Chapter 11
“You ten' to your own business, Bud, an' I'll ten' to mine,” Mrs. Cullum returned, not unkindly. Which business on her part apparently was to make Mr. Cullum miserable by taking no notice of him whatever. The house under her supervision was, as it had always been, a model of neatness; the meals were cooked by her own hands and served with an especial eye to Tobe's comfort; his clothes were washed and ironed, and his white shirt laid out on Sunday mornings, with the accustomed care and regularity. But with these details Mrs. Cullum's wifely attentions ended. She remained absolutely deaf to any remark addressed to her by her husband, looking through and beyond him when he was present with a steady, unseeing gaze, which was, to say the least, exasperating. All necessary communication with him was carried on by means of the children. “Minty,” she would say at the breakfast-table, “ask your pa if he wants another cup of coffee”; or at night, “Temp'unce, tell your pa that Buster has shed a shoe”; or, “Sue, does your pa know where them well-grabs is?” et caetera, et caetera.
The demoralized household huddled, so to speak, between the opposing camps, frightened and unhappy, and things were altogether in a bad way.
To make matters worse, Miss Minty Cullum, following her mother's example, took high and mighty ground with Jack Carter, dismissing that gentleman with a promptness and coolness which left him wellnigh dumb with amazement.
“Lord, Minty!” he gasped. “Why, I was taken snipe-hunting myself not more'n five years ago. I--”
“I didn't know you were such a fool, Jack Carter,” interrupted his sweetheart, with a toss of her pretty head; “that settles it!” and she slammed the door in his face.
Matters were at such a pass finally that Mr. Skaggs, the circuit-rider, when he came to preach, the third Sunday in the month, at Ebenezer Church, deemed it his duty to remonstrate and pray with Sister Cullum at her own house. She listened to his exhortations in grim silence, and knelt without a word when he summoned her to wrestle before the Throne of Grace. “Lord,” he concluded, after a long and powerful summing up of the erring sister's misdeeds, “Thou knowest that she is travelling the broad and flowery road to destruction. Show her the evil of her ways, and warn her to flee from the wrath to come.”
He arose from his knees with a look of satisfaction on his face, which changed to one of chagrin when he saw Sister Cullum's chair empty, and Sister Cullum herself out in the backyard tranquilly and silently feeding her hens.
“She shore did flee from the wrath to come, Sissy did,” chuckled Granny Carnes, when this episode reached her ears.
As for Tobe, he bore himself in the early days of his affliction in a jaunty debonair fashion, affecting a sprightliness which did not deceive his cronies at Bishop's. In time, however, finding all his attempts at reconciliation with Sissy vain, he became uneasy, and almost as silent as herself, then morose and irritable, and finally black and thunderous.
“He's that wore upon that nobody dassent to go anigh him,” said Mrs. Pinson, solemnly. “An' no wonder! Fer of all the conniptions that ever struck the women o' Jim-Ned, _ez wives_, Sissy Cullum's conniptions air the outbeatenes'.”
But human endurance has its limits. Mr. Cullum's reached his at the supper-table one night about three weeks after the beginning of his discipline. He had been ploughing all day, and brooding, presumably, over his tribulations, and there was a techy look in his dark eyes as he seated himself at the foot of the well-spread table, presided over by Mrs. Cullum, impassive and dumb as usual. The six girls were ranged on either side.
“Well, ma,” began Tobe, with assumed gayety, turning up his plate, “what for a day have you had?”
Sissy looked through and beyond him with fixed, unresponsive gaze, and said never a word.
Then, as Mr. Cullum afterward said, “Ole Satan swep' an' garnish_eed_ him an' tuk possession of him.” He seized the heavy teacup in front of him and hurled it at his unsuspecting spouse; she gasped, paling slightly, and dodged. The missile, striking the brick chimney-jamb behind her, crashed and fell shivering into fragments on the hearth. The saucer followed. Then, Tobe's spirits rising, plate after plate hurtled across the table; the air fairly bristled with flying crockery. Mrs. Cullum, after the first shock of surprise, continued calmly to eat her supper, moving her head from right to left or ducking to avoid an unusually well-aimed projectile.
