University of Virginia Library

13. CHAPTER XIII.
THE PROGRESS OF DOMESTIC REVOLUTION.

The misadventure, happening so near to Christmas—that sea
son when we require to have all our limbs in perfection, our bodies
free from bruises, and our spirits buoyant over all restraints,—was
the great subject of annoyance with the Major. Christmas was assigned
by him for a great festival—a something more than was
customary in the country, in which every body that was any body,
was to be at the Barony. The accident happened on the 13th of
December. But twelve days, accordingly, were allowed to the
sufferers to get well. With respect to the Major himself, this, perhaps,
bating the scar upon the forehead, was not a matter of much
doubt or difficulty. But the case was otherwise with poor Ned,
whose arm, the Doctor affirmed, could not be suffered to go free
of splint and sling under a goodly month. What a month of
vexation. So, at least, it seemed. But the good grows out of
the evil, even as the cauliflower out of the dunghill. Evil, according
to the ordinance, is the moral manure for good. The Major
lost something of his imperious will in the feelings of self-reproach
which seized upon him. He now beheld, what he did not then,
that it was the champagne which he had imbibed, and not that
which he had imputed to his son, that had tumbled the pair into
the pathway. He also began to suspect, what Ned would never
have hinted to him, that age was giving certain premonitions in the
shape of a failing eye-sight. Strange that he had never seen that
fence. Was it the wine or the years? Both, perhaps. This conclusion
humbled the old man. He sought the chamber of his son.

“My dear boy,” he said, “I won't ask you to forgive me, for
such a request will give you more pain, I know, than any thing
besides; but I feel that it is not easy to forgive myself. I had drank

too much champagne, that is certain. But I was angry with you,
Ned,—and you know what one of our modern poets says:—
I am not sure that I quote literally, but I am pretty near it. I
could not eat, and drank freely on an empty stomach. This made
me wilful; and Ned, my boy, you provoked me. You were a little
too cool,—too cavalier. Had you drank freely too—had you
been angry or quarrelsome—all would have gone right. But, no
matter now. It does not help to go over the same ground again.”

“No,” quoth Ned, between a writhe and a smile, a grin and a
contortion, not able to resist the temptation—“More likely to
hurt—perhaps the other eye, the other arm.”

“Well,” good humoredly responded the Major, “you are doing
well, so long as you can perpetrate a pun.”

“Of old, you held that to be doing ill.”

“What! another! Dick,”—to me—“is he not incorrigible!
But, Ned, my boy, you must hurry your proceedings. It won't
do to have you laid up at Christmas. Get well as fast as you can,
and, as an inducement, I have sent to town already, to Reynolds,
ordering a new buggy. Your horse is badly hurt in the flanks. I
must take him off your hands. You shall have two hundred dollars
for him, or the pick of any draught horse in my stable—they
are all free.”

“I'll take the money, papa. I have suffered too much from
your free draughts.”

“What a propensity. But I forgive you, considering your arm.”

“Strange, too, that I should owe my safety to that which I can
no longer count upon.”

“A pun again! I give you up. But look at my phiz. Am I
in a condition to call upon Madame Agnes-Theresa this morning?”

Ned looked up with some curiosity—anxiety perhaps—in his

glance. We both agreed that the scar had an honourable appearance.

“Ah!” quoth the Major, I should not have been ashamed of it
had it been won in battle—driving an enemy instead of driving a
horse.”

“At the head of the Fencibles, instead of the foot of the fence,”
murmured Ned languidly.

“You did serve in the war of 1815, Major,” was my remark.

“Yes, after a fashion, along the sea coast; but we never had any
encounter with the enemy. Their shipping lay in sight of the
coast, and their boats sometimes put into the creeks and rivers, but
they fought shy of us.”

“Knowing, perhaps, that they would have to deal with shy
fighters,” quoth Ned.

“No, indeed. We were brave enough, under the circumstances.
Once we thought we had a chance. It was after night, but starlight;
the tide was coming in, and one of our sentinels discovered
a boat making straight for shore. We crouched among the sands,
flat on our faces, making ready. When within gun shot, we
poured in a terrific fire and rushed up to finish the work with the
bayonets. We found the boat riddled admirably with our balls,
but nothing in her but a junk bottle and a jacket, and both empty.
She had drifted from the Lacedemonian man-of-war. Her capture
was thought no small evidence of our prowess, showing how we
could have fought. The Charleston papers were particularly eloquent
in our praise, and I'm not sure but salutes were fired from
Castle Pinckney in our honour. It was no fault of ours that the
British feared us too greatly to venture any soldiers in the skiff.
That was our only achievement, unless I mention a somewhat ineffectual
fire at a barge, about seven miles off. It is barely possible
that the enemy saw the smoke of our muskets. They could not
have heard the report. But, you think I will do to see Madame
Girardin?”

