University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER III.

The prodigal waited for no invitation to enter, but
bounced in, the moment the door was opened. Seeing
the stranger, he stopped short for an instant, his
deportment bearing equal marks of confident assurance,
and a reasonable consciousness of his own
demerits. The habits of the player-men, however,
got the better of his misgivings, and, without yielding
any farther notice to Vernon, after the first
glance, he advanced towards the father, prefacing
his movement with a hearty rowdy salutation, which
made the old man wince in his seat, at the gross disregard
of his dignity which it betrayed.

“Ha, dad! there you are, prime and hearty, as
though you never had a son, to `bring you cares for
inconsiderate youth,'—and how's the old lady, `our
venerable mother, keeps she well?' gone to bed, I
reckon, and fast; so I take it for granted she's as she
should be, and you, sir, you and—”

Here his eyes wandered to the seat which Vernon
had re-occupied.

“Puppy!” exclaimed the father, “can't you leave
off your cursed player nonsense, Tom Horsey, when
you're in a gentleman's presence. That, sir, is my

friend, Mr. Vernon, Mr. Harry Vernon, of Natchez,
or New Orleans, or elsewhere.”

“Sir, Mr. Vernon, of elsewhere, I am glad to
know you. `If I mistake not, thou art Harry Monmouth,”'
was the prompt address of the actor, extending
his right hand, with an air of princely condescension.

“Monmouth, no!” cried the more literal father;
“Vernon, I said, Tom Horsey,—Mr. Harry Vernon.”

“The same—a good name, I think, sir, a very
good name, and I'm glad to know you. Mr. Vernon,
as I said before, `there's matter in this;' and,
some allowances must be made for the prejudices of
age, and a hard school, sir, against the drama. It
is only in the presence of gentlemen, sir,”—to his
father,—“let me tell you, that players should speak.
The very element they live in, sir, is in the applause
of the gentle and the wise—their pursuits are `caviare
to the general;' and let me tell you, sir, that
you risk not a little when you give way to this harsh
and most unjust manner of speech, in respect to a
profession, whose ill report while you live, it is said,
will do you more harm, than a bad epitaph when you
die. You will find the passage in Hamlet,—for the
rest, sir—have you any thing to drink.”

This speech was pretty evenly divided between the
father and his guest. When it was concluded, he
turned to the little table that stood between the elder
Horsey and Vernon, filled a glass for himself, and
drawing a chair from the corner of the apartment,
placed himself, with a show of sang froid, which was
not altogether felt, directly beside the father. The
old man could no longer restrain his indignation.

“You d—d conceited squab, where have you
been these eight months? Put down your glass, sir,
until you answer me.”

“Dry throats must needs make short speeches, sir
—I have been at school.”

“Do not mock me, Tom Horsey!—don't go too
far, boy, in playing your d—d theatre stuff on me.
I can't bear it much longer—you'll put me in a
rousing passion.”

“We'll have a rouse to-night, sir,—Mr. Vernon,
`the king drinks to Hamlet.' Don't think, sir,” addressing
his father, “don't think I shall forget you`
dad, but your glass remains unfilled. Shall I help
you?”

“Help yourself and be d—d. Answer my question.
Where have you been these eight months?”

“Egad, sir, that's the most puzzling of all questions,
and the most correct answer that I can make you is
that which I have made already. At school, sir! In
the great school of the world, sir, I have been acquiring
my humanities or getting rid of them. Don't
you think me reasonably improved?”

“What have you done with the money I sent
you?”

“Paid my schooling with it, sir.”

“That is to say, you drank it out at taverns upon
your roaring companions, your drunken actors, your
bully gamblers, and all that strange sort of cattle that
you herd with in Orleans.”

“Alas! my father, revile not thus. Wherefore
will you speak of things which you know not. Have
more charity, I pray you. As for the poor sums of
money which you sent me, they were as nothing to
the good which they procured me. They brought
me to a knowledge of the fine generous spirits, who
are as much above the dirty wants and slavish necessities
of common clay, as the divine Shakspeare
is beyond all the thousand priests and pretenders that
officiate at the altar of the muse. Had you sent me
ten times the sums you speak of, I had freely shared

them all with the noble fellows whom your parsimony
has chiefly compelled me to leave.”

“Ay, and where would their generosity have carried
you, you ridiculous spendthrift. To the Calaboose—to
the Calaboose, you rascal. If it has not
already carried you there. Pitiful sums indeed!—but
you shan't impose on Mr. Vernon. You shall say
what these pitiful sums are; you shall tell him what
money I sent you, and let him say whether I have
not been almost as great a spendthrift as yourself.”

