Lady Baltimore Part 20

"President gwine to gib brekfus' an' dinnah an suppah to de likes ob you fo' de whole remaindah oh youh wuthless nat'ral life? Get out ob my sight, you reconstuckted n.i.g.g.ah. I come out oh de St. Michael."

There came through the window immediately upon this sounds of scuffling and of a fall, and then cries for help which took me running into the dilapidated building. Daddy Ben lay on the floor, and a thick, young savage was kicking him. In some remarkable way I thought of the solidity of their heads, and before the a.s.sailant even knew that he had a witness, I sped forward, aiming my kettle-supporter, and with its sharp bra.s.s edge I dealt him a crack over his s.h.i.+n with astonis.h.i.+ng accuracy.

It was a dismal howl that he gave, and as he turned he got from me another crack upon the other s.h.i.+n. I had no time to be alarmed at my deed, or I think that I should have been very much so; I am a man above all of peace, and physical encounters are peculiarly abhorrent to me; but, so far from a.s.sailing me, the thick, young savage, with the single muttered remark, "He hit me fuss," got himself out of the house with the most agreeable rapidity.

Daddy Ben sat up, and his first inquiry greatly rea.s.sured me as to his state. He stared at my paper bundle. "You done make him hollah wid dat, sah!"

I showed him the kettle-supporter through a rent in its wrapping, and I a.s.sisted him to stand upright. His injuries proved fortunately to be slight (although I may say here that the shock to his ancient body kept him away for a few days from the churchyard), and when I began to talk to him about the incident, he seemed unwilling to say much in answer to my questions. And when I offered to accompany him to where he lived, he declined altogether, a.s.suring me that it was close, and that he could walk there as well as if nothing had happened to him; but upon my asking him if I was on the right way to the carpenter's shop, he looked at me curiously.

"No use you gwine dab, sah. Dat shop close up. He not wukkin, dis week, and dat why fo' I jaw him jus' now when you come in an' stop him. He de cahpentah, my gran'son, Cha's Coteswuth."

XII: From the Bedside

Next morning when I saw the weltering sky I resigned myself to a day of dullness; yet before its end I had caught a bright new glimpse of John Mayrant's abilities, and also had come, through tribulation, to a further understanding of the South; so that I do not, to-day, regret the tribulation. As the rain disappointed me of two outdoor expeditions, to which I had been for some little while looking forward, I dedicated most of my long morning to a sadly neglected correspondence, and trusted that the expeditions, as soon as the next fine weather visited Kings Port, would still be in store for me. Not only everybody in town here, but Aunt Carola, up in the North also, had a.s.sured me that to miss the sight of Live Oaks when the azaleas in the gardens of that country seat were in flower would be to lose one of the rarest and most beautiful things which could be seen anywhere; and so I looked out of my window at the furious storm, hoping that it might not strip the bushes at Live Oaks of their bloom, which recent tourists at Mrs. Trevise's had described as drawing near the zenith of its luxuriance. The other excursion to Udolpho with John Mayrant was not so likely to fall through. Udolpho was a sort of hunting lodge or country club near Tern Creek and an old colonial church, so old that it bore the royal arms upon a s.h.i.+eld still preserved as a sign of its colonial origin. A note from Mayrant, received at breakfast, informed me that the rain would take all pleasure from such an excursion, and that he should seize the earliest opportunity the weather might afford to hold me to my promise. The wet gale, even as I sat writing, was beating down some of the full-blown flowers in the garden next Mrs. Trevise's house, and as the morning wore on I watched the paths grow more strewn with broken twigs and leaves.

I filled my correspondence with accounts of Daddy Ben and his grandson, the carpenter, doubtless from some pride in my part in that, but also because it had become, through thinking it over, even more interesting to-day than it had been at the moment of its occurrence; and in replying to a sort of postscript of Aunt Carola's in which she hurriedly wrote that she had forgotten to say she had heard the La Heu family in South Carolina was related to the Bombos, and should be obliged to me if I would make inquiries about this, I told her that it would be easy, and then described to her the Teuton, plying his "antiquity" trade externally while internally cheris.h.i.+ng his collected skulls and nursing his scientific rage. All my letters were the more abundant concerning these adventures of mine from my having kept entirely silent upon them at Mrs. Trevise's tea-table. I dreaded Juno when let loose upon the negro question; and the fact that I was beginning to understand her feelings did not at all make me wish to be deafened by them. Neither Juno, therefore, nor any of them learned a word from me about the kettle-supporter incident. What I did take pains to inform the a.s.sembled company was my gratification that the report of Mr. Mayrant's engagement being broken was unfounded; and this caused Juno to observe that in that case Miss Rieppe must have the most imperative reasons for uniting herself to such a young man.

Unintimidated by the rain, this formidable creature had taken herself off to her nephew's bedside almost immediately after breakfast; and later in the day I, too, risked a drenching for the sake of ordering the packing-box that I needed. When I returned, it was close on tea-time; I had seen Mrs. Weguelin St. Michael send out the hot coffee to the conductor, and I had found a negro carpenter whose week it happily was to stay sober; and now I learned that, when tea should be finished, the poetess had in store for us, as a treat, her ode.

