(1850-)
he literary work of James Lane Allen was begun with maturer powers and wider culture than most writers exhibit in their first publications. His mastery of English was acquired with difficulty, and his knowledge of Latin he obtained through years of instruction as well as of study. The wholesome open-air atmosphere which pervades his stories, their pastoral character and love of nature, come from the tastes bequeathed to him by three generations of paternal ancestors, easy-going gentlemen farmers of the blue-grass region of Kentucky. On a farm near Lexington, in this beautiful country of stately homes, fine herds, and great flocks, the author was born, and there he spent his childhood and youth.
About 1885 he came to New York to devote himself to literature; for though he had contributed poems, essays, and criticisms to leading periodicals, his first important work was a series of articles descriptive of the "Blue-Grass Region," published in Harper's Magazine. The field was new, the work was fresh, and the author's ability was at once recognized. Inevitably he chose Kentucky for the scene of his stories, knowing and loving, as he did, her characteristics and her history. While preparing his articles on 'The Blue-Grass Region,' he had studied the Trappist Monastery and the Convent of Loretto, as well as the records of the Catholic Church in Kentucky; and his first stories, 'The White Cowl' and 'Sister Dolorosa,' which appeared in the Century Magazine, were the first fruits of this labor. A controversy arose as to the fairness of these portraitures; but however opinions may differ as to his characterization, there can be no question of the truthfulness of the exposition of the mediaeval spirit of those retreats.
This tendency to use a historic background marks most of Mr. Allen's stories. In 'The Choir Invisible,' a tale of the last century, pioneer Kentucky once more exists. The old clergyman of 'Flute and Violin' lived and died in Lexington, and had been long forgotten when his story "touched the vanishing halo of a hard and saintly life." The old negro preacher, with texts embroidered on his coat-tails, was another figure of reality, unnoticed until he became one of the 'Two Gentlemen of Kentucky.' In Lexington lived and died "King Solomon," who had almost faded from memory when his historian found the record of the poor vagabond's heroism during the plague, and made it memorable in a story that touches the heart and fills the eyes. 'A Kentucky Cardinal,' with 'Aftermath,' its second part, is full of history and of historic personages. 'Summer in Arcady: A Tale of Nature,' the latest of Mr. Allen's stories, is no less based on local history and no less full of local color than his other tales, notwithstanding its general unlikeness.
This book sounds a deeper note than the earlier tales, although the truth which Mr. Allen sees is not mere fidelity to local types, but the essential truth of human nature. His realism has always a poetic aspect. Quiet, reserved, out of the common, his books deal with moods rather than with actions; their problems are spiritual rather than physical; their thought tends toward the higher and more difficult way of life.
A COURTSHIP
From 'Summer in Arcady'
The sunlight grew pale the following morning; a shadow crept rapidly over the blue; bolts darted about the skies like maddened redbirds; the thunder, ploughing its way down the dome as along zigzag cracks in the stony street, filled the caverns of the horizon with reverberations that shook the earth; and the rain was whirled across the landscape in long, white, wavering sheets. Then all day quiet and silence throughout Nature except for the drops, tapping high and low the twinkling leaves; except for the new melody of woodland and meadow brooks, late silvery and with a voice only for their pebbles and moss and mint, but now yellow and brawling and leaping-back into the grassy channels that were their old-time beds; except for the indoor music of dripping eaves and rushing gutters and overflowing rain-barrels. And when at last in the gold of the cool west the sun broke from the edge of the gray, over what a green, soaked, fragrant world he reared the arch of Nature's peace!
A COURTSHIP.
Photogravure from Painting by H. Vogka.
Not a little blade of corn in the fields but holds in an emerald vase its treasures of white gems. The hemp-stalks bend so low under the weight of their plumes, that were a vesper sparrow to alight on one for his evening hymn, it would go with him to the ground. The leaning barley and rye and wheat flash in the last rays their jeweled beards. Under the old apple-trees, golden-brown mushrooms are already pushing upward through the leaf-loam, rank with many an autumn's dropping. About the yards the peonies fall with faces earthward. In the stable-lots the larded porkers, with bristles as clean as frost, and flesh of pinky whiteness, are hunting with nervous nostrils for the lush purslain. The fowls are driving their bills up and down their wet breasts. And the farmers who have been shelling corn for the mill come out of their barns, with their coats over their shoulders, on the way to supper, look about for the plough-horses, and glance at the western sky, from which the last drops are falling.
