A Municipal Report
by O. Henry
The cities are full of pride,
Challenging each to each--
This from her mountainside,
That from her burthened beach.
R. KIPLING.
Fancy a novel about Chicago or Buffalo, let us say, or Nashville,
Tennessee! There are just three big cities in the United States
that are "story cities"--New York, of course, New Orleans, and,
best of the lot, San Francisco.--FRANK NORRIS.
East is East, and West is San Francisco, according to Californians.
Californians are a race of people; they are not merely inhabitants of a
State. They are the Southerners of the West. Now, Chicagoans are no less
loyal to their city; but when you ask them why, they stammer and speak
of lake fish and the new Odd Fellows Building. But Californians go into
detail.
Of course they have, in the climate, an argument that is good for half
an hour while you are thinking of your coal bills and heavy underwear.
But as soon as they come to mistake your silence for conviction, madness
comes upon them, and they picture the city of the Golden Gate as the
Bagdad of the New World. So far, as a matter of opinion, no refutation
is necessary. But, dear cousins all (from Adam and Eve descended), it
is a rash one who will lay his finger on the map and say: "In this town
there can be no romance--what could happen here?" Yes, it is a bold and
a rash deed to challenge in one sentence history, romance, and Rand and
McNally.
NASHVILLE--A city, port of delivery, and the capital of the
State of Tennessee, is on the Cumberland River and on the
N. C. & St. L. and the L. & N. railroads. This city is regarded
as the most important educational centre in the South.
I stepped off the train at 8 P.M. Having searched the thesaurus in
vain for adjectives, I must, as a substitution, hie me to comparison
in the form of a recipe.
Take a London fog 30 parts; malaria 10 parts; gas leaks 20 parts;
dewdrops gathered in a brick yard at sunrise, 25 parts; odor of
honeysuckle 15 parts. Mix.
The mixture will give you an approximate conception of a Nashville
drizzle. It is not so fragrant as a moth-ball nor as thick as pea-soup;
but 'tis enough--'twill serve.
I went to a hotel in a tumbril. It required strong self-suppression
for me to keep from climbing to the top of it and giving an imitation
of Sidney Carton. The vehicle was drawn by beasts of a bygone era and
driven by something dark and emancipated.
I was sleepy and tired, so when I got to the hotel I hurriedly paid it
the fifty cents it demanded (with approximate lagniappe, I assure you).
I knew its habits; and I did not want to hear it prate about its old
"marster" or anything that happened "befo' de wah."
The hotel was one of the kind described as "renovated." That means
$20,000 worth of new marble pillars, tiling, electric lights and brass
cuspidors in the lobby, and a new L. & N. time table and a lithograph of
Lookout Mountain in each one of the great rooms above. The management
was without reproach, the attention full of exquisite Southern courtesy,
the service as slow as the progress of a snail and as good-humored as
Rip Van Winkle. The food was worth traveling a thousand miles for. There
is no other hotel in the world where you can get such chicken livers en
brochette.
At dinner I asked a Negro waiter if there was anything doing in town.
He pondered gravely for a minute, and then replied: "Well, boss, I don't
really reckon there's anything at all doin' after sundown."
Sundown had been accomplished; it had been drowned in the drizzle
long before. So that spectacle was denied me. But I went forth upon
the streets in the drizzle to see what might be there.
It is built on undulating grounds; and the streets are lighted
by electricity at a cost of $32,470 per annum.
As I left the hotel there was a race riot. Down upon me charged a
company of freedmen, or Arabs, or Zulus, armed with--no, I saw with
relief that they were not rifles, but whips. And I saw dimly a caravan
of black, clumsy vehicles; and at the reassuring shouts, "Kyar you
anywhere in the town, boss, fuh fifty cents," I reasoned that I was
merely a "fare" instead of a victim.
I walked through long streets, all leading uphill. I wondered how
those streets ever came down again. Perhaps they didn't until they
were "graded." On a few of the "main streets" I saw lights in stores
here and there; saw street cars go by conveying worthy burghers hither
and yon; saw people pass engaged in the art of conversation, and heard
a burst of semi-lively laughter issuing from a soda-water and ice-cream
parlor. The streets other than "main" seemed to have enticed upon their
borders houses consecrated to peace and domesticity. In many of them
lights shone behind discreetly drawn window shades; in a few pianos
tinkled orderly and irreproachable music. There was, indeed, little
"doing." I wished I had come before sundown. So I returned to my hotel.
