University of Virginia Library

9. CHAPTER IX.

Youth is not the season for enduring enmities.
That is a cold heart and a malignant spirit which
preserves its bitterness and asperities through the
summer, and in spite of all its sunshine. Harry
Vernon, besides being of a just and generous nature,
was also of a cheerful and social one, and he soon
discovered that there was no good reason for keeping
up a cloudy front to the vacillating and wayward
creature who rode beside him, and whom an
erring judgment and, probably, fine but misdirected
endowments, were hurrying on to his own destruction.
By degrees he resumed his kindly manner to
the obtrusive but well-meaning actor, and as he
found that he could not rid himself of his company,
he resolved to make the most of it. This resolution
once taken, it required but few words on the
part of Vernon to unlock all the stores of memory
and experience in Horsey's possession. The erratic
creature, from long wandering into forbidden places,

had picked up a wholesale, if not wholesome, collection
of anecdote and story. His imitative faculties
were good, and he illustrated his scenes by
taking off, with considerable humour, the various
persons who appeared in them. Shakespeare, too,
was at his fingers' ends, and there was no lack of
passages, to fill out his own remarks, and enliven
their deficiencies. The dog read well, too, with the
single reservation, that he had not yet learned that
nice and most necessary art of all—that art which
scarcely one of our artists possesses in a meritorious
degree,—of subduing his utterance to the demands
of the character, and the capacities of his own
voice. This evil results, in most cases, from the too
great size of the theatre, which, as it calls for great
physical powers of voice, must, except in the case
of energies singularly masculine, for ever defeat
its nicer regulations. Horsey had throat enough,
and the very best of lungs, and he was glad of any
opportunity for using them. The woods soon rang
with his sonorous passages, and Vernon, with the
feeling of the cautious citizen always alive to ridicule,
could not help now and then looking around
him, as if apprehensive that other ears were suffering
from those clamours that seemed almost to perforate
his own anew. These declamations, be it
understood, however, were not given with the reckless
rapidity of one who has nothing beside in store
of his own; but the actor ingeniously contrived that
they should only occur in such places in his own
dissertations where they might enforce and illustrate
what he said. This was one of his arts additional,
by which he contrived that his masterpieces should
be brought in play; and, like the fellow who had a
gun-story, and in order to introduce it fairly into
company, acquired the art of imitating the report of
a pistol, so Tom Horsey practised, when alone, those
generalizing opinions on a thousand subjects, under
some one of which he could always classify the fine
things of Brutus and Cassius, Hamlet, Hotspur, and
Macbeth. When, with a generous consideration of
his companion, and a moderation which few great
talkers are prone to practise, he had tired himself
fairly down, he came to a halt, and declared aloud
his resolution to pause in time, for fear he should also
tire down his hearer.

“But, could you hear me, Harry, when the scene
is filling, when the characters are by, the audience
silent and watchful, and the curtain drawn—it
would be something. You would say it were
something, and that I were no insane fool, as some
of dad's friends will have it, and Ben Carter among
them. I feel that I have it in me, Harry Vernon,
and, by the Lord Harry, but it shall come out. I
have never had a fair chance yet, but the time must
come. Hitherto, they have taken advantage of my
necessity, and I have been compelled to walk
through wooden parts, which I scorned to move in
with any wasteful animation of my own. Nothing
but the delight of being upon the boards, amidst the
blessed blaze of lights which are no where so lovely
to my eyes as in a playhouse, could have made me
endure the damnable persecution and miserable
jealousies of those poor, incapable creatures, that
were able to do nothing themselves, and hated the
very sight of others who had it in them to do every
thing. I could tell you stories of the drudgery of
the stage, of the malice and the meanness of the
actors, of the mercenary baseness of managers,
their impracticability and insolence when successful,
and their d—d dishonesty when otherwise,
which would shock you to hear, and which you
could scarcely ever believe. But you will learn for
yourself. One week with the little lamplighter,—

unless you make a hit—and then you can snap your
fingers in his face, and kick him with your worst
boots, and still have his thanks,—one week with
him, however, as a stock-player, and you will curse
your stars that endowed you with faculties, yet left
them at the mercy of such eternal skunks as your
generality of managers are sure to be. But let us
bully little Tilton, and play our own characters,
work our way up the Mississippi, break out like
little comets with a double length of tail in Louisville
and Cincinnati, and, by-and-by, touch the Park
boards—the zenith of theatrical eminence in America,
where, Mr. Kean told us, with an equivocal sort
of compliment, that the taste for the drama was
periodical—and then, the devil take the hindmost—
hey, for the crown and the triumph, the chariots
and the horsemen—

