University of Virginia Library

7. CHAPTER VII.

It was quite dark before Horsey and his companion
came to a halt; and when this was done, the
former looked round him with astonishment, as he
could not well divine at first the reason for doing so.
There was no more sign of habitation or human
comfort then, than had been seen at the moment
when he encountered the dwarf. Indeed, if possible,
the locale looked decidedly worse than ever.
The very spot on which they stopped was a perfect
quagmire, to which the rising waters of the contiguous
river had access at every freshet; and, beheld
in the uncertain starlight, our actor could see that
there were ponds all around him, and little crossing
brooklets that seemed to struggle slowly through the
thickening ooze, as if seeking to regain the parent
stream, by whose subsiding torrents they had been
left. A dense wall of canes spread itself over the
path in front, and Horsey was about to give utterance
to the doubt and bewilderment which he felt,
when his companion, who seemed in no ways disconcerted,
uttered a shrill whistle, which was immediately
answered by the deep bay of a beagle at a
little distance ahead.

“They will find us now in a twinkling,” said
Jones; “that dog will soon tell them where to look,
even if that crooked scamp, Stillyards, should prove
a sluggard by the way. You will be relieved of
your nag in a few moments, Mr. Horsey, and we
will coon a log for the rest of our journey. So
much for living in a swamp—these are difficulties
which would scarcely trouble us in Natchez or New
Orleans.”

“Well, but why do you incur them? Why live
in the swamp?” demanded Horsey, to whom the
increasing difficulties and perplexities of the last
twenty minutes of circuitous navigation had begun
to suggest certain doubts of the policy of choosing
places of abode for which there seemed no justifying
necessity.

“Ha!” said the other, with a laugh, “there are
troubles in the city which we have not here, and
which we count a great deal worse. Here we
should laugh at a sheriff's officer—there we should
pull hat and bend knee to him in respectful deference;
and if you ever blarneyed a tailor or bullied
a landlord—”

“Say no more,” said Horsey, to whom the references
of Jones seemed to have almost a personal
direction, and were therefore sufficiently conclusive
—“say no more—I see the wisdom of your arrangements,
and were I as near New Orleans as
you are to Vicksburg and Benton, I should most
probably have needed no explanation.”

Some merry references to the artifices and annoyances
of duns and dunnees followed this sally,
in the relation of which the experience of the two
seemed to be by no means unequal. If Jones had
his story of sharps and flats in Vicksburg, Natchez,
Manchester, and Benton, Horsey could tell tales
quite as lively of Mobile and Orleans; and could

these stories have been heard by the city sufferers,
the consolation would have been of a sort to have
induced a large addition to the sum total on the off
side of the profit and loss account. Certainly, the
most patient of all fashionable costumers would have
cursed such customers. Their merriment had not
subsided, when the figure of a man plunging from
a fallen tree that lay half covered and quite concealed
in the dark by the canes which grew luxuriantly
around it, presented himself in front, and immediately
took charge of their horses. A word between
Jones and the new-comer furnished sufficient
explanation; and the former, telling Horsey to follow
him closely, put aside the canes which concealed
the fallen tree, and was, an instant after, hidden from
sight. Horsey followed promptly, and found himself
on a sort of natural bridge which carried him safely
over a creek, of whose existence, though but ten feet
from where he had been standing, he had not till that
moment been aware. Though deep, and pursuing a
direct course to the Loosa-Chitta, it kept so quiet a
travel all the while that its murmurs were barely
heard among the canes that grew out of it, even
when Horsey stood directly above its bed; and the
assurance of his companion only then certified him
of its existence.

“Steady now, Mr. Horsey. The creek below
you has a depth of ten feet, and a sudden souse at
this moment would startle more alligators than a
man could ride for a half-mile around us. There is
some soft clay on the log that makes it slippery, and
if you find it ticklish, you had better squat in time
and coon it.”

But Horsey was too good a Mississippian to need
such cautious counsel, and he boldly followed his
conductor after his own fashion, and in perfect
safety. A few moments brought them to the end of

the tree, when, leaping to the earth, after the example
of his companion, our traveller once more, after
a long interval, found himself upon terra firma.

