Chapter VII (2)

"Now, my little man; come, don't be hard on the old veteran! He's down, old Beau is, sence the time he owned his blooded pacer and dined with the _Corps Diplomatique_; Beau's down sence then; but don't call the old feller hard names. We take it back, don't we?--we take _them_ words back?"

"There's a angel somewhere," said Lowndes Cleburn, "even in a Washington bummer, which responds to a little chap on crutches with a clear voice. Whether the angel takes the side of the bummer or the little chap, is a p'int out of our jurisdiction. Abe, give Beau a julep. He seems to have been demoralized by little Crutch's last."

"Take them hard words back, Bub," whined the licensed mendicant, with either real or affected pain; "it's a p'int of honor I'm a standin' on. Do, now, little Major!"

"I shan't!" cried the boy. "Go and work like me. You're big, and you called Mr. Reybold mean. Haven't you got a wife or little girl, or nobody to work for? You ought to work for yourself, anyhow. Oughtn't he, gentlemen?"

Reybold, who had slipped around by the little cripple and was holding him in a caressing way from behind, looked over to Beau and was even more impressed with that generally undaunted worthy's expression. It was that of acute and suffering sensibility, perhaps the effervescence of some little remaining pride, or it might have been a twinge of the gout. Beau looked at the little boy, suspended there with the weak back and the narrow chest, and that scintillant, sincere spirit beaming out with courage born in the stock he belonged to. Admiration, conciliation, and pain were in the ruined vagrant's eyes. Reybold felt a sense of pity. He put his hand in his pocket and drew forth a dollar.

"Here, Beau," he said, "I'll make an exception. You seem to have some feeling. Don't mind the boy!"

In an instant the coin was flying from his hand through the air. The beggar, with a livid face and clinched cane, confronted the Congressman like a maniac.

"You bilk!" he cried. "You supper customer! I'll brain you! I had rather parted with my shoes at a dolly shop and gone gadding the hoof, without a doss to sleep on--a town pauper, done on the vag--than to have made been scurvy in the sight of that child and deserve his words of shame!"

He threw his head upon the table and burst into tears.

II.--HASH.

Mrs. Tryphonia Basil kept a boarding-house of the usual kind on Four-and-a-Half Street. Male clerks--there were no female clerks in the Government in 1854--to the number of half a dozen, two old bureau officers, an architect's assistant, Reybold, and certain temporary visitors made up the table. The landlady was the mistress; the slave was Joyce.

Joyce Basil was a fine-looking girl, who did not know it--a fact so astounding as to be fitly related only in fiction. She did not know it, because she had to work so hard for the boarders and her mother. Loving her mother with the whole of her affection, she had suffered all the pains and penalties of love from that repository. She was to-day upbraided for her want of coquetry and neatness; to-morrow, for proposing to desert her mother and elope with a person she had never thought of. The mainstay of the establishment, she was not aware of her usefulness. Accepting every complaint and outbreak as if she deserved it, the poor girl lived at the capital a beautiful scullion, an unsalaried domestic, and daily forwarded the food to the table, led in the chamberwork, rose from bed unrested and retired with all her bones aching. But she was of a natural grace that hard work could not make awkward; work only gave her bodily power, brawn, and form. Though no more than seventeen years of age, she was a superb woman, her chest thrown forward, her back like the torso of a _Venus de Milo_, her head placed on the throat of a Minerva, and the nature of a child moulded in the form of a matron. Joyce Basil had black hair and eyes--very long, excessive hair, that in the mornings she tied up with haste so imperfectly, that once Reybold had seen it drop like a cloud around her and nearly touch her feet. At that moment, seeing him, she blushed. He plead, for once, a Congressman's impudence, and without her objection, wound that great crown of woman's glory around her head, and, as he did so, the perfection of her form and skin, and the overrunning health and height of the Virginia girl, struck him so thoroughly that he said:

"Miss Joyce, I don't wonder that Virginia is the mother of Presidents."

Between Reybold and Joyce there were already the delicate relations of a girl who did not know that she was a woman, and a man who knew she was beautiful and worthy. He was a man vigilant over himself, and the poverty and menial estate of Joyce Basil were already insuperable obstacles to marrying her, but still he was attracted by her insensibility that he could ever have regarded her in that light of marriage. "Who was her father, the Judge?" he used to reflect. The Judge was a favorite topic with Mrs. Basil at the table.

"Mr. Reybold," she would say, "you commercial people of the Nawth can't hunt, I believe. Jedge Basil is now on the mountains of Fawquear hunting the plova. His grandfather's estate is full of plova."

If, by chance, Reybold saw a look of care on Mrs. Basil's face, he inquired for the Judge, her husband, and found he was still shooting on the Occequan.

"Does he never come to Washington, Mrs. Basil?" asked Reybold one day, when his mind was very full of Joyce, the daughter.

"Not while Congress is in session," said Mrs. Basil. "It's a little too much of the _oi polloi_ for the Judge. His family, you may not know, Mr. Reybold, air of the Basils of King George. They married into the Tayloze of Mount Snaffle. The Tayloze of Mount Snaffle have Ingin blood in their veins--the blood of Poky-huntus. They dropped the name of Taylor, which had got to be common through a want of Ingin blood, and spelled it with a E. It used to be Taylor, but now it's Tayloze."

On another occasion, at sight of Joyce Basil cooking over the fire, against whose flame her moulded arms took momentary roses upon their ivory, Reybold said to himself: "Surely there is something above the common in the race of this girl." And he asked the question of Mrs. Basil:

"Madame, how was the Judge, your husband, at the last advices?"