In November, 1864, the Confederate General Hood advanced against
Nashville, where he shut up a National force under General Thomas.
The latter then sallied forth and defeated the Confederates in a
terrible conflict.
All my life I have heard of, admired, and witnessed the fine
marksmanship of the South in its peaceful conflicts in the
tobacco-chewing regions. But in my hotel a surprise awaited me.
There were twelve bright, new, imposing, capacious brass cuspidors
in the great lobby, tall enough to be called urns and so wide-mouthed
that the crack pitcher of a lady baseball team should have been
able to throw a ball into one of them at five paces distant. But,
although a terrible battle had raged and was still raging, the enemy
had not suffered. Bright, new, imposing, capacious, untouched, they
stood. But, shades of Jefferson Brick! the tile floor--the beautiful
tile floor! I could not avoid thinking of the battle of Nashville,
and trying to draw, as is my foolish habit, some deductions about
hereditary marksmanship.
Here I first saw Major (by misplaced courtesy) Wentworth Caswell. I
knew him for a type the moment my eyes suffered from the sight of
him. A rat has no geographical habitat. My old friend, A. Tennyson,
said, as he so well said almost everything:
Prophet, curse me the blabbing lip,
And curse me the British vermin, the rat.
Let us regard the word "British" as interchangeable ad lib. A rat
is a rat.
This man was hunting about the hotel lobby like a starved dog that had
forgotten where he had buried a bone. He had a face of great acreage,
red, pulpy, and with a kind of sleepy massiveness like that of Buddha.
He possessed one single virtue--he was very smoothly shaven. The mark
of the beast is not indelible upon a man until he goes about with a
stubble. I think that if he had not used his razor that day I would
have repulsed his advances, and the criminal calendar of the world
would have been spared the addition of one murder.
I happened to be standing within five feet of a cuspidor when Major
Caswell opened fire upon it. I had been observant enough to perceive
that the attacking force was using Gatlings instead of squirrel
rifles; so I side-stepped so promptly that the major seized the
opportunity to apologize to a noncombatant. He had the blabbing
lip. In four minutes he had become my friend and had dragged me
to the bar.
I desire to interpolate here that I am a Southerner. But I am not one
by profession or trade. I eschew the string tie, the slouch hat, the
Prince Albert, the number of bales of cotton destroyed by Sherman,
and plug chewing. When the orchestra plays Dixie I do not cheer. I
slide a little lower on the leather-cornered seat and, well, order
another Wuerzburger and wish that Longstreet had--but what's the use?
Major Caswell banged the bar with his fist, and the first gun at Fort
Sumter re-echoed. When he fired the last one at Appomattox I began to
hope. But then he began on family trees, and demonstrated that Adam
was only a third cousin of a collateral branch of the Caswell family.
Genealogy disposed of, he took up, to my distaste, his private family
matters. He spoke of his wife, traced her descent back to Eve, and
profanely denied any possible rumor that she may have had relations
in the land of Nod.
By this time I was beginning to suspect that he was trying to obscure
by noise the fact that he had ordered the drinks, on the chance that
I would be bewildered into paying for them. But when they were down he
crashed a silver dollar loudly upon the bar. Then, of course, another
serving was obligatory. And when I had paid for that I took leave of
him brusquely; for I wanted no more of him. But before I had obtained
my release he had prated loudly of an income that his wife received,
and showed a handful of silver money.
When I got my key at the desk the clerk said to me courteously: "If that
man Caswell has annoyed you, and if you would like to make a complaint,
we will have him ejected. He is a nuisance, a loafer, and without any
known means of support, although he seems to have some money most the
time. But we don't seem to be able to hit upon any means of throwing
him out legally."
"Why, no," said I, after some reflection; "I don't see my way clear
to making a complaint. But I would like to place myself on record as
asserting that I do not care for his company. Your town," I continued,
"seems to be a quiet one. What manner of entertainment, adventure, or
excitement have you to offer to the stranger within your gates?"
