University of Virginia Library

11. CHAPTER XI.

           

“Item, A capon	2s. 2d.
“Item, Sauce	4d.
“Item, Sack, two gallons	5s. 8d.
“Item, Anchovies, and sack after supper	2s. 6d.
“Item, Bread	ob.”
	King Henry IV.

When Philip awoke, the dungeon was as light as it
ever became, with the light of day. His enemy of the
night had fled with it; and for this reason, if no other,
Philip would have hailed the holy light with Miltonic
fervor.

If he had known the full extent and sincerity of
Gorm Smallin's designs, and how, as they were brooded
over, they grew always more diabolically vindictive,
he would have preferred the presence of the plotter,
since that only disgusted him, to an absence which
menaced the safety of those whom he loved better
than himself.

At this moment, however, Gorm Smallin was as
happy as any Gorm Smallin could be.

Early in the morning a sentry had called his name
at the grated door, and conducted him out of the cell,
where Cranston met him. After witnessing the solemn
ceremony of his taking the oath of allegiance, Cranston
had conveyed him aboard the steamer for Norfolk,
to the narrow streets of which ancient town a short and
pleasant passage quickly brought them.

As they stepped upon the wharf, Mr. Smallin threw
his burning soul into one short interrogatory.

“Major,” said he, “whar mought a body git a leetle
mite o' somethin' to eat, here?”

“That 's a fact” said Cranston; “you must be hungry
after living on those slim rations at the fortress.”

“Waal,” replied Mr. Smallin, guardedly, “I don't
mean to say nothin' agin them rations o' yourn back
yan: but I will say, fur I never was one o' them that 's
afeard to speak ther mind, that a leetle mite o' breakfas'
right now 'ud do a body a power o' good!”

“Well, let 's turn across, here. Yonder 's the `United
States Restaurant,' over there. I remember when we
came in here, first, it was the Confederate States Restaurant:
you can still see the C O N under the one coat
of paint with which the proprietor scratched out his
old patriotism.”

“A dam rascal!” observed Mr. Smallin, indignantly.
“Changed his flag, did he?”

“Yes; — or rather his colors, like a chameleon.
While the ground was gray, he was gray; but the
ground changed to blue, and the groundling became a
Yankee.”

“A mortial sight o' feed and truck o' one sort and
another thar, in the windows! Hit makes me hongrier
and hongrier the nigher I git to 'em!”

They entered the restaurant, passed through an
anteroom which was fitted up as a bar (so delicately
intimating that drinking comes before eating, as well in
the order of time as of dignity), and approached a long
and indescribably greasy pine-table which ran down the
centre of the eating-room.

“Now then, Mr. Smallin!” said Cranston, as they
took their seats on a bench which ran alongside the
table, and which was as like it in all its features (can
grease be called a feature?) as if it were an infant table
nestling by the side of a maternal one, “what 'll you
take to eat?”

Who, with any the slightest knowledge of the habits
of the Confederate army in '64, does not know what
Mr. Smallin took to eat?

“A cup o' kauphy” said he, “fust and fo'most!”

The war disclosed the fact that kauphy (which, with
that independence we have preserved in some matters,
we still call so, though the spelling nowise justifies it)
was more thoroughly interwoven with our existence
than any other institution. Our social life was “like an
island in the sea,” and the sea was a sea of coffee. This
beverage was to us as Malmsey to Clarence, as Falernian
to Horace, as the Pierian Spring to poets. We made
libations to the coming day in coffee, at breakfast; we
sped the parting day with stirrup-cups of it, at supper;
we drowned ourselves in it, in the last full ecstasy of
good dinners.

As heathens worship their grotesque ideals through
grotesque idols of wood and stone, so we, genuine
coffee being invisible as any spirit during the war, made
hideous images of it and paid our devotions to these,
morn, noon, and night. We made decoctions of pease,
of potatoes, of pea-nuts, of meal, of corn, of okra, of butter-beans,
of rice, of acorns, of heaven knows what else.
These we sugared (with sorghum-syrup), and these,
our cows having been slaughtered after the manner of
beef-cattle in the scarcity thereof, we drank milkless,
and called them kauphy.

