The Broken Sword Part 30

And there is the old drawing-room with a bountiful bouquet of memories.

This hallowed chamber was so often refreshed in the golden twilight by mother's presence, by mother's devotions, by mother's voice as it blended softly with the harmonies of the old harpsichord; and it seems as if there were sweet chimes out of doors in the stilly air, and perhaps the stars were re-enforcing the old songs with whispering symphonies.

Then there was the chamber just next to mother's, embowered in columbine and the trailing arbutus where there are treasured still old letters, books and shoes and articles of vertu that belonged to Walter; just where he placed them before he enlisted in the Confederate cavalry; before he died and was rudely buried without a winding sheet, under the clods of the Shenandoah valley, that day that Stonewall Jackson unfurled the star barred banner in the streets of Winchester; to rest, aye, to rest until the bugler of the skies shall pipe the reveille. Going, going, going. It is the knell of happy days; the dirge of hearts crushed by sacrifices, sorrows; it is the thud of the cold clay upon the coffin of hope; the shroud that a remorseless destiny has flung around our idols as they fall one by one from their pedestals. "Going, going, going," the echo is thrust back upon the bruised heart from the white cold stones out yonder under the Mulberry. Perhaps Mr. Baring's daughters, who planted about these sacred mounds the star eyed daisies and the lily white violets, never thought of the dance that should go on and on to the fascination of lute and harp in the resounding halls, when the stranger should occupy in his right dear old Burnbrae. So bewildering are the changes in this life. It seems to them but yesterday that their lovely sister, a maiden of sixteen years, was laid away by the side of their mother, to arise one day transfigured and glorified; and now they were going to tell the old home with its cherished memorials good-bye; and the old graveyard and mother's vine clad "Flowery kingdom" too. Ah, every footfall is like an echo from some deserted shrine; and there is no kind voice to bid them "come again."

The little twittering birds are piping the refrain of the sad, sad song of the auctioneer. Others enter now with the keys of a lawful dominion; they unlock the dead chambers, but the fragrance of happy lives is gone like the breath exhaled from the nostril. The stranger never heard the old harpsichord with its responsive chords, as they were swept by mother's lily white hands and almost syllabled her angel voice. They were never charmed by that sweet sunny voice that in so many twilights has been singing vespers in heaven; they know naught of the dead white ashes that lay in the unlighted furnaces of the poor souls, who are saying now so tenderly, so tearfully, to their old home and its memorials, its idols, "Good-bye, good-bye!"

Judge Bonham, the purchaser, had been highly distinguished in the civic and military employments of the country. Like his old friend, Colonel Seymour, he was with Lee at Spottsylvania, Gettysburg and Appommattox, and like his colleague in the humiliations of the hour he had declined to "bend the pregnant hinges of the knee that thrift may follow fawning." To say that under all circ.u.mstances he maintained a perpendicular, from which there was no swerving backwards or forwards or to the right, or the left would be a falsification of biography. He, like all other mortals upon this terrene had his pa.s.sions, when his temper, despite curbs and restraints, almost overmastered him. Judicial experiences had affected his manners, so that he appeared austere and unfriendly; but he had a kind heart, open-handed to a fault, true to his convictions, his friends, his G.o.d.

There were curves and lines in the physical man here and there that appeared misplaced and misshapen. His long stringy hair or what there was left of it, was of a carrotty color, his nose was aquiline with unnatural projections, and his mouth though a little rigid in outline displayed, when animated, a beautiful set of teeth.

He was a very scholarly man; a religious man too, and entertained throughout his life strong Calvinistic convictions. It was strange indeed that a gentleman so exemplary in life, should sometimes run the hazard of being suspected as a rogue by those who were ignorant of the infirmity that hara.s.sed him all of his years. When meditating upon this playfulness of nature he would observe confidentially, that in any community where he was not known he would be oftener in the State's prison than without it.

"Better a Bedouin in the trackless desert than a man who is forever running the gauntlet at such a risk," he said embarra.s.singly.

There was the gossip of the town in which he lived as biting as the h.o.a.r frost, revamped and magnified to his hurt. When the gossipping spinsters heard that the judge was reinforcing his natural attractiveness by the glossiest and finest of raiment, coming out of the wardrobe like the b.u.t.terfly out of the chrysalis, they hurried to and fro among the neighbors, like magpies chattering and twittering, and they laid the poor fellow under the power of an anodyne upon the cold marble slab, and with scalpels scarified him horribly, as some women only can do. "Did you ever! Did you ever!" came a refrain from puckered lips.

