"Oh my dear, dear, child, what is to become of you!" she exclaimed disparagingly. "Susan, come here, my pretty gyurl," called the lady.
"Oh! how pretty are your sparkling jetty eyes," she exclaimed as she turned up the little negro"s face to kiss her. "Now dear, how old are you?"
"Me!" asked the girl, "I"s furteen gwine in foteen."
"And now tell me who made you?"
"Who made me!" echoed the child. "Oh, I fort yu axed dat ar boy who made him," she answered with a broad smile.
"So I did; now I wish to know who made you?"
"I aint no kin to dat ar boy, kase his daddy aint got but wun eye und my daddy has got too eyes."
"Who made you, child?"
"Ho, I furgot," replied Susan "Gord made me."
"That is correct," answered the teacher, "Now what did G.o.d make you out of?"
"Outen?" again replied Susan, "Oh, outen la.s.ses candy. My mudder says kase I"s so sweet."
"Dear, dear, dear, shall I give entirely up?" exclaimed the discomfited lady. "Shall I try again? yes, perhaps I shall find a little leaven directly." "Come here Willie; I can see from your bright face that you are a smart little boy. Now tell me did you ever hear of the rebellion?"
"Belliun?" echoed Willie as he thrust his fingers into his mouth and out again with a pop that made the children t.i.tter. "Neber heerd ob nuffin else epseps de belliun."
"What is a traitor, dear boy?"
"Tater?" "What sort er tater, sweet tator ur Orish tater?" enquired Willie.
"Perhaps I may teach the little heathen to understand," said the school marm, suggestively. "Willie," she asked "What do you call that gentleman who lives in that fine house over the way?"
"Calls him!" again repeated Willie, "I calls him po white trash; what dos yer call him?"
"Oh dear, dear, dear," screamed the teacher utterly bewildered. One more time she exclaimed "James, come here," and another little negro as black as tar with one eye closed by a great knot upon it came forward.
"What is the matter, James, with your face?"
"Umph!" grunted James, "Specks if yer seed whar I been you"d know "dout axin. Dat ar boy has been scrougin me lak I wus a trabball."
"James, if you are a bad boy do you know where you will go when you die?" asked the lady.
"Umph," exclaimed James, "I haint eben a studdin erbout which erway I"m a gwine arter I die. I"m studdin which erway I"m ergwine arter I git outen dat ar do. See dat ar boy a shaking he hed?" "He sez how dat ef I c.u.m by his mudders house agwine to my mudders house he"s agwine to scrouge me sum mo, und I"m skeert to go tuther way."
"One other question" (half aside), "James, if you live to be a man what are you going to do for a living?"
"Gwine to do?" said James, "I"m agwine to be a lyer, so I kin set in de kote house und sa.s.s de jedge." And thus the farce went on day after day under the shadow of Ingleside.
Clarissa caught a depredating urchin trying to stand upon his head in a half-filled barrel of crushed sugar in the pantry and said to herself "You stays dar twell I get me er plank," and creeping like a cat back again, and taking a fresh purchase on the board, she came down upon "de middle ships of dat dar ar yungun lak er buzzum of struction; pend upon it, Miss Alice, dat ar n.i.g.g.ar is er flying twill yit wid sweetnin nuff to last twell de July flies c.u.m agin."
"This nest of dirt-daubers," as Colonel Seymour fitly described the school, became a nuisance that must be abated by hook or crook. The law was nothing more than a great stalking shadow. "If I could only secure the services of Jake Flowers the regulator, thought the old man, "he and I shall be a law unto ourselves."
This was the man whom Colonel Seymour desired as his file leader upon the drill ground when the stalking shadow of the law failed to keep time to the music, a law unto himself, whose forum should be "thar or tharabouts" on the Ingleside plantation.
Jake Flowers the regulator had violated a law of the Sabbath by working out some devilish invention, which, he observed with satisfaction, to his wife, would keep the coroner sitting upon corpses until "the c.r.a.ps were smartly out of the gra.s.s." The regulator stood in the open door, looking out upon the great sheets of water that were falling from the clouds. As he stood in his muddy boots, with both hands deep down into his pockets, his carrotty hair in great shocks standing out of a crownless hat as if an electric current had just pa.s.sed through it, he was picturesque in the extreme.
"Sally Ann!" he exclaimed "I am thinking."
"Well, think agen," Sally Ann answered tartly, "That mout fetch back old Nance and the biddies." Sally Ann had been pouting ever since Jake went to jail for the loss of her setting hen and the chicks.
