CHAPTER I.

It was Aunt Fanny Brown who caused the duel between Captain Mason and Bob Nettles. Aunt Fanny was a high-nosed, aristocratic dowager, of a pretty taste in old china, who put her wig in curl papers and came down to breakfast in the roseate bloom of sixty summers, as if defying perfidy to call it paint. A Washington, New Orleans and Louisville belle, she had received from her husband five hundred acres of blue-grass land and the finest racing stables in that part of the State. To the surprise of all but the knowing, she conducted the business with admirable skill. Many a jockey has walked out of the pink boudoir before a crack race so completely dazed and pumped he did not dare to chaff even a stable-boy. The newsboy's stamp, the dissipated buck's allowance and the leakage of the shop-till all found a way to irrigate Aunt Fanny's fat blue-grass pastures and to keep glossy her satin-coated stock. Not that she soiled her aristocratic hands with such canaille, but she domineered the whole race of Brown, from Vandyke Brown the artist, who painted her stud, to little Yelloe Ochre and Burnett Umber of the stable-yard, poor but proud in the aristocracy of horse.

Aunt Fanny proposed to marry her nephew, Lind Mason--or Lindley Brown Mason, for the remotest relation took a color from the parent stock--to little Sue Brown, daughter of her nephew, Walter Brown, Esq., pork merchant. That was her object in the intriguing that led to the duel. Captain Mason was a man-about-town, with no wish to marry any one in particular, but anxious to raise the wind, to clear off his play debts and attend the match race between Kentucky and Asteroid, then much talked of in racing circles. His object, to use his own picturesque language, was "to put the saddle on the right horse."

Bob Nettles, the other party to the duel, was a sort of general clerk or factotum to Walter Brown. He was _épris_ of little Sudie Brown, his employer's daughter, one of those merry little romps no one thinks of as a grown woman until she surprises society by marrying. Bob was a shy, modest little fellow, with scrubby poll, pug nose, stubby palms, like leather, from base ball, and with a habit of laughing in the nose, called sniggering. He had merry gray eyes and hair of a pure tow color, which I take to be the true plebeian tint, without a sanguine shade in it--just the last man you would think of as engaging in a duel. To tell how these various shades were woven into the carmine flower is the purpose of this sketch.

Bob would probably never have looked so high but for the bookkeeper at Brown, Ochre & Co.'s pork-house, Major Johnstone--nicknamed Toady Johnstone, because he could not help reflecting the air, tone, gestures and opinions of those he conversed with. But the major was of tried courage, and had a pistol wound from a duel in the thigh; and no one ever heard an ungentlemanly word from his lips. He had a store of singularly inept recollections in respect to such marriages, which had generally, turned out badly; but that was nothing. The major, like a novelist, believed he had done his whole duty in marrying a couple, and the deuce might take them after that.

Sue had not, at this time, shown any marked preference, though she liked Bob as a playmate, and had a sort of awe of her cousin Lind and his marvellous stories of adventures in the Lost Cause. It was her mother, who by no means approved of a match with the little plebeian, that first gave her daughter a hint of such pretensions.

It was the morning Sudie proposed that garden-party, and at Mrs. Brown's country-house. The view overlooked a jumble of village roofs very confusing to any conception of regular thoroughfares, and faced the meeting-house, in much disrepair, because the Masons and Methodists had agreed to put up a lodge and a church together, and had not yet put up something else necessary to such enterprise. The house had just been cleaned: fresh streaks of moisture dried off the porch and mixed with the fragrance of verbenas and the cool pungency of soot from the freshly-cleaned chimneys. The bees droned under the pear trees; the redbirds sang in the cedars; even the black cook, scouring her tins in the kitchen, caught the infection and shouted jubilant doxologies at the top of her voice. Sudie swung in a hammock on the porch. Mrs. Brown read the _Woman in White_, and held a feather-duster over the colored girl red-painting the pavements, as if it were a wand. Then Sue proposed that garden-party that made all the mischief.