Our evening meal was not plain sailing, even for the veteran navigation of Mrs. Trevise; Juno had returned from the bedside very plainly displeased (she was always candid even when silent) by something which had happened there; and before the joyful moment came when we all learned what this was, a very gouty Boston lady who had arrived with her husband from Florida on her way North--and whose nature you will readily grasp when I tell you that we found ourselves speaking of the man as Mrs. Braintree's husband and never as Mr. Braintree--this crippled lady, who was of a candor equal to Juno's, embarked upon a conversation with Juno that compelled Mrs. Trevise to tinkle her bell for Daphne after only two remarks had been exchanged.

I had been sorry at first that here in this Southern boarding-house Boston should be represented only by a lady who appeared to unite in herself all the stony products of that city, and none of the others; for she was as convivial as a statue and as well-informed as a spelling-book; she stood no more for the whole of Boston than did Juno for the whole of Kings Port. But my sorrow grew less when I found that in Mrs. Braintree we had indeed a capable match for her Southern counterpart. Juno, according to her custom, had remembered something objectionable that had been perpetrated in 1865 by the Northern vandals.

"Edward," said Mrs. Braintree to her husband, in a frightfully clear voice, "it was at Chambersburg, was it not, that the Southern vandals burned the house in which were your father's t.i.tle-deeds?"

Edward, who, it appeared, had fought through the whole Civil War, and was in consequence perfectly good-humored and peaceable in his feelings upon that subject, replied hastily and amiably: "Oh, yes, yes! Why, I believe it was!"

But this availed nothing; Juno bent her great height forward, and addressed Mrs. Braintree. "This is the first time I have been told Southerners were vandals."

"You will never be able to say that again!" replied Mrs. Braintree.

After the bell and Daphne had stopped, the invaluable Briton addressed a genial generalization to us all: "I often think how truly awful your war would have been if the women had fought it, y'know, instead of the men."

"Quite so!" said the easy-going Edward "Squaws! Mutilation! Yes!" and he laughed at his little joke, but he laughed alone.

I turned to Juno. "Speaking of mutilation, I trust your nephew is better this evening."

I was rejoiced by receiving a glare in response. But still more joy was to come.

"An apology ought to help cure him a lot," observed the Briton.

Juno employed her policy of not hearing him.

"Indeed, I trust that your nephew is in less pain," said the poetess.

Juno was willing to answer this. "The injuries, thank you, are the merest trifles--all that such a light-weight could inflict." And she shrugged her shoulders to indicate the futility of young John's pugilism.

"But," the surprised Briton interposed, "I thought you said your nephew was too feeble to eat steak or hear poetry."

Juno could always stem the eddy of her own contradictions--but she did raise her voice a little. "I fancy, sir, that Doctor Beaugarcon knows what he is talking about."

"Have they apologized yet?" inquired the male honeymooner from the up-country.

"My nephew, sir, n.o.bly consented to shake hands this afternoon. He did it entirely out of respect for Mr. Mayrant's family, who coerced him into this tardy reparation, and who feel unable to recognize him since his treasonable att.i.tude in the Custom House."

"Must be fairly hard to coerce a chap you can't recognize," said the Briton.

An et cetera now spoke to the honeymoon bride from the up-country: "I heard Doctor Beaugarcon say he was coming to visit you this evening."

"Yais," a.s.sented the bride. "Doctor Beaugarcon is my mother's fourth cousin."

Juno now took--most unwisely, as it proved--a vindictive turn at me. "I knew that your friend, Mr. Mayrant, was intemperate," she began.

I don't think that Mrs. Trevise had any intention to ring for Daphne at this point--her curiosity was too lively; but Juno was going to risk no such intervention, and I saw her lay a precautionary hand heavily down over the bell. "But," she continued, "I did not know that Mr. Mayrant was a gambler."

"Have you ever seen him intemperate?" I asked.

"That would be quite needless," Juno returned. "And of the gambling I have ocular proof, since I found him, cards, counters, and money, with my sick nephew. He had actually brought cards in his pocket."

"I suppose," said the Briton, "your nephew was too sick to resist him."

The male honeymooner, with two of the et ceteras, made such unsteady demonstrations at this that Mrs. Trevise protracted our sitting no longer. She rose, and this meant rising for us all.

A sense of regret and incompleteness filled me, and finding the Briton at my elbow as our company proceeded toward the sitting room, I said: "Too bad!"

His whisper was confident. "We'll get the rest of it out of her yet."

But the rest of it came without our connivance.

In the sitting room Doctor Beaugarcon sat waiting, and at sight of Juno entering the door (she headed our irregular procession) he sprang up and lifted admiring hands. "Oh, why didn't I have an aunt like you!" he exclaimed, and to Mrs. Trevise as she followed: "She pays her nephew's poker debts."

"How much, cousin Tom?" asked the upcountry bride.

And the gay old doctor chuckled, as he kissed her: "Thirty dollars this afternoon, my darling."

At this the Briton dragged me behind a door in the hall, and there we danced together.

"That Mayrant chap will do," he declared; and we composed ourselves for a proper entrance into the sitting room, where the introductions had been made, and where Doctor Beaugarcon and Mrs. Braintree's husband had already fallen into war reminiscences, and were discovering with mutual amiability that they had fought against each other in a number of battles.

"And you generally licked us," smiled the Union soldier.

"Ah! don't I know myself how it feels to run!" laughed the Confederate.

"Are you down at the club?"

But upon learning from the poetess that her ode was now to be read aloud, Doctor Beaugarcon paid his fourth cousin's daughter a brief, though affectionate, visit, lamenting that a very ill patient should compel him to take himself away so immediately, but promising her presently in his stead two visitors much more interesting.