"Well, sir," said the clerk, "there will be a show here next Thursday.
It is--I'll look it up and have the announcement sent up to your room
with the ice water. Good night."
After I went up to my room I looked out the window. It was only about
ten o'clock, but I looked upon a silent town. The drizzle continued,
spangled with dim lights, as far apart as currants in a cake sold at
the Ladies' Exchange.
"A quiet place," I said to myself, as my first shoe struck the ceiling
of the occupant of the room beneath mine. "Nothing of the life here
that gives color and variety to the cities in the East and West. Just
a good, ordinary, humdrum, business town."
Nashville occupies a foremost place among the manufacturing
centres of the country. It is the fifth boot and shoe market
in the United States, the largest candy and cracker manufacturing
city in the South, and does an enormous wholesale drygoods,
grocery, and drug business.
I must tell you how I came to be in Nashville, and I assure you
the digression brings as much tedium to me as it does to you. I
was traveling elsewhere on my own business, but I had a commission
from a Northern literary magazine to stop over there and establish
a personal connection between the publication and one of its
contributors, Azalea Adair.
Adair (there was no clue to the personality except the handwriting)
had sent in some essays (lost art!) and poems that had made the
editors swear approvingly over their one o'clock luncheon. So they
had commissioned me to round up said Adair and corner by contract
his or her output at two cents a word before some other publisher
offered her ten or twenty.
At nine o'clock the next morning, after my chicken livers en brochette
(try them if you can find that hotel), I strayed out into the drizzle,
which was still on for an unlimited run. At the first corner I came
upon Uncle Caesar. He was a stalwart Negro, older than the pyramids,
with gray wool and a face that reminded me of Brutus, and a second
afterwards of the late King Cettiwayo. He wore the most remarkable
coat that I ever had seen or expect to see. It reached to his ankles
and had once been a Confederate gray in colors. But rain and sun and
age had so variegated it that Joseph's coat, beside it, would have
faded to a pale monochrome. I must linger with that coat, for it has
to do with the story--the story that is so long in coming, because
you can hardly expect anything to happen in Nashville.
Once it must have been the military coat of an officer. The cape of
it had vanished, but all adown its front it had been frogged and
tasseled magnificently. But now the frogs and tassles were gone.
In their stead had been patiently stitched (I surmised by some
surviving "black mammy") new frogs made of cunningly twisted common
hempen twine. This twine was frayed and disheveled. It must have
been added to the coat as a substitute for vanished splendors, with
tasteless but painstaking devotion, for it followed faithfully the
curves of the long-missing frogs. And, to complete the comedy and
pathos of the garment, all its buttons were gone save one. The
second button from the top alone remained. The coat was fastened
by other twine strings tied through the buttonholes and other
holes rudely pierced in the opposite side. There was never such
a weird garment so fantastically bedecked and of so many mottled
hues. The lone button was the size of a half-dollar, made of
yellow horn and sewed on with coarse twine.
This Negro stood by a carriage so old that Ham himself might have
started a hack line with it after he left the ark with the two animals
hitched to it. As I approached he threw open the door, drew out a
feather duster, waved it without using it, and said in deep, rumbling
tones:
"Step right in, suh; ain't a speck of dust in it--jus' got back from
a funeral, suh."
I inferred that on such gala occasions carriages were given an extra
cleaning. I looked up and down the street and perceived that there
was little choice among the vehicles for hire that lined the curb.
I looked in my memorandum book for the address of Azalea Adair.
"I want to go to 861 Jessamine Street," I said, and was about to step
into the hack. But for an instant the thick, long, gorilla-like arm of
the old Negro barred me. On his massive and saturnine face a look of
sudden suspicion and enmity flashed for a moment. Then, with quickly
returning conviction, he asked blandishingly: "What are you gwine
there for, boss?"
"What is it to you?" I asked, a little sharply.
"Nothin', suh, jus' nothin'. Only it's a lonesome kind of part of
town and few folks ever has business out there. Step right in. The
seats is clean--jes' got back from a funeral, suh."
A mile and a half it must have been to our journey's end. I could
hear nothing but the fearful rattle of the ancient hack over the
uneven brick paving; I could smell nothing but the drizzle, now
further flavored with coal smoke and something like a mixture of
tar and oleander blossoms. All I could see through the streaming
windows were two rows of dim houses.