But soon only a more passionate heat shoots from the sun into the planet. The plumes of the hemp are so dry again, that by the pollen shaken from their tops you can trace the young rabbits making their way out to the dusty paths. The shadows of white clouds sail over purple stretches of blue-grass, hiding the sun from the steady eye of the turkey, whose brood is spread out before her like a fan on the earth. At early morning the neighing of the stallions is heard around the horizon; at noon the bull makes the deep, hot pastures echo with his majestic summons; out in the blazing meadows the butterflies strike the afternoon air with more impatient wings; under the moon all night the play of ducks and drakes goes on along the margins of the ponds. Young people are running away and marrying; middle-aged farmers surprise their wives by looking in on them at their butter-making in the sweet dairies; and Nature is lashing everything--grass, fruit, insects, cattle, human creatures--more fiercely onward to the fulfillment of her ends. She is the great heartless haymaker, wasting not a ray of sunshine on a clod, but caring naught for the light that beats upon a throne, and holding man and woman, with their longing for immortality, and their capacities for joy and pain, as of no more account than a couple of fertilizing nasturtiums.
The storm kept Daphne at home. On the next day the earth was yellow with sunlight, but there were puddles along the path, and a branch rushing swollen across the green valley in the fields. On the third, her mother took the children to town to be fitted with hats and shoes, and Daphne also, to be freshened up with various moderate adornments, in view of a protracted meeting soon to begin. On the fourth, some ladies dropped in to spend the day, bearing in mind the episode at the dinner, and having grown curious to watch events accordingly. On the fifth, her father carried out the idea of cutting down some cedar-trees in the front yard for fence posts; and whenever he was working about the house, he kept her near to wait on him in unnecessary ways. On the sixth, he rode away with two hands and an empty wagon-bed for some work on the farm; her mother drove off to another dinner--dinners never cease in Kentucky, and the wife of an elder is not free to decline invitations; and at last she was left alone in the front porch, her face turned with burning eagerness toward the fields. In a little while she had slipped away.
All these days Hilary had been eager to see her. He was carrying a good many girls in his mind that summer; none in his heart; but his plans concerning these latter were for the time forgotten. He hung about that part of his farm from which he could have descried her in the distance. Each forenoon and afternoon, at the usual hour of her going to her uncle's, he rode over and watched for her. Other people passed to and fro,--children and servants,--but not Daphne; and repeated disappointments fanned his desire to see her.
When she came into sight at last, he was soon walking beside her, leading his horse by the reins.
"I have been waiting to see you, Daphne," he said, with a smile, but general air of seriousness. "I have been waiting a long time for a chance to talk to you."
"And I have wanted to see you," said Daphne, her face turned away and her voice hardly to be heard. "I have been waiting for a chance to talk to you."
The change in her was so great, so unexpected, it contained an appeal to him so touching, that he glanced quickly at her. Then he stopped short and looked searchingly around the meadow.
The thorn-tree is often the only one that can survive on these pasture lands. Its spikes, even when it is no higher than the grass, keep off the mouths of grazing stock. As it grows higher, birds see it standing solitary in the distance and fly to it, as a resting-place in passing. Some autumn day a seed of the wild grape is thus dropped near its root; and in time the thorn-tree and the grape-vine come to thrive together.
As Hilary now looked for some shade to which they could retreat from the blinding, burning sunlight, he saw one of these standing off at a distance of a few hundred yards. He slipped the bridle-reins through the head-stall, and giving his mare a soft slap on the shoulder, turned her loose to graze.
"Come over here and sit down out of the sun," he said, starting off in his authoritative way. "I want to talk to you."
Daphne followed in his wake, through the deep grass.
When they reached the tree, they sat down under the rayless boughs. Some sheep lying there ran round to the other side and stood watching them, with a frightened look in their clear, peaceful eyes.
"What's the matter?" he said, fanning his face, and tugging with his forefinger to loosen his shirt collar from his moist neck. He had the manner of a powerful comrade who means to succor a weaker one.
"Nothing," said Daphne, like a true woman.
"Yes, but there is," he insisted. "I got you into trouble. I didn't think of that when I asked you to dance."
"You had nothing to do with it," retorted Daphne, with a flash. "I danced for spite."
He threw back his head with a peal of laughter. All at once this was broken off. He sat up, with his eyes fixed on the lower edge of the meadow.
"Here comes your father," he said gravely.
Daphne turned. Her father was riding slowly through the bars. A wagon-bed loaded with rails crept slowly after him.
In an instant the things that had cost her so much toil and so many tears to arrange,--her explanations, her justifications, and her parting,--all the reserve and the coldness that she had laid up in her heart, as one fills high a little ice-house with fear of far-off summer heat,--all were quite gone, melted away. And everything that he had planned to tell her was forgotten also at the sight of that stern figure on horseback bearing unconsciously down upon them.
