Chapter I (2)

Every school-boy knows what the Edict of Nantes was; but philosophers differ as to what was the effect of its revocation upon the fortunes of France. For us it is enough to know that Louis XIV., by recalling it, drove to Virginia our ancestor John Bouche, whose daughter, Elizabeth, completely captivated my great etc. grandfather, Tom Whacker, by her pretty French accent and trim French figure. She was good and wise, too; but the rascal never found that out till after he married her. It must be owing to the Danichester strain, I suppose, that the Whackers, so sensible in many ways, have always sought grace and beauty in their wives, rather than piety and learning; and I suppose I shall be no wiser than my fathers when my time comes.

This Huguenot cross gave the old Whacker stock a twist towards theology. Two of the sons of Thomas and Elizabeth took orders, much to the surprise of their father, who used to say that _Reverend Whacker_ had a queer sound to his ear. So prepotent, in fact, has the Huguenot strain become, that a Whacker is no longer a Whacker. In the old days our eyes were as blue as the sky; now they are as black as sloes. Once we were reserved and silent; now—but enough. As for myself, it has often seemed to me that I was all Bouche,—Bouche _et præterea nihil_,—as the ancient Romans put it in their compact way.

Needless to say, therefore, that this book was to instruct and edify you. You may see that from the very first sentence of it all that I wrote:

“And, now in conclusion, my dear boy, if you rise from the perusal of this work a wiser and better man, the direct author of the book and the indirect author of your being will feel amply repaid for all his toil.”

Such were my intentions. And now read the book, as it stands. Heavens and earth, was there ever such another! Alas, those Danichester molecules, what have they not made me say! Page after page, and chapter after chapter, in which I defy even a mouse to pick up a crumb of edification. Chapter after chapter of feasting, fiddling, dancing, courting,—roast turkeys, broiled oysters, hams seven years old. Bowls full of egg-nogg, pipes full of tobacco, students full of apple-toddy,—everything to make a man feel good, nothing to make him be good. For the heathen Viking in me speaks!

Yet he does not hold entire sway. But as we sit—you and I and the friends you shall presently make—sit joyously picnicking in a fair wood—more than once the trees above us, as you shall find, will seem to moan, as they bend before the gentle breeze. ’Tis the spirit of the melancholy Jaques, perched like a raven, there. To him a sob lies lurking in every laugh; and his weary eyes can never look upon a dimple—a dimple, smile-wrought in damask cheek—but they see therein the sheen of coming tears.

28.

Here I am, then, Whacker-Danichester-Bouche. [Anglicé, Bush.] And, since man is but the epitome of his ancestry, what kind of an author should result? Chemists tells us that it is not so much the molecules as their arrangement. Let us try this: Danichester-Bush-Whacker,—so what else could I be but a Humoristico-sentimental Bushwhacker?

And such I am, ladies and gentlemen, at your service!

29.

And a Bushwhacker, beloved scion, you will rightly divine to be one who whacks from behind a bush. But that this is so is (and _that_ you would never guess) one of those whimsical accidents of which philology points out so many examples. Bushwhackers no more got their name in the way the name suggests than your Shank-high fowls got theirs from length of limb.

How they did get it I must now explain. Not that I may vaingloriously show off my rather quaint and curious philologic lore. I have a better motive. The word has its origin in an incident in our family history; an incident, too, of such interest that it gave rise to a poem, famous in its day, beginning, “All quiet along the Potomac to-night,”—the author of which will never be known. For three hundred and eleven people (two hundred and ninety-nine women and twelve men) went before justices of the peace, when it began to make a noise in the world, and made oath that they wrote it. Which shows, among other things, that there is no lack of justices of the peace in this country. But let’s to the incident.

30.

You must know, then, that the Bouche connection is as numerous as it is respectable. Hardly a county in Virginia where you shall not find a colony of them. And as a rule they are genteel folk, mingling with the best. But (for I shall not conceal it from you) every now and then one stumbles upon a shoot of the original stem that is fallen into the sere and yellow leaf. Still, the motto with us is, that a Bouche is a Bouche, even though he be run down at the heel. But our clannishness has its limits. We draw the line at the spelling of the name,—draw it sharply between Bouche and Bush. Still, I happen to have heard my grandfather say that, though old Jim Bush did not spell the name after the aristocratic Huguenot fashion, his father before him did; and that, consequently, he was one of us.