Little Sis scrambled down from her high chair at the first hint of hostilities, and dived, screaming, under the table; the others remained in their places, half paralyzed with terror.
In less time than it takes to tell it, Mr. Cullum, reaching out his long arms, had cleared half the board of its stone and glass ware. Finally he laid a savage hand upon a small, old-fashioned blue pitcher left standing alone in a wide waste of table-cloth.
At this Sissy surrendered unconditionally. “Oh, Tobe, fer Gawd's sake!” she cried, throwing out her hands and quivering from head to foot. “I give in! I give in! _Don't_ break the little blue-chiny pitcher! You fetched it to me the day little Bud was born! An' he drunk out'n it jest afore he died! Fer Gawd's sake, Tobe, honey! I give in!”
Tobe set down the pitcher as gingerly as if it had been a soap-bubble. Then, with a whoop which fairly lifted the roof from the cabin, he cleared the intervening space between them and caught his wife in his arms.
Minty, with ready tact, dragged Little Sis from under the table, and driving the rest of the flock before her, fled the room and shut the door behind her. On the dark porch she ran plump upon Jack Carter.
“Why, Jack!” she cried, with her tear-wet face tucked before she knew it against his breast, “what are you doing here?”
“Oh, just hanging around,” grinned Mr. Carter.
“Gawd be praised!” roared Tobe, inside the house.
“Amen!” responded Jack, outside.
“An' Tobe Cullum,” announced Joe Trimble at Bishop's the next day, “have ordered up the fines' set o' shiny in Waco fer Sissy.”
“It beats _me_,” said Newt Pinson; “but I allers did say that the women o' Jim-Ned, _ez wives_, air the outbeatenes' critters in creation!”
The Courtship of Colonel Bill
BY J. J. EAKINS
It was early morning in the Bluegrass. The triumphant sun was driving the white mist before it from wood and rolling meadow-land, rousing the drowsy cattle from their tranquil dreams and quickening into fuller life all the inhabitants of that favored region, from the warlike woodpecker with his head of flame high up in the naked tree-top to the timid ground-squirrel flitting along the graystone fences. It glorified with splendid impartiality the apple blossoms in the orchards and the vagabond blackberry bushes blooming by the roadside; and then, with many a mile of smiling pastures in its victorious wake, it burst over the low rampart of stable roofs encircling the old Lexington race-course, and, after a hasty glimpse at the horses speeding around the track and the black boys singing and slouching from stall to stall with buckets of water on their heads, it rushed impetuously into an old-fashioned, deep-waisted family barouche beside one of the stables, and shone full upon a slender, girlish figure within. It wasted no time upon a purple-faced old gentleman beside her, nor upon two young gentlemen on the seat opposite, but rested with bold and ardent admiration upon the young girl's face, touching her cheeks with a color as delicate as the apple blossoms in the orchards, and weaving into her rich brown hair the red gold of its own beams.
The picture was so dazzling and altogether so unprecedented that Colonel Bill Jarvis, the young owner of the stable, who had come swinging around the corner, whistling a lively tune, his hat thrown back on his head, and who had almost run plump into the carriage, stopped abruptly and stood staring. He was roused to a realizing sense of his position by Major Cicero Johnson, editor of the Lexington _Chronicle_ and president of the association, who was standing beside the barouche, saying, with that courtliness of manner and amplitude of rhetoric which made him a fixture in the legislative halls at Frankfort: “Colonel Bill, I want to present you to General Thomas Anderson Braxton, the hero of two wars, of whom as a Kentuckian you must be proud, and his sons Matt and Jack, and his daughter, Miss Sue, the Flower of the Blue-grass. Ladies and gentlemen,” he continued, with an oratorical wave of his hand towards the Colonel, who had bowed gravely to each person in turn to whom he was introduced, “this is my friend Colonel Bill Jarvis, the finest horseman and the most gallant young turfman between the Ohio River and the Gulf of Mexico.”
While the Major was speaking, Colonel Bill's eyes wandered from the two young gentlemen on the front seat to the purple-faced old General on the rear seat, and then rested on Miss Braxton. Her eyes met his, and she smiled. It was such a pleasant, gracious, encouraging smile, and there was so much kindliness in the depths of the soft brown eyes, that the Colonel was reassured at once.
