How this was done and what occurred at that interview has not been recorded. But it was known the next day that, while Mrs. Jeffcourt accepted the body at Corbin’s hands,—and it is presumed the funeral expenses also,—he was positively forbidden to appear either at the services at the house or at the church. There had been some wild talk among the younger and many of the lower members of the community, notably the “poor” non-slave-holding whites, of tarring and feathering Joseph Corbin, and riding him on a rail out of the town on the day of the funeral, as a propitiatory sacrifice to the manes of Thomas Jeffcourt; but it being pointed out by the undertaker that it might involve some uncertainty in the settlement of his bill, together with some reasonable doubt of the thorough resignation of Corbin, whose previous momentary aberration in that respect they were celebrating, the project was postponed until after the funeral. And here an unlooked-for incident occurred.
There was to be a political meeting at Kirby on that day, when certain distinguished Southern leaders had gathered from the remoter Southern States. At the instigation of Captain Dows it was adjourned at the hour of the funeral to enable members to attend, and it was even rumored, to the great delight of Pineville, that a distinguished speaker or two might come over to “improve the occasion” with some slight allusion to the engrossing topic of “Southern Rights.” This combined appeal to the domestic and political emotions of Pineville was irresistible. The Second Baptist Church was crowded. After the religious service there was a pause, and Judge Reed, stepping forward amid a breathless silence, said that they were peculiarly honored by the unexpected presence in their midst “of that famous son of the South, Colonel Starbottle,” who had lately returned to his native soil from his adopted home in California. Every eye was fixed on the distinguished stranger as he rose.
Jaunty and gallant as ever, femininely smooth-faced, yet polished and high colored as a youthful mask; pectorally expansive, and unfolding the white petals of his waistcoat through the swollen lapels of his coat, like a bursting magnolia bud, Colonel Starbottle began. The present associations were, he might say, singularly hallowed to him; not only was Pineville—a Southern centre—the recognized nursery of Southern chivalry, Southern beauty (a stately inclination to the pew in which Miss Sally and Julia Jeffcourt sat), Southern intelligence, and Southern independence, but it was the home of the lamented dead who had been, like himself and another he should refer to later, an adopted citizen of the Golden State, a seeker of the Golden Fleece, a companion of Jason. It was the home, fellow-citizens and friends, of the sorrowing sister of the deceased, a young lady whom he, the speaker, had as yet known only through the chivalrous blazon of her virtues and graces by her attendant knights (a courteous wave towards the gallery where Joyce Masterton, Chester Brooks, Calhoun Bungstarter, and the embattled youth generally of Pineville became empurpled and idiotic); it was the home of the afflicted widowed mother, also personally unknown to him, but with whom he might say he had had—er—er—professional correspondence. But it was not this alone that hallowed the occasion, it was a sentiment that should speak in trumpet-like tones throughout the South in this uprising of an united section. It was the forgetfulness of petty strife, of family feud, of personal wrongs in the claims of party! It might not be known that he, the speaker, was professionally cognizant of one of these regrettable—should he say accidents?—arising from the chivalrous challenge and equally chivalrous response of two fiery Southern spirits, to which they primarily owe their coming here that day. And he should take it as his duty, his solemn duty, in that sacred edifice to proclaim to the world that in his knowledge as a professional man—as a man of honor, as a Southerner, as a gentleman, that the—er—circumstances which three years ago led to the early demise of our lamented friend and brother, reflected only the highest credit equally on both of the parties. He said this on his own responsibility—in or out of this sacred edifice—and in or out of that sacred edifice he was personally responsible, and prepared to give the fullest satisfaction for it. He was also aware that it might not be known—or understood—that since that boyish episode the survivor had taken the place of the departed in the bereaved family and ministered to their needs with counsel and—er—er—pecuniary aid, and had followed the body afoot across the continent that it might rest with its kindred dust. He was aware that an unchristian—he would say but for that sacred edifice—a dastardly attempt had been made to impugn the survivor’s motives—to suggest an unseemly discord between him and the family, but he, the speaker, would never forget the letter breathing with Christian forgiveness and replete with angelic simplicity sent by a member of that family to his client, which came under his professional eye (here the professional eye for a moment lingered on the hysteric face of Miss Sally); he did not envy the head or heart of a man who could peruse these lines—of which the mere recollection—er—er—choked the utterance of even a professional man like—er—himself—without emotion. “And what, my friends and fellow-citizens,” suddenly continued the Colonel, replacing his white handkerchief in his coat-tail, “was the reason why my client, Mr. Joseph Corbin—whose delicacy keeps him from appearing among these mourners—comes here to bury all differences, all animosities, all petty passions? Because he is a son of the South; because as a son of the South, as the representative, and a distant connection, I believe, of my old political friend, Major Corbin, of Nashville, he wishes here and everywhere, at this momentous crisis, to sink everything in the one all-pervading, all-absorbing, one and indivisible unity of the South in its resistance to the Northern Usurper! That, my friends, is the great, the solemn, the Christian lesson of this most remarkable occasion in my professional, political, and social experience.”