After all, he was by no means a bad fellow. It covers his case better to say that he was not profitable unto himself. He was, in fact, a kind of Rip Van Winkle, whose hands, though he was desperately poor and owned a farm of a few acres, were more familiar with the rifle than the handles of a plough. For miles around his tumble-down old house he and his gun were a terror to game of all kinds; and it was believed that, of squirrels especially, he had killed more, in his day, than any man within miles of Alexandria. Nor were there lacking those who maintained that upon a dozen of these edible rodents, as a substratum, he could build up a Brunswick stew such as—but I dined with him once, and feel no need of outside testimony. (I suppose it was the French streak in him. He spelt himself Bush, but blood will tell.)

“The main secret, Jack” (everybody calls me Jack, no matter how poor and humble they may be; besides, he _was_ a cousin),—“the main secret is that I put in the brains. When I was a green hand with the rifle I used to knock their heads off; and monstrous proud I was, I remember, of never touching their bodies. Now I save their brains by just wiping off their smellers.”

Yes, my son, he was an out-at-the-elbows Bouche, and his language was low. But let us not sneer at him. He could do two things well. And how many of us can do one! For my own part, when I look at myself and then at my brother-men, I cannot find it in my heart to despise the lowliest of them all. The scornful alone do I scorn. And when I see a little two-legged puff-ball strutting along, with its nose in the air, I long for old Jim Bush and his rifle, that he might serve it as he did the squirrels.

31.

Old Jim’s ramshackle house stood in the zone which lay between the Northern and Southern armies during the winter following the first battle of Manassas, or Bull Bun. He was not young enough to shoulder his musket, having been born in the year 1800. Besides, rheumatism had laid its heavy hand upon his left knee. As scouting parties of the enemy frequently came uncomfortably near old Jim’s little farm, he, dreading capture, spent most of his time in the dense woods which surrounded his house, creeping back, at nightfall, beneath its friendly roof. True, the roof leaked here and there, but it was all he had, and he loved it.

One day the enemy pushed forward their picket-line as far as his house, and established a station there. It was late in the afternoon when they came, and old Jim, who had already returned for the night, had barely time, on hearing the clatter of hoofs at his very door, to rush out by the back way and tumble into the dense jungle of a ravine which skirted his little garden. Very naturally, to a Bedouin like old Bush, the idea of being immured in a noisome dungeon, as had happened to some of his less wily neighbors, was full of horrors; and crawling into the densest part of the thicket, he crouched there pale and hardly breathing, lest the men whose voices he heard so clearly should hear him.

Old Joe—for, while Jim differed from Diogenes in many other ways, he was like him in this, that he owned a solitary slave—old Joe they had caught. No doubt the sizzling (the dictionary-man will please put the word in his next edition)—the sizzling of the bacon in his frying-pan dulled his hearing; and so his knees smote together, when, raising his eyes to the darkened door, he saw a Federal soldier standing upon the threshold.

“Sarvant, mahster!” stammered he through his chattering teeth.

In order to explain his terror to readers of the present day, I must beg them to recall the fact that Lincoln had issued a proclamation that the North had no intention or wish to overthrow slavery in the South. “We come to save the Union,—dash the niggers!” was the angry and universal reply of the Federal soldiers when our women jeered them on their supposed mission. Hence the phrase “wicked and _causeless_ rebellion,” without which no loyal editor could get on with the least comfort in those early days of the war.

Just as a poetess, nowadays, rends her ringlets till she finds a way of working “gloaming” into her little sonnet.

The abolitionists,—to praise them is the toughest task my conscience ever put upon me,—though they brought on the war, were not war-men. They honestly abhorred slavery, and had the courage of their convictions. They would have let the “erring sisters depart in peace” so as to rid the Union of the blot of African servitude, and deserve such honor as is due to earnest men. Later on, they changed their position; but middle-aged men will remember what their views were at the opening of the struggle.

Not recognizing, therefore, a friend in the “Yankee” who stood in his door-way, the glitter of his bayonet was disagreeable to old Joe’s eyes, and the point of it looked so sharp that it made his ribs ache; and his knees trembled beneath him. For old Joe was not by nature bloodthirsty, nor longed for gore,—least of all the intimate and personal gore of Joseph Meekins.

“Sarvant, mahster!”

Perhaps old Jim’s naturally serene temper was ruffled, at the moment, by the fact that the fangs of a blackberry-bush, under which he had forced his head, had fastened themselves upon his right ear. At any rate, I am afraid he muttered, _sotto voce_, an oath at hearing his old slave and friend call a Yankee master.

“Sarvant, mahster!”

