Colonel Carter of Cartersville | Page 2

enthusiasm over his new railroad scheme, and the latter by such
requests as these: "Will you lend me half a dozen napkins--mine are all
in the wash, and I want enough to carry me over Sunday. Chad will
bring, with your permission, the extra pair of andirons you spoke of."
Or, "Kindly hand Chad the two magazines and a corkscrew."
[Illustration]
Of course Chad always tucked them under his arm, and carried them
away, for nobody ever refused the colonel anything--nobody who loved

him. As for himself, he would have been equally generous in return,
and have emptied his house, and even his pocketbook, in my behalf,
had that latter receptacle been capable of further effort. Should this
have been temporarily overstrained,--and it generally was,--he would
have promptly borrowed the amount of the nearest friend, and then
have rubbed his hands and glowed all day with delight at being able to
relieve my necessity.
"I am a Virginian, suh. Command me," was his way of putting it.
So to-night I pushed open the swinging door, felt my way along the
dark passage, and crossed the small yard choked with snow at the
precise minute when the two hands of the great clock in the tall tower
pointed to six.
The door was opened by Chad.
"Walk right in, suh; de colonel's in de dinin'-room."
Chad was wrong. The colonel was at that moment finishing his toilet
upstairs, in what he was pleased to call his "dressing-room," his cheery
voice announcing that fact over the balusters as soon as he heard my
own, coupled with the additional information that he would be down in
five minutes.
What a cosy charming interior, this dining-room of the colonel's! It had
once been two rooms, and two very small ones at that, divided by
folding doors. From out the rear one there had opened a smaller room
answering to the space occupied by the narrow hall and staircase in
front. All the interior partitions and doors dividing these three rooms
had been knocked away at some time in its history, leaving an L
interior having two windows in front and three in the rear.
Some one of its former occupants, more luxurious than the others, had
paneled the walls of this now irregular-shaped apartment with a dark
wood running half way to the low ceiling badly smoked and blackened
by time, and had built two fireplaces--an open wood fire which laughed
at me from behind my own andirons, and an old-fashioned English

grate set into the chimney with wide hobs--convenient and necessary
for the various brews and mixtures for which the colonel was famous.
Midway, equally warmed by both fires, stood the table, its centre
freshened by a great dish of celery white and crisp, with covers for
three on a snow-white cloth resplendent in old India blue, while at each
end shone a pair of silver coasters,--heirlooms from Carter Hall,--one
holding a cut-glass decanter of Madeira, the other awaiting its
customary bottle of claret.
On the hearth before the wood fire rested a pile of plates, also Indiablue,
and on the mantel over the grate stood a row of bottles adapting
themselves, like all good foreigners, to the rigors of our climate. Add a
pair of silver candelabra with candles,--the colonel despised gas,--dark
red curtains drawn close, three or four easy chairs, a few etchings and
sketches loaned from my studio, together with a modest sideboard at
the end of the L, and you have the salient features of a room so inviting
and restful that you wanted life made up of one long dinner, continually
served within its hospitable walls.
But I hear the colonel calling down the back stairs:--
"Not a minute over eighteen, Chad. You ruined those ducks last
Sunday."
The next moment he had me by both hands.
"My dear Major, I am pa'alized to think I kep' you waitin'. Just up from
my office. Been workin' like a slave, suh. Only five minutes to dress
befo' dinner. Have a drop of sherry and a dash of bitters, or shall we
wait for Fitzpatrick? No? All right! He should have been here befo' this.
You don't know Fitz? Most extraord'nary man; a great mind, suh;
literature, science, politics, finance, everything at his fingers' ends. He
has been of the greatest service to me since I have been in New York in
this railroad enterprise, which I am happy to say is now reachin' a
culmination. You shall hear all about it after dinner. Put yo' body in
that chair and yo' feet on the fender--my fire and yo' fender! No, Fitz's
fender and yo' andirons! Charmin' combination!"

It is always one of my delights to watch the colonel as he busies
himself about the room, warming a big chair for his guests,