An old fogy

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Chapter I

AFTER early lamplight the old Burnett house always presented the appearance of being hermetically sealed.

Not that there were many people to be rebuffed by its inhospitable gloom, for it stood in the centre of a dense grove of trees ; and the grove of trees stood in the centre of far-stretching cotton fields ; and the cotton fields were hemmed in on all sides by forest trees only pierced on two sides by wagon roads. There was no neighboring mansion within four and a half miles of it, so it did not in the least matter how early it was closed and darkened.

The window shutters were never, by any chance, left unfastened. There were a great many of them, and they were outside shutters, of the close-slatted, impenetrable pattern, through which no ray of light could escape. The closing of them involved, either a fresh-air excursion around the entire exterior of a large

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and rambling old plantation house, or else the forcible lifting of heavy sashes. As the sashes did not run on cords, but had to be propped up with sticks, or pokers, or boot-jacks — whichever might be nearest at hand — the fresh-air excursion commended itself as an economy of time and labor.

The closing of all those shutters was Colonel Ethbert Burnett’s self-assumed duty ; one of the very few household regulations for which he was willing to be held personally responsible. The slam-banging that was absolutely essential to make the well-worn catches catch, would have suggested*a man in a towering rage, to any one not familiar with the colonel and his methods.

Next to his long military mustache, the Colonel’s conscience was the most conspicuous thing about him. Having once exalted the closing of those shutters into the realm of duty, nothing short of illness or absence would ever have excused their being unclosed, five minutes after Mrs. Burnett — by lighting the Rochester lamp on the library table — declared the day was done.

With the shutters all closed and the doors all locked, a fortress could not have presented a more forbidding front. Not even the concession of glass side-lights or a transom had been granted the heavy front door.

There was, indeed, no particular point in having side-lights to a door which stood wide open all day long, and through which there was scarcely a possibility of any one passing after sunset.

Watching the sun set behind the tall crowns of the environing forest trees was another occupation for the Colonel and Mrs. Burnett, which custom, backed by social aridity, had almost dignified by the name of duty. There was really nothing else to do at that hour of the day.

The Colonel always completed his “ rounds ” of the plantation before the sun reached the tallest of the pecan trees, and would canter briskly homeward on Lem, his high-mettled black horse, placidly sure of finding Mrs. Burnett occupying one of the big splintbottomed arm-chairs, that stood on the front-gallery the year round, taking their chances of rain or sun, or, else, slowly pacing its broad planks with her delicate blue-veined hands outlined upon her folded arms.

There was not much for them to talk about. Perhaps he would tell her how the cotton was getting on in the willow slough field ; and perhaps she would tell him how many chickens she had found hatched out on her last visit to the henhouse. And then, side by side in that peaceful silence which paucity of excitement breeds, they would watch the sun set, for the beauty of it. And beauty was too scarce a commodity not to be made much of.

Life had long since settled itself into a monotonous groove for the Burnetts, which would have been

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deadly but for two things, its inevitability and its familiarity.

When quite alone, before the Colonel and Black Lem had broken the dull stretch of sandy road between the brown cotton stalks, Mrs. Burnett, turning with slow grace in her gallery promenade, would ask herself, with a distinct sense of treachery,

“ How she had ever inured herself to it ? ” Another question, before which treachery gave place to anxiety, was,

“ Would the children ever be able to stand it?”

“ It ” stood for the brooding stillness and the dreary isolation of a home-life which knew no variation, day in or day out, week in or week out, year in or year out.

There was only one day of the week that had a flavor of spice above its fellows. That was mail-day. There were three, and only three, post-marks that ever brought a brighter light into her soft, dark eyes. One was, Baton Rouge, from whence came Stanford’s college-boy letters, bristling with enthusiasm over life in all its aspects ; another was, Crystal Springs, from whence came Olivia’s school-girl jeremiads over the deprivations and the injustices inflicted at boarding-school, mitigated, in her case, by the near approach of graduation day ; the third was Brooklyn, where Margaret — or “ Miss Burnett,” as she liked to see it on the backs of envelopes — was getting a prolonged and dangerous draught of life as it was not lived on the old plantation home. Glad

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as she was to get them always, the “ children’s ” letters left Mrs. Burnett’s heart a-flutter with anxious forebodings.