The city has an area of 10 square miles; 181 miles of streets,
of which 137 miles are paved; a system of water-works that cost
$2,000,000, with 77 miles of mains.
Eight-sixty-one Jessamine Street was a decayed mansion. Thirty yards
back from the street it stood, outmerged in a splendid grove of trees
and untrimmed shrubbery. A row of box bushes overflowed and almost hid
the paling fence from sight; the gate was kept closed by a rope noose
that encircled the gate post and the first paling of the gate. But when
you got inside you saw that 861 was a shell, a shadow, a ghost of former
grandeur and excellence. But in the story, I have not yet got inside.
When the hack had ceased from rattling and the weary quadrupeds came
to a rest I handed my jehu his fifty cents with an additional quarter,
feeling a glow of conscious generosity, as I did so. He refused it.
"It's two dollars, suh," he said.
"How's that?" I asked. "I plainly heard you call out at the hotel:
'Fifty cents to any part of the town.'"
"It's two dollars, suh," he repeated obstinately. "It's a long ways from
the hotel."
"It is within the city limits and well within them." I argued. "Don't
think that you have picked up a greenhorn Yankee. Do you see those hills
over there?" I went on, pointing toward the east (I could not see them,
myself, for the drizzle); "well, I was born and raised on their other
side. You old fool nigger, can't you tell people from other people when
you see 'em?"
The grim face of King Cettiwayo softened. "Is you from the South, suh?
I reckon it was them shoes of yourn fooled me. They is somethin' sharp
in the toes for a Southern gen'l'man to wear."
"Then the charge is fifty cents, I suppose?" said I inexorably.
His former expression, a mingling of cupidity and hostility, returned,
remained ten seconds, and vanished.
"Boss," he said, "fifty cents is right; but I needs two dollars, suh;
I'm obleeged to have two dollars. I ain't demandin' it now, suh;
after I know whar you's from; I'm jus' sayin' that I has to have two
dollars to-night, and business is mighty po'."
Peace and confidence settled upon his heavy features. He had been
luckier than he had hoped. Instead of having picked up a greenhorn,
ignorant of rates, he had come upon an inheritance.
"You confounded old rascal," I said, reaching down to my pocket, "you
ought to be turned over to the police."
For the first time I saw him smile. He knew; he knew. HE KNEW.
I gave him two one-dollar bills. As I handed them over I noticed that
one of them had seen parlous times. Its upper right-hand corner was
missing, and it had been torn through the middle, but joined again. A
strip of blue tissue paper, pasted over the split, preserved its
negotiability.
Enough of the African bandit for the present: I left him happy, lifted
the rope and opened a creaky gate.
The house, as I said, was a shell. A paint brush had not touched it in
twenty years. I could not see why a strong wind should not have bowled
it over like a house of cards until I looked again at the trees that
hugged it close--the trees that saw the battle of Nashville and still
drew their protecting branches around it against storm and enemy and
cold.
Azalea Adair, fifty years old, white-haired, a descendant of the
cavaliers, as thin and frail as the house she lived in, robed in the
cheapest and cleanest dress I ever saw, with an air as simple as a
queen's, received me.
The reception room seemed a mile square, because there was nothing in
it except some rows of books, on unpainted white-pine bookshelves, a
cracked marble-top table, a rag rug, a hairless horsehair sofa and two
or three chairs. Yes, there was a picture on the wall, a colored crayon
drawing of a cluster of pansies. I looked around for the portrait of
Andrew Jackson and the pinecone hanging basket but they were not there.
Azalea Adair and I had conversation, a little of which will be repeated
to you. She was a product of the old South, gently nurtured in the
sheltered life. Her learning was not broad, but was deep and of splendid
originality in its somewhat narrow scope. She had been educated at
home, and her knowledge of the world was derived from inference and
by inspiration. Of such is the precious, small group of essayists
made. While she talked to me I kept brushing my fingers, trying,
unconsciously, to rid them guiltily of the absent dust from the
half-calf backs of Lamb, Chaucer, Hazlitt, Marcus Aurelius, Montaigne
and Hood. She was exquisite, she was a valuable discovery. Nearly
everybody nowadays knows too much--oh, so much too much--of real
life.