“Supper first,” said Vernon, “or I shall never
sufficiently ascend that highest heaven of invention,
to behold with you so respectable an audience, or to
regard it with any sort of satisfaction when I do so.
Look ahead—see you nothing of a log house?
There should be one on the left, a little in the
woods. That must be our baiting-place to-night;
and if you will prick up your beast, Mr. Horsey,
which, in your own industry, you have been indulging
long enough, we shall probably avoid the prospect,
of which there is some present danger, of
being compelled to sleep in Big Black Swamp to-night,
with nothing but Shakspeare to keep us warm
or satisfy our hunger.”

“And enough too. He has kept me warm and been
my only supper many a night. But, I do see something

of an opening, and it is to the left. By the
ghost of David, Harry Vernon, an' if it shall be a
large one, we'll have a few passages—we'll make
a rouse. `Because thou art virtuous shall there be
no more cakes and ale!'—it is a house—`ay, and
ginger shall be hot i' the mouth too.”'

“Hush!” said Vernon, with singular gravity.
“Be still, if you do not want to lose every chance
of supper. Chickens in these parts take to the
woods whenever they hear or see a stranger—they
know, poor devils, by a sort of instinct, the fate that
awaits them.”

“'Gad, if that be true, it is a very singular fact.
Are you serious, Master Vernon?”

“Serious! Do you think I could jest about such
a matter? But see—there's the woman of the
house. She must have heard you the last three
miles. If not utterly out of voice from your late
exertions, you will perhaps be the best spokesman
here. See if we can get beds and bacon—the
chickens, I suppose, unless she has them in coop
already, cannot be thought of.”

“A very singular fact!” muttered Horsey, as,
giving spur to his steed, he led the way to the wigwam,
leaving Vernon to follow at his leisure.

“Accommodations!” said the woman, who was a
somewhat ill-favoured person, probably forty years
of age, having a face sober and grave even to sternness,
and speaking in accents slow, harsh, and indifferent—“have
I accommodations for two for the
night? Yes, sir, I have, but they are none of the
best, and neither of you gentlemen would be much
the better of them. Perhaps, you'd better ride
farther,—and you'll be suited better. The night's
clear enough, though it be cool, and if you're going
to strike for the lower ferry, you'll get a place to
lie at, ten miles ahead. The upper ferry-house is

farther on, but not much, and the road's pretty
clear in a starlight. You'd better ride on, I'm
thinking.”

“Nay, my good madam, that will hardly suit us,”
replied Vernon, riding up—“we have already ridden
near forty miles to-day, having come from Raymond,
and I am resolved, unless you positively deny us
shelter, to go no farther to-night.”

“I'm sure I don't deny you, sir; I only tell you
how little we can do here to make you comfortable.
We're mighty poor people in these parts, and have
little to give strangers to make them satisfied. Now,
ten miles beyond—”

“No more, my good madam,” said Vernon,
alighting from his horse; “we stop with you to-night;
and the sooner you give us supper the better.
In the meantime, you can tell my friend here what
I have already told him, that your chickens have
already taken to the woods.”

“Chickens—”

The speech of the woman was cut short by
Horsey, who had been steadily watching her features
with an air of interest, and who now advanced,
laid his hand on her shoulder, with a degree
of familiarity that made her start and look disquieted,
if not angry, as she strove to withdraw
herself from so great a freedom. This, however,
he would not suffer.

“By the cut of your teeth, as the cheese said to the
mouse, I know you, my worthy professor of sassafras
and gunja. Brown Bessy Clayton, as I live!”

“And who are you, young mister, that's so free
with my name?—my name that was, I mean—for
though I'm Brown Bess, I'm no Clayton now.
What's your name?”