“Here we are,” exclaimed Jones, “in the immediate
neighbourhood of Cane Castle. Our way is
clear enough, though it still seems thick to your
eyes. We are in an Indian trail, which the Choctaws
have used, I reckon, for a thousand years. I
know it was ready made to our hands—our feet,
rather—and very good use we've made of it so far.
Congratulate yourself, Mr. Horsey, that there's no
hope for a sheriff here! We have security in the bog
and liberty in the brake, for which I know one poor
devil that would pray in vain were he in the swamp
at Natchy. Here you may laugh as loud as you
please, and sing as perverse, and no one to remind
you of laws and judges—no one to say `shut up—
you shall neither sing nor smoke.' There's no law
here against tobacco.”

These assurances, which promised so great a degree
of liberty to the habitual swearer, singer, and
smoker, and which, in brief, summed up the amount
total of what are usually defined as the blessings of
civil and religious liberty, did not, however, seem to
awaken that degree of satisfaction in the mind of
the actor, which was justified by the importance of
the promised benefits. A word about the cast of
characters, or the selection of pieces, or any thing,
however immaterial, in the business of staging,
would have called for infinitely more of his regards.
Receiving no answer to what he had spoken, Jones,
with practised cunning, readily changed the subject
to one more grateful; and mustering all that he
could remember of the plays he had ever read and
seen acted, he contrived, by some imperfect quotations,
to divert the attention of Horsey from such
subjects of speculation as would most probably have

occurred to almost every ordinary traveller in his
present situation. Naturally frank and unsuspicious,
it was by no means difficult to deceive a person
whose mind was so completely surrendered up to
the one engrossing passion; and though exceedingly
acute in his judgments, and active in his inquiries,
on all subjects not actually swallowed up
in the maelstrom of that mania which, at an instant,
absorbed every thing that came within its whirling
vortex, yet nothing was more easy than to lead
him off from the minor pursuit by the suggestion
of the smallest gleam from that greater object which
was the all in all of his desires. But on this head
the reader wants no new lights at this late moment.
He, perhaps, unlike the deluded traveller of whom
we write, is not so sure of the Thespian character
of those performers whom the worthy Horsey is
about to encounter in the swamp. He is not now
to be told that—but why should we anticipate?

A few moments sufficed, following the little Indian
footpath and his companion, to bring the actor
into something like an opening in the forest, which
consisted of mingled pines, cypresses, and ash-trees,
closely set, and still more closely united—save in the
opening mentioned—by the matted canes, which
seemed to fill up all the intervals between them,
and, in fact, formed a dense margin to every one of
the hundred beds of watery ooze which skirted the
river, the rank and festering deposit of a thousand
years. Here the actor was encountered by gay
gleams of firelight at a little distance, by the imperfect
blaze of which, he discovered himself to be on
the verge of a little area, or amphitheatre, in the
swamp, high and dry, a sort of island, the circuit
of which was probably a meagre quarter of a mile
in extent. This, following his conductor, he rapidly
overpassed, until they reached a sort of nook

from whence the fire met their eyes. Here they
found as merry a set of scamps at their revels as
ever blessed the sight of a wayfarer on the edge of
a gipsy encampment. They were about seven or
eight persons, squat upon their haunches, and
busily engaged in the adventurous business of
vingt-un; a sight that warmed the heart of our
traveller even more than a smoking supper might
have done, since, though not absolutely dramatic
in itself, it suggested to his mind one of those leading
associations of theatrical life, which brought
back his fading memories with fresh colours, and
greatly increased their vitality. But if their present
employment seemed natural enough to the heyday
recklessness of the ordinary actor's life, there
was little beside, in their air and appearance, to
justify, in the mind of Horsey, their adoption of the
business. He looked in vain for that happy ease,
sometimes, in “mouths of wisest censure,” esteemed
impudence, which distinguishes so greatly the actor
by profession. The dashing effrontery, the devil-may-care
deportment of the sect was lacking. There
was none of the graceful swagger of the genteel
comedian—none of the solemn emphasis of him who
wears the image of fate, and looks habitual tragedy
upon his brow, a Prometheus-like gloom and defiance
which would have realized the ideal of an
æschylus, and filled the eyes of the poet with the
figures that else had only had existence in his mind;
and as for the comedy of stare, and grin, and clatter
—the broad fun, and ridiculous, reckless, farce—
never was pleasant companie so utterly without its
enlivening and mirth-compelling attributes. The
very soul of every rascal in the group seemed set
only upon the sixpences before him. Mammon, not
Momus, was the god of the entertainment, and our
traveller's anticipations were taken half aback, as
he beheld an expression of care and intensity in every
face, so utterly unlike that good-humoured indifference
to fate and fortune, which hitherto had been to
him one of the chief attractions among his intimates
of the lobby and the green-room.

