CHAPTER VIII

.

THE TWO RIVALS AT JUDGE OWEN'S--A COMBAT A LA OUTRANCE BETWEEN THE BANCKER AND THE WALLACE--ALMOST A CHALLENGE, AND A TRIAL OF EVERY-DAY COURAGE.

Return we now to the somewhat too-long neglected Miss Emily Owen and the other inmates and intimates of Judge Owen's pleasant house near the Harlem River.

Some days had elapsed after the conversation between Emily and Aunt Martha, bringing the time to the first of July and the commencement of that fire-cracker abomination that was to culminate on the Fourth in a general distraction. Some days had elapsed--as has already been noted; and judging by the person who sat nearest to Miss Emily Owen in the faintly-lighted parlor, at about half past eight in the evening, the Judge's praises of Col. Bancker and animadversions of Frank Wallace had not been without their effect on the young girl. Both the rival suitors were present, and so was Aunt Martha; but Frank Wallace made a somewhat dim and undefined picture as he sat near one of the front windows, apparently observing the boys deep in the mysteries of fire-crackers and torpedoes; while the Colonel was in altogether a better light as he sat near Emily and nearly under the half-lighted chandelier. Emily was indulging in the peculiarly American vice of rolling backward and forward in a rocking-chair; the Colonel had one leg over the other and was drumming with the opened blade of his penknife on the cover of the book he held in his hand; and Aunt Martha was ruining what eyes she had left, by some kind of crochet-work in cotton that may possibly have been a "tidy."

Frank and the Colonel had come in very nearly together, yet _not_ together, about half an hour before. Some little conversation had ensued, but very little, for the rivals instinctively hated each other, and Wallace could not manage to string ten words in his rival's presence without throwing hits at him in a manner decidedly improper. Perhaps Emily had taken the Colonel's part a little, spite of her aversion to him; and the result was that Master Frank had fallen partially into the sulks and gone off to the end of the room--quite as far as he intended to go at that juncture, however.

The young man might be pardoned if he felt for the moment a little vexed. Though not forbidden the house of Judge Owen, and treated with cold politeness when he entered it (of course with _one_ exception)--he knew very well that he was an object of dislike to the portly Judge, and he always endeavored so to time his visits that he might avoid that parental potentate. That afternoon he had accidentally seen the Judge (who had anticipated his summer vacation) step on board the Hudson River cars, with Mrs. Owen, for a day or two somewhere up the Hudson; and he had very naturally made his calculations upon a quiet evening with Emily. And now to find the Colonel dividing the opportunity with him--nay more, to find Emily even siding a little with the valorous Colonel!--it _was_ too bad, was it not?

Perhaps the young lover would not have fallen into his partial sulks quite so easily, had he been aware that Col. Bancker had announced his intention of being at the house in the evening (as _he_ had not), and that Emily had begged her aunt to come down from her room and sit with her in the parlor, on purpose to prevent the expected Colonel having an opportunity for one word with her in private. But these men are so unreasonable as well as so blind! There is no satisfying them, especially with the amount of attention shown them by a woman whom they happen to fancy that they love. Perhaps men do not grow actually jealous any more easily than women, but they grow "miffed" and "hurt" a thousand times easier--let the fact be recorded. There is one instance on legendary record, of a woman who divided her husband with another, at the time of the chivalrous adventures of the Crusaders; but the instance has not yet come to light of the man who so divided his _wife_. Mormonism at the present day shows the pitch even of fanatical tolerance to which the female mind can be wrought in this direction; while we have yet to look for the corresponding instance on the other side, in which the women of a community appropriate to themselves half a dozen or fifty husbands each, and the men consent to the division.

