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I sometimes wonder how some people can plume themselves on their descent, though able to trace it back only to the Norman Conquest. J. B. W. |
It did not seem so while I was writing it, but now that my book is finished, it strikes me as one of the oddest works I have ever read. You can never tell what is coming next. Even to me it was a series of surprises. Read the first ten lines of any chapter. Now read the last ten. Heavens, how did he get there! I seem never to know whither, or how far I am going. It has been the same with me all my life. Often, as a boy, I have set out for a neighbor’s on a mule, and not gone all the way.
Another singular trait about this book is what I must be allowed to call its unconscious humor. A strange thing to say about one’s own book; but somehow, when I am reading it, I can’t shake off the impression that some other fellow wrote it, or that I wrote it in my sleep,—so many things do I find in it which I could almost swear I never thought of in my life. And there are a dozen passages in it where I slapped my thigh, crying out, Good! Good! And more than once I caught myself saying, By Jove, I should like to know the old boy who wrote this!
Yet, never in my life was I more serious than when I sat down to write this work; for it was the solemn, theological, Huguenot molecules of my brain that set me to writing; and the book was to be too grave to bring a ripple to the beak of a Laughing Jackass,—that jovial kingfisher whose professional hilarity cheers the lone Australian shepherd.
Now, since man—as every college-boy knows—and it is well to know something—since man is but the sum of his ancestors modified by his environment, whence have I derived this trait of mine, this unconscious humor,—the gift, that is, of making people laugh without intending it? Many persons have it, but where did I get it?
Not from the business-like Whackers, surely. Still less from the Pope-hating Bouches. I must derive it from my Danichester blood. From this source, too, I must get another characteristic,—that of being sad when others are gay. In the midst of piping and fiddling I sometimes ask my heart what is the use of it all. And ofttimes, while I have stood smiling as I looked upon a group of merry children at play, I could feel the tears trickling back upon my heart.
Family traits are generally modified (Darwin, passim) from generation to generation. Thus, the grandson of a painter will be a musician, perhaps; and many literary people are sons of clergymen. There is similarity rather than identity. And so this vein of sadness, which lies so deep in me that few or none of my friends have ever suspected its existence, crops out in one of my progenitors. I allude to Olaf Danichester, Gent., whose daughter Gunhilda was married to John Whacker, merchant, London, in the seventeenth year of the reign of glorious Queen Bess.
Now, from all accounts, this ancestor of ours had a most extraordinary way of saying things that no one else would ever have thought of; added to which was the singularity that, after he had run through the fortune brought to him by his second wife, he was never known to smile. And it is no secret to the Whacker connection (though not generally known in literary circles) that the immortal Shakespeare, who often sat with him over a cold cut and a tankard of ale in the parlor of his prosperous son-in-law (J. W.), has embalmed him for posterity in the melancholy Jaques.
Now, the difference between Olaf Danichester and myself is simply that he gave utterance to his sad thoughts, while I keep mine to myself. I am a mere modification of him, just as he was of his valiant progenitor, Vagn Akason, the Viking. This Vagn, though an eminent waterman in his day, did not come over to America in the Mayflower,—chiefly because he was killed centuries before she sailed, but in part, also, because he felt no wish to make others worship God after his fashion; which was a very poor fashion, I fear, from the account given of him in our Records. At any rate, he was a marvellously handsome fellow, this Viking bold; and when he went forth to battle, a storm of yellow hair, as Motherwell says, floated over his broad shoulders,—so that he looked for all the world like Lohengrin. But I suspect he was not the kind of man we should select, at the present day, as superintendent of a Sunday-school. For one thing, he was a most omnipotous drinker; nor should I ever have admitted that I had a drop of his blood in my veins had it not been necessary for me, as a Darwinian, to account for my unconscious humor. And if these words savor of conceit, let us call it my trick of saying and doing the most unexpected things. Hear the account of the death of this brave young sea-rover, and see whether I do not come honestly by this trait:
He, with seventeen of his companions, had been captured, and had been made, according to the custom of those rude days, to straddle a large log, one behind the other, with their hands tied behind their backs. Up came, then, the victor, Jarl Hakon (after a leisurely breakfast of pork chops), to strike off their heads. This, to us, seems unkind; but having one’s head chopped off was such a matter of course in those days that no one ever thought for an instant of minding it in the least. Give and take was the way they looked at it.
But brave as these men were in the presence of the headsman, they shuddered at the very thought of a barber. They gloried in their long hair. To lose their heads was an incident of war; to lose their locks a disgrace which followed them even into the next world. According to a superstition of theirs, a Sea-Cavalier who lost his curls just before parting with his head was doomed to be a Roundhead ghost and a laughing-stock throughout eternity.
Up strode the fierce headsman, Tharkell Leire, and bade the captive Viking lean forward and lay his golden hair upon the log. He obeyed, but held his calm, sky-blue eye upon the glittering axe, and, quick as a flash, as it descended, covered his fair curls with his fairer neck. And when his seventeen comrades, who sat there waiting their turn, saw how their wily captain had outwitted their enemy, and how he raged thereat, they roared with Sea-King laughter.
Every school-boy knows what the Edict of Nantes was; but philosophers differ as to what was the effect of its revocation upon the fortunes of France. For us it is enough to know that Louis XIV., by recalling it, drove to Virginia our ancestor John Bouche, whose daughter, Elizabeth, completely captivated my great etc. grandfather, Tom Whacker, by her pretty French accent and trim French figure. She was good and wise, too; but the rascal never found that out till after he married her. It must be owing to the Danichester strain, I suppose, that the Whackers, so sensible in many ways, have always sought grace and beauty in their wives, rather than piety and learning; and I suppose I shall be no wiser than my fathers when my time comes.
This Huguenot cross gave the old Whacker stock a twist towards theology. Two of the sons of Thomas and Elizabeth took orders, much to the surprise of their father, who used to say that Reverend Whacker had a queer sound to his ear. So prepotent, in fact, has the Huguenot strain become, that a Whacker is no longer a Whacker. In the old days our eyes were as blue as the sky; now they are as black as sloes. Once we were reserved and silent; now—but enough. As for myself, it has often seemed to me that I was all Bouche,—Bouche et præterea nihil,—as the ancient Romans put it in their compact way.
