The Choir Invisible
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James Lane Allen >> The Choir Invisible
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In setting out on his journey, he had instructed his sole assistant--a young
man by the name of Charles O'Bannon--as to his duties in the meantime: he
was to cut some new capital letters out of a block of dog-wood in the
office, and also some small letters where the type fell short; to collect if
possible some unpaid subscriptions--this being one of the advantages that an
editor always takes of his own absence--in particular to call upon certain
merchants for arrears in advertisements; and he was to receive any lost
articles that might be sent in to be advertised, or return such as should be
called for by their owners: with other details appertaining to the
establishment.
O'Bannon had performed his duties as he had been told--reserving for
himself, as always, the right of a personal construction. He had addressed a
written appeal to the nonpaying subscribers, declaring that the Gazette had
now become a Try-Weekly, since Mr. Bradford had to try hard every week to
get it out by the end; he had collected from several delinquent advertisers;
whittled out three new capital letters, and also the face of Mr. Bradford
and one of his legs; taken charge with especial interest of the department
of Lost and Found and was now ready for other duties.
On this evening of the ball he was sitting in the office.
In one corner of the room stood a worn handpress with two dog-skin
inking-balls. Between the logs of the wall near another corner a horizontal
iron bar had been driven, and from the end of this bar hung a saucer-shaped
iron lamp filled with bear-oil. Out of this oil stuck the end of a cotton
rag for a wick; which, being set on fire, filled the room with a strong
smell and a feeble, murky, flickering light. Under the lamp stood a plain
oak slab on two pairs of crosslegs; and on the slab were papers and letters,
a black ink-horn, some leaves of native tobacco, and a large gray-horn
drinking-cup--empty. Under the table was a lately emptied bottle.O'Bannon
sat in a rough chair before this drinking-cup, smoking a long tomahawk-pipe.
His head was tilted backward, his eyes followed the flight of smoke upward.
That he expected to be at the party might have been inferred from his dress:
a blue broadcloth coat with yellow gilt buttons; a swan's-down waistcoat
with broad stripes of red and white; a pair of dove-coloured corded-velvet
pantaloons with three large yellow buttons on the hips; and a neckcloth of
fine white cam- bric.His figure was thickset, strong, cumbrous; his hair
black, curly, shining. His eyes, bold, vivacious, and now inflamed, were of
that rarely beautiful blue which is seen only in members of the Irish race.
His complexion was a blending of the lily and the rose. His lips were thick
and red under his short fuzzy moustache. His hands also were thick and soft,
always warm, and not very clean--on account of the dog-skin inking-balls.
He had two ruling passions: the influence he thought himself entitled to
exert over women; and his disposition to play practical jokes on men. Both
the first and the second of these weaknesses grew out of his confidence that
he had nothing to fear from either sex. Nevertheless he had felt forced to
admit that his charms had never prevailed with Amy Falconer. He had often
wondered how she could resist; but she had resisted without the least
effort. Still, he pursued, and he had once told her with smiling candour
that if she did not mind the pursuit, he did not mind the chase. Only, he
never urged it into the presence of Mrs. Falconer, of whom alone he stood in
speechless, easily comprehensible awe. Perhaps to-night--as Amy had never
seen him in ball-dress--she might begin to succumb; he had just placed her
under obligation to him by an unexpected stroke of good fortune; and finally
he had executed one neat stratagem at the expense of Mr. Bradford and
another at the expense of John Gray. So that esteeming himself in a fair way
to gratify one passion and having already gratified the other, he leaned
back in his chair, smiling, smoking, drinking.
He had just risen to pinch the wick in the lamp overhead when a knock
sounded on the door, and to his surprise and displeasure--for he thought he
had bolted it--there entered without waiting to be bidden a low,
broadchested, barefooted, blond fellow, his brown-tow breeches rolled up to
his knees, showing a pair of fine white calves; a clean shirt thrown open at
the neck and rolled up to the elbows, displaying a noble pair of arms; a
ruddy shine on his good-humoured face; a drenched look about his short,
thick, whitish hair; and a comfortable smell of soap emanating from his
entire person.
Seeing him, O'Bannon looked less displeased; but keeping his seat and merely
taking the pipe from his lips, he said, with an air of sarcasm, "I would
have invited you to come in, Peter, but I see you have not waited for the
invitation."
Peter deigned no reply; but walking forward, he clapped down on the oak slab
a round handful of shillings and pence. "Count it, and see if it's all
there," he said, taking a short cob pipe out of his mouth and planting his
other hand stoutly on his hip.
