor in her
tights and spangles, her head resting uncomfortably on a chair, and
apparently in a dead faint. Nobody knew how long she had been there, as
Jack, who always came to take his sister home after the performance,
couldn't explain anything for sobbing and crying, except that after
the balloon went up, and Sam Stacker came before the curtain and told
that astounding lie about the balloon being six miles in the air, and
made his magnificent offer to take care of our wives and children that
didn't exist, Jenny had tumbled over, screaming, "Oh, Ted," or "Oh,
Ned," Jack couldn't remember which. He hadn't been able to bring her to
since. Sam slapped her hands, Dag loosened her dress, and I produced
a brandy flask, which Ted was about to take out of my hand and put to
her lips, but I preferred doing that myself, and quietly pushed him
away while I supported her head and got a few drops of brandy between
her teeth. In a few minutes of this vigorous treatment she recovered,
did like all people coming out of a fainting fit--sat up, wondered
where she was, had it all come back to her in a moment, and seizing
Jack, began to cry hysterically. Jack yelled too, so we had a devil of
a commotion for a while; but Sam, who had sublime common sense, put an
end to it by calling a carriage, packing Dag and Jack and Jenny in it,
and sending them off to Jenny's lodgings. Then we went to Sam's hotel
and got the champagne before mentioned.
But somehow, although Sam and the other fellows--we got together a lot
of them--toasted us as the Valbella Brothers, and commended forever our
fraternal alliance, we didn't feel like brothers. We had been the best
of friends, but that little blubbering rascal Jack Hobbs had planted
something in our hearts that grew like Jonah's gourd. Which was it, Ted
or Ned, that Jenny Hobbs had fainted about when we went through the
roof hanging on to each other by our teeth, our legs, and everything
except our hands, and doing the double-trapeze act like daisies? There
was the trouble. Was it Ted or was it Ned? I had had a soft place
for Jenny in my heart for a considerable time, but I had determined
to wait until I found out whether I had any chance or not, and then
Ted--Valbella I'll him for want of something better--had come along,
and seemed to like her too. But I had not paid much attention to it
until that night. Ted was good-looking--I almost groaned when I saw how
good-looking he was--and a sober, honest, industrious fellow to boot.
Somehow Sam and the other fellows seemed to realize that we weren't
quite so brotherly as we had been, and consequently they enlarged upon
our fraternal feelings, and represented us as being much more deeply
attached to each other than we ever could have been; but at last it was
all over, and we started to walk home--we had lodgings together. As we
came out into the quiet moonlit streets I noticed Ted seemed to expect
me to speak.
"Now see here," said I, turning to him; "you know what that little
rascal said to-night?"
"Yes, I know," said Ted doggedly; "and I know what Jenny Hobbs said
too."
"It's more than anybody else does," said I, feeling as if I wanted
to choke him. "We'd better not discuss that now," said I, presently;
"we've both had some champagne, and I want to think things over, and
so do you, perhaps; so we'll let it rest until to-morrow."
"Just as you like," said Ted sulkily.
We went home and went to bed, both rather worn out with excitement.
Next morning, just as we were dressed and going to get some breakfast,
Sam Stacker came in, boiling. I don't know who could have told him,
or whether he guessed at it from the way we looked the night before,
but he evidently knew that something was up between us. So he sat
right down and gave us a talking to. "Now, boys," says he, very
earnestly, "you see how it is. You've made a tremendous hit with that
there balloon feature. Last night when I came out and told that there
whopper about the balloon bein' six miles in the air, and broached
that benevolent scheme about your families, you ought to have heard
the women scream; it done my heart good to hear 'em; two of 'em had
to be carried out in convulsions, and it would be worth five thousand
dollars' advertising if one of 'em was to die. Of course if you fellows
quarrel, we'll have to drop the Valbella Brothers altogether, and
that'll make a difference in your salaries. Besides, if you both get to
making love to Jenny Hobbs, it will upset the whole business, and I'll
just have to pay her the penalty in her contract, and get somebody else
in her place. That'll be hard on her, poor girl, as she'll lose the
best chance she's had yet of getting introduced to the public. I really
had hoped you two fellows would have kept out of difficulties with
each other," continued Sam, groaning. "I swear there's but one thing
worse than quarreling in a theatrical company, and that is love-making.
Blamed if I don't post a fine for any man in the company that's caught
looking at a woman. Love, anyhow, is the durndest, foolishest business
on top of the earth--no money in it and lots of trouble--and here you
are two fellows actually risking a cut of twenty dollars a week for the
sake of a petticoat! It's wicked, I say, and blasphemous, and it'll
ruin the show business. And here you've gone and brought the whole
infernal bother on my head, and I've been a good friend to you both;
and--and it's a shame--and--"
Sam stopped, almost crying. Neither one of us fully believed his threat
about parting with Jenny, but it would clearly lead to trouble and loss
of money on all sides if the Valbella Brothers came to grief. So it was
tacitly understood that for the remainder of the season neither one of
us should say a word to Jenny, and should go on as usual; and afterward
each would try his luck with the pretty little dancer. Sam Stacker had
intimated privately to me that if we left off our trapeze performance
he and the rest of the company would construe it that I was afraid to
risk it with Ted, considering the feeling between us, and I think he
also managed to convey the same idea to Ted, and it had its effect on
each. Sam swore that he intended to advise Jenny to marry the trombone,
who had three wives in various stages of divorce, seven small children,
and who alternated between the show business and that of a professional
revivalist.