Читать книгу A Man of Honor - George Cary Eggleston - Страница 15

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When our two young men reached the station at which they were to leave the cars, they found awaiting them there the lumbering old carriage which had been a part of the Shirley establishment ever since Mr. Billy could remember. This vehicle was known to everybody in the neighborhood as the Shirley carriage, not because it was older or clumsier or uglier than its fellows, for indeed it was not, but merely because every carriage in a Virginian neighborhood is known to everybody quite as well as its owner is. To Mr. Robert Pagebrook, however, the vehicle presented itself as an antique and a curiosity. Its body was suspended by leathern straps which came out of some high semicircular springs at the back, and it was thus raised so far above the axles that one could enter it only by mounting quite a stairway of steps, which unfolded themselves from its interior. Swinging thus by its leathern straps, the great heavy carriage body really seemed to have no support at all, and Mr. Robert found it necessary to exercise all the faith there was in him in order to believe that to get inside of the vehicle was not a sure and speedy way of securing two or three broken bones. He got in, however, at his cousin's invitation, and soon discovered that although the motion of the suspended carriage body closely resembled that of a fore and aft schooner in a gale, it was by no means unpleasant, as the worst that the roughest road could do was to make the vibratory motion a trifle more decided than usual in its nature. A jolt was simply impossible.

As soon as he got his sea legs on sufficiently to keep himself tolerably steady on his seat, Mr. Rob began to look at the country or, more properly, to study the road-side, there being little else visible, so thickly grew the trees and underbrush on each side.

"How far must we drive before reaching Shirley?" he asked after awhile, as the carriage stopped for the opening of a gate.

"About four miles now," said his cousin. "It's five miles, or nearly that, from the Court House."

"The court house? Where is that?"

"O the village where we left the train! That's the Court House."

"Ah! you Virginians call a village a court house, do you?"

"Certainly, when it's the county-seat and a'n't much else. Now and then court houses put on airs and call themselves names, but they don't often make much of it. There's Powhatan Court House now, I believe it tried to get itself called 'Scottsville,' or something of that sort, but nobody knows it as anything but Powhatan Court House. Our county-seat has always been modest, and if it has any name I never heard of it."

"That's one interesting custom of the country, at any rate. Pray tell me, is it another of your customs to dispense wholly with public roads? I ask for information merely, and the question is suggested by the fact that we seem to have driven away from the Court House by the private road which we are still following."

"Why, this isn't a private road. It's one of the principal public roads of the county."

"How about these gates then?" asked Robert as the negro boy who rode behind the carriage jumped down to open another.

"Well, what about them?"

"Why, I never saw a gate across a public thoroughfare before. Do you really permit such things in Virginia?"

"O yes! certainly. It saves a great deal of fencing, and the Court never refuses permission to put up a gate in any reasonable place, only the owner is bound to make it easy to open on horseback—or, as you would put it, 'by a person riding on horseback.' You see I'm growing circumspect in my choice of words since I've been with you. May be you'll reform us all, and make us talk tolerably good English before you go back. If you do, I'll give you some 'testimonials' to your worth as a professor."

"But about those gates, Billy. I am all the more interested in them now that I know them as another 'custom of the country.' How do their owners keep them shut? Don't people leave them open pretty often?"

"Never; a Virginian is always 'on honor' so far as his neighbors are concerned, and the man who would leave a neighbor's gate open might as well take to stealing at once for all the difference it would make in his social standing."

It was not only the gates, but the general appearance of the road as well, that astonished young Pagebrook: a public road, consisting of a single carriage track, with a grass plat on each side, fringed with thick undergrowth and overhung by the branches of great trees, was to him a novelty, and a very pleasant novelty too, in which he was greatly interested.

"Who lives there?" asked Robert, as a large house came into view.

"That's The Oaks, Cousin Edwin's place."

"And who is your Cousin Edwin?"

"My Cousin Edwin? He's yours too, I reckon. Cousin Edwin Pagebrook. He is our second cousin or, as the old ladies put it, first cousin once removed."

