A Strange, Sad Comedy

by Molly Elliot Seawell

Dad Davy soused his client with bay rum, and then taking up the gourd, mop, etc., put them in the basket, and stood, expectant of his quarter.

“Here’s a dollar for you,” said Mr. Romaine; “and say to Colonel Corbin I am much obliged for your visit to-day—and if I had as good a barber as you I should not follow his plan of shaving himself.”

Dad Davy, although secretly astounded at the magnificence of the gift, disdained to show his delight before “po’ white trash,” as he regarded Bridge, and making a profound bow, took himself and his basket off.

Bridge, however, after the manner of his kind, seeing his master independent of him, began to reflect that he had a good place and high wages, and that if Mr. Romaine was a difficult master to serve, all masters had their faults; and he finally concluded to stay. He went to Mr. Romaine therefore a few days afterward, and with much shuffling, hemming, and hawing, declared his willingness to remain, provided Mr. Romaine went to England in April. At this Mr. Romaine expressed much surprise, and declared that his return to England was quite problematical and might never occur. Bridge, though, saw unmistakable signs that Mr. Romaine’s latest freak had outworn itself, and at last knuckled down completely—when he was restored to favor. Dodson then followed the prevailing wind and asked to be reinstated; and Carroll, the maid, being a diffident maiden of forty, declared she couldn’t think of traveling alone from Virginia to New York; and so, with the delays attending Miss Maywood’s departure, it looked as if the Shrewsbury party would depart intact as when it came.

But a disturbance greater than any that yet occurred was now impending, and was brought about by the innocent agency of Colonel Corbin.

One evening the Colonel had his two fine horses hitched up to a two-wheeled chaise which had been resurrected from the loft of the carriage-house during the emergencies of the war time, and started out for the river landing for a parcel he expected by the boat.

It was now past Christmas, and the “Christmas snow” had come, whitening the ground. The Colonel’s position in the chaise was one calculated to make a nervous person uneasy. The vehicle ran down on the horses’ withers in the most uncomfortable way, and if the traces broke—and they had several breaks in them, mended with twine—the Colonel would be under the horses’ hind feet before he knew it. But Colonel Corbin did not know what it was to be afraid of man or beast, and sat back composedly in the chaise, bracing his feet against the low dashboard, while the horses dashed along the slushy country road. The snow does not last in Eastern Virginia, and it only made the road wet and slippery to the most unsatisfactory degree. But over the fields and woods it lay soft and unsoiled. The afternoon was gray, and a biting east wind was blowing.

The Colonel got to the landing in ample time, but it would be dusk before the great river steamboat would arrive. Meanwhile, he went into the little waiting-room, with its red-hot stove, and conversed amicably with the wharfinger, a blacksmith, and two drummers, waiting to take the boat “up the bay.” It was almost dark when a long, shrill whistle resounded, and everybody jumped up, saying, “The boat!” A truck loaded with boxes and freight of all sorts, and the drummers’ trunks, and drawn by a patient mule, was started down the tramway on the wharf that extended nearly four hundred yards into the river. The Colonel, like most country gentlemen, liked to see what was to be seen, and walked out on the wharf to watch the exciting spectacle of the boat making her landing.

The sky had darkened still more, and it looked as if more snow were coming. The great, broad salt river, with its fierce tides and foaming like the ocean that it was so near, was quite black, except for the phosphorescent glare left in the steamer’s wake as she plowed her way along, looking like a gigantic illuminated lantern with lights blazing from one end of her to the other. At intervals her long, hoarse whistle screamed over the waters, and presently, with much noise and churning, she bumped against the wharf and was made fast. Her gang-plank was thrown out, and a few passengers in the humbler walks of life stepped off; but, in a moment, the captain himself appeared, escorting a woman in a long fur cloak. The light from a lantern on the wharf fell directly upon her, and as soon as the Colonel saw her, he understood why she should have the captain’s escort. She was about forty, apparently, and her abundant dark hair was slightly streaked with gray. But there was not a line or a wrinkle in her clear, pale face, and her eyes had the beauty of a girl of fifteen. There was something peculiarly elegant in her whole air—the long seal-skin mantle that enveloped her, the close black bonnet that she wore, her immaculate gloves and shoes—Colonel Corbin at once recognized in her a metropolitan.

She remained talking with the captain for a few moments, until he was obliged to leave. It took only a short while to discharge the small amount of freight, and in five minutes the boat had lurched off, and the noise of her churning wheels and the myriad lights from her saloons were melting in the blackness where the river and night sky blent together.