Plooie Of Our Square

The result was unsatisfactory. Some hooted. Others laughed.

"Never mind the Dominie," yelled Inky Mike, laying hold of the rail by an end and hauling it around. "He don't mean nothin'."

Old bones are no match for young barbarism. The rush through the gate brushed me aside like a feather. I saw the tragi-comic parade go by, as I leaned against a supporting tree: the advance guard of clamorous urchins, the rail-bearers, the white-faced figure of Plooie, jolted aloft, bleeding but calm, self-forgetful, and still calling out reassurances to his wife; the jostling rabble, and upon the edge of it a frantic woman, clawing, sobbing, imploring. On they swept. I listened for the splash.

It did not come.

A lion had risen in the path. To be more accurate, a lioness. To my unsuccessful rôle of Horatius, a Horatia better fitted for the fray had succeeded, in the austere and superb person of Madame Rachel Pinckney Pemberton Tallafferr, aforetime of the sovereign State of Virginia.

Where all my eloquence had failed, she checked that joyously anticipative rabble by the simple query, set in the chillest and most peremptory of aristocratic tones, as to what they were doing.

I like to think--the Bonnie Lassie says that I am flattering myself thereby--that it was the momentary halt caused by my abortive effort to hold the gate, which gave time for a greater than my humble self to intervene.

Madame Tallafferr, in the glory of black silk, the Pinckney lace, the Pemberton diamond, and accompanied by that fat relic of slavery, Black Sally, had been taking the air genteelly on a bench when the disturbance grated upon her sensitive ear.

"What is that rabble about, Sally?" she inquired.

The aged negress reconnoitered. "Reckon dey's ridin' a gentmun on a rail," she reported.

"A gentleman, Sally? Impossible. No gentleman would endure such an affront. Look again."

"Yessum. It's dat po' white trash dey call Plooie. Mainded yo' umbrella oncet."

"My umbrella-mender!" (The mere fact that the victim had once tinkered for her a decrepit parasol entitled him in her feudal mind to the high protection of the Tallafferr tradition.) "Tell them to desist at once."

Apologetically but shrewdly Sally opined that the neighborhood of the advancing mob was "no place foh a niggah."

With perfect faith in the powers of her superior she added: "You desist 'em, mist'ess."

Sally's confidence in her mistress was equaled or perhaps even excelled by her mistress's confidence in herself.

Leaning upon her cane and attended by the faithful though terrified servitor, Madame Tallafferr rustled forward. She took her stand upon the brink of the fountain in almost the exact spot where she had disarmed MacLachan, the tailor, drunk, songful, and suicidal, two years before. Since that feat an almost mythologic awe had attached itself to her locally.

She waited, small and thin, hawk-eyed, imperious, and tempered like steel. The ring of tempered steel, too, was in her voice when, at the proper moment, she raised it.

"What are you doing?"

The clamor of the mob died down. The sight of Horatia (I beg her pardon humbly, Madame Tallafferr) in the path smote them with misgivings. As in Macaulay's immortal, if somewhat jingly epic, "those behind cried 'Forward' and those before cried 'Back'!" That single hale and fiery old lady held them. No more could those two hundred ruffians have defied the challenge of her contemptuous eyes than they could have advanced into the flaming doors of a furnace.

A cautious voice from the rear inquired: "Who's the dame?"

"She's a witch," conjectured some one.

"It's the Duchess," said another, giving her the local title of veneration.

"It's the lady that shot the tailor," proclaimed an awe-stricken bystander. (Legend takes strange twists in Our Square as elsewhere.) Some outlander, ignorant of our traditions, prescribed in a malevolent squeak:

"T'row 'er in the drink."

"Who spoke?" said Madame Tallafferr, crisp and clear.

Silence. Then the sound of objurgations as the advocate frantically resisted well-meant efforts to thrust him into undesirable prominence. Finally a miniature eruption outward from the mob's edge, followed by a glimpse of a shadowy figure departing at full speed. The Duchess leveled a bony finger at Inky Mike, the nearest figure personally known to her, who began a series of contortions suggestive of a desire to crawl into his own pocket.

"Michael," said the Duchess.

"Yessum," said Inky Mike, whose name happens to be Moe Sapperstein.

"What are you doing to that unfortunate person?"

"J-j-just a little j-j-joke," replied the other in what was doubtless intended for a light-hearted and care-free tone.

"Let him down." Inky Mike hesitated. "At once!" snapped the Duchess and stamped her foot.

"Yessum," said Inky Mike meekly.

Loosing his hold on the scantling, he retreated upon the feet of those behind. They let go also. Plooie slid forward to the ground. Madame Tallafferr's bony finger (backed by the sparkle of an authoritative diamond) swept slowly around a half-circle, with very much the easy and significant motion of a machine gun and something of the effect. A subtle suggestion of limpness manifested itself in the mass before her. Addressing them, she raised her voice not a whit. She had no need to.

"Go about your business," she said. "Rabble!" she added in precisely the tone which one might expect of a well-bred but particularly deadly snake.

The mob wilted to a purposeless and abashed crowd. The crowd disintegrated into individuals. The individuals asked themselves what they were doing there, and, finding no sufficient answer, slunk away. Plooie was triumphantly escorted by Madame Tallafferr and Black Sally, and (less triumphantly) by my limping self, to the nearest haven, which chanced to be the Bonnie Lassie's house. Annie Oombrella pattered along beside him, fumbling his hand and trying not to cry.

But when the Bonnie Lassie saw the melancholy wreck, she cried, as much from fury as from pity, and said that men were brutes and bullies and cowards and imbeciles--and why hadn't her Cyrus been at home to stop it? Whereto Madame Tallafferr complacently responded that Mr. Cyrus Staten had not been needed: the canaille would always respect a proper show of authority from its superiors; and so went home, rustling and sparkling.

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