Sometimes, after the ceremony of closing the shutters was performed, and the lamps were lighted, and the white and red chessmen were marshalled for the inevitable contest that was to bridge over the yawning chasm between dusk and bedtime, her forebodings would find timid utterance : —

“ Ethbert, I am afraid the children will find home dreadfully dull and lonely when they do come back. And Margaret cannot stay in Brooklyn much longer, without wearing out her welcome.”

And the Colonel, looking his very fiercest, with his shaggy brows contracted and his big military mustache working violently in the effort to start his cigar, would answer indifferently : —

“ Well, what are you going to do about it? You and I have never found it dreadfully dull, Mildred, and what is good enough for us ought to be good enough for our children.”

“ Yes, but we are used to it.”

“And they will have to get used to it. You know I never cordially endorsed Maggie’s acceptance of that invitation. Your first move to-night, my dear.”

Upon which Mrs. Burnett would move her king’s pawn to his fourth square, with a sigh that held its mental reservations.

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Had she never found it frightfully dull? Had she really, unconsciously, subsided into the placid poultryraiser, butter-maker, and small-fruit-culturer which had won her such distinguished laurels, locally ?

Sometimes the mother fears that agitated her refused to be silenced by a single rebuff. She was especially exigeant on a certain evening of the mail-day that had brought an account from Margaret of a “ lovely german ” and a “ perfectly delicious theatre-party.”

“ But I am afraid they will not look at things through our glasses, Ethbert.”

“Check! You are a most unsatisfactory player sometimes, Mrs. Burnett. Well, as I asked you before, what are you going to do about it ? Margaret cannot take up her abode permanently at her Uncle George’s, and Olivia must get through this term. If I can carry Stanford through without any unpaid bills I will rejoice. Be so kind as to notice my check.”

Mrs. Burnett retrieved her chess reputation by along and apparently studious contemplation of the board between them.

The Colonel played chess because he loved it. Mrs. Burnett played chess because the Colonel loved it. In her soul she loathed the stately game, which, under the guise of recreation, made the most arduous demands upon her preoccupied brain.

How could she hope to cope successfully with its subtile combinations, when she was thinking at one and

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the same time, of her three scattered darlings, the too rapid depletion of the flour-barrel, and the various delinquencies in the household service which ought to be dealt with rigidly ?

She would much rather have devoted her lamp-lit hours to the week-old newspaper, or her darning basket, or — “ even to Scott or Dickens.” They were famous old stand-bys — ready to her hand, behind the glassdoors of the ancient bookcase that formed such a wonderful combination of drawers, writing-desk, and book-shelves. But the Colonel had so little recreation, and if she did not play chess with him every night he would work over those dismal plantation books which always left him worried and irritable. And his eyes were not at all strong. So there were many and potent reasons why the ivory warriors should be marshalled in battle array every evening.

“ When Stan comes home he can take the books entirely off your hands,” she said, noting, with quick compunction, that the Colonel’s jaws had become a little hard set since that talk about the children.

“ I fancy Stanford will care more for shooting wild-

ducks than for book-keeping. But he’s not here yet,

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Mildred, nor will he be for six months if things go as they should. I believe it is your move.”

This with considerable asperity. If there was one thing the Colonel could not forgive it was discursiveness over the chess-board.

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Mrs. Burnett held her hand suspended over a red knight so long that her husband lifted an impatient glance to her face.

“ Well, my dear ! ”

“ I thought I heard some one screaming.”

“ An owl, I presume. I should think you were used enough to screech-owls. If you simply do not want to play chess to-night, pray say so.”

“ No, but, Ethbert, listen please. Surely ” A

heavy hurried footfall just outside the closed shutters of the library completed her nervousness. It was followed by a thundering blow upon their unyielding surface, loud enough to convince the Colonel that something besides screech-owls was abroad in the outer darkness. Mrs. Burnett paled.

