Elsket and Other Stories

by Thomas Nelson Page

VI.

As the afternoon had worn away, and whilst the two principals in the affair were arranging their matters, the Major had been taking every precaution to carry out the plan for the meeting. The effect of the approaching duel upon the old gentleman was somewhat remarkable. He was in unusually high spirits; his rosy countenance wore an expression of humorous content; and, from time to time as he bustled about, a smile flitted across his face, or a chuckle sounded from the depths of his satin stock. He fell in with Miss Jemima, and related to her a series of anecdotes respecting duelling and homicide generally, so lurid in their character that she groaned over the depravity of a region where such barbarity was practised; but when he solemnly informed her that he felt satisfied from the signs of the time that some one would be shot in the neighborhood before twenty-four hours were over, the old lady determined to return home next day.

It was not difficult to secure secrecy, as the Major had given directions that no one should be admitted to the garden.

For at least an hour before sunset he had been giving directions to George Washington which that dignitary would have found some difficulty in executing, even had he remained sober; but which, in his existing condition, was as impossible as for him to change the kinks in his hair. The Major had solemnly assured him that if he got drunk he would shoot him on the spot, and George Washington had as solemnly consented that he would gladly die if he should be found in this unprecedented condition. Immediately succeeding which, however, under the weight of the momentous matters submitted to him, he had, after his habit, sought aid and comfort of his old friends, the Major's decanters, and he was shortly in that condition when he felt that the entire universe depended upon him. He blacked his shoes at least twenty times, and marched back and forth in the yard with such portentous importance that the servants instinctively shrunk away from his august presence. One of the children, in their frolics, ran against him; George Washington simply said, "Git out my way," and without pausing in his gait or deigning to look at him, slapped him completely over.

A maid ventured to accost him jocularly to know why he was so finely dressed. George Washington overwhelmed her with a look of such infinite contempt and such withering scorn that all the other servants forthwith fell upon her for "interferin' in Unc' George Wash'n'ton's business." At last the Major entered the garden and bade George Washington follow him; and George Washington having paid his twentieth visit to the dining-room, and had a final interview with the liquor-case, and having polished up his old beaver anew, left the office by the side door, carrying under his arm a mahogany box about two feet long and one foot wide, partially covered with a large linen cloth. His beaver hat was cocked on the side of his head, with an air supposed to be impressive. He wore the Major's coat and flowered velvet waistcoat respecting which he had won so signal a victory in the morning, and he flaunted a large bandanna handkerchief, the ownership of which he had transferred still more recently. The Major's orders to George Washington were to convey the box to the garden in a secret manner, but George Washington was far too much impressed with the importance of the part he bore in the affair to lose the opportunity of impressing the other servants. Instead, therefore, of taking a by-path, he marched ostentatiously through the yard with a manner which effected his object, if not his master's, and which struck the entire circle of servants with inexpressible awe. However, after he gained the garden and reached a spot where he was no longer in danger of being observed by any one, he adopted a manner of the greatest secrecy, and proceeded to the place selected for the meeting with a degree of caution which could not have been greater had he been covertly stealing his way through a band of hostile Indians. The spot chosen for the meeting was a grass plot bounded on three sides by shrubbery and on the fourth by the wall of the little square within which had been laid to rest the mortal remains of some half dozen generations of the Burwells. Though the grass was green and the sky above was of the deep steely hue which the late afternoon brings; yet the thick shrubbery which secluded the place gave it an air of wildness, and the tops of the tall monuments gleaming white over the old wall against the dark cedars, added an impression of ghostliness which had long caused the locality to be generally avoided by the negroes from the time that the afternoon shadows began to lengthen.

George Washington, indeed, as he made his way stealthily down towards the rendezvous glanced behind him once or twice as if he were not at all certain that some impalpable pursuer were not following him, and he almost jumped out of his shoes when the Major, who had for ten minutes been pacing up and down the grass-plat in a fume of impatience, caught sight of him and suddenly shouted, "Why don't you come on, you—rascal?"

As soon as George Washington recognized that the voice was not supernatural, he recovered his courage and at once disarmed the Major, who, watch in hand, was demanding if he supposed he had nothing else to do than to wait for him all night, by falling into his vein and acquiescing in all that he said in abuse of the yet absent duellists, or at least of one of them.

He spoke in terms of the severest reprobation of Mr. Lawrence, declaring that he had never had a high opinion of his courage, or, indeed, of any quality which he possessed. He was, perhaps, not quite prepared to join in an attack on Jeff, of whose frequent benefactions he entertained a lively recollection amounting to gratitude, at least in the accepted French idea of that virtue, and as he had constituted himself Jeff's especial representative for this "solemn recasion," he felt a personal interest in defending him to some extent.

At last the Major ordered him to take out the weapons and some little time was spent in handling them, George Washington examining them with the air of a connoisseur. The Major asserted that he had never seen a prettier spot, and George Washington, immediately striking an attitude, echoed the sentiment. He was, indeed, so transported with its beauty that he declared it reminded him of the duel he and the Major fought with Judge Carrington, which he positively declared, was "a jewel like you been read about," and he ended with the emphatic assertion, "Ef dese gent'mens jes plump each urr like we did de Judge dat evelin!—--" A wave of the hand completed the period.

The Major turned on him with a positive denial that he had ever even shot at the Judge, but George Washington unblushingly insisted that they had, and in fact had shot him twice. "We hit him fyah an' squar'." He levelled a pistol at a tree a few yards distant, and striking an attitude, squinted along the barrel with the air of an old hand at the weapon.