Needless to say, therefore, that this book was to instruct and edify you. You may see that from the very first sentence of it all that I wrote:
“And, now in conclusion, my dear boy, if you rise from the perusal of this work a wiser and better man, the direct author of the book and the indirect author of your being will feel amply repaid for all his toil.”
Such were my intentions. And now read the book, as it stands. Heavens and earth, was there ever such another! Alas, those Danichester molecules, what have they not made me say! Page after page, and chapter after chapter, in which I defy even a mouse to pick up a crumb of edification. Chapter after chapter of feasting, fiddling, dancing, courting,—roast turkeys, broiled oysters, hams seven years old. Bowls full of egg-nogg, pipes full of tobacco, students full of apple-toddy,—everything to make a man feel good, nothing to make him be good. For the heathen Viking in me speaks!
Yet he does not hold entire sway. But as we sit—you and I and the friends you shall presently make—sit joyously picnicking in a fair wood—more than once the trees above us, as you shall find, will seem to moan, as they bend before the gentle breeze. ’Tis the spirit of the melancholy Jaques, perched like a raven, there. To him a sob lies lurking in every laugh; and his weary eyes can never look upon a dimple—a dimple, smile-wrought in damask cheek—but they see therein the sheen of coming tears.
Here I am, then, Whacker-Danichester-Bouche. [Anglicé, Bush.] And, since man is but the epitome of his ancestry, what kind of an author should result? Chemists tells us that it is not so much the molecules as their arrangement. Let us try this: Danichester-Bush-Whacker,—so what else could I be but a Humoristico-sentimental Bushwhacker?
And such I am, ladies and gentlemen, at your service!
And a Bushwhacker, beloved scion, you will rightly divine to be one who whacks from behind a bush. But that this is so is (and that you would never guess) one of those whimsical accidents of which philology points out so many examples. Bushwhackers no more got their name in the way the name suggests than your Shank-high fowls got theirs from length of limb.
How they did get it I must now explain. Not that I may vaingloriously show off my rather quaint and curious philologic lore. I have a better motive. The word has its origin in an incident in our family history; an incident, too, of such interest that it gave rise to a poem, famous in its day, beginning, “All quiet along the Potomac to-night,”—the author of which will never be known. For three hundred and eleven people (two hundred and ninety-nine women and twelve men) went before justices of the peace, when it began to make a noise in the world, and made oath that they wrote it. Which shows, among other things, that there is no lack of justices of the peace in this country. But let’s to the incident.
You must know, then, that the Bouche connection is as numerous as it is respectable. Hardly a county in Virginia where you shall not find a colony of them. And as a rule they are genteel folk, mingling with the best. But (for I shall not conceal it from you) every now and then one stumbles upon a shoot of the original stem that is fallen into the sere and yellow leaf. Still, the motto with us is, that a Bouche is a Bouche, even though he be run down at the heel. But our clannishness has its limits. We draw the line at the spelling of the name,—draw it sharply between Bouche and Bush. Still, I happen to have heard my grandfather say that, though old Jim Bush did not spell the name after the aristocratic Huguenot fashion, his father before him did; and that, consequently, he was one of us.
After all, he was by no means a bad fellow. It covers his case better to say that he was not profitable unto himself. He was, in fact, a kind of Rip Van Winkle, whose hands, though he was desperately poor and owned a farm of a few acres, were more familiar with the rifle than the handles of a plough. For miles around his tumble-down old house he and his gun were a terror to game of all kinds; and it was believed that, of squirrels especially, he had killed more, in his day, than any man within miles of Alexandria. Nor were there lacking those who maintained that upon a dozen of these edible rodents, as a substratum, he could build up a Brunswick stew such as—but I dined with him once, and feel no need of outside testimony. (I suppose it was the French streak in him. He spelt himself Bush, but blood will tell.)
“The main secret, Jack” (everybody calls me Jack, no matter how poor and humble they may be; besides, he was a cousin),—“the main secret is that I put in the brains. When I was a green hand with the rifle I used to knock their heads off; and monstrous proud I was, I remember, of never touching their bodies. Now I save their brains by just wiping off their smellers.”
Yes, my son, he was an out-at-the-elbows Bouche, and his language was low. But let us not sneer at him. He could do two things well. And how many of us can do one! For my own part, when I look at myself and then at my brother-men, I cannot find it in my heart to despise the lowliest of them all. The scornful alone do I scorn. And when I see a little two-legged puff-ball strutting along, with its nose in the air, I long for old Jim Bush and his rifle, that he might serve it as he did the squirrels.
Old Jim’s ramshackle house stood in the zone which lay between the Northern and Southern armies during the winter following the first battle of Manassas, or Bull Bun. He was not young enough to shoulder his musket, having been born in the year 1800. Besides, rheumatism had laid its heavy hand upon his left knee. As scouting parties of the enemy frequently came uncomfortably near old Jim’s little farm, he, dreading capture, spent most of his time in the dense woods which surrounded his house, creeping back, at nightfall, beneath its friendly roof. True, the roof leaked here and there, but it was all he had, and he loved it.
One day the enemy pushed forward their picket-line as far as his house, and established a station there. It was late in the afternoon when they came, and old Jim, who had already returned for the night, had barely time, on hearing the clatter of hoofs at his very door, to rush out by the back way and tumble into the dense jungle of a ravine which skirted his little garden. Very naturally, to a Bedouin like old Bush, the idea of being immured in a noisome dungeon, as had happened to some of his less wily neighbors, was full of horrors; and crawling into the densest part of the thicket, he crouched there pale and hardly breathing, lest the men whose voices he heard so clearly should hear him.
Old Joe—for, while Jim differed from Diogenes in many other ways, he was like him in this, that he owned a solitary slave—old Joe they had caught. No doubt the sizzling (the dictionary-man will please put the word in his next edition)—the sizzling of the bacon in his frying-pan dulled his hearing; and so his knees smote together, when, raising his eyes to the darkened door, he saw a Federal soldier standing upon the threshold.
“Sarvant, mahster!” stammered he through his chattering teeth.
In order to explain his terror to readers of the present day, I must beg them to recall the fact that Lincoln had issued a proclamation that the North had no intention or wish to overthrow slavery in the South. “We come to save the Union,—dash the niggers!” was the angry and universal reply of the Federal soldiers when our women jeered them on their supposed mission. Hence the phrase “wicked and causeless rebellion,” without which no loyal editor could get on with the least comfort in those early days of the war.