"Hunting the snipe, Mr. Reybold. I suppose you do not have the snipe in the North. It is the aristocratic fowl of the Old Dominion. Its bill is only shorter than its legs, and it will not brown at the fire, to perfection, unless upon a silver spit. Ah! when the Jedge and myself were young, before his land troubles overtook us, we went to the springs with our own silver and carriages, Mr. Reybold."

Looking up at Mrs. Basil, Reybold noticed a pallor and flush alternately, and she evaded his eye.

Once Mrs. Basil borrowed a hundred dollars from Reybold in advance of board, and the table suffered in consequence.

"The Judge," she had explained, "is short of taxes on his Fawquear lands. It's a desperate moment with him." Yet in two days the Judge was shooting blue-winged teal at the mouth of the Accotink, and his entire indifference to his family set Reybold to thinking whether the Virginia husband and father was any thing more than a forgetful savage. The boarders, however, made very merry over the absent unknown. If the beefsteak was tough, threats were made to send for "the Judge," and let him try a tooth on it; if scant, it was suggested that the Judge might have paid a gunning visit to the premises and inspected the larder. The daughter of the house kept such an even temper, and was so obliging within the limitations of the establishment, that many a boarder went to his department without complaint, though with an appetite only partly satisfied. The boy, Uriel, also was the guardsman of the household, old-faced as if with the responsibility of taking care of two women. Indeed, the children of the landlady were so well behaved and prepossessing that, compared with Mrs. Basil's shabby _hauteur_ and garrulity, the legend of the Judge seemed to require no other foundation than offspring of such good spirit and intonation.

Mrs. Tryphonia Basil was no respecter of persons. She kept boarders, she said, as a matter of society, and to lighten the load of the Judge. He had very little idea that she was making a mercantile matter of hospitality, but, as she feelingly remarked, "the old families are misplaced in such times as these yer, when the departments are filled with Dutch, Yankees, Crackers, Pore Whites, and other foreigners." Her manner was, at periods, insolent to Mr. Reybold, who seldom protested, out of regard to the daughter and the little Page; he was a man of quite ordinary appearance, saying little, never making speeches or soliciting notice, and he accepted his fare and quarters with little or no complaint.

"Crutch," he said one day to the little boy, "did you ever see your father?"

"No, I never saw him, Mr. Reybold, but I've had letters from him."

"Don't he ever come to see you when you are sick?"

"No. He wanted to come once when my back was very sick, and I laid in bed weeks and weeks, sir, dreaming, oh! such beautiful things. I thought mamma and sister and I were all with papa in that old home we are going to some day. He carried me up and down in his arms, and I felt such rest that I never knew any thing like it, when I woke up, and my back began to ache again. I wouldn't let mamma send for him, though, because she said he was working for us all to make our fortunes, and get doctors for me, and clothes and school for dear Joyce. So I sent him my love, and told papa to work, and he and I would bring the family out all right."

"What did your papa seem like in that dream, my little boy?

"Oh! sir, his forehead was bright as the sun. Sometimes I see him now when I am tired at night after running all day through Congress."

Reybold's eyes were full of tears as he listened to the boy, and, turning aside, he saw Joyce Basil weeping also.

"My dear girl," he said to her, looking up significantly, "I fear he will see his great Father very soon."

Reybold had few acquaintances, and he encouraged the landlady's daughter to go about with him when she could get a leisure hour or evening. Sometimes they took a seat at the theatre, more often at the old Ascension Church, and once they attended a President's reception. Joyce had the bearing of a well-bred lady, and the purity of thought of a child. She was noticed as if she had been a new and distinguished arrival in Washington.

"Ah! Reybold," said Pontotoc Bibb, "I understand, ole feller, what keeps you so quiet now. You've got a wife onbeknown to the Kemittee! and a happy man I know you air."

It pleased Reybold to hear this, and deepened his interest in the landlady's family. His attention to her daughter stirred Mrs. Basil's pride and revolt together.

"My daughter, Colonel Reybold," she said, "is designed for the army. The Judge never writes to me but he says: 'Tryphonee, be careful that you impress upon my daughter the importance of the military profession. My mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother married into the army, and no girl of the Basil stock shall descend to civil life while I can keep the Fawquear estates.'"

"Madame," said the Congressman, "will you permit me to make the suggestion that your daughter is already a woman and needs a father's care, if she is ever to receive it. I beseech you to impress this subject upon the Judge. His estates cannot be more precious to his heart, if he is a man of honor; nay, what is better than honor, his duty requires him to come to the side of these children, though he be ever so constrained by business or pleasure to attend to more worldly concerns."

"The Judge," exclaimed Mrs. Basil, much miffed, "is a man of hereditary ijees, Colonel Reybold. He is now in pursuit of the--ahem!--the Kinvas-back on his ancestral waters. If he should hear that you suggested a pacific life and the grovelling associations of the capital for him, he might call you out, sir!"

Reybold said no more; but one evening when Mrs. Basil was absent, called across the Potomac, as happened frequently, at the summons of the Judge--and on such occasions she generally requested a temporary loan or a slight advance of board--Reybold found Joyce Basil in the little parlor of the dwelling. She was alone and in tears, but the little boy Uriel slept before the chimney-fire on a rug, and his pale, thin face, catching the glow of the burning wood, looked beautified as Reybold addressed the young woman.

"Miss Joyce," he said, "our little brother works too hard. Is there never to be relief for him? His poor, withered body, slung on those crutches for hours and hours, racing up the aisles of the House with stronger pages, is wearing him out. His ambition is very interesting to see, but his breath is growing shorter and his strength is frailer every week. Do you know what it will lead to?"

"O my Lord!" she said, in the negrofied phrase natural to her latitude, "I wish it was no sin to wish him dead."

"Tell me, my friend," said Reybold, "can I do nothing to assist you both? Let me understand you. Accept my sympathy and confidence. Where is Uriel's father? What is this mystery?"

She did not answer.