This difference goes much farther even than the regulation (can such a thing be regulated?) of jealousy. Where no jealousy exists, exclusiveness and the sense of propriety comes into the account--again on the male side of the calculation. Jones and his wife being both wall-flowers at any evening party, Mrs. Jones did not feel aggrieved, but rather proud, at Mrs. Thompson's re-union, that Jones went off for an hour to pay the usual flirting attention to the wives of half a dozen of his acquaintances; while Jones colored to the eyes and could scarcely be restrained from making a fool of himself, because Robinson sat down in the vacant chair beside his wife, and tried to be agreeable. And when the Emperor and Lady Flora were at Niagara last summer, it is not upon record that the lady made any objection to the gentleman lingering an hour too late upon Goat Island with that blonde-haired English girl who was such an unmistakeable flirt,--while the gentleman went on like a madman on the balcony of the Cataract, because Lady Flora ran away for half an hour in broad daylight, to Prospect Point, with an old friend of her father's, _oelat_ fifty and incurably an invalid. Ah, well--so it has been from the days of the first flirtation (always _except_ that of Adam and Eve, when there was neither male nor female rival in the neighborhood), and so it will be to the last--with those arrogant, unreasonable, unsatisfied "lords of the creation."

A word of description of the two rivals, as yet unintroduced, who on that occasion sunned themselves in the eyes of Emily Owen, though at such different distances from the luminary.

Lt. Colonel John Boadley Bancker (let him have his full name once more, for the honor of the service--be the same more or less!) was a rather tall and slight man, gentlemanly in appearance and action, but with an occasional dash of swagger that somehow did not indicate courage, and the undefinable impression of the "old beau." His face was well-formed, except that the nose was too large and too prominently aquiline. He had faultlessly black side-whiskers and hair correspondingly black--_too_ black, Frank Wallace said--not to have been "doctored" by Batchelor or Cristadoro, at least. The dark eyes were a little faded, and there were crows-feet at the corners of the same eyes, for age has its own way of telling its story, and not all of us who wish to be young can alter the record in the old family Bible. In dress Colonel Bancker presented no variation from the other colonels of the volunteer service--wearing the full blue uniform, shoulder-straps and belts, with the number of his regiment wrought in gold on the front of a broad brimmed hat lying on a book-table near him. Not an ill-looking man by any manner of means, in spite of the violent antipathy for him which Miss Emily had managed to transmute out of her regard for Wallace.

"Age before beauty!" is a motto somewhat popular, so the Colonel has had the preference. Frank Wallace, proprietor of a small but thriving job-printing establishment before spoken of, and would-be proprietor of the heart and hand of Miss Emily Owen--was altogether a different style of man from the puissant Colonel. As he lounged at the window in his suit of loose-fitting gray Melton, he looked very young indeed and created rather the impression of a "little fellow." He probably fell at least three or four inches short of the romantic six feet, in reality; but was the owner of a fine erect and well-rounded gymnastic form, not a little improved by frequent visits to the Seventh Regiment Gymnasium. A jolly round face with very fair complexion, a merry blue eye, short, curly brown hair and a full moustache somewhat darker,--made up the ensemble of the particular person destined to be the torment of Judge Owen--and of others. For Frank Wallace, be it understood, had other penchants besides his attachment to pretty Emily--fun being the other and leading propensity. He was a capital mimic, an incorrigible banterer, and in any other company than that of the woman he loved, and her family, the merriest and most jocular soul alive. Sometimes when alone with her, and with the "spooniness" which will attach to male courtship before twenty-five, fairly shaken off, he could be a gay, dashing and even a presuming lover. Just now he was unamiable--not to say wicked, and ready for any use of his glib tongue which could send the blue coat out of the house at "double-quick."

It could not have been malice--it certainly must have been want of thought--that induced Aunt Martha to break the temporary silence with the remark, addressed to the Colonel:

"It is a funny question I am going to ask, I know, Colonel, but I suppose I have an old woman's privilege. Mrs. Owen and myself were talking about ages a day or two ago, and she thought you were more than thirty-five. How old _are_ you?"

If half a paper of pins, with all the points upward, had suddenly made their appearance in the bottom of the Colonel's chair, he probably could not have been more discomfited. What reason he had to be unquiet, will be more apparent at a later period. He fidgetted a little and hemmed more than once, before he replied:

"Humph! hum! Well, Madame, to tell you the truth, I _am_ a little on the shady side of extreme youth--old enough to be through with my juvenile indiscretions--ha! ha!" (The laugh decidedly forced and feeble). "I am a little over thirty-two--was thirty-two in March last."

"I thought so! I was sure you could not be older than that!" said Aunt Martha, in the most natural way in the world, while Emily took a quick look round at the Colonel, which said, much plainer than words: "Oh, what a bouncer!"

