



Produced by Duncan Harrod





KENNEDY SQUARE

By F. Hopkinson Smith




Author's Preface:

"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  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 there, 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."--From "The Fortunes of
Oliver Horn."





KENNEDY SQUARE




CHAPTER I



On the precise day on which this story opens--some sixty or more years
ago, to be exact--a bullet-headed, merry-eyed, mahogany- young
<DW54> stood on the top step of an old-fashioned, high-stoop house,
craning his head up and down and across Kennedy Square in the effort to
get the first glimpse of his master, St. George Wilmot Temple, attorney
and counsellor-at-law, who was expected home from a ducking trip down
the bay.

Whether it was the need of this very diet, or whether St. George had
felt a sudden longing for the out-of-doors, is a matter of doubt, but
certain it is that some weeks before the very best shot in the county
had betaken himself to the Eastern Shore of Maryland, accompanied by
his guns, his four dogs, and two or three choice men of fashion--young
bloods of the time--men with whom we shall become better acquainted as
these chronicles go on--there to search for the toothsome and elusive
canvas-back for which his State was famous.

That the <DW54> was without a hat and in his shirt-sleeves, and it
winter--the middle of January, really--the only warm thing about him
being the green baize apron tied about his waist, his customary livery
when attending to his morning duties--did not trouble him in the least.
Marse George might come any minute, and he wanted to be the first to
welcome him.

For the past few weeks Todd had had the house to himself. Coal-black
Aunt Jemima, with her knotted pig-tails, capacious bosom, and unconfined
waist, forty years his senior and ten shades darker in color, it is
true, looked after the pots and pans, to say nothing of a particular
spit on which her master's joints and game were roasted; but the upper
part of the house, which covered the drawing-room, dining-room, bedroom,
and dressing-room in the rear, as well as the outside of the dwelling,
including even the green-painted front door and the slant of white
marble steps that dropped to the brick sidewalk, were the especial
property of the chocolate- <DW54>.

To these duties was added the exclusive care of the master himself--a
care which gave the boy the keenest delight, and which embraced every
service from the drawing off of St. George Wilmot Temple's boots to the
shortening of that gentleman's slightly gray hair; the supervision of
his linen, clothes, and table, with such side issues as the custody of
his well-stocked cellar, to say nothing of the compounding of various
combinations, sweet, sour, and strong, the betrayal of whose secrets
would have cost the <DW54> his place.

"Place" is the word, for Todd was not St. George's slave, but the
property of a well-born, if slightly impoverished, gentleman who lived
on the Eastern Shore, and whose chief source of income was the hiring
out to his friends and acquaintances of just such likely young <DW54>s
as Todd--a custom common to the impecunious of those days.

As Mr. Temple, however, did not come under either one of the
above-mentioned classes--the "slightly impoverished gentleman" never
having laid eyes on him in his life--the negotiations had to be
conducted with a certain formality. Todd had therefore, on his arrival,
unpinned from the inside of his jacket a portentous document signed
with his owner's name and sealed with a red wafer, which after such
felicitous phrases as--"I have the distinguished honor," etc.--gave the
boy's age (21), weight (140 pounds), and height (5 feet 10 inches)--all
valuable data for identification in case the chattel conceived a notion
of moving further north (an unnecessary precaution in Todd's case).
To this was added the further information that the boy had been raised
under his master's heels, that he therefore knew his pedigree, and that
his sole and only reason for sparing him from his own immediate service
was his own poverty and the fact that while under St. George's care the
boy could learn how "to wait on quality."

As to the house itself--the "Temple Mansion," as it was called--that
was as much a part of Kennedy Square as the giant magnolias gracing the
park, or the Noah's Ark church, with its quaint belfry and cracked bell,
which faced its shady walks. Nobody, of course, remembered how long it
had been built--that is, nobody then alive--I mean the very date. Such
authorities as Major Clayton were positive that the bricks had been
brought from Holland; while Richard Horn, the rising young scientist,
was sure that all the iron and brass work outside were the product of
Sheffield; but in what year they had all been put together had always
been a disputed question.