Old Joe’s form was bent low, his teeth chattered, his eyes rolled in terror like those of a bullock dragged up to the slaughter-post and the knife.

The sight of a man’s face distorted with abject fear has always filled me with deep compassion; but I believe it arouses in the average man (which I am far from claiming to be) a feeling of pitiless scorn.

“Sarvant, mahster!” chattered old Joe, writhing himself behind the kitchen table. The soldier was an average man.

“Where is your master, you d—d old baboon?” said he, entering the kitchen.

“My mahster, yes, mahster, my mahster, he—for de love o’ Gaud, young gent’mun, don’t pint her dis way,—she mought be loaded. Take a cheer, young mahster; jess set up to de table” (over which he gave a rapid pass with his sleeve) “an’ lemme gi’ you some o’ dat nice bacon I was jess a-fryin’ for my mahster’s supper.”

At these words old Jim’s teeth began to chatter so that he forgot the belligerent brier.

The soldier, hungry from his march, fell to, nothing loath, but had scarcely eaten three mouthfuls before several of his comrades appeared, all of whom fell foul of poor old Jim’s supper with military ardor, if without military precision.

“Where’s the old F. F. V.?” asked a new-comer, through a mouthful of hoe-cake.

“Yes, where is your master?” put in the first man. “You didn’t tell me. Out with it.”

Joe had had time to repent of his ill-advised admission in regard to the supper.

“You ax me whar Mr. Bush is? Oh, he’s in Culpeper Court-House. Leastways, he leff b’fo’ light dis mornin’ boun’ dar.”

The audacious lack of adjustment between this statement and the facts of the case amazed, almost amused, old Jim. Breathing a little freer, he ventured softly to shake his ear loose from the brier; for he could not reach it with his hand.

“Why, you lying old ape, didn’t you tell me that this was his supper?”

“Cert’n’y, young gent’mun; cert’n’y I say dat, in course.”

“And your master at Culpeper?”

“Yes, young mahster. Dis is de way ’tis. You ’pear like a stranger in dese parts, beggin’ your pardon, an’ maybe you mout’n’ understan’ how de folks ’bout here is. S’posin’ some o’ de neighbors had ’a’ step in, and dar warn’t nothin’ for ’em to eat, an’ mahster hear ’bout it when he come back, how I turn a gent’mun hongry ’way fum de do’. How ’bout dat, you reckon? Umgh-umgh! You don’t know my mahster! Didn’t I try it once! Lord ’a’ mussy!”

“How was it?”

“You ax me how was it! Go ’long, chile!” (No musket had gone off yet, and Joe began to feel rather more comfortable.) “Go ’long! My mahster was off fox-huntin’ wid some o’ de bloods,—some o’ de bloods,—an’ when he come back an’ find out I hadn’t cook no supper jess ’cause he was away, an’ I done turn a gent’mun off widout he supper, mahster he gimme, eff you b’lieve Joe, he gimme ’bout de keenest breshin’ Joe ever tase in he born days.” And, throwing back his head, he gave a laugh such as these soldiers had never heard in their lives.

And none of us shall ever hear again.

As for old Jim, who had never laid the weight of his finger on the romancer whose imagination was now playing like a fountain, tears of affectionate gratitude came into his eyes.

An instant later, and all kindly feeling was curdled in his simple heart.

Hearing a bustle, he peeped through the briers, and saw the officer in command of the party coming towards the kitchen, bearing in his hand the Virginia flag. He had discovered it in old Jim’s bedroom, where he had tacked it upon the bare wall, so that it was the last thing he saw at night and the first his opening eyes beheld. It was an insult to the Union soldiers, he heard the officer say, to flaunt the old rag in their faces. It was what no patriot could stand. He would teach the dashed rebels a lesson. “Set fire to this house,” he ordered. “The old rattletrap would fall down anyway, the first high wind that came along,” he added, with a laugh.

That laugh had a keener sting for old Jim than the order to burn down the house which had sheltered him for sixty years. The bitterest thing about poverty, says Juvenal, is that it makes men ridiculous.

Late in the night, when the smoking ruins of his house no longer gave any light, Jim crawled stealthily down the ravine. Could the sentry, as he marched back and forth on his beat, have seen the look that the old man, turning, fixed upon him every now and then as he made his way through the jungle, he would have felt less comfortable. As for Jim, half dead with cold, he reached the fires of the Confederate pickets at daybreak. On his way he had stopped at a certain old oak, and, thrusting down his arm into its hollow trunk, drew forth his rifle.