I could perceive clearly that Azalea Adair was very poor. A house and a
dress she had, not much else, I fancied. So, divided between my duty to
the magazine and my loyalty to the poets and essayists who fought Thomas
in the valley of the Cumberland, I listened to her voice, which was like
a harpsichord's, and found that I could not speak of contracts. In the
presence of the nine Muses and the three Graces one hesitated to lower
the topic to two cents. There would have to be another colloquy after
I had regained my commercialism. But I spoke of my mission, and three
o'clock of the next afternoon was set for the discussion of the
business proposition.
"Your town," I said, as I began to make ready to depart (which is
the time for smooth generalities), "seems to be a quiet, sedate place.
A home town, I should say, where few things out of the ordinary ever
happen."
It carries on an extensive trade in stoves and hollow ware with
the West and South, and its flouring mills have a daily capacity
of more than 2,000 barrels.
Azalea Adair seemed to reflect.
"I have never thought of it that way," she said, with a kind of
sincere intensity that seemed to belong to her. "Isn't it in the
still, quiet places that things do happen? I fancy that when God
began to create the earth on the first Monday morning one could
have leaned out one's window and heard the drops of mud splashing
from His trowel as He built up the everlasting hills. What did the
noisiest project in the world--I mean the building of the Tower
of Babel--result in finally? A page and a half of Esperanto in
the North American Review."
"Of course," said I platitudinously, "human nature is the same
everywhere; but there is more color--er--more drama and movement
and--er--romance in some cities than in others."
"On the surface," said Azalea Adair. "I have traveled many times
around the world in a golden airship wafted on two wings--print
and dreams. I have seen (on one of my imaginary tours) the Sultan
of Turkey bowstring with his own hands one of his wives who had
uncovered her face in public. I have seen a man in Nashville tear
up his theatre tickets because his wife was going out with her face
covered--with rice powder. In San Francisco's Chinatown I saw the
slave girl Sing Yee dipped slowly, inch by inch, in boiling almond
oil to make her swear she would never see her American lover again.
She gave in when the boiling oil had reached three inches above her
knee. At a euchre party in East Nashville the other night I saw
Kitty Morgan cut dead by seven of her schoolmates and lifelong
friends because she had married a house painter. The boiling oil
was sizzling as high as her heart; but I wish you could have seen
the fine little smile that she carried from table to table. Oh,
yes, it is a humdrum town. Just a few miles of red brick houses
and mud and lumber yards."
Some one knocked hollowly at the back of the house. Azalea Adair
breathed a soft apology and went to investigate the sound. She came
back in three minutes with brightened eyes, a faint flush on her
cheeks, and ten years lifted from her shoulders.
"You must have a cup of tea before you go," she said, "and a sugar
cake."
She reached and shook a little iron bell. In shuffled a small Negro
girl about twelve, barefoot, not very tidy, glowering at me with
thumb in mouth and bulging eyes.
Azalea Adair opened a tiny, worn purse and drew out a dollar bill,
a dollar bill with the upper right-hand corner missing, torn in two
pieces, and pasted together again with a strip of blue tissue paper.
It was one of the bills I had given the piratical Negro--there was
no doubt about it.
"Go up to Mr. Baker's store on the corner, Impy," she said, handing
the girl the dollar bill, "and get a quarter of a pound of tea--the
kind he always sends me--and ten cents worth of sugar cakes. Now,
hurry. The supply of tea in the house happens to be exhausted," she
explained to me.
Impy left by the back way. Before the scrape of her hard, bare feet
had died away on the back porch, a wild shriek--I was sure it was
hers--filled the hollow house. Then the deep, gruff tones of an angry
man's voice mingled with the girl's further squeals and unintelligible
words.
Azalea Adair rose without surprise or emotion and disappeared. For
two minutes I heard the hoarse rumble of the man's voice; then
something like an oath and a slight scuffle, and she returned
calmly to her chair.
"This is a roomy house," she said, "and I have a tenant for part
of it. I am sorry to have to rescind my invitation to tea. It was
impossible to get the kind I always use at the store. Perhaps
to-morrow, Mr. Baker will be able to supply me."
