Who in all the South has not heard of Judge Jacky Wylie, still called judge because he had once sat upon the bench, though not finding the seat comfortable, he had abandoned it, affirming that he had “not the heart” for the business? That was a favorite phrase of the judge, who was always asserting that he “hadn’t the heart,” when everyone knew that he had the largest heart in all old Maryland.
And there was his mother, a gentlewoman of the old school, without any state about her, a Lady Bountiful of the neighborhood, without any pretensions.
Who did not know and love old Mrs. Wylie?
How she was adored by the large, miscellaneous family Jack had gathered together! To be sure, all Jacky’s unprovided nieces and nephews were her grandchildren, and it was partly for love of her, to please her, to let her gather all her second brood under her wing, that her son Jacky collected them. Yes, she was adored by all that household of laughing girls and roystering boys, the tide of whose love and fondness for her was so great that it sometimes overflowed the barriers of veneration—just as Jacky’s confidence in God sometimes swamped his reverence!—but most of all was she idolized by the adopted son of Judge Jacky, Ulysses Roebuck.
Next to his grandmother Ulysses loved his smallest cousin, little Ambrosia, the only child of Judge Jacky, and the little goddess of the whole household of grown-up and growing young men and maidens. Little Ambrosia, named after her Uncle Ambrose, who had been the elder and only brother of Jacky, and the favorite of his mother, but who had died in youth. And it was to please his mother that Jacky, having no son, called his little daughter after his brother. And it was a lovely name, too, he thought—a lovely, tempting, caressable name! really better than one could have hoped; for Ambrose was old-fashioned and ugly—low be it spoken.
I think the negroes must have conceived it to be a “tempting” name, too; for, with their inevitable fault of corrupting language, they called the little seraph, with her charming face and sunny hair, “Miss Ambush.”
And “Marse Useless” and “Miss Ambush” were the prime favorites of the plantation, notwithstanding, or perhaps, because of, the dare-devil, don’t care-ishness of the former.
It was with this family, then, that General and Mrs. Garnet interchanged frequent visits. Often the old lady, Mrs. Wylie, accompanied by little Ambrosia and a waiting-maid, would drive up to Mount Calm in their old-fashioned phaeton, to spend the day; or else two or three of the girls and young men would ride up to pass an evening, and return by starlight. And not unfrequently young Mrs. Garnet would go down with her little Alice and pass a day and night at Point Pleasant.
There was yet another family with whom the Garnets were upon terms of close intimacy and friendship—their next neighbors, the Hardcastles of Hemlock Hollow, whose estate joined Mount Calm, lying immediately behind and below it, and extending further inland. The family at the Hollow consisted of Lionel Hardcastle, High Sheriff of the State; his only son, Lionel, Jr., a youth of fifteen, and his nephew, Magnus, a boy of ten years old.
Lionel Hardcastle was the only man in the county with whom General Garnet could be said to be on terms of close intimacy. Their estates, as I said, joined; their rank in life was upon a par, and their country interests almost identical. They were also of the same party in politics, of the same denomination in religion, and of like opinion upon all common and local questions; so that there was very little to differ about, while there was a great deal to attract them to each other in their very opposite temperaments and characters, experiences, and mental acquisitions.