"It is for no idle curiosity that I ask," he continued. "I will appeal to him for his family, even at the risk of his resentment. Where is he?"

"Oh, do not ask!" she exclaimed. "You want me to tell you only the truth. He is _there_!"

She pointed to one of the old portraits in the room--a picture fairly painted by some provincial artist--and it revealed a handsome face, a little voluptuous but aristocratic, the shoulders clad in a martial cloak, the neck in ruffles and ruffles, also and a diamond in the shirt bosom. Reybold studied it with all his mind.

"Then it is no fiction," he said, "that you have a living father, one answering to your mother's description. Where have I seen that face? Has some irreparable mistake, some miserable controversy, alienated him from his wife? Has he another family?"

She answered with spirit:

"No, sir. He is my father and my brother's only. But I can tell you no more."

"Joyce," he said, taking her hand, "this is not enough. I will not press you to betray any secret you may possess. Keep it. But of yourself I must know something more. You are almost a woman. You are beautiful."

At this he tightened his grasp, and it brought him closer to her side. She made a little struggle to draw away, but it pleased him to see that when the first modest opposition had been tried she sat quite happily, though trembling, with his arm around her.

"Joyce," he continued, "you have a double duty: one to your mother and this poor invalid, whose journey toward that Father's house not made with hands is swiftly hastening; another duty toward your nobler self--the future that is in you and your woman's heart. I tell you again that you are beautiful, and the slavery to which you are condemning yourself forever is an offence against the creator of such perfection. Do you know what it is to love?"

"I know what it is to feel kindness," she answered after a time of silence. "I ought to know no more. You goodness is very dear to me. We never sleep, brother and I, but we say your name together, and ask God to bless you."

Reybold sought in vain to suppress a confession he had resisted. The contact of her form, her large dark eyes now fixed upon him in emotion, the birth of the conscious woman in the virgin and her affection still in the leashes of a slavish sacrifice, tempted him onward to the conquest.

"I am about to retire from Congress," he said. "It is no place for me in times so insubstantial. There is darkness and beggary ahead for all your Southern race. There is a crisis coming which will be followed by desolation. The generation to which your parents belong is doomed! I open my arms to you, dear girl, and offer you a home never yet gladdened by a wife. Accept it, and leave Washington with me and with your brother. I love you wholly."

A happy light shone in her face a moment. She was weary to the bone with the day's work, and had not the strength, if she had the will, to prevent the Congressman drawing her to his heart. Sobbing there, she spoke with bitter agony:

"Heaven bless you, dear Mr. Reybold, with a wife good enough to deserve you! Blessings on your generous heart. But I cannot leave Washington. I love another here!"

III.--DUST.

The Lake and Bayou Committee reaped the reward of a good action. Crutch, the page, as they all called Uriel Basil, affected the sensibility of the whole committee to the extent that profanity almost ceased there, and vulgarity became a crime in the presence of a child. Gentle words and wishes became the rule; a glimmer of reverence and a thought of piety were not unknown in that little chamber.

"Dog my skin!" said Jeems Bee, "if I ever made a 'pintment that give me sech satisfaction! I feel as if I had sot a nigger free!"

The youthful abstractionist, Lowndes Cleburn, expressed it even better. "Crutch," he said, "is like a angel reduced to his bones. Them air wings or pinions, that he might have flew off with, being a pair of crutches, keeps him here to tarry awhile in our service. But, gentlemen, he's not got long to stay. His crutches is growing too heavy for that expandin' sperit. Some day we'll look up and miss him through our tears."

They gave him many a present; they put a silver watch in his pocket, and dressed him in a jacket with gilt buttons. He had a bouquet of flowers to take home every day to that marvellous sister of whom he spoke so often; and there were times when the whole committee, seeing him drop off to sleep as he often did through frail and weary nature, sat silently watching lest he might be wakened before his rest was over. But no persuasion could take him off the floor of Congress. In that solemn old Hall of Representatives, under the semicircle of gray columns, he darted with agility from noon to dusk, keeping speed upon his crutches with the healthiest of the pages, and racing into the document-room; and through the dark and narrow corridors of the old Capitol loft, where the House library was lost in twilight. Visitors looked with interest and sympathy at the narrow back and body of this invalid child, whose eyes were full of bright, beaming spirit. He sometimes nodded on the steps by the Speaker's chair; and these spells of dreaminess and fatigue increased as his disease advanced upon his wasting system. Once he did not awaken at all until adjournment. The great Congress and audience passed out, and the little fellow still slept, with his head against the Clerk's desk, while all the other pages were grouped around him, and they finally bore him off to the committee-room in their arms, where, amongst the sympathetic watchers, was old Beau. When Uriel opened his eyes the old mendicant was looking into them.

"Ah! little Major," he said, "poor Beau has been waiting for you to take those bad words back. Old Beau thought it was all bob with his little cove."

"Beau," said the boy, "I've had such a dream! I thought my dear father, who is working so hard to bring me home to him, had carried me out on the river in a boat. We sailed through the greenest marshes, among white lilies, where the wild ducks were tame as they can be. All the ducks were diving and diving, and they brought up long stalks of celery from the water and gave them to us. Father ate all his. But mine turned into lilies and grew up so high that I felt myself going with them, and the higher I went the more beautiful grew the birds. Oh! let me sleep and see if it will be so again."

The outcast raised his gold-headed cane and hobbled up and down the room with a laced handkerchief at his eyes.

"Great God!" he exclaimed, "another generation is going out, and here I stay without a stake, playing a lone hand forever and forever."

"Beau," said Reybold, "there's hope while one can feel. Don't go away until you have a good word from our little passenger."

The outstretched hand of the Northern Congressman was not refused by the vagrant, whose eccentric sorrow yet amused the Southern Committeemen.

