Mortmain Part 46

Perhaps it was. I never had the heart to go there afterwards. One thing I remember was a grand old garden laid out in terraces, the walks bordered by box two hundred years old and as high as your head, where little red and green snakes curled up and sunned themselves--a garden full of old-fas.h.i.+oned flowers and fountains and sundials, and a water garden, too, with lilies of every sort; and there was a family graveyard right on the place where they had all been buried--where his father had been--with a ghost--a female ghost--named s.h.i.+rley, I recall that, who flitted among the trees on misty mornings. Oh, it was a great picture!

I'll never see that old place. Perhaps it's just as well. It couldn't have been as beautiful as he painted it. You see I'd been born in a twenty-one-foot red-brick house on Beacon Hill.

"Then as we were sitting there on the steps, I broad awake but in fairyland, out from under the trees shuffled Moses's quaint, crooked figure. Wanted to know if eb'ryt'ing was all right with young Ma.r.s.e.

Azam and Bhurtpore was fixed first-cla.s.s, suh. An' he'd done got a little cubby-hole down in the stable to sleep in. Wuz dere any orders to-night, suh? An' what time should he bring Azam roun' in de mornin'?

"'Go 'long with Moses, Jim,' said Randolph. The dog obediently arose, stretched himself, and descended the steps.

"'Good night, Ma.r.s.e d.i.c.k,' said Moses.

"'Good night, Moses,' replied d.i.c.k. And the two, the darky and the dog, disappeared under the shadow of the elms."

Mr. Curtis knocked the ash from his extinct cigar and relit it at the top of the lamp chimney.

"I should just like to have seen him," remarked Ralph enthusiastically.

"And to think that he really lived in this room. How did that happen?

And which bedroom did he have?"

"The one on the left, nearest the door," replied Mr. Curtis.

Over in Stoughton some fool was strumming a banjo, singing "I'm a soldier now, Lizette"--rottenly. And some one else, of the same mind as myself apparently, leaned out of the window in the room above us and holloed:

"Oh, quit that! Try being a freshman a while! Lizette won't care."

Evidently the singer decided to follow the advice thus gratuitously given, for the banjo ceased. Then came one of those long silences when you felt instinctively that in a moment something might happen to spoil the excellent opportunity of it, throw us off the key as it were, or break its placid surface like an inconsequent pebble. But Ralph, in a singularly moderate tone, as if leading the theme gently that it might not become startled and break away, continued:

"You said something about dueling pistols, you know."

Mr. Curtis looked at him with that same quizzical smile which my roommate had called forth before.

"That's it. All you want is gunpowder, treason, and plot. My feeble attempt at character sketching has been a failure. Well, now to your dessert."

"You are entirely wrong," said Ralph, rather mortified. "Randolph must have been a perfect corker. I wish we had some chaps like that in 19--.

But the Southerners nowadays all seem to go to Chapel Hill, or William and Mary, or Tulane, or some of those G.o.d-forsaken places where I don't believe they even have a ball nine. Only, naturally, I wanted to make sure of the bullet hole. You see," he added cunningly, "that bullet hole is the thing that links us together. That's how we'll know when you've gone that it wasn't all a dream."

Mr. Curtis laughed outright.

"You're a funny boy," said he. "Well, two or three days later I asked Randolph to room with me. The matter was easily adjusted, and Moses spent nearly a week in fixing up this den here with what he called 'Ma.r.s.e d.i.c.k's contraptions.' Save the old picture there, there's not a thing in the place that suggests the room as it looked then. From extreme meagerness, if not poverty, of furniture it sprang into opulence--almost ornately magnificent it seemed to me with my conservative New England tastes and still more conservative New England pocketbook. I remember a silver-mounted revolver was always lying on one end of the mantelpiece, while in the center was a rosewood case of pistols, curious affairs, with long octagonal barrels, and stocks inlaid with mother-of-pearl and silver.

"Randolph soon became a celebrity. He could no more avoid being the most conspicuous figure in Cambridge than he could help addressing his acquaintances as 'suh.' And in spite of his natural reserve, a quality which was curiously combined with entire ease in conversation, he soon acquired a large acquaintance and rather a following.