A cup of genuine coffee!

This in the Southern States, in the year 1864, was
alike the Dream of soldiers and of statesmen, of old
men and of matrons, of children and of slaves.

Happy Gorm Smallin! He realized this dream.

The waiter brought in the ideal, on a tray. Mr.
Smallin sugared and stirred and drank.

“What else 'll you have?” said Cranston, quietly
laughing as he saw how the coffee, meandering through
the great desert of Smallin, did forthwith cause the
same to smile and blossom as the rose.

“What — else?” slowly repeated Mr. Smallin. Question
of questions! How should he tell, he, who so long
had wanted everything and had nothing, to eat?

Mr. Smallin would have preferred time to think on
it, but his pent appetite brooked not delay; it rose and
poured over the feeble dam he tried to erect, and he
floated upon the stormful current. He eagerly seized
the first chance to guide himself into a haven.

“Major,” said he with solemnity, as if he were an
acolyte questioning a venerable father upon the sacred
mysteries, “what air you goin' to take?”

“Nothing!!”

Kind Heaven, it was a blow like to the blow wherewith
King Richard did fell the stout friar of the greenwood
chapelle!

It was as if Mr. Smallin's bush, by which he was pulling
in to bank, suddenly gave way by the roots, so that
he floated out again, despairing, into the stream. Nay,
more. That a man, with good serviceable white teeth
gleaming through his moustache, a man with a mouth
and appurtenances thereunto pertaining, a man with

the ordinary passions of humanity, — that a man, in the
time of the war, should sit at table, in sight and smell
of the very things, — and take nothing to eat; this
was a trifle too much for Mr. Smallin. His mind recoiled
from the contemplation of such a phenomenon, and he
resolutely closed his eyes upon this “devilish suggestion”
which made his brain reel.

With a tremor, as if the devil had flitted by while his
eyes were shut, he opened them. At which auspicious
moment, sublime luck, even as the goddess in the old
Virgilian battle, arrayed herself on hesitating Smallin's
side. At the other end of the table Mr. Smallin saw a
thrilling sight.

Four rough sailors, not long ashore, sat there making
great ado over their grub. Of these, one's face showed
dim through a cloud of smoke from a hot dish of
stewed oysters, like the face of your future husband in
one of those charming visions conjured up by the
great second-sight necromanceress, Madame — from
Paris; another was attacking, with wild energy and
marvellous sagacity in the avoidance of bones, a plate
of fried hog-fish; a third could not see his plate by
reason of a huge beefsteak thereupon, and was making
successful endeavor to see his plate; and a fourth had
just finished squaring, with great nicety of eye and accuracy
of handling, a slice of ham that had been sent
in circular, and upon which reposed, as yet untouched
by this dallying gourmand, three of those most pitiful
of all flat squelched objects in nature and art — fried
eggs.

“Here, you!” said Mr. Smallin to the waiter, keeping
his eye fixed upon the other end of the table as if

he were reading his Bill of Fare: “Fetch me a dish o'
eysters, hot! an' some fish, some o' them, some —
pirch, hit looks like f'om here; an' some beefsteak,
'ith butter on it, an' pepper a plenty! an' some ham and
eggs, an' saw the ham out 'n bone an' all, like yan slice:
an' — an' — waal, fetch them fust; an' some bread; —
an' some mo' kauphy!” he shouted as the astounded
waiter vanished into the dark regions where the kitchen
lay perdue.

And now again burned the ardent soul of Smallin,
and again, as if to cool it, he plunged it into a question.

“Major,” said he, “how long, mought you think, 'll
take him to git 'em ready?”

Cold, cold indeed, was the water that Cranston
offered.

“I should think.” replied he, meditatively, “about
three quarters of an hour!”

An expression overspread the face of Mr. Smallin
which can only be described by a paradox — it was a
visible groan. This, not long lingering, died away and
dissolved into a plaintive look of settled melancholy,
during which Mr. Smallin sat and idly struck his horn-jointed
fingers upon the table, in his abstraction finishing
his kauphy at a draught.

But long-suffering hath and end.