Just as a poetess, nowadays, rends her ringlets till she finds a way of working “gloaming” into her little sonnet.
The abolitionists,—to praise them is the toughest task my conscience ever put upon me,—though they brought on the war, were not war-men. They honestly abhorred slavery, and had the courage of their convictions. They would have let the “erring sisters depart in peace” so as to rid the Union of the blot of African servitude, and deserve such honor as is due to earnest men. Later on, they changed their position; but middle-aged men will remember what their views were at the opening of the struggle.
Not recognizing, therefore, a friend in the “Yankee” who stood in his door-way, the glitter of his bayonet was disagreeable to old Joe’s eyes, and the point of it looked so sharp that it made his ribs ache; and his knees trembled beneath him. For old Joe was not by nature bloodthirsty, nor longed for gore,—least of all the intimate and personal gore of Joseph Meekins.
“Sarvant, mahster!”
Perhaps old Jim’s naturally serene temper was ruffled, at the moment, by the fact that the fangs of a blackberry-bush, under which he had forced his head, had fastened themselves upon his right ear. At any rate, I am afraid he muttered, sotto voce, an oath at hearing his old slave and friend call a Yankee master.
“Sarvant, mahster!”
Old Joe’s form was bent low, his teeth chattered, his eyes rolled in terror like those of a bullock dragged up to the slaughter-post and the knife.
The sight of a man’s face distorted with abject fear has always filled me with deep compassion; but I believe it arouses in the average man (which I am far from claiming to be) a feeling of pitiless scorn.
“Sarvant, mahster!” chattered old Joe, writhing himself behind the kitchen table. The soldier was an average man.
“Where is your master, you d—d old baboon?” said he, entering the kitchen.
“My mahster, yes, mahster, my mahster, he—for de love o’ Gaud, young gent’mun, don’t pint her dis way,—she mought be loaded. Take a cheer, young mahster; jess set up to de table” (over which he gave a rapid pass with his sleeve) “an’ lemme gi’ you some o’ dat nice bacon I was jess a-fryin’ for my mahster’s supper.”
At these words old Jim’s teeth began to chatter so that he forgot the belligerent brier.
The soldier, hungry from his march, fell to, nothing loath, but had scarcely eaten three mouthfuls before several of his comrades appeared, all of whom fell foul of poor old Jim’s supper with military ardor, if without military precision.
“Where’s the old F. F. V.?” asked a new-comer, through a mouthful of hoe-cake.
“Yes, where is your master?” put in the first man. “You didn’t tell me. Out with it.”
Joe had had time to repent of his ill-advised admission in regard to the supper.
“You ax me whar Mr. Bush is? Oh, he’s in Culpeper Court-House. Leastways, he leff b’fo’ light dis mornin’ boun’ dar.”
The audacious lack of adjustment between this statement and the facts of the case amazed, almost amused, old Jim. Breathing a little freer, he ventured softly to shake his ear loose from the brier; for he could not reach it with his hand.
“Why, you lying old ape, didn’t you tell me that this was his supper?”
“Cert’n’y, young gent’mun; cert’n’y I say dat, in course.”
“And your master at Culpeper?”
“Yes, young mahster. Dis is de way ’tis. You ’pear like a stranger in dese parts, beggin’ your pardon, an’ maybe you mout’n’ understan’ how de folks ’bout here is. S’posin’ some o’ de neighbors had ’a’ step in, and dar warn’t nothin’ for ’em to eat, an’ mahster hear ’bout it when he come back, how I turn a gent’mun hongry ’way fum de do’. How ’bout dat, you reckon? Umgh-umgh! You don’t know my mahster! Didn’t I try it once! Lord ’a’ mussy!”
“How was it?”
“You ax me how was it! Go ’long, chile!” (No musket had gone off yet, and Joe began to feel rather more comfortable.) “Go ’long! My mahster was off fox-huntin’ wid some o’ de bloods,—some o’ de bloods,—an’ when he come back an’ find out I hadn’t cook no supper jess ’cause he was away, an’ I done turn a gent’mun off widout he supper, mahster he gimme, eff you b’lieve Joe, he gimme ’bout de keenest breshin’ Joe ever tase in he born days.” And, throwing back his head, he gave a laugh such as these soldiers had never heard in their lives.
And none of us shall ever hear again.
As for old Jim, who had never laid the weight of his finger on the romancer whose imagination was now playing like a fountain, tears of affectionate gratitude came into his eyes.
An instant later, and all kindly feeling was curdled in his simple heart.
Hearing a bustle, he peeped through the briers, and saw the officer in command of the party coming towards the kitchen, bearing in his hand the Virginia flag. He had discovered it in old Jim’s bedroom, where he had tacked it upon the bare wall, so that it was the last thing he saw at night and the first his opening eyes beheld. It was an insult to the Union soldiers, he heard the officer say, to flaunt the old rag in their faces. It was what no patriot could stand. He would teach the dashed rebels a lesson. “Set fire to this house,” he ordered. “The old rattletrap would fall down anyway, the first high wind that came along,” he added, with a laugh.
That laugh had a keener sting for old Jim than the order to burn down the house which had sheltered him for sixty years. The bitterest thing about poverty, says Juvenal, is that it makes men ridiculous.
Late in the night, when the smoking ruins of his house no longer gave any light, Jim crawled stealthily down the ravine. Could the sentry, as he marched back and forth on his beat, have seen the look that the old man, turning, fixed upon him every now and then as he made his way through the jungle, he would have felt less comfortable. As for Jim, half dead with cold, he reached the fires of the Confederate pickets at daybreak. On his way he had stopped at a certain old oak, and, thrusting down his arm into its hollow trunk, drew forth his rifle.
“Bushy-tails,” said he, with grave passion, waving his hand in the direction of the tree-tops above him, “you needn’t mind old Jim any longer. Lead is skeerce these times. You may skip ’round and chatter all you want to. Your smellers is safe. And gobblers, you may gobble and strut in peace now. You needn’t say put! put! when you see me creepin’ ’round. I won’t be a-lookin’ for you. You’ll have to excuse the old man. Bullets is skeerce these days, let alone powder. So, good-by, my honeys. And if you will forgive me the harm I have done you, old Jim won’t trouble you any more.”