I was sure that Impy had not had time to leave the house. I inquired
concerning street-car lines and took my leave. After I was well on
my way I remembered that I had not learned Azalea Adair's name. But
to-morrow would do.
That same day I started in on the course of iniquity that this
uneventful city forced upon me. I was in the town only two days, but
in that time I managed to lie shamelessly by telegraph, and to be
an accomplice--after the fact, if that is the correct legal term--to
a murder.
As I rounded the corner nearest my hotel the Afrite coachman of the
polychromatic, nonpareil coat seized me, swung open the dungeony door
of his peripatetic sarcophagus, flirted his feather duster and began
his ritual: "Step right in, boss. Carriage is clean--jus' got back
from a funeral. Fifty cents to any--"
And then he knew me and grinned broadly. "'Scuse me, boss; you is de
gen'l'man what rid out with me dis mawnin'. Thank you kindly, suh."
"I am going out to 861 again to-morrow afternoon at three," said I,
"and if you will be here, I'll let you drive me. So you know Miss
Adair?" I concluded, thinking of my dollar bill.
"I belonged to her father, Judge Adair, suh," he replied.
"I judge that she is pretty poor," I said. "She hasn't much money to
speak of, has she?"
For an instant I looked again at the fierce countenance of King
Cettiwayo, and then he changed back to an extortionate old Negro hack
driver.
"She ain't gwine to starve, suh," he said slowly. "She has reso'ces,
suh; she has reso'ces."
"I shall pay you fifty cents for the trip," said I.
"Dat is puffeckly correct, suh," he answered humbly. "I jus' had to
have dat two dollars dis mawnin', boss."
I went to the hotel and lied by electricity. I wired the magazine: "A.
Adair holds out for eight cents a word."
The answer that came back was: "Give it to her quick you duffer."
Just before dinner "Major" Wentworth Caswell bore down upon me with
the greetings of a long-lost friend. I have seen few men whom I have
so instantaneously hated, and of whom it was so difficult to be rid. I
was standing at the bar when he invaded me; therefore I could not wave
the white ribbon in his face. I would have paid gladly for the drinks,
hoping, thereby, to escape another; but he was one of those despicable,
roaring, advertising bibbers who must have brass bands and fireworks
attend upon every cent that they waste in their follies.
With an air of producing millions he drew two one-dollar bills from a
pocket and dashed one of them upon the bar. I looked once more at the
dollar bill with the upper right-hand corner missing, torn through the
middle, and patched with a strip of blue tissue paper. It was my dollar
bill again. It could have been no other.
I went up to my room. The drizzle and the monotony of a dreary,
eventless Southern town had made me tired and listless. I remember that
just before I went to bed I mentally disposed of the mysterious dollar
bill (which might have formed the clew to a tremendously fine detective
story of San Francisco) by saying to myself sleepily: "Seems as if a
lot of people here own stock in the Hack-Driver's Trust. Pays dividends
promptly, too. Wonder if--" Then I fell asleep.
King Cettiwayo was at his post the next day, and rattled my bones over
the stones out to 861. He was to wait and rattle me back again when I
was ready.
Azalea Adair looked paler and cleaner and frailer than she had looked
on the day before. After she had signed the contract at eight cents per
word she grew still paler and began to slip out of her chair. Without
much trouble I managed to get her up on the antediluvian horsehair sofa
and then I ran out to the sidewalk and yelled to the coffee-colored
Pirate to bring a doctor. With a wisdom that I had not expected in him,
he abandoned his team and struck off up the street afoot, realizing the
value of speed. In ten minutes he returned with a grave, gray-haired
and capable man of medicine. In a few words (worth much less than eight
cents each) I explained to him my presence in the hollow house of
mystery. He bowed with stately understanding, and turned to the old
Negro.
"Uncle Caesar," he said calmly, "Run up to my house and ask Miss Lucy
to give you a cream pitcher full of fresh milk and half a tumbler of
port wine. And hurry back. Don't drive--run. I want you to get back
sometime this week."
It occurred to me that Dr. Merriman also felt a distrust as to the
speeding powers of the land-pirate's steeds. After Uncle Caesar was
gone, lumberingly, but swiftly, up the street, the doctor looked me
over with great politeness and as much careful calculation until he
had decided that I might do.