"Ole Beau's jib-boom of a mustache 'll put his eye out," said Pontotoc Bibb, "ef he fetches another groan like that."

"Beau's very shaky around the hams an' knees," said Box Izard; "he's been a good figger, but even figgers can lie ef they stand up too long."

The little boy unclosed his eyes and looked around on all those kindly, watching faces.

"Did anybody fire a gun?" he said. "Oh! no. I was only dreaming that I was hunting with father, and he shot at the beautiful pheasants that were making such a whirring of wings for me. It was music. When can I hunt with father, dear gentlemen?"

They all felt the tread of the mighty hunter before the Lord very near at hand; the hunter whose name is Death.

"There are little tiny birds along the beach," muttered the boy. "They twitter and run into the surf and back again, and am I one of them? I must be; for I feel the water cold, and yet I see you all, so kind to me! Don't whistle for me now; for I don't get much play, gentlemen! Will the Speaker turn me out if I play with the beach birds just once? I'm only a little boy working for my mother."

"Dear Uriel," whispered Reybold, "here's Old Beau, to whom you once spoke angrily. Don't you see him?"

The little boy's eyes came back from far-land somewhere, and he saw the ruined gamester at his feet.

"Dear Beau," he said, "I can't get off to go home with you. They won't excuse me, and I give all my money to mother. But you go to the back gate. Ask for Joyce. She'll give you a nice warm meal every day. Go with him, Mr. Reybold! If you ask for him it will be all right; for Joyce--dear Joyce!--she loves you."

The beach birds played again along the strand; the boy ran into the foam with his companions and felt the spray once more. The Mighty Hunter shot his bird--a little cripple that twittered the sweetest of them all. Nothing moved in the solemn chamber of the committee but the voice of an old forsaken man, sobbing bitterly.

IV.--CAKE.

The funeral was over, and Mr. Reybold marvelled much that the Judge had not put in an appearance. The whole committee had attended the obsequies of Crutch and acted as pall-bearers. Reybold had escorted the page's sister to the Congressional cemetery, and had observed even Old Beau to come with a wreath of flowers and hobble to the grave and deposit them there. But the Judge, remorseless in death as frivolous in life, never came near his mourning wife and daughter in their severest sorrow. Mrs. Tryphonia Basil, seeing that this singular want of behavior on the Judge's part was making some ado, raised her voice above the general din of meals.

"Jedge Basil," she exclaimed, "has been on his Tennessee purchase. These Christmas times there's no getting through the snow in the Cumberland Gap. He's stopped off thaw to shoot the--ahem!--the wild torkey--a great passion with the Jedge. His half-uncle, Gineral Johnson, of Awkinso, was a torkey-killer of high celebrity. He was a Deshay on his Maw's side. I s'pose you haven't the torkey in the Dutch country, Mr. Reybold?"

"Madame," said Reybold, in a quieter moment, "have you written to the Judge the fact of his son's death?"

"Oh yes--to Fawquear."

"Mrs. Basil," continued the Congressman, "I want you to be explicit with me. Where is the Judge, your husband, at this moment?"

"Excuse me, Colonel Reybold, this is a little of a assumption, sir. The Jedge might call you out, sir, for intruding upon his incog. He's very fine on his incog., you air awair."

"Madame," exclaimed Reybold straightforwardly, "there are reasons why I should communicate with your husband. My term in Congress is nearly expired. I might arouse your interest, if I chose, by recalling to your mind the memorandum of about seven hundred dollars in which you are my debtor. That would be a reason for seeing your husband anywhere north of the Potomac, but I do not intend to mention it. Is he aware--are you?--that Joyce Basil is in love with some one in this city?"

Mrs. Basil drew a long breath, raised both hands, and ejaculated: "Well, I declaw!"

"I have it from her own lips," continued Reybold. "She told me as a secret, but all my suspicions are awakened. If I can prevent it, madame, that girl shall not follow the example of hundreds of her class in Washington, and descend, through the boarding-house or the lodging quarter, to be the wife of some common and unambitious clerk, whose penury she must some day sustain by her labor. I love her myself, but I will never take her until I know her heart to be free. Who is this lover of your daughter?"

An expression of agitation and cunning passed over Mrs. Basil's face.

"Colonel Reybold," she whined, "I pity your blasted hopes. If I was a widow, they should be comfoted. Alas! my daughter is in love with one of the Fitzchews of Fawqueeah. His parents is cousins of the Jedge, and attached to the military."

The Congressman looked disappointed, but not yet satisfied.

"Give me at once the address of your husband," he spoke. "If you do not, I shall ask your daughter for it, and she cannot refuse me."

The mistress of the boarding-house was not without alarm, but she dispelled it with an outbreak of anger.

"If my daughter disobeys her mother," she cried, "and betrays the Jedge's incog., she is no Basil, Colonel Reybold. The Basils repudiate her, and she may jine the Dutch and other foreigners at her pleasure."

"That is her only safety," exclaimed Reybold. "I hope to break every string that holds her to yonder barren honor and exhausted soil."

He pointed toward Virginia, and hastened away to the Capitol. All the way up the squalid and muddy avenue of that day he mused and wondered: "Who is Fitzhugh? Is there such a person any more than a Judge Basil? And yet there _is_ a Judge, for Joyce has told me so. _She_, at least, cannot lie to me. At last," he thought, "the dream of my happiness is over. Invincible in her prejudice as all these Virginians, Joyce Basil has made her bed amongst the starveling First Families, and there she means to live and die. Five years hence she will have her brood around her. In ten years she will keep a boarding-house and borrow money. As her daughters grow up to the stature and grace of their mother, they will be proud and poor again and breed in and out, until the race will perish from the earth."