“No doubt, no doubt—I make no question, dad,
but that your extravagance has always exceeded
mine. I am but a chip—a small chip of the old block;
and—”

“Why, you impudent rascal, my spendings have
been altogether on you. If I have to reproach myself
with any extravagance at all, it is only in having
given you the means to make a fool of yourself.”

“`Wisely, indeed, and worthily bestowed'—you
do not repent, sir, of having provided for my subsistence?”

“I have done more, sir. What amount did I send
you by Bill Perkins?”

“Some fifty or a hundred dollars, as I think.”

“As you think! as you think! Tom Horsey, will
you lie too? Have your player-fellows taught you this
among their other accursed lessons. Speak, are you
in earnest!”

The old man's voice trembled, and passion seemed
to be succeeded in his choking utterance by a fear
that falsehood was to be included among the other
profligacies of one whom his own tenderness had
rendered somewhat incorrigible. Vernon watched
the scene with curious interest, and he remarked the
sudden flush which mounted up into the son's cheeks
at the accusation, as if conscious innocence revolted
within him at the injustice. Such was the impression

of the spectator, and it was confirmed by the
effect which it seemed to produce in the youth's tone
and general manner.

“You are a little too hard with me, sir,” was his
reply. “I admit that you sent me some money by
Perkins.”

“Three hundred, not fifty, sir—not fifty or a hundred,
but three hundred dollars, Tom Horsey.”

“Right, sir; Perkins brought me that sum, which
I trust you did not really think me base enough to
deny. When I said less I simply meant to compute
it by the time it lasted. It was the very sum you
name, sir, but it might just as well have been the
fifty—it was very short-lived.”

“Very well, sir,” said the father, glad to have an
excuse to forbear reproach and harsh language.
“And had it been fifty times as much, do you think
it would have lasted much longer with such company
as you keep? No, sir, they would have spent my
gains and your gettings, and counted my thousands
as you have learned to do by fifties and hundreds.
But that's not all. You got money from my factor
in Orleans. What sum got you, for to this day I
have never learned.”

“I sent you two thousand dollars by Major Mandrake.”

“I got it, but the crop sold for more, sir—cotton
was selling at sixteen; I had the price current of the
week, and have it now. What did my cotton bring?
You sent me the money but no account of sales, what
was done with that?”

“'Gad, sir, I know not, unless we used it to make
snow one night at C—dwell's when the storm gave
out. I remember, we were rather short of snow.”

“Tom, Tom, don't rouse me, don't put me in a
passion. I'm sick,—I can't bear it easily; and besides,
I don't want Mr. Harry Vernon to see what a

d—d fool I am to let you treat me as you do. What
did you get from my factor in all? let me know that.
You sent me two thousand—what did you keep?”

“Well, sir, as nearly as I can remember, about
seven hundred—”

“Seven hundred!'

“There may have been a forty or fifty tacked on
to it; but it certainly was not more than that. Suppose
we call it seven hundred and fifty dollars—`the
very head and front of my offending, hath this extent,
no more.”'

“And enough too, in God's name, to ruin any
man that's got so little to go upon as I,” responded
the father; “but there is more, Tom Horsey—you
took a hundred and seventy dollars with you when
you went; you collected ninety dollars from Michael
Hopper for so many bushels of corn; and what
have you done with Martin Groning's note for sixty-seven
dollars. If you got that, it makes—”

“But I haven't got that, dad. Groning's a great
rascal; `there must be lawings ere you get that
gold'—we shall have to set Master Phang upon him,
dad, before he settles.”

“No, let him go. It's but a poor sixty-seven dollars,
and I shouldn't miss so small a matter, if my
own son didn't help me to the loss of a great deal
more. But now count up, count up, Mr. Vernon,
these moneys as I call them out to you, and then say
whether I'm parsimonious, or whether there's a
spendthrift in my family, that'll let out at a thousand
mouths what his father was compelled to take in at
one.”

“Nay, don't count up, I beg you, dad,” cried the
profligate; “why will you bother Harry Monmouth
with these `small chores.' To count up money that
you have not, is to impoverish memory most cursedly.
The very thought of my spendings is a misery,

since it only the more forcibly reminds me of the
little that is left to spend. Wherefore have I left my
company, `my comates in exile,' but that the candle
was at the last snuff—wherefore have I trudged
homewards `on weary legs—”'

“You don't mean to say that you walked from
Orleans here, Tom Horsey?” cried the father, to
whom the last fragment of a quotation uttered by
his son suggested a new cause of apprehension.

“Not all the way. I had a cast in a steamboat
as far as Monticello, and a fling in a wagon for some
twelve or fourteen miles above; but, by the Lord
Harry, the widow's mare did the rest.”

“Why, where's your horse?”

“Gone—gone the way of all flesh.”

“Dead—how was that—the botts?”