“Why, Bess, you're getting old, my girl,—your
memory's failing you. Don't you remember me—

don't you remember little Tom Horsey, that was
your best customer when you sold cakes and beer
at Hogler's mill—that burst your bottles by shaking,
and punched your cakes out of the tray by a long
pole sharpened at the end?”

“Yes, and got punched for it himself,” responded
the woman, as these reminiscences of Horsey
awakened her own. “And is it you, Tom—little
Tom, indeed? Why, you can eat your cakes now
off my shoulder.”

“Ay, Bess, and a bit of the shoulder with it,
when I happen to be so hungry as I am just now.
And so you're married,—and who did you marry,
Bess?—I hav'n't heard of you for these ten long
years.”

“But I've heard tell of you, Tom Horsey. They
said you'd gone crazy, and that didn't seem strange,
for you always had a little twist in your understanding,
and couldn't do things jist like other people.”

“Did you ever hear such a defamation of genius?”
exclaimed Horsey to Vernon in a manner of affected
misery. “But go on, Bess. What did you
hear?”

“Why, they said as how you had turned fair fool,
and how they'd got you down among the player-people
at Orleans, and how they dressed you up in
a jacket and breeches full of colours and spangles—”

“My Romeo, by the shade of Juliet!”

“And how,” continued the woman, “they brought
you out before the company, and worried you, jist
like so many curs worrying a pig that had got into
the 'tato patch—”

“Exquisite comparison, by my soul!”

“And how they all stuck at you with their swords,
and how you fell down and pretended to be dead,
and then how they dragged you out by the heels;

while every body, men and women, little and big,
laughed as if they would split. After that I heard
no more of you, and concluded you were dead for
good.”

“For good, say you?” exclaimed the actor, as
the woman concluded. “Well, Vernon, only think
now that this is the representation of one of my
best performances,—my debut in Macbeth, for my
benefit—when it so happened that a cargo of Ishmaelites
from Pearl River, that had crossed Ponchartrain
that day, came to the `American,' with
`every particular hair on end,' to see their `old
schoolfellow, Tom Horsey, son of John Horsey,
the lame man that kept tavern on the river-road:'
and this is the d—nable report which they carried
back to the country in their ignorance and envy.
Is it not a most abominable trait in man, that he
hates to see his neighbour's successes? Every
whipster with whom he ever hunted 'possum in a
dark night, or shelled corn in husking-time, is ready
to disparage those talents which he cannot rival,
and to pull down that merit in a companion which
he thinks—and it is—a sarcasm upon his own deficiencies.
By Pompey's ghost, it is my own people
that have ever been the first to decry my performances,
and to wrest from me the just rewards
of my labours.”

“Well, don't you be running down the Pearl
River people, Tom Horsey; they're a mighty good
sort of people, Tom, and I only wish I was back
ag'in among 'em,” said the woman.

“Selling cakes and beer?” said Tom.

“Why, yes, sellin' cakes and beer; it's a mighty
good business for the time it lasts.”

“Five months at least, Bess—I remember all
about it—from May to September, and if the season
was very warm, a month longer. 'Gad my picayunes

melted as rapidly in those months, when I was
a boy, as my Mexicans have continued to melt ever
since I was a man.”

“There was another thing, Tom, that they told
about you,” said the woman.

“What was that?” quickly demanded the actor.

“Why, that you spent your father's money a
deuced sight faster than he could make it, and that
you are a mighty great—”

“Say no more, Brown Bess; leave it where it is,
at the `mighty great.”'

“Riprobate, I was going to say,” continued the
matter of fact woman; “and I reckon, Tom, it is
not far from the right word.”

“Perhaps not, Bess; but no more of that an'
thou lovest me; I am reformed now—grown quite
sober—never drink unless when the spirit moves,
and I expect soon to confess a working of mind as
active as ever was your beer, whenever I can meet
with old brother Abrams—”

“Why he's dead!—dead five years ago!” exclaimed
the woman.

