The Return of a Native

IT was never distinctly understood by his compatriots how Truesdale had earned the title of filibuster. The blending of reproach and glory implied in this term he bore with dignity and goodhumor, and, it was sometimes suspected, with inner complacency. He touched but lightly upon the sequence of events which in his adventurous young manhood had turned the current of his life away from the ordinary channels. For many years he had been as complete an alien as it is possible for one to be who still at intervals stands on his country’s threshold to discharge some errand of merely commercial interest. He had made his home in an old Spanish city in that portion of our continent which the geographies designate Central, but which, viewed in the light of all that is characteristically American, has more than a European remoteness and indifferency. Another language had become more ready to his thought than his mother - tongue, and in employing the latter his phrases were tinged with an unconscious euphuism, the natural effect produced by a Latin graft upon the long-neglected stock of the vernacular.

A few months previous to the incidents here to be narrated Truesdale had arrived in New York, with the vague purpose of renewing an acquaintance with his countrymen and of studying the social conditions in his native land, about which he had almost a foreigner’s curiosity. What happened soon after his return — how in him society joyfully recognized a genuine specimen from the remote regions, in its charts marked Hie sunt leones — it is not within the province of this sketch to relate. Perhaps he had not disdained the rôle of splendid barbarian ; he may not have been altogether unwilling to “grace my own triumph,” as he had characterized his acquiescence with the schemes of his exhibitors: yet, in his serious reflections, he felt that he had made but small progress in the study which he had proposed to himself; he had been stripping layer after layer off the social nut, and yet so far had not reached the kernel of essential sweetness. It was at this point in the experiment that he spoke often, albeit somewhat floridly, of the “ dear old sylvan life of the West;” his boyhood’s home ; the tender associations it held for him ; the idyllic and grotesque characters. the homely worth, which had flourished there. As it was with the lotos-eaters, so with himself; he, too, knew how sweet it is

Oftenest, in his reverie, he saw the small chamber that had been his, in his mother’s house : the whitewashed walls, the slant ceiling, the one window opening towards the morning. There, what dreams he had entertained ! — surely not of frontier adventure and the cruelties of war, but of a life dear to Apollo and the Muses. It was when this retrospective mood was upon him that he was wont to show his metropolitan friends an old ambrotype portrait of a youth, with pensive, Antinous face, framed with loose ringlets of dark hair, these falling over a wide, rolling collar of the fashion known as Byronic. The portrait having elicited the usual romantic and speculative comments, Truesdale would observe in a careless, reminiscential tone, “ A most unfortunate young fellow, I knew, years ago. Wrote poetry; thought he had the divine afflatus. Checkered career, — gold-mining, fighting greasers, and what not; dead long ago, if reports are to be trusted.” Rumors of his own demise had more than once reached Truesdale ; and on one occasion he had been charged with imposture, when personating himself supposed deceased.

Previous to this unlooked-for attack of nostalgia, it had been in vain to urge Truesdale’s revisitation of his old home, though frequent pressing invitations had been sent him by the remnant of his family residing there. He had not believed in your sentimental pilgrimage. “ When you are disposed to go back and touch the shrine with your hands, don’t do it; keep at a discreet, worshiping distance,” had been his precept. But he had not been a day in “ old Hillsboro’ ” before his objection to the sentimental pilgrimage was dispelled. He blessed the lazy immutability of the times and manners illustrated in the lives of his old friends and neighbors. As he looked on the summer fields, it seemed to him that they were still waving the unshorn harvests of twenty years ago. He was pleased to see above him the same “low, Hillsboro’ sky,” held up at the horizon by tall, Atlas-shouldered woods, — the sky that had shut down too close, the woods that had presented a hostile phalanx, to his impatient youth. Chiefly was he pleased that he could be thus pleased with the old scenes and associations. Did it not argue, he asked himself, that his heart was still warm and impressionable, open to all gentle influences, as is the soil to the ministrations of sun and dew ?

