For Falstaff He Is Dead

THEY were from Virginia. Most Texans are from somewhere, and the true Virginian never ceases to be from the Old Dominion, even to the third and fourth generation. They had evidently been people of consequence once, and were about as capable of holding their own in the rough-and-tumble, hustling West as a couple of babes.

The war, I think, had beggared them. The major knew as much about earning his right to existence as a prince of the blood royal. Misfortune had buffeted them and drifted them, as wind and water sweep a couple of stray leaves about, till it had finally lodged them in San Antonio ; and Mrs. Randolph set to work keeping boarders among the invalids and tourists.

I boarded with them, the first time I went to Texas ; and, like everybody else who had ever tasted Mrs. Randolph’s cookery and fallen within the spell of her genius for home-making, I returned. Perhaps her wonderful coffee served the purpose of the water from the fairy wells of Ireland, of which, if one drinks, he will return to drink again before he dies ; or, more likely, her own gracious influence, diffused upon all her surroundings, accounted for it ; but people who had once sojourned with them always did come back.

Mrs. Randolph was a slight, faded woman, with only the luminous hazel eyes, — such beautiful eyes, — looking out of the hollows of their orbits with a clear, wistful brightness, to mark what a beauty she must have been. Just the slender brown stalk of a once gorgeous flower.

Her voice —it trembles in my ear as I write of it — was unforgettable, so peculiar to herself was it: a thin, sweet falsetto, like the upper notes of a little flute very softly blown. No voice, it seems to me, was ever so exquisitely soothing to ailing nerves or tired ears.

She was a perfect sick-nurse, — that wonderful mingling of galley slave and angel. Of the many who came to her in lingering and hopeless disease, or who actually breathed their last in her arms, all appeared to loosen or forget other ties of love and kindred, to cling to her. Their nearest and dearest, who came, summoned to stand helpless about that last bedside, were almost unnoted, while all the poor, plaintive, peevish appeals were to her ; and the failing eyes and voice followed and sought her to the last.

We all sheltered ourselves in her and hung upon her, as though she had been a strong man, and not a weak, drooping, overburdened woman ; but there was in that fragile form a great heart that was never appalled, never utterly vanquished, a benignant tenderness and kindness accessible to every piteous creature whose warrant was his need, impersonal and vast as those of nature. When you add that she was a typical and perfect Virginia cook, you have, I suppose, the reasons for the popularity of that hoarding-house.

It was never the major who made it, of course. Or perhaps I err, — perhaps I should say it ought not to have been. All the boarders were agreed that banging was too good for the worthless old reprobate ; and yet among them all, I will venture to say, there was not one who did not have a sneaking weakness for the merry old sinner.

He was a very large man. He had evidently been of immense frame before be became so enormously fat as he was when I first saw him. At that time he must have weighed considerably more than three hundred pounds. He was not a man who became hilarious with drink ; he simply managed, by consuming enough liquor to keep a whole political convention tipsy, to be always just comfortably mellow.

A large, unwieldy mass supported on two short and shaky legs, a big mottled face, a quartette of chins, and a rolling, merry eye, — that was the major. He was a confirmed sloven, which annoyed his wife, I am sure, as much as all his other shortcomings together. His shirt (made by Mrs. Randolph, of the finest linen throughout, and upon a special pattern, which was the accretion of years of experience, and sloped out from the top like a circus tent) was always open a button or two at his fat red neck; and his clothing, flung upon his great bulk anyhow, was usually far from spotless. Not a pretty picture ? No, and not far from a repulsive reality — and yet —

As to the major’s mental characteristics, he was a man of wit; not one who told funny stories, but a creature whose careless and rambling brain contained always the fit and apt phrase to characterize a man, an act, or a situation with such inimitable drollery as printed it forever upon your mind. He nicknamed God’s creatures, and his nicknames always stuck. His idle good humor, his thriftless good fellowship, his appreciation of the humorous side of all human mishaps, including his own, were as expansive as his frame.

Nobody who studied his facile, sensual mouth and his shifting, laughing eye would have inclined to belief in his statements ; but few would have guessed, on first acquaintance, the extent of their unreliability.

