Southern Lights and Shadows Part 12

The city was in a fever of excitement over the probable fate of those who had not yet returned, and in making provision for the homeless. Mammy turned up next morning with some of my civilian clothes that had been confided to her.

Mammy's simple "What you gwine do now, Mabs William?" thrown in whilst she a.s.sisted by her presence at my complete change of toilet--lapse of time was nothing to her--woke me to the momentous problem. There was no commissary sergeant to distribute even the meagre rations that so long left us ravenous after every meal. I could not camp in the Capitol Square, even if I had wished so to do.

Mammy left me with the injunction to call on her "ef I didn't have nowhar else to go."

I went with unbroken fast to see what was left of the city. I met many acquaintances on the same errand. None of us seemed to realize that day what was to be done. For four years our campaigns had been planned for us.

I learned from one acquaintance, however, that I could have rations for the asking, and not long after found myself in line at the United States Commissary Department, along with hundreds of others, and departed thence bearing a goodly portion of hardtack and codfish. These I took to Mammy, who cooked the fish for me under loud protests against the smell.

Not long thereafter a number of us paroled soldiers made a mess, and cooked for ourselves at the room of one of them.

On one of these indeterminate days--dates had become nothing to me--I saw a dapper young man sketching about the ruins. I spoke to him, and mentioned that his had been my profession. This acquaintance was the beginning of hope.

I showed the young man places of interest, gave him points about a good many things, and at last fell to making sketches to help him out. They were perfectly satisfactory and liberally paid for. With this capital I set myself up in another place, which had a north light--by-the-way, I had been dispossessed of the asylum where I first found shelter, as the previous tenant returned. I was able to purchase material and apparel. But what was I to paint, and where to sell the product? My hand was out, I discovered, so I set to studying still life, and painting those of my friends who had the patience to sit.

I would have gone back to my old haunts in New York but for the material reason that my funds were too low, and the sentimental one that I not only was not in the humor for appealing to citizens of that section for patronage, but was not sure that it would not be withheld, from an a.n.a.logous state of mind towards me.

Summer ran into fall. Mammy's visits increased in frequency, and her conversation drifted towards the difficulties of living.

I had long ago discharged all of her claims for material and repairs, but I noticed a tendency on her part to prepare my mind for a regular subsidy. I ignored these hints because it was impossible for me to carry out Mammy's plan, and painful for me to say so.

She approached the matter in a different way finally, and said, one day:

"Mahs William, you been cayin' on yo' fif' for some time now. Doan you think it's time for some of the yothers to look after them?"

I suggested that the whole family was about on a parity financially; that one brother was drifting in the trans-Mississippi, another living more precariously than I was. Suddenly a thought struck me, and I proposed that Mammy should apply to my married sister in the country, who could at least give her a home.

Mammy was very nearly indignant in her rejection of the proposition.

"Me live in de country! Why, Mahs William, I'm town-bred to de backbone.

What I gwine do thar? Whar's anybody whar'll want my sponge-cake, jelly, and blue-monge, whar I can git ez much ez I wants to do in town? Who gwine want my clar-starchin' an' pickle-makin' an' ketchups? Dem tacky people doan want none of my makin's."

I ventured to remind Mammy that all dwellers in the country were not tackies.

"I know dat, sah; but whole parcel of um is. Besides, heap uv de quality folks is poor an' in trouble sence the revackeration. I'd rather give up my other fif's fust."

Of course Mammy's propositions were contradictory, but I had long known that she was not gifted with a logical mind, so I made no attempt to convict her of inconsistency.

From time to time I got small jobs of drawings for architects, as people had begun to bestir themselves and rebuild. I had been a.s.sured that I would find no prejudice against me in New York, but would stand on my own merits.

I was not profoundly convinced that this was a safe risk for me to take.

But living here was becoming impossible. Our own people were out of the question as purchasers of pictures. My still-lifes, from long exposure in the window of a friendly merchant in Broad Street, were becoming the camping-ground of the flies, and deteriorating rapidly. I was not strong in landscape, and the only subjects which suggested themselves were military, taken from my point of view politically, and not likely to be convertible into cash by persons of other convictions.

I was leaning against my ceiling one gray afternoon--at least I suppose it should be called ceiling, for it ran from the highest part of the chamber on an angle to the floor, and was pierced by a dormer--and contemplating a bunch of withered flowers which I had studied almost into dissolution, when Mammy knocked.

I had laid my palette on the floor, and was standing with my hands in my pockets. They fumbled, on one side with my bunch of keys, on the other with a small roll of small bills, the dreadful fractional currency of that era, whilst, in imagination, I projected my motive on the bare canvas, a twenty by twenty-four. I was sorry that Mammy had come, because a subject was beginning to take form in my mind. It was suggested by the withered flowers.

I thought that it would be a good idea to group them with a bundle of letters, some showing age, the top one with a recent postmark, and call the composition "Dead Hopes." My thoughts were divided between the selection of a postmark for the top letter and the possibility of getting a frame, whilst Mammy was going through the process of finding a chair and seating herself. The invitation to come in implied the other courtesies.

