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The Fortunes of Oliver Horn

F >> F. Hopkinson Smith >> The Fortunes of Oliver Horn



Prepared By: Duncan Harrod - DuncanHarrod@excite.com





THE FORTUNES OF
OLIVER HORN

by F. Hopkinson Smith




I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO THE MEMORY OF


"THE MAN OF ALL OTHERS ABOUT KENNEDY
SQUARE MOST BELOVED, AND THE MAN OF ALL
OTHERS LEAST UNDERSTOOD--RICHARD HORN,
THE DISTINGUISHED INVENTOR."
F.H.S.




THE FORTUNES OF
OLIVER HORN




CHAPTER I

THE OLD HOUSE IN KENNEDY SQUARE



Kennedy Square, in the late fifties, was a place of
birds and trees and flowers; of rude stone benches,
sagging arbors smothered in vines, and cool dirt-paths
bordered by sweet-smelling box. Giant magnolias
filled the air with their fragrance, and climbing roses
played hide and seek among the railings of the rotting
fence. Along the shaded walks laughing boys and
girls romped all day, with hoop and ball, attended
by old black mammies in white aprons and gayly colored
bandannas; while in the more secluded corners,
sheltered by protecting shrubs, happy lovers sat and
talked, tired wayfarers rested with hats off, and staid
old gentlemen read by the hour, their noses in their
books.

Outside of all this color, perfume, and old-time
charm, outside the grass-line and the rickety wooden
fence that framed them in, ran an uneven pavement
splashed with cool shadows and stained with green
mould. Here, in summer, the watermelon-man
stopped his cart; and here, in winter, upon its broken
bricks, old Moses unhooked his bucket of oysters and
ceased for a moment his droning call.

On the shady side of the square, and half-hidden
in ivy, was a Noah's Ark church, topped by a quaint
belfry holding a bell that had not rung for years, and
faced by a clock-dial all weather-stains and cracks,
around which travelled a single rusty hand. In its
shadow to the right lay the home of the Archdeacon,
a stately mansion with Corinthian columns reaching
to the roof and surrounded by a spacious garden
filled with damask roses and bushes of sweet syringa.
To the left crouched a row of dingy houses built of
brick, their iron balconies hung in flowering vines,
the windows glistening with panes of wavy glass purpled
by age.

On the sunny side of the square, opposite the
church, were more houses, high and low; one all garden,
filled with broken-nosed statues hiding behind
still more magnolias, and another all veranda and
honeysuckle, big rocking-chairs and swinging hammocks;
and still others with porticos curtained by
white jasmine or Virginia creeper.

Half-way down this stretch of sunshine--and what
a lovely stretch it was--there had stood for years
a venerable mansion with high chimneys, sloping roof,
and quaint dormer-windows, shaded by a tall sycamore
that spread its branches far across the street.
Two white marble steps guarded by old-fashioned iron
railings led up to the front door, which bore on its
face a silver-plated knocker, inscribed in letters of
black with the name Of its owner--"Richard Horn."
All three, the door, the white marble steps, and the
silver-plated knocker--not to forget the round silver
knobs ornamenting the newel posts of the railings--
were kept as bright as the rest of the family plate by
that most loyal of servants, old Malachi, who daily
soused the steps with soap and water, and then brought
to a phenomenal polish the knocker, bell-pull, and
knobs by means of fuller's-earth, turpentine, hard
breathing, and the vigorous use of a buckskin rag.

If this weazened-faced, bald-headed old darky, resplendent
in white shirt-sleeves, green baize apron, and
never-ceasing smile of welcome, happened to be engaged
in this cleansing and polishing process--and it
occurred every morning--and saw any friend of his
master approaching, he would begin removing his pail
and brushes and throwing wide the white door before
the visitor reached the house, would there await his
coming, bent double in profound salutation. Indeed,
whenever Malachi had charge of the front steps he
seldom stood upright, so constantly was he occupied--
by reason of his master's large acquaintance--in either
crooking his back in the beginning of a bow, or
straightening it up in the ending of one.

To one and all inquiries for Mr. Horn his answer
during the morning hours was invariably the same:

"Yes, sah, Marse Richard's in his li'l room wrastlin'
wid his machine, I reckon. He's in dar now, sah--"
this with another low bow, and then slowly recovering
his perpendicular with eyes fixed on the retreating
figure, so as to be sure there was no further need
of his services, he would resume his work, drenching
the steps again with soap-suds or rubbing away on the
door-plate or door-pull, stopping every other moment
to blow his breath on the polished surface.