“We have come to disturb you at this unearthly hour,” said Miss Braxton, apologetically, “because I wanted to see the horses at their work, and father and my brothers were good enough to come with me.”
Colonel Bill explained that his horses had finished their morning exercise, but that it would afford him great pleasure to show them in their stalls. Miss Braxton was sure that they were putting him to a great deal of trouble, and she was also convinced that to see horses in their stalls must be delightful; so presently the party was marching along under the shed, looking at the calm-eyed thoroughbreds in their narrow little homes, the Colonel and Miss Braxton leading the way.
With the wisdom of her sex, Miss Braxton concealed her lack of special knowledge by a generous general enthusiasm which captivated her simple-hearted host.
“And that is really Beau Brummel!” she cried, with sparkling eyes, pointing to a splendid deep-chested animal, who was regarding them with mild curiosity. “And that is Queen of Sheba next to him! What lovely heads they have, and how very proud you must be to own them!” One would have thought her days and nights had been given to a study of these two thoroughbreds.
“They are the best long-distance horses in the country,” said the Colonel, flushing with pleasure. And then, in reply to her eager questioning, he gave their pedigrees and performances, all their battles and victories, in detail--a list as long and glorious as the triumphs of Napoleon, and perhaps as useful. At each stall she had fresh questions to ask. Her brothers, with an eye to the coming meeting, listened eagerly to the Colonel's answers, while the Major and the General, lagging behind, discussed affairs of state. At last the horses were all seen; everybody shook hands with the Colonel and thanked him, the General with great pompousness, and Miss Braxton with a smile, and a hope that she might see him during the meeting; and the old barouche went lumbering away down the road, until it presently buried itself, like a monstrous cuttlefish, in a cloud of its own making.
Colonel Bill looked after it with a pleased expression on his face, and pulling his tawny mustache reflectively, muttered to himself with true masculine acuteness, “She knew as much about my horses as I did myself.”
* * * * *
The great Lexington meeting was in the full tide of its success. Peach-cheeked, bright-eyed Blue-grass girls, and their big-boned, deep-chested admirers, riding and driving in couples and parties, filled all the white, dusty tumpikes leading to the race-course, and made gay the quaint old Lexington streets. The grand-stand echoed with their merriment, and they cheered home the horses with an enthusiasm seen nowhere else in the world.
The centre of the liveliest of all these merry groups, noticeable for her grace and beauty even there, where so many lovely girls were gathered, was Miss Braxton. She was continuously surrounded by a devoted body-guard of young men, many of whom had ridden miles to catch a glimpse of her bewitching face, and who felt more than recompensed for their efforts by a glance from her bright eyes.
On the first day of the meeting Colonel Bill, arrayed with unusual care, had eagerly scanned the occupants of the grand-stand. His eyes ran heedlessly over scores of pretty faces, until finally they rested upon the group around Miss Braxton. Then carefully buttoning up his coat and straightening out his tall figure, as a brave man might who was about to lead a forlorn hope or receive his opponent's fire, he bore down upon them. Miss Braxton welcomed him cordially, and introduced him to the gentlemen about her. She straightway became so gracious to him that he aroused an amazing amount of suspicion and dislike in the little circle, to all of which, however, he was happily oblivious. He was a capital mimic, and under the inspiration of her applause he told innumerable negro stories with such lifelike fidelity to nature that even the hostile circle was convulsed, and Miss Braxton laughed until the tears ran down her cheeks.
Time sped so swiftly that the last race was run before the Colonel was aware that the programme was half over, and he found himself saying good-bye to Miss Braxton, and wishing with all his heart he were one of the half-dozen lucky young men who were waiting on their horses outside to escort her carriage back to Lexington.
It was that same evening old Elias, Colonel Bill's body-servant and general assistant, noticed a most surprising development in his young employer. One of the Colonel's most prized possessions was a fiddle. It bad never been known, in all the years he owned it, to utter aught except the most joyful sounds. Whenever he picked it up, as he frequently did on winter nights, when everybody gathered around the big wood fire in his room, the stable-boys at once made ready to beat time to “Money Musk,” “Old Dan Tucker,” and other cheerful airs.