"No, Madame," added the Colonel, perhaps aware that fibs require to be told over at least twice before they acquire the weight of truths told _once_. "No, Madame, a fraction over thirty-two, as I said."

At that moment the invisible influences, if they have good ears, may have heard Frank Wallace getting up from his chair, and muttering between his teeth something very like:

"Humph! well, I cannot stand _this_ any longer! If I do not succeed in making the house too warm to hold that respectable individual, within ten minutes, I shall certainly leave it myself!" Just then the words "thirty-two," from the Colonel's lips, met his ear, and though he did not catch the context, so as to know what it was all about, the spirit of malicious (and it must be said, reckless) mischief, prompted him to lounge leisurely forward and take a share in the conversation, although uninvited.

"Ah, Colonel, did I understand you to say thirty-two?"

"Yes, I said thirty-two!" said the personage addressed, with a stiffness contrasting very forcibly with the suavity of his speech to Aunt Martha. Emily, who, as may be supposed, knew Frank Wallace better than any other person in the house, at that moment caught a glimpse of his face under the chandelier, and saw that trouble was brewing. The _sulk_ had gone, and the _badger_, a much more dangerous devil in society, had taken its place. Two antagonistic acids were certainly coming together, and an explosion was very likely to be the result. Yet what could the poor girl do, except to wait the crash and be ready to act as peacemaker when the worst came to the worst? The one thing she would have liked to do, was precisely the thing she dared not do for her life--that was, to spring up, catch her young lover by the arm, drag him out into the garden, pet him a good deal and kiss him a very little, and send him home doubtful whether he was walking on his head or his heels--while her old beau might spend the whole evening, if he liked, with Aunt Martha. Millie would give her bright eyes to be able to do the same thing with Tom, stately Madame _mere_, when all she dares do in your presence is to sit still, answer in monosyllables, steal sly glances when you are not looking, and be generally dull and stupid. Would it not be well to let them out occasionally, Madame _mere_, for half an hour's play, with full consent and confidence, as they let out the colts in the country? Who knows but they might behave the better for it, when out of your sight altogether? Think of it, Madame _mere_, and make public the result of your experiment! But all this is grossly irrelevant, and springs out of the fact that Emily, who wished to drag Frank Wallace out of the danger of an approaching _melee_, had not the power to do so.

"Indeed I always thought there were thirty-_nine_!" said the young scamp, in the most natural tone of surprise imaginable, and in response to the Colonel's last "thirty-two."

"Thirty-nine _what_, sir?" asked the Colonel, with the same sign of intense disgust upon his face that we have sometimes seen on Harry Placide's, when playing _Sir Harcourt Courtley_ and uttering the words: "Good gracious! who was addressing _you_?"

"Oh, I really beg pardon," replied the young man, in a tone which meant that he did nothing of the kind. "I thought I heard Mrs. West and yourself speaking of the religious aspects of the country, and that you were enumerating the articles of faith."

"Oh no, you were quite mistaken, Mr. Wallace!" said Aunt Martha, very calmly, while Emily directed an appealing look at the scapegrace, which might as well have been a putty pellet fired at the brown-stone Washington in the Park, for any effect it produced.

"No sir, we were talking of nothing of the kind!" said the Colonel, with that kind of severe dignity intended to convey: "This closes the conversation."

"Then of course it is my duty to beg pardon once more," said the incorrigible. "But you _might_ have been talking on that subject, you know, without any impropriety. The religious aspects of the country are deplorable!" throwing up his hands and eyes in no bad imitation of _Aminadab Sleek_. "Do you not think so, Colonel?"

"Sir!" said the Colonel, still more severely, "I had not been thinking of the subject at all!"

"Oh yes," the scapegrace went on--"deplorable! War desolating the country--all the restraints of society removed or weakened--no Sabbath at all--gambling and libertinism in the army and infidelity among the officers--Colonel, I really hope you will excuse me! of course I do not mean to make any allusion to the present company--but I repeat that the present religious aspects of the country are deplorable."

"And _I_ repeat, sir," spoke the Colonel, with even more severity than before, while Aunt Martha's face began to assume an expression that might easily have deepened into a smile, and Emily had serious trouble to keep from a broad grin--"_I_ repeat, sir, that we were not speaking of the religious aspects of the country at all!"