And so, with his rifle across his lap, he sat upon a log and warmed his benumbed limbs, and, looking into friendly faces, warmed his heart, too.
“I say, old man,” said a young soldier, chaffing him, “what do you call that thing lying in your lap? Can it shoot?”
“I call her Old Betsey,” said he. “You may laugh at her, but if you hold her right and steady, she hurts. There ain’t anything funny about Old Betsey’s business end, I promise you.” And he tapped the muzzle of his rifle with a grim smile.
Late in the afternoon of the next day (it took him all this day to get thawed) old Jim bade the jolly boys at the picket station good-day. He was going scouting, he said.
“Leave the old pop-gun behind,” cried one.
“No, take it along,” put in another. “Perhaps you may knock over a molly-cotton-tail. Fetch her in, and we will help you cook her.”
Just before sundown the old man reached the summit of a densely-wooded little hill, about three hundred yards from where his house had lately stood. Stopping in front of a tall hickory on its apex, he raised his eyes and surveyed the tree from bottom to top.
“I went up it once, after nuts,” said he, speaking aloud; “but that was many a year ago,—let me see,—yes, forty-five years. Well, I must try—ah, I see,—I can make it.” And, leaning Old Betsey against the huge trunk, he tackled a young white oak.
Old Jim was tough and wiry, and found no great difficulty in climbing this to a point about thirty feet from the ground, where a large branch of the hickory came within a foot of the white oak. This he cooned till he reached the trunk. [I have not time to define cooning. Suffice it to say that, like heat, it is a mode of motion.] Toiling up this till he reached a fork about eighty feet from the ground, he, with a sharp effort, adjusted his own bifurcation to that of the tree, and immediately, without taking time to collect his breath, leaned forward, and fixed his eyes intently upon the little open space in front of the ruins of his house. He gazed, motionless, for a little while, then nodded his head,—“Ah, there he comes.” He sat there for half an hour, watching the sentry come into view and again pass out of sight, as he marched to and fro. “Well, old man,” said he, at last, “I reckon you know about all you want to know.” And twisting his stiff leg out of the fork, with a wry face, he descended the hickory, and took his seat upon a fallen trunk that lay near, throwing old Betsey across his lap. It was growing dark, and every now and then he raised his rifle to his cheek and took aim at various trees around him. Took aim again and again, lowering and raising his rifle, with contracted brows. “I am afraid my eyes are growing dim,” he muttered; “but the moon will rise at a quarter to ten, and then it will be all right, won’t it, old Bet? Don’t you remember that big gobbler we tumbled out of the beech-tree, one moonlight night—let me see—nineteen years ago coming next Christmas Eve? And you ain’t going to go back on me to-night, are you? Oh, I know you will stand by me this one time, if my eyes are just a little old and dim. I know you will help me out, as you have done many a time before, when I didn’t point you just right, but you knew where I wanted the bullet to go. Do you know what’s happened, old gal? Do you know that the little corner behind the bed, where you have stood for fifty years, is all ashes now, and the bed, too? Do you hear me, Betsey? And as the Holy Scripture says, the birds of the air have their nests, and the foxes their holes, but you and I have not where to lay our heads.”
The old man bowed his head over his rifle; and the fading twilight revealed the cold, steady gleam of its polished barrel, spotted with the quivering shimmer of hot tears.
A soldier marched to and fro in the darkness. It oppressed him, and he longed for the moon to rise.
Does the wisest among us know what to pray for?
Tramp! tramp! tramp! tramp! He pauses at one end of his beat and looks down upon his comrades sleeping, wrapped in their blankets, with their feet to the fire. When his hour is up, he, too, will sleep. Yes, and it is up, now, poor fellow, and your sleep will know no waking!
Yet it was not you who burned the nest of the poor old man. Nor even your regiment. Nor had you helped to hound the South to revolution by threats and contumely. ’Twas John Brown dissolved the Union. You hated him and his work, for you loved your whole country,—you and your father, who bade you good-by, the other day, with averted face. And now you must die that that work may be undone. You and half a million more of your people.
The South salutes your memory!
Ah, the moon is rising now. Ribbons of light stealing through the trees lie across his path, and yonder, at the farther end of it, the Queen of Night pours a flood of soft effulgence through a rift in the wood. The young soldier stood in the midst of it, bathed in a glorious plenitude of peaceful light. Such perfect stillness! Can this be war, thought he? He could hear the ticking of his watch upon his heart. But the click! click! beneath that dark old oak,—that he did not hear. And that barrel that glitters grimly even in the shadow,—he sees it not. The tear-stains are upon it still; but the tears are dried and gone.
Click! click!
The muzzle rises slowly; butt and shoulder meet. A head bends low; a left eye closes; the right, brown as a hawk’s and as fierce, glares, from beneath corrugated brow, along a barrel that rests as though in a grip of steel. The keen report of a sporting rifle—not loud, but crisp and clear—rings through the silent wood, and there is a heavy fall and a groan.
And the placid moon, serene mocker of mortals and their woes, floated upward and upward, and on and on. On and on, supremely tranquil, over other scenes, whether of love or hate.
Ah, can it be true that we poor men have no friend anywhere in the heavens above, as some would have us believe? or the ever-peaceful gods, dwellers upon Olympus, have they in very deed forgotten us?
“Where’s your game, grandpa?” asked the young soldier. “We have been sitting up waiting for you and your rabbit.”
“There are two kinds of game,” replied the old man, warming his hands before the fire; “one sort you bring home, the other kind you send home.”
“What! did you shoot a Yankee? One of the boys thought he heard the crack of a rifle.”
“’Twas old Betsey,” replied he, patting her cheek, as it were. “We whacked one of ’em. He won’t set fire to any more houses, I reckon.”
After this, old Jim, thoroughly acquainted with the country for miles around, became a regular scout; and going and coming at all hours of the night and day, he was soon well-known along the line of our outposts. And whenever he had important information to give, he went straight to headquarters; but whenever, after a moonlight night, he stopped at the picket-post, sat down on a log and toyed with his rifle, seeming to have nothing to say, the boys knew that he was waiting for a certain question: “Yes, old Betsey and me whacked one of ’em last night.” And then he would set out for headquarters, and the soldiers, passing the news, and adopting old Jim’s word, would say, “Old Bush whacked another of the rascals last night.” And these two words, so often brought in contact, at last cohered. Bushwhacker did not, therefore, originally, at least, mean a man who whacked from behind a thicket, but one who whacked after the fashion of old Jim Bush.