“Dead, you say! Who could have thought it.
Why he was the last regular preacher that I ever
heard. It makes me melancholy to think of it; so
let's in to supper, Vernon, with what appetite we may.
You're married, Bess? Where's your husband, and
what is he—what's his name?”

A dark cloud rose and rested on the woman's
brow as she heard this question, which she answered
slowly and briefly.

“His name's Yarbers—he's a middle-aged man
that'll be in, I reckon, directly. But I'm truly thinking,
Tom, that you and the other gentleman had
much better ride on to the other house. It's a short
ten miles, and an easy road.”

“Can't think of it, Bess; by the soul and substance

of the fat knight, I cannot. We must partake
of your hog and hominy to-night; and I'm surprised,
Bess, that you seek to send us forward without
supper. You were not wont to be so inhospitable.
Marriage has changed you, Bess.”

“I reckon it has, Tom,” said the woman, “but
I'm not wanting you to go without supper. I could
get it ready for you in a short five minutes, and you
might easily ride then.”

“By the Lord Harry, Bess, but this is altogether
too bad! What! pack us off the moment we've
swallowed our coffee, on a long road in a dark
night! I tell you, Bess, it won't do. We sleep in
your house to-night, by the peepers of that blessed
saint Monajahadjee, of the Chickasaws, that slept
every day in the week but the eighth, and never
opened one eye, unless it was to see if the other was
shut.”

“Well, just as you will, Tom, but, perhaps, the
other gentleman here?—”

“The other gentleman here is my Castor; we
are Castor and Pollux, the inseparables. He never
goes without me, and I never go without him, and
so, strange as it may seem to you, we never go
without one another. If we never go without one
another, we also never stay without one another,
and, Bess, I have drawn this proposition almost
syllogistically to you, in order that you should understand
that we shall sleep together in the same bed,
provided you cannot spare us one apiece.”

“Ah, Tom, you're the same rattlepate that you
ever was; and the older you grow, the wiser you
don't grow. I can't understand the half you say.”

“Not understand! Did ever one hear the like,
when I stated the case with singular simplicity in
order that you should understand.”

“Well, well,” responded the woman, “but let Mr.

Castor speak for himself. He don't say much, and
I reckon it'll be the easier for me to understand
him. I was saying, sir,” here she addressed herself
to Vernon, “I was saying, Mr. Castor—”

“Ha! ha! ha!” was the ecstatic roar of Horsey,
who made no attempt to correct the error.

“Vernon is my name,” said his companion
gravely. The old woman gave Horsey a single
look of reproof, then turning to Vernon proceeded
to repeat what she had already said touching the
propriety of his riding to the next tavern, which was
at the lower ferry, and only ten miles off, for his
night's lodging. Her reason for so singular a suggestion
arose from the alleged poverty of her accommodations.

“There is something strange in all this: there is
something secret here!” was the unexpressed thought
of Vernon, and he drew his conclusion as much from
the earnest and bewildered countenance of the woman,
as from her words. His self-communion went
farther: “I am on the borders of the Chittaloosa,
and my labours should now properly begin. Every
mystery may have mine in its keeping, and I must
search it if I can. This woman, it is evident, would
send me off rather than Horsey. I will stay.”

He spoke this determination aloud.

“Mr. Horsey has spoken for both of us, Mrs.
Yarbers, and we must stay with you to-night. Forty
miles is rather more of a journey than a horse should
be made to bear who is going to a swamp country,
and I am almost as anxious for sleep as supper.”

“Well, if you will,” said the old woman ungraciously,
as she ushered them into the hall, and summoned
a negro girl to take the horses to the stable.
The saddle-bags, valise, and saddles were carried into
the house. The travellers drew chairs, rough, country
made, high-backed, and seated with untanned

deer-skins stretched across and tacked beneath;
while the old lady, opening a wooden cupboard of
plain pine that was fastened by pegs to the rear
wall, drew forth a couple of common junk bottles,
one of which, as she said, contained Monongahela,
and the other honey, as a sweetener.

“A dram will comfort you after you ride, Tom,
though if you drink whisky as freely as you used to
drink the sassafras, you'll have an enemy in your
head that'll be sure soon to trip your heels.”

