Cudjo's Cave Part 40

And the gay captain made a bootjack of the old negro.

"Now shut up the house and go to bed!" he said, dismissing him with a kick.

After Toby had retired, and Salina had wiped her eyes, and Lysander had got his feet comfortably installed in the old clergyman's slippers, the long-estranged couple grew affectionate and confidential.

"Law, Sallie!" said the captain, caressingly, "we can be as happy as two pigs in clover!" And he proceeded to interpret, in plain prosaic detail, those blissful possibilities expressed by the choice poetic figure.

It was evident to Salina that all his domestic plans were founded on the supposition that the slippers he had on were the dead man's shoes he had been waiting for. Was she shocked by this cold, atrocious spirit of calculation? At first she was; but since she had begun to pardon his faults, she could easily overlook that. She, who had lately been so spiteful and bitter, was now all charity towards this man. Even the image of her blind and aged father faded from her mind; even the pure and beautiful image of her sister grew dim; and the old, revivified attachment became supreme. Shall we condemn the weakness? Or shall we pity it, rather? So long her affections had been thwarted! So long she had carried that lonely and hungry heart! So long, like a starved, sick child, it had fretted and cried, till now, at last, nurture and warmth made it grateful and glad! A babe is a sacred thing; and so is love. But if you starve and beat them? Perhaps Salina's unhappiness of temper owed its development chiefly to this cause. No wonder, then, that we find her melancholy, morbid, unreasonable, and now so ready to cling again to this wretch, this scamp, her husband, forgiving all, forgetting all (for the moment at least), in the wild flood of love and tears that drowned the past.

"O, yes! I do think we can be happy!" she said--"if you will only be kind and good to me! If not here, why, then, somewhere else; for place is of no consequence; all I want is love."

"Ah!" said Lysander, knocking the ashes from his cigar, "but I have a fancy for this place! And what should we leave it for?"

"Because--you know--there is no certainty--I believe father is alive yet, and well."

"Not unless Toby lied to me!--Did he?"

"Pshaw! you can't place any reliance on what Toby says!"--evasively.

"But I tell you Pepperill confirms his report about the dead bodies in the ravine! Now, what do you know to the contrary?" Lysander appeared very much excited, and a quarrel was imminent. Salina dreaded a quarrel.

She broke into a laugh.

"The truth is, Toby did fool you. He couldn't help bragging to me about it."

O Toby, Toby! that little innocent vanity of yours is destined to cost you, and others besides you, very dear! Lysander sprang upon his feet; his eyes sparkled with rage. Salina saw that it was now too late to keep the secret from him; there was no way but to tell him all. She showed Virginia's note. Virginia and her father alive and safe--that was what maddened Lysander!

But where were they?

Salina could not answer that question; for the most she had been able to get out of Toby was only a vague hint that they were hidden somewhere in a cave.

"No matter!" said Lysander, with a diabolical laugh showing his clinched and tobacco-stained teeth. "I'll have the n.i.g.g.e.r licked! I'll have the truth out of him, or I'll have his life?"

x.x.xII.

_TOBY'S REWARD._

Filled with disgust and wrath, Toby had obeyed the man who a.s.sumed to be his master, and gone to bed. But he was scarcely asleep, when he felt somebody shaking him, and awoke to see bending over him, with smiling countenance, lamp in hand, Captain Lysander.

"What's wantin', sar?"

"I want you to do an errand for me, Toby," Lysander kindly replied.

"Wal, sar, I don'o', sar," said Toby, reluctant, sitting up in bed and rubbing his elbows. "You know I had a right smart tramp. I's a tuckered-out n.i.g.g.e.r, sar; dat's de troof."

"Yes, you had a hard time, Toby. But you'll just run over to the school-house for me, I know. That's a good fellow!"

Toby hardly knew what to make of Lysander's extraordinarily persuasive and indulgent manner. He didn't know before that a Sprowl could smile so pleasantly, and behave so much like a gentleman. Then, the captain had called him a good fellow, and his African soul was not above flattery.

Weary, sleepy as he was, he felt strongly inclined to get up out of his delicious bed, and go and do Lysander's errand.

"You've only to hand this note to Lieutenant Ropes. And I'll give you something when you come back--something you don't get every day, Toby!

Something you've deserved, and ought to have had long ago!" And Lysander, all smiles, patted the old servant's shoulder.

This was too much for Toby. He laughed with pleasure, got up, pulled on his clothes, took the note, and started off with alacrity, to convince the captain that he merited all the good that was said of him, and that indefinite "something" besides.

What could that something be? He thought of many things by the way: a dollar; a knife; a new pair of boots with red tops, such as Lysander himself wore;--which last item reminded him of the bootjack he had been used for, and the kick he had received.

He stopped in the street, his wrath rising up again at the recollection.

"Good mind ter go back, and not do his old arrant." But then he thought of the smiles and compliments, and the promised reward. "Somefin' kinder decent 'bout dat mis'ble Sprowl, 'long wid a heap o' mean tings, arter all!" And he started on again.

Lysander's note was in these words:--

"Leiutent Ropes Send me with the bearrer of This 2 strappin felloes capble of doin a touhgh Job."

This letter was duly signed, and duly delivered, and it brought the "2 strappin felloes." The internal evidence it bore, that Lysander had not pursued his studies at school half as earnestly as he had of late pursued the schoolmaster, made no difference with the result.

The two strapping fellows returned with Toby. They were raw recruits, who had travelled a long distance on foot in order to enlist in the confederate ranks. They had an unmistakable foreign air. They called themselves Germans. They were brothers.

"All right, Toby!" said Lysander, well pleased. "What are you bowing and grinning at me for? O, I was to give you something!"

"If you please, sar," said Toby--wretched, deceived, cajoled, devoted Toby.

"Well, you go to the woodshed and bring the clothes line for these fellows--to make a swing for the ladies, you know--then I'll tell you what you're to have."

"Sartin, sar." And Toby ran for the clothes line.

"Good old Toby! Now, what you have deserved so long, and what these stout Dutchmen will proceed to give you, is the d.a.m.nedest licking you ever had in your life!"

Toby almost fainted; falling upon his knees, and rolling up his eyes in consternation. Sprowl smiled. The "Dutchmen" grinned. Just then Salina darted into the room.

"Lysander! what are you going to do with that old man?"

She put the demand sharply, her short upper lip quivering, cheeks flushed, eyes flaming.

"I'm going to have him whipped."

"No, you are not. You promised me you wouldn't. You told me that if he would go to the Academy for you, and be respectful, you would forgive him. If I had known what you were sending for, he should never have left this house. Now send those men back, and let him go."

"Not exactly, my lady. I am master in this house, whatever turns up. I am this n.i.g.g.e.r's master, too."

"You are not; you never were. Toby has his freedom. He shall not be whipped!" And with a gesture of authority, and with a stamp of her foot, Salina placed herself between the kneeling old servant and the grinning brothers.

Alas! this woman's dream of love and happiness had been brief, as all such dreams, false in their very nature, must ever be. She loved him well enough to concede much. She was not going to quarrel with him any more. To avoid a threatened quarrel, she betrayed Toby. But she was not heartless: she had a sense of justice, pride, temper, an impetuous will, not yet given over in perpetuity to the keeping of her husband.

The captain laughed devilishly, and threw his arms about his wife (this time in no loving embrace), and seizing her wrists, held them, and nodded to the soldiers to begin their work.