Slow to love, deeply interested, baffled but unsatisfied, Reybold made up his mind to cut his perplexity short by leaving the city for the county of Fauquier. As he passed down the avenue late that afternoon, he turned into E Street, near the theatre, to engage a carriage for his expedition. It was a street of livery-stables, gambling dens, drinking houses, and worse; murders had been committed along its sidewalks. The more pretentious _canaille_ of the city harbored there to prey on the hotels close at hand and aspire to the chance acquaintance of gentlemen. As Reybold stood in an archway of this street, just as the evening shadows deepened above the line of sunset, he saw something pass which made his heart start to his throat and fastened him to the spot. Veiled and walking fast, as if escaping detection or pursuit, the figure of Joyce Basil flitted over the pavement and disappeared in a door about at the middle of this Alsatian quarter of the capital.

"What house is that?" he asked of a constable passing by, pointing to the door she entered.

"Gambling den," answered the officer. "It used to be old Phil Pendleton's."

Reybold knew the reputation of the house: a resort for the scions of the old tide-water families, where hospitality thinly veiled the paramount design of plunder. The connection established the truth of Mrs. Basil's statement. Here, perhaps, already married to the dissipated heir of some unproductive estate, Joyce Basil's lot was cast forever. It might even be that she had been tempted here by some wretch whose villainy she knew not of. Reybold's brain took fire at the thought, and he pursued the fugitive into the doorway. A negro steward unfastened a slide and peeped at Reybold knocking in the hall; and, seeing him of respectable appearance, bowed ceremoniously as he let down a chain and opened the door.

"Short cards in the front saloon," he said; "supper and faro back. Chambers on the third floor. Walk up."

Reybold only tarried a moment at the gaming tables, where the silent, monotonous deal from the tin box, the lazy stroke of the markers, and the transfer of ivory "chips" from card to card of the sweat-cloth, impressed him as the dullest form of vice he had ever found. Treading softly up the stairs, he was attracted by the light of a door partly ajar, and a deep groan, as of a dying person. He peeped through the crack of the door, and beheld Joyce Basil leaning over an old man, whose brow she moistened with her handkerchief. "Dear father," he heard her say, and it brought consolation to more than the sick man. Reybold threw open the door and entered into the presence of Mrs. Basil and her daughter. The former arose with surprise and shame, and cried:

"Jedge Basil, the Dutch have hunted you down. He's here--the Yankee creditor."

Joyce Basil held up her hand in imploration, but Reybold did not heed the woman's remark. He felt a weight rising from his heart, and the blindness of many months lifted from his eyes. The dying mortal upon the bed, over whose face the blue billow of death was rolling rapidly, and whose eyes sought in his daughter's the promise of mercy from on high, was the mysterious parent who had never arrived--the Judge from Fauquier. In that old man's long waxed mustache, crimped hair, and threadbare finery the Congressman recognized Old Beau, the outcast gamester and mendicant, and the father of Joyce and Uriel Basil.

"Colonel Reybold," faltered that old wreck of manly beauty and of promise long departed, "Old Beau's passing in his checks. The chant coves will be telling to-morrow what they know of his life in the papers, but I've dropped a cold deck on 'em these twenty years. Not one knows Old Beau, the Bloke, to be Tom Basil, cadet at West Point in the last generation. I've kept nothing of my own but my children's good name. My little boy never knew me to be his father. I tried to keep the secret from my daughter, but her affection broke down my disguises. Thank God! the old rounder's deal has run out at last. For his wife he'll flash her diles no more, nor be taken on the vag."

"Basil," said Reybold, "what trust do you leave to me in your family?"

Mrs. Basil strove to interpose, but the dying man raised his voice:

"Tryphonee can go home to Fauquier. She was always welcome there--without me. I was disinherited. But here, Colonel! My last drop of blood is in the girl. She loves you."

A rattle arose in the sinner's throat. He made an effort, and transferred his daughter's hand to the Congressman's. Not taking it away, she knelt with her future husband at the bedside and raised her voice:

"Lord, when Thou comest into Thy kingdom, remember him!"

HERMAN OF BOHEMIA MANOR.

(_See note at end of poem._)

I.--THE MANOR.

"My corn is gathered in the bins,"
The Lord Augustin Herman said;
"My wild swine romp in chincapins;
Dried are the deer and beaver skins;
And on Elk Mountain's languid head
The autumn woods are red.

"So in my heart an autumn falls;
I stand a lonely tree unleaved;
And to my hermit manor walls
The wild-goose from the water calls,
As if to mock a man bereaved:
My years are nearly sheaved.

"Go saddle me the Flemish steed
My brother Verlett gave to me,
What time his sister did concede
Her dainty hand to hear me plead!
Poor soul! she's mouldering by the sea
And I with misery."

The slave man brought the wild-maned horse
All wilder that with stags he grazed--
Bred from the seed the knightly Norse
Rode from Araby. Like remorse
The eyes in his gray forehead blazed,
As on his lord he gazed.

"Now guard ye well my lands and stock;
Slack not the seine, ply well the axe;
The eagle circles o'er the flock;
The Indian at my gates may knock:
The firelock prime for his attacks;
I ride the sunrise tracks."

Swift as a wizard on a broom,
The strong gray horse and rider ran,
Adown the forest stripped of bloom.
By stump and bough that scarce gave room
To pass the woodman's caravan,
Rode the Bohemian.

"Lord Herman, stay," the brewer cried,
"And Huddy's friendly flagon clink!"
And martial Hinoyossa spied
The horseman, moving with the tide
That ebbed from Appoquinimink,
Nor stopped to rest or drink.

"Where rides old Herman?" Beekman mused;
"That railing wife has turned his head."
"He keeps the saddle as he used,
In younger days, when he enthused
Three provinces," Pierre Alricks said,
"And mapped their landscapes spread."