“I am commanded to love mine enemies, Bess,
but I try to weaken them a little, so that our wrestle
shall be even; there's no water here?”

“Mary's gone for some to the spring, Tom; my
darter Mary; she'll be here in a shake.”

“You've a daughter, too, eh? What sort of a
girl is she, Bess? A good, smart, active, little
creature, I suppose, a—”

The door opened, and the sudden appearance of
the daughter in question, silenced the speech, and
utterly confounded the speaker for an instant, as he
found himself confronted by as tall and pretty an
adversary in the shape of a damsel, as ever met the
eyes yet of an enthusiastic and self-assured young
man. He started to his feet, caught the vessel
which she bore from her hands, a little clean white
piggin with a gourd hanging upon the handle, and
setting it down upon the shelf which was placed for
it, exclaimed, all in a breath—

“This your daughter, Bess,—this your Mary?—
by the Capulets, but she is the very Juliet of the host.
I must have a kiss, Mrs. Yarbers—for auld lang
syne, Bess—by all the damask roses that ever tried
to look like those cheeks, and faded out of envy.
I must, Mary—why, Mary, I am your mother's old
friend—I'm your great uncle, Mary—an innocent

old man,—you need not fear me. I must—there's
no use—I must.”

The girl, who was probably not more than sixteen,
perhaps not that, retreated with no less dignity
than modesty, while, between jest and earnest, her
mother expostulated with the bashaw; but it is
probable that neither the reluctance and possible
flight of the damsel, nor the expostulations of the
mother, would have availed to protect her from the
parental tenderness of the venerable man, but for
the sudden interposition of another party, whose
mode of proceeding was of a more summary and
imposing character. The door opened while the
strife was at the warmest, and the husband of the
dame entered, followed by a sturdy youth of about
twenty years of age. Horsey was too much interested
by the game in hand to look behind him, and
it was only when the youth, without a word, passed
in front, and placed himself between him and the
maiden, that he became conscious of the unexpected
interruption of his desires. The intruder's presence
semed almost as much annoying to Mary as to the
enamoured actor. She shrunk back with quite as
much promptness from her champion as from her
assailant, and this movement probably encouraged
Horsey with the idea that his chances were even
better now than before.

“My worthy rustic,” said he, “give me but a
moment, another time I will acknowledge your
presence, but just at this time—nay, stand aside, I
pray you, that I may do grace to the lips of that
little Juliet there—a moment—but a moment.”

Suiting the action to the word, Horsey put forth
his hand, intending, with the utmost gentleness, to
put him aside from his path; but his hand had
scarcely touched the shoulder of the other, when,
putting forth all his strength, he planted a blow

between the eyes of the actor, that gave him a very
comical vision of two crossed rainbows, the ends of
which were most singularly tied together. Down
he fell like a bullock in the same instant, and his
prompt enemy jumped upon him, and twining his
little finger in the locks of the fallen man, prepared
to thrust his thumb into his eyes.

“Touch my eyes, man, and I put you to death as
sure as a catastrophe,” exclaimed Horsey, characteristically,
as the effort of the other had brought
him to all his consciousness. The fellow would
scarce have heeded his threats, but by this time the
vigorous arm of Vernon had grasped him about the
middle, and flung him to the other end of the room.
We have omitted the screams of the women, which
were as loud as usual, and as rightly timed. Nor
have we deemed it necessary to say that old Yarbers—a
fellow almost overcome with fat— offered
sundry expostulations to the course of his companion,
which, however, as he never hurried to enforce
them, were as little heeded by the fierce young rustic
as were the screams aforesaid. The effect of
Vernon's movement was more obvious. The youth
glared now upon him and now upon Horsey, who
had taken advantage of the interval to recover his
feet, as if doubtful which to attack. His hesitation
resulted from no want of hostile feeling, but simply
from the consciousness that there were two to contend
with now; and one of them, however easy he found
it to trip the heels of the other, had convinced him
that the play in his case could never be all of one
side. While he stood glowing and glaring, Vernon,
like a man satisfied that he had done all that was
required, resumed his seat, and with the assistance
of the woman of the house, made such an acquaintance
with its master, as suited the relation of guest

and landlord. The good humour of Horsey did
something to restore the quiet of the rest.