The old lady was marvellously attired, and I wondered what could be the occasion of it. She had on a plaid shawl of purple, green, and red checkers, crossed on her bosom. Around her throat there was a lace collar of some common sort, held by a breastpin of enormous value if calculated by the square inch. She wore her usual turban of red and white, but on the top of it to-day was a straw bonnet of about the fashion of 1835, with flowers inside, and from it depended a green veil. Her frock was silk of an indescribable tint, the result of years of fading, and was flounced. The old lady had freed herself of her black cotton gloves, and was rolling them into a ball. I sighed inwardly, for this was the outward sign of undeterminable sitting.

Suddenly the self-arranged color scheme struck me as the cool light fell over Mammy. I seated myself and seized my palette.

"Sit still, Mammy, right where you are. I'm going to paint you."

"Namer Gawd! paint me, Mahs William? After all dem pretty things whar you kin paint, paint yo' old Mammy?" She slapped herself on the knees, called the name of the Lord several times, and burst into the heartiest laugh that I had heard from her for some time.

"Yes, Mammy, just sit right still, and don't talk much, and I won't make you tired."

I worked frantically, getting in the drawing as surely as I could, then attacked the face in color. The result was a success that astonished me.

Mammy's evident fatigue stopped me. It was fortunate. I might have painted more and spoiled my study. I thought that she would go now, but her mission was not fulfilled. She had come to consult me on an important matter.

"You know this Freedman's Bureau, Mahs William? Well, they tells me--Lawd knows what they calls it bureau for!--they tells me that of a colored pusson goes down thar and gives in what he wuz worth--women either, mind you--that the guv'mint would pay um."

Mammy paused for corroboration, but I determined to hear what she might add to this remarkable statement. "Well?"

"Well, sah, I didn't want to go down thar without no price, so I called in to arst you what you might consider yo' fif' worth, an' five times ovah."

I did not laugh at Mammy. The emanc.i.p.ated negroes had such utterly wild notions of what was going to be done for them that Mammy's statement did not surprise me very much. I let her go with the a.s.surance that I would inquire into the matter. She left enjoining me not to put that "fif' too cheap," and I insisting that she should not go to the Bureau, in deference to whose officials her astonishing toilet had evidently been made.

I was so much pleased with my own work that it was nearly twilight before the knock of a familiar friend roused me. He was a clever amateur, and took the greatest interest in my work. His enthusiasm over Mammy's effigy made me glow. He agreed to pose for me in Mammy's costume.

Next day I borrowed the outfit without intimating that it was to be worn by anybody. Mammy was over-nervous about its being properly cared for. I think that she still contemplated appearing in it at the Bureau.

In a week the picture was complete. My model and I went out and celebrated appropriately but frugally.

A small label in the corner gave the t.i.tle to the picture--"My old Mammy."

My friend gave my work a place in his window, and my acquaintances generally accorded unqualified praise. The older ones recognized Mammy at once.

Pending a purchaser for this, I started my deferred subject, and changed it into a figure piece. A lovely friend was my model. She contemplated the flowers and letters. Above the old piece of furniture on which she leaned there hung a photograph, a sword, and a sash--a more striking suggestion of my first t.i.tle, "Dead Hopes." How little I dreamed, as I worked, that there was such happy irony in the name, and that Mammy could ever, in the remotest way, conduce to such a result!

Nearly every morning I hovered about my friend's establishment at a sufficient distance to elude suspicion of my anxiety, but easily in visual range of my exhibit.

One morning it was not visible. I rushed to the store with a throbbing breast. Alas! the picture had only been shifted to another light. Before the revulsion of feeling had time to overpower me I was seized by my friend the merchant.

"It's a regular play," he exclaimed.

He forced me to a seat on a pile of cheese-boxes, and facing me, began:

"Yesterday, the old lady," pointing to the picture, "came in. She took no notice of her portrait, but said that she had failed to find you; that she was anxious to hear what you had done about the Bureau business." (I had forgotten it utterly.) "Well, I could tell her nothing, and she started to go out just as a group opened the door to come in. Mammy made one of her courtly bows, and gave place. The young lady who was one of the three coming in, the others evidently her parents, said, in a loud whisper, 'Why, it's she!' Mammy, who either did not hear or did not understand, was about to pa.s.s out, when the young lady accosted her with, 'I beg your pardon, but isn't that your portrait?'

"'I grant you grace, young mistiss, but sence I looks, hit is. Hit wuz did by my young mahster, which he can do all kinds of pictures lovely.'

"'Your young master?' the young lady said--sweet voice, too; dev'lish handsome girl--'your young master?' Then she said aside to the others, 'Isn't it charmingly interesting?'

"'Yes, 'm, I call him so. But really I'm only his'n a fif'.'

"'His fif?' the young lady said, looking puzzled. I stepped up to them to explain, just for politeness, though I was sure that they weren't customers, 'She means that he owned a fifth interest in her previous to--the recent change in affairs.'