On this particular night the Colonel seized the fiddle and strode gloomily to the end of the stable. Presently there came forth upon the night air such melancholy and dismal notes as made every stable-boy, from little Pete to big Mose, shiver. As the lugubrious sounds continued, the boys fled to their loft, leaving Elias, who had watched over the Colonel from his infancy, to keep vigil, with a troubled look on his withered face. Many nights thereafter was this singular proceeding repeated, to the ever-increasing wonderment of Elias.
Every day during the meeting when Miss Braxton was at the track Colonel Bill sought her out. Sometimes he had a chance for a long talk, but oftener he was forced to content himself with shorter interviews. More than once he noticed General Braxton join his daughter when he approached, and he found that old warrior's manner growing more and more cold.
“He's a loser,” thought the Colonel, to whom it never for a moment occurred that his own presence might be disagreeable to any one. “A man oughtn't to bet when he can't stand a-losing,” he concluded, philosophically, and then he dismissed the matter from his mind.
On the last day of the races, after waiting for an hour or more to speak alone to Miss Braxton, and finding her constantly guarded by her father, who looked fiercer than usual, Colonel Bill was finally compelled to join her as she and the General were leaving the grand-stand. She saw him coming, and stopped, a pleased look on her face. The General, with a frigid nod, moved on a few paces and left them together.
“I have come to ask if I might call on you this evening, Miss Braxton,” said the Colonel, timidly, “if you have no other engagement.”
“I shall be very glad indeed to have you call,” she replied, cordially, adding, with a smile, “You know, Lexington is not so wildly gay that we haven't ample time to see our friends.”
As he walked away the Colonel thought he heard his name mentioned by General Braxton, and although the words were inaudible, the tone was sharp and commanding. He turned and glanced back. The girl's face was flushed, and she looked excited, something unusual to her self-contained, reposeful manner. As they moved out of hearing, the General was still talking with great earnestness, and a feeling of uneasiness began to oppress him. This feeling had not altogether departed when he galloped into Lexington that night, his long-tailed, white linen duster buttoned up to his chin, the brim of his soft black hat pulled down over his eyes.
The Elms, a roomy old-fashioned house encircled by wide verandas, the home of the Braxtons for generations, was one of the landmarks of Lexington. A long stretch of lawn filled with shrubbery and clumps of trees protected its inmates from the city's dust and turmoil and almost concealed the house itself from view. The Colonel, to whom the Elms was perfectly well known, never drew rein till he was before it, and then, checking his horse so suddenly that a less intelligent animal would have turned a somersault, swung himself out of the saddle with the ease of one who had spent the greater part of his life there, fastened the bridle to a ring in a great oak-tree by the curbing, and opening the big iron gate, strode up the gravelled walk which wound through the shrubbery.
Miss Braxton had been sitting at the piano in the drawing-room playing softly. The long windows looking out on the veranda were opened to admit the balmy air, and before her visitor arrived she heard his approaching footsteps.
“I am very glad you have come,” she said, walking out to meet him; “I was afraid that in the excitement of the race-track you might have forgotten our engagement. I felt a little depressed this evening, and that is another reason why I am glad to see you.” She led the way back into the drawing-room as she talked, and invited the Colonel to sit beside her on one of the sofas. In the soft glow of the dimly lighted lamps he thought she had never appeared so beautiful; and the rich fragrance of the dew-laden roses and honeysuckle wafted in through the open windows seemed to him to be an atmosphere peculiar to her alone, like the exceeding sweetness of her soft, low voice and the easy grace of her movements.
In reply to her questions he told her of his adventures on far Southern tracks, and of the careless, reckless life he had led. He had seen many strange and stirring sights during his wanderings; and to her, whose young life lead hitherto flown along as peacefully as a meadow-brook, it seemed like a new and thrilling romance, with a living being in place of the printed page. Once he mentioned a woman's name, and she started.
“In all that time,” she inquired, softly, her eyes lowered, “did no woman ever come into your life?”