“ Some one is outside. There, on the violet beds under the window, Ethbert. Something is the matter. Do open the window.”

The Colonel rose to his feet in slow bewilderment.

What could possibly happen on his place to warrant screams and rushing feet at that hour of the night ? He had lived in that house more than fifty years, and nothing at all out of the way had ever happened before. At least not since the war.

All this went through his well-ordered brain while he was lifting the heavy sash and unlocking the rusty hasp of the shutter with a hand that would tremble in spite of him. The Colonel always asked a precedent.

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II

With the rush of outer air there entered a lurid glare. Silhouetted against a flame-lit sky stood Amanda, their cook, gesticulating wildly with the billet of stove-wood she had raised for another blow on the shutters.

“ My Gawd, Colonel Burnett, is you plum-stone deef ? I been hollerin’ my lungs soa’ ev’y step I jump from my house to thisn. The work is on fire an’ we all goin’ to be scworched in our baids.”

One outward glance, and then Colonel Burnett, stiffly erect, as if he had been o£ military drill, turned a blanched face towards his wife.

“ Some devil has fired the gin ! The whole year’s crop was in it. We are ruined.”

For a second a paralysis of inaction held him in iron bondage. Then with long, swift strides he strode for the yard premises, and yelled for his horse.

Amanda’s shrill proclamation that the world was on fire and everybody was going to be scorched in bed, had already broken the heavy slumber of Andrew, whose chief occupation in life was saddling and unsaddling Black Lem.

He was stumbling across the yard, only half aroused, when the Colonel sent that stentorian demand after him.

“ My horse in two minutes, boy ! ”

And by the time Black Lem, snorting his amazed resentment at this untimely call, had pranced up to the back steps, with Andrew shoeless and hatless on

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his back, his master was standing, booted and spurred, gazing dumbly upon the ruin some fiend had wrought.

Quite a mile across the treeless fields stood the stately gin-house, in and out of whose every crevice darted tongues of flame and volumes of black smoke. From where they stood they could see men moving to and fro about the burning building, excited but impotent. There was nothing to do. Nothing but a feeble handing of buckets of water from one to the other. By the light of the conflagration Mrs. Burnett could see the look of fixed despair upon her husband’s face.

She had no words for this crisis. She put a soft, caressing hand on his arm. It was a mute offer of comfort.

“Of course you are insured, Ethbert?”

“ Expired yesterday. Was going to renew by tomorrow’s mail. It is always the way.”

Then he leaped into the saddle, bending to make sure of his stirrups.

A plaintive whisper smote his ear softly. “ Oh, Ethbert, do be careful.”

“ Of what ? ” he asked grimly, plunging his spurs into the black horse so savagely that he was carried, at one bound, beyond the possibility of hearing her hesitating answer : —

“ Of — of — falling timbers.”

She had not meant that. She was not thinking of

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falling timbers. But Andrew was standing there with starting eye-balls and dropped jaw, dimly realizing that a great crime had been committed on that slow-moving peace-begirt plantation since he had lain him down to his early slumbers. He would greatly have preferred following in the wake of black Lem and the Colonel, but that would have left “ Miss Milly her lone self,” and Andrew adored the lady of the “big house.”

“Who done it, you reckon, Miss Milly?” But she did not hear him. She was thinking of her husband. One against hundreds !

Might not the hand that was capable of applying the torch be equal to still darker deeds ?

She had followed the sound of his horse’s hoof-beats until it was swallowed up in the soft dirt road. Then she had lost the dark moving mass of man and horse behind the clumps of willows that fringed the gin slough. Now, there they were once more, standing clear-cut against a background of flames as motionless as an equestrian statue in bronze. She glued her eyes to that spot.

There was nothing for him to do. If only he would find nothing to say. It would be so useless. So much worse than useless. A deathlike stillness enwrapped her, the ruddy light was dying out of the sky, great billows of black smoke obliterated the stars. If Ethbert would only come back !

