A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others | Page 8

said he, 'and you raised here! Isn't that very sudden?' She told him it was, and asked him what he was going to do for a home when the place was rented?
"'Me, Jane? I shan't do anythin'. I shall stay here. If your money affairs are so badly mixed up that you're obliged to leave yo' home, I am very deeply grieved, but I am powerless to help. I am not responsible for the way this war ended. I was born here, and here I am going to stay." And he did. Nothing could move him. She finally had to rent him with the house,--he to have three meals a day, and a room over the kitchen.
"For two years after that Kent was so disgusted with life, and the turn of events, that he used to lie out on a rawhide, under a big sycamore tree in front of the po'ch, and get a farm nigger to pull him round into the shade by the tail of the hide, till the grass was wore as bare as yo' hand. Then he got a bias-cut rockin'-chair, and rocked himself round.
"The strawberry man said, of co'se, that he was too lazy to live. But I look deeper than that. To me, gentlemen, it was a crushin', silent protest against the money power of our times. And it never broke his spirit, neither. Why, when the census man came down a year befo' the colonel's death, he found him sittin' in his rockin'-chair, bare-headed. Without havin' the decency to take off his own hat, or even ask Kent's permission to speak to him, the census man began askin' questions,--all kinds, as those damnable fellows do. Colonel Kent let him ramble on for a while, then he brought him up standin'.
"'Who did you say you were, suh?'
"'The United States census-taker.'
"'Ah, a message from the enemy. Take a seat on the grass.'
"'It's only a matter of form,' said the man.
"'So I presume, and very bad form, suh,' looking at the hat still on the man's head. 'But go on.'
"'Well, what's yo' business?' asked the agent, taking out his book and pencil.
"'My business, suh?' said the colonel, risin' from his chair, mad clear through,--'I've no business, suh. I am a prisoner of war waitin' to be exchanged!' and he stomped into the house."
Here the major burst into a laugh, straightened himself up to his full height, squeezed the keys back into his pocket, and said he must take a look into the state-rooms on the deck to see if they were all ready for his friends for the night.
When I turned in for the night, he was on deck again, still talking, his hearty laugh ringing out every few moments. Only the white-whiskered man was left. The other camp-stools were empty.
II
At early dawn the steamboat slowed down, and a scow, manned by two bare-footed negroes with sweep oars, rounded to. In a few moments the major, two guns, two valises, Jack, and I were safely landed on its wet bottom, the major's bag with its precious contents stowed between his knees.
To the left, a mile or more away, lay Crab Island, the landed estate of our host,--a delicate, green thread on the horizon line, broken by two knots, one evidently a large house with chimneys, and the other a clump of trees. The larger knot proved to be the manor house that sheltered the belongings of the major, with the wine-cellars of marvelous vintage, the table that groaned, the folding mahogany doors that swung back for bevies of beauties, and perhaps, for all I knew, the gray-haired, ebony butler in the green coat. The smaller knot, Jack said, screened from public view the little club-house belonging to his friends and himself.
As the sun rose and we neared the shore, there came into view on the near end of the island the rickety outline of a palsied old dock, clutching with one arm a group of piles anchored in the marsh grass, and extending the other as if in welcome to the slow-moving scow. We accepted the invitation, threw a line over a thumb of a pile, and in five minutes were seated in a country stage. Ten more, and we backed up to an old-fashioned colonial porch, with sloping roof and dormer windows supported by high white columns. Leaning over the broken railing of the porch was a half-grown negro boy, hatless and bare-footed; inside the door, looking furtively out, half concealing her face with her apron, stood an old negro woman, her head bound with a bandana kerchief, while peeping from behind an outbuilding was a group of children in sun-bonnets and straw hats,--"the farmer's boys and girls," the major said, waving his hand, as we drove up, his eyes brightening. Then there was the