"Needless to say, I became his almost inseparable companion. d.i.c.k's second hunter, Bhurtpore, had been placed entirely at my service, and scarce a day pa.s.sed that autumn without our scouring the country roads for miles around, followed by three or four of the hounds. Jim, the mastiff, while we were absent on these excursions, spent his time lying beneath the ebony table in 10 Holworthy awaiting our return.

"Randolph tried unsuccessfully to organize a hunt. It soon appeared that Azam and Bhurtpore were the only hunters in Cambridge, and polo had not yet been introduced into this country. Frequently we would take a circle of twenty miles in the course of an afternoon, galloping up quiet old Brattle Street, out around Fresh Pond, until we struck the Concord turnpike, which we followed over Belmont Hill, down past an old yellow farmhouse with blue blinds, at the juncture of the highway to Lexington and what we called the 'Willow Road,' and then under the overarching boughs, through soggy fields full of bright clumps of alders, until the fading light of the afternoon warned us that it was time to turn our horses' heads in the direction of Cambridge."

"We have a Polo Club," said Ralph, "but we haven't any horses."

"Well, now, to get down to your bullet hole," continued Mr. Curtis.

"Hazing, of course, was an ordinary affair, and it was not uncommon to see a pitched battle of fisticuffs going on behind some college building.

"Now, mind you, the hazing was not done by the best men, but by the worst, and it was always the tougher elements in the soph.o.m.ore cla.s.s that availed themselves of this method of showing that they were feeling their oats. Every one of us looked forward, sooner or later, to getting his dose, and any freshman who smoked cigars and kept a n.i.g.g.e.r might have expected it as a matter of course. But d.i.c.k was a chap that did just as he pleased, and did it with such a confounded air--the '_bel air_,' you know--that you'd have thought we were all a parcel of cavaliers walking in a palace garden. I don't blame them for feeling that he ought to be taken down a peg, when you take everything into consideration.

"For example, imagine his kissing old Mrs. Podridge's hand at a faculty tea! Of course the antiquated thing liked it, but it was so conspicuous.

And worse than all, inviting Prex into his room to have a cigar and a gla.s.s of Madeira! Think of that! The queer part of it was that Prex nearly accepted the invitation.

"'Why not?' said d.i.c.k, in answer to my expostulation. 'Do you mean that in the North one gentleman cannot, without criticism, extend to another the hospitality of his own room?'

"It was all in the point of view. What could you say?

"Some carping fellows spread a canard that Randolph was trying to introduce slavery into Cambridge. d.i.c.k did not even notice it sufficiently to direct Moses to display his manumission papers. Of course there was a deal of talking about him, mostly good-natured chaff, and had it not been for Watkins I doubt if anything would have happened. This person was an ill-conditioned, dissatisfied fellow who had come from a small town in Rhode Island with a considerable amount of the initial velocity arising out of local prestige, which, wearing off, left him in a miserable state of doubt as to what to do to rehabilitate himself in the garments of distinction. As you would say, he 'had it in'

for Randolph for no reason in the world. d.i.c.k was just too good-looking, too prosperous, too independent--that was all. He had an idea, I suppose, that if he could knock the statue off its pedestal he might perhaps occupy the vacant situation.

"One evening I inquired carelessly of Randolph what he should do if the soph.o.m.ores tried to haze him. He replied, nonchalantly, that he should exercise the sacred right of self-defense as circ.u.mstances might require. If anyone tried to interfere with him he must take the consequences. In certain situations the only thing to do was to shoot your aggressor. I looked up to see if he were joking, but his face was entirely serious.

"Another chap who was sitting there laughed and slapped his knee. I can see now that it was just this kind of thing that gave Randolph's enemies some color for saying that he was a sort of crazy fool. Perhaps I was playing Sancho Panza to his Don Quixote, after all.

"Presently a lot of other fellows joined us, and by the time Moses appeared we had disposed of a couple of bottles of old Port, from under d.i.c.k's bed, and were loudly declaiming our loyalty to the Old Dominion and consigning the cla.s.s of '63 to eternal torment. In the midst of the uproar some one grabbed Moses and shoved him upon the steps, shouting 'Speech! Speech!' What put the idea into his head I can't imagine--probably antislavery speeches in the square which he had overheard.