When, however, someone asked for young Oliver,
the inventor's only son, the reply was by no means
so definite, although the smile was a trifle broader and
the bow, if anything, a little more profound.

"Marse Oliver, did you say, sah? Dat's a difficult
question, sah. Fo' Gawd I ain't seen him since breakfas'.
You might look into Jedge Ellicott's office if
you is gwine downtown, whar dey do say he's studyin'
law, an' if he ain't dar--an' I reckon he ain't--den
you might drap in on Mister Crocker, whar Marse
Oliver's paintin' dem pictures; an' if he ain't dar,
den fo-sho he's wid some o' do young ladies, but which
one de Lawd only knows. Marse Oliver's like the
rabbit, sah--he don't leab no tracks," and Malachi
would hold his sides in a chuckle of so suffocating a
nature that it would have developed into apoplexy in
a less wrinkled and emaciated person.

Inside of the front door of this venerable mansion
ran a wide hall bare of everything but a solid mahogany
hat-rack and table with glass mirror and heavy
haircloth settee, over which, suspended from the ceiling,
hung a curious eight-sided lantern, its wick replaced
with a modern gas-burner. Above were the
bedrooms, reached by a curved staircase guarded by
spindling mahogany bannisters with slender hand-rail
--a staircase so pure in style and of so distinguished
an air that only maidens in gowns and slippers should
have tripped down its steps, and only cavaliers in silk
stockings and perukes have waited below for their
hands.

Level with the bare hall, opened two highly polished
mahogany doors, which led respectively into the
drawing-room and library, their windows draped in
red damask and their walls covered with family portraits.
All about these rooms stood sofas studded with
brass nails, big easy-chairs upholstered in damask, and
small tables piled high with magazines and papers.
Here and there, between the windows, towered a bookcase
crammed with well-bound volumes reaching clear
to the ceiling. In the centre of each room was a broad
mantel sheltering an open fireplace, and on cold days
--and there were some pretty cold days about Kennedy
Square--two roaring wood-fires dispensed comfort,
the welcoming blaze of each reflected in the shining
brass fire-irons and fenders.

Adjoining the library was the dining-room with its
well-rubbed mahogany table, straight-backed chairs,
and old sideboard laden with family silver, besides a
much-coveted mahogany cellaret containing some of
that very rare Madeira for which the host was famous.
Here were more easy-chairs and more portraits--one
of Major Horn, who fell at Yorktown, in cocked hat
and epaulets, and two others in mob-caps and ruffles
--both ancient grandmothers of long ago.

The "li'l room ob Marse Richard," to which in the
morning Malachi directed all his master's visitors, was
in an old-fashioned one-story out-house, with a sloping
roof, that nestled under the shade of a big tulip-
tree in the back yard--a cool, damp, brick-paved old
yard, shut in between high walls mantled with ivy
and Virginia creeper and capped by rows of broken
bottles sunk in mortar. This out-building had once
served as servants' quarters, and it still had the open
fireplace and broad hearth before which many a black
mammy had toasted the toes of her pickaninnies, as
well as the trap-door in the ceiling leading to the loft
where they had slept. Two windows which peered out
from under bushy eyebrows of tangled honeysuckle
gave the only light; a green-painted wooden door,
which swung level with the moist bricks, the only entrance.

It was at this green-painted wooden door that you
would have had to knock to find the man of all others
about Kennedy Square most beloved, and the man
of all others least understood--Richard Horn, the
distinguished inventor.

Perhaps at the first rap he would have been too
absorbed to hear you. He would have been bending
over his carpenter-bench--his deep, thoughtful eyes
fixed on a drawing spread out before him, the shavings
pushed back to give him room, a pair of compasses
held between his fingers. Or he might have
been raking the coals of his forge--set up in the same
fireplace that had warmed the toes of the pickaninnies,
his long red calico working-gown, which clung
about his spare body, tucked between his knees to
keep it from the blaze. Or he might have been stirring
a pot of glue--a wooden model in his hand--
or hammering away on some bit of hot iron, the
brown paper cap that hid his sparse gray locks pushed
down over his broad forehead to protect it from the
heat.

When, however, his ear had caught the tap of your
knuckles and he had thrown wide the green door, what
a welcome would have awaited you! How warm the
grasp of his fine old hand; how cordial his greeting.

