Mark Twain's Medieval Romance (27 page)

“‘So he has it, carefully enclosed in a buckskin case, and is bringing it to you with all the pride and importance of a king’s messenger. I gave him money for the round trip and for a two weeks’ stay in the city. I wish you would see to it that he gets comfortable quarters—Jake won’t need much looking after—he’s able to take care of himself.

“‘I gave him full directions about finding you, and packed his valise myself. Take the watch that he brings you—it’s almost a decoration. It has been worn by true Carterets, and there isn’t a stain upon it nor a false movement of the wheels. Bringing it to you is the crowning joy of Old Jake’s life. I wanted him to have that little outing and that happiness before it is too late. You have often heard us talk about how Jake, pretty badly wounded himself, crawled through the reddened grass at Chancellorsville to where your father lay with the bullet in his dear heart, and took the watch from his pocket to keep it from the “Yanks.”

“‘So, my son, when the old man comes, consider him as a frail but worthy messenger from the oldtime life and home.

“‘You have been so long away from home and so long among the people that we have always regarded as aliens that I’m not sure that Jake will know you when he sees you. But Jake has a keen perception, and I rather believe that he will know a Virginia Carteret at sight. I can’t conceive that even ten years in Yankeeland could change a boy of mine. Anyhow, I’m sure you will know Jake. I put eighteen collars in his valise. If he should have to buy collars, he wears a number 15 ½. Please see that he gets the right ones. He will be no trouble to you at all.

“‘If you are not too busy, I’d like for you to find him a place to board where they have white-meal cornbread, and try to keep him from taking his shoes off in your office or on the street. His right foot swells a little, and he likes to be comfortable.

“‘If you can spare the time, count his handkerchiefs when they come back from the wash. I bought him a dozen new ones before he left. He should be there about the time this letter reaches you. I told him to go straight to your office when he arrives.’”

As soon as Blandford had finished the reading of this, something happened (as there should happen in stories and must happen on the stage).

Percival, the office boy, with his air of despising the world’s output of mill supplies and leather belting, came in to announce that a colored gentleman was outside to see Mr. Blandford Carteret. “Bring him in,” said Blandford, rising.

John Carteret swung around in his chair and said to Percival: “Ask him to wait a few minutes outside. We’ll let you know when to bring him in.”

Then he turned to his cousin with one of those broad, slow smiles that was an inheritance of all the Carterets, and said:

“Bland, I’ve always had a consuming curiosity to understand the differences that you haughty Southerners believe to exist between ‘you all’ and the people of the North. Of course, I know that you consider yourselves made out of finer clay and look upon Adam as only a collateral branch of your ancestry; but I don’t know why. I never could understand the differences between us.”

“Well, John,” said Blandford, laughing, “what you don’t understand about it is just the difference, of course. I suppose it was the feudal way in which we lived that gave us our lordly baronial airs and feeling of superiority.”

“But you are not feudal now,” went on John. “Since we licked you and stole your cotton and mules you’ve had to go to work just as we ‘damnyankees,’ as you call us, have always been doing. And you’re just as proud and exclusive and upper-classy as you were before the war. So it wasn’t your money that caused it.”

“Maybe it was the climate,” said Blandford lightly, “or maybe our Negroes spoiled us. I’ll call old Jake in, now. I’ll be glad to see the old villain again.”

“Wait just a moment,” said John. “I’ve got a little theory I want to test. You and I are pretty much alike in our general appearance. Old Jake hasn’t seen you since you were fifteen. Let’s have him in and play fair and see which of us gets the watch. The old fellow surely ought to be able to pick out his ‘young marster’ without any trouble. The alleged aristocrat superiority of a ‘reb’ ought to be visible to him at once. He couldn’t make the mistake of handing over the timepiece to a Yankee, of course. The loser buys the dinner this evening and two dozen 15 1/2 collars for Jake. Is it a go?”

Blandford agreed heartily. Percival was summoned, and told to usher the “colored gentleman” in.

Uncle Jake stepped inside the private office cautiously. He was a little old man, as black as soot, wrinkled and bald except for a fringe of white wool, cut decorously short, that ran over his ears and around his head. There was nothing of the stage “uncle” about him; his black suit nearly fitted him; his shoes shone, and his straw hat was banded with a gaudy ribbon. In his right hand he carried something carefully concealed by his closed fingers.