He had visited the village buryingground, given over to the care of blooming sweet-brier and wild strawberry in early summer, and later to aster, goldenrod, and life-everlasting. A long time he had stood, with uncovered head, beside his mother’s grave, and then had moved but a few steps away, where a low headstone bore the legend, “ Rosalie Graham. Aged twenty-one. ‘ There the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.’ ” A strange scripture for her, it seemed to him. When had the wicked troubled her tranquil and innocent life ? He, at least, had gone away, and had not spoken aught to vex her. Weary ? He could not believe it, with her fresh young face still blooming in bis memory.

He had not neglected to attend the Sabbath morning service in the little, lonesome, white - painted, sun - beaten church, that stood at one side of the village green. He could not enough praise the devout faith and abounding good works of those whom he curiously denominated “ Apostolic Methodists.” In them he recognized the stuff of the Huguenots, of the Covenanters, and the Puritans. Their prayers and exhortations, he demonstrated, were as replete with natural poetry as with fervent piety. “ A wellspring in a desert land,” “ stately steppings of the Almighty,” “ abundant entrance into the kingdom,” — where could you find more lively imagery, more vigorous English, than in these and like expressions contained in the unwritten ritual of this earnest, faithful people ? Indeed, he now gave himself, both by observation and practice, to recover the short, stout, AngloSaxon vocables, which so many years’ use of a foreign language had wrested from his command. He had been freshly convinced of the great resources afforded in the vernacular, by hearing an old neighbor, noted for her allocutive energy, remark that she had “ just given the hired man a good tongue-banging ” !

As a matter of course, Truesdale had called upon Uncle Gail Hartwell, now in his ninety-second year, and mentally dwelling among the events of the early portion of the century. Truesdale, sentimentally moved by the sight of the worthy patriarch and the generations gathered around him, had repeated the " seven ages of man.” “ And did old Bony write that you’ve been a-sayin’ ? ” asked the patriarch, who had listened with misty attention. “ Ah, yes,” Truesdale had observed in an aside, “ Bony was a sweet poet.”

In this bronzed, foreign-appearing man, this stranger so anxious to be treated as a native, Hillsboro’ people had at first found it difficult to recognize the youth they had known in times past. Afterwards, all were desirous to substantiate the great truth that the boy is father of the man. One testified that Truesdale had once, in the coldest January weather, walked ten miles to borrow a book owned by deponent’s uncle. Another, surveying the hero’s imposing height and muscularity, affirmed that he “ always told ’em there was pluck enough in Jim Truesdale to stock a nation.” Still another remembered that when they went to “ deestrick ” school “ Jimmy was always A No. 1 in geography. P’int to South Afriky, an’ he knew all about it, ’cause he was goin’ there some day to shoot lions ; p’int to Brayzil, an’ he was goin’ there to clean out them di’mon’s in the big river; an’ he said he’d go over them Alps, if he had to pour vinegar on ’em, as Hannybil did ! ”

Whatever desperate passages there may have been in Truesdale’s history, no truculent indices appeared in his countenance, its expression being uniformly one of serene self-reliance. Yet there were those who noticed that his eyes had a habit of masked watchfulness, while others saw in the same eyes something of elate expectancy. Certain it was, if, looking up the tame country road, he remarked, “ What is that coming yonder ? It has the appearance of an Indian on horseback,” the observation was sufficient to stir the imagination of any youthful hearer. Also, in the summer evenings spent at the farmhouse of his relatives, when he would pace up and down the floor, occasionally pausing at the open door and peering into the twilight scene without, the action suggested that at some time in his life such sentinel-like vigilance had been habitual. While there was little in his present appearance that could be construed as indicating a bellicose element in his past, it is true that if the glossy locks of his dark hair (just touched with a first frost) had been parted at a certain place, a long white mark, the scar of an old sabre-cut, would have been disclosed. He carried a cane, but with such adroitness as to make its use appear a whimsicality of taste, rather than a necessity. None would have suspected that an old hip wound, still troublesome at intervals, strongly recommended the services of a walking-stick. Some good Hillsboro’ souls kindly prescribed for his supposed rheumatism, — that malady being perennially prevalent in the community.