Broad rose Zuydt River as the sail
Above his periauger flew;
Loud neighed the steed to snuff the gale;
But Herman saw not, swift and pale,
Two carrier pigeons, winging true
North-east, across the blue.

They quit the cage of Stuyvesant's spy,
And lurking Willems' message bore:
("This morn rode Herman rapid by,
Tow'rd Amsterdam, to satisfy
Yet wider titles than he tore
From shallow Baltimore!")

II.--REPLEVIN.

The second sunset at his back
From Navesink Highlands threw the shade
Of horse and Herman, long and black,
Across the golden ripples' track,
Where with the Kills the ocean played
A measured serenade;

There where to sea a river ran,
Between tall hills of brown and sand,
A mountain island rose to span
The outlet of the Raritan,
And made a world on either hand,
Soft as a poet planned:

Fair marshes pierced with brimming creeks,
Where wild-fowl dived to oyster caves;
And shores that swung to wooded peaks,
Where many a falling water seeks
The cascade's plunge to reach the waves,
And greenest farmland laves:

Deep tide to every roadstead slips,
And many capes confuse the shore,
Yet none do with their forms eclipse
Yon ocean, made for royal ships,
Whose swells on silver beaches roar
And rock forevermore.

Old Herman gazed through lengthening shades
Far up the inland, where the spires,
Defined on rocky palisades,
Flung sunset from their burnished blades,
And with their bells in evening choirs
Breathed homesick men's desires:

"New Amsterdam! 'tis thine or mine--
The foreground of this stately plan!
To me the Indian did assign
Totem on totem, line on line--
Both Staten and the groves that ran
Far up the Raritan.

"By spiteful Stuyvesant long restrained,
Now, while the English break his power,
Be Achter Kill again regained
And Herman's title entertained,
Here float my banner from my tower,
Here is my right, my hour!"

III.--THE SQUATTERS.

He scarce had finished, when a rush,
Like partridge through the stubble, broke,
And armed men trod down the brush;
A harsh voice, trembling in the hush,
As it must either stab or choke,
Imperiously spoke:

"Ye conquered men of Achter Kill,
Whose farms by loyal toil ye got,
True Dutchmen! give this traitor will--
And he is yours to loose or kill--
All that ye have he will allot
Anew--field, cradle, cot.

"Years past, beyond our Southern bounds,
On States' commission sent by me,
He mapped the English papists' grounds,
And like a Judas, o'er our wounds,
Our raiment parted openly:
This is the man ye see!

"Yet followed by my sleepless age,
Fast as he rode my pigeons sped--
Straight as the ravens from their cage,
Straight as the arrows of my rage,
Straight as the meteor overhead
That strikes a traitor dead."

They bound Lord Herman fast as hate,
And bore him o'er to Staten Isle;
Behind him closed the postern gate,
And round him pitiless as fate,
Closed moat and palisade and pile:
"Thou diest at morn," they smile.

IV.--STUYVESANT.

Morn broke on lofty Staten's height,
O'er low Amboy and Arthur Kill;
And ocean dallying with the light,
Between the beaches leprous white,
And silent hook and headland hill,
And Stuyvesant had his will;

One-legged he stood, his sharp mustache
Stiff as the sword he slashed in ire;
His bald crown, like a calabash,
Fringed round with ringlets white as ash,
And features scorched with inner fire;
Age wore him like a briar.

"Bring the Bohemian forth!" he cried;
"Old man, thy moments are but few."
"So much the better, Dutchman! bide
Thy little time of aged pride,
Thy poor revenges to pursue--
Thy date is hastening, too.

"No crime is mine, save that I sought
A refuge past thy jealous ken,
And peaceful arts to strangers taught,
And mine own title hither brought,
Before the laws of Englishmen,
A banished denizen.

"Yet that thy churlish soul may plead
A favor to a dying foe,
I'll ask thee, Stuyvesant, ere I bleed,
Let me once more on my gray steed
Thrice round the timbered _enceinte_ go:
Fire, when I tell thee so!"

"What freak is this?" quoth Stuyvesant grim.
Quoth Herman, "'Twas a charger brave--
Like my first bride in eye and limb--
A wedding-gift; indulge the whim!
And from his back to plunge, I crave,
A bridegroom, in her grave."

Then muttered the uneasy guard:
"We rob an old man of his lands,
And slay him. Sure his fate is hard,
His dying plea to disregard!"
"Ride then to death!" Stuyvesant commands;
"Unbind his horse, his hands!"

V.--THE LEAP.

The old steed darted in the fort,
And neighed and shook his long gray mane;
Then, seeing soldiery, his port
Grew savage. With a charger's snort,
Upright he reared, as young again
And scenting a campaign.

Hard on his nostrils Herman laid
An iron hand and drew him down,
Then, mounting in the esplanade,
The rude Dutch rustics stared afraid:
"By Santa Claus! he needs no crown,
To look more proud renown!"

Lame Stuyvesant, also, envious saw
How straight he sat in courteous power,
Like boldness sanctified by law,
And age gave magisterial awe;
Though in his last and bitter hour,
Of knightliness the flower.

His gray hairs o'er his cassock blew,
And in his peak'd hat waved a plume;
A horn swung loose and shining through
High boots of buckskin, as he drew
The rein, a jewel burst to bloom:
The signet ring of doom.

'Thrice round the fort! Then as I raise
This hand, aim all and murder well!'
His head bends low; the steed's eyes blaze,
But not less bright do Herman's gaze,
As circling round the citadel,
He peers for hope in hell.

Fast were the gates; no crevice showed.
The ramparts, spiked with palisades,
Grew higher as once round he rode;
The arquebusiers prime the load,
And drop to aim from ambuscades;
No latch, no loophole aids.