“No,” he answered, simply; “I never thought of a woman then.”
She raised her eyes to his, and lowered them instantly, her face flushing.
During a moment's lull in the conversation the hour was struck from a neighboring steeple. They both started, half-guiltily. It was midnight. He at once arose to go, apologizing for the lateness of his visit.
“I would like to see you again, Miss Braxton, before I go North,” he said, as he prepared to leave.
She had risen with him, and they were both standing beside the mantel. Her face paled. Then she turned her head aside, and said, in a tone that was almost inaudible, “Father objects.”
He became rigid instantly, and his lips grew white. “I suppose your father don't know who I am,” he said, proudly. “My family is as good as any in the State. I loved horses and the life and color of the race-track, and refused to go to college when I could. Until I met you I never thought of anything except horses. But that pedigree of my people is straight. There isn't a cold cross on either side. I know I amount to nothing myself,” he continued, bitterly, his eyes resting gloomily on the floor; “I'm only a no-account old selling-plater, and I'll just go back to the stable, where I belong.” Here an unusual sound interrupted him, and he looked up. The girl, with her head on her arm, was leaning against the mantel, sobbing quietly. In a moment he forgot all about himself and snatched up her disengaged hand.
“Do you really care?” he cried, pressing the fluttering little hand in both of his.
She lifted up her face, the soft brown eyes swimming in tears. “I wouldn't mind,” she replied, half laughing and half sobbing--“I wouldn't mind at all about the pedigree, and I know you're not an old selling-plater; but if you were, I am very sure that I would care for you.”
The Lexington meeting was over, and the horsemen were scattered far and wide, from Chicago to Sheepshead Bay. Colonel Bill alone remained behind. As the days passed and he made no preparation to depart, old Elias's irritation grew apace, and the lives of the stable-boys under the increasing rigor of his rule became almost unendurable. The Colonel, however, saw very little of Elias or the stable-boys. Even his beloved horses no longer interested him. He passed the days walking the streets of Lexington, hoping by some chance to meet Miss Braxton, and it was not until late at night that he returned to the race-track, foot-sore and disappointed. He had been too deeply wounded and was too proud to make any further effort to visit the Elms, and he thought it would be unmanly and ungenerous to ask Miss Braxton to meet him away from her father's house.
In the mean time the old General's wrath increased as the days passed. He was unused to any kind of opposition, and the Colonel's persistence irritated him beyond measure. The dream of his life was a brilliant marriage for his daughter, and no amount of argument could alter his opinion that Colonel Bill was a rude, unlettered stable-man.
“Why, sir,” he would exclaim, over a mint-julep, to his friend Major Johnson, who always defended the Colonel vigorously, “the idea of such attentions to my daughter is preposterous--ludicrous! I will not permit it, sir--not for one moment. If he persists in annoying my family, sir,” and the purple hue of the General's face deepened, “I would no more hesitate to shoot him--no more, by gad!--than I would a rattlesnake.” After the fourth or fifth julep he did not always confine his conversation to his friend, and so his threats often found their way back to the object of his wrath, losing nothing by the journey. Although the Colonel's disposition was the sunniest, the strain to which he was being subjected was telling on his nerves, and once or twice he replied sharply to the tale-bearers. The little city was soon excited over the quarrel, and every movement of the principals was eagerly noted.
“My money goes on Bill,” said Jule Chinn, the proprietor of the Blue-grass Club, when the matter came up for discussion there between deals. “I saw him plug that creole down in Orleans. First he throws him down the steps of the St. Charles for insultin' a lady. When Frenchy insists on a duel an' Bill gets up in front of him, he says, in that free-an'-easy way of his, 'We mark puppies up in my country by cutting their ears, and that's what I'm going to do to you, for you ain't fit to die,' an' blame me if he don't just pop bullets through that fellow's ears like you'd punch holes in a piece of cheese!” After that the Colonel ruled a strong favorite in the betting.
When this condition of affairs had existed for two weeks, the Colonel arose one morning from a sleepless bed with a fixed idea in his mind. He sat down to a table in his room, pulled out some writing-paper, and set to work. After many sheets had been covered and destroyed, he finally decided upon the following: