University of Virginia Library

1. I.

In one of those villages peculiar to our Eastern
coast, whose long lines of pepper-and-salt stone-fences
indicate laborious, if not profitable farming,
and where the saline breath of the ocean has the
effect of making fruit-trees more picturesque than
productive, in a stone chunk of a house, whose
aspect is quite as interesting to the geologist as to
the architect, lives Captain Belgrave.

The Captain, as he says himself, “is American
clean through, on the father's side, up to Plymouth
Rock, and knows little, and cares less, of what is
beyond that.” To hear him talk, you would suppose
Adam and Eve had landed there from the
May-Flower, and that the Garden of Eden was
located within rifle distance of that celebrated

land-mark. His genealogical table, however,
stands upon unequal legs; for, on his mother's side
he is part German and part Irishman. I mention
this for the benefit of those who believe that certain
qualities in men are hereditary. Of course it
will be easy for them to assign those of Captain
Belgrave to their proper source.

The house is square, and would not be remarkable
but for a stone turret on one corner. This,
rising from the ground some forty feet, embroidered
with ivy, and pierced with arrow-slits, has rather a
feudal look. It stands in a by-lane, apart from the
congregated village. On the right side of the
road is a plashy spring, somewhat redolent of mint
in the summer. Opposite to this, in a clump of
oaks, surrounded with a picket-fence, is the open
porch, with broad wooden benches, and within is
an ample hall, looking out upon well-cultivated
fields, and beyond—blue water! This is the
“Oakery,” as Captain Belgrave calls it. Here
he lives with his brother Adolphus—bachelors
both.

His title is a mystery. There is a legend in the
village, that during the last war Belgrave was
enrolled in the militia on some frontier. One night

he was pacing as sentinel on a long wooden piazza
in front of the General's quarters. It was midnight;
the camp was asleep, and the moon was just sinking
behind a bank of clouds. Belgrave heard a footstep
on the stairs at the foot of the piazza. “Who
goes there?” No answer. Another step. “Who
goes there?” he repeated, and his heart began to
fail him. No answer—but another step. He cocked
his musket. Step! step! step! and then between
him and the sinking moon appeared an enormous
head, decorated with diabolical horns. Belgrave
drew a long breath and fired. The next instant
the spectre was upon him; he was knocked down;
the drums beat to arms; the guard turned out, and
found the sentinel stretched upon the floor, with
an old he-goat, full of defiance and odor, standing
on him. From that time he was called “Captain.”

No place, though it be a paradise, is perfect
without one of the gentler sex. There is a lady at
the Oakery. Miss Augusta Belgrave is a maiden
of about—let me see; her age was formerly
inscribed on the fly-leaf of the family Bible
between the Old and New Testaments; but the
page was torn out, and now it is somewhere in the
Apocrypha. No matter what her age may be; if
you were to see her, you would say she was safe

over the breakers. Two unmarried brothers, with
a spinster sister, living alone: it is not infrequent
in old families. The rest of the household may be
embraced in Hannah, the help, who is also “a
maiden all forlorn,” and Jim, the stable-boy. Jim
is a unit, as well as the rest. Jim has been a
stable-boy all his life, and now, at the age of sixty,
is only a boy ripened. His chief pride and glory
is to drive a pair of bob-tailed bay trotters that are
(traditionally) fast! Adolphus, who has a turn for
literature, christened the off-horse “Spectator;”
but the near horse came from a bankrupt wine-broker,
who named him “Chateau Margaux.”
This the Captain reduced to “Shatto,” and the
village people corrupted to “Shatter.”

There was something bold and jaunty in the way
the Captain used to drive old Shatter on a dog-trot
through the village (Spectator rarely went with his
mate except to church on Sundays), with squared
elbows, and whip depending at a just angle over
the dash-board. “Talk of your fast horses!” he
would say. “Why, if I would only let him out,”
pointing his whip, like a marshal's baton, toward
Shatter, “you would see time!” But he never
lets him out.