But one small hut its chimney thrust
Between the timbers, close as they;
Twice round and with a desperate trust
Lord Herman muttered: "die I must:
_There_, CHARGE!" and spurred through beam and clay--
"By heaven! he is away!"

VI.--THE KILLS.

In clouds of dust the muskets fire,
And volleying oaths old Stuyvesant from:
"Turn out! In yonder Kills he'll mire,
Or drown, unless the fiends conspire.
Mount! Follow! Still he must succumb--
That tide was never swum."

Through hut and chimney, down the ditch
And up the bank, plunge horse and man;
And down the Kills of bramble pitch,
Oft-stumbling, those old gray knees which,
Hunting the raccoon, led the van;
Now, limp yet game he ran.

But cool and supple, Herman sat,
His mind at work, his frame the horse's,
And knew with each pulsation, that
Past foe and fen, past crag, and flat,
And marsh, the steed he nearer forces
To the broad sea's recourses.

"Old friend," he thought, "thou art too weak
To try the Kills and drown, or falter,
The while from shore their marksmen seek
My heart. (Once o'er the Chesapeake
I paddled oarless.) Lest the halter
Be mine, I must not palter--

"Thou diest, though my marriage-gift:
I still can swim. Poor Joost, adieu!"
Ere ceased the heartfelt sigh he lift,
The prospect widened: all adrift,
The salty sluice burst into view,
Where grappling tides fought through,

And sucked to doom the venturous bear,
And from his ferry swept the rower--
How wide, how terrible, how fair!
Yet how inspiriting the air--
How tempts the long salt grass the mower!
How treacherous the shore!

Far up the right spread Newark Bay,
To lone Secaucus wooded rock;
Nor could the Kill von Kull convey
Passaic's mountain flood away:
In Arthur Kill the surges choke,
The wild tides interlock.

O'er Arthur Kill the Holland farms
Their gambril roofs, red painted, show;
Beyond the newer Yankee swarms--
His cider-presses spread their arms.
Before, the squatter; back, the foe;
And the dark waters flow.

As that salt air the stallion felt,
He whimpers gayly, as if still is
Upon his sight his native Scheldt,
Or Skagger Rack, or Little Belt,--
Their waving grass and silver lilies,
Where browsed the amorous fillies.

And o'er the tide some lady nags
Blew back his challenge. Scarce could Herman
Hold in his seat. "By John of Prague's
True faith!" he thought, "thy spirit lags
Not, Joost! Thy course thyself determine!"
And plunges like a merman.

Leander's spirit in the steed
Inspired his stroke, not Herman's fear;
And fast the island shores recede,
Fast rise the rider's spirits freed,
The golden mainland draws more near--
"O gallant horse! 'tis here!"

VII.--ELUSION.

Across the Kills the muskets crack--
"Ha! ha!" Lord Herman waves his beaver:
"Die of thy spleen ere I come back,
Old Stuyvesant!" With a noise of wrack
The fort blew up of his aggriever!--
But not without retriever.

For from the smoke two pigeons fly,
One south, one westward, separating,
And straight as arrows crossed the sky,
With silent orders ("_He must die_
_Who comes hereafter. Lie in waiting!_")
Their snowy pinions freighting.

They warn the men of Minisink;
They warn the Dutchmen of Zuydt River.
Now speed to Jersey's farther brink,
Old horse, old master, ere ye shrink!--
Or ambushed fall ere moonrise quiver,
On paths where ye shall shiver.

On went the twain till past the ford
That red-walled Raritan led over,
And lonely woodland shades explored.
Unarmed with firelock or with sword,
Free-hearted rode the forest rover,
Of all wild kind the drover:

Fled deer and bear before his coming,
The wild-cat glared, the viper hissed;
And died the long day's insect-drumming.
Where things of night began their humming,
And witchly phantoms went to tryst,
Was Herman exorcist.

"No land so tangled but my eye
Can map its confines and its courses;
Yet on life's map who can espy
Where hides his foe--where he shall die?"
So Herman said, and his resources
Resigned unto his horse's.

All night the steed instinctive travelled--
His weary rider wept for him--
Through unseen gulfs the whirlwind ravelled,
Up moonlit beds of streamlets gravelled,
Till halting every bleeding limb,
He stands by something dim,

And will not stir till morning breaks.
"What is't I see, low clustering there,
Beyond those broadening bays and lakes,
That yonder point familiar makes?--
Is it New Amstel, lowly fair,
And this the Delaware?"

VIII.--THE ECHO.

Lord Herman hugged his horse with pride;
He raised his horn and blew so loudly,
That more than echoes back replied:
Horns answered louder; horsemen cried,
And muskets banged, as if avowedly
On Stuyvesant's errand proudly!

"Die, traitor; fleér! though thou 'scape
Our ambush on thy devil's racer,
Caught here upon this marshy cape,
Thy bones the muskrat's brood shall scrape,
The sturgeon suck--Death thy embracer!"
So shouts each sanguine chaser.

To die in sight of Amstel's walls,
And gallant Joost to die beside him?--
O foolish blast, such fate that calls!
O river that the heart appalls!
Dear Joost may live. And _they_ bestride him?
"By hell! none else shall ride him!

"My steed, thy limbs like mine are sore!
Few years are left us ere the billows
Roll over both. Come but once more,
And to the bottom or the shore,
Bear me and thee to happy pillows,
Or 'neath the water willows!"

He strokes old Joost. He bends him low.
He winds his horn and laughs derision.
One spring!--they've cleared the bog and sloe,
And down the ebb tide buoyant go--
That stately tide. So like a vision
Of home, to Norse and Frisian,

Where full a league spread Maas and Rhine,
And in the marsh the rice-birds twitter;
The long cranes pasture and the kine
Loom lofty in the misty shine
Of dawn and reedy islands glitter:
Yet death all where is bitter.

