"Can you spell, Buck?"
"Yes," he says.
"I bet you can"t spell my name," says I.
"I bet you what you dare I can," says he.
"All right," says I, "go ahead."
"G-e-o-r-g-e J-a-x-o-n?there now," he says.
"Well," says I, "you done it, but I didn"t think you could. It ain"t no slouch of a name to spell?right off without studying."
I set it down, private, because somebody might want _me_ to spell it next, and so I wanted to be handy with it and rattle it off like I was used to it.
It was a mighty nice family, and a mighty nice house, too. I hadn"t seen no house out in the country before that was so nice and had so much style. It didn"t have an iron latch on the front door, nor a wooden one with a buckskin string, but a bra.s.s k.n.o.b to turn, the same as houses in town. There warn"t no bed in the parlor, nor a sign of a bed; but heaps of parlors in towns has beds in them. There was a big fireplace that was bricked on the bottom, and the bricks was kept clean and red by pouring water on them and scrubbing them with another brick; sometimes they wash them over with red water-paint that they call Spanish-brown, same as they do in town. They had big bra.s.s dog-irons that could hold up a saw-log. There was a clock on the middle of the mantelpiece, with a picture of a town painted on the bottom half of the gla.s.s front, and a round place in the middle of it for the sun, and you could see the pendulum swinging behind it. It was beautiful to hear that clock tick; and sometimes when one of these peddlers had been along and scoured her up and got her in good shape, she would start in and strike a hundred and fifty before she got tuckered out. They wouldn"t took any money for her.
Well, there was a big outlandish parrot on each side of the clock, made out of something like chalk, and painted up gaudy. By one of the parrots was a cat made of crockery, and a crockery dog by the other; and when you pressed down on them they squeaked, but didn"t open their mouths nor look different nor interested. They squeaked through underneath. There was a couple of big wild-turkey-wing fans spread out behind those things. On the table in the middle of the room was a kind of a lovely crockery basket that had apples and oranges and peaches and grapes piled up in it, which was much redder and yellower and prettier than real ones is, but they warn"t real because you could see where pieces had got chipped off and showed the white chalk, or whatever it was, underneath.
This table had a cover made out of beautiful oilcloth, with a red and blue spread-eagle painted on it, and a painted border all around. It come all the way from Philadelphia, they said. There was some books, too, piled up perfectly exact, on each corner of the table. One was a big family Bible full of pictures. One was Pilgrim"s Progress, about a man that left his family, it didn"t say why. I read considerable in it now and then. The statements was interesting, but tough. Another was Friendship"s Offering, full of beautiful stuff and poetry; but I didn"t read the poetry. Another was Henry Clay"s Speeches, and another was Dr.
Gunn"s Family Medicine, which told you all about what to do if a body was sick or dead. There was a hymn book, and a lot of other books. And there was nice split-bottom chairs, and perfectly sound, too?not bagged down in the middle and busted, like an old basket.
They had pictures hung on the walls?mainly Washingtons and Lafayettes, and battles, and Highland Marys, and one called "Signing the Declaration." There was some that they called crayons, which one of the daughters which was dead made her own self when she was only fifteen years old. They was different from any pictures I ever see before?blacker, mostly, than is common. One was a woman in a slim black dress, belted small under the armpits, with bulges like a cabbage in the middle of the sleeves, and a large black scoop-shovel bonnet with a black veil, and white slim ankles crossed about with black tape, and very wee black slippers, like a chisel, and she was leaning pensive on a tombstone on her right elbow, under a weeping willow, and her other hand hanging down her side holding a white handkerchief and a reticule, and underneath the picture it said "Shall I Never See Thee More Alas."
Another one was a young lady with her hair all combed up straight to the top of her head, and knotted there in front of a comb like a chair-back, and she was crying into a handkerchief and had a dead bird laying on its back in her other hand with its heels up, and underneath the picture it said "I Shall Never Hear Thy Sweet Chirrup More Alas."
There was one where a young lady was at a window looking up at the moon, and tears running down her cheeks; and she had an open letter in one hand with black sealing wax showing on one edge of it, and she was mashing a locket with a chain to it against her mouth, and underneath the picture it said "And Art Thou Gone Yes Thou Art Gone Alas." These was all nice pictures, I reckon, but I didn"t somehow seem to take to them, because if ever I was down a little they always give me the fan-tods. Everybody was sorry she died, because she had laid out a lot more of these pictures to do, and a body could see by what she had done what they had lost. But I reckoned that with her disposition she was having a better time in the graveyard. She was at work on what they said was her greatest picture when she took sick, and every day and every night it was her prayer to be allowed to live till she got it done, but she never got the chance. It was a picture of a young woman in a long white gown, standing on the rail of a bridge all ready to jump off, with her hair all down her back, and looking up to the moon, with the tears running down her face, and she had two arms folded across her breast, and two arms stretched out in front, and two more reaching up towards the moon?and the idea was to see which pair would look best, and then scratch out all the other arms; but, as I was saying, she died before she got her mind made up, and now they kept this picture over the head of the bed in her room, and every time her birthday come they hung flowers on it. Other times it was hid with a little curtain. The young woman in the picture had a kind of a nice sweet face, but there was so many arms it made her look too spidery, seemed to me.