The square turret rises considerably above the

house roof. Every night, at bed-time, the villagers
see a light shining through its narrow loop-holes.
There are loop-holes in the room below, and strong
casements of ordinary size in the rooms adjoining.
In the one next to the tower Miss Augusta sleeps,
as all the village knows, for she is seen at times looking
out of the window. Next to that is another room,
in which Adolphus sleeps. He is often seen looking
out of that window. Next, again, to that is the
vestal chamber of Hannah, on the south-west
corner of the house. She is sometimes seen looking
out of the window on either side. Next to
that again is the dormitory of Jim, the stable-boy.
Jim always smells like a menagerie, and so does
his room, no doubt. He never looks out of his
window except upon the Fourth of July, when
there is too much noise in the village to risk driving
Spec and Shat. No living person but the
occupants has ever been in that story of the house.
No living person understands the mystery of the
tower. The light appears at night through the
loop-holes in the second story, then flashes upward,
shines again through the slits in the lofty part of
the turret, burns steadily half an hour or so, and
then vanishes. Who occupies that lonely turret?

Let us take the author-privilege and ascend the
stairs. First we come to Jim's room; we pass
through that into Hannah's apartment. There is
a bolt on the inside of her door; we pass on into
the room of Adolphus; it, too, has a bolt on the
inside. Now all the virtues guide and protect us,
for we are in the sleeping-apartment of the spinster
sister! It, too, has a bolt on the inside; and here
we are in the tower: the door, like the rest, is
bolted. There is nothing in the room but the
carpet on the floor; no stair-case, but a trap-door
in the ceiling. It is but a short flight for fancy to
reach the upper story. The trap is bolted in the
floor; there is a ladder standing beside it; here
are chairs, a bureau, a table, with an extinguished
candle, and the moonlight falls in a narrow strip
across the features of Captain Belgrave, fast asleep,
and beside him a Bible, and an enormous horse-pistol,
loaded.

Nowhere but in the household of some old
bachelor could such discipline exist as in the
Oakery. At night the Captain is the first to
retire; Miss Augusta follows with a pair of candlesticks
and candles; then metaphysical Adolphus
with his mind in a painful state of fermentation;

then Hannah, the help, with a small brass candlestick;
then Jim, the stable-boy, who usually waits
until the company is on the top-stair, when he
makes a false start, breaks, pulls himself up, and
gets into a square trot just in time to save being distanced
at the landing. Adolphus and Jim are not
trusted with candles. Miss Augusta is rigorous on
that point. She permits the Captain to have one
because he is careful with it; besides he owns the
house and everything in it; the land and everything
on it; and supports the family; therefore his
sister indulges him. We now understand the
internal arrangement of the Oakery. It is a fort,
a castle, a citadel, of which Augusta is the scarp,
Jim the glacis, Hannah the counter-scarp, and
Adolphus the ditch. The Captain studied the
science of fortification after his return from the
wars.

The Belgraves are intimate with only one family
in the village, and they are new acquaintances—
the Mewkers. There is Mr. Mewker, Mrs. Mewker,
Mrs. Lasciver, formerly Miss Mewker, and six or
seven little Mewkers. Mewker has the reputation
of being a good man, but unfortunately his
appearance is not prepossessing. He has large

bunchy feet, with very ineffectual legs, low shoulders,
a sunken chest, a hollow cavity under the
waistcoat, little, weak eyes that seem set in bladders,
straggling hair, rusty whiskers, black, and
yellow teeth, and long, skinny, disagreeable fingers;
beside, he is knock-kneed, shuffling in gait, and
always leans on one side when he walks. Uncharitable
people say he leans on the side where his
interests lie, but Captain Belgrave will not believe
a word of it. Oh! no; Mewker is a different man
from that. He is a member of the church, and
sings in the choir. He is executor of several
estates, and of course takes care of the orphans
and widows. He holds the church money in trust,
and of course handles it solely to promote its
interests. And then he is so deferential, so polite,
so charitable. “Never,” says the Captain, “did I
hear him speak ill of anybody, but he lets me
into the worst points of my neighbors by jest teching
on 'em, and then he excuses their fibles, as if
he was a kind o' sorry for 'em; but I keeps my eye
onto 'em after the hints he give me, and he can't
blind me to them.”

Harriet Lasciver, formerly Miss Mewker, is a
widow, perfectly delicious in dimples and dimity,

fond of high life and low-necked dresses, music,
birds, and camelias. Captain Belgrave has a great
fancy for the charming widow. This is a secret,
however. You and I know it, and so does Mewker.