A Strange, Sad Comedy

by Molly Elliot Seawell

ONE sunny November day, in 1864, Colonel Archibald Corbin sat placidly reading “The Spectator” in the shabby old library at Corbin Hall, in Virginia. The Colonel had a fine, pale old face, clean shaven, except for a bristly, white mustache, and his white hair, which was rather long, was combed back in the fashion of the days when Bulwer’s heroes set the style for hair-dressing. The Colonel—who was no more a colonel than he was a cheese-box—had an invincible placidity, which could not be disturbed by wars or rumors of wars. He had come into the world in a calm and judicial frame of mind, and meant to go through it and out of it calmly and judicially, in spite of rude shocks and upheavals.

Everything about Colonel Corbin had reached the stage of genteel shabbiness—a shabbiness which is the exclusive mark of gentlemen. His dignified frock-coat was white about the seams with much brushing, and the tall, old-fashioned “stock” which supported his chin was neatly but obviously mended. The furniture in the room was as archaic as the Colonel’s coat and stock. A square of rag carpet covered the floor; there had been a Brussels carpet once, but that had long since gone to the hospital at Richmond—and the knob of the Colonel’s gold-headed cane had gone into the collection-plate at church some months before. For, as the Colonel said, with a sort of grandiose modesty—“I can give but little, sir, in these disjointed times. But when I do give, I give like a gentleman, sir.”

There had been a time, not long before that, when he had been compelled to “realize,” as the Virginians euphemistically express it, upon something that could be converted into cash. This was when it became necessary to bring the body of his only son, who had been killed early in the war, back to Corbin Hall—and likewise to bring the dead man’s twelve-year-old daughter from the far South, where her mother had quickly followed her father across the gulf. Even in that sad extremity, the Colonel had never dreamed of “realizing” on the great piles of silver plate, which would, in those times, have commanded instant sale. The Corbins, who were perfectly satisfied to have their dining-room furnished with some scanty horsehair sofas and a few rickety chairs and tables, had a fancy for loading down rude cupboards with enough plate for a great establishment, according to a provincial fashion in Virginia. But instead of this, the Colonel sacrificed a fine threshing-machine and some of his best stock without a qualm. The Colonel had borne all this, and much more,—and the rare, salt tears had worn little furrows in his cheeks,—but he was still calm, still composed, under all circumstances.

The sun had just marked twelve o’clock on the old sun-dial in the garden, when the Colonel, happening to glance up, saw Aunt Tulip, the dairymaid, streaking past the window, with her petticoat over her head, followed by Nancy, the scullion, by little Patsy Jane, who picked up chips for the kitchen fire, by Tom Battercake, whose mission in life was indicated by his name,—the bringing in of battercakes being an important part of life in Virginia,—and by Juba, who was just beginning his apprenticeship by carrying relays of the eternal battercakes from the kitchen to the dining-room. And the next moment, Miss Jemima, the Colonel’s sister and double, actually danced into the room with her gray curls flying, and gasped, “Brother, the Yankees are coming!”

“Are they, my dear Jemima?” remarked the Colonel, rising. “Then we must prepare to meet them with all the dignity and composure possible.” As the Colonel opened the door, his own man, Dad Davy, nearly ran over him, blurting out the startling news, “Marse, de Yankees is comin’!” and the same information was screeched at him by every negro, big and little, on the plantation who had known it in time to make a bee-line for the house.

“Disperse to your usual occupations,” cried the Colonel, waving his hand majestically. The negroes dispersed, not to their business, but with the African’s natural love of a sensation to spread the alarm all over the place. By the time it got to the “quarters,”—the houses of the field-hands, farthest away from “de gret house,”—it was reported that Dad Davy had told Tom Battercake that he saw Aunt Tulip “runnin’ outen de gret house, and the Yankees wuz hol’in er pistol at ole Marse’ hade, and Miss Jemima, she wuz havin’ er fit with nobody but little Patsy Jane,” etc., etc., etc. What really happened was, the Colonel walked calmly out in the hall, urging Miss Jemima to be composed.

“My dear Jemima, do not become agitated. David, you are an old fool. Thomas Battercake, proceed to your usual employment at this time of day, cleaning the knives, or whatever it is. Would you have these Yankee miscreants to think us a body of Bedlamites?”

Just then, down the stairs came running pretty little twelve-year-old Letty, his granddaughter. Letty seized his veined and nervous hand in her two pink palms, and expressed a willingness to die on the spot for him.

The Colonel marched solemnly out on the porch, and by that time, what seemed to him an army of blue-coats was dashing across the lawn. A lieutenant swung himself off his horse, and, coming up the steps, demanded the keys of the barn, in a brogue that could be cut with a knife.