"Please don't talk that way," I pleaded, my heart smiting me.
"Yes, I will. You tried to throw yourself into my son's place to save him, and I can't say too much in your favor. And you will reap your reward when the time comes. 'Well done, thou good and faithful servant,' can be said of you."
Old Master came in while she was sitting there. He appeared to be pleased with the attention she showed[Pg 194] me, or his pleasure might have proceeded from his discovery that her temper was improved. "You'll be all right now pretty soon," he said. "I don't believe that I'd read too much. It isn't well to strain your mind. Has your young master told you that he is preparing himself for examination? He is nearly ready, and will be by the time court meets next week. He's afraid that he won't get through without a bobble, but I think he'll go through like a flash. He has decided to enter old Judge Bruce's office. The old fellow doesn't know much but he is a good palaverer and has a pretty fair practice. He never was a real judge, you know—was a candidate once and came off with the title but missed the office."
As Old Master became warmer toward me, Old Miss grew cooler; her countenance while she talked had been kindly, but now it was veiled with a frown. The prospect of seeing Young Master established as a lawyer lifted my spirits, but the sight of his mother's displeasure toward me threw them down. Old Master observed the change in the atmosphere. "Madam," said he, "I have been thinking that we need a new carpet for the parlor."
"Indeed," she replied, bowing with a mocking grace, "I am delighted to credit your eye-sight with a[Pg 195] sudden improvement. I have spoken of the condition of that carpet until I am tired of it. It's the talk of the neighborhood, I'm sure. Mrs. Ramsey turned up her nose at it the other day, and I couldn't help thinking that it was a pretty pass indeed to be humiliated in my own house by such a thing as she is. And it was no longer ago than last fall that her husband had to sell an old negro woman that had been in the family all her life."
"Huh," grunted the old man, winking slyly at me. "Did she turn up her nose very high?" He grabbed out a red handkerchief, snorted into it and sat looking at her with the water of an old mischief standing in his eyes.
"General, don't laugh at me. I am the last person in this world that you should laugh at. Don't you do it!"
"But, madam, you are the first person I should laugh with."
"I don't see how you can laugh at anybody after what we have gone through with lately, blood spattered on our door-sill; but I actually believe that you have been gayer since that awful event." With that remark she flounced out of the room, and the old man sat there, looking out into the blue space of the [Pg 196]speckless day, silent and absorbed. After a time he turned his old eyes slowly upon me.
"The youth whose promise in life embraces the prospect of a broad scope should be taught that at the end of it all—this alluring rain-bow—lies disappointment. Sometimes when I have seen my men in the field, with no thought of the morrow and with never a worry except some trifling physical ill, I have wished that I was one of them. I started out wrong," he went on, shaking his head slowly up and down. "Horses can be called back from a false spurt in the race, and another start taken, but men must go on. Dan, I have stood by and seen you trying to educate yourself, and I have said nothing, although I know that education is often the sensitizing of a nerve that leads to misery. To be a gentleman means to possess a large ability to feel, and to feel is to worry, to brood and to suffer. Men of the North and gentlemen of the South, the phrase has gone forth. Our old Virginia blood is gentle, in society; but alone, it is hot with the lingering fire of the cavalier. Do you know what I am saying?" he asked, deepening the wrinkles in his brow.
"No, sir; I don't know that I do."
"I suppose not. I have been beating the devil around an oratorical stump, sir," he said, his scrawny,[Pg 197] red neck stiffening. "I don't know that I understand myself. Is that Bob or Clem coming up the stairs? It's Bob. Glad to see you doing so well," he added, getting up. And standing for a moment, he put his hand on my head. "You are a noble fellow, even if you are a slave and a negro."
Going out he met Young Master coming in. The young man saluted; the old man gave him a smile and a kindly nod and passed on. Bob spoke to me; said he was glad to see me improving so fast; he sat down and took up his book. He opened it at random, knowing it so well that any place offered an understandable beginning, but he did not read. He turned his eyes toward me and said: "You remember that about two months ago a gentleman named Potter bought the old Jamison place, over on the pike? Mother and I called on the family. And since then I have been over there a number of times, though I have said nothing about it to even you. All my life I have been gazing about to discover a sweet secret, and I think I've found one. Yes—and her name is Jane." At this he laughed, threw down his book, shoved his chair back and put his feet on the table. "The name is well enough, no doubt, but in this part of the country we usually associate it with a black wench, you know; and I was impudent[Pg 198] enough to ask Mrs. Potter why she didn't call her Jenny, but she shut me up with, 'she was named for my mother and it is an honorable name, I'm sure.' And it is, too—it takes on bright colors as I associate it with her. But I never thought that I could be smitten with a girl named Jane. It struck me that they had nick-named a rose—said scat to a lily. Do you know what she did? Came over here to see you. Said she wanted to see a hero. I brought her up and she looked upon you as you lay here unconscious. As a usual thing, a boy is born in love—falls in love with his nurse if no one else is handy—but I have escaped pretty well. Oh, I did rather love the Webster girl, and I confess to breathing hard whenever Miss Flemming, the old maid school-teacher, came about; but I'm sure I never was knocked senseless with a perfumed slung-shot until I met Jane. Well, the name's all right; is like the finest music—takes you some time to discover its beauties. I told her that I was going to be a lawyer and she said that was charming; declared that she was coming to hear my first speech. I wish she would; I could shame Demosthenes."