“As well as any gallant of us all,” was my reply.

“Very good. I'll ride over this morning.'`

“Eyes right, father, and look out for fences on the left.”

“Get out, you dog. Trust me, never again to take champagne
or any other liquor on an empty stomach.”

“And, beware of the black dog, father.”

“The tiger is becoming pacified, Ned,” was my remark after
the departure of the Major. “He has had a bad scare. He will
come round by degrees. All the symptoms are favourable.”

“He will give up some favourite projects then. His heart has
been more earnestly set on this marriage than I had suspected. I
am now convinced he has been planning it for months, and I have
reason to believe that he opened the subject to Mrs. Mazyck before
she went to travel last summer. He is tenacious of such
matters.”

“No doubt; and without some extraordinary event he would
have continued so. This accident has been a great good fortune.
The Major has too uniformly escaped successfully from those evils
to which flesh is heir. Uninterrupted good fortune is quite too
apt to harden the hearts of the very best men. They finally believe
themselves to be entitled to impunity. It requires a disaster
to rebuke arrogance; and one should pray for an occasional
mischance, knowing our tendency to self-reliance. We must every
now and then receive a lesson which teaches us that God is still
the Ruler of the Universe, and that the richest, the strongest,
the bravest, the wisest, are but feathers and straw before his
breath. Your father has just had one of these excellent lessons.
He has been taught the exceeding shortness of the step between
an imperial will, a haughty temper, a glorious future, and suffering,
agony, the grave, the loss of the thing most precious, the overthrow
of the most cherished pride and vanity. You are the only
son, and the very will which threatened to wreck your hopes, was
based upon the desire to subserve your success and prosperity.

Strange as it may seem, parents are thus constantly employed, at
once for the good and the mortification of their children. Keep
up your spirits. Do not vex him. Say nothing of your hurts.
He will see them, and suppose them, fast enough; and your very
forbearance to complain will, in his mind, exaggerate the amount
of your suffering. There will be a degree of remorse at work
within his bosom, which shall impel his moods hereafter in an entirely
opposite direction.”

“But, you do not augur any thing from this visit to Madame
Girardin?”

“By no means. As a gentleman, he could do no less. He had
to go. There is no merit in the act. He owes the old lady and
the young one the visit, and something more. But, there is something
favourable in the fact that he does it willingly, cheerfully,
and with a grace, showing that the duty is now by no means an
irksome one. A week ago, and to be required to visit the Bonneau
plantation would have been like taking a pill of myrrh and aloes.”

Let us follow the Baron, and see the issue of his visit.

When it was announced to Madame Girardin that Major Bulmer
was in the parlour, she was quite in a fidget. “Bonita,” her
own maid, a mulatto of Cuban origin, and “Marie,” the waiting
maid of Paula, were both summoned.

“Bonita, what has become of my mantua cap? Marie, I told
you to put away my Valenciennes. Dear me, Paula, I can find
nothing, and these servants are positively in the way of each other.
They are certainly the most awkward and useless creatures in the
world. Paula, child, do look into your drawers for the Valenciennes
tippet. Ah! there it is. Paula, child, do fix me,—pin the
cap for me, and put on that bunch of crimson ribbons. Crimson
always suited my hair best, and complexion. Do get away, Bonita—you
only disorder me. You are getting quite too fat and
clumsy for any useful purpose about house. I'll have to send you

into the field. Heavens, what will Major Bulmer say to being
kept so long? Why, Paula, where are you, child?”

Paula was already down stairs. Madame Agnes-Theresa was
still a long time fixing. For years she had never taken such pains
to caparison herself for any encounter with the other gender.
Strange! that she should be so solicitous about her personal appearance,
when she was to meet with one whom she had always
regarded with prejudice and the bitterest hostility. Yet, not
strange! Oh! woman, after all, claim what you please for yourself;
assert what rights you please; estimate your charms at the
highest; pride yourself as you may upon your intrinsic worth; suppose
yourself, if you please, of the purest and most precious procelain
clay that ever afforded materials for celestial manufacture;—
then, put what rough estimate you may on man—suppose him all
that is rude, and wild, and rough, and tough,—all dough and
mortality if you think proper,—a mere savage in beaver and
breeches,—a mere beast of burden, with only half the usual allowance
of legs and ears—still, my dear creature, all your painstaking
are for him, even when he is of the rudest, and you the
softest—all these careful caparisonings before the mirror,—all this
assiduous training of the tresses—all this nice adjustment of the
features,—the very disposition of that scarf and tippet, the careful
twofold concealment and display of that white neck and bosom,
that adroit placing of the jewel just where it is best calculated to
inform him how much more precious is the jewel that hides beneath,—that
confining zone,—that flowing drapery,—that bracelet
spanning the snowy arm,—all, all,—the grace, the taste, the toil,
the care, the smile, the motion,—all, all are designed to win his
smile, to charm his fancy, provoke his admiration, compel his love.
Talk of your rights! Confess the truth, for once, now, at this holiday
season, and admit that the most precious of your rights, even
in your own estimation, is that of winning his affection, wild colt,
fierce tiger, beast of prey and burden as he is!