And I am a Bushwhacker who whacketh after that fashion. So much so, that it seems to me that my parents made a sort of prophetic pun when they named me John Bouche. The difference between me and old Jim is simply this: that he expressed his sentiments with a carnal rifle, I mine with a spiritual one. He hung upon the skirts of the Northern hosts; I go stalking stragglers from the Noble Army of Lies. Every sham the sturdy Whacker molecules of me impel my soul to hate. Yet my Huguenot blood shrinks from martyrdom. Did not they leave France to avoid it? I never attack the main body. But let a feeble, emaciated, and worn-out little lie, or a blustering, braggart fraud, or a conceited, coxcombical sham, stray to the right or left, or get belated on the march! I pounce upon him like an owl upon a field-mouse. It is my nature to. And so the reader must not be surprised, as we journey along together, through scene after scene of my story, to find herself suddenly left alone at the most unexpected times and places. I’ll come back, after a while, bringing a scalp; after which we will jog along together, for a chapter or so, again.
And a jolly, rousing, mad time we shall have of it, then. For it is on such occasions that I put my mustang through his comical paces,—my coal-black mustang, with his great, shaggy mane, and bushy, flowing tail, that sweeps the ground. For though, as every schoolboy knows, a Poet or other Gifted Person is properly mounted only on a Pegasus, I have been unable to get me one of those winged, high-bounding steeds.
And now, fair lady, the manager makes his bow and exit. You will soon be in better company.
One word more,—he begs your pardon. He led you to believe that the opera began at eight, sharp. You were there, in your seat, on time, eager to hear the first notes of the opening chorus. But I feared that had you known there was to be a long overture you would have been late, and thereby missed certain leitmotifs, not to have heard which would have marred what was to follow. Honestly, now, had you known that Chapter I. was not Chapter I., nor chapter of any kind, would you have read it? Would you not have skipped it, clear and clean (for it’s a hundred to one that you are a woman), had you known that it was my Introduction?
As the last rays of the setting sun were gilding the modest spires of Richmond, early in the month of October, 1860, I was sitting with two young ladies at the front parlor window of a house on Leigh Street. One of these, Lucy Poythress, like myself, was from the county of Leicester; or, to speak with entire exactness, her father’s residence was separated from my grandfather’s, in that county, by a river only. She had arrived in Richmond that morning, on a visit to her friend, Alice Carter. As the two girls, lately school-mates, had not met for three months, and had just risen from an excellent dinner,—that notable promoter of the affections,—I deem it superfluous to state that they were holding each other’s hands.
Also, they were talking.
“Oh, Lucy!” exclaimed Alice, suddenly starting up, “I had forgotten to tell you. I have fallen in love,—that is, nearly. I must tell you about it,” continued she, talking, at the same time, with her lips, her hands, and her merry-glancing hazel eyes,—“it was so romantic!”
“Of course,” said I.
“Ah, don’t be jealous!” retorted she, coaxingly. “But you see, Lucy, one day last week, as I was crossing the street, two squares below here, I struck my foot against something and fell flat. A book that I carried tumbled one way, my veil flew another, and—”
“And some pale, poetic stranger helped you to rise,” interrupted I.
“Yes; a gentleman who was meeting me just as I fell, and whose face I am sure I had never before seen in Richmond, ran forward, lifted me up, got me my book and veil, and, in short, he was so graceful, and his voice was so gentle, when he said ‘Excuse me,’ as he lifted me from the ground, that—I confess—I—” And dropping her eyes, and with an inimitable simper on her countenance, she made as though straightening, between thumb and forefinger, the hem of her handkerchief.
“Ah, you are the same dear old Alice still,” cried Lucy, leaning forward, and, with laughing lips, kissing her on the cheek. “And you fell in love with the graceful stranger?”
“Yes, indeed,—that is, as much as was becoming in a young woman of eighteen summers. By the way, Lucy, you too have reached that dignified age since I last saw you. Don’t you begin to feel ancient? I do. We shall soon be old maids.”
“And the romantic stranger, in that event?” asked I. “He, I suppose, will go hurl himself dismally off Mayo’s bridge. By the way, yonder he comes now.”
I am aware that the barest insinuation of the kind is flouted and scouted by the lovelier portion of mankind; but among men it is always frankly admitted that women are not destitute of curiosity.
“Yonder he comes now,” said I, languidly, as one who had dined well. Two lovely heads shot instantly out of the window.
“Where? where?”
“There,” said I; “that tall chap with the heavy beard, on the other side of the street.”
“Well, upon my word,” cried Alice, “’tis the very man! How on earth did you know it was he? You didn’t? Really and truly? How strange! Oh, if he would only cross the street and walk past our window! There, I believe—no—yes, here he comes across! How nice! What on earth makes him carry his hat in his hand?”
“Is that really your graceful friend?” asked I, growing interested.
“It is certainly he; I am sure I am not mistaken.”
The Unknown was crossing the street in a very leisurely, or rather abstracted, manner, evidently absorbed in thought,—or the lack of it,—for extremes meet. With hat in hand and chin pressed upon his breast, he sauntered along with the air of one who is going nowhere, and cares not when he reaches his destination. When he reached the lamp-post at the corner, not over twenty or thirty yards from where we stood, he stopped, hung his hat on the back of his head, and drew from his breast-pocket a pencil and a piece of stiff-looking paper. This he held against the lamp-post, and appeared to write or draw.
We drew back a little from the window.
“What on earth is he going to do?” exclaimed Alice.
“He is doubtless inditing an ode,” said I, “in commemoration of last week’s romantic interview. ‘Lines to a fallen angel,’ perhaps.” This witticism passed unheeded.
“The man’s crazy!” said Alice.
The Unknown had thrown his head back, and, with his eyes nearly closed, was gently tapping the air with the pencil in a kind of rhythm.
“Did you ever!” ejaculated Alice.
“Did you ever!” echoed Lucy.
“Well, I never!” mocked I.
“St!”
We drew still farther away from the window. He was going to pass us. Pencil and paper are again in breast-pocket, hat in hand, chin upon breast.
“Isn’t he nice and tall!”
“Yes; and what shoulders!”
“How strong he looks; and without an ounce of superfluous flesh!”
“How distinguished-looking!”
So chirruped these twain,—I, meanwhile, interjecting such interruptions as I could think of. “No one ever says of me that I haven’t an ounce of superfluous flesh.”
“Nor ever will, unless you go as a missionary among the Feejeeans,” retorted Alice.
You see I am rather—but no matter about me.
At the edge of the sidewalk, and nearly opposite the window at which we were standing, was an oblong carriage-block of granite, and upon this was seated, at this juncture, a sister of Lucy’s,—a little girl of nearly four years of age, playing with a set of painted squares of wood, known in the nursery as “blocks,” which had been presented to her by her godmother, Mrs. Carter, at whose special request the little thing had been brought to Richmond. Her country nurse was standing a few paces distant, dressed out in her finest, airing her best country manners for the bedazzlement of a city beau of her acquaintance (as having been formerly of her county), a mulatto barber who had chanced to pass that way, and had stopped for a chat about old times. The Unknown had not observed the little girl till, in his listless way, he had sauntered to within a few feet of her, when, catching sight of the mass of sunny curls that poured over her neck and shoulders (her back was turned towards him), he stopped, and seeing what her occupation was and hearing the babbling of her little tongue as she agreed with herself, now upon this plan, now on that, upsetting one structure almost before it was begun for another which was to share a like fate; gazing upon this little scene, a look of pleased interest, not unmingled with sadness, came into his face.
“He is a married man,” said I.
“Say not so!” cried Alice, with a tragic air.
“But his wife’s dead,” I added.
“I breathe again!” intoned Alice, in the same vein.
“Oh, Alice!” said Lucy, with gentle reproachfulness.
“Why, of course, Lucy,” began Alice, throwing herself into an argumentative attitude, “of course I do not really rejoice at the poor woman’s death; but how can you expect me to grieve over a person I never—”
“You are a greater scamp than ever,” said Lucy, laughingly stopping her friend’s mouth with her hand.
The little architect felt that some one stood behind her, and, turning her head and judging with that unerring infantile instinct that he was a friend, she gave him a number of those irresistible little looks, with which every one is familiar, half coy, half coquettish, which showed that, young though she was, her name was woman. Ladies at her time of life do not appreciate the necessity of introductions as preliminary to conversation with gentlemen.
“Build me a house!” cried she to the stranger, running towards him and looking now into his face, now at her blocks, with a smile half expectation, half timidity.
“I build you a house? Why, certainly, little brown eyes!”—taking her plump cheeks between his hands and gazing down into her upturned face with a smile that was singularly tender and bright; and all the more striking, as it gleamed forth with something of the suddenness of a flash of sunlight bursting through a cloud. It had been easy to see, indeed, as he approached us more nearly, that his preoccupations were not of a pleasant character. His slightly compressed lips imparted a shade of grimness to his look, and the mingled expression of weariness and resolution upon his features seemed to reveal some struggle going on in his breast.
“Well, now,” said he, taking up a few of the blocks as he seated himself upon the stepping-stone, “what kind of a house shall we build?”
“Did you ever!” looked we, all of us!
“We-e-’ll, we-e-’ll—we’ll m-a-k-e—let me tell you—”
“Saint Paul’s Church?” suggested the stranger,—“with a great, tall steeple!”
“N-o-o-o! People don’t live in churches! M-a-k-e me—m-a-k-e me—oh! make me one just like our house!” cried she, with sudden triumph, placing her hand upon her new-found friend’s shoulder, thrusting her face almost against his, and opening wide at him her great brown eyes, as much as to say, now we have it! And away she skipped, backwards, on the tips of her toes, clapping her dimpled hands; chirping forth, meanwhile, sundry joyous, inarticulate notes; which I shall not merely say were as sweet as the song of the birds,—for they were warblings from the heart of a happy child,—which notes, I take it, are the loveliest that float upward into the dome of the high heavens,—and blessed whose fingers avail to call them forth!
“Well, then,” began he, gathering together his blocks, “here are our bricks.”
“Bricks!” cried she, in a voice that was almost shrill with surprise. “Why, it is not a brick house!”
“Why, yes,” said he, carelessly glancing towards the house in which we were.
“Lor’ me, that’s not our house! Did you think that was our house? Oh, how funny!” cried she, gleefully triumphing in her superior knowledge; then, running towards the open window, behind the curtains of which the amused spectators of this scene had retired, “Sister Lucy!” exclaimed she, “what do you think! This gentleman thought this was our house, and we are just on a visit here! Sister Lucy! Sister Lucy! Sister L-u-u-u-c-y!”
Not receiving any reply from that alarmed young person, who had fled with me into one corner of the room, and with appalled look and appealing gestures was endeavoring to check the convulsive tittering of her friend Alice, who, in another corner, stood bowed together, weak and weeping with suppressed laughter, the little girl turned to her friend and said, “Sister Lucy has gone up-stairs, I reckon.”
“Thither Luthy hath dawn up-thtairs, I weckon,”—that was the way she said it; but words so distorted, charm, as they may, when they fall, like crumpled rose-leaves, from the fair portals of a child’s mouth, can please the eye of a phonetic reformer only. And so with the reader’s consent,—in fact, as a compliment to her,—I shall leave, in the main, such transformations to her fancy.
Besides, how utterly unintelligible would be a dialogue, so printed, to the very person for whose benefit, chiefly, this work has been undertaken. In his illumined day, you know, infants will have ceased to lisp.
The stranger had risen from his seat with rather a startled look, but upon this reassuring suggestion of his little friend, resumed it.
“You love your sister Lucy ever so much, I suppose?”
“Oh, yes, indeed. Mr. Whacker does, too.”
This remark produced a profound sensation upon two, certainly, of the eavesdroppers. Lucy, who was diffidence itself, blushed to the roots of her hair; while an uncomfortable consciousness of looking foolish took possession of me. Alice, holding her sides, fell exhausted upon a sofa.
“Mr. who?” asked he, with a sudden look of interest which startled us all.
“Mr. Whacker; don’t you know Mr. Whacker?”
“Maybe so; what kind of a man is he?”
“Oh, he is a nice man, and he is so funny,—he makes me nearly dead with laughing.”
“Does your sister Lucy love this nice, funny Mr. Whacker?”
Lucy looked perfectly aghast.
“Yes, she do.”