"If I had only kept my mouth shut about his old fences," he said to himself. "Confound my bull!" and he looked anxiously at Daphne, who sat with her eyes riveted on her father. The next moment she had turned, and they were laughing in each other's faces.
"What shall I do?" she cried, leaning over and burying her face in her hands, and lifting it again, scarlet with excitement.
"Don't do anything," he said calmly.
"But Hilary, if he sees us, we are lost."
"If he sees us, we are found."
"But he mustn't see me here!" she cried, with something like real terror. "I believe I'll lie down in the grass. Maybe he'll think I am a friend of yours."
"My friends all sit up in the grass," said Hilary.
But Daphne had already hidden.
Many a time, when a little girl, she had amused herself by screaming like a hawk at the young guineas, and seeing them cuddle invisible under small tufts and weeds. Out in the stable lot, where the grass was grazed so close that the geese could barely nip it, she would sometimes get one of the negro men to scare the little pigs, for the delight of seeing them squat as though hidden, when they were no more hidden than if they had spread themselves out upon so many dinner dishes. All of us reveal traces of this primitive instinct upon occasion. Daphne was doing her best to hide now.
When Hilary realized it he moved in front of her, screening her as well as possible.
"Hadn't you better lie down, too?" she asked.
"No," he replied quickly.
"But if he sees you, he might take a notion to ride over this way!"
"Then he'll have to ride."
"But, Hilary, suppose he were to find me lying down here behind you, hiding?"
"Then he'll have to find you."
"You get me into trouble, and then you won't help me out!" exclaimed Daphne with considerable heat.
"It might not make matters any better for me to hide," he answered quietly. "But if he comes over here and tries to get us into trouble, I'll see then what I can do."
Daphne lay silent for a moment, thinking. Then she nestled more closely down, and said with gay, unconscious archness: "I'm not hiding because I'm afraid of him. I'm doing it just because I want to."
She did not know that the fresh happiness flushing her at that moment came from the fact of having Hilary between herself and her father as a protector; that she was drinking in the delight a woman feels in getting playfully behind the man she loves in the face of danger: but her action bound her to him and brought her more under his influence.
His words showed that he also felt his position,--the position of the male who stalks forth from the herd and stands the silent challenger. He was young, and vain of his manhood in the usual innocent way that led him to carry the chip on his shoulder for the world to knock off; and he placed himself before Daphne with the understanding that if they were discovered, there would be trouble. Her father was a violent man, and the circumstances were not such that any Kentucky father would overlook them. But with his inward seriousness, his face wore its usual look of reckless unconcern.
"Is he coming this way?" asked Daphne, after an interval of impatient waiting.
"Straight ahead. Are you hid?"
"I can't see whether I'm hid or not. Where is he now?"
"Right on us."
"Does he see you?"
"Yes."
"Do you think he sees me?"
"I'm sure of it."
"Then I might as well get up," said Daphne, with the courage of despair, and up she got. Her father was riding along the path in front of them, but not looking. She was down again like a partridge.
"How could you fool me, Hilary? Suppose he had been looking!"
"I wonder what he thinks I'm doing, sitting over here in the grass like a stump," said Hilary. "If he takes me for one, he must think I've got an awful lot of roots."
"Tell me when it's time to get up."
"I will."
He turned softly toward her. She was lying on her side, with her burning cheek in one hand. The other hand rested high on the curve of her hip. Her braids had fallen forward, and lay in a heavy loop about her lovely shoulders. Her eyes were closed, her scarlet lips parted in a smile. The edges of her snow-white petticoats showed beneath her blue dress, and beyond these one of her feet and ankles. Nothing more fragrant with innocence ever lay on the grass.
"Is it time to get up now?"
"Not yet," and he sat bending over her.
"Now?"
"Not yet," he repeated more softly.
"Now, then?"
"Not for a long time."
His voice thrilled her, and she glanced up at him. His laughing eyes were glowing down upon her under his heavy mat of hair. She sat up and looked toward the wagon crawling away in the distance; her father was no longer in sight.
One of the ewes, dissatisfied with a back view, stamped her forefoot impatiently, and ran round in front, and out into the sun. Her lambs followed, and the three, ranging themselves abreast, stared at Daphne, with a look of helpless inquiry.
"Sh-pp-pp!" she cried, throwing up her hands at them, irritated. "Go away!"
They turned and ran; the others followed; and the whole number, falling into line, took a path meekly homeward. They left a greater sense of privacy under the tree. Several yards off was a small stock-pond. Around the edge of this the water stood hot and green in the tracks of the cattle and the sheep, and about these pools the yellow butterflies were thick, alighting daintily on the promontories of the mud, or rising two by two through the dazzling atmosphere in columns of enamored flight.