"Who would have believed it!" exclaimed Miss Jerusha Timpkins, as she rolled up her dancing eyes and clasped her bony hands as if in expostulation.

"The idea! The idea!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Miss Narcissa Scoggins.

"That man going to marry!" they all exclaimed in chorus. "My, my, my!"

"And pray who told you so?" asked Miss Jemima Livesay with a biting expression.

"Why, where have you been, Jemima, all these months, you ain't heard it?

It is the town talk. Why, Amarylla Hedgepeth she heard it straight from the knitting society. Squire Jiggetts told old Deacon Bobbett that the judge had spoken to him to marry him to the beautiful Alice Seymour, and Deacon Bobbett told his wife, and Mrs. Bobbett told Sarah Marlow, and Sarah Marlow told Polly Ann Midgett, and Polly Ann ups and tells Martha Gallop, and that's how the news gets to us strait."

"Well sir!" exclaimed Miss Serepta Hightower, forgetting she was speaking to old maids who had a loathing for any expression that suggested a man or the name or the memory of a man, except the man they were prodding and scarifying. "I wouldn't believe it if the news came pine blank from the clouds; that I wouldn't!" and she gave emphasis to the utterance by the malicious and vehement stroking of one skinny fist against the other.

"Why, that man?" she exclaimed with horror, "Why, he would forget his marriage vows before he ever made them. Why when he led Malindy Hartsease a blus.h.i.+ng bride to the altar thirty years ago; why, don't you all remember that he sauntered out of the church by his lone lorn self, and the preacher had to go to his house in the dead of night in the rain and tell him that he had left his bride in the church crying her very eyeb.a.l.l.s out?"

"The monster! the monster!" all exclaimed and skinny hands and skinny arms and skinny necks were tossing and swaying automatically.

"Of course I warnt there myself (nor I either, came interruptions from all the spinsters) but I heard my mother, poor soul, say that she was right there and that she never felt so sorry for a poor human being in all her life as she did for poor Malindy; but she has gone to her rest now, thank the Lord!" and a dozen handkerchiefs instantly gravitated toward a dozen hysterical faces.

"I pity any poor soul that ties herself to such a man as that from the bottom of my heart," said Miss Anastasia Perkins in great sympathy. "Why she won't know whether she is married or not, neither will he; just as likely as not he will go courting somebody else with his poor wife a sitting back in the chimney corner in the ashes."

"And there is another pint I haint ever said anything about, but I think it ought to be known here betwixt ourselves and not to go any further"

said, Miss Martha Gallop "but the way he treated his poor wife Malindy was a purified scandal. Now I aint a telling you this as coming from me, for the good Lord knows when that thing happened, I was a little teensy weensy tot, (with a coquettish toss of her antique head) but old aunt Mehetibel Parsley knows all about it, and I've heard her say over and over again that when Judge Bonham and Malindy would be riding in their carriage to meeting that he would forget where he was going and would fetch up right against the poor house three miles or more in the other direction, and that poor mournful woman would be a sitting back in the carriage with eyes as red as a gander's, and a looking pine plank like she was coming from a funeral."

"Oh the cruel, cruel monster!" came another refrain, and skinny fists would double up and strike against ancient knees like resounding boards, and the spinsters would all heave great, tumultuous sighs, and corkscrew curls, like spiral springs, would dance up and down mechanically upon their well oiled pivots.

Judge Bonham was quite nervously gravitating toward a situation that required great force of character; a situation always extra hazardous and demanding the exercise of every resource.

This phlegmatic man was running the biblical parallel, dreaming dreams and seeing visions; not the distorted creations of the night-mare, but beautiful little crayons of love, swinging like tiny acrobats from blue ribbons on the walls, and descending like vagrant sunbeams upon the vermillion carpet; composite faces, too, with bright golden hair and brighter blue eyes.

The old gentleman sat back in his easy chair, thinking of the captivating beauty over at Ingleside, and there were ecstatic little chimes ringing in his ears, and their chorus always was this,

"I don't care what the gossips say, I shall marry some fair day."

"But am I really in love?" asked he. It was a perplexing question to a mind unusually acute and active in the powers of a.n.a.lysis and synthesis; to a mind that could grasp, multiply and divide remainders, particular estates and reversions in all their infiniteness. And the old man began to ponder seriously upon the situation.