“She do, do she?” echoed the Unknown; while ripples of merriment danced about his singularly intense and glowing eyes, like those on the dark waters of some deep lake.
“Did she ever tell you so?”
“Y-e-e-e-es,” replied she, doubtfully.
“Mr. Whacker, I assure you,” began Lucy, choking with mortification, “I—”
“I forgive, though I can never forget—”
“But—”
“St!” whispered Alice; “it is as good as a play!”
“But, Alice, it’s a most outrageous—”
“Never mind,—listen!”
Meantime, we had lost a few sentences of the colloquy, which seemed to be affording intense amusement to the Stranger.
“But what did she say?” were the first words we caught.
“She said,” began the little thing, gesticulating with her hands and rolling her eyes,—speaking, in fact, with her whole body,—“sister Lucy, she said—”
“Well.”
“Sister Lucy, she said Mr. Whacker was mighty fat, but he was right pretty.”
Imagine the scene behind the curtains! The trouble was that Lucy, who was as truthful as Epaminondas, could not deny having paid me, in substance, this two-edged compliment. So she could only bury her face in her hands. As for the Stranger, he actually laughed aloud.
“But do ladies always love pretty men?”
“Why, yes; I love my sweetheart, and he is pretty.”
“Your sweetheart! Have you a sweetheart?”
“Yes,” replied she, with decision and complacency.
“What’s his name?”
“I can’t tell you!”
“Do, now.”
“Oh, I can’t!” And she dropped her cheek on her off shoulder and shut her eyes.
“Say, do you like candy?”
“Yes,” said she, eagerly wheeling round; “where is it?”
“Never mind. If you will tell me, I will bring you some to-morrow.”
“What’s in that paper? I ’spec’ it’s candy, right now!”
“No,” said he, smiling; “but I will bring you some to-morrow if you will tell me.”
She stuck a finger into her mouth and hung her head.
“Red candy,” began he, “and blue candy,” he continued, nodding his head up and down, between the varieties, with a sort of pantomimic punctuation, “and green candy—”
Wide-eyed delight and a half-smile of eager expectation illumined the face of the little tempted one.
“And yellow candy, and—let me see—and striped candy, and speckled candy—and—and—and—ALL SORTS OF CANDY!”
She clasped her hands and drew a long breath.
“Will you?”
The infant that hesitates is lost.
“And tied up in most beautiful paper—”
“You won’t tell Mr. Whacker?”
“No, never!!!”
In an instant the little creature had sprung towards him, seized his head, pulled it down, pressed her lips against his ear, shot the momentous name therein and bounded back.
“There! Give me the candy!”
“I said I should get it to-morrow. But I didn’t hear a word. Tell me over again. There,—whisper it in my ear. Willie? Willie what?” said he, drawing her towards him. “Ah, that is the name, is it?”
We did not hear the name, and I must suppose it was that of some near neighbor of her father’s.
“Now, don’t tell Mr. Whacker!”
“No,” replied the stranger; but he had heard her with the outward ear only. He sat, with drawn lids, gazing upon the pavement, and softly biting his nails, as though solving some problem. His lips seemed to move; and every now and then he looked, out of the corners of his eyes, at his little companion. At last he slowly rose, but stood motionless, with eyes fixed upon the ground.
“Oh, don’t go!” cried she, her fair, upturned face wearing a beautiful expression of infantile affection.
And here our mysterious friend had another surprise in store for us. For, when he saw that look, a startled expression came into his face; and leaning forward, he scrutinized her features with a gaze so searching that there was a kind of glare in his eyes,—so that the little girl dropped her eyes and drew back, as though with a feeling of dread. But the Unknown suddenly sat down beside her, and, taking one of her hands in both his, patted it softly, and, in a voice tender as that of a young mother, asked, “But what is your name, my little cherub?”
“My name is Laura. Let’s make another house—oh, no, let’s make a boat!”
“Not now. But Laura what? What is your other name?”
“My name is Laura Poythress.”
“Laura Poythress!”
He bowed his broad shoulders till his face was almost on a level with hers, and scanning her features intently: “Laura Poythress, Laura Poythress,” repeated he, to himself; “and Lucy, too! and Whacker!”
We looked at each other with wide eyes.
Again the stranger rose; this time with nervous abruptness, and took a few rapid turns up and down the pavement, close to little Laura; then walking quickly up to her, and stooping down, he asked her, in an eager whisper, “Have you any mother?”
“Yeth,” replied she, with a simple little laugh, “of courth; evvybody’th dot a muvver!”
He seemed to avert his face when she laid down this generalization; nor could we, from our position, see his expression. “Yes,” said he; and was silent for a while. “What is your mother’s name?”
“My mother’s name is Mumma.”
“But what is her real sure-enough name?”
“Her name is Mumma,” repeated she, with emphasis. “Oh, my mother’s got two names. She is named Mumma and she is named Mrs. Poythress.”
“Ah, yes; but what does your father call her?”
“My papa calls my mumma my dear; oh, and sometimes he calls her ‘honey,’—because she is so sweet.”
“Does he ever call her—let me see—does he ever call her Polly?”
“Oh, me, the idea!” cried she, raising her hands and eyes in infantile pity of his ignorance. “Why, that’s Aunt Polly’s name!”
“So your Aunt Polly is named Polly, is she?”
“No, she ain’t! Aunt Polly is named Aunt Polly. She is our cook at our house, she is.”
“She is your cook, is she? And what does she call your mother?”
“Mistiss.”
Just then the mulatto barber, passing by, doffed his hat to the gentleman; and Dolly, the nurse, left alone, bethought her of her charge. Coming up, she dropped a courtesy to the Stranger, and told Laura it was time she were within doors.
“Good-by, Laura,” said the Unknown, taking her plump little hand in his; “won’t you give me a kiss? Ah, that’s a good little girl! One more! And another! Ah!” And he patted her cheek. “Good-by!”
“Dood-by!”
We looked at each other, and, although two-thirds of us were girls, several seconds passed without a word being spoken.
“Oh, here comes Mary!” And, looking across the way, I saw Mary Rolfe briskly tripping down the steps of her father’s residence. Away scampered Alice and Lucy into the hall; not to unlock the front door for Mary, for that, Richmond-fashion, stood wide open; but impelled by that instinctive conviction, never entirely absent from the female breast, that life is short. I followed with all the dignity of a fledgling counsellor-at-law, and possible future supreme justice.