Daphne leaned over to the blue grass where it swayed unbroken in the breeze, and drew out of their sockets several stalks of it, bearing on their tops the purplish seed-vessels. With them she began to braid a ring about one of her fingers in the old simple fashion of the country.
As they talked, he lay propped on his elbow, watching her fingers, the soft slow movements of which little by little wove a spell over his eyes. And once again the power of her beauty began to draw him beyond control. He felt a desire to seize her hands, to crush them in his. His eyes passed upward along her tapering wrists, the skin of which was like mother-of-pearl; upward along the arm to the shoulder--to her neck--to her deeply crimsoned cheeks--to the purity of her brow--to the purity of her eyes, the downcast lashes of which hid them like conscious fringes.
An awkward silence began to fall between them. Daphne felt that the time had come for her to speak. But, powerless to begin, she feigned to busy herself all the more devotedly with braiding the deep-green circlet. Suddenly he drew himself through the grass to her side.
"Let me!"
"No!" she cried, lifting her arm above his reach and looking at him with a gay threat. "You don't know how."
"I do know how," he said, with his white teeth on his red underlip, and his eyes sparkling; and reaching upward, he laid his hand in the hollow of her elbow and pulled her arm down.
"No! No!" she cried again, putting her hands behind her back. "You will spoil it!"
"I will not spoil it," he said, moving so close to her that his breath was on her face, and reaching round to unclasp her hands.
"No! No! No!" she cried, bending away from him. "I don't want any ring!" and she tore it from her finger and threw it out on the grass. Then she got up, and, brushing the grass-seed off her lap, put on her hat.
He sat cross-legged on the grass before her. He had put on his hat, and the brim hid his eyes.
"And you are not going to stay and talk to me?" he said in a tone of reproachfulness, without looking up.
She was excited and weak and trembling, and so she put out her hand and took hold of a strong loop of the grape-vine hanging from a branch of the thorn, and laid her cheek against her hand and looked away from him.
"I thought you were better than the others," he continued, with the bitter wisdom of twenty years. "But you women are all alike. When a man gets into trouble, you desert him. You hurry him on to the devil. I have been turned out of the church, and now you are down on me. Oh, well! But you know how much I have always liked you, Daphne."
It was not the first time he had acted this character. It had been a favorite role. But Daphne had never seen the like. She was overwhelmed with happiness that he cared so much for her; and to have him reproach her for indifference, and see him suffering with the idea that she had turned against him--that instantly changed the whole situation. He had not heard then what had taken place at the dinner. Under the circumstances, feeling certain that the secret of her love had not been discovered, she grew emboldened to risk a little more.
So she turned toward him smiling, and swayed gently as she clung to the vine.
"Yes; I have my orders not even to speak to you! Never again!" she said, with the air of tantalizing.
"Then stay with me a while now," he said, and lifted slowly to her his appealing face. She sat down, and screened herself with a little feminine transparency.
"I can't stay long: it's going to rain!"
He cast a wicked glance at the sky from under his hat; there were a few clouds on the horizon.
"And so you are never going to speak to me again?" he said mournfully.
"Never!" How delicious her laughter was.
"I'll put a ring on your finger to remember me by."
He lay over in the grass and pulled several stalks. Then he lifted his eyes beseechingly to hers.
"Will you let me?"
Daphne hid her hands. He drew himself to her side and took one of them forcibly from her lap.
With a slow, caressing movement he began to braid the grass ring around her finger--in and out, around and around, his fingers laced with her fingers, his palm lying close upon her palm, his blood tingling through the skin upon her blood. He made the braiding go wrong, and took it off and began over again. Two or three times she drew a deep breath, and stole a bewildered look at his face, which was so close to hers that his hair brushed it--so close that she heard the quiver of his own breath. Then all at once he folded his hands about hers with a quick, fierce tenderness, and looked up at her. She turned her face aside and tried to draw her hand away. His clasp tightened. She snatched it away, and got up with a nervous laugh.
"Look at the butterflies! Aren't they pretty?"
He sprang up and tried to seize her hand again.
"You shan't go home yet!" he said, in an undertone.
"Shan't I?" she said, backing away from him. "Who's going to keep me?"
"I am," he said, laughing excitedly and following her closely.
"My father's coming!" she cried out as a warning.
He turned and looked: there was no one in sight.
"He is coming--sooner or later!" she called.
She had retreated several yards off into the sunlight of the meadow.
The remembrance of the risk that he was causing her to run checked him. He went over to her.
"When can I see you again--soon?"
He had never spoken so seriously to her before. He had never before been so serious. But within the last hour Nature had been doing her work, and its effect was immediate. His sincerity instantly conquered her. Her eyes fell.