Ere out of range a volley peals,
But greed too great made aye a blunder.
His horse Lord Herman's self conceals,
Yet once his horse and he go under,
And rise again. No wound he feels.
They hold their fire in wonder!

Short of the mark the bullets splash:
"Now drown thee, wizard! at thy pleasure,"
The Dutchmen hiss through teeth they gnash.
He answers not; for o'er the plash
Of waves he hears Joost's gasping measure
Of breath's fast wasting treasure.

IX.--PEGASUS.

The sighs when dying comrades fall,
Struck by the foe, are only sad;
They leaped the ditch and climbed the wall,
And shared the purpose of us all;
The fame they have; the joy they had:
"Rest in thy tracks, brave lad!"

But thou, poor beast! unknown to fame,
Whose heart is reached while ours is bounding,
Amidst the victory's acclaim--
By thee we kneel with more of shame,
That bore us through the fight resounding,
And dumbly took our wounding!

Lord Herman saw the blood drops seethe,
The nag's neck droop, the nostril bubble,
And loosed the bridle from his teeth;
Yet swam the old legs underneath,
Invincibly. The gap they double;
But further swim in trouble.

And lovely Nature stretched her aid,
Her sympathetic tow and eddy;
The oars of air with azure blade,
And silent gravities persuade
And waft them onward, slow and steady--
On duteous deeds aye ready.

High leaped the perch. The hawk screamed joy.
Under Joost's belly musically
The ripples broke. Bright clouds convoy
The brute that man would but destroy,
And all instinctive agents rally
Strong and medicinally.

In vain! The gurgling waters suck
That old life under. Herman swimming
Seized but the horse tail. Like a buck
Breasting a lake in wild woods' pluck,
Joost rose, the glaze his bright eyes dimming,
And blood his sockets brimming.

Then voices speak and women cry.
The treading feet find soil to stand.
Above them the green ramparts lie,
And twixt their shadows and the sky,
The wondering burghers crowd the strand,
And Herman help to land:

"Now to Newcastle's English walls,
Hail, Herman! and thy matchless stud!"
Joost staggers up the bank and falls,
And dying to his master crawls.
Yields up his long solicitude,
And spills his veins of blood.

In Herman's arms his neck is prest,
With martial pride his dark eye glazes;
He feels the hand he loves the best
Stroke fondly, and a chill of rest,
As if he rolled in pasture daisies
And heard in winds his praises:

"O couldst thou speak, what wouldst thou say?
I who can speak am dumb before thee.
Thine eyes that drink Olympian day
Where steeds of wings thy soul convey,
With pride of eagles circling o'er thee:
Thou seest I adore thee!

"Bound to thy starry home and her
Who brought me thee and left earth hollow!
An honored grave thy bones inter,
And painting shall thy fame confer,
Ere in thy shining track I follow,
Thou courser of Apollo!"

NOTE TO HERMAN OF BOHEMIA MANOR.[1]

The singular incident of this poem was published in 1862, in Rev. John Lednum's "Personal Rise of Methodism," and in the following words:

"It is said that the Dutch had him (Herman) a prisoner of war, at one time, under sentence of death, in New York. A short time before he was to be executed, he feigned himself to be deranged in mind, and requested that his horse should be brought to him in the prison. The horse was brought, finely caparisoned. Herman mounted him, and seemed to be performing military exercises, when, on the first opportunity, he bolted through one of the large windows, that was some fifteen feet above ground, leaped down, swam the North River, ran his horse through Jersey, and alighted on the bank of the Delaware, opposite Newcastle, and thus made his escape from death and the Dutch. This daring feat, tradition says, he had transferred to canvas--himself represented as standing by the side of his charger, from whose nostrils the blood was flowing."--Page 277.

Such a singular and improbable story attracted great local attention, and in 1870, Francis Vincent, publishing his "History of Delaware," wrote: "The author found this incident in both Lednum and Foot, and has seen a copy of this painting. It is in the possession of James R. Oldham, Esq., of Christiana Bridge, the only male descendant of Herman in Delaware State. He is the seventh in descent from Augustin Herman."--Page 469.

In 1875, Rev. Charles P. Mallery, of Chesapeake City, a part of the Bohemia Manor, wrote in the Elkton (Md.) _Democrat_ as follows: "Herman resided on the Manor for more than twenty years, during which time he once rode to New York on the back of his favorite horse, to reclaim his long-neglected possessions there. He found his land occupied by squatters.... They secured him, as they thought, for the night; but he soon found means to escape by leaping his horse through a forced opening, swimming the North River, and continuing his flight through New Jersey until he reached the shore opposite Newcastle, where he swam his horse across the Delaware and was safe.... Dr. Spotswood, of Newcastle, told me that there was a tradition in his town that the horse was buried there." Augustin Herman made the first drawing of New Amsterdam, and early maps of Maryland and New England. He was the first speculator in city real estate in America.

[Footnote 1: The Bohemia Manor is a tract of 18,000 acres of the best land on the Delaware peninsula. It was granted to Augustine Herman, Bohemian, whose tombstone, now lying in the yard of Richard Bayard, on the site of Herman's park, bears date 1661. He received the manor for making an early map of Maryland, and granted a part of the land to the sect of Labadists. In the course of a century it became the homestead of Senator Richard Bassett, heir of the last lord of the manor, and of his son-in-law, Senator James A. Bayard, the first. Herman was the principal historic personage about the head of the Chesapeake, and was Peter Stuyvesant's diplomatist to New England as well as Maryland. The argument he made for the priority of the Dutch settlement on the Delaware was the basis of the independence of Delaware State. The legend of his escape from New York is told in several local books and newspapers, and it was the subject of one of his paintings, as he was both draughtsman and designer. G. A. T.]