“These chaps have greatly mistaken their profession,”
was the unexpressed thought of the idealist.
“There is not a scamp among 'em who will ever do
more than snuff a candle or shout at a pageant.
They will give me no support—they will bungle
most damnably. `Then came each actor on his ass.'
Gad! the ass will be uppermost here. But these
are supernumeraries only. There must be others.
I must wait. At least, I am sure of good foils, if I
have no rivals; and if they can make play at all,
they will give me all the chance I want. But they
are mere Turks and Muscoghees—a sort of savages
that will never stop till they scalp what they have
murdered. Their parts are all in danger of a bloody
death. But—buz! buz!”

The introduction of the stranger was rapidly gone
through with—too rapidly to enable our traveller to
witness any of those beauties of deportment which he
still fancied might make their appearance in that
nice performance—the reception of a guest for the
first time—which so eminently calls for a pleasing
and prompt gracefulness, without which reception
is more properly repulsion, and an invitation to make
oneself at home, looks very like a suggestion to depart.
Jones seemed to conjecture what was passing
in Horsey's mind, and took an opportunity, a few
minutes after, to say to him, in a whisper, that the
giants were yet to arrive—these were the pasteboard
personages—that class of creatures which
we use from necessity, and keep out of sight when
we can.

“But they will improve, Mr. Horsey, under your

tuition—under your example I mean. They have
had no opportunities—have seen no shining lights,
and are shy, sir, very shy—much cannot be expected
from them as yet; but when you have given
us some readings, Mr. Horsey—then, &c.”

It was not surprising after this appeal, that our
vain actor beheld his companions with a look of
greater indulgence and more charitable thoughts.
The wily Jones knew all his soundings, and the
tragedian was little more than a puppet in his
hands.

Meanwhile new fires were built, new combinations
formed, and Horsey found himself as busy
about the blaze as the rest, and, though with a less
intense feeling than the rest, receiving his cards,
and “planking” his shillings. His friend Jones sat
beside him and assisted him as a partner to lose his
money in the game. As the “stakes” disappeared,
the good humour of the group seemed to increase,
and the contagious mirth soon made Horsey as indulgent
in his criticism as unmindful of his losses.
He thought the scamps susceptible of improvement,
and, stimulated by the suggestions and applauses of
Jones, his quotations became recitations; and his
own language was at length limited to a few occasional
comments which served to introduce and
link together the choicest declamatory passages of
Shakspeare. The Toms, Dicks, and Harries around
him looked as grave and seemed as attentive as possible;
but it might have been perceived by one
more watchful than our amateur, that none of them
forgot the game in the delight which he felt or
affected to feel, and the stakes were always lifted
as soon as won. They were men who had long
since learned to combine the severest cares of business
with the utmost relaxations of pleasure.

“That was superbly said, Mr. Horsey,” remarked

the attentive and respectful Jones, as the actor concluded
the famous soliloquy in Hamlet, “to be,” &c.
—“I can say with confidence that I have never
heard that passage delivered before, though I have
heard it a hundred times from other lips. You
make us feel the poet, sir, and tremble at the philosophy.
Ah, sir, how these reflections come to us,
poor outcasts of fortune, like so many dreadful experiences.
Who has not asked himself whether it was
not better and nobler to make his own quietus with
a bare bodkin, rather than suffer the thousand cruel
and crushing evils, such as the rest of the passage
has described. Not that it is all evil, Mr. Horsey.
I am disposed to think, so far as my experience
goes, that that part of it about `the law's delay'
might very well be left out. The law's delay, sir, is
one of the most agreeable features which the law
ever shows to a poor debtor like myself, and as I
have said before, but for the law's delay, and that
of the deputy, many's the poor devil who would
have lain at the mercy of tailor and tapster, without
hope or redress, to the detriment of his genius, and
to the great loss of the majority of mankind. I'm
thinking, Mr. Horsey, that that half line might very
well be left out of the passage.”