"No one has any right to keep us from seeing each other!" he insisted. "We must settle that for ourselves."
Daphne made no reply.
"But we can't meet here any more--with people passing backward and forward!" he continued rapidly and decisively. "What has happened to-day mustn't happen again."
"No!" she replied, in a voice barely to be heard. "It must never happen again. We can't meet here."
They were walking side by side now toward the meadow-path. As they reached it he paused.
"Come to the back of the pasture--to-morrow!--at four o'clock!" he said, tentatively, recklessly.
Daphne did not answer as she moved away from him along the path homeward.
"Will you come?" he called out to her.
She turned and shook her head. Whatever her own new plans may have become, she was once more happy and laughing.
"Come, Daphne!"
She walked several paces further and turned and shook her head again.
"Come!" he pleaded.
She laughed at him.
He wheeled round to his mare grazing near. As he put his foot into the stirrup, he looked again: she was standing in the same place, laughing still.
"You go," she cried, waving him good-by. "There'll not be a soul to disturb you! To-morrow--at four o'clock!"
"Will you be there?" he said.
"Will you?" she answered.
"I'll be there to-morrow," he said, "and every other day till you come."
By permission of the Macmillan Company, Publishers.
OLD KING SOLOMON'S CORONATION
From 'Flute and Violin, and Other Kentucky Tales and Romances' 1891, by Harper and Brothers.
He stood on the topmost of the court-house steps, and for a moment looked down on the crowd with the usual air of official severity.
"Gentlemen," he then cried out sharply, "by an ordah of the cou't I now offah this man at public sale to the highes' biddah. He is able-bodied but lazy, without visible property or means of suppoht, an' of dissolute habits. He is therefoh adjudged guilty of high misdemeanahs, an' is to be sole into labah foh a twelvemonth. How much, then, am I offahed foh the vagrant? How much am I offahed foh ole King Sol'mon?"
Nothing was offered for old King Solomon. The spectators formed themselves into a ring around the big vagrant, and settled down to enjoy the performance.
"Staht 'im, somebody."
Somebody started a laugh, which rippled around the circle.
The sheriff looked on with an expression of unrelaxed severity, but catching the eye of an acquaintance on the outskirts, he exchanged a lightning wink of secret appreciation. Then he lifted off his tight beaver hat, wiped out of his eyes a little shower of perspiration which rolled suddenly down from above, and warmed a degree to his theme.
"Come, gentlemen," he said more suasively, "it's too hot to stan' heah all day. Make me an offah! You all know ole King Sol'mon; don't wait to be interduced. How much, then, to staht 'im? Say fifty dollahs! Twenty-five! Fifteen! Ten! Why, gentlemen! Not ten dollahs? Remembah, this is the Blue-Grass Region of Kentucky--the land of Boone an' Kenton, the home of Henry Clay!" he added, in an oratorical crescendo.
"He ain't wuth his victuals," said an oily little tavern-keeper, folding his arms restfully over his own stomach and cocking up one piggish eye into his neighbor's face. "He ain't wuth his 'taters."
"Buy 'im foh 'is rags!" cried a young law student, with a Blackstone under his arm, to the town rag picker opposite, who was unconsciously ogling the vagrant's apparel.
"I might buy 'im foh 'is scalp," drawled a farmer, who had taken part in all kinds of scalp contests, and was now known to be busily engaged in collecting crow scalps for a match soon to come off between two rival counties.
"I think I'll buy 'im foh a hat sign," said a manufacturer of ten-dollar Castor and Rhorum hats. This sally drew merry attention to the vagrant's hat, and the merchant felt rewarded.
"You'd bettah say the town ought to buy 'im an' put 'im up on top of the cou't-house as a scarecrow foh the cholera," said some one else.
"What news of the cholera did the stage coach bring this mohning?" quickly inquired his neighbor in his ear; and the two immediately fell into low, grave talk, forgot the auction, and turned away.
"Stop, gentlemen, stop!" cried the sheriff, who had watched the rising tide of good humor, and now saw his chance to float in on it with spreading sails. "You're runnin' the price in the wrong direction--down, not up. The law requires that he be sole to the highes' biddah, not the lowes'. As loyal citizens, uphole the constitution of the commonwealth of Kentucky an' make me an offah; the man is really a great bargain. In the first place, he would cos' his ownah little or nothin', because, as you see, he keeps himself in cigahs an' clo'es; then, his main article of diet is whisky--a supply of which he always has on ban'. He don't even need a bed, foh you know he sleeps jus' as well on any doohstep; noh a chair, foh he prefers to sit roun' on the curbstones. Remembah, too, gentlemen, that ole King Sol'mon is a Virginian--from the same neighbohhood as Mr. Clay. Remembah that he is well educated, that he is an awful Whig, an' that he has smoked mo' of the stumps of Mr. Clay's cigahs than any other man in existence. If you don't b'lieve me, gentlemen, yondah goes Mr. Clay now; call him ovah an' ask 'im foh yo'se'ves."