It was not from necessity he lied, — he knew not the word, — but from preference, which formed the basis of all his actions. His fictions were not ingenious ; he took no thought to elaborate them ; they were simply astonishing in quantity and brazen effrontery. Anything or nothing furnished him a text; his prowess during the late war, his wife’s beauty when young, his conquests of gallantry, his great bodily strength, or the extraordinary complication of diseases from which he suffered, — no theme was too high, too solemn, or too trivial for him to embellish.

What did his wife think of these things ? Who has penetrated the mind of a woman like Mrs. Randolph ? Who can tell how it is that such an one finds it possible to offer, out of her chastity, respect and wifely duty to the coarse, immoral man who chances to be her yokemate ; out of her probity, trustful affection to the dishonest scoundrel whose schemes she has the best chance of seeing through ; or, out of her fastidious abstemiousness, a fond consideration to the drunkard whose name she bears ? These are among the things that people may not know, and that must always remain unsolvable mysteries to those of us who are more impulsive and less rigidly selfgoverned.

The major’s mornings were spent sitting with a few congenial spirits in the front door of a grocery where liquor was sold, around the corner from the house. This galled Mrs. Randolph’s pride; not so much, I think, that he spent the time there drinking and idling — the Randolphs, she told me, as if speaking of any other hereditary peculiarity, had always been drinking men, more or less — as that he must do his drinking in a common groggery, in the company of common loafers.

Major Randolph, to do him justice, was troubled by no such aristocratic scruples. The cronies with whom he consorted pleased him as well as if the best blood of Virginia had reddened their noses, and the little corner grocery was dear to his soul. He was not a man of theories. His philosophy was to reach for what he wanted, get it if he could without too much trouble, and sit in the sun to enjoy it. He was, incidentally, good humored, as impatient of pain for others (if he chanced to see it) as for himself, enjoyed making people laugh rather than cry, so that possibly his simple ethical code was as serviceable to his fellow-creatures as many that are more elaborate.

Thus, all the morning he sat in the shady front door of his lounging-place. between the bulging tin signs of “ Beauty of the Plains ” lager and “ Cowboy’s Delight ” cut plug, his fat knees wide apart, his doubly double chin resting on the head of his cane, babbling, bragging to those who would listen, adjourning frequently to the shrine of Bacchus within, when his throat became dry from incessant talking, and occasionally rising to enthusiasm over the bright eyes, graceful figure, or small foot of some feminine passer-by, for the major was still a great admirer and connoisseur of fine women. When noon came, he got up, and, after a final sacrifice at the inner shrine, rolled home.

There, in the long, cool dining-room — Mrs, Randolph’s rooms were always cool, without reference to the thermometer — would be spread one of her perfect dinners. We sat, perhaps, at table, as the major labored in, red and perspiring, and would hear Mrs. Randolph’s little, silvery, remonstrant voice behind him : —

“ Morton, Morton, wait and wash your hands. I ve ironed you a fresh linen coat.”

“ Coat — coat ” — he would reply, in his fat, wheezy tones ; “ who wants a coat this confounded weather ? I don’t.”

And he usually came in struggling to extricate himself from the one he had on ; flung it, when it was doffed, across the back of his chair; and sat down, looking, in his shirt sleeves, like a captive balloon.

Once seated at the table, he gabbled incessantly, and ate enormously of the most trying compounds, rich old cheese crumbled in very sweet coffee being one of his favorite mixtures. His gastronomic and conversational feats annoyed some people ; but to most of the “ regulars ” it was a never failing delight to see him take a new-comer in hand. The smartly awakened interest at the beginning in the face of the uninitiated one, which merged gradually into astonishment, as one fabulous story or statement jostled another in the turgid tide of the major’s reminiscences, and frequently ended in downright irritation as the true status of the narrator was shown by some misstatement more glaring than those that had preceded it, — these phases succeeded so certainly as to be worth watching.

I remember an elderly, quiet man from Ohio, whom the major instructed once on the subject of the late war. The Ohio man had been an officer in the Federal army, the major in the Confederate. They exchanged reminiscences very interestedly for a while ; or rather, the major held forth, and his hearer put in an astonished query now and again, with a perplexed look growing in his face. Finally the Ohio man found pause in which to mention that he was wounded at the battle of Bald Ridge.

“ The battle of Bald Ridge took place on my land,” said the major.