"You haint got no call to go back on me, on the occasion of the old hen and the n.i.g.g.e.r," said Jake seriously. "Hit wus providence or hit wus the guvement, and twixt the two they has got a mighty prejudy agen a poor man; when hit comes ter shullikin and pilferen they is hard to hender.
Weuns haint no more than dandy-lions in the path of the harrycane; leastwise weuns kaint hit back.
"Nor hit haint providence; nor hit haint the guvement, nor hit haint prejudy," Sally Ann replied angrily "Hit are pine blank cussedness. Some folks is onnery Jake, and it is like the swamp-ager, hit is powerful raging when the c.r.a.p is knee-deep in the gra.s.s. I shouldn"t wonder nary bit and grain if Andy"s c.r.a.p aint in the yallers same as ourn." This was said very provokingly, and Jake felt the sting of the reproof.
"Jeminy-cracky!" he exclaimed in a pa.s.sion, "Harkee Sally, hit is t.i.t fur tat; be ye a pinin fur another fellow?"
"Why I guess maybe--I reckon--I mout a.s.sist yu"uns, leastwise I haint a going to stand in yu"unsway." The regulator looked down as by accident into the cradle: there was the sleeping babe, the pledge of a love that had been hedged in all these days by privations, and his heart went out toward his wife with the old time affection.
"Naw Sally Ann" he exclaimed with a husky voice, "Weuns kaint part when there is no one to come betwixt us; weuns kaint say good-bye twell yuuns is on yon side of the river."
The roses had faded out of the cheek of his wife, but there was the old-fashioned sparkle in her eye; there was the old time love in her heart, crossed sometimes by the perverse nature of her lord and master.
"Haint you made your will Jake?" asked Sally-Ann half seriously.
"Naw is you skeert honey?"
"Andy has done and made hissen and fetched it over here to read last Sunday when you wus gone to the mash and hit read like scriptur."
Jake had been envious of Andy Vose for some time. When the need of the country for men good and true had been most urgent, Vose had deserted to the ranks of the enemy, and now he counted his flocks and herds by the score. Jake was also jealous of the attentions the scalawag was from time to time showing his young wife; these visits occurred most frequently in the absence of the regulator, and these intrusions as he felt they were, gave him alarm. After reflection, Jake concealing his suspicions remarked with apparent unconcern, "Read like scriptur, I"ll be dorg gone!" "I haint got no call to make a will like Andy, honey. De n.i.g.g.e.r officer levelled on old Nance and the biddies, and the live stock has run plum out epsepting the babe and it is yourn any way honey."
This man was a terror to the freedmen. They had a tradition among themselves that the very last seen of the regulator until after the war was over was his ascension in a cloud of fire and smoke into "de elements" holding fast to a dead negro. Jake said that this was "pintedly" true, but that he came down again as his captain was going up who told him when he had fairly lit to "charge bagonets." In the language of the plains this Jake Flowers was an "eye opener." His personal attractions he said had been spoilt by the blamed war. I am not sure that the name of Jake Flowers appears upon the b.l.o.o.d.y roster of battles lost and won; but for his doings at the Crater fight, so Jake has observed, historians would have reversed the incidents of that b.l.o.o.d.y day.
He claimed always to be the "Survival of the Fittest" and with the blind faith of the Moslem he believed that there was a "Providence that shapes our ends, rough hew them as we may."
His favorite posture whenever animated was as follows; he would sit with his right leg crossed over his left, gently swaying his foot, with his bearded chin resting reposefully in the palm of his hand, with the fore and middle finger forming the letter V and pressed to his lips; through which he would now and then expectorate; the man was also spavined in the right knee joint that caused him to walk like a sailor on his "sea legs." Like other men he had his delusions and whether good or evil, they were the rule of action of his life. Jake was the reinforcement vehemently demanded in this conjuncture. "With the regulator armed and equipped, the enemy will flee without taking order as to its line of march," thought the old man.
"I am utterly bewildered; can you help me Mr. Flowers to drive these vermin from my home?" he asked the regulator.
"Wall, now," drawled the regulator, "I reckon I mout ef I am not pestered ur nuthing; which eend do yer expect me to take holt of?"
Jake gave an extra motion to his spavined leg and looked up quizzically into the rigid face of the old man.
"Clean them out sir, root and branch, if you will, sir!" exclaimed the Colonel.
"Prezactly so," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the regulator, "Prezactly so," he reiterated.
"Does yer mean it pine blank, mister?" he again asked.
"Yes, yes, emphatically I do," responded Colonel Seymour.
"Drat my b.u.t.tons if the thing haint done and did!" the regulator answered with emphasis and taking his leave observed, "I"ll see you later, mister."