He paused, and pointed with his right forefinger towards Main Street, along which the spectators, with a sudden craning of necks, beheld the familiar figure of the passing statesman.
"But you don't need anybody to tell these fac's, gentlemen," he continued. "You merely need to be reminded that ole King Sol'mon is no ohdinary man. Mo'ovah he has a kine heaht; he nevah spoke a rough wohd to anybody in this worl', an' he is as proud as Tecumseh of his good name an' charactah. An', gentlemen," he added, bridling with an air of mock gallantry and laying a hand on his heart, "if anythin' fu'thah is required in the way of a puffect encomium, we all know that there isn't anothah man among us who cuts as wide a swath among the ladies. The'foh, if you have any appreciation of virtue, any magnanimity of heaht; if you set a propah valuation upon the descendants of Virginia, that mothah of Presidents; if you believe in the pure laws of Kentucky as the pioneer bride of the Union; if you love America an' love the worl'--make me a gen'rous, high-toned offah foh ole King Sol'mon!"
He ended his peroration amid a shout of laughter and applause, and feeling satisfied that it was a good time for returning to a more practical treatment of his subject, proceeded in a sincere tone:--
"He can easily earn from one to two dollahs a day, an' from three to six hundred a yeah. There's not anothah white man in town capable of doin' as much work. There's not a niggah ban' in the hemp factories with such muscles an' such a chest. Look at 'em! An', if you don't b'lieve me, step fo'ward and feel 'em. How much, then, is bid foh 'im?"
"One dollah!" said the owner of a hemp factory, who had walked forward and felt the vagrant's arm, laughing, but coloring up also as the eyes of all were quickly turned upon him. In those days it was not an unheard-of thing for the muscles of a human being to be thus examined when being sold into servitude to a new master.
"Thank you!" cried the sheriff, cheerily. "One precinc' heard from! One dollah! I am offahed one dollah foh ole King Sol'mon. One dollah foh the king! Make it a half. One dollah an' a half. Make it a half. One dol-dol-dol-dollah!"
Two medical students, returning from lectures at the old Medical Hall, now joined the group, and the sheriff explained:
"One dollah is bid foh the vagrant ole King Sol'mon, who is to be sole into labah foh a twelvemonth. Is there any othah bid? Are you all done? One dollah, once--"
"Dollah and a half," said one of the students, and remarked half jestingly under his breath to his companion, "I'll buy him on the chance of his dying. We'll dissect him."
"Would you own his body if he should die?"
"If he dies while bound to me, I'll arrange that."
"One dollah an' a half," resumed the sheriff, and falling into the tone of a facile auctioneer he rattled on:--
"One dollah an' a half foh ole Sol'mon--sol, sol, sol,--do, re, mi, fa, sol,--do, re, mi, fa, sol! Why, gentlemen, you can set the king to music!"
All this time the vagrant had stood in the centre of that close ring of jeering and humorous bystanders--a baffling text from which to have preached a sermon on the infirmities of our imperfect humanity. Some years before, perhaps as a master-stroke of derision, there had been given to him that title which could but heighten the contrast of his personality and estate with every suggestion of the ancient sacred magnificence; and never had the mockery seemed so fine as at this moment, when he was led forth into the streets to receive the lowest sentence of the law upon his poverty and dissolute idleness. He was apparently in the very prime of life--a striking figure, for nature at least had truly done some royal work on him. Over six feet in height, erect, with limbs well shaped and sinewy, with chest and neck full of the lines of great power, a large head thickly covered with long, reddish hair, eyes blue, face beardless, complexion fair but discolored by low passions and excesses--such was old King Solomon. He wore a stiff, high, black Castor hat of the period, with the crown smashed in and the torn rim hanging down over one ear; a black cloth coat in the old style, ragged and buttonless; a white cotton shirt, with the broad collar crumpled wide open at the neck and down his sunburnt bosom; blue jean pantaloons, patched at the seat and the knees; and ragged cotton socks that fell down over the tops of his dusty shoes, which were open at the heels.