"'Gem'men,' he began, 'I'se not 'customed ter makin' speeches outa meetin', 'specially ter gem'men like you-all, but I'se got suthin' I'se been a-studyin' ober an' what's a-worryin' me, what I'd like ter say.

It's des' 'bout Ma.r.s.e d.i.c.k. I des' come from down de street whar I done hear some gem'men a-speechifyin' 'bout him an' me. Dey says' (his voice rose indignantly) 'dat Ma.r.s.e d.i.c.k didn't hab no business fo' ter hab me here. Dat he didn't hab no right ter hab me work fo' him nohow, or Old Ma.r.s.e; an' dey calls Ma.r.s.e d.i.c.k some mighty mean names. Now I des' 'ud like ter know ef I ain't Ma.r.s.e d.i.c.k's boy an' why he ain't got no right fo' ter hab me work fo' him. Didn't I work fo' Old Ma.r.s.e 'fo' he died, an' didn' my ole man work fo' him, an' ain't I allus been a-workin' fo'

Ole Miss and Missy Dorothy? Him an' me's been bred up togedder; I'se been a-totin' with him eber since he wuz born, ain't I, Ma.r.s.e d.i.c.k?'

"He paused amid a dead silence. None of us spoke. I looked at Randolph and saw that he was gripping his pipe hard between his teeth.

"'Well, gem'men, I doesn't want leab Ma.r.s.e d.i.c.k, ef I is a free n.i.g.g.e.r, an' I doesn't want you ter let 'em tek me away from him, cuz he got no one else ter look out fo' him, an' Azam an' Bur'pore an' de dogs, an'

Ole Miss say when I lef' de Hall how I was neber to leab Ma.r.s.e d.i.c.k--nohow. An', gem'men, you won't let 'em, will yer?'

"He waited for our a.s.surance. Oh, the constraint of generations of New England character! It was so difficult for us to say what we felt. d.i.c.k was staring out under the trees with glistening eyes. Some fellow made a few halting remarks and said we'd stick up for him and Moses to the last man, and then we all pounded Moses on the back, and d.i.c.k got out some more Port and we had another toast, but something had hit us hard."

Mr. Curtis closed his eyes and leaned back his head for a moment as if trying to recall some forgotten memory.

"The next evening," he continued presently, "we were both sitting before the fire. Jim lay as usual beneath the table, his head pointing toward the door. The lamps had not yet been lit and the windows, I remember, were open, for the day had been warm--one of those Cambridge Indian-summer days. From the lower end of the Yard came a confused murmur of voices, mingled with occasional shouts. The voices grew louder, and shortly there came a loud cheer, followed by the tramp of many feet. I stepped to the window and saw through the dusk a cl.u.s.ter of men moving slowly up the sidewalk by Ma.s.sachusetts Hall. In a moment I realized that the time might be at hand for the application of my roommate's recently declared principles. With a distinct feeling of apprehension I drew in my head and was about hurriedly to suggest a walk, when there came the sound of flying feet, and Moses, with scared face and starting eyes, burst into the room.

"'Oh, Ma.r.s.e d.i.c.k,' he cried in a trembling voice, 'dey's a-comin' ter kill yer an' tek me away from yer. Dey's goin' ter hurt yer drefful!

Doan' let 'em do it, Ma.r.s.e Curtis!'

"d.i.c.k had risen quietly and was now engaged in lighting the lamp upon the center table, while I shut and locked both door and windows. Jim got up from his place beneath the table and watched us uneasily. The noise of the crowd grew nearer. Then suddenly I heard a sharp click behind me and turned to see Randolph holding one of the silver-mounted pistols which he had taken from its case upon the mantel. He was calmly engaged in loading.

"'Look here, d.i.c.k!' I cried, 'for Heaven's sake put that back!'

"Before I could say another word our a.s.sailants entered the hallway of the building. There came a babel of voices, followed by a loud pounding upon the door. We returned no answer. Then there were shouts of:

"'Run him out!'

"'Liberty forever!'

"'No slaves in Harvard!'

"'Smash in the door!'