A Strange Sad Comedy

I-2

The Colonel inclined his head, a slight flush creeping into his wan face.

“You do me honor,” he said, “but you do my son only justice.”

By this time the wagons had been loaded up and were being driven off. The scared n*****s that had flocked about the house from all over the plantation were peering, with ashy faces, around the corners and over the garden fence. The men were ordered to fall in, the lieutenant giving his orders at a considerable distance, and in his involuntary and marked brogue. The lanky sergeant and the few men with him mounted, and then all of them, simultaneously, took off their caps.

“Three cheers for the old game-c**k!” cried the lanky sergeant enthusiastically. The cheers were given with a will and with a grin. The Colonel bowed profoundly, smiling all the time.

“This is truly grotesque,” he said. “You have just appropriated all of my last year’s crops, and now you are assuring me of your personal respect. For the last, I thank you,” and so, with cheering and laughter, they rode off, leaving the Colonel with his self-respect unimpaired, but minus several hundred bushels of corn and wheat. The n*****s gradually quieted down, and the Colonel and Miss Jemima and little Miss Letty retired to the library. The Colonel took down his family tree, and began gravely to study that perennially entertaining document in order to place the Corbin who was serving as aide-de-camp in the Union army. Miss Jemima, too, was deeply interested, and remarked sagely:

“He is no doubt a great-grandson of Admiral Sir Archibald Corbin, who adhered to the royal cause and was afterward made a baronet by George III.”

At that very moment, the Colonel hit upon him.

“That is he, my dear Jemima. General Sir George Corbin, grandson of the admiral and son of Sir Archibald Corbin, second, married to the Honorable Evelyn Guilford-Hope, has one son and heir, Archibald, born May 18, 1842. His father must be dead, and he has but little more than reached his majority. Sister, if he were not in the Federal army, I should be most happy to greet him as a kinsman. But I own to an adamantine prejudice toward strangers who dare to meddle in civil broils.”

So had Miss Jemima, of course, who regarded the Colonel’s prejudices as direct inspirations from on high.

The very next week after the visitation of the Federal cavalry came a descent upon the part of a squad of Confederate troopers. As the Colonel and Miss Jemima entertained the commanding officers in the library, with the most elaborate courtesy and home-made wine, the shrill quacking and squawking of the ducks and chickens was painfully audible as the hungry troopers chased and captured them. The Colonel and Miss Jemima, though, were perfectly deaf to the clamor made by the poultry as their necks were wrung, and when a cavalryman rode past the window with one of Miss Jemima’s pet bronze turkeys hanging from his saddle-bow and gobbling wildly, Miss Jemima only gave a faint sigh, and looked very hard at little Miss Letty, who was about to shriek a protest against such cruelty. Even next morning she made not a single inquiry as to the startling deficit in the poultry yard. And when Aunt Tulip began to grumble something about “dem po’ w*********h dat c*m ter a gent’mun’ house, an’ cornfuscate he tu’keys settin’ on the nes’,” Miss Jemima shut her up promptly.

“Not a word, not a word, Tulip. Confederate officers are welcome to anything at Corbin Hall.”

A few nights after that, the Colonel sat in the library looking at the hickory fire that danced up the chimney and shone on the polished floor, and turned little Letty’s yellow hair into burnished gold. Suddenly a terrific knocking resounded at the door.

In those strange times people’s hearts sometimes stood still when there was a clamor for entrance; but the Colonel’s brave old heart went on beating placidly. Not so Dad Davy’s, who, with a n***o’s propensity to get up an excitement about everything, exclaimed solemnly:

“D’yar dee come to bu’n de house over we all’s hades. I done dream lars night ’bout a ole h’yar cotch hade fo’mos’ in er trap, an’ dat’s a sho’ sign o’ trouble and distrus’fulness.”

“David,” remarked the Colonel, according to custom, “you are a fool. Go and open the hall door.”

Dad Davy hobbled toward the door and opened it. It was about dusk on an autumn night, and there was a weird half-light upon the weedy lawn, and the clumps of gnarled acacias, and the overgrown carriage drive of pounded oyster-shells. Nor was there any light in the large, low-pitched hall, with its hard mahogany sofa, and the walls ornamented with riding-whips and old spurs. A tall and stalwart figure stood before the door, and a voice out of the darkness asked:

“Is this the house of Mr. Archibald Corbin, and is he at home?”