"Disturb me, my dear sir," he would have said
in answer to your apologies, "that's what I was put
in the world for. I love to be disturbed. Please do
it every day. Come in! Come in! It's delightful to
get hold of your hand."

If you were his friend, and most men who knew
him were, he would have slipped his arm through
your own, and after a brief moment you would have
found yourself poring over a detailed plan, his arm
still in yours, while he showed you the outline of some
pin, or lever, needed to perfect the most marvellous
of all discoveries of modern times--his new galvanic
motor.

If it were your first visit, and he had touched in
you some sympathetic chord, he would have uncovered
a nondescript combination of glass jars, horse-shoe
magnets, and copper wires which lay in a curious
shaped box beneath one of the windows, and in a voice
trembling with emotion as he spoke, he would have
explained to you the value of this or that lever, and
its necessary relation to this new invention of his
which was so soon to revolutionize the motive power
of the world. Or he would perhaps have talked to
you as he did to me, of his theories and beliefs
and of what he felt sure the future would bring
forth.

"The days of steam-power are already numbered.
I may not live to see it, but you will. This new force
is almost within my grasp. I know people laugh, but
so they have always done. All inventors who have
benefited mankind have first been received with ridicule.
I can expect no better treatment. But I have
no fear of the result. The steady destruction of our
forests and the eating up of our coal-fields must throw
us back on chemistry for our working power. There
is only one solution of this problem--it lies in the
employment of a force which this machine will compel
to our uses. I have not perfected the apparatus
yet, as you see, but it is only a question of time. To-
morrow, perhaps, or next week, or next year--but it
will surely come. See what Charles Bright and this
Mr. Cyrus Field are accomplishing. If it astonishes
you to realize that we will soon talk to each other
across the ocean, why should the supplanting of steam
by a new energy seem so extraordinary? The problems
which they have worked out along the lines of
electricity, I am trying to work out along the lines
of galvanism. Both will ultimately benefit the
human race.

And while he talked you would have listened with
your eyes and ears wide open, and your heart too, and
believed every word he said, no matter how practical
you might have been or how unwilling at first to be
convinced.

On another day perhaps you might have chanced
to knock at his door when some serious complication
had vexed him--a day when the cogs and pulleys
upon which he had depended for certain demonstration
had become so tangled up in his busy brain that
he had thoughts for nothing else. Then, had he
pushed pack his green door to receive you, his greeting
might have been as cordial and his welcome as
hearty, but before long you would have found his
eyes gazing into vacancy, or he would have stopped
half-way in an answer to your question, his thoughts
far away. Had you loved him you would then have
closed the green door behind you and left him alone.
Had you remained you would, perhaps, have seen him
spring from his seat and pick up from his work-bench
some unfinished fragment. This he would have
plunged into the smouldering embers of his forge and,
entirely forgetful of your presence, would have seized
the handle of the bellows, his eyes intent on the
blaze, his lips muttering broken sentences. At these
moments, as he would peer into the curling smoke,
one thin hand upraised, the long calico gown wrinkling
about his spare body, the paper cap on his head,
he would have looked like some alchemist of old, or
weird necromancer weaving a mystic spell. Sometimes,
as you watched his face, with the glow of the
coals lighting up his earnest eyes, there would have
flashed across his troubled features, as heat lightning
illumines a cloud, some sudden brightness from within
followed by a quick smile of triumph. The rebellious
fragment had been mastered. For the hundredth
time the great motor was a success!

And yet, had this very pin or crank or cog, on
which he had set such store, refused the next hour
or day or week to do its work, no trace of his
disappointment would have been found in his face or
speech. His faith was always supreme; his belief
in his ideals unshaken. If the pin or crank would
not answer, the lever or pulley would. It was the
"adjustment" that was at fault, not the principle.
And so the dear old man would work on, week after
week, only to abandon his results again, and with
equal cheerfulness and enthusiasm to begin upon another
appliance totally unlike any other he had tried
before. "It was only a mile-stone," he would say;
"every one that I pass brings me so much nearer the
end."

If you had been only a stranger--some savant,
for instance, who wanted a problem in mechanics
solved, or a professor, blinded by the dazzling light of
the almost daily discoveries of the time, in search of
mental ammunition to fire back at curious students
daily bombarding you with puzzling questions; or
had you been a thrifty capitalist, holding back a first
payment until an expert like Richard Horn had
passed upon the merits of some new labor-saving device
of the day; had you been any one of these, and
you might very easily have been, for such persons
came almost daily to see him, the inventor would not
only have listened to your wants, no matter how absorbed
he might have been in his own work, but he
would not have allowed you to leave him until he
was sure that your mind was at rest.