At a picnic, as he had anticipated, Truesdale had a rare opportunity to taste the half-forgotten flavor of rural social life. At this picnic, the holiday confluence of two neighboring schools, were present, besides the demure young school-mistresses and their small summer flocks, the parents of the children and many friends of education. Among these last, most of them old acquaintances of Truesdale, was Squire Jerrold, a person of authority in Hillsboro’, as became one connected with the Jerrolds in the East. Had Colonel Truesdale (Hillsboro’ etiquette had decided that this prefix was suitable) ever seen the Genealogy of the Jerrold Family ? No ? Then he must see it. Squire Jerrold was troubled with headache and dizziness, but had been much comforted by the perusal of the ancestral record : all the Jerrolds, so far as he could gather, had had “ something the matter with their heads,” especially those who had been eminent in professional life. In politics the squire was a staunch Democrat, and an adorer of that canonized patriot, General Jackson. Though not profane in his habits of speech, he was known sometimes, in vehement debate, to employ the favorite oath of his political idol. When he did so, with an effort to dilate his small frame and to clinch his short, soft fingers into a forcible fist, the effect was most laughable, or pathetic, according to the character or the mood of the spectator.

Next to the squire, on the temporary seating arranged for those who were to listen to the children’s exercises, sat Elder Doolittle. He was a large, vigorous man, a powerful preacher, so called by those who sat under his boanergic ministration of gospel truth. His massive head was rendered larger in appearance by the abundance of iron-gray hair which it bore, and which its owner, by the unconscious working of some curious cranial muscle, could bring down over his forehead to within an inch and a half of his bushy eyebrows. Had his scalp been of india rubber, its elasticity and recoil could scarcely have been greater. Whether this agitation of the outer integument was related to the inner act of cerebration might have been a fit subject for scientific investigation. The elder exchanged hearty greetings with Truesdale, who, he felt sure, had been sent to his charge to be rescued as a brand from the burning.

Among the friends of education before mentioned was old Sammy Upson, the cooper. With no drop of Celtic blood in his veins, nevertheless he could scarcely open his mouth without an Irish bull issued therefrom. In relating his experience, in the class-meeting, a few Sundays before, he had most feelingly referred to the time “ when I lay on my death-bed.” On being nudged by his grand-daughter, who sat beside him, he had added, “ my death-bed, as it were, though the Lord, in his infinite wisdom, saw fit to spare me for a few more fleetin’ years ! ” His latest felicity of this sort had been uttered while on the witness-stand, in a suit being tried at the county-seat. Such and such things had happened so and so, he attested, as sure as he held up his hand betwixt God and heaven !

Between old Sammy Upson and Moffitt Herkimer sat Hollering Clapp, whose stentorian voice, in the old days, could be heard as far as any farmhouse noonbell could send its summons. Many a time had Truesdale listened to the musical storms awakened in the West Woods by Clapp’s singing of his favorite hymns, while his axe rang in unison. It was touching now to observe how thin and piping had become that phenomenal voice, confessing to its own disabilities. “ Could n’t holler now worth a cent. All used up with coughin’. S’pose I’ve got the long lingerin’ consumption.”

Truesdale remembered Moffitt Herkimer as having excelled in every department of woodcraft : never a beetree but Moffitt Herkimer was informed as to its exact locality ; never a coonhunt in which his sagacity and agility were not exercised ; never a well to be dug, on anybody’s farm, but the witchhazel in his canny hand must be consulted. He had also been the best runner in five townships. On Truesdale’s inquiring whether he could now get over the ground as rapidly, he replied, “ Wall, I cal’late I could, mebbe. Give me a smooth road, an’ if my soles wan’t too tender from wearin’ shoes so much, in these days, I cal’late I could run to the Centre inside of three minutes and a half.”