The sound of that voice seemed to paralyze Dad Davy.

“Lord A’mighty,” he gasped, “’tis Marse Archy’s voice. Look a heah, is you—is you a ha’nt?” [1]

“A what?”

But without waiting for an answer Dad Davy scurried off for a moment and returned with a tallow candle in a tall silver candlestick. As he appeared, shading the candle with one dusky hand, and rolling two great eyeballs at the newcomer, he was handed a visiting card. This further mystified him, as he had never seen such an implement in his life before; he gazed with a fixed and frightened gaze at the young man before him, and his skin gradually turned the ashy hue that terror produces in a n***o.

“Hi, hi,” he spluttered, “you is de spit and image o’ my young Marse, that was kilt long o’ dis lars’ year. And you got he voice. I kin mos’ swar you wuz Marse Archy Corbin, like he wuz fo’ he got married.”

“And my name is Archibald Corbin, too,” said the young man, comprehending the strange resemblance between himself and the dead and gone Archy that had so startled the old n***o. He poked his card vigorously into Dad Davy’s hand.

“What I gwine to do with this heah?” asked Dad Davy, eying the card suspiciously.

“Take this card to your master.”

“And if he ax me who k’yard ’tis, what I gwi’ tell him?”

At this the young man burst out into a ringing, full-chested laugh. The n*****s were new to him, and ever amusing, and he could not but laugh at Dad Davy’s simplicity. That laugh brought the Colonel out into the hall. He advanced with a low bow, which the stranger returned, and took the card out of Dad Davy’s hand, meanwhile settling his spectacles carefully on his nose, and reading deliberately:

“Sir Archibald Corbin, Fox Court.”

The Colonel fixed his eyes upon his guest, and, like Dad Davy, the resemblance to the other Archibald Corbin overcame him instantly. His lips trembled slightly, and it was a moment or two before he could say, with his usual blandness:

“I see you are Archibald Corbin, and I am your kinsman, also Archibald Corbin.”

“Being in your neighborhood,” said Sir Archibald, courteously, “I could not forbear doing myself the pleasure of making myself known to the only relatives I have on this side of the water.”

There was something winning and graceful about him, and the Colonel was much surprised to find that any man born and bred outside of the State of Virginia should have so fine an address.

“It gives me much gratification,” replied Colonel Corbin, in his most imposing barytone, “to acknowledge the relationship existing between the Corbins of Corbin Hall in Virginia and those of Fox Court in England.”

In saying this he led the way toward the library, where two more tallow dips in silver candlesticks had been lighted.

When young Corbin came within the circle of the fire’s red light—for the tallow dips did not count—Miss Jemima uttered a faint scream. This strange sensation that his appearance made in every member of the family rather vexed the young Englishman, who was a robust specimen, and with nothing uncanny about him, except the strange and uncomfortable likeness to a dead man whom he had never seen or heard of until that moment.

“Pardon me,” said the Colonel, after a moment, in a choked voice, “but your resemblance to my only son, who was killed while gallantly leading his regiment, is something extraordinary, and you will perhaps understand a father’s agitation”—here two scanty tears rolled down upon his white mustache. Even little Miss Letty looked at the newcomer with troubled eyes and quivering lips.

Young Corbin, with a hearty and healthy desire to get upon more comfortable subjects of discourse, mentioned that, having a taste for adventure, he had come to America during the terrible upheaval, and through the influence of friends in power he had obtained a temporary staff appointment, by which he was able to see something of actual warfare.

This statement was heard in absolute silence. Young Corbin received a subtile impression that his new-found relatives rather disapproved of him, and that the fact that he was a baronet with a big rent-roll, which had hitherto brought him the highest consideration, ranked as nothing with these primitive people. Naturally, this was a stab to the self-love of a young fellow of twenty-two, but with the innate independence of a man born to position and possessions, he refrained from forcing his consequence upon his relatives. The Colonel talked learnedly and eloquently upon the subject of the Corbins and their pedigree, to which Miss Jemima listened complacently. Little Miss Letty, though, seemed to regard the guest as a base intruder, and glowered viciously upon him, while she knitted a large woolen sock.