"Pshaw! of course not! How stupid I am!" said the tormentor, who had by this time dropped into a chair a little behind the Colonel's left shoulder, where he could literally talk into his ear. "It was the number that deceived me, as I heard it from the window. I _should_ have known what you were saying, at once. You are right in the remark that had we had only thirty-two States instead of thirty-four, this rebellion might never have occurred. Had South Carolina, with its rampant Calhounism, and Massachusetts with its anti-slavery fanaticism, both been left out of the compact--"

"_I_ must beg pardon, now, for interrupting _you_, Mr. Wallace," said Aunt Martha, with the calmest of voices and the smile all smoothed away from her face. "You are mistaken again. We were neither discussing religious nor national affairs, when you were so _kind_ as to come down and join us." (Emphasis on the word "kind," which made the young man wince a little and for the moment predisposed the Colonel to a chuckle.) "Colonel Bancker was saying--"

"Really, my dear Madame," put in the Colonel, "it is scarcely necessary to repeat--"

"Oh, we have had quite enough of misconceptions," said that estimable lady, with what appeared to be another shot at Wallace. "Let us have the truth at last. I had the impoliteness to ask Colonel Bancker his age, and he had the courtesy to say that he was just turned of thirty-two."

"Ph-ph-ph-ph-ew!" came in a long whistle from the lips of the tormentor. The Colonel sprung to his feet in an instant, and looked angrily around. Frank Wallace was quite on the other side of the room, examining a pastel over the mantel, and whistling very slightly, but he was certainly whistling the serenade from "Pasquali."

"Sir!" said the Colonel, rage in the word.

"Meaning _me_?" asked Wallace, turning around.

"Was that whistle intended for _me_, sir?" demanded the Colonel, tragically.

"Certainly not," answered Wallace. "I was directing my whistle, which is not a good one, and certainly impolite in company--at the cornice. The cornice is a handsome one, you will notice, Colonel, and I think by Garvey. Those festoons of roses--"

"Mr. Wallace, you shall answer to me for this!" broke out the Colonel, now no longer master of himself.

"Gentlemen! gentlemen!" said Aunt Martha, rising.

"Don't, Frank! for heaven's sake don't torment him any more!" plead Emily, passing rapidly before her lover and speaking in a low tone. Whether he understood her is a question to be settled between them at some future time. "Don't!" is a very easy thing to say, when Niagara is pouring or a herd of wild buffaloes sweeping down; but if the imploration is addressed to either of the moving bodies, it may not win quick obedience. As the human temper is a combination of the torrent, the herd, and all the other unmanageable things in nature and beyond, "Don't!" even from a voice that we love, with right and reason behind it, is sometimes painfully powerless. There is no intention, on the part of the narrator, of defending the previous or subsequent action of Mr. Frank Wallace on this occasion; but actual events must be recorded.

"Well sir, and what am I to answer?" asked the young man, without a quiver in his voice, but with much more earnest in it than it had before manifested.

"You made an offensive comment on my veracity, by whistling, a moment ago."

"And what then, sir?"

"That offensive comment shows that you doubt my veracity!"

"Gentlemen! gentlemen!" again spoke Aunt Martha; and poor Emily, now half frightened out of her wits, made one more attempt at imploring her lover to be quiet. This done, and both now aware that the tide, on one side at least, had overflowed the bounds of all prudence, they desisted, stepped back from between the rivals, and allowed the quarrel to take its own course.

"And suppose I _do_ doubt your veracity!" answered Wallace to the last remark of the Colonel. "You call yourself thirty-two! Bah! you are fifty, if you are ten!" The obvious rage on the countenance of the Colonel did not stop the torrent, now, nor even check it! "Such fine crows'-feet under the eyes, as those of yours, never come much before fifty, except in case of a nice round of brandy-smashes, late hours and general dissipation, or--"

"Well, sir, what is the _or_?" broke out the Colonel, still more furious.

"A severe course of early piety!" concluded the young man, throwing a terrible sting into the tail of his sentence, not less by the manner than the voice.