She moaned aloud in her pain.

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From his lowly seat on the bottom steps Andrew essayed a message of humble comfort.

“ Somebody been doin’ the devil’s own work on this place to-night. But you go to bed, Miss Milly, and Andrew’ll see that nobody don’t pester you.”

Then the tears that she had held back so bravely fell in a hot torrent. And Andrew grieved that his good intentions had gone astray.

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CHAPTER Ii

It was with a distinct sense of injury at the hands of Providence that Colonel Ethbert Burnett strode up and down the length of the long front gallery, on a certain gray morning, some weeks after the burning of his gin-house.

“ Stormed ” up and down, would, perhaps, more adequately express his tempestuous progress. Every fibre of the physical man responded to his mental perturbation. They always did.

He had thrust his long, nervous fingers through his thick gray hair until every separate hair asserted itself prominently. He had twisted the ends of his big mustache so violently that they stood straight out, making him look dreadfully brigandish. With his thumbs inserted in the arm-holes of his waistcoat his elbow sassumed aggressive angles.

In obedience to some occult law of adhesion peculiar to masculine headgear, his hat maintained a precarious position on the back of his head.

The hat was misleading, and led to something akin to tragedy. Observing it on his master’s head instead of the hat-rack, the Colonel’s favorite setter approached

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confidently, and sociably indicated his entire readiness to go birding by a brisk series of tail-waggings.

He got a kick for his affability, and retired to the rear premises with crushed sensibilities and a bruised nose.

The Colonel could stand a great deal of luxury without flinching. It was generally understood, that, when he was discovered in one of the big gallery chairs on off hours, he was going to smoke an extra cigar. He flung himself into a chair, spent and white with his mental excitement. That action also was misleading.

The house-girl, on her very best behavior since the “white folks had been so upset,” appeared promptly with a cuspadore.

She got roared at for offlciousness, and was told, with awful sternness, that, when the Colonel wanted a cuspadore he would order one.

She was paralyzed with astonishment, and assured Amanda, when she reached the kitchen, that she “ never had seen the Colonel in such a pucker.”

During the passage of the years necessary for bringing one son and two daughters to years of discretion, Mrs. Burnett had contracted the habit of calling her husband “ papa,” with a caressing inflection. Sometimes, he was “ the Colonel,” at others, notably when it became imperative she should assert herself, he was “ Mr. Burnett,” through barely parted lips.

In view of the kick actual and kick implied that had

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been bestowed upon his dog and her maid, she considered it advisable to pour oil upon the troubled waters. After all, “ Poor papa, it was dreadfully hard on him.”

She came forward working a buttonhole, which would complete a pair of shaker-flannel drawers for him. She made pretence of great cheerfulness, that was not, however, any deeper seated than her eyes and lips.

A great bronze turkey-gobbler was strutting and swelling in the front yard, very much as the Colonel had been strutting and fuming on the front gallery.

She made some irrelevant remarks about his probable weight when she should come to kill him for Christmas.

Her husband admonished her by a dark glance that he was not to be switched off the main grievance by such a puerile suggestion of good to come. Upon which she became more direct.

“ I would not take things so dreadfully hard, papa, if I were you. Really one would think this blow had fallen exclusively on your shoulders. Don’t be so dreadfully downcast. We will come out all right in the end. I am quite sure we will.”

The Colonel took a tighter hold upon his arm-holes and stretched his long legs to their utmost capacity. He seemed to be pondering the advisability of answering a fool according to his folly, so contemptuously did his big mustache go up and then down.

A flush of belated resentment mounted slowly to his wife’s temples. She turned her back on him, and i8

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busied her fingers with the dead leaves that had fluttered to the floor from the frost-nipped Madeira vines, festooned over the front steps. Her husband’s answer came to her like a fresh touch of frost.

“ I very much doubt, my dear, if you are capable of taking anything as hard as I do. That is, if you choose so to express a man’s giving way, occasionally, to his most refined sensibilities. You are not a Burnett.”