“Impossible, Mr. Jones,—there would be an ugly
hiatus—the music of the line would be lost—utterly
lost.”

“But the passage might be altered—something
might be supplied in its place. Suppose we were to
read—`the play's delay'—now that would be such
an improvement as would be grateful to every ambitious
actor.”

This suggestion grated on the ears of our amateur.
He was one of those profound devotees of
the great literary outlaw, who venerate his very
faults, even as the antiquarian treasures up the rust

and canker of the relic. To remove any thing, in
his eyes, would be to impair the value and take from
the propriety of what remained; and his reply was
uttered in tones more energetic than he had hitherto
employed.

“Sacrilege! sacrilege, Mr. Jones,—how can you
think of it! No, sir, the passage must stand as it is
—neither too little nor too much—nothing can be
added, nothing taken away. It's true, as you say,
the law's delay is a very agreeable thing to the
debtor. Gad, sir, I have been indebted to it quite as
often as yourself; but our notions would be greatly
altered if we stood in the creditor's shoes; we should
then hold the passage to be perfect as it is; as, indeed,
I hold it now, having no debtors, and being
still overshoes on the books of other men. No, no!
sir—no liberties with Shakspeare—remember the
admirable counsel to this effect which he gives to
our profession in particular on this very head—to
`speak no more than is set down for them.' I can
forgive a fellow when he is out and the audience
waiting, and the prompter asleep, if he fills out from
his own head; but when he does it out of presumption,
seeking to improve the work of the mighty
master, `that's villanous, and shows a most pitiful
ambition in the fool,' that does it.”

“I don't know but you're right, sir.”

“I am! I am right, Mr. Jones—I am positive in
this matter. The more you think of it, sir, the more
you'll have occasion to agree with me; and in the
beginning of our campaign, sir, the thing cannot be
too much insisted upon for the benefit of the whole
company.”

“I was thinking, sir,” said Jones, with some hesitation
of manner, and a bow and look of particular
deference almost amounting to veneration—“I was
thinking, sir, that it might be of great service to our

boys, if you'd be so good as to give us your reading
of that very part.”

“What! the advice to the players?”

“Yes, sir—I'm sure there's not one present that
would not be delighted to hear it from your lips.
What say you, boys—what Ricks, Mason, Baker,
Bull?”

“Ay, ay! let's have it!” was the lively cry from
all, in tones far less full of solicitous deference, and
a great deal more indifferent than those of Jones.
Meanwhile, however, the cards were shuffled, the
stakes set down and lifted, and the game underwent
no cessation, though, in the excitement of his declamation,
our friend Horsey's cards remained upon the
turf, from which, however, his stakes were always
considerately withdrawn by the banker, as soon as
laid before him.

“But it will interrupt the game,” was the considerate
suggestion of the actor. “Our friends would
rather play than listen to those dull recitations, of
which they hear so much professionally.”

“Devil a bit!” was the warm reply of Jones to
the modest apprehension of Horsey. “Devil a bit!
Dull recitations, indeed. By —! such luxuries
are more than they are used to—more, perhaps, than
they deserve. Put up your hands, men, while Mr.
Horsey gives us these passages; down with your
pictures, take up your picayunes, and let us surrender
our souls for a while to the scene. By the way,
Mr. Horsey, if you have no objection, the thing
might be made more complete—the illusion rendered
more striking and fascinating,—in short, sir,—if
you would consent—”

He paused and looked in the actor's face with
doubt and entreaty, equally mingled with respectful
deference;—but he spoke not.

“What, Mr. Jones?” was the demand of Horsey,

who was at that moment too well pleased to have
refused the speaker any thing in his power to bestow,
and who felt assured, from the manner of Jones,
that he was only about to solicit some farther extension
of that courtesy, the concession of which
was, perhaps, far more gratifying to him than it
could be to the hearers. The reply of Jones was
uttered in the hesitating accents of one who still
scrupled to give offence.

“If I remember—I think, Mr. Horsey—nay, you
did tell me, that you had brought with you a portion
of your wardrobe.”