Supper was presently announced by Dad Davy. There might be a rag carpet on the floor at Corbin Hall, and tallow dips, but there was sure to be enough on the table to feed a regiment. This supper was the most satisfactory thing that young Sir Archy had seen yet among his Virginia relations. There was an “old ham” cured in the smoke from hickory ashes, and deviled turkey after Miss Jemima’s own recipe, and it took Tom Battercake, Black Juba, and little Patsy Jane, all together, to bring in supplies of battercakes, to which the invariable formula was: “Take two, and butter them while they are hot.”

The Colonel kept up a steady fusillade, reinforced by Miss Jemima, of all the family history, peculiarities, and what not, of the Corbin family. The Corbins were, to a man, the best judges of wines in the State of Virginia; they inherited great capacity for whist; and were remarkable for putting a just estimate upon people, and inflexible in maintaining their opinions. “Of which,” said the Colonel, suavely, “I will give you an example:

“My honored father always believed that it was the guest’s duty, when spending the night at a house, to make the motion toward retiring for the night. My uncle, John Whiting Corbin, held the contrary. As both knew the other’s inflexibility they avoided ever spending the night at each other’s houses, although upon the most affectionate and brotherly terms. Upon one occasion, however, my uncle was caught at Corbin Hall by stress of weather. The evening passed pleasantly, but toward midnight the rest of the family, including my sister Jemima and myself, retired, leaving my father and his brother amicably discussing the Virginia resolutions of ’98. As the night wore on both wished to retire, but my father would not transgress the code of etiquette he professed, by suggesting bedtime to his guest, nor would my uncle yield the point by making the first move.

“When, at daylight the next morning, my boy Davy came in to make the fire, here, sir, in this library, I assure you, my father and his brother were still discussing the resolutions of ’98. They had been at it all night.”

This was one of the Colonel’s c***k stories, and Sir Archy laughed at it heartily enough. But with all this studied hospitality toward himself, he felt more, every moment, in spite of the Colonel’s sounding periods, that he was merely tolerated at best, and as he had never been snubbed before in his life, the experience did not please him. At ten o’clock he rose to go, saying that he preferred traveling by night under the circumstances. The Colonel invited him to remain longer, with careful politeness, but when the invitation was declined, no more was visible than civil regret. Nevertheless, the Colonel went himself to see that Sir Archy’s horse had been properly fed and rubbed down, and Miss Jemima went to fetch a glass of the home-made wine, which nearly choked Sir Archy in the effort to gulp it down. He was alone for a few moments with pretty little Letty, who had not for a moment abandoned her standoffish attitude.

“Will you be glad to see me the next time I come, little cousin?” he asked, mischievously.

Here was a chance for Letty to annihilate this brazen newcomer, and she proceeded to do it by quoting one of the Colonel’s most elaborate phrases. She got slightly mixed on the word “adamantine,” but still Letty thought it sounded very well when she remarked, loftily, “I have an anti-mundane prejudice toward foreigners meddling in domestic broils.” And every word was punctuated by a scowl.

Miss Letty fondly imagined that the young Englishman would be awed and delighted at this prodigious remark in one so young, but when Sir Archy burst into one of his rich and ringing laughs, Letty promptly realized that he was laughing at her, and could have pulled his hair with pleasure.

Sir Archy was still laughing and Letty was still blushing and scowling when their elders returned. In a little while Sir Archy was galloping down the sandy lane at Corbin Hall, with the faint lights of the grim old house twinkling far behind him. It was an odd experience, and not altogether pleasing. For once, he had met people who knew he was a baronet, and who did not care for it, and who knew he had a great property, and who did not feel the slightest respect for it. There was something sad, something ludicrous, and something noble and disinterested about those refined, unsophisticated people at Corbin Hall; and when that little sulky, frowning thing grew up, she would be a beauty, Sir Archy decided, as he galloped along the sandy road through the moonlight night.