Mrs. Burnett regarded her completed work reflectively. She was glad his drawers were done, so that she could get at his dressing-gown. She bit off her thread with strong white teeth and looked at him pleasantly.

“ No, I am a La Pice, as everybody knows.”

“ And ” — the Colonel was on his feet again, and, spinning rapidly on one heel, made a little dust ring on the floor — “you have not been surrounded all your life by the objects on which your infantile eye first rested. This house was not built by your great grandfather. It has not been occupied by your ancestors for more than a hundred years. Every nail in its floor is dear to me, and I would be a brute, rather than a man of some slight sensibility, if I did not feel this cruel blow keenly.”

Perhaps the closing clause of the Colonel’s rhapsody appealed to the sensibilities of his dog, who appeared in the front doorway at that moment, dejected, but quite ready to forgive the cruel blow he felt keenly.

Mrs. Burnett accepted the obloquy of her implied natal inferiority cheerfully.

“No, I had a great-grandpapa, but I believe he was nothing but a doctor, and lived always in large cities ; here and there and everywhere, as professional men must.”

“ Which accounts,” the Colonel graciously conceded, “ in a measure, I presume, for the facility with which you can adjust yourself to change. It is in your blood.”

“ Occasional change of locality and association has a broadening tendency, don’t you think, Ethbert ? It is like varying one’s diet, and I know you like that.”

But the Colonel was not to be entrapped into an impersonal discussion on any subject. Things were good or bad as they touched him. People were noble or ignoble as they affected his destinies. And, just now, both things and people were at a savage discount with him.

“ Well, our chances of being broadened by change of location are imminent. Those robbers, those vampires, have given me only until the first of the year to make my arrangements for evacuation. It is comforting to reflect that at least one member of the family will enjoy being homeless.”

“ Somewhere in our family,” said Mrs. Burnett, with placid inconsequence, “ there is a great silver urn presented to my father — you know he was a doctor too —

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for distinguished services during a New Orleans yellowfever epidemic. Dear me, what a litter these vines do keep the gallery in.”

That bit of family history contributed by the La Pice side of the house was quite familiar to every member of it. But the Burnett traditions always outranked the La Pice. The Colonel waived the silver urn aside somewhat irritably.

“ I know, I know, my dear Mildred. Doubtless your great-grandfather and your most estimable father were very useful members of society ; but, just now, we have matters of more vital interest to discuss. You, I am glad to reflect, will never be called on to experience the bitterness of being robbed of your ancestral acres.”

Mrs. Burnett’s fine sense of justice impelled her to protest against the word “ robbed.”

“ Oh, I can’t think it quite right, Ethbert, to speak of Mandeville and Cuthbert as robbers.”

The Colonel flung himself wrathfully into the big leather chair.

“ Don’t add fuel to the flames, Mildred, by championing my enemies, I beg of you. I say robbed.” He brought his clinched fists forcibly down upon the arm of his chair. “ Robbed mercilessly and without warning.”

Mrs. Burnett smiled. It was almost impossible to avoid smiling when the Colonel’s temper ran completely away with his vocabulary.

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“ I don’t think, papa, it is customary to warn one when robbery is meditated. But, I should say that for five years we have lived under the sombre shadow of a very explicit warning. And this foreclosure certainly ought not to surprise us, however else we may be affected by it.”

The Colonel lay back, spent with emotion, and stretched his arms wide as if he would fain clasp his ancestral acres in one last fond embrace. He moaned tragically :

“ All gone ! All gone ! ”

There had come emergencies into her married life, swift-rushing rapids precipitated into a very sluggish current, over whi'ch nothing had ever helped Mrs. Burnett to “shoot” safely ; but falling back upon her sense of the ridiculous, something struck her at this juncture as immensely funny. Between Ethbert, crimsoned with rage, inflated with a sense of personal importance, clamorously protestant against the existing order of things, and the bronze turkey-gobbler, strutting about the yard with swelling breast and crimsoned wattles, gobbling angrily in response to the Colonel’s raised voice, there was a comical resemblance.