"It is only a case of insufficient nutrition," he said. "In other words,
the result of poverty, pride, and starvation. Mrs. Caswell has many
devoted friends who would be glad to aid her, but she will accept
nothing except from that old Negro, Uncle Caesar, who was once owned
by her family."
"Mrs. Caswell!" said I, in surprise. And then I looked at the contract
and saw that she had signed it "Azalea Adair Caswell."
"I thought she was Miss Adair," I said.
"Married to a drunken, worthless loafer, sir," said the doctor. "It
is said that he robs her even of the small sums that her old servant
contributes toward her support."
When the milk and wine had been brought the doctor soon revived Azalea
Adair. She sat up and talked of the beauty of the autumn leaves that
were then in season, and their height of color. She referred lightly to
her fainting seizure as the outcome of an old palpitation of the heart.
Impy fanned her as she lay on the sofa. The doctor was due elsewhere,
and I followed him to the door. I told him that it was within my power
and intentions to make a reasonable advance of money to Azalea Adair
on future contributions to the magazine, and he seemed pleased.
"By the way," he said, "perhaps you would like to know that you have had
royalty for a coachman. Old Caesar's grandfather was a king in Congo.
Caesar himself has royal ways, as you may have observed."
As the doctor was moving off I heard Uncle Caesar's voice inside: "Did
he get bofe of dem two dollars from you, Mis' Zalea?"
"Yes, Caesar," I heard Azalea Adair answer weakly. And then I went in
and concluded business negotiations with our contributor. I assumed the
responsibility of advancing fifty dollars, putting it as a necessary
formality in binding our bargain. And then Uncle Caesar drove me back
to the hotel.
Here ends all of the story as far as I can testify as a witness. The
rest must be only bare statements of facts.
At about six o'clock I went out for a stroll. Uncle Caesar was at his
corner. He threw open the door of his carriage, flourished his duster
and began his depressing formula: "Step right in, suh. Fifty cents to
anywhere in the city--hack's puffickly clean, suh--jus' got back from
a funeral--"
And then he recognized me. I think his eyesight was getting bad. His
coat had taken on a few more faded shades of color, the twine strings
were more frayed and ragged, the last remaining button--the button of
yellow horn--was gone. A motley descendant of kings was Uncle Caesar!
About two hours later I saw an excited crowd besieging the front of
a drug store. In a desert where nothing happens this was manna; so
I wedged my way inside. On an extemporized couch of empty boxes and
chairs was stretched the mortal corporeality of Major Wentworth
Caswell. A doctor was testing him for the immortal ingredient. His
decision was that it was conspicuous by its absence.
The erstwhile Major had been found dead on a dark street and brought by
curious and ennuied citizens to the drug store. The late human being had
been engaged in terrific battle--the details showed that. Loafer and
reprobate though he had been, he had been also a warrior. But he had
lost. His hands were yet clinched so tightly that his fingers would not
be opened. The gentle citizens who had know him stood about and searched
their vocabularies to find some good words, if it were possible, to
speak of him. One kind-looking man said, after much thought: "When
'Cas' was about fo'teen he was one of the best spellers in school."
While I stood there the fingers of the right hand of "the man that was"
which hung down the side of a white pine box, relaxed, and dropped
something at my feet. I covered it with one foot quietly, and a little
later on I picked it up and pocketed it. I reasoned that in his last
struggle his hand must have seized that object unwittingly and held
it in a death grip.
At the hotel that night the main topic of conversation, with the
possible exceptions of politics and prohibition, was the demise of
Major Caswell. I heard one man say to a group of listeners:
"In my opinion, gentlemen, Caswell was murdered by some of these
no-account niggers for his money. He had fifty dollars this afternoon
which he showed to several gentlemen in the hotel. When he was found
the money was not on his person."
I left the city the next morning at nine, and as the train was crossing
the bridge over the Cumberland River I took out of my pocket a yellow
horn overcoat button the size of a fifty-cent piece, with frayed ends
of coarse twine hanging from it, and cast it out of the window into
the slow, muddy waters below.
I wonder what's doing in Buffalo!
~~~~~~~ THE END ~~~~~~~
|