Yes. sir,” in reply to a surprised exclamation ; “ mostly on the ten-acre pasture of my Virginia plantation. I was n’t in it. Home on sick leave at the time. Down in the bed, and not expected to live. When I heard the cannonading begin, that morning, about sun-up, I said, ‘ Those are Yankee guns. Get me up and dress me.’ I was n’t quite sufeh a heavy weight in those days as I am now, and my boy managed to do it. Two of ’em got me downstairs and out on the front gallery. By that time it was nine o’clock; and I sat there all day, listening to the firing.”

“ The fight came on about two o’clock in the afternoon, as well as I remember,” said the Ohio man, rather coolly. His face was beginning to harden from astonishment into skepticism.

“ Yes, two o’clock, — two o’clock,” chimed in the unabashed major ; “ that’s about the hour. As I was saying, when you fellows commenced to retreat about two o’clock, — or it may have been as late as three, — and come up over the ridge that lay between my house and the battlefield, musket balls began to be exhilaratingly thick on my front porch ; but I was too much interested to notice ’em.”

“ Oh, major, I should think you’d have been frightened,” said a soft voice from the foot of the table. She was a new boarder, too ; a young teacher, and very pretty.

The major looked at her indulgently. “Who — me?” he asked. “Musket balls were too common with me those days to talk about feeling scared of ’em ; they formed my natural atmosphere. I began to feel better directly they commenced beating the devil’s tattoo on the porch floor and the sides of the bouse; and I was up and walking round, time the Yankees had fought and straggled over the far side of the ridge and out of sight. I had my boys take me over then to where the main fighting had been, — it was in my twelve-acre pasture. That was a fearful sight, a fearful sight, — a dreadful battle ! Why, let me tell you, sir, the ground was so thick with the killed and wounded that I could have walked all over that whole fifteen-acre field and never stepped off a dead man ! ”

The Ohio man pushed his chair back with some emphasis ; and then, rising, walked, without a word of reply, into the other room. I was the first to follow him there. I left the major explaining to the pretty teacher how one gets used to danger, and citing the case of his big “ brinnel ” cat, Tom, who ran and hid himself at the first sounds of firing; concluding, “Before the day was over he was out on the porch with me, chasing those musket balls when they ’d sail across the porch floor, fearless and playful as a kitten.”

I found the Ohio man figuring with pencil and paper, and exploding mild expletives. As there was no one else to appeal to, he began on me.

“ Why, bang it! ” he said, “ what does that old idiot mean, getting off such talk as that to a man who was a soldier ? Claims to have been in the war himself, too. Why, hang it all! ” with an accession of wrath, “ it makes me mad to be taken for a fool, like that ! I’ve made a calculation here, and allowing for a lot of men lying crooked and all sorts of ways, the number of dead be claims to have seen in his old pasture is more than were killed on both sides during the entire war ! ”

Why was I born to be the major’s apologist ? I appeased the wrathful Ohio man as best I might, and pondered as to why that task fell to me oftener than to another. Why should I, a young woman professing the most advanced views in regard to all those laws of conduct which he daily transgressed and trampled underfoot in serene unconsciousness, feel moved to offer excuses for him? What was it that begot in me the feeling of toleration, even of indulgence, which I was sure he saw and relied upon ?

To whom did he turn when too hard pressed by the graceless young men boarders who were fond, in Mrs. Randolph’s absence, of “running” him, and setting traps into which some invention more audacious or unlucky than another would precipitate him ? It was invariably to me, and — be always found the ally he openly reckoned upon.

It was a chance expression, not the overwhelming daily testimony of eye and ear, that finally revealed to me the hidden spring of this sympathy, this feeling of camaraderie.

These same young scamps were mostly prime favorites of his, despite their persecutions. However shameless and open their jokes at his expense, his good humor was unfailing, and the waggish drollery of his replies often much more amusing than the remarks which called them forth. I think he liked best his chief tormentor, a young newspaper man, who was running a weekly paper for pleasure and the gratification of a natural bent, and keeping books at night for a living. He was really most likable ; keen and brilliant in his quiet way. The major used to tag him about persistently while lie was in the house, and tell him his most fabulous stories, and always distinguished him above the others by following him to the porch on his departure.

One hot day, just after dinner, I went out on the porch, and found the major sitting in his big common-sense rocker, with his great carpet-slippered feet on a stool, watching the young editor off, after a final bout. As T paused in the doorway he waved his hand toward the slender, erect figure disappearing down the sunny street.