Dear, good, antique, frigid, stately, stiff, and bigoted Madame
Girardin, was not superior to her sex; and this, by the way, my
dear, is the one most precious jewel of her humanity. She was a
good half hour in fixing, even after Paula Bonneau had descended
to the parlour. The latter has gone down to meet the Major after
the fashion of Nora Creina:

Never sticking a pin in her dress, never adjusting tippet or ribbon,
the artless child bounded down to the meeting with Ned's father
with a joyous, cheerful sentiment of delight and expectation. She
knew that he would come,—that he was bound to come to make
his acknowledgments,—but, somehow, there was a vague, undefinable
feeling in her little heart, that his coming augured something
more grateful,—something more positive than a mere formality.
She fancied that the snows of winter were about to thaw, and, like
a glad bird, she bounded forth with song to welcome in the first
sunshine and the infant promise of the spring. And the old
Major, bigoted and prejudiced, and feeling, as he did, that she
stood in the way of one of his most cherished schemes in behalf
of his son, he could not resist the child-like confidence, the unaffected
and pure innocence of soul and spirit which displayed itself
to his eye on her approach—so frank, so free, so joyous, the union
of child and angel, so sweetly mingled in look and manner! She
came towards him with extended hands, but he caught her in his
arms, and kissed her, I fancy quite as affectionately as he would
have done Beatrice Mazyck; then he put her from him at arm's
length, and looked kindly into her large, bright, dewy eyes.

“Oh! I'm so glad to see you, and to see you well again, Major.”

“My dear child, I owe it, perhaps, to you and to your good
grandmother, that I am well again—or nearly so.”

Paula did not disclaim the service, as many foolish people would
do. She acted more wisely—said not a word about it; but looking
at the scar, cried out, with child-like freedom:—

“But you have got a mark for life, Major. That was a terrible
cut.”

“Ah! my dear, but not half so severe as that which you would
have made upon my heart, were I thirty years younger. As
it is, I don't know how much love I do not owe you, old as I am.”

And he took her again into his arms, and seated her upon his
knees, and began to think that, after all, it was really not so strange
that Ned Bulmer should take a fancy to the little damsel, though
she was of that pernicious French stock. And the old man and
the young girl prattled together like two children that have chased
butterflies together, until the moment when that gem from the antique,
Madame Girardin, strode into the apartment, looking very
much like a crane on a visit of special ceremonial feeding, at the
Court of the Frogs.

“Mrs. Girardin,” quoth the Major, rising and making his famous
bow, though at the cost of a few severe twitches of the back and
arms,—“I come, my dear Madam, to return you my best thanks
for your kindness and singular attention to myself and son, at a
moment of very great pain and imminent danger to both. You
acted the part, my dear Madam, of the good Samaritan, and
when I think of the coldness of the night, your exposure on the
damp earth, your fatigue, at an hour when repose was absolutely
necessary,—the judicious efforts you employed, and the prompt
intelligence which made you provide for immediate help,—I feel
utterly at a loss for words to say how deeply I am penetrated by

your kindness and benevolent consideration. I trust, my dear
Mrs. Girardin, that you will receive my assurances in the spirit in
which they are tendered, and that, hereafter, we shall become
more to each other than mere passing acquaintances of the same
parish.”

The Major had evidently meditated this speech with a great
deal of care. It betrayed cogitation, and this was its fault. His
object was to express his feelings distinctly, and to declare his conviction
of the friendly and useful assistance of the lady; yet without
falling into formality. But, that he meditated at all, what he
had to say, necessarily led him into formality. This is always the
error with impulsive men, who forget that when impulse has become
habitual, it has also become equally polished, proper and expressive.
I am speaking now of educated people, of course. A
man so impulsive as Major Bulmer, it is to be expected, must occasionally
err in speech; but a man who is so free and frequent a
speaker, is never apt to err very greatly, if he will leave himself
alone, and wait for the promptings of the occasion. Had he, by
accident, encountered Mrs. Girardin the morning after the accident,
he would have thanked her in a single sentence and a look; and
his gratitude would have seemed more decidedly warm from the
heart, than it now declared itself.