The three met on the sidewalk and it began,—Eurus, Zephyrusque Notusque.
All nature is one. Remove the plug from a basin and see how the water, instead of pouring straight out in a business-like way, spins round and round, just as though it knew you were late for breakfast. Behold, too, the planets in their courses. And as in a tornado, which whirls along through field and forest, across mountain-chain and valley, around its advancing storm-centre, so in one of those lesser atmospheric disturbances set up by the conversation, or rather contemporaneousversation, of three or four girls just met (impossible though it be, in the present state of our knowledge, to determine in advance the precise location of their area of lowest barometric pressure), it is clear, even to the eye, that the movement of the girls themselves is cyclonic. And, further, just as, in a storm, the area of highest barometer is found to be occupied by a more or less tranquil atmosphere, so you shall find that the centre of a contemporancousversation always moves forward around a listener,—some weakling of a girl, with a bronchitis, perhaps, or, in rare cases, a stammerer. And again, just as a body of air, itself capable of levelling houses and uprooting trees, may be forced into quiescence by its environment of storm, so may a really worthy girl, not otherwise inferior, be reduced to silence by despair.
This, in fact, was the case with Lucy in the present instance. As the lovely human cyclone, whose outward sign was a world of fluttering ribbons and waving flounces, came whirling up the steps, through the hall, and into the parlor, it was obvious that she was the pivot around which it revolved.
In plain English, she found it impossible to get in a word.
It appears that Mary had seen, from her window, the Unknown, and watched his strange performances till he was gone. She had not seen us at our window, and tripping across the street to tell her dear Alice what a singular man she had seen sitting on her carriage-block, and talking with Laura, she had found that Alice had seen and heard more than she. And so, with that instinctive dread of loss of time so characteristic of the sex, they both, when they met on the sidewalk, began talking at once. They began talking to each other; but soon, their words, in obedience to that law of which Mr. Herbert Spencer makes so much (that moving bodies always follow the line of least resistance), began flowing into Lucy’s ears. Not that Mary took possession of one ear, Alice of the other. Rather did they, in obedience to law, revolve around her, as the earth around the sun, the moon round the earth, water round its exit, pouring their tidings into either organ with impartial eagerness.
It may excite wonder among my male readers that Alice should have told Lucy things that she knew the latter had seen with her own eyes. But this would be hardly putting the case fairly, as her remarks were couched rather in the form of exclamatory comments than of pure narrative. The male reader, again (would that there were no such dull animals in the world!), must be warned not to suppose that Alice and Mary were rude in talking simultaneously. It is discourteous, oh, crass mortal, for one man to interrupt another; but where a party of girls are met together, it will be found that the words of each, though many, are no impediment, but a stimulus, rather, to those of the rest.
Like swallows at eventide, circling around some village chimney, the more of them in the air at once, the more merrily do they flit.
And it will be found, too, that no matter how many have been talking at once, each will have heard what all have said.
It is when I contemplate this well-known phenomenon that my wonder daily grows that no allusion has ever been made to this acknowledged superiority of the female over the male homo, by what are called the woman-women, in their annual pow-wows in the interest of their sex. Cropped-haired woman after cropped-haired woman will arise, reinforced, here and there, by some mild-eyed male, o’er whose sloping shoulders soft ringlets cluster, and the burden of the plaint of she-he and he-she, alike, will be only that woman is unjustly excluded by man from this employment or that privilege, for which she is as well fitted as he. They seem to me to forget that Hannibal was not overcome till Africa was invaded; and they will never advance their cause till they find some female Seipio to put man upon the defensive, and aggressively insist that the real question is not whether she is capable of becoming lawyer, physician, preacher, but whether he is, or, at any rate, will be, in the re-fashioned world which is coming, fit for any avocation whatever.
Let us take the legal profession for an example. Excluding the male lawyer of the period, as an interested witness, who can fail to see how much would be gained were our judges, our counsel, and our jurymen all women? As things actually stand, the law’s delay has passed into a proverb. But what delay could there be in a trial wherein all the witnesses could be examined simultaneously, without a word being lost on the jury; where the learned (and lovely) counsel could sum up side by side (like a pair of well-matched trotters), neither of them getting in the first word, neither (what fairness!) being allowed the last? Again. Instead of a drowsy Bench, hearing nothing, seeing nothing, you would have an alert Sofa, capable of lending one ear to the plaintiff’s counsel, one to the defendant’s; taking in, with one eye, every convolution of the jury’s back-hair (should such things be), while with the other, she—the Court—estimated the relative good looks of the litigants, preparatory to instructing the jury and laying down the law. And so of the other professions, did space allow.
But this is not the worst of the matter. Already have advanced thinkers begun dimly to see that, with the approaching extinction of war, the time will come when courage will be worse than useless; while, in the rapid multiplication of labor-saving machinery, there is discernible the inevitable approach of an era when superior strength will be a disadvantage. For is not strength assimilated food? And in the Struggle for Existence will not She, requiring less food, and being therefore Fittest, survive? So that, with Seer’s eye, I seem to behold the day when my sex, excluded from every avocation, shall perish from off the face of that earth over which we have so long and so haughtily lorded.
The truth is, my dear lad (would that you were a girl!), I shudder when I think of your fate and that of your brother males, three hundred years from now. Preserved here and there in the zoological gardens of the wealthy and the curious, along with rare specimens of the bison of the prairie, skeletons of the American Indian and the dodo; exhibited in mammoth moral shows, and meeting the stare of the unnumbered female of the period with a once wicked, but now, alas! futile wink, you will rue the day when your ancestors, mistaking might for right, excluded woman from that haven of rest, the ballot-box. Why, it was but the other day that I saw a boy with a basketful of pups, which he was going to drown; and on my asking him why he condemned them to this fate, he answered, in the simplest way, “Oh, they are nothing but she’s.”
Yet we are never tired of boasting of our nineteenth century!
How the world is to be kept wagging when once the custom is established of drowning all the boy-babies (except specimens for menageries and preserves), is a problem for the science of the future. It suffices that I have recorded my views upon this burning question.
And upon this plank of my platform you, my grand-son-to-the-tenth-power, will, I trust, be allowed to float by the womankind of your day, in remembrance of my gallant defence of their rights in mine. Yes, yes, you will be one of the elect and undrowned!