"What's this for?" O'Bannon spoke in a tone of wounded astonishment.
"What do you suppose it's for? Didn't I hear you've been out collecting?"
"Well, you have had an advertisement running in the paper for some time."
"That's what it's for then! And what's more, I've got the money to pay for a
better one, whenever you'll write it."
"Sit down, sit down, sit down!" O'Bannon jumped from his chair, hurried
across the room--a little unsteadily--emptied a pile of things on the floor,
and dragged back a heavy oak stool. "Sit down. And Peter?" he added
inquiringly, tapping his empty drinking-cup.
Peter nodded his willingness. O'Bannoli drew a key from his pocket and shook
it temptingly under Peter's nose. Then he bolted the door and unlocked the
cupboard, displaying a shelf filled with bottles.
"All for advertisements!" he said, waving his hand at the collection. "And a
joke on Mr. Bradford. Fourth-proof French brandy, Jamaica rum, Holland gin,
cherry bounce, Martinique cordial, Madeira, port, sherry, cider. All for
advertisements! Two or three of these dealers have been running bills up,
and to-day I stepped in and told them we'd submit to be paid in merchandise
of this kind. And here's the merchandise. What brand of merchandise will
you take?"
"We had better take what you have been taking."
"As you please." He brought forward another drinking-cup and a bottle.
"Hold on!" cried Peter, laying a hand on his arm. "My advertisement first!"
"As you please."
"About twice as long as the other one," instructed Peter.
"As you please." O'Bannon set the bottle down, took up a goose-quill, and
drew a sheet of paper before him.
"My business is increasing," prompted Peter still further, with a puzzled
look as to what should come next. "Put that in!"
"Of course," said O'Bannon. "I always put that in."
He was thinking impatiently about the ball and he wrote out something
quickly and read it aloud with a thick, unsteady utterance:
"'Mr. Peter Springle continues to carry on the blacksmith business opposite
the Sign of the Indian Queen. Mr. Springle cannot be rivalled in his shoeing
of horses. He keeps on hand a constant supply of axes, chains, and hoes,
which he will sell at prices usually asked--'"
"Stop," interrupted Peter who had sniffed a strange, delicious odour of
personal praise in the second sentence. "You might say something more about
me, before you bring in the axes."
"As you please."
"'Mr. Peter Springle executes his work with satisfaction and despatch; his
work is second to none in Kentucky; no one surpasses him; he is a noted
horseshoer; he does nothing but shoe horses.'" He looked at Peter
inquiringly.
"That sounds more like it," admitted Peter.
"Is that enough?"
"Oh, if that's all you can say!""'Mr. Springle devotes himself entirely to
the shoeing of fine horses; fine horses are often injured by neglect in
shoeing; Mr. Springle does not injure fine horses, but shoes them all around
with new shoes at one dollar for each horse.'"
"Better," said Peter." Only, don't say so much about the horses! Say more
about--"
"'Mr. Springle is the greatest blacksmith that ever left New Jersey--'""Or
that ever lived I'll New Jersey."
O'Bannon rose and pinched the cotton wick, seized the bottle, and poured out
more liquor.
"Peter," he said, squaring himself, "I'm going to let you into a secret. If
you were not drunk, I wouldn't tell you. You'll forget it by morning."
"If I were half as drunk as you are, I couldn't listen," retorted Peter. "I
don't want to know any secrets. I tell everything I know."
"You don't know any secrets? You don't know that last week Horatio Turpin
sold a ten dollar horse in front of your shop for a hundred because he
had--"
"Oh, I know some secrets about horses," admitted Peter, carelessly.
"It's a secret about a horse I'm going to tell you," said O'Bannon.
"Here is an advertisement that has been left to be inserted in the next
paper: 'Lost, on Tuesday evening, on the road between Frankfort and
Lexington, a bundle of clothes tied up in a blue-and-white checked cotton
neckerchief, and containing one white muslin dress, a pale-blue silk coat,
two thin white muslin handkerchiefs, one pair long kid gloves--straw
colour--one pair white kid shoes, two cambric handkerchiefs, and some other
things. Whoever will deliver said clothes to the printer, or give
information so that they can be got, will be liberally rewarded on
application to him.'
"And here, Peter, is another advertisement. Found, on Tuesday evening, on
the road between Lexington and Frankfort, a bundle of clothes tied in a
blue-and-white neckerchief. The owner can recover property by calling on the
printer.'"
He pushed the papers away from him.