This young girl kept a sc.r.a.p-book when she was alive, and used to paste obituaries and accidents and cases of patient suffering in it out of the Presbyterian Observer, and write poetry after them out of her own head.
It was very good poetry. This is what she wrote about a boy by the name of Stephen Dowling Bots that fell down a well and was drownded:
ODE TO STEPHEN DOWLING BOTS, DEC"D
And did young Stephen sicken, And did young Stephen die? And did the sad hearts thicken, And did the mourners cry?
No; such was not the fate of Young Stephen Dowling Bots; Though sad hearts round him thickened, "Twas not from sickness" shots.
No whooping-cough did rack his frame, Nor measles drear with spots; Not these impaired the sacred name Of Stephen Dowling Bots.
Despised love struck not with woe That head of curly knots, Nor stomach troubles laid him low, Young Stephen Dowling Bots.
O no. Then list with tearful eye, Whilst I his fate do tell. His soul did from this cold world fly By falling down a well.
They got him out and emptied him; Alas it was too late; His spirit was gone for to sport aloft In the realms of the good and great.
If Emmeline Grangerford could make poetry like that before she was fourteen, there ain"t no telling what she could a done by and by. Buck said she could rattle off poetry like nothing. She didn"t ever have to stop to think. He said she would slap down a line, and if she couldn"t find anything to rhyme with it would just scratch it out and slap down another one, and go ahead. She warn"t particular; she could write about anything you choose to give her to write about just so it was sadful.
Every time a man died, or a woman died, or a child died, she would be on hand with her "tribute" before he was cold. She called them tributes.
The neighbors said it was the doctor first, then Emmeline, then the undertaker?the undertaker never got in ahead of Emmeline but once, and then she hung fire on a rhyme for the dead person"s name, which was Whistler. She warn"t ever the same after that; she never complained, but she kinder pined away and did not live long. Poor thing, many"s the time I made myself go up to the little room that used to be hers and get out her poor old sc.r.a.p-book and read in it when her pictures had been aggravating me and I had soured on her a little. I liked all that family, dead ones and all, and warn"t going to let anything come between us. Poor Emmeline made poetry about all the dead people when she was alive, and it didn"t seem right that there warn"t n.o.body to make some about her now she was gone; so I tried to sweat out a verse or two myself, but I couldn"t seem to make it go somehow. They kept Emmeline"s room trim and nice, and all the things fixed in it just the way she liked to have them when she was alive, and n.o.body ever slept there.
The old lady took care of the room herself, though there was plenty of n.i.g.g.e.rs, and she sewed there a good deal and read her Bible there mostly.
Well, as I was saying about the parlor, there was beautiful curtains on the windows: white, with pictures painted on them of castles with vines all down the walls, and cattle coming down to drink. There was a little old piano, too, that had tin pans in it, I reckon, and nothing was ever so lovely as to hear the young ladies sing "The Last Link is Broken"
and play "The Battle of Prague" on it. The walls of all the rooms was plastered, and most had carpets on the floors, and the whole house was whitewashed on the outside.
It was a double house, and the big open place betwixt them was roofed and floored, and sometimes the table was set there in the middle of the day, and it was a cool, comfortable place. Nothing couldn"t be better.
And warn"t the cooking good, and just bushels of it too!
CHAPTER XVIII.