Had you, however, been neither friend nor client,
but some unbeliever fresh from the gossip of the Club,
where many of the habitues not only laughed at the
inventor's predictions for the future, but often lost
their tempers in discussing his revolutionary ideas; or
had you, in a spirit of temerity, entered his room
armed with arguments for his overthrow, nothing that
your good-breeding or the lack of it would have permitted
you to have said could have ruffled his gentle
spirit. With the tact of a man of wide experience
among men, he would have turned the talk into another
channel--music, perhaps, or some topic of the
day--and all with such exquisite grace that you
would have forgotten the subject you came to discuss
until you found yourself outside the yard and half-
way across Kennedy Square before realizing that the
inventor had made no reply to your attacks.

But whoever you might have been, whether the
friend of years, the anxious client, or the trifling
unbeliever, and whatever the purpose of your visit,
whether to shake his hand again for the very delight
of touching it, to seek advice, or to combat his theories,
you would have carried away the impression of a man
whose like you had never met before--a man who
spoke in a low, gentle voice, and yet, with an authority
that compelled attention; enthusiastic over the
things he loved, silent over those that pained him;
a scholar of wide learning, yet skilled in the use of
tools that obeyed him as readily as nimble fingers do
a hand; a philosopher eminently sane on most of the
accepted theories of the day and yet equally insistent
in his support of many of the supposed sophistries and
so-called "fanaticisms of the hour"; an old-time aristocrat
holding fast to the class distinctions of his ancestors
and yet glorying in the dignity of personal
labor; a patriot loyal to the traditions of his State
and yet so opposed to the bondage of men and women
that he had freed his own slaves the day his father's
will was read; a cavalier reverencing a woman as
sweetheart, wife, and mother, and yet longing for the
time to come when she, too, could make a career, then
denied her, coequal in its dignity with that of the man
beside her.

A composite personality of strange contradictions;
of pronounced accomplishments and yet of equally
pronounced failures. And yet, withal, a man so gracious
in speech, so courtly in bearing, so helpful in
counsel, so rational, human, and lovable, that agree
with him or not, as you pleased, his vision would have
lingered with you for days.

When night came the inventor would rake the coals
from the forge, and laying aside his paper cap and
calico gown, close the green door of his shop, cross the
brick pavement of the back yard, and ascend the
stairs with the spindling bannisters to his dressing
room. Here Malachi would have laid out the black
swallow-tail coat with the high velvet collar, trousers
to match, double-breasted waistcoat with gilt buttons,
and fluffy cravat of white silk.

Then, while his master was dressing, the old servant
would slip down-stairs and begin arranging the
several rooms for the evening's guests--for there were
always guests at night. The red damask curtains
would be drawn close, the hearth swept clean, and
fresh logs thrown on the andirons. The lamp in the
library would be lighted, and his master's great easy-
chair wheeled close to a low table piled high with
papers and magazines, his big-eyed reading-glasses
within reach of his hand. The paper would be unfolded,
aired at the snapping blaze, and hung over
the arm of the chair. These duties attended to, the
old servant, with a last satisfied glance about the
room, would betake himself to the foot of the stair-
case, there to await his master's coming, glancing
overhead at every sound, and ready to conduct him to
his chair by the fire.

When Richard, his toilet completed, appeared at
the top of the stairs, Malachi would stand until his
master had reached the bottom step, wheel about,
and, with head up, gravely and noiselessly precede
him into the drawing-room--the only time he ever
dared to walk before him--and with a wave of the
hand and the air of a prince presenting one of his
palaces, would say--"Yo' char's all ready, Marse
Richard; bright fire burnin'." Adding, with a low,
sweeping bow, now that the ceremony was over--
"Hope yo're feelin' fine dis evenin', sah."

He had said it hundreds of times in the course of
the year, but always with a salutation that was a
special tribute, and always with the same low bow,
as he gravely pulled out the chair, puffing up the
back cushion, his wrinkled hands resting on it until
Richard had taken his seat. Then, with equal gravity,
he would hand his master the evening paper and
the big-bowed spectacles, and would stand gravely
by until Richard had dismissed him with a gentle
"Thank you, Malachi; that will do." And Malachi,
with the serene, uplifted face as of one who had
served in a temple, would tiptoe out to his pantry.