“ No. you could n’t, you ole fool,” interposed Mrs. Herkimer, whose remarkably hard common sense never dealt in euphemism ; “ you could n’t, and you know you could n’t, — all stiffened up with the rheumatiz as you be. Had to have a chair to get up into the buggy with, last Sunday ! ”

Very refreshing to Truesdale’s eye was the scene before him. The green recesses of the wood; the slight motion of the leaves ; the lights and shadows that played over the little stage, changefully brocading the white dresses of the two girlish teachers; the happy children, in their holiday attire, now “ coming to order ” at a word from her who acted as mistress of ceremonies, — all pleased the returned native more than any pageant of civic prosperity he had ever witnessed. Where under heaven were the children so favored, so well clothed, so well mannered, so intelligent and apt withal, as here in his own country ?

During the opening exercises,—in part performed by a melodeon, which seemed to express astonishment at its own presumption in trying to fill so vast an auditorium, — a singular arrival was noticed. This might have been some grotesque genius of the wood, — some lusus, called into existence by Nature in her most rollicking mood. Advancing slowly, the new comer threw himself upon an inviting bed of moss under a tree, and there stretched out his rotund proportions, while he surveyed the holiday company with an air of lazy enjoyment. “ Fatty Wheaton,” whispered one of Truesdale’s juvenile friends. “ He’s fat, like that, because his folks let him eat so much pork when he was a baby. He ’s been asked to go with a circus, but his folks won’t let him.”

The opening exercises over, a palefaced, tow-haired boy came upon the stage, and in shrill-pitched voice announced that he was trying to climb the Hill of Science, and that Truth was his guide and sure reliance. The young pilgrim had much difficulty in making the ascent, having several times to be “ prompted.” “ That boy must be a Hackett, and that accounts for his perplexities,” thought Truesdale. “No Hackett was ever known to climb the slight elevation he speaks of.” Next, a gypsy maiden, with sunburnt hair of many shades, and lips and cheeks red as the fruit of the wild rose, extolled, in rapid sing-song, the advantages and pleasures to be found in country life. Then, a tall boy came forward with a temperance piece, depicting in Miltonic blank verse the envious strife stirred up in Pandemonium by a certain peregrinating fiend, who boasted of the mischief he had accomplished upon the earth : —

After this, a bevy of girls filled the little stage, and a dialogue entitled Gossip was acted. Each gossip had sewing or knitting work in her hands ; there was frequent laying together of shrewd heads, much mysterious whispering, much lifting of the eyebrows in scandalized amazement, while many promises of secrecy were exacted.

The exercises went forward, but Truesdale had dropped into a reverie. As he bent his eyes upon the ground, a plant with delicate light green leaves and small yellow flowers arrested his attention. It seemed bending forward to say, “ I know you, but I see you have forgotten me.” Its name did not at once come to his mind, but when it did he was pleased, recognizing an old acquaintance. Sheep-sorrel ? — of course it was ; and he tried his memory with other plants around him, and had soon added cohosh, milkweed, and lobelia to the list of his botanical recollections. The grass, — how fat and sleek it grew in one place, shining with prosperity! What would be not have given for such a grass-plot transferred to his garden in the tropics ! Did anybody know how good it was to see the grass growing, after living under a sun too fervid for this temperate, cool-blooded plant? Would it not be sweet to take up his life anew under these old trees that had shaded the home of his childhood? Enough had he seen of the cocoa and the orange tree ; these had been well; but now give him an apple-orchard and a title to the West Woods of Hillsboro’. What better could he do, perhaps, than return here for good, buy a little farm, and live the “ gentle life ” ? Perhaps some daughter of Arcadia —

But a daughter of Arcadia was even now sweetly smiling, sweetly speaking ; and her words, addressed to him, were these : —

“ We would be pleased to listen to some remarks from Colonel Truesdale.”