Uncle Jake stopped a few steps from the door. Two young men sat in their revolving desk-chairs ten feet apart and looked at him in friendly silence. His gaze slowly shifted many times from one to the other. He felt sure that he was in the presence of one, at least, of the revered family among whose fortunes his life had begun and was to end.

One had the pleasing but haughty Carteret air; the other had the unmistakable straight, long family nose. Both had the keen black eyes, horizontal brows, and thin, smiling lips that had distinguished both the Carteret of the
Mayflower
and him of the brigantine. Old Jake had thought that he could have picked out his young master instantly from a thousand Northerners; but he found himself in difficulties. The best he could do was to use strategy.

“Howdy, Marse Blandford—howdy, suh?” he said looking midway between the young men.

“Howdy, Uncle Jake?” they both answered pleasantly and in unison. “Sit down. Have you brought the watch?”

Uncle Jake chose a hard-bottom chair at a respectful distance, sat on the edge of it, and laid his hat carefully on the floor. The watch in its buckskin case he gripped tightly. He had not risked his life on the battlefield to rescue that watch from his “old marster’s” foes to hand it over again to the enemy.

“Yes, suh; I got it in my hand, suh. I’m gwine give it to you right away in jus’ a minute. Old Missus told me to put it in young Marse Blandford’s hand and tell him to wear it for the family pride and honor. It was a mighty lonesome trip for an old man to make—ten thousand miles, it must be, back to old Vi’ginia, suh. You’ve growed mightily, young marster. I wouldn’t have reconnized you but for yo’ powerful resemblance to the old marster.”

With admirable diplomacy the old man kept his eyes roaming in the space between the two men. His words might have been addressed to either. Though neither wicked nor perverse, he was seeking for a sign. Blandford and John exchanged winks.

“I reckon you done got you ma’s letter,” went on Uncle Jake. “She said she was gwine to write to you about my comin’ along up this er-way.”

“Yes, yes, Uncle Jake,” said John, briskly. “My cousin and I have just been notified to expect you. We are both Carterets, you know.”

“Although one of us,” said Blandford, “was born and raised in the North.”

“So if you will hand over the watch—” said John.

“My cousin and I—” said Blandford.

“We’ll see to it—” said John.

“That comfortable quarters are found for you,” said Blandford.

With creditable ingenuity, old Jake set up a cackling, high-pitched, protracted laugh. He beat his knee, picked up his hat and bent the brim in an apparent paroxysm of humorous appreciation. The seizure afforded him a mask behind which he could roll his eye impartially between, above, and beyond his two tormentors.

“I sees what!” he chuckled, after a while. “You gen’lemen is tryin’ to have fun with the po’ old man. But you can’t fool old Jake. I knowed you, Marse Blandford, the minute I sot eyes on you. You was a po’ skimpy little boy no mo’ than about fo’teen when you lef home to come No’th; but I knowed you the minute I sot eyes on you. You is the mawtal image of old marster. The other gen’leman resembles you mightily, suh; but you can’t fool old Jake on a member of the old Vi’ginia family. No, suh.”

At exactly the same time both Carterets smiled and extended a hand for the watch.

Uncle Jake’s wrinkled black face lost the expression of amusement into which he had vainly twisted it. He knew that he was being teased, and that it made little real difference, as far as its safety went, into which of those outstretched hands he placed the family treasure. But it seemed to him that not only his own pride and loyalty but much of the Virginia Carterets’ was at stake. He had heard down South during the war about that other branch of the family that lived in the North and fought on “the yuther side,” and it had always grieved him. He had followed his “old marster’s” fortunes from stately luxury through war to almost poverty. And now, with the last relic and reminder of him, blessed by “old missus,” and entrusted implicitly to his care, he had come ten thousand miles (as it seemed) to deliver it into the hands of the one who was to wear it and wind it and cherish it and listen to it tick off the unsullied hours that marked the lives of the Carterets—of Virginia.