It had gone on for years--this waiting for Richard
at the foot of the staircase. Malachi had never
missed a night when his master was at home. It was
not his duty--not a part of the established regime
of the old house. No other family servant about Kennedy
Square performed a like service for master or
mistress. It was not even a custom of the times.

It was only one of "Malachi's ways," Richard
would say, with a gentle smile quivering about his
lips.

"I do dat 'cause it's Marse Richard--dat's all,"
Malachi would answer, drawing himself up with the
dignity of a chamberlain serving a king, when someone
had the audacity to question him--a liberty he
always resented.

They had been boys together--these two. They
had fished and hunted and robbed birds' nests and
gone swimming with each other. They had fought
for each other, and been whipped for each other many
and many a time in the old plantation-days. Night
after night in the years that followed they had sat
by each other when one or the other was ill.

And now that each was an old man the mutual service
was still continued.

"How are you getting on now, Malachi--better?
Ah, that's good--" and the master's thin white hand
would be laid on the black wrinkled head with a
soothing touch.

"Allus feels better, Marse Richard, when I kin
git hold ob yo' han', sah--" Malachi would answer.

Not his slave, remember. Not so many pounds of
human flesh and bone and brains condemned to his
service for life; for Malachi was free to come and
go and had been so privileged since the day the old
Horn estate had been settled twenty years before,
when Richard had given him his freedom with the
other slaves that fell to his lot; not that kind of a
servitor at all, but his comrade, his chum, his friend;
the one man, black as he was, in all the world who
in laying down his life for him would but have
counted it as gain.

Just before tea Mrs. Horn, with a thin gossamer
shawl about her shoulders, would come down from
her bedroom above and join her husband. Then
young Oliver himself would come bounding in, always
a little late, but always with his face aglow and
always bubbling over with laughter, until Malachi,
now that the last member of the family was at home,
would throw open the mahogany doors, and high tea
would be served in the dining-room on the well-
rubbed, unclothed mahogany table, the plates, forks,
and saucers under Malachi's manipulations touching
the polished wood as noiselessly as soap-bubbles.

Tea served and over, Malachi would light the candies
in the big, cut-glass chandelier in the front parlor
--the especial pride of the hostess, it having hung
in her father's house in Virginia.

After this he would retire once more to his pantry,
this time to make ready for some special function to
follow; for every evening at the Horn mansion had
its separate festivity. On Mondays small whist-tables
that unfolded or let down or evolved from half-moons
into circles, their tops covered with green cloth, were
pulled out or moved around so as to form the centres
of cosey groups. Some extra sticks of hickory would
be brought in and piled on the andirons, and the huge
library-table, always covered with the magazines of
the day--Littell's, Westminster, Blackwood's, and the
Scientific Review, would be pushed back against the
wall to make room.

On Wednesdays there would be a dinner at six
o'clock, served without pretence or culinary assistance
from the pastry-cook outside--even the ices were prepared
at home. To these dinners any distinguished
strangers who were passing through the city were
sure to be invited. Malachi in his time had served
many famous men--Charles Dickens, Ole Bull,
Macready, and once the great Mr. Thackeray himself
with a second glass of "that pale sherry, if you
please," and at the great man's request, too. An
appreciation which, in the case of Mr. Thackeray, had
helped to mollify Malachi's righteous wrath over the
immortal novelist's ignorance of Southern dishes:

"Dat fat gemman wid de gold specs dat dey do
say is so mighty great, ain't eat nuffin yet but soup
an' a li'l mite o' 'tater," he said to Aunt Hannah on
one of his trips to the kitchen as dinner went on.
"He let dat tar'pin an' dem ducks go by him same
as dey was pizen. But I lay he knows 'bout dat ole
yaller sherry," and Malachi chuckled. "He keeps a'
retchin' fur dat decanter as if he was 'feared somebody'd
git it fust."

On Fridays there would invariably be a musicale--
generally a quartette, with a few connoisseurs to
listen and to criticise. Then the piano would be
drawn out from its corner and the lid propped up,
so that Max Unger of the "Harmonie" could find
a place for his 'cello behind it, and there still be room
for the inventor with his violin--a violin with a tradition,
for Ole Bull had once played on it and in that
same room, too, and had said it had the soul of a Cremona
--which was quite true when Richard Horn
touched its strings.

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