That, however, which was certain and beyond doubt, was that St. George's
father, old General Dorsey Temple, had purchased the property near the
close of the preceding century; that he had, with his characteristic
vehemence, pushed up the roof, thrust in two dormer windows, and smashed
out the rear wall, thus enlarging the dining-room and giving increased
space for a glass-covered porch ending in a broad flight of wooden steps
descending to a rose-garden surrounded by a high brick wall; that thus
encouraged he had widened the fireplaces, wainscoted the hall, built a
new mahogany spider-web staircase leading to his library on the second
floor, and had otherwise disported himself after the manner of a man
who, having suddenly fallen heir to a big pot of money, had ever after
continued oblivious to the fact that the more holes he punched in
its bottom the less water would spill over its top. The alterations
complete, balls, routs, and dinners followed to such distinguished
people as Count Rochambeau, the Marquis de Castellux, Marquis de
Lafayette, and other high dignitaries, coming-of-age parties for the
young bloods--quite English in his tastes was the old gentleman--not
to mention many other extravagances which were still discussed by the
gossips of the day.

With the general's death--it had occurred some twenty years before--the
expected had happened. Not only was the pot nearly empty, but the
various drains which it had sustained had so undermined the family
rent-roll that an equally disastrous effect had been produced on the
mansion itself (one of the few pieces of property, by the way, that
the father had left to his only son and heir unencumbered, with the
exception of a suit in chancery from which nobody ever expected a
penny), the only dry spots in St. George's finances being the few ground
rents remaining from his grandmother's legacy and the little he could
pick up at the law.

It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that certain changes and
deteriorations had taken place inside and out of the historic
building--changes which never in the slightest degree affected the
even-tempered St. George, who had retained his own private apartments
regardless of the rest of the house--but changes which, in all justice
to the irascible old spendthrift, would have lifted that gentleman out
of his grave could he have realized their effect and extent. What a
shock, for instance, would the most punctilious man of his time have
received when he found his front basement rented for a law office, to
say nothing of a disreputable tin sign nailed to a shutter--where in
the olden time he and his cronies had toasted their shins before blazing
logs, the toddies kept hot on the hearth! And what a row would he have
raised had he known that the rose-garden was entirely neglected and
given over to the dogs and their kennels; the library in the second
story stripped of its books and turned into a guest-chamber, and the
books themselves consigned to the basement; the oak-panelled dining-room
transformed into a bedchamber for St. George, and the white-and-gold
drawing-room fronting the street reduced to a mere living-room where his
son and heir made merry with his friends! And then the shrinkages all
about! When a room could be dispensed with, it was locked up. When a
shingle broke loose, it stayed loose; and so did the bricks capping the
chimneys, and the leaky rain-spouts that spattered the dingy bricks, as
well as the cracks and crannies that marred the ceilings and walls.

And yet so great was Todd's care over the outside fittings of the
house--details which were necessarily in evidence, and which determined
at a glance the quality of the folks inside--that these several
crumblings, shake-downs, and shrinkages were seldom noticed by the
passer-by. The old adage that a well-brushed hat, a clean collar,
polished shoes, and immaculate gloves--all terminal details--make
the well-dressed man, no matter how shabby or how ill-fitting his
intermediate apparel, applied, according to Todd's standards, to houses
as well as Brummels. He it was who soused the windows of purple glass,
polished the brass knobs, rubbed bright the brass knocker and brass
balls at the top and bottom of the delightful iron railings, to say
nothing of the white marble steps, which he attacked with a slab of
sandstone and cake of fuller's-earth, bringing them to so high a state
of perfection that one wanted to apologize for stepping on them. Thus
it was that the weather-beaten rainspouts, stained bricks, sagging roof,
and blistered window-sashes were no longer in evidence. Indeed, their
very shabbiness so enhanced the brilliancy of Todd's handiwork that the
most casual passers-by were convinced at a glance that gentlefolk lived
within.


On this particular morning, then, Todd had spent most of the time since
daylight--it was now eight o'clock--in the effort to descry his master
making his way along the street, either afoot or by some conveyance, his
eyes dancing, his ears alert as a rabbit's, his restless feet marking
the limit of his eagerness. In his impatience he had practised every
step known to darkydom in single and double shuffle; had patted juba on
one and both knees, keeping time with his heels to the rhythm; had slid
down and climbed up the railings a dozen times, his eyes on the turn in
the street, and had otherwise conducted himself as would any other boy,
black or white, who was at his wits' end to know what to do with the
next second of his time.