There was a hush of expectation, in which all eyes were turned towards the colonel, who slowly rose to his feet. I pretend to no clairvoyant cleverness ; the account of what passed through his mind is based upon his own affidavit. He rose to his feet, because it was expected that he should do so. The events of his life drifted before him, as in the retrospect of a drowning man. Now, now, do these good people think to reach the heart of his mystery. Now must he show them his scars, and they will give him their most sweet voices. He takes a step forward. Something to interest the children, of course. Then, they would, perhaps, like to hear how a jaguar — a bold, bad beast, dear children — met his death in his own den. Two balls of fire in the dark were the mark of the dare-devil fellow. . . . Or take this : Four riders, hotly pursued. They spur their horses, and bid fair to escape. But a chasm is reached. Leap it, or fall into the hands of the enemy. Three go over safely. The fourth tries to follow. Adios, mundo, — good-by, world! and down. . . . Or this: Evening, after a red day of battle. On this side, the moon rising over the long mountain wall; on that, the ocean and the sunset. A band of soldiers, a couple of prisoners, halt before a small village. The vesper hymn, — chanted prayer for pardon and peace, — sweet and solemn. The younger prisoner joins in tins singing, though to-morrow—who knows? His voice rings out clear. When the hymn is done, the dark-eyed women of the village gather around him. “ El es muy suave,—he is very gentle. Soldiers, don’t kill him.” . . . Good heavens ! what tales are these to pour into the ears of these innocent children ! There must be another way, thus: My dear young friends, you are to-day assembled here in the capacity of — a picnic. It rejoices my heart to be permitted to mingle with you here, for I was once as you are. I once roved through these sylvan aisles, warbling my wood-notes wild. Just as you do now, I set traps for the squirrels, and fished out of Crooked Crick. Like you, I went to school, loved my books and teacher dear. As I grew up, I increased in virtue and wisdom, and became a bright and shining—filibuster. Fought, bled, and died, times without number. Returning to the home of my youth, the elders arise and call me Colonel, and you all listen, enraptured, to the mellifluous accents of this chin-music of mine.

Up to this point in his unmouthed eloquence, the face of the filibuster had worn an expression of dreamy abstraction, now changing rapidly to one of bewilderment and appeal. Help him, ye woodland powers ! How very still it is ! — so still that he hears distinctly the hum of bees at work in the blossoms of yonder basswood. He also hears the snuffings and pawings of some canine zealot (doubtless Tige Herkimer) bent upon unearthing a woodchuck. But what evil spell is this ? Vox faucibus hæsit. Stage-fright, aha! Had he not harangued and subdued the myrmidons of war ? Had he not overruled, in secret juntas, by the crafty persuasiveness of his voice and speech? Had he not, like another Othello, held society, like another Desdemona, entranced by the moving and pictorial quality of his language? And should he now quail before a handful of country children ? No ! and yet it seemed inevitable. What a merciful deliverance if he could but see a charge of greasers breaking through the thicket on his right! Single-handed he would defend his people! He was so taken with this idea that he actually bent a faint smile of scrutiny in the direction of the wished-for raid.

He knew not how long he had stood thus. He perceived that his friends were growing solicitous on his account. Elder Doolittle evinced his sympathetic distress by an unusually violent twitching of his movable scalp, bringing his hair and eyebrows much nearer together than had ever been observed before. The sufferer from long lingerin’ consumption was inspired to a paroxysm of coughing, which succeeded in attracting considerable attention away from the spellbound orator. Old Sammy Upson puckered his dry lips, ready for a prolonged whistle of amazement; while Dave Hackett, who had always owed Jim Truesdale a grudge for the latter’s “ fine-haired notions,” smiled with derisive satisfaction. The younger of the two pretty school-teachers, at this trying juncture losing her self-control, tittered audibly. At length, a friend of our hero, perceiving the hopelessness of the situation, came to the rescue. “I would suggest, with Colonel Truesdale’s concurrence,” said this friend, “ that further remarks be deferred until the children, who are getting rather impatient, have had refreshments.”