"But the house just cleaned, and all the carpets to take up!" murmured Mrs. Brown, pursuing the indomitable Miss Holcombe across the page like a flea.

"Oh no, mamma: we'll dance out here," said Sue. "This house was just built for fun. It's so"--pouncing on the expressive word--"jolly!"

"Well, you must see your aunt," said Mrs. Brown, who dreaded the dowager.

"Why?" asked the little rebel. "She'll just say, 'There, child, don't trouble me with details;' and if I put in a lump of sugar or spike of cloves without telling her, she'll snub me before papa for extravagance. Besides, she'll say Bobby Nettles isn't aristocratic; and we can't have a garden-party without Bob."

"I don't understand the fuss you girls make over that little fellow," said Mrs. Brown. "Why, he is not as tall as you!"

"Yes he is, mamma," answered Sue, laughing at the recollection. "We measured, and Mr. Warrener bumped our heads and drove a hairpin clear into my wits. Bob hasn't any, but he's so accommodating."

"Your aunt won't like it," said Mrs. Brown with a peculiar stress on the pronoun.

Sue blushed to the roots of her hair and looked a little startled: "La, mamma! I didn't mean that: I don't think of him that way. Little Bob Nettles! Why, mamma!" For all that, little Sue kept laughing to herself and blushing, as if there was something not altogether unpleasant in the thought.

Mr. Brown pooh-poohed the necessity of consulting his aunt about his home hospitalities, but thought it only courtesy to inform her of what was contemplated. This he undertook to do, and failed. It was the first offence.

His factotum, Bob, was to have the conduct of the preliminaries, for those were idle days at the pork-house. The great vats were dry, the pens vacant, Parker's patent fingers for lifting swine reached out beggarly hands for alms. At any hour of the forenoon you could see the rows of porkmen sitting on chairs atilt on the flags. Take a retail grocer, water him well, he buds into a forwarding and commission merchant, flowers a transportation agent, and matures a great pork merchant. Why? I don't know. No more do I know why a livery-stable-keeper always develops into a candidate for sheriff. It is a mystery, a branch of the great Darwinian theory. At eleven o'clock they stop talking steamboat, the chairs come down with a crack, and the stately figures--all Kentucky pork-dealers are large, fine-looking men--troop into the beer-saloon to drink lager and eat pretzels. Bob does not go--he knows Mr. Brown does not want a beer-drinker to overlook his transactions in pork--nor does the major, who objects to beer as slops, and says it is hard on the coats of the stomach. The major has a theory on the coats of the stomach he has never been able to propound, from his agreeable facility in coinciding with any one who questions it. They remain outside to inhale the fragrance of oak shavings in the cooper-shop opposite, and to watch Beargrass glass itself under the old stone bridge like a great green eye and lid.

As Walter Brown, Esq., passes out he stops by Bob's chair: "Here, Nettles, I have to meet the Board of Trade at twelve. Would you see to these commissions for Puss?" Would he? Bob enters the street-car with the others. Mr. Brown adds: "Oh, I promised Sue to let her aunt Fanny know. Would you mind--?"

"Hm-m!" hesitates Bob. "Old lady's rather uppish--got the scrinctum scranctums 'bout me, somehow: my nose is too short. Beg pardon, but she don't like me."

"Confounded old jockey!" ejaculates the irreverent Brown at the inconvenience; and Redmond Ochre, Esq., thinks such language in a prospective legatee should be reported; and it is, and Aunt Fanny rages.

These offences, however, were mere preliminaries to that which the unlucky Nettles was destined to give, and which was the true origin of that duel and its results.

He arrived at Mrs. Brown's in the afternoon in a grocer's van.

"La! if it isn't Bob!" screamed Sudie, rushing out, very fresh and rumpled.--"Why, what have you got there?"

"Goodies," said Bob, "and things marked 'L'eau'--'riginal packages. Shut your eyes and open your mouth when the vane o' the church is blowing south. Ain't it hunkidory?"