COL. Grangerford was a gentleman, you see. He was a gentleman all over; and so was his family. He was well born, as the saying is, and that"s worth as much in a man as it is in a horse, so the Widow Douglas said, and n.o.body ever denied that she was of the first aristocracy in our town; and pap he always said it, too, though he warn"t no more quality than a mudcat himself. Col. Grangerford was very tall and very slim, and had a darkish-paly complexion, not a sign of red in it anywheres; he was clean shaved every morning all over his thin face, and he had the thinnest kind of lips, and the thinnest kind of nostrils, and a high nose, and heavy eyebrows, and the blackest kind of eyes, sunk so deep back that they seemed like they was looking out of caverns at you, as you may say. His forehead was high, and his hair was black and straight and hung to his shoulders. His hands was long and thin, and every day of his life he put on a clean shirt and a full suit from head to foot made out of linen so white it hurt your eyes to look at it; and on Sundays he wore a blue tail-coat with bra.s.s b.u.t.tons on it. He carried a mahogany cane with a silver head to it. There warn"t no frivolishness about him, not a bit, and he warn"t ever loud. He was as kind as he could be?you could feel that, you know, and so you had confidence. Sometimes he smiled, and it was good to see; but when he straightened himself up like a liberty-pole, and the lightning begun to flicker out from under his eyebrows, you wanted to climb a tree first, and find out what the matter was afterwards. He didn"t ever have to tell anybody to mind their manners?everybody was always good-mannered where he was. Everybody loved to have him around, too; he was sunshine most always?I mean he made it seem like good weather. When he turned into a cloudbank it was awful dark for half a minute, and that was enough; there wouldn"t nothing go wrong again for a week.
When him and the old lady come down in the morning all the family got up out of their chairs and give them good-day, and didn"t set down again till they had set down. Then Tom and Bob went to the sideboard where the decanter was, and mixed a gla.s.s of bitters and handed it to him, and he held it in his hand and waited till Tom"s and Bob"s was mixed, and then they bowed and said, "Our duty to you, sir, and madam;" and _they_ bowed the least bit in the world and said thank you, and so they drank, all three, and Bob and Tom poured a spoonful of water on the sugar and the mite of whisky or apple brandy in the bottom of their tumblers, and give it to me and Buck, and we drank to the old people too.
Bob was the oldest and Tom next?tall, beautiful men with very broad shoulders and brown faces, and long black hair and black eyes. They dressed in white linen from head to foot, like the old gentleman, and wore broad Panama hats.
Then there was Miss Charlotte; she was twenty-five, and tall and proud and grand, but as good as she could be when she warn"t stirred up; but when she was she had a look that would make you wilt in your tracks, like her father. She was beautiful.
So was her sister, Miss Sophia, but it was a different kind. She was gentle and sweet like a dove, and she was only twenty.
Each person had their own n.i.g.g.e.r to wait on them?Buck too. My n.i.g.g.e.r had a monstrous easy time, because I warn"t used to having anybody do anything for me, but Buck"s was on the jump most of the time.
This was all there was of the family now, but there used to be more?three sons; they got killed; and Emmeline that died.
The old gentleman owned a lot of farms and over a hundred n.i.g.g.e.rs.
Sometimes a stack of people would come there, horseback, from ten or fifteen mile around, and stay five or six days, and have such junketings round about and on the river, and dances and picnics in the woods daytimes, and b.a.l.l.s at the house nights. These people was mostly kinfolks of the family. The men brought their guns with them. It was a handsome lot of quality, I tell you.
There was another clan of aristocracy around there?five or six families?mostly of the name of Shepherdson. They was as high-toned and well born and rich and grand as the tribe of Grangerfords. The Shepherdsons and Grangerfords used the same steamboat landing, which was about two mile above our house; so sometimes when I went up there with a lot of our folks I used to see a lot of the Shepherdsons there on their fine horses.
One day Buck and me was away out in the woods hunting, and heard a horse coming. We was crossing the road. Buck says:
"Quick! Jump for the woods!"
We done it, and then peeped down the woods through the leaves. Pretty soon a splendid young man come galloping down the road, setting his horse easy and looking like a soldier. He had his gun across his pommel. I had seen him before. It was young Harney Shepherdson. I heard Buck"s gun go off at my ear, and Harney"s hat tumbled off from his head. He grabbed his gun and rode straight to the place where we was hid. But we didn"t wait. We started through the woods on a run. The woods warn"t thick, so I looked over my shoulder to dodge the bullet, and twice I seen Harney cover Buck with his gun; and then he rode away the way he come?to get his hat, I reckon, but I couldn"t see. We never stopped running till we got home. The old gentleman"s eyes blazed a minute?"twas pleasure, mainly, I judged?then his face sort of smoothed down, and he says, kind of gentle:
"I don"t like that shooting from behind a bush. Why didn"t you step into the road, my boy?"
"The Shepherdsons don"t, father. They always take advantage."
Miss Charlotte she held her head up like a queen while Buck was telling his tale, and her nostrils spread and her eyes snapped. The two young men looked dark, but never said nothing. Miss Sophia she turned pale, but the color come back when she found the man warn"t hurt.
Soon as I could get Buck down by the corn-cribs under the trees by ourselves, I says:
"Did you want to kill him, Buck?"
"Well, I bet I did."
"What did he do to you?"
"Him? He never done nothing to me."