His experience and conception of the Yankees had been an impression of tyrants—“low-down, common trash”—in blue, laying waste with fire and sword. He had seen the smoke of many burning homesteads almost as grand as Carteret Hall ascending to the drowsy Southern skies. And now he was face to face with one of them—and he could not distinguish him from his “young marster” whom he had come to find and bestow upon him the emblem of his kingship—even as the arm “clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful” laid Excalibur in the right hand of Arthur. He saw before him two young men, easy, kind, courteous, welcoming, either of whom might have been the one he sought. Troubled, bewildered, sorely grieved at his weakness of judgment, old Jake abandoned his loyal subterfuges. His right hand sweated against the buckskin cover of the watch. He was deeply humiliated and chastened. Seriously, now, his prominent, yellow-white eyes closely scanned the two young men. At the end of his scrutiny he was conscious of but one difference between them. One wore a narrow black tie with a white-pearl stickpin. The other’s “four-in-hand” was a narrow blue one pinned with a black pearl.

And then, to old Jake’s relief, there came a sudden distraction. Drama knocked at the door with imperious knuckles, and forced Comedy to the wings, and Drama peeped with a smiling but set face over the footlights.

Percival, the hater of mill supplies, brought in a card, which he handed, with the manner of one bearing a cartel, to Blue-Tie.

“Olivia De Ormond,” read Blue-Tie from the card. He looked inquiringly at his cousin.

“Why not have her in,” said Black-Tie, “and bring matters to a conclusion?”

“Uncle Jake,” said one of the young men, “would you mind taking that chair over there in the corner for a while? A lady is coming in—on some business.”

The lady whom Percival ushered in was young and petulantly, decidedly, freshly, consciously, and intentionally pretty. She was dressed with such expensive plainness that she made you consider lace and ruffles as mere tatters and rags. But one great ostrich plume that she wore would have marked her anywhere in the army of beauty as the wearer of the merry helmet of Navarre.

Miss De Ormond accepted the swivel chair at Blue-Tie’s desk. Then the gentlemen drew leather-upholstered seats conveniently near, and spoke of the weather.

“Yes,” said she, “I noticed it was warmer. But I mustn’t take up too much of your time during business hours. That is,” she continued, “unless we talk business.”

She addressed her words to Blue-Tie with a charming smile.

“Very well,” said he. “You don’t mind my cousin being present, do you? We are generally rather confidential with each other—especially in business matters.”

“Oh, no,” caroled Miss De Ormond. “I’d rather he did hear. He knows all about it, anyhow. In fact, he’s quite a material witness because he was present when you—when it happened. I thought you might want to talk things over before—well, before any action is taken, as I believe the lawyers say.”

“Have you anything in the way of a proposition to make?” asked Black-Tie.

Miss De Ormond looked reflectively at the neat toe of one of her dull-kid pumps.

“I had a proposal made to me,” she said. “If the proposal sticks, it cuts out the proposition. Let’s have that settled first.”

“Well, as far as—” began Blue-Tie.

“Excuse me, cousin,” interrupted Black-Tie, “if you don’t mind my cutting in.” And then he turned, with a good-natured air toward the lady.

“Now, let’s recapitulate a bit,” he said, cheerfully. “All three of us, besides other mutual acquaintances, have been out on a good many larks together.”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to call the birds by another name,” said Miss De Ormond.

“All right,” responded Black-Tie, with unimpaired cheerfulness; “suppose we say ‘squabs’ when we talk about the ‘proposal’ and ‘larks’ when we discuss the ‘proposition.’ You have a quick mind, Miss De Ormond. Two months ago some half-dozen of us went in a motor-car for a day’s run into the country. We stopped at a road-house for dinner. My cousin proposed marriage to you then and there. He was influenced to do so. of course, by the beauty and charm which no one can deny that you possess.”

“I wish I had you for a press agent, Mr. Carteret,” said the beauty, with a dazzling smile.

“You are on the stage, Miss De Ormond,” went on Black-Tie. “You have had, doubtless, many admirers, and perhaps other proposals. You must remember, too, that we were a party of merrymakers on that occasion. There were a good many corks pulled. That the proposal of marriage was made to you by my cousin we cannot deny. But hasn’t it been your experience that, by common consent, such things lose their seriousness when viewed in the next day’s sunlight? Isn’t there something of a ‘code’ among good ‘sports’— I use the word in its best sense—that wipes out each day the follies of the evening previous?”

“Oh, yes,” said Miss De Ormond. “I know that very well. And I’ve always played up to it. But as you seem to be conducting the case—with the silent consent of the defendant—I’ll tell you something more. I’ve got letters from him repeating the proposal. And they’re signed too.”