LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1995, 16 July 1880, Page 3

LITERATURE.

CRUTCH, THE PAGE.

[By "Gath."]

(Continued.)

' Take them hard words back, Bub,' whined the licensed mendicant, with either real or affeoted pain ; 'lt's a p'int of honor I'm standing on. Do, now, little Major!' ' I shan't.' cried the boy. 'Go and work, like me. You're big, and you called Mr Beybold mean. Haven't you got a wife or li'-tle girl, or nobody to work for! Yon ought to work for yourself, anyhow. Oughtn't he, gentlemen?' Beybold, who had slipped around by the little cripple ard was holding him in a care gang way from behmd, looked over to Beau, and was even more impressed with that generally undaunted worthy's expression It was that of acute and suffering sensibility, perhaps the effervescence of seme little remaining pride, or it might have been a twinge of the gout. Beau looked at the little boy suspended there with the weak back and the narrow chest, and that scintillant, sincere spirit beaming out with courage, born In the stock he belonged to. Admiration, conciliation, ar>d p?.in were in the ruined vagrant's eyes. Reynold felt a sense of pity. He put his hand in his pocket and drew forth a dollar. 'Here, Beau,' he saW, 'l'll make an exception. Yon seem to have eome feeling. Don't mind the boy 1' In an instant the coin was 65 lug from his hand through the air. The beggar, with a livid face and clinched cane confronted the Congressman like a maniac. ' You bilk I'he cried. 'You supper customer. I'll brain you! I had rather parted with my shoes at a dolly shop and gone gadding the hoof, without a doss to sleep on —a town pauper, done on the vag—than to have beei made scurvy in the eight of that child and deserve his word of shame ! ' He threw his head upon the table and burst into tears.

ll.—Hash.

Mrs Tryphonia Basil kept a boardinghouse of the usual kind on 4| street. Male clerka—there were no female clerks in the Government in 1854—t0 the number of half a dozen, two old bureau officers), an architect's assistant, Beybold, and certain temporary visitors made up the table. The landlady was the mistress; the slave was Joyoe.

Joyce Basil was a fine-looking girl, who did not know it—a fact so astounding as to be fitly related only in fiction. She did not know it because Bbe had to work so hard for the boarders and her mother. Loving her mother with the whole of her affection, she had Buffered all the pains and penalties of love from that repository. She was to day upbraided for her want of coquetry and neatness ; to morrow, for proposing to desert her mother and elope with a person she bad never heard of. The mainstay cf the establishment, she was not aware of her usefulness. Accepting every complaint and outbreak as If she deserved it, the poor girl lived at the Capital a beautiful scullion, an unsalaried domestic, and daily forwarded the food to the table, led in the chamber-work, rose from the bed nnrested, and retired with all jher bones aching. But she was of a natural grace that hard work could not make awkward ; work only gave her bodily power, brawn, and form. Though no more than seventeen years of age, she was a superb woman, her chest thrown forward, her back like the torso of a Venus de Milo, he head placed on the throat of a Minerva, and the nature of a child moulded in the form of a matron. Joyce Basil had black hair and eyes—very long, excessive hair that In the mornings she tied up with haste so imperfectly, that once Beybold had seen it drop like a cloud around her and nearly touch her feet At that moment, seeing him, she blushed. He pleaded, for once, a Congressman's impudence, and without her objection, wound that great crown of woman's glory aronnd her head, and, as he did so, the perfection of her form and akin, and the overrunning health and height of the Virginia girl, struck him so thoroughly that he said:

' Miss Joyce, I don't wonder that Virginia is the mother of Presidents.'

Between Beybold and Joyce there were already the delicate relations of a girl who did not know that she was a woman, and a man who knew she was beautiful and worthy. He was a man vigilant over him self, and the poverty and menial estate of Joyce Baail were already insuperable obstacles to marrying her, but still he was attracted by her insensibility tbat he could ever have regarded her in that light of marriage. ' Who was her father, the Judge 1 ' he used to reflect. The Judge was a favorite topic with Mrs Basil at the table.