“Ay, botts enough to take off a dozen horses.
The sheriff suspected I was out of money, and not
able to keep him any longer; and so relieved me of
the charge.”

“Seized for debt!” exclaimed the father aghast;
“a colt of my own raising—seized for debt!—eat his
head off in a livery stable!—ah, Tom, Tom! you'll
kill me yet!”

“At the suit of one Stubbs, a tailor; a fellow that
helped me to fit up my wardrobe, and brought suit
for all his suits. Thus was I nonsuited. But I
punished the scoundrel, you may be sure. I basted
him with his own yard-stick the night I left Orleans,
till there wasn't a seam in his carcass that couldn't
count stitches. You shall hear particulars some
day, Mr. Monmouth; a devilish good story—
but—”

“Look you, Tom, this gentleman's name is Vernon,
and not Monmouth. None of your tricks, I
tell you.”

“Vernon, is it? I ask pardon, but I thought it

was Monmouth—Harry Monmouth—it was Harry
you said—I'll swear to that.”

“You've a free tongue to swear, Tom Horsey;
but how would you like an oath of mine to cut you
off with a shilling, and leave you to the miserable
life you have so miserably begun. Answer me that,
sir: what would you think of such an oath? and
wouldn't it be justly deserved, Mr. Vernon?”

“Nay, father, do not bother Mr. Vernon any more
in this matter, and above all matters eschew the sin
of swearing. Oath taking is a bad business, and
unless you take some such rash oath as that you speak
of, I think I may promise you with safety to do nothing
again rashly as long as I live. I am come
home to be a sober fellow, follow the plough, drive
the wagon, bleed horses, and kill bacon. In short,
do just whatever is needful to make money, and keep
it afterwards.”

“Can you keep to this?” cried the delighted
father, who desired nothing more than such a concession
on the part of his son, as should save his
dignity, and obviate the necessity of more scolding.

“I think so—I'll try, sir.”

“Ah, Tom, for awhile only, I'm afraid. You'll
be reading in the newspaper about some new play-house
or some new actor, and then, nothing will
suit, but off you must go to see for yourself; as if
the reading of it wouldn't do as well.”

“It shall—it shall in future, dad. Don't be afraid
of me. I think I shall keep my promises this time,
for, do you see, whatever might be my own desires
to go to Orleans, the drubbing I gave the tailor,
Stubbs, will stand against me in the black books of
the law, and I have too great a respect for that
stately dwelling, the Calaboose, to risk the chances
of admission. As for the theatre itself, by my fears,
I have just as little reason to venture near it. My

chance is all up with the American, and my hopes
with C—dwell; but for that, dad, it might have been,
that you hadn't seen me home to-night.”

“Well, whatever it was, I'm glad it happened so;
but you don't mean, Tom, that you quarrelled with
the actors.”

“Ay, with the very chief of them—the manager.”

“Well, the stars be thanked, I'm a great deal
gladder than before. There's no hope of making
up the matter, Tom, is there?”

“But little, unless you lend your help.”

“God forbid! I lend my help!—I'd burn down
all their establishments, if I could. But how was
it, Tom—what was the quarrel? You didn't lick
him, too, as well as the tailor?”

“Egad, no! The boot was on t'other leg! It
was because I didn't lick him, that we quarrelled;
it was, by my soul!”

“Come, come, Tom, don't, now; none of your
d—d nonsense. We know it's all gammon that!
No man would quarrel with another because he
didn't lick him.”

“True as gospel, dad, professionally speaking.
An excellent adventure, by the way, Mr. Vernon,
and I must tell it. Dad, fill your glass!—an excellent
joke—fill, Mr. Vernon! You shall hear how I
came over the manager—how I struck him, even
when `soaring in his pride of place.”'

“I thought you said you didn't strike him, Tom?”
demanded the matter-of-fact father.

“You shall hear, sir. Understand, you are at the
American Theatre in New Orleans, C—ll, manager;
and your humble servant doing third and
fourth-rate characters at tenth-rate prices. Ten
dollars a week is scarcely enough for gentlemen of
my cloth; and just at this time Stubbs was writing

to me in the very language of Master Shallow, `I
beseech you, Sir John, let me have five hundred of
my thousand,' in other words, of less classical grace,
—`let me have but half of my bill.”'

“Drop the theatre talk, Tom,” whispered the father;
“drop it, d—n you, if you can.”

“It was necessary to remit, to raise the wind.
This was the difficulty. I had got rid of the seven
hundred, and the three hundred, and the other odd
hundred; and I had even drawn the week's salary
in advance. I had the horse, it is true, but the colt
was a favourite—I had helped to raise it; and, by
Jupiter, I had much sooner have parted with my
velvet plush breeches, than with Corporal.”