"Yesterday morning who should slip around here but Amy Falconer. And then,
in such a voice, she began. How she had come to town the day before, and had
brought her party dress. How the bundle was lost. How she had come to
inquire whether any one had left the clothes to be advertised; or whether I
wouldn't put an advertisement in the paper; or, if they were left at my
office before Thursday evening, whether I wouldn't send them to her at
once."
"Ahem!" said Peter drily, but with moisture in his eyes.
"She hadn't more than gone before who should come in here but a boy bringing
this same bundle of clothes with a note from John Gray, saying that he had
found them in the public road yesterday, and asking me to send them at once
to the owner, if I should hear who she was; if not, to advertise them."
"That's no secret," said Peter contemptuously.
"I might have sent that bundle straight to the owner of it. But, when I have
anything against a man, I always forgive him, only I get even with him
first."
"What are you hammering at?" cried Peter, bringing his fist down on the
table. "Hit the nail on the head."
"Now I've got no grudge against her," continued O'Bannon. "I'd hate her if I
could. I've tried hard enough, but I can't. She may treat me as she pleases:
it's all the same to me as soon as she smiles. But as for this redheaded
Scotch-Irishman--"
"Stop!" said Peter. "Not a word against him!" O'Bannon stared.
"He's no friend of yours," said he, reflectively.
"He is!"
"Oh, is he? Well, only the other day I heard him say that he thought a good
deal more of your shoes than he did of you," cried O'Bannon, laughing
sarcastically.
Peter made no reply, but his neck seemed to swell and his face to be getting
purple.
"And he's a friend of yours? I can't even play a little joke on him."
"Play your joke on him!" exclaimed Peter, "and when my time comes, I'll play
mine."
"When he sent the bundle here yesterday morning I could have returned it
straight to her. I locked it in that closet! 'You'll never go to the ball
with her,' I said, 'if I have to keep her away.' I set my trap. To-day I
hunted up Joseph Holden. 'Come by the office, as you are on your way to the
party to-night,' I said. 'I want to talk to you about a piece of land. Come
early; then we can go together.' When he came--just before you did--I said,
'Look here, did you know that Amy wouldn't be at the ball? She lost her
clothes as she was coming to town the other day, and somebody has just sent
them here to be advertised. I think I'd better take them around to her yet:
it's not too late.' 'I'll take them! I'll go with her myself!' he
cried,jumping up.
"So she'll be there, he'll be there, I'll be there, we'll all be there--but
your John can hear about it in the morning." And O'Bannon arose slowly, but
unexpectedly sat down again.
"You think I won't be there," he said threateningly to Peter.
"You think I'm drunk. I'll show you! I'll show you that I can walk--that I
can dance--dance by myself --do it all--by myself--furnish the music and do
the dancing."
He began whistling "Sir Roger de Coverley," and stood up, but sank down
again and reached for the bottle.
"Peter," he said with a soft smile, looking down at his gorgeous swan's-down
waistcoat and his well-shaped dove-coloured legs: "ain't I a beauty?"
"Yes, you are a beauty!" said Peter.
Suddenly lifting one of his bare feet, he shot O'Bannon as by the action of
a catapult against the printing-press.
He lay there all night.
IV
HOW fine a thing it would be if all the faculties of the mind could be
trained for the battles of life as a modern nation makes every man a
soldier. Some of these, as we know, are always engaged in active service;
but there are times when they need to be strengthened by others,
constituting a first reserve; and yet graver emergencies arise in the
marchings of every man when the last defences of land and hearth should be
ready to turn out: too often even then the entire disciplined strength of
his forces would count as a mere handful to the great allied powers of the
world and the devil.
But so few of our faculties are of a truly military turn, and these wax
indolent and unwary from disuse like troops during long times of peace. We
all come to recognize sooner or later, of course, the unfailing little band
of them that form our standby, our battle-smoked campaigners, our Old Guard,
that dies, neversurrenders. Who of us also but knows his faithful artillery,
dragging along his big guns--and so liable to reach the scene after the
fighting is over? Who when worsted has not fought many a battle through
again merely to show how different the result would have been, if his
artillery had only arrived in time! Boom! boom! boom! Where are the enemy
now? And who does not take pride in his navy, sweeping the high seas of the
imagination but too often departed for some foreign port when the coast
defences need protecting?