"You should answer for this, Mr. Wallace, as you call yourself," foamed the Colonel--"but--"

"But _what_, Lieut. Colonel Bancker--as you _try_ to call yourself?" thundered the young man, in reply.

"Oh, gentlemen! gentlemen! do stop, for the sake of the house!" imploringly put in Aunt Martha at this period; while Emily, seriously frightened, indulged in a few tears that were no doubt set down to the account of her brute of a lover, by the over-watching intelligences. But the quarrel ceased not, even yet, at the bidding of either; and, marvellous to relate, though the front windows were open and they were speaking in a tone altogether too loud for the amenities of society, a crowd had _not_ gathered around the area railing in front.

"But _what_?" demanded the younger combatant.

"But that my sword, sir--" began the elder.

"Oh, you _have_ a sword, then!" sneered Wallace. "I thought it was all _belts_!"

"I would chastise you for this, sir, severely," said the officer, "but that my sword is sacred to the cause of the Union. When with my regiment, sir--"

"Yes, I know," again interrupted Wallace, who had his own reasons for believing that the Colonel's regiment was altogether a myth, as so many others have been--"Yes, I know--the Eleven hundred and fifty-fifth Coney Island Thimble-rig Zouaves!"

Human patience could stand this no longer. With one dash for his hat and a surly "Good night, ladies!" coupled with an intimation to Wallace: "You shall hear from me, sir!" Lt. Colonel John Boadley Bancker (let him once more have the full benefit of the name!) strode out of the parlor into the hall, and was about to vanish from the field. But as he passed into the hall the hand of Aunt Martha was laid upon his arm, and her voice--so much pleasanter than that of the tormentor--sounded in his ear. The good aunt, whatever might have been her wish to rid her niece of a match so repugnant, certainly did not wish to produce the riddance in this manner and to send the Colonel out of the house under a sensation of outrage which could not fail to come to the ears of her "big brother." So she passed into the hall with the Colonel, leaving the young people behind her,--and managed to detain the enraged man in the hall and on the piazza for several minutes. It was not the first time, beyond doubt, that she had made peace for others, however she might have martyred her own.

"Oh, Frank! what have you done!" exclaimed the young girl, the moment they had passed out into the hall, her eyes yet dim with the tears of anxiety she had been shedding; but in spite of her fear and even her mortification, laying her hand in that of the reckless young scapegrace whom she truly loved. "Father will hear of this--we shall be separated altogether!" And again she repeated the expostulation of all dairy-maids to all cats or children that have upset pans of milk--"What have you done!"

"What have I done!" echoed the culprit. "Why merely roasted a cowardly humbug who deserves nothing better, and who has not spunk enough to resent it--that is all!"

"But besides my father's anger--I am afraid he _may_, Frank," said the young girl, looking into her lover's face with real anxiety.

"I only wish he would!" was the reply.

"Why, you do not mean to say that you would fight him?"

"With the sword, if he has one--no!" he said. "Not with anything more dangerous than a piece of rattan. I would not mind polishing off his dainty hide with _that_! Besides, if I quarrelled with him, who made me? You! He sat too near you, and you not only talked with him but _looked_ at him. What business had you to look at him? Eh?"

"Oh, you cruel fellow!" said the young girl, not disposed to scold more sharply, even at _folly_, when it had such a sediment of true love lying beneath the froth.

"Oh, you handsome torment!" was the reply of the lover, as he took that one auspicious moment to enfold the young girl in his arms and give her half a dozen warm, close, voluptuous kisses full on the lips--such kisses as people should never indulge in who do not know exactly the haven toward which they are sailing.

"What are you doing _now_, impudence!" uttered the thoroughly-kissed girl, making just so much resistance as seemed becoming, and yet meeting her lover nearly enough half-way to make the exercise rather exhilarating.

"What am I doing? 'Locking up' a 'form'--you know I am a printer!" said the young man, taking yet another "proof" of affection. But here the alarmed reader will be spared the succession of bad puns, peculiar to the printing-office, with which this specimen was followed, and which has probably been to some extent indulged in by every disciple of Faust more or less in love, since Adam worked off the first proof of his breakfast bill-of-fare, on the original hand-press, in one corner of the Garden of Eden.

