For the next two years the life the last De Willoughby lived in the old house, though distinctly unique, was not favourable to the development of youth. Having been prepared for the practice of the law, after the time-honoured De Willoughby custom, and having also for some months occupied a corner in the small, unbusiness-like, tree-shaded, brick building known as the Judge’s “office,” Rupert sat now at his grandfather’s desk and earned a scant living by endeavouring to hold together the old man’s long-diminished practice. The profession at the time offered nothing in such places as Delisleville, even to older and more experienced men. No one had any money to go to law with, few had any property worth going to law about.
Both armies having swept through it, Delisleville wore in those days an aspect differing greatly from its old air of hospitable well-being and inconsequent good spirits and good cheer. Its broad verandahed houses had seen hard usage, its pavements were worn and broken, and in many streets tufted with weeds; its fences were dilapidated, its rich families had lost their possessions, and those who had not been driven away by their necessities were gazing aghast at a future to which it seemed impossible to adjust their ease-loving, slave-attended, luxurious habits of the past. Houses built of wood, after the Southern fashion, do not well withstand neglect and ill-fortune. Porticos and pillars and trellis-work which had been picturesque and imposing when they had been well cared for, and gleamed white among creepers and trees, lost their charm drearily when paint peeled off, trees were cut down, and vines were dragged away and died. Over the whole of the once gay little place there had fallen an air of discouragement, desolation, and decay. Financial disaster had crippled the boldest even in centres much more energetic than small, unbusiness-like Southern towns; the country lay, as it were, prostrate to recover strength, and all was at a standstill.
Finding himself penniless, Rupert De Willoughby lived in a corner of the house he had been brought up in. Such furniture as had survived the havoc of war and the entire dilapidation of old age, he had gathered together in three or four rooms, which he occupied with the one servant good fortune brought to his door at a time when the forlornness of his changed position was continually accentuated by the untidy irregularity of his life and surroundings. He was only able to afford to engage the shiftless services of a slatternly negro girl, rendered insubordinate by her newly acquired freedom, and he had begun to feel that he should never again find himself encompassed by the decorous system of a well-managed household.
It was at this juncture that Uncle Matthew arrived and presented his curious petition, which was that he should be accepted as general servant, with wages or without them.
He had not belonged to Judge De Willoughby, but to a distant relative, and, as he was an obstinate and conservative old person, he actually felt that to be “a free nigger” was rather to drop in the social scale.
“Whar’s a man stand, sah, if he ain’t got no fambly?” he said to Rupert when he came to offer his services to him. “He stan’ nowhar, that’s war he stan’; I’ve got to own up to it, Marse Rupert, I’se a ’ristycrat bawn an’ bred, an’ I ’low to stay one, long’s my head’s hot. Ef my old mars’s fambly hadn’t er gone fo’th en’ bin scattered to de fo’ win’s of de university, I’d a helt on, but when de las’ of ’um went to dat Europe, dey couldn’t ’ford to take me, an’ I had ter stay. An’ when I heerd as all yo’ kin was gone an’ you was gwine to live erlone like dis yere, I come to ax yer to take me to wait on yer—as a favier, Marse Rupert—as a favier. ’Tain’t pay I wants, sah; it’s a fambly name an’ a fambly circle.”
“It’s not much of a circle, Uncle Matt,” said Rupert, looking round at the bareness of the big room he sat in.
“’Tain’t much fer you, suh,” answered Uncle Matthew, “but it’s a pow’fle deal fer me in dese yere days. Ef yer don’t take me, fust thing I knows I’ll be drivin’ or waitin’ on some Mr. Nobody from New York or Boston, an’ seems like I shouldn’t know how to stand it. ’Scuse me a-recommendin’ myself, sah—I look ole, but I ain’t as ole as I look; I’se l’arnt to cook, sah, from three womens what I was married to, an’ I knows my place an’ how to keep house like it orter be kep’. Will you try me a mont’, Marse De Willoughby—will you try me a week?”
Rupert tried him and never regretted the venture. In fact, Uncle Matt’s accomplishments were varied for practical reasons. He had been in his time first house servant, then coachman; he had married at twenty a woman of forty, who had been a sort of female mulatto Vatel. When she had died, having overheated herself and caught cold on the occasion of a series of great dinners given at a triumphant political crisis, he had taken for his second wife the woman whose ambition it had been to rival her in her culinary arts. His third marriage had been even more distinguished. His wife had been owned by some extravagantly rich Creoles in New Orleans, and had even lived with them during a year spent in France, thereby gaining unheard-of culinary accomplishments. Matthew had always declared that he loved her the best of the three. Those matrimonial ventures had been a liberal education to him. He had learned to cook almost as well as his first, and from his second and third he had inherited methods and recipes which were invaluable. He seemed to have learned to do everything. He dismissed the slatternly negro girl and took upon himself the duties of both man and woman servant. The house gradually wore a new aspect—dust disappeared, windows were bright, the scant furniture was arranged to the best possible advantage, the scant meals were marvels of perfect cookery and neat serving. Having prepared a repast, Uncle Matt donned an ancient but respectable coat and stood behind his young master’s chair with dignity. The dramatic nature of his race was strongly appealed to by the situation in which he found himself. A negro of his kind is perfectly capable of building a romance out of much smaller materials. The amiable vanity which gave such exalted value to all the belongings of their masters in their days of slavery, and which so delighted in all picturesqueness of surrounding, is the best of foundations for romances. From generation to generation certain circumstances and qualities had conferred a sort of distinction upon their humbleness; to be owned by an aristocrat, to live in a great house, to wait upon young masters who were handsome and accomplished and young mistresses who were beautiful and surrounded by worshippers, to be indispensable to “de Jedge” or “de Cun’l,” or to travel as attendant because some brilliant young son or lovely young daughter could find no one who would wait on them as “Uncle Matt” or “Aunt Prissy” could—these things made life to be desired and filled it with excitement and importance.
To the halcyon days in which such delights were possible Uncle Matt belonged. He was too old to look forward; he wanted his past again; and to find himself the sole faithful retainer in a once brilliant household, with the chance of making himself indispensable to the one remaining scion of an old name, assisted him to feel that he was a relic of departed grandeur.