As peace out of grimy war, as sweet spring out from
the Merlin-beard of winter, as Æneas from Avernus'
smoky pit, issued at last the waiter from the dark regions,
bearing gifts which Mr. Smallin did not fear.

Utterly disdaining that his cohorts (Mr. Smallin was
a captain of ten — fingers) were not by any means
gleaming with purple and gold, Mr. Smallin came

down like the wolf on the foal, with dire intent to
utterly mangle and crunch the several vivers.

Sternly, single-souledly, Mr. Smallin devoted himself
to the great work before him. He did not, would not,
could not talk.

“How long since you were in Tennessee, Smallin?”
asked Cranston, seeing him fairly started, impatient for
news of those who had made so deep impression on his
life, and full of bitter thoughts, of love which fed on
absence, of half-formed designs.

“Some — time,” chewed out the cormorant, without
looking up.

“Was Mr. Sterling living when you left?”

“Umph, humph.”

“Was Miss — were the two young ladies still at his
house?”

“Umph — 'blieve they was.”

“Damned glutton!” ejaculated Cranston.

“Yaas, — umph, humph,” abstractedly remarked Mr.
Smallin, while egg No. 3 ran partly down his chin,
leaving yellow footprints upon that sand, which must
have been anything but heartsome signs to egg
No. 4.

Cranston gave it up, but his tormentor kept at his
work.

Once, and suddenly, the Ravenous surceased a moment.

“Major, hit 's the month of May now, haint it?”

“Yes.”

“'Feard it 's too soon for 'em,” said Dalgetty, in a
melancholy soliloquy. “Howsomedever; here, waiter!
Got any chickens: young uns?”

Of course the waiter had chickens.

“Fetch one; fry him — in batter,” guzzled the bibulous
voice, resounding sepulchrally from inside the coffee-cup.

But to this trembling soul came its doomsday. At
length Dalgetty could no more.

Cranston saw that this man who had sat down at
table a sour-faced, half-bowed, scowling son of darkness,
arose from it erect, complacent, to all appearance a son
of the morning — if it could be imagined, even by a
poet, that sons of the morning wound up their ambrosial
breakfast with that luxuriant, loud, and resounding
eructation wherewith Mr. Smallin trumpeted the fullness
of his — satisfaction. Who might believe that out
of mere dead flesh of beasts, which hath been also
burned, could arise such moral dignity and sweetness
as Mr. Smallin's face now displayed beamingly? Indeed,
in this moment Mr. Smallin had forgot his revenge.
Such flowers from such decay!

Might not the statistics of crime be also called statistics
of hunger?

True, Falstaff and Fosco had plenty of sack and
plenty of tarts and cream. Yet, the one took purses
from mere dread of thirst, the other lied and apostatized
from dread of hunger.

That the Confederate army starved, and yet was a
confessedly virtuous and patriotic army, — let men give
them credit.

The souls of these men did not reside in the stomachs
thereof. The soul of this deserter did. Cranston had
determined to see Felix Sterling once more. He would
procure leave of absence as a spy in the Confederacy.

Mr. Smallin would guide him. To buy Mr. Smallin —
this came first. Cranston made a quick bid.

“Smallin,” said he, when he had gotten that smiling
individual into a room at the hotel, “don't you want to
go home?”

“Thar's jest whar I 'm agwine.”

“How much will you take to get you and me there,
through the Confederacy?”

It was not in the nature of Smallin to bite so quickly
at bids as at bread.

“You want to go thar, too?”

“Yes.”

“Waal, Major, I should think 'at about a hundred
dollars in greenbacks mought do a'most any thing now,
in that section!”

“Very good. The money 's yours when we get there.
Make the arrangements. If you betray me, Smallin,”
he coolly continued, “here 's a little dog that 'll trail
you through every ravine in your mountains till he bites
you. Feel his teeth!”

Cranston placed the cold muzzle of a pistol against
Gorm Smallin's forehead.

Which action awoke disagreeable memories, and
spoiled the fine lingering aroma of Mr. Smallin's dinner.
He smiled very faintly, and did not reply.

He muttered to himself something very like, Joxabobble.