Aunt Jemima had listened to the racket until she had lost all patience,
and at last threw up the basement window:

"Go in an' shet dat do'--'fo' I come up dar an' smack ye--'nough ter
make a body deef ter hear ye," she called, her black shining face
dividing the curtains. "How you know he's a-comin'?"

Todd leaned over the railing and peered down: "Mister Harry Rutter done
tol' me--said dey all's a-comin'--de jedge an' Doctor Teackle an'
Marse George an' de hull kit an' bilin'. Dey's been gone mos' two weeks
now,--dey's a-comin' I tell ye--be yere any minute."

"I b'liebe dat when I sees it. Fool <DW65> like you b'liebe anything.
You better go inside 'fo' you catch yo' dea'f. I gin ye fair warnin'
right now dat I ain't gwineter nuss ye,--d'ye yere?--standin' out dar
like a tarr-pin wid yo' haid out. Go in I tell ye!" and she shut the
window with a bang and made her way to the kitchen.

Todd kept up his double shuffle with everything going--hands, feet,
and knees--thrashed his arms about his chest and back to keep up the
circulation and with a final grimace in the direction of the old cook
maintained his watch.

"I spec's it's de fog dat's kep' 'em," he muttered anxiously, his feet
still in action. "Dat bay boat's mos' allus late,--can't tell when
she'll git in. Only las' week--Golly!--dar he is--DAT'S HIM!"

A mud-bespattered gig was swinging around the corner into the Square,
and with a swerve in its course was heading to where Todd stood.

The boy sprang down the steps:

"Yere he is, Aunt Jemima!" he shouted, as if the old cook could have
heard him through three brick walls.

The gig came to a stand-still and began to unload: first the dogs, who
had been stowed under their master's feet since they left the steamboat
wharf, and who with a clear bound to the sidewalk began scouring in mad
circles, one after another, up and down Todd's immaculate steps, the
four in full cry until the entire neighborhood was aroused, the late
sleepers turning over with the remark--"Temple's at home," and the early
risers sticking their heads out of the windows to count the ducks as
they were passed out. Next the master: One shapely leg encased in
an English-made ducking boot, then its mate, until the whole of his
handsome, well-knit, perfectly healthy and perfectly delightful body was
clear of the cramped conveyance.

"Hello, Todd!" he burst out, his face aglow with his drive from the
boat-landing--"glad to see you! Here, take hold of these guns---easy
now, they won't hurt you; one at a time, you lunkhead! And now pull
those ducks from under the seat. How's Aunt Jemima?--Oh, is that
you aunty?" She had come on the run as soon as she heard the dogs.
"Everything all right, aunty--howdy--" and he shook her hand heartily.

The old woman had made a feint to pull her sleeves down over her plump
black arms and then, begrudging the delay, had grasped his outstretched
hand, her face in a broad grin.

"Yes, sah, dat's me. Clar' to goodness, Marse George, I's glad ter
git ye home. Lawd-a-massy, see dem ducks! Purty fat, ain't dey, sah?
My!--dat pair's jes' a-bustin'! G'long you fool <DW65> an' let me hab
'em! G'way f'om dere I tell ye!"

"No,--you pick them up, Todd--they're too heavy for you, aunty. You go
back to your kitchen and hurry up breakfast--waffles, remember,--and
some corn pone and a scallop shell or two--I'm as hungry as a bear."

The whole party were mounting the steps now, St. George carrying the
guns, Todd loaded down with the game--ten brace of canvas-backs and
redheads strung together by their bills--the driver of the gig following
with the master's big ducking overcoat and smaller traps--the four dogs
crowding up trying to nose past for a dash into the wide hall as soon as
Todd opened the door.

"Anybody been here lately, Todd?" his master asked, stopping for a
moment to get a better grip of his heaviest duck gun.

"Ain't nobody been yere partic'ler 'cept Mister Harry Rutter. Dey alls
knowed you was away. Been yere mos' ev'ry day--come ag'in yisterday."

"Mr. Rutter been here!--Well, what did he want?"

"Dunno, sah,--didn't say. Seemed consid'ble shook up when he foun' you
warn't to home. I done tol' him you might be back to-day an' den ag'in
you mightn't--'pended on de way de ducks was flyin'. Spec' he'll be
