She hesitated a long time, smoothing the folds of her neat alpaca skirt with her strong hands. Then she said:
“Well, seh, I wouldn’t have you say any thing about it, fo’ feah of huhting Cunnle Bre’eton’s feelings; but when he gets that way, I jes’ nachully tuhn him up and spank him. I’ve done it eveh since he was a baby,” she continued, apologetically, “and it’s the only way. But you won’t say any thing about it, seh? The Cunnle’s powerful sensitive.”
I wrote a brief note to the Justice. I do not know what legal formalities he dispensed with; but that afternoon the Colonel was free. Aunt Sabrine took him home, and he went to bed for two days while she washed his clothes. The next week he appeared in a complete new outfit – in cut and color the counterpart of its predecessor.
Here began a new era for the Colonel. He was no longer the town drunkard. Aunty Sabrine “allowanced” him – one cocktail in the “mo’ning:” a “ho’n” at noon, and one at night. On this diet he was a model of temperance. If occasionally he essayed a drinking bout, Aunty Sabrine came after him at eve, and led him home. From my window I sometimes saw the steady big figure and the wavering little one going home over the crest of the hill, equally black in their silhouettes against the sunset sky.
What happened to the Colonel we knew not. No man saw him for two days. Then he emerged – with unruffled dignity. The two always maintained genuine Southern relations. He called her his damn black nigger – and would have killed any man who spoke ill of her. She treated him with the humble and deferential familiarity of a “mammy” toward “young mahse.”
For herself, Aunty Sabrine won the hearts of the town. She was an ideal washerwoman, an able temporary cook in domestic interregna, a tender and wise nurse, and a genius at jam and jellies. The Colonel, too, made money in his line, and put it faithfully into the common fund.
In March of the next year, I was one of a Reform Town Committee, elected to oust the usual local ring. We discharged the inefficient Town Counsel, who had neglected our interests in a lot of suits brought by swindling road-contractors. Aunty Sabrine came to me, and solemnly nominated Colonel Brereton for the post. “He is sho’ly a fine loyyeh,” she said.
I know not whether it was the Great American sense of humor, or the Great American sense of fairness, but we engaged the Colonel, conditionally.
He was a positive, a marvelous, an incredible success, and he won every suit. Perhaps he did not know much law; but he was the man of men for country judges and juries. Nothing like his eloquence had ever before been heard in the county. He argued, he cajoled, he threatened, he pleaded, he thundered, he exploded, he confused, he blazed, he fairly dazzled – for silence stunned you when the Colonel ceased to speak, as the lightning blinds your eyes long after it has vanished.
The Colonel was utterly incapable of seeing any but his own side of the case. I remember a few of his remarks concerning Finnegan, the contractor, who was suing for $31.27 payments withheld.
“Fohty yahds!” the Colonel roared: “fohty yahds! This hyeh man Finnegan, this hyeh cock-a-doodle-doo, he goes along this hyeh road, and he casts his eye oveh this hyeh excavation, and he comes hyeh and sweahs it’s fohty yahds good measure. Does he take a tape measure and measure it? NO! Does he even pace it off with those hyeh corkscrew legs of his that he’s trying to hide under his chaiah? NO!! He says, ‘I’m Finnegan, and this hyeh’s fohty yahds,’ and off he sashays up the hill, wondering wheah Finnegan’s going to bring up when he’s walked off the topmost peak of the snow-clad Himalayas of human omniscience! And this hyeh man, this hyeh insult to humanity in a papeh collah, he comes hyeh, to this august tribunal, and he asks you, gentlemen of the jury, to let him rob you of the money you have earned in the sweat of youh brows, to take the bread out of the mouths of the children whom youh patient and devoted wives have bohne to you in pain and anguish – but I say to you, gen – tel – men– (suddenly exploding) HIS PAPEH COLLAH SHALL ROAST IN HADES BEFO’ I WILL BE A PAHTY TO THIS HYEH INFAMY!”
Finnegan was found in hiding in his cellar when his counsel came to tell him that he could not collect his $31.27. “Bedad, is that all?” he gasped; “I t’ought I’d get six mont’s.”
People flocked from miles about to hear the Colonel. Recalcitrant jurymen were bribed to service by the promise of a Brereton case on the docket. His performances were regarded in the light of a free show, and a verdict in his favor was looked upon as a graceful gratuity.
He made money – and he gave it meekly to Aunty Sabrine.
It was the night of the great blizzard; but there was no sign of cold or wind when I looked out, half-an-hour after midnight, before closing my front door. I heard the drip of water from the trees, I saw a faint mist rising from the melting snow. At the foot of my lawn I dimly saw the Colonel’s familiar figure marching homeward from some political meeting preliminary to Tuesday’s election. His form was erect, his step steady. He swung his little cane and whistled as he walked. I was proud of the Colonel.
An hour later the storm was upon us. By noon of Monday, Alfred Winthrop’s house, two hundred yards away, might as well have been two thousand, so far as getting to it, or even seeing it, was concerned. Tuesday morning the snow had stopped, and we looked out over a still and shining deluge with sparkling fringes above the blue hollows of its frozen waves. Across it roared an icy wind, bearing almost invisible diamond dust to fill irritated eyes and throats. The election was held that day. The result was to be expected. All the “hard” citizens were at the polls. Most of the reformers were stalled in railroad trains. The Reform Ticket failed of re-election, and Colonel Brereton’s term of office was practically at an end.
I was outdoors most of the day, and that night, when I awoke about three o’clock, suddenly and with a shock, thinking I had heard Aunty Sabrine’s voice crying: “Cunnle! wheah are you, Cunnle?” my exhausted brain took it for the echo of a dream. I must have dozed for an hour before I sprang up with a certainty in my mind that I had heard her voice in very truth. Then I hurried on my clothes, and ran to Alfred Winthrop’s. He looked incredulous; but he got into his boots like a man. We found Aunty Sabrine, alive but unconscious, on the crest of the hill. When we had secured an asylum for her, we searched for the Colonel. The next day we learned that he had heard the news of the election and had boarded a snow-clearing train that was returning to the Junction.
It was a week before Aunty Sabrine recovered. When I asked her if she was going to look for the Colonel, she answered with gentle resignation:
“No, seh. I’m ’most too old. I’ll stay hyeh, wheah he knows wheah to find me. He’ll come afteh me, sho’.”
Sixteen months passed, and he did not come. Then, one evening, a Summer walk took me by the little house. I heard a voice I could not forget.
“Hyeh, you black niggeh, get along with that suppeh, or I come in theah and cut youh damn haid off!”
Looking up, I saw Colonel Brereton, a little the worse for wear, seated on the snake fence. No … he was not seated; he was hitched on by the crook of his knees, his toes braced against the inside of the lower rail. His coat-tails hung in the vacant air.
He descended, a little stiffly, I thought, and greeted me cordially, with affable dignity. His manner somehow implied that it was I who had been away.
He insisted on my coming into his front yard and sitting down on the bench by the house, while he condescendingly and courteously inquired after the health of his old friends and neighbors. I stayed until supper was announced. The Colonel was always the soul of hospitality; but on this occasion he did not ask me to join him. And I reflected, as I went away, that although he had punctiliously insisted on my sitting down, the Colonel had remained standing during our somewhat protracted conversation.
A ROUND-UP
When Rhodora Boyd – Rhodora Pennington that was – died in her little house, with no one near her but one old maid who