A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others | Page 8

interest in the
house and property, and it was so nominated in the bond. Well, when it
got down to hog and hominy, and very little of that, she told Kent she
was goin' to let the place to a strawberry-planter from Philadelphia, and
go to Baltimo' to teach school. She was sorry to break up the home, but
there was nothin' else to do. Well, it hurt Kent to think she had to leave
home and work for her living, for he was a very tender-hearted man.
"'You don't say so, Jane,' said he, 'and you raised here! Isn't that very
sudden?' She told him it was, and asked him what he was going to do
for a home when the place was rented?
"'Me, Jane? I shan't do anythin'. I shall stay here. If your money affairs
are so badly mixed up that you're obliged to leave yo' home, I am very
deeply grieved, but I am powerless to help. I am not responsible for the
way this war ended. I was born here, and here I am going to stay." And
he did. Nothing could move him. She finally had to rent him with the
house,--he to have three meals a day, and a room over the kitchen.

"For two years after that Kent was so disgusted with life, and the turn
of events, that he used to lie out on a rawhide, under a big sycamore
tree in front of the po'ch, and get a farm nigger to pull him round into
the shade by the tail of the hide, till the grass was wore as bare as yo'
hand. Then he got a bias-cut rockin'-chair, and rocked himself round.
"The strawberry man said, of co'se, that he was too lazy to live. But I
look deeper than that. To me, gentlemen, it was a crushin', silent protest
against the money power of our times. And it never broke his spirit,
neither. Why, when the census man came down a year befo' the
colonel's death, he found him sittin' in his rockin'-chair, bare-headed.
Without havin' the decency to take off his own hat, or even ask Kent's
permission to speak to him, the census man began askin' questions,--all
kinds, as those damnable fellows do. Colonel Kent let him ramble on
for a while, then he brought him up standin'.
"'Who did you say you were, suh?'
"'The United States census-taker.'
"'Ah, a message from the enemy. Take a seat on the grass.'
"'It's only a matter of form,' said the man.
"'So I presume, and very bad form, suh,' looking at the hat still on the
man's head. 'But go on.'
"'Well, what's yo' business?' asked the agent, taking out his book and
pencil.
"'My business, suh?' said the colonel, risin' from his chair, mad clear
through,--'I've no business, suh. I am a prisoner of war waitin' to be
exchanged!' and he stomped into the house."
Here the major burst into a laugh, straightened himself up to his full
height, squeezed the keys back into his pocket, and said he must take a
look into the state-rooms on the deck to see if they were all ready for
his friends for the night.

When I turned in for the night, he was on deck again, still talking, his
hearty laugh ringing out every few moments. Only the white-whiskered
man was left. The other camp-stools were empty.
II
At early dawn the steamboat slowed down, and a scow, manned by two
bare-footed negroes with sweep oars, rounded to. In a few moments the
major, two guns, two valises, Jack, and I were safely landed on its wet
bottom, the major's bag with its precious contents stowed between his
knees.
To the left, a mile or more away, lay Crab Island, the landed estate of
our host,--a delicate, green thread on the horizon line, broken by two
knots, one evidently a large house with chimneys, and the other a
clump of trees. The larger knot proved to be the manor house that
sheltered the belongings of the major, with the wine-cellars of
marvelous vintage, the table that groaned, the folding mahogany doors
that swung back for bevies of beauties, and perhaps, for all I knew, the
gray-haired, ebony butler in the green coat. The smaller knot, Jack said,
screened from public view the little club-house belonging to his friends
and himself.
As the sun rose and we neared the shore, there came into view on the
near end of the island the rickety outline of a palsied old dock,
clutching with one arm a group of piles anchored in the marsh grass,
and extending the other as if in welcome to the slow-moving scow. We
accepted the invitation, threw a line over a thumb of a pile, and in five