Whatever might have been the calmer opinion, there was no doubt that the gallant Colonel had changed the prevailing illogical emotion of Pineville by the substitution of another equally illogical, and Miss Sally was not surprised when her father, touched by the Colonel’s allusion to his daughter’s epistolary powers, insisted upon bringing Joseph Corbin home with him, and offering him the hospitality of the Dows mansion. Although the stranger seemed to yield rather from the fact that the Dows were relations of the Jeffcourts than from any personal preference, when he was fairly installed in one of the appropriately gloomy guest chambers, Miss Sally set about the delayed work of reconciliation—theoretically accepted by her father, and cynically tolerated by her Aunt Miranda. But here a difficulty arose which she had not foreseen. Although Corbin had evidently forgiven her defection on that memorable evening, he had not apparently got over the revelation of her giddy worldliness, and was resignedly apathetic and distrustful of her endeavors. She was at first amused, and then angry. And her patience was exhausted when she discovered that he actually seemed more anxious to conciliate Julia Jeffcourt than her mother.
“But she spat in your face,” she said, indignantly.
“That’s so,” he replied, gloomily; “but I reckoned you said something in one of your letters about turning the other cheek when you were smitten. Of course, as you don’t believe it now,” he added with his upward glance, “I suppose that’s been played on me, too.”
But here Miss Sally’s spirit lazily rebelled.
“Look here, Mr. Joseph Jeremiah Corbin,” she returned with languid impertinence, “if instead of cavortin’ round on yo’ knees trying to conciliate an old woman who never had a stroke of luck till you killed her son, and a young girl who won’t be above letting on afore you think it that your conciliatin’ her means sparkin’ her; if instead of that foolishness you’d turn your hand to trying to conciliate the folks here and keep ’em from going into that fool’s act of breaking up these United States; if instead of digging up second-hand corpses that’s already been put out of sight once you’d set to work to try and prevent the folks about here from digging up their old cranks and their old whims, and their old women fancies, you’d be doing something like a Christian and a man! What’s yo’ blood-guiltiness—I’d like to know—alongside of the blood-guiltiness of those fools who are just wild to rush into it, led by such turkey-cocks as yo’ friend Colonel Starbottle? And you’ve been five years in California—a free State—and that’s all yo’ ’ve toted out of it—a dead body! There now, don’t sit there and swing yo’ hat under that chyar, but rouse out and come along with me to the pawty if you can shake a foot, and show Miss Pinkney and the gyrls yo’ fit for something mo’ than to skirmish round as a black japanned spittoon for Julia Jeffcourt!” It is not recorded that Corbin accepted this cheerful invitation, but for a few days afterwards he was more darkly observant of, and respectful to, Miss Sally. Strange indeed if he had not noticed—although always in his resigned fashion—the dull green stagnation of the life around him, or when not accepting it as part of his trouble he had not chafed at the arrested youth and senile childishness of the people. Stranger still if he had not at times been startled to hear the outgrown superstitions and follies of his youth voiced again by grown-up men, and perhaps strangest of all if he had not vaguely accepted it all as the hereditary curse of that barbarism under which he himself had survived and suffered.