“Bushy-tails,” said he, with grave passion, waving his hand in the direction of the tree-tops above him, “you needn’t mind old Jim any longer. Lead is skeerce these times. You may skip ’round and chatter all you want to. Your smellers is safe. And gobblers, you may gobble and strut in peace now. You needn’t say put! put! when you see me creepin’ ’round. I won’t be a-lookin’ for you. You’ll have to excuse the old man. Bullets is skeerce these days, let alone powder. So, good-by, my honeys. And if you will forgive me the harm I _have_ done you, old Jim won’t trouble you any more.”

And so, with his rifle across his lap, he sat upon a log and warmed his benumbed limbs, and, looking into friendly faces, warmed his heart, too.

“I say, old man,” said a young soldier, chaffing him, “what do you call that thing lying in your lap? Can it shoot?”

“I call her Old Betsey,” said he. “You may laugh at her, but if you hold her right and steady, she hurts. There ain’t anything funny about Old Betsey’s business end, I promise you.” And he tapped the muzzle of his rifle with a grim smile.

Late in the afternoon of the next day (it took him all this day to get thawed) old Jim bade the jolly boys at the picket station good-day. He was going scouting, he said.

“Leave the old pop-gun behind,” cried one.

“No, take it along,” put in another. “Perhaps you may knock over a molly-cotton-tail. Fetch her in, and we will help you cook her.”

32.

Just before sundown the old man reached the summit of a densely-wooded little hill, about three hundred yards from where his house had lately stood. Stopping in front of a tall hickory on its apex, he raised his eyes and surveyed the tree from bottom to top.

“I went up it once, after nuts,” said he, speaking aloud; “but that was many a year ago,—let me see,—yes, forty-five years. Well, I must try—ah, I see,—I can make it.” And, leaning Old Betsey against the huge trunk, he tackled a young white oak.

Old Jim was tough and wiry, and found no great difficulty in climbing this to a point about thirty feet from the ground, where a large branch of the hickory came within a foot of the white oak. This he cooned till he reached the trunk. [I have not time to define cooning. Suffice it to say that, like heat, it is a mode of motion.] Toiling up this till he reached a fork about eighty feet from the ground, he, with a sharp effort, adjusted his own bifurcation to that of the tree, and immediately, without taking time to collect his breath, leaned forward, and fixed his eyes intently upon the little open space in front of the ruins of his house. He gazed, motionless, for a little while, then nodded his head,—“Ah, there he comes.” He sat there for half an hour, watching the sentry come into view and again pass out of sight, as he marched to and fro. “Well, old man,” said he, at last, “I reckon you know about all you want to know.” And twisting his stiff leg out of the fork, with a wry face, he descended the hickory, and took his seat upon a fallen trunk that lay near, throwing old Betsey across his lap. It was growing dark, and every now and then he raised his rifle to his cheek and took aim at various trees around him. Took aim again and again, lowering and raising his rifle, with contracted brows. “I am afraid my eyes are growing dim,” he muttered; “but the moon will rise at a quarter to ten, and then it will be all right, won’t it, old Bet? Don’t you remember that big gobbler we tumbled out of the beech-tree, one moonlight night—let me see—nineteen years ago coming next Christmas Eve? And you ain’t going to go back on me to-night, are you? Oh, I know you will stand by me this one time, if my eyes are just a little old and dim. I know you will help me out, as you have done many a time before, when I didn’t point you just right, but you knew where I wanted the bullet to go. Do you know what’s happened, old gal? Do you know that the little corner behind the bed, where you have stood for fifty years, is all ashes now, and the bed, too? Do you hear me, Betsey? And as the Holy Scripture says, the birds of the air have their nests, and the foxes their holes, but you and I have not where to lay our heads.”

The old man bowed his head over his rifle; and the fading twilight revealed the cold, steady gleam of its polished barrel, spotted with the quivering shimmer of hot tears.

33.

A soldier marched to and fro in the darkness. It oppressed him, and he longed for the moon to rise.

Does the wisest among us know what to pray for?

Tramp! tramp! tramp! tramp! He pauses at one end of his beat and looks down upon his comrades sleeping, wrapped in their blankets, with their feet to the fire. When his hour is up, he, too, will sleep. Yes, and it is up, now, poor fellow, and your sleep will know no waking!