“ A fine fellow,” he said ; “ he ’ll make a man of himself. A heart of gold, — a heart of gold ! ”

The stage was not set for a transformation, —only prosaic daylight all about us ; I had not guessed him, even, when his pasture acres were growing, from sentence to sentence, like the men in buckram ; yet at the Shakespearean phrase disguise fell away, — the incongruous domestic setting, the modern surroundings, the slouchy, soiled modern clothing, — and my old friend Jack Falstaff stood revealed : merry, bibulous, ungodly ; running lies like a public pump ; mighty of paunch and short of wind ; yet withal, in some sense, a lovable creature, by reason of those very faults he made no effort to conceal. Why had I never recognized him before ?

Oh, I knew him now ! Where he had dallied since the days of Hal, of Bardolph, Poins, and Pistol, I knew not, but him I knew ; and never to the day of his death did I lose the feeling that he and I had a secret understanding, that we had campaigned together aforetime.

Shall I tell you how Falstaff died ? I know, for I was there. Of all the world who have laughed at his sallies across the footlights, or wept over his end in the pages of King Henry, I only saw him die.

A couple of cowboys from the upper Panhandle ranges had, in their energetic efforts to spend in one spree a whole year’s wages, paid over to them at one time, strayed as far south as San Antonio. They had probably not been sober for weeks when they reached the town, and their serious intention was to clean it out.

Their irruption into the major’s sleepy little haunt caused an unwonted commotion ; and their warlike demonstrations finally sent the proprietor scurrying out to the sidewalk. As he passed, cautioning the major to seek safety in flight, the old man rose, and started into the saloon.

“ What ’s this ? ” he said. “ I can quiet ’em. They don’t want to hurt anybody. They ’re good boys. I” —

He uttered the last words as his foot reached the threshold. Perhaps such a target as he made, standing against the light, was not to he resisted; perhaps, as seemed to be proved at the subsequent inquest, they were shooting wild, and it was a stray bullet that struck him ; but his next step carried him almost to that gate which waits to open for all of us somewhere.

They brought him home, six of them, groaning, sweating, and tugging at the litter they had improvised from the heavy iron-bound shop shutters. He could not be carried up the stairs, and they laid him on my bed in the downstairs room.

Mrs. Randolph, dry-eyed and efficient, did everything as the physicians directed her, exactly as I bad seen her work over many another sufferer ; but when they told us that the wound was necessarily fatal, that he might live till noon the next day, certainly not longer, she asked that I would stay with her during the night.

And so it came about that, when everything had been done that her hands could do for him. I was to see with astonishment how deep, how poignant, and how utter her grief was. I say, with astonishment ; yet who was I to hold that the major should not have his one faithful mourner ? My own heart was torn with that remnant of Puritanic judgment which would not sanction the grief that rushed in upon me, and was pulled this way and that by choking emotions, and questionings that shall have no answer this side heaven ; but to her who sat across from me the great groaning bulk between us represented all that life once meant: times and scenes and joys long gone ; the pretty boy, the playmate of her youth, the young soldier who was the father of the little children she had buried under the Virginia sod; the last pitiful tie to what had been.

In the early part of the night he talked incessantly : sometimes, with the light of reason in his eyes, to us ; more often, with that light quenched, to those we could not see. Like his prototype, “ a’ babbled o’ green fields.” He was in the Virginia meadows, with his dogs and gun. He called to servitors, long dead or dispersed, to bring his horse ; he smiled at his wife’s bent head, and patted it, calling her first one name and then another.

Then the words were fewer, and the groans were so frequent as to be almost continuous. His wife slipped to the floor, and knelt, holding his hand, her face hidden on his pillow.

I watched the gross, blotched features fine and sharpen under the chisel of pain and the chill of death, till the face of the gay and gallant young Virginian of thirty years before showed faintly through their clumsy mask, like a fleeting image in troubled water.

His voice lapsed into silence, broken now and then by a word, a groan, or a long, sobbing breath. The window began to shine pallidly with the light of dawn, and the dawn s chill breath swept into the room. I got up to put out the lamp that its movement set wavering and flickering. The voice of the dying man rose as I did so.

“ Cold — cold — cold ! ” he cried.

His wife put down the hand she was holding, caught the other, laid her palm against his cheek, and broke into sobs.

And Falstaff had gone back to Sliadowland.

Grace McGowan Cooke.