In one corner of his sensual mouth rested the stump of a cigar. Once during the proceedings he had produced another, lighted it, and continued quietly smoking. If he took to himself any shame as the central figure of this ignoble performance, no one knew it. There was something almost royal in his unconcern. The humor, the badinage, the open contempt, of which he was the public target, fell thick and fast upon him, but as harmlessly as would balls of pith upon a coat of mail. In truth, there was that in his great, lazy, gentle, good-humored bulk and bearing which made the gibes seem all but despicable. He shuffled from one foot to the other as though he found it a trial to stand up so long, but all the while looking the spectators full in the eyes without the least impatience. He suffered the man of the factory to walk round him and push and pinch his muscles as calmly as though he had been the show bull at a country fair. Once only, when the sheriff had pointed across the street at the figure of Mr. Clay, he had looked quickly in that direction with a kindling light in his eye and a passing flush on his face. For the rest, he seemed like a man who has drained his cup of human life and has nothing left him but to fill again and drink without the least surprise or eagerness.
The bidding between the man of the factory and the student had gone slowly on. The price had reached ten dollars. The heat was intense, the sheriff tired. Then something occurred to revivify the scene. Across the market place and toward the steps of the court-house there suddenly came trundling along in breathless haste a huge old negress, carrying on one arm a large shallow basket containing apple-crab lanterns and fresh gingerbread. With a series of half-articulate grunts and snorts she approached the edge of the crowd and tried to force her way through. She coaxed, she begged, she elbowed and pushed and scolded, now laughing, and now with the passion of tears in her thick, excited voice. All at once, catching sight of the sheriff, she lifted one ponderous brown arm, naked to the elbow, and waved her hand to him above the heads of those in front.
"Hole on marster! hole on!" she cried in a tone of humorous entreaty. "Don' knock 'im off till I come! Gim me a bid at 'im!"
The sheriff paused and smiled. The crowd made way tumultuously, with broad laughter and comment.
"Stan' aside theah an' let Aun' Charlotte in!"
"Now you'll see biddin'!"
"Get out of the way foh Aun' Charlotte!"
"Up, my free niggah! Hurrah foh Kentucky."
A moment more and she stood inside the ring of spectators, her basket on the pavement at her feet, her hands plumped akimbo into her fathomless sides, her head up, and her soft, motherly eyes turned eagerly upon the sheriff. Of the crowd she seemed unconscious, and on the vagrant before her she had not cast a single glance.
She was dressed with perfect neatness. A red and yellow Madras kerchief was bound about her head in a high coil, and another over the bosom of her stiffly starched and smoothly ironed blue cottonade dress. Rivulets of perspiration ran down over her nose, her temples, and around her ears, and disappeared mysteriously in the creases of her brown neck. A single drop accidentally hung glistening like a diamond on the circlet of one of her large brass earrings.
The sheriff looked at her a moment, smiling but a little disconcerted. The spectacle was unprecedented.
"What do you want heah, Aun' Charlotte?" he asked kindly. "You can't sell yo' pies an' gingerbread heah."
"I don' wan' sell no pies en gingerbread," she replied, contemptuously. "I wan' bid on him," and she nodded sidewise at the vagrant. "White folks allers sellin' niggahs to wuk fuh dem; I gwine to buy a white man to wuk fuh me. En he gwine t' git a mighty hard mistiss, you heah me!"
The eyes of the sheriff twinkled with delight.
"Ten dollahs is offahed foh ole King Sol'mon. Is theah any othah bid. Are you all done?"
"Leben," she said.
Two young ragamuffins crawled among the legs of the crowd up to her basket and filched pies and cake beneath her very nose.
"Twelve!" cried the student, laughing.
"Thirteen!" she laughed, too, but her eyes flashed.
"You are bidding against a niggah" whispered the student's companion in his ear.
"So I am; let's be off," answered the other, with a hot flush on his proud face.
Thus the sale was ended, and the crowd variously dispersed. In a distant corner of the courtyard the ragged urchins were devouring their unexpected booty. The old negress drew a red handkerchief out of her bosom, untied a knot in a corner of it, and counted out the money to the sheriff. Only she and the vagrant were now left on the spot.
"You have bought me. What do you want me to do?" he asked quietly.
"Lohd, honey!" she answered, in a low tone of affectionate chiding, "I don' wan' you to do no thin'! I wuzn' gwine t' 'low dem white folks to buy you. Dey'd wuk you till you dropped dead. You go 'long en do ez you please."
She gave a cunning chuckle of triumph in thus setting at naught the ends of justice, and in a voice rich and musical with affection, she said, as she gave him a little push:
"You bettah be gittin' out o' dis blazin' sun. G' on home! I be 'long by-en-by."