Yet it was not you who burned the nest of the poor old man. Nor even your regiment. Nor had _you_ helped to hound the South to revolution by threats and contumely. ’Twas John Brown dissolved the Union. You hated him and his work, for you loved your whole country,—you and your father, who bade you good-by, the other day, with averted face. And now you must die that that work may be undone. You and half a million more of your people.

The South salutes your memory!

Ah, the moon is rising now. Ribbons of light stealing through the trees lie across his path, and yonder, at the farther end of it, the Queen of Night pours a flood of soft effulgence through a rift in the wood. The young soldier stood in the midst of it, bathed in a glorious plenitude of peaceful light. Such perfect stillness! Can this be war, thought he? He could hear the ticking of his watch upon his heart. But the click! click! beneath that dark old oak,—that he did not hear. And that barrel that glitters grimly even in the shadow,—he sees it not. The tear-stains are upon it still; but the tears are dried and gone.

Click! click!

The muzzle rises slowly; butt and shoulder meet. A head bends low; a left eye closes; the right, brown as a hawk’s and as fierce, glares, from beneath corrugated brow, along a barrel that rests as though in a grip of steel. The keen report of a sporting rifle—not loud, but crisp and clear—rings through the silent wood, and there is a heavy fall and a groan.

And the placid moon, serene mocker of mortals and their woes, floated upward and upward, and on and on. On and on, supremely tranquil, over other scenes, whether of love or hate.

Ah, can it be true that we poor men have no friend anywhere in the heavens above, as some would have us believe? or the ever-peaceful gods, dwellers upon Olympus, have they in very deed forgotten us?

34.

“Where’s your game, grandpa?” asked the young soldier. “We have been sitting up waiting for you and your rabbit.”

“There are two kinds of game,” replied the old man, warming his hands before the fire; “one sort you bring home, the other kind you send home.”

“What! did you shoot a Yankee? One of the boys thought he heard the crack of a rifle.”

“’Twas old Betsey,” replied he, patting her cheek, as it were. “We whacked one of ’em. _He_ won’t set fire to any more houses, I reckon.”

After this, old Jim, thoroughly acquainted with the country for miles around, became a regular scout; and going and coming at all hours of the night and day, he was soon well-known along the line of our outposts. And whenever he had important information to give, he went straight to headquarters; but whenever, after a moonlight night, he stopped at the picket-post, sat down on a log and toyed with his rifle, seeming to have nothing to say, the boys knew that he was waiting for a certain question: “Yes, old Betsey and me whacked one of ’em last night.” And then he would set out for headquarters, and the soldiers, passing the news, and adopting old Jim’s word, would say, “Old Bush whacked another of the rascals last night.” And these two words, so often brought in contact, at last cohered. Bushwhacker did not, therefore, originally, at least, mean a man who whacked from behind a thicket, but one who whacked after the fashion of old Jim Bush.

35.

And I am a Bushwhacker who whacketh after that fashion. So much so, that it seems to me that my parents made a sort of prophetic pun when they named me John Bouche. The difference between me and old Jim is simply this: that he expressed his sentiments with a carnal rifle, I mine with a spiritual one. He hung upon the skirts of the Northern hosts; I go stalking stragglers from the Noble Army of Lies. Every sham the sturdy Whacker molecules of me impel my soul to hate. Yet my Huguenot blood shrinks from martyrdom. Did not _they_ leave France to avoid it? I never attack the main body. But let a feeble, emaciated, and worn-out little lie, or a blustering, braggart fraud, or a conceited, coxcombical sham, stray to the right or left, or get belated on the march! I pounce upon him like an owl upon a field-mouse. It is my nature to. And so the reader must not be surprised, as we journey along together, through scene after scene of my story, to find herself suddenly left alone at the most unexpected times and places. I’ll come back, after a while, bringing a scalp; after which we will jog along together, for a chapter or so, again.

And a jolly, rousing, mad time we shall have of it, then. For it is on such occasions that I put my mustang through his comical paces,—my coal-black mustang, with his great, shaggy mane, and bushy, flowing tail, that sweeps the ground. For though, as every schoolboy knows, a Poet or other Gifted Person is properly mounted only on a Pegasus, I have been unable to get me one of those winged, high-bounding steeds.

36.

And now, fair lady, the manager makes his bow and exit. You will soon be in better company.

One word more,—he begs your pardon. He led you to believe that the opera began at eight, sharp. You were there, in your seat, on time, eager to hear the first notes of the opening chorus. But I feared that had you known there was to be a long overture you would have been late, and thereby missed certain _leitmotifs_, not to have heard which would have marred what was to follow. Honestly, now, had you known that