Not since he was a small boy had I heard him rattle on so, and it was a delight to me. Of late his over-manishness and his abstraction had told of too deep an[Pg 199] absorption in his books, of an impatient ambition gnawing him, and this chaffy talk and the idle light of his countenance relieved a fear that had crept into my mind.
"There is something more than beauty about her," he went on, taking pleasure in the interest I was showing. "She reminds Uncle Clem of a blooded horse, he says. I was inclined to take exceptions at this, but remembered that it was but an expression of real enthusiasm. She steps like a fawn, springs off the turf before she appears to have touched it. My first feeling toward her was one of gladness. I was selfish enough to believe, or to fancy that I believed, she had been created to delight me. And when I removed my eyes from her, I felt sad. Her eyes laughed at me and her lips seemed to say, I have found a fool. At the gate she had jumped off a horse and was in a riding habit when she came running into the room. She was in no wise embarrassed by me. After a while she said that she was hungry and I was startled. I could not conceive of that creature sitting down to vulgar bread, and I was stupid enough to say that I didn't see how she existed in the winter, with the roses all gone. I knew she must eat roses. And she smote me hard by replying that cabbages came on about the[Pg 200] time roses gave out. This tickled her mother immensely and she shook her fat sides and fanned herself with the wing of a guinea hen. I am getting all my visits mixed, perhaps, but I am giving you a collection of impressions. The mother is ignorant and the father is coarse. He made money driving mules to New Orleans and bought the Jamison farm. Yes, her mother and father are plebeian, but the girl is a patrician of the rarest type. She told me that she had just come from school. I asked her if she were sure she had not just come from a gallery of famous portraits. This tickled her and my blood danced in rhythm with her laugh. Every line of my prose, law, oratory, turned up crackling like drying leaves and was blown away, but all the poetry I had read remained, blooming anew. Now you know how bad off I am, and you may congratulate yourself that you can't follow me into this new domain. Oh, what is so delicious as a fool's love affair! But I wonder if she's going to have fun with me and then tell me to go. No, sir, I'm going to win her love if actions, words and devotion count for anything. Dan, she has given me new blood. Good thing that something has happened, for this quiet, expectant life is almost unbearable."
[Pg 201]
"What's that?" cried Mr. Clem, stepping into the room. "Quiet life, do I hear? Well, it won't always be this quiet, my son. Lincoln will be nominated for the presidency as sure as you live, and the chances are that he'll get in, and then what? War, my boy; red-whiskered war. The South is as sore as a stone-bruise and won't accept an abolitionist. Our high aristocrats have been hankering a long time for a fight and they are going to get it."
"Let it come," replied Young Master, shoving his hands into his pockets. "It will be a tournament, music, smiles and flowers. Then we'll all eat out of the same bowl."
"Don't you fool yourself!" the old man exclaimed, and I saw that he was deeply in earnest. "It won't be a tournament. It will look more like a butcher's pen."
"But the blood-letting will be good for our swollen pride. It will give us all a chance to strut like a turkey gobbler, and, Uncle Clem, it will bring up the price of horses."
"By the hoofs, I hadn't thought of that. I never saw a young fellow improve as fast as you do, Bob. In the last week or so you have said several pretty good things. You are getting the proper grasp on truth; and if a man has truth in one hand it needn't make any[Pg 202] difference what the other fellow has in both hands. Yes, sir, if a war should break out, the horse market would hold up its head and snort. But say, Bob, wasn't there a little love mixed up in what you were saying as I came in?"
"Not a little, uncle. All."
"The girl you've been prancing around with lately?"
"Yes, if you wish to put it that way."
"High stepper, Bobbie; trot a mile in—I mean she's all right. Good nostrils—shapely nose, you understand. Laughs well, teeth all sound, and if I were a young fellow, I'd agree to pay her way into every show that might come along, and make a fire for her every morning. Why, Dan, you appear to be tickled nearly to death. I want to tell you that I found that money on the bed where I dropped it. Talk about your heroes of old, why—"
I interrupted him with a sign of real distress. "I must beg of you and of everyone else, Mr. Clem, not to try to make a hero out of me. But there is a hero under this roof—"
"Dan," Young Master broke in, "I have just sharpened my knife and I am almost tempted to cut off your ears. Of what use is an ear when you turn it from heart-felt praise to catch the unsympathetic tones of[Pg 203] average life? And now when anyone starts to compliment you upon your heroism, I command you to keep your ears open and your mouth shut. You did act the part of a hero. Shut up, not a word out of you."
Mr. Clem swore with a horsey oath that I was a hero, and I was compelled to sit there and listen to his extravagant praise.