He turned and moved slowly away in the direction of Water Street, where she lived; and she, taking up her basket, shuffled across the market place toward Cheapside, muttering to herself the while:
"I come mighty nigh gittin' dar too late, foolin' long wid dese pies. Sellin' him 'ca'se he don' wuk! Umph! if all de men in dis town dat don' wuk wuz to be tuk up en sole, d' wouldn' be 'nough money in de town to buy em! Don' I see 'em settin' 'roun' dese taverns f'om mohnin' till night?"
Nature soon smiles upon her own ravages and strews our graves with flowers, not as memories, but for other flowers when the spring returns.
It was one cool, brilliant morning late in that autumn. The air blew fresh and invigorating, as though on the earth there were no corruption, no death. Far southward had flown the plague. A spectator in the open court square might have seen many signs of life returning to the town. Students hurried along, talking eagerly. Merchants met for the first time and spoke of the winter trade. An old negress, gayly and neatly dressed, came into the market place, and sitting down on a sidewalk displayed her yellow and red apples and fragrant gingerbread. She hummed to herself an old cradle-song, and in her soft, motherly black eyes shone a mild, happy radiance. A group of young ragamuffins eyed her longingly from a distance. Court was to open for the first time since the spring. The hour was early, and one by one the lawyers passed slowly in. On the steps of the court-house three men were standing: Thomas Brown, the sheriff; old Peter Leuba, who had just walked over from his music store on Main Street; and little M. Giron, the French confectioner. Each wore mourning on his hat, and their voices were low and grave.
"Gentlemen," the sheriff was saying, "it was on this very spot the day befoah the cholera broke out that I sole 'im as a vagrant. An' I did the meanes' thing a man can evah do. I hel' 'im up to public ridicule foh his weakness an' made spoht of 'is infirmities. I laughed at 'is povahty an' 'is ole clo'es. I delivahed on 'im as complete an oration of sarcastic detraction as I could prepare on the spot, out of my own meanness an' with the vulgah sympathies of the crowd. Gentlemen, if I only had that crowd heah now, an' ole King Sol'mon standin' in the midst of it, that I might ask 'im to accept a humble public apology, offahed from the heaht of one who feels himself unworthy to shake 'is han'! But gentlemen, that crowd will nevah reassemble. Neahly ev'ry man of them is dead, an' ole King Sol'mon buried them."
"He buried my friend Adolphe Xaupi," said François Giron, touching his eyes with his handkerchief.
"There is a case of my best Jamaica rum for him whenever he comes for it," said old Leuba, clearing his throat.
"But, gentlemen, while we are speakin' of ole King Sol'mon we ought not to forget who it is that has suppohted 'im. Yondah she sits on the sidewalk, sellin' 'er apples an' gingerbread."
The three men looked in the direction indicated.
"Heah comes ole King Sol'mon now," exclaimed the sheriff.
Across the open square the vagrant was seen walking slowly along with his habitual air of quiet, unobtrusive preoccupation. A minute more and he had come over and passed into the court-house by a side door.
"Is Mr. Clay to be in court to-day?"
"He is expected, I think."
"Then let's go in: there will be a crowd."
"I don't know: so many are dead."
They turned and entered and found seats as quietly as possible; for a strange and sorrowful hush brooded over the court-room. Until the bar assembled, it had not been realized how many were gone. The silence was that of a common overwhelming disaster. No one spoke with his neighbor; no one observed the vagrant as he entered and made his way to a seat on one of the meanest benches, a little apart from the others. He had not sat there since the day of his indictment for vagrancy. The judge took his seat, and making a great effort to control himself, passed his eyes slowly over the court-room. All at once he caught sight of old King Solomon sitting against the wall in an obscure corner; and before any one could know what he was doing, he had hurried down and walked up to the vagrant and grasped his hand. He tried to speak, but could not. Old King Solomon had buried his wife and daughter,--buried them one clouded midnight, with no one present but himself.
Then the oldest member of the bar started up and followed the example; and then the other members, rising by a common impulse, filed slowly back and one by one wrung that hard and powerful hand. After them came the other persons in the court-room. The vagrant, the gravedigger, had risen and stood against the wall, at first with a white face and a dazed expression, not knowing what it meant; afterwards, when he understood it, his head dropped suddenly forward and his tears fell thick and hot upon the hands that he could not see. And his were not the only tears. Not a man in the long file but paid his tribute of emotion as he stepped forward to honor that image of sadly eclipsed but still effulgent humanity. It was not grief, it was not gratitude, nor any sense of making reparation for the past. It was the softening influence of an act of heroism, which makes every man feel himself a brother hand in hand with every other;--such power has a single act of moral greatness to reverse the relations of men, lifting up one, and bringing all others to do him homage.
It was the coronation scene in the life of 'Ole' King Solomon of Kentucky.