Something quite unusual and quite unnatural was tinkering upon the frayed out heart strings of the old judge, until the learned man quite bewildered found himself addressing his reflected image in the mirror.

"Quite handsome, upon my honor, Mr. Livy Bonham," he exclaimed, "and she will say so, too, when she sees her beautiful image in my soft blue eyes; for they will speak to her in love and she will understand."

He turned from the mirror singing sweetly,

"And bright blue was her ee, And for bonnie Annie Laurie I'll lay me doon and dee."

As he pa.s.sed out of the door with his brand new beaver hat canted to the right side of his head and twirling his gold-headed cane in his hand, he said to his old cook,

"Remember, Harriet, to come to me when I return, as I shall have orders for a general cleaning of the house by and by, and tell Lije to put the carriage in apple-pie order."

"I wonder what mars judge do mean?" asked the simple negro as she turned away, "Hit pears lak his mind is a purified a wonderin; n.o.boddy haint rid in dat kerrige since ole missis died, und it do seem lak a skandle to rub ole missis' tracks out dis late day. Ef Mars Livy is agwine to get married he orter dun und dun it soon arter old missis died, den dere wudn't ben no skandle in de lan lak dere is agwine to be now. Folkses high und low is ergwine to look skornful, wid dere fingers pinted at de gal, und ax deyselves how c.u.m she jined herself to ole ma.r.s.er, wid wun foot in de grave, jes to suck sorrer arter he is dun und gon."

The man of fifty-five years was met at the door of Ingleside by the faithful old butler, who bowed almost to the floor as he greeted the judge, who, placing his hat into Ned's hands asked suspiciously if his young mistress were at home?

"Deed she is, mars jedge," exclaimed Ned obsequiously.

"Miss Alice is always at home to er yung gemman lak you is sar. Und she is diked monstrous, mars jedge, in lilacks und princess fedders und jonquils, jes lak she c.u.m outen de observatory, und she is speckin c.u.mpany dis werry minit, und I spek yu knose who dat is sar," said the old negro as he dropped his voice almost to a whisper, laughing and smirking the while.

"Angelic creature!" exclaimed the old man aside, as he began to feel a creepiness up and down his back like great caterpillars upon the march.

"What infinite comprehension!" he exclaimed again as he seemed to jerk spasmodically; "What an affectionate appreciation! Doubtless expecting me as if my arrival had been telegraphed from Burnbrae."

"Mars jedge," asked Ned "dus you ame dis wisit for yung missis or ole ma.r.s.er?"

"Undoubtedly, Ned, this visit is for your mistress," said the judge as he rubbed his hands with energy. "When my plans are arranged I will interview your marster--perhaps in the very near future."

"Eggzackly, yung ma.r.s.er," replied Ned as he twirled the judge's new beaver in his hand. "Mout I mak jes wun kurreckshun, sar, fore yu gits too fur?" asked Ned.

"Why, certainly; what is it Ned?"

The old negro placed his hands to his lips as if to keep back the sound of his own voice and asked in a whisper, while a smile played around the corners of his mouth, "Is you sho yus all rite, boss?"

"Why certainly," the judge replied with a degree of impatience "Do you suppose I have come out of the low grounds?"

"Lans saks, yung ma.r.s.er, dis ole n.i.g.g.e.r don't ames to inturrup a gemman of your sability. But boss yu dun und flung yo oberkote on de rack, duz yu ame to go into the parlor whar yung missis is wid all her hallibooloos ur dout ary weskote ur koller udder?" and the old negro turned away his head and t.i.ttered, while the judge with the embarra.s.sment of a suspected felon was looking and feeling for the missing garments; and he turned his ashen face with a hard grimace to the old negro as if he had been the cause of this particular act of absent-mindedness and said angrily.

"Ned if you ever mention this matter to man or beast your life shall pay the forfeit."

"Deed I won't, mars jedge, dat I won't, kase dat mout fling de fat in de farr."

"What shall I do, Ned?" asked the judge confidentially.

"Hit pears lak dat de onliess fing yu can do now is to slip outen dis do rite easy fore ole Jube sees yu und wait out in de piazzy twell I fetch wun of mars Jon's weskotes und collars, und den yu kin march in sar as biggerty as when yu was de jedge in de kote."

"No, I will go back home; and shall I come again Ned?"