The reconciliation between himself and Mrs. Jeffcourt was superficially effected, so far as a daily visit by him to the house indicated it to the community, but it was also known that Julia was invariably absent on these occasions. What happened at those interviews did not transpire, but it may be surmised that Mrs. Jeffcourt, perhaps recognizing the fact that Corbin was really giving her all that he had to give, or possibly having some lurking fear of Colonel Starbottle, was so far placated as to exhibit only the average ingratitude of her species towards a regular benefactor. She consented to the erection of a small obelisk over her son’s grave, and permitted Corbin to plant a few flowering shrubs, which he daily visited and took care of. It is said that on one of these pilgrimages he encountered Miss Julia, apparently on the same errand, who haughtily retired. It was further alleged, on the authority of one of Mammy Judy’s little niggers, that those two black mourning figures had been seen at nightfall sitting opposite to each other at the head and foot of the grave, and “glowerin’” at one another “like two hants.” But when it was asserted on the same authority that their voices had been later overheard uplifted in some vehement discussion over the grave of the impassive dead, great curiosity was aroused. Being pressed by the eager Miss Sally to repeat some words or any words he had heard them say, the little witness glibly replied, “Marse Linkum” (Lincoln), and “The Souf,” and so, for the time, shipwrecked his testimony. But it was recalled six months afterwards. It was then that a pleasant spring day brought madness and enthusiasm to a majority of Pineville, and bated breath and awe to a few, and it was known with the tidings that the South had appealed to arms, that among those who had first responded to the call was Joseph Corbin, an alleged “Union man,” who had, however, volunteered to take that place in her ranks which might have been filled by the man he had killed. And then people forgot all about him.
A mile down this road, growing more and more obscure with those rising and falling apparitions or the shapeless and rugged heaps terrible in their helpless inertia by hedge and fence, arose the cemetery hill. Taken and retaken thrice that afternoon, the dead above it far outnumbered the dead below; and when at last the tide of battle swept around its base into the dull, reverberating woods, and it emerged from the smoke, silenced and abandoned, only a few stragglers remained. One of them, leaning on his musket, was still gloomily facing the woods.
“Joseph Corbin,” said a low, hurried voice.
He started and glanced quickly at the tombs around him. Perhaps it was because he had been thinking of the dead,—but the voice sounded like his. Yet it was only the sister, who had glided, pale and haggard, from the thicket.
“They are coming through the woods,” she said quickly. “Run, or you’ll be taken. Why do you linger?”
“You know why,” he said gloomily.
“Yes, but you have done yo’ duty. You have done his work. The task is finished now, and yo’ free.”
He did not reply, but remained gazing at the woods.
“Joseph,” she said more gently, laying her trembling hand on his arm, “Joseph, fly—and—take me with you. For I was wrong, and I want you to forgive me. I knew your heart was not in this, and I ought not to have asked you. Joseph—listen! I never wanted to avenge myself nor him when I spat on your face. I wanted to avenge myself on her. I hated her, because I thought she wanted to work upon you and use you for herself.”
“Your mother,” he said, looking at her.
“No,” she said, with widely opened eyes, “you know who I mean—Miss Sally.”
He looked at her wonderingly for a moment, but quickly bent his head again in the direction of the road. “They are coming,” he said, starting. “you must go. This is no place for you. Stop! it’s too late; you cannot go now until they have passed. Come here—crouch down here—over this grave—so.”
He almost forced her—kneeling down—upon the mound below the level of the shrubs, and then ran quickly himself a few paces lower down the hill to a more exposed position. She understood it. He wished to attract attention to himself. He was successful—a few hurried shots followed from the road, but struck above him.
He clambered back quickly to where she was still crouching.
“They were the vedettes,” he said, “but they have fallen back on the main skirmish line and will be here in force in a moment. Go—while you can.” She had not moved. He tried to raise her—her hat fell off—he saw blood oozing from where the vedette’s bullet that had missed him had pierced her brain.
And yet he saw in that pale dead face only the other face which he remembered now had been turned like this towards his own. It was very strange. And this was the end, and this was his expiation! He raised his own face humbly, blindly, despairingly to the inscrutable sky; it looked back upon him from above as coldly as the dead face had from below.
Yet out of this he struck a faint idea that he voiced aloud in nearly the same words which he had used to Colonel Starbottle only three years ago. “It was with his own pistol too,” he said, and took up his musket.
He walked deliberately down the hill, occasionally trying the stock of his musket in the loose earth, and at last suddenly remained motionless, in the attitude of leaning over it. At the same moment there was a distant shout; two thin parallel streams of blue and steel came issuing through the woods like a river, appeared to join tumultuously in the open before the hill, and out of the tumult a mounted officer called upon him to surrender.
He did not reply.
“Come down from there, Johnny Reb, I want to speak to you,” called a young corporal.
He did not move.
“It’s time to go home, Johnny.”
No response.
The officer, who had been holding down his men with an unsworded but masterful hand, raised it suddenly. A dozen shots followed. The men leaped forward, and dashing Corbin contemptuously aside streamed up the hill past him.
But he had neither heard nor cared. For they found he had already deliberately transfixed himself through the heart on his own bayonet.