'Mr Bey bold, 1 she would say, 'you commercial people of the Nawth can't hunt, I believe. Judge Basil is now on the mountains of Fawnquar hunting the plova. His grandfather's estate is full of plova.' If, by Beybold saw a look of care on Mrs Basil's face, he inquired for tha Judge, her husband, and found he was shooting on the Occequan. ' Does he never come to Washington, Mrs Basil?' asked Beybold one day, when his roind was very full of Joyce, the daughter. * Not while Congress is in session,' said Mrs Basil ? ' It's a little too much of the t>i pollot for the Judge. His family yon may not know, Mr Beybold, air of the Basils of King George. They married into the Tayloze of Mount Snaffle. The Tayloze of Mount Snaffle have Inglin blood in their veins—the blood of Fokyhuntua. They dropped the name of Taylor, but now it's Tayloze.' On another occasion, at the sight of Joyce Basil cooking over tho fire, against whose flame her moulded arms took momentary roßes upon their ivory, Beybold said to himself, ■ Surely there is something above the common in the race of this girl.' And he asked the question of Mrs Basil: ■Madame, how was the Jucge, yonr husband, at last advices V ' Hunting the snipe, Mr Beybold. I ouppose you do not have the snipe in the Nawth. It is the aristocratic fowl of the Old Dominion. Its bill is only a little shorter than its legs, and it will not brown at the fire, to perfection, unless upon a silver spit. Ah! when the Judge and myself were young, before his land troubles overtook us, we went to the springs with our silver and carriages, Mr Beybold.' Looking up at Mrs Basil, Beybold noticed a pallor and flash alternately, and she evaded his eye. Once Mrs Basil borrowed a hundred dollars from Beybold in advance of board, and the table suffered in consequence. ' Tho Judge,' she had explained, *is short of taxes on his Fawquear lands. It's a desperate moment with him.' Yet in two days the Judge was shooting blue-winged teal at the month of the Accotink, and his entire indifference to his family set Beybold to thinking whether the Virginia husband and father was anything more that a forgetful savage. The boarders, however, made very merry over the absent unknown. If the beafsteak was tough, threats were made to send for ' the Judge,' and let him try a tooth on it ; if scant, it was suggested that the Judge might have paid a gunning visit to the premises and inspected the larder. The daughter of the house kept such an even temper, and was so obliging within the limitations of the establishment, that many a boarder went to his department without complaint, though with an appetite only partly satisfied. The boy, Uriel, also was the guardsman of the household, old-faced as if with tho responsibility of taking care of two women. Indeed, the children of the landlady were so well behaved and prepossessing that, compared with Mrs Basil's shabby hauteur and garra'ity, the legend of the Judge seemed to require no other foundation than offspring of such good spirit and intonation.

Mrs Tryhonia Basil was no reEpectsr of personß. She kept b:>arder3, ehe said, as a matter of soci?tv. and to lightsn the load of tin Judge. He had very little idea that she was making a mercr-ntile matter of hospitality, but, as she feelingly remarked, ' the old families aro misplaced in such times as these yer, when the departments are filled with Datch, Yankees, Crackers, Pore Whites and other foreigners.' Her manner was, at periods, insolent to Mr Reybold, who seldom protested, out of regard to the danchter and the little page ; he w*i a man of quite ordinary appearance, saying little, never making speeohes or soliciting notice, and he accepted his fare and quarters with little or no complaint. 'Crutch,' he said one day to the little boy, ' did you ever see your father ?'

'No, I never saw him, Mr lieybold, bet I've had letters from him.' ' Don't he ever come to see yon when yoa are sick?'

' No. He wanted to come onoo when my back was very sick, and I laid in bed weeks and weeks, sir, dreaming, oh I such beantif al things. I thought mamma and sister and I were all with papa In that old home ws tre going to some day. He carried mo np and down in his arms, and I felt each rest that I never knew anything like it, when I woke np, and my back began to ache again I wouldn't let mamma eend for him, though, because she said he was working for ns all to make our fortunes, and get doctors for me, and clothes and school for dear Joyce. So I sent him my love and told pspr. to work, and he and I would bring the family out all right'