"My precious papa!" screamed Sudie. "Come right in here.--Mamma, here's Mr. Nettles," offering him like a saucer of cream.--"Just wait till I get my bonnet--where is my bonnet?--and we'll run right down to Mrs. Dinwiddie's and get Vixie and Cordie to help."

The two went giggling and romping down the lawn, more like two hoydens than boy and girl, and pretty soon returned with two others. It would be hard to tell what help Sue wanted, unless it was to laugh, though she did that very well, for Bob did the entertaining. They played "Old Maid," and they put the odd queen on Bob with as frank cheating as if they were the three knaves in the pack. Then they blacked Bob's comical face with soot, and in this costume he mimicked everybody, even the great dragon, Aunt Fanny, being put up to it by her nephew; whereat Mrs. Brown looked grave, while Mr. Brown roared like a great bull alligator.

How did Bob Nettles entertain that family? He was not witty; he could not tell a story without missing the point; he was a poor buffoon; he did not know a pun from a problem; and his voice in singing was hee-haw and screech. Yet he did entertain them better than noted humorists would have done. O thou immaculate and pure spirit of Fun! fathered in no classic fable, brought to sweetness by no toil of thought, thou art indeed the lowliest and sweetest of thy kind. Growing like the wild fruits and berries that the humblest may partake of thy bounty and be filled, thy nutriment is in a quick and cheerful spirit, and thy abundance in the broadest sympathies of our common nature.

But this childish mummery did the mischief, carried as it was by the common vehicle of scandal in the South.

Dame Brown had two maids--Ma'amselle Hortense, who enamelled that fine old face and retired to her crucifix and French novels; and Memmie, the mulatto, elderly, with a complexion like a soiled and creased straw-colored kid glove, light-blue eyes, and a prim, affected laugh like the crackle of letter paper.

The morning after Bob's mimicry the latter went about muttering, as her kind do, to attract attention.

"What is it, Memmie?" asked the dowager, carelessly closing and relaxing her upper lip before a hand-mirror to adjust her false teeth. "Have you and Hortense quarrelled again?"

"Te-hee," crackled the negress. "Missis sich sweet dispisition me 'n' Miss Ho'tense 'bleege to be frien's. If ma'amselle hain't got the true spirit of the Methodies, hallelujah! amen! She ain't none o' them Nettleses pesterin' roun', a-blackin' of his face fo' tu 'ten' like of it's a-missus's beyoucheeful enamuel; and Mistah Waltah a-laughin' of hoss-laughs, a-sayin' it's the very spit o' ole Miss Fanny.--Whar ye been wid dat choc'lit all dis time missis a-waitin'?" breaking out on the under-servant with the breakfast tray. "Some'hin' hap'n top o' yo' head, gal: yo' mammy'll have to git ye peg t' hang yo' hat on. Yo's wuss'n Nettles, niggah as ye is."

Dame Brown's first thought was of a _lettre de cachet_: she would have chopped off Bob's head without the slightest compunction. Her next was to reduce the rebellious province of Walter Brown and occupy its fairest possession, Sudie, much given to upset the tea-caddy upon occasion.

The General Gage she proposed for this expedition was her nephew. Captain Mason was one of those elegant do-nothings whom statisticians grub out and sentimentalists wail over, as if I were to shed a few ink-drops because the morning-glory at my porch will not make an edible potato of its root, like its first cousin the yam in the near field. He was portly, rosy in the jowls, with fat blue eyes of a tendency to get bloodshot in the corners, and curly brown hair. He wore sumptuous waistcoats, lawn fronts, much irrigation of vest-chain and jewels, like her of Banbury Cross; after which it is superfluous to add skill in billiards and games of chance. He affected a pompous sort of military horse-talk, as if the steed in the book of Job neighed through his conversation. Sudie Brown thought him just awful, and was quite sure he had chopped off heads with that ostentatious sabre he kept on view. But waggish Confederates had a way of playing on the captain's foible by such remarks as "I say, Lind, how about the four Dutchmen you scalped at Perryville?" and there would be good entertainment for an hour, or indeed as long as one chose to listen. If it was absurd to think of that merry little prig Nettles in such a business, Captain Mason's old companions-in-arms at the mere suggestion of his being brought to face a loaded pistol burst into great guffaws of laughter. For all that, it got to look very ugly, and one silly, loving little heart suffered unspeakable agonies of apprehension before it was over.