“Young un,” said he, “you've bloodied my nose,
and done it tolerably well, with some skill, but
scarcely with sufficient firmness. That up and down
blow, though it would fell an ox if hit squarely
between the eyes, is a monstrous dangerous one if
the enemy is watchful. It leaves your whole side
exposed, all your ribs, not to speak of your diaphragm,
a blow in which would make a fat man
uncomfortable for life. You, sir,” turning to Yarbers,
“you would find a blow in your diaphragm a
singular inconvenience.”

“Ay, sir, or any where else,” said the person addressed,
with a good-humoured laugh, and scarcely
knowing how to understand the strange creature
who confronted him.

“And now, Mary,” continued the actor, stopping
the blood with his handkerchief, as it still continued
to issue from his nose, “you were the cause, though
the innocent cause, of this young rustic's incivility.
You must help me to some water, that I may remove
`this filthy witness from my hand'—and
nose. `This is a sorry sight,' Harry. By the way,
I must not forget to thank you, Harry, for taking
that fellow's fingers from my eyes.”

“If you don't mind how you talk, stranger, I'll
put 'em there again,” said the other, his wrath duly
increasing with the seeming composure and good
humour of Horsey.

“I hope not,” replied the latter, “as well for your
sake as mine. Had you succeeded, my good fellow,
in your first attempt, you'd have been, by this time,
on the longest journey that you have ever taken in
your life, and doubtful whether you'd have found
easy ferriage across the river, unless your pocket is
lined with more picayunes than I think it holds at

present. What, my lovely Juliet, you have the water,
have you?”

“There's the piggin, Mr. Horsey, and here's the
towel, sir,” said the damsel, whose sympathies for
the hurts which he bore so good-humouredly, seemed
to have made her less shy of him than she had shown
herself at first.

“So, you know my name already, chuck—a
good name, Juliet—and your mother knew it many
days before you, though I must have known you
once. There—there's a spot still, my Juliet!” he
exclaimed, as, having wiped his face, he placed the
towel upon her hand, and before she could be conscious
of his design, threw his arm about her waist
and inflicted upon her cheek as unequivocal a smack
as ever came from the hasty application of lip to
lip. The young gallant was again in arms, but
Horsey was ready for him, and the father, probably
dreading that the latter would use some weapon in
the strife, as he had already intimated, interposed
his authority with sufficient promptitude to prevent
the encounter.

“If we don't get angry, Mr. Mabry, I wonder
why should you? Besides, this gentleman's an old
friend of Bess, and Mary's but a child to him.”

“Not so fast—not so fast, old gentleman!” cried
Horsey, who was considerably nettled at this imperfect
sort of chronicling; “a child, indeed—a woman,
a fine, lovely, ripe, bewitching damsel, this
same Mary of yours. She's no more a child than
I'm a grandfather. Now I come to think of it,
there can't be much difference between us in age—
not so much as to make a difference in any material
respect. Let me see, she's about sixteen, and—
egad, Mrs. Yarbers, it can't be more than fifteen
years since I bought cakes from you at Hogler's
and I going to Hugh Peter's school. I was only

ten then,—sixteen and ten—why do you talk of her
being but a child to me? Count for yourself—sixteen
and ten are twenty-six all the world over, except
Connecticut, where, they say, it counts more—
and I'll take Bible oath I'm not a syllable older.
What say you to that, sir? There's no young woman
of sixteen in Mississippi who, if she has any sense,
will find fault with a man of twenty-six.”

Vernon was amused at the pains which the actor
took to vindicate his youth; and the result of his
calculations seemed still farther to increase the annoyance
of his rustic rival, who, after a little while
spent in a condition of fever-heat, got up and left
the room. He was followed by old Yarbers.
Meanwhile, Horsey continued a playful chat with
the mother and daughter,—his philosophy under
his bruises seeming to commend him to additional
favour, and both listening to him with pleased attention.
But, catching the eye of Vernon, in the
midst of one of his random speeches, he made him
a sign, then rising, declared his intention to see
what sort of night it was, and left the house. Vernon
soon followed.