She wished she could point it out to Ethbert, but that would hardly do. She wished she could laugh aloud, but that would hardly do, either. So she was reduced to the old well-worn verbiage :

“ Don’t take things so very hard, papa.”

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“ The home of my fathers. The lands that have been in the Burnett family over a hundred years, to go to — whom ? ”

It was really becoming exasperating. Mrs. Burnett’s eyes narrowed and her caressing voice hardened.

“ After all, Mr. Burnett, imposing as it sounds, there is a good deal of what Stan calls, ‘ blasted nonsense, don’t you know,’ about ancestral acres. Individually I would rather have one acre in potatoes or turnips, uncovered by mortgages, or unpestered by coco-grass, than all your dismal cotton acreage which has only been plungingyou deeper in debt every year since the war.”

“ Stanford is an irreverent scamp, who never could have grown up to sneer at his father unless his mother had encouraged the practice.”

“ You know better than that, Mr. Burnett.” When Mrs. Burnett narrowed her eyes and called him “ Mr. Burnett,” through barely parted lips the Colonel recognized the moment for retraction.

“ Of course, of course, Mildred. Don’t take one so very literally. But all this is excessively trying, and Stanford is inclined to irreverence.”

“ The age is irreverent,” said Mrs. Burnett, conclusively, “ and our boy belongs to the age.”

“ Most emphatically. I wish Stanford was our oldest instead of our youngest child.”

“Why? ”

She opened questioning eyes. She was leaning against the gallery railing, running her unthreaded needle in and out of her folded work.

“ Because, well — because — at such a serious juncture as this a man naturally desires the help and comfort which only another man can give him.”

There would have been a fine opportunity for some women to ring in something tart about the relative strength of men and women. Instead, with a smile of ineffable sweetness, she answered :

“ I think our Margaret will prove our main dependence, husband. I must write to the dear child to-night and tell her everything. Or would you rather I should telegraph her to come home at once ? ”

“ Home. By the time she could get here she would have no more rights here than the veriest stranger. This place belongs to Mandeville and Cuthbert, commission merchants. I beg of you not to lose sight of that fact.”

“ Then perhaps I had better write to George. Of course they will have to know everything, and I will tell him I want him to keep Maggie until our plans are more settled.”

The Colonel turned his head restlessly. Through the open doorway he could see into the library where his desk stood open, and all over and about it lay a promiscuous litter of torn bills, contracts reduced to tatters, letters, jagged and scattered, just where he had scattered and left them all in his frenzied efforts to

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“ straighten his papers out.” He was thinking of Mandeville and Cuthbert. “And I must write to them too. There is no getting around it, this time.”

“ I don’t think we want to get around it, do we Ethbert ? We have put it off and dodged it and blinked it too long already. It was inevitable, and we have known that it was for, oh, such a long time. The fire only precipitated it.”

The Colonel heaved a deep-chested sigh. “ And sister Catherine has to be told. It will grieve her sorely to see the old homestead pass out of the family. Of course every one will blame me.”

“Then every one will be cruelly unjust. No one knows as well as I do against what tremendous odds you have been fighting, you poor dear brave victim of circumstances. There, now.”

And the wife’s verdict of acquittal was sealed with a kiss on the brow where worry and disappointment were ploughing deep lines.

“ I must write to those fellows at once.”

“ Suppose you light your cigar and think it over placidly before you write.”

“ Think it over placidly ! Women have so limited a capacity for gauging calamity.”

The Colonel’s manner breathed a fine scorn of his wife’s mental capacity, but he took her advice. He bit the end off a cigar, lighted it, and, by the time it had accumulated sufficient ashes to establish its excel-

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lence, the hand that held it dropped heavily to the arm of the big chair. The Colonel had found temporary oblivion from all his perplexities.

Mrs. Burnett tip-toed softly into the house to fetch a palmetto fan. There were flies in the air and some of them might select the broad shining expanse of the Colonel’s fine forehead for a promenade.