The young man was yet standing with his arm around the waist of Emily, just within the door leading from the parlor into the hall, and yet other farewell kisses and reproaches might have been on the possible programme,--when both were startled by a sharp scream from Aunt Martha, who was yet standing on the piazza with the Colonel near her.

"Ough-ough-oh!"

Wallace and Emily at once rushed to the front door, under the belief that some sudden accident had befallen the lady; but at that moment there was a loud crash, followed by other voices screaming; and in the street, almost in front of the door, a painful and threatening spectacle presented itself.

As afterwards appeared, when the various parties became sufficiently collected to ascertain what had really happened--a carriage had been coming along the street from the left, driven rapidly, but with the pair of fine horses under good command. Just before it reached the house of Judge Owen, one of those troublesome boys who ought all to be sent to Blackwell's Island from the twenty-fifth of June until the tenth of July, had thrown a lighted "snake," or "chaser," under the belly of the near horse as he passed. The animals had already become sufficiently frightened by the fire-crackers thrown under them and the pistols exploding at their ears; and at this crowning atrocity they became altogether unmanageable. Spite of the exertions of the practised driver, they shied violently to the left, breaking into a run at the same moment, and the next instant one side of the carriage was whirled upon the curb, so that the hind axle and wheel caught in the lamp-post, happily not tearing apart or overturning the vehicle, but bringing-up with such a shock that the driver was hurled from his seat and thrown to the pavement between the maddened horses.

This state of affairs had drawn the scream from Aunt Martha, and at the instant when Wallace reached the door the people in the carriage were screaming but incapable of getting out, the horses were plunging to such a degree that they must have broken loose in a moment, after making a wreck of the carriage and trampling to death the poor fellow who lay senseless under their feet. At the same time it seemed worth a dozen lives to plunge into that storm of lashing hoofs and do anything to rescue driver and riders from their peril.

"Help! help! oh, save them!--save the poor man--somebody!" cried both the women on the piazza, at a breath; and "Help! help!" rung in a woman's voice from the inside of the carriage. Fifteen or twenty persons had already rushed up, but no one seemed disposed to risk his own life to save others. The Colonel yet stood on one of the steps of the piazza, apparently spell-bound.

"Colonel Bancker, you wanted to try courage with me a little while ago: take hold of those horses, if you _dare_!" cried Frank Wallace, rushing to the edge of the stoop. The Colonel neither spoke nor stirred. "Coward!" they heard the young man cry, and the next instant--how, none of them knew--he had rushed in upon the horses' heads, spite of their lashing hoofs, had one or both by the bridles, and in an instant more both horses were flung prostrate and helpless. The imminent danger over, some of the bystanders rushed in to assist, the horses were more firmly secured, and the poor driver was dragged out, bloody and half insensible, but not seriously injured. One ready and daring hand had prevented the certain loss of one life, and the probable loss of more. Fire-crackers, pistols and other abominations had vanished from the street as if by magic; the noise over, the horses came again under command; they were raised, and horses, harness and carriage all found comparatively uninjured; the disabled driver was taken to a neighboring drug-store; one of the bystanders volunteered to drive the carriage to its destination, and took his seat on the box; the owner droned out his thanks from the inside of the carriage, in a fat, wheezy voice, mingled with the sobs of a woman in partial hysterics; and the equipage rolled away almost as suddenly as it had come--perhaps not five minutes having been consumed in the whole affair.

Short as was the time occupied, the Colonel had disappeared. When the trouble was over he was no longer standing on the piazza. Frank Wallace had apparently been once beaten down, and had some soiled spots on his Melton, and a few bruises, but he had received no injury of any consequence. For what violent and even dangerous exertion he had undergone, he was unquestionably more than repaid when Aunt Martha caught him by one hand and said fervently, "God bless you!" and when Emily Owen took the other hand with a warmer and fonder pressure than she had ever given it before, and said--so low that probably not even Aunt Martha heard her: "Good--brave--generous Frank!--I won't scold you again in a twelvemonth!"

All that Frank Wallace replied to both these generous outbursts, was comprised in a snap of his fingers in the direction supposed to have been taken by the Colonel, and the words:

"Bah! I told you that man was a coward and wouldn't fight! If he had not pluck enough to risk the feet of those two horses, what would he do in the face of a charge of rebel cavalry!"

##