But I am not so sure, remembering the sort of frigid person
with whom he had to deal, that his present mode of address was
not the most appropriate. It sounded dignified,—it appealed to
her dignity. He made it an affair of state, and her state was accordingly
lifted by it. It showed him deliberate in his approaches,
even when his object was to give thanks, and this displayed his
high sense of the service, and of the importance of the person addressed.
All of which was rather grateful than otherwise to a
person who still longed for the return of hoops and high head
dresses. She answered him in similar fashion,—`She had done
her duty only. We must give help to one another in the hour of

distress and affliction. Major Bulmer's rank in society justified
her departure from some of its strictnesses, in the effort to assist
him. She was conscious of the impropriety, ordinarily, of stooping
beside a gentleman, particularly on the high road; but she begged
him to believe that, before she did so, she ascertained that he was
actually insensible. She herself saw the blood streaming from
his brows. She heard his groans. Otherwise, he was quite speechless.
Under the circumstances, she had a Christian charity to fulfil.
She thanked God she was a Christian,—true; a most unworthy
one,—but she prayed nightly for Heavenly Grace to make her
better. She was happy to believe that her prayers had been
somewhat heard; assuming the very casualty of which the Major
had been so nearly the victim, to be designed as affording her a
special opportunity of serving one whom she had not been taught
to recognize as a friend.”

“Cool indeed,” thought the Major. “Certainly very cool. I am
to be upset by Providence, my own and son's neck perilled, only
to afford her an opportunity to play the good Samaritan. Very
cool, indeed!' thought the Major, though he suppressed the very
natural comment. The self-complacency of the old lady now began
to please him as a sort of study of character. But he spoke
again. She had referred to his bloody appearance, to his groans
unconsciously uttered. It was in something of the spirit of a certain
Frenchman, of famous memory, that he said,—

“Really, Mrs. Girardin, when I was in that condition, I must
greatly have disquieted you by my groans and shocking appearance.
I am afraid I made some horrible wry faces. Believe me,
my dear Madame, it was purely unintentional. Had I been conscious
of your presence, I certainly would have constrained myself.
I trust you did not construe my wry faces into any feeling of disapprobation
at your presence, or the kindly succour you were giving
me.”

“No, sir; I thank God, who kept me from putting any such uncharitable

construction on your conduct. Suffering as you did, in
such a situation,—or had it been any body else,—I should have
begged you to pay no attention to my presence, but to be as much
at ease as possible!”

“At ease!” thought the Major. “What an idea!—what a
strange woman.” His spoken words were of another sort.

“I thank you, Mrs. Girardin,—from the bottom of my heart I
thank you,—for myself and son. He, too, sends his thanks, though
too great a sufferer to offer them in person. He will present himself
as soon as he is able. To you, and this sweet angel of a
daughter, we owe more than we can ever acknowledge.”

To this, the good lady had a set speech, deprecating all acknowledgments.
The delight of doing good was sufficient for her. To
this the Major had his response; to which the lady had hers; the
former replied again; and Madam Agnes-Theresa answered him.
By and by, the Major began to speak more at his ease, and, after
a little while, making a prodigious leap from one point to another,
he exclaimed abruptly:—

“The fact is, my dear Mrs. Girardin, we have been all our lives
a couple of old fools—”

“Sir!”

“I beg pardon,—a thousand pardons. I meant to say that I
have been a couple of old fools—not merely one fool—that would
not answer to express my sense of my stupidity for so many years
of my life. No, Madam, I have been a pair of fools; for living
beside you in the parish so long, knowing your worth, and the
honourable family to which you belong, yet never once seeking to
show my estimation of it. It is thus, my dear Mrs. Girardin, that
one will hunt for years after a treasure which is actually lying all
the while in his path—that one will sigh and yearn after possessions
for which he has only to open his eyes and stretch forth his
hands,—and that we hourly lament the growing weakness, wickedness,
and ignorance of the world around us, without being at

the proper pains to welcome and value the good, the great, the
wise and the virtuous, even when we find them. I have been a
fool of this description of forty horse power. By God's blessing,
my dear Mrs. Girardin, and, with your favour, I will show that I
am recovering my senses. Permit me, then, to acknowledge my
past stupidity in not knowing you better, and do not punish the
offence, for which I feel a becoming remorse, by denying me permission
to make proper amends in the future for the past.”