' What did your papa seem like in that dream, my little boy.' 'Oh ! sir, hiß forehead was 3s bright as the sun, Sometimes I see him now when I am tired at night after running all cay through congress.' Reybold's eyes were fnll of as he listened to tho boy, and, t':uming aside, he saw Joyce Basil weeping ilso. 'My dear girl.' he said to her, locking no significantly, ' I fear he will s;e his grest Father very soon.' Reybold had few acquaintancen, and he encouraged the landlady's daughter to go about with them when she couid get a leisure hour or evening. Sometimes they took a seat at the theatre, more oft?n at the old Ascension Church, and once they attended a President's reception. Joyce had the bearing of a well-bred lady, and the purity of thought of a child. She was noticed as if she had been a new and distinguished arrival in Washington. •Ah! Reybold,' said Pontotoc Bibb, *I understand, ole feller, what keeps you so quiet now. You've got a wife onbeknown to the Kemittee ! and a happy man I know yon air.'

It pleased Reybold to hear this, and deepened his interest in the landlady's family. His attention to her daughter stirred Mrs Basil's pride and revolt together.

' My danghter, Colonel Beybold, * she said, * is designed for the army. The Judge never ■writes to me but he says : * Tyrphonee, be careful that you impress upon my daughter the importance of the military profession. My mother, my grandmother, and great grandmother married into the army, and no girl of the Basil stock shall descend to civ:! life while I can keep the Fawquear estates. 1 • Madame,' said the Congressman, 'will you permit me to make the suggestion that your daughter is really a woman and needs a father's care, if she ia ever to receive it. X beseech you to lmpzess this subject upon the Judge His estates cannot be more precious to his heart, if he is a man of honor ; nay, what is better than honor, his duty requires him to dome to the side c* hie children, though he be ever so constrained by business or pleasure to attend to more worldly concerns,' 'The Judge,' exclaimed Mrs Basil, much miffed, 'is a man of hereditaey i jeers, Colonel Beybold. He ia now in pursuit of the—ahem !—the Kinvas-back on his ancestral waters. If he should hear that you suggested a pacific life and the grovelling associations of the capital for him, he might call you out, sir 1' Beybold said no more ; but one evening when Mrs Basil was absent, called across the Potomac, as happened frequently, at the summons of [the Judge—and on such occasions she generally requested a temporary loan, or a slight advance of board—Beybold found Joyce Basil in the little parlor of the dwelling. She was alone and in tears, but the little boy Uriel slept before she chimney fire on a rug, and the pale, thin face, catching the glow of the burning wood, looked beautified as Beybold addressed the young woman.' ' Miss Joyce,' he said, ' our little brother works too hard. His poor withered body, slung on those cruthes for hours and hours, racing up the aisles of the House with stronger pages, is wearing him out. His ambition is very interesting to see, but his breath is growing shorter and his strength is frailer every week. Do you know what it will lead to?'

'O, my Lord!' she said, in the negrofied phrase natural to her latitude," I wish it was no sin to wish him dead.'

• ' Tell me, my friend,' said Beybold, * can Ido nothing to assist you both ? Let me understand you. Accept my sympathy and confidence. Where is Uriel's father ? What is this mystery ?' She did not answer.

' It is no idle curiosity that I ask,' he continued. ' I will appeal to him for his family, even at the risk of his resentment. Where is he ?*

* Oh, do not ask !' she exclaimed. ' Yon want me to tell yon only the truth. He is there !'

She pointed to one of the old portraits in the room—a fairly painted by come provincial artist—and it revealed a handsome face, a little voluptuous but aristocratic, the shoulders clad in a martial cloak, the neck in ruffles also, and a diamond in the shirt bosom. Beybold studied it with all his mind.

' Then it is no fiction,' he said, ' that yon have a living father, one answering to yonr mother's desciiption. Where have I seen that face ? Has some irreparable mistake, some miserable controversy, aleniated him from his wife ? has he another family ?' £ She answered with spirit: 'No, sir. He is my father and cy brother's only. But I can tell yon no more.'

' Joyce,' he said, taking her hand, ' this is not enough. I will not preßs yon to betray any secret you may possess. Keep it. But of yourself I must know something more. Yon are almost a woman. Yon tie beautiful.' At this he tightened his grasp, and it brought him closer to her side. She made a little struggle to draw away, but it pleased him to see that when the first modest opposition had been tried she sat quite happily, though trembling, with his arm aroand her, „ (To be continued.)