“You are right, sir,—I have with me a Hamlet
and a Romeo, a Rolla, a Turk and two field officers,
in my bags, but—”

“The very thing, my dear sir!” cried Jones, with
an air of inexpressible delight—“and now, sir,” he
continued, “if you would only crown your favours
and give us your readings in costume—give us the
favourite passages in Hamlet, which, I should think,
from what you have suffered us to see, your best
performance, you would bind us to you eternally.
It would make us so happy—it would help us so
greatly—we should all be so much pleased, not to
speak of the immense benefit—that—that—”

Here the cunning dog stopped very judiciously,
leaving unexpressed the superb climax which the
imagination of the hearer was better able to provide,
than the flattery of the eulogist. Soothed, seduced,
perfectly overcome, in the weakness of his
heart, by the adroit management of the wily Jones,
the reluctance of the actor was very feeble. He
said something about his horse and saddle-bags not
having come, and murmured a fear that he might
be tiresome. But these objections were soon met
and overruled by the other.

“Your horse is here in our stables. The bags

you can get at in a moment; and if you will go with
me, we can put you at once into a chamber where
you can make all your changes without disturbance.”

There was no resisting the pleasant importunities
of his companion; and, following his guidance, Horsey
was led through a contiguous thicket into another
smaller area, where he found several huts of
bushes and bark, in one of which his horse was
fastened, along with that of Jones; while the fellow
who had taken charge of them, lay fast asleep before
the door, using the saddle-bags of the actor for
his pillow. He was soon aroused, and made to
carry them into another of the huts, where Jones,
having studiously repeated his flatteries, left the delighted
actor to prepare his toilet prior to his first
rehearsal before his new companions.

These, meanwhile, had their own thoughts on the
subject of the new-comer.

“Now, what the devil can Jones be after,” was
the muttered speech of one surly fellow of the circle,
“in bringing this conceited ass among us? He seems
to have precious little money, and he's not worth
robbing; he's a fool and can't be trusted; and why
we are to pretend to be actors, and all that nonsense,
and listen to his stuff, is more than I can reckon up
at a single tuning. What do you say, Baker—do
you understand it?”

“No better than yourself, but I s'pose there's
something in it, since Jones says that he's ordered
by Saxon. Saxon's after some strange business, I
reckon, and I s'pose he's got his reasons. What
they are I don't care to know, so long as the fellow
has a Mexican to lose, and don't know when he
loses.”

“Nor when he wins, for that matter,” said another.
“Bull gathered up his stakes and winnings

together, the first time in his life that ever his losses
filled his pockets.”

“The fellow's well enough,” said Bull, with a
growling chuckle—“so say no more. I'm for his
playing cards, or any thing he pleases, so long as
the playing is profitable to us. But here's Jones
coming back; let us know all about it from him.”

“How now, growlers?” said this last named person,
as he returned among the group. “Can't you
be satisfied with your gettings, when they come with
so little trouble. This fellow's your pidgeon, pluck
him as you please; but look you that he does not
guess what you're about. Take your counsel from
me, and humour him awhile—it will give us quite as
much sport as profit.”

“But what's the upshot of the business—are we
to stop his wind, or is he to be one of the family?
He'll never make a beagle, so long as his head's full
of play stuff.”

“Let that give you no trouble. It's enough that
Saxon plans it. This fellow's nothing in himself,
but we use him against another. There's one thing,
let me tell you, before you go further. Weston is dead
—shot through the head by a young lawyer going
up to Lucchesa, on t'other side of the river by Big
Ben's. There's a start below against us, and the old
methodist, Badger, is beginning to growl aloud.
So, lie close—there's no fear of the dad, while the
son is a beagle. He'll give tongue enough when the
hunt's a-foot. As for this chap, all that you have to
do is to wink, look wise—talk what player nonsense
you can, and praise him for his acting, whenever he
asks questions that you can't answer. That will stop
his tongue, and turn his thoughts, and that's all that
you've to do. I'll manage all the rest of the business.
Put up your cards now, and get the grog in
readiness, and let Girhan get our supper, while I'm

gone for the actor. You'll see him in his glory when
he comes back, but no grinning—nothing to frighten
him. Hear him with open mouths, and if you can
throw in a bit of blarney, let it be done. But do it
neatly—nothing slippery—nothing stupid. The fellow's
no fool when he aint flattered—it's soft soap
only that turns his head. Enough—you have the
trail.”