"Pray tell me what a first cousin once removed is, will you not, Billy? I am wholly ignorant on the subject of cousinhood in its higher branches, and as I understand that a good deal of stress is laid upon relationships of this sort in Virginia, I should like to inform myself in advance if possible."

"I really don't know whether I can or not. Any of the old ladies will lay it all out to you, illustrating it with their keys arranged like a genealogical tree. I don't know much about it, but I reckon I can make you understand this much, as I have Cousin Edwin's case to go by. It's a 'case in point' as we lawyers say. Let's see. Cousin Edwin's grandfather was our great grandfather; then his father was our grandfather's brother, and that makes him first cousin to my mother and your father. Now I would call mother's first cousin my second cousin, but the old ladies, who pay a good deal of attention to these matters, say not. They say that my mother's or my father's first cousin is my first cousin once removed, and his children are my second cousins, and they prove it all, too, with their keys."

"Well then," asked Robert, "if that is so, what is the exact relationship between Cousin Edwin's children and my father or your mother?"

"O don't! You bewilder me. I told you I didn't know anything about it. You must get some old lady to explain it with her keys, and when she gets through you won't know who you are, to save you."

"That is encouraging, certainly," said Mr. Robert.

"O it's no matter! You're safe enough in calling everybody around here 'cousin' if you're sure they a'n't any closer kin. The fact is, all the best families here have intermarried so often that the relationships are all mixed up, and we always claim kin when there is any ghost of a chance for it. Besides, the Pagebrooks are the biggest tadpoles in the puddle; and so, if they don't 'cousin' all their kin-folks people think they're stuck-up."

"Thank you, Billy; but tell me, am I, being a Pagebrook, under any consequent obligation to consider myself a tadpole during my stay in Virginia?"

Billy's only answer was a laugh.

"Now, Billy," Robert resumed, "tell me about the people of Shirley. I am sadly ignorant, you understand, and I do not wish to make mistakes. Begin at top, and tell me how I shall call them all."

"Well, there's father; you will call him Uncle Carter, of course. He is Col. Carter Barksdale, you know."

"I knew his name was Carter, of course, but I did not know he had ever been a military man."

"A military man! No, he never was. What made you think that?"

"Why you called him 'Colonel.'"

"O that's nothing! You'll find every gentleman past middle age wearing some sort of title or other. They call father 'Colonel Barksdale,' and Cousin Edwin 'Major Pagebrook,' though neither of them ever saw a tent that I know of."

"Ah! another interesting custom of the country. But pray go on."

"Well, mother is 'Aunt Mary,' you know, and then there's Aunt Catherine."

"Indeed! who is she? Is she my aunt?"

"I really don't know. Let me see. No, I reckon not; nor mine either, for that matter. I think she's father's fourth or fifth cousin, with a remove or two added, possibly, but you must call her 'Aunt' anyhow; we all do, and she'd never forgive you if you didn't. You see she knew your father, and I reckon he called her 'Aunt.' It's a way we have here. She is a maiden lady, you understand, and Shirley is her home. You'll find somebody of that sort in nearly every house, and they're a delightful sort of somebody, too, to have round. She'll post you up on relationships. She can use up a whole key-basket full of keys, and run 'em over by name backwards or forwards, just as you please. You needn't follow her though if you object to a headache. All you've got to do is to let her tell you about it, and you say 'yes' now and then. She puts me through every week or so. Then there's Cousin Sudie, my father's niece and ward. She's been an orphan almost all her life, and so she's always lived with us. Father is her guardian, and he always calls her 'daughter.' You'll call her 'Cousin Sue,' of course."

"Then she is akin to me too, is she?"

"Of course. She's father's own brother's child."

"But, Billy, your father is only my uncle by marriage, and I do not understand how——"

"O bother! If you're going to count it up, I reckon there a'n't any real relationship; but she's your cousin, anyhow, and you'll offend her if you refuse to own it. Call her 'Cousin,' and be done with it."

"Being one of the large Pagebrook tadpoles, I suppose I must. However, in the case of a young lady, I shall not find it difficult, I dare say."