Beyond this general dismemberment of our resources do we not all feel the
presence within us of certain renegades? Does there not exist inside every
man a certain big, ferocious-looking faculty who is his drum major--loving
to strut at the head of a peaceful parade and twirl his bawble and roll his
eyes at the children and scowl back at the quiet intrepid fellows behind as
though they were his personal prisoners? Let but a skirmish threaten, and
our dear, ferocious, fat major--! not even in the rear--not even on the
field! Then there is a rattling little mannikin who sleeps in the barracks
of the brain and is good for nothing but to beat the cerebral drum. There is
a certain awkward squad--too easily identified--who have been drafted again
and again into service only to be in the way of every skilled manoeuvre,
only to be mustered out as raw recruits at the very end of life. And,
finally, there is a miscellaneous crowd of our faculties scattered far and
near at their humdrum peaceful occupations; so that if a quick call for war
be heard, these do but behave as a populace that rushes into a street to
gaze at the national guard already marching past, some of the spectators not
even grateful, not even cheering.
All that day John had to fight a battle for which he had never been trained;
moreover he had been compelled to divide his forces: there was the far-off
solemn battle going on in his private thoughts; and there was the usual
siege of duties in the school. For once he would gladly have shirked the
latter; but the single compensation he always tried to wrest from the
disagreeable things of life was to do them in such a way that they would
never fester in his conscience like thorns broken off in the flesh.
During the forenoon, therefore, by an effort which only those who have
experienced it can understand, he ordered off all communication with larger
troubles and confined himself in that stifling prison-house of the mind
where the perplexities and toils of childhood become enormous and everything
else in the world grows small. Up under the joists there was the terrible
struggle of a fly in a web, at first more and more violent, then ceasing in
a strain so fine that the ear could scarce take it; a bee came in one
window, went out another; a rat, sniffing greedily at its hole, crept toward
a crumb under a bench, ran back, crept nearer, seized it and was gone; a
toiling slate-pencil grated on its way as arduously as a wagon up a hill; he
had to teach a beginner its letters. These were the great happenings. At
noon the same child that had brought him a note on the day before came with
another:
"Kitty is going to the ball with Horatio. I shall be alone. We can have our
talk uninterrupted. How unreasonable you are! Why don't you understand
things without wanting to have them explained? If you wish to go to the
ball, you can do this afterwards. Don't come till Kitty has gone."
Duties in the school till near sunset, then letters. O'Bannon had told him
that Mr. Bradford's post-rider would leave at four o'clock next morning; if
he had letters to send, they must be deposited in the box that night. Gray
had letters of the utmost importance to write--to his lawyer regarding the
late decision in his will case, and to the secretary of the Democratic Club
in Philadelphia touching the revival of activity in the clubs throughout the
country on account of the expected treaty with England.
After he had finished them, he strolled slowly about the dark town--past his
school-house, thinking that his teaching days would soon be over--past
Peter's blacksmith shop, thinking what a good fellow he always was--past Mr.
Bradford's editorial room, with a light under the door and the curtain drawn
across the window. Two or three times he lingered before show-windows of
merchandise. He had some taste in snuff-boxes, being the inheritor of
several from his Scotch and Irish ancestors, and there were a few in the new
silversmith's window which he found little to his liking. As he passed a
tavern, a group of Revolutionary officers, not yet gone to the ball, were
having a time of it over their pipes and memories; and he paused to hear one
finish a yarn of strong fibre about the battle of King's Mountain. Couples
went hurrying by him beautifully dressed. Once down a dark street he fancied
that he distinguished Amy's laughter ringing faintly out on the still air;
and once down another he clearly heard the long cry of a pet panther kept by
a young backwoods hunter.
The Poythress homestead was wrapped in silence as he stepped upon the porch;
but the door was open, there was a light inside, and by means of this he
discovered, lying asleep on the threshold, a lad who was apprentice to the
new English silversmith of the town and a lodger at the minister's--the bond
of acquaintanceship being the memory of John Wesley who had sprinkled the
lad's father in England.
John laid a hand on his shoulder and tried to break his slumber. He opened
his eyes at last and said, "Nobody at home," and went to sleep again. When
thoroughly aroused, he sat up. Mr. and Mrs. Poythress had been called away
to some sick person; they had asked him to sit up till they came back; he
wished they'd come; he didn't see how he was ever to learn how to make
watches if he couldn't get any sleep; and be lay down again.
John aroused him again.
"Miss Falconer is here; will you tell her I wish to see her?"
The lad didn't open his eyes but said dreamily:
"She's not here; she's gone to the party."
John lifted him and set him on his feet. Then he put his hands on his
shoulders and shook him:
"You are asleep! Wake up! Tell Miss Falconer I wish to see her."
The lad seized Gray by the arms and shook him with all his might.
"You wake up," he cried. "I tell you she's gone to the party. Do you hear?