Madame Agnes-Theresa was proud, and vain, and haughty, and
clannish, and full of ridiculous notions of what was due especially
to herself and family,—but she was not wilful or perverse. Properly
appealed to, she was accessible, and, if she had no question
of the sincerity of the offender, she was forgiving. Besides, as
we have before hinted, her hostility to the Bulmer household arose
from pique and a mortified spirit. She did not hold herself aloof
from them, or toss her head haughtily when she heard them mentioned,
because she felt her superiority over them, but simply
because they seemed tacitly to assert theirs over her. Vain people
are easily mollified. The very attempt to mollify them, soothes the
self-esteem which you have outraged. Major Bulmer was a great
beguiler of the sex. In his youth, a splendid figure, with a handsome
face, he was irresistible. Even now, his figure was noble and
erect, his eye open, manly, and of a glad, generous blue; and his
whole air was that of the born gentleman. Madame Girardin did
not prove incorrigible. The signs of yielding were soon manifest,
and when, pointing to an ancient portrait of a Knight in
armour, hanging against the walls, the Major afforded her an opportunity
of tracing the Girardin family to the fountain head
which they were content to claim, he made a formidable advance
into the champagne country of her affections. He put her on the
right strain, and she told the story which he had heard from other
sources a hundred times before, of that famous warrior, the Lord
Paul St. Marc Girardin, who accompanied Saint Louis to the Holy

Land, and helped to bury him there. Then the old lady showed
him the antique seal ring of the family, the crest being a cross-handled
sword, the blade dividing a crescent at an awful swoop;
then followed the narrative of the Lord Paul St. Marc's feats of
arms, his prowess, the number of ladies he saved, hearts he won,
Turks he slew. The Bonneaus, the old lady was pleased to admit,
had never been quite so distinguished as the Girardins, but they,
too, had done no small mischief upon Turks' heads and ladies'
hearts. To slaughter foes, and jilt damsels, by the way, was,
among the fine people fifty years ago, the two preferred processes
for being honourably famous; and, with all her religion and bigotry,
the good grandmother held rather tenaciously to the old faith in
these performances.

And so the two talked away, and about the strangest things,—
strangely communicative, for the first time in their lives, to one
another, until, by the time the hour was ended,—you will scarce
believe it, dutiful reader of mine, but it is a solemn and truthful
chronicle which I indite,—but,—certainly I shall surprise you.
Prepare yourself. What think you then? The old lady herself,
Madame Agnes-Theresa, taking Major Bulmer by the arm, actually
conducted him out to look at a new smoke-house she had been
building, and to show her new plans for curing hogs; then led him
away, in the same style, to look at some new fowls of foreign varieties,
roosters big as giraffes, and pullets that might have pacified
Polyphemus, which her factor had bought for her at the great
Fowl Fair in Charleston. “Fair is foul and foul is fair!” says
Shakspeare, so that nobody need be offended at my present collocation
of words. The Fowl Fair in Charleston had contributed
largely to our grandmother's hen coop, and afforded material upon
which the old lady and her guest could expatiate with equal eloquence.
Little Paula thought there would be no end of it; but
the sly little puss, seeing that things were going rightly, never interposed
an unnecessary word,—and her forbearance displayea

eminent wisdom. Half the world are fools in this very particular.
They put in an oar, just when the boat is making the best headway,
with tide, wind and current in favour, They stop the currents,
they head the winds, and, in the effort to help progress,
mar the enterprise forever. Keep your tongues, fools; hold off
your hands, donkies, and let “Go ahead” and “Do well,” work
their own passages, without clapping unnecessary steam to their tails.

“Well,” quoth the old lady to Paula, after the Major had departed,—“well,
my child, who would have thought it! Who
ever expected to see Major Bulmer in my house. Who ever listened
to hear me welcome him! There's some great change at
hand, my child, when such things happen.”

“The great change has happened, mamma.”

“Yes; but it always betokens other changes yet. The Major
has had a narrow escape. But he is old, and he may have suffered
some secret injury, of which he never dreams. When people
thus suddenly change in their dispositions, look for a singular
change in their fortunes. Well, God be thanked for making him
sensible, in his old age, and before it became too late, of what he
owed to society and his neighbours. It is late, but not too late,
and I pray that no evil consequences may follow the present change
for the better in his disposition.”

“How can it, mamma?”

“Oh! I don't know; but change is an awful thing always, even
when it happens for the better, and there is always some evil following
in the footsteps of what is good. We must only hope and
pray, and leave it all to heaven.”