The colonel, with a grave smile and inflection of his head, signed his concurrence. The children, considering themselves dismissed, deserted their hard seats, and were soon expectantly ranged on each side of the long table, which groaned (if table ever groaned) under its feastful burden. Delicious proclamation of this plenty went abroad on the air. Some bees left their mealy labor in the basswood tree, and came over to the table, where they behaved themselves like true sybarites. As the festivity proceeded, Fatty Wheaton was not forgotten. Whether from shyness or an indisposition towards leaving his mossy couch, he had refused to take his place with the other children ; but the good women who dispensed the feast plied him with every sort of delicacy which the table afforded. It appeared to them that, by such attentions, the weight of his obese misery might be lessened.

With but one exception, all were prepared to do justice to the bountiful dinner. This exception was not to be found among the children ; nor could it have been Moffitt Herkimer, who declared himself keen enough to eat a woodchuck. (Who, if not he, knew the flavor of woodchuck?) The exception could not have been Squire Jerrold. With a school-boy fondness for sweetmeats, which led him to keep a jar of candies in the closet at home, as also to have his pockets supplied with some sort of “ drops ” for his hoarseness, he was now engaged in abstracting the raisins from his pudding and the icing from his cake. Elder Doolittle, with the earnestness that characterized all his actions, gave himself to the full enjoyment of the “ creature benefits ” referred to in the grace pronounced by him. No one had lost an appetite unless it was the filibuster. Verily, deadsea apples could not have been bitterer to his taste than was the wholesome and delicious food with which his injured friends insisted upon heaping his plate. How could he partake of their kind hospitality, when he had failed to perform the paltry part assigned to him in the day’s exercises ? He was grimly amused, sitting between the squire and the elder, to note their efforts to restore his spirits by relating embarrassments similar to his own, which had happened in their experience.

“ ’D I ever tell you, elder, about the fix I got into down at Plainfield, once when I tried to make a p’litical speech there, just before ’lection ? I’d committed every word of it to memory, and then, to make a dead-sure thing of it, I copied it to take with me. Well, I’d been going on swimmingly for about five minutes, when I came up stump. Recollect the very sentence I stuck on : ‘ Let us, who cherish the star-bright palladium of our rights, secured to us by him who, inflexible in his patriotism, was fitly styled “Old Hickory,” — let us ’ — I said that ‘ let us ’ over and over, until some young peppersass in the back part of the room put in, ‘ Go right ahead; we ’ll let ye.’ Searched my pockets, and pulled out a paper; but by the Eternal ! it wa’ n’t my speech at all, — only a stack of old letters I’d put in by mistake.”

“ That reminds me, Squire Jerrold, of how I got bushed, when I first entered the ministry. I had to preach before the presiding elder at Copenhagen. I took for my text, TEKEL : thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting. Of course the sermon was extempour; preaching with notes was n’t approved of, then. I got through TEKEL all right, and then I broke down completely, — in fact, had to sit down; and Elder Woolever had to continue the exercises. As I was subject to palpitation in those days, the congregation took it for granted that I had had one of my bad turns.”

Thus, in the goodness of their hearts. Masters Slender and Shallow strove to comfort and cheer Master Silence. He, however, refused to be comforted, and as soon as he could withdraw without giving offense took his way home by a cross-cut through the West Woods; whipping with his cane the innocent herbage in his path, and not stopping, as he had thought to do, to see if certain old landmarks were still remaining. Sylvan things had lost their charm.

To this day, Truesdale counts “ that disgraceful fiasco of mine at the picnic” as among the serious chagrins of a lifetime. “ But what could I do ? ” he asks. To do the least thing well, a man must have had practice. I could not ‘ make remarks ’ to the school, because my training in that direction had been neglected.”

Edith M. Thomas.