The old man gave an approbatory chuckle as
this show of proper feeling escaped his son in his
narrative.

“But you should have gone to the factors, or
wrote to me for the money, Tom, and redeemed the
nag. I'd rather than twice his value that you had
not lost him.”

The son winked to Vernon, as he replied—

“Ah, dad, Stubbs is not the only tailor in Orleans;
and one suit is not all that a poor devil actor has to
suffer before his wardrobe's complete. As I was
saying, I knew of no present mode of raising the
wind, and I had but one mode left me. I went to
the manager, implored him for a loan, on the strength
of future services. He denied me; `but was I to
be denied?' You shall hear how I fixed him.
That very night I was to play Richmond to his
Richard. The manager had a very strange notion
that he was a tragedian, and was, therefore, continually
going out of his element, to try waters which
were quite beyond his depth. He did well enough
as a genteel comedian, but that did not satisfy his
ambition; and among those who knew nothing better,

he did monstrous well. I remember the first
time I ever saw him was in tragedy. I went to
Orleans, dad, if you remember, with uncle Wat Stevens,
and he treated me to the show.”

“Damn him for it,” was the fervent ejaculation
of the father. The son proceeded without heeding
the interruption.

“Like the rest of the gaping countrymen around,
and the house was full of them, I thought him a wonderful
man, though I soon learned other things when
I looked a little more into the matter. But the opinion
of the manager himself underwent no change. He
was still ripe for tragedy and nothing else, and was
that very night, when Stubbs sent me his impudent
letter, to play Richard—I, Richmond. We went
through the piece very well, till we got to the death
scene. Then Richard tried his best, and I buckled to
him. I had wounded him, and he had fallen; but that
was nothing to a man determined to outdo Kean, and
make the ghost of Garrick gape with astonishment,
and shiver in his shroud. He rolled and writhed
about the stage, keeping up the fight as he did so,
and striving to show his skill of fence while in the
death agony. It was then that the thought seized
suddenly upon me to avail myself of the particular
predicament in which he stood—lay rather—to bring
him to an accommodation—to compel him to my
own terms. What do you think I did, Harry Monmouth—Master
Vernon, I mean—how do you think
I fixed him? A thousand to one you can neither of
you guess.”

Vernon confessed his inability, and the father,
now an attentive auditor, and a pleased one too, as
he beheld the evident attention of his guest, and observed
the more modest demeanour of his son, disclaimed
with equal readiness any ability to conjecture
the ruse de guerre made use of by the debtor

to extort from the dying actor, the loan he found necessary
to keep him from his tailor's clutches.

“I knew it—I knew it was beyond you both,”
was the chuckling response of Richmond to these
admissions. “It was a thought of my own, and my
own only; and what was it, you will ask. Hark
ye then in your ears; it was simply to forbear killing
him. I began to play slowly to evade his strokes
and avoid pursuit of him. You may imagine the
predicament of Richard, half-dead, and inviting the
fatal blow. He called to me in a hoarse whisper,
while twisting and writhing after, and sticking at
moments, when, in order to keep up appearances
with the audience, I suffered our swords to mingle.
—`Why the devil don't you play, Horsey?”'

“I answered him in a suppressed voice, speaking
in the gorge of my throat, so that he could distinctly
hear the emphasis which I employed, and supposed
that it could not altogether escape the hearing
of the audience. Yet, such was not the case.
It is an art of speech which I possess, and of which,
Mr. Vernon, you shall have a sample some day.

“`Look you, Richard,' said I, `it was only to-day
I asked you for a matter of seventy dollars to pay
off a d—d tailor that was troubling me. You refused
me, was that done like Richard?'

“`Strike on, you d—d fool,' said he, `or I'll
strike you off. What are you talking about? Strike!'

“`Never till you consent to let me have the money.
You sha'n't die by my hands to-night, Richard. I'll
leave you half-dead upon the stage, and for once
there shall be no catastrophe. Will you let me have
the money?'

“`Yes, yes, any thing,' was his answer; `but strike
on, the pit is getting impatient. Strike! strike!'

“We tugged away quite heartily then for a few
seconds, the house roared with applause, and some

of the groundlings, after he had received the coup de
grace, actually encored the performance, clearly signifying
a desire that he should do the death over again.
But, would you think it, the ungrateful tyrant refused
to let me have the money the next morning,
and added to the enormity of his conduct by giving
me my walking ticket. Was it not shocking, Mr.
Vernon? Did I not merit the money for the humour
of the thing? But he had no soul to feel it—none,
none!”

Before Vernon or the father could answer the
question, or comment upon the transaction, another
person entered the apartment and interrupted the
dialogue. The introduction to the new-comer must
be reserved for another chapter.