She's gone to the party! Now go away, will you? How am I ever to be a
silversmith, if I can't get any sleep?" And stretching himself once more on
the settee, he closed his eyes.
John turned straight to the Wilkinsons'. His gait was not hurried; whatever
his face may have expressed was hidden by the darkness. The tense quietude
of his mind was like that of a summer tree, not one of whose thousands of
leaves quivers along the edge, but toward which a tempest is rolling in the
distance.
The house was set close to the street. The windows were open; long bars of
light fell out; as he stepped forward to the threshold, the fiddlers struck
up "Sir Roger de Coverley"; the company parted in lines to the right and
left, leaving a vacant space down the middle of the room; and into this
vacant space he saw Joseph lead Amy and the two begin to dance.
She wore a white muslin dress--a little skillful work had restored its
freshness; a blue silk coat of the loveliest hue; a wide white lace tucker
caught across her round bosom with a bunch of cinnamon roses; and
straw-coloured kid gloves, reaching far up her snow-white arms. Her hair was
coiled high on the crown of her head and airily overtopped by a great
curiously carved silver-and-tortoise-shell comb; and under her dress played
the white mice of her feet. The tints of her skin were pearl and rose; her
red lips parted in smiles. She was radiant with excitement, happiness,
youth. She culled admiration, visiting all eyes with hers as a bee all
flowers. It was not the flowers she cared for.
He did not see her dress; he did not recognize the garments that had hung on
the wall of his room. What he did see and continued to see was the fact that
she was there and dancing with Joseph.
If he had stepped on a rattlesnake, he could not have been more horribly,
more miserably stung. He had the sense of being poisoned, as though actual
venom were coursing through his blood. There was one swift backward movement
of his mind over the chain of forerunning events.
"She is a venomous little serpent!" he groaned aloud. "And I have been
crawling in the dust to her, to be stung like this!" He walked quietly into
the house.
He sought his hostess first. He found her in the centre of a group of
ladies, wearing the toilet of the past Revolutionary period in the capitals
of the East. The vision dazzled him, bewildered him. But he swept his eye
over them with one feeling of heart-sickness and asked his hostess one
question: was Mrs. Falconer there? She was not.
In another room he found his host, and a group of Revolutionary officers and
other tried historic men, surrounding the Governor.
They were discussing the letters that had passed between the President and
his Excellency for the suppression of a revolution in Kentucky. During this
spring of 1795 the news had reached Kentucky that Jay had at last concluded
a treaty with England. The ratification of this was to be followed by the
surrender of those terrible Northwestern posts that for twenty years had
been the source of destruction and despair to the single-handed, maddened,
or massacred Kentuckians. Behind those forts had rested the inexhaustible
power of the Indian confederacies, of Canada, of England. Out of them,
summer after summer, armies that knew no pity had swarmed down upon the
doggedly advancing line of the Anglo-Saxon frontiersmen. Against them,
sometimes unaided, sometimes with the aid of Virginia or of the National
Government, the pioneers hurled their frantic retaliating armies: Clarke and
Boone and Kenton often and often; Harmar followed by St. Clair; St. Clair
followed by Wayne. It was for the old failure to give aid against these that
Kentucky had hated Virginia and resolved to tear herself loose from the
mother State and either perish or triumph alone. It was for the failure to
give aid against these that Kentucky hated Washington, hated the East, hated
the National Government, and plotted to wrest Kentucky away from the Union,
and either make her an independent power or ally her with France or Spain.
But over the sea now France--France that had come to the rescue of the
colonies in their struggle for independence--this same beautiful, passionate
France was fighting all Europe unaided and victorious. The spectacle had
amazed the world. In no other spot had sympathy been more fiercely kindled
than along that Western border where life was always tense with martial
passion. It had passed from station to station, like a torch blazing in the
darkness and with a two-forked fire--gratitude to France, hatred of
England--hatred rankling in a people who had come out of the very heart of
the English stock as you would hew the heart out of a tree. So that when,
two years before this, Citizen Genet, the ambassador of the French republic,
had landed at Charleston, been driven through the country to New York amid
the acclamations of French sympathizers, and disregarding the
President'sproclamation of neutrality, had begun to equip privateers and
enlist crews to act against the commerce of England and Spain, it was to the
backwoodsmen of Kentucky that he sent four agents, to enlist an army,
appoint a generalissimo, and descend upon the Spanish settlements at the
mouth of the Mississippi--those same hated settlements that had refused to
the Kentuckians the right of navigation for their commerce, thus shutting
them off from the world by water, as the mountains shut them off from the
world by land.
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