Captain Mason had stepped into Rufer's gorgeous saloon as if to collect his rents, and came out wiping his moustache as if he had eaten them, when he was hailed by Aunt Fanny's African page, and ushered into the presence in time to witness a spectacle of materialization that would astound Spiritualists.

Mason, in a puffy sort of way, stood greatly in awe of his aunt--who, in addition to all a man knows, knew all a woman knows--and would have liked to impress her. He began: "Ah, how dee do, aunt? Just been looking at Woodlawn. Company's rather gravelled, eh? Thought to give 'em a lift and take the race-course myself."

"You take Woodlawn!" cried the dowager, absolutely startled out of her discernment by the notion of getting the once-famous racing-park in the family. Then, recognizing the tremendous bounce, she said sharply, "Pshaw! Do you know a young fellow named Nettles?"

"Nettles? Net-tles?" repeated Mason, hesitating, in doubt if it was a proper acquaintance to acknowledge just then. "Well, yes--a clerk or duffer of some sort at Uncle Brown's pork-house. Oh yes, I know the cad--by sight."

"I did not ask if you knew him by scent," said the dowager, who took no pains to conceal her contempt for her nephew. "He is making up to little Sue Brown. Susannah is too silly to see it, and Walter Brown is an obstinate fool. Low people are always trying to make good connections. You can cut him out if you like."

There was a little chuckle of delight under Mason's watch-pocket, as if that dry timepiece laughed like a dice-box at the thought of the little round-eyed girl who had listened to his vaporing with no mere hypocrisy of belief; but he said, "Marry for money! eh, aunty? Not that she isn't a clean little filly, built up from the ground, neat pastern, good shoulders; but marry for money! eh, aunty?"

It was the purest of cant. He knew, his aunt knew, he would as soon think of eating his knife and fork as marrying a piece of furniture that did not feed him.

"Bah! ostrich with your head in the sand!" said his aunt. "You have played Ancient Pistol all your life. I show you where it will win. Will you play?"

Lind looked over his hand: he remembered that he had made Bob fag on the playground, and as he thought of little Sue he believed it feasible; but he saw more tricks in his hand than that one. "Well," said he affectedly, "if it is to keep out an interloper I don't mind; but you said pistols? A man that has seen Perryville, Stone River, Vicksburg, Gettysburg"--Lind got his battles mixed sometimes in the haste of composition--"don't mind saying he has seen enough of bloodshed."

"Pah!" said the dowager in the tone of Hamlet putting down Yorick's skull. "You amuse me to disgust. I'll mop up all the blood spilt with a cambric handkerchief. Will you do it?"

"Didn't I say so?" answered Mason, chafing under her open contempt. "But war cannot be carried on without funds, and Asteroid let into me heavily." He was playing for the odd trick now.

"I expected that," said the dowager contemptuously. "How much?"

"Well, say two hundred," hesitated Lind, for he expected a controversy--"for first impressions."

She only took out her portemonnaie and said, "See that you earn it."

"You bet! I mean, Thank ye, aunt," muttering as he left the room, "Confounded old cow with the crumpled horn! but who thought she would milk so easy?"

Elated with having "made a raise," he went strutting and breathing down the avenue, clanking his chains and thinking of his little cousin as already won.

But that was the way of the dowager, this Queen Catharine of the Browns. If she heard of derelictions from loyalty, she did not stop to mediate and discuss, but, like a vigorous ruler, took prompt means